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dogs and horses would appear to be more sensitive to pain than less domesticated animals, and yet innumerable instances have been recorded of these animals meeting with the severest injuries, and exhibiting little or no indication of suffering much. Mr. G. A. Rowell, of Oxford, in an essay on 'The Beneficent Distribution of the Sense of Pain in the Lower Animals,' published some years ago, gives many forcible examples of this. Among others, the following:

A horse, feeding by the side of the road on Headington Hill, Oxford, had its leg broken by a coach-wheel passing over it just above the fetlock-joint; the bone was dreadfully crushed, and protruded in parts through the skin. Within a few minutes the horse had hobbled to the side of the road and begun grazing, showing no other signs of pain than holding up the injured leg.

Other striking examples of a similar nature are quoted in the same work as having come under the writer's own observation. Every gamekeeper knows that it is a common thing for a rat or rabbit, when caught by the leg in one of the ordinary steel traps, to gnaw off its limb and so escape, while other animals when kept short of food will readily eat their own tails. Another proof that animals are less sensitive to pain than man is their comparative freedom from shock after severe injuries. When a man meets with a severe injury of any kind, a train of symptoms follow which are collectively known by the name of shock. A striking pallor takes the place of the natural colour, the skin becomes covered with a clammy moisture, the eye loses its natural lustre, and the extremities become deadly cold, and while the ear may detect the fluttering action of the heart, the pulse at the wrist is often quite imperceptible. All these symptoms point to a great disturbance of the nervous system, and I think that all medical men would agree that shock is much more easily induced and more marked among the active brain-workers in our crowded cities than among their less intellectual brethren in agricultural districts, whereas the lower animals often sustain the severest injuries without exhibiting any of the symptoms of shock.

When we pass from animals to fish, we find that the belief that fish suffer very little pain is far more general and widespread. Every fisherman has his story to tell either of himself or of a friend having hooked a fish with another hook recently embedded in its flesh. The great difficulty of killing some fish would prove at any rate that their nervous system was not over-sensitive to shock, while the extreme smallness of their brains would strengthen our belief in their want of sensitiveness, for whereas the proportion of the brain of man to the rest of his body is about as one to sixty, the proportion in fishes is about one to three thousand.

In man and animals the skin is certainly the most sensitive tissue of the body; we can hardly imagine that the scales which cover the bodies of fishes are equally sensitive. When we pass to the invertebrate kingdom, represented by shell-fish, snails, VOL. XXVI.-No. 152.

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worms, insects, &c., we find an entire absence of brain, the nervous system being represented by two nervous cords running the whole length of the ventral surface of the body, and having a pair of small masses of nervous tissue, known as ganglia, developed at intervals. The extraordinary mutilations these creatures will successfully endure prove that their nervous system is but little influenced by shock, and renders it almost certain that it is equally insensitive to pain. When we remember that the worm when cut in half does not necessarily die, but has the power of reproducing the lower portion of its body, and that in some orders the lower half develops a new mouth, and becomes a new animal-again, when we remember that other members of the same sub-kingdom, such as lobsters and crabs, will frequently when frightened throw off a limb or two, we must conclude that their sense of pain is very small, and yet they are repeatedly spoken and written of as though they were as sensitive

as man.

The nervous system of insects is very similar to that of worms and snails, being represented by a ventral chain of ganglia; and in their case the evidence of insensitiveness would appear to be overwhelming.

Wasps with their bodies crushed out of all shape will readily attack sugar and honey when supplied them as though nothing were the matter; cockchafers, in a similar way, will go on feeding when their abdomens have been partially eviscerated by the peck of a bird; while a beetle with a pin through its body has been known to perambulate the collector's case in which it had been placed, and devour all the other specimens in the neighbourhood. Again, as we watch a moth hovering round an open light, and see its wings and body from time to time singed by the heat, it must strike us that were it more sensitive to pain its life would be preserved.

I have at the commencement of this article spoken of the apparently enormous amount of pain inflicted on the lower animals by man, and in spite of all that I have said with regard to their lesser sensitiveness, we shall, I think, still be horrified by the pain inflicted when we read accounts of the way in which some of the larger animals are killed by the use of explosive bullets. Especially will this be the case when we read of the fearful wounds inflicted on the whales in our northern seas by harpoons shot from cannons carrying dynamite bombs which only explode after burying themselves in the bodies of the unfortunate creatures. We are told that their dying struggles will often, in spite of these enormous wounds, last for hours. Yet one fact would lead us to hope that the pain is much less than we should at first sight conceive possible. It is that, as far as man is concerned, any severe injury would seem to paralyse the nerve endings to such an extent as to prevent them transmitting the stimulus which they had received to the brain. Thus it often

happens that the severest wounds are only attended by a feeling of numbness in the parts, until several hours after the injury, when the nerves have recovered their function. Every surgeon is familiar with cases which illustrate this point, and innumerable examples might be quoted of the severest gunshot wounds giving rise to but little pain until many hours after the wound had been inflicted. Mr. Rowell relates the following:

During the siege of Sebastopol, an officer was with a party of his men in the trenches, when a shell fell and burst among them: he was lighting a pipe at the moment the shell exploded; and, making some exclamation relative to its having knocked the pipe out of his hand, his attention was directed to a sergeant near him, who was killed by the explosion-when, seeing that the eyes of his men were turned upon himself, he found that the shell had taken off one arm between the wrist and elbow, and three fingers from the other hand; but, till his attention was thus drawn to it, he did not know he was wounded, and felt no pain from it.

Excitement, too, is an important factor in mitigating pain; the battle-field constantly affords examples of intense excitement, blunting sensation. It was excitement which, in the middle ages, enabled religious enthusiasts to inflict apparently the severest tortures on their own bodies, without exhibiting any evidence of acute suffering. And we can have little doubt that the excitement produced in an animal when fighting for life and liberty often aids in numbing the pain of the ghastly wounds inflicted by the weapons of man. This might appear to tell against the suggestion made earlier, that the more active and wide-awake the brain is the more sensitive is it to pain, for it is quite clear that during periods of intense excitement the brain is in a state of great activity. The probable explanation is that this activity is limited to one portion of the brain, and that the functions of the other portions are thrown partially into abeyance. Lastly, let us not forget that animals are generally free from that anticipation of pain which with man is often worse than the pain itself.

I would conclude by urging that we have good grounds for believing that, although the lower animals are sensitive to pain, they are far less sensitive than man, and that the lower we descend in the scale of animal life, the less sensitive it becomes. Further, that while in their wild state countless myriads of them meet with violent deaths at the hands of their more powerful foes, such death is attended by a minimum amount of pain. I would add, too, that such a belief should not make us any the less careful in our dealings with the lower animals, but should strengthen our belief in the mercy and benevolence of the Creator, and should increase our pleasure in studying their habits and movements.

W. COLLIER.

ON SOME WAR-SONGS OF EUROPE.

and you

shall hear

List his discourse of war,
A fearful battle render'd in music.

Henry the Fifth.

BETWEEN the war-cries common throughout Europe in the middle ages, and the war songs of the later centuries, there is a wide difference, although the object, which was to animate the troops by some common and endeared subject of reference at the moment of attack, remains the same. War-cries were generally one of three thingsthe name of the leader, the place of the rendezvous, or the figure on the standard. For an example of the first class, the cry of the family of Bourbon was simply the name 'Bourbon.' Sometimes an encomium was added, as in the case of the cri de guerre of the Counts of Hainault-Hainault the Noble.' Those of the kind which consisted of a reference to the place of rendezvous were abundant in Scotland, in consequence of the localisation of clans in particular districts, and the practice which prevailed of collecting them at a particular place in times of danger by means of a messenger or the 'fiery cross.' They were also taken from the names of patron Saints: that of the King of England was St. George.'

Advance our standards, set upon our foes;
Our ancient word of courage, fair St. George,
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons!
Upon them!

Richard the Third.

The King of France cried 'Montjoye St. Denis' the former word being in allusion, it is supposed, to certain little mounts on which crosses were erected, on the way from Paris to St. Denis, for the direction of travellers. The Duke of Milan had for his clamor militaris—as an old Italian writer, Sylvester Petra Sancta, quaintly terms it-Milan the Valiant." An old French herald speaks of some other war-cries, somewhat different from the above: the Crusaders' 'Dieu le veut ;' the cries of invocation, a notable instance of which was that of the lords of Montmorency,' 'Dieu aide au premier This being said to have been the first family converted to Christianity in

France

Chrétien ;' and the cries of exhortation, as that of the Emperor, 'A dextre et à sinistre,' a sufficiently emphatic direction to the soldiers of the chivalrous times.

When modes of fighting changed, war-cries were laid aside or transferred as mottoes to the crests of the families by which they had been used. The latter is the case with a large proportion of the Scotch family'slogans' (war-cries). The favourite battle-cry of the Irish was 'Aboo.' War-cries were evidently indulged in by the soldiers in Homer's day, for he speaks of the solemn silence in which the Greeks marched to battle, and the wild chants and yells characteristic of the Trojans' advance. The Greeks stood in great awe of their generals: the cosmopolitan nature of the Trojan army did not leave room for any special patriotic sentiment.

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The political importance of songs and ballads in aiding great changes, whether reformatory, revolutionary, or otherwise, has been proved, not only in our own country, but in almost every other: witness the famous Rakoczy march of the Hungarians, Haydn's magnificent Hymn to the Emperor of Austria, the patriotic Brabançonne of the Belgians, Garibaldi's warlike Hymn of the Italians, the stirring and grandiose God protect the Czar' of the Russians, the inflammable Marseillaise' of the light-hearted French, the beloved Heil Dir im Siegeskranz of the Vaterland, which is the same as our own inspiriting and essentially loyal anthem. Many of the war-songs popular at certain periods in various countries have perished for want of the immortality achieved only by the pen. Grenville Murray's delightful Doine gives a short account of the Lantars, or wandering minstrels, who are taught to sing to humble men the Doine which had soothed their sires, and the old warsongs of the braves, which had yet power to stir their hearts like the call of the trumpet. These songs had been transmitted from father to son by oral tradition and by quaint old living chroniclers, the only records now left to Roumania. Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mopsa, in The Winter's Tale, the following words:-'I love a ballad in print o' life; for then we are sure they are true.' Mopsa's ballads were not of a sufficiently refined nature to render them worthy of oral transmission; probably their inherent coarseness ensured a ready sale at every street corner. This was not the case with many of the warrior's lays, which were well worthy of preservation. D'Israeli, in his Curiosities of Literature, says that the Ranz des Vaches, though without anything striking in the composition, has so powerful an influence over the Swiss, and impresses them with so violent a desire to return to their own country, that it is forbidden to be played in the Swiss regiments in the French service on pain of death. There is also a Scotch tune which has the same effect on some of our North Britons. In one of our battles in Calabria, a bagpiper of the 78th Highland regiment, when the light infantry

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