n
ground sedately, to walk through the water rather than set the whole
flock leaping and scrambling; but never to give voice to alarm, as goats
will, and call the herder.

It appears that leaders understand their office, and goats particularly
exhibit a jealousy of their rights to be first over the stepping-stones
or to walk the teetering log-bridges at the roaring creeks. By this
facile reference of the initiative to the wisest one, the shepherd is
served most. The dogs learn to which of the flock to communicate orders,
at which heels a bark or a bite soonest sets the flock in motion. But
the flock-mind obsesses equally the best-trained, flashes as instantly
from the meanest of the flock.

By very little the herder may turn the flock-mind to his advantage, but
chiefly it works against him. Suppose on the open range the impulse to
forward movement overtakes them, set in motion by some eager leaders
that remember enough of what lies ahead to make them oblivious to what
they pass. They press ahead. The flock draws on. The momentum of travel
grows. The bells clang soft and hurriedly; the sheep forget to feed;
they neglect the tender pastures; they will not stay to drink. Under an
unwise or indolent herder the sheep going on an unaccustomed trail will
overtravel and underfeed, until in the midst of good pasture they starve
upon their feet. So it is on the Long Trail you so often see the herder
walking with his dogs ahead of his sheep to hold them back to feed. But
if it should be new ground he must go after and press them skilfully,
for the flock-mind balks chiefly at the unknown.

In sudden attacks from several quarters, or inexplicable man-thwarting
of their instincts, the flock-mind teaches them to turn a solid front,
revolving about in the smallest compass with the lambs in their midst,
narrowing and indrawing until they perish by suffocation. So they did in
the intricate defiles of Red Rock, where Carrier lost 250 in '74, and at
Poison Springs, as Narcisse Duplin told me, where he had to choose
between leaving them to the deadly waters, or, prevented from the
spring, made witless by thirst, to mill about until they piled up and
killed threescore in their midst. By no urgency of the dogs could they
be moved forward or scattered until night fell with coolness and
returning sanity. Nor does the imperfect gregariousness of man always
save us from ill-considered rushes or strangulous in-turnings of the
social mass. Notwi