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

During this period the males often herd together, and they serve a protective function by attracting to themselves the attacks of their enemies. For the mothers, the bearing time is a truce time. There are fox-hunters who roundly assert that in spring fox hounds have been known to refuse to attack and kill foxes about to become mothers. The Fourth Law. In union there is strength; in separation there is weakness; and the solitary animal is in the greatest danger. It was the wild species of mammals and birds who learned and most diligently observed this law who became individually the most numerous. A hundred pairs of eyes, a hundred noses and a hundred pairs of listening ears increase about ten times the protection of the single individual against surprise attacks. The solitary elephant, bison, sheep or goat is far easier to stalk and approach than a herd, or a herd member. A wolf pack can attack and kill even the strongest solitary musk-ox, bison or caribou, but the horned herd is invincible. A lynx can pull down and kill a single mountain sheep ram, but even the mountain lion does not care to attack a herd of sheep. It is due solely to the beneficent results of this clear precept, and the law of defensive union, that any baboons are today alive in Africa. The grizzly bear loves mountain-goat meat; but he does not love to have his inner tube punctured by the deadly little black skewers on the head of a billy. It is the Mountain Goats' Protective Union that condemns the silvertip grizzly to laborious digging for humble little ground-squirrels, instead of killing goats for a living. The rogue elephant who will not behave himself in the herd, and will not live up to the herd law, is expelled; and after that takes place his wicked race is very soon ended by a high- power bullet, about calibre .26. The last one brought to my notice was overtaken by Charles Theobald, State Shikaree of Mysore, in a Ford automobile; and the car outlived the elephant.