CHAPTEE XI. 



GRIME AND CRIMINALITY. 



CERTAIN animals commit crimes or criminal acts, offences 

 against man's laws or their own, and these crimes are of the 

 same nature as those committed by man, and occur under 

 the same kind of circumstances, as the result of the same 

 sort of motives. Illustrations of such offences are to be 

 found especially in 



1. Theft of property or person. 



2. Destructiveness of property or life. 



Theft may be conveniently considered as of two kinds, as 

 in man, according as the articles stolen are 



1. Useful to the thief, and of some one particular kind; 

 or 



2. Useless, and miscellaneous or heterogeneous. 



In the one class of cases the motive is usually obvious 

 and intelligible ; in the other there appears to be no rational 

 or explicable motive. On the one hand we have to deal with 

 what in man is regarded as a normal vice ; on the other with 

 the results perhaps of mental disease of that form thereof 

 known in our police and law courts as kleptomania. 



Thieving or stealing is a common vice in a considerable 

 number and variety of animals, including, for instance 



1. The orang and siamang ; the rnona, malbrook, diana, 

 cebus, and other monkeys or apes. 



2. The horse, dog, cat, hare, rabbit, fox, rat, mouse, 

 viscacha, racoon, and other quadrupeds. 



3. The magpie, jay, jackdaw ; pied and other ravens ; 

 rook, Indian and other crows, skua and other gulls, golden- 

 crested and other wrens, sparrow, oriole, nut-hatch, eagle, 



