THE STORING INSTINCT 189 
by the quaint tailless hares. We have not been able 
to verify in the field what has been circumstantially 
described, that moles make collections of decapi- 
tated earthworms—a store for days when the 
ground is gripped by unusually hard frost. We 
are told that these collected earthworms form a 
living larder, unable (as they could in summer) to 
regrow their lost heads, and therefore unable to 
crawl away. As moles are experts in dealing with 
earthworms and as decapitation interferes with co- 
ordinated movements, there is nothing incredible in 
the story. But it is a grim one! 
We have seen, then, that at many different 
levels in the animal kingdom a storing instinct has 
developed. When we turn to man, pre-eminent 
among creatures, we find very little evidence of any 
such instinct. This seems the more remarkable 
since in North Temperate countries prevision of 
and provision for seasonal scarcity must have been 
for untold ages of life-saving importance. It is 
possible that the habit of saving and storing was 
sustained from generation to generation by a 
domestic tradition which has gradually become en- 
feebled as industrial life, facilities of transport, and 
communal storage made man in great measure 
independent of local and temporary scarcity. The 
duty of saving and storing was gradually shifted 
from domestic to social shoulders. As one would 
expect, the domestic tradition is stronger to-day in 
rural than in urban conditions, for the man with a 
multitude of diverse lives in his charge is doomed 
