The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-11-24
ANIMAL ANTIPATHIES.

A correspondent describes a curious scene witnessed at the Geological Gar dens. He had for d companion a gentle man, now dead, who was dwarf, and walked with crutches. "As soon as the tiger saw him he Iashed his tail, and finally stood up on his hind legs against the bars and remained in a. state of great excitement. We who saw 1t at the time were much struck by the sight, though whether its behavior were due to alarm or intense curiosity we could not tell" Probably the tigers excite ment was due to neither, but to the in- tent antipathy which many animals feel for anything abnormal, either in their own species, or even among others with which they are well acquainted. It is the feeling which prompts storks or rocks to destroy at once the young of other birds which are matched from eggs placed in their nests, and dogs to bark at cripples or ragged beggars, or as in this case, reused the dislike of an observant Zoo tiger who saw men of normal size and proportions pass every day before it's cage.
 The belief in permanent antiquities among animals is very ancient. It ap- pears in all the monkish tertiaries. There the otter is always the enemy of the crocodile, and the unicorn of the elephant; while the dragon is hated by the hart, and in turn dislikes all beasts including the panther, whose exquisite l perfume, so agreeable to all other an imals, disgusts the dragon, who runs | away the moment he smells it. Turning from legend to facts, we find that an-
 imal antiquities have a range as wide or wider than the instinctive dislikes 1 of men. They are in a part exactly the same in kind as the latter, one animal
 exciting in another exactly the same disgust that a baboon or a black beetle
 does in the minds of many human
 beings; but the list of hereditary ene- mies-of one species which is the sworn | foe of another, and has left in the weak i CT species an inbred and ancient sense
 of horror and fear-is far longer than
 the list of hereditary enemies of the l dominant species-man.
 l | plicable antipathy are naturally the | least common, but they are very mark
 ed and definite examples It is quite | impossible, for instance, to account for the intense disgust which the camel ex- cites in horses. They have been asso- ciated in many countries for centuries | in the common service of man, and
 early training makes the horse acqui- 1 esce in the proximity of the creature
 which disgusts him. Otherwise it is far l more difficult to accustom horses to
 work with camels than with elephants, a natural antipathy, and not a reasoned
 fear. They get used to the sight of an
 elephant, but the smell of a camel dis 1 gusts and frightens them. English | horses which have never seen a camel
 refuse to approach ground where they | have stood. Recently a travelling me nagerie was refused leave to encemp on
 a village green in Suffolk, not because
 it was not welcome, for a wild-beast
 show is always vastly popular, but be- | cause the green was also the site of a
 market, and the farmers gig-horses invariably refused to be driven across it after camels had stood there. Yet last
 week two bears were being exhibited in
 Harley Street, and no horse showed any
 fear of them. One horse almost touched
 the larger bear, but neither it or the
 team of a four-in-hand which passed 1 showed any neTvousness.-Londo Spectator.