SOLDIERS’ LOVE OF ANIMALS

Northland Age, Volume VII, Issue 15, 10 December 1910, Page 2

SOLDIERS’ LOVE OF ANIMALS

Tbe British soldier always has a soft corner In his heart for animals of all sorts, and a regiment without its complement of these would be almost like a regiment without rifles. In every barrack or camp throughout the Empire one may see numerous denizens of the fur and feather world accommodating themselves to military routine as though they were horn to it. Every time the drum rolls or the stirring notes of the bugle peal out on the parade-ground there la a soldier’s dog or cat or bird somewhere in the immediate vicinity. They are always treated with the utmost kindness, and often live to a good old age. At Edinburgh Castie to this day may be seen "the dog’s cemetery,” a small plot of ground under the ramparts of the Argyle Battery, just below Mons Meg, where the canine friends of Highland regiments stationed there have been buried. Army pets vary, naturally, with the particular quarter of the globe where the regiment to which they are attached may he stationed. In England, for example, one does not often see much beyond dogs and cats and cariaries. When, however, troops ore abroad the range becomes wider, and barracks and cantonments will then be found to contain, in addition to the usual number of dogs and cats, all sorts of birds of rare and gorgeous plumage, mongooses, harmless snakes monkeys, and even tame bears and lion-cubs. Of course, when these latter emerge from the cubstage to something approaching maturity they have to be got rid of. As a rule they are then presented to the nearest zoological gardens, where their former masters visit* them during their hours of leisure,— "Chambers’s Journal.”