all the forces in nature as in league
against them. The anger of the gods as shown in storms and winds
and pestilence and defeat is a phase of the same feeling. A wild
animal caught in a steel trap vents its wrath upon the bushes and
sticks and trees and rocks within its reach. Something is to
blame, something baffles it and gives it pain, and its teeth
and claws seek every near object. Of course it is a blind
manifestation of the instinct of self-defense, just as was my
uncle's act when he kicked over his beehive, or as is the
angler's impatience when his line gets tangled and his hook gets
fast. If the Colorado bear caught his fish with a hook and line,
how many times would he lose his temper during the day!

I do not think many animals show their kinship to us by
exhibiting the trait I am here discussing. Probably birds do not
show it at all. I have seen a nest-building robin baffled and
delayed, day after day, by the wind that swept away the straws
and rubbish she carried to the top of a timber under my porch.
But she did not seem to lose her temper. She did not spitefully
reclaim the straws and strings that would persist in falling to
the porch floors, but cheerfully went away in search of more. So
I have seen a wood thrush time after time carrying the same piece
of paper to a branch from which the breeze dislodged it, without
any evidence of impatience. It is true that when a string or a
horsehair which a bird is carrying to its nest gets caught in a
branch, the bird tugs at it again and again to free it from
entanglement, but I have never seen any evidence of impatience or
spite against branch or string, as would be pretty sure to be the
case did my string show such a spirit of perversity. Why your dog
bites the stone which you roll for him when he has found it, or
gnaws the stick you throw, is not quite clear, unless it be from
the instinct of his primitive ancestors to bite and kill the game
run down in the chase. Or is the dog trying to punish the stick
or stone because it will not roll or fly for him? The dog is
often quick to resent a kick, be it from man or beast, but I have
never known him to show anger at the door that slammed to and hit
him. Probably, if the door held him by his tail or his limb, it
would quickly receive the imprint of his teeth.

In reading Bostock on the "Training of Wild Animals," my
attention was arrested by the remark that his performing lions
and tigers are liable to suffer fr