“No, it does not think of it, either. It does not know that pears spoil and nuts keep, because it has never tried to keep pears. It does not foresee that when it wakes up, the fruit-trees will not be bearing fruit, will hardly have their first leaves; it does not know how long it would have to wait to find a pear to nibble; it knows nothing of all these things, which it is now about to become aware of, perhaps for the first time, through experience. Some one else thinks for the dormouse and gives it the prudence to store up nuts in a hole in the wall; some one who understands, foresees, and knows everything. And that some one is God, the Father of the man who plants the pear-tree, and Father also of the little dormouse that is so fond of pears.” CHAPTER XV HORNED OWLS “We have glanced in a cursory way at a number of our rodents that are harmful to crops. I pass over in silence the pretty squirrel, a lover of walnuts and beechnuts, and the industrious beaver, an animal which may still be found, here and there, along the Rhone. The hare and the rabbit, too, I willingly give over to the hunter’s rifle. What protection have we from the devouring hunger of the others—the rats, the field-mice, and the meadow-mice? How are we to hold them in check? In our homes we have the cat; outside we have the army of feathered cats—the nocturnal birds of prey. I will divide these latter into two classes, to make it easier to distinguish the various species. One has the head adorned with two tufts of feathers—plumicorns is the term sometimes used—while the other class lacks this ornament. Horned owls come under the first classification; hornless owls, or those that may be called simply owls, come under the second.