Animals' Illusions

Bisds are perhaps more commouly the victims of illusions than other anirnals, their stupidity about their eggs being quite rernarkable. Last year, for instance, a hen got into the pavilion of a ladies' golf club and begau to sit on a golf ball in a corner, for which it made a nest with a couple of pocket handkerchieis. But many quadrupeds are not only deceived for the moment by refleotions, ELadowsand such unrealities, but ofteu f;eni victims to illusions largcly develoi.vd by the imagination. The norse, for instance, is one of the bravest of animáis when face to face with dangei3 which it can uuuerstand, such as the charge of an elephant or a wild boar at bay. Yet the courageous and devoted horse, so steadfast against the dangeis be knows, is a prey to a hundred terrors of the imagination due to illusions, mainly those of sight, for shying, the minor effect of these illusions, and "bolting," in which panic gains complete possession oí nis soul, are caused, as a rule, by mistakes as to what the horse sees, and not by misinterpretation of what he hears. It is noticed, for instance, that rnany horses whieh shy usnally start away frorn objects on one side more frequently than from objeots on the other. This is probably due to defects in the visión oí one or other eye. In aearly all cases of shyiug the horse takes fright at some unfamiliar objeot, though this is coromonly quite harmless, euch as a wheelbarrow upside down, a freshly felled log or a piece of paper rolling before the wind. This instantly becomes an illusion, is interpreted as something else, and it is a curious question in equine nenropatüy to know what it is that the horse figures these harmless objects to be. When Russian ponies first began to be shipped to Harwich, they usually objected to pass uear a donkey. This reluctance was explained on the hypothesis that the ponies seklora saw donkeys in