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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.

Nor was all the fault with the snakes. For as soon as the Apes got to accumulating, they scoured the swamps as well as the hills for provisions, and so met the Snakes in their own element, who had to fight for the ungathered fruits as well as the gathered. In fact, through their strongly developed acquisitiveness, the Apes had drained the country so generally of its productions, that there was not enough left to support the Snakes, so that the latter had to become criminals and attack the gathered stores. Whenever the rich gather up everything so close as to leave nothing for the poor, the latter will turn criminals, whether they be snakes or men, and will steal from the rich, whether these be men or monkeys.