6 7 3 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



guish as clearly as do many men "between rneum and tuum. When 

 trespassing they plainly know that their quarrel is not just, and 

 conscience makes cowards of many if not of all. 



" You are aware," says a writer in the Zoologist (vol. v, p. 1G35), 

 " that in Rome the inhabitants are accustomed to throw out the 

 garbage and refuse of their houses, which is deposited generally 

 in some blind corner appointed for that purpose by the police. 

 Though several hundreds of these depots exist in Rome, not one 

 is unappropriated, but has become the fee-simple of some particu- 

 lar dog, who will not suffer his claim to be invaded. Some cases 

 of copartnership in a corner have been observed, but with brothers 

 on the death of a parent, and desperate battles occur occasionally 

 about ' fixity of tenure/ as in Tipperary." 



The homeless dogs of Constantinople have their particular 

 quarters of the city, into which no dog save its regularly estab- 

 lished canine inmates can intrude without the risk of being torn 

 to pieces. 



A spider, unless greatly superior in size, hesitates to invade the 

 web of another spider for marauding purposes. Ants consider 

 themselves rightfully entitled not merely to the city they have 

 built, and the roads they have laid out, but to the whole neigh- 

 boring territory, and they will brave any odds in its defense. 



I do not assert that among the lower animals right is the only 

 might. Like the " lords of creation " they often covet what is not 

 their own, and, like them, they sometimes overcome the feeling of 

 respect for their neighbor's landmark. There are feathered and 

 four-footed Romanoffs Nachbarfresser who, without scruple, 

 seek to absorb whatsoever lies in their vicinity. Nor does right- 

 eous indignation always lend the assailed party strength enough 

 to defend his Plevna. 



We may go yet further : not only do animals feel a right to 

 such possessions as they have acquired by custom, by first dis- 

 covery, or by labor. Such right, among social species, is recog- 

 nized by public opinion, and is enforced by positive law. In sup- 

 port of this statement let us turn to the rookery. It has been ob- 

 served, not once only but repeatedly, that a particular couple of 

 rooks, too lazy to fetch building materials for themselves, and 

 given to plundering their more industrious neighbors, have been 

 formally punished by the community. The penalty inflicted va- 

 ries greatly. Sometimes it consists simply in a sound beating. 

 Sometimes the ill-gotten nest is summarily demolished, and the 

 materials are given back to their rightful owners. Sometimes, 

 again perhaps when sundry former convictions are on record* 

 the offenders, after a severe cuffing, are forever banished from the 

 rookery and left to seek out for themselves a new settlement. On 

 one occasion I saw a rook stealthily approach the bottom of a 



