i 3 o CURIOUS CREATURES. 



stake, and pretend to be asleep, dead asleep, drunk, 

 chloroformed, anything you like that means profound 

 and gross slumber. A foot or so off would be lying a 

 piece of meat, or a bone. 



" The crows would very soon discover the bone, and 

 collecting round in a circle, would discuss the proba- 

 bilities of the lynx only shamming, and the chances of 

 stealing his dinner. The animal would take no notice 

 whatever, but lie there looking so limp and dead, that 

 at last one crow would make so bold as to come forward. 

 The others let it do so alone, knowing that afterwards 

 there would be a free fight for the plunder, and the 

 thief, probably, not enjoy it, after all. So the delegate 

 would advance with all the caution of a crow and 

 nothing exceeds it until within seizing distance. There 

 it would stop, flirt its wings nervously, stoop, take a 

 last long look at the lynx to make sure that it really 

 was asleep, and then dart like lightning at the bone. 

 But, if the crow was as quick as lightning, the lynx was 

 as swift as thought, and lo ! the next instant there was 

 the beast sitting up with the bird in its mouth ! . . . 



" Next time it had to practise a completely different 

 manoeuvre. The same crows are not to be 'humbugged ' 

 a second time by a repetition of the being-dead trick. 

 So the lynx, when a sufficient number of the birds had 

 assembled, would take the string in its mouth, and run 

 round and round the stake, at the extreme limit of its 

 tether, as if it were tied. The crows, after their im- 

 pudent fashion, would close in. They thought they knew 

 the exact circumference of the animal's circle, and getting 

 as close to the dangerous line as possible, without actually 

 transgressing it, would mock and abuse the supposed be- 

 tethercd brute. But all of a sudden, the circling lynx 



