The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-09-25
PANIC AS SHOWN
 SOME IN ANIMALS Singular Conduct of Dogs When Horses Went
 Crazy. A SYMPATHETIC PANIC Uncomfortable Scares, Too, Among Human
 Beings.
4 SYMPATHETIC PANIC

Beings.
 At country house at which the
 writer was staying there occurred a
 which he can recall no parallel. Our
 which he canrecall no parallel. Our
 host had been breaking in a young
 horse, and one morning the animal was
 sent out with an older. and steadier
 horse harnessed to a heavy omnibus.
 All went extremely well during a drive
 of about ten miles till the party, con-
 sistlng of the coachman, the man who had broken in the horse, and a daugh-
 ter of the house, were almost home again. Our host was waiting on the road a few hundred yards from the stable to see how the young one shap-
 ed He happened to have with him
 more than a dozen fox terriers which are accustomed to be taken out to-
 gether, frequently get run after a
 rabbit, and are generally known as
 'the pack" Our host jumped on to the
 boxstep of the omnibus as 1t went past, the better to judge of the young horses appearance. and as luck would
 have 1t one of the pack began leaping up at the step and barking. The bark
 ing dog started the young horse kick ing. The first kick was skier, as the writer can testify, having examined
 the horses hoof high up on the omni-
 bus, and it brought the horse over the
 trace. After that he was beyond con-
 trol, and his plunges made the other animal respond The latter got one leg over the pole and soon the young one
 was fiounderng on the ground, and the elder, powerful animal of over sixteen hands, was trampling on him and kicking furlously. All this, though a serious mess, was nothing extraor-
 dinary in tue experience of a fearless household which breaks in It's own horses.
 But then an entireE new and unex- pected trouble began. The pack were yelping and skirmishing round the kicking horses, and the horses (wheth- CT only in pain, or whether partly in anger and terror at the pack 1t is diff ficult to say) began to scream. All the four persons engaged in the turmoil they were by this time on the road
 trying to hold and pacify the horses
 are agreed that the screaming of the horses was what appeared to make the pack go mad Mad, at all events, for the time they went. They attacked the horses and they attacked the men,
 particularly the men. It ought to be explained that the dogs knew the men
 perfectly well, and had been accuston- ed to go out often enough with our host to regard him as their master in the absence of one or two other mem
 bens of the family. They were not,
 then, attacking strangers. Our host, hanging on vallantly to the head of the older horse, which was still Kick
 ing dlabolically and screaming, kept several of the dogs off by taking les son from the horse. To his great sat-
 isfaction he lifted" one of them sev-
 eral yards by lucky kick, but for all ! that he was bitten on both legs. The
 coachman suffered worse; both his legs were bleeding and his tattere1 trousers
 were sufficient testimony of the way
 in which he had been worried" Once
 during the struggle the horses stopped 1 screaming for few second and then i it seems that if the pack did not &C., tually come under control they were l at all events not seriously aggressive, 1 One curious fact which impressed It.
 self on all those present was that
 retriever trained for shooting, who
 need 1t be said?--is not theoretically a
 member of the pack, rushed in with
 the others and laid hold of enc of the l ears of the fallen horse.
 The pack are a set of terriers as good tempered in their relations with | human beings as one could want to | find. This was not a case of few
 vicious dogs turning when suitable opportunity came on people whom they l had obeyed sullenly. Of course, the 1 fact that the terriers were accustomed to hunt anything which came in their
 way may explain something Concelv- ably the spectacle of a horse on the , ground may have aroused in them the same instincts as they have at the end of run, though even so the horse would surely seem very large and unfamiliar quarry. But this does not explain the attack upon the men. Hounds at the death do not turn on ! the huntsmen, and, so far as one l knows. would not do so even if they were less well under control. The writer is forced to the conclusion that
 the screaming of the horses produced in the dogs kind of frenzy which may perhaps be best though loosely, describ- I ed as panic. Panic, of course, strictly means a state of fear resulting from
 some triHing or inadequate cause. The Greeks certainly were familiar with such a state of "nervNs" when they 1 attributed the phenomenon to the ar- | bitrary intervention of Pan. But Or hars one may be allowed to use Sie word In the wider sense of similar ac- ton on the nerves by same external cause not necessarily producing fear. : The pack were certainly not afraid. The 1 subject is a very interesting, but un- happily very vague one in the hu- man sphere; 1t would be an interest ing, though probably even more diff | cult to investigate in the animal world.
 History records uncomfortable panics among soldiers, for which no immedi- ate reason could be shown, In recent times there was the panic of the Greek soldiers outside Larissa in Thessaly l when no Turks were near them. The writer has heard young officer tell Lnr,t in thn Snnth A frican war his conn.