XXIV 
THE STORING INSTINCT 
HERE are various ways in which animals 
meet or circumvent impending seasonal 
scarcity. Many go into winter quarters, and, 
reducing their expenditure to a minimum, lie low 
till the spring calls them again to action. Others, 
like the wolves, continue to live dangerously, and 
simply intensify the keenness of their hunting. 
Some, like the ermine and the ptarmigan, don a 
white dress, which is not offly physiologically best 
for warm-blooded creatures in very cold weather, 
but gives them a garment of invisibility against the 
background of snow. Others solve the problem 
by a change of habitat—notably the migratory 
birds, which come from the snow-covered moors 
to the open shore and the fields adjacent, or “ wing 
their way from cloud to cloud down the long wind ” 
to “ warmer lands and coasts that keep the sun.” 
There are several other solutions of the problem— 
to curl up and die is to decline to consider it— 
and one of these is to lay up stores, to hoard, to 
save. Many animals do this inside their bodies, 
and what are called “ hibernating glands” and the 
like are internal stores for the evil day, but we 
shall confine our attention to external savings. 
183 
