The daily morning journal and courier., 1898-11-12

are awake ana about all night. But among the former tie sleeping place is the true home, the domus ct penet alia. It has nothing necessarily In common with the nest, and birds, like some O her animals and many human beings, oft Il prefer complete isolation at this time. They want bedroom to themselves.
 Sparrows, which apl ear to go to roost in compani-s, and sometimes do so, after a vast amount of talk and fuss do not rest cuddled up aga nst one another, like starlings or chickens, but have private holes and corners to sleep in. They are fond of sleeping in the sides of strawricks, but each sparrow has it's own little hollow among the straWs just as each of a flock of sleep ing larks makes it's own 'cubcle" on 1 the ground. A London sparrow for two years occupied a sleeping home al- most as bare of furniture as the ceiling which the East Indian butterfly fua- quented. It came every night in win ter to sleep on a narrow ledge under the portico of house in Onslow Square | Above was the bare whitewas h top of the portico, there were no cosey cor ners, and at eighteen inches from the SPolioN Nclo biiC SdS lil GOlllcO ld1lDs There every evening it slept and guests leaving the house seldom failed to look up and see the little bird fast asleep in it's enormous white bedroom. Its regu- lar return during two winters is evil l dence that it regarded this as its home; i but why did it choose this particular J portico in place of a hundred others in i the same square?
 1 It is far cry'' from South Kensing- ton to the southern cliffs; but the same sense of home which brought the spar row back nightly to his London portico brings the cormorants and the falcons to the same spot in the same precipce, year after year, in the Culver Cliffs. There is a certain vaulted niche, in which the peregrine falcons sleep, win l ter and summer, in the white wall of | the precipice, and every night at dusk l the cormorants fly in to sleep on their 1 special shelves and pedestaIs on anoth- | CT portion of the cliff They come to ! these few square yards of perpendicu- lar chalk, three hundred feet above the surge as constantly as the fishermen return to their cottages at the Fore land.
 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 of all animals sleeping places, caves and caverns are most rema katl ls for ancient and distinguished hab ta-
 tion. Like prehistoric man, the ami
 mals alike of past ages and of the pres
 I, i, I
 rooms, and that they regard these in
 the light of home Is almost certain, for
 they return to die there. Whether the
 last English rhinocerus slept in the
 Derbyshire cave where his bones were found can only be matter of conjec- l ture.
 1 But caves are the natural s'eaping I places of nearly all nocturnal creatures,
 which need by day protection from ere
 mics and from the disturbing light. l Hollow trees serve the smaller crea- l lures. But the great caves, especially
 those of the tropical forest whether on
 the Orinoco, or in Central America or
 the Indian Archipelago, or in pre- his- 1 toric 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 "dra- 1 gcons" and monsters of old dr amed evil dreams after und gestad surfeits l marsupial prey or of prehistoric fish l from vanished seas; and there the w If. l the bear, the panther and the giant
 snake still asleep away the hours of | day.
 | Other animals. in place of seeking ard
 maintaining a private bedroom, prefer to sleep together in companies. Arlsto- l ties remark that "carefulnes ss is least
 in that which is common to most" holds
 good of these communal sleeping 1 places. Even clever creatures like pigs
 and domestic ducks have no home"
 and no permanent sleeping quarters.
 Like the Australian back who, wh II | presented with a house, pointed out the l peculiar advantages offered by square buildings, because they always offered 1 wall to sleep against, outside, which
 ever way the wind blew, they have to
 shift their quarters accord ng to the weather.
 With these limitations pigs are ex- l tremely clever in choosing sleeping ] quarters The wave of heat during tn 2 second week of August was precede 1 by two days of low temperature and
 rain In row of model pigsties during 1 these cold days, nothing was wis be but | a large fiat 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 invisi-
 ble, with the straw for blanket. Then
 came the heat, and some hundred swine 1 were let loose in a paddock. By noon | the whole herd were lying in the shad-
 ow of large oak, every pg being fast
 asleep, close together in the shade cir i cle.
 THE QUEER LANGwORTHY sTO-