180 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
to disaster and forced to cruelty if he does not 
habitually look ahead. The relative enfeeblement 
of the tradition or the instinct to store and save 
may in critical times of shortage imperil national 
welfare, and one can but hope that in this, as in 
parallel cases, there will be a replacement of in- 
stinctive or traditional habit by deliberate rational 
purpose. As society develops it is ever shedding 
the unplastic and the incongruent, as a growing lob- 
ster molts its encumbering sherd. But in putting on 
a new garment adapted to changed times and 
changed folk-ways, it is ours to make sure that it be 
not less effective than was the old-fashioned jacket 
of thrift. 
