e Animal Traits. [September, 
Coachwhip was an interested spectator of the whole affair, and 
- when it was over and the relieved opossum had shut its mouth, I 
= thought the snake had gone insane. It tore around the room 
. like lightning, tied itself into innumerable knots, wove in and out 
of the chair rounds, made sham charges, and ended by rushing 
out of the door and taking to the bushes. 
= Poor coachwhip met witha sad fate at last. One quiet day it 
had discovered a mouse in the yard hidden beside a billet of wood 
= ina position so insecure that it took to the grass, and the snake 
lifted its head a couple of feet high to get a view of the escaping 
prey. A rush of wings and mingling of shadows took place, and 
Natrix went aloft in the talons of the king of birds, No time 
was to be lost. Shot was wanted, but only bullets were available. 
I emptied the full chamber of a Winchester rifle at the pirate, but 
every shot missed. The bird made directly for its nest that I 
knew of two miles away, but when the tree was reached, coach- 
whip had departed this life, and had no less than three living — 
tombs. 
It is evident that the great doctrine of the conservation and 
correlation of forces, as applied by evolution, has thrown a new- 
and brilliant light upon these animal traits. They are no longer 
isolated facts, having their ultimate explanation in the specific 
characteristics of the creature, but legacies from ancestries reach- 
3 ing through the geological epochs to the earliest fossiliferous £ 
rocks. The force setting up the multitudinous motions is a pro- 
duct of the present time. The food digested, the air breathed, ; 
the various ethereal vibrations disturbing the nerves of sensation 
and all the influences which cause muscular work are active at 
ie instant the work is done. The work done is done now. +9% 
ces employed are generated now. The transformation of force 
; But when — 
an opossum and a raccoon, and her mortal fear ot E 
:? Where did she learn that the well-detailed preparations ge 
ult made by a serpent almost large enough to swallow e 
sham before she had the least experience of it, w oie 
y of one of her own family was the very maximun 
