94 HAMPSHIRE DAYS 



was due to individual aberration, or resulted through 

 the bluntness of some sense or instinct. What is 

 wonderful and almost incredible is that the higher 

 vertebrates have no instinct to guide them in such a 

 case as I have described, and no inherited knowledge 

 of death. To make of Nature a person, we may see 

 that in spite of her providential care for all her chil- 

 dren, and wise ordering of their lives down to the 

 minutest detail, she ' has yet failed in this one thing. 

 Her only provision is that the dead shall be speedily 

 devoured ; but they are not thus removed in number- 

 less instances; a very familiar one is the sight of 

 living and dead young birds, the dead often in a 

 state of decay, lying together in one nest: and here 

 we cannot but see that the dead become a burden 

 and a danger to the living. Birds and mammals are 

 alike in this. They will call, and wait for, and bring 

 food to, and try to rouse the dead young or mate; 

 day and night they will keep guard over it and waste 

 themselves in fighting to save it from their enemies. 

 Yet we can readily believe that an instinct fitted to 

 save an animal from all this vain excitement, and 

 labour, and danger, would be of infinite advantage to 

 the species that possessed it. 



In some social hymenopterous insects we see that 

 the dead are removed ; it would be impossible for ants 

 to exist in communities numbering many thousands 

 and tens of thousands of members crowded in a small 

 space without such a provision. The dead ant is picked 



