Ways of nature

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HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
Boston and New York

WAYS OF NATURE

A BIRD IN SIGHT

WAYS OF NATURE

BY

JOHN BURROUGHS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

1905
JJOSTON COhLMiH^ LIBKAitil

CMlltT^gl

/.'

COPYRIGHT 1905 BY JOHN BURROUGHS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Bj7d

'shea October jqc

Published October iqos

PREFACE

My reader will find this volume quite a departure
in certain ways from the tone and spirit of my pre-
vious books, especially in regard to the subject of
animal intelligence. Heretofore I have made the
most of every gleam of intelligence of bird or four-
footed beast that came under my observation, often,
I fancy, making too much of it, and giving the wild
creatures credit for more " sense " than they really
possessed. The nature lover is always tempted to
do this very thing; his tendency is to humanize the
wild life about him, and to read his own traits and
moods into whatever he looks upon. I have never
consciously done this myself, at least to the extent
of willfully misleading my reader. But some of our
later nature writers have been guilty of this fault,
and have so grossly exaggerated and misrepresented
the every-day wild Hfe of our fields and woods that
their example has caused a strong reaction to take
place in my own mind, and has led me to set about
examining the whole subject of animal Hfe and
instinct in a way I have never done before.

In March, 1903, I contributed to "The Atlantic
Monthly " a paper called " Real and Sham Natural
History," which was as vigorous a protest as I could

V

PREFACE

make against the growing tendency to humanize
the lower animals. The paper was widely read and
discussed, and bore fruit in many ways, much of
it good and wholesome fruit, but a little of it bitter
and acrid. For obvious reasons that paper is not
included in this collection. But I have given all the
essays that were the outcome of the currents of
thought and inquiry that it set going in my mind,
and I have given them nearly in the order in which
they were written, so that the reader may see the
growth of my own mind and opinions in relation to
the subject. I confess I have not been fully able to
persuade myself that the lower animals ever show
anything more than a faint gleam of what we call
thought and reflection, — the power to evolve ideas
from sense impressions, — except feebly in the case
of the dog and the apes, and possibly the elephant.
Nearly all the animal behavior that the credulous
pubKc looks upon as the outcome of reason is simply
the result of the adaptiveness and plasticity of
instinct. The animal has impulses and impressions
where we have ideas and concepts. Of our faculties
I concede to them perception, sense memory, and
association of memories, and little else. Without
these it would be impossible for their lives to go on.
I am aware that there is much repetition in this
volume, and that the names of several of the separate
chapters differ much more than do the subjects
discussed in them.

vi

PREFACE

When I was a boy on the farm, we used to thrash
our grain with the hand-flail. Our custom was to
thrash a flooring of sheaves on one side, then turn
the sheaves over and thrash them on the other,
then unbind them and thrash the loosened straw
again, and then finish by turning the whole over
and thrashing it once more. I suspect my reader
will feel that I have followed the same method in
many of these papers. I have thrashed the same
straw several times, but I have turned it each time,
and I trust have been rewarded by a few additional
grains of truth.

Let me hope that the result of the discussion or
thrashing will not be to make the reader love the
animals less, but rather to love the truth more.

June, 1905.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Ways of Nature 1

n. Bird-Songs 29

III. Nature with Closed Doors . . » 47

IV. The Wit of a Duck .... 53
V. Factors in Animal Life . . . .69

VI. Animal Communication ... 87

VII. Devious Paths 109

VIII. What do Animals Know? . . . 123

IX. Do Animals Think and Reflect? . . 151

X. A Pinch of Salt 173

XI. The Literary Treatment of Nature . 191

XII. A Beaver's Reason .... 209

Xin. Reading the Book of Nature . . . 231
XIV. Gathered by the Way

I. the training of wild animals . . 239

II. AN astonished PORCUPINE . . . 242

ni. birds and strings .... 246

IV. mimicry 248

V. the colors of fruits .... 251
VI. instinct 254

vn. the robin 261

vni. the crow 265

Index ^ . 273

WAYS OF NATURE

I WAS much amused lately by a half-dozen or
more letters that camie to me from some Califor-
nian schoolchildren, who wrote to ask if I would
please tell them whether or not birds have sense.
One Httle girl said : " I would be pleased if you would
write and tell me if birds have sense. I wanted to
see if I could n't be the first one to know." I felt
obliged to reply to the children that we ourselves
do not have sense enough to know just how much
sense the birds and other wild creatures do have,
and that they do appear to have some, though their
actions are probably the result of what we call in-
stinct, or natural prompting, like that of the bean-
stalk when it cHmbs the pole. Yet a bean-stalk will
sometimes show a kind of perversity or depravity
that looks hke the result of deliberate choice. Each
season, among my dozen or more hills of pole-beans,
there are usually two or three low-minded plants
that will not chmb the poles, but go groveling upon
the ground, wandering off among the potato- vines or
cucumbers, departing utterly from the traditions
of their race, becoming shiftless and vagrant. When

1

WAYS OF NATURE

I lift them up and wind them around the poles and
tie them with a wisp of grass, they rarely stay. In
some way they seem to get a wrong start in life, or
else are degenerates from the first. I have never
known anything like this among the wild creatures,
though it happens often enough among our own
kind. The trouble with the bean is doubtless this :
the Lima bean is of South American origin, and in
the Southern Hemisphere, beans, it seems, go the
other way around the pole; that is, from right to
left. When transferred north of the equator, it takes
them some time to learn the new way, or from left to
right, and a few of them are always backshding,
or departing from the new way and vaguely seeking
the old; and not finding this, they become vaga-
bonds.

How much or how little sense or judgment our
wild neighbors have is hard to determine. The
crows and other birds that carry shell-fish high in
the air and then let them drop upon the rocks to
break the shell show something very much like
reason, or a knowledge of the relation of cause and
effect, though it is probably an unthinking habit
formed in their ancestors under the pressure of
hunger. Froude tells of some species of bird that
he saw in South Africa flying amid the swarm of
migrating locusts and clipping off the wings of the
insects so that they would drop to the earth, where
the birds could devour them at their leisure. Our

2

WAYS OF NATURE

squirrels will cut off the chestnut burs before they
have opened, allowing them to fall to the ground,
where, as they seem to know, the burs soon dry
open. Feed a caged coon soiled food, — a piece of
bread or meat rolled on the ground, — and before
he eats it he will put it in his dish of water and wash
it off. The author of "Wild Life Near Home"
says that muskrats "will wash what they eat,
whether washing is needed or not." If the coon
washes his food only when it needs washing, and not
in every individual instance, then the proceeding
looks Hke an act of judgment ; the same with the
muskrat. But if they always wash their food, whether
soiled or not, the act looks more hke instinct or an
inherited habit, the origin of which is obscure.

Birds and animals probably think without know-
ing that they think; that is, they have not self-con-
sciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with
this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intel-
ligence, — intelligence that is not primarily con-
cerned with his own safety and well-being, but that
looks abroad upon things. The wit of the lower
animals seems all to have been developed by the
struggle for existence, and it rarely gets beyond
the prudential stage. The sharper the struggle,
the sharper the wit. Our porcupine, for instance,
is probably the most stupid of animals and has
the least speed ; it has little use for either wit or
celerity of movement. It carries a death-deaUng

3

WAYS OF NATURE

armor to protect it from its enemies, and it can
climb the nearest hemlock tree and hve on the bark
all winter. The skunk, too, pays for its terrible
weapon by dull wits. But think of the wit of the
much-hunted fox, the much-hunted otter, the much-
sought beaver! Even the grouse, when often fired
at, learns, when it is started in the open, to fly with
a cockscrew motion to avoid the shot.

Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that de-
veloped the wits of the lower animals, as they were,
of course, the prime factors in developing the intel-
ligence of man. But man has gone on, while the
animals have stopped at these fundamental wants,
— the need of safety, of offspring, of food.

Probably in a state of wild nature birds never
make mistakes, but where they come in contact mth
our civilization and are confronted by new con-
ditions, they very naturally make mistakes. For
instance, their cunning in nest-building sometimes
deserts them. The art of the bird is to conceal its
nest both as to position and as to material, but now
and then it is betrayed into weaving into its struc-
ture showy and bizarre bits of this or that, which
give its secret away, and which seem to violate all the
traditions of its kind. I have the picture of a robin's
nest before me, upon the outside of which are stuck
a muslin flower, a leaf from a small calendar, and a
photograph of a local celebrity. A more incongruous
use of material in bird architecture it would be

4

WAYS OF NATURE

hard to find. I have been told of another robin's
nest upon the outside of which the bird had fastened
a wooden label from a near-by flower-bed, marked
" Wake Robin." Still another nest I have seen built
upon a large, showy foundation of the paper-Hke
flowers of antennaria, or everlasting. The wood
thrush frequently weaves a fragment of newspaper
or a white rag into the foundation of its nest. " Evil
communications corrupt good manners." The
newspaper and the rag-bag unsettle the wits of the
birds. The phcebe-bird is capable of this kind of
mistake or indiscretion. All the past generations of
her tribe have built upon natural and, therefore,
neutral sites, usually under shelving and overhang-
ing rocks, and the art of adapting the nest to its
surroundings, blending it with them, has been
highly developed. But phoebe now frequently
builds under our sheds and porches, where, so far
as concealment is concerned, a change of material,
say from moss to dry grass or shreds of bark, would
be an advantage to her ; but she departs not a 'bit
from the family traditions ; she uses the same
woodsy mosses, which in some cases, especially
when the nest is placed upon newly sawed timber,
make her secret an open one to all eyes.

It does indeed often look as if the birds had very
little sense. Think of a bluebird, or an oriole, or a
robin, or a jay, fighting for hours at a time its own
image as reflected in a pane of glass ; quite exhaust-

5

WAYS OF NATURE

ing itself in its fury to demolish its supposed rival!
Yet I have often witnessed this Httle comedy. It is
another instance of how the arts of our civilization
corrupt and confuse the birds. It may be that in the
course of many generations the knowledge of glass
will get into their blood, and they will cease to be
fooled by it, as they may also in time learn what a
poor foundation the newspaper is to build upon.
The ant or the bee could not be fooled by the glass
in that way for a moment.

Have the birds and our other wild neighbors
sense, as distinguished from instinct ? Is a change
of habits to meet new conditions, or the taking
advantage of accidental circumstances, an evidence
of sense ? How many birds appear to have taken
advantage of the protection afforded by man in
building their nests! How many of them build
near paths and along roadsides, to say nothing of
those that come close to our dwellings ! Even the
quail seems to prefer the borders of the highway
to the open fields. I have chanced upon only three
quails' nests, and these were all by the roadside.
One season a scarlet tanager that had failed with
her first nest in the woods came to try again in a
Uttle cherry tree that stood in the open, a few feet
from my cabin, where I could almost touch the nest
with my hand as I passed. But in my absence she
again came to grief, some marauder, probably a
red squirrel, taking her eggs. Will her failure in

6

WAYS OF NATURE

this case cause her to lose faith in the protective in-
fluence of the shadow of a human dweUing ? I hope
not. I have known the turtle dove to make a simi-
lar move, occupying an old robin's nest near my
neighbor's cottage. The timid rabbit will sometimes
come up from the bushy fields and excavate a place
for her nest in the lawn a few feet from the house.
All such things look like acts of judgment, though
they may be only the result of a greater fear over-
coming a lesser fear.

It is in the preservation of their lives and of their
young that the wild creatures come the nearest to
showing what we call sense or reason. The boys tell
me that a rabbit that has been driven from her hole
a couple of times by a ferret will not again run into
it when pursued. The tragedy of a rabbit pursued
by a mink or a weasel may often be read upon our
winter snows. The rabbit does not take to her hole ;
it would be fatal. And yet, though capable of far
greater speed, so far as I have observed, she does not
escape the mink; he very soon pulls her down. It
would look as though a fatal paralysis, the paralysis
of utter fear, fell upon the poor creature as soon
as she found herself hunted by this subtle, blood-
thirsty enemy. I have seen upon the snow where her
jumps had become shorter and shorter, with tufts
of fur marking each stride, till the bloodstains,
and then her half-devoured body, told the whole
tragic story.

7

WAYS OF NATURE

There is probably nothing in human experience,
at this age of the world, that is like the helpless terror
that seizes the rabbits as it does other of our lesser
wild creatures, when pursued by any of the weasel
tribe. They seem instantly to be under some fatal
spell which binds their feet and destroys their will
power. It would seem as if a certain phase of nature
from which we get our notions of fate and cruelty
had taken form in the weasel.

The rabbit, when pursued by the fox or by the
dog, quickly takes to hole. Hence, perhaps, the wit
of the fox that a hunter told me about. The story was
all written upon the snow. A mink was hunting a
rabbit, and the fox, happening along, evidently took
in the situation at a glance. He secreted himself
behind a tree or a rock, and, as the "babbit came
along, swept her from her course like a charge of
shot fired at close range, hurling her several feet over
the snow, and then seizing her and carrying her to
his den up the mountain-side.

It would be interesting to know how long our
chimney swifts saw the open chimney-stacks of the
early settlers beneath them before they abandoned
the hollow trees in the woods and entered the chim-
neys for nesting and roosting purposes. Was the act
an act of judgment, or simply an unreasoning im-
pulse, like so much else in the lives of the wild crea-
tures ?

In the choice of nesting-ipaaterial the swift shows

8

WAYS OF NATURE

no change of habit. She still snips off the small dry
twigs from the tree-tops and glues them together, and
to the side of the chimney, with her own glue. The
soot is a new obstacle in her way, that she does not
yet seem to have learned to overcome, as the rains
often loosen it and cause her nest to fall to the bot-
tom. She has a pretty way of trying to frighten you
off when your head suddenly darkens the opening
above her. At such times she leaves the nest and
clings to the side of the chimney near it. Then,
slowly raising her wings, she suddenly springs out
from the wall and back again, making as loud a
drumming with them in the passage as she is capa-
ble of. If this does not frighten you away, she re-
peats it three or four times. If your face still hovers
above her, she remains quiet and watches you.

What a creature of the air this bird is, never
touching the ground, so far as I know, and never
tasting earthly food ! The swallow does perch now
and then and descend to the ground for nesting-
material; but the swift, I have reason to believe,
even outrides the summer storms, facing them on
steady wing, high in air. The twigs for her nest she
gathers on the wing, sweeping along like children on
a " merry-go-round " who try to seize a ring, or to do
some other feat, as they pass a given point. If the
swift misses the twig, or it fails to yield to her the
first time, she tries again and again, each time mak-
ing a wider circuit, as if to tame and train her steed

9

WAYS OF NATURE

a little and bring him up more squarely to the mark
next time.

The swift is a stiff flyer: there appear to be no
joints in her wings; she suggests something made of
wires or of steel. Yet the air of frolic and of super-
abundance of wing-power is more marked with her
than with any other of our birds. Her feeding and
twig-gathering seem like asides in a life of endless
play. Several times both in spring and fall I have
seen swifts gather in immense numbers toward night-
fall, to take refuge in large unused chimney-stacks.
On such occasions they seem to be coming together
for some aerial festival or grand celebration; and, as
if bent upon a final effort to work off a part of their
superabundant wing-power before settling down for
the night, they circle and circle high above the chim-
ney-top, a great cloud of them, drifting this way and
that, all in high spirits and chippering as they fly.
Their numbers constantly increase as other members
of the clan come dashing in from all points of the
compass. Swifts seem to materialize out of empty
air on all sides of the chippering, whirling ring, as
an hour or more this assembling of the clan and this
flight festival go on. The birds must gather in from
whole counties, or from half a State. They have
been on the wing all day, and yet now they seem as
tireless as the wind, and as if unable to curb their
powers.

One fall they gathered in this way and took refuge

10

WAYS OF NATURE

for the night in a large chimney-stack in a city near
me, for more than a month and a half. Several times
I went to town to witness the spectacle, and a spec-
tacle it was : ten thousand of them, I should think,
filHng the air above a whole square like a whirling
swarm of huge black bees, but saluting the ear with
a multitudinous chippering, instead of a humming.
People gathered upon the sidewalks to see them. It
was a rare circus performance, free to all. After a
great many feints and playful approaches, the whirl-
ing ring of birds would suddenly grow denser above
the chimney ; then a stream of them, as if drawn
down by some power of suction, would pour into the
opening. For only a few seconds would this down-
ward rush continue; then, as if the spirit of frolic
had again got the upper hand of them, the ring
would rise, and the chippering and circling go on.
In a minute or two the same manoeuvre would be
repeated, the chimney, as it were, taking its swal-
lows at intervals to prevent choking. It usually took
a half-hour or more for the birds all to disappear
down its capacious throat. There was always an air
of timidity and irresolution about their approach
to the chimney, just as there always is about their
approach to the dead tree-top from which they
procure their twigs for nest-building. Often did I
see birds hesitate above the opening and then pass
on, apparently as though they had not struck it at
just the right angle. On one occasion a solitary bird

11

WAYS OF NATURE

was left flying, and it took three or four trials either
to make up its mind or to catch the trick of the
descent. On dark or threatening or stormy days the
birds would begin to assemble by mid-afternoon,
and by four or five o'clock were all in their lodgings.
The chimney is a capacious one, forty or fifty feet
high and nearly three feet square, yet it did not seem
adequate to afford breathing-space for so many
birds. I was curious to know how they disposed
themselves inside. At the bottom was a small open-
ing. Holding my ear to it, I could hear a continuous
chippering and humming, as if the birds were still
all in motion, like an agitated beehive. At nine
o'clock this multitudinous sound of wings and voices
was still going on, and doubtless it was kept up all
night. What was the meaning of it ? Was the press
of birds so great that they needed to keep their wings
moving to ventilate the shaft, as do certain of the
bees in a crowded hive ? Or were these restless
spirits unable to fold their wings even in sleep ? I
was very curious to get a peep inside that chimney
when the swifts were in it. So one afternoon this
opportunity was afforded me by the removal of the
large smoke-pipe of the old steam-boiler. This left
an opening into which I could thrust my head and
shoulders. The sound of wings and voices filled
the hollow shaft. On looking up, I saw the sides
of the chimney for about half its length paved with
the restless birds ; they sat so close together that their

12

WAYS OF NATURE

bodies touched. Moreover, a large number of them
were constantly on the wing, showing against the
sky light as if they were leaving the chimney. But
they did not leave it. They rose up a few feet and
then resumed their positions upon the sides, and it
was this movement that caused the humming sound.
All the while the droppings of the birds came down
Hke a summer shower. At the bottom of the shaft
was a mine of guano three or four feet deep, with a
dead swift here and there upon it. Probably one or
more birds out of such a multitude died every night.
I had fancied there would be many more. It was a
long time before it dawned upon me what this unin-
terrupted flight within the chimney meant. Finally
I saw that it was a sanitary measure : only thus could
the birds keep from soiling each other with their
droppings. Birds digest very rapidly, and had they
all continued to cling to the sides of the wall, they
would have been in a sad predicament before morn-
ing. Like other acts of cleanliness on the part of
birds, this was doubtless the prompting of instinct
and not of judgment. It was Nature looking out for
her own.

In view, then, of the doubtful sense or intelligence
of the wild creatures, what shall we say of the new
school of nature writers or natural history roman-
cers that has lately arisen, and that reads into the
birds and animals almost the entire human psycho-
logy ? This, surely : so far as these writers awaken an

13

WAYS OF NATURE

interest in the wild denizens of the field and wood,
and foster a genuine love of them in the hearts of
the young people, so far is their influence good ; but
so far as they pervert natural history and give false
impressions of the intelligence of our animals, cater-
ing to a taste that prefers the fanciful to the true and
the real, is their influence bad. Of course the great
army of readers prefer this sugar-coated natural
history to the real thing, but the danger always is
that an indulgence of this taste will take away a hk-
ing for the real thing, or prevent its development.
The knowing ones, those who can take these pretty
tales with the pinch of salt of real knowledge, are
not many; the great majority are simply entertained
while they are being humbugged. There may be no
very serious objection to the popular love of sweets
being catered to in this field by serving up the fife-
history of our animals in a story, all the missing links
supplied, and all their motives and acts humanized,
provided it is not done covertly and under the guise
of a real history. We are never at a loss how to take
Kipling in his "Jungle Book;" we are pretty sure
that this is fact dressed up as fiction, and that much
of the real life of the jungle is in these stories. I
remember reading his story of "The White Seal"
shortly after I had visited the Seal Islands in Bering
Sea, and I could not detect in the story one departure
from the facts of the life-history of the seal, so far as
it is known. Kipling takes no covert liberties with

14

WAYS OF NATURE

natural history, any more than he does with the facts
of human history in his novels.

Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are
what the real nature-lover craves. No man can
invent incidents and traits as interesting as the
reality. Then, to know that a thing is true gives it
such a savor ! The truth — how we do crave the
truth ! We cannot feed our minds on simulacra any
more than we can our bodies. Do assure us that the
thing you tell is true. If you must counterfeit the
truth, do it so deftly that we shall never detect you.
But in natural liistory there is no need to counter-
feit the truth; the reality always suffices, if you
have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. Behold what
Maeterlinck makes out of the life of the bee, sim-
ply by getting at and portraying the facts — a true
wonder-book, the enchantment of poetry wedded
to the authority of science.

Works on animal intelligence, such as Romanes's,
abound in incidents that show in the animals reason
and forethought in their simpler forms ; but in many
cases the incidents related in these works are not
well authenticated, nor told by trained observers.
The observations of the great majority of people
have no scientific value whatever. Romanes quotes
from some person who alleges that he saw a pair of
nightingales, during a flood in the river near which
their nest was placed, pick up the nest bodily and
carry it to a place of safety. This is incredible. If

15

WAYS OF NATURE

Romanes himself or Darwin himself said he saw
this, one would have to believe it. Birds whose nests
have been plundered sometimes pull the old nest to
pieces and use the material, or parts of it, in build-
ing a new nest; but I cannot believe that any pair
of birds ever picked up a nest containing eggs and
carried it off to a new place. How could they do it ?
With one on each side, how could they fly with the
nest between them ? They could not carry it with their
feet, and how could they manage it with their beaks ?
My neighbor met in the woods a black snake that
had just swallowed a red squirrel. Now your ro-
mance-naturalist may take such a fact as this and
make as pretty a story of it as he can. He may
ascribe to the snake and his victim all the human
emotions he pleases. He may make the snake ghde
through the tree-tops from limb to limb, and from
tree to tree, in pursuit of its prey : the main filing is,
the snake got the squirrel. If our romancer makes
the snake fascinate the squirrel, I shall object, be-
cause I don't believe that snakes have this power.
People like to believe that they have. It would seem
as if this subtle, gliding, hateful creature ought to
have some such mysterious gift, but I have no proof
that it has. Every year I see the black snake robbing
birds'-nests, or pursued by birds whose nests it has
just plundered, but I have yet to see it cast its fatal
spell upon a grown bird. Or, if our romancer says
that the black snake was drilled in the art of squir-

16

WAYS OF NATURE

rel-catching by its mother, I shall know he is a pre-
tender.

Speaking of snakes reminds me of an incident I
have several times witnessed in our woods in con-
nection with a snake commonly called the sissing or
blowing adder. When I have teased this snake a few
moments with my cane, it seems to be seized with an
epileptic or cataleptic fit. It throws itself upon its
back, coiled nearly in the form of a figure eight, and
begins a series of writhings and twistings and con-
vulsive movements astonishing to behold. Its mouth
is open and presently full of leaf -mould, its eyes are
covered with the same, its head is thrown back, its
white belly up; now it is under the leaves, now out,
the body all the while being rapidly drawn through
this figure eight, so that the head and tail are con-
stantly changing place. What does it mean ? Is it
fear ? Is it a real fit ? I do not know, but any one of
our romance-naturalists could tell you at once. I can
only suggest that it may be a ruse to baffle its enemy,
the black snake, when he would attempt to crush
it in his folds, or to seize its head when he would
swallow it.

I am reminded of another mystery connected with
a snake, or a snake-skin, and a bird. Why does our
great crested flycatcher weave a snake-skin into its
nest, or, in lieu of that, something that suggests a
snake-skin, such as an onion-skin, or fish-scales, or
a bit of oiled paper ? It is thought by some persons

17

WAYS OF NATURE

that it uses the snake-skin as a kind of scarecrow, to
frighten away its natural enemies. But think what
this purpose in the use of it would imply. It would
imply that the bird knew that there were among its
enemies creatures that were afraid of snakes — so
afraid of them that one of their faded and cast-off
skins would keep these enemies away. How could
the bird obtain this knowledge ? It is not afraid of
the skin itself; why should it infer that squirrels,
for instance, are ? I am convinced there is nothing
in this notion. In all the nests that have come
under my observation, the snake-skin was in faded
fragments woven into the texture of the nest, and one
would not be aware of its presence unless he pulled
the nest to pieces. True, Mr. Frank BoUes reports
finding a nest of this bird with a whole snake-skin
coiled around a single egg; but it was the skin of
a small garter-snake, six or seven inches long, and
could not therefore have inspired much terror in
the heart of the bird's natural enemies. Dallas
Lore Sharp, author of that dehghtful book, " Wild
Life Near Home," tells me he has seen a whole skin
danghng nearly its entire length from the hole that
contained the nest, just as he has seen strings hang-
ing from the nest of the kingbird. The bird was
too hurried or too careless to pull in the skin. Mr.
Sharp adds that he cannot " give the bird credit for
appreciating the attitude of the rest of the world
toward snakes, and making use of the fear." More-

18

wxys of nature

over, a cast-off snake-skin looks very little like a
snake. It is thin, shrunken, faded, papery, and there
is no terror in it. Then, too, it is dark in the cavity
of the nest, consequently the skin could not serve
as a scarecrow in any case. Hence, whatever its pur-
pose may be, it surely is not that. It looks like a mere
fancy or whim of the bird. There is that in its voice
and ways that suggests something a little uncanny.
Its call is more like the call of the toad than that of
a bird. If the toad did not always swallow its own
cast-off skin, the bird would probably use that too.

At the best we can only guess at the motives of the
birds and beasts. As I have elsewhere said, they
nearly all have reference in some way to the self-
preservation of these creatures. But how the bits of
an old snake-skin in a bird's nest can contribute
specially to this end, I cannot see.

Nature is not always consistent ; she does not
always choose the best means to a given end. For
instance, all the wrens except our house wren seem
to use about the best material at hand for their nests.
What can be more unsuitable, untractable, for a nest
in a hole or cavity than the twigs the house wren
uses ? Dry grasses or bits of soft bark would bend
and adapt themselves easily to the exigencies of the
case; but stiff, unyielding twigs! What a contrast
to the suitableness of the material the hummingbird
uses — the down of some plant, which seems to have
a poetic fitness!

19

WAYS OF NATURE

Yesterday in my walk I saw where a red squirrel
had stripped the soft outer bark off a group of red
cedars to build its winter's nest with. This also
seemed fit, — fit that such a creature of the trees
should not go to the ground for its nest-material, and
should choose something soft and pliable. Among
the birches, it probably gathers the fine curHng
shreds of the birch bark.

Beside my path in the woods a downy woodpecker,
late one fall, drilled a hole in the top of a small dead
black birch for his winter quarters. My attention
was first called to his doings by the white chips upon
the ground. Every day as I passed I would rap upon
his tree, and if he was in he would appear at his door
and ask plainly enough what I wanted now. One
day when I rapped, sometliing else appeared at the
door — I could not make out what. I continued my
rapping,when out came two flying-squirrels. On the
tree being given a vigorous shake, it broke off at the
hole, and the squirrels went sliding down the air to
the foot of a hemlock, up which they disappeared.
They had dispossessed Downy of his house, had car-
ried in some grass and leaves for a nest, and were as
snug as a bug in a rug. Downy drilled another cell
in a dead oak farther up the hill, and, I hope, passed
the winter there unmolested. Such incidents, comic
or tragic, as they chance to strike us, are happening
all about us, if we have eyes to see them.

The next season, near sundown of a late Novem-

20

WAYS OF NATURE

ber day, I saw Downy trying to get possession of a
hole not his own. I chanced to be passing under
a maple, when white chips upon the ground again
caused me to scrutinize the branches overhead. Just
then I saw Downy come to the tree, and, hopping
around on the under side of a large dry limb, begin
to make passes at something with his beak. Pre-
sently I made out a round hole there, with some-
thing in it returning Downy' s thrusts. The sparring
continued some moments. Downy would hop away
a few feet, then return to the attack, each time to be
met by the occupant of the hole. I suspected an
English sparrow had taken possession of Downy's
cell in his absence during the day, but I was wrong.
Downy flew to another branch, and I tossed up a
stone against the one that contained the hole, when,
with a sharp, steely note, out came a hairy wood-
pecker and alighted on a near-by branch. Downy,
then, had the " cheek " to try to turn his large rival
out of doors — and it was Hairy' s cell, too ; one could
see that by the size of the entrance. Thus loosely
does the rule of meum and tuu7n obtain in the
woods. There is no moral code in nature. Might
reads right. Man in communities has evolved ethi-
cal standards of conduct, but nations, in their deal-
ings with one another, are still largely in a state of
savage nature, and seek to establish the right, as
dogs do, by the appeal to battle.

One season a wood duck laid her eggs in a cavity

21

WAYS OF NATURE

in the top of a tall yellow birch near the spring that
supplies my cabin with water. A bold climber
"shinned" up the fifty or sixty feet of rough tree-
trunk and looked in upon the eleven eggs. They
were beyond the reach of his arm, in a well-hke
cavity over three feet deep. How would the mother
duck get her young up out of that well and down
to the ground ? We watched, hoping to see her in
the act. But we did not. She may have done it at
night or very early in the morning. All we know is
that when Amasa one morning passed that way,
there sat eleven little tufts of black and yellow down
in the spring, with the mother duck near by. It was
a pretty sight. The feat of getting down from the
tree-top cradle had been safely effected, probably by
the young clambering up on the inside walls of the
cavity and then tumbling out into the air and com-
ing down gently like huge snowflakes. They are
mostly down, and why should they not fall with-
out any danger to life or limb ? The notion that
the mother duck takes the young one by one in her
beak and carries them to the creek is doubtless erro-
neous. Mr. William Brewster once saw the golden-
eye, whose habits of nesting are like those of the
wood duck, get its young from the nest to the water
in this manner: The mother bird ahghted in the
water under the nest, looked all around to see that
the coast was clear, and then gave a peculiar call.
Instantly the young shot out of the cavity that held

WAYS OF NATURE

them, as if the tree had taken an emetic, and came
softly down to the water beside their mother. An-
other observer assures me that he once found a
newly hatched duckling hung by the neck in the
fork of a bush under a tree in which a brood of
wood ducks had been hatched.

The ways of nature, — who can map them, or
fathom them, or interpret them, or do much more
than read a hint correctly here and there ? Of one
thing we may be pretty certain, namely, that the ways
of wild nature may be studied in our human ways,
inasmuch as the latter are an evolution from the
former, till we come to the ethical code, to altruism
and self-sacrifice. Here we seem to breathe another
air, though probably this code differs no more from
the animal standards of conduct than our physi-
cal atmosphere differs from that of early geologic
time.

Our moral code must in some way have been
evolved from our rude animal instincts. It came
from within; its possibilities were all in nature. If
not, where were they ?

I have seen disinterested acts among the birds, or
what looked like such, as when one bird feeds the
young of another species when it hears them crying
for food. But that a bird would feed a grown bird
of another species, or even of its own, to keep it from
starving, I have my doubts. I am quite positive
that mice will try to pull one of their fellows out of a

23

WAYS OF NATURE

trap, but what the motive is, who shall say ? Would
the same mice share their last crumb with their fel-
low if he were starving ? That, of course, would be
a much nearer approach to the human code, and
is too much to expect. Bees will clear their fellows
of honey, but whether it be to help them, or to save
the honey, is a question.

In my youth I saw a parent weasel seize one of its
nearly grown young which I had wounded and carry
it across an open barway, in spite of my efforts to
liinder it. A friend of mine, who is a careful observer,
says he once wounded a shrike so that it fell to the
ground, but before he got to it, it recovered itself and
flew with difficulty toward some near trees, calling
to its mate the while ; the mate came and seemed to
get beneath the wounded bird and buoy it up, so
aiding it that it gained the top of a tall tree, where
my friend left it. But in neither instance can we
call this helpfulness entirely disinterested, or pure
altruism.

Emerson said that he was an endless experimenter
with no past at his back. This is just what Nature is.
She experiments endlessly, seeking new ways, new
modes, new forms, and is ever intent upon breaking
away from the past. In this way, as Darwin showed, ,
she attains to new species. She is blind, she gropes
her way, she trusts to luck; all her successes are
chance hits. Whenever I look over my right shoul-
der, as I sit at my desk writing these sentences, I see

24

WAYS OF NATURE

a long shoot of a honeysuckle that came in through
a crack of my imperfectly closed window last sum-
mer. It came in looking, or rather feeling, for some-
thing to cling to. It first dropped down upon a pile
of books, then reached off till it struck the window-
sill of another large window ; along this it crept, its
regular leaves standing up like so many pairs of
green ears, looking very pretty. Coming to the end of
the open way there, it turned to the left and reached
out into vacancy, till it struck another window-sill
runm'ng at right angles to the former; along this it
traveled nearly half an inch a day, till it came to the
end of that road. Then it ventured out into vacant
space again, and pointed straight toward me at my
desk, ten feet distant. Day by day it kept its seat
upon the window-sill, and stretched out farther and
farther, almost beckoning me to give it a lift or to
bring it support. I could hardly resist its patient
daily appeal. Late in October it had bridged about
three feet of the distance that separated us, when,
one day, the moment came when it could maintain
itself outright in the air no longer, and it fell to the
floor. "Poor thing," I said, "your faith was blind,
but it was real. You knew there was a support some-
where, and you tried all ways to find it." This is
Nature. She goes around the circle, she tries every
direction, sure that she will find a way at some
point. Animals in cages behave in a similar way,
looking for a means of escape. In the vineyard I

25

WAYS OF NATURE

see the grape-vines reaching out bhndly in all direc-
tions for some hold for their tendrils. The young
arms seize upon one another and tighten their hold
as if they had at last found what they were in search
of. Stop long enough beside one of the vines, and
it will cling to you and run all over you.

Behold the tumble-bug with her ball of dung by
the roadside ; where is she going with it ? She is
going anywhere and everywhere; she changes her
direction, like the vine, whenever she encounters an
obstacle. She only knows that somewhere there is a
depression or a hole in which her ball with its egg
can rest secure, and she keeps on tumbling about
till she finds it, or maybe digs one, or comes to grief
by the foot of some careless passer-by. This, again,
is Nature's way, randomly and tirelessly seeking
her ends. When we look over a large section of his-
tory, we see that it is man's way, too, or Nature's
way in man. His progress has been a blind groping,
the result of endless experimentation, and all his
failures and mistakes could not be written in a book.
How he has tumbled about with liis ball, seeking
the right place for it, and how many times has he
come to grief! x\ll his successes have been lucky
hits: steam, electricity, representative government,
printing — how long he groped for them before he
found them! There is always and everywhere the
Darwinian tendency to variation, to seek new forms,
to improve upon the past ; and man is under this

26

WAYS OF NATURE

law, the same as is the rest of nature. One genera-
tion of men, Hke one generation of leaves, becomes
the fertilizer of the next; failures only enrich the
soil or make smoother the way.

There are so many conflicting forces and interests,
and the conditions of success are so complex ! If the
seed fall here, it will not germinate ; if there, it will
be drowned or washed away ; if yonder, it will find
too sharp competition. There are only a few places
where it will find all the conditions favorable. Hence
the prodigality of Nature in seeds, scattering a thou-
sand for one plant or tree. She is like a hunter shoot-
ing at random into every tree or bush, hoping to
bring down his game, which he does if his ammu-
nition holds out long enough; or like the British
soldier in the Boer War, firing vaguely at an enemy
that he does not see. But Nature's ammunition
always holds out, and she hits her mark in the end.
Her ammunition on our planet is the heat of the
sun. When this fails, she will no longer hit the
mark or try to hit it.

Let there be a plum tree anywhere with the
disease called the "black-knot" upon it, and pre-
sently every plum tree in its neighborhood will have
black knots. Do you think the germs from the first
knot knew where to find the other plum trees ? No ;
the wind carried them in every direction, where the
plum trees were not as well as where they were. It
was a blind search and a chance hit. So with all

27

WAYS OF NATURE

seeds and germs. Nature covers all the space, and is
bound to hit the mark sooner or later. The sun spills
his light indiscriminately into space; a small frac-
tion of his rays hit the earth, and we are warmed.
Yet to all intents and purposes it is as if he shone
for us alone.

II

BIRD-SONGS

I SUSPECT it requires a special gift of grace to
enable one to hear the bird-songs; some new
power must be added to the ear, or some obstruction
removed. There are not only scales upon our eyes
so that we do not see, there are scales upon our ears
so that we do not hear. A city woman who had
spent much of her time in the country once asked
a well-known ornithologist to take her where she
could hear the bluebird. "What, never heard the
bluebird ! " said he. " I have not," said the woman.
"Then you will never hear it," said the bird-lover;
never hear it with that inward ear that gives beauty
and meaning to the note. He could probably have
taken her in a few minutes where she could have
heard the call or warble of the bluebird ; but it would
have fallen upon unresponsive ears — upon ears
that were not sensitized by love for the birds or
associations with them. Bird-songs are not music,
properly speaking, but only suggestions of music.
A great many people whose attention would be
quickly arrested by the same volume of sound made
by a musical instrument or by artificial means never

29

WAYS OF NATURE

hear them at all. The sound of a boy's penny
whistle there in the grove or the meadow would
separate itself more from the background of nature,
and be a greater challenge to the ear, than is the
strain of the thrush or the song of the sparrow.
There is something elusive, indefinite, neutral, about
bird-songs that makes them strike obliquely, as it
were, upon the ear ; and we are very apt to miss
them. They are a part of nature, the Nature that
Hes about us, entirely occupied with her own affairs,
and quite regardless of our presence. Hence it is
with bird-songs as it is with so many other things
in nature — they are what we make them ; the ear
that hears them must be half creative. I am always
disturbed when persons not especially observant
of birds ask me to take them where they can hear
a particular bird, in whose song they have become
interested through a description in some book. As
I Hsten with them, I feel like apologizing for the
bird : it has a bad cold, or has just heard some
depressing news; it will not let itself out. The
song seems so casual and minor when you make a
dead set at it. I have taken persons to hear the
hermit thrush, and I have fancied that they were all
the time saying to themselves, " Is that all ? " But
should one hear the bird in his walk, when the mind
is attuned to simple things and is open and recep-
tive, when expectation is not aroused and the song
comes as a surprise out of the dusky silence of the

30 '

BIRD-SONGS

woods, then one feels that it merits all the fine things
that can be said of it.

One of our popular writers and lecturers upon
birds told me this incident: He had engaged to
take two city giris out for a walk in the country, to
teach them the names of the birds they might see
and hear. Before they started, he read to them
Henry van Dyke's poem on the song sparrow, —
one of our best bird-poems, — telling them that the
song sparrow was one of the first birds they were
likely to hear. As they proceeded with their walk,
sure enough, there by the roadside was a sparrow
in song. The bird man called the attention of his
companions to it. It was some time before the un-
practiced ears of the girls could make it out ; then
one of them said (the poem she had just heard, I
suppose, still ringing in her ears), "What! that
little squeaky thing ? " The sparrow's song meant
nothing to her at all, and how could she share the
enthusiasm of the poet? Probably the warble of
the robin, or the call of the meadowlark or of the
highhole, if they chanced to hear them, meant no
more to these girls. If we have no associations with
these sounds, they will mean very little to us. Their
merit as musical performances is very slight. It is as
signs of joy and love in nature, as heralds of spring,
and as the spirit of the woods and fields made audi-
ble, that they appeal to us. The drumming of the
woodpeckers and of the ruffed grouse give great

31

WAYS OF NATURE

pleasure to a countryman, though these sounds have
not the quality of real music. It is the same with the
call of the migrating geese or the voice of any wild
thing : our pleasure in them is entirely apart from
any considerations of music. Why does the wild
flower, as we chance upon it in the woods or bogs,
give us more pleasure than the more elaborate
flower of the garden or lawn ? Because it comes as
a surprise, offers a greater contrast with its sur-
roundings, and suggests a spirit in wild nature that
seems to take thought of itself and to aspire to
beautiful forms.

The songs of caged birds are always disappoint-
ing, because such birds have nothing but their musi-
cal qualities to recommend them to us. We have
separated them from that which gives quality and
meaning to their songs. One recalls Emerson's
lines : —

" I thought the sparrow's note from heaven.
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even;
He sings the song, but it cheers not now.
For I did not bring home the river and sky; —
He sang to my ear, — they sang to my eye."

I have never yet seen a caged bird that I wanted, —
at least, not on account of its song, — nor a wild
flower that I wished to transfer to my garden. A
caged skylark will sing its song sitting on a bit of

32

BIRD-SONGS

turf in the bottom of the cage ; but you want to stop
your ears, it is so harsh and sibilant and penetrating.
But up there against the morning sky, and above the
wide expanse of fields, what delight we have in it!
It is not the concord of sweet sounds : it is the soar-
ing spirit of gladness and ecstasy raining down upon
us from " heaven's gate."

Then, if to the time and the place one could only
add the association, or hear the bird through the
vista of the years, the song touched with the magic
of youthful memories ! One season a friend in Eng-
land sent me a score of skylarks in a cage. I gave
them their liberty in a field near my place. They
drifted away, and I never heard them or saw them
again. But one Sunday a Scotchman from a neigh-
boring city called upon me, and declared with visible
excitement that on his way along the road he had
heard a skylark. He was not dreaming; he knew it
was a skylark, though he had not heard one since
he had left the banks of the Doon, a quarter of a
century or more before. What pleasure it gave him !
How much more the song meant to him than it
would have meant to me ! For the moment he was
on his native heath again. Then I told him about
the larks I had liberated, and he seemed to enjoy it
all over again with renewed appreciation.

Many years ago some skylarks were liberated on
Long Island, and they became established there, and
may now occasionally be heard in certain localities.

33

WAYS OF NATURE

One summer day a friend of mine was out there ob-
serving them ; a lark was soaring and singing in the
sky above him. An old Irishman came along, and
suddenly stopped as if transfixed to the spot ; a look
of mingled delight and incredulity came into his
face. Was he indeed hearing the bird of his youth ?
He took off his hat, turned his face skyward, and
with moving lips and streaming eyes stood a long
time regarding the bird. " Ah," my friend thought,
" if I could only hear that song with his ears ! " How
it brought back his youth and all those long-gone
days on his native hills !

The power of bird-songs over us is so much a mat-
ter of association that every traveler to other coun-
tries finds the feathered songsters of less merit than
those he left behind. The stranger does not hear
the birds in the same receptive, uncritical frame of
mind as does the native; they are not in the same
way the voices of the place and the season. What
music can there be in that long, piercing, far-heard
note of the first meadowlark in spring to any but
a native, or in the " o-ka-lee " of the red-shouldered
starling as he rests upon the willows in March ? A
stranger would probably recognize melody and a
wild woodsy quality in the flutings of the veery
thrush; but how much more they would mean to
him after he had spent many successive Junes
threading our northern trout-streams and encamp-
ing on their banks ! The veery will come early in

34

BIRD-SONGS

the morning, and again at sundown, and perch above
your tent, and blow his soft, reverberant note for
many minutes at a time. The strain repeats the
echoes of the hmpid stream in the halls and corri-
dors of the leafy woods.

While in England in 1882, 1 rushed about two or
three counties in late June and early July, bent on
hearing the song of the nightingale, but missed it by
a few days, and in some cases, as it seemed, only by
a few hours. The nightingale seems to be wound up
to go only so long, or till about the middle of June,
and it is only by a rare chance that you hear one
after that date. Then I came home to hear a nightin-
gale in song one winter morning in a friend's house
in the city. It was a curious let-down to my en-
thusiasm. A caged song in a city chamber in broad
dayhght, in lieu of the wild, free song in the gloam-
ing of an English landscape! I closed my eyes,
abstracted myself from my surroundings, and tried
my best to fancy myself Hstening to the strain back
there amid the scenes I had haunted about Hasle-
mere and Godalming, but with poor success, I sus-
pect. The nightingale's song, like the lark's, needs
vista, needs all the accessories of time and place.
The song is not all in the singing, any more than
the wit is all in the saying. It is in the occasion, the
surroundings, the spirit of which it is the expression.
My friend said that the bird did not fully let itself
out. Its song was a brilliant medley of notes, — no

35

WAYS OF NATURE

theme that I could detect, — like the lark's song in
this respect; all the notes of the field and forest
appeared to be the gift of this bird, but what tone!
what accent ! like that of a great poet !

Nearly every May I am seized with an impulse to
go back to the scenes of my youth, and hear the
bobolinks in the home meadows once more. I am
sure they sing there better than anywhere else. They
probably drink nothing but dew, and the dew dis-
tilled in those high pastoral regions has surprising
virtues. It gives a clear, full, vibrant quality to the
birds' voices that I have never heard elsewhere. The
night of my arrival, I leave my southern window
open, so that the meadow chorus may come pour-
ing in before I am up in the morning. How it does
transport me athwart the years, and make me a
boy again, sheltered by the paternal wing ! On one
occasion, the third morning after my arrival, a bobo-
link appeared with a new note in his song. The
note sounded like the word " baby " uttered with a
peculiar, tender resonance: but it was clearly an
interpolation; it did not belong there; it had no
relation to the rest of the song. Yet the bird never
failed to utter it with the same joy and confidence as
the rest of his song. Maybe it was the beginning
of a variation that will in time result in an entirely
new bobolink song.

On my last spring visit to my native hills, my
attention was attracted to another songster not seen

36

BIRD-SONGS

or heard there in my youth, namely, the prairie
horned lark. Flocks of these birds used to be seen
in some of the Northern States in the late fall dur-
ing their southern migrations; but within the last
twenty years they have become regular summer
residents in the hilly parts of many sections of New
York and New England. They are genuine skylarks,
and lack only the powers of song to make them as
attractive as their famous cousins of Europe.

The larks are ground-birds when they perch, and
sky-birds when they sing ; from the turf to the clouds
— nothing between. Our homed lark mounts up-
ward on quivering wing in the true lark fashion, and,
spread out against the sky at an altitude of two or
three hundred feet, hovers and sings. The watcher
and listener below holds him in his eye, but the ear
catches only a faint, broken, half-inarticulate note
now and then — mere splinters, as it were, of the
song of the skylark. The song of the latter is con-
tinuous, and is load and humming; it is a fountain
of jubilant song up there in the sky: but our lark
sings in snatches; at each repetition of its notes it
dips forward and downward a few feet, and then
rises again. One day I kept my eye upon one until
it had repeated its song one hundred and three
times ; then it closed its wings, and dropped toward
the earth like a plummet, as does its European con-
gener. While I was watching the bird, a bobolink
flew over my head, between me and the lark, and

37

WAYS OF NATURE

poured out his voluble and copious strain. " What a
contrast," I thought, "between the voice of the
spluttering, tongue-tied lark, and the free, liquid,
and varied song of the bobolink!"

I have heard of a curious fact in the life-histories
of these larks in the West. A Michigan woman once
wrote me that her brother, who was an engineer on
an express train that made daily trips between two
Western cities, reported that many birds were struck
by the engine every day, and killed — often as many
as thirty on a trip of sixty miles. Birds of many
kinds were killed, but the most common was a bird
that went in flocks, the description of which an-
swered to the horned lark. Since then I have read
in a Minnesota newspaper that many horned larks
are killed by railroad locomotives in that State. It
was thought that the birds sat behind the rails to get
out of the wind, and on starting up in front of the
advancing train, were struck down by the engine.
The Michigan engineer referred to thought that the
birds gathered upon the track to earth their wings,
or else to pick up the grain that leaks out of the
wheat-trains, and sows the track from Dakota to
the seaboard. Probably the wind which they might
have to face in getting up was the prime cause of
their being struck. One does not think of the loco-
motive as a bird-destroyer, though it is well known
that many of the smaller mammals often fall be-
neath it.

38

BIRD-SONGS

A very interesting feature of our bird-songs is the
wing-song, or song of ecstasy. It is not the gift of
many of our birds. Indeed, less than a dozen species
are known to me as ever singing on the wing. It
seems to spring from more intense excitement and
self-abandonment than the ordinary song delivered
from the perch. When its joy reaches the point of
rapture, the bird is hterally carried off its feet, and
up it goes into the air, pouring out its song as a
rocket pours out its sparks. The skylark and the
bobolink habitually do this, while a few others of
our birds do it only on occasions. One summer, up
in the Catskills, I added another name to my Hst
of ecstatic singers — that of the vesper sparrow.
Several times I heard a new song in the air, and
caught a ghmpse of the bird as it dropped back to
the earth. My attention would be attracted by a
succession of hurried, chirping noljcs, followed by a
brief burst of song, then by the vanishing form of the
bird. One day I was lucky enough to see the bird as
it was rising to its climax in the air, and to identify
it as the vesper sparrow. The burst of song that
crowned the upward flight of seventy-five or one
hundred feet was brief ; but it was brilliant and
striking, and entirely unlike the leisurely chant of
the bird while upon the ground. It suggested a lark,
but was less buzzing or humming. The preliminary
chirping notes, uttered faster and faster as the bird
mounted in the air, were like the trail of sparks

39

WAYS OF NATURE

which a rocket emits before its grand burst of color
at the top of its flight.

It is interesting to note that this bird is quite
lark-hke in its color and markings, having the two
lateral white quills in the tail, and it has the habit
of elevating the feathers on the top of the head so
as to suggest a crest. The solitary skylark that I
discovered several years ago in a field near me was
seen on several occasions paying his addresses to
one of these birds, but the vesper-bird was shy, and
eluded all his advances.

Probably the perch-songster among our ordinary
birds that is most regularly seized with the fit of
ecstasy that results in this lyric burst in the air, as
I described in my first book, " Wake Robin," over
thirty years ago, is the oven-bird, or wood-accentor
— the golden-crowned thrush of the old ornitholo-
gists. Every loiterer about the woods knows this
pretty, speckled-breasted, olive-backed little bird,
which walks along over the dry leaves a few yards
from him, moving its head as it walks, like a minia-
ture domestic fowl. Most birds are very stiff-necked,
hke the robin, and as they run or hop upon the
ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the
body. Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that
walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow.
They move the head forward with the movement
of the feet. The sharp, reiterated, almost screech-
ing song of the oven-bird, as it perches on a limb a

40

BIRD-SONGS

few feet from the ground, like the words, ** preacher,
preacher, preacher," or "teacher, teacher, teacher,"
uttered louder and louder, and repeated six or
seven times, is also familiar to most ears; but its
wild, ringing, rapturous burst of song in the air high
above the tree-tops is not so well known. From a
very prosy, tiresome, unmelodious singer, it is sud-
denly transformed for a brief moment into a lyric
poet of great power. It is a great surprise. The
bird undergoes a complete transformation. Ordi-
narily it is a very quiet, demure sort of bird. It
walks about over the leaves, moving its head like a
little hen; then perches on a limb a few feet from
the ground and sends forth its shrill, rather prosy,
unmusical chant. Surely it is an ordinary, common-
place bird. But wait till the inspiration of its flight-
song is upon it. What a change! Up it goes
through the branches of the trees, leaping from
limb to limb, faster and faster, till it shoots from
the tree-tops fifty or more feet into the air above
them, and bursts into an ecstasy of song, rapid,
ringing, lyrical ; no more like its habitual perform-
ance than a match is like a rocket ; brief but
thrilling ; emphatic but musical. Having reached
its climax of flight and song, the bird closes its
wings and drops nearly perpendicularly downward
like the skylark. If its song were more prolonged, it
would rival the song of that famous bird. The bird
does this many times a day during early June, but

41

WAYS OF NATURE

oftenest at twilight. The song in quality and general
cast is like that of its congener, the water-accentor,
which, however, I believe is never delivered on the
wing. From its habit of singing at twihght, and from
the swift, darting motions of the bird, I am inclined
to think that in it we have solved the mystery of
Thoreau's " night- warbler," that puzzled and eluded
him for years. Emerson told him he must beware of
finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing
more to show him. The older ornithologists must
have heard this song many times, but they never
seem to have suspected the identity of the singer.

Other birds that sing on the wing are the meadow-
lark, goldfinch, purple finch, indigo-bird, Maryland
yellow-throat, and woodcock. The flight-song of
the woodcock I have heard but twice in my life.
The first time was in the evening twilight about the
middle of April. The bird was calling in the dusk
"yeap, yeap," or "seap, seap," from the ground,
— a peculiar reedy call. Then, by and by, it started
upward on an easy slant, that peculiar whistling
of its wings alone heard; then, at an altitude of oiie
hundred feet or more, it began to float about in
wide circles and broke out in an ecstatic chipper,
almost a warble at times, with a peculiar smacking
musical quaUty; then, in a minute or so, it dropped
back to the ground again, not straight down like the
lark, but more spirally, and continued its call as be-
fore. In less than five minutes it was up again. The

42

BIRD-SONGS

next time, a few years later, I heard the song in
company with a friend, Dr. Clara Barrus. Let
me give the woman's impression of the song as she
afterward wrote it up for a popular journal.

" The sunset Hght was flooding all this May love-
liness of field and farm and distant wood; song
sparrows were bUthely pouring out happiness by the
throatful ; peepers were piping and toads trilling, and
we thought it no hardship to wait in such a place till
the dusk should gather, and the wary woodcock an-
nounce his presence. But hark! while yet 'tis light,
only a few rods distant, I hear that welcome * seap . . .
seap,' and lo ! a chipper and a chirr, and past us he
flies, — a direct, slanting upward flight, somewhat
labored, — his bill showing long against the reddened
sky. * He has something in his mouth,' I start to say,
when I bethink me what a long bill he has. Around,
above us he flies in wide, ambitious circles, the while
we are enveloped, as it were, in that hurried chip-
pering sound — fine, elusive, now near, now distant.
How rapid is the flight ! Now it sounds faster and
faster, ' hke a whiplash flashed through the air,' said
my friend; up, up he soars, till he becomes lost to
sight at the instant that his song ends in that last
mad ecstasy that just precedes his alighting."

The meadowlark sings in a level flight, half hov-
ering in the air, giving voice to a rapid medley of
lark-hke notes. The goldfinch also sings in a level
flight, beating the air slowly with its wings broadly

43

WAYS OF NATURE

open, and pouring out its jubilant, ecstatic strain. I
think it indulges in this wing-song only in the early
season. After the mother bird has begun sitting, the
male circles about within earshot of her, in that
curious undulating flight, uttering his "per-chic-o-
pee, per-chic-o-pee," while the female calls back to
him in the tenderest tones, " Yes, lovie; I hear you."
The indigo-bird and the purple finch, when their
happiness becomes too full and buoyant for them
longer to control it, launch into the air, and sing
briefly, ecstatically, in a tremulous, hovering flight.
The air-song of these birds does not differ essentially
from the song delivered from the perch, except that
it betrays more excitement, and hence is a more
complete lyrical rapture.

The purple finch is our finest songster among the
finches. Its strain is so soft and melodious, and
touched with such a childlike gayety and plaintive-
ness, that I think it might sound well even in a cage
inside a room, if the bird would only sing with
the same joyous abandonment, which, of course, it
would not do.

It is not generally known that individual birds of
the same species show different degrees of musical
ability. This is often noticed in caged birds, among
which the principle of variation seems more active ;
but an attentive observer notes the same fact in wild
birds. Occasionally he hears one that in powers of
song surpasses all its fellows. I have heard a sparrow,

44

BIRD-SONGS

an oriole, and a wood thrush, each of which had a
song of its own that far exceeded any other. I stood
one day by a trout-stream, and suspended my fish-
ing for several minutes to watch a song sparrow
that was singing on a dry limb before me. He had
five distinct songs, each as markedly different from
the others as any human songs, which he repeated
one after the other. He may have had a sixth or
a seventh, but he bethought liimself of some busi-
ness in the next field, and flew away before he had
exhausted his repertory. I once had a letter from
Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he had read an
account I had written of the song of the English
blackbird. He said I might as well talk of the song
of man; that every blackbird had its own song; and
then he told me of a remarkable singer he used to
hear somewhere amid the Scottish hills. But his
singer was, of course, an exception ; twenty-four
blackbirds out of every twenty-five probably sing
the same song, with no appreciable variations: but
the twenty-fifth may show extraordinary powers. I
told Stevenson that his famous singer had probably
been to school to some nightingale on the Continent
or in southern England, I might have told him of the
robin I once heard here that sang with great spirit
and accuracy the song of the brown thrasher, or of
another that had the note of the whip-poor-will
interpolated in the regular robin song, or of still
another that had the call of the quail. In each case

45

WAYS OF NATURE

the bird had probably heard the song and learned
it while very young. In the Trossachs, in Scotland,
I followed a song thrush about for a long time, at-
tracted by its peculiar song. It repeated over and
over again three or four notes of a well-known air,
which it might have caught from some shepherd
boy whistling to his flock or to his cow.

The songless birds — why has Nature denied
them this gift ? But they nearly all have some musi-
cal call or impulse that serves them very well. The
quail has his whistle, the woodpecker his drum, the
pewee his plaintive cry, the chickadee his exqui-
sitely sweet call, the highhole his long, repeated
" wick, wick, wick," one of the most welcome sounds
of spring, the jay his musical gurgle, the hawk his
scream, the crow his sturdy caw. Only one of our
pretty birds of the orchard is reduced to an all but
inaudible note, and that is the cedar-bird.

Ill

NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS

DECEMBER in our climate is the month when
Nature finally shuts up house and turns the
key. She has been slowly packing up and putting
away her things and closing a door and a window
here and there all the fall. Now she completes the
work and puts up the last bar. She is ready for
winter. The leaves are all off the trees, except that
here and there a beech or an oak or a hickory still
chngs to a remnant of its withered foliage. Her
streams are full, her new growths of wood are rip-
ened, her saps and juices are quiescent. The musk-
rat has completed his house in the shallow pond or
stream, the beaver in the northern woods has com-
pleted his. The wild mice and the chipmunk have
laid up their winter stores of nuts and grains in their
dens in the ground and in the cavities of trees. The
woodchuck is rolled up in his burrow in the hill-
side, sleeping his long winter sleep. The coon has
deserted his chamber in the old tree and gone into
winter quarters in his den in the rocks. The winter
birds have taken on a good coat of fat against the
coming cold and a possible scarcity of food. The

47

WAYS OF NATURE

frogs and toads are all in their hibernaculums in the
ground.

I saw it stated the other day, in a paper read before
some scientific body, that the wood frogs retreat two
feet into the ground beyond the reach of frost. In
two instances I have found the wood frog in Decem-
ber with a covering of less than two inches of leaves
and moss. It had buried itself in the soil and leaf
mould only to the depth of the thickness of its own
body, and for covering had only the ordinary coat
of dry leaves and pine needles to be found in the
wood. It was evidently counting upon the snow for
its main protection. In one case I marked the spot,
and returned there in early spring to see how the
frog had wintered. I found it all right. Evidently it
had some charm against the cold, for while the earth
around and beneath it was yet frozen solid, there
was no frost in the frog. It was not a brisk frog, but
it was well, and when I came again on a warm day a
week later, it had come forth from its retreat and
was headed for the near-by marsh, where in April,
with its kith and kin, it helped make the air vocal
with its love-calls. A friend of mine, one mild day
late in December, found a wood frog sitting upon the
snow in the woods. She took it home and put it to
bed in the soil of one of her flower-pots in the cellar.
In the spring she found it in good condition, and in
April carried it back to the woods. The hyla, or little
piping frog, passes the winter in the ground like

48

NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS

the wood frog. I have seen the toad go into the
ground in the late fall. It is an interesting proceed-
ing. It literally elbows its way into the soil. It sits
on end, and works and presses with the sharp joints
of its folded legs until it has sunk itself at a suffi-
cient depth, which is only a few inches beneath the
surface. The water frogs appear to pass the winter
in the mud at the bottom of ponds and marshes.
The queen bumblebee and the queen hornet, I
think, seek out their winter quarters in holes in the
ground in September, while the drones and the
workers perish. The honey-bees do not hibernate:
they must have food all winter ; but our native wild
bees are dormant during the cold months, and sur-
vive the winter only in the person of the queen
mother. In the spring these queens set up house-
keeping alone, and found new families.

Insects in all stages of their growth are creatures
of the warmth; the heat is the motive power that
makes them go; when this fails, they are still. The
katydids rasp away in the fall as long as there is
warmth enough to keep them going; as the heat
fails, they fail, till from the emphatic " Katy did it "
of August they dwindle to a hoarse, dying, " Kate,
Kate," in October. Think of the stillness that falls
upon the myriad wood-borers in the dry trees and
stumps in the forest as the chill of autumn comes on.
All summer have they worked incessantly in oak
and hickory and birch and chestnut and spruce,

49

WAYS OF NATURE

some of them making a sound exactly like that of
the old-fashioned hand augur, others a fine, snap-
ping, and splintering sound ; but as the cold comes
on, they go slower and slower, till they finally cease
to move. A warm day starts them again, slowly
or briskly according to the degree of heat, but in
December they are finally stilled for the season.
These creatures, like the big fat grubs of the June
beetles which one sometimes finds in the ground or
in decayed wood, are full of frost in winter; cut one
of the big grubs in two, and it looks like a lump of
ice cream.

Some time in October the crows begin to collect
together in large flocks and establish their winter
quarters. They choose some secluded wood for a
roosting-place, and thither all the crows for many
square miles of country betake themselves at night,
and thence they disperse in all directions again in
the early morning. The crow is a social bird, a true
American ; no hermit or recluse is he. The winter
probably brings them together in these large colonies
for purposes of sociability and for greater warmth.
By roosting close together and quite filling a tree-
top, there must result some economy of heat.

I have seen it stated in a rhetorical flight of some
writer that the new buds crowd the old leaves off.
But this is not true as a rule. The new bud is formed
in the axil of the old leaf long before the leaves are
ready to fall. With only two species of our trees

50

NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS

known to me might the swelling bud push off the old
leaf. In the sumach and button-ball or plane-tree
the new bud is formed immediately under the base
of the old leaf-stalk, by which it is covered like a
cap. Examine the fallen leaves of these trees, and
you will see the cavity in the base of each where the
new bud was cradled. Why the beech, the oak, and
the hickory chng to their old leaves is not clear. It
may be simply a slovenly trait — inability to finish
and have done with a thing — a fault of so many
people. Some oaks and beeches appear to lack
decision of character. It requires strength and vital-
ity, it seems, simply to let go. Kill a tree suddenly,
and the leaves wither upon the branches. How
neatly and thoroughly the maples, the ashes, the
birches, the elm clean up. They are tidy, energetic
trees, and can turn over a new leaf without hesitation.
A correspondent, writing to me from one of the
colleges, suggests that our spring really begins in
December, because the "annual cycle of vegetable
life " seems to start then. At this time he finds that
many of our wild flowers — the bloodroot, hepatica,
columbine, shinleaf, maidenhair fern, etc. — have
all made quite a start toward the next season's
growth, in some cases the new shoot being an inch
high. But the real start of the next season's vege-
table life in this sense is long before December. It
is in late summer, when the new buds are formed
on the trees. Nature looks ahead, and makes ready

51

WAYS OF NATURE

for the new season in the midst of the old. Cut
open the terminal hickory buds in the late fall and
you will find the new growth of the coming season
all snugly packed away there, many times folded
up and wrapped about by protecting scales. The
catkins of the birches, alders, and hazel are fully
formed, and as in the case of the buds, are like eggs
to be hatched by the warmth of spring. The present
season is always the mother of the next, and the
inception takes place long before the sun loses his
power. The eggs that hold the coming crop of
insect life are mostly laid in the late summer or early
fall, and an analogous start is made in the vegeta-
ble world. The egg, the seed, the bud, are all ahke
in many ways, and look to the future. Our earhest
spring flower, the skunk-cabbage, may be found
with its round green spear-point an inch or two
above the mould in December. It is ready to wel-
come and make the most of the first fitful March
warmth. Look at the elms, too, and see how they
swarm with buds. In early April they suggest a
swarm of bees.

In all cases, before Nature closes her house in the
fall, she makes ready for its spring opening.

IV
THE WIT OF A DUCK

THE homing instinct in birds and animals is one
of their most remarkable traits: their strong
local attachments and their skill in finding their way
back when removed to a distance. It seems at times
as if they possessed some extra sense — the home
sense — which operates unerringly. I saw this illus-
trated one spring in the case of a mallard drake.

My son had two ducks, and to mate with them
he procured a drake of a neighbor who lived two
miles south of us. He brought the drake home in a
bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the road
along which it was carried, or to get the general
direction, except at the time of starting, when the boy
carried him a few rods openly.

He was placed with the ducks in a spring run,
under a tree in a secluded place on the river slope,
about a hundred yards from the highway. The two
ducks treated him very contemptuously. It was
easy to see that the drake was homesick from the
first hour, and he soon left the presence of the
scornful ducks.

Then we shut the three in the barn together,

53

WAYS OF NATURE

and kept them there a day and a night. Still the
friendship did not ripen; the ducks and the drake
separated the moment we let them out. Left to
himself, the drake at once turned his head home-
ward, and started up the hill for the highway.

Then we shut the trio up together again for a
couple of days, but with the same results as before.
There seemed to be but one thought in the mind of
the drake, and that was home.

Several times we headed him off and brought
him back, till finally on the third or fourth day I
said to my son, " If that drake is really bound to go
home, he shall have an opportunity to make the
trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fair
play." We withdrew, and the homesick mallard
started up through the currant patch, then through
the vineyard toward the highway which he had
never seen.

When he reached the fence, he followed it south
till he came to the open gate, where he took to the
road as confidently as if he knew for a certainty
that it would lead him straight to his mate. How
eagerly he paddled along, glancing right and left,
and increasing his speed at every step ! I kept about
fifty yards behind him. Presently he met a dog; he
paused and eyed the animal for a moment, and then
turned to the right along a road which diverged
just at that point, and which led to the railroad
station. I followed, thinking the drake would soon

54

THE WIT OF A DUCK

lose his bearings, and get hopelessly confused in
the tangle of roads that converged at the station.

But he seemed to have an exact map of the
country in his mind ; he soon left the station road,
went around a house, through a \ineyard, till he
struck a stone fence that crossed his course at right
angles ; this he followed eastward till it was joined
by a barbed wire fence, under which he passed
and again entered the highway he had first taken.
Then down the road he paddled with renewed
confidence : under the trees, down a hill, through a
grove, over a bridge, up the hill again toward home.

Presently he found his clue cut in two by the
railroad track; this was something he had never
before seen; he paused, glanced up it, then down
it, then at the highway across it, and quickly con-
cluded this last was his course. On he went again,
faster and faster.

He had now gone half the distance, and was get-
ting tired. A httle pool of water by the roadside
caught his eye. Into it he plunged, bathed, drank,
preened his plumage for a few moments, and then
started homeward again. He knew his home was
on the upper side of the road, for he kept his eye
bent in that direction, scanning the fields. Twice
he stopped, stretched himself up, and scanned the
landscape intently; then on again. It seemed as if
an im^sible cord was attached to him, and he was
being pulled down the road.

55

WAYS OF NATURE

Just opposite a farm lane which led up to a group
of farm buildings, and which did indeed look like
his home lane, he paused and seemed to be debating
with himself. Two women just then came along;
they lifted and flirted their skirts, for it was raining,
and this disturbed him again and decided him to
take to the farm lane. Up the lane he went, rather
doubtingly, I thought.

In a few moments it brought him into a barn-
yard, where a group of hens caught his eye. Evi-
dently he was on good terms with hens at home, for
he made up to these eagerly as if to tell them his
troubles ; but the hens knew not ducks ; they with-
drew suspiciously, then assumed a threatening atti-
tude, till one old " dominie " put up her feathers
and charged upon him viciously.

Again he tried to make up to them, quacking
softly, and again he was repulsed. Then the cattle
in the yard spied this strange creature and came
snifiing toward it, full of curiosity.

The drake quickly concluded he had got into the
wrong place, and turned his face southward again.
Through the fence he went into a plowed field. Pre-
sently another stone fence crossed his path; along
this he again turned toward the highway. In a few
minutes he found himself in a corner formed by the
meeting of two stone fences. Then he turned ap-
pealingly to me, uttering the soft note of the mallard.
To use his wings never seemed to cross his mind.

56

THE WIT OF A DUCK

Well, I am bound to confess that I helped the
drake over the wall, but I sat him down in the road
as impartially as I could. How well his pink feet
knew the course ! How they flew up the road ! His
green head and white throat fairly twinkled under
the long avenue of oaks and chestnuts.

At last we came in sight of the home lane, which
led up to the farmhouse one hundred or more yards
from the road. I was curious to see if he would
recognize the place. At the gate leading into the lane
he paused. He had just gone up a lane that looked
like that and had been disappointed. What should he
do now ? Truth compels me to say that he overshot
the mark : he kept on hesitatingly along the highway.

It was now nearly night. I felt sure the duck
would soon discover his mistake, but I had not time
to watch the experiment further. I went around the
drake and turned him back. As he neared the lane
this time he seemed suddenly to see some familiar
landmark, and he rushed up it at the top of his speed.
His joy and eagerness were almost pathetic.

I followed close. Into the house yard he rushed
with uplifted wings, and fell down almost exhausted
by the side of his mate. A half hour later the two
were nipping the grass together in the pasture, and
he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her the story
of his adventures.

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

THE question that the Calif ornian schoolchildren
put to me, *' Have the birds got sense ? " still
" sticks in my crop."

Such extraordinary sense has been attributed to
most of the wild creatures by several of our latter day
nature-writers, that I have been moved to examine
the whole question more thoroughly than ever be-
fore, and to find out, as far as I can, just how much
and what kind of sense the birds and four-footed
beasts have.

In this and in some following chapters I shall
make an effort to use my own sense to the best advan-
tage in probing that of the animals, which has, as I
think, been so vastly overrated.

When sentiment gets overripe, it becomes senti-
mentalism. The sentiment for nature which has
been so assiduously cultivated in our times is fast
undergoing this change, and is softening into sen-
timentalism toward the lower animals. Many a
wholesome feeling can be pushed so far that it
becomes a weakness and a sign of disease. Pity for
the sufferings of our brute neighbors may be a manly

59

WAYS OF NATURE

feeling; and then again it may be so fostered and
cosseted that it becomes maudUn and unworthy.
When hospitals are founded for sick or homeless
cats and dogs, when all forms of vivisection are
cried down, when the animals are humanized and
books are written to show that the wild creatures
have schools and kindergartens, and that their
young are instructed and disciplined in quite the
human way by their fond parents; when we want
to believe that reason and not instinct guides them,
that they are quite up in some of the simpler arts of
surgery, mending or amputating their own broken
limbs and salving their wounds, — when, I say, our
attitude toward the natural life about us and our
feeling for it have reached the stage implied by
these things, then has sentiment degenerated into
sentimentalism, and our appreciation of nature lost
its firm edge.

No doubt there is a considerable number of
people in any community that are greatly taken
with this improved anthropomorphic view of wild
nature now current among us. Such a view tickles
the fancy and touches the emotions. It makes the
wild creatures so much more interesting. Shall we
deny anything to a bird or beast that makes it more
interesting, and more worthy of our study and ad-
miration ?

This sentimental view of animal life has its good
side and its bad side. Its good side is its result in

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FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

making us more considerate and merciful toward
our brute neighbors ; its bad side is seen in the
degree to which it leads to a false interpretation of
their Hves. The tendency to which I refer is no
doubt partly the result of our growing humanitari-
anism and feeling of kinship with all the lower orders
of creation, and partly due to the fact that we Hve in
a time of impromptu nature study, when birds and
plants and trees are fast becoming a fad with half
the population, and when the " yellow " reporter is
abroad in the fields and woods. Never before in my
time have so many exaggerations and misconcep-
tions of the wild life about us been current in the
popular mind. It is becoming the fashion to ascribe
to the lower animals nearly all our human motives
and attributes, and often to credit them with plans
and devices that imply reason and a fair amount of
mechanical knowledge. An illustration of this is the
account of the nest of a pair of orioles, as described
in the " North American Review " for May, 1903, by
a writer of popular nature books. These orioles built
a nest so extraordinary that it can be accounted for
only on the theory that there is a school of the woods,
and that these two birds had been pupils there and
had taken an advanced course in Strings. Among
other things impossible for birds to do, these orioles
tied a knot in the end of a string to prevent its fray-
ing in the wind ! If the whole idea were not too pre-
posterous for even a half-witted child to beheve, one

61

WAYS OF NATURE

might ask, What in the name of anything and every-
thing but the " Modern School of Nature Study " do
orioles know about strings fraying in the wind and
the use of knots to prevent it ? They have never had
occasion to know ; they have had no experience with
strings that hang loose and unravel in the wind.
They often use strings, to be sure, in building their
nests, but they use them in a sort of haphazard way,
weaving them awkwardly into the structure, and
leaving no loose ends that would suffer by fraying
in the wind. Sometimes they use strings in attaching
the nest to the limb, but they never knot or tie them ;
they simply wind them round and round as a child
might. It is possible that a bird might be taught to
tie a knot with its foot and beak, though I should
have to see it done to be convinced. But the orioles
in question not only tied knots ; they tied them with
a " reversed double hitch, the kind that a man uses
in cinching his saddle"! More wonderful still, not
finding in a New England elm-embowered town a
suitable branch from which to suspend their nest,
the birds went down upon the ground and tied three
twigs together in the form of " a perfectly measured
triangle " (no doubt working from a plan drawn to a
scale). They attached to the three sides of this frame-
work four strings of equal length (eight or ten inches),
all carefully doubled, tied them to a heavier string,
carried the whole ingenious contrivance to a tree,
and tied it fast to a limb in precisely the way you

62

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

or I would have done it ! From this framework they
suspended their nest, the whole structure being
about two feet long, and having the effect of a small
hanging basket. Still more astonishing, when the
genuineness of the nest is questioned, a man is
found who makes affidavit that he saw the orioles
build it ! After such a proceeding, how long will it
be before the water-birds are building little rush
cradles for their young, or rush boats to be driven
about the ponds and lakes by means of leaf sails, or
before Jenny Wren will be living in a log cabin of
her own construction ? How long will it be before
some one makes affidavit that the sparrow with his
bow and arrow has actually been seen to kill Cock
Robin, and the beetle with his thread and needle en-
gaged in making the shroud ? Birds show the taste
and skill of their kind in building their nests, but
rarely any individual ingenuity and inventiveness.
The nest referred to is on a plane entirely outside
of Nature and her processes. It belongs to a differ-
ent order of things, the order of mechanical contriv-
ances, and was of course "made up," probably from
a real oriole's nest, and the writer who vouches for
its genuineness has been the victim of a clever prac-
tical joke — a willing victim, no doubt, since he is
looking in Nature for just this kind of thing, and
since he believes there is " absolutely no limit to the
variety and adaptiveness of Nature even in a single
species." If there is no such limit, then I suppose

63

WAYS OF NATURE .

we need not be surprised to meet a winged horse, or
a centaur, or a mermaid at any time.

It is as plain as anything can be that the animals
share our emotional nature in vastly greater mea-
sure than they do our intellectual or our moral
nature; and because they do this, because they
show fear, love, joy, anger, sympathy, jealousy,
because they suffer and are glad, because they form
friendships and local attachments and have the
home and paternal instincts, in short, because their
lives run parallel to our own in so many particulars,
we come, if we are not careful, to ascribe to them the
whole human psychology. But it is equally plain
that of what we mean by mind, intellect, they show
only a trace now and then. They do not accumulate
a store of knowledge any more than they do a store
of riches. A store of knowledge is impossible with-
out language. Man began to emerge from the lower
orders when he invented a language of some sort.
As the language of animals is Httle more than vari-
ous cries expressive of pleasure or pain, or fear or
suspicion, they do not think in any proper sense,
because they have no terms in which to think — no
language. I shall have more to say upon this point
in another chapter. One trait they do show which is
the first step toward knowledge — curiosity. Nearly
all the animals show at times varying degrees of
curiosity, but here again an instinctive feeling of
possible danger probably lies back of it. They even

64

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

seem to show at times a kind of altruistic feeling. A
correspondent writes me that she possessed a canary
which Uved to so great an age that it finally became
so feeble it could not crack the seeds she gave it,
when the other birds, its own progeny, it is true, fed
it ; and Darwin cites cases of blind birds, in a state of
nature, being fed by their fellows. Probably it would
be hasty to conclude that such acts show anything
more than instinct. I should be slow to ascribe to the
animals any notion of the uses of punishment as we
practice it, though the cat will box her kittens when
they play too long with her tail, and the mother hen
will separate her chickens when they get into a fight,
and sometimes peck one or both of them on the head,
as much as to say, " There, don't you do that again."
The rooster will in the same way separate two hens
when they are fighting. On the surface this seems
like a very human act, but can we say that it is pun-
ishment or discipline in the human sense, as having
for its aim a betterment of the manners of the kit-
tens or of the chickens ? The cat aims to get rid of
an annoyance, and the rooster and the mother hen
interfere to prevent an injury to members of their
family; they exhibit the paternal and maternal in-
stinct of protection. More than that would imply
ethical considerations, of which the lower animals are
not capable. The act of the baboon, mentioned by
Darwin, I believe, that examined the paws of the cat
that had scratched it, and then deliberately bit ojff

65

WAYS OF NATURE

the nails, belongs lo a different and to a higher order
of conduct.

A complete statement of the factors that shape
the lives of the lower orders would include three
terms — instinct, imitation (though, doubtless, this
is instinctive), and experience. Instinct is, of course,
the main factor, and by this term we mean that
which prompts an animal or a man to act spon-
taneously, without instruction or experience. All
creatures are imitative, and man himself not the
least so. I had a visit the other day from a woman
who had spent the last two years in London, and
her speech betrayed the fact; she had quite uncon-
sciously caught certain of the English mannerisms of
speech. A few years in the South will give the New
Englander the Southern accent, and vice versa. The
young are, of course, more imitative than the old.
Children imitate their parents; the young writer
imitates his favorite author.

Animals of different species closely associated
will imitate each other. A lady writes me that she
has a rabbit that lives in a cage with a monkey, and
that it has caught many of the monkey's ways. I
can well believe it. Dogs reared with cats have been
known to acquire the cat habit of licking the paws
and then washing the ears and face. Wolves reared
with dogs learn to bark, and who has not seen a dog
draw its face as if trying to laugh as its master does ?
When a cat has been taught to sit up for its food,

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FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

its kittens have been known to imitate the mother.
Darwin tells of a cat that used to put its paw into the
mouth of a narrow milk- jug and then lick it off, and
that its kittens soon learned the same trick. In all
such cases, hasty observers say the mother taught its
young. Certainly the young learned, but there was
no effort to teach on the part of the parent. Uncon-
scious imitation did it all. Our " Modern School of
Nature Study " would say that the old sow teaches
her pigs to root when they follow her afield, rooting
in their Httle ways as she does. But would she not
root if she had no pigs, and would not the pigs root if
they had no mother ? All acts necessary to an ani-
mal's life and to the continuance of the species are
instinctive; the creature does not have to be taught
them, nor are they acquired by imitation. The bird
does not have to be taught to build its nest or to fly,
nor the beaver to build its dam or its house, nor the
otter or the seal to swim, nor the young of mammals
to suckle, nor the spider to spin its web, nor the grub
to weave its cocoon. Nature does not trust these
things to chance ; they are too vital. The things that
an animal acquires by imitation are of secondary im-
portance in its life. As soon as the calf, or the lamb,
or the colt can get upon its feet, its first impulse is to
find the udder of its dam. It requires no instruction
or experience to take this important step.

How far the different species of song-birds acquire
each their peculiar songs by imitation is a question

67

WAYS OF NATURE

that has not yet been fully settled. That imitation
has much to do with it admits of little doubt. The
song of a bird is of secondary importance in its life.
Birds reared in captivity, where they have never
heard the songs of their kind, sing at the proper age,
but not always the songs of their parents. Mr. Scott
of Princeton proved this with his orioles. They sang
at the proper age, but not the regular oriole song.
I am told that there is a well-authenticated case of
an English sparrow brought up with canaries that
learned to sing like a canary. "The Hon. Daines
Barrington placed three young linnets with three
different foster-parents, the skylark, the woodlark,
and the titlark or meadow-pipit, and each adopted,
through imitation, the song of its foster-parent." I
have myself heard goldfinches that were reared in a
cage sing beautifully, but not the regular goldfinch
song; it was clearly the song of a finch, but of what
finch I could not have told. I have also heard a robin
that sang to perfection the song of the brown
thrasher ; it had, no doubt, caught it by imitation.
I have heard another robin that had the call of the
quail interpolated into its own proper robin's song.
But I have yet to hear of a robin building a nest like
a brown thrasher, or of an oriole building a nest like
a robin, or of kingfishers drilling for grubs in a tree.
The hen cannot keep out of the water the ducks she
has hatched, nor can the duck coax into the water
the chickens she has hatched. The cowbird hatched

68

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

and reared by the sparrow, or the warbler, or the
vireo does not sing the song of the foster-parent.
Why ? Did its parent not try to teach it ? I have no
evidence that young birds sing, except occasionally
in a low, tentative kind of way, till they return the
following season, and then birds of a feather flock
together, robins staying with robins, and cowbirds
with cowbirds, each singing the song of its species.
The songs of bobolinks differ in different localities,
but those of the same locality always sing alike. I
once had a caged skylark that imitated the songs
of nearly every bird in my neighborhood.

Mr. Leander S. Keyser, author of " Birds of the
Rockies," relates in "Forest and Stream" the re-
sults of his experiments with a variety of birds taken
from the nest while very young and reared in cap-
tivity; among them meadowlarks, red-winged black-
birds, brown thrashers, blue jays, wood thrushes,
catbirds, flickers, woodpeckers, and several others.
Did they receive any parental instruction ? Not a
bit of it, and yet at the proper age they flew, perched,
called, and sang like their wild fellows — all except
the robins and the red-winged blackbirds: these
did not sing the songs of their species, but sang
a medley made up of curious imitations of human
and other sounds. And the blue jay never learned
to sing "the sweet gurgling roulade of the wild
jays," though it gave the blue jay call correctly. Mr.
Keyser's experiment was interesting and valuable,

69

WAYS OF NATURE

but his sagacity fails him when interpreting the
action of the jay in roosting in an exposed place
after it had been given its liberty. He thinks this
showed how little instinct can be relied on, and
how much the bird needed parental instruction.
Could he not see that the artificial life of the bird
in the cage had demoraUzed its instincts, and that
acquired habits had supplanted native tendencies ?
The bird had learned to be unafraid in the cage,
and why should it be afraid out of the cage ? This
reminds me of a letter from a correspondent : he had
a tame crow that was not afraid of a gun ; therefore
he concluded that the old crows must instill the fear
of guns into their young ! Why should the crow be
afraid of a gun, if it had learned not to be afraid
of the gunner ?

I have seen a young chickadee fly late in the day
from the nest in the cavity of a tree straight to a
pear-tree, where it perched close to the trunk and
remained unregarded by its parents till next morn-
ing. But no doubt its parents had given it minute
directions before it left the nest how to fly and
where to perch !

That animals learn by experience in a limited way
is very certain. Yet that old birds build better nests
or sing better than young ones it would be hard
to prove, though it seems reasonable that it should
be so.

Rarely does one see nests of the same species of

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FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

varying degrees of excellence — that is, first nests in
the spring. The second nest of any species is likely
to be a more hurried and incomplete affair. Some
species are at all times poor nest-builders, as the
cuckoos and the pigeons. Other birds are good nest-
builders, as the orioles, the thrushes, the finches,
the warblers, the hummingbirds, and one never finds
an inferior specimen of the nests of any of these
birds. There is probably no more improvement in
this respect among birds than there is among insects.

I have no proof that wild birds improve in singing.
One does not hear a vireo, or a finch, or a thrush, or
a warbler that is noticeably inferior as a songster
to its fellows; their songs are all ahke, except in the
few rare cases when one hears a master songster
among its kind; but whether this mastery is natural
or acquired, who shall tell ?

What birds learn about migration, if anything,
I do not see that we have any means of finding out.

It has been observed of birds reared under artificial
conditions that the young males practice a long time
before they sing well. That this is true of wild birds,
there is no proof. What birds and animals learn by
experience is greater cunning. Does not even an old
trout know more about hooks than a young one ?
Birds of any kind that are much hunted become
wilder, even though they have not had the experience
of being shot. Ask any duck or grouse or quail
hunter if this is not so. Our ruffed grouse learns to

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WAYS OF NATURE

fly with a corkscrew motion where it is much fired
at on the wing. How wary and cautious the fox
becomes in regions where it is much trapped and
hunted ! Even the woodchuck becomes very wild on
the farms where it is much shot at, and this wildness
extends to its young. In his "Wilderness Hunter"
President Roosevelt says the same thing of the big
game of the Rockies. Antelope and deer can be
lured near the concealed hunter by the waving of a
small flag till they are shot at a few times. Then they
see through the trick. " The burnt child fears the
fire." Animals profit by experience in this way; they
learn what not to do. In the accumulation of posi-
tive knowledge, so far as we know, they make little
or no progress. Birds and beasts will adapt them-
selves more or less to their environment, but plants
and trees will do that, too. The rats in Jamaica have
learned to nest in trees to escape the mongoose,
but this is only the triumph of the instinct of self-
preservation. The mongoose has not yet learned to
cHmb trees; the pressure of need is not yet great
enough. It is said that in districts subject to floods
moor-hens often build in trees. All animals will
change their habits under pressure of necessity; man
changes his without this pressure. The Duke of
Argyll saw a bald eagle seize a fish in the stream —
an unusual proceeding; but the eagle was doubtless
very hungry, and there was no osprey near upon
whom to levy tribute.

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FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

Romanes found that rats would get certain semi-
liquid foods out of a bottle with their tails, as a cat
will get milk out of a jar with her paw, but neither
ever progresses so far as to use any sort of tool
for the purpose, or to tip the vessel over. Animals
practice concealment to secure their prey, but not
deception, as man does. They do not use lures or
disguises, or traps or poison.

There is, of course, no Hmit to the variety and
adaptiveness of nature taken as a whole, but each
species is hedged about by impassable Hmitations.
The ouzel is akin to the thrushes, and yet it lives
along and in the water. Does it ever take to the
fields and woods, and live on fruit and land-insects,
and nest in trees like other thrushes ? So "with all
birds and beasts. They vary constantly, but not in
one lifetime, and the sum of these variations, accu-
mulated through natural selection, as Darwin has
shown, gives rise, in the course of long periods of
time, to new species.

As I have already said, domestic animals vary
more than wild ones. Every farmer and poultry-
grower knows that some hens are better with chick-
ens than others — more motherly, more careful —
and rear a greater number of their brood. The same
is true of sows with pigs. Some sows will eat their
pigs, and wild animals in cages often destroy their
young. Some ewes will not own their lambs, and
occasionally a cow will not own her calf. (Such cases

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WAYS OF NATURE

show perverted or demoralized instinct.) Similar
to these are the strange friendships that sometimes
occur among the domestic animals, as that of a sheep
with a cow, a goose with a horse, or a hen adopting
kittens. In a state of nature these curious attach-
ments probably never spring up. Instinct is likely to
be more or less demoralized when animal Hfe touches
human life.

With the wild creatures we sometimes see one
instinct overcoming another, as when fear drives
a bird to desert its nest, or when the instinct of mi-
gration leads a pair of swallows to desert their
unfledged young.

A great many young birds come to grief by leaving
the nest before they can fly. In such cases, I sup-
pose, they disobey the parental instructions ! I find it
easier to believe that instinct is at fault, or that one
instinct has overcome another; something has dis-
turbed or alarmed the young birds, and the fear of
danger has led them to attempt flight before their
wings were strong enough. Once, when I was climb-
ing up to the nest of a broad-winged hawk, the
young took fright and launched out in the air, com-
ing to the ground only a few rods away.

Instinct, natural prompting, is the main matter,
after all. It makes up at least nine tenths of the
lives of all our wild neighbors. How much has fear
had to do in shaping their lives and in perpetuating
them! And "fear of any particular enemy," says

74

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

Darwin, " is certainly an instinctive quality." It has
been said that kittens confined in a box, and which
have never known a dog, will spit and put up their
backs at a hand that has just stroked a dog, — even
before their eyes are opened, one authority says,
but this I doubt. My son's tame gray squirrel had
never seen chestnuts, nor learned about them in the
school of the woods, and yet when he was offered
some, he fairly danced with excitement; he put his
paws eagerly around them and drew them to him,
and chattered, and looked threateningly at all about
him. Does man know his proper food in the same
way? The child has only the instinct to eat, and
will put anything into its mouth.

How the instinctive wildness of the turkey crops
out in the young! Let the mother turkey while
hovering her brood give the danger-signal, and the
young will run from under her and hide in the grass.
Why ? To give her a chance to fly and decoy away
the enemy. I think young chickens will do the same.
Young partridges hatched under a hen run away at
once. Pheasants in England reared under a domes-
tic fowl are as wild as in a state of nature. Some
California quail hatched under a bantam hen in the
Zoo in New York did not heed the calls of their
foster-mother at all the first week, but at her alarm-
note they instantly squatted, showing that the dan-
ger-cry of a fowl is a kind of universal language that
all species understand. One may prove this at any

75

WAYS OF NATURE

time by arousing the fears of any wild bird : how all
the other birds catch the alarm! Charles St. John
says that in Scotland the stag you are stalking is
sure to be put to flight if it hears the alarm-cry of
the cock-grouse. You see it is more important that
the wild creatures should understand the danger-
signals of one another than that they should under-
stand the rest of their language.

To what extent animals reason, or show any glim-
mering of what we call reason, is a much-debated
question among animal psychologists, and I shall
have more to say upon the subject later on. Dogs
undoubtedly show gleams of reason, and other ani-
mals in domestication, such as the elephant and the
monkey. One does not often feel hke questioning
Darwin's conclusions, yet the incident of the caged
bear which he quotes, that pawed the water in front
of its cage to create a current that should float within
its reach a piece of bread that had been placed there,
does not, in my judgment, show any reasoning about
the laws of hydrostatics. The bear would doubtless
have pawed a cloth in the same way, vaguely seek-
ing to draw the bread within reach. But when an
elephant blows through his trunk upon the ground
beyond an object which he wants, but which is be-
yond his reach, so that the rebounding air will drive
it toward him, he shows something very much hke
reason.

Instinct is a kind of natural reason, — reason

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FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

that acts without proof or experience. The principle
of Hfe in organic nature seeks in all ways to express
and to perpetuate itself. It finds many degrees of
expression and fulfillment in the vegetable world ; it
finds higher degrees of expression and fulfillment in
the animal world, reaching its highest development
in man.

That the animals, except those that have been
long associated with man, and they only in occa-
sional gleams and hints, are capable of any of our
complex mental processes, that they are capable of
an act of reflection, of connecting cause and effect,
of putting this and that together, is to me void of
proof. Why, there are yet savage tribes in which the
woman is regarded as the sole parent of the child.
When the mother is sick at childbirth, the father
takes to his bed and feigns the illness he does not
feel, in order to estabhsh his relationship to the child.
It is not at all probable that the males of any spe-
cies of animals, or the females either, are guided
or influenced in their actions by the desire for off-
spring, or that they possess anything like knowledge
of the connection between their love-making and
their offspring. This knowledge comes of reflection,
and reflection the lower animals are not capable of.
But I shall have more to say upon this point in an-
other chapter, entitled " What do Animals Know ? "
I will only say here that animals are almost as much
under the dominion of absolute nature, or what we

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WAYS OF NATURE

call instinct, innate tendency, habit of growth, as
are the plants and trees. Their lives revolve around
three wants or needs — the want of food, of safety,
and of offspring. It is in securing these ends that
all their wit is developed. They have no wants out-
side of these spheres, as man has. Their social wants
and their love of beauty, as in some of the birds, are
secondary. It is quite certain that the animals that
store up food for the winter do not take any thought
of the future. Nature takes thought for them and
gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his
propensity to carry away and hide things, plants
many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares
say that he does this on purpose, any more than that
the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose?
Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their
backs that is to protect them from the cold of win-
ter, nor does the fox of his fur. In the tropics sheep
cease to grow wool in three or four years.

All the lower animals, so far as I know, swim
the first time they find themselves in the water.
They do not have to be taught : it is a matter of
instinct. It is what we should expect from our
knowledge of their lives. Not so with man ; he must
learn to swim as he learns so many other things.
The stimulus of the water does not at once set in
motion his legs and arms in the right way, as it does
the animal's legs ; his powers of reason and re-
flection paralyze him — his brain carries him down.

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FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

Not until he has learned to resign himself to the
water as the animal does, and to go on all fours,
can he swim. As soon as the boy ceases to struggle
against his tendency to sink, assumes the horizontal
position, and strikes out as the animal does, with but
one thought, and that to apply his powers of locomo-
tion to the medium about him, he swims as a matter
of course. It is said that children have sometimes
been known to swim when thrown into the water.
Their animal instincts were not thwarted by their
powers of reflection. Doubtless this never happened
to a grown person. Moreover, is it not probable that
the specific gravity of the hairless human body
is greater than that of the hair-covered animal, and
that it sinks, while that of the cat or dog floats ?
This, with the erect position of man, makes swim-
ming with him an art that must be acquired.

There is no better illustration of the action of
instinct as opposed to conscious intelligence than
is afforded by the parasitic birds, — the cuckoo in
Europe and the cowbird in this country, — birds that
lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Darwin
speculates as to how this instinct came about, but
whatever may have been its genesis, it is now a fixed
habit among these birds. Moreover, the instinct of
the blind young ahen, a day or two after it is hatched,
to throw or crowd its foster-brothers out of the nest
is a strange and anomalous act, and is as untaught
and unreasoned as anything in vegetable Hfe. But

79

WAYS OF NATURE

when our yellow warbler, finding this strange egg of
the cowbird in her nest, proceeds to bury it by put-
ting another bottom in the nest and carrying up the
sides to correspond, she shows something very much
like sense and judgment, though of a clumsy kind.
How much simpler and easier it would be to throw
out the strange egg ! I have known the cowbird her-
self to carry an egg from a nest in which she wished
to deposit one of her own. Again, how stupid and
ludicrous it seems on the part of the mother spar-
row, or warbler, or vireo, when she goes about toiling
desperately to satisfy the hunger of her big clam-
orous bantling of a cowbird, never suspecting that
she has been imposed upon!

Of course the line that divides man from the lower
orders is not a straight line. It has many breaks and
curves and deep indentations. The man-like apes,
as it were, mark where the line rises up into the
domain of man. Furthermore, the elephant and the
dog, especially as we know them in domestication,
encroach upon man's territory.

Men are born with aptitudes for different things,
but the art and the science of them all they have to
learn; proficiency comes with practice. Man must
learn to spin his web, to build his house, to sing his
song, to know his food, to sail his craft, to find his way
— things that the animals know " from the jump."
The animal inherits its knowledge and its skill : man
must acquire his by individual effort ; all he inherits

80

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

is capacity in varying degrees for these things. The
animal does rational things without an exercise of
reason. It is intelligent as nature is intelligent. It
does not know that it knows, or how it knows, while
man does. Man's knowledge is the light of his mind
that shines on many and widely different objects,
while the knowledge of animals cannot be sym-
bohzed by the term " light " at all. The animal acts
blindly so far as any conscious individual illumi-
nation or act of judgment is concerned. It does the
thing unwittingly, because it must. Confront it with
a new^ condition, and it has no resources to meet
that condition. The animal knows what necessity
taught its progenitors, and it knows that only as a
spontaneous impulse to do certain things.

Instinct, I say, is a great matter, and often shames
reason. It adapts means to an end, it makes few or
no mistakes, it takes note of times and seasons, it
delves, it bores, it spins, it weaves, it sews, it builds,
it makes paper, it constructs a shelter, it navigates
the air and the water, it is provident and thrifty,
it knows its enemies, it outwits its foes, it crosses
oceans and continents without compass, it foreshad-
ows nearly all the arts and trades and occupations
of mankind, it is skilled without practice, and wise
without experience. How it arose, what its genesis
was, who can tell ? Probably natural selection has
been the chief agent in its development. If natural
selection has developed and sharpened the claws of

81

WAYS OF NATURE

the cat and the scent of the fox, why should it not
develop and sharpen their wits also ? The remote
ancestors of the fox or of the crow were doubtless less
shrewd and cunning than the crows and the foxes of
to-day. The instinctive intelligence of an animal of
our time is the sum of the variations toward greater
intelligence of all its ancestors. What man stores in
language and in books — the accumulated results
of experience — the animals seem to have stored in
instinct. As Darwin says, a man cannot, on his first
trial, make a stone hatchet or a canoe through his
power of imitation. " He has to learn his work by
practice; a beaver, on the other hand, can make its
dam or canal, and a bird its nest, as well or nearly
as well, and a spider its wonderful web quite as
well, the first time it tries as when old and expe-
rienced."

An animal shows intelligence, as distinct from
instinct, when it takes advantage of any circum-
stance that arises at the moment, when it finds new
ways, whether better or not, as when certain birds
desert their old nesting-sites, and take up with new
ones afforded by man. This act, at least, shows
power of choice. The birds and beasts all quickly
avail themselves of any new source of food supply.
Their wits are probably more keen and active here
than in any other direction. It is said that in Okla-
homa the coyotes have learned to tell ripe water-
melons from unripe ones by scratching upon them.

82

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

If they have not, they probably will. Eating is the
one thing that engrosses the attention of all crea-
tures, and the procuring of food has been a great
means of education to all.

I notice that certain of the wood-folk — mice and
squirrels and birds — eat mushrooms. If I would
eat them, I must learn how to distinguish the edible
from the poisonous ones. I have no special sense to
guide me in the matter, as doubtless the squirrels
have. Their instinct is sure where my reason fails.
It would be very interesting to know if they ever
make a mistake in this matter. Domestic animals
sometimes make mistakes as to their food because
their instinct has been tampered with and is by
no means as sure as that of the wild creatures. It
is said that sheep will occasionally eat laurel and
St. John's-wort, which are poisonous to them. In the
far West I was told that the horses sometimes eat a
weed called the loco-weed that makes them crazy.
I have since learned that the buffaloes and cattle with
a strain of the buffalo blood never eat this weed.

The imitation among the lower animals to which
I have referred is in no sense akin to teaching. The
boy does not learn arithmetic by imitation. To teach
is to bring one mind to act upon another mind ; it is
the result of a conscious effort on the part of both
teacher and pupil. The child, says Darwin, has an
instinctive tendency to speak, but not to brew, or
bake, or write. The child comes to speak by imita-

83

WAYS OF NATURE

tion, as does the parrot, and then learns the meaning
of words, as the parrot does not.

I am convinced there is nothing in the notion that
animals consciously teach their young. Is it prob-
able that a mere animal reflects upon the future any
more than it does upon the past ? Is it solicitous
about the future well-being of its offspring any more
than it is curious about its ancestry ? Persons who
think they see the lower animals training their young
consciously or unconsciously supply something to
their observations ; they read their own thoughts or
preconceptions into what they see. Yet so trained a
naturaUst and experienced a hunter as President
Roosevelt differs with me in this matter. In a letter
which I am permitted to quote, he says : —

"I have not the slightest doubt that there is a
large amount of unconscious teaching by wood-folk
of their offspring. In unfrequented places I have had
the deer watch me with almost as much indifference
as they do now in the Yellowstone Park. In fre-
quented places, where they are hunted, young deer
and young mountain sheep, on the other hand, —
and of course young wolves, bobcats, and the like, —
are exceedingly wary and shy when the sight or smell
of man is concerned. Undoubtedly this is due to the
fact that from their earliest moments of going about
they learn to imitate the unflagging watchfulness of
their parents, and by the exercise of some associative
or imitative quality they grow to imitate and then to

84 .

FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE

share the alarm displayed by the older ones at the
smell or presence of man. A young deer that has
never seen a man feels no instinctive alarm at his
presence, or at least very little ; but it will undoubt-
edly learn to associate extreme alarm with his pre-
sence from merely accompanying its mother, if the
latter feels such alarm. I should not regard this as
schooHng by the parent any more than I should so
regard the instant flight of twenty antelope who had
not seen a hunter, because the twenty-first has seen
him and has instantly run. Sometimes a deer or an
antelope will deliberately give an alarm-cry at sight
of something strange. This cry at once puts every
deer or antelope on the alert ; but they will be just as
much on the alert if they witness nothing but an
exhibition of fright and flight on the part of the flrst
deer or antelope, without there being any conscious
effort on its part to express alarm.

"Moreover, I am inclined to think that on cer-
tain occasions, rare though they may be, there is a
conscious effort at teaching. I have myself known
of one setter dog which would thrash its puppy
soundly if the latter carelessly or stupidly flushed a
bird. Something similar may occur in the wild state
among such intelligent beasts as wolves and foxes.
Indeed, I have some reason to believe that with both
of these animals it does occur — that is, that there
is conscious as well as unconscious teaching of the
young in such matters as traps."

85

WAYS OF NATURE

Probably the President and I differ more in the
meaning we attach to the same words than in any-
thing else. In a subsequent letter he says: " I think
the chief difference between you and me in the mat-
ter is one of terminology. When I speak of uncon-
scious teaching, I really mean simply acting in a
manner which arouses imitation."

Imitation is no doubt the key to the whole matter.
The animals unconsciously teach their young by
t-heir example, and in no other way. But I must
leave the discussion of this subject for another
chapter.

VI

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

THE notion that animals consciously train and
educate their young has been held only tenta-
tively by European writers on natural history. Dar-
win does not seem to have been of this opinion at
all. Wallace shared it at one time in regard to the
birds, — their songs and nest-building, — but aban-
doned it later, and fell back upon instinct or in-
herited habit. Some of the German writers, such
as Brehm, Buchner, and the Miillers, seem to have
held to the notion more decidedly. But Professor
Groos had not yet opened their eyes to the signifi-
cance of the play of animals. The writers mentioned
undoubtedly read the instinctive play of animals as
an attempt on the part of the parents to teach their
young.

That the examples of the parents in many ways
stimulate the imitative instincts of the young is quite
certain, but that the parents in any sense aim at
instruction is an idea no longer held by writers on
animal psychology.

Of course it all depends upon what we mean by
teaching. Do we mean the communication of know-

87

WAYS OF NATURE

ledge, or the communication of emotion ? It seems
to me that by teaching we mean the former. Man
alone communicates knowledge; the lower animals
communicate feeling or emotion. Hence their com-
munications always refer to the present, never to the
past or to the future.

That birds and beasts do communicate with each
other, who can doubt ? But that they impart know-
ledge, that they have any knowledge to impart, in
the strict meaning of the word, any store of ideas
or mental concepts — that is quite another matter.
Teaching implies such store of ideas and power to
impart them. The subconscious self rules in the
animal ; the conscious self rules in man, and the con-
scious self alone can teach or communicate know-
ledge. It seems to me that the cases of the deer and
the antelope, referred to by President Roosevelt in
the letter to me quoted in the last chapter, show the
communication of emotion only.

Teaching implies reflection and judgment; it
implies a thought of, and solicitude for, the future.
" The young will need this knowledge," says the hu-
man parent, " and so we will impart it to them now."
But the animal parent has consciously no knowledge
to imparts only fear or suspicion. One may aflSrm
almost an3i:hing of trained dogs and of dogs gener-
ally. I can well believe that the setter bitch spoken of
by the President punished her pup when it flushed a
bird, — she had been punished herself for the same

88

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

offense, — but that the act was expressive of any-
thing more than her present anger, that she was in
any sense trying to train and instruct her pup, there
is no proof.

But with animals that have not been to school to
man, all ideas of teaching must be rudimentary
indeed. How could a fox or a wolf instruct its young
in such matters as traps ? Only in the presence of
the trap, certainly; and then the fear of the trap
would be communicated to the young through
natural instinct. Fear, hke joy or curiosity, is con-
tagious among beasts and birds, as it is among men;
the young fox or wolf would instantly share the emo-
tion of its parent in the presence of a trap. It is very
important to the wild creatures that they have a
quick apprehension of danger, and as a matter of
fact they have. One wild and suspicious duck in a
flock will often defeat the best laid plans of the duck-
hunter. Its suspicions are quickly communicated to
all its fellows: not through any conscious effort on
its part to do so, but through the law of natural con-
tagion above referred to. Where any bird or beast
is much hunted, fear seems to be in the air, and their
fellows come to be conscious of the danger which
they have not experienced.

What an animal lacks in wdt it makes up in cau-
tion. Fear is a good thing for the wild creatures to
have in superabundance. It often saves them from
real danger. But how undiscriminating it is! It is

89

WAYS OF NATURE

said that an iron hoop or wagon-tire placed around a
setting hen in the woods will protect her from the
foxes.

Animals are afraid on general principles. Any-
thing new and strange excites their suspicions. In
a herd of animals, cattle, or horses, fear quickly be-
comes a panic and rages like a conflagration. Cattle-
men in the West found that any little thing at night
might kindle the spark in their herds and sweep the
whole mass away in a furious stampede. Each ani-
mal excites every other, and the multiplied fear of
the herd is something terrible. Panics among men
are not much different.

In a discussion like the present one, let us use
words in their strict logical sense, if possible. Most
of the current misconceptions in natural history, as
in other matters, arise from a loose and careless use
of words. One says teach and train and instruct,
when the facts point to instinctive imitation or
unconscious communication.

That the young of all kinds thrive better and
develop more rapidly under the care of their parents
than when deprived of that care is obvious enough.
It would be strange if it were not so. Nothing can
quite fill the place of the mother with either man or
bird or beast. The mother provides and protects.
The young quickly learn of her through the natural
instinct of imitation. They share her fears, they fol-
low in her footsteps, they look to her for protection ;

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ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

it is the order of nature. They are not trained in the
way they should go, as a child is by its human par-
ents — they are not trained at all ; but their natu-
ral instincts doubtless act more promptly and surely
with the mother than without her. That a young
kingfisher or a young osprey would, in due time,
dive for fish, or a young marsh hawk catch mice
and birds, or a young fox or wolf or coon hunt for
its proper prey without the parental example, ad-
mits of no doubt at all; but they would each prob-
ably do this thing earlier and better in the order of
nature than if that order were interfered with.

The other day I saw a yellow-bellied woodpecker
alight upon a decaying beech and proceed to drill
for a grub. Two of its fully grown young followed
it and, alighting near, sidled up to where the parent
was drilKng. A hasty observer would say that the
parent was giving its young a lesson in grub-hunt-
ing, but I read the incident differently. The parent
bird had no thought of its young. It made passes at
them when they came too near, and drove them away.
Presently it left the tree, whereupon one of the young
examined the hole its parent had made and drilled a
little on its own account. A parental example hke
this may stimulate the young to hunt for grubs ear-
lier than they would otherwise do, but this is merely
conjecture. There is no proof of it, nor can there
be any.

The mother bird or beast does not have to be

91

WAYS OF NATURE

instructed in her maternal duties : they are instinc-
tive with her; it is of vital importance to the contin-
uance of the species that they should be. If it were
a matter of instruction or acquired knowledge, how
precarious it would be !

The idea of teaching is an advanced idea, and
can come only to a being that is capable of returning
upon itself in thought, and that can form abstract
conceptions — conceptions that float free, so to
speak, dissociated from particular concrete objects.

If a fox, or a wolf, for instance, were capable of
reflection and of dwelling upon the future and upon
the past, it might feel the need of instructing its
young in the matter of traps and hounds, if such a
thing were possible without language. When the
cat brings her kitten a live mouse, she is not think-
ing about instructing it in the art of dealing with
mice, but is intent solely upon feeding her young.
The kitten already knows, through inheritance,
about mice. So when the hen leads her brood forth
and scratches for them, she has but one purpose —
to provide them with food. If she is confined to the
coop, the chickens go forth and soon scratch for
themselves and snap up the proper insect food.

The mother's care and protection count for much,
but they do not take the place of inherited instinct.
It has been found that newly hatched chickens, when
left to themselves, do not know the difference be-
tween edible and non-edible insects, but that they

92

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

soon learn. In such matters the mother hen, no
doubt, guides them.

A writer in " Forest and Stream, " who has since
pubKshed a book about his "wild friends," pushes
this notion that animals train their young so far that
it becomes grotesque. Here are some of the things
that this keen observer and exposer of " false natural
history " reports that he has seen about his cabin in
the woods : He has seen an old crow that hurriedly
flew away from his cabin door on his sudden appear-
ance, return and beat its young because they did not
follow quickly enough. He has seen a male chewink,
while its mate was rearing a second brood, take the
first brood and lead them away to a bird-resort (he
probably meant to say to a bird-nursery or kinder-
garten) ; and when one of the birds wandered back
to take one more view of the scenes of its infancy, he
has seen the father bird pounce upon it and give it a
"severe whipping and take it to the resort again."

He has seen swallows teach their young to fly by
gathering them upon fences and telegraph wires and
then, at intervals (and at the word of command, I
suppose), launching out in the air with them, and
swooping and circling about. He has seen a song
sparrow, that came to his dooryard for fourteen
years (he omitted to say that he had branded him
and so knew his bird), teach his year-old hoy to sing
(the itaUcs are mine). This hermit-inclined sparrow
wanted to " desert the fields for a life in the woods,"

93

WAYS OF NATURE

but his " wife would not consent." Many a feather-
less biped has had the same experience with his
society-spoiled wife. The puzzle is, how did this
masterly observer know that this state of affairs
existed between this couple ? Did the wife tell him,
or the husband ? " Hermit " often takes his visitors
to a wood thrushes' singing-school, where, " as the
birds forget their lesson, they drop out one by one."

He has seen an old rooster teaching a young
rooster to crow! At first the old rooster crows
mostly in the morning, but later in the season he
crows throughout the day, at short intervals, to show
the young "the proper thing." "Young birds re-
moved out of hearing will not learn to crow." He
hears the old grouse teaching the young to drum in
the fall, though he neglects to tell us that he has
seen the young in attendance upon these lessons.
He has seen a mother song sparrow helping her two-
year-old daughter build her nest. He has discov-
ered that the cat talks to her kittens with her ears :
when she points them forward, that means "yes;"
when she points them backward, that means "no."
Hence she can tell them whether the wagon they
hear approaching is the butcher's cart or not, and
thus save them the trouble of looking out.

And so on through a long Ust of wild and domes-
tic creatures. At first I suspected this writer was
covertly ridiculing a certain other extravagant " ob-
server," but a careful reading of his letter shows him

94

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

to be seriously engaged in the worthy task of expos-
ing " false natural history."

Now the singing of birds, the crowing of cocks,
the drumming of grouse, are secondary sexual char-
acteristics. They are not necessary to the hves of the
creatures, and are probably more influenced by imi-
tation than are the more important instincts of self-
preservation and reproduction. Yet the testimony is
overwhelming that birds will sing and roosters crow
and turkeys gobble, though they have never heard
these sounds; and, no doubt, the grouse and the
woodpeckers drum from promptings of the same
sexual instinct.

I do not wish to accuse " Hermit " of mllfully per-
verting the facts of natural history. He is one of
those persons who read their own fancies into what-
ever they look upon. He is incapable of disinterested
observation, which means he is incapable of observa-
tion at all in the true sense. There are no animals
that signal to each other with their ears. The move-
ments of the ears follow the movements of the eye.
When an animal's attention is directed to any ob-
ject or sound, its ears point forward ; when its atten-
tion is relaxed, the ears fall. But with the cat tribe
the ears are habitually erect, as those of the horse
are usually relaxed. They depress them and revert
them, as do many other animals, when angered or
afraid.

Certain things in animal life lead me to suspect

95

WAYS OF NATURE

that animals have some means of communication
with one another, especially the gregarious animals,
that is quite independent of what we mean by lan-
guage. It is like an interchange or blending of sub-
conscious states, and may be analogous to telepathy
among human beings. Observe what a unit a flock
of birds becomes when performing their evolutions
in the air. They are not many, but one, turning and
flashing in the sun with a unity and a precision that
it would be hard to imitate. One may see a flock
of shore-birds that behave as one body: now they
turn to the sun a sheet of silver; then, as their dark
backs are presented to the beholder, they almost dis-
appear against the shore or the clouds. It would
seem as if they shared in a communal mind or spirit,
and that what one felt they all felt at the same
instant.

In Florida I many times saw large schools of mul-
lets fretting and breaking the surface of the water
with what seemed to be the tips of their tails. A
large area would be agitated and rippled by the backs
or tails of a host of fishes. Then suddenly, while I
looked, there would be one splash and every fish
would dive. It was a multitude, again, acting as one
body. Hundreds, thousands of tails slapped the
water at the same instant and were gone.

When the passenger pigeons were numbered by
milhons, the enormous clans used to migrate from
one part of the continent to another. I saw the last

96

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

flight of them up the Hudson River valley in the
spring of 1875. All day they streamed across the sky.
One purpose seemed to animate every flock and
every bird. It was as if all had orders to move to the
same point. The pigeons came only when there was
beech-mast in the woods. How did they know we
had had a beech-nut year? It is true that a few
straggling bands were usually seen some days in
advance of the blue myriads : were these the scouts,
and did they return with the news of the beech-nuts ?
If so, how did they communicate the intelligence
and set the whole mighty army in motion ?

The migrations among the four-footed animals
that sometimes occur over a large part of the coun-
try — among the rats, the gray squirrels, the rein-
deer of the north — seem to be of a similar char-
acter. How does every individual come to share in
the common purpose ? An army of men attempting
to move without leaders and without a written or
spoken language becomes a disorganized mob. Not
so the animals. There seems to be a community of
mind among them in a sense that there is not among
men. The pressure of great danger seems to develop
in a degree this community of mind and feeling
among men. Under strong excitement we revert
more or less to the animal state, and are ruled by
instinct. It may well be that telepathy — the power
to project one's mental or emotional state so as to
impress a friend at a distance — is a power which we

97

WAYS OF NATURE

have carried over from our remote animal ancestors.
However this may be, it is certain that the sensi-
tiveness of birds and quadrupeds to the condition
of one another, their sense of a common danger, of
food supphes, of the direction of home under all cir-
cumstances, point to the possession of a power which
is only rudimentary in us.

Some observers explain these things on the theory
that the flocks of birds have leaders, and that their
surprising evolutions are guided by calls or signals
from these leaders, too quick or too fine for our eyes
or ears to catch. I suppose they would explain the
movements of the schools of fish and the simulta-
neous movements of a large number of land animals
on the same theory. I cannot accept this explana-
tion. It is harder for me to beheve that a flock of
birds has a code of calls or signals for all its evolu-
tions— now right, now left, now mount, now swoop
— which each individual understands on the instant,
or that the hosts of the wild pigeons had their cap-
tains and signals, than to believe that out of the flock-
ing instinct there has grown some other instinct or
faculty, less understood, but equally potent, that puts
all the members of a flock in such complete rapport
with one another that the purpose and the desire of
one become the purpose and the desire of all. There
is nothing in this state of things analogous to a mih-
tary organization. The relation among the mem-
bers of the flock is rather that of creatures sharing

98

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

spontaneously the same subconscious or psychic
state, and acted upon by the same hidden influence,
in a way and to a degree that never occur among
men.

The faculty or power by which animals find the
way home over or across long stretches of country
is quite as mysterious and incomprehensible to us
as the spirit of the flock to which I refer. A hive
of bees evidently has a collective purpose and plan
that does not emanate from any single individual
or group of individuals, and which is understood
by all without outward communication.

Is there anything which, without great violence
to language, may be called a school of the woods ?
In the sense in which a playground is a school — a
playground without rules or methods or a director
— there is a school of the woods. It is an unkept, an
unconscious school or gymnasium, and is entirely
instinctive. In play the young of all animals, no
doubt, get a certain amount of training and disci-
phning that helps fit them for their future careers ;
but this school is not presided over or directed by
parents, though they sometimes take part in it. It is
spontaneous and haphazard, without rule or system ;
but is, in every case, along the line of the future
struggle for life of the particular bird or animal.
A young marsh hawk which we reared used to play
at striking leaves or bits of bark with its talons;
kittens play with a ball, or a cob, or a stick, as if

99

WAYS OF NATURE

it were a mouse; dogs race and wrestle with one
another as in the chase ; ducks dive and sport in the
water; doves circle and dive in the air as if es-
caping from a hawk; birds pursue and dodge one
another in the same way; bears wrestle and box;
chickens have mimic battles; colts run and leap;
fawns probably do the same thing; squirrels play
something like a game of tag in the trees ; lambs butt
one another and skip about the rocks; and so on.

In fact, nearly all play, including much of that of
man, takes the form of mock battle, and is to that
extent an education for the future. Among the car-
nivora it takes also the form of the chase. Its spring
and motive are, of course, pleasure, and not educa-
tion; and herein again is revealed the cunning of
nature — the power that conceals purposes of its
own in our most thoughtless acts. The cat and the
kitten play with the Uve mouse, not to indulge the
sense of cruelty, as some have supposed, but to in-
dulge in the pleasure of the chase and unconsciously
to practice the feat of capture. The cat rarely plays
with a live bird, because the recapture would be more
difficult, and might fail. What fisherman would not
Hke to take his big fish over and over again, if he
could be sure of doing it, not from cruelty, but for
the pleasure of practicing his art ? For further light
on the subject of the significance of the play of ani-
mals, I refer the reader to the work of Professor
Karl Groos called "The Play of Animals."

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ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

One of my critics has accused me of measuring all
things by the standard of my httle farm — of think-
ing that what is not true of animal Hfe there is not
true anywhere. Unfortunately my farm is small —
hardly a score of acres — and its animal hfe very
hmited. I have never seen even a porcupine upon it ;
but I have a hill where one might roll down, should
one ever come my way and be in the mood for that
kind of play.^ I have a few possums, a woodchuck
or two, an occasional skunk, some red squirrels and
rabbits, and many kinds of song-birds. Foxes oc-
casionally cross my acres; and once, at least, I saw
a bald eagle devouring a fish in one of my apple-
trees. Wild ducks, geese, and swans in spring and
fall pass across the sky above me. Quail and grouse
invade my premises, and of crows I have, at least in
bird-nesting time, too many.

But I have a few times chmbed over my pasture
wall and wandered into distant fields. Once upon
a time I was a traveler in Asia for the space of two
hours — an experience that ought to have yielded
me some starthng discoveries, but did not. Indeed,
the wider I have traveled and observed nature, the
more I am convinced that the wild creatures behave
just about the same in all parts of the country; that
is, under similar conditions. What one observes truly
about bird or beast upon his farm of ten acres, he
will not have to unlearn, travel as wide or as far as

^ See comment on the story here alluded to on page 244.

101

WAYS OF NATURE

he will. Where the animals are much hunted, they
are of course much wilder and more cunning than
where they are not hunted. In the Yellowstone
National Park we found the elk, deer, and mountain
sheep singularly tame; and in the summer, so we
were told, the bears board at the big hotels. The
wild geese and ducks, too, were tame ; and the red-
tailed hawk built its nest in a large dead oak that
stood quite alone near the side of the road. With
us the same hawk hides its nest in a tree in the dense
woods, because the farmers unwisely hunt and de-
stroy it. But the cougars and coyotes and bobcats
were no tamer in the park than they are in other
places where they are hunted.

Indeed, if I had elk and deer and caribou and
moose and bears and wildcats and beavers and
otters and porcupines on my farm, I should expect
them to behave just as they do in other parts of the
country under hke conditions : they would be tame
and docile if I did not molest them, and wild and
fierce if I did. They would do nothing out of charac-
ter in either case.

Your natural history knowledge of the East will
avail you in the West. There is no country, says
Emerson, in which they do not wash the pans and
spank the babies; and there is no country where a
dog is not a dog, or a fox a fox, or where a hare is
ferocious, or a wolf lamblike. The porcupine be-
haves in the Rockies just as he does in the Catskills;

102

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

the deer and the moose and the black bear and the
beaver of the Pacific slope are almost identical in
their habits and traits with those of the Atlantic
slope.

In my observations of the birds of the far West,
I went wrong in my reckoning but once : the West-
ern meadowlark has a new song. How or where he
got it is a mystery; it seems to be in some way the
gift of those great, smooth, flowery, treeless, dimpled
hills. But the swallow was familiar, and the robin
and the wren and the highhole, while the wood-
chuck I saw and heard in Wyoming might have
been the "chuck" of my native hills. The eagle is
an eagle the world over. When I was a boy I saw,
one autumn day, an eagle descend with extended
talons upon the backs of a herd of young cattle that
were accompanied by a cosset-sheep and were feed-
ing upon a high hill. The object of the eagle seemed
to be to separate the one sheep from the cattle, or to
frighten them all into breaking their necks in trying
to escape him. But neither result did he achieve.
In the Yellowstone Park, President Roosevelt and
Major Pitcher saw a golden eagle trying the same
tactics upon a herd of elk that contained one yearling.
The eagle doubtless had his eye upon the yearling,
though he would probably have been quite satis-
fied to have driven one of the older ones down a
precipice. His chances of a dinner would have been
equally good.

103

WAYS OF NATURE

There is one particular in which the bird families
are much more human than our four-footed kindred.
I refer to the practice of courtship. The male of all
birds, so far as I know, pays suit to the female and
seeks to please and attract her.^ This the quad-
rupeds do not do; there is no period of courtship
among them, and no mating or pairing as among the
birds. The male fights for the female, but he does
not seek to win her by delicate attentions. If there
are any exceptions to this rule, I do not know them.
There seems to be among the birds something that
is like what is called romantic love. The choice of
mate seems always to rest with the female,^ while
among the mammals the female shows no prefer-
ence at all.

Among our own birds, the prettiest thing I know
of attending the period of courtship, or prelimi-
nary to the match-making, is the spring musical
festival and reunion of the goldfinches, which often
lasts for days, through rain and shine. In April or
May, apparently all the goldfinches from a large area
collect in the top of an elm or a maple and unite in
a prolonged musical festival. Is it a contest among
the males for the favor of the females, or is it the
spontaneous expression of the gladness of the whole
clan at the return of the season of life and love ?
The birds seem to pair soon after, and doubtless the
concert of voices has some reference to that event.

^ Except in the case of certain birds of India and Australia.

104

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

There is one other human practice often attrib-
uted to the lower animals that I must briefly con-
sider, and that is the practice, under certain cir-
cumstances, of poisoning their young. One often
hears of caged young birds being fed by their parents
for a few days and then poisoned; or of a mother
fox poisoning her captive young when she finds that
she cannot liberate him; and such stories obtain
ready credence with the public, especially with the
young. To make these stories credible, one must
suppose a school of pharmacy, too, in the woods.

" The worst thing about these poisoning stories,"
writes a friend of mine, himself a writer of nature-
books, " is the implied appreciation of the full effect
and object of poison — the comprehension by the
fox, for instance, that the poisoned meat she may
be supposed to find was placed there for the object
of killing herself (or some other fox), and that she
may apply it to another animal for that purpose.
Furthermore, that she understands the nature of
death — that it brings * surcease of sorrow,' and
that death is better than captivity for her young one.
How did she acquire all this knowledge? Where
was her experience of its supposed truth obtained ?
How could she make so fine and far-seeing a judg-
ment, wholly out of the range of brute affairs, and
so purely philosophical and humanly ethical? It
violates every instinct and canon of natural law,
which is for the preservation of life at all hazards.

105

WAYS OF NATURE

This is simply the human idea of * murder/ Animals
kill one another for food, or in rivalry, or in bhnd
ferocity of predatory disposition ; but there is not a
particle of evidence that they ' commit murder ' for
ulterior ends. It is questionable whether they com-
prehend the condition called death, or its nature,
in any proper sense."

On another occasion I laughed at a recent nature
writer for his credulity in half-believing the story
told him by a fisherman, that the fox catches crabs
by using his tail as a bait ; and yet I read in Romanes
that Olaus, in his account of Norway, says he has
seen a fox do this very thing among the rocks on the
sea-coast.^ One would like to cross-question Olaus
before accepting such a statement. One would as
soon expect a fox to put his brush in the fire as in the
water. When it becomes wet and bedraggled, he is
greatly handicapped as to speed. There is no doubt
that rats will put their tails into jars that contain
liquid food they want, and then lick them off, as
Romanes proved ; but the rat's tail is not a brush,
nor in any sense an ornament. Think what the
fox-and-crab story impKes ! Now the fox is entirely
a land animal, and lives by preying upon land crea-

1 A book published in London in 1783, entitled A Geographical,
Historical, and Commercial Grammar and the Present State of the
Several Kingdoms of the World, among other astonishing natural
history notes, makes this statement about the white and red fox of
Norway : " They have a particular way of drawing- crabs ashore
by dipping their tails in the water, which the crab lays hold of."

106

ANIMAL COMMUNICATION

tures, which it follows by scent or sight. It can
neither see nor smell crabs in the deep water, where
crabs are usually found. How should it know that
there are such things as crabs ? How should it know
that they can be taken with bait and line or by fish-
ing for them ? When and how did it get this experi-
ence? This knowledge belongs to man alone. It
comes through a process of reasoning that he alone
is capable of. Man alone of land animals sets traps
and fishes. There is a fish called the angler (Lophius
piscatoriMs) , which, it is said on doubtful authority,
by means of some sort of appendages on its head
angles for small fish; but no competent observer
has reported any land animal doing so. Again,
would a crab lay hold of a mass of fur like a fox's
tail ? — even if the tail could be thrust deep enough
into the water, which is impossible. Crabs, when
not caught with hand-nets, are usually taken in
water eight or ten feet deep. They are baited and
caught with a piece of meat tied to a string, but
cannot be lifted to the surface till they are eating
the meat, and then a dip-net is required to secure
them. The story, on the whole, is one of the most
preposterous that ever gained credence in natural
history.

Good observers are probably about as rare as
good poets. Accurate seeing, — an eye that takes in
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, — how
rare indeed it is ! So few persons know or can tell

107

WAYS OF NATURE

exactly what they see; so few persons can draw a
right inference from an observed fact; so few per-
sons can keep from reading their own thoughts and
preconceptions into what they see ; only a person
with the scientific habit of mind can be trusted to
report things as they are. Most of us, in observ-
ing the v^ld Hfe about us, see more or see less than
the truth. We see less when our minds are dull, or
preoccupied, or blunted by want of interest. This
is true of most country people. We see more when
we read the Hves of the wild creatures about us in
the Hght of our human experience, and impute to
the birds and beasts human motives and methods.
This is too often true of the eager city man or
woman who sallies out into the country to study
nature.

The tendency to sentimentalize nature has, in our
time, largely taken the place of the old tendency to
demonize and spiritize it. It is anthropomorphism
in another form, less fraught with evil to us, but
equally in the way of a clear understanding of the
life about us.

VII
DEVIOUS PATHS

THERE is no better type or epitome of wild na-
ture than the bird's-nest — something built,
and yet as if it grew, a part of the ground, or of
the rock, or of the branch upon which it is placed;
beginning so coarsely, so irregularly, and ending
so finely and s}Tnmetrically ; so unlike the work of
hands, and yet the result of a skill beyond hands;
and when it holds its complement of eggs, how pleas-
ing, how suggestive!

The bird adapts means to an end, and yet so dif-
ferently from the way of man, — an end of which it
does not know the value or the purpose. We know
it is prompted to it by the instinct of reproduc-
tion. When the woodpecker in the fall excavates a
lodge in a dry Kmb, we know he is prompted to it
by the instinct of self-preservation, but the birds
themselves obey the behests of nature without know-
ledge.

A bird's-nest suggests design, and yet it seems
almost haphazard ; the result of a kind of madness,
yet with method in it. The hole the woodpecker
drills for its cell is to the eye a perfect circle, and the

109

WAYS OF NATURE

rim of most nests is as true as that of a cup. The
circle and the sphere exist in nature; they are mo-
ther forms and hold all other forms. They are
easily attained; they are spontaneous and inevit-
able. The bird models her nest about her own
breast ; she turns round and round in it, and its
circular character results as a matter of course.
Angles, right Hnes, measured precision, so charac-
teristic of the works of man, are rarely met with
in organic nature.

Nature reaches her ends by devious paths; she
loiters, she meanders, she plays by the way; she
surely " arrives," but it is always in a blind, hesitat-
ing, experimental kind of fashion. Follow the tun-
nels of the ants or the crickets, or of the moles and
the weasels, underground, or the courses of the
streams or the paths of the animals above ground
— how they turn and hesitate, how wayward and
undecided they are! A right line seems out of the
question.

The oriole often weaves strings into her nest ;
sometimes she binds and overhands the part of the
rim where she aHghts in going in, to make it stronger,
but it is always done in a hit-or-miss, childish sort
of way, as one would expect it to be; the strings are
massed, or snarled, or left dangling at loose ends, or
are caught around branches ; the weaving and the
sewing are effective, and the whole nest is a mar-
vel of bUnd skill, of untaught intelligence; yet how

110

DEVIOUS PATHS

unmethodical, how delightfully irregular, how un-
mistakably a piece of wild nature !

Sometimes the instinct of the bird is tardy, and
the egg of the bird gets ripe before the nest is ready;
in such a case the egg is of course lost. I once found
the nest of the black and white creeping warbler in
a mossy bank in the woods, and under the nest was
an egg of the bird. The warbler had excavated the
site for her nest, dropped her egg into it, and then
gone on with her building. Instinct is not always
inerrant. Nature is wasteful, and plays the game
with a free hand. Yet what she loses on one side she
gains on another; she is like that least bittern Mr.
Frank M. Chapman tells about. Two of the bittern's
five eggs had been punctured by the long-billed
marsh wren. When the bird returned to her nest
and found the two eggs punctured, she made no
outcry, showed no emotion, but deliberately pro-
ceeded to eat them. Having done this, she dropped
the empty shells over the side of the nest, together
with any straws that had become soiled in the pro-
cess, cleaned her bill, and proceeded with her incu-
bation. This was Nature in a nut-shell, — or rather
egg-shell, — turning her mishaps to some good ac-
count. If the egg will not make a bird, it will make
food; if not food, then fertilizer.

Among nearly all our birds, the female is the
active business member of the partnership ; she has
a turn for practical affairs ; she chooses the site of

111

WAYS OF NATURE

the nest, and usually builds it unaided. The life of
the male is more or less a holiday or picnic till the
young are hatched, when his real cares begin, for
he does his part in feeding them. One may see the
male cedar-bird attending the female as she is busy
with her nestJbuilding, but never, so far as I have
observed, assisting her. One spring I observed with
much interest a phoebe-bird building her nest not
far from my cabin in the woods. The male looked
on approvingly, but did not help. He perched most
of the time on a mullein stalk near the Httle spring
run where Phoebe came for mud. In the early
morning hours she made her trips at intervals of a
minute or two. The male flirted his tail and called
encouragingly, and when she started up the hill
with her load he would accompany her part way,
to help her over the steepest part, as it were, then
return to his perch and watch and call for her re-
turn. For an hour or more I witnessed this little
play in bird hfe, in which the female's part was so
primary and the male's so secondary. There is
something in such things that seems to lend support
to Professor Lester F. Ward's contention, as set
forth in his " Pure Sociology," that in the natural
evolution of the two sexes the female was first and
the male second ; that he was made from her rib,
so to speak, and not she from his.

With our phalarope and a few Australian birds,
the position of the two sexes as indicated above

112

DEVIOUS PATHS

is reversed, the females having the ornaments and
bright colors and doing the courting, while the
male does the incubating. In a few cases also the
female is much the more masculine, noisy, and pug-
nacious. With some of our common birds, such as
the woodpeckers, the chickadee, and the swallows,
both sexes take part in nest-building..

It is a very pretty sight to witness a pair of wood
thrushes building their nest. Indeed, what is there
about the wood thrush that is not pleasing ? He is
a kind of visible embodied melody. Some birds are
so sharp and nervous and emphatic in their move-
ments, as the common snowbird or junco, the flash-
ing of whose white tail quills expresses the character
of the bird. But all the ways of the wood thrush
are smooth and gentle, and suggest the melody of its
song. It is the only bird thief I love to see carrying
off my cherries. It usually takes only those dropped
upon the ground by other birds, and with the red
or golden globe impaled upon its beak, its flight
across the lawn is a picture delightful to behold.
One season a pair of them built a nest in a near-by
grove; morning after morning, for many mornings, I
used to see the two going to and from the nest, over
my vineyard and currant patch and pear orchard, in
quest of, or bringing material for, the structure. They
flew low, the female in the lead, the male just behind
in line with her, timing his motions to hers, the two
making a brown, gently undulating Hne, very pretty

113

WAYS OF NATURE

to look upon, from my neighbor's field where they
obtained the material, to the tree that held the nest.
A gentle, gliding flight, hurried but hushed, as it
were, and expressive of privacy and loving preoccu-
pation. The male carried no material; apparently
he was simply the escort of his mate ; but he had an
air of keen and joyous interest. He never failed to
attend her each way, keeping about a yard behind
her, and flying as if her thought were his thought
and her wish his wish. I have rarely seen anything
so pretty in bird life. The movements of all our
thrushes except the robin give one this same sense
of harmony, — nothing sharp or angular or abrupt.
Their gestures are as pleasing as their notes.

One evening, while seated upon my porch, I had
convincing proof that musical or song contests do
take place among the birds. Two wood thrushes
who had nests near by sat on the top of a dead tree
and pitted themselves against each other in song
for over half an hour, contending like champions in
a game, and certainly affording the rarest treat in
wood thrush melody I had ever had. They sang
and sang with unwearied spirit and persistence,
now and then changing position or facing in another
direction, but keeping within a few feet of each
other. The rivalry became so obvious and was so
interesting that I finally made it a point not to take
my eyes from the singers. The twilight deepened
till their forms began to grow dim ; then one of the

114

DEVIOUS PATHS

birds could stand the strain no longer, the limit of
fair competition had been reached, and seeming to
say, " I will silence you, anyhow," it made a spite-
ful dive at its rival, and in hot pursuit the two dis-
appeared in the bushes beneath the tree. Of course
I would not say that the birds were consciously
striving to outdo each other in song ; it was the old
feud between males in the love season, not a war of
words or of blows, but of song. Had the birds been
birds of brilhant plumage, the rivalry would prob-
ably have taken the form of strutting and showing
off their bright colors and ornaments.

An English writer on birds, Edmund Selous, de-
scribes a similar song contest between two night-
ingales. " Jealousy," he says, " did not seem to blind
them to the merit of each other's performance.
Though often one, upon hearing the sweet, hostile
strains, would burst forth instantly itself, — and
here there was no certain mark of appreciation,
— yet sometimes, perhaps quite as often, it would
put its head on one side and Ksten with exactly the
appearance of a musical connoisseur, weighing,
testing, and appraising each note as it issued from
the rival bill. A curious, half-suppressed expression
would «teal, or seem to steal (for Fancy may play
her part in such matters), over the listening bird,
and the idea appear to be, ' How exquisite would be

those strains were they not sung by , and yet

I must admit that they are exquisite.' " Fancy no

115

WAYS OF NATURE

doubt does play a part in such matters. It may well
be doubted if birds are musical connoisseurs, or
have anything like human appreciation of their own
or of each other's songs. My reason for thinking so
is this : I have heard a bobolink with an instrument
so defective that its song was broken and inarticu-
late in parts, and yet it sang with as much apparent
joy and abandon as any of its fellows. I have also
heard a hermit thrush with a similar defect or
impediment that appeared to sing entirely to its
own satisfaction. It would be very interesting to
know if these poor singers found mates as readily
as their more gifted brothers. If they did, the
Darwinian theory of "sexual selection" in such
matters, according to which the finer songster would
carry off the female, would fall to the ground. Yet
it is certain that it is during the mating and breeding
season that these "song combats" occur, and the
favor of the female would seem to be the matter in
dispute. Whether or not it be expressive of actual
jealousy or rivalry, we have no other words to apply
to it.

A good deal of light is thrown upon the ways of
nature as seen in the lives of our solitary wasps, so
skillfully and charmingly depicted by George W.
Peckham and his wife in their work on those insects.
So whimsical, so fickle, so forgetful, so fussy, so
wise, and yet so foolish, as these little people are!
such victims of routine and yet so individual, such

116

DEVIOUS PATHS

apparent foresight and yet such thoughtlessness, at
such great pains and labor to dig a hole and build
a cell, and then at times sealing it up without storing
it with food or laying the egg, half finishing hole
after hole, and then abandoning them without any
apparent reason; sometimes killing their spiders,
at other times only paralyzing them; one species
digging its burrow before it captures its game, oth-
ers capturing the game and then digging the hole ;
some of them hanging the spider up in the fork
of a weed to keep it away from the ants while they
work at their nest, and running to it every few min-
utes to see that it is safe; others laying the insect
on the ground while they dig; one species walking
backward and dragging its spider after it, and when
the spider is so small that it carries it in its mandible,
still walking backward as if dragging it, when it
would be much more convenient to walk forward.
A curious little people, leading their soKtary lives
and greatly differentiated by the solitude, hardly any
two alike, one nervous and excitable, another calm
and unhurried; one careless in her work, another
neat and thorough; this one suspicious, that one
confiding ; Ammophila using a pebble to pack
down the earth in her burrow, while another species
uses the end of her abdomen, — verily a queer little
people, with a lot of wild nature about them, and a
lot of human nature, too.

I think one can see how this development of in-

117

WAYS OF NATURE

dividuality among the solitary wasps comes about.
May it not be because the wasps are sohtary ? They
hve alone. They have no one to imitate; they are
uninfluenced by their fellows. No community in-
terests override or check individual whims or pecul-
iarities. The innate tendency to variation, active in
all forms of hfe, has with them full sway. Among
the social bees or wasps one would not expect to
find those differences between individuals. The
members of a colony all appear alike in habits and
in dispositions. Colonies differ, as every bee-keeper
knows, but probably the members composing it
differ very Httle. The community interests shape
all alike. Is it not the same in a degree among men ?
Does not solitude bring out a man's peculiarities
and differentiate him from others ? The more one
hves alone, the more he becomes unhke his fellows.
Hence the original and racy flavor of woodsmen,
pioneers, lone dwellers in Nature's soHtudes. Thus
isolated communities develop characteristics of
their own. Constant intercommunication, the fric-
tion of travel, of streets, of books, of newspapers,
make us all alike ; we are, as it were, all pebbles
upon the same shore, washed by the same waves.

Among the larger of vertebrate animals, I think,
one might reasonably expect to find more individual-
ity among those that are sohtary than among those
that are gregarious ; more among birds of prey than
among water-fowl, more among foxes than among

118

DEVIOUS PATHS

prairie-dogs, more among moose than among sheep
or buffalo, more among grouse than among quail.
But I do not know that this is true.

Yet among none of these would one expect to
find the diversity of individual types that one finds
among men. No two dogs of the same breed will be
found to differ as two men of the same family often
differ. An original fox, or wolf, or bear, or beaver,
or crow, or crab, — that is, one not merely different
from his fellows, but obviously superior to them,
differing from them as a master mind differs from
the ordinary mind, — I think, one need not expect
to find. It is quite legitimate for the animal-story
writer to make the most of the individual differ-
ences in habits and disposition among the animals ;
he has the same latitude any other story writer has,
but he is bound also by the same law of probabihty,
the same need of fidelity to nature. If he proceed
upon the theory that the wild creatures have as pro-
nounced individuality as men have, that there are
master minds among them, inventors and discov-
erers of new ways, born captains and heroes, he will
surely "o'erstep the modesty of nature."

The great diversity of character and capacity
among men doubtless arises from their greater and
more complex needs, relations, and aspirations.
The animals' needs in comparison are few, their
relations simple, and their aspirations nil. One can-
not see what could give rise to the individual types

119

WAYS OF NATURE

and exceptional endowments that are often claimed
for them. The law of variation, as I have said,
would give rise to differences, but not to a sudden
reversal of race habits, or to animal geniuses.

The law of variation is everywhere operative —
less so now, no doubt, than in the earlier history of
organic Hfe on the globe. Yet Nature is still ex-
perimenting in her bHnd way, and hits upon many
curious differences and departures. But I suppose
if the race of man were exterminated, man would
never arise again. I doubt if the law of evolution
could ever again produce him, or any other species
of animal.

This principle of variation was no doubt much
more active back in geologic time, during the early
history of animal hfe upon the globe, than it is in this
late age. And for the reason that animal life was
less adapted to its environment than it is now, the
struggle for life was sharper. Perfect adaptation of
any form of life to the conditions surrounding it
seems to check variability. Animal and plant life
seem to vary more in this country than in England
because the conditions of life are harder. The ex-
tremes of heat and cold, of wet and dry, are much
greater. It has been found that the eggs of the Eng-
lish sparrow vary in form and color more in the
United States than in Great Britain. Certain Ameri-
can shells are said to be more variable than the Eng-
hsh. Among our own birds it has been found that

120

DEVIOUS PATHS

the "migratory species evince a greater amount of
individual variation than do non-migrating species "
because they are subject to more varying conditions
of food and climate. I think we may say, then, if
there were no struggle for life, if uniformity of
temperature and means of subsistence everywhere
prevailed, there would be httle or no variation and
no new species would arise. The causes of variation
seem to be the inequahty and imperfection of things ;
the pressure of life is unequally distributed, and
this is one of Nature's ways that accounts for much
that we see about us.

VIII
WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

A FTER the discussion carried on in the forego-
jLJl. ing chapters touching the general subject of
animal Hfe and instinct, we are prepared, I think, to
ask with more confidence, What do animals know ?

The animals unite such ignorance with such
apparent knowledge, such stupidity with such clev-
erness, that in our estimate of them we are likely
to rate their wit either too high or too low. With
them, knowledge does not fade into ignorance, as
it does in man; the contrast is like that between
night and day, with no twilight between. So keen
one moment, so blind the next !

Think of the ignorance of the horse after all his
long association with man; of the trifling things
along the street at which he mil take fright, till he
rushes off in a wild panic of fear, endangering his
own neck and the neck of his driver. One would
think that if he had a particle of sense he would
know that an old hat or a bit of paper was harmless.
But fear is deeply implanted in his nature; it has
saved the lives of his ancestors countless times, and
it is still one of his ruling passions.

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WAYS OF NATURE

I have known a cow to put her head between two
trees in the woods — a kind of natural stanchion —
and not have wit enough to get it out again, though
she could have done so at once by lifting her head
to a horizontal position. But the best instance I
know of the grotesque ignorance of a cow is given by
Hamerton in his " Chapters on Animals." The cow
would not " give down " her milk unless she had her
calf before her. But her calf had died, so the herds-
man took the skin of the calf, stuffed it with hay, and
stood it up before the inconsolable mother. Instantly
she proceeded to lick it and to yield her milk. One
day, in licking it, she ripped open the seams, and out
rolled the hay. This the mother at once proceeded to
eat, without any look of surprise or alarm. She hked
hay herself, her acquaintance with it was of long
standing, and what more natural to her than that
her calf should turn out to be made of hay! Yet
this very cow that did not know her calf from a bale
of hay would have defended her young against the
attack of a bear or a wolf in the most skillful and
heroic manner; and the horse that was nearly fright-
ened out of its skin by a white stone, or by the flutter
of a piece of newspaper by the roadside, would find
its way back home over a long stretch of country, or
find its way to water in the desert, with a certainty
you or I could not approach.

The hen-hawk that the farm-boy finds so diffi-
cult to approach with his gun will yet alight upon

124

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

his steel trap fastened to the top of a pole in the
fields. The rabbit that can be so easily caught in a
snare or in a box-trap will yet conceal its nest and
young in the most ingenious manner. A^Tiere instinct
or inherited knowledge can come into play, the
animals are very wise, but new conditions, new
problems, bring out their ignorance.

A college girl told me an incident of a red squirrel
she had observed at her home in Iowa that illus-
trates how shallow the wit of a squirrel is when con-
fronted by new conditions. This squirrel carried
nuts all day and stored them in the end of a drain-
pipe that discharged the rain-water upon the pave-
ment below. The nuts obeyed the same law that the
rain-water did, and all rolled through the pipe and
fell upon the sidewalk. In the squirrel's experience,
and in that of his forbears, all holes upon the ground
were stopped at the far end, or they were like pockets,
and if nuts were put in them they stayed there. A
hollow tube open at both ends, that would not hold
nuts — this was too much for the wit of the squir-
rel. But how wise he is about the nuts themselves !

Among the lower animals the ignorance of one is
the ignorance of all, and the knowledge of one is the
knowledge of all, in a sense in which the same is not
true among men. Of course some are more stupid
than others of the same species, but probably, on the
one hand, there are no idiots among them, and, on
the other, none is preeminent in wit.

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WAYS OF NATURE

Animals take the first step in knowledge — they
perceive things and discriminate between them; but
they do not take the second step — combine them,
analyze them, and form concepts and judgments.

So that, whether animals know much or little, I
think we are safe in saying that what they know in
the human way, that is, from a process of reasoning,
is very sUght.

The animals all have in varying degrees perceptive
intelligence. They know what they see, hear, smell,
feel, so far as it concerns them to know it. They
know their kind, their mates, their enemies, their
food, heat from cold, hard from soft, and a thousand
other things that it is important that they should
know, and they know these things just as we know
them, through their perceptive powers.

We may ascribe intelligence to the animals in the
same sense in which we ascribe it to a child, as the
perception of the differences or of the likenesses and
the relations of things — that is, perceptive intelli-
gence, but not reasoning intelligence. When the
child begins to " notice things," to know its mother,
to fear strangers, to be attracted by certain objects,
we say it begins to show intelligence. Development
in this direction goes on for a long time before it can
form any proper judgment about things or take the
step of reason.

If we were to subtract from the sum of the intelli-
gence of an animal that which it owes to nature or

126

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

inherited knowledge, the amount left, representing
its own power of thought, would be very small. Dar-
win tells of a. pike in an aquarium separated by
plate-glass from fish which were its proper food, and
that the pike, in trying to capture the fish, would
often dash with such violence against the glass as to
be completely stunned. This the pike did for three
months before it learned caution. After the glass
was removed, the pike would not attack those par-
ticular fishes, but would devour others that were in-
troduced. It did not yet understand the situation,
but merely associated the punishment it had received
with a particular kind of fish.

During the mating season the males of some of
our birds may often be seen dashing themselves
against a window, and pecking and fluttering against
the pane for hours at a time, day after day. They
take their own images reflected in the glass to be
rival birds, and are bent upon demolishing them.
They never comprehend the mystery of the glass, be-
cause glass is not found in nature, and neither they
nor their ancestors have had any experience with it.

Contrast these incidents with those which Dar-
win relates of the American monkeys. When the
monkeys had cut themselves once with any sharp
tool, they would not touch it again, or else would
handle it with the greatest caution. They evinced
the simpler forms of reason, of which monkeys are
no doubt capable.

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WAYS OF NATURE

Animals are wise as Nature is wise; they partake,
each in its own measure, of that universal intelli-
gence, or mind-stuff, that is operative in all things
— in the vegetable as well as in the animal world.
Does the body, or the life that fills it, reason when
it tries to get rid of, or to neutralize the effects of, a
foreign substance, like a bullet, by encysting it ? or
when it thickens the skin on the hand or on any
other part of the body, even forming special pads
called callosities, as a result of the increased wear or
friction ? This may be called physiological intelli-
gence.

But how blind tliis intelligence is at times, or how
wanting in judgment, may be seen when it tries to
develop a callosity upon the foot as a result of the
friction of the shoe, and overdoes the matter and
produces the corn. The corn is a physiological blun-
der. Or see an unexpected manifestation of this
intelligence when we cut off the central and leading
shoot of a spruce or of a pine tree, and straightway
one of the lateral and horizontal branches rises up,
takes the place of the lost leader, and carries the
tree upward ; or in the roots of a tree working their
way through the ground much like molten metal,
parting and uniting, taking the form of whatever
object they touch, shaping themselves to the rock,
flowing into its seams, the better to get a grip upon
the earth and thus maintain an upright position.

In the animal world this foresight becomes psychic

128

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

intelligence, developing in man the highest form of
all, reasoned inteUigence. When an animal solves a
new problem or meets a new condition as effectually
as the tree or the body does in the cases I have just
cited, we are wont to ascribe to it powers of reason.
Reason we may call it, but it is reason not its own.

This universal or cosmic intelligence makes up
by far the greater part of what animals know. The
domestic animals, such as the dog, that have long
been under the tutelage of man, of course show more
independent power of thought than the uneducated
beasts of the fields and woods.

The plant is wise in all ways to reproduce and
perpetuate itself; see the many ingenious devices
for scattering seed. In the animal world this intelH-
gence is most keen and active in the same direction.
The wit of the animal comes out most clearly in
looking out for its food and safety. We are often
ready to ascribe reason to it in feats shown in these
directions.

In man alone does this universal intelligence or
mind-stuff reach out beyond these primary needs and
become aware of itself. What the plant or the animal
does without thought or rule, man takes thought
about. He considers his ways. I noticed that the
scallops in the shallow water on the beach had the
power to anchor themselves to stones or to some
other object, by putting out a httle tough but elastic
cable from near the hinge, and that they did so when

129

WAYS OF NATURE

the water was rough; but I could not look upon it
as an act of conscious or individual intelligence on
the part of the bivalve. It was as much an act of the
general intelligence to which I refer as was its hinge
or its form. But when the sailor anchors his ship,
that is another matter. He thinks about it, he rea-
sons from cause to effect, he sees the storm coming,
he has a fund of experience, and his act is a special
indi\ddual act.

The muskrat builds its house instinctively, and
all muskrats build ahke. Man builds his house
from reason and forethought. Savages build as
nearly ahke as the animals, but civilized man shows
an endless variety. The higher the intelligence, the
greater the diversity.

The sitting bird that is so sohcitous to keep its
eggs warm, or to feed and defend its young, prob-
ably shows no more independent and individual
intelligence than the plant that strives so hard to ma-
ture and scatter its seed. A plant will grow toward
the hght; a tree will try to get from under another
tree that overshadows it ; a willow will run its roots
toward the water: but these acts are the results of
external stimuli alone.

When I go to pass the winter in a warmer climate,
the act is the result of calculation and of weighing
pros and cons. I can go, or I can refrain from go-
ing. Not so with the migrating birds. Nature plans
and thinks for them; it is not an individual act on

130

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

the part of each; it is a race instinct: they must go;
the life of the race demands it. Or when the old
goose covers up her nest, or the rabbit covers her
young with a blanket of hair and grass of her own
weaving, I do not look upon these things as inde-
pendent acts of intelligence: it is the cunning of
nature; it is a race instinct.

Animals, on the whole, know what is necessary
for them to know — what the conditions of life have
taught their ancestors through countless genera-
tions. It is very important, for instance, that
amphibians shall have some sense that shall guide
them to the water ; and they have such a sense. It
is said that young turtles and crocodiles put down
anywhere will turn instantly toward the nearest
water. It is certain that the beasts of the field have
such a sense much more fully developed than has
man. It is of vital importance that birds should
know how to fly, how to build their nests, how to
find their proper food, and when and where to
migrate, without instruction or example, otherwise
the race might become extinct.

Richard Jefferies says that most birds' -nests need
a structure around them like a cage to keep the
young from falling out or from leaving the nest pre-
maturely. Now, if such a structure were needed,
either the race of birds would have failed, or the
structure would have been added. Since neither has
happened, we are safe in concluding it is not needed.

131

WAYS OF NATURE

We are not warranted in attributing to any wild,
untrained animal a degree of intelligence that its
forbears could not have possessed. The animals
for the most part act upon inherited knowledge, that
is, knowledge that does not depend upon instruction
or experience. For instance, the red squirrels near
me seem to know that chestnut-burs will open if cut
from the tree and allowed to lie upon the ground. iVt
least, they act upon this theory. I do not suppose
this fact or knowledge lies in the squirrel's mind as
it would in that of a man — as a deduction from
facts of experience or of observation. The squirrel
cuts off the chestnuts because he is hungry for them,
and because his ancestors for long generations have
cut them off in the same way. That the air or sun
will cause the burs to open is a bit of knowledge that
I do not suppose he possesses in the sense in which
we possess it: he is in a hurry for the nuts, and
does not by any means always wait for the burs to
open ; he frequently chips them up and eats the pale
nuts.

The same squirrel will bite into the limbs of a
maple tree in spring and suck the sap. What does
he know about maple trees and the spring flow of
sap ? Nothing as a mental concept, as a bit of con-
crete knowledge. He often finds the sap flowing
from a crack or other wound in the limbs of a maple,
and he sips it and likes it. Then he sinks his teeth
into the limb, as his forbears undoubtedly did.

132

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

When I was a boy and saw, as I often did on my
way to school, where a squirrel had stopped on his
course through the woods and dug down through
two or three feet of snow, bringing up a beech-nut
or an acorn, I used to wonder how he knew the nut
was there. I am now convinced that he smelled it.

Why should he not ? It stands the squirrel in hand
to smell nuts ; they are his life. He knows a false nut
from a good one without biting into it. Try the
experiment upon your tame chipmunk or caged gray
squirrel, and see if this is not so. The false or dead
nut is lighter, and most persons think this fact guides
the squirrel. But this, it seems to me, implies an
association of ideas beyond the reach of instinct. A
young squirrel will reject a worthless nut as promptly
as an old one will. Again the sense of smell is the
guide; the sound-meated nut has an odor which the
other has not. All animals are keen and wise in
relation to their food and to their natural enemies.
A red squirrel will chip up green apples and pears
for the seeds at the core: can he know, on general
principles, that these fruits contain seeds ? Does
not some clue to them reach his senses ?

I have known gray squirrels to go many hundred
yards in winter across fields to a barn that contained
grain in the sheaf. They could have had no other
guide to the grain than the sense of smell. Watch a
chipmunk or any squirrel near at hand: as a friend
of mine observed, he seems to be smelling with his

133

WAYS OF NATURE

whole body; his abdomen fairly palpitates with the
effort.

The coon knows when the corn is in the milk,
gaining that knowledge, no doubt, through his nose.
At times he seems to know enough, too, to cut off
his foot when caught in a trap, especially if the foot
becomes frozen; but if you tell me he will treat his
wound by smearing it with pitch or anything else,
or in any way except by Ucking it, I shall discredit
you. The practice of the art of healing by the
application of external or foreign substances is a
conception entirely beyond the capacity of any of
the lower animals. If such a practice had been
necessary for the continuance of the species, it
would probably have been used. The knowledge
it imphes could not be inherited; it must needs
come by experience. When a fowl eats gravel or
sand, is it probable that the fowl knows what the
practice is for, or has any notion at all about the
matter? It has a craving for the gravel, that is
all. Nature is wise for it.

The ostrich is described by those who know it in-
timately as the most stupid and witless of birds, and
yet before leaving its eggs exposed to the hot African
sun, the parent bird knows enough to put a large
pinch of sand on the top of each of them, in order,
it is said, to shade and protect the germ, which
alwr.ys rises to the highest point of the egg. This
act certainly cannot be the result of knowledge, as

134

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

we use the term ; the young ostrich does it as well as
the old. It is the inherited wisdom of the race, or
instinct.

A sitting bird or fowl turns its eggs at regular
intervals, which has the effect of keeping the yolk
from sticking to the shell. Is this act the result of
knowledge or of experience ? It is again the result
of that untaught knowledge called instinct. Some
kinds of eggs hatch in two weeks, some in three,
others in four. The mother bird has no knowledge
of this period. It is not important that she should
have. If the eggs are addled or sterile, she will often
continue to sit beyond the normal period. If the
continuance of the species depended upon her know-
ing the exact time required to hatch her eggs, as it
depends upon her having the incubating fever, of
course she would know exactly, and would never sit
beyond the required period.

But what shall we say of Mrs. Annie Martin's
story, in her " Home Life on an Ostrich Farm," of
the white-necked African crow that, in order to feast
upon the eggs of the ostrich, carries a stone high
in the air above them and breaks them by letting it
fall ? This looks like reason, a knowledge of the rela-
tion of cause and effect. Mrs. Martin says the crows
break tortoise-shells in the same way, and have I not
heard of our own crows and gulls carrying clams
and crabs into the air and dropping them upon the
rocks ?

135

WAYS OF NATURE

If Mrs. Martin's statements are literally true, —
if she has not the failing, so common among women
observers, of letting her feeling and her fancies color
her observations, — then her story shows how the
pressure of hunger will develop the wit of a crow.

But the story goes one step beyond my credence.
It virtually makes the crow a tool-using animal, and
Darwin knew of but two animals, the man-hke ape
and the elephant, that used anything like a tool or
weapon to attain their ends. How could the crow gain
the knowledge or the experience which this trick
implies ? What could induce it to make the first
experiment of breaking an egg with a falHng stone
but an acquaintance with physical laws such as man
alone possesses ? The first step in this chain of causa-
tion it is easy to conceive of any animal taking ;
namely, the direct application of its own powers or
weapons to the breaking of the shell. But the second
step, — the making use of a foreign substance or
object in the way described, — that is what staggers
one.

Our own crow has great cunning, but it is only
cunning. He is suspicious of everything that looks
like design, that suggests a trap, even a harmless
string stretched around a corn-field. As a natural
philosopher he makes a poor show, and the egg or the
shell that he cannot open with his own beak he leaves
beliind. Yet even his alleged method of dropping
clams upon the rocks to break the shells does not

136

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

seem incredible. He might easily drop a clam by
accident, and then, finding the shell broken, repeat
the experiment. He is still only taking the first step
in the sequence of causations.

A recent English nature-writer, on the whole, I
think, a good observer and truthful reporter, Mr.
Richard Kearton, tells of an osprey that did this
incredible thing: to prevent its eggs from being
harmed by an enforced exposure to the sun, the bird
plunged into the lake, then rose, and shook its drip-
ping plumage over the nest. The writer apparently
reports this story at second-hand. It is incredible
to me, because it imphes a knowledge that the hawk
could not possibly possess.

Such an emergency could hardly arise once in a
lifetime to it or its forbears. Hence the act could not
have been the result of inherited habit, or instinct,
and as an original act on the part of the osprey it is
not credible. The bird probably plunged into the
lake for a fish, and then by accident shook itself
above the eggs. In any case, the amount of water
that would fall upon the eggs under such circum-
stances would be too shght to temper appreciably
the heat.

There is little doubt that among certain of our
common birds the male, during periods of excessive
heat, has been known to shade the female with his
outstretched wings, and the mother bird to shade
her young in the same way. But this is a different

137

WAYS OF NATURE

matter. Tliis emergency must have occurred for ages,
and it, again, called only for the first step from cause
to effect, and called for the use of no intermediate
agent. If the robin were to hold a leaf or a branch
above his mate at such times, that would imply
reflection.

It is said that elephants in India will besmear
themselves with mud as a protection against insects,
and that they will break branches from the trees
and use them to brush away the flies. If this is true,
it shows, I tliink, something beyond instinct in the
elephant; it shows reflection.

All birds are secretive about their nests, and dis-
play great cunning in hiding them ; but whether they
know the value of adaptive material, such as moss,
lichens, and dried grass, in helping to conceal them,
admits of doubt, because they so often use the re-
sults of our own arts, as paper, rags, strings, tinsel,
in such a reckless way. In a perfectly wild state they
use natural material because it is the handiest and
there is really no other. The phoebe uses the moss
on or near the rocks where she builds ; the sparrows,
the bobolinks, and the meadowlarks use the dry
grass of the bank or of the meadow bottom where
the nest is placed.

The English writer to whom I have referred says
that the wren builds the outside of its nest of old hay
straws when placing it in the side of a rick, of green
moss when it is situated in a mossy bank, and of

138

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

dead leaves when in a hedge-row or a bramble-bush,
in each case thus rendering the nest very difficult of
detection because it harmonizes so perfectly with its
surroundings, and the writer wonders if this har-
mony is the result of accident or of design. He is
inclined to think that it is unpremeditated, as I my-
self do. The bird uses the material nearest to hand.

Another case, which this same writer gives at
second-hand, of a bird recognizing the value of pro-
tective coloration, is not credible. A friend of his
told him that he had once visited a colony of terns
"on an island where the natural breeding accom-
modation was so Hmited that many of them had
conveyed patches of pebbles on to the grass and laid
their eggs thereon."

Here is the same difficulty we have encountered
before — one more step of reasoning than the bird
is capable of. As a deduction from observed facts,
a bird, of course, knows nothing about protective
coloring ; its wisdom in this respect is the wisdom
of Nature, and Nature in animal hfe never acts with
this kind of foresight. A bird may exercise some
choice about the background of its nest, but it will
not make both nest and background.

Nature learns by endless experiment. Through a
long and expensive process of natural selection she
seems to have brought the color of certain animals
and the color of their environment pretty close
together, the better to hide the animals from their

139

WAYS OF NATURE

enemies and from their prey, as we are told ; but the
animals themselves do not know this, though they
may act as if they did. Young terns and gulls in-
stinctively squat upon the beach, where their colors
so harmonize with the sand and pebbles that the
birds are virtually invisible. Young partridges do
the same in the woods, where the eye cannot tell the
reddish tuft of down from the dry leaves. How many
gulls and terns and partridges were sacrificed before
Nature learned this trick!

I regard the lower animals as incapable of taking
the step from the fact to the principle. They have
perceptions, but not conceptions. They may recog-
nize a certain fact, but any deduction from that fact
to be applied to a different case, or to meet new
conditions, is beyond them. Wolves and foxes soon
learn to be afraid of poisoned meat : just what gives
them the hint it would be hard to say, as the sur-
vivors could not know the poison's deadly effect from
experience; their fear of it probably comes from
seeing their fellows suffer and die after eating it, or
maybe through that mysterious means of communi-
cation between animals to which I have referred in
a previous article. The poison probably changes the
odor of the meat, and this strange smell would
naturally put them on their guard.

We do not expect rats to succeed in putting a bell
on the cat, but if they were capable of conceiving
such a thing, that would establish their claim to be

140

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

regarded as reasonable beings. I should as soon
expect a fox or a wolf to make use of a trap to cap-
ture its prey as to make use of poison in any way.
Why does not the fox take a stick and spring the
trap he is so afraid of? Simply because the act
would involve a mental process beyond him. He has
not yet learned to use even the simplest implement
to attain his end. Then he would probably be just as
afraid of the trap after it was sprung as before. He
in some way associates it with his arch-enemy, man.

Such stories, too, as a chained fox or a coyote
getting possession of corn or other grain and bait-
ing the chickens with it — feigning sleep till the
chicken gets within reach, and then seizing it — are
of the same class, incredible because transcending
the inherited knowledge of those animals. I can
believe that a fox might walk in a shallow creek to
elude the hound, because he may inherit this kind
of cunning, and in his own experience he may have
come to associate loss of scent with water. Animals
stalk their prey, or lie in wait for it, instinctively, not
from a process of calculation, as man does. If a fox
would bait poultry with corn, why should he not, in
his wild state, bait mice and squirrels with nuts and
seeds ? Has a cat ever been known to bait a rat with
a piece of cheese ?

Animals seem to have a certain association of
ideas; one thing suggests another to them, as with
us. This fact is made use of by animal-trainers. I

141

WAYS OF NATURE

can easily believe the story Charles St. John tells of
the fox he saw waylaying some hares, and which,
to screen himself the more completely from his
quarry, scraped a small hollow in the ground and
threw up the sand about it. But if St. John had said
that the fox brought weeds or brush to make himself
a blind, as the hunter often does, I should have dis-
credited him, just as I discredit the observation of
a man quoted by Romanes, who says that jackals,
ambushing deer at the latter's watering-place, de-
liberately wait till the deer have filled themselves
with water, knowing that in that state they are more
easily run down and captured !

President Roosevelt, in " The Wilderness Hunter,"
— a book, by the way, of even deeper interest to the
naturalist than to the sportsman, — says that the
moose has to the hunter the " very provoking habit
of making a half or three-quarters circle before lying
down, and then crouching with its head so turned
that it can surely perceive any pursuer who may fol-
low its trail." This is the cunning of the moose
developed through long generations of its hunted
and wolf -pursued ancestors, — a cunning that does
not differ from that of a man under the same circum-
stances, though, of course, it is not the result of the
same process of reasoning.

I have known a chipping sparrow to build her nest
on a grape-vine just beneath a bunch of small green
grapes. Soon the bunch grew and lengthened and

142

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

filled the nest, crowding out the bird. If the bird
could have foreseen the danger, she would have
shown something like human reason.

Birds that nest along streams, such as the water-
thrush and the water-ouzel, I suppose are rarely
ever brought to grief by high water. They have
learned through many generations to keep at a safe
distance. I have never known a woodpecker to drill
its nesting-cavity in a branch or limb that was ready
to fall. Not that woodpeckers look the branch or tree
over with a view to its stability, but that they will cut
into a tree only of a certain hardness ; it is a family
instinct. Birds sometimes make the mistake of
building their nests on slender branches that a sum-
mer tempest will turn over, thus causing the eggs or
the young to spill upon the ground. Even instinct
cannot always get ahead of the weather.

It is almost impossible for us not to interpret the
lives of the lower animals in the terms of our own
experience and our own psychology. I entirely agree
with Lloyd Morgan that we err when we do so,
when we attribute to them what we call sentiments
or any of the emotions that spring from our moral
and aesthetic natures, — the sentiments of justice,
truth, beauty, altruism, goodness, duty, and the
like, — because these sentiments are the products
of concepts and ideas to which the brute natures
are strangers. But all the emotions of our animal
nature — fear, anger, curiosity, local attachment,

143

WAYS OF NATURE

jealousy, and rivalry — are undoubtedly the same
in the lower orders.

Though almost anything may be affirmed of dogs,
for they are nearly half human, yet I doubt if even
dogs experience the feeling of shame or guilt or
revenge that we so often ascribe to them. These
feelings are all complex and have a deep root. When
I was a youth, my father had a big churn-dog that
appeared one morning with a small bullet-hole in
his hip. Day after day the old dog treated his
wound with his tongue, after the manner of dogs,
until it healed, and the incident was nearly forgotten.
One day a man was going by on horseback, when
the old dog rushed out, sprang at the man, and came
near pulling him from the horse. It turned out that
this was the person who had shot the dog, and the
dog recognized him.

This looks Hke revenge, and it would have been
such in you or me, but in the dog it was probably
simple anger at the sight of the man who had hurt
him. The incident shows memory and the asso-
ciation of impressions, but the complex feeling of
vengeance, as we know it, is another matter.

If animals do not share our higher intellectual
nature, we have no warrant for attributing to them
anything like our higher and more complex emo-
tional nature. Musical strains seem to give them
pain rather than pleasure, and it is quite evident that
pei-fumes have no attraction for them.

144

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

The stories, which seem to be well authenticated,
of sheep-killing dogs that have slipped their collars
in the night and indulged their passion for live mut-
ton, and then returned and thrust their necks into
their collars before their absence was discovered, do
not, to my mind, prove that the dogs were trying to
deceive their masters and conceal their guilt, but
rather show how obedient to the chain and collar
the dogs had become. They had long been subject
to such control and discipline, and they returned to
them again from the mere force of habit.

I do not believe even the dog to be capable of a
sense of guilt. Such a sense implies a sense of duty,
and this is a complex ethical sense that the animals
do not experience. What the dog fears, and what
makes him put on his look of guilt and shame, is his
master's anger. A harsh word or a severe look will
make him assume the air of a culprit whether he is
one or not, and, on the other hand, a kind word and
a reassuring smile will transform him into a happy
beast, no matter if the blood of his victim is fresh
upon him.

A dog is to be broken of a bad habit, if at all, not
by an appeal to his conscience or to his sense of
duty, for he has neither, but by an appeal to his
susceptibility to pain.

Both Pliny and Plutarch tell the story of an ele-
phant which, having been beaten by its trainer for
its poor dancing, was afterward found all by itself

145

WAYS OF NATURE

practicing its steps by the light of the moon. This is
just as credible as many of the animal stories one
hears nowadays.

Many of the actions of the lower animals are as
automatic as those of the tin rooster that serves as
a weather-vane. See how intelhgently the rooster
acts, always pointing the direction of the wind with-
out a moment's hesitation. Or behold the vessel
anchored in the harbor, how intelligently it adjusts
itself to the winds and the tides ! I have seen a log,
caught in an eddy in a flooded stream, apparently
make such struggles to escape that the thing became
almost uncanny in its semblance to life. Man him-
self often obeys just such unseen currents of race or
history when he thinks he is acting upon his own
initiative.

When I was in Alaska, I saw precipices down
which hundreds of horses had dashed themselves in
their mad and desperate efforts to escape from the
toil and suffering they underwent on the White Pass
trail. Shall we say these horses deliberately com-
mitted suicide ? Suicide it certainly was in effect, but
of course not in intention. What does or can a horse
know about death, or about self-destruction ? These
animals were maddened by their hardships, and
blindly plunged down the rocks.

The tendency to humanize the animals is more
and more marked in all recent nature books that aim
at popularity. A recent British book on animal life

146

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

has a chapter entitled "Animal Materia Medica."
The writer, to make out his case, is forced to treat
as medicine the salt which the herbivorous am'mals
eat, and the sand and gravel which grain and nut-
eating birds take into their gizzards to act as mill-
stones to grind their grist. He might as well treat
their food as medicine and be done with it. So far
as I know, animals have no remedies whatever for
their ailments. Even savages have, for the most
part, only "fake" medicines.

A Frenchman has published a book, which has
been translated into English, on the " Industries of
Animals." Some of these Frenchmen could give
points even to our "Modern School of Nature
Study." It may be remembered that Michelet said
the bird floated, and that it could puff itself up so
that it was lighter than the air ! Not a little contem-
porary natural science can beat the bird in this
respect.

The serious student of nature can have no interest
in belittling or in exaggerating the intelligence of
animals. What he wants is the truth about them,
and this he will not get from our natural history
romancers, nor from the casual, untrained observers,
who are sure to interpret the lives of the wood-folk
in terms of their own motives and experiences, nor
from Indians, trappers, or backwoodsmen, who give
such free rein to their fancies and superstitions.

Such a book as Romanes's " Animal Intelligence "

147

WAYS OF NATURE

is not always a safe guide. It is like a lawyer's plea
to the jury for his client. Romanes was so intent
upon making out his case that he allowed himself
to be imposed upon by the tales of irresponsible
observers. Many of his stories of the intelhgence of
birds and beasts are antecedently improbable. He
evidently credits the story of the Bishop of Carlisle,
who thinks he saw a jackdaw being tried by a jury of
rooks for some misdemeanor. Jack made a speech
and the jury cawed back at him, and after a time
appeared to acquit Jack! What a child's fancy to
be put in a serious work on " Animal Intelhgence " !
The dead birds we now and then find hanging from
the nest, or from the limb of a tree, with a string
wound around their necks are no doubt criminals
upon whom their fellows have inflicted capital pun-
ishment !

Most of the observations upon which Romanes
bases his conclusions are like the incident which he
quoted from Jesse, who tells of some swallows that
in the spirit of revenge tore down a nest from which
they had been ejected by the sparrows, in order to
destroy the young of their enemies — a feat im-
possible for swallows to do. Jesse does not say he
saw the swallows do it, but he " saw the young spar-
rows dead upon the ground amid the ruins of the
nest," and of course the nest could get down in no
other way!

Not to Romanes or Jesse or Michelet must we go

148

WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW?

for the truth about animals, but to the patient, hon-
est Darwin, to such calm, keen, and philosophical
investigators as Lloyd Morgan, and to the books of
such sportsmen as Charles St. John, or to our own
candid, trained, and many-sided Theodore Roose-
velt, — men capable of disinterested observation,
with no theories about animals to uphold.

IX

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

WHEN we see the animals going about, living
their lives in many ways as we live ours,
seeking their food, avoiding their enemies, building
their nests, digging their holes, laying up stores,
migrating, courting, playing, fighting, showing cun-
ning, courage, fear, joy, anger, rivalry, grief, profit-
ing by experience, following their leaders, — when
we see all this, I say, what more natural than that we
should ascribe to them powers akin to our own, and
look upon them as thinking, reasoning, and reflect-
ing. A hasty survey of animal life is sure to lead to
this conclusion. An animal is not a clod, nor a block,
nor a machine. It is alive and self-directing, it has
some sort of psychic life, yet the more I study the
subject, the more I am persuaded that with the
probable exception of the dog on occasions, and of
the apes, animals do not think or reflect in any proper
sense of those words. As I have before said, animal
life shows in an active and free state that kind of
intelligence that pervades and governs the whole
organic world, — intelligence that takes no thought
of itself. Here, in front of my window, is a black

151

WAYS OF NATURE

raspberry bush. A few weeks ago its branches
curved upward, with their ends swinging fully two
feet above the ground; now those ends are thrust
down through the weeds and are fast rooted to
the soil. Did the raspberry bush think, or choose
what it should do ? Did it reflect and say, Now
is the time for me to bend down and thrust my tip
into the ground ? To all intents and purposes yes,
yet there was no voluntary mental process, as in
similar acts of our own. We say its nature prompts
it to act thus and thus, and that is all the explana-
tion we can give. Or take the case of the pine or the
spruce tree that loses its central and leading shoot.
When this happens, does the tree start a new bud
and then develop a new shoot to take the place of
the lost leader ? No, a branch from the first ring of
branches below, probably the most vigorous of the
whorl, is promoted to the leadership. Slowly it rises
up, and in two or three years it reaches the upright
position and is leading the tree upward. This, I
suspect, is just as much an act of conscious intelli-
gence and of reason as is much to which we are
so inclined to apply those words in animal life. I
suppose it is all foreordained in the economy of
the tree, if we could penetrate that economy. It is
in this sense that Nature thinks in the animal, and
the vegetable, and the mineral worlds. Her think-
ing is more flexible and adaptive in the vegetable
than in the mineral, and more so in the animal

152

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

than in the vegetable, and the most so of all in the
mind of man.

The way the wild apple trees and the red thorn
trees in the pasture, as described by Thoreau, tri-
umph over the cattle that year after year browse
them down, suggests something almost hke human
tactics. The cropped and bruised tree, not being
allowed to shoot upward, spreads more and more
laterally, thus pushing its enemies farther and
farther away, till, after many years, a shoot starts up
from the top of the thorny, knotted cone, and in one
season, protected by this cheval-de-frise, attains a
height beyond the reach of the cattle, and the victory
is won. Now the whole push of the large root system
goes into the central shoot and the tree is rapidly
developed.

This almost looks like a well-laid scheme on the
part of the tree to defeat its enemies. But see how
inevitable the whole process is. Check the direct
flow of a current and it will flow out at the sides ;
check the side issues and they will push out on their
sides, and so on. So it is with the tree or seedhng.
The more it is cropped, the more it branches and
rebranches, pushing out laterally as its vertical
growth is checked, till it has surrounded the central
stalk on all sides with a dense, thorny hedge. Then
as this stalk is no longer cropped, it leads the
tree upward. The lateral branches are starved, and
in a few years the tree stands with little or no evi-

153

WAYS OF NATURE

dence of the ordeal it has passed through. In like
manner the nature of the animals prompts them to
the deeds they do, and we think of them as the
result of a mental process, because similar acts in
ourselves are the result of such a process.

See how the mice begin to press into our buildings
as the fall comes on. Do they know winter is com-
ing ? In the same way the vegetable world knows
it is coming when it prepares for winter, or the insect
world when it makes ready, but not as you and I
know it. The woodchuck "holes up" in late Sep-
tember ; the crows flock and select their rookery
about the same time, and the small wood newts or
salamanders soon begin to migrate to the marshes.
They all know winter is coming, just as much as
the tree knows, when in August it forms its new
buds for the next year, or as the flower knows that
its color and perfume will attract the insects, and
no more. The general intelligence of nature settles
all these and similar things.

When a bird selects a site for its nest, it seems, on
first view, as if it must actually think, reflect, com-
pare, as you and I do when we decide where to place
our house. I saw a little chipping sparrow trying
to decide between two raspberry bushes. She kept
going from one to the other, peering, inspecting, and
apparently weighing the advantages of each. I saw a
robin in the woodbine on the side of the house try-
ing to decide which particular place was the best site

154

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

for her nest. She hopped to this tangle of shoots and
sat down, then to that, she turned around, she re-
adjusted herself, she looked about, she worked her
feet beneath her, she was slow in making up her
mind. Did she make up her mind ? Did she think,
compare, weigh ? I do not believe it. When she
found the right conditions, she no doubt felt pleasure
and satisfaction, and that settled the question. An
inward, instinctive want was met and satisfied by an
outward material condition. In the same way the
hermit crab goes from shell to shell upon the beach,
seeking one to its liking. Sometimes two crabs fall
to fighting over a shell that each wants. Can we
believe that the hermit crab thinks and reasons ? It
selects the suitable shell instinctively, and not by an
individual act of judgment. Instinct is not always
inerrant, though it makes fewer mistakes than reason
does. The red squirrel usually knows how to come
at the meat in the butternut with the least gnawing,
but now and then he makes a mistake and strikes the
edge of the kernel, instead of the flat side. The cliff
swallow will stick her mud nest under the eaves of a
barn where the boards are planed so smooth that the
nest sooner or later is bound to fall. She seems to
have no judgment in the matter. Her ancestors built
upon the face of high cliffs, where the mud adhered
more firmly.

A wood thrush began a nest in one of my maples,
as usual making the foundation of dry leaves, bits

155

WAYS OF NATURE

of paper, and dry grass. After the third day the site
on the branch was bare, the wind having swept
away every vestige of the nest. As I passed beneath
the tree I saw the thrush standing where the nest
had been, apparently in deep thought. A few days
afterward I looked again, and the nest was com-
pleted. The bird had got ahead of the wind at
last. The nesting -instinct had triumphed over the
weather.

Take the case of the little yellow warbler when
the cowbird drops her egg into its nest — does any-
thing like a process of thought or reflection pass in
the bird's mind then ? The warbler is much dis-
turbed when she discovers the strange egg, and her
mate appears to share her agitation. Then after a
time, and after the two have apparently considered
the matter together, the mother bird proceeds to
bury the egg by building another nest on top of the
old one. If another cowbird's egg is dropped in this
one, she will proceed to get rid of this in the same
way. This all looks very like reflection. But let us
consider the matter a moment. This thing between
the cowbird and the warbler has been going on for
innumerable generations. The yellow warbler
seems to be the favorite host of this parasite, and
something like a special instinct may have grown up
in the warbler with reference to this strange egg.
The bird reacts, as the psychologists say, at sight of
it, then she proceeds to dispose of it in the way

156

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

above described. All yellow warblers act in the same
manner, which is the way of instinct. Now if this
procedure was the result of an individual thought
or calculation on the part of the birds, they would
not all do the same thing ; different lines of conduct
would be hit upon. How much simpler and easier
it would be to throw the egg out — how much more
hke an act of rational intelligence. So far as I know,
no bird does eject this parasitical eggy and no other
bird besides the yellow warbler gets rid of it in
the way I have described. I have found a deserted
phoebe's nest with one egg of the phoebe and one of
the cowbird in it.

Some of our wild birds have changed their habits
of nesting, coming from the woods and the rocks to
the protection of our buildings. The phoebe-bird
and the cliif swallow are marked examples. We
ascribe the change to the birds' intelligence, but to
my mind it shows only their natural adaptiveness.
Take the cliff swallow, for instance; it has largely
left the cHffs for the eaves of our buildings. How nat-
urally and instinctively this change has come about !
In an open farming country insect life is much more
varied and abundant than in a wild, unsettled coun-
try. This greater food supply naturally attracts the
swallows. Then the protecting eaves of the buildings
would stimulate their nesting-instincts. The abun-
dance of mud along the highways and about the
farm would also no doubt have its effect, and the

157

WAYS OF NATURE

birds would adopt the new sites as a matter of course.
Or take the phoebe, which originally built its nest
under ledges, and does so still to some extent. It,
too, would find a more abundant food supply in the
vicinity of farm-buildings and bridges. The pro-
tected nesting-sites afforded by sheds and porches
would likewise stimulate its nesting-instincts, and
attract the bird as we see it attracted each spring.

Nearly everything an animal does is the result of
an inborn instinct acted upon by an outward stimu-
lus. The margin wherein intelligent choice plays a
part is very small. But it does at times play a part
— perceptive intelligence, but not rational intelli-
gence. The insects do many things that look like in-
telligence, yet how these things differ from human
intelligence may be seen in the case of one of our soli-
tary wasps, — the mud-dauber, — which sometimes
builds its cell with great labor, then seals it up with-
out laying its egg and storing it with the accustomed
spiders. Intelligence never makes that kind of a
mistake, but instinct does. Instinct acts more in
the invariable way of a machine. Certain of the
solitary wasps bring their game — spider, or bug,
or grasshopper — and place it just at the entrance
of their hole, and then go into their den apparently
to see that all is right before they carry it in.

Fabre, the French naturalist, experimented with
one of these wasps, as follows : While the wasp was
in its den he moved its grasshopper a few inches

158

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

away. The wasp came out, brought it to the open-
ing as before, and went within a second time ; again
the game was removed, again the wasp came out
and brought it back and entered her nest as before.
This little comedy was repeated over and over ;
each time the wasp felt compelled to enter her hole
before dragging in the grasshopper. She was like
a machine that would work that way and no other.
Step must follow step in just such order. Any inter-
ruption of the regular method and she must begin
over again. This is instinct, and the incident shows
how widely it differs from conscious intelligence.

If you have a tame chipmunk, turn him loose
in an empty room and give him some nuts. Find-
ing no place to hide them, he will doubtless carry
them into a comer and pretend to cover them up.
You will see his paws move quickly about them for
an instant as if in the act of pulhng leaves or mould
over them. His machine, too, must work in that way.
After the nuts have been laid down, the next thing
in order is to cover them, and he makes the motions
all in due form. Intelligence would have omitted
this useless act.

A canary-bird in its cage will go through all the
motions of taldng a bath in front of the cup that
holds its drinking-water when it can only dip its bill
into the hquid. The sight or touch of the water ex-^
cites it and sets it going, and with now and then a
drop thrown from its beak it will keep up the flirting

159

WAYS OF NATURE

and fluttering motion of its tail and wings precisely
as if taking a real instead of an imaginary bath.

Attempt to thwart the nesting-instinct in a bird
and see how persistent it is, and how blind! One
spring a pair of English sparrows tried to build a
nest on the plate that upholds the roof of my porch.
They were apparently attracted by an opening about
an inch wide in the top of the plate, that ran the
whole length of it. The pair were busy nearly the
whole month of April in carrying nesting-material
to various points ori that plate. That big crack or
opening which was not large enough to admit their
bodies seemed to have a powerful fascination for
them. They carried straws and weed stalks and
filled up one portion of it, and then another and
another, till the crack was packed with rubbish from
one end of the porch to the other, and the indignant
broom of the housekeeper grew tired of sweeping
up the litter. The birds could not effect an entrance
into the interior of the plate, but they could thrust
in their nesting- material, and so they persisted week
after week, stimulated by the presence of a cavity
beyond their reach. The case is a good illustration
of the bUnd working of instinct.

Animals have keen perceptions, — keener in many
respects than our own, — but they form no concep-
tions, have no powers of comparing one thing with
another. They live entirely in and through their
senses.

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DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

It is as if the psychic world were divided into two
planes, one above the other, — the plane of sense and
the plane of spirit. In the plane of sense live the
lower animals, only now and then just breaking for
a moment into the higher plane. In the world of
sense man is immersed also — this is his start and
foundation ; but he rises into the plane of spirit, and
here lives his proper life. He is emancipated from
sense in a way that beasts are not.

Thus, I think, the line between animal and human
psychology may be pretty clearly drawn. It is not
a dead-level hne. Instinct is undoubtedly often
modified by intelhgence, and intelligence is as often
guided or prompted by instinct, but one need not
hesitate long as to which side of the line any given
act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts
to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if
he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of
intelligence, — the lower form which we call cun-
ning, — and he is prompted to this by an instinct
of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue and
cry about a hawk or an owl, or boldly attack him,
they show intelligence in its simpler form, the intel-
hgence that recognizes its enemies, prompted again
by the instinct of self-preservation. When a hawk
does not know a man on horseback from a horse, it
shows a want of intelligence. When a crow is kept
away from a corn-field by a string stretched around
it, the fact shows how masterful is its fear and how

161

WAYS OF NATURE

shallow its wit. When a cat or a dog, or a horse or
a cow, learns to open a gate or a door, it shows a
degree of intelligence — power to imitate, to profit
by experience. A machine could not learn to do
this. If the animal were to close the door or gate be-
hind it, that would be another step in intelligence.
But its direct wants have no relation to the closing
of the door, only to the opening of it. To close the
door involves an after-thought that an animal is not
capable of. A horse will hesitate to go upon thin ice
or upon a frail bridge, even though it has never had
any experience with thin ice or frail bridges. This,
no doubt, is an inherited instinct, which has arisen
in its ancestors from their fund of general experience
with the world. How much with them has depended
upon a secure footing! A pair of house wrens had
a nest in my well-curb ; when the young were partly
grown and heard any one come to the curb, they
would set up a clamorous calling for food. When I
scratched against the sides of the curb beneath them
like some animal trying to climb up, their voices
instantly hushed; the instinct of fear promptly
overcame the instinct of hunger. Instinct is intelli-
gent, but it is not the same as acquired individual
intelligence; it is untaught.

When the nuthatch carries a fragment of a hick-
ory-nut to a tree and wedges it into a crevice in the
bark, the bird is not showing an individual act of
inteUigence : all nuthatches do this ; it is a race

162

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

instinct. The act shows intelligence, — that is, it
adapts means to an end, — but it is not like human
or individual intelligence, which adapts new means
to old ends, or old means to new ends, and which
springs up on the occasion. Jays and chickadees
hold the nut or seed they would peck under the foot,
but the nuthatch makes a vise to hold it of the bark
of the tree, and one act is just as intelligent as the
other; both are the promptings of instinct. But
when man makes a vise, or a wedge, or a bootjack,
he uses his individual intelhgence. When the jay
carries away the corn you put out in winter and
hides it in old worms' nests and knot-holes and
crevices in trees, he is obeying the instinct of all
his tribe to pilfer and hide things, — an instinct
that plays its part in the economy of nature, as by
its means many acorns and chestnuts get planted
and large seeds widely disseminated. By this greed
of the jay the wingless nuts take flight, oaks are
planted amid the pines, and chestnuts amid the
hemlocks.

Speaking of nuts reminds me of an incident I
read of the deer or white-footed mouse — an in-
cident that throws light on the limitation of animal
intelhgence. The writer gave the mouse hickory-
nuts, which it attempted to cany through a crack
between the laths in the kitchen wall. The nuts
were too large to go through the crack. The mouse
would try to push them through ; failing in that, he

163

WAYS OF NATURE

would go through and then try to pull them after
him. All night he or his companion seems to have
kept up this futile attempt, fumbling and dropping
the nut every few minutes. It never occurred to the
mouse to gnaw the hole larger, as it would instantly
have done had the hole been too small to admit its
own body. It could not project its mind thus far;
it could not get out of itself sufficiently to regard
the nut in its relation to the hole, and it is doubtful
if any four-footed animal is capable of that degree
of reflection and comparison. Nothing in its own
life or in the life of its ancestors had prepared it to
meet that Idnd of a difficulty with nuts. And yet
the writer who made the above observation says
that when confined in a box, the sides of which are
of unequal thickness, the deer mouse, on attempt-
ing to gnaw out, almost invariably attacks the thin-
nest side. How does he know which is the thinnest
side?- Probably by a delicate and trained sense of
feehng or hearing. In gnawing through obstruc-
tions from within, or from without, he and his kind
have had ample experience.

Now when we come to insects, we find that the
above inferences do not hold. It has been observed
that when a solitary wasp finds its hole in the ground
too small to admit the spider or other insect which
it has brought, it falls to and enlarges it. In this
and in other respects certain insects seem to take
the step of reason that quadrupeds are incapable of.

164

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

Lloyd Morgan relates at some length the experi-
ments he tried with his fox terrier, Tony, seeking to
teach him how to bring a stick through a fence with
vertical palings. The spaces would allow the dog
to pass through, but the palings caught the ends of
the stick which the dog carried in his mouth. When
his master encouraged him, he pushed and strug-
gled vigorously. Not succeeding, he went back,
lay down, and began gnawing the stick. Then he
tried again, and stuck as before, but by a chance
movement of his head to one side finally got the
stick through. His master patted him approvingly
and sent him for the stick again. Again he seized
it by the middle, and of course brought up against
the palings. After some struggles he dropped it
and came through without it. Then, encouraged
by his master, he put his head through, seized the
stick, and tried to pull it through, dancing up and
down in his endeavors. Time after time and day
after day the experiment was repeated with prac-
tically the same results. The dog never mastered
the problem. He could not see the relation of that
stick to the opening in the fence. At one time he
worked and tugged three minutes trying to pull the
stick through. Of course, if he had had any mental
conception of the problem or had thought about it
at all, a single trial would have convinced him as
well as would a dozen trials. Mr. Morgan tried the
experiment ^dth other dogs with like result. When

165

WAYS OF NATURE

they did get the stick through, it was always by
chance.

It has never been necessary that the dog or his
ancestors should know how to fetch long sticks
through a narrow opening in a fence. Hence he
does not know the trick of it. But we have a httle
bird that knows the trick. The house wren will
carry a twig three inches long through a hole of
half that diameter. She knows how to manage it
because the wren tribe have handled twigs so long
in building their nests that this knowledge has
become a family instinct.

What we call the intelligence of animals is limited
for the most part to sense perception and sense
memory. We teach them certain things, train them
to do tricks quite beyond the range of their natural
intelhgence, not because we enlighten their minds
or develop their reason, but mainly by the force of
habit. Through repetition the act becomes auto-
matic. Who ever saw a trained animal, unless it be
the elephant, do anything that betrayed the least
spark of conscious intelhgence ? The trained pig, or
the trained dog, or the trained Hon does its" stunt"
precisely as a machine would do it — without any
more appreciation of what it is doing. The trainer
and pubhc performer find that things must always
be done in the same fixed order; any change, any-
thing unusual, any strange sound, Hght, color, or
movement, and trouble at once ensues.

166

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

I read of a beaver that cut down a tree which
was held in such a way that it did not fall, but sim-
ply dropped down the height of the stump. The
beaver cut it off again; again it dropped and re-
fused to fall ; he cut it off a third and a fourth time :
still the tree stood. Then he gave it up. Now, so
far as I can see, the only independent intelligence
the animal showed was when it ceased to cut off the
tree. Had it been a complete automaton, it would
have gone on cutting — would it not ? — till it made
stove-wood of the whole tree. It was confronted
by a new problem, and after a while it took the
hint. Of course it did not understand what was the
matter, as you and I would have, but it evidently
concluded that something was wrong. Was this of
itself an act of intelligence ? Though it may be that
its ceasing to cut off the tree was simply the result
of discouragement, and involved no mental con-
clusion at all. It is a new problem, a new condition,
that tests an animal's intelligence. How long it
takes a caged bird or beast to learn that it cannot
escape! What a man would see at a glance it takes
weeks or months to pound into the captive bird, or
squirrel, or coon. When the prisoner ceases to strug-
gle, it is probably not because it has at last come to
understand the situation, but because it is discour-
aged. It is checked, but not enlightened.

Even so careful an observer as Gilbert White
credits the swallow with an act of judgment to

167

WAYS OF NATURE

which it is not entitled. He says that in order that
the mud nest may not advance too rapidly and so
fall of its own weight, the bird works at it only in the
morning, and plays and feeds the rest of the day,
thus giving the mud a chance to harden. Had not
the genial parson observed that this is the practice
of all birds during nest-building — that they work
in the early morning hours and feed and amuse
themselves the rest of the day ? In the case of the
mud-builders, this interim of course gives the mud
a chance to harden, but are we justified in crediting
them with this forethought ? ■

Such skill and intelligence as a bird seems to dis-
play in the building of its nest, and yet at times
such stupidity ! I have known a phcebe-bird to start
four nests at once, and work more or less upon all
of them. She had deserted the ancestral sites under
the shelving rocks and come to a new porch, upon
the plate of which she started her four nests. She
blundered because her race had had Httle or no
experience with porches. There were four or more
places upon the plate just alike, and whichever
one of these she chanced to strike with her loaded
beak she regarded as the right one. Her instinct
served her up to a certain point, but it did not
enable her to discriminate between those rafters.
Where a little original intelligence should have
come into play she was deficient. Her progenitors
had built under rocks where there was little chance

168

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLCT?

for mistakes of this sort, and they had learned
through ages of experience to blend the nest with
its surroundings, by the use of moss, the better to
conceal it. My phoebe brought her moss to the new
timbers of the porch, where it had precisely the
opposite effect to what it had under the gray mossy
rocks.

I was amused at the case of a robin that recently
came to my knowledge. The bird built its nest in
the south end of a rude shed that covered a table at
a railroad terminus upon which a locomotive was
frequently turned. When her end of the shed was
turned to the north she built another nest in the
temporary south end, and as the reversal of the
shed ends continued from day to day, she soon had
two nests with two sets of eggs. When I last heard
from her, she was consistently sitting on that par-
ticular nest which happened to be for the time be-
ing in the end of the shed facing toward the south.
The bewildered bird evidently had had no experi-
ence with the tricks of turn-tables !

An intelligent man once told me that crabs could
reason, and this was his proof : In hunting for crabs
in shallow water, he found one that had just cast
its shell, but the crab put up just as brave a fight
as ever, though of course it was powerless to inflict
any pain; as soon as the creature found that its
bluff game did not work, it offered no further re-
sistance. Now I should as soon say a wasp rea-

169

WAYS OF NATURE

soned because a stingless drone, or male, when you
capture him, will make all the motions with its
body, curving and thrusting, that its sting-equipped
fellows do. This action is from an inherited in-
stinct, and is purely automatic. The wasp is not
putting up a bluff game; it is really trying to sting
you, but has not the weapon. The shell-less crab
quickly reacts at your approach, as is its nature
to do, and then quickly ceases its defense because
in its enfeebled condition the impulse of defense
is feeble also. Its surrender was on physiological,
not upon rational grounds.

Thus do we without thinking impute the higher
faculties to even the lowest forms of animal Hfe.
Much in our own Hves is purely automatic — the
quick reaction to appropriate stimuh, as when we
ward off a blow, or dodge a missile, or make our-
selves agreeable to the opposite sex ; and much
also is inherited or unconsciously imitative.

Because man, then, is half animal, shall we say
that the animal is half man ? This seems to be the
logic of some people. The animal man, while re-
taining much of his animahty, has evolved from it
higher faculties and attributes, while our four-footed
kindred have not thus progressed.

Man is undoubtedly of animal origin, but his
rise occurred when the principle of variation was
much more active, when the forms and forces of
nature were much more youthful and plastic, when

170

DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT?

the seething and fermenting of the vital fluids were
at a high pitch in the far past, and it was high tide
with the creative impulse. The world is aging, and,
no doubt, the power of initiative in Nature is be-
coming less and less. I think it safe to say that the
worm no longer aspires to be man.

X

A PINCH OF SALT

PROBABLY I have become unusually cautious
of late about accepting offhand all I read in
print on subjects of natural history. I take much of
it with a Hberal pinch of salt. Newspaper reading
tends to make one cautious — and who does not
read newspapers in these days ? One of my critics
says, apropos of certain recent strictures of mine
upon some current nature writers, that I discredit
whatever I have not myself seen; that I belong to
that class of observers "whose view-point is nar-
rowed to the limit of their own personal experience.'*
This were a grievous fault if it were true, so much
we have to take upon trust in natural history as well
as in other history, and in life in general. "Mr.
Burroughs might have remembered," says another
critic discussing the same subject, "that nobody
has seen quite so many things as everybody." How
true ! If I have ever been guilty of denying the truth
of what everybody has seen, my critic has just
ground for complaint. I was conscious, in the paper
referred to,^ of denying only the truth of certain

1 Atlantic Monthly, March, 1903.
173

WAYS OF NATURE

things that one man alone had reported having
seen, — things so at variance not only with my own
observations, but with those of all other observers
and with the fundamental principles of animal psy-
chology, that my " will to beheve," always easy to
move, balked and refused to take a step.

In matters of belief in any field, it is certain that
the scientific method, the method of proof, is not of
equal favor with all minds. Some persons believe
what they can or must, others what they would. One
person accepts what agrees with his reason and
experience, another what is agreeable to his or
her fancy. The grounds of probability count much
with me ; the tone and quality of the witness count
for much. Does he ring true.'' Is his eye single?
Does he see out of the back of his head ^ — that is,
does he see on more than one side of a thing .'^ Is
he in love with the truth, or with the strange, the
bizarre ? Last of all, my own experience comes in
to correct or to modify the observations of others.
If what you report is antecedently improbable, I
shall want concrete proof before accepting it, and
I shall cross-question your witness sharply. If you
tell me you have seen apples and acorns, or pears
and plums, growing upon the same tree, I shall dis-
credit you. The thing has never been known and
is contrary to nature. But if you tell me you have
seen a peach tree bearing nectarines, or have known
a nectarine-stone to produce a peach tree, I shall

174

A PINCH OF SALT

still want to cross-question you sharply, but I may
believe you. Such things have happened. Or if
you tell me that you have seen an old doe with
horns, or a hen with spurs, or a male bird incubat-
ing and singing on the nest, unusual as the last
occurrence is, I shall not dispute you. I will concede
that you may have seen a white crow or a white
blackbird or a white robin, or a black chipmunk
or a black red squirrel, and many other departures
from the usual in animal life ; but I cannot share the
conviction of the man who told me he had seen a
red squirrel curing rye before storing it up in its
den, or of the writer who believes the fox will ride
upon the back of a sheep to escape the hound, or
of another writer that he has seen the blue heron
chumming for fish. Even if you aver that you
have seen a woodpecker running down the trunk
of a tree as well as up, I shall be sure you have
not seen correctly. It is the nuthatch and not the
woodpecker that hops up and down and around
the trees. It is easy to transcend any man's experi-
ence; not so easy to transcend his reason. " Nobody
has seen so many things as everybody," yet a dozen
men cannot see any farther than one, and the truth
is not often a matter of majorities. If you tell me
any incident in the hfe of bird or beast that implies
the possession of what we mean by reason, I shall
be very skeptical.

Am I guilty, then, as has been charged, of pre-

175

WAYS OF NATURE

ferring the deductive method of reasoning to the
more modern and more scientific inductive method ?
But I doubt if the inductive method would avail
one in trying to prove that the old cow really jumped
over the moon. We do deny certain things upon
general principles, and affirm others. I do not
believe that a rooster ever laid an egg, or that a
male tiger ever gave milk. If your alleged fact con-
tradicts fundamental principles, I shall beware of
it; if it contradicts universal experience, I shall
probe it thoroughly. A college professor wrote me
that he had seen a crow blackbird catch a small
fish and fly away with it in its beak. Now I have
never seen anything of the kind, but I know of no
principle upon which I should feel disposed to
question the truth of such an assertion. I have
myself seen a crow blackbird kill an English spar-
row. Both proceedings I think are very unusual,
but neither is antecedently improbable. If the pro-
fessor had said that he saw the blackbird dive head
first into the water for the fish, after the manner of
the kingfisher, I should have been very skeptical.
He only saw the bird rise up from the edge of the
water with the wriggling fish in its mouth. It had
doubtless seized it in shallow water near the shore.
But I should discredit upon general principles the
statement of the woman who related with much de-
tail how she and her whole family had seen a pair
"of small brown birds" carry their half -fledged

176

A PINCH OF SALT

young from their nest in a low busli, where there
was danger from cats, to a new nest which they had
just finished in the top of a near-by tree! Could
any person who knows the birds credit such a tale ?
The bank-teller throws out the counterfeit coin or
bill because his practiced eye and touch detect the
fraud at once. On similar grounds the experienced
observer rejects all such stories as the above. Dar-
win quotes an authority for the statement that our
ruffed grouse makes its drumming sound by striking
its wings together over its back. A recent writer
says the sound is not made with the wings at all,
but is made with the voice, just as a rooster crows.
Every woodsman knows that neither statement is
true, and he knows it, not on general principles, but
from experience — he has seen the grouse drum.

Birds that are not flycatchers sometimes take
insects in the air; they do it clumsily, but they get the
bug. On the other hand, flycatchers sometimes eat
fruit. I have seen the kingbird carry off raspber-
ries. ^All such facts are matters of observation. In
the search for truth we employ both the deductive
and the inductive methods; we deduce principles
from facts, and we test alleged facts by principles.

The other day an intelligent woman told me this
about a canary-bird : The bird had a nest with
young in the corner of her cage ; near by were some
other birds in a cage — I forget what they were;
they had a full view of all the domestic affairs of the

177

WAYS OF NATURE

canary. This publicity she evidently did not like, for
she tore out of the paper that covered the bottom of
her cage a piece as large as one's hand and wove it
into the wires so as to make a screen against her
inquisitive neighbors. My informant evidently be-
lieved this story. It was agreeable to her fancies and
feelings. But see the difficulties in the way. How
could the bird with its beak tear out a broad piece
of paper ? then, how could it weave it into the wires
of its cage? Furthermore, the family of birds to
which the canary belongs are not weavers ; they
build cup-shaped nests, and they have had no use
for screens or covers, and they never have made
them. Just what was the truth about the matter I
cannot say, but if we know anything about animal
psychology, we know that was not the truth. It is
always risky to attribute to an animal any act its
ancestors could not have performed.

Again, things are reported as facts that are not
so much contrary to reason as contrary to all expe-
rience, and with these, too, I have my difficulties.
A recent writer upon our wild life says he has dis-
covered that the cowbird watches over its young
and assists the foster-parents in providing food
for them — an observation so contrary to all that
we know of parasitical birds, both at home and
abroad, that no real observer can credit the state-
ment. Our cowbird has been under observation for
a hundred years or more ; every dweller in the coun-

178

A PINCH OF SALT

try must see one or more young cowbirds being fed
by their foster-parents every season, yet no com-
petent observer has ever reported any care of the
young bird by its real parent. If this were true, it
would make the cowbird only half parasitical — an
unheard-of phenomenon.

The same writer tells this incident about a grouse
that had a nest near his cabin. One morning he
heard a strange cry in the direction of the nest, and
taking the path that led to it, he met the grouse
running toward him with one wing pressed close to
her side, and fighting off two robber crows with the
other. Under the closed wing the grouse was carry-
ing an egg, which she had managed to save from the
ruin of her nest. The bird was coming to the hermit
for succor. Now, am I skeptical about such a story,
put down in apparent good faith in a book of natural
history as a real occurrence, because I have never
seen the like.'' No; I am skeptical because the in-
cident is so contrary to all that we know about
grouse and all other wild birds. Our behef in nearly
all matters takes the Hne of least resistance, and it is
easier for me to beheve that the writer deceived
himself, than that such a thing ever happened. In
the first place, a grouse could not pick up an egg
with her wing when crows were trying to rob her,
and, in the second place, she would not think far
enough to do it if she had the power. What was she
going to do with the egg ? Bring it to the hermit for

179

WAYS OF NATURE

his breakfast ? This last supposition is just as rea-
sonable as any part of the story. A grouse will not
readily leave her unfledged young, but she will leave
her eggs when disturbed by man or beast with
apparent unconcern.

It is the rarest thing in the world that real
observers see any of these starthng and exceptional
things in nature. Thoreau saw none. White saw
none. Charles St. John saw none. John Muir
reports none, Audubon none. It is always your
untrained observer that has his poser, his shower
of frogs or hzards, or his hoop snakes, and the hke.
The impossible things that country people see or
hear of would make a book of wonders. In some
places fishermen believe that the loon carries its
egg under its wing till it hatches, and one would say
that they are in a position to know. So they are.
But opportunity is only half the problem ; the verify-
ing mind is the other half. One of our writers of
popular nature books relates this curious incident of
" animal surgery " among wild ducks. He discovered
two eider ducks swimming about a fresh-water pond
and acting queerly, " dipping their heads under
water and keeping them there for a minute or more
at a time." He later discovered that the ducks had
large mussels attached to their tongues, and that
they were trying to get rid of them by drowning
them. The birds had discovered that the salt-water
mussel cannot live in fresh water. Now am I to

180

A PINCH OF SALT

accept this story without question because I find it
printed in a book ? In the first place, is it not most
remarkable that if the ducks had discovered that
the bivalves could not five in fresh water, they
should not also have discovered that they could not
five in the air ? In fact, that they would die as soon
in the air as in the fresh water ?^ See how much
trouble the ducks could have saved themselves by
going and sitting quietly upon the beach, or putting
their heads under their wings and going to sleep
on the wave. Oysters are often laid down in fresh
water to " fatten " before being sent to market, and
probably mussels would thrive for a short time in
fresh water equally well. In the second place, a
duck's tongue is a very short and stiff affair, and is
fixed in the lower mandible as in a trough. Ducks
do not protrude the tongue when they feed; they
cannot protrude it ; and if a duck can crush a mus-
sel-shell with its beak, what better position could it
have the bivalve in than fast to the tongue between
the upper and the lower mandible ? The story is
certainly a very " fishy" one. In all such cases the
mind follows the line of least resistance. If the
ducks were deliberately holding their bills under
water, it is easier to believe that they did it because
they thereby found some relief from pain, than that
they knew the bivalves would let go their hold

^ I have tried the experiment on two ordinary clams, and they
both died on the third day.

181

WAYS OF NATURE

sooner in fresh water than in salt or than in the air.
A duck's mouth held open and the tongue pinched
by a shell-fish would doubtless soon be in a feverish
and abnormal condition, which cool water would
tend to alleviate. One is unable to see how the
ducks could have acquired the kind of human ex-
perimental knowledge attributed to them. A per-
son might learn such a secret, but surely not a duck.
In discovering and in eluding its enemies, and in
many other ways, the duck's wits are very sharp,
but to attribute to them a knowledge of the virtues
of fresh water over salt in a certain unusual emer-
gency — an emergency that could not have occurred
to the race of ducks, much less to individuals often
enough for a special instinct to have been developed
to meet it — is to make them entirely human.

The whole idea of animal surgery which the
incident impUes — such as mending broken legs
with clay, salving wounds with pitch, or resorting
to bandages or amputations — is preposterous. Sick
or wounded animals will often seek rehef from pain
by taking to the water or to the mud, or maybe to
the snow, just as cows will seek the pond or the
bushes to escape the heat and the flies, and that is
about the extent of their surgery. The dog Hcks
liis wound; it no doubt soothes and relieves it.
The cow licks her calf; she licks him into shape;
it is her instinct to do so. That tongue of hers is
a currycomb, plus warmth and moisture and flexi-

182

A PINCH OF SALT

bility. The cat always carries her kittens by the
back of the neck; it is her best way to carry them,
though I do not suppose this act is the result of
experiment on her part.

A chimney swift has taken up her abode in my
study chimney. At intervals, day or night, when she
hears me in the room, she makes a sudden flapping
and drumming sound with her wings to scare me
away. It is a very pretty little trick and quite amus-
ing. If you appear above the opening of the top of a
chimney where a swift is sitting on her nest, she will
try to drum you away in the same manner. I do
not suppose there is any thought or calculation in
her behavior, any more than there is in her nest-build-
ing, or any other of her instinctive doings. It is prob-
ably as much a reflex act as that of a bird when she
turns her eggs, or feigns lameness or paralysis, to
lure you away from her nest, or as the "playing pos-
sum " of a rose-bug or potato-bug when it is disturbed .

One of the writers referred to above relates with
much detail tliis astonishing thing of the Canada
lynx: He saw a pack of them trailing their game —
a hare — through the winter woods, not only hunting
in concert, but tracking their quarry. Now any can-
did and informed reader will balk at this story, for
two reasons: (1) the cat tribe do not hunt by scent,
but by sight, — they stalk or waylay their game ; (2)
they hunt singly, they are all sohtary in their habits,
they are probably the most unsocial of the carnivora,

183

WAYS OF NATURE

— they prowl, they listen, they bide their time. Wolves
often hunt in packs. I have no evidence that foxes
do, and if the cats ever do, it is a most extraordi-
nary departure. A statement of such an exceptional
occurrence should always put one on his guard. In
the same story the lynx is represented as making
curious antics in the air to excite the curiosity of a
band of caribou, and thus lure one of them to its
death at the teeth and claws of the waiting hidden
pack. This also is so uncatlike a proceeding that
no woodsman could ever credit it. Hunters on the
plains sometimes "flag" deer and antelope, and I
have seen even a loon drawn very near to a bather
in the water who was waving a small red flag. But
none of our wild creatures use lures, or decoys, or
disguises. This would involve a process of reason-
ing quite beyond them.

Many instances have been recorded of animals
seeking the protection of man when pursued by
their deadly enemies. I heard of a rat which, when
hunted by a weasel, rushed into a room where a
man was sleeping, and took refuge in the bed at his
feet. I heard Mr. Thompson Seton tell of a young
pronghorn buck that was vanquished by a rival,
and so hotly pursued by its antagonist that it sought
shelter amid his horses and wagons. On another
occasion Mr. Seton said a jack rabbit pursued by
a weasel upon the snow sought safety under his sled.
In all such cases, if the frightened animal really

184

A PINCH OF SALT

rushed to man for protection, that act would show
a degree of reason. The animal must think, and
weigh the pros and cons. But I am con\dnced that
the truth about such cases is this : The greater fear
drives out the lesser fear; the animal loses its head,
and becomes obHvious to everything but the enemy
that is pursuing it. The rat was so terrified at the
demon of a weasel that it had but one impulse, and
that was to hide somewhere. Doubtless had the bed
been empty, it would have taken refuge there just
the same. How could an animal know that a man
will protect it on special occasions, when ordinarily
it has exactly the opposite feehng ? A deer hotly
pursued by a hound might rush into the barn-yard
or into the open door of the barn in sheer despera-
tion of uncontrollable terror. Then we should say
the creature knew the farmer would protect it, and
every woman who read the incident, and half the
men, would believe that that thought was in the
deer's mind. When the hunted deer rushes into
the lake or pond, it does so, of course, with a view
to escape its pursuers, and wherever it seeks refuge
this is its sole purpose. I can easily fancy a bird
pursued by a hawk darting into an open door or
window, not with the thought that the inmates of
the house will protect it, but in a panic of absolute
terror. Its fear is then centred upon something
behind it, not in front of it.

When an animal does something necessary to its

185

WAYS OF NATURE

self-preservation, or to the continuance of its species,
it probably does not think about it as a person would,
any more than the plant or tree thinks about the
light when it bends toward it, or about the moisture
when it sends down its tap-root. Touch the tail of
a porcupine ever so hghtly, and it springs up Hke a
trap and your hand is stuck with quills. I do not
suppose there is any more thinking about the act, or
any more conscious exercise of will-power, than there
is in a trap. An outward stimulus is apphed and the
reaction is quick. Does not man wink, and dodge,
and sneeze, and laugh, and cry, and blush, and fall in
love, and do many other things without thought or
will ? I do not suppose the birds think about migrat-
ing, as man does when he migrates ; they simply obey
an inborn impulse to move south or north, as the
case may be. They do not think about the great
lights upon the coast that blaze out with a fatal fas-
cination in their midnight paths. If they had inde-
pendent powers of thought, they would avoid them.
But the lighthouse is comparatively a new thing in
the life of birds, and instinct has not yet taught them
to avoid it. To adapt means to an end is an act of
intelligence, but that intelligence may be inborn and
instinctive as in the animals, or it may be acquired
and therefore rational as in man.

" Surely," said a woman to me, " when a cat sits
watching at a mouse-hole, she has some image in her
mind of the mouse in its hole ? " Not in any such

186

A PINCH OF SALT

sense as we have when we think of the same subject.
The cat has either seen the mouse go into the hole,
or else she smells him ; she knows he is there through
her senses, and she reacts to that impression. Her
instinct prompts her to hunt and to catch mice ; she
does n't need to think about them as we do about
the game we hunt; Nature has done that for her in
the shape of an inborn impulse that is awakened
by the sight or smell of mice. We have no ready way
to describe her act as she sits intently by the hole
but to say, *' The cat thinks there is a mouse there,"
while she is not thinking at all, but simply watch-
ing, prompted to it by her inborn instinct for mice.

The cow's mouth will water at the sight of her
food when she is hungry. Is she thinking about it ?
No more than you are when your mouth waters as
your full dinner-plate is set down before you. Cer-
tain desires and appetites are aroused through sight
and smell without any mental cognition. The sexual
relations of the animals also illustrate this fact.

We know that the animals do not think in any
proper sense as we do, or have concepts and ideas,
because they have no language. To be sure, a deaf
mute thinks without language because a human
being has the intelligence which language implies,
or which was begotten in his ancestors by its use
through long ages. Not so with the lower animals.
They are Kke very young children in this respect;
they have impressions, perceptions, emotions, but

187

WAYS OF NATURE

not ideas. The child perceives things, discriminates
things, knows its mother from a stranger, is angry,
or glad, or afraid, long before it has any language
or any proper concepts. Animals know only through
their senses, and this "knowledge is restricted to
things present in time and space." Reflection, or a
return upon themselves in thought, of this they are
not capable. Their only language consists of vari-
ous cries and calls, expressions of pain, alarm, joy,
love, anger. They communicate with one another,
and come to share one another's mental or emo-
tional states, through these cries and calls. A dog
barks in various tones and keys, each of which ex-
presses a different feeling in the dog. I can always
tell when my dog is barking at a snake; there is
something peculiar in the tone. The hunter knows
when liis hound has driven the fox to hole by a
change in his baying. The lowing and bellowing of
horned cattle are expressions of several different
things. The crow has many caws, that no doubt
convey various meanings. The cries of alarm and
distress of the birds are understood by all the
wild creatures that hear them; a feehng of alarm
is conveyed to them — an emotion, not an idea.

How could a crow tell his fellows of some future
event, or pf some experience of the day ? How could
he tell him this thing is dangerous, this is harmless,
save by his actions in the presence of those things ?
Or how tell of a newly found food supply save by

188

A PINCH OF SALT

flying eagerly to it ? A fox or a wolf could warn its
fellow of the danger of poisoned meat by showing
alarm in the presence of the meat. Such meat would
no doubt have a peculiar odor to the keen scent of
the fox or the wolf. Animals that Hve in communi-
ties, such as bees and beavers, cooperate with each
other without language, because they form a sort of
organic unity, and what one feels all the others feel.
One spirit, one purpose, fills the community.

It is said on good authority that prairie-dogs will
not permit weeds or tall grass to grow about their
burrows, as these afford cover for coyotes and other
enemies to stalk them. If they cannot remove these
screens, they will leave the place. And yet they will
sometimes allow a weed such as the Norse nettle or
the Mexican poppy to grow on the mound at the
mouth of the den where it will afford shade and not
obstruct the view. At first thought this conduct may
look hke a matter of calculation and forethought,
but it is doubtless the result of an instinct that
has been developed in the tribe by the struggle for
existence, and with any given rodent is quite inde-
pendent of experience. It is an inherited fear of
every weed or tuft of grass that might conceal an
enemy.

I am told that prairie wolves will dig up and eat
meat that has been poisoned and then buried, when
they will not touch it if left on the surface. In such
a case the ranchmen think the wolf has been out-

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WAYS OF NATURE

wilted ; but the truth probably is that there was no
calculation in the matter; the soil drew out or
dulled the smell of the poison and of the man's
hand, and so allayed the wolf's suspicions.

I suppose that when an animal practices decep-
tion, as when a bird feigns lameness or a broken
wing to decoy you away from her nest or her young,
it is quite unconscious of the act. It takes no thought
about the matter. In tr3dng to call a hen to his side,
a rooster will often make believe he has food in his
beak, when the pretended grain or insect may be
only a pebble or a bit of stick. He picks it up and
then drops it in sight of the hen, and calls her in
his most persuasive manner. I do not suppose that
in such cases the rooster is conscious of the fraud
he is practicing. His instinct, under such circum-
stances, is to pick up food and call the attention of
the hen to it, and when no food is present, he in-
stinctively picks up a pebble or a stick. His main
purpose is to get the hen near him, and not to feed
her. When he is intent only on feeding her, he
never offers her a stone instead of bread.

We have only to think of the animals as habitually
in a condition analogous to, or identical with, the
unthinking and involuntary character of much of
our own Hves. They are creatures of routine. They
are wholly immersed in the unconscious, involun-
tary nature out of which we rise, and above which
our higher Hves go on.

' 190

XI

THE LITERARY TREATMENT OF
NATURE

THE literary treatment of natural history themes
is, of course, quite different from the scientific
treatment, and should be so. The former, compared
with the latter, is Hke free-hand drawing compared
with mechanical drawing. Literature aims to give
us the truth in a way to touch our emotions, and in
some degree to satisfy the enjoyment we have in the
H\dng reaHty. The hterary artist is just as much in
love with the fact as is his scientific brother, only he
makes a different use of the fact, and his interest in
it is often of a non-scientific character. His method
is synthetic rather than analytic. He deals in gen-
eral, and not in technical truths, — truths that he
arrives at in the fields and woods, and not in the
laboratory.

The essay-naturahst observes and admires ; the
scientific naturahst collects. One brings home a
bouquet from the woods; the other, specimens for
his herbarium. The former would enhst your sym-
pathies and arouse your enthusiasm ; the latter
would add to your store of exact knowledge. The

191

WAYS OF NATURE

one is just as shy of over-coloring or falsifying his
facts as the other, only he gives more than facts, —
he gives impressions and analogies, and, as far as
possible, shows you the live bird on the bough.

The hterary and the scientific treatment of the
dog, for instance, will differ widely, not to say radi-
cally, but they will not differ in one being true and
the other false. Each will be true in its own way.
One will be suggestive and the other exact; one
will be strictly objective, but literature is always
more or less subjective. Literature aims to invest its
subject with a human interest, and to this end stirs
our sympathies and emotions. Pure science aims
to convince the reason and the understanding alone.
Note Maeterlinck's treatment of the dog in a late
magazine article, probably the best thing on our
four-footed comrade that English literature has to
show. It gives one pleasure, not because it is all true
as science is true, but because it is so tender, human,
and sympathetic, without being false to the essen-
tial dog nature; it does not make the dog do impos-
sible things. It is not natural history, it is hterature;
it is not a record of observations upon the manners
and habits of the dog, but reflections upon him and
his relations to man, and upon the many problems,
from the human point of view, that the dog must
master in a brief time: the distinctions he must
figure out, the mistakes he must avoid, the riddles of
fife he must read in his dumb dog way. Of course, as

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LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

a matter of fact, the dog is not compelled "in less
than five or six weeks to get into his mind, taking
shape within it, an image and a satisfactory concep-
tion of the universe." No, nor in five or six years.
Strictly speakings he is not capable of conceptions at
all, but only of sense impressions ; his sure guide is
instinct — not blundering reason. The dog starts
with a fund of knowledge, which man acquires
slowly and painfully. But all this does not trouble
one in reading of MaeterHnck's dog. Our interest is
awakened, and our sympathies are moved, by seeing
the world presented to the dog as it presents itself
to us, or by putting ourselves in the dog's place. It
is not false natural history, it is a fund of true
human sentiment awakened by the contemplation
of the dog's life and character.

MaeterHnck does not ascribe human powers and
capacities to his dumb friend, the dog; he has no
incredible tales of its sagacity and wit to relate ; it is
only an ordinary bull pup that he describes, but he
makes us love it, and, through it, all other dogs, by
his loving analysis of its trials and tribulations, and
its devotion to its god, man. In like manner, in John
Muir's story of liis dog Stickeen, — a story to go
with " Rab and his Friends," — our credulity is
not once challenged. Our sympathies are deeply
moved because our reason is not in the least out-
raged. It is true that Muir makes his dog act like a
human being under the press of great danger; but

193

WAYS OF NATURE

the action is not the kind that involves reason; it
only implies sense perception, and the instinct of
self-preservation. Stickeen does as his master bids
him, and he is human only in the human emotions
of fear, despair, joy, that he shows.

In Mr. Egerton Young's book, called " My Dogs
of the Northland," I find much that is interesting
and several vivid dog portraits, but Mr. Young hu-
manizes his dogs to a greater extent than does either
Muir or Maeterlinck. For instance, he makes his
dog Jack take special delight in teasing the Indian
servant girl by walking or lying upon her kitchen
floor when she had just cleaned it, all in revenge
for the slights the girl had put upon him; and he
gives several instances of the conduct of the dog
which he thus interprets. Now one can believe
almost anything of dogs in the way of wit about
their food, their safety, and the Hke, but one can-
not make them so entirely human as dehberately to
plan and execute the kind of revenge here imputed
to Jack. No animal could appreciate a woman's
pride in a clean kitchen floor, or see any relation
between the tracks which he makes upon the floor
and her state of feeling toward himself. Mr.
Young's facts are doubtless all right; it is his in-
terpretation of them that is wrong.

It is perfectly legitimate for the animal story
writer to put himself inside the animal he wishes
to portray, and tell how hfe and the world look from

194

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

that point of view; but he must always be true to
the facts of the case, and to the Hnaited inteUigence
for which he speaks.

In the humanization of the animals, and of the
facts of natural history which is supposed to be the
province of literature in this field, we must recog-
nize certain limits. Your facts are sufficiently hu-
manized the moment they become interesting, and
they become interesting the moment you relate
them in any way to our lives, or make them sug-
gestive of what we know to be true in other fields
and in our own experience. Thoreau made his bat-
tle of the ants interesting because he made it illus-
trate all the human traits of courage, fortitude,
heroism, self-sacrifice. Burns's mouse at once strikes
a sympathetic chord in us without ceasing to be a
mouse; we see ourselves in it. To attribute human
motives and faculties to the animals is to carica-
ture them ; but to put us in such relation with them
that we feel their kinship, that we see their lives
embosomed in the same iron necessity as our own,
that we see in their minds a humbler manifestation
of the same psychic power and intelligence that
culminates and is conscious of itself in man, —
that, I take it, is the true humanization.

We Hke to see ourselves in the nature around us.
We want in some way to translate these facts and
laws of outward nature into our own experiences;
to relate our observations of bird or beast to our

195

WAYS OF NATURE

own lives. Unless they beget some human emotion
in me, — the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime,

— or appeal to my sense of the fit, the permanent,

— unless what you learn in the fields and the woods
corresponds in some way with what I know of my
fellows, I shall not long be deeply interested in it.
I do not want the animals humanized in any other
sense. They all have human traits and ways; let
those be brought out — their mirth, their joy, their
curiosity, their cunning, their thrift, their rela-
tions, their wars, their loves — and all the springs
of their actions laid bare as far as possible; but I do
not expect my natural history to back up the Ten
Commandments, or to be an illustration of the value
of training-schools and kindergartens, or to afford
a commentary upon the vanity of human wishes.
Humanize your facts to the extent of making them
interesting, if you have the art to do it, but leave
the dog a dog, and the straddle-bug a straddle-bug.

Interpretation is a favorite word with some re-
cent nature writers. It is claimed for the literary
naturalist that he interprets natural history. The
ways and doings of the wild creatures are exagger-
ated and misread under the plea of interpretation.
Now, if by interpretation we mean an answer to
the question, *' What does this mean ? " or, " What
is the exact truth about it ? " then there is but one
interpretation of nature, and that is the scientific.
What is the meaning of the fossils in the rocks } or

196

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

of the carving and sculpturing of the landscape?
or of a thousand and one other things in the organic
and inorganic world about us ? Science alone can
answer. But if we mean by interpretation an an-
swer to the inquiry, "What does this scene or in-
cident suggest to you ? how do you feel about it ? "
then we come to what is called the literary or poetic
interpretation of nature, which, strictly speaking,
is no interpretation of nature at all, but an interpre-
tation of the writer or the poet himself. The poet
or the essayist tells what the bird, or the tree, or
the cloud means to him. It is himself, therefore,
that is being interpreted. What do Ruskin's writ-
ings upon nature interpret .^ They interpret Rus-
kin — his wealth of moral and ethical ideas, and
his wonderful imagination. Richard Jefferies tells
us how the flower, or the bird, or the cloud is re-
lated to his subjective life and experience. It means
this or that to him; it may mean something en-
tirely different to another, because he may be bound
to it by a different tie of association. The poet fills
the lap of Earth with treasures not her own — the
riches of his own spirit; science reveals the trea-
sures that are her own, and arranges and appraises
them.

Strictly speaking, there is not much in natural
history that needs interpreting. We explain a fact,
we interpret an oracle; we explain the action and
relation of physical laws and forces, we interpret,

197

WAYS OF NATURE

as well as we can, the geologic record. Darwin
sought to explain the origin of species, and to in-
terpret many palseontological phenomena. We ac-
count for animal behavior on rational grounds of
animal psychology; there is little to interpret. Nat-
ural history is not a cryptograph to be deciphered,
it is a series of facts and incidents to be observed
and recorded. If two wild animals, such as the
beaver and the otter, are deadly enemies, there is
good reason for it; and when we have found that
reason, we have got hold of a fact in natural his-
tory. The robins are at enmity ^vith the jays and
the crow blackbirds and the cuckoos in the spring,
and the reason is, these birds eat the robins' eggs.
When we seek to interpret the actions of the ani-
mals, we are, I must repeat, in danger of running
into all kinds of anthropomorphic absurdities, by
reading their lives in terms of our own thinking
and consciousness.

A man sees a flock of crows in a tree in a state
of commotion; now they all caw, then only one
master voice is heard, presently two or three crows
fall upon one of their number and fell him to the
ground. The spectator examines the victim and
finds him dead, with his eyes pecked out. He in-
terprets what he has seen as a court of justice; the
crows were trying a criminal, and, having found
him guilty, they proceeded to execute him. The
curious instinct which often prompts animals to fall

198

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

upon and destroy a member of the flock that is sick,
or hurt, or blind, is difficult of explanation, but we
may be quite sure that, whatever the reason is, the
act is not the outcome of a judicial proceeding in
which judge and jury and executioner all play their
proper part. Wild crows will chase and maltreat
a tame crow whenever they get a chance, just why,
it would be hard to say. But the tame crow has
evidently lost caste among them. I have what I
consider good proof that a number of skunks that
were wintering together in their den in the ground
fell upon and killed and then partly devoured one
of their number that had lost a foot in a trap.

Another man sees a fox lead a hound over a long
railroad trestle, when the hound is caught and killed
by a passing train. He interprets the fact as a
cunning trick on the part of the fox to destroy his
enemy! A captive fox, held to his kennel by a long
chain, was seen to pick up an ear of corn that had
fallen from a passing load, chew it up, scattering
the kernels about, and then retire into his ken-
nel. Presently a fat hen, attracted by the corn,
approached the hidden fox, whereupon he rushed
out and seized her. This was a shrewd trick on
the part of the fox to capture a hen for his dinner !
In this, and in the foregoing cases, the observer
supplies something from his own mind. That is
what he or she would do under like conditions.
True, a fox does not eat corn; but an idle one, tied

199

WAYS OF NATURE

by a chain, might bite the kernels from an ear in
a mere spirit of mischief and restlessness, as a dog
or puppy might, and drop them upon the ground;
a hen would very likely be attracted by them, when
the fox would be quick to see his chance.

Some of the older entomologists believed that in
a colony of ants and of bees the members recog-
nized one another by means of some secret sign or
password. In all cases a stranger from another
colony is instantly detected, and a home member
as instantly known. This sign or password, says
Burmeister, as quoted by Lubbock, *' serves to pre-
vent any strange bee from entering into the same
hive without being immediately detected and killed.
It, however, sometimes happens that several hives
have the same signs, when their several members
rob each other with impunity. In these cases the
bees whose hives suffer most alter their signs, and
then can immediately detect their enemy." The
same thing was thought to be true of a colony of
ants. Others held that the bees and the ants knew
one another individually, as men of the same town
do ! Would not any serious student of nature in our
day know in advance of experiment that all this
was childish and absurd ? Lubbock showed by
numerous experiments that bees and ants did not
recognize their friends or their enemies by either
of these methods. Just how they did do it he could
not clearly settle, though it seems as if they were

200

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

guided more by the sense of smell than by anything
else. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has
much to say about the " spirit of the hive," and it
does seem as if there were some mysterious agent
or power at work there that cannot be located or
defined.

This current effort to interpret nature has led one
of the well-known prophets of the art to say that in
this act of interpretation one " must struggle against
fact and law to develop or keep his own individ-
uahty." This is certainly a curious notion, and I
think an unsafe one, that the student of nature
must struggle against fact and law, must ignore or
override them, in order to give full swing to his
own individuality. Is it himself, then, and not the
truth that he is seeking to exploit .^ In the field of
natural history we have been led to think the point
at issue is not man's individuality, but correct ob-
servation — a true report of the wild life about us.
Is one to give free rein to his fancy or imagination ;
to see animal fife with his *' vision," and not with his
corporeal eyesight; to hear with his transcendental
ear, and not through his auditory nerve ? This may
be all right in fiction or romance or fable, but why
call the outcome natural history ? Why set it down
as a record of actual observation ? Why penetrate
the wilderness to interview Indians, trappers, guides,
woodsmen, and thus seek to confirm your obser-
vations, if you have all the while been ** struggling

201

WAYS OF NATURE

against fact and law," and do not want or need
confirmation ? If nature study is only to exploit
your own individuality, why bother about what
other people have or have not seen or heard ? Why,
in fact, go to the woods at all ? Why not sit in your
study and invent your facts to suit your fancyings ?

My sole objection to the nature books that are
the outcome of this proceeding is that they are put
forth as veritable natural history, and thus mislead
their readers. They are the result of a successful
"struggle against fact and law" in a field where
fact and law should be supreme. No doubt that,
in the practical affairs of fife, one often has a strug-
gle with the fact. If one's bank balance gets on
the negative side of the account, he must struggle to
get it back where it belongs ; he may even have the
help of the bank's attorney to get it there. If one
has a besetting sin of any kind, he has to struggle
against that. Life is a struggle anyhow, and we are
all strugglers — struggling to put the facts upon
our side. But the only struggle the real nature stu-
dent has with facts is to see them as they are, and
to read them aright. He is just as zealous for the
truth as is the man of science. In fact, nature study
is only science out of school, happy in the fields
and woods, loving the flower and the animal which
it observes, and finding in them something for the
sentiments and the emotions as well as for the under-
standing.

202

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

With the nature student, the human interest in the
wild creatures — by which I mean our interest in
them as Hving, struggling beings — dominates the
scientific interest, or our interest in them merely as
subjects for comparison and classification.

Gilbert White was a rare combination of the
nature student and the man of science, and his book
is one of the minor English classics. Richard Jef-
feries was a true nature lover, but his interests rarely
take a scientific turn. Our Thoreau was in Jove with
the natural, but still more in love with the super-
natural ; yet he prized the fact, and his books abound
in dehghtful natural history observations. We have
a host of nature students in our own day, bent on
plucking out the heart of every mystery in the fields
and woods. Some are dryly scientific, some are dull
and prosy, some are sentimental, some are sensa-
tional, and a few are altogether admirable. Mr.
Thompson Seton, as an artist and raconteur, ranks
by far the highest in this field, but in reading his
works as natural history, one has to be constantly on
guard against his romantic tendencies.

The structure of animals, their colors, their orna-
ments, their distribution, their migrations, all have
a significance that science may interpret for us if
it can, but it is the business of every observer to
report truthfully what he sees, and not to confound
his facts with his theories.

Why does the cowbird lay its egg in another bird's

203

WAYS OF NATURE

nest? Why are these parasitical birds found the
world over ? Who knows ? Only there seems to be a
parasitical principle in Nature that runs all through
her works, in the vegetable as well as in the ani-
mal kingdom. Why is the porcupine so tame and
stupid ? Because it does not have to hunt for its
game, and is self-armed against all comers. The
struggle of hfe has not developed its wits. AMiy are
robins so abundant ? Because they are so adaptive,
both as regards their food and their nesting-habits.
They eat both fruit and insects, and will nest any-
where — in trees, sheds, walls, and on the ground.
Why is the fox so cunning ? Because the discipline
of life has made him cunning. Man has probably
always been after his fur; and his subsistence has
not been easily obtained. If you ask me why the
crow is so cunning, I shall be put to it for an ade-
quate answer. It seems as if nobody could ever have
wanted his skin or his carcass, and his diet does not
compel him to outwit Hve game, as does that of the
fox. His jet black plumage exposes him alike winter
and summer. This drawback he has had to meet by
added wit, but I can think of no other way in which
he is handicapped. I do not know that he has any
natural enemies ; yet he is one of the most suspicious
of the fowls of the air. Why is the Canada jay so
much tamer than are other jays? They belong
farther north, where they see less of man; they are
birds of the wilderness; they are often, no doubt,

204

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

hard put to it for food; their color does not make
them conspicuous, — all these things, no doubt, tend
to make them more familiar than their congeners.
Why, again, the chickadee can be induced to perch
upon your hand, and take food from it, more readily
than can the nuthatch or the woodpecker, is a ques-
tion not so easily answered. It being a lesser bird, it
probably has fewer enemies than either of the others,
and its fear would be less in proportion.

Why does the dog, the world over, use his nose
in covering the bone he is hiding, and not his paw ?
Is it because his foot would leave a scent that
would give his secret away, while his nose does not ?
He uses his paw in digging the hole for the bone,
but its scent in this case would be obliterated by
his subsequent procedure.

The foregoing is one way to interpret or explain
natural facts. Everything has its reason. To hit
upon this reason is to interpret it to the understand-
ing. To interpret it to the emotions, or to the moral
or to the aesthetic sense, that is another matter.

I would not be unjust or unsympathetic toward
this current tendency to exalt the lower animals into
the human sphere. I would only help my reader to
see things as they are, and to stimulate him to love
the animals as animals, and not as men. Nothing is
gained by self-deception. The best discipline of life
is that which prepares us to face the facts, no matter
what they are. Such sweet companionship as one

205

WAYS OF NATURE

may have with a dog, simply because he is a dog,
and does not invade your own exclusive sphere ! He
is, in a way, like your youth come back to you, and
taking form — all instinct and joy and adventure.
You can ignore him, and he is not offended; you
can reprove him, and he still loves you ; you can hail
him, and he bounds with joy; you can camp and
tramp and ride with him, and his interest and curi-
osity and adventurous spirit give to the days and the
nights the true holiday atmosphere. With him you
are alone and not alone; you have both compan-
ionship and solitude. Who would have him more
human or less canine.'^ He divines your thought
through his love, and feels your will in the glance of
your eye. He is not a rational being, yet he is a very
susceptible one, and touches us at so many points
that we come to look upon him with a fraternal
regard.

I suppose we should not care much for natural
history, as I have before said, or for the study of
nature generally, if we did not in some way find
ourselves there ; that is, something that is akin to
our own feelings, methods, and intelligence. W^e
have traveled that road, we find tokens of ourselves
on every hand ; we are " stuccoed with quadrupeds
and birds all over,'* as Whitman says. The life-
history of the humblest animal, if truly told, is
profoundly interesting. If we could know all that
befalls the slow moving turtle in the fields, or the

206

LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE

toad that stumbles and fumbles along the roadside,
our sympathies would be touched, and some spark of
real knowledge imparted. We should not want the
lives of those humble creatures " interpreted " after
the manner of our sentimental " School of Nature
Study," for that were to lose fact in fable; that
were to give us a stone when we had asked for
bread; we should want only a truthful record from
the point of view of a wise, loving, human eye, such
a record as, say, Gilbert White or Henry Thoreau
might have given us. How interesting White makes
his old turtle, hurrying to shelter when it rains,
or seeking the shade of a cabbage leaf when the
sun is too hot, or prancing about the garden on
tiptoe in the spring by five in the morning, when
the mating instinct begins to stir within him ! Surely
we may see ourselves in the old tortoise.

In fact, the problem of the essay-naturalist always
is to make his subject interesting, and yet keep
strictly within the bounds of truth.

It is always an artist's privilege to heighten or
deepen natural effects. He may paint us a more
beautiful woman, or a more beautiful horse, or a
more beautiful landscape, than we ever saw; we are
not deceived even though he outdo nature. We
know where we stand and where he stands; we
know that this is the power of art. If he is writing
an animal romance like Kipling's story of the
" White Seal, " or like his " Jungle Book," there will

207

WAYS OF NATURE

be nothing equivocal about it, no mixture of fact and
fiction, nothing to confuse or mislead the reader.

We know that here is the Hght that never was on
sea or land, the light of the spirit. The facts are not
falsified ; they are transmuted. The aim of art is the
beautiful, not over but through the true. The aim
of the literary naturalist is the true, not over but
through the beautiful; you shall find the exact facts
in his pages, and you shall find them possessed of
some of the allurement and suggestiveness that they
had in the fields and woods. Only thus does his
work attain to the rank of hterature.

XII
A BEAVER'S REASON

ONE of our well-known natural historians thinks
that there is no difference between a man's
reason and a beaver's reason because, he says, when
a man builds a dam, he first looks the ground over,
and after due deliberation decides upon his plan, and
a beaver, he avers, does the same. But the difference
is obvious. Beavers, under the same conditions,
build the same kind of dams and lodges; and all
beavers as a rule do the same. Instinct is uniform
in its worldngs ; it runs in a groove. Reason varies
endlessly and makes endless mistakes. Men build
various kinds of dams and in various kinds of places,
with various kinds of material and for various kinds
of uses. They exercise individual judgment, they
invent new ways and seek new ends, and of course
often fail.

Every man has his own measure of reason, be it
more or less. It is largely personal and original with
him, and frequent failure is the penalty he pays for
this gift.

But the individual beaver has only the inherited
intelligence of his kind, with such slight addition as

209

WAYS OF NATURE

his experience may have given him. He learns
to avoid traps, but he does not learn to improve
upon his dam or lodge building, because he does not
need to; they answer his purpose. If he had new
and growing wants and aspirations like man, why,
then he would no longer be a beaver. He reacts to
outward conditions, where man reflects and takes
thought of things. His reason, if we prefer to call it
such, is practically inerrant. It is bUnd, inasmuch
as it is unconscious, but it is sure, inasmuch as it
is adequate. It is a part of Hving nature in a sense
that man's is not. If it makes a mistake, it is such
a mistake as nature makes when, for instance, a
hen produces an egg within an egg, or an egg with-
out a yolk, or when more seeds germinate in the soil
than can grow into plants.

A lower animal's intelHgence, I say, compared
with man's is blind. It does not grasp the subject
perceived as ours does. When instinct perceives an
object, it reacts to it, or not, just as the object is, or
is not, related to its needs of one kind or another.
In many ways an animal is hke a child. What comes
first in the child is simple perception and memory
and association of memories, and these make up
the main sum of an animal's intelligence. The child
goes on developing till it reaches the power of reflec-
tion and of generalization — a stage of mentaHty
that the animal never attains to.

All animal life is specialized; each animal is an

210

A BEAVER'S REASON

expert in its own line of work — the work of its
tribe. Beavers do the work of beavers, they cut
down trees and build dams, and all beavers do it
alike and with the same degree of untaught skill.
This is instinct, or unthinking nature.

Of a hot day a dog will often dig down to fresh
earth to get cooler soil to he on. Or he will go and
he in the creek. All dogs do these things. Now if the
dog were seen to carry stones and sods to dam up the
creek to make a deeper pool to lie in, then he would
in a measure be imitating the beavers, and this, in
the dog, could fairly be called an act of reason,
because it is not a necessity of the conditions of his
Ufe ; it would be of the nature of an afterthought.

All animals of a given species are wise in their
own way, but not in the way of another species. The
robin could not build the oriole's nest, nor the oriole
build the robin's nor the swallow's. The cunning: of
the fox is not the cunning of the coon. The squirrel
knows a good deal more about nuts than the rabbit
does, but the rabbit would live where the squirrel
would die. The muskrat and the beaver build
lodges much ahke, that is, with the entrance under
water and an inner chamber above the water, and
this because they are both water-animals with
necessities much the same.

Now, the mark of reason is that it is endlessly
adaptive, that it can apply itself to all kinds of prob-
lems, that it can adapt old means to new ends, or

211

WAYS OF NATURE

new means to old ends, and is capable of progressive
development. It holds what it gets, and uses that as
a fulcrum to get more. But tliis is not at all the
way of animal instinct, which begins and ends as
instinct and is non-progressive.

A large part of our own lives is instinctive and
void of thought. We go instinctively toward the
warmth and away from the cold. All our affections
are instinctive, and do not wait upon the reason.
Our affinities are as independent of our reflection
as gravity is. Our inherited traits, the ties of race,
the spirit of the times in which we Kve, the impres-
sions of youth, of cKmate, of soil, of our surround-
ings, — all influence our acts and often determine
them without any conscious exercise of judgment or
reason on our part. Then habit is all-potent with
us, temperament is potent, health and disease are
potent. Indeed, the amount of conscious reason
that an ordinary man uses in his life, compared with
the great unreason or blind impulse and inborn
tendency that impel him, is like his artificial lights
compared with the light of day — indispensable on
special occasions, but a feeble matter, after all.
Reason is an artificial light in the sense that it is not
one with the light of nature, and in the sense that
men possess it in varying degrees. The lower ani-
mals have only a gleam of it now and then. They
are wise as the plants and trees are wise, and are
guided by their inborn tendencies.

212

A BEAVER'S REASON

Is instinct resourceful ? Can it meet new condi-
tions ? Can it solve a new problem ? If so, how
does it differ from free intelKgence or judgment ? I
am inclined to think that up to a certain point in-
stinct is resourceful. Thus a Western correspondent
writes: "At three different times I have pursued
the common jack-rabbit from a level field, when the
rabbit, coming to a furrow that ran at right angles
to his course, jumped into it, and crouching down,
slowly crept away to the end of the furrow, when it
jumped out and ran at full speed again." This is
a good example of the resourcefulness of instinct
— the instinct to escape from an enemy — an old
problem met by taking advantage of an unusual
opportunity. To run, to double, to crouch, to hide,
are probably all reflex acts with certain animals
when hunted. The bird when pursued by a hawk
rushes to cover in a tree or a bush, or beneath some
object. Last summer I saw a bald eagle pursuing
a fish hawk that held a fish in its talons. The
hawk had a long start of the eagle, and began
mounting upward, screaming in protest or defiance
as it mounted. The pirate circled far beneath it
for a few minutes, and then, seeing how he was
distanced, turned back toward the ocean, so that
I did not witness the Kttle drama in the air that I
had so long wished to see.

A wounded wild duck suddenly develops much
cunning in escaping from the gunner — swimming

213

WAYS OF NATURE

under water, hiding by the shore with only the end
of the bill in the air, or diving and seizing upon
some object at the bottom, where it sometimes
remains till Hfe is extinct.

I once saw some farm-hands try to capture a
fatted calf that had run all summer in a partly
wooded field, till it had become rather wild. As
the calf refused to be cornered, the farmer shot it
with his rifle, but only inflicted a severe wound in
the head. The calf then became as wild as a deer,
and scaled fences in much the manner of the deer.
When cornered, it turned and broke through the
line in sheer desperation, and showed wonderful
resources in eluding its pursuers. It coursed over
the hills and gained the mountain, where it baffled
its pursuers for two days before it was run down
and caught. All such cases show the resources of
instinct, the instinct of fear.

The skill of a bird in hiding its nest is very great,
as is the cunning displayed in keeping the secret
afterward. How careful it is not to betray the pre-
cious locality to the supposed enemy ! Even the do-
mestic turkey, when she hides her nest in the bush,
if watched, approaches it by all manner of delays
and indirections, and when she leaves it to feed,
usually does so on the wing. I look upon these and
kindred acts as exhibiting only the resourcefulness
of instinct.

We are not to forget that the resourcefulness

214

A BEAVER'S REASON

and flexibiKty of instinct which all animals show,
some more and some less, is not reason, though it
is doubtless the first step toward it. Out of it the
conscious reason and intelKgence of man probably
have been evolved. I do not object to hearing this
variability and plasticity of instinct called the twi-
light of mind or rudimentary mentality. It is that,
or something like that. What I object to is hearing
those things in animal life ascribed to reason that
can be easier accounted for on the theory of instinct.
I must differ from the ornithologist of the New
York Zoological Park when he says in a recent
paper that a bird's affection for her young is not
an instinct, an uncontrollable emotion, but I quite
agree with him that it does not differ, in kind at
least, from the emotion of the human mother. In
both cases the affection is instinctive, and not a
matter of reason, or forethought, or afterthought at
all. The two affections differ in this: that one is
brief and transient, and the other is deep and last-
ing. Under stress of circumstances the bird will
abandon her helpless young, while the human
mother will not. When the food supply fails, the
lower animal will not share the last morsel with its
young; its fierce hunger makes it forget them. Dur-
ing the cold, wet summer of 1903 a vast number of
half -fledged birds — orioles, finches, warblers — per-
ished in the nest, probably from scarcity of insect
food and the neglect of the mothers to hover them.

215

WAYS OF NATURE

In interpreting the action of the animals, we so
often do the thinking and reasoning ourselves
which we attribute to them. Thus Mr. Beebe in the
paper referred to says : " Birds have early learned to
take clams or mussels in their beaks or claws at low
tide and carry them out of the reach of the water,
so that at the death of the mollusk, the relaxation
of the adductor muscle would permit the shell to
spring open and afford easy access to the inmate.'*
No doubt the advancing tide would cause the bird
to carry the shell-fish back out of the reach of the
waves, where it might hope to get at its meat, but
where it would be compelled to leave the shell un-
opened. But that the bird knew the fish would
die there and that its shell would then open — it
is in such particulars that the observer does the
thinking.

Two other writers upon our birds have stated
that pelicans vdll gather in flocks along the shore,
and by manoeuvring and beating the water with
their wings, will drive the fish into the shallows,
where they easily capture them. Here again the
observer thinks for the observed. The pelicans see
the fish and pursue them, without any plan to cor-
ner them in shoal water, but the inevitable result
is that they are so cornered and captured. The
fish are foolish, but the pelicans are not wise. The
wisdom here attributed to them is human wisdom
and not animal vidsdom.

216

A BEAVER'S REASON

To observe the actions of the lower animals with-
out reading our own thoughts into them is not an easy
matter. Mr. Beebe thinks that when in early
spring the peacock, in the Zoological Park, timidly
erects its plumes before an unappreciative crow, it
is merely practicing the art of showing off its gay
plumes in anticipation of the time when it shall
compete with its rivals before the females ; in other
words, that it is rehearsing its part. But I should
say that the peacock struts before the crow or be-
fore spectators because it can't help it. The sexual
instinct begins to flame up and master it. The fowl
can no more control it than it can control its appetite
for food. To practice beforehand is human. Ani-
mal practice takes the form of spontaneous play.
The mock battles of two dogs or of other animals
are not conscious practice on their part, but are play
pure and simple, the same as human games, though
their value as training is obvious enough.

Animals do not have general ideas; they receive
impressions through their various senses, to which
they respond. I recently read in manuscript a very
clear and concise paper on the subject of animal
thinking compared with that of man, in which the
writer says: "There is a rudimentary abstraction
before language. All the higher animals have gen-
eral ideas of ' good-f or-eating ' and * not-good-f or-
eating,' quite apart from any particular objects of
which either of these qualities happens to be char-

217

WAYS OF NATURE

acteristic." It is at this point, I think, that the
writer referred to goes wrong. The animal has no
idea at all about what is good to eat and what is not
good; it is guided entirely by its senses. It reacts
to the stimuli that reach it through the sight or
smell, usually the latter. There is no mental process
at all in the matter, not the most rudimentary ;
there is simple reaction to stimuli, as strictly so as
when we sneeze on taking snuff. Man alone has
ideas of what is good to eat and what is not good.
When a fox prowls about a farmhouse, he has no
general idea that there are eatable things there, as
the essayist above referred to alleges. He is simply
following his nose; he smells something to which he
responds. We think for him when we attribute to
him general ideas of what he is likely to find at the
farmhouse. But when a man goes to a restaurant,
he follows an idea and not his nose, he compares the
different viands in his mind, and often decides be-
forehand what he will have. There is no agreement
in the two cases at all. If, when the bird chooses the
site for its nest, or the chipmunk or the woodchuck
the place for its hole, or the beaver the spot for its
dam, we make these animals think, compare, weigh,
we are simply putting ourselves in their place and
making them do as we would do under Uke condi-
tions.

Animal Ufe parallels human life at many points,
but it is in another plane. Something guides the

218

A BEAVER'S REASON

lower animals, but it is not thought; something
restrains them, but it is not judgment; they are
provident without prudence; they are active with-
out industry; they are skillful without practice; they
are wise without knowledge ; they are rational with-
out reason; they are deceptive without guile. They
cross seas without a compass, they return home
without guidance, they communicate without lan-
guage, their flocks act as a unit without signals or
leaders. When they are joyful, they sing or they
play; when they are distressed, they moan or they
cry; when they are jealous, they bite or they claw,
or they strike or they gore, — and yet I do not sup-
pose they experience the emotions of joy or sorrow,
or anger or love, as we do, because these feelings in
them do not involve reflection, memory, and what
we call the higher nature, as with us.

The animals do not have to consult the almanac
to know when to migrate or to go into winter quar-
ters. At a certain time in the fall, I see the newts all
making for the marshes; at a certain time in the
spring, I see them all returning to the woods again.
At one place where I walk, I see them on the rail-
road track wandering up and down between the
rails, trying to get across. I often lend them a hand.
They know when and in what direction to go, but
not in the way I should know under the same cir-
cumstances. I should have to learn or be told ; they
know instinctively.

219

WAYS OF NATURE

We marvel at what we call the wisdom of Nature,
but how unlike our own ! How blind, and yet in the
end how sure ! How wasteful, and yet how conserv-
ing! How helter-skelter she sows her seed, yet be-
hold the forest or the flowery plain. Her springs
leap out everywhere, yet how inevitably their waters
find their way into streams, the streams into rivers,
and the rivers to the sea. Nature is an engineer
without science, and a builder without rules.

The animals follow the tides and the seasons ; they
find their own; the fittest and the luckiest survive;
the struggle for life is sharp with them all ; birds of
a feather flock together; the young cowbirds reared
by many different foster-parents all gather in flocks
in the fall; they know their kind — at least, they
are attracted by their kind.

A correspondent asks me if I do not think the
minds of animals capable of improvement. Not in
the strict sense. When we teach an animal anything,
we make an impression upon its senses and repeat
this impression over and over, till we establish a
habit. We do not bring about any mental devel-
opment as we do in the child ; we mould and stamp
its sense memory. It is like bending or compressing
a vegetable growth till it takes a certain form.

The human animal sees through the trick, he
comprehends it and does not need the endless repe-
tition. When repetition has worn a path in our
minds, then we, too, act automatically, or without

220

A BEAVER'S REASON

conscious thought, as we do, for instance, in form-
ing the letters when we write.

Wild animals are trained, but not educated.
We multiply impressions upon them without add-
ing to their store of knowledge, because they can-
not evolve general ideas from these sense impres-
sions. Here we reach their hmitations. A bluebird
or a robin will fight its reflected image in the
window-pane of a darkened room day after day,
and never master the delusion. It can take no step
beyond the evidence of its senses — a hard step
even for man to take. You may train your dog so
that he will bound around you when he greets
you without putting his feet upon you. But do you
suppose the fond creature ever comes to know why
you do not want his feet upon you ? If he does, then
he takes the step in general knowledge to which I
have referred. Your cow, tethered by a long rope
upon the lawn, learns many things about that rope
and how to manage it that she did not know when,
she was first tied, but she can never know why she
is tethered, or why she is not to crop the shrubbery,
or paw up the turf, or reach the com on the edge
of the garden. This would imply general ideas or
power of reflection. You might punish her until
she was afraid to do any of these things, but you
could never enhghten her on the subject. The rudest
savage can, in a measure, be enlightened, he can
be taught the reason why of things, but an animal

221

WAYS OF NATURE

cannot. We can make its impulses follow a rut, so
to speak, but we cannot make them free and self-
directing. Animals are the victims of habits inher-
ited or acquired.

I was told of a fox that came nightly prowKng
about some deadfalls set for other game. The
new-fallen snow each night showed the movements
of the suspicious animal; it dared not approach
nearer than several feet to the deadfalls. Then one
day a red-shouldered hawk seized the bait in one
of the traps, and was caught. That night a fox,
presumably the same one, came and ate such parts
of the body of the hawk as protruded from beneath
the stone. Now, how did the fox know that the
trap was sprung and was now harmless ? Did not
its act imply something more than instinct.^ We
have the cunning and suspicion of the fox to start
with; these are factors already in the problem that
do not have to be accounted for. To the fox, as to
the crow, anything that looks hke design or a trap,
anything that does not match with the haphazard
look and general disarray of objects in nature, will
put it on its guard. A deadfall is a contrivance that
is not in keeping with the usual fortuitous disarray
of sticks and stones in the fields and woods. The
odor of the man's hand would also be there, and
this of itself would put the fox on its guard. But a
hawk or any other animal crushed by a stone, with
part of its body protruding from beneath the stone,

A BEAVER'S REASON

has quite a different air. It at least does not look
threatening; the rock is not impending; the open
jaws are closed. More than that, the smell of the
man's hand would be less apparent, if not entirely
absent. The fox drew no rational conclusions; its
instinctive fear was allayed by the changed condi-
tions of the trap. The hawk has not the fox's cun-
ning, hence it fell an easy victim. I do not think
that the cunning of the fox is any more akin to
reason than is the power of smell of the hound
that pursues him. Both are inborn, and are quite
independent of experience. If a fox were deliber-
ately to seek to elude the hound by running through
a flock of sheep, or by following the bed of a
shallow stream, or by taking to the pubHc high-
way, then I think we should have to credit him
with powers of reflection. It is true he often does
all these things, but whether he does them by
chance, or of set purpose, admits of doubt.

The cunning of a fox is as much a part of his
inherited nature as is his fleetness of foot. All the
more notable fur-bearing animals, as the fox, the
beaver, the otter, have doubtless been persecuted
by man and his savage ancestors for tens of thou-
sands of years, and their suspicion of traps and
lures, and their skill in eluding them, are the accu-
mulated inheritance of ages.

In denying what we mean by thought or free
intelligence to animals, an exception should un-

223

WAYS OF NATURE

doubtedly be made in favor of the dog. I have else-
where said that the dog is almost a human product ;
he has been the companion of man so long, and has
been so loved by him, that he has come to partake,
in a measure at least, of his master's nature. If the
dog does not at times think, reflect, he does some-
thing so Hke it that I can find no other name for it.
Take so simple an incident as this, which is of com-
mon occurrence: A collie dog is going along the
street in advance of its master's team. It comes to
a point where the road forks; the dog takes, say,
the road to the left and trots along it a few rods,
and then, half turning, suddenly pauses and looks
back at the team. Has he not been struck by the
thought, " I do not know which way my master is
going : I will wait and see " ? If the dog in such
cases does not reflect, what does he do ? Can we find
any other word for his act ? To ask a question by
word or deed involves some sort of a mental pro-
cess, however rudimentary. Is there any other ani-
mal that would act as the colKe did under hke
circumstances ?

A Western physician writes me that he has on
three different occasions seen his pointer dog be-
have as follows : He had pointed a flock of quail,
that would not sit to be flushed, but kept running.
Then the dog, without a word or sign from his mas-
ter, made a long detour to the right or to the left
around the retreating birds, headed them off, and

224

A BEAVER'S REASON

then slowly advanced, facing the gunner, till he
came to a point again, with the quail in a position
to be flushed. After crediting the instinct and the
training of the dog to the full, such an act, I think,
shows a degree of independent judgment. The dog
had not been trained to do that particular thing,
and took the initiative of his own accord.

Many authentic stories are told of cats which
seem to show that they too have profited in the
way of added intelligence by their long intercourse
with man. A lady writing to me from New York
makes the following discriminating remarks upon
the cat : —

" It seems to me that the reason which you ascribe
for the semi-humanizing of the dog, his long inter-
course with man, might apply in some degree to
the cat. But it is necessary to be very fond of cats
in order to perceive their quahties. The dog is
*up in every one's face,' so to speak ; always in
evidence ; always on deck. But the cat is a shy,
reserved, exclusive creature. The dog is the humble
friend, follower, imitator, and slave of man. He
will hck the foot that kicks him. The cat, instead,
will scratch. The dog begs for notice. The cat
must be loved much and courted assiduously be-
fore she will blossom out and humanize under the
atmosphere of affection. The dog seems to me to
have the typical quahties of the negro, the cat of
the Indian. She is indifferent to man, cares nothing

225

WAYS OF NATURE

for him unless he wins her by special and consistent
kindness, and throughout her long domestication
has kept her wild independence, and abiUty to
forage for herself when turned loose, whether in
forest or city street. It is when she is much loved
and petted that her intelligence manifests itself, in
such quiet ways that an indifferent observer will
never notice them. But she always knows who is
fond of her, and which member of the family is
fondest of her."

The correspondent who had the experience with
his pointer dog relates this incident about his blooded
mare: A drove of horses were pasturing in a
forty-acre lot. The horses had paired off, as horses
usually do under such circumstances. The doctor's
thoroughbred mare had paired with another mare
that was totally blind, and had been so since a colt.
Through the field " ran a little creek which could
not well be crossed by the horses except at a bridge
at one end." One day when the farmer went to salt
the animals, they all came galloping over the bridge
and up to the gate, except the blind one ; she could
not find the bridge, and remained on the other side,
whinnying and stamping, while the others were
getting their salt a quarter of a mile away. Presently
the blooded mare suddenly left her salt, made her
way through the herd, and went at a flying gallop
down across the bridge to the blind animal. Then
she turned and came back, followed by the blind

226

A BEAVER'S REASON

one. The doctor is convinced that his mare delib-
erately went back to conduct her blind companion
over the bridge and down to the salt-Hck. But the
act may be more simply explained. How could the
mare have known her companion was blind "^ What
could any horse know about such a disability ? The
only thing implied in the incident is the attachment
of one animal for another. The mare heard her
mate calling, probably in tones of excitement or
distress, and she flew back to her. Finding her all
right, she turned toward the salt again and was fol-
lowed by her fellow. Instinct did it all.

My own observation of the wild creatures has
revealed nothing so near to human thought and
reflection as is seen in the cases of the collie and
pointer dogs above referred to. The nearest to
them of anything I can now recall is an incident
related by an English writer, Mr. Kearton. In one
of his books, Mr. Kearton relates how he has fre-
quently fooled sitting birds with wooden eggs. He
put his counterfeits, painted and marked like the
originals, into the nests of the song thrush, the
blackbird, and the grasshopper warbler, and in no
case was the imposition detected. In the warbler's
nest he placed dummy eggs twice the size of her
own, and the bird proceeded to brood them without
the slightest sign of suspicion that they were not of
her own laying.

But when Mr. Kearton tried his counterfeits

227

WAYS OF NATURE

upon a ring plover, the fraud was detected. The
plover hammered the shams with her bill "in the
most skeptical fashion," and refused to sit down
upon them. When two of the bird's own eggs were
returned to the nest and left there with two wooden
ones, the plover tried to throw out the shams, but
faihng to do this, " reluctantly sat down and covered
good and bad ahke."

Now, can the action of the plover in this case be
explained on the theory of instinct alone ? The bird
could hardly have had such an experience before.
It was offered a counterfeit, and it behaved much
as you or I would have done under like conditions,
although we have the general idea of counterfeits,
which the plover could not have had. Of course,
everything that pertains to the nest and eggs of a
bird is very vital to it. The bird is wise about these
things from instinct. Yet the other birds were easily
fooled. We do not know how nearly perfect Mr.
Kearton's imitation eggs were, but evidently there
was some defect in them which arrested the bird's
attention. If the incident does not show powers
of reflection in the bird, it certainly shows keen
powers of perception; and that birds, and indeed
all animals, show varying degrees of this power,
is a matter of common observation. I hesitate,
therefore, to say that Mr. Kearton's plover showed
anything more than very keen instincts. Among
our own birds there is only one, so far as I know,

228

A BEAVER'S REASON

that detects the egg of the cowbird when it is laid
in the bird's nest, and that is the yellow warbler.
All the other birds accept it as their own, but this
warbler detects the imposition, and proceeds to get
rid of the strange egg by burying it under a new
nest bottom.

Man is undoubtedly of animal origin. The road
by which he has come out of the dim past hes
through the lower animals. The germ and poten-
tiahty of all that he has become or can become was
sleeping there in his humble origins. Of this I have
no doubt. Yet I think we are justified in saying
that the difference between animal intelligence and
human reason is one of kind and not merely of
degree. Flying and walking are both modes of loco-
motion, and yet may we not fairly say they differ in
kind ? Reason and instinct are both manifestations
of intelHgence, yet do they not belong to different
planes ? Intensify animal instinct ever so much,
and you have not reached the plane of reason. The
homing instinct of certain animals is far beyond
any gift of the kind possessed by man, and yet it
seems in no way akin to reason. Reason heeds the
points of the compass and takes note of the topo-
graphy of the country, but what can animals know
of these things ?

And yet I say the animal is father of the man.
Without the lower orders, there could have been
no higher. In my opinion, no miracle or special

229

WAYS OF NATURE

creation is required to account for man. The trans-
formation of force, as of heat into light or elec-
tricity, is as great a leap and as mysterious as the
transformation of animal intelligence into human
reason.

XIII
READING THE BOOK OF NATURE

IN studying Nature, the important thing is not
so much what we see as how we interpret what
we see. Do we get at the true meaning of the facts ?
Do we draw the right inference ? The fossils in the
rocks were long observed before men drew the right
inference from them. So with a hundred other
things in nature and hfe.

During May and a part of June of 1903, a drouth
of unusual severity prevailed throughout the land.
The pools and marshes nearly all dried up. Late
in June the rains came again and filled them up.
Then an unusual thing happened: suddenly, for
two or three days and nights, the marshes about me
were again vocal with the many voices of the hyla,
the "peepers" of early spring. That is the fact.
Now, what is the interpretation ? With me the peep-
ers become silent in early May, and, I suppose, leave
the marshes for their Hfe in the woods. Did the
drouth destroy all their eggs and young, and did
they know this and so come back to try again ?
How else shall one explain their second appearance
in the marshes ? But how did they know of the de-

231

WAYS OF NATURE

struction of their young, and how can we account
for their concerted action ? These are difficulties not
easily overcome. A more rational explanation to
me is tliis, namely, that the extreme dryness of the
woods — nearly two months without rain — drove
the little frogs to seek for moisture in their spring
haunts, where in places a little water would be pretty
certain to be found. Here they were holding out,
probably hibernating again, as such creatures do in
the tropics during the dry season, when the rains
came, and here again they sent up their spring
chorus of voices, and, for aught I know, once more
deposited their eggs. This to me is much more like
the ways of Nature with her creatures than is the
theory of the frogs' voluntary return to the swamps
and pools to start the season over again.

The birds at least show little or no wit when a
new problem is presented to them. They have no
power of initiative. Instinct runs in a groove, and
cannot take a step outside of it. One May day we
started a meadowlark from her nest. There were
three just hatched young in the nest, and one egg
lying on the ground about two inches from the nest.
I suspected that this egg was infertile and that the
bird had had the sense to throw it out, but on ex-
amination it was found to contain a nearly grown
bird. The inference was, then, that the egg had
been accidentally carried out of the nest some time
when the sitting bird had taken a sudden flight,

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READING THE BOOK OF NATURE

and that she did not have the sense to roll or carry
it back to its place.

There is another view of the case which no doubt
the sentimental "School of Nature Study" would
eagerly adopt : A very severe drouth reigned through-
out the land; food was probably scarce, and was
becoming scarcer ; the bird foresaw her inability
to care for four young ones, and so reduced the
possible number by ejecting one of the eggs from
the nest. This sounds pretty and plausible, and so
credits the bird with the wisdom that the public is
so fond of believing it possesses. Something Hke
this wisdom often occurs among the hive bees in
seasons of scarcity ; they will destroy the unhatched
queens. But birds have no such foresight, and make
no such calculations. In cold, backward seasons,
I think, birds lay fewer eggs than when the season
is early and warm, but that is not a matter of cal-
culation on their part; it is the result of outward
conditions.

A great many observers and nature students at
the present time are possessed of the notion that
the birds and beasts instruct their young, train
them and tutor them, much after the human man-
ner. In the familiar sight of a pair of crows for-
aging with their young about a field in summer,
one of our nature writers sees the old birds giving
their young a lesson in flying. She says that the
most important thing that the elders had to do was

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WAYS OF NATURE

to teach the youngsters how to fly. This they did
by circling about the pasture, giving a pecuHar call
while they were followed by their flock — all but
one. This was a bobtailed crow, and he did not
obey the word of command. His mother took note
of his disobedience and proceeded to discipKne him.
He stood upon a big stone, and she came down upon
him and knocked him off his perch. " He squawked
and fluttered his wings to keep from falHng, but the
blow came so suddenly that he had not time to save
himself, and he fell flat on the ground. In a minute
he clambered back upon his stone, and I watched
him closely. The next time the call came to fly he
did not Hnger, but went with the rest, and so long
as I could watch him he never disobeyed again.'*
I should interpret tliis fact of the old and young
crows flying about a field in summer quite differ-
ently. The young are fully fledged, and are already
strong flyers, when this occurs. They do not leave
the nest until they can fly well and need no tutor-
ing. What the writer really saw was what any one
may see on the farm in June and July: she saw
the parent crows foraging with their young in a field.
The old birds flew about, followed by their brood,
clamorous for the food which their parents found.
The bobtailed bird, which had probably met with
some accident, did not follow, and the mother re-
turned to feed it; the young crow lifted its wings
and flapped them, and in its eagerness probably

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READING THE BOOK OF NATURE

fell off its perch ; then when its parent flew away,
it followed.

I think it highly probable that the sense or fac-
ulty by which animals find their way home over
long stretches of country, and which keeps them
from ever being lost as man so often is, is a faculty
entirely unhke anything man now possesses. The
same may be said of the faculty that guides the
birds back a thousand miles or more to their old
breeding-haunts. In caged or housed animals I
fancy this faculty soon becomes blunted. President
Roosevelt tells in his "Ranch Life" of a horse he
owned that ran away two hundred miles across the
plains, swimming rivers on the *way to its old home.
It is very certain, I think, that this homing feat is
not accomplished by the aid of either sight or scent,
for usually the returning animal seems to follow
a comparatively straight line. It is, or seems to
be, a consciousness of direction that is as unerring
as the magnetic needle. Reason, calculation, and
judgment err, but these primary instincts of the
animal seem almost infallible.

In Bronx Park in New York a grebe and a loon
lived together in an inclosure in which was a large
pool of water. The two birds became much at-
tached to each other and were never long separated.
One winter day on which the pool was frozen over,
except a small opening in one end of it, the grebe
dived under the ice and made its way to the far

235

WAYS OF NATURE

end of the pool, where it remained swimming about
aimlessly for some moments. Presently the loon
missed its companion, and with an apparent look
of concern dived under the ice and joined it at the
closed end of the pool. The grebe seemed to be
in distress for want of air. Then the loon settled
upon the bottom, and with lifted beak sprang up
with much force against the ice, piercing it with
its dagger-like bill, but not breaking it. Down to
the bottom it went again, and again hurled itself
up against the ice, this time shattering it and rising
to the surface, where the grebe was quick to follow.
Now it looked as if the loon had gone under the ice
to rescue its friend from a dangerous situation, for
had not the grebe soon found the air, it must have
perished, and persons who witnessed the incident
interpreted it in this way. It is in such cases that
we are so apt to read our human motives and emo-
tions into the acts of the lower animals. I do not
suppose the loon reahzed the danger of its com-
panion, nor went under the ice to rescue it. It fol-
lowed the grebe because it wanted to be with it,
or to share in any food that might be detaining it
there, and then, finding no air-hole, it proceeded to
make one, as it and its ancestors must often have
done before. All our northern divers must be more
or less acquainted with ice, and must know how to
break it. The grebe itself could doubtless have
broken the ice had it desired to. The birds and the

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READING THE BOOK OF NATURE

beasts often show much intelligence, or what looks
like intelligence, but, as Hamerton says, " the mo-
ment we think of them as human, we are lost."

A farmer had a yearling that sucked the cows.
To prevent this, he put on the yearling a muzzle
set full of sharpened nails. These of course pricked
the cows, and they would not stand to be drained of
their milk. The next day the farmer saw the year-
ling rubbing the nails against a rock in order, as
he thought, to dull them so they would not prick
the cows! How much easier to believe that the
beast was simply trying to get rid of the awkward
incumbrance upon its nose. What can a calf or
a cow know about sharpened nails, and the use
of a rock to dull them ? This is a kind of outside
knowledge — outside of their needs and experi-
ences — that they could not possess.

An Arizona friend of mine lately told me this
interesting incident about the gophers that infested
his cabin when he was a miner. The gophers ate up
his bread. He could not hide it from them or put
it beyond their reach. Finally, he bethought him to
stick his loaf on the end of a long iron poker that
he had, and then stand up the poker in the middle
of his floor. Still, when he came back to his cabin,
he would find his loaf eaten full of holes. One day,
having nothing to do, he concluded to watch and
see how the gophers reached the bread, and this
was what he saw : The animals climbed up the side

237

WAYS OF NATURE

of his log cabin, ran along one of the logs to a point
opposite the bread, and then sprang out sidewise
toward the loaf, which each one struck, but upon
which only one seemed able to effect a lodgment.
Then this one would cling to the loaf and act as a
stop to his fellows when they tried a second time,
his body affording them the barrier they required.
My friend felt sure that this leader deliberately and
consciously aided the others in securing a footing
on the loaf. But I read the incident differently.
This successful jumper aided his fellows without
designing it. The exigencies of the situation com-
pelled him to the course he pursued. Having ef-
fected a lodgment upon the impaled loaf, he would
of course cling to it when the others jumped so as
not to be dislodged, thereby, willy nilly, helping
them to secure a foothold. The cooperation was in-
evitable, and not the result of design.

The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts;
to see no more and no less than is actually before
you ; to be able to detach yourself and see the thing
as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your
own sentiments or prepossessions. In short, to see
with your reason as well as with your perceptions,
that is to be an observer and to read the book of
nature aright.

xw

GATHERED BY THE WAY

I. THE TRAINING OF WILD ANIMALS

I WAS reminded afresh of how prone we all are
to regard the actions of the lower animals in
the light of our own psychology on reading " The
Training of Wild Animals," by Bostock, a well-
known animal-trainer. Bostock evidently knows
well the art of training animals, but of the science of
it he seems to know very little. That is, while he is a
successful trainer, his notions of animal psychology
are very crude. For instance, on one page he speaks
of the Hon as if it were endowed with a fair mea-
sure of human intelligence, and had notions, feel-
ings, and thoughts like our own ; on the next page,
when he gets down to real business, he lays bare its
utter want of these things. He says a lion born and
bred in captivity is more difficult to train than one
caught from the jungle. Then he gives rein to his
fancy. " Such a lion does not fear man ; he knows
his own power. He regards man as an inferior, with
an attitude of disdain and silent hauteur." "He
accepts his food as tribute, and his care as homage
due." "He is aristocratic in his independence."

239

WAYS OF NATURE

" Deep in him — so deep that he barely realizes its
existence — slumbers a desire for freedom and an
unutterable longing for the blue sky and the free
air." When his training is begun, " he meets it with
a reserved majesty and silent indifference, as though
he had a dumb realization of his wrongs." All this
is a very human way of looking at the matter, and
is typical of the way we all — most of us — speak of
the lower animals, defining them to ourselves in terms
of our own mentality, but it leads to false notions
about them. We look upon an animal fretting and
struggling in its cage as longing for freedom, pictur-
ing to itself the joy of the open air and the free hills
and sky, when the truth of the matter undoubtedly
is that the fluttering bird or restless fox or lion sim-
ply feels discomfort in confinement. Its sufferings
are physical, and not mental. Its instincts lead it
to struggle for freedom. It reacts strongly against
the barriers that hold it, and tries in every way to
overcome them. Freedom, as an idea, or a concep-
tion of a condition of life, is, of course, beyond its
capacity.

Bostock shows how the animal learns entirely by
association, and not at all by the exercise of thought
or reason, and yet a moment later says : " The ani-
mal is becoming amenable to the mastery of man,
and in doing so his own reason is being developed,"
which is much like saying that when a man is prac-
ticing on the flying trapeze his wings are being de-

240

GATHERED BY THE WAY

veloped. The lion learns slowly through association
— through repeated sense impressions. First a long
stick is put into his cage. If this is destroyed, it is
replaced by another, until he gets used to it and tol-
erates its presence. Then he is gently rubbed with
it at the hands of his keeper. He gets used to this
and comes to like it. Then the stick is baited with
a piece of meat, and in taking the meat the animal
gets still better acquainted with the stick, and so
ceases to fear it. When this stage is reached, the
stick is shortened day by day, " until finally it is not
much longer than the hand." The next step is to let
the hand take the place of the stick in the stroking
process. " This is a great step taken, for one of the
most difficult things is to get any wild animal to allow
himself to be touched with the human hand . " After a
time a collar with a chain attached is slipped around
the lion's neck when he is asleep. He is now chained
to one end of the cage. Then a chair is introduced
into the cage; whereupon this king of beasts, whose
reason is being developed, and who has such clear
notions of inferior and superior, and who knows his
own powers, usually springs for the chair, seeking to
demolish it. His tether prevents his reaching it, and
so in time he tolerates the chair. Then the trainer,
after some preliminary feints, walks into the cage
and seats himself in the chair. And so, inch by inch,
as it were, the trainer gets control of the animal
and subdues him to his purposes, not by appeaHng

241

WAYS OF NATURE

to liis mind, for he has none, but by impressions
upon his senses.

" Leopards, panthers, and jaguars are all trained
in much the same manner," and in putting them
through their tricks one invariable order must be
observed: "Each thing done one day must be done
the next day in exactly the same way; there must
be no deviation from the rule." Now we do not see
in this fact the way of a thinking or reflecting being,
but rather the way of a creature governed by instinct
or unthinking intelligence. An animal never learns
a trick in the sense that man learns it, never sees
through it or comprehends it, has no image of it in
its mind, and no idea of the relations of the parts of
it to one another; it does it by reason of repetition,
as a creek wears its channel, and probably has no
more self-knowledge or self -thought than the creek
has. This, I think, is quite contrary to the popular
notion of animal life and mentality, but it is the con-
clusion that I, at least, cannot avoid after making
a study of the subject.

II. AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE

One summer, while three young people and I
were spending an afternoon upon a mountain-top,
our dogs treed a porcupine. At my suggestion the
young man climbed the tree — not a large one —
to shake the animal down. I wished to see what the
dogs would do with him, and what the " quill-pig "

242

GATHERED BY THE WAY

would do with the dogs. As the climber advanced
the rodent went higher, till the Kmb he clung to was
no larger than one's wrist. This the young man
seized and shook vigorously. I expected to see the
slow, stupid porcupine drop, but he did not. He
only tightened his hold. The climber tightened his
hold, too, and shook the harder. Still the bundle
of quills did not come down, and no amount of
shaking could bring it down. Then I handed a long
pole up to the climber, and he tried to punch the
animal down. This attack in the rear was evidently
a surprise; it produced an impression different from
that of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole
with his tail, put up the shield of quills upon his
back, and assumed his best attitude of defense.
Still the pole persisted in its persecution, regardless
of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished;
he had never had an experience hke this before ; he
had now met a foe that despised his terrible quills.
Then he began to back rapidly down the tree in the
face of his enemy. The young man's sweetheart
stood below, a highly interested spectator. " Look
out, Sam, he's coming down!" "Be quick, he's
gaining on you!" "Hurry, Sam!" Sam came as
fast as he could, but he had to look out for his foot-
ing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached the
ground first, and his sweetheart breathed more
easily. It looked as if the porcupine reasoned thus;
" My quills are useless against a foe so far away ;

243

WAYS OF NATURE

I must come to close quarters with him." But,
of course, the stupid creature had no such mental
process, and formed no such purpose. He had found
the tree unsafe, and his instinct now was to get to the
ground as quickly as possible and take refuge among
the rocks. As he came down I hit him a sHght blow
over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to con-
fuse him a Httle, but much to my surprise and morti-
fication he dropped to the ground and rolled down
the hill dead, having succumbed to a blow that a
woodchuck or a coon would hardly nave regarded
at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense
of the porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes
frail and brittle the thread of his life. He has had no
struggles or battles to harden and toughen him.

That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and
he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewil-
der for a moment any other forest animal, unless
it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant
of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort,
from struggle is always purchased with a price.

Certain of our natural history romancers have
taken liberties with the porcupine in one respect:
they have shown him made up into a ball and roll-
ing down a hill. One writer makes him do this in
a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the
woods, and at the bottom he is a ragged mass of
leaves which his quills have impaled — an appari-
tion that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits.

244

GATHERED BY THE WAY

Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy
it performing a feat like this !

Another romancer makes his porcupine roll him-
self into a ball when attacked by a panther, and then
on a nudge from his enemy roll down a snowy incline
into the water. I believe the little European hedge-
hog can roll itself up into something hke a ball, but
our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of
tricks with him, and made all sorts of assaults upon
him, at different times, and I have never yet seen
him assume the globular form. It would not be the
best form for him to assume, because it would partly
expose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the
porcupine seems bent upon doing at all times is to
keep right side up with care. His attitude of defense
is crouching close to the ground, head drawn in and
pressed down, the circular shield of large quills upon
his back opened and extended as far as possible, and
the tail stretched back rigid and held close upon the
ground. " Now come on," he says, " if you want to."
The tail is his weapon of active defense ; with it he
strikes upward like lightning, and drives the quills
into whatever they touch. In his chapter called " In
Panoply of Spears," Mr. Roberts paints the porcu-
pine without taking any liberties with the creature's
known habits. He portrays one characteristic of
the porcupine very fehcitously : " As the porcupine
made his resolute way through the woods, the man-
ner of his going differed from that of all the other

245

WAYS OF NATURE

kindreds of the wild. He went not furtively. He had
no particular objection to making a noise. He did
not consider it necessary to stop every little while,
stiffen himself to a monument of immobihty, cast
wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for
the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of
his coming, and he did not greatly care who came.
Behind his panoply of biting spears he felt himself
secure, and in that security he moved as if he held
in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland
world."

III. BIRDS AND STRINGS

A college professor writes me as follows : —
** Watching this morning a robin attempting to
carry off a string, one end of which was caught in
a tree, I was much impressed by his utter lack of
sense. He could not realize that the string was fast,
or that it must be loosened before it could be car-
ried off, and in his efforts to get it all in his bill he
wound it about a neighboring hmb. If as httle sense
were displayed in using other material for nests,
there would be no robins' nests. It impressed me
more than ever with the important part played by
instinct."

Who ever saw any of our common birds dis-
play any sense or judgment in the handling of
strings ? Strings are comparatively a new thing with
birds; they are not a natural product, and as a

246

GATHERED BY THE WAY

matter of course birds blunder in handKng them.
The oriole uses them the most successfully, often
attaching her pensile nest to the branch by their aid.
But she uses them in a blind, childish way, winding
them round and round the branch, often getting
them looped over a twig or hopelessly tangled, and
now and then hanging herself with them, as is the
case with other birds. I have seen a sparrow, a cedar-
bird, and a robin each hung by a string it was using
in the building of its nest. Last spring, in Spokane, a
boy brought me a desiccated robin, whose feet were
held together by a long thread hopelessly snarled.
The boy had found it hanging to a tree.

I have seen in a bird magazine a photograph of
an oriole's nest that had a string carried around a
branch apparently a foot or more away, and then
brought back and the end woven into the nest. It
was given as a sample of a well-guyed nest, the dis-
coverer no doubt looking upon it as proof of an
oriole's forethought in providing against winds and
storms. I have seen an oriole's nest with a string
carried around a leaf, and another with a long looped
string hanging free. All such cases simply show
that the bird was not master of her material ; she
bungled; the traihng string caught over the leaf or
branch, and she drew both ends in and fastened
them regardless of what had happened. The inci-
dent only shows how blindly instinct works.

Twice I have seen cedar-birds, in their quest for

247

WAYS OF NATURE

nesting-material, trying to carry away the strings
that orioles had attached to branches. According to
our sentimental " School of Nature Study," the birds
should have untied and unsnarled the strings in a
human way, but they did not; they simply tugged
at them, bringing their weight to bear, and tried to
fly away with the loose end.

In view of the ignorance of birds with regard to
strings, how can we credit the story told by one of
our popular nature writers of a pair of orioles that
dehberately impaled a piece of cloth upon a thorn
in order that it might be held firmly while they pulled
out the threads ? When it came loose, they refastened
it. The story is incredible for two reasons: (1) the
male oriole does not assist the female in building the
nest ; he only furnishes the music ; (2) the whole
proceeding implies an amount of reflection and skill
in dealing with a new problem that none of our
birds possess. What experience has the race of
orioles had with cloth, that any member of it should
know how to unravel it in that way ? The whole idea
is absurd.

IV. MIMICRY

To what lengths the protective resemblance the-
ory is pushed by some of its expounders! Thus,
in the neighborhood of Rio Janeiro there are two
species of hawks that closely resemble each other,
but one eats only insects and the other eats birds.

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GATHERED BY THE WAY

Mr. Wallace thinks that the bird-eater mimics the
insect-eater, so as to deceive the birds, which are
not afraid of the latter. But if the two hawks look
ahke, would not the birds come to regard them both
as bird-eaters, since one of them does eat birds ?
Would they not at once identify the harmless one
with their real enemy and thus fear them both alike ?
If the latter were newcomers and vastly in the minor-
ity, then the ruse might work for a while. But if there
were ten harmless hawks around to one dangerous
one, the former would quickly suffer from the char-
acter of the latter in the estimation of the birds.
Birds are instinctively afraid of all hawk kind.

Wallace thinks it may be an advantage to cuckoos,
a rather feeble class of birds, to resemble the hawks,
but this seems to me far-fetched. True it is, if the
sheep could imitate the wolf, its enemies might keep
clear of it. Why, then, has not this resemblance
been brought about ? Our cuckoo is a feeble and
defenseless bird also, but it bears no resemblance
to the hawk. The same can be said of scores of
other birds.

Many of these close resemblances among different
species of animals are no doubt purely accidental,
or the result of the same law of variation acting
under similar conditions. We have a hummingbird
moth that so closely in its form and flight and man-
ner resembles a hummingbird, that if this resem-
blance brought it any immunity from danger it

249

WAYS OF NATURE

would be set down as a clear case of mimicry. There
is such a moth in England, too, where no humming-
bird is found. Why should not Nature repeat herself
in this way ? This moth feeds upon the nectar of
flowers like the hummingbird, and why should it
not have the hummingbird's form and manner ?

Then there are accidental resemblances in nature,
such as the often-seen resemblance of knots of trees
and of vegetables to the human form, and of a cer-
tain fungus to a part of man's anatomy. We have a
fly that resembles a honey-bee. In my bee-hunting
days I used to call it the "mock honey-bee." It
would come up the wind on the scent of my bee box
and hum about it precisely like a real bee. Of course
it was here before the honey-bee, and has been
evolved quite independently of it. It feeds upon the
pollen and nectar of flowers like the true bee, and is,
therefore, of similar form and color. The honey-bee
has its enemies; the toads and tree-frogs feed upon
it, and the kingbird captures the slow drone.

When an edible butterfly mimics an inedible or
noxious one, as is frequently the case in the tropics,
the mimicker is no doubt the gainer.

It makes a big difference whether the mimicker
is seeking to escape from an enemy, or seeking to
deceive its prey. I fail to see how, in the latter case,
any disguise of form or color could be brought about.

Our shrike, at times, murders little birds and eats
out their brains, and it has not the form, or the

250

GATHERED BY THE WAY

color, or the eye of a bird of prey, and thus probably
deceives its victims, but there is no reason to beheve
that this guise is the result of any sort of mimicry.

V. THE COLORS OF FRUITS

Mr. Wallace even looks upon the nuts as pro-
tectively colored, because they are not to be eaten.
But without the agency of the birds and the squir-
rels, how are the heavy nuts, such as the chestnut,
beechnut, acorn, butternut, and the like, to be scat-
tered ? The blue jay is often busy hours at a time
in the fall, planting chestnuts and acorns, and red
squirrels carry butternuts and walnuts far from the
parent trees, and place them in forked hmbs and
holes for future use. Of course, many of these fall to
the ground and take root. If the protective colora-
tion of the nuts, then, were effective, it would defeat
a purpose which every tree and shrub and plant has
at heart, namely, the scattering of its seed. I notice
that the button-balls on the sycamores are protec-
tively colored also, and certainly they do not crave
concealment. It is true that they hang on the naked
trees till spring, when no concealment is possible. It
is also true that the jays and the crows carry away
the chestnuts from the open burrs on the trees where
no color scheme would conceal them. But the squir-
rels find them upon the ground even beneath the
snow, being guided, no doubt, by the sense of smell.

The hickory nut is almost white ; why does it not

251

WAYS OF NATURE

seek concealment also ? It is just as helpless as tlie
others, and is just as sweet-meated. It occurs to me
that birds can do nothing with it on account of its
thick shell ; it needs, therefore, to attract some four-
footed creature that will carry it away from the par-
ent tree, and this is done by the mice and the squir-
rels. But if this is the reason of its whiteness, there
is the dusky butternut and the black walnut, both
more or less concealed by their color, and yet having
the same need of some creature to scatter them.

The seeds of the maple, and of the ash and the
linden, are obscurely colored, and they are winged ;
hence they do not need the aid of any creature in
their dissemination. To say that this is the reason
of their dull, unattractive tints would be an expla-
nation on a par with much that one hears about
the significance of animal and vegetable coloration.
Why is corn so bright colored, and wheat and barley
so dull, and rice so white .'^ No doubt there is a
reason in each case, but I doubt if that reason has
any relation to the surrounding animal Hfe.

The new Botany teaches that the flowers have
color and perfume to attract the insects to aid in
their fertihzation — a need so paramount with all
plants, because plants that are fertilized by aid of
the wind have very inconspicuous flowers. Is it
equally true that the high color of most fruits is to
attract some hungry creature to come and eat them
and thus scatter the seeds ? From the dwarf cornel,

252

GATHERED BY THE WAY

or bunch-berry, in the woods, to the red thorn in
the fields, every fruit-bearing plant and shrub and
tree seems to advertise itself to the passer-by in its
bright hues. Apparently there is no other use to
the plant of the fleshy pericarp than to serve as a
bait or wage for some animal to come and sow its
seed. Why, then, should it not take on these allur-
ing colors to help along this end.'^ And yet there
comes the thought, may not this scarlet and gold of
the berries and tree fruits be the inevitable result of
the chemistry of ripening, as it is with the autumn
foliage.'' What benefit to the tree, directly or in-
directly, is all this wealth of color of the autumn ?
Many of the toadstools are highly colored also ; how
do they profit by it ? Many of the shells upon the
beach are very showy ; to what end ? The cherry-
birds find the pale ox-hearts as readily as they do the
brilKant Murillos, and the dull blue cedar berries
and the duller drupes of the lotus are not concealed
from them nor from the robins. But it is true that
the greenish white grapes in the vineyard do not
suffer from the attacks of the birds as do the blue
and red ones. The reason probably is that the birds
regard them as unripe. The white grape is quite
recent, and the birds have not yet " caught on."

Poisonous fruits are also highly colored; to what
end ? In Bermuda I saw on low bushes great masses
of what they called "pigeon-berries" of a brilliant
yellow color and very tempting, yet I was assured

253

WAYS OF NATURE

they were poisonous. It would be interesting to
know if anything eats the red berries of our wild
turnip or arum. I doubt if any bird or beast could
stand them. Wherefore, then, are they so brightly
colored ? I am also equally curious to know if any-
thing eats the fruit of the red and white baneberry
and the blue cohosh.

The seeds of some wild fruit, such as the chmb-
ing bitter-sweet, are so soft that it seems impossible
they should pass through the gizzard of a bird and
not be destroyed.

The fruit of the sumac comes the nearest to being
a cheat of anything I know of in nature — a collec-
tion of seeds covered with a flannel coat with just a
perceptible acid taste, and all highly colored. Unless
the seed itself is digested, what is there to tempt the
bird to devour it, or to reward it for so doing ?

In the tropics one sees fruits that do not become
bright colored on ripening, such as the breadfruit,
the custard apple, the naseberry, the mango. And
tropical foHage never colors up as does the foHage of
northern trees.

VI. INSTINCT

Many false notions seem to be current in the
popular mind about instinct. Apparently, some of
our writers on natural history themes would like
to discard the word entirely.' Now instinct is not
opposed to intelligence; it is intelligence of the

254

GATHERED BY THE WAY

unlearned, unconscious kind, — the intelligence in-
nate in nature. We use the word to distinguish a
gift or faculty which animals possess, and which is
independent of instruction and experience, from the
mental equipment of man which depends mainly
upon instruction and experience. A man has to be
taught to do that which the lower animals do from
nature. Hence the animals do not progress in
knowledge, while man's progress is almost limitless.
A man is an animal born again into a higher spirit-
ual plane. He has lost or shed many of his animal
instincts in the process, but he has gained the ca-
pacity for great and wonderful improvement.

Instinct is opposed to reason, to reflection, to
thought, — to that kind of intelligence which knows
and takes cognizance of itself. Instinct is that lower
form of intelligence wliich acts through the senses, —
sense perception, sense association, sense memory, —
which we share with the animals, though their eyes
and ears and noses are often quicker and keener
than ours. Hence the animals know only the present,
visible, objective world, while man through his gift
of reason and thought knows the inward world of
ideas and ideal relations.

An animal for the most part knows all that it is
necessary for it to know as soon as it reaches ma-
turity; what it learns beyond that, what it learns
at the hands of the animal-trainer, for instance, it
learns slowly, through a long repetition of the pro-

255

WAYS OF NATURE

cess of trial and failure. Man also achieves many
things through practice alone, or through the same
process of trial and failure. Much of his manual
skill comes in this way, but he learns certain things
through the exercise of his reason ; he sees how the
thing is done, and the relation of the elements of the
problem to one another. The trained animal never
sees how the thing is done, it simply does it auto-
matically, because certain sense impressions have
been stamped upon it till a habit has been formed,
just as a man will often wind his watch before going
to bed, or do some other accustomed act, without
thinking of it.

The bird builds her nest and builds it intelli-
gently, that is, she adapts means to an end; but
there is no reason to suppose that she thinks about
it in the sense that man does when he builds his
house. The nest-building instinct is stimulated into
activity by outward conditions of place and cHmate
and food supply as truly as the growth of a plant is
thus stimulated.

As I look upon the matter, the most wonderful
and ingenious nests in the world, as those of the
weaver-birds and orioles, show no more independent
self-directed and self-originated thought than does
the rude nest of the pigeon or the cuckoo. They
evince a higher grade of intelligent instinct, and that
is all. Both are equally the result of natural prompt-
ings, and not of acquired skill, or the lack of it. One

^5Q

GATHERED BY THE WAY

species of bird will occasionally learn the song of
another species, but the song impulse must be there
to begin with, and this must be stimulated in the
right way at the right time. A caged Enghsh spar-
row has been known to learn the song of the canary
caged with or near it, but the sparrow certainly
inherits the song impulse. One has proof of this
when he hears a company of these sparrows sitting
in a tree in spring chattering and chirping in unison,
and almost reaching an utterance that is song-like.
Our cedar-bird does not seem to have the song im-
pulse, and I doubt if it could ever be taught to sing.
In like manner our ruffed grouse has but feeble vocal
powers, and I do not suppose it would learn to crow
or cackle if brought up in the barn-yard. It expresses
its joy at the return of spring and the mating season
in its drum, as do the woodpeckers.

The recent English writer Richard Kearton says
there is " no such dead level of unreasoning instinct "
in the animal world as is popularly supposed, and
he seems to base the remark upon the fact that he
found certain of the cavities or holes in a hay-rick
where sparrows roosted Hned with feathers, while
others were not lined. Such departures from a level
line of habit as this are common enough among all
creatures. Instinct is not something as rigid as cast
iron; it does not invariably act like a machine,
always the same. The animal is something ahve,
and is subject to the law of variation. Instinct may

257

WAYS OF NATURE

act more strongly in one kind than in another, just
as reason may act more strongly in one man than in
another, or as one animal may have greater speed
or courage than another of the same species. It
would be hard to find two Hve creatures, very far up
in the scale, exactly aHke. A thrush may use much
mud in the construction of its nest, or it may use
Httle or none at all; the oriole may weave strings
into its nest, or it may use only dry grasses and
horse-hairs ; such cases only show variations in the
action of instinct. But if an oriole should build a
nest Uke a robin, or a robin build like a cliff swal-
low, that would be a departure from instinct to
take note of.

Some birds show a much higher degree of vari-
abihty than others ; some species vary much in song,
others in nesting and in feeding habits. I have
never noticed much variation in the songs of robins,
but in their nesting-habits they vary constantly.
Thus one nest will be almost destitute of mud, while
another will be composed almost mainly of mud;
one will have a large mass of dry grass and weeds
as its foundation, while the next one will have little
or no foundation of the kind. The sites chosen
vary still more, ranging from the ground all the
way to the tops of trees. I have seen a robin's nest
built in the centre of a small box that held a clump
of ferns, which stood by the roadside on the top
of a low post near a house, and without cover or

258

GATHERED BY THE WAY

shield of any sort. The robin had welded her nest
so completely to the soil in the box that the whole
could be hfted by the rim of the nest. She had
given a very pretty and unique effect to the nest
by a border of fine dark rootlets skillfully woven
together. The song sparrow shows a high degree of
variabihty both in its song and in its nesting-habits,
each bird having several songs of its own, while
one may nest upon the ground and another in a
low bush, or in the vines on the side of your house.
The vesper sparrow, on the other hand, shows a
much lower degree of variabihty, the individuals
rarely differing in their songs, while all the nests I
have ever found of this sparrow were in open grassy
fields upon the ground. The chipping or social
sparrow is usually very constant in its song and its
nesting-habits, and yet one season a chippy built
her nest in an old robin's nest in the vines on my
porch. It was a very pretty instance of adaptation
on the part of the httle bird. Another chippy that
I knew had an original song, one that resembled
the sound of a small tin whistle. The bush spar-
row, too, is pretty constant in choosing a bush in
which to place its nest, yet I once found the nest of
this sparrow upon the ground in an open field with
suitable bushes within a few yards of it. The wood-
peckers, the jays, the cuckoos, the pewees, the war-
blers, and other wood birds show only a low degree
of variabihty in song, feeding, and nesting habits.

259

WAYS OF NATURE

The Baltimore oriole makes free use of strings in
its nest-building, and the songs of different birds of
this species vary greatly, while the orchard oriole
makes no use of strings, so far as I have observed,
and its song is always and everywhere the same.
Hence we may say that the lives of some birds run
much more in ruts than do those of others ; they
show less plasticity of instinct, and are perhaps for
that reason less near the state of free intelligence.

Organic life in all its forms is flexible; instinct is
flexible; the habits of all the animals change more
or less with changed conditions, but the range of the
fluctuations in the lives of the wild creatures is very
Hmited, and is always determined by surrounding
circumstances, and not by individual volition, as it
so often is in the case of man. In a treeless country
birds that sing on the perch elsewhere will sing on
the wing. The black bear in the Southern States
" holes up " for a much shorter period than in Can-
ada or the Rockies. Why is the spruce grouse so
stupid compared with most other species ? Why is
the Canada jay so tame and familiar about your
camp in the northern woods or in the Rockies, and
the other jays so wary ? Such variations, of course,
have their natural explanation, whatever it may be.
In New Zealand there is a parrot, the kea, that once
lived upon honey and fruit, but that now lives upon
the sheep, tearing its way down to the kidney fat.

This is a wide departure in instinct, but it is not

260

GATHERED BY THE WAY

to be read as a development of reason in its place.
It is a modified instinct, — the instinct for food seek-
ing new sources of supply. Exactly how it came
about would be interesting to know. Our oriole
is an insectivorous bird, but in some localities it is
very destructive in the August vineyards. It does
not become a fruit-eater like the robin, but a juice-
sucker; it punctures the grapes for their unfermented
wine. Here, again, we have a case of modified and
adaptive instinct. All animals are more or less
adaptive, and avail themselves of new sources of
food supply. When the southern savannas were
planted with rice, the bobolinks soon found that this
food suited them. A few years ago we had a great
visitation in the Hudson River Valley of crossbills
from the north. They lingered till the fruit of the
peach orchards had set, when they discovered that
here was a new source of food supply, and they
became very destructive to the promised crop by
deftly cutting out the embryo peaches. All such
cases show how plastic and adaptive instinct is, at
least in relation to food suppHes. Let me again say
that instinct is native, untaught intelhgence, di-
rected outward, but never inward as in man.

VII. THE ROBIN

Probably, with us, no other bird is so closely
associated with country life as the robin ; most of
the time pleasantly, but for a brief season, during

261

WAYS OF NATURE

cherry time, unpleasantly. His life touches or min-
gles with ours at many points — in the dooryard,
in the garden, in the orchard, along the road, in
the groves, in the woods. He is everywhere except
in the depths of the primitive forests, and he is
always very much at home. He does not hang tim-
idly upon the skirts of our rural life, Hke, say, the
thrasher or the chewink ; he plunges in boldly and
takes his chances, and his share, and often more
than his share, of whatever is going. What vigor,
what cheer, how persistent, how prohfic, how adap-
tive ; pugnacious, but cheery, pilfering, but com-
panionable !

When one first sees his ruddy breast upon the
lawn in spring, or his pert form outHned against
a patch of Hngering snow in the brown fields, or
hears his simple carol from the top of a leafless tree
at sundown, what a vernal thrill it gives one ! What
a train of pleasant associations is quickened into
Hfe!

What pictures he makes upon the lawn! What
attitudes he strikes ! See him seize a worm and yank
it from its burrow!

I recently observed a robin boring for grubs in a
country dooryard. It is a common enough sight to
witness one seize an angle-worm and drag it from
its burrow in the turf, but I am not sure that I ever
before saw one drill for grubs and bring the big
white morsel to the surface. The robin I am speak-

262

GATHERED BY THE WAY

ing of had a nest of young in a maple near by, and
she worked the neighborhood very industriously
for food. She would run along over the short grass
after the manner of robins, stopping every few feet,
her form stiff and erect. Now and then she would
suddenly bend her head toward the ground and bring
eye or ear for a moment to bear intently upon it.
Then she would spring to boring the turf vigorously
with her bill, changing her attitude at each stroke,
alert and watchful, throwing up the grass roots and
little jets of soil, stabbing deeper and deeper, grow-
ing every moment more and more excited, till finally
a fat grub was seized and brought forth. Time after
time, during several days, I saw her mine for grubs
in this way and drag them forth. How did she know
where to drill? The insect was in every case an
inch below the surface. Did she hear it gnawing the
roots of the grasses, or did she see a movement in the
turf beneath which the grub was at work ? I know
not. I only know that she struck her game uner-
ringly each time. Only twice did I see her make a
few thrusts and then desist, as if she had been for
the moment deceived.

How pugnacious the robin is ! With what spunk
and spirit he defends himself against his enemies!
Every spring I see the robins mobbing the blue jays
that go sneaking through the trees looking for eggs.
The crow blackbirds nest in my evergreens, and
there is perpetual war between them and the robins.

263

WAYS OF NATURE

The blackbirds devour the robins' eggs, and the
robins never cease to utter their protest, often
backing it up with blows. I saw two robins attack a
young blackbird in the air, and they tweaked out
his feathers at a Kvely rate.

One spring a pack of robins killed a cuckoo near
me that they found robbing a nest. I did not witness
the killing, but I have cross-questioned a number
of people who did see it, and I am convinced of the
fact. They set upon him when he was on the robin's
nest, and left him so bruised and helpless beneath
it that he soon died. It was the first intimation I
had ever had that the cuckoo devoured the eggs of
other birds.

Two other well-authenticated cases have come
to my knowledge of robins killing cuckoos (the
black-billed) in May. The robin knows its enemies,
and it is quite certain, I think, that the cuckoo is
one of them.

What a hustler the robin is ! No wonder he gets
on in the world. He is early, he is handy, he is adap-
tive, he is tenacious. Before the leaves are out in
April the female begins her nest, concealing it as
much as she can in a tree-crotch, or placing it under
a shed or porch, or even under an overhanging bank
upon the ground. One spring a robin built her nest
upon the ladder that was hung up beneath the eaves
of the wagon-shed. Having occasion to use the lad-
der, we placed the nest on a box that stood beneath

264

GATHERED BY THE WAY

it. The robin was disturbed at first, but soon went
on with her incubating in the new and more exposed
position. The same spring one built her nest upon
a beam in a half-finished fruit house, going out and
in through the unshingled roof. One day, just as the
eggs were hatched, we completed the roof, and kept
up a hammering about the place till near night ; the
mother robin scolded a good deal, but she did not
desert her young, and soon found her way in and
out the door.

If a robin makes up her mind to build upon your
porch, and you make up your mind that you do not
want her there, there is likely to be considerable
trouble on both sides before the matter is settled.
The robin gets the start of you in the morning, and
has her heap of dry grass and straws in place before
the jealous broom is stirring, and she persists after
you have cleaned out her rubbish half a dozen times.
Before you have discouraged her, you may have to
shunt her off of every plate or other " coign of van-
tage" with boards or shingles. A strenuous bird
indeed, and a hustler.

VIII. THE CROW

One very cold winter's morning, after a fall of
nearly two feet of snow, as I came out of my door
three crows were perched in an apple tree but a few
rods away. One of them uttered a peculiar caw as
they saw me, but they did not fly away. It was not

265

WAYS OF NATURE

the usual high-keyed note of alarm. It may have
meant " Look out ! " yet it seemed to me like the ask-
ing of alms : " Here we are, three hungry neighbors
of yours; give us food." So I brought out the en-
trails and legs of a chicken, and placed them upon
the snow. The crows very soon discovered what I
had done, and with the usual suspicious movement
of the closed wings which has the effect of emphasiz-
ing the birds' alertness, approached and devoured the
food or carried it away. But there was not the least
strife or dispute among them over the food. Indeed,
each seemed ready to give precedence to the others.
In fact, the crow is a courtly, fine-mannered bird.
Birds of prey will rend one another over their food ;
even buzzards will make some show of mauling one
another mth their wings ; but I have yet to see any-
thing of the kind with that gentle freebooter, the
crow. Yet suspicion is his dominant trait. Anything
that looks like design puts him on his guard. The
simplest device in a cornfield usually suffices to
keep him away. He suspects a trap. His wit is not
deep, but it is quick, and ever on the alert.

One of our natural history romancers makes the
crows flock in June. But the truth is, they do not
flock till September. Through the summer the dif-
ferent famihes keep pretty well together. You may
see the old ones with their young foraging about
the fields, the young often being fed by their par-
ents.

^66

GATHERED BY THE WAY

From my boyhood I have seen the yearly meet-
ing of the crows in September or October, on a high
grassy hill or a wooded ridge. Apparently, all the
crows from a large area assemble at these times;
you may see them coming, singly or in loose bands,
from all directions to the rendezvous, till there are
hundreds of them together. They make black an
acre or two of ground. At intervals they all rise in
the air, and wheel about, all cawing at once. Then
to the ground again, or to the tree-tops, as the case
may be; then, rising again, they send forth the
voice of the multitude. What does it all mean ? I
notice that this rally is always prehminary to their
going into winter quarters. It would be interesting
to know just the nature of the communication that
takes place between them. Not long afterwards,
or early in October, they may be seen morning
and evening going to and from their rookeries.
The matter seems to be settled in these September
gatherings of the clan. Was the spot agreed upon
beforehand and notice served upon all the members
of the tribe ? Our " school-of-the- woods " professors
would probably infer something of the kind. I sus-
pect it is all brought about as naturally as any other
aggregation of animals. A few crows meet on the
hill; they attract others and still others. The rising
of a body of them in the air, the circling and caw-
ing, may be an instinctive act to advertise the meet-
ing to all the crows within sight or hearing. At any

267

WAYS OF NATURE

rate, it has this effect, and they come hurrying from
all points.

What their various calls mean, who shall tell ?
That lusty caw-aw, caiv-aiv that one hears in spring
and summer, hke the voice of authority or com-
mand, what does it mean ? I never could find out.
It is doubtless from the male. A crow will utter it
while sitting alone on the fence in the pasture, as
well as when flying through the air. The crow's cry
of alarm is easily distinguished ; all the other birds
and wild creatures know it, and the hunter who is
stalking his game is apt to swear when he hears it.
I have heard two crows in the spring, seated on
a limb close together, give utterance to many curi-
ous, guttural, gurghng, ventriloquial sounds. Wliat
were they saying? It was probably some form of
the language of love.

I venture to say that no one has ever yet heard
the crow utter a complaining or a disconsolate note.
He is always cheery, he is always self-possessed, he
is a great success. Nothing in Bermuda made me
feel so much at home as a flock of half a dozen of
our crows which I saw and heard there. At one time
they were very numerous on the island, but they
have been persecuted till only a remnant of the

tribe remains.

I

My friend and neighbor through the year.
Self-appointed overseer
268

GATHERED BY THE WAY

Of my crops of fruit and grain.
Of my woods and furrowed plain,

Claim thy tithings right and left,
I shall never call it theft.

Nature wisely made the law,
And I fail to find a flaw

In thy title to the earth,
And all it holds of any worth.

I like thy self-complacent air,
I like thy ways so free from care,

Thy landlord stroll about my fields.
Quickly noting what each yields;

Thy courtly mien and bearing bold.
As if thy claim were bought with gold;

Thy floating shape against the sky,
When days are calm and clouds sail high;

Thy thrifty flight ere rise of sun,
Thy homing clans when day is done.

Hues protective are not thine,

So sleek thy coat each quill doth shine.

Diamond black to end of toe,
Thy counter-point the crystal snow.
269

WAYS OF NATURE

II

Never plaintive nor appealing,

Quite at home when thou art stealing,

c

Always groomed to tip of feather.
Calm and trim in every weather.

Morn till night my woods policing,
Every sound thy watch increasing.

Hawk and owl in tree-top hiding
Feel the shame of thy deriding.

Naught escapes thy observation.
None but dread thy accusation.

Hunters, prowlers, woodland lovers
Vainly seek the leafy covers.

Ill

Noisy, scheming, and predacious.
With demeanor almost gracious.

Dowered with leisure, void of hurry,
Void of fuss and void of worry.

Friendly bandit, Robin Hood,
Judge and jury of the wood.

Or Captain Kidd of sable quill,
Hiding treasures in the hill,
270

GATHERED BY THE WAY

Nature made thee for each season,
Gave thee wit for ample reason,

Good crow wit that 's always burnished
Like the coat her care has furnished.

May thy numbers ne'er diminish,
I'll befriend thee till life's finish.

May I never cease to meet thee,
May I never have to eat thee.

And mayest thou never have to fare so
That thou playest the part of scarecrow.

INDEX

Adder, Mowing, 17.

Altruism among animals, 23.

Ammophila, 117.

Angler (Z/opMws piscatorius), 107.

Animals, the author's attitude in
regard to the intelligence of, v,
vi ; nature of the intelligence of,
1-3; sources of the intelligence
of, 4 ; the sentimental attitude
towards, 59-61 ; emotions and
intellect of, 64 ; language of, 64;
curiosity of, 64; altruism of,
65 ; punishment and discipline
among, 65 ; the three factors that
shape their lives, 66; imitation
among, 66-70 ; learning by expe-
rience, 70-73; variation in, 73;
instinct in, 73-83 ; incapable of
reflection, 77, 78; their know-
ledge compared with man's, 80,
81 ; imitation among, not akin to
teaching, 83-86; belief in regard
to teaching among, 87; play of ,87,
99, 100 ; communication among,
87-98; fear in, 89, 90; ears of, 95;
telepathy among, 96-98; their
habits the same everywhere,
101-103; courtship among, 104;
Stories of poisoning among, 105,
106 ; stories of trapping and fish-
ing among, 106, 107 ; individual-
ity among, 118, 119 ; variation in,
120, 121; ignorance of, 123-125;
perceptive intelligence of, 126;
partakers of the universal intel-
ligence, 128-130; know what is
necessary for them to know, 131 ;
their knowledge inherited, 132;
wise in relation to their food and
their enemies, 133; and the art
of healing, 134 ; protective color-
ation of, 138-140 ; their fear of

poison, 140 ; association of ideas
in, 141, 142; emotions of, 143; no
ethical sense in, 144, 145; auto-
matism of, 146 ; and the use of
medicine, 147; the truth about
them what is wanted, 147-149 ;
the thinking of, instinct in, 151-
170; have perceptions but no
conceptions, 160 ; first steps of
intelligence in, 161, 162; limita-
tions of intelligence in, 163-168 ;
automatism of trained animals,
166; incredible stories of, 175-
184; stories of surgery among,
180-182 ; true interpretation of
seeming acts of reason in, 184-
187, 189, 190 ; absence of language
among, 187-189 ; creatures of rou-
tine, 190; the humanization of,
195, 196; nature of their intel-
ligence, 209-230; their minds
incapable of improvement, 220-
222; the victims of habits, 222;
popular notion of teaching
among, 233, 234 ; nature of the
homing faculty of, 235 ; Bostock
on the training of wild, 239-
242 ; mimicry among, 248-250 ;
instinct in, 255-261.

Antelope, 85.

Apple trees, protecting them-
selves from cattle, 153.

Argyll, Duke of, 72.

"Atlantic Monthly, The," article
in, V, vi, 173.

Baboon, 65.

Barrington, Daines, 68.

Barrus, Dr. Clara, her description

of the woodcock's song and song

flight, 43.
Bean, the, intelligence of, 1, 2.

273

INDEX

Bear, a caged, 76.

Bear, black, 260.

Beaver, 166, 167 ; nature of his in-
telligence, 209-211,

Beebe, C. William, on instinct and
reason in birds, 215-217.

Bees, 24.

Belief, scientific grounds for, 173-
179.

Birds, mistakes of, 4-6 ; their nest-
building, 4, 5, 70, 71; fighting

• their reflections, 5, 6; taking ad-
vantage of man's protection for
their nests, 6, 7 ; probably make
no improvement in nest-build-
ing or singing, 70, 71 ; learn cun-
ning by experience, 71 ; instincts
connected with parasitism, 79,
80; communication in flocks of,
96-98; courtship of, 103, 104 ; ac-
tivities of the two sexes among,
111-114; song contests among,
114, 115 ; and glass, 127 ; incubat-
ing-habits of, 135 ; shading mate
and young from sun, 137, 138;
their knowledge of the value of
protective coloration, 138-140;
migration of, 186; their affection
for their young, 215 ; and shell-
fish, 216 ; have no power of initi-
ative, 232, 233 ; their handling of
strings, 246-248; instinct in, 256-
261; variability in, 258-261.

Bird's-nests, an epitome of wild
nature, 109; haphazard design
in, 109, 110.

Bird-songs, the power to hear, 29 ;
not music, 29 ; elusiveness of,
30 ; a part of nature, 30 ; our
pleasure in them from associa-
tion, 31-34; songs of caged birds,
32, 35; the wing-song, 39-44; in-
dividual variation in musical
ability, 44-46; acquired by imi-
tation, 67, 68.

Bittern, least {Ardetta exilis),

eating her eggs, Ill-
Blackbird, crow, or gracMe {Quis-
caltis quiscula subsp.), catching
a fish, 176; enmity with robins,
263, 264.

Blackbird, English, song of, 45,

227.

Blackbird, red-winged. See Ked-
shouldered starling.

Black-knot, 27.

Bluebird {Sialia sialis), hearing
the, 29.

Bobolink (Dolichonyx oryzivo-
Tus), its song in the home mead-
ows, 36 ; variation in song, 69;
with defective song, 116.

Body, the, intelligence of, 128.

Bolles, Frank, 18.

Bostock, Frank C, his The Train-
ing of Wild Animals, 239-242.

Brewster, William, 22.

Buds, formation of, 50, 51.

Bumblebee, hibernation of, 49.

Burmeister, quoted on bees, 200.

Calf, a wild, 214; a yearling and
its muzzle, 237.

Canary-bird, 159; an incredible
story of a, 177, 178.

Carlisle, Bishop of, 148.

Cats, 66, 67, 73; fear of dogs, 75;
talking with the ears, 94, 95;
playing with mice, 100; watch-
ing a mouse-hole, 186, 187; hu-
man qualities of, 225, 226.

Cat tribe, their method of hunt-
ing, 183, 184.

Cedar-bird (Ampelis cedrorum),
notes of, 46; nest-building of,
112 ; and strings, 247, 248 ; no
song impulse in, 257.

Chapman, Frank M., his story of
a least bittern. 111.

Chewink, or towhee {Pipilo
erythrophthalmus), the " Her-
mit's " story, 93.

Chickadee (Parus atricapillus),
flight of a young, 70; tameness
of, 205.

Chipmunk, 159.

Coon. See Raccoon.

Cow, the, ignorance of, 123, 124 ;
187, 221.

Cowbird {Molothrus ater), 79, 80,
156, 157 ; an incredible statement
regarding, 178, 179, 220.

274

INDEX

Coyote, or prairie wolf, 82, 83, 189.

Crab, hermit, 155.

Crabs, defensive instinct in, 169,
170.

Crossbills {Loxia sp.), feeding on
young peaclies, 261.

Crow, American {Corvus brachy-
rhynchos), winter quarters of,
50; the ''Hermit's " story of a
crow, 93; nature of his intelli-
gence, 136, 137; notes of, 188, 268;
story of a court of justice, 198,
199; maltreating a tame crow,
199; cunning of, 204;' a misinter-
preted incident, 233, 234 ; feed-
ing, 265, 266; suspiciousness of,
266; flocking of, 266, 267; mean-
ing of calls of, 268 ; disposition
of, 268; in Bermuda, 268; lines
on, 268.

Crow, white-necked African, 135,
136.

Crows and shell-fish, 2.

Cuckoos, 249 ; eating birds' eggs,
264; kiUed by robins, 264.

Darwin, Charles, 65, 67, 73, 75, 76,
79, 82, 83, 87, 127, 136, 149, 177, 198.

December, the month when Na-
ture closes her doors, 47.

Deer, 84, 85, 185.

Dipper. See Water ouzel.

Dogs, imitativeness of, 66; show
gleams of reason, 76; 85, 88 ; feel-
ings of shame, guilt, and re-
venge ascribed to, 144, 145 ; car-
rying a stick through a fence,
16^166; language of, 188; Mae-
terlinck on, 192, 193 ; John Muir's
story of a dog, 193, 194; Egerton
Young's book about, 194; hiding
a bone, 205 ; companionableness
of, 205, 206; 211, 221; rational in-
telligence in, 223-225 ; partake of
the master's nature, 224; story
of a pointer, 224, 225.

Dove, turtle, or mourning dove
{Zenaidura macroura), occu-
pying a robin's nest, 7.

Duck. See Mallard.

Duck, eider. See American eider.

Duck, wild, wounded, 213.
Duck, wood (Aix sponsa), nest,
eggs, and young of, 21-23.

Eagle, 103.

Eagle, bald {Halioeetus leucoceph-
altis), 72, 213.

Ears, movements of, 95.

Eider, American (Somateria dres-
seri), killing mussels, 180-182.

Elephants, 76 ; protecting them-
selves from flies, 138; an incred-
ible story, 145, 146.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 24 ; his
lines on the sparrow's song, 32,
102.

Evolution, 170, 171.

Fabre, the French naturalist, 158.

Farm, the author's, 101.

Fear, instinctive, 74-76; use of,
89; indiscriminating, 89; panics,
90.

Finch, purple (Carpodacus pur-
pureus), song flight of, 44; song
of, 44.

Fish and glass, 127.

Flocks, communication in, 96-98.

Fly, mimicking the honey-bee,
250.

Flycatcher, great crested (Myiar-
chus crinitus), nesting-habits of,
17-19.

Forest and Stream, 69, 93.

Fox, capturing a rabbit, 8; 72;
poisoning stories of, 105 ; stories
of crab-catching, 106, 107 ; intel-
ligence of, 141, 142; misinter-
preted stories of, 199; and dead-
fall, 222, 223; cunning of, 223.

Frog, wood, hibernation of, 48.

Frogs, hibernation of, 49.

Froude, 2.

Fruits, colors of, 251-254.

Golden-eye (Clangula clangnJa
americana), young leaving
nest, 22.

Goldfinch {Astragalinns tristis),
flight song of, 43, 44 ; other notes
of, 44; musical festivals of, 104.

275

INDEX

Gophers, an interesting incident,

237, 238.

Grackle. See Crow blackbird.

Grebe, and loon, 235, 236.

Gregariousness, its effect on indi-
viduality, 118, 119,

Groos, Karl, his work on The Play
of Animals, 87, 100.

Grouse, flight of, 4.

Grouse, rufEed (Bonasa uvfibel-
lus), 71, 94; drumming of, 177,
257; the " Hermit's " incredible
story of a, 179, 180 ; feeble vocal
powers of, 257.

Grouse, spruce, or Canada grouse
{Canachites canadensis cana-
ce), 260.

Hamerton, Philip GUbert, his
Chapters on Animals, 124; 237.

Hawk, broad - winged (Buteo
platypterus), 74.

Hawk, fish, or American osprey
{Pandion haliaetxis caroli-
nensis), 213.

Hawk, marsh (Circus hudsonius),
a young, 99.

Hawk, red-shouldered {Buteo li-
neatus), 222, 223.

Hawk, red-tailed (Buteo borealis
and subsp.), 102.

Hawks, alleged mimicry among,
248, 249.

"Hermit," his false natural his-
tory, 93-95; his stories of cow-
birds and a grouse, 178, 179.

Hibernation, 48, 49.

Hickory nut, 251, 252.

Home Life on an Ostrich Farm,
135, 136.

Homing instinct, the, a remark-
able trait, 53; an instance of its
workings, 53-57; 99; nature of,
235.

Honeysuckle, a shoot of, 24, 25.

Horses, ignorant fear in, 123; self-
destruction of, 146 ; 162 ; a mare
and her blind companion,226,227.

Hyla, peeping, hibernation of, 48;
a second period of peeping, 231,
232.

Indigo-bird (Oj/anospisa cyanea),
flight song of, 44.

Individuality, effects of solitude
and gregariousness upon, 118,
119.

Industries of Animals, 137.

Inferences, right, 231-238.

Insects stilled by the cold, 49, 50.

Instinct, 1 ; demoralized, 73, 74 ;
one instinct overcoming an-
other, 74 ; makes up nine tenths
of the lives of our wild neigh-
bors, 74; a kind of natural rea-
son, 76; in connection with par-
asitism, 79, 80; importance of,
81; origin and development of,
81, 82; not always inerrant, 155;
machine-like action of, 158, 159;
non-progressive, 212 ; nature of,
254-257; variability of, 257-261.

Jackals, 142.

Jackdaw, the Bishop of Carlisle's
story of a, 148.

Jay, hlae (Cyanocitta cristata),
Mr. Keyser's young bird, 69,
70 ; hiding instinct of, 161 ; 251,
263.

Jay, Canada (Perisoreus canaden-
sis), 204, 260.

Jefferies, Richard, 131, 197, 203.

Jesse, Edward, his story of some
swallows, 148.

Katydids, 49.

Kea, 260, 261.

Kearton, Richard, his story of an
osprey, 137; on the wren's nest,
138, 139; on a colony of terns,
139; his experiments with
wooden eggs, 227, 228; on instinct
in animals, 257.

Keyser, Leander S., his experi-
ments with young birds, 69,
70.

Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus),
177.

Kipling, Rudyard, his Jungle
Book, 14; his The White Seal,
14.

Kittens, 75.

276

INDEX

Language, a necessity to thinking,
187, 188.

Lark. See Skylark.

Lark, prairie horned (Otocoris
alpestris praticola), spreading
of, 36, 37; song and song flight
of, 37, 38; killed by the locomo-
tive, 38.

Leaves, persistent and deciduous,
51.

Lion, Bostock on the training of,
239-241.

Loco- weed, 83.

Locusts, 2.

Loon {Gavia imber), 180, 184 ;
under ice, 235, 236.

liophiiis piscatorius, 107.

Lubbock, Sir John, on recognition
among bees and ants, 200.

Lynx, Canada, incredible story of,
183, 184.

Maeterlinck, Maurice, on the bee,
15; on the dog, 192, 193 ; his Life
of the Bee, 201.

Mallard, domestic, finding its way
home, 53-57.

Man, progress of, 26, 27; the line
that divides him from the lower
orders, 80, 81 ; animal origin of,
229,230; instinct in, 255; learn-
ing through practice, 256.

Martin, Mrs. Annie, her story of a
crow, 135, 136.

Meadowlark {Sturnella magna),
song of, 34 ; flight song of, 43 ;
232, 233.

Meadowlark, "Western (Sturnella
magna neglecta) , song of, 103.

Mice and traps, 23, 24.

Michelet, 147.

Mimicry, 248-250.

Mongoose, 72.

Monkeys, capable of the simpler
forms of reason, 127.

Moose, a habit of, 142.

Moral code, evolution of, 23.

Morgan, C. Lloyd, 143, 149; his
experiment with his dog, 164,
165.

Moth, hummingbird, 249, 250.

Mouse, white-footed, or deer

mouse, an incident, 163, 164.
Muir, John, his story of his dog

Stickeen, 193, 194.
Mullet, 96.

Mushrooms, animals eating, 83.
Muskrat, 211.

Mussels, ducks drowning, 180-182.
My Dogs of the Northland, by

Egerton Young, 194.
" My friend and neighbor through

the year," 268.

Natural history romancers, influ-
ence of, 13, 14; methods of, 16,
17.

Nature, an endless experimenter,
24, 139; prodigality of, 27; like a
hunter, 27 ; bound to hit the
mark, 28 ; the tendency to senti-
mentalize, 108 ; reaches her ends
by devious paths, 110 ; the think-
ing of, 152; literary treatment
of, 191-208 ; the interpretation
of, 196-201, 203-205 ; wisdom of,
220.

Newts, migrations of, 219.

Nightingale, carrying nest, 15, 16;
song of, 35 ; song of a caged
bird, 35; a song contest, 115.

North American Review, an arti-
cle in the, 61.

Nuthatch, 162.

Nuts, protective colors of, 251, 252.

Observing, rarity of accurate, 107,
108, 238.

Olaus, his fox and crab story, 106.

Oriole, Baltimore {Icterus gal-
bula), a published account of a
nest, 61-63; Scott's experiment
with young, 68; its nest a marvel
of blind skill, 110; its use of
strings in nest-buUding, 247; an
incredible story of, 248 ; varia-
bility of, 259, 260 ; song of, 259,
260; destructive in vineyards,
261.

Oriole, orchard {Icterus spurius),
260.

Osprey, 137. See also Fish hawk.

277

INDEX

Ostricli, 134, 135.

Ousel, water, or dipper, 73.

Oven-bird {Seiurus aurocapilliis),
•walk of, 40; ordinary song of,
40, 41; flight song of, 41, 42.

Peacock, strutting before a crow,
217.

Peckham, George W. and Eliza-
beth G., their work on the soli-
tary wasps, 116.

Pelicans, driving fish, 216.

Phoebe-bird {Sayortiis phcebe),
nesting-habits of, 5, 157, 158 ;
nest-building of, 112; cowbird's
egg in nest of, 157; an instance
of stupidity, 168, 169.

Pigeon, passenger, or wild pigeon
{JEctopistes migratorius), flocks
of, 96, 97.

Pike, 127.

Plants, intelligence of, 128, 129.

Plover, ring, rejecting counter-
feit eggs, 227, 228.

Poison, fear of, 140.

Poisoning among animals, 105, 106.

Porcupine, its lack of wit, 3; 186;
an encounter with a, 242-244;
easily killed, 244; stories of roll-
ing into a ball, 244, 245; C. G. D.
Roberts on, 245, 246.

Prairie-dogs, their fear of weeds
and grass, 189.

Protective coloration, 139, 140.

Quail, or bob- white {Colinus vir-
ginianus), nests of, 6.

Rabbit, nest of , 7; intelligence of,
7 ; pursued by a mink or weasel,
7, 8; pursued by a fox, 8; imi-
tating a monkey, 66.

Rabbit, jack, 184 ; running in a
furrow, 213.

Raccoon, washing food, 3; 134.

Rats, 72, 73, 106, 184, 185.

"Real and Sham Natural His-
tory," the author's article, v, vi.

Reason, an artificial light, 212.

Roberts, Charles Gr. D., on the por-
cupine, 245, 246.

Robin (Merula migratoria), nests
of, 4, 5, 169, 264, 265; unusual
songs of, 45, 68; 154, 155; nesting
on turn-table, 169; and string,
246, 247; variability of nesting-
habits of, 258, 259 ; closely asso-
ciated with country life, 261,
262; boring for grubs, 262, 263;
pugnacity of, 263; at war with
blue jays, crow blackbigis, and
cuckoos, 263, 264; a iustler, 264,
265.

Romanes, G. J., 15, 16, 73, 106, 142;
untrustworthiness of his Ani-
mal Ititelligence, 147, 148.

Roosevelt, Theodore, his The Wil-
deryiess H^inter, 72, 142; quoted
on teaching among animals, 84-
86; 88, 103; quoted on the moose,
1,42; 149; his story of a horse,
235.

Rooster, " teaching " a young one,
94 ; calling a hen, 190.

Ruskin, John, 197.

St. John, Charles, 76 ; his story of
a fox, 142; 149.

Sapsucker, yellow-beUied. See
Yellow-bellied woodpecker.

Scallops, 129, 130.

Schoolchildren, letters from, 1.

" School of the woods," the, 99.

Scott, W. E. D., 68.

Selous, Edmund, on a song con-
test between nightingales, 115.

Seton, Ernest Thompson, 184, 203.

Sexual selection, 116.

Sharp, Dallas Lore, on the crested
flycatcher, 18.

Shrike {Lanius sp.), assisting
wounded mate, 24; 250.

Skunk, dull wits of, 4; killing a
maimed one, 203.

Skunk-cabbage, 52.

Skylark, song of, 32-34, 37; in
America, 33, 34; Scotchman and,
33 ; Irishman and, 34; wooing a
vesper sparrow, 40; a caged, 69.

Snake, black, 16.

Snakes, and the power of fasci-
nation, 16.

278

INDEX

Solitude, its effect on individu-
ality, 118, 119.

Sparrow, bush, or field sparrow
{Spizella jpusilla), nest of, 259.

Sparrow, chipping {Spizella soci-
alis), nest of, 142, 143, 259; 154;
an unusual song of, 259.

Sparrow, English (Passer domes-
ticus), singing like a canary, 68,
257; eggs of, 120; a case of blind
instinct in, 160.

Sparrow, song (Melospiza cine-
rea melodia), a city girl's im-
pression of its song, 31; a tal-
ented singer, 45; the " Hermit's "
story, 93, 94; variability of,
259.

Sparrow, vesper {Pooecetes gra-
mineus), flight song of, 39 ; lark-
like in color and markings, 40 ;
wooed by a skylark, 40 ; low de-
gree of variability in, 259.

Spring, the real beginning of, 51,
52.

Squirrel, gray, 75, 133.

Squirrel, red, nesting-material of,
20 ; a stupid, 125 ; and chestnuts,
132 ; and maple sap, 132 ; and
green apples and pears, 133; 155,
251.

Squirrels, and chestnut burs, 3;
their knowledge of nuts, 133;
smelling with the whole body,
133.

Starling, red-shouldered, or red-
winged blackbird {Agelaius
phoeniceus), song of, 34.

Stevenson, Robert Louis, on the
English blackbird's songs, 45.

Sumac, fruit of, 254.

Swallow, cliff {Petroehelidon luni-
frons), nesting of, 155, 157.

Swallows, 93.

Swift, chimney {Chcetura pela-
gica), change of nesting-site, 8;
getting nesting-material, 8, 9; in
the chimney, 9; a creature of
the air, 9, 10; spring and fall
congregations in large chim-
neys, 10-13; drumming in chim-
ney, 183.

Swimming, 78, 79.
Sycamore, fruit of, 251.

Tanager, scarlet {Piranga ery-
throTnelas), nesting in a cherry
tree, 6, 7.

Teaching among animals, 83-94,
233, 234.

Telepathy, 96-98.

Terns, 139.

Thoreauv Henry D., his " night-
warbler," 42, 153, 195, 203.

Thrush, hermit {Hylocichla gut-
tata pallasii), with an impedi-
ment, 116.

Thrush, song, in the Trossachs,
46; and wooden eggs, 227.

Thrush, Wilson's. See Veery.

Thrush, wood {Hyloeichla miiste-
lina), nest of, 5; a "singing-
school," 94 ; nest-building of,
113, 114, 155, 156 ; ways of, 113,
114 ; song contest of, 114, 115.

Toad, going into the ground, 49.

Towhee. See Chewink.

Training of Wild Animals, The,
by Frank C. Bostock, 239-242.

Traps, the fear of, 89.

Tumble-bug, 26.

Turkey, 75, 214.

Van Dyke, Henry, his poem on the
song sparrow, 31.

Variation, 73; a less active prin-
ciple now than formerly, 120;
various degrees of, 120, 121;
causes of, 121.

Veery, or "Wilson's thrush {Hylo-
eichla fiiscescens), song of, 34, 35.

"Wallace, Alfred Russel, 87; on
mimicry, 249, 251.

Warbler, black and white creeping
{Mniotilta varia), nest and egg
of, 111.

Warbler, grasshopper, 227.

Warbler, yellow {Dendroica ces-
tiva), and cowbird's egg, 80, 156,
157, 229.

Ward, Lester F., his Pure Soci-
ology, 112.

279

INDEX

Wasps, solitary, ways of, 116-118 ;
instinct in, 158, 159; intelligence
of, 164.

"Wasps, stinging instinct in sting-
less, 169, 170.

Waxwing, cedar. See Cedar-bird.

Weasel, rescuing young, 24.

White, Gilbert, on the swallow's
nest-building, 167, 168; 203; his
account of his old tortoise, 207.

Whitman, Walt, quoted, 206.

Wolf, prairie. See Coyote.

Wolves, 66.

Wood-borers, 49, 50.

Woodchuck, 72.

Woodcock {Philohela minor),
song and song flight of, 42, 43.

Woodpecker, downy {Dryobates

pubescens medianits), dispos-
sessed by flying-squirrels, 20;
trying to evict a hairy wood-
pecker, 21.

Woodpecker, hairy {Dryobates
villosus), and downy woodpeck-
er, 21.

Woodpecker, yellow-bellied, or
yellow-bellied sapsucker {Sphy-
rapicus varius), 91.

Wren, European, nest of, 138,
139.

Wren, house (Troglodytes aedon),
nesting-materials of, 19 ; young
of, 162; handling twigs, 166.

Young, Egerton, his My Dogs of
the Northland, 194.

Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &* Co.
Cambridge, Mast., U. S. A.

Date

Due

!

-1 ''^

**

NOV ^

^ /987 -

01

JAN 4 K

SEP 1

6 2002

!

f)

BOSTON COLLEGE

3 9031 01766232 1