The snakes, however, soon attacked these homes, and all the more eagerly because of the food stored in them. For the Apes found that they could put their structures to many uses not before known. They would hold their provisions, as well as themselves, and would protect such provisions from the weather, as well as from the snakes, and so preserve them for a longer time. Their homes accordingly became store-houses, and this facility for keeping provisions by storage stimulated the collection of them. Instead of gathering only what they wanted to eat at the time, the Apes now picked up all they could find, and placed it in their dug-outs. They soon learned to allow nothing to go to waste, and became economical. They even collected when they did not want anything, from the mere fact that they could store it, and thus became provident. They believed they might want in the future, and so often stored large quantities; for some Apes early became avaricious. They got in time to be as proud of their possessions as of their homes, and often gathered from a feeling of ambition. Shoozoo claimed that he had enough fruits in his mound to feed all the Apes of Cocoanut Hill for a lifetime; which nobody of that generation believed, and nobody of the next doubted. These great quantities of fruits, we say, attracted the snakes, who were soon found more plentiful about the homes than about the swamps. Wealth always has its enemies, and a snake no more than a man, will work for what he can get more easily. It was thought easier to get cocoanuts in Shoozoo’s dug-out than by climbing a tree. One day an ape, who had made a large collection, found, on returning home, that all his store was gone. The snakes had broken in and eaten what they could, and destroyed the rest by half eating it. The only sign of the thieves was an old snake which had eaten so much that he could not get away, and lay, like a drunken man, helpless on the ground. The ape soon dispatched him; but that did not satisfy the ape. He was indignant, and in his sense of suffering wrong we have the first appearance of the ethical sentiment. The sense of wrong in others appears before we recognize it in ourselves. The snakes did not feel the wrong; nor did the same monkey when afterwards he went to steal some of Shoozoo’s fruit (and found none), although he felt an indignation at Shoozoo that might be called an incipient sense of the wrong of falsehood. He wanted to charge Shoozoo with lying; but as that would have disclosed his own theft, or attempt at it, he suppressed his indignation in his prudence. [Illustration: THE ROBBERS OF THE AMMI.] Other depredations were committed by the snakes, so that almost every ape soon had a property grievance. Added to this was a growing personal animosity between the Apes and the Snakes. As they had frequent contests over the fruits, they had learned to fight, and so to hate, each other, and finally to look upon each other as public enemies.