s who, foreseeing a hard season, or
fearing the days when hunting will not be productive, lay up
provisions to utilise in such times of famine, rise a degree higher
than even the most skilful hunters. Not all amass with the same
sagacity, and we shall find different examples of foresight, from the
most rudimentary to the highest, very near what we may observe in Man.

The provisions harvested by animals have more than one destination:
some are for the individual himself who has gathered them; others, on
the contrary, are to serve as the food for his young at the age when
they are not yet capable of seeking their own food. I will deal with
these latter in another chapter, and propose at present only to speak
of those animals who provision barns with the intention of themselves
profiting by them.

The foresight of the animal is so much the greater the more remote the
future for which he prepares. The Carnivora live from day to day and
lay up no stores; it is the Rodents, certain frugivorous birds, and
insects who exhibit the most complicated acts of economy.

_Provisions laid up for a short period._--As a rudimentary example of
the art of preserving food in view of possible famine, I may mention
the case of the _Lanius collurio_. I have already spoken of this bird
and of his custom in days of abundance of spitting on thorns all the
captures he has made. One may see side by side Coleoptera, crickets,
grasshoppers, frogs, and small birds. It is evident that these
reserves cannot be preserved for more than a day, or at most two days.
The bird amasses just enough to show us his apprehensions of the
possible future lack of success in hunting, and his thought of
preserving the surplus of the present in view of privations to
come.[47]

[47] Naumann, _Naturgeschichte der Voegel Deutschlands_, etc.

The Fox, a very skilful hunter, has no trouble in finding game; of all
the Carnivora he is, however, the only one who is truly foreseeing.
The others in presence of abundant food gorge themselves, and abandon
the rest at the risk of suffering to-morrow. The fox is not so
careless. If he has had the good fortune to discover a poultry yard,
well supplied but ill watched, he carries away as many fowls as he can
before dawn and hides them in the neighbourhood of his burrow. He
places each by itself, one at the foot of a hedge, another beneath a
bush, a third in a hole rapidly hollowed out and closed up again. It
is said that he th