50 ROUND THE YEAR 



their vast bodies all dripping with salt water. But 

 the long, coarse and deep-rooted bristles which lie in 

 the fur keep it from getting matted or ruffled. Some 

 animals can use their claws as combs ; in others the 

 pile of the fur is too short to need combing at all. 



The Cat does her licking by preference after a meal, 

 probably because the saliva flows most freely at that 

 time. Then she likes to go to sleep. The three 

 actions of feeding, licking and sleeping have become 

 associated, not only in the Cat's memory, but very likely 

 (so uniform is the practice) in the nervous mechanism 

 of her body. Some men associate feeding, smoking 

 and sleeping, but this is merely the habit of an 

 individual, and not ingrained in the physical organi- 

 sation of the race. There are men who eat without 

 wanting either to smoke or sleep, and many women put 

 knitting in the place of smoking. But every Cat that 

 I have known loves to lick after eating, and to sleep 

 after licking. 



Many Birds possess a useful comb in the claw of 

 the middle toe of the foot, this has been noticed in 

 Owls, Night-jars, Herons, Bitterns, Cormorants, 

 Gannets, etc. It has been explained as a means of 

 holding the prey securely. Gilbert White probably 

 set this notion afoot. In his forty-seventh letter he 

 says of the Goatsucker or Nightjar : " I saw it dis- 

 tinctly more than once put out its short leg while on 

 the wing, and by a bend of the head deliver somewhat 

 into its mouth. If it takes any part of its prey in its 

 foot, as I have now the greatest reason to suppose it 

 does these chafers, I no longer wonder at the use of 

 its middle toe, which is curiously furnished with a 



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