1 1 o ANIMALS IN FAMINE 



The greater number are never far removed from the 

 latter possibility ; it is the inevitable sequence of dis- 

 ablement, weakness, or old age, and if not cut off by 

 pestilence, violence or fatal accident, they have all to 

 face this grim spectre in the closing scene. Yet in 

 most cases dread of the latter is not present to their 

 consciousness in the form of apprehension only as 

 shadowed out by actual reminder caused by scarcity of 

 food at a particular time, or a total failure, which drives 

 them to wander. But the fear of the * natural enemy ' 

 is always vivid and oppressive, and alters the whole 

 course of their everyday life. The deer on certain of 

 the Highland mountains, exposed in any hard winter 

 to almost inevitable famine, do not profit by experience 

 of famine. Experience of danger from man makes 

 them the most wary of animals ; they sleep with waking 

 senses, feed by night, are constantly under the influence 

 of this besetting terror, and take every measure which 

 experience suggests to guard against the enemy. Ex- 

 perience of famine leaves them no wiser than before. 

 They do not abandon the spots in which they suffered 

 in previous years until they actually feel the pinch of 

 hunger, and they return to the same inhospitable ground 

 when the scarcity has passed. Yet when confronted by 

 the two terrors, hunger and man, they are simply 

 insensible to the fear of the latter, usually so dominant. 

 Starvation looms larger than any terror from living 



