98 ANIMAL REPUTATION. 



courage, or for its tenderness in nursing. Its domestic life is 

 characterised by order and quiet, by cleanliness, by care for 

 the young. There is an atmosphere of good understanding 

 in the community ; its members co-operate harmoniously 

 for common ends ; there is a rarity of quarrels among 

 themselves. They are models of industry for instance, the 

 sand wasp (Baird). They display considerable artistic fancy 

 (Figuier) ; their nest is a sort of town, displaying symmetry 

 or regularity in its dwellings, streets, and walls (Eeaumur). 



To say that the wasp is faultless that it is free from vices 

 while abounding in virtues would be to say what is not 

 true would be to assert that it is a singular exception to 

 the general rule that the character of all animals is made up 

 of various combinations of both vices and virtues. The wasp 

 has warlike propensities, and its pugnacity is sometimes a 

 marked feature. It is, or may appear to be, excitable, 

 irritable, even savage ; it gets out of temper or into bad 

 temper. But it is fair to the insect's true character to say, 

 in this as in so many other cases, that this bad temper or 

 other similar vices, where they occur, are frequently in great 

 measure or altogether due to the provocation to which the 

 wasp is subjected occasionally or habitually from man. 



We have seen, then, that in a great many cases man is 

 really to blame ; he is morally responsible for the evil repu- 

 tation which he attaches to the lower animals. If only he 

 give them fair play, they will show themselves in their real, 

 not in their fictitious, characters. It is proper, however, on 

 man's behalf, here shortly to advert to the fact that he occa- 

 sionally, though not often, suffers in reputation from the 

 misdeeds of other animals. Many a poor servant girl, for 

 instance, has been suspected of, charged with, or punished 

 for a theft of coin, jewellery, plate, or cutlery that was 

 really perpetrated by some roguish rat or pet bird. In the 

 chapter on ' Crime and Criminality ' it is shown how many 

 animals are arrant thieves; how they hoard their stolen 

 goods, and how ingeniously and successfully they conceal 

 the evidences and results of their crime. And there is this 

 parallelism between the responsibility of man and that of the 

 lower animals for the undeserved evil reputation fixed upon 



