TO EAT OR TO SLEEP 45 



every sort of food : candles, walnuts, chicken food, and 

 artichokes in the garden. They themselves had suffered 

 from hungry enemies. More than once a heron was 

 observed to pick up a full-sized rat in its beak and fly 

 off with it. 



The warmer, the hungrier, may be accepted as a con 

 cise, if ungrammatical expression of a general truth. A 

 vastly greater amount of food is being consumed this 

 most open winter than in other colder winters. The bits 

 of fruit and meat on my bird table have attracted, among 

 the less welcome guests, blue-bottle flies. Most animals, 

 outside the true hibernators snails, frogs, toads, hedge 

 hogs, noctule bats, bumble-bees, queen wasps, and the 

 rest are unusually active, are eating, pairing, quarrelling 

 and amusing themselves ; and though food is more than 

 usually prevalent how few berries have been cleared 

 off ! hunger has been engendered beyond the supply of 

 food. This means that we have a chance of attracting a 

 larger range of guests than usual. The hunger of the 

 animals is the measure of our opportunity. 



Could we not devise a table at which many sorts of 

 little mammals might attend ? A famous German Baron 

 attracted such insect-eating birds as wrens, by pouring 

 hot fat over boughs of a tree, and mixing with the fat, 

 among much else, minute atoms of carnal food. We 

 could, perhaps, bring into the circle of our observation 

 most of the commoner mammals by aid of a table on the 

 ground, some little distance from the window. It is 

 astonishing how little is known of these often fascinating 

 creatures. It has been roundly stated in the standard 

 books that the harvest mouse hibernates. Mr. Thomp 

 son, most persistent and ingenious of all our observers, 

 denies it in Nature by Day. He has found bundles of 

 them in straw as some of us have found bunches of 



