ablest and best-known entomologists, is a more beautiful, though scarcely more interesting example. The crocodile and alligator are mistaken for floating tree-trunks by unwary animals drinking on the banks of tropical rivers, and they sometimes pay by loss of life the penalty of their error. On the other hand, insects sometimes so closely resemble the droppings of birds, or spiders the axillary buds of plants, as to throw birds off their guard; thus enabling these protected insects and spiders to escape the usually keen vision of their bird enemies. The seed vessels of medicago polymorpha sometimes resemble caterpillars, and are mistaken for caterpillars by birds; while the seeds of calendula (marigold) also resemble a hairy caterpillar, and may thus deter some birds from preying upon them (Erasmus Darwin). CHAPTER XXXIV. DECEPTION. IT has been supposed and alleged that one of the patent differences between man and other animals is the transparency of motive, and the simplicity of conduct in the latter; their freedom from hypocrisy, or guile; their incapability of disguising their real feelings, or intentions, and their want of desire to conceal or misrepresent them; their blunt, obvious honesty. Thus Miss Cobbe speaks of the dog having a character 'pure and simple,' with no conventionality. And no doubt such a description may apply to some dogs; but it certainly does not apply to many, nor is it characteristic of the dog as a species. One of the many errors of novelists and poets, indeed, is regarding the dog as 'incapable of deceit '-with 'no share of man's falsehood.' 6 So far is this from being true that the dog, and certain other animals, are capable of wonderful refinements of hypocrisy and deceit, those which are associated with outward politeness, and with all the proprieties of behaviour. A whitefaced monkey of Belt's, that did not relish certain insect-foods, was too polite not to take them when they were offered to him, and would sometimes smell them. But he invariably rolled them up in his hand, and dropped them quietly again after a few moments,' a procedure that has its parallel in the behaviour of even well-bred children with food they dislike. If they do not tell, dogs at least elaborately, deliberately, and successfully act, lies. There is a refined hypocrisy in the secret night-coursing or poaching of dogs for their own ends, when they slip their necks out of a collar, escape from the kennel for hours, return as surreptitiously as they went, resuming their collar and their place in the kennel, and assuming before human visitors an air of perfect innocence and ignorance (Cassell, Low). And other night marauders resort to similar shifts to conceal or effect their purpose, knowing obviously that concealment is necessary and detection possible. There is a wonderful amount of hypocrisy, too, in the invention of excuses for laziness, or for the avoidance of irksome work; in the ruses of the 'lazy dog,' or 'idle dog,' or 'dirty dog' to escape duty, or punishment-ruses that include the simulation of sleep, repose, fatigue, flight, wounds, illness, dying, or death! Even verbal or oral deception occurs occasionally in the speech-gifted parrot, when it uses its gift, for instance, for the purpose of fun or mischief in practical jokes. In point of fact, then, the lower animals, like man, practise deceit in a great variety of ways, and from a great variety of motives: some of the latter commendable, as self-defence, the preservation of life, escape from enemies or danger, the protection or amusement of the young, self-recreation; others reprehensible, as revenge, cupidity, wanton mischievousness, or cruelty. Illustrations of the many forms in which individual animals deceive each other, or man, are to be found in all kinds of as these are embodied in games, practical jokes, theatrical performances; and as they are expressed sometimes, merely in look, as well as more generally by behaviour, which involves gesture, attitude and action. Only some of these forms of deception can be considered in the present chapter. But references to other forms may be found in the chapters on Practical Jokes,' Adaptiveness,' and 'Error.' Perhaps the most familiar examples of deception practised by the lower animals are the varied forms of simulating or feigning 1. Death or dying. 2. Disease or illness. 3. Disablement from accident, injury or wounds. 6. Insensibility. 7. Play or inattention. 8. Preoccupation or intentness on occupation. 10. Innocence. 11. Suffering, mentally or bodily- the usual motives for which are 1. The diversion of man or other animals from their young or their nests. 2. The securing of their own safety in presence of imminent danger. It is notorious that many beetles-various coleopteramany of the Cantharidea and Eryotylidæ, and Bromius vitis (Baird), feign death in the presence of an enemy or of other danger, and obviously in order to escape therefrom. The crab also, like beetles, in terror or alarm-especially if suddenon seizure by man, sometimes even on being touched, makes believe that it is defunct (Baird, Watson). The fox does the same (Drake), the elephant (Tennent, Watson), the young turkey (Percy Anecdotes), and the polecat (Low), to escape threatened danger. A New Brunswick humming-bird and the jackal resort to the same feint or ruse on capture (Adams); and similar phenomena are exhibited by certain other birds, by snakes and spiders, by the rat, opossum, and other animals. One of the commonest tricks that the dog is taught, is to feign itself dead, to allow its limbs, and whole carcase indeed, to be treated by man as if it were dead. A North American opossum is called the dissimulator' from its well-known habit of feigning death. When attacked it rolls itself up like a ball, submits to be kicked and maltreated without moving; feigns death; lies on the ground with shut eyes, and cheats its assailants into the belief that it has been destroyed' (Audubon). All these animals must realise their danger, must possess a sense of danger, must have generalised ideas of peril based on individual experiences, as well as a feeling of the desirability of escaping it, of consulting their personal safety, with a knowledge of the proper means of escape, and the power of instantly applying their knowledge. There are also involved such mental qualities as presence of mind or self-possession, self-command or self-control, fertility of resource or ingenuity, patience, reasoning, reflection, cunning. The successful feigning of death is usually or frequently simply the assumption and maintenance of rigid immobility. But it does not follow, per contra, that such immobility, when voluntarily assumed, is so for the purpose of feigning death and of avoiding danger. In certain cases the cause, object or motive is of a very different kind. Thus the object may be to dissipate fear, if not to inspire confidence, in intended prey, so as to allow them to go on with their feeding or other occupations till the proper opportunity for capture arrives. This is the case, for instance, with a certain Nicaraguan hawk, in order to deceive his prey-small birds. He sits motionless on a tree-bough till his opportunity presents itself (Belt). On the other hand, a certain Nicaraguan locust, when suddenly surrounded by foraging ants, assumes immobility to save its life. Such was its maintenance of this condition, such its conviction, apparently, that its salvation depended on its motionlessness, that it allowed me to pick it up and replace it among the ants without making a single effort to escape,' says Belt. Berkeley mentions a young stoat lying still as death when her mother had been shot, and the dogs and hunters approached; which motionlessness may have been here, however, the paralysis, and resulting immobility, of fear or bewilderment in and from the suddenness of bereavement, and the presence of two classes of enemies. A young merganser deceived the Duke of Argyll and a party of his visitors at Inverary, simply by remaining perfectly still on ground on which it was inconspicuous by reason of the protective resemblance or mimicry of its colour, a manœuvre involving great self-command in so young an |