INTRODUCTION. 17 



eat porpoises ; he tells us also of the hen of a pair of ravens, 

 which acquired the magpies' habit of plundering birds' nests, 

 while the cock bird did not thus misbehave himself ; of a 

 coal titmouse, kept by him in captivity, which in default 

 of his usual worms, pieces of meat and so on, killed a 

 robin, eat it bit by bit, and thenceforward continued to 

 murder and feast on smaller birds ; and lastly of a Lammer- 

 geyer, Gypaetus barbatus^ which in some countries and places 

 is a bold thief and bird of prey, and in others, compelled by 

 circumstances, is a regular feeder on carrion. Brehm tells 

 us also of a parrot which killed and eat birds of its own species 

 or smaller birds. Reclam ("Mind and Body," 1859, p. 300) 

 watched flesh-eating squirrels and rabbits, which latter 

 gnawed like dogs bones which were thrown to them, 

 although they were never short of vegetable food. Yet 

 more striking is the instance recorded by Darwin of those 

 island cattle, which on islands where pasture failed them, 

 accustomed themselves to a fish diet an observation which 

 exactly coincides with those of Brehm on cattle in the 

 extreme north of Norway, which were fed on cooked fishes' 

 heads, and where the frames on which the haddocks were 

 drying had to be guarded againt the cows, because these 

 were wont to feast without ceremony on the half-dried fish. 

 Even horses will, under some circumstances, become flesh- 

 eaters, as in a case observed by Dr. R. A. Philippi, at St. 

 Jago, in Chili, wherein two riding horses belonging to a 

 Mr. Nicholas Paulsen would snap up and eat young chickens 

 and pigeons, pulling the latter out of their nests in a low 

 clay wall. 



Another instance of a changed instinct : The so-called 

 hole-beaver, which, in consequence of the snares of the 

 hunters, cannot live in societies any longer as for instance 

 in France and Germany has changed from a social to a 

 solitary animal ; instead of its famous structures, the dams 

 built in the rivers (as in America), it digs itself simple holes 

 in banks, and barricades them, at most, with some logs 

 of wood. Thus, merely from stress of circumstances, and 

 in opposition to its supposed instinct, it has become a 

 digging and hole-dwelling animal, instead of a building one 

 living in the open. In a similar way the sable, as Radde 

 relates (in Brehm, vol. ii., p. 60), is, in the Barkal 

 mountains, owing to the hunters' traps, an animal that hides 



