THE SIMPLE LIFE 243 



hours. As a rule, it is for the young that a 

 house or nest is made, and that only by certain species. 

 Life in the open is what the adults instinctively seek. 



What drives almost all animals to seek cover, even 

 at the expense of less wholesome air, is wet, especially 

 torrential cold rains such as sometimes usher in an 

 early winter in this country. It will be found 

 that the wet temperate regions are always among the 

 least productive of animal life. In the gloomy and 

 dripping forests of Tierra del Fuego, where a mean 

 temperature as high as that of Dublin is accompanied 

 by constant wet and little variation caused by sun- 

 shine, Darwin found almost no mammals at all. 

 There were no deer south of the Straits of Magellan, 

 and in the forest region proper only one bat, three 

 kinds of mice, a mole, and one fox, the other species 

 being confined to the drier parts of the country. 



There seems reason to believe that, to avoid the 

 destructive autumn rains of Europe, several of the 

 creatures which in drier regions live mainly in the 

 open became " cave-dwellers " during the time pre- 

 ceding their extermination by man. Most of the 

 ancient lion legends of Europe represent the lion as 

 living in a cave, the Numean lion among the number. 

 The tale of Androclus and the lion, though said to 

 be of African origin, also represents the lion as re- 

 sorting to a cave. In ancient Britain in the prehistoric 

 period there seems to have been a regular cave- 

 dwelling fauna, including bears, lions, tigers, and 

 hyenas. We may possibly conclude that the climate 

 was even wetter than it is now, and that a cave 



