ne by one, and then carry them into the garden
and watch over them, carrying them back in the same way after a time; at
other times, lying contentedly with them in the basket. Of course Vic
had to be forcibly removed when the adopted family required their
mother's attention for their sustenance. I also have met a friend who
saw a hen-hawk, who was in a cage, mothering a young starling. Three
young, unfledged starlings were given the hawk to eat. She ate two, and
then broodled the other, and took the utmost care of it. Unhappily, the
young starling died; and from that moment the hawk would touch no food,
but died herself in a few days.

The same friend was on a mountain one day, when a sheep came up to him,
and unmistakably begged him to follow her going just in front, and
continually looking round to see if he was following. The sheep led him
at last to some rocks, where he found a lamb fast wedged in between two
pieces of rock. He was able to liberate the lamb, to the evident joy of
the mother.

I myself once saw a cat "broodling" and taking care of a very small
chicken, which, being hatched first of a brood, had been brought into a
cottage and placed in a basket near the fire. It managed to get out of
the basket, and hopped up to the cat, who immediately adopted it.

WM. WALSHAM WAKEFIELD.

HAVE ANIMALS A FOREKNOWLEDGE OF DEATH?

[_April 30, 1892._]

In a recent _Spectator_ there is a quotation from Pierre Loti to the
effect that "animals not only fear death, but fear it the more because
they are aware that they have no future." Pierre Loti is a brilliant
novelist, but I am not aware that he is a scientific naturalist, and I
trust his idea is a mere chimera. Loti would take from the brutes the
one privilege for which men may envy them, and endows them with a
knowledge of the aftertime that we have only by revelation. However, two
common-sense naturalists have published their belief that the lower
animals have a foreknowledge of death, and one of them goes so far as to
give an account of an old horse committing suicide. He says the animal
frequently suffered from some internal disease, and that it deliberately
walked into a pond, and, putting its nostrils under water, stood thus
till it dropped dead from suffocation. The incident, I think, is easily
explained. Many horses drink in the manner described, and in old horses
heart-disease is not uncommon. I imagine the stoppage of respiration
ca