The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals: A Book of Personal Observations

If the races and nations of men were as peace-loving, honest and sensible in avoiding wars as all the wild animal species are, then would we indeed have a social heaven upon earth. Now, tell me, ye winged winds that blow from the four corners of the earth and over the seven seas, whence came the Philosophy of Peace to the world's wild animals? Did they learn it by observing the ways of man? "It is to laugh," says the innkeeper. Man has not yet learned it himself; and therefore do we find the beasts of the field a lap ahead of the quarrelsome biped who has assumed dominion over them. Day by day we read in our newspapers of men and women who are moral lepers and utterly unfit to associate with horses, dogs, cats, deer and elephants. Our big male chimpanzee, Father Boma, who knows no wife but Suzette, and firmly repels the blandishments of his neighbor Fanny, is a more moral individual than many a pretty gentleman whose name we see heading columns of divorce proceedings in the newspapers. Said the Count to Julia in "The Hunchback," "Dost thou like the picture, dearest?" As a natural historian, it is our task to hew to the line, and let the chips fall where they will. Among the wild animals there are but few degenerate and unmoral species. In some very upright species there are occasionally individual lapses from virtue. A famous case in point is the rogue elephant, who goes from meanness to meanness until he becomes unbearable. Then he is driven out of the herd; he becomes an outcast and a bandit, and he upsets carts, maims bullocks, tears down huts and finally murders natives until the nearest local sahib gets after him, and ends his career with a bullet through his wicked brain.