418 USE OF NATURAL INSTRUMENTS. 



though indulging in a family sparring match ' (Wood). The 

 black and brown rat and the common or domestic mouse 

 lick their paws, and so wash their heads and faces as the cat 

 does (Wood). The hamster and common rat wash their 

 faces. Mice also embrace each other with their fore legs 

 and paws (Cassell). Rats eat like squirrels, ' sitting upon 

 their hind legs, and holding the fruit in their front paws ' 

 (Wood). The toad uses one of its fore feet to draw any 

 extraneous matter such as a blade of grass or a fragment 

 of moss out of its mouth (Jesse). The Mellivora, and pro- 

 bably other animals, use their paws to aid vision, by acting 

 as eye-shades, just as man does (Houzeau). 



The dog, cat, and other animals, moreover, use their fore 

 legs and paws for purposes to which the Quadrumana and 

 man do not usually at least apply their hands and arms. 

 Thus the cat steals, by the insertion of its paw, bottled porter, 

 milk or cream, or helps herself to water or other fluids, from 

 vessels with long narrow mouths, inaccessible to its tongue. 

 A certain cat, when thirsty and unable to reach the water in 

 a jug by means of her tongue, dipped her paws in (Wood). 



What may be considered in certain respects the equiva- 

 lents of fingers, hands, and arms in man, or of paws and fore 

 legs in other animals, subserve various useful, and some 

 singular, purposes. Thus there is a certain land-crab of 

 Samoa that climbs cocoa-nut trees, ' and pushes down a 

 brown nut that is nearly ripe, and consequently easily 

 detached from the stalk. It then descends, goes to the nut, 

 and with its strong claws tears off the fibrous husk, always 

 commencing at that end where the three eyeholes are 

 situated, just as a native would. When this operation is 

 completed it reascends the tree .... and holding the nut 

 by a bit of the fibre, which it leaves on for the purpose, it 

 lets it fall upon a rock or stone, and thus breaks it. When 

 there are no other means of breaking the nut it hammers 

 away with its heavy claws on one of the eyeholes until an 

 opening is made, large enough to insert its narrow pincers, 

 Avith which it scoops out the white food' (Boddam Whetham). 



Hague speaks of certain Californian ants wringing their 

 pincers in despair, as man would do his hands. Soldiers 



