Page 267 - erewhon

less suspicious circumstances. Suicidal mania, again, which
had hitherto been confined exclusively to donkeys, became
alarmingly prevalent even among such for the most part
self-respecting creatures as sheep and cattle. It was aston-
ishing how some of these unfortunate animals would scent
out a butcher’s knife if there was one within a mile of them,
and run right up against it if the butcher did not get it out
of their way in time.
Dogs, again, that had been quite law-abiding as regards
domestic poultry, tame rabbits, sucking pigs, or sheep
and lambs, suddenly took to breaking beyond the control
of their masters, and killing anything that they were told
not to touch. It was held that any animal killed by a dog
had died a natural death, for it was the dog’s nature to kill
things, and he had only refrained from molesting farmyard
creatures hitherto because his nature had been tampered
with. Unfortunately the more these unruly tendencies be-
came developed, the more the common people seemed to
delight in breeding the very animals that would put tempta-
tion in the dog’s way. There is little doubt, in fact, that they
were deliberately evading the law; but whether this was so
or no they sold or ate everything their dogs had killed.
Evasion was more difficult in the case of the larger ani-
mals, for the magistrates could not wink at all the pretended
suicides of pigs, sheep, and cattle that were brought before
them. Sometimes they had to convict, and a few convictions
had a very terrorising effect—whereas in the case of ani-
mals killed by a dog, the marks of the dog’s teeth could be
seen, and it was practically impossible to prove malice on

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