242 ANIMAL ARTISANS 



feeling the bad effects of the ill-built, ill-ventilated, 

 and ill-lighted stables which the working horses of 

 London often inhabit. 



Cold has no ill effect on most animals if it merely 

 takes the form of low temperature. Their bodily 

 heat is considerably greater than ours. They have 

 also exceptional means for adapting themselves to 

 cold. The rapidity of the growth of protective and 

 non-conducting hair is astonishing. A Bactrian camel, 

 which is almost or quite bare of fur in the summer, 

 grows a coat in the winter on which snow would lie 

 without melting, just as it sometimes does on a 

 sheep's back. Even carriage-horses if turned out to 

 grass soon develop a fairly thick jacket of hair ; and 

 the Arctic fox and Rocky Mountain goat gain a felt 

 which must be absolutely frost-proof. When the 

 latter animal sheds its winter coat it might be thought 

 that about one and a half feet of Witney blankets 

 were slowly disintegrating and becoming resolved into 

 the original wool, were it not that that of the goat is 

 far finer and warmer. The white cotton-like wool shed 

 by the male goat would stuff several pillows. The 

 growth of hair on the Scotch cattle which are left out 

 all the year on the wet and wild mountains and pastures 

 of the West Highlands is also remarkable, though it 

 is not so proof against wet and cold as the "buffalo 

 robe " or the winter fur of the European bison. 



It would seem, also, that the neglect by a vast 

 majority of animals to make any form of house or 

 nest in which to sleep is evidence that the open air 

 suits them best throughout the whole twenty-four 



