ORDER RODENTIA. 223 



intensity in different parts of the body ; it does not seem at 

 all subject to change with the season. The ears are black, 

 with a whitish edge ; the nose is brown, and the whiskers 

 black ; the fur is shorter, and more harsh than that of the 

 Hare, and more allied to the fur of the Marmot. There 

 are six mammas, two pectoral, two abdominal, and two un- 

 guinal. 



The Pika is an inhabitant of the highest mountains of 

 the extreme north of Europe and Asia, in the thickest and 

 most sequestered and humid forests. Sometimes it is said 

 to live alone, and at others in small societies. It digs 

 burrows between the pieces of rock, but sometimes sits in 

 the manner of the Common Hare in the clefts of rocks, or 

 of trees ; from these it issues generally after sun-set ; or if 

 the weather be very dark, during day, to graze. 



The instinct of amassing provision for winter food is very 

 remarkable in this species, and its mode of doing it is still 

 more so. About the month of August, the Pikas cut and 

 collect large parcels of grass, which they spread and dry, 

 and, in effect, convert into hay ; this they collect into stacks 

 of about seven feet in height, at a convenient distance from 

 their subterranean retreat ; having done this, they exca- 

 vate a way from their burrow, which opens under the stack, 

 and which they use as a road to their provision, while the 

 snow of a Siberian winter buries almost every thing under 

 one common surface. These poor animals are frequently 

 plundered of their winter store by the hunters, by whom 

 these hay-stacks are much prized as food for their horses. 



Actions like this, which do, in fact, anticipate remote, 

 but certain evils, and wear all the semblance of doing so by 

 the powers of reason and deduction, equally surprise and 

 astonish us, while the mental facultiesof these creatures 

 are evidently so limited on all other subjects as to render it 

 probable that such faculties differ from our own not merely 

 in degree, but in kind. It is not merely the prescience of the 



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