The higher animals, on the other hand, rarely fail to profit by lessons of experience. Trappers know that the contrivances for capturing wild animals have to be changed from time to time, the older methods being apt to lose their efficacy after the fate of a certain number of victims has warned their relatives. Old rats have been seen driving their young from a dish of arsenic-poisoned gruel. Deer, foxes, and wild turkeys learn to avoid the favorite trails of the hunter; monkeys, on their first arrival in a cold climate, impatiently tear off the jackets or shawls furnished by the kindness of their keeper, but soon learn to appreciate the advantage of artificial teguments, and even try to increase their stock of wardrobe by appropriating every stray piece of cloth they can lay their hands on. The instinct of adaptation to the conditions of progress has asserted itself both among modern and very ancient nations, though during the mental bondage of the Middle Ages its manifestations were systematically suppressed by the conservatism of religious bigots. Savages show an almost apish eagerness in adopting the habits, fashions, and foibles of civilization. The political institutions of primitive nations are very elastic. The Grecian republics were not only willing but anxious to improve their laws by abolishing abuses and testing amendments. In ancient Rome every general assembly of freemen exercised the functions of a legislative council; legislative reforms were proposed by private citizens and were often carried by acclamation, like the edict for the expulsion of the Tarquins, and the resolution revoking the exile of Cicero. B.—REWARDS OF CONFORMITY. Legislative reform, the manful renunciation of entangling alliances with the ghosts of the past, is a sword that has more than once cut a Gordian knot of fatal complications. The suppression of monasteries saved four of our Spanish American sister republics from a brood of vampires that had drained the life-blood of Spain for a series of centuries. In England the timely repeal of the corn-laws averted an explosion that might have rent the coherence of the entire British empire. The abolition of slavery with one blow destroyed a hydra that had menaced the safety of the American Union by an endless series of political disputes. By the abolition of serfdom Czar Alexander elevated the Russian empire to the rank of a progressive nation. The very possibility of national progress depends, indeed, on the hope of legislative reform, for the rigor of unalterable laws prevents social development as the clasp of an iron ring prevents the growth of a tree. C.—PERVERSION.