FA VOURITE FOODS 3 5 



of taste as the rats, tits, and ants that selected the dessert 

 apples for their table. The birds and insects ate them on 

 the tree as soon as the acid began to be transformed by 

 maturing time and the sun into sugar ; and the rats, 

 foraging in the store-room, sniffed scornfully at Bramley s 

 and Lane s Prince Albert to concentrate on the Cox s 

 on the remotest shelf. The percentage of sugar was the 

 criterion of all of them : rat, ant, and bird. 



How each of these very different creatures comes to 

 know that the Cox is the sweetest apple no one perhaps 

 knows for certain. The mammals probably rely on 

 scent. If you watch a rat at close quarters the gesture 

 that fixes your attention is the continually twitching nose. 

 The animal seems to be trying hard all the time to smell 

 something, very much like a dog in .a motor-car which 

 sniffs the rushing air with as obvious pleasure in the 

 various bouquets as a judge of good wine. They can 

 quite certainly detect the smell of a seed or bulb that is 

 well covered with earth. It is a not uncommon experi 

 ence for research workers in horticulture to find neat 

 holes scratched above certain special precious varieties of 

 seed, while all the commoner are untouched. The 

 experts in savour are both mice and rats. They possess 

 the quality of nose of the more obviously gifted pigs of 

 the New Forest, which can detect the scent of that insi 

 dious fungus, the truffle, though it is hidden among deep- 

 burrowing roots. How acutely birds can smell we 

 scarcely know ; but they arrive at their conclusions, I 

 think, by trial and error, aided by an aesthetic perception 

 for colour. The red Cox is attacked before the tawny, 

 as the sourer red currant before the white. After their 

 artless manner they peck idly at this thing and that till 

 their taste tells them which is good. As for insects, their 

 instincts are so peculiar, the message from the ganglionic 



