A still more remarkable case of this kind was given in one of my books, of a gaucho, accompanied by his dog, who was chased and overtaken by a troop of soldiers during one of the civil wars in Uruguay. Suspecting him of being a spy, or, at all events, an enemy, his captors cut his throat, then rode away, calling to the dog to follow them; but the animal refused to leave his dead master's side. Returning to the spot a few days later, they saw the body of the man they had killed surrounded by a large number of vultures, which the dog, in a frenzy of excitement, was occupied in keeping at a respectable distance. It was observed that the dog, after making one of his sallies, driving the birds away with furious barkings, would set out at a run to a small stream not far from the spot; but when half way to it he would look back, and, seeing the vultures advancing once more to the corpse, would rush back to protect it. 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. When a vizcacha dies in a burrow, the body is dragged out and thrown on to the mound among the mass of rubbish collected on it--but not until he has been dead a long time, and there is nothing left of him but the dry bones held together by the skin. In that condition the other members of the community probably cease to look on him as one of their companions who has fallen into a long sleep; he is no more than so much rubbish, which must be cleared out of an old disused burrow. Probably the beaver possesses some rude