6 
ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS 
Protection by means of Objectionable Flavours. 
Any one who has observed animals will know the preferences 
they have for certain food, and also how, when nothing else is 
procurable, they will frequently eat that which they usually avoid. 
My experience of herbivorous animals does not enable me to state 
what they would eat when driven by hard necessity. All I can 
venture to do is to name some plants of which they will not 
partake, either on the pasture or from the hand. 
The general avoidance or refusal by an animal of any plant not 
bearing thorns, etc., shows it to he objectionable, or at least not so 
palatable as the food to which it is accustomed. In either case the 
plant may be said to he protected by its flavour. Many plants 
which are the staple food of some animals are never eaten by 
others, and the grasses, which are so acceptable to grazing animals, 
are neglected by most of the lepidopterous larvae, even when 
starving. Grazing animals do not care to eat thick-leaved plants, 
such as the rhododendron, nor ferns, mosses, aconite, hellebore, 
hemlock, the greater celandine, poppies, spurges, gentians, the 
potato, meadow-saffron (falsely called the autumn crocus), the 
danewort (Sambucus ebulus ), nor any of the Crassulaceae. Yet we 
know that the potato is freely eaten by many animals, while the 
larva of the spotted elephant-moth feeds on the sea-spurge, that 
of the six-belted clear-wing moth on the stems of the stinking 
hellebore, and that of the Haltica atropce on the deadly nightshade, 
the berries of which, according to Kerner, are taken with impunity 
by thrushes. Many lichens are exceedingly nutritious, and wild 
animals feed on them in winter in many countries. The Cladonia 
rangiferina is said to be in Lapland the winter food of the reindeer. 
Other species belonging to the genus Gyrophora are the “ tripe-de- 
roche” of Canadian trappers, and were for a period the only suste¬ 
nance of the members of Franklin’s first Arctic Expedition. The 
Iceland-moss of our druggists is a preparation of a lichen ( Cetraria 
Icelandica ) which is consumed, after treatment, by the Icelander, 
his cattle, and domestic animals; with it also the Scandinavian 
fattens his swine. Yet it must be borne in mind that an obnoxious 
flavour which renders many species inedible extends to a greater 
or less degree throughout the whole group of lichens when in the 
raw state, and that they therefore may be protected from their 
enemies except in seasons of scarcity of food. The Cladonia rangi¬ 
ferina has to be rendered palatable to animals by pouring hot water 
over it, and then mixing with straw and salt .* 1 Further, lichens may 
* See ‘ Lindsay’s Popular History of British Lichens,’ p. 274. 
