381 



mutton. In fact it has gi-adually become carnivorous, taking 

 advantage of the carcases hung up by the settlers iu winter in the 

 open air, or even tearing away pieces of flesh from the living 

 animal, " exhibiting, it is said, an amount of daring akin to the 

 savage fierceness of a raptorial." * 



It may be remarked also that many animals that have been 

 brought into contact with man feed upon artificial substances 

 which they could not have obtained formerly. M. Fatio, in a work 

 on the Swiss mammals, describes a little black mouse found in the 

 Grisons and supposed to be a new species, wliich " lives on tobacco. 

 It was first noticed in a tobacco-factory, and was found to make 

 great ravages among the stores of the nicotian weed." t 



Darwin also has observed that there are " many British insects 

 which now feed on exotic plants, or exclusively on artificial sub- 

 stances." X Among the latter might be mentioned certain species 

 of moth which in the larva state make the same havoc in stores of 

 tea which the mouse above alluded to makes in the tobacco stores. 



Another remarkable fact connected with man's movements is 

 noticed in a paper in the " American Naturalist" for October, 1871, 

 where Mr. T. Martin Trippe speaks of " the difference in habits, 

 note, time of breeding, &c., in the same species of bird in the 

 eastern and newly-settled western portions of the American con- 

 tinent, and the manner in which the indigenous avi-fauna of the 

 "Western States is becoming gradually superseded by Eastern forms, 

 along with the advance of man." § 



But irrespectively of man, many facts are on record serving to 

 show the altered habits and instincts of animals under particular 

 circumstances. Thus it has been ascertained, a fact I can confirm 

 by my own observation, that the reproduction of frogs and toads 

 occasionally takes place without the intermediate stage of tadpole, 

 the occasion being that, in which they have accidentally got into 

 places from which there is no escape, and where the tadpole 

 state would be impossible for lack of water. || Efts also lo.se many 



* See " Nature," vol. iv.,.p. 489, and vol. v., p. 262. t "Nature," 



vol. i., p. 282. J Origin of Species, 1st Ed., p. 183. § Id., vol. v., 



p. 313. II Edinb. New Phil. Joum., vol. 55 (1853), p. 184. See also 



Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 2nd Ser., vol. xi., p. 341., Id. p. 482. 



