4 ANIMALS AT WORK AND PL A Y 



asleep, in a bed which it had nibbled out in the 

 cloth, with the fur on the top for a blanket. Another 

 and much larger hibernating animal the badger 

 takes a quantity of grass in to make its bed in the 

 winter, and removes this when it comes out more 

 freely in the spring. But the oddest fancy of the 

 badger in bed is that it actually sleeps on its head. 

 This is true, in any case, of one of the Zoo badgers. 

 Twice, when the straw in which he buries himself has 

 been moved, the writer has seen him, not curled up on 

 his side, but with the top of his flat head on the ground, 

 and the rest of its body curled over it, as if it had fallen 

 asleep in the middle of turning head over heels. 



No one can have failed to notice how particular 

 children are about their beds -how much they object to 

 have them altered, how they insist on their being ' made ' 

 in their own way, and how they carry their newest and 

 most valued possessions up to bed with them, and poke 

 them away under the blankets and pillows. Animals 

 do exactly the same, and a pet dog which is on the 

 friendliest terms with master and servants, often makes 

 the most ridiculous fuss if anyone touches the box or 

 basket in which it sleeps. Like children, or the old 

 women who hide sovereigns and bank notes in the 

 mattresses, the dogs have nearly always a small hoard 

 of very old, dry bones hidden away in their bed, in the 

 straw or under a rug, as the case may be, and think it 



