92 COIJX CLOUT'S CALENDAR 



l)Ut loose in xx\\' rooms ; and In affect ionatcncss of de- 

 meanour, as well as in ^a-neral cleverness of perceptions, 

 it certainly surpassed a ^ood many do^s that I have 

 known. Doubtless the iiabit of stf)rin^ food j;rew up 

 at fust, as the west-country proverb says, more by hap 

 than cunnin^^ It may have orii;inated merely from the 

 thou^ditlessly ^aeed)' jjractice of carrjinj; ln^ne more food 

 at a time than was needed for immediate consumption. 

 Still, thou^di the custom need not have been deliberately 

 inlelliL;ent in its ori_L,n'n, it must have tended to develop 

 iiUellit,^ence in the animals displaying it ; and even now 

 it has hardened into an inherited instinct, it may often 

 1)1' a very conscious bit of prevision imlecd with (jid 

 S(juirn'ls who have seen more than one winter, and who 

 know that nuts or berries cannot always be obtained 

 with ecjual ease. At any rate, the fact that iicpiirrels, 

 rats, and beavers arc now very clever animals is undeni- 

 able ; and there is every reason to believe that their 

 cleverness has been partly brought out by their provid- 

 ent habits. 



Another thing that prol)ably adds to the physical 

 basis of intelligence in squirrels is their possession of 

 a pair of paws which almost serve them in the place of 

 hands. Mr. Herbert Spencer has pointed out that many 

 of the cleverest animals are those which can grasp an 

 object all round with some prehensile organ. Such 

 animals, in fact, are the only ones that can really quite 

 understand the nature of space of three dimensions. 

 The apes and monkeys with their opposable thumb, the 

 elephants with their flexible trunk and its fingcr-Iike 

 process, the parrots with their prehensile claws, are all 

 instances strictly in point. Even among the usually 



