ANIMALS IN FAMINE i , 5 



and the North Sea, will hang about the same parish in 

 bad droughts and suffer acutely, though they might 

 easily move to places where water, if not food, is 

 abundant. The frost famines mainly affect the insect- 

 eating birds ; and as these live on animal food, which 

 would not keep, they could not be expected to make a 

 store. But there is no such difference of possible food 

 between birds which do make stores and birds which do 

 not. Why, for instance, should the nuthatch and the 

 Mexican woodpecker lay by for hard times while the 

 rook does not? 



Domestic animals in this country are very properly 

 guaranteed by recent legislation against being left to 

 starve by their owners. It is not often that the owner 

 of any domesticated animal is so careless of his own 

 interests as to neglect to provide food when the creature 

 is capable of work, or so inhuman if it is not. But 

 instances do occur to the contrary. The law does 

 recognise an implied right on the part of the animal to 

 this exemption from the great curse of animal exist- 

 ence, if man has exacted from it a previous tribute in 

 the form of work. But there is a borderland of animal 

 domestication in which this implicit duty of man to 

 beast is seriously neglected, partly because the work 

 done by the animal is less obvious, though it is kept 

 for the profit of man. There are great areas of 

 new country in Argentina, the United States, and 



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