[May, 
276 On Self-Mutilation in the 
visible and tangible Cosmos lives and moves and has its 
being. We have seen, also, that the real or noumenal 
world is everywhere alive with the same architectonic activi- 
ties which culminate in the human Ego ; and that the 
formative “ Spirit ” is a purely material energy, not less 
necessary to the sand-grains of the sea-shore than to the 
molecules of the cerebrum. 
V. ON SELF-MUTILATION IN THE LOWER 
ANIMALS. 
®T is maintained that a rat if caught by the leg ampu- 
tates the limb with its teeth, and escapes. We have 
® heard the same thing said concerning wolves. We 
have been told by a friend that in the Orange Free State he 
went out one morning, in company with a Boer, to inspect a 
trap which the latter had set for some plundering baboons. 
On coming within sight they found that one of the tiibe was 
caught. Thinking him secure they approached very delibe- 
rately, and were surprised at seeing the animal suddenly 
wrench himself away and disappear among the rocks, leaving, 
as we were told, a part of his leg in the trap. We cannot 
ouarantee these statements, and we have strong doubts ; 
whether any warm-blooded animal — especially one so near : 
of kin to man — could survive so rough-and-ready an opera- 
tion. It is, however, a well-known and common faCt that 
animals belonging to various groups occasionally perform a i 
mutilation of some of their members in order to escape from 
an enemy. We know that the blind-worm and the lizard i : 
can break off their tails, and that a number of crustaceans, 1 
spiders, and inserts if caught by a leg throw it off and flee. 
How readily this is done by that corn- and grass-destroyer 
the crane-fly, or daddy-longlegs, is a familiar circumstance. 1 
Many observers must have seen this insedt leave in this way '■ 
a leg in the web of a spider, and have noted the evident ) 
surprise of the latter on finding a limb without a body. _ It 
is also on record that an Epeira , the well-known geometrical > 
spider so common in our gardens in the autumn, having 
