The soldiers watched him for some time with great interest, and once
more they tried in vain to get him to follow them. Two days afterwards
they revisited the spot, to find the dog lying dead by the side of his
dead master. I had this story from the lips of one of the witnesses.
In all such cases, whether the dog watches over, conceals, or buries a
dead body, he is doubtless moved by the same instinct which leads him to
safeguard the animal he is attached to--another dog or his human master.
But, as the dead animal is past help, it is, of course, a blunder of the
instinct; and the blunder must be of very much less frequent occurrence
among wild than among domestic animals. In a state of nature, when a
gregarious animal dies, he dies, as a rule, alone; his body is not seen
by his former companions, and he is not missed. When he dies by
violence--which is the common fate--the body is carried off or devoured
by the killer. This being the usual order, there is no instinct, except
in a very few species, relating to the disposal of the dead among
mammals and other vertebrates, such as is found in ants and other social
insects. There are a few mammalians that live together in small
communities, in a habitation made to last for many generations, in which
such an instinct would appear necessary, and it accordingly exists, but
is very imperfect. This is the case with the vizcacha, the large rodent
of the pampas, which lives with its fellows, to the number of twenty or
thirty, in a cluster of huge burrows.
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