WORK VERSUS PLAY. Y3 



watch for hours at a mouse-hole, and that other ani- 

 mals undergo trouble and fatigue in seeking their 

 prey, but there is nothing to show that they do not 

 enjoy it ; and the fact that in mere sportive play they 

 will often do much the same thing, seems to argue 

 that they take pleasure in the pursuit as well as the 

 capture of game. 



Certain birds that make very handsome nests have 

 the instinct for building so strongly developed that 

 they will go on working away at their nests after they 

 are finished, and will even build others, seemingly 

 with no other object than to gratify their love of nest- 

 building. Beavers will try to build their dams, if 

 kept in captivity, even if they have to build them of 

 hair brushes, old rags, and bottles, in bedrooms and 

 closets ; and, without tediously giving instance after 

 instance of the kind, it will perhaps be sufficient to 

 recall the fact that bees, instead of resting when they 

 have laid up ample store of honey to last for genera- 

 tions yet unborn, labor as assiduously as ever to still 

 further increase their store. 



Another mistake often made is that which credits 

 insects with enormous strength in proportion to their 

 size. A number of curious computations have been 

 made to show what men could do if they were pro- 

 portionately as strong as fleas and flies and bees and 

 beetles. " An ant carries away a dead fly larger as 

 compared with its own size than an elephant is to a 

 man ; a grasshopper leaps fifty or sixty times the 

 length of its body, and termites rear edifices which to 

 equal in proportional size men would have to erect 



