72 CURIOUS HOMES AND THEIR TENANTS. 



speaking, it was play-work ; and this is just what 

 the so-called labor of bees, ants, beavers, and birds 

 amounts to. 



Men labor : horses, reindeer, and sometimes dogs 

 labor ; but only men, and the animals they compel to 

 do so, really labor. Birds build their ne§ts, bees 

 make their honey, and beavers build their dams, be- 

 cause they find it delightful to do so. They work 

 " for the fun of the thing," as a boy would say. 



There are a great many mistaken notions indulged 

 in by folks who get all their ideas about animals from 

 what they read in books, and one of them is thinking 

 and speaking of animal workers as they would of 

 human laborers. 



You may sometimes hear and read of the labors 

 of coral insects and the islands they build m the 

 southern seas. There used to be a poem, in the school 

 reader I studied, describing their unselfish and life- 

 long labor ; and Mr. Montgomery in one of his poems 

 descrilies these architects, who, by touching slime, 

 turn it into adamant, and with it build their own mau- 

 soleums. 



Of course, this is all nonsense. The coral animal 

 is as far from being an insect as was Mr. Montgomery 

 himself ; and the coral, which is composed of the hard 

 parts or skeletons of a number of such animals, is no 

 more the result of their toil than are the bones in our 

 bodies the effect of any labor on our part. 



Animals, in a natural state, never do one thing 

 when they would prefer doing something else. It 

 may be thought that cats must find it tiresome to 



