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Nor is it unlikely that animals of a higher class than birds exist there; and the discovery of new mammalians, differing in type from those we know, would certainly be glad tidings to most students of nature. Land birds on the pampas are few in species and in numbers.
No; the small, bright soul which is in a bird is incapable of such a motive, and has only the lesser light of instinct for its guide, and to the birds' instinct we are only one of the wingless mammalians inhabiting the earth, and with the cat and weasel are labelled "dangerous," but the ox and horse and sheep have no such label. Even our larger, dimmer eyes can easily discover the attraction.
Those, and the other large avians, together with the finest of the mammalians, will shortly be lost to the pampas utterly as the great bustard is to England, and as the wild turkey and bison and many other species will shortly be lost to North America.
Among the mammalians the instinct appears almost universal; but their displays are, as a rule, less admirable than those seen in birds.
How marvellous a thing it seems that the two species of mammalians the beaver and the vizcacha that most nearly simulate men's intelligent actions in their social organizing instincts, and their habitations, which are made to endure, should belong to an order so low down as the Rodents!
There are moments when he is mad with joy, when he cannot keep still, when his impulse is to sing and shout aloud and laugh at nothing, to run and leap and exert himself in some extravagant way. Among the heavier mammalians the feeling is manifested in loud noises, bellowings and screamings, and in lumbering, uncouth motions throwing up of heels, pretended panics, and ponderous mock battles.
Lest any one should misread the title to this chapter, I hasten to say that the huanaco, or guanaco as it is often spelt, is not a perishing species; nor, as things are, is it likely to perish soon, despite the fact that civilized men, Britons especially, are now enthusiastically engaged in the extermination of all the nobler mammalians: a very glorious crusade, the triumphant conclusion of which will doubtless be witnessed by the succeeding generation, more favoured in this respect than ours.
I have found among my papers the following mislaid note on the subject of sportive displays of mammalians, which should have been used on page 281, where the subject is briefly treated: Most mammalians are comparatively silent and live on the ground, and not having the power to escape easily, which birds have, and being more persecuted by man, they do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his presence; it is difficult to watch any wild animal without the watcher's presence being known or suspected.
And to believe even this we should first have to assume that bats and goatsuckers are differently constituted from all other creatures; for in other animals insects, birds, and mammalians the appearance of fire by night seems to confuse and frighten, but it certainly cannot be said to warn, in the sense in which that word is used when we speak of the brilliant colours of some butterflies, or even of the gestures of some venomous snakes, and of the sounds they emit.
It is a familiar fact that brightness in itself powerfully attracts most if not all animals. The higher mammalians are affected in the same way as birds and insects, although not in the same degree. This fact partly explains the rage of the bull.
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