2l6 WILD TRAITS IX TAME ANniALS. 



ward store had wellnigh been consumed. It was 

 always an anxious question with him whether he 

 would " save his bacon " until the breaking of 

 the frost. We know that in every hard winter 

 when the cold lasts a few days or weeks longer 

 than usual, thousands of birds and other wild 

 creatures perish. Nature so nicely computes her 

 annual estimates that there is seldom any surplus 

 even in an average season. It is during winters 

 and droughts of unusual severity that the elimin- 

 ative force of adverse circumstances (of which 

 Darwin makes so much) makes itself most ap- 

 . parent. 



You will thus see that the hog which had 

 amassed within his own private bank a shilling's 

 worth of adipose savings more than his fellows, 

 would in an exceptionally protracted and inclem- 

 ent winter be one of the few to survive. He 

 would naturally transmit his talents to his pro- 

 geny ; and thus it comes about that in the present 

 day no animal so handsomely responds to liberal 

 feeding as the domestic pig. 



Many other beasts which lived under some- 

 what similar conditions share with the hog this 

 faculty for accumulating a store of fat during the 

 autumn, or whenever food is specially abundant. 



