32 TAILS 



which throws a pathetic light on misery of which 

 we have little experience. We do, indeed, growl 

 at the gnats of a summer evening and think ourselves 

 very ill-used. How little do we know or think of 

 the unintermitted and unabated torment that the 

 most harmless classes of beasts suffer from the 

 bands of beggars which follow them night and day, 

 demanding blood, and will take no refusal. Driven 

 from the brow they settle on the neck, shaken from 

 the neck they dive between the legs, and but for 

 that far-reaching whisk at the end of the tail, they 

 would found a permanent colony on the flanks and 

 defy ejection, like the raiders of Vatersay. Darwin 

 argues that the tail-brush may have materially 

 helped to secure the survival of those species of 

 beasts that possessed it, and no doubt he is right. 

 The subject is interminable, but we must give a 

 passing glance to some quixotic tails. The opossum 

 scampers up a tree, carrying all her numerous family 

 on her back, and they do not fall off because each 

 infant is securely moored by its own tail to the 

 uplifted tail of its mother. The opossum is a very 

 primitive beast, and so early and useful an invention 

 should, one would think, have been spread widely 

 in after time ; but there appears to be some diffi- 

 culty in developing muscles at the thin end of a 

 long tail, for the animals that have turned it into 

 a grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. 

 Examples are the chameleon among lizards, our 

 own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent above 



