NATURE AND ANIMAL LIFE 



of the incident is that it had not eaten one of the 

 fowls or any part of one that it had killed. The ex- 

 planation doubtless is that its killing instinct was 

 so overstimulated by its great hunger that the cat 

 could do nothing but kill as long as there was a 

 live fowl left. There was no such word as enough in 

 its vocabulary. It had no perception of the relation 

 between its appetite and any given quantity. It 

 must kill and kill and kill again. After it had cleared 

 the roost, if left alone, it would doubtless have 

 fallen to and gorged itself. Wolves act in a similar 

 way with a flock of sheep, killing vastly more than 

 they can eat. I do not look upon this excess as the 

 result of the wild spirit of debauch, in the human 

 sense, but as the result of blind instinct acting auto- 

 matically. The rodents that hoard nuts illustrate 

 the same tendency. A tame chipmunk, fed to reple- 

 tion, will hoard all the nuts you have a mind to give 

 him, and go through the pantomime of covering 

 them up on the bare floor of an empty room. Dallas 

 Lore Sharp says a red squirrel will hoard nuts in its 

 own cage from the stores you give it, and that if a 

 white-footed mouse were confined in a room with a 

 peck of hickory-nuts, it would make little piles of 

 the nuts about the room. 



We marvel at what we call the wisdom of the 



hive bee, yet there is one thing she never learns 



from experience, and that is, that she is storing up 



honey for the use of man. She could not learn this, 



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