There are animals and insects which on being touched, or being approached by a superior enemy, instantly assume the attitude and appearance of death. They recognize their peril, and seek to elude notice by a motionless condition which simulates death. They thus pretend to be other than they are, for the purpose of preserving the power to remain what they are. The ruby-throated humming-bird of Canada, if captured, feigns death by shutting its eyes and keeping quite still, then making a vigorous effort to escape. Some birds by false pretences of agitation lure the trapper away from the neighborhood of their nest. Cats constantly feign sleep to further their design of catching birds or mice. This shows not only a dramatic gift, but also a clear purpose in the use of it. This _playing 'possum_ is a dramatic artifice very prevalent even in the lower regions of the animal kingdom. If it be thought that a bug cannot possibly know so much, the reply is, Perhaps the bug itself does not, but the presence of God, the creative and guardian Spirit of nature, the collective experience of the total ancestry of the bug organized in its nervous system, does know it; and it is this automatic reason that plays the cunning game. A bear has been known to frequent the bank of a stream where fishes were wont to come to the surface and feed on the falling fruit of an overhanging tree, to splash the water with his paw in imitation of the dropping fruit, and when the fish appeared, seize and devour it! This neat little drama implies on the part of the bear an imaginative conception of the different personages and scenes in the situation, in advance, and then a deliberate representation of his ideas in action. It would be the same thing as human art if the bear could of its own impulse repeat the whole serial action under other circumstances, as, for example, before a group of bears off in the woods. This he cannot do; and thus is the animal drama differenced from the human drama, instinct separated from art.