62 
NATURE NOTES. 
shelter from the weather and protection from foes, which give 
character its opportunity for development. In the direct 
struggle for life, no place can be found for more than slight 
deviations from the normal. But let food be artificially and 
copiously provided, and let that danger of being slain, which 
haunts every moment of a wild creature’s life, be removed, and 
the species has the occasion offered it of extending its varieties 
of habit as widel)’ as it chooses. The gift which we specially 
applaud in Miss Benson, is one which is best exercised on 
domesticated animals, and accordingly, it is of these that she 
writes with most confidence. Her analysis of the emotions of 
cats is really valuable ; for instance, she indicates to a nicety 
the shades of feeling which pass over these sensitive and super- 
ficial beings, so hysterical, so impulsive and yet essentially so 
obtuse ; and the pages in which she records the volatile action 
of maternity on the character of the beautiful Persis are written 
with the pen of one who possesses a mastery of the feline heart. 
Miss Benson positively suggests a possible new departure, a 
species of fiction in which real animals, not little human people 
masquerading in an animal dress, shall be the characters. 
Something of this kind was dimly foreshadowed in the eigh- 
teenth century, as by Henry Coventry in his Pompey the Little, 
but the eighteenth century had not pushed animal psychology 
nearly far enough to make the experiment a success. 
When Miss Benson leaves the domesticated animal, her 
observation remains as keen as ever, but she is unable to 
explain what she sees. I have already mentioned Mrs. 
Brightwen’s name ; it is that of an analyst of character less 
brilliant than Miss Benson, but more scientifically trained and 
perhaps of a quicker practical instinct. With I\Irs. Brightwen’s 
well-known study of the habits of the water-shrew may be 
compared this clever and exact, but abrupt account of Miss 
Benson’s adventure with a similar animal. (The individualis- 
ing habit of ]\Iiss Benson’s mind is shown by the fact that she 
could not be thrown into the society of a solitary shrew for 
half a day, without giving him a definite name.) 
“ What was it, I wonder, that killed Maximilianus ? Maxi- 
milianus was a very small shrew, and we found him running 
about the garden; he was just about as long as his name. He 
was not the least frightened, and we carried him about for 
half a day, but we found nothing he could eat, until at last we 
came upon a very large, fat, orange-coloured centipede. Maxi- 
milianus seized upon this with the utmost delight, began it 
vigorously at one end, and ate it up like a radish as far as the 
middle, then he died.” 
This mystery of the death of creatures who seem to have 
no cause to die, weighs heavily upon IMiss Benson. She has 
been very unfortunate with her captures. The field and 
harvest-mice, the hoopoe, the wild cygnets — they all passed 
away untimely, without assigning any satisfactory reason for 
