150 CEIME AND CRIMINALITY. 



sentinel butcher bird, wood hen of New Zealand, ostrich, 

 cuckoo, and other birds. 



4. Certain ants, bees, wasps, the death's head moth, and 

 other insects. 



But the character of the pilfering, purloining, plundering, 

 robbery, piracy, that occur in animals differing so widely in 

 species and genera, orders and classes, structure and habits, 

 obviously varies greatly. 



In the first place, there is the stealing of useful articles, 

 of food to satiate hunger, or of materials for nest-building. 

 The hungry dog or cat that harries the larder is in a parallel 

 position to the starving human beggar that helps himself 

 from the tempting contents of a baker's or butcher's shop. 

 In both cases we have the strong motives of hunger 011 the 

 one hand, and temptation on the other. In neither case is 

 the temptation ultimately or successfully resisted, and 

 appetite is therefore gratified. But there are many cases 

 in which such temptation among the lower animals, espe- 

 cially the dog, is successfully resisted, even at the expense 

 of the non-gratification of one of the most imperious of the 

 physical appetites that of hunger. 



Dogs are sometimes so well trained not only to know, but 

 to do at all hazards, the right to refrain from doing what 

 they feel or know to be the wrong, in the sense that it is for- 

 bidden by their master man that even when suffering the 

 pangs of starvation they can, and do, abstain from touching 

 the most tempting food, of which they have been placed 

 experimentally it may be in charge, and of which they have 

 the complete command. 



Theft, then, of the kind we are now considering, of ar- 

 ticles useful to the thief, may be prevented and corrected by 

 proper means. It is further to be noted that there is in 

 such cases a selection of suitable articles, the variety of which 

 is therefore limited. The hungry dog and cat confine them- 

 selves to the abstraction of game, milk, bread, or other 

 eatables and drinkables, while the nestbuildiiig bird helps 

 itself to wool or cotton, straws or sticks. 



Nor, as a rule, do animals that steal merely useful ar- 

 ticles hoard or hide them : they usually apply them at once 



