to stamp upon the dung and to tear and dig up the ground in the immediate vicinity, so that there is absolutely no chance of anyone missing the place where a R. bicornis has spent the day. R. simus, however, leaves his dung alone, and does not trample and scatter it about; moreover, he is conservative in these matters; he always drops his dung in one place until he has raised a huge heap, then he starts the same operation in another place, and so on."[1] In Patagonia, the Guanaco has somewhat similar habits. Cunningham writes:—"Darwin has commented on the singular habit which they possess of depositing their droppings on successive days in the same defined heap, and this I have likewise frequently observed."[2] According to Romanes, "The dusting over of their excrements by certain freely roaming carnivora; the choice by certain herbivora of particular places on which to void their urine, or in which to die; the howling of Wolves at the moon; purring of Cats, &c, under pleasurable emotions; and sundry other hereditary actions of the same apparently unmeaning kind, all admit of being readily accounted for as useless habits originally acquired in various ways, and afterwards perpetuated by heredity, because not sufficiently deleterious to have been stamped out by natural selection."[3]
(To be continued.)
- ↑ Coryndon, 'Proc. Zool. Soc.' 1894, pp. 331–2.—Col. Pollok relates a similar practice of the Indian Rhinoceros (R. unicornis):—"Whilst it remains in a locality it will deposit its ordure only on one spot, and visits it for that purpose once when it commences feeding at night, and again before leaving off soon after daybreak." ('Zoologist,' 1898, p. 173.)
- ↑ 'Nat. Hist. Straits Magellan,' p. 109.
- ↑ 'Darwin and after Darwin,' vol. ii. p. 89. For further treatment on this topic, cf. same author's 'Mental Evolution in Animals,' pp. 274–285, 378–9, 381–3.
