The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-09-27

@A~ @AASl s4lDL E0EHGk ALsLe -AA+| g~sA-2%es since they Have no pride to make them grin and bear any discomfort are free to make as much fuss as they like. Then too, animals are easily to dis tinguish between the signs of fear and pain. .~
 learned this lesson from a cat with which I was once on friendly terms He used to "clirnb the moonlit fence,'' and I sometimes had to mend him up afterward. Once he got a suppurating wound near the top of his head. This drained internally so that a large pus cavity formed around the eyesoeket and along the side of the jaw. Most men find this sort of thing exceedingly painful. I csntainly should choose to miss meal rather than to move the muscles in that check. The cat, how ever, did not seem to mind it especially. could not see that he even sighted his face washing on that side. Yet he would not lave the wound touched. After time discovered that he was simply frightened by the new experi- ence. By gdng to work cautiously to avoid alarming him, could get him to lie in his mistress lap under her gentle restraint, ant allow holes to be cut in his skin anl the cavities drained and washed out with hydrogen dioxide Now, I submit that no young child could be made to believe so well. The advantage of trust in his parents, the habit of obedience, the ability to un- derstand what it was all about, would all be on the side of the child. But the child would make ten times the fuss, becaus, it would hurt him ten times more. Several like; experiences make me bslieve hat in the stock anecdotes, tie sagacious lions and ele- plants. which have thorns in their paws or absesses in their gums, and bear heroicalK the pain of an operation for the sake 3f the santicipated relief, do not reallyendure much, after all.
 My argumelt then amounts to this: We all agree that the flower when plucked suffels no pain. We all agree also that it Is no discomfort to the oyster to become the initial dinner course-at least never heard of any body who obected to raw oysters on the ground ot cruelty. As to the lob ster, am mt sure that we are all quite free iron misgivings when he is boiled or broihd alive, At any rate, we agree that hii feelings are not worth considering. Dn the other end of the scale we knoy that the lower races of men and the east intelligent members of civilized communities are much less sensitive thanare we. The law of con tinuity, therefore. impels us to believe that the higfnr brutes feel pain less than the lowest men, and the les intel lIgent brutes feel 1t hardly at all. Tn short, the capacity af any creature for suffering pain is probably closely re- lated to its ability to avoid 1t.
 Turning now the practical side of tiie question, everyday experience with an- hnais supports the theoretical position if only the ohierver takes pains to dis tinguish between pain and fear. An animal will ciy and struggle in the most distressing wa from sheer panic when it can hardly De in any bodily discom- fort. On the other hand, an animal
 
 apparently painful from such insuffic- ent motives that it is impossible to be- lieve that it costs him any such rice as man would have to pay.
 Only upon some such basis as this, believe, is it possible to explain certain anomalies in the behavior of many of the common domestic animals. The balky horse, ,yn which the most merci- less beating has no effect, is started by 8 few handfuls of gravel or a mild switching with q leafy branch. The fighting dogs endure unlimited kicks and cuffs, but yield to a bucket of cold water. Sportsmen tell us that a rab- bit, driven from it's burrow by a ferret, if 1t sees tlIe gunner, often bolts into the hole again; and thereupon will al- low itself to be slowly torn to shreds by the ferret rether than face the man with the gun. Tn all such cases it is impossible to believe that the creature would act as it does if its pain sense were at all comparable to our own,
 Everybody who hts had to do with animals knows how difficult it is to drive them from thdr food even when they are not especially hungry. I had a little experience of this sort once up- on a time that rathtr opened my eyes to one side of animal psychology, I was ministerlng angd to an interesting, numerous family of hogs. The boar, one day when his wives and children were being fed, brokt into the seraglio, and of course rushe straight for the trough, trampling his young progeny recklesssly under bot. I, with the handle of an old hoe called his atten- tion to the moral anl financial aspects of his conduct. I pu; it to him, as one omnivora to another, whether he would rather wait five minutes and have his dinner quietly in the usual place, or take lace, or take it then and there plus the biggest licking le ever had in his life, He for his part allowed that he was being murdered, and called upon the Society for the prevention of Cruelty to Animals for aid. At the same time he gave me to understand in the most unmistaSable fashion that the biggest licking was equal to giv- ing him was small matter at most compared with the delights of guzzling sour milk and apple 9arings, Now, the hog knew far more accurately than any other being possibly known just how much it hurt him to be batted over the nose with a. hoe handle. If he decided that the pains of the heating were mi