CRIME AND CEIMINALITY. 155 



tiveness impels to such procedure, and in some cases such 

 procedure, with the aimless hoarding up of property, begets 

 a certain kind or amount of enjoyment. 



An ineradicable propensity to theft Buckland regards as 

 a characteristic of monkeys as a family. A cebus monkey of 

 Belt's, ' when anyone came near to fondle him, never neglected 

 the opportunity of pocket-picking,' a form of theft in which 

 the mona, malbrook, and other monkeys are adepts. There 

 is in such cases no sense of crime, guilt, or wrong-doing. 

 On the contrary, like too many of our own human criminals, 

 the animals find their chief amusement in their nefarious 

 practices, and congratulate themselves on their dexterity, 

 quickness, ingenuity, or adroitness. 



In all such cases there is the same difficulty as in man in 

 the diagnosis between mere vice or crime, for which the thief 

 is responsible, because the habit is corrigible ; and morbid 

 propensity or impulse, the result, or a form or degree of, 

 mental defect or derangement in which the habit is incor- 

 rigible and the animal or man irresponsible. For, as appears 

 in another chapter, kleptomania as such morbid propensity 

 to steal is called is common as a form or feature of moral 

 insanity in man. 



Langstroth remarks that c some bee-keepers question 

 whether a bee that once learns to steal ever returns to honest 

 courses ;' while Lubbock tell us ' Siebold has mentioned 

 similar facts in the case of wasps (Polistes).' 



In connection with the mere useless accumulation of 

 property, it may be desirable to interpolate a few remarks 

 on the sense of property and possession exhibited by many 

 animals. They show how they value, and they defend, their 

 proprietary rights in a great variety of ways for instance, 

 in their 



1. Competition for prizes, such as the possession of 



a. The female. 



b. Food, prey, or booty. 



c. The trappings or insignia of rank. 



2. Territorial districts and their boundaries. 



3. Nests or other dwellings, and their materials of con- 

 struction. 



