INTELLIGENCE OP SQUIERELS. 183 



benefit to the animals, such au explanation might be valid if ntural selection be admitted at 

 all. On the other hand, Darwin has shewn that the position assumed by the shamming 

 insects "in no instance was exactly the same" as that of the dead insects, and in many cases it 

 W'as as ixnlike as could be. The c^uestion then arises in my mind : May not this condition 

 assumed by insects be a peculiarity with which natural selection has nothing to do — a 

 sort of imperfection of their nervous system, if it exposes them to enemies ; the reverse 

 if it conceals them — at all events not necessarily connected with natural selection, for 

 animals survive in spite of peculiarities and imperfections ? In fact the conception that 

 any animal is perfectly adapted to its surroundings is unwarrantable, otherwise such 

 an animal shoixld continue to live in perpetimm. 



Preyer would ascribe the so-called shamming death of insects wholly to cntaplexy, 

 which seems highly probable. Couch, who is quoted by Eomaues, would explain certain 

 behaviour of wolves, foxes and some other animals usually set down to deliberate 

 feigning, by an effect analagoixs to cataplexy. He thinks their senses are stupefied by 

 surprise, terror, etc., so that they are unable to escape. 



The transfixing effect of fear in man has been well described by the poets, including 

 Shakespeare himself : — 



" Whilst they, distill'd 

 Almost to jelly with the act of fear. 

 Stand dumb, and speak not to him." 



Romanes inclines to give weight to the views of Preyer and Couch so far as verte- 

 brates are concerned. He says " A fox would never have so good a chance of escape from 

 an enemy by remaining motionless as it would by the use of its legs " But if man is to 

 be reckoned among the enemies of this animal, then, according to instances given by 

 Romanes in the same chapter, foxes have escaped from their enemies by feigning death. 



I have often noticed how one dog has escaped the attack of another by lying down 

 and assuming an attitude of complete surrender. (See "Youatt on the Dog," Am. éd., p. 

 31.) Even dogs would not be inclined to worry a fox apparently dead. And what of the 

 feigning of the opossum? Romanes finds a special difficulty in this subject, because, as 

 he says, " On the one hand, it is obvioixs that the idea of death and its conscious simula- 

 tion would involves abstraction of a higher order than we could readily ascribe to any 

 animal, and on the other hand, it is not easy otherwise to explain the facts. " 



I cannot help thinking that this difficulty is a sample of those we make for ourselves 

 by attempting to define and classify where nature has left things complex and unsus- 

 ceptible of the sort of simple analysis after which Romanes and others are in this instance 

 striving. 



If there is a vertebrate animal in which the feigning of death is an instinct, as pure 

 as such an instinct can be, that animal is the Opossum {Didelp/ii/s virginwna, Shaw). If 

 invariability of behavior under similar circumstances be essential to an instinct, then the 

 Opossum's feigning is instinctive. From the account of a writer in the Ainencaii Naturalist 

 (Vol. VI) we learn that a Turkey Buzzard (Catharies aura) may run iipon an Opossum and, 

 after flapping his wings a few times over him, the Opossum will go into a " spasm," and 

 the buzzard proceed to pick out its eyes, and " generally take a pretty good bite from its 

 neck and shoulders." From all that I have been able to learn of the behaviour of this 



