"I was just wonderin' where the Ants came from." * * * * * It was Abel on the other hand who asked his father why he had not named the male ants uncles, a question that to this day has not been satisfactorily answered.

Indeed I have frequently found myself regretting that there was nobody at hand to ask Adam these very pertinent questions earlier in his life, and before it was too late to instil in his mind the idea that a little more consistency would be desirable in his selection of names for the creatures he was called upon to christen.

Zooelogy might have been a far simpler science in the matter of nomenclature than it is now ever likely to become, had Adam been surrounded at the beginning with inquiring minds like those of Cain and Abel, not necessarily to dispute his conclusions or his judgments, but to seek explanations.

Why, for instance, should a creature that is found chiefly on the Nile, and never under any circumstances on the Rhine, be called a Rhinoceros?
And why should a Caribou be called a Caribou entirely irrespective of its sex?
There are Caribou of both sexes, when we might have had Caribou for one and Billibou for the other, and yet Adam has feminized the whole Bou family with no apparent thought about the matter at all.

Then there is the animal which he called the Bear.