THE SLEEPING HOMES OF ANIMALS.
AS animals' beds are almost the only pieces of furniture which they construct, so their sleeping places or bed- rooms represent most nearly their notion of "home." The
place selected to pass the hours of sleep, whether by night or day, is more often than not devoid of any efforts at con- struction. It is chosen for some qualities which strike the owner as suitable for rest and quiet, and from that moment it arouses in the animal mind some part of the human sentiment which we know as "the love of home." This association of ideas with their sleeping places is entirely distinct from the so-called "homing instinct," or sense of direction. It is a sentiment, not a mental process, and is exhibited by creatures which are not commonly credited with memory or the power of thought. Some butterflies, for example, return regularly to the same place to sleep, and their proverbial flightiness does not prevent them from enterta ining the sentiment of home. The first vindication of butterfly memory was occasioned by the regularity with which a small butterfly named Preas Iphita returned to sleep in a verandah of a musical club at Manghasar, in the Dutch East India Islands. Mr. C. Piepers, a member of the Dutch Entomological Society, noticed that this butterfly returned to the same place on the ceiling during the evening. In the day it was absent, but at nightfall, in spite of the brilliant illumination of the verandah, it was again sleeping in the same spot. "It was not to be found in the daytime, being probably absent on business," writes Mr. Piepers ; "but as civilisation has not advanced so far in Maughasar that it is there considered necessary to drive away every harmless creature which ventures into a human dwelling, I had the pleasure of admiring the memory of this butterfly for six consecutive nights. Then some accident probably befell it, for I never saw any trace of it again."
It is difficult to imagine a spot with less domestic features to adorn the home than a piece of the bare ceiling of a tropical verandah; but the attachment of animals to their chosen sleeping place must rest on some preference quite clear to their own consciousness, though not evident to as. In some instances the ground of choice is intelligible. Many of the small blue British butterflies have greyish spotted backs to their wings. At night they fly regularly to sheltered corners on the chalk downs where they live, alight head downwards on the tops of the grasses which there flourish, and closing and lowering their wings as far as possible, look exactly like a seed-head on the grasses. If the night is cold they creep down the stem and sleep in shelter among the thick lower growth of grass. The habits of birds in regard to sleep are very unlike, some being extremely solicitous to be in bed in good time, while others are awake and about all night. Bat among the former the sleeping-place is the true home, the dams et penetralia. It has nothing necessarily in com- mon with the nest, and birds, like some other animals and many human beings, often prefer complete isolation at this time. They want a bedroom to themselves. Sparrows, which appear to go to roost in companies, and sometimes do so, after a vast amount of talk and fuss, do not rest cuddled up against one another, like starlings or chickens, but have private holes and corners to sleep in. They are fond of sleeping in the sides of straw - ricks, but each sparrow has its own little hollow among the straws, just as each of a flock of sleeping larks makes its own "cubicle" on the ground. A London sparrow for two years occupied a sleeping home almost as bare of furniture as the ceiling which the East Indian butterfly frequented. It came every night in winter to sleep on a narrow ledge under the portico of a house in Onslow Square. Above was the bare white- washed top of the portico, there were no cosy corners, and at eighteen inches from the sparrow was the gas-lit portioo lamp. There every evening it slept, and guests leaving the house seldom failed to look up and see the little bird fast asleep in its enormous white bedroom. Its regular return during two winters is evidence that it regarded this as its home; but why did it choose this particular portico in place of a hundred others in the same square It is a "far cry" from South Kensington to the Southern cliffs ; but the same sense of home which brought the sparrow back nightly to his London portico brings the cormorants and the falcons to the same spot in the same precipice, year after year, in the Culver Cliffs. There is a certain vaulted niche, in which the peregrine falocnis sleep, winter and summer, in the white wall of the pre. cipice, and every night at dusk the cormorants fty in to 'sleep on their special shelves and pedestals on another poi'. tion of the cliff. They come to these few square yards of per- pendicular chalk, 300 ft. above the surge, as constantly as the fishermen return to their cottages at the Foreland. They regard this sleeping place as their fixed and certain home, where safe from gun, cragsman, or cliff-fox they can sleep till sunrise sends them hungry to their business of fishing. But .cuf all animal sleeping places, caves and caverns are most remarkable for ancient and distinguished habitation. Like prehistoric man, the animals alike of past ages and of the .present hour have made caves their bedrooms, and that they regard these in the light of home is almost certain, for they return to die there. Whether the last English rhinoceros slept in the Derbyshire cave where his bones were found can only be matter of conjecture. But caves are the natural sleeping places of nearly all nocturnal creatures, Which need by day protection from enemies, and from the disturbing light. Hollow trees serve the smaller creatures. But the great caves, especially those of the tropical forest, whether on the Orinoco, or in Central America, or the Indian Archipelago, or in prehistoric Kentucky, have been the sleeping places of millions of creatures from the remotest ages of the earth. There sleep the legions of the bats; there the " dragons " and monsters of old dreamed evil dreams after undigested surfeits of marsupial prey or of prehistoric fish from vanished seas; and there the wolf, the bear, the panther, and the giant snake still sleep away the hours of a4Y- Other animals, in place of seeking and maintaining a private bedroom, prefer to sleep together in companies. Aristotle's remark that "carefulness is least in that which is common to most" holds good of these communal sleeping places. Even clever creatures like pigs and domestic ducks have no "home" and no permanent sleeping quarters. Like the Australian black who, when presented with a house, pointed out the peculiar advantages offered by square buildings, because they always offered a wall to sleep against, outside, whichever way the wind blew, they have to shift their quarters according to the weather. With these limitations, pigs are extremely clever in choosing sleeping quarters. The wave of heat during the second week of August was preceded by two days of very low temperature and rain. In a row of model pig-sties, during these cold days, nothing was visible 'but a large flat heap of straw in each. This straw was
stuffed" with little pigs, all lying like sardines in a box, keeping each other warm, and perfectly invisible, with the straw for a blanket. Then came the heat, and some hundred +swine were let loose in a paddock. By noon the whole herd were lying in the shadow of a large oak, every pig being fast asleep, close together in the shade circle. In another meadow two flocks of Ailesbnry ducks were also fast asleep in the grass, in the shadow of the oaks. But social animals, which live in herds and often move considerable distances in search of their daily food, are known to resort to fixed sleeping places on occa- sion. Among the wildest and least accessible creatures of the Old World are the wild sheep. Hunters in the Atlas Mountains commonly find chambers in the rocks which the aoudads, or Barbary wild sheep, use to sleep in. Some are occupied by asingle ram, others are used by small herds of five or six, or an old sheep with her lamb. The ovine scent, so strong near domestic sheepfolds, always clings to these rock chambers of the wild sheep. The "big horn" of the Rocky Mountains is also found in holes in the hills, but these are believed to be made by the sheep eating salt-impregnated clay, until they burrow into the hill. They may be " bolted " from these boles like rabbits. Even park deer sometimes occupy bedrooms. In one old deer park in Suffolk some of the giant trees show hollow, half-decayed roots above ground, like miniature caves. Into these the young deer used to creep in hot weather, when the flies were troublesome, and lie hidden and cooL
Fish, which not only need sleep like other creatures, but gawn when drowsy, and exhibit quite recognisable signs of somnolence, sometimes seek a quiet chamber to slumber in. This is obvious to any one who will watch the behaviour of aertain rock-haunting species at any good aquarium. The 4'1=p-suckers," conger-eels, and rock-fish will retire into a cave in the grotto provided for them, and there go fast asleep ; though as their eyes are open their "exposition of sleep" is only proved by the absence of movement, and neglect of any food which comes in their reach. Their comparative safety from attack when asleep in open water may be due to the
sensitiveness of their bodies to any movement in the water. But pike are easily snared when asleep, probably because, being the tyrants of the waters themselves, they have less of the "sleeping senses" possessed by most animals which go in fear of their lives from hereditary enemies.
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