300 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



of breaking cover. When this is over, the hunger-fit 

 starts that will make a ruin of the cabbage within a few 

 weeks. 



What an appetite! What a stomach, working con- 

 tinuously day and night! It is a devouring laboratory, 

 through which the foodstuffs merely pass, transformed 

 at once. I serve up to my caged herd a bunch of leaves 

 picked from among the biggest : two hours later, nothing 

 remains but the thick midribs ; and even these are attacked 

 when there is any delay in renewing the victuals. At this 

 rate a " hundredweight-cabbage," doled out leaf by leaf, 

 would not last my menagerie a week. 



The gluttonous animal, therefore, when it swarms and 

 multiplies, is a scourge. How are we to protect our 

 gardens against it? In the days of Pliny, the great 

 Latin naturalist, a stake was set up in the middle of the 

 cabbage-bed to be preserved ; and on this stake was fixed 

 a Horse's skull bleached in the sun: a Mare's skull was 

 considered even better. This sort of bogey was supposed 

 to ward off the devouring brood. 



My confidence in this preservative is but an indifferent 

 one; my reason for mentioning it is that it reminds 

 me of a custom still observed in our own days, at least 

 in my part of the country. Nothing is so long-lived as 

 absurdity. Tradition has retained in a simplified form, 

 the ancient defensive apparatus of which Pliny speaks. 

 For the Horse's skull our people have substituted an egg- 

 shell on the top of a switch stuck among the cabbages. 

 It is easier to arrange ; also it is quite as useful, that is 

 to say, it has no effect whatever. 



