ANIMAL EATIOCINATION 35 



be taken from a Cloughian hexameter : ' ' God knows ; I 

 certainly do not." 



LIONEL A. TOLLEMACHE. 



July 3, 1909. 



NOTE. May it not be (with apologies to the cat-lover) 

 that the seemingly deliberate cruelty of the cat , its passion 

 for catching birds though full-fed, and its torments of 

 sexual desire at all seasons, are the consequence of an 

 only partial adaptation to domestic life? The last two 

 lapses are certainly not characteristic of the wild Felidce, 

 and it is very dubious whether the first is, if not from 

 virtue, from hunger. A lion certainly cannot afford to 

 play with an antelope ; he must kill it or lose it. And, as 

 I have pointed out elsewhere, deliberate torture is prac- 

 tically, if not totally, unknown in wild Nature. It is the 

 disease of a more advanced rationality. It has been sug- 

 gested that playing with the mouse is connected with the 

 play-instinct of young animals, which is a very important 

 part of their education and may have survived in the 

 domestic cat through its much leisure. In spite of its 

 many engaging qualities, the domestic cat has, as it were, 

 fallen between two stools, and is therefore, to some extent, 

 a degenerate. It has failed to make its response to the 

 demand of new conditions, as the dog certainly has not so 

 failed. The Malthusianism of the bees seems to me 

 neither a god-send nor a devil-send, if I may disagree with 

 the wise and learned Mr. Tollemache. It is simply a 

 necessity of life, a tax upon evolutionary progress. For 

 the hive-bee is at the top of its race's evolutionary tree, 

 and in none of the lower grades Bombus, Halictus, 

 Mining Bee, Seratina, Solitary Bee, etc. do the worker 

 bees survive the winter. The hive-bee is the only highly 

 organized community of bees, and its drones would survive 

 at the expense of the most useful part of the society, while, 

 as we should expect, the other bees do not put their drones 

 to death. 



