"Say, Pa," said Cain, one Saturday afternoon, when the whole family
were off on a picnic together, "did you have any sisters?"

"No, my son," replied Adam, plucking a bottle of olives from a
neighboring tree, and placing them on the outspread table-cloth on the
grass.

"Well, did Ma have any sisters?" persisted Cain.

"No," said Adam. "Your mother had no sisters, either. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothin'," replied the lad with a puzzled expression coming over
his face as he scratched his back. "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. He is not bare at all--on the
contrary he wears the shaggiest coat of all the animals, except
possibly the Buffalo, who, by the way, is not buff, but a rather dirty
dull brownish black in color. The Panther does not wear pants, and the
Monkey far from suggesting the habits of a Monk is a roystering,
philanderous old rounder that would disgrace a heathen temple, much
less adorn a Monastery. And finally if there is anything lower than a
Hyena, or less coy than a Coyote, I don't know what it is.

There is considerable evidence in Mother Eve's Garden Book, in which
she jotted down now and then little notes o