510 COMMISSION OF ERROR. 



dure that may be, and frequently is, fatal to life or liberty, 

 either by reason of 



1. The immediate or direct effects of the distension of 

 the stomach on the animal economy ; or 



2. Indirectly by causing the drowsy, sleeping, or helpless 

 animal to fall a prey to its natural enemies, including man. 



Many habitually voracious animals die of fatty degenera- 

 tion the result of over-feeding and inactivity, as in man. 

 The immediate effect of over-eating, of gorging to repletion, 

 is the production of a kind or degree of stupor, or semi-stupor, 

 that leads to the easy capture of the helpless or unconscious 

 animals. The condor, by its gluttony, begets in itself a 

 state of stupid insensibility, of somnolence or stupor, of in- 

 ability to move or escape, during which it may be seized with 

 the lasso, or death itself may be the direct result of its sur- 

 feit. The special fondness for apples in the cedar bird, and 

 the repletion which ensues whenever any opportunity occurs 

 of gratifying its appetite, render it easily seized by hand 

 (Houzeau). The boa (serpent) is, however, a more familiar 

 instance of gorging to stupor. Loss of liberty, then, is one of 

 the least, most immediate, and direct of the penalties that 

 result from the stupefaction and immobility produced by 

 food-gorging. 



Among errors of food-selection may be classed cannibal- 

 ism, as illustrated by a perch swallowing its own eye when 

 the eye was hooked out and both fish and eye were thrown 

 back into the water. Such errors include also the multitu- 

 dinous phenomena of morbid appetite a subject, to discuss 

 which a special chapter would be insufficient, and to which 

 special attention cannot be directed in the present work. 



Perhaps there is no more ridiculous, but at the same 

 time common, error in other animals or man than the vent- 

 ing of annoyance, irritation, temper, passion, on the unof- 

 fending, unconscious, inanimate instruments by which injuries 

 have been inflicted. The man who stumbles unexpectedly 

 over his boot, shoe or slipper angrily kicks it to a distance as 

 if it had been to blame for an accident attributable to his own 

 carelessness and want of observation. 



Of the Maoris, Colenso tells us >' Their keen, uncontrolled 



