Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/15

 the races of men, in shape, gestures, tones, and habits. What a wide range of Nature's curious freakery a forest has, or a district of country like those plains and thickets of Africa, where the natives dig their great pit and organize a monster drive! Into it falls every thing which cannot escape to either side. The giraffe, elephant, gnu, antelope, hartbeest, zebra, jackal,—think of the commingling of strange discrepancies thus suddenly collected! Were it not for the panic which prevails, and the accidents to life and limb, one would suppose that they ought to be aware of Nature's whims in themselves, and to narrowly escape inventing amusement. But curiosity and aversion probably exhaust the speculative possibilities of animals in this direction.

It is true, we occasionally hear of happy families, like that of the prairie-dog who has an owl and a rattlesnake to share his housekeeping, which they do with zest; for they have established a taste for the young of the prairie-dog, and they hire his tenement only with an eye to business.

When a great freshet takes possession of a country, and evicts the tenants of every hole, thicket, and burrow, there is an indiscriminate stampede of the animals for the driest and safest places: hares, rattlesnakes, mice, cats, and the carnivora cling together to the tops of trees, or wait in terror on the highest hills. So a prairie fire startles all the wild creatures with its sweep into a promiscuous race towards some spot that cannot be tenanted by flame. There they might observe the strange traits which shun each other in ordinary times