470 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



to stamp upon the dung and to tear and dig up the ground in 

 the immediate vicinity, so that there is absolutely no chance of 

 anyone missing the place where a B. bicornis has spent the day. 

 R. simus, however, leaves his dung alone, and does not trample 

 and scatter it about ; moreover, he is conservative in these 

 matters; he always drops his dung in one place until he has 

 raised a huge heap, then he starts the same operation in another 

 place, and so on." * In Patagonia, the Guanaco has somewhat 

 similar habits. Cunningham writes : — " Darwin has commented 

 on the singular habit which they possess of depositing their drop- 

 pings on successive days in the same denned heap, and this I have 

 likewise frequently observed." f According to Komanes, " The 

 dusting over of their excrements by certain freely roaming carni- 

 vora ; the choice by certain herbivora of particular places on which 

 to void their urine, or in which to die ; the howling of Wolves at 

 the moon; purring of Cats, &c, under pleasurable emotions; 

 and sundry other hereditary actions of the same apparently un- 

 meaning kind, all admit of being readily accounted for as useless 

 habits originally acquired in various ways, and afterwards per- 

 petuated by heredity, because not sufficiently deleterious to have 

 been stamped out by natural selection." J 



* Coryndon, ' Proc. ZooL Soc' 1894, pp. 331-2.— Col. Pollok relates a 

 similar practice of the Indian Rhinoceros (B. unicornis) : — " Whilst it re- 

 mains in a locality it will deposit its ordure only on one spot, and visits it 

 for that purpose once when it commences feeding at night, and again before 

 leaving off soon after daybreak." (' Zoologist,' 1898, p. 173.) 



f ' Nat. Hist. Straits Magellan,' p. 109. 



| ' Darwin and after Darwin,' vol. ii. p. 89. For further treatment on 



this topic, cf. same author's ' Mental Evolution in Animals,' pp. 274-285, 



378-9, 381-3. 



(To be continued.) 



