194 OTHEE ANIMALS 



more than he could possibly eat, biscuits and nuts, when 

 we at last discovered his secret larder in a hollow tree in 

 the plantation, his biscuits all wretchedly soft and soppy ; 

 and we also found him holding in his tiny hands and 

 biting an immense tree-fungus, like a great sea-biscuit, 

 which almost overbalanced him. To end my too long 

 story, in November, of the same year, alas ! our pet dis- 

 appeared and came no longer at my call, leaping through 

 the trees. 



ANNB MARY WOOD. 



July 18, 1908. 



NOTE. The phrase " the struggle for existence " has 

 perhaps done more mischief in the world than any other 

 in the history of civilization. How tragi-comic is the 

 wizard spell of words ! For the phrase is but a phrase , 

 a metaphor and expressly so used by Darwin. " Words," 

 as Hobbes said, " are wise men's counters; they are the 

 money of fools." The " struggle for existence " includes 

 the total reactions of living creatures to their environ- 

 ment, social reactions no less than individual, tender no 

 less than fierce, other-regarding no less than self -regard- 

 ing. It is the summons upon life to respond, as the 

 conductor taps with his baton for the music to begin. The 

 maternal hunger of the cat, cherishing what was not its 

 own, but warm, helpless, and living, was as integral a 

 part of the struggle for existence as the same cat's action 

 in killing a mouse. 



