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13 Our Dumb Animals 1 (1880-1881)

handle is hein.journals/animals13 and id is 1 raw text is: COE 1 44p~. 'C % b ut I would not enter on my list of friends, Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility, the man TVho needlessly sets foot upon a worm. - Cowper. Vol. 13. BOSTON, JUNE, 1880. No. 1. Instinct. Who taught the natives of the field and flood To shun their poison and to choose their food? Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand? Who made the spider parallels design Sure as De Moivre, without rule or line? Who bid the stork Columbus-like explore Heavens not his own, and worlds unknown before, WHO CALLS THE COUNCIL, STATES THE CERTAIN DAY. VHO rORMS THE PHALANX, AND WHO POINTS THE WAY ? - Pope. Itt The Zoological Gardens of Philadelphia. The collection at the present time numbers 942; and comprises 392 mammals, 415 birds, 51 batra- chians, and 84 reptiles, the whole valued at $46,- 770. Many additions of interest and value have been made to the collection during the year, both by presentation and purchase. THE MORTALITY AMONG THE ANIMALS. The estimated loss sustained by the society dur- ing the year by the deaths of the animals was $6829. This was largely contributed to by a female giraffe, a female African elephant, a female hair seal, and a male South American tapir. To this may be added a Javan leopard, an ostrich, a pair of cheetahs, a young male Bactrian camel, and a moose. In speaking of the deaths at the garden, Dr. Henry C. Chapman, Prosector of the Society, in his report, states that the steady diminishing rela- tive mortality of the past three years is attributed to the better hygienic measures observed in the construction 'of the cages, the character of the food, and the maintenance of proper temperature. The neglect of such measures is the most fertile source of disease in menageries, which no drugs or medical treatment can remedy. The causes of death during the past year are such as are inherent to the nature of animals confined under conditions often unavoidably different from those in a state of nature, and which no foresight can prevent. FOOD FOR THE ANIMALS. The amount of food consumed daily by the ani- mals is large. The chief meat-eating animals are the lions, tigers, leopards, pumas, and hyenas. Altogether they consume about 175 pounds of horse meat a day. Next in point of heavy feeding come the elephants. Their chief food is hay, of which it takes about four times as much to keep an ele- phant as it does to keep a horse, the elephant eat- ing about 100 pounds of hay every twenty-four hours. And in order to keep up his appetite the hay must be the best going, being invariably tim- othy of the best grade. Other animals that eat hay are the giraffes, the camels, the deer, zebra, and different animals of the cattle species. The lions, tigers, leopards, and pumas are not the only animals that are fed on horse meat. The wolves and foxes and prairie dogs and monkeys and black bears also come in for their share of the supplies, being fed almost altogether on this kind of meat. Two years ago it was found that they would eat the flesh of horses as quick as that of cows, and provision was made accordingly. This saves about fifty per cent. in expense. The cost of feeding the lions, tigers, leopards, and pumas as stated is about $20 a week. Add to this the $114, cost of feeding the larger animals, elephants, giraffes, and others, and the cost is $134. The sea-lions have to be fed on fish, usually fresh and salt mackerel, each animal taking twelve or fifteen to each meal twice a day, and consuming altogether 100 pounds of fish daily. Next in point of delicate livers come the polar bears, whose reg- ular diet; is bread soaked in milk, with fish now and then for a change. The black bears are also given bread, 100 pounds being used daily. Vege- tables of almost every sort are fed liberally to the different animals,- cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, and turnips. The elephants are great cab- bage eaters, in addition to their standard diet, hay. The giraffes, singularly enough, are great onion eaters, while the deer and goats and animals of the cow species eat carrots and turnips and potatoes. Bran and oats and corn are also liberally distrib- uted, once or twice a week, among the hay- eating animals. The most delicate and expensive feeder in the place perhaps is the ourang-outang, which gets beef, potatoes, bread, and honey. An- other delicacy which must not be omitted in the diet of the polar bears is fish oil, of which they get several supplies a week, The cost of feeding the animals alone foots up to about $100 a day. -Abridged from Ledger. Massacre of the Dogs of Glasgow. So lately as November, 1876, only two months subsequent to one of the congresses in that city of the British Association for the Promotion of Sci- ence - a congress that had, however, in its dis- cussion on Spiritualism, exposed to public view the morbid credulity even of men of undoubted scientific attainments, - Glasgow, collegiate and wealthy, that prides itself on being the second city of the British Empire, by 'means of its police massacred no less than 1,200 dogs. And for what reason P Because it was feared that some of these poor animals might become rabid; that, if they became rabid, they would bite man; that, if man were so bitten, he would inevitably be affected with hydrophobia; and that hydrophobia is a cer- tainly fatal and horrible disease. The immediate cause of the slaughter was the fact that three men haddied of so-called hydrophobia in the Royal In- firmary of Glasgow, within a period of a few weeks. But the popular 'panic was based on a series of false assumptions, and therefore of false fears. For rabies is rare in the dog, at least in Scotland; so much so that very few practitioners, veterinary or medical, ever saw a genuine case; hydrophobia in man is equally rare there; and both in Scotland and elsewhere, when hydrophobia does occur in man, there is seldom proof of the rabidity of the dog that bit, or that was supposed to have bitten, the patient. The peculiar phenomena of the dis- ease are, in the majority of cases at least, ascribable to morbid imagination. In short, the hue and cry of mad dog is as little rational as the belief in diabolic possession; and the wholesale massacre of innocent animals on the ground of mere possibilities of being affected by this or that disorder is as cruel and indefensible in the one case as the other. It has already been stated that, in the super- stitious ages, the excitement or passion of the persecuted cat or dog was ascribed to diabolic possession, just as the epilepsy or mania of man was attributed to satanic or demoniac agency. And the treatment was in accordance with the popular belief. But it is doubtful whether, in these dark ages, there was any such ruthless sac- rifice to man's stupidity or morbid fears as the massacre of the dogs of Glasgow by its magis- trates in the winter of 1876.- Mind in the Lower Animals, vol. 2, pp. 363, 364. The Intelligence of Animals. It is commonly said that no animal can commu- nicate its experience to another. This I deny. Nothing is more notorious than that a flock of rooks can distinguish a man with a walking-stick from one with a gun, and act accordingly. It is erroneous to say that an animal cannot make tools. I know of a case in which a wild elephant tore off a piece of a branch to scratch its diseased tooth with,-a common habit of these animals; but, finding it too large, it deliberately broke it smaller with the help of its trunk and fore feet. Here was a case of reasoning.-London Standard. Al)R Q~

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