u6 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



Bewick's vignettes of old horses, or unhappy donkeys, 

 huddled together in driving showers on some bleak 

 common, express a vast amount of animal misery in 

 an inch of wood-cut. It seems strange that no animal, 

 unless it be the squirrel, seems to build itself a 

 shelter with the express object of keeping off the rain, 

 which all so much dislike. Monkeys are miserable 

 in wet, and could easily build shelters if they had 

 the sense to do so. 'As the creatures hop discon- 

 solately along in the rain/ writes Mr Kipling in 

 his Beast and Man in India ^ ' or crouch on branches, 

 with dripping backs set against the tree-trunk as 

 shelter from a driving storm, they have the air of 

 being very sorry for themselves.' But even the ourang- 

 outang, which builds a small platform in the trees 

 on which to sleep at night, never seems to think 

 of a roof, though the Dyaks say that when it is 

 very wet it covers itself with the leaves of tree 

 ferns. Birds, some of which carefully roof in the 

 nests in which they rear their young, and even, as 

 in the case of the swallow, choose some existing 

 roof, such as the eaves of a house or a project- 

 ing cliff, to cover the nest, when built of materials 

 which wet would destroy, seem incapable of making 

 a waterproof house for themselves. Grouse and all 

 the fowl of the open moorlands go to the most open 

 and exposed spots in rain, avoiding the thick heather 



