17185	----	Transcriber's Note: A number of typographical errors found in the original text have been maintained in this version. A list of these errors is found at the end of this book. The illustration originally used as the frontispiece has been moved to the page to which it refers. STORIES ABOUT THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS, THEIR CHARACTERS, AND HABITS. BY THOMAS BINGLEY. EMBELLISHED WITH ENGRAVINGS, FROM DRAWINGS BY T. LANDSEER. [Illustration] NEW YORK: C.S. FRANCIS & CO., 252 BROADWAY. BOSTON: J.H. FRANCIS, 128 WASHINGTON STREET. 1851. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Uncle Thomas resumes his Stories about the Instinct of Animals.--Tells about the Horse, and of the Immense Herds which are to be found on the Plains of South America; of their Capture by means of the Lasso; the Arab and his Mare; the Gadshill Robber; the Benevolent Planter; the Lawyer-Highwayman; as well as several other Curious Stories about the Intelligence, Affection, and Docility of the Horse Page 9 CHAPTER II. Uncle Thomas tells about the Beaver, and the Singular Manner in which it constructs a Dam to confine the Waters of the River; and about the Hut which it builds for its Habitation. He tells also about the Curious Nests of the Sociable Grosbeak; and gives a Long and Entertaining Account of the White Ant of Africa; its Extraordinary Nest; and the Important Part which it acts in the Economy of Nature 29 CHAPTER III. Uncle Thomas describes the Manner in which Wild Elephants are caught, and relates some Curious Stories of the Cunning, Affection, and Intelligence of the Elephant 54 CHAPTER IV. Uncle Thomas introduces to the Notice of the Young Folks the Ettrick Shepherd's Stories about Sheep; and tells them some Interesting Stories about the Goat, and its Peculiarities 71 CHAPTER V. Uncle Thomas relates some Very Remarkable Stories about the Cat; points out to the Boys the Connexion subsisting between the Domestic Cat and the Lion, Tiger, &c., and tells them some Stories about the Gentleness, as well as the Ferocity of these Animals 89 CHAPTER VI. Uncle Thomas tells about the Tiger; its Ferocity and Power; and of the Curious Modes which are adopted for its Capture and Destruction.--Also about the Puma or American Lion, and introduces some Hunting Scenes in North and South America, with other Interesting and Entertaining Adventures 123 CHAPTER VII. Uncle Thomas tells about the Migrating Instinct of Animals.--Of the House Swallow of England; and the Esculent Swallow, whose Nest is eaten by the Chinese.--He tells also about the Passenger Pigeon of America; of the Myriads which are found in various parts of the United States; of the Land-Crab and its Migrations, and of those of the Salmon and the Common Herring 144 CHAPTER VIII. Uncle Thomas tells about the Baboons, and their Plundering Excursions to the Gardens at the of Good Hope, Calsoaep about Le Vaillant's Baboon, Kees, and his Peculiarities; the American Monkeys; and relates an Amusing Story about a Young Monkey deprived of its Mother, putting itself under the Fostering Care of a Wig-Block 174 CHAPTER IX. Uncle Thomas concludes Stories about Instinct with several Interesting Illustrations of the Affections of Animals, particularly of the Instinct of Maternal Affection, in the course of which he narrates the Story of the Cat and the Black-Bird; the Squirrel's Nest; the Equestrian Friends; and points out the Beneficent Care of Providence in implanting in the Breasts of each of his Creatures the Instinct which is necessary for its Security and Protection 193 STORIES ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS. CHAPTER I. Uncle Thomas resumes his Stories about the Instinct of Animals.--Tells about the Horse, and of the Immense Herds which are to be found on the Plains of South America; of their Capture by means of the Lasso; the Arab and his Mare; the Gadshill Robber; the Benevolent Planter; the Lawyer-Highwayman; as well as several other Curious Stories about the Intelligence, Affection, and Docility of the Horse. "Come away, boys, I am glad to see you again! Since I last saw you I have made an extensive tour, and visited some of the most romantic and picturesque scenery in England. One day I may give you an account of what I saw, and describe to you the scenes which I visited; but I must deny myself this pleasure at present. I promised, at our next meeting, to tell you some TALES ABOUT THE INSTINCT OF ANIMALS; and I propose to begin with the Horse. I like to interest you with those animals with which you are familiar, and to draw out your sympathies towards them. After the STORIES ABOUT DOGS which I told you, some of them exhibiting that fine animal in such an amiable and affectionate character, I am sure it must assume a new interest in your mind. Such instances of fidelity and attachment could not fail to impress you with a higher opinion of the animal than you before possessed, and show that kindness and good treatment even to a brute are not without their reward. "I wish to excite the same interest towards the other animals which, I hope, I have effected towards the Dog. Each, you will find, has been endowed by its Creator with particular instincts, to fit it for the station which it was intended to occupy in the great system of Nature. Some of them are wild and ferocious, while others are quiet and inoffensive; the former naturally repel us, while those of the latter class as naturally attract our regard, although, properly speaking, each ought equally to interest us, in as far as it fulfils the object of its being. "But I know you like stories better than lectures, so I will not tire you by lecturing, but will at once proceed to tell some stories about Horses, which I have gathered for you." "Oh no, Uncle Thomas, we never feel tired of listening to you; we know you have always something curious to tell us." "Well, then, Frank, to begin at once with THE HORSE. "In several parts of the world there are to be found large herds of wild horses. In South America, in particular, the immense plains are inhabited by them, and, it is said, that so many as ten thousand are sometimes found in a single herd. These flocks are always preceded by a leader, who directs their motions; and such is the regularity with which they perform their movements, that it seems almost as if they could not be surpassed by the best trained cavalry. "It is extremely dangerous for travellers to encounter a herd of this description. When they are unaccustomed to the sight of such a mass of creatures, they cannot help feeling greatly alarmed at their rapid and apparently irresistible approach. The trampling of the animals sounds like the loudest thunder; and such is the rapidity and impetuosity of their advance, that it seems to threaten instant destruction. Suddenly, however, they sometimes stop short, utter a loud and piercing neighing, and, with a rapid wheel in an opposite course, altogether disappear. On such occasions, however, it requires all the care of the traveller to prevent his horses from breaking loose, and escaping with the wild herd. "In those countries where horses are so plentiful, the inhabitants do not take the trouble to rear them, but, whenever they want one, mount upon an animal which has been accustomed to the sport, and gallop over the plain towards the herd, which is readily found at no great distance. Gradually he approaches some stragglers from the main body, and, having selected the horse which he wishes to possess, he dexterously throws the _lasso_ (which is a long rope with a running noose, and which is firmly fixed to his saddle,) in such a manner as to entangle the animal's hind legs; and, with a sudden turn of his horse, he pulls it over on its side. In an instant he jumps off his horse, wraps his _poncho_, or cloak, round the captive's head, forces a bit into its mouth, and straps a saddle upon its back. He then removes the poncho, and the animal starts on its feet. With equal quickness the hunter leaps into the saddle; and, in spite of the contortions and kickings of his captive, keeps his seat, till, having wearied itself out with its vain efforts, it submits to the discipline of its captor, who seldom fails to reduce it to complete obedience." "That is very dexterous indeed, Uncle Thomas; but surely all horses are not originally found in this wild state. I have heard that the Arabians are famous for rearing horses." "Arabia has, for a long time, been the country noted for the symmetry and speed of its horses: so much attention has been paid to the breeding of horses in our own country, however, for the race-course as well as the hunting-field, that the English horses are now almost unequalled, both for speed and endurance. "It is little wonder, however, that the Arabian horse should be the most excellent, considering the care and attention which it receives, and the kindness and consideration with which it is treated. One of the best stories which I ever heard of the love of an Arabian for his steed, is that related of an Arab from whom one of our envoys wished to purchase his horse. "The animal was a bright bay mare, of extraordinary shape and beauty; and the owner, proud of its appearance and qualities, paraded it before the envoy's tent until it attracted his attention. On being asked if he would sell her, 'What will you give me?' was the reply. 'That depends upon her age; I suppose she is past five?' 'Guess again,' said he. 'Four?' 'Look at her mouth,' said the Arab, with a smile. On examination she was found to be rising three. This, from her size and symmetry, greatly enhanced her value. The envoy said, 'I will give you fifty tomans' (a coin nearly of the value of a pound sterling). 'A little more, if you please,' said the fellow, somewhat entertained. 'Eighty--a hundred.' He shook his head and smiled. The officer at last came to two hundred tomans. 'Well,' said the Arab, 'you need not tempt me farther. You are a rich elchee (nobleman); you have fine horses, camels, and mules, and I am told you have loads of silver and gold. Now,' added he, 'you want my mare, but you shall not have her for all you have got.' He put spurs to his horse, and was soon out of the reach of temptation. "Swift as the Arabian horses are, however, they are frequently matched by those of our own country. I say nothing about _race horses_, because, though some of them are recorded to have run at an amazing speed, the effort is generally continued for but a short time. Here is an instance of speed in a horse which saved its unworthy master from the punishment due to his crime. [Illustration: CATCHING WILD HORSES--Page 13.] "One morning about four o'clock a gentleman was stopped, and robbed by a highwayman named Nicks, at Gadshill, on the west side of Chatham. He was mounted on a bay mare of great speed and endurance, and as soon as he had accomplished his purpose, he instantly started for Gravesend, where he was detained nearly an hour by the difficulty of getting a boat. He employed the interval to advantage however in baiting his horse. From thence he got to Essex and Chelmsford, where he again stopped about half an hour to refresh his horse. He then went to Braintree, Bocking, Weathersfield, and over the Downs to Cambridge, and still pursuing the cross roads, he went by Fenney and Stratford to Huntingdon, where he again rested about half an hour. Proceeding now on the north road, and at a full gallop most of the way, he arrived at York the same afternoon, put off his boots and riding clothes, and went dressed to the bowling-green, where, among other promenaders, happened to be the Lord Mayor of the city. He there studied to do something particular, that his lordship might remember him, and asking what o'clock it was, the mayor informed him that it was a quarter past eight. Notwithstanding all these precautions, however, he was discovered, and tried for the robbery; he rested his defence on the fact of his being at York at such a time. The gentleman swore positively to the time and place at which the robbery was committed, but on the other hand, the proof was equally clear that the prisoner was at York at the time specified. The jury acquitted him on the supposed impossibility of his having got so great a distance from Kent by the time he was seen in the bowling-green. Yet he was the highwayman." "So that he owed his safety to the speed of his horse, Uncle Thomas." "He did so, Harry. The horse can on occasion swim about as well as most animals, yet it never takes to the water unless urged to do so. There is a story about a horse saving the lives of many persons who had suffered shipwreck by being driven upon the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope, which, I am sure, will interest you as much for the perseverance and docility of the animal, as for the benevolence and intrepidity of its owner. "A violent gale of wind setting in from north and north-west, a vessel in the roads dragged her anchors, was forced on the rocks, and bilged; and while the greater part of the crew fell an immediate sacrifice to the waves, the remainder were seen from the shore struggling for their lives, by clinging to the different pieces of the wreck. The sea ran dreadfully high, and broke over the sailors with such amazing fury, that no boat whatever could venture off to their assistance. Meanwhile a planter, considerably advanced in life, had come from his farm to be a spectator of the shipwreck; his heart was melted at the sight of the unhappy seamen, and knowing the bold and enterprizing spirit of his horse, and his particular excellence as a swimmer, he instantly determined to make a desperate effort for their deliverance. He alighted, and blew a little brandy into his horse's nostrils, and again seating himself in the saddle, he instantly pushed into the midst of the breakers. At first both disappeared, but it was not long before they floated on the surface, and swam up to the wreck; when taking with him two men, each of whom held by one of his boots, he brought them safe to shore. This perilous expedition he repeated no seldomer than seven times, and saved fourteen lives; but on his return the eighth time, his horse being much fatigued, and meeting a most formidable wave, he lost his balance, and was overwhelmed in a moment. The horse swam safely to land, but his gallant rider sank to rise no more." "That was very unfortunate, Uncle Thomas. I suppose the planter had been so fatigued with his previous exertions, that he had not strength to struggle with the strong waves." "Very likely, indeed, Harry. I dare say the poor animal felt the loss of his kind owner very much, for the horse soon becomes attached to his master, and exhibits traits of intelligence and fidelity, certainly not surpassed by those of any other animal: for instance,--A gentleman, who was one dark night riding home through a wood, had the misfortune to strike his head against the branch of a tree, and fell from his horse stunned by the blow. The noble animal immediately returned to the house they had left, which stood about a mile distant. He found the door closed,--the family had retired to bed. He pawed at it, however, till one of them, hearing the noise, arose and opened it, and, to his surprise, saw the horse of his friend. No sooner was the door opened than the horse turned round as if it wished to be followed; and the man, suspecting there was something wrong, followed the animal, which led him directly to the spot where its wounded master lay on the ground. "There is another story of a somewhat similar description in which a horse saved his master from perishing among the snow. It happened in the North of Scotland. "A gentleman connected with the Excise was returning home from one of his professional journies. His way lay across a range of hills, the road over which was so blocked up with snow as to leave all trace of it indiscernible. Uncertain how to proceed, he resolved to trust to his horse, and throwing loose the reins, allowed him to choose his course. The animal proceeded cautiously, and safely for some time, till coming to a ravine, horse and rider sunk in a snow-wreath several fathoms deep. "Stunned by the suddenness and depth of the descent, the gentleman lay for some time insensible. On recovering, he found himself nearly three yards from the dangerous spot, with his faithful horse standing over him and licking the snow from his face. He accounts for his extrication, by supposing that the bridle must have been attached to his person, but so completely had he lost all sense of consciousness, that beyond the bare fact as stated, he had no knowledge of the means by which he made so remarkable an escape." "It was at any rate very kind in the horse to clear away the snow, Uncle Thomas." "No doubt of it, John, and perhaps he owed his life quite as much to this act of kindness as to being pulled out of the ravine. He might have been as certainly choked by the snow out of it as in it. Sometimes the horse becomes much attached to the animals with which it associates, and its feelings of friendship are as powererful as those of the dog. A gentleman of Bristol had a greyhound which slept in the same stable, and contracted a very great intimacy with a fine hunter. When the dog was taken out, the horse neighed wistfully after him, and seemed to long for its return; he welcomed him home with a neigh; the greyhound ran up to the horse and licked him; the horse, in return, scratched the greyhound's back with his teeth. On one occasion, when the groom had the pair out for exercise, a large dog attacked the greyhound, bore him to the ground, and seemed likely to worry him, when the horse threw back his ears, rushed forward, seized the strange dog by the back, and flung him to a distance, which so terrified the aggressor, that he at once desisted and made off." "That was very kind, Uncle Thomas. I like to hear of such instances of friendship between animals." "Such a docile animal as the horse can readily be trained to particular habits, and does not readily forget them, however disreputable. There is an odd story to illustrate this. "About the middle of last century, a Scottish lawyer had occasion to visit the metropolis. At that period such journies were usually performed on horseback, and the traveller might either ride post, or, if willing to travel economically, he bought a horse, and sold him at the end of his journey. The lawyer had chosen the latter mode of travelling, and sold the animal on which he rode from Scotland as soon as he arrived in London. With a view to his return, he went to Smithfield to purchase a horse. About dusk a handsome one was offered, at so cheap a rate that he suspected the soundness of the animal, but being able to discover no blemish, he became the purchaser. "Next morning, he set out on his journey, the horse had excellent paces, and our traveller, while riding over the few first miles, where the road was well frequented, did not fail to congratulate himself on his good fortune, which had led him to make so advantageous a bargain. "They arrived at last at Finchley Common, and at a place where the road ran down a slight eminence, and up another, the lawyer met a clergyman driving a one-horse chaise. There was nobody within sight, and the horse by his conduct instantly discovered the profession of his former owner. Instead of pursuing his journey, he ran close up to the chaise and stopt it, having no doubt but his rider would embrace so fair an opportunity of exercising his calling. The clergyman seemed of the same opinion, produced his purse unasked, and assured the astonished lawyer that it was quite unnecessary to draw his pistol, as he did not intend to offer any resistance. The traveller rallied his horse, and with many apologies to the gentleman he had so innocently and unwillingly affrighted, pursued his journey. "They had not proceeded far when the horse again made the same suspicious approach to a coach, from the window of which a blunderbuss was levelled, with denunciations of death and destruction to the hapless and perplexed rider. In short, after his life had been once or twice endangered by the suspicions to which the conduct of his horse gave rise, and his liberty as often threatened by the peace-officers, who were disposed to apprehend him as a notorious highwayman, the former owner of the horse, he was obliged to part with the inauspicious animal for a trifle, and to purchase one less beautiful, but not accustomed to such dangerous habits." "Capital, Uncle Thomas! I should have liked to have seen the perplexed look of the poor lawyer, when he saw the blunderbuss make its appearance at the carriage window!" "There is one other story about the horse, showing his love for his master, and the gentleness of his character. A horse which was remarkable for its antipathy to strangers, one evening, while bearing his master home from a jovial meeting, became disburthened of his rider, who, having indulged rather freely, soon went to sleep on the ground. The horse, however, did not scamper off, but kept faithful watch by his prostrate master till the morning, when the two were perceived about sunrise by some labourers. They approached the gentleman, with the intention of replacing him on his saddle, but every attempt on their part was resolutely opposed by the grinning teeth and ready heels of the horse, which would neither allow them to touch his master, nor suffer himself to be seized till the gentleman himself awoke from his sleep. The same horse, among other bad propensities, constantly resented the attempts of the groom to trim its fetlocks. This circumstance happened to be mentioned by its owner in conversation, in the presence of his youngest child, a very few years old, when he defied any man to perform the operation singly. The father next day, in passing through the stable-yard, beheld with the utmost distress, the infant employed with a pair of scissors in clipping the fetlocks of the hind-legs of this vicious hunter--an operation which had been always hitherto performed with great danger even by a number of men. Instead, however, of exhibiting his usual vicious disposition, the horse, in the present case, was looking with the greatest complacency on the little groom, who soon after, to the very great relief of his father, walked off unhurt." CHAPTER II. Uncle Thomas tells about the Beaver, and the Singular Manner in which it Constructs a Dam to confine the Waters of the River; and about the Hut which it builds for its Habitation. He tells also about the Curious Nests of the Sociable Grosbeak; and gives a Long and Entertaining Account of the White Ant of Africa; its Extraordinary Nest; and the Important Part which it acts in the Economy of Nature. "Good evening, Boys! I am going to tell you about a very singular animal to-night--singular both in its conformation and its habits. I allude to the Beaver." "Oh, we shall be so glad to hear about the Beaver, Uncle Thomas. I have sometimes wondered what sort of an animal it is. It is of its skin that hats are made--is it not?" "It is so, Harry--at least it is of the fur with which its skin is covered. I must tell you about the manufacture of hats at some other time. Our business at present is with the Beaver itself. I think we shall get on better by confining our attention to the animal now, and examine into its habits and instincts." "Very well, Uncle Thomas, we are all attention." "The Beaver, which is now only to be found in the more inaccessible parts of America, and the more northern countries of Europe, affords a curious instance of what may be called a compound structure. It has the fore-feet of a land animal, and the hind ones of an aquatic one--the latter only being webbed. Its tail is covered with scales like a fish, and serves to direct its course in the water, in which it spends much of its time. "On the rivers where they abound, they form societies sometimes consisting of upwards of two hundred. They begin to assemble about the months of June and July, and generally choose for the place of their future habitation the side of some lake or river. If a lake, in which the water is always pretty nearly of a uniform level, they dispense with building a dam, but if the place they fix upon be the banks of a river, they immediately set about constructing a pier or dam, to confine the water, so that they may always have a good supply." "That is an instance of very singular sagacity Uncle Thomas. I suppose it is their instinct which teaches them to act in this manner." "You are right, Frank. Well, the mode in which they set about constructing the dam is this: having fixed upon the spot, they go into the neighbouring forest, and cut quantities of the smaller branches of trees, which they forthwith convey to the place selected, and having fixed them in the earth, interweave them strongly and closely, filling up all the crevices with mud and stones, so as soon to make a most compact construction." "That must be a work of very great labour, Uncle Thomas." "The labour is very considerable, Boys; but the power which, for want of a better name, we call Instinct, comes wonderfully to their aid. For instance, it has been observed that they seek all the branches which they want on the banks of the river, higher up than their construction, so that having once got them conveyed to the water, they are easily floated to it." "Very good, Uncle Thomas." "When the beavers have finished the dam, they then proceed to construct a house for themselves. First they dig a foundation of greater or less capacity, in proportion to the number of their society. They then form the walls of earth and stones, mixed with billets of wood crossing each other, and thus tying the fabric together just in the same way as you sometimes see masons do in building human dwellings. Their huts are generally of a circular form, something like the figure of a haycock, and they have usually several entrances--one or more opening into the river or lake, below the surface of the water, and one communicating with any bushes and brushwood which may be at hand, so as to afford the means of escape in case of attack either on the land or water side." "They must be pretty safe then, Uncle Thomas, since they can so readily escape." "They are pretty secure so long as they have only unreasoning animals to contend with, Frank; but when man, armed with the power, before which mere Instinct must at all times bow, attacks them, they are very easily overcome. Shall I tell you how the hunters capture them?" "If you please, Uncle Thomas." "Very well. I must first tell you that the skin of the Beaver is most valuable during winter, as the fur is then thicker and finer than during the summer. They are therefore very little if at all molested during summer by the hunters. When winter sets in, however, and the lakes and rivers are frozen over, a party of hunters set out to seek for the beaver colonies, and, having found them, they make a number of holes in the ice. Having done this and concerted measures, they break down the huts, and the animals instantly get into the water as a place of safety. As they cannot remain long under water, however, they have soon occasion to come to the surface to breathe, and of course make for the holes which the hunters have formed in the ice, when the latter, who are waiting in readiness, knock them on the head." "But, Uncle Thomas, don't you think it is very cruel to kill the beaver so? I believe it feeds entirely on vegetables, and does no harm to any one." "You might say the same, John, of the sheep on the downs; the one is not more cruel than the other: both are useful to man, and furnish him with food as well as raiment, and both were, of course, included in the 'dominion' which God originally gave to man 'over the beasts of the field.'" "Is the beaver used for food, then, Uncle Thomas?" "It is, and except during a small part of the year, when it feeds on the root of the water-lily, which communicates a peculiar flavour to the flesh of the animal, it is said to be very palatable. It is, however, principally for its fur that it is hunted; the skin, even, is of little value, being coarser and looser in texture, and of course less applicable to general uses, than that of many other animals. I dare say you have often seen it made into gloves. "I will now read to you an account of a tame beaver, which its owner, Mr. Broderip, communicated to 'the Gardens and Menagerie of the Zoological Society.' "The animal arrived in this country in the winter of 1825, very young, being small and woolly, and without the covering of long hair, which marks the adult beaver. It was the sole survivor of five or six which were shipped at the same time, and was in a very pitiable condition. Good treatment soon made it familiar. When called by its name, 'Binny,' it generally answered with a little cry, and came to its owner. The hearth rug was its favourite haunt, and thereon it would lie, stretched out, sometimes on its back, and sometimes flat on its belly, but always near its master. The building instinct showed itself immediately after it was let out of its cage, and materials were placed in its way,--and this, before it had been a week in its new quarters. Its strength, even before it was half grown, was great. It would drag along a large sweeping-brush, or a warming-pan, grasping the handle with its teeth, so that the load came over its shoulder, and advancing in an oblique direction, till it arrived at the point where it wished to place it. The long and large materials were always taken first, and two of the longest were generally laid crosswise, with one of the ends of each touching the wall, and the other ends projecting out into the room. The area formed by the crossed brushes and the wall he would fill up with hand-brushes, rush baskets, books, boots, sticks, cloths, dried turf, or any thing portable. As the work grew high, he supported himself on his tail, which propped him up admirably: and he would often, after laying on one of his building materials, sit up over against it, apparently to consider his work, or, as the country people say, 'judge it.' This pause was sometimes followed by changing the position of the material 'judged,' and sometimes it was left in its place. After he had piled up his materials in one part of the room (for he generally chose the same place), he proceeded to wall up the space between the feet of a chest of drawers, which stood at a little distance from it, high enough on its legs to make the bottom a roof for him; using for this purpose dried turf and sticks, which he laid very even, and filling up the interstices with bits of coal, hay, cloth, or any thing he could pick up. This last place he seemed to appropriate for his dwelling; the former work seemed to be intended for a dam. When he had walled up the space between the feet of the chest of drawers, he proceeded to carry in sticks, cloths, hay, cotton, and to make a nest; and, when he had done, he would sit up under the drawers, and comb himself with the nails of his hind feet. In this operation, that which appeared at first to be a malformation, was shown to be a beautiful adaptation to the necessities of the animal. The huge webbed hind feet often turn in, so as to give the appearance of deformities; but if the toes were straight, instead of being incurved, the animal could not use them for the purpose of keeping its fur in order, and cleansing it from dirt and moisture. "Binny generally carried small and light articles between his right fore leg and his chin, walking on the other three legs; and large masses, which he could not grasp readily with his teeth, he pushed forwards, leaning against them with his right fore paw and his chin. He never carried anything on his tail, which he liked to dip in water, but he was not fond of plunging in his whole body. If his tail was kept moist, he never cared to drink, but, if it was kept dry, it became hot, and the animal appeared distressed, and would drink a great deal. It is not impossible that the tail may have the power of absorbing water, like the skin of frogs, though it must be owned that the scaly integument which invests that member has not much of the character which generally belongs to absorbing surfaces. "Bread, and bread and milk, and sugar, formed the principal part of Binny's food; but he was very fond of succulent fruits and roots. He was a most entertaining creature; and some highly comic scenes occurred between the worthy, but slow beaver, and a light and airy macauco, that was kept in the same apartment." "I think I have read, Uncle, that beavers use their tails as trowels to plaster their houses, and as sledges to carry the materials to build huts." "I dare say, you have, Frank; but I believe such stories are mere fables, told by the ignorant to excite wonder in the minds of the credulous. No such operations have been observed by the most accurate observers of the animal's habits. The wonderful instinct which they display in building their houses is quite sufficient to excite our admiration, without having recourse to false and exaggerated statements." "The building instinct of the beaver is very curious, Uncle Thomas. Is it displayed by any other animal?" "All animals exhibit it more or less, Harry, and birds in particular, in the construction of their nests, some of which are very curious indeed; perhaps one of the most striking instances is that of the Sociable Grosbeak, a bird which is found in the interior of the Cape of Good Hope. They construct their nests under one roof, which they form of the branches of some tall and wide-spreading tree, thatching it all over, as it were, with a species of grass. "When they have got their habitation fairly covered in they lay out the inside, according to some travellers, into regular streets, with nests on both sides, about a couple of inches distant from each other. In one respect, however, they differ from the beaver, they do not appear to lay up a common store of food, the nature of the climate not rendering such a precaution necessary. "Here is the account of one of these erections furnished by a gentleman who minutely examined the structure. "I observed on the way a tree with an enormous nest of those birds, to which I have given the appellation of republicans; and, as soon as I arrived at my camp, I despatched a few men, with a waggon, to bring it to me, that I might open the hive, and examine the structure in its minutest parts. When it arrived, I cut it in pieces with a hatchet, and found that the chief portion of the structure consisted of a mass of Boshman's grass, without any mixture, but so compact and firmly basketed together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This is the commencement of the structure; and each bird builds its particular nest under this canopy. But the nests are formed only beneath the eaves of the canopy, the upper surface remaining void, without, however, being useless; for, as it has a projecting rim, and is a little inclined, it serves to let the rain-water run off, and preserves each little dwelling from the rain. Figure to yourself a huge irregular sloping roof, and all the eaves of which are completely covered with nests, crowded one against another, and you will have a tolerably accurate idea of these singular edifices. "Each individual nest is three or four inches in diameter, which is sufficient for the bird. But as they are all in contact with one another, around the eaves, they appear to the eye to form but one building, and are distinguishable from each other only by a little external aperture, which serves as an entrance to the nest; and even this is sometimes common to three different nests, one of which is situated at the bottom, and the other two at the sides. According to Paterson, the number of cells increasing in proportion to the increase of inhabitants, the old ones become 'streets of communication, formed by line and level.' No doubt, as the republic increases, the cells must be multiplied also; but it is easy to imagine that, as the augmentation can take place only at the surface, the new buildings will necessarily cover the old ones, which must therefore be abandoned. "Should these even, contrary to all probability, be able to subsist, it may be presumed that the depth of their situation, by preventing any circulation and renewal of the air, would render them so extremely hot as to be uninhabitable. But while they thus become useless, they would remain what they were before, real nests, and change neither into streets nor sleeping-rooms. "The large nest which I examined was one of the most considerable which I had seen any where on my journey, and contained three hundred and twenty inhabited cells." "Well, Uncle Thomas, that is very curious; I don't know which most to admire. I rather incline to the beaver however, because of the winter store of food which he lays up." "There is another animal which displays the building instinct so remarkably, that I must tell you something about it before we part." "Which is it, Uncle Thomas?" "It is the white ant of Africa; it is a little animal, scarcely, if at all, exceeding in size those of our own country, yet they construct large nests of a conical or sugar loaf shape, sometimes from ten to twelve feet in height; and one species builds them so strong and compact, that even when they are raised to little more than half their height, the wild-bulls of the country use them as sentinel posts to watch over the safety of the herd which grazes below. "Mr. Smeathman, a naturalist fully capable to do justice to the nature of these erections, states, that on one occasion he and four men stood on the top of one of them. So you may guess how strong they are." "Of what are they made, Uncle Thomas? They must be very curious structures. How very different from the ant hills of England!" "Very different, indeed, John. They are made of clay and sand, and as in such a luxuriant climate they soon become coated over with grass, they quickly assume the appearance of hay-cocks. They are indeed very remarkable structures, whether we consider them externally or internally, and are said to excel those of the beaver and the bee in the same proportion as the inhabitants of the most polished European nation excel the huts of the rude inhabitants of the country where the _Termites_ or white ants abound; while in regard to mere size, Mr. Smeathman calculates that, supposing a man's ordinary height to be six feet, the nests of these creatures may be considered, relative to their size and that of man's, as being raised to four times the height of the largest Egyptian pyramids." "That is enormous, Uncle Thomas?" "It is indeed, Frank; but strange though it is, the interior of the nest is even more remarkable, many parts of its construction falling little short of human ingenuity. I need not attempt to describe all its arrangements, which, without a plan, would be nearly unintelligible; but there is one device so admirable that I must point it out to you. The nest is formed of two floors, as it were, and all round the walls are galleries perforated in various winding directions, and leading to the store-houses of the colony, or to the nurseries where the eggs are deposited. As it is sometimes convenient to reach the galleries which open from the upper roof without threading all the intricacies of these winding passages, they construct bridges of a single arch, and thus at once reach the upper roof, from which these diverge. They are thus also saved much labour, in transporting provisions, and in bearing the eggs to the places where they remain till they are hatched." "That is indeed admirable, Uncle Thomas; they must be very curious animals." "They are divided into various classes, in the same way as bees; choosing a queen, and some of them acting as workers, &c. But the white ants have a class to which there is nothing similar among any other race of insects. These are what Smeathman calls soldiers, from the duties which they perform. They are much less numerous than the workers, being somewhat in the proportion of one in one hundred. The duty of the soldier-insects is to protect the nest when it is attacked. They are furnished with long and slender jaws, and when enraged bite very fiercely, and sometimes even drive off the negroes who may have attacked them, and even white people suffer severely,--the bite bleeding profusely even through the stocking. Some one who observed the colony alarmed, by having part of the nest broken down, gives the following account of the subsequent operations. One of the soldiers first makes his appearance, as if to see if the enemy be gone, and to learn whence the attack proceeds. By and by two or three others make their appearance, and soon afterwards a numerous body rushes out, which increases in number so long as the attack is continued. They are at this time in a state of the most violent agitation; some employed in beating upon the building with their mandibles, so as to make a noise which may be distinctly heard at the distance of three or four feet. Whenever the attack is discontinued, the soldiers retire first, and are quickly followed by the labourers, which hasten in various directions towards the breach, each with a burden of mortar ready tempered, and thus they soon repair the chasm. Besides the duty of protecting the colony, the soldiers seem to act as overseers of the work, one being generally in attendance on every six or eight hundred; and another, who may be looked upon as commander in chief, takes up his station close to the wall which they are repairing, and frequently repeats the beating which I just mentioned, which is instantly answered by a loud hiss from all the labourers within the dome,--those at work labouring with redoubled energy." "But, Uncle Thomas, what can be the use of such animals as white ants? I really cannot see what use they are for." "Well, John, I confess I do not much wonder at your question, though, in putting it, you have forgotten that God makes nothing in vain. Mr. Smeathman, who tells us so much about these curious animals, has answered you by anticipation; and his answer is in such a spirit that I cannot do better than read it to you. "It may appear surprising how a Being perfectly good should have created animals which seem to serve no other end but to spread destruction and desolation wherever they go. But let us be cautious in suspecting any imperfection in the FATHER OF THE UNIVERSE. What at first sight may seem only productive of mischief, will, upon mature deliberation, be found worthy of that wisdom which planned the most beautiful parts of the world. Many poisons are valuable medicines, Storms are beneficial; and diseases often promote life. These _Termites_ are indeed frequently pernicious to mankind, but they are also very useful and even necessary. One valuable purpose which they serve is, to destroy decayed trees and other substances which, if left on the surface of the ground in hot climates, would in a short time pollute the air. In this respect they resemble very much the common flies, which are regarded by mankind in general as noxious and, albeit, as useless beings in creation. But this is certainly for want of consideration. There are not probably in all nature animals of more importance, and it would not be difficult to prove that we should feel the want of one or two large quadrupeds much less than of one or two species of these despicable-looking insects. Mankind in general are sensible that nothing is more disagreeable or more pestiferous than putrid substances; and it is apparent to all who have made observation, that those little insects contribute more to the quick dissolution and dispersion of putrescent matter than any other. They are so necessary in all hot climates, that ever in the open fields a dead animal or small putrid substance cannot be laid upon the ground two minutes before it will be covered with flies and their maggots, which, instantly entering, quickly devour one part, and perforating the rest in various directions, expose the whole to be much sooner decomposed by the elements. Thus it is with the _Termites_. The rapid vegetation in hot climates, of which no idea can be formed by any thing to be seen in this, is equalled by as great a degree of destruction from natural as well as accidental causes. It seems apparent that when anything whatever has arrived at its last degree of perfection, the Creator has decreed that it shall be wholly destroyed as soon as possible, that the face of nature may be speedily adorned with fresh productions in the bloom of spring, or the pride of summer; so when trees and even woods are in part destroyed by tornadoes or fire, it is wonderful to observe how many agents are employed in hastening the total dissolution of the rest. But in hot climates there are none so expert, or who do their business so expeditiously and effectually, as these insects, which in a few weeks destroy and carry away the bodies of large trees, without leaving a particle behind; thus clearing the place for other vegetables which soon fill up every vacancy: and in places where two or three years before there has been a populous town, if the inhabitants, as is frequently the case, have chosen to abandon it, there shall be a very thick wood, and not a vestige of a post to be seen, unless the wood has been of a species which from its hardness is called iron wood." "Thank you, Uncle Thomas. I see, I was quite wrong in supposing that the ants are of no use. I really did not imagine that they could have been so serviceable." CHAPTER III. Uncle Thomas describes the Manner in which Wild Elephants are caught, and relates some Curious Stories of the Cunning, Affection, and Intelligence of the Elephant. "Well, Boys, you are once more welcome!--I am going to tell you some stories about the Elephant to-night, which I hope will interest you quite as much as those which I told you about the dog. Next to the dog the elephant is one of the most intelligent animals; some of his actions, indeed, seem to be rather the result of reason than mere instinct. But I must first tell you about the animal in its native forests. "In the luxuriant forests with which a large portion of Asia is covered, this huge animal reigns supreme. Its size and strength easily enable it to overcome the most formidable opponents. The intelligence with which it has been endowed by its Creator would make it a most formidable enemy to man, but that the same All-wise Being has graciously endowed it with peaceful and gentle feelings. In its native forests it roams about without seeking to molest any one, and even when caught and tamed it very soon becomes gentle and obedient. "In the East Indies the elephant is in very general use as a beast of burden. For this purpose it is hunted and caught in great numbers by the Natives, who employ some very ingenious devices to deceive them, and to drive them into the ambuscades which they form for them. The manner in which whole herds are captured is as follows:-- "When the herd is discovered by parties who are sent out for the purpose of reconnoitering, they take notice of the direction in which it is ranging, and as, if their food is plentiful, they generally continue to advance in one direction for miles together, the hunters construct, at a considerable distance in front, a series of enclosures, into which it is their object to drive them. "When every thing is prepared, the hunters, sometimes to the number of several hundreds, divide themselves into small parties, and form a large circle, so as to surround the herd. Each party generally consists of three men, whose duty it is to light a fire and to clear a footpath between their station and that of their neighbours, so that in this way a communication is kept up by the whole circle, and assistance can at once be afforded at any given point. "New circles are constantly formed at short distances in advance, so as gradually to drive the animals in the required direction. The hunters are all the while concealed by the luxuriant jungle, and do not show themselves to the elephants at all, but urge them forward by the use of drums, rattles, &c. &c., from the noise of which the animals seek to escape, and thus wander on, feeding as they proceed toward the toils which are prepared for them. "The _keddah_, or trap, as it may be called, consists of three enclosures, each formed of strong stockades on the outside of deep ditches; the innermost one being the strongest, because by the time they arrive in it, the elephants are generally in a state of great excitement, and would soon break down a fragile enclosure, and make their escape. "As soon as the herd has entered the first enclosure, strong barricades are erected across the entrance; and as there is no ditch at this point, the hunters take advantage of the remarkable dread which the animal has of fire, to scare them from this most vulnerable part of the fortification. Fires are gradually lit all round the first enclosure, so that the only way of escape which is left is by the entrance to the second. "At first, as if profiting by their former experience, they generally shun the entrance to the second of the series, but at last, seeing no other chance of escape, the leader of the herd ventures forward, and the rest follow. The gate is instantly shut, and they are in the same manner driven into the third enclosure. Finding no outlet from this they become desperate, scream with tremendous power, and seek to escape by violently attacking the sides of the stockade. At all points, however, they are repulsed by lighted fires, and the tumultuous and exulting shouts of the triumphant hunters. "In this place of confinement they remain for several days. When their excitement has somewhat subsided, they are enticed one by one to enter a narrow passage leading to the second enclosure. As soon as one enters in, the entrance is closed, and as the passage is so narrow that it cannot turn round, it soon fatigues itself by unavailing exertions to beat down the barrier. Strong ropes with running nooses are now laid down, and no sooner does the animal put his foot within one of them, than the rope is drawn tight by some of the hunters who are stationed on a small scaffold which has been raised over the gateway. In the same manner his other feet are secured. When this has been effected, some of the hunters venture to approach, and tie his hind legs together. Having thus secured him, they can with comparative safety complete their capture. When he is completely secured he is placed between two tame elephants, and led away to the forest and fastened to a tree; and the same operation is repeated, till the whole herd has been secured. At first the rage of the captive is extreme; so long as the animals between which he is led away prisoner remain with him he is comparatively quiet, but when he sees them depart, he is agitated with all the horrors of despair, and makes the most extravagant attempts to regain his liberty. For some time he refuses to eat, but gradually becomes resigned, and feeds freely. "A keeper is appointed to each animal, as they are secured. His first object is to gain its confidence; supplying it regularly with food, pouring water over its body to keep it cool, and gradually accustoming it to caresses. In the course of five or six weeks he generally obtains a complete ascendency over it; its fetters are removed by degrees, it knows his voice and obeys him, and is then gradually initiated into the objects of its future labours." "Thank you, Uncle Thomas. I now understand all about elephant-hunting. I could not think how the hunters managed to secure such a huge animal. It seems to be no such difficult task after all." "It seems easy enough from description, Frank; but it sometimes happens that they break loose, and, irritated by their efforts to escape, they range about in the most furious manner, and as they are very cunning animals, it requires all the circumspection of the hunter to counteract their schemes. I recollect a story which displays this quality in a very strong light. "During the seige of Bhurtpore, in the year 1805, when the British army, with its countless host of followers and attendants, and thousands of cattle, had been for a long time before the city, the approach of the warm season and of the dry hot winds caused the quantity of water in the neighbourhood of the camps to begin to fail; the ponds or tanks had dried up, and no more water was left than the immense wells of the country could furnish. The multitude of men and cattle that were unceasingly at the wells, occasioned no little struggle for priority in procuring the supply, and the consequent confusion on the spot was frequently very considerable. On one occasion, two elephant-drivers, each with his elephant, the one remarkably large and strong, and the other comparatively small and weak, were at the well together; the small elephant had been provided by his master with a bucket for the occasion, which he carried at the end of his proboscis; but the larger animal being destitute of this necessary vessel, either spontaneously, or by desire of his keeper, seized the bucket, and easily wrested it away from his less powerful fellow-servant. The latter was too sensible of his inferiority openly to resist the insult, though it is obvious that he felt it; and great squabbling and abuse ensued between the keepers. "At length, the weaker animal, watching the opportunity when the other was standing with his side to the well, retired backwards a few paces, in a very quiet unsuspicious manner, and then rushing forward with all his might, drove his head against the side of the other, and fairly pushed him into the well. It may easily be imagined that great inconvenience was immediately experienced, and serious apprehensions quickly followed, that the water in the well, on which the existence of so many seemed in a great measure to depend, would be spoiled by the unwieldy brute which was precipitated into it; and as the surface of the water was nearly twenty feet below the common level, there did not appear to be any means that could be adopted to get the animal out by main force, without the risk of injuring him. There were many feet of water below the elephant, who floated with ease on its surface, and, experiencing considerable pleasure from his cool retreat, he evinced but little inclination even to exert what means of escape he might himself possess. "A vast number of fascines (bundles of wood) had been employed by the army in conducting the siege; and at length it occurred to the elephant-keeper, that a sufficient number of these might be lowered into the well, on which the animal might be raised to the top, if it could be instructed as to the necessary means of laying them in regular succession under its feet. Permission having accordingly been obtained from the engineers to use the fascines, the keeper had to teach the elephant the lesson, which, by means of that extraordinary ascendency these men attain over their charge, joined with the intellectual resources of the animal itself, he was soon enabled to do; and the elephant began quickly to place each fascine, as it was lowered, successively under him, until, in a little time, he was enabled to stand upon them. By this time, however, the cunning brute, enjoying the pleasure of his situation, after the heat and partial privation of water to which he had been lately exposed, was unwilling to work any longer; and all the threats of his keeper could not induce him to place another fascine. The man then opposed cunning to cunning, and began to caress and praise the elephant; and what he could not effect by threats he was enabled to do by the repeated promise of plenty of arrack, a spirituous beverage composed of rum, of which the elephant is very fond. Incited by this, the animal again set to work, raised himself considerably higher, until, by a partial removal of the masonry round the top of the well, he was enabled to step out, after having been in the water about fourteen hours." "That was very cunning, Uncle Thomas. The keepers seem to attain great ascendency over the animals." "The attachment of the elephant to its keeper, and the command which some of these men acquire over the objects of their care by appealing to their affections is very extraordinary. The mere sound of the keeper's voice has been known to reclaim an animal which escaped from domestication and resumed its original freedom:-- "A female elephant, belonging to a gentleman in Calcutta, who was ordered from the upper country to Chittagong, in the route thither, broke loose from her keeper, and, making her way to the woods, was lost. The keeper made every excuse to vindicate himself, which the master of the animal would not listen to, but branded the man with dishonesty; for it was instantly supposed that he had sold the elephant. He was tried for it, and condemned to work on the roads for life, and his wife and children sold for slaves. "About twelve years afterwards, this man, who was known to be well acquainted with breaking elephants, was sent into the country with a party to assist in catching wild ones. They came upon a herd, amongst which the man fancied he saw the long-lost elephant for which he had been condemned. He resolved to approach it, nor could the strongest remonstrances of the party dissuade him from the attempt. As he approached the animal, he called her by name, when she immediately recognised his voice; she waved her trunk in the air as a token of salutation, and kneeling down, allowed him to mount her neck. She afterwards assisted in taking other elephants, and decoyed three young ones, to which she had given birth since her escape. The keeper returned to his master, and the singular circumstances attending the recovery of the elephant being told, he regained his character; and, as a recompense for his unmerited sufferings, had a pension settled on him for life." "That was an instance of rare good fortune, Uncle Thomas. How very curious that he should fall in with the herd in which his own elephant was!" "It was very fortunate indeed, Frank. It was not a little curious too that the elephant should recognise him after so long a period. But the attachment which they show to their keepers is sometimes very great. One which in a moment of rage killed its keeper a few years ago, adopted his son as its _carnac_ or driver, and would allow no one else to assume his place. The wife of the unfortunate man was witness to the dreadful scene, and, in the frenzy of her mental agony, took her two children, and threw them at the feet of the elephant, saying, 'As you have slain my husband, take my life also, as well as that of my children!' The elephant became calm, seemed to relent, and as if stung with remorse, took up the eldest boy with its trunk, placed him on its neck, adopted him for its carnac, and never afterwards allowed another to occupy that seat." "That was at least making all the reparation in its power, Uncle Thomas." "There is one or two other stories about the elephant, showing that he knows how to revenge an insult, which I must tell you before you go. "A merchant at Bencoolen kept a tame elephant, which was so exceedingly gentle in his habits, that he was permitted to go at large. This huge animal used to walk about the streets in the most quiet and orderly manner, and paid many visits through the city to people who were kind to him. Two cobblers took an ill will to this inoffensive creature, and several times pricked him on the proboscis with their awls. The noble animal did not chastise them in the manner he might have done, and seemed to think they were too contemptible to be angry with them. But he took other means to punish them for their cruelty. He filled his trunk with water of a dirty quality, and advancing towards them in his ordinary manner, spouted the whole of the puddle over them. The punishment was highly applauded by those who witnessed it, and the poor cobblers were laughed at for their pains." [Illustration: THE ELEPHANT AND THE COBBLERS--Page 68.] "Ha! ha! ha! He must have been a very knowing animal, Uncle Thomas. I dare say, the cobblers behaved better in future." "I dare say they would, Boys. Here is another story of the same description, but the trickster did not escape so easily." "A person in the island of Ceylon, who lived near a place where elephants were daily led to water, and often sat at the door of his house, used occasionally to give one of these animals some fig leaves, a food to which elephants are very partial. Once he took it into his head to play one of the elephants a trick. He wrapped a stone round with fig leaves, and said to the carnac, 'This time I will give him a stone to eat, and see how it will agree with him.' The carnac answered, 'that the elephant would not be such a fool as to swallow a stone.' The man, however, reached the stone to the elephant, who, taking it with his trunk, immediately let it fall to the ground. 'You see,' said the keeper, 'that I was right;' and without further words, drove away his elephants. After they were watered, he was conducting them again to their stable. The man who had played the elephant the trick was still sitting at his door, when, before he was aware, the animal ran at him, threw his trunk around his body, and, dashing him to the ground, trampled him immediately to death." CHAPTER IV. Uncle Thomas introduces to the Notice of the Young Folks the Ettrick Shepherd's Stories about Sheep; and tells them some Interesting Stories about the Goat, and its Peculiarities. "I dare say, Boys, you have not forgotten the Ettrick Shepherd's wonderful stories about his dogs. Some of those which he relates about sheep are equally remarkable, and as he tells them in the same pleasing style, I think I cannot do better than read to you the chapter in 'The Shepherd's Calendar' which he devotes to this animal." "Thank you, Uncle Thomas. We remember very well his stories about Sirrah and Hector and Chieftain, and the old Shepherd's grief at parting with his dog." "That's right, Boys; I am pleased to think that you do not forget what I tell you. But listen to the Ettrick Shepherd." "The sheep has scarcely any marked character save that of natural affection, of which it possesses a very great share. It is otherwise a stupid indifferent animal, having few wants, and fewer expedients. The old black-faced, or forest breed, have far more powerful capabilities than any of the finer breeds that have been introduced into Scotland, and, therefore, the few anecdotes that I have to relate shall be confined to them. "So strong is the attachment of the sheep to the place where they have been bred, that I have heard of their returning from Yorkshire to the Highlands. I was always somewhat inclined to suspect that they might have been lost by the way, but it is certain, however, that when once one or a few sheep get away from the rest of their acquaintances, they return homeward with great eagerness and perseverance. I have lived beside a drove-road the better part of my life, and many stragglers have I seen bending their steps northward in the spring of the year. A shepherd rarely sees these journeyers twice; if he sees them, and stops them in the morning, they are gone long before night; and if he sees them at night they will be gone many miles before morning. This strong attachment to the place of their nativity is much more predominant in our old aboriginal breed than in any of the other kinds with which I am acquainted. "The most singular instance that I know of, to be quite well authenticated, is that of a black ewe, that returned with her lamb from a farm in the head of Glen-Lyon, to the farm of Harehope, in Tweeddale, and accomplished the journey in nine days. She was soon missed by her owner, and a shepherd was despatched in pursuit of her, who followed her all the way to Crieff, where he turned, and gave her up. He got intelligence of her all the way, and every one told him that she absolutely persisted in travelling on,--she would not be turned, regarding neither sheep nor shepherd by the way. Her lamb was often far behind, and she had constantly to urge it on by impatient bleating. She unluckily came to Stirling on the morning of a great annual fair, about the end of May, and judging it imprudent to venture through the crowd with her lamb, she halted on the north side of the town the whole day, where she was seen by hundreds, lying close by the road-side. But next morning, when all became quiet, a little after the break of day, she was observed stealing quietly through the town, in apparent terror of the dogs that were prowling about the street. The last time she was seen on the road was at a toll-bar near St. Ninian's; the man stopped her, thinking she was a strayed animal, and that some one would claim her. She tried several times to break through by force when he opened the gate, but he always prevented her, and at length she turned patiently back. She had found some means of eluding him, however, for home she came on a Sabbath morning, early in June; and she left the farm of Lochs, in Glen-Lyon, either on the Thursday afternoon, or Friday morning, a week and two days before. The farmer of Harehope paid the Highland farmer the price of her, and she remained on her native farm till she died of old age, in her seventeenth year. "With regard to the natural affection of this animal, the instances that might be mentioned are without number. When one loses its sight in a flock of sheep, it is rarely abandoned to itself in that hapless and helpless state. Some one always attaches itself to it, and by bleating calls it back from the precipice, the lake, the pool, and all dangers whatever. There is a disease among sheep, called by shepherds the Breakshugh, a deadly sort of dysentery, which is as infectious as fire, in a flock. Whenever a sheep feels itself seized by this, it instantly withdraws from all the rest, shunning their society with the greatest care; it even hides itself, and is often very hard to be found. Though this propensity can hardly be attributed to natural instinct, it is, at all events, a provision of nature of the greatest kindness and beneficence. "Another manifest provision of nature with regard to these animals is, that the more inhospitable the land is on which they feed, the greater their kindness and attention to their young. I once herded two years on a wild and bare farm called Willenslee, on the border of Mid-Lothian, and of all the sheep I ever saw, these were the kindest and most affectionate to their lambs. I was often deeply affected at scenes which I witnessed. We had one very hard winter, so that our sheep grew lean in the spring, and the thwarter-ill (a sort of paralytic affection) came among them, and carried off a number. Often have I seen these poor victims, when fallen down to rise no more, even when unable to lift their heads from the ground, holding up the leg, to invite the starving lamb to the miserable pittance that the udder still could supply. I had never seen aught more painfully affecting. "It is well known that it is a custom with shepherds, when a lamb dies, if the mother have a sufficiency of milk, to bring her from the hill, and put another lamb to her. This is done by putting the skin of the dead lamb upon the living one; the ewe immediately acknowledges the relationship, and after the skin has warmed on it, so as to give it something of the smell of her own progeny, and it has sucked her two or three times, she accepts and nourishes it as her own ever after. Whether it is from joy at this apparent reanimation of her young one, or because a little doubt remains on her mind which she would fain dispel, I cannot decide; but, for a number of days, she shows far more fondness, by bleating and caressing over this one, than she did formerly over the one that was really her own. But this is not what I wanted to explain; it was, that such sheep as thus lose their lambs must be driven to a house with dogs, so that the lamb may be put to them; for they will only take it in a dark confined place. But at Willenslee, I never needed to drive home a sheep by force, with dogs, or in any other way than the following: I found every ewe, of course, standing hanging her head over her dead lamb; and having a piece of twine with me for the purpose, I tied that to the lamb's neck or foot, and trailing it along, the ewe followed me into any house or fold that I choose to lead her. Any of them would have followed me in that way for miles, with her nose close on the lamb, which she never quitted for a moment, except to chase my dog, which she would not suffer to walk near me. I often, out of curiosity, led them in to the side of the kitchen fire by this means, into the midst of servants and dogs; but the more that dangers multiplied around the ewe, she clung the closer to her dead offspring, and thought of nothing whatever but protecting it. One of the two years, while I remained on this farm, a severe blast of snow came on by night, about the latter end of April, which destroyed several scores of our lambs; and as we had not enow of twins and odd lambs for the mothers that had lost theirs, of course we selected the best ewes, and put lambs to them. As we were making the distribution, I requested of my master to spare me a lamb for a hawked ewe which he knew, and which was standing over a dead lamb in the head of the Hope, about four miles from the house. He would not do it, but bid me let her stand over her lamb for a day or two, and perhaps a twin would be forthcoming. I did so, and faithfully she did stand to her charge; so faithfully, that I think the like never was equalled by any of the woolly race. I visited her every morning and evening, and for the first eight days never found her above two or three yards from the lamb; and always, as I went my rounds, she eyed me long ere I came near her, and kept tramping with her feet, and whistling through her nose, to frighten away the dog; he got a regular chase twice a day as I passed by: but, however excited and fierce a ewe may be, she never offers any resistance to mankind, being perfectly and meekly passive to them. The weather grew fine and warm, and the dead lamb soon decayed, which the body of a dead lamb does particularly soon: but still this affectionate and desolate creature kept hanging over the poor remains with an attachment that seemed to be nourished by hopelessness. It often drew the tears from my eyes to see her hanging with such fondness over a few bones, mixed with a small portion of wool. For the first fortnight she never quitted the spot, and for another week she visited it every morning and evening, uttering a few kindly and heart-piercing bleats each time; till at length every remnant of her offspring vanished, mixing with the soil, or wafted away by the winds." "Poor creature! Uncle Thomas, that was very affecting." "So much for the Ettrick Shepherd. I will now tell you a story about a remarkable instance of sagacity in a sheep, of which I myself was an eye-witness. "One evening, as I was enjoying a walk through some verdant pastures, which were plentifully dotted with sheep, my attention was attracted by the motions of one which repeatedly came close up to me, bleating in a piteous manner, and after looking expressively in my face, ran off towards a brook which meandered through the midst of the pastures. At first I took little notice of the creature, but as her entreaties became importunate, I followed her. Delighted at having at length attracted my notice, she ran with all her speed, frequently looking back. When I reached the spot, I discovered the cause of all her anxiety; her lamb had unfortunately fallen into the brook, whose steep banks prevented it from making its escape. Fortunately the water, though up to the little creature's back, was not sufficient to drown it. I rescued it with much pleasure, and to the great gratification of its affectionate mother, who licked it with her tongue to dry it, now and then skipping about, and giving vent to her joy and gratitude in most expressive gambols. "Though differing in many respects from the sheep, the goat bears so strong a resemblance to that animal, that, now that I am speaking of it, I may as well tell you a story or two about the goat. It will save my returning to it afterwards." "Very well, Uncle Thomas." "The goat is in every respect more fitted for a life of savage liberty than the sheep. It is of a more lively disposition, and is possessed of a greater degree of instinct. It readily attaches itself to man, and seems sensible of his caresses. It delights in climbing precipices, and going to the very edge of danger, and it is often seen suspended upon an eminence overhanging the sea, upon a very little base, and sometimes even sleeps there in security. Nature has in some measure fitted it for traversing these declivities with ease; the hoof is hollow underneath, with sharp edges, so that it walks as securely on the ridge of a house as on the level ground. "When once reduced to a state of domestication, the goat seldom resumes its original wildness. A good many years ago, an English vessel happening to touch at the island of Bonavista, two negroes came and offered the sailors as many goats as they chose to take away. Upon the captain expressing his surprise at this offer, the negroes assured him that there were but twelve persons on the island, and that the goats had multiplied in such a manner as even to become a nuisance: they added, that far from giving any trouble to capture them, they followed the few inhabitants that were left with a sort of obstinacy, and became even troublesome by their tameness. The celebrated traveller Dr. Clarke gives a very curious account of a goat, which was trained to exhibit various amusing feats of dexterity. "We met, (says he,) an Arab with a goat which he led about the country to exhibit, in order to gain a livelihood for itself and its owner. He had taught this animal, while he accompanied its movements with a song, to mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed successively one above another, and in shape resembling the dice-box belonging to a backgammon table. In this manner the goat stood, first, on the top of two; afterwards, of three, four, five, and six, until it remained balanced upon the summit of them all, elevated several feet above the ground, and with its four feet collected upon a single point, without throwing down the disjointed fabric on which it stood. The diameter of the upper cylinder, on which its four feet alternately remained until the Arab had ended his ditty, was only two inches, and the length of each six inches. The most curious part of the performance occurred afterwards; for the Arab, to convince us of the animal's attention to the turn of the air, interrupted the _Da Capo_; and, as often as he did this, the goat tottered, appeared uneasy, and, upon his becoming suddenly silent, in the middle of his song, it fell to the ground. [Illustration: THE ARAB AND HIS GOAT--Page 84.] "Like the sheep, the goat possesses great natural affection for its young. In its defence it boldly repels the attacks of the most formidable opponents. I remember a little story which finely illustrates this instinctive courage. "A person having missed one of his goats when his flock was taken home at night, being afraid the wanderer would get among the young trees in his nursery, two boys, wrapped in their plaids, were ordered to watch all night. The morning had but faintly dawned, when they set out in search of her. They at length discovered her on a pointed rock at a considerable distance, and hastening to the spot perceived her standing watching her kid with the greatest anxiety, and defending it from a fox. The enemy turned round and round to lay hold of his prey, but the goat presented her horns in every direction. The youngest boy was despatched for assistance to attack the fox, and the eldest, hallooing and throwing up stones, sought to intimidate it as he climbed to rescue his charge. The fox seemed well aware that the child could not execute his threats; he looked at him one instant, and then renewed the assault, till, quite impatient, he made a sudden effort to seize the kid. The whole three suddenly disappeared, and were found at the bottom of the precipice. The goat's horns were darted into the back of the fox; the kid lay stretched beside her. It is supposed that the fox had fixed his teeth in the kid, for its neck was lacerated; but that when the faithful mother inflicted a death wound upon her mortal enemy he probably staggered, and brought his victims with him over the rock. "There is another story of the goat, which places its gratitude and affection in such an interesting light, that I am sure it will delight you:-- "After the final suppression of the Scottish Rebellion of 1715, by the decisive Battle of Preston, a gentleman who had taken a very active share in it escaped to the West Highlands to the residence of a female relative, who afforded him an asylum. As in consequence of the strict search which was made after the ringleaders, it was soon judged unsafe for him to remain in the house of his friend, he was conducted to a cavern in a sequestered situation, and furnished with a supply of food. The approach to this lonely abode consisted of a small aperture, through which he crept, dragging his provisions along with him. A little way from the mouth of the cave the roof became elevated, but on advancing, an obstacle obstructed his progress. He soon perceived that, whatever it might be, the object was a living one, but unwilling to strike at a venture with his dirk, he stooped down, and discovered a goat and her kid lying on the ground. The animal was evidently in great pain, and feeling her body and limbs, he ascertained that one of her legs had been fractured. He bound it up with his garter, and offered her some of his bread; but she refused to eat, and stretched out her tongue, as if intimating that her mouth was parched with thirst. He gave her water, which she drank greedily, and then she ate the bread. At midnight he ventured from the cave, pulled a quantity of grass and the tender branches of trees, and carried them to the poor sufferer, which received them with demonstrations of gratitude. "The only thing which this fugitive had to arrest his attention in his dreary abode, was administering comfort to the goat; and he was indeed thankful to have any living creature beside him. It quickly recovered, and became tenderly attached to him. It happened that the servant who was intrusted with the secret of his retreat fell sick, when it became necessary to send another with provisions. The goat, on this occasion, happening to be lying near the mouth of the cavern, opposed his entrance with all her might, butting him furiously; the fugitive, hearing a disturbance, went forward, and receiving the watchword from his new attendant, interposed, and the faithful goat permitted him to pass. So resolute was the animal on this occasion, that the gentleman was convinced she would have died in his defence." CHAPTER V. Uncle Thomas relates some Very Remarkable Stories about the Cat; points out to the Boys the Connexion subsisting between the Domestic Cat and the Lion, Tiger, &c., and tells them some Stories about the Gentleness, as well as the Ferocity of these Animals. "Though far from being so general a favourite as the dog, the domestic cat has many qualities to recommend it to attention and regard, and some of the stories which I am going to tell you exhibit instances of instinctive attachment and gentleness which cannot be surpassed. "Here is one of attachment, which will match with the best of those of the dog. "A cat which had been brought up in a family became extremely attached to the eldest child, a little boy, who was very fond of playing with her. She bore with the most exemplary patience any maltreatment which she received from him--which even good-natured children seldom fail, occasionally, to give to animals in their sports with them--without ever making any attempt at resistance. As the cat grew up, however, she daily quitted her playfellow for a time, from whom she had formerly been inseparable, in order to follow her natural propensity to catch mice; but even when engaged in this employment, she did not forget her friend; for, as soon as she had caught a mouse, she brought it alive to him. If he showed an inclination to take her prey from her, she anticipated him, by letting it run, and waited to see whether he was able to catch it. If he did not, the cat darted at, seized it, and laid it again before him; and in this manner the sport continued as long as the child showed any inclination for the amusement. "At length the boy was attacked by smallpox, and, during the early stages of his disorder, the cat never quitted his bed-side; but, as his danger increased, it was found necessary to remove the cat and lock it up. The child died. On the following day, the cat having escaped from her confinement, immediately ran to the apartment where she hoped to find her playmate. Disappointed in her expectation, she sought for him with symptoms of great uneasiness and loud lamentation, all over the house, till she came to the door of the room in which the corpse lay. Here she lay down in silent melancholy, till she was again locked up. As soon as the child was interred, and the cat set at liberty, she disappeared; and it was not till a fortnight after that event, that she returned to the well-known apartment, quite emaciated. She would not, however, take any nourishment, and soon ran away again with dismal cries. At length, compelled by hunger, she made her appearance every day at dinner-time, but always left the house as soon as she had eaten the food that was given her. No one knew where she spent the rest of her time, till she was found one day under the wall of the burying-ground, close to the grave of her favourite; and so indelible was the attachment of the cat to her deceased friend, that till his parents removed to another place, five years afterwards, she never, except in the greatest severity of winter, passed the night any where else than at the above-mentioned spot, close to the grave. Ever afterwards she was treated with the utmost kindness by every person in the family. She suffered herself to be played with by the younger children, although without exhibiting a particular partiality for any of them. "There is another story of the cat's attachment, of a somewhat less melancholy cast, which I lately saw recorded in a provincial newspaper. [Illustration: THE AFFECTIONATE CAT--Page 92.] "A country gentleman of our acquaintance, who is neither a friend to thieves nor poachers, has at this moment in his household a favourite cat, whose honesty, he is sorry to say, there is but too much reason to call in question. The animal, however, is far from being selfish in her principles; for her acceptable gleanings she regularly shares among the children of the family in which her lot is cast. It is the habit of grimalkin to leave the kitchen or parlour, as often as hunger and an opportunity may occur, and wend her way to a certain pastrycook's shop, where, the better to conceal her purpose, she endeavours slily to ingratiate herself into favour with the mistress of the house. As soon as the shopkeeper's attention becomes engrossed in business, or otherwise, puss contrives to pilfer a small pie or tart from the shelves on which they are placed, speedily afterwards making the best of her way home with her booty. She then carefully delivers her prize to some of the little ones in the nursery. A division of the stolen property quickly takes place; and here it is singularly amusing to observe the cunning animal, not the least conspicuous among the numerous group, thankfully mumping her share of the illegal traffic. We may add that the pastrycook is by no means disposed to institute a legal process against the delinquent, as the children of the gentleman to whom we allude are honest enough to acknowledge their four-footed playmate's failings to papa, who willingly compensates any damage the pastrycook may sustain from the petty depredations of the would-be philanthropic cat. "I remember how highly pleased you were with the story which I told you about the dog discovering the murderers of his master. There is one of a very similar description of a French cat, which I am sure will equally interest you. "In the beginning of the present century a woman was murdered in Paris. The magistrate who went to investigate the affair was accompanied by a physician; they found the body lying upon the floor, and a greyhound watching over it, and howling mournfully. When the gentleman entered the apartment, it ran to them without barking, and then returned with a melancholy mien to the body of his murdered mistress. Upon a chest in a corner of the room sat a cat, motionless, with eyes expressive of furious indignation, stedfastly fixed upon the body. Many persons now entered the apartment, but neither the appearance of such a crowd of strangers, nor the confusion that prevailed in the place, could make her change her position. In the mean time, some persons were apprehended on suspicion of being the murderers, and it was resolved to lead them into the apartment. Before the cat got sight of them, when she only heard their footsteps approaching, her eyes flashed with increased fury, her hair stood erect, and so soon as she saw them enter the apartment, she sprang towards them with expressions of the most violent rage, but did not venture to attack them, being probably alarmed by the numbers that followed. Having turned several times towards them with a peculiar ferocity of aspect, she crept into a corner, with an air indicative of the deepest melancholy. This behaviour of the cat astonished every one present. The effect which it produced upon the murderers was such as almost to amount to an acknowledgment of guilt. Nor did this remain long doubtful, for a train of accessory circumstances was soon discovered which proved it to complete conviction. "I have often warned you against stories of ghosts and hobgoblins, and shown you on how frail a foundation they generally rest. There is a story in which a cat was one of the principal actors, which contains the elements of as marvellous a tale of this description as could be desired. It happened in the west of Scotland. "Some years ago, a poor man whose habits of life had always been of the most retired description, giving way to the natural despondency of his disposition, put an end to his existence. The only other inmate of his cottage was a favourite cat, When the deed was discovered, the cat was found assiduously watching over her late master's body, and it was with some difficulty she could be driven away. "The appalling deed naturally excited a great deal of attention in the surrounding neighbourhood; and on the day after the body was deposited in the grave, which was made at the outside of the church-yard, a number of school-boys ventured thither, to view the resting-place of one who had at times been the subject of village wonder, and whose recent act of self-destruction was invested with additional interest. At first, no one was brave enough to venture near; but at last, the appearance of a hole in the side of the grave irresistibly attracted their attention. Having been minutely examined, it was at length determined that it must have been the work of some body-snatcher, and the story having spread, the grave was minutely examined, but as the body had not been removed, the community considered themselves fortunate in having made so narrow an escape. The turf was replaced, and the grave again carefully covered up. "On the following morning the turf was again displaced, and a hole, deeper than before, yawned in the side of the sad receptacle. Speculation was soon busy at work, and all sorts of explanations were suggested. In the midst of their speculations, alarmed perhaps by the noise of the disputants, poor puss darted from the hole, much to the confusion of some of the most noisy and dogmatic expounders of the mystery. Again the turf was replaced, and again and again was it removed by the unceasing efforts of the faithful cat to share the resting-place of her deceased master. It was at last found necessary to shoot her, it being found impossible otherwise to put a stop to her unceasing importunities." "Poor puss! What a pity it should have been necessary to destroy such a faithful animal. I wonder no one tried to gain its affections, and thus charm it from its dreary abode. Uncle Thomas, did you ever hear Dr. Good's account of a very extraordinary instance of sagacity exemplified by his cat? I was very much struck with it when I saw it a day or two ago in his 'Book of Nature.' If you please, I will read it to you." "Very well, Harry, I shall be glad to hear it; I dare say it is an old acquaintance of mine. I have been such a diligent searcher after stories of this description, that I think very few have escaped me." "A favourite cat, that was accustomed from day to day to take her station quietly at my elbow, on the writing table, sometimes for hour after hour, whilst I was engaged in study, became at length less constant in her attendance, as she had a kitten to take care of. One morning she placed herself in the same spot, but seemed unquiet, and, instead of seating herself as usual, continued to rub her furry sides against my hand and pen, as though resolved to draw my attention, and make me leave off. As soon as she had accomplished this point, she leaped down on the carpet, and made towards the door, with a look of great uneasiness. I opened the door for her, as she seemed to desire, but, instead of going forward, she turned round, and looked earnestly at me, as though she wished me to follow her, or had something to communicate. I did not fully understand her meaning, and, being much engaged at the time, shut the door upon her, that she might go where she liked. "In less than an hour afterwards, however, she had again found an entrance into the room, and drawn close to me, but, instead of mounting the table, and rubbing herself against my hand, as before, she was now under the table, and continued to rub herself against my feet, on moving which I struck them against a something which seemed to be in their way, and, on looking down, beheld with equal grief and astonishment the dead body of her little kitten which I supposed had been alive and in good health, covered over with cinder dust. I now entered into the entire train of this afflicted cat's feelings. She had suddenly lost the nursling she doated on, and was resolved to make me acquainted with it,--assuredly that I might know her grief, and probably also that I might inquire into the cause, and, finding me too dull to understand her expressive motioning that I would follow her to the cinder heap, on which the dead kitten had been thrown, she took the great labour of bringing it to me herself, from the area on the basement floor, and up a whole flight of stairs, and laid it at my feet. I took up the kitten in my hand, the cat still following me, made inquiry into the cause of its death, which I found, upon summoning the servants, to have been an accident, in which no one was much to blame; and the yearning mother having thus obtained her object, and gotten her master to enter into her cause, and divide her sorrows with her, gradually took comfort, and resumed her former station by my side." "Thank you, Harry, I do not think I ever heard that story before. Here is one that will match it however, displaying considerable ingenuity in a cat in the protection of her young. "A cat belonging to Mr. Stevens, of the Red Lion Hotel, Truro, having been removed from that town to a barn at some distance, soon afterwards produced four kittens. Not wishing the stock increased, Mr. Stevens desired three of them to be drowned, next morning, before opening their eyes on the world. Puss was deeply affected by this bereavement, and resolved on moving her remaining offspring to a place of security. When the person appointed to feed grimalkin went with her breakfast next day, no traces of her or her kitten were to be found. He called; but all was silent as the tomb; every corner was searched in vain; no cat was forthcoming. Here the matter rested for several days, when, at length, early one morning, puss made her appearance in the court of her master's house, a melancholy picture of starvation. Having satisfied her hunger, and loitered about the house during the day, late in the evening she took her departure, carrying away some meat. For several days she continued her visits in the same manner, taking care never to leave home empty-mouthed at night. Her proceedings having excited attention, she was followed by two men, in one of her nocturnal retreats, and traced to the top of a wheat stack, at some distance. On obtaining a ladder, her surviving kitten was found, in a curiously constructed hole, sleek and plump, but as wild as a young tiger, and would allow no one to touch it. A few days afterwards, the mother finding, perhaps, that her own daily journeys were rather fatiguing, or thinking it was time that the object of her solicitude should be introduced into the world, or, probably, that the kitten had attained an age when it could protect itself, she took advantage of a dark and silent night, when cat-worrying dogs and boys were reposing, to convey it safely to Truro, where tabby and her kitten found a welcome reception. "Though from bad education the cat and dog are generally the most determined enemies, some instances have occurred of the greatest friendship subsisting between these animals. Here is an instance recorded by a French author on the Language of Brutes. "I had a cat and dog, which became so attached to each other, that they would never willingly be asunder. Whenever the dog got any choice morsel of food, he was sure to divide it with his whiskered friend. They always ate sociably out of one plate, slept in the same bed, and daily walked out together. Wishing to put this apparently sincere friendship to the proof, I, one day, took the cat by herself into my room, while I had the dog guarded in another apartment. I entertained the cat in a most sumptuous manner, being desirous to see what sort of a meal she would make without her friend, who had hitherto been her constant table companion. The cat enjoyed the treat with great glee, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the dog. I had had a partridge for dinner, half of which I intended to keep for supper. My wife covered it with a plate, and put it into a cupboard, the door of which she did not lock. The cat left the room, and I walked out upon business. My wife, meanwhile, sat at work in an adjoining apartment. When I returned home, she related to me the following circumstances:--The cat, having hastily left the dining room, went to the dog, and mewed uncommonly loud, and in different tones of voice; which the dog, from time to time, answered with a short bark. They both then went to the door of the room where the cat had dined, and waited till it was opened. One of my children opened the door, and immediately the two friends entered the apartment. The mewing of the cat excited my wife's attention. She rose from her seat, and stepped softly up to the door, which stood ajar, to observe what was going on. The cat led the dog to the cupboard which contained the partridge, pushed off the plate which covered it, and, taking out my intended supper, laid it before her canine friend, who devoured it greedily. Probably the cat, by her mewing, had given the dog to understand what an excellent meal she had made, and how sorry she was that he had not participated in it; but, at the same time, had explained to him that something was left for him in the cupboard, and persuaded him to follow her thither. Since that time I have paid particular attention to these animals, and am perfectly convinced that they communicate to each other whatever seems interesting." "Oh! indeed, Uncle Thomas, do you think that animals understand each other?" "I have no doubt that they do to a limited extent, Harry, but I cannot go the whole length of Monsieur Wenzel, who records the story I have just told you. "I will now tell you some stories about some of the other animals of the cat kind, such as the lion, tiger, &c.; and though these animals differ so much from the domestic cat, they all belong to the same family; the huge lion, which carries off with ease a buffalo from the herd, or makes the forest tremble with his hoarse roar is no more than an enormous cat. "I dare say you have all heard the story of 'Androcles and the Lion,' which is recorded in that most delightful book, 'Sandford and Merton.' It is so captivating a tale, that I must repeat it to you as much for my own gratification as for yours. I will just observe, however, that it is a fiction, and not a real story, though I can tell you one or two very similar ones, which occurred in real life." "There was a certain slave named Androcles, who was so ill treated by his master that his life became insupportable. Finding no remedy from what he suffered, he at length said to himself:--'It is better to die than to continue to live in such hardships and misery as I am obliged to suffer. I am determined, therefore, to run away from my master; if I am taken again, I know that I shall be punished with a cruel death, but it is better to die at once, than to live in misery. If I escape, I must betake myself to deserts and woods, inhabited only by wild beasts, but they cannot use me more cruelly than I have been by my fellow-creatures, therefore I will rather trust myself to them, than continue to be a miserable slave. "Having formed this resolution, he took an opportunity of leaving his master's house, and hid himself in a thick forest, which was some miles distant from the city. But here the unhappy man found that he had only escaped from one kind of misery to experience another. He wandered about all day through a vast and trackless wood, where his flesh was continually torn by thorns and brambles. He grew hungry, but he could find no food in this dreary solitude. At length he was ready to die with fatigue, and lay down in despair in a large cavern. "The unfortunate man had not been long quiet in the cavern, before he heard a dreadful noise, which seemed to be the roar of some wild beast, and terrified him very much. He started up with a design to escape, and had already reached the mouth of the cave, when he saw coming towards him a lion of prodigious size, which prevented any possibility of retreat. He now believed his destruction to be inevitable, but to his great astonishment the beast advanced towards him with a gentle pace, without any mark of enmity or rage, and uttered a kind of mournful voice, as if he demanded the assistance of the man. "Androcles, who was naturally of a resolute disposition, acquired courage from this circumstance to examine his monstrous guest, who gave him sufficient leisure for this purpose. He saw, as the lion approached him, that he seemed to limp upon one of his legs, and that the foot was extremely swelled, as if it had been wounded. Acquiring still more fortitude from the gentle demeanour of the beast, he advanced towards him, and took hold of the wounded part as a surgeon would examine his patient. He then perceived that a thorn of uncommon size had penetrated the ball of the foot, and was the occasion of the swelling and the lameness which he had observed. Androcles found that the beast, far from resenting his familiarity, received it with the greatest gentleness, and seemed to invite him by his blandishments to proceed. He therefore extracted the thorn, and, pressing the swelling, discharged a considerable quantity of matter, which had been the cause of so much pain. As soon as the beast felt himself thus relieved, he began to testify his joy and gratitude by every expression in his power. He jumped about like a wanton spaniel, wagged his enormous tail, and licked the feet and hands of his physician. Nor was he contented with these demonstrations of kindness. From this moment Androcles became his guest; nor did the lion ever sally forth in quest of his prey, without bringing home the produce of his chase, and sharing it with his friend. [Illustration: ANDROCLES AND THE LION--Page 110.] "In this savage state of hospitality did the man continue to live during several months. At length, wandering unguardedly through the woods, he met with a company of soldiers sent out to apprehend him, and was by them taken prisoner, and conducted back to his master. The laws of that country being very severe against slaves, he was tried and found guilty of having fled from his master, and as a punishment for his pretended crime, he was sentenced to be torn in pieces by a furious lion, kept many days without food, to inspire him with additional rage. "When the destined moment arrived, the unhappy man was exposed, unarmed, in the middle of a spacious arena, inclosed on every side, round which many thousand people were assembled to view the mournful spectacle. Presently a dreadful yell was heard, which struck the spectators with horror, and a monstrous lion rushed out of a den, which was purposely set open, with erected mane and flaming eyes, and jaws that gaped like an open sepulchre. A mournful silence instantly prevailed. All eyes were turned upon the destined victim, whose destruction seemed inevitable. But the pity of the multitude was soon converted into astonishment, when they beheld the lion, instead of destroying its defenceless enemy, crouch submissively at his feet, fawn upon him as a faithful dog would do upon his master, and rejoice over him as a mother that unexpectedly recovers her offspring. The governor of the town, who was present, then called out with a loud voice, and ordered Androcles to explain to them this unintelligible mystery, and how a savage of the fiercest and most unpitying nature should thus in a moment have forgotten his innate disposition, and be converted into a harmless and inoffensive animal. Androcles then related to the assembly every circumstance of his adventures, and concluded by saying, that the very lion which now stood before them, had been his friend and entertainer in the woods. All present were astonished and delighted with the story, to find that even the fiercest beasts are capable of being softened by gratitude; and, being moved by humanity, they unanimously joined to entreat for the pardon of the unhappy man, from the governor of the place. This was immediately granted to him, and he was also presented with the lion, which had twice saved the life of Androcles." "Oh, what a delightful story, Uncle Thomas! What a pity it is that it is not true." "I can tell you one which is true, John which is hardly, if at all, inferior in interest:-- "Sir George Davis, who was English consul at Naples about the middle of the seventeenth century, happening on one ocassion to be in Florence, visited the Menagerie of the Grand Duke. At the farther end of one of the dens he saw a lion which lay in sullen majesty, and which the keepers informed him they had been unable to tame, although every effort had been used for upwards of three years. Sir George had no sooner reached the gate of the den, than the lion ran to it, and evinced every demonstration of joy and transport. The animal reared himself up, purred like a cat when pleased, and licked the hand of Sir George, which he had put through the bars. The keeper was astonished and frightened for the safety of his visitor, entreated him not to trust an apparent fit of frenzy, with which the animal seemed to be seized; for he was, without exception, the most fierce and sullen of his tribe which he had ever seen. This, however, had no effect on Sir George, who, notwithstanding every entreaty on the part of the keeper, insisted on entering the lion's den. The moment he got in, the delighted lion threw his paws upon his shoulders, licked his face, and ran about him, rubbing his head on Sir George, purring and fawning like a cat when expressing its affection for its master. This occurrence became the talk of Florence, and reached the ears of the Grand Duke, who sent for Sir George, and requested an interview at the menagerie, that he might witness so extraordinary a circumstance, when Sir George gave the following explanation; 'A captain of a ship from Barbary gave me this lion, when quite a whelp. I brought him up tame; but when I thought him too large to be suffered to run about the house, I built a den for him in my court-yard. From that time he was never permitted to be loose, except when brought to the house to be exhibited to my friends. When he was five years old, he did some mischief by pawing and playing with people in his frolicsome moods. Having griped a man one day a little too hard, I ordered him to be shot, for fear of myself incurring the guilt of what might happen. On this a friend, who happened to be then at dinner with me, begged him as a present. How he came here, I know not.' The Grand Duke of Tuscany, on hearing his story, said it was the very same person who had presented him with the lion." "Oh! Uncle Thomas: I should have been terribly afraid to have ventured into the lion's den!" "I dare say you would, John, and so should I. But some stories are recorded of the gentleness of the lion, as almost to justify such acts of what would otherwise appear fool-hardiness. "Part of a ship's crew being sent ashore on the coast of India for the purpose of cutting wood, the curiosity of one of the men having led him to stray to a considerable distance from his companions, he was much alarmed by the appearance of a large lioness, who made towards him; but, on her coming up, his fear was allayed, by her lying down at his feet, and looking very earnestly, first in his face, and then at a tree some little distance off. After repeating these looks several times, she arose, and proceeded towards the tree, looking back, as if she wished the sailor to follow her. At length he ventured, and, coming to the tree, perceived a huge baboon, with two young cubs in her arms, which he immediately supposed to be those of the lioness', as she crouched down like a cat, and seemed to eye them very stedfastly. The man being afraid to ascend the tree, decided on cutting it down, and having his axe with him, he set actively to work, when the lioness seemed most attentive to what he was doing. When the tree fell, she pounced upon the baboon, and, after tearing her in pieces, she turned round, and licked the cubs for some time. She then returned to the sailor, and fawned round him, rubbing her head against him in great fondness, and in token of her gratitude for the service done her. After this, she carried the cubs away one by one, and the sailor rejoined his companions, much pleased with the adventure. [Illustration: THE LIONESS AND THE BABOON--Page 117.] "Another author tells such a graphic story of a lion's entertaining a hunter, that I must let you hear it also, though I must say that I think he has rather overstrained it. "A hunter on one occasion having gone in search of a lion, and having penetrated a considerable distance into a forest, happened to meet with two whelps of a lion that came to caress him. The hunter stopped with the little animals, and waiting for the coming of the sire or the dam, took out his breakfast, and gave them a part. The lioness arrived, unperceived by the huntsman, so that he had not time, or perhaps wanted the courage, to take his gun. After having for some time looked at the man who was thus feasting her young, the lioness burst away, and soon after returned, bearing with her a sheep, which she came and laid at the huntsman's feet. The hunter, thus become one of the family, took occasion to make a good meal,--skinned the sheep, made a fire, and roasted a part, giving the entrails to the young. The lion, in his turn, came also; and, as if respecting the rights of hospitality, showed no tokens whatever of ferocity. Their guest, the next day, having finished his provisions, returned home, and came to a resolution never more to kill any of these animals, the noble generosity of which he had so fully experienced. He stroked and caressed the whelps at taking leave of them, and the dam and sire accompanied him till he was safely out of the forest." "Well, Uncle Thomas, I cannot believe that. I think the man would have been too glad to escape, to have staid so long with such unsafe companions." "You are quite right, Harry, I cannot expect that you should give credit to a story which I myself disbelieve. Here is a story about the ferocity of the lion, which is, however, beyond all, doubt. "In the year 1816 the horses which were dragging the Exeter mail coach were attacked in the most furious manner by a lioness, which had escaped from a travelling menagerie. "At the moment when the coachman pulled up, to deliver his bags at one of the stages a few miles from the town of Salisbury, one of the leading horses was suddenly seized by a ferocious animal. This produced a great confusion and alarm. Two passengers, who were inside the mail, got out and ran into the house. The horse kicked and plunged violently; and it was with difficulty the driver could prevent the coach from being overturned. It was soon observed by the coachman and guard, by the light of the lamps, that the animal which had seized the horse was a huge lioness. A large mastiff dog came up and attacked her fiercely, on which she quitted the horse and turned upon him. The dog fled, but was pursued and killed by the lioness, within about forty yards of the place. It appears that the beast had escaped from a caravan, which was standing on the road side, and belonged to a menagerie, on its way to Salisbury fair. An alarm being given, the keepers pursued and hunted the lioness, carrying the dog in her teeth, into a hovel under a granary, which served for keeping agricultural implements. About half past eight, they had secured her effectually, by barricading the place, so as to prevent her escape. The horse, when first attacked, fought with great spirit; and if he had been at liberty, would probably have beaten down his antagonist with his fore feet but in plunging he entangled himself in the harness. The lioness, it appears, attacked him in front, and springing at his throat, had fastened the talons of her fore feet on each side of his gullet, close to the head, while the talons of her hind feet were forced into the chest. In this situation she hung, while the blood was seen streaming, as if a vein had been opened by a lancet. The furious animal missed the throat and jugular vein; but the horse was so dreadfully torn, that he was not at first expected to survive. The expressions of agony, in his tears and moans, were most piteous and affecting. Whether the lioness was afraid of her prey being taken from her, or from some other cause, she continued a considerable time after she had entered the hovel, roaring in a dreadful manner, so loud, indeed, that she was distinctly heard at the distance of half a mile. She was eventually secured and led back in triumph to her cell." "It was fortunate that it did not attack the passengers, Uncle Thomas." "Very much so, indeed; it might have turned out a very serious affair, Frank." CHAPTER VI. Uncle Thomas tells about the Tiger; its Ferocity and Power; and of the Curious Modes which are adopted for its Capture and Destruction.--Also about the Puma or American Lion, and introduces some Hunting Scenes in North and South America, with other Interesting and Entertaining Adventures. "Long as the stories were, Boys, which I told you last night about the lion, I have not yet quite done with the animals of the cat kind; there are still one or two stories about the tiger and the puma or American lion, which I wish to tell you of, if you do not think we have already had enough of them." "Oh, no, Uncle Thomas, pray do continue." "Very well, I will first tell you about the tiger. "The tiger, which inhabits the rich jungles of India, nearly equals the lion in strength, and perhaps excels him in activity and ferocity. A very affecting instance of his ferocity, by which a fine young man, the only son of Sir Hector Munro, lost his life, is thus related by one of the party: "Yesterday morning, Captain George Downey, Lieutenant Pyefinch, poor Mr. Munro (of the Honourable East India Company's service), and myself (Captain Consar), went on shore, on Saugur Island, to shoot deer. We saw innumerable tracks of tigers and deer; but still we were induced to pursue our sport; and did so the whole day. About half past three, we sat down on the edge of the jungle, to eat some cold meat, sent to us from the ship, and had just commenced our meal, when Mr. Pyefinch and a black servant told us there was a fine deer within six yards of us. Captain Downey and I immediately jumped up, to take our guns; mine was nearest, and I had but just laid hold of it, when I heard a roar like thunder, and saw an immense royal tiger spring on the unfortunate Munro, who was sitting down; in a moment his head was in the beast's mouth, and he rushed into the jungle with him, with as much ease as I could lift a kitten, tearing him through the thickest bushes and trees, every thing yielding to his monstrous strength. The agonies of horror, regret, and, I must say, fear (for there were two tigers), rushed on me at once; the only effort I could make was to fire at him, though the poor youth was still in his mouth. I relied partly on Providence, partly on my own aim, and fired a musket. The tiger staggered, and seemed agitated, which I took notice of to my companions. Captain Downey then fired two shots, and I one more. We retired from the jungle, and, a few minutes after, Mr. Munro came up to us all over blood and fell. We took him on our backs to the boat, and got every medical assistance for him from the Valentine Indiaman, which lay at anchor near the Island; but in vain. He lived twenty-four hours in the utmost torture; his head and skull were all torn and broken to pieces, and he was also wounded, by the animal's claws, all over his neck and shoulders; but it was better to take him away, though irrecoverable, than leave him to be mangled and devoured. We have just read the funeral service over his body, and committed it to the deep. Mr. Munro was an amiable and promising youth. I must observe, there was a large fire blazing close to us, composed of ten or a dozen whole trees. I made it myself on purpose to keep the tigers off, as I had always heard it would. There were eight or ten of the natives about us; many shots had been fired at the place; there was much noise and laughing at the time; but this ferocious animal disregarded all. The human mind cannot form an idea of the scene; it turned my very soul within me. The beast was about four feet and a half high, and nine long. His head appeared as large as that of an ox; his eyes darting fire, and his roar, when he first seized his prey, will never be out of my recollection. We had scarcely pushed our boat from that cursed shore, when the tigress made her appearance, raging, almost mad, and remained on the sand, as long as the distance would allow me to see her." "Oh, dreadful, Uncle Thomas! I declare it makes my hair stand on end!" "It is a fearful tale, John, and shows you what a scourge such an animal must be to the inhabitants of the country in which it is found. It frequents the deserts of Asia, but in some places where civilization has commenced, it prowls about the villages and commits great havoc among the herds of the inhabitants, who therefore find it necessary to adopt various schemes for its destruction; some of these devices are very curious. "A large cage of strong bamboos is constructed, and fastened firmly to the ground, in a place which the tigers frequent. In this a man takes up his station for the night. He is generally accompanied by a dog or a goat, which by its extreme agitation is sure to give notice of the tiger's approach. His weapons consist of two or three strong spears, and thus provided he wraps himself in his quilt, and very composedly goes to steep in the full confidence of safety. By and by the tiger makes his appearance, and after duly reconnoitring all round, begins to rear against the cage, seeking for some means of entering. The hunter, who watches his opportunity, thrusts one of his spears into the animal's body, and seldom fails to destroy it." "That is a very good plan, Uncle Thomas, and does not seem to be attended with much danger, if the cage be strong enough." "No, Boys, it is not very dangerous, but I don't think any of you would like to trust yourselves so exposed. Here, however, is another mode of destroying the tiger, which is practised in some parts of India. "The track of a tiger being ascertained, which though not invariably the same, may yet be known sufficiently for the purpose, the peasants collect a quantity of the leaves of the prous, which are like those of the sycamore, and are common in most underwoods, as they form the largest portion of most jungles in India. These leaves are smeared with a species of bird-lime, made by bruising the berries of a tree by no means scarce. They are then strewed, with the gluten uppermost, near to the spot to which it is understood the tiger usually retires during noon-tide heat. If by chance the animal should tread on one of these smeared leaves his fate is certain. He commences by shaking his paw, with the view to remove the adhesive incumbrance, but finding no relief from that expedient, he rubs the nuisance against his jaw with the same intention, by which means his eyes, ears, &c. become covered with the same substance. This occasions such uneasiness as causes him to roll perhaps among many more smeared leaves, till at length he becomes completely enveloped, and he is deprived of sight, and in this situation may be compared to a man who has been tarred and feathered. The anxiety produced by this strange and novel predicament, soon discovers itself in dreadful howlings, which serve to call the watchful peasants, who in this disabled state find no difficulty in shooting the object of detestation." "That is better still, Uncle Thomas; I think that is the most ingenious way of catching an animal that I ever heard of." "I must now tell you something about the puma or American lion, which is also taken in a very ingenious manner by the natives of South America. It is generally hunted by means of dogs. When they unkennel a lion or a tiger, they pursue him till he stops to defend himself. The hunter, who is mounted on a good steed, follows close behind, and if the dogs seize upon the animal, the hunter jumps off his horse, and, while the lion is engaged in contending with the dogs, strikes him on the head, and thus dispatches him. If, however, the dogs are afraid to attack him, the hunter uses his lasso, dexterously fixes it round some part of the animal, and gallops away, dragging it after him. The dogs now rush in and tear him, when he is soon dispatched. "When wounded the puma grows furious and irresistible. Here is a story which shows the fierceness of the animal:--Two hunters having gone in quest of game to the Catskill mountains, province of New York, each armed with a gun, and accompanied by a dog, they agreed to go in contrary directions round the base of the hill, which formed one of the points of that chain of mountains; and it was settled that, if either discharged his piece, the other should hasten to the spot whence the report proceeded as speedily as possible, to join in the pursuit of whatever game might fall to their lot. They had not been long asunder, when the one heard the other fire, and, agreeably to promise, hastened to join his companion. He looked for him in every direction; but to no purpose. At length, however, he came upon the dog of his friend, dead, and dreadfully lacerated. Convinced by this, that the animal his comrade had shot at was ferocious and formidable, he felt much alarm for his fate, and sought after him with great anxiety. He had not proceeded many yards from me spot where the dog lay prostrate, when his attention was arrested by the ferocious growl of some wild animal. On raising his eyes to the spot whence the sound proceeded, he discovered a large puma couching on the branch of a tree, and under him the body of his friend. The animal's eyes glared at him, and he appeared hesitating whether he should descend, and make an attack on the survivor also, or relinquish his prey, and decamp. The hunter, aware of the celerity of the puma's movements, knew that there was no time for reflection, levelled his piece, and mortally wounded the animal, when it and the body of the man fell together from the tree. His dog then attacked the wounded puma, but a single blow from its paw laid it prostrate. In this state of things, finding his comrade was dead, and knowing it was dangerous to approach the wounded animal, he went in search of assistance, and on returning to the spot he found his companion, the puma, and the two dogs, all lying dead. "The celebrated naturalist Audubon gives an interesting account of a hunt which he had after the puma, in one of the back settlements of North America. In the course of his rambles he arrived at the cabin of a squatter on the banks of Cold-Water River, and after a hospitable reception, and an evening spent in relating their adventures in the chase, it was agreed in the morning to hunt the puma which had of late been making sad ravages among the squatter's pigs. "The hunters accordingly made their appearance just as the sun was emerging from the horizon. They were five in number, and fully equipped for the chase, being mounted on horses which in some parts of Europe might appear sorry nags, but which, in strength, speed, and bottom, are better fitted for pursuing a puma or bear through woods and morasses than any in that country. A pack of large ugly curs were already engaged in making acquaintance with those of the squatter. He and myself mounted his two best horses, whilst his sons were bestriding others of inferior quality. "Few words were uttered by the party until we had reached the edge of the swamp where it was agreed that all should disperse and seek for the fresh track of the puma, it being previously settled that the discoverer should blow his horn, and remain on the spot until the rest should join him. In less than an hour, the sound of the horn was clearly heard, and, sticking close the squatter, off we went through the thick woods, guided only by the moon and the repeated call of the distant huntsman. We soon reached the spot, and in a short time the rest of the party came up. The best dog was sent forward to attack the animal, and in a few minutes the whole pack were observed diligently tracking and bearing in their course for the interior of the swamp. The rifles were immediately put in trim, and the party followed the dogs at separate distances, within sight of each other, determined to shoot at no other game than the puma. "The dogs soon began to mouth, and suddenly quickened their pace. My companions concluded that the beast was on the ground, and putting our horses to a gentle gallop, we followed the curs, guided by their voices. The noise of the dogs increased, when all of a sudden their mode of barking became altered, and the squatter, urging me to push on, told me the beast was _treed_, by which he meant that it had got upon some low branch of a large tree, to rest for a few moments, and that should we not succeed in shooting him while thus situated we might expect a long chase of it. As we approached the spot, we all by degrees united into a body, but on seeing the dogs at the foot of a large tree, separated again, and galloped off to surround it. "Each hunter now moved with caution, holding his gun ready, and allowing the bridle to dangle on the neck of his horse, as it advanced slowly towards the dogs. A shot from one of the party was heard, on which the puma was seen to leap to the ground and bound off with such velocity as to show that he was very unwilling to stand our fire longer. The dogs set off in pursuit with the utmost eagerness and a deafening cry; the hunter who had fired came up, and said that his ball had hit the monster, and had probably broken one of his fore legs near the shoulder, the only place at which he could aim; a slight trail of blood was discovered on the ground, but the curs proceeded at such a rate, that we merely noticed this and put spurs to our horses, which galloped on towards the centre of the swamp. One bayou (a part of the swamp in which the water accumulates) was crossed, then another still larger and more muddy, but the dogs were brushing forward, and as the horses began to pant at a furious rate, we judged it expedient to leave them and advance on foot. These determined hunters knew that the animal, being wounded, would shortly ascend another tree, where in all probability he would remain for a considerable time, and that it was easy to follow the track of the dogs. We dismounted, took off the saddles and bridles, set the bells attached to the horses, necks at liberty to jingle, hoppled the animals (fastening the bridle to one of their legs so that they could not stray far), and left them to shift for themselves. "After marching for a couple of hours, we again heard the dogs. Each of us pressed forward, elated at the thought of terminating the career of the puma; some of the dogs were heard whining, although the greater part barked vehemently. We felt assured that the animal was treed, and that he would rest for some time to recover from his fatigue. As we came up to the dogs we discovered the furious animal lying across a large branch close to the trunk of a cotton-wood tree. His broad breast lay towards us, his eyes were at one time bent on us, and again on the dogs, beneath, and around him; one of his fore-legs hung down loosely by his side, and he lay crouched with his ears lowered close to his head, as if he thought he might remain undiscovered. Three balls were fired at him at a given signal, on which he sprung a few feet from the branch, and tumbled headlong to the ground. Attacked on all sides by the enraged curs, the infuriated animal fought with desperate valour; but the squatter advancing in front of the party, and almost in the midst of the dogs, shot him immediately behind and beneath the left shoulder. He writhed for a moment in agony, and in another lay dead." "It must be very exciting employment, hunting the puma, Uncle Thomas." "And not a little dangerous too, Boys, for you hear how fiercely he maintains his ground. With all their fierceness, however, the fear of man is over even this relentless race of animals. Captain Head, who has written an amusing book called 'Rough Notes of Rapid Rides across the Pampas,' thus speaks on this subject: "The fear which all wild animals in America have of man is very singularly exhibited in the Pampas. I often rode towards the ostriches and zamas, crouching under the opposite side of my horse's neck; but I always found that, although they would allow my loose horse to approach them, they, even when young, ran from me, though little of my figure was visible; and when I saw them all enjoying themselves in such full liberty, it was at first not pleasing to observe that one's appearance was every where a signal to them that they should fly from their enemy. Yet it is by this fear 'that man hath dominion over the beasts of the field,' and there is no animal in South America that does not acknowledge this instinctive feeling. As a singular proof of the above, and of the difference between the wild beasts of America and of the old world, I will venture to relate a circumstance which a man sincerely assured me had happened to him in South America. "He was trying to shoot some wild ducks, and, in order to approach them unperceived, he put the corner of his poncho (which is a sort of long narrow blanket) over his head, and crawling along the ground upon his hand and knees, the poncho not only covered his body, but trailed along the ground behind him. As he was thus creeping by a large bush of reeds, he heard a loud, sudden noise, between a bark and a roar; he felt something heavy strike his feet, and, instantly jumping up, he saw to his astonishment, a large puma actually standing on his poncho; and, perhaps, the animal was equally astonished to find himself in the immediate presence of so athletic a man. The man told me he was unwilling to fire, as his gun was loaded with very small shot; and he therefore remained motionless, the puma standing on his poncho for many seconds; at last the creature turned his head, and walking very slowly away about ten yards, stopped, and turned again: the man still maintained his ground, upon which the puma tacitly acknowledged his supremacy, and walked off." "I dare say the man was very glad to be so easily quit of such a formidable visitor, Uncle Thomas." [Illustration: THE SURPRISE--Page 140.] "No doubt of it, Frank. I have one other story to tell you about the puma, which fortunately exhibits it in a more favourable light than some of those which I have told you. "During the government of Don Diego de Mendoza, in Paraguay, a dreadful famine raged at Buenos Ayres; yet Diego, afraid to give the Indians a habit of spilling Spanish blood, forbade the inhabitants, on pain of death, to go into the fields, in search of relief, placing soldiers at all the outlets to the country, with orders to fire upon those who should attempt to transgress his orders. A woman, however, called Maldonata, was artful enough to elude the vigilance of the guards, and to effect her escape. After wandering about the country for a long time, she sought shelter in a cavern; but she had scarcely entered it, when she became dreadfully alarmed, on observing a puma occupying the same den. She was, however, soon quieted by the animal approaching and caressing her. The poor brute was very ill, and scarcely able to crawl towards her. Maldonata soon discovered what was the cause of the animal's illness, and kindly ministered to it. It soon recovered, and was all gratitude and attention to its kind benefactress, never returning from searching after its daily subsistence without laying a portion of it at the feet of Maldonata. "Some time after, Maldonata fell into the hands of the Spaniards; and, being brought back to Buenos Ayres, was conducted before Don Francis Ruez de Galen, who then commanded there. She was charged with having left the city contrary to orders. Galen was a man of a cruel and tyrannical disposition, and condemned the unfortunate woman to a death which none but the most cruel tyrant could have devised. He ordered some soldiers to take her into the country, and leave her tied to a tree, either to perish with hunger, or to be torn to pieces by wild beasts. Two days after, he sent the same soldiers to see what had been her fate, when, to their great surprise, they found her alive and unhurt, though surrounded by pumas and jaguars, while a female puma at her feet kept them at bay. As soon as the puma saw the soldiers, she retired to some distance and they unbound Maldonata, who related to them the history of this puma, whom she knew to be the same she had formerly relieved in the cavern. On the soldiers taking Maldonata away, the animal approached, and fawned upon her, as if unwilling to part. The soldiers reported what they had seen to their commander, who could not but pardon a woman who had been so singularly protected, without the danger of appearing more inhuman than pumas themselves. CHAPTER VII. Uncle Thomas tells about the Migrating Instinct of Animals.--Of the House Swallow of England; and the Esculent Swallow, whose Nest is eaten by the Chinese.--He tells also about the Passenger Pigeon of America; of the Myriads which are found in various parts of the United States; of the Land-Crab and its Migrations, and of those of the Salmon and the Common Herring. "Uncle Thomas, I heard to-day of a swallow which for many years returned to the same window, and built its nest in the same corner. Now as I believe swallows are birds of passage, and leave this country to spend the winter in warmer climates, I wish you to explain to me how it is that they can return from such distances to the same spot." "That is a question, Frank, which I cannot very well answer, but so many instances of the kind have been observed as to leave no doubt as to the fact. It has sometimes been known even to penetrate into the house, and attach its nest to articles of furniture. "At Camerton Hall, near Bath, a pair of swallows built their nest on the upper part of the frame of an old picture over the chimney; and, coming into the room through a broken pane in one of the windows, they continued to use the same place for their nest for three successive years, and would probably have continued to do so, but the room having been put into repair, they could no longer obtain access to it." "Is it want of food which makes birds migrate, Uncle Thomas?" "Principally, I should say that it is so, Frank, but in shifting from one place to another they only fulfil an instinct impressed on them by their Creator for the preservation of their species. Thus, for instance, an old swallow might know by experience, that when its food fails here, it begins to become plentiful elsewhere, but the young bird which had never been more than a few miles from the place where it was hatched, can have no such experimental knowledge; yet, when the season arrives, we find the whole flock ready to set out. I dare say you have all seen them, Boys, gathering in flocks and resting on the house tops, as if taking breath before setting out on their long journey." "Oh, yes, Uncle Thomas, I have often seen them doing so, but I have heard that they dive to the bottom of lakes and ponds, and remain there till winter is over." "Many foolish stories are told of swallows being found in such situations, Harry, but they are now well known to be fables. There is no doubt that they migrate in the same way as many other birds. Last autumn I watched with great pleasure the movements of a flock, which was evidently preparing for their arduous flight. "For several evenings they assembled in large numbers on a tree at a short distance from my house, and, after remaining seated for some time, one of them, who appeared to be commander-in-chief, kept flying about in all directions, and at length, with a sharp and loudly repeated call, he darted up into the air. In an instant the whole congregation were on the wing, following their leader in a sort of spiral track. In a little time they had risen so high that I lost sight of them, but after a short absence they again returned and took up their position on the tree which they had just left. "This manoeuvre they continued for some time, till one day they set off in reality, and I saw no more of them for the winter." "I read, somewhere, Uncle Thomas, that the Chinese eat swallows' nests. I cannot understand this, Sir; surely the mud and clay, of which swallows' nests are composed, would make but an indifferent repast." "I dare say they would, Frank, if they were made of clay and mud, as the nests of our swallows are; but such is not the case. Various opinions are entertained as to the substance of which the nest of the esculent swallow is made. Sir George Staunton, who accompanied Lord Macartney in his embassy to China, gives a very interesting account both of the swallow and of its nest. "In the Cass," says Sir George, "a small island near Sumatra, we found two caverns running horizontally into the side of the rock, and in these were a number of those birds' nests so much prized by the Chinese epicures. They seemed to be composed of fine filaments, cemented together by a transparent viscous matter, not unlike what is left by the foam of the sea upon stones alternately covered by the tide, or those gelatinous animal substances found floating on every coast. The nests adhere to each other and to the sides of the cavern, mostly in horizontal rows, without any break or interruption, and at different depths from fifty to five hundred feet. The birds that build these nests are small grey swallows, with bellies of a dirty white. They were flying about in considerable numbers, but were so small, and their flight was so quick, that they escaped the shot fired at them. The same sort of nests are said to be also found in deep caverns at the foot of the highest mountains in the middle of Java, at a distance from the sea; from which source it is thought that the birds derive no materials, either for their food, or the construction of their nests, as it does not appear probable they should fly in search of either over the intermediate mountains, which are very high, or against the boisterous winds prevailing thereabouts. They feed on insects, which they find hovering over stagnated pools between the mountains, and for the catching of which their wide opening beaks are particularly adapted. They prepare their nests from the best remnants of their food. Their greatest enemy is the kite, who often intercepts them in their passage to and from the caverns, which are generally surrounded with rocks of grey limestone or white marble. The colour and value of the nests depend on the quantity and quality of the insects caught, and perhaps also on the situation where they are built. Their value is chiefly ascertained by the uniform fineness and delicacy of their texture; those that are white and transparent being most esteemed, and fetching often in China their weight in silver. "These nests are a considerable object of traffic among the Javanese, many of whom are employed in it from their infancy. The birds, after having spent nearly two months in preparing their nests, lay each two eggs, which are hatched in about fifteen days. When the young birds become fledged, it is thought the proper time to seize upon their nests, which is done regularly three times a year, and is effected by means of ladders of bamboo and reeds, by which the people descend into the caverns; but when these are very deep, rope-ladders are preferred. This operation is attended with much danger, and several perish in the attempt. The inhabitants of the mountains generally employed in this business begin always by sacrificing a buffalo, which custom is observed by the Javanese on the eve of every extraordinary enterprise. They also pronounce some prayers, anoint themselves with sweet-scented oil, and smoke the entrance of the cavern with gumbenjamin. Near some of the caverns a tutelar goddess is worshipped, whose priest burns incense, and lays his projecting hands on every person preparing to descend. A flambeau is carefully prepared at the same time, with a gum which exudes from a tree growing in the vicinity, and which is not easily extinguished by fixed air or subterraneous vapours." "But how are the nests eaten, Uncle Thomas? Are they prepared in any way, or are they fit for use as they are taken down?" "They are always prepared before they are eaten. The finest sort, which are of a clear colour, and not unlike isinglass, are dissolved in broth, to which they are said to give an exquisite flavour. After being soaked, they are sometimes introduced into the body of a fowl and stewed; but I am not quite versed in all the mysteries of a Chinese kitchen, so you must be satisfied with these two modes of preparation." "Thank you, Uncle Thomas." "I have only one more story to tell you about the swallow, Boys, and then I must turn to two or three other animals, whose peregrinations exhibit as strong instances of instinct as it does." "A swallow's nest, built in the west corner of a window facing the north, was so much softened by the rain beating against it, that it was rendered unfit to support the superincumbent load of five pretty full grown swallows. During a storm the nest fell into the tower corner of the window, leaving the young brood exposed to all the fury of the blast. To save the little creatures from an untimely death, the owner of the house benevolently caused a covering to be thrown over them, till the severity of the storm was past. No sooner had it subsided, than the sages of the colony assembled, fluttering round the window, and hovering over the temporary covering of the fallen nest. As soon as this careful anxiety was observed, the covering was removed, and the utmost joy evinced by the group, on finding the young ones alive and unhurt. After feeding them, the members of this assembled community arranged themselves into working order. Each division taking its appropriate station, commenced instantly to work, and before night-fall they had jointly completed an arched canopy over the young brood in the corner where they lay, and securely covered them against a succeeding blast. Calculating the time occupied by them in performing this piece of architecture, it appeared evident that the young must have perished from cold and hunger, before any single pair could have executed half the job." "How very kind, Uncle Thomas! Had they been reasoning creatures, they could not have behaved more properly." "I dare say not, Frank. Such traits overstep the limits of _instinct_, and almost trespass on that of reason." "You asked, Frank, if it was want of food which prompted the flight of migratory animals from one place to another. In some cases it is so, undoubtedly; as for instance, in that which I am now going to tell you about, the American passenger pigeon; it is from the work of the great naturalist, Wilson. "The migrations of these pigeons appear to be undertaken rather in quest of food than merely to avoid the cold of the climate; since we find them lingering in the northern regions around Hudson's Bay so late as December, and since their appearance is so casual and irregular, sometimes not visiting certain districts for several years in any considerable numbers, while at other times they are innumerable. I have often witnessed these migrations in the Genesee country, often in Pennsylvania, and also in various parts of Virginia, with amazement; but all that I have seen of them are mere straggling parties, when compared with the congregated millions which I have since beheld in the western forests in the states of Ohio, Kentucky, and the Indiana territory. These fertile and extensive regions abound with the nutritious beech nut, which constitutes the chief food of the wild pigeon. In seasons when these nuts are abundant, corresponding multitudes of pigeons may be confidently expected. It sometimes happens, that having consumed the whole produce of the beech trees in an extensive district, they discover another at the distance of perhaps sixty or eighty miles, to which they regularly repair every morning, and return as regularly in the course of the day, or in the evening, to their place of general rendezvous, or, as it is generally called, the roosting place. These roosting places are always in the wood, and sometimes occupy a large extent of forest. When they have frequented one of these places for some time, the appearance it exhibits is surprising. The ground is covered to the depth of several inches with their droppings; all the tender grass and underwood destroyed; the surface strewed with large limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of the birds clustering one above another, and the trees themselves, for thousand of acres, killed as completely as if girdled with an axe. The marks of this desolation remain for many years on the spot, and numerous places could be pointed out, where for several years after scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance. "When these roosts are first discovered, the inhabitants from considerable distances visit them in the night with guns, clubs, long poles, pots of sulphur, and various other engines of destruction. In a few hours they fill many sacks, and load their horses with them. By the Indians, a pigeon roost or breeding place is considered an important source of national profit and dependence for the season, and all their active ingenuity is exercised on the occasion. The breeding place differs from the former in its greater extent. In the western countries before mentioned, these are generally in beech woods, and often extend in nearly a straight line across the country for a great way. Not far from Shelbyville, in the state of Kentucky, about five years ago, there was one of these breeding places, which stretched through the woods in nearly a north and south direction, which was several miles in breadth, and was said to be upwards of forty miles in extent. In this tract almost every tree was furnished with nests wherever the branches could accommodate them. The pigeons made their first appearance there about the 10th of April, and left it altogether with their young before the 25th of May. "As soon as the young were fully grown, and before they left the nests, numerous parties of the inhabitants, from all parts of the adjacent country, came with waggons, axes, beds, cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater part of their families, and encamped for several days in this immense nursery. Several of them informed me that the noise in the woods was so great as to terrify their horses, and that it was difficult for one person to hear another speak without bawling in his ear. The ground was strewed with broken limbs of trees, eggs, and young squab pigeons which had been precipitated from above, and on which herds of hogs were fattening; hawks, buzzards, and eagles were sailing about in great numbers, and seizing the squabs from their nests at pleasure; while from twenty feet upwards to the tops of the trees, the view through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and fluttering multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with the frequent crash of falling timber; for now the axemen were at work, cutting down those trees which seemed to be most crowded with nests, and contrived to fell them in such a manner, that in their descent they might bring down several others, by which means the falling of one large tree sometimes produced two hundred squabs, little inferior in size to the old pigeons, and almost one mass of fat. On some single trees, upwards of one hundred nests were found, each containing one young only, a circumstance in the history of this bird not generally known to naturalists. It was dangerous to walk under these fluttering and flying millions, from the frequent fall of large branches, broken down by the weight of the multitudes above, and which in their descent often destroyed numbers of the birds themselves. "I had left the public road to visit the remains of the breeding place near Shelbyville, and was traversing the woods with my gun on my way to Frankfort, when about one o'clock, the pigeons which I had observed flying the greater part of the morning northerly, began to return in such immense numbers as I never before had witnessed; coming to an opening by the side of a creek called the Benson, where I had a more uninterrupted view, I was astonished at their appearance. They were flying with great steadiness and rapidity, at a height beyond gun-shot, and several strata deep, and so close together, that could shot have reached them, one discharge could not have failed in bringing down several individuals. From right to left as far as the eye could reach, the breadth of this vast procession extended, seeming every where equally crowded. Curious to determine how long this appearance would continue, I took out my watch to note time, and sat down to observe them. It was then half-past one; I sat for more than an hour, but instead of a diminution of this prodigious procession, it seemed rather to increase both in numbers and rapidity, and anxious to reach Frankfort before night, I arose and went on. About four o'clock in the afternoon, I crossed the Kentucky river at the town of Frankfort, at which time the living torrent above my head seemed as numerous and as extensive as ever; and long after this, I observed them in large bodies that continued to pass for six or eight minutes, and these again were followed by other detached bodies, all moving in the same south-east direction, till after six in the evening. The great breadth of front which this mighty multitude preserved would seem to intimate a corresponding breadth of their breeding place, which, by several gentlemen who had lately passed through part of it, was stated to me at several miles. It was said to be in Green County, and that the young began to fly about the middle of March. On the 17th of April, forty-nine miles beyond Danville, and not far from Green River, I crossed this same breeding place, where the nests for more than three miles spotted every tree; the leaves not being yet out, I had a fair prospect of them, and was really astonished at their numbers. A few bodies of pigeons lingered yet in different parts of the woods, the roaring of whose wings was heard in various quarters around me. "The vast quantity of food which these multitudes consume is a serious loss to the other animals, such as bears, pigs, squirrels, which are dependent on the fruits of the forest. I have taken from the crop of a single wild pigeon a good handful of the kernels of beech nuts intermixed with acorns and chesnuts. To form a rough estimate of the daily consumption of one of these immense flocks, let us first attempt to calculate the numbers above mentioned, as seen in passing between Frankfort and the Indian Territory. If we suppose this column to have been one mile in breadth (and I believe it to have been much more), and that it moved at the rate of one mile in a minute, four hours, the time it continued passing, would make its whole length two hundred and forty miles. Again, supposing that each square yard of this moving body comprehended three pigeons, the square yards in the whole space, multiplied by three, would give two thousand two hundred and thirty millions two hundred and seventy-two thousand pigeons!--an almost incredible multitude, and yet far below the actual amount. Computing each of these to consume half a pint of mast (nuts, and other seeds of trees) daily, the whole quantity, at this rate, would equal seventeen millions four hundred and twenty-four thousand bushels per day! Heaven has wisely and graciously given to these birds rapidity of flight, and a disposition to range over vast uncultivated tracts of the earth; otherwise they must have perished in the districts where they resided, or devoured the whole productions of agriculture, as well as those of the forests. "The appearance of large detached flocks of these birds in the air, and the various evolutions they display, are strikingly picturesque and interesting. In descending the Ohio by myself, I often rested on my oars to contemplate their aerial manoeuvres. A column of eight or ten miles in length would appear from Kentucky high in air, steering across to Indiana. The leaders of this great body would sometimes gradually vary their course, till it formed a large bend of more than a mile in diameter, those behind tracing the exact route of their predecessors. This would continue sometimes long after both extremities were beyond the reach of sight; so that the whole with its glittering undulations marked a space on the face of the heavens resembling the windings of a vast majestic river. When this bend became very great, the birds, as if sensible of the unnecessarily circuitous route they were taking, suddenly changed their direction, so that what was in column before became an immense front, straightening all its indentures until it swept the heavens in one vast and infinitely extended line. Other lesser bodies also united with each other as they happened to approach, and with such ease and elegance of evolution, forming new figures and varying these as they united or separated, that I was never tired of contemplating them. Sometimes a hawk would sweep on a particular part of the column from a great height, when almost as quick as lightning that part shot downwards out of the common track, but soon rising again, continued advancing at the same height as before. This inflection was continued by those behind, who, on arriving at this point, dived down almost perpendicularly to a great depth, and, rising, followed the exact path of those that went before. "Happening to go ashore one charming afternoon to purchase some milk at a house that stood near the river, and while talking with the people within doors, I was suddenly struck with astonishment at a loud rushing roar, succeeded by instant darkness, which for the first moment I took for a tornado about to overwhelm the house, and every thing around, in destruction. The people observing my surprise, coolly said, 'It is only the pigeons,' and on running out, I beheld a flock thirty or forty yards in width, sweeping along very low between the house and the mountain or height that formed the second bank of the river. These continued crossing for more than a quarter of an hour, and at length varied their bearing, so as to pass over the mountain, behind which they disappeared before the rear came up." "That is amazing, Uncle Thomas; two thousand millions of live birds! I can scarcely form an adequate idea of such a mass of living creatures." "There is something almost overwhelming in the idea, Frank; and yet in some parts of the world are to be found flocks of animals hardly less surprisingly numerous, when we consider how much less they are fitted for moving about, travelling at stated intervals from the mountains to the sea coast, and returning again to their old habitations, after having fulfilled the purposes for which this instinctive feeling was implanted in them." "Which animals do you mean, Uncle Thomas?" "I allude to the land-crab, which is a native of the Bahamas, and also of most of the other islands between the tropics. They live in clefts of the rocks, or holes which they dig for themselves among the mountains, and subsist on vegetables. About the months of April and May, they descend to the sea coast in a body of millions at a time, for the purpose of depositing their spawn. They march in a direct line towards their destination, and seldom turn out of their way, even should they encounter a wall or a house, but boldly attempt to scale it. If, however, they arrive at a river, they wind along the course of the stream, and thus reach the sea. "In their procession they are as regular as an army under the command of an experienced general, and are usually divided into three battalions. The first body consists of the strongest males, which march forward to clear the route and face the greatest dangers. The main body is composed of females, which are formed into columns, sometimes extending fifty or sixty yards in breadth and three miles in depth. Three or four days after these follows the third division or rear guard, a straggling undisciplined tribe, consisting both of males and females, but neither so robust nor so vigorous as the former. "Though easily drowned, a certain proportion of moisture seems necessary to the existence of these animals, and the advanced guard is often obliged to halt from the want of rain. The females, indeed, never leave the mountains till the rainy season has fairly set in. They march chiefly during the night, but if it happens to rain during the day, they always profit by it. When the sun is hot they halt till evening. They march very slowly, and are sometimes three months in gaining the shore. When alarmed they run in a confused and disorderly manner, holding up and clattering their nippers with a threatening attitude, and if suffered to take hold of the hand they bite severely. If in their journey any of them should be so maimed as to be unable to proceed, the others fall upon it and devour it. "Arrived at the coast, they prepare to cast their spawn. They go to the edge of the water, and suffer the waves to wash twice or thrice over their bodies, and then withdraw to seek a lodging upon the land. After a short time the spawn becomes ready for being deposited, when they again seek the sea-side, and leave the spawn to be brought to maturity by the heat of the sun. Much of the spawn, which exactly resembles the roe of a herring, is devoured by the fishes; that which escapes soon arrives at maturity, and millions of little crabs are then to be seen slowly travelling towards the mountains. "The old ones in the mean time seek to return to their old haunts, but so feeble are they that they seem scarcely able to crawl along. Some of them, indeed, are obliged to remain in the level parts of the country till they recover, making holes in the earth, which they block up with leaves and dirt. In these they cast their old shells, after which they soon recover, and become so fat as to be delicious food. "At the season of their descent from the mountains, the natives of the islands which they inhabit, eagerly wait for them and destroy them in thousands. On their descent they are only taken for the roe or spawn, the flesh being then poor and lean: on their return from the sea-side they are in greatest repute, being then fat and high flavoured. "The crab-catchers adopt various modes of securing them, but they are obliged to be very cautious, for when the animals perceive themselves attacked, they throw themselves on their back, and snap their claws about, pinching whatever they lay hold of very severely. The crab-catchers, however, soon learn to seize them by the hind legs, in such a manner as that the nippers cannot reach them." "You said, Uncle Thomas, that the fishes watched the descent of the crabs, that they might feed on the spawn. Do you think that they are endowed with reasoning powers, as well as the higher classes of animals, Uncle Thomas?" "No doubt of it, Frank. Old Isaac Walton, the most amusing author on angling who ever wrote, tells many curious stories about fishes, of their coming to be fed at the sound of a bell, and so forth. "Many fishes exhibit the migratory instinct quite as distinctly as those animals which I have just told you about. The salmon leaves the sea, and seeks its way up the rivers, stemming their most rapid currents, and scaling highest waterfalls with a pertinacity which can only be the result of an instinct implanted in them by their Creator." "And the herring, Uncle Thomas; does not it come every year from the Polar seas to spawn on our shores? I read a very interesting account of their progress southwards somewhere lately." "I can tell you where, Frank; I will show it you, and when you have read it aloud, I will point out one or two mistakes, which it is as well to clear your mind of. It is in old Pennant's work; here it is; will you read it to us, John?" "With pleasure, Uncle Thomas. "This mighty army begins to put itself in motion in the spring. They begin to appear off the Shetland Islands in April and May. This is the first check this army meets in its march southward. There it is divided into two parts; one wing of those destined to visit the Scottish coast takes to the east, the other to the western shores of Great Britain, and fill every bay and creek with their numbers; others proceed towards Yarmouth, the great and ancient mart of herrings; they then pass through the British channel, and after that in a manner disappear. Those which take to the west, after offering themselves to the Hebrides, where the great stationary fishery is, proceed towards the north of Ireland, where they meet with a second interruption and are obliged to make a second division; the one takes to the western side and is scarcely perceived, being soon lost in the immensity of the Atlantic, but the other, which passes into the Irish sea, rejoins, and feeds the inhabitants of most of the coasts that border on it. The brigades, as we call them, which are separated from the greater columns, are often capricious in their motions, and do not show an invariable attachment to their haunts." "Thank you, John. Now all this sounds very fine, and seems very systematic. It has but one objection--it is quite untrue. It is in the first place more than doubtful if the herring frequents the Polar seas at all; and in the second place, the most distinguished naturalists are of opinion that it never leaves the neighbourhood of our own shores, but merely retires to the deep water after it has spawned, and there remains till the return of another season calls it again to the shores to undergo a similar operation. So you see, Frank, it does not follow that an interesting account of an animal's habits is necessarily a true one." CHAPTER VIII. Uncle Thomas tells about the Baboons, and their Plundering Excursions to the Gardens at the Cape of Good Hope, also about Le Vaillant's Baboon, Kees, and his Peculiarities; the American Monkeys; and relates an amusing Story about a young Monkey deprived of its Mother, putting itself under the Fostering Care of a Wig-Block. "Oh, Uncle Thomas, I saw such a strange looking creature to-day. It was so ugly. It seemed to be a very large monkey, it was as big as a boy." "I heard of it, Boys, though I did not see it. It was a baboon, and one of the largest of the species.--It was what is called the dog-faced baboon." "Where do such animals come from, Uncle Thomas." "From Africa, John, and I believe they are not to be found elsewhere. They are very fierce and mischievous creatures, and are said sometimes even to attack man, but this I believe to be an exaggeration. Immense troops of them inhabit the mountains in the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope, whence they descend in bands to plunder the gardens and orchards. In these excursions they move on a concerted plan, placing sentinels on commanding spots to give notice of the approach of an enemy. On the appearance of danger, the sentinel utters a loud yell, upon which the whole troop retreats with the utmost precipitation." "Do they carry the spoil with them when they are thus disturbed, Uncle Thomas?" "When disturbed they are said to break in pieces the fruit which they have gathered, and cram it into their cheek pouches--receptacles with which nature has furnished them for keeping articles of food till they are wanted. "Le Vaillant, a traveller in Africa, had a dog-faced baboon which accompanied him on his journey, and he found its instinct of great service to him in various ways. As a sentinel he was better than any of the dogs. So quick was his sense of danger, that he often gave notice of the approach of beasts of prey, when every thing else seemed sunk in security. He was also very useful in guarding the people of the expedition from danger, from using unwholesome or poisonous fruits. The animal's name was Kees. Here is the very interesting account which his master gives of him. "Whenever we found fruits or roots, with which my Hottentots were unacquainted, we did not touch them till Kees had tasted them. If he threw them away, we concluded that they were either of a disagreeable flavour, or of a pernicious quality, and left them untasted. The ape possesses a peculiar property, wherein he differs greatly from other animals, and resembles man,--namely, that he is by nature equally gluttonous and inquisitive. Without necessity, and without appetite, he tastes every thing that falls in his way, or that is given to him. But Kees had a still more valuable quality,--he was an excellent sentinel; for, whether by day or night, he immediately sprang up on the slightest appearance of danger. By his cry, and the symptoms of fear which he exhibited, we were always apprized of the approach of an enemy, even though the dogs perceived nothing of it. The latter at length learned to rely upon him with such confidence, that they slept on in perfect tranquillity. I often took Kees with me when I went a hunting; and when he saw me preparing for sport, he exhibited the most lively demonstrations of joy. On the way he would climb into the trees, to look for gum, of which he was very fond. Sometimes he discovered to me honey, deposited in the clefts of rocks, or hollow trees. But if he happened to have met with neither honey nor gum, and his appetite had become sharp by his running about, I always witnessed a very ludicrous scene. In those cases, he looked for roots, which he ate with great greediness, especially a particular kind, which, to his cost, I also found to be very well tasted and refreshing, and therefore insisted upon sharing with him. But Kees was no fool. As soon as he found such a root, and I was not near enough to seize upon my share of it, he devoured it in the greatest haste, keeping his eyes all the while riveted on me. He accurately measured the distance I had to pass before I could get to him; and I was sure of coming too late. Sometimes, however, when he had made a mistake in his calculation, and I came upon him sooner than he expected, he endeavoured to hide the root, in which case I compelled him, by a box on the ear, to give me up my share. But this treatment caused no malice between us; we remained as good friends as ever. In order to draw these roots out of the ground, he employed a very ingenious method, which afforded me much amusement. He laid hold of the herbage with his teeth, stemmed his fore feet against the ground, and drew back his head, which gradually pulled out the root. But if this expedient, for which he employed his whole strength, did not succeed, he laid hold of the leaves as before, as close to the ground as possible, and then threw himself heels over head, which gave such a concussion to the root, that it never failed to come out. "When Kees happened to tire on the road, he mounted upon the back of one of my dogs, who was so obliging as to carry him whole hours. One of them, which was larger and stronger than the rest, hit upon a very ingenious artifice, to avoid being pressed into this piece of service. As soon as Kees leaped upon his back he stood still, and let the train pass, without moving from the spot. Kees still persisted in his intention, till we were almost out of his sight, when he found himself at length compelled to dismount, upon which both the baboon and dog exerted all their speed to overtake us. The latter, however, gave him the start, and kept a good look-out after him, that he might not serve him in the same manner again. In fact, Kees enjoyed a certain authority with all my dogs, for which he perhaps was indebted to the superiority of his instinct. He could not endure a competitor; if any of the dogs came too near him when he was eating, he gave them a box on the ear, which compelled him immediately to retire to a respectful distance. "Serpents excepted, there were no animals of whom Kees stood in such great dread as of his own species,--perhaps owing to a consciousness, that he had lost a portion of his natural capacities. Sometimes he heard the cry of the other apes among the mountains, and, terrified as he was, he yet answered them. But if they approached nearer, and he saw any of them, he fled, with a hideous cry, crept between our legs, and trembled over his whole body. It was very difficult to compose him, and it required some time before he recovered from his fright. "Like all other domestic animals, Kees was addicted to stealing. He understood admirably well how to loose the strings of a basket, in order to take victuals out of it, especially milk, of which he was very fond. My people chastised him for these thefts; but that did not make him amend his conduct. I myself sometimes whipped him; but then he ran away, and did not return again to the tent, until it grew dark. Once as I was about to dine, and had put the beans which I had boiled for myself upon a plate, I heard the voice of a bird, with which I was not acquainted. I left my dinner standing, seized my gun, and run out of my tent. After the space of about a quarter of an hour, I returned, with the bird in my hand; but to my astonishment, found not a single bean upon the plate. Kees had stolen them all, and taken himself out of the way. When he had committed any trespass of this kind, he used always, about the time when I drank tea, to return quietly, and seat himself in his usual place, with every appearance of innocence, as if nothing had happened; but this evening he did not let himself be seen; and on the following day, also, he was not seen by any of us; and in consequence, I began to grow seriously uneasy about him, and apprehensive that he might be lost for ever, but on the third day, one of my people, who had been to fetch water, informed me that he had seen Kees in the neighbourhood; but that as soon as the animal espied him, he had concealed himself again. I immediately went out and beat the whole neighbourhood with my dogs. All at once, I heard a cry, like that which Kees used to make when I returned from my shooting, and had not taken him with me. I looked about and at length espied him, endeavouring to hide himself behind the large branches of a tree. I now called to him in a friendly tone of voice, and made motions to him to come down to me. But he would not trust me, and I was obliged to climb up the tree to fetch him. He did not attempt to fly, and we returned together to my quarters; here he expected to receive his punishment; but I did nothing, as it would have been of no use. "When exhausted with the heat of the sun, and the fatigues of the day, with my throat and mouth covered with dust and perspiration, I was ready to sink gasping to the ground, in tracts destitute of shade, and longed even for the dirtiest ditch-water; but after seeking long in vain, lost all hopes of finding any in the parched soil. In such distressing moments, my faithful Kees never moved from my side. We sometimes got out of our carriage, and then his sure instinct led him to a plant. Frequently the stalk was fallen off, and then all his endeavours to pull it out were in vain. In such cases, he began to scratch in the earth with his paws; but as that would also have proved ineffectual, I came to his assistance with my dagger, or my knife, and we honestly divided the refreshing root with each other. "An officer, wishing one day to put the fidelity of my baboon, Kees, to the test, pretended to strike me. At this Kees flew in a violent rage, and, from that time, he could never endure the sight of the officer. If he only saw him at a distance, he began to cry and make all kinds of grimaces, which evidently showed that he wished to revenge the insult that had been done to me; he ground his teeth, and endeavoured, with all his might, to fly at his face, but that was out of his power, as he was chained down. The offender several times endeavoured, in vain, to conciliate him, by offering him dainties, but he remained long implacable. [Illustration: DOG AND BABOON--Page 185.] "When any eatables had been pilfered at my quarters, the fault was always laid first upon Kees; and rarely was the accusation unfounded. For a time the eggs which a hen laid me were constantly stolen away, and I wished to ascertain whether I had to attribute this loss also to him. For this purpose, I went one morning to watch him, and waited till the hen announced by her cackling that she had laid an egg. Kees was sitting upon my vehicle; but the moment he heard the hen's voice he leapt down, and was running to fetch the egg. When he saw me he suddenly stopped, and affected a careless posture, swaying himself backwards upon his hind legs, and assuming a very innocent look; in short, he employed all his art to deceive me with respect to his design. His hypocritical manoeuvres only confirmed my suspicions, and, in order in my turn to deceive him, I pretended not to attend to him, and turned my back to the bush where the hen was cackling, upon which he immediately sprang to the place. I ran after him, and came up to him at the moment when he had broken the egg, and was swallowing it. Having caught the thief in the fact, I gave him a good beating upon the spot; but this severe chastisement did not prevent his soon stealing fresh-laid eggs again. As I was convinced that I should never be able to break Kees of his natural vices, and that, unless I chained him up every morning, I should never get an egg, I endeavoured to accomplish my purpose in another manner: I trained one of my dogs, as soon as the hen cackled, to run to the nest, and bring me the egg without breaking it. In a few days the dog had learned his lesson; but Kees, as soon as he heard the hen cackle, ran with him to the nest. A contest now took place between them, who should have the egg; often the dog was foiled, although he was the stronger of the two. If he gained the victory, he ran joyfully to me with the egg, and put it into my hand. Kees, nevertheless, followed him, and did not cease to grumble and make threatening grimaces at him, till he saw me take the egg,--as if he was comforted for the loss of his booty by his adversary's not retaining it for himself. If Kees had got hold of the egg, he endeavoured to run with it to a tree, where, having devoured it, he threw down the shells upon his adversary, as if to make game of him. In that case, the dog returned, looking ashamed, from which I could conjecture the unlucky adventure he had met with. "Kees was always the first awake in the morning, and when it was the proper time he awoke the dogs, who were accustomed to his voice, and, in general, obeyed without hesitation the slightest motions by which he communicated his orders to them, immediately taking their posts about the tent and carriage, as he directed them." "What a delightful companion Kees must have been, Uncle Thomas!" "He must at least have been an amusing one, Frank, and not an unuseful one either. There are, however, great variations in this respect among the monkeys; some of them are most lively creatures, seldom sitting still for a couple of minutes, while others are retired and gloomy in their dispositions, and some are most fickle and uncertain. The fair monkey, though one of the most beautiful of the tribe, is of the latter description, as the following story will testify:-- "An animal of this class, which from its extreme beauty and gentleness was allowed to ramble at liberty about a ship, soon became a great favourite among the crew, and in order to make him perfectly happy, as they imagined, they procured him a wife. For some weeks he was a devoted husband, and showed her every attention and respect. He then grew cool, and became jealous of any kind of civility shown her by the master of the vessel, and began to use her with much cruelty. His treatment made her wretched and dull; and she bore the spleen of her husband with that fortitude which is characteristic of the female sex of the human species. And pug, like the lords of the creation, was up to deceit, and practised pretended kindness to his spouse, to effect a diabolical scheme, which he seemed to premeditate. One morning, when the sea ran very high, he seduced her aloft, and drew her attention to an object at some distance from the yard-arm; her attention being fixed, he all of a sudden applied his paw to her rear, and canted her into the sea, where she fell a victim to his cruelty. This seemed to afford him high gratification, for he descended in great spirits." "Oh, what a wretched creature, Uncle Thomas. I wonder the sailors did not throw him into the sea also." "Stay, Frank, you are somewhat too hasty. He deserved certainly to be punished; but I doubt whether it would have been proper to have put him to death for his misdeed. All monkeys are not, however, equally cruel; some of them, indeed, are remarkable for the instinctive kindness which they evince towards their young. When threatened by danger, they mount them on their back, or clasp them firmly to their breast, to which the young creatures secure themselves, by means of their long and powerful arms, so as to permit of their parent moving about, and springing from branch to branch, with nearly as much facility as if she were perfectly free from all incumbrance." "Oh, I can readily believe that, Uncle Thomas. One day lately, at the Zoological Gardens, I saw two monkeys clasping a young one between them, to keep it warm. They seemed so fond of it." "Yes, Frank, I have also seen them occupied in the same way. I was quite delighted at such an unexpected exhibition of tenderness. "Some of the monkeys which are natives of the American continent have the singular characteristic of prehensile tales; that is, of tails which they can more about, and lay hold of branches of trees with nearly as much ease as they can with their hands. The facilities which this affords them for moving about with celerity among the branches of trees is astonishing. The firmness of the grasp which it takes of the tree is no less surprising, for if it makes a single coil round a branch, it is quite sufficient, not only to support the weight of the animal, but to enable it to swing in such a manner as to gain a fresh hold with its feet." "That is very curious, Uncle Thomas. Is there any other animal which has this power in the tail." "Oh, yes, Frank, several of the lizards have the power, as well as some other animals; the little harvest mouse, for instance; but none of them are possessed of it in so high a degree as the American monkeys. "I have now pretty well exhausted my stories about the monkey tribe. I recollect only one more at present, and it occurred to the same traveller to whom Kees belonged. "In one of his excursions he happened to kill a female monkey, which carried a young one on her back. The little creature, as if insensible of its mother's death, continued to cling to the dead body till they reached their evening quarters; and even then it required considerable force to disengage it. No sooner, however, did the little creature feel itself alone, than it darted towards a wooden block, on which was placed the wig of Le Vaillant's father, mistaking it for its dead mother. To this it clung most pertinaciously by its fore paws; and such was the force of this deceptive instinct, that it remained in the same position for about three weeks, all this time evidently mistaking the wig for its mother. It was fed, from time to time, with goat's milk; and, at length, emancipated itself voluntarily, by quitting the fostering care of the peruke. The confidence which it ere long assumed, and the amusing familiarity of its manners, soon rendered it a favourite. The unsuspecting naturalist had, however, introduced a wolf in sheep's clothing into his dwelling: for, one morning, on entering his chamber, the door of which had been imprudently left open, he beheld his young favourite making a hearty breakfast on a very noble collection of insects. In the first transports of his anger, he resolved to strangle the monkey in his arms: but his rage immediately gave way to pity, when he perceived that the crime of its voracity had carried the punishment along with it. In eating the beetles, it had swallowed several of the pins on which they were transfixed. Its agony, consequently, became great; and all his efforts were unable to preserve its life." "Poor creature! How unfortunate, Uncle Thomas. It must, however, have been a very stupid animal to mistake a wig for its mother." CHAPTER IX. Uncle Thomas concludes Stories about Instinct with several Interesting Illustrations of the Affections of Animals, particularly of the Instinct of Maternal Affection, in the course of which he narrates the Story of the Cat and the Black-Bird; the Squirrel's Nest; the Equestrian Friends; and points out the Beneficent Care of Providence in implanting in the Breasts of each of his Creatures the Instinct which is necessary for its Security and Protection. "Good evening, Uncle Thomas? We were so delighted with the adventures of Kees, that we wish to know if you have any more such amusing stories to tell us." "Oh yes, Boys, plenty such, but it is now time to bring these STORIES ABOUT INSTINCT to a close. I am therefore going to conclude by narrating one or two stories about the affections of animals. I wish to impress your minds with feelings of kindness towards them, and I think that the best way to do so is to exhibit them to you in their gentleness and love; to show you that they too partake of the kindlier emotions by which the heart of man is moved, and that the feelings of maternal affection, and of friendship, and of fidelity, are as much the prerogatives of the lower animals as they are of man himself. Perhaps one of the most amiable lights in which the affections of animals are exhibited is their love and attachment to their offspring. You have all seen how regardless of danger a domestic hen, one of the most timid and defenceless of animals, becomes when she has charge of a brood of chickens. At other times she is alarmed by the slightest noise--the sudden rustle of a leaf makes her shrink with fear and apprehension. Yet, no sooner do her little helpless offspring escape from the shell, than she becomes armed with a determination of which even birds of prey stand in awe." "Oh yes, Uncle Thomas, I have often seen a hen attack a large dog and drive it away from her chickens." "It marks the wisdom of the omnipotent and all-wise Creator, Boys, that he has implanted in the hearts of each of his creatures the particular instincts which were necessary for their safety and protection. Thus, in the case I have just spoken of, the instinctive courage with which the mother is endowed, you will find to be the best security which could have been devised. In some other birds this instinct exhibits itself in a different way. If you happen to approach the nest of the lapwing, for instance, the old birds try every means to attract your attention, and lure you away from the sacred spot. They will fly close by you, and in an irregular manner, as if wounded; but no sooner do they find that their stratagem has been successful, and that you have passed the nest unobserved, than they at once take a longer flight, and soon leave you behind." "How very singular, Uncle Thomas! Does the lapwing defend its young with as much courage as the hen?" "I am not aware that it does, Frank, though I think it is not at all unlikely. As its instinct teaches it to finesse in the way which I have told you, however, I should not expect to find that it does so with equal spirit. Even the pigeon, the very emblem of gentleness and love, boldly pecks at the rude hand which is extended towards its young, during the earlier stages of their existence. If you come by chance on the brood of a partridge, the mother flutters along, as if she were so much wounded that it was impossible to escape, and the young ones squat themselves close by the earth. When by her cunning wiles she has led you to a little distance, and you discover that her illness was feigned, you return to the spot to seek for the young, and you find that they too are gone: no sooner is your back turned than they run and hide themselves in some more secret place, where they remain till the well-known call of the mother again collects them under her wing. "I lately heard a most interesting story of the boldness of a pair of blackbirds in defence of their young. A cat was one day observed mounted on the top of a railing, endeavouring to get at a nest which was near it, containing a brood of young birds. On the cat's approach the mother left the nest, and flew to meet it in a state of great alarm, placing herself almost within its reach, and uttering the most piteous screams of wildness and despair. Alarmed by his partner's screams, the male bird soon discovered the cause of her distress, and in a state of equal trepidation flew to the place, uttering loud screams and outcries, sometimes settling on the fence just before the cat, which was unable to make a spring in consequence of the narrowness of its footing. After a little time, seeing that their distress made no impression on their assailant, the male bird flew at the cat, settled on its back, and pecked at its head with so much violence that it fell to the ground, followed by the blackbird, which at length succeeded in driving it away. Foiled in this attempt, the cat a short time after again returned to the charge, and was a second time vanquished, which so intimidated her that she relinquished all attempts to get at the young birds. For several days, whenever she made her appearance in the garden, she was set upon by the blackbirds, and at length became so much afraid of them, that she scampered to a place of security whenever she saw them approach." "That was very bold indeed, Uncle Thomas. Birds seem to be all very much attached to their young." "Very much so, Harry; but perhaps not more so than many quadrupeds. Here is a story of the squirrel's affection, which, though it does not exhibit an instance of active defence against its enemies, affords one of endurance equally admirable. "In cutting down some trees on the estate recently purchased by the crown at Petersham, for the purpose of being annexed to Richmond park, the axe was applied to the root of a tall tree, on the top of which was a squirrel's nest. A rope was fastened to the tree for the purpose of pulling it down more expeditiously; the workmen cut at the roots; the rope was pulled; the tree swayed backwards and forwards, and at length fell. During all these operations a female squirrel never attempted to desert her new-born young, but remained with them in the nest. When the tree fell down, she was thrown out and secured unhurt, and was put into a cage with her young ones. She suckled them for a short time, but refused to eat. Her maternal affection, however, remained till the last moment of her life, and she died in the act of affording all the nourishment in her power to her offspring. "We are too apt, Boys, to overlook the admirable lessons which such stories as these inculcate. They should teach us kindness to each other--kindness, indeed, not only to those of our own species, but kindness to all created creatures. If the lower animals love each other so warmly and affectionately, how much more ought man, to whom the Creator has been so beneficent, to love his fellow creatures. But though the attachment of animals to their offspring is an admirable mode of its developement, it is far from being the only one. After all the STORIES ABOUT DOGS--their love of their master--their fidelity--their sagacity--which I will relate to you at a future time, it is hardly necessary for me to bring forward evidence in favour of this position. Here is an instance of friendship, as it is called, between horses, which was so strong as to terminate fatally. "During the Peninsular war, two horses, which had long been associated together, assisting to drag the same piece of artillery, and standing together the shock of many battles, became so much attached to each other as to be inseparable companions. At length one of them was killed. After the battle in which this took place, the other was picquetted as usual, and his food brought to him. He refused, however, to eat, and was constantly turning round his head to look for his companion, sometimes neighing as if to call her. All the attention which was bestowed upon him was of no avail; though surrounded by horses he took no notice of them, but incessantly bewailed his absent friend. He died shortly after, having refused to taste food from the time his former companion was killed! "Such is but one solitary instance. But there are many such scattered up and down in the ample records of nature, bearing silent but emphatic testimony to the kindness and beneficence of the Creator. Let them but be searched for in a proper and gentle spirit, and they are sure to be found. "Not a tree, A plant, a leaf, a blossom, but contains A folio volume: we may read, and read, And read again, but still find something new-- Something to please, and something to instruct, E'en in the noisome weed." THE END. Mary Howitt's Story-Book. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. CONTENTS. A CHRISTMAS CAROL. STORY OF LITTLE CRISTAL. MABEL ON MIDSUMMER-DAY. THE CHRISTMAS-TREE. A DREAM. PICTURE OF THE VIRGIN. BOY OF THE SOUTHERN ISLE. BIRDS AND THE GUINEA-PIGS. CORN-FIELDS. THE PIGEON-HOUSE. THE SPIRIT'S QUESTIONINGS. THIS WORLD AND THE NEXT. LITTLE CHILDREN. THE YOUNG TURTLE DOVE OF CARMEL. THE JOY OF ENGELE. MARIEN'S PILGRIMAGE. PAINTER'S LITTLE MODEL. MAN IN A WILDERNESS. BLIND BOY AND HIS SISTER. THE CHRISTMAS DINNER. OLD CHRISTMAS. TWO FRIEND'S COUNSEL. THE CHILDREN. BEGINNING AND END OF MRS. MUGGERIDGE'S WEDDING-DINNER. COMING SPRING. THE TAX-GATHERER'S VISIT. [Illustration] "Mary Howitt's Stories for Children are with many preferred above all the other works of that charming writer, to true and genial is the sympathy she shows for the young, and to healthy the tone of her gently insinuated moral."--Mrs. Kirkland. C.S. FRANCIS & CO., 252 BROADWAY. HANS ANDERSEN'S STORY BOOK. _One thick Volume, with Illustrations, and a Memoir of the Author by Mary Howitt._ Price 75 cents; extra gilt, $1. CONTENTS. MEMOIR OF HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. A PICTURE-BOOK WITHOUT PICTURES. MY BOOTS. SCENES ON THE DANUBE. PEGASUS AND POST-HORSES. EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES. THE SWINEHERD. THE REAL PRINCESS. THE SHOES OF FORTUNE. THE FIR-TREE. THE SNOW-QUEEN. THE LEAP-FROG. THE ELDER-BUSH. THE BELL. THE OLD HOUSE. THE DROP OF WATER. THE HAPPY FAMILY. THE STORY OF A MOTHER. THE FALSE COLLAR. THE SHADOW. THE OLD STREET LAMP. THE DREAM OF LITTLE TUK. THE NAUGHTY BOY. TWO NEIGHBORING FAMILIES. THE DARNING NEEDLE. THE LITTLE MATCH-GIRL. THE RED SHOES. TO THE YOUNG READERS. "We have placed Andersen's name at the head of our list, in gratitude for the delight and amusement his stories for children have afforded us. When Fairy-land seemed lost to us, or peopled by a new race of utilitarians, who spoke its language and tried its spells in mere slavish imitation, without comprehending their use and meaning; a Poet from the North has made fresh flowers bloom there, and brought it back again to our hearts and eyes in brighter colors and stronger outlines than before."--_Christian Remembrancer._ "There is a child-like tenderness and simplicity in his writings--an elevation and purity of tone--which is the secret of the extreme charm his celebrated stories have for children. They are as simple and as touching as the old Bible narratives of Joseph and his Brethren, and the little lad who died in the corn field. We wonder not at their being the most popular books of their kind in Europe."--_Mary Howitt._ Published by C.S. FRANCIS & Co., New York. Transcriber's Note: The following typographical errors have been maintained in this text: Original page vii "at the of Good Hope, Calsoaep" should read: "at the Cape of Good Hope, also" 23 powererful for powerful 50 , for . in "valuable medicines, Storms" 60 seige for siege 67 "There is one or two" should read "There are..." 96 , for . in "favourite cat, When the" 113 ocassion for occasion 143 Missing close quotes at end of chapter 174 "Where do such animals come from, Uncle Thomas." should end with ? 189 "prehensile tales" for "prehensile tails" 190 "more about" should read "move about" 195 "Good evening, Uncle Thomas?" should end with ! 200 developement for development The following word is spelled inconsistently: colour / color 
10962	----	[Illustration: Portrait of "EHA."] CONCERNING ANIMALS AND OTHER MATTERS BY E.H. AITKEN ("EHA") AUTHOR OF "FIVE WINDOWS OF THE SOUL," "TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER," ETC. WITH A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR BY SURGEON-GENERAL W.B. BANNERMAN I.M.S., C.S.I. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J A. SHEPHERD AND A PORTRAIT LONDON 1914 CONTENTS "EHA" I FEET AND HANDS II BILLS OF BIRDS III TAILS IV NOSES V EARS VI TOMMY VII THE BARN OWL VIII DOMESTIC ANIMALS IX SNAKES X THE INDIAN SNAKE-CHARMER XI CURES FOR SNAKE-BITE XII THE COBRA BUNGALOW XIII THE PANTHER I DID NOT SHOOT XIV THE PURBHOO XV THE COCONUT TREE XVI THE BETEL NUT XVII A HINDU FESTIVAL XVIII INDIAN POVERTY XIX BORROWED INDIAN WORDS Special thanks are due to the Editors and Proprietors of the _Strand Magazine, Pall Mall Magazine_ and _Times of India_ for their courtesy in permitting the reprinting of the articles in this book which originally appeared in their columns. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HALF-TONES "EHA" THE NOSE OF THE ELEPHANT BECOMING A HAND HAS REDEEMED ITS MIND GOOD FOR ANY ROUGH JOB HERE THE COMPETITION HAS BEEN VERY KEEN INDEED THE RAT IS A NEAR RELATION OF THE SQUIRREL ZOOLOGICALLY BUT PERSONALLY HE IS A GUTTER-SNIPE, AND YOU MAY KNOW THAT BY ONE LOOK AT THE TAIL, WHICH HE DRAGS AFTER HIM LIKE A DIRTY ROPE A BLACKBIRD AND A STARLING--THE ONE LIFTS ITS SKIRTS, WHILE THE OTHER WEARS A WALKING DRESS THE NOSTRILS OF THE APTERYX ARE AT THE TIP OF ITS BEAK THE LONG-NOSED MONKEY LINE BLOCKS AN AUTHENTIC STANDARD FOOT THESE BEASTS ARE ALL CLODHOPPERS, AND THEIR FEET ARE HOBNAILED BOOTS IT HAS TO DOUBLE THEM UNDER AND HOBBLE ABOUT LIKE A CHINESE LADY NO DOUBT EACH BIRD SWEARS BY ITS OWN PATTERN ITS BILL DESERVES STUDY AS WONDERFUL AS THE PELICAN, BUT HOW OPPOSITE! THERE ARE SOME ECCENTRICS, SUCH AS JENNY WREN, WHICH HAVE DESPISED THEIR TAILS AT THE SIGHT OF A RIVAL THE DOG HOLDS ITS TAIL UP STIFFLY A SHREW CAN DO IT, BUT NOT A MAN A BOLD ATTEMPT TO GROW IN THE CASE OF A TAPIR I HAVE SEEN HUMAN NOSES OF A PATTERN NOT UNLIKE THIS, BUT THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED ARISTOCRATIC WHO CAN CONSIDER THAT NOSE SERIOUSLY? OR PERHAPS WHEN IT WANTS TO LISTEN IT RAISES A FLIPPER TO ITS EAR "TEAR OUT THE HOUSE LIKE THE DOGS WUZ ATTER HIM" A GREAT CATHOLIC CONGRESS OF DISTINGUISHED EARS THE CURLS OF A MOTHER'S DARLING INTRODUCTION "EHA" Edward Hamilton Aitken, the author of the following sketches, was well known to the present generation of Anglo-Indians, by his pen-name of Eha, as an accurate and amusing writer on natural history subjects. Those who were privileged to know him intimately, as the writer of this sketch did, knew him as a Christian gentleman of singular simplicity and modesty and great charm of manner. He was always ready to help a fellow-worker in science or philanthropy if it were possible for him to do so. Thus, indeed, began the friendship between us. For when plague first invaded India in 1896, the writer was one of those sent to Bombay to work at the problem of its causation from the scientific side, thereby becoming interested in the life history of rats, which were shown to be intimately connected with the spread of this dire disease. Having for years admired Eha's books on natural history--_The Tribes on my Frontier, An Indian Naturalist's Foreign Policy_, and _The Naturalist on the Prowl_, I ventured to write to him on the subject of rats and their habits, and asked him whether he could not throw some light on the problem of plague and its spread, from the naturalist's point of view. In response to this appeal he wrote a most informing and characteristic article for _The Times of India_ (July 19, 1899), which threw a flood of light on the subject of the habits and characteristics of the Indian rat as found in town and country. He was the first to show that _Mus rattus_, the old English black rat, which is the common house rat of India outside the large seaports, has become, through centuries of contact with the Indian people, a domestic animal like the cat in Britain. When one realises the fact that this same rat is responsible for the spread of plague in India, and that every house is full of them, the value of this naturalist's observation is plain. Thus began an intimacy which lasted till Eha's death in 1909. The first time I met Mr. Aitken was at a meeting of the Free Church of Scotland Literary Society in 1899, when he read a paper on the early experiences, of the English in Bombay. The minute he entered the room I recognised him from the caricatures of himself in the _Tribes_. The long, thin, erect, bearded man was unmistakable, with a typically Scots face lit up with the humorous twinkle one came to know so well. Many a time in after-years has that look been seen as he discoursed, as only he could, on the ways of man and beast, bird or insect, as one tramped with him through the jungles on the hills around Bombay during week-ends spent with him at Vehar or elsewhere. He was an ideal companion on such occasions, always at his best when acting the part of _The Naturalist on the Prowl._ Mr. Aitken was born at Satara in the Bombay Presidency on August 16, 1851. His father was the Rev. James Aitken, missionary of the Free Church of Scotland. His mother was a sister of the Rev. Daniel Edward, missionary to the Jews at Breslau for some fifty years. He was educated by his father in India, and one can well realise the sort of education he got from such parents from the many allusions to the Bible and its old Testament characters that one constantly finds used with such effect in his books. His farther education was obtained at Bombay and Poona. He passed M.A. and B.A. of Bombay University first on the list, and won the Homejee Cursetjee prize with a poem in 1880. From 1870 to 1876 he was Latin Reader in the Deccan College at Poona, which accounts for the extensive acquaintance with the Latin classics so charmingly manifest in his writings. That he was well grounded in Greek is also certain, for the writer, while living in a chummery with him in Bombay in 1902, saw him constantly reading the Greek Testament in the mornings without the aid of a dictionary. He entered the Customs and Salt Department of the Government of Bombay in April 1876, and served in Kharaghoda (the Dustypore of the _Tribes_), Uran, North Kanara and Goa Frontier, Ratnagiri, and Bombay itself. In May, 1903, he was appointed Chief Collector of Customs and Salt Revenue at Karachi, and in November, 1905, was made Superintendent in charge of the District Gazetteer of Sind. He retired from the service in August 1906. He married in 1883 the daughter of the Rev. J. Chalmers Blake, and left a family of two sons and three daughters. In 1902 he was deputed, on special duty, to investigate the prevalence of malaria at the Customs stations along the frontier of Goa, and to devise means for removing the Salt Peons at these posts, from the neighbourhood of the anopheles mosquito, by that time recognised as the cause of the deadly malaria, which made service on that frontier dreaded by all. It was during this expedition that he discovered a new species of anopheline mosquito, which after identification by Major James, I.M.S., was named after him _Anopheles aitkeni_. During his long service there are to be found in the Annual Reports of the Customs Department frequent mention of Mr. Aitken's good work, but it is doubtful whether the Government ever fully realised what an able literary man they had in their service, wasting his talent in the Salt Department. On two occasions only did congenial work come to him in the course of his public duty--namely, when he was sent to study, from the naturalist's point of view, the malarial conditions prevailing on the frontier of Goa; and when during the last two years of his service he was put in literary charge of _The Sind Gazetteer_. In this book one can see the light and graceful literary touch of Eha frequently cropping up amidst the dry bones of public health and commercial statistics, and the book is enlivened by innumerable witty and philosophic touches appearing in the most unlikely places, such as he alone could enliven a dull subject with. Would that all Government gazetteers were similarly adorned! But there are not many "Ehas" in Government employ in India. On completion of this work he retired to Edinburgh, where most of the sketches contained in this volume were written. He was very happy with his family in his home at Morningside, and was beginning to surround himself with pets and flowers, as was his wont all his life, and to get a good connection with the home newspapers and magazines, when, alas! death stepped in, and he died after a short illness on April 25, 1909. He was interested in the home birds and beasts as he had been with those in India, and the last time the writer met him he was taking home some gold-fish for his aquarium. A few days before his death he had found his way down to the Morningside cemetery, where he had been enjoying the sunshine and flowers of Spring, and he remarked to his wife that he would often go there in future to watch the birds building their nests. Before that time came, he was himself laid to rest in that very spot in sure and certain hope of a blessed resurrection. The above imperfect sketch fails to give the charm and magnetic attraction of the man, and for this one must go to his works, which for those who knew him are very illuminating in this respect. In them one catches a glimpse of his plan for keeping young and cheerful in "the land of regrets," for one of his charms was his youthfulness and interest in life. He refused to be depressed by his lonely life. "I am only an exile," he remarks, "endeavouring to work a successful existence in Dustypore, and not to let my environment shape me as a pudding takes the shape of its mould, but to make it tributary to my own happiness." He therefore urges his readers to cultivate a hobby. "It is strange," he says, "that Europeans in India know so little, see so little, care so little, about all the intense life that surrounds them. The boy who was the most ardent of bug-hunters, or the most enthusiastic of bird-nesters in England, where one shilling will buy nearly all that is known, or can be known, about birds or butterflies, maintains in this country, aided by Messrs. B. &. S., an unequal strife with the insupportableness of an _ennui_-smitten life. Why, if he would stir up for one day the embers of the old flame, he could not quench it again with such a prairie of fuel around him. I am not speaking of Bombay people, with their clubs and gymkhanas and other devices for oiling the wheels of existence, but of the dreary up-country exile, whose life is a blank, a moral Sahara, a catechism of the Nihilist creed. What such a one needs is a hobby. Every hobby is good--a sign of good and an influence for good. Any hobby will draw out the mind, but the one I plead for touches the soul too, keeps the milk of human kindness from souring, puts a gentle poetry into the prosiest life. That all my own finer feelings have not long since withered in this land of separation from 'old familiar faces,' I attribute partly to a pair of rabbits. All rabbits are idiotic things, but these come in and sit up meekly and beg a crust of bread, and even a perennial fare of village _moorgee_ cannot induce me to issue the order for their execution and conversion into pie. But if such considerations cannot lead, the struggle for existence should drive a man in this country to learn the ways of his border tribes. For no one, I take it, who reflects for an instant will deny that a small mosquito, with black rings upon a white ground, or a sparrow that has finally made up its mind to rear a family in your ceiling, exercises an influence on your personal happiness far beyond the Czar of the Russias. It is not a question of scientific frontiers--the enemy invades us on all, sides. We are plundered, insulted, phlebotomised under our own vine and fig-tree. We might make head against the foe if we laid to heart the lesson our national history in India teaches--namely, that the way to fight uncivilised enemies is to encourage them to cut one another's throats, and then step in and inherit the spoil. But we murder our friends, exterminate our allies, and then groan under the oppression of the enemy. I might illustrate this by the case of the meek and long-suffering musk-rat, by spiders or ants, but these must wait another day." Again he says, "The 'poor dumb animals' can give each other a bit of their minds like their betters, and to me their fierce and tender little passions, their loves and hates, their envies and jealousies, and their small vanities beget a sense of fellow-feeling which makes their presence society. The touch of Nature which makes the whole world kin is infirmity. A man without a weakness is insupportable company, and so is a man who does not feel the heat. There is a large grey ring-dove that sits in the blazing sun all through the hottest hours of the day, and says coo-coo, coo, coo-coo, coo until the melancholy sweet monotony of that sound is as thoroughly mixed up in my brain with 110° in the shade as physic in my infantile memories with the peppermint lozenges which used to 'put away the taste,' But as for these creatures, which confess the heat and come into the house and gasp, I feel drawn to them. I should like to offer them cooling drinks. Not that all my midday guests are equally welcome: I could dispense, for instance, with the grey-ringed bee which has just reconnoitred my ear for the third time, and guesses it is a key-hole--she is away just now, but only, I fancy, for clay to stop it up with. There are others also to which I would give their _congé_ if they would take it. But good, bad, or indifferent they give us their company whether we want it or not." Eha certainly found company in beasts all his life, and kept the charm of youth about him in consequence to the end. If his lot were cast, as it often was, in lonely places, he kept pets, and made friends besides of many of the members of the tribes on his frontier; if in Bombay city he consoled himself with his aquarium and the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society. When the present writer chummed with him in a flat on the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, he remembers well that aquarium and the Sunday-morning expeditions to the malarious ravines at the back of Malabar Hill to search for mosquito larvae to feed its inmates. For at that time Mr. Aitken was investigating the capabilities for the destruction of larvae, of a small surface-feeding fish with an ivory-white spot on the top of its head, which he had found at Vehar in the stream below the bund. It took him some time to identify these particular fishes (_Haplochilus lineatus_), and in the meantime he dubbed them "Scooties" from the lightning rapidity of their movements, and in his own admirable manner made himself a sharer of their joys and sorrows, their cares and interests. With these he stocked the ornamental fountains of Bombay to keep them from becoming breeding-grounds for mosquitoes, and they are now largely used throughout India for this very purpose. It will be recognised, therefore, that Mr. Aitken studied natural history not only for its own sake, but as a means of benefiting the people of India, whom he had learned to love, as is so plainly shown in _Behind the Bungalow_. He was an indefatigable worker in the museum of the Bombay Natural History Society, which he helped to found, and many of his papers and notes are preserved for us in the pages of its excellent _Journal_, of which he was an original joint-editor. He was for long secretary of the Insect Section, and then president. Before his retirement he was elected one of the Vice-Presidents of the Society. Mr. Aitken was a deeply religious man, and was for some twenty years an elder in the congregation of the United Free Church of Scotland in Bombay. He was for some years Superintendent of the Sunday School in connection with this congregation, and a member of the Committee of the Bombay Scottish Orphanage and the Scottish High Schools. His former minister says of him, "He was deeply interested in theology, and remained wonderfully orthodox in spite of" (or, as the present writer would prefer to say, _because of_) "his scientific knowledge. He always thought that the evidence for the doctrine of evolution had been pressed for more than it was worth, and he had many criticisms to make upon the Higher Critics of the Bible. Many a discussion we had, in which, against me, he took the conservative side." He lets one see very clearly into the workings of his mind in this direction in what is perhaps the finest, although the least well known of his books, _The Five Windows of the Soul_ (John Murray), in which he discourses in his own inimitable way of the five senses, and how they bring man and beast into contact with their surroundings. It is a book on perceiving, and shows how according as this faculty is exercised it makes each man such as he is. The following extract from the book shows Mr. Aitken's style, and may perhaps induce some to go to the book itself for more from the same source. He is speaking of the moral sense. "And it is almost a truism to say that, if a man has any taste, it will show itself in his dress and in his dwelling. No doubt, through indolence and slovenly habits, a man may allow his surroundings to fall far below what he is capable of approving; but every one who does so pays the penalty in the gradual deterioration of his perceptions. "How many times more true is all this in the case of the moral sense? When the heart is still young and tender, how spontaneously and sweetly and urgently does every vision of goodness and nobleness in the conduct of another awaken the impulse to go and do likewise! And if that impulse is not obeyed, how certainly does the first approving perception of the beauty of goodness become duller, until at last we may even come to hate it where we find it, for its discordance with the 'motions of sins in our members'! "But not less certainly will every earnest effort to bring the life into unison with what we perceive to be right bring its own reward in a clearer and more joyful perception of what is right, and a keener sensitiveness to every discord in ourselves. How all such discord may be removed, how the chords of the heart may be tuned and the life become music,--these are questions of religion, which are quite beyond our scope. But I take it that every religion which has prevailed among the children of Adam is in itself an evidence that, however debased and perverted the moral sense may have become, the painful consciousness that his heart is 'like sweet bells jangled' still presses everywhere and always on the spirit of man; and it is also a conscious or unconscious admission that there is no blessedness for him until his life shall march in step with the music of the 'Eternal Righteousness.'" Mr. Aitken's name will be kept green among Anglo-Indians by the well-known series of books published by Messrs. Thacker & Co., of London and Calcutta. They are _The Tribes on my Frontier, An Indian Naturalist's Foreign Policy_, which was published in 1883, and of which a seventh edition appeared in 1910. This book deals with the common birds, beasts, and insects in and around an Indian bungalow, and it should be put into the hands of every one whose lot is cast in India. It will open their eyes to the beauty and interests of their surroundings in a truly wonderful way, and may be read again and again with increasing pleasure as one's experience of Indian life increases. This was followed in 1889 by _Behind the Bungalow_, which describes with charming insight the strange manners and customs of our Indian domestic servants. The witty and yet kindly way in which their excellencies and defects are touched off is delightful, and many a harassed _mem-sahib_ must bless Eha for showing her the humorous and human side of her life surrounded as it is by those necessary but annoying inhabitants of the Godowns behind the bungalow. A tenth edition of this book was published in 1911. _The Naturalist on the Prowl_ was brought out in 1894, and a third edition was published in 1905. It contains sketches on the same lines as those in _The Tribes_, but deals more with the jungles, and not so much with the immediate surroundings of the bungalow. The very smell of the country is in these chapters, and will vividly recall memories to those who know the country along the West Coast of India southward of Bombay. In 1900 was published _The Common Birds of Bombay_, which contains descriptions of the ordinary birds one sees about the bungalow or in the country. As is well said by the writer of the obituary notice in the _Journal_ of the Bombay Natural History Society, Eha "had a special genius for seizing the striking and characteristic points in the appearance and behaviour of individual species and a happy knack of translating them into print so as to render his descriptions unmistakable. He looked upon all creatures in the proper way, as if each had a soul and character of its own. He loved them all, and was unwilling to hurt any of them." These characteristics are well shown in this book, for one is able to recognise the birds easily from some prominent feature described therein.[1] _The Five Windows of the Soul_, published by John Murray in 1898, is of quite another character from the above, and was regarded by its author with great affection as the best of his books. It is certainly a wonderfully self-revealing book, and full of the most beautiful thoughts. A second impression appeared in the following year, and a new and cheaper edition has just been published. The portrait of Eha is reproduced from one taken in 1902 in a flat on the Apollo Bunder, and shows the man as he was in workaday life in Bombay. The humorous and kindly look is, I think, well brought out, and will stir pleasant memories in all who knew Mr. Aitken. W. B. B. MADRAS, _January_ 1914. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: The illustrations are his own work, but the blocks having been produced in India, they do not do justice to the extreme delicacy of workmanship and fine perception of detail which characterise the originals, as all who have been privileged to see these will agree.] CONCERNING ANIMALS I FEET AND HANDS It is evident that, in what is called the evolution of animal forms, the foot came in suddenly when the backboned creatures began to live on the dry land--that is, with the frogs. How it came in is a question which still puzzles the phylogenists, who cannot find a sure pedigree for the frog. There it is, anyhow, and the remarkable point about it is that the foot of a frog is not a rudimentary thing, but an authentic standard foot, like the yard measure kept in the Tower of London, of which all other feet are copies or adaptations. This instrument, as part of the original outfit given to the pioneers of the brainy, backboned, and four-limbed races, when they were sent out to multiply and replenish the earth, is surely worth considering well. It consists essentially of a sole, or palm, made up of small bones and of _five_ separate digits, each with several joints. [Illustration: AN AUTHENTIC STANDARD FOOT.] In the hind foot of a frog the toes are very long and webbed from point to point. In this it differs a good deal from the toad, and there is significance in the difference. The "heavy-gaited toad," satisfied with sour ants, hard beetles, and such other fare as it can easily pick up, and grown nasty in consequence, so that nothing seeks to eat it, has hobbled through life, like a plethoric old gentleman, until the present day, on its original feet. The more versatile and nimble-witted frog, seeking better diet and greater security of life, went back to the element in which it was bred, and, swimming much, became better fitted for swimming. The soft elastic skin between the fingers or toes is just the sort of tissue which responds most readily to inward impulses, and we find that the very same change has come about in those birds and beasts which live much in water. I know that this is not the accepted theory of evolution, but I am waiting till it shall become so. We all develop in the direction of our tendencies, and shall, I doubt not, be wise enough some day to give animals leave to do the same. It seems strange that any creature, furnished with such tricky and adaptable instruments to go about the world with, should tire of them and wish to get rid of them, but so it happened at a very early stage. It must have been a consequence, I think, of growing too fast. Mark Twain remarked about a dachshund that it seemed to want another pair of legs in the middle to prevent it sagging. Now, some lizards are so long that they cannot keep from sagging, and their progress becomes a painful wriggle. But if you must go by wriggling, then what is the use of legs to knock against stems and stones? So some lizards have discarded two of their legs and some all four. Zoologically they are not snakes, but snakes are only a further advance in the same direction. That snakes did not start fair without legs is clear, for the python has to this day two tell-tale leg-bones buried in its flesh. When we pass from reptiles to birds, lo! an astounding thing has happened. That there were flying reptiles in the fossil ages we know, and there are flying beasts in our own. But the wings of these are simple mechanical alterations, which the imagination of a child, or a savage, could explain. The hands of a bat are hands still, and, though the fingers are hampered by their awkward gloves, the thumbs are free. The giant fruit bats of the tropics clamber about the trees quite acrobatically with their thumbs and feet. That Apollyonic monster of the prime, the pterodactyl, did even better. Stretching on each little finger a lateen sail that would have served to waft a skiff across the Thames, it kept the rest of its hands for other uses. But what bearing has all this on the case of birds? Here is a whole sub-kingdom, as they call it, of the animal world which has unreservedly and irrevocably bartered one pair of its limbs for a flying-machine. The apparatus is made of feathers--a new invention, unknown to amphibian or saurian, whence obtained nobody can say--and these are grafted into the transformed frame of the old limbs. The bargain was worth making, for the winged bird at once soared away in all senses from the creeping things of earth, and became a more ethereal being; "like a blown flame, it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it; it is the air, conscious of itself, conquering itself, ruling itself." But the price was heavy. The bird must get through life with one pair of feet and its mouth. But this was all the bodily furniture of Charles François Felu, who, without arms, became a famous artist. A friend of mine, standing behind him in a _salon_ and watching him at work, saw him lay down his brush and, raising his foot to his head, take off his hat and scratch his crown with his great toe. My friend was nearly hypnotised by the sight, yet it scarcely strikes us as a wonder when a parrot, standing on one foot, takes its meals with the other. It is a wonder, and stamps the parrot as a bird of talent. A mine of hidden possibilities is in us all, but those who dig resolutely into it and bring out treasure are few. And let us note that the art of standing began with birds. Frogs sit, and, as far as I know, every reptile, be it lizard, crocodile, alligator, or tortoise, lays its body on the ground when not actually carrying it. And these have each four fat legs. Contrast the flamingo, which, having only two, and those like willow wands, tucks up one of them and sleeps poised high on the other, like a tulip on its stem. Note also that one toe has been altogether discarded by birds as superfluous. The germ, or bud, must be there, for the Dorking fowl has produced a fifth toe under some influence of the poultry-yard, but no natural bird has more than four. Except in swifts, which never perch, but cling to rocks and walls, one is turned backwards, and, by a cunning contrivance, the act of bending the leg draws them all automatically together. So a hen closes its toes at every step it takes, as if it grasped something, and, of course, when it settles down on its roost, they grasp that tight and hold it fast till morning. But to birds that do not perch this mechanism is only an encumbrance, so many of them, like the plovers, abolish the hind toe entirely, and the prince of all two-legged runners, the ostrich, has got rid of one of the front toes also, retaining only two. [Illustration: THESE BEASTS ARE ALL CLODHOPPERS, AND THEIR FEET ARE HOBNAILED BOOTS.] To a man who thinks, it is very interesting to observe that beasts have been led along gradually in the very same direction. All the common beasts, such as cats, dogs, rats, stoats, and so on, have five ordinary toes. On the hind feet there may be only four. But as soon as we come to those that feed on grass and leaves, standing or walking all the while, we find that the feet are shod with hoofs instead of being tipped with claws. First the five toes, though clubbed together, have each a separate hoof, as in the elephant; then the hippopotamus follows with four toes, and the rhinoceros with practically three. These beasts are all clodhoppers, and their feet are hobnailed boots. The more active deer and all cattle keep only two toes for practical purposes, though stumps of two more remain. Finally, the horse gathers all its foot into one boot, and becomes the champion runner of the world. It is not without significance that this degeneracy of the feet goes with a decline in the brain, whether as cause or effect I will not pretend to know. These hoofed beasts have shallow natures and live shallow lives. They eat what is spread by Nature before their noses, have no homes, and do nothing but feed and fight with each other. The elephant is a notable exception, but then the nose of the elephant, becoming a hand, has redeemed its mind. As for the horse, whatever its admirers may say, it is just a great ass. There is a lesson in all this: "from him that hath not shall be taken even that which he hath." There is another dull beast which, from the point of view of the mere systematist, seems as far removed from those that wear hoofs as it could be, but the philosopher, considering the point at which it has arrived, rather than the route by which it got there, will class it with them, for its idea of life is just theirs turned topsy-turvy. The nails of the sloth, instead of being hammered into hoofs on the hard ground, have grown long and curved, like those of a caged bird, and become hooks by which it can hang, without effort, in the midst of the leaves on which it feeds. A minimum of intellect is required for such an existence, and the sloth has lost any superfluous brain that it may have had, as well as two, or even three, of its five toes. To return to those birds and beasts with standard feet, I find that the first outside purpose for which they find them serviceable is to scratch themselves. This is a universal need. But a foot is handy in many other ways. A hen and chickens, getting into my garden, transferred a whole flower-bed to the walk in half an hour. Yet a bird trying to do anything with its foot is like a man putting on his socks standing, and birds as a race have turned their feet to very little account outside of their original purpose. Such a simple thing as holding down its food with one foot scarcely occurs to an ordinary bird. A hen will pull about a cabbage leaf and shake it in the hope that a small piece may come away, but it never enters her head to put her foot on it. In this and other matters the parrot stands apart, and also the hawk, eagle, and owl; but these are not ordinary birds. Beasts, having twice as many feet as birds, have learned to apply them to many uses. They dig with them, hold down their food with them, fondle their children with them, paw their friends, and scratch their enemies. One does more of one thing and another of another, and the feet soon show the effects of the occupation, the claws first, then the muscles, and even the bones dwindling by disuse, or waxing stout and strong. Then the joy of doing what it can do well impels the beast further on the same path, and its offspring after it. [Illustration: THE NOSE OF THE ELEPHANT BECOMING A HAND HAS REDEEMED ITS MIND] And this leads at last to specialism. The Indian black bear is a "handy man," like the British Tar--good all round. Its great soft paw is a very serviceable tool and weapon, armed with claws which will take the face off a man or grub up a root with equal ease. When a black bear has found an ant-hill it takes but a few minutes to tear up the hard, cemented clay and lay the deep galleries bare; then, putting its gutta-percha muzzle to the mouth of each, it draws such a blast of air through them that the industrious labourers are sucked into its gullet in drifts. Afterwards it digs right down to the royal chamber, licks up the bloated queen, and goes its way. But there is another worker in the same mine which does not go to work this way. The ant-eater found fat termites so satisfying that it left all other things and devoted its life to the exploiting of anthills, and now it has no rival at that business, but it is fit for nothing else. Its awkward digging tools will not allow it to put the sole of its foot to the ground, so it has to double them under and hobble about like a Chinese lady. It has no teeth, and stupidity is the most prominent feature of its character. It has become that poor thing, a man of one idea. But the bear is like a sign-post at a parting of the ways. If you compare a brown bear with the black Indian, or sloth bear, as it is sometimes called, you may detect a small but pregnant difference. When the former walks, its claws are lifted, so that their points do not touch the ground. Why? I have no information, but I know that it is not content with a vegetarian diet, like its black relative, but hankers after sheep and goats, and I guess that its murderous thoughts flow down its nerves to those keen claws. It reminds me of a man clenching his fist unconsciously when he thinks of the liar who has slandered him. [Illustration: IT HAS TO DOUBLE THEM UNDER AND HOBBLE ABOUT LIKE A CHINESE LADY.] But what ages of concentration on the thought and practice of assassination must have been required to perfect that most awful weapon in Nature, the paw of a tiger, or, indeed, of any cat, for they are all of one pattern. The sharpened flint of the savage has become the scimitar of Saladin, keeping the keenness of its edge in a velvet sheath and flashing out only on the field of battle. Compare that paw with the foot of a dog, and you will, perhaps, see with me that the servility and pliancy of the slave of man has usurped a place in his esteem which is not its due. The cat is much the nobler animal. Dogs, with wolves, jackals, and all of their kin, love to fall upon their victim in overwhelming force, like a rascally mob, and bite, tear, and worry until the life has gone out of it; the tiger, rushing single-handed, with a fearful challenge, on the gigantic buffalo, grasps its nose with one paw and its shoulder with the other, and has broken its massive neck in a manner so dexterous and instantaneous that scarcely two sportsmen can agree about how the thing is done. I have said that the foot first appeared when the backboned creatures came out of the waters to live upon the dry land. But all mundane things (not excepting politics) tend to move in circles, ending where they began; and so the foot, if we follow it far enough, will take us back into water. See how the rat--I mean our common, omnivorous, scavenging, thieving, poaching brown rat--when it lives near a pond or stream, learns to swim and dive as naturally as a duck. Next comes the vole, or water-rat, which will not live away from water. Then there are water shrews, the beaver, otter, duck-billed platypus, and a host of others, not related, just as, among birds, there are water ousels, moorhens, ducks, divers, etc., which have permanently made the water their home and seek their living in it. All these have attained to web-footedness in a greater or less degree. That this has occurred among reptiles, beasts, and birds alike shows what an easy, or natural, or obvious (put it as you will) modification it is. And it has a consequence not to be escaped. Just as a man who rides a great deal and never walks acquires a certain indirectness of the legs, and you never mistake a jockey for a drill-sergeant, so the web-footed beasts are not among the things that are "comely in going." Following this road you arrive at the seal and sea-lion. Of all the feet that I have looked at I know only one more utterly ridiculous than the twisted flipper on which the sea-lion props his great bulk in front, and that is the forked fly-flap which extends from the hinder parts of the same. How can it be worth any beast's while to carry such an absurd apparatus with it just for the sake of getting out into the air sometimes and pushing itself about on the ice and being eaten by Polar bears? The porpoise has discarded one pair, turned the other into decent fins, and recovered a grace and power of motion in water which are not equalled by the greyhound on land. Why have the seals hung back? I believe I know the secret. It is the baby! No one knows where the porpoise and the whale cradle their newborn infants--it is so difficult to pry into the domestic ways of these sea-people--but evidently the seals cannot manage it, so they are forced to return to the land when the cares of maternity are on them. I have called the feet of these sea beasts ridiculous things, and so they are as we see them; but strip off the skin, and lo! there appears a plain foot, with its five digits, each of several joints, tipped with claws--nowise essentially different, in short, from that with which the toad, or frog, first set out in a past too distant for our infirm imagination. Admiration itself is paralysed by a contrivance so simple, so transmutable, and so sufficient for every need that time and change could bring. There remains yet one transformation which seems simple compared with some that I have noticed, but is more full of fate than they all; for by it the foot becomes a hand. This comes about by easy stages. The reason why one of a bird's four toes is turned back is quite plain: trees are the proper home of birds, and they require feet that will grasp branches. So those beasts also that have taken to living in trees have got one toe detached more or less from the rest and arranged so that it can co-operate with them to catch hold of a thing. Then other changes quickly follow. For, in judging whether you have got hold of a thing and how much force you must put forth to keep hold of it, you are guided entirely by the pressure on the finger-points, and to gauge this pressure nicely the nerves must be refined and educated. In fact, the exercise itself, with the intent direction of the mind to the finger-points, brings about the refinement and education in accordance with Sandow's principle of muscle culture. For an example of the result do not look at the gross paw of any so-called anthropoid ape, gorilla, orang-outang, or chimpanzee, but study the gentle lemur. At the point of each digit is a broad elastic pad, plentifully supplied with delicate nerves, and the vital energy which has been directed into them appears to have been withdrawn from the growth of the claws, which have shrunk into fine nails just shielding the fleshy tips. In short, the lemur has a hand on each of its four limbs, and no feet at all. And as it goes about its cage--I am at the Zoo in spirit--with a silent wonder shining out of its great eyes, it examines things by _feeling_ them with its hands. How plainly a new avenue from the outer world into its mind has been opened by those fingers! But how about scratching? What would be the gain of having higher susceptibilities and keener perceptions if they only aggravated the triumph of the insulting flea? Nay, this disaster has been averted by reserving a good sharp claw on the forefinger (not the thumb) of each hind hand. The old naturalists called the apes and lemurs Quadrumana, the "four-handed," and separated the Bimana, with one species--namely, _Homo sapiens_. Now we have anatomy cited to belittle the difference between a hand and a foot, and geology importuned to show us the missing link, pending which an order has been instituted roomy enough to hold monkeys, gorillas, and men. It is a strange perversity. How much more fitting it were to bow in reverent ignorance before the perfect hand, taken up from the ground, no more to dull its percipient surfaces on earth and stones and bark, but to minister to its lord's expanding mind and obey his creative will, while his frame stands upright and firm upon a single pair of true feet, with their toes all in one rank. II BILLS OF BIRDS The prospectus, or advertisement, of a certain American typewriting machine commences by informing the public that "The ---- typewriter is founded on an idea." When I saw this phrase I secured it for my collection, for I felt that, without jest, it contained the kernel of a true philosophy of Nature. The forms, the _phainomena_, of Nature are innumerable, multifarious, interwoven, and infinitely perplexing, and you may spend a happy life in unravelling their relations and devising their evolutions; but until you have looked through them and seen the ideas that are behind them you are a mere materialist and a blind worker. The soul of Nature is hid from you. What is the bill of a bird and what does it mean? I do not refer to the bill of a hawk, or a heron, or an owl, or an ostrich, but to that which is the abstract of all these and a thousand more. I hold, regardless of anatomy and physiology, that a bird is a higher being than a beast. No beast soars and sings to its sweetheart; no beast remains in lifelong partnership with the wife of its youth; no beast builds itself a summer-house and decks it with feathers and bright shells. A beast is a grovelling denizen of the earth; a bird is a free citizen of the air. And who can say that there is not a connection between this difference and other developments? The beast, thinking only of its appetites, has evolved a delicate nose, a discriminating palate, three kinds of teeth to cut, tear, and grind its food, salivary glands to moisten the same, and a perfected apparatus of digestion. [Illustration: GOOD FOR ANY ROUGH JOB] The bird, occupied with thoughts of love and beauty, with "fields, or waves, or mountains" and "shapes of sky or plain," has made little advance in the art and instruments of good living. It swallows its food whole, scarcely knowing the taste of it, and a pair of forceps for picking it up, tipped and cased with horn, is the whole of its dining furniture. For the bill of a bird, primarily and essentially, is that and nothing else. In the chickens and the sparrows that come to steal their food, and the robin that looks on, and all the little dicky-birds, you may see it in its simplicity. The size and shape may vary, as a Canadian axe differs from a Scotch axe; some are short and stout and have a sharp edge for shelling seeds; some are longer and fine-pointed, for picking worms and caterpillars out of their hiding-places; some a little hooked at their points, and one, that of the crossbill, with points crossed for picking the small seeds out of fir-cones; but all are practically the same tool. Yet the last distinctly points the way to those modifications by which the simple bill is gradually adapted to one special purpose or another, until it becomes a wonderful mechanism in which the original intention is quite out of sight. At this point I find an instructive parable in my tool chest. Fully half of the tools are just knives. A chisel is a knife, a plane is a knife set in a block of wood, a saw is a knife with the edge notched. Moreover, there are many sorts of curious planes and saws, each intended for one distinct kind of fine work. All these the joiner has need of, but a schoolboy would rather have one good, strong pocket-knife than the whole boxful. For, just in proportion as each tool is perfected for its own special work, it becomes useless for any other. And your schoolboy is not a specialist. He wants a tool that will cut a stick, carve a boat, peel an apple, dig out a worm--in short, one that will do whatever his active mind wants done. Now apply this parable to the birds. If you see a bill that is nothing but a large and powerful pair of forceps, good for any rough job, you may know without further inquiry that the owner is no limited specialist, but a "handy man," bold, enterprising, resourceful, and good all round. He will not starve in the desert. No wholesome food comes amiss to him--grub, slug, or snail, fruit, eggs, a live mouse or a dead rat, and he can deal with them all. Such are the magpie, the crow, the jackdaw, and all of that ilk; and these are the birds that are found in all countries and climates, and prosper wherever they go. [Illustration: NO DOUBT EACH BIRD SWEARS BY ITS OWN PATTERN.] But all birds cannot play that part. One is timid, another fastidious, another shy but ingenious. So, in the universal competition for a living, each has taken its own line according to the bent of its nature, and its one tool has been perfected for its trade until it can follow no other. The thrush catches such worms as rashly show themselves above-ground; but an ancient ancestor of the snipe found that, if it followed them into marshy lands, it could probe the soft ground and drag them out of their chambers. For this operation it has now a bill three inches long, straight, thin and sensitive at the tip, a beautiful instrument, but good for no purpose except extracting worms from soft ground. If frost or drought hardens the ground, the snipe must starve or travel. Among the many "lang nebbit" birds that follow the same profession as the snipe, some, like the curlew and the ibis, have curved bills of prodigious length. I do not know the comparative advantages of the two forms, but no doubt each bird swears by its own pattern, as every golfer does by his own putter. But now behold another grub-hunter, which, distasting mud, has discovered an unworked mine in the trunks of trees. There, in deep burrows, lurked great succulent beetle-grubs, demanding only a tool with which they might be dug out. This has been perfected by many stages, and I have now before me a splendid specimen of the most improved pattern--namely, the bill of the great black woodpecker of Western India, a bird nearly as big as a crow. It is nothing else than a hatchet in two parts, which, when locked together, present a steeled edge about three-eighths of an inch in breadth. The hatchet is two and a half inches long by one in breadth at the base, and a prominent ridge, or keel, runs down the top from base to point. It is further strengthened by a keel on each side. Inside of it, ere the bird became a mummy, was her tongue, which I myself drew out three inches beyond the point of the bill. It was rough and tough, like gutta-percha, tipped with a fine spike, and armed on each side, for the last inch of its length, with a row of sharp barbs pointing backwards. The whole was lubricated with some patent stickfast, "always ready for use." That grub must sit tight indeed which this corkscrew will not draw when once the hatchet has opened a way. The swallows and swifts, untirable on their wings, but too gentle to hold their own in a jostling crowd, soared away after the midges and May-flies and pestilent gnats that rise from marsh and pond to hold their joyous dances under the blue dome. Continually rushing open-mouthed after these, they have stretched their gape from ear to ear; but their bills have dwindled by disuse and left only an apology for their absence. Compared with all these, the birds that can do with a diet of fruit only lead an easy life. They have just to pluck and eat--that is, if they are pleased with small fruits and content to swallow them whole. But the hornbills, being too bulky to hop among twigs, need a long reach; hence the portentous machines which they carry on their faces. The beak of a hornbill is nothing else than a pair of tongs long enough to reach and strong enough to wrench off a wild fig from its thick stem. If it were of iron it would be thin and heavy; being of cellular horn-stuff it is bulky but light. If you ask why it should rise up into an absurd helmet on the queer fowl's head, I cannot tell. Nature has quaint ways of using up surplus material. [Illustration: ITS BILL DESERVES STUDY] An easy life begets luxury, and among fruit-eaters the parrot has become an epicure. It will not swallow its food whole, and its bill deserves study. In birds generally the upper mandible is more or less joined to the skull, leaving only the lower jaw free to move. But in the parrot the upper mandible is also hinged, so that each plays freely on the other. The upper, as we all know, is hooked and pointed; the lower has a sharp edge. The tongue is thick, muscular, and sensitive. The whole makes a wonderful instrument, unique among birds, for feelingly manipulating a dainty morsel, shelling, peeling, and slicing, until nothing is left but the sweetest part of the core. Of all gourmands Polly is the most shameless waster. Long before land, trees, and air had been exploited the primitive bird must have discovered the harvest of the waters, and here the competition has been very keen indeed. Yet the form of bill most in use is very simple--just a plain pair of forceps, long and sharp-pointed like scissors. This is evidently hard to beat, for birds of many sorts use it, handling it variously. The kingfisher plumps bodily down on the minnow from an overhanging perch; the solan goose, soaring, plunges from a "pernicious height"; the heron, high on its stilts, darts out a long and serpentine neck; the diver, with similar beak and neck, but different legs, pursues the fleeing shoals under water; to the swift and slippery fish all are alike terrible in their certainty. There are, however, other varieties of the fishing bill. Some have a hook at the point, as that of the cormorant, and some are straight at the top, but curved on the under side. This last form is handy for storks, which do not pluck fish out of water so much, but scoop up frogs, crabs, and reptiles from the ground. The ridiculous bill of the puffin, or sea-parrot, is an eccentricity. There may be some idea in it, but I suspect it is an effect of vanity merely, being coloured blue, yellow, and red, and quite in keeping with the other absurdities of the wearer. Apart from all these and by itself stands a princely fisher whose bill is no modification, but an original invention and a marvellous one. Larger than a swan and gluttonous withal, the pelican cannot live on single fishes. It has given up angling altogether and taken to netting; and the way in which the net has been constructed out of the pair of forceps provided in the original plan of its construction is as well worth your examining as anything I know. It is a foot in length, the upper jaw is flat and broad, while the lower consists of two thin, elastic bones joined at the point, a mere ring to carry the curious yellow bag that hangs from it. In pictures this is represented as a creel in which the kind pelican carries home the children's breakfast; you are allowed to see the tail of a big fish hanging out. But it is not a creel; it is a net. The great birds, marshalled in line on some broad lake or marsh, and beating the water with their wings, drive the fish before them until they have got a dense crowd huddled in panic and confusion between them and the shore. Now watch them narrowly. As each monstrous bill opens, the thin bones of the lower jaw stretch sideways to the breadth of a span by some curious mechanism not described in the books, and at the same time the shrunken bag expands into a deep, capacious net. Simultaneously the whole instrument is plunged into the struggling, silvery mass and comes up full. The side bones instantly contract again, and the upper jaw is clapped on them like a lid. No wonder the fishermen of the East detest the pelican. [Illustration: HERE THE COMPETITION HAS BEEN VERY KEEN INDEED.] [Illustration: AS WONDERFUL AS THE PELICAN, BUT HOW OPPOSITE!] In the same marsh, perhaps, standing with unequalled grace upon the longest legs known in this world, is a troop of giant birds as wonderful as the pelican, but how opposite! The beautiful flamingo is a bird of feeble intellect, delicate appetite, and genteel tastes. It cannot eat fish, for its slender throat would scarcely admit a pea. Besides, the idea of catching anything, or even picking up food from the ground, does not occur to its simple mind. Its diet consists of certain small crustaceans, classed by naturalists with water-fleas, which abound in brackish water; and it has an instrument for taking these which it knows how to use. I kept flamingos once, and, after trying many things in vain, offered them bran, or boiled rice, floating in water. Then they dined, and I learned the construction and working of the most marvellous of all bills. The lower jaw is deep and hollow, and its upper edges turn in to meet each other, so that you may fairly describe it as a pipe with a narrow slit along the upper side. In this pipe lies the tongue, and it cannot get out, for it is wider than the slit, but it can be pressed against the top to close the slit, and then the lower jaw becomes an actual pipe. The root of the tongue is furnished on both sides with a loose fringe which we will call the first strainer. The upper jaw is thin and flat and rests on the lower like a lid, and it is beautifully fringed along both sides with small, leathery points, close set, like the teeth of a very fine saw. This is the second strainer. To work the machine you dip the point into dirty water full of water-fleas, draw back the tip of the tongue a little, and suck in water till the lower jaw (the pipe) is full, then close the point again with the tip of the tongue and force the water out. It can only get out by passing through the first strainers at the root of the tongue, then over the palate, and so through the second strainers at the sides of the bill; and all the solid matter it contained will remain in the mouth. The sucking in and squirting out of the water is managed by the cheeks, or rather by the cheek, for a flamingo has only one cheek, and that is situated under the chin. When the bird is feeding you will see this throbbing faster than the eye can follow it, while water squirts from the sides of the mouth in a continuous stream. I should have said that the whole bill is sharply bent downwards at the middle. The advantage of this is that when the bird lets down its head into the water, like a bucket into a well, the point of the bill does not stick in the mud, but lies flat on it, upside down. In conclusion, let us not fail to note, whatever be our political creed, that, while all the birds pursue their respective industries, there sit apart, in pride of place, some whose bills are not tools wherewith to work, but weapons wherewith to slay. And these take tribute of the rest, not with their consent, but of right. III TAILS The secrets of Nature often play like an iridescence on the surface, and escape the eye of her worshipper because it is stopped with a microscope. There are mysteries all about us as omnipresent as the movement of the air that lifts the smoke and stirs the leaves, which I cannot find that any philosopher has looked into. Often and deeply have I been impressed with this. For example, there is scarcely, in this world, a commoner or a humbler thing than a tail, yet how multifarious is it in aspect, in construction, and in function, a hundred different things and yet one. Some are of feathers and some of hair, and some bare and skinny; some are long and some are short, some stick up and some hang down, some wag for ever and some are still; the uses that they serve cannot be numbered, but one name covers them all. In the course of evolution they came in with the fishes and went out with man. What was their purpose and mission? What place have they filled in the scheme of things? In short, what is the true inwardness of a tail? If we try to commence--as scientific method requires--with a definition, we stumble on a key, at the very threshold, which opens the door. For there is no definition of a tail; it is not, in its nature, anything at all. When an animal's fore-legs are fitted on to its backbone at the proper distance from the hind-legs, if any of the backbone remains over, we call it a tail. But it has no purpose; it is a mere surplus, which a tailor (the pun is unavoidable) would have trimmed off. And, lo! in this very negativeness lies the whole secret of the multifarious positiveness of tails. For the absence of special purpose is the chance of general usefulness. The ear must fulfil its purpose or fail entirely, for it can do nothing else. Eyes, nose and mouth, hands and feet, all have their duties; the tail is the unemployed. And if we allow that life has had any hand in the shaping of its own destiny, then the ingenuity of the devices for turning the useless member to account affords one of the most exhilarating subjects of contemplation in the whole panorama of Nature. The fishes fitted it up at once as a twin-propeller, with results so satisfactory that the whale and the porpoise, coming long after, adopted the invention. And be it noted that these last and their kin are now the only ocean-going mammals in the world. The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as seals and walruses and dugongs, are only coasters. Among those beasts that would live on the dry land, the primitive kangaroo could think of nothing better to do with his tail than to make a stool of it. It was a simple thought, but a happy one. Sitting up like a gentleman, he has his hands free to scratch his ribs or twitch his moustache. And when he goes he needs not to put them to the ground, for his great tail so nearly equals the weight of his body that one pair of legs keeps the balance even. And so the kangaroo, almost the lowest of beasts, comes closer to man in his postures than any other. The squirrel also sits up and uses his forepaws for hands, but the squirrel is a sybarite who lies abed in cold weather, and it is every way characteristic of him that he has sent his tail to the furrier and had it done up into a boa, or comforter, at once warm and becoming. See, too, how daintily he lifts it over his back to keep it clean. The rat is a near relation of the squirrel zoologically, but personally he is a gutter-snipe, and you may know that by one look at the tail which he drags after him like a dirty rope. Others of the same family, cleaner, though not more ingenious, like the guinea-pig, have simply dispensed with the encumbrance; but the rabbit has kept enough to make a white cockade, which it hoists when bolting from danger. This is for the guidance of the youngsters. Nearly every kind of deer and antelope carries the same signal, with which, when fleeing through dusky woods, the leader shows the way to the herd and the doe to her fawn. But of beasts that graze and browse, a large number have turned their tails rather to a use which throws a pathetic light on misery of which we have little experience. We do, indeed, growl at the gnats of a summer evening and think ourselves very ill-used. How little do we know or think of the unintermitted and unabated torment that the most harmless classes of beasts suffer from the bands of beggars which follow them night and day, demanding blood, and will take no refusal. Driven from the brow they settle on the neck, shaken from the neck they dive between the legs, and but for that far-reaching whisk at the end of the tail, they would found a permanent colony on the flanks and defy ejection, like the raiders of Vatersay. Darwin argues that the tail-brush may have materially helped to secure the survival of those species of beasts that possessed it, and no doubt he is right. The subject is interminable, but we must give a passing glance to some quixotic tails. The opossum scampers up a tree, carrying all her numerous family on her back, and they do not fall off because each infant is securely moored by its own tail to the uplifted tail of its mother. The opossum is a very primitive beast, and so early and useful an invention should, one would think, have been spread widely in after time; but there appears to be some difficulty in developing muscles at the thin end of a long tail, for the animals that have turned it into a grasping organ are few and are widely scattered. Examples are the chameleon among lizards, our own little harvest mouse, and, pre-eminent above all, the American monkeys. To a howler, or spider-monkey, its long tail is a swing and a trapeze in its forest gymnasium. Humboldt saw (he says it) a cluster of them all hanging from a tree by one tail, which proceeded from a Sandow in the middle. I should like to see that too. It is worth noting, by the way, that no old-world monkey has attained to this application of its tail. Then there is the beaver, whose tail I am convinced is a trowel. I know of no naturalist who has mentioned this, but such negative evidence is of little weight. The beaver, as everybody knows, is a builder, who cuts down trees and piles log upon log until he has raised a solid, domed cabin from seven to twenty feet in diameter, which he then plasters over with clay and straw. If he does not turn round and beat the work smooth with his tail, then I require to know for what purpose he carries that broad, heavy, and hard tool behind him. How few even among lovers of Nature know why a frog has no tail! The reason-is simply that it used that organ up when it was in want. In early life, as a jolly tadpole, it had a flourishing tail to swim with, and gills for breathing water, and an infantile mouth for taking vegetable nourishment. But when it began to draw near to frog's estate, serious changes were required in its structure to fit it for the life of a land animal. Four tiny legs appeared from under its skin, the gills gave place to air-breathing lungs, and the infant lips to a great, gaping mouth. Now, during this "temporary alteration of the premises" all business was of necessity stopped. The half-fish, half-frog could neither sup like an infant nor eat like a man. In this extremity it fed on its own tail--absorbed it as a camel is said to absorb its hump when travelling in the foodless desert--and so it entered on its new life without one. Aeronautics have changed the whole perspective of life for birds, as they may for us shortly; so it is no surprise to find that birds have, almost with one consent, converted their tails into steering-gear. A commonplace bird, like a sparrow, scarcely requires this except as a brake when in the act of alighting; but to those birds with which flight is an art and an accomplishment, an expansive forked or rounded tail (there are two patents) is indispensable. We have shot almost all the birds of this sort in our own country, and must travel if we would enjoy that enchanting sight--a pair of eagles or a party of kites gone aloft for a sail when the wind is rising, like skaters to a pond when the ice is bearing. For an hour on end, in restful ease or swift joy, they trace ever-varying circles and spirals against the dark storm-cloud, now rising, now falling, turning and reversing, but never once flapping their widespread pinions. How is it done? How does the _Shamrock_ sail? Watch, and you will see. When the wind is behind, each stiff quill at the end of the wing stands out by itself and is caught and driven by the blast; but as the bird turns round to face the gale, they all close up and form a continuous mainsail, close-hauled. And all the while the expanded tail is in play, dipping first at one side and then at the other, and turning the trim craft with easy grace "as the governor listeth." [Illustration: THERE ARE SOME ECCENTRICS, SUCH AS JENNY WREN, WHICH HAVE DESPISED THEIR TAILS.] Besides ground birds, like the quail, there are some eccentrics, such as Jenny wren, which have despised their tails, and there are specialists also which require them for other purposes than flying. The woodpecker's tail is quite useless as a rudder, for he is a woodman and has altered and adapted it for a portable stool to rest against as he plies his axe. But that man must be very blind to the place which birds have taken in the progress of civilisation who can suppose it possible that they should think only of utility in such a question as the disposal of their tails. It is a common notion among those who have acquired some smattering of the theory of evolution that fishes developed into reptiles, reptiles into birds, and birds into beasts; but this is as wrong as it could be. Whatever the genealogy of the beasts may be, they certainly were not evolved from birds, and are in many respects not above them but below them. These are two independent branches of the tree of living forms, as the Greeks and Romans were branches of the stock of Japheth. The beasts may stand for the conquering Romans if you like, but the birds are the Greeks, and have advanced far beyond them in all emotional and artistic sensibility. They worship in the temple of music and beauty. And, like ourselves, they have found no subject so worthy of the highest efforts of art as their own dress. But the clothing of the body must conform more or less to the figure, and so, for a field in which invention and fancy may sport untrammelled, a lady turns to her hat and a bird to its tail. And by both, with equal heroism, every consideration of mere comfort, convenience, health, or safety is swept aside in obedience to the higher aim. Is this only a flippant jocularity, or is there here in very truth some profound law of the mind revealing itself in spheres seemingly so disconnected? Look at a peacock. Its train, by the way, is a false tail, like the chignon of twenty years ago, or the fringe of the present day; the true tail is under it, and serves no purpose but to support it. Now the peacock lives on the ground, among scrub and brushwood, haunted by jackals and wild cats. They, like soldiers in khaki, reconnoitre him in a uniform expressly designed to elude the eye, but he flaunts a flag resplendent with green and gold. And when his one chance of life lies in springing nimbly from the ground and committing himself to his strong wings, he must lift and carry this ponderous paraphernalia with him. And the terrible Bonelli's eagle is soaring above. But all is risked proudly for the sake of the morning hour in the glade where the ladies assemble. And the peacock is only one of many. Not to mention the lyre bird, the Argus pheasant, the bird of paradise, and other splendid examples, there are common dicky-birds which point the moral and adorn the tail as emphatically. If the tail is a rudder, where should you look to find it in its most simple and efficient form but among the flycatchers, which make their living by aerial acrobatics after flies? Yet this family seems to be peculiarly prone to the vanity of a stylish tail. The paradise flycatcher flutters two streamers a foot long, like white ribbons, behind it. The fantail could hide behind its own fan. The bee-eater has the two central feathers prolonged and pointed. The drongos, which are flycatchers in habit, wear their tails very long and deeply forked; and one of them, the racket-tailed drongo, has the two side feathers extended beyond the rest for nearly a foot, and as thin as wires, expanding into a blade at the ends. I have seen nothing in ladies' hats more preposterous. It is vain to object that there can be no proper comparison between tails and hats because the woman chooses her own hat while the bird has to wear what Nature has given it. I know that, but the contention is utterly superficial. What choice has a woman as to the style of her hat? Fashion prescribes for her, and Nature for the birds; that is all the difference. No doubt she acquiesces when theoretically she might rebel. The bird cannot rebel, but does it not acquiesce? Does a lyre bird submit to its tail--wear it under protest, so to speak? Believe me, every bird that has an aesthetic tail knows the fact, and tries to live up to it. We may push the argument even further, for the motmot of Brazil is not content with a ready-made tail, but actually strips the web off the two long side feathers with its own beak, except a little patch at the end, so as to get the pattern which Nature, if one must use the phrase, gave to the racket-tailed drongo. A specimen is exhibited in the hall of the South Kensington Museum. [Illustration: A BLACKBIRD AND A STARLING--THE ONE LIFTS ITS SKIRTS, WHILE THE OTHER WEARS A WALKING DRESS.] In this connection I may also say that the shape or colour of a tail is not everything. An observant eye may find much to note in the wearing of them. There is a stylish way of carrying a tail and a slovenly way, and there are coquettish arts for the display of recherche tails. A blackbird and a starling are both tidy birds, and both walk much on the ground, but the one lifts its skirts, while the other, more practical and less fashionable, wears a walking dress and saves itself trouble. This line of observation leads to a higher, and reveals the most important purpose that tails have served in the economy of beast, bird, and reptile, and, perhaps, even cold-blooded fish. Before the godlike countenance of man appeared on the earth, with its contractile forehead and erectile eyebrows, the answering light of the eye, the expansive nostrils, and subtilely mobile lips; before that the tail was the prime vehicle of emotion and safety-valve of passion. It is a great truth, too often buried in these days under rubbish of materialistic theories, that some way of self-manifestation is a supreme necessity of all sentient life. From the hot centre of thought and feeling the currents rush along the nervous ways and pervade the whole frame, seeking an outlet. But many passages are barred by duty, or fear, or eager purpose. A strong gust of passion may burst all barriers and force its way out at every point, but gentle currents flow along the lines of least resistance and find the idle tail. I do not know a better illustration of this than a cat watching a mouse. The ears are pricked forward, the eyes are fixed on the unsuspecting victim, every muscle of the legs is tense, like a bent bow ready to speed the arrow on its way. But see, the excitement with which the whole body is charged cannot be wholly restrained, and oozes out at the point of the tail. [Illustration: AT THE SIGHT OF A RIVAL THE DOG HOLDS ITS TAIL UP STIFFLY] Every emotion and passion takes this course. The happy kid wags its tail as it runs to its mother, the donkey when it has executed a successful bray, and the dog when it sees its master. At the sight of a rival the dog holds its tail up stiffly, unless, indeed, the rival is a bigger dog than itself, in which case the index goes down quickly between the legs. An elated horse elevates its tail, and so does a duck in the same mood. A lizard preparing to fight another lizard Swinges the scaly horror of his folded tail, and the raging lion of fiction lashes its sides with the same nervous instrument. It would be tedious to dwell on the pretty part which the tail plays in the courtships of sparrows and pigeons, or on the sprightly attitudes by which birds of all sorts let off their spirits when shower and sunshine have overfilled their hearts with gladness. But birds twitch their tails constantly, without meaning anything by it. The ceaseless wagging of a wagtail is a mere habit of cheerfulness, like the twirling of her thumbs by an idle Scotswoman. The long tail is there and something must be done with it. Look at the embarrassment which a nervous young man shows about the disposal of his hands; how he thrusts them into his trouser pockets, hangs them by their thumbs from the arm-holes of his waistcoat, or gives them a walking-stick to play with. I like to imagine what such a fellow would do with a long tail if he had it--how he would wind it round each leg in turn, rub up his back hair, and describe figures on the floor. But no animal so self-conscious as man could bear up long under the nervous strain of having to think continually of its tail. It would die young and the race would become extinct. Perhaps it did. A final word on the conclusion of the whole matter, for these reflections have a moral. As habit becomes character, so expression hardens into feature. The tail of a sheep grows downwards, but that of a goat upwards, and this is the only infallible outward mark of distinction between the two animals. But it is the permanent record of a long history. The sheep was never anything but sheepish; the goat and its forefathers were pert as kids and insolent when their beards grew. It is useless to inquire why insolence should express itself by an upturned tail until someone can advance a reason why it should express itself in another way. For proof of the fact you need go no farther than your own dogs. The ancestral wolf, or jackal, hunting and fighting, fearing and hoping, showed every changing mood by the pose of its tail; but a change came when it acquired an assured position of security and importance as the chosen companion of man, so dreaded by all its kith and kin. The tail went up at once and stayed there; when it could go no higher, it curled over. But promotion breeds conceit only in base natures. The greyhound is a gentleman, respectful and self-respecting, and it shows that by the very carriage of its tail. Only a snob at heart, petted and pampered for many generations, could have produced that perfect incarnation of smug self-satisfaction, the pug. Let us take the lesson home. The thoughts on which we let our minds dwell, and the sentiments that we harbour in our hearts, are the chisels with which we are carving out our faces and those of our children's children. IV NOSES Some may think that I have chosen a trivial subject, and they will look for frivolous treatment of it. I can only hope that they will be disappointed. There is nothing that the progress of science has taught us more emphatically than this--that we must call nothing insignificant. Seemingly trivial pursuits have led to discoveries which have benefited all mankind, and priceless truths have been dug out of the most unpromising mines. I am not insinuating that anyone's nose is an unpromising mine, but I say that I am persuaded there is wisdom hidden in that organ for him who will observingly distil it out. [Illustration: A SHREW CAN DO IT, BUT NOT A MAN.] It possesses a peculiar and mystical significance not shared by any other feature. This is abundantly proved by common speech, which is one of the most trustworthy of all kinds of evidence. For example, we speak of a person turning up his nose at a good offer. The phrase is absurd, for the power of turning up his nose is one which no human being ever possessed. A shrew can do it, but not a man. Yet the meaning of the saying needs no interpretation. Akin to it is the classical phrase, _adunco suspendere naso_. What Horace means scarcely requires explanation, but no commentator has successfully explained it. These expressions well illustrate the mystery that enshrouds our most salient feature. They show that, while everybody can see that disdain is expressed through the nose, nobody can define how it is done. Then there is that curious expression "put his nose out of joint," which is quite inexplicable, the nose being destitute of joint. There are many other phrases and also gestures which point in the same direction, but need not be cited, being for the most part vulgar. Allusions to the nose have a tendency to be vulgar, which is another mystery inciting us to investigate it. So let us proceed. The first thing required by the principles of scientific precedure is a definition. What is a nose? But this proves to be a much more difficult question than anyone would suspect before he tried to answer it. The individual human nose we can recognise, describe or sketch more easily than any other feature, but try to define the thing _nose_ in Nature and it is a most elusive phenomenon. When we speak of a man being led by the nose we imply that it is a part of him which is prominent and situated in front, when we speak of keeping one's nose above water we refer to it as the breathing orifice, but when we say that this or that offends our nose we are regarding it as the seat of the sense of smell. I believe that all these three ideas must be included in any definition. It should follow that insects, which breathe through holes in their sides, cannot have noses, and this is the truth. Fishes, too, though they may have snouts, have not noses, because they breathe by gills. In truth, it seems that the nose was a very late and high acquisition, almost the finishing touch of the perfected animal form. And incidentally this leads us to notice what a great step was taken in evolution when the breathing holes were brought up to the region of the mouth. For the sense of taste is necessarily situated in the mouth, and the sense of smell is in close alliance with it. The mouth tastes food dissolved in the saliva during the process of mastication, and the primary use of the sense of smell is to detect and analyse beforehand the small particles given off by food and floating in the atmosphere. A good many years ago, when the late Sally chimpanzee was the darling of the Zoological Gardens in Regent's Park, I watched her eating dates. She was an epicure, and always peeled each date delicately with her preposterous lips before eating it, and during the process she would apply the date to her nose every second to test its quality or enjoy its aroma. The action was indescribably comical, but what would it have been if her nostrils had been situated among her ribs? Imagine a mantis, for example, as he chews up a fly, lifting one of his wings and applying it to his flanks to see if it smells gamey. That is where some naturalists believe that the sense of smell is situated in insects. Others, however, think, with reason, that it is in the antennae or mouth. Nobody knows; the senses of the lower animals seem to be stuck about all parts of the body. But, even if the sense of smell is at the mouth, how limited must its usefulness be when it can only deal with substances that are held to it! A new era dawned when the passages by which the breath of life unceasingly comes and goes were transferred to the region of the mouth also. The nerves of smell quickly spread themselves over the lining membrane of those passages and became warders of the gate, challenging every waft of air that entered the body and examining what it carried. Thenceforth this region comprising the mouth, nostrils and surrounding parts holds a new and high place in the economy of the body, for the headquarters of the intelligence department are located there, and all the faculties of the brain converge on that point. Of course, the eyes and ears claim a share, but they are not far off. Now it is being recognised more and more clearly by medical and physiological science that when the mind is much directed to any part of the body it exercises an influence in some way not understood on the flow of blood to that part to a degree which may seriously affect its functions and even its growth. When a person is suffering from any nervous affection, from heart disease, or even from weakness of the eyes, it is of the utmost importance to keep him from knowing it if possible, for if he knows it he will think about it, and that will inevitably aggravate it. This principle is well recognised in systems of physical culture. And surely it is impossible that so much intelligence should pass through that one sensitive region of the body which we are considering without affecting its growth and structure. Every muscle in it becomes quick to respond to various sensations in different ways, till the very recollection of those sensations will excite the same response. Nay, we may go further. The mental emotions excited by those sensations will be expressed in the same way. For example, the sense of smell is peculiarly effective in exciting disgust. Anything which does violence to the sense of hearing exasperates, but does not disgust. If a man practises the accordion all day in the next room you do not loathe him, you only want to kill him. But anything that stinks excites pure disgust. Here you have the key to the fact that disgust and all feelings akin to it, disdain, contempt and scorn, express themselves through the nose. Darwin says that when we think of anything base or vile in a man's character the expression of the face is the same "as if we smelled a bad smell." This is an example of the temporary expression of a passing emotion, and there are many others like it. But each of us has his prevailing and dominant emotions which constitute the habitual attitude of his mind. And by the habitual indulgence of any emotion the features will become habituated to the expression of it, and so the set of our features comes at last to express our prevailing and dominant emotions; in other words, our _character_. [Illustration: THE NOSTRILS OF THE APTERYX ARE AT THE TIP OF ITS BEAK.] But let us return to the evolution of the nose. In these days of universal "Nature study" nobody need be told that the practice of breathing through the nostrils was introduced by the amphibians and reptiles. The former (frogs and toads) take to it only when they come of age, but lizards, snakes and all other reptiles do it from infancy. But the nose is not yet. That is something too delicate to come out of a cold-blooded snout covered with hard scales. Birds, too, by having their mouth parts encased in a horny bill seem to be debarred from wearing noses. And yet there is one primeval fowl, most ancient of all the feathered families, which has come near it. I mean the apteryx, that eccentric, wingless recluse which hides itself in the scrub jungles of New Zealand. Its nostrils, unlike those of every other bird, are at the tip of its beak, which is swollen and sensitive; and Dr. Buller says that as it wanders about in the night it makes a continual sniffing and softly taps the walls of its cage with the point of its bill. But the apteryx is one of those odd geniuses which come into the world too soon, and perish ineffectual. Its kindred are all extinct, and so will it be ere long. [Illustration: A BOLD ATTEMPT TO GROW IN THE CASE OF A TAPIR] When we come to the beasts we find the right conditions at last for the growth of the nose. Take the horse for an example of the average beast without idiosyncrasy. Its profile is nearly a straight line from the crown to the nostrils, beyond which it slopes downwards to the lips. The skin of this part is soft and smooth, without hair, and the horse dearly loves to have it fondled. The sense of touch is evidently uppermost. At this stage there was what to the eye of fancy looks like a bold attempt to grow a nose in the case of a tapir, but it miscarried. These hoofed beasts are all very hard up for something in the way of a hand to bring their food to their mouths. The camel employs its lips and the cow its tongue; the muntjae or barking deer of India has attained a tongue of such length that it uses it for a handkerchief to wipe its eyes. So the tapir could not resist the temptation to misapply its nose to the purpose of gathering fodder, and the ultimate result was the elephant, whose nose is a wonderful hand and a bucket and other things. The pig, being a swine, debased its nose in a worse way, making a grubbing tool of it. There has been another attempt to misuse and pervert this part of the face which I scarcely dare to touch upon, for it is so utterly fantastic and mystical that I fear the charge of heresy if I give words to my thoughts. It occurs among bats, a tribe of obscure creatures about which common knowledge amounts to this, that they fly about after sunset, are uncanny, and fond of getting entangled in the hair of ladies, and should be killed. But there are certain families of bats, named horseshoe bats, leaf-nosed bats and vampires about which common knowledge is _nil_, and the knowledge possessed by naturalists very little, so I will tell what I know of them. They are larger than common bats, their wings are broad, soft and silent, like those of the owl, they sleep in caves, tombs and ruins, they do not flutter in the open air, but swiftly traverse gloomy avenues and shady glades, their prey is not gnats and midges, but the "droning beetle," the death's head moth, the cockchafer, croaking frogs, sleeping birds and _human blood_. The books will tell you that these bats are distinguished by "complicated nasal appendages consisting of foliaceous skin processes around the nostrils," which is quite true and utterly futile. It may do for a dried skin or a specimen in spirits of wine. I have had the foul fiend in a cage and looked him in the face. His whole countenance, from lips to brow and from cheek to cheek, is covered and hidden by a hideous design of Spells and signs, Symbolic letters, circles, lines, sculptured in living, quivering skin. It is a sight to make the flesh creep. The books suggest that these foliaceous appendages are the organs of some special sense akin to touch. Futile again! There are things in Nature still which prompt the naturalist who has not atrophied his inner eye and starved his imagination to cry out: Science ... Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart, Vulture, whose wings are dull realities? Supposing there should be in the unseen universe an evil spirit, an imp of malice and mischief, not Milton's Satan, but the Deil of Burns: Whyles ranging, like a roaring lion, For prey, a' holes an' corners tryin; Whyles on the strong-winged tempest flyin, Tirlin the kirks; Whyles in the human bosom pryin, and supposing him to crave possession of a body through which he might get into touch with this material world and express himself in outward forms and motions; then oh! how fitly were this bat explained. But let us go back to firm ground. If you compare a dog's profile with that of a horse you will note at once that the nostrils are in advance of the lips, and have a kind of portal to themselves. This is a distinct advance. The sense of smell has come to the front and pushed aside the lower sense of touch. You will observe, too, that with the growth of the brain the brain-pan has elevated itself above the level of the nose. Through the cat to the monkeys the process proceeds, the forehead advancing, the jaws retreating, and the nostrils leaving the lips, until they finally settle in a detached villa midway between the eyes and the mouth. This is the nose. I do not know the use of it. I cannot fathom the meaning of it. It is a solemn mystery. See the face of an orang-outang. It is a _countenance_, a signboard with three distinct lines of writing on it, the eyes, the nose and the mouth. You may not think much of this particular nose. Neither do I. I think it is situated rather too near the eyes and too far from the mouth. It is a little too small also, and wants style. But you must not judge a first attempt too critically. I have seen human noses of a pattern not unlike this, but they are not considered aristocratic: perhaps they indicate a reversion to the ancestral type. [Illustration: I HAVE SEEN HUMAN NOSES OF A PATTERN NOT UNLIKE THIS, BUT THEY ARE NOT CONSIDERED ARISTOCRATIC.] But the noses even of monkeys are not all like this. In fact, there is a good deal of variety, and two in particular have struck me as quite remarkable. One is that of the long-nosed monkey (_Semnopithecus nasalis_). I think it must have suggested Sterne's stranger on a mule, who had travelled to the promontory of noses and threw all Strassburg into a ferment. I have often contemplated this nose in mute wonderment, and longed to see that monkey in life, if so be I might arrive at some understanding of it; for the taxidermist cannot rise above his own level, and the man who would mount _S. nasalis_ would need to be a Henry Irving. Then there is the sub-nosed monkey, labelled _rhinopithecus_, of which there is an expressive specimen at the South Kensington Museum. Who can consider that nose seriously and continue to believe in a recipe made up of struggle for existence, adaptation to environment, and natural selection _quantum suf_.? If I could dine with that monkey, ask it to drink a glass of wine with me, offer it a pinch of snuff and so on, I might come in time to feel, if not to comprehend, the import of its nose. [Illustration: THE LONG-NOSED MONKEY.] [Illustration: WHO CAN CONSIDER THAT NOSE SERIOUSLY?] But one step further is required for the evolution of what we may call the human nose, and that is a solid foundation, a ridge of bone connecting it with the brow and separating the eyes from each other. I believe that the completeness of this is a fair index of the comparative advancement of different races of men. In the Greek ideal of a perfect face the profile forms a straight line from the top of the forehead to the tip of the nose. This is the type of face which painters have delighted to give to the Virgin Mary; and, when looking at their Madonnas, one cannot help wondering whether they forgot that Mary was a Jewess. According to the Hebrew ideal, a perfect nose was like "the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus" (Song of Solomon, vii. 4); but not even the ruins of that tower remain to help us to-day. The Romans, no doubt, accepted the ideal of the Greeks aesthetically, but their destiny had given them a very different nose, and they ruled the world. Here is the nose of Julius Caesar as a coin has preserved it for us. I think that the outline is too straight for a typical Roman, but the deep dip under the brow and the downward point are characteristic. Now compare the nose of another race which rules an empire greater than that of the Caesars. Here is John Bull as _Punch_ usually represents him. It belongs to the same genus as that of the Roman. The reason why this should be the nose of command is not easy to give with scientific precision, for we are dealing with the play of very subtle influences, so the man without imagination will no doubt scoff. But I will take shelter under Darwin. Dealing with the expression of pride he says, "A proud man exhibits his sense of superiority by holding his head and body erect. He is haughty _(haut),_ or high, and makes himself appear as large as possible." Again, "The arrogant man looks down on others"; and yet again, "In some photographs of patients affected by a monomania of pride, sent me by Dr. Crichton-Browne, the head and body were held erect and the mouth firmly closed. This latter action, expressive of decision, follows, I presume, from the proud man feeling perfect self-confidence in himself." Darwin says nothing about the nose, but I believe that, by physiological sympathy, it cannot but take part in the habitual downward look upon inferior beings. Darwin goes on to say that, "The whole expression of pride stands in direct antithesis to that of humility"; from which it follows, if my philosophy is sound, that the nose of Uriah Heep was turned upwards. Of course, many emotions may share in the moulding of a nose, and the whole subject is too intricate and vast to be treated briefly. I have only given a few examples to illustrate my argument, and my conclusion is that the key to the peculiar significance and personal quality of the nose is to be found in its _immobility_. The eyes and lips are incessantly in motion, we can twitch and wrinkle the cheeks and forehead, and muscles to move the ears are there, though most men have lost control of them. But the nose stands out like some bold promontory on a level coast, or like the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert, with an ancient history, no doubt, and a mystery perhaps, but without response to any appeal. And for this very reason it is an index, not to that which is transient in the man, but to that which is permanent. He may knit his brows to seem thoughtful and profound, or compress his lips to persuade his friends and himself that he has a strong will, but he can play no trick with his nose. There it stands, an incorruptible witness, testifying to what he is, and not only to what he is, but to the rock whence he was hewn and to the pit whence he was digged. For his nose is a bequest from his ancestors, an entailed estate which he cannot alienate. V EARS Men and women have ears, and so have jugs and pitchers. In the latter case they are useful: jugs and pitchers are lifted by them. And what is useful is fit, and fitness is the first condition of beauty. But human ears are put to no use, except sometimes when naughty little boys are lifted by them in the way of discipline; and I can see no beauty in them. It is only because they are so common that we do not notice how ridiculous they are. In the days of Charles I. men sometimes had their ears cut off for holding wrong opinions, which would have made them famous and popular in these enlightened days, but at that time it made all right-thinking people despise them, so the fashion of going without ears did not spread among us. If it had, then how differently we should all think of the matter now! If we were all accustomed to neat, round heads at drawing-rooms, levees and balls, how repulsive it Would be to see a well-dressed man with two ridiculous, wrinkled appendages sticking out from the sides of his face! In saying this I am not drawing on my fancy, but on my memory. I can recollect the time when no gentleman, still less any lady, would have owned a terrier with its ears on. And why go back so far? The same sentiment is prevalent in good society with respect to men's beards in this year of grace and smooth faces. Yet, if one chance to be looking at a Rembrandt instead of at society, what an infinitely handsomer adjunct to a noble face is a fine beard than a pair of ears! When woman first looked at her face in a polished saucepan, she was at once struck with the comicality of those things, and bethought herself what to do with them. She decided to use them for pegs to hang ornaments on. The improvement excited the admiration of her husband and the envy of her rivals to such a degree that all other women of taste in her tribe did the same, and from that day to this, in almost every country in the world, it has been accounted a shame for any respectable woman to show her face in public in the hideousness of naked ears. This discovery of its capabilities gave a new value to the ear, and a large, roomy one became an asset in the marriage market. I have seen a pretty little damsel of Sind with fourteen jingling silver things hanging at regular intervals from the outside edge of each ear. If Nature had been niggardly, the lobe at least could be enlarged by boring it and thrusting in a small wooden peg, then a larger one, and so on until it could hold an ivory wheel as large as a quoit, and hung down to the shoulders. But Nature surely did not intend the ear for this purpose. Then what did she intend? A popular error is that the ears are given to hear with, but the ears cannot hear. The hearing is done by a box of assorted instruments (_malleus, incus, stapes_, etc.) hidden in a burrow which has its entrance inside of the ear. If you argue that the ears are intended to catch sounds and direct them down to the hearing instrument, then explain their absurd shape. They are useless. A man who wants to hear distinctly puts his hand to his ear. And why do they not turn to meet the sounds that come from different quarters? They are absolutely immovable, and therefore also expressionless. A savage expresses his mind with all the rest of his face; he smiles and grins and pouts and frowns, but his ears stand like gravestones with the inscriptions effaced. How different is the case when you turn from man to the "irrational" animals! The eyes of a fawn are lustrous and beautiful, but they would be as meaningless as polished stones without the eloquent ears that stand behind them and tell her thoughts. Curiosity, suspicion, alarm, anger, submission, friendliness, every emotion that flits across her quick, sensitive mind speaks through them. They are in touch with her soul, and half the music of her life is played on them. And if you abstract yourself from individuals and look at that thing, the ear, in the wide field of life, what a great, living reality it is!--a spiritual unity under infinite diversity of material form and fashion. It is like the telegraph wire overhead, the commonest and plainest of material things, but charged with the silent and invisible currents of the life of the world. "Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore." [Illustration: OR PERHAPS WHEN IT WANTS TO LISTEN IT RAISES A FLIPPER TO ITS EAR.] Birds have no ears, nor have crocodiles, nor frogs, nor snakes. Ears seem to be for beasts only. And not for all beasts. Seals are divided by naturalists into two great families--those with ears, and those without. The common seal belongs to the latter class, and the sea-lion to the former. A common seal lives in the sea, and when it does wriggle up on the beach of an iceberg there is nothing to hear, I suppose, or perhaps when it wants to listen it raises a flipper to its ear. I never saw one doing so, but we do not see everything that happens in the world. The sea-lion, with its stouter limbs, can lift its forepart, raise its head and look about it, and even flop about the ice-fields at a respectable rate. And there is no doubt that one of these is as much above an earless seal as fifty years of Europe are better than a cycle of Cathay. When performing seals are exhibited at a circus sitting on chairs, catching balls on the points of their noses and playing diabolo with them, or balancing billiard cues on their snouts, and doing other miraculous things, they are always sea-lions, not common seals. Of course, I do not mean to insinuate that sea-lions invented the ear and stuck it on: that would be unscientific; but I mean that their general intelligence and interest in affairs created that demand for more distinct hearing which led to the development of an ear trumpet. This view is wholly scientific, though pedants may quarrel with my way of putting it. The sea-lion's ears are very minute, mere apologies one might think; but don't be hasty. The finny prey of the sea-lion makes no sound as it skims through the water; and perhaps the padded foot of that stealthy garrotter, the Polar bear, makes as little on the smooth ice; for catching the one and not being caught by the other the sea-lion must trust to the keenness of its great goggle eyes. But it is a social beast, and it wants to catch the bellowing of its fellows far across the foggy waste of ice-floes; and that little leather scoop standing behind the ear-hole seems to be just the instrument required to catch and send down those sounds which would otherwise glance off the glossy fur and never find entrance to the tiny orifice at all. If it were any larger than is absolutely necessary it would be a serious impediment to a professional diver and swimmer like the sea-lion. This is the reason why otters have very small ears, and why whales and porpoises have none at all. But when a beast lives on land the conditions are all altered, and then the ear blossoms out into an infinite variety of forms and sizes, from each of which the true naturalist may divine the manner of life of its wearer as surely as the palmist tells your past, present and future from the lines on your hand. First, he will divide all beasts into those that pursue and those that flee, oppressors and oppressed. The former point their ears forwards, but the latter backwards. There may be a good deal of free play in both cases, but I am thinking of the habitual position. When a cat is making its felonious way along the garden wall, wrapped in thoughts of blackbirds and thrushes, its ears look straight forwards, and this is the way in which a cat's portrait is always taken, because it is characteristic, It cannot turn them round to catch sounds from behind, and would scorn to do so; when accosted from behind, it turns its head and looks danger in the face. It can fold them down backwards when the danger is a terrier and the decks are cleared for action, but that is another story. Contrast Brer Rabbit as he comes "lopin' up de big road," His ears are turning every way scouting for danger, not always in unison, but independently; but when he is at rest they are set to alarm from the flank and rear. [Illustration: "TEAR OUT THE HOUSE LIKE THE DOGS WUZ ATTER HIM."] But when he "tear out the house like the dogs wuz atter him," then they point straight back. He was made to be eaten, and he knows it. So it is with the whole tribe of deer, and even with the horse, pampered and cared for and unacquainted with danger; his ears are a weathercock registering the drift of all his petty hopes and fears. I see the left ear go forward and prepare for a desperate shy at that wheelbarrow. He knows a wheelbarrow familiarly--there is one in his stall all day--but I am taking him a road he does not want to go, and so the hypocrite is going to pretend that barrow is of a dangerous sort. I prepare to apply a counter-irritant: he sees it with the corner of his eye, and both ears turn back like a tuning-fork. The size and quality of the ear serve to show how far the owner depends on it. You will never begin to understand Nature until you see clearly that every life is dominated by two supreme anxieties which push aside all other concerns--viz., to eat, and not to be eaten. The one is uppermost in those that pursue, and the other in those that flee. Now if the pursuer fails he loses a dinner, but if the fugitive fails he loses his life, from which it follows that the very best sort of ears will be found among those beasts that do not ravage but run. But there is another matter to be taken into account. The ears are not the whole of the beast's outfit. It has eyes, and it has a nose. Which of the three it most relies on depends upon the manner of its life. A bird lives in trees or the air, looking down at the prowling cat or up at the hawk hovering in the clear sky; so it does not keep ears, and its nose is of no account. But what four-footed thing can see like a bird? The squirrel also lives in the trees, and its ears are frivolously decorated with tufts of hair. You will not find many beasts that can afford to prostitute their ears to ornamental purposes. The only other beast that I can think of at this moment which has tufted ears is the lynx. Now the lynx is a tree cat, and there is proverbial wisdom in the saying "Eyes like a lynx." [Illustration: A GREAT CATHOLIC CONGRESS OF DISTINGUISHED EARS.] But go to the timid beasts that spend their lives on the ground among grass and brushwood and woods and coppices, where murderous foes are prowling unseen, and you will see ears indeed--expansive, tremulous, turning lightly on well-oiled pivots, and catching, like large sea-shells, the mingled murmur of rustling leaves and snapping twigs and chirping insects and falling seeds, and the slight, occasional, abrupt, fateful sound which is none of these. It is impossible, no doubt, for us ever to think ourselves into the life which these beasts live--moving, thinking and sleeping in a circumambient atmosphere of never-ceasing sound; sitting, as it were, at the receiving station of a system of wireless telegraphy, and catching cross-currents of floating intelligence from all quarters, mostly undiscernible by us if we listened for it, but which they, by long practice, instantly locate and interpret without conscious effort. The zoologist classifies them under many heads. The field mouse and rabbits are rodentia, the deer ungulata, the kangaroos marsupialia. In my museum they are all one family, and their labels are their ears. In these days of international conferences, parliaments of religion, pan-everything-in-turn councils, might we not arrange for a great catholic congress of distinguished ears? What a glow of new life it would shed upon our straitened, traditional ways of thinking about the social problems of our humble fellow-creatures! I would exclude the eared owls, whose ears are a mere sport of fashion, like the hideous imitations of birds' wings which ladies stick on their hats. But just when this peep into the rare show of Nature is lifting my soul into sublimity, I am brought down to the base earth again by an exception. This is the plague of all high science. You design a stately theory, collect from many quarters a wealth of facts to establish it with, and have arranged them with cumulative and irresistible force, when some disgusting, uninvited case thrusts itself in on your notice and refuses to fit into your argument at all. In this instance it is "my lord the elephant." That he has no need to concern himself about any bloodthirsty beast that may be lurking in the jungle is not more obvious than that his ears are the biggest in the world. Now there are two ways of getting rid of an obstruction of this kind. One is to betake yourself to your thinking chair and pipe and to rake up the possibilities of the Pleiocene and Meiocene ages, and prove that when the immense ear of the elephant was evolved there must have been some carnivorous monster, some sabre-toothed tiger or cave bear, which preyed on elephants. The other way is to get acquainted with the elephant, cultivate an intimacy with him, and find out what his ears are to him. I prefer the second way. I would patiently watch him as he stands drowsily under an umbrageous banian tree on a sultry day before the monsoon has burst and refreshed earth and air. So might I note that his ears are incessantly moving, but not turning this way and that to catch sounds--just flapping, flapping, as if to cool his great temples. So have I seen the gigantic fruit bats, called flying foxes in India, hanging in hundreds in the upper branches of a tall peepul tree at noon, feeling too hot to sleep, and all fanning themselves in unison with one wing--a comic spectacle. And at each flap of the elephant's ears I would observe that a cloud of flies (for the elephant is not too great to be pestered by the despicable hordes of beggars for blood) were dislodged from their feeding grounds about his head and neck, and, trying to settle about his rear parts, were driven back again by the swinging of his tail. Then I should say that ear is just a fan. How significant it is that among the emblems of royalty in the East the three chiefest are an umbrella-bearer, two men who stand behind and swing great punkahs modelled on the elephant's ear, and two others carrying yak's tails wherewith to scare the flies from the royal person! The elephant is a rajah! There is another mysterious ear which is a stumbling-block to the simple theory-monger. It is in fashion among a tribe of bats to which belongs the so-called vampire of India. This monster is fond of coming into your bedroom at midnight through the open windows, but not to suck your blood, for it has little in common with the true vampire of South America. It brings its dinner with it and hangs from the ceiling, "feeding like horses when you hear them feed." You hear its jaws working--crunch, crunch, crunch, but feel too drowsy to get up and expel it. When you get up in the morning there on your clean dressing table, just below the place where it hung, are the bloody remains of a sparrow, or the crumbs of a tree-frog. The servants will tell you that the sparrow was killed and eaten by a rat, but if you rise softly next night when you hear the sound of feeding, and shut the windows, you will find a goblin hanging from the ceiling in the morning, hideous beyond the power of words to tell. Its ears, thin, membranous and longer than its head, tremble incessantly. Inside of them is another pair, much smaller than the first, and tuned to their octave, I should guess, while two membranous smelling trumpets of similar pattern rise over the nose. What is the meaning of these repulsive instruments, and how does that strange beast catch sparrows? When it comes out after dark and quarters the garden, passing swiftly under and through the branches of trees, they are sound asleep hidden among the leaves, motionless and silent. But their flesh may be scented, and their gentle breathing heard if you have instruments sufficiently delicate. Then the ample wings may suddenly enfold the sleeping body, and the savage jaws grip the startled head before there is time even to scream. Without a doubt this is the secret of the vampire bat's ears. But to find food and flee death are not the only interests in life even to the meanest creature. There are social pleasures, family affections and fellowship, sympathy and co-operation in the struggles of life. And there is love. Omne adeo genus in terris hominumque ferarumque, Et genus aequoreum, pecudes, pictaeque volucres, In furias ignemque ruunt: amor omnibus idem. The chirping of the cricket, the song of the lark, the call of the sentinel crane, the watchword with which the migratory geese keep their squadrons together, the howling of jackals, the lowing of cows, the hum of the hive, the chatter of the drawing-room, and a hundred other voices in forest and field and town remind us that the voice and the ear are the pair of wheels on which society runs. And this thought points the way out of another contradictious puzzle, that which confronts my argument from the ears of an ass. It roams treeless deserts where no foe can approach unseen. Thistles make no sound. Why should it be adorned with ears which in their amplitude are scarcely surpassed by those of the rabbit and the hare. There is no answer unless their function is to hear the bray of a fellow-ass.... One may object that that majestic sound is surely of force to impress itself without any aid from an external ear; but that is a vain argument built on the costermonger's moke--dreary exile from its fatherland. Remember that its ancestors wandered on the steppes of Central Asia or the borders of the Sahara. In those boundless solitudes, with nothing that eye can see or that common ear can hear to remind her that she is not the sole inhabitant of the universe, the wild ass "snuffeth up the wind in her desire," and lifting her windsails to the hot blast, hears, borne across miles of white sand and shimmering mirage, the joyful reverberations of that music which tells of old comrades and boon companions scouring the plain and kicking up their exultant heels. Monkeys taking to trees were like the birds, they scarcely needed ears. And so by the high road of evolution you arrive at man and the enigma of his ear. It is a shrunken and shrivelled remnant, a moss-grown ruin, a derelict ship. It is to a pattern ear what the old shoe which you find in a country lane, shed from the foot of some "unemployed," is to one of Waukenphast's "five-miles-an-hour-easy" boots. We ought to temper our contempt for what it is with respect for what it was. All the parts of it are there and recognisable, even to the muscles that should move it, but we have lost control of them. I believe anyone could regain that by persevering exercise of his will power for a time--that is, if he has any. I have a friend who, if you treat him with disrespect, shrivels you up with a sarcastic wag of his right ear. The ears of dogs open up another vista for the questioning philosopher. Their day is past, too, and man may cut them short to match his own, but the dog grows them longer than before. When he first took service with man, and grew careless and lazy, the muscles got slack and the ears dropped, which is in accordance with Nature. Then, instead of being allowed to wither away, they have been handed over to the milliner and shaped and trimmed in harmony with the "style" of each breed of dogs. How it has been done is one of those mysteries which will not open to the iron keys of Darwin, But there it is for those to see who have eyes. [Illustration: THE CURLS OF A MOTHER'S DARLING.] The ears of the little dogs bred for ladies' laps are the curls of a mother's darling; the pendant love-locks of the old, old maid who, despite of changeful fashions, clings to those memorials of the pensive beauty of her youth, are repeated in solemn mimicry by the dachshund trotting at her heels; but the sensible fur cap of the dignified Newfoundland reminds us of the cold regions from which his forefathers came. Some kinds of terriers still have their ears starched up to look perky, and I have occasionally seen a dog with one ear up and the other down as if straining after the elusive idea expressed in the Baden-Powell hat. All which shows that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin." VI TOMMY THE STORY OF AN OWL Among the many and various strangers within my gates who have helped to enliven the days of my exile, Tommy was one towards whom I still feel a certain sense of obligation because he taught me for the first time what an owl is. For Tommy was an owl. From any dictionary you may ascertain that an owl is a nocturnal, carnivorous bird, of a short, stout form, with downy feathers and a large head; and if that does not satisfy you, there is no lack of books which will furnish fuller and more precise descriptions. But descriptions cannot impart acquaintance. I had sought acquaintance and had gained some knowledge such as books cannot supply, not only of owls in general, but of that particular species of owls to which Tommy belonged, who, in the heraldry of ornithology, was _Carine brahma_, an Indian spotted owlet. This branch of the ancient family of owls has always been eccentric. It does not mope and to the moon complain. It flouts the moon and the sun and everyone who passes by, showing its round face at its door and even coming out, at odd times of the day, to stare and bob and play the clown. It does not cry "Tuwhoo, Tuwhoo," as the poets would have it, but laughs, jabbers, squeaks and chants clamorous duets with its spouse. All this I knew. I had also gathered from his public appearances that a spotted owlet is happy in his domestic life and that he is fond of fat white ants, for, when their winged swarms were flying, I had seen him making short flights from his perch in a tree and catching them with his feet; and I believed that he fed in secret on mice and lizards. But all that did not amount to understanding an owl, as I discovered when Tommy became a member of our chummery. Tommy was born in "the second city of the British Empire," to wit, Bombay, in the month of March, 1901. His birthplace was a hole in an old "Coral" tree. Domestic life in that hole was not conducted with regularity. Meals were at uncertain hours and uncertain also in their quantity and quality. The parents were hunters and were absent for long periods, and though there was incredible shouting and laughter when they returned, they came at such irregular times that we did not suspect that they were permanent residents and had a family. One night, however, Tommy, being precocious and, as we discovered afterwards, keen on seeing life, took advantage of parental absence to clamber to the entrance of the nursery and, losing his balance, toppled over into the garden. He kept cool, however, and tried to conceal himself, but Hurree the malee, watering the plants early in the morning, spied him lying with his face on the earth and brought him to us. He seemed dead, but he was very much alive, as appeared when he was made to sit up and turned those wonderful eyes of his upon us. He was a droll little object at that time, nearly globular in form and covered with down, like a toy for children to play with. His head turned like a revolving lighthouse and flared those eyes upon you wherever you went, great luminous orbs, black-centred and gold-ringed and full of silent wonder, or, I should rather say, surprise. This never left him. To the last everything that presented itself to his gaze, though he had seen it a hundred times, seemed to fill him with fresh surprise. Nothing ever became familiar. What an enviable cast of mind! It must make the brightness of childhood perennial. There was some discussion as to how Tommy should be fed, and we finally decided that one should try to open the small hooked beak, whose point could just be detected protruding from a nest of fluff, while another held a piece of raw meat ready to pop in. It did not look an easy job, but we had scarcely set about it when Tommy himself solved the difficulty by plucking the meat out of our fingers and swallowing it. This early intimation that, however absent he might look, he was "all there" was never belied, and there was no further difficulty about the feeding of him. When he saw us coming he always fell into the same ridiculous attitude, with his face in the dust, but we just picked him up and stood him on his proper end and showed him the meat and his bashfulness vanished at once. After sunset he would get lively and begin calling for his mother in a strange husky voice. At this time we would let him out in the garden, watching him closely, for, if he thought he was alone, he would sneak away slyly, then make a run for liberty, hobbling along at a good rate with the aid of his wings, though he never attempted to fly as yet. When detected and overtaken, he fell on his face as before. One memorable day he found a hole in a stone wall and, before we could stop him, he was in. The hole was too small to admit a hand, though not a rat or a snake, so the prospect was gloomy. Suddenly a happy inspiration came to me. That sad, husky cry with which he expressed his need of a mother was not difficult to mimic, and he might be cheated into thinking that a lost brother or sister was looking for him. I retired and made the attempt, and, hark! a faint echo came from the wall. At each repetition it became clearer, until the round face and great eyes appeared at the mouth of the hole. Then the round body tumbled out, and little Tommy was hobbling about, looking, with pathetic eagerness, for "the old familiar faces." When he discovered how he had been betrayed, his face went down and he suffered himself to be carried quietly to the canary's cage in which he was kept. It seemed to be time now to begin Tommy's education, for I judged that, if he had been at home, he would ere then have been getting nightly lessons in the poacher's art. So I procured a small gecko, one of those grey house lizards, with pellets at the ends of their toes, which come down from the roof after the lamps are lit and gorge themselves on the foolish moths and plant bugs that come to the light. Securing it with a thin cord tied round its waist, I introduced it into Tommy's cage. He looked surprised, very much surprised. He raised himself to his full height. He gazed at it. He curtseyed. He gave a little jump and was standing with both feet on the lizard. A moment more and the lizard was gliding down his throat with my thin cord after it. Mr. Seton Thompson would have us believe that all young things are laboriously trained by their parents, just like human children, and if he was an eye-witness of all the scenes that he describes so vividly, it must be so with other young things. But he did not know Tommy, who is the bird of Minerva and evidently sprang into being, like his patron goddess, with all his armour on. After a time, when he had exchanged his infant down for a suit of feathers, he was promoted to a large cage out in the garden, and his regular diet was a little raw meat or a mutton bone tied to one of his perches, but, by way of a treat, I would offer him, whenever I could get it, a locust, or large grasshopper. His way of accepting this was unique and pretty. He would look surprised, stare, curtsey once or twice, stare again and then, suddenly, noiselessly and as lightly as a fairy, flit across the cage and, without alighting, pluck the insect from my fingers with both his feet and return to his perch. Why he bowed to his food and to everybody and everything that presented itself before him was a riddle that I never solved. A materialistic friend suggested that he was adjusting the focus of his wonderful eyes, and the action was certainly like that of an optician examining a lens; but I feel that there was something more ceremonial about it. This punctiliousness cost him his dinner once. I was curious to know what he would do with a mouse, so, having caught one alive, I slipped it quietly into his cage. He was more surprised than ever before, raised himself erect, bowed to the earth once, twice and three times, stared, bowed again and so on until, to his evident astonishment and chagrin, the mouse found an opening and was gone. The lesson was not lost. A few days later I got another mouse, to which he began to do obeisance as before, but very soon and suddenly, though as softly as falling snow, he plumped upon it with both feet and, spreading his wings on the ground, looked all round him with infinite satisfaction. The mouse squeaked, but he stopped that by cracking its skull quietly with his beak. Then he gathered himself up and flew to the perch with his prize. One thing I noted about Tommy most emphatically. He never showed a sign of affection, or what is called attachment. He maintained a strictly bowing acquaintance with me. He was not afraid, but he would suffer no familiarity. He would come and eat, with due ceremony, out of my hand, but if I offered to touch him he was surprised and affronted and went off at once. When I moved to another house I found that I could not continue to keep him, so I sent him to the zoological garden, where I visited him sometimes, but he never vouchsafed a token of recognition. His heart was locked except to his own kin. But since that time, when I have seen an owl, even a barn owl, or a great horned owl, swiftly cross the sky in the darkness of night, I have felt that I could accompany it, in imagination, on its secret quest. It will arrive silently, like the angel of death, in a tree overlooking a field in which a rat, whose hour has come, is furtively feeding, all alert and tremulous, but unaware of any impending danger. The rat will go on feeding, unconscious of the mocking curtsey and the baleful eyes that follow with mute attention its every motion, until the hand of the clock has moved to the point assigned by fate, and then it will feel eight sharp talons plunged into its flesh. I have seen the fierce dash of the sparrow hawk into a crowd of unsuspecting sparrows, I know the triumph of the falcon as it rises for the final, fatal swoop on the flying duck, and I have watched the kestrel, high in air, scanning the field for some rash mouse or lizard that has wandered too far from shelter. The owl is also a bird of prey, but its idea is different from all these. VII THE BARN OWL A FRIEND OF MAN A thunderstorm has burst on the common rat. Its complicity in the spread of the plague, which has been proved up to the hilt, has filled the cup of its iniquities to overflowing, and we have awakened to the fact that it is and always has been an arch-enemy of mankind. Simultaneously, in widely separated parts of the world, a "pogrom" has been proclaimed, and the accounts of the massacre which come to us from great cities like Calcutta and Bombay are appalling and almost incredible. They would move to pity the most callous heart, if pity could be associated with the rat. But it cannot. The wild rat deserves that humane consideration to which all our natural fellow-creatures on this earth are entitled; but the domestic rat (I use this term advisedly, for though man has not domesticated it, it has thoroughly domesticated itself) cannot justify its existence. It is a fungus of civilisation. If it confined itself to its natural food, the farmer's grain, the tax which it levies on the country would still be such as no free people ought to endure. But it confines itself to nothing. As Waterton says: "After dining on carrion in the filthiest sink, it will often manage to sup on the choicest dainties of the larder, where like Celoeno of old _vestigia foeda relinquit_." It kills chickens, plunders the nests of little birds, devouring mother, eggs and young, murders and feeds on its brothers and sisters and even its own offspring, and not infrequently tastes even man when it finds him asleep. The bite of a rat is sometimes very poisonous, and I have had to give three months' sick leave to a clerk who had been bitten by one. Add to this that the rat multiplies at a rate which is simply criminal, rearing a family of perhaps a dozen every two or three months, and no further argument is needed to justify the war which has been declared against it. Every engine of war will, no doubt, be brought into use, traps of many kinds, poisons, cats, the professional rat-catcher, and a rat bacillus which, if once it gets a footing, is expected to originate a fearful epidemic. But I need not linger any more among rats, which are not my subject. I am writing in the hope that this may be an opportune time to put in a plea for a much persecuted native of this and many other countries, whose principal function in the economy of nature is to kill rats and mice. The barn, or screech, owl, which is found over a great part of Europe and Asia and also in America, was once very common in Britain, inhabiting every "ivy-mantled tower," church steeple, barn loft, hollow tree, or dovecot, in which it could get a lodging. But it was never welcome. Like the Jews in the days of King John it has been relentlessly persecuted by superstition, ignorance and avarice. Avarice, instigated by ladies and milliners, has looked with covetous eye on its downy and beautiful plumes; while ignorance and superstition have feared and hated the owl in all countries and all ages. In ancient Rome it was a bird of evil omen. Foedaque fit volucris venturi nuncia luctus, Ignavus bubo, dirum mortalibus omen. In India, to-day, if an owl sits on the house-top, the occupants dare scarcely lie down to sleep, for they know that the devil is walking the rooms and marking someone for death. Lady Macbeth, when about the murder of Duncan, starts and whispers, Hark! Peace! It was the owl that shrieked, The fatal bellman. And even as late as the nineteenth century, Waterton's aged housekeeper "knew full well what sorrow it had brought into other houses when she was a young woman," Witches, like modern ladies of fashion, set great value on its wings. The latter stick them on their hats, the witches in Macbeth threw them into their boiling cauldron. Horace's Canidia could not complete her recipe without "Plumamque nocturnae strigis." We may suppose that in Britain these superstitions are gone for ever, killed and buried by board schools and compulsory education. If they are (there is room for an _if_) they have been succeeded by a worse, the superstition of gamekeepers and farmers. It is worse in effect, because these men have guns, which their predecessors had not. And it is more wicked, because it is founded on an ignorance for which there is no excuse. How little harm the barn owl is likely to do game may be inferred from the fact that, when it makes its lodging in a dovecot, the pigeons suffer no concern! Waterton (and no better authority could be quoted) scouts the idea, common among farmers, that its business there is to eat the pigeons' eggs. "They lay the saddle," he says, "on the wrong horse. They ought to put it on the rat." His predecessor in the estate had allowed the owls to be destroyed and the rats to multiply, and there were few young pigeons in the dovecot. Waterton took strong measures to exterminate the rats, but built breeding places for the owls, and the dovecot, which they constantly frequented, became prolific again. But granting that the owls did twice the injury to game with which they are credited, it would be repaid many times over by their services. Waterton well says that, if we knew its utility in thinning the country of mice, it would be with us what the ibis was with the Egyptians--a sacred bird. He examined the pellets ejected by a pair of owls that occupied a ruined gateway on the estate. Every pellet contained skeletons of from four to seven mice. Owls, it may be necessary to explain, swallow their food without separating flesh from bone, skin and hair, and afterwards disgorge the indigestible portions rolled up into little balls. In sixteen months the pair of owls above-mentioned had accumulated a deposit of more than a bushel of these pellets, each a funeral urn of from four to seven mice! In the old Portuguese fort of Bassein in Western India I noticed that the earth at the foot of a ruined tower was plentifully mixed with small skulls, jaws and other bones. Taking home a handful and examining them, I found that they were the remains of rats, mice and muskrats. The owl kills small birds, large insects, frogs and even fishes, but these are extras: its profession is rat-catching and mousing, and only those who have a very intimate personal acquaintance with it know how peculiarly its equipment and methods are adapted to this work. The falcon gives open chase to the wild duck, keeping above it if possible until near enough for a last spurt; then it comes down at a speed which is terrific, and, striking the duck from above, dashes it to the ground. The sparrow hawk plunges unexpectedly into a group of little birds and nips up one with a long outstretched foot before they have time to get clear of each other. The harrier skims over field, copse and meadow, suddenly rounding corners and topping fences and surprising small birds, or mice, on which it drops before they have recovered from their surprise. The owl does none of these things. For one thing, it hunts in the night, when its sight is keenest and rats are abroad feeding. Its flight is almost noiseless and yet marvellously light and rapid when it pleases. Sailing over field, lane and hedgerow and examining the ground as it goes, it finds a likely place and takes a post of observation on a fence perhaps, or a sheaf of corn. Here it sits, bolt upright, all eyes. It sees a rat emerge from the grass and advance slowly, as it feeds, into open ground. There is no hurry, for the doom of that rat is already fixed. So the owl just sits and watches till the right moment has arrived; then it flits swiftly, softly, silently, across the intervening space and drops like a flake of snow. Without warning, or suspicion of danger, the rat feels eight sharp claws buried in its flesh. It protests with frantic squeals, but these are stopped with a nip that crunches its skull, and the owl is away with it to the old tower, where the hungry children are calling, with weird, impatient hisses, for something to eat. The owl does not hunt the fields and hedgerows only. It goes to all places where rats or mice may be, reconnoitres farmyards, barns and dwelling houses and boldly enters open windows. Sometimes it hovers in the air, like a kestrel, scanning the ground below. And though its regular hunting hours are from dusk till dawn, it has been seen at work as late as nine or ten on a bright summer morning. But the vulgar boys of bird society are fond of mobbing it when it appears abroad by day, and it dislikes publicity. The barn owl lays its eggs in the places which it inhabits. There is usually a thick bed of pellets on the floor, and it considers no other nest needful. The eggs are said to be laid in pairs. There may be two, four, or six, of different eggs, in the nest, and perhaps a young one, or two, at the same time. Eggs are found from April, or even March, till June or July, and there is, sometimes at any rate, a second brood as late as November or December. This owl does not hoot, but screeches. A weird and ghostly voice it is, from which, according to Ovid, the bird has its Latin name, Strix (pronounced "Streex," probably, at that time). Est illis strigibus nomen, sed nominis hujus. Causa, quod horrenda stridere nocte silent. It is a sound which, coming suddenly out of the darkness, might well start fears and forebodings in the dark and guilty mind of untutored man, which would not be dispelled by a nearer view of the strange object from which they proceeded. White, ghostly, upright, spindle-shaped and biggest at the top, where two great orbs flare, like fiery bull's-eyes, from the centres of two round white targets, it stands solemn and speechless; you approach nearer and it falls into fearsome pantomimic attitudes and grimaces, like a clown trying to frighten a child. And now a new horror has been added to the barn owl. The numerous letters which appeared in _The Times_ and were summarised, with comments, by Sir T. Digby Pigott, C.B., in _The Contemporary Review_ of July 1908, leave no reasonable room for doubt that this bird sometimes becomes brightly luminous, and is the will-o'-the-wisp for believing in which we are deriding our forefathers. All things considered, I cannot withhold my sympathy and some respect for the superstition of aged housekeepers, Romans and Indians. For that of gamekeepers and farmers I have neither. All our new schemes of "Nature study" will surely deserve the reproach of futility if, in the next generation, every farmhouse in England has not its own Owl Tower for the encouragement of this friend of man. VIII DOMESTIC ANIMALS Long before Jubal became the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ and Tubalcain the instructor of every artificer in brass and iron, Abel was a keeper of sheep, but the sacred writer has not informed us how he first caught them and tamed them. If we consult other records of the infancy of the human race, they reveal as little. When the Egyptians began to portray their daily life on stone 6,000 or 7,000 years ago, they already had cattle and sheep, geese and ducks and dogs and plenty of asses, though not horses. They got these from the Assyrians, who had used them in their chariots long before they began to record anything. Further back than this we have no one to question except those shadowy men of the Stone Age who have left us heaps of their implements, but none of their bones. They were not so careful of the bones of horses, which lie in thousands about the precincts of their untidy villages, but not a scrawl on a bit of a mammoth tusk has been found to indicate whether these were ridden and driven, or only hunted and eaten. Why should it be recorded that Cadmus invented letters? Why should we inquire who first made gunpowder and glass? Why should every schoolboy be taught that Watt was the inventor of the steam engine? Can any of these be put in the scale, as benefactors of our race, with the man who first trained a horse to carry him on its back, or drew milk with his hands from the udders of a cow? The familiarity of the thing has made us callous to the wonder of it. Let us put it before us, like a painting or a statue, and have a good look at it. There is a farmhouse, any common farmhouse, just one of the molecules that constitute the mass of our wholesome country life. A horse is being harnessed for the plough: its ancestors sniffed the wind on the steppes of Tartary. Meek cows are standing to be milked: when primitive man first knew them in their native forests he used to give them a wide berth, for his flint arrows fell harmless off their tough hides, and they were fierce exceedingly. A cock is crowing on the fence as if the whole farm belonged to himself: he ought to be skulking in an Indian jungle. The sheep have no business here; their place is on the rocky mountains of Asia. As for the dog, it is difficult to assign it a country, for it owns no wild kindred in any part of the world, but it ought at least to be worrying the sheep. If there is an ass, it is a native of Abyssinia, and the Turkeys are Americans. The cat derives its descent from an Egyptian. But all these are of one country now and of one religion. They know no home nor desire any, except the farmhouse, in which they were born and bred, and the lord of it is their lord, to whom they look for food and protection. And what would he do without them? What should we do without them? It is impossible to conceive that life could be carried on if we were deprived of these obedient and uncomplaining servants. High civilisation has been attained without steam engines; education, as we use the term now, is superfluous--Runjeet Singh, the Lion of the Punjab, could neither read nor write; the human race has prospered and multiplied without the knowledge of iron; but we know of no time when man did without domestic animals. It is vain to speculate how the thing first came about, whether the sportive anthropoid ape took to riding on a wild goat before he emerged as a man keeping flocks, or whether some great pioneer, destined to be worshipped in after ages as a demigod, showed his fellows how the wild calves, if taken young, might be trained into tractable slaves; and it is hopeless to expect that any record will now leap to light which will give us knowledge in place of speculation. But it might not be unprofitable to seek for some clue to the strange selection which the domesticating genius of man has made from among the multifarious material presented to it by the animal kingdom. If we do so we shall almost be forced to the conclusion that domesticability is a character, or quality, inherent in some animals and entirely wanting in others. Let us begin with pigeons, a very large group, but one that shows more unity than any of the other Orders into which naturalists divide birds. It embraces turtle doves of many species, wood pigeons, ground pigeons, fruit pigeons and some strange forms like the great crowned pigeon of Victoria. Of all these only one, the common blue rock, has been domesticated. The ring dove of Asia has been kept as a cage bird for so long that a permanent albino and also a fawn-coloured variety have been established and are more common in aviaries than birds of the natural colour; but the ring dove has not become a domestic fowl, and never will. In this instance there is a plausible explanation, for the blue rock, unlike the rest of the tribe, nests and roosts in holes and is also gregarious; therefore, if provided with accommodation of the kind it requires, it will form a permanent settlement and remain with us on the same terms as the honey bee; while the ring dove, not caring for a fixed home, must be confined, however tame it may become, or it will wander and be lost. But this explanation will not fit other cases. What a multitude of wild ducks there are in Scotland and every other country, mallards, pintails, gadwalls, widgeons, pochards and teals, all very much alike in their habits and tastes! But of them all only one species, and that a migratory one, the mallard, has been persuaded to abandon its wandering ways and settle down to a life of ease and obesity as a dependant of man. In India there is a duck of the same genus as the mallard, known as the spotted-billed duck (_Anas poecilorhynchus_), which is as large as the mallard and quite as tasty, and is, moreover, not migratory, but remains and breeds in the country. But it has not been domesticated: the tame ducks in India, as here, are all mallards. The muscovy duck is a distinct species which has been domesticated elsewhere and introduced. From the ducks let us turn to the hens. The partridge, grouse and pheasant are all dainty birds, but if we desire to eat them we must shoot them, or (_proh pudor!_) snare them. Plover's eggs are worth four shillings a dozen, but we must seek them on the moors. The birds that have covenanted to accept our food and protection and lay their eggs for our use and rear their young for us to kill are descended from _Gallus bankivus_, the jungle fowl of Eastern India. How they came here history records not: perhaps the gipsies brought them. They appear now in strange and diverse guise, the ponderous and feather-legged Cochin-China, the clean-limbed and wiry game, the crested Houdan, the Minorca with its monstrous comb, and the puny bantam. In Japan there is a breed that carries a tail seven or eight feet in length, which has to be "done" regularly like a lady's hair, to keep it from dirt and damage. But however their outward aspects may differ, they are of the same blood and know it. A featherweight bantam cock will stand up to an elephantine brahma and fight him according to the rules of the ring and next minute pay compliments to his lady in language which she will be at no loss to understand. And if the artificial conditions of their life were removed, they would soon all lapse alike to the image of the stock from which they are sprung. This is well illustrated in a show case in the South Kensington Museum exhibiting a group of fowls from Pitcairn's Island. These are descended from some stock landed by the mutinous crew of H.M.S. _Bounty_ in 1790, which ran wild, and in a century they have gone back to the small size and lithe figure and almost to the game colour of the wild birds from which they branched off before history dawned. If we turn next to the Ruminants, the clean beasts which chew the cud and divide the hoof, the puzzle becomes harder still. Deer and antelopes are often kept as pets, and become so tame that they are allowed to wander at liberty. In Egypt herds of gazelles were so kept before the days of Cheops. In India I have known a black buck which regularly attended the station cricket ground, moving among the nervous players with its nose in the air and insolence in its gait, fully aware that eighteen-inch horns with very sharp points insured respectful treatment. Mr. Sterndale trained a Neilghai to go in harness. The great bovine antelopes of Africa would become as tame, and there is no reason to suppose that their beef and milk would not be as good as those of the cow. But no antelope or deer appears ever to have been domesticated, with the exception of the reindeer. Of the other ruminants the ox, buffalo, yak, goat, sheep and a few others are domestic animals, while the bison and the gaur, or so-called Indian bison, and a large number of wild goats and sheep have been neglected. The buffalo and yak have probably come under the yoke in comparatively recent times, for they are little changed; but the goat and still more the sheep have undergone a wonderful transformation within and without. Who could recognise in a Leicester ewe the wary denizen of precipitous mountains which will not feed until it has set a sentinel to give warning if danger approaches? And here is a curious fact which has scarcely been noticed by naturalists. The original of our goat is supposed to be the Persian ibex. At any rate, it was an ibex of some species, as its horns plainly show. But on the plains of Northern India, under ranges of hills on which the Persian ibex wanders wild, the common domestic goat is a very different animal from that of Europe, and has peculiar spiral horns of the same pattern as the markhor, another grand species of wild goat which draws eager hunters to the higher reaches of the same mountains. From this it would appear that two species of wild goat have been domesticated and kept to some extent distinct, one eventually finding its way westward, but not eastward and southward. The Indian humped cattle also differ so widely in form, structure and voice from those of Europe that there can scarcely be a doubt of their descent from distinct species. But both have entirely disappeared as wild animals, unless indeed the white cattle of Chillingham are really descendants of Caesar's dreadful urus and not merely domestic cattle lapsed into savagery. So have the camel, and, with a similar possible exception, the horse. Was the whole race in each of these cases subjugated, or exterminated, and that by uncivilised man with his primitive weapons? There is no analogy here with the extinction of such animals as the mammoth, for the ox is a beast in every way fitted to live and thrive in the present condition of this world, as much so as the buffalo and the Indian bison, which show no sign of approaching extinction. Our fathers easily got rid of the difficulty by assuming that Noah never released these species after the Flood, but what shall those do who cannot believe in the literality of Noah's ark? As for the dog, its domestication has been the creation of a new species. The material was perhaps the wolf, more likely the jackal, but possibly a blend of more than one species. But a dog is now a dog and neither a wolf nor a jackal. A mastiff, a pug, a collie, a greyhound, a pariah all recognise each other and observe the same rules of etiquette when they meet. We must admit, however, that, whatever pliability of disposition, or other inherent suitability, led to the first domestication of certain species of animals, the changes induced in their natures by many generations of domesticity have made them amenable to man's control to a degree which puts a wide difference between them and their wild relations. A wild ass, though brought up from its birth in a stable, would make a very intractable costermonger's moke. We may infer from this that the first subjugation of each of our common domestic animals was the achievement of some genius, or of some tribe favourably situated, and that they spread from that centre by sale or barter, rather than that they were separately domesticated in many places. This would partly explain why a few species of widely different families are so universally kept in all countries to the exclusion of hundreds of species nearly allied and apparently as suitable. When a want could be supplied by obtaining from another country an animal bred to live with man and serve him, the long and difficult task of softening down the wild instincts of a beast taken from the forests or the hills and acclimatising its constitution to a domestic life was not likely to be attempted. But there have been a few recent additions to our list of domestic animals. The turkey and the guinea fowl are examples, and perhaps within another generation we may be able to add the zebra. And there may be many other animals fitted to enrich and adorn human life which would make no insuperable resistance to domestication if wisely and patiently handled. Here is a noble opening for carrying out in its kindest sense the command, "Multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the face of the earth." IX SNAKES I have met persons, otherwise quite sane, who told me that they would like to visit India if it were not for the _snakes_. Now there is something very depressing in the thought that this state of mind is extant in England, for it is calculated, on occasion, to have results of a most melancholy nature. By way of example, let us picture the case of a broken-hearted maiden forced to reject an ardent lover because duty calls him to a land where there are snakes. Think of his happiness blighted for ever and her doomed to a "perpetual maidenhood," harrowed with remorseful dreams of the hourly perils and horrors through which he must be passing without her, and dreading to enter an academy or picture-gallery lest a laocoon or a fury might revive apprehensions too horrible to be borne. In view of possibilities so dreadful, surely it is a duty that a man owes to his kind to disseminate the truth, if he can, about the present condition in the East of that reptile which, crawling on its belly and eating dust and having its head bruised by the descendants of Eve, sometimes pays off her share of the curse on their heels. Here the truth is. Within the limits of our Indian Empire, including Burmah and Ceylon, there are at present known to naturalists two hundred and sixty-four species of snakes. Twenty-seven of these are sea-serpents, which never leave the sea, and could not if they would. The remaining two hundred and thirty-seven species comprise samples of every size and pattern of limbless reptile found on this globe, from the gigantic python, which crushes a jackal and swallows it whole, to the little burrowing _Typhlops_, whose proportions are those of an earthworm and its food white ants. If you have made up your mind never to touch a snake or go nearer to one than you can help, then I need scarcely tell you what you know already, that these are all alike hideous and repulsive in their aspect, being smeared from head to tail with a viscous and venomous slime, which, as your Shakespeare will tell you, leaves a trail even on fig-leaves when they have occasion to pass over such. This preparation would appear to line them inside as well as out, for there is no lack of ancient and modern testimony to the fact that they "slaver" their prey all over before swallowing it, that it may slide the more easily down their ghastly throats. Their eye is cruel and stony, and possesses a peculiar property known as "fascination," which places their victims entirely at their mercy. They have also the power of coiling themselves up like a watch-spring and discharging themselves from a considerable distance at those whom they have doomed to death--a fact which is attested by such passages in the poets as-- Like adder darting from his coil, and by travellers _passim_. This is the true faith with respect to all serpents, and if you are resolved to remain steadfast in it, you may do so even in India, for it is possible to live in that country for months, I might almost say years, without ever getting a sight of a live snake except in the basket of a snake-charmer. If, however, you are minded to cultivate an acquaintance with them, it is not difficult to find opportunities of doing so, but I must warn you that it will be with jeopardy to your faith, for the very first thing that will strike you about them will probably be their cleanness. What has become of the classical slime I cannot tell, but it is a fact that the skin of a modern snake is always delightfully dry and clean, and as smooth to the touch as velvet. The next thing that attracts attention is their beauty, not so much the beauty of their colours as of their forms. With few exceptions, snakes are the most graceful of living things. Every position into which they put themselves, and every motion of their perfectly proportioned forms, is artistic. The effect of this is enhanced by their gentleness and the softness of their movements. But if you want to see them properly, you must be careful not to frighten them, for there is no creature more timid at heart than a snake. One will sometimes let you get quite near to it and watch it, simply because it does not notice you, being rather deaf and very shortsighted, but when it does discover your presence, its one thought is to slip away quietly and hide itself. It is on account of this extreme timidity that we see them so seldom. Of the two hundred and thirty-seven kinds that I have referred to, some are, of course, very rare, or only found in particular parts of the country, but at least forty or fifty of them occur everywhere, and some are as plentiful as crows. Yet they keep themselves out of our way so successfully that it is quite a rare event to meet with one. Occasionally one finds its way into a house in quest of frogs, lizards, musk-rats, or some other of the numerous malefactors that use our dwellings as cities of refuge from the avenger, and it is discovered by the Hamal behind a cupboard, or under a carpet. He does the one thing which it occurs to a native to do in any emergency--viz. raises an alarm. Then there is a general hubbub, servants rush together with the longest sticks they can find, the children are hurried away to a place of safety, the master appears on the scene, armed with his gun, and the Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie, trying to slip away from the fuss which it dislikes so much, is headed, and blown, or battered, to pieces. Then its head is pounded to a jelly, for the servants are agreed that, if this precaution is omitted, it will revive during the night and come and coil itself on the chest of its murderer. Finally a council is held and a unanimous resolution recorded that deceased was a serpent of the deadliest kind. This is not a lie, for they believe it; but in the great majority of cases it is an untruth. Of our two hundred and thirty-seven kinds of snakes only forty-four are ranked by naturalists as venomous, and many of these are quite incapable of killing any animal as large as a man. Others are very rare or local. In short, we may reckon the poisonous snakes with which we have any practical concern at four kinds, and the chance of a snake found in the house belonging to one of these kinds stands at less than one in ten. It is a sufficiently terrible thought, however, that there are even four kinds of reptiles going silently about the land whose bite is certain death. If they knew their powers and were maliciously disposed, our life in the East would be like Christian's progress through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. But the poisonous snakes are just as timid as the rest, and as little inclined to act on the offensive against any living creature except the little animals on which they prey. Even a trodden worm will turn, and a snake has as much spirit as a worm. If a man treads on it, it will turn and bite him. But it has no desire to be trodden on. It does its best to avoid that mischance, and, I need scarcely say, so does a man unless he is drunk. When both parties are sincerely anxious to avoid a collision, a collision is not at all likely to occur, and the fact is that, of all forms of death to which we are exposed in India, death by snake-bite is about the one which we have least reason to apprehend. During a pretty long residence in India I have heard of only one instance of an Englishman being killed by a snake. It was in Manipur, and I read of it in the newspapers. During the same time I have heard of only one death by lightning and one by falling into the fermenting vat of a brewery, so I suppose these accidents are equally uncommon. Eating oysters is much more fatal: I have heard of at least four or five deaths from that cause. The natives are far more exposed to danger from snakes than we are, because they go barefoot, by night as well as day, through fields and along narrow, overgrown footpaths about their villages. The tread of a barefooted man does not make noise enough to warn a snake to get out of his way, and if he treads on one, there is nothing between its fangs and his skin. Again, the huts of the natives, being made of wattle and daub and thatched with straw, offer to snakes just the kind of shelter that they like, and the wonder is that naked men, sleeping on the ground in such places, and poking about dark corners, among their stores of fuel and other chattels, meet with so few accidents. It says a great deal for the mild and inoffensive nature of the snake. Still, the total number of deaths by snake-bite reported every year is very large, and looks absolutely appalling if you do not think of dividing it among three hundred millions. Treated in that way it shrivels up at once, and when compared with the results of other causes of death, looks quite insignificant. The natives themselves are so far from regarding the serpent tribe with our feelings that the deadliest of them all has been canonised and is treated with all the respect due to a sub-deity. No Brahmin, or religious-minded man of any respectable caste, will have a cobra killed on any account. If one takes to haunting his premises, he will propitiate it with offerings of silk and look for good luck from its patronage. About snakes other than the cobra the average native concerns himself so little that he does not know one from another by sight. They are all classed together as _janwar,_ a word which answers exactly to the "venomous beast" of Acts xxviii. 4; and though they are aware that some are deadly and some are not, any particular snake that a _sahib_ has had the honour to kill is one of the deadliest as a matter of course. I have never met a native who knew that a venomous snake could be distinguished by its fangs, except a few doctors and educated men who have imbibed western science. In fact they do not think of the venom as a material substance situated in the mouth. It is an effluence from the entire animal, which may be projected at a man in various ways, by biting him, or spitting at him, or giving him a flick with the tail. The Government of India spends a large sum of money every year in rewards for the destruction of snakes. This is one of those sacrifices to sentiment which every prudent government offers. The sentiment to which respect is paid in this case is of course British, not Indian. Indian sentiment is propitiated by not levying any tax on dogs, so the pariah cur, owned and disowned, in all stages of starvation, mange and disease, infests every town and village, lying in wait for the bacillus of rabies. Against the one fatal case of snake-bite mentioned above, I have known of at least half a dozen deaths among Englishmen from the more horrible scourge of hydrophobia. In the steamer which brought me home there were two private soldiers on their way to M. Pasteur, at the expense, of course, of the British Government. X THE INDIAN SNAKE-CHARMER We must wait for another month or two before we can think of the winter in this country in the past tense, but in India the month of March is the beginning of the hot season, and the tourists who have been enjoying the pleasant side of Anglo-Indian life and assuring themselves that their exiled countrymen have not much to grumble at will now be making haste to flee. During the month the various hotels of Bombay will be pretty familiar with the grey sun-hat, fortified with _puggaree_ and pendent flap, which is the sign of the globe-trotter in the East. And all the tribe of birds of prey who look upon him as their lawful spoil will recognise the sign from afar and gather about him as he sits in the balcony after breakfast, taking his last view of the gorgeous East, and perhaps (it is to be feared) seeking inspiration for a few matured reflections wherewith to bring the forthcoming book to an impressive close. The vendor of Delhi jewellery will be there and the Sind-work-box-walla, with his small, compressed white turban and spotless robes, and the Cashmere shawl merchant and many more, pressing on the gentleman's notice for the last time their most tempting wares and preparing for the long bout of fence which will decide at what point between "asking price" and "selling price" each article shall change ownership. The distance between these two points is wide and variable, depending upon the indications of wealth about the purchaser's person and the indications of innocence about his countenance. And when the poor globe-trotter, who has long since spent more money than he ever meant to spend, and loaded himself with things which he could have got cheaper in London or New York, tries to shake off his tormentors by getting up and leaning over the balcony rails, the shrill voice of the snake-charmer will assail him from below, promising him, in a torrent of sonorous Hindustanee, variegated with pigeon English and illuminated with wild gesticulations, such a superfine _tamasha_ as it never was the fortune of the _sahib_ to witness before. _Tamasha_ is one of those Indian words, like _bundobust_, for which there is no equivalent in the English language, and which are at once so comprehensive and so expressive that, when once the use of them has been acquired, they become indispensable, so that they have gained a permanent place in the Anglo-Indian's vocabulary. It is not slang, but a good word of ancient origin. Hobson-Jobson quotes a curious Latin writer on the Empire of the Grand Mogul, who uses it with a definition appended, "ut spectet Thamasham, id est pugnas elephantorum, leonum, buffalorum et aliarura ferarum." "Show" comes nearest it in English, but falls far short of it. The _tamasha_ which the snake-charmer promises the _sahib_ will include serpent dances, a fight between a cobra and a mungoose, the inevitable mango tree, and other tricks of juggling. But to a stranger the snake-charmer himself is a better _tamasha_ than anything he can show. He is indeed a most extraordinary animal. His hair and beard are long and unkempt, his general aspect wild, his clothing a mixture of savagery and the wreckage of civilisation. He wears a turban, of course, and generally a large one; but it is put on without art, just wound about his head anyhow, and hanging lopsidedly over one ear. It and the loose cloth wrapped about the middle of him are as dirty as may be and truly Oriental, though erratic. But, besides these, he wears a jacket of coloured calico, or any other material, with one button fastened, probably on the wrong buttonhole, and under this, if the weather is cold, he may have a shirt seemingly obtained from some Indian representative of Moses & Co. On his shoulder he carries a long bamboo, from the ends of which hang villainously shabby baskets, some flat and round, occupied by snakes, others large and oblong, filled with apparatus of jugglery. The members of his family, down to an unclothed, precocious imp of ten, accompany him, carrying similar baskets, or capacious wallets, or long, cylindrical drums, on which they play with their fingers. The dramatic effect of the whole is enhanced when one of them allows a huge python, a snake of the _Boa constrictor_ tribe, which kills its prey by crushing it, to wind its hideous, speckled coils round his body. What the snake-charmer is by race or origin ethnologists may determine when they have done with the gipsy. He is not a Hindu. No particular part of the country acknowledges him as its native. He is to the great races, castes, and creeds of India what the waif is to the billows of the sea. His language, in public at least, is Hindustanee, but this is a sort of _lingua franca_, the common property of all the inhabitants of the country. His religion is probably one of the many forms of demon worship which grow rank on the fringes of Hinduism. He must be classed, no doubt, with the other wandering tribes which roam the country, camping under umbrellas, or something little better, each consecrated to some particular form of common crime, and each professing some not in itself dishonest occupation, like the tinkering of gipsies. But the snake-charmer is the best known and most widely spread of them all. By occupation he is a professor of three occult sciences. First, he is a juggler, and in this art he has some skill. His masterpiece is the famous mango trick, which consists in making a miniature mango tree grow up in a few minutes, and even blossom and bear fruit, out of some bare spot which he has covered with his mysterious basket. It has been written about by travellers in extravagant terms of astonishment and admiration, but, as generally performed, is an extremely clumsy-looking trick, though it is undoubtedly difficult to guess how it is done. A more blood-curdling feat is to put the unclothed and precocious imp aforementioned under a large basket, and then run a sword savagely through and through every corner of it, and draw it out covered with gore. When the sickened spectators are about to lynch the murderer, the imp runs in smiling from the garden gate. The connection between these performances and the man's second trade, namely, snake-charming, is not obvious to a Western mind; but it must be remembered that the snake-charmer is not a mere, vulgar juggler, amusing people with sleight-of-hand. His feats are miracles, performed with the assistance of superior powers. In short, he is a theosophist, only his converse is not with excorporated Mahatmas from Thibet, but with spirits of another grade, whose Superior has been known from very remote antiquity as an Old Serpent. In deference to this respectable connection the cobra holds a distinguished place even in orthodox Hinduism. So it is altogether fit that a performer of wonders should be on intimate terms with the serpent tribe. The snake-charmer keeps all sorts of them, but chiefly cobras. These he professes to charm from their holes by playing upon an instrument which may have some hereditary connection with the bagpipe, for it has an air-reservoir consisting of a large gourd, and it makes a most abominable noise. As soon as the cobra shows itself the charmer catches it by the tail with one hand, and, running the other swiftly along its body, grips it firmly just behind the jaws, so that it cannot turn and bite. Practice and coolness make this an easy feat. Then the poison fangs are pulled out with a pair of forceps and the cobra is quite harmless. It is kept in a round, flat basket, out of which, when the charmer removes the lid and begins to play, it raises its graceful head, and, expanding its hood, sways gently in response to the music. Scientific men aver that a snake has no ears and cannot possibly hear the strains of the pipe, but that sort of science simply spoils a picturesque subject like the snake-charmer. So much is certain, that all snakes cannot be played upon in this way: there are some species which are utterly callous to the influences to which the cobra yields itself so readily. No missionary will find any difficulty in getting a snake-charmer to appreciate that Scripture text about the deaf adder which will not listen to the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. To these two occupations the snake-charmer adds that of a medicine man, for who should know the occult potencies of herbs and trees so well as he? So, as he wanders from village to village, he is welcomed as well as feared. But one wealthy tourist is worth more to him than a whole village of ryots, so he keeps his eye on every town in which he is likely to fall in with the travelling white man. And the travelling white man would be sorry to miss him, for he is one of the few relics of an ancient state of things which railways and telegraphs and the Educational Department have left unchanged. The itinerant jeweller and the Sind-work-box-walla are unmistakably being left behind as the East hurries after the West, and we shall soon know them no more. Showy shops, where the inexperienced traveller may see all the products of Sind and Benares, and Cutch and Cashmere, spread before him at fixed prices, are multiplying rapidly and taking the bread from the mouth of the poor hawker. But the snake-charmer seems safe from that kind of competition. It is difficult to forecast a time when a broad signboard in Rampart Row will invite the passer-by to visit Mr. Nagshett's world-renowned Serpent Tamasha, Mungoose and Cobra Fight, Mango-tree Illusion, etc. Entrance, one rupee. XI CURES FOR SNAKE-BITE In a little book on the snakes of India, published many years ago by Dr. Nicholson of the Madras Medical Service, the conviction was expressed that the snake-charmers of Burmah knew of some antidote to the poison of the cobra which gave them confidence in handling it. He said that nothing would induce them to divulge it, but that he suspected it consisted in gradual inoculation with the venom itself. Putting the question to himself why he did not attempt to attest this by experiment, he replied that there were two reasons, which, if I recollect rightly, were, first, that he had a strong natural repugnance to anything like cruelty to animals, and, secondly, that he had observed that as soon as a man got the notion into his head that he had discovered a cure for snake-bite, he began to show symptoms of insanity. It is rather remarkable that, after so many years, another Scottish doctor, not in Madras, but in Edinburgh, has proved, by just such experiments as Dr. Nicholson shrank from, that an "aged and previously sedate horse" may, by gradual inoculation with cobra poison, be rendered so thoroughly proof against it that a dose which would suffice to kill ten ordinary horses only imparts "increased vigour and liveliness" to it. Further, Dr. Fraser has found that the serum of the blood of an animal thus rendered proof against poison is itself an antidote capable of combating that poison after it has been at work for thirty minutes in the veins of a rabbit, and arresting its effects. And all this has been achieved without apparent detriment to the distinguished doctor's sanity. This must be intensely interesting intelligence to Englishmen throughout India, and joyful intelligence too, for, scoff as we may at the danger of being bitten by a poisonous snake, nobody likes to think that, if such a thing _should_ happen to him (and very narrow escapes sometimes remind us that it may), there would be nothing for him to do but to lie down and die. And so, ever since the Honourable East India Company was chartered, the antidote to snake poison has been a sort of philosopher's stone, sought after by doctors and men of science along many lines of investigation. And every now and then somebody has risen up and announced that he has found it, and has had disciples for a season. But one remedy after another, though it might give startling results in the laboratory, has proved to be useless in common life, and the majority of Englishmen have long since resigned themselves to the conclusion that there is no practical cure for the bite of a poisonous snake. For what avails it to carry about in your travelling bag a phial of strong ammonia and to live in more jeopardy of death by asphyxiation than you ever were by snakes, unless you have some guarantee that, when it is your fate to be bitten by a snake, the phial will be at hand? For ammonia must act on the venom before the venom has had time to act upon you, or it will only add another pain to your end; and that gives only a few minutes to go upon. So with nitric acid and every agent that operates by neutralising the poison and not by counteracting its effects. And this has been the character of all the remedies hitherto put forward. "They are," says Sir Joseph Fayrer, "absolutely without any specific effect on the condition produced by the poison." But "anti-venene," as Dr. Fraser calls his immunised blood-serum, follows the poison into the system, even after the fatal symptoms have begun to show themselves, and arrests them at once. So the Anglo-Indian may throw away his ammonia phial and, arming himself with another of anti-venene and a hypodermic syringe, feel that he is safe against an accident which will never happen. As for the man who is not nervous, he will speak of the new antidote, and think of it as most interesting and valuable, and go on his way as before with no expectation of ever being bitten by a venomous snake. The medical man of every degree will order a supply as soon as it is to be had, and conscientiously try to stamp out the smouldering hope within him that somebody in the station will soon be bitten by a cobra and give him a chance. Among the dusky millions of India Dr. Fraser's discovery will create no "catholic ravishment" because they will not hear of it. And if they did hear of it they would regard his labours as misapplied and the result as superfluous. For the Hindu has never shared the Englishman's opinion that there is no cure for snake-bite. On the contrary, he is assured that there are not one or two but many specifics for the bite of every kind of snake, known to those whose business it is to know them. If they are not invariably efficacious, it is for the simple reason that if a man's time has come to die he will die. But if his time has not come to die they will not fail to cure him, and since no man can know when he is bitten whether his time has come or not, he will lay the odds against Fate by trying, not one or another of them, but as many as he can hear of or get. Some of them are drastic in their effects, and so it too often proves that the poor man's time has indeed come, for though he might survive the snake he succumbs to the cure. It is many years now since the news was brought to me one day that a man whom I knew very well had been bitten by a deadly serpent and was dying. He was a fine, strongly built young fellow, a Mohammedan, in the employ of a Parsee liquor distiller, in whose godown he was arranging firewood when he was bitten in the foot. Without looking at the snake he rushed out and, falling on his face on the ground, implored the bystanders to take care of his wife and children as he was a dead man. The news spread and all the village ran together. The man was taken to an open room in his employer's premises and vigorous measures for his recovery were set on foot, in which his employer's family and servants, his own friends and as many of the general public as chose to look in, were allowed to take part. First of all, some jungle men were called in, for the man of the jungle must naturally know more about snakes than other men. These were probably Katkurrees, an aboriginal race, who live by woodcutting, hunting and other sylvan occupations. They proved to be practical men and at once sucked the wound. An intelligent Havildar of the Customs Department, who chanced to be present, then lanced the wound slightly to let the blood flow, and tied the leg tightly in two places above it. This was admirable. If what the jungle men and the Havildar did were always and promptly done whenever a man is bitten by a snake, few such accidents would end fatally. But this poor man's friends did not stop there. A supply of chickens had been procured with all haste, and these were scientifically applied. This is a remedy in which the natives have great faith, and I have known Europeans who were convinced of its efficacy. The manner of its application scarcely admits of description in these pages, but the effect is that the chickens absorb the poison and die, while the man lives. The number of chickens required is a gauge of the virulence of the serpent, for as soon as the venom is all extracted they cease to die. Nobody, however, could tell me how many chickens perished in this case. They were all too busy to stop and note the result of one remedy while another remained untried. And there were many yet. Somebody suggested that the venom should be dislodged from the patient's stomach, so an emetic was administered in the form of a handful of common salt, with immediate and seismic effect. Then a decoction of _neem_ leaves was poured down the man's throat. The _neem_ tree is an enemy of all fevers and a friend of man generally, so much so that it is healthful to sleep under its shade. Therefore a decoction of the leaves could not fail to be beneficial in one way or another. The residue of the leaves was well rubbed into the crown of the man's head for more direct effect on the brains in case they might be affected. Something else was rubbed in under the root of the tongue. In the meantime a man with some experience in exorcism had brought twigs of a tree of well-ascertained potency in expelling the devil, and advised that, in view of the known connection between serpents and Satan, it would be well to try beating the patient with these. The advice was taken, and many stripes were laid upon him. Massage was also tried, and other homely expedients, such as bandaging and thumping with the fists, were not neglected. It was about noon when I was told of the accident, and I went down at once and found the poor man in a woeful state, as well he might be after such rough handling as he had suffered for four consecutive hours; but he was quite conscious and there was neither pain nor swelling in the bitten foot. I remonstrated most vigorously, pointing out that the snake, which nobody had seen, might not have been a venomous one at all, that there were no symptoms of poisoning, except such as might also be explained by the treatment the man had suffered at the hands of his friends, and that, in short, I could see no reason to think he was going to die unless they were determined to kill him. My words appeared to produce a good effect on the Parsees at least, and they consented to stop curing the man and let him rest, giving him such stimulating refreshment as he would take, for he was a pious Mussulman and would not touch wine or spirits. I said what I could to cheer him up, and went away hoping that I had saved a human life. Alas! In an hour or so a friend came in with a root of rare virtue and persuaded the man to swallow some preparation of it. _Post hoc_, whether _propter hoc_ I dare not say, he became unconscious and sank. Before night he was buried. All this did not happen in some obscure village in a remote jungle. It happened within a mile and a half of a town controlled by a municipal corporation which enjoys the rights and privileges of "local self-government." In that town there was a dispensary, with a very capable assistant-surgeon in charge, and in that dispensary I doubt not you would have found a bottle of strong _liquor ammoniæ_ and a printed copy of the directions issued by a paternal Government for the recovery of persons bitten by venomous serpents. But when the man was bitten the one thing which occurred to nobody was to take him there, and when I heard of the matter the assistant-surgeon had just left for a distant place, passing on his way the gate of the house in which the man lay. This was a bad case, but there is little reason to hope that it was altogether exceptional. I am afraid there can be no question at all that hundreds of the deaths put down to snake-bite by village punchayets every year might with more truth be registered as "cured to death." XII THE COBRA BUNGALOW A STORY OF A MONEYLENDER Beharil Surajmul was the greatest moneylender in Dowlutpoor. He was a man of rare talents. He remembered the face of every man who had at any time come to borrow money of him since he began to work, as a little boy, in his father's office, so that it was impossible to deceive him. He had also such a miraculous skill in the making out of accounts that a poor man who had come to him in extremity for a loan of fifty rupees, to meet the expenses of his daughter's marriage, might go on making payments for the remainder of his life without reducing the debt by one rupee. In fact, it seemed to increase with each payment. And if the matter went into court, Beharilal never failed to show that there was still a balance due to him much larger than the original loan. But so courteous and pleasant was the Seth in his manner to all that such matters never went into court until the right time, of which he was an infallible judge, for he knew the private affairs of every family in Dowlutpoor. Then a decree was obtained and the debtor's house, or land, was sold to defray the debt, Beharilal himself being usually the purchaser, though not, of course, in his own name, for he was a prudent man. By these means Beharilal had become possessed of large estates, which he managed with such skill that they yielded to him revenues which they had never yielded to the former owners of them, while his tenants, who were mostly former owners, grew daily more deeply involved in their pecuniary obligations to him, and therefore entertained no thought of leaving him, for he could put them into prison any day if he chose. Their contentment gave him great satisfaction, and he treated them with benevolence, giving them advances of money for all their necessary expenses and appropriating the whole of their crops at the harvest to repay himself. He bound them to buy all that they had need of at his shop, so that he made profit off them on both sides. And as his wealth increased, his person increased with it and his appearance became more imposing, so that he was regarded everywhere with the highest respect and esteem. He was, moreover, a very religious man and charitable beyond most. By early risers he might be seen in his garden seeking out the nests of ants and giving them, with his own hands, their daily dole of rice. It was his benevolent thoughtfulness which had supplied drinking troughs for the flocks of pigeons that continually plundered the stores of the other grain merchants. He had also established a pinjrapole for aged, sickly and ownerless animals of all kinds. To this he required all his tenants to send their bullocks when they became unfit for work, and he sold them new cattle, good and strong, at prices fixed by himself. If any of his old debtors, when reduced to beggary, came to his door for alms, they were never sent away without a handful of rice or a copper coin. He kept a bag of the smallest copper coins always at hand for such purposes. Beharilal had a fine house, designed by himself and surrounded by a vast garden stocked with mangoes, guavas, custard apples, oranges and other fruit trees, and made beautiful and fragrant with all manner of flowers. The cool shade drew together birds of many kinds from the dry plains of the surrounding country, and it pleased Beharilal to think that they also were recipients of his bounty and that the benefits which he conferred on them would certainly be entered to the credit of his account with Heaven. Some he fed, such as the crows, which flocked about the back door, like a convocation of Christian padres, in the morning and afternoon, when the ladies of his family gave out their portion of boiled rice and ghee. The pigeons also came together in hundreds in an open space under the shade of a noble peepul tree, where grain was thrown out for them at three o'clock every day; and among them were many chattering sparrows and not a few green parrots, which walked quaintly among the bustling pigeons, their long tails moving from side to side like the pointer of the scale on which the Bunia weighed his rupees. This resemblance struck him as he reclined against the fat red cushion in his verandah summing up his gains. There were other birds which would not eat his food, but found abundance, suited to their respective castes, among the shrubs and trees that he had planted. Mynas walked eagerly on the lawns looking for grasshoppers, glittering sunbirds hovered over the flowers, thrusting their slender bills into each nectar-laden blossom, bulbuls twittered among the mulberries and the koel made the shady banian tree resound with its melodious notes. In a remote corner of the garden, under the dark shade of a tamarind, there stood a small shrine, like a whitewashed tomb, with a niche or recess on one side of it containing a conical stone smeared with red ochre. Some called it Mahadeo and some Khandoba, but no one could explain the presence of a Mahratta god in a Bunia's garden in Dowlutpoor, except by quoting an old tradition about one Narayen who had come from the Mahratta country and lived for many years in this place. Some said he was a prosperous goldsmith of great piety, but others maintained that he was a Sunyasee, or saint, and there was no certainty in the matter. The one point on which all were agreed was the great sanctity of the shrine, and Beharilal was most careful to perform at it every ceremony which custom, or tradition, sanctioned for placating the god and averting any calamity that might arise from his displeasure. At the base of one of the old cracked walls of the shrine there was a hole which was the den of a very large, black cobra. Several times it had been seen in the garden, and, when pursued, had glided into this hole and escaped. When Beharilal first heard of it he was much troubled in his mind, but, having consulted a Brahmin, he gave strict injunctions that the reptile should not be molested, and since that time he had never failed to place an offering of milk near to the hole in the morning and in the evening. Now it happened that at this time there was in Dowlutpoor an English doctor who was generally known as the Jadoo-walla Saheb, because he was believed to practise sorcery and had some mysterious need of snakes. Perhaps he was only making experiments with their venom. At any rate, he wanted live cobras and offered a good price for them. So when Nagoo, the snake-charmer, heard that there was a large one in Beharilal's garden, he thought he might do good business by capturing it for the Jadoo-walla Saheb, and at the same time demanding a reward from the timorous Bunia for ridding him of such a dangerous neighbour. With this intent he repaired to the garden with all the apparatus of his art, his flat snake baskets, his mongoose and his crooked pipe. Having reconnoitred the ground, he commenced operations by sitting down on his hams and producing such ear-splitting strains from the crooked pipe as might have charmed Cerberus to leave his kennel at the gate of hell. Great was his surprise and mortification when he heard the voice of Beharilal raised in tones of unwonted passion and saw a stalwart Purdaisee advancing towards him armed with an iron-bound lathee, who, without ceremony, nay, with abusive epithets, hustled him and all his gear out of the garden. Nagoo was a snake-charmer and by nature a gipsy, and this treatment rankled in his dark bosom. Some weeks passed and the sun had scarcely risen when Beharilal sat in the ota in front of his house at his daily business, which began as soon as his teeth were cleaned and ended about eleven at night. The place was not tidy. Two or three mats were spread on the floor, a spare one was rolled up in a corner, several pairs of shoes were on the steps, umbrellas leaned against the wall, handles downwards, and a large chatty of drinking water stood beside them. The Bunia himself, bare-headed and bare-footed, sat cross-legged on a cushion, with a wooden stool in front of him, on which lay an open ledger of stout yellowish paper, bound in soft red leather and nearly two feet in length. In this he was carefully entering yesterday's transactions with a reed pen, which he dipped frequently in a brass inkpot filled with a sponge soaked in a muddy black fluid. Beside him sat his son, aged two years, playing with the red, lacquered cylinder in which he kept his reed pens. Beharilal had two girls also, but they were with the women folk in the interior of the house, where he was content they should stay. This was his only boy, the pride and joy of his heart. Engrossed as he was in recording his gains, he could not refrain from lifting his eyes now and again to feast them on that rotund little body, like a goblet set on two pillars. No clothing concealed the tense and shiny brown skin, but there were silver bracelets on the fat wrists and massive anklets where deep creases divided the fat little feet from the fat little legs, and a representation, in chased silver, of Eve's fig leaf hung from a silver chain which encircled the sphere that should have been his waist. His globular head was curiously shaven. From two deep pits between the bulging brow and the fat cheeks that nearly squeezed out the little nose between them, two black diamonds twinkled, full of wonder, as the small purse mouth prattled to itself softly and inarticulately of the mysteries of life. Suddenly a startled cry, passing into a prolonged wail of fear, roused old Beharilal, and he saw a sight that nearly caused him to swoon with terror. The little man, a moment ago so placid and happy, was shrinking back with "I don't like that thing" inscribed in lines of anguish on his distorted face, and not three feet from him a huge cobra, just emerged from the roll of matting, eyed him with a stony stare, its head raised and its hood expanded. Its quivering tongue flickered out from between its lips like distant flashes of forked lightning. For a moment Beharilal stood stupefied, then all the heroism that was in him spent itself at once. Seizing the heavy wooden stool in both his hands, he raised it high over his head and dashed it down on the reptile. The sharp edge of hard wood broke its back, and as it wriggled and lashed about, biting at everything within reach, the Bunia snatched up his boy and waddled into the house at a pace to which he had long been unaccustomed, calling out, in frantic gasps, for help. A rush of excited and screaming women met him in the inner court, and he dropped his precious burden, with pious ejaculations, into the arms of its mother, and stood panting and speechless. Then calling aloud to know if all danger was past, he ventured cautiously out again and saw that the Purdaisee and the Malee had ejected the wriggling cobra and were pounding its head into a jelly with a big stone. For some seconds he looked on in a strange stupor, and then he realised what he had done. He, Beharilal, the Bunia, who had always removed the insects so tenderly from his own person that they were not hurt, who had never committed the sin of killing a mosquito or a fly; he, with his own hands, had taken the life of the guardian cobra of the shrine! "Urray-ray! Bap-ray!" he cried, "for what demerit of mine has this ill-luck befallen me in my old age? What will happen now?" "Nay, Sethjkee," said the Malee, "be not afraid. It was in your destiny that this offspring of Satan should come to its end by your hand. We have pounded its head properly, so it will not return to you," "But what of its mate?" said Beharilal. "I have heard that, if any man kills a cobra, its mate will follow him by day and by night until it has had its revenge. Is that not so?" The Malee answered, "Chh, Chh! There is no mate of this cobra," but his tone was not confident. "Go," cried Beharilal--"go quickly and call Nagoo, the snake-charmer. He has knowledge." "I will go," said the Malee, and set off at a run; but when he got out of the gate he lapsed into a leisurely walk, for why should a man lose his breath without cause? In time he found his way to the little settlement of huts constructed of poles and mats, where Nagoo sat on the ground smoking his "chillum," and told his errand. "Why should I come?" was Nagoo's reply; "I went to take away that cobra and the Bunia drove me from the garden with abuse. Why does he send for me now?" "He is a Bunia," said the Malee, as if that summed up the whole matter; but he added, after a pause, "If he sees a burning ground, he shakes like a peepul leaf. The cobra has died by his hand and his liver has become like water. Whatever you ask he will give. You should come," Nagoo replied aloud, "I will come," and to himself, "I will give him physic." Then he took up his baskets and his pipe and followed the Malee. Beharilal proceeded to business with a directness foreign to his habit, looking over his shoulder at intervals lest a snake might be silently approaching. "Good Nagoo," he said, "a great misfortune has happened. The cobra of the shrine has been killed. Has it a mate?" "How can a cobra not have a mate?" answered Nagoo curtly. Then Beharilal employed the most insinuating of the many tones of his voice. "Listen, Nagoo. You are a man of skill. Capture that cobra and I will pay you well. I will give you five rupees." Then, observing no response in the wrinkled visage of the charmer, "I will give you ten rupees." Nagoo would have sold his revenge for a tithe of the wealth thus dangled before him, but he saw no reason to suppose that there was another cobra anywhere in the garden, so he answered with the calm confidence of an expert, "That cannot be done. The serpent will not heed any pipe now. In its mind there is only revenge." "Then what will it do?" said the trembling Bunia. "If its mate died by the hand of a man, it will follow that man until it has accomplished its purpose." "But how will it know," asked Beharilal, "by whose hand its mate died?" Nagoo replied with pious simplicity, "How can I tell by what means it knows? God informs it." "But," pleaded Beharilal, "is there no escape?--if a man goes away by the railway or by water?" Nagoo pondered for a moment and said, "If a man crossed the sea, the serpent would be baulked. If he goes by railway it will not leave him. Let him go to Madras, it will find him." With a faltering hand the Bunia put some rupees, uncounted, into the charmer's skinny palm, saying, "Go, make incantations. Do something. There is great knowledge of mysteries with you"; and he hurried back into the house. His arrangements were very soon made. His account books, with a bundle of bonds and hoondies and cash and his son, were put into a small cart drawn by a pair of fast trotting bullocks, into which he himself climbed, after looking under the cushion to see that there was no evil beast lurking there, and got away in haste while the sun was yet hot. The rest of the family followed with the household property, and in a few days the house was empty and only the Malee remained in charge. Many years have passed and the house is empty still, and the Malee, grown grey and frail, is still in charge. He gets no wages, but he sells the jasmine flowers and the mangoes and guavas, and he grows chillies and brinjals, and so fills the stomachs of himself and his little grandson and is contented. If you ask him where the Seth has gone, he replies, "Who knows?" His debt has gone with his creditor, "gone glimmering through the dream of things that were," and he has no desire to recall them. A civil or military officer from the station, taking a solitary walk, sometimes finds himself at the Cobra Bungalow, and turns in to wander among its old trees and unswept paths, obstructed by overgrown and untended shrubs, and wonders how it got its name. Then he pauses at the whitewashed shrine and notes that the god-stone has been freshly painted red and that chaplets of faded flowers lie before it. But the old Malee approaches with a meek salaam and a posy of jasmine and marigolds and warns him that there is a cobra in the shrine. XIII THE PANTHER I DID NOT SHOOT It was January 13 of a good many years ago, in those happy days that have "gone glimmering through the dream of things that were." The sun had scarcely risen, and I was sitting in the cosy cabin of my yacht enjoying my "chota hazree," which, being interpreted, means "lesser presence," and in Anglo-Indian speech signifies an "eye-opener" of tea and toast--the greater presence appears some hours later and we call it breakfast. I will not say that the view from my cabin windows was enchanting. The placid waters of the broad creek would have been pleasant to look upon if the level rays of the sun in his strength had not skimmed them with such a blinding glare, but the low, flat-topped hills that bounded them were forbidding. The people said truly that God had made this a country of stones, but they forgot that He had clothed the stones with trees of evergreen foliage and a dense undergrowth of shrubs and grass, to protect and hold together the thick bed of loam which the fallen leaves enriched from year to year. It was the axes of their fathers that felled the trees, to sell for fuel, and the billhooks of their mothers that hacked away the bushes and grubbed up their very roots to burn on the household cooking hole. Then the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon came down on the naked, defenceless, parched and cracked soil and swept it in muddy cascades down to the sea, leaving flats of bare rock, strewn thick with round stones, sore to the best-shod foot of man and cruel to the hoofs of a horse. About and among the huts of the unswept and malodorous hamlet just above the shore there were fine trees, mango, tamarind, babool and bor, showing what might have been elsewhere. On the rounded top of the highest hill frowned in black ruin an old Mahratta fort, covered on the top and sides and choked within by that dense mass of struggling vegetation which always takes possession of old forts in India. The weather-worn stones and crumbling mortar seem to feed the trees to gluttony. First some bird-drops the seeds of the banian fig into crevices of the ramparts, and its insidious roots push their way and grow and grow into great tortuous snakes, embracing the massive blocks of basalt, heaving them up and holding them up, so that they cannot fall. Then prickly shrubs and thorny trees follow, fighting for every inch of ground, but quite unable to eject the gently persistent custard-apple, descended doubtless from seeds which the garrison dropped as they ate the luscious fruit, on account of which the Portuguese introduced the tree from South America. I had penetrated into that fort and had seen something of the snakes and birds of night, but not the ghosts and demons which I was assured made it their habitation by day. On a level place a little below the fort stood two monuments, telling of the days when the Honourable East India Company maintained a "Resident" at this place. Here he lived in proud solitude, upholding the British flag. But his wife and the little one on whose face he had not yet looked were on their way from Bombay in a native "pattimar" to join him, and as he stood gazing over the sea at the red setting sun one 5th of October, he thought of the glad to-morrow and the end of his dreary loneliness. It fell to him to put up one of these monuments, with a sorrowful inscription to all that was left to him on the following morning, the "memory" of a beloved wife and an infant thirty-one days old, drowned in crossing the bar on October 6, 1853. We have strewed our best to the weeds unrest, To the shark and the sheering gull. If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' paid in full. I carried my gun and rifle with me in my yacht. They served to keep up my character as a sportsman, and did not often require to be cleaned. So the morning calm of my mind was lashed into an unwonted tempest of excitement when my jolly skipper, Sheikh Abdul Rehman, came in and told me briefly that a "bag" (which word does not rhyme with rag, but must be pronounced like barg without the _r_ and signifies a tiger or panther) had killed a cow in the village the night before last. When he added that the villagers had set a spring gun for it last evening and it had returned to the "kill" and been badly wounded, my excitement was turned into wrath. I had been at anchor here all yesterday. The Indian ryot everywhere turns instinctively to the _sahib_ as his protector against all wild beasts. What did these men mean by keeping their own counsel and setting an infernal machine for their enemy? Abdul Rehman explained, and the explanation was simple and sufficient. My fat predecessor in the appointment that I held had no relish for sport and kept no guns, so the simple villagers, when they saw my boat with its familiar flag, looked for no help from that quarter. However, I might still win renown off that wounded "bag," if it was not a myth; but, to tell the truth, I was sceptical. The tiger and the panther are not nomads on rocky plains, like the antelope. I landed, notwithstanding, promptly and visited the scene. Sure enough, there was a young heifer lying on its side, with the unmistakable deep pits where the jaws of the panther had gripped its throat, and a gory cavity where it had selected a gigot for its dinner. Round the corpse the villagers had arranged a circular fence of thorns, with one opening, across which they had stretched a cord, attached at the other end to the trigger of an old shooting iron of some sort, charged with slugs and looking hard at the opening. The gun had gone off during the night, and the ground was soaked with blood. A few yards off there was another great swamp of blood. The beast had staggered away and lain down for a while, faint and sick. Then it had got up and crawled home, still dripping with blood, by which we tracked it for a good distance, but the trace grew gradually fainter and at last ceased altogether. "It has gone to the fort," said the men--"bags always go to the fort." I pointed out that, if it had meant to go to the fort, it would have gone towards the fort, instead of in another direction; but the argument did not move them. "The fort is a jungle, and where else should a 'bag' take refuge but in a jungle?" However, I was obstinate, and pursued the original direction until we arrived at the brow of the hill, where it sloped steeply down to the sea. The whole slope, for half a mile, was covered with a dense scrub of Lantana bushes. This is another plant introduced in some by-gone century from South America, and planted first in gardens for its profuse clusters of red and pink verbena-like blossoms (it is a near relation of the garden verbena), whence it has spread like the rabbit in New Zealand, and become a nuisance. "There," I cried, pointing at the scrub, "there, without doubt, your wounded 'bag' is lying." Some of the men, unbelieving still, were amusing themselves by rolling large stones down the slope, when suddenly there was a sound of scrambling, and across an opening in the scrub, in sight of us all, a huge hyaena scurried away "on three legs." I sent a man post-haste for my rifle, which I had not brought with me, never expecting to require it until a regular campaign could be arranged. As soon as it arrived, we formed in line and advanced, throwing stones in all directions. Make no offering of admiration at the shrine of our hardihood, for we were in no peril. Among carnivorous beasts there is not a more contemptible poltroon than the hyaena, even when wounded. A friend of mine once tied up a billy goat as a bait for a panther and sat up over it in a tree. In the middle of the night a hyaena nosed it from afar, and came sneaking up in the rear, for hyaenas love the flesh of goats next to that of dogs. But the goat saw it, and, turning about bravely, presented his horned front. This the hyaena could not find stomach to face. For two hours he manoeuvred to take the goat in rear, but it turned as he circled, and stood up to him stoutly till the dawn came, and my friend cut short its disreputable career with a bullet. To return to my story, we had not gone far when, on a lower level, not many yards from me, I was suddenly confronted by that repulsive, ghoulish physiognomy which can never be forgotten when once seen, the smoky-black snout, broad forehead and great upstanding ears. Instantly the beast wheeled and scrambled over a bank, receiving a hasty rear shot which, as I afterwards found, left it but one limb to go with, for the bullet passed clean through a hindleg and lodged in a foreleg. It went on, however, and some time passed before I descried it far off dragging itself painfully across an open space. A careful shot finished it, and it died under a thick bush, where we found it and dragged it out. It proved to be a large male, measuring 4 feet 7 inches, from which something over a foot must be deducted for its shabby tail. The natives all maintained still that their cow had been killed by a panther, saying that the hyaena had come on the second night, after their manner, to fill its base belly with the leavings. And there was some circumstantial evidence in favour of this view. In the first place, I never heard of a hyaena having the audacity to attack a cow; in the second, the tooth-marks on the cow showed that it had been executed according to the tradition of all the great cats--by seizing its throat and breaking its neck; and in the third, a hyaena, sitting down to such a meal, would certainly have begun with calf's head and crunched up every bone of the skull before thinking of sirloin or rumpsteak. But the absurdity of a panther being found in such a region outweighed all this and I scoffed. I was yet to learn a lesson in humility out of this adventure. Two years later I sailed over the bar and dropped anchor at the same spot. I was met with the intelligence that on the previous evening two panthers had been seen sitting on the brow of the hill and gazing at the beauties of the fading sunset, as wild beasts are so fond of doing. A night or two later a cow was attacked in a neighbouring field, and, staggering into the village, fell down and died in a narrow alley between two houses. The panther followed and prowled about all night, but the villagers, hammering at their doors with sticks, scared it from its meal. I at once had a nest put up in a small tree, and took my position in it at sunset. The common people in India do not waste much money on lamp oil, preferring to sleep during the hours appointed by Nature for the purpose, so it was not long before all doors were securely barred and quietness reigned. Then the mosquitoes awoke and came to inquire for me, the little bats (how I blessed them!) wheeled about my head, the night-jar called to his fellow, and the little owls sat on a branch together and talked to each other about me. Hour after hour passed, and it became too dark in that narrow alley to see a panther if it had come. So I came down and got to my boat. The panther was engaged a mile away dining on another cow! On further inquiry I learned that there was some good forest a day's journey distant, and it was quite the fashion among the panthers of that place to spend a weekend occasionally at a spot so full of all delights as this dark, jungle-smothered fort. XIV THE PURBHOO I do not believe that the Member of Parliament who moved the adjournment of the House to consider the culpable carelessness of the Government of India in allowing the Rajah of Muttighur to fall into the moat of his own castle when he was drunk, could have told you what a Purbhoo is, not though you had spelled it Prabhu, so that he could find it in his _Gazetteer_. Of course he saw hundreds of them during that Christmas which he spent in the East before he wrote his book; but then he took them all for Brahmins. He never noticed that the curve of their turbans was not the same, and the idol mark on their foreheads was quite different, nor even that their shoes were not forked at the toes, but ended in a sharp point curled upwards. And if he did not see these things which were on the surface, what could he know of matters that lie deeper? Now the first and most important thing to be known respecting the Purbhoo, the fundamental fact of him, is that he is not a Brahmin. If he were a Brahmin, one essential piece of our administrative apparatus in India would be wanting, and without it the whole machinery would assuredly go out of order. Nor is it easy to see how we could replace him. Not one of the other castes would serve even as a makeshift. They are all too far removed from the Brahmin. But the Purbhoo is near him, irritatingly near him, and he has proved in practice to be just the sort of homoeopathic remedy we require, the counter-irritant, the outward blister by wise application of which we can keep down the internal inflammation. In speaking of the Brahmin as an inflammation in the body politic I disown all offensive and invidious implications. I am only using a convenient simile. You may reverse it if you like and make the disease stand for the Purbhoo, in which case the Brahmin will be the blister. Which way fits the facts best will depend upon which caste chances at the time to be nearest to the vitals of Government. The case stands thus. Before the days of British rule the Brahmin was the priest and man of letters, the "clerke" in short. The rajahs and chiefs were much of the same mind as old Douglas: Thanks to Saint Bothan son of mine, Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line, Gawain being a bishop. As a Mohammedan gentleman related to one of the ruling Indian princes put the matter when speaking to me a few years ago, "In those days none of us could write. Our pen was the sword. If any writing had to be done the Brahmin was called in." And no doubt he did excellent service, being diligent, astute, and withal pliant and diplomatic. If to these qualities he added ambition, he might, and often did, become a Cardinal Wolsey in the state. In Poona, for example, the Brahmin Prime Minister gradually overshadowed the Mahratta king, and the descendant of Shivajee was put on a back shelf as Rajah of Sattara, while the Peishwa ruled at the capital. Of course this carnal advancement was not gained without some sacrifice of his spiritual character, and the "secular" Brahmin had to bow, _quoad sacra_, to the penniless Bhut, or "regular" Brahmin, who, refusing to contaminate his sanctity by doing any kind of work, ate of the temple, or lived by royal bounty or private charity, and by the free breakfasts without which a marriage, "thread ceremony" or funeral in a gentleman's house could not be respectably celebrated. Idleness and sanctity are a powerful combination, and it is written in the _shastras_ that every day in which a holy man does no work for his bread, but lives by begging, is equal in the eyes of the gods to a day spent in fasting; so, though the prospect of power and wealth might tempt a few restless and wayward spirits, the great mass of the Brahmin caste clung to the sacred calling. All this time the Purbhoo was in the land, but insignificant. He had no sacred calling. Tradition assigned him a hybrid origin. He could not presume to be a warrior, because his mother was a _shoodra_, nor could he condescend to be a farmer, for his father was a _kshutriya_. So the gods had given him the pen, and he was a writer--not a secretary, but a humble quill-driver. But when the Portuguese and then the British came upon the scene, not ruling by word of mouth, like the native rajahs, but inditing their orders and keeping records, the Purbhoo saw an open door and went in. Then the Brahmin woke up, for he saw that he was in evil case. The spirit of the British _raj_ was falling like a blight and a pestilence upon the means by which he had lived, drying up the fountains of religious revenue and slowly but surely blighting the luxuriance of that pious liberality which always took the form of feeding holy men. He found that he must work for his bread whether he liked it or not, and the only implement of secular work that would not soil his priestly hand was the pen. And this was already taken up by the Purbhoo, who carried himself haughtily under the new _regime_ and showed no mind to make way for the holier man. Hence sprang those bitter enmities and jealousies which have done so much to lighten the difficulties of our position. The British Government has often been accused of acting on the maxim, _Divide et impera_. It is a libel. We do not divide, for there is no need. Division is already there. We have only to rejoice and rule. How well and justly we rule all the world knows, but only the initiated know how much we owe to the fact that the talents and energies which would otherwise be employed in thwarting our just intentions and phlebotomising the ryot are largely preoccupied with the more useful work of thwarting and undermining each other. What could a collector do single-handed against a host of clerks and subordinate magistrates and petty officials of every grade, all armed with the awfulness of a heaven-born sanctity, all hedged round with the prestige of an ancient supremacy, endowed with a mole-like genius for underground work which the Englishman never fathoms, and all leagued together to suck to the uttermost the life blood of those inferior castes which were created expressly for their advantage? _He_ is working in a foreign language, among customs and ways of thought which it takes a lifetime to understand: _they_ are using their mother tongue and handling matters that they have known from childhood. _He_ cannot tell a lie and is ashamed to deceive: _they_ are trained in a thrifty policy which saves the truth for a last resort in case everything else should fail. He would be helpless in their hands as a sucking child. But he knows they will do for him what he cannot do for himself. The Purbhoo will lie in wait for the Brahmin, and the Brahmin will keep his lynx eye on the Purbhoo. And woe to the one who trips first. So the collector arranges his men with judicious skill to the fostering of each other's virtue, and the result is most gratifying. The country blesses his administration, and his subordinates are equally surprised and delighted at their own integrity. I speak of a wise and able administrator. There are men in the Indian Civil Service who are neither wise nor able, and some who are not administrators at all, having most unhappily mistaken their vocation. When such a one becomes collector of a district his _chitnis_, or chief secretary, sees that that tide in the affairs of men has come which, "taken at the flood, leads on to fortune," and his caste-fellows all through the service are filled with unholy joy. But he does nothing rash or hasty. Wilily and patiently he goes to work to make his own foundation sure first of all. He studies his chief under all conditions, discovers his little foibles and vanities and feeds them sedulously. He masters codes, rules and regulations, standing orders, precedents and past correspondence, till it is dangerous to contradict him and always safe to trust him. In every difficulty he is at hand, clearing away perplexity and refreshing the "swithering" mind with his precision and assurance. He becomes indispensable. The collector reposes absolute confidence in him and is proud to say so in his reports. Then the _chitnis_, if he is a Brahmin, addresses himself to the task of eliminating the Purbhoo from the service, or at least depriving him of place and power. It is a delicate task, but the Brahmin's touch is light. He never disparages a Purbhoo from that day; "damning with faint praise" is safer and as effectual. He practises the charity which covereth a multitude of faults, but he leaves a tag end of one peeping out to attract curiosity, and if the collector asks questions, he is candid and tells the truth, though with manifest reluctance. Then he grapples with the gradation lists, which have fallen into confusion, and puts them into such excellent order that the collector can see at a glance every man's past services and present claims to promotion. And from these lists it appears that clearly, whenever any vacancy has to be filled, a Brahmin has the first claim. And so, as the shades of night yield to the dawn of day, the Purbhoo by degrees fades away and disappears, and the star of the Brahmin rises and shines everywhere with still increasing splendour. But the Purbhoo possesses his soul in patience, and keeps a note of every slip that the Brahmin makes. For the next _chitnis_ may be a Purbhoo, and then the day of reckoning will come and old scores will be paid off. The Brahmin knows that too, and the thought of it makes him walk warily even in the day of his prosperity. Thus our administration is saved from utter corruption. XV THE COCONUT TREE Among the classic fairy-tales which passed like shooting stars across those dark hours of our boyhood in which we wrestled with the grim rudiments of Latin and Greek, and which abide in the memory after nearly all that they helped to brighten has passed away, there was one which related to a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to which should confer the greatest benefit on the human race. Neptune first struck his trident on the ground (or was it on the waves? "Eheu fugaces"--no, that also is gone), and there sprang forth a noble steed, pawing the ground, terrible in war and no less useful in peace. Then the watery god leaned back and smiled as if he would say, "Now, beat that." But the Goddess of Wisdom brought out of the earth a modest, dark tree bearing olives and, in classic phrase, "took the cake," Oriental mythology is more luxuriant and fantastic than that of the West, but I do not know if it has any legend parallel to this. If it has, then I am sure the palm is awarded to the deity who gave to the human race the tree that bears the coconut. Passing a confectioner's shop, I saw a tempting packet labelled "Cokernut Toffee." I bought a pennyworth and gave it to my little girl, and "I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge." How many boys and girls are there in this kingdom to whom the word coconut connotes an ingredient which goes to the making of a very toothsome sweetie? And how many confectioners and shop girls are there whose idea is no broader? Again: "I laye a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, a-thynkynge, And merrie sang the Birde as she sat upon the spraye." And I said, "Little Bird, what do you know of the coconut?" And it made answer, "It is a cup full of food, rich and sweet, which kind hands hang out for me in winter," How narrow may be the key-hole through which we take our outlook on things human and divine, never doubting that we see the whole! In our own British Empire, only a few thousand miles away, sits a mild Hindu, almost unclad and wholly unlettered, to whom the tree that bore the fruit that flavoured the toffee that my little girl is enjoying seems to be one of the predominating tints of the whole landscape of life. It puts a roof over his head, it lightens his darkness, it helps to feed his body, it furnishes the wine that maketh glad his heart and the oil that causeth his face to shine, and time would fail me to tell of all the other things that it does for him. As a type and symbol, it is always about him, spanning the sunshine and shower of life with bows of hope. The coconut tree is a palm, and has nothing to do with cocoa of the breakfast table. That word is a perversion of "cacao," and came to us from Mexico: the other is the Portuguese word "coco," which means a nut. It is what Vasco da Gama called the thing when he first saw it, and the word, with our English translation added, has stuck to it. The tree is, I need scarcely say, a palm, one of many kinds that flourish in India. But none of them can be ranked with it. The rough date palm makes dense groves on sandy plains, but brings no fruit to perfection, pining for something which only Arabia can supply; the strong but unprofitable "brab," or fan palm, rises on rocky hills, the beautiful fish-tailed palm in forests solitarily, while the "areca" rears its tall, smooth stem and delicate head in gardens and supplies millions with a solace more indispensable than tobacco or tea. But the coconut loves a sandy soil and the salt breath of the sea and the company of its own kind. The others grow erect as a mast, but the gentle coconuts lean on the wind and mingle the waving of their sisterly arms, casting a grateful shade on the humble folk who live under their blessing. To the mariner sailing by India's coral strand that country presents the aspect of an endless beach of shell sand, quite innocent of coral, on which the surf breaks continually into dazzling white foam against a dark background of pensive palms. He might naturally suppose that they had grown up of themselves, like the screw-pines and aloes which sometimes share the beach with them; but that would be a great mistake. Everyone of them has been planted and carefully watered for years and manured annually with fresh foliage of forest trees buried in a moat round the root. And so it grew in stature, but not in girth, until its head was sixty, seventy or even eighty feet above the ground, and a hundred nuts of various sizes hung in bunches from long, shiny, green arms, each as thick as a man's, which had thrust themselves out from between the lower fronds. There is no production of Nature that I know of less negotiable than a coconut as the tree presents it. The man who first showed the way into it deserved a place in mythology with Prometheus, Jason and other heroes of the dawn. There is a crab, I know, which lives on coconuts, enjoying the scientific name of _Birgus latro_, the Burglar; but it seems to be a special invention, as big as a cat and armed with two fearful pairs of pincers in front for rending the outside casings of the fruits, and a more delicate tool on its hind-legs for picking out the meat. Other animals have to do without it, as had man, I opine, in the stone and copper ages. With the iron age came a chopper, called in Western India a "koita," with which he can hack his way through most of the obstructions of life. When, with this, he has slashed off the tough outer rind and the inch-thick packing of agglutinated fibres, like metal wires, he has only to crack the hard shell which contains the kernel. How little we can conceive the spaces in his life that would be empty without that firm pulp, at once nutritious, sweet and fragrant! Curry cannot be made without it, the cook cannot advance three steps in its absence, pattimars laden with it are sailing north, south, east and west, a thousand creaky wooden mills are squeezing the limpid oil out of it, a hundred thousand little earthen lamps filled with that oil are making visible the smoky darkness of hut and temple, brightening the wedding feast and illuminating the sad page over which the candidate for university honours nods his shaven head. That oil fed lighthouses of the first order and illuminated viceregal balls and durbars before paraffin and kerosene inundated the earth. And it has other uses. For arresting premature baldness and preventing the hair turning grey its virtues are equalled by no other oil known to us, and there is a fortune awaiting the hairdresser who can find means effectually to remove or suppress its peculiar and penetrating odour. Joao Gomez, my faithful "boy," did not object to the odour, and when he had been tempted to pass my comb through his raven locks as he was dusting my dressing table, I always knew it. When the white kernel has been turned to account, the utilities of the coconut are not exhausted. The shell, neatly bisected, makes a pair of teacups, and either of these, fitted with a wooden handle, makes a handy spoon. Laurenco de Gama demands one or two of these inexpensive spoons to complete the furnishing of my kitchen. As for the obstinate casing that wraps the coconut shell, it is an article of commerce. It must first be soaked for some months in a pit on the slimy bank of the backwater, until all the stuff that holds it together in a stiff and obdurate mass has rotted away and set free those hard and smooth fibres which nothing can rot. These, when thoroughly purged of the foul black pollution in which they have sweltered so long, will go out to all quarters of the world under the name of "coir" to make indestructible door mats and other indispensable things. It will penetrate to every corner of India in which a white man lives, to mat his verandahs and stuff his mattresses. And who shall recount a tithe of its other uses? Of course, the nude man under the coconut tree knows nothing of all this. He does without a mattress, and has no use for a door mat. But he cannot do without cordage, and if you took from him his coconut fibre, life would almost stop. Wherewith would he bind the rafters of his hut to the beams, or tether the cow, or let down the bucket into the well? What would all the boats do that traverse the backwater, or lie at anchor in the bay, or line the sandy beach? From the cable of the great pattimar, now getting under weigh for the Persian Gulf with a cargo of coconuts, to the painter of the dugout, "hodee," every yard of cordage about them is made of imperishable coir. When the axe is at last laid to the old coconut tree, a beam will fall to the earth sixty feet in length, hard as teak and already rounded and smoothed. True, you cannot saw it into planks, but no one will complain of that in a village which does not own a saw. It cleaves readily enough and straightly, forming long troughs most useful for leading water from the well to the plantation and for many other purposes. It can also be chopped into lengths suitable for the ridge poles of the hut, or for bridges to span the deep ditches which drain the rice fields or feed the salt pans. When out in quest of snipe I have sometimes had to choose between crossing by one of those bridges, innocent of even a handrail, and wading through the black slough of despond which it spanned. Choosing neither, I went home, but the "Kolee" and the "Agree" trip over them like birds, balancing household chattels on their steady heads. We must not think, however, of the trunk as, at the best, anything more than a by-product of the coconut tree, whose head is more than its body. Even while it lives its head is shorn once a year, for, as fresh fronds push out and upward from the centre, those of the outer circle get old and must be cut away. And when one of those feathery, fern-like fronds, toying with the breeze, comes crashing to the ground, it is ten or twelve feet long, and consists of a great backbone, as thick at the base as a man's leg, with a close-set row of swords on either side, about a yard in length. They are hard and tough, but supple yet and of a shiny green colour; but they will turn to brown as they wither. Now observe that this gigantic, unmanageable-looking leaf, like everything else about the coconut tree, is almost a ready-made article, demanding no machinery to turn it to account, except the "koita" which hangs ever ready from the nude man's girdle. With it he will cleave the backbone lengthwise, and then, taking each half separately, he will simply twist backwards every second sword and plait them all into a mat two feet wide, eight or ten feet long, and firmly bounded and held together on one side by the unbreakable backbone. This is a "jaolee," lighter than slates, or tiles, and more handy than any form of thatch. You have just to arrange your "jaolees" neatly on your bamboo frame, each overlapping the one below it, then tie them securely in their places with coir rope and your roof is made for a year. There is yet another benevolence of the coconut tree which I have left to the last, and the simple folk of whom I am trying to write with fellow feeling would certainly have named it first. I ought to refer to it as a curse: they, without qualm or question, call it a blessing. Let me try to describe it dispassionately. If you wander in any palm grove in Western India, looking upward, it will soon strike you that a large number of the trees do not seem to bear coconuts at all, but black earthen pots. If your visit should chance to be made early in the morning, or late in the afternoon, the mystery will soon be revealed. You will see a dusky, sinewy figure, not of a monkey, but of a man, ascending and descending those trees with marvellous celerity and ease, grasping the trunks with his hands and fitting his naked feet into slight notches cut in them. The distance between the notches is so great that his knee goes up to his chin at each step, but he is as supple as he is sinewy and feels no inconvenience. For he is a Bhundaree, or Toddy-drawer, and his forefathers have been Bhundarees since the time, I suppose, when Manu made his immortal laws. His waistcloth is tightly girded about him, in his hand he carries a broad billhook as bright and keen as a razor, and from his caudal region depends a tail more strange than any borne by beast or reptile. It looks like a large brown pot, constructed in the middle. It is, in fact, a large gourd, or calabash, hanging by a hook from the climber's waistband. When he has reached the top of a tree, he gets among the branches and, sitting astride of one of them, proceeds to detach one of the black pots from the stout fruit stem on which it is fastened, and empty its contents into his tail. Then, taking his billhook, he carefully pares the raw end of the stem, refastens the black pot in its place and hurries down to make the ascent of another tree, and so on until his tail is full of a foaming white liquor spotted with drowned honey bees and filling the surrounding air with a rank odour of fermentation. This liquor is "toddy." If I were a Darwin I would not leave that word until I had traced the agencies which wafted it over sea and land from the shores of Hindustan to the Scottish coast, where it first took root and, quickly adapting itself to a strange environment, developed into a new and vigorous species, spread like the thistle and became a national institution. At first it was only the Briton's way of mouthing a common native word, "tadi" (pronounced ta-dee), which meant palm juice; but it became current in its present shape as early as 1673, when the traveller Fryer wrote of "the natives singing and roaring all night long, being drunk with toddy, the wine of the cocoe." About a century later Burns sang, The lads and lasses, blythely bent, To mind baith saul and body, Sit round the table, weel content, And steer about the toddy. Between these I can find no vestigia, but imagination easily fills the gap. I see a company of jovial Scots, met in Calcutta, or Surat, on St. Andrew's Day. European wines and beer are expensive, whisky not obtainable at all; but the skilful khansamah makes up a punch with toddy spirit, hot water, sugar and limes, and they are "well content." After many years I see the few of them who still survive foregathered again in the old country, and one proposes to have a good brew of toddy for auld lang syne. If real toddy spirit cannot be had, what of that? Whisky is found to take very kindly to hot water and sugar and limes, and the old folks at home and the neighbours and the minister himself pronounce a most favourable verdict on "toddy." In short, it has come to stay. But we must return to the liquor in the Bhundaree's gourd. It is the rich sap which should have gone to the forming of coconuts, which is intercepted by cutting off the point of the fruit stalk and tying on an earthen pot. If the pot is clean, the juice, when it is taken down in the morning, not fermented yet but just beginning to sparkle with minute bubbles, not too sweet and not so oily as the milk of the coconut, is nectar to a hot and thirsty soul. No summer drink have I drunk so innocently restorative after a hot and toilsome march on a broiling May morning. But the Bhundaree will not squander it so: he takes care not to clean his pots, and when he takes them down in the morning the liquor is already foaming like London stout. Not that he means to drink it himself, for you must know that, by the rules of his caste, he is a total abstainer, being a Bhundaree, whose function is to draw toddy, not to drink it. This is one of those profound institutes by which the wisdom of the ancients fenced the whole social system of this strange land. But, while the Bhundaree must refuse all intoxicating drinks himself, it is his duty to exercise a large tolerance towards those who are not so hindered. He is, in fact, a partner in the business of Babajee, Licensed Vendor of Fresh Toddy, towards whose spacious, open-fronted shop, thatched with "jaolees," he now carries his gourds. There the contents will stand, in dirty vessels and a warm place, maturing their exhilarating qualities until the evening, when the Tam o' Shanters and Souter Johnnies of the village begin to assemble and squat in a ring in the open space in front. They may be Kolees, or fishermen, and Agrees, who make salt, and aboriginal Katkurrees from the jungle, with their bows and arrows, most bibulous of all, but among them all there will be no Bhundaree. Babajee sits apart, presiding and serving, beside a dirty table, on which are many bottles and dirty tumblers of patterns which were on our tables thirty years ago. The assembly begins solemnly, discussing social problems and bartering village gossip, for the Hindu is by nature staid. After a while, at the second bottle perhaps, cheerfulness will supervene, then mirth and garrulity, ending, as the night closes round, with wordy contention and a general brawl. But nothing serious will happen, for toddy, though decidedly heady, is at the worst a thin potation. A strong and very pure spirit is distilled from it, which has its devotees, but the rustic, as a rule, prefers quantity to quality. We are often told that the British Government taught the people of India to drink, but the scene that I have tried to describe is indigenous conviviality, much older than any European connection with the country. Is it any wonder that the coconut has become an emblem of fertility and prosperity and all good luck? When a new house is building you will see a high pole over the doorway, bearing coconuts at the top, with an umbrella spread over them. Do not ask the owner the meaning of the sign, for he does not know. He does not think about such matters, but he feels about them and he knows that that is the right thing to do. Besides, he might ask you why you nail a horseshoe over your door. The difference between us and him is that we do such things in jest, no longer believing in them. They are the husks of a dead faith with us. But the Hindu's faith is very living still. So, when he breaks a coconut at the launching of a pattimar, he is a gainer in hope, if nothing else; while we squander our champagne and gain nothing. That nut follows him even to the grave, or burning ground, with mystic significances which I cannot explain. I have been told that, when a very holy man dies, who always clothed himself in ashes and never profaned his hands with work, his disciples sometimes break a coconut over his head. If the spirit can escape from the body through the sutures of the skull instead of by any of the other orifices, it is believed to find a more direct route to heaven, so the purpose of this ceremony may be to facilitate its exit that way. In that case the breaking of the nut is perhaps only an accident, due to its not being so hard as the holy man's skull. XVI THE BETEL NUT One half the world does not know how the other half lives. Noticing a pot of areca nut toothpaste on a chemist's counter, I asked him what the peculiar properties of the areca nut were--in short, what was it good for. He replied that it was an astringent and acted beneficially on the gums, but he had never heard that it was used for any other purpose than the manufacture of an elegant dentifrice. I felt inclined to question him about the camel in order to see whether he would tell me that it was a tropical animal, chiefly noted for the fine quality of its hair, from which artist's brushes were made. Here was a man whose special business it is to know the properties and uses of all drugs and their action on the human system, and he had not the faintest notion that there are nearly 300 millions of His Majesty's subjects, and many millions more beyond his empire, who could scarcely think of life as a thing to be desired if they were obliged to go through it without the areca nut. For the areca nut is the betel nut. In the Canarese language and the kindred dialects of Malabar it is called by a name which is rendered as _adike_, or _adika_, in scientific books, but would stand more chance of being correctly pronounced by the average Englishman if it were spelled _uddiky_. The coast districts of Canara and Malabar being famed for their betel nuts, the trade name of the article was taken from the languages current there, and was tortured by the Portuguese into _areca_. Over the greater part of India the natives use the Hindustanee name _supari_, but by Englishmen it is best known as the betel nut, because it is always found in company with the betel leaf, with which, however, it has no more connection than strawberries have with cream. The one is the leaf of a kind of pepper vine, and the other is the seed, or nut, of a palm. But nature and man have combined to marry them to one another, and it is difficult to think of them separately. In life the betel vine climbs up the stem of the areca palm, and in death the areca nut is rolled in a shroud of the betel leaf and the two are munched together. Other things are often added to the morsel, such as a clove, a cardamom, or a pinch of tobacco, and a small quantity of fresh lime is indispensable. What is the precise nature of the consolation derived from the chewing of this mixture it is not easy to say. Outwardly it produces effects which are visible enough, to wit, a most copious flow of saliva, which is dyed deep red by the juice of the nut, so that a betel nut chewer seems to go about spitting blood all the day. As every Hindu is a betel nut chewer, those 943,903 superficial miles of country which make up our Indian Empire must be bespattered to a degree which it dizzies the mind to contemplate. This is one of the difficulties of Indian administration. In large towns and centres of business it is found necessary to fortify the public buildings in various ways. The Custom House in Bombay has the wall painted with dark red ochre to a height of three or four feet from the ground. But these are the outward results. What is the inwardness of the thing? In a word, why do the people chew betel nut? Surely not that they may spit on our public buildings. That is a chance result, not sought for and not shunned. There is, of course, some deeper reason. Early travellers in India were much exercised about this and used to question the people, from whom they got some curious explanations. One reports, "They say they do it to comfort the heart, nor could live without it." Another says, "It bites in the mouth, accords rheume, cooles the head, strengthens the teeth and is all their phisicke." A Latin writer gets quite eloquent. "_Ex ea mansione_"--by that chewing--he says, "mire recreantur, et ad labores tolerandos et ad languores discutiendos." But the remarkable thing is that the betel nut has these effects only on the Hindu constitution. To a European the strong, astringent taste and penetrating odour of the betel nut are alike insufferable, and there is no instance on record, as far as I know, of an Englishman becoming a betel nut chewer. But wherever Hindu blood circulates, not in India only, but all through the islands of the Malay Archipelago, as far as the Philippines, the betel nut is an indispensable ingredient of any life that is worth living. Mohammedanism forbids spirits and Brahminism condemns all things that intoxicate or stupefy, but the betel nut is like the cup that cheers yet not inebriates. No religion speaks disrespectfully of it. It flourishes, blessed by all, and takes its place among the institutions of civilisation. Indeed it is the chief cement of social intercourse in a country where all ordinary conviviality between man and man is almost strangled by the quarantine enforced against ceremonial defilement. Friend offers friend the betel nut box just as Scotsmen offered the snuff-box in the hearty old days that are passing away. And all visits of ceremony, durbars, receptions, leave-takings, and public functions of the like kind are brought to an august close by the distribution of _pan supari_. To go through this rite without visible repugnance is part of the training of our young Civil Servants. When the interview or ceremony has lasted as long as it was intended to last, there enter, with due pomp, bearers of heavy-scented garlands, woven of jasmine and marigold, and in form like the muffs and boas that ladies wear in winter. These are put upon the necks and wrists of the guests in order of rank. Silver vases and sprinklers follow, containing rose-water and attar of roses. You may ward off the former from your person by offering your handkerchief for it, and you may present the back of your hand for the latter, of which one drop will be applied to your skin with a tiny silver or golden spoon. Finally, when everybody is reeking with incongruous odours and trying not to be sick, a silver tray appears with the daintiest little packets of _pan supari_, each pinned with a clove, and every guest is expected to transfer one to his mouth, for they have been prepared by a Brahmin and cannot hurt the most delicate caste. To an Englishman, however, it is now generally conceded to compromise by keeping the morsel in his hand, as if waiting an opportunity to enjoy it more at his leisure. When you get home your servant craves it of you and contrasts real rajah's _pan supari_ with the stuff which the poor man gets in the bazaar. The chewing of betel nut requires more apparatus and makes greater demands on a man's time and personal care than the smoking of tobacco or any of the allied vices. To cut the nut neatly an instrument is used like an enormous pair of nutcrackers with a sharp cutting edge. The lime should be made from oyster shells and it must be freshly burned and slaked. Exposure to the air soon spoils it, so a small, air-tight tin box is required to keep it in. Lastly, the betel leaf must be fresh, and in a hot climate green leaves do not keep their freshness without special care. But the necessity for attending to all these matters no doubt adds greatly to the interest which a chewer of _pan supari_ is able to find in life. Moreover, his taste and wealth have scope for expression in the elegance of his appointments, and by these you may generally judge of a man's rank and means. A well-to-do Mahratta cartman will carry in his waistband a sort of bijou hold-all of coloured cloth, which, when unrolled, displays neat pockets of different forms for the leaves, broken nuts, lime box, spices, etc.; but a native magistrate, who goes about attended by a peon and need not carry his own things, will have a box of polished brass, or even silver, divided into compartments. One may easily infer that to meet such a universal want there must be a correspondingly great industry, and the cultivation of the betel nut is indeed a great industry, and a most beautiful one. Surely since Adam first began to till the ground in the sweat of his face, his children have found no tillage so Eden-like as this. India has produced no Virgil to take the common charms of a farmer's life and put them into immortal song, so we search her literature in vain to learn how her simple, rustic people feel about these things, and in what we see of their life there is little sign that they feel about them at all; but when the Englishman, wandering, gun in hand, up a steaming valley among forest-clad hills, suddenly finds the path lead him into a betel nut garden, with no wire fence, or locked gate, or inhospitable notice threatening prosecution to trespassers, he feels as if he had entered some region of bliss where the earthly senses are too narrow for the delights that press for entrance to the soul. In the first place, the areca nut palm is almost, if not altogether, the most graceful of all its graceful tribe. Unlike the coconut, it grows as erect as a flagstaff, and the effect of this is increased by its extreme slenderness, for though it may attain a height of fifty feet, its diameter scarcely exceeds six inches. At the top of the stem there is a sheath of polished green, from the top of which again there issues a tuft of the most ethereal, feathery fronds, diverging and drooping with matchless grace. Under these hang the clusters of reddish-brown nuts. As the areca nut will not grow except in places that are at once moist and warm, the gardens are generally situated in narrow valleys and dells among hills, with little streams of limpid water rippling past them or through them. The steaming heat of such situations can only be realised by one who has traversed them at noon in the month of May in pursuit of sport or natural history. But the palms grow so close together that their fronds mingle into an almost unbroken roof, through which the sun can scarcely peep, and every air that enters there has the heat charmed out of it, and as it wanders among the broad, aromatic leaves of the betel vines which wreathe the pillars of that fairy hall, it is softened with balmy moisture, and laden with fragrance and scent to woo your senses in perfect tune with the tinkling music of the water and the enchanting beauty of the whole scene. In a large hut among these shades, with bananas waving their banner leaves over the smooth and well-swept yard in front, where the children play, lives the family that cultivates the garden. They are a sect of Brahmins, but very unbrahminical, unsophisticated, industrious, temperate, kind and hospitable. Other Brahmins despise them and wish to deny them the name, because they have soiled their priestly hands with agriculture. But they return the contempt, and walk in the way of their fathers, a way which leads them among the purest pleasures that this life affords and keeps them from many of its more sordid temptations. Perhaps the picture has its darker shades too. I have not seen them, and why should I look for them? The betel nut harvest is something of the nature of an acrobatic performance, for the crop is not on the ground, but on poles forty or fifty feet high. This is the manner in which it is gathered. The farmer, attended by his wife, goes out, and slipping a loose loop of rope over his feet to keep them together, so that when he gets the trunk of a tree between them it may fit like a wedge, he clasps one of the trees with his hands and goes up at a surprising rate. He carries with him a long rope, and when he reaches the top, he fastens one end of it to the tree, and throws the other to his wife, who goes to a distance and draws it tight. Then the man breaks off a heavy bunch of ripe nuts, and hitching it on the rope lets it go. It shoots down with such velocity that it would knock his wife down did she not know how to dodge it skilfully and break its force in a bend of the rope. When all the bunches are on the ground, the man begins to sway his body violently till the tender and supple palm is swinging like a pendulum and almost striking the trees on either side. Watching his opportunity, the man grasps one of these and transfers himself to it with the nimbleness of a monkey. In this way he makes an aerial journey round the garden and avoids the fatigue of climbing up and down every separate tree. The gathered betel nuts soon find their way to the warehouses of fat Bunias at the coast ports, where they are peeled and prepared and sorted and piled in great heaps according to quality, and finally shipped in _pattimars_ and _cotias_ and coasting steamers, and so disseminated over the length and breadth of the land to be the comforters of poor and rich. It only remains to say that the betel nut is not used in the East for tooth-powder, though the natives believe that the practice of chewing it saves them from toothache. When they use any dentifrice it is generally charcoal, and their toothbrush is either the forefinger or a fibrous stick chewed at the end till it becomes like a stiff paintbrush. But whatever he may use for the purpose, the Hindu cleans his teeth every morning, and that most thoroughly, before he will allow food to pass his lips, and the whiteness and soundness of his teeth are an object of envy to Englishmen. XVII A HINDU FESTIVAL Poets may sing, "Let the ape and tiger die," but they are not quite dead yet, only caged, and where is the man in whose bosom there lurks no wish that he could open the door just once in a way and let them have a frisk? In the East there is no hypocrisy about the matter. The tiger's den is barred and locked, and the British Government keeps the key, but the ape has an appointed day in the year on which he shall have his outing. They call it the _Holi_, which is a misnomer, for of all Hindu festivals this is the most unholy; but of that anon. I asked a Brahmin what this festival commemorated, and he said he did not know. He knew how to observe it, which was the main thing. Of course, there is an explanation of it in Hindu mythology, which the Brahmin ought to have known, and very probably did know, but was ashamed to tell. But it matters little, for we may be well assured that the explanation was invented to sanctify the festival long after the festival itself came into vogue, as has been the case with some of our most Christian holidays. The Holi comes round about the time of the vernal equinox, when victory declares for day and warmth in its long struggle with night and cold. Then Nature rises and shakes herself as Samson rose and shook himself and snapped the seven new cords that bound him, as tow is snapped when it smells the fire. Then "the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest," and then also the young Hindu's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love; and so it came about quite naturally that, looking around, among his plentiful gods, for a deity who might fitly be invited to preside over his lusty rejoicings at this season, he pitched upon Krishna. For Krishna, when he was upon this earth, was an amorous youth, and his goings on with certain milkmaids were such as would shock Mrs. Grundy at the present day even in India, supposing he had been only a man. But he was a god, therefore his doing a thing made it right, and, where he presides, his worshippers may do as he did. Consequently, man, woman and child of every caste and grade give themselves licence, during these days of the Holi, to act and speak in a manner that would be scandalous at any other time of the year. Hindus of the better sort are beginning to be outwardly, and some of them, I hope, inwardly, rather ashamed of this festival, and it is time they were. Yet there is always something cheering in the sight of untutored mirth and exuberant animal joy breaking out and triumphing over the sadness of life and the monotony of lowly toil; and I confess that I find a pleasing side to this festival of the Holi. I like it best as I have seen it in a fishing village on the west coast of India. At first sight you would not suspect the black and brawny Koli of much gaiety, but there is deep down in him a spring of mirth and humour which, "when wine and free companions kindle him," can break out into the most boisterous hilarity and jocundity and even buffoonery, throwing aside all trammels of convention and decorum. His women folk, too, though they do not go out of their proper place in the social system, assert themselves vigorously within it, and are gay and vivacious and well aware of their personal attractions. So the Koli village looks forward to the Holi and makes timely preparation for it. The night before the _poornima_, or full moon, of the month Phalgoon arrives, each trim fishing boat is stored with flowers and leafy branches, all the flags that can be mustered and a drum; then the whole village goes a-fishing. Next morning each housewife gets up early to decorate her house and trick out herself and her children. For though the Koli is the most naked of men, his whole workaday costume consisting of one rag about equal in amplitude to half a good pocket-handkerchief, his wife is the most dressy of women. She is always well-dressed even on common days. The bareness of her limbs may perhaps shock our notions of propriety at first, for, being a mud-wader of necessity, like the stork and the heron, she girds her garments about her very tightly indeed; but this only sets off her wonderfully erect and athletic figure, while her well-set head looks all the nicer that it has no covering except her own neatly-bound hair. She never draws her _saree_ coyly over her head, like other native women, when she meets a man. On this day there is no change in the fashion of her costume (that never changes), but she puts on her brightest dress, blue, or red, or lemon yellow, with all her private jewellery, and decks her hair with a small chaplet of bright flowers. Her children are tricked out with more fancy. The little brown girl, who yesterday had not one square inch of cloth on the whole of her tiny person, comes out a _petite_ miss in a crimson bodice and a white skirt, with her shining black hair oiled and combed and plaited and decked with flowers, and her neck and arms and feet twinkling with ornaments. Her brother of six or seven looks as if he were going to a fancy-dress ball in the character of His Highness the Holkar. His small head is set in a great three-cornered Maratha turban, and his body, a stranger to the feel of clothes, is masked in a resplendent purple jacket. The young men of the village, such of them as are not gone a-fishing, have donned clean white jackets. Beyond that they will not go, contemning effeminacy. About nine o'clock, when the sun is now well up, the distant sound of a tom-tom is heard, and the first of the returning fleet of _muchwas_ appears at the mouth of the creek. A long line of red and white flags extends from the top of the mainyard to the helm and streamers flutter from the mastheads. A monster bouquet of marigolds is mounted on the bowsprit, branches of trees are stuck about in all possible situations, and three or four large fishes hang from the bow, trailing their tails in the water. With the exception of the man at the helm, who sits stolid, minding his business, and one youth who plays the tom-tom, the crew are standing in a ring, gesticulating with their arms and legs, or waving wands and branches of trees. Some have half of their faces smeared with red paint. If a boat passes they greet it with a shout and a sally of wit or ribaldry. The other _muchwas_ follow close behind, with every inch of white sail spread and all a-flutter with flags and streamers: it would be difficult to imagine a prettier spectacle, and the tom-toming and the happiness beaming on the faces of the crews are almost infectious. One feels almost compelled to wave one's hat and cry, "Hip, hip, hooray!" The boats come to shore, and then there ought to be a tumbling out of the silvery harvest and a gathering of women and a strife indescribable of shrill tongues, and then a long procession of wives and daughters trotting to market, each balancing a great, dripping basket on her comely head, while the husbands and fathers go home to eat and sleep. But there is none of that to-day. The silvery harvest may go to destruction and the husbands and fathers can do without sleep for once. The children are taken on board in all their finery, and friends join and musicians with their instruments. Then all sails are spread again and the boats start for a circuit round the harbour. The wind blows fiercely from the north, and each buoyant _muchwa_ scuds along at a fearful pace, heeling over until the rippling water fingers the edge of the gunwale as if it were just getting ready to leap over and take possession. But the hilarious Koli balances himself on the sloping thwarts and jumps and sings and claps his hands, while the pipes screech and the drums rattle. Twice, or three times, does the whole fleet go out over the bar and wheel and return, each boat racing to be first, with no more sense of danger than a porpoise at play. At last they have had enough. The sails are furled and the boats beached, the big fishes are taken down from the bows, and the whole crowd, with their trophies and garlands, dance their way to the village. There it is better that we leave them. To-night great fires will be lighted in the middle of the main road and capacious pots of toddy will be at hand, and every merry Koli will get hilariously drunk and do and say things which we had better not see and hear. And the children will look on and try to imitate their elders. And women will find it best to keep out of the way for the sake of their pretty dresses, if there were no better reason. For pots of water dyed crimson with _goolal_ powder are ready, and everybody has licence to splash everybody when he gets a chance. Any time during the next two or three days you may find your own servants coming home dappled with red. So the ape has his fling. And the tiger is lurking not far behind. In each of those fires it is the proper thing to roast a cock, throwing him in alive. If the fire is a great one, a general village fire, then it is still greater fun to throw in a live goat. But the worst of these ceremonies are happily going out of fashion. For the English law is stern, and the _sahibs_ have strange and quixotic notions about cruelty to animals, and although they are far away on tour at this season and no native officer would voluntarily interfere with an immemorial custom, still the tiger walks in fear in these days and the Koli is often content to roast a coconut as proxy for a cock or a goat. XVIII INDIAN POVERTY THE STANDARD OF LIVING When Mr. Keir Hardie was in India he satisfied himself that the standard of living among the working classes in India has been deteriorating. This is interesting psychologically, and one would like to know by what means Mr. Keir Hardie attained to satisfaction on such a great and important question. Doubtless he had the ungrudging assistance of Mr. Chowdry. The poverty of India has for a good many years been a handy weapon, like the sailor's belaying pin, for everyone who wanted to "have at" our administration of that country; and if "a lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies," then this one must be as black as Tartarus, for it is indubitably more than half a truth. The common field-labourer in India is about as poor as man can be. He is very nearly as poor as a sparrow. His hut, built by himself, is scarcely more substantial or permanent than the sparrow's nest, and his clothing compares very unfavourably with the sparrow's feathers. The residue of his worldly goods consists of a few cooking pots and, it must be admitted, a few ornaments on his wife. But a sparrow is usually well fed and quite happy. It has no property simply because it wants none. If it stored honey like the busy bee, or nuts like the thrifty squirrel, it would be a prey to constant anxiety and stand in hourly danger of being plundered of its possessions, and perhaps killed for the sake of them. Therefore to speak of a Hindu's poverty as if it certainly implied want and unhappiness is mere misrepresentation born of ignorance. In all ages there have been men so enamoured of the possessionless life that they have abandoned their worldly goods and formed brotherhoods pledged to lifelong poverty. The majority of religious beggars in India belong to brotherhoods of this kind, and are the sturdiest and best-fed men to be seen in the country, especially in time of famine. But the Hindu peasant is not a begging friar, and may be supposed to have some share of the love of money which is common to humanity; so it is worth while to inquire why he is normally so very poor. There are two reasons, both of which are so obvious and have so often been pointed out by those who have known him best, that there is little excuse for overlooking them. The first of them is thus stated in Tennant's _Indian Recreations_, written in 1797, before British rule had affected the people of India much in one direction or another. "Industry can hardly be ranked among their virtues. Among all classes it is necessity of subsistence and not choice that urges to labour; a native will not earn six rupees a month by working a few hours more, if he can live upon three; and if he has three he will not work at all," Such was the Hindu a century ago in the eyes of an observant and judicious man, studying him with all the sympathetic interest of novelty, and such he is now. The other reason for the chronic poverty of the Indian peasant is that, if he had money beyond his immediate necessity, he could not keep it. It is the despair of the Government of India and of every English official who endeavours to improve his condition that he cannot keep his land, or his cattle, or anything else on which his permanent welfare depends. The following extract from _The Reminiscences of an Indian Police Official_ gives a lively picture of the effect of unaccustomed wealth, not on peasants, but on farmers owning land and cattle and used to something like comfort. "Yellapa, like all cotton growers in that part of the Western Presidency, profited enormously by the high price of the staple during the American war. Silver was poured into the country (literally) in _crores_ (millions sterling), and cultivators who previously had as much as they could do to live, suddenly found themselves possessed of sums their imagination had never dreamt of. What to do with their wealth, how to spend their cash was their problem. Having laden their women and children with ornaments, and decked them out in expensive _sarees_, they launched into the wildest extravagance in the matter of carts and trotting bullocks, going even as far as silver-plated yokes and harness studded with silver mountings. Even silver tyres to the wheels became the fashion. Twelve and fifteen rupees were eagerly paid for a pair of trotting bullocks. Trotting matches for large stakes were common; and the whole rural population appeared with expensive red silk umbrellas, which an enterprising English firm imported as likely to gratify the general taste for display. Many took to drink, not country liquors such as had satisfied them previously, but British brandy, rum, gin, and even champagne." A few pages further on the author tells us of the ruin by debt and drunkenness of the families which had indulged in these extravagances. The fact is that to keep for to-morrow what is in the hand to-day demands imagination, purpose and self-discipline, which the Hindu working man has not. He is the product of centuries, during which his rulers made the life of to-morrow too uncertain, while his climate made the life of to-day too easy. No outward applications will alone cure his poverty, because it is a symptom of an inward disease. When a healthier state of mind shall awaken an appetite for comforts and conveniences, and create necessities unknown to his fathers, then degrading poverty will no longer be possible as the common lot. And it was to be hoped that the British rule would in time have this happy effect. Tennant evidently thought that it had begun to do so even in his day. "The existence," he says, "of a regular British Government is but a recent circumstance; yet in the course of a few years complete security has been afforded to all of its dependants; many new manufactures have been established, many more have been extended to answer the demands of a larger exportation. We have therefore conferred upon our Asiatic subjects an increase of security, of industry and of produce, and of consequent greater means of enjoyment." It is therefore a very grave charge that Mr. Keir Hardie brings against the British Administration when he says, a century after these words were written, that the standard of living among the Hindu peasantry has deteriorated. Happily there does not appear to have been a close relation between facts and Mr. Keir Hardie's conclusions during his Indian tour, so we may continue to put our confidence in the many hopeful indications that exist of a distinct improvement in the ideal of life which has so long prevailed among our poor Indian fellow-subjects. The rise in the wages of both skilled and unskilled labour during even the last thirty years, especially in and near important towns, has been most remarkable. It is more to the point to know what the labourer is able to do and actually does with his wages, and here the returns of trade and the reports of the railway companies, post office and savings bank have striking evidence to offer. They are published annually, and anyone, even Mr. Keir Hardie, may consult them who likes his facts in statistical form. For those who live in India there are abundant evidences with more colour in them. Some thirty years ago, or more, there was a steamship company in Bombay owning two small steamers which carried passengers across the harbour. By degrees it extended its operations and increased its fleet until it had a daily service of fast steamers, with accommodation for nearly a thousand third-class passengers, which went down the coast as far as Goa, calling at every petty port on the way. The head of the firm retired some years ago, having made his pile. Seldom has a more profitable enterprise been started in Bombay. And whence did the profits come? From the pockets of Hindu peasants. The Mahrattas of the Ratnagiri District supply most of the "labour" required in Bombay, and for these the company spread its nets. And by their incessant coming and going it amassed its wealth. Heads of mercantile firms and Government offices, and all who have to deal with the Mahratta "puttiwala," viewed its success without surprise. Though always grumbling at his wages, he never appears to be without the means and the will to travel. A marriage, a religious ceremony in his family, or the death of some relative, requires his immediate presence in his village, and he asks for leave. If he cannot get it otherwise, he offers to forfeit his pay for the period. If it is still refused, he resigns his situation and goes. This does not indicate pinching poverty; there must be some margin between such men and starvation. And a saunter through their villages will amply confirm such a surmise. It is no uncommon thing in these coast villages to see that foreign luxury, a chair, perhaps even an easy-chair, in the verandah of a common Bhundaree (toddy-drawer). The rapidly growing use of chairs, glass tumblers, enamelled ironware, soda-water and lemonade, patent medicines, and even cheap watches, declares plainly that the young Hindu of the present day does not live as his fathers did. Men go better dressed, and their children are clothed at an earlier age. The advertisements in vernacular languages that one meets with, circulated and posted up in all sorts of places, tell the same tale convincingly; for the advertiser knows his business, and will not angle where no fish rise. Nor are large towns like Bombay the only places where the Hindu peasant widens his horizon and acquires new tastes. In the Fiji Islands there are about 22,000 natives of India who went out as indentured coolies with the option of returning at the end of five years at their own expense, or after ten years at that of Government. When these men come home, they bring with them new tastes and new ideas, as well as the habit of saving money and thousands of rupees saved during their short exile. In Mauritius and South Africa the Hindu working man is learning the same lessons. When he gets back to the sleepy life of his native village, he is not likely to settle down contentedly at the level from which he started. On every hand, in short, forces are at work stirring discontent in the breasts of the younger generation with the existence which was the heritage of their fathers. These forces operate from the outside, and the mass is large and very inert: it would be rash to say that in the heart of it there are not still millions who regard a monotonous struggle for a bare existence as their portion from Providence. But when a man who has travelled in India for half a cold season tells us that the standard of living in India has deteriorated, we are tempted to quote from Sir Ali Baba: "What is it that these travelling people put on paper? Let me put it in the form of a conundrum. Q. What is it that the travelling M.P. treasures up and the Anglo-Indian hastens to throw away? A. Erroneous hazy, distorted impressions." "One of the most serious duties attending a residence in India is the correcting of those misapprehensions which your travelling M.P. sacrifices his bath to hustle upon paper." XIX BORROWED INDIAN WORDS Of the results of the Roman supremacy in Britain none have been so permanent as their influence on our language. No doubt this was less due to any direct effect that their residence among the Britons had at the time on vernacular speech than to the fact that, for many centuries after their departure, Latin was the language, throughout Europe, of literature and scholarship. Our supremacy in India is acting on the languages of that country in both ways, and though it has scarcely lasted half as long yet as the Roman rule in Britain, English already bids fair to become one day the common tongue of the Hindus. But there is also a current flowing the other way, comparatively insignificant, but curious and interesting. Few persons in England are aware how often they use words of Indian origin in common speech. In attempting to give a list of these I will exclude the trade names of articles of Indian produce or manufacture, which have no literary interest, and also words which indicate objects, ideas or customs that are not English, and therefore have no English equivalents, such as "tom-tom," "sepoy" and "suttee," I will also omit Indian words, such as "bundobust," and "griffin," which are used by writers like Thackeray in the same way in which French terms are commonly introduced into English composition. Of course, it is not always possible to draw a hard and fast line. There are words which first came into England as the trade names of Indian products, but have extended their significance, or entirely changed it, and taken a permanent place in the English language. Pepper still means what it originally meant, but it has also become a verb. Another example is Shawl, a word which has lost all trace of its Oriental origin. It is a pure Hindustani word, pronounced "Shal," and indicating an article thus described in the seventeenth century by Thevenot, as quoted in Hobson-Jobson:--"Une Chal, qui est une maniere de toilette d'une laine très fine qui se fait a Cachmir." With the article to England came the name, but soon spread itself over all fabrics worn in the same fashion, except the Scotch plaid, which held its own. Somewhat similar is Calico, originally a fine cotton cloth imported from Calicut. This place is called Calicot by the natives, and may have dropped the final T through the influence of French dressmakers. Chintz is another example, being the Hindustani word "cheent," which means a spotted cotton cloth. In trade fabrics are always described in the plural, and the Z in Chintz is no doubt a perversion, through misunderstanding, of the terminal S. Lac is another Indian word which has retained its own meaning, but it has gone beyond it and given rise to a verb "to lacquer." With these perhaps should be mentioned Pyjamas and Shampoo, both of which have undergone strange perversions. Pyjama is an Indian name for loose drawers or trousers tied with a cord round the waist, such as Mussulmans of both sexes wear. In India the Pyjama was long ago adopted, with a loose coat to match, as a more decent and comfortable costume than the British nightshirt, and when Anglo-Indians retired they brought the fashion home with them, English tailors called the whole costume a "Pyjama suit," but the second word was soon dropped and the first improved into the plural number. "Shampoo" comes from a verb "champna," to press or squeeze, and the imperative, "champo," as often happens, was the form in which it became English. Forbes, in his _Oriental Memoirs_, writes of "the effects of opium, champoing and other luxuries indulged in by Oriental sensualists." When the medical profession in England began to patronise the practice, it assumed a more dignified name, "massage," and the old word was relegated to the hairdressers, who appropriated it to the washing of the head, an operation with which the word has no proper relation at all. There are two words of doubtful derivation, which may be mentioned in this connection. Cot, in the sense of a light bed, or cradle, is not much used in England, but is given in Webster's and other dictionaries, with the same Saxon derivation, as the "cot beside the hill" which the poet Rogers sighed for. If this is correct, then it is at least curious that the word should have almost gone out of use in England and revived in India from a distinct root. There it is the term in every-day use for any rough bedstead, such as the natives sleep on and call a khat. The average Englishman cannot aspirate a K, and never pronounces the Indian A aright unless it is followed by an R, so khat becomes "cot" by a process of which there are many illustrations. The other doubtful word mentioned above is Teapoy. It is defined in the dictionaries as an ornamental table, with a folding top, containing caddies for holding tea, but in India, where it is in much more general use than it is in England, it signifies simply a light tripod table and almost certainly comes from "teenpai" (three-foot), corresponding to another common word, "charpai" (four-foot), which means a native bedstead. The fact that it is sometimes spelled Tepoy confirms this, but the other spelling is commoner, and appears to have led to its getting a special meaning connected with tea among furniture sellers. Cheroot, Bangle, Curry and Kidgeree are examples of words which have come to us with the things which they signify, and retain their meaning though the thing itself may have undergone some change. Curry as made in England is sometimes not recognisable by a new arrival from India, and Kidgeree is applied to a preparation of rice and fish, whereas it means properly a dish of rice, split peas and butter, or "ghee." Fish may be eaten with it, but is not an ingredient of it. Bazaar may be classed with these words, and also Polo, which is merely the name for a polo ball in the language of one of the Himalayan tribes from whom we learned the game. It is said to have been played in England for the first time at Aldershot in 1871. More interest attaches to Gymkhana, for neither the word nor the thing which it signifies is Indian, though both originated in India, and the derivation of the word is unknown, though it is scarcely fifty years old. Several hybrid derivations have been suggested, none of them probable, and I lean to the suggestion that the starting-point of the word may have been "jumkhana", a term which, though it is not in Forbes's _Hindustani Dictionary,_ I have heard a native apply to a large cotton carpet, such as native acrobats, or wrestlers, might spread when about to give a performance. Our use of the words Arena, Stage, Boards, Footlights, etc., shows how easily a carpet might give name to a place of meeting for athletic exercises. There is another class of words which have come into England through returned Anglo-Indians and spread by their own merit. One of these is Loot. The dictionary says that it means "to plunder," but it holds more than that or any equivalent English word. Perhaps it has scarcely risen above the level of slang yet, but the phrase "to run amuck" is classical, having been used by both Pope and Dryden. The pedantic attempt made by some writers to change the common way of writing it because the original Malay term is a single word, "amok," comes too late in view of Dryden's line, "And runs an Indian muck at all he meets." Cheese, in the sense of a thing, or rather of "the very thing," must be ranked as slang too, though very common. The slang dictionaries give fanciful derivations from Anglo-Saxon roots, or suggest that it is a perversion of "chose"; but it is a common Hindustani word for a thing, and when an Englishman in India finds some article which exactly suits his purpose and exclaims, "Ah! that's the cheese," no one needs to ask the derivation. If it did not come to us directly from India, then it came through the gipsies, for it is one of the many Hindustani words which occur in their language. Another word that came from India indirectly is Caste, but it is of Portuguese origin. The early Portuguese writers applied it ("casta") to the hereditary division of Hindu society, and the English adopted it. It has now become indispensable. We have no other word that could take its place in the lines, Her manners had not that repose Which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. I must close with two familiar words which have been so long with us that few who use them ever suspect that they came from the East--namely, Punch and Toddy. The Rev. J. Ovington, who sailed to Bombay in 1689, in the ship that carried the glad news of the coronation of William and Mary, tells us that, in the East India Company's chief factory at Surat, the common table was supplied with "plenty of generous Sherash (Shiraz) wine and arak Punch," Arrack (properly "Urk"), sometimes abbreviated to Rack, means any distilled spirit, or essence, but is commonly used to distinguish country liquor from imported spirits. The Company's factors drank it because European wines and beer were at that time very expensive in India, and to reconcile it to their palates they made it into a brew called Punch, from the Indian word "panch," meaning five, because it contained five ingredients--viz. arrack, hot water, limes, sugar and spice. This was the ordinary drink of poor Englishmen in India for a longtime, and public "Punch-houses" existed in every settlement of the East India Company. Now, one of the principal substances from which country liquor is distilled is palm juice, the native name for which, "tadee," has been perverted into "toddy" (as in the case of "cot" above-mentioned), and "toddy punch" meant the same thing as "arrack punch," Returning Anglo-Indians brought the receipt for making this brew to England, and lovers of Vanity Fair will remember how the whole course of that story was changed by the bowl of "rack punch" which Joseph Sedley ordered at Vauxhall, where "everybody had rack punch." How soon both the brew and its Indian name took firm root and spread among us appears from the fact that, at the Holy Fair described by Burns in the century before last, the lads and lasses sit round a table and "steer about the toddy." 
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18767	----	images generously made available by Literature for Children, a State University System of Florida PALMM Project (http://palmm.fcla.edu/juv/) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 18767-h.htm or 18767-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/7/6/18767/18767-h/18767-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/8/7/6/18767/18767-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Literature for Children, a State University System of Florida PALMM Project. See http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=juv&idno=UF00002052&format=jpg or http://fulltext10.fcla.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=juv&idno=UF00002052&format=pdf STORIES ABOUT ANIMALS. WITH PICTURES TO MATCH by FRANCIS C. WOODWORTH, Editor of "The Youth's Cabinet," Author of "Stories About Birds," &C. Boston. Phillips, Sampson and Company. 1851. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, By D. A. Woodworth, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New York. Preface. In the following pages are grouped together anecdotes illustrative of the peculiarities of different animals--mostly quadrupeds--their habits, dispositions, intelligence, and affection. Nothing like a scientific treatise of any of these animals has been attempted. I do not even give a generic or specific history of one of them, except so far as they are all casually and incidentally described in these anecdotes. Their natural history, in detail, I leave for others, as the historian or biographer of men, bent only on a record of the thoughts, words, and acts of men, passes by the abstract details, however interesting they may be, of human physiology, and the general characteristics of the species. I have not aimed to introduce to the reader, in this volume, all the animals belonging to the race of quadrupeds, who have a claim to such a distinction. I have preferred rather to make a selection from the great multitude, and to present such facts and anecdotes respecting those selected as shall, while they interest and entertain the young reader, tend to make him familiar with this branch of useful knowledge. I ought, in justice to myself, to explain the reason why I have restricted my anecdotes almost exclusively to animals belonging to the race of quadrupeds. It is seldom wise, in my judgment, for an author to define, very minutely, any plan he may have, to be developed in future years--as so many circumstances may thwart that plan altogether, or very materially modify it. Yet I may say, in this connection, that the general plan I had marked out for myself, when I set about the task of collecting materials for these familiar anecdotes, is by no means exhausted in this volume, and that, should my stories respecting quadrupeds prove as acceptable to my young friends as I hope, it is my intention eventually to pursue the same, or a similar course, in relation to the other great divisions of the animal kingdom--Birds, Reptiles, Insects, Fishes, etc. The stories I tell I have picked up wherever I could find them--having been generally content when I have judged a particular story to be, in the first place, a good story, and in the second place, a reliable one. I have not thought it either necessary or desirable, to give, in every case, the source from which I have derived my facts. Some of them I obtained by actual observation; quite as many were communicated by personal friends and casual acquaintances; and by far the greater portion were gleaned from the current newspapers of the day, and from the many valuable works on natural history, published in England and in this country. Among the books I have consulted, I am mostly indebted to the following: Bingley's Anecdotes illustrative of the Instincts of Animals; Knight's Library of Entertaining Knowledge; Bell's Phenomena of Nature; the Young Naturalist's Rambles; Natural History of the Earth and Man; Chambers' Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge; Animal Biography; and the Penny Magazine. The task of preparing this volume for the press has been an exceedingly pleasant one. Indeed, it has been rather recreation than toil, in comparison with other and severer literary labors. I trust my young friends will take as much pleasure in reading these stories as I have taken in collecting them. I hope too, that no one of my readers will fail to discover, as he proceeds, the evidences of the wisdom, power, and goodness of the Being who formed and who controls and governs the animal kingdom. Here, as in every department of nature's works, these evidences abound, if we will but perceive them. Look at them, dear reader, and in your admiration of nature, forget not the love and reverence you owe to nature's God. [Illustration: (signed) Francis C. Woodworth] Contents. The Dog The Wolf The Horse The Panther The Elephant The Lion The Galago The Bear The Rat The Mouse The Rabbit The Hare The Cat The Jackal The Sheep The Deer The Hippopotamus The Weasel The Squirrel The Giraffe The Monkey Tribe The Zebra The Ox and Cow The Lama [Illustration: "Engravings." Heading.] Rover and his Play-fellow The Dog at his Master's Grave Nero, saving Little Ellen The Servant and the Mastiff The Child discovered by the Indian's Dog The Dog of St. Bernard, rescuing the Child The Bloodhound Exploit of the New England Dog A Shepherd Dog feeding a lost Child A Newfoundland, saving a Child from drowning The Adventure with the Serpent The Russian Dog-Sledge The Skirmish with Wolves A Scene in the old Wolf Story The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing The Horse watching over the Trumpeter Parting with the Favorite Horse Alexander taming Bucephalus Uncle Peter and his queer Old Mare The Horse sentenced to die The Leopard and the Serpent The Elephant The Lion The Lioness and her Cubs The Convention of Animals The Galago Portrait of Goldsmith The Juggler and his Pupils Field Mice The Rabbit Trap The Rabbit Tame Hares Portrait of Cowper Wonderful Feat of a Goat The Tiger The Rhinoceros The Alligator The Cat The Jackal The Wounded Traveler Giotto, sketching among his Sheep The Invalid and the Sheep The Deer The Hippopotamus The Ferret Weasel A Hawk pouncing on a Weasel The Squirrel The Giraffe The Orang-outang The Zebra Cows, taking their comfort Stories about Animals. The Dog. Whatever may be thought of the somewhat aristocratic pretensions of the lion, as the dog, after all, has the reputation of being the most intelligent of the inferior animals, I will allow this interesting family the precedence in these stories, and introduce them first to the reader. For the same reason, too--because they exhibit such wonderful marks of intelligence, approaching, sometimes, almost to the boundary of human reason--I shall occupy much more time in relating stories about them than about any other animal. Let me see. Where shall I begin? With Rover, my old friend Rover--my companion and play-fellow, when a little boy? I have a good mind to do so; for he endeared himself to me by thousands of acts of kindness and affection, and he has still a place of honor in my memory. He frequently went to school with me. As soon as he saw me get my satchel of books, he was at my side, and off he ran before me toward the school-house. When he had conducted me to school, he usually took leave of me, and returned home. But he came back again, before school was out, so as to be my companion homeward. I might tell a great many stories about the smartness of Rover; but on the whole I think I will forbear. I am afraid if I should talk half an hour about him, some of you would accuse me of too much partiality for my favorite, and would think I had fallen into the same foolish mistake that is sometimes noticed in over-fond fathers and mothers, who talk about a little boy or girl of theirs, as if there never was another such a prodigy. So I will just pass over Rover's wonderful exploits--for he had some, let me whisper it in your ear--and tell my stories about other people's dogs. [Illustration: ROVER AND HIS PLAY-FELLOW.] "Going to the dogs," is a favorite expression with a great many people. They understand by it a condition in the last degree deplorable. To "go to the dogs," is spoken of as being just about the worst thing that can happen to a poor fellow. I think differently, however. I wish from my heart, that some selfish persons whom I could name would go to the dogs. They would learn there, I am sure, what they have never learned before--most valuable lessons in gratitude, and affection, and self-sacrifice--to say nothing about common sense, a little more of which would not hurt them. There is an exceedingly affecting story of a dog that lived in Scotland as long ago as 1716: This dog belonged to a Mr. Stewart, of Argyleshire, and was a great favorite with his master. He was a Highland greyhound, I believe. One afternoon, while his master was hunting in company with this dog, he was attacked with inflammation in his side. He returned home, and died the same evening. Some three days afterward his funeral took place, when the dog followed the remains of his master to the grave-yard, which was nearly ten miles from the residence of the family. He remained until the interment was completed, when he returned home with those who attended the funeral. When he entered the house he found the plaid cloak, formerly his master's, hanging in the entry. He pulled it down, and in defiance of all attempts to take it from him, lay on it all night, and would not even allow any person to touch it. Every evening afterward, about sunset, he left home, traveled to the grave-yard, reposed on the grave of his late master all night, and returned home regularly in the morning. But, what was still more remarkable, he could not be persuaded to eat a morsel. Children near the grave-yard, who watched his motions, again and again carried him food; but he resolutely refused it, and it was never known by what means he existed. While at home he was always dull and sorrowful; he usually lay in a sleeping posture, and frequently uttered long and mournful groans. [Illustration: THE DOG AT HIS MASTER'S GRAVE.] In the western part of our own country, some years since, an exploit was performed by a Newfoundland dog, which I must tell my readers. It is related by Mrs. Phelan. A man by the name of Wilson, residing near a river which was navigable, although the current was somewhat rapid, kept a pleasure boat. One day he invited a small party to accompany him in an excursion on the river. They set out. Among the number were Mr. Wilson's wife and little girl, about three years of age. The child was delighted with the boat, and with the water lilies that floated on the surface of the river. Meanwhile, a fine Newfoundland dog trotted along the bank of the stream, looking occasionally at the boat, and thinking, perhaps, that he should like a sail himself. Pleasantly onward went the boat, and the party were in the highest spirits, when little Ellen, trying to get a pretty lily, stretched out her hand over the side of the boat, and in a moment she lost her balance and fell into the river. What language can describe the agony of those parents when they saw the current close over their dear child! The mother, in her terror, could hardly be prevented from throwing herself into the river to rescue her drowning girl, and her husband had to hold her back by force. Vain was the help of man at that dreadful moment; but prayer was offered up to God, and he heard it. No one took any notice of Nero, the faithful dog. But he had kept his eye upon the boat, it seems. He saw all that was going on; he plunged into the river at the critical moment when the child had sunk to the bottom, and dived beneath the surface. Suddenly a strange noise was heard on the side of the boat opposite to the one toward which the party were anxiously looking, and something seemed to be splashing in the water. It was the dog. Nero had dived to the bottom of that deep river, and found the very spot where the poor child had settled down into her cold, strange cradle of weeds and slime. Seizing her clothes, and holding them fast in his teeth, he brought her up to the surface of the water, a very little distance from the boat, and with looks that told his joy, he gave the little girl into the hands of her astonished father. Then, swimming back to the shore, he shook the water from his long, shaggy coat, and laid himself down, panting, to recover from the fatigue of his adventure. [Illustration: NERO SAVING LITTLE ELLEN.] Ellen seemed for awhile to be dead; her face was deadly pale; it hung on her shoulder; her dress showed that she had sunk to the bottom. But by and by she recovered gradually, and in less than a week she was as well as ever. But the Glasgow Chronicle tells a story of the most supremely humane dog I ever heard of--so humane, in fact, that his humanity was somewhat troublesome. This dog--a fine Newfoundland--resided near Edinburgh. Every day he was seen visiting all the ponds and brooks in the neighborhood of his master's residence. He had been instrumental more than once in saving persons from drowning. He was respected for his magnanimity, and caressed for his amiable qualities, till, strange as it may be considered, this flattery completely turned his head. Saving life became a passion. He took to it as men take to dram-drinking. Not having sufficient scope for the exercise of his diseased benevolence in the district, he took to a very questionable method of supplying the deficiency. Whenever he found a child on the brink of a pond, he watched patiently for the opportunity to place his fore-paws suddenly on its person, and plunged it in before it was aware. Now all this was done for the mere purpose of fetching them out again. He appeared to find intense pleasure in this nonsensical sort of work. At last the outcry became so great by parents alarmed for their children, although no life was ever lost by the indulgence of such a singular taste, that the poor dog was reluctantly destroyed. Mr. Bingley, an English writer, has contributed not a little to the amusement and instruction of the young, by a book which he published a few years ago, relating to the instinct of the dog. Among the stories told in this book, are several which I must transfer for my own readers. Here is one about the fatal adventure of a large mastiff with a robber. I shall give it nearly in the words of Mr. Bingley. Not a great many years ago, a lady, who resided in a lonely house in Cheshire, England, permitted all her domestics, save one female, to go to a supper at an inn about three miles distant, which was kept by the uncle of the girl who remained at home with her mistress. As the servants were not expected to return till the morning, all the doors and windows were as usual secured, and the lady and her companion were about to retire to bed, when they were alarmed by the noise of some persons apparently attempting to break into the house. A large mastiff, which fortunately happened to be in the kitchen, set up a tremendous barking; but this had not the effect of intimidating the robbers. After listening attentively for some time, the maid-servant discovered that the robbers were attempting to enter the house by forcing their way through a hole under the sunk story in the back kitchen. Being a young woman of courage, she went toward the spot, accompanied by the dog, and patting him on the back, exclaimed, "At him, Cæsar!" The dog leaped into the hole, made a furious attack upon the intruder, and gave something a violent shake. In a few minutes all became quiet, and the animal returned with his mouth full of blood. A slight bustle was now heard outside the house, but in a short time all again became still. The lady and servant, too much terrified to think of going to bed, sat up until morning without further molestation. When day dawned they discovered a quantity of blood outside of the wall in the court-yard. When her fellow-servants came home, they brought word to the girl that her uncle, the inn-keeper, had died suddenly of apoplexy during the night, and that it was intended that the funeral should take place in the course of the day. Having obtained leave to go to the funeral, she was surprised to learn, on her arrival, that the coffin was screwed down. She insisted, however, on taking a last look at the body, which was most unwillingly granted; when, to her great surprise and horror, she discovered that his death had been occasioned by a large wound in the throat. The events of the preceding night rushed on her mind, and it soon became evident to her that she had been the innocent and unwilling cause of her uncle's death. It turned out, that he and one of his servants had formed the design of robbing the house and murdering the lady during the absence of her servants, but that their wicked design had been frustrated by the courage and watchfulness of her faithful mastiff. [Illustration: THE SERVANT AND THE MASTIFF.] There is another anecdote told of a wild Indian dog which I am sure my young friends will like. It is from the same source with the one about the mastiff. A man by the name of Le Fevre, many years ago, lived on a farm in the United States, near the Blue mountains. Those mountains at that time abounded in deer and other animals. One day, the youngest of Le Fevre's children, who was four years old, disappeared early in the morning. The family, after a partial search, becoming alarmed, had recourse to the assistance of some neighbors. These separated into parties, and explored the woods in every direction, but without success. Next day the search was renewed, but with no better result. In the midst of their distress Tewenissa, a native Indian from Anaguaga, on the eastern branch of the river Susquehannah, who happened to be journeying in that quarter, accompanied by his dog Oniah, happily went into the house of the planter with the design of reposing himself. Observing the distress of the family, and being informed of the circumstances, he requested that the shoes and stockings last worn by the child should be brought to him. He then ordered his dog to smell them; and taking the house for a centre, described a semicircle of a quarter of a mile, urging the dog to find out the scent. They had not gone far before the sagacious animal began to bark. The track was followed up by the dog with still louder barking, till at last, darting off at full speed, he was lost in the thickness of the woods. Half an hour after they saw him returning. His countenance was animated, bearing even an expression of joy; it was evident he had found the child--but was he dead or alive? This was a moment of cruel suspense, but it was of short continuance. The Indian followed his dog, and the excellent animal conducted him to the lost child, who was found unharmed, lying at the foot of a great tree. Tewenissa took him in his arms, and returned with him to the distressed parents and their friends, who had not been able to advance with the same speed. He restored little Derick to his father and mother, who ran to meet him; when a scene of tenderness and gratitude ensued, which may be easier felt than described. The child was in a state of extreme weakness, but, by means of a little care, he was in a short time restored to his usual vigor. [Illustration: THE CHILD DISCOVERED BY THE INDIAN'S DOG.] In one of the churches at Lambeth, England, there is a painting on a window, representing a man with his dog. There is a story connected with this painting which is worth telling. Tradition informs us that a piece of ground near Westminster bridge, containing a little over an acre, was left to that parish by a pedler, upon condition that his picture, accompanied by his dog, should be faithfully painted on the glass of one of the windows. The parishioners, as the story goes, had this picture executed accordingly, and came in possession of the land. This was in the year 1504. The property rented at that time for about a dollar a year. It now commands a rent of nearly fifteen hundred dollars. The reason given for the pedler's request is, that he was once very poor, when, one day, having occasion to pass across this piece of ground, and being weary, he sat down under a tree to rest. While seated here, he noticed that his dog, who was with him, acted strangely. At a distance of several rods from the place where he sat, the dog busied himself for awhile in scratching at a particular spot of earth, after which he returned to his master, looked earnestly up to his face, and endeavored to draw him toward the spot where he had been digging. The pedler, however, paid but little attention to the movements of the dog, until he had repeated them several times, when he was induced to accompany the dog. To his surprise he found, on doing so, that there was a pot of gold buried there. With a part of this gold he purchased the lot of ground on which it had been discovered, and bequeathed it to the parish on the conditions mentioned above. The pedler and his dog are represented in the picture which ornaments the window of that church. "But is the story a true one?" methinks I hear my little friends inquire. I confess it has the air of one of Baron Munchausen's yarns, and I am somewhat doubtful about it. But that is the tradition in the Lambeth parish, where the picture may still be seen by any body who takes the trouble to visit the place. The story may be true. Stranger things have happened. Those who have studied geography do not need to be informed that there is a chain of high mountains running through Switzerland, called the Alps. The tops of some of these mountains are covered with snow nearly all the year. In the winter it is very difficult and dangerous traveling over the Alps; for the snow frequently rolls down the sides of the mountain, in a great mass, called an _avalanche_, and buries the traveler beneath it. On one of these mountains there is the convent of St. Bernard. It is situated ten thousand feet above the base of the mountain, and is on one of the most dangerous passes between Switzerland and Savoy. It is said to be the highest inhabited spot in the old world. It is tenanted by a race of monks, who are very kind to travelers. Among other good services they render to the strangers who pass near their convent, they search for unhappy persons who have been overtaken by sudden storms, and who are liable to perish. These monks have a peculiar variety of the dog, called the dog of St. Bernard, or the Alpine Spaniel, which they train to hunt for travelers who are overtaken by a storm, and who are in danger of perishing. The dog of St. Bernard is one of the most sagacious of his species. He is covered with thick, curly hair, which is frequently of great service in warming the traveler, when he is almost dead with cold. One of these dogs, named Barry, had, it was reckoned, in twelve years saved the lives of forty individuals. Whenever the mountain was enveloped in fogs and snow, away scoured Barry, barking and searching all about for any person who might have fallen a victim to the storm. When he was successful in finding any one, if his own strength was insufficient to rescue him, he would run back to the convent in search of assistance. I think I must translate for my young readers an affecting story about this dog Barry, which I read the other day in a little French book, entitled "Modèles des Enfans." It seems that a great while ago there was a poor woman wandering about these mountains, in the vicinity of the convent of St. Bernard, in company with her son, a very small boy. The story does not inform us what they were doing, and why they were walking in such a dangerous place. Perhaps they were gathering fuel to keep them warm; and very likely when they left home the weather was mild, and that they did not anticipate a storm. However that may be, they were overtaken by an avalanche, the mother was buried beneath it, and the child saw her no more. But I must tell the remainder of the story in the language of the French writer. [Illustration: THE DOG OF ST. BERNARD, RESCUING THE CHILD.] "Poor boy! the storm increased; the wind howled, and whirled the snow into huge heaps. In the hope that he might possibly meet a traveler, the child forced his way for awhile through the snow; but at last, exhausted, benumbed with the cold, and discouraged, he fell upon his knees, joined his hands devoutly together, and cried, as he raised his face, bathed in tears, toward heaven, 'O my God! have mercy on a poor child, who has nobody in the world to care for him!' As he lay in the place where he fell down, which was sheltered a little by a rock, he grew colder and colder, and he thought he must die. But still, from time to time, he prayed, 'Have mercy, O my God! on a poor child, who has nobody in the world to care for him!' At last he fell asleep, but was wakened by feeling a warm paw on his face. As he opened his eyes he saw with terror an enormous dog holding his head near his own. He uttered a cry of fear, and started back a little way from the dog. The dog approached the boy again, and tried, after his own fashion, to make the little fellow understand that he came there to do him good, and not to hurt him. Then he licked the face and hands of the child. By and by the child confided in his visitor, and began to entertain a hope that he might yet be saved. When Barry saw that his errand was understood, he lifted his head, and showed the child a bottle covered with willow, which was hanging around his neck. This bottle contained wine, some of which the little fellow drank, and felt refreshed. Then the dog lay down by the side of the child, and gave him the benefit of the heat of his own body for a long time. After this, the dog made a sign for the boy to get upon his back. It was some time before the boy could understand what the sign meant. But it was repeated again and again, and at last the child mounted the back of the kind animal, who carried him safely to the convent." Here is a capital story about a bloodhound, taken from the excellent book by Mr. Bingley, to which I have before alluded. Aubri de Mondidier, a gentleman of family and fortune, traveling alone through the Forest of Bondy, in France, was murdered, and buried under a tree. His dog, a bloodhound, would not quit his master's grave for several days; till at length, compelled by hunger, he proceeded to the house of an intimate friend of the unfortunate Aubri at Paris, and, by his melancholy howling, seemed desirous of expressing the loss they had both sustained. He repeated his cries, ran to the door, looked back to see if any one followed him, returned to his master's friend, pulled him by the sleeve, and with dumb eloquence, entreated him to go with him. The singularity of all these actions of the dog, added to the circumstance of his coming there without his master, whose faithful companion he had always been, prompted the company to follow the animal. He conducted them to the foot of a tree, where he renewed his howling, scratching the earth with his feet, and significantly entreating them to search the particular spot. Accordingly, on digging, the body of the unhappy Aubri was found. [Illustration: THE BLOODHOUND] Some time after, the dog accidentally met the assassin, who is styled, by all the historians who relate the story, the Chevalier Macaire, when, instantly seizing him by the throat, he was with great difficulty compelled to quit his victim. In short, whenever the dog saw the chevalier, he continued to pursue and attack him with equal fury. Such obstinate violence, confined only to Macaire, appeared very extraordinary, especially to those who at once recalled the dog's remarkable attachment to his master, and several instances in which Macaire's envy and hatred to Aubri de Mondidier had been conspicuous. Additional circumstances increased suspicion, and at length the affair reached the royal ear. The king accordingly sent for the dog, which appeared extremely gentle, till he perceived Macaire in the midst of several noblemen, when he ran fiercely toward him, growling at and attacking him, as usual. Struck with such a combination of circumstantial evidence against Macaire, the king determined to refer the decision to the chance of battle; or, in other words, he gave orders for a combat between the chevalier and the dog. The lists were appointed in the Isle of Notre Dame, then an unenclosed, uninhabited place. Macaire was allowed for his weapon a great cudgel, and an empty cask was given to the dog as a place of retreat, to enable him to recover breath. Every thing being prepared, the dog no sooner found himself at liberty, than he made for his adversary, running round him and menacing him on every side, avoiding his blows till his strength was exhausted; then springing forward, he seized him by the throat, threw him on the ground, and obliged him to confess his guilt in presence of the king and the whole court. In consequence of this confession, the chevalier, after a few days, was convicted upon his own acknowledgment, and beheaded on a scaffold in the Isle of Notre Dame. The editor of the Portland (Maine) Advertiser relates the following anecdote: "A gentleman from the country recently drove up to a store in this city, and jumping from his sleigh, left his dog in the care of the vehicle. Presently an avalanche of snow slid from the top of the building upon the sidewalk, which so frightened the horse that he started off down the street at a furious run. At this critical juncture, the dog sprang from the sleigh, and seizing the reins in his mouth, held back with all his strength, and actually reined in the frightened animal to a post at the side of the street, when apparently having satisfied himself that no danger was to be apprehended, he again resumed his station in the sleigh, as unconcerned as if he had only done an ordinary act of duty." A few years ago a little girl, residing in an inland village in Connecticut--without the consent of her mother, be it remembered--went alone to a pond near by, to play with her brother's little vessel, and fell into the water. She came very near drowning; but a dog belonging to the family, named Rollo, who was not far off, plunged in and drew her to the shore. She was so exhausted, however, that she could not rise, and the dog could not lift her entirely out of the water. But he raised her head a little above the surface, and then ran after help. He found a man, and made use of every expedient in his power to draw him to the spot where he had left the child. At first the stranger paid very little attention to the dog; but by and by he was persuaded something was wrong, and followed the dog to the pond. The little girl was not drowned, though she was quite insensible; and the man lifted her from the water, and saved her life, to the great joy of Rollo, who seemed eager to assist in this enterprise. Here is a capital story about a shepherd's dog in Scotland. I take the liberty of borrowing it from Bingley's admirable book. The valleys, or glens, as they are called by the natives, which intersect the Grampians, a ridge of rocky and precipitous mountains in the northern part of Scotland, are chiefly inhabited by shepherds. As the pastures over which each flock is permitted to range, extend many miles in every direction, the shepherd never has a view of his whole flock at once, except when it is collected for the purpose of sale or shearing. His occupation is to make daily visits to the different extremities of his pastures in succession, and to turn back, by means of his dog, any stragglers that may be approaching the boundaries of his neighbors. [Illustration: EXPLOIT OF THE NEW ENGLAND DOG.] In one of these excursions, a shepherd happened to carry with him one of his children, an infant some two or three years old. After traversing his pastures for some time, attended by his dog, the shepherd found himself under the necessity of ascending a summit at some distance to have a more extended view of his range. As the ascent was too fatiguing for his child, he left him on a small plain at the bottom, with strict injunctions not to stir from it till his return. Scarcely, however, had he gained the summit, when the horizon was suddenly darkened by one of those thick and heavy fogs which frequently descend so rapidly amid these mountains, as, in the space of a few minutes, almost to turn day into night. The anxious father instantly hastened back to find his child; but, owing to the unusual darkness, and his own trepidation, he unfortunately missed his way in the descent. After a fruitless search of many hours among the dangerous morasses and cataracts with which these mountains abound, he was at length overtaken by night. Still wandering on, without knowing whither, he at length came to the verge of the mist, and, by the light of the moon, discovered that he had reached the bottom of the valley, and was now within a short distance of his cottage. To renew the search that night was equally fruitless and dangerous. He was therefore obliged to return home, having lost both his child and his dog, which had attended him faithfully for years. Next morning by day-break, the shepherd, accompanied by a band of his neighbors, set out again to seek his child; but, after a day spent in fruitless fatigue, he was at last compelled by the approach of night to descend from the mountain. On returning to his cottage, he found that the dog which he had lost the day before, had been home, and, on receiving a piece of cake, had instantly gone off again. For several successive days the shepherd renewed the search for his child, and still, on returning in the evening disappointed to his cottage, he found that the dog had been there, and, on receiving his usual allowance of cake, had instantly disappeared. Struck with this singular circumstance, he remained at home one day, and when the dog, as usual, departed with his piece of cake, he resolved to follow him, and find out the cause of this strange procedure. The dog led the way to a cataract at some distance from the spot where the shepherd had left his child. The banks of the waterfall, almost joined at the top, yet separated by an abyss of immense depth, presented that abrupt appearance which so often astonishes and appalls the traveler amid the Grampian mountains, and indicates that these stupendous chasms were not the silent work of time, but the sudden effect of some violent convulsion of the earth. Down one of these rugged and almost perpendicular descents the dog began, without hesitation, to make his way, and at last disappeared in a cave, the mouth of which was almost on a level with the torrent. The shepherd with difficulty followed; but, on entering the cave, what were his emotions, when he beheld his infant eating with much satisfaction the cake which the dog had just brought him, while the faithful animal stood by, eyeing his young charge with the utmost complacency! From the situation in which the child was found, it appeared that he had wandered to the brink of the precipice, and either fallen or scrambled down till he reached the cave, which the dread of the torrent had afterward prevented him from quitting. The dog, by means of his scent, had traced him to the spot, and afterward prevented him from starving, by giving up to him his own daily allowance. He appears never to have quitted the child by night or day, except when it was necessary to go for his food, and then he was always seen running at full speed to and from the cottage. [Illustration: A SHEPHERD'S DOG FEEDING A LOST CHILD] The following story is related on the authority of a correspondent of the Boston Traveler: A gentleman from abroad, stopping at a hotel in Boston, privately secreted his handkerchief behind the cushion of a sofa, and left the hotel, in company with his dog. After walking for some minutes, he suddenly stopped, and said to his dog, "I have left my handkerchief at the hotel, and want it"--giving no particular directions in reference to it. The dog immediately returned in full speed, and entered the room which his master had just left. He went directly to the sofa, but the handkerchief was gone. He jumped upon tables and counters, but it was not to be seen. It proved that a friend had discovered it, and supposing that it had been left by mistake, had retained it for the owner. But Tiger was not to be foiled. He flew about the room, apparently much excited, in quest of the "lost or stolen." Soon, however, he was upon the track; he scented it to the gentleman's coat pocket. What was to be done? The dog had no means of asking verbally for it, and was not accustomed to picking pockets; and, besides, the gentleman was ignorant of his business with him. But Tiger's sagacity did not suffer him to remain long in suspense; he seized the skirt containing the prize, and furiously tore it from the coat, and hastily made off with it, much to the surprise of its owner. Tiger overtook his master, and restored the lost property, receiving his approbation, notwithstanding he did it at the expense of the gentleman's coat. At a subsequent interview, the gentleman refused any remuneration for his torn garment, declaring that the joke was worth the price of his coat. One day, as a little girl was amusing herself with a child, near Carlisle Bridge, Dublin, and was sportively toying with the child, he made a sudden spring from her arms, and in an instant fell into the river. The screaming nurse and anxious spectators saw the water close over the child, and conceived that he had sunk to rise no more. A Newfoundland dog, which had been accidentally passing with his master, sprang forward to the wall, and gazed wistfully at the ripple in the water, made by the child's descent. At the same instant the dog sprang forward to the edge of the water. While the animal was descending, the child again sunk, and the faithful creature was seen anxiously swimming round and round the spot where he had disappeared. Once more the child rose to the surface; the dog seized him, and with a firm but gentle pressure, bore him to land without injury. Meanwhile a gentleman arrived, who, on inquiry into the circumstances of the transaction, exhibited strong marks of interest and feeling toward the child, and of admiration for the dog that had rescued him from death. The person who had removed the child from the dog turned to show him to the gentleman, when there were presented to his view the well-known features of his own son! A mixed sensation of terror, joy, and surprise, struck him mute. When he had recovered the use of his faculties, and fondly kissed his little darling, he lavished a thousand embraces on the dog, and offered to his master five hundred guineas if he would transfer the valuable animal to him; but the owner of the dog felt too much affection for the useful creature, to part with him for any consideration whatever. A boatman on the river Thames, in England, once laid a wager that he and his dog would leap from the centre arch of Westminster Bridge, and land at Lambeth within a minute of each other. He jumped off first, and the dog immediately followed; but as he was not in the secret, and fearing that his master would be drowned, he seized him by the neck, and dragged him on shore, to the great diversion of the spectators. [Illustration: NEWFOUNDLAND DOG, SAVING A CHILD FROM DROWNING] Some years ago, a gentleman of Queen's College, Oxford, went to pass the Christmas vacation at his father's in the country. An uncle, a brother, and other friends, were one day to dine together. It was fine, frosty weather; the two young gentlemen went out for a forenoon's recreation, and one of them took his skates with him. They were followed by a favorite greyhound. When the friends were beginning to long for their return, the dog came home at full speed, and by his apparent anxiety, his laying hold of their clothes to pull them along, and all his gestures, he convinced them that something was wrong. They followed the greyhound, who led them to a piece of water frozen over. A hat was seen on the ice, near which was a fresh aperture. The bodies of the young gentlemen were soon found, but, alas! though every means were tried, life could not be restored. There is another story which places the sagacity of the greyhound in still stronger light. A Scotch gentleman, who kept a greyhound and a pointer, being fond of coursing, employed the one to find the hares, and the other to catch them. It was, however, discovered, that when the season was over, the dogs were in the habit of going out by themselves, and killing hares for their own amusement. To prevent this, a large iron ring was fastened to the pointer's neck by a leather collar, and hung down so as to prevent the dog from running or jumping over dikes. The animals, however, continued to stroll out to the fields together; and one day, the gentleman suspecting that all was not right, resolved to watch them, and, to his surprise, found that the moment they thought they were unobserved, the greyhound took up the ring in his mouth, and carrying it, they set off to the hills, and began to search for hares, as usual. They were followed; and it was observed that whenever the pointer scented the hare, the ring was dropped, and the greyhound stood ready to pounce upon the game the moment the other drove her from her form; but that he uniformly returned to assist his companion, after he had caught his prey. [Illustration: AN ENCAMPMENT OF GIPSIES.] Some of the dogs belonging to the gipsies possess a great deal of shrewdness. The gipsies, you know, are a very singular race of people. They are scattered over a great portion of Europe, wandering from place to place, and living in miserable tents, or huts. You can form a pretty correct notion of a gipsy encampment, by the picture on another page. Here you see the gipsy men and women, sitting and standing around a fire, over which is a pot, evidently containing the material for their meal. If you notice the picture carefully, you will observe, also, a little, insignificant looking dog, who is apparently asleep, and, for aught I know, dreaming about the exploits of the day. You will no doubt smile, and wonder what exploits such a cur is able to perform; but I assure you that if he is at all like some of the gipsy dogs I have heard of, he has been taught a good many very shrewd tricks. The dogs of the gipsies are sometimes trained to steal for their masters. The thief enters a store with some respectably dressed man, whom the owner of the dog will commission for the purpose, and--the man having made certain signals to the animal--the gipsy cur, after loitering about the store, perhaps for hours, waiting a favorable opportunity, will steal the articles which were designated, and run away with them to his master's tent. I made the acquaintance of a dog at Niagara Falls, last summer, who was an ardent admirer of the beautiful and grand in nature. The little steamer called the "Maid of the Mist" makes several trips daily, from a point some two miles down the river, to within a few rods of the Canada Fall. I went up in this boat, one morning, and the trip afforded me one of the finest views I had of this inimitable cataract. Among the passengers in this boat, at the time, was the dog who was so fond of the sublime. He walked leisurely on board, just before the hour of starting, and during the entire excursion seemed to enjoy the scene as much as any of the rest of the passengers. As the boat approached the American Fall, he took his station in the bow, where he remained, completely deluged in the spray, until the boat passed the same Fall, on its return. This, however, is not the most remarkable part of the story. The captain informed me that such was the daily practice of the dog. Every morning, regularly, at the hour of starting, he makes his appearance, though he is not owned by any one engaged in the boat, and treats himself to this novel excursion. There is a dog living on Staten Island, who has for some time been acting the part of a philanthropist, on a large scale. He makes it a great share of his business to administer to the necessities of the sick and infirm dogs in the neighborhood. As soon as he learns that a dog is sick, so that he is unable to take care of himself, he visits the invalid, and nurses him; and he even goes from house to house, searching out those who need his assistance. Frequently he brings his patient to his own kennel, and takes care of him until he either gets well or dies. Sometimes he has two or three sick dogs in his hospital, at the same time. I have these facts on the authority of my friend Mr. Ranlett, the editor of the "Architect," a gentleman of unquestionable veracity, who has seen the dog thus imitating the example of the Good Samaritan. [Illustration: RUSSIAN SLEDGE.] Captain Parry, an adventurous sailor, who went out from England on a voyage of discovery in the northern seas, relates some amusing anecdotes about the dogs among the Esquimaux Indians. These dogs are trained to draw a vehicle called a sledge, made a little like what we call a sleigh. In some parts of Russia many people travel in the same manner. Here is a picture of one of the Russian sledges. It is made in very handsome style, as you see. The greater portion of them are constructed much more rudely. The Esquimaux Indian is famous for his feats in driving dogs. When he wants to take a ride, he harnesses up several pairs of these dogs, and off he goes, almost as swift as the wind. The dogs are rather unruly, however, sometimes, and get themselves sadly snarled together, so that the driver is obliged to go through the harnessing process several times in the course of a drive of a few miles. When the road is level and pretty smoothly worn, eight or ten dogs, with a weight only of some six or seven hundred pounds attached to them, are almost unmanageable, and will run any where they choose at the rate of ten miles an hour. The following anecdote we have on the authority of the Newark (N. J.) Daily Advertiser: An officer of the army, accompanied by his dog, left West Point on a visit to the city of Burlington, N. J., and while there, becoming sick, wrote to his wife and family at West Point, in relation to his indisposition. Shortly after the reception of his letter, the family were aroused by a whining, barking and scratching, at the door of the house, and when opened to ascertain the cause, in rushed the faithful dog. After being caressed, and every attempt made to quiet him, the dog, in despair at not being understood, seized a shawl in his teeth, and, placing his paws on the lady's shoulders, deposited there the shawl! He then placed himself before her, and, fixing his gaze intently upon her, to attract her attention, seized her dress, and began to drag her to the door. The lady then became alarmed, and sent for a relative, who endeavored to allay her fears, but she prevailed upon him to accompany her at once to her husband, and on arriving, found him dangerously ill in Burlington. The distance traveled by the faithful animal, and the difficulties encountered, render this exploit almost incredible, especially as the boats could not stop at West Point, on account of the ice, it being in the winter. There is a dog in the city of New York, who, according to unquestionable authority, is accustomed every day not only to bring his mistress the morning paper, as soon as it is thrown into the front yard, but to select the one belonging to the lady, when, as is frequently the case, there is one lying with it belonging to another member of the family. An unfortunate dog, living in England, in order to make sport for some fools, had a pan tied to his tail, and was sent off on his travels toward a village a few miles distant. He reached the place utterly exhausted, and lay down before the steps of a tavern, eyeing most anxiously the horrid annoyance hung behind him, but unable to move a step further, or rid himself of the torment. Another dog, a Scotch colly, came up at the time, and seeing the distress of his crony, laid himself down gently beside him, and gaining his confidence by a few caresses, proceeded to gnaw the string by which the noisy appendage was attached to his friend's tail, and by about a quarter of an hour's exertion, severed the cord, and started to his legs, with the pan hanging from the string in his mouth, and after a few joyful capers around his friend, departed on his travels, in the highest glee at his success. The Albany Journal tells us of a dog in that city, who has formed the habit of regarding a shadow with a great deal of interest. In this particular, he is not unlike some people that one occasionally meets with, who spend their whole time following shadows. The story of the Albany editor is thus told: Those who are in the habit of frequenting the post-office, between the hours of six and eight in the evening, have doubtless noticed the singular wanderings of a dog near the first swing door, without knowing the cause of his mysterious actions. The hall is lighted with gas, and the burner is placed between the two doors. When the outer door swings, the frame-work of the sash throws a moving shadow on the wall, beneath the structure, which, from its peculiar movement toward the floor, has attracted the notice of this dog. He watches it as sharp as if it were a mouse, and although his labors have been fruitless, yet he still continues nightly to grace this place with his presence. Several attempts have been made to draw his attention from the object, with but little success; for though his attention may be diverted, it is soon lost, as the instant his eye catches the shadow, he renews his watchings. In all his movements he is very harmless, and he neither injures nor even molests those who have occasion to pass through the hall. As a farmer of good circumstances, who resided in the county of Norfolk, England, was taking an excursion to a considerable distance from home, during the frosts in the month of March 1795, he at length was so benumbed by the intense cold, that he became stupefied, and so sleepy that he found himself unable to proceed. He lay down, and would have perished on the spot, had not a faithful dog, which attended him, as if sensible of his dangerous situation, got on his breast, and, extending himself over him, preserved the circulation of his blood. The dog, so situated for many hours, kept up a continual barking, by which means, and the assistance of some passengers, the farmer was roused, and led to a house, where he soon recovered. The Wolf. From an authentic source I have obtained an incident of recent occurrence, which painfully illustrates the fury of the wolf, while engaged at a favorite meal. Near Lake Constance, in Canada, two men observed some wolves engaged in eating a deer. One of them, named Black, went to dispute the prize with these ravenous animals, when he unfortunately fell a victim to his rashness, the wolves having devoured him, leaving only a small portion of his bones. Some three years since, while traveling in Canada, I met a lady who resided with a brother in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company, a few hundred miles north of Montreal. This lady informed me that she had not unfrequently been chased by wolves, while proceeding to the house of her nearest neighbor--about ten miles distant--and that a pack of them, unusually hungry, once seemed very much determined to pull her from her horse, though they finally made up their minds that they would try their fortunes in another direction. [Illustration: AN ADVENTURE WITH WOLVES.] It sometimes, though not very frequently happens, that several wolves together attack men who travel on horseback, and fight furiously. A story is told of two men who were traveling in this manner in Mexico, when two or three wolves, who, one would suppose, had fasted a good while, fell upon the men and their horses, and it was a matter of some doubt, for a time, who would be the victors, the travelers or their assailants. The former were armed with pistols, too. The wolves got the worst of the battle, however, at last, and they retreated, as men very often do when they go to war with each other--having gained nothing but a broken limb or two, which they boast of for the remainder of their lives. A peasant in Russia was one day riding along, when he found that he was pursued by eleven wolves. Being about two miles from home he urged his horse to the very extent of his speed. At the entrance to his residence was a gate, which being shut at the time, the frightened horse dashed open, and carried his master safely into the yard. Nine of the wolves followed the man and his horse into the inclosure, when fortunately, the gate swung back, and caught them all as it were in a trap. Finding themselves caught in this manner, the wolves seemed to lose all their courage and ferocity. They shrunk away, and tried to hide themselves instead of pursuing their prey, and they were all killed with very little difficulty. The following story of an encounter with a saucy wolf in the south-western part of the United States, is taken from the journal of a Santa Fe trader: "I shall not soon forget an adventure with a furious wolf, many years ago, on the frontiers of Missouri. Riding near the prairie border, I perceived one of the largest and fiercest of the gray species, which had just descended from the west, and seemed famished to desperation. I at once prepared for a chase; and being without arms, I caught up a cudgel, when I betook me valiantly to the charge, much stronger, as I soon discovered, in my cause than in my equipment. The wolf was in no humor to flee, however, but boldly met me full half way. I was soon disarmed, for my club broke upon the animal's head. He then 'laid to' my horse's legs, which, not relishing the conflict, gave a plunge, and sent me whirling over his head, and made his escape, leaving me and the wolf at close quarters. I was no sooner upon my feet than my antagonist renewed the charge; but being without a weapon, or any means of awakening an emotion of terror, save through his imagination, I took off my large black hat, and using it for a shield, began to thrust it toward his gaping jaws. My _ruse_ had the desired effect; for after springing at me a few times, he wheeled about, and trotted off several paces, and stopped to gaze at me. Being apprehensive that he might change his mind, and return to the attack, and conscious that, under the compromise, I had the best of the bargain, I very resolutely took to my heels, glad of the opportunity of making a drawn game,[1] though I had myself given the challenge." A friend of mine, who visited Texas a little while ago, gives quite an interesting account of a ride he had through an uninhabited part of that country, where wolves were abundant. He says: "As there was no road, I was obliged to take the prairie. My conveyance was a mule, which is, by the way, the best for a long journey in this country, as it is far more capable of endurance than a horse. When I had rode about five miles, I found that I had lost my course; and as the sun was clouded, I had no means of guessing at the route. But I pushed on, and soon found myself in a dense grove of live oak. Here I heard a distinct barking, and thought I must be near a house. I rode toward the place whence the noise seemed to proceed, but soon found that I had committed a most egregious error; for I was in the very midst of a pack of wolves, consisting of about a dozen. As you may suppose, I was terribly frightened, though I had heard that wolves in the country seldom molest any one traveling on horseback. Still, this interesting party appeared singularly fierce and hungry, and I opened a large clasp knife, the only available weapon I had, in order to be prepared for the contemplated attack. In this way I rode on about a mile, with the wolves after me, when the whole force quietly dispersed. After riding about three hours more, I discovered that I had been on the wrong track all the time, though I was not sure where I was; but it was so dark it was not safe to go further. So I spread my cloak on the grass, tied my mule up to a tree, made my saddle into a pillow, and, thus prepared, lay down for the night. I thought of wolves and snakes for some time, but being very tired, soon went to sleep." [Footnote 1: A drawn game at chess, as some of my readers may not be aware, is one in which neither party is the victor.] The wolf is capable of strong attachments, and has been known to cherish the memory of a friend for a great length of time. A wolf belonging to the menagerie in London, met his old keeper, after three years' absence. It was evening when the man returned, and the wolf's den was shut up from any external observation; yet the instant the man's voice was heard, the faithful animal set up the most anxious cries; and the door of his cage being opened, he rushed toward his friend, leaped upon his shoulders, licked his face, and threatened to bite his keepers on their attempting to separate them. When the man ultimately went away, he fell sick, was long on the verge of death, and would never after permit a stranger to approach him. Captain Franklin, in his journal of a voyage in the Polar seas, mentions seeing white wolves there, and gives an account which shows the wolf to be quite a cunning animal. A number of deer, says the captain, were feeding on a high cliff, when a multitude of wolves slily encircled the place, and then rushed upon the deer, scaring them over the precipice, where they were crushed to death by the fall. The wolves then came down, and devoured the deer at their leisure. [Illustration: SCENE IN THE OLD WOLF STORY.] When I was quite a little boy, it used to be the fashion for many people to fill children's heads with all manner of frightful stories about wolves, and bears, and gentry of that sort--stories that had not a word of truth in them, and which did a great deal of mischief. I remember to this day, the horror I used to have, when obliged to go away alone in the dark. Many a time I have looked behind me, thinking it quite likely that a furious wolf was at my heels. The reason for this foolish fear--for it was foolish, of course--was, that a servant girl, in the employ of my mother, used to tell me scores of stories in which wolves always played a very prominent part. I remember one story in particular, which cost me a world of terror. The principal scene in the tale, and the one which most frightened me, was at the time pictured so strongly on my imagination, that it never entirely wore off. It was much after this fashion. The wolf's jaws were opened wide enough to take a poor fellow's head in, and fancy pictured that event as being about to happen scores of times. Indeed, the nurse told me, over and over again, that unless I kept out of mischief--which I did not always, I am sorry to say--I should be sure to come to some such end. Boys and girls, if you have ever heard such stories, don't let them trouble you for a moment. There is not a word of truth in them. I know how you feel--some of you who are quite young, and who have been entertained with stories of this class--when any body asks you to go alone into a dark room. You are afraid of something, and for your life cannot tell what. I should not wonder very much if some of you were _afraid of the dark_. I have heard children talk about being afraid of the dark. You laugh, perhaps. It is rather funny--almost too funny to be treated seriously. Well, if it is not the dark, what is it you are afraid of? Your parents, and others who are older than you, are alone in the dark a thousand times in the course of a year. Did you ever hear them say any thing about meeting a single one of the heroes of the frightful stories you have heard? Do you think they ever came across a ghost, or an apparition, or a fairy, or an elf, or a witch, or a hobgoblin, or a giant, or a Blue-Beard, or a wolf? It makes you smile to think of it. Well, then, after all, don't you think it would be a great deal wiser and better to turn all these foolish fancies out of your head, just as one would get rid of a company of saucy rats and mice that were doing mischief in the cellar or corn-house? I think so. Before I have done with the wolf, I must recite that fable of Æsop's, about one who dressed himself up in the garb of a sheep, to impose upon the shepherd, but who shared a very different fate from the one he anticipated. [Illustration: THE WOLF IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING.] A wolf, clothing himself in the skin of a sheep, and getting in among the flock, by this means took the opportunity to devour many of them. At last the shepherd discovered him, and cunningly fastening a rope about his neck, tied him up to a tree which stood hard by. Some other shepherds happening to pass that way, and observing what he was about, drew near and expressed their amazement. "What," says one of them, "brother, do you make a practice of hanging sheep?" "No," replies the other; "but I make a practice of hanging a wolf whenever I catch him, though in the habit and garb of a sheep." Then he showed them their mistake, and they applauded the justice of the execution. The moral of this fable is so plain, that it is quite useless to repeat it. The Horse. Of all the animals which have been pressed into the service of man, the horse, perhaps, is the most useful. What could we do without the labor of this noble and faithful animal? Day after day, and year after year, he toils on for his master, seldom complaining, when he is well treated, seldom showing himself ungrateful to his friends, and sometimes exhibiting the strongest attachment. The following story is a matter of history, and is told by one who was a witness of most of the facts connected with it: During the peninsular war in Europe, the trumpeter of a French cavalry corps had a fine charger assigned to him, of which he became passionately fond, and which, by gentleness of disposition and uniform docility, equally evinced its affection. The sound of the trumpeter's voice, the sight of his uniform, or the twang of his trumpet, was sufficient to throw this animal into a state of the greatest excitement; and he appeared to be pleased and happy only when under the saddle of his rider. Indeed he was unruly and useless to every body else; for once, on being removed to another part of the forces, and consigned to a young officer, he resolutely refused to perform his evolutions, and bolted straight to the trumpeter's station, and there took his stand, jostling alongside his former master. This animal, on being restored to the trumpeter, carried him, during several of the peninsular campaigns, through many difficulties and hair-breadth escapes. At last the corps to which he belonged was worsted, and in the confusion of retreat the trumpeter was mortally wounded. Dropping from his horse, his body was found, many days after the engagement, stretched on the ground, with the faithful old charger standing beside it. During the long interval, it seems that he had never left the trumpeter's side, but had stood sentinel over his corpse, as represented in the engraving, scaring away the birds of prey, and remaining totally heedless of his own privations. When found, he was in a sadly reduced condition, partly from loss of blood through wounds, but chiefly from want of food, of which, in the excess of his grief, he could not be prevailed on to partake. [Illustration: THE HORSE WATCHING THE BODY OF THE TRUMPETER.] In a book called "Sketches of the Horse," is an anecdote which exhibits the intelligence of this animal in perhaps a still stronger light. A farmer, living in the neighborhood of Bedford, in England, was returning home from market one evening in 1828, and being somewhat tipsy, rolled off his saddle into the middle of the road. His horse stood still; but after remaining patiently for some time, and not observing any disposition in his rider to get up and proceed further, he took him by the collar and shook him. This had little or no effect, for the farmer only gave a grumble of dissatisfaction at having his repose disturbed. The animal was not to be put off by any such evasion, and so applied his mouth to one of his master's coat-laps, and after several attempts, by dragging at it, to raise him upon his feet, the coat-lap gave way. Three individuals who witnessed this extraordinary proceeding then went up, and assisted the man in mounting his horse. My father had a horse, when I was a little boy, that was quite a pet with the whole family. We called him Jack, and he knew his name as well as I did. The biography of the old veteran would be very interesting, I am sure, if any body were to write it. I do not mean to be his biographer, however, though my partiality for him will be a sufficient apology for a slight sketch. Old Jack was a very intelligent horse. He would always come when he heard his name called, let him be ever so far distant in the pasture; that is, if he had a mind to come. Of course, being a gentleman of discernment, he sometimes chose to stay where he was, and enjoy his walk. This was especially the case when the grass was very green, and when the person who came for him chanced to be a little green also. Jack had his faults, it cannot be denied, and among them, perhaps the most prominent one was a strong aversion to being caught by any body but my father, whom he seemed to regard as having the sole right to summon him from the pasture. I used occasionally to try my hand at catching him. In fact, I succeeded several times, by stratagem only. I carried a measure containing a few gills of oats with me into the field; and his love for oats was so much stronger than his dislike of the catching process, that I secured him. But after a while the old fellow became too cunning for me. He came to the conclusion that the quantity of his favorite dish was too small to warrant him in sacrificing his freedom. He had some knowledge of arithmetic, you see. Certainly he must have cyphered as far as loss and gain. One day I went into the pasture with my bridle concealed behind me, and just about enough oats to cover the bottom of my measure, and advanced carefully toward the spot where old Jack was quietly grazing in the meadow. He did not stir as I approached. He held up his head a little, and seemed to be thinking what it was best to do. I drew nearer, encouraged, of course. The cunning fellow let me come within a few feet of him, and then suddenly wheeled around, threw his heels into the air, a great deal too near my head, and then started off at full gallop, snorting his delight at the fun, and seeming to say, "I am not quite so great a fool as you suppose." Still, old Jack was kind and gentle. My father never had any trouble with him, and many a long mile have I rode after him, when he went over the ground like a bird. I loved him, with all his faults; I loved him dearly, and when he was sold, we all had a long crying spell about it. I remember the time well, when the man who purchased our old pet came to take him away. I presume the man was kind enough, but really I never could forgive him for buying the horse. He was rather a rough-looking man, and he laughed a good deal when we told him he must be good to Jack, and give him plenty of oats, and not make him work too hard. I went out, with my sister, to bid our old friend a last sad good-bye. We carried him some green grass--we knew how well he loved grass, he had given us proof enough of that--and while he was eating it, and the man was preparing to take him away, we talked to old Jack till the tears stood in our eyes; we told him how sorry we were to part with him; and he seemed to be sad, too, for he stopped eating his grass, and looked at us tenderly, while we put our arms around his neck and caressed him for the last time. [Illustration: PARTING WITH OLD JACK.] I have had a great many pets since--cats and dogs, squirrels and rabbits, canary birds and parrots--but never any that I loved more than I did old Jack; and to this day I am ashamed of the deception I practiced upon him in the matter of the oats, when trying to catch him. I don't wonder he resented the trick, and played one on me in return. But I am transgressing the rule I laid down for myself in the outset of these stories--not to prate much about my own pets. According to this rule, I ought to have touched much more lightly upon the life and times of old Jack. A correspondent of the Providence (R. I.) Journal, gives an account of a horse in his neighborhood that was remarkably fond of music. "A physician," he says, "called daily to visit a patient opposite to my place of residence. We had a piano in the room on the street, on which a young lady daily practiced for several hours in the morning. The weather was warm, and the windows were open, and the moment the horse caught the sound of the piano, he would deliberately wheel about, cross the street, place himself as near the window as possible, and there, with ears and eyes dilating, would he quietly stand and listen till his owner came for him. This was his daily practice. Sometimes the young lady would stop playing when the doctor drove up. The horse would then remain quietly in his place; but the first stroke of a key would arrest his attention, and half a dozen notes would invariably call him across the street. I witnessed the effect several times." There was a show-bill printed during the reign of Queen Anne, a copy of which is still to be seen in one of the public libraries in England, to the following effect: "To be seen, at the Ship, upon Great Tower Hill, the finest taught horse in the world. He fetches and carries like a spaniel dog. If you hide a glove, a handkerchief, a door key, a pewter spoon, or so small a thing as a silver twopence, he will seek about the room till he has found it, and then he will bring it to his master. He will also tell the number of spots on a card, and leap through a hoop; with a variety of other curious performances." [Illustration: ALEXANDER TAMING BUCEPHALUS.] The story of Alexander the Great, and his favorite horse Bucephalus, doubtless most of my readers have heard before. Bucephalus was a war-horse of a very high spirit, which had been sent to Philip, Alexander's father, when the latter was a boy. This horse was taken out into one of the parks connected with the palace, and the king and many of his courtiers went to see him. The horse pranced about so furiously, that every body was afraid of him. He seemed perfectly unmanageable. No one was willing to risk his life by mounting such an unruly animal. Philip, instead of being thankful for the present, was inclined to be in ill humor about it. In the mean time, the boy Alexander stood quietly by, watching all the motions of the horse, and seeming to be studying his character. Philip had decided that the horse was useless, and had given orders to have him sent back to Thessaly, where he came from. Alexander did not much like the idea of losing so fine an animal, and begged his father to allow him to mount the horse. Philip at first refused, thinking the risk was too great. But he finally consented, after his son had urged him a great while. So Alexander went up to the horse, and took hold of his bridle. He patted him upon the neck, and soothed him with his voice, showing him, at the same time, by his easy and unconcerned manner, that he was not in the least afraid of him. Bucephalus was calmed and subdued by the presence of Alexander. He allowed himself to be caressed. Alexander turned his head in such a direction as to prevent his seeing his own shadow, which had before appeared to frighten him. Then he threw off his cloak, and sprang upon the back of the horse, and let him go as fast as he pleased. The animal flew across the plain, at the top of his speed, while the king and his courtiers looked on, at first with extreme fear, but afterward with the greatest admiration and pleasure. When Bucephalus had got tired of running, he was easily reined in, and Alexander returned to the king, who praised him very highly, and told him that he deserved a larger kingdom than Macedon. Alexander had a larger kingdom, some years after--a great deal larger one--though that is a part of another story. Bucephalus became the favorite horse of Alexander, and was very tractable and docile, though full of life and spirit. He would kneel upon his fore legs, at the command of his master, in order that he might mount more easily. A great many anecdotes are related of the feats of Bucephalus, as a war-horse. He was never willing to have any one ride him but Alexander. When the horse died, Alexander mourned for him a great deal. He had him buried with great solemnity, and built a small city upon the spot of his interment, which he named, in honor of his favorite, Bucephalia. An odd sort of an old mare, called by her master Nancy, used to go by my father's house, when I was a child. She was the bearer of Peter Packer--Uncle Peter, as he was sometimes called by the good people in our neighborhood--and he was the bearer of the weekly newspaper, and was, withal, quite as odd as his mare. As long as I can remember, Uncle Peter went his weekly rounds, and for aught I know, he is going to this day. No storm, or tempest, or snow-bank, could detain him, that is, not longer than a day or two, in his mission. He was a very punctual man--in other words, he always paced leisurely along, some time or another. Speaking of pacing, reminds me that the mare aforesaid belonged to that particular class and order called _pacers_, from their peculiar gait. I should think, too, that the mare was not altogether unlike the celebrated animal on which Don Quixote rode in pursuit of wind-mills, and things of that sort. But she had one peculiarity which is not set down in the description of Rozinante, to wit: the faculty of diagonal or oblique locomotion. This mare of Uncle Peter's went forward something after the fashion of a crab, and a little like a ship with the wind abeam, as the sailors would say. It was a standing topic of dispute among us school-boys, whether the animal went head foremost or not. But that did not matter much, practically, it is true, so that she always made her circuit; and that she did, as I have said before. Sometimes she was a day or two later than usual. But that seldom occurred except in the summer season; and when it did happen, it was on this wise: she had a most passionate love for the study of practical botany; and not being allowed, when at home, to pursue her favorite science as often as she wished, owing partly to a want of specimens, and partly to her master's desire to educate her in the more solid branches--he was a great advocate for the solid branches--she frequently took the liberty to divest herself of her bridle, when standing at the door of her master's customers, and to pace away in search of the dear flowers. Oh, she was a devoted student of botany! so much so, that her desire to obtain botanical specimens did sometimes interfere a good deal with her other literary and scientific engagements. She used to do very nearly as she chose. Uncle Peter seldom crossed her in her inclinations. If she was pacing along the highway, and felt a little thirsty, she never hesitated to stop, whether her master invited her to do so or not, at a brook or a watering-trough. Uncle Peter used to say, that he never tried to prevent these liberties but once, and he had occasion to repent bitterly of that. A thunder-storm was coming on, and he was in a hurry to get to the next house. But the mare was determined, before she went any further, to stop at a stream of water and drink. He set out to have his way--Nancy set out to have hers. The result was, that Peter was obliged to yield. But that was not the worst of it. The old mare was so much vexed because her master disputed her will, that while she was standing in the brook, she threw up her hind feet and let him fall over her head into the water. That gentle correction cured Uncle Peter. She had her own way after the ducking. [Illustration: UNCLE PETER AND HIS OLD MARE.] Horses have been known to cherish a strong attachment for each other. In one of the British wars called the peninsular war, two horses, who had long been associated together, assisting in dragging the same piece of artillery, became so much attached to each other as to be inseparable companions. At length one of them was killed in battle. After the engagement was over, the other horse was attended to, as usual, and his food was brought to him. But he refused to eat, and was constantly turning his head to look for his former companion, sometimes neighing, as if to call her. All the attention which was bestowed upon him was of no avail. Though surrounded by other horses, he took no notice of them, but was continually mourning for his lost friend. Shortly after he died, having refused to taste any food from the day his companion was killed. An old Shetland pony was so much attached to a little boy, his master, that he would place his fore feet in the hands of the boy, like a dog, thrust his head under his arm, to court his caresses, and join with him and a little dog in their noisy rompings. The same animal daily carried his master to school. He would even walk alone from the stable to the school-house, to bring the boy home, and sometimes he would wait hours for him, having come much too early. But I have occupied the reader's attention long enough with stories of the horse, interesting and noble as this animal is. I must, however, before I pass to another subject, recite a touching ballad, from one of our sweetest bards. [Illustration: THE OLD HORSE'S ADDRESS TO HIS MASTER, ON BEING SENTENCED TO DIE.] And hast thou fixed my doom, kind master, say? And wilt thou kill thy servant, old and poor? A little longer let me live, I pray-- A little longer hobble round thy door. For much it glads me to behold this place, And house me in this hospitable shed; It glads me more to see my master's face, And linger on the spot where I was bred. For oh! to think of what we have enjoyed, In my life's prime, ere I was old and poor; Then, from the jocund morn to eve employed, My gracious master on my back I bore. Thrice told ten happy years have danced along, Since first to thee these wayworn limbs I gave; Sweet smiling years, when both of us were young-- The kindest master, and the happiest slave! Ah, years sweet smiling, now forever flown! Ten years thrice told, alas! are as a day; Yet, as together we are aged grown, Together let us wear that age away. For still the olden times are dear to thought, And rapture marked each minute as it flew; Light were our hearts, and every season brought Pains that were soft, and pleasures that were new. And hast thou fixed my doom, sweet master, say? And wilt thou kill thy servant, old and poor? A little longer let me live, I pray-- A little longer hobble round thy door. But oh! kind Nature, take thy victim's life! End thou a servant, feeble, old, and poor! So shalt thou save me from the uplifted knife, And gently stretch me at my master's door. [Illustration: THE LEOPARD AND THE SERPENT.] The Panther and Leopard. Leopards and panthers are very similar in their appearance and habits; so much so, that I shall introduce them both in the same chapter. The engraving represents a panther. He is in some danger from the serpent near him, I am inclined to think. A panther is spoken of by an English lady, Mrs. Bowdich, who resided for some time in Africa, as being thoroughly domesticated. He was as tame as a cat, and much more affectionate than cats usually are. On one occasion, when he was sick, the boy who had charge of him slept in his den, and held the patient a great part of the time in his arms, and the poor fellow appeared to be soothed by the care and attention of his nurse. He had a great partiality for white people, probably because he had been tamed by them; and the lady who gives this account of him was his especial favorite. Twice each week she used to take him some lavender water, which he was very fond of, and seized with great eagerness. He allowed the children to play with him; and sometimes, when he was sitting in the window, gazing upon what was going on below, the little urchins would pull him down by the tail. It would seem to be rather a dangerous experiment. But the panther let his play-fellows enjoy the sport. I suppose he thought that though it was not very pleasant to him, he would make the sacrifice of a little comfort rather than to get angry and revenge himself. Besides, he might have said to himself, "These boys like the sport pretty well; I should guess it was capital fun for them; it is a pity to rob them of their amusement it does not hurt me much, and I will let it go; they don't mean any harm; they are the kindest, best-natured children in the world; they would go without their own dinner, any day, rather than see me suffer." If the panther said this to himself, it was a very wise and sensible speech; and if he did not say it, my little readers may consider me as the author of it. I am satisfied, whether the panther has the credit of making the remarks or whether I have it, so that my young friends get the benefit of the lesson. In their wild state these animals are very destructive. The same lady who tells the story about the tame panther, says that in one case a panther leaped through an open window near her residence, and killed a little girl who happened to be the only occupant of the house at the time, except a man who was asleep. The tame leopard is often used in India for the purpose of hunting antelopes. He is carried in a kind of small wagon, blindfolded, to the place where the herd of antelopes are feeding. The reason they blindfold him is to prevent his being too much in a hurry, so that he might make choice of an animal which is not worth much. He does not fly at his prey at once, when let loose, but, winding along carefully, conceals himself, until an opportunity offers for his leap; and then, with five or six bounds, made with amazing force and rapidity, overtakes the herd, and brings his prey to the ground. I have read a very serious story of an American panther. The lady, who is the heroine of the story, and her husband, were among the first settlers in the wilderness of one of our western states. They at first lived in a log cabin. The luxury of glass was unknown in that wild place among the forests, and consequently light and air were admitted through holes which were always open. Both husband and wife had been away from home for a day or two; and on their return, they found some deer's flesh, which had been hanging up inside, partly eaten, and the tracks of an animal, which the gentleman supposed were those of a large dog. He was again obliged to leave home for a night, and this time the lady remained in the house alone. She went to bed; and soon after, she heard an animal climbing up the outside of the hut, and jump down through one of the openings into the adjoining room, with which her sleeping apartment was connected by a doorway without a door. Peeping out, she saw a huge panther, apparently seeking for prey, and of course very hungry and fierce. She beat against the partition between the rooms, and screamed as loudly as she could, which so frightened the panther that he jumped out. He was, however, soon in again, and a second time she frightened him away in the same manner, when she sprang out of bed, and went to the fire-place, in the hope of making a sufficient blaze to keep the panther from entering again. But the embers were too much burned, and would send out but a slight flame. What could the poor woman do? She thought of getting under the bed; but then she reflected that the animal would find no difficulty in getting at her in that situation, in which case he would tear her in pieces before she could make any resistance. The only plan which then occurred to her mind for perfect security, was to get into a large sea-chest of her husband's, which was nearly empty. Into that she accordingly crept. But there was danger of her being smothered in this retreat; so she put her hand between the edge of the chest and the lid, in order to keep the chest open a little, and admit the air. Fortunately this lid hung over the side of the chest a little, which saved her fingers. The panther soon came back again, as was anticipated; and after snuffing about for some time, evidently discovered where the lady was, and prowled round and round the chest, licking and scratching the wood close to her fingers. There she lay, scarcely daring to move, and listening intently to every movement of her enemy. At last, he jumped on the top of the chest. His weight crushed her fingers terribly; but she was brave enough to keep them where they were, until the panther, tired of his fruitless efforts to get at her, and finding nothing else to eat, finally retreated. She did not dare to come out of the chest, however, until morning; for she feared, as long as it was dark, that the beast might come back again. So there she sat, ready to crouch down into her hiding-place, if she heard a noise from her enemy. There she remained till after daylight. She was a heroine, was she not? A horse was killed one night by an American panther; but the body was not disturbed until the next day, when some gentlemen living in the vicinity, had an opportunity of watching the motions of the panther when he returned to his prey. He seized the body of the horse with his teeth, and drew it about sixty paces to a river, into which he plunged with his prey, swam across with it, and drew it into a neighboring forest. The American panther is very fond of fish, and instances have been known of these animals catching trout with their paws. Humboldt says that he saw a great many turtle shells which the panthers had robbed of the flesh. The manner in which the panther performs this operation, this traveler informs us, is to run with all speed when he sees a number of turtles together on land, and to turn them, or as many of them as he can catch before they reach the water, upon their backs, so that they cannot escape, after which he feasts at his leisure. Two children, a girl and a boy, were playing together near a small Indian village, in the vicinity of a thicket, when a large panther came out of the woods and made toward them, playfully bounding along, his head down, and his back arched after the fashion of the cat when she chooses to put on some of her mischievous airs. He came up to the boy, and began to play with him, as the latter at first supposed, although he was convinced of his mistake when the panther hit him so severe a blow on his head as to draw blood. Then the little girl, who had a small stick in her hand, struck the panther; and matters were going on in this way, when some Indians in the village, hearing the cries of the children, came to their rescue. A gentleman who was formerly in the British service at Ceylon, relates the following anecdote: "I was at Jaffna, at the northern extremity of the island of Ceylon, in the beginning of the year 1819, when, one morning, my servant called me an hour or two before my usual time, with 'Master, master! people sent for master's dogs; leopard in the town!' My gun chanced not to be put together; and while my servant was adjusting it, the collector and two medical men, who had recently arrived, in consequence of the cholera morbus having just then reached Ceylon from the continent, came to my door, the former armed with a fowling-piece, and the two latter with remarkably blunt hog spears. They insisted upon setting off without waiting for my gun, a proceeding not much to my taste. The leopard had taken refuge in a hut, the roof of which, like those of Ceylon huts in general, spread to the ground like an umbrella; the only aperture into it was a small door about four feet high. The collector wanted to get the leopard out at once. I begged to wait for my gun; but no, the fowling-piece (loaded with ball, of course) and the two spears were quite enough. I got a stake, and awaited my fate from very shame. At this moment, to my great delight, there arrived from the fort an English officer, two artillerymen, and a Malay captain; and a pretty figure we should have cut without them, as the event will show. I was now quite ready to attack, and my gun came a minute afterward. The whole scene which follows took place within an inclosure, about twenty feet square, formed on three sides by a strong fence of palmyra leaves, and on the fourth by the hut. At the door of this the two artillerymen planted themselves; and the Malay captain got at the top, to frighten the leopard out by unroofing it--an easy operation, as the huts there are covered with cocoanut leaves. One of the artillerymen wanted to go in to the leopard, but we would not suffer it. At last the beast sprang; this man received him on his bayonet, which he thrust apparently down his throat, firing his piece at the same moment. The bayonet broke off short, leaving less than three inches on the musket; the rest remained in the animal, but was invisible to us: the shot probably went through his cheek, for it certainly did not seriously injure him, as he instantly rose upon his legs, with a loud roar, and placed his paws upon the soldier's breast. At this moment the animal appeared to me to about reach the centre of the man's face; but I had scarcely time to observe this, when the leopard, stooping his head, seized the soldier's arm in his mouth, turned him half round, staggering, threw him over on his back, and fell upon him. Our dread now was, that if we fired upon the leopard we might kill the man: for a moment there was a pause, when his comrade attacked the beast exactly in the same manner as the gallant fellow himself had done. He struck his bayonet into his head; the leopard rose at him; he fired; and this time the ball took effect, and in the head. The animal staggered backward, and we all poured in our fire. He still kicked and writhed; when the gentlemen with the spears advanced and fixed him, while some natives finished him by beating him on the head with hedge-stakes. The brave artilleryman was, after all, but slightly hurt. He claimed the skin, which was very cheerfully given to him. There was, however, a cry among the natives that the head should be cut off: it was; and, in so doing, the knife came directly across the bayonet. The animal measured scarcely less than four feet from the root of the tail to the nose." Captain Marryatt had a pretty serious adventure with a huge panther in Africa, while his vessel lay at anchor in a river there, and he and his men were busy in taking in a cargo of ivory. As they were thus engaged one day, by some accident a hole was made in the bottom of the boat, and they were unable to proceed with it. The captain told the men to remain by the boat, and started himself to obtain assistance from the vessel. He thought that if he could force his way through the canes which abounded in that vicinity, a short distance down the river, he could make signals to those on board, and that some of them would come to their help. This expedition, however, proved a much longer one than he anticipated, and much more perilous. He lost his way. "At first," he says, "I got on very well, as there were little paths through the canes, made, as I imagined, by the natives; and although I was up to my knees in thick black mud, I continued to get on pretty fast; but at last the canes grew so thick that I could hardly force my way through them, and it was a work of exceeding labor. Still I persevered, expecting each second I should arrive at the banks of the river, and be rewarded for my fatigue; but the more I labored the worse it appeared for me, and at last I became worn out and quite bewildered. I then tried to find my way back, and was equally unsuccessful, when I sat down with any thing but pleasant thoughts in my mind. I calculated that I had been two hours in making this attempt, and was now quite puzzled how to proceed. I bitterly lamented my rashness, now that it was too late. Having reposed a little, I resumed my toil, and again, after an hour's exertion, was compelled, from fatigue, to sit down in the deep black mud. Another respite from toil and another hour more of exertion, and I gave myself up for lost. The day was evidently fast closing in, the light over head was not near so bright as it had been, and I knew that a night passed in the miasma of the cane swamp was death. At last it became darker and darker. There could not be an hour of daylight remaining. I determined upon one struggle more, and reeking as I was with perspiration, and faint with fatigue, I rose again, and was forcing my way through the thickest of the canes, when I heard a deep growl, and perceived a large panther not twenty yards from me. He was on the move as well as myself, attempting to force his way through the thickest of the canes, so as to come up to me. I retreated from him as fast as I could, but he gained slowly upon me, and my strength was fast declining. I thought I heard sounds at a distance, and they became more and more distinct; but what they were, my fear and my struggles probably prevented from making out. "My eyes were fixed upon the fierce animal who was in pursuit of me; and I now thank God that the canes were so thick and impassable. Still the animal evidently gained ground, until it was not more than twenty yards from me, dashing and springing at the canes, and tearing them aside with his teeth. The sounds were now nearer, and I made them out to be the hallooing of some other animals. A moment's pause, and I thought it was the barking of dogs, and I thought I must have arrived close to where the schooner lay, and that I heard the barking of bloodhounds. At last I could do no more, and dropped exhausted and almost senseless in the mud. I recollect hearing the crashing of canes, and then the savage roar, and the yells, and growls, and struggle, and fierce contention, but had fainted. "I must now inform the reader that about an hour after I had left the boat, the captain of an American vessel was pulling up the river, and was hailed by our men in our long boat. Perceiving them on that side of the river, and that they were in distress, he pulled toward them, and they told him what had happened, and that an hour previous I had left the boat to force my way through the cane brakes, and they had heard nothing of me since. 'Madness!' cried he, 'he is a lost man. Stay till I come back from the schooner.' He went back to the schooner, and taking two of his crew, who were negroes, and his two bloodhounds, into the boat, he returned immediately; and as soon as he landed, he put the bloodhounds on my track, and sent the negroes on with them. They had followed me in all my windings--for it appeared that I had traveled in all directions--and had come up with me just as I had sunk with exhaustion, and the panther was so close upon me. The bloodhounds had attacked the panther, and this was the noise which sounded on my ears as I lay stupefied at the mercy of the wild beast. The panther was not easily, although eventually overcome, and the black men coming up, had found me and borne me in a state of insensibility on board my vessel. The fever had set upon me, and it was not till three weeks afterward that I recovered my senses, when I learned what I have told to the reader." [Illustration: THE ELEPHANT.] The Elephant. Several hunters once surprised a male and female elephant in an open spot, near a thick swamp. The animals fled toward the thicket, and the male was soon beyond the reach of the balls from the hunters' guns. The female, however, was wounded so severely, that she was not able to make her escape; and the hunters were about to capture her, when the male elephant rushed from his retreat, and with a shrill and frightful scream, like the sound of a trumpet, attacked the party. All escaped but one, the man who had last discharged his gun, and who was standing with his horse's bridle over his arm, reloading his gun, at the moment the furious animal burst from the wood. This unfortunate man the elephant immediately singled out, and before he could spring into his saddle, he was prepared to revenge the insult that had been offered to his companion. One blow from his trunk struck the poor man to the earth; and without troubling himself about the horse, who galloped off at full speed, the elephant thrust his tusks into the hunter's body, and flung him high into the air. The unfortunate man was instantly killed. After this act, the elephant walked gently up to his bleeding companion, and regardless of the volleys with which he was assailed from the hunters, he caressed her, and aided her in reaching a shelter in the thicket. A tame elephant had a great affection for a dog; and those who visited the place where the animal was exhibited, used to pull the dog's ears, to make him yelp, on purpose to see what the elephant would do. On one occasion, when this cruel sport was going on at the opposite side of the barn where the elephant was kept, she no sooner heard the voice of her friend in distress, than she began to feel the boards of the partition which separated her and the dog, and then, striking them a heavy blow, made them fly in splinters. After this she looked through the hole she had made, which was large enough to admit her entire body, with such threatening gestures, that the miserable fools who were teasing the dog concluded that it would not pay very well to continue the sport. At an exhibition of a menagerie in one of our principal cities, not long since, when the crowd of spectators was the greatest, a little girl, who had fed the elephant with sundry cakes and apples from her bag, drew out her ivory card-case, which fell unobserved in the saw-dust of the ring. At the close of the ring performances, the crowd opened to let the elephant pass to his recess; but instead of proceeding as usual, he turned aside and thrust his trunk in the midst of a group of ladies and gentlemen, who, as might be expected, were so much alarmed that they scattered in every direction. The keeper, at this moment, discovered that the animal had something in his trunk. Upon examination, he found it to be the young lady's card-case, which the elephant picked up, and it now appeared that he was only seeking out the owner. A person in the island of Ceylon, who lived near a place where elephants were daily led to water, and often sat at the door of his house, used occasionally to give one of these animals some fig leaves, a kind of food which elephants are said to be very fond of. One day this man took it into his head to play one of the elephants a trick. He wrapped up a stone in fig leaves, and said to the man who had the elephants in charge, "This time I am going to give him a stone to eat; I want to see how it will agree with him." The keeper replied, that the elephant would not be such a fool as to swallow the stone--he might make up his mind to that. The other, however, reached out the stone to the elephant, who took it in his trunk, but instantly let it fall to the ground. "You see," said the keeper, "that I was right, and that the beast is not so great a fool as you took him to be;" and drove away his elephants. After they were watered, he was conducting them again to their stable. The man who had played the elephant the trick was still sitting at his door, when, before he had time to think of his danger, the insulted animal ran at him, threw his trunk around his body, dashed him to the ground, and trampled him to death. At the Cape of Good Hope, it is customary to hunt these animals for the sake of the ivory they obtain from them. Three horsemen armed with lances, attack the beast alternately, each relieving the other as they see their companion pressed, and likely to get the worst of the contest. On one occasion three Dutchmen, who were brothers, having made large fortunes at the cape by elephant hunting, were about to return home to enjoy the fruits of their toil. They determined, however, the day before they started, to have one more hunt by way of amusement. They went out into the field, and soon met with an elephant, whom they began to attack in their usual manner. But unfortunately, the horse of the man who was fighting with the elephant at the time fell, and the rider was thrown to the ground. Then the elephant had his vengeance, and it was a terrible one--almost too terrible to think upon. He instantly seized the unhappy man with his trunk, threw him up into the air to a vast height, and received him upon his tusks as he fell. Then, turning toward the other two brothers with an aspect of revenge and insult, he held out to them the mangled body of his victim, writhing in the agony of death. At Macassar an elephant driver one day had a cocoanut given him, which, in order to break it, he struck two or three times against the elephant's head. The next day the animal saw some cocoanuts exposed in the street for sale, and taking one of them up in his trunk, beat it about the driver's head until he fractured his skull. Mr. Colton, the author of that admirable book called "Lacon," tells a similar anecdote of an elephant in Madras. It was a war elephant, and was trained to perform an act of civility called the _grand salam_, which is done by falling on the first joint of the fore-leg at a given signal. The elephant was to make the salam before a British officer. It was noticed at the time that he was rather out of humor. The keeper was ordered up to explain the cause, and was in the act of doing so, when the elephant advanced a few steps, and with one stroke of his trunk laid the poor man dead at his feet. He then retired to his former position, and made the grand salam with the utmost propriety and apparent good will. The wife of the unfortunate man said that she had always been afraid something of that kind would happen, as her husband had been constantly in the habit of robbing the elephant of his rations of rice. It is said that when once wild elephants have been caught, and eluded the snares of their adversaries, if they are compelled to go into the woods they are mistrustful, and break with their trunk a large branch, with which they sound the ground before they put their foot upon it, to discover if there are any holes on their passage, not to be caught a second time. "We saw two wild elephants," says a traveler, "which had just been caught; each of them was between two tame elephant; and around the wild elephants were six men, holding spears. They spoke to these animals in presenting them something to eat, and telling them, in their language, _take this and eat it_. They had small bundles of hay, bits of black sugar, or rice boiled in water with pepper. When the wild elephant refused to do what he was ordered, the men commanded the tame elephants to beat him, which they did immediately, one striking his forehead with his; and when he seemed to aim at revenge against his aggressor, another struck him; so that the poor wild elephant perceived he had nothing to do but to obey." A sentinel belonging to the menagerie at Paris, was in the habit of telling the spectators not to give any food to the elephant during the exhibition. One day, after a piece of bread had been presented to the animal, the sentinel had commenced making the usual request, when the elephant violently discharged in his face a stream of water, so that he could not utter the admonition in his confusion. Of course the spectators roared with laughter, and the elephant seemed to enjoy the joke as well as they. By and by, the sentinel having wiped his face, found himself under the necessity of repeating the request which he had made before. But no sooner had he done this, than the elephant laid hold of his musket with her trunk, wrested it from his hands, twirled it round and round, trod it under her feet, and did not restore it until she had twisted it nearly into the form of a cork-screw. Elephants are occasionally taught to work on a farm, like horses and oxen. Any one visiting Singapore, may see a small elephant, named Rajah, working daily on the estate of J. Balestier, Esq., American Consul; and, although the animal is only five years and a half old, he will plough his acre of land a day, with ease. One man holds the plough, and another walks beside the animal, and directs him in his duty. The docile little creature obeys every word that is said to him, and will plough all day between the cane rows, without plucking a single cane. An elephant was once wounded in battle, and rendered so furious by the pain she endured, that she ran about the field, uttering the most hideous cries. One of the men was unable, in consequence of his wounds, to get out of her way. The elephant seemed conscious of his situation, and for fear she should trample upon him, took him up with her trunk, placed him where he would be more safe, and continued her route. A young elephant received a violent wound in its head, from which it became so furious that it was utterly impossible to come near it to dress the wound. A variety of expedients were tried, but in vain, until at last the keeper hit upon this plan: he succeeded in making the mother understand, by signs, what he wanted, and she immediately seized the young one around the neck with her trunk, and held it firmly down, though groaning with anguish, until the wound was dressed. This she continued to do every day, for some time afterward, until the service was no longer necessary. Elephants are said to be exceedingly susceptible of the power of music, and some curious experiments were tried at Paris, with a view of observing the effect of it upon them. In one instance, a band was placed near their den, while some food was given to a pair of elephants, to engage their attention. On the commencement of the music, the huge creatures turned round, and appeared alarmed for their safety, either from the players or the spectators. The music, however, soon overcame their fears, and all other emotions appeared absorbed in their attention to it. According to the character of the music, so were their feelings. If it was bold, they were excited, or manifested signs of approaching anger. If it was brisk, they were lively; if it was plaintive, they were soothed by its effects. The female seemed to express the most lively emotions of the two. A merchant in the East Indies kept a tame elephant, which was so exceedingly gentle in his habits, that he was permitted to go at large. This huge animal used to walk about the streets in the most quiet and orderly manner, and paid many visits through the city to people who were kind to him. Two cobblers took an ill will to this inoffensive creature, and several times pricked him on the proboscis with their awls. The noble animal did not chastise them in the manner he might have done, and seemed to think they were too contemptible to be angry with them. But he took other means to punish them for their cruelty. He filled his trunk with water of a dirty quality, and advancing toward them in his ordinary manner, spouted the whole of the puddle over them. The punishment was highly applauded by those who witnessed it, and the poor cobblers were laughed at for their pains. [Illustration: THE LION.] The Lion. I have read a thrilling story of a poor Hottentot, who was sent to take his master's cattle to water at a pool not far off from the house. When he came to the watering-place, he perceived that a huge lion was lying there, apparently bathing himself. He immediately ran, with the greatest terror, through the midst of the herd of cattle, hoping the lion would be satisfied with one of the cattle, and allow him to escape. He was mistaken, however. The lion dashed through the herd, and made directly after the man. Throwing his eyes over his shoulder, he saw that the furious animal had singled him out. Not knowing what else to do to get clear of his enemy, he scrambled up an aloe-tree, that happened to be near. At that very moment the lion made a spring at him, but unsuccessfully, and fell to the ground. There was in the tree a cluster of nests of the bird called the sociable grosbeak; and the Hottentot hid himself among these nests, in hopes that he could get out of the lion's sight, and that the beast would leave him. So he remained silent and motionless for a great while, and then ventured to peep out of his retreat. To his surprise, he perceived that he was still watched. In this way, he was kept a prisoner for more than twenty-four hours, when, at last, the lion, parched with thirst, went to the pool to drink, and the Hottentot embraced the opportunity to come down, and run home as fast as his legs would carry him. There is a thrilling anecdote told of a settler in the back districts of the Cape of Good Hope, who was a hunter. Returning, one day, with some friends, from an excursion, they suddenly came upon two large full-grown lions. Their horses were already jaded, and the utmost consternation for a moment seized them. They immediately saw that their only hope of safety lay in separation. They started in somewhat different directions, at the top of their speed, holding their rifles on the cock. Those who were most lightly loaded made good way, but the third was left behind, and, as his companions disappeared below the brow of a hill, the two beasts came directly after him. He quickly loosed a deer which was tied to his saddle, but the prey was not sufficient to distract them from their purpose. Happily, as is the custom, both barrels of his piece were loaded with ball--a most timely precaution in that country--and he was a good marksman. Turning for a moment, he leveled his gun with as much precision as at such a time he could command, and fired. He waited not for the result, but again scampered off as quickly as his horse could carry him, but he heard a deep, short, and outrageous roar. The ball was afterward found to have entered the animal's breast, and lodged in his back. His work, however, was but half done. The time he had lost sufficed to bring the other within reach, and, with a tremendous bound, he leaped upon the horse's back, lacerating it in a dreadful manner, but missed his hold, for the poor creature, mad with agony and fear, kicked with all his force, and hurried forward with increased rapidity. A second attempt was more successful, and the hunter was shaken from his seat; the horse, however, again escaped. The poor fellow gave himself up for lost, but he was a brave man, and he determined not to die without every attempt to save his life should fail. Escape he saw was hopeless; so planting himself with the energy of despair, he put his rifle hastily to his shoulder, and just as the lion was stooping for his spring, he fired. He was a little too late; the beast had moved, and the ball did not prove so effective as he hoped. It entered the side of the wild beast, though it did him no mortal harm, and he leaped at his victim. The shot had, nevertheless, delayed his bound for an instant, and the hunter avoided its effect by a rapid jump, and with the butt-end of his gun struck at the lion with all his power, as he turned upon him. The dreadful creature seized it with his teeth, but with such force, that instead of twisting it out of the hunter's hand, he broke it short off by the barrel. The hunter immediately attacked him again, but his weapon was too short, and the lion fixed his claws in his breast, tearing off all his flesh, and endeavored to gripe his shoulder with his mouth, but the gun-barrel was of excellent service. Driving it into the mouth of the beast with all his strength, he seized one of the creature's jaws with his left hand, and, what with the strength and energy given by the dreadful circumstances, and the purchase obtained by the gun-barrel, he succeeded in splitting the animal's mouth. At the same time they fell together on their sides, and a struggle for several minutes ensued upon the ground. Blood flowed freely in the lion's mouth, and nearly choked him. His motions were thus so frustrated that the hunter was upon his feet first, and, aiming a blow with all his might, he knocked out one of the lion's eyes. He roared terrifically with pain and rage, and, during the moments of delay caused by the loss of his eye, the hunter got behind him, and, animated by his success, hit him a dreadful stroke on the back of the neck, which he knew was the most tender part. The stroke, however, appeared to have no effect, for the lion immediately leaped at him again; but, it is supposed from a defect of vision occasioned by the loss of his eye, instead of coming down upon the hunter, he leaped beside him, and shook his head, as if from excess of pain. The hunter felt his strength rapidly declining, but the agony he endured excited him, and thus gave new power to strike the lion again across the eyes. The beast fell backward, but drew the hunter with him with his paw, and another struggle took place upon the ground. He felt that the gun-barrel was his safeguard; and though it rather seemed to encumber his hands, he clung tenaciously to it. Rising up from the ground in terrible pain, he managed to thrust it into the throat of the lion with all his might. That thrust was fatal; and the huge animal fell on his side, powerless. The hunter dragged himself to a considerable distance, and then fell exhausted and senseless. His friends shortly afterward returned to his assistance. A lion had broken into a walled inclosure for cattle, and had done considerable damage. The people belonging to the farm were well assured that he would come again by the same way. They therefore stretched a rope directly across the entrance, to which several loaded guns were fastened, in such a manner that they must necessarily discharge themselves into the lion's body, as soon as he should push against the cord with his breast. But the lion, who came before it was dark, and had probably some suspicion of the cord, struck it away with his foot, and without betraying the least alarm in consequence of the reports made by the loaded pieces, went fearlessly on, and devoured the prey he had left untouched before. The strength of the lion is so prodigious, that a single stroke of his paw is sufficient to break the back of a horse; and one sweep of his tail will throw a strong man to the ground. Kolbein says, that when he comes up to his prey, he always knocks it down dead, and seldom bites it till the mortal blow has been given. A lion at the Cape of Good Hope was once seen to take a heifer in his mouth; and though that animal's legs dragged on the ground, yet he seemed to carry her off with as much ease as a cat does a rat. One of the residents in South Africa--according to the Naturalist's History--shot a lion in the most perilous circumstances that can be conceived. We must tell the story in his own words. "My wife," he says, "was sitting in the house, near the door. The children were playing around her. I was outside, busily engaged in doing something to a wagon, when suddenly, though it was mid-day, an enormous lion came up and laid himself quietly down in the shade, upon the very threshold of the door. My wife, either stupefied with fear, or aware of the danger attending any attempt to fly, remained motionless in her place, while the children took refuge in her lap. The cry they uttered immediately attracted my attention. I hastened toward the door; but my astonishment may well be conceived, when I found the entrance to it barred in such a way. Although the animal had not seen me, unarmed as I was, escape seemed impossible; yet I glided gently, scarcely knowing what I meant to do, to the side of the house, up to the window of my chamber, where I knew my loaded gun was standing, and which I found in such a condition, that I could reach it with my hand--a most fortunate circumstance; and still more so, when I found that the door of the room was open, so that I could see the whole danger of the scene. The lion was beginning to move, perhaps with the intention of making a spring. There was no longer any time to think. I called softly to the mother not to be alarmed; and, invoking the name of the Lord, fired my piece. The ball passed directly over the hair of my boy's head, and lodged in the forehead of the lion, immediately above his eyes, which shot forth, as it were, sparks of fire, and stretched him on the ground, so that he never stirred more." Nothing is more common than for the keepers of wild beasts to play with the lion, to pull out his tongue, and even to chastise him without cause. He seems to bear it all with the utmost composure; and we very rarely have instances of his revenging these unprovoked sallies of cruelty. However, when his anger is at last excited, the consequences are terrible. Labat tells us of a gentleman who kept a lion in his chamber, and employed a servant to attend it, who, as is usual, mixed blows with his caresses. This state of things continued for some time, till one morning the gentleman was awakened by a noise in his room, which at first he could not tell the cause of; but, drawing the curtains, he perceived a horrid spectacle--the lion growling over the man's head, which he had separated from the body, and tossing it round the floor! He immediately flew into the next apartment, called to the people without, and had the animal secured from doing further mischief. We are told of the combat of a lion and a wild boar, in a meadow near Algiers, which continued for a long time with incredible obstinacy. At last, both were seen to fall by the wounds they had given each other; and the ground all about them was covered with their blood. These instances, however, are rare; the lion is in general undisputed master of the forest. It was once customary for those who were unable to pay sixpence for the sight of the wild beasts in the tower of London, to bring a dog or a cat, as a gift to the beasts, in lieu of money to the keeper. Among others, a man had brought a pretty black spaniel, which was thrown into the cage of the great lion. Immediately the little animal trembled and shivered, crouched, and threw himself on his back, put forth his tongue, and held up his paws, as if praying for mercy. In the mean time, the lion, instead of devouring him, turned him over with one paw, and then with the other. He smelled of him, and seemed desirous of courting a further acquaintance. The keeper, on seeing this, brought a large mess of his own family dinner. But the lion kept aloof, and refused to eat, keeping his eye on the dog, and inviting him, as it were, to be his taster. At length, the little animal's fears being somewhat abated, and his appetite quickened by the smell of the food, he approached slowly, and, with trembling, ventured to eat. The lion then advanced gently, and began to partake, and they finished their meal very quietly together. From this day, a strict friendship commenced between them, consisting of great affection and tenderness on the part of the lion, and the utmost confidence and boldness on the part of the dog; insomuch that he would lay himself down to sleep, within the fangs and under the jaws of his terrible patron. In about twelve months the little spaniel sickened and died. For a time the lion did not appear to conceive otherwise than that his favorite was asleep. He would continue to smell of him, and then would stir him with his nose, and turn him over with his paws. But finding that all his efforts to wake him were vain, he would traverse his cage from end to end, at a swift and uneasy pace. He would then stop, and look down upon him with a fixed and drooping regard, and again lift up his head, and roar for several minutes, as the sound of distant thunder. They attempted, but in vain, to convey the carcass from him. The keeper then endeavored to tempt him with a variety of food, but he turned from all that was offered, with loathing. They then put several living dogs in his cage, which he tore in pieces, but left their carcasses on the floor. His passions being thus inflamed, he would grapple at the bars of his cage, as if enraged at his restraint from tearing those around him to pieces. Again, as if quite spent, he would stretch himself by the remains of his beloved associate, lay his paws upon him, and take him to his bosom; and then utter his grief in deep and melancholy roaring, for the loss of his little play-fellow. For five days he thus languished, and gradually declined, without taking any sustenance or admitting any comfort, till, one morning, he was found dead, with his head reclined on the carcass of his little friend. They were both interred together. A lion, when about three months old, was caught in the forests of Senegal, and tamed by the director of the African company in that colony. He became unusually tractable and gentle. He slept in company with cats, dogs, geese, monkeys, and other animals, and never offered any violence to them. When he was about eight months old, he formed an attachment to a terrier dog, and this attachment increased afterward to such an extent, that the lion was seldom happy in the absence of his companion. At the age of fourteen months, the lion, with the dog in company, was transported to France. He showed so little ferocity on shipboard, that he was allowed at all times to have the liberty of walking about the vessel. When he was landed at Havre, he was conducted with only a cord attached to his collar, and attended by his favorite play-fellow, to Versailles. Soon after their arrival, the dog died, when the lion became so disconsolate, that it was found necessary to put another dog into his den. This dog, terrified at the sight of such an animal, endeavored to conceal himself; and the lion, surprised at the noise, killed him by a stroke with one of his paws. M. Felix, some years since the keeper of the national menagerie at Paris, added two lions to the collection, a male and a female. He had become endeared to them by kind treatment, so that scarcely any one else could control them, and they manifested their regard in a great many ways. The gentleman, however, was taken very sick, and was confined for some time to his bed. Another person was necessarily intrusted with the care of these lions. From the moment that M. Felix left, the male sat, sad and solitary, at the end of his cage, and refused to take food from the hands of the stranger, for whom, it was evident, he entertained no little dislike. The company of the female seemed to displease him. In a short time he became so uneasy, that no one dared to approach him. By and by, however, his old master recovered, and with the intention of surprising the animal, he crept softly to the cage, and showed only his face between the bars. But the male lion knew him at once. He leaped against the bars, patted him with his paws, licked his hands and face, and actually trembled with pleasure. The female also ran to him; but the other drove her back, and was on the point of quarreling with her, so jealous was he lest she should receive any of the favors of M. Felix. Afterward, however, the keeper entered the cage, caressed them both by turns, and pacified them. Sir George Davis, who was English consul at Naples about the middle of the seventeenth century, happening on one occasion to be in Florence, visited the menagerie of the grand duke. At the farther end of one of the dens he saw a lion which lay in sullen majesty, and which the keepers informed him they had been unable to tame, although every effort had been used for upward of three years. Sir George had no sooner reached the gate of the den, than the lion ran to it, and evinced every demonstration of joy and transport. The animal reared himself up, purred like a cat when pleased, and licked the hand of Sir George, which he had put through the bars. The keeper was astonished and frightened for the safety of his visitor, entreated him not to trust an apparent fit of phrensy, with which the animal seemed to be seized; for he was, without exception, the most fierce and sullen of his tribe which he had ever seen. This, however, had no effect on Sir George, who, notwithstanding every entreaty on the part of the keeper, insisted on entering the lion's den. The moment he got in, the delighted lion threw his paws upon his shoulders, licked his face, and ran about him, rubbing his head on Sir George, purring and fawning like a cat when expressing its affection for its master. This occurrence became the talk of Florence, and reached the ears of the grand duke, who sent for Sir George, and requested an interview at the menagerie, that he might witness so extraordinary a circumstance, when Sir George gave the following explanation: "A captain of a ship from Barbary gave me this lion, when quite a whelp. I brought him up tame; but when I thought him too large to be suffered to run about the house, I built a den for him in my court-yard. From that time he was never permitted to be loose, except when brought to the house to be exhibited to my friends. When he was five years old, he did some mischief by pawing and playing with people in his frolicsome moods. Having griped a man one day a little too hard, I ordered him to be shot, for fear of myself incurring the guilt of what might happen. On this a friend, who happened to be then at dinner with me, begged him as a present. How he came here, I do not know." The Grand Duke of Tuscany, on hearing his story, said it was the very same person who had presented him with the lion. [Illustration: THE LIONESS AND HER CUBS.] Part of a ship's crew being sent ashore on the coast of India for the purpose of cutting wood, the curiosity of one of the men having led him to stray to a considerable distance from his companions, he was much alarmed by the appearance of a large lioness, who made toward him; but, on her coming up, his fear was allayed, by her lying down at his feet, and looking very earnestly, first in his face, and then at a tree some little distance off. After repeating these looks several times, she arose, and proceeded toward the tree, looking back, as if she wished the sailor to follow her. At length he ventured, and, coming to the tree, perceived a huge baboon, with two young cubs in her arms, which he immediately supposed to be those of the lioness, as she crouched down like a cat, and seemed to eye them very steadfastly. The man being afraid to ascend the tree, decided on cutting it down; and having his axe with him, he set actively to work, when the lioness seemed most attentive to what he was doing. When the tree fell, she pounced upon the baboon, and, after tearing her in pieces, she turned round, and licked the cubs for some time. She then returned to the sailor, and fawned round him, rubbing her head against him in great fondness, and in token of her gratitude for the service done her. After this, she carried the cubs away one by one, and the sailor rejoined his companions, much pleased with the adventure. A French gentleman relates a remarkable anecdote about a combat which he saw on the banks of the Niger, between a Moorish chief and a lion. The prince took the Frenchman and his company to a place adjoining a large wood which was much infested with wild beasts, and directed them all to climb the trees. They did so. Then, getting upon his horse, and taking three spears and a dagger, he entered the forest, where he soon found a lion, which he wounded with one of the spears. The enraged animal sprang with great fury at his assailant, who, by a feigned flight, led him near the spot where the company were stationed. He then turned his horse, and in a moment darted another spear at the lion, which pierced his body. He alighted, and the lion, now grown furious, advanced with open jaws; but the prince received him on the point of his third spear, which he forced into his throat. Then, at one leap, springing across his body, he cut open his throat with his dagger. In this contest, the Moor's skill was such, that he received only a slight scratch on the thigh. [Illustration: THE CONVENTION OF ANIMALS.] Allow me, in concluding these stories about lions, to recite one from the French. It is fabulous, as you will perceive; but fables are not to be despised. The design of the fable is to illustrate the truth that in a community, every one may be more or less useful. "War having been declared between two nations of animals (for, notwithstanding their instinct, they are as foolish as men), the lion issued a proclamation of the fact to his subjects, and ordered them to appear in person at his camp. Among the great number of animals that obeyed the orders of their sovereign, were some asses and hares. Each animal offered his services for the campaign. The elephant agreed to transport the baggage of the army. The bear took it upon him to make the assaults. The fox proposed to manage the ruses and the stratagems. The monkey promised to amuse the enemy by his tricks. 'Sire,' said the horse, 'send back the asses; they are too lazy--and the hares; they are too timid, and subject to too frequent alarms.' 'By no means,' said the king of the animals; 'our army would not be complete without these. The asses will serve for trumpeters, and the hares will make excellent couriers.'" [Illustration: THE GALAGO.] The Galago. From a recent English periodical, I have obtained some interesting facts in relation to an animal to which naturalists have given the name of the Galago. In the picture on the opposite page you have a portrait of the animal, drawn from life. He is a very singular looking fellow, as you perceive. Not long ago he was brought to England from Zanguebar, in Africa. The specimen, now being exhibited in London, is the first of this race of quadrupeds which has ever been introduced from its native country into any part of Europe, and it is exciting a great deal of interest among naturalists. Very little is known of the genus to which the animal belongs, all its species being found only in the barbarous countries, very little known, on the eastern coast of Africa. They all climb upon trees, like the squirrel. Their habits are strictly nocturnal. They never venture from their retreats while the faintest gleam of daylight is visible; but at the approach of night they become exceedingly active, springing from tree to tree with all the dexterity of the squirrel. In the day time, they remain, for the most part, in the holes of decayed trees. Their food is gum and pulpy fruits. The country where they live is one of the hottest regions on the globe. On this account, the animal sent to England is very sensitive to the sudden changes of that comparatively northern latitude, and it requires much care to preserve him from the influence of the cold. One of the striking peculiarities of the animal is the appearance of his feet. They resemble the hands of a man, as will be seen by the engraving. This peculiarity admirably fits the galago for the life it leads, as it spends a great part of its time in leaping on the boughs of trees. The specimen in England is remarkably tame and frolicksome, and does not seem altogether happy except when he is fondled and petted, when he enjoys himself immensely. During the night he delights in active motion, climbing and playing like a kitten, often uttering a loud, clucking noise, which ends with a sharp, shrill call, of astonishing volume. The animal is not so large as a fox. The Bear. That distinguished author, Oliver Goldsmith, in his "Animated Nature," has given a most interesting account of the habits of the bear, which I wish, for the benefit of my readers, might be embodied in this chapter, though, on the whole, I think the entire account is too long, and I am forced to omit it. Besides, I suppose it would hardly be just to accord such a civility to the bear, while it is denied to the other animals. According to the description of this eminent practical naturalist, the bear is not by any means the unamiable monster he has been represented to be; but has, on the contrary, a great many good traits of character. He has been slandered, grossly slandered, if we may credit Mr. Goldsmith; and for one, I do credit him. He is exceedingly reliable in most of his statements. Now that I am speaking of Mr. Goldsmith, I can scarce refrain from adding that I have been greatly assisted, in the preparation of this volume, by the work of his above alluded to. It is, and ever will be, a valuable book in the library of those who are interested in becoming acquainted with nature, in her varied aspects. There are three species of bears--the black, the white, and the brown or Syrian bear. The latter, represented in the engraving on the opposite page, is the one to which allusion is made in Scripture. [Illustration: THE BROWN BEAR.] The bear is capable of strong and generous attachment. Many years ago, Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, in Europe, owned a bear which had become very tame, and which was remarkable for the strength of his love for those whom he happened to fancy. In the winter of 1709, a poor Savoyard boy had been placed in a barn to stay over night. This boy, finding that he was near the hut occupied by the duke's bear, took it into his head to go and pay the bear a visit. It was a singular fancy, to be sure. But as the old proverb says, "There is no accounting for tastes." He had no sooner formed the determination, than off he started to see Marco--for that was the name of the bear. He was cold, I think; and not having any other way of warming himself, he thought he would see if Marco could not be prevailed upon to let him share in the benefit of his shaggy coat for awhile. So in he went, and he and the bear were soon on the best of terms. Marco took him between his paws, and warmed him, by pressing him to his breast, until the next morning, when he allowed him to depart, to ramble about the city. In the evening, the young Savoyard returned to the bear's den, and was received with the same marks of kindness and affection. For several days, the boy made this den his home. The bear saved a part of his food for his companion, and they lived together on the most intimate and friendly terms. A number of days passed in this manner, without the servants knowing any thing about the circumstance, the boy not being in the den when the bear's food was brought. At length, one day, when some one came to bring the generous animal his supper, rather later than usual, the boy was there. The servant then saw the fondness of the bear for the young Savoyard. The boy was asleep. The bear rolled his eyes around, in a furious manner, and seemed to intimate that as little noise as possible must be made, for fear of awaking the child, whom he clasped to his breast. The bear did not move when the food was placed before him. This extraordinary circumstance was related to Leopold, the owner of the bear, who, with a good many others, went to the bear's hut, where they found, with surprise, that the animal never stirred as long as his guest manifested a disposition to sleep. When the little fellow awoke in the morning, he was very much ashamed and alarmed to find that he was discovered, thinking that he should be punished; and he begged the duke's pardon for the liberty he had taken with the bear. The bear, however, caressed his new friend, and tried to prevail upon him to eat a part of the supper which had been brought the previous evening, and which seemed untouched. Bruin is famous for hugging his enemies so desperately, that they are glad to get clear of him. But in these hugging fights, he sometimes gets the worst of it, as in the following instance. Some years since, when the western part of the State of New York was but slightly settled, some enterprising emigrant from New England had built a saw-mill on the banks of the Genesee river. One day, as he was eating his luncheon, sitting on the log which was going through the sawing operation at the time, a huge black bear came from the woods, toward the mill. The man, leaving his bread and cold bacon on the log, made a spring, and climbed up to a beam above, to get out of the way of the bear, when the latter, mounting the log which the sawyer had left, sat down, with his back toward the saw, and commenced eating the man's dinner. After awhile, the log on which he sat approached so near the saw, that he got scratched a little, and he hitched away a few feet from the saw, and resumed his dinner. But the saw scratched him again soon, of course, and this time rather more seriously. Bruin got angry, and his anger cost him dearly. He wheeled about, and throwing his paws around the saw, he gave it a most desperate hug. In this position he remained, until he was sawn into two pieces, as if he had been a log. Poor fellow! we ought to pity him, I suppose; but it is pretty difficult to avoid a hearty laugh over his misfortunes. Here is a story of an encounter between a bear and a bull, which is also rather laughable, although there is a good deal of the tragic in it. A bull was attacked in the forest by a rather small bear, when, striking his horns into his assailant, he pinned him against a tree. In this situation they were both found dead; the bull from starvation, the bear from his wounds. Some years ago, a New Hampshire boy found a very young cub near Lake Winnepeg, and carried it home with him. It was fed and brought up in the house of the boy's father, and became as tame as a dog. At length, it learned to follow the boy to school, and by degrees, it became his daily companion. At first, the other scholars were somewhat shy of Bruin's acquaintance; but before a great while, it became their constant play-fellow, and they delighted in sharing with it the little store of provisions which they brought for their own dinner. However, it wandered off into the woods again, and for four years, nothing was heard of it. Changes had taken place in the school where the bear used to be a welcome guest. Another generation of pupils had taken the place of the bear's old companions. One very cold winter day, while the schoolmistress was busy with her lessons, a boy happened to leave the door open, and a huge bear walked in. The consternation of the mistress and her pupils was very great, of course. But what could they do? Nothing but look on, and see what would come of this strange visit. However, the bear molested no one. It walked quietly up to the fire, and warmed itself. Then it walked up to the wall, where the dinner baskets hung, and standing on its hind feet, reached them down, and made free with their contents. By and by, it went out. But the alarm was given, and the poor fellow was shot, when it was found out, by some marks on its body, that it was the identical bear that had used to visit the school four years before. In one of the expeditions from England to the Polar seas, a white bear was seen to perform an ingenious feat in order to capture some walruses. He was seen to swim cautiously to a large, rough piece of ice, on which these walruses were lying, fast asleep, with their cubs. The wily animal crept up some little hillocks of ice, behind the party, and with his fore feet loosened a large block of ice. This, with the help of his nose and paws, he rolled along until he was near the sleepers, and almost over their heads, when he let it fall on one of the old walruses, who was instantly killed. The other walrus, with her cubs, rolled into the water; but the young one of the dead animal remained with its mother. On this helpless creature the bear then leaped down, and completed the destruction of two animals which it would not have ventured to attack openly. It often happens, that when a Greenlander and his wife are paddling along out at sea, by coming too near a floating field of ice, a white bear unexpectedly jumps into their canoe. Provided he does not upset it by the weight of his body, he sits calmly and demurely in one end of it, like any other passenger, and allows himself to be rowed to the shore. The Greenlander would very cheerfully dispense with the company of the bear; but dares not dispute his right there--it might cost him a pretty rough handling. So he makes a virtue of necessity, and rows his bearship to the shore. In the early part of the settlement of this country, an expedition was sent to explore a part of the territory now called Missouri. Bears were found there, at that time, in great abundance, and of very large size. Some of the men belonging to the expedition were in a canoe one day, when they discovered a bear lying in the open grounds, about three hundred paces from the river. Six of the men, all good hunters, immediately went to attack him, and concealing themselves by a small eminence, came within forty paces of him before they were perceived. Four of the hunters now fired, as nearly as they could at the same instant, and each lodged a ball in his body, two of which entered the lungs. The furious animal then sprang up, and ran upon the men, with his mouth wide open, ready for a terrible attack. As he came near, the two hunters who had reserved their fire gave him two rounds, one of which, breaking his shoulder, retarded his progress for a moment; but before they could reload, he was so near that they were obliged to run to the river. Before they reached it, he had almost overtaken them. Two jumped into the canoe; the other four separated, and concealing themselves among the willows, fired as fast as they could reload. They hit him several times; but instead of weakening the monster, each shot only seemed to direct him toward the hunters, till at last he pursued two of them so closely, that they threw aside their guns and pouches, and jumped down a perpendicular bank of some fifteen feet into the river. The bear sprang after them, and was within a few feet of the hindermost, when one of the hunters on the shore shot him in the head, and finally killed him. They dragged him to the shore, and found that eight balls had passed through him, in different directions. While a British frigate was locked in the ice of the Polar seas, three bears were discovered one morning, directing their course toward the ship. They had undoubtedly been attracted by the scent of a part of the carcass of a sea-horse that the crew had killed a few days before, which had been set on fire, and was burning on the ice at the time of their approach. They proved to be a female bear and her two cubs; but the cubs were nearly as large as the mother. They ran eagerly to the fire, and drew out of the flames a part of the flesh of the sea-horse which remained unconsumed, and ate it voraciously. Some of the crew threw large pieces of the flesh from the ship upon the ice, which the old bear took, one by one, and laid before her cubs. Then she divided each piece, and reserved only a very small portion for herself. As she was carrying away the last piece, several of the men on board the ship aimed their muskets at the two cubs, and shot them dead; after which they shot at the old bear, and wounded her, though not mortally. One of the gentlemen who witnessed this spectacle says that it would have drawn pity from any but the most unfeeling hearts, to mark the affectionate concern expressed by this poor beast, as she saw that her young were dying. Though she was sorely wounded herself, and could but just crawl to the place where they lay, she carried the last piece of flesh to them, as she had done with the others, and divided it for them. When she perceived that they refused to eat, she put her paws first upon one and then upon the other, and endeavored to raise them up. All this time it was deeply affecting to hear her moans. When she found she could not stir her dying cubs in this manner, she went away some distance from them, looking back occasionally, and moaning, as if in the utmost distress. This means not availing to entice them away from the spot, she returned, and commenced smelling around them, and licking their wounds. Then she went off a second time, as before, and having crawled a few paces, looked again behind her, and for some time stood still, uttering the most piteous cries. But still her cubs did not rise to follow her, and she returned to them, and with signs of the greatest fondness, went around them separately, placing her paws upon them tenderly, and giving utterance to the same cries of distress. Finding, at last, that they were cold and lifeless, she raised her head toward the ship, and growled in indignation for the murder. Poor creature! the men on board returned her angry cry with a shower of musket balls. She fell between her cubs, and died licking their wounds. Hans Christian Andersen, in his "Picture Book without Pictures," relates an anecdote, in his droll way, about a tame bear, who got loose, when the man who was exhibiting him was at dinner, and who found his way into the public house, and went straight to a room where there were three children, the eldest of whom was only some six or eight years old. But, Hans, you may tell the rest of the story in your own peculiar language: "The door sprang open, and in stepped the great rough bear! He had grown tired of standing out there in the yard, and he now found his way up the steps. The children were very much frightened at the great, grim-looking beast, and crept each one of them into a corner. But he found them all out, and rubbed them with his nose. He did them no harm, not the slightest. 'It is certainly a big dog,' thought they; and so they patted him kindly. He laid himself down on the floor, and the smallest boy tumbled over him, and amused himself by hiding his curly head in the thick black hair of the animal. The eldest boy now took his drum, and made a tremendous noise; and the bear rose up on his hind legs, and began to dance. It was charming. Each boy took his weapons--for they had been playing at soldiers before their visitor arrived. The bear must have a gun too, and he held it like a regular militia man. What a fine comrade they had found!--and so they marched about the room--'one, two! one, two!' Presently, however, the door opened. It was the children's mother. You should have seen her--her face as white as a sheet; her half-opened mouth, her staring eyes. The smallest of the children ran up to her mother, and shouted with all her might, 'Mama, we are playing at soldiers!'" [Illustration: THE JUGGLER AND HIS PUPILS.] Bears have frequently been taught a great many funny tricks. I remember seeing one, when a boy, that would stand on his head, and dance, and perform sundry other feats of skill. His master was an old man, who passed himself off among the little folks as a conjurer. He was dressed in a most grotesque manner, and played on a drum and some kind of wind instrument at the same time. Besides the bear, who seemed to be the hero in the different performances, the juggler had some dogs, which he had trained to dance to his music, and a cock which would walk and dance, after his fashion, on stilts. But I should not care to witness any such performances now. I should not be able to keep out of my mind the thought that the different animals engaged in these exhibitions must have been subjected to a great deal of pain and ill treatment before they could have arrived at such a stage of proficiency, and that thought would imbitter the entertainment, I imagine. The Rat and Mouse. Every body, almost, entertains a sort of hostility to the rat family, and considers himself licensed to say all manner of hard things about them. They are a set of rogues--there is no doubt about that, unless they are universally slandered. But they are shrewd and cunning, as well as roguish; and many of their exploits are worth recording. There were several slaughter-houses near Paris, where as many as thirty worn-out horses were slaughtered every day. One of these slaughter-houses was regarded as a nuisance, and a proposition was made to remove it at a greater distance from the city. But there was a strong objection made to its removal, on account of the ravages which the rats would make in the neighborhood, when they had no longer the carcasses of the horses to feed upon. These voracious creatures assembled at this spot in such numbers, that they devoured all the flesh (that was not much, perhaps, in many cases) of twenty or thirty horses in one night, so that in the morning nothing remained of these carcasses but bare bones. In one of these slaughter-houses, which was inclosed by solid walls, the carcasses of two or three horses were placed; and in the night the workmen blocked up all the holes through which the rats went in. When this was done, the workmen went inside with lighted torches and heavy clubs, and killed two thousand six hundred and fifty rats. In four such hunts, the numbers destroyed were upward of nine thousand. The rats in this neighborhood made themselves burrows like rabbits; and to such an extent was the building of these underground villages carried, that the earth sometimes tumbled in, and revealed the astonishing work they had been doing. That is rather a tough story, but I guess we shall have to believe it. It comes to us on the authority of Mr. Jesse, who, in his excellent work on Natural History, is pretty careful to say nothing which cannot be relied upon as true. As to the battle which those men had with the rats in the slaughter-house, it must have been a desperate one. I should not have fancied it much. I had a little experience in fighting with rats once, when I was a boy. They were in a room occupied with meal and flour. The door was closed, so that they could not get out. I was armed with a fire shovel, or something of that sort, and I fought, as I thought at the time, with a good deal of bravery and some skill. But the rats got the better of me. They won the victory. They would jump upon a barrel, and from that upon a shelf, and then down they would fly into my face, ready to gripe me with their teeth. I was glad to beat a retreat soon, I assure you. They are a shrewd set of fellows, these rats. Some years ago, the cellar of the house in which I resided was greatly infested with them. They devoured potatoes, apples, cabbages, and whatever came in their way; for they are not very particular about their diet, you know. Well, we set a trap for them. It was a flat stone set up on one end, with a figure four. We scattered corn all about the trap, and placed a few barrels on the end of the spindle under the stone. The first night these midnight robbers ate up all the corn around the trap, but did not touch a morsel under it. This they repeated several nights in succession; and all at once, there was not the trace of a rat to be found in the cellar. They no doubt held a council (rats are accustomed to hold councils, it would seem; they once held a council to deliberate upon the best mode of protection against their enemy, the cat, and concluded to put a bell on her ladyship--so the fable says)--they held a council, as I said before, and came to the unanimous conclusion that those quarters were no longer safe. So they decamped forthwith; and the very next day after we missed them, one of our neighbors complained that they were suddenly besieged by a whole army of rats. A German succeeded in training six rats so that they would go through astonishing exercises. He kept them in a box, which he opened, and from which they came out only as their names were called. This box was placed on a table, before which the man stood. He held a wand in his hand, and called by name such of his pupils as he wished to appear. The one who was called came out instantly, and climbed up the wand, on which he seated himself in an upright posture, looking round on the spectators, and saluting them, after his own fashion. Then he waited the orders of his master, which he executed with the utmost precision, running from one end of the rod to the other counterfeiting death, and performing a multitude of astonishing feats, as he was bidden by his master. After these performances were finished, the pupil received a reward for his good behavior, and for his proficiency in study. The master invited him to come and kiss his face, and eat a part of the biscuit which he held between his lips. Immediately the animal ran toward him, climbed up to his shoulder, licked the cheek of his master, and afterward took the biscuit. Then, turning to the spectators, he seated himself on his master's shoulder, ate his dinner, and returned to his box. The other rats were called, one by one, in the same manner, and all went through the several parts with the same precision. I have read a pretty tough rat story in the "Penny Magazine," but it is said to be authentic. "An open box," says the narrator, "containing some bottles of Florence oil, was placed in a room which was seldom visited. On going into the room for one of the bottles, it was perceived that the pieces of bladder and the cotton, which were at the mouth of each bottle, had disappeared; and that a considerable quantity of the contents of the bottles had been consumed. This circumstance having excited surprise, some of the bottles were filled with oil, and the mouths of them secured as before. The next morning the coverings of the bottles had again been removed, and part of the oil was gone. On watching the room, through a small window, some rats were seen to get into the box, thrust their tails into the necks of the bottles, and then, withdrawing them, lick off the oil which adhered to them." Another story about these animals, almost as wonderful, I have upon the authority of a clergyman in England. He says that he was walking out in the meadow one evening, and he observed a great number of rats in the act of emigrating. He stood perfectly still, and the whole army passed close to him. Among the number he tells us was an old rat who was blind. He held a piece of stick by one end in his mouth, while another rat had hold of the other end of it, and was conducting him. The Chicago Democrat tells the following, prefacing it with the remark that the rats of Chicago are "noted for their firmness and daring." A few nights since, a cat belonging to a friend, while exercising the office of mother of a family of kittens, was attacked by a regularly organized band of rats, which, sad to relate, contrived to kill the parent, and make a prey of the offspring. In the morning the cat was found bitten to death by the side of nine of her assailants, whom she slew before she was overpowered by superior numbers. The following story about a rat extremely fond of good living, was told me by a clerical friend residing in the city of New York. The family in which this rat lived, had just purchased some round clams, and they were placed in the cellar. One night all the inmates of the house were alarmed by an unusual noise. It appeared as if some one was stamping about the house with heavy boots on. It was a long time before they found out how the matter stood; but when they did find out, an old rat was discovered dragging one of these clams about with him. It appeared that this fellow, thinking it would be nice to have a supper from one of the clams, which he saw open, thrust in his paw, and got caught. This story reminds me of a French fable about the rat who got tired of staying at home, and went abroad to see something of the world. "A rat with very few brains"--so runs the fable--"got tired of living in solitude, and took it into his head to travel. He had hardly proceeded a mile, before he exclaimed, 'What a grand and spacious world this is! Behold the Alps and the Pyrenees!' The least mole-hill seemed a mountain in his eyes. After a few days, our traveler arrived at the sea-coast, where there were a multitude of oysters. At first he thought they were ships. Among these oysters, was one lying open. The rat perceived it. 'What do I see?' said he. 'Here is a delicate morsel for me, and if I am not greatly mistaken, I shall have a fine dinner to-day.' So he approached the oyster, stretched out his neck, and thrust his head between the shells. The oyster closed, and master Nibble was caught as effectually as if he was in a trap." I believe the moral of this fable is something as follows: "Those who have no experience in the world, are often astonished at the smallest objects, and not unfrequently become the dupes of their ignorance." In 1776, one of the British ships engaged in the war with this country, became infested with rats to such a degree, that they at last devoured daily nearly a hundred weight of biscuit. They were at last destroyed, by smoking the ship between decks, after which several bushels of them were removed. In the Isle of France rats are found in prodigious swarms. There were formerly so many, that, according to some accounts, they formed the principal cause for abandoning the island by the Dutch. In some of the houses, thirty thousand have been known to be killed in one year. In Egypt, when the waters of the Nile retire, after the annual overflow, multitudes of rats and mice are seen to issue from the moistened soil. The Egyptians believe that these animals are generated from the earth; and some of the people assert, that they have seen the rats in a state of formation, while one half of the bodies was flesh and the other half mud. The following anecdote is related by a correspondent of one of the English newspapers: "This morning," says he, "while reading in bed, I was suddenly interrupted by a noise similar to that made by rats, when running through a double wainscot, and endeavoring to pierce it. The noise ceased for some moments, and then commenced again. I was only two or three feet from the wall whence the noise proceeded; and soon I perceived a great rat making his appearance at a hole. It looked about for awhile, without making any noise, and having made the observations it wished, it retired. An instant after, I saw it come again, leading by the ear another rat, larger than itself, and which appeared to be much advanced in years. Having left this one at the edge of the hole, it was joined by another young rat. The two then ran about the chamber, collecting the crumbs of bread which had fallen from the table at supper the previous evening, and carried them to the rat which they had left at the edge of the hole. I was astonished at this extraordinary attention on the part of the young rats, and continued to observe all their motions with a great deal of care. It soon appeared clear to me that the animal to whom the food was brought was blind, and unable to find the bread which was placed before it, except by feeling after it. The two younger ones were undoubtedly the offspring of the other, and they were engaged in supplying the wants of their poor, blind parent. I admired the wisdom of the God of nature, who has given to all animals a social tenderness, a gratitude, I had almost said a virtue, proportionate to their faculties. From that moment, these creatures, which I had before abhorred, seemed to become my friends. By and by, a person opened the door of the room, when the two young rats warned the blind one by a cry; and in spite of their fears, they did not seek for safety themselves, until assured that their blind parent was beyond the reach of danger. They followed as the other retired, and served as a sort of rear-guard." [Illustration: FIELD MICE.] There are several species of mice. The engraving represents the field mouse, an animal which sometimes makes great havoc with the farmer's grain. The common domestic mouse is perhaps better known. He is generally, and I think I may say justly, regarded as a pest in the house where he becomes a tenant. But he is an interesting animal, after all. I love to watch him--the sly little fellow--nibbling his favorite cheese, his keen black eye looking straight at me, all the time, as if to read by my countenance what sort of thoughts I had about his mouseship. How much at home he always contrives to make himself in a family! How very much at his ease he is, as he regales himself on the best things which the house affords! A day or two ago, a friend of mine was telling me an amusing story about some mice with which he had the pleasure of a slight acquaintance. He lived in the same house with a gentleman who kept a sort of bachelor's hall, and who was a great lover of pets. This gentleman took him into his room one day to see a mouse which he was educating to be a companion of his lonely hours. The bachelor remarked that he had been a pensioner for some time, that he fed him bountifully every day, and that he had become very tame indeed. "But," said the mouse's patron, "he is an ungrateful fellow. He is not content with eating what I give him; he destroys every thing he can lay hold of." A short time after this, my friend was called in again, when he was told by the bachelor, that, the mouse having become absolutely intolerable by his petty larcenies and grand larcenies, he set a trap for him and caught him. But still the larcenies continued. He set his trap again, and caught another rogue, and another, and another, till at last he found he had been making a pet of thirteen mice, instead of one, as he at first supposed. The field mouse, represented in the engraving, lays up a large store of provisions in his nice little nest under ground, which he keeps for winter. These mice are very particular in stowing away their winter store. The corn, acorns, chestnuts, hickory nuts, and whatever else they hoard up, have each separate apartments. One room contains nothing but corn, another nothing but chestnuts, and so on. When they have exhausted their stock of provisions before spring, and they have nothing else to eat, they turn to, and eat one another. They are regular cannibals, if their manners and customs have been correctly reported. Sometimes the hogs, as they are roaming about the pasture, in the autumn, soon after a family of field mice have laid in their provisions, and before the ground has frozen, come across the nest, and smell the good things that are in it. Then the poor mouse has to suffer. The author of the Boy's Winter Book thus graphically and humorously describes the misfortunes of such a mouse: "There he sits huddled up in a dark corner, looking on, as the hog is devouring the contents of his house, saying to himself, no doubt, 'I wish it may choke you, you great, grunting brute, that I do. There go my poor acorns, a dozen at a mouthfull. Twelve long journeys I had to take to the foot of the old oak, where I picked them up--such a hard day's work, that I could hardly get a wink of sleep, my bones ached so. And now that great glutton gobbles them all up at once, and makes nothing of it! What I shall do in the winter, I'm sure I don't know. There goes my corn, too, which I brought, a little at a time, all the way from the field on the other side of the woods, and with which I was often obliged to rest, two or three times before I reached home; and then I sometimes had to lay my load down, while I had a battle with another field mouse, who tried to take the corn away from me, under pretence of helping me to carry it home, which I knew well enough meant his own nest. And after all this fighting, and slaving, and carrying heavy loads from sunrise to sunset, here comes a pair of great, grunting pork chaps, and make a meal from my hard earnings. Well, never mind, Mr. Pig. It's winter now; but perhaps by next harvest time, I shall creep into some reaper's basket, and have a taste of you, when he brings a part of you, nicely cured and cooked, and laid lovingly between two slices of bread and butter. I'll be even with you then, old fellow--that I will, if I am only spared!' And so he creeps out, scarcely knowing whether he should make up his mind to beg, borrow, or steal, half muttering to himself, as he hops across the way, to visit some neighbor for a breakfast, 'I declare such infamous treatment is enough to make one dishonest, and never be industrious and virtuous any more!'" The Rabbit. Friend reader, did you ever see the rabbit bounding along through the bushes, when you have been walking in the woods? When a boy, I used often to be amused at the gambols of the rabbits, in the woods near my father's house. They do not run very gracefully or very fast, and a dog easily overtakes them. It seems cruel to hunt them, and set snares for them; and yet if they are wanted for food, doubtless there is no harm in taking their life. The way in which I used to catch them, years ago, when the sources of my enjoyment were widely different from what they are at present, was by means of a box-trap with a lid to it, so adjusted that the poor rabbit, when he undertook to nibble the apple, attached to the spindle for a bait, sprung the trap, and made himself a prisoner. Another method we used to employ to catch the rabbit, was something like this: a fence was made of brush-wood, about three feet high, and reaching some rods in length. The brush in this fence was interlaced so closely, that rabbits and partridges could not get through except at intervals of a few yards, where there was a door. At this door was a noose connecting with a flexible pole, which was bent down for the purpose. The unsuspecting rabbit, in his journeyings from place to place, comes to the fence. He could leap over, if he should try. But he thinks it cheaper to walk through the door, especially as there is a choice bit of apple suspended over the entrance. Well, he attempts to go through, stopping a minute to eat that favorite morsel; he thrusts his head into the noose; the trap is sprung, and the elastic pole twitches the poor wayfarer up by the neck. It is rather barbarous business, this snaring innocent rabbits; and I should much rather my young friends would adopt either of a hundred other sports of winter, than this. [Illustration: THE RABBIT TRAP.] [Illustration: THE RABBIT.] The father of a family of rabbits is said to exercise a very respectable discipline among the children. Would it not be well for some of our fathers and mothers to attend school, a quarter or so, in one of their villages? The father among rabbits is a patriarch. Somebody who owned several tame ones, tells us that whenever any of them quarreled, the father instantly ran among them, and at once peace and order were restored. "If he caught any one quarreling, he always punished him as an example to the rest. Having taught them to come to me," says this man, "with the call of a whistle, the instant this signal was given, I saw this old fellow marshal up his forces, sometimes taking the lead, and sometimes making them file off before him." The Hare. Probably most of my readers are so well acquainted with natural history, that they do not need to be told that the hare and the rabbit are very like, in their appearance, as well as in most of their habits. The two animals, however, are sufficiently unlike to be entitled to a separate introduction in our stories. Hares have been known to possess a good deal of cunning, which is a fortunate circumstance for them, as they often need not a little of this trait of character in their numerous persecutions. "I have seen," says Du Fouilloux, a French naturalist, "a hare so cunning, that, as soon as it heard the huntsman's horn, it started from its place, and though at the distance of a quarter of a league from it, leaped to a pond, and there hid itself among the rushes, thus escaping the pursuit of the dogs. I have seen a hare, which, after having run above two hours before the dogs, has dislodged another hare, and taken possession of its residence. I have seen them swim over three ponds, of which the smallest was not less than eighty paces broad. I have seen others, which, after having been warmly chased for two hours, have entered a sheep-cot, through the little opening under the door, and remained among the cattle. Others, again, when the dogs have chased them, have joined a flock of sheep in the field, and, in like manner, remained with them. I have seen others, which, when they heard the dogs, have concealed themselves in the earth, or have gone along on one side of a hedge, and returned by the other, so that there was only the thickness of the hedge between the dogs and the hare. I have seen others, which, after they had been chased for half an hour, have mounted an old wall of six feet high, and taken refuge in a hole covered with ivy." An English hunter tells a very affecting anecdote about two hares which were chased by a pack of dogs. A hare which they had pursued for some time was nearly exhausted. On the way, he came across another hare, doubtless a personal friend of his. The latter, after a short conversation with the former--for there was not time for many ceremonies--took the place of the poor weary one, and allowed himself to be chased by the dogs, while the other, who must soon have fallen a victim to the dogs, was left to shift as best he could, and try to find a place of shelter. The hares in Liberia exhibit much foresight. In the month of August they cut great quantities of soft, tender grass, and other herbs, which they spread out to dry. This hay, early in autumn, they collect into heaps, and place either beneath the overhanging rocks, or around the trunks of trees, in conical heaps of various sizes, resembling the stacks in which men sometimes preserve their hay in winter. The stacks which the hares make are much smaller, however, not usually more than three feet high. In the winter these stacks are covered with snow, and the animals make a path between them and their holes. They select the best of vegetables for their winter store, and crop them when in the fullest vigor, and these they make into the best and greenest hay. Dr. Towson, while in Gottingen, succeeded in getting a young hare so tame, that it would play about his sofa and bed. It would leap upon his knee, pat him with its fore feet, and frequently, while he was reading, it would jump up in his lap, and knock the book out of his hand, so as to get a share of his attention. [Illustration: TAME HARES.] One Sunday evening, five men were sitting on the bank of the river Mersey, in England, singing sacred songs. The field where they were had a forest on one side of it. As they were singing, a hare came out of this forest, and ran toward the place where they were seated. When she came up very near the spot, she suddenly stopped, and stood still for a considerable time, appearing to enjoy the sound of the music. She frequently turned her head, as if listening with intense interest. When they stopped singing, she turned slowly toward the forest. She had nearly reached the forest, when the gentlemen commenced singing again. The hare turned around, and ran back swiftly, nearly to the spot where she stood before, and listened with the same apparent pleasure, until the music was finished, when she again retired toward the woods, and soon disappeared. Cowper was a great lover of pets; and I confess that I love him for this trait in his character. He has endeared himself to me, indeed, as much by the kindness he showed to the different animals which he had about him, and which he had taught to love him, as by almost any other act of his. I never think of Cowper, without thinking, too, of the interest he took in every thing that breathed; and I hardly ever see a pet hare, or rabbit, or squirrel, without thinking of him. If the reader is as much interested in the poet as I am, he will like to see a portrait of him, which I introduce in this connection. Many people take great delight in hunting such beautiful and innocent animals as the fawn and the hare. But Cowper was no sportsman. He could not bear to hurt any thing that lived. You remember, perhaps, what he says in his "Task" about being kind to animals. Let me see if I can quote it from memory. I guess I can, for I learned it at school when a little boy, and those things are always fixed in the memory more indelibly than those which are learned in maturer years. I think he says-- "I would not enter on my list of friends-- Though graced with polished manners and fine sense, Yet wanting sensibility--the man Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm. An inadvertent step may crush the snail, That crawls at eve along the public path; But he who has humanity, forewarned, Will step aside, and let the reptile live." [Illustration: THE POET COWPER.] He was right--the kind-hearted poet was right. Well, as I said before, he was not only careful about giving pain to animals, but he was very fond of pets. First and last, he had a good many of these pets. But there were none of them that he took so great delight in as his hares. He had two of these pretty little creatures, and they seemed to be as fond of him as he was of them. Cowper was subject to fits of great despondency, or depression of spirits. With him hypochondria was a sort of chronic disease. He would try to be cheerful. He knew the nature of his melancholy, and often tried to remedy indirectly what could not be reached directly. He resorted to innocent amusements in order to lead the mind away from the contemplation of its own ills, real or imaginary. This was well--it was philosophical--but it did not always succeed. The disease was too deeply seated in his system. The care which he took of his pets was no doubt one of his favorite amusements. These hares--there were three of them at first, though one of them did not live long--had each very different characters. The poet described them in detail in one of his letters. Puss was the greatest favorite. He was more tractable, tame and affectionate than the rest. Once the fellow was very sick, and his master treated him with a great deal of kindness, gave him medicine, and nursed him so well that he recovered. Cowper says that Puss showed his gratitude by licking his hand for a long time, a ceremony he never went through with but once in his life, before or afterward. Bess, who died young, was the funny one. He had a great fund of humor and drollery. Tiney, though very entertaining in his way, seems to have been rather a grave and surly fellow. When he died--and he lived to a good old age, some nine years, I think--Cowper buried him with honor, and wrote an epitaph for him. I will copy two or three stanzas from this epitaph, to show that Tiney got quite as good a character as he deserved. EPITAPH ON A HARE. Here lies, whom hound did ne'er pursue, Nor swifter greyhound follow, Whose feet ne'er tainted morning dew, Nor ear heard huntsman's hallo. Old Tiney, surliest of his kind, Who, nursed with tender care, And to domestic bounds confined, Was still a wild Jack-hare. Though duly from my hand he took His pittance every night, He did it with a jealous look, And when he could, would bite. I kept him for his humor's sake, For he would oft beguile My heart of thought, that made it ache, And force me to a smile. But now beneath this walnut shade, He finds his long, last home, And waits, in snug concealment laid, Till gentler Puss shall come. He, still more aged, feels the shocks, From which no power can save, And, partner once of Tiney's box, Must soon partake his grave. The Goat. Goats have been taught to perform a great many wonderful exploits. The celebrated traveler, Dr. Clarke, gives a very curious account of a goat which he came across in Arabia. This goat would perform some most surprising feats of dexterity. "We met," he says, "an Arab with a goat, which he led about the country to exhibit, in order to gain a livelihood. He had taught this animal, while he accompanied its movements with a song, to mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed successively one above another, and resembling in shape the dice belonging to a backgammon table. In this manner the goat stood, first on the top of two; afterward of three, four, five, and six, until it remained balanced upon the summit of them all, elevated several feet above the ground, and with its fore feet collected upon a single point, without throwing down the disjointed fabric on which it stood. The diameter of the upper cylinder, on which its four feet alternately remained until the Arab had ended his ditty, was only two inches, and the length of each was six inches. The most curious part of the performance took place afterward; for the Arab, to convince us of the animal's attention to the turn of the air, sometimes interrupted the ordinary _da capo_, or repeat, and as often as he did so, the goat tottered, and appeared uneasy. When the man suddenly stopped, in the middle of his song, the animal fell to the ground." [Illustration: THE WONDERFUL FEAT OF THE GOAT.] A farmer in Scotland missed one of his goats, when his flock came home at night. Being afraid the missing animal would get among the young trees in his nursery, he sent two boys, wrapped up warm in their plaid cloaks, to watch all night. In the morning, these boys climbed up the brow of a hill near by, to hunt for the wanderer. They found her after a long search. She was on the brow of a hill, and her young kid was by her side. This faithful mother was defending the kid from the attack of a fox. The enemy was using all the cunning and art he was master of, to get possession of the little fellow, while the old goat was presenting her horns in every direction, as he made his sallies. The boys shouted at the top of their voices, in order to drive the fox away. But Master Renard was probably aware that they would not dare to touch him. At any rate, he kept up the assault. At last, getting out of patience with the goat, he made a more resolute effort to seize the kid; and in an instant all three of the animals rolled off the precipice, and were killed by the fall. The fox was found at the bottom of the gorge, with the goat's horns piercing his body. A story is told by Mr. Bingley, which illustrates, in a very forcible manner, the gratitude and affection of the goat. After the final suppression of the Scottish rebellion of 1715, by the decisive battle of Preston, a gentleman who had taken a very active share in it escaped to the West Highlands, to the residence of a female relative, who afforded him an asylum. As, in consequence of the strict search which was made after the ringleaders, it was soon judged unsafe for him to remain in the house of his friend, he was conducted to a cavern in a sequestered situation, and furnished with a supply of food. The approach to this lonely abode consisted of a small aperture, through which he crept, dragging his provisions along with him. A little way from the mouth of the cave the roof became elevated, but on advancing, an obstacle obstructed his progress. He soon perceived that, whatever it might be, the object was a living one; but unwilling to strike at a venture with his dirk, he stooped down, and discovered a goat and her kid lying on the ground. The animal was evidently in great pain, and feeling her body and limbs, he ascertained that one of her legs had been fractured. He bound it up with his garter, and offered her some of his bread; but she refused to eat, and stretched out her tongue, as if intimating that her mouth was parched with thirst. He gave her water, which she drank greedily, and then she ate the bread. At midnight he ventured from the cave, pulled a quantity of grass and the tender branches of trees, and carried them to the poor sufferer, which received them with demonstrations of gratitude. The only thing which this fugitive had to arrest his attention in this dreary abode, was administering comfort to the goat; and he was, indeed, thankful to have any living creature beside him. She quickly recovered, and became tenderly attached to him. It happened that the servant who was intrusted with the secret of his retreat fell sick, when it became necessary to send another with provisions. The goat, on this occasion, happening to be lying near the mouth of the cavern, opposed his entrance with all her might, butting him furiously; the fugitive, hearing a disturbance, went forward, and receiving the watchword from his new attendant, interposed, and the faithful goat permitted him to pass. So resolute was the animal on this occasion, that the gentleman was convinced she would have died in his defence. [Illustration: CHAPTER END DECORATION] The Tiger. Such of my readers as have had an opportunity to look a little into natural history, are probably aware that the tiger belongs to the cat family. Many of its habits are very like those of the domestic cat. Did you ever see an old cat preparing to make a spring at a mouse or a bird? If you have, you have noticed that she crouches on the ground, and creeps stealthily along toward her victim, without making the least noise, until she is near enough, and then suddenly springs upon her prey. The tiger pursues the same course. A British officer, who lived for awhile in India, where tigers abound, was returning, in the evening, to the house where he resided, after dining with another officer, when he was met by his servants, who were making a great noise, in order to frighten away a tiger which was known to be prowling about the neighborhood. Although he had been some years in India, the young officer had never seen a tiger, as it happened, except from a distance; and he determined he would gratify his curiosity, if possible, and have a good view of the animal. So he dismissed his servants, and seated himself opposite the jungle, where the tiger was supposed to be, and there looked out for the enemy. It was moonlight, and the ferocious beast soon discovered the officer. The latter could distinctly see all the motions of his savage foe. He approached so slowly as scarcely to make the least noise. Then, crouching down, he prepared to make the fatal spring at his victim. At this instant, however, the officer, taking off a bear skin cap which he wore, swung it in the air, and shouted as loudly as he could. This so frightened the tiger that he made off with himself, and was soon out of sight in the bushes. A European gentleman, who has spent some time in Java, tells us a thrilling story about the adventure of a criminal with a tiger. The poor man was condemned, as is the custom in that country, to fight a large royal tiger, whose ferocity was raised to the highest point by want of food and artificial irritation. The only weapon allowed to the human combatant was a lance, with the point broken off. After wrapping a cloth round his left fist and arm, the man entered the arena with an air of undaunted calmness, and fixed a steady, menacing gaze upon the brute. The tiger sprang furiously upon his intended victim, who, with extraordinary boldness and rapidity, thrust his left fist into the gaping jaws, and at the same moment, with his keen, pointless dagger, ripped up the breast to the very heart. In less than a minute the tiger lay dead at his conqueror's feet. The criminal was forgiven. [Illustration: THE TIGER.] Several years ago, an Englishman, by the name of Munro, was killed by a tiger in the East Indies. The particulars of this distressing scene are given by an eye-witness. "We went on shore," says the writer of the narrative, "to shoot deer, of which we saw innumerable tracks, as well as of tigers; notwithstanding which, we continued our diversion till near three o'clock, when, sitting down by the side of a jungle to refresh ourselves, a roar like thunder was heard, and an immense tiger seized on our unfortunate friend, and rushed again into the jungle, dragging him through the thickest bushes and trees, every thing giving way to his monstrous strength; a tigress accompanied his progress. The united agonies of horror, regret, and fear, rushed at once upon us. I fired on the tiger; he seemed agitated; my companion fired also, and, in a few minutes after this, our unfortunate friend came up to us bathed in blood. Every medical assistance was vain, and he expired in the space of twenty-four hours, having received such deep wounds from the teeth and claws of the animal, as rendered his recovery hopeless. A large fire, consisting of ten or twelve whole trees, was blazing by us at the time this accident took place, and ten or more natives were with us. The human mind can scarce form any idea of the scene of horror. We had hardly pushed our boat from that accursed shore, when the tigress made her appearance, almost raging mad, and remained on the sand, exhibiting signs of the utmost ferocity, all the while we continued in sight." There is an account given of a small party who entered a cave, to seek shelter from a terrible storm, in South America. The storm raged with such violence, that they could not hear each other speak; the cedar-trees were struck down, and the torrents of rain rushed from the mountains. Suddenly a growling noise was heard at the end of the cave. They soon found, to their amazement and horror, that they had taken refuge in a tiger's cave, and that the growling proceeded from two young cubs. At this moment the Indians who attended them gave the alarm that a tiger was approaching. The Indians mounted a tree, and the party in the cave blocked up the mouth of it with a large and heavy stone, which fortunately lay near. A dreadful roar was heard, which was replied to by the growling of the two cubs, and the flaming eyes of a tremendous tiger were seen glowing with fury between the top of the stone and the rock just above it. The tiger attempted to remove the stone, but his prodigious strength was unequal to the attempt, and he howled more tremendously than before. Several of the party had leveled their muskets and pistols at the head of the tiger, through the narrow opening left by the stone; but the storm had damped the powder, and the pieces could not be discharged. The young cubs were then killed and thrust through the hole to the tiger on the outside, who, after turning them over and examining them, broke afresh into the wildest fury. The Indians discharged several arrows at the infuriated animal, but his thick skin repelled them. The storm ceased, and the thunder was heard only in the distance, but the tiger laid himself down at the mouth of the cave. In a short time a roar was heard near, which was answered by the tiger, who sprang up directly on his feet. The Indians in the tree gave a wild shriek, as a tigress bounded toward the cave. The howling of the two animals, after the tigress had examined her cubs, was truly terrible, and every one in the cavern gave himself over for lost. A powder-flask, containing their whole stock of gunpowder, had been upset in turning out the young cubs, so that they were reduced to despair. The tigress, after staring wildly at the stone at the opening of the cavern, sprang against it with all her force, and would probably have displaced it, had not the party joined together to hold it in its place. Suddenly the two tigers turned their heads toward the forest, and disappeared. The Indians descended the tree, and urged the party in the cave to take the opportunity of escaping, for that the tigers had ascended the heights to find another way into the cave. No time was to be lost; they hurried through the forest till they came to a wide chasm with a rushing stream below it. A bridge of reeds had been thrown across the chasm, and over this bridge they passed, but the tigers were close in pursuit. The last of the party who crossed the bridge cut the fastenings which tied it to the rock, and hoped by this means to secure safety, when the tigress rushed toward the chasm, made a spring, and fell down upon the pointed rocks below, and from thence into the torrent at the bottom. It was a fearful sight to see this ferocious animal for a moment in the air, without knowing whether she would be able to clear the chasm. The tiger paused not a moment, but making an amazing spring, reached the opposite side with his fore paws. As he clung to the rock, one of the party plunged his sword into the breast of the furious beast, while another struck him a blow on the head with the butt-end of his gun. The tiger let go his hold, and fell back into the abyss. This was a dreadful moment! for the man who struck the tiger on the head could not recover himself; he reeled over the edge of the fearful precipice, stretched out his hand in vain to seize hold of something with which to save himself, and then was precipitated into the horrid gulf below! A novel exhibition was presented in the city of Boston, not long ago, which attracted the attention of every body, old and young. Herr Driesbach, the famous tamer of wild animals, made his appearance in an elegant sleigh, with his pet tiger by his side. In this manner he rode through the streets. The tiger, it is said, seemed to enjoy the sleighing mightily, and leaped upon his master, from time to time, licking his face, and showing other signs of excitement. Driesbach had to strike him several times, to keep him from making too enthusiastic demonstrations. After astonishing the citizens for a considerable time, Driesbach alighted at his hotel, with his tiger, and taking him into one of the apartments, invited gentlemen to walk in and be introduced, though there were very few who seemed willing to avail themselves of the privilege. [Illustration: CHAPTER END DECORATION] [Illustration: THE RHINOCEROS.] The Rhinoceros. From the accounts of those who are best acquainted with the rhinoceros, it appears that the animal is tamed only with great difficulty, and never to such an extent that it is always safe to approach him. Sir Everard Home gives the following account of one in a menagerie in London: "He was so savage, that about a month after he came, he endeavored to kill the keeper, and nearly succeeded. He ran at him with the greatest fury; but, fortunately, the horn of the animal passed between the keeper's thighs, and threw him on the head of the rhinoceros. The horn struck a wooden partition, into which it was forced to such a depth, that the animal, for a minute, was unable to withdraw it; and during this interval, the man escaped. By discipline, the keeper afterward got the management of him; but frequently, more especially in the middle of the night, fits of phrensy came on, and while these lasted, nothing could control his rage. He ran, with great swiftness, round his den, playing all kinds of antics, making hideous noises, breaking every thing to pieces, and disturbing the whole neighborhood. While this fit was on, the keeper never dared to come near him." When the rhinoceros is quietly pursuing his way through his favorite glades of mimosa bushes (which his hooked upper lip enables him readily to seize, and his powerful grinders to masticate), his horns, fixed loosely in his skin, make a clapping noise by striking one against the other; but on the approach of danger, if his quick ear or keen scent makes him aware of the vicinity of a hunter, the head is quickly raised, and the horns stand stiff, and ready for combat on his terrible front. The rhinoceros is often accompanied by a sentinel, to give him warning--a beautiful green-backed and blue-winged bird, about the size of a jay--which sits on one of his horns. The following account of the perils of a party hunting for the rhinoceros is given by Mr. Bruce, a traveler of celebrity: "We were on horseback, at the dawn of the day, in search of the rhinoceros; and after having searched about an hour in the thickest part of the forest, one of these animals rushed out with great violence, and crossed the plain toward a thicket of canes, at the distance of nearly two miles. But though he ran, or rather trotted, with surprising speed, considering his bulk, he was in a short time pierced with thirty or forty javelins. This attack so confounded him, that he left his purpose of going to the thicket, and ran into a deep ravine, without outlet, breaking about a dozen of the javelins as he entered. Here we thought he was caught in a trap--for he had scarcely room to turn--and a servant, who had a gun, standing directly over him, fired at his head. The animal fell immediately, to all appearance dead. All those on foot now jumped into the ravine, to cut him up. But they had scarcely begun, when the animal recovered himself so far as to rise upon his knees; and he would undoubtedly have destroyed several of the men, had not one of them, with great presence of mind, cut the sinew of the animal's hind leg. To this precaution they were indebted, under God, for their lives." The rhinoceros and the elephant have been known to engage in a pitched battle, in which case the former always comes off victor. The combat, however, is a very furious one. There are two species of the rhinoceros. The one which is represented in the engraving is the double-horned rhinoceros. It is perhaps the largest of land animals, with the exception of the elephant. When pursued, notwithstanding its large, unwieldy body, it can run with astonishing swiftness. [Illustration: CHAPTER END DECORATION] The Alligator. On the whole, though the alligator can hardly claim any attention from us in these stories, owing to his manner of locomotion, and some other circumstances, yet I think I will introduce him to the reader, as I have two or three anecdotes about his tribe, which are worth reading, and as he comes within the qualifications for introduction to our present company of animals, so far as to possess the specific number of locomotive organs. A British medical officer, many years a resident in the East Indies, relates the following painful incident: "A native, being employed in repairing a ship lying in the Bengal river, carelessly put his legs off the stage upon which he was seated, at the side of the vessel, and being engaged in conversation with his wife and child, who were on board, forgot the danger of his situation. As he proceeded in his labors, it was necessary to lower the stage, until it came within a few feet only of the water. He had not been in this position many minutes, when a monstrous alligator rose suddenly above the surface of the river, and before the poor man perceived the animal, seized one of his legs, snapped it off, just above the knee, and descended into the water. The man then tried to get on board the ship, but in vain. The pain, the terror, the loss of his limb, so entirely prostrated his strength, that all his efforts were useless. The wife hung terror-stricken over the side of the vessel, not knowing what to do, calling for assistance, and shrieking distractedly. The boy, with more presence of mind, clung to his father, and endeavored, with all his little strength, to lift him up. The cries of the woman at length brought some persons to ascertain what was the matter. At this moment the monster appeared again. The son redoubled his exertions to drag his father from his terrible situation, but with as little success as before. Some of the people who were attracted to the spot, threw stones, sticks, or any thing that happened to be in their way, at the alligator, while the wife, thinking that the deliverance of her husband was now certain, hastened to the shore to seek the surgeon. As the monster advanced, the child became convulsed with terror, and at length was hardly able, by his exertions, to sustain the weight of his father's body. He called loudly for assistance, but either through surprise or fear, his cries were unheeded. Still continuing to defend himself in a measure from the attacks of the alligator, the sufferer became exhausted from pain and loss of blood. The terrible animal seized the other leg. The boy still kept his hold, and contrived to throw a rope round the body of his nearly expiring father, so as to prevent him from being pulled into the river. At this instant the wife returned with the surgeon. But, alas! they came too late. The poor Indian recognized his wife, gave one parting look, then sunk in death on the bosom of his child." [Illustration: THE ALLIGATOR.] Mr. Audubon, the distinguished naturalist, has given some of the most interesting facts in connection with the alligator that have come to my knowledge. He says: "A friend having intimated a wish to have the heart of one of these animals, to study its comparative anatomy, I one afternoon went out about half a mile from the plantation, and seeing an alligator that I thought I could put whole into a hogshead of spirits, I shot it immediately on the skull-bone. It tumbled over from the log on which it had been basking into the water, and, with the assistance of two negroes, I had it out in a few minutes, apparently dead. A strong rope was fastened round its neck, and in this condition, I had it dragged home across logs, thrown over fences, and handled without the least fear. Some young ladies there, anxious to see the inside of its mouth, requested that the mouth should be propped open with a stick put vertically; this was attempted, but at this instant the first stunning effect of the wound was over, and the animal thrashed and snapped its jaws furiously, although it did not advance a foot. I have frequently been very much amused when fishing in a bayou, where alligators were numerous, by throwing a blown bladder on the water toward the nearest one. The alligator makes for it, flaps it toward its mouth, or attempts seizing it at once, but all in vain. The light bladder slides off; in a few minutes many alligators are trying to seize this, and their evolutions are quite interesting. They then put one in mind of a crowd of boys running after a football. A black bottle is sometimes thrown in also, tightly corked; but the alligator seizes this easily, and you hear the glass give way under its teeth, as if ground in a coarse mill. They are easily caught by negroes, who most expertly throw a rope over their heads when swimming close to shore, and haul them out instantly." A writer in the Liberia Herald, according to his account of the matter, had a pretty good opportunity to observe some of the habits of the alligator. "Coming down the river," he says, "a few days ago, we espied an alligator lying with his body on the sloping margin of the river, his lower jaw submerged in the water, while the upper was extended in the air, showing a formidable array of teeth. We stopped to gaze at him. Anon, a hapless fish ventured within the dread chasm, when the treacherous jaws suddenly closed, and severed the fish asunder. The native boys who were with us, took the occasion to assign the reason of some of the alligator's movements. They say he lies with his mouth open, to attract a certain insect which floats upon the surface of the water. These collect in large numbers around his mouth; fishes feed upon them, and when lured by the desired prey within the vortex, they become a prey themselves." There is a singular adventure with an alligator recorded by the captain of a vessel on the coast of Guinea. It is as follows: "The ocean was very smooth, and the heat very great. Campbell, who had been drinking too much, was obstinately bent on going overboard to bathe, and although we used every means in our power to persuade him to the contrary, he dashed into the water, and had swam some distance from the vessel, when we on board discovered an alligator making toward him, behind a rock that stood some distance from the shore. His escape I now considered impossible, and I applied to Johnson to know how we should act, who, like myself, affirmed the impossibility of saving him, and instantly seized upon a loaded musket, to shoot the poor fellow before he fell into the jaws of the monster. I did not, however, consent to this, but waited, with horror, the event; yet, willing to do all in my power, I ordered the boat to be hoisted out, and we fired two shots at the approaching alligator, but without effect, for they glided over his scaly covering like hail-stones on a tiled house, and the progress of the creature was by no means impeded. The report of the piece, and the noise of the blacks from the sloop, soon made Campbell acquainted with his danger; he saw the creature making toward him, and, with all the strength and skill he was master of, he made for the shore. And now the moment arrived, in which a scene was exhibited beyond the power of my pen to describe. On approaching within a very short distance of some canes and shrubs that covered the bank, while closely pursued by the alligator, a fierce and ferocious tiger sprang toward him, at the instant the jaws of his first enemy were extended to devour him. At this awful moment Campbell was preserved. The eager tiger, by overleaping, fell into the gripe of the alligator. A horrible conflict then ensued. The water was colored with the blood of the tiger, whose efforts to tear the scaly covering of the alligator were unavailing, while the latter had also the advantage of keeping his adversary under water, by which the victory was presently obtained; for the tiger's death was now effected. They both sank to the bottom, and we saw no more of the alligator. Campbell was recovered, and instantly conveyed on board; he did not speak while in the boat, though his danger had completely sobered him. But the moment he leaped on the deck, he fell on his knees, and returned thanks to the Providence who had so protected him; and, what is most singular, from that moment to the time I am now writing, he has never been seen the least intoxicated, nor has been heard to utter a single oath." [Illustration: CHAPTER END DECORATION] The Cat. Cats, say what you will against them, have some excellent traits of character. They are capable of the strongest attachment. A cat which had been brought up in a family, became extremely attached to the oldest child, a little boy who was very fond of playing with her. She bore with the utmost patience all the rough treatment of the mischievous child, without ever making the least resistance. As the cat grew up, she used to catch mice, and bring them alive into the room where the little boy was, to amuse him with her prey. If he showed an inclination to take the mouse from her, she let it run, and waited to see whether he was able to catch it. If he did not, she darted at it, caught it, and again laid it before him. In this manner the sport continued, as long as the child showed any taste for it. At length, the boy was attacked with the small-pox, and during the early stages of his disorder, the cat rarely left his bed-side; but as his danger increased, it was thought necessary to remove the cat, and lock her up. The child died. On the following day, the cat, having escaped from her confinement, immediately ran to the apartment where she hoped to find her playmate. Disappointed in her expectations, she sought for him, with symptoms of great uneasiness and loud lamentations, all over the house, till she came to the door of the room in which the corpse lay. Here she lay down in silent grief, till she was again locked up. As soon as the child was buried, and the cat set at liberty, she disappeared; and it was not till a fortnight after that event, that she returned to the well-known apartment, sad and emaciated. She refused to take any nourishment, and soon ran away again, with dismal cries. At length, compelled by hunger, she made her appearance one day at dinner-time, and continued to visit the house after that, every day, at about the same hour, but always left as soon as she had eaten the food that was given her. No one knew where she spent the rest of her time, until she was found, one day, under the wall of the burying-ground, close to the grave of her favorite; and so strong was the attachment of the cat to her lost friend, that, till his parents removed to another place, nearly five years afterward, she never, except in the severest winter weather, passed the night any where else than in the burying-ground, at her little friend's grave. Here is another story of a cat who exhibited in a similar way her love for her deceased master. The incidents of this story, which, it is believed, are strictly true, occurred in the north of Scotland. Some years ago, a poor man residing in that country, whose habits of life had always been of the most retired description, giving way to the natural despondency of his disposition, put an end to his existence. The only other inmate of his cottage was a favorite cat. When the deed was discovered, the cat was found assiduously watching over her late master's body, and it was with some difficulty she could be driven away. The appalling deed naturally excited a great deal of attention in the surrounding neighborhood; and on the day after the body was deposited in the grave, which was made at the outside of the church-yard, a number of school-boys ventured thither, to view the resting-place of one who had at times been the subject of village wonder, and whose recent act of self-destruction was invested with additional interest. At first, no one was brave enough to venture near; but at last, the appearance of a hole in the side of the grave irresistibly attracted their attention. Having been minutely examined, it was at length determined that it must have been the work of some body-snatcher; and the story having spread, the grave was minutely examined, but as the body had not been removed, the community considered themselves fortunate in having made so narrow an escape. The turf was replaced, and the grave again carefully covered up. On the following morning the turf was again displaced, and a hole, deeper than before, yawned in the side of the sad receptacle. Speculation was soon busy at work, and all sorts of explanations were suggested. In the midst of their speculations, alarmed, perhaps, by the noise of the disputants, poor Puss darted from the hole, much to the confusion of some of the most noisy and dogmatic expounders of the mystery. Again the turf was replaced, and again and again was it removed by the unceasing efforts of the faithful cat to share the resting-place of her deceased master. It was at last found necessary to shoot her, it being found impossible otherwise to put a stop to her unceasing importunities. The enmity of the cat and dog is proverbial. Yet instances have been known in which the closest friendship has been formed between them. A French author of a work on the Language of Brutes tells the following story: "I had a cat and dog, which became so attached to each other, that they would never willingly be asunder. Whenever the dog got any choice morsel of food, he was sure to divide it with his whiskered friend. They always ate sociably out of one plate, slept in the same bed, and daily walked out together. Wishing to put this apparently sincere friendship to the proof, I one day took the cat by herself into my room, while I had the dog guarded in another apartment. I entertained the cat in a most sumptuous manner, being desirous to see what sort of a meal she would make without her friend, who had hitherto been her constant table companion. The cat enjoyed the treat with great glee, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the dog. I had had a partridge for dinner, half of which I intended to keep for supper. My wife covered it with a plate, and put it into a cupboard, the door of which she did not lock. The cat left the room, and I walked out upon business. My wife, meanwhile, sat at work in an adjoining apartment. When I returned home, she related to me the following circumstances: The cat, having hastily left the dining-room, went to the dog, and mewed uncommonly loud, and in different tones of voice; which the dog, from time to time, answered with a short bark. They both then went to the door of the room where the cat had dined, and waited till it was opened. One of my children opened the door, and immediately the two friends entered the apartment. The mewing of the cat excited my wife's attention. She rose from her seat, and stepped softly up to the door, which stood ajar, to observe what was going on. The cat led the dog to the cupboard which contained the partridge, pushed off the plate which covered it, and, taking out my intended supper, laid it before her canine friend, who devoured it greedily. Probably the cat, by her mewing, had given the dog to understand what an excellent meal she had made, and how sorry she was that he had not participated in it; but, at the same time, had explained to him that something was left for him in the cupboard, and persuaded him to follow her thither." [Illustration: THE CAT.] In Lawrence's History of the Horse occurs the following anecdote, in which the cat is quite as much concerned as the horse: "A celebrated Arabian horse and a black cat were for many years the warmest friends. When the horse died in 1753, the cat sat upon his carcass until it was buried; and then, creeping slowly and reluctantly away, was never seen again, till her dead body was found in a hay-loft." Henry Wriothsly, earl of Southampton, having been some time confined in the tower of London, was one day surprised by a visit from his favorite cat, who must have reached her master by descending from the chimney of the edifice. The following instance of a cat's courage and maternal affection is recorded in the Naturalist's Cabinet: "A cat who had a family of kittens, was playing with them one sunny day in spring, near the door of a farm-house, when a hawk darted swiftly down and caught one of the kittens. The assassin was endeavoring to rise with his prey, when the mother, seeing the danger of the little one, flew at the common enemy, who, to defend himself, let the kitten fall. The battle presently became dreadful to both parties; for the hawk, by the power of his wings, the sharpness of his talons, and the keenness of his beak, had for awhile the advantage, cruelly lacerating the poor cat, and actually deprived her of one eye in the conflict. But Puss, not at all daunted by this accident, strove with all her cunning and strength to protect her little ones, till she had broken a wing of her adversary. In this state she got him more within the power of her claws, the hawk still defending himself, however, according to the best of his ability. The fight continued for a long time. But at last victory favored the mother; and by a sudden movement, she laid the hawk motionless beneath her feet, when, as if exulting in her victory, she tore off the head of her vanquished enemy. Disregarding the loss of her eye, she immediately ran to her bleeding kitten, licked the wounds inflicted by the talons of the hawk, purring, while she caressed the little one, with the same affection as if nothing had happened to her." Here is an instance of the ingenuity of a cat. Tabby was in the habit of visiting a closet, the door of which was fastened by a common iron latch. A window was situated near the door. When the door was shut, the cat, as soon as she was tired of her confinement, mounted on the sill of the window, and with her paws dexterously lifted the latch, opened the door, and came out of the room. This practice she continued for years. A cat belonging to a monastery in France was still more ingenious. She was accustomed to have her meals served to her at the same time that the inmates of the monastery had theirs. These hours were announced by the ringing of the bell. One day it so happened that Puss was shut up in a room by herself, when the bell rang for dinner, so that she was not able to avail herself of the invitation. Some hours afterward she was released from her confinement, and instantly ran to the spot where dinner was always left for her; but no dinner was to be found. In the afternoon the bell was heard ringing at an unusual hour. When the inmates of the cloister came to see what was the cause of it, they found the hungry cat clinging to the bell-rope, and setting it in motion as well as she was able, in order that she might have her dinner served up for her. Was not this act of the cat the result of something very nearly related to what we call reason, when exhibited in man? A French naturalist gives us an amusing incident connected with a cat in Prussia. This animal was quietly sleeping on the hearth, when one of the children in the family where she lived set up a boisterous crying. Puss left the place where she was lying, marched up to the child, and gave her such a smart blow with her paw as to draw blood. Then she walked back, with the greatest composure and gravity, as if satisfied with having punished the child for crying, and with the hope of indulging in a comfortable nap. No doubt she had often seen the child punished in this manner for peevishness; and as there was no one near who seemed disposed to administer correction in this instance, Puss determined to take the law into her own hand. This story brings to my mind one which I saw in a newspaper the other day, about a cat who took it upon her to punish her children in a very singular manner. The story runs thus: "One Sabbath, a motherly old cat, belonging to one of our citizens, left her little family in quiet repose, while she went forth in pursuit of something to eat. On returning, she found them quarreling. She then very deliberately took the one most eagerly engaged in the combat by the nape of the neck, and not seeing any convenient place near by to administer what she considered a salutary reproof, went to a tub of water, upon the edge of which she raised her feet, and dropped the kitten into the water. She resisted all attempts at escape, and after repeatedly sousing it in the water till sufficiently punished, she took it again by the neck as before, and carried it back again, doubtless a thorough repentant for the wrong it had done. There has been no contention in the family since." It must be a very difficult thing for a cat, when a tame bird is within her reach, to resist the temptation to make a dinner from it. But there are not wanting instances in which this disposition has been entirely overcome. More than this: a cat has been known to become the protector of a bird, when it was in danger. A lady had a tame canary, which she was in the habit of letting out of its cage every day. One morning, as it was picking crumbs of bread off the carpet, her cat, who had always before showed the bird the utmost kindness, seized it suddenly, and jumped with it in her mouth upon a table. The lady was much alarmed for the fate of her favorite; but on turning about, she instantly perceived the cause. The door had been left open, and another cat, a stranger, had just come into the room! After the lady turned out the neighbor, her own cat came down from the table, and dropped the bird, without doing it the smallest injury. The following story was told me by my friend Dr. Alcott: A cat, in Northborough, Mass., with three very young kittens, having been removed to Shrewsbury, a distance of about four miles, continued to elude the vigilance of her mistress, and, during the hours of sleep, to transport these three kittens to their old mansion in Northborough. Here is a story about a cat who was for some time supposed to be a musical ghost: A family residing a few miles from Aberdeen, Scotland--so says the Aberdeen Herald--and at the time consisting of females, were recently thrown for one or two successive nights into no small consternation, by the unaccountable circumstance of a piano being set a strumming about midnight, after all the inmates of the house were in bed. The first night the lady of the house rose when she heard the unseasonable sounds, thinking some member of the family had set about "practicing her music" over night. She went cautiously to the room door, which she found shut; but although she heard the tones of the instrument when her hand was upon the handle of the door, on entering she was astonished to find no one in the room. The piano was indeed open, as it was generally, for a young girl to practice when she had a mind. But where was the midnight musician? The room was searched, but to no purpose--there was no musician visible. Next night the same sounds were heard, and a search was made, but with no better success. One or two nights of quietude might intervene between those on which such sounds were heard; but they still broke at intervals through the stillness of midnight--at one time with note by note, slowly--at another, like the quick, loud thundering of a battle-piece; till the horrible conviction filled every mind, that the house was haunted. One morning, the piano was heard sounding away much louder than usual; and the dawn having begun to peep through the window-blinds, one or two of the family, summoning up the courage that comes with the light of day, resolved that, "ghost, if ghost it were," they should at all risks have a peep at it, and cautiously descended to the door of the apartment, which was slightly ajar. The musician was fingering the instrument with the greatest industry and energy, and apparently at his own entire satisfaction. Well, after much demurring, in they peeped; and most assuredly, through the dim dusk of the morning, a gray figure was seen exerting itself most strenuously. They looked closer, when, behold, there was--what think you?--the cat, pawing away, first with her fore feet, and then with her hind; now touching one note gently, and then dancing with all fours across the keys. There was a solution of the enigma--a bringing to light of the imagined ghost. A traveler in one of the Western States relates the following humorous anecdote of a wild cat: "I was plodding once in a wagon from Toledo to Maumee, over an execrably level road, in the hot noon sun of a mid-June day. The driver was a hardy fellow, who looked as though he could outhug a bear, and loosen the tightest Maumee ague with a single shake, and yet he owned he had been frightened by a wild cat, so that he ran from it, and then he told the story, which I give you partly in his own words: 'I was driving along this road in a buggy, with as fast a horse as ever scorned the whip, when some ten rods ahead of us, just by that big oak, a wild cat, leading three kittens, came out of the wood, crossed the road, and went into those bushes on our left, and I thought what nice pets they would make, and wished I had one. When I came up, I noticed one of the young ones in the edge of the bushes, but a few feet off, and I heard, or thought I heard, the old one stealing along deep in the woods. I sprang out, snatched up the kitten, threw it into the buggy, jumped in, and started. When I laid hands on it, it mewed, and kept mewing, and, as I grasped the reins, I heard a sharp growl and a thrashing through the brush. I knew the old one was coming, and the next instant she streamed over a log, and alighted in the road. She ran with her eyes flaming, her hair bristling, and her teeth grinning. She turned as on a pivot, and gave an unearthly squall, as she saw me racing away, and bounded after, with such yells and fury, and gained on me so fast, that for very fear I threw the kitten out, and lashed the flying horse; but she scarcely paused for that, but bounded on a while, as though recovery of her young would not suffice without revenge. When I saw her at my very back, I scarcely breathed until her crying child recalled her. Here, at the top of this pitch, I looked back, and saw her standing, with her young one in her mouth, looking after me, as though she had half a mind to drop the kitten and give chase again. I gave the horse a cut, and did not feel quite safe until I had got some miles away. I made up my mind from that time forward to let young kittens alone, and mind my own business.'" The Jackal. Like the hyena, the jackal derives its principal notoriety from its ferocious and untameable disposition. It is found in Southern Asia, in many parts of Africa, and, to some extent, in Syria and Persia. There is not much difference in the jackal and the dog, except in some of the habits of the two, and there is a great deal of similarity between the former and the wolf. By many Biblical commentators, it is thought that the three hundred foxes to which the sacred penman alludes in the book of Judges, as performing a singular and mischievous exploit in the standing corn of the Philistines, were jackals; and their habit of assembling together in large companies, so as to be taken in considerable numbers, seems to justify this conclusion--the fox being, on the other hand, a solitary animal, and in the habit of living for the most part in small families. To the inhabitants of hot countries, the jackal is of the same service as the vulture and the hyena. He does not scruple to feed upon putrid flesh. Wherever there is an animal in a state of putrefaction, he scents it out from a great distance, and soon devours it. In this way the air is often freed from substances in the highest degree unwholesome and deadly. Nor is this all. One of the habits of this animal is to enter grave-yards, and dig up the bodies that have been buried there. In countries where jackals abound, great care needs to be taken in protecting graves, newly opened, on this account. People frequently mix the earth on the mound raised over a grave with thorns and other sharp substances, to prevent the jackal from accomplishing the deed. [Illustration: THE JACKAL.] Still the jackal makes his living, in a great measure, by hunting other beasts. Indeed, he not only makes his own living, but, if the stories that are told about him are true, he helps other animals in getting their living, though it is very doubtful whether he means to do so. He has been called the "lion's provider," you know; and some have represented him as a humble slave of the lion, obeying his will in every thing, hunting for him, and only receiving for his portion what his majesty is pleased to leave. But this notion is probably somewhat fabulous. The upshot of the matter seems to be this: that the jackal, having about as much wit as some other servants of kings, chases after his prey, yelling with all his might, very industriously, and without hardly stopping to take breath, until the poor hare, or fawn, or whatever the animal may be, gets tired out, and then the jackal catches him. But the hunter, by his yelling, starts the lion, as soon as he gets upon the scent. The lion knows well enough that there is game somewhere in that region; and so he is on the look-out, while the jackal is running it down. Well, the jackal has to go over a great deal more ground than the lion--for these animals, when they are pursued, never go in a straight direction--and when the game is caught, he has had little more to do than to look on and enjoy the sport, and he comes up, at his leisure, just at the right time, to the spot where the jackals are going to have a feast over their well-earned prey. Then the lion thanks his dear friends, the jackals, and gives them liberty to retire a few moments, until he has tasted of their dinner, in order, perhaps he tells them, to see whether they have made a good selection. After satisfying his appetite, the jackals have unrestrained liberty to lick the bones, just as much and as long as they please. In Captain Beechey's account of his expedition to explore the northern coasts of Africa, we have an interesting description of this animal. He does not give a very favorable account of the music made by a band of jackals. "As they usually come in packs," he says, "the first shriek which is uttered is always a signal for a general chorus. We hardly know a sound which is further removed from pleasant harmony than their yells. The sudden burst of the long-protracted scream, succeeding immediately to the opening note, is scarcely less impressive than the roll of the thunder clap after a flash of lightning. The effect of this music is very much increased when the first note is heard in the distance--a circumstance which frequently occurs--and the answering yell bursts out from several points at once, within a few yards of the place where the auditors are sleeping, or trying to sleep." It sometimes happens that a jackal ventures near a house, and perhaps enters a hen-roost, to steal a hen. But in such cases, he often shows himself to be as stupid as he is impudent; for even then, if he hears the yelling of his comrades chasing their game, he forgets himself, and yells as lustily as the rest of them. The result is as might be expected. The inmates of the house are awakened, and they take such measures with the poor jackal, as effectually to prevent his repetition of the blunder. [Illustration: CHAPTER END DECORATION] The Sheep. Sheep, as well as many other animals, show a great fondness for music. The following anecdote in proof of such a taste, is given on the authority of the celebrated musician, Haydn. He and several other gentlemen were making a tour through a mountainous part of Lombardy, when they fell in with a flock of sheep, which a shepherd was driving homeward. One of the gentlemen, having a flute with him, commenced playing, and immediately the sheep, which were following the shepherd, raised their heads, and turned with haste to the spot whence the music proceeded. They gradually flocked around the musician, and listened with the utmost silence and attention. He stopped playing. But the sheep did not stir. The shepherd, with his staff, now obliged them to move on; but no sooner did the fluter begin to play again, than his interested audience returned to him. The shepherd got out of patience, and pelted the sheep with pieces of turf; but not one of them moved. The fluter played still more sweet and beautiful strains. The shepherd worked himself up into a storm of passion. He scolded, and pelted the poor creatures with stones. Some of the sheep were hit, and they made up their minds to go on; but the rest remained spell-bound by the music. At last the shepherd was forced to entreat the flute-player to stop his music. He did stop, and the sheep moved off, but still they continued to look behind them occasionally, and to manifest a desire to return, as often as the musician resumed his playing. The life of a shepherd is very favorable for study and for improvement in knowledge, if one has the natural genius and the industry to make use of his spare time. Some of the most eminent men the world ever saw began their career by the care of a flock of sheep. Did you ever hear of Giotto, the great painter Giotto? No doubt you have. He was the man who made that famous design for a church, at the request of Pope Benedict IX. The messengers of the pope entered the artist's studio, and communicated the wish of their master. Giotto took a sheet of paper, fixed his elbow at his side, to keep his hand steady, and instantly drew a perfect circle. "Tell his holiness that this is my design," said he. His friends tried to persuade him not to send such a thing to the pope; but he persisted in doing so. Pope Benedict was a learned man, and he saw that Giotto had given the best evidence of perfection in his art. He invited the painter to Rome, and honored and rewarded him. "Round as Giotto's O," from that time, became an Italian proverb. But I must give a glance at the early history of this man. In the year 1276--according to that invaluable publication, "Chambers' Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge"--about forty miles from Florence, in the town of Vespignano, there lived a poor laboring man named Bondone. This man had a son whom he brought up in the ignorance usual to the lowly condition of a peasant boy. But the extraordinary powers of the child, uncultivated as they necessarily were, and his surprising quickness of perception and never-failing vivacity, made him the delight of his father, and of the unsophisticated people among whom he lived. At the age of ten, his father intrusted him with the care of a flock. Now the happy little shepherd-boy strolled at his will over meadow and plain with his woolly charge, and amused himself with lying on the grass, and sketching, as fancy led him, the surrounding objects, on broad flat stones, sand, or soft earth. His sole pencils were a hard stick, or a sharp piece of stone; his chief models were his flock, which he used to copy as they gathered around him in various attitudes. One day, as the shepherd-boy lay in the midst of his flock, earnestly sketching something on a stone, there came by a traveler. Struck with the boy's deep attention to his work, and the unconscious grace of his attitude, the stranger stopped, and went to look at his work. It was a sketch of a sheep, drawn with such freedom and truth of nature, that the traveler beheld it with astonishment. "Whose son are you?" cried he, with eagerness. The startled boy looked up in the face of his questioner. "My father is Bondone the laborer, and I am his little Giotto, so please the signor," said he. "Well, then, Giotto, should you like to come and live with me, and learn how to draw, and paint sheep like this, and horses, and even men?" The child's eyes flashed with delight, "I will go with you any where to learn that," said he; "but," he added, as a sudden thought made him change color, "I must first go and ask my father; I can do nothing without his leave." "That is quite right, my boy, and so we will go to him together, and ask him," said the stranger. It was the celebrated painter, Cimabue. Old Bondone consented to the wish of his son, and the boy went to Florence with Cimabue. Giotto soon went beyond his master in his sketches. His former familiarity with nature, while tending his sheep, doubtless contributed a good deal to his astonishing progress. One morning the master came into his studio, and looking at a half finished head, saw a fly resting on the nose. He tried to brush it off with his hand, when he discovered that it was only painted, and that it was one of the tricks of his young pupil. It was not long before the fame of the new artist spread all over Europe. [Illustration: GIOTTO SKETCHING AMONG HIS SHEEP.] The author of that pleasant little book, called "Stories of the Instinct of Animals," relates a pleasing anecdote of a sheep in England. "One afternoon, in summer," he says, "after an illness which had confined me some time to the house, I went out into the field, to enjoy awhile the luxury of a walk at leisure among the beauties of nature. I had not been long in the field, before my attention was attracted by the motions of one of the sheep that were grazing there. She came up close to me, bleating in a piteous manner; and after looking wishfully in my face, ran off toward a brook which flowed through the pasture. At first I took but little notice of the creature; but as her entreaties became more importunate, I followed her. Delighted at having attracted my notice, she ran with all her speed, frequently looking back, to see if I was following her. When I reached the spot where she led me, I discovered the cause of all her anxiety. Her lamb had fallen into the brook, and the banks being steep, the poor little creature was unable to escape. Fortunately, the water, though up to the back of the lamb, was not sufficient to drown it. I rescued the sufferer with the utmost pleasure, and to the great gratification of its affectionate mother, who licked it with her tongue, to dry it, now and then skipping about, and making noisy demonstrations of joy. I watched her with interest, till she lay down with her little one, caressing it with the utmost fondness, and apparently trying to show me how much she was indebted to me, for my friendly aid." [Illustration: THE INVALID AND THE SHEEP.] A man was once passing through a lonely part of the Highlands in Scotland, when he perceived a sheep hurrying toward the road before him. She was bleating most piteously at the time; and as the man approached nearer, she redoubled her cries, looked earnestly into his face, and seemed to be imploring his assistance. He stopped, left his wagon, and followed the sheep. She led him quite a distance from the road, to a solitary spot, and at length she stopped. When the traveler came up, he found a lamb completely wedged in between two large stones, and struggling, in vain, to extricate himself. The gentleman immediately set the little sufferer free, and placed him on his feet, when the mother poured out her thanks and joy, in a long-continued and animated strain of bleating. I am indebted to a correspondent of mine--Dr. Charles Burr, residing in the state of Pennsylvania--for a good story about a sheep which belonged to his father a number of years ago. This sheep, he says, was a _cosset_, was quite tame, and very much of a pet. One day, a young lamb of hers was wounded; and "my father (I must let the doctor tell his story in his own words) being out of the door, noticed the mother upon the hill by the barn, being as near the house as she could come. She appeared to be in great distress, running about, looking toward him, and bleating; evidently wishing to attract his attention. Supposing that something must be wrong, my father started to see what was the matter. The old sheep waited till he had got almost up to her, when she started and ran a few rods from him and stopped, turned round, looked at him, and bleated. My father followed on. The old sheep waited until he had got nearly up to her again, when she ran on, and went through the same operation as before. In this way she led my father to the farthest end of the pasture, where lay her lamb, bleeding and helpless. The little thing had bled so much that it could not raise its head, or help itself in the least. My father took the lamb, stanched the bleeding wound, took it in his arms and carried it home--the old sheep, in the mean time, following, and expressing her joy and gratitude, not by words, it is true, but by looks and actions more truthful, and which were not to be mistaken. Suffice it to say, that with proper care and nursing, the lamb was saved, and restored to health and strength, to the great satisfaction of both parties concerned." I have a mind to tell you one of my own youthful adventures, in which a poor wight of a sheep had a prominent share. The adventure proved of immense service to me, as you will see in the sequel. Perhaps the story of it will be valuable to you, in the same manner. I shall never forget the first time I sallied out into the woods to try my hand at hunting. Rover, the old family dog, went with me, and he was about as green in the matter of securing game as myself. We were pretty well matched, I think. I played the part of Hudibras, as nearly as I can recollect, and Rover was a second Ralph. I had a most excellent fowling-piece; so they said. It began its career in the French war, and was a very veteran in service. Besides this ancient and honorable weapon, I was provided with all the means and appliances necessary for successful hunting. I was "armed and equipped as the law directs," to employ the words of those semi-annual documents that used to summon me to training. Well, it was some time before we--Rover and I--started any game. Wind-mills were scarce. For one, I began to fear we should have to return without any adventure to call forth our skill and courage. But the brightest time is just before day, and so it was in this instance. Rover began presently to bark, and I heard a slight rustling among the leaves in the woods. Sure enough, there was visible a large animal of some kind, though I could not determine precisely what it was, on account of the underbrush. However, I satisfied myself it was rare game, at any rate; and that point being settled, I took aim and fired. Rover immediately ran to the poor victim. He was a courageous fellow, that Rover, especially after the danger was over. Many a time I have known him make demonstrations as fierce as a tiger when people rode by our house, though he generally took care not to insult them until they were at a convenient distance. Rover had no notion of being killed, knowing very well that if he were dead, he could be of no farther service whatever to the world. Hudibras said well when he said, "That he who fights and runs away, May live to fight another day." That was good logic. But Rover went farther than this, even. He was for running away before he fought at all; and so he always did, except when the enemy ran away first, in which case he ran after him, as every chivalrous dog should. In the case of the animal which I shot at, Rover bounded to his side when the gun was discharged, as I said before. For myself, I did not venture quite so soon, remembering that caution is the parent of safety. By and by, however, I mustered courage, and advanced to the spot. There lay the victim of my first shot. It was one of my father's sheep! Poor creature! She was sick, I believe, and went into the thicket, near a stream of water, where she could die in peace. I don't know whether I hit her or not. I didn't look to see, but ran home as fast as my legs would carry me. Thus ended the first hunting excursion in which I ever engaged; and though I was a mere boy then, and am approaching the meridian of life now, it proved to be my last. The Deer. There are several species of the deer--the moose, stag, rein-deer, elk, and others. Of these, the stag is one of the most interesting. He is said to love music, and to show great delight in hearing a person sing. "Traveling some years since," says a gentleman whose statements may be relied on, "I met a bevy of about twenty stags, following a bagpipe and violin. While the music continued, they proceeded; when it ceased, they all stood still." As Captain Smith, a British officer in Bengal, was out one day in a shooting party, very early in the morning, they observed a tiger steal out of a jungle, in pursuit of a herd of deer. Having selected one as his object, it was quickly deserted by the herd. The tiger advanced with such amazing swiftness, that the stag in vain attempted to escape, and at the moment the officer expected to see the animal make the fatal spring, the deer gallantly faced his enemy, and for some minutes kept him at bay; and it was not till after three attacks, that the tiger succeeded in securing his prey. He was supposed to have been considerably injured by the horns of the stag, as, on the advance of Captain Smith, he abandoned the carcass, having only sucked the blood from the throat. [Illustration: THE DEER.] The following account of a remarkably intelligent stag, is given by Delacroix, a French gentleman: "When I was at Compiegne, my friends took me to a German, who exhibited a wonderful stag. As soon as we had taken our seats in a large room, the stag was introduced. He was of an elegant form, and majestic stature, and his aspect animated and gentle. The first trick he performed, was to make a profound bow to the company, as he entered, after which he paid his respects to each individual of us, in the same manner. He next carried about a small stick in his mouth, to each end of which a small wax taper was attached. He was then blindfolded, and at the beat of a drum, fell upon his knees, and laid his head upon the ground. As soon as the word _pardon_ was pronounced, he instantly sprang upon his feet. Dice were then thrown upon the head of a drum, and he told the numbers that were thrown up, by bowing his head as many times as there were numbers indicated. He discharged a pistol, by drawing with his teeth a string that was fastened to the trigger. He fired a small cannon by means of a match which was attached to his right foot, and he exhibited no signs of fear at the report of the cannon. He leaped through a hoop several times, with the greatest agility--his master holding the hoop at the height of his head above the floor. At length the exhibition was closed, by his eating a handfull of oats from the head of a drum, which a person was beating all the time, with the utmost violence." We must wind up what we have to say about this animal with a fable. Perhaps my little friends have seen it before. But it will bear reading again, and I should not be sorry to hear that many of you had committed it to memory; for there is a moral in it which you cannot fail to perceive, and which may be of service to you one of these days: "A stag, quenching his thirst in a clear lake, was struck with the beauty of his horns, which he saw reflected in the water. At the same time, observing the extreme length and slenderness of his legs, 'What a pity it is,' said he, 'that so fine a creature should be furnished with so despicable a set of spindle-shanks! What a noble animal I should be, were my legs answerable to my horns!' "In the midst of this vain talk, the stag was alarmed by the cry of a pack of hounds. He immediately bounded over the ground, and left his pursuers so far behind that he might have escaped; but going into a thick wood, his horns were entangled in the branches of the trees, where he was held till the hounds came up, and tore him in pieces. "In his last moments he thus exclaimed: 'How ill do we judge of our own true advantages! The legs which I despised would have borne me away in safety, had not my favorite antlers brought me to ruin.'" The Hippopotamus. Every traveler, who has seen the hippopotamus in his native haunts, and who has attempted to give a description of the animal, represents him as exceedingly formidable, when he is irritated, and when he can get a chance to fight his battle in the water. On land, he is unwieldy and awkward; so that, when he is pursued by an enemy, he usually takes to his favorite element. There he plunges in head foremost, and sinks to the bottom, where it is said he finds no difficulty in moving with the same pace as when upon land, in the open air. He cannot, however, continue under water for any great length of time. He is obliged to rise to the surface, to take breath. Severe battles sometimes take place between the males, and they make sad havoc before they get through. [Illustration: THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.] Great masses of flesh, torn out by their terrible jaws, mark the spot where one of these encounters has occurred. It not unfrequently happens that one or even both perish on the spot. On the banks of the Nile, whole fields of grain and sugar cane are sometimes destroyed by these animals. Clapperton, the enterprising traveler, informs us that, when on a warlike expedition, he had convincing evidence that the hippopotamus is fond of music. "As the expedition passed along the banks of the lake at sunrise," says he, "these uncouth and stupendous animals followed the sound of the drums the whole length of the water, sometimes approaching so close to the shore, that the spray they spouted from their mouths reached the people, who were passing along the banks. I counted fifteen, at one time, sporting on the surface of the water." The following account of hunting the hippopotamus is given by Dr. Edward Russell: "One of the animals we killed was of an enormous size. We fought with him for four good hours by night, and came very near losing our large boat, and probably our lives too, owing to the fury of the animal. As soon as he spied the hunters in the small canoe, he dashed at them with all his might, dragged the canoe with him under the water, and smashed it to pieces. The two hunters escaped with difficulty. Of twenty-five musket balls aimed at the head, only one pierced the skin and the bones of the nose. At each snorting, the animal spouted out large streams of blood on the boat. The rest of the balls stuck in the thick hide. At last, we availed ourselves of a swivel; but it was not until we had discharged five balls from it, at the distance of a few feet, that the huge animal gave up the ghost. The darkness of the night increased the danger of the contest, for this gigantic enemy tossed our boat about in the stream at his pleasure; and it was a fortunate moment for us that he gave up the struggle, as he had carried us into a complete labyrinth of rocks, which, in the midst of the confusion, none of our crew had observed." In Egypt they have a singular mode of catching the hippopotamus. They throw large quantities of dried peas on the bank of the river along which the animal is expected to pass. He devours these peas greedily. The dry food disposes the animal to drink; and after drinking, the peas swell in his stomach, and the poor fellow is destroyed. "I have seen," says a traveler, "a hippopotamus open his mouth, fix one tooth on the side of a boat, and another on the second plank under the keel--that is, four feet distant from each other--pierce the side through and through, and in this manner sink the boat." When the negroes go a-fishing, the same traveler informs us, "in their canoes, and meet with a hippopotamus, they throw fish to him; and then he passes on, without disturbing their fishing any more. Once, when our boat was near shore, I saw a hippopotamus get underneath it, lift it above the water upon his back, and overset it, with six men who were in it." "We dare not," says another traveler, "irritate the hippopotamus in the water, since an adventure happened which came near proving fatal to the men. They were going in a small canoe, to kill one of these animals in a river, where there were some eight or ten feet of water. After they had discovered him walking at the bottom of the river, according to his custom, they wounded him with a long lance, which so greatly irritated him, that he rose immediately to the surface of the water, regarded them with a terrible look, opened his mouth, and with one bite took a great piece out of the side of the canoe, and very nearly overturned it, but he plunged again almost directly to the bottom of the river." The Weasel. Great numbers of weasels, it seems, sometimes unite together, and defend themselves pretty resolutely against the attacks of men. A laborer in Scotland was one day suddenly attacked by six weasels, who rushed upon him from an old wall near the place where he was at work at the time. The man, alarmed, as well he might have been, by such a furious onset, took to his heels; but he soon found he was closely pursued. Although he had in his hand a large horse-whip, with which he endeavored to frighten back his enemies, yet so eager were they in pursuing him, that he was on the point of being seized by the throat, when he fortunately noticed the fallen branch of a tree, at a little distance, which he reached, and snatching it up as fiercely as possible, rallied upon his enemies, and killed three of them, when the remainder thought it best to give up the battle, and left the field. [Illustration: THE FERRET WEASEL.] A similar case occurred some years ago near Edinburgh, when a gentleman, observing another leaping about in an extraordinary manner, made up to him, and found him beset and dreadfully bitten by about fifteen weasels, who still continued their attack. Both of the men being strong and courageous, they succeeded in killing quite a number of the animals, and the rest escaped and ran into the fissures of a neighboring rock. The account the unfortunate man gave of the beginning of the affray was, that, walking through the park, he ran at a weasel which he saw, and made several attempts to strike it, remaining between it and the rock, to which it tried to retreat. The animal, in this situation, squeaked loudly, when a sudden attack was made by the whole colony of weasels, who came to the rescue of their companion, determined to conquer or die. Mr. Miller, in his Boy's Summer Book, tells us a little about what he had seen and heard of the habits and disposition of this family. He says, "They are a destructive race of little savages; and one has been known, before now, to attack a child in his cradle, and inflict a deep wound upon his neck, where it clung, and sucked like a leech. They are very fond of blood, and to obtain this, they will sometimes destroy the occupants of a whole hen-roost, not caring to feed upon the bodies of the poultry which they have killed. They will climb trees, attack the old bird on its nest, suck the eggs, or carry off the young; for nothing of this kind seems to come amiss to them. They are great hunters of mice; and their long, slender bodies are well adapted for following these destructive little animals in their rambles among the corn-stalks in the field. In this way, the weasel renders the farmer a good service occasionally, though he never asks to be rewarded with a duck or chicken, always choosing to help himself without asking, whenever he can get a chance. Oh! if you could but see a weasel attack a mouse, as I have done. By just one single bite of the head, which is done in a moment, and which pierces the brain before you can say 'Jack Robinson,' the mouse is killed as dead as a red herring, before he has time to squeak or struggle. It is no joke, I can tell you, to be bitten by a weasel; and if you thought, when you caught hold of one by the back, that you had him safe, you would soon find your mistake out; for his neck is as pliable as a piece of India rubber. He would have hold of your hand in a moment." [Illustration: THE HAWK POUNCING UPON THE WEASEL.] I have just come across a funny story about the adventure of a weasel and a hawk. It seems that a hawk took an especial fancy to a weasel that he saw prowling about a farm-yard. His hawkship happened to be pretty hungry at the time, and concluded he would carry off the weasel, and make a dinner of him at his leisure. So he pounced upon the fellow, and set out on his journey home. I should not wonder if he had a nest in the woods not far off. The weasel, however, submitted to his fate with no very good grace. He thought that two could play at that game. He twisted around his elastic neck--to use the language of the writer I mentioned--poked up his pointed nose, and in he went, with his sharp teeth, right under the wings of the hawk, making such a hole in an instant, that you might have thrust your finger in. The hawk tried to pick at him with his hooked beak, but it was no use. The weasel kept eating away, and licking his lips as if he enjoyed himself; and the hawk soon came wheeling down to the ground, which he no sooner touched, than away ran the weasel, having got an excellent dinner at the expense of the hawk. He was not a bit the worse for the ride; while Mr. Hawk lay there as dead as a nail. The biter was bitten that time, wasn't he? It was a pretty good lesson to the hawk family not to be so greedy, though whether they ever profited by it is more than I can say. From the account that a little girl gave me of the incursions recently made upon her chickens, I judge that they did not all profit by it. [Illustration: CHAPTER END DECORATION] The Squirrel. I had a pretty little red squirrel of my own, when I was a little boy. My father bought a cage for him, with a wheel in it; and Billy, as we used to call him, would get inside the wheel, and whirl it around for a half hour at a time. It was amusing, too, to see him stand up on his hind feet, and eat the nuts we gave him. Billy was a great favorite with me and my brother. By and by, we let him go out of the cage, and ramble wherever he pleased. He became as tame as a kitten. He would go out into the corn-field in autumn, and come home with his mouth filled with corn, and this he would lay up in a safe place for further use. Once the old cat caught him, and the poor fellow would have been killed, if some one had not been near and rescued him from the grasp of his enemy. We indulged Billy a good deal. We had a box of hickory nuts in the garret, and he was allowed to go and help himself whenever he pleased. He was pleased to go pretty often, too; and he was not satisfied with eating what he wanted out of the box. The greedy fellow! One day he carried off nearly all the nuts there were in the box, and hid them away under the floor, through a hole he had gnawed in the boards. He was a great pet though, for all that. We could not help loving him, mischievous as he was. He used to climb up often on my shoulder, and down into my pockets; and if there was any thing good to eat thereabout, he would help himself without ceremony. Sometimes, when he felt particularly frolicksome, he leaped from one person's shoulder to another, all around the room. The more we petted this little fellow, and the more good things we gave him, the more roguish he became. At length he exhausted all my father's patience by his mischief. One of his last tricks was this. He gnawed a hole in a bag of meal, and after eating as much as he could (and this was but little, for we fed him as often as he needed to eat, and oftener too) he carried away large quantities of the meal, and wasted it. He never worked harder in his life, not even when he was trying to get away from the jaws of the old cat, than he did when he was scattering this meal over the yard. Well, we had a sort of a court about Billy, after this. My father's corn-house was the court room, and my father himself was the judge. We all agreed that Billy was guilty, though we differed as to the punishment that ought to be inflicted. The question seemed to be, according to the language they use in courts of law, whether the theft was a _petty larceny_ or a _grand larceny_. Alas for Billy and Billy's friends! My father decided, in his charge to the jury, that the crime must be ranked under the head of grand larceny, and the jury brought in a verdict accordingly. My father pronounced the sentence, which was that the offending squirrel must die that same day. Billy seemed to be aware of what was going on, for he did not come near the house again till almost night; and when he did come, one of my father's men shot him, and just as the sun was going down he died. For a long time after that, I cried whenever I thought of poor Billy. Among the many juvenile friends with whom I have had more or less correspondence, as the editor of a young people's magazine, is one who resides at Saratoga Springs. I passed a few days at this watering-place last summer, and called on Master William, for that is the name of my friend--who introduced to me a pet squirrel of his, called Dick. Dick did not perform many very surprising feats while I was present, though I did not at the time set that circumstance down as any evidence of a want of smartness on the part of the squirrel; for I well remembered that it was a very common thing for pets sustaining even a much higher rank in the scale of intelligence, to disappoint the expectations of those persons who think all the world of them, when they--the pets--are ushered into the presence of strangers, for the purpose of being exhibited, and, indeed, I have some faint recollection of thus disappointing an over-fond nurse, not unfrequently, on similar occasions. There are some propositions the truth of which it is quite as well to assent to, when one hears them stated, without waiting for proof; and among these propositions I class those which relate to the unheard-of sagacity and genius of a darling pet. I make it a point to admit, without demonstration or argument, that there never was another such a creature in all the world. Moreover, I saw plainly enough in Dick's keen, black eye, that he knew a thing or two, and I could easily understand how he might greatly endear himself to his little patron. Nor was I at all surprised when I recently heard of the death of this favorite, that my young friend cried a great deal; and I am sure I shared in some measure his grief. Poor Dick! I immediately wrote to Willy, to solicit a short biography of his favorite, for my stories about animals. The request was kindly responded to by Willy's aunt, from whom I received the following sketch: "When Dick first became a member of the family, he was shy, resentful, and very capricious; but by degrees all these faults gave place to a sort of playful drollery, that called out many a laugh. His cage was a fine, large, commodious place, well lined with tiers, and furnished with every convenience that he could have desired in a habitation, not excepting a big wheel, which is by general consent esteemed a great luxury for a squirrel. But he often liked a change, and when the door was left loose, he would soon find his way out. Then he had many hair-breadth escapes--sometimes from dogs, who looked upon him as lawful prey; sometimes from frolicsome and thoughtless boys, who forgot how much a squirrel suffers who is worried almost to death. Sometimes he has been nearly abducted by strangers, who saw with surprise so small an individual at large, and quite unconscious of the perils of a public street in a watering-place. On one of these occasions, when he was playing with his little master, and skipping from bough to bough on the large trees that sheltered his home, he bounded from a branch to the roof of a three-storied house adjoining, and running across, jumped from one of the angles to the court below, landed on all fours, stopped a second or two to decide if he were really alive or not, then quietly trudged home to his cage. If he wanted a change, Dick had odd ways of showing himself dissatisfied with his condition. In the summer, when his house was too much exposed to the rays of the sun, he would give a queer little cry, which, if no one heeded, he would lie down flat, all extended, and gasp, as if each moment was his last; and no coaxing could bring him to himself, until he was removed, cage and all; then immediately he would jump up, frisk about, sit on his haunches, and laugh out of his eye as merrily as if he had said, 'I know a thing or two--don't I, though?' These manoeuvres were a clear sham; he could fall into one in a twinkling, at any time. How many times he has led the children of the family, and the big children too, through beds of beans, beets, and cucumbers, and through the tomato vines and rose-bushes; and when we were in full chase, just ready to believe that he had eluded us quite, and was gone forever, lo! there sat Dick in his wheel, as demure as a judge, and looking as wise as possible at those very silly people, who would be running about so fast, on such a warm day. He never liked any infringement upon his personal liberty; this he always resented; but he would pretend to hide away, and come and peep at you, or jump up behind you, stand on the top of your head or shoulder, play all manner of pranks about your person, get clear into the pocket of any friend, who was likely to have a supply of nuts. He would answer to his name, follow when called, in the house, out of the house, any where, play all about the large house-dog, Tom--pat him on the ear, gently pinch his tail, poise himself on his back, and pretend to sleep by the side of him. But if any one caught him, or held him, as if he were imprisoned--alas! what a struggle ensued--and then, I grieve to say it--he would _bite_." [Illustration: THE SQUIRREL.] The most common squirrels in this country are the gray, the red, and the striped, or chipping squirrel. The latter is the smallest of the three; and as that species are not hunted so much as the rest of the genus, they are very abundant in the woods. Many and many a time, when a child, have I been deceived by the cunning of the chipping squirrel. The little fellow has a hole and nest in the ground. The hole is very frequently either directly under or very near the stump of a tree which has been cut down or was blown over by the wind. Well, the little fellow is accustomed, or he was accustomed, when I was a little boy, to sit good-humoredly on this stump, and sing for hours together. His song has nothing very exquisite in it--it is simply "chip, chip, chip," from the beginning to the end; and his notes are not only all on the same key--a monotony which one might pardon, if he was particularly good-natured--but they are all on the same point in the diatonic scale. However, like many other indifferent singers that I have met in my day, our striped vocalist goes on with his music, as if he thought there never was another, or certainly not more than one other quite as finished a singer as himself. Well, the boy who is unacquainted with the tricks of this little fellow, as was once my own case, steals along carefully toward the stump, thinking that the squirrel is so busy with his music, that he is perfectly unconscious of any thing else that is going on, and that it is just the easiest matter in the world to catch him. Half a dozen times, at least, I have tried this experiment, before I became satisfied that I was not the only interested party who was wide awake. "Chip, chip, chip," sings the squirrel. He does not move an inch. He does not vary his song. His eyes seem half closed. The boy advances within a few feet of the squirrel. He reaches out his hand to secure his prize, when down goes the striped vocalist into his hole, always uttering a sort of laugh, as he enters his door, and seeming pretty plainly to say, though in rather poor Anglo-Saxon, it must be confessed, "No, you don't." Whoever takes the pains to dig into the earth, where the striped squirrel has made his nest, will find something that will amply repay him for his trouble. The hole goes down pretty straight for some feet; then it turns, and takes a horizontal direction, and runs sometimes a great distance. Little chambers are seen leading out from this horizontal passage, each chamber connected by a door with the passage, and sometimes with other chambers. In each of these rooms, the squirrel stores up different varieties of nuts and other provisions. In one you will find acorns; in another hickory nuts--real shag-barks, for our chipping squirrel is a good judge in these matters; and in another chestnuts, a whole hat-full of them, sometimes. There is quite as much order and regularity in the store-houses of the chipping squirrel, as there seems to be about the premises of some lazy and careless farmers one meets with occasionally. Accounts are given of the ingenuity of the squirrels in Lapland, which would be too astonishing for belief, were they not credited by such men as Linnæus, on whose authority we have them. It seems that the squirrels in that country are in the habit of emigrating, in large parties, and that they sometimes travel hundreds of miles in this way, and that when they meet with broad or rapid lakes in their travels, they take a very extraordinary method of crossing them. On approaching the banks, and perceiving the breadth of the water, they return, as if by common consent, into the neighboring forest, each in quest of a piece of bark, which answers all the purpose of boats for wafting them over. When the whole company are fitted in this manner, they boldly commit their little fleet to the waves--every squirrel sitting on its own piece of bark, and fanning the air with its tail, to drive the vessel to the desired port. In this orderly manner they set forward, and often cross lakes several miles broad. But it occasionally happens that the poor mariners are not aware of the dangers of their navigation; for although at the edge of the water it is generally calm, in the middle it is always more rough. The slightest additional gust of wind often oversets the little sailor and his vessel altogether. The entire navy, that perhaps but a few minutes before rode proudly and securely along, is now overturned, and a shipwreck of two or three thousand vessels is the consequence. This wreck, which is so unfortunate for the little animal, is generally the most lucky accident in the world for the Laplander on shore; who gathers up the dead bodies as they are thrown in by the waves, eats the flesh, and sells the skins. I read an interesting story, awhile ago, which came from the Gentleman's Magazine, about a squirrel who was charmed by a rattle-snake. The substance of the story was something like this: A gentleman was traveling by the side of a creek, where he saw a squirrel running backward and forward between the creek and a large tree a few yards distant. The squirrel's hair looked very rough, showing that he was very much terrified about something. His circuit became shorter and shorter, and the man stopped to see what could be the cause of this strange state of things. He soon discovered the head and neck of a rattle-snake pointing directly at the squirrel, through a hole of the tree, which was hollow. The squirrel at length gave over running, and laid himself down quietly, with his head close to the snake's. The snake then opened his mouth wide, and took in the squirrel's head; upon which the man gave the snake a blow across the neck with his whip, by which the squirrel was released. You will see by this story, which comes to us well authenticated, that snakes possess the power of charming, whatever some people may think or say to the contrary. This is only one among a multitude of facts which I could relate in proof of the existence of such a power among many of the serpent race. But we are conversing about quadrupeds now, and we must not go out of our way to chase after snakes. A squirrel, sitting on a hickory-tree, was once observed to weigh the nuts he got in each paw, to find out which were good and which were bad. The light ones he invariably threw away, retaining only those which were heavier. It was found, on examining those he had thrown away, that he had not made a mistake in a single instance. They were all bad nuts. [Illustration: THE GIRAFFE] The Giraffe. Leaving our friends the squirrels, to whom we have certainly devoted quite sufficient attention, we pass along to quite a different race of animals--that of the giraffe or camelopard. This is a noble-looking animal, as you see plainly enough by the engraving. The tongue of the giraffe is exquisitely contrived for grasping. In its native deserts, the animal uses it to hook down branches which are beyond the reach of its muzzle; and in the menagerie at Regent's Park, many a fair lady has been robbed of the artificial flowers which adorned her bonnet, by the nimble and filching tongue of the rare object of her admiration. When attacked, notwithstanding the natural defence of horns and hoofs, the camelopard always seeks escape in flight, and will not turn to do battle except at the last extremity. In such cases, he sometimes makes a successful defence by striking out his powerful armed feet; and the king of beasts is frequently repelled and disabled by the wounds which the giraffe has thus inflicted with his hoofs. His horns are also used with effect, and a side-long sweep of his neck sometimes does fatal execution. Some years ago, a giraffe was sent from Egypt to Constantinople. His keeper used to exercise him in an open square, where the Turks flocked daily, in great crowds, to see the extraordinary animal. Seeing how inoffensive he was, and how domestic he became, the keeper took the animal with him through the city; and wherever he appeared, a number of friendly hands were held out of the latticed windows, to offer him something to eat. When he came to a house where he had been well treated, if no one was at the window, he would tap gently against the wooden lattice, as if to announce his visit. He was extremely docile and affectionate; and if left to himself, he always frequented the streets where he had the most and best friends. The Monkey Tribe. Of course my readers are in some measure familiar with the tricks of this large and notorious family of animals. But one is not easily wearied with their antics. They afford us, the most sober and sedate of us, an immense amount of material for amusement. I confess I have stopped in the street, many a time, to see a sage monkey go through his grotesque manoeuvres, under the direction of a tutor who ground out music from a wheezing hand-organ, and have been willing to undergo the penance of hearing the music of the master, for the sake of witnessing the genius of the pupil. I can conceive of nothing more excessively ludicrous than many of these exhibitions. But I must not detain the reader from the stories any longer. A foreign gentleman of distinction having to attend the court of Louis XVI. of France, took with him his favorite monkey. Soon after his arrival, he was invited to attend a great ball at Versailles; and anxious to perform his part with credit in that fashionable country, he engaged one of the first dancing-masters in the city to teach him the latest mode. Every day he employed several hours in practicing his lessons with the tutor, so as to be _au fait_, as the French people have it--quite at home in the ball-room. Pug made his observations very attentively, watching all his motions. He also scrutinized the musician very closely, as he was engaged in instructing the gentleman, and playing on his violin. At the close of his lesson, the foreigner was in the habit of going to his mirror, and of practicing before it, by himself, for a considerable time, till he was in a measure satisfied with his performances, and pretty sure, we may suppose, that he would make a fine figure at court when the ball should come off. One day, after the gentleman had been exercising in this manner, and had just left the room, the monkey, who had been looking on with interest, as usual, left his post of observation, took up the violin, which had been left there by the musician, and commenced playing and imitating the dancing of his master, before the mirror. There is no knowing how much of a dancer he would have become, if he had been allowed to practice as much as he desired. As it was, however, his training for the ball was very suddenly terminated by the entrance of a servant into the room, while the student was in the midst of his performances. A monkey tied to a stake was robbed by the crows, in the West Indies, of his food, and he conceived the following plan of punishing the thieves. He feigned death, and lay perfectly motionless on the ground near to his stake. The birds approached by degrees, and got near enough to steal his food, which he allowed them to do. This he repeated several times, till they became so bold as to come within the reach of his claws. He calculated his distance, and laid hold of one of them. Death was not his plan of punishment. He was more refined in his cruelty. He plucked every feather out of the bird, and then let him go and show himself to his companions. He made a man of him according to the ancient definition of a "biped without feathers." An organ-grinder, with his monkey, being taken before the mayor of New Orleans, for exhibiting themselves without a license, the monkey was so polite to the mayor, took off his cap and made so many bows to his honor, that the two were permitted to depart in peace. It is said that no lawyer would have managed the case better than the monkey did. A gentleman living in Bath, England, had a monkey who used to perform a great many very amusing tricks, in imitation of his master. The gentleman was a great politician, and was in the habit of reading his newspaper very punctually every morning, at the breakfast-table. One day, business having compelled him to leave the table earlier than usual, Pug was found, seated in his chair, with his master's spectacles on, and the Courier newspaper upside down, reading as gravely, and with as much apparent interest, as the politician. Once in a while he looked off his paper, and chattered, and made significant gestures, as his master was in the habit of doing, when he came across any thing very especially interesting. A farmer in the West Indies had planted a field with Indian corn. Numerous monkeys inhabited a forest near by, who had attentively observed the planting process, and the method by which it was cultivated. They seemed to take not a little interest in the whole matter. The farmer had the pleasure of seeing his crop of corn nearly ready for harvesting. But the monkeys took care that he should not have the trouble of harvesting it. One night, they issued from the forest in vast numbers, forming themselves into long lines between it and the corn-field. All was conducted in silence. Each was intent on the business in hand. Those in front of the lines plucked off the ears of corn with great dexterity, and passed them to his nearest companion, who handed them forward from one to another, till they reached the woods. In this manner the work proceeded till daylight, when the slaves found the thieves finishing the operation. It had been a very profitable night's labor for the mischievous fellows. The corn was pretty nearly all disposed of. Before the owner of it could get his workmen together, with suitable weapons of defence, the whole troop had disappeared in the forest. What a chattering there must have been among them, when they all met at their rendezvous! How knowing they must have looked, as they said one to another, "Wasn't that thing managed pretty nicely?" In Sierra Leone is a species of orang-outang so strong and so industrious, that, when properly trained and fed, they work like servants. They generally walk upright on their two hind feet. Sometimes they are employed to pound substances in a mortar, and they are frequently taught to go to rivers, and to bring water in small pitchers. They usually carry the water on their heads. When they come to the door of the house, if the pitchers are not soon taken off, they let them fall; and when they perceive that they are broken, the poor fellows sometimes weep like a child, in anticipation of the flogging they are to receive. Buffon saw an orang-outang that performed a multitude of funny tricks. He would present his hand to lead his visitors about the room, and promenade as gravely as if he was one of the most important personages in the company. He would even sit down at table, unfold his napkin, wipe his lips like any other gentleman, use a spoon or fork in carrying food to his mouth, pour his liquor into a glass--for it seems he had not become a convert to the principles of total abstinence--and touch his glass to that of the person who drank with him. When invited to take tea, he brought a cup and saucer, placed them on the table, put in sugar, poured out the tea, and after allowing it to cool, drank it with the utmost propriety. [Illustration: THE ORANG-OUTANG.] In Africa the orang-outang is a very formidable animal, and does not hesitate to attack men, when alone and without arms, in which cases he always proves himself the victor. He sleeps under trees, and builds himself a hut, which serves to protect him against the sun and the rains of the tropical climates. When the negroes make a fire in the woods, this animal comes near and warms himself by the blaze. However, he has not skill enough to keep the flame alive by feeding it with fuel. They even attack the elephant, which they beat with their clubs, and oblige to leave that part of the forest which they claim as their own. When one of these animals dies, the rest cover the body with a quantity of leaves and branches. They sometimes show mercy to the human species. A negro boy, it is said, that was taken by one of them and carried into the woods, continued there a whole year, without receiving any injury. It is said, indeed, that they often attempt to surprise the negroes as they go into the woods, and sometimes keep them against their will, for the pleasure of their company, feeding them very plentifully all the time. In respect to this latter statement, however, I confess myself a little skeptical. There have been a great many well-told stories about men of the woods, which have proved to be altogether fabulous, when the true state of the case has become known. There were two monkeys, one of which was peculiarly mischievous, and the other pretty civil and good-natured, on board of the same ship. One day, when the sea ran very high, the former prevailed on the other to go aloft with him, when he drew her attention to an object at a distance, and when she turned to look at it, he hit her a blow with his paw, and threw her into the sea, where she was drowned. This act seemed to afford the rascal a great deal of gratification. He came down to the deck of the vessel, chattering at the top of his voice, he was so happy. Le Vaillant, a French traveler in Africa, says of a tame baboon, which followed him in his rambles, "One day, a gentleman, wishing to put the fidelity of the animal to the test, pretended to strike me. At this the monkey flew into a violent rage, and from that time, he could never endure the sight of the man. If he only saw him at a distance, he began to cry and to make all sorts of grimaces, which evidently showed that he wished to revenge the insult that had been done to me. He ground his teeth, and endeavored, with all his might, to fly at his face." Here is a story of a monkey who made a fool of himself, and of a British soldier at the same time. During the period of the siege of Gibraltar, when England and Spain were at war in 1779, the English fleet being at the time absent, an attack from the enemy was daily expected. One dark night, a sentinel, whose post was near a tower facing the Spanish lines, was standing, at the end of his walk, whistling, looking toward the enemy, his head filled with fire, and sword, and glory. By the side of his box stood a deep, narrow-necked earthen jar, in which was the remainder of his supper, consisting of boiled peas. A large monkey--of which there were plenty at Gibraltar--encouraged by the man's absence, and allured by the smell of the peas, ventured to the jar; and in endeavoring to get at its contents, thrust his head so far into the vessel that he was not able to get it out again. At this moment, the soldier approached. The monkey started, in alarm, with the jar on his head. This terrible monster frightened the poor soldier half out of his wits. He thought it was a bloodthirsty Spanish grenadier, with a most prodigious cap on his head. So he fired his musket, like any other valiant soldier, roaring out, as loud as he could, that the enemy had scaled the walls. The guards took the alarm; the drums were beaten; signal guns discharged, and in less than ten minutes the whole garrison were under arms. The supposed grenadier, being very uncomfortable in his cap, was soon overtaken and seized; and by his capture, the tranquillity of the garrison, as the reader might rationally conjecture, was speedily restored, without any of the bloodshed which the sagacious sentinel so much feared. A clergyman in England, of some distinction, had a tame baboon, who was very fond of him, and whenever he could get a chance, followed him in the street. When he went to church, however, to perform the service, he preferred, of course, that his monkey should stay at home, and used to confine him accordingly. One Sabbath morning the animal escaped, and followed his master to the church; and silently mounting the sounding-board over the minister's head, he lay perfectly still till the sermon commenced. Then he crept to the edge, where he could see his master, and imitated his gestures in such a droll and amusing manner, that the entire congregation began to laugh. The minister, who did not see his favorite monkey, and who was surprised and confounded at this unaccountable levity, rebuked the audience, but to no effect. The people still laughed, and the preacher, in the warmth of his zeal, redoubled his earnestness and action. The consequence was that the ape became more animated too, and increased the number and violence of his gestures. The congregation could no longer restrain themselves, and burst into a long and loud roar of laughter. Some of the ape-catchers of Africa have a very queer way of securing these animals. It is said that they take a vessel filled with water out into the woods with them, and wash their hands and faces in the water. The apes see this operation. Afterward, the natives throw out the water in which they washed, and supply its place by a solution of glue. Then they leave the spot, and the apes come down from the trees, and wash themselves, in the same manner as they have seen the men wash. The consequence is, that the poor fellows get their eyes glued together so fast that they cannot open them, and so being unable to see their way to escape, they fall into the hands of their enemies. The Zebra. Probably there is no animal so beautiful, and that possesses so much ability for being serviceable to man, that is nevertheless so useless, except for its beauty, as the zebra. One would suppose, to look at the fellow--and doubtless this is the fact--that he could perform much of the labor of the horse. But he is generally quite indisposed to any such routine of employment. He is very fond of his own way--so fond of it, indeed, that the most patient and persevering efforts to teach him to change it are generally almost fruitless. The entire race are any thing but docile. They are tamed, so as to obey the bridle, only with great difficulty; and their obedience is rather imperfect, at best. Bingley mentions one which was brought from the Cape of Good Hope to the tower of London, in 1803, who was more docile and kindly disposed than most of the species. When in pretty good humor, this animal would carry her keeper from fifty to a hundred yards; but he could never prevail upon her to go any farther. He might beat her as much as he pleased; she would not budge an inch, but would rear up and kick, until her rider was obliged to get off. When she got angry, as she did sometimes, she would plunge at her keeper, and on one occasion she seized him by the coat, threw him upon the ground, and would undoubtedly have killed him, had he not been very active, so that he got out of her reach. [Illustration: THE ZEBRA.] The most docile zebra on record was one that was burned, accidentally, in England, several years ago, with several other animals belonging to a lyceum. This animal allowed his keeper to use great familiarities with him--to put children on his back, even, without showing any resentment. On one occasion, a person rode on his back a mile or two. This zebra had been raised in Portugal. The Ox and Cow. [Illustration: COWS TAKING THEIR COMFORT.] Can any body imagine a more perfect picture of quiet contentment, than a company of cows that have finished their toils for the day, and have come at early evening to chew their cud, and to reward their patrons for the supply of green grass that has been afforded them? There are two such amiable cows represented in the engraving on the opposite page. The artist has portrayed them standing before a huge pottery, where they seem to be very much at home, and at peace with all the world. Their thoughts--if they have any, and doubtless they have, a good many of them--are those of the most tranquil and placid nature. Perhaps they are edifying each other with reflections on the great advantages of the mechanic arts, and the art of making earthen ware in particular. The old cow is a genuine philosopher. She makes the best of every thing. Seldom, very seldom, does she allow herself to get excited. As for being angry, she makes such a bungling piece of work of it, whenever she does indulge in a little peevishness, that she seems to cool off at once, from the very idea of the ludicrous figure she makes. Generally, she takes the world easy. Her troubles are few. If the flies bite her--and they take that liberty sometimes--she leisurely employs a wand she has at command, and brushes them off. Nervous and excitable men might undoubtedly learn a lesson from the philosophical old cow, if they would go to school to her. They might learn that the true way to go through the world, is to keep tolerably cool, and not to be breaking their heads against every stone wall that happens to lie between them and the object of their desire. There are many anecdotes which prove that the ox and cow have a musical ear, as the phrase is. Professor Bell says that he has often, when a boy, tried the effect of the music of the flute on cows, and always observed that it produced great apparent enjoyment. Instances have been known of the fiercest bulls having been subdued and calmed into gentleness, by music of a plaintive kind. There is a laughable story told of the effect of music on a bull. A fiddler, residing in the country, not far from Liverpool, was returning, at three o'clock in the morning, with his instrument, from a place where he had been engaged in his accustomed vocation. He had occasion to cross a field where there were some cows and a rather saucy bull. The latter took it into his head to assault the fiddler, who tried to escape. He did not succeed, however. The bull was wide awake, and could not let the gentleman off so cheap. The poor fellow then attempted to climb a tree. But the enraged animal would not permit him to do that. The fiddler, who had heard something about the wonderful power of music in subduing the rage of some of the lower animals, thinking of nothing else that he could do for his protection, got behind the tree, and commenced playing, literally for his life. Strange as it may appear, the animal was calmed at once, and appeared to be delighted with the music. By and by, the fiddler, finding that his enemy was entirely pacified, stopped playing, and started homeward, as fast as his legs would carry him. But the bull would not allow him to escape, and made after him. The poor fellow, fearing he should be killed, stopped, and went to fiddling again. The animal was pacified, as before. Our hero then plied the bow until his arm ached, and seizing, as he supposed, a favorable opportunity, he made another effort to run away. He was probably not accustomed to fiddle without pay, and he was pretty sure the customer he was now playing for intended to get his music for nothing. Well, the fiddler was no more successful this time than he was before. The fury of the bull returned, as soon as the strains ceased; and at last, the poor man surrendered himself to his fate, and actually played for the bull until six o'clock--about three hours in all--when some people came to his rescue. He must have been pretty well convinced, I think, while he was entertaining the bull in that manner, that "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast." The Lama. This animal, which belongs to the same family with the camel, is a native of some parts of South America, and is used as a beast of burden. He is capable of carrying from one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds, and on the steep places where he is usually employed, will walk with his load twelve or fifteen miles a day. When lamas get weary, it is said they will stop, and scarcely any severity can compel them to go on. Some of the accounts of these singular animals represent them as having a bad trick of _spitting_, when they do not like their treatment. In this respect, they resemble a great many strange sort of men I have met with on our side of the equator, who will spit from morning till night, sometimes on the carpet, too, on account of a very nauseous weed they have in their mouths--with this difference, however, that the lamas spit when they are displeased only, and the men spit all the time. Some one who has been familiar with the animal in South America, and who has seen it a great deal in use among the Indians there, presents a very interesting account of its nature and habits. He says, "The lama is the only animal associated with man, and undebased by the contact. The lama will bear neither beating nor ill treatment. They go in troops, an Indian going a long distance ahead as a guide. If tired, they stop, and the Indian stops also. If the delay is great, the Indian, becoming uneasy toward sunset, resolves on supplicating the beasts to resume their journey. If the lamas are disposed to continue their course, they follow the Indian in good order, at a regular pace, and very fast, for their legs are very long; but when they are in ill-humor, they do not even turn their heads toward the speaker, but remain motionless, standing or lying down, and gazing on heaven with looks so tender, so melancholy, that we might imagine these singular animals had the consciousness of a happier existence. If it happens--which is very seldom--that an Indian wishes to obtain, either by force or threats, what the lama will not willingly perform, the instant the animal finds himself affronted by word or gesture, he raises his head with dignity, or, without attempting to escape ill treatment by flight, he lies down, his looks turned toward heaven; large tears flow from his beautiful eyes; and frequently, in less than an hour, he dies." [Illustration: THE END.] * * * * * * * Transcriber's note: The caption of the illustration in "The Goat", shown in the List of Illustrations and above as "THE WONDERFUL FEAT OF THE GOAT.", was "THE ARAB AND HIS GOAT." in the printed illustration. 
1901	----	SECRETS OF THE WOODS Wood Folk Series Book Three By William J. Long 1901 TO CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS, "Little Friend Ch'geegee," whose coming makes the winter glad. PREFACE This little book is but another chapter in the shy 'wild life of the fields and woods' of which "Ways of Wood Folk" and "Wilderness Ways" were the beginning. It is given gladly in answer to the call for more from those who have read the previous volumes, and whose letters are full of the spirit of kindness and appreciation. Many questions have come of late with these same letters; chief of which is this: How shall one discover such things for himself? how shall we, too, read the secrets of the Wood Folk? There is no space here to answer, to describe the long training, even if one could explain perfectly what is more or less unconscious. I would only suggest that perhaps the real reason why we see so little in the woods is the way we go through them--talking, laughing, rustling, smashing twigs, disturbing the peace of the solitudes by what must seem strange and uncouth noises to the little wild creatures. They, on the other hand, slip with noiseless feet through their native coverts, shy, silent, listening, more concerned to hear than to be heard, loving the silence, hating noise and fearing it, as they fear and hate their natural enemies. We would not feel comfortable if a big barbarian came into our quiet home, broke the door down, whacked his war-club on the furniture, and whooped his battle yell. We could hardly be natural under the circumstances. Our true dispositions would hide themselves. We might even vacate the house bodily. Just so Wood Folk. Only as you copy their ways can you expect to share their life and their secrets. And it is astonishing how little the shyest of them fears you, if you but keep silence and avoid all excitement, even of feeling; for they understand your feeling quite as much as your action. A dog knows when you are afraid of him; when you are hostile; when friendly. So does a bear. Lose your nerve, and the horse you are riding goes to pieces instantly. Bubble over with suppressed excitement, and the deer yonder, stepping daintily down the bank to your canoe in the water grasses, will stamp and snort and bound away without ever knowing what startled him. But be quiet, friendly, peace-possessed in the same place, and the deer, even after discovering you, will draw near and show his curiosity in twenty pretty ways ere he trots away, looking back over his shoulder for your last message. Then be generous--show him the flash of a looking-glass, the flutter of a bright handkerchief, a tin whistle, or any other little kickshaw that the remembrance of a boy's pocket may suggest--and the chances are that he will come back again, finding curiosity so richly rewarded. That is another point to remember: all the Wood Folk are more curious about you than you are about them. Sit down quietly in the woods anywhere, and your coming will occasion the same stir that a stranger makes in a New England hill town. Control your curiosity, and soon their curiosity gets beyond control; they must come to find out who you are and what you are doing. Then you have the advantage; for, while their curiosity is being satisfied, they forget fear and show you many curious bits of their life that you will never discover otherwise. As to the source of these sketches, it is the same as that of the others years of quiet observation in the woods and fields, and some old notebooks which hold the records of summer and winter camps in the great wilderness. My kind publishers announced, some time ago, a table of contents, which included chapters on jay and fish-hawk, panther, and musquash, and a certain savage old bull moose that once took up his abode too near my camp for comfort. My only excuse for their non-appearance is that my little book was full before their turn came. They will find their place, I trust, in another volume presently. STAMFORD, CONN., June, 1901. Wm. J. LONG. CONTENTS TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE A WILDERNESS BYWAY KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER THE OL' BEECH PA'TRIDGE FOLLOWING THE DEER SUMMER WOODS STILL HUNTING WINTER TRAILS SNOW BOUND GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES SECRETS OF THE WOODS TOOKHEES THE 'FRAID ONE Little Tookhees the wood mouse, the 'Fraid One, as Simmo calls him, always makes two appearances when you squeak to bring him out. First, after much peeking, he runs out of his tunnel; sits up once on his hind legs; rubs his eyes with his paws; looks up for the owl, and behind him for the fox, and straight ahead at the tent where the man lives; then he dives back headlong into his tunnel with a rustle of leaves and a frightened whistle, as if Kupkawis the little owl had seen him. That is to reassure himself. In a moment he comes back softly to see what kind of crumbs you have given him. No wonder Tookhees is so timid, for there is no place in earth or air or water, outside his own little doorway under the mossy stone, where he is safe. Above him the owls watch by night and the hawks by day; around him not a prowler of the wilderness, from Mooween the bear down through a score of gradations, to Kagax the bloodthirsty little weasel, but will sniff under every old log in the hope of finding a wood mouse; and if he takes a swim, as he is fond of doing, not a big trout in the river but leaves his eddy to rush at the tiny ripple holding bravely across the current. So, with all these enemies waiting to catch him the moment he ventures out, Tookhees must needs make one or two false starts in order to find out where the coast is clear. That is why he always dodges back after his first appearance; why he gives you two or three swift glimpses of himself, now here, now there, before coming out into the light. He knows his enemies are so hungry, so afraid he will get away or that somebody else will catch him, that they jump for him the moment he shows a whisker. So eager are they for his flesh, and so sure, after missing him, that the swoop of wings or the snap of red jaws has scared him into permanent hiding, that they pass on to other trails. And when a prowler, watching from behind a stump, sees Tookhees flash out of sight and hears his startled squeak, he thinks naturally that the keen little eyes have seen the tail, which he forgot to curl close enough, and so sneaks away as if ashamed of himself. Not even the fox, whose patience is without end, has learned the wisdom of waiting for Tookhees' second appearance. And that is the salvation of the little 'Fraid One. From all these enemies Tookhees has one refuge, the little arched nest beyond the pretty doorway under the mossy stone. Most of his enemies can dig, to be sure, but his tunnel winds about in such a way that they never can tell from the looks of his doorway where it leads to; and there are no snakes in the wilderness to follow and find out. Occasionally I have seen where Mooween the bear has turned the stone over and clawed the earth beneath; but there is generally a tough root in the way, and Mooween concludes that he is taking too much trouble for so small a mouthful, and shuffles off to the log where the red ants live. On his journeys through the woods Tookhees never forgets the dangerous possibilities. His progress is a series of jerks, and whisks, and jumps, and hidings. He leaves his doorway, after much watching, and shoots like a minnow across the moss to an upturned root. There he sits up and listens, rubbing his whiskers nervously. Then he glides along the root for a couple of feet, drops to the ground and disappears. He is hiding there under a dead leaf. A moment of stillness and he jumps like a jack-in-abox. Now he is sitting on the leaf that covered him, rubbing his whiskers again, looking back over his trail as if he heard footsteps behind him. Then another nervous dash, a squeak which proclaims at once his escape, and his arrival, and he vanishes under the old moss-grown log where his fellows live, a whole colony of them. All these things, and many more, I discovered the first season that I began to study the wild things that lived within sight of my tent. I had been making long excursions after bear and beaver, following on wild-goose chases after Old Whitehead the eagle and Kakagos the wild woods raven that always escaped me, only to find that within the warm circle of my camp-fire little wild folk were hiding whose lives were more unknown and quite as interesting as the greater creatures I had been following. One day, as I returned quietly to camp, I saw Simmo quite lost in watching something near my tent. He stood beside a great birch tree, one hand resting against the bark that he would claim next winter for his new canoe; the other hand still grasped his axe, which he had picked up a moment before to quicken the tempo of the bean kettle's song. His dark face peered behind the tree with a kind of childlike intensity written all over it. I stole nearer without his hearing me; but I could see nothing. The woods were all still. Killooleet was dozing by his nest; the chickadees had vanished, knowing that it was not meal time; and Meeko the red squirrel had been made to jump from the fir top to the ground so often that now he kept sullenly to his own hemlock across the island, nursing his sore feet and scolding like a fury whenever I approached. Still Simmo watched, as if a bear were approaching his bait, till I whispered, "Quiee, Simmo, what is it?" "Nodwar k'chee Toquis, I see little 'Fraid One'" he said, unconsciously dropping into his own dialect, which is the softest speech in the world, so soft that wild things are not disturbed when they hear it, thinking it only a louder sough of the pines or a softer tunking of ripples on the rocks.--"O bah cosh, see! He wash-um face in yo lil cup." And when I tiptoed to his side, there was Tookhees sitting on the rim of my drinking cup, in which I had left a new leader to soak for the evening's fishing, scrubbing his face diligently, like a boy who is watched from behind to see that he slights not his ears or his neck. Remembering my own boyhood on cold mornings, I looked behind him to see if he also were under compulsion, but there was no other mouse in sight. He would scoop up a double handful of water in his paws, rub it rapidly up over nose and eyes, and then behind his ears, on the spots that wake you up quickest when you are sleepy. Then another scoop of water, and another vigorous rub, ending behind his ears as before. Simmo was full of wonder, for an Indian notices few things in the woods beside those that pertain to his trapping and hunting; and to see a mouse wash his face was as incomprehensible to him as to see me read a book. But all wood mice are very cleanly; they have none of the strong odors of our house mice. Afterwards, while getting acquainted, I saw him wash many times in the plate of water that I kept filled near his den; but he never washed more than his face and the sensitive spot behind his ears. Sometimes, however, when I have seen him swimming in the lake or river, I have wondered whether he were going on a journey, or just bathing for the love of it, as he washed his face in my cup. I left the cup where it was and spread a feast for the little guest, cracker crumbs and a bit of candle end. In the morning they were gone, the signs of several mice telling plainly who had been called in from the wilderness byways. That was the introduction of man to beast. Soon they came regularly. I had only to scatter crumbs and squeak a few times like a mouse, when little streaks and flashes would appear on the moss or among the faded gold tapestries of old birch leaves, and the little wild things would come to my table, their eyes shining like jet, their tiny paws lifted to rub their whiskers or to shield themselves from the fear under which they lived continually. They were not all alike--quite the contrary. One, the same who had washed in my cup, was gray and old, and wise from much dodging of enemies. His left ear was split from a fight, or an owl's claw, probably, that just missed him as he dodged under a root. He was at once the shyest and boldest of the lot. For a day or two he came with marvelous stealth, making use of every dead leaf and root tangle to hide his approach, and shooting across the open spaces so quickly that one knew not what had happened--just a dun streak which ended in nothing. And the brown leaf gave no sign of what it sheltered. But once assured of his ground, he came boldly. This great man-creature, with his face close to the table, perfectly still but for his eyes, with a hand that moved gently if it moved at all, was not to be feared--that Tookhees felt instinctively. And this strange fire with hungry odors, and the white tent, and the comings and goings of men who were masters of the woods kept fox and lynx and owl far away--that he learned after a day or two. Only the mink, who crept in at night to steal the man's fish, was to be feared. So Tookhees presently gave up his nocturnal habits and came out boldly into the sunlight. Ordinarily the little creatures come out in the dusk, when their quick movements are hidden among the shadows that creep and quiver. But with fear gone, they are only too glad to run about in the daylight, especially when good things to eat are calling them. Besides the veteran there was a little mother-mouse, whose tiny gray jacket was still big enough to cover a wonderful mother love, as I afterwards found out. She never ate at my table, but carried her fare away into hiding, not to feed her little ones-they were, too small as yet--but thinking in some dumb way, behind the bright little eyes, that they needed her and that her life must be spared with greater precaution for their sakes. She would steal timidly to my table, always appearing from under a gray shred of bark on a fallen birch log, following the same path, first to a mossy stone, then to a dark hole under a root, then to a low brake, and along the underside of a billet of wood to the mouse table. There she would stuff both cheeks hurriedly, till they bulged as if she had toothache, and steal away by the same path, disappearing at last under the shred of gray bark. For a long time it puzzled me to find her nest, which I knew could not be far away. It was not in the birch log where she disappeared--that was hollow the whole length--nor was it anywhere beneath it. Some distance away was a large stone, half covered by the green moss which reached up from every side. The most careful search here had failed to discover any trace of Tookhees' doorway; so one day when the wind blew half a gale and I was going out on the lake alone, I picked up this stone to put in the bow of my canoe. That was to steady the little craft by bringing her nose down to grip the water. Then the secret was out, and there it was in a little dome of dried grass among some spruce roots under the stone. The mother was away foraging, but a faint sibilant squeaking within the dome told me that the little ones were there, and hungry as usual. As I watched there was a swift movement in a tunnel among the roots, and the mother-mouse came rushing back. She paused a moment, lifting her forepaws against a root to sniff what danger threatened. Then she saw my face bending over the opening--Et tu Brute! and she darted into the nest. In a moment she was out again and disappeared into her tunnel, running swiftly with her little ones hanging to her sides by a grip that could not be shaken,--all but one, a delicate pink creature that one could hide in a thimble, and that snuggled down in the darkest corner of my hand confidently. It was ten minutes before the little mother came back, looking anxiously for the lost baby. When she found him safe in his own nest, with the man's face still watching, she was half reassured; but when she threw herself down and the little one began to drink, she grew fearful again and ran away into the tunnel, the little one clinging to her side, this time securely. I put the stone back and gathered the moss carefully about it. In a few days Mother Mouse was again at my table. I stole away to the stone, put my ear close to it, and heard with immense satisfaction tiny squeaks, which told me that the house was again occupied. Then I watched to find the path by which Mother Mouse came to her own. When her cheeks were full, she disappeared under the shred of bark by her usual route. That led into the hollow center of the birch log, which she followed to the end, where she paused a moment, eyes, ears, and nostrils busy; then she jumped to a tangle of roots and dead leaves, beneath which was a tunnel that led, deep down under the moss, straight to her nest beneath the stone. Besides these older mice, there were five or six smaller ones, all shy save one, who from the first showed not the slightest fear but came straight to my hand, ate his crumbs, and went up my sleeve, and proceeded to make himself a warm nest there by nibbling wool from my flannel shirt. In strong contrast to this little fellow was another who knew too well what fear meant. He belonged to another tribe that had not yet grown accustomed to man's ways. I learned too late how careful one must be in handling the little creatures that live continually in the land where fear reigns. A little way behind my tent was a great fallen log, mouldy and moss-grown, with twin-flowers shaking their bells along its length, under which lived a whole colony of wood mice. They ate the crumbs that I placed by the log; but they could never be tolled to my table, whether because they had no split-eared old veteran to spy out the man's ways, or because my own colony drove them away, I could never find out. One day I saw Tookhees dive under the big log as I approached, and having nothing more important to do, I placed one big crumb near his entrance, stretched out in the moss, hid my hand in a dead brake near the tempting morsel, and squeaked the call. In a moment Tookhees' nose and eyes appeared in his doorway, his whiskers twitching nervously as he smelled the candle grease. But he was suspicious of the big object, or perhaps he smelled the man too and was afraid, for after much dodging in and out he disappeared altogether. I was wondering how long his hunger would battle with his caution, when I saw the moss near my bait stir from beneath. A little waving of the moss blossoms, and Tookhees' nose and eyes appeared out of the ground for an instant, sniffing in all directions. His little scheme was evident enough now; he was tunneling for the morsel that he dared not take openly. I watched with breathless interest as a faint quiver nearer my bait showed where he was pushing his works. Then the moss stirred cautiously close beside his objective; a hole opened; the morsel tumbled in, and Tookhees was gone with his prize. I placed more crumbs from my pocket in the same place, and presently three or four mice were nibbling them. One sat up close by the dead brake, holding a bit of bread in his forepaws like a squirrel. The brake stirred suddenly; before he could jump my hand closed over him, and slipping the other hand beneath him I held him up to my face to watch him between my fingers. He made no movement to escape, but only trembled violently. His legs seemed too weak to support his weight now; he lay down; his eyes closed. One convulsive twitch and he was dead--dead of fright in a hand which had not harmed him. It was at this colony, whose members were all strangers to me, that I learned in a peculiar way of the visiting habits of wood mice, and at the same time another lesson that I shall not soon forget. For several days I had been trying every legitimate way in vain to catch a big trout, a monster of his kind, that lived in an eddy behind a rock up at the inlet. Trout were scarce in that lake, and in summer the big fish are always lazy and hard to catch. I was trout hungry most of the time, for the fish that I caught were small, and few and far between. Several times, however, when casting from the shore at the inlet for small fish, I had seen swirls in a great eddy near the farther shore, which told me plainly of big fish beneath; and one day, when a huge trout rolled half his length out of water behind my fly, small fry lost all their interest and I promised myself the joy of feeling my rod bend and tingle beneath the rush of that big trout if it took all summer. Flies were no use. I offered him a bookful, every variety of shape and color, at dawn and dusk, without tempting him. I tried grubs, which bass like, and a frog's leg, which no pickerel can resist, and little frogs, such as big trout hunt among the lily pads in the twilight,--all without pleasing him. And then waterbeetles, and a red squirrel's tail-tip, which makes the best hackle in the world, and kicking grasshoppers, and a silver spoon with a wicked "gang" of hooks, which I detest and which, I am thankful to remember, the trout detested also. They lay there in their big cool eddy, lazily taking what food the stream brought down to them, giving no heed to frauds of any kind. Then I caught a red-fin in the stream above, hooked it securely, laid it on a big chip, coiled my line upon it, and set it floating down stream, the line uncoiling gently behind it as it went. When it reached the eddy I raised my rod tip; the line straightened; the red-fin plunged overboard, and a two-pound trout, thinking, no doubt, that the little fellow had been hiding under the chip, rose for him and took him in. That was the only one I caught. His struggle disturbed the pool, and the other trout gave no heed to more red-fins. Then, one morning at daybreak, as I sat on a big rock pondering new baits and devices, a stir on an alder bush across the stream caught my eye. Tookhees the wood mouse was there, running over the bush, evidently for the black catkins which still clung to the tips. As I watched him he fell, or jumped from his branch into the quiet water below and, after circling about for a moment, headed bravely across the current. I could just see his nose as he swam, a rippling wedge against the black water with a widening letter V trailing out behind him. The current swept him downward; he touched the edge of the big eddy; there was a swirl, a mighty plunge beneath, and Tookhees was gone, leaving no trace but a swift circle of ripples that were swallowed up in the rings and dimples behind the rock.--I had found what bait the big trout wanted. Hurrying back to camp, I loaded a cartridge lightly with a pinch of dust shot, spread some crumbs near the big log behind my tent, squeaked the call a few times, and sat down to wait. "These mice are strangers to me," I told Conscience, who was protesting a little, "and the woods are full of them, and I want that trout." In a moment there was a rustle in the mossy doorway and Tookhees appeared. He darted across the open, seized a crumb in his mouth, sat up on his hind legs, took the crumb in his paws, and began to eat. I had raised the gun, thinking he would dodge back a few times before giving me a shot; his boldness surprised me, but I did not recognize him. Still my eye followed along the barrels and over the sight to where Tookhees sat eating his crumb. My finger was pressing the trigger--"O you big butcher," said Conscience, "think how little he is, and what a big roar your gun will make! Aren't you ashamed?" "But I want the trout," I protested. "Catch him then, without killing this little harmless thing," said Conscience sternly. "But he is a stranger to me; I never--" "He is eating your bread and salt," said Conscience. That settled it; but even as I looked at him over the gun sight, Tookhees finished his crumb, came to my foot, ran along my leg into my lap, and looked into my face expectantly. The grizzled coat and the split ear showed the welcome guest at my table for a week past. He was visiting the stranger colony, as wood mice are fond of doing, and persuading them by his example that they might trust me, as he did. More ashamed than if I had been caught potting quail, I threw away the hateful shell that had almost slain my friend and went back to camp. There I made a mouse of a bit of muskrat fur, with a piece of my leather shoestring sewed on for a tail. It served the purpose perfectly, for within the hour I was gloating over the size and beauty of the big trout as he stretched his length on the rock beside me. But I lost the fraud at the next cast, leaving it, with a foot of my leader, in the mouth of a second trout that rolled up at it the instant it touched his eddy behind the rock. After that the wood mice were safe so far as I was concerned. Not a trout, though he were big as a salmon, would ever taste them, unless they chose to go swimming of their own accord; and I kept their table better supplied than before. I saw much of their visiting back and forth, and have understood better what those tunnels mean that one finds in the spring when the last snows are melting. In a corner of the woods, where the drifts lay, you will often find a score of tunnels coming in from all directions to a central chamber. They speak of Tookhees' sociable nature, of his long visits with his fellows, undisturbed by swoop or snap, when the packed snow above has swept the summer fear away and made him safe from hawk and owl and fox and wildcat, and when no open water tempts him to go swimming where Skooktum the big trout lies waiting, mouse hungry, under his eddy. The weeks passed all too quickly, as wilderness weeks do, and the sad task of breaking camp lay just before us. But one thing troubled me--the little Tookhees, who knew no fear, but tried to make a nest in the sleeve of my flannel shirt. His simple confidence touched me more than the curious ways of all the other mice. Every day he came and took his crumbs, not from the common table, but from my, hand, evidently enjoying its warmth while he ate, and always getting the choicest morsels. But I knew that he would be the first one caught by the owl after I left; for it is fear only that saves the wild things. Occasionally one finds animals of various kinds in which the instinct of fear is lacking--a frog, a young partridge, a moose calf--and wonders what golden age that knew no fear, or what glorious vision of Isaiah in which lion and lamb lie down together, is here set forth. I have even seen a young black duck, whose natural disposition is wild as the wilderness itself, that had profited nothing by his mother's alarms and her constant lessons in hiding, but came bobbing up to my canoe among the sedges of a wilderness lake, while his brethren crouched invisible in their coverts of bending rushes, and his mother flapped wildly off, splashing and quacking and trailing a wing to draw me away from the little ones. Such an one is generally abandoned by its mother, or else is the first to fall in the battle with the strong before she gives him up as hopeless. Little Tookhees evidently belonged to this class, so before leaving I undertook the task of teaching him fear, which had evidently been too much for Nature and his own mother. I pinched him a few times, hooting like an owl as I did so,--a startling process, which sent the other mice diving like brown streaks to cover. Then I waved a branch over him, like a hawk's wing, at the same time flipping him end over end, shaking him up terribly. Then again, when he appeared with a new light dawning in his eyes, the light of fear, I would set a stick to wiggling like a creeping fox among the ferns and switch him sharply with a hemlock tip. It was a hard lesson, but he learned it after a few days. And before I finished the teaching, not a mouse would come to my table, no matter how persuasively I squeaked. They would dart about in the twilight as of yore, but the first whish of my stick sent them all back to cover on the instant. That was their stern yet, practical preparation for the robber horde that would soon be prowling over my camping ground. Then a stealthy movement among the ferns or the sweep of a shadow among the twilight shadows would mean a very different thing from wriggling stick and waving hemlock tip. Snap and swoop, and teeth and claws,--jump for your life and find out afterwards. That is the rule for a wise wood mouse. So I said good-by, and left them to take care of themselves in the wilderness. A WILDERNESS BYWAY One day in the wilderness, as my canoe was sweeping down a beautiful stretch of river, I noticed a little path leading through the water grass, at right angles to the stream's course. Swinging my canoe up to it, I found what seemed to be a landing place for the wood folk on their river journeyings. The sedges, which stood thickly all about, were here bent inward, making a shiny green channel from the river. On the muddy shore were many tracks of mink and muskrat and otter. Here a big moose had stood drinking; and there a beaver had cut the grass and made a little mud pie, in the middle of which was a bit of musk scenting the whole neighborhood. It was done last night, for the marks of his fore paws still showed plainly where he had patted his pie smooth ere he went away. But the spot was more than a landing place; a path went up the bank into the woods, as faint as the green waterway among the sedges. Tall ferns bent over to hide it; rank grasses that had been softly brushed aside tried their best to look natural; the alders waved their branches thickly, saying: There is no way here. But there it was, a path for the wood folk. And when I followed it into the shade and silence of the woods, the first mossy log that lay across it was worn smooth by the passage of many little feet. As I came back, Simmo's canoe glided into sight and I waved him to shore. The light birch swung up beside mine, a deep water-dimple just under the curl of its bow, and a musical ripple like the gurgle of water by a mossy stone--that was the only sound. "What means this path, Simmo?" His keen eyes took in everything at a glance, the wavy waterway, the tracks, the faint path to the alders. There was a look of surprise in his face that I had blundered onto a discovery which he had looked for many times in vain, his traps on his back. "Das a portash," he said simply. "A portage! But who made a portage here?" "Well, Musquash he prob'ly make-um first. Den beaver, den h'otter, den everybody in hurry he make-um. You see, river make big bend here. Portash go 'cross; save time, jus' same Indian portash." That was the first of a dozen such paths that I have since found cutting across the bends of wilderness rivers,--the wood folk's way of saving time on a journey. I left Simmo to go on down the river, while I followed the little byway curiously. There is nothing more fascinating in the woods than to go on the track of the wild things and see what they have been doing. But alas! mine were not the first human feet that had taken the journey. Halfway across, at a point where the path ran over a little brook, I found a deadfall set squarely in the way of unwary feet. It was different from any I had ever seen, and was made like this: {drawing omitted} That tiny stick (trigger, the trappers call it) with its end resting in air three inches above the bed log, just the right height so that a beaver or an otter would naturally put his foot on it in crossing, looks innocent enough. But if you look sharply you will see that if it were pressed down ever so little it would instantly release the bent stick that holds the fall-log, and bring the deadly thing down with crushing force across the back of any animal beneath. Such are the pitfalls that lie athwart the way of Keeonekh the otter, when he goes a-courting and uses Musquash's portage to shorten his journey. At the other end of the portage I waited for Simmo to come round the bend, and took him back to see the work, denouncing the heartless carelessness of the trapper who had gone away in the spring and left an unsprung deadfall as a menace to the wild things. At the first glance he pronounced it an otter trap. Then the fear and wonder swept into his face, and the questions into mine. "Das Noel Waby's trap. Nobody else make-um tukpeel stick like dat," he said at last. Then I understood. Noel Waby had gone up river trapping in the spring, and had never come back; nor any word to tell how death met him. I stooped down to examine the trap with greater interest. On the underside of the fall-log I found some long hairs still clinging in the crevices of the rough bark. They belonged to the outer waterproof coat with which Keeonekh keeps his fur dry. One otter at least had been caught here, and the trap reset. But some sense of danger, some old scent of blood or subtle warning clung to the spot, and no other creature had crossed the bed log, though hundreds must have passed that way since the old Indian reset his trap, and strode away with the dead otter across his shoulders. What was it in the air? What sense of fear brooded here and whispered in the alder leaves and tinkled in the brook? Simmo grew uneasy and hurried away. He was like the wood folk. But I sat down on a great log that the spring floods had driven in through the alders to feel the meaning of the place, if possible, and to have the vast sweet solitude all to myself for a little while. A faint stir on my left, and another! Then up the path, twisting and gliding, came Keeonekh, the first otter that I had ever seen in the wilderness. Where the sun flickered in through the alder leaves it glinted brightly on the shiny puter hairs of his rough coat. As he went his nose worked constantly, going far ahead of his bright little eyes to tell him what was in the path. I was sitting very still, some distance to one side, and he did not see me. Near old Noel's deadfall he paused an instant with raised head, in the curious snake-like attitude that all the weasels take when watching. Then he glided round the end of the trap, and disappeared down the portage. When he was gone I stole out to examine his tracks. Then I noticed for the first time that the old path near the deadfall was getting moss-grown; a faint new path began to show among the alders. Some warning was there in the trap, and with cunning instinct all the wood dwellers turned aside, giving a wide berth to what they felt was dangerous but could not understand. The new path joined the old again, beyond the brook, and followed it straight to the river. Again I examined the deadfall carefully, but of course I found nothing. That is a matter of instinct, not of eyes and ears, and it is past finding out. Then I went away for good, after driving a ring of stout stakes all about the trap to keep heedless little feet out of it. But I left it unsprung, just as it was, a rude tribute of remembrance to Keeonekh and the lost Indian. KEEONEKH THE FISHERMAN Wherever you find Keeonekh the otter you find three other things: wildness, beauty, and running water that no winter can freeze. There is also good fishing, but that will profit you little; for after Keeonekh has harried a pool it is useless to cast your fly or minnow there. The largest fish has disappeared--you will find his bones and a fin or two on the ice or the nearest bank--and the little fish are still in hiding after their fright. Conversely, wherever you find the three elements mentioned you will also find Keeonekh, if your eyes know how to read the signs aright. Even in places near the towns, where no otter has been seen for generations, they are still to be found leading their shy wild life, so familiar with every sight and sound of danger that no eye of the many that pass by ever sees them. No animal has been more persistently trapped and hunted for the valuable fur that he bears; but Keeonekh is hard to catch and quick to learn. When a family have all been caught or driven away from a favorite stream, another otter speedily finds the spot in some of his winter wanderings after better fishing, and, knowing well from the signs that others of his race have paid the sad penalty for heedlessness, he settles down there with greater watchfulness, and enjoys his fisherman's luck. In the spring he brings a mate to share his rich living. Soon a family of young otters go a-fishing in the best pools and explore the stream for miles up and down. But so shy and wild and quick to hide are they that the trout fishermen who follow the river, and the ice fishermen who set their tilt-ups in the pond below, and the children who gather cowslips in the spring have no suspicion that the original proprietors of the stream are still on the spot, jealously watching and resenting every intrusion. Occasionally the wood choppers cross an unknown trail in the snow, a heavy trail, with long, sliding, down-hill plunges which look as if a log had been dragged along. But they too go their way, wondering a bit at the queer things that live in the woods, but not understanding the plain records that the queer things leave behind them. Did they but follow far enough they would find the end of the trail in open water, and on the ice beyond the signs of Keeonekh's fishing. I remember one otter family whose den I found, when a boy, on a stream between two ponds within three miles of the town house. Yet the oldest hunter could barely remember the time when the last otter had been caught or seen in the county. I was sitting very still in the bushes on the bank, one day in spring, watching for a wood duck. Wood duck lived there, but the cover was so thick that I could never surprise them. They always heard me coming and were off, giving me only vanishing glimpses among the trees, or else quietly hiding until I went by. So the only way to see them--a beautiful sight they were--was to sit still in hiding, for hours if need be, until they came gliding by, all unconscious of the watcher. As I waited a large animal came swiftly up stream, just his head visible, with a long tail trailing behind. He was swimming powerfully, steadily, straight as a string; but, as I noted with wonder, he made no ripple whatever, sliding through the water as if greased from nose to tail. Just above me he dived, and I did not see him again, though I watched up and down stream breathlessly for him to reappear. I had never seen such an animal before, but I knew somehow that it was an otter, and I drew back into better hiding with the hope of seeing the rare creature again. Presently another otter appeared, coming up stream and disappearing in exactly the same way as the first. But though I stayed all the afternoon I saw nothing more. After that I haunted the spot every time I could get away, creeping down to the river bank and lying in hiding hours long at a stretch; for I knew now that the otters lived there, and they gave me many glimpses of a life I had never seen before. Soon I found their den. It was in a bank opposite my hiding place, and the entrance was among the roots of a great tree, under water, where no one could have possibly found it if the otters had not themselves shown the way. In their approach they always dived while yet well out in the stream, and so entered their door unseen. When they came out they were quite as careful, always swimming some distance under water before coming to the surface. It was several days before my eye could trace surely the faint undulation of the water above them, and so follow their course to their doorway. Had not the water been shallow I should never have found it; for they are the most wonderful of swimmers, making no ripple on the surface, and not half the disturbance below it that a fish of the same weight makes. Those were among the happiest watching hours that I have ever spent in the woods. The game was so large, so utterly unexpected; and I had the wonderful discovery all to myself. Not one of the half dozen boys and men who occasionally, when the fever seized them, trapped muskrat in the big meadow, a mile below, or the rare mink that hunted frogs in the brook, had any suspicion that such splendid fur was to be had for the hunting. Sometimes a whole afternoon would go slowly by, filled with the sounds and sweet smells of the woods, and not a ripple would break the dimples of the stream before me. But when, one late afternoon, just as the pines across the stream began to darken against the western light, a string of silver bubbles shot across the stream and a big otter rose to the surface with a pickerel in his mouth, all the watching that had not well repaid itself was swept out of the reckoning. He came swiftly towards me, put his fore paws against the bank, gave a wriggling jump,--and there he was, not twenty feet away, holding the pickerel down with his fore paws, his back arched like a frightened cat, and a tiny stream of water trickling down from the tip of his heavy pointed tail, as he ate his fish with immense relish. Years afterward, hundreds of miles away on the Dungarvon, in the heart of the wilderness, every detail of the scene came back to me again. I was standing on snowshoes, looking out over the frozen river, when Keeonekh appeared in an open pool with a trout in his mouth. He broke his way, with a clattering tinkle of winter bells, through the thin edge of ice, put his paws against the heavy snow ice, threw himself out with the same wriggling jump, and ate with his back arched--just as I had seen him years before. This curious way of eating is, I think, characteristic of all otters; certainly of those that I have been fortunate enough to see. Why they do it is more than I know; but it must be uncomfortable for every mouthful--full of fish bones, too--to slide uphill to one's stomach. Perhaps it is mere habit, which shows in the arched backs of all the weasel family. Perhaps it is to frighten any enemy that may approach unawares while Keeonekh is eating, just as an owl, when feeding on the ground, bristles up all his feathers so as to look as big as possible. But my first otter was too keen-scented to remain long so near a concealed enemy. Suddenly he stopped eating and turned his head in my direction. I could see his nostrils twitching as the wind gave him its message. Then he left his fish, glided into the stream as noiselessly as the brook entered it below him, and disappeared without leaving a single wavelet to show where he had gone down. When the young otters appeared, there was one of the most interesting lessons to be seen in the woods. Though Keeonekh loves the water and lives in it more than half the time, his little ones are afraid of it as so many kittens. If left to themselves they would undoubtedly go off for a hunting life, following the old family instinct; for fishing is an acquired habit of the otters, and so the fishing instinct cannot yet be transmitted to the little ones. That will take many generations. Meanwhile the little Keeonekhs must be taught to swim. One day the mother-otter appeared on the bank among the roots of the great tree under which was their secret doorway. That was surprising, for up to this time both otters had always approached it from the river, and were never seen on the bank near their den. She appeared to be digging, but was immensely cautious about it, looking, listening, sniffing continually. I had never gone near the place for fear of frightening them away; and it was months afterward, when the den was deserted, before I examined it to understand just what she was doing. Then I found that she had made another doorway from her den leading out to the bank. She had selected the spot with wonderful cunning,--a hollow under a great root that would never be noticed,--and she dug from inside, carrying the earth down to the river bottom, so that there should be nothing about the tree to indicate the haunt of an animal. Long afterwards, when I had grown better acquainted with Keeonekh's ways from much watching, I understood the meaning of all this. She was simply making a safe way out and in for the little ones, who were afraid of the water. Had she taken or driven them out of her own entrance under the river, they might easily have drowned ere they reached the surface. When the entrance was all ready she disappeared, but I have no doubt she was just inside, watching to be sure the coast was clear. Slowly her head and neck appeared till they showed clear of the black roots. She turned her nose up stream--nothing in the wind. Eyes and ears searched below--nothing harmful there. Then she came out, and after her toddled two little otters, full of wonder at the big bright world, full of fear at the river. There was no play at first, only wonder and investigation. Caution was born in them; they put their little feet down as if treading on eggs, and they sniffed every bush before going behind it. And the old mother noted their cunning with satisfaction while her own nose and ears watched far away. The outing was all too short; some uneasiness was in the air down stream. Suddenly she rose from where she was lying, and the little ones, as if commanded, tumbled back into the den. In a moment she had glided after them, and the bank was deserted. It was fully ten minutes before my untrained cars caught faint sounds, which were not of the woods, coming up stream; and longer than that before two men with fish poles appeared, making their slow way to the pond above. They passed almost over the den and disappeared, all unconscious of beast or man that wished them elsewhere, resenting their noisy passage through the solitudes. But the otters did not come out again, though I watched till nearly dark. It was a week before I saw them again, and some good teaching had evidently been done in the meantime; for all fear of the river was gone. They toddled out as before, at the same hour in the afternoon, and went straight to the bank. There the mother lay down, and the little ones, as if enjoying the frolic, clambered up to her back. Whereupon she slid into the stream and swam slowly about with the little Keeonekhs clinging to her desperately, as if humpty-dumpty had been played on them before, and might be repeated any moment. I understood their air of anxious expectation a moment later, when Mother Otter dived like a flash from under them, leaving them to make their own way in the water. They began to swim naturally enough, but the fear of the new element was still upon them. The moment old Mother Otter appeared they made for her whimpering, but she dived again and again, or moved slowly away, and so kept them swimming. After a little they seemed to tire and lose courage. Her eyes saw it quicker than mine, and she glided between them. Both little ones turned in at the same instant and found a resting place on her back. So she brought them carefully to land again, and in a few moments they were all rolling about in the dry leaves like so many puppies. I must confess here that, besides the boy's wonder in watching the wild things, another interest brought me to the river bank and kept me studying Keeonekh's ways. Father Otter was a big fellow,--enormous he seemed to me, thinking of my mink skins,--and occasionally, when his rich coat glinted in the sunshine, I was thinking what a famous cap it would make for the winter woods, or for coasting on moonshiny nights. More often I was thinking what famous things a boy could buy for the fourteen dollars, at least, which his pelt would bring in the open market. The first Saturday after I saw him I prepared a board, ten times bigger than a mink-stretcher, and tapered one end to a round point, and split it, and made a wedge, and smoothed it all down, and hid it away--to stretch the big otter's skin upon when I should catch him. When November came, and fur was prime, I carried down a half-bushel basket of heads and stuff from the fish market, and piled them up temptingly on the bank, above a little water path, in a lonely spot by the river. At the lower end of the path, where it came out of the water, I set a trap, my biggest one, with a famous grip for skunks and woodchucks. But the fish rotted away, as did also another basketful in another place. Whatever was eaten went to the crows and mink. Keeonekh disdained it. Then I set the trap in some water (to kill the smell of it) on a game path among some swamp alders, at a bend of the river where nobody ever came and where I had found Keeonekh's tracks. The next night he walked into it. But the trap that was sure grip for woodchucks was a plaything for Keeonekh's strength. He wrenched his foot out of it, leaving me only a few glistening hairs--which was all I ever caught of him. Years afterward, when I found old Noel's trap on Keeonekh's portage, I asked Simmo why no bait had been used. "No good use-um bait," he said, "Keeonekh like-um fresh fish, an' catch-um self all he want." And that is true. Except in starvation times, when even the pools are frozen, or the fish die from one of their mysterious epidemics, Keeonekh turns up his nose at any bait. If a bit of castor is put in a split stick, he will turn aside, like all the fur-bearers, to see what this strange smell is. But if you would toll him with a bait, you must fasten a fish in the water in such a way that it seems alive as the current wiggles it, else Keeonekh will never think it worthy of his catching. The den in the river bank was never disturbed, and the following year another litter was raised there. With characteristic cunning--a cunning which grows keener and keener in the neighborhood of civilization--the mother-otter filled up the land entrance among the roots with earth and driftweed, using only the doorway under water until it was time for the cubs to come out into the world again. Of all the creatures of the wilderness Keeonekh is the most richly gifted, and his ways, could we but search them out, would furnish a most interesting chapter. Every journey he takes, whether by land or water, is full of unknown traits and tricks; but unfortunately no one ever sees him doing things, and most of his ways are yet to be found out. You see a head holding swiftly across a wilderness lake, or coming to meet your canoe on the streams; then, as you follow eagerly, a swirl and he is gone. When he comes up again he will watch you so much more keenly than you can possibly watch him that you learn little about him, except how shy he is. Even the trappers who make a business of catching him, and with whom I have often talked, know almost nothing of Keeonekh, except where to set their traps for him living and how to care for his skin when he is dead. Once I saw him fishing in a curious way. It was winter, on a wilderness stream flowing into the Dugarvon. There had been a fall of dry snow that still lay deep and powdery over all the woods, too light to settle or crust. At every step one had to lift a shovelful of the stuff on the point of his snowshoe; and I was tired out, following some caribou that wandered like plover in the rain. Just below me was a deep open pool surrounded by double fringes of ice. Early in the winter, while the stream was higher, the white ice had formed thickly on the river wherever the current was not too swift for freezing. Then the stream fell, and a shelf of new black ice formed at the water's level, eighteen inches or more below the first ice, some of which still clung to the banks, reaching out in places two or three feet and forming dark caverns with the ice below. Both shelves dipped towards the water, forming a gentle incline all about the edges of the open places. A string of silver bubbles shooting across the black pool at my feet roused me out of a drowsy weariness. There it was again, a rippling wave across the pool, which rose to the surface a moment later in a hundred bubbles, tinkling like tiny bells as they broke in the keen air. Two or three times I saw it with growing wonder. Then something stirred under the shelf of ice across the pool. An otter slid into the water; the rippling wave shot across again; the bubbles broke at the surface; and I knew that he was sitting under the white ice below me, not twenty feet away. A whole family of otters, three or four of them, were fishing there at my feet in utter unconsciousness. The discovery took my breath away. Every little while the bubbles would shoot across from my side, and watching sharply I would see Keeonekh slide out upon the lower shelf of ice on the other side and crouch there in the gloom, with back humped against the ice above him, eating his catch. The fish they caught were all small evidently, for after a few minutes he would throw himself flat on the ice, slide down the incline into the water, making no splash or disturbance as he entered, and the string of bubbles would shoot across to my side again. For a full hour I watched them breathlessly, marveling at their skill. A small fish is nimble game to follow and catch in his own element. But at every slide Keeonekh did it. Sometimes the rippling wave would shoot all over the pool, and the bubbles break in a wild tangle as the fish darted and doubled below, with the otter after him. But it always ended the same way. Keeonekh would slide out upon the ice shelf, and hump his back, and begin to eat almost before the last bubble had tinkled behind him. Curiously enough, the rule of the salmon fishermen prevailed here in the wilderness: no two rods shall whip the same pool at the same time. I would see an otter lying ready on the ice, evidently waiting for the chase to end. Then, as another otter slid out beside him with his fish, in he would go like a flash and take his turn. For a while the pool was a lively place; the bubbles had no rest. Then the plunges grew fewer and fewer, and the otters all disappeared into the ice caverns. What became of them I could not make out; and I was too chilled to watch longer. Above and below the pool the stream was frozen for a distance; then there was more open water and more fishing. Whether they followed along the bank under cover of the ice to other pools, or simply slept where they were till hungry again, I never found out. Certainly they had taken up their abode in an ideal spot, and would not leave it willingly. The open pools gave excellent fishing, and the upper ice shelf protected them perfectly from all enemies. Once, a week later, I left the caribou and came back to the spot to watch awhile; but the place was deserted. The black water gurgled and dimpled across the pool, and slipped away silently under the lower edge of ice undisturbed by strings of silver bubbles. The ice caverns were all dark and silent. The mink had stolen the fish heads, and there was no trace anywhere to show that it was Keeonekh's banquet hall. The swimming power of an otter, which was so evident there in the winter pool, is one of the most remarkable things in nature. All other animals and birds, and even the best modeled of modern boats, leave more or less wake behind them when moving through the water. But Keeonekh leaves no more trail than a fish. This is partly because he keeps his body well submerged when swimming, partly because of the strong, deep, even stroke that drives him forward. Sometimes I have wondered if the outer hairs of his coat--the waterproof covering that keeps his fur dry, no matter how long he swims--are not better oiled than in other animals, which might account for the lack of ripple. I have seen him go down suddenly and leave absolutely no break in the surface to show where he was. When sliding also, plunging down a twenty-foot clay bank, he enters the water with an astonishing lack of noise or disturbance of any kind. In swimming at the surface he seems to use all four feet, like other animals. But below the surface, when chasing fish, he uses only the fore-paws. The hind legs then stretch straight out behind and are used, with the heavy tail, for a great rudder. By this means he turns and doubles like a flash, following surely the swift dartings of frightened trout, and beating them by sheer speed and nimbleness. When fishing a pool he always hunts outward from the center, driving the fish towards the bank, keeping himself within their circlings, and so having the immense advantage of the shorter line in heading off his game. The fish are seized as they crouch against the bank for protection, or try to dart out past him. Large fish are frequently caught from behind as they lie resting in their spring-holes. So swift and noiseless is his approach that they are seized before they become aware of danger. This swimming power of Keeonekh is all the more astonishing when one remembers that he is distinctively a land animal, with none of the special endowments of the seal, who is his only rival as a fisherman. Nature undoubtedly intended him to get his living, as the other members of his large family do, by hunting in the woods, and endowed him accordingly. He is a strong runner, a good climber, a patient tireless hunter, and his nose is keen as a brier. With a little practice he could again get his living by hunting, as his ancestors did. If squirrels and rats and rabbits were too nimble at first, there are plenty of musquash to be caught, and he need not stop at a fawn or a sheep, for he is enormously strong, and the grip of his jaws is not to be loosened. In severe winters, when fish are scarce or his pools frozen over, he takes to the woods boldly and shows himself a master at hunting craft. But he likes fish, and likes the water, and for many generations now has been simply a fisherman, with many of the quiet lovable traits that belong to fishermen in general. That is one thing to give you instant sympathy for Keeonekh--he is so different, so far above all other members of his tribe. He is very gentle by nature, with no trace of the fisher's ferocity or the weasel's bloodthirstiness. He tames easily, and makes the most docile and affectionate pet of all the wood folk. He never kills for the sake of killing, but lives peaceably, so far as he can, with all creatures. And he stops fishing when he has caught his dinner. He is also most cleanly in his habits, with no suggestion whatever of the evil odors that cling to the mink and defile the whole neighborhood of a skunk. One cannot help wondering whether just going fishing has not wrought all this wonder in Keeonekh's disposition. If so, 't is a pity that all his tribe do not turn fishermen. His one enemy among the wood folk, so far as I have observed, is the beaver. As the latter is also a peaceable animal, it is difficult to account for the hostility. I have heard or read somewhere that Keeonekh is fond of young beaver and hunts them occasionally to vary his diet of fish; but I have never found any evidence in the wilderness to show this. Instead, I think it is simply a matter of the beaver's dam and pond that causes the trouble. When the dam is built the beavers often dig a channel around either end to carry off the surplus water, and so prevent their handiwork being washed away in a freshet. Then the beavers guard their preserve jealously, driving away the wood folk that dare to cross their dam or enter their ponds, especially the musquash, who is apt to burrow and cause them no end of trouble. But Keeonekh, secure in his strength, holds straight through the pond, minding his own business and even taking a fish or two in the deep places near the dam. He delights also in running water, especially in winter when lakes and streams are mostly frozen, and in his journeyings he makes use of the open channels that guard the beavers' work. But the moment the beavers hear a splashing there, or note a disturbance in the pond where Keeonekh is chasing fish, down they come full of wrath. And there is generally a desperate fight before the affair is settled. Once, on a little pond, I saw a fierce battle going on out in the middle, and paddled hastily to find out about it. Two beavers and a big otter were locked in a death struggle, diving, plunging, throwing themselves out of water, and snapping at each other's throats. As my canoe halted the otter gripped one of his antagonists and went under with him. There was a terrible commotion below the surface for a few moments. When it ended the beaver rolled up dead, and Keeonekh shot up under the second beaver to repeat the attack. They gripped on the instant, but the second beaver, an enormous fellow, refused to go under where he would be at a disadvantage. In my eagerness I let the canoe drift almost upon them, driving them wildly apart before the common danger. The otter held on his way up the lake; the beaver turned towards the shore, where I noticed for the first time a couple of beaver houses. In this case there was no chance for intrusion on Keeonekh's part. He had probably been attacked when going peaceably about his business through the lake. It is barely possible, however, that there was an old grievance on the beavers' part, which they sought to square when they caught Keeonekh on the lake. When beavers build their houses on the lake shore, without the necessity for making a dam, they generally build a tunnel slanting up from the lake's bed to their den or house on the bank. Now Keeonekh fishes under the ice in winter more than is generally supposed. As he must breathe after every chase he must needs know all the air-holes and dens in the whole lake. No matter how much he turns and doubles in the chase after a trout, he never loses his sense of direction, never forgets where the breathing places are. When his fish is seized he makes a bee line under the ice for the nearest place where he can breathe and eat. Sometimes this lands him, out of breath, in the beaver's tunnel; and the beaver must sit upstairs in his own house, nursing his wrath, while Keeonekh eats fish in his hallway; for there is not room for both at once in the tunnel, and a fight there or under the ice is out of the question. As the beaver eats only bark--the white inner layer of "popple" bark is his chief dainty--he cannot understand and cannot tolerate this barbarian, who eats raw fish and leaves the bones and fins and the smell of slime in his doorway. The beaver is exemplary in his neatness, detesting all smells and filth; and this may possibly account for some of his enmity and his savage attacks upon Keeonekh when he catches him in a good place. Not the least interesting of Keeonekh's queer ways is his habit of sliding down hill, which makes a bond of sympathy and brings him close to the boyhood memories of those who know him. I remember one pair of otters that I watched for the better part of a sunny afternoon sliding down a clay bank with endless delight. The slide had been made, with much care evidently, on the steep side of a little promontory that jutted into the river. It was very steep, about twenty feet high, and had been made perfectly smooth by much sliding and wetting-down. An otter would appear at the top of the bank, throw himself forward on his belly and shoot downward like a flash, diving deep under water and reappearing some distance out from the foot of the slide. And all this with marvelous stillness, as if the very woods had ears and were listening to betray the shy creatures at their fun. For it was fun, pure and simple, and fun with no end of tingle and excitement in it, especially when one tried to catch the other and shot into the water at his very heels. This slide was in perfect condition, and the otters were careful not to roughen it. They never scrambled up over it, but went round the point and climbed from the other side, or else went up parallel to the slide, some distance away, where the ascent was easier and where there was no danger of rolling stones or sticks upon the coasting ground to spoil its smoothness. In winter the snow makes better coasting than the clay. Moreover it soon grows hard and icy from the freezing of the water left by the otter's body, and after a few days the slide is as smooth as glass. Then coasting is perfect, and every otter, old and young, has his favorite slide and spends part of every pleasant day enjoying the fun. When traveling through the woods in deep snow, Keeonekh makes use of his sliding habit to help him along, especially on down grades. He runs a little way and throws himself forward on his belly, sliding through the snow for several feet before he runs again. So his progress is a series of slides, much as one hurries along in slippery weather. I have spoken of the silver bubbles that first drew my attention to the fishing otters one day in the wilderness. From the few rare opportunities that I have had to watch them, I think that the bubbles are seen only after Keeonekh slides swiftly into the stream. The air clings to the hairs of his rough outer coat and is brushed from them as he passes through the water. One who watches him thus, shooting down the long slide belly-bump into the black winter pool, with a string of silver bubbles breaking and tinkling above him, is apt to know the hunter's change of heart from the touch of Nature which makes us all kin. Thereafter he eschews trapping--at least you will not find his number-three trap at the foot of Keeonekh's slide any more, to turn the shy creature's happiness into tragedy--and he sends a hearty good-luck after his fellow-fisherman, whether he meet him on the wilderness lakes or in the quiet places on the home streams where nobody ever comes. KOSKOMENOS THE OUTCAST Koskomenos the kingfisher is a kind of outcast among the birds. I think they regard him as a half reptile, who has not yet climbed high enough in the bird scale to deserve recognition; so they let him severely alone. Even the goshawk hesitates before taking a swoop at him, not knowing quite whether the gaudy creature is dangerous or only uncanny. I saw a great hawk once drop like a bolt upon a kingfisher that hung on quivering wings, rattling softly, before his hole in the bank. But the robber lost his nerve at the instant when he should have dropped his claws to strike. He swerved aside and shot upward in a great slant to a dead spruce top, where he stood watching intently till the dark beak of a brooding kingfisher reached out of the hole to receive the fish that her mate had brought her. Whereupon Koskomenos swept away to his watchtower above the minnow pool, and the hawk set his wings toward the outlet, where a brood of young sheldrakes were taking their first lessons in the open water. No wonder the birds look askance at Kingfisher. His head is ridiculously large; his feet ridiculously small. He is a poem of grace in the air; but he creeps like a lizard, or waddles so that a duck would be ashamed of him, in the rare moments when he is afoot. His mouth is big enough to take in a minnow whole; his tongue so small that he has no voice, but only a harsh klr-rr-r-ik-ik-ik, like a watchman's rattle. He builds no nest, but rather a den in the bank, in which he lives most filthily half the day; yet the other half he is a clean, beautiful creature, with never a suggestion of earth, but only of the blue heavens above and the color-steeped water below, in his bright garments. Water will not wet him, though he plunge a dozen times out of sight beneath the surface. His clatter is harsh, noisy, diabolical; yet his plunge into the stream, with its flash of color, its silver spray, and its tinkle of smitten water, is the most musical thing in the wilderness. As a fisherman he has no equal. His fishy, expressionless eye is yet the keenest that sweeps the water, and his swoop puts even the fish-hawk to shame for its certainty and its lightning quickness. Besides all these contradictions, he is solitary, unknown, inapproachable. He has no youth, no play, no joy except to eat; he associates with nobody, not even with his own kind; and when he catches a fish, and beats its head against a limb till it is dead, and sits with head back-tilted, swallowing his prey, with a clattering chuckle deep down in his throat, he affects you as a parrot does that swears diabolically under his breath as he scratches his head, and that you would gladly shy a stone at, if the owner's back were turned for a sufficient moment. It is this unknown, this uncanny mixture of bird and reptile that has made the kingfisher an object of superstition among all savage peoples. The legends about him are legion; his crested head is prized by savages above all others as a charm or fetish; and even among civilized peoples his dried body may still sometimes be seen hanging to a pole, in the hope that his bill will point out the quarter from which the next wind will blow. But Koskomenos has another side, though the world as yet has found out little about it. One day in the wilderness I cheered him quite involuntarily. It was late afternoon; the fishing was over, and I sat in my canoe watching by a grassy point to see what would happen next. Across the stream was a clay bank, near the top of which a hole as wide as a tea-cup showed where a pair of kingfishers had dug their long tunnel. "There is nothing for them to stand on there; how did they begin that hole?" I wondered lazily; "and how can they ever raise a brood, with an open door like that for mink and weasel to enter?" Here were two new problems to add to the many unsolved ones which meet you at every turn on the woodland byways. A movement under the shore stopped my wondering, and the long lithe form of a hunting mink shot swiftly up stream. Under the hole he stopped, raised himself with his fore paws against the bank, twisting his head from side to side and sniffing nervously. "Something good up there," he thought, and began to climb. But the bank was sheer and soft; he slipped back half a dozen times without rising two feet. Then he went down stream to a point where some roots gave him a foothold, and ran lightly up till under the dark eaves that threw their shadowy roots over the clay bank. There he crept cautiously along till his nose found the nest, and slipped down till his fore paws rested on the threshold. A long hungry sniff of the rank fishy odor that pours out of a kingfisher's den, a keen look all around to be sure the old birds were not returning, and he vanished like a shadow. "There is one brood of kingfishers the less," I thought, with my glasses focused on the hole. But scarcely was the thought formed, when a fierce rumbling clatter sounded in the bank. The mink shot out, a streak of red showing plainly across his brown face. After him came a kingfisher clattering out a storm of invective and aiding his progress by vicious jabs at his rear. He had made a miscalculation that time; the old mother bird was at home waiting for him, and drove her powerful beak at his evil eye the moment it appeared at the inner end of the tunnel. That took the longing for young kingfisher all out of Cheokhes. He plunged headlong down the bank, the bird swooping after him with a rattling alarm that brought another kingfisher in a twinkling. The mink dived, but it was useless to attempt escape in that way; the keen eyes above followed his flight perfectly. When he came to the surface, twenty feet away, both birds were over him and dropped like plummets on his head. So they drove him down stream and out of sight. Years afterward I solved the second problem suggested by the kingfisher's den, when I had the good fortune, one day, to watch a pair beginning their tunneling. All who have ever watched the bird have, no doubt, noticed his wonderful ability to stop short in swift flight and hold himself poised in midair for an indefinite time, while watching the movements of a minnow beneath. They make use of this ability in beginning their nest on a bank so steep as to afford no foothold. As I watched the pair referred to, first one then the other would hover before the point selected, as a hummingbird balances for a moment at the door of a trumpet flower to be sure that no one is watching ere he goes in, then drive his beak with rapid plunges into the bank, sending down a continuous shower of clay to the river below. When tired he rested on a watch-stub, while his mate made a battering-ram of herself and kept up the work. In a remarkably short time they had a foothold and proceeded to dig themselves in out of sight. Kingfisher's tunnel is so narrow that he cannot turn around in it. His straight, strong bill loosens the earth; his tiny feet throw it out behind. I would see a shower of dirt, and perchance the tail of Koskomenos for a brief instant, then a period of waiting, and another shower. This kept up till the tunnel was bored perhaps two feet, when they undoubtedly made a sharp turn, as is their custom. After that they brought most of the earth out in their beaks. While one worked, the other watched or fished at the minnow pool, so that there was steady progress as long as I observed them. For years I had regarded Koskomenos, as the birds and the rest of the world regard him, as a noisy, half-diabolical creature, between bird and lizard, whom one must pass by with suspicion. But that affair with the mink changed my feelings a bit. Koskomenos' mate might lay her eggs like a reptile, but she could defend them like any bird hero. So I took to watching more carefully; which is the only way to get acquainted. The first thing I noticed about the birds--an observation confirmed later on many waters--was that each pair of kingfishers have their own particular pools, over which they exercise unquestioned lordship. There may be a dozen pairs of birds on a single stream; but, so far as I have been able to observe, each family has a certain stretch of water on which no other kingfishers are allowed to fish. They may pass up and down freely, but they never stop at the minnow pools; they are caught watching near them, they are promptly driven out by the rightful owners. The same thing is true on the lake shores. Whether there is some secret understanding and partition among them, or whether (which is more likely) their right consists in discovery or first arrival, there is no means of knowing. A curious thing, in this connection, is that while a kingfisher will allow none of his kind to poach on his preserves, he lives at peace with the brood of sheldrakes that occupy the same stretch of river. And the sheldrake eats a dozen fish to his one. The same thing is noticeable among the sheldrakes also, namely, that each pair, or rather each mother and her brood, have their own piece of lake or river on which no others are allowed to fish. The male sheldrakes meanwhile are far away, fishing on their own waters. I had not half settled this matter of the division of trout streams when another observation came, which was utterly unexpected. Koskomenos, half reptile though he seem, not only recognizes riparian rights, but he is also capable of friendship--and that, too, for a moody prowler of the wilderness whom no one else cares anything about. Here is the proof. I was out in my canoe alone looking for a loon's nest, one midsummer day, when the fresh trail of a bull caribou drew me to shore. The trail led straight from the water to a broad alder belt, beyond which, on the hillside, I might find the big brute loafing his time away till evening should come, and watch him to see what he would do with himself. As I turned shoreward a kingfisher sounded his rattle and came darting across the mouth of the bay where Hukweem the loon had hidden her two eggs. I watched him, admiring the rippling sweep of his flight, like the run of a cat's-paw breeze across a sleeping lake, and the clear blue of his crest against the deeper blue of summer sky. Under him his reflection rippled along, like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill first--plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief instant; the ripples gathered and began to dance over the spot where Koskomenos had gone down, when they were scattered rudely again as he burst out among them with his fish. He swept back to the stub whence he had come, chuckling on the way. There he whacked his fish soundly on the wood, threw his head back, and through the glass I saw the tail of a minnow wriggling slowly down the road that has for him no turning. Then I took up the caribou trail. I had gone nearly through the alders, following the course of a little brook and stealing along without a sound, when behind me I heard the kingfisher coming above the alders, rattling as if possessed, klrrr, klrrr, klrrr-ik-ik-ik! On the instant there was a heavy plunge and splash just ahead, and the swift rush of some large animal up the hillside. Over me poised the kingfisher, looking down first at me, then ahead at the unknown beast, till the crashing ceased in a faint rustle far away, when he swept back to his fishing-stub, clacking and chuckling immoderately. I pushed cautiously ahead and came presently to a beautiful pool below a rock, where the hillside shelved gently towards the alders. From the numerous tracks and the look of the place, I knew instantly that I had stumbled upon a bear's bathing pool. The water was still troubled and muddy; huge tracks, all soppy and broken, led up the hillside in big jumps; the moss was torn, the underbrush spattered with shining water drops. "No room for doubt here," I thought; "Mooween was asleep in this pool, and the kingfisher woke him up--but why? and did he do it on purpose?" I remembered suddenly a record in an old notebook, which reads: "Sugarloaf Lake, 26 July.--Tried to stalk a bear this noon. No luck. He was nosing alongshore and I had a perfect chance; but a kingfisher scared him." I began to wonder how the rattle of a kingfisher, which is one of the commonest sounds on wilderness waters, could scare a bear, who knows all the sounds of the wilderness perfectly. Perhaps Koskomenos has an alarm note and uses it for a friend in time of need, as gulls go out of their way to alarm a flock of sleeping ducks when danger is approaching. Here was a new trait, a touch of the human in this unknown, clattering suspect of the fishing streams. I resolved to watch him with keener interest. Somewhere above me, deep in the tangle of the summer wilderness, Mooween stood watching his back track, eyes, ears, and nose alert to discover what the creature was who dared frighten him out of his noonday bath. It would be senseless to attempt to surprise him now; besides, I had no weapon of any kind.--"To-morrow, about this time, I shall be coming back; then look out, Mooween," I thought as I marked the place and stole away to my canoe. But the next day when I came to the place, creeping along the upper edge of the alders so as to make no noise, the pool was clear and quiet, as if nothing but the little trout that hid under the foam bubbles had ever disturbed its peace. Koskomenos was clattering about the bay below as usual. Spite of my precaution he had seen me enter the alders; but he gave me no attention whatever. He went on with his fishing as if he knew perfectly that the bear had deserted his bathing pool. It was nearly a month before I again camped on the beautiful lake. Summer was gone. All her warmth and more than her fragrant beauty still lingered on forest and river; but the drowsiness had gone from the atmosphere, and the haze had crept into it. Here and there birches and maples flung out their gorgeous banners of autumn over the silent water. A tingle came into the evening air; the lake's breath lay heavy and white in the twilight stillness; birds and beasts became suddenly changed as they entered the brief period of sport and of full feeding. I was drifting about a reedy bay (the same bay in which the almost forgotten kingfisher had cheated me out of my bear, after eating a minnow that my paddle had routed out for him) shooting frogs for my table with a pocket rifle. How different it was here, I reflected, from the woods about home. There the game was already harried; the report of a gun set every living creature skulking. Here the crack of my little rifle was no more heeded than the plunge of a fish-hawk, or the groaning of a burdened elm bough. A score of fat woodcock lay unheeding in that bit of alder tangle yonder, the ground bored like a colander after their night's feeding. Up on the burned hillside the partridges said, quit, quit! when I appeared, and jumped to a tree and craned their necks to see what I was. The black ducks skulked in the reeds. They were full-grown now and strong of wing, but the early hiding habit was not yet broken up by shooting. They would glide through the sedges, and double the bogs, and crouch in a tangle till the canoe was almost upon them, when with a rush and a frightened hark-ark! they shot into the air and away to the river. The mink, changing from brown to black, gave up his nest-robbing for honest hunting, undismayed by trap or deadfall; and up in the inlet I could see grassy domes rising above the bronze and gold of the marsh, where Musquash was building thick and high for winter cold and spring floods. Truly it was good to be here, and to enter for a brief hour into the shy, wild but unharried life of the wood folk. A big bullfrog showed his head among the lily pads, and the little rifle, unmindful of the joys of an unharried existence, rose slowly to its place. My eye was glancing along the sights when a sudden movement in the alders on the shore, above and beyond the unconscious head of Chigwooltz the frog, spared him for a little season to his lily pads and his minnow hunting. At the same moment a kingfisher went rattling by to his old perch over the minnow pool. The alders swayed again as if struck; a huge bear lumbered out of them to the shore, with a disgruntled woof! at some twig that had switched his ear too sharply. I slid lower in the canoe till only my head and shoulders were visible. Mooween went nosing along-shore till something--a dead fish or a mussel bed--touched his appetite, when he stopped and began feeding, scarcely two hundred yards away. I reached first for my heavy rifle, then for the paddle, and cautiously "fanned" the canoe towards shore till an old stump on the point covered my approach. Then the little bark jumped forward as if alive. But I had scarcely started when--klrrrr! klrrr! ik-ik--ik! Over my head swept Koskomenos with a rush of wings and an alarm cry that spoke only of haste and danger. I had a glimpse of the bear as he shot into the alders, as if thrown by a catapult; the kingfisher wheeled in a great rattling circle about the canoe before he pitched upon the old stump, jerking his tail and clattering in great excitement. I swung noiselessly out into the lake, where I could watch the alders. They were all still for a space of ten minutes; but Mooween was there, I knew, sniffing and listening. Then a great snake seemed to be wriggling through the bushes, making no sound, but showing a wavy line of quivering tops as he went. Down the shore a little way was a higher point, with a fallen tree that commanded a view of half the lake. I had stood there a few days before, while watching to determine the air paths and lines of flight that sheldrakes use in passing up and down the lake,--for birds have runways, or rather flyways, just as foxes do. Mooween evidently knew the spot; the alders showed that he was heading straight for it, to look out on the lake and see what the alarm was about. As yet he had no idea what peril had threatened him; though, like all wild creatures, he had obeyed the first clang of a danger note on the instant. Not a creature in the woods, from Mooween down to Tookhees the wood mouse, but has learned from experience that, in matters of this kind, it is well to jump to cover first and investigate afterwards. I paddled swiftly to the point, landed and crept to a rock from which I could just see the fallen tree. Mooween was coming. "My bear this time," I thought, as a twig snapped faintly. Then Koskomenos swept into the woods, hovering over the brush near the butt of the old tree, looking down and rattling--klrrrik, clear out! klrrr-ik, clear out! There was a heavy rush, such as a bear always makes when alarmed; Koskomenos swept back to his perch; and I sought the shore, half inclined to make my next hunting more even-chanced by disposing of one meddlesome factor. "You wretched, noisy, clattering meddler!" I muttered, the front sight of my rifle resting fair on the blue back of Koskomenos, "that is the third time you have spoiled my shot, and you won't have another chance.--But wait; who is the meddler here?" Slowly the bent finger relaxed on the trigger. A loon went floating by the point, all unconscious of danger, with a rippling wake that sent silver reflections glinting across the lake's deep blue. Far overhead soared an eagle, breeze-borne in wide circles, looking down on his own wide domain, unheeding the man's intrusion. Nearer, a red squirrel barked down his resentment from a giant spruce trunk. Down on my left a heavy splash and a wild, free tumult of quacking told where the black ducks were coming in, as they had done, undisturbed, for generations. Behind me a long roll echoed through the woods--some young cock partridge, whom the warm sun had beguiled into drumming his spring love-call. From the mountain side a cow moose rolled back a startling answer. Close at hand, yet seeming miles away, a chipmunk was chunking sleepily in the sunshine, while a nest of young wood mice were calling their mother in the grass at my feet. And every wild sound did but deepen the vast, wondrous silence of the wilderness. "After all, what place has the roar of a rifle or the smell of sulphurous powder in the midst of all this blessed peace?" I asked half sadly. As if in answer, the kingfisher dropped with his musical plash, and swept back with exultant rattle to his watchtower.--"Go on with your clatter and your fishing. The wilderness and the solitary place shall still be glad, for you and Mooween, and the trout pools would be lonely without you. But I wish you knew that your life lay a moment ago in the bend of my finger, and that some one, besides the bear, appreciates your brave warning." Then I went back to the point to measure the tracks, and to estimate how big the bear was, and to console myself with the thought of how I would certainly have had him, if something had not interfered--which is the philosophy of all hunters since Esau. It was a few days later that the chance came of repaying Koskomenos with coals of fire. The lake surface was still warm; no storms nor frosts had cooled it. The big trout had risen from the deep places, but were not yet quickened enough to take my flies; so, trout hungry, I had gone trolling for them with a minnow. I had taken two good fish, and was moving slowly by the mouth of the bay, Simmo at the paddle, when a suspicious movement on the shore attracted my attention. I passed the line to Simmo, the better to use my glasses, and was scanning the alders sharply, when a cry of wonder came from the Indian. "O bah cosh, see! das second time I catchum, Koskomenos." And there, twenty feet above the lake, a young kingfisher--one of Koskomenos' frowzy-headed, wild-eyed-youngsters--was whirling wildly at the end of my line. He had seen the minnow trailing a hundred feet astern and, with more hunger than discretion, had swooped for it promptly. Simmo, feeling the tug but seeing nothing behind him, had struck promptly, and the hook went home. I seized the line and began to pull in gently. The young kingfisher came most unwillingly, with a continuous clatter of protest that speedily brought Koskomenos and his mate, and two or three of the captive's brethren, in a wild, clamoring about the canoe. They showed no lack of courage, but swooped again and again at the line, and even at the man who held it. In a moment I had the youngster in my hand, and had disengaged the hook. He was not hurt at all, but terribly frightened; so I held him a little while, enjoying the excitement of the others, whom the captive's alarm rattle kept circling wildly about the canoe. It was noteworthy that not another bird heeded the cry or came near. Even in distress they refused to recognize the outcast. Then, as Koskomenos hovered on quivering wings just over my head, I tossed the captive close up beside him. "There, Koskomenos, take your young chuckle-head, and teach him better wisdom. Next time you see me stalking a bear, please go on with your fishing." But there was no note of gratitude in the noisy babel that swept up the bay after the kingfishers. When I saw them again, they were sitting on a dead branch, five of them in a row, chuckling and clattering all at once, unmindful of the minnows that played beneath them. I have no doubt that, in their own way, they were telling each other all about it. MEEKO THE MISCHIEF-MAKER There is a curious Indian legend about Meeko the red squirrel--the Mischief-Maker, as the Milicetes call him--which is also an excellent commentary upon his character. Simmo told it to me, one day, when we had caught Meeko coming out of a woodpecker's hole with the last of a brood of fledgelings in his mouth, chuckling to himself over his hunting. Long ago, in the days when Clote Scarpe ruled the animals, Meeko was much larger than he is now, large as Mooween the bear. But his temper was so fierce, and his disposition so altogether bad that all the wood folk were threatened with destruction. Meeko killed right and left with the temper of a weasel, who kills from pure lust of blood. So Clote Scarpe, to save the little woods-people, made Meeko smaller--small as he is now. Unfortunately, Clote Scarpe forgot Meeko's disposition; that remained as big and as bad as before. So now Meeko goes about the woods with a small body and a big temper, barking, scolding, quarreling and, since he cannot destroy in his rage as before, setting other animals by the ears to destroy each other. When you have listened to Meeko's scolding for a season, and have seen him going from nest to nest after innocent fledgelings; or creeping into the den of his big cousin, the beautiful gray squirrel, to kill the young; or driving away his little cousin, the chipmunk, to steal his hoarded nuts; or watching every fight that goes on in the woods, jeering and chuckling above it,--then you begin to understand the Indian legend. Spite of his evil ways, however, he is interesting and always unexpected. When you have watched the red squirrel that lives near your camp all summer, and think you know all about him, he does the queerest thing, good or bad, to upset all your theories and even the Indian legends about him. I remember one that greeted me, the first living thing in the great woods, as I ran my canoe ashore on a wilderness river. Meeko heard me coming. His bark sounded loudly, in a big spruce, above the dip of the paddles. As we turned shoreward, he ran down the tree in which he was, and out on a fallen log to meet us. I grasped a branch of the old log to steady the canoe and watched him curiously. He had never seen a man before; he barked, jeered, scolded, jerked his tail, whistled, did everything within his power to make me show my teeth and my disposition. Suddenly he grew excited--and when Meeko grows excited the woods are not big enough to hold him. He came nearer and nearer to my canoe till he leaped upon the gunwale and sat there chattering, as if he were Adjidaumo come back again and I were Hiawatha. All the while he had poured out a torrent of squirrel talk, but now his note changed; jeering and scolding and curiosity went out of it; something else crept in. I began to feel, somehow, that he was trying to make me understand something, and found me very stupid about it. I began to talk quietly, calling him a rattle-head and a disturber of the peace. At the first sound of my voice he listened with intense curiosity, then leaped to the log, ran the length of it, jumped down and began to dig furiously among the moss and dead leaves. Every moment or two he would stop, and jump to the log to see if I were watching him. Presently he ran to my canoe, sprang upon the gunwale, jumped back again, and ran along the log as before to where he had been digging. He did it again, looking back at me and saying plainly: "Come here; come and look." I stepped out of the canoe to the old log, whereupon Meeko went off into a fit of terrible excitement.--I was bigger than he expected; I had only two legs; kut-e-k'chuck, kut-e-k'chuck! whit, whit, whit, kut-e-k'chuck! I stood where I was until he got over his excitement. Then he came towards me, and led me along the log, with much chuckling and jabbering, to the hole in the leaves where he had been digging. When I bent over it he sprang to a spruce trunk, on a level with my head, fairly bursting with excitement, but watching me with intensest interest. In the hole I found a small lizard, one of the rare kind that lives under logs and loves the dusk. He had been bitten through the back and disabled. He could still use legs, tail and head feebly, but could not run away. When I picked him up and held him in my hand, Meeko came closer with loud-voiced curiosity, longing to leap to my hand and claim his own, but held back by fear.--"What is it? He's mine; I found him. What is it?" he barked, jumping about as if bewitched. Two curiosities, the lizard and the man, were almost too much for him. I never saw a squirrel more excited. He had evidently found the lizard by accident, bit him to keep him still, and then, astonished by the rare find, hid him away where he could dig him out and watch him at leisure. I put the lizard back into the hole and covered him with leaves; then went to unloading my canoe. Meeko watched me closely. And the moment I was gone he dug away the leaves, took his treasure out, watched it with wide bright eyes, bit it once more to keep it still, and covered it up again carefully. Then he came chuckling along to where I was putting up my tent. In a week he owned the camp, coming and going at his own will, stealing my provisions when I forgot to feed him, and scolding me roundly at every irregular occurrence. He was an early riser and insisted on my conforming to the custom. Every morning he would leap at daylight from a fir tip to my ridgepole, run it along to the front and sit there, barking and whistling, until I put my head out of my door, or until Simmo came along with his axe. Of Simmo and his axe Meeko had a mortal dread, which I could not understand till one day when I paddled silently back to camp and, instead of coming up the path, sat idly in my canoe watching the Indian, who had broken his one pipe and now sat making another out of a chunk of black alder and a length of nanny bush. Simmo was as interesting to watch, in his way, as any of the wood folk. Presently Meeko came down, chattering his curiosity at seeing the Indian so still and so occupied. A red squirrel is always unhappy unless he knows all about everything. He watched from the nearest tree for a while, but could not make up his mind what was doing. Then he came down on the ground and advanced a foot at a time, jumping up continually but coming down in the same spot, barking to make Simmo turn his head and show his hand. Simmo watched out of the corner of his eye until Meeko was near a solitary tree which stood in the middle of the camp ground, when he jumped up suddenly and rushed at the squirrel, who sprang to the tree and ran to a branch out of reach, snickering and jeering. Simmo took his axe deliberately and swung it mightily at the foot of the tree, as if to chop it down; only he hit the trunk with the head, not the blade of his weapon. At the first blow, which made his toes tingle, Meeko stopped jeering and ran higher. Simmo swung again and Meeko went up another notch. So it went on, Simmo looking up intently to see the effect and Meeko running higher after each blow, until the tiptop was reached. Then Simmo gave a mighty whack; the squirrel leaped far out and came to the ground, sixty feet below; picked himself up, none the worse for his leap, and rushed scolding away to his nest. Then Simmo said umpfh! like a bear, and went back to his pipemaking. He had not smiled nor relaxed the intent expression of his face during the whole little comedy. I found out afterwards that making Meeko jump from a tree top is one of the few diversions of Indian children. I tried it myself many times with many squirrels, and found to my astonishment that a jump from any height, however great, is no concern to a squirrel, red or gray. They have a way of flattening the body and bushy tail against the air, which breaks their fall. Their bodies, and especially their bushy tails, have a curious tremulous motion, like the quiver of wings, as they come down. The flying squirrel's sailing down from a tree top to another tree, fifty feet away, is but an exaggeration, due to the membrane connecting the fore and hind legs, of what all squirrels practice continually. I have seen a red squirrel land lightly after jumping from an enormous height, and run away as if nothing unusual had happened. But though I have watched them often, I have never seen a squirrel do this except when compelled to do so. When chased by a weasel or a marten, or when the axe beats against the trunk below--either because the vibration hurts their feet, or else they fear the tree is being cut down--they use the strange gift to save their lives. But I fancy it is a breathless experience, and they never try it for fun, though I have seen them do all sorts of risky stumps in leaping from branch to branch. It is a curious fact that, though a squirrel leaps from a great height without hesitation, it is practically impossible to make him take a jump of a few feet to the ground. Probably the upward rush of air, caused by falling a long distance, is necessary to flatten the body enough to make him land lightly. It would be interesting to know whether the raccoon also, a large, heavy animal, has the same way of breaking his fall when he jumps from a height. One bright moonlight night, when I ran ahead of the dogs, I saw a big coon leap from a tree to the ground, a distance of some thirty or forty feet. The dogs had treed him in an evergreen, and he left them howling below while he stole silently from branch to branch until a good distance away, when to save time he leaped to the ground. He struck with a heavy thump, but ran on uninjured as swiftly as before, and gave the dogs a long run before they treed him again. The sole of a coon's foot is padded thick with fat and gristle, so that it must feel like landing on springs when he jumps; but I suspect that he also knows the squirrel trick of flattening his body and tail against the air so as to fall lightly. The chipmunk seems to be the only one of the squirrel family in whom this gift is wanting. Possibly he has it also, if the need ever comes. I fancy, however, that he would fare badly if compelled to jump from a spruce top, for his body is heavy and his tail small from long living on the ground; all of which seems to indicate that the tree-squirrel's bushy tail is given him, not for ornament, but to aid his passage from branch to branch, and to break his fall when he comes down from a height. By way of contrast with Meeko, you may try a curious trick on the chipmunk. It is not easy to get him into a tree; he prefers a log or an old wall when frightened; and he is seldom more than two or three jumps from his den. But watch him as he goes from his garner to the grove where the acorns are, or to the field where his winter corn is ripening. Put yourself near his path (he always follows the same one to and fro) where there is no refuge close at hand. Then, as he comes along, rush at him suddenly and he will take to the nearest tree in his alarm. When he recovers from his fright--which is soon over; for he is the most trustful of squirrels and looks down at you with interest, never questioning your motives--take a stick and begin to tap the tree softly. The more slow and rhythmical your tattoo the sooner he is charmed. Presently he comes down closer and closer, his eyes filled with strange wonder. More than once I have had a chipmunk come to my hand and rest upon it, looking everywhere for the queer sound that brought him down, forgetting fright and cornfield and coming winter in his bright curiosity. Meeko is a bird of another color. He never trusts you nor anybody else fully, and his curiosity is generally of the vulgar, selfish kind. When the autumn woods are busy places, and wings flutter and little feet go pattering everywhere after winter supplies, he also begins garnering, remembering the hungry days of last winter. But he is always more curious to see what others are doing than to fill his own bins. He seldom trusts to one storehouse--he is too suspicious for that--but hides his things in twenty different places; some shagbarks in the old wall, a handful of acorns in a hollow tree, an ear of corn under the eaves of the old barn, a pint of chestnuts scattered about in the trees, some in crevices in the bark, some in a pine crotch covered carefully with needles, and one or two stuck firmly into the splinters of every broken branch that is not too conspicuous. But he never gathers much at a time. The moment he sees anybody else gathering he forgets his own work and goes spying to see where others are hiding their store. The little chipmunk, who knows his thieving and his devices, always makes one turn, at least, in the tunnel to his den too small for Meeko to follow. He sees a blue jay flitting through the woods, and knows by his unusual silence that he is hiding things. Meeko follows after him, stopping all his jabber and stealing from tree to tree, watching patiently, for hours it need be, until he knows that Deedeeaskh is gathering corn from a certain field. Then he watches the line of flight, like a bee hunter, and sees Deedeeaskh disappear twice by an oak on the wood's edge, a hundred yards away. Meeko rushes away at a headlong pace and hides himself in the oak. There he traces the jay's line of flight a little farther into the woods; sees the unconscious thief disappear by an old pine. Meeko hides in the pine, and so traces the jay straight to one of his storehouses. Sometimes Meeko is so elated over the discovery that, with all the fields laden with food, he cannot wait for winter. When the jay goes away Meeko falls to eating or to carrying away his store. More often he marks the spot and goes away silently. When he is hungry he will carry off Deedeeaskh's corn before touching his own. Once I saw the tables turned in a most interesting fashion. Deedeeaskh is as big a thief in his way as is Meeko, and also as vile a nest-robber. The red squirrel had found a hoard of chestnuts--small fruit, but sweet and good--and was hiding it away. Part of it he stored in a hollow under the stub of a broken branch, twenty feet from the ground, so near the source of supply that no one would ever think of looking for it there. I was hidden away in a thicket when I discovered him at his work quite by accident. He seldom came twice to the same spot, but went off to his other storehouses in succession. After an unusually long absence, when I was expecting him every moment, a blue jay came stealing into the tree, spying and sneaking about, as if a nest of fresh thrush's eggs were somewhere near. He smelled a mouse evidently, for after a moment's spying he hid himself away in the tree top, close up against the trunk. Presently Meeko came back, with his face bulging as if he had toothache, uncovered his store, emptied in the half dozen chestnuts from his cheek pockets and covered them all up again. The moment he was gone the blue jay went straight to the spot, seized a mouthful of nuts and flew swiftly away. He made three trips before the squirrel came back. Meeko in his hurry never noticed the loss, but emptied his pockets and was off to the chestnut tree again. When he returned, the jay in his eagerness had disturbed the leaves which covered the hidden store. Meeko noticed it and was all suspicion in an instant. He whipped off the covering and stood staring down intently into the garner, evidently trying to compute the number he had brought and the number that were there. Then a terrible scolding began, a scolding that was broken short off when a distant screaming of jays came floating through the woods. Meeko covered his store hurriedly, ran along a limb and leaped to the next tree, where he hid in a knot hole, just his eyes visible, watching his garner keenly out of the darkness. Meeko, has no patience. Three or four times he showed himself nervously. Fortunately for me, the jay had found some excitement to keep his rattle-brain busy for a moment. A flash of blue, and he came stealing back, just as Meeko had settled himself for more watching. After much pecking and listening the jay flew down to the storehouse, and Meeko, unable to contain himself a moment longer at sight of the thief, jumped out of his hiding and came rushing along the limb, hurling threats and vituperation ahead of him. The jay fluttered off, screaming derision. Meeko followed, hurling more abuse, but soon gave up the chase and came back to his chestnuts. It was curious to watch him there, sitting motionless and intent, his nose close down to his treasure, trying to compute his loss. Then he stuffed his cheeks full and began carrying his hoard off to another hiding place. The autumn woods are full of such little comedies. Jays, crows, and squirrels are all hiding away winter's supplies, and no matter how great the abundance, not one of them can resist the temptation to steal or to break into another's garner. Meeko is a poor provider; he would much rather live on buds and bark and apple seeds and fir cones, and what he can steal from others in the winter, than bother himself with laying up supplies of his own. When the spring comes he goes a-hunting, and is for a season the most villainous of nest-robbers. Every bird in the woods then hates him, takes a jab at him, and cries thief, thief! wherever he goes. On a trout brook once I had a curious sense of comradeship with Meeko. It was in the early spring, when all the wild things make holiday, and man goes a-fishing. Near the brook a red squirrel had tapped a maple tree with his teeth and was tasting the sweet sap as it came up scantily. Seeing him and remembering my own boyhood, I cut a little hollow into the bark of a black birch tree and, when it brimmed full, drank the sap with immense satisfaction. Meeko stopped his own drinking to watch, then to scold and denounce me roundly. While my cup was filling again I went down to the brook and took a wary old trout from his den under the end of a log, where the foam bubbles were dancing merrily. When I went back, thirsting for another sweet draught from the same spring, Meeko had emptied it to the last drop and had his nose down in the bottom of my cup, catching the sap as it welled up with an abundance that must have surprised him. When I went away quietly he followed me through the wood to the pool at the edge of the meadow, to see what I would do next. Wherever you go in the wilderness you find Meeko ahead of you, and all the best camping grounds preempted by him. Even on the islands he seems to own the prettiest spots, and disputes mightily your right to stay there; though he is generally glad enough of your company to share his loneliness, and shows it plainly. Once I found one living all by himself on an island in the middle of a wilderness lake, with no company whatever except a family of mink, who are his enemies. He had probably crossed on the ice in the late spring, and while he was busy here and there with his explorations the ice broke up, cutting off his retreat to the mainland, which was too far away for his swimming. So he was a prisoner for the long summer, and welcomed me gladly to share his exile. He was the only red squirrel I ever met that never scolded me roundly at least once a day. His loneliness had made him quite tame. Most of the time he lived within sight of my tent door. Not even Simmo's axe, though it made him jump twice from the top of a spruce, could keep him long away. He had twenty ways of getting up an excitement, and whenever he barked out in the woods I knew that it was simply to call me to see his discovery,--a new nest, a loon that swam up close, a thieving muskrat, a hawk that rested on a dead stub, the mink family eating my fish heads,--and when I stole out to see what it was, he would run ahead, barking and chuckling at having some one to share his interests with him. In such places squirrels use the ice for occasional journeys to the mainland. Sometimes also, when the waters are calm, they swim over. Hunters have told me that when the breeze is fair they make use of a floating bit of wood, sitting tip straight with tail curled over their backs, making a sail of their bodies--just as an Indian, with no knowledge of sailing whatever, puts a spruce bush in a bow of his canoe and lets the wind do his work for him. That would be the sight of a lifetime, to see Meeko sailing his boat; but I have no doubt whatever that it is true. The only red squirrel that I ever saw in the water fell in by accident. He swam rapidly to a floating board, shook himself, sat up with his tail raised along his back, and began to dry himself. After a little he saw that the slight breeze was setting him farther from shore. He began to chatter excitedly, and changed his position two or three times, evidently trying to catch the wind right. Finding that it was of no use, he plunged in again and swam easily to land. That he lives and thrives in the wilderness, spite of enemies and hunger and winter cold, is a tribute to his wits. He never hibernates, except in severe storms, when for a few days he lies close in his den. Hawks and owls and weasels and martens hunt him continually; yet he more than holds his own in the big woods, which would lose some of their charm if their vast silences were not sometimes broken by his petty scoldings. As with most wild creatures, the squirrels that live in touch with civilization are much keener witted than their wilderness brethren. The most interesting one I ever knew lived in the trees just outside my dormitory window, in a New England college town. He was the patriarch of a large family, and the greatest thief and rascal among them. I speak of the family, but, so far as I could see, there was very little family life. Each one shifted for himself the moment he was big enough, and stole from all the others indiscriminately. It was while watching these squirrels that I discovered first that they have regular paths among the trees, as well defined as our own highways. Not only has each squirrel his own private paths and ways, but all the squirrels follow certain courses along the branches in going from one tree to another. Even the strange squirrels, which ventured at times into the grove, followed these highways as if they had been used to them all their lives. On a recent visit to the old dormitory I watched the squirrels for a while, and found that they used exactly the same paths,--up the trunk of a big oak to a certain boss, along a branch to a certain crook, a jump to a linden twig and so on, making use of one of the highways that I had watched them following ten years before. Yet this course was not the shortest between two points, and there were a hundred other branches that they might have used. I had the good fortune one morning to see Meeko, the patriarch, make a new path for himself that none of the others ever followed so long as I was in the dormitory. He had a home den over a hallway, and a hiding place for acorns in a hollow linden. Between the two was a driveway; but though the branches arched over it from either side, the jump was too great for him to take. A hundred times I saw him run out on the farthest oak twig and look across longingly at the maple that swayed on the other side. It was perhaps three feet away, with no branches beneath to seize and break his fall in case he missed his spring, altogether too much for a red squirrel to attempt. He would rush out as if determined to try it, time after time, but always his courage failed him; he had to go down the oak trunk and cross the driveway on the ground, where numberless straying dogs were always ready to chase him. One morning I saw him run twice in succession at the jump, only to turn back. But the air was keen and bracing, and he felt its inspiration. He drew farther back, then came rushing along the oak branch and, before he had time to be afraid, hurled himself across the chasm. He landed fairly on the maple twig, with several inches to spare, and hung there with claws and teeth, swaying up and down gloriously. Then, chattering his delight at himself, he ran down the maple, back across the driveway, and tried the jump three times in succession to be sure he could do it. After that he sprang across frequently. But I noticed that whenever the branches were wet with rain or sleet he never attempted it; and he never tried the return jump, which was uphill, and which he seemed to know by instinct was too much to attempt. When I began feeding him, in the cold winter days, he showed me many curious bits of his life. First I put some nuts near the top of an old well, among the stones of which he used to hide things in the autumn. Long after he had eaten all his store he used to come and search the crannies among the stones to see if perchance he had overlooked any trifles. When he found a handful of shagbarks, one morning, in a hole only a foot below the surface, his astonishment knew no bounds. His first thought was that he had forgotten them all these hungry days, and he promptly ate the biggest of the store within sight, a thing I never saw a squirrel do before. His second thought--I could see it in his changed attitude, his sudden creepings and hidings--was that some other squirrel had hidden them there since his last visit. Whereupon he carried them all off and hid them in a broken linden branch. Then I tossed him peanuts, throwing them first far away, then nearer and nearer till he would come to my window-sill. And when I woke one morning he was sitting there looking in at the window, waiting for me to get up and bring his breakfast. In a week he had showed me all his hiding places. The most interesting of these was over a roofed piazza in a building near by. He had gnawed a hole under the eaves, where it would not be noticed, and lived there in solitary grandeur during stormy days in a den four by eight feet, and rain-proof. In one corner was a bushel of corncobs, some of them two or three years old, which he had stolen from a cornfield near by in the early autumn mornings. With characteristic improvidence he had fallen to eating the corn while yet there was plenty more to be gathered. In consequence he was hungry before February was half over, and living by his wits, like his brother of the wilderness. The other squirrels soon noticed his journeys to my window, and presently they too came for their share. Spite of his fury in driving them away, they managed in twenty ways to circumvent him. It was most interesting, while he sat on my window-sill eating peanuts, to see the nose and eyes of another squirrel peering over the crotch of the nearest tree, watching the proceedings from his hiding place. Then I would give Meeko five or six peanuts at once. Instantly the old hiding instinct would come back; he would start away, taking as much of his store as he could carry with him. The moment he was gone, out would come a squirrel--sometimes two or three from their concealment--and carry off all the peanuts that remained. Meeko's wrath when he returned was most comical. The Indian legend is true as gospel to squirrel nature. If he returned unexpectedly and caught one of the intruders, there was always a furious chase and a deal of scolding and squirrel jabber before peace was restored and the peanuts eaten. Once, when he had hidden a dozen or more nuts in the broken linden branch, a very small squirrel came prowling along and discovered the store. In an instant he was all alertness, peeking, listening, exploring, till quite sure that the coast was clear, when he rushed away headlong with a mouthful. He did not return that day; but the next morning early I saw him do the same thing. An hour later Meeko appeared and, finding nothing on the window-sill, went to the linden. Half his store of yesterday was gone. Curiously enough, he did not suspect at first that they were stolen. Meeko is always quite sure that nobody knows his secrets. He searched the tree over, went to his other hiding places, came back, counted his peanuts, then searched the ground beneath, thinking, no doubt, the wind must have blown them out--all this before he had tasted a peanut of those that remained. Slowly it dawned upon him that he had been robbed and there was an outburst of wrath. But instead of carrying what were left to another place, he left them where they were, still without eating, and hid himself near by to watch. I neglected a lecture in philosophy to see the proceedings, but nothing happened. Meeko's patience soon gave out, or else he grew hungry, for he ate two or three of his scanty supply of peanuts, scolding and threatening to himself. But he left the rest carefully where they were. Two or three times that day I saw him sneaking about, keeping a sharp eye on the linden; but the little thief was watching too, and kept out of the way. Early next morning a great hubbub rose outside my window, and I jumped up to see what was going on. Little Thief had come back, and Big Thief caught him in the act of robbery. Away they went pell-mell, jabbering like a flock of blackbirds, along a linden branch, through two maples, across a driveway, and up a big elm where Little Thief whisked out of sight into a knot hole. After him came Big Thief, swearing vengeance. But the knot hole was too small; he couldn't get in. Twist and turn and push and threaten as he would, he could not get in; and Little Thief sat just inside jeering maliciously. Meeko gave it up after a while and went off, nursing his wrath. But ten feet from the tree a thought struck him. He rushed away out of sight, making a great noise, then came back quietly and hid under an eave where he could watch the knot hole. Presently Little Thief came out, rubbed his eyes, and looked all about. Through my glass I could see Meeko blinking and twitching under the dark eave, trying to control his anger. Little Thief ventured to a branch a few feet away from his refuge, and Big Thief, unable to hold himself a moment longer, rushed out, firing a volley of direful threats ahead of him. In a flash Little Thief was back in his knot hole and the comedy began all over again. I never saw how it ended; but for a day or two there was an unusual amount of chasing and scolding going on outside my windows. It was this same big squirrel that first showed me a curious trick of biding. Whenever he found a handful of nuts on my windowsill and suspected that other squirrels were watching to share the bounty, he had a way of hiding them all very rapidly. He would never carry them direct to his various garners; first, because these were too far away, and the other squirrels would steal while he was gone; second, because, with hungry eyes watching somewhere, they might follow and find out where he habitually kept things. So he used to bide them all on the ground, under the leaves in autumn, under snow in winter, and all within sight of the window-sill, where he could watch the store as he hurried to and fro. Then, at his leisure, he would dig them up and carry them off to his den, two cheekfuls at a time. Each nut was hidden by itself; never so much as two in one spot. For a long time it puzzled me to know how he remembered so many places. I noticed first that he would always start from a certain point, a tree or a stone, with his burden. When it was hidden he would come back by the shortest route to the windowsill; but with his new mouthful he would always go first to the tree or stone he had selected, and from there search out a new hiding place. It was many days before I noticed that, starting from one fixed point, he generally worked toward another tree or stone in the distance. Then his secret was out; he hid things in a line. Next day he would come back, start from his fixed point and move slowly towards the distant one till his nose told him he was over a peanut, which he dug up and ate or carried away to his den. But he always seemed to distrust himself; for on hungry days he would go over two or three of his old lines in the hope of finding a mouthful that he had overlooked. This method was used only when he had a large supply to dispose of hurriedly, and not always then. Meeko is a careless fellow and soon forgets. When I gave him only a few to dispose of, he hid them helter-skelter among the leaves, forgetting some of them afterwards and enjoying the rare delight of stumbling upon them when he was hungriest--much like a child whom I saw once giving himself a sensation. He would throw his penny on the ground, go round the house, and saunter back with his hands in his pockets till he saw the penny, which he pounced upon with almost the joy of treasure-trove in the highway. Meeko made a sad end--a fate which he deserved well enough, but which I had to pity, spite of myself. When the spring came on, he went back to evil ways. Sap was sweet and buds were luscious with the first swelling of tender leaves; spring rains had washed out plenty of acorns in the crannies under the big oak, and there were fresh-roasted peanuts still at the corner window-sill within easy jump of a linden twig; but he took to watching the robins to see where they nested, and when the young were hatched he came no more to my window. Twice I saw him with fledgelings in his mouth; and I drove him day after day from a late clutch of robin's eggs that I could watch from my study. He had warnings enough. Once some students, who had been friendly all winter, stoned him out of a tree where he was nestrobbing; once the sparrows caught him in their nest under the high eaves, and knocked him off promptly. A twig upon which he caught in falling saved his life undoubtedly, for the sparrows were after him and he barely escaped into a knot hole, leaving the angry horde clamoring outside. But nothing could reform him. One morning at daylight a great crying of robins brought me to the window. Meeko was running along a limb, the first of the fledgelings in his mouth. After him were five or six robins whom the parents' danger cry had brought to the rescue. They were all excited and tremendously in earnest. They cried thief! thief! and swooped at him like hawks. Their cries speedily brought a score of other birds, some to watch, others to join in the punishment. Meeko dropped the young bird and ran for his den; but a robin dashed recklessly in his face and knocked him fair from the tree. That and the fall of the fledgeling excited the birds more than ever. This thieving bird-eater was not invulnerable. A dozen rushed at him on the ground and left the marks of their beaks on his coat before he could reach the nearest tree. Again he rushed for his den, but wherever he turned now angry wings fluttered over him and beaks jabbed in his face. Raging but frightened, he sat up to snarl wickedly. Like a flash a robin hurled himself down, caught the squirrel just under his ear and knocked him again to the ground. Things began to look dark for Meeko. The birds grew bolder and angrier every minute. When he started to climb a tree he was hurled off twice ere he reached a crotch and drew himself down into it. He was safe there with his back against a big limb; they could not get at him from behind. But the angry clamor in front frightened him, and again he started for his place of refuge. His footing was unsteady now and his head dizzy from the blows he had received. Before he had gone half a limb's length he was again on the ground, with a dozen birds pecking at him as they swooped over. With his last strength he snapped viciously at his foes and rushed to the linden. My window was open, and he came creeping, hurrying towards it on the branch over which he had often capered so lightly in the winter days. Over him clamored the birds, forgetting all fear of me in their hatred of the nestrobber. A dozen times he was struck on the way, but at every blow he clung to the branch with claws and teeth, then staggered on doggedly, making no defense. His whole thought now was to reach the window-sill. At the place where he always jumped he stopped and began to sway, gripping the bark with his claws, trying to summon strength for the effort. He knew it was too much, but it was his last hope. At the instant of his spring a robin swooped in his face; another caught him a side blow in mid-air, and he fell heavily to the stones below.--Sic semper tyrannis! yelled the robins, scattering wildly as I ran down the steps to save him, if it were not too late. He died in my hands a moment later, with curious maliciousness nipping my finger sharply at the last gasp. He was the only squirrel of the lot who knew how to hide in a line; and never a one since his day has taken the jump from oak to maple over the driveway. THE OL' BEECH PA'TRIDGE Of all the wild birds that still haunt our remaining solitudes, the ruffed grouse--the pa'tridge of our younger days--is perhaps the wildest, the most alert, the most suggestive of the primeval wilderness that we have lost. You enter the woods from the hillside pasture, lounging a moment on the old gray fence to note the play of light and shadow on the birch bolls. Your eye lingers restfully on the wonderful mixture of soft colors that no brush has ever yet imitated, the rich old gold of autumn tapestries, the glimmering gray-green of the mouldering stump that the fungi have painted. What a giant that tree must have been, generations ago, in its days of strength; how puny the birches that now grow out of its roots! You remember the great canoe birches by the wilderness river, whiter than the little tent that nestled beneath them, their wide bark banners waving in the wind, soft as the flutter of owls' wings that swept among them, shadow-like, in the twilight. A vague regret steals over you that our own wilderness is gone, and with it most of the shy folk that loved its solitudes. Suddenly there is a rustle in the leaves. Something stirs by the old stump. A moment ago you thought it was only a brown root; now it runs, hides, draws itself erect--Kwit, kwit, kwit! and with a whirring rush of wings and a whirling eddy of dead leaves a grouse bursts up, and darts away like a blunt arrow, flint-tipped, gray-feathered, among the startled birch stems. As you follow softly to rout him out again, and to thrill and be startled by his unexpected rush, something of the Indian has come unbidden into your cautious tread. All regret for the wilderness is vanished; you are simply glad that so much wildness still remains to speak eloquently of the good old days. It is this element of unconquerable wildness in the grouse, coupled with a host of early, half-fearful impressions, that always sets my heart to beating, as to an old tune, whenever a partridge bursts away at my feet. I remember well a little child that used to steal away into the still woods, which drew him by an irresistible attraction while as yet their dim arches and quiet paths were full of mysteries and haunting terrors. Step by step the child would advance into the shadows, cautious as a wood mouse, timid as a rabbit. Suddenly a swift rustle and a thunderous rush of something from the ground that first set the child's heart to beating wildly, and then reached his heels in a fearful impulse which sent him rushing out of the woods, tumbling headlong over the old gray wall, and scampering halfway across the pasture before he dared halt from the terror behind. And then, at last, another impulse which always sent the child stealing back into the woods again, shy, alert, tense as a watching fox, to find out what the fearful thing was that could make such a commotion in the quiet woods. And when he found out at last--ah, that was a discovery beside which the panther's kittens are as nothing as I think of them. One day in the woods, near the spot where the awful thunder used to burst away, the child heard a cluck and a kwitkwit, and saw a beautiful bird dodging, gliding, halting, hiding in the underbrush, watching the child's every motion. And when he ran forward to put his cap over the bird, it burst away, and then--whirr! whirr! whirr! a whole covey of grouse roared up all about him. The terror of it weakened his legs so that he fell down in the eddying leaves and covered his ears. But this time he knew what it was at last, and in a moment he was up and running, not away, but fast as his little legs could carry him after the last bird that he saw hurtling away among the trees, with a birch branch that he had touched with his wings nodding good-by behind him. There is another association with this same bird that always gives an added thrill to the rush of his wings through the startled woods. It was in the old school by the cross-roads, one sleepy September afternoon. A class in spelling, big boys and little girls, toed a crack in front of the waster's desk. The rest of the school droned away on appointed tasks in the drowsy interlude. The fat boy slept openly on his arms; even the mischief-maker was quiet, thinking dreamily of summer days that were gone. Suddenly there was a terrific crash, a clattering tinkle of broken glass, a howl from a boy near the window. Twenty knees banged the desks beneath as twenty boys jumped. Then, before any of us had found his wits, Jimmy Jenkins, a red-headed boy whom no calamity could throw off his balance and from whom no opportunity ever got away free, had jumped over two forms and was down on the floor in the girls' aisle, gripping something between his knees-- "I've got him," he announced, with the air of a general. "Got what?" thundered the master. "Got a pa'tridge; he's an old buster," said Jimmy. And he straightened up, holding by the legs a fine cock partridge whose stiffening wings still beat his sides spasmodically. He had been scared-up in the neighboring woods, frightened by some hunter out of his native coverts. When he reached the unknown open places he was more frightened still and, as a frightened grouse always flies straight, he had driven like a bolt through the schoolhouse window, killing himself by the impact. Rule-of-three and cube root and the unmapped wilderness of partial payments have left but scant impression on one of those pupils, at least; but a bird that could wake up a drowsy schoolroom and bring out a living lesson, full of life and interest and the subtile call of the woods, from a drowsy teacher who studied law by night, but never his boys by day,--that was a bird to be respected. I have studied him with keener interest ever since. Yet however much you study the grouse, you learn little except how wild he is. Occasionally, when you are still in the woods and a grouse walks up to your hiding place, you get a fair glimpse and an idea or two; but he soon discovers you, and draws himself up straight as a string and watches you for five minutes without stirring or even winking. Then, outdone at his own game, he glides away. A rustle of little feet on leaves, a faint kwit-kwit with a question in it, and he is gone. Nor will he come back, like the fox, to watch from the other side and find out what you are. Civilization, in its first advances, is good to the grouse, providing him with an abundance of food and driving away his enemies. Grouse are always more numerous about settlements than in the wilderness. Unlike other birds, however, he grows wilder and wilder by nearness to men's dwellings. I suppose that is because the presence of man is so often accompanied by the rush of a dog and the report of a gun, and perhaps by the rip and sting of shot in his feathers as he darts away. Once, in the wilderness, when very hungry, I caught two partridges by slipping over their heads a string noose at the end of a pole. Here one might as well try to catch a bat in the twilight as to hope to snare one of our upland partridges by any such invention, or even to get near enough to meditate the attempt. But there was one grouse--and he the very wildest of all that I have ever met in the woods--who showed me unwittingly many bits of his life, and with whom I grew to be very well acquainted after a few seasons' watching. All the hunters of the village knew him well; and a half-dozen boys, who owned guns and were eager to join the hunters' ranks, had a shooting acquaintance with him. He was known far and wide as "the ol' beech pa'tridge." That he was old no one could deny who knew his ways and his devices; and he was frequently scared-up in a beech wood by a brook, a couple of miles out of the village. Spite of much learned discussion as to different varieties of grouse, due to marked variations in coloring, I think personally that we have but one variety, and that differences in color are due largely to the different surroundings in which they live. Of all birds the grouse is most invisible when quiet, his coloring blends so perfectly with the roots and leaves and tree stems among which he hides. This wonderful invisibility is increased by the fact that he changes color easily. He is darker in summer, lighter in winter, like the rabbit. When he lives in dark woods he becomes a glossy red-brown; and when his haunt is among the birches he is often a decided gray. This was certainly true of the old beech partridge. When he spread his tail wide and darted away among the beeches, his color blended so perfectly with the gray tree trunks that only a keen eye could separate him. And he knew every art of the dodger perfectly. When he rose there was scarcely a second of time before he had put a big tree between you and him, so as to cover his line of flight. I don't know how many times he had been shot at on the wing. Every hunter I knew had tried it many times; and every boy who roamed the woods in autumn had sought to pot him on the ground. But he never lost a feather; and he would never stand to a dog long enough for the most cunning of our craft to take his position. When a brood of young partridges hear a dog running in the woods, they generally flit to the lower branches of a tree and kwit-kwit at him curiously. They have not yet learned the difference between him and the fox, who is the ancient enemy of their kind, and whom their ancestors of the wilderness escaped and tantalized in the same way. But when it is an old bird that your setter is trailing, his actions are a curious mixture of cunning and fascination. As old Don draws to a point, the grouse pulls himself up rigidly by a stump and watches the dog. So both stand like statues; the dog held by the strange instinct which makes him point, lost to sight, sound and all things else save the smell in his nose, the grouse tense as a fiddlestring, every sense alert, watching the enemy whom he thinks to be fooled by his good hiding. For a few moments they are motionless; then the grouse skulks and glides to a better cover. As the strong scent fades from Don's nose, he breaks his point and follows. The grouse hears him and again hides by drawing himself up against a stump, where he is invisible; again Don stiffens into his point, one foot lifted, nose and tail in a straight line, as if he were frozen and could not move. So it goes on, now gliding through the coverts, now still as a stone, till the grouse discovers that so long as he is still the dog seems paralyzed, unable to move or feel. Then he draws himself up, braced against a root or a tree boll; and there they stand, within twenty feet of each other, never stirring, never winking, till the dog falls from exhaustion at the strain, or breaks it by leaping forward, or till the hunter's step on the leaves fills the grouse with a new terror that sends him rushing away through the October woods to deeper solitudes. Once, at noon, I saw Old Ben, a famous dog, draw to a perfect point. Just ahead, in a tangle of brown brakes, I could see the head and neck of a grouse watching the dog keenly. Old Ben's master, to test the splendid training of his dog, proposed lunch on the spot. We withdrew a little space and ate deliberately, watching the bird and the dog with an interest that grew keener and keener as the meal progressed, while Old Ben stood like a rock, and the grouse's eye shone steadily out of the tangle of brakes. Nor did either move so much as an eyelid while we ate, and Ben's master smoked his pipe with quiet confidence. At last, after a full hour, he whacked his pipe on his boot heel and rose to reach for his gun. That meant death for the grouse; but I owed him too much of keen enjoyment to see him cut down in swift flight. In the moment that the master's back was turned I hurled a knot at the tangle of brakes. The grouse burst away, and Old Ben, shaken out of his trance by the whirr of wings, dropped obediently to the charge and turned his head to say reproachfully with his eyes: "What in the world is the matter with you back there--didn't I hold him long enough?" The noble old fellow was trembling like a leaf after the long strain when I went up to him to pat his head and praise his steadiness, and share with him the better half of my lunch. But to this day Ben's master does not know what started the grouse so suddenly; and as he tells you about the incident will still say regretfully: "I ought to a-started jest a minute sooner, 'fore he got tired. Then I'd a had 'im." The old beech partridge, however, was a bird of a different mind. No dog ever stood him for more than a second; he had learned too well what the thing meant. The moment he heard the patter of a dog's feet on leaves he would run rapidly, and skulk and hide and run again, keeping dog and hunter on the move till he found the cover he wanted,--thick trees, or a tangle of wild grapevines,--when he would burst out on, the farther side. And no eye, however keen, could catch more than a glimpse of a gray tail before he was gone. Other grouse make short straight flights, and can be followed and found again; but he always drove away on strong wings for an incredible distance, and swerved far to right or left; so that it was a waste of time to follow him up. Before you found him he had rested his wings and was ready for another flight; and when you did find him he would shoot away like an arrow out of the top of a pine tree and give you never a glimpse of himself. He lived most of the time on a ridge behind the 'Fales place,' an abandoned farm on the east of the old post road. This was his middle range, a place of dense coverts, bullbrier thickets and sunny open spots among the ledges, where you might, with good-luck, find him on special days at any season. But he had all the migratory instincts of a Newfoundland caribou. In winter he moved south, with twenty other grouse, to the foot of the ridge, which dropped away into a succession of knolls and ravines and sunny, well-protected little valleys, where food was plenty. Here, fifty years ago, was the farm pasture; but now it had grown up everywhere with thickets and berry patches, and wild apple trees of the birds' planting. All the birds loved it in their season; quail nested on its edges; and you could kick a brown rabbit out of almost any of its decaying brush piles or hollow moss-grown logs. In the spring he crossed the ridge northward again, moving into the still dark woods, where he had two or three wives with as many broods of young partridges; all of whom, by the way, he regarded with astonishing indifference. Across the whole range--stealing silently out of the big woods, brawling along the foot of the ridge and singing through the old pasture--ran a brook that the old beech partridge seemed to love. A hundred times I started him from its banks. You had only to follow it any November morning before eight o'clock, and you would be sure to find him. But why he haunted it at this particular time and season I never found out. I used to wonder sometimes why I never saw him drink. Other birds had their regular drinking places and bathing pools there, and I frequently watched them from my hiding; but though I saw him many times, after I learned his haunts, he never touched the water. One early summer morning a possible explanation suggested itself. I was sitting quietly by the brook, on the edge of the big woods, waiting for a pool to grow quiet, out of which I had just taken a trout and in which I suspected there was a larger one hiding. As I waited a mother-grouse and her brood--one of the old beech partridge's numerous families for whom he provided nothing--came gliding along the edge of the woods. They had come to drink, evidently, but not from the brook. A sweeter draught than that was waiting for their coming. The dew was still clinging to the grass blades; here and there a drop hung from a leaf point, flashing like a diamond in the early light. And the little partridges, cheeping, gliding, whistling among the drooping stems, would raise their little bills for each shining dewdrop that attracted them, and drink it down and run with glad little pipings and gurglings to the next drop that flashed an invitation from its bending grass blade. The old mother walked sedately in the midst of them, now fussing over a laggard, now clucking them all together in an eager, chirping, jumping little crowd, each one struggling to be first in at the death of a fat slug she had discovered on the underside of a leaf; and anon reaching herself for a dewdrop that hung too high for their drinking. So they passed by within a few yards, a shy, wild, happy little family, and disappeared into the shadow of the big woods. Perhaps that is why I never saw the old beech partridge drink from the brook. Nature has a fresher draught, of her own distilling, that is more to his tasting. Earlier in the season I found another of his families near the same spot. I was stealing along a wood road when I ran plump upon them, scratching away at an ant hill in a sunny open spot. There was a wild flurry, as if a whirlwind had struck the ant hill; but it was only the wind of the mother bird's wings, whirling up the dust to blind my eyes and to hide the scampering retreat of her downy brood. Again her wings beat the ground, sending up a flurry of dead leaves, in the midst of which the little partridges jumped and scurried away, so much like the leaves that no eye could separate them. Then the leaves settled slowly and the brood was gone, as if the ground had swallowed them up; while Mother Grouse went fluttering along just out of my reach, trailing a wing as if broken, falling prone on the ground, clucking and kwitting and whirling the leaves to draw my attention and bring me away from where the little ones were hiding. I knelt down just within the edge of woods, whither I had seen the last laggard of the brood vanish like a brown streak, and began to look for them carefully. After a time I found one. He was crouched flat on a dead oak leaf, just under my nose, his color hiding him wonderfully. Something glistened in a tangle of dark roots. It was an eye, and presently I could make out a little head there. That was all I could find of the family, though a dozen more were close beside me, under the leaves mostly. As I backed away I put my hand on another before seeing him, and barely saved myself from hurting the little sly-boots, who never stirred a muscle, not even when I took away the leaf that covered him and put it back again softly. Across the pathway was a thick scrub oak, under which I sat down to watch. Ten long minutes passed, with nothing stirring, before Mother Grouse came stealing back. She clucked once--"Careful!" it seemed to say; and not a leaf stirred. She clucked again--did the ground open? There they were, a dozen or more of them, springing up from nowhere and scurrying with a thousand cheepings to tell her all about it. So she gathered them all close about her, and they vanished into the friendly shadows. It was curious how jealously the old beech partridge watched over the solitudes where these interesting little families roamed. Though he seemed to care nothing about them, and was never seen near one of his families, he suffered no other cock partridge to come into his woods, or even to drum within hearing. In the winter he shared the southern pasture peaceably with twenty other grouse; and on certain days you might, by much creeping, surprise a whole company of them on a sunny southern slope, strutting and gliding, in and out and round about, with spread tails and drooping wings, going through all the movements of a grouse minuet. Once, in Indian summer, I crept up to twelve or fifteen of the splendid birds, who were going through their curious performance in a little opening among the berry bushes; and in the midst of them-more vain, more resplendent, strutting more proudly and clucking more arrogantly than any other--was the old beech partridge. But when the spring came, and the long rolling drum-calls began to throb through the budding woods, he retired to his middle range on the ridge, and marched from one end to the other, driving every other cock grouse out of hearing, and drubbing him soundly if he dared resist. Then, after a triumph, you would hear his loud drum-call rolling through the May splendor, calling as many wives as possible to share his rich living. He had two drumming logs on this range, as I soon discovered; and once, while he was drumming on one log, I hid near the other and imitated his call fairly well by beating my hands on a blown bladder that I had buttoned under my jacket. The roll of a grouse drum is a curiously muffled sound; it is often hard to determine the spot or even the direction whence it comes; and it always sounds much farther away than it really is. This may have deceived the old beech partridge at first into thinking that he heard some other bird far away, on a ridge across the valley where he had no concern; for presently he drummed again on his own log. I answered it promptly, rolling back a defiance, and also telling any hen grouse on the range that here was another candidate willing to strut and spread his tail and lift the resplendent ruff about his neck to win his way into her good graces, if she would but come to his drumming log and see him. Some suspicion that a rival had come to his range must have entered the old beech partridge's head, for there was a long silence in which I could fancy him standing up straight and stiff on his drumming log, listening intently to locate the daring intruder, and holding down his bubbling wrath with difficulty. Without waiting for him to drum again, I beat out a challenge. The roll had barely ceased when he came darting up the ridge, glancing like a bolt among the thick branches, and plunged down by his own log, where he drew himself up with marvelous suddenness to listen and watch for the intruder. He seemed relieved that the log was not occupied, but he was still full of wrath and suspicion. He glided and dodged all about the place, looking and listening; then he sprang to his log and, without waiting to strut and spread his gorgeous feathers as usual, he rolled out the long call, drawing himself up straight the instant it was done, turning his head from side to side to catch the first beat of his rival's answer--"Come out, if you dare; drum, if you dare. Oh, you coward!" And he hopped, five or six high, excited hops, like a rooster before a storm, to the other end of the log, and again his quick throbbing drumcall rolled through the woods. Though I was near enough to see him clearly without, my field glasses, I could not even then, nor at any other time when I have watched grouse drumming, determine just how the call is given. After a little while the excitement of a suspected rival's presence wore away, and he grew exultant, thinking that he had driven the rascal out of his woods. He strutted back and forth on the log, trailing his wings, spreading wide his beautiful tail, lifting his crest and his resplendent ruff. Suddenly he would draw himself up; there would be a flash of his wings up and down that no eye could follow, and I would hear a single throb of his drum. Another flash and another throb; then faster and faster, till he seemed to have two or three pairs of wings, whirring and running together like the spokes of a swift-moving wheel, and the drumbeats rolled together into a long call and died away in the woods. Generally he stood up on his toes, as a rooster does when he flaps his wings before crowing; rarely he crouched down close to the log; but I doubt if he beat the wood with his wings, as is often claimed. Yet the two logs were different; one was dry and hard, the other mouldy and moss-grown; and the drumcalls were as different as the two logs. After a time I could tell by the sound which log he was using at the first beat of his wings; but that, I think, was a matter of resonance, a kind of sounding-board effect, and not because the two sounded differently as he beat them. The call is undoubtedly made either by striking the wings together over his back or, as I am inclined to believe, by striking them on the down beat against his own sides. Once I heard a wounded bird give three or four beats of his drum-call, and when I went into the grapevine thicket, where he had fallen, I found him lying flat on his back, beating his sides with his wings. Whenever he drums he first struts, because he knows not how many pairs of bright eyes are watching him shyly out of the coverts. Once, when I had watched him strut and drum a few times, the leaves rustled, and two hen grouse emerged from opposite sides into the little opening where his log was. Then he strutted with greater vanity than before, while the two hen grouse went gliding about the place, searching for seeds apparently, but in reality watching his every movement out of their eye corners, and admiring him to his heart's content. In winter I used to follow his trail through the snow to find what he had been doing, and what he had found to eat in nature's scarce time. His worst enemies, the man and his dog, were no longer to be feared, being restrained by law, and he roamed the woods with greater freedom than ever. He seemed to know that he was safe at this time, and more than once I trailed him up to his hiding and saw him whirr away through the open woods, sending down a shower of snow behind him, as if in that curious way to hide his line of flight from my eyes. There were other enemies, however, whom no law restrained, save the universal wood-laws of fear and hunger. Often I found the trail of a fox crossing his in the snow; and once I followed a double trail, fox over grouse, for nearly half a mile. The fox had struck the trail late the previous afternoon, and followed it to a bullbrier thicket, in the midst of which was a great cedar in which the old beech partridge roosted. The fox went twice around the tree, halting and looking up, then went straight away to the swamp, as if he knew it was of no use to watch longer. Rarely, when the snow was deep, I found the place where he, or some other grouse, went to sleep on the ground. He would plunge down from a tree into the soft snow, driving into it headfirst for three or four feet, then turn around and settle down in his white warm chamber for the night. I would find the small hole where he plunged in at evening, and near it the great hole where he burst out when the light waked him. Taking my direction from his wing prints in the snow, I would follow to find where he lit, and then trace him on his morning wanderings. One would think that this might be a dangerous proceeding, sleeping on the ground with no protection but the snow, and a score of hungry enemies prowling about the woods; but the grouse knows well that when the storms are out his enemies stay close at home, not being able to see or smell, and therefore afraid each one of his own enemies. There is always a truce in the woods during a snowstorm; and that is the reason why a grouse goes to sleep in the snow only while the flakes are still falling. When the storm is over and the snow has settled a bit, the fox will be abroad again; and then the grouse sleeps in the evergreens. Once, however, the old beech partridge miscalculated. The storm ceased early in the evening, and hunger drove the fox out on a night when, ordinarily, he would have stayed under cover. Sometime about daybreak, before yet the light had penetrated to where the old beech partridge was sleeping, the fox found a hole in the snow, which told him that just in front of his hungry nose a grouse was hidden, all unconscious of danger. I found the spot, trailing the fox, a few hours later. How cautious he was! The sly trail was eloquent with hunger and anticipation. A few feet away from the promising hole he had stopped, looking keenly over the snow to find some suspicious roundness on the smooth surface. Ah! there it was, just by the edge of a juniper thicket. He crouched down, stole forward, pushing a deep trail with his body, settled himself firmly and sprang. And there, just beside the hole his paws had made in the snow, was another hole where the grouse had burst out, scattering snow all over his enemy, who had miscalculated by a foot, and thundered away to the safety and shelter of the pines. There was another enemy, who ought to have known better, following the old beech partridge all one early spring when snow was deep and food scarce. One day, in crossing the partridge's southern range, I met a small boy,--a keen little fellow, with the instincts of a fox for hunting. He had always something interesting afoot,--minks, or muskrats, or a skunk, or a big owl,--so I hailed him with joy. "Hello, Johnnie! what you after to-day--bears?" But he only shook his head--a bit sheepishly, I thought--and talked of all things except the one that he was thinking about; and presently he vanished down the old road. One of his jacket pockets bulged more than the other, and I knew there was a trap in it. Late that afternoon I crossed his trail and, having nothing more interesting to do, followed it. It led straight to the bullbrier thicket where the old beech partridge roosted. I had searched for it many times in vain before the fox led me to it; but Johnnie, in some of his prowlings, had found tracks and a feather or two under a cedar branch, and knew just what it meant. His trap was there, in the very spot where, the night before, the old beech partridge had stood when he jumped for the lowest limb. Corn was scattered liberally about, and a bluejay that had followed Johnnie was already fast in the trap, caught at the base of his bill just under the eyes. He had sprung the trap in pecking at some corn that was fastened cunningly to the pan by fine wire. When I took the jay carefully from the trap he played possum, lying limp in my hand till my grip relaxed, when he flew to a branch over my head, squalling and upbraiding me for having anything to do with such abominable inventions. I hung the trap to a low limb of the cedar, with a note in its jaws telling Johnnie to come and see me next day. He came at dusk, shamefaced, and I read him a lecture on fair play and the difference between a thieving mink and an honest partridge. But he chuckled over the bluejay, and I doubted the withholding power of a mere lecture; so, to even matters, I hinted of an otter slide I had discovered, and of a Saturday afternoon tramp together. Twenty times, he told me, he had tried to snare the old beech partridge. When he saw the otter slide he forswore traps and snares for birds; and I left the place, soon after, with good hopes for the grouse, knowing that I had spiked the guns of his most dangerous enemy. Years later I crossed the old pasture and went straight to the bullbrier tangle. There were tracks of a grouse in the snow,--blunt tracks that rested lightly on the soft whiteness, showing that Nature remembered his necessity and had caused his new snowshoes to grow famously. I hurried to the brook, a hundred memories thronging over me of happy days and rare sights when the wood folk revealed their little secrets. In the midst of them--kwit! kwit! and with a thunder of wings a grouse whirred away, wild and gray as the rare bird that lived there years before. And when I questioned a hunter, he said: "That ol' beech pa'tridge? Oh, yes, he's there. He'll stay there, too, till he dies of old age; 'cause you see, Mister, there ain't nobody in these parts spry enough to ketch 'im." FOLLOWING THE DEER I was camping one summer on a little lake--Deer Pond, the natives called it--a few miles back from a quiet summer resort on the Maine coast. Summer hotels and mackerel fishing and noisy excursions had lost their semblance to a charm; so I made a little tent, hired a canoe, and moved back into the woods. It was better here. The days, were still and long, and the nights full of peace. The air was good, for nothing but the wild creatures breathed it, and the firs had touched it with their fragrance. The faraway surge of the sea came up faintly till the spruces answered it, and both sounds went gossiping over the hills together. On all sides were the woods, which, on the north especially, stretched away over a broken country beyond my farthest explorations. Over against my tenting place a colony of herons had their nests in some dark hemlocks. They were interesting as a camp of gypsies, some going off in straggling bands to the coast at daybreak, others frogging in the streams, and a few solitary, patient, philosophical ones joining me daily in following the gentle art of Izaak Walton. And then, when the sunset came and the deep red glowed just behind the hemlocks, and the gypsy bands came home, I would see their sentinels posted here and there among the hemlock tips--still, dark, graceful silhouettes etched in sepia against the gorgeous after-glow--and hear the mothers croaking their ungainly babies to sleep in the tree tops. Down at one end of the pond a brood of young black ducks were learning their daily lessons in hiding; at the other end a noisy kingfisher, an honest blue heron, and a thieving mink shared the pools and watched each other as rival fishermen. Hares by night, and squirrels by day, and wood mice at all seasons played round my tent, or came shyly to taste my bounty. A pair of big owls lived and hunted in a swamp hard by, who hooted dismally before the storms came, and sometimes swept within the circle of my fire at night. Every morning a raccoon stopped at a little pool in the brook above my tent, to wash his food carefully ere taking it home. So there was plenty to do and plenty to learn, and the days passed all too swiftly. I had been told by the village hunters that there were no deer; that they had vanished long since, hounded and crusted and chevied out of season, till life was not worth the living. So it was with a start of surprise and a thrill of new interest that I came upon the tracks of a large buck and two smaller deer on the shore one morning. I was following them eagerly when I ran plump upon Old Wally, the cunningest hunter and trapper in the whole region. "Sho! Mister, what yer follerin?" "Why, these deer tracks," I said simply. Wally gave me a look, of great pity. "Guess you're green--one o' them city fellers, ain't ye, Mister? Them ere's sheep tracks--my sheep. Wandered off int' th' woods a spell ago, and I hain't seen the tarnal critters since. Came up here lookin' for um this mornin'." I glanced at Wally's fish basket, and thought of the nibbled lily pads; but I said nothing. Wally was a great hunter, albeit jealous; apt to think of all the game in the woods as being sent by Providence to help him get a lazy living; and I knew little about deer at that time. So I took him to camp, fed him, and sent him away. "Kinder keep a lookout for my sheep, will ye, Mister, down 't this end o' the pond?" he said, pointing away from the deer tracks. "If ye see ary one, send out word, and I'll come and fetch 'im.--Needn't foller the tracks though; they wander like all possessed this time o' year," he added earnestly as he went away. That afternoon I went over to a little pond, a mile distant from my camp, and deeper in the woods. The shore was well cut up with numerous deer tracks, and among the lily pads everywhere were signs of recent feeding. There was a man's track here too, which came cautiously out from a thick point of woods, and spied about on the shore, and went back again more cautiously than before. I took the measure of it back to camp, and found that it corresponded perfectly with the boot tracks of Old Wally. There were a few deer here, undoubtedly, which he was watching jealously for his own benefit in the fall hunting. When the next still, misty night came, it found me afloat on the lonely little pond with a dark lantern fastened to an upright stick just in front of me in the canoe. In the shadow of the shores all was black as Egypt; but out in the middle the outlines of the pond could be followed vaguely by the heavy cloud of woods against the lighter sky. The stillness was intense; every slightest sound,--the creak of a bough or the ripple of a passing musquash, the plunk of a water drop into the lake or the snap of a rotten twig, broken by the weight of clinging mist,--came to the strained ear with startling suddenness. Then, as I waited and sifted the night sounds, a dainty plop, plop, plop! sent the canoe gliding like a shadow toward the shore whence the sounds had come. When the lantern opened noiselessly, sending a broad beam of gray, full of shadows and misty lights, through the even blackness of the night, the deer stood revealed--a beautiful creature, shrinking back into the forest's shadow, yet ever drawn forward by the sudden wonder of the light. She turned her head towards me, and her eyes blazed like great colored lights in the lantern's reflection. They fascinated me; I could see nothing but those great glowing spots, blazing and scintillating with a kind of intense fear and wonder out of the darkness. She turned away, unable to endure the glory any longer; then released from the fascination of her eyes, I saw her hurrying along the shore, a graceful living shadow among the shadows, rubbing her head among the bushes as if to brush away from her eyes the charm that dazzled them. I followed a little way, watching every move, till she turned again, and for a longer time stared steadfastly at the light. It was harder this time to break away from its power. She came nearer two or three times, halting between dainty steps to stare and wonder, while her eyes blazed into mine. Then, as she faltered irresolutely, I reached forward and closed the lantern, leaving lake and woods in deeper darkness than before. At the sudden release I heard her plunge out of the water; but a moment later she was moving nervously among the trees, trying to stamp herself up to the courage point of coming back to investigate. And when I flashed my lantern at the spot she threw aside caution and came hurriedly down the bank again. Later that night I heard other footsteps in the pond, and opened my lantern upon three deer, a doe, a fawn and a large buck, feeding at short intervals among the lily pads. The buck was wild; after one look he plunged into the woods, whistling danger to his companions. But the fawn heeded nothing, knew nothing for the moment save the fascination of the wonderful glare out there in the darkness. Had I not shut off the light, I think he would have climbed into the canoe in his intense wonder. I saw the little fellow again, in a curious way, a few nights later. A wild storm was raging over the woods. Under its lash the great trees writhed and groaned; and the "voices"--that strange phenomenon of the forest and rapids--were calling wildly through the roar of the storm and the rush of rain on innumerable leaves. I had gone out on the old wood road, to lose myself for a little while in the intense darkness and uproar, and to feel again the wild thrill of the elements. But the night was too dark, the storm too fierce. Every few moments I would blunder against a tree, which told me I was off the road; and to lose the road meant to wander all night in the storm-swept woods. So I went back for my lantern, with which I again started down the old cart path, a little circle of wavering, jumping shadows about me, the one gray spot in the midst of universal darkness. I had gone but a few hundred yards when there was a rush--it was not the wind or the rain--in a thicket on my right. Something jumped into the circle of light. Two bright spots burned out of the darkness, then two more; and with strange bleats a deer came close to me with her fawn. I stood stockstill, with a thrill in my spine that was not altogether of the elements, while the deer moved uneasily back and forth. The doe wavered between fear and fascination; but the fawn knew no fear, or perhaps he knew only the great fear of the uproar around him; for he came close beside me, rested his nose an instant against the light, then thrust his head between my arm and body, so as to shield his eyes, and pressed close against my side, shivering with cold and fear, pleading dumbly for my protection against the pitiless storm. I refrained from touching the little thing, for no wild creature likes to be handled, while his mother called in vain from the leafy darkness. When I turned to go he followed me close, still trying to thrust his face under my arm; and I had to close the light with a sharp click before he bounded away down the road, where one who knew better than I how to take care of a frightened innocent was, no doubt, waiting to receive him. I gave up everything else but fishing after that, and took to watching the deer; but there was little to be learned in the summer woods. Once I came upon the big buck lying down in a thicket. I was following his track, trying to learn the Indian trick of sign-trailing, when he shot up in front of me like Jack-in-a-box, and was gone before I knew what it meant. From the impressions in the moss, I concluded that he slept with all four feet under him, ready to shoot up at an instant's notice, with power enough in his spring to clear any obstacle near him. And then I thought of the way a cow gets up, first one end, then the other, rising from the fore knees at last with puff and grunt and clacking of joints; and I took my first lesson in wholesome respect for the creature whom I already considered mine by right of discovery, and whose splendid head I saw, in anticipation, adorning the hall of my house--to the utter discomfiture of Old Wally. At another time I crept up to an old road beyond the little deer pond, where three deer, a mother with her fawn, and a young spike-buck, were playing. They kept running up and down, leaping over the trees that lay across the road with marvelous ease and grace--that is, the two larger deer. The little fellow followed awkwardly; but he had the spring in him, and was learning rapidly to gather himself for the rise, and lift his hind feet at the top of his jump, and come down with all fours together, instead of sprawling clumsily, as a horse does. I saw the perfection of it a few days later. I was sitting before my tent door at twilight, watching the herons, when there was a shot and a sudden crash over on their side. In a moment the big buck plunged out of the woods and went leaping in swift bounds along the shore, head high, antlers back, the mighty muscles driving him up and onward as if invisible wings were bearing him. A dozen great trees were fallen across his path, one of which, as I afterwards measured, lay a clear eight feet above the sand. But he never hesitated nor broke his splendid stride. He would rush at a tree; rise light and swift till above it, where he turned as if on a pivot, with head thrown back to the wind, actually resting an instant in air at the very top of his jump; then shoot downward, not falling but driven still by the impulse of his great muscles. When he struck, all four feet were close together; and almost quicker than the eye could follow he was in the air again, sweeping along the water's edge, or rising like a bird over the next obstacle. Just below me was a stream, with muddy shores on both sides. I looked to see if he would stog himself there or turn aside; but he knew the place better than I, and that just under the soft mud the sand lay firm and, sure. He struck the muddy place only twice, once on either side the fifteen-foot stream, sending out a light shower of mud in all directions; then, because the banks on my side were steep, he leaped for the cover of the woods and was gone. I thought I had seen the last of him, when I heard him coming, bump! bump! bump! the swift blows of his hoofs sounding all together on the forest floor. So he flashed by, between me and my tent door, barely swerved aside for my fire, and gave me another beautiful run down the old road, rising and falling light as thistle-down, with the old trees arching over him and brushing his antlers as he rocketed along. The last branch had hardly swished behind him when, across the pond, the underbrush parted cautiously and Old Wally appeared, trailing a long gun. He had followed scarcely a dozen of the buck's jumps when he looked back and saw me watching him from beside a great maple. "Just a-follerin one o' my tarnal sheep. Strayed off day 'fore yesterday. Hain't seen 'im, hev ye?" he bawled across. "Just went along; ten or twelve points on his horns. And say, Wally--" The old sinner, who was glancing about furtively to see if the white sand showed any blood stains,--looked up quickly at the changed tone. "You let those sheep of yours alone till the first of October; then I'll help you round 'em up. Just now they're worth forty dollars apiece to the state. I'll see that the warden collects it, too, if you shoot another." "Sho! Mister, I ain't a-shootin' no deer. Hain't seen a deer round here in ten year or more. I just took a crack at a pa'tridge 'at kwitted at me, top o' a stump"-- But as he vanished among the hemlocks, trailing his old gun, I knew that he understood the threat. To make the matter sure I drove the deer out of the pond that night, giving them the first of a series of rude lessons in caution, until the falling leaves should make them wild enough to take care of themselves. STILL HUNTING October, the superb month for one who loves the forest, found me again in the same woods, this time not to watch and, learn, but to follow the big buck to his death. Old Wally was ahead of me; but the falling leaves had done their work well. The deer had left the pond at his approach. Here and there on the ridges I found their tracks, and saw them at a distance, shy, wild, alert, ready to take care of themselves in any emergency. The big buck led them everywhere. Already his spirit, grown keen in long battle against his enemies, dominated them all. Even the fawns had learned fear, and followed it as their salvation. Then began the most fascinating experience that comes to one who haunts the woods--the first, thrilling, glorious days of the still-hunter's schooling, with the frost-colored October woods for a schoolroom, and Nature herself for the all-wise teacher. Daylight found me far afield, while the heavy mists hung low and the night smells still clung to the first fallen leaves, moving swift and silent through the chill fragrant mistiness of the lowlands, eye and ear alert for every sign, and face set to the heights where the deer were waiting. Noon found me miles away on the hills, munching my crust thankfully in a sunny opening of the woods, with a brook's music tinkling among the mossy stones at my feet, and the gorgeous crimson and green and gold of the hillside stretching down and away, like a vast Oriental rug of a giant's weaving, to the flash and blue gleam of the distant sea. And everywhere--Nature's last subtle touches to her picture--the sense of a filmy veil let down ere the end was reached, a soft haze on the glowing hilltops, a sheen as of silver mist along the stream in the valley, a fleecy light-shot cloud on the sea, to suggest more, and more beautiful, beyond the veil. Evening found me hurrying homeward through the short twilight, along silent wood roads from which the birds had departed, breathing deep of the pure air with its pungent tang of ripened leaves, sniffing the first night smells, listening now for the yap of a fox, now for the distant bay of a dog to guide me in a short cut over the hills to where my room in the old farmhouse was waiting. It mattered little that, far behind me (though not so far from where the trail ended), the big buck began his twilight wandering along the ridges, sniffing alertly at the vanishing scent of the man on his feeding ground. The best things that a hunter brings home are in his heart, not in his game bag; and a free deer meant another long glorious day following him through the October woods, making the tyro's mistakes, to be sure, but feeling also the tyro's thrill and the tyro's wonder, and the consciousness of growing power and skill to read in a new language the secrets that the moss and leaves hide so innocently. There was so much to note and learn and remember in those days! A bit of moss with that curiously measured angular cut in it, as if the wood folk had taken to studying Euclid,--how wonderful it was at first! The deer had been here; his foot drew that sharp triangle; and I must measure and feel it carefully, and press aside the moss, and study the leaves, to know whether it were my big buck or no, and how long since he had passed, and whether he were feeding or running or just nosing about and watching the valley below. And all that is much to learn from a tiny triangle in the moss, with imaginary a, b, c's clinging to the dried moss blossoms. How careful one had to be! Every shift of wind, every cloud shadow had to be noted. The lesson of a dewdrop, splashed from a leaf in the early morning; the testimony of a crushed flower, or a broken brake, or a bending grass blade; the counsel of a bit of bark frayed from a birch tree, with a shred of deer-velvet clinging to it,--all these were vastly significant and interesting. Every copse and hiding place and cathedral aisle of the big woods in front must be searched with quiet eyes far ahead, as one glided silently from tree to tree. That depression in the gray moss of a fir thicket, with two others near it--three deer lay down there last night; no, this morning; no, scarcely an hour ago, and the dim traces along the ridge show no sign of hurry or alarm. So I move on, following surely the trail that, only a few days since, would have been invisible as the trail of a fish in the lake to my unschooled eyes, searching, searching everywhere for dim forms gliding among the trees, till--a scream, a whistle, a rush away! And I know that the bluejay, which has been gliding after me curiously the last ten minutes,--has fathomed my intentions and flown ahead to alarm the deer, which are now bounding away for denser cover. I brush ahead heedlessly, knowing that caution here only wastes time, and study the fresh trail where the quarry jumped away in alarm. Straight down the wind it goes. Cunning old buck! He has no idea what Bluejay's alarm was about, but a warning, whether of crow or jay or tainted wind or snapping twig, is never lost on the wood folk. Now as he bounds along, cleaving the woods like a living bolt, yet stopping short every hundred yards or so to whirl and listen and sort the messages that the wood wires bring to him, he is perfectly sure of himself and his little flock, knowing that if danger follow down wind, his own nose will tell him all about it. I glance at the sun; only another hour of light, and I am six miles from home. I glance at the jay, flitting about restlessly in a mixture of mischief and curiosity, whistling his too-loo-loo loudly as a sign to the fleeing game that I am right here and that he sees me. Then I take up the back trail, planning another day. So the days went by, one after another; the big buck, aided by his friends the birds, held his own against my craft and patience. He grew more wild and alert with every hunt, and kept so far ahead of me that only once, before the snow blew, did I have even the chance of stalking him, and then the cunning old fellow foiled me again masterfully. Old Wally was afield too; but, so far as I could read from the woods' record, he fared no better than I on the trail of the buck. Once, when I knew my game was miles ahead, I heard the longdrawn whang of Wally's old gun across a little valley. Presently the brush began to crackle, and a small doe came jumping among the trees straight towards me. Within thirty feet she saw me, caught herself at the top of her jump, came straight down, and stood an instant as if turned to stone, with a spruce branch bending over to hide her from my eyes. Then, when I moved not, having no desire to kill a doe but only to watch the beautiful creature, she turned, glided a few steps, and went bounding away along the ridge. Old Wally came in a little while, not following the trail,--he had no skill nor patience for that,--but with a woodsman's instinct following up the general direction of his game. Not far from where the doe had first appeared he stopped, looked all around keenly, then rested his hands on the end of his long gun barrel, and put his chin on his hands. "Drat it all! Never tetched 'im again. That paowder o' mine hain't wuth a cent. You wait till snow blows,"--addressing the silent woods at large,--"then I'll get me some paowder as is paowder, and foller the critter, and I'll show ye--" Old Wally said never a word, but all this was in his face and attitude as he leaned moodily on his long gun. And I watched him, chuckling, from my hiding among the rocks, till with curious instinct he vanished down the ridge behind the very thicket where I had seen the doe flash out of sight a moment before. When I saw him again he was deep in less creditable business. It was a perfect autumn day,--the air full of light and color, the fragrant woods resting under the soft haze like a great bouquet of Nature's own culling, birds, bees and squirrels frolicking all day long amidst the trees, yet doing an astonishing amount of work in gathering each one his harvest for the cold dark days that were coming. At daylight, from the top of a hill, I looked down on a little clearing and saw the first signs of the game I was seeking. There had been what old people call a duck-frost. In the meadows and along the fringes of the woods the white rime lay thick and powdery on grass and dead leaves; every foot that touched it left a black mark, as if seared with a hot iron, when the sun came up and shone upon it. Across the field three black trails meandered away from the brook; but alas! under the fringe of evergreen was another trail, that of a man, which crept and halted and hid, yet drew nearer and nearer the point where the three deer trails vanished into the wood. Then I found powder marks, and some brush that was torn by buck shot, and three trails that bounded away, and a tiny splash of deeper red on a crimson maple leaf. So I left the deer to the early hunter and wandered away up the hill for a long, lazy, satisfying day in the woods alone. Presently I came to a low brush fence running zigzag through the woods, with snares set every few yards in the partridge and rabbit runs. At the third opening a fine cock partridge swung limp and lifeless from a twitch-up. The cruel wire had torn his neck under his beautiful ruff; the broken wing quills showed how terrible had been his struggle. Hung by the neck till dead!--an atrocious fate to mete out to a noble bird. I followed the hedge of snares for a couple of hundred yards, finding three more strangled grouse and a brown rabbit. Then I sat down in a beautiful spot to watch the life about me, and to catch the snarer at his abominable work. The sun climbed higher and blotted out the four trails in the field below. Red squirrels came down close to my head to chatter and scold and drive me out of the solitude. A beautiful gray squirrel went tearing by among the branches, pursued by one of the savage little reds that nipped and snarled at his heels. The two cannot live together, and the gray must always go. Jays stopped spying on the squirrels--to see and remember where their winter stores were hidden--and lingered near me, whistling their curiosity at the silent man below. None but jays gave any heed to the five grim corpses swinging by their necks over the deadly hedge, and to them it was only a new sensation. Then a cruel thing happened,--one of the many tragedies that pass unnoticed in the woods. There was a scurry in the underbrush, and strange cries like those of an agonized child, only tiny and distant, as if heard in a phonograph. Over the sounds a crow hovered and rose and fell, in his intense absorption seeing nothing but the creature below. Suddenly he swooped like a hawk into a thicket, and out of the cover sprang a leveret (young hare), only to crouch shivering in the open space under a hemlock's drooping branches. There the crow headed him, struck once, twice, three times, straight hard blows with his powerful beak; and when I ran to the spot the leveret lay quite dead with his skull split, while the crow went flapping wildly to the tree tops, giving the danger cry to the flock that was gossiping in the sunshine on the ridge across the valley. The woods were all still after that; jays and squirrels seemed appalled at the tragedy, and avoided me as if I were responsible for the still little body under the hemlock tips. An hour passed; then, a quarter-mile away, in the direction that the deer had taken in the early morning, a single jay set up his cry, the cry of something new passing in the woods. Two or three others joined him; the cry came nearer. A flock of crossbills went whistling overhead, coming from the same direction. Then, as I slipped away into an evergreen thicket, a partridge came whirring up, and darted by me like a brown arrow driven by the bending branches behind him, flicking the twigs sharply with his wings as he drove along. And then, on the path of his last forerunner, Old Wally appeared, his keen eyes searching his murderous gibbetline expectantly. Now Old Wally was held in great reputation by the Nimrods of the village, because he hunted partridges, not with "scatter-gun" and dog,--such amateurish bungling he disdained and swore against,--but in the good old-fashioned way of stalking with a rifle. And when he brought his bunch of birds to market, his admirers pointed with pride to the marks of his wondrous skill. Here was a bird with the head hanging by a thread of skin; there one with its neck broken; there a furrow along the top of the head; and here--perfect work!--a partridge with both eyes gone, showing the course of his unerring bullet. Not ten yards from my hiding place he took down a partridge from its gallows, fumbled a pointed stick out of his pocket, ran it through the bird's neck, and stowed the creature that had died miserably, without a chance for its life, away in one of his big pockets, a self-satisfied grin on his face as he glanced down the hedge and saw another bird swinging. So he followed his hangman's hedge, treating each bird to his pointed stick, carefully resetting the snares after him and clearing away the fallen leaves from the fatal pathways. When he came to the rabbit he harled him dexterously, slipped him over his long gun barrel, took his bearings in a quick look, and struck over the ridge for another southern hillside. Here, at last, was the secret of Wally's boasted skill in partridge hunting with a rifle. Spite of my indignation at the snare line, the cruel death which gaped day and night for the game as it ran about heedlessly in the fancied security of its own coverts, a humorous, half shame-faced feeling of admiration would creep in as I thought of the old sinner's cunning, and remembered his look of disdain when he met me one day, with a "scatter-gun" in my hands and old Don following obediently at heel. Thinking that in his long life he must have learned many things in the woods that I would be glad to know, I had invited him cordially to join me. But he only withered me with the contempt in his hawk eyes, and wiggled his toe as if holding back a kick from my honest dog with difficulty. "Go hunting with ye? Not much, Mister. Scarin' a pa'tridge to death with a dum dog, and then turnin' a handful o' shot loose on the critter, an' call it huntin'! That's the way to kill a pa'tridge, the on'y decent way"--and he pulled a bird out of his pocket, pointing to a clean hole through the head where the eyes had been. When he had gone I kicked the hedge to pieces quickly, cut the twitch-ups at the butts and threw them with their wire nooses far into the thickets, and posted a warning in a cleft stick on the site of the last gibbet. Then I followed Wally to a second and third line of snares, which were treated in the same rough way, and watched him with curiously mingled feelings of detestation and amusement as he sneaked down the dense hillside with tread light as Leatherstocking, the old gun over his shoulder, his pockets bulging enormously, and a string of hanged rabbits swinging to and fro on his gun barrel, as if in death they had caught the dizzy motion and could not quit it while the woods they had loved and lived in threw their long sad shadows over them. So they came to the meadow, into which they had so often come limping down to play or feed among the twilight shadows, and crossed it for the last time on Wally's gun barrel, swinging, swinging. The leaves were falling thickly now; they formed a dry, hard carpet over which it was impossible to follow game accurately, and they rustled a sharp warning underfoot if but a wood mouse ran over them. It was of little use to still-hunt the wary old buck till the rains should soften the carpet, or a snowfall make tracking like boys' play. But I tried it once more; found the quarry on a ridge deep in the woods, and followed--more by good-luck than by good management--till, late in the afternoon, I saw the buck with two smaller deer standing far away on a half-cleared hillside, quietly watching a wide stretch of country below. Beyond them the ridge narrowed gradually to a long neck, ending in a high open bluff above the river. There I tried my last hunter's dodge--manoeuvered craftily till near the deer, which were hidden by dense thickets, and rushed straight at them, thinking they would either break away down the open hillside, and so give me a running shot, or else rush straightaway at the sudden alarm and be caught on the bluff beyond. Was it simple instinct, I wonder, or did the buck that had grown old in hunter's wiles feel what was passing in my mind, and like a flash take the chance that would save, not only his own life, but the lives of the two that followed him? At the first alarm they separated; the two smaller deer broke away down the hillside, giving me as pretty a shot as one could wish. But I scarcely noticed them; my eyes were following eagerly a swift waving of brush tops, which told me that the big buck was jumping away, straight into the natural trap ahead. I followed on the run till the ridge narrowed so that I could see across it on either side, then slowly, carefully, steadying my nerves for the shot. The river was all about him now, too wide to jump, too steep-banked to climb down; the only way out was past me. I gripped the rifle hard, holding it at a ready as I moved forward, watching either side for a slinking form among the scattered coverts. At last, at last! and how easy, how perfectly I had trapped him! My heart was singing as I stole along. The tracks moved straight on; first an easy run, then a swift, hard rush as they approached the river. But what was this? The whole end of the bluff was under my eye, and no buck standing at bay or running wildly along the bank to escape. The tracks moved straight on to the edge in great leaps; my heart quickened its beat as if I were nerving myself for a supreme effort. Would he do it? would he dare? A foot this side the brink the lichens were torn away where the sharp hoofs had cut down to solid earth. Thirty feet away, well over the farther bank and ten feet below the level where I stood, the fresh earth showed clearly among the hoof-torn moss. Far below, the river fretted and roared in a white rush of rapids. He had taken the jump, a jump that made one's nostrils spread and his breath come hard as he measured it with his eye. Somewhere, over in the spruces' shadow there, he was hiding, watching me no doubt to see if I would dare follow. That was the last of the autumn woods for me. If I had only seen him--just one splendid glimpse as he shot over and poised in mid-air, turning for the down plunge! That was my only regret as I turned slowly away, the river singing beside me and the shadows lengthening along the home trail. WINTER TRAILS The snow had come, and with it a Christmas holiday. For weeks I had looked longingly out of college windows as the first tracking-snows came sifting down, my thoughts turning from books and the problems of human wisdom to the winter woods, with their wide white pages written all over by the feet of wild things. Then the sun would shine again, and I knew that the records were washed clean, and the hard-packed leaves as innocent of footmarks as the beach where plover feed when a great wave has chased them away. On the twentieth a change came. Outside the snow fell heavily, two days and a night; inside, books were packed away, professors said Merry Christmas, and students were scattering, like a bevy of flushed quail, to all points of the compass for the holidays. The afternoon of the twenty-first found me again in my room under the eaves of the old farmhouse. Before dark I had taken a wide run over the hills and through the woods to the place of my summer camp. How wonderful it all was! The great woods were covered deep with their pure white mantle; not a fleck, not a track soiled its even whiteness; for the last soft flakes were lingering in the air, and fox and grouse and hare and lucivee were still keeping the storm truce, hidden deep in their coverts. Every fir and spruce and hemlock had gone to building fairy grottoes as the snow packed their lower branches, under which all sorts of wonders and beauties might be hidden, to say nothing of the wild things for whom Nature had been building innumerable tents of white and green as they slept. The silence was absolute, the forest's unconscious tribute to the Wonder Worker. Even the trout brook, running black as night among its white-capped boulders and delicate arches of frost and fern work, between massive banks of feathery white and green, had stopped its idle chatter and tinkled a low bell under the ice, as if only the Angelus could express the wonder of the world. As I came back softly in the twilight a movement in an evergreen ahead caught my eye, and I stopped for one of the rare sights of the woods,--a partridge going to sleep in a warm room of his own making. He looked all about among the trees most carefully, listened, kwit-kwitted in a low voice to himself, then, with a sudden plunge, swooped downward head-first into the snow. I stole to the spot where he had disappeared, noted the direction of his tunnel, and fell forward with arms outstretched, thinking perhaps to catch him under me and examine his feet to see how his natural snowshoes (Nature's winter gift to every grouse) were developing, before letting him go again. But the grouse was an old bird, not to be caught napping, who had thought on the possibilities of being followed ere he made his plunge. He had ploughed under the snow for a couple of feet, then swerved sharply to the left and made a little chamber for himself just under some snow-packed spruce tips, with a foot of snow for a blanket over him. When I fell forward, disturbing his rest most rudely ere he had time to wink the snow out of his eyes, he burst out with a great whirr and sputter between my left hand and my head, scattering snow all over me, and thundered off through the startled woods, flicking a branch here and there with his wings, and shaking down a great white shower as he rushed away for deeper solitudes. There, no doubt, he went to sleep in the evergreens, congratulating himself on his escape and preferring to take his chances with the owl, rather than with some other ground-prowler that might come nosing into his hole before the light snow had time to fill it up effectually behind him. Next morning I was early afield, heading for a ridge where I thought the deer of the neighborhood might congregate with the intention of yarding for the winter. At the foot of a wild little natural meadow, made centuries ago by the beavers, I found the trail of two deer which had been helping themselves to some hay that had been cut and stacked there the previous summer. My big buck was not with them; so I left the trail in peace to push through a belt of woods and across a pond to an old road that led for a mile or two towards the ridge I was seeking. Early as I was, the wood folk were ahead of me. Their tracks were everywhere, eager, hungry tracks, that poked their noses into every possible hiding place of food or game, showing how the two-days' fast had whetted their appetites and set them to running keenly the moment the last flakes were down and the storm truce ended. A suspicious-looking clump of evergreens, where something had brushed the snow rudely from the feathery tips, stopped me as I hurried down the old road. Under the evergreens was a hole in the snow, and at the bottom of the hole hard inverted cups made by deer's feet. I followed on to another hole in the snow (it could scarcely be called a trail) and then to another, and another, some twelve or fifteen feet apart, leading in swift bounds to some big timber. There the curious track separated into three deer trails, one of which might well be that of a ten-point buck. Here was luck,--luck to find my quarry so early on the first day out, and better luck that, during my long absence, the cunning animal had kept himself and his consort clear of Old Wally and his devices. When I ran to examine the back trail more carefully, I found that the deer had passed the night in a dense thicket of evergreen, on a hilltop overlooking the road. They had come down the hill, picking their way among the stumps of a burned clearing, stepping carefully in each other's tracks so as to make but a single trail. At the road they had leaped clear across from one thicket to another, leaving never a trace on the bare even whiteness. One might have passed along the road a score of times without noticing that game had crossed. There was no doubt now that these were deer that had been often hunted, and that had learned their cunning from long experience. I followed them rapidly till they began feeding in a little valley, then with much caution, stealing from tree to thicket, giving scant attention to the trail, but searching the woods ahead; for the last "sign" showed that I was now but a few minutes behind the deer. There they were at last, two graceful forms gliding like gray shadows among the snow-laden branches. But in vain I searched for a lordly head with wide rough antlers sweeping proudly over the brow; my buck was not there. Scarcely had I made the discovery when there was a whistle and a plunge up on the hill on my left, and I had one swift glimpse of him, a splendid creature, as he bounded away. By way of general precaution, or else led by some strange sixth sense of danger, he had left his companions feeding and mounted the hill, where he could look back on his own track. There he had been watching me for half an hour, till I approached too near, when he sounded the alarm and was off. I read it all from the trail a few moments later. It was of no use to follow him, for he ran straight down wind. The two others had gone quartering off at right angles to his course, obeying his signal promptly, but having as yet no idea of what danger followed them. When alarmed in this way, deer never run far before halting to sniff and listen. Then, if not disturbed, they run off again, circling back and down wind so as to catch from a distance the scent of anything that follows on their trail. I sat still where I was for a good hour, watching the chickadees and red squirrels that found me speedily, and refusing to move for all the peekings and whistlings of a jay that would fain satisfy his curiosity as to whether I meant harm to the deer, or were just benumbed by the cold and incapable of further mischief. When I went on I left some scattered bits of meat from my lunch to keep him busy in case the deer were near; but there was no need of the precaution. The two had learned the leader's lesson of caution well, and ran for a mile, with many haltings and circlings, before they began to feed again. Even then they moved along at a good pace as they fed, till a mile farther on, when, as I had forelayed, the buck came down from a hill to join them, and all three moved off toward the big ridge, feeding as they went. Then began a long chase, a chase which for the deer meant a straightaway game, and for me a series of wide circles--never following the trail directly, but approaching it at intervals from leeward, hoping to circle ahead of the deer and stalk them at last from an unexpected quarter. Once, when I looked down from a bare hilltop into a valley where the trail ran, I had a most interesting glimpse of the big buck doing the same thing from a hill farther on too far away for a shot, but near enough to see plainly through my field glass. The deer were farther ahead than I supposed. They had made a run for it, intending to rest after first putting a good space between them and anything that might follow. Now they were undoubtedly lying down in some far-away thicket, their minds at rest, but their four feet doubled under them for a jump at short notice. Trust your nose, but keep your feet under you--that is deer wisdom on going to sleep. Meanwhile, to take no chances, the wary old leader had circled back, to wind the trail and watch it awhile from a distance before joining them in their rest. He stood stock-still in his hiding, so still that one might have passed close by without noticing him. But his head was above the low evergreens; eyes, ears, and nose were busy giving him perfect report of everything that passed in the woods. I started to stalk him promptly, creeping up the hill behind him, chuckling to myself at the rare sport of catching a wild thing at his own game. But before I sighted him again he grew uneasy (the snow tells everything), trotted down hill to the trail, and put his nose into it here and there to be sure it was not polluted. Then--another of his endless devices to make the noonday siesta full of contentment--he followed the back track a little way, stepping carefully in his own footprints; branched off on the other side of the trail, and so circled swiftly back to join his little flock, leaving behind him a sad puzzle of disputing tracks for any novice that might follow him. So the interesting chase went on all day, skill against keener cunning, instinct against finer instinct, through the white wonder of the winter woods, till, late in the afternoon, it swung back towards the starting point. The deer had undoubtedly intended to begin their yard that day on the ridge I had selected; for at noon I crossed the trail of the two from the haystack, heading as if by mutual understanding in that direction. But the big buck, feeling that he was followed, cunningly led his charge away from the spot, so as to give no hint of the proposed winter quarters to the enemy that was after him. Just as the long shadows were stretching across all the valleys from hill to hill, and the sun vanished into the last gray bank of clouds on the horizon, my deer recrossed the old road, leaping it, as in the morning, so as to leave no telltale track, and climbed the hill to the dense thicket where they had passed the previous night. Here was my last chance, and I studied it deliberately. The deer were there, safe within the evergreens, I had no doubt, using their eyes for the open hillside in front and their noses for the woods behind. It was useless to attempt stalking from any direction, for the cover was so thick that a fox could hardly creep through without alarming ears far less sensitive than a deer's. Skill had failed; their cunning was too much for me. I must now try an appeal to curiosity. I crept up the hill flat on my face, keeping stump or scrub spruce always between me and the thicket on the hilltop. The wind was in my favor; I had only their eyes to consider. Somewhere, just within the shadow, at least one pair were sweeping the back track keenly; so I kept well away from it, creeping slowly up till I rested behind a great burned stump within forty yards of my game. There I fastened a red bandanna handkerchief to a stick and waved it slowly above the stump. Almost instantly there was a snort and a rustle of bushes in the thicket above me. Peeking out I saw the evergreens moving nervously; a doe's head appeared, her ears set forward, her eyes glistening. I waved the handkerchief more erratically. My rifle lay across the stump's roots, pointing straight at her; but she was not the game I was hunting. Some more waving and dancing of the bright color, some more nervous twitchings and rustlings in the evergreens, then a whistle and a rush; the doe disappeared; the movement ceased; the thicket was silent as the winter woods behind me. "They are just inside," I thought, "pawing the snow to get their courage up to come and see." So the handkerchief danced on--one, two, five minutes passed in silence; then something made me turn round. There in plain sight behind me, just this side the fringe of evergreen that lined the old road, stood my three deer in a row--the big buck on the right--like three beautiful statues, their ears all forward, their eyes fixed with intensest curiosity on the man lying at full length in the snow with the queer red flag above his head. My first motion broke up the pretty tableau. Before I could reach for my rifle the deer whirled and vanished like three winks, leaving the heavy evergreen tips nodding and blinking behind them in a shower of snow. Tired as I was, I took a last run to see from the trail how it all happened. The deer had been standing just within the thicket as I approached. All three had seen the handkerchief; the tracks showed that they had pawed the snow and moved about nervously. When the leader whistled they had bounded straightaway down the steep on the other side. But the farms lay in that direction, so they had skirted the base of the hill, keeping within the fringe of woods and heading back for their morning trail, till the red flag caught their eye again, and strong curiosity had halted them for another look. Thus the long hunt ended at twilight within sight of the spot where it began in the gray morning stillness. With marvelous cunning the deer circled into their old tracks and followed them till night turned them aside into a thicket. This I discovered at daylight next morning. That day a change came; first a south wind, then in succession a thaw, a mist, a rain turning to snow, a cold wind and a bitter frost. Next day when I entered the woods a brittle crust made silent traveling impossible, and over the rocks and bare places was a sheet of ice covered thinly with snow. I was out all day, less in hope of finding deer than of watching the wild things; but at noon, as I sat eating my lunch, I heard a rapid running, crunch, crunch, crunch, on the ridge above me. I stole up, quietly as I could, to find the fresh trails of my three deer. They were running from fright evidently, and were very tired, as the short irregular jumps showed. Once, where the two leaders cleared a fallen log, the third deer had fallen heavily; and all three trails showed blood stains where the crust had cut into their legs. I waited there on the trail to see what was following--to give right of way to any hunter, but with a good stout stick handy, for dealing with dogs, which sometimes ran wild in the woods and harried the deer. For a long quarter-hour the woods were all still; then the jays, which had come whistling up on the trail, flew back screaming and scolding, and a huge yellow mongrel, showing hound's blood in his ears and nose, came slipping, limping, whining over the crust. I waited behind a tree till he was up with me, when I jumped out and caught him a resounding thump on the ribs. As he ran yelping away I fired my rifle over his head, and sent the good club with a vengeance to knock his heels from under him. A fresh outburst of howls inspired me with hope. Perhaps he would remember now to let deer alone for the winter. Above the noise of canine lamentation I caught the faint click of snowshoes, and hid again to catch the cur's owner at his contemptible work. But the sound stopped far back on the trail at the sudden uproar. Through the trees I caught glimpses of a fur cap and a long gun and the hawk face of Old Wally, peeking, listening, creeping on the trail, and stepping gingerly at last down the valley, ashamed or afraid of being caught at his unlawful hunting. "An ill wind, but it blows me good," I thought, as I took up the trail of the deer, half ashamed myself to take advantage of them when tired by the dog's chasing. There was no need of commiseration, however; now that the dog was out of the way they could take care of themselves very well. I found them resting only a short distance ahead; but when I attempted to stalk them from leeward the noise of my approach on the crust sent them off with a rush before I caught even a glimpse of them in their thicket. I gave up caution then and there. I was fresh and the deer were tired,--why not run them down and get a fair shot before the sun went down and left the woods too dark to see a rifle sight? I had heard that the Indians used sometimes to try running a deer down afoot in the old days; here was the chance to try a new experience. It was fearfully hard traveling without snowshoes, to be sure; but that seemed only to even-up chances fairly with the deer. At the thought I ran on, giving no heed when the quarry jumped again just ahead of me, but pushing them steadily, mile after mile, till I realized with a thrill that I was gaining rapidly, that their pauses grew more and more frequent, and I had constant glimpses of deer ahead among the trees--never of the big buck, but of the two does, who were struggling desperately to follow their leader as he kept well ahead of them breaking the way. Then realizing, I think, that he was followed by strength rather than by skill or cunning, the noble old fellow tried a last trick, which came near being the end of my hunting altogether. The trail turned suddenly to a high open ridge with scattered thickets here and there. As they labored up the slope I had the does in plain sight. On top the snow was light, and they bounded ahead with fresh strength. The trail led straight along the edge of a cliff, beyond which the deer had vanished. They had stopped running here; I noticed with amazement that they had walked with quick short steps across the open. Eager for a sight of the buck I saw only the thin powdering of snow; I forgot the glare ice that covered the rock beneath. The deer's sharp hoofs had clung to the very edge securely. My heedless feet had barely struck the rock when they slipped and I shot over the cliff, thirty feet to the rocks below. Even as I fell and the rifle flew from my grasp, I heard the buck's loud whistle from the thicket where he was watching me, and then the heavy plunge of the deer as they jumped away. A great drift at the foot of the cliff saved me. I picked myself up, fearfully bruised but with nothing broken, found my rifle and limped away four miles through the woods to the road, thinking as I went that I was well served for having delivered the deer "from the power of the dog," only to take advantage of their long run to secure a head that my skill had failed to win. I wondered, with an extra twinge in my limp, whether I had saved Old Wally by taking the chase out of his hands unceremoniously. Above all, I wondered--and here I would gladly follow another trail over the same ground--whether the noble beast, grown weary with running, his splendid strength failing for the first time, and his little, long-tended flock ready to give in and have the tragedy over, knew just what he was doing in mincing along the cliff's edge with his heedless enemy close behind. What did he think and feel, looking back from his hiding, and what did his loud whistle mean? But that is always the despair of studying the wild things. When your problem is almost solved, night comes and the trail ends. When I could walk again easily vacation was over, the law was on, and the deer were safe. SNOW BOUND March is a weary month for the wood folk. One who follows them then has it borne in upon him continually that life is a struggle,--a keen, hard, hunger-driven struggle to find enough to keep a-going and sleep warm till the tardy sun comes north again with his rich living. The fall abundance of stored food has all been eaten, except in out-of-the-way corners that one stumbles upon in a long day's wandering; the game also is wary and hard to find from being constantly hunted by eager enemies. It is then that the sparrow falleth. You find him on the snow, a wind-blown feather guiding your eye to the open where he fell in mid-flight; or under the tree, which shows that he lost his grip in the night. His empty crop tells the whole pitiful story, and why you find him there cold and dead, his toes curled up and his body feather-light. You would find more but for the fact that hunger-pointed eyes are keener than yours and earlier abroad, and that crow and jay and mink and wildcat have greater interest than you in finding where the sparrow fell. It is then, also, that the owl, who hunts the sparrow o' nights, grows so light from scant feeding that he cannot fly against the wind. If he would go back to his starting point while the March winds are out, he must needs come down close to the ground and yewyaw towards his objective, making leeway like an old boat without ballast or centerboard. The grouse have taken to bud-eating from necessity--birch buds mostly, with occasional trips to the orchards for variety. They live much now in the trees, which they dislike; but with a score of hungry enemies prowling for them day and night, what can a poor grouse do? When a belated snow falls, you follow their particular enemy, the fox, where he wanders, wanders, wander's on his night's hunting. Across the meadow, to dine on the remembrance of field mice--alas! safe now under the crust; along the brook, where he once caught frogs; through the thicket, where the grouse were hatched; past the bullbrier tangle, where the covey of quail once rested nightly; into the farmyard, where the dog is loose and the chickens are safe under lock and key, instead of roosting in trees; across the highway, and through the swamp, and into the big bare empty woods; till in the sad gray morning light he digs under the wild apple tree and sits down on the snow to eat a frozen apple, lest his stomach cry too loudly while he sleeps the day away and tries to forget that he is hungry. Everywhere it is the same story: hard times and poor hunting. Even the chickadees are hard pressed to keep up appearances and have their sweet love note ready at the first smell of spring in the air. This was the lesson that the great woods whispered sadly when a few idle March days found me gliding on snowshoes over the old familiar ground. Wild geese had honked an invitation from the South Shore; but one can never study a wild goose; the only satisfaction is to see him swing in on broad wings over the decoys--one glorious moment ere the gun speaks and the dog jumps and everything is spoiled. So I left gun and rifle behind, and went off to the woods of happy memories to see how my deer were faring. The wonder of the snow was gone; there was left only its cold bitterness and a vague sense that it ought no longer to cumber the ground, but would better go away as soon as possible and spare the wood folk any more suffering. The litter of a score of storms covered its soiled rough surface; every shred of bark had left its dark stain where the decaying sap had melted and spread in the midday sun. The hard crust, which made such excellent running for my snowshoes, seemed bitterly cruel when I thought of the starving wild things and of the abundance of food on the brown earth, just four feet below their hungry bills and noses. The winter bad been unusually severe. Reports had come to me from the North Woods of deep snows, and of deer dying of starvation and cold in their yards. I confess that I was anxious as I hurried along. Now that the hunt was over and the deer had won, they belonged to me more than ever more even than if the stuffed head of the buck looked down on my hall, instead of resting proudly over his own strong shoulders. My snowshoes clicked a rapid march through the sad gray woods, while the March wind thrummed an accompaniment high up among the bare branches, and the ground-spruce nodded briskly, beating time with their green tips, as if glad of any sound or music that would break the chill silence until the birds came back. Here and there the snow told stories; gay stories, tragic stories, sad, wandering, patient stories of the little woods-people, which the frost had hardened into crust, as if Nature would keep their memorials forever, like the records on the sunhardened bricks of Babylon. But would the deer live? Would the big buck's cunning provide a yard large enough for wide wandering, with plenty of browse along the paths to carry his flock safely through the winter's hunger? That was a story, waiting somewhere ahead, which made me hurry away from the foot-written records that otherwise would have kept me busy for hours. Crossbills called welcome to me, high overhead. Nothing can starve them out. A red squirrel rushed headlong out of his hollow tree at the first click of my snowshoes. Nothing can check his curiosity or his scolding except his wife, whom he likes, and the weasel, whom he is mortally afraid of. Chickadees followed me shyly with their blandishments--tsic-a-deeee? with that gentle up-slide of questioning. "Is the spring really coming? Are--are you a harbinger?" But the snowshoes clicked on, away from the sweet blarney, Leaving behind the little flatterers who were honestly glad to see me in the woods again, and who would fain have delayed me. Other questions, stern ones, were calling ahead. Would the cur dogs find the yard and exterminate the innocents? Would Old Wally--but no; Wally had the "rheumatiz," and was out of the running. Ill-wind blew the deer good that time; else he would long ago have run them down on snowshoes and cut their throats, as if they were indeed his "tarnal sheep" that had run wild in the woods. At the southern end of a great hardwood ridge I found the first path of their yard. It was half filled with snow, unused since the last two storms. A glance on either side, where everything eatable within reach of a deer's neck had long ago been cropped close, showed plainly why the path was abandoned. I followed it a short distance before running into another path, and another, then into a great tangle of deer ways spreading out crisscross over the eastern and southern slopes of the ridge. In some of the paths were fresh deer tracks and the signs of recent feeding. My heart jumped at sight of one great hoof mark. I had measured and studied it too often to fail to recognize its owner. There was browse here still, to be had for the cropping. I began to be hopeful for my little flock, and to feel a higher regard for their leader, who could plan a yard, it seemed, as well as a flight, and who could not be deceived by early abundance into outlining a small yard, forgetting the late snows and the spring hunger. I was stooping to examine the more recent signs, when a sharp snort made me raise my head quickly. In the path before me stood a doe, all a-quiver, her feet still braced from the suddenness with which she had stopped at sight of an unknown object blocking the path ahead. Behind her two other deer checked themselves and stood like statues, unable to see, but obeying their leader promptly. All three were frightened and excited, not simply curious, as they would have been had they found me in their path unexpectedly. The widespread nostrils and heaving sides showed that they had been running hard. Those in the rear (I could see them over the top of the scrub spruce, behind which I crouched in the path) said in every muscle: "Go on! No matter what it is, the danger behind is worse. Go on, go on!" Insistence was in the air. The doe felt it and bounded aside. The crust had softened in the sun, and she plunged through it when she struck, cr-r-runch, cr-r-runch, up to her sides at every jump. The others followed, just swinging their heads for a look and a sniff at me, springing from hole to hole in the snow, and making but a single track. A dozen jumps and they struck another path and turned into it, running as before down the ridge. In the swift glimpses they gave me I noticed with satisfaction that, though thin and a bit ragged in appearance, they were by no means starved. The veteran leader had provided well for his little family. I followed their back track up the ridge for perhaps half a mile, when another track made me turn aside. Two days before, a single deer had been driven out of the yard at a point where three paths met. She had been running down the ridge when something in front met her and drove her headlong out of her course. The soft edges of the path were cut and torn by suspicious claw marks. I followed her flight anxiously, finding here and there, where the snow had been softest, dog tracks big and little. The deer was tired from long running, apparently; the deep holes in the snow, where she had broken through the crust, were not half the regular distance apart. A little way from the path I found her, cold and stiff, her throat horribly torn by the pack which had run her to death. Her hind feet were still doubled under her, just as she had landed from her last despairing jump, when the tired muscles could do no more, and she sank down without a struggle to let the dogs do their cruel work. I had barely read all this, and had not yet finished measuring the largest tracks to see if it were her old enemy that, as dogs frequently do, had gathered a pirate band about him and led them forth to the slaughter of the innocents, when a far-away cry came stealing down through the gray woods. Hark! the eager yelp of curs and the leading hoot of a hound. I whipped out my knife to cut a club, and was off for the sounds on a galloping run, which is the swiftest possible gait on snowshoes. There were no deer paths here; for the hardwood browse, upon which deer depend for food, grew mostly on the other sides of the ridge. That the chase should turn this way, out of the yard's limits showed the dogs' cunning, and that they were not new at their evil business. They had divided their forces again, as they had undoubtedly done when hunting the poor doe whose body I had just found. Part of the pack hunted down the ridge in full cry, while the rest lay in wait to spring at the flying game as it came on and drive it out of the paths into the deep snow, where it would speedily be at their mercy. At the thought I gripped the club hard, promising to stop that kind of hunting for good, if only I could get half a chance. Presently, above the scrape of my snowshoes, I heard the deer coming, cr-r-runch! cr-r-runch! the heavy plunges growing shorter and fainter, while behind the sounds an eager, whining trail-cry grew into a fierce howl of canine exultation. Something was telling me to hurry, hurry; that the big buck I had so often hunted was in my power at last, and that, if I would square accounts, I must beat the dogs, though they were nearer to him now than I. The excitement of a new kind of hunt, a hunt to save, not to kill, was tingling all over me when I circled a dense thicket of firs with a rush, and there he lay, up to his shoulders in the snow before me. He had taken his last jump. The splendid strength which had carried him so far was spent now to the last ounce. He lay resting easily in the snow, his head outstretched on the crust before him, awaiting the tragedy that had followed him for years, by lake and clearing and winter yard, and that burst out behind him now with a cry to make one's nerves shudder. The glory of his antlers was gone; he had dropped them months before; but the mighty shoulders and sinewy neck and perfect head showed how well, how grandly he had deserved my hunting. He threw up his head as I burst out upon him from an utterly unexpected quarter--the very thing that I had so often tried to do, in vain, in the old glorious days. "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? Well, here am I." That is what his eyes, great, sad, accusing eyes, were saying as he laid his head down on the snow again, quiet as an Indian at the torture, too proud to struggle where nothing was to be gained but pity or derision. A strange, uncanny silence had settled over the woods. Wolves cease their cry in the last swift burst of speed that will bring the game in sight. Then the dogs broke out of the cover behind him with a fiercer howl that was too much for even his nerves to stand. Nothing on earth could have met such a death unmoved. No ears, however trained, could hear that fierce cry for blood without turning to meet it face to face. With a mighty effort the buck whirled in the snow and gathered himself for the tragedy. Far ahead of the pack came a small, swift bulldog that, with no nose of his own for hunting, had followed the pirate leader for mere love of killing. As he jumped for the throat, the buck, with his last strength, reared on his hind legs, so as to get his fore feet clear of the snow, and plunged down again with a hard, swift sabre-cut of his right hoof. It caught the dog on the neck as he rose on the spring, and ripped him from ear to tail. Deer and dog came down together. Then the buck rose swiftly for his last blow, and the knife-edged hoofs shot down like lightning; one straight, hard drive with the crushing force of a ten-ton hammer behind it--and his first enemy was out of the hunt forever. Before he had time to gather himself again the big yellow brindle, with the hound's blood showing in nose and ears,--Old Wally's dog,--leaped into sight. His whining trail-cry changed to a fierce growl as he sprang for the buck's nose. I had waited for just this moment in hiding, and jumped to meet it. The club came down between the two heads; and there was no reserve this time in the muscles that swung it. It caught the brute fair on the head, where the nose begins to come up into the skull,--and he too had harried his last deer. Two other curs had leaped aside with quick instinct the moment they saw me, and vanished into the thickets, as if conscious of their evil doing and anxious to avoid detection. But the third, a large collie,--a dog that, when he does go wrong, becomes the most cunning and vicious of brutes,--flew straight at my throat with a snarl like a gray wolf cheated of his killing. I have faced bear and panther and bull moose when the red danger-light blazed into their eyes; but never before or since have I seen such awful fury in a brute's face. It swept over me in an instant that it was his life or mine; there was no question or alternative. A lucky cut of the club disabled him, and I finished the job on the spot, for the good of the deer and the community. The big buck had not moved, nor tried to, after his last great effort. Now he only turned his head and lifted it wearily, as if to get away from the intolerable smell of his dog enemies that lay dying under his very nose. His great, sorrowful, questioning eyes were turned on me continually, with a look that only innocence could possibly meet. No man on earth, I think, could have looked into them for a full moment and then raised his hand to slay. I approached very quietly, and dragged the dogs away from him, one by one. His eyes followed me always. His nostrils spread, his head came up with a start when I flung the first cur aside to leeward. But he made no motion; only his eyes had a wonderful light in them when I dragged his last enemy, the one he had killed himself, from under his very head and threw it after the others. Then I sat down quietly in the snow, and we were face to face at last. He feared me--I could hardly expect otherwise, while a deer has memory--but he lay perfectly still, his head extended on the snow, his sides heaving. After a little while he made a few bounds forward, at right angles to the course he had been running, with marvelous instinct remembering the nearest point in the many paths out of which the pack had driven him. But he stopped and lay quiet at the first sound of my snowshoes behind him. "The chase law holds. You have caught me; I am yours,"--this is what his sad eyes were saying. And sitting down quietly near him again, I tried to reassure him. "You are safe. Take your own time. No dog shall harm you now."--That is what I tried to make him feel by the very power of my own feeling, never more strongly roused than now for any wild creature. I whistled a little tune softly, which always rouses the wood folk's curiosity; but as he lay quiet, listening, his ears shot back and forth nervously at a score of sounds that I could not hear, as if above the music he caught faint echoes of the last fearful chase. Then I brought out my lunch and, nibbling a bit myself, pushed a slice of black bread over the crust towards him with a long stick. It was curious and intensely interesting to watch the struggle. At first he pulled away, as if I would poison him. Then a new rich odor began to steal up into his hungry nostrils. For weeks he had not fed full; he had been running hard since daylight, and was faint and exhausted. And in all his life he had never smelled anything so good. He turned his head to question me with his eyes. Slowly his nose came down, searching for the bread. "If he would only eat!-that is a truce which I would never break," I kept thinking over and over, and stopped eating in my eagerness to have him share with me the hunter's crust. His nose touched it; then through his hunger came the smell of the man--the danger smell that had followed him day after day in the beautiful October woods, and over white winter trails when he fled for his life, and still the man followed. The remembrance was too much. He raised his head with an effort and bounded away. I followed slowly, keeping well out to one side of his trail, and sitting quietly within sight whenever he rested in the snow. Wild animals soon lose their fear in the presence of man if one avoids all excitement, even of interest, and is quiet in his motions. His fear was gone now, but the old wild freedom and the intense desire for life--a life which he had resigned when I appeared suddenly before him, and the pack broke out behind--were coming back with renewed force. His bounds grew longer, firmer, his stops less frequent, till he broke at last into a deer path and shook himself, as if to throw off all memory of the experience. From a thicket of fir a doe, that had been listening in hiding to the sounds of his coming and to the faint unknown click, which was the voice of my snowshoes, came out to meet him. Together they trotted down the path, turning often to look and listen, and vanished at last, like gray shadows, into the gray stillness of the March woods. GLOSSARY OF INDIAN NAMES Cheokhes, the mink. Ch'geegee-lokh, the chickadee. Cheplahgan, the bald eagle. Chigwooltz, the bullfrog. Clote Scarpe, a legendary hero, like Hiawatha, of the Northern Indians. Pronounced variously, Clote Scarpe, Groscap, Gluscap, etc. Deedeeaskh, the blue jay. Hukweem, the great northern diver, or loon. Ismaques, the fish-hawk. Kagax, the weasel. Kakagos, the raven. Keeokuskh, the muskrat. Keeonekh, the otter. Killooleet, the white-throated sparrow. Kookooskoos, the great horned owl. Koskomenos, the kingfisher. Kupkawis, the barred owl. Kwaseekho, the sheldrake. Lhoks, the panther. Malsun, the wolf. Meeko,the red squirrel. Megaleep, the caribou. Milicete, the name of an Indian tribe; written also Malicete. Mitches, the birch partridge, or ruffed grouse. Moktaques, the hare. Mooween, the black bear. Musquash, the muskrat. Nemox, the fisher. Pekquam, the fisher. Seksagadagee, the Canada grouse, or spruce partridge. Skooktum, the trout. Tookhees, the wood grouse. Upweekis, the Canada lynx. 
30249	----	TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_. The words phoebe, manoeuvre, manoeuvring, Pooecetes and phoeniceus use "oe" ligature in the original text. The printer's inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. WAYS OF NATURE [Illustration: A BIRD IN SIGHT] WAYS OF NATURE BY JOHN BURROUGHS BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT 1905 BY JOHN BURROUGHS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED _Published October 1905_ PREFACE My reader will find this volume quite a departure in certain ways from the tone and spirit of my previous books, especially in regard to the subject of animal intelligence. Heretofore I have made the most of every gleam of intelligence of bird or four-footed beast that came under my observation, often, I fancy, making too much of it, and giving the wild creatures credit for more "sense" than they really possessed. The nature lover is always tempted to do this very thing; his tendency is to humanize the wild life about him, and to read his own traits and moods into whatever he looks upon. I have never consciously done this myself, at least to the extent of willfully misleading my reader. But some of our later nature writers have been guilty of this fault, and have so grossly exaggerated and misrepresented the every-day wild life of our fields and woods that their example has caused a strong reaction to take place in my own mind, and has led me to set about examining the whole subject of animal life and instinct in a way I have never done before. In March, 1903, I contributed to "The Atlantic Monthly" a paper called "Real and Sham Natural History," which was as vigorous a protest as I could make against the growing tendency to humanize the lower animals. The paper was widely read and discussed, and bore fruit in many ways, much of it good and wholesome fruit, but a little of it bitter and acrid. For obvious reasons that paper is not included in this collection. But I have given all the essays that were the outcome of the currents of thought and inquiry that it set going in my mind, and I have given them nearly in the order in which they were written, so that the reader may see the growth of my own mind and opinions in relation to the subject. I confess I have not been fully able to persuade myself that the lower animals ever show anything more than a faint gleam of what we call thought and reflection,--the power to evolve ideas from sense impressions,--except feebly in the case of the dog and the apes, and possibly the elephant. Nearly all the animal behavior that the credulous public looks upon as the outcome of reason is simply the result of the adaptiveness and plasticity of instinct. The animal has impulses and impressions where we have ideas and concepts. Of our faculties I concede to them perception, sense memory, and association of memories, and little else. Without these it would be impossible for their lives to go on. I am aware that there is much repetition in this volume, and that the names of several of the separate chapters differ much more than do the subjects discussed in them. When I was a boy on the farm, we used to thrash our grain with the hand-flail. Our custom was to thrash a flooring of sheaves on one side, then turn the sheaves over and thrash them on the other, then unbind them and thrash the loosened straw again, and then finish by turning the whole over and thrashing it once more. I suspect my reader will feel that I have followed the same method in many of these papers. I have thrashed the same straw several times, but I have turned it each time, and I trust have been rewarded by a few additional grains of truth. Let me hope that the result of the discussion or thrashing will not be to make the reader love the animals less, but rather to love the truth more. June, 1905. CONTENTS PAGE I. WAYS OF NATURE 1 II. BIRD-SONGS 29 III. NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS 47 IV. THE WIT OF A DUCK 53 V. FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE 59 VI. ANIMAL COMMUNICATION 87 VII. DEVIOUS PATHS 109 VIII. WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW? 123 IX. DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT? 151 X. A PINCH OF SALT 173 XI. THE LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 191 XII. A BEAVER'S REASON 209 XIII. READING THE BOOK OF NATURE 231 XIV. GATHERED BY THE WAY I. THE TRAINING OF WILD ANIMALS 239 II. AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE 242 III. BIRDS AND STRINGS 246 IV. MIMICRY 248 V. THE COLORS OF FRUITS 251 VI. INSTINCT 254 VII. THE ROBIN 261 VIII. THE CROW 265 INDEX 273 I WAYS OF NATURE I was much amused lately by a half-dozen or more letters that came to me from some Californian schoolchildren, who wrote to ask if I would please tell them whether or not birds have sense. One little girl said: "I would be pleased if you would write and tell me if birds have sense. I wanted to see if I couldn't be the first one to know." I felt obliged to reply to the children that we ourselves do not have sense enough to know just how much sense the birds and other wild creatures do have, and that they do appear to have some, though their actions are probably the result of what we call instinct, or natural prompting, like that of the bean-stalk when it climbs the pole. Yet a bean-stalk will sometimes show a kind of perversity or depravity that looks like the result of deliberate choice. Each season, among my dozen or more hills of pole-beans, there are usually two or three low-minded plants that will not climb the poles, but go groveling upon the ground, wandering off among the potato-vines or cucumbers, departing utterly from the traditions of their race, becoming shiftless and vagrant. When I lift them up and wind them around the poles and tie them with a wisp of grass, they rarely stay. In some way they seem to get a wrong start in life, or else are degenerates from the first. I have never known anything like this among the wild creatures, though it happens often enough among our own kind. The trouble with the bean is doubtless this: the Lima bean is of South American origin, and in the Southern Hemisphere, beans, it seems, go the other way around the pole; that is, from right to left. When transferred north of the equator, it takes them some time to learn the new way, or from left to right, and a few of them are always backsliding, or departing from the new way and vaguely seeking the old; and not finding this, they become vagabonds. How much or how little sense or judgment our wild neighbors have is hard to determine. The crows and other birds that carry shell-fish high in the air and then let them drop upon the rocks to break the shell show something very much like reason, or a knowledge of the relation of cause and effect, though it is probably an unthinking habit formed in their ancestors under the pressure of hunger. Froude tells of some species of bird that he saw in South Africa flying amid the swarm of migrating locusts and clipping off the wings of the insects so that they would drop to the earth, where the birds could devour them at their leisure. Our squirrels will cut off the chestnut burs before they have opened, allowing them to fall to the ground, where, as they seem to know, the burs soon dry open. Feed a caged coon soiled food,--a piece of bread or meat rolled on the ground,--and before he eats it he will put it in his dish of water and wash it off. The author of "Wild Life Near Home" says that muskrats "will wash what they eat, whether washing is needed or not." If the coon washes his food only when it needs washing, and not in every individual instance, then the proceeding looks like an act of judgment; the same with the muskrat. But if they always wash their food, whether soiled or not, the act looks more like instinct or an inherited habit, the origin of which is obscure. Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence,--intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being, but that looks abroad upon things. The wit of the lower animals seems all to have been developed by the struggle for existence, and it rarely gets beyond the prudential stage. The sharper the struggle, the sharper the wit. Our porcupine, for instance, is probably the most stupid of animals and has the least speed; it has little use for either wit or celerity of movement. It carries a death-dealing armor to protect it from its enemies, and it can climb the nearest hemlock tree and live on the bark all winter. The skunk, too, pays for its terrible weapon by dull wits. But think of the wit of the much-hunted fox, the much-hunted otter, the much-sought beaver! Even the grouse, when often fired at, learns, when it is started in the open, to fly with a corkscrew motion to avoid the shot. Fear, love, and hunger were the agents that developed the wits of the lower animals, as they were, of course, the prime factors in developing the intelligence of man. But man has gone on, while the animals have stopped at these fundamental wants,--the need of safety, of offspring, of food. Probably in a state of wild nature birds never make mistakes, but where they come in contact with our civilization and are confronted by new conditions, they very naturally make mistakes. For instance, their cunning in nest-building sometimes deserts them. The art of the bird is to conceal its nest both as to position and as to material, but now and then it is betrayed into weaving into its structure showy and bizarre bits of this or that, which give its secret away, and which seem to violate all the traditions of its kind. I have the picture of a robin's nest before me, upon the outside of which are stuck a muslin flower, a leaf from a small calendar, and a photograph of a local celebrity. A more incongruous use of material in bird architecture it would be hard to find. I have been told of another robin's nest upon the outside of which the bird had fastened a wooden label from a near-by flower-bed, marked "Wake Robin." Still another nest I have seen built upon a large, showy foundation of the paper-like flowers of antennaria, or everlasting. The wood thrush frequently weaves a fragment of newspaper or a white rag into the foundation of its nest. "Evil communications corrupt good manners." The newspaper and the rag-bag unsettle the wits of the birds. The phoebe-bird is capable of this kind of mistake or indiscretion. All the past generations of her tribe have built upon natural and, therefore, neutral sites, usually under shelving and overhanging rocks, and the art of adapting the nest to its surroundings, blending it with them, has been highly developed. But phoebe now frequently builds under our sheds and porches, where, so far as concealment is concerned, a change of material, say from moss to dry grass or shreds of bark, would be an advantage to her; but she departs not a bit from the family traditions; she uses the same woodsy mosses, which in some cases, especially when the nest is placed upon newly sawed timber, make her secret an open one to all eyes. It does indeed often look as if the birds had very little sense. Think of a bluebird, or an oriole, or a robin, or a jay, fighting for hours at a time its own image as reflected in a pane of glass; quite exhausting itself in its fury to demolish its supposed rival! Yet I have often witnessed this little comedy. It is another instance of how the arts of our civilization corrupt and confuse the birds. It may be that in the course of many generations the knowledge of glass will get into their blood, and they will cease to be fooled by it, as they may also in time learn what a poor foundation the newspaper is to build upon. The ant or the bee could not be fooled by the glass in that way for a moment. _Have_ the birds and our other wild neighbors sense, as distinguished from instinct? Is a change of habits to meet new conditions, or the taking advantage of accidental circumstances, an evidence of sense? How many birds appear to have taken advantage of the protection afforded by man in building their nests! How many of them build near paths and along roadsides, to say nothing of those that come close to our dwellings! Even the quail seems to prefer the borders of the highway to the open fields. I have chanced upon only three quails' nests, and these were all by the roadside. One season a scarlet tanager that had failed with her first nest in the woods came to try again in a little cherry tree that stood in the open, a few feet from my cabin, where I could almost touch the nest with my hand as I passed. But in my absence she again came to grief, some marauder, probably a red squirrel, taking her eggs. Will her failure in this case cause her to lose faith in the protective influence of the shadow of a human dwelling? I hope not. I have known the turtle dove to make a similar move, occupying an old robin's nest near my neighbor's cottage. The timid rabbit will sometimes come up from the bushy fields and excavate a place for her nest in the lawn a few feet from the house. All such things look like acts of judgment, though they may be only the result of a greater fear overcoming a lesser fear. It is in the preservation of their lives and of their young that the wild creatures come the nearest to showing what we call sense or reason. The boys tell me that a rabbit that has been driven from her hole a couple of times by a ferret will not again run into it when pursued. The tragedy of a rabbit pursued by a mink or a weasel may often be read upon our winter snows. The rabbit does not take to her hole; it would be fatal. And yet, though capable of far greater speed, so far as I have observed, she does not escape the mink; he very soon pulls her down. It would look as though a fatal paralysis, the paralysis of utter fear, fell upon the poor creature as soon as she found herself hunted by this subtle, bloodthirsty enemy. I have seen upon the snow where her jumps had become shorter and shorter, with tufts of fur marking each stride, till the bloodstains, and then her half-devoured body, told the whole tragic story. There is probably nothing in human experience, at this age of the world, that is like the helpless terror that seizes the rabbits as it does other of our lesser wild creatures, when pursued by any of the weasel tribe. They seem instantly to be under some fatal spell which binds their feet and destroys their will power. It would seem as if a certain phase of nature from which we get our notions of fate and cruelty had taken form in the weasel. The rabbit, when pursued by the fox or by the dog, quickly takes to hole. Hence, perhaps, the wit of the fox that a hunter told me about. The story was all written upon the snow. A mink was hunting a rabbit, and the fox, happening along, evidently took in the situation at a glance. He secreted himself behind a tree or a rock, and, as the rabbit came along, swept her from her course like a charge of shot fired at close range, hurling her several feet over the snow, and then seizing her and carrying her to his den up the mountain-side. It would be interesting to know how long our chimney swifts saw the open chimney-stacks of the early settlers beneath them before they abandoned the hollow trees in the woods and entered the chimneys for nesting and roosting purposes. Was the act an act of judgment, or simply an unreasoning impulse, like so much else in the lives of the wild creatures? In the choice of nesting-material the swift shows no change of habit. She still snips off the small dry twigs from the tree-tops and glues them together, and to the side of the chimney, with her own glue. The soot is a new obstacle in her way, that she does not yet seem to have learned to overcome, as the rains often loosen it and cause her nest to fall to the bottom. She has a pretty way of trying to frighten you off when your head suddenly darkens the opening above her. At such times she leaves the nest and clings to the side of the chimney near it. Then, slowly raising her wings, she suddenly springs out from the wall and back again, making as loud a drumming with them in the passage as she is capable of. If this does not frighten you away, she repeats it three or four times. If your face still hovers above her, she remains quiet and watches you. What a creature of the air this bird is, never touching the ground, so far as I know, and never tasting earthly food! The swallow does perch now and then and descend to the ground for nesting-material; but the swift, I have reason to believe, even outrides the summer storms, facing them on steady wing, high in air. The twigs for her nest she gathers on the wing, sweeping along like children on a "merry-go-round" who try to seize a ring, or to do some other feat, as they pass a given point. If the swift misses the twig, or it fails to yield to her the first time, she tries again and again, each time making a wider circuit, as if to tame and train her steed a little and bring him up more squarely to the mark next time. The swift is a stiff flyer: there appear to be no joints in her wings; she suggests something made of wires or of steel. Yet the air of frolic and of superabundance of wing-power is more marked with her than with any other of our birds. Her feeding and twig-gathering seem like asides in a life of endless play. Several times both in spring and fall I have seen swifts gather in immense numbers toward nightfall, to take refuge in large unused chimney-stacks. On such occasions they seem to be coming together for some aerial festival or grand celebration; and, as if bent upon a final effort to work off a part of their superabundant wing-power before settling down for the night, they circle and circle high above the chimney-top, a great cloud of them, drifting this way and that, all in high spirits and chippering as they fly. Their numbers constantly increase as other members of the clan come dashing in from all points of the compass. Swifts seem to materialize out of empty air on all sides of the chippering, whirling ring, as an hour or more this assembling of the clan and this flight festival go on. The birds must gather in from whole counties, or from half a State. They have been on the wing all day, and yet now they seem as tireless as the wind, and as if unable to curb their powers. One fall they gathered in this way and took refuge for the night in a large chimney-stack in a city near me, for more than a month and a half. Several times I went to town to witness the spectacle, and a spectacle it was: ten thousand of them, I should think, filling the air above a whole square like a whirling swarm of huge black bees, but saluting the ear with a multitudinous chippering, instead of a humming. People gathered upon the sidewalks to see them. It was a rare circus performance, free to all. After a great many feints and playful approaches, the whirling ring of birds would suddenly grow denser above the chimney; then a stream of them, as if drawn down by some power of suction, would pour into the opening. For only a few seconds would this downward rush continue; then, as if the spirit of frolic had again got the upper hand of them, the ring would rise, and the chippering and circling go on. In a minute or two the same manoeuvre would be repeated, the chimney, as it were, taking its swallows at intervals to prevent choking. It usually took a half-hour or more for the birds all to disappear down its capacious throat. There was always an air of timidity and irresolution about their approach to the chimney, just as there always is about their approach to the dead tree-top from which they procure their twigs for nest-building. Often did I see birds hesitate above the opening and then pass on, apparently as though they had not struck it at just the right angle. On one occasion a solitary bird was left flying, and it took three or four trials either to make up its mind or to catch the trick of the descent. On dark or threatening or stormy days the birds would begin to assemble by mid-afternoon, and by four or five o'clock were all in their lodgings. The chimney is a capacious one, forty or fifty feet high and nearly three feet square, yet it did not seem adequate to afford breathing-space for so many birds. I was curious to know how they disposed themselves inside. At the bottom was a small opening. Holding my ear to it, I could hear a continuous chippering and humming, as if the birds were still all in motion, like an agitated beehive. At nine o'clock this multitudinous sound of wings and voices was still going on, and doubtless it was kept up all night. What was the meaning of it? Was the press of birds so great that they needed to keep their wings moving to ventilate the shaft, as do certain of the bees in a crowded hive? Or were these restless spirits unable to fold their wings even in sleep? I was very curious to get a peep inside that chimney when the swifts were in it. So one afternoon this opportunity was afforded me by the removal of the large smoke-pipe of the old steam-boiler. This left an opening into which I could thrust my head and shoulders. The sound of wings and voices filled the hollow shaft. On looking up, I saw the sides of the chimney for about half its length paved with the restless birds; they sat so close together that their bodies touched. Moreover, a large number of them were constantly on the wing, showing against the sky light as if they were leaving the chimney. But they did not leave it. They rose up a few feet and then resumed their positions upon the sides, and it was this movement that caused the humming sound. All the while the droppings of the birds came down like a summer shower. At the bottom of the shaft was a mine of guano three or four feet deep, with a dead swift here and there upon it. Probably one or more birds out of such a multitude died every night. I had fancied there would be many more. It was a long time before it dawned upon me what this uninterrupted flight within the chimney meant. Finally I saw that it was a sanitary measure: only thus could the birds keep from soiling each other with their droppings. Birds digest very rapidly, and had they all continued to cling to the sides of the wall, they would have been in a sad predicament before morning. Like other acts of cleanliness on the part of birds, this was doubtless the prompting of instinct and not of judgment. It was Nature looking out for her own. In view, then, of the doubtful sense or intelligence of the wild creatures, what shall we say of the new school of nature writers or natural history romancers that has lately arisen, and that reads into the birds and animals almost the entire human psychology? This, surely: so far as these writers awaken an interest in the wild denizens of the field and wood, and foster a genuine love of them in the hearts of the young people, so far is their influence good; but so far as they pervert natural history and give false impressions of the intelligence of our animals, catering to a taste that prefers the fanciful to the true and the real, is their influence bad. Of course the great army of readers prefer this sugar-coated natural history to the real thing, but the danger always is that an indulgence of this taste will take away a liking for the real thing, or prevent its development. The knowing ones, those who can take these pretty tales with the pinch of salt of real knowledge, are not many; the great majority are simply entertained while they are being humbugged. There may be no very serious objection to the popular love of sweets being catered to in this field by serving up the life-history of our animals in a story, all the missing links supplied, and all their motives and acts humanized, provided it is not done covertly and under the guise of a real history. We are never at a loss how to take Kipling in his "Jungle Book;" we are pretty sure that this is fact dressed up as fiction, and that much of the real life of the jungle is in these stories. I remember reading his story of "The White Seal" shortly after I had visited the Seal Islands in Bering Sea, and I could not detect in the story one departure from the facts of the life-history of the seal, so far as it is known. Kipling takes no covert liberties with natural history, any more than he does with the facts of human history in his novels. Unadulterated, unsweetened observations are what the real nature-lover craves. No man can invent incidents and traits as interesting as the reality. Then, to know that a thing is true gives it such a savor! The truth--how we do crave the truth! We cannot feed our minds on simulacra any more than we can our bodies. Do assure us that the thing you tell is true. If you must counterfeit the truth, do it so deftly that we shall never detect you. But in natural history there is no need to counterfeit the truth; the reality always suffices, if you have eyes to see it and ears to hear it. Behold what Maeterlinck makes out of the life of the bee, simply by getting at and portraying the facts--a true wonder-book, the enchantment of poetry wedded to the authority of science. Works on animal intelligence, such as Romanes's, abound in incidents that show in the animals reason and forethought in their simpler forms; but in many cases the incidents related in these works are not well authenticated, nor told by trained observers. The observations of the great majority of people have no scientific value whatever. Romanes quotes from some person who alleges that he saw a pair of nightingales, during a flood in the river near which their nest was placed, pick up the nest bodily and carry it to a place of safety. This is incredible. If Romanes himself or Darwin himself said he saw this, one would have to believe it. Birds whose nests have been plundered sometimes pull the old nest to pieces and use the material, or parts of it, in building a new nest; but I cannot believe that any pair of birds ever picked up a nest containing eggs and carried it off to a new place. How could they do it? With one on each side, how could they fly with the nest between them? They could not carry it with their feet, and how could they manage it with their beaks? My neighbor met in the woods a black snake that had just swallowed a red squirrel. Now your romance-naturalist may take such a fact as this and make as pretty a story of it as he can. He may ascribe to the snake and his victim all the human emotions he pleases. He may make the snake glide through the tree-tops from limb to limb, and from tree to tree, in pursuit of its prey: the main thing is, the snake got the squirrel. If our romancer makes the snake fascinate the squirrel, I shall object, because I don't believe that snakes have this power. People like to believe that they have. It would seem as if this subtle, gliding, hateful creature ought to have some such mysterious gift, but I have no proof that it has. Every year I see the black snake robbing birds'-nests, or pursued by birds whose nests it has just plundered, but I have yet to see it cast its fatal spell upon a grown bird. Or, if our romancer says that the black snake was drilled in the art of squirrel-catching by its mother, I shall know he is a pretender. Speaking of snakes reminds me of an incident I have several times witnessed in our woods in connection with a snake commonly called the sissing or blowing adder. When I have teased this snake a few moments with my cane, it seems to be seized with an epileptic or cataleptic fit. It throws itself upon its back, coiled nearly in the form of a figure eight, and begins a series of writhings and twistings and convulsive movements astonishing to behold. Its mouth is open and presently full of leaf-mould, its eyes are covered with the same, its head is thrown back, its white belly up; now it is under the leaves, now out, the body all the while being rapidly drawn through this figure eight, so that the head and tail are constantly changing place. What does it mean? Is it fear? Is it a real fit? I do not know, but any one of our romance-naturalists could tell you at once. I can only suggest that it may be a ruse to baffle its enemy, the black snake, when he would attempt to crush it in his folds, or to seize its head when he would swallow it. I am reminded of another mystery connected with a snake, or a snake-skin, and a bird. Why does our great crested flycatcher weave a snake-skin into its nest, or, in lieu of that, something that suggests a snake-skin, such as an onion-skin, or fish-scales, or a bit of oiled paper? It is thought by some persons that it uses the snake-skin as a kind of scarecrow, to frighten away its natural enemies. But think what this purpose in the use of it would imply. It would imply that the bird knew that there were among its enemies creatures that were afraid of snakes--so afraid of them that one of their faded and cast-off skins would keep these enemies away. How could the bird obtain this knowledge? It is not afraid of the skin itself; why should it infer that squirrels, for instance, are? I am convinced there is nothing in this notion. In all the nests that have come under my observation, the snake-skin was in faded fragments woven into the texture of the nest, and one would not be aware of its presence unless he pulled the nest to pieces. True, Mr. Frank Bolles reports finding a nest of this bird with a whole snake-skin coiled around a single egg; but it was the skin of a small garter-snake, six or seven inches long, and could not therefore have inspired much terror in the heart of the bird's natural enemies. Dallas Lore Sharp, author of that delightful book, "Wild Life Near Home," tells me he has seen a whole skin dangling nearly its entire length from the hole that contained the nest, just as he has seen strings hanging from the nest of the kingbird. The bird was too hurried or too careless to pull in the skin. Mr. Sharp adds that he cannot "give the bird credit for appreciating the attitude of the rest of the world toward snakes, and making use of the fear." Moreover, a cast-off snake-skin looks very little like a snake. It is thin, shrunken, faded, papery, and there is no terror in it. Then, too, it is dark in the cavity of the nest, consequently the skin could not serve as a scarecrow in any case. Hence, whatever its purpose may be, it surely is not that. It looks like a mere fancy or whim of the bird. There is that in its voice and ways that suggests something a little uncanny. Its call is more like the call of the toad than that of a bird. If the toad did not always swallow its own cast-off skin, the bird would probably use that too. At the best we can only guess at the motives of the birds and beasts. As I have elsewhere said, they nearly all have reference in some way to the self-preservation of these creatures. But how the bits of an old snake-skin in a bird's nest can contribute specially to this end, I cannot see. Nature is not always consistent; she does not always choose the best means to a given end. For instance, all the wrens except our house wren seem to use about the best material at hand for their nests. What can be more unsuitable, untractable, for a nest in a hole or cavity than the twigs the house wren uses? Dry grasses or bits of soft bark would bend and adapt themselves easily to the exigencies of the case; but stiff, unyielding twigs! What a contrast to the suitableness of the material the hummingbird uses--the down of some plant, which seems to have a poetic fitness! Yesterday in my walk I saw where a red squirrel had stripped the soft outer bark off a group of red cedars to build its winter's nest with. This also seemed fit,--fit that such a creature of the trees should not go to the ground for its nest-material, and should choose something soft and pliable. Among the birches, it probably gathers the fine curling shreds of the birch bark. Beside my path in the woods a downy woodpecker, late one fall, drilled a hole in the top of a small dead black birch for his winter quarters. My attention was first called to his doings by the white chips upon the ground. Every day as I passed I would rap upon his tree, and if he was in he would appear at his door and ask plainly enough what I wanted now. One day when I rapped, something else appeared at the door--I could not make out what. I continued my rapping, when out came two flying-squirrels. On the tree being given a vigorous shake, it broke off at the hole, and the squirrels went sliding down the air to the foot of a hemlock, up which they disappeared. They had dispossessed Downy of his house, had carried in some grass and leaves for a nest, and were as snug as a bug in a rug. Downy drilled another cell in a dead oak farther up the hill, and, I hope, passed the winter there unmolested. Such incidents, comic or tragic, as they chance to strike us, are happening all about us, if we have eyes to see them. The next season, near sundown of a late November day, I saw Downy trying to get possession of a hole not his own. I chanced to be passing under a maple, when white chips upon the ground again caused me to scrutinize the branches overhead. Just then I saw Downy come to the tree, and, hopping around on the under side of a large dry limb, begin to make passes at something with his beak. Presently I made out a round hole there, with something in it returning Downy's thrusts. The sparring continued some moments. Downy would hop away a few feet, then return to the attack, each time to be met by the occupant of the hole. I suspected an English sparrow had taken possession of Downy's cell in his absence during the day, but I was wrong. Downy flew to another branch, and I tossed up a stone against the one that contained the hole, when, with a sharp, steely note, out came a hairy woodpecker and alighted on a near-by branch. Downy, then, had the "cheek" to try to turn his large rival out of doors--and it was Hairy's cell, too; one could see that by the size of the entrance. Thus loosely does the rule of _meum_ and _tuum_ obtain in the woods. There is no moral code in nature. Might reads right. Man in communities has evolved ethical standards of conduct, but nations, in their dealings with one another, are still largely in a state of savage nature, and seek to establish the right, as dogs do, by the appeal to battle. One season a wood duck laid her eggs in a cavity in the top of a tall yellow birch near the spring that supplies my cabin with water. A bold climber "shinned" up the fifty or sixty feet of rough tree-trunk and looked in upon the eleven eggs. They were beyond the reach of his arm, in a well-like cavity over three feet deep. How would the mother duck get her young up out of that well and down to the ground? We watched, hoping to see her in the act. But we did not. She may have done it at night or very early in the morning. All we know is that when Amasa one morning passed that way, there sat eleven little tufts of black and yellow down in the spring, with the mother duck near by. It was a pretty sight. The feat of getting down from the tree-top cradle had been safely effected, probably by the young clambering up on the inside walls of the cavity and then tumbling out into the air and coming down gently like huge snowflakes. They are mostly down, and why should they not fall without any danger to life or limb? The notion that the mother duck takes the young one by one in her beak and carries them to the creek is doubtless erroneous. Mr. William Brewster once saw the golden-eye, whose habits of nesting are like those of the wood duck, get its young from the nest to the water in this manner: The mother bird alighted in the water under the nest, looked all around to see that the coast was clear, and then gave a peculiar call. Instantly the young shot out of the cavity that held them, as if the tree had taken an emetic, and came softly down to the water beside their mother. Another observer assures me that he once found a newly hatched duckling hung by the neck in the fork of a bush under a tree in which a brood of Wood ducks had been hatched. The ways of nature,--who can map them, or fathom them, or interpret them, or do much more than read a hint correctly here and there? Of one thing we may be pretty certain, namely, that the ways of wild nature may be studied in our human ways, inasmuch as the latter are an evolution from the former, till we come to the ethical code, to altruism and self-sacrifice. Here we seem to breathe another air, though probably this code differs no more from the animal standards of conduct than our physical atmosphere differs from that of early geologic time. Our moral code must in some way have been evolved from our rude animal instincts. It came from within; its possibilities were all in nature. If not, where were they? I have seen disinterested acts among the birds, or what looked like such, as when one bird feeds the young of another species when it hears them crying for food. But that a bird would feed a grown bird of another species, or even of its own, to keep it from starving, I have my doubts. I am quite positive that mice will try to pull one of their fellows out of a trap, but what the motive is, who shall say? Would the same mice share their last crumb with their fellow if he were starving? That, of course, would be a much nearer approach to the human code, and is too much to expect. Bees will clear their fellows of honey, but whether it be to help them, or to save the honey, is a question. In my youth I saw a parent weasel seize one of its nearly grown young which I had wounded and carry it across an open barway, in spite of my efforts to hinder it. A friend of mine, who is a careful observer, says he once wounded a shrike so that it fell to the ground, but before he got to it, it recovered itself and flew with difficulty toward some near trees, calling to its mate the while; the mate came and seemed to get beneath the wounded bird and buoy it up, so aiding it that it gained the top of a tall tree, where my friend left it. But in neither instance can we call this helpfulness entirely disinterested, or pure altruism. Emerson said that he was an endless experimenter with no past at his back. This is just what Nature is. She experiments endlessly, seeking new ways, new modes, new forms, and is ever intent upon breaking away from the past. In this way, as Darwin showed, she attains to new species. She is blind, she gropes her way, she trusts to luck; all her successes are chance hits. Whenever I look over my right shoulder, as I sit at my desk writing these sentences, I see a long shoot of a honeysuckle that came in through a crack of my imperfectly closed window last summer. It came in looking, or rather feeling, for something to cling to. It first dropped down upon a pile of books, then reached off till it struck the window-sill of another large window; along this it crept, its regular leaves standing up like so many pairs of green ears, looking very pretty. Coming to the end of the open way there, it turned to the left and reached out into vacancy, till it struck another window-sill running at right angles to the former; along this it traveled nearly half an inch a day, till it came to the end of that road. Then it ventured out into vacant space again, and pointed straight toward me at my desk, ten feet distant. Day by day it kept its seat upon the window-sill, and stretched out farther and farther, almost beckoning me to give it a lift or to bring it support. I could hardly resist its patient daily appeal. Late in October it had bridged about three feet of the distance that separated us, when, one day, the moment came when it could maintain itself outright in the air no longer, and it fell to the floor. "Poor thing," I said, "your faith was blind, but it was real. You knew there was a support somewhere, and you tried all ways to find it." This is Nature. She goes around the circle, she tries every direction, sure that she will find a way at some point. Animals in cages behave in a similar way, looking for a means of escape. In the vineyard I see the grape-vines reaching out blindly in all directions for some hold for their tendrils. The young arms seize upon one another and tighten their hold as if they had at last found what they were in search of. Stop long enough beside one of the vines, and it will cling to you and run all over you. Behold the tumble-bug with her ball of dung by the roadside; where is she going with it? She is going anywhere and everywhere; she changes her direction, like the vine, whenever she encounters an obstacle. She only knows that somewhere there is a depression or a hole in which her ball with its egg can rest secure, and she keeps on tumbling about till she finds it, or maybe digs one, or comes to grief by the foot of some careless passer-by. This, again, is Nature's way, randomly and tirelessly seeking her ends. When we look over a large section of history, we see that it is man's way, too, or Nature's way in man. His progress has been a blind groping, the result of endless experimentation, and all his failures and mistakes could not be written in a book. How he has tumbled about with his ball, seeking the right place for it, and how many times has he come to grief! All his successes have been lucky hits: steam, electricity, representative government, printing--how long he groped for them before he found them! There is always and everywhere the Darwinian tendency to variation, to seek new forms, to improve upon the past; and man is under this law, the same as is the rest of nature. One generation of men, like one generation of leaves, becomes the fertilizer of the next; failures only enrich the soil or make smoother the way. There are so many conflicting forces and interests, and the conditions of success are so complex! If the seed fall here, it will not germinate; if there, it will be drowned or washed away; if yonder, it will find too sharp competition. There are only a few places where it will find all the conditions favorable. Hence the prodigality of Nature in seeds, scattering a thousand for one plant or tree. She is like a hunter shooting at random into every tree or bush, hoping to bring down his game, which he does if his ammunition holds out long enough; or like the British soldier in the Boer War, firing vaguely at an enemy that he does not see. But Nature's ammunition always holds out, and she hits her mark in the end. Her ammunition on our planet is the heat of the sun. When this fails, she will no longer hit the mark or try to hit it. Let there be a plum tree anywhere with the disease called the "black-knot" upon it, and presently every plum tree in its neighborhood will have black knots. Do you think the germs from the first knot knew where to find the other plum trees? No; the wind carried them in every direction, where the plum trees were not as well as where they were. It was a blind search and a chance hit. So with all seeds and germs. Nature covers all the space, and is bound to hit the mark sooner or later. The sun spills his light indiscriminately into space; a small fraction of his rays hit the earth, and we are warmed. Yet to all intents and purposes it is as if he shone for us alone. II BIRD-SONGS I suspect it requires a special gift of grace to enable one to hear the bird-songs; some new power must be added to the ear, or some obstruction removed. There are not only scales upon our eyes so that we do not see, there are scales upon our ears so that we do not hear. A city woman who had spent much of her time in the country once asked a well-known ornithologist to take her where she could hear the bluebird. "What, never heard the bluebird!" said he. "I have not," said the woman. "Then you will never hear it," said the bird-lover; never hear it with that inward ear that gives beauty and meaning to the note. He could probably have taken her in a few minutes where she could have heard the call or warble of the bluebird; but it would have fallen upon unresponsive ears--upon ears that were not sensitized by love for the birds or associations with them. Bird-songs are not music, properly speaking, but only suggestions of music. A great many people whose attention would be quickly arrested by the same volume of sound made by a musical instrument or by artificial means never hear them at all. The sound of a boy's penny whistle there in the grove or the meadow would separate itself more from the background of nature, and be a greater challenge to the ear, than is the strain of the thrush or the song of the sparrow. There is something elusive, indefinite, neutral, about bird-songs that makes them strike obliquely, as it were, upon the ear; and we are very apt to miss them. They are a part of nature, the Nature that lies about us, entirely occupied with her own affairs, and quite regardless of our presence. Hence it is with bird-songs as it is with so many other things in nature--they are what we make them; the ear that hears them must be half creative. I am always disturbed when persons not especially observant of birds ask me to take them where they can hear a particular bird, in whose song they have become interested through a description in some book. As I listen with them, I feel like apologizing for the bird: it has a bad cold, or has just heard some depressing news; it will not let itself out. The song seems so casual and minor when you make a dead set at it. I have taken persons to hear the hermit thrush, and I have fancied that they were all the time saying to themselves, "Is that all?" But should one hear the bird in his walk, when the mind is attuned to simple things and is open and receptive, when expectation is not aroused and the song comes as a surprise out of the dusky silence of the woods, then one feels that it merits all the fine things that can be said of it. One of our popular writers and lecturers upon birds told me this incident: He had engaged to take two city girls out for a walk in the country, to teach them the names of the birds they might see and hear. Before they started, he read to them Henry van Dyke's poem on the song sparrow,--one of our best bird-poems,--telling them that the song sparrow was one of the first birds they were likely to hear. As they proceeded with their walk, sure enough, there by the roadside was a sparrow in song. The bird man called the attention of his companions to it. It was some time before the unpracticed ears of the girls could make it out; then one of them said (the poem she had just heard, I suppose, still ringing in her ears), "What! that little squeaky thing?" The sparrow's song meant nothing to her at all, and how could she share the enthusiasm of the poet? Probably the warble of the robin, or the call of the meadowlark or of the highhole, if they chanced to hear them, meant no more to these girls. If we have no associations with these sounds, they will mean very little to us. Their merit as musical performances is very slight. It is as signs of joy and love in nature, as heralds of spring, and as the spirit of the woods and fields made audible, that they appeal to us. The drumming of the woodpeckers and of the ruffed grouse give great pleasure to a countryman, though these sounds have not the quality of real music. It is the same with the call of the migrating geese or the voice of any wild thing: our pleasure in them is entirely apart from any considerations of music. Why does the wild flower, as we chance upon it in the woods or bogs, give us more pleasure than the more elaborate flower of the garden or lawn? Because it comes as a surprise, offers a greater contrast with its surroundings, and suggests a spirit in wild nature that seems to take thought of itself and to aspire to beautiful forms. The songs of caged birds are always disappointing, because such birds have nothing but their musical qualities to recommend them to us. We have separated them from that which gives quality and, meaning to their songs. One recalls Emerson's lines:-- "I thought the sparrow's note from heaven, Singing at dawn on the alder bough; I brought him home, in his nest, at even; He sings the song, but it cheers not now, For I did not bring home the river and sky;-- He sang to my ear,--they sang to my eye." I have never yet seen a caged bird that I wanted,--at least, not on account of its song,--nor a wild flower that I wished to transfer to my garden. A caged skylark will sing its song sitting on a bit of turf in the bottom of the cage; but you want to stop your ears, it is so harsh and sibilant and penetrating. But up there against the morning sky, and above the wide expanse of fields, what delight we have in it! It is not the concord of sweet sounds: it is the soaring spirit of gladness and ecstasy raining down upon us from "heaven's gate." Then, if to the time and the place one could only add the association, or hear the bird through the vista of the years, the song touched with the magic of youthful memories! One season a friend in England sent me a score of skylarks in a cage. I gave them their liberty in a field near my place. They drifted away, and I never heard them or saw them again. But one Sunday a Scotchman from a neighboring city called upon me, and declared with visible excitement that on his way along the road he had heard a skylark. He was not dreaming; he knew it was a skylark, though he had not heard one since he had left the banks of the Doon, a quarter of a century or more before. What pleasure it gave him! How much more the song meant to him than it would have meant to me! For the moment he was on his native heath again. Then I told him about the larks I had liberated, and he seemed to enjoy it all over again with renewed appreciation. Many years ago some skylarks were liberated on Long Island, and they became established there, and may now occasionally be heard in certain localities. One summer day a friend of mine was out there observing them; a lark was soaring and singing in the sky above him. An old Irishman came along, and suddenly stopped as if transfixed to the spot; a look of mingled delight and incredulity came into his face. Was he indeed hearing the bird of his youth? He took off his hat, turned his face skyward, and with moving lips and streaming eyes stood a long time regarding the bird. "Ah," my friend thought, "if I could only hear that song with his ears!" How it brought back his youth and all those long-gone days on his native hills! The power of bird-songs over us is so much a matter of association that every traveler to other countries finds the feathered songsters of less merit than those he left behind. The stranger does not hear the birds in the same receptive, uncritical frame of mind as does the native; they are not in the same way the voices of the place and the season. What music can there be in that long, piercing, far-heard note of the first meadowlark in spring to any but a native, or in the "o-ka-lee" of the red-shouldered starling as he rests upon the willows in March? A stranger would probably recognize melody and a wild woodsy quality in the flutings of the veery thrush; but how much more they would mean to him after he had spent many successive Junes threading our northern trout-streams and encamping on their banks! The veery will come early in the morning, and again at sundown, and perch above your tent, and blow his soft, reverberant note for many minutes at a time. The strain repeats the echoes of the limpid stream in the halls and corridors of the leafy woods. While in England in 1882, I rushed about two or three counties in late June and early July, bent on hearing the song of the nightingale, but missed it by a few days, and in some cases, as it seemed, only by a few hours. The nightingale seems to be wound up to go only so long, or till about the middle of June, and it is only by a rare chance that you hear one after that date. Then I came home to hear a nightingale in song one winter morning in a friend's house in the city. It was a curious let-down to my enthusiasm. A caged song in a city chamber in broad daylight, in lieu of the wild, free song in the gloaming of an English landscape! I closed my eyes, abstracted myself from my surroundings, and tried my best to fancy myself listening to the strain back there amid the scenes I had haunted about Haslemere and Godalming, but with poor success, I suspect. The nightingale's song, like the lark's, needs vista, needs all the accessories of time and place. The song is not all in the singing, any more than the wit is all in the saying. It is in the occasion, the surroundings, the spirit of which it is the expression. My friend said that the bird did not fully let itself out. Its song was a brilliant medley of notes,--no theme that I could detect,--like the lark's song in this respect; all the notes of the field and forest appeared to be the gift of this bird, but what tone! what accent! like that of a great poet! Nearly every May I am seized with an impulse to go back to the scenes of my youth, and hear the bobolinks in the home meadows once more. I am sure they sing there better than anywhere else. They probably drink nothing but dew, and the dew distilled in those high pastoral regions has surprising virtues. It gives a clear, full, vibrant quality to the birds' voices that I have never heard elsewhere. The night of my arrival, I leave my southern window open, so that the meadow chorus may come pouring in before I am up in the morning. How it does transport me athwart the years, and make me a boy again, sheltered by the paternal wing! On one occasion, the third morning after my arrival, a bobolink appeared with a new note in his song. The note sounded like the word "baby" uttered with a peculiar, tender resonance: but it was clearly an interpolation; it did not belong there; it had no relation to the rest of the song. Yet the bird never failed to utter it with the same joy and confidence as the rest of his song. Maybe it was the beginning of a variation that will in time result in an entirely new bobolink song. On my last spring visit to my native hills, my attention was attracted to another songster not seen or heard there in my youth, namely, the prairie horned lark. Flocks of these birds used to be seen in some of the Northern States in the late fall during their southern migrations; but within the last twenty years they have become regular summer residents in the hilly parts of many sections of New York and New England. They are genuine skylarks, and lack only the powers of song to make them as attractive as their famous cousins of Europe. The larks are ground-birds when they perch, and sky-birds when they sing; from the turf to the clouds--nothing between. Our horned lark mounts upward on quivering wing in the true lark fashion, and, spread out against the sky at an altitude of two or three hundred feet, hovers and sings. The watcher and listener below holds him in his eye, but the ear catches only a faint, broken, half-inarticulate note now and then--mere splinters, as it were, of the song of the skylark. The song of the latter is continuous, and is loud and humming; it is a fountain of jubilant song up there in the sky: but our lark sings in snatches; at each repetition of its notes it dips forward and downward a few feet, and then rises again. One day I kept my eye upon one until it had repeated its song one hundred and three times; then it closed its wings, and dropped toward the earth like a plummet, as does its European congener. While I was watching the bird, a bobolink flew over my head, between me and the lark, and poured out his voluble and copious strain. "What a contrast," I thought, "between the voice of the spluttering, tongue-tied lark, and the free, liquid, and varied song of the bobolink!" I have heard of a curious fact in the life-histories of these larks in the West. A Michigan woman once wrote me that her brother, who was an engineer on an express train that made daily trips between two Western cities, reported that many birds were struck by the engine every day, and killed--often as many as thirty on a trip of sixty miles. Birds of many kinds were killed, but the most common was a bird that went in flocks, the description of which answered to the horned lark. Since then I have read in a Minnesota newspaper that many horned larks are killed by railroad locomotives in that State. It was thought that the birds sat behind the rails to get out of the wind, and on starting up in front of the advancing train, were struck down by the engine. The Michigan engineer referred to thought that the birds gathered upon the track to earth their wings, or else to pick up the grain that leaks out of the wheat-trains, and sows the track from Dakota to the seaboard. Probably the wind which they might have to face in getting up was the prime cause of their being struck. One does not think of the locomotive as a bird-destroyer, though it is well known that many of the smaller mammals often fall beneath it. A very interesting feature of our bird-songs is the wing-song, or song of ecstasy. It is not the gift of many of our birds. Indeed, less than a dozen species are known to me as ever singing on the wing. It seems to spring from more intense excitement and self-abandonment than the ordinary song delivered from the perch. When its joy reaches the point of rapture, the bird is literally carried off its feet, and up it goes into the air, pouring out its song as a rocket pours out its sparks. The skylark and the bobolink habitually do this, while a few others of our birds do it only on occasions. One summer, up in the Catskills, I added another name to my list of ecstatic singers--that of the vesper sparrow. Several times I heard a new song in the air, and caught a glimpse of the bird as it dropped back to the earth. My attention would be attracted by a succession of hurried, chirping notes, followed by a brief burst of song, then by the vanishing form of the bird. One day I was lucky enough to see the bird as it was rising to its climax in the air, and to identify it as the vesper sparrow. The burst of song that crowned the upward flight of seventy-five or one hundred feet was brief; but it was brilliant and striking, and entirely unlike the leisurely chant of the bird while upon the ground. It suggested a lark, but was less buzzing or humming. The preliminary chirping notes, uttered faster and faster as the bird mounted in the air, were like the trail of sparks which a rocket emits before its grand burst of color at the top of its flight. It is interesting to note that this bird is quite lark-like in its color and markings, having the two lateral white quills in the tail, and it has the habit of elevating the feathers on the top of the head so as to suggest a crest. The solitary skylark that I discovered several years ago in a field near me was seen on several occasions paying his addresses to one of these birds, but the vesper-bird was shy, and eluded all his advances. Probably the perch-songster among our ordinary birds that is most regularly seized with the fit of ecstasy that results in this lyric burst in the air, as I described in my first book, "Wake Robin," over thirty years ago, is the oven-bird, or wood-accentor--the golden-crowned thrush of the old ornithologists. Every loiterer about the woods knows this pretty, speckled-breasted, olive-backed little bird, which walks along over the dry leaves a few yards from him, moving its head as it walks, like a miniature domestic fowl. Most birds are very stiff-necked, like the robin, and as they run or hop upon the ground, carry the head as if it were riveted to the body. Not so the oven-bird, or the other birds that walk, as the cow-bunting, or the quail, or the crow. They move the head forward with the movement of the feet. The sharp, reiterated, almost screeching song of the oven-bird, as it perches on a limb a few feet from the ground, like the words, "preacher, preacher, preacher," or "teacher, teacher, teacher," uttered louder and louder, and repeated six or seven times, is also familiar to most ears; but its wild, ringing, rapturous burst of song in the air high above the tree-tops is not so well known. From a very prosy, tiresome, unmelodious singer, it is suddenly transformed for a brief moment into a lyric poet of great power. It is a great surprise. The bird undergoes a complete transformation. Ordinarily it is a very quiet, demure sort of bird. It walks about over the leaves, moving its head like a little hen; then perches on a limb a few feet from the ground and sends forth its shrill, rather prosy, unmusical chant. Surely it is an ordinary, common-place bird. But wait till the inspiration of its flight-song is upon it. What a change! Up it goes through the branches of the trees, leaping from limb to limb, faster and faster, till it shoots from the tree-tops fifty or more feet into the air above them, and bursts into an ecstasy of song, rapid, ringing, lyrical; no more like its habitual performance than a match is like a rocket; brief but thrilling; emphatic but musical. Having reached its climax of flight and song, the bird closes its wings and drops nearly perpendicularly downward like the skylark. If its song were more prolonged, it would rival the song of that famous bird. The bird does this many times a day during early June, but oftenest at twilight. The song in quality and general cast is like that of its congener, the water-accentor, which, however, I believe is never delivered on the wing. From its habit of singing at twilight, and from the swift, darting motions of the bird, I am inclined to think that in it we have solved the mystery of Thoreau's "night-warbler," that puzzled and eluded him for years. Emerson told him he must beware of finding and booking it, lest life should have nothing more to show him. The older ornithologists must have heard this song many times, but they never seem to have suspected the identity of the singer. Other birds that sing on the wing are the meadowlark, goldfinch, purple finch, indigo-bird, Maryland yellow-throat, and woodcock. The flight-song of the woodcock I have heard but twice in my life. The first time was in the evening twilight about the middle of April. The bird was calling in the dusk "yeap, yeap," or "seap, seap," from the ground,--a peculiar reedy call. Then, by and by, it started upward on an easy slant, that peculiar whistling of its wings alone heard; then, at an altitude of one hundred feet or more, it began to float about in wide circles and broke out in an ecstatic chipper, almost a warble at times, with a peculiar smacking musical quality; then, in a minute or so, it dropped back to the ground again, not straight down like the lark, but more spirally, and continued its call as before. In less than five minutes it was up again. The next time, a few years later, I heard the song in company with a friend, Dr. Clara Barrus. Let me give the woman's impression of the song as she afterward wrote it up for a popular journal. "The sunset light was flooding all this May loveliness of field and farm and distant wood; song sparrows were blithely pouring out happiness by the throatful; peepers were piping and toads trilling, and we thought it no hardship to wait in such a place till the dusk should gather, and the wary woodcock announce his presence. But hark! while yet 'tis light, only a few rods distant, I hear that welcome 'seap ... seap,' and lo! a chipper and a chirr, and past us he flies,--a direct, slanting upward flight, somewhat labored,--his bill showing long against the reddened sky. 'He has something in his mouth,' I start to say, when I bethink me what a long bill he has. Around, above us he flies in wide, ambitious circles, the while we are enveloped, as it were, in that hurried chippering sound--fine, elusive, now near, now distant. How rapid is the flight! Now it sounds faster and faster, 'like a whiplash flashed through the air,' said my friend; up, up he soars, till he becomes lost to sight at the instant that his song ends in that last mad ecstasy that just precedes his alighting." The meadowlark sings in a level flight, half hovering in the air, giving voice to a rapid medley of lark-like notes. The goldfinch also sings in a level flight, beating the air slowly with its wings broadly open, and pouring out its jubilant, ecstatic strain I think it indulges in this wing-song only in the early season. After the mother bird has begun sitting, the male circles about within earshot of her, in that curious undulating flight, uttering his "per-chic-o-pee, per-chic-o-pee," while the female calls back to him in the tenderest tones, "Yes, lovie; I hear you." The indigo-bird and the purple finch, when their happiness becomes too full and buoyant for them longer to control it, launch into the air, and sing briefly, ecstatically, in a tremulous, hovering flight. The air-song of these birds does not differ essentially from the song delivered from the perch, except that it betrays more excitement, and hence is a more complete lyrical rapture. The purple finch is our finest songster among the finches. Its strain is so soft and melodious, and touched with such a childlike gayety and plaintiveness, that I think it might sound well even in a cage inside a room, if the bird would only sing with the same joyous abandonment, which, of course, it would not do. It is not generally known that individual birds of the same species show different degrees of musical ability. This is often noticed in caged birds, among which the principle of variation seems more active; but an attentive observer notes the same fact in wild birds. Occasionally he hears one that in powers of song surpasses all its fellows. I have heard a sparrow, an oriole, and a wood thrush, each of which had a song of its own that far exceeded any other. I stood one day by a trout-stream, and suspended my fishing for several minutes to watch a song sparrow that was singing on a dry limb before me. He had five distinct songs, each as markedly different from the others as any human songs, which he repeated one after the other. He may have had a sixth or a seventh, but he bethought himself of some business in the next field, and flew away before he had exhausted his repertory. I once had a letter from Robert Louis Stevenson, who said he had read an account I had written of the song of the English blackbird. He said I might as well talk of the song of man; that every blackbird had its own song; and then he told me of a remarkable singer he used to hear somewhere amid the Scottish hills. But his singer was, of course, an exception; twenty-four blackbirds out of every twenty-five probably sing the same song, with no appreciable variations: but the twenty-fifth may show extraordinary powers. I told Stevenson that his famous singer had probably been to school to some nightingale on the Continent or in southern England. I might have told him of the robin I once heard here that sang with great spirit and accuracy the song of the brown thrasher, or of another that had the note of the whip-poor-will interpolated in the regular robin song, or of still another that had the call of the quail. In each case the bird had probably heard the song and learned it while very young. In the Trossachs, in Scotland, I followed a song thrush about for a long time, attracted by its peculiar song. It repeated over and over again three or four notes of a well-known air, which it might have caught from some shepherd boy whistling to his flock or to his cow. The songless birds--why has Nature denied them this gift? But they nearly all have some musical call or impulse that serves them very well. The quail has his whistle, the woodpecker his drum, the pewee his plaintive cry, the chickadee his exquisitely sweet call, the highhole his long, repeated "wick, wick, wick," one of the most welcome sounds of spring, the jay his musical gurgle, the hawk his scream, the crow his sturdy caw. Only one of our pretty birds of the orchard is reduced to an all but inaudible note, and that is the cedar-bird. III NATURE WITH CLOSED DOORS December in our climate is the month when Nature finally shuts up house and turns the key. She has been slowly packing up and putting away her things and closing a door and a window here and there all the fall. Now she completes the work and puts up the last bar. She is ready for winter. The leaves are all off the trees, except that here and there a beech or an oak or a hickory still clings to a remnant of its withered foliage. Her streams are full, her new growths of wood are ripened, her saps and juices are quiescent. The muskrat has completed his house in the shallow pond or stream, the beaver in the northern woods has completed his. The wild mice and the chipmunk have laid up their winter stores of nuts and grains in their dens in the ground and in the cavities of trees. The woodchuck is rolled up in his burrow in the hillside, sleeping his long winter sleep. The coon has deserted his chamber in the old tree and gone into winter quarters in his den in the rocks. The winter birds have taken on a good coat of fat against the coming cold and a possible scarcity of food. The frogs and toads are all in their hibernaculums in the ground. I saw it stated the other day, in a paper read before some scientific body, that the wood frogs retreat two feet into the ground beyond the reach of frost. In two instances I have found the wood frog in December with a covering of less than two inches of leaves and moss. It had buried itself in the soil and leaf mould only to the depth of the thickness of its own body, and for covering had only the ordinary coat of dry leaves and pine needles to be found in the wood. It was evidently counting upon the snow for its main protection. In one case I marked the spot, and returned there in early spring to see how the frog had wintered. I found it all right. Evidently it had some charm against the cold, for while the earth around and beneath it was yet frozen solid, there was no frost in the frog. It was not a brisk frog, but it was well, and when I came again on a warm day a week later, it had come forth from its retreat and was headed for the near-by marsh, where in April, with its kith and kin, it helped make the air vocal with its love-calls. A friend of mine, one mild day late in December, found a wood frog sitting upon the snow in the woods. She took it home and put it to bed in the soil of one of her flower-pots in the cellar. In the spring she found it in good condition, and in April carried it back to the woods. The hyla, or little piping frog, passes the winter in the ground like the wood frog. I have seen the toad go into the ground in the late fall. It is an interesting proceeding. It literally elbows its way into the soil. It sits on end, and works and presses with the sharp joints of its folded legs until it has sunk itself at a sufficient depth, which is only a few inches beneath the surface. The water frogs appear to pass the winter in the mud at the bottom of ponds and marshes. The queen bumblebee and the queen hornet, I think, seek out their winter quarters in holes in the ground in September, while the drones and the workers perish. The honey-bees do not hibernate: they must have food all winter; but our native wild bees are dormant during the cold months, and survive the winter only in the person of the queen mother. In the spring these queens set up housekeeping alone, and found new families. Insects in all stages of their growth are creatures of the warmth; the heat is the motive power that makes them go; when this fails, they are still. The katydids rasp away in the fall as long as there is warmth enough to keep them going; as the heat fails, they fail, till from the emphatic "Katy did it" of August they dwindle to a hoarse, dying, "Kate, Kate," in October. Think of the stillness that falls upon the myriad wood-borers in the dry trees and stumps in the forest as the chill of autumn comes on. All summer have they worked incessantly in oak and hickory and birch and chestnut and spruce, some of them making a sound exactly like that of the old-fashioned hand augur, others a fine, snapping, and splintering sound; but as the cold comes on, they go slower and slower, till they finally cease to move. A warm day starts them again, slowly or briskly according to the degree of heat, but in December they are finally stilled for the season. These creatures, like the big fat grubs of the June beetles which one sometimes finds in the ground or in decayed wood, are full of frost in winter; cut one of the big grubs in two, and it looks like a lump of ice cream. Some time in October the crows begin to collect together in large flocks and establish their winter quarters. They choose some secluded wood for a roosting-place, and thither all the crows for many square miles of country betake themselves at night, and thence they disperse in all directions again in the early morning. The crow is a social bird, a true American; no hermit or recluse is he. The winter probably brings them together in these large colonies for purposes of sociability and for greater warmth. By roosting close together and quite filling a tree-top, there must result some economy of heat. I have seen it stated in a rhetorical flight of some writer that the new buds crowd the old leaves off. But this is not true as a rule. The new bud is formed in the axil of the old leaf long before the leaves are ready to fall. With only two species of our trees known to me might the swelling bud push off the old leaf. In the sumach and button-ball or plane-tree the new bud is formed immediately under the base of the old leaf-stalk, by which it is covered like a cap. Examine the fallen leaves of these trees, and you will see the cavity in the base of each where the new bud was cradled. Why the beech, the oak, and the hickory cling to their old leaves is not clear. It may be simply a slovenly trait--inability to finish and have done with a thing--a fault of so many people. Some oaks and beeches appear to lack decision of character. It requires strength and vitality, it seems, simply to let go. Kill a tree suddenly, and the leaves wither upon the branches. How neatly and thoroughly the maples, the ashes, the birches, the elm clean up. They are tidy, energetic trees, and can turn over a new leaf without hesitation. A correspondent, writing to me from one of the colleges, suggests that our spring really begins in December, because the "annual cycle of vegetable life" seems to start then. At this time he finds that many of our wild flowers--the bloodroot, hepatica, columbine, shinleaf, maidenhair fern, etc.--have all made quite a start toward the next season's growth, in some cases the new shoot being an inch high. But the real start of the next season's vegetable life in this sense is long before December. It is in late summer, when the new buds are formed on the trees. Nature looks ahead, and makes ready for the new season in the midst of the old. Cut open the terminal hickory buds in the late fall and you will find the new growth of the coming season all snugly packed away there, many times folded up and wrapped about by protecting scales. The catkins of the birches, alders, and hazel are fully formed, and as in the case of the buds, are like eggs to be hatched by the warmth of spring. The present season is always the mother of the next, and the inception takes place long before the sun loses his power. The eggs that hold the coming crop of insect life are mostly laid in the late summer or early fall, and an analogous start is made in the vegetable world. The egg, the seed, the bud, are all alike in many ways, and look to the future. Our earliest spring flower, the skunk-cabbage, may be found with its round green spear-point an inch or two above the mould in December. It is ready to welcome and make the most of the first fitful March warmth. Look at the elms, too, and see how they swarm with buds. In early April they suggest a swarm of bees. In all cases, before Nature closes her house in the fall, she makes ready for its spring opening. IV THE WIT OF A DUCK The homing instinct in birds and animals is one of their most remarkable traits: their strong local attachments and their skill in finding their way back when removed to a distance. It seems at times as if they possessed some extra sense--the home sense--which operates unerringly. I saw this illustrated one spring in the case of a mallard drake. My son had two ducks, and to mate with them he procured a drake of a neighbor who lived two miles south of us. He brought the drake home in a bag. The bird had no opportunity to see the road along which it was carried, or to get the general direction, except at the time of starting, when the boy carried him a few rods openly. He was placed with the ducks in a spring run, under a tree in a secluded place on the river slope, about a hundred yards from the highway. The two ducks treated him very contemptuously. It was easy to see that the drake was homesick from the first hour, and he soon left the presence of the scornful ducks. Then we shut the three in the barn together, and kept them there a day and a night. Still the friendship did not ripen; the ducks and the drake separated the moment we let them out. Left to himself, the drake at once turned his head homeward, and started up the hill for the highway. Then we shut the trio up together again for a couple of days, but with the same results as before. There seemed to be but one thought in the mind of the drake, and that was home. Several times we headed him off and brought him back, till finally on the third or fourth day I said to my son, "If that drake is really bound to go home, he shall have an opportunity to make the trial, and I will go with him to see that he has fair play." We withdrew, and the homesick mallard started up through the currant patch, then through the vineyard toward the highway which he had never seen. When he reached the fence, he followed it south till he came to the open gate, where he took to the road as confidently as if he knew for a certainty that it would lead him straight to his mate. How eagerly he paddled along, glancing right and left, and increasing his speed at every step! I kept about fifty yards behind him. Presently he met a dog; he paused and eyed the animal for a moment, and then turned to the right along a road which diverged just at that point, and which led to the railroad station. I followed, thinking the drake would soon lose his bearings, and get hopelessly confused in the tangle of roads that converged at the station. But he seemed to have an exact map of the country in his mind; he soon left the station road, went around a house, through a vineyard, till he struck a stone fence that crossed his course at right angles; this he followed eastward till it was joined by a barbed wire fence, under which he passed and again entered the highway he had first taken. Then down the road he paddled with renewed confidence: under the trees, down a hill, through a grove, over a bridge, up the hill again toward home. Presently he found his clue cut in two by the railroad track; this was something he had never before seen; he paused, glanced up it, then down it, then at the highway across it, and quickly concluded this last was his course. On he went again, faster and faster. He had now gone half the distance, and was getting tired. A little pool of water by the roadside caught his eye. Into it he plunged, bathed, drank, preened his plumage for a few moments, and then started homeward again. He knew his home was on the upper side of the road, for he kept his eye bent in that direction, scanning the fields. Twice he stopped, stretched himself up, and scanned the landscape intently; then on again. It seemed as if an invisible cord was attached to him, and he was being pulled down the road. Just opposite a farm lane which led up to a group of farm buildings, and which did indeed look like his home lane, he paused and seemed to be debating with himself. Two women just then came along; they lifted and flirted their skirts, for it was raining, and this disturbed him again and decided him to take to the farm lane. Up the lane he went, rather doubtingly, I thought. In a few moments it brought him into a barn-yard, where a group of hens caught his eye. Evidently he was on good terms with hens at home, for he made up to these eagerly as if to tell them his troubles; but the hens knew not ducks; they withdrew suspiciously, then assumed a threatening attitude, till one old "dominic" put up her feathers and charged upon him viciously. Again he tried to make up to them, quacking softly, and again he was repulsed. Then the cattle in the yard spied this strange creature and came sniffing toward it, full of curiosity. The drake quickly concluded he had got into the wrong place, and turned his face southward again. Through the fence he went into a plowed field. Presently another stone fence crossed his path; along this he again turned toward the highway. In a few minutes he found himself in a corner formed by the meeting of two stone fences. Then he turned appealingly to me, uttering the soft note of the mallard. To use his wings never seemed to cross his mind. Well, I am bound to confess that I helped the drake over the wall, but I sat him down in the road as impartially as I could. How well his pink feet knew the course! How they flew up the road! His green head and white throat fairly twinkled under the long avenue of oaks and chestnuts. At last we came in sight of the home lane, which led up to the farmhouse one hundred or more yards from the road. I was curious to see if he would recognize the place. At the gate leading into the lane he paused. He had just gone up a lane that looked like that and had been disappointed. What should he do now? Truth compels me to say that he overshot the mark: he kept on hesitatingly along the highway. It was now nearly night. I felt sure the duck would soon discover his mistake, but I had not time to watch the experiment further. I went around the drake and turned him back. As he neared the lane this time he seemed suddenly to see some familiar landmark, and he rushed up it at the top of his speed. His joy and eagerness were almost pathetic. I followed close. Into the house yard he rushed with uplifted wings, and fell down almost exhausted by the side of his mate. A half hour later the two were nipping the grass together in the pasture, and he, I have no doubt, was eagerly telling her the story of his adventures. V FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE The question that the Californian schoolchildren put to me, "Have the birds got sense?" still "sticks in my crop." Such extraordinary sense has been attributed to most of the wild creatures by several of our latter day nature-writers, that I have been moved to examine the whole question more thoroughly than ever before, and to find out, as far as I can, just how much and what kind of sense the birds and four-footed beasts have. In this and in some following chapters I shall make an effort to use my own sense to the best advantage in probing that of the animals, which has, as I think, been so vastly overrated. When sentiment gets overripe, it becomes sentimentalism. The sentiment for nature which has been so assiduously cultivated in our times is fast undergoing this change, and is softening into sentimentalism toward the lower animals. Many a wholesome feeling can be pushed so far that it becomes a weakness and a sign of disease. Pity for the sufferings of our brute neighbors may be a manly feeling; and then again it may be so fostered and cosseted that it becomes maudlin and unworthy. When hospitals are founded for sick or homeless cats and dogs, when all forms of vivisection are cried down, when the animals are humanized and books are written to show that the wild creatures have schools and kindergartens, and that their young are instructed and disciplined in quite the human way by their fond parents; when we want to believe that reason and not instinct guides them, that they are quite up in some of the simpler arts of surgery, mending or amputating their own broken limbs and salving their wounds,--when, I say, our attitude toward the natural life about us and our feeling for it have reached the stage implied by these things, then has sentiment degenerated into sentimentalism, and our appreciation of nature lost its firm edge. No doubt there is a considerable number of people in any community that are greatly taken with this improved anthropomorphic view of wild nature now current among us. Such a view tickles the fancy and touches the emotions. It makes the wild creatures so much more interesting. Shall we deny anything to a bird or beast that makes it more interesting, and more worthy of our study and admiration? This sentimental view of animal life has its good side and its bad side. Its good side is its result in making us more considerate and merciful toward our brute neighbors; its bad side is seen in the degree to which it leads to a false interpretation of their lives. The tendency to which I refer is no doubt partly the result of our growing humanitarianism and feeling of kinship with all the lower orders of creation, and partly due to the fact that we live in a time of impromptu nature study, when birds and plants and trees are fast becoming a fad with half the population, and when the "yellow" reporter is abroad in the fields and woods. Never before in my time have so many exaggerations and misconceptions of the wild life about us been current in the popular mind. It is becoming the fashion to ascribe to the lower animals nearly all our human motives and attributes, and often to credit them with plans and devices that imply reason and a fair amount of mechanical knowledge. An illustration of this is the account of the nest of a pair of orioles, as described in the "North American Review" for May, 1903, by a writer of popular nature books. These orioles built a nest so extraordinary that it can be accounted for only on the theory that there _is_ a school of the woods, and that these two birds had been pupils there and had taken an advanced course in Strings. Among other things impossible for birds to do, these orioles tied a knot in the end of a string to prevent its fraying in the wind! If the whole idea were not too preposterous for even a half-witted child to believe, one might ask, What in the name of anything and everything but the "Modern School of Nature Study" do orioles know about strings fraying in the wind and the use of knots to prevent it? They have never had occasion to know; they have had no experience with strings that hang loose and unravel in the wind. They often use strings, to be sure, in building their nests, but they use them in a sort of haphazard way, weaving them awkwardly into the structure, and leaving no loose ends that would suffer by fraying in the wind. Sometimes they use strings in attaching the nest to the limb, but they never knot or tie them; they simply wind them round and round as a child might. It is possible that a bird might be taught to tie a knot with its foot and beak, though I should have to see it done to be convinced. But the orioles in question not only tied knots; they tied them with a "reversed double hitch, the kind that a man uses in cinching his saddle"! More wonderful still, not finding in a New England elm-embowered town a suitable branch from which to suspend their nest, the birds went down upon the ground and tied three twigs together in the form of "a perfectly measured triangle" (no doubt working from a plan drawn to a scale). They attached to the three sides of this framework four strings of equal length (eight or ten inches), all carefully doubled, tied them to a heavier string, carried the whole ingenious contrivance to a tree, and tied it fast to a limb in precisely the way you or I would have done it! From this framework they suspended their nest, the whole structure being about two feet long, and having the effect of a small hanging basket. Still more astonishing, when the genuineness of the nest is questioned, a man is found who makes affidavit that he saw the orioles build it! After such a proceeding, how long will it be before the water-birds are building little rush cradles for their young, or rush boats to be driven about the ponds and lakes by means of leaf sails, or before Jenny Wren will be living in a log cabin of her own construction? How long will it be before some one makes affidavit that the sparrow with his bow and arrow has actually been seen to kill Cock Robin, and the beetle with his thread and needle engaged in making the shroud? Birds show the taste and skill of their kind in building their nests, but rarely any individual ingenuity and inventiveness. The nest referred to is on a plane entirely outside of Nature and her processes. It belongs to a different order of things, the order of mechanical contrivances, and was of course "made up," probably from a real oriole's nest, and the writer who vouches for its genuineness has been the victim of a clever practical joke--a willing victim, no doubt, since he is looking in Nature for just this kind of thing, and since he believes there is "absolutely no limit to the variety and adaptiveness of Nature even in a single species." If there is no such limit, then I suppose we need not be surprised to meet a winged horse, or a centaur, or a mermaid at any time. It is as plain as anything can be that the animals share our emotional nature in vastly greater measure than they do our intellectual or our moral nature; and because they do this, because they show fear, love, joy, anger, sympathy, jealousy, because they suffer and are glad, because they form friendships and local attachments and have the home and paternal instincts, in short, because their lives run parallel to our own in so many particulars, we come, if we are not careful, to ascribe to them the whole human psychology. But it is equally plain that of what we mean by mind, intellect, they show only a trace now and then. They do not accumulate a store of knowledge any more than they do a store of riches. A store of knowledge is impossible without language. Man began to emerge from the lower orders when he invented a language of some sort. As the language of animals is little more than various cries expressive of pleasure or pain, or fear or suspicion, they do not think in any proper sense, because they have no terms in which to think--no language. I shall have more to say upon this point in another chapter. One trait they do show which is the first step toward knowledge--curiosity. Nearly all the animals show at times varying degrees of curiosity, but here again an instinctive feeling of possible danger probably lies back of it. They even seem to show at times a kind of altruistic feeling. A correspondent writes me that she possessed a canary which lived to so great an age that it finally became so feeble it could not crack the seeds she gave it, when the other birds, its own progeny, it is true, fed it; and Darwin cites cases of blind birds, in a state of nature, being fed by their fellows. Probably it would be hasty to conclude that such acts show anything more than instinct. I should be slow to ascribe to the animals any notion of the uses of punishment as we practice it, though the cat will box her kittens when they play too long with her tail, and the mother hen will separate her chickens when they get into a fight, and sometimes peck one or both of them on the head, as much as to say, "There, don't you do that again." The rooster will in the same way separate two hens when they are fighting. On the surface this seems like a very human act, but can we say that it is punishment or discipline in the human sense, as having for its aim a betterment of the manners of the kittens or of the chickens? The cat aims to get rid of an annoyance, and the rooster and the mother hen interfere to prevent an injury to members of their family; they exhibit the paternal and maternal instinct of protection. More than that would imply ethical considerations, of which the lower animals are not capable. The act of the baboon, mentioned by Darwin, I believe, that examined the paws of the cat that had scratched it, and then deliberately bit off the nails, belongs to a different and to a higher order of conduct. A complete statement of the factors that shape the lives of the lower orders would include three terms--instinct, imitation (though, doubtless, this is instinctive), and experience. Instinct is, of course, the main factor, and by this term we mean that which prompts an animal or a man to act spontaneously, without instruction or experience. All creatures are imitative, and man himself not the least so. I had a visit the other day from a woman who had spent the last two years in London, and her speech betrayed the fact; she had quite unconsciously caught certain of the English mannerisms of speech. A few years in the South will give the New Englander the Southern accent, and vice versa. The young are, of course, more imitative than the old. Children imitate their parents; the young writer imitates his favorite author. Animals of different species closely associated will imitate each other. A lady writes me that she has a rabbit that lives in a cage with a monkey, and that it has caught many of the monkey's ways. I can well believe it. Dogs reared with cats have been known to acquire the cat habit of licking the paws and then washing the ears and face. Wolves reared with dogs learn to bark, and who has not seen a dog draw its face as if trying to laugh as its master does? When a cat has been taught to sit up for its food, its kittens have been known to imitate the mother. Darwin tells of a cat that used to put its paw into the mouth of a narrow milk-jug and then lick it off, and that its kittens soon learned the same trick. In all such cases, hasty observers say the mother taught its young. Certainly the young learned, but there was no effort to teach on the part of the parent. Unconscious imitation did it all. Our "Modern School of Nature Study" would say that the old sow teaches her pigs to root when they follow her afield, rooting in their little ways as she does. But would she not root if she had no pigs, and would not the pigs root if they had no mother? All acts necessary to an animal's life and to the continuance of the species are instinctive; the creature does not have to be taught them, nor are they acquired by imitation. The bird does not have to be taught to build its nest or to fly, nor the beaver to build its dam or its house, nor the otter or the seal to swim, nor the young of mammals to suckle, nor the spider to spin its web, nor the grub to weave its cocoon. Nature does not trust these things to chance; they are too vital. The things that an animal acquires by imitation are of secondary importance in its life. As soon as the calf, or the lamb, or the colt can get upon its feet, its first impulse is to find the udder of its dam. It requires no instruction or experience to take this important step. How far the different species of song-birds acquire each their peculiar songs by imitation is a question that has not yet been fully settled. That imitation has much to do with it admits of little doubt. The song of a bird is of secondary importance in its life. Birds reared in captivity, where they have never heard the songs of their kind, sing at the proper age, but not always the songs of their parents. Mr. Scott of Princeton proved this with his orioles. They sang at the proper age, but not the regular oriole song. I am told that there is a well-authenticated case of an English sparrow brought up with canaries that learned to sing like a canary. "The Hon. Daines Barrington placed three young linnets with three different foster-parents, the skylark, the woodlark, and the titlark or meadow-pipit, and each adopted, through imitation, the song of its foster-parent." I have myself heard goldfinches that were reared in a cage sing beautifully, but not the regular goldfinch song; it was clearly the song of a finch, but of what finch I could not have told. I have also heard a robin that sang to perfection the song of the brown thrasher; it had, no doubt, caught it by imitation. I have heard another robin that had the call of the quail interpolated into its own proper robin's song. But I have yet to hear of a robin building a nest like a brown thrasher, or of an oriole building a nest like a robin, or of kingfishers drilling for grubs in a tree. The hen cannot keep out of the water the ducks she has hatched, nor can the duck coax into the water the chickens she has hatched. The cowbird hatched and reared by the sparrow, or the warbler, or the vireo does not sing the song of the foster-parent. Why? Did its parent not try to teach it? I have no evidence that young birds sing, except occasionally in a low, tentative kind of way, till they return the following season, and then birds of a feather flock together, robins staying with robins, and cowbirds with cowbirds, each singing the song of its species. The songs of bobolinks differ in different localities, but those of the same locality always sing alike. I once had a caged skylark that imitated the songs of nearly every bird in my neighborhood. Mr. Leander S. Keyser, author of "Birds of the Rockies," relates in "Forest and Stream" the results of his experiments with a variety of birds taken from the nest while very young and reared in captivity; among them meadowlarks, red-winged blackbirds, brown thrashers, blue jays, wood thrushes, catbirds, flickers, woodpeckers, and several others. Did they receive any parental instruction? Not a bit of it, and yet at the proper age they flew, perched, called, and sang like their wild fellows--all except the robins and the red-winged blackbirds: these did not sing the songs of their species, but sang a medley made up of curious imitations of human and other sounds. And the blue jay never learned to sing "the sweet gurgling roulade of the wild jays," though it gave the blue jay call correctly. Mr. Keyser's experiment was interesting and valuable, but his sagacity fails him when interpreting the action of the jay in roosting in an exposed place after it had been given its liberty. He thinks this showed how little instinct can be relied on, and how much the bird needed parental instruction. Could he not see that the artificial life of the bird in the cage had demoralized its instincts, and that acquired habits had supplanted native tendencies? The bird had learned to be unafraid in the cage, and why should it be afraid out of the cage? This reminds me of a letter from a correspondent: he had a tame crow that was not afraid of a gun; therefore he concluded that the old crows must instill the fear of guns into their young! Why should the crow be afraid of a gun, if it had learned not to be afraid of the gunner? I have seen a young chickadee fly late in the day from the nest in the cavity of a tree straight to a pear-tree, where it perched close to the trunk and remained unregarded by its parents till next morning. But no doubt its parents had given it minute directions before it left the nest how to fly and where to perch! That animals learn by experience in a limited way is very certain. Yet that old birds build better nests or sing better than young ones it would be hard to prove, though it seems reasonable that it should be so. Rarely does one see nests of the same species of varying degrees of excellence--that is, first nests in the spring. The second nest of any species is likely to be a more hurried and incomplete affair. Some species are at all times poor nest-builders, as the cuckoos and the pigeons. Other birds are good nest-builders, as the orioles, the thrushes, the finches, the warblers, the hummingbirds, and one never finds an inferior specimen of the nests of any of these birds. There is probably no more improvement in this respect among birds than there is among insects. I have no proof that wild birds improve in singing. One does not hear a vireo, or a finch, or a thrush, or a warbler that is noticeably inferior as a songster to its fellows; their songs are all alike, except in the few rare cases when one hears a master songster among its kind; but whether this mastery is natural or acquired, who shall tell? What birds learn about migration, if anything, I do not see that we have any means of finding out. It has been observed of birds reared under artificial conditions that the young males practice a long time before they sing well. That this is true of wild birds, there is no proof. What birds and animals learn by experience is greater cunning. Does not even an old trout know more about hooks than a young one? Birds of any kind that are much hunted become wilder, even though they have not had the experience of being shot. Ask any duck or grouse or quail hunter if this is not so. Our ruffed grouse learns to fly with a corkscrew motion where it is much fired at on the wing. How wary and cautious the fox becomes in regions where it is much trapped and hunted! Even the woodchuck becomes very wild on the farms where it is much shot at, and this wildness extends to its young. In his "Wilderness Hunter" President Roosevelt says the same thing of the big game of the Rockies. Antelope and deer can be lured near the concealed hunter by the waving of a small flag till they are shot at a few times. Then they see through the trick. "The burnt child fears the fire." Animals profit by experience in this way; they learn what not to do. In the accumulation of positive knowledge, so far as we know, they make little or no progress. Birds and beasts will adapt themselves more or less to their environment, but plants and trees will do that, too. The rats in Jamaica have learned to nest in trees to escape the mongoose, but this is only the triumph of the instinct of self-preservation. The mongoose has not yet learned to climb trees; the pressure of need is not yet great enough. It is said that in districts subject to floods moor-hens often build in trees. All animals will change their habits under pressure of necessity; man changes his without this pressure. The Duke of Argyll saw a bald eagle seize a fish in the stream--an unusual proceeding; but the eagle was doubtless very hungry, and there was no osprey near upon whom to levy tribute. Romanes found that rats would get certain semi-liquid foods out of a bottle with their tails, as a cat will get milk out of a jar with her paw, but neither ever progresses so far as to use any sort of tool for the purpose, or to tip the vessel over. Animals practice concealment to secure their prey, but not deception, as man does. They do not use lures or disguises, or traps or poison. There is, of course, no limit to the variety and adaptiveness of nature taken as a whole, but each species is hedged about by impassable limitations. The ouzel is akin to the thrushes, and yet it lives along and in the water. Does it ever take to the fields and woods, and live on fruit and land-insects, and nest in trees like other thrushes? So with all birds and beasts. They vary constantly, but not in one lifetime, and the sum of these variations, accumulated through natural selection, as Darwin has shown, gives rise, in the course of long periods of time, to new species. As I have already said, domestic animals vary more than wild ones. Every farmer and poultry-grower knows that some hens are better with chickens than others--more motherly, more careful--and rear a greater number of their brood. The same is true of sows with pigs. Some sows will eat their pigs, and wild animals in cages often destroy their young. Some ewes will not own their lambs, and occasionally a cow will not own her calf. (Such cases show perverted or demoralized instinct.) Similar to these are the strange friendships that sometimes occur among the domestic animals, as that of a sheep with a cow, a goose with a horse, or a hen adopting kittens. In a state of nature these curious attachments probably never spring up. Instinct is likely to be more or less demoralized when animal life touches human life. With the wild creatures we sometimes see one instinct overcoming another, as when fear drives a bird to desert its nest, or when the instinct of migration leads a pair of swallows to desert their unfledged young. A great many young birds come to grief by leaving the nest before they can fly. In such cases, I suppose, they disobey the parental instructions! I find it easier to believe that instinct is at fault, or that one instinct has overcome another; something has disturbed or alarmed the young birds, and the fear of danger has led them to attempt flight before their wings were strong enough. Once, when I was climbing up to the nest of a broad-winged hawk, the young took fright and launched out in the air, coming to the ground only a few rods away. Instinct, natural prompting, is the main matter, after all. It makes up at least nine tenths of the lives of all our wild neighbors. How much has fear had to do in shaping their lives and in perpetuating them! And "fear of any particular enemy," says Darwin, "is certainly an instinctive quality." It has been said that kittens confined in a box, and which have never known a dog, will spit and put up their backs at a hand that has just stroked a dog,--even before their eyes are opened, one authority says, but this I doubt. My son's tame gray squirrel had never seen chestnuts, nor learned about them in the school of the woods, and yet when he was offered some, he fairly danced with excitement; he put his paws eagerly around them and drew them to him, and chattered, and looked threateningly at all about him. Does man know his proper food in the same way? The child has only the instinct to eat, and will put anything into its mouth. How the instinctive wildness of the turkey crops out in the young! Let the mother turkey while hovering her brood give the danger-signal, and the young will run from under her and hide in the grass. Why? To give her a chance to fly and decoy away the enemy. I think young chickens will do the same. Young partridges hatched under a hen run away at once. Pheasants in England reared under a domestic fowl are as wild as in a state of nature. Some California quail hatched under a bantam hen in the Zoo in New York did not heed the calls of their foster-mother at all the first week, but at her alarm-note they instantly squatted, showing that the danger-cry of a fowl is a kind of universal language that all species understand. One may prove this at any time by arousing the fears of any wild bird: how all the other birds catch the alarm! Charles St. John says that in Scotland the stag you are stalking is sure to be put to flight if it hears the alarm-cry of the cock-grouse. You see it is more important that the wild creatures should understand the danger-signals of one another than that they should understand the rest of their language. To what extent animals reason, or show any glimmering of what we call reason, is a much-debated question among animal psychologists, and I shall have more to say upon the subject later on. Dogs undoubtedly show gleams of reason, and other animals in domestication, such as the elephant and the monkey. One does not often feel like questioning Darwin's conclusions, yet the incident of the caged bear which he quotes, that pawed the water in front of its cage to create a current that should float within its reach a piece of bread that had been placed there, does not, in my judgment, show any reasoning about the laws of hydrostatics. The bear would doubtless have pawed a cloth in the same way, vaguely seeking to draw the bread within reach. But when an elephant blows through his trunk upon the ground _beyond_ an object which he wants, but which is beyond his reach, so that the rebounding air will drive it toward him, he shows something very much like reason. Instinct is a kind of natural reason,--reason that acts without proof or experience. The principle of life in organic nature seeks in all ways to express and to perpetuate itself. It finds many degrees of expression and fulfillment in the vegetable world; it finds higher degrees of expression and fulfillment in the animal world, reaching its highest development in man. That the animals, except those that have been long associated with man, and they only in occasional gleams and hints, are capable of any of our complex mental processes, that they are capable of an act of reflection, of connecting cause and effect, of putting this and that together, is to me void of proof. Why, there are yet savage tribes in which the woman is regarded as the sole parent of the child. When the mother is sick at childbirth, the father takes to his bed and feigns the illness he does not feel, in order to establish his relationship to the child. It is not at all probable that the males of any species of animals, or the females either, are guided or influenced in their actions by the desire for offspring, or that they possess anything like knowledge of the connection between their love-making and their offspring. This knowledge comes of reflection, and reflection the lower animals are not capable of. But I shall have more to say upon this point in another chapter, entitled "What do Animals Know?" I will only say here that animals are almost as much under the dominion of absolute nature, or what we call instinct, innate tendency, habit of growth, as are the plants and trees. Their lives revolve around three wants or needs--the want of food, of safety, and of offspring. It is in securing these ends that all their wit is developed. They have no wants outside of these spheres, as man has. Their social wants and their love of beauty, as in some of the birds, are secondary. It is quite certain that the animals that store up food for the winter do not take any thought of the future. Nature takes thought for them and gives them their provident instinct. The jay, by his propensity to carry away and hide things, plants many of our oak and chestnut trees, but who dares say that he does this on purpose, any more than that the insects cross-fertilize the flowers on purpose? Sheep do not take thought of the wool upon their backs that is to protect them from the cold of winter, nor does the fox of his fur. In the tropics sheep cease to grow wool in three or four years. All the lower animals, so far as I know, swim the first time they find themselves in the water. They do not have to be taught: it is a matter of instinct. It is what we should expect from our knowledge of their lives. Not so with man; he must learn to swim as he learns so many other things. The stimulus of the water does not at once set in motion his legs and arms in the right way, as it does the animal's legs; his powers of reason and reflection paralyze him--his brain carries him down. Not until he has learned to resign himself to the water as the animal does, and to go on all fours, can he swim. As soon as the boy ceases to struggle against his tendency to sink, assumes the horizontal position, and strikes out as the animal does, with but one thought, and that to apply his powers of locomotion to the medium about him, he swims as a matter of course. It is said that children have sometimes been known to swim when thrown into the water. Their animal instincts were not thwarted by their powers of reflection. Doubtless this never happened to a grown person. Moreover, is it not probable that the specific gravity of the hairless human body is greater than that of the hair-covered animal, and that it sinks, while that of the cat or dog floats? This, with the erect position of man, makes swimming with him an art that must be acquired. There is no better illustration of the action of instinct as opposed to conscious intelligence than is afforded by the parasitic birds,--the cuckoo in Europe and the cowbird in this country,--birds that lay their eggs in the nests of other birds. Darwin speculates as to how this instinct came about, but whatever may have been its genesis, it is now a fixed habit among these birds. Moreover, the instinct of the blind young alien, a day or two after it is hatched, to throw or crowd its foster-brothers out of the nest is a strange and anomalous act, and is as untaught and unreasoned as anything in vegetable life. But when our yellow warbler, finding this strange egg of the cowbird in her nest, proceeds to bury it by putting another bottom in the nest and carrying up the sides to correspond, she shows something very much like sense and judgment, though of a clumsy kind. How much simpler and easier it would be to throw out the strange egg! I have known the cowbird herself to carry an egg from a nest in which she wished to deposit one of her own. Again, how stupid and ludicrous it seems on the part of the mother sparrow, or warbler, or vireo, when she goes about toiling desperately to satisfy the hunger of her big clamorous bantling of a cowbird, never suspecting that she has been imposed upon! Of course the line that divides man from the lower orders is not a straight line. It has many breaks and curves and deep indentations. The man-like apes, as it were, mark where the line rises up into the domain of man. Furthermore, the elephant and the dog, especially as we know them in domestication, encroach upon man's territory. Men are born with aptitudes for different things, but the art and the science of them all they have to learn; proficiency comes with practice. Man must learn to spin his web, to build his house, to sing his song, to know his food, to sail his craft, to find his way--things that the animals know "from the jump." The animal inherits its knowledge and its skill: man must acquire his by individual effort; all he inherits is capacity in varying degrees for these things. The animal does rational things without an exercise of reason. It is intelligent as nature is intelligent. It does not know that it knows, or how it knows, while man does. Man's knowledge is the light of his mind that shines on many and widely different objects, while the knowledge of animals cannot be symbolized by the term "light" at all. The animal acts blindly so far as any conscious individual illumination or act of judgment is concerned. It does the thing unwittingly, because it must. Confront it with a new condition, and it has no resources to meet that condition. The animal knows what necessity taught its progenitors, and it knows that only as a spontaneous impulse to do certain things. Instinct, I say, is a great matter, and often shames reason. It adapts means to an end, it makes few or no mistakes, it takes note of times and seasons, it delves, it bores, it spins, it weaves, it sews, it builds, it makes paper, it constructs a shelter, it navigates the air and the water, it is provident and thrifty, it knows its enemies, it outwits its foes, it crosses oceans and continents without compass, it foreshadows nearly all the arts and trades and occupations of mankind, it is skilled without practice, and wise without experience. How it arose, what its genesis was, who can tell? Probably natural selection has been the chief agent in its development. If natural selection has developed and sharpened the claws of the cat and the scent of the fox, why should it not develop and sharpen their wits also? The remote ancestors of the fox or of the crow were doubtless less shrewd and cunning than the crows and the foxes of to-day. The instinctive intelligence of an animal of our time is the sum of the variations toward greater intelligence of all its ancestors. What man stores in language and in books--the accumulated results of experience--the animals seem to have stored in instinct. As Darwin says, a man cannot, on his first trial, make a stone hatchet or a canoe through his power of imitation. "He has to learn his work by practice; a beaver, on the other hand, can make its dam or canal, and a bird its nest, as well or nearly as well, and a spider its wonderful web quite as well, the first time it tries as when old and experienced." An animal shows intelligence, as distinct from instinct, when it takes advantage of any circumstance that arises at the moment, when it finds new ways, whether better or not, as when certain birds desert their old nesting-sites, and take up with new ones afforded by man. This act, at least, shows power of choice. The birds and beasts all quickly avail themselves of any new source of food supply. Their wits are probably more keen and active here than in any other direction. It is said that in Oklahoma the coyotes have learned to tell ripe watermelons from unripe ones by scratching upon them. If they have not, they probably will. Eating is the one thing that engrosses the attention of all creatures, and the procuring of food has been a great means of education to all. I notice that certain of the wood-folk--mice and squirrels and birds--eat mushrooms. If I would eat them, I must learn how to distinguish the edible from the poisonous ones. I have no special sense to guide me in the matter, as doubtless the squirrels have. Their instinct is sure where my reason fails. It would be very interesting to know if they ever make a mistake in this matter. Domestic animals sometimes make mistakes as to their food because their instinct has been tampered with and is by no means as sure as that of the wild creatures. It is said that sheep will occasionally eat laurel and St. John's-wort, which are poisonous to them. In the far West I was told that the horses sometimes eat a weed called the loco-weed that makes them crazy. I have since learned that the buffaloes and cattle with a strain of the buffalo blood never eat this weed. The imitation among the lower animals to which I have referred is in no sense akin to teaching. The boy does not learn arithmetic by imitation. To teach is to bring one mind to act upon another mind; it is the result of a conscious effort on the part of both teacher and pupil. The child, says Darwin, has an instinctive tendency to speak, but not to brew, or bake, or write. The child comes to speak by imitation, as does the parrot, and then learns the meaning of words, as the parrot does not. I am convinced there is nothing in the notion that animals consciously teach their young. Is it probable that a mere animal reflects upon the future any more than it does upon the past? Is it solicitous about the future well-being of its offspring any more than it is curious about its ancestry? Persons who think they see the lower animals training their young consciously or unconsciously supply something to their observations; they read their own thoughts or preconceptions into what they see. Yet so trained a naturalist and experienced a hunter as President Roosevelt differs with me in this matter. In a letter which I am permitted to quote, he says:-- "I have not the slightest doubt that there is a large amount of _unconscious_ teaching by wood-folk of their offspring. In unfrequented places I have had the deer watch me with almost as much indifference as they do now in the Yellowstone Park. In frequented places, where they are hunted, young deer and young mountain sheep, on the other hand,--and of course young wolves, bobcats, and the like,--are exceedingly wary and shy when the sight or smell of man is concerned. Undoubtedly this is due to the fact that from their earliest moments of going about they learn to imitate the unflagging watchfulness of their parents, and by the exercise of some associative or imitative quality they grow to imitate and then to share the alarm displayed by the older ones at the smell or presence of man. A young deer that has never seen a man feels no instinctive alarm at his presence, or at least very little; but it will undoubtedly learn to associate extreme alarm with his presence from merely accompanying its mother, if the latter feels such alarm. I should not regard this as schooling by the parent any more than I should so regard the instant flight of twenty antelope who had not seen a hunter, because the twenty-first has seen him and has instantly run. Sometimes a deer or an antelope will deliberately give an alarm-cry at sight of something strange. This cry at once puts every deer or antelope on the alert; but they will be just as much on the alert if they witness nothing but an exhibition of fright and flight on the part of the first deer or antelope, without there being any conscious effort on its part to express alarm. "Moreover, I am inclined to think that on certain occasions, rare though they may be, there is a conscious effort at teaching. I have myself known of one setter dog which would thrash its puppy soundly if the latter carelessly or stupidly flushed a bird. Something similar may occur in the wild state among such intelligent beasts as wolves and foxes. Indeed, I have some reason to believe that with both of these animals it does occur--that is, that there is conscious as well as unconscious teaching of the young in such matters as traps." Probably the President and I differ more in the meaning we attach to the same words than in anything else. In a subsequent letter he says: "I think the chief difference between you and me in the matter is one of terminology. When I speak of unconscious teaching, I really mean simply acting in a manner which arouses imitation." Imitation is no doubt the key to the whole matter. The animals unconsciously teach their young by their example, and in no other way. But I must leave the discussion of this subject for another chapter. VI ANIMAL COMMUNICATION The notion that animals consciously train and educate their young has been held only tentatively by European writers on natural history. Darwin does not seem to have been of this opinion at all. Wallace shared it at one time in regard to the birds,--their songs and nest-building,--but abandoned it later, and fell back upon instinct or inherited habit. Some of the German writers, such as Brehm, Büchner, and the Müllers, seem to have held to the notion more decidedly. But Professor Groos had not yet opened their eyes to the significance of the play of animals. The writers mentioned undoubtedly read the instinctive play of animals as an attempt on the part of the parents to teach their young. That the examples of the parents in many ways stimulate the imitative instincts of the young is quite certain, but that the parents in any sense aim at instruction is an idea no longer held by writers on animal psychology. Of course it all depends upon what we mean by teaching. Do we mean the communication of knowledge, or the communication of emotion? It seems to me that by teaching we mean the former. Man alone communicates knowledge; the lower animals communicate feeling or emotion. Hence their communications always refer to the present, never to the past or to the future. That birds and beasts do communicate with each other, who can doubt? But that they impart knowledge, that they have any knowledge to impart, in the strict meaning of the word, any store of ideas or mental concepts--that is quite another matter. Teaching implies such store of ideas and power to impart them. The subconscious self rules in the animal; the conscious self rules in man, and the conscious self alone can teach or communicate knowledge. It seems to me that the cases of the deer and the antelope, referred to by President Roosevelt in the letter to me quoted in the last chapter, show the communication of emotion only. Teaching implies reflection and judgment; it implies a thought of, and solicitude for, the future. "The young will need this knowledge," says the human parent, "and so we will impart it to them now." But the animal parent has consciously no knowledge to impart, only fear or suspicion. One may affirm almost anything of trained dogs and of dogs generally. I can well believe that the setter bitch spoken of by the President punished her pup when it flushed a bird,--she had been punished herself for the same offense,--but that the act was expressive of anything more than her present anger, that she was in any sense trying to train and instruct her pup, there is no proof. But with animals that have not been to school to man, all ideas of teaching must be rudimentary indeed. How could a fox or a wolf instruct its young in such matters as traps? Only in the presence of the trap, certainly; and then the fear of the trap would be communicated to the young through natural instinct. Fear, like joy or curiosity, is contagious among beasts and birds, as it is among men; the young fox or wolf would instantly share the emotion of its parent in the presence of a trap. It is very important to the wild creatures that they have a quick apprehension of danger, and as a matter of fact they have. One wild and suspicious duck in a flock will often defeat the best laid plans of the duck-hunter. Its suspicions are quickly communicated to all its fellows: not through any conscious effort on its part to do so, but through the law of natural contagion above referred to. Where any bird or beast is much hunted, fear seems to be in the air, and their fellows come to be conscious of the danger which they have not experienced. What an animal lacks in wit it makes up in caution. Fear is a good thing for the wild creatures to have in superabundance. It often saves them from real danger. But how undiscriminating it is! It is said that an iron hoop or wagon-tire placed around a setting hen in the woods will protect her from the foxes. Animals are afraid on general principles. Anything new and strange excites their suspicions. In a herd of animals, cattle, or horses, fear quickly becomes a panic and rages like a conflagration. Cattlemen in the West found that any little thing at night might kindle the spark in their herds and sweep the whole mass away in a furious stampede. Each animal excites every other, and the multiplied fear of the herd is something terrible. Panics among men are not much different. In a discussion like the present one, let us use words in their strict logical sense, if possible. Most of the current misconceptions in natural history, as in other matters, arise from a loose and careless use of words. One says teach and train and instruct, when the facts point to instinctive imitation or unconscious communication. That the young of all kinds thrive better and develop more rapidly under the care of their parents than when deprived of that care is obvious enough. It would be strange if it were not so. Nothing can quite fill the place of the mother with either man or bird or beast. The mother provides and protects. The young quickly learn of her through the natural instinct of imitation. They share her fears, they follow in her footsteps, they look to her for protection; it is the order of nature. They are not trained in the way they should go, as a child is by its human parents--they are not trained at all; but their natural instincts doubtless act more promptly and surely with the mother than without her. That a young kingfisher or a young osprey would, in due time, dive for fish, or a young marsh hawk catch mice and birds, or a young fox or wolf or coon hunt for its proper prey without the parental example, admits of no doubt at all; but they would each probably do this thing earlier and better in the order of nature than if that order were interfered with. The other day I saw a yellow-bellied woodpecker alight upon a decaying beech and proceed to drill for a grub. Two of its fully grown young followed it and, alighting near, sidled up to where the parent was drilling. A hasty observer would say that the parent was giving its young a lesson in grub-hunting, but I read the incident differently. The parent bird had no thought of its young. It made passes at them when they came too near, and drove them away. Presently it left the tree, whereupon one of the young examined the hole its parent had made and drilled a little on its own account. A parental example like this may stimulate the young to hunt for grubs earlier than they would otherwise do, but this is merely conjecture. There is no proof of it, nor can there be any. The mother bird or beast does not have to be instructed in her maternal duties: they are instinctive with her; it is of vital importance to the continuance of the species that they should be. If it were a matter of instruction or acquired knowledge, how precarious it would be! The idea of teaching is an advanced idea, and can come only to a being that is capable of returning upon itself in thought, and that can form abstract conceptions--conceptions that float free, so to speak, dissociated from particular concrete objects. If a fox, or a wolf, for instance, were capable of reflection and of dwelling upon the future and upon the past, it might feel the need of instructing its young in the matter of traps and hounds, if such a thing were possible without language. When the cat brings her kitten a live mouse, she is not thinking about instructing it in the art of dealing with mice, but is intent solely upon feeding her young. The kitten already knows, through inheritance, about mice. So when the hen leads her brood forth and scratches for them, she has but one purpose--to provide them with food. If she is confined to the coop, the chickens go forth and soon scratch for themselves and snap up the proper insect food. The mother's care and protection count for much, but they do not take the place of inherited instinct. It has been found that newly hatched chickens, when left to themselves, do not know the difference between edible and non-edible insects, but that they soon learn. In such matters the mother hen, no doubt, guides them. A writer in "Forest and Stream," who has since published a book about his "wild friends," pushes this notion that animals train their young so far that it becomes grotesque. Here are some of the things that this keen observer and exposer of "false natural history" reports that he has seen about his cabin in the woods: He has seen an old crow that hurriedly flew away from his cabin door on his sudden appearance, return and beat its young because they did not follow quickly enough. He has seen a male chewink, while its mate was rearing a second brood, take the first brood and lead them away to a bird-resort (he probably meant to say to a bird-nursery or kindergarten); and when one of the birds wandered back to take one more view of the scenes of its infancy, he has seen the father bird pounce upon it and give it a "severe whipping and take it to the resort again." He has seen swallows teach their young to fly by gathering them upon fences and telegraph wires and then, at intervals (and at the word of command, I suppose), launching out in the air with them, and swooping and circling about. He has seen a song sparrow, that came to his dooryard for fourteen years (he omitted to say that he had branded him and so knew his bird), teach _his year-old boy to sing_ (the italics are mine). This hermit-inclined sparrow wanted to "desert the fields for a life in the woods," but his "wife would not consent." Many a featherless biped has had the same experience with his society-spoiled wife. The puzzle is, how did this masterly observer know that this state of affairs existed between this couple? Did the wife tell him, or the husband? "Hermit" often takes his visitors to a wood thrushes' singing-school, where, "as the birds forget their lesson, they drop out one by one." He has seen an old rooster teaching a young rooster to crow! At first the old rooster crows mostly in the morning, but later in the season he crows throughout the day, at short intervals, to show the young "the proper thing." "Young birds removed out of hearing will not learn to crow." He hears the old grouse teaching the young to drum in the fall, though he neglects to tell us that he has seen the young in attendance upon these lessons. He has seen a mother song sparrow helping her two-year-old daughter build her nest. He has discovered that the cat talks to her kittens with her ears: when she points them forward, that means "yes;" when she points them backward, that means "no." Hence she can tell them whether the wagon they hear approaching is the butcher's cart or not, and thus save them the trouble of looking out. And so on through a long list of wild and domestic creatures. At first I suspected this writer was covertly ridiculing a certain other extravagant "observer," but a careful reading of his letter shows him to be seriously engaged in the worthy task of exposing "false natural history." Now the singing of birds, the crowing of cocks, the drumming of grouse, are secondary sexual characteristics. They are not necessary to the lives of the creatures, and are probably more influenced by imitation than are the more important instincts of self-preservation and reproduction. Yet the testimony is overwhelming that birds will sing and roosters crow and turkeys gobble, though they have never heard these sounds; and, no doubt, the grouse and the woodpeckers drum from promptings of the same sexual instinct. I do not wish to accuse "Hermit" of willfully perverting the facts of natural history. He is one of those persons who read their own fancies into whatever they look upon. He is incapable of disinterested observation, which means he is incapable of observation at all in the true sense. There are no animals that signal to each other with their ears. The movements of the ears follow the movements of the eye. When an animal's attention is directed to any object or sound, its ears point forward; when its attention is relaxed, the ears fall. But with the cat tribe the ears are habitually erect, as those of the horse are usually relaxed. They depress them and revert them, as do many other animals, when angered or afraid. Certain things in animal life lead me to suspect that animals have some means of communication with one another, especially the gregarious animals, that is quite independent of what we mean by language. It is like an interchange or blending of subconscious states, and may be analogous to telepathy among human beings. Observe what a unit a flock of birds becomes when performing their evolutions in the air. They are not many, but one, turning and flashing in the sun with a unity and a precision that it would be hard to imitate. One may see a flock of shore-birds that behave as one body: now they turn to the sun a sheet of silver; then, as their dark backs are presented to the beholder, they almost disappear against the shore or the clouds. It would seem as if they shared in a communal mind or spirit, and that what one felt they all felt at the same instant. In Florida I many times saw large schools of mullets fretting and breaking the surface of the water with what seemed to be the tips of their tails. A large area would be agitated and rippled by the backs or tails of a host of fishes. Then suddenly, while I looked, there would be one splash and every fish would dive. It was a multitude, again, acting as one body. Hundreds, thousands of tails slapped the water at the same instant and were gone. When the passenger pigeons were numbered by millions, the enormous clans used to migrate from one part of the continent to another. I saw the last flight of them up the Hudson River valley in the spring of 1875. All day they streamed across the sky. One purpose seemed to animate every flock and every bird. It was as if all had orders to move to the same point. The pigeons came only when there was beech-mast in the woods. How did they know we had had a beech-nut year? It is true that a few straggling bands were usually seen some days in advance of the blue myriads: were these the scouts, and did they return with the news of the beech-nuts? If so, how did they communicate the intelligence and set the whole mighty army in motion? The migrations among the four-footed animals that sometimes occur over a large, part of the country--among the rats, the gray squirrels, the reindeer of the north--seem to be of a similar character. How does every individual come to share in the common purpose? An army of men attempting to move without leaders and without a written or spoken language becomes a disorganized mob. Not so the animals. There seems to be a community of mind among them in a sense that there is not among men. The pressure of great danger seems to develop in a degree this community of mind and feeling among men. Under strong excitement we revert more or less to the animal state, and are ruled by instinct. It may well be that telepathy--the power to project one's mental or emotional state so as to impress a friend at a distance--is a power which we have carried over from our remote animal ancestors. However this may be, it is certain that the sensitiveness of birds and quadrupeds to the condition of one another, their sense of a common danger, of food supplies, of the direction of home under all circumstances, point to the possession of a power which is only rudimentary in us. Some observers explain these things on the theory that the flocks of birds have leaders, and that their surprising evolutions are guided by calls or signals from these leaders, too quick or too fine for our eyes or ears to catch. I suppose they would explain the movements of the schools of fish and the simultaneous movements of a large number of land animals on the same theory. I cannot accept this explanation. It is harder for me to believe that a flock of birds has a code of calls or signals for all its evolutions--now right, now left, now mount, now swoop--which each individual understands on the instant, or that the hosts of the wild pigeons had their captains and signals, than to believe that out of the flocking instinct there has grown some other instinct or faculty, less understood, but equally potent, that puts all the members of a flock in such complete rapport with one another that the purpose and the desire of one become the purpose and the desire of all. There is nothing in this state of things analogous to a military organization. The relation among the members of the flock is rather that of creatures sharing spontaneously the same subconscious or psychic state, and acted upon by the same hidden influence, in a way and to a degree that never occur among men. The faculty or power by which animals find the way home over or across long stretches of country is quite as mysterious and incomprehensible to us as the spirit of the flock to which I refer. A hive of bees evidently has a collective purpose and plan that does not emanate from any single individual or group of individuals, and which is understood by all without outward communication. Is there anything which, without great violence to language, may be called a school of the woods? In the sense in which a playground is a school--a playground without rules or methods or a director--there is a school of the woods. It is an unkept, an unconscious school or gymnasium, and is entirely instinctive. In play the young of all animals, no doubt, get a certain amount of training and disciplining that helps fit them for their future careers; but this school is not presided over or directed by parents, though they sometimes take part in it. It is spontaneous and haphazard, without rule or system; but is, in every case, along the line of the future struggle for life of the particular bird or animal. A young marsh hawk which we reared used to play at striking leaves or bits of bark with its talons; kittens play with a ball, or a cob, or a stick, as if it were a mouse, dogs race and wrestle with one another as in the chase; ducks dive and sport in the water; doves circle and dive in the air as if escaping from a hawk; birds pursue and dodge one another in the same way; bears wrestle and box; chickens have mimic battles; colts run and leap; fawns probably do the same thing; squirrels play something like a game of tag in the trees; lambs butt one another and skip about the rocks; and so on. In fact, nearly all play, including much of that of man, takes the form of mock battle, and is to that extent an education for the future. Among the carnivora it takes also the form of the chase. Its spring and motive are, of course, pleasure, and not education; and herein again is revealed the cunning of nature--the power that conceals purposes of its own in our most thoughtless acts. The cat and the kitten play with the live mouse, not to indulge the sense of cruelty, as some have supposed, but to indulge in the pleasure of the chase and unconsciously to practice the feat of capture. The cat rarely plays with a live bird, because the recapture would be more difficult, and might fail. What fisherman would not like to take his big fish over and over again, if he could be sure of doing it, not from cruelty, but for the pleasure of practicing his art? For further light on the subject of the significance of the play of animals, I refer the reader to the work of Professor Karl Groos called "The Play of Animals." One of my critics has accused me of measuring all things by the standard of my little farm--of thinking that what is not true of animal life there is not true anywhere. Unfortunately my farm _is_ small--hardly a score of acres--and its animal life very limited. I have never seen even a porcupine upon it; but I have a hill where one might roll down, should one ever come my way and be in the mood for that kind of play.[1] I have a few possums, a woodchuck or two, an occasional skunk, some red squirrels and rabbits, and many kinds of song-birds. Foxes occasionally cross my acres; and once, at least, I saw a bald eagle devouring a fish in one of my apple-trees. Wild ducks, geese, and swans in spring and fall pass across the sky above me. Quail and grouse invade my premises, and of crows I have, at least in bird-nesting time, too many. [1] See comment on the story here alluded to on page 244. But I have a few times climbed over my pasture wall and wandered into distant fields. Once upon a time I was a traveler in Asia for the space of two hours--an experience that ought to have yielded me some startling discoveries, but did not. Indeed, the wider I have traveled and observed nature, the more I am convinced that the wild creatures behave just about the same in all parts of the country; that is, under similar conditions. What one observes truly about bird or beast upon his farm of ten acres, he will not have to unlearn, travel as wide or as far as he will. Where the animals are much hunted, they are of course much wilder and more cunning than where they are not hunted. In the Yellowstone National Park we found the elk, deer, and mountain sheep singularly tame; and in the summer, so we were told, the bears board at the big hotels. The wild geese and ducks, too, were tame; and the red-tailed hawk built its nest in a large dead oak that stood quite alone near the side of the road. With us the same hawk hides its nest in a tree in the dense woods, because the farmers unwisely hunt and destroy it. But the cougars and coyotes and bobcats were no tamer in the park than they are in other places where they are hunted. Indeed, if I had elk and deer and caribou and moose and bears and wildcats and beavers and otters and porcupines on my farm, I should expect them to behave just as they do in other parts of the country under like conditions: they would be tame and docile if I did not molest them, and wild and fierce if I did. They would do nothing out of character in either case. Your natural history knowledge of the East will avail you in the West. There is no country, says Emerson, in which they do not wash the pans and spank the babies; and there is no country where a dog is not a dog, or a fox a fox, or where a hare is ferocious, or a wolf lamblike. The porcupine behaves in the Rockies just as he does in the Catskills; the deer and the moose and the black bear and the beaver of the Pacific slope are almost identical in their habits and traits with those of the Atlantic slope. In my observations of the birds of the far West, I went wrong in my reckoning but once: the Western meadowlark has a new song. How or where he got it is a mystery; it seems to be in some way the gift of those great, smooth, flowery, treeless, dimpled hills. But the swallow was familiar, and the robin and the wren and the highhole, while the woodchuck I saw and heard in Wyoming might have been the "chuck" of my native hills. The eagle is an eagle the world over. When I was a boy I saw, one autumn day, an eagle descend with extended talons upon the backs of a herd of young cattle that were accompanied by a cosset-sheep and were feeding upon a high hill. The object of the eagle seemed to be to separate the one sheep from the cattle, or to frighten them all into breaking their necks in trying to escape him. But neither result did he achieve. In the Yellowstone Park, President Roosevelt and Major Pitcher saw a golden eagle trying the same tactics upon a herd of elk that contained one yearling. The eagle doubtless had his eye upon the yearling, though he would probably have been quite satisfied to have driven one of the older ones down a precipice. His chances of a dinner would have been equally good. There is one particular in which the bird families are much more human than our four-footed kindred. I refer to the practice of courtship. The male of all birds, so far as I know, pays suit to the female and seeks to please and attract her.[2] This the quadrupeds do not do; there is no period of courtship among them, and no mating or pairing as among the birds. The male fights for the female, but he does not seek to win her by delicate attentions. If there are any exceptions to this rule, I do not know them. There seems to be among the birds something that is like what is called romantic love. The choice of mate seems always to rest with the female,[2] while among the mammals the female shows no preference at all. [2] Except in the case of certain birds of India and Australia. Among our own birds, the prettiest thing I know of attending the period of courtship, or preliminary to the match-making, is the spring musical festival and reunion of the goldfinches, which often lasts for days, through rain and shine. In April or May, apparently all the goldfinches from a large area collect in the top of an elm or a maple and unite in a prolonged musical festival. Is it a contest among the males for the favor of the females, or is it the spontaneous expression of the gladness of the whole clan at the return of the season of life and love? The birds seem to pair soon after, and doubtless the concert of voices has some reference to that event. There is one other human practice often attributed to the lower animals that I must briefly consider, and that is the practice, under certain circumstances, of poisoning their young. One often hears of caged young birds being fed by their parents for a few days and then poisoned; or of a mother fox poisoning her captive young when she finds that she cannot liberate him; and such stories obtain ready credence with the public, especially with the young. To make these stories credible, one must suppose a school of pharmacy, too, in the woods. "The worst thing about these poisoning stories," writes a friend of mine, himself a writer of nature-books, "is the implied appreciation of the full effect and object of poison--the comprehension by the fox, for instance, that the poisoned meat she may be supposed to find was placed there for the object of killing herself (or some other fox), and that she may apply it to another animal for that purpose. Furthermore, that she understands the nature of death--that it brings 'surcease of sorrow,' and that death is better than captivity for her young one. How did she acquire all this knowledge? Where was her experience of its supposed truth obtained? How could she make so fine and far-seeing a judgment, wholly out of the range of brute affairs, and so purely philosophical and humanly ethical? It violates every instinct and canon of natural law, which is for the preservation of life at all hazards. This is simply the human idea of 'murder.' Animals kill one another for food, or in rivalry, or in blind ferocity of predatory disposition; but there is not a particle of evidence that they 'commit murder' for ulterior ends. It is questionable whether they comprehend the condition called death, or its nature, in any proper sense." On another occasion I laughed at a recent nature writer for his credulity in half-believing the story told him by a fisherman, that the fox catches crabs by using his tail as a bait; and yet I read in Romanes that Olaus, in his account of Norway, says he has seen a fox do this very thing among the rocks on the sea-coast.[3] One would like to cross-question Olaus before accepting such a statement. One would as soon expect a fox to put his brush in the fire as in the water. When it becomes wet and bedraggled, he is greatly handicapped as to speed. There is no doubt that rats will put their tails into jars that contain liquid food they want, and then lick them off, as Romanes proved; but the rat's tail is not a brush, nor in any sense an ornament. Think what the fox-and-crab story implies! Now the fox is entirely a land animal, and lives by preying upon land creatures, which it follows by scent or sight. It can neither see nor smell crabs in the deep water, where crabs are usually found. How should it know that there are such things as crabs? How should it know that they can be taken with bait and line or by fishing for them? When and how did it get this experience? This knowledge belongs to man alone. It comes through a process of reasoning that he alone is capable of. Man alone of land animals sets traps and fishes. There is a fish called the angler (_Lophius piscatorius_), which, it is said on doubtful authority, by means of some sort of appendages on its head angles for small fish; but no competent observer has reported any land animal doing so. Again, would a crab lay hold of a mass of fur like a fox's tail?--even if the tail could be thrust deep enough into the water, which is impossible. Crabs, when not caught with hand-nets, are usually taken in water eight or ten feet deep. They are baited and caught with a piece of meat tied to a string, but cannot be lifted to the surface till they are eating the meat, and then a dip-net is required to secure them. The story, on the whole, is one of the most preposterous that ever gained credence in natural history. [3] A book published in London in 1783, entitled _A Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar and the Present State of the Several Kingdoms of the World_, among other astonishing natural history notes, makes this statement about the white and red fox of Norway: "They have a particular way of drawing crabs ashore by dipping their tails in the water, which the crab lays hold of." Good observers are probably about as rare as good poets. Accurate seeing,--an eye that takes in the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,--how rare indeed it is! So few persons know or can tell exactly what they see; so few persons can draw a right inference from an observed fact; so few persons can keep from reading their own thoughts and preconceptions into what they see; only a person with the scientific habit of mind can be trusted to report things as they are. Most of us, in observing the wild life about us, see more or see less than the truth. We see less when our minds are dull, or preoccupied, or blunted by want of interest. This is true of most country people. We see more when we read the lives of the wild creatures about us in the light of our human experience, and impute to the birds and beasts human motives and methods. This is too often true of the eager city man or woman who sallies out into the country to study nature. The tendency to sentimentalize nature has, in our time, largely taken the place of the old tendency to demonize and spiritize it. It is anthropomorphism in another form, less fraught with evil to us, but equally in the way of a clear understanding of the life about us. VII DEVIOUS PATHS There is no better type or epitome of wild nature than the bird's-nest--something built, and yet as if it grew, a part of the ground, or of the rock, or of the branch upon which it is placed; beginning so coarsely, so irregularly, and ending so finely and symmetrically; so unlike the work of hands, and yet the result of a skill beyond hands; and when it holds its complement of eggs, how pleasing, how suggestive! The bird adapts means to an end, and yet so differently from the way of man,--an end of which it does not know the value or the purpose. We know it is prompted to it by the instinct of reproduction. When the woodpecker in the fall excavates a lodge in a dry limb, we know he is prompted to it by the instinct of self-preservation, but the birds themselves obey the behests of nature without knowledge. A bird's-nest suggests design, and yet it seems almost haphazard; the result of a kind of madness, yet with method in it. The hole the woodpecker drills for its cell is to the eye a perfect circle, and the rim of most nests is as true as that of a cup. The circle and the sphere exist in nature; they are mother forms and hold all other forms. They are easily attained; they are spontaneous and inevitable. The bird models her nest about her own breast; she turns round and round in it, and its circular character results as a matter of course. Angles, right lines, measured precision, so characteristic of the works of man, are rarely met with in organic nature. Nature reaches her ends by devious paths; she loiters, she meanders, she plays by the way; she surely "arrives," but it is always in a blind, hesitating, experimental kind of fashion. Follow the tunnels of the ants or the crickets, or of the moles and the weasels, underground, or the courses of the streams or the paths of the animals above ground--how they turn and hesitate, how wayward and undecided they are! A right line seems out of the question. The oriole often weaves strings into her nest; sometimes she binds and overhands the part of the rim where she alights in going in, to make it stronger, but it is always done in a hit-or-miss, childish sort of way, as one would expect it to be; the strings are massed, or snarled, or left dangling at loose ends, or are caught around branches; the weaving and the sewing are effective, and the whole nest is a marvel of blind skill, of untaught intelligence; yet how unmethodical, how delightfully irregular, how unmistakably a piece of wild nature! Sometimes the instinct of the bird is tardy, and the egg of the bird gets ripe before the nest is ready; in such a case the egg is of course lost. I once found the nest of the black and white creeping warbler in a mossy bank in the woods, and under the nest was an egg of the bird. The warbler had excavated the site for her nest, dropped her egg into it, and then gone on with her building. Instinct is not always inerrant. Nature is wasteful, and plays the game with a free hand. Yet what she loses on one side she gains on another; she is like that least bittern Mr. Frank M. Chapman tells about. Two of the bittern's five eggs had been punctured by the long-billed marsh wren. When the bird returned to her nest and found the two eggs punctured, she made no outcry, showed no emotion, but deliberately proceeded to eat them. Having done this, she dropped the empty shells over the side of the nest, together with any straws that had become soiled in the process, cleaned her bill, and proceeded with her incubation. This was Nature in a nut-shell,--or rather egg-shell,--turning her mishaps to some good account. If the egg will not make a bird, it will make food; if not food, then fertilizer. Among nearly all our birds, the female is the active business member of the partnership; she has a turn for practical affairs; she chooses the site of the nest, and usually builds it unaided. The life of the male is more or less a holiday or picnic till the young are hatched, when his real cares begin, for he does his part in feeding them. One may see the male cedar-bird attending the female as she is busy with her nest-building, but never, so far as I have observed, assisting her. One spring I observed with much interest a phoebe-bird building her nest not far from my cabin in the woods. The male looked on approvingly, but did not help. He perched most of the time on a mullein stalk near the little spring run where Phoebe came for mud. In the early morning hours she made her trips at intervals of a minute or two. The male flirted his tail and called encouragingly, and when she started up the hill with her load he would accompany her part way, to help her over the steepest part, as it were, then return to his perch and watch and call for her return. For an hour or more I witnessed this little play in bird life, in which the female's part was so primary and the male's so secondary. There is something in such things that seems to lend support to Professor Lester F. Ward's contention, as set forth in his "Pure Sociology," that in the natural evolution of the two sexes the female was first and the male second; that he was made from her rib, so to speak, and not she from his. With our phalarope and a few Australian birds, the position of the two sexes as indicated above is reversed, the females having the ornaments and bright colors and doing the courting, while the male does the incubating. In a few cases also the female is much the more masculine, noisy, and pugnacious. With some of our common birds, such as the woodpeckers, the chickadee, and the swallows, both sexes take part in nest-building. It is a very pretty sight to witness a pair of wood thrushes building their nest. Indeed, what is there about the wood thrush that is not pleasing? He is a kind of visible embodied melody. Some birds are so sharp and nervous and emphatic in their movements, as the common snowbird or junco, the flashing of whose white tail quills expresses the character of the bird. But all the ways of the wood thrush are smooth and gentle, and suggest the melody of its song. It is the only bird thief I love to see carrying off my cherries. It usually takes only those dropped upon the ground by other birds, and with the red or golden globe impaled upon its beak, its flight across the lawn is a picture delightful to behold. One season a pair of them built a nest in a near-by grove; morning after morning, for many mornings, I used to see the two going to and from the nest, over my vineyard and currant patch and pear orchard, in quest of, or bringing material for, the structure. They flew low, the female in the lead, the male just behind in line with her, timing his motions to hers, the two making a brown, gently undulating line, very pretty to look upon, from my neighbor's field where they obtained the material, to the tree that held the nest. A gentle, gliding flight, hurried but hushed, as it were, and expressive of privacy and loving preoccupation. The male carried no material; apparently he was simply the escort of his mate; but he had an air of keen and joyous interest. He never failed to attend her each way, keeping about a yard behind her, and flying as if her thought were his thought and her wish his wish. I have rarely seen anything so pretty in bird life. The movements of all our thrushes except the robin give one this same sense of harmony,--nothing sharp or angular or abrupt. Their gestures are as pleasing as their notes. One evening, while seated upon my porch, I had convincing proof that musical or song contests do take place among the birds. Two wood thrashes who had nests near by sat on the top of a dead tree and pitted themselves against each other in song for over half an hour, contending like champions in a game, and certainly affording the rarest treat in wood thrush melody I had ever had. They sang and sang with unwearied spirit and persistence, now and then changing position or facing in another direction, but keeping within a few feet of each other. The rivalry became so obvious and was so interesting that I finally made it a point not to take my eyes from the singers. The twilight deepened till their forms began to grow dim; then one of the birds could stand the strain no longer, the limit of fair competition had been reached, and seeming to say, "I will silence you, anyhow," it made a spiteful dive at its rival, and in hot pursuit the two disappeared in the bushes beneath the tree. Of course I would not say that the birds were consciously striving to outdo each other in song; it was the old feud between males in the love season, not a war of words or of blows, but of song. Had the birds been birds of brilliant plumage, the rivalry would probably have taken the form of strutting and showing off their bright colors and ornaments. An English writer on birds, Edmund Selous; describes a similar song contest between two nightingales. "Jealousy," he says, "did not seem to blind them to the merit of each other's performance. Though often one, upon hearing the sweet, hostile strains, would burst forth instantly itself,--and here there was no certain mark of appreciation,--yet sometimes, perhaps quite as often, it would put its head on one side and listen with exactly the appearance of a musical connoisseur, weighing, testing, and appraising each note as it issued from the rival bill. A curious, half-suppressed expression would steal, or seem to steal (for Fancy may play her part in such matters), over the listening bird, and the idea appear to be, 'How exquisite would be those strains were they not sung by ----, and yet I must admit that they are exquisite.'" Fancy no doubt does play a part in such matters. It may well be doubted if birds are musical connoisseurs, or have anything like human appreciation of their own or of each other's songs. My reason for thinking so is this: I have heard a bobolink with an instrument so defective that its song was broken and inarticulate in parts, and yet it sang with as much apparent joy and abandon as any of its fellows. I have also heard a hermit thrush with a similar defect or impediment that appeared to sing entirely to its own satisfaction. It would be very interesting to know if these poor singers found mates as readily as their more gifted brothers. If they did, the Darwinian theory of "sexual selection" in such matters, according to which the finer songster would carry off the female, would fall to the ground. Yet it is certain that it is during the mating and breeding season that these "song combats" occur, and the favor of the female would seem to be the matter in dispute. Whether or not it be expressive of actual jealousy or rivalry, we have no other words to apply to it. A good deal of light is thrown upon the ways of nature as seen in the lives of our solitary wasps, so skillfully and charmingly depicted by George W. Peckham and his wife in their work on those insects. So whimsical, so fickle, so forgetful, so fussy, so wise, and yet so foolish, as these little people are! such victims of routine and yet so individual, such apparent foresight and yet such thoughtlessness, at such great pains and labor to dig a hole and build a cell, and then at times sealing it up without storing it with food or laying the egg, half finishing hole after hole, and then abandoning them without any apparent reason; sometimes killing their spiders, at other times only paralyzing them; one species digging its burrow before it captures its game, others capturing the game and then digging the hole; some of them hanging the spider up in the fork of a weed to keep it away from the ants while they work at their nest, and running to it every few minutes to see that it is safe; others laying the insect on the ground while they dig; one species walking backward and dragging its spider after it, and when the spider is so small that it carries it in its mandible, still walking backward as if dragging it, when it would be much more convenient to walk forward. A curious little people, leading their solitary lives and greatly differentiated by the solitude, hardly any two alike, one nervous and excitable, another calm and unhurried; one careless in her work, another neat and thorough; this one suspicious, that one confiding; Ammophila using a pebble to pack down the earth in her burrow, while another species uses the end of her abdomen,--verily a queer little people, with a lot of wild nature about them, and a lot of human nature, too. I think one can see how this development of individuality among the solitary wasps comes about. May it not be because the wasps are solitary? They live alone. They have no one to imitate; they are uninfluenced by their fellows. No community interests override or check individual whims or peculiarities. The innate tendency to variation, active in all forms of life, has with them full sway. Among the social bees or wasps one would not expect to find those differences between individuals. The members of a colony all appear alike in habits and in dispositions. Colonies differ, as every bee-keeper knows, but probably the members composing it differ very little. The community interests shape all alike. Is it not the same in a degree among men? Does not solitude bring out a man's peculiarities and differentiate him from others? The more one lives alone, the more he becomes unlike his fellows. Hence the original and racy flavor of woodsmen, pioneers, lone dwellers in Nature's solitudes. Thus isolated communities develop characteristics of their own. Constant intercommunication, the friction of travel, of streets, of books, of newspapers, make us all alike; we are, as it were, all pebbles upon the same shore, washed by the same waves. Among the larger of vertebrate animals, I think, one might reasonably expect to find more individuality among those that are solitary than among those that are gregarious; more among birds of prey than among water-fowl, more among foxes than among prairie-dogs, more among moose than among sheep or buffalo, more among grouse than among quail. But I do not know that this is true. Yet among none of these would one expect to find the diversity of individual types that one finds among men. No two dogs of the same breed will be found to differ as two men of the same family often differ. An original fox, or wolf, or bear, or beaver, or crow, or crab,--that is, one not merely different from his fellows, but obviously superior to them, differing from them as a master mind differs from the ordinary mind,--I think, one need not expect to find. It is quite legitimate for the animal-story writer to make the most of the individual differences in habits and disposition among the animals; he has the same latitude any other story writer has, but he is bound also by the same law of probability, the same need of fidelity to nature. If he proceed upon the theory that the wild creatures have as pronounced individuality as men have, that there are master minds among them, inventors and discoverers of new ways, born captains and heroes, he will surely "o'erstep the modesty of nature." The great diversity of character and capacity among men doubtless arises from their greater and more complex needs, relations, and aspirations. The animals' needs in comparison are few, their relations simple, and their aspirations _nil_. One cannot see what could give rise to the individual types and exceptional endowments that are often claimed for them. The law of variation, as I have said, would give rise to differences, but not to a sudden reversal of race habits, or to animal geniuses. The law of variation is everywhere operative--less so now, no doubt, than in the earlier history of organic life on the globe. Yet Nature is still experimenting in her blind way, and hits upon many curious differences and departures. But I suppose if the race of man were exterminated, man would never arise again. I doubt if the law of evolution could ever again produce him, or any other species of animal. This principle of variation was no doubt much more active back in geologic time, during the early history of animal life upon the globe, than it is in this late age. And for the reason that animal life was less adapted to its environment than it is now, the struggle for life was sharper. Perfect adaptation of any form of life to the conditions surrounding it seems to check variability. Animal and plant life seem to vary more in this country than in England because the conditions of life are harder. The extremes of heat and cold, of wet and dry, are much greater. It has been found that the eggs of the English sparrow vary in form and color more in the United States than in Great Britain. Certain American shells are said to be more variable than the English. Among our own birds it has been found that the "migratory species evince a greater amount of individual variation than do non-migrating species" because they are subject to more varying conditions of food and climate. I think we may say, then, if there were no struggle for life, if uniformity of temperature and means of subsistence everywhere prevailed, there would be little or no variation and no new species would arise. The causes of variation seem to be the inequality and imperfection of things; the pressure of life is unequally distributed, and this is one of Nature's ways that accounts for much that we see about us. VIII WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW? After the discussion carried on in the foregoing chapters touching the general subject of animal life and instinct, we are prepared, I think, to ask with more confidence, What do animals know? The animals unite such ignorance with such apparent knowledge, such stupidity with such cleverness, that in our estimate of them we are likely to rate their wit either too high or too low. With them, knowledge does not fade into ignorance, as it does in man; the contrast is like that between night and day, with no twilight between. So keen one moment, so blind the next! Think of the ignorance of the horse after all his long association with man; of the trifling things along the street at which he will take fright, till he rushes off in a wild panic of fear, endangering his own neck and the neck of his driver. One would think that if he had a particle of sense he would know that an old hat or a bit of paper was harmless. But fear is deeply implanted in his nature; it has saved the lives of his ancestors countless times, and it is still one of his ruling passions. I have known a cow to put her head between two trees in the woods--a kind of natural stanchion--and not have wit enough to get it out again, though she could have done so at once by lifting her head to a horizontal position. But the best instance I know of the grotesque ignorance of a cow is given by Hamerton in his "Chapters on Animals." The cow would not "give down" her milk unless she had her calf before her. But her calf had died, so the herdsman took the skin of the calf, stuffed it with hay, and stood it up before the inconsolable mother. Instantly she proceeded to lick it and to yield her milk. One day, in licking it, she ripped open the seams, and out rolled the hay. This the mother at once proceeded to eat, without any look of surprise or alarm. She liked hay herself, her acquaintance with it was of long standing, and what more natural to her than that her calf should turn out to be made of hay! Yet this very cow that did not know her calf from a bale of hay would have defended her young against the attack of a bear or a wolf in the most skillful and heroic manner; and the horse that was nearly frightened out of its skin by a white stone, or by the flutter of a piece of newspaper by the roadside, would find its way back home over a long stretch of country, or find its way to water in the desert, with a certainty you or I could not approach. The hen-hawk that the farm-boy finds so difficult to approach with his gun will yet alight upon his steel trap fastened to the top of a pole in the fields. The rabbit that can be so easily caught in a snare or in a box-trap will yet conceal its nest and young in the most ingenious manner. Where instinct or inherited knowledge can come into play, the animals are very wise, but new conditions, new problems, bring out their ignorance. A college girl told me an incident of a red squirrel she had observed at her home in Iowa that illustrates how shallow the wit of a squirrel is when confronted by new conditions. This squirrel carried nuts all day and stored them in the end of a drainpipe that discharged the rain-water upon the pavement below. The nuts obeyed the same law that the rain-water did, and all rolled through the pipe and fell upon the sidewalk. In the squirrel's experience, and in that of his forbears, all holes upon the ground were stopped at the far end, or they were like pockets, and if nuts were put in them they stayed there. A hollow tube open at both ends, that would not hold nuts--this was too much for the wit of the squirrel. But how wise he is about the nuts themselves! Among the lower animals the ignorance of one is the ignorance of all, and the knowledge of one is the knowledge of all, in a sense in which the same is not true among men. Of course some are more stupid than others of the same species, but probably, on the one hand, there are no idiots among them, and, on the other, none is preëminent in wit. Animals take the first step in knowledge--they perceive things and discriminate between them; but they do not take the second step--combine them, analyze them, and form concepts and judgments. So that, whether animals know much or little, I think we are safe in saying that what they know in the human way, that is, from a process of reasoning, is very slight. The animals all have in varying degrees perceptive intelligence. They know what they see, hear, smell, feel, so far as it concerns them to know it. They know their kind, their mates, their enemies, their food, heat from cold, hard from soft, and a thousand other things that it is important that they should know, and they know these things just as we know them, through their perceptive powers. We may ascribe intelligence to the animals in the same sense in which we ascribe it to a child, as the perception of the differences or of the likenesses and the relations of things--that is, perceptive intelligence, but not reasoning intelligence. When the child begins to "notice things," to know its mother, to fear strangers, to be attracted by certain objects, we say it begins to show intelligence. Development in this direction goes on for a long time before it can form any proper judgment about things or take the step of reason. If we were to subtract from the sum of the intelligence of an animal that which it owes to nature or inherited knowledge, the amount left, representing its own power of thought, would be very small. Darwin tells of a pike in an aquarium separated by plate-glass from fish which were its proper food, and that the pike, in trying to capture the fish, would often dash with such violence against the glass as to be completely stunned. This the pike did for three months before it learned caution. After the glass was removed, the pike would not attack those particular fishes, but would devour others that were introduced. It did not yet understand the situation, but merely associated the punishment it had received with a particular kind of fish. During the mating season the males of some of our birds may often be seen dashing themselves against a window, and pecking and fluttering against the pane for hours at a time, day after day. They take their own images reflected in the glass to be rival birds, and are bent upon demolishing them. They never comprehend the mystery of the glass, because glass is not found in nature, and neither they nor their ancestors have had any experience with it. Contrast these incidents with those which Darwin relates of the American monkeys. When the monkeys had cut themselves once with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or else would handle it with the greatest caution. They evinced the simpler forms of reason, of which monkeys are no doubt capable. Animals are wise as Nature is wise; they partake, each in its own measure, of that universal intelligence, or mind-stuff, that is operative in all things--in the vegetable as well as in the animal world. Does the body, or the life that fills it, reason when it tries to get rid of, or to neutralize the effects of, a foreign substance, like a bullet, by encysting it? or when it thickens the skin on the hand or on any other part of the body, even forming special pads called callosities, as a result of the increased wear or friction? This may be called physiological intelligence. But how blind this intelligence is at times, or how wanting in judgment, may be seen when it tries to develop a callosity upon the foot as a result of the friction of the shoe, and overdoes the matter and produces the corn. The corn is a physiological blunder. Or see an unexpected manifestation of this intelligence when we cut off the central and leading shoot of a spruce or of a pine tree, and straightway one of the lateral and horizontal branches rises up, takes the place of the lost leader, and carries the tree upward; or in the roots of a tree working their way through the ground much like molten metal, parting and uniting, taking the form of whatever object they touch, shaping themselves to the rock, flowing into its seams, the better to get a grip upon the earth and thus maintain an upright position. In the animal world this foresight becomes psychic intelligence, developing in man the highest form of all, reasoned intelligence. When an animal solves a new problem or meets a new condition as effectually as the tree or the body does in the cases I have just cited, we are wont to ascribe to it powers of reason. Reason we may call it, but it is reason not its own. This universal or cosmic intelligence makes up by far the greater part of what animals know. The domestic animals, such as the dog, that have long been under the tutelage of man, of course show more independent power of thought than the uneducated beasts of the fields and woods. The plant is wise in all ways to reproduce and perpetuate itself; see the many ingenious devices for scattering seed. In the animal world this intelligence is most keen and active in the same direction. The wit of the animal comes out most clearly in looking out for its food and safety. We are often ready to ascribe reason to it in feats shown in these directions. In man alone does this universal intelligence or mind-stuff reach out beyond these primary needs and become aware of itself. What the plant or the animal does without thought or rule, man takes thought about. He considers his ways, I noticed that the scallops in the shallow water on the beach had the power to anchor themselves to stones or to some other object, by putting out a little tough but elastic cable from near the hinge, and that they did so when the water was rough; but I could not look upon It as an act of conscious or individual intelligence on the part of the bivalve. It was as much an act of the general intelligence to which I refer as was its hinge or its form. But when the sailor anchors his ship, that is another matter. He thinks about it, he reasons from cause to effect, he sees the storm coming, he has a fund of experience, and his act is a special individual act. The muskrat builds its house instinctively, and all muskrats build alike. Man builds his house from reason and forethought. Savages build as nearly alike as the animals, but civilized man shows an endless variety. The higher the intelligence, the greater the diversity. The sitting bird that is so solicitous to keep its eggs warm, or to feed and defend its young, probably shows no more independent and individual intelligence than the plant that strives so hard to mature and scatter its seed. A plant will grow toward the light; a tree will try to get from under another tree that overshadows it; a willow will run its roots toward the water: but these acts are the results of external stimuli alone. When I go to pass the winter in a warmer climate, the act is the result of calculation and of weighing pros and cons. I can go, of I can refrain from going. Not so with the migrating birds. Nature plans and thinks for them; it is not an individual act on the part of each; it is a race instinct: they must go; the life of the race demands it. Or when the old goose covers up her nest, or the rabbit covers her young with a blanket of hair and grass of her own weaving, I do not look upon these things as independent acts of intelligence: it is the cunning of nature; it is a race instinct. Animals, on the whole, know what is necessary for them to know--what the conditions of life have taught their ancestors through countless generations. It is very important, for instance, that amphibians shall have some sense that shall guide them to the water; and they have such a sense. It is said that young turtles and crocodiles put down anywhere will turn instantly toward the nearest water. It is certain that the beasts of the field have such a sense much more fully developed than has man. It is of vital importance that birds should know how to fly, how to build their nests, how to find their proper food, and when and where to migrate, without instruction or example, otherwise the race might become extinct. Richard Jefferies says that most birds'-nests need a structure around them like a cage to keep the young from falling out or from leaving the nest prematurely. Now, if such a structure were needed, either the race of birds would have failed, or the structure would have been added. Since neither has happened, we are safe in concluding it is not needed. We are not warranted in attributing to any wild, untrained animal a degree of intelligence that its forbears could not have possessed. The animals for the most part act upon inherited knowledge, that is, knowledge that does not depend upon instruction or experience. For instance, the red squirrels near me seem to know that chestnut-burs will open if cut from the tree and allowed to lie upon the ground. At least, they act upon this theory. I do not suppose this fact or knowledge lies in the squirrel's mind as it would in that of a man--as a deduction from facts of experience or of observation. The squirrel cuts off the chestnuts because he is hungry for them, and because his ancestors for long generations have cut them off in the same way. That the air or sun will cause the burs to open is a bit of knowledge that I do not suppose he possesses in the sense in which we possess it: he is in a hurry for the nuts, and does not by any means always wait for the burs to open; he frequently chips them up and eats the pale nuts. The same squirrel will bite into the limbs of a maple tree in spring and suck the sap. What does he know about maple trees and the spring flow of sap? Nothing as a mental concept, as a bit of concrete knowledge. He often finds the sap flowing from a crack or other wound in the limbs of a maple, and he sips it and likes it. Then he sinks his teeth into the limb, as his forbears undoubtedly did. When I was a boy and saw, as I often did on my way to school, where a squirrel had stopped on his course through the woods and dug down through two or three feet of snow, bringing up a beech-nut or an acorn, I used to wonder how he knew the nut was there. I am now convinced that he smelled it. Why should he not? It stands the squirrel in hand to smell nuts; they are his life. He knows a false nut from a good one without biting into it. Try the experiment upon your tame chipmunk or caged gray squirrel, and see if this is not so. The false or dead nut is lighter, and most persons think this fact guides the squirrel. But this, it seems to me, implies an association of ideas beyond the reach of instinct. A young squirrel will reject a worthless nut as promptly as an old one will. Again the sense of smell is the guide; the sound-meated nut has an odor which the other has not. All animals are keen and wise in relation to their food and to their natural enemies. A red squirrel will chip up green apples and pears for the seeds at the core: can he know, on general principles, that these fruits contain seeds? Does not some clue to them reach his senses? I have known gray squirrels to go many hundred yards in winter across fields to a barn that contained grain in the sheaf. They could have had no other guide to the grain than the sense of smell. Watch a chipmunk or any squirrel near at hand: as a friend of mine observed, he seems to be smelling with his whole body; his abdomen fairly palpitates with the effort. The coon knows when the corn is in the milk, gaining that knowledge, no doubt, through his nose. At times he seems to know enough, too, to cut off his foot when caught in a trap, especially if the foot becomes frozen; but if you tell me he will treat his wound by smearing it with pitch or anything else, or in any way except by licking it, I shall discredit you. The practice of the art of healing by the application of external or foreign substances is a conception entirely beyond the capacity of any of the lower animals. If such a practice had been necessary for the continuance of the species, it would probably have been used. The knowledge it implies could not be inherited; it must needs come by experience. When a fowl eats gravel or sand, is it probable that the fowl knows what the practice is for, or has any notion at all about the matter? It has a craving for the gravel, that is all. Nature is wise for it. The ostrich is described by those who know it intimately as the most stupid and witless of birds, and yet before leaving its eggs exposed to the hot African sun, the parent bird knows enough to put a large pinch of sand on the top of each of them, in order, it is said, to shade and protect the germ, which always rises to the highest point of the egg. This act certainly cannot be the result of knowledge, as we use the term; the young ostrich does it as well as the old. It is the inherited wisdom of the race, or instinct. A sitting bird or fowl turns its eggs at regular intervals, which has the effect of keeping the yolk from sticking to the shell. Is this act the result of knowledge or of experience? It is again the result of that untaught knowledge called instinct. Some kinds of eggs hatch in two weeks, some in three, others in four. The mother bird has no knowledge of this period. It is not important that she should have. If the eggs are addled or sterile, she will often continue to sit beyond the normal period. If the continuance of the species depended upon her knowing the exact time required to hatch her eggs, as it depends upon her having the incubating fever, of course she would know exactly, and would never sit beyond the required period. But what shall we say of Mrs. Annie Martin's story, in her "Home Life on an Ostrich Farm," of the white-necked African crow that, in order to feast upon the eggs of the ostrich, carries a stone high in the air above them and breaks them by letting it fall? This looks like reason, a knowledge of the relation of cause and effect. Mrs. Martin says the crows break tortoise-shells in the same way, and have I not heard of our own crows and gulls carrying clams and crabs into the air and dropping them upon the rocks? If Mrs. Martin's statements are literally true,--if she has not the failing, so common among women observers, of letting her feeling and her fancies color her observations,--then her story shows how the pressure of hunger will develop the wit of a crow. But the story goes one step beyond my credence. It virtually makes the crow a tool-using animal, and Darwin knew of but two animals, the man-like ape and the elephant, that used anything like a tool or weapon to attain their ends. How could the crow gain the knowledge or the experience which this trick implies? What could induce it to make the first experiment of breaking an egg with a falling stone but an acquaintance with physical laws such as man alone possesses? The first step in this chain of causation it is easy to conceive of any animal taking; namely, the direct application of its own powers or weapons to the breaking of the shell. But the second step,--the making use of a foreign substance or object in the way described,--that is what staggers one. Our own crow has great cunning, but it is only cunning. He is suspicious of everything that looks like design, that suggests a trap, even a harmless string stretched around a corn-field. As a natural philosopher he makes a poor show, and the egg or the shell that he cannot open with his own beak he leaves behind. Yet even his alleged method of dropping clams upon the rocks to break the shells does not seem incredible. He might easily drop a clam by accident, and then, finding the shell broken, repeat the experiment. He is still only taking the first step in the sequence of causations. A recent English nature-writer, on the whole, I think, a good observer and truthful reporter, Mr. Richard Kearton, tells of an osprey that did this incredible thing: to prevent its eggs from being harmed by an enforced exposure to the sun, the bird plunged into the lake, then rose, and shook its dripping plumage over the nest. The writer apparently reports this story at second-hand. It is incredible to me, because it implies a knowledge that the hawk could not possibly possess. Such an emergency could hardly arise once in a lifetime to it or its forbears. Hence the act could not have been the result of inherited habit, or instinct, and as an original act on the part of the osprey it is not credible. The bird probably plunged into the lake for a fish, and then by accident shook itself above the eggs. In any case, the amount of water that would fall upon the eggs under such circumstances would be too slight to temper appreciably the heat. There is little doubt that among certain of our common birds the male, during periods of excessive heat, has been known to shade the female with his outstretched wings, and the mother bird to shade her young in the same way. But this is a different matter. This emergency must have occurred for ages, and it, again, called only for the first step from cause to effect, and called for the use of no intermediate agent. If the robin were to hold a leaf or a branch above his mate at such times, that would imply reflection. It is said that elephants in India will besmear themselves with mud as a protection against insects, and that they will break branches from the trees and use them to brush away the flies. If this is true, it shows, I think, something beyond instinct in the elephant; it shows reflection. All birds are secretive about their nests, and display great cunning in hiding them; but whether they know the value of adaptive material, such as moss, lichens, and dried grass, in helping to conceal them, admits of doubt, because they so often use the results of our own arts, as paper, rags, strings, tinsel, in such a reckless way. In a perfectly wild state they use natural material because it is the handiest and there is really no other. The phoebe uses the moss on or near the rocks where she builds; the sparrows, the bobolinks, and the meadowlarks use the dry grass of the bank or of the meadow bottom where the nest is placed. The English writer to whom I have referred says that the wren builds the outside of its nest of old hay straws when placing it in the side of a rick, of green moss when it is situated in a mossy bank, and of dead leaves when in a hedge-row or a bramble-bush, in each case thus rendering the nest very difficult of detection because it harmonizes so perfectly with its surroundings, and the writer wonders if this harmony is the result of accident or of design. He is inclined to think that it is unpremeditated, as I myself do. The bird uses the material nearest to hand. Another case, which this same writer gives at second-hand, of a bird recognizing the value of protective coloration, is not credible. A friend of his told him that he had once visited a colony of terns "on an island where the natural breeding accommodation was so limited that many of them had conveyed patches of pebbles on to the grass and laid their eggs thereon." Here is the same difficulty we have encountered before--one more step of reasoning than the bird is capable of. As a deduction from observed facts, a bird, of course, knows nothing about protective coloring; its wisdom in this respect is the wisdom of Nature, and Nature in animal life never acts with this kind of foresight. A bird may exercise some choice about the background of its nest, but it will not make both nest and background. Nature learns by endless experiment. Through a long and expensive process of natural selection she seems to have brought the color of certain animals and the color of their environment pretty close together, the better to hide the animals from their enemies and from their prey, as we are told; but the animals themselves do not know this, though they may act as if they did. Young terns and gulls instinctively squat upon the beach, where their colors so harmonize with the sand and pebbles that the birds are virtually invisible. Young partridges do the same in the woods, where the eye cannot tell the reddish tuft of down from the dry leaves. How many gulls and terns and partridges were sacrificed before Nature learned this trick! I regard the lower animals as incapable of taking the step from the fact to the principle. They have perceptions, but not conceptions. They may recognize a certain fact, but any deduction from that fact to be applied to a different case, or to meet new conditions, is beyond them. Wolves and foxes soon learn to be afraid of poisoned meat: just what gives them the hint it would be hard to say, as the survivors could not know the poison's deadly effect from experience; their fear of it probably comes from seeing their fellows suffer and die after eating it, or maybe through that mysterious means of communication between animals to which I have referred in a previous article. The poison probably changes the odor of the meat, and this strange smell would naturally put them on their guard. We do not expect rats to succeed in putting a bell on the cat, but if they were capable of conceiving such a thing, that would establish their claim to be regarded as reasonable beings. I should as soon expect a fox or a wolf to make use of a trap to capture its prey as to make use of poison in any way. Why does not the fox take a stick and spring the trap he is so afraid of? Simply because the act would involve a mental process beyond him. He has not yet learned to use even the simplest implement to attain his end. Then he would probably be just as afraid of the trap after it was sprung as before. He in some way associates it with his arch-enemy, man. Such stories, too, as a chained fox or a coyote getting possession of corn or other grain and baiting the chickens with it--feigning sleep till the chicken gets within reach, and then seizing it--are of the same class, incredible because transcending the inherited knowledge of those animals. I can believe that a fox might walk in a shallow creek to elude the hound, because he may inherit this kind of cunning, and in his own experience he may have come to associate loss of scent with water. Animals stalk their prey, or lie in wait for it, instinctively, not from a process of calculation, as man does. If a fox would bait poultry with corn, why should he not, in his wild state, bait mice and squirrels with nuts and seeds? Has a cat ever been known to bait a rat with a piece of cheese? Animals seem to have a certain association of ideas; one thing suggests another to them, as with us. This fact is made use of by animal-trainers. I can easily believe the story Charles St. John tells of the fox he saw waylaying some hares, and which, to screen himself the more completely from his quarry, scraped a small hollow in the ground and threw up the sand about it. But if St. John had said that the fox brought weeds or brush to make himself a blind, as the hunter often does, I should have discredited him, just as I discredit the observation of a man quoted by Romanes, who says that jackals, ambushing deer at the latter's watering-place, deliberately wait till the deer have filled themselves with water, knowing that in that state they are more easily run down and captured! President Roosevelt, in "The Wilderness Hunter,"--a book, by the way, of even deeper interest to the naturalist than to the sportsman,--says that the moose has to the hunter the "very provoking habit of making a half or three-quarters circle before lying down, and then crouching with its head so turned that it can surely perceive any pursuer who may follow its trail." This is the cunning of the moose developed through long generations of its hunted and wolf-pursued ancestors,--a cunning that does not differ from that of a man under the same circumstances, though, of course, it is not the result of the same process of reasoning. I have known a chipping sparrow to build her nest on a grape-vine just beneath a bunch of small green grapes. Soon the bunch grew and lengthened and filled the nest, crowding out the bird. If the bird could have foreseen the danger, she would have shown something like human reason. Birds that nest along streams, such as the water-thrush and the water-ouzel, I suppose are rarely ever brought to grief by high water. They have learned through many generations to keep at a safe distance. I have never known a woodpecker to drill its nesting-cavity in a branch or limb that was ready to fall. Not that woodpeckers look the branch or tree over with a view to its stability, but that they will cut into a tree only of a certain hardness; it is a family instinct. Birds sometimes make the mistake of building their nests on slender branches that a summer tempest will turn over, thus causing the eggs or the young to spill upon the ground. Even instinct cannot always get ahead of the weather. It is almost impossible for us not to interpret the lives of the lower animals in the terms of our own experience and our own psychology. I entirely agree with Lloyd Morgan that we err when we do so, when we attribute to them what we call sentiments or any of the emotions that spring from our moral and æsthetic natures,--the sentiments of justice, truth, beauty, altruism, goodness, duty, and the like,--because these sentiments are the products of concepts and ideas to which the brute natures are strangers. But all the emotions of our animal nature--fear, anger, curiosity, local attachment, jealousy, and rivalry--are undoubtedly the same in the lower orders. Though almost anything may be affirmed of dogs, for they are nearly half human, yet I doubt if even dogs experience the feeling of shame or guilt or revenge that we so often ascribe to them. These feelings are all complex and have a deep root. When I was a youth, my father had a big churn-dog that appeared one morning with a small bullet-hole in his hip. Day after day the old dog treated his wound with his tongue, after the manner of dogs, until it healed, and the incident was nearly forgotten. One day a man was going by on horseback, when the old dog rushed out, sprang at the man, and came near pulling him from the horse. It turned out that this was the person who had shot the dog, and the dog recognized him. This looks like revenge, and it would have been such in you or me, but in the dog it was probably simple anger at the sight of the man who had hurt him. The incident shows memory and the association of impressions, but the complex feeling of vengeance, as we know it, is another matter. If animals do not share our higher intellectual nature, we have no warrant for attributing to them anything like our higher and more complex emotional nature. Musical strains seem to give them pain rather than pleasure, and it is quite evident that perfumes have no attraction for them. The stories, which seem to be well authenticated, of sheep-killing dogs that have slipped their collars in the night and indulged their passion for live mutton, and then returned and thrust their necks into their collars before their absence was discovered, do not, to my mind, prove that the dogs were trying to deceive their masters and conceal their guilt, but rather show how obedient to the chain and collar the dogs had become. They had long been subject to such control and discipline, and they returned to them again from the mere force of habit. I do not believe even the dog to be capable of a sense of guilt. Such a sense implies a sense of duty, and this is a complex ethical sense that the animals do not experience. What the dog fears, and what makes him put on his look of guilt and shame, is his master's anger. A harsh word or a severe look will make him assume the air of a culprit whether he is one or not, and, on the other hand, a kind word and a reassuring smile will transform him into a happy beast, no matter if the blood of his victim is fresh upon him. A dog is to be broken of a bad habit, if at all, not by an appeal to his conscience or to his sense of duty, for he has neither, but by an appeal to his susceptibility to pain. Both Pliny and Plutarch tell the story of an elephant which, having been beaten by its trainer for its poor dancing, was afterward found all by itself practicing its steps by the light of the moon. This is just as credible as many of the animal stories one hears nowadays. Many of the actions of the lower animals are as automatic as those of the tin rooster that serves as a weather-vane. See how intelligently the rooster acts, always pointing the direction of the wind without a moment's hesitation. Or behold the vessel anchored in the harbor, how intelligently it adjusts itself to the winds and the tides! I have seen a log, caught in an eddy in a flooded stream, apparently make such struggles to escape that the thing became almost uncanny in its semblance to life. Man himself often obeys just such unseen currents of race or history when he thinks he is acting upon his own initiative. When I was in Alaska, I saw precipices down which hundreds of horses had dashed themselves in their mad and desperate efforts to escape from the toil and suffering they underwent on the White Pass trail. Shall we say these horses deliberately committed suicide? Suicide it certainly was in effect, but of course not in intention. What does or can a horse know about death, or about self-destruction? These animals were maddened by their hardships, and blindly plunged down the rocks. The tendency to humanize the animals is more and more marked in all recent nature books that aim at popularity. A recent British book on animal life has a chapter entitled "Animal Materia Medica." The writer, to make out his case, is forced to treat as medicine the salt which the herbivorous animals eat, and the sand and gravel which grain and nut-eating birds take into their gizzards to act as millstones to grind their grist. He might as well treat their food as medicine and be done with it. So far as I know, animals have no remedies whatever for their ailments. Even savages have, for the most part, only "fake" medicines. A Frenchman has published a book, which has been translated into English, on the "Industries of Animals." Some of these Frenchmen could give points even to our "Modern School of Nature Study." It may be remembered that Michelet said the bird floated, and that it could puff itself up so that it was lighter than the air! Not a little contemporary natural science can beat the bird in this respect. The serious student of nature can have no interest in belittling or in exaggerating the intelligence of animals. What he wants is the truth about them, and this he will not get from our natural history romancers, nor from the casual, untrained observers, who are sure to interpret the lives of the wood-folk in terms of their own motives and experiences, nor from Indians, trappers, or backwoodsmen, who give such free rein to their fancies and superstitions. Such a book as Romanes's "Animal Intelligence" is not always a safe guide. It is like a lawyer's plea to the jury for his client. Romanes was so intent upon making out his case that he allowed himself to be imposed upon by the tales of irresponsible observers. Many of his stories of the intelligence of birds and beasts are antecedently improbable. He evidently credits the story of the Bishop of Carlisle, who thinks he saw a jackdaw being tried by a jury of rooks for some misdemeanor. Jack made a speech and the jury cawed back at him, and after a time appeared to acquit Jack! What a child's fancy to be put in a serious work on "Animal Intelligence"! The dead birds we now and then find hanging from the nest, or from the limb of a tree, with a string wound around their necks are no doubt criminals upon whom their fellows have inflicted capital punishment! Most of the observations upon which Romanes bases his conclusions are like the incident which he quoted from Jesse, who tells of some swallows that in the spirit of revenge tore down a nest from which they had been ejected by the sparrows, in order to destroy the young of their enemies--a feat impossible for swallows to do. Jesse does not say he saw the swallows do it, but he "saw the young sparrows dead upon the ground amid the ruins of the nest," and of course the nest could get down in no other way! Not to Romanes or Jesse or Michelet must we go for the truth about animals, but to the patient, honest Darwin, to such calm, keen, and philosophical investigators as Lloyd Morgan, and to the books of such sportsmen as Charles St. John, or to our own candid, trained, and many-sided Theodore Roosevelt,--men capable of disinterested observation with no theories about animals to uphold. IX DO ANIMALS THINK AND REFLECT? When we see the animals going about, living their lives in many ways as we live ours, seeking their food, avoiding their enemies, building their nests, digging their holes, laying up stores, migrating, courting, playing, fighting, showing cunning, courage, fear, joy, anger, rivalry, grief, profiting by experience, following their leaders,--when we see all this, I say, what more natural than that we should ascribe to them powers akin to our own, and look upon them as thinking, reasoning, and reflecting. A hasty survey of animal life is sure to lead to this conclusion. An animal is not a clod, nor a block, nor a machine. It is alive and self-directing, it has some sort of psychic life, yet the more I study the subject, the more I am persuaded that with the probable exception of the dog on occasions, and of the apes, animals do not think or reflect in any proper sense of those words. As I have before said, animal life shows in an active and free state that kind of intelligence that pervades and governs the whole organic world,--intelligence that takes no thought of itself. Here, in front of my window, is a black raspberry bush. A few weeks ago its branches curved upward, with their ends swinging fully two feet above the ground; now those ends are thrust down through the weeds and are fast rooted to the soil. Did the raspberry bush think, or choose what it should do? Did it reflect and say, Now is the time for me to bend down and thrust my tip into the ground? To all intents and purposes yes, yet there was no voluntary mental process, as in similar acts of our own. We say its nature prompts it to act thus and thus, and that is all the explanation we can give. Or take the case of the pine or the spruce tree that loses its central and leading shoot. When this happens, does the tree start a new bud and then develop a new shoot to take the place of the lost leader? No, a branch from the first ring of branches below, probably the most vigorous of the whorl, is promoted to the leadership. Slowly it rises up, and in two or three years it reaches the upright position and is leading the tree upward. This, I suspect, is just as much an act of conscious intelligence and of reason as is much to which we are so inclined to apply those words in animal life. I suppose it is all foreordained in the economy of the tree, if we could penetrate that economy. It is in this sense that Nature thinks in the animal, and the vegetable, and the mineral worlds. Her thinking is more flexible and adaptive in the vegetable than in the mineral, and more so in the animal than in the vegetable, and the most so of all in the mind of man. The way the wild apple trees and the red thorn trees in the pasture, as described by Thoreau, triumph over the cattle that year after year browse them down, suggests something almost like human tactics. The cropped and bruised tree, not being allowed to shoot upward, spreads more and more laterally, thus pushing its enemies farther and farther away, till, after many years, a shoot starts up from the top of the thorny, knotted cone, and in one season, protected by this _cheval-de-frise_, attains a height beyond the reach of the cattle, and the victory is won. Now the whole push of the large root system goes into the central shoot and the tree is rapidly developed. This almost looks like a well-laid scheme on the part of the tree to defeat its enemies. But see how inevitable the whole process is. Check the direct flow of a current and it will flow out at the sides; check the side issues and they will push out on their sides, and so on. So it is with the tree or seedling. The more it is cropped, the more it branches and rebranches, pushing out laterally as its vertical growth is checked, till it has surrounded the central stalk on all sides with a dense, thorny hedge. Then as this stalk is no longer cropped, it leads the tree upward. The lateral branches are starved, and in a few years the tree stands with little or no evidence of the ordeal it has passed through. In like manner the nature of the animals prompts them to the deeds they do, and we think of them as the result of a mental process, because similar acts in ourselves are the result of such a process. See how the mice begin to press into our buildings as the fall comes on. Do they know winter is coming? In the same way the vegetable world knows it is coming when it prepares for winter, or the insect world when it makes ready, but not as you and I know it. The woodchuck "holes up" in late September; the crows flock and select their rookery about the same time, and the small wood newts or salamanders soon begin to migrate to the marshes. They all know winter is coming, just as much as the tree knows, when in August it forms its new buds for the next year, or as the flower knows that its color and perfume will attract the insects, and no more. The general intelligence of nature settles all these and similar things. When a bird selects a site for its nest, it seems, on first view, as if it must actually think, reflect, compare, as you and I do when we decide where to place our house. I saw a little chipping sparrow trying to decide between two raspberry bushes. She kept going from one to the other, peering, inspecting, and apparently weighing the advantages of each. I saw a robin in the woodbine on the side of the house trying to decide which particular place was the best site for her nest. She hopped to this tangle of shoots and sat down, then to that, she turned around, she readjusted herself, she looked about, she worked her feet beneath her, she was slow in making up her mind. Did she make up her mind? Did she think, compare, weigh? I do not believe it. When she found the right conditions, she no doubt felt pleasure and satisfaction, and that settled the question. An inward, instinctive want was met and satisfied by an outward material condition. In the same way the hermit crab goes from shell to shell upon the beach, seeking one to its liking. Sometimes two crabs fall to fighting over a shell that each wants. Can we believe that the hermit crab thinks and reasons? It selects the suitable shell instinctively, and not by an individual act of judgment. Instinct is not always inerrant, though it makes fewer mistakes than reason does. The red squirrel usually knows how to come at the meat in the butternut with the least gnawing, but now and then he makes a mistake and strikes the edge of the kernel, instead of the flat side. The cliff swallow will stick her mud nest under the eaves of a barn where the boards are planed so smooth that the nest sooner or later is bound to fall. She seems to have no judgment in the matter. Her ancestors built upon the face of high cliffs, where the mud adhered more firmly. A wood thrush began a nest in one of my maples, as usual making the foundation of dry leaves, bits of paper, and dry grass. After the third day the site on the branch was bare, the wind having swept away every vestige of the nest. As I passed beneath the tree I saw the thrush standing where the nest had been, apparently in deep thought. A few days afterward I looked again, and the nest was completed. The bird had got ahead of the wind at last. The nesting-instinct had triumphed over the weather. Take the case of the little yellow warbler when the cowbird drops her egg into its nest--does anything like a process of thought or reflection pass in the bird's mind then? The warbler is much disturbed when she discovers the strange egg, and her mate appears to share her agitation. Then after a time, and after the two have apparently considered the matter together, the mother bird proceeds to bury the egg by building another nest on top of the old one. If another cowbird's egg is dropped in this one, she will proceed to get rid of this in the same way. This all looks very like reflection. But let us consider the matter a moment. This thing between the cowbird and the warbler has been going on for innumerable generations. The yellow warbler seems to be the favorite host of this parasite, and something like a special instinct may have grown up in the warbler with reference to this strange egg. The bird reacts, as the psychologists say, at sight of it, then she proceeds to dispose of it in the way above described. _All yellow warblers act in the same manner_, which is the way of instinct. Now if this procedure was the result of an individual thought or calculation on the part of the birds, they would not all do the same thing; different lines of conduct would be hit upon. How much simpler and easier it would be to throw the egg out--how much more like an act of rational intelligence. So far as I know, no bird does eject this parasitical egg, and no other bird besides the yellow warbler gets rid of it in the way I have described. I have found a deserted phoebe's nest with one egg of the phoebe and one of the cowbird in it. Some of our wild birds have changed their habits of nesting, coming from the woods and the rocks to the protection of our buildings. The phoebe-bird and the cliff swallow are marked examples. We ascribe the change to the birds' intelligence, but to my mind it shows only their natural adaptiveness. Take the cliff swallow, for instance; it has largely left the cliffs for the eaves of our buildings. How naturally and instinctively this change has come about! In an open farming country insect life is much more varied and abundant than in a wild, unsettled country. This greater food supply naturally attracts the swallows. Then the protecting eaves of the buildings would stimulate their nesting-instincts. The abundance of mud along the highways and about the farm would also no doubt have its effect, and the birds would adopt the new sites as a matter of course. Or take the phoebe, which originally built its nest under ledges, and does so still to some extent. It, too, would find a more abundant food supply in the vicinity of farm-buildings and bridges. The protected nesting-sites afforded by sheds and porches would likewise stimulate its nesting-instincts, and attract the bird as we see it attracted each spring. Nearly everything an animal does is the result of an inborn instinct acted upon by an outward stimulus. The margin wherein intelligent choice plays a part is very small. But it does at times play a part--perceptive intelligence, but not rational intelligence. The insects do many things that look like intelligence, yet how these things differ from human intelligence may be seen in the case of one of our solitary wasps,--the mud-dauber,--which sometimes builds its cell with great labor, then seals it up without laying its egg and storing it with the accustomed spiders. Intelligence never makes that kind of a mistake, but instinct does. Instinct acts more in the invariable way of a machine. Certain of the solitary wasps bring their game--spider, or bug, or grasshopper--and place it just at the entrance of their hole, and then go into their den apparently to see that all is right before they carry it in. Fabre, the French naturalist, experimented with one of these wasps, as follows: While the wasp was in its den he moved its grasshopper a few inches away. The wasp came out, brought it to the opening as before, and went within a second time; again the game was removed, again the wasp came out and brought it back and entered her nest as before. This little comedy was repeated over and over; each time the wasp felt compelled to enter her hole before dragging in the grasshopper. She was like a machine that would work that way and no other. Step must follow step in just such order. Any interruption of the regular method and she must begin over again. This is instinct, and the incident shows how widely it differs from conscious intelligence. If you have a tame chipmunk, turn him loose in an empty room and give him some nuts. Finding no place to hide them, he will doubtless carry them into a corner and pretend to cover them up. You will see his paws move quickly about them for an instant as if in the act of pulling leaves or mould over them. His machine, too, must work in that way. After the nuts have been laid down, the next thing in order is to cover them, and he makes the motions all in due form. Intelligence would have omitted this useless act. A canary-bird in its cage will go through all the motions of taking a bath in front of the cup that holds its drinking-water when it can only dip its bill into the liquid. The sight or touch of the water excites it and sets it going, and with now and then a drop thrown from its beak it will keep up the flirting and fluttering motion of its tail and wings precisely as if taking a real instead of an imaginary bath. Attempt to thwart the nesting-instinct in a bird and see how persistent it is, and how blind! One spring a pair of English sparrows tried to build a nest on the plate that upholds the roof of my porch. They were apparently attracted by an opening about an inch wide in the top of the plate, that ran the whole length of it. The pair were busy nearly the whole month of April in carrying nesting-material to various points on that plate. That big crack or opening which was not large enough to admit their bodies seemed to have a powerful fascination for them. They carried straws and weed stalks and filled up one portion of it, and then another and another, till the crack was packed with rubbish from one end of the porch to the other, and the indignant broom of the housekeeper grew tired of sweeping up the litter. The birds could not effect an entrance into the interior of the plate, but they could thrust in their nesting-material, and so they persisted week after week, stimulated by the presence of a cavity beyond their reach. The case is a good illustration of the blind working of instinct. Animals have keen perceptions,--keener in many respects than our own,--but they form no conceptions, have no powers of comparing one thing with another. They live entirely in and through their senses. It is as if the psychic world were divided into two planes, one above the other,--the plane of sense and the plane of spirit. In the plane of sense live the lower animals, only now and then just breaking for a moment into the higher plane. In the world of sense man is immersed also--this is his start and foundation; but he rises into the plane of spirit, and here lives his proper life. He is emancipated from sense in a way that beasts are not. Thus, I think, the line between animal and human psychology may be pretty clearly drawn. It is not a dead-level line. Instinct is undoubtedly often modified by intelligence, and intelligence is as often guided or prompted by instinct, but one need not hesitate long as to which side of the line any given act of man or beast belongs. When the fox resorts to various tricks to outwit and delay the hound (if he ever consciously does so), he exercises a kind of intelligence,--the lower form which we call cunning,--and he is prompted to this by an instinct of self-preservation. When the birds set up a hue and cry about a hawk or an owl, or boldly attack him, they show intelligence in its simpler form, the intelligence that recognizes its enemies, prompted again by the instinct of self-preservation. When a hawk does not know a man on horseback from a horse, it shows a want of intelligence. When a crow is kept away from a corn-field by a string stretched around it, the fact shows how masterful is its fear and how shallow its wit. When a cat or a dog, or a horse or a cow, learns to open a gate or a door, it shows a degree of intelligence--power to imitate, to profit by experience. A machine could not learn to do this. If the animal were to close the door or gate behind it, that would be another step in intelligence. But its direct wants have no relation to the closing of the door, only to the opening of it. To close the door involves an after-thought that an animal is not capable of. A horse will hesitate to go upon thin ice or upon a frail bridge, even though it has never had any experience with thin ice or frail bridges. This, no doubt, is an inherited instinct, which has arisen in its ancestors from their fund of general experience with the world. How much with them has depended upon a secure footing! A pair of house wrens had a nest in my well-curb; when the young were partly grown and heard any one come to the curb, they would set up a clamorous calling for food. When I scratched against the sides of the curb beneath them like some animal trying to climb up, their voices instantly hushed; the instinct of fear promptly overcame the instinct of hunger. Instinct is intelligent, but it is not the same as acquired individual intelligence; it is untaught. When the nuthatch carries a fragment of a hickory-nut to a tree and wedges it into a crevice in the bark, the bird is not showing an individual act of intelligence: all nuthatches do this; it is a race instinct. The act shows intelligence,--that is, it adapts means to an end,--but it is not like human or individual intelligence, which adapts new means to old ends, or old means to new ends, and which springs up on the occasion. Jays and chickadees hold the nut or seed they would peck under the foot, but the nuthatch makes a vise to hold it of the bark of the tree, and one act is just as intelligent as the other; both are the promptings of instinct. But when man makes a vise, or a wedge, or a bootjack, he uses his individual intelligence. When the jay carries away the corn you put out in winter and hides it in old worms' nests and knot-holes and crevices in trees, he is obeying the instinct of all his tribe to pilfer and hide things,--an instinct that plays its part in the economy of nature, as by its means many acorns and chestnuts get planted and large seeds widely disseminated. By this greed of the jay the wingless nuts take flight, oaks are planted amid the pines, and chestnuts amid the hemlocks. Speaking of nuts reminds me of an incident I read of the deer or white-footed mouse--an incident that throws light on the limitation of animal intelligence. The writer gave the mouse hickory-nuts, which it attempted to carry through a crack between the laths in the kitchen wall. The nuts were too large to go through the crack. The mouse would try to push them through; failing in that, he would go through and then try to pull them after him. All night he or his companion seems to have kept up this futile attempt, fumbling and dropping the nut every few minutes. It never occurred to the mouse to gnaw the hole larger, as it would instantly have done had the hole been too small to admit its own body. It could not project its mind thus far; it could not get out of itself sufficiently to regard the nut in its relation to the hole, and it is doubtful if any four-footed animal is capable of that degree of reflection and comparison. Nothing in its own life or in the life of its ancestors had prepared it to meet that kind of a difficulty with nuts. And yet the writer who made the above observation says that when confined in a box, the sides of which are of unequal thickness, the deer mouse, on attempting to gnaw out, almost invariably attacks the thinnest side. How does he know which is the thinnest side? Probably by a delicate and trained sense of feeling or hearing. In gnawing through obstructions from within, or from without, he and his kind have had ample experience. Now when we come to insects, we find that the above inferences do not hold. It has been observed that when a solitary wasp finds its hole in the ground too small to admit the spider or other insect which it has brought, it falls to and enlarges it. In this and in other respects certain insects seem to take the step of reason that quadrupeds are incapable of. Lloyd Morgan relates at some length the experiments he tried with his fox terrier, Tony, seeking to teach him how to bring a stick through a fence with vertical palings. The spaces would allow the dog to pass through, but the palings caught the ends of the stick which the dog carried in his mouth. When his master encouraged him, he pushed and struggled vigorously. Not succeeding, he went back, lay down, and began gnawing the stick. Then he tried again, and stuck as before, but by a chance movement of his head to one side finally got the stick through. His master patted him approvingly and sent him for the stick again. Again he seized it by the middle, and of course brought up against the palings. After some struggles he dropped it and came through without it. Then, encouraged by his master, he put his head through, seized the stick, and tried to pull it through, dancing up and down in his endeavors. Time after time and day after day the experiment was repeated with practically the same results. The dog never mastered the problem. He could not see the relation of that stick to the opening in the fence. At one time he worked and tugged three minutes trying to pull the stick through. Of course, if he had had any mental conception of the problem or had thought about it at all, a single trial would have convinced him as well as would a dozen trials. Mr. Morgan tried the experiment with other dogs with like result. When they did get the stick through, it was always by chance. It has never been necessary that the dog or his ancestors should know how to fetch long sticks through a narrow opening in a fence. Hence he does not know the trick of it. But we have a little bird that knows the trick. The house wren will carry a twig three inches long through a hole of half that diameter. She knows how to manage it because the wren tribe have handled twigs so long in building their nests that this knowledge has become a family instinct. What we call the intelligence of animals is limited for the most part to sense perception and sense memory. We teach them certain things, train them to do tricks quite beyond the range of their natural intelligence, not because we enlighten their minds or develop their reason, but mainly by the force of habit. Through repetition the act becomes automatic. Who ever saw a trained animal, unless it be the elephant, do anything that betrayed the least spark of conscious intelligence? The trained pig, or the trained dog, or the trained lion does its "stunt" precisely as a machine would do it--without any more appreciation of what it is doing. The trainer and public performer find that things must always be done in the same fixed order; any change, anything unusual, any strange sound, light, color, or movement, and trouble at once ensues. I read of a beaver that cut down a tree which was held in such a way that it did not fall, but simply dropped down the height of the stump. The beaver cut it off again; again it dropped and refused to fall; he cut it off a third and a fourth time: still the tree stood. Then he gave it up. Now, so far as I can see, the only independent intelligence the animal showed was when it ceased to cut off the tree. Had it been a complete automaton, it would have gone on cutting--would it not?--till it made stove-wood of the whole tree. It was confronted by a new problem, and after a while it took the hint. Of course it did not understand what was the matter, as you and I would have, but it evidently concluded that something was wrong. Was this of itself an act of intelligence? Though it may be that its ceasing to cut off the tree was simply the result of discouragement, and involved no mental conclusion at all. It is a new problem, a new condition, that tests an animal's intelligence. How long it takes a caged bird or beast to learn that it cannot escape! What a man would see at a glance it takes weeks or months to pound into the captive bird, or squirrel, or coon. When the prisoner ceases to struggle, it is probably not because it has at last come to understand the situation, but because it is discouraged. It is checked, but not enlightened. Even so careful an observer as Gilbert White credits the swallow with an act of judgment to which it is not entitled. He says that in order that the mud nest may not advance too rapidly and so fall of its own weight, the bird works at it only in the morning, and plays and feeds the rest of the day, thus giving the mud a chance to harden. Had not the genial parson observed that this is the practice of all birds during nest-building--that they work in the early morning hours and feed and amuse themselves the rest of the day? In the case of the mud-builders, this interim of course gives the mud a chance to harden, but are we justified in crediting them with this forethought? Such skill and intelligence as a bird seems to display in the building of its nest, and yet at times such stupidity! I have known a phoebe-bird to start four nests at once, and work more or less upon all of them. She had deserted the ancestral sites under the shelving rocks and come to a new porch, upon the plate of which she started her four nests. She blundered because her race had had little or no experience with porches. There were four or more places upon the plate just alike, and whichever one of these she chanced to strike with her loaded beak she regarded as the right one. Her instinct served her up to a certain point, but it did not enable her to discriminate between those rafters. Where a little original intelligence should have come into play she was deficient. Her progenitors Had built under rocks where there was little chance for mistakes of this sort, and they had learned through ages of experience to blend the nest with its surroundings, by the use of moss, the better to conceal it. My phoebe brought her moss to the new timbers of the porch, where it had precisely the opposite effect to what it had under the gray mossy rocks. I was amused at the case of a robin that recently came to my knowledge. The bird built its nest in the south end of a rude shed that covered a table at a railroad terminus upon which a locomotive was frequently turned. When her end of the shed was turned to the north she built another nest in the temporary south end, and as the reversal of the shed ends continued from day to day, she soon had two nests with two sets of eggs. When I last heard from her, she was consistently sitting on that particular nest which happened to be for the time being in the end of the shed facing toward the south. The bewildered bird evidently had had no experience with the tricks of turn-tables! An intelligent man once told me that crabs could reason, and this was his proof: In hunting for crabs in shallow water, he found one that had just cast its shell, but the crab put up just as brave a fight as ever, though of course it was powerless to inflict any pain; as soon as the creature found that its bluff game did not work, it offered no further resistance. Now I should as soon say a wasp reasoned because a stingless drone, or male, when you capture him, will make all the motions with its body, curving and thrusting, that its sting-equipped fellows do. This action is from an inherited instinct, and is purely automatic. The wasp is not putting up a bluff game; it is really trying to sting you, but has not the weapon. The shell-less crab quickly reacts at your approach, as is its nature to do, and then quickly ceases its defense because in its enfeebled condition the impulse of defense is feeble also. Its surrender was on physiological, not upon rational grounds. Thus do we without thinking impute the higher faculties to even the lowest forms of animal life. Much in our own lives is purely automatic--the quick reaction to appropriate stimuli, as when we ward off a blow, or dodge a missile, or make ourselves agreeable to the opposite sex; and much also is inherited or unconsciously imitative. Because man, then, is half animal, shall we say that the animal is half man? This seems to be the logic of some people. The animal man, while retaining much of his animality, has evolved from it higher faculties and attributes, while our four-footed kindred have not thus progressed. Man is undoubtedly of animal origin, but his rise occurred when the principle of variation was much more active, when the forms and forces of nature were much more youthful and plastic, when the seething and fermenting of the vital fluids were at a high pitch in the far past, and it was high tide with the creative impulse. The world is aging, and, no doubt, the power of initiative in Nature is becoming less and less. I think it safe to say that the worm no longer aspires to be man. X A PINCH OF SALT Probably I have become unusually cautious of late about accepting offhand all I read in print on subjects of natural history. I take much of it with a liberal pinch of salt. Newspaper reading tends to make one cautious--and who does not read newspapers in these days? One of my critics says, apropos of certain recent strictures of mine upon some current nature writers, that I discredit whatever I have not myself seen; that I belong to that class of observers "whose view-point is narrowed to the limit of their own personal experience." This were a grievous fault if it were true, so much we have to take upon trust in natural history as well as in other history, and in life in general. "Mr. Burroughs might have remembered," says another critic discussing the same subject, "that nobody has seen quite so many things as everybody." How true! If I have ever been guilty of denying the truth of what everybody has seen, my critic has just ground for complaint. I was conscious, in the paper referred to,[4] of denying only the truth of certain things that one man alone had reported having seen,--things so at variance not only with my own observations, but with those of all other observers and with the fundamental principles of animal psychology, that my "will to believe," always easy to move, balked and refused to take a step. [4] _Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1903. In matters of belief in any field, it is certain that the scientific method, the method of proof, is not of equal favor with all minds. Some persons believe what they can or must, others what they would. One person accepts what agrees with his reason and experience, another what is agreeable to his or her fancy. The grounds of probability count much with me; the tone and quality of the witness count for much. Does he ring true? Is his eye single? Does he see out of the back of his head?--that is, does he see on more than one side of a thing? Is he in love with the truth, or with the strange, the bizarre? Last of all, my own experience comes in to correct or to modify the observations of others. If what you report is antecedently improbable, I shall want concrete proof before accepting it, and I shall cross-question your witness sharply. If you tell me you have seen apples and acorns, or pears and plums, growing upon the same tree, I shall discredit you. The thing has never been known and is contrary to nature. But if you tell me you have seen a peach tree bearing nectarines, or have known a nectarine-stone to produce a peach tree, I shall still want to cross-question you sharply, but I may believe you. Such things have happened. Or if you tell me that you have seen an old doe with horns, or a hen with spurs, or a male bird incubating and singing on the nest, unusual as the last occurrence is, I shall not dispute you. I will concede that you may have seen a white crow or a white blackbird or a white robin, or a black chipmunk or a black red squirrel, and many other departures from the usual in animal life; but I cannot share the conviction of the man who told me he had seen a red squirrel curing rye before storing it up in its den, or of the writer who believes the fox will ride upon the back of a sheep to escape the hound, or of another writer that he has seen the blue heron chumming for fish. Even if you aver that you have seen a woodpecker running down the trunk of a tree as well as up, I shall be sure you have not seen correctly. It is the nuthatch and not the woodpecker that hops up and down and around the trees. It is easy to transcend any man's experience; not so easy to transcend his reason. "Nobody has seen so many things as everybody," yet a dozen men cannot see any farther than one, and the truth is not often a matter of majorities. If you tell me any incident in the life of bird or beast that implies the possession of what we mean by reason, I shall be very skeptical. Am I guilty, then, as has been charged, of preferring the deductive method of reasoning to the more modern and more scientific inductive method? But I doubt if the inductive method would avail one in trying to prove that the old cow really jumped over the moon. We do deny certain things upon general principles, and affirm others. I do not believe that a rooster ever laid an egg, or that a male tiger ever gave milk. If your alleged fact contradicts fundamental principles, I shall beware of it; if it contradicts universal experience, I shall probe it thoroughly. A college professor wrote me that he had seen a crow blackbird catch a small fish and fly away with it in its beak. Now I have never seen anything of the kind, but I know of no principle upon which I should feel disposed to question the truth of such an assertion. I have myself seen a crow blackbird kill an English sparrow. Both proceedings I think are very unusual, but neither is antecedently improbable. If the professor had said that he saw the blackbird dive head first into the water for the fish, after the manner of the kingfisher, I should have been very skeptical. He only saw the bird rise up from the edge of the water with the wriggling fish in its mouth. It had doubtless seized it in shallow water near the shore. But I should discredit upon general principles the statement of the woman who related with much detail how she and her whole family had seen a pair "of small brown birds" carry their half-fledged young from their nest in a low bush, where there was danger from cats, to a new nest which they had just finished in the top of a near-by tree! Could any person who knows the birds credit such a tale? The bank-teller throws out the counterfeit coin or bill because his practiced eye and touch detect the fraud at once. On similar grounds the experienced observer rejects all such stories as the above. Darwin quotes an authority for the statement that our ruffed grouse makes its drumming sound by striking its wings together over its back. A recent writer says the sound is not made with the wings at all, but is made with the voice, just as a rooster crows. Every woodsman knows that neither statement is true, and he knows it, not on general principles, but from experience--he has seen the grouse drum. Birds that are not flycatchers sometimes take insects in the air; they do it clumsily, but they get the bug. On the other hand, flycatchers sometimes eat fruit. I have seen the kingbird carry off raspberries. All such facts are matters of observation. In the search for truth we employ both the deductive and the inductive methods; we deduce principles from facts, and we test alleged facts by principles. The other day an intelligent woman told me this about a canary-bird: The bird had a nest with young in the corner of her cage; near by were some other birds in a cage--I forget what they were; they had a full view of all the domestic affairs of the canary. This publicity she evidently did not like, for she tore out of the paper that covered the bottom of her cage a piece as large as one's hand and wove it into the wires so as to make a screen against her inquisitive neighbors. My informant evidently believed this story. It was agreeable to her fancies and feelings. But see the difficulties in the way. How could the bird with its beak tear out a broad piece of paper? then, how could it weave it into the wires of its cage? Furthermore, the family of birds to which the canary belongs are not weavers; they build cup-shaped nests, and they have had no use for screens or covers, and they never have made them. Just what was the truth about the matter I cannot say, but if we know anything about animal psychology, we know that was not the truth. It is always risky to attribute to an animal any act its ancestors could not have performed. Again, things are reported as facts that are not so much contrary to reason as contrary to all experience, and with these, too, I have my difficulties. A recent writer upon our wild life says he has discovered that the cowbird watches over its young and assists the foster-parents in providing food for them--an observation so contrary to all that we know of parasitical birds, both at home and abroad, that no real observer can credit the statement. Our cowbird has been under observation for a hundred years or more; every dweller in the country must see one or more young cowbirds being fed by their foster-parents every season, yet no competent observer has ever reported any care of the young bird by its real parent. If this were true, it would make the cowbird only half parasitical--an unheard-of phenomenon. The same writer tells this incident about a grouse that had a nest near his cabin. One morning he heard a strange cry in the direction of the nest, and taking the path that led to it, he met the grouse running toward him with one wing pressed close to her side, and fighting off two robber crows with the other. Under the closed wing the grouse was carrying an egg, which she had managed to save from the ruin of her nest. The bird was coming to the hermit for succor. Now, am I skeptical about such a story, put down in apparent good faith in a book of natural history as a real occurrence, because I have never seen the like? No; I am skeptical because the incident is so contrary to all that we know about grouse and all other wild birds. Our belief in nearly all matters takes the line of least resistance, and it is easier for me to believe that the writer deceived himself, than that such a thing ever happened. In the first place, a grouse could not pick up an egg with her wing when crows were trying to rob her, and, in the second place, she would not think far enough to do it if she had the power. What was she going to do with the egg? Bring it to the hermit for his breakfast? This last supposition is just as reasonable as any part of the story. A grouse will not readily leave her unfledged young, but she will leave her eggs when disturbed by man or beast with apparent unconcern. It is the rarest thing in the world that real observers see any of these startling and exceptional things in nature. Thoreau saw none. White saw none. Charles St. John saw none. John Muir reports none, Audubon none. It is always your untrained observer that has his poser, his shower of frogs or lizards, or his hoop snakes, and the like. The impossible things that country people see or hear of would make a book of wonders. In some places fishermen believe that the loon carries its egg under its wing till it hatches, and one would say that they are in a position to know. So they are. But opportunity is only half the problem; the verifying mind is the other half. One of our writers of popular nature books relates this curious incident of "animal surgery" among wild ducks. He discovered two eider ducks swimming about a fresh-water pond and acting queerly, "dipping their heads under water and keeping them there for a minute or more at a time." He later discovered that the ducks had large mussels attached to their tongues, and that they were trying to get rid of them by drowning them. The birds had discovered that the salt-water mussel cannot live in fresh water. Now am I to accept this story without question because I find it printed in a book? In the first place, is it not most remarkable that if the ducks had discovered that the bivalves could not live in fresh water, they should not also have discovered that they could not live in the air? In fact, that they would die as soon in the air as in the fresh water?[5] See how much trouble the ducks could have saved themselves by going and sitting quietly upon the beach, or putting their heads under their wings and going to sleep on the wave. Oysters are often laid down in fresh water to "fatten" before being sent to market, and probably mussels would thrive for a short time in fresh water equally well. In the second place, a duck's tongue is a very short and stiff affair, and is fixed in the lower mandible as in a trough. Ducks do not protrude the tongue when they feed; they cannot protrude it; and if a duck can crush a mussel-shell with its beak, what better position could it have the bivalve in than fast to the tongue between the upper and the lower mandible? The story is certainly a very "fishy" one. In all such cases the mind follows the line of least resistance. If the ducks were deliberately holding their bills under water, it is easier to believe that they did it because they thereby found some relief from pain, than that they knew the bivalves would let go their hold sooner in fresh water than in salt or than in the air. A duck's mouth held open and the tongue pinched by a shell-fish would doubtless soon be in a feverish and abnormal condition, which cool water would tend to alleviate. One is unable to see how the ducks could have acquired the kind of human experimental knowledge attributed to them. A person might learn such a secret, but surely not a duck. In discovering and in eluding its enemies, and in many other ways, the duck's wits are very sharp, but to attribute to them a knowledge of the virtues of fresh water over salt in a certain unusual emergency--an emergency that could not have occurred to the race of ducks, much less to individuals often enough for a special instinct to have been developed to meet it--is to make them entirely human. [5] I have tried the experiment on two ordinary clams, and they both died on the third day. The whole idea of animal surgery which the incident implies--such as mending broken legs with clay, salving wounds with pitch, or resorting to bandages or amputations--is preposterous. Sick or wounded animals will often seek relief from pain by taking to the water or to the mud, or maybe to the snow, just as cows will seek the pond or the bushes to escape the heat and the flies, and that is about the extent of their surgery. The dog licks his wound; it no doubt soothes and relieves it. The cow licks her calf; she licks him into shape; it is her instinct to do so. That tongue of hers is a currycomb, plus warmth and moisture and flexibility. The cat always carries her kittens by the back of the neck; it is her best way to carry them, though I do not suppose this act is the result of experiment on her part. A chimney swift has taken up her abode in my study chimney. At intervals, day or night, when she hears me in the room, she makes a sudden flapping and drumming sound with her wings to scare me away. It is a very pretty little trick and quite amusing. If you appear above the opening of the top of a chimney where a swift is sitting on her nest, she will try to drum you away in the same manner. I do not suppose there is any thought or calculation in her behavior, any more than there is in her nest-building, or any other of her instinctive doings. It is probably as much a reflex act as that of a bird when she turns her eggs, or feigns lameness or paralysis, to lure you away from her nest, or as the "playing possum" of a rose-bug or potato-bug when it is disturbed. One of the writers referred to above relates with much detail this astonishing thing of the Canada lynx: He saw a pack of them trailing their game--a hare--through the winter woods, not only hunting in concert, but tracking their quarry. Now any candid and informed reader will balk at this story, for two reasons: (1) the cat tribe do not hunt by scent, but by sight,--they stalk or waylay their game; (2) they hunt singly, they are all solitary in their habits, they are probably the most unsocial of the carnivora,--they prowl, they listen, they bide their time. Wolves often hunt in packs. I have no evidence that foxes do, and if the cats ever do, it is a most extraordinary departure. A statement of such an exceptional occurrence should always put one on his guard. In the same story the lynx is represented as making curious antics in the air to excite the curiosity of a band of caribou, and thus lure one of them to its death at the teeth and claws of the waiting hidden pack. This also is so uncatlike a proceeding that no woodsman could ever credit it. Hunters on the plains sometimes "flag" deer and antelope, and I have seen even a loon drawn very near to a bather in the water who was waving a small red flag. But none of our wild creatures use lures, or decoys, or disguises. This would involve a process of reasoning quite beyond them. Many instances have been recorded of animals seeking the protection of man when pursued by their deadly enemies. I heard of a rat which, when hunted by a weasel, rushed into a room where a man was sleeping, and took refuge in the bed at his feet. I heard Mr. Thompson Seton tell of a young pronghorn buck that was vanquished by a rival, and so hotly pursued by its antagonist that it sought shelter amid his horses and wagons. On another occasion Mr. Seton said a jack rabbit pursued by a weasel upon the snow sought safety under his sled. In all such cases, if the frightened animal really rushed to man for protection, that act would show a degree of reason. The animal must think, and weigh the _pros_ and _cons_. But I am convinced that the truth about such cases is this: The greater fear drives out the lesser fear; the animal loses its head, and becomes oblivious to everything but the enemy that is pursuing it. The rat was so terrified at the demon of a weasel that it had but one impulse, and that was to hide somewhere. Doubtless had the bed been empty, it would have taken refuge there just the same. How could an animal know that a man will protect it on special occasions, when ordinarily it has exactly the opposite feeling? A deer hotly pursued by a hound might rush into the barn-yard or into the open door of the barn in sheer desperation of uncontrollable terror. Then we should say the creature knew the farmer would protect it, and every woman who read the incident, and half the men, would believe that that thought was in the deer's mind. When the hunted deer rushes into the lake or pond, it does so, of course, with a view to escape its pursuers, and wherever it seeks refuge this is its sole purpose. I can easily fancy a bird pursued by a hawk darting into an open door or window, not with the thought that the inmates of the house will protect it, but in a panic of absolute terror. Its fear is then centred upon something behind it, not in front of it. When an animal does something necessary to its self-preservation, or to the continuance of its species, it probably does not think about it as a person would, any more than the plant or tree thinks about the light when it bends toward it, or about the moisture when it sends down its tap-root. Touch the tail of a porcupine ever so lightly, and it springs up like a trap and your hand is stuck with quills. I do not suppose there is any more thinking about the act, or any more conscious exercise of will-power, than there is in a trap. An outward stimulus is applied and the reaction is quick. Does not man wink, and dodge, and sneeze, and laugh, and cry, and blush, and fall in love, and do many other things without thought or will? I do not suppose the birds think about migrating, as man does when he migrates; they simply obey an inborn impulse to move south or north, as the case may be. They do not think about the great lights upon the coast that blaze out with a fatal fascination in their midnight paths. If they had independent powers of thought, they would avoid them. But the lighthouse is comparatively a new thing in the life of birds, and instinct has not yet taught them to avoid it. To adapt means to an end is an act of intelligence, but that intelligence may be inborn and instinctive as in the animals, or it may be acquired and therefore rational as in man. "Surely," said a woman to me, "when a cat sits watching at a mouse-hole, she has some image in her mind of the mouse in its hole?" Not in any such sense as we have when we think of the same subject. The cat has either seen the mouse go into the hole, or else she smells him; she knows he is there through her senses, and she reacts to that impression. Her instinct prompts her to hunt and to catch mice; she doesn't need to think about them as we do about the game we hunt; Nature has done that for her in the shape of an inborn impulse that is awakened by the sight or smell of mice. We have no ready way to describe her act as she sits intently by the hole but to say, "The cat thinks there is a mouse there," while she is not thinking at all, but simply watching, prompted to it by her inborn instinct for mice. The cow's mouth will water at the sight of her food when she is hungry. Is she thinking about it? No more than you are when your mouth waters as your full dinner-plate is set down before you. Certain desires and appetites are aroused through sight and smell without any mental cognition. The sexual relations of the animals also illustrate this fact. We know that the animals do not think in any proper sense as we do, or have concepts and ideas, because they have no language. To be sure, a deaf mute thinks without language because a human being has the intelligence which language implies, or which was begotten in his ancestors by its use through long ages. Not so with the lower animals. They are like very young children in this respect; they have impressions, perceptions, emotions, but not ideas. The child perceives things, discriminates things, knows its mother from a stranger, is angry, or glad, or afraid, long before it has any language or any proper concepts. Animals know only through their senses, and this "knowledge is restricted to things present in time and space." Reflection, or a return upon themselves in thought, of this they are not capable. Their only language consists of various cries and calls, expressions of pain, alarm, joy, love, anger. They communicate with one another, and come to share one another's mental or emotional states, through these cries and calls. A dog barks in various tones and keys, each of which expresses a different feeling in the dog. I can always tell when my dog is barking at a snake; there is something peculiar in the tone. The hunter knows when his hound has driven the fox to hole by a change in his baying. The lowing and bellowing of horned cattle are expressions of several different things. The crow has many caws, that no doubt convey various meanings. The cries of alarm and distress of the birds are understood by all the wild creatures that hear them; a feeling of alarm is conveyed to them--an emotion, not an idea. How could a crow tell his fellows of some future event, or of some experience of the day? How could he tell him this thing is dangerous, this is harmless, save by his actions in the presence of those things? Or how tell of a newly found food supply save by flying eagerly to it? A fox or a wolf could warn its fellow of the danger of poisoned meat by showing alarm in the presence of the meat. Such meat would no doubt have a peculiar odor to the keen scent of the fox or the wolf. Animals that live in communities, such as bees and beavers, coöperate with each other without language, because they form a sort of organic unity, and what one feels all the others feel. One spirit, one purpose, fills the community. It is said on good authority that prairie-dogs will not permit weeds or tall grass to grow about their burrows, as these afford cover for coyotes and other enemies to stalk them. If they cannot remove these screens, they will leave the place. And yet they will sometimes allow a weed such as the Norse nettle or the Mexican poppy to grow on the mound at the mouth of the den where it will afford shade and not obstruct the view. At first thought this conduct may look like a matter of calculation and forethought, but it is doubtless the result of an instinct that has been developed in the tribe by the struggle for existence, and with any given rodent is quite independent of experience. It is an inherited fear of every weed or tuft of grass that might conceal an enemy. I am told that prairie wolves will dig up and eat meat that has been poisoned and then buried, when they will not touch it if left on the surface. In such a case the ranchmen think the wolf has been outwitted; but the truth probably is that there was no calculation in the matter; the soil drew out or dulled the smell of the poison and of the man's hand, and so allayed the wolf's suspicions. I suppose that when an animal practices deception, as when a bird feigns lameness or a broken wing to decoy you away from her nest or her young, it is quite unconscious of the act. It takes no thought about the matter. In trying to call a hen to his side, a rooster will often make believe he has food in his beak, when the pretended grain or insect may be only a pebble or a bit of stick. He picks it up and then drops it in sight of the hen, and calls her in his most persuasive manner. I do not suppose that in such cases the rooster is conscious of the fraud he is practicing. His instinct, under such circumstances, is to pick up food and call the attention of the hen to it, and when no food is present, he instinctively picks up a pebble or a stick. His main purpose is to get the hen near him, and not to feed her. When he is intent only on feeding her, he never offers her a stone instead of bread. We have only to think of the animals as habitually in a condition analogous to, or identical with, the unthinking and involuntary character of much of our own lives. They are creatures of routine. They are wholly immersed in the unconscious, involuntary nature out of which we rise, and above which our higher lives go on. XI THE LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE The literary treatment of natural history themes is, of course, quite different from the scientific treatment, and should be so. The former, compared with the latter, is like free-hand drawing compared with mechanical drawing. Literature aims to give us the truth in a way to touch our emotions, and in some degree to satisfy the enjoyment we have in the living reality. The literary artist is just as much in love with the fact as is his scientific brother, only he makes a different use of the fact, and his interest in it is often of a non-scientific character. His method is synthetic rather than analytic. He deals in general, and not in technical truths,--truths that he arrives at in the fields and woods, and not in the laboratory. The essay-naturalist observes and admires; the scientific naturalist collects. One brings home a bouquet from the woods; the other, specimens for his herbarium. The former would enlist your sympathies and arouse your enthusiasm; the latter would add to your store of exact knowledge. The one is just as shy of over-coloring or falsifying his facts as the other, only he gives more than facts,--he gives impressions and analogies, and, as far as possible, shows you the live bird on the bough. The literary and the scientific treatment of the dog, for instance, will differ widely, not to say radically, but they will not differ in one being true and the other false. Each will be true in its own way. One will be suggestive and the other exact; one will be strictly objective, but literature is always more or less subjective. Literature aims to invest its subject with a human interest, and to this end stirs our sympathies and emotions. Pure science aims to convince the reason and the understanding alone. Note Maeterlinck's treatment of the dog in a late magazine article, probably the best thing on our four-footed comrade that English literature has to show. It gives one pleasure, not because it is all true as science is true, but because it is so tender, human, and sympathetic, without being false to the essential dog nature; it does not make the dog _do_ impossible things. It is not natural history, it is literature; it is not a record of observations upon the manners and habits of the dog, but reflections upon him and his relations to man, and upon the many problems, from the human point of view, that the dog must master in a brief time: the distinctions he must figure out, the mistakes he must avoid, the riddles of life he must read in his dumb dog way. Of course, as a matter of fact, the dog is not compelled "in less than five or six weeks to get into his mind, taking shape within it, an image and a satisfactory conception of the universe." No, nor in five or six years. Strictly speaking, he is not capable of conceptions at all, but only of sense impressions; his sure guide is instinct--not blundering reason. The dog starts with a fund of knowledge, which man acquires slowly and painfully. But all this does not trouble one in reading of Maeterlinck's dog. Our interest is awakened, and our sympathies are moved, by seeing the world presented to the dog as it presents itself to us, or by putting ourselves in the dog's place. It is not false natural history, it is a fund of true human sentiment awakened by the contemplation of the dog's life and character. Maeterlinck does not ascribe human powers and capacities to his dumb friend, the dog; he has no incredible tales of its sagacity and wit to relate; it is only an ordinary bull pup that he describes, but he makes us love it, and, through it, all other dogs, by his loving analysis of its trials and tribulations, and its devotion to its god, man. In like manner, in John Muir's story of his dog Stickeen,--a story to go with "Rab and his Friends,"--our credulity is not once challenged. Our sympathies are deeply moved because our reason is not in the least outraged. It is true that Muir makes his dog act like a human being under the press of great danger; but the action is not the kind that involves reason; it only implies sense perception, and the instinct of self-preservation. Stickeen does as his master bids him, and he is human only in the human emotions of fear, despair, joy, that he shows. In Mr. Egerton Young's book, called "My Dogs of the Northland," I find much that is interesting and several vivid dog portraits, but Mr. Young humanizes his dogs to a greater extent than does either Muir or Maeterlinck. For instance, he makes his dog Jack take special delight in teasing the Indian servant girl by walking or lying upon her kitchen floor when she had just cleaned it, all in revenge for the slights the girl had put upon him; and he gives several instances of the conduct of the dog which he thus interprets. Now one can believe almost anything of dogs in the way of wit about their food, their safety, and the like, but one cannot make them so entirely human as deliberately to plan and execute the kind of revenge here imputed to Jack. No animal could appreciate a woman's pride in a clean kitchen floor, or see any relation between the tracks which he makes upon the floor and her state of feeling toward himself. Mr. Young's facts are doubtless all right; it is his interpretation of them that is wrong. It is perfectly legitimate for the animal story writer to put himself inside the animal he wishes to portray, and tell how life and the world look from that point of view; but he must always be true to the facts of the case, and to the limited intelligence for which he speaks. In the humanization of the animals, and of the facts of natural history which is supposed to be the province of literature in this field, we must recognize certain limits. Your facts are sufficiently humanized the moment they become interesting, and they become interesting the moment you relate them in any way to our lives, or make them suggestive of what we know to be true in other fields and in our own experience. Thoreau made his battle of the ants interesting because he made it illustrate all the human traits of courage, fortitude, heroism, self-sacrifice. Burns's mouse at once strikes a sympathetic chord in us without ceasing to be a mouse; we see ourselves in it. To attribute human motives and faculties to the animals is to caricature them; but to put us in such relation with them that we feel their kinship, that we see their lives embosomed in the same iron necessity as our own, that we see in their minds a humbler manifestation of the same psychic power and intelligence that culminates and is conscious of itself in man,--that, I take it, is the true humanization. We like to see ourselves in the nature around us. We want in some way to translate these facts and laws of outward nature into our own experiences; to relate our observations of bird or beast to our own lives. Unless they beget some human emotion in me,--the emotion of the beautiful, the sublime,--or appeal to my sense of the fit, the permanent,--unless what you learn in the fields and the woods corresponds in some way with what I know of my fellows, I shall not long be deeply interested in it. I do not want the animals humanized in any other sense. They all have human traits and ways; let those be brought out--their mirth, their joy, their curiosity, their cunning, their thrift, their relations, their wars, their loves--and all the springs of their actions laid bare as far as possible; but I do not expect my natural history to back up the Ten Commandments, or to be an illustration of the value of training-schools and kindergartens, or to afford a commentary upon the vanity of human wishes. Humanize your facts to the extent of making them interesting, if you have the art to do it, but leave the dog a dog, and the straddle-bug a straddle-bug. Interpretation is a favorite word with some recent nature writers. It is claimed for the literary naturalist that he interprets natural history. The ways and doings of the wild creatures are exaggerated and misread under the plea of interpretation. Now, if by interpretation we mean an answer to the question, "What does this mean?" or, "What is the exact truth about it?" then there is but one interpretation of nature, and that is the scientific. What is the meaning of the fossils in the rocks? or of the carving and sculpturing of the landscape? or of a thousand and one other things in the organic and inorganic world about us? Science alone can answer. But if we mean by interpretation an answer to the inquiry, "What does this scene or incident suggest to you? how do you feel about it?" then we come to what is called the literary or poetic interpretation of nature, which, strictly speaking, is no interpretation of nature at all, but an interpretation of the writer or the poet himself. The poet or the essayist tells what the bird, or the tree, or the cloud means to him. It is himself, therefore, that is being interpreted. What do Ruskin's writings upon nature interpret? They interpret Ruskin--his wealth of moral and ethical ideas, and his wonderful imagination. Richard Jefferies tells us how the flower, or the bird, or the cloud is related to his subjective life and experience. It means this or that to him; it may mean something entirely different to another, because he may be bound to it by a different tie of association. The poet fills the lap of Earth with treasures not her own--the riches of his own spirit; science reveals the treasures that are her own, and arranges and appraises them. Strictly speaking, there is not much in natural history that needs interpreting. We explain a fact, we interpret an oracle; we explain the action and relation of physical laws and forces, we interpret, as well as we can, the geologic record. Darwin sought to explain the origin of species, and to interpret many palæontological phenomena. We account for animal behavior on rational grounds of animal psychology, there is little to interpret. Natural history is not a cryptograph to be deciphered, it is a series of facts and incidents to be observed and recorded. If two wild animals, such as the beaver and the otter, are deadly enemies, there is good reason for it; and when we have found that reason, we have got hold of a fact in natural history. The robins are at enmity with the jays and the crow blackbirds and the cuckoos in the spring, and the reason is, these birds eat the robins' eggs. When we seek to interpret the actions of the animals, we are, I must repeat, in danger of running into all kinds of anthropomorphic absurdities, by reading their lives in terms of our own thinking and consciousness. A man sees a flock of crows in a tree in a state of commotion; now they all caw, then only one master voice is heard, presently two or three crows fall upon one of their number and fell him to the ground. The spectator examines the victim and finds him dead, with his eyes pecked out. He interprets what he has seen as a court of justice; the crows were trying a criminal, and, having found him guilty, they proceeded to execute him. The curious instinct which often prompts animals to fall upon and destroy a member of the flock that is sick, or hurt, or blind, is difficult of explanation, but we may be quite sure that, whatever the reason is, the act is not the outcome of a judicial proceeding in which judge and jury and executioner all play their proper part. Wild crows will chase and maltreat a tame crow whenever they get a chance, just why, it would be hard to say. But the tame crow has evidently lost caste among them. I have what I consider good proof that a number of skunks that were wintering together in their den in the ground fell upon and killed and then partly devoured one of their number that had lost a foot in a trap. Another man sees a fox lead a hound over a long railroad trestle, when the hound is caught and killed by a passing train. He interprets the fact as a cunning trick on the part of the fox to destroy his enemy! A captive fox, held to his kennel by a long chain, was seen to pick up an ear of corn that had fallen from a passing load, chew it up, scattering the kernels about, and then retire into his kennel. Presently a fat hen, attracted by the corn, approached the hidden fox, whereupon he rushed out and seized her. This was a shrewd trick on the part of the fox to capture a hen for his dinner! In this, and in the foregoing cases, the observer supplies something from his own mind. That is what he or she would do under like conditions. True, a fox does not eat corn; but an idle one, tied by a chain, might bite the kernels from an ear in a mere spirit of mischief and restlessness, as a dog or puppy might, and drop them upon the ground; a hen would very likely be attracted by them, when the fox would be quick to see his chance. Some of the older entomologists believed that in a colony of ants and of bees the members recognized one another by means of some secret sign or password. In all cases a stranger from another colony is instantly detected, and a home member as instantly known. This sign or password, says Burmeister, as quoted by Lubbock, "serves to prevent any strange bee from entering into the same hive without being immediately detected and killed. It, however, sometimes happens that several hives have the same signs, when their several members rob each other with impunity. In these cases the bees whose hives suffer most alter their signs, and then can immediately detect their enemy." The same thing was thought to be true of a colony of ants. Others held that the bees and the ants knew one another individually, as men of the same town do! Would not any serious student of nature in our day know in advance of experiment that all this was childish and absurd? Lubbock showed by numerous experiments that bees and ants did not recognize their friends or their enemies by either of these methods. Just how they did do it he could not clearly settle, though it seems as if they were guided more by the sense of smell than by anything else. Maeterlinck in his "Life of the Bee" has much to say about the "spirit of the hive," and it does seem as if there were some mysterious agent or power at work there that cannot be located or defined. This current effort to interpret nature has led one of the well-known prophets of the art to say that in this act of interpretation one "must struggle against fact and law to develop or keep his own individuality." This is certainly a curious notion, and I think an unsafe one, that the student of nature must struggle against fact and law, must ignore or override them, in order to give full swing to his own individuality. Is it himself, then, and not the truth that he is seeking to exploit? In the field of natural history we have been led to think the point at issue is not man's individuality, but correct observation--a true report of the wild life about us. Is one to give free rein to his fancy or imagination; to see animal life with his "vision," and not with his corporeal eyesight; to hear with his transcendental ear, and not through his auditory nerve? This may be all right in fiction or romance or fable, but why call the outcome natural history? Why set it down as a record of actual observation? Why penetrate the wilderness to interview Indians, trappers, guides, woodsmen, and thus seek to confirm your observations, if you have all the while been "struggling against fact and law," and do not want or need confirmation? If nature study is only to exploit your own individuality, why bother about what other people have or have not seen or heard? Why, in fact, go to the woods at all? Why not sit in your study and invent your facts to suit your fancyings? My sole objection to the nature books that are the outcome of this proceeding is that they are put forth as veritable natural history, and thus mislead their readers. They are the result of a successful "struggle against fact and law" in a field where fact and law should be supreme. No doubt that, in the practical affairs of life, one often has a struggle with the fact. If one's bank balance gets on the negative side of the account, he must struggle to get it back where it belongs; he may even have the help of the bank's attorney to get it there. If one has a besetting sin of any kind, he has to struggle against that. Life is a struggle anyhow, and we are all strugglers--struggling to put the facts upon our side. But the only struggle the real nature student has with facts is to see them as they are, and to read them aright. He is just as zealous for the truth as is the man of science. In fact, nature study is only science out of school, happy in the fields and woods, loving the flower and the animal which it observes, and finding in them something for the sentiments and the emotions as well as for the understanding. With the nature student, the human interest in the wild creatures--by which I mean our interest in them as living, struggling beings--dominates the scientific interest, or our interest in them merely as subjects for comparison and classification. Gilbert White was a rare combination of the nature student and the man of science, and his book is one of the minor English classics. Richard Jefferies was a true nature lover, but his interests rarely take a scientific turn. Our Thoreau was in love with the natural, but still more in love with the supernatural; yet he prized the fact, and his books abound in delightful natural history observations. We have a host of nature students in our own day, bent on plucking out the heart of every mystery in the fields and woods. Some are dryly scientific, some are dull and prosy, some are sentimental, some are sensational, and a few are altogether admirable. Mr. Thompson Seton, as an artist and _raconteur_, ranks by far the highest in this field, but in reading his works as natural history, one has to be constantly on guard against his romantic tendencies. The structure of animals, their colors, their ornaments, their distribution, their migrations, all have a significance that science may interpret for us if it can, but it is the business of every observer to report truthfully what he sees, and not to confound his facts with his theories. Why does the cowbird lay its egg in another bird's nest? Why are these parasitical birds found the world over? Who knows? Only there seems to be a parasitical principle in Nature that runs all through her works, in the vegetable as well as in the animal kingdom. Why is the porcupine so tame and stupid? Because it does not have to hunt for its game, and is self-armed against all comers. The struggle of life has not developed its wits. Why are robins so abundant? Because they are so adaptive, both as regards their food and their nesting-habits. They eat both fruit and insects, and will nest anywhere--in trees, sheds, walls, and on the ground. Why is the fox so cunning? Because the discipline of life has made him cunning. Man has probably always been after his fur; and his subsistence has not been easily obtained. If you ask me why the crow is so cunning, I shall be put to it for an adequate answer. It seems as if nobody could ever have wanted his skin or his carcass, and his diet does not compel him to outwit live game, as does that of the fox. His jet black plumage exposes him alike winter and summer. This drawback he has had to meet by added wit, but I can think of no other way in which he is handicapped. I do not know that he has any natural enemies; yet he is one of the most suspicious of the fowls of the air. Why is the Canada jay so much tamer than are other jays? They belong farther north, where they see less of man; they are birds of the wilderness; they are often, no doubt, hard put to it for food; their color does not make them conspicuous,--all these things, no doubt, tend to make them more familiar than their congeners. Why, again, the chickadee can be induced to perch upon your hand, and take food from it, more readily than can the nuthatch or the woodpecker, is a question not so easily answered. It being a lesser bird, it probably has fewer enemies than either of the others, and its fear would be less in proportion. Why does the dog, the world over, use his nose in covering the bone he is hiding, and not his paw? Is it because his foot would leave a scent that would give his secret away, while his nose does not? He uses his paw in digging the hole for the bone, but its scent in this case would be obliterated by his subsequent procedure. The foregoing is one way to interpret or explain natural facts. Everything has its reason. To hit upon this reason is to interpret it to the understanding. To interpret it to the emotions, or to the moral or to the æsthetic sense, that is another matter. I would not be unjust or unsympathetic toward this current tendency to exalt the lower animals into the human sphere. I would only help my reader to see things as they are, and to stimulate him to love the animals as animals, and not as men. Nothing is gained by self-deception. The best discipline of life is that which prepares us to face the facts, no matter what they are. Such sweet companionship as one may have with a dog, simply because he is a dog, and does not invade your own exclusive sphere! He is, in a way, like your youth come back to you, and taking form--all instinct and joy and adventure. You can ignore him, and he is not offended; you can reprove him, and he still loves you; you can hail him, and he bounds with joy; you can camp and tramp and ride with him, and his interest and curiosity and adventurous spirit give to the days and the nights the true holiday atmosphere. With him you are alone and not alone; you have both companionship and solitude. Who would have him more human or less canine? He divines your thought through his love, and feels your will in the glance of your eye. He is not a rational being, yet he is a very susceptible one, and touches us at so many points that we come to look upon him with a fraternal regard. I suppose we should not care much for natural history, as I have before said, or for the study of nature generally, if we did not in some way find ourselves there; that is, something that is akin to our own feelings, methods, and intelligence. We have traveled that road, we find tokens of ourselves on every hand; we are "stuccoed with quadrupeds and birds all over," as Whitman says. The life-history of the humblest animal, if truly told, is profoundly interesting. If we could know all that befalls the slow moving turtle in the fields, or the toad that stumbles and fumbles along the roadside, our sympathies would be touched, and some spark of real knowledge imparted. We should not want the lives of those humble creatures "interpreted" after the manner of our sentimental "School of Nature Study," for that were to lose fact in fable; that were to give us a stone when we had asked for bread; we should want only a truthful record from the point of view of a wise, loving, human eye, such a record as, say, Gilbert White or Henry Thoreau might have given us. How interesting White makes his old turtle, hurrying to shelter when it rains, or seeking the shade of a cabbage leaf when the sun is too hot, or prancing about the garden on tiptoe in the spring by five in the morning, when the mating instinct begins to stir within him! Surely we may see ourselves in the old tortoise. In fact, the problem of the essay-naturalist always is to make his subject interesting, and yet keep strictly within the bounds of truth. It is always an artist's privilege to heighten or deepen natural effects. He may paint us a more beautiful woman, or a more beautiful horse, or a more beautiful landscape, than we ever saw; we are not deceived even though he outdo nature. We know where we stand and where he stands; we know that this is the power of art. If he is writing an animal romance like Kipling's story of the "White Seal," or like his "Jungle Book," there will be nothing equivocal about it, no mixture of fact and fiction, nothing to confuse or mislead the reader. We know that here is the light that never was on sea or land, the light of the spirit. The facts are not falsified; they are transmuted. The aim of art is the beautiful, not _over_ but _through_ the true. The aim of the literary naturalist is the true, not over but through the beautiful; you shall find the exact facts in his pages, and you shall find them possessed of some of the allurement and suggestiveness that they had in the fields and woods. Only thus does his work attain to the rank of literature. XII A BEAVER'S REASON One of our well-known natural historians thinks that there is no difference between a man's reason and a beaver's reason because, he says, when a man builds a dam, he first looks the ground over, and after due deliberation decides upon his plan, and a beaver, he avers, does the same. But the difference is obvious. Beavers, under the same conditions, build the same kind of dams and lodges; and all beavers as a rule do the same. Instinct is uniform in its workings; it runs in a groove. Reason varies endlessly and makes endless mistakes. Men build various kinds of dams and in various kinds of places, with various kinds of material and for various kinds of uses. They exercise individual judgment, they invent new ways and seek new ends, and of course often fail. Every man has his own measure of reason, be it more or less. It is largely personal and original with him, and frequent failure is the penalty he pays for this gift. But the individual beaver has only the inherited intelligence of his kind, with such slight addition as his experience may have given him. He learns to avoid traps, but he does not learn to improve upon his dam or lodge building, because he does not need to; they answer his purpose. If he had new and growing wants and aspirations like man, why, then he would no longer be a beaver. He reacts to outward conditions, where man reflects and takes thought of things. His reason, if we prefer to call it such, is practically inerrant. It is blind, inasmuch as it is unconscious, but it is sure, inasmuch as it is adequate. It is a part of living nature in a sense that man's is not. If it makes a mistake, it is such a mistake as nature makes when, for instance, a hen produces an egg within an egg, or an egg without a yolk, or when more seeds germinate in the soil than can grow into plants. A lower animal's intelligence, I say, compared with man's is blind. It does not grasp the subject perceived as ours does. When instinct perceives an object, it reacts to it, or not, just as the object is, or is not, related to its needs of one kind or another. In many ways an animal is like a child. What comes first in the child is simple perception and memory and association of memories, and these make up the main sum of an animal's intelligence. The child goes on developing till it reaches the power of reflection and of generalization--a stage of mentality that the animal never attains to. All animal life is specialized; each animal is an expert in its own line of work--the work of its tribe. Beavers do the work of beavers, they cut down trees and build dams, and all beavers do it alike and with the same degree of untaught skill. This is instinct, or unthinking nature. Of a hot day a dog will often dig down to fresh earth to get cooler soil to lie on. Or he will go and lie in the creek. All dogs do these things. Now if the dog were seen to carry stones and sods to dam up the creek to make a deeper pool to lie in, then he would in a measure be imitating the beavers, and this, in the dog, could fairly be called an act of reason, because it is not a necessity of the conditions of his life; it would be of the nature of an afterthought. All animals of a given species are wise in their own way, but not in the way of another species. The robin could not build the oriole's nest, nor the oriole build the robin's nor the swallow's. The cunning of the fox is not the cunning of the coon. The squirrel knows a good deal more about nuts than the rabbit does, but the rabbit would live where the squirrel would die. The muskrat and the beaver build lodges much alike, that is, with the entrance under water and an inner chamber above the water, and this because they are both water-animals with necessities much the same. Now, the mark of reason is that it is endlessly adaptive, that it can apply itself to all kinds of problems, that it can adapt old means to new ends, or new means to old ends, and is capable of progressive development. It holds what it gets, and uses that as a fulcrum to get more. But this is not at all the way of animal instinct, which begins and ends as instinct and is non-progressive. A large part of our own lives is instinctive and void of thought. We go instinctively toward the warmth and away from the cold. All our affections are instinctive, and do not wait upon the reason. Our affinities are as independent of our reflection as gravity is. Our inherited traits, the ties of race, the spirit of the times in which we live, the impressions of youth, of climate, of soil, of our surroundings,--all influence our acts and often determine them without any conscious exercise of judgment or reason on our part. Then habit is all-potent with us, temperament is potent, health and disease are potent. Indeed, the amount of conscious reason that an ordinary man uses in his life, compared with the great unreason or blind impulse and inborn tendency that impel him, is like his artificial lights, compared with the light of day--indispensable on special occasions, but a feeble matter, after all. Reason is an artificial light in the sense that it is not one with the light of nature, and in the sense that men possess it in varying degrees. The lower animals have only a gleam of it now and then. They are wise as the plants and trees are wise, and are guided by their inborn tendencies. Is instinct resourceful? Can it meet new conditions? Can it solve a new problem? If so, how does it differ from free intelligence or judgment? I am inclined to think that up to a certain point instinct is resourceful. Thus a Western correspondent writes: "At three different times I have pursued the common jack-rabbit from a level field, when the rabbit, coming to a furrow that ran at right angles to his course, jumped into it, and crouching down, slowly crept away to the end of the furrow, when it jumped out and ran at full speed again." This is a good example of the resourcefulness of instinct--the instinct to escape from an enemy--an old problem met by taking advantage of an unusual opportunity. To run, to double, to crouch, to hide, are probably all reflex acts with certain animals when hunted. The bird when pursued by a hawk rushes to cover in a tree or a bush, or beneath some object. Last summer I saw a bald eagle pursuing a fish hawk that held a fish in its talons. The hawk had a long start of the eagle, and began mounting upward, screaming in protest or defiance as it mounted. The pirate circled far beneath it for a few minutes, and then, seeing how he was distanced, turned back toward the ocean, so that I did not witness the little drama in the air that I had so long wished to see. A wounded wild duck suddenly develops much cunning in escaping from the gunner--swimming under water, hiding by the shore with only the end of the bill in the air, or diving and seizing upon some object at the bottom, where it sometimes remains till life is extinct. I once saw some farm-hands try to capture a fatted calf that had run all summer in a partly wooded field, till it had become rather wild. As the calf refused to be cornered, the farmer shot it with his rifle, but only inflicted a severe wound in the head. The calf then became as wild as a deer, and scaled fences in much the manner of the deer. When cornered, it turned and broke through the line in sheer desperation, and showed wonderful resources in eluding its pursuers. It coursed over the hills and gained the mountain, where it baffled its pursuers for two days before it was run down and caught. All such cases show the resources of instinct, the instinct of fear. The skill of a bird in hiding its nest is very great, as is the cunning displayed in keeping the secret afterward. How careful it is not to betray the precious locality to the supposed enemy! Even the domestic turkey, when she hides her nest in the bush, if watched, approaches it by all manner of delays and indirections, and when she leaves it to feed, usually does so on the wing. I look upon these and kindred acts as exhibiting only the resourcefulness of instinct. We are not to forget that the resourcefulness and flexibility of instinct which all animals show, some more and some less, is not reason, though it is doubtless the first step toward it. Out of it the conscious reason and intelligence of man probably have been evolved. I do not object to hearing this variability and plasticity of instinct called the twilight of mind or rudimentary mentality. It is that, or something like that. What I object to is hearing those things in animal life ascribed to reason that can be easier accounted for on the theory of instinct. I must differ from the ornithologist of the New York Zoölogical Park when he says in a recent paper that a bird's affection for her young is not an instinct, an uncontrollable emotion, but I quite agree with him that it does not differ, in kind at least, from the emotion of the human mother. In both cases the affection is instinctive, and not a matter of reason, or forethought, or afterthought at all. The two affections differ in this: that one is brief and transient, and the other is deep and lasting. Under stress of circumstances the bird will abandon her helpless young, while the human mother will not. When the food supply fails, the lower animal will not share the last morsel with its young; its fierce hunger makes it forget them. During the cold, wet summer of 1903 a vast number of half-fledged birds--orioles, finches, warblers--perished in the nest, probably from scarcity of insect food and the neglect of the mothers to hover them. In interpreting the action of the animals, we so often do the thinking and reasoning ourselves which we attribute to them. Thus Mr. Beebe in the paper referred to says: "Birds have early learned to take clams or mussels in their beaks or claws at low tide and carry them out of the reach of the water, so that at the death of the mollusk, the relaxation of the adductor muscle would permit the shell to spring open and afford easy access to the inmate." No doubt the advancing tide would cause the bird to carry the shell-fish back out of the reach of the waves, where it might hope to get at its meat, but where it would be compelled to leave the shell unopened. But that the bird knew the fish would die there and that its shell would then open--it is in such particulars that the observer does the thinking. Two other writers upon our birds have stated that pelicans will gather in flocks along the shore, and by manoeuvring and beating the water with their wings, will drive the fish into the shallows, where they easily capture them. Here again the observer thinks for the observed. The pelicans see the fish and pursue them, without any plan to corner them in shoal water, but the inevitable result is that they are so cornered and captured. The fish are foolish, but the pelicans are not wise. The wisdom here attributed to them is human wisdom and not animal wisdom. To observe the actions of the lower animals without reading our own thoughts into them is not an easy matter. Mr. Beebe thinks that when in early spring the peacock, in the Zoölogical Park, timidly erects its plumes before an unappreciative crow, it is merely practicing the art of showing off its gay plumes in anticipation of the time when it shall compete with its rivals before the females; in other words, that it is rehearsing its part. But I should say that the peacock struts before the crow or before spectators because it can't help it. The sexual instinct begins to flame up and master it. The fowl can no more control it than it can control its appetite for food. To practice beforehand is human. Animal practice takes the form of spontaneous play. The mock battles of two dogs or of other animals are not conscious practice on their part, but are play pure and simple, the same as human games, though their value as training is obvious enough. Animals do not have general ideas; they receive impressions through their various senses, to which they respond. I recently read in manuscript a very clear and concise paper on the subject of animal thinking compared with that of man, in which the writer says: "There is a rudimentary abstraction before language. All the higher animals have general ideas of 'good-for-eating' and 'not-good-for-eating,' quite apart from any particular objects of which either of these qualities happens to be characteristic." It is at this point, I think, that the writer referred to goes wrong. The animal has no idea at all about what is good to eat and what is not good; it is guided entirely by its senses. It reacts to the stimuli that reach it through the sight or smell, usually the latter. There is no mental process at all in the matter, not the most rudimentary; there is simple reaction to stimuli, as strictly so as when we sneeze on taking snuff. Man alone has ideas of what is good to eat and what is not good. When a fox prowls about a farmhouse, he has no general idea that there are eatable things there, as the essayist above referred to alleges. He is simply following his nose; he smells something to which he responds. We think for him when we attribute to him general ideas of what he is likely to find at the farmhouse. But when a man goes to a restaurant, he follows an idea and not his nose, he compares the different viands in his mind, and often decides beforehand what he will have. There is no agreement in the two cases at all. If, when the bird chooses the site for its nest, or the chipmunk or the woodchuck the place for its hole, or the beaver the spot for its dam, we make these animals think, compare, weigh, we are simply putting ourselves in their place and making them do as we would do under like conditions. Animal life parallels human life at many points, but it is in another plane. Something guides the lower animals, but it is not thought; something restrains them, but it is not judgment; they are provident without prudence; they are active without industry; they are skillful without practice; they are wise without knowledge; they are rational without reason; they are deceptive without guile. They cross seas without a compass, they return home without guidance, they communicate without language, their flocks act as a unit without signals or leaders. When they are joyful, they sing or they play; when they are distressed, they moan or they cry; when they are jealous, they bite or they claw, or they strike or they gore,--and yet I do not suppose they experience the emotions of joy or sorrow, or anger or love, as we do, because these feelings in them do not involve reflection, memory, and what we call the higher nature, as with us. The animals do not have to consult the almanac to know when to migrate or to go into winter quarters. At a certain time in the fall, I see the newts all making for the marshes; at a certain time in the spring, I see them all returning to the woods again. At one place where I walk, I see them on the railroad track wandering up and down between the rails, trying to get across. I often lend them a hand. They know when and in what direction to go, but not in the way I should know under the same circumstances. I should have to learn or be told; they know instinctively. We marvel at what we call the wisdom of Nature, but how unlike our own! How blind, and yet in the end how sure! How wasteful, and yet how conserving! How helter-skelter she sows her seed, yet behold the forest or the flowery plain. Her springs leap out everywhere, yet how inevitably their waters find their way into streams, the streams into rivers, and the rivers to the sea. Nature is an engineer without science, and a builder without rules. The animals follow the tides and the seasons; they find their own; the fittest and the luckiest survive; the struggle for life is sharp with them all; birds of a feather flock together; the young cowbirds reared by many different foster-parents all gather in flocks in the fall; they know their kind--at least, they are attracted by their kind. A correspondent asks me if I do not think the minds of animals capable of improvement. Not in the strict sense. When we teach an animal anything, we make an impression upon its senses and repeat this impression over and over, till we establish a habit. We do not bring about any mental development as we do in the child; we mould and stamp its sense memory. It is like bending or compressing a vegetable growth till it takes a certain form. The human animal sees through the trick, he comprehends it and does not need the endless repetition. When repetition has worn a path in our minds, then we, too, act automatically, or without conscious thought, as we do, for instance, in forming the letters when we write. Wild animals are trained, but not educated. We multiply impressions upon them without adding to their store of knowledge, because they cannot evolve general ideas from these sense impressions. Here we reach their limitations. A bluebird or a robin will fight its reflected image in the window-pane of a darkened room day after day, and never master the delusion. It can take no step beyond the evidence of its senses--a hard step even for man to take. You may train your dog so that he will bound around you when he greets you without putting his feet upon you. But do you suppose the fond creature ever comes to know why you do not want his feet upon you? If he does, then he takes the step in general knowledge to which I have referred. Your cow, tethered by a long rope upon the lawn, learns many things about that rope and how to manage it that she did not know when she was first tied, but she can never know why she is tethered, or why she is not to crop the shrubbery, or paw up the turf, or reach the corn on the edge of the garden. This would imply general ideas or power of reflection. You might punish her until she was afraid to do any of these things, but you could never enlighten her on the subject. The rudest savage can, in a measure, be enlightened, he can be taught the reason why of things, but an animal cannot. We can make its impulses follow a rut, so to speak, but we cannot make them free and self-directing. Animals are the victims of habits inherited or acquired. I was told of a fox that came nightly prowling about some deadfalls set for other game. The new-fallen snow each night showed the movements of the suspicious animal; it dared not approach nearer than several feet to the deadfalls. Then one day a red-shouldered hawk seized the bait in one of the traps, and was caught. That night a fox, presumably the same one, came and ate such parts of the body of the hawk as protruded from beneath the stone. Now, how did the fox know that the trap was sprung and was now harmless? Did not its act imply something more than instinct? We have the cunning and suspicion of the fox to start with; these are factors already in the problem that do not have to be accounted for. To the fox, as to the crow, anything that looks like design or a trap, anything that does not match with the haphazard look and general disarray of objects in nature, will put it on its guard. A deadfall is a contrivance that is not in keeping with the usual fortuitous disarray of sticks and stones in the fields and woods. The odor of the man's hand would also be there, and this of itself would put the fox on its guard. But a hawk or any other animal crushed by a stone, with part of its body protruding from beneath the stone, has quite a different air. It at least does not look threatening; the rock is not impending; the open jaws are closed. More than that, the smell of the man's hand would be less apparent, if not entirely absent. The fox drew no rational conclusions; its instinctive fear was allayed by the changed conditions of the trap. The hawk has not the fox's cunning, hence it fell an easy victim. I do not think that the cunning of the fox is any more akin to reason than is the power of smell of the hound that pursues him. Both are inborn, and are quite independent of experience. If a fox were deliberately to seek to elude the hound by running through a flock of sheep, or by following the bed of a shallow stream, or by taking to the public highway, then I think we should have to credit him with powers of reflection. It is true he often does all these things, but whether he does them by chance, or of set purpose, admits of doubt. The cunning of a fox is as much a part of his inherited nature as is his fleetness of foot. All the more notable fur-bearing animals, as the fox, the beaver, the otter, have doubtless been persecuted by man and his savage ancestors for tens of thousands of years, and their suspicion of traps and lures, and their skill in eluding them, are the accumulated inheritance of ages. In denying what we mean by thought or free intelligence to animals, an exception should undoubtedly be made in favor of the dog. I have else where said that the dog is almost a human product; he has been the companion of man so long, and has been so loved by him, that he has come to partake, in a measure at least, of his master's nature. If the dog does not at times think, reflect, he does something so like it that I can find no other name for it. Take so simple an incident as this, which is of common occurrence: A collie dog is going along the street in advance of its master's team. It comes to a point where the road forks; the dog takes, say, the road to the left and trots along it a few rods, and then, half turning, suddenly pauses and looks back at the team. Has he not been struck by the thought, "I do not know which way my master is going: I will wait and see"? If the dog in such cases does not reflect, what does he do? Can we find any other word for his act? To ask a question by word or deed involves some sort of a mental process, however rudimentary. Is there any other animal that would act as the collie did under like circumstances? A Western physician writes me that he has on three different occasions seen his pointer dog behave as follows: He had pointed a flock of quail, that would not sit to be flushed, but kept running. Then the dog, without a word or sign from his master, made a long détour to the right or to the left around the retreating birds, headed them off, and then slowly advanced, facing the gunner, till he came to a point again, with the quail in a position to be flushed. After crediting the instinct and the training of the dog to the full, such an act, I think, shows a degree of independent judgment. The dog had not been trained to do that particular thing, and took the initiative of his own accord. Many authentic stories are told of cats which seem to show that they too have profited in the way of added intelligence by their long intercourse with man. A lady writing to me from New York makes the following discriminating remarks upon the cat:-- "It seems to me that the reason which you ascribe for the semi-humanizing of the dog, his long intercourse with man, might apply in some degree to the cat. But it is necessary to be very fond of cats in order to perceive their qualities. The dog is 'up in every one's face,' so to speak; always in evidence; always on deck. But the cat is a shy, reserved, exclusive creature. The dog is the humble friend, follower, imitator, and slave of man. He will lick the foot that kicks him. The cat, instead, will scratch. The dog begs for notice. The cat must be loved much and courted assiduously before she will blossom out and humanize under the atmosphere of affection. The dog seems to me to have the typical qualities of the negro, the cat of the Indian. She is indifferent to man, cares nothing for him unless he wins her by special and consistent kindness, and throughout her long domestication has kept her wild independence, and ability to forage for herself when turned loose, whether in forest or city street. It is when she is much loved and petted that her intelligence manifests itself, in such quiet ways that an indifferent observer will never notice them. But she always knows who is fond of her, and which member of the family is fondest of her." The correspondent who had the experience with his pointer dog relates this incident about his blooded mare: A drove of horses were pasturing in a forty-acre lot. The horses had paired off, as horses usually do under such circumstances. The doctor's thoroughbred mare had paired with another mare that was totally blind, and had been so since a colt. Through the field "ran a little creek which could not well be crossed by the horses except at a bridge at one end." One day when the farmer went to salt the animals, they all came galloping over the bridge and up to the gate, except the blind one; she could not find the bridge, and remained on the other side, whinnying and stamping, while the others were getting their salt a quarter of a mile away. Presently the blooded mare suddenly left her salt, made her way through the herd, and went at a flying gallop down across the bridge to the blind animal. Then she turned and came back, followed by the blind one. The doctor is convinced that his mare deliberately went back to conduct her blind companion over the bridge and down to the salt-lick. But the act may be more simply explained. How could the mare have known her companion was blind? What could any horse know about such a disability? The only thing implied in the incident is the attachment of one animal for another. The mare heard her mate calling, probably in tones of excitement or distress, and she flew back to her. Finding her all right, she turned toward the salt again and was followed by her fellow. Instinct did it all. My own observation of the wild creatures has revealed nothing so near to human thought and reflection as is seen in the cases of the collie and pointer dogs above referred to. The nearest to them of anything I can now recall is an incident related by an English writer, Mr. Kearton. In one of his books, Mr. Kearton relates how he has frequently fooled sitting birds with wooden eggs. He put his counterfeits, painted and marked like the originals, into the nests of the song thrush, the blackbird, and the grasshopper warbler, and in no case was the imposition detected. In the warbler's nest he placed dummy eggs twice the size of her own, and the bird proceeded to brood them without the slightest sign of suspicion that they were not of her own laying. But when Mr. Kearton tried his counterfeits upon a ring plover, the fraud was detected. The plover hammered the shams with her bill "in the most skeptical fashion," and refused to sit down upon them. When two of the bird's own eggs were returned to the nest and left there with two wooden ones, the plover tried to throw out the shams, but failing to do this, "reluctantly sat down and covered good and bad alike." Now, can the action of the plover in this case be explained on the theory of instinct alone? The bird could hardly have had such an experience before. It was offered a counterfeit, and it behaved much as you or I would have done under like conditions, although we have the general idea of counterfeits, which the plover could not have had. Of course, everything that pertains to the nest and eggs of a bird is very vital to it. The bird is wise about these things from instinct. Yet the other birds were easily fooled. We do not know how nearly perfect Mr. Kearton's imitation eggs were, but evidently there was some defect in them which arrested the bird's attention. If the incident does not show powers of reflection in the bird, it certainly shows keen powers of perception; and that birds, and indeed all animals, show varying degrees of this power, is a matter of common observation. I hesitate, therefore, to say that Mr. Kearton's plover showed anything more than very keen instincts. Among our own birds there is only one, so far as I know that detects the egg of the cowbird when it is laid in the bird's nest, and that is the yellow warbler. All the other birds accept it as their own, but this warbler detects the imposition, and proceeds to get rid of the strange egg by burying it under a new nest bottom. Man is undoubtedly of animal origin. The road by which he has come out of the dim past lies through the lower animals. The germ and potentiality of all that he has become or can become was sleeping there in his humble origins. Of this I have no doubt. Yet I think we are justified in saying that the difference between animal intelligence and human reason is one of kind and not merely of degree. Flying and walking are both modes of locomotion, and yet may we not fairly say they differ in kind? Reason and instinct are both manifestations of intelligence, yet do they not belong to different planes? Intensify animal instinct ever so much, and you have not reached the plane of reason. The homing instinct of certain animals is far beyond any gift of the kind possessed by man, and yet it seems in no way akin to reason. Reason heeds the points of the compass and takes note of the topography of the country, but what can animals know of these things? And yet I say the animal is father of the man. Without the lower orders, there could have been no higher. In my opinion, no miracle or special creation is required to account for man. The transformation of force, as of heat into light or electricity, is as great a leap and as mysterious as the transformation of animal intelligence into human reason. XIII READING THE BOOK OF NATURE In studying Nature, the important thing is not so much what we see as how we interpret what we see. Do we get at the true meaning of the facts? Do we draw the right inference? The fossils in the rocks were long observed before men drew the right inference from them. So with a hundred other things in nature and life. During May and a part of June of 1903, a drouth of unusual severity prevailed throughout the land. The pools and marshes nearly all dried up. Late in June the rains came again and filled them up. Then an unusual thing happened: suddenly, for two or three days and nights, the marshes about me were again vocal with the many voices of the hyla, the "peepers" of early spring. That is the fact. Now, what is the interpretation? With me the peepers become silent in early May, and, I suppose, leave the marshes for their life in the woods. Did the drouth destroy all their eggs and young, and did they know this and so come back to try again? How else shall one explain their second appearance in the marshes? But how did they know of the destruction of their young, and how can we account for their concerted action? These are difficulties not easily overcome. A more rational explanation to me is this, namely, that the extreme dryness of the woods--nearly two months without rain--drove the little frogs to seek for moisture in their spring haunts, where in places a little water would be pretty certain to be found. Here they were holding out, probably hibernating again, as such creatures do in the tropics during the dry season, when the rains came, and here again they sent up their spring chorus of voices, and, for aught I know, once more deposited their eggs. This to me is much more like the ways of Nature with her creatures than is the theory of the frogs' voluntary return to the swamps and pools to start the season over again. The birds at least show little or no wit when a new problem is presented to them. They have no power of initiative. Instinct runs in a groove, and cannot take a step outside of it. One May day we started a meadowlark from her nest. There were three just hatched young in the nest, and one egg lying on the ground about two inches from the nest. I suspected that this egg was infertile and that the bird had had the sense to throw it out, but on examination it was found to contain a nearly grown bird. The inference was, then, that the egg had been accidentally carried out of the nest some time when the sitting bird had taken a sudden flight, and that she did not have the sense to roll or carry it back to its place. There is another view of the case which no doubt the sentimental "School of Nature Study" would eagerly adopt: A very severe drouth reigned throughout the land; food was probably scarce, and was becoming scarcer; the bird foresaw her inability to care for four young ones, and so reduced the possible number by ejecting one of the eggs from the nest. This sounds pretty and plausible, and so credits the bird with the wisdom that the public is so fond of believing it possesses. Something like this wisdom often occurs among the hive bees in seasons of scarcity; they will destroy the unhatched queens. But birds have no such foresight, and make no such calculations. In cold, backward seasons, I think, birds lay fewer eggs than when the season is early and warm, but that is not a matter of calculation on their part; it is the result of outward conditions. A great many observers and nature students at the present time are possessed of the notion that the birds and beasts instruct their young, train them and tutor them, much after the human manner. In the familiar sight of a pair of crows foraging with their young about a field in summer, one of our nature writers sees the old birds giving their young a lesson in flying. She says that the most important thing that the elders had to do was to teach the youngsters how to fly. This they did by circling about the pasture, giving a peculiar call while they were followed by their flock--all but one. This was a bobtailed crow, and he did not obey the word of command. His mother took note of his disobedience and proceeded to discipline him. He stood upon a big stone, and she came down upon him and knocked him off his perch. "He squawked and fluttered his wings to keep from falling, but the blow came so suddenly that he had not time to save himself, and he fell flat on the ground. In a minute he clambered back upon his stone, and I watched him closely. The next time the call came to fly he did not linger, but went with the rest, and so long as I could watch him he never disobeyed again." I should interpret this fact of the old and young crows flying about a field in summer quite differently. The young are fully fledged, and are already strong flyers, when this occurs. They do not leave the nest until they can fly well and need no tutoring. What the writer really saw was what any one may see on the farm in June and July: she saw the parent crows foraging with their young in a field The old birds flew about, followed by their brood, clamorous for the food which their parents found. The bobtailed bird, which had probably met with some accident, did not follow, and the mother returned to feed it; the young crow lifted its wings and flapped them, and in its eagerness probably fell off its perch; then when its parent flew away, it followed. I think it highly probable that the sense or faculty by which animals find their way home over long stretches of country, and which keeps them from ever being lost as man so often is, is a faculty entirely unlike anything man now possesses. The same may be said of the faculty that guides the birds back a thousand miles or more to their old breeding-haunts. In caged or housed animals I fancy this faculty soon becomes blunted. President Roosevelt tells in his "Ranch Life" of a horse he owned that ran away two hundred miles across the plains, swimming rivers on the way to its old home. It is very certain, I think, that this homing feat is not accomplished by the aid of either sight or scent, for usually the returning animal seems to follow a comparatively straight line. It is, or seems to be, a consciousness of direction that is as unerring as the magnetic needle. Reason, calculation, and judgment err, but these primary instincts of the animal seem almost infallible. In Bronx Park in New York a grebe and a loon lived together in an inclosure in which was a large pool of water. The two birds became much attached to each other and were never long separated. One winter day on which the pool was frozen over, except a small opening in one end of it, the grebe dived under the ice and made its way to the far end of the pool, where it remained swimming about aimlessly for some moments. Presently the loon missed its companion, and with an apparent look of concern dived under the ice and joined it at the closed end of the pool. The grebe seemed to be in distress for want of air. Then the loon settled upon the bottom, and with lifted beak sprang up with much force against the ice, piercing it with its dagger-like bill, but not breaking it. Down to the bottom it went again, and again hurled itself up against the ice, this time shattering it and rising to the surface, where the grebe was quick to follow. Now it looked as if the loon had gone under the ice to rescue its friend from a dangerous situation, for had not the grebe soon found the air, it must have perished, and persons who witnessed the incident interpreted it in this way. It is in such cases that we are so apt to read our human motives and emotions into the acts of the lower animals. I do not suppose the loon realized the danger of its companion, nor went under the ice to rescue it. It followed the grebe because it wanted to be with it, or to share in any food that might be detaining it there, and then, finding no air-hole, it proceeded to make one, as it and its ancestors must often have done before. All our northern divers must be more or less acquainted with ice, and must know how to break it. The grebe itself could doubtless have broken the ice had it desired to. The birds and the beasts often show much intelligence, or what looks like intelligence, but, as Hamerton says, "the moment we think of them as _human_, we are lost." A farmer had a yearling that sucked the cows. To prevent this, he put on the yearling a muzzle set full of sharpened nails. These of course pricked the cows, and they would not stand to be drained of their milk. The next day the farmer saw the yearling rubbing the nails against a rock in order, as he thought, to dull them so they would not prick the cows! How much easier to believe that the beast was simply trying to get rid of the awkward incumbrance upon its nose. What can a calf or a cow know about sharpened nails, and the use of a rock to dull them? This is a kind of outside knowledge--outside of their needs and experiences--that they could not possess. An Arizona friend of mine lately told me this interesting incident about the gophers that infested his cabin when he was a miner. The gophers ate up his bread. He could not hide it from them or put it beyond their reach. Finally, he bethought him to stick his loaf on the end of a long iron poker that he had, and then stand up the poker in the middle of his floor. Still, when he came back to his cabin, he would find his loaf eaten full of holes. One day, having nothing to do, he concluded to watch and see how the gophers reached the bread, and this was what he saw: The animals climbed up the side of his log cabin, ran along one of the logs to a point opposite the bread, and then sprang out sidewise toward the loaf, which each one struck, but upon which only one seemed able to effect a lodgment. Then this one would cling to the loaf and act as a stop to his fellows when they tried a second time, his body affording them the barrier they required. My friend felt sure that this leader deliberately and consciously aided the others in securing a footing on the loaf. But I read the incident differently. This successful jumper aided his fellows without designing it. The exigencies of the situation compelled him to the course he pursued. Having effected a lodgment upon the impaled loaf, he would of course cling to it when the others jumped so as not to be dislodged, thereby, willy nilly, helping them to secure a foothold. The coöperation was inevitable, and not the result of design. The power to see straight is the rarest of gifts; to see no more and no less than is actually before you; to be able to detach yourself and see the thing as it actually is, uncolored or unmodified by your own sentiments or prepossessions. In short, to see with your reason as well as with your perceptions, that is to be an observer and to read the book of nature aright. XIV GATHERED BY THE WAY I. THE TRAINING OF WILD ANIMALS I was reminded afresh of how prone we all are to regard the actions of the lower animals in the light of our own psychology on reading "The Training of Wild Animals," by Bostock, a well-known animal-trainer. Bostock evidently knows well the art of training animals, but of the science of it he seems to know very little. That is, while he is a successful trainer, his notions of animal psychology are very crude. For instance, on one page he speaks of the lion as if it were endowed with a fair measure of human intelligence, and had notions, feelings, and thoughts like our own; on the next page, when he gets down to real business, he lays bare its utter want of these things. He says a lion born and bred in captivity is more difficult to train than one caught from the jungle. Then he gives rein to his fancy. "Such a lion does not fear man; he knows his own power. He regards man as an inferior, with an attitude of disdain and silent hauteur." "He accepts his food as tribute, and his care as homage due." "He is aristocratic in his independence." "Deep in him--so deep that he barely realizes its existence--slumbers a desire for freedom and an unutterable longing for the blue sky and the free air." When his training is begun, "he meets it with a reserved majesty and silent indifference, as though he had a dumb realization of his wrongs." All this is a very human way of looking at the matter, and is typical of the way we all--most of us--speak of the lower animals, defining them to ourselves in terms of our own mentality, but it leads to false notions about them. We look upon an animal fretting and struggling in its cage as longing for freedom, picturing to itself the joy of the open air and the free hills and sky, when the truth of the matter undoubtedly is that the fluttering bird or restless fox or lion simply feels discomfort in confinement. Its sufferings are physical, and not mental. Its instincts lead it to struggle for freedom. It reacts strongly against the barriers that hold it, and tries in every way to overcome them. Freedom, as an idea, or a conception of a condition of life, is, of course, beyond its capacity. Bostock shows how the animal learns entirely by association, and not at all by the exercise of thought or reason, and yet a moment later says: "The animal is becoming amenable to the mastery of man, and in doing so his own reason is being developed," which is much like saying that when a man is practicing on the flying trapeze his wings are being developed. The lion learns slowly through association--through repeated sense impressions. First a long stick is put into his cage. If this is destroyed, it is replaced by another, until he gets used to it and tolerates its presence. Then he is gently rubbed with it at the hands of his keeper. He gets used to this and comes to like it. Then the stick is baited with a piece of meat, and in taking the meat the animal gets still better acquainted with the stick, and so ceases to fear it. When this stage is reached, the stick is shortened day by day, "until finally it is not much longer than the hand." The next step is to let the hand take the place of the stick in the stroking process. "This is a great step taken, for one of the most difficult things is to get any wild animal to allow himself to be touched with the human hand." After a time a collar with a chain attached is slipped around the lion's neck when he is asleep. He is now chained to one end of the cage. Then a chair is introduced into the cage; whereupon this king of beasts, whose reason is being developed, and who has such clear notions of inferior and superior, and who knows his own powers, usually springs for the chair, seeking to demolish it. His tether prevents his reaching it, and so in time he tolerates the chair. Then the trainer, after some preliminary feints, walks into the cage and seats himself in the chair. And so, inch by inch, as it were, the trainer gets control of the animal and subdues him to his purposes, not by appealing to his mind, for he has none, but by impressions upon his senses. "Leopards, panthers, and jaguars are all trained in much the same manner," and in putting them through their tricks one invariable order must be observed: "Each thing done one day must be done the next day in exactly the same way; there must be no deviation from the rule." Now we do not see in this fact the way of a thinking or reflecting being, but rather the way of a creature governed by instinct or unthinking intelligence. An animal never _learns_ a trick in the sense that man learns it, never sees through it or comprehends it, has no image of it in its mind, and no idea of the relations of the parts of it to one another; it does it by reason of repetition, as a creek wears its channel, and probably has no more self-knowledge or self-thought than the creek has. This, I think, is quite contrary to the popular notion of animal life and mentality, but it is the conclusion that I, at least, cannot avoid after making a study of the subject. II. AN ASTONISHED PORCUPINE One summer, while three young people and I were spending an afternoon upon a mountain-top, our dogs treed a porcupine. At my suggestion the young man climbed the tree--not a large one--to shake the animal down. I wished to see what the dogs would do with him, and what the "quill-pig" would do with the dogs. As the climber advanced the rodent went higher, till the limb he clung to was no larger than one's wrist. This the young man seized and shook vigorously. I expected to see the slow, stupid porcupine drop, but he did not. He only tightened his hold. The climber tightened his hold, too, and shook the harder. Still the bundle of quills did not come down, and no amount of shaking could bring it down. Then I handed a long pole up to the climber, and he tried to punch the animal down. This attack in the rear was evidently a surprise; it produced an impression different from that of the shaking. The porcupine struck the pole with his tail, put up the shield of quills upon his back, and assumed his best attitude of defense. Still the pole persisted in its persecution, regardless of the quills; evidently the animal was astonished: he had never had an experience like this before; he had now met a foe that despised his terrible quills. Then he began to back rapidly down the tree in the face of his enemy. The young man's sweetheart stood below, a highly interested spectator. "Look out, Sam, he's coming down!" "Be quick, he's gaining on you!" "Hurry, Sam!" Sam came as fast as he could, but he had to look out for his footing, and his antagonist did not. Still, he reached the ground first, and his sweetheart breathed more easily. It looked as if the porcupine reasoned thus: "My quills are useless against a foe so far away; I must come to close quarters with him." But, of course, the stupid creature had no such mental process, and formed no such purpose. He had found the tree unsafe, and his instinct now was to get to the ground as quickly as possible and take refuge among the rocks. As he came down I hit him a slight blow over the nose with a rotten stick, hoping only to confuse him a little, but much to my surprise and mortification he dropped to the ground and rolled down the hill dead, having succumbed to a blow that a woodchuck or a coon would hardly have regarded at all. Thus does the easy, passive mode of defense of the porcupine not only dull his wits, but it makes frail and brittle the thread of his life. He has had no struggles or battles to harden and toughen him. That blunt nose of his is as tender as a baby's, and he is snuffed out by a blow that would hardly bewilder for a moment any other forest animal, unless it be the skunk, another sluggish non-combatant of our woodlands. Immunity from foes, from effort, from struggle is always purchased with a price. Certain of our natural history romancers have taken liberties with the porcupine in one respect: they have shown him made up into a ball and rolling down a hill. One writer makes him do this in a sportive mood; he rolls down a long hill in the woods, and at the bottom he is a ragged mass of leaves which his quills have impaled--: an apparition that nearly frightened a rabbit out of its wits. Let any one who knows the porcupine try to fancy it performing a feat like this! Another romancer makes his porcupine roll himself into a ball when attacked by a panther, and then on a nudge from his enemy roll down a snowy incline into the water. I believe the little European hedgehog can roll itself up into something like a ball, but our porcupine does not. I have tried all sorts of tricks with him, and made all sorts of assaults upon him, at different times, and I have never yet seen him assume the globular form. It would not be the best form for him to assume, because it would partly expose his vulnerable under side. The one thing the porcupine seems bent upon doing at all times is to keep right side up with care. His attitude of defense is crouching close to the ground, head drawn in and pressed down, the circular shield of large quills upon his back opened and extended as far as possible, and the tail stretched back rigid and held close upon the ground. "Now come on," he says, "if you want to." The tail is his weapon of active defense; with it he strikes upward like lightning, and drives the quills into whatever they touch. In his chapter called "In Panoply of Spears," Mr. Roberts paints the porcupine without taking any liberties with the creature's known habits. He portrays one characteristic of the porcupine very felicitously: "As the porcupine made his resolute way through the woods, the manner of his going differed from that of all the other kindreds of the wild. He went not furtively. He had no particular objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous woodland world." III. BIRDS AND STRINGS A college professor writes me as follows:-- "Watching this morning a robin attempting to carry off a string, one end of which was caught in a tree, I was much impressed by his utter lack of sense. He could not realize that the string was fast, or that it must be loosened before it could be carried off, and in his efforts to get it all in his bill he wound it about a neighboring limb. If as little sense were displayed in using other material for nests, there would be no robins' nests. It impressed me more than ever with the important part played by instinct." Who ever saw any of our common birds display any sense or judgment in the handling of strings? Strings are comparatively a new thing with birds; they are not a natural product, and as a matter of course birds blunder in handling them. The oriole uses them the most successfully, often attaching her pensile nest to the branch by their aid. But she uses them in a blind, childish way, winding them round and round the branch, often getting them looped over a twig or hopelessly tangled, and now and then hanging herself with them, as is the case with other birds. I have seen a sparrow, a cedar-bird, and a robin each hung by a string it was using in the building of its nest. Last spring, in Spokane, a boy brought me a desiccated robin, whose feet were held together by a long thread hopelessly snarled. The boy had found it hanging to a tree. I have seen in a bird magazine a photograph of an oriole's nest that had a string carried around a branch apparently a foot or more away, and then brought back and the end woven into the nest. It was given as a sample of a well-guyed nest, the discoverer no doubt looking upon it as proof of an oriole's forethought in providing against winds and storms. I have seen an oriole's nest with a string carried around a leaf, and another with a long looped string hanging free. All such cases simply show that the bird was not master of her material; she bungled; the trailing string caught over the leaf or branch, and she drew both ends in and fastened them regardless of what had happened. The incident only shows how blindly instinct works. Twice I have seen cedar-birds, in their quest for nesting-material, trying to carry away the strings that orioles had attached to branches. According to our sentimental "School of Nature Study," the birds should have untied and unsnarled the strings in a human way, but they did not; they simply tugged at them, bringing their weight to bear, and tried to fly away with the loose end. In view of the ignorance of birds with regard to strings, how can we credit the story told by one of our popular nature writers of a pair of orioles that deliberately impaled a piece of cloth upon a thorn in order that it might be held firmly while they pulled out the threads? When it came loose, they refastened it. The story is incredible for two reasons: (1) the male oriole does not assist the female in building the nest; he only furnishes the music; (2) the whole proceeding implies an amount of reflection and skill in dealing with a new problem that none of our birds possess. What experience has the race of orioles had with cloth, that any member of it should know how to unravel it in that way? The whole idea is absurd. IV. MIMICRY To what lengths the protective resemblance theory is pushed by some of its expounders! Thus, in the neighborhood of Rio Janeiro there are two species of hawks that closely resemble each other, but one eats only insects and the other eats birds. Mr. Wallace thinks that the bird-eater mimics the insect-eater, so as to deceive the birds, which are not afraid of the latter. But if the two hawks look alike, would not the birds come to regard them both as bird-eaters, since one of them does eat birds? Would they not at once identify the harmless one with their real enemy and thus fear them both alike? If the latter were newcomers and vastly in the minority, then the ruse might work for a while. But if there were ten harmless hawks around to one dangerous one, the former would quickly suffer from the character of the latter in the estimation of the birds. Birds are instinctively afraid of all hawk kind. Wallace thinks it may be an advantage to cuckoos, a rather feeble class of birds, to resemble the hawks, but this seems to me far-fetched. True it is, if the sheep could imitate the wolf, its enemies might keep clear of it. Why, then, has not this resemblance been brought about? Our cuckoo is a feeble and defenseless bird also, but it bears no resemblance to the hawk. The same can be said of scores of other birds. Many of these close resemblances among different species of animals are no doubt purely accidental, or the result of the same law of variation acting under similar conditions. We have a hummingbird moth that so closely in its form and flight and manner resembles a hummingbird, that if this resemblance brought it any immunity from danger it would be set down as a clear case of mimicry. There is such a moth in England, too, where no hummingbird is found. Why should not Nature repeat herself in this way? This moth feeds upon the nectar of flowers like the hummingbird, and why should it not have the hummingbird's form and manner? Then there are accidental resemblances in nature, such as the often-seen resemblance of knots of trees and of vegetables to the human form, and of a certain fungus to a part of man's anatomy. We have a fly that resembles a honey-bee. In my bee-hunting days I used to call it the "mock honey-bee." It would come up the wind on the scent of my bee box and hum about it precisely like a real bee. Of course it was here before the honey-bee, and has been evolved quite independently of it. It feeds upon the pollen and nectar of flowers like the true bee, and is, therefore, of similar form and color. The honey-bee has its enemies; the toads and tree-frogs feed upon it, and the kingbird captures the slow drone. When an edible butterfly mimics an inedible or noxious one, as is frequently the case in the tropics, the mimicker is no doubt the gainer. It makes a big difference whether the mimicker is seeking to escape from an enemy, or seeking to deceive its prey. I fail to see how, in the latter case, any disguise of form or color could be brought about. Our shrike, at times, murders little birds and eats out their brains, and it has not the form, or the color, or the eye of a bird of prey, and thus probably deceives its victims, but there is no reason to believe that this guise is the result of any sort of mimicry. V. THE COLORS OF FRUITS Mr. Wallace even looks upon the nuts as protectively colored, because they are not to be eaten. But without the agency of the birds and the squirrels, how are the heavy nuts, such as the chestnut, beechnut, acorn, butternut, and the like, to be scattered? The blue jay is often busy hours at a time in the fall, planting chestnuts and acorns, and red squirrels carry butternuts and walnuts far from the parent trees, and place them in forked limbs and holes for future use. Of course, many of these fall to the ground and take root. If the protective coloration of the nuts, then, were effective, it would defeat a purpose which every tree and shrub and plant has at heart, namely, the scattering of its seed. I notice that the button-balls on the sycamores are protectively colored also, and certainly they do not crave concealment. It is true that they hang on the naked trees till spring, when no concealment is possible. It is also true that the jays and the crows carry away the chestnuts from the open burrs on the trees where no color scheme would conceal them. But the squirrels find them upon the ground even beneath the snow, being guided, no doubt, by the sense of smell. The hickory nut is almost white; why does it not seek concealment also? It is just as helpless as the others, and is just as sweet-meated. It occurs to me that birds can do nothing with it on account of its thick shell; it needs, therefore, to attract some four-footed creature that will carry it away from the parent tree, and this is done by the mice and the squirrels. But if this is the reason of its whiteness, there is the dusky butternut and the black walnut, both more or less concealed by their color, and yet having the same need of some creature to scatter them. The seeds of the maple, and of the ash and the linden, are obscurely colored, and they are winged; hence they do not need the aid of any creature in their dissemination. To say that this is the reason of their dull, unattractive tints would be an explanation on a par with much that one hears about the significance of animal and vegetable coloration. Why is corn so bright colored, and wheat and barley so dull, and rice so white? No doubt there is a reason in each case, but I doubt if that reason has any relation to the surrounding animal life. The new Botany teaches that the flowers have color and perfume to attract the insects to aid in their fertilization--a need so paramount with all plants, because plants that are fertilized by aid of the wind have very inconspicuous flowers. Is it equally true that the high color of most fruits is to attract some hungry creature to come and eat them and thus scatter the seeds? From the dwarf cornel, or bunch-berry, in the woods, to the red thorn in the fields, every fruit-bearing plant and shrub and tree seems to advertise itself to the passer-by in its bright hues. Apparently there is no other use to the plant of the fleshy pericarp than to serve as a bait or wage for some animal to come and sow its seed. Why, then, should it not take on these alluring colors to help along this end? And yet there comes the thought, may not this scarlet and gold of the berries and tree fruits be the inevitable result of the chemistry of ripening, as it is with the autumn foliage? What benefit to the tree, directly or indirectly, is all this wealth of color of the autumn? Many of the toadstools are highly colored also; how do they profit by it? Many of the shells upon the beach are very showy; to what end? The cherry-birds find the pale ox-hearts as readily as they do the brilliant Murillos, and the dull blue cedar berries and the duller drupes of the lotus are not concealed from them nor from the robins. But it is true that the greenish white grapes in the vineyard do not suffer from the attacks of the birds as do the blue and red ones. The reason probably is that the birds regard them as unripe. The white grape is quite recent, and the birds have not yet "caught on." Poisonous fruits are also highly colored; to what end? In Bermuda I saw on low bushes great masses of what they called "pigeon-berries" of a brilliant yellow color and very tempting, yet I was assured they were poisonous. It would be interesting to know if anything eats the red berries of our wild turnip or arum. I doubt if any bird or beast could stand them. Wherefore, then, are they so brightly colored? I am also equally curious to know if anything eats the fruit of the red and white baneberry and the blue cohosh. The seeds of some wild fruit, such as the climbing bitter-sweet, are so soft that it seems impossible they should pass through the gizzard of a bird and not be destroyed. The fruit of the sumac comes the nearest to being a cheat of anything I know of in nature--a collection of seeds covered with a flannel coat with just a perceptible acid taste, and all highly colored. Unless the seed itself is digested, what is there to tempt the bird to devour it, or to reward it for so doing? In the tropics one sees fruits that do not become bright colored on ripening, such as the breadfruit, the custard apple, the naseberry, the mango. And tropical foliage never colors up as does the foliage of northern trees. VI. INSTINCT Many false notions seem to be current in the popular mind about instinct. Apparently, some of our writers on natural history themes would like to discard the word entirely. Now instinct is not opposed to intelligence; it is intelligence of the unlearned, unconscious kind,--the intelligence innate in nature. We use the word to distinguish a gift or faculty which animals possess, and which is independent of instruction and experience, from the mental equipment of man which depends mainly upon instruction and experience. A man has to be taught to do that which the lower animals do from nature. Hence the animals do not progress in knowledge, while man's progress is almost limitless. A man is an animal born again into a higher spiritual plane. He has lost or shed many of his animal instincts in the process, but he has gained the capacity for great and wonderful improvement. Instinct is opposed to reason, to reflection, to thought,--to that kind of intelligence which knows and takes cognizance of itself. Instinct is that lower form of intelligence which acts through the senses,--sense perception, sense association, sense memory,--which we share with the animals, though their eyes and ears and noses are often quicker and keener than ours. Hence the animals know only the present, visible, objective world, while man through his gift of reason and thought knows the inward world of ideas and ideal relations. An animal for the most part knows all that it is necessary for it to know as soon as it reaches maturity; what it learns beyond that, what it learns at the hands of the animal-trainer, for instance, it learns slowly, through a long repetition of the process of trial and failure. Man also achieves many things through practice alone, or through the same process of trial and failure. Much of his manual skill comes in this way, but he learns certain things through the exercise of his reason; he sees how the thing is done, and the relation of the elements of the problem to one another. The trained animal never sees _how_ the thing is done, it simply does it automatically, because certain sense impressions have been stamped upon it till a habit has been formed, just as a man will often wind his watch before going to bed, or do some other accustomed act, without thinking of it. The bird builds her nest and builds it intelligently, that is, she adapts means to an end; but there is no reason to suppose that she _thinks_ about it in the sense that man does when he builds his house. The nest-building instinct is stimulated into activity by outward conditions of place and climate and food supply as truly as the growth of a plant is thus stimulated. As I look upon the matter, the most wonderful and ingenious nests in the world, as those of the weaver-birds and orioles, show no more independent self-directed and self-originated thought than does the rude nest of the pigeon or the cuckoo. They evince a higher grade of intelligent instinct, and that is all. Both are equally the result of natural promptings, and not of acquired skill, or the lack of it. One species of bird will occasionally learn the song of another species, but the song impulse must be there to begin with, and this must be stimulated in the right way at the right time. A caged English sparrow has been known to learn the song of the canary caged with or near it, but the sparrow certainly inherits the song impulse. One has proof of this when he hears a company of these sparrows sitting in a tree in spring chattering and chirping in unison, and almost reaching an utterance that is song-like. Our cedar-bird does not seem to have the song impulse, and I doubt if it could ever be taught to sing. In like manner our ruffed grouse has but feeble vocal powers, and I do not suppose it would learn to crow or cackle if brought up in the barn-yard. It expresses its joy at the return of spring and the mating season in its drum, as do the woodpeckers. The recent English writer Richard Kearton says there is "no such dead level of unreasoning instinct" in the animal world as is popularly supposed, and he seems to base the remark upon the fact that he found certain of the cavities or holes in a hay-rick where sparrows roosted lined with feathers, while others were not lined. Such departures from a level line of habit as this are common enough among all creatures. Instinct is not something as rigid as cast iron; it does not invariably act like a machine, always the same. The animal is something alive, and is subject to the law of variation. Instinct may act more strongly in one kind than in another, just as reason may act more strongly in one man than in another, or as one animal may have greater speed or courage than another of the same species. It would be hard to find two live creatures, very far up in the scale, exactly alike. A thrush may use much mud in the construction of its nest, or it may use little or none at all; the oriole may weave strings into its nest, or it may use only dry grasses and horse-hairs; such cases only show variations in the action of instinct. But if an oriole should build a nest like a robin, or a robin build like a cliff swallow, that would be a departure from instinct to take note of. Some birds show a much higher degree of variability than others; some species vary much in song, others in nesting and in feeding habits. I have never noticed much variation in the songs of robins, but in their nesting-habits they vary constantly. Thus one nest will be almost destitute of mud, while another will be composed almost mainly of mud; one will have a large mass of dry grass and weeds as its foundation, while the next one will have little or no foundation of the kind. The sites chosen vary still more, ranging from the ground all the way to the tops of trees. I have seen a robin's nest built in the centre of a small box that held a clump of ferns, which stood by the roadside on the top of a low post near a house, and without cover or shield of any sort. The robin had welded her nest so completely to the soil in the box that the whole could be lifted by the rim of the nest. She had given a very pretty and unique effect to the nest by a border of fine dark rootlets skillfully woven together. The song sparrow shows a high degree of variability both in its song and in its nesting-habits, each bird having several songs of its own, while one may nest upon the ground and another in a low bush, or in the vines on the side of your house. The vesper sparrow, on the other hand, shows a much lower degree of variability, the individuals rarely differing in their songs, while all the nests I have ever found of this sparrow were in open grassy fields upon the ground. The chipping or social sparrow is usually very constant in its song and its nesting-habits, and yet one season a chippy built her nest in an old robin's nest in the vines on my porch. It was a very pretty instance of adaptation on the part of the little bird. Another chippy that I knew had an original song, one that resembled the sound of a small tin whistle. The bush sparrow, too, is pretty constant in choosing a bush in which to place its nest, yet I once found the nest of this sparrow upon the ground in an open field with suitable bushes within a few yards of it. The woodpeckers, the jays, the cuckoos, the pewees, the warblers, and other wood birds show only a low degree of variability in song, feeding, and nesting habits. The Baltimore oriole makes free use of strings in its nest-building, and the songs of different birds of this species vary greatly, while the orchard oriole makes no use of strings, so far as I have observed, and its song is always and everywhere the same. Hence we may say that the lives of some birds run much more in ruts than do those of others; they show less plasticity of instinct, and are perhaps for that reason less near the state of free intelligence. Organic life in all its forms is flexible; instinct is flexible; the habits of all the animals change more or less with changed conditions, but the range of the fluctuations in the lives of the wild creatures is very limited, and is always determined by surrounding circumstances, and not by individual volition, as it so often is in the case of man. In a treeless country birds that sing on the perch elsewhere will sing on the wing. The black bear in the Southern States "holes up" for a much shorter period than in Canada or the Rockies. Why is the spruce grouse so stupid compared with most other species? Why is the Canada jay so tame and familiar about your camp in the northern woods or in the Rockies, and the other jays so wary? Such variations, of course, have their natural explanation, whatever it may be. In New Zealand there is a parrot, the kea, that once lived upon honey and fruit, but that now lives upon the sheep, tearing its way down to the kidney fat. This is a wide departure in instinct, but it is not to be read as a development of reason in its place. It is a modified instinct,--the instinct for food seeking new sources of supply. Exactly how it came about would be interesting to know. Our oriole is an insectivorous bird, but in some localities it is very destructive in the August vineyards. It does not become a fruit-eater like the robin, but a juice-sucker; it punctures the grapes for their unfermented wine. Here, again, we have a case of modified and adaptive instinct. All animals are more or less adaptive, and avail themselves of new sources of food supply. When the southern savannas were planted with rice, the bobolinks soon found that this food suited them. A few years ago we had a great visitation in the Hudson River Valley of crossbills from the north. They lingered till the fruit of the peach orchards had set, when they discovered that here was a new source of food supply, and they became very destructive to the promised crop by deftly cutting out the embryo peaches. All such cases show how plastic and adaptive instinct is, at least in relation to food supplies. Let me again say that instinct is native, untaught intelligence, directed outward, but never inward as in man. VII. THE ROBIN Probably, with us, no other bird is so closely associated with country life as the robin; most of the time pleasantly, but for a brief season, during cherry time, unpleasantly. His life touches or mingles with ours at many points--in the dooryard, in the garden, in the orchard, along the road, in the groves, in the woods. He is everywhere except in the depths of the primitive forests, and he is always very much at home. He does not hang timidly upon the skirts of our rural life, like, say, the thrasher or the chewink; he plunges in boldly and takes his chances, and his share, and often more than his share, of whatever is going. What vigor, what cheer, how persistent, how prolific, how adaptive; pugnacious, but cheery, pilfering, but companionable! When one first sees his ruddy breast upon the lawn in spring, or his pert form outlined against a patch of lingering snow in the brown fields, or hears his simple carol from the top of a leafless tree at sundown, what a vernal thrill it gives one! What a train of pleasant associations is quickened into life! What pictures he makes upon the lawn! What attitudes he strikes! See him seize a worm and yank it from its burrow! I recently observed a robin boring for grubs in a country dooryard. It is a common enough sight to witness one seize an angle-worm and drag it from its burrow in the turf, but I am not sure that I ever before saw one drill for grubs and bring the big white morsel to the surface. The robin I am speaking of had a nest of young in a maple near by, and she worked the neighborhood very industriously for food. She would run along over the short grass after the manner of robins, stopping every few feet, her form stiff and erect. Now and then she would suddenly bend her head toward the ground and bring eye or ear for a moment to bear intently upon it. Then she would spring to boring the turf vigorously with her bill, changing her attitude at each stroke, alert and watchful, throwing up the grass roots and little jets of soil, stabbing deeper and deeper, growing every moment more and more excited, till finally a fat grub was seized and brought forth. Time after time, during several days, I saw her mine for grubs in this way and drag them forth. How did she know where to drill? The insect was in every case an inch below the surface. Did she hear it gnawing the roots of the grasses, or did she see a movement in the turf beneath which the grub was at work? I know not. I only know that she struck her game unerringly each time. Only twice did I see her make a few thrusts and then desist, as if she had been for the moment deceived. How pugnacious the robin is! With what spunk and spirit he defends himself against his enemies! Every spring I see the robins mobbing the blue jays that go sneaking through the trees looking for eggs. The crow blackbirds nest in my evergreens, and there is perpetual war between them and the robins. The blackbirds devour the robins' eggs, and the robins never cease to utter their protest, often backing it up with blows. I saw two robins attack a young blackbird in the air, and they tweaked out his feathers at a lively rate. One spring a pack of robins killed a cuckoo near me that they found robbing a nest. I did not witness the killing, but I have cross-questioned a number of people who did see it, and I am convinced of the fact. They set upon him when he was on the robin's nest, and left him so bruised and helpless beneath it that he soon died. It was the first intimation I had ever had that the cuckoo devoured the eggs of other birds. Two other well-authenticated cases have come to my knowledge of robins killing cuckoos (the black-billed) in May. The robin knows its enemies, and it is quite certain, I think, that the cuckoo is one of them. What a hustler the robin is! No wonder he gets on in the world. He is early, he is handy, he is adaptive, he is tenacious. Before the leaves are out in April the female begins her nest, concealing it as much as she can in a tree-crotch, or placing it under a shed or porch, or even under an overhanging bank upon the ground. One spring a robin built her nest upon the ladder that was hung up beneath the eaves of the wagon-shed. Having occasion to use the ladder, we placed the nest on a box that stood beneath it. The robin was disturbed at first, but soon went on with her incubating in the new and more exposed position. The same spring one built her nest upon a beam in a half-finished fruit house, going out and in through the unshingled roof. One day, just as the eggs were hatched, we completed the roof, and kept up a hammering about the place till near night; the mother robin scolded a good deal, but she did not desert her young, and soon found her way in and out the door. If a robin makes up her mind to build upon your porch, and you make up your mind that you do not want her there, there is likely to be considerable trouble on both sides before the matter is settled. The robin gets the start of you in the morning, and has her heap of dry grass and straws in place before the jealous broom is stirring, and she persists after you have cleaned out her rubbish half a dozen times. Before you have discouraged her, you may have to shunt her off of every plate or other "coign of vantage" with boards or shingles. A strenuous bird indeed, and a hustler. VIII. THE CROW One very cold winter's morning, after a fall of nearly two feet of snow, as I came out of my door three crows were perched in an apple tree but a few rods away. One of them uttered a peculiar caw as they saw me, but they did not fly away. It was not the usual high-keyed note of alarm. It may have meant "Look out!" yet it seemed to me like the asking of alms: "Here we are, three hungry neighbors of yours; give us food." So I brought out the entrails and legs of a chicken, and placed them upon the snow. The crows very soon discovered what I had done, and with the usual suspicious movement of the closed wings which has the effect of emphasizing the birds' alertness, approached and devoured the food or carried it away. But there, was not the least strife or dispute among them over the food. Indeed, each seemed ready to give precedence to the others. In fact, the crow is a courtly, fine-mannered bird. Birds of prey will rend one another over their food; even buzzards will make some show of mauling one another with their wings; but I have yet to see anything of the kind with that gentle freebooter, the crow. Yet suspicion is his dominant trait. Anything that looks like design puts him on his guard. The simplest device in a cornfield usually suffices to keep him away. He suspects a trap. His wit is not deep, but it is quick, and ever on the alert. One of our natural history romancers makes the crows flock in June. But the truth is, they do not flock till September. Through the summer the different families keep pretty well together. You may see the old ones with their young foraging about the fields, the young often being fed by their parents. From my boyhood I have seen the yearly meeting of the crows in September or October, on a high grassy hill or a wooded ridge. Apparently, all the crows from a large area assemble at these times; you may see them coming, singly or in loose bands, from all directions to the rendezvous, till there are hundreds of them together. They make black an acre or two of ground. At intervals they all rise in the air, and wheel about, all cawing at once. Then to the ground again, or to the tree-tops, as the case may be; then, rising again, they send forth the voice of the multitude. What does it all mean? I notice that this rally is always preliminary to their going into winter quarters. It would be interesting to know just the nature of the communication that takes place between them. Not long afterwards, or early in October, they may be seen morning and evening going to and from their rookeries. The matter seems to be settled in these September gatherings of the clan. Was the spot agreed upon beforehand and notice served upon all the members of the tribe? Our "school-of-the-woods" professors would probably infer something of the kind. I suspect it is all brought about as naturally as any other aggregation of animals. A few crows meet on the hill; they attract others and still others. The rising of a body of them in the air, the circling and cawing, may be an instinctive act to advertise the meeting to all the crows within sight or hearing. At any rate, it has this effect, and they come hurrying from all points. What their various calls mean, who shall tell? That lusty _caw-aw, caw-aw_ that one hears in spring and summer, like the voice of authority or command, what does it mean? I never could find out. It is doubtless from the male. A crow will utter it while sitting alone on the fence in the pasture, as well as when flying through the air. The crow's cry of alarm is easily distinguished; all the other birds and wild creatures know it, and the hunter who is stalking his game is apt to swear when he hears it. I have heard two crows in the spring, seated on a limb close together, give utterance to many curious, guttural, gurgling, ventriloquial sounds. What were they saying? It was probably some form of the language of love. I venture to say that no one has ever yet heard the crow utter a complaining or a disconsolate note. He is always cheery, he is always self-possessed, he is a great success. Nothing in Bermuda made me feel so much at home as a flock of half a dozen of our crows which I saw and heard there. At one time they were very numerous on the island, but they have been persecuted till only a remnant of the tribe remains. I My friend and neighbor through the year, Self-appointed overseer Of my crops of fruit and grain, Of my woods and furrowed plain, Claim thy tithings right and left, I shall never call it theft. Nature wisely made the law, And I fail to find a flaw In thy title to the earth, And all it holds of any worth. I like thy self-complacent air, I like thy ways so free from care, Thy landlord stroll about my fields, Quickly noting what each yields; Thy courtly mien and bearing bold, As if thy claim were bought with gold; Thy floating shape against the sky, When days are calm and clouds sail high; Thy thrifty flight ere rise of sun, Thy homing clans when day is done. Hues protective are not thine, So sleek thy coat each quill doth shine. Diamond black to end of toe, Thy counter-point the crystal snow. II Never plaintive nor appealing, Quite at home when thou art stealing, Always groomed to tip of feather, Calm and trim in every weather, Morn till night my woods policing, Every sound thy watch increasing. Hawk and owl in tree-top hiding Feel the shame of thy deriding. Naught escapes thy observation, None but dread thy accusation. Hunters, prowlers, woodland lovers Vainly seek the leafy covers. III Noisy, scheming, and predacious, With demeanor almost gracious, Dowered with leisure, void of hurry, Void of fuss and void of worry, Friendly bandit, Robin Hood, Judge and jury of the wood, Or Captain Kidd of sable quill, Hiding treasures in the hill, Nature made thee for each season, Gave thee wit for ample reason, Good crow wit that's always burnished Like the coat her care has furnished. May thy numbers ne'er diminish, I'll befriend thee till life's finish. May I never cease to meet thee, May I never have to eat thee. And mayest thou never have to fare so That thou playest the part of scarecrow. INDEX Adder, blowing, 17. Altruism among animals, 23. Ammophila, 117. Angler (_Lophius piscatorius_), 107. Animals, the author's attitude in regard to the intelligence of, v, vi; nature of the intelligence of, 1-3; sources of the intelligence of, 4; the sentimental attitude towards, 59-61; emotions and intellect of, 64; language of, 64; curiosity of, 64; altruism of, 65; punishment and discipline among, 65; the three factors that shape their lives, 66; imitation among, 66-70; learning by experience, 70-73; variation in, 73; instinct in, 73-83; incapable of reflection, 77, 78; their knowledge compared with man's, 80, 81; imitation among, not akin to teaching, 83-86; belief in regard to teaching among, 87; play of, 87, 99, 100; communication among, 87-98; fear in, 89, 90; ears of, 95; telepathy among, 96-98; their habits the same everywhere, 101-103; courtship among, 104; stories of poisoning among, 105, 106; stories of trapping and fishing among, 106, 107; individuality among, 118, 119; variation in, 120, 121; ignorance of, 123-125; perceptive intelligence of, 126; partakers of the universal intelligence, 128-130; know what is necessary for them to know, 131; their knowledge inherited, 132; wise in relation to their food and their enemies, 133; and the art of healing, 134; protective coloration of, 138-140; their fear of poison, 140; association of ideas in, 141, 142; emotions of, 143; no ethical sense in, 144, 145; automatism of, 146; and the use of medicine, 147; the truth about them what is wanted, 147-149; the thinking of, instinct in, 151-170; have perceptions but no conceptions, 160; first steps of intelligence in, 161, 162; limitations of intelligence in, 163-168; automatism of trained animals, 166; incredible stories of, 175-184; stories of surgery among, 180-182; true interpretation of seeming acts of reason in, 184-187, 189, 190; absence of language among, 187-189; creatures of routine, 190; the humanization of, 195, 196; nature of their intelligence, 209-230; their minds incapable of improvement, 220-222; the victims of habits, 222; popular notion of teaching among, 233, 234; nature of the homing faculty of, 235; Bostock on the training of wild, 239-242; mimicry among, 248-250; instinct in, 255-261. Antelope, 85. Apple trees, protecting themselves from cattle, 153. Argyll, Duke of, 72. "Atlantic Monthly, The," article in, v, vi, 173. Baboon, 65. Barrington, Daines, 68. Barrus, Dr. Clara, her description of the woodcock's song and song flight, 43. Bean, the, intelligence of, 1, 2. Bear, a caged, 76. Bear, black, 260. Beaver, 166, 167; nature of his intelligence, 209-211. Beebe, C. William, on instinct and reason in birds, 215-217. Bees, 24. Belief, scientific grounds for, 173-179. Birds, mistakes of, 4-6; their nest-building, 4, 5, 70, 71; fighting their reflections, 5, 6; taking advantage of man's protection for their nests, 6, 7; probably make no improvement in nest-building or singing, 70, 71; learn cunning by experience, 71; instincts connected with parasitism, 79, 80; communication in flocks of, 96-98; courtship of, 103, 104; activities of the two sexes among, 111-114; song contests among, 114, 115; and glass, 127; incubating-habits of, 135; shading mate and young from sun, 137, 138; their knowledge of the value of protective coloration, 138-140; migration of, 186; their affection for their young, 215; and shell-fish, 216; have no power of initiative, 232, 233; their handling of strings, 246-248; instinct in, 256-261; variability in, 258-261. Bird's-nests, an epitome of wild nature, 109; haphazard design in, 109, 110. Bird-songs, the power to hear, 29; not music, 29; elusiveness of, 30; a part of nature, 30; our pleasure in them from association, 31-34; songs of caged birds, 32, 35; the wing-song, 39-44; individual variation in musical ability, 44-46; acquired by imitation, 67, 68. Bittern, least (_Ardetta exilis_), eating her eggs, 111. Blackbird, crow, or grackle (_Quiscalus quiscula_ subsp.), catching a fish, 176; enmity with robins, 263, 264. Blackbird, English, song of, 45, 227. Blackbird, red-winged. _See_ Red-shouldered starling. Black-knot, 27. Bluebird (_Sialia sialis_), hearing the, 29. Bobolink (_Dolichonyx oryzivorus_), its song in the home meadows, 36; variation in song, 69; with defective song, 116. Body, the, intelligence of, 128. Bolles, Frank, 18. Bostock, Frank C., his _The Training of Wild Animals_, 239-242. Brewster, William, 22. Buds, formation of, 50, 51. Bumblebee, hibernation of, 49. Burmeister, quoted on bees, 200. Calf, a wild, 214; a yearling and its muzzle, 237. Canary-bird, 159; an incredible story of a, 177, 178. Carlisle, Bishop of, 148. Cats, 66, 67, 73; fear of dogs, 75; talking with the ears, 94, 95; playing with mice, 100; watching a mouse-hole, 186, 187; human qualities of, 225, 226. Cat tribe, their method of hunting, 183, 184. Cedar-bird (_Ampelis cedrorum_), notes of, 46; nest-building of, 112; and strings, 247, 248; no song impulse in, 257. Chapman, Frank M., his story of a least bittern, 111. Chewink, or towhee (_Pipilo erythrophthalmus_), the "Hermit's" story, 93. Chickadee (_Parus atricapillus_), flight of a young, 70; tameness of, 205. Chipmunk, 159. Coon. _See_ Raccoon. Cow, the, ignorance of, 123, 124, 187, 221. Cowbird (_Molothrus ater_), 79, 80, 156, 157; an incredible statement regarding, 178, 179, 220. Coyote, or prairie wolf, 82, 86, 189. Crab, hermit, 155. Crabs, defensive instinct in, 169, 170. Crossbills (_Loxia_ sp.), feeding on young peaches, 261. Crow, American (_Corvus brachyrhynchos_), winter quarters of, 50; the "Hermit's" story of a crow, 93; nature of his intelligence, 136, 137; notes of, 188, 268; story of a court of justice, 198, 199; maltreating a tame crow, 199; cunning of, 204; a misinterpreted incident, 233, 234; feeding, 265, 266; suspiciousness of, 266; flocking of, 266, 267; meaning of calls of, 268; disposition of, 268; in Bermuda, 268; lines on, 268. Crow, white-necked African, 135, 136. Crows and shell-fish, 2. Cuckoos, 249; eating birds' eggs, 264; killed by robins, 264. Darwin, Charles, 65, 67, 73, 75, 76, 79, 82, 83, 87, 127, 136, 149, 177, 198. December, the month when Nature closes her doors, 47. Deer, 84, 85, 185. Dipper. _See_ Water ouzel. Dogs, imitativeness of, 66; show gleams of reason, 76, 85, 88; feelings of shame, guilt, and revenge ascribed to, 144, 145; carrying a stick through a fence, 164-166; language of, 188; Maeterlinck on, 192, 193; John Muir's story of a dog, 193, 194; Egerton Young's book about, 194; hiding a bone, 205; companionableness of, 205, 206, 211, 221; rational intelligence in, 223-225; partake of the master's nature, 224; story of a pointer, 224, 225. Dove, turtle, _or_ mourning dove (_Zenaidura macroura_), occupying a robin's nest, 7. Duck. _See_ Mallard. Duck, eider. _See_ American eider. Duck, wild, wounded, 213. Duck, wood (_Aix sponsa_), nest, eggs, and young of, 21-23. Eagle, 103. Eagle, bald (_Haliæetus leucocephalus_), 72, 213. Ears, movements of, 95. Eider, American (_Somateria dresseri_), killing mussels, 180-182. Elephants, 76; protecting themselves from flies, 138; an incredible story, 145, 146. Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 24; his lines on the sparrow's song, 32, 102. Evolution, 170, 171. Fabre, the French naturalist, 158. Farm, the author's, 101. Fear, instinctive, 74-76; use of, 89; indiscriminating, 89; panics, 90. Finch, purple (_Carpodacus purpureus_), song flight of, 44; song of, 44. Fish and glass, 127. Flocks, communication in, 96-98. Fly, mimicking the honey-bee, 250. Flycatcher, great crested (_Myiarchus crinitus_), nesting-habits of, 17-19. _Forest and Stream_, 69, 93. Fox, capturing a rabbit, 8, 72; poisoning stories of, 105; stories of crab-catching, 106, 107; intelligence of, 141, 142; misinterpreted stories of, 199; and deadfall, 222, 223; cunning of, 223. Frog, wood, hibernation of, 48. Frogs, hibernation of, 49. Froude, 2. Fruits, colors of, 251-254. Golden-eye (_Clangula clangula americana_), young leaving nest, 22. Goldfinch (_Astragalinus tristis_), flight song of, 43, 44; other notes of, 44; musical festivals of, 104. Gophers, an interesting incident, 237, 238. Grackle. _See_ Crow blackbird. Grebe, and loon, 235, 236. Gregariousness, its effect on individuality, 118, 119. Groos, Karl, his work on _The Play of Animals_, 87, 100. Grouse, flight of, 4. Grouse, ruffed (_Bonasa umbelius_), 71, 94; drumming of, 177, 257; the "Hermit's" incredible story of a, 179, 180; feeble vocal powers of, 257. Grouse, spruce, or Canada grouse (_Canachites canadensis canace_), 260. Hamerton, Philip Gilbert, his _Chapters on Animals_, 124, 237. Hawk, broad-winged (_Buteo platypterus_), 74. Hawk, fish, or American osprey (_Pandion haliaëtus carolinensis_), 213. Hawk, marsh (_Circus hudsonius_), a young, 99. Hawk, red-shouldered (_Buteo lineatus_), 222, 223. Hawk, red-tailed (_Buteo borealis_ and subsp.), 102. Hawks, alleged mimicry among, 248, 249. "Hermit," his false natural history, 93-95; his stories of cowbirds and a grouse, 178, 179. Hibernation, 48, 49. Hickory nut, 251, 252. _Home Life on an Ostrich Farm_, 135, 136. Homing instinct, the, a remarkable trait, 53; an instance of its workings, 53-57, 99; nature of, 235. Honeysuckle, a shoot of, 24, 25. Horses, ignorant fear in, 123; self-destruction of, 146, 162; a mare and her blind companion, 226, 227. Hyla, peeping, hibernation of, 48; a second period of peeping, 231, 232. Indigo-bird (_Cyanospiza cyanea_), flight song of, 44. Individuality, effects of solitude and gregariousness upon, 118, 119. _Industries of Animals_, 137. Inferences, right, 231-238. Insects stilled by the cold, 49, 50. Instinct, 1; demoralized, 73, 74; one instinct overcoming another, 74; makes up nine tenths of the lives of our wild neighbors, 74; a kind of natural reason, 76; in connection with parasitism, 79, 80; importance of, 81; origin and development of, 81, 82; not always inerrant, 155; machine-like action of, 158, 159; non-progressive, 212; nature of, 254-257; variability of, 257-261. Jackals, 142. Jackdaw, the Bishop of Carlisle's story of a, 148. Jay, blue (_Cyanocitta cristata_), Mr. Keyser's young bird, 69, 70; hiding instinct of, 161, 251, 263. Jay, Canada (_Perisoreus canadensis_), 204, 260. Jefferies, Richard, 131, 197, 203. Jesse, Edward, his story of some swallows, 148. Katydids, 49. Kea, 260, 261. Kearton, Richard, his story of an osprey, 137; on the wren's nest, 138, 139; on a colony of terns, 139; his experiments with wooden eggs, 227, 228; on instinct in animals, 257. Keyser, Leander S., his experiments with young birds, 69, 70. Kingbird (_Tyrannus tyrannus_), 177. Kipling, Rudyard, his _Jungle Book_, 14; his _The White Seal_, 14. Kittens, 75. Language, a necessity to thinking, 187, 188. Lark. _See_ Skylark. Lark, prairie horned (_Otocoris alpestris praticola_), spreading of, 36, 37; song and song flight of, 37, 38; killed by the locomotive, 38. Leaves, persistent and deciduous, 51. Lion, Bostock on the training of, 239-241. Loco-weed, 83. Locusts, 2. Loon (_Gavia imber_), 180, 184; under ice, 235, 236. _Lophius piscatorius_, 107. Lubbock, Sir John, on recognition among bees and ants, 200. Lynx, Canada, incredible story of, 183, 184. Maeterlinck, Maurice, on the bee, 15; on the dog, 192, 193; his _Life of the Bee_, 201. Mallard, domestic, finding its way home, 53-57. Man, progress of, 26, 27; the line that divides him from the lower orders, 80, 81; animal origin of, 229, 230; instinct in, 255; learning through practice, 256. Martin, Mrs. Annie, her story of a crow, 135, 136. Meadowlark (_Sturnella magna_), song of, 34; flight song of, 43, 232, 233. Meadowlark, Western (_Sturnella magna neglecta_), song of, 103. Mice and traps, 23, 24. Michelet, 147. Mimicry, 248-250. Mongoose, 72. Monkeys, capable of the simpler forms of reason, 127. Moose, a habit of, 142. Moral code, evolution of, 23. Morgan, C. Lloyd, 143, 149; his experiment with his dog, 164, 165. Moth, hummingbird, 249, 250. Mouse, white-footed, _or_ deer mouse, an incident, 163, 164. Muir, John, his story of his dog Stickeen, 193, 194. Mullet, 96. Mushrooms, animals eating, 83. Muskrat, 211. Mussels, ducks drowning, 180-182. _My Dogs of the Northland_, by Egerton Young, 194. "My friend and neighbor through the year," 268. Natural history romancers, influence of, 13, 14; methods of, 16, 17. Nature, an endless experimenter, 24, 139; prodigality of, 27; like a hunter, 27; bound to hit the mark, 28; the tendency to sentimentalize, 108; reaches her ends by devious paths, 110; the thinking of, 152; literary treatment of, 191-208; the interpretation of, 196-201, 203-205; wisdom of, 220. Newts, migrations of, 219. Nightingale, carrying nest, 15, 16; song of, 35; song of a caged bird, 35; a song contest, 115. _North American Review_, an article in the, 61. Nuthatch, 162. Nuts, protective colors of, 251, 252. Observing, rarity of accurate, 107, 108, 238. Olaus, his fox and crab story, 106. Oriole, Baltimore (_Icterus galbula_), a published account of a nest, 61-63; Scott's experiment with young, 68; its nest a marvel of blind skill, 110; its use of strings in nest-building, 247; an incredible story of, 248; variability of, 259, 260; song of, 259, 260; destructive in vineyards, 261. Oriole, orchard (_Icterus spurius_), 260. Osprey, 137. _See also_ Fish hawk. Ostrich, 134, 135. Ousel, water, or dipper, 73. Oven-bird (_Seiurus aurocapillus_), walk of, 40; ordinary song of, 40, 41; flight song of, 41, 42. Peacock, strutting before a crow, 217. Peckham, George W. and Elizabeth G., their work on the solitary wasps, 116. Pelicans, driving fish, 216. Phoebe-bird (_Sayornis phoebe_), nesting-habits of, 5, 157, 158; nest-building of, 112; cowbird's egg in nest of, 157; an instance of stupidity, 168, 169. Pigeon, passenger, or wild pigeon (_Ectopistes migratorius_), flocks of, 96, 97. Pike, 127. Plants, intelligence of, 128, 129. Plover, ring, rejecting counterfeit eggs, 227, 228. Poison, fear of, 140. Poisoning among animals, 105, 106. Porcupine, its lack of wit, 3, 186; an encounter with a, 242-244; easily killed, 244; stories of rolling into a ball, 244, 245; C. G. D. Roberts on, 245, 246. Prairie-dogs, their fear of weeds and grass, 189. Protective coloration, 139, 140. Quail, or bob-white (_Colinus virginianus_), nests of, 6. Rabbit, nest of, 7; intelligence of, 7; pursued by a mink or weasel, 7, 8; pursued by a fox, 8; imitating a monkey, 66. Rabbit, jack, 184; running in a furrow, 213. Raccoon, washing food, 3, 134. Rats, 72, 73, 106, 184, 185. "Real and Sham Natural History," the author's article, v, vi. Reason, an artificial light, 212. Roberts, Charles G. D., on the porcupine, 245, 246. Robin (_Merula migratoria_), nests of, 4, 5, 169, 264, 265; unusual songs of, 45, 68, 154, 155; nesting on turn-table, 169; and string, 246, 247; variability of nesting-habits of, 258, 259; closely associated with country life, 261, 262; boring for grubs, 262, 263; pugnacity of, 263; at war with blue jays, crow blackbirds, and cuckoos, 263, 264; a hustler, 264, 265. Romanes, G. J., 15, 16, 73, 106, 142; untrustworthiness of his _Animal Intelligence_, 147, 148. Roosevelt, Theodore, his _The Wilderness Hunter_, 72, 142; quoted on teaching among animals, 84-86, 88, 103; quoted on the moose, 142, 149; his story of a horse, 235. Rooster, "teaching" a young one, 94; calling a hen, 190. Ruskin, John, 197. St. John, Charles, 76; his story of a fox, 142, 149. Sapsucker, yellow-bellied. _See_ Yellow-bellied woodpecker. Scallops, 129, 130. Schoolchildren, letters from, 1. "School of the woods," the, 99. Scott, W. E. D., 68. Selous, Edmund, on a song contest between nightingales, 115. Seton, Ernest Thompson, 184, 203. Sexual selection, 116. Sharp, Dallas Lore, on the crested flycatcher, 18. Shrike (_Lanius_ sp.), assisting wounded mate, 24, 250. Skunk, dull wits of, 4; killing a maimed one, 203. Skunk-cabbage, 52. Skylark, song of, 32-34, 37; in America, 33, 34; Scotchman and, 33; Irishman and, 34; wooing a vesper sparrow, 40; a caged, 69. Snake, black, 16. Snakes, and the power of fascination, 16. Solitude, its effect on individuality, 118, 119. Sparrow, bush, or field sparrow (_Spizella pusilla_), nest of, 259. Sparrow, chipping (_Spizella socialis_), nest of, 142, 143, 259, 154; an unusual song of, 259. Sparrow, English (_Passer domesticus_), singing like a canary, 68, 257; eggs of, 120; a case of blind instinct in, 160. Sparrow, song (_Melospiza cinerea melodia_), a city girl's impression of its song, 31; a talented singer, 45; the "Hermit's" story, 93, 94; variability of, 259. Sparrow, vesper (_Pooecetes gramineus_), flight song of, 39; lark-like in color and markings, 40; wooed by a skylark, 40; low degree of variability in, 259. Spring, the real beginning of, 51, 52. Squirrel, gray, 75, 133. Squirrel, red, nesting-material of, 20; a stupid, 125; and chestnuts, 132; and maple sap, 132; and green apples and pears, 133, 155, 251. Squirrels, and chestnut burs, 3; their knowledge of nuts, 133; smelling with the whole body, 133. Starling, red-shouldered, _or_ red-winged blackbird (_Agelaius phoeniceus_), song of, 34. Stevenson, Robert Louis, on the English blackbird's songs, 45. Sumac, fruit of, 254. Swallow, cliff (_Petrochelidon lunifrons_), nesting of, 155, 157. Swallows, 93. Swift, chimney (_Chætura pelagica_), change of nesting-site, 8; getting nesting-material, 8, 9; in the chimney, 9; a creature of the air, 9, 10; spring and fall congregations in large chimneys, 10-13; drumming in chimney, 183. Swimming, 78, 79. Sycamore, fruit of, 251. Tanager, scarlet (_Piranga erythromelas_), nesting in a cherry tree, 6, 7. Teaching among animals, 83-94, 233, 234. Telepathy, 96-98. Terns, 139. Thoreau, Henry D., his "night-warbler," 42, 153, 195, 203. Thrush, hermit (_Hylocichla guttata pallasii_), with an impediment, 116. Thrush, song, in the Trossachs, 46; and wooden eggs, 227. Thrush, Wilson's. _See_ Veery. Thrush, wood (_Hylocichla mustelina_), nest of, 5; a "singing-school," 94; nest-building of, 113, 114, 155, 156; ways of, 113, 114; song contest of, 114, 115. Toad, going into the ground, 49. Towhee. _See_ Chewink. _Training of Wild Animals, The_, by Frank C. Bostock, 239-242. Traps, the fear of, 89. Tumble-bug, 26. Turkey, 75, 214. Van Dyke, Henry, his poem on the song sparrow, 31. Variation, 73; a less active principle now than formerly, 120; various degrees of, 120, 121; causes of, 121. Veery, or Wilson's thrush (_Hylocichla fuscescens_), song of, 84, 85. Wallace, Alfred Russel, 87; on mimicry, 249, 251. Warbler, black and white creeping (_Mniotilta varia_), nest and egg of, 111. Warbler, grasshopper, 227. Warbler, yellow (_Dendroioa æstiva_), and cowbird's egg, 80, 156, 157, 229. Ward, Lester F., his _Pure Sociology_, 112. Wasps, solitary, ways of, 116-118; instinct in, 158, 159; intelligence of, 164. Wasps, stinging instinct in stingless, 169, 170. Waxwing, cedar. _See_ Cedar-bird. Weasel, rescuing young, 24. White, Gilbert, on the swallow's nest-building, 167, 168, 203; his account of his old tortoise, 207. Whitman, Walt, quoted, 206. Wolf, prairie. _See_ Coyote. Wolves, 66. Wood-borers, 49, 50. Woodchuck, 72. Woodcock (_Philohela minor_), song and song flight of, 42, 43. Woodpecker, downy (_Dryobates pubescens medianus_), dispossessed by flying-squirrels, 20; trying to evict a hairy woodpecker, 21. Woodpecker, hairy (_Dryobates villosus_), and downy woodpecker, 21. Woodpecker, yellow-bellied, or yellow-bellied sapsucker (_Sphyrapicus varius_), 91. Wren, European, nest of, 138, 139. Wren, house (_Troglodytes aëdon_), nesting-materials of, 19; young of, 162; handling twigs, 166. Young, Egerton, his _My Dogs of the Northland_, 194. Books by John Burroughs WORKS. 18 vols., uniform, 16mo, with frontispiece, gilt top. WAKE-ROBIN. WINTER SUNSHINE. LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY. FRESH FIELDS. INDOOR STUDIES. BIRDS AND POETS, with Other Papers. PEPACTON, and Other Sketches. SIGNS AND SEASONS. RIVERBY. WHITMAN: A STUDY. THE LIGHT OF DAY. LITERARY VALUES. FAR AND NEAR. WAYS OF NATURE. LEAF AND TENDRIL. TIME AND CHANGE. THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS. THE BREATH OF LIFE. THE BREATH OF LIFE. _Riverside Edition._ THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS. _Riverside Edition._ TIME AND CHANGE. _Riverside Edition._ LEAF AND TENDRIL. _Riverside Edition._ WAYS OF NATURE. _Riverside Edition._ FAR AND NEAR. _Riverside Edition._ LITERARY VALUES. _Riverside Edition._ THE LIGHT OF DAY. _Riverside Edition._ WHITMAN: A Study. _Riverside Edition._ A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections appropriate to each season of the year, from the writings of John Burroughs. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON JOHNSON. IN THE CATSKILLS. Illustrated from Photographs by CLIFTON JOHNSON. CAMPING AND TRAMPING WITH ROOSEVELT. Illustrated from Photographs. BIRD AND BOUGH. Poems. WINTER SUNSHINE. _Cambridge Classics Series._ WAKE-ROBIN. _Riverside Aldine Series._ SQUIRRELS AND OTHER FUR-BEARERS. Illustrated. BIRD STORIES FROM BURROUGHS. Illustrated. HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
29349	----	CREATURES OF THE NIGHT _By the same Author._ IANTO THE FISHERMAN AND OTHER SKETCHES OF COUNTRY LIFE. _Illustrated with Photogravures. Large Crown 8vo._ _The Times._--"The quality which perhaps most gives its individuality to the book is distinctive of Celtic genius.... The characters ... are touched with a reality that implies genuine literary skill." _The Standard._--"Mr Rees has taken a place which is all his own in the great succession of writers who have made Nature their theme." _The Guardian._--"We can remember nothing in recent books on natural history which can compare with the first part of this book ... surprising insight into the life of field, and moor, and river." _The Outlook._--"This book--we speak in deliberate superlative--is the best essay in what may be called natural history biography that we have ever read." LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET [Illustration: "THE BROAD RIVER, IN WHICH SHE HAD SPENT HER EARLY LIFE." (_See_ p. 50.) _Frontispiece._] [Illustration: Decoration] CREATURES OF THE NIGHT A BOOK OF WILD LIFE IN WESTERN BRITAIN BY ALFRED W. REES AUTHOR OF "IANTO THE FISHERMAN" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET 1905 TO MYFANWY AND MORGAN "All life is seed, dropped in Time's yawning furrow, Which, with slow sprout and shoot, In the revolving world's unfathomed morrow, Will blossom and bear fruit." MATHILDE BLIND. PREFACE. The Editors of _The Standard_ have kindly permitted me to republish the contents of this book, and I tender them my thanks. The original form of these Studies of animal life has been extensively altered, and, in some instances, the titles have been changed. I am again greatly indebted to my brother, R. Wilkins Rees. His wide and accurate knowledge has been constantly at my disposal, and in the preparation of these Studies he has given me much indispensable advice and assistance. Similarity in the habits of some of the animals described has made a slight similarity of treatment unavoidable in certain chapters. I may also remark that, in unfrequented districts where beasts and birds of prey are not destroyed by gamekeepers, the hare is as much a creature of the night as is the badger or the fox. ALFRED W. REES. [Transcriber's Note: Obvious typographical errors have been corrected, and standardized the hyphenations, otherwise the text has been left as the original] CONTENTS. THE OTTER. I. THE HOLT AMONG THE ALDERS. PAGE Late fishing--A summer night--River voices--A master-fisher-- The old mansion--Lingering beauty--The otters' "oven"--Observant youngsters--Careful motherhood--The meadow playground--Falling leaves--A swollen river--Dabchick's oar-like wings--Mysterious proceedings--Migrating salmon--Hoar-fringed river-banks--An adventure with a sheep-dog--Slip-shod builders--Signs of spring--A change of diet--Fattening trout--The capture of a "kelt"--"The otter's bite"--Lone wanderings. 1-23 II. THE POOL BENEATH THE FARMSTEAD. A song of autumn--The salmon pool--Angling difficulties--Bullying a sportive fish--An absent-minded fisherman--At dawn and nightfall--A deserted home--Practical joking--A moorhen's fate--Playfulness of youth--The torrent below the fall--The garden ponds--Feasting on frogs--A watcher of the night--Hounds and hunters--Lutra's discretion--The spell of fear 24-40 III. THE GORGE OF ALLTYCAFN. The Hunt again--Fury of despair--A "strong place"--The terrier's discomfiture--Lutra's widowhood--Summer drought--Life at the estuary--Returning to the river--Scarce provender--A rare and unexpected sight--The blacksmith's baited trap--The Rock of Gwion--Peace 41-50 THE WATER-VOLE. I. OUR VILLAGE HOUNDS. Quiet life--Leisure hours--A winter pastime--A miscellaneous pack--The bobtail, and his fight with an otter--The terrier, and his friendship with fishermen--A family party--Expert diving--Hunt membership, and the landlord as huntsman--Fast and furious fun--A rival Hunt--The bobtail's death--The terrier's eccentricities--A pleasant study begins--Brown rats--Yellow ants--Brighteye's peculiarities--Evening sport 51-67 II. THE BURROW IN THE RIVER BANK. At dusk--A picturesque home--Main roads and lanes of the riverside people--A heron's alertness--A rabbit's danger signal--The reed-bed--The vole in fear--The wildest of the wild--Tell-tale footprints--The significance of a blood-stain--A weasel's ferocity--Maternal warnings--A rat-hunting spaniel--An invaded sanctuary--The terrier's opportunity--The water-vole chatters and sings--A gladsome life--Dangers sharpen intellect 68-82 III. WILD HUNTING. An otter-hunt--Fading afterglow--Spiritual influence of night--Lutra and Brighteye--Brighteye's song--Chill waters--A beacon in the gloom--A squirrel's derision--A silvery phantom--An old, lean trout--Restless salmon--Change of quarters--Brighteye's encounter with a "red" fish 83-98 IV. SAVED BY AN ENEMY. The "redd" in the gravel--In company with a water-shrew--Ravenous trout--The salmon's attack--An otter appears--Brighteye's bewilderment--Increasing vigilance--Playful minnows--A new water-entrance--The winter granary--Careful harvesting--The dipper's winter carol--The robin and the wren at vespers--Unsafe quarters--Rats on the move--A sequestered pool--Icebound haunts 99-115 V. THE COURAGE OF FEAR. The dawn--Restlessness of spring--A bold adventurer--A sharp fight--Cleared pathways--Differences of opinion--A tight snuggery--In defence of home--A monster rat--Temporary refuge--The voles and the cannibal trout--Family troubles--A winter evening in the village 116-129 THE FIELD-VOLE. I. HIDDEN PATHWAYS IN THE GRASS. A pleasant wilderness--Pitying Nature--Hedgerow sentinels--The story of the day--Familiar signs--An unknown scent--The agony of fear--A change of mood--The weasel's raid--A place of slaughter--Autumn preparations--A general panic--Hibernation--Winter sunshine--The red bank-voles--Owls and hawks 131-150 II. THE VALLEY OF OLWEN. The last of winter's stores--Renewed activity--The field-vole's food--A lively widow vole--An unequal encounter--First fond passion--Ominous sounds--A clumsy rabbit--An unimportant "affair"--An elopement--Nesting time--A fussy parent--A fox pays a visit--Also a carrion crow--Repairing damages 151-166 III. A BARREN HILLSIDE. A secluded pasture--Poachers and owls--An astute magpie--The vole a sire of many families--Plague--Nature's caprice--Privation and disease--Unexpected destroyers--A living skeleton--Starvation and death--An owl once more 167-175 THE FOX. I. THE LAST HUNT. A baffled marauder--The flesh of breeding creatures tough and tasteless--An unsavoury rat--The arrival of the Hunt--The fox sees his foes--The view-halloo--No respite, no mercy, no sanctuary--The last hope--A fearless vixen--Defiant to the end 177-193 II. A NEW HOME. Life in an artificial "earth"--Longing and despair--Contentment of maternity--Prisoners--A way of escape--Careless infancy--A precocious cub--First lessons--An obedient family--A fox's smile--Inborn passion for flesh--Favourite food of fox-cubs--The huntsman's desire 194-209 III. THE CUB AND THE POLECAT. Patience and watchfulness--How to capture field-voles--Winding trails--Ill-luck--A painful surprise--A fresh line of scent--Cost of a struggle--A luckless fortnight--The old hound and the "young entry"--A curiously shaped monster--Pursued by a lurcher-- Desertion--A vagrant bachelor 210-223 IV. A CRY OF THE NIGHT. The hunting call--A recollection--A joyous greeting--A woodland bride--The sting of a wasp--Preparation of a "breeding earth"--Meddlesome jays and magpies--A rocky fastness on the wild west coast--Vulp's retreat--The end of a long life--The fox's mask--Memories 224-240 THE BROWN HARE. I. THE UPLAND CORNFIELD. Midsummer--The leveret's birth--First wanderings--Instinct and teaching--The "creeps"--In the stubble--Habits change with seasons--The "sweet joint" of the rye--Lessons from a net and a lurcher--Rough methods--The man-scent--On the hills above the river-mists 241-260 II. MARCH MADNESS. March winds--Reckless jack-hares--Courtship and rivalry--Motherhood--A harmless conflict--An intruding fox--The faithless lover--Maternal courage--The falcon's "stoop"--The "slit-eared" hare--Countryside superstitions--On the river island--Patience rewarded--The hare as a swimmer--Bloodless sport--Habits of the hare in wet weather--The "form" in the root-field--Bereavements--Increasing caution-- Productiveness in relation to food--A poacher's ruse 261-277 III. THE CHASE. The basset-hound--Mirthful and dignified--A method of protecting hares--A suggestion--Formidable foes--"Fouling" the scent--A cry of distress--The home in the snow-drift--The renegade cat--An inoffensive life--A devastating storm 278-291 THE BADGER. I. A WOODLAND SOLITUDE. Haunts of a naturalist--Why certain animals are unmolested--Means of security--Fear of dogs and men--A place of interest--The "nocturnal" instinct--Droll revelry--Serious pastimes--Teaching by reward and punishment--Animals study the disposition of their young--Voices of the wilderness 293-309 II. HOME DISCIPLINE. Unwelcome attentions--An old badger's watchfulness--A clever trick--A presumptuous youngster--Instructions in selfishness--Harsh measures--The badger and the stoat--A long ramble 310-324 III. FEAR OF THE TRAP. Wisdom in Nature's ways--The laggard of the family--A salutary lesson--Hand-scent and foot-scent--An old Welsh law--The lesson of a "double" scent--The sorrel as medicine--A wild bees' nest--"In grease" 325-339 IV. THE WINTER "OVEN." The vixen and the hounds--The wounded rabbit--Old inhabitants of the wood--In touch with enemies--Twilight romps--Brock's quarrel with his sire--A bone of contention--Prompt chastisement--A mournful chorus--Wild fancies of a bachelor--A big battle--The terror of the flock--Unwarranted suspicion--Caught in the act 340-356 V. HILLSIDE TRAILS. The backward "drag"--Loyalty tested--A spiteful spouse--Spring cleaning--Carrying litter to the "set"--A numerous family--An eviction--Vulpicide--Important news--Old traditions of sport revived--A long day's toil--The secret history of a "draw"--An old burrow 357-373 THE HEDGEHOG. I. A VAGABOND HUNTER. The nest in the "trash"--Quaint wildlings--Neighbours and enemies--A feast--Spines and talons--The gipsy boy--A vagabond's sport--The nest in the wild bees' ruined home--Insects killed by frost--Winter quarters of the lizard and the snail 377-391 II. AN EXPERIENCE IN SNAKE-KILLING. An iron winter--March awakening--A coat of autumn leaves--The Rip Van Winkle of the woods--Sunshine and strength--Faulty eyesight--The hedgehog and the viper--Worsting an enemy--The moorhen's nest--Antics of weasels and snakes--The hedgehog's bleat--Odd and awkward courtship 392-406 NIGHT IN THE WOODS. I. HAUNTS OF THE BADGER AND THE FOX. Wild life at night--Long watching--A "set" with numerous inhabitants--The vixen and her cubs--Tolerant badgers--Vigilance--A moorland episode--"Chalking the mark"--Fox-signs--A habit of voles and rabbits--Patience, in vain--Sulky badgers--The vixen's lair--Foxes at play 407-426 II. THE CRAG OF VORTIGERN. Difficulties of night watching--Powers of observation in wild creatures--Night wanderers dislike rain--Eager helpers--A tempting invitation--Cry of young owls--Philip, the silent watcher--The fern-owl's rattle--The leaping places of the hare--Night gossip--The meaning of the white and black markings on a badger's head--The secrets of the cave 427-443 INDEX 445-448 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS From Drawings by Florence H. Laverock. "THE BROAD RIVER, IN WHICH SHE HAD SPENT HER EARLY LIFE." See p. 50 _Frontispiece._ "AN OPPORTUNITY CAME, WHICH, HAD SHE BEEN POISED IN THE AIR, COULD SCARCELY HAVE BEEN MISSED." _To face p._ 88 "THE BIG TROUT, IN HIS TORPEDO-LIKE RUSH TO CUT OFF BRIGHTEYE FROM SURE REFUGE." See p. 105 " " 104 "SHE WAS HOLDING ONE OF HER OFFSPRING BY THE NECK, IN PREPARATION FOR FLIGHT." See p. 139 " " 138 "HE RETIRED TO A ROCKY FASTNESS ON THE WILD WEST COAST." " " 238 "WHEN THE EARLY AUTUMN MOON ROSE OVER THE CORN." " " 290 "HE CLIMBED FROM HIS DOORWAY, AND STOOD MOTIONLESS, WITH UPLIFTED NOSTRILS, INHALING EACH BREATH OF SCENT." " " 364 "AS HE MEASURED HIS FULL LENGTH AGAINST THE TREE." See p. 419 " " 418 THE OTTER. I. THE HOLT AMONG THE ALDERS. I first saw Lutra, the otter-cub, while I was fishing late one summer night. Slow-moving clouds, breaking into fantastic shapes and spreading out great, threatening arms into the dark, ascended from the horizon and sailed northward under the moon and stars. Ever and anon, low down in the sky, Venus, like a clear-cut diamond suspended from one of its many twinkling points, glittered between the fringes of the clouds, or the white moon diffused soft light among the wreathing vapours that twisted and rolled athwart the heavens. In the shelter of the pines on the margin of the river, a ringdove, awakened by a bickering mate, fluttered from bough to bough; and his angry, muffled coo of defiance marred the stillness of the night. The gurgling call of a moorhen, mingling with the ripple of the stream over the ford, came from the reeds at a distant bend of the river. Nearer, the river, with varying cadence, rose and fell in uneven current over a rocky shelf, and then came on to murmur around me while I waded towards the edge of a deep, forbidding pool. In the smooth back-wash beyond the black cup of the pool a mass of gathered foam gleamed weirdly in the dark; and, further away, broad tangles of river-weed, dotted with the pale petals of countless flowers, floated on the shallow trout-reach extending from the village gardens to the cornfields below the old, grey church. In one of the terraced gardens behind me a cottager was burning garden refuse; tongues of flame leaped up amid billows of smoke, and from the crackling heap a myriad sparks shot out on every side. While the cottager moved about by the fire, his shadow lengthened across the river, which, reflecting the lurid glare, became strangely suggestive of unfathomable depths. The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool. Casting a white moth quietly over the stream, I noticed beyond the shadows a round mass rising from the centre of the current, moving against the flood, and sinking noiselessly out of sight. There could be no doubt that the shape and motion were those of an otter. To continue my sport would have been in vain with such a master-fisher in the pool, so I reeled in my line, and stood still among the ripples as they circled, muttering, around my knees. Presently the dim form of the otter reappeared a little further up-stream, and I caught sight of a glistening trout in the creature's mouth. The otter swam, with head just above water, towards the alders skirting the opposite bank, and then, turning sharply, was lost to sight near the overhanging roots of a sycamore. Immediately afterwards, a strange, flute-like whistle--as if some animal, having ascended from the depths of the river, had blown water through its nostrils in a violent effort to breathe--came from the whirlpool in the dense shadows of the pines: the otter's mate was hunting in the quiet water beyond the shelf of rock. Then a slight, rattling sound on the pebbly beach of a little bay near the sycamore indicated that the animal had landed and was probably devouring the captured fish. The leaping flames of the cottager's fire had been succeeded by a fitful glow, but the moon glided from behind the clouds and revealed a distinct picture of the parent otter standing on the shingle, in company with Lutra, her little cub. * * * * * A deserted mansion--to whose history, like the aged ivy to its crumbling walls, clung many a fateful legend--nestled under the precipitous woods in the valley. Time, taking advantage of neglect, had made a wilderness of the gardens, the lawns, and the orchards, which, less than a century ago, surrounded with quiet beauty this home of a typical old country squire. A few garden flowers still lingered near the porch; but the once well tended borders were overgrown with grass, or occupied with wild blossoms brought from the fields by the hundred agents employed by Nature to scatter seed. Owls inhabited the outhouses, and bats the chinks beneath the eaves. A fox had his "earth" in the shrubbery beyond the moss-grown pathway leading from the door to the gate at the end of the drive. A timid wood-pigeon often flew across from the pines and walked about the steps before the long-closed door. Near the warped window of the dismantled gun-room the end of a large water-pipe formed a convenient burrow for some of the rabbits that played at dusk near the margin of the shrubbery. This water-pipe led to the river's brink; and there, having been broken by landslips resulting from the ingress of the stream during flood, one of the severed parts of the tube formed, beneath the surface of the water, an outlet to a natural chamber high and dry in the bank. The upper portion of the pipe was choked with earth and leaves washed down from the fields by the winter rains. In this hollow "oven," on a heap of hay, moss, and leaves, brought hither by the parent otters through an opening they had tunnelled into the meadow, Lutra was born. Her nursery was shared by two other cubs. Blind, helpless, murmuring little balls of fur, they were tended lovingly by the dam. Soon the thin membrane between their eyelids dried and parted, and they awoke to a keen interest in their surroundings. Their chamber was dimly lit by the hole above; and the cubs, directly they were able to crawl, feebly climbed to a recess behind the shaft, where they blinked at the clouds that sailed beneath the dome of June, and at the stars that peeped out when night drew on, or watched the limpid water as, flowing past the end of the pipe below, it bore along a twirling leaf or rolled a pebble down the river-bed. Occasionally a salmon-pink wandered across from the shallows; for a moment or two the play of its tiny fins was seen at the edge of the pipe; and the cubs, excited by a sight of their future prey, stretched their necks and knowingly held their heads askew, so that no movement of the fish might escape their observation. Among flesh-eating mammals of many kinds, the females display signs of intelligence earlier than the males. Lutra being the only female among the cubs, she naturally grew to be the most keenly observant, and often identified the finny visitor before her brothers ventured to decide that it was not a moving twig. The dam spent most of the day asleep in the "holt," and most of the night fishing in the pools. Inheriting the disposition of their kind, the cubs also were more particularly lively by night than by day. Directly the cold dew-mist wreathed the grass at the entrance of the burrow, they commenced to sport and play, tumbling over each other, grunting and fighting in mimic anger, or pretending to startle their mother directly she entered the pipe on returning at intervals from fishing. One night, while the cubs were rougher than ever in their fun, Lutra slipped off the platform and fell headlong down the pipe into the stream. But almost before she had time to be frightened she discovered that to swim was as easy as to play; and she rose to the surface with a faint, flute-like call. She splashed somewhat wildly, for her stroke was not yet perfected by practice. Hearing the commotion and instantly recognising its meaning, the dam dived quietly and swiftly right beneath the cub, and bore her gently back to the platform, where the rest of the family, having missed their companion, had for the moment ceased to romp and fight. A few nights after this incident, the mother commenced in earnest to educate her young. Tenderly taking each in turn, she carried the nurslings into the water, and taught them, by a method and in language known only to themselves, how to dive and swim with the least possible exertion and disturbance. Henceforward, throughout the summer, and till the foliage on the trees near the pool, chilled by the rapid fall of the temperature every evening, became thinner in the breath of the early autumn wind, the otter-cubs fished, and frolicked, and slept, or were suckled by their dam. Sometimes the whole family, together with the old dog-otter, adjourned to the middle of the meadow, and in the tall, dew-drenched grass skipped like kittens, though with comical clumsiness rather than with the agility they displayed in the water. Like kittens, too, the cubs played with their mother, in spite of wholesome chastisement when they nipped her muzzle rather more severely than even long-suffering patience could allow. The dam was at all times loath to correct her offspring, but the sire rarely endured the familiarity of the cubs for long. Directly they became unduly presumptuous he lumbered off to the river, as if he considered it much more becoming to fish than to join in the sport of his progeny. Perhaps, indeed, he deemed a change of surroundings essential that he might forget the liberties taken with him by his disrespectful youngsters. When about three months old, Lutra began to show promise of that grace of form and motion which in later life was to be one of her chief distinctions. Her body, tail, and head gradually lengthened; and, as her movements in the water became more sinuous and easy, she tired less rapidly when fishing. Autumn passed on towards winter, the nights were long, the great harvest of the leaves fell thickly on the meadow and the stream, the mountain springs were loosed in muddy torrents, and the river roared, swollen and turbid, past the "holt" under the trailing alder-twigs. The moorhens came back from the ponds where they had nested in April and May; the wild duck and the teal flew south from oversea, and in the night descended circling to the pool; a dabchick from the wild gorge down-river took up his abode in the sedges. The quick jerk of the dabchick's oar-like wings caused much wonder to Lutra, when, walking on the river-bed, she looked up towards the moonlit sky, and saw the little grebe dive like a dark phantom into the deep hole beneath the rocky ledges of Penpwll. Once the otter-cub, acting under an irresistible impulse, swam towards the bird and tried to seize him. She managed to grip one of his feet, as they trailed behind him while he dived, but the grebe escaped, leaving in the assailant's mouth only a morsel of flesh torn from a claw. In the warm evenings of late summer and the first weeks of autumn, the angler usually visited the shingle opposite the water-pipe, and waded up-stream casting for trout. The otter-cubs, grown wiser than when the angler saw them near the sycamore, discreetly stayed at home, for they had been taught to regard this strange being, Man, known by his peculiar footfall and upright walk, as a dreaded enemy scarcely less formidable than the hounds and the terriers that at intervals accompanied him for the express purpose of hunting such river-folk as otters and rats. As yet Lutra had never seen the hounds, nor, till the following summer, was she to know the import of her instinctive timidity. Roaming, hungry, and venturesome, she had chanced at nightfall to catch a glimpse, during an occasional gleam of moonlight, of a large trout struggling frantically on the surface of the water not far from the angler, had heard the click of the reel and the swish of the landing net, and had concluded that these mysterious proceedings gave cause for fear. The end of October drew nigh; and, when the last golden leaves began to fall from the beeches, the angler ceased to frequent the riverside. Henceforward, except when a sportsman passed with his gun, the otters' haunt remained in peace. Always at break of day, however, when the pigeons left their roosting places in the pines, an old, decrepit woman tottered down the steps from the cottage door to the rock at the brim of the pool, and filled her pails with water. But the creatures felt little alarm: they had become accustomed to her presence in the dawn. Lonely and childless and poor, she knew more than any one else of the otters; but she kept their whereabouts a secret, for the creatures lent an interest to her cheerless, forsaken life, and recalled to her halting memory the long past days when her husband told her tales of hunting and fishing as she sat, a young and pretty girl, at her spinning wheel in the light of the flickering "tallow-dip." Warm, cloudy weather continued from the late autumn through the winter--except for a few days of frost and snow in December--so that food was never scarce, and Lutra thrived and grew. The great migration of salmon took place, but she was not sufficiently big and strong to grip and hold these monster fish. Her own weight hardly exceeded that of the smallest of them, so she had to be content with a mixed diet of salmon-fry and trout, varied with an occasional slug or snail that she chanced to find in the meadow. For a brief period after the fall of snow in December, the frost fettered the fields, and the moon shone nightly on a white waste through which the river flowed, like a black, uneven line, between its hoar-fringed banks. Then Lutra, bold in the unbroken stillness of Nature's perfect sleep, climbed the steps leading to a village garden, and searched the refuse heap for scraps discarded from the cottager's meagre board. She even wandered further, crossed the road, and passed under a gate into the fields near the outlying stables of the inn. Here some birds had roosted in the hazels by the fence, and the cub stood watching them, like the fox beneath the desired but distant grapes. A rough, mongrel sheep-dog, having missed his master, who had been carousing in the inn that evening, chanced to be trotting homeward to the farm on the hill, and, sniffing at the gate, discovered the cub in the hedgerow. With a mad yell the dog tore through the briars at the side of the gate-post; but Lutra was equally quick, and by the time her enemy was in the field she had dodged under the bars and was shuffling away, as quickly as her short legs permitted, down the garden to the river. The dog turned, crashed back through the briars, and gained rapidly on the otter. He reached her just as she gained the top of the wall that, on a level with the garden, formed a barrier against the river-floods. Lutra felt a sharp nip on her flank, and was bowled over by the impetuous rush of her foe; but she regained her feet in an instant, and jumped without hesitation into the water. The river was shallow where she fell; the dog followed her; and for a moment she was in deadly peril. But before the sheep-dog recovered from his sudden plunge, Lutra swam into the deep water and dived straight for home, leaving the plucky mongrel standing in the ripples, with a look of almost human disgust and astonishment on his intelligent face. He may have reasoned thus: "Surely I caught that otter. But stay, I must have been dreaming. 'Tis queer, though: I'm in the river instead of on the road to the farm." This, for Lutra, was perhaps the only noteworthy episode of her early life. The otter-cub was about nine months old when spring came to the valley. The water-weed grew in long filaments from the gravelly shallows. The angler, who had ceased to frequent the riverside at the approach of winter, returned to the pool, but only by day, and then Lutra dozed in her retreat. In the pines on the margin of the river the blue ringdoves were busy constructing the rude makeshift that was to serve the purpose of a nest. Instead of seeking how to construct a perfect dwelling place, these slipshod builders spent most of their hours in courtship. Sometimes, owing to the carelessness of the lackadaisical doves, a dry stick released by bill or claw would fall pattering among the branches, and drop, with a plash, into the river, where it would be borne by the current past the otter's lair. From every bush and brake along the sparkling stream the carols of joyous birds floated on the morning mists. The first green leaves of the bean peeped in the gardens; the first broods of the year's ducklings launched forth, like heartstrong adventurers, into the shallows by the cottage walls. In the sunny glades the big, fleshy buds of the chestnut and the light-green, tapering sprouts of the sycamore expanded under the influence of increasing warmth. Finches and sparrows, on the lookout for flies, hovered above the ankle-deep drifts of leaf-mould in the lane below the trees, or crossed and re-crossed between the budding boughs. Only a few of these many signs were observed by Lutra, it is true, for she spent the day in hiding. But at dusk she heard the bleating of the lambs, and the musical note of a bell that had been slung round the neck of the patriarch of the flock in order to deter foxes from meddling with the new-born weaklings then under the big ram's care. She was made aware of the presence of spring by the "scent in the shadow and sound in the light." The hatching of countless flies in the leaf-mould was not watched by the birds only: Lutra also knew that the swarms had arrived; and spring was welcome if only for this. For months she had fed on lean and tasteless trout exhausted by spawning. Now, instead of lying under stones or haunting the deep basin of the pool, the trout rose to the surface and wandered abroad into the shallows. There the languid fish became fit for food again, and more capable of eluding the occasional long, stern chases of the otter. But Lutra was never disconcerted by the fact that the fish were strong and active; as with all carnivorous creatures, her sporting instincts were so highly developed that she revelled in overcoming difficulties, especially because she felt her own strength growing from day to day. During winter the trout had fed on worms and "sundries." Now, their best and heartiest meals were of flies. Daily, at noon, swarms of ephemerals played over the water, and the trout rose from the river-bed to feed. At first they "sported" ravenously, rising quick and sure to any insect their marvellous vision might discern. Afterwards they fed daintily, disabling and drowning with a flip of the tail many an insect that fluttered at the surface, and choosing from their various victims some unusually tasty morsel, such as a female "February red" about to lay her eggs. At this time, also, the plump, cream-coloured larvæ of the stone-fly in the shallows were growing within their well cemented caddis-cases and preparing for maturity. So the trout fattened on caddis-grubs and flies, and the otter-cub, in corresponding measure, became sleek, well-grown, and spirited. In the winter Lutra had imperceptibly acquired the habit of swimming and diving across-stream, just as an old fox, when hunting in the woods, quarters his ground systematically across-wind, and so detects the slightest scent that may be wafted on the breeze. Nature had been specially kind to her; she was fashioned perfectly, and in the river reigned supreme. Her body was long, supple, and tapering; her brown fur was close and short, so that the water never penetrated to her skin and her movements were not retarded as they would have been had she possessed the loose, draggling coat of an otter-hound. She seemed to glide with extraordinary facility even against a rapid current. Her skin was so tough that on one occasion when, by accident, she was carried down a raging rapid and thrown against a jagged rock, a slight bruise was the only result. Her legs were short and powerful, her toes webbed, and her tail served the purpose of a rudder. Nostrils, eyes, and ears--all were small and water-tight, and set so high on the skull that, when she rose to breathe, little more than a speck could be seen on the surface, unless she felt it safe to raise her head and body further for the sake of ease in plunging deep. When Lutra was nine months old she caught her first salmon; and, though the fish was only a small "kelt," returning, weak from spawning, to the sea, the capture was a fair test of the cub's prowess and daring. It happened thus. She was walking up the river-bed one boisterous night, when she saw a dark form hovering close to the surface in the middle of a deep pool. Her eyes, peculiarly fitted for watching objects immediately above, quickly detected the almost motionless fish. The eyes of the salmon were also formed for looking upwards, and so Lutra remained unnoticed by her prey. She stole around the hovering fish, that the bubbles caused by her breathing might make no noticeable disturbance as they rose to the surface, and then, having judged to a nicety the strength of the stream, paddled with almost imperceptible motion towards the salmon. Before the fish had time to flee it was caught in Lutra's vice-like jaws and borne, struggling desperately and threshing the water into foam, to the bank. There the otter-cub killed her victim by severing the vertebræ immediately behind its gills. Otters well nigh invariably destroy large-sized fish by attacking them in this particular part. And, according to a similar method, stoats and polecats, whenever possible, seize their victims near the base of the brain. In yet another way Lutra proved her relationship to the weasel tribe: just as our miniature land-otters eat only small portions of the rabbits they kill, so the cub was content with a juicy morsel behind the salmon's head--a morsel known among sportsmen as "the otter's bite." Soon after the cub had killed her first salmon she separated from her parents and brothers, travelled far down-river, and wandered alone. In the human character, development becomes especially marked directly independence of action is assumed; henceforward parental guidance counts for comparatively little. And so it was with Lutra. II. THE POOL BENEATH THE FARMSTEAD. Last year, in autumn mornings, when the big round clouds sailing swiftly overhead reminded me of springtide days and joyous skylarks in the heavens, but when all parent birds were silent, knowing how dark winter soon would chill the world, a thrush, that not long since had been a fledgling in his nest amid a shrubbery of box, came to the fruit-tree near my window, and, in such low tones that only I could hear them, warbled that all in earth and sky was beautiful. To Lutra, lonely like the thrush, and, like the thrush, not yet aware of pain and hunger, the world seemed bright and filled with happiness. At first, like a young fox that, till he learns the fear of dogs and men, steals chickens from a coop near which an old, experienced fox would never venture, she was, perhaps, a little too indifferent to danger. In her perfect health and irresponsible freedom, she paid but slight attention to the alarm signals of other creatures of the night. Up-river, at a bend below a hillside farmstead some distance from our village, is a broad, deep salmon-pool, fringed with alders and willows. Right across the upper end of this pool stretches a broken ledge of rock, over which, in flood, the waters boom and crash into a seething basin whence thin lines of vapour--blue and grey when the day is dull, or gleaming with the colours of the rainbow when the sun, unclouded, shines aslant the fall--ceaselessly arise, and quiver on the waves of air that catch their movement from the restless swirls beneath. But in dry summer weather the ledge is covered with green, slippery weed, the curving fall is smooth as glass, and the rapid loses half its flood-time strength. This pool, though containing some of the finest salmon "hovers" in the river, is nowadays but seldom fished. Since the old generation of village fishermen has passed away it seems to have gradually lost its popularity. The right bank of the river above and below the pool is for miles so thickly wooded that anglers prefer to pass up-country before unpacking their rods. From the left bank it is useless for any angler who has not made a study of the pool to attempt to reach the "hovers." Under far more favourable conditions than these, the throw necessary to place a fly on even the nearest of the "hovers" would be almost the longest that could with accuracy be made. But the angler is baffled at the outset by the presence of a steep slope behind him. I well remember two instances when I was tricked by the self-conceit which led me to suppose that my skill in casting was of no mean order. Once, while the river was bank-high after flood, I happened to be throwing an unusually long line, with careless ease, over the lower end of a pool, where, before, I had never seen a fish. I was, no doubt, thinking of something quite unconnected with fishing, otherwise I should not have wandered thus far from the spot where I generally reeled in my line. A salmon effectually aroused me by a terrific rush at my fly. I "struck" hard, and the fly, after a momentary check, flew up into the air. I am not one of those anglers who give rest to a salmon in the belief that, after rising, he requires time to recover from his disappointment at having failed to catch the lure. I believe in "sticking to" a fish, perhaps because the first I ever hooked was one I had bullied ceaselessly during the whole of a spring evening. And so I tried hard and often to tempt that sportive fish again; but after the careless, easy casting which resulted in the rise, I could not by any means throw satisfactorily over the tail of the pool. However I tried to do so, the line would double awkwardly as it reached the water, or would curl back into the rapid on the near side of the "hover," or the fly would splash in a most provoking manner as it alighted on the stream. So at last I left the riverside. Henceforth, I attempted the same long cast whenever I passed the pool. I lost many flies, and never again rose a fish. But I was convinced that I had discovered a "hover" new to the village fishermen, till my old friend Ianto chaffed me into the belief that the salmon I had seen was a "passenger," and, probably, a "spent kelt" in such a weak condition that for it to stay in the rough water higher up the pool was impossible. On another occasion, in early days when my ignorance of the river and of fishing sorely troubled both Ianto and myself, as I was wading down-stream along the edge of a pool a grilse rose, "head and tail," about twenty yards below my fly. Using my long gaff-handle as a staff, I walked slowly towards the fish, casting carefully all the way. I was so absorbed in my work that I did not know I was moving into deep water till I found that my wading stockings had filled. I then stopped, and, lengthening my line at each successive "throw," sent my fly nearer and still nearer to the grilse. How I managed the long, straight cast that presently resulted in my fly passing down the "hover," I do not know. The grilse rose sharply at the lure, but I "struck" too late. I reeled in my line, and after a few minutes began once more to cast. Now, however, try as I might, I could not get the line out to the distance required; it would not fall straight and true. In desperation I endeavoured to overcome the difficulty by sheer strength. I swung my arms aloft; my old hickory rod creaked and groaned with the increasing strain, then snapped immediately the tension was released with the return of the line; and, a second afterwards, the grilse took my fly and bolted away down-stream. All caution left me; I was "into a fish"--that was enough. In haste to catch my rod-top as it slipped down the line from the butt, I made one step forward, and fell over head and ears into a deep hole beneath the shelf of rock on which I had been standing. When I recognised what had happened I was clinging to an alder-root near the bank; thence, breathless, I lifted myself till I was safe on a tree-trunk above the pool. My rod and cap were drifting rapidly away; but, after divesting myself of half my dripping garments, I recovered the rod in a backwater below the neighbouring wood. All my line had been taken out, the gut collar had been snapped, and the fly had undoubtedly been carried off by the grilse. In those old days of which I have elsewhere written,[1] Ianto and I often resorted to the wide, deep pool under the farm. Sometimes, during summer, we were there before daybreak, fishing for the salmon that only then or in the dusk would deign to inspect our "Dandy" fly. And there, in the summer nights, we frequently captured, with the natural minnow, the big trout that wandered from the rapids to feed in the quiet waters by the alders. Ianto knew the pool so well that even in the darkest night he would wade along the slippery, weed-grown shelf near the raging fall, to troll in the shadows above him. Had the old man taken one false step he would have entered on a struggle for life compared with which my own adventure after hooking the grilse would have been insignificant. For several months free, happy Lutra made her daytime abode in a "holt" among the alder-roots fringing this pool. She loved in the long winter nights to hear the winnow-winnow of powerful wings as the wild ducks circled down towards the pool, the whir of the grey lag-geese far in the mysterious sky, and the whistle of the teal and the gurgle of the moorhens among the weeds close by the river's brim. Crouched on a grassy mound beside the rapids, she could see each movement on the surface of the pool. The wild ducks splattered and quacked as they paddled busily hither and thither, visiting each little bay and reed-clump at the water's edge. Sometimes, surrendering themselves wholly to sport and play, they formed little groups of two or three; and now one group, and then another, would race, half-swimming, half-flying, from bank to bank or from the rock to the salmon "hover" at the lower end of the pool. The otter remembered her experience with the dabchick, and believed that to capture a full-grown duck would tax her utmost strength and cause a general alarm. Once, however, excited by the wild ducks' sport, she slipped quietly from the mound, dived deep, and from the river-bed shot up in the midst of the birds just as they had congregated to settle a point of difference in a recent event, and to discuss a second part of their sports' programme for the night. As the birds, panic-stricken, scattered on every side, and, following each other in two long lines that joined in the form of a wedge, flew up into the starlit sky, Lutra watched them eagerly for a few moments; then, without a ripple, she sank below the surface and returned to her watch on the mound. For a while after the ducks had left the pool, nothing could be heard but the ceaseless noise of falling water. But as the night drew on, a moorhen ventured from the shelter of the alders, and, like a tiny, buoyant boat, launched out into the pool. The otter, with appetite whetted by recent sport among the ducks, again left her hiding place and silently vanished into the stream. Borne by the current, she reached, with scarcely an effort, a point in the swirling depths from which she could catch a glimpse of the dim outline of the floating bird. Then, rising swiftly, she gripped the moorhen from beneath, dived across to the "hover," and, having killed and skinned her prey, feasted at leisure. There were times in the second summer of her existence when Lutra, like the wild ducks, seemed to abandon every thought of the possibility of danger. Simply for the love of exercise and in enjoyment of the tranquil night, she played about the pool till the dawn peeped over the hills; then, tired of her frolic, she sought her secret "holt," and, curling her tail about her face and holding her hind-paws closely between her fore-paws, fell asleep. While she gambolled in the water, even her quickest movements were as graceful as those of a salmon stemming the rapids and leaping into the shallows above the rock. Diving into the depths, she avoided with scarcely an effort the tangled roots and branches, that, washed thither by the floods, had long been the dread of anglers when heavy fish were hooked. Ceasing all exertion as she turned into the current, she floated to the surface and was borne away down-stream. She swam at highest speed from the tail to the throat of the pool, and drifted idly back to the place from which she had started; then, changing her methods, she skirted slowly the edge of the current, and with one long, straight dive shot down from the head of the rapids to the still water near her "holt." From playing thus about the pool, the otter learned the power of the current, and how it hastened or retarded her while she pursued her prey. But most of all, during the hours of the placid night, she delighted to frolic in the torrent immediately below the rock, where, matching her strength against that of the river, she leaped and dived and tumbled through the foam, or, lying on her back amid a shower of spray, stretched wide her limbs and suffered the whirlpool to draw her, unresisting, into its vortex deep beneath the fall. Lutra sometimes noticed, while she drifted with the current, that the scent of her kindred lay strong at the surface not far from her "holt." One still, moonlit night the scent indicated that several full-grown otters had at intervals come from the trout-reaches down-stream, and had landed in a reed-bed at the lower end of the pool. It led away from the river through the valley, along by a number of stagnant ponds in an old garden near the farm, and thence to a point beyond a bend where the river flowed almost parallel to its course at the pool. As the otter, inquisitively following the line of the scent, came to the ponds, she heard the croaking of countless frogs hidden in the duckweed that lay over the entire surface of the water. Lutra made ample use of the opportunity for a feast--frogs were the greatest delicacies known to her, and she had never before found them to be so plentiful. Dawn was breaking when, in her onward journey, she reached the river; so she drifted around the bend, dived over the fall, and returned to her home beneath the alder-roots. It happened that the otters whose "spur" (footprints) Lutra had followed to the frog-ponds retraced their steps towards the pool, and in doing so suddenly discovered that the scent of a man lay strong on the trodden grass. A villager, knowing the eagerness with which otters seek for frogs, and that they often cross a narrow neck of land at the bend of a stream, had for a time kept watch at the lower end of the old farm garden. He was anxious that the hounds, which, on the previous day, had arrived at the village, should enjoy good sport during their stay in the neighbourhood. But he saw nothing of the animals he had come to watch; as soon as they detected his whereabouts they retreated hastily to the pond at the upper end of the garden, gained the river, and, like Lutra, swam homewards around the bend. But, less familiar than Lutra with the strength of the current, they left the water as they approached the fall, and crept through the deep shadows of the alder-roots till they reached a point at some distance beyond the pool. These events of the night were of the utmost importance to the otters as connected with the events of the morrow. During the early morning the villager paid a second visit to the garden, and examined closely the soft mud at the margin of the ponds. The remains of the otters' feast--the skins and the eyes of frogs--lay in several places, and, near the largest of the ponds, the otters' "spur" showed clearly that the animals had for some time been busy there. Taking a straight course to the river above the pools, the watcher again detected the marks of the otters on the sloping bank. By the riverside below the garden, however, he failed to observe any further sign, and so concluded that the animals had probably left the water at the opposite bank. When, later, the Hunt crossed the bridge on its way up-stream, the villager told his story to the Master, who immediately led his hounds over the hill-top in the direction of the ponds. This unexpected movement drew the followers of the Hunt away from the river; they imagined that the hounds were to be taken across country to a well known gorge where, during a previous season, good sport had been obtained. At the farm, the Master, leaving the hounds to the care of the whippers-in, waited till the villagers and the farmers had congregated in the yard. He then addressed the crowd, telling them that otters had visited the garden during the night and probably were still in hiding there, and that, if good sport were desired, it would be wise for his followers to form two groups and watch the fords above and below the river-bend, while he, alone, accompanied the hounds to the garden; his chief reason, he said, for pointing out to them the advisability of leaving him was that if an otter still remained near the pond it should be given every chance of reaching the river without molestation. The crowd, recognising the wisdom of the Master's remarks, moved off with the whippers-in to the fords; and, when all was in readiness, the pack was led into the garden. One, and another, and yet another of the "young entry" soon gave tongue; then, after a minute's deliberation, an old, experienced hound raised his head from the rushes, uttered a single deep, clear note, climbed the garden hedge, and galloped across the meadow towards the river. The rest of the hounds speedily found the line of the "drag," but all came to a check at the water's edge. They were taken back to the ponds, and thence to the pool by the farm, but the scent was weak above the waterfall. They again "cast" to the upper end of the garden, and onward to the river. Carefully searching every hole and corner in the bank, they drew down-stream around the bend, and at last struck the scent of the otters among the reeds below the pool. Lutra heard them tearing madly past, heard also the dull thud of human footsteps above her "holt," but she discreetly remained close-hidden in her sleeping chamber. For hours, in a pool beyond the trout-reach, her visitors of the previous night were hustled to and fro, and frequent cries of "Gaze! gaze!" and "Bubble avent!" mingled with the clamour of the hounds. Then the commotion seemed suddenly to subside. After an interval the hounds splashed by once more among the alder-roots, and the thud of human footsteps resounded in the "holt." In the silence that followed, Lutra, reassured, dived from her "holt," and, paddling gently to the surface, saw the last stragglers of the Hunt climbing the slope towards the farm. That night no otter from the down-stream trout-reach wandered to the salmon-pool beneath the farm. The water-voles and the moorhens were unusually alert as they swam hither and thither in the little bays along the edge of the current. The fear of man and his loud-tongued hounds rested, like a spell, on the creatures of the river. Even Lutra felt its power; but when the scent of her foes became so faint as to be lost in the fragrance of the meadow-sweet along the river-bank, she ventured into the old garden, and, on returning to the pool, played again in the raging water by the fall. III. THE GORGE OF ALLTYCAFN. When Lutra had attained her full size and strength she was wooed and won by a young dog-otter of her own age, and lived with him in a "holt" among the great rocks of Alltycafn. Now, again, the Hunt arrived in the neighbourhood. It was a lovely morning in May. The sun shone brightly; the leaves were breaking from their sheaths; the birds sang blithely in the trees. Suddenly the otters, resting in their "holt," were awakened by a loud commotion--the sounds of hurrying feet, reverberating in the chamber among the boulders, and then the music of the shaggy hounds, varied occasionally by the yap-yap of the terriers. The noise drew rapidly nearer. Presently a man, in red stockings and vest, blue breeches and coat, and a blue hunting cap bearing an otter's "pad" mounted in silver, poked among the boulders with a steelshod pole. The dog-otter was now thoroughly alarmed. He rushed from his lair, dived straight into the stream, headed through the seething current, and rose in the adjoining pool. Threatened by a hound, he dived again, walked over the gravel, and swam under the gnarled roots of an oak. The members of the Hunt stood watching the bubbles, filled by his breath, as they floated up and broke. The hounds swam pell-mell in hot pursuit, and the otter was forced to turn up-stream. Moving cautiously under the rocky ledges, he regained the "holt," where his terrified mate awaited his return. Sorely pressed, the dog-otter hid close, hoping to baffle his relentless pursuers. But a bristling, snarling terrier soon came down the shaft from the bank. Maddened, and courageous with the fury of despair, Lutra seized the intruder by the muzzle, and, in the combat that ensued, sorely mangled her assailant's lips and nostrils. Then, as her mate dived out once more and swam down-stream, she also left the chamber. She rose immediately among the surrounding boulders, and hid in the furthest recess. With nostrils, eyes, and ears raised slightly above the surface of the water, she stayed there, unseen and hardly daring to breathe, and, with strained senses watched closely every movement of hounds and hunters. Fortunately for Lutra, the arch of the boulders below was shaped so peculiarly that the scent of her breath and body was sucked into a cavity and carried down-stream, and, passing beneath the stone, mingled, at the raging cataract near the rock, with air in the bubbles formed by the tumult of the waters. These bubbles, instead of bursting, were drawn into the vortex of a little whirlpool; and the keen-nosed hounds, though suspicious, could form no definite opinion as to the presence of a second otter among the rocks. The terrier knew the secret, but he had been put out of action and sent off, post haste, to the nearest veterinary surgeon. Lutra saw her tormentors--some of them of the pure otter-hound breed, some half otter-hound, half fox-hound, and others, again, fox-hounds trained for otter-hunting--rushing backwards and forwards in the water and on the bank. Another terrier, led by a boy, strained at his leash near the river's brink. Women, dressed, like the men, in smart scarlet and blue, and as ready to wade into the stream as the huntsman himself, stood leaning on their otter-poles not far away. At the fords above and below the "pool," the dog-otter's egress was barred by outposts of the enemy standing and splashing, in complete lines, from bank to bank. Once, in despair, the otter actually tried to break through the human chain; but a hunter "tailed" him for a moment, and then dropped him into the deeper water beyond the ford. The sound of horn, the shouts of men, the deep-toned notes of great hounds, the shrill yapping of eager terriers, and the splashing and the plunging on every side, almost bewildered Lutra. Fearing to move from her shelter, she floated in the deep basin of the hidden pool beside the cataract, till at last the commotion gradually subsided, and hounds and hunters passed out of sight down-stream. Lutra awaited her mate's return, but in vain. Not till night did she venture from her hiding place. When, however, the stars appeared, she swam wearily from pool to pool, calling, calling, calling. She explored each little bay, each crevice in the rock. She walked up the dry bed of a tributary brook, and searched among the gnarled roots and the dry, brown grass fringing the gravelly watercourse. She skirted the meadows and the rocks where the hunters had beaten down the gorse and the brambles near her home; thence she returned to the pool. Hitherto she had loved the placid night; to her the stillness was significant of peace. But now that stillness was full of sadness, and weariness, and monotony. The shadows were deep within the gorge; from the distant woods the hoot of an owl mocked her loneliness. She heard no glad answering cry. Still calling, calling, calling, she floated through the shadows, and out into the moonlight shimmering on the placid water below the gorge; but she sought and called in vain. Lutra spent the rest of that year in widowhood. In consequence of her fight with the terrier, and also because of her grief, her two little cubs were still-born. Midsummer came, and the shallows were almost choked with weeds. The countryside experienced a phenomenal period of drought, and for weeks the river seemed impure and almost fetid. Night after night, and steadily travelling westward, Lutra took short cuts across country from pool to pool. Late in July she reached the estuary of the river; and for the remaining months of summer fished in the bay, finding there a pleasant change in her surroundings. Once she was chased by some men in a boat, who shot at her as she appeared for an instant to breathe. Quick and watchful, she dived at the flash, and the pellets fell harmlessly overhead. Again she rose, and again she dived just in time to avoid the leaden hail. Then she doubled back towards the estuary, and the baffled sportsmen sailed away across the bay. As autumn came once more she returned to the river, and fed chiefly on the migrating eels that swarmed in the hollows near the bank. Presently, by many a nightly journey, she gained the upper reaches, where she lived, till the following spring, close to her old home. The winter was long and severe. In January, the fields were buried in snow, the roads were as smooth and hard as glass, and the well-remembered pool beneath the pines was almost covered with a great sheet of ice. At this time another young dog-otter began to show Lutra considerable attention. The village children often saw the pairing otters, for the animals, hard pressed, had perforce to fish by day instead of by night. All night the trout lay dormant under the stones in the bed of the river, and only at noon did they rise to the surface on the lookout for hardy ephemerals that, in a short half hour of warmth, were hatched at the margin of the stream. Lutra and her companion followed the fish, and afforded a rare, unexpected sight as, bold with hunger, they ascended to breathe between the sheets of ice in the pool by the village gardens. At night the otters wandered over the snow, and sometimes visited the hillside farms. There, among rotting refuse-heaps, they discovered worms and insects sheltering in genial warmth. When exceptionally hungry, Lutra and her mate would dig into the chambers of the mole and the field-vole in the meadows, and search ravenously for the inmates. Among the roots of the spreading oaks, the otters found, also, such tit-bits as the larvæ of moths and beetles. A starved pigeon fallen from the pine-boughs; an occasional moorhen weak and almost defenceless; a wild duck that Lutra had captured by darting from beneath a root while the indiscreet bird was feeding, head downwards, at the river's brink--these were among the varied items of the hungry otters' food. Life was indeed hard to maintain. And, to crown the misfortunes of the ice-bound winter, Lutra's matrimonial affairs were once more cruelly disturbed: her mate was caught in a steel trap that Ned the blacksmith had baited and laid in the meadows near the village bridge. He had marked the otters' wanderings by their footprints in the snow, and had then matured his plans. The calamity occurred one morning, just before daybreak, as the otters were returning to the river from a visit to a hen-coop, where they had found an open door and a solitary chicken. The trap was placed on the grass by the verge of the stream. A light fall of snow had covered it, but had left exposed the entrails of a chicken which, by coincidence, formed the tempting bait. Distressed and perplexed, Lutra stayed by the dog-otter, trying in vain to release him from his sufferings. The trapped creature, beside himself with rage and fear and pain, attempted to gnaw through his crunched and almost severed foot; but as the dawn lightened the east, and before the limb could be freed, Ned the blacksmith was to be seen hurrying to the spot. Lutra dived out of sight, and, unable to interpose, watched, for a second time, a riverside tragedy. Her attachment, however, had not been of so ardent a nature that bereavement left her disconsolate. Before April she forgot her trapped friend, and was mated again. Lutra's new spouse had his home in the tributary stream of a neighbouring valley. So, when the snows had melted and the rime no longer touched with fairy fingerprints the tracery of the leafless boughs, and when Olwen the White-footed had come once more into the valley called after her name, Lutra forsook the broad river in which she had spent her early life, and, with her companion and a promising family, lived contented under the frowning Rock of Gwion, secure in peace and solitude, at least for a season, from the shaggy otter-hounds. THE WATER-VOLE. I. OUR VILLAGE HOUNDS. Not many years ago the pleasures of life among my neighbours here in the country were simpler and truer than they are to-day. Perhaps in that bygone time money was more easily made, or daily need was met with smaller expenditure. It may be, too, that family cares were then less pressing, or that a prolonged period of general prosperity had been the privilege of rich and poor alike in this green river-valley around my home. In those days, to which I often look back with regretful yearning, everybody seemed to have leisure; the ties of friendship were not severed by malicious gossip; old and young seemed to realise how good it was to have pleasant acquaintanceships and to be in the sunshine and the open air. Fathers played with their children in the street: one winter morning, when, after a heavy fall of snow and a subsequent frost, the ground was as slippery as glass, I watched a white-haired shopkeeper, lying prone on a home-made toboggan, with his feet sprawling behind for rudder, steer a load of merry youngsters full tilt down a steep lane behind his house. The sight was so exhilarating that I also forgot I was not a child; and on the second journey I joined the sportive party, and came to grief because the shopkeeper kicked too quickly at a turn in the course and sent me with a double somersault into the ditch. It happened in those days that in the miscellaneous pack of mongrels our village sportsmen gathered together when they went rabbit-shooting among the dense coverts of the hillsides were two exceptionally clever dogs--a big, shaggy, bobtail kind of animal, and a little, smooth-coated beast resembling a black-and-tan terrier. The big dog, Joker, lived at a farm in the village, and, during the leisure of summer, when rabbiting did not engage his attention, took to wandering by the river, joining the bathers in their sport and poking his nose inquisitively under the alder-roots along the bank. While, one sultry noon, the fun in the bathing pool was at its height, Joker routed an otter from a hiding place near which the bathers were swimming with the current, and a terrific fight took place in the shallows before the _dwrgu_ made good his escape. The dog was found to have been severely worsted in the fray, and was taken home to be nursed till his wounds were healed. Meanwhile, Joker's fame as an otter-hound was firmly established in the village, and he was regarded as a hero. The little dog, Bob, lived at the inn, and for years his droll ways endeared him to every villager, as well as to every angler who came to "the house" for salmon-fishing. He loved nothing better than a friendship with some unsuspecting fisherman whom he might afterwards use to further his own ends. The sight of a rod placed by the door in the early morning was sufficient promise of a day's continuous enjoyment; the terrier assumed possession of the rod at once, and kept all other curs at a distance. On the appearance of the sportsman, he manifested such unmistakable delight, and pleaded so hard for permission to follow, that, unless the sportsman happened to be one whose experiences led him to dislike the presence of a fussy dog by the riverside, the flattery rarely failed of its object. Once past the rustic swing-bridge at the lower boundary of the waters belonging to the inn, Bob left the sportsman to his own devices, and stole off into the woods to hunt rabbits. Unfailingly, however, he rejoined his friend at lunch. On Sundays, knowing that the report of a gun was not likely then to resound among the woods, and depressed by the quietness and disappointed by the nervous manner with which everybody well dressed for church resented his familiarities, he lingered about the street corners--as the unemployed usually do, even in our village--till the delicious smells of Sunday dinners pervaded the street. The savoury odours in no way sharpened his appetite, for at the inn his fare was always of the best; but they indicated that the time was approaching when the watchmaker and the lawyer set out together for their long weekly ramble through the woods. Bob knew what such a ramble meant for him. The watchmaker's dog, Tip, was Bob's respected sire, and Tip's brother, Charlie, dwelt at a house in "The Square." Bob, scenting the Sunday dinners, went at once to call for Charlie, and in his company adjourned to the lane behind the village gardens, till the watchmaker and the lawyer, with Tip, were ready for their customary walk. When the water was low and anglers seldom visited the inn, Bob, during the summer week-days, followed Joker's course of action, and attached himself to a bathing party frequenting a pool below the ruined garden on the outskirts of the village. There, like Joker, he searched beneath the alder-roots, but without success as far as an otter was concerned. However, he vastly enjoyed himself digging out the brown rats from their holes along the bank not far from a rick-yard belonging to the inn, and then hunting them about the pool with as much noise and bustle as if he were close at the tail of a rabbit in the furze. He was so fond of the water that he became a rapid, untiring swimmer; and the boys trained him, in intervals of rat-hunting, to dive to the bottom of the river and pick up a white pebble thrown from the bank. Like Joker, also, he gained a name for pluck and ability; and one night the village sportsmen, at an informal meeting in the "private room" of the inn, decided to hunt in the river on Wednesday evenings, with Bob and Joker at the head of a pack including nearly every game-dog in the near neighbourhood, except certain aristocratic pointers and setters likely to be spoiled by companionship with yelping and excited curs. A merrier hunting party was never in the world. They would foregather in the meadow below the ruined garden: the landlord, whose home-brewed ale was the best and strongest on the countryside; the curate, whose stern admonitions were the terror of evil-doers; the farmer, whose skill in ferreting was greater than in ploughing; the watchmaker, whose clocks filled the village street with music when, simultaneously, they struck the hour; the draper, whose white pigeons cooed and fluttered on the bridge near his shop; the solicitor, whose law was for a time thrown to the winds; and a small crowd of boys ready to assist, if required, in "chaining" the fords. There they would "cry" the dogs across the stream till the valley echoed and re-echoed with shouts and laughter. The first hunt was started in spirited fashion; the men walked along the bank thrusting their sticks into crevices and holes; but only Joker and Bob entered the water, and rats and otters for a while remained discreetly out of view. Near a bend of the stream, however, Bob surprised a rat secreted by a stone, and, forcing it to rush to the river, followed with frantic speed. Here, at last, was a chase; the other dogs all hurried to the spot, and the landlord, swinging his otter-pole, waded out to perform the duties of huntsman with the now uproarious pack. His action proved infectious--watchmaker, draper, lawyer, and curate splashed into the shallows to help in keeping the rat on the move; and fun was fast and furious till the prey, fleeing from a smart attack by Bob, was captured by a spaniel swimming under a big oak-root between the curate and the bank. I hardly think I have enjoyed any sport so well as those Wednesday evening hunts in the bygone years, when life was unshadowed and each sportsman of us felt within him the heart of a child. So great was our amusement that the village urchins instituted a rival Hunt in the brooks on Saturdays; they notched their sticks for every "kill," and boasted that they beat us hollow with the number of their trophies. We had several adventures with otters, but the creatures always, in the end, eluded us, and we soon were of opinion that smaller fry were capable of affording better fun. Some seasons afterwards, when our Hunt was disbanded, the shopkeepers' apprentices continued, with the youngsters, to work our mongrel hounds; but eventually Joker's death from the bite of an adder put an end to their pastime, for the bobtail and the terrier were the only possible leaders of the nondescript pack. Bob, the terrier, was always the most interesting of our hounds. He manifested a disposition to use the other dogs to serve his purposes, just as he used the unsuspecting fishermen if he wished to go hunting in the woods. When with me after game on the upland farms, he often seemed to forget entirely that I had taken him to hunt, not for his own amusement only, but also for mine. Directly he discovered a rabbit squatting in a clump of grass or brambles, perhaps ten or a dozen yards from a hedge, he signalled his find by barking so incessantly that my spaniels hastened pell-mell to the spot. This was just as it should be--for Bob. Dancing with excitement, he waited between the clump and the hedge till the spaniels entered and bolted the rabbit; then he tore madly in close pursuit of the fleeing creature, and my chance of a shot was spoiled through the possibility of my hitting him instead of his quarry. By the riverside, his tricks were precisely similar. Seeing a moorhen dive, he would call the dogs around him, so that they might bring the bird again to the surface and thus afford him sport. The moorhen, meanwhile, invariably escaped; yet Bob failed to understand that he was the only diver in the pack. His antics were comical in the extreme if a vole eluded him by diving to the lower entrance of its burrow beneath the surface of a backwater. Having missed his opportunity, but unable to comprehend how he had missed it, the terrier left the water, stood on the roots of a tree over the entrance to the vole's burrow, and furiously barked instructions to his companions swimming in the pool. Disgusted at last by their inattention to his orders, he plunged headlong into the stream and vanished for a few moments; then he reappeared, proud of his superior bravery, sneezing and coughing, and with a mouthful of stones and soil torn from the bank in his desperate efforts to force his way to the spot whither the object of the chase had gone from view. Bob long survived the big dog Joker, and in his old days loved as well as ever the excitement of a hunt. His originality was preserved to the end; stiffened by rheumatism and almost choked by asthma, he always, when in search of rabbits, ran up-hill and walked down-hill, thus losing both energy and breath that might with advantage have been kept in reserve. With the passing of the years, many changes have occurred to sunder the friendships formed during those boylike expeditions. I smile when I think how impossible it would be, now that the veneer of town life has been thinly spread over the life of our village, for the man of law to go wading, with tucked-up trousers, after rats; how impossible, also, for him to frequent with me the bathing pool, as was sometimes his wont, and swim idly hither and thither, while the moon peered between the trees and the vague witchery of the summer night filled his spirit and my own. My youthful feelings, long preserved, have been irrevocably lost; and yet, if only for memory's sake, I would willingly hunt with him again, and, when night had fallen, swim with him once more in the dim, mysterious pool below the garden. But the old hunting party could never be complete. Death makes gaps that Time fails to fill. Those evenings were delightful, not only because of unrestrained mirth and innocent sport, but also because we took a keen interest in our surroundings, seeing the world of small things by the river-bank with eyes such as belonged to anglers and hunters of the old-fashioned, leisurely school. They marked for me the beginning of a pleasant study of the water-voles that lived in their burrows on the brink of the river, and were sometimes hunted as persistently as were the brown rats, but far more frequently eluded our hounds than did the noxious little brutes we particularly desired to destroy. Wherever they take up their quarters, about the farmstead during winter or in the open fields during summer, brown rats are an insufferable nuisance. There is no courtesy or kindness in the nature of the rat; no nesting bird is safe from his attacks, unless her home is beyond his reach in some cleft of a rock that he cannot scale or in some fork of a tree that he cannot climb. He is a cannibal--even the young and the sick of his own kind become the victims of his rapacious hunger--and he will eat almost anything, living or dead, from the refuse in a garbage heap to the dainty egg of a willow-wren in the tiny, domed nest amid the briars at the margin of the river. The water-vole is often called, wrongly, the water-rat, but it is of very different habits, and is well nigh entirely a vegetable feeder, and one of the most charming and most inoffensive creatures in Britain. To the close observer of Nature, differences in the character of animals--even among the members of one species--soon become apparent. I was struck with manifestations of such unlikeness when I kept small communities of ants in artificial nests between slips of glass, so as to watch their doings in my hours of leisure. One nest of yellow ants contained at first a dozen workers and a queen; and when I began to study them I used to mark with minute spots of white the bodies of the particular ants under observation. These spots would remain till the ants had time for their toilet and either licked themselves clean or were licked clean by sympathetic companions. At the outset I found that under a magnifying glass two of the dozen workers were readily distinguishable from the others because of their size and shape. Gradually, by detecting little peculiarities, I could single out the ants, and so had no need to mark my tiny pets in order to follow their movements, except on occasions when they clustered round the queen, or rested, gossiping in little groups, here and there in the rooms and passages of their dwelling. One ant was greedy, and, if she was the first to find a fresh drop of honey I had placed outside the nest, would feed to repletion without ever thinking of informing her friends of her discovery. At such times she even became intoxicated, and I fancied that, when she did at last get home, eager enquiries made as to the whereabouts of the nectar met with incoherent replies, since the seekers for information generally failed to profit by what they were told, and had to cast about aimlessly for some time before finding the food. I also observed that another ant was perfectly unselfish, and not only would inform her companions directly she discovered honey, but would assiduously feed the queen before attending to her own requirements. And so my pets were separately known because of faults and failings or good qualities that often seemed quite human. A certain vole, living in the river-bank near the place where the villagers met to hunt, was not easily mistaken for one of his fellows. Whereas the general colour of a water-vole's coat--except in the variety known as the black vole--is greyish brown, which takes a reddish tinge when the light glances on it between the leaves, his was uniformly of a dark russet. In keeping with this shiny russet coat, his beady black eyes seemed to glisten with unusual lustre; and so it happened that the question, "I wonder if Brighteye is from home?" was often asked as we sent our hounds to search among the willows on the further bank; and later it became a custom for the Hunt, before the sport of the evening was begun, to pass up-stream for a hundred yards or so in order that he might be left in peace. He was quite a baby water-vole when first I made his acquaintance, but the colour of his coat did not change with the succeeding months, and, evening after evening, when the noisy hounds were safe at home or strolling about the village street, I would quietly make my way back to his haunt, and, hidden behind a convenient tree, carefully watch him. In this way I learned many secrets of his life, noticed many traits in which he differed from his companions, and could form a fairly accurate idea of the dangers that beset him, and of the joys and the sorrows that fell to his lot during the three years when his presence was familiar as I fished in the calm summer twilight, or lay motionless in the long grass near the place where he was wont to sit, silent and alert, before dropping into the backwater and beginning the work and the play of the night. II. THE BURROW IN THE RIVER-BANK. The first faint shadows of dusk were creeping over the river when Brighteye, awakened by a movement on the part of his mother, stole from his burrow into the tall grass at the edge of the gravel-bank by the pool. His home was situated in a picturesque spot between the river and a woodland path skirting the base of a cliff-like ascent clothed with giant beeches and an under-garment of ferns and whinberry bushes. Alders and willows grew along the gravel-bank, and through the moss-tangles among the roots many a twisting, close-hidden run-way led upwards to what might be called a main thoroughfare, in and out of the grass-fringes and the ivy, above high-water mark. This road, extending from the far-off tidal estuary to the river's source in the wild mountains to the north, communicated with all the dwellings of the riverside people, and had been kept clear for hundreds of years by wandering voles and water-shrews, moorhens, water-rails, and coots, and, in recent days, by those unwelcome invaders, the brown rats. Here and there it merged into the wider trail of the otter. Sometimes, near a hedge, it was joined by the track of rabbits, bank-voles, field-voles, weasels, and stoats, and sometimes, where brooks and rills trickled over the stones on their way to the river, by other main roads that had followed the smaller water-courses from the crests of the hills. Brighteye's home might be likened to a cottage nestling among trees at the end of an embowered lane well removed from busy traffic; it contained four or five chambers wherein the members of his family dwelt; and to Brighteye the tall reeds and the bramble thickets were as large as shrubs and trees are to human beings. And, like a sequestered cottager, he knew but little about the great road stretching, up-stream and down-stream, away from his haunts; he was content with his particular domain--the pool, the shallows beyond, a hundred yards of intersected lanes, and the wide main road above the pool and the shallows. For a time Brighteye sat at the edge of the stream, alert for any sign of danger that might threaten his harmless existence. Then playfully he dropped into the pool, dived, sought the water-entrance to his house, climbed inside his sleeping chamber, and thence to the bank, where again he sat intently listening as he sniffed the cool evening air. A quick-eyed heron was standing motionless in a tranquil backwater thirty yards up-stream; the scent of the bird was borne down by the water, and the vole caught it as it passed beneath the bank. But he showed no trace of terror; the heron was not near enough to give him any real cause for alarm. The rabbits stole down through the woods, the undergrowth crackled slightly as they passed, and one old buck "drummed" a danger signal. Instantly the vole dived again, for he interpreted the sound to mean that a weasel was on the prowl; and, as he vanished, the first notes of a blackbird's rattling cry came to his ears. Brighteye stayed awhile in his burrow before climbing once more to the upper entrance. Then cautiously he advanced through the passage, and gained his lookout station. Not the slightest taint of a weasel was noticeable on the bank; so, regaining confidence, he sat on his haunches, brushed his long, bristly whiskers with his fore-feet, and licked his russet body clean with his warm, red tongue. Then he dropped once more into the pool, and swam across to a reed-bed on the further margin. There he found several of his neighbours feeding on roots of riverside plants. He, too, was hungry, so he bit off a juicy flag at the spot marking the junction of the tender stalk with the tough, fibrous stem; then, sitting upright, he took it in his fore-paws, and with his incisor teeth--shaped perfectly like an adze for such a purpose--stripped it of its outer covering, beginning at the severed edge, and laying bare the white pith, on which he greedily fed. While thus engaged, he, as usual, watched and listened. The spot was dangerous for him because of its distance from the stream, and because the water immediately beyond was so shallow that he could not, by diving, readily escape from determined pursuit. His meal was often interrupted for a few moments by some trifling incident that caused alarm. A moorhen splattered out from the willow-roots, and Brighteye crouched motionless, till he recognised that the noise made by the clumsy bird was almost as familiar to him as the rustle of the reeds in a breeze. The blue heron rose heavily from the backwater, and winged his slow flight high above the trees. Here, indeed, seemed reason for fear; but the great bird was not in the humour for killing voles, and soon passed out of view. Now a kingfisher, then a dipper, sped like an arrow past the near corner of the pool; and the whiz of swift wings--unheard by all except little creatures living in frequent danger, and listening with beating hearts to sounds unperceived by our drowsy senses dulled by long immunity from fear--caused momentary terror to the water-vole. Each trifling sight and sound contributed to that invaluable stock of experience from which he would gradually learn to distinguish without hesitation between friends and foes, and be freed from the pain of needless anxiety which, to Nature's weaklings, is at times almost as bitter as death. Brighteye was fated to meet with an unusual number of adventures, and consequently to know much of the agony of fear. His russet coat was more conspicuous than that of his soberly gowned companions, and he was on several occasions marked for attack when they escaped detection. But he became the wisest, shyest, most watchful vole along the wooded river-reach, and in time his neighbours and offspring were so influenced by his example and training that a strangely furtive kindred, the wildest of the wild, living in secrecy--their presence revealed to loitering anglers only by tell-tale footprints on the wet sand when the torrent dwindled after a flood--seemed to have come to haunt the river bank between the cottage gardens and the swinging bridge above the pool where Brighteye dwelt. Though Brighteye's distinctive appearance attracted the notice of numerous enemies, his marked individuality was not wholly a misfortune, since it aroused my kindly interest, and thus caused him to be spared by the village hunting party. As he sat in the first shadows of evening among the reeds and the rushes, the kingfisher and the dipper, by which a few minutes before he had been startled, flew back from the direction of the village gardens; and he quickly decided, while watching their flight, that somehow it must be connected with the dull, but now plainly audible, thud of approaching footsteps on the meadow-path. The buck "drummed" again, then the rustling "pat, pat" of the rabbits ceased in the wood, and one by one the adult voles feeding in the reed-bed slipped silently into the shallows and disappeared. Brighteye was loath to relinquish the juicy rush that he held in his fore-paws, but the signs of danger were insistent. After creeping through the reeds to the water's edge, he proceeded a little way down the bank till he came to a spot where the view of the meadow-path was uninterrupted. His sight was not nearly so keen as his scent and hearing were, but he discerned, in a blur of dim fields, and rippling water, and evening light peering through the willow-stoles, a number of unfamiliar moving objects. He heard quick, uneven footsteps, and, now and then, a voice; and was aware of an unmistakable scent, such as he had already often noticed in the shallows and amid the grass. On several occasions, at dusk, Brighteye, like Lutra the otter, had seen a trout splashing and twisting convulsively in terror and pain. Each time the trout had been irresistibly drawn through the shallows towards a peculiar, upright object on the opposite bank, and after this object had passed into the distance the vole had found that the familiar scent of which he was now conscious was mingled, at the edge of the river-bank, with fresh blood-stains and with the strong smell of fish. To all animals, whether wild or domesticated, fresh-spilt blood has a significance that can never be disregarded. It indicates suffering and death. Ever since, in far distant years, blood first welled from a stricken creature's wounds, Nature has been haunted by the grim presence of Fear. The hunting weasel, coming unexpectedly to a pool of blood, whence a wounded rabbit has crawled away to die in the nearest burrow, opens mouth and nostrils wide to inhale with fierce delight the pungent odour. Once I caught sight of a weasel under such circumstances, and was startled by the almost demon-like look of ferocity on the creature's face. But the hunted weaklings of the fields and woods read the signs of death with consternation. When the scent of the slayer is mingled with that of the victim it is noted with care, and, if often detected in similar conditions, is committed to memory as inseparable from danger. Brighteye had been repeatedly warned by his mother to avoid the presence of man, and had also learned to fear it because of his experiences with the angler and the trout. Alarmed at the approach of men and hounds, he waded out, swam straight up-stream to a tiny bay, and hid beneath a willow-root to wait till the danger had passed. He strained his ears to catch each different sound as the "thud, thud" and the patter of feet came nearer. Then the gravel rattled, a stone fell into the stream, and a shaggy spaniel poked his nose into a hole between the willow-roots. The dog drew a long, noisy breath, and barked so suddenly and loudly, and so close to Brighteye's ear, that the vole involuntarily leaped from his resting place. In full view of the spaniel, Brighteye passed deep down into the clear, unruffled pool, hurriedly using every limb, instead of only his hind-legs, and with quick strokes gained the edge of the current, where for an instant he rose to breathe before plunging deep once more and continuing his journey towards the willows on the opposite bank. As he dived for the second time, Bob saw him among the ripples, and with shrill voice headed the clamouring hounds, that, "harking forward" to his cry, rushed headlong in pursuit through shallow and pool. A stout, lichen-covered branch, weighed down at the river's edge by a mass of herbage borne thither by a recent heavy flood, occupied a corner in the dense shadow of an alder; and the vole, climbing out of the water, sat on it, and was hidden completely by the darkness from the eager hounds. But his sanctuary was soon invaded; the indefatigable terrier, guided by the tiny bubbles of scent borne down by the stream, left the river, and ran, whimpering with excitement, straight to the alder. Brighteye saw him approach, dived silently, and, with a wisdom he had never gained from experience, turned in a direction quite contrary to that in which the terrier expected him to flee. The vole moved slowly, right beneath the dark form of the terrier now swimming in the backwater. On, on, he went, past the stakes at the outlet of the pool into the trout-reach, and still on, by a series of dives, each following a brief interval for breath and observation among the sheltering weeds, till he arrived at the pool above the cottage gardens, where a wide fringe of brushwood formed an impenetrable thicket and he was safe from his pursuers. Hardly, however, was this long journey needed. The dog was baffled at the outset; and, casting about for the lost scent, he discovered, on the pebbles, the strong smell of the weasel that had wandered thither to quench his thirst while Brighteye was feeding in the reed-bed opposite. Bob never by any chance neglected the opportunity of killing a stoat or a weasel; so, abandoning all thoughts of rats and voles, he dashed upward through the wood, and, almost immediately closing on his prey, destroyed a bloodthirsty little tyrant that, unknown to Brighteye, had just been planning a raid on the burrow by the willow-stoles. Water-voles, as a rule, are silent little creatures; unless attacked or frightened they seldom squeak as they move in and out of the lush herbage by the riverside. But Brighteye was undoubtedly different from his fellows: he was almost as noisy as a shrew in the dead leaves of a tangled hedgerow, and his voice was like a shrew's, high-pitched and continuous, but louder, so that I could hear him at some distance from his favourite resort in the reeds and the rushes by the willows. He seemed to be always talking to himself or to the flowers and the river as he wandered to and fro in search of tit-bits; always debating with himself as to the chances of finding a tempting delicacy; always querulous of danger from some ravenous tyrant that might surprise him in his burrow, or pounce on him unawares from the evening sky, or rise, swift, relentless, eager, from the depths beneath him as he swam across the pool. When I got to know him well, my favourite method, in learning of his ways, was to lie in wait at a spot commanding a view of one or other of the narrow lanes joining the main road of the riverside folk, and there, my face hidden by a convenient screen of interlacing grass-stems, to listen intently for his approach. Generally, for five minutes or so before he chose to reach my hiding place, I could hear his shrill piping, now faint and intercepted by a mound, or indistinct and mingled with the swirl of the water around the stakes, then full and clear as he gained the summit of a stone or ridge and came down the winding path towards me. Though in his talkative moments Brighteye usually reminded me of the tiny shrew, there were times when he reminded me more forcibly of an eccentric mouse that, a few years before, had taken up her quarters in the wall of my study, and each night, for more than a week, when the children's hour was over and I sat in silence by my shaded lamp, had made her presence known by a bird-like solo interrupted only when the singer stayed to pick up a crumb on her way across the room. The times when Brighteye wandered, singing, singing, down the lanes and main road of the river-bank, were, however, infrequent; and the surest sign of his approach, before he came in sight, was the continuous, gossiping twitter I have already described. This habit of singing and twittering was not connected with amorous sentiments towards any sleek young female; Brighteye adopted it long before he was of an age to seek a mate, and he ceased practising his solos before the first winter set in and the morning sun glanced between leafless trees on a dark flood swirling over the reed-bed where in summer was his favourite feeding place. Whether or not the other voles frequenting the burrow by the willows had shown their disapproval of such a habit I was never able to discover. One fact, however, seemed significant: Brighteye parted from his parents as soon as he was sufficiently alert and industrious to manage his own affairs, and, having hollowed out a plain, one-roomed dwelling, with an exit under the surface of the water and another near some primrose-roots above the level of flood, lived there for months, timid and lonely, yet withal, if his singing might be regarded as the sign of a gladsome life, the happiest vole in the shadowed pool above the village gardens. It has been supposed by certain naturalists that the song of the house-mouse is the result of a disease in its throat, and is therefore a precursor of death. The mouse that came to my study ceased her visits soon after the week had passed and was never seen again; and I was unable to determine how her end was hastened. Brighteye could not, at any rate, have suffered seriously, else he would have succumbed, either to some enemy ever ready to prey on the young, the aged, the sick, and the wounded of his tribe, or to starvation, the well-nigh inevitable follower of disease in animals. He always seemed to me to be full of vitality and happiness, as if the dangers besetting his life only provided him with wholesome excitement, and sharpened his intellect far more finely than that of the rest of his tribe. III. WILD HUNTING. Once, during the first summer of the water-vole's life, I saw as pretty a bit of wild hunting as I have ever witnessed, and my pleasure was enhanced by the fact that the quarry escaped unharmed. Early in the afternoon, instead of during twilight, I, in company with the members of the village Hunt and their mongrel pack, had searched the stream and its banks for rats, and had enjoyed good sport. Suddenly, however, our ragamuffin hounds struck the line of nobler game: Lutra, the otter, was astir in the pool. I was not surprised, for on the previous night, long after the moon had risen and sleep had descended on the village, I, with Ianto the fisherman, had passed the spot on returning from an angling expedition eight or ten miles up-stream, and had stayed awhile to watch the most expert of all river-fishers, as she dived and swam from bank to bank, and sometimes, turning swiftly into the backwater, landed on the shingle close by Brighteye's reed-bed, to devour at leisure a captured trout. Lutra soon baffled our inexpert hounds, and gained refuge in a "strong place" well behind a fringe of alder-roots, whence Bob, notwithstanding his most strenuous efforts, failed to "bolt" her. I then drew off the hounds, led them towards the throat of the pool, and for a half hour assisted them to work the "stale drag," till I reached a bend of the river where Lutra's footprints were still visible on the fine, wet sand at the brink of a rapid. Later, when the dogs were quietly resting at their homes, I returned, alone, to my hiding place not far from Lutra's "holt." As long as daylight lasted I saw nothing of vole or otter, though several brown rats, undeterred by the disturbance of the early afternoon, came from their burrows and ran boldly hither and thither through the arched pathways of the rank grass by the edge of the bank. The afterglow faded in the western sky around the old church beyond the village gardens; and the night, though one by one the stars were lighted overhead, became so dark that I could see nothing plainly except the white froth, in large round masses, floating idly down the pool. I waited impatiently for the moon to rise, for I feared lest the faint, occasional plashes in the pool indicated that the otter had left her "holt," and would probably be fishing in a distant pool when an opportunity for observation arrived. The night was strangely impressive, as it always is to me while I roam through the woodlands or lie in hiding to watch the creatures that haunt the gloom-wrapt clearings among the oaks and the beeches. In the darkness, long intervals, during which nothing will be seen or heard, must of necessity be spent by the naturalist; and in such intervals the mind is often filled with what may, perhaps, be best described as the spiritual influence of night, when the eyes turn upward to the stars or to the lights of a lone farmstead twinkling through the trees, and imagination, wondering greatly at its own daring, links time with eternity, and the destinies of this little world with the affairs of a limitless universe. At length the rim of the full moon appeared above the crest of the hill behind the village, and gradually, as the orb ascended, the night became brighter, till the whole surface of the pool, except for a fleeting shadow, was clear and white, and a broad silver bar lay across the ripples between me and the reed-bed on the further side. For a time no sign of a living creature was visible; then a brown rat crept along the bank beneath my hiding place; a dim form, which from its size I concluded was that of Lutra, the otter, crossed a spit of sand about a dozen yards above the reed-bed, where a moonbeam glanced through the alders; and a big brown owl, silhouetted against the sky, flew silently up-stream, and perched on a low, bare branch of a Scotch fir beside the grass-grown path. After another uneventful interval a slight movement was observable in the reeds directly opposite. Straight in the line of the silver bar a water-vole came towards me, only the head of the little swimmer being visible at the apex of a V-shaped wake lengthening rapidly behind him. More than half-way across the pool a large boulder stood out of the water, but the vole was heading towards the bank above. Then, apparently without cause, he turned quickly and made straight for the stone. He had barely landed and run round to hide in a shallow depression of the stone when the water seemed to swell and heave immediately beside the boulder, and Lutra's head, with wide-open jaws, shot above the current. Disappointed, the otter vanished under the shining surface of the stream, came to sight once more in an eddy between the boulder and the bank, and once more disappeared. I was keenly interested, for every movement of the vole and the otter had been plainly discernible, so bright was the night, and so close were the creatures to my hiding place; and, raising myself slightly, I crawled a few inches nearer the edge of the overhanging bank. [Illustration: "AN OPPORTUNITY CAME, WHICH, HAD SHE BEEN POISED IN THE AIR, COULD SCARCELY HAVE BEEN MISSED."] For a long time the vole, not daring to move, remained in the shadow. I had almost concluded that he had dived through some crevice into the dark water on the other side of the boulder, when he cautiously lifted his head to the light, and crept into a grass-clump on the top of the stone. Thence, after a little hesitation, he moved to the edge, as if contemplating a second swim. Fastidious as to his toilet, even in the presence of danger, he rose on his haunches and washed his round, furry face. The action was almost fatal. The brown owl, that had doubtless seen him by the grass-clump and had therefore left her perch in the fir-tree, dropped like a bolt and hovered, with wings nearly touching the silver stream, above the spot where she had marked her prey. But she was too late--the vole had dived. Yet, even while, having alighted on the boulder, the owl stood baffled by the disappearance of the vole, an opportunity came, which, had she been poised in the air, could scarcely have been missed. Close to the near bank a wave rose above the surface of the eddy as Lutra, having seen the vole dive from the stone, again hurried in pursuit. So fast was the otter that the momentum carried her well into the shallows. But for the third time the vole escaped. I indistinctly saw him scramble out, and run, with a shrill squeak, across a ridge of sand, offering a second chance to the listening owl; and, from his flight in the direction of the well known burrow, I concluded that the hunted creature was russet-coated little Brighteye. But the bird knew that she could not rise and swoop in time; so, probably disturbed by the presence of the otter, she flew away down-stream just as Lutra, since the vole was out of reach, glided from the sand and philosophically turned her attention to less evasive trout and eels. Then all was motionless and silent, but for an occasional faint whistle as Lutra fished in the backwater at the throat of the pool, the wailing cry of the owl from the garden on the crest of the slope behind me, and the ceaseless, gentle ripple of the river. At last, when the voices of the otter and the owl were still, and when the shadows were foreshortened as the moon gazed coldly down between the branches of the fir, Brighteye, having recovered from his recent fright, left his sanctuary by the roots of the willow, and wandered, singing, singing, down the white, winding run-way and out into the main road of the riverside people, till he came to a jutting branch above the river's brim, whence he dived into the placid pool, and swam away towards the reed-bed. Then the crossed shadows of the flags and hemlocks screened him from my sight. The first autumn in the water-vole's life was a season of wonderful beauty. A few successive frosts chilled the sap in the trees and the bushes near the river, but were succeeded by a long period when the air was crisp yet balmy, and not a breath of wind was noticeable except by the birds and the squirrels high among the giant beeches around the old garden, and when the murmur of summer insects was never heard by night, and only by day if a chance drone-fly or humble-bee visited a surviving clump of yellow ragweed by the run-way close to Brighteye's burrow. The elms and the sycamores glowed with purple and bronze, the ash-trees and the willows paled to lemon yellow, the oaks arrayed themselves in rich and glossy olive green; while the beeches in the glade, and the brambles along the outskirts of the thickets, ruddy and golden and glittering in the brief, delicious autumn days, seemed to filter and yet stain the mellow sunshine, and to fill each nook with liquid shadow as pure and glorious as the blue and amber lights on the undulating hills. Spread on the bosom of the brimming river, and broken, here and there, by creamy lines of passing foam, the reflections of this beauty seemed to well and bubble, from unfathomable deeps, around the "sly, fat fishes sailing, watching all." The water became much colder than in summer; but Brighteye, protected by a warm covering of thick, soft fur through which the moisture could not penetrate, as well as by an over-garment of longer, coarser hair from which the drops were easily shaken when he left the stream, hardly noticed the change of temperature. But he well knew there were changes in the surroundings of his home. The flags in the reed-bed were not so succulent as they had been in early summer; the branches that sometimes guided him as he swam from place to place seemed strangely bare and grey; the clump of may-weed that, growing near his burrow, had served as a beacon in the gloom, was faded to a few short brown tufts; and nightly in his wanderings he was startled by the withered leaves that, like fluttering birds, descended near him on the littered run-ways or on the glassy surface of the river-reach. It was long before he became accustomed to the falling of the leaves, and up to the time when every bough was bare the rustling flight of a great chestnut plume towards him never failed to rouse the fear first wakened by the owl, and to send him on a long, breathless dive to the bottom of the pool. Brighteye was a familiar figure to all the river-folk, while he, in turn, knew most of them, and had learned to distinguish between friends and foes. But occasionally he made a slight mistake. Though shy, he was as curious as the squirrel that, one afternoon when Brighteye was early abroad, hopped down the run-way to make his acquaintance, and frightened him into a precipitate retreat, then ran out to a branch above the stream and loudly derided the creature apparently drowning in the stream. An object of ceaseless curiosity to Brighteye was a water-shrew, not more than half the size of the vole, that had come to dwell in the pool, and had tunnelled out a burrow in the bank above the reed-bed. Nightly, after supper, Brighteye made a circuit of the pool to find the shrew, and with his companion swam hither and thither, till, startled by some real or imagined danger, each of the playmates hurried to refuge, and was lost awhile to the other amid the darkness and the solitude of the silent hours. Brighteye soon became aware of the fact that some of the habits of the shrew were entirely different from his own. While the vole was almost entirely a vegetable feeder, the shrew, diving to the bed of the river, would thrust his long snout between the stones, and pick up grubs and worms and leeches sheltering there. With Brighteye's curiosity was mingled not a little wonderment, for the shrew's furry coat presented a strange contrast of black above and white beneath, and, immediately after the shrew had dived, a hundred little bubbles, adhering to the ends of his hair, caused him to appear like a silvery grey phantom, gliding gracefully, though erratically, from stone to stone, from patch to patch of water-weed, from ripple to ripple near the surface of the stream. The young brown trout, hovering harmlessly above the rocky shelves and in the sandy shallows, far from being a source of terror to Brighteye, fled at his approach, and seldom returned to their haunts till he had reached the far side of the current. Emboldened by the example of the shrew, that sometimes made a raid among the minnows, and desirous of keeping all intruders away from the lower entrance to his burrow, Brighteye habitually chased the trout if they ventured within the little bay before his home. But there was one trout, old and lean, whose haunt was behind a weed-covered stone at the throat of the pool, and of this hook-beaked, carnivorous creature, by which he had once been chased and bitten, Brighteye went in such constant fear that he avoided the rapid, and, directly he caught a glimpse of the long, dark form roving through the gloomy depths, paddled with utmost haste to his nearest landing place. Since, under the care of his mother, he made his earliest visit to the reed-bed, Brighteye had seen hundreds of giant salmon; the restless fish, however, did not stay long in the pool, but after a brief sojourn passed upward. Often at dusk the salmon would leap clear into the air just as Brighteye came to the surface after his first dive, and once so near was a sportive fish that the vole became confused for the moment by the sudden turmoil of the "rise," and rocked on the swell of the back-wash like a boat on the waves of a tossing sea. During the summer Brighteye had suffered nothing, beyond this one sudden fright, from the visits of the great silvery fish to the neighbourhood of his home; and, notwithstanding his experience, he was accustomed to dive boldly into the depths of the "hovers," and even to regard without fear the approach of an unusually inquisitive salmon. Late in the autumn, however, Brighteye noticed, with unaccountable misgiving, a distinct change in the appearance of these passing visitors. The silvery sheen had died away from their scales, and had been succeeded by a dark, dull red; and the fish were sluggish and ill-tempered. Besides, they were so numerous, especially after a heavy rainfall, that the stream seemed barely able to afford them room in their favourite "hovers," and the old trout, previously an easy master of the situation, found it almost beyond his powers to keep trespassers from his particular haunt in mid-current at the throat of the pool. So occupied was he with this duty that he seldom roamed into the little bays beneath the alder-fringes; and Brighteye, so long as he avoided the rapid, was fairly safe from his attack. The reed-bed, though partly submerged, still yielded the vole sufficient food; and to reach it straight from his home he had to pass through the shallows, which extended for a considerable distance up-stream and down-stream from the gravelly stretch immediately outside the reeds. About the beginning of winter, when the migration of the salmon had become intermittent, and the sea-trout had all passed upward beyond the pool, two of the big, ugly "red fish," late arrivals at the "hover" nearest the burrow, made a close inspection of the pool; then, instead of following their kindred to the further reaches, they fell back toward the tail of the stream and there remained. After the first week of their stay, Brighteye found them so ill-tempered that he dared not venture anywhere near the tail of the stream; and, as the big trout at the top of the pool showed irritation at the least disturbance, the vole was forced to wander down the bank, to a spot below the salmon, before crossing the river on his periodical journeys to the reed-bed. His kindred, still living in the burrow where he had been born, were similarly daunted; while the shrew became the object of such frequent attack--especially from the bigger of the two salmon, an old male with a sinister, pig-like countenance and a formidable array of teeth--that escape from disaster was little short of miraculous. Having calculated to a nicety his chances of escape, and having decided to avoid at all times the haunts of the pugnacious fish, Brighteye was seldom inconvenienced, except that he had to pass further than hitherto along the bank before taking to the water, and thus had to risk attack from weasels and owls. But soon, to his dismay, he discovered that the salmon had shifted their quarters to the shallow close by the reeds. He was swimming one night as usual into the quiet water by the reed-bed, and, indeed, had entered a narrow, lane-like opening among the stems, when he felt a quick, powerful movement in the water, and saw a mysterious form turn in pursuit of him, and glide swiftly away with a mighty effort that caused a wave to ripple through the reeds, while the outer stalks bent and recoiled as if from the force of a powerful blow. On the following night he was chased almost to the end of the opening among the reeds, and barely escaped; but this time he recognised his pursuer. Afterwards, having unexpectedly met the shrew, he crept with his companion along by the water's edge as far as the ford, and spent the dark hours in a strange place, till at dawn he crossed the rough water, and sought his home by a path the further part of which he had not previously explored. IV. SAVED BY AN ENEMY. The days were dim and the nights long, and thick, drenching mists hung over the gloomy river. The salmon's family affairs had reached an important stage; and the "redd," furrowed in the gravel by the mated fish, contained thousands of newly deposited eggs. And, as many of the river-folk, from the big trout to the little water-shrew, continually threatened a raid on the spawn, the salmon guarded each approach to the shallows with unremitting vigilance. It happened, unfortunately for Brighteye, that, while the construction of the "redd" was in progress, some of the eggs--unfertilised and therefore not heavy enough to sink to the bottom of the water--were borne slowly by the current to the ford below the pool, just as the shrew was occupied there in vain attempts to teach the vole how to hunt for insects among the pebbles. If Brighteye had been at all inclined to vary his diet, he would at that moment have yielded to temptation. Everywhere around him the trout were exhibiting great eagerness, snapping up the delicacies as they drew near, and then moving forward on the scent in the direction of the "redd." The shrew joined in the quest; and Brighteye, full of curiosity, swam beside his playmate in the wake of the hungry trout. The vole found quite a shoal of fish collected near the reeds; and for a few moments he frolicked about the edge of the shallow. He could see nothing of the old male salmon, though he caught a glimpse of the female busy with her maternal duties at the top of the "redd." After diving up-stream and along by the line of the eager trout, he rose to breathe at the surface, when, suddenly, the river seemed alive with trout scattering in every direction, a great upheaval seemed to part the water, and he himself was gripped by one of his hind-feet and dragged violently down and across to the deep "hover" near his home. The salmon had at last outwitted the vole. The current was strong, and beneath its weight Brighteye's body was bent backwards till his fore-paws rested on the salmon's head. Mad with rage and fright, he clawed and bit at the neck of his captor. Gradually his strength was giving way, and for want of air he was losing consciousness, when, like a living bolt, Lutra, the otter, to save unwittingly a life that she had erstwhile threatened, shot from the darkness of the river-bed, and fixed her teeth in the neck of the salmon scarcely more than an inch from the spot to which the vole held fast in desperation. In the struggle that ensued, and ended only when Lutra had carried her prey to shore, Brighteye, half suffocated and but faintly apprehending what had taken place, was released. Like a cork he rose to the surface, where he lay outstretched and gasping, while the current carried him swiftly to the ford, and thence to the pool beneath the village gardens. Having recovered sufficiently to paddle feebly ashore, he sat for a time in the safe shelter of a rocky ledge, unnoticed by the brown rats as they wandered through the tall, withered grass-clumps high above his hiding place. At last he got the better of his sickness and fright; and, notwithstanding the continued pain of his scarred limbs, he brushed his furry coat and limped homeward just as the dawn was silvering the grey, silent pool where the lonely salmon guarded the "redd" and waited in vain for the return of her absent mate. Brighteye took to heart his own escape from death, and for several nights moped and pined, ate little, and frequented only a part of the river-bank in proximity to his burrow. As soon, however, as the tiny scars on his leg were healed, he ventured again to the river; and for a period danger seldom threatened him. While he was unceasingly vigilant, and always ready to seek with utmost haste the safety of his home, a new desire to take precautions against the probability of attack possessed him. When, at dusk, he stole out from the upper entrance of his dwelling, he crouched on the grassy ledge at the river's brim and peered into the little bay below. If nothing stirred between the salmon "hover" and the bank, he dropped quietly into the pool, inhaled a long, deep breath, dived beneath the willow-roots, and watched, through the clear depths, each moving fish or swaying stem of river-weed within the range of his vision. But not till, after several visits to his water-entrance, he was perfectly convinced of the absence of danger, did he dare to brave the passage of the pool. The water-entrance to the vole's burrow was situated about a foot below the summer level of the river, and in a kind of buttress of gravel and soil, which, at its base, sloped abruptly inwards like an arch. This buttress jutted out at the lower corner of a little horse-shoe bay; and hereabouts, during summer, a shoal of minnows had often played, following each other in and out of every nook and cranny beneath the bank, or floating up and flashing in sun-flecked ripples faintly stirred by a breeze that wandered lightly from across the stream. Ordinarily, Brighteye found that the hole in the perpendicular bank served its purpose well; at the slightest disturbance he could escape thither, and, safe from pursuit, climb the irregular stairway to the hollow chamber above high-water mark. But it was different in times of flood. If he had to flee from the big trout, or from the otter, when the stream rushed madly past his open doorway, he found that an interval, which, however brief, was sufficient to imperil his life, must necessarily elapse before he could secure a foothold in his doorway and lift himself into the dark recess beyond. [Illustration: "THE BIG TROUT, IN HIS TORPEDO-LIKE RUSH TO CUT OFF BRIGHTEYE FROM SURE REFUGE." (_See_ p. 105).] Lutra had almost caught him after his adventure with the owl. He had, however, eluded the otter by diving, in the nick of time, from the stone to which he clung before the entrance, and then seeking the land. If he had been an instant later, she would have picked him off, as a bat picks a moth from a lighted window-pane, and he would never have reached the down-stream shallow. At that time the water, clearing after a summer freshet, was fairly low. Brighteye's danger in some wild winter flood would, therefore, be far greater; so, timorous from his recent experiences, and sufficiently intelligent to devise and carry out plans by which he would secure greater safety, he occupied his spare time in the lengthening nights with driving a second shaft straight inward from the chamber to a roomy natural hollow among the willow-roots, and thence in devious course, to avoid embedded stones, downward to a tiny haven in the angle of the buttress far inside the archway of the bank, where the space was so confined that the otter could not possibly follow him. Even the big trout, in his torpedo-like rush to cut off Brighteye from sure refuge, utterly failed to turn, and then enter the narrow archway, in time to catch the artful vole. The task of digging out the second tunnel was exceedingly arduous; yet, on its completion, Brighteye, taught by the changes going on around him that months of scarcity were impending, set to work again about half-way between his sleeping chamber and the upper entrance of the burrow. Here he scratched out a small, semicircular "pocket," which he filled with miscellaneous supplies--seeds of many kinds, a few beech-nuts, hazel-nuts, and acorns, as well as roots of horse-tail grass and fibrous river-weed. He was careful, like his small relative the field-vole, and like the squirrel in the woods above the river-bank, to harvest only ripe, undamaged seeds and nuts; and in making his choice he was helped by his exquisite sense of smell. He found some potatoes and carrots--so small that they had been dropped as worthless by a passing labourer on the river-path--and selected the best, leaving the others to rot among the autumn leaves. As the "pocket" was inadequate to contain his various stores, the vole used the chamber also as a granary, and slept in the warm, dry hollow by the willow-roots. In the depth of winter, when the mist-wreaths on the stream were icy cold and brought death to the sleeping birds among the branches of the leafless alders, and when Lutra, ravenous with hunger, chased the great grey trout from his "hover," but lost him in a crevice near the stakes, Brighteye, saved from privation by his hoarded provender, seldom ventured from his home. But if the night was mild and the stars were not hidden by a cloud of mist, he would steal along his run-way to the main road of the riverside people, strip the bark from the willow-stoles, and feed contentedly on the juicy pith; while his friend, the shrew, busy in the shallows near the reed-bed, searched for salmon-spawn washed from the "redd" by the turbulent flood, or for newly hatched fry no longer guarded by the lonely parent fish long since departed on her way to the distant sea. The spirit of winter brooded over the river valley. The faint summer music of the gold-crest in the fir-tops, the sweet, flute-like solo of the meditative thrush in the darkness of the hawthorn, and the weird, continuous rattle of the goatsucker perched moveless on an oak-bough near the river-bend, were no longer heard when at dusk Brighteye left his burrow and sat, watching and listening, on the little eminence above the river's brink. Even the drone of the drowsy beetle, swinging over the ripples of the shadowed stream or from tuft to tuft of grass beside the woodland path, had ceased. But at times the cheery dipper still sang from the boulder whence the vole had dived to escape the big brown owl; and, when other birds had gone to sleep, the robin on the alder-spray and the wren among the willow-stoles piped their glad vespers to assure a saddened world that presently the winter's gloom would vanish before the coming of another spring. Like a vision of glory, which, in the first hour of some poor wanderer's sleep, serves but to mock awhile his awakened mind with recollections of a happy past, so had the Indian summer shone on Nature's tired heart, and mocked, and passed away. The last red roseleaf had fluttered silently down; the last purple sloe had fallen from its sapless stem. A sharp November frost was succeeded by a depressing month of mist and drizzling rain. Then the heavens opened, and for day after day, and night after night, their torrents poured down the stony water-courses of the hills. The river rose beyond the highest mark of summer freshets, till the low-lying meadow above the village was converted into a lake, and Brighteye's burrow disappeared beneath the surface of a raging flood. Gifted with a mysterious knowledge of Nature's moods--which all wild animals in some degree possess--the vole had made ready for the sudden change. On the night preceding the storm, when in the mist even the faintest sounds seemed to gain in clearness and intensity, he had hollowed out for himself a temporary dwelling among the roots of a moss-grown tree on the steep slope of the wood behind the river-path, and had carried thither all his winter supplies from the granary where first they had been stored. Brighteye was exposed to exceptional danger by his compulsory retirement from the old burrow in the river-bank. Stoats and weasels were ever on the prowl; no water-entrance afforded him immediate escape from their relentless hostilities, and he was almost as liable to panic, if pursued for any considerable distance on land, as were the rabbits living on the fringe of the gravel-pit within the heart of the silent wood. If a weasel or a stoat had entered the vole's new burrow during the period when the flood was at its highest, only the most fortunate circumstances could have saved its occupant. Even had he managed to flee to the river, his plight would still have been pitiful. Unable to find security in his former retreat, and effectually deterred by the lingering scent of his pursuers from returning to his woodland haunts, Brighteye, a homeless, hungry little vagabond, at first perplexed, then risking all in search of food and rest, would inevitably have met his fate. But neither stoat nor weasel learned of his new abode. His burrow was high and dry in the gravelly soil under the tree-trunk; and before his doorway, as far as a hollow at the river's verge, stretched a natural path of rain-washed stones on which the line of his scent could never with certainty be followed. While many of his kindred perished, Brighteye survived this period of flood; and when the waters, having cleansed each riverside dwelling, abated to their ordinary winter level, he returned to his burrow in the buttress by the stakes, and once more felt the joy of living in safety among familiar scenes. Since the leaves had fallen, the brown rats had become fewer and still fewer along the river, and, when the flood subsided, it might have been found that none of these creatures remained in their summer haunts. They had emigrated to the rick-yard near the village inn; many of the stoats and weasels, finding provender scarce, had followed in their footsteps; and Brighteye and his kindred, with the water-shrews, the moorhens, and the coots, were unmolested in their wanderings both by night and day. The vole's favourite reed-bed was now seldom visited. Besides being inundated, it was silted so completely with gravel that to cut through the submerged stems would have been an arduous and almost impossible task. Luckily, in his journeys along the edge of the shallows during the flood, Brighteye had found a sequestered pond, near an old hedgerow dividing the wood, where tender duckweed was plentiful, and, with delicious roots of watercress, promised him abundant food. Every evening he stole through the shadows, climbed the leaf-strewn rabbit-track by the hedge, and swam across the pond from a dark spot beneath some brambles to the shelter of a gorse-bush overhanging the weeds. There he was well protected from the owl by an impenetrable prickly roof, while he could readily elude, by diving, any stray creature attacking him from land. Winter dragged slowly on its course, and, just as the first prophecy of spring was breathed by the awakening woodlands, the warm west breezes ceased to blow, and the bleak north wind moaned drearily among the trees. Night after night a sheet of ice spread and thickened from the shallows to the edge of the current, the wild ducks came down to the river from the frost-bound moors, and great flocks of geese, whistling loudly in the starlit sky, passed on their southward journey to the coast. For the first few nights Brighteye left his chamber only when acute hunger drove him to his storehouse in the wood. Directly he had fed, he returned home, and settled once more to sleep. At last his supplies were exhausted, and he was forced to subsist almost entirely on the pith beneath the bark of the willows. The pond by the hedgerow was sealed with ice, and he suffered much from the lack of his customary food. Half-way between his sleeping chamber and its water-entrance, a floor of ice prevented ready access to the river; and, under this floor, a hollow, filled with air, was gradually formed as the river receded from the level it had reached on the first night of frost. Brighteye's only approach to the outer world was, therefore, through the upper doorway. All along the margin of the pool, as far as the swift water beyond the stakes, the ice-shelf was now so high above the river that even to a large animal like the otter it offered no landing place. Only at the stakes, where the dark, cold stream flowed rapidly between two blocks of ice, could Brighteye enter or leave the river. Partly because, if he should be pursued, the swiftness of the stream was likely to lessen his chances of escape, and partly because of a vague but ever-present apprehension of danger, he avoided this spot. It was fortunate that he did so; Lutra, knowing well the ways of the riverside people, often lurked in hiding under the shelf of ice beyond the stakes, and, when she had gone from sight, the big, gaunt trout came slyly from his refuge by the boulder and resumed his tireless scrutiny of everything that passed his "hover." At last a thaw set in, and Brighteye, awakening on the second day from his noontide sleep, heard the great ice-sheet crack, and groan, and fall into the river. When darkness came he hurried to the water's brink, and, almost reckless with delight, plunged headlong into the pool. He tucked his fore-paws beneath his chin, and, with quick, free strokes of his hind-legs, dived deep to the very bottom of the backwater. Thence he made a circle of the little bay, and, floating up to the arch before his dwelling, sought the inner entrance, where, however, the ice had not yet melted. He dived once more, and gained the outer entrance in the front of the buttress, but there, also, the ice was thick and firm. He breathed the cold, damp air in the hollow beneath the ice, then glided out and swam to land. The tiny specks of dirt, which, since the frost kept him from the river, had matted his glossy fur, seemed now completely washed away, and he felt delightfully fresh and vigorous as he sat on the grass, and licked and brushed each hair into place. His toilet completed, he ran gaily up the bank to his storehouse under the tree, but only to find it empty. Not in the least disheartened, he climbed the rabbit-track, rustled over the hedge-bank to the margin of the pond, and there, as in the nights before the frost, feasted eagerly on duckweed and watercress. On the following day the ice melted in the shaft below his chamber, and he was thus saved the trouble of tunnelling a third water-passage--as a ready means of escape from the otter and the big trout, as well as from a chance weasel or stoat--which, if the ice had not disappeared, he surely would have made as soon as his vigour was fully restored. V. THE COURAGE OF FEAR. The dawn, with easy movement, comes across the eastern hills; the mists roll up from steaming hollows to a cloudless sky; the windows of a farm-house in the dingle gleam and sparkle with the light. So came the fair, unhesitating spring; so rolled the veil of winter's gloom away; so gleamed and sparkled with responsive greeting every tree and bush and flower in the awakened river valley. The springs and summers of our life are few, yet in each radiant dawn and sunrise they may, in brief, be found. Filled with the restlessness of springtide life--a restlessness felt by all wild creatures, and inherited by man from far distant ages when, depending on the hunt for his sustenance, he followed the migrations of the beasts--Brighteye often left his retreat much earlier in the afternoon than had been his wont, and stole along the river-paths even while the sunshine lingered on the crest of the hill and on the ripples by the stakes below the pool. Prompted by an increasing feeling of loneliness and a strong desire that one of his kindred should share with him his comfortable home, he occupied much of his time in enlarging the upper chamber of the burrow till it formed a snug, commodious sleeping place ceiled by the twisted willow-roots; and, throwing the soil behind him down the shaft, he cleared the floor till it was smooth and level. Then he boldly sallied forth, determined to wander far in search of a mate rather than remain a bachelor. He proceeded down-stream beside the trout-reach, and for a long time his journey was in vain. He heard a faint plash on the surface of the water, and at once his little heart beat fast with mingled hope and fear; but the sound merely indicated that the last of winter's withered oak-leaves, pushed gently aside by a swelling bud, had fallen from the bough. Suddenly, from the ruined garden above him on the brow of the slope, came the dread hunting cry of his old enemy, the tawny owl. Even as the first weird note struck with far-spreading resonance on the silence of the night, all longing and hope forsook the vole. Realising only that he was in a strange place far from home, and exposed to many unknown dangers, he sat as moveless as the pebbles around him, till, from a repetition of the cry, he learned that the owl was departing into the heart of the wood. Then, silently, he journeyed onward. Further and still further--past the rocky shelf where he had landed after his escape from the salmon, and into a region honeycombed with old, deserted rat-burrows, and arched with prostrate trees and refuse borne by flood--he ventured, his fear forgotten in the strength of his desire. Close beside the river's brink, as the shadows darkened, he found the fresh scent of a female vole. He followed it eagerly, through shallow and whirlpool and stream, to a spit of sand among some boulders, where he met, not the reward of his labour and longing, but a jealous admirer of the dainty lady he had sought to woo. After the manner of their kind in such affairs, the rivals ruffled with rage, kicked and squealed as if to declare their reckless bravery, and closed in desperate battle. Their polished teeth cut deeply, and the sand was furrowed and pitted by their straining feet. Several times they paused for breath, but only to resume the fight with renewed energy. The issue was, however, at last decided. Brighteye, lying on his back, used his powerful hind-claws with such effect that, when he regained his footing, he was able, almost unresisted, to get firm hold of his tired opponent, and to thrust him, screaming with pain and baffled rage, into the pool. The female vole had watched the combat from a recess in the bank; and, when the victor returned from the river, she crept out trustfully to meet him, and licked his soiled and ruffled fur. But for the moment Brighteye was not in a responsive mood. Though his body thrilled at the touch of her warm, soft tongue, he recognised that his first duty was to make his conquest sure. His strength had been taxed to the utmost, and, since his rage was expended and his tiny wounds were beginning to smart, he feared a second encounter and the possible loss of his lady-love. So, with simulated anger, he drove her before him along the up-stream path and into the network of deserted run-ways by the trout-reach. There his mood entirely changed; and soon, in simple, happy comradeship, he led her to his home. Brighteye was a handsome little fellow. At all times he had been careful in his toilet, but now, pardonably vain, he fastidiously occupied every moment of leisure in brushing and combing his long, fine, soft fur. Both in appearance and habits he was altogether different from the garbage-loving rat. His head was rounder and blunter than the rat's, his feet were larger and softer, and his limbs and his tail were shorter. On the under side his feet were of a pale pink colour, but on the upper side they were covered, like the field-vole's, with close, stiff hair set in regular lines from the toes to the elbows of the front limbs and to the ankles of the hind-legs, where the long, fine fur of the body took its place. A slight webbing crossed the toes of his hind-feet--so slight, indeed, that it assisted him but little in swimming--and his tiny, polished claws were plum-coloured. Except when he was listening intently for some sign of danger, his small, round ears were almost concealed in his thick fur. His mate was of smaller and more delicate build--this was especially noticeable when once I saw her swim with Brighteye through the clear water beneath the bank--and she was clad in sombre brown and grey. Household and similar duties soon began to claim attention in and around the riverside dwelling. The green grass was growing rapidly under the withered blades that arched the run-ways between the river's brink and the woodland path; and, as the voles desired to keep these run-ways clear, they assiduously cut off all encroaching stems and brushed them aside. The stems dried, and in several places formed a screen beneath which the movements of the voles were not easily discernible. Selecting the best of the dry grass-stalks, the voles carried them home, and, after much labour, varied with much consultation in which small differences of opinion evidently occurred, completed, in the sleeping chamber beneath the willow-roots, a large, round nest. The magnitude of their labour could be easily inferred from the appearance of the nest: each grass-blade carried thither had been bitten into dozens of fragments, and the structure filled the entire space beyond the first of the exposed roots, though its interior, till from frequent use it changed its form, seemed hardly able to accommodate the female vole. In this tight snuggery, at a time when the corncrake's nocturnal music was first heard in the meadow by the pool, five midget water-voles, naked and blind, were born. Brighteye listened intently to the faint, unmistakable family noises issuing therefrom, and then, like a thoughtful dry-nurse, went off to find for his mate a tender white root of horse-tail grass. For several nights he was assiduous in his attentions to the mother vole; and afterwards, his house-keeping duties being suspended, he became a vigilant sentinel, maintaining constant watch over the precious family within his home. When the baby voles were about a week old, a large brown rat, that on several occasions in the previous year had annoyed the youthful Brighteye, returned to the pool. Wandering through the run-ways, the monster chanced to discover the opening from the bank to Brighteye's chamber, and, thinking that here was a place admirably suited for a summer resort, proceeded to investigate. The vole scented him immediately, and, though the weaker animal, climbed quickly out and with tooth and nail fell upon the intruder. An instant later, the mother vole appeared, and with even greater ferocity than that of her mate joined in the keen affray in order to defend her home and family to the utmost of her powers. But the rat possessed great strength and cruel teeth, and his size and weight were such that for several minutes he successfully maintained his position. With desperate efforts, the voles endeavoured to pull the rat into the water, where, as they knew, their advantage would be greater than on land. They succeeded at last in forcing him over the bank, and in the pool proceeded to punish him to such an extent--clinging to his neck by their teeth and fore-feet, while they used their hind-claws with painful effect on his body--that, dazed by their drastic methods and almost suffocated, he reluctantly gave up the struggle, and floated, gasping, down the stream. The mother vole, though she and her spouse had proved victorious, was so unsettled by the rat's incursion, that, as a cat carries her kittens, she carried each of her young in turn from their nest to a temporary refuge in a clump of brambles. Still dissatisfied, she removed them thence to a shallow depression beside one of the run-ways, where, throughout the night, she nursed them tenderly. At daybreak she took them back to the warmth and the comfort of the nest. Shortly afterwards, when their eyes were opened and they were following the parent voles on one of their customary night excursions, the mother found herself face to face with a far more formidable antagonist than the rat. The baby voles, like the offspring of nearly all land animals that have gradually become aquatic in their habits, were at first strangely averse from entering the water, and had to be taken by their parents into the pool. There the anxious mother, firm yet gentle in her system of education, watched their every movement, and encouraged them to follow her about the backwaters and shallows near their home. But if either of them showed the faintest sign of fatigue, the mother dived quietly and lifted the tired nursling to the surface. Late one evening, while the parent voles were busy with their work of family training, the old cannibal trout suddenly appeared, rose quickly at one of the youngsters swimming near the edge of the current, but, through a slight miscalculation, failed to clutch his prize. The mother vole, ever on the alert, plunged down, and, heedless of danger, darted towards her enemy. For a second or two she manoeuvred to obtain a grip, then, as she turned to avoid attack, the jaws of the trout opened wide, and, like a steel trap, closed firmly on her tail. Maddened with rage and pain, she raised herself quickly, clutched at the back of her assailant, and buried her sharp, adze-shaped teeth--that could strip a piece of willow-bark as neatly as could a highly tempered tool of steel--in the flesh behind his gills. So sure and speedy was her action, that she showed no sign of fatigue when she reached the surface of the water, and the trout, his spinal column severed just behind his gills, drifted lifelessly away. Though the young voles, in the tunnelled buttress of the river-bank, lived under the care of experienced parents ever ready and resolute in their defence, and became as shy and furtive as the wood-mice dwelling in the hollows of the hedge beside the pond, they were not always favoured by fortune. The weakling of the family died of disease; another of the youngsters, foraging alone in the wood, was killed by a bloodthirsty weasel; while a third, diving to pick up a root of water-weed, was caught by the neck in the fork of a submerged branch, and drowned. During the autumn and the winter the survivors remained with their parents; the burrow was enlarged and improved by the addition of new granaries for winter supplies, new water-entrances to facilitate escape in times of panic, and a new, commodious sleeping chamber, strewn with hay and withered reeds, at the end of a long tunnel extending almost directly beneath the river-path. The supplies in the granaries were, however, hardly needed: the winter was exceptionally mild, and the voles were generally able to obtain duckweed and watercress for food. Often, on my way to the ruined garden, I noticed their footprints--indistinctly outlined on the gravel, but deep and triangular where the creatures climbed through soft and yielding soil--along the path leading to the pond in the pasture near the wood. When spring came once more, and the scented primroses gleamed faintly in the gloom beside the upper entrance to the burrow, and the corncrake, babbling loudly, wandered through the growing grass at the foot of the meadow-hedge, the household of the voles was broken up. The young ones found partners, and, in homes not far from the burrow by the willow-stoles, settled down to the usual life of the vole, a life of happiness and yet of peril. For still another year Brighteye's presence was familiar to me. I often watched him as he sat at the water's edge above the buttress, or on the stone in mid-stream, or on the half-submerged root of a tree washed into an angle of the pool above the stakes, and as, after his usual toilet observances, he swam thence across the reed-bed opposite the "hover" where, in autumn, the breeding salmon lurked. Then, for many months, I lived far from the well loved village. But one winter evening, after a long journey, I returned. The snow, falling rapidly, blotted out the prospect of the silent hills. The village seemed asleep; the shops were closed for the weekly holiday; not a footfall could be heard, not even a dog could be seen, down the long vista of the straggling street. The white walls of the cottages, and the white snow-drifts banked beside the irregular pavements, were in complete contrast to the radiant summer scene on which my eyes had lingered when I left the village. My feeling of cheerlessness was not dispelled even by the warmth and comfort of the little inn. Oppressed by the evidences of change, which in my disappointment were, no doubt, much exaggerated, I left the inn, and, heedless of the piercing cold and the driving snow, made my way towards the river. As I approached the stakes below the pool, a golden-eye duck rose from beside the bank, and on whistling wings flew swiftly into the gloom. I crouched in the shelter of a holly tree, and waited and watched till the cold became unendurable; but no other sign of life was visible; the pool was deserted. In summer I returned home to stay, and then, as of old, I often wandered by the river. Evening after evening, till long after the last red glow had faded from the western hill-tops, I lingered by the pool. The owl sailed slowly past; the goatsucker hawked for moths about the oaks; the trout rose to the incautious flies; the corncrake babbled loudly in the long, lush meadow grass. A family of voles swam in and out of the shallows opposite my hiding place; but none of the little animals approached the buttress near the stakes. Frequently I saw their footprints on the sandy margin, but never the footprints of Brighteye. Somehow, somewhere, he had met relentless fate. THE FIELD-VOLE. I. HIDDEN PATHWAYS IN THE GRASS. The sun had set, the evening was calm, and a mist hung over the countryside when a field-vole appeared at the mouth of his burrow in a mossy pasture. The little grey creature was one of the most timorous of the feeble folk dwelling in the pleasant wilderness of the Valley of Olwen. His life, like that of Brighteye, the water-vole, was beset with enemies; but Nature had given to him, as to the water-vole, acute senses of sight, and smell, and hearing, and a great power of quick and intelligent action. He had lived four years, survived a hundred dangers, and reared twenty healthy families; and his wits were so finely sharpened that he was recognised by a flourishing colony, which had gradually increased around his moss-roofed home, as the wisest and most wide-awake field-vole that ever nibbled a turnip or harvested a seed. For a moment the vole sat in the mouth of the burrow, with nothing of himself visible but a blunt little snout twitching as he sniffed the air, and two beady eyes moving restlessly as he peered into the sky. Suddenly he leaped out and squatted beside the nearest stone. A robin, disturbed in his roosting place by another of his kind, flew from the hedge in furious pursuit of the intruder, and passed within a few inches of the burrow. The vole, alarmed by the rush of wings, instantly vanished; but soon, convinced that no cause for fear existed, he again left his burrow and for several minutes sat motionless by the stone. He was not, however, idle--a field-vole is never idle save when he sleeps--but he was puzzled by the different sounds and scents and sights around him; they had become entangled, and while he watched and listened his mind was trying to pick out a thread of meaning here and there. What was the cause of that angry chatter, loud, prolonged, insistent, in the fir plantation at the bottom of the field? Some unwelcome creature, bent on mischief--perhaps a weasel or a cat--was wandering through the undergrowth, and the blackbirds, joined by the finches, the wrens, and the tits, were endeavouring to drive it from the neighbourhood. Gradually the noisy birds followed the intruder to the far end of the slope; then, returning to their roosting places, they squabbled for the choice of sheltered perches among the ivied boughs. Silence fell on upland and valley; and the creatures of the night crept forth from bank and hedgerow, and the thickets of the wood, to play and feed under the friendly protection of the fast-gathering gloom. But the field-vole would not venture from his lair beside the stone. A convenient tunnel, arched with grass-bents, led thither from the burrow, the post of observation being shaped through frequent use into an oval "form." The vole, though anxious to begin his search for food, was not satisfied that the way was clear to the margin of the fir plantation, for the air was infused with many odours, some so strong and new that he could easily have followed their lines, but others so faint and old that their direction and identity were alike uncertain. From the signs that were fresh the vole learned the story of field-life for the day. Horses, men, and hounds had hurried by in the early morning, and with their scent was mingled that of a fleeing fox. Later, the farmer and his dog had passed along the hedge, a carrion crow had fed on a scrap of refuse not a yard from the stone, and a covey of partridges had "dusted" in the soft soil before leaving the pasture by a gap beside a clump of furze. Blackbirds, thrushes, yellow-hammers, and larks had wandered by in the grass, a wood-pigeon and a squirrel had loitered among the acorns under the oak, and a hedgehog had led her young through the briars. Rabbits, too, had left their trails in the clover, and a red bank-vole had strayed near the boundaries of the field-vole's colony. Their signs were familiar to the vole from experience; he detected them and singled them out from the old trails with a sense even truer than that of the hounds as they galloped past in the morning's chase. There was one distinct scent, however, that baffled him. At first he believed it to be that of a weasel, but it lacked the pungent strength inseparable from the scent of a full-grown "vear." Gathering courage as the darkness deepened, the field-vole rustled from his lair, ran quickly down the slope, and crept through a wattled opening into the wood. He found some fallen hawthorn berries among the hyacinth leaves that carpeted the ground, and of these he made a hasty meal, sitting on his haunches, and holding his food in his fore-paws as he gnawed the firm, succulent flesh about the kernel of the seed. Then, with a swift patter of tiny feet on the leaf-mould, he ran down to a rill trickling over a gravelly bed towards the brook, stooped at the edge of a dark pool in the shadow of a stone, and lapped the cool, clear water. Thence he made for the edge of the wood, to visit a colony of his tribe which in spring had migrated from the burrows in the uplands. Half-way on his journey, he again suddenly crossed the line of the unknown scent, now mingled with the almost overpowering smell of a full-grown weasel. The mystery was explained: the strange trail in the upland meadow had evidently been that of a young "vear" passing by the hedge to join its parent in the wood. For a moment the vole stood petrified with terror; then he sank to the earth, and lay as still as the dead leaves beneath him. But there was no time to be lost; the "vears" were returning on their trail. In an agony of fear the mouse turned back towards his home. He ran slowly, for his limbs almost refused their office of bearing him from danger. Reaching the mouth of his burrow with great difficulty, he dropped headlong down a shallow shaft leading to one of the numerous galleries. Then, lo! his mood immediately changed; his reasoning powers became strong and clear; his parental instincts whispered that his family, like himself, was in peril. Squeaking all the while, he raced down one tunnel, then down another, turned a sharp corner beneath an archway formed by the roots of a tree that had long ago been felled; and there, in a dry nest of hay and straw, he found his mate with her helpless little family of six blind, semi-transparent sucklings only three days old. He heard on every side the quick scamper of feet as, alarmed by his cries, the voles inhabiting the side passages of the burrow scurried hither and thither in wild efforts to remove their young to some imagined place of safety. [Illustration: "SHE WAS HOLDING ONE OF HER OFFSPRING BY THE NECK, IN PREPARATION FOR FLIGHT." (_See_ p. 139).] His mate, like her neighbours, had already taken alarm. At the moment of his arrival she was holding one of her offspring by the neck, in preparation for flight. The next instant an ominous hiss reverberated along the hollow passages; the mother vole, with her suckling, vanished in the darkness of the winding gallery; and the weasels descended into the labyrinth of tunnels hollowed out beneath the moss. Again an almost overwhelming fear possessed the hunted vole, his limbs stiffened, his condition seemed helpless. He crawled slowly hither and thither, now passing some fellow-creature huddled in the corner of a blind alley; now lifting himself above ground to seek refuge in another part of the burrow; now pausing to listen to cries of pain which indicated how thoroughly the "vears" were fulfilling their gruesome work. It seemed that the whole colony of voles was being exterminated. Bewildered, after an hour of unmitigated dread, he quitted the place of slaughter, where every nook and corner reeked of blood or of the weasels' scent, and limped through the grass towards the hedge. In a hollow among the scattered stones he stayed till terror no longer benumbed him, and he could summon courage to seek an early meal in the root-field beyond the pasture. Directly the day began to dawn, he cautiously returned to his burrow. Though numerous traces of the havoc of the night remained, he knew, from the staleness of the weasels' scent, that his foes had departed. At noon his mate came again to her nest, and searched for her missing offspring. But the taint of blood on the floor of the chamber told her only too well that henceforth her mothering care would be needed solely by the young mouse that she had rescued in her flight. The day passed uneventfully; the weasels did not repeat their visit. At nightfall the mother mouse, stealing into the wood, found both her enemies caught in rabbit-traps set beside the "runs" among the hawthorns. For a while peace reigned in the underground dwellings of the mossy pasture, and the young field-vole thrived amazingly; from the very outset fortune favoured him above the rest of his species. After the wholesale destruction that had taken place, little risk of overcrowding and its attendant evils remained, and, for the lucky mice surviving the raid, food was plentiful, even when later, in winter, they were awakened by some warm, bright day, and hunger, long sustained, had made them ravenous. Kweek, having no brother or sister to share his birthright, was fed and trained in a manner that otherwise would have been impossible, while his parents were particularly strong and healthy. These circumstances undoubtedly combined to make him what he eventually became--quick to form an opinion and to act, and able, once he was fully grown, to meet in fight all rivals for the possession of any sleek young she-vole he happened to have chosen for his mate. Soon after his eyes were open, the adult voles of the colony began to harvest their winter supplies. Seeds of all kinds were stored in shallow hiding places--under stones, or under fallen branches--or in certain chambers of the burrow set apart for that especial purpose; and as each granary was filled its entrance was securely stopped by a mound of earth thrown up by the busy harvesters. The first solid food Kweek tasted was the black, glossy seed of a columbine, which his mother, busily collecting provender, chanced to drop near him as she hurried to her storehouse. Earlier in the night, just outside the burrow, he had watched her with great curiosity as she daintily nibbled a grain of wheat brought from a gateway where the laden waggons had passed. He had loitered near, searching among the grass-roots for some fragment he supposed his mother to have left behind, but he found only a rough, prickly husk, that stuck beneath his tongue, nearly choked him, and drove him frantic with irritation, till, after much violent shaking and twitching, and rubbing his throat and muzzle with his fore-paws, he managed to get rid of the objectionable morsel. Something, however, in the taste of the husk so aroused his appetite for solid food, that when his mother dropped the columbine seed he at once picked it up in his fore-paws, and, stripping off the hard, glossy covering, devoured it with the keen relish of a new hunger that as yet he could not entirely understand. His growth, directly he learned to feed on the seeds his mother showed him, and to forage a little for himself, was more rapid than before. Nature seemed in a hurry to make him strong and fat, that he might be able to endure the cold and privation of winter. By the end of November, when at night the first rime-frosts lay on the fallow, and the voles, disliking the chill mists, seldom left their burrow, Kweek was already bigger than his dam. He was, in fact, the equal of his sire in bone and length, but he was loose-limbed and had not filled out to those exact proportions which, among voles as among all other wildlings of the field, make for perfect symmetry, grace, and stamina, and come only with maturity and the first love season. When about two months old, Kweek, for the first time since the weasels had visited the burrow, experienced a narrow escape from death. The night was mild and bright, and the vole was busy in the littered loam of the hedgerow, where, during the afternoon, a blackbird had scratched the leaves away and left some ripe haws exposed to view. Suddenly he heard a loud, mocking call, apparently coming from the direction of the moon: "Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo-o-o-o!" It was a strangely bewildering sound; so the vole squatted among the leaves and listened anxiously, every sense alert to catch the meaning of the weird, foreboding voice. "Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo-o-o-o!"--again, from directly overhead, the cry rang out into the night. A low squeak of warning, uttered by the father vole as he dived into his burrow, caused the young mice foraging in the undergrowth to bolt helter-skelter towards home. Kweek, joining in the general panic, rushed across the field, and had almost disappeared underground when he felt the earth and the loose pebbles falling over him, and at the same time experienced a sharp thrill of pain. Fortunately, his speed saved him--but only by an inch. The claws of the great brown owl, shutting like a vice as the bird "stooped" on her prey, laid hold of nothing but earth and grass, though one keen talon cut the vole's tail as with a knife, so that the little creature squealed lustily as he ran along the gallery to seek solace from his mother's companionship in the central chamber beyond. Yet even there he was not allowed to remain in peace. Maddened by the scent of a few drops of blood coming from his wound, the adult voles chased him from the burrow, and drove him out into the field. Luckily for him the brown owl had meanwhile flown away with another young vole in her claws. Kweek remained in safety under the hawthorns till the grey dawn flushed the south-east sky; then, his injured tail having ceased to bleed, he ventured without fear among his kindred as they lay huddled asleep in the recesses of their underground abode. The year drew to its close, the weather became colder, and an irresistible desire for long-continued rest took possession of Kweek. His appetite was more easily satisfied than hitherto; hour after hour, by night as well as by day, he drowsed in the snug corner where lay the remains of the nest in which he had been born. Winter, weary and monotonous to most of the wildlings of the field, passed quickly over his head. Scarce-broken sleep and forgetfulness, when skies are grey and tempests rage--such are Nature's gifts to the snake, the bee, and the flower, as well as to the squirrel in the wood and the vole in the burrow beneath the moss. Occasionally, it is true, when at noon the sun was bright and spring seemed to have come to the Valley of Olwen, the snake would stir in his retreat beneath the leaves, the bee would crawl to and fro in her hidden nest, the flower would feel the stir of rising sap, the squirrel would venture forth to stretch cramped limbs by a visit to some particular storehouse--the existence of which, as one among many filled with nuts and acorns, he happened to remember--and the vole would creep to the entrance of his burrow, and sit in the welcome warmth till the sun declined and hunger sent him to his granary for a hearty meal. These brief, spring-like hours, when the golden furze blossomed in the hedge-bank near the field-vole's home, and the lark, exultant, rose from the barren stubble, were, however, full of danger to Kweek if he but dared to lift his head above the opening of his burrow. On the outskirts of the wood, in a rough, ivy-grown ridge where, years ago, some trees had been felled, a flourishing colony of bank-voles--little creatures nearly akin, and almost similar in shape and size, to the field-voles--dwelt among the roots and the undergrowth. These bank-voles, probably because they lived in a sheltered place screened from the bitter wind by a wall of gorse and pines, moved abroad in the winter days far more frequently than did the field-voles. For several years a pair of kestrels had lived in the valley, and had reared their young in a nest built on a ledge of rock above the Cerdyn brook and safe beyond the reach of marauding schoolboys. The hen-kestrel, when provender became scarce, would regularly at noon beat her way across the hill-top to the ridge where the red voles lived, and, watching and waiting, with keen eyes and ready talons, would remain in the air above the burrow as if poised at the end of an invisible thread. Chiefly she was the terror of the bank-voles; but often, impatient of failure, she would slant her fans and drift towards the burrows in the mossy pasture, hoping to find that the grey voles had awakened for an hour from their winter sleep. Once, when the breeze blew gently from the south and the sun was bright, Kweek, sitting on a grassy mound, saw a shadow rapidly approaching, and heard a sharp swish of powerful wings. Though drowsy and stiff from his winter sleep, he was roused for the moment by the imminence of danger, and, barely in time, scurried to his hole. A fortnight afterwards, when, again tempted out of doors by the mildness of the weather, the vole was peeping through an archway of matted grass, the hawk, with even greater rapidity than before, shot down from the sky. Had it not been that the long grass screened an entrance on the outskirts of the burrow, Kweek would then have met his fate. He fell, almost without knowing what was happening, straight down the shaft; and the sharp talons of the hawk touched nothing but grass and earth, and the end of a tail already scarred by the claws of the owl. Next day, as, moving along the galleries to his favourite exit, the vole passed beneath the shaft, he saw, straight overhead, the shadowy wings outstretched, quivering, lifting, gliding, pausing, while beneath those spreading fans the baleful eyes gleamed yellow in the slant of the south-west sun, and the cruel claws, indrawn against the keel-shaped breast, were clenched in readiness for the deadly "stoop." Fascinated, the vole stayed awhile to look at the hovering hawk. Then, as the bird passed from the line of sight, he continued his way along the underground passage to the spot where he usually left his home by one of the narrow, clean-cut holes which, in a field-vole's burrow, seem to serve a somewhat similar purpose to that of the "bolts" in a rabbit's warren; and there he again looked out. The hawk still hovered in the calm winter air, so Kweek did not venture that day to bask in the sun outside his door. As soon as he had fed, and shaken every speck of loose loam from his fur, and washed himself clean with his tiny red tongue, he once more sought his cosy corner and fell asleep. Presently a pink and purple sunset faded in the gloom of night, and a heavy frost, beginning a month of bitter cold, lay over the fields. In continuous slumber Kweek passed that dreary month, till the daisies peeped in the grass, the snowdrops and the daffodils thrust forth their sword-shaped leaves above the water-meadows, and the earliest violet unfolded its petals by the pathway in the woods. II. THE VALLEY OF OLWEN. Eastward, the sky was covered with pale cobalt; and in the midst of the far-spreading blue hung a white and crimson cloud, like a puff of bright-stained vapour blown up above the rim of the world. Westward, the sky was coloured with brilliant primrose; and on the edge of the distant moorlands lay a great bank of mist, rainbow-tinted with deep violet, and rose, and orange. For a space immediately on each side of the mist the primrose deepened into daffodil--a chaste yet intense splendour that seemed to stretch into infinite distances and overlap the sharply defined ridges of the dark horizon. The green of the upland pasture and the brown of the ploughland beyond were veiled by a shimmering twilight haze, in which the varied tints of the sky harmoniously blended, till the umber and indigo shadows of night loomed over the hills, and the daffodil flame flickered and vanished over the last red ember of the afterglow. Thus the first calm day of early spring drew to its close. Kweek, the little field-vole, asleep in his hidden nest beneath the moss, was roused by the promise that Olwen, the White-footed, who had come to her own beautiful valley among our western hills, whispered as she passed along the slope above the mill-dam in the glen. He uncurled himself on the litter of withered grass-bents that formed his winter couch, crept towards the nearest bolt-hole of his burrow, and peeped at the fleecy clouds as they wandered idly overhead. He inhaled long, deep breaths of the fresh, warm air; then, conscious of new, increasing strength, he continued his way underground to the granary in which, some months ago, his mother had stored the columbine seeds. But the earth had been scratched away from the storehouse door, and nothing remained of the winter supplies. Hungry and thirsty, yet not daring to roam abroad while the sun was high, the vole moved from chamber to chamber of his burrow, washed himself thoroughly from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, then, feeling lonely, awakened his parents from their heavy sleep, and spent the afternoon thinking and dreaming, till the sun sank low in the glory of the aureolin sky, and the robin's vesper trilled wistfully from the hawthorns on the fringe of the shadowed wood. Becoming venturesome with the near approach of night, but still remembering the danger that had threatened him before the last period of his winter sleep, he lifted himself warily above the ground, and for a little while stayed near the mound of earth beside the door of his burrow. Cramped from long disuse, every muscle in his body seemed in need of vigorous exertion, while with each succeeding breath of the cool twilight air his hunger and thirst increased. Determined to find food and water, Kweek started towards the copse. No beaten pathway guided his footsteps; wind and rain, frost and thaw, and the new, slow growth of the grass, had obliterated every trail. But by following the scent of the parent voles that had already stolen into the wood, he reached in safety the banks of the rill. Having quenched his thirst, he scratched the soft soil from beneath a stone and satisfied his hunger with some succulent sprouts of herbage there exposed to sight. Soon, tired from his unwonted exertion, and feeling great pain through having torn the pads of his feet--which, like those of all hibernating animals, had become extremely tender from want of exercise--he crept home to his burrow, and rested till the soreness had gone from his limbs, and he felt active and hungry again. For the vole, guided as he was by his appetite, the most wholesome vegetable food was a ripe, well-flavoured seed. It contained all that the plant could give; leaf and stalk were tasteless compared with it, and were accepted only as a change of diet, or as a medicine, or as a last resource. Next to a seed, he loved a tender root, or a stem that had not yet thrust itself through the soil, and was therefore crisp and dainty to the taste. But the vole did not subsist entirely on vegetable food. Occasionally, when the nights were warm, he surprised some little insect hiding in the moss, and pounced on his prey almost as greedily as the trout in the stream below the hill rose to a passing fly. And just as the cattle in the distant farm throve on grain and oil-cake, and the pheasant in the copse near by on wood-ants' "eggs," and the trout in the Cerdyn brook on ephemerals hatched at the margin of the pool, so Kweek, the field-vole, abroad in the nights of summer, grew sleek and well conditioned on good supplies of seeds and grubs. But now, worn out by long privation, he was tired and weak. Gradually, from the bed of winter death, from the rotting leaf-mould and the cold, damp earth, the fresh, bright forms of spring arose. The purple and crimson trails of the periwinkle lengthened over the stones; then the spear-shaped buds, prompted by the flow of pulsing sap, lifted themselves above the glossy leaves and burst into flowers. The dandelion and the celandine peeped from the grass; the primrose garlanded each sunny mound on the margin of the wood; and the willow catkins, clothed with silver and pearly grey, waved in the moist, warm breeze as it wandered by the brook. The queen-ant, aroused by the increasing warmth, carried her offspring from the deep recess where, in her tunnelled nest, she had brooded over them while the north-east wind blew through the leafless boughs, and laid them side by side in a roomy chamber immediately beneath the stone that screened the spot to which, in the autumn dusk, the father vole resorted that he might watch and wait before the darkness deepened on the fields and woods. The bees from the hives in the farm garden, and innumerable flies from their winter retreats in the hedgerows, came eagerly to the golden blossoms of the furze near the bank-voles' colony. The bees alighted with care on the lower petals of the flowers, and thence climbed quickly to the hidden sweets; but the flies, heedless adventurers, dropped haphazard among the sprays, and were content to filch the specks of pollen dust and the tiny drops of nectar scattered by the honey-bees. A spirit of restlessness, of strife, of strange, unsatisfied desire, possessed all Nature's children; it raised the primrose from amid the deep-veined leaves close-pressed on the carpet of the grass, it tuned the carols of the robin and the thrush, it caused the wild jack-hare to roam by daylight along paths which hitherto he had not followed save by night. Kweek felt the subtle influence; long before dark he would venture from his home, steal through the "creeps," which had now become evident because of frequent "traffic," and visit the distant colonies of his kindred beyond the wood. Of the flourishing community living in the burrow before the weasels' raid none survived but Kweek and his parents. One night, however, the father vole, while foraging near the hedgerow, was snapped up and eaten by the big brown owl from the beech-wood across the valley. In the woodlands the greatest expert on the ways of voles was the brown owl. His noiseless wings never gave the slightest alarm, and never interfered with his sense of hearing--so acute that the faint rustle of a leaf or a grass-blade brought him, like a bolt, from the sky, to hover close to the earth, eager, inquisitive, merciless, till a movement on the part of his quarry sealed its doom. The mother vole, feeling lonely and more than ever afraid, wandered far away, and found another mate in a sleek, bright-eyed little creature inhabiting a roomy chamber excavated in the loose soil around a heap of stones on the crest of the hill. Kweek, nevertheless, remained faithful to the place of his birth. Though most of his time was spent near the colony beyond the wood, he invariably returned to sleep on the shapeless litter which was all that now remained of the neat, round nest in which he had been nursed. Kweek's frequent visits to his kindred beyond the wood led to numerous adventures. Every member of the colony seemed suddenly to have turned to the consideration of household affairs, and a lively widow-vole flirted so outrageously with bachelor Kweek that, having at last fallen a victim to her persistent attentions, he was never happy save in her company. Unfortunately a big ruffian mouse also succumbed to the widow's wiles, and Kweek found himself awkwardly placed. He fought long and stubbornly against his rival, but, unequally matched and sorely scratched and bitten, was at last forced to rustle away in the direction of his burrow as quickly as his little feet could carry him. He slept off the effects of his exhaustion and the loss of a little blood and fur, then returned, stealthily, to his well-known trysting place, but found, alas! that his fickle lady-love had already regarded with favour the charms of the enemy. Kweek caught a glimpse of her as she carried wisps of withered grass to a hole in the middle of the burrow, and at once recognised that his first fond passion had hopelessly ended. Fortune continued to treat him unkindly: that night, while returning homewards, he was almost frightened out of his wits by the shrieks of some little creature captured by the cruel owl, and, immediately afterwards, a rabbit, alarmed by the same ominous sounds and bolting to her warren in the wood, knocked him topsy-turvy as he crouched in hiding among the leaves. These adventures taught him salutary lessons, and henceforth the confidence of youth gave place to extreme caution; he avoided the risk of lying near a rabbit's "creep," and was quick to discern the slightest sign, such as a shadowy form above the moonlit field, which might indicate the approach of the slow-winged tyrant of the night. Among animals living in communities it is a frequent custom for a young male, if badly beaten in his first love episode by a rival, to elope with a new spouse, and seek a home at some distance from the scene of his defeat. Kweek suffered exceedingly from his disappointment; it was a shock to him that he should be bullied and hustled at the very time when his passion was strongest and every prospect in his little life seemed fair and bright. For a time he dared not match himself against another of the older voles. But in an unimportant squabble with a mouse of his own age, he soon proved the victor, and, finding his reward in the favour of a young she-vole that had watched the quarrel from behind a grass-tuft, ran off with her at midnight to his old, deserted burrow in the pasture. After thoroughly examining the various galleries in the underground labyrinth, the fastidious little pair dug out a clean, fresh chamber at right angles to the main tunnel, and, contented, began in earnest the duties of the year. April came; and often, as he sat by his door, Kweek watched the gentle showers sweep by in tall pillars of vapour through the moonbeams falling aslant from the illumined edges of an overhanging cloud, and through the shadows stretching in long, irregular lines between the fallow and the copse; and night after night the shadows near the copse grew deeper, and still deeper, as the hawthorn leaf-buds opened to the warmth of spring. The grass-spears lengthened; the moss spread in new, rain-jewelled velvet-pile over the pasture floor; the woodbine and the bramble trailed their tender shoots above the hedge; a leafy screen sheltered each woodland home; and even the narrow path from the field-voles' burrow to the corner of the copse led through a perfect bower of half-transparent greenery. The birds were everywhere busy with their nests in the thickets; sometimes, in the quiet evening, long after the moon had risen and Kweek had ventured forth to feed, the robin and the thrush, perched on a bare ash-tree, sang their sweet solos to the sleepy fields; and, with the earliest peep of dawn, the clear, wild notes of the missel-thrush rang out over the valley from the beech-tree near the river. The rabbits extended their galleries and dug new "breeding earths" in their warren by the wood; and often, in the deep stillness of the night, the call-note of an awakened bird echoed, murmuring, among the rocks opposite the pines far down the slope. During the past few weeks great events had happened in the new-made chamber of the field-voles' burrow. Hundreds of dry grass-bents, bleached and seasoned by the winter frosts and rains, had been collected there, with tufts of withered moss, a stray feather or two dropped from the ruined nest of a long-tailed titmouse in the furze, and a few fine, hair-like roots of polypody fern from the neighbouring thicket. And now, their nursery complete, four tiny, hairless voles, with disproportionate heads, round black eyes beneath unopened lids, wrinkled muzzles, and abbreviated tails--helpless midgets in form suggestive of diminutive bull-dog puppies--lay huddled in their tight, warm bed. It was a time of great anxiety for Kweek. While his mate with maternal pride went leisurely about her duties, doing all things in order, as if she had nursed much larger families and foes were never known, he moved fussily hither and thither, visiting his offspring at frequent intervals during the night, creeping into the wood and back along his bowered path, scampering noisily down the shaft if the brown owl but happened to hoot far up in the glen, and doing a hundred things for which there was not the slightest need, and which only served to irritate and alarm the careful mother-vole. Kweek inherited his timorous disposition from countless generations of voles that by their ceaseless watchfulness, had survived when others had been killed by birds and beasts of prey; and though, in his zeal for the welfare of his family, he often gave a false alarm, it was far better that he should be at all times prepared for the worst than that, in some unguarded instant, death should drop swiftly from the sky or crawl stealthily into his hidden home. During spring, more frequently than at any other season, death waited for him and his kindred--in the grass, in the air, in the trees along the hedge-banks, and on the summit of the rock that towered above the glen. Vermin had become unusually numerous in the valley, partly because in the mild winter their food had been sufficient, and partly because the keeper, feeble with old age, could no longer shoot and trap them with the deadly certainty that had made him famous in his younger days. Bold in the care of their young, the vermin ravaged the countryside, preying everywhere on the weak and ailing little children of Nature. But fate was indulgent to Kweek; though his kindred in the colony beyond the wood, and the bank-voles in the sheltered hollow near the pines, suffered greatly from all kinds of enemies, he and his mate still managed to escape unhurt. One night a fox, prowling across the pasture, caught sight of Kweek as he hurried to his lair. Suspicious and crafty, Reynard paused at one of the entrances to the burrow, thrust his sharp nose as far as possible down the shaft, drew a long, deep breath, and commenced to dig away the soil from the mouth of the hole. Suddenly changing his mind--perhaps because the scent was faint and he concluded that his labour would not be sufficiently repaid--he ceased his exertions and wandered off towards the hedge. Next day a carrion crow, seeing the heap of earth that lay around the hole, and shrewdly guessing it to mean a treat in store, flew down from an oak-tree, and hopped sideways towards the spot. He peered inquisitively at the opening, waddled over to another entrance, returned, and listened eagerly. Convinced that a sound of breathing came from midway between the two holes he had examined, he moved towards the spot directly above the nest, tapped it sharply with his beak, and again returned to listen near the entrance. But all his artifice was quite in vain; the voles would not bolt; they were not even inquisitive; so presently, baffled in his hopes of plunder, he moved clumsily away, stooped for an instant, and lifted himself on slow, sable pinions into the air. The mother vole, assisted in questionable fashion by meddlesome Kweek, spent several hours of the following night in repairing the damage done by the fox. She drew most of the soil back into the shaft, and then, where it accumulated in the passage beneath, made the opening towards the inner chamber slightly narrower than before. Soon, moistened and hardened by the constant "traffic" of tiny feet nearly always damp with dew, the mound of earth formed a barrier so artfully contrived that even a weasel might find it difficult to enter the gallery from the bottom of the shaft. III. A BARREN HILLSIDE. Living a secluded life in the pasture with his little mate, Kweek escaped the close attention paid by the "vermin" to his kindred in the colony beyond the wood. The brown owl still remembered where he dwelt, but, loath to make a special nightly journey to the spot, seldom caused him the least anxiety. She seemed to content herself with a strict watch over the bank inhabited by the red voles, and over the fields on the far side of the copse, where the grey voles, notwithstanding that they supplied her with many a delicious supper, were becoming numerous. She awaited an almost certain increase among the "small deer" of the pasture, before commencing her raids on the grey voles there. As events proved, however, her patience was unrewarded. Kweek's first experience in rearing a family ended disastrously. Two of the nurslings died a few hours after birth; one, venturing from the nest too soon in the evening, was killed by a magpie; and two, while sitting out near the hedge, were trampled to death by a flock of sheep rushing, panic-stricken, at the sight of a wandering fox. By the middle of May, when another vole family of six had arrived, the number of vermin in the valley had perceptibly diminished. The old, asthmatic keeper in charge of the Cerdyn valley died, and a younger and more energetic man from a neighbouring estate came to take his place. Eager to gain the favour of his master by providing him good sport in the coming autumn, the new keeper ranged the woods from dawn till dusk, setting pole-traps in the trees, or baiting rabbit-traps in the "creeps" of stoat or weasel, and destroying nests, as well as shooting any furred or feathered creature of questionable character. The big brown owl from the beech-grove, the kestrel from the rock on the far side of the brook, the sparrow-hawk from the spinney up-stream, together with the weasels, the stoats, the cats, the jays, and the magpies--all in turn met their doom. A pair of barn-owls from the loft in the farm suffered next. These owls were great pets at the old homestead. For many years they had lived unmolested in their gloomy retreat under the tiles, and regularly at nightfall had flown fearlessly to and fro among the outbuildings, or perched on the ruined pigeon-cote watching for the rats to leave their holes. The farmer, less ignorant than the keeper, recognised the owls as friends, and treated them accordingly. They were his winged cats, and assisted to check the increase of a plague. Like the brown owl, they knew well the habits of the voles; but their attention was diverted by the rats and the mice at the farm, and they seldom wandered far afield except for a change of diet or to stretch wings cramped by a long summer day's seclusion. The rats, however, were far from being exterminated; and so, when a little child who was all sunshine to his parents in the lonely homestead died from typhoid fever, the village doctor, fearing an epidemic, advised that the pests should be utterly destroyed. Loath to use strychnine, since he knew that in a neighbouring valley some owls had died from eating poisoned rats, the farmer sought the aid of the village poachers, who, with their terriers and ferrets, thoroughly searched the stacks and the buildings. During the hunt it was noticed that about a score of rats took refuge in a narrow chamber under the eaves. The farmer, directing operations in another part of the yard, was unaware of what had occurred. The poachers, knowing nothing of the presence of the owls, pushed a terrier through the opening beneath the rafters of the loft, and blocked the hole with the rusty blade of a disused shovel. For a few moments the quick patter of tiny feet indicated that the terrier was busily engaged with his task; then cries of rage and terror came from the imprisoned dog, while with these cries were mingled the sounds of flapping wings. When at last the poachers unstopped the hole and dragged the terrier out, they found that every rat had been killed, and that the place was thickly strewn with the feathers of two dying owls. During the rest of the summer, Kweek led a strangely peaceful life, having little to fear beyond an occasional visit from Reynard, or from an astute old magpie that, evading with apparent ease the keeper's gun and pole-traps, lived on till the late autumn, when, before a line of beaters, he broke cover over some sportsmen waiting for their driven game. As soon as the leaves began to fall and exhausted Nature longed for winter's rest, the burrow in the pasture became the scene of feverish activity. Kweek was now the proud sire of five or six healthy families, and the grand-sire of many more. Even the youngest voles were growing fat and strong; and, when the numerous members of the colony set about harvesting their winter stores, ripe, delicious seeds were plentiful everywhere along the margin of the wood. The winter was uniformly mild, with exception of one short period of great cold which brought a thorough, healthful sleep to the voles; and in the earliest days of spring, when the love-calls of chaffinches and tits were heard from almost every tree, Kweek and his tribe resumed their work and throve amazingly. Every circumstance appeared to favour their well-being. But for the fox, that sometimes crouched beside an opening to the burrow and snapped up an incautious venturer peeping above ground, a young sheep-dog, whose greatest pleasure in life seemed to be found in digging a large round hole in the centre of the burrow, and an adder, that stung a few of the weaklings to death, but found them inconveniently big for swallowing, the voles were seldom troubled. Their numbers, and those of every similar colony in the neighbourhood, increased in such a fashion that, before the following autumn, both the pasture and the near ploughland were barren wastes completely honeycombed with their dwellings. Every grass-root in the pasture was eaten up; every stalk in the cornfield was nibbled through so that the grain might be easily reached and devoured; and the root-crops--potatoes, turnips, and mangolds--on the far side of the cornfield were utterly spoiled; and in the hedgerows and the copse the leaves dropped from the lifeless trees, each of which was marked by a complete ring where the bark was gnawed away close to the ground. But capricious Nature, as if regretting the haste with which she had brought into the world her destructive little children, and desiring, even at the cost of untold suffering and the loss of countless lives, to restore the pleasant Cerdyn valley to its beauty of green fields and leafy woods, sent her twin plagues of disease and starvation among the voles, till, like the sapless leaves, they withered and died. And from far and near the hawks and the owls, the weasels, the stoats, and the foxes hastened to the scene. The keeper, at a loss to know whence they came, and not understanding the lesson he was being taught, bewailed his misfortune, but dared not stay their advent. At almost any hour of the day, five or six kestrels might be seen quartering the fields or hovering here and there among the burrows. And, long before dark, the stoats and the weasels, as if knowing that, fulfilling a special mission, they were now safe from their arch-enemy, the keeper, hunted their prey through the "trash" of the hedge-banks, or in and out of the passages underground. The farm labourers, in desperate haste, dug numerous pitfalls, wide at the bottom but narrow at the mouth, and trapped hundreds of the voles, which, maddened by hunger but unable to climb the sloping sides, attacked one another--all at last dying a miserable death. Not only did the customary enemies of the voles arrive on the scene: Nature called to her great task a number of unexpected destroyers--sea-gulls from the distant coast, a kite from a wooded island on a desolate, far-off mere, and a buzzard from a rocky fastness, rarely visited save by keepers and shepherds, near the up-country lakes. Food had gradually become scarce even for the few hundred voles that yet remained. No longer were they to be seen at play together, in little groups, during the cool, hazy twilight, that, earlier in the year, shimmered like a wonderful afterglow on the mossy pasture-floor. Now their only desire was for food and sleep. Unnoticed by a passing owl, Kweek, worn to a skeleton by sickness and privation, crawled from his burrow into the moonlight of a calm, clear autumn night, and lay in the shadow of the stone where the old male vole had watched and listened for the cruel "vear." A big blow-fly, attracted, with countless thousands of his kind, to the place of slaughter and decay, had gone to sleep on the side of the stone, and Kweek, in a last desperate effort to obtain a little food, moved forward to secure his prize; but at that moment his strength failed him, his weary limbs relaxed, and the dull, grey film of death overspread his half-closed eyes. The owl, hearing a faint sound like the rustle of a dry grass-bent, quickly turned in her flight; then, slanting her wings, dropped to the ground, and presently, with her defenceless quarry in her talons, flew away towards the woods. THE FOX. I. THE LAST HUNT. A dark and wind-swept night had fallen over the countryside when Reynard left the steep slope above the keeper's cottage, and stole through gorse and brambles towards the outskirts of the covert, where a narrow dingle, intersected by a noisy rill and thickly matted with brown bracken, divided the furze from some neighbouring pine-woods. For months nothing had occurred to disturb the peace of his woodland home. Once, about a year ago, he had fled for his life before the hounds; and again, during the last autumn, while lying hidden in the ditch of the root-crop field above the pines, he had been surprised by two sheep-dogs that nipped him sorely before he could make good his escape. But at no other time had he been in evident peril, and so, though naturally cunning and suspicious, he had grown bolder, and better acquainted with the neighbourhood of cottage and farmstead than were certain members of his family living on the opposite side of the valley, among thickets hunted regularly, where guns and spaniels might be heard from early morning till close of day. Here and there, as the fox crept stealthily among the blackthorns and the gorse-bushes, he stopped for a moment on the scent of a rabbit; but the night was not such as to induce Bunny to remain outside her cosy burrow in the bank. He examined each "creep" in the tangled clumps along his way, and sometimes, resting on his haunches, sniffed the air and listened intently for any sign to indicate the presence of a feeding coney; but even the strongest taint was "stale," and no sound could be detected that might betray the whereabouts of any creature feeding in the grass. Disappointed, the fox turned towards the uplands and crossed the hedgerow into the nearest stubble. Louping leisurely along, he surprised and killed a sleeping lark. Further on he crossed the scent of a hare, but Puss was doubtless some distance away, feeding in a quiet corner of the root-crop field. Reynard now instinctively made for the farmyard among the pines, trusting meanwhile that luck would befriend him. Across the gap, by the side of the hedgerow, and through an open gateway, he went, seeking spoil everywhere, but finding none. With all his senses alert, he climbed the low wall around the yard, peeped into the empty cart-house, and stealthily approached an open shed. There, unluckily, the dogs were sleeping on a load of hay in the furthest corner. Careful not to arouse his foes, the fox retreated, and, passing the pond at the bottom of the yard, moved silently towards another shed, in which, as he knew from a former visit, the poultry roosted. Though the door was shut, an opening for the use of the fowls seemed to afford the possibility of success. With difficulty Reynard managed to squeeze himself in, only, however, to no purpose. Just beyond the door lay a loose coil of wire, brought home by the labourers after fencing and thrown here out of the way. The fox, fearing a trap, reluctantly abandoned his project, returned to the bank by the pond, and crept down the lane to a spot where the ducks were housed in a neat shelter built in the wall. But here he found everything securely fastened. At this moment a door of the farmstead creaked loudly, the light of a lantern flooded the yard, and the baffled marauder sprang over the wall and trotted across the field towards the wood. His pace soon slackened when he found himself free from pursuit; and before he reached the end of the meadow he had regained all his cool audacity and was busily planning a visit to the cottage at the foot of the dingle. Hardly had his thoughts turned once more to hunting when fortune favoured him. A hen from the farmyard had laid her eggs in the hedgerow bordering the wood, and was brooding over them in proud anticipation of one day leading home a healthy family, thus causing an agreeable surprise to the farmer's wife. The fox almost brushed against her as he sprang over the hedge, and she paid to the utmost the penalty of indiscretion. After feasting royally on the eggs, the fox took up the dead bird, and moved slowly away through the trees towards his home. Re-entering the covert, he was met by a prowling vixen that, in company with her four young cubs, inhabited an "earth" not many yards away. Reckless through hunger and maddened by the scent of blood, she attacked him savagely, bullied him out of the possession of the dead fowl, and bore her prize away in triumph to her den. The fox endured his ill-treatment with the submission of a Stoic--he happened to be the pugnacious vixen's mate, and the sire of her family. Soon recovering from the chastisement, he set off, and skirted the covert as far as the cottage garden. Finding the gate of the hen-coop closed, he sprang on the water-butt, climbed to the roof of the shed, and tried to enter the coop from above; but there, as at the farm, he feared a trap, and dared not creep beneath the loose wire netting overhanging the shed. As he jumped from the coop to the wall of the stye, he caught sight of several rats scampering to their holes. Lying flat on the wall, he awaited patiently their re-appearance. At last one of them ventured out beneath the door of the cot, and was instantly killed. But, much to his chagrin, Reynard found the carcass a decidedly doubtful tit-bit, and so, having conveyed it gingerly to the margin of the covert, he scratched a shallow hole among the rotting leaves, and buried his prey, that, perhaps, its flavour might improve with keeping. Afterwards, till the sky lightened almost imperceptibly, and a steel-blue bar, low down beneath the clouds, first signalled the coming of day, he lay motionless among the undergrowth near a warren in the dingle. Then an unsuspecting rabbit hopped out into the grass, and Reynard, his watch rewarded, disappeared with his spoil into the wilderness of the gorse. Dawn was breaking over the hills. Blue smoke curled up into the sky from the lodge cottage at the foot of the tree-clad slope. The door of the cottage stood wide open, and the scent of the wood-fire hung on the chill, damp air filling the narrow lane. A blackbird flew into the apple-tree overlooking the thatch, shook the moisture from his wings, and cleaned his bright orange bill on a bough. Then his full, reed-like music floated over the fields. The skylarks soared above the upland pastures, and a shower of song descended to the valley out of the pearl-blue haze just lifting in a cloud from the hill-top. Presently the blackbird flew from the apple-tree to feed beside the hedge, and the larks dropped from the mist into the grass. But for the crackle of the cottage fire as the keeper busied himself with the preparation of his morning meal, and the rustle of a withered leaf as the blackbird moved to and fro in the ditch, not a sound disturbed the silence of the dawn. Soon the haze lifted, leaving the dew thick on the grass by the ditch, and on the moss and the ivy in the hedgerow bank. The larks soared once more into the sky; a robin sang wistfully in the ash; a brown wren, with many a flick of her tiny wings and many a merry curtsy, hopped in and out among the trees, trilling loudly a gleeful carol. The tits flew hither and thither, twittering to each other as they flew. The hedge-sparrows' metallic notes sounded clear amid all the varied music, as the birds, moving among the hazels and gently flirting their wings, pursued their coy mates from bough to bough. Through the raised curtain of the mist the sun--a white globe hardly too brilliant to be boldly looked at--illumined the dewy fields with its faint beams, till the cloud-streaked sky became a clear expanse, and the blue and brown countryside glowed with the splendour of a perfect morning. The wind changed and freshened, so that the call of a farm labourer to his team and the constant voice of the river were distinctly heard in the level valley below the wood. As the morning advanced, signs of unusual stir and bustle were apparent in the neighbourhood of the lodge. Messengers came and went between the cottage and the mansion at the bend of the river, or between the mansion and the distant village. The keeper appeared at his door, and, after satisfying himself that the lane seemed clean and well-kept, walked off briskly in the direction of the "big house." Scarlet-coated horsemen, and high-born maids and matrons, with all the medley of the Hunt in their train, cantered along the winding road--a mirthful, laughter-loving company. There were the General, stout and inelegant, wont to take his fences carefully, who changed his weight-carrying mount thrice during the day, and liked a gateway better than a thorny hedge, and for the last fifteen years had never been in at the death; and his wife, the leader of fashion, but not yet the leader of the Hunt; the Major, an old shekarry from India, who still could ride as straight and fast as any man in the west; and his niece, the belle of the countryside, whose mettlesome hunter occasionally showed a sudden fondness for taking the bit between his teeth, and carrying his mistress, with reckless abandon, over furrow and five-barred gate and through the thickest hedgerow--anywhere, so long as he had breath and the music of the hounds allured him onward in his impetuous career. The sun glanced between the trees as they passed the cottage door. Then came the Magistrate's Clerk, faultlessly attired, with florid face and glittering eyeglass, who, in an ambitious youth, finding his name too suggestive of plebeian blood, changed a vowel in it, and thereby gave an aristocratic flavour to the title of his partnership, and who acquired, with this new dignity, the taste for a monocle, a horse, and a good cigar. Following were the members of the medley--the big butcher on his sturdy pony, the "dealer" on his black, raw-boned half-bred, the publican on his stolid old mare, farmers, drovers, after-riders, on cropped and uncropped mounts more accustomed to the slow drudgery of labour than to the rollicking, hard-going hunt; and after them the crowd on foot--village children, farm labourers, and apprentices from forge and counter. Riding side by side, and earnestly conversing, were the "vet," whose horse at the last hunt bolted and left him clinging to a bough, and the shopkeeper, whose grave attire and sober mien seemed strangely out of keeping with the bright, hilarious throng. These were soon met by the main party from the meet, and hounds and hunters sped away in the direction of the hillside covert, while the onlookers adjourned to the uplands, whence an almost uninterrupted view of the valleys for miles around might be enjoyed, and the movements of the fox and his enemies followed more closely than from the hollows beneath the woods. Reynard, abundantly satisfied with his supper of eggs and early breakfast of rabbit, was lying asleep in a tuft of grass at the top of the thicket when the huntsman passed down the dingle after the meet. Awakened by the noise that reached him from below, he arose, stretched his limbs, and listened anxiously--the clatter of hoofs seemed to fill the valley. Suddenly, from the outskirts of the wood, came the deep, sonorous note of a hound, followed by the sharp rebuke of the whipper-in; Jollity, the keen-nosed puppy, was "rioting" on the cold scent near the stream. Peering between the bushes, the fox could as yet see nothing moving in the covert, but a few minutes afterwards his sharp eye caught a glimpse of a hound leaping over the bank above the gorse, followed by another, and another, and yet another, till the place seemed alive with his foes. Whither should he flee? The dingle was occupied; men and horses were everywhere in the lane; and the hounds were closing in above the gorse. The far side of the covert offered the only chance of escape, and thither he must hie, else the hounds, now pouring down the slope, would cut off his retreat. Quickly he threaded his way through the gorse, by paths familiar only to himself and the rabbits, till he reached the bank by the willows; but, even while he ran, the full chorus of the hounds echoed from hillside to hillside, as, having "struck the line," they tore madly in pursuit. He reached the edge of the covert at a point furthest from his foes--then, as he crossed the meadow, a single red-coated horseman, standing sentinel far up the hillside, gave the "view-halloo," and over the brow of the slope streamed the main body of the Hunt. It was at once evident to Reynard that by skirting the margin of the covert he could not for the present escape, so he headed down-wind towards the opposite hill, hoping to find refuge in a well-known "earth" amid the thickets. To his surprise he found the entrance "stopped" with clods and prickly branches of gorse, and had perforce to continue his flight. Having well out-distanced his pursuers, he stayed to rest for a while near the stream that trickled by the hedgerow; then, with the horrid music of the hounds again in his ears, he turned, by a long backward cast, in the direction of his home. But he was wholly unable to shake off his pursuers. For four long hours he was hustled from covert to covert, and hillside to hillside, finding no respite, no mercy, no sanctuary. Breathless, mud-stained, footsore, and sick with fright, his draggling "brush" and lolling tongue betraying his distress, he sought at last the place he had long avoided, and, entering the mouth of the den where the vixen and her cubs were hiding, lay there, almost utterly exhausted. Some minutes elapsed, during which no sound but that of his laboured breathing, and of the tiny sucklings busy by the side of the dam, disturbed the stillness. Suddenly, a deep-voiced hound broke through the bushes and bayed loudly before the entrance. His fellow joined him, and their foreboding clamour reverberated in the chamber. Terrified, the fox crawled slowly into the recess of the den. Presently a shaggy terrier came down the tunnel, and bit him sorely on the flank. He scarcely had the courage to turn on the aggressor; but the enraged vixen, thrusting her mate aside, quickly routed the daring intruder, and followed his retreat to the very mouth of the "earth," where she turned back, threatened by the great hounds that stood without. But even the reckless courage of maternity was unavailing. Soon the noise of blows and of falling earth was heard, as the passage was gradually opened by brawny farm labourers, working with spade and pick, and assisted in their task by the eager huntsman, who ever and anon thrust a long bramble-spray into the tunnel and thus ascertained the direction of its devious course. At last the tip of the fox's "brush" was seen amid the soil and pebbles that had fallen into the chamber. The huntsman had cut two stout hazel rods; these he now thrust into the hollow, one along either flank of the fox; then, grasping their ends firmly about the exposed tail, he drew poor Reynard from his hiding place, and thrust him, defiant to the last, and with his teeth close-locked on one of the hazel rods, into an old sack requisitioned at the nearest farm. The vixen met a similar fate, while the sleek, furry little cubs, treated with the utmost gentleness, were wrapped together in the Master's handkerchief and given to the care of an attendant. Reynard's life was nearing its close. In the meadow behind the keeper's cottage the hounds were summoned by the huntsman's horn, and the bag was opened. The scene that followed marred, for some of us at least, the beauty of the bright March morning. The vixen and her cubs were carried away, and found a new home in an artificial "earth" prepared for their reception near a distant mansion. II. A NEW HOME. When the vixen recovered from the excitement and distress consequent on her capture, she found herself in a commodious, well ventilated chamber, circular in shape and slightly above the level of two low and narrow passages leading into the covert. The sack had been opened at the entrance of one of these passages, and the vixen had crawled through the darkness till, finding further retreat impossible, she had lain down, with wildly beating heart, on the floor of her hiding place. Her senses seemed to have forsaken her. Had she dreamed? Often, during the warm, quiet days of a bygone summer, while lying curled in a cosy litter of dry grass-bents--which she had neatly arranged by turning round and round, and with her sensitive black muzzle pressing or lifting into shape each refractory twig--she had dreamed of mouse-hunting and rabbit-catching; her body had moved, her limbs twitched, her ears pricked forward, and her nostrils quivered as the delightful incidents of past expeditions were recalled. And when, with a start, she had awakened, as some venturesome rabbit frisked by her lair, or a nervous blackbird, startled by her movements, made the woodlands ring with news of his discovery, she had retained for a moment the impressions of her vivid dreams. But never in her sleep had she been haunted by such a bewildering sense of mingled dread and anger, such an awful apprehension of the presence of men and hounds, as that which had recently possessed her. Now, however, all was mysteriously tranquil; the full-toned clamour of the hounds and the sharp, snarling bark of the terriers had ceased; no longer was she confined and jostled in the stuffy, evil-smelling sack that yielded to, and yet restrained, her every frantic effort to regain liberty. Her heart still beat violently, as though at any moment it might break; and she crept back towards the entrance, where she might breathe the free, fresh air. Suddenly she realised, to the full, that the day's bitter experiences were not a dream--the scent of the human hand remained on her brush, her fur was damp and matted with meal-dust, and, alas! her little ones were missing from her side. She was furious now; at all risks she would venture forth on the long, straight journey back towards home; her helpless cubs might still be somewhere under the bushes--perchance in sore need of warmth and food, and whining for their dam. With every mothering instinct quickened, the vixen crept down the slanting passages in the direction of a faint moonlight glimmer beyond. Reaching the end of the tunnel, she, in her impetuosity, thrust her muzzle into a mass of prickles--the "earth" had been stopped with a branch of gorse. Baffled for the time, she returned to the central chamber; then cautiously, for her eyes and nostrils were smarting with pain, she tried the other outlet, but here, too, a gorse-bush baulked her exit. Now, however, a faint, familiar scent seemed to fill the passage, some tiny creatures moved and whimpered, and, with almost savage joy, the vixen discovered her cubs, alive and unharmed, huddled together near the furze. Quickly she carried them, one by one, into the chamber; then, lying beside the little creatures, which, though blind and helpless, eagerly recognised the presence of their mother, she gathered them between her limbs, covered them with her soft, warm brush, and, in a language used only amid the woodlands, soothed and comforted them, while they nestled once more beneath her sheltering care. When she had fed them and licked them clean from every taint of human touch, and when she had shaken herself free from dust and removed from her brush the man-scent left by the huntsman's right hand while "drawing" her, she became more collected in her mind and more contented with her strange, new situation. Leaving her cubs asleep, she moved along the passage, determined, if possible, to explore the thickets in hope of finding a young rabbit or a few field-voles wherewith to satisfy her increasing hunger. The entrance was still blocked with furze, but just in the spot where she had found her cubs a couple of dead rabbits lay, and from one of these, though after much misgiving, she made a hearty meal. She endeavoured, but vainly, to dig a shallow trench in which to hide the rest of her provisions; the floor of the artificial "earth" was tiled, and only lightly covered with soil. Her efforts to scratch out a tunnel around the furze-bush proved alike unavailing, so she returned to her cubs, lay down between them and the narrow opening from the chamber, and slept. That night and the following day were spent in drowsy imprisonment, till, towards the afternoon, the vixen began to feel the pangs of thirst and made fresh efforts to escape. As she was endeavouring to dislodge the tile nearest the furze, she heard the tramp of heavy feet and the sound of human voices. "They be nice cubs," said the "whip" to the huntsman; "as nice a little lot as ever I clapped eyes on. If only they can give us such a doing as the old vixen gave us twice last December, they'll pass muster. Them Gwyddyl Valley foxes be always reg'lar fliers. Their meat ain't got too easy-like; that's why, maybe, they're always in working order. Any road, their flags o' distress (tongues) don't flop over their grinders without the hounds trim 'em hard on a straight, burning scent." "Well, we'll give 'em a good start, whatever happens," replied the huntsman; "here's two more bunnies for the larder. If the old girl shifts her quarters, find out her new "earth," and feed her well. I shouldn't like to be near the guv'nor if the young uns turn out mangy when we hustle 'em about a bit in the autumn." The voices ceased, the furze-bushes were removed from the tunnel entrances, a cold, steady current of air filled the chamber and the passages, and the vixen knew that a way had been made for her escape. She was not, however, so foolhardy as to venture forth while the scent of her foes remained strong in the thicket; she lingered, in spite of extreme thirst, till the shadows of evening deepened perceptibly in her underground abode. When the vixen stole out into the grass, the pale moon was brightening in the southern sky, and a solitary star glimmered faintly above the tree-tops. A thrush sang his vesper from the bare branch of an oak near by, and a blackbird, startled by the sight of a strange form squatting beside the brambles, sounded his shrill alarm and dipped across the clearing towards a clump of blackthorn bushes. As soon as she heard the blackbird's warning, the vixen vanished; but, presently reappearing, she trotted across the open space and sat beneath the thorns. For some minutes she remained motionless in the dark patch of shadow, listening intently; then, passing slowly down a narrow path, she reached a trickling streamlet that fell with constant music from stone to stone between luxuriant masses of moss and lichen; and there, at a gravelly pool among the boulders, she cautiously stooped to drink. With exceeding care, she now proceeded to make a thorough inspection of the covert. The night was so calm and bright that the rabbits were feeding everywhere on the margin of the thickets, but the vixen passed them by with nothing but a casual glance; her mind, for the present, was not concerned with hunting. After skirting the covert, she turned homewards by a pathway through the trees. At the end of the path she paused, with head bent low and hackles ruffled along the spine--the scent of another vixen lay fresh on the ground. The peculiar taint told her a complete story. The strange vixen was soon to become a mother, and probably, in anticipation of the event, inhabited an "earth" close by. Casting about like an experienced hound, she picked up the trail, and followed it into a great tangle of heather, brambles, and fern, where the scent led, by many a devious turn, to the spreading roots of a beech, beneath which a disused rabbit warren had been prepared for the little strangers presently to be brought into the world. The dwelling place was empty. Retracing her steps as far as the spot where first she had struck the trail, then turning sharply towards the clearing, the crafty creature hastened back to the "earth," determined to remove her cubs without delay to the newly discovered abode. One by one she bore her offspring thither, holding them gently by the loose skin about their necks, and housed them all before the dispossessed tenant returned from a slow and wearisome night's hunting. The evicted vixen, seeking to enter her home, speedily recognised that in her distressed condition she was no match for her savage, active enemy, and so, reluctantly retiring, took up her quarters in the artificial "earth." Henceforth, through all the careless hours of infancy, till summer ended and the nights gradually lengthened towards the time of the Hunter's Moon, the stillness of the woodlands was never broken by the ominous note of the horn, or by the dread, fascinating music of the hounds in full cry. Three of the cubs grew stout and strong, but the fourth was a weakling--whether from injury at the hands of the huntsman or from some natural ailment was not to be determined. He died, and mysteriously disappeared, on the very day when the rest of the cubs first opened their eyes in the dim chamber among the roots of the beech. Vulp was the only male member of the happy woodland family. His indulgent sisters tolerated his bouncing, familiar manners as if they were born to be his playthings--he was so serious and yet so droll, so stupidly self-assertive and yet so irresistibly affectionate! He seemed to take his pleasures sadly, wearing, if such be possible to a fox, an air of melancholy disdain; and yet his beady eyes were ever on the lookout for mischief, and for the chance of a helter-skelter romp with his sisters round and round the chamber, or to the entrance of the "earth," where the sprouts of the green grass and the flowers of the golden celandine sparkled as the sunlight of the fresh spring morning flickered between the trees. As yet, Vulp was unacquainted with the wide, free world. It seemed very wonderful and awe-inspiring, as he sat by the mouth of the tunnel in the shadow of an arching spray of polypody and, for sheer lack of something better to do, half lifted himself on his hind-legs to rub his lips against the edge of a fern, or to peep, with a feeling that his whereabouts were a secret, between the drooping fronds. His mother restrained his rashness; once, when he actually thrust his head beyond the ferns, she with a stern admonition warned him of his mistake; and he promptly withdrew to her side, frightened at his own boldness, but grunting in well assumed defiance of the imagined danger from which he had fled. This, in fact, was the first lesson learned--that a certain sign from the vixen meant "No," and that disobedience was afterwards punishable according to the unwritten laws of woodland life. Another sign that he learned to obey meant "Come." It was a low, deep note, gentle and persuasive; and directly Vulp heard it he would hasten to his mother to be not only fed but also cleansed from every particle of dirt. Such toilet operations were not always welcome to the youngsters, and were sometimes vigorously resented. But the vixen had a convincing method of dealing with any refractory member of her family; she would hold the cub firmly between her fore-feet while she continued her treatment, or administered slight, well-judged chastisement by nipping her wayward offspring in some tender spot, where, however, little harm could be the result. The cubs were ten days old when they opened their eyes, but more than three weeks passed before they were allowed beyond the threshold of their home. Then, one starlight night, their mother, having returned from hunting, awoke them, and, withholding their usual nourishment, gave the signal "Come." The obedient little family followed her along the dark passage, and ventured, close at her heels, into the grass-patch in the middle of the briar-brake. Vulp was slightly more timid than his sisters were; even at that early age he showed signs of independence and distrust. While the other cubs played "follow-my-leader" with the dam, he hung back, hesitating and afraid. Even an unusual show of affection by his mother failed to reassure him. A rabbit dodged quickly across a path, and immediately he stood rigid with fright. Hardly had he recovered before an owl flew slowly overhead. Enough! He paused, motionless, till the awful presence had disappeared; then darted, with astonishing speed, straight towards the "earth," and vanished, with a ridiculously feeble "yap" of make-believe bravado, into the darkness of the den. Confidence, however, came and increased as the days and the nights went by, till, at the close of a week's experiences, Vulp was as bold in danger as either of his playmates. He learned to trust his mother implicitly, and, in her absence, became the guardian of the family when some fancied alarm brought fear. He was always last in learning his lessons; but, as if to make amends, he always profited most by the teaching. Happy, indeed, were those hours of innocence--filled with sleep, and love, and play. Till Vulp was six weeks old, he was wholly unconscious of that ravenous hunger for flesh which was fated to make him the scourge of the woodlands. Nevertheless, his instincts were slowly developing, and so, when on a second occasion the old buck rabbit that had frightened him in the thicket bolted before his eyes across the path, the little fox bristled with rage and, but for his mother's presence, would doubtless have tried to pursue the exasperating coney. Invariably, when the night was fine, the cubs gambolled about the vixen on the close-cropped sward beyond the den, climbing over her body, pinching her ears, growling and grunting, tugging at each other's brushes, and in general behaving just as healthy, happy fox-cubs might be expected to behave; while the patient, careful mother looked on approvingly--save when, uniting in one strong effort, they endeavoured to disjoint her tail by pulling it over her back--and smiled, as only a fox can smile, with eyes asquint and a single out-turned fang showing white beside the half-closed lip. A great event occurred when the mother first brought home her prey that she might educate her youngsters in the matter of appetite and prepare them for an independent existence. The victim was an almost full-grown rabbit. Laying it down close to the entrance of the "earth," the vixen called her cubs, and instantly they rushed from the den, tumbling over each other in their haste, till they gained the spot where she was waiting. At that moment, however, they caught sight of the strange grey object in the grass, and, leaping back, bolted round to their mother's side. Then, feeling safe under her care, they cautiously advanced in a row to sniff the rabbit, and wondered, yet instinctively guessed, at the meaning of the situation. The vixen growled, and, picking up her prey, carried it to the bramble-clump. The cubs followed, making all sorts of curious noises in mimicking their dam, and evincing the utmost inquisitiveness as to the reason of her unexpected conduct. Presently, having succeeded in arousing their inborn passion for flesh, the vixen resorted to a neighbouring mound, and left her offspring in possession of the dead animal, on which they immediately pounced, tooth and nail. How terribly in earnest they became, how bold and reckless in their vain attempt to demolish the subject of their wrath! Vulp fastened his needle-like teeth in the throat, and each of his sisters gripped a leg, while together they jerked, strained, scolded, and threatened, till the mother, fearing lest the commotion would betray their whereabouts to some lurking foe, rated her noisy progeny and in anger drove them away. But as soon as she had gone back to her seat among the grass-bents, the youngsters returned to their work. Anyhow, anywhere, they hurled themselves on the dead creature, sometimes biting each other for sheer lack of knowing exactly what else they should bite, and sometimes simply for the excitement of a family squabble. At last, their unwonted exertions began to tire them; then the careful vixen, desirous of bringing the lesson to its close, "broke up" her prey and divided it among her hungry children. They fed daintily, choosing from each portion no more than a morsel, and soon afterwards, exhausted by excitement and fatigue, and forgetful of their differences, were fast asleep, huddled together as usual in the roomy recess of the den. For a while the vixen remained to satisfy her hunger; then, having buried a few tit-bits of her provender, she also retired to rest; and silence brooded over the woodlands till the break of day set every nesting bird atune. The vixen proved to be an untiring teacher, and the education of the cubs occupied a part, at least, of every night. The young foxes were growing rapidly, and accompanied their dam in her wanderings about the thickets. She never went far afield, food being easily procured at that time of year, particularly as in a certain spot additional supplies for the larder were frequently forthcoming because of the vigilance of the huntsman, whose one desire was to fit the cubs to match his hounds in the first "runs" of the coming season. III. THE CUB AND THE POLECAT. The young fox's education, varied and thorough, steadily proceeded. Though the vixen-cubs were slightly quicker to learn, they were more excitable, and consequently did not benefit fully by each lesson. Vulp soon began to hunt for his own sport and profit. In the meadow above the wood he would sit motionless, his eyes fixed on the ground, till the voles came from their burrows to play beneath the grass-bents; then, with a quick rush, he would secure a victim directly its presence was betrayed by a waving stalk. With the same patience he would watch near a rabbit warren, till one of the inhabitants, hopping out to the mound before her door, gave him the sure chance of a kill. But in the wheat-fields on the slope his methods were altogether different. To capture partridges required unusual cunning and skill, and such importance did the vixen attach to this branch of her field-craft, that, before initiating her youngsters into the sport of hunting these birds at night, she instructed them diligently in the methods of following by scent, training them how to pursue the winding trail left by the larks that fed at evening near their sleeping places, or by the corncrakes that wandered babbling through the green wheat. Vulp's first attempt to capture a partridge chick resulted in failure. The vixen-cubs "fouled" the line he had patiently picked out in the ditch around the cornfield, and, "casting" haphazard through the herbage, alarmed the sleeping birds, and sent them away to a secure hiding place in the clover. But his second attempt was crowned with success, and he proudly carried his prey into a sequestered nook amid the gorse, where he enjoyed a quiet meal. The cub was fully six months old before he knew the precise difference between stale and fresh scent, or between the scent of one creature and that of another, and how to hunt accordingly; and several years, with many dangers and hair-breadth escapes, were destined to pass before he became expert in avoiding or baffling the numerous enemies--chiefly dogs, and men, and traps--that threatened his life. And yet, during the first few months of his existence, he gained sufficient knowledge for the needs of the moment; and when August drew on towards the close of the summer, and he was three parts grown, he had so extended his nightly rambles that the "lay of the land" was familiar for miles around the covert. His outdoor existence--for now he was wont to sleep in a lair among the gorse and the bracken, instead of in the stuffy "earth"--gave him strength in abundant measure, while his scrupulously clean habits, the care with which he removed even the slightest trace of a burr from his sleek, brown coat, and the plentiful supplies of fresh food which he was able to obtain, naturally preserved him from mange and similar ailments to which carnivorous animals are always prone. For the present, indeed, life meant nothing more to him than the sheer enjoyment of vigorous health, at home by day amid the grateful shadows of the bushes and the trees, or basking in the sun, and abroad at night in the cold, clear air of the dewy uplands. Just as sportsmen occasionally meet with a run of ill-luck, when for some apparently unaccountable reason they either fail to find game, or fail to kill it, and, to intensify the annoyance, an accident occurs that leaves a bitter memory, so Vulp, during one of his long rambles over the countryside, failed entirely to find sport, and gained a decidedly unpleasant experience. If only his mother had not taught him that in a season of scarcity a weasel might reasonably be considered an article of food! One summer night, as he started on his usual prowl, the covert seemed strangely silent. With the exception of a solitary rabbit that bolted to its burrow when the young fox crossed the clearing, and another that disappeared in similar fashion when nothing more than a slight crackle of a leaf betrayed Vulp's whereabouts near a bramble-clump, every animal had apparently deserted the thickets. So, leaving his accustomed haunts, he crossed the furze-clad dingle, and watched near a large warren in the open. But there, again, not a rabbit could be seen. A field-vole rustled by over the leaves; the cub made a futile effort to capture it, stood for an instant listening to its movements, then thrust his nose into the herbage in another vigorous but vain attempt; the vole, like the rabbits, had sought refuge underground. An owl, that had frightened the cub about five months before when first he ventured outside his home, rose from the hedge, and flew slowly down the valley with a little squealing creature in her talons; she, at any rate, had not hunted in vain. At last Vulp struck a fresh line of scent which, though particularly strong and uninviting, he took to be that of a weasel. It was mingled with the faint odour of a field-vole that, doubtless, had been pursued and carried away by its persistent enemy. The cub followed the trail, hoping to secure both hunter and victim, but it soon led him to a hole in the hedgerow, and there abruptly ceased. He was about to turn from the spot, when the eyes of the supposed weasel suddenly gleamed at the mouth of the hole, but disappeared when the presence of the cub was recognised. The fox, retreating to a convenient post of observation behind a tuft of grass, settled down to await his opportunity. A few minutes elapsed, and the pursued creature came once more in sight. It appeared like a shadow against the sky, lifted its nose inquiringly, quitted the burrow, sat bolt upright for a moment, then, reassured, proceeded towards the covert on the opposite side of the path. With a single bound, the cub cleared the grass-tuft, reached out at his prey, missed his grip, bowled the animal over, and, turning rapidly, caught it across the loins instead of by the throat. Unfortunately for himself, the fox had made a slight miscalculation. With a scream of rage and pain, the polecat--for such the creature proved to be--turned on the aggressor, and instantly fastened its formidable teeth, like a steel trap, on his muzzle. Vulp had been taught that his fangs, also, were a trap from which there should be no escape, and so he held on firmly, trying meanwhile to shake the life from his victim. He pressed the polecat to the ground, and frantically endeavoured to disengage its hold by thrusting his fore-paws beneath its muzzle; but every effort alike was useless. A scalding, acrid fluid emitted by the polecat caused the lips and one of the eyes of the cub to smart unbearably, and the offensive odour of the fluid grew stronger and stronger, till it became almost suffocating. At last the polecat convulsively trembled as its ribs and spine were crushed in the fox's tightening jaws, its teeth relaxed their hold, and the fight was over. Sickened by the pungent smell, and with muzzle, lips, and right eye burning horribly from his wounds and the irritant poison, Vulp hastily dropped his prey, and ignominiously bolted from the scene of the encounter. Soon, however, he stopped; the pain in his eye seemed beyond endurance. He tried to rub away the noxious fluid with his paws, but his frantic efforts only increased the irritation by conveying the poison to his other eye and to his wounds. He rolled and sneezed and grunted in torment; he drew his muzzle and cheeks to and fro on the ground, wrestling with the great Earth-Mother for help in direst agony. He could not open his eyes; he stumbled blindly against a tree-trunk, and at last became entangled in the prickly undergrowth. This was Nature's method of succour--she forced her wildling to remain quiet, in helpless exhaustion, till the pain subsided and life could once again be endured. Panting and sick, the cub lay outstretched among the thorns, while the tears flowed from his eyes and the froth hung on his lips. Presently, however, relieved by the copious discharge, he recovered his senses, and, miserably cowed, with head and brush hanging low, returned before dawn to the covert. But the vixen in fury drove the cub away; the scent still clung to him, and rendered him obnoxious even to his mother. In shame he retired to a dense "double" hedge of hawthorn, where he hid throughout the day, till he could summon sufficient courage at dusk to hunt for some dainty morsel wherewith to tempt his sickened appetite. But before taking up his position above the entrance to a rabbit warren, he drank at the brook, dipped his tainted fore-paws in the running water, and, sitting by the margin, removed from his face, as far as possible, the traces left by the previous night's conflict. Repeatedly, at all hours of the day and the night, he licked his paws and with them washed his wounded muzzle and inflamed eyes; but so obstinately did the offensive odour cling to him that a fortnight elapsed before the last vestige of the nuisance disappeared. Meanwhile, he narrowly escaped the mange; and, to add to the discomfort of his wounds, he experienced, now that his mother's aid was lacking, some difficulty in obtaining sufficient fresh food. At length he recovered, and new, downy hair clothed the wounds and the scratches on his muzzle and throat. Sleek and strong once more, he was welcomed as a penitent prodigal by the relenting vixen, and, having in the period of his solitary wanderings learned much about the habits of the woodland folk, was doubtless able to assist his mother in the future training of the vixen-cubs. In that luckless fortnight he had acquired a taste for young pheasants, had picked up a few fat pigeon-squabs belonging to the last broods of the year, and had sampled sundry articles of diet--frogs, slugs, snails, a young hedgehog or two, and a squirrel that, overcome with inquisitiveness, descended from the tree-tops to inspect the young fox as he dozed among the bilberries carpeting the forest floor. Another incident occurred, to which, at the time, the cub attached considerable importance. He had killed what seemed to be a large, heavy rabbit, which, though evidently possessed of a healthy appetite, was almost scentless, and differed in taste from any he had hitherto captured. He was not particularly hungry, so he buried the insipid flesh, and resolved never to destroy another rabbit that did not yield a full, strong scent. Shortly afterwards, when, under the eye of the bright August moon, Vulp and the vixen were hunting in the wheat-fields, he detected a similarly weak scent along the hedgerow, and learned from his wise mother it was that of a doe-hare about to give birth to her young, and therefore hardly worth the trouble of following. The vixen further explained that, except when other food was scarce, creatures occupied, or about to be occupied, with maternal cares--even the lark in the furrow and the willow-warbler in the hole by the brook--were far less palatable than at other times. The cub was also told how, just before he came into the world, the hounds had chased his mother from the thicket, and how old Reveller, the leader of the pack, had headed the reckless puppies, and, rating them for their discourtesy, had led them away to scour another part of the covert. With the advance of autumn, a great change passed over the countryside. The young fox now found it necessary to choose his paths with care as he wandered through the darkness, lest the rabbits should be warned of his approach by the crisp rustle of his "pads" on the leaves that had fallen in showers on the grass. Hitherto he had associated the presence of man with that of something good for food. An occasional dead rabbit was still to be found near the old "earth," and, strange to relate, the man-scent leading to the place was never fresher or staler than that of the rabbit. In another spot--a wood-clearing not far from the keeper's lodge--the strong scent of pheasants always seemed to indicate that the birds had ventured thither in numbers to feed, and there, too, the man-scent was strong on the grass. The tracks of innumerable little creatures intersected the clearing in all directions, and, if but for the sport of watching the pheasants, the pigeons, the sparrows, and the voles playing and quarrelling in the undergrowth or partaking of the food provided by the keeper, the fox loved to lurk in the gorse near by. He evinced little real alarm even at the sight of man, though he felt a misgiving and instinctively knew that he must hide or keep at a distance till the curiously shaped monster had gone. The vixen warned him repeatedly; and she herself, after giving the signal "Hide!" would slink away, and wander for miles before returning to her family, if only the measured footfall of a poacher or a farm labourer sounded faintly through the covert. But soon the young fox learned, in a way not to be misunderstood, that the presence of man meant undoubted danger. One day in October, as he was intently watching the movements of a sportsman in the copse, a big cock pheasant rose with a great clatter from the brambles, a loud report rang through the covert, and a shaggy brown and white spaniel dashed yelping into the bushes. Darting impetuously from his lair, the cub easily out-distanced the dog, and quickly found refuge in an adjoining thicket, where he remained in safety during the rest of the day. Night brought him another adventure. While crossing a pasture towards a wooded belt on the hillside, he discovered, to his surprise, that a man was creeping stealthily towards him through the shadows. A moment later, a great lurcher came bounding over the field. The fox turned, made for the hedgerow, and gained the friendly shelter of the hawthorns just as the dog crashed into the ditch. The frightened creature now ran along the opposite side of the hedge in a straight line towards the wood, and for a second time narrowly escaped the lurcher's teeth; but, by keeping close to the ditch and among the prickly bushes on the top of the hedge-bank, he at last succeeded in baffling his long-legged foe and reached the wood unharmed. Vulp had thus awakened to the dangers which, during winter and the earliest days of spring, were always to beset him. But the apprehensions caused by his little affair with the spaniel, and even by his narrow escape from the lurcher, were trifling compared with the dread and distress of being driven for hours before the hounds. And so full of perils was the first winter of his life that nothing but a combination of sheer luck with great endurance could then have sufficed to save him from destruction. Quickly, one after the other, the young vixens were missing from the thickets; soon afterwards, three of the cubs belonging to the litter that had been reared in the artificial "earth" disappeared; and an old fox, the sire of that litter, was killed after a long, wearisome chase almost to the cliffs on the distant coast. One dark and dismal night in December, Vulp, on returning to the home thickets, failed to find his dam. Her trail was fresh; she had evidently escaped the day's hunt; but all his efforts to follow her met with no sort of success. Nature had brought about a separation; in the company of an adult fox, whose scent lay also on the woodland path, the vixen had departed from her haunts. The fox-cub remained, however, among the woodlands where he had learned his earliest lessons, and, for another year, hunted and was hunted--a vagrant bachelor. IV. A CRY OF THE NIGHT. One starlit night, when in early winter the snow lay thick on the ground, Vulp heard the hunting call of a vixen prowling through the pines. A similar call had often reached his ears. Not long after his dam deserted him, the cry had come from a furze-brake on a neighbouring hill-top, and, hastening thither, he had wandered long and wearily, recognising, though with misgiving, his mother's voice. But the exact meaning of the call, not being a matter for his mother's teaching, was unknown to him at the time. Now, however, he was a strong, well fed, fully developed fox, able to hold his own against all rivals, and the cry possessed for him a strange, new significance: "The night is white; man is asleep; I hunt alone!" Almost like a big brown leaf he seemed to drift across the moonlit snow, nearer and nearer to the pines. He paused for a moment to sniff the trail; then, with a joyous "yap" of greeting, he bounded over the hedge, reached the aisles of the wood, and gambolled--again like a big, wind-blown leaf--about the sleek, handsome creature whose call he had heard. The happy pair trotted off to hunt the thickets, till, just before dawn, Vulp, eager to show his skill and training, surprised two young rabbits sitting beneath a snow-laden tangle of briar and gorse, and gallantly shared the spoil with his woodland bride. They feasted long and heartily, afterwards journeying to the banks of a rill, that, like a black ribbon, flowed through the glen; and there, crouching together at the margin, they lapped the water with eager, thirsty tongues. Presently, happening to glance behind along the line of the trail, Vulp caught sight of another fox, a rival for the vixen's affections, crouching in some bracken scarcely a dozen yards away. With a low grunt of rage, he dashed into the fern, but the watchful stranger simply moved aside, and frisked towards the vixen as she still crouched at the edge of the stream. In response to this insulting defiance, Vulp hurled himself on the intruder, and bowled him over into the snow. The fight was fast and furious; now one gained the advantage, then the other. The grass beneath them became gradually bared of snow by their frantic struggles, and marked here and there by a bunch of fur or a spot of blood. At last the rival fox, his cheek torn badly beneath the eye, showed signs of exhaustion; his breath came in quick, loud gasps; and Vulp, pressing the attack, forced him to flee for life to a thicket on the brow of the slope. There he dwelt and nursed his wounds, till, when the snow melted, the huntsman's "In-hoick, in-hoick, loo-loo-in-hoick!" resounded in the coverts, and he was routed from his lair for a last, half-hearted chase, that ended as Melody pulled him down at a ford of the river below the woods. During the period of their comradeship--a period of privation for most of Nature's wildlings--Vulp taught the vixen much of the lore he had learned from his mother, while the vixen imparted to him the knowledge she herself had gained when a cub. He taught her how to steal away from the covert along the rough, rarely trodden paths between the farm-labourers' cottages--where the scent lay so badly that the hounds were unable to follow--directly the first faint notes of a horn, or the dull thud of galloping hoofs, or the excited whimper of a "rioting" puppy, indicated the approach of enemies. She taught him to baffle his foes by chasing sheep across the stubbles, and then passing through a line of strong scent where his own trail could not readily be distinguished; also that to cross the river by leaping from stone to stone in the ford was as sure a means of eluding pursuit as to swim the pools and the shallows. He taught her, when hard pressed, to leap suddenly aside from her path, run along the top rail of a fence, return sharply on her line of scent, and follow, with a wide cast, a loop-shaped trail, which, with a tangent through a ploughed field or dry fallow, was usually sufficient to check pursuit till the scent became faint and cold. And gradually each of these woodland rovers grew acquainted with the peculiar whims and habits of the other. Vulp loved to follow stealthily the trail of the rabbit, and then to lie in wait till some imagined cause of alarm sent Bunny back through the "creep" and almost straight into her enemy's open jaws. The vixen preferred to hide in the brambles to leeward of a burrow till an unsuspecting rabbit crept out into the open. Vulp, since his adventure with the polecat, bristled with rage whenever he crossed the track of a weasel, but never dreamed of following; polecat and weasel were the same animal for aught he knew to the contrary. The vixen, however, was not daunted by the unpleasant memory of any such adventure; having chanced to see a weasel in the act of killing a vole, she had recognised a rival and acted accordingly. And so Vulp's repeated warnings to his mate on this matter produced no effect beyond making her slightly more careful than she had hitherto been to obtain a proper grip when she pounced on her savage little quarry. The vixen was exceedingly fond of snails, and would eagerly thrust a fore-paw into the crannies of any old wall or bank where they hibernated; but Vulp much preferred to scratch up the moss in a deserted gravel-pit, and grub in the loosened soil for the drowsy blow-flies and beetles that had chosen the spot for their winter abode. This was the reason for such different tastes: the vixen, when a cub, had often basked in the sun near a snails' favourite resort, and had there acquired a liking for the snails; while the fox, on the other hand, had times out of number amused himself, in the first summer of his life, by leaping and snapping at the flies as they buzzed among the leaves when the mid-day sun was hot, and at the beetles as they boomed along the narrow paths in the thicket near the "earth" when the moon rolled up above the hedge, and the dark, mysterious shadows of intersecting boughs foreshortened on the grass. But Vulp knew well, from an unpleasant experience, the difference between a fly and a wasp. One day in August, as he lay in his outdoor lair, the brightness and heat of the sunshine were such that his eyes, blinking in the drowsiness of half-awakened slumber, appeared like mere slits of black across streaked orbs of yellow, and gave no indication of the fiery glow that lit the round, distended pupils when he peered at nightfall through the tangled undergrowth. His tongue lolled out, and he panted like a tired hound, but from thirst rather than weariness. The flies annoyed him greatly, now settling on his brush, till with a flick of his paw he drove them away, then, nothing daunted, alighting on his back, his ears, his haunches, till his fur wrinkled and straightened in numberless uneasy movements from the tormenting tickling of the little pests. Presently, with a shrill bizz of rapid wings, a large, yellow-striped fly passed close to his ears. He struck down the tormenting insect with a random flip of his paws, snapped at it to complete the work of destruction, and proceeded leisurely to eat his victim. To his utter surprise, he seemed to have captured a living, angry thorn, which, despite his most violent efforts to tear it away with his paws, stuck in his lip, and produced a smarting, burning sensation that was intolerable. He rolled on the ground and rubbed his muzzle in the grass, but to no purpose. No wonder, then, that subsequently his manner towards an occasional hibernating wasp among the moss-roots in the gravel-pit was deferential in the extreme! Vulp and his mate soon learned that in rabbit-hunting it was exceedingly profitable to co-operate. Thus, while the vixen "lay up" near a warren, Vulp skirted the copse and chased the conies home towards his waiting spouse. After considerable practice, the trick paid handsomely, and food was seldom lacking. The vixen possessed, perhaps, a slightly more delicate sense of smell than the fox. Frequently she scented a rabbit in a clump of fern or gorse after Vulp had passed it by; suddenly stopping, she would tell her lord of her discovery by signs he readily understood, and then, while he kept outside the tangle, would pounce on the coney in its retreat, or start it helter-skelter into his very jaws. But of all the tricks and the devices she taught him, the chief, undoubtedly, were those concerned with the capture of hens and ducks from a neighbouring farmstead. An adult fox, as a rule, does not pay frequent visits to a farmstead; but Vulp, like his sire, was passionately fond of poultry, and so, in after years, the vixen's instructions caused him to become the dread of every henwife in the district. Undoubtedly he would have been shot had he not been the prize most sought for by the Master of the Hounds, who cared little for the frequent demands made on his purse by the cottagers, so long as the fox that slaughtered the poultry gave abundant sport when running fast and straight before the pack. The months drifted by, and signs of spring became more and more abundant in the valley. About the beginning of March, Vulp deserted the "earth" prepared by himself and the vixen for their prospective family, and took up his abode among the hazels and the hawthorns in a thick-set hedge bounding the woods. In preparing the "breeding earth," Vulp and the vixen observed the utmost care in order that its whereabouts should not be discovered. The chosen site was a shallow depression, scratched in the soil by a fickle-minded rabbit that had ultimately fixed on another spot for her abiding place. This depression was enlarged; a long tunnel was excavated as far as the roots of an oak, and there broadened. Then another long tunnel was hollowed out towards the surface, where it opened in the middle of a briar-brake. The foxes worked systematically, digging away the soil with their fore-paws, loosening an occasional stubborn stone or root with their teeth, and thrusting the rubbish behind them with their powerful hind-legs. As it accumulated, they turned and pushed it towards the mouth of the den, where at last a fair-sized mound was formed. When the burrow had been opened into the thicket, the crafty creatures securely "stopped" the original entrance, so that, when the grass sprouted and the briar sprays lengthened in the woodlands, the "earth" would escape all notice, unless a prying visitor penetrated the thicket and discovered the second opening--then, of course, the only one--leading to the den. When summer came, and the undergrowth renewed its foliage, and the grass and the corn grew so tall and thick that Vulp could roam unseen through the fields, he left his haunts amid the woodlands at the first peep of dawn, and as long as daylight lasted lay quiet in a snug retreat amid the gorse. There all was silent; no patter of summer rain from leaves far overhead, no rustle of summer wind through laden boughs, prevented him hearing the approach of a soft-footed enemy; no harsh, mocking cry of jay or magpie, bent on betraying his whereabouts, gave him cause for uneasiness and fear. Of all wild creatures in the fields and woods, he detested most the meddlesome jay and magpie. If he but ventured by day to cross an open spot, one of these birds would surely detect and follow him, hopping from branch to branch, or swooping with ungainly flight almost on his head, meanwhile hurling at him a thousand abuses. Unless he quickly regained his refuge in the gorse, the blackbirds and the thrushes would join in the tantalising mockery, till it seemed that the whole countryside was aroused by the cry of "Fox! fox!" After such an adventure, it needed the quiet and solitude of night to restore his peace of mind; and even when he had escaped the din, and lay in his couch among the bleached grass and withered leaves, his ears were continually strained in every direction to catch the least sound of dog or man. When in the winter he ran for life before the hounds, and tried by every artifice to baffle his pursuers, these "clap-cats" of the woods would jeer him on his way. Once, when he ventured into the river, and headed down-stream, thinking that the current would bear his scent below the point where he would land on the opposite bank, the magpie's clatter caused him the utmost fear that his ruse might not succeed. But luckily the hounds and the huntsman were far away. The birds, however, were not the only advertisers of his presence; the squirrel, directly she caught sight of him, would hurry from her seat aloft in fir or beach, to the lowest bough, and thence--though more wary of Vulp than of Brighteye, the water-vole--fling at him the choicest assortment of names her varied vocabulary could supply. Still, for all this irritating abuse Vulp had only himself and his ancestry to blame. The fox loved--as an article of diet--a plump young fledgling that had fallen from its nest, or a tasty squirrel, with flesh daintily flavoured by many a feast of nuts, or beech-mast, or eggs. It was but natural that his sins, and those of his forefathers, should be accounted to him for punishment, and that it should become the custom, in season and out of season, when he was known to be about, for all the woodland folk to hiss and scream, and expostulate and threaten, and to compel his return to hiding with the least possible delay. Thus it happened that he scarcely ventured, during the day, to attack even a young rabbit that frisked near his lair, lest, screaming to its dam for help, it should bring a very bedlam about his ears. While roaming abroad in the summer night, Vulp gradually became acquainted with all sorts of vermin-traps used by the keepers. Once, treading on a soft spot near a rabbit "creep," he suddenly felt a slight movement beneath his feet. Springing back, he almost managed to clear the trap; but the sharp steel teeth caught him by a single claw and for a moment held him fast. He wrenched himself loose, and retired for a while to examine his damaged toe-nail. Then, reassured, he again approached the trap, so that he might store up in memory the circumstances of his near escape. He learned his lesson thoroughly, and never afterwards did the smell of iron, or the slightest taint of the trapper's hand, escape him. He even walked around molehills; they reminded him too much of the soft soil about the trap. And, for the same reason, he avoided treading on freshly excavated earth before the holes of a rabbit warren. The succeeding years of Vulp's eventful life were in many respects similar to the year that began with his courtship of the sleek young vixen in the white wilderness of the winter fields. His fear of men and hounds increased, while his cunning became greater with every passing day. He never slept on a straight trail, but cast about, returned on the line of his scent, and leaped aside, before retiring to sleep in his retreat amid the bracken. Often he heard the wild, ominous cry of the huntsman, "Eloa-in-hoick, hoick--hoick, cover--hoick!" as the hounds dashed into the furze; and the loud "Tally-ho!" as he himself, or, perchance, a less fortunate neighbour, broke into sight before the loud-tongued pack. And more than once, from a safe distance, he heard the awful "Whoop!" that proclaimed the death of one of his kindred. As the years wore on, Vulp gradually wandered far from his old home. The countryside, for twenty or thirty miles around, was known as intimately to him as a little garden, nestling between sunny fruit-tree walls, is known to the cottager who makes it the object of his daily care. His ears were torn by thorns and fighting; his russet coat was streaked with grey along the spine. At last, when age demanded ease and comparative safety from the long, hard chase over hill and dale, he retired to a rocky fastness on the wild west coast, and there, far above the leaping waves and dashing spray, lived his free, lonely life. And there he died. [Illustration: "HE RETIRED TO A ROCKY FASTNESS ON THE WILD WEST COAST."] It was a bright, hot day in July. Lying among the boulders on the shore, I watched through a field-glass the antics of some birds that wheeled and soared above the cliffs, when, to my surprise, I saw Vulp crawl slowly along a shelf of rock above a deep, dark cavern. His movements, somehow, appeared unnatural. Instead of crouching, with legs bent under him and brush curled gracefully about his "pads," to bask, his eyelids half-closed, in the sun, he lay on his side. Guided by a companion, who, with waving hand, directed my course as I climbed, I gradually mounted the steep ascent, and peeped over the edge of the rock on which the fox lay. Despite my excessive caution, he was aware of my presence. Slowly and drowsily he lifted his head, uttered a feeble half-grunt, half-whine of alarm, and for a moment bared his teeth defiantly. I remained absolutely still. Then his head fell back, and with a tremor of pain he stretched a stiffened limb. I crawled across the ledge to a rugged path among the cliffs, and descended to the shore. Next day I found him on the rock again, lying in the same position, but dead, while far up in the blue the sea-birds circled and called, and far below, at the edge of the flowing tide, the crested billows leaped and sang. His "mask" hangs above my study door. It has been placed there--not as a thing of beauty. The hard, set pose devoid of grace, the bent, dried ears once ever on the alert, the glassy, artificial eyes in sockets once tenanted by living balls of fire that glowed in the darkness of the night--all are unreal and expressionless. Yet the "mask" suggests a hundred pictures, and when I turn aside and forget for a moment the unreality of this poor image of death, I wander, led by fancy, among the moonlit woods, where the red mouse rustles past, and the mournful cry of the brown owl floats through the beeches' shadowed aisles. Then I hear a sudden wail, that echoes from hillside to hillside, as the vixen calls to Vulp: "The night is white; man is asleep; I hunt alone!" And the fox, standing at the edge of the clearing, sends back his sharp, glad answer, "I come!" THE BROWN HARE. I. THE UPLAND CORNFIELD. In midsummer, when the sun rises over the hillside opposite my home its first bright beams glance between the branches of a giant oak in the hedgerow of a cornfield above the wooded slope, and sparkle on my study window. And when at evening the valley is deeply shadowed, the light seems to linger in benediction on the same cornfield, where the great oak-tree, no longer silhouetted darkly against a golden dawn, shines faintly, with a radiance borrowed from the west, against the pearl-blue curtain of the waning day. Except during the early morning or at dusk, the cornfield does not stand out conspicuously in the landscape. The eye is attracted by the striking picture of the woodland wall stretching across the slope from the brink of the river, or by the lower prospect of peaceful meadows and orchards through which the murmuring stream wanders towards the village bridge; but the peaceful uplands beyond rarely greet the vision. For many years I was wont to look from my window only at the woods and the meadows, and somehow I was accustomed to imagine that the line of my vision was bounded by the top of the wood. It was not till more than usual interest had been awakened in me concerning the wild life inhabiting the cornfield, that my eyes were daily turned in the direction of the uplands, where, every evening, the rooks disappear from sight on their way to the tall elms in a neighbouring valley. Except during harvest, the cornfield is seldom visited by the country folk. It lies away from the main road, and the nearest approach to it is by a grass-grown lane leading from some ruined cottages to a farmstead in the middle of the estate. Many years ago, it was a wilderness of furze and briar, one of the thickest coverts on the countryside, affording safe sanctuary for fox and badger. But gradually it has been reclaimed, till now only a belt of undergrowth, scarcely twenty yards wide, stretches along the horizon between the upper hedgerow and the wheat. Here, one starry April night, in a snug "form" prepared by the mother hare, a leveret was born. The "form" was hardly more than a depression in the rank grass, to which, for some time past, the doe had been in the habit of resorting at dawn, that she might hide secure through the day, till the dusk brought with it renewed confidence, and tempted her away into the open meadows beyond the cornfield, where the young clover grew green and succulent. A thick gorse-bush, decked with a wealth of yellow bloom, grew by the side of the "form," and, all around, the matted grass and brambles made a labyrinth, pathless, save for the winding "run" by which the hare approached or left her home. Unlike the offspring of the rabbit--born blind and naked in an underground nest lined with its parent's fur--the leveret was covered with down, and her eyes were open, from the hour of birth. Nature had fitted her for an existence in the open air. At first she was suckled by day as well as by night, but as she grew older she seldom felt the want of food till dark. While light remained, she squatted motionless by her mother's side in the "form," protected by the resemblance in colour between her coat and the surrounding herbage, where the browns and greys of last autumn might still be seen among the brambles, with here and there a weather-worn stone or the fresh castings from a field-vole's burrow. In the gloaming, she followed her mother through the "creeps" amid the furze-brake, and sometimes to the edge of the thicket as far as the gap, where she learned to nibble the tastiest leaves in the grass. But soon after nightfall, she was generally alone for some hours while the doe wandered in search of food. Before daybreak, the doe always returned to suckle her little one. Often in the quiet night, the leveret, feeling lonely or afraid, would call in a low, tremulous voice for help. If the doe was within hearing she immediately responded; but frequently the cry, "leek, leek," did not reach the roaming hare, and the leveret, crouching in the undergrowth, had to wait till she heard her mother's welcome call. Soon the little home in the thicket was deserted, and the leveret accompanied her mother on her nightly journeys till the fields and the woods for miles around became familiar. About a month after her birth, the leveret, having grown so rapidly that she was able to take care of herself, parted from her mother, and, crossing the boundary hedge of the estate, took up her quarters on the opposite side of the valley. The doe and her leveret had lived happily in the cornfield and the meadows above the wood. The mother had attended with utmost solicitude to the wants of her offspring, allowing no intruder among her kindred to trespass on her own particular haunts, and careful to select for each day's hiding place some sequestered spot where a human footstep was seldom heard, and the noise of the farmyard sounded faint and remote. The leveret had learned, partly through a wonderful instinct and partly through her mother's teaching, how to act when there was cause for alarm. Immediately on detecting the presence of an intruder, she lay as still as the stone beside the ant-heap near, trusting that she would not be distinguished from her surroundings. But if flight was absolutely necessary, she sped away towards the nearest gap, and thence over pasture and cornfield, always up-hill if possible, out-distancing any probable pursuer by the marvellous power of her long hind-limbs. During the late summer and the early autumn, nothing occurred to endanger the leveret's life. The corn grew tall and slowly ripened. Amid its cool shadows the leveret dwelt in solitude. Her "creeps" were out of sight beneath the arching stalks. A gutter for winter drainage, dry and overgrown with grass, formed a tunnel in the hedge-bank between the corn and the root-crop field beyond; and through this gutter the leveret, when at night she grew hungry, could steal into the dense tangle of thistles and nettles fringing the turnips, thence, between the ridges under the wide-spreading leaves, to the narrow pathway dividing the rape from the root-crop, and across the field to a furrow where sweet red carrots, topped with dew-sprinkled plumes, tempted her dainty appetite. When the calm night was illumined, but not too brightly, by the moon and stars, the leveret would venture far away from her retreat to visit a cottage garden where the young lettuces were crisp and tender. Her depredations among the carrots and lettuces were scarcely such as to deserve punishment. She ate only enough of the lettuces to make a slight difference in the number of seeding plants ultimately devoured by the cottager's pig, or thrown to the refuse-heap; and from the great pile of carrots, to be gathered and stored in the peat-mound by the farmstead, the few she destroyed could never by any chance be missed. On all the countryside she was the most inoffensive creature--the harmless gipsy of the animal world, having no fixed abode, her tent-roof being the dome of the sky. As autumn advanced, the reapers came to the corn. She heard them enter by the gate; and presently, along the broad path cut by the scythe around the field, the great machine clanked and whirred. All day the strange, disturbing noise continued, drawing gradually nearer the spot where the leveret lay. Through the spaces between the stalks she watched the whirling arms swinging over, and the horses plodding leisurely by the edge of the standing wheat. At last, but almost too late, she leaped from her "form" as the cruel teeth cut through the stalks at her side; and, taking the direction of her "creep," rushed off towards the nearest gap and disappeared over the brow of the hill. In the middle of the night she wandered back to the wheat-field. The scene before her eyes revealed a startling change. The corn stood in "stooks" on the stubble; no winding paths led here and there through a silent sanctuary, where countless waving, nodding plumes, bent and released by a gentle-flowing wind, had shimmered in the bright radiance of the harvest moon, when, coming home late at night from the marsh across the hill, she had stayed for a while on the mound by the gate, and tiptoe, with black-fringed ears moving restlessly, had listened to some ominous sound in the farmyard. The prickly stubble felt strange to her feet, so, carefully picking her way by the ditch, she crossed to the nearest gate and ambled down the lane. But the change noticed in the wheat-field seemed to have passed over the whole countryside. It was more and more pronounced during the following week, till, in October, the late harvest had all been cleared. The habits of the hare altered with the season. Having at last grown accustomed to the varied conditions of her life, she sometimes frequented the old tracks over the upland, but rarely resorted to the "forms" in which she had lain amid the summer wheat. October brought her an experience which might have proved disastrous, but which, fortunately, resulted in nothing more than a passing fright. In the stalk of the rye occurs a knot, forming a slight bulge known to the peasantry as the "sweet joint." Rabbits and hares are extremely fond of this succulent morsel, and, in consequence, the rye-crop, if near a large warren, is in danger of being totally destroyed. Puss one night had wandered far to a field, where, some time before, she had discovered a patch of standing rye. The few remaining stalks were hard and uninviting, but there were some delicious parsnips among the root-crops. At dawn she settled down to hide between the rows of swedes close by, and remained secreted for the day; but towards evening a sportsman came in at the gate, and, with a low word of command and a wave of the arm, "threw off" his brace of red setters to range the field. Working systematically to right and left, the dogs sought eagerly for game. Soon the hare was scented, and while Juno, with stiffened "stern" and uplifted paw, stood almost over her, Random, "backing" his companion, set towards the furrow where Puss, perfectly rigid, and with ears well over her shoulders, crouched low, prepared for instant flight. Step by step the sportsman, with gun in readiness, moved towards Juno, cautioning her against excitement; while Random, sinking on his haunches, awaited patiently the issue of events. Suddenly, convinced that in flight lay her surest chance of escape, the hare leaped from her "seat," and with the utmost speed, though from the ease of her motions appearing to run slowly, made her way towards the hedgerow. There was a quick rush behind her as she started from the furrow, and then a loud, rasping exclamation from the sportsman, but nothing more; no shot was fired. She owed her life to several circumstances. The dogs were young, and in strict training; their master, knowing the natural fondness of "first season" setters for "chasing fur," had purposely refrained from killing the hare, and had turned his attention to the behaviour of his dogs. Then, again, he cherished a certain fondness for Puss, believing her to be the most persecuted, as well as the most innocent and interesting, of Nature's wildlings in the wind-swept upland fields. Henceforward, but for one other incident, the life of the hare was singularly uneventful till the early spring. That incident occurred within a week of her escape from the setters, and once more her luck was due to the humanity of him who had found her among the turnips. The farm-lands frequented by the leveret were a favourite resort of many of her kind, and when moving about in the darkness of the night she often found signs of their presence near the gaps and gateways. The sportsman, knowing well that after harvest the poaching instincts of the peasantry and of the professional village "mouchers" would receive fresh stimulus, determined to forestall his enemies, and render futile some, at least, of their endeavours. So it came about that one night a keeper, assisted by several of the guests at the "big house" in the valley, and having previously made every preparation for the event, placed a net near each gate and before each likely gap within a radius of half a mile from the heart of the estate. Unless hard pressed, a hare seldom leaves a field except by certain well-known openings in the hedgerow. Unlike the rabbit, she will not readily leap over any obstacle beneath which she can crawl; and whereas the "creep" of a rabbit through a gateway or a hedgerow is well-nigh invariably at right angles to the line of that gateway or hedgerow, the "creep" of a hare tends sideways and is sometimes slightly curved. To net hares successfully it is necessary to know their habits; and the keeper, having served a lifelong apprenticeship in field-craft, was prepared for every emergency. His object at this time was not to kill the hares, but simply to educate them, to warn them thoroughly once for all against the wiles of their worst enemy, the poacher. As Puss was busily feeding in the dewy clover, she heard the quick, continuous gallop of a dog. This time, however, she had not to deal with Juno, the setter, but with a trained lurcher, borrowed for the occasion from a keeper who had captured the animal during a poaching affray. The leveret, peeping over the grass-tops, saw the dog coming rapidly on. He was over and past her in an instant. As he turned, she started off straight towards an opening where some sheep had partly broken down the hedge. The lurcher closed in, and drove her thither at tremendous speed. She strained every nerve, and, gaining the ditch, blundered blindly through the gap, and fell, helpless and inert, entangled completely within the treacherous folds of the unseen net. Her piteous cries, tremulous, wailing, heart-rending--similar to the cries of a suffering infant--were borne far and wide on the wind. The keeper soon reached the spot, and, placing his hand over her mouth to stop the cries, tenderly extricated the frightened creature from the treacherous meshes and allowed her to go free. For a few seconds, she lay in abject fright, panting and unable to move. Then, hearing the cries of another hare entangled in a bag-net some distance away, she bounded to her feet, and darted off--somewhere, anywhere, so long as she might leave the awful peril behind. Bewildered, but with every instinct assisting her in the desire for life, she ran along by the hedgerow, and, unexpectedly catching sight of a familiar gate, crouched and passed quickly through the "creep" beneath the lowest bar. But here, again, a net was spread; again the hare fell screaming and struggling into the meshes; and again the keeper released her. Exhausted by intense excitement and fear, she crawled into the "trash" in the ditch, and kept in hiding, not daring the risk of another capture. Luckily for Puss, the lurcher had already hunted the field in which she was now secreted, and so the timid creature remained undisturbed beneath the fern. When her wildly throbbing heart had been quieted by rest and solitude, she stole from her hiding place to nibble the clover at the side of the path. Towards dawn, she journeyed to a wide stretch of moorland on the opposite hills, and there made a new "form" on a rough bank that separated a reedy hollow from the undulating wilderness of heather and fern. The leveret's adventures were destined to effect a considerable change in her habits. She was being roughly taught that to preserve her life she must be ever cautious and vigilant. Though danger threatened her by day and by night, she lived beyond the usual period of a hare's existence, partly because her early education was thorough and severe. Thus taught, she would pause for an instant at every gap and gateway before she passed through, and, if she found a net in her path, would turn aside, creep along by the hedge, and seek an exit at another place. The perils to which she had been exposed created a feeling of intense restlessness, which harassed her throughout the winter months, and caused her to travel long distances, by the loneliest lanes and fields, to and from the moorland where now she had made her home. She remembered the scent of a human being since her experiences with the keeper, and, her powers of smell being wonderfully acute, was able to detect even the faintest signs which indicated that her dread enemy--man--had crossed her path. One night she smelt the touch of a hand on the grass-bents near her "form," and found also that the herbage had been moved aside. Though the scent was faint--the intruder having visited the spot soon after the leveret had set out in quest of food--the cautious creature forsook her lair, and spent the day in a sheltered retreat beside a heap of dry and withered leaves near the outskirts of a copse on the slope overlooking the moor. Gradually she grew big and strong, becoming unusually fat as the autumn advanced, so that she would be able, if required, to withstand the rigour and the waste of a severe winter. Her coat was thick and beautifully soft, for protection against cold and damp. But while she increased in weight, she remained in hard condition because of her long journeys and frequent change of quarters. It happened, however, that her first winter was helpful to the welfare of animal life in general. The heavy rains, it is true, greatly distressed the leveret. The nights were so dark, and the constant patter of the rain so interfered with even her highly trained powers of hearing, that, while the wet weather lasted, she seldom dared to leave the neighbourhood of her favourite resort, but crouched in the grass at the margin of the copse, and tried to obtain a meal as best she could from the sodden herbage. Though on certain occasions Puss might have been discovered in hiding on the marsh, yet there, whenever possible, she chose a dry spot for her "seat." She loved, best of all, the undulating hills far above the river-mists, which, chilled at nightfall by an occasional frost, descended on the fields like crystal dust, and almost choked her if she chanced to pass within these wreathing drifts that brought discomfort and disease to man and beast alike. But the want of exercise so affected her, that, when again the weather was fine and she ventured from her lair, she found herself unable to cover the usual distance of her nightly rambles. As the first cold glimmer of the dawn appeared in the south-eastern sky, she started back, in alarm at her fatigue, to complete the remaining mile of her journey home. Her weakness soon became apparent. Then, finding herself powerless to proceed, she turned reluctantly aside, and crouched, with Nature's mimicry for her protection, on the brown ploughland where the winter wheat was thrusting up its first green sprouts above the soil. But after a few days she was well and strong again. She suffered far less from the short, sharp frost that bound the countryside with its icy fetters, than from the rains. The frost scarcely interfered with her movements; indeed, it made exercise more than ever necessary. Forced to seek diligently for her food, she found it in a deserted stubble; there, when the sheep lay sleeping in the bright winter moonlight, she would squat beside them, nibbling the turnips scattered over the field as provender for the flock. II. MARCH MADNESS. March came in "like a lion." The wind whistled round the farmstead on the hill, and through the doorway of the great kitchen, and down the open chimney. It woke up the old, grey-haired farmer who dozed on the "skew" in the ingle-nook by the crackling wood-fire; it almost made him feel young again with the vigour of the boisterous spring. It sang in the key-hole of the door between the passage and the best parlour; the mat at the threshold flapped with a sound as of pattering feet; and the gaudy calendars on the wall flew up like banners streaming in the breeze. The old man turned, and eagerly watched the hailstones, as they dropped tinkling on the roofs of the outhouses, or, driven aslant by the wind, crashed hissing against the ground, and, rebounding, rolled across the pebbled yard. The labourers came home to the mid-day meal, and, pausing at the door, shook the hail from their garments. "Lads," said the farmer, "I've been spared to hear the whisper of another spring." "God be thanked!" said the hind, "for seasonable weather at last. Every man to his trencher! the broth is in the bowls." Out on the marsh the reeds beat in the wind. Every grass-fibre twisted and swung; the matted tussocks, drooping over stagnant pools near which the snipe, with ruffled feathers, probed the soil in search of food, were shaken and disentangled, so that the bleached blades of last year's growth fell apart, and exposed the fresh young sprouts rising from the bed of winter's death. Over the wide waste the March wind drove furiously, with blessing in the guise of chastisement, while, far above, the grey-blue clouds whirled fast across a steely sky, till the ashen moon gazed coldly on the waning day, as one by one the stars flashed overhead, the clouds rolled down into the pink and silver west, and the song of the wind became only a murmur in the leafless willows by the brook. With the advent of March, a great change passed over the wild life of the uplands. The jack-hares threw aside their timidity, and wandered, reckless of danger, over the marsh, across the stubbles, and through the woods. Even in broad daylight, they frisked and quarrelled, in courtship and rivalry. The leveret was now full-grown, and Nature's mothering instincts were strong within her. One evening, as she louped along her accustomed trail towards the turnip-field, she discovered a suitor following in her wake. Half in misgiving, half in wantonness, she turned aside and hid in the ditch. Presently she felt a soft touch on her neck: the jack-hare was pushing his way through the undergrowth. For a moment she stopped to admire him as the moonlight gleamed on a white star in the centre of his forehead. Then away she jumped, dodging round the bushes and hither and thither among the grassy tangles, while her admirer followed, frisking and leaping in sportive gaiety. Another jack-hare now came along the hedgerow. In utter mischief, Puss called "leek, leek, leek," as if pretending to be in distress and in need of help. "Leek, leek," came the low response, as, quickening his pace, the second hare sprang into the fern. But his audacity was not to go unchallenged. The first suitor immediately showed himself, and, making a great pretence of reckless bravery, prepared to give the second a warm reception. The doe-leveret, apparently indifferent, but nevertheless keenly interested in the combat, crouched on a little knoll by the path, while the jack-hares, sitting on their haunches, boxed and scratched, and rolled over each other in a singularly harmless conflict, neither suffering more than the loss of a few tufts of fur. The comedy might, however, have had a tragic ending. Presently one of the combatants--the hare that had come late on the scene--became slightly exhausted, and, ignominiously yielding to his rival's superior dexterity, ran back towards the distant hedge. Almost at once a fox crept out from the furze at the corner of the field, and trotted away on the scent of the fleeing hare, while Puss and her mate made off in the direction of a more secluded pasture. A month passed--a month of general hilarity and indiscriminate fighting among all the hares in the district--and then, within a neat, dry "form," that Puss, with a mother's solicitude, had made in a carefully selected spot on a mound where the grass was tall and thick, her little leveret was "kittled." The doe-hare tended her offspring as carefully as she herself had been tended a year before. Her faithless lover had gone his own way. But Puss cared little for his desertion: she wished to live alone, under no monopoly as far as her affections were concerned, though for the time her leveret wholly engaged her mothering love. So strong was her strange new passion that she was ready, if needs be, to brave death in defence of her young. And, not long after the leveret's birth, the mother's courage was tested to the utmost. A peregrine falcon, from the wild, rocky coast to the west, came sailing on wide-reaching wings across the April sky. Puss was resting in a clump of brambles not far from her "form," and saw the big hawk flying swiftly above. Any movement on her part would have instantly attracted the attention of her foe, so she squatted motionless, while her leveret also instinctively lay still in its "form." But the keen eyes of the falcon detected the young hare, and the bird descended like a stone on his helpless victim. Instantly, the doe rushed to the rescue, and, effectually warding the attack, received the full force of the "stoop" on her shoulders. As the hawk rose into the air, the doe felt a sharp pain in one of her ears--the big talons, closing in their grasp, had ripped it as with the edge of a knife. She screamed, then, grunting savagely, leaped hither and thither around the leveret, meanwhile urging it to escape into the adjacent thicket. The bird, aloft in the air, seemed perplexed, and eventually prepared to "stoop" again. In the nick of time, Puss vanished with her little one beneath an impenetrable tangle of friendly thorns, while the baffled peregrine proceeded on his way. For some weeks, the hare languished under the effects of the falcon's blow. When her leveret was old enough to find food for itself, she rested, forced by the wound to live quietly in hiding, till the scar healed and life once more became enjoyable. But she always bore the marks of the talons, and so was spoken of by the country folk as "the slit-eared hare." The superstitious recalled the tales of a bygone century, and half believed the hare to be a witch in disguise, for she seemed to bear a charmed life, and, though known everywhere in the parish, successfully eluded to the end all the devices that threatened her. No matter how artfully the wire noose was set above the level of the ground in her "run," she brushed it by and never blundered into the treacherous loop. A net failed even to alarm her: it might almost be imagined that she became an experienced judge of any such contrivance, and knew every individual poacher by the method with which his toils were spread across her path. Not having bred during the year in which she was born, Puss had thrived, and weighed about nine pounds in the late autumn of her second season. But according to popular opinion she was much heavier. Will, the cobbler, who was fond of coursing, stoutly maintained, to a group of interested listeners in the bar-parlour of the village inn, that she seemed like a donkey when she escaped from his greyhound into the wood. Family cares again claimed the hare's attention in July; and, having taken to heart her experience with the peregrine, she left the uplands and made her home in the thickets of a river-island. At that time the river was low, and, on one side of the island, the bed of the stream had become a dry, pebbly hollow, save for a large pool fed by the backwater at the lower end, where the minnows played, and whither the big trout wandered from the rapids to feed during the hot summer nights. Late one afternoon, when long shadows lay across the mossy bank of the river beyond the tall beeches standing at the entrance to the island thickets, Puss was waiting for the dusk, and dozing meanwhile, but with wide-open eyes, beside her leveret. Since there was another little mouth besides her own requiring food, she generally felt hungry long before nightfall, and so, when the afterglow began to fade in the west, was wont to steal away to the clover above the woods that fringed the long, still pool up-stream. As the day wore on, the hare heard the unmistakable tread of human feet approaching through the woods. The sounds became increasingly distinct; then a pebble rattled and splashed into the water as the intruder walked across the river-bed. He passed close to the "form," and, turning down-stream, was lost to sight amid the bushes. At intervals, the hare imagined that the faint, muffled sounds of footsteps came from the distance; but again the sounds drew near, ceasing, however, when the man was a few yards from the nest. I can complete the story. Since spring I had been studying the wild life of this lonely island below the rocky gorge extending hither from the village bridge. The wood-wren, the willow-wren, and the garden-warbler had nested in the thickets, and every evening I had visited the place to pry on their doings, and to note how the flowers in glad succession blossomed and faded--their presence in this lonely sanctuary known only to myself, and to the birds, bees, and butterflies, and to the little shrews that rustled over the dry leaves beneath. But now the garden-warblers had left for the copse on the far side of the river, and the wood-wrens and the willow-wrens had retreated to the inner recesses of the thickets, where, amid the luxuriant verdure of midsummer, their movements baffled my observation. On the July evening, as I lay in the matted grass at the edge of the copse by the pebbles, watching a whitethroat among the bushes opposite, my eye happened to rest for an instant on a patch of bare mud immediately before me. There, to my surprise, I discovered the footprints of the hare. The five toes of the fore-feet, and the four toes of the hind-feet, were as clearly outlined as if each impression had been taken in plaster. And yet, when I stood up to look at the spot, the marks seemed to have wholly disappeared. On nearer examination I found that the track of the hare was in the direction of the island. From their shape, and the distance between each, the footprints indicated that the movements of the hare had not been hurried. Similar footprints were visible in a straight line between the bank and the island. Only one conclusion seemed possible--the hare had crossed to the island early that morning, after the heavy shower that had fallen just before dawn. It would have been contrary to her habits had she crossed later; and, had she passed the place at any time before, the rain would have washed away the marks in such an open spot, or, at any rate, would have blurred them beyond recognition. After placing a white stone by the footprints to indicate their whereabouts, I searched along the river-bed for signs that would show a track towards the bank; but not a single mark could be found pointing in that direction. It was obvious that the hare had not left the island till, at any rate, some hours after the rain. Then, however, the sun would have been so high that Puss would have been loath to leave her lair. Faintly discernible beside a large pebble, one other footprint appeared, leading like the rest towards the island. The mark was old, and had been saved from obliteration by the sheltering stone; but it suggested that the hare had made her home not far away. Taught by experience, I decided not to penetrate the copse and risk disturbing its probable tenant. I approached it only so far as to examine another bare place in a line with the footprints on the mud, where, to my delight, I found fresh footprints similar to those at the dried-up ford, together with other and much smaller marks undoubtedly made by a tiny leveret. I now re-crossed the ford and went home. But before nightfall I returned, and, hiding behind the hedgerow on the bank, watched, unseen, the approach to the island. My patience was soon rewarded. Just as the dusk was deepening over the woodlands, "the slit-eared hare" left her "form" and stood in full view by the ford. There, having lazily stretched her long, supple limbs, she played awhile with her leveret, sometimes pausing to nibble a few clover-leaves as if to direct the little one's attention towards its suitable food. Then she ambled leisurely across the river-bed, and, with graceful, swinging gait, passed through the meadow beyond--while her offspring disappeared within the thickets of the island. The hot weather broke up in July, and henceforth, till late September, rain descended almost every day. The shower that had revealed the whereabouts of the hare was the first sign of the change. On the following night, a thunderstorm broke over the countryside, washed down the soil from the pastures, and sent the river roaring in flood through the gorge. While on the far side of the island the main torrent raged past beneath the willows, the divided stream under the near bank formed salmon-pools and trout-reaches, where, before, the pebbles had been bare and dry. Anxious to know how the flood would interfere with the movements of the hare, I came back on the following evening to my hiding place by the hedgerow. In the dusk, Puss appeared at the margin of the copse, and moved down the bank to the edge of the stream. There she paused, apparently perplexed, and called to her leveret. Presently the young hare joined her mother at the water's edge, and both hopped along the brink, seeking a dry place by which they might reach the field on the slope. Finding none, they adjourned to the mossy bank where I had seen the leveret's footprints. Then the doe went down boldly to the stream, called to her companion, waded in, and swam across. Ascending into the field, she shook the water from her fur, and again called repeatedly. The young one hesitated, and ran to and fro crying piteously, "leek--leek." Suddenly, in the excitement, it missed its footfall and fell into the river. Bewildered, but hearing its mother's call, it swam down the pool through the still water below the little rapid, and landed on the opposite bank, where it joined its parent, and, following her example, shook the water from its downy limbs. Soon both disappeared within the wood; and, satisfied with my evening's sport, I turned homewards across the fields. During the rest of the summer, the hare frequented the rough pastures skirting the ploughlands, and visited the cornfields only when the weather was dry. Hares suffer little discomfort in rainy weather, if only the fine fur beneath the surface of the coat remains dry--after a shower they can easily shake off any outside moisture. But they dislike entering damp places where the vegetation is tall and their fur may get matted and soaked by the raindrops collected on the herbage. In wet weather hares may often be found in cover, especially near thick furze-brakes on a well drained hillside, but their presence in such a situation may imply that they sought shelter before the rain began to fall. In September, for the third time during the year, Puss was occupied with family affairs. Now, three tiny leverets were "kittled," and the nest occupied an almost bare place on the top of a ridge in the root-field where last season the succulent carrots grew. The hare had been greatly distressed by the unusually wet summer, and one of her leverets was in consequence a weakling; another leveret was killed by a prowling polecat while the mother wandered from the "form"; and only the third grew up robust and strong. The approach of winter brought Puss many strange experiences, from some of which she barely emerged with her life. When the season was passed, it had become more than ever difficult to approach her; she would slip away to cover directly her keen senses detected the presence of a stranger in the field where she lay in her "form." As she grew older, her leverets sometimes numbered four or five, but as a rule she gave birth to three only, her productiveness being probably dependent on the ease with which she obtained food. One day in February, just before bringing an early little family into the world, she almost met her death. A village poacher, ferreting on the hillside, chanced to see her, as she lay not far off in a patch of clover. Without waste of time, he proceeded to attempt the capture of the hare by a well-known trick. Thrusting a stake into the ground, he placed his hat on it, and strolled unconcernedly away. Then, as though he had changed his mind, he walked round the clump, in ever narrowing circles, gradually closing on his prey. Meanwhile, the hare, her attention wholly diverted by the improvised scarecrow, remained motionless, baffled by the artifice. Suddenly she felt the touch of the man's hand. The poacher had thrown himself down on the tuft, hoping to clutch the hare before she could move. But in endeavouring to look away from the spot, and, at the same time, measure the distance of his fall, he had miscalculated the hare's position. She sprang up, and with ears held low sped away towards the wood, leaving the poacher wild with rage at the failure of his ruse, and vowing vengeance on the timid creature, whose life, at such a time, would hardly, even to him, have been worth an effort. III. THE CHASE. Of all the hounds employed in the chase of the hare, the basset promises to become the prime favourite among some true-hearted sportsmen who love sport for its own sake, and not from a desire to kill. He is a loose, lumbering little fellow--resembling his relative, the dachshund--low and long, with out-turned legs, sickle-shaped "flag," and features which, in repose, seem to suggest that he has borne the grief and the care of a hundred years, but which, when the huntsman comes to open the kennel doors, are radiant with delight. Mirthfulness and dignity seem to seek expression in every movement of the quaint, old-fashioned little hound, and in every line of his face. As for his music--who would expect such a deep, bell-like note from this queer midget among hunters, standing not much higher than the second button of the huntsman's legging? Withal, he is a merry, lively little fellow, with a good nose for the scent of a rabbit or a hare, and, when in fit condition, is able to follow, follow, follow, if needed, from earliest dawn till the coming of night. The chase being ended, he with his companions, Harlequin and Columbine, and all the stragglers of the panting pack, will surround the tired hare, and will wait, bellowing lustily, but without molesting the quarry, till the Master appears and calls them to heel. If the ten to twenty sportsmen often to be found in a village would combine, each keeping a basset for the common Hunt, they might derive the utmost pleasure from following their pets afield, and incidentally would assist to prevent the extermination of an innocent wildling of our fields and woodlands. For the sake of the sport shown by the basset-hounds, many of the farmers near the villages, who dearly love to hear the deep music of a pack in full cry, would protect Puss from those more cunning and powerful enemies of hers, who, lurcher in leash or gun in hand, steal along the hedgerows at nightfall, so that, from a secret transaction thereafter with some local game-dealer, they may get the wherewithal for a carouse in the kitchen of the "Blossom" or the "Bunch of Grapes." One morning in December, when the rime lay thick on the fields, and the unclouded sun, rising in the steel-blue sky, cast a radiance over the glittering countryside, our village basset-hounds found the "cold" scent of the hare in the woods above the church, where Puss had sheltered beside a prostrate pine-trunk before returning to her "form" at dawn. After endeavouring in vain for some time to discover the direction of her "run," they set off, "checking" occasionally, across the stubble, through the root-crop field, and down over the fallow to the bottom of the dingle. There, near a bubbling spring, Puss had hidden since daybreak. Hearing the far-off music, she slipped out of the field unobserved, till, reaching the uplands, she was seen to pass leisurely by in the direction of the furze-brake. Directly the bassets came to the spring, a chorus of deep sounds announced that the quarry had been tracked to her recent lair. All through the morning they continued their quest; they streamed in a long, irregular line up the hillside, their black and tan and white coats gaily conspicuous in the sunlight; they trickled over the hedgerows, and dotted the furrows of the deserted ploughlands; they moved in "open order" through the copse, and plodded along by the furze-brakes or through the undergrowth where the sharp-thorned brambles continually annoyed and impeded them; they worked as if time needed not to be taken into the slightest account. The least scent met with loud and hearty recognition; fancy ran riot with the excited puppies; the atmosphere at every turn seemed to betray the near presence of Puss. But every condition of weather and fortune was against good sport. The ground was steadily thawing in the warmth of the sun, and the rising vapour, trembling in the light, seemed to carry the scent too high for accurate hunting. So the hare ambled along her line of flight--a wide, horse-shoe curve that began and ended in the fallow on the slope. When a considerable distance had been placed between herself and her pursuers, she ceased to hurry. Indeed, the music of horn and hounds seemed almost to fascinate the creature, and frequently she lingered for a few moments to listen intently to the clamour of her enemies. A farm labourer, who tried to "grab" her as she passed down the grassy lane, said that she "was coming along as cool as a cucumber. Sometimes she'd sit down to tickle her neck with her hind-feet. Then she'd give a big jump, casual-like, to one side of the path, and sit down again, with her ears twitching and turning as if she thought there was mischief in every flutter of a leaf or creak of a bough." Frightened almost out of her wits by the labourer's sudden and well-nigh successful endeavour to secure her, Puss rushed back along the lane, crossed a gap, and sped over the uplands once more, leaving her usual horse-shoe line of flight, and taking a much greater curve towards the fallow. But gradually her pace slackened as she discovered she was no longer followed; and then, not far from her lair by the spring, she paused to rest. The music of the hounds was faint, distant, and intermittent; and at last it entirely ceased. Somewhat exhausted towards the end of her journey, she had withheld her scent, and had thus completely outwitted her slow but patient pursuers. Once, and once only, towards the end of January, she found herself chased by her more formidable foes, the beagles. At first she eluded them by stealing off without yielding the faintest scent; but she was "viewed" in crossing the meadow, and the hounds, making a long, wide cast, "picked up" as soon as a slight, increasing taint in the air was perceptible, then followed for several miles. But, ultimately, they were baffled, and Puss made good her escape. It had happened that, after creeping through a gutter in the hedgerow of a stubble, she had come in sight of a flock of sheep grazing on the opposite side. Like Vulp, the fox, she knew how to hinder the chase by mingling her scent with that of other animals; so without hesitation she passed through the flock, and made straight for an open gateway in the far corner of the field. When the beagles, in hot pursuit, appeared on the scene, the startled sheep, rushing away, took the line of the hunted hare through the opening, and thus "fouled" the scent so thoroughly that the hunt came to a "check." After the hare had left the fields frequented by the sheep, she took the direction of a path leading over a wide bog towards the woodland. On the damp ground the scent lay so badly, that when, some time later, the beagles crossed her line, they were unable, even after repeated "casts," to follow her track. Presently the impatient huntsman, with hounds at heel, moved away to the nearest road and relinquished his quest. Luckily for Puss, the harriers never visited her neighbourhood, and only on special occasions was coursing permitted on the estate. If at night a lurcher entered the field in which she grazed amid the clover, her knowledge of the poacher's artifices immediately prompted her to slip over the hedge and past the treacherous nets. Her life, beset with hidden dangers, was preserved by a chain of wonderfully favourable circumstances, that befriended her even when the utmost caution and vigilance had been unavailing. Once, so mild was the winter that the hare's first family for the year came into the world in January. A few weeks afterwards, when she was about to separate from her leverets, an incident occurred that might have been attended with fatal results. A poacher, prowling along the far side of the hedgerow, and occasionally stopping to peep through the bushes for partridges "jugging" in the grass-field, caught sight of the leverets nibbling the clover near a small blackthorn. In the feeble afterglow, he was uncertain that the objects before him were worth the risk of a shot, so he crawled towards a gap to obtain a nearer view. To his astonishment, when he reached the gap nothing was visible by the thorn-bush; the leverets had vanished in the ferns. But the poacher was artful and experienced. He hid in the undergrowth of the ditch, where, after waiting awhile, and seeing no sign of movement in the grass, he gave utterance to a shrill cry like that of a young hare in distress. Five minutes passed, and the cry was repeated--tremulous, prolonged, eloquent of helpless suffering. At intervals, the same artifice was employed, but apparently without success. The poacher was about to crawl from his hiding place, when suddenly, close beside the hedgerow, the head of the doe hare came into sight. Startled, in spite of expectation, by her sudden appearance, and excited as he recognised the "slit-eared hare," the poacher involuntarily moved to grasp his gun. He looked down for an instant to make sure that his gun was in readiness, but when he lifted his eyes again the hare was gone. Do what he might, not another glimpse of his quarry was to be obtained, and so, half believing that he had seen a witch or that he had dreamed, he stole away into the darkening night. Deceived by the poacher's cries, the doe-hare had hurried home, but had found her young alive and well. Then, scenting danger, she had vanished with her offspring into the nearest bramble-clump, and in the deep shadow of the hedgerow had led them safely away. During the last year of her life, she frequented the hawthorn hedges and the furze brakes of an estate diligently "preserved" by a lover of Nature as a sanctuary whither the furred and feathered denizens of the countryside might resort without fear of hounds or poachers, and where a gun was never fired except at vermin. The winter was severe; on two occasions snow lay thick on the ground for more than a week. But Puss was fairly comfortable; she had her "form" on a dry, rough heap of stones, gathered from the fields and thrown into a disused quarry near the woods; and for four or five nights she remained at home, the snow covering her completely but for a breathing hole in the white walls of her tiny hut. At last, impatient of confinement, and desperately hungry, she broke through the snow-drift, and sought the nearest root-crop field, where, after scratching the snow from a turnip, she was able to make a hearty meal. While returning slowly towards the wood through the soft, yielding snow that rendered her journey difficult and tiresome, she unexpectedly discovered, near the hedge beyond the furrows, a tasty leaf or two of the rest-harrow, together with a few yellow sprouts of young grass where a stone had been kicked aside by a passing sheep--these were the tit-bits of her provender. In the early morning, the hare, too cautious to re-enter the "form," which, now that its surroundings were torn asunder, had become a conspicuous rent in the white mantle of the old quarry, crept over the hedge into the woods, and, moving leisurely beneath the snow-laden undergrowth, where her deep footprints could not easily be tracked, selected a suitable spot for a new "form" in the friendly shelter of a fallen pine. But even in this woodland sanctuary she encountered an enemy. A cat from the farm on the hill, having acquired poaching habits, had strayed, and taken up her abode among the boulders at the foot of a wooded precipice adjoining the lower pastures of the estate. In a gallery between these boulders, she had made her nest of withered grass and oak-leaves, where, at the time of which I write, she was occupied with a family of kittens. The wants of the kittens taxed the mother's utmost powers; she prowled far and wide in search of food, and was as much a creature of the night as were the fox and the polecat that also lived among the rocks. There is no greater enemy of game than the renegade cat. She is far more destructive than a fox. Many animals that can evade Reynard are helpless in the grip of a foe armed so completely as to seem all fangs and talons. The special method of slaughter adopted by the cat towards a victim of her own size is cruel and repulsive in the extreme. Grasping it with her fore-claws and holding it with her teeth, she lies on her back and uses her hind-claws with such effect that often her prey is lacerated to death. Roaming at night in the shadow, the cat came unexpectedly on the scent of the hare and traced it to the "form," but the desired victim was not at home. The cat returned to the spot before dawn, and lurked in hiding beneath the hawthorns. The hare, however, was not to be easily trapped. Coming into the wood against the wind, she fortunately detected the enemy's presence quite as readily as the cat had discovered her "form" amid the grass-bents. With ears set close, and limbs and tail twitching with excitement, the cat crouched ready for the deadly leap. But the hare suddenly sprang aside from her path, climbed the hedgerow, and disappeared, outpacing with ease the cat's half-hearted attempt at pursuit. At length the "slit-eared hare" met her death, in a manner befitting the wild, free existence she had led among the hills and the valleys. Her dead body was brought me by the head keeper of the woodland estate, and, as it rested on my study table, I gazed at it almost in wonder. The russet coat, turning grey with age, was eloquent of the brown earth, the sere leaf, and the colourless calm of twilight, and told me of the creature's times and seasons. The big, dark eyes, their marvellous beauty and expressiveness dimmed by death, and the long, sensitive ears, one ripped by the falcon's talon and both slightly bent at the tip with age, were suggestive of persecution, and of a haunting fear banished only with the coming of night, when, perchance, the early autumn moon rose over the corn, and the hare played with her leverets among the shadowy "creeps." My hands rested on the fine, white down that took the place of the russet coat where Nature's mimicry was needed not; it was pure and stainless, like the lonely wildling's inoffensive life. [Illustration: "WHEN THE EARLY AUTUMN MOON ROSE OVER THE CORN."] A terrible thunderstorm had raged over the countryside all the evening and throughout the night. Ben, the carter, coming home to the farm with his team, had dropped at the very threshold of the stable, blasted in a lurid furnace of sudden fire. A labourer's cottage had been wrecked; many a stately forest tree had been rent or blighted; the withering havoc had spread far and wide over the hills. On the following morning, the keeper, going his rounds, had found the dead hare beside a riven oak. THE BADGER. I. A WOODLAND SOLITUDE. Even in our own densely peopled land, there are out of the way districts in which human footsteps are seldom heard and many rare wild creatures flourish unmolested. Near such parts the naturalist delights to dwell, in touch, on one side, with subjects that deserve his patient study, and, on the other side, with kindly country folk, who, perhaps, supply him with food, and are the means of communication between him and the strenuous world. In this western county, however, the naturalist, in order to gain expert knowledge, does not need to live on the fringe of civilisation. Here, among the scattered upland farms around the old village, creatures that would elsewhere be in daily danger because of their supposed attacks on game are almost entirely free from persecution. In several of our woods, polecats seem to be more numerous than stoats, and badgers are known, but only to the persistent observer, to be more common than foxes; and both polecats and badgers are seldom disturbed, though the farmers may regularly pass their burrows. The immunity of such animals from harm is, to some extent, the result of the farmer's lack of interest in their doings. He strongly resents the presence of too many rabbits on his land, "scratching" the soil, spoiling the hedges, and devouring the young crops, and, therefore, cherishes no grudge against their enemies so long as his stock is unmolested. He is no ardent protector of game, and, if a clutch of eggs disappears from the pheasant's nest he has chanced to discover in the woods, thinks little about the incident, and concludes that Ned the blacksmith's broody hen has probably been requisitioned as a foster-mother, and that some day he will know more of the true state of affairs when he visits the smithy at the cross-roads. Another circumstance to which the badger hereabouts is indebted for security is that terriers are not the favourite dogs of the countryside. When shooting, the sportsman prefers spaniels, particularly certain "strains" of black and brown cockers--untiring little workers with a keen, true power of scent--which for many years have been common in the neighbourhood; and the farmer's sheep-dog is unfitted for any sport except rabbiting. Here and there, among the poaching fraternity, may be found a mongrel fondly imagined by its owner to be a terrier--a good rabbit "marker," and wonderfully quick in killing rats, but no more suited than the sportman's spaniel for "lying up" with a badger. Undoubtedly, however, the security of some of our most interesting wild animals, and especially of the badger, is to be accounted for by their extreme shyness. They venture abroad only when the shadows of night lie over the woods. For countless years, dogs and men have been their greatest foes, and their fear of them is found to be almost as strong in remote districts as where, near towns, their existence is continually threatened. Wild life in our quiet valley will be deemed of unusual interest when I say that less than six hours before writing these lines I visited a badger's "set"--a deep underground hollow with several main passages and upper galleries, where, as I have good reason to believe, a fox also dwells--an otter's "holt" beneath gnarled alder-roots fringing the river-bank, and another fox's "earth," all on the outskirts of a wooded belt not more than a mile from my home, and all showing signs of having long been inhabited. Unless systematically persecuted, the fox, the otter, and the badger cling to their respective haunts with such tenacity that, season after season, they prowl along the same familiar paths through the woods or by the river, and rear their young in the same retreats. This is the case especially with the badger; from the traditions of the countryside, as well as from the careful observation of sporting landowners, it may be learned that for generations certain inaccessible "sets" have seldom, if ever, been uninhabited. Always at nightfall the "little man in grey" has climbed the slanting passage from his cave-like chamber, ten or--if among the boulders of some ancient cairn--even from twenty to thirty feet below the level of the soil, and sniffed the cool evening air, and listened intently for the slightest sound of danger, before departing on his well worn trail to hunt and forage in the silent upland pastures. And with the first glimpse of light, when the hare stole past towards her "form," and the fox, a shadowy figure drifting through the haze of early dawn, returned to the dense darkness of the lonely wood, he has sought his daytime snuggery of leaves and grass industriously gathered from the littered glades. In a deep burrow at the foot of a hill, about a quarter of a mile from a farmstead built on a declivity at a bend of the broad river, Brock, the badger, was born, one morning about the middle of spring. Three other sucklings, like himself blind and wholly dependent on their parents' care, shared his couch of hay and leaves. Day by day, the mother badger, devoted to their welfare, fed and tended her unusually numerous offspring, lying beside them on the comfortable litter, while the sire, occupying a snug corner of the ample bed, dozed the lazy hours away; and evening after evening, when twilight deepened into darkness as night descended on the woods, she arose, shook a few seed-husks from her coat, and with her mate adjourned to an upper gallery leading to the main opening of the "set," whence, assured that no danger lurked in the neighbourhood of their home, both stole out to forage in the clearings and among the thickets on the brow of the hill. Just as with Lutra, the little otter-cub in the "holt" above the river's brim, the first weeks of babyhood passed uneventfully, so with Brock, the badger, nothing of interest occurred till his eyes gradually opened, and he could enjoy with careless freedom the real beginning of his woodland life. Even thus early, what may be called the nocturnal instinct was strong within him. He was alert and playful chiefly at night, when, deep in the underground hollow, nothing could be heard of the outer world but the indistinct, monotonous wail of the wind in the upper passages of the "set." Droll, indeed, were the revels of the young badgers when the parents were hunting far away. The little creatures, awakened from a heavy sleep that had followed the last fond attentions of their mother, were loath to frolic at once with each other in the lonely, silent chamber. In their parents' absence they felt unsafe; that mysterious whisper of admonition, unheard but felt, which is the voice of the all-pervading spirit of the woods forever warning the kindred of the wild, bade them be quiet till the dawn should bring the mother badger to the lair once more. So, huddled close, they were for a time satisfied with a strangely deliberate game of "King of the Castle," the castle being an imaginary place in the middle of their bed. Towards that spot each player pushed quietly, but vigorously, one or other gaining a slight advantage now and again by grunting an unexpected threat into the ear of a near companion, or by bestowing an unexpected nip on the flank of the cub that held for the moment the coveted position of king. Withal this was a sober pastime, unless Brock, the strongest and most determined member of the family, chanced to provoke his playmates beyond endurance, and caused a general, reckless scramble, in which tiny white teeth were bared and tempers were uncontrolled. As the night wore on, it almost invariably happened, however, that the "Castle" game gave place to a livelier diversion akin to "Puss in the Corner," when, on feeble, unsteady legs, the "earth-pigs" romped in pursuit of each other, or squatted, grunting with excitement, in different spots near the wall of their nursery. But, tired at last, they ceased their gambols an hour or so before dawn, lay together in a warm, panting heap, and slept, till, on the return of their mother to the "set," they were gathered to the soft comfort of her folded limbs, and fed and fondled to their hearts' content. Though Brock grew as rapidly as any young badger might be expected to grow, a comparatively long time passed by before he and the other small members of the family ventured out of doors. Repeatedly they were warned, in a language which soon they perfectly understood, that, except under the care of their parents, a visit to the outer world would end disastrously; so, while the old ones were abroad, the little creatures dared not move beyond the opening to the dark passage between the chamber and the gallery above. Sometimes, following their dam when she climbed the steep passage to her favourite lookout corner within a mouth of the burrow, they caught a glimpse of the sky, and of the trees and the bracken around their home; but a journey along the gallery was never made before the twilight deepened. The purpose of such close confinement was, that the young badgers should be taught, thoroughly and without risk, the first principles of wood-craft, and thus be enabled to hold their own in that struggle for existence, the stress of which is known even to the strong. Obedience, ever of vital importance in the training of the forest folk, was impartially exacted by the mother from her offspring. It was also taught by a system of immediate reward. The old badger invariably uttered a low but not unmusical greeting when she returned to her family at dawn. Almost before their eyes were open, the sucklings learned to connect this sound with food and comfort, and at once turned to the spot from which it proceeded. Later, when the same note was used as a call, they recognised that its meaning was varied; in turn it became, with subtle differences of inflection, an entreaty, a command, and a warning that it would be folly to ignore; but, whatever it might indicate, they instinctively remembered its first happy associations, and hurried to their mother's side. Hardly different from the call, when it conveyed the idea of warning, was a note of definite dissent, directing the youngsters to cease from squabbling, and to become less noisy in their rough-and-tumble play. After they had learned each minute difference in the call notes, their progress in education was largely determined by that love of mimicry which always prompts the young to imitate the old; and in time they acquired the tastes, the passions, and the experiences of their watchful teachers. While prevented from wandering abroad, they nevertheless were not entirely ignorant of what was happening in the woods. They were not quickly weaned; it was necessary, before the dam denied them Nature's first nourishment, that they should have ready access to the brook that trickled down the hillside hollow not far from the "set." But meanwhile, young rabbits, dug from the breeding "stops" of the does, were frequently brought to them, and the badgers were encouraged to gratify a love for solid food which nightly became stronger. In this part of the education of their young, the parent badgers adopted methods similar to those of the fox and other carnivorous animals. When first the mother badger brought a rabbit home, she placed it close beside her cubs, so that they could not fail to be attracted by its scent. For a moment, aware of something new and strange, they showed signs of timidity, and crouched together in the middle of the nest; but the presence of their mother reassured them, and they sniffed at the warm body with increasing delight. The dam seemed to know each trifling thought passing through their minds; and, observing their eager interest, she dragged the rabbit into a corner of the bed, making great show of savagery, as if guarding it from their attacks. Time after time, she alternately surrendered and withdrew her victim, till the tempers of the little animals, irritated beyond control by her tantalising methods, blazed out in a free fight among themselves for possession of the prize. The mother now retired to a corner of the "set," and listened attentively to all that happened, till they had finished their quarrel, and Brock, the middle figure in a group of tired youngsters, lay fast asleep with his head on the rabbit's neck. Then she turned, climbed quietly to the upper galleries, and, stealing out among the shadows of the wood, came again to the breeding "stop," where she unearthed and devoured a young rabbit that had been suffocated in the loose soil thrown up during her former visit. After quenching her thirst at the brook in the hollow, she journeyed to the upland fields, crossed the scent of her mate in the gorse, and then "cast" back across the hillside, making a leisurely examination of each woodland sign, to satisfy herself that no danger lurked in the neighbourhood of her home. For the badger, as for the tiny field-vole in the rough pastures of the Cerdyn valley, the various scents and sounds were full of meaning, and constituted a record of the night such as only the woodland folk have learned fully to understand. The smell of the fox lay strong on a path between the oaks; with it was mingled the scent of a bird; and a white feather, caught by a puff of wind, fluttered in the grass: young Reynard, boldest of an early family in the "earth," had stolen a fowl from a neighbouring farmyard near the river, and had carried it--not slung over his shoulders, as fanciful writers declare, but with its tail almost touching the soil--into the thicket beyond the wood. Rabbits had wandered in the undergrowth; and, near a large warren, the stale, peculiar odour of a stoat that had evidently prowled at dusk lingered on the dewy soil. The signs of blackbirds and pigeons among the loose leaf-mould were also faint; as soon as night had fallen, the birds had flown to roost in the branches overhead. The short, coughing bark of an old fox came from the edge of the wood; and then for some time all was quiet, till the musical cry of an otter sounded low and clear from the river beneath the steep. These familiar voices of the wilderness caused the badger no anxiety; they told her of freedom from danger; they were to her assuring signals from the watchers of the night. But the howl of a dog in a distant farmstead, and the bleat of a restless sheep in the pasture on the far side of the hill, told her a different story; they reminded her, as the smell of the fowl had done, that man, arch-enemy of the woodland people, might in any capricious moment threaten her existence, seeking to destroy her even while by day she slumbered in her chamber under the roots of the forest trees. She crossed the gap, where the river-path joined the down-stream boundary of the wood, then, with awkward, shambling stride, climbed the steep pasture, and for a few moments paused to watch and listen in the deep shadows of the hedge on the brow of the slope. A rabbit, that had lain out all night in her "seat" beneath the briars, rushed quickly from the undergrowth, and fled for safety to a burrow in the middle of the field. A small, dim form appeared for a moment by a wattled opening between the pasture and the cornfield above, then, with a rustle of dry leaves, vanished on the further side--a polecat was returning to her home in a pile of stones that occupied a hollow on the edge of the wood. Day was slowly breaking. A cool wind, blowing straight from the direction of a homestead indistinctly outlined against the dawn, stirred the leaves in the ditch, and brought to the badger's nostrils the pungent scent of burning wood--the milkmaid was already at work preparing a frugal breakfast in the kitchen of a lonely farm. Fearing that with the day the birds would mock her as she passed, and thus reveal her whereabouts to some inquisitive foe, the badger sought the loneliest pathway through the wood, and returned, silently but hastily, to her home. II. HOME DISCIPLINE. During the mother badger's absence from home, an unlooked-for event--almost the exact repetition of an incident in the training of Vulp, the young fox--had happened in the education of her cubs. Her mate, hunting in an upland fallow, had been surprised by a poacher, and, long before daybreak, had discreetly returned to the "set." The success he had met with had enabled him to feed to repletion, so he was not tempted by the dead rabbit carried home by the mother and left in the chamber. Fearing to leave his hiding place, he wisely determined to devote the time at his disposal, before settling to sleep, to his children's instruction. With a grunt like that of the mother when she greeted her offspring, he at once aroused the slumbering youngsters, and then, heedless of their attentions, as, mistaking him for the dam, they pressed at his side, he laid hold of the rabbit and dragged it into a far corner. Full of curiosity, the cubs followed, but with well assumed anger he drove them away. As if in keen anticipation of a feast, he tore the dead animal into small pieces which he placed together on the floor of the chamber. This task complete, he retired to his accustomed resting place, and listened while the cubs, overcoming their timidity, ventured nearer and nearer to the dismembered rabbit, till, suddenly smelling the fresh blood, they gave way to inborn passion, and buried their teeth in the lifeless flesh. An inevitable quarrel ensued; Brock and his companions could not agree on the choice of tit-bits, and a medley of discordant grunts and squeals seemed to fill the chamber, though now and again it partly subsided, as two or three of the cubs, having fixed on the same portion of the rabbit, tugged and strained for its possession--so intent on the struggle that they dared not waste their breath in useless wrangling. The old badger, satisfied that his progeny gave excellent promise of pluck and strength, was almost dropping off contentedly to sleep, when one of the excited combatants, retreating from the fray, backed unceremoniously, and awoke him with an accidental blow on the ribs. This was more than the crusty sire could endure, and he administered such prompt and indiscriminate chastisement to the youngsters, that, in a subdued frame of mind, they forgot their differences, forgot also the toothsome remnants of their feast, and nestled together in bed, desiring much that their patient dam would come to console them for the ill-usage just received. On returning to the "set," the mother badger stayed for a few minutes at the edge of the mound before the main entrance, and, rearing herself on her hind-legs, rubbed her cheek against a tree-trunk, and sniffed the air for the scent of a lurking enemy. Then, satisfied that all was safe, she entered the deep chamber, and was greeted by the little creatures that for an hour had expectantly awaited her arrival. Unusually boisterous in their welcome, they instantly disregarded the presence of their sire; and such, already, was the magic effect of the meal of raw flesh on their tempers, that, with an eagerness hitherto unknown, they followed every movement of their dam, till, submitting to their importunities, she lay beside them, and fed and fondled them to sleep. Almost nightly, she brought something new with which to tempt their appetites--young bank-voles dug from their burrows on the margin of the wood, weakling pigeons dropped from late nests among the leafy boughs, snakes, and lizards, and, chiefly, suckling rabbits unearthed from the shallow holes which the does had "stopped" with soil thrown back into the entrance when they left to feed amid the clover. Though young rabbits, in breeding "stops" barely a foot below the level of the ground, were never safe from the badger's attack, a flourishing colony dwelt within the precincts of the "set." Early in spring, when the badgers were preparing for their expected family, a doe rabbit, attracted by the great commotion caused by their efforts to remove the big heap of soil thrown up at the entrance to their dwelling, hopped quietly out of the fern, and sat for a long time watching from between the bushes the occasional showers of loam which indicated the progress of the work. Judged by the standard of a rabbit, Bunny was a fairly clever little creature, and the plans she formed as she hid in the undergrowth seemed to show that she possessed unusual forethought. She waited and watched for several nights, till the badgers had ceased to labour, and the mound before the "set" remained apparently untouched. Then, one evening, after she had seen the badgers go off together into the heart of the wood, she entered, and moved along the gallery, pausing here and there to touch the walls with her sensitive muzzle. Coming to a place where a stone was slightly loosened, she began to dig a shaft almost at right angles to the roomy gallery, and for a time continued her work undisturbed; but an hour or so before dawn she retired to sleep in a thicket, some distance beyond the plain, wide trail marking the badger's movements to and from the nearest fields. The badgers, on returning home, were sorely puzzled at the change that had taken place during their absence. To all appearance, a trick had been played on them, for, whereas their house had been left neat and tidy at dusk, there was now a pile of earth obstructing the main passage. However, they accepted the situation philosophically, and completed the rabbit's work by clearing the gallery and adding to the heap beyond the entrance. Night after night, the wily rabbit watched for the badgers' departure, carried on her work, and gave them a fresh task for the early morning, till a short but winding burrow, some depth below the level of the ground, formed an antechamber where the little family to which she presently gave birth was reared in safety. Though the badgers, aware that the shallow "stops" in the woods were more easily unearthed than this deeper burrow near the mouth of the "set," did not seek to disturb their neighbours, the mother rabbit, directly her family grew old enough to leave the nest, became increasingly vigilant, and, when about to lead them to or from their dwelling, was ever careful to be satisfied that all was quiet in the chambers and the galleries below. Generally she ventured abroad before the badgers awoke from the day's sleep, came back during their absence, and once more stole out to feed when they had returned and were resting in their snuggery. The danger that lurked in her surroundings supplied a special excitement to life, and she never heard without fear the ominous sounds that vibrated clearly through every crack and cranny when the badgers occasionally arose from their couch, stretched their cramped limbs, shook their rough grey coats, and grunted with satisfaction at the feeling of health and strength which nearly all wild animals delight occasionally to express. The forest trees had donned their verdure; the tall bracken had lifted its fronds so far above the grass that the mother rabbit no longer found them a convenient screen through which to peer at the strange antics of the old badgers as they came from their lair and sat in the twilight on the mound by the entrance of their home; and the rill in the dingle, which, during winter and early spring, leaped, a clear, rushing torrent, on its way to the river below the steep, had dwindled to a few drops of water, collected in tiny pools among the stones, or trickling reluctantly down the dank, green water-weed. The young badger family had grown so strong and high-spirited that their dam, weakened by motherhood, and at a loss to restrain their increasing desire for outdoor air and exercise, determined to wean them, and to teach them many lessons, concerning the ways of the woodland people, which she had learned long ago from her parents, or, more recently, from her own experiences as a creature of the dark, mysterious night. Brock, in particular, was the source of considerable anxiety to her. He was the leader in every scene of noisy festivity; she was repeatedly forced to punish him for following her at dusk to the mound outside the upper gallery, and for disobedience when she condescended to take part in a midnight romp in the underground nursery. He tormented the other members of the family by awakening them from sleep when he desired to play, also by appropriating, till his appetite was fully appeased, all the food his dam brought home from her hunting expeditions, and, again, by picking quarrels over such a trifling matter as the choice of a place when he and his little companions wished to rest. Nature's children are wilful and selfish; and in their struggle for existence they live, if independent of their parents, only so long as they can take care of themselves. Among adult animals, however, selfishness seems to become inoperative in the care they take of their offspring. But though the mother badger was unselfish towards her little ones, she spared no effort to instruct them in the ways of selfishness. The night of Brock's first visit to the woods was warm and unclouded. For an hour after sunset, he played about the gallery by the door, while his mother, a vigilant sentinel, remained motionless and unseen in the darkness behind. Now and again, he heard the rabbits moving in the burrow, but they, aware of his presence, stayed discreetly out of view. Under his mother's guidance, or even if his playmates had been bold enough to accompany him, he would at once have been ready to explore the furthest corner of the rabbit-hole. But the old badger was too big, and the youngsters were too timid, to go with him into the mysterious antechamber; so, after repeated attempts to explore the passage as far as the bend, and finding to his discomfort that there the space became narrower, he gave up the idea of prying on the doings of his neighbours, and contented himself with droll, clumsy antics, such as those by which wild children often seek to convince indulgent parents that they are eager and fearless. As the darkness deepened, the dog-badger, after hunting near the outskirts of the wood, returned to the "set." His manner indicated that he was the bearer of an important message. He touched his mate on the shoulder; then, as she responded to his greeting, he thrust his head forward so that she could scent a drop of blood clinging to his lip; and, while she sniffed enquiringly along the fringe of his muzzle, he seemed to be assuring her that his message was of the utmost consequence. As soon as she understood his meaning, he vanished into the gallery, and for a few moments was evidently busy. Faint squeals and grunts, which gradually became louder and louder, proceeded from the central chamber, and, again, from the inner passages; and presently the big badger appeared in sight, driving his family before him, and threatening them with direst punishment if they attempted to double past him and thus regain their dark retreat. Wholly unable to appreciate the real position of affairs, Brock, perplexed and frightened, found himself hiding among the ferns and brambles outside the "set," while the sire, standing in full view on the mound, and grunting loudly, forbade the return of his evicted family. Unexpectedly, too, the mother badger, when the little ones looked to her for sympathy in their extraordinary treatment, took the part of the crusty old sire, and snapped and snarled directly they attempted to move back towards the mound. Utterly bewildered and much in fear, since their dam, hitherto the object of implicit trust, had suddenly deserted their cause, the young badgers crouched together under the bushes, and watched distrustfully each movement of their parents. The sire stuck to his post on the mound, and, with hoarse grunts, varied occasionally by thin, piping squeals that did not seem in the least to accord with his wrathful demeanour, continued to keep them at a distance. Soon the dam moved slowly away, climbed the track towards the top of the wood, and then called to the cubs as they sat peering after her into the darkness. Released from discipline, and eagerly responsive to her cry, they lurched after her, and followed closely as she led them further and still further from home. Presently, the dog-badger overtook his family. His manner, as well as the dam's, had changed; and though great caution was exercised as they journeyed along paths well trodden, and free from twigs that might snap, or leaves that might rustle, and though silence was the order of the march, the little family--proud parents and shy, inquisitive children--seemed as happy as the summer night was calm. The distant sound of a prowling creature, heard at times from the margin of the wood, caused not the slightest alarm to the cubs: the intense nervousness always apparent in young foxes was not evinced by the little badgers. In comparison with the fox-cubs, they were not easily frightened; they already gave promise of the presence of mind which, later, was often displayed when they were threatened by powerful foes. Brock, nevertheless, betrayed astonishment when a dusky form bolted through the whinberry bushes close by; and several moments passed before he was able, by his undeveloped methods of reasoning, to connect the scent of the flying creature with that of the rabbits often carried home by his mother, and, therefore, with something good for food. At the top of the wood, the old badgers turned aside and led the way through a thicket, where, in obedience to their mother, the youngsters came to a halt, while their sire, proceeding a few yards in advance, sniffed the ground, like a beagle picking up the line of the hunt. Having found the object of his search, he called his family to him, that they might learn the meaning of the various signs around. But the doings of the woodland folk could not yet be learnt by the little badgers, as by the experienced parents, from trifling details, such as the altered position of a leaf or twig, the ringing alarm-cry of a bird, the fresh earth-smell near an upturned stone, or the taint of a moving creature in the grass. Beside them lay a small brown and white stoat, its head almost severed from its body by a quick, powerful bite, and, just beyond, the motionless form of a half-grown rabbit, unmarked, save by a small, clean-cut wound between the ears. The scent of both creatures was noticeable everywhere around, and with it, quite as strong and fresh, the scent of the big male badger. Walking up the path, soon after nightfall, the badger had arrived on the scene of a woodland tragedy, and had found the stoat so engrossed with its victim that to kill the bloodthirsty little tyrant was the easy work of an instant. Afterwards, mindful of the education of his progeny, he had hurried home to arrange with his mate a timely object lesson in wood-craft. The stoat was left untasted, but the rabbit was speedily devoured; and then the badger family resorted to the riverside below the "set," where the cubs were taught to lap the cool, clear water. Thence, before returning home, they were taken to a clearing in the middle of the wood, and, while the sire went off alone to scout and hunt, the mother badger showed them how to find grubs and beetles under the rotting bark of the tree-butts, in the crevices among the stones, and in the soft, damp litter of the decaying leaves. III. FEAR OF THE TRAP. Night after night, the cubs, sometimes under the protection of both their parents, and sometimes under the protection of only the dam, roamed through the by-ways of the countryside. From each expedition they gleaned something of new and unexpected interest, till they grew wise in the ways of Nature's folk that haunt the gloom--the strong, for ever seeking opportunities of attack; the weak, for ever dreading even a chance shadow on the moonlit trail. A strange performance, which, for quite a month, seemed devoid of meaning to the cubs, but which, nevertheless, Brock soon learned to imitate, took place whenever the tainted flesh of a dead creature was found in the way. The old badgers at once became alert, moved with the utmost caution, smelt but did not touch the offensive morsel, and, instead of seizing it, rolled over it again and yet again, as if the scent proved irresistibly attractive. One of the cubs, that had always shown an inclination to act differently from the way in which her companions acted, and often became lazy and stupid when lesson-time arrived, was destined to pay dearly for neglecting to imitate her parents. Lagging behind the rest of the family, as in single file they moved homeward after a long night's hunting in the fallow, she chanced to scent some carrion in the ditch, turned aside to taste it, and immediately was held fast in the teeth of an iron trap. Hearing her cries of pain and terror, the mother hastened to the spot, and, for a moment, was so bewildered with disappointment and anger that she chastised the cub unmercifully, though the little creature was enduring extreme agony. But directly the old badger recovered from her fit of temper, she sought to make amends by petting and soothing the frightened cub, and trying to remove the trap. Finally, after half an hour's continuous effort, she accidentally found that the trap was connected by a chain with a stake thrust into the ground. Quickly, with all the strength of her muscular fore-paws, she dug up the soil at the end of the chain, and then, with powerful teeth, wrenched the stake from its position. Dragging the cruel trap, the young badger slowly followed her dam homeward, but when she had gone about a hundred yards pain overcame her, and she rolled down a slight incline near the hedge. For a few minutes, she lay helpless; then, grunting hoarsely, she climbed the ditch, and continued her way in the direction of a gap leading into the wood. There, as she gained the top of the hedge, the trap was firmly caught in the stout fork of a thorn-bush. Further progress was impossible; all her frantic struggles failed to give her freedom. The dam stayed near, vainly endeavouring to release her, till at dawn a rustle was heard in the hedge, and a labourer on his way to the farm came in sight above a hurdle in the gap. Reluctantly, the old badger stole away into the wood, leaving the cub to her fate. It came--a single blow on the nostrils from a stout cudgel--and all was over. The lesson thus taught left a salutary impression on the minds of the other cubs. From it they learned that the presence of stale flesh was somehow associated with the peculiar scent of oiled and rusty iron, or with the taint of a human hand, and was fraught with the utmost danger. They somehow felt that their dam acted wisely in rolling over any decaying refuse she happened to find on her way; and later, when Brock, seizing an opportunity to imitate his mother, sprang another trap, which, closing suddenly beneath his back, did no more harm than to rob him of a bunch of fur, they recognised how a menace to their safety might be easily and completely removed by the simple expedient taught them by their careful parent. Though she invariably took the utmost precaution against danger from baited traps, the old she-badger was nevertheless surprised, almost as much as were the cubs, at the incidents just described. At various times she had sprung more than a dozen traps, but in each case her attention had been directed to the trap only by the scent of iron, or of the human hand. However faint that scent might be, and however mingled with the smell of newly turned earth or of sap from bruised stalks of woodland plants, she immediately detected it, rolled on the spot, and then noted the signs around--the disturbed leaf-mould, and the foot-scent of man leading back among the bilberry bushes, or down the winding paths between the oaks, where, occasionally, she also found faint traces of the hand-scent on bits of lichen, or on rotten twigs, fallen from the grasp of her enemy as he clutched the tree-trunks in his steep descent towards the riverside. But never before had she seen a baited trap. Her dam had never seen one; her grand-dam had been equally ignorant; and yet both, like herself, had always rolled on any tainted flesh they chanced to come across on their many journeys. For generations, in this far county of the west, the creatures of the woods, except the fox, had never been systematically hunted. The vicissitudes of history had directly affected the welfare of wild animals. The old professional hunting and fighting classes had become unambitious tenant farmers; and, partly through the operations of an old Welsh law regarding the equal division of property, the land beyond the feudal tracts of the Norman Marches were, in many instances, broken up into small freeholds owned by descendants of the princely families of bygone ages. But hard, incessant work was the lot of tenant and freeholder alike. When the aims and the experiences of the old fighting and sporting days had passed away, and nothing was left but ceaseless toil, these essentially combative people, to whom violent and continuous excitement was the very breath of life, became, for a while at least, knavish and immoral, sunk almost to one dead social level, and totally uninteresting because, in their new life of peaceful tillage--a life far more suited to their English law-givers than to themselves--they were apparently incapable of maintaining that complete, vigilant interest in their ordinary surroundings which makes for enlightenment and success. Having lost the love of "venerie" possessed by their forefathers, the farmers cared little about any wild creatures but hares and rabbits; a badger's ham was to them an unknown article of food. The fear of a baited trap had, therefore, probably descended from one badger to another since days when the green-gowned forester came to the farm, from the lodge down-river, and sought assistance in the capture of an animal for the sport of an otherwise dull Sunday afternoon in the courtyard of the nearest castle; or even since ages far remote, when a badger's flesh was esteemed a luxury by the earliest Celts. Unbaited traps, in the "runs" of the rabbits, had at intervals been common for centuries; but now the carefully prepared baits and the unusually strong traps seemed to indicate nothing less than an organised attack on other and more powerful night hunters. The badger's fears, however, were hardly warranted. Five traps had been placed in the wood by a curious visitor staying at the village inn. In one of these, Brock's sister had been caught; but the owner of the trap knew nothing beyond the fact that it had mysteriously disappeared from the spot where he had seen it fixed. Another was sprung by Brock; two at the far end of the wood were so completely fouled by a fox that every prowling creature carefully avoided the spot; while in the fifth was found a single blood-stained claw, left to prove the visit of a renegade cat. It may well be imagined that a large and interesting animal like the badger, keeping for many years to an underground abode so spacious that the mound at its principal entrance is often a quite conspicuous landmark for some distance in the woods, would be subject to frequent and varied attacks from man, and thus be speedily exterminated. It may also be imagined that the habits of following the same well worn paths night after night, of never ranging further than a few miles from the "set," and of living so sociably that the community sometimes numbers from half-a-dozen to a dozen members, apart from such lodgers as foxes, rabbits, and wood-mice, would all combine to render the creature an easy prey. But if the badger's ways are carefully studied, the very circumstances which at first seem unfavourable to him are found to account for much of his immunity from harm. The depth of his breeding chamber and the length of the connecting passages are, as a rule, indicated by the size of the mound before his door. The fact that he regularly pursues the same paths in his nightly excursions enables him to become familiar, like the fox, with each sight and scent and sound of the woods, so that anything strange is at once noticed, and danger avoided. His sociability is a distinct gain, because he receives therefrom co-operation in his sapping and mining while he aims to secure the impregnability of his fortress; and his tolerance of cunning and timid neighbours gains for him this advantage: sometimes in the dusk, before venturing abroad, he receives a warning that danger lurks in the thickets around his home--perhaps from a double line of scent indicating that the fox has started on a journey and then hurriedly turned back, or from numerous cross-scents at the mouth of the burrow, where the rabbits and the wood-mice have passed to and fro, deterred by fear in their frequent attempts to reach feeding places beyond the nearest briar-clumps. His methods, however, when either his neighbours or the members of his own family become too numerous, are prompt and drastic. Shy, inoffensive, and, for a young creature unacquainted with the responsibilities of a family, deliberate to the point of drollery in all his movements, Brock grew up beneath his parents' care; and, with an intelligence keener than that possessed by the other members of the little woodland family, learned many lessons which they failed to understand. When his mother called, he was always the first to hasten to her side. Each incident of the night, if of any significance, was explained to her offspring by the mother. Often Brock was the only listener when she began her story, and the late arrivals heard but disconnected parts. Beautiful beyond comparison were those brief summer nights, silent, starlit, fragrant, when the badgers led their young by many a devious path through close-arched bowers amid the tangled bracken, or under drooping sprays of thorn and honeysuckle in the hidden ditches, or through close tunnels, as gloomy as the passages of their underground abode, in the dense thickets of the furze. Sometimes they wandered in the corn and root-crop, or in the hayfield where the sorrel, a cooling medicinal herb for many of the woodland folk, grew long and succulent; and sometimes they descended the steep cattle-path on the far side of the farm, where the big dor-beetles, as plentiful there as in the grass-clumps of the open pasture, were easily struck down while they circled, droning loudly, about the heaps of refuse near the hedge. Once, late in July, when the badgers were busily catching beetles by the side of the cattle-path, Brock, thrusting his snout into the grass to secure a crawling insect, chanced to hear a faint, continuous sound, as of a number of tiny creatures moving to and fro in a hollow beneath the moss-covered mound at his feet. He listened intently, his head cocked knowingly towards the spot whence the sound proceeded; then, scratching up a few roots of the moss, he sniffed enquiringly, drawing in a long, deep breath, at the mouth of a thimble-shaped hole his sharp claws had exposed. Unexpectedly, and without the help of the dam, he had discovered a wild-bees' nest. His inborn love of honey was every whit as strong as a bear's, and he recognised the scent as similar to that of insects known by him to be far more tasty than beetles; so, without a moment's hesitation, he began to dig away the soil. The nest was soon unearthed, and the little badger, completely protected by his thick and wiry coat from the half-hearted assaults of the bewildered bees, greedily devoured the entire comb, together with every well-fed grub and every drop of honey the fragile cells contained. His eagerness was such that these spoils seemed hardly more than a tempting morsel sufficient to awaken a desire for the luscious sweets of the wayside storehouses. He carefully hunted the hedgerow, as far as a gate leading to a rick-yard, and at last, close to a stile, found another nest, which, also, he quickly destroyed. Henceforth, till the end of August, there were few nights during which he did not find a meal of honey and grubs. The summer was fine and warm, a lavish profusion of flowers adorned the fields and the woods, and humble-bees and wasps were everywhere numerous. As if to taunt the badgers with inability to climb, a swarm of tree-wasps lived in a big nest of wood-pulp suspended from a branch ten feet or so above the "set," and, every afternoon, the badgers, as they waited near the mouth of their dwelling for the darkness to deepen, heard the shrill, long continued humming of the sentinel wasps around the big ball in the tree--surely one of the most appetising sounds that could ever reach a badger's ears. But the wasps that had built among the ferns near the river-path, and in the hollows of the hedges, were remorselessly hunted and despoiled. Their stings failed to penetrate the thick coat and hide of their persistent foes, while a chance stab on the lips or between the nostrils seemed only to arouse the badgers from leisurely methods of pillage to quick and ruthless slaughter of the adult insects as well as of the immature grubs. But Brock never committed the indiscretion of swallowing a full-grown wasp. With his fore-paws he dexterously struck and crippled the angry sentinels that buzzed about his ears, and, with teeth bared in order to prevent a sting on his tender muzzle, disabled the newly emerged and sluggish insects that wandered over the comb. As autumn drew on, the cubs grew strong and fat on the plentiful supplies of food, which, with their parents' help, they readily found in field and wood. Brock gave promise of abnormal strength, and was already considerably heavier than his sister. They fared far better than the third cub, a little male, that, notwithstanding a temper almost as fiery as Brock's, was worsted in every dispute and frequently robbed of his food, and still, never owning himself beaten, persisted in drawing attention to his success whenever he happened on something fresh and toothsome. At such times, instead of hastily and silently regaling himself, he made a great a-do, grunting with rage and defiance, like a dog that guards a marrow-bone but will not settle down to gnaw its juicy ends. Brock's brother was so often deprived of his legitimate spoils, that, while his surliness was increased, his bodily growth was checked. He was small and thin for his age; and so, when a kind of fever peculiar to young badgers broke out in the woodland home, he succumbed. His grave was a shallow depression near the path below the "set," whither his parents dragged his lifeless body, and where the whispering leaves of autumn presently descended to array him in a red and golden robe of death. The other young badgers quickly recovered from their fever; and by the end of October all the animals were, as sportsmen say, "in grease," and well prepared for winter's cold and privation. The old badgers became more and more indisposed to roam abroad; and, whereas in summer they sometimes wandered four or five miles from the "set," they now seldom went further than the gorse-thicket on the fringe of the wood. IV. THE WINTER "OVEN." The badger-cubs, while not so well provided against the cold as were their parents, grew lazy as winter advanced, and spent most of their time indoors on a large heap of fresh bedding, that had been collected under the oaks and carried to a special winter "oven" below the chamber generally occupied in summer. Here, the sudden changes of temperature affecting the outer world were hardly noticeable; and so enervating were the warmth and indolence, that the badgers, in spite of thick furs and tough hides, rarely left their retreat when the shrill voice of the north-east wind, overhead in the mouth of the burrow, told them of frost and snow. About mid-winter, the first of two changes took place in the colour of the young badgers' coats; from silver-grey it turned to dull brownish yellow, and the contrasts in the pied markings of the cheeks became increasingly pronounced. This change happened a little later with Brock than with his sister. Eventually, late in the following winter, the young female, arriving at maturity, donned a gown of darker grey, and her face was striped with black and white; shortly afterwards, Brock, too, assumed the livery of a full-grown badger. Meanwhile, till events occurred of which the second change was only a portent, all remained fairly peaceful in the big burrow under the whins and brambles. Occasionally, in the brief winter days, Brock was awakened from his comfortable sleep by the music of the hounds, as they passed by on the scent of Vulp, the fleetest and most cunning fox on the countryside, or by the stamp of impatient hoofs, as the huntsman's mare, tethered to a tree not far from the "set," eagerly awaited her rider's return from a "forward cast" into the dense thicket beyond the glade. One afternoon in late winter, a young vixen, that, without knowing it, had completely baffled her pursuers, crept, footsore and travel-stained, into the mouth of the "set," and lay there, panting loudly, till night descended, and she had sufficiently recovered from her distress to continue her homeward journey. Now and again, the sharp report of a shotgun echoed down the wood; and once, late at night, when Brock climbed up from the "oven" to sit awhile on the mound before his door, the scent of blood was strong in the passage leading to the rabbit's quarters. Unfortunate bunny! Next night, stiff and sore from her wounds, she crawled out into the wood, and Vulp and his vixen put an end to her misery long before the badgers ventured from their lair. Winter, with its long hours of sleep, passed quietly away. Amid the sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt by day in the oak-scrub near the "set," and had fed at night in the swampy thickets by the rill, heard the voice of a curlew descending from the heights of the sky, and rose, on quick, glad pinions, far beyond the soaring of the lark, to join a great bird-army travelling north. Regularly, as the time for sleep drew nigh, the old inhabitants among the woodland birds--the thrushes, the robins, the finches, and the wrens--squabbled loudly as they settled to rest: their favourite roosting places were being invaded by aliens of their species, that, desirous of breaking for the night their northward journey, dropped, twittering, into every bush and brake on the margin of the copse. And into Nature's breast swept, like an irresistible flood, a yearning for maternity. The vixen, that once had rested inside the burrow to recover from her "run" before the hounds, remembered the sanctuary, returned to it, and there in time gave birth to her young; and, though almost in touch with such enemies as the badger and the fox, a few of the rabbits that had been reared during the previous season in the antechamber of the "set" enlarged their dwelling place, and were soon engaged in tending a numerous offspring. The timid wood-mice, following suit, scooped out a dozen tiny galleries within an old back entrance of the burrow, and multiplied exceedingly. But, while all other creatures seemed bent on family affairs, Brock's parents, following a not infrequent habit of their kindred, deferred such duties to another season. As spring advanced, food became far more abundant than in winter, and the badgers' appetites correspondingly increased. Directly the evening shadows began to deepen, parents and cubs alike became impatient of the long day's inactivity, and adjourned together to one or other of the entrances, generally to the main opening behind the big mound. There, unseen, they could watch the rooks sail slowly overhead, and the pigeons, with a sharp hiss of swiftly beating wings, drop down into the trees, and flutter, cooing loudly, from bough to bough before they fell asleep. Then, after a twilight romp in and about the mouth of the burrow, the badgers took up the business of the night, and wandered away over the countryside in search of food, sometimes extending their journeys even as far as the garden of a cottage five miles distant, where Brock distinguished himself by overturning a hive and devouring every particle of a new honeycomb found therein. Autumn, beautiful with pearly mists and red and golden leaves, again succeeded summer, and the woods resounded with the music of the huntsman's horn, as the hounds "harked forward" on the scent of fleeing fox-cubs, that had never heard, till then, the cries of the pursuing pack. One morning, Brock lay out in the undergrowth, though the sun was high and the rest of his family slept safely in the burrow. At the time, his temper was not particularly sweet, for, on returning to the "set" an hour before dawn, he had quarrelled with his sire. Among the dead leaves and hay strewn on the floor of the chamber usually inhabited by the badgers in warm weather, was an old bone, discovered by Brock in the woods, and carried home as a plaything. For this bone Brock had conceived a violent affection, almost like that of a child for a limbless and much disfigured doll. He would lie outstretched on his bed, for an hour at a time, with his toy between his fore-feet, vainly sucking the broken end for marrow, or sharpening his teeth by gnawing the juiceless knob, with perfect contentment written on every line of his long, solemn face. If disturbed, he would take the bone to the winter "oven" below, and there, alone, would toss it from corner to corner and pounce on it with glee, or, with a sudden change of manner, would grasp it in his fore-paws, roll on his back, and scratch, and bite, and kick it, till, tired of the fun, he dropped asleep beside his plaything; while overhead, the rabbits and the voles, at a loss to imagine what was happening in the dark hollows of the "earth," quaked with fear, or bolted helter-skelter into the bushes beyond the mound. When, just before the quarrel, Brock sought for his bone, as he was wont to do on returning home, he scented it in the litter beneath a spot completely overlapped on every side by some part or other of his recumbent sire. For a few moments, he was nonplussed by the situation; then, desperate for his plaything, he suddenly began to dig, and, in a twinkling, was half buried in the hay and leaves; while to right and to left he scattered soil and bedding that fell like a shower over his mother and sister. Before the old dog-badger had realised the meaning of the commotion, Brock had grabbed his treasure, and, withdrawing his head from the shallow pitfall he had hurriedly fashioned, had caused his drowsy parent to roll helplessly over. This was more than a self-respecting father could possibly endure in his own home and among his own kin, so, with unexpected agility, as he turned in struggling to recover his balance, he gripped Brock by the loose skin of the neck, and held him as in a vice from which there seemed no escape. Brock, doubtless thinking that his right to the bone was being disputed, strove vigorously to get hold of his sire, but the grip of the trap-like jaws was inflexible, and kept him firmly down till his rage had expended itself, and he was cowed by his parent's prompt, easy show of tremendous power. When, at last, the old badger relinquished his hold, Brock shook himself, and sulkily departed from the "set," followed to the door by his relentless chastiser. An hour before noon, Brock heard the note of a horn--sounding far distant, but really coming only from the other side of the hill--succeeded by the eager baying of a pack of fox-hounds. Then, for a while, all was silent, but soon the cries of the hounds broke out again, away beyond the farm by the river. Evidently something was amiss. Brock, though hardly, perhaps, alarmed, shifted uneasily in his retreat under the yellow bracken, and finally, almost fascinated, lay quiet, watching and listening. Presently the ferns parted; and a fox-cub appeared in full view, treading lightly, his tongue lolling out, his jaws strained far back towards his ears, and his face wearing the look of a creature of excessive cunning, though for the time frightened nearly out of his wits. The fox-cub paused an instant, turned as if to look at something in the dark thickets by the glen, climbed the mound, and, after another hasty glance, entered his home among the outer chambers of the "set." Unknown, of course, to Brock, the leading hounds were running mute on the fox-cub's scent down the path by the river. They swerved, and lost the line for a moment, then, "throwing their tongues," crashed through the briars into the fern; and at once Brock was surrounded. Luckily, he had neither been punished too severely by his sire, nor had exhausted himself in hotly resisting the chastisement. For a few seconds, however, as the hounds pressed closely in the rough-and-tumble fray, trying to tear him limb from limb, he was disconcerted. But quickly regaining his self-possession, he began to make the fight exceedingly warm for his assailants. A hound caught him by the leg; turning, he caught the aggressor by the muzzle. His strong, sharp teeth crashed through nose and lip clean to the bone, and the discomfited hound, directly one of the pack had "created a diversion," made off at full speed, running "heel," and howling at the top of his voice. One after another, Brock served two couples thus, till the wood was filled with a mournful chorus altogether different from the usual music of the hounds. Little hurt, except for a bruise or two on his loose, rough hide, and feeling almost as fresh as when the attack began, Brock, with his face to the few foes still remaining to threaten him hoarsely from a safe distance, retired with dignity to the mound, and disappeared in the tunnel just as reinforcements of the enemy hastened up the slope. Henceforth, even in leafy summer, he seldom remained outside his dwelling during the day, and any fresh sign of a dog in the neighbourhood of his immediate haunt never failed to fill him with rage and apprehension. Since the time when their silvery-grey coats had turned to brownish-yellow, the badger cubs had become more and more independent of their parents; and before long, familiar with the forest paths, they often wandered alone. Yet so regular was their habit of returning home during the hour preceding dawn, that, unless something untoward happened, the last badger to reach the "earth" was rarely more than a few minutes after the first. Towards the end of autumn, however, the female cub seemed to have lost this habit; on several occasions dawn was breaking when she sought her couch; and one morning she was missing from the family. Her regular home-coming had given place to meeting, in a copse over the hill, a young male badger reared among the rocks of a glen up-stream; and by him she had at last been led away to a home, which, after inspecting several other likely places, he had made by enlarging a rabbit burrow in a long disused quarry. Brock was in no hurry to find himself a spouse; he waited till the end of winter. Meanwhile, the colour of his coat changed from yellow to full, dark grey, and simultaneously a change became apparent in his disposition. Wild fancies seized him; from dusk to dawn he wandered with clumsy gait over the countryside, little heeding how noisily he lumbered through the undergrowth. The gaunt jack-hare, that, crying out in the night, hurried past him, was not a whit more crazy. At one time, Brock met a young male badger in the furze, attacked him vigorously, and left him more dead than alive. At another time, he even turned his rage against his sire. The old badger was by no means unwilling to resent provocation: he, too, felt the hot, quick blood of spring in his veins. The fight was fierce and long--no other wild animal in Britain can inflict or endure such punishment as the badger--and it ended in victory for Brock. His size and strength were greater than his father's; he also had the advantage of youth and self-confidence; but till its close the struggle was almost equal, for the obstinate resistance of the experienced old sire was indeed hard to overcome. Brock forced him at last from the corner where he stood with his head to the wall, and hustled him out of doors. Then the victor hastened to the brook to quench his thirst, and, returning to the "set," sought to sleep off the effects of the fight. When he awoke, he found that the mother badger had gone to join her evicted mate. The inseparable couple prepared a disused part of the "set" for future habitation; there they collected a heap of dry bedding, and, free from further interruption, were soon engaged with the care of a second family. For nearly a week after his big battle, Brock felt stiff and sore, and altogether too ill to extend his nightly rambles further than the boundaries of the wood. But with renewed health his restlessness returned, and he wandered hither and thither in search of a mate to share his dwelling. A knight-errant among badgers, he sought adventure for the sake of a lady-love whose face he had not even seen. Sometimes, to make his journeys shorter than if the usual trails from wood to wood had been followed, he used the roads and by-ways leading past the farmsteads, and risked encounter with the watchful sheep-dogs. For this indiscretion, he almost paid the penalty of his life. Crossing a moonlit field on the edge of a covert, he saw a flock of sheep break from the hurdles of a fold near the distant hedge, and run panic-stricken straight towards him. Long before he had time to regain the cover, they swept by, separating into two groups as they came where he stood. Immediately afterwards, he saw that one of the sheep was lying on her back, struggling frantically, while a big, white-ruffed collie worried her to death. The dog was so engrossed with his victim that the badger remained unnoticed. Having killed the sheep, the dog sat by, panting because of his exertions, and licking the blood from his lips. Suddenly, raising his head, he listened intently, his ears turned in the direction of the fold. Then, growling savagely, he slunk away, with his tail between his legs, and disappeared within the wood. He had scarcely gone from sight, when the farmer and his boy climbed over the hedge near the field and hastened across the pasture. They saw the sheep lying dead, and, not far from the spot, the badger lumbering off to the covert. Instantly believing that Brock was the cause of their trouble, they called excitedly for help from the farm, and dashed in pursuit. As Brock gained the gap by the wood, he felt a sharp, stinging blow on his ribs. On the other side of the hedge, he reached an opening in the furze, and the sticks and stones aimed at him by his pursuers, as he turned downwards through the wood, fell harmlessly against the trees and bushes. The noise he made when crashing through the thickets was, however, such a guide to his movements, that he failed to baffle the chase till he reached a well worn trail through the open glades. Luckily for him, as he emerged from cover a cloud obscured the moon, and he was able to make good his escape by crossing a deep dingle to the lonely fields along his homeward route, where, in the shadows of the hedges, though now the moon again was bright, he could not easily be seen. It was fortunate for the badger, not only that the moon was hidden by a cloud as he crossed the dingle when fleeing from the wood, but also that his home was distant from the scene of the tragedy in the upland pasture near the farm. A hue-and-cry was raised, and for days the farmer's boy searched the wood around the spot where Brock had disappeared, hoping there to find the earth-pig's home. Other sheep were mysteriously killed on farms still further from the badger's "earth"; then watchers, armed with guns, lay out among the cold, damp fields to guard the sleeping flocks; and the collie, a beautiful creature whose character had hitherto been held above reproach, was shot almost in the act of closing on a sheep he had already wounded, close to the corner of a field where a shepherd lay in hiding. The farmer and his boy were chaffed so unmercifully--for this story of the badger was now considered a myth--that they grew to hate the very name of "earth-pig," and to believe that after all they must have chased through the wood some incarnation of Satan. V. HILLSIDE TRAILS. Several times during his search for a mate, Brock struck the trail of a female badger, and followed its windings through the thickets and away across the open fields towards the distant valley, only, however, to lose it near some swollen brook or on some well trodden sheep-path. The female had evidently come to a little copse on the crest of a rugged hill overlooking the river, and, after skirting a pond where wild duck sheltered among the flags, had retraced her steps. Brock's most frequented tracks led close to the spot where the stranger's return trail joined the other near an opening from an almost impenetrable gorse-cover into a marshy fallow. There, late one night, he found, as he crossed the opening, that the female badger had travelled forward, but had not yet returned. Revisiting the spot some minutes afterwards, he discovered that the backward "drag" was strong on the damp grass. He followed it quickly, and, in a stubble beyond the gorse, came up at last with the object of his oft-disappointed quest. She was a widow badger, older and more experienced than Brock, but smaller and of lighter build. Perhaps because she wished to test the loyalty of her new lover, and to find whether he would fight for her possession with any intruder, she resisted his advances, and refused to go with him to his home. So he followed her far away to her own snug dwelling on the fringe of the moorlands. Thence, with the first streak of dawn in the south-eastern sky, he hurried back to his lair. Early next evening, Brock went forth to meet his lady-love; and throughout the long night and for nights afterwards he wandered at her side, till, concluding that no other suitor was likely to appear, she accompanied him to his home, and entered on the season's house-keeping in the central chamber of the great "set" where he had been born. There they lived happily, and without the slightest annoyance from the old badgers; and, since the time of the spring "running" was over, they wandered no further afield than in the cold winter nights. Filled with the joy of the life-giving season, they often romped together in the twilight for half an hour at a time, chasing one another in and out of the entrances to the "set," or kicking up the soil as if they suddenly recollected that their claws needed to be filed and sharpened, or standing on their hind-feet and rubbing their cheeks delightedly against a favourite tree--grunting loudly in their fun the while, and in general behaving like droll, ungainly little pigs just escaped from a stye. At last, their frolic being ended, they "bumped" away into the bushes, and, meeting on the trail beyond, proceeded soberly towards the outskirts of the wood. As in the previous spring, the big burrow was soon the scene of family affairs other than those of the badgers. By the end of February, there were cubs in the vixen's den, and both the wood-mice and the rabbits were diligently preparing for important family events. Brock's companion, unlike himself was not accustomed to a house inhabited by other tenants. None but members of her own family had dwelt in the "earth" near the moor; and, being somewhat exclusive in her ideas, she strongly resented the presence of the vixen in any quarter of her new abode. A little spiteful in her disposition, she lurked about the passages, and by the mound outside the entrance, intending to give her neighbour "a bit of her mind" at the first opportunity. But since she did not for the present care to enter the vixen's den, that opportunity never came till her own family arrangements claimed her undivided attention, and effectually prevented her from following the course of action she had planned. In the first week of April, the badger's spring-cleaning began in downright earnest. The old bedding of fern, and hay, and leaves was cleared entirely from the winter "oven," and, after a few windy but rainless days and nights, when the refuse of Nature's woodland garden was dry, new materials for a cosy couch were carried to the lair, and arranged on the floor of the roomy chamber where Brock's mother had brought him into the world. The badgers' methods of conveying the required litter were quaintly characteristic, for the animals possessed the power of moving backward almost as easily and quickly as forward. They collected a pile of leaves, and, grasping it between their fore-legs, made their way, tail first, to the mound, and thence, in the same manner, along their underground galleries, as far as the place intended for its reception, strewing everywhere in the path proofs of their presence, quite sufficient for any naturalist visiting their haunts. On a dark, wet night rather less than a fortnight after they had completed their preparations, when Brock returned to his home for shelter from the driving storm, three little cubs were lying by their mother's side. The training of the badger-cubs during the first two months was left wholly to their dam; but afterwards Brock shared the work with his mate, teaching the youngsters, by his example, how to procure food, and, at the same time, to detect and to avoid all kinds of danger. In so doing, he simply acted towards his cubs as his sire had acted towards him. Apart from family ties, however, his life--that of a strong, deliberate animal, self-possessed in peril and in conflict, yet shy and cautious to a fault--was of extreme interest to both naturalist and sportsman. Five young foxes, as well as the vixen, now dwelt in the antechamber near the main entrance of the "set," and the presence of this numerous family became, for several reasons, so objectionable to the she-badger, that, about the middle of May, the antipathy which, since her partnership with Brock, she had always felt towards the vixen, was united with a fixed determination to get rid of her neighbours. She was too discreet, however, to attempt to rout them during the day, when some dreaded human being might be attracted by the noise; so she endeavoured to surprise the vixen and her cubs together at night. For a while, she was unsuccessful. She happened to frighten them by an impetuous, blustering attack in the rear, from which they easily escaped; thus her difficulties had been increased, since the objects of her aversion became loath to stay in the "earth" after nightfall. But at last, probably more through accident than set purpose, the badger out-manoeuvred the wily foxes. Lying one evening in the doorway, she heard the vixen, followed by the young foxes, creeping stealthily from the den. Retreating quickly, she barred their exit, thus compelling them to return to their lair; then she took up her position in the neck of the passage, and waited patiently till midnight before commencing her assault. At last, in the dense darkness, she crawled along the winding tunnel, and, directly, the den was the scene of wild confusion and uproar, as its inmates leaped and tumbled over each other in their frantic efforts to escape. For a few minutes, the advent of danger unnerved them; then, as if peculiarly fascinated by the grim, motionless enemy blocking their only outlet, they began an aimless, shuffling dance, baring their teeth and hissing as they lurched from side to side. Their suspense was soon ended. The badger, emerging partly from the passage, gripped one of the cubs by a hind-leg, and dragged it backwards along the passage to the thicket outside, where, after worrying her victim unmercifully, she ended its life by crushing its skull, above the muzzle, into fragments between her teeth. Once more, but this time furious with the taste of blood, she hurried to the den; and the scene of fear and violence was repeated. Her third visit was futile: the vixen with the other cubs had bolted into the main gallery, and escaped thence to the wood, through an old opening, almost choked with withered leaves, at the back of the "set." They never returned, but the following spring a strange vixen from the rocks across the valley came to the burrow, gave birth to her young, and, in due course, without loss, was evicted by Brock's relentless mate. [Illustration: "HE CLIMBED FROM HIS DOORWAY, AND STOOD MOTIONLESS, WITH UPLIFTED NOSTRILS, INHALING EACH BREATH OF SCENT."] On the night after the death of the fox-cubs, when Brock was led by the she-badger to the spot where her victims lay, he noticed that man's foot-scent was strong on the grass around, and also that his hand-scent lingered on the fur of the slain animal. Often, during the succeeding two months, he was awakened in the day by quick, irregular footsteps overhead; and later, when he climbed from his doorway, and stood motionless, with uplifted nostrils, inhaling each breath of scent, he found that the dreaded signs of man were numerous on the trail, on the near beech-trunk, and even on the mound before the "set." Once, on returning home with his family, he was greatly alarmed to discover that in the night the man had visited his haunts, and that a dog had passed down the galleries and disturbed the bed on which he slept. Henceforward, he used the main opening as an exit only, and invariably entered the "set" by the opening through which the vixen had escaped from his mate, passing, on his way, the mouth of a side-gallery connected with the apartments occupied by his old sire and dam, together with their present family. Eventually, through these precautions, he saved his principal earthworks from destruction. Had Brock been able to ascertain the meaning of man's frequent visits to the neighbourhood of his dwelling, he would have sorely lamented the killing of the young foxes by the female badger. In the eyes of the Hunt, vulpicide was an unpardonable crime, whether committed by man or beast; and, when the dead fox-cubs were shown to the huntsman, he vowed vengeance on the slayer. Because of a recent exchange, between the two local Hunts, of certain outlying farms, it happened that this huntsman was not he who in past seasons had tethered his horse near the "set" while he "drew" the cover on foot. The new-comer soon discovered the "earth"; but after a brief examination, from which he concluded, because of the strong taint still lingering, that it was tenanted by a fox, he walked away towards the farm. Fearing a reprimand from the Master if the mysterious slaughter of the foxes could not be explained, he made careful enquiries of the farmers, by whom he was told of the badger and the sheep, as well as of the poacher who had seen Brock's sire in the upland fields two years ago; but he laughed at the first tale, and for want of adequate information paid no heed to the second. Nevertheless, when he again visited the "earth," and, stooping, saw the withered leaves and fern, and detected, not now the scent of a fox, but the scent of half a dozen badgers, his sluggish brain began to move in the right direction. Stories he had heard by the lodge fireside when he was a lad, casual remarks dropped by followers of the Hunt, questions asked him by an inquisitive boy-naturalist--he slowly remembered them all; and then the revealing light dawned on his mind, that no animal but a badger could with ease have broken the limbs of a fox-cub, and cracked the skull as though it were a hazel-nut. Filled with a sense of self-importance, befitting the bearer of a momentous message, the huntsman rode away in the breathless summer twilight to the country house where the Master lived, and presently was shown into the gun-room to wait till dinner was over. The Master prided himself on his love of every kind of sport; and before the huntsman had finished a long, rambling story of the woodland tragedy he had formed his plans for the punishment of the offender and was writing a brief, urgent letter to a distant friend. As the result, a few days afterwards three little terriers, specially trained for "drawing" a badger, arrived at the Master's house, and were accommodated in a vacant "loose-box" in the stables. Late at night, one of these was introduced to the "set," and from the experiment the Master was led to believe that, though the place, as he surmised, was empty of its usual tenants at the time, it held sure promise of sport for an "off" day, as soon as the otter-hounds, now about to hunt in the rivers of the west, had departed from the neighbourhood. Meanwhile, according to his strictest orders, the little terriers were well fed, regularly exercised, and kept from quarrelling, and their coats were carefully brushed and oiled that they might be as fit as fiddles for the eventful "draw." The Master was a rigid disciplinarian in all matters concerned with sport. His servants, one and all, from the old, white-haired family butler down to the little stable-boy, idolised him, but never presumed to disobey his slightest command. For many years before he came to live at the mansion, the Hunt had fallen into a state of extreme neglect; the pack was one of the worst in the kingdom, the subscriptions were irregular, the kennel servants were ill-paid, the poor cottagers never received payment for losses when Reynard visited their hen-coops, and even the farmers began to grumble at needless damage to their hedges, and to refuse to "walk" the puppies. But the new Master had changed all this. He bore his share, but no more, of the expense caused by the reforms he at once introduced, and he reminded his proud yet stingy neighbours that the pack existed for their sport as much as for his own, that arrears were shown in his secretary's subscription-books, and that, unless the funds were augmented, he would reconsider the step he had taken in accepting the Mastership. Useless servants, useless hounds, and merely ornamental members of the Hunt, alike disappeared; and with system and discipline came season after season of prosperity, contentment, and justice, till it seemed that the best old traditions of British sport were revived in a community of hard-working, rough-riding fox-hunters, among the isolated valleys of the west. As might be inferred from the personality of the Squire, everything was in apple-pie order on the glorious summer morning when he and his huntsmen made their way down river to the wood inhabited by Brock. A complete collection of tools--crowbar, earth-drill, shovels, picks, a woodman's axe, and a badger-tongs that had been used many years ago to unearth a badger in a distant county, and ever since had occupied a corner in the Squire's harness-room--had already been conveyed to the scene of operations, together with a big basket of provisions and a cask of beer, it being one of the Squire's axioms that hard work deserved good hire. Four brawny labourers were also there; and, near by, each in leash, the three little terriers lay among the bilberries. Punctually at the time appointed, the work of the day began. A terrier was led to the main entrance of the "set," but, to the dismay of the huntsman, he refused to enter. When, however, he was brought to the entrance that artful Brock had lately used, he at once became keenly excited, dragged at his leash, and, on being freed, disappeared in the darkness of the burrow. The Master knelt to listen; and presently, as the sound of furious growls and barks came from the depths, he arose, saying: "Now, my men, we may begin with picks and shovels; our badger is at home." What followed, from that early summer morning till twilight shadows fell over the woods, and men and dogs, completely beaten, wended their way homewards along the river-path, may best be told, perhaps, in a bare, simple narrative of events as they occurred. When the terrier went "to ground," he crawled down a steep, winding passage into a hollow, from twelve to fifteen feet below the entrance. Thence, guided by the scent of a badger, he climbed an equally steep passage, to a gallery about six feet below the surface. Following the gallery for a yard or so, he came to a spot where it was joined by a side passage, and here, as well as in the gallery beyond, the scent was strong. He chose the side passage, crept down a slight declivity, and came where Brock's sire had, a few minutes before, been lying asleep, while his mate and cubs occupied the centre of the chamber. Awakened by the approach of the terrier, the she-badger and her offspring had hurried to another chamber of the "set," and the male had retreated to a blind alley recently excavated back towards the main gallery. The terrier, keeping to the line he had struck at the sleeping place, found the male badger at work there, throwing up a barrier between himself and his pursuing enemy, and at once diverted his attention by feinting an attack in the rear. For two hours, the game little dog, avoiding each clumsy charge and yet not giving the badger a moment's peace, remained close by, while the men cut further and further into the "set," till they stood in the first deep chamber through which the terrier had passed. Then the terrier came out to quench his thirst, and was led away by the huntsman to the river, while the second dog was speedily despatched to earth, that the badger might be allowed no breathing space during which he could bury himself beyond the reach of further attack. The second dog, on coming to the junction of the passage and the gallery, chose the alternative line of scent in the gallery, and wandered far away into the chamber where Brock, whose family had descended some time before to the winter "oven," awaited his coming. When the faint barking of the second terrier told that the badger had seemingly shifted his quarters to an almost incredible distance from the trench, the faces of the Squire and his assistants evinced no little surprise. For a moment, the men were inclined to believe that the dog was "marking false," but, presently, their doubts were dispelled, and their hopes revived, as the sounds indicated that the terrier, contesting hotly every inch of the way, was retreating towards them before his enraged enemy. The labourers resumed work, though not with the confidence of the early morning, when their task seemed lighter than the experienced Master would admit. Hour after hour they toiled; the dogs were often changed; and at last the trench was long enough to be within a yard or so of the spot where the dog was engaged. Then, to the mortification of the sportsmen, the sounds of the conflict suggested another change: Brock was retiring leisurely to his chamber. The earth-drill was soon put into play, and the badger's position discovered, but directly afterwards the animal again moved, this time to the deep "oven" below. Night was now rapidly closing over the woods, and the weary, disappointed men and dogs reluctantly gave up their task. The Squire admitted that on this occasion, at any rate, he was fairly and squarely beaten. Brock and his mate are still in possession of the old burrow beyond the farm; and Brock's sire, a patriarch among badgers, lives, as the comrade of another old male, among the boulders of a rugged hillside a mile from the "set." THE HEDGEHOG. I. A VAGABOND HUNTER. At the lower end of our village, the valley is joined by a deep ravine through which a sequestered road--hidden by hawthorn hedges, and crossed by numerous water-courses where the hillside streams, dropping from rocks of shale, ripple towards a trout-brook feeding the main river--winds into the quiet country. The rugged sides of the ravine are thickly clothed with gorse and brambles, and dotted with hazels, willows, and oaks. This dense cover is inhabited by large numbers of rabbits; in a sheltered hollow half-way up the slope a badger has dug his "set"; and in the pastures above the thickets a fox may be seen prowling on almost any moonlit night. Past the gorge, the glen opens out in rich, level pastures and meadows bounded on either side by the hills. The nearest farmsteads are built high among the sunny dingles overlooking the glen, and the corn and the root-crops are grown on the slope beyond the broad belts of gorse and bramble. In winter, the low-lying lands are seldom visited by the peasantry, except when the dairymaid drives the cattle to and fro, or the hedger trims the undergrowth along the ditches. Though the sportsman with gun and spaniels and the huntsman with horse and hounds are frequently heard in the thickets, they never visit the "bottom," unless the partridges fly down from the stubble, or the hare, pursued by the beagles, takes a straight line from the far side of the glen to a sheep-path leading up the gorge. And in summer, except when the fisherman wanders by the brook, and the haymakers are busy in the grass, the glen is an undisturbed sanctuary, given over to Nature's wildlings, where, in safety, as far as man is concerned, they tend their hidden young. In this quiet, windless place, on the day when first the haymakers came to the meadows, five little hedgehogs were born in a nest among the roots of a tree, deep in the undergrowth of a tangled hedgerow. The nest was made of dry grass and leaves, and with an entrance so arranged amid the "trash," that, when the parent hedgehogs went to or from their home, they pushed their way through a heap of dead herbage, which, falling behind them, hid the passage from inquisitive eyes. It may be asked why such a warm retreat was necessary, inasmuch as the hedgehog sucklings came into the world in the hottest time of the year. Nature's reasons were, however, all-sufficient; the little creatures, feeble and blind, needed a secure hiding place, screened from the changeful wind of night and from every roving enemy. The haymakers, moving to and fro amid the swathes, knew nothing of the hedgehogs' whereabouts; but when the dews of night lay thick on the strewn wild flowers, the parent "urchins," leaving their helpless charges asleep within their nest, wondered greatly, while they hunted for snails and slugs in the ditch, at the quick change that had passed over the silent field. For a week or more, the spines sprouting from round projections on the bodies of the young hedgehogs were colourless and blunt, and so flexible that they could have offered no defence against the teeth or the claws of an enemy; while every muscle was so soft and feeble that not one of the little animals was as yet able to roll itself into the shape of a ball. The spines, however, served a useful purpose: they kept the tender skin beneath from being irritated by the chance touch of the mother hedgehog's obtrusive quills. Soon the baby hedgehogs' eyes opened wide to the pale light filtering between the leaves at the entrance to the chamber, and their spines, gradually stiffening, assumed a dull grey colour. Then, one still, dark night, the little creatures, with great misgiving, followed their parents from the nest, and wandered for a short distance beside the tangled hedge. Presently, made tired and sleepy and hungry by exercise and fresh air, they were led back to their secret retreat, where, after being tended for a few moments by their careful mother, they fell asleep, while their parents searched diligently for food in the dense grass-clumps left by the harvesters amid the briars and the furze. Henceforth, every night, they ventured, under their mother's care, to roam afield, their journeys becoming longer and still longer as their strength increased, till, familiar with the hedgerow paths, they were ready and eager to learn the rudiments of such field-craft as concerned their unpretending lives. A glorious summer, far brighter than is usual among the rainy hills of the west, brooded over the countryside. The days were calm and sunny, but with the coming of evening occasional mists drifted along the dingles and scattered pearl-drops on the after-math; and the nights were warm and starlit, filled with the silence of the wilderness, which only Nature's children break. The "calling season" for the hare had long since passed, and for the fox it had not yet arrived; so the voices of the two greatest wanderers on the countryside were not at this time heard. A doe hare had made her "form" hardly twenty yards from the hedgehogs' nest, and night after night, just when the "urchins" moved down the hedge from the old tree-root, she ambled by on her way to the clover-field above the heath. Once, a little before dawn, a fox, coming to drink at the brook, detected the scent of the hedgehogs near a molehill, followed it to the litter of leaves by the tree, and caused considerable alarm by making a vigorous attempt to dig out the nest; but, probably because of the dampness of the loamy soil, he failed to determine the exact whereabouts of the hedgehog family; and, after breaking a tooth in his vain efforts to cut through a tough, close-fibred root, he made his way along the hedge, and soon disappeared over the crest of the moonlit hill. But the next night, when the wind blew strong, and the rain pattered loudly on the leafy trees, he came again to the "urchins'" haunt. The doe hare had long since rustled by, and the hedgehogs were busy munching a cluster of earthworms discovered in a heap of refuse not far from the gate, when Reynard stole over the fence-bank, and sniffed at the nest. Not finding the family at home, he followed their scent through the ditch, and soon surprised them. To kill one of the tiny "urchins" was the work of a moment; then, made eager by the taste of blood, the fox turned on the mother hedgehog and tried to fix his fangs in the soft flesh beneath the armour of her spines. But, feeling at once his warm breath, she, with a quick contraction of the muscles, rolled herself into a prickly ball, and remained proof against his every artifice. He was a young fox, not yet learned in the wiles of Nature's feebler folk, and so, when he had recovered from his astonishment, he pounced on the rigid creature, and, thoughtlessly exerting all his strength, endeavoured to rend her in pieces with his powerful jaws. He paid dearly for his temerity. The prickly ball rolled over, under the pressure of his fore-paws, the sharp points of the spines entered the bare flesh behind his pads, and as, almost falling to the ground, he bit savagely to right and left in the fit of anger which now possessed him, his mouth and nostrils dripped blood from a dozen irritating wounds. Thoroughly discomfited, he leaped back into the field, where, sick with pain, he endeavoured to gain relief by rubbing his muzzle vigorously in the grass and against his aching limbs. Then, sneezing violently, and with his mouth encrusted with froth and loam, he bolted from the scene of his unpleasant adventure, never pausing till he reached his "earth" on the hillside, in which, hidden from the mocking gaze of other prowlers of the night, he could leisurely salve his wounds with the moisture of his soft, warm tongue, and ponder over the lessons of his recent experience. By far the most intelligent and powerful enemy of the young hedgehogs was the farmer's dog; but, as he slept in the barn at night, and generally accompanied the labourers to the upland fields by day, they escaped, for a while, his unwelcome attentions. Foes hardly less dreaded, because of their insatiable thirst for blood, were two polecats living in a hole half-way up the wall of a ruined cottage not far from the hillside farm-house. The polecats, however, were so occupied with the care of a family, that, finding young rabbits plentiful in the burrows on the heath, they seldom wandered into the open fields, till the little "urchins," ready, at the first sign of danger, to curl themselves within the proof-armour of their growing spines, were well able to resist attack. The hedgehogs were about three months old, and summer, brief and beautiful, was passing away, when an incident occurred that might have proved disastrous, though, fortunately, it resulted only in a practical joke, such as Nature often plays on the children of the wilds. One calm, dark night, while they were busy in the grass, a brown owl, hunting for mice, sailed slowly by. Now, the brown owl, in spite of proverbial wisdom gained during a long life in the dim seclusion of the woods, is occasionally apt to blunder. Her character, indeed, seems full of quaint contradictions. As she floats through the moonlight and the shadows of the beech-aisles of Dollan, she appears to be a large bird, with a philosophic contentment of mind--an ancient creature that, shunning the fellow-ships of the garish modern day and loving the leisure and the solitude of night, dreams of the past. But, beneath its loose feathery garments, her body, hardly larger than that of a ringdove, is altogether out of proportion to her long, narrow head and wide-spreading talons. Visions of the past may come to her, as, blinking at the light of day, she sits in the hollow of the tree, but at night she is far too wide-awake to dream. And so great are the owl's powers of sight and hearing, and so swift is her "stoop" from the sky to the ground, that the bank-vole has little chance of escape should a single grass-stalk rustle underfoot when she is hovering near his haunt. Far from being shy and retiring in her disposition, the brown owl, directly night steals over the woodlands, is so fearless that probably no animal smaller than the hare can in safety roam abroad. As the owl flew slowly past the fence, she heard the faint sound of a crackling shell--the hedgehogs were feeding on snails. She could barely distinguish a moving form in a tangle of briars, but its position discouraged attack; so she flew away and continued to hunt for mice. Presently, returning to the spot, the owl was once more attracted by the sound of some creature feeding in the grass; and, detecting a slight movement beside the briars, she swooped towards the ditch, grasped one of the "urchins" in her claws, and rose into the air. Her quarry, feeling the sudden grip of the sharp talons, made a desperate, convulsive movement, and the owl found, to her astonishment, that her grasp had shifted, and that she was holding, apparently, a hard bunch of thorns. Nevertheless, she tightened her grasp; but an unendurable twitch of pain, as the spines entered her flesh immediately above the scales of her talons, caused her to drop the hedgehog into the leaf-mould of the ditch. Immediately afterwards, she herself, eager to find out the cause of her discomfiture, dropped also to the earth, and, standing beside the hedgehog, clawed savagely at the motionless creature, seeking some defenceless point among the bristling spines. At last, her patience exhausted, the owl gave up the ineffectual assault, and glided away into the gloomy night. Unhurt, but for a slight wound inflicted when first the bird descended, the hedgehog crawled back to the brambles, where the rest of her family were still busy with the snails, and joined them in their feast. Autumn's sere leaves had fallen from the trees, and the hedgehogs had found such a plentiful supply of all kinds of food that they were ready for their winter sleep, when a gipsy boy, the proud possessor of a terrier trained for hunting hedgehogs, set forth in haste one evening from his tent by the wayside above the farm. The boy was smarting from cruel blows inflicted by his drunken parents, who, after unusual success in disposing of baskets and clothes-pegs, had spent much of the day's profit in a carouse at the village inn. Having escaped a continuance of his parents' brutalities, and eluded their ill-conducted pursuit, the young gipsy, in the company of his only friend, soon forgot his miseries as his thoughts turned to a vagabond's rough sport in the stillness of the harvest night. Thrusting a long stick here and there into the briars, he strolled along by the fence, till his dog, diligently beating in line amid the undergrowth, gave a quick yelp of delight, and, an instant later, a curled-up hedgehog rolled down into the ditch. The boy placed the animal in his ragged handkerchief, the corners of which he was proceeding to tie together when the terrier again attracted attention with unmistakable signs of a "find." For a few brief minutes sport was keenly exciting, but at last all the "urchin" family, with the exception of one member, were captured, and the boy, now thoroughly happy, his pockets and handkerchief heavy with spoil, turned homewards through the darkness. Next morning, the slain hedgehogs, baked in clay among the hot ashes of a fire of rotten twigs, formed the principal item in the gipsies' bill of fare, and the terrier enjoyed the remnants of the meal. The hedgehog surviving the gipsy's raid was a young female, that, while the terrier beat the fence, remained quietly munching a large lob-worm at the foot of a mound a dozen yards away, and so knew nothing of the fate of her kindred. The last weeks of the year passed uneventfully, as far as her little life was concerned; then, as the nights grew longer and the cold increased, she set about preparing in earnest for her long, deep sleep. In a sheltered spot close to the woodlands, where, a month before, a badger had unearthed a wild bee's nest, she collected a heap of withered oak-leaves, hay, and moss, and with these simple materials made a large, snug nest, a winter house so constructed that the rain might trickle down to the absorbent soil beneath. For a little while, however, she did not enter into her unbroken rest. Still, nightly, she roamed abroad, moving in and out of the dried herbage everywhere strewn in her paths among the tree-roots, till the sapless leaves impaled on the sharp points of her spines formed such a cluster that she lost all semblance of a living creature. Insects were becoming rarer and still rarer as the year drew to its close, and those surviving the frosts retired to countless secret chambers at the roots of the moss and under the tough bark of the trees. The lizards sought shelter in warm hollows deep below the piles of stones left here and there by the labourers, when, every spring, they cleared the freshening fields. And the big round snails, the luscious tit-bits of the hedgehog's provender, crept into the holes of the red mice and into the chinks of walls and banks, where, protected by their shells, each being fastened to its resting place by a neat rim of hardened glue, they lived unconscious of decay and gloom. Then the hedgehog, having become drowsier and still drowsier with privation and cold, ceased to wander from her nest at dark, and began that slumber which was to last till the sweet, warm breath of spring awoke her, and other wildlings of the night, to a life among the early primroses and violets. II. AN EXPERIENCE IN SNAKE-KILLING. The many changes of winter passed over the countryside; tempests raged, rain beat down in slanting sheets or enveloped the fields in mist, snow fell heavily and then vanished before the breath of a westerly breeze, black frost held the fields for days in an iron clutch, and sometimes, from late dawn to early dusk, the sun shone clearly in the southern sky. The sportsman with his spaniels wandered by the hedge, the huntsman with his beagles chased the hare across the sodden meadows, and the report of a gun or the note of a horn echoed among the surrounding hills. But in spite of changing weather and dangers from unresting foes, the hedgehog slept peacefully within her nest of withered leaves till awakened by the whisper of the warm south-western wind. It was a calm day towards the end of March when the hedgehog awoke. Gradually, since the winter solstice, the shadows of noon, cast from the wooded slope across the meadows in the glen, had become shorter; and now, when the sun reached its meridian, its beams fell directly on the spot where the hedgehog rested among the littered leaves. She felt the strange and subtle influence of spring, and crawled feebly from her retreat. The light above her nest was far too brilliant for her eyes, which had been closed for three long months, and were at best only accustomed to the gloom of night, so she sought the shadow of a tree-trunk near, and there, for a while, remained quite motionless. With the leaves of last autumn still clinging thickly to her spines, she seemed an oddly fashioned creature belonging to a distant age, a little Rip Van Winkle of the woods, with a new, quick world of unfamiliar joys and sorrows claiming her half-conscious life. Extremely feeble from cold and privation, and knowing, as all Nature's wildlings seem to know, that sunlight brings with it health and strength, she presently left the shadow of the tree-trunk, and, closing her eyes, basked in complete enjoyment of the balmy day. The heat and the gentle wind soon dried her armour of spines and surcoat of leaves. Stealing in through the tunnel left open when the hedgehog came forth from her sleep, the wind cleansed and ventilated the nest, and soon all traces of winter's mustiness had vanished from both herself and her home. By sundown, the "urchin" had gained strength that enabled her to wander slowly into the meadow, where she found sufficient food to stay her growing hunger. During the first few nights, her appetite, though keen, was easily satisfied, for the digestive organs, unaccustomed to their work, could not retain much nutriment, and hours of slumber seemed necessary after every trifling meal. But gradually her powers were restored, till almost any kind of fresh animal matter that came in her way was greedily devoured. A spider sleeping in a folded leaf, a fly hiding beneath a stone, a snail, a slug, a worm, a frog, a weakling bird fallen from an early nest, a lizard, or a snake--all alike were welcome as she thrust her damp, blunt snout, that looked like a little fold of black rubber, here and there amid the herbage. Her eyesight was faulty--she had no great need of it; her enemies were few, and she did not live the life of the hunted that fear each footfall on the grass; but, as if to balance all deficiencies, her sense of smell was singularly acute, so that she could follow with ease the trail of a beetle or of an earthworm in its windings over the soil. The eggs and young of the lark, the corncrake, the partridge, or of any other bird that built on the ground, were never safe once the hedgehog had crossed the lines of scent left by the parents around their nest. Even the robin and the wren, nesting in holes along the hedge, and the field-mouse in its chamber sheltered by the moss, were at any time likely to have their family affairs most cruelly upset. The wild-bee's sting could not save her honeyed cells and helpless grubs, and the sharp-fanged adder, writhing from the hedgehog's sudden bite, would hurl itself in vain against the prickly ball that instantly confronted each counter attack. The hedgehog's first experience of snake-killing occurred late one evening, when she discovered a viper, some distance from its hole, coiled asleep on a bare patch of soil where the sunlight had lingered at the close of day. Her manner instantly changed; she became eager and alert. Pausing only a second to make sure of her attack, she bit the snake sharply near the neck, then, withdrawing her head and limbs into the shelter of her spines, rolled over, an inanimate ball. The viper, mad with pain, thrust back its head from its sinuous coils, rose, and struck with open jaws at its assailant. Its fangs closed strongly, but failed to get a grip, and the smooth underside of its throat glanced past the hedgehog's slanting prickles with such force that the whole body of the snake was lifted from the ground, and fell, like a bent arrow, about a yard behind its foe. Again the snake rose, and struck with no effect; but this time the stroke, coming from the rear, was met by the sharp points of the spines, and the adder's mouth dropped blood from a clean-cut wound on the upper edge of the palate. Repeatedly, the snake, hissing loudly and fighting for its life, attacked its armoured enemy--at first dashing itself senselessly against the sharp points of the hedgehog's spines, then, with caution, swaying to and fro its bleeding head and snapping harmlessly at an apparently unguarded spot, till, from sheer exhaustion and pain, and with its store of poison almost exhausted, it retired from the unequal combat and slowly wriggled into the grass. Presently, the "urchin" uncoiled, and, as soon as the inquisitive little snout discovered the whereabouts of the snake, started in pursuit. With a hard, firm bite, she luckily managed to break the backbone of the viper; then, at once, she again assumed the shape of a ball. Desperate now, the snake expended all its remaining strength in wild attacks, till, limp and helpless, and utterly at the mercy of the hedgehog, it lay outstretched. Then the relentless hedgehog, assured that her prey was quite defenceless, severed almost every bone in its body, tore the scales from the flesh, and fed to repletion. Such a struggle often happens in the fields and the woodlands. During the first few weeks of life, the hedgehog, if its parents are absent, may be at the adder's mercy; but, later, the tables are completely turned, the once helpless creature becomes the strong aggressor, and is revenged by removing, not only an enemy, but a rival subsisting on food often similar to that which is its own. For a while after her awakening, the hedgehog fed chiefly on the big earthworms which, induced by the increasing warmth, forsook the deep recesses of their burrows, and tunnelled immediately beneath the grass-roots, coming forth at night to lie outstretched amid the undergrowth. She had, of necessity, to match their fear by her excessive cunning. They frequently detected her presence by the slight vibrations of the soil beneath her soft, slow-moving feet, and hurriedly withdrew from her path, but more often she surprised and captured them by the simple artifice of waiting and watching beside the burrows where scent was fresh, and where, notwithstanding the noises reaching her from above, she could readily distinguish the sounds of stretching, gliding bodies moving to the surface through the tortuous passages below. She soon became a wanderer, deserting her winter nest, and roaming nightly further and yet further from the valley meadows, till she reached a rough pasture at the end of the glen. In a thick hedgerow skirting a secluded pond among alders and willows, she found food unexpectedly varied and plentiful. Luscious snails, with striped yellow and brown shells, were so common in the ditch beyond a certain cattle-path, that, even after a whole day's fast, her hunger was quickly appeased. April drew near, the leaves of the trees expanded, and the voice of the night wind in the branches changed from a moan to a whisper. At noon, flies came forth to bask on the stones; the furze, decked with yellow flowers, was visited by countless bees; and bronze-winged beetles crept among the thorny branches of the hawthorn and the sloe. The hedgehog knew little of the pulsing life of mid-day, but at dusk she sometimes found a tired fly, or bee, or beetle, hiding in the matted grass beneath the gorse, and so was made aware of summer's near approach. Among the flags and the rushes of the pond, a pair of fussy moorhens built their nest on an islet of decayed vegetation clustered round a stone. At all hours of the day, the birds sailed gaily hither and thither, or wandered, happy and impulsive, along the margin of the pool. No care had they, and the solitude of their retreat seemed likely never to be disturbed, till, one moonlit night, the fox, that last year had killed the baby hedgehog in the glen, stole through the shadows of the alders, caught the scent of the moorhens, and approached the nest where the female was brooding over her eggs. The bird had watched the fox's movements since first he appeared on the bank beyond the trees. Quietly she dropped into the pond beside the nest, dived, came up on the far side of the islet, and stayed there, with only her head above the surface of the water. She saw, with fear, the fox approach her nest, and recognised that it was hardly possible for her treasures to be saved, when, suddenly, her mate, having doubtless watched the marauder as closely as she herself had done, walked out of a reed-clump two or three yards from her hiding place, and, in full view of the fox, swam slowly to and fro, beating his wings as if in mortal pain. Without the slightest hesitation, Reynard, thinking to obtain an easy prize, plunged into the pond, but the bird just managed to elude him, and to flutter into another reed-clump a short distance away. Completely deceived by the ruse, the fox was drawn further and further from the nest, till he reached a distant corner of the pond, when, to his astonishment, the moorhen vanished, leaving him to a vain search which at last so much annoyed him that, instead of returning along the bank towards the nest, he crossed the glen, trotted up the cattle-path, and entered the dense thicket on the slope. With most wild creatures, fear seems to be a feeling that quickly comes and quickly goes. But over some of Nature's weaklings, fear seems to throw a spell that remains long after the danger has passed; as, for instance, in the case of a rabbit hunted by a stoat, or of a vole pursued by a weasel. The animal trembles with fright, cries as if in pain, and limps, half-paralysed, towards its home, some time after its pursuer may have turned aside to follow a line of scent leading in a quite opposite direction. Now and then, a young rabbit is so overcome by fright, that the sly, watchful carrion crow obtains, with little trouble, an unexpected meal. The birds of the hedgerow--finches, robins, and the like--are also subject to the distressing influence of fear, directly they catch sight of a hungry weasel "performing" in the ditch. When the weasel sets itself to lure any such creatures, its movements are remarkably similar to the contortions of a snake; and the birds, fascinated as their enemy's strange actions are rapidly repeated, flutter helplessly from spray to spray, till one or other becomes a victim and the weasel ambles off with its prey. Then, released from the spell, the birds proceed to mob the bloodthirsty tyrant, and, at times, with such effect that he is compelled, before making good his escape, to resort to stratagems similar to those that previously held the birds enthralled. Reynard seems to have learned from the weasel's manoeuvres, for he, too, is wont to entice the rabbits towards him by extraordinary methods, twirling round, like a cat, in pursuit of his tail, and affording such a spectacle to any onlookers that they must needs, from sheer curiosity, find out the meaning of a woodland farce, which, alas! is often followed by a tragedy. It is not known that the fox ever succeeds in fascinating the moorhen; the bird, directly she caught sight of his circling form, would probably dive, and in the cool refuge of the water, her sharp eyes peeping from between the flags, would wisely conclude that such an unaccountable display meant danger. It is, however, tolerably certain that the influence of fear seldom causes a nesting bird, or a breeding mammal, to become helpless in the presence of an enemy, though when family cares are over the conditions might be entirely reversed. Even such timid creatures as rabbits and hares sometimes strenuously defend their young from the attacks of weasels and stoats. As the fox trotted up the hillside path, the moorhen joined her mate in the tangle of the reeds, and, without fear, wandered over the marshy ground in the neighbourhood of her nest. Then she swam out across the narrow channel, and settled down, in fancied security, to brood once more over her speckled eggs. She had just taken her accustomed position, when the hedgehog, pushing the reeds aside, became aware of the strong scent on the margin of the pond. The hungry "urchin's" intelligence, though limited, at once suggested that the scent of a mothering bird might lead to a clutch of delicious eggs, or to a brood of plump and juicy nestlings. Following the trail, the hedgehog came to the marshy ground at the margin of the narrow passage where the bird had crossed, and, with head erect, sniffed the tainted wind blowing gently shorewards from the brooding moorhen. In her eagerness, she lifted herself slightly at the edge of the bank, missed her footing, and fell into the pond, not more than two or three feet from the moorhen. The bird, hearing the splash, dived instantly; her mate again came quickly to the scene and tried to lead the enemy away, but the hedgehog, heedless of every artifice, paddled slowly to the platform of dry flags, and helped herself to a repast more appetising than any she had recently enjoyed, while the birds, flapping their wings, circled angrily about the pond, and pecked vigorously, but vainly, at the marauder's prickly coat. Late the next evening, the hedgehog discovered a fledgling thrush hidden in the grass beyond the alders. In response to the cry of the young bird, the mother thrush flew straight to the spot, and, with a lucky blow struck full at the hedgehog's snout, so intimidated her enemy that she curled up immediately and allowed the fledgling to escape unharmed. The tender grass was reaching up to seed, the may blossom was burdening the air with rich perfume, and summer had almost come, when, late one night, the hedgehog, hunting among the shadows of the trees, chanced to hear a low, bleating sound, like the voice of a leveret calling to the mother hare out feeding in the clover. She had never heard that sound before, but its meaning, nevertheless, was plain, and without hesitation she replied. Again the sound broke the stillness, as a dim form lifted itself clumsily from the ditch and came towards her. Presently she felt an inquiring touch, and, turning, found herself face to face with a male hedgehog that had followed her path through the undergrowth. Nature had not been lavish in his adornment; like the female, he was a plain little creature, brown and grey, fitted to sleep unnoticed among the wind-blown leaves and twigs beside a sheltering mound. Theirs was an odd and awkward courtship--its language a medley of unmusical squeals and grunts; and if a difference arose it was settled by one curling up into a ball till the other had forgotten the quarrel. But soon they became good friends, hunted together all night and slept together all day, while the year drew on to summer and then, almost imperceptibly, declined. Devoting much of their attention to domestic affairs, they built a large, dry nest among the foxgloves near the stream; where, towards the end of hay harvest, three naked little "urchins" came into the world, to be reared, just as the mother hedgehog herself had been reared, till autumn merged into winter, and winter's cold induced each to go in loneliness and build a snuggery for sleep. NIGHT IN THE WOODS. I. HAUNTS OF THE BADGER AND THE FOX. Comparatively little seems to be known of the night side of wild life in this country. Night watching involves prolonged exposure, unremitting vigilance, absolute quietness; and yet, to the most alert observer, it often results in nothing but disappointment and vexation. Some time ago, during the moonlit nights of several months, I kept watch, near a "set" inhabited by half-a-dozen badgers, a vixen and her cubs, a rabbit and her numerous progeny, and a solitary little buck wood-mouse, whose close acquaintanceship I made after I had captured him in a butterfly-net placed as a spring-trap above his narrow run-way in the grass. This "set"--which I have already partly described, in writing of Brock, the badger--seemed to be the common lodging house of the wood. Its numerous inhabitants, though not on terms of friendship, were, apparently, not at enmity. The wood-mouse and the rabbits, while entering or leaving the underground passages, and wandering through the paths in the wood, took care to avoid their powerful neighbours; the foxes, believing that out of sight is out of mind, avoided with equal care all chances of encountering the badgers; and the badgers, sluggish in movement and tolerant in disposition, refrained from evicting the foxes or digging out the rabbits. In the undergrowth, but away from the well worn tracks used by the creatures as they stole out to feed, I had chosen three hiding places, representing in their relative positions the corners of a triangle the centre of which was the main entrance to the "set." I was thus able, whatever might be the direction of the wind, to lie to leeward and obtain a clear view of the principal opening, while I incurred but slight risk of detection, unless the rabbits or the wood-mouse crept into the brambles. It was during the last week of watching that my patience received its best rewards. Almost regularly then, as the shadows deepened before moonrise, the rabbits stole out, and, sometimes with no hesitation, sometimes after much cautious reconnoitring and sniffing the air and "drumming" alarm signals on the mound before their door, hopped along the paths towards the clover-fields outside the wood. Soon after the rabbits appeared, the wood-mouse timidly peeped around the corner of the entrance, and, seeing nothing of his enemy, the brown owl, disappeared, with a rustle, among the dead leaves that filled a hollow where the old, disused workings of the "set" had "shrunk." On several occasions, the vixen led forth her cubs long before the badgers came in view, and while the light yet lingered on the crests of the neighbouring hills. The little family went away silently to a dense furze-brake about a hundred yards distant on the lower edge of the wood, and, till the sun had gone down, remained close-hidden in a lair that I afterwards discovered amid the long grass in the heart of the thicket. More frequently, however, I saw nothing of the vixen till nightfall, though the cubs, impatient of confinement, now and again visited the mound outside the "set," and for a few moments played together on the bare soil thrown up by the hard-working badgers, as, in spring, they enlarged their breeding chamber. But, in the first calm hour of night, when the red afterglow had faded from the hills, and the moon, ascending cloudless in the southern sky, cast long, mysterious shadows down the aisles of the wood, the fox-cubs and their dam came boldly out, and, instead of moving off towards the furze, adjourned to a rill close by, whence, after quenching their thirst, they repaired to a glade above the "set," and in this favourite playground frisked and romped, unremittingly guarded from danger by their devoted mother. My presence unsuspected, I watched them, little dim figures, flitting to and fro. When they had gone far up the winding pathway to the cornfields, and the silence was no longer broken by their low cries of dissembled rage and fear, I sometimes lingered in my hiding place; and as on the grass I lay, looking towards the stars that twinkled between the motionless leaves of the trees above me, my thoughts went back to a time long before our village had been built beside the river; before Giraldus Cambrensis had journeyed hence with the pilgrim band towards Sant Dewi's shrine; before the great Crag of Vortigern, across the near dingle, had resounded with the blare of the trumpets of war; before even, in the primitive hut-circle on the opposite hill, wild little children had played about the twilight fires kindled in readiness for the home-coming of the weary hunters--a time when the fox, the badger, and the tiny mouse had nightly journeyed through the woods, and the call of the gaunt wolf to his mate had weirdly echoed and re-echoed in the valley, startling the innocent hare in the open waste above the slope, and the busy beaver on the dam below in the pool at the bend of the river. The badgers--or "earth-pigs" as the country folk have named them--were the original occupants of the "set," unless, however, the earliest excavations had been made by the ancestors of the old doe-rabbit now inhabiting a side apartment. The foxes and the wood-mouse might have been looked upon as interlopers, but they often played the part of scouts and sentinels, quick to give alarm to the tolerant, easy-going badgers, in case of imminent danger from the visit of a dog or a man to the neighbourhood of their retreat. The badgers were more irregular as to the time when they left the "set" than were any of the other inhabitants. Perhaps they suspected a human presence, because of some peculiar vibration in the earth through a false step of mine. Perhaps, during certain conditions of the atmosphere, a taint--borne from me, on a wave rather than a current of air, to the wide archway beneath the tree-roots in front of the main entrance, and then drawn down into the draughty passages--was detected by them immediately they passed beyond the stagnant atmosphere of the blind-alley where they slept. Evening after evening, one of the old badgers would appear at the mouth of the "set," and, with snout uplifted in the archway of the tree-roots, would stay as motionless, but for the restless twitching of the alert nostrils, as were the trees and the stones around his home, while I, not even daring to flick an irritating gnat from my forehead or neck, would wait and long for the philosopher in grey to make up his slow-moving mind. With regard to the badger's habit of staying for some time in the doorway of his home, it may be mentioned that years afterwards, when one night I compared my notes with those of a companion who had hidden near the main opening of the "set" while I had watched by a hole higher in the wood, I found that each entrance had, simultaneously and for long, been occupied by a vigilant badger; and, as both animals were full-grown "greys," I concluded that parent badgers not unusually took ample precautions against surprise before allowing their cubs to venture out into the night. Once away from the "set," the old male badger seemed to lose suspicion of any obnoxious presence. Then, lumbering after him, every member of his family would appear in full view on the mound, and, with little fits and starts of pretended rage and fright, would roll over and over each other, rush helter-skelter back to the underground dwelling and out again, and round and round the tree-trunks. A favourite trick, indulged in by young and old alike, was that of raising themselves on their hind-legs close beside a broad beech-trunk near the "set," and then, on tiptoe, stretching out their fore-claws to the fullest extent and scratching vigorously at the bark. This trick irresistibly reminded me of an incident connected with a shooting expedition to the moors, when, one evening, after much gossip in the ingle-nook, I accompanied my jolly host to the barn, and there, much to the merriment of all concerned, acted as judge, while, by the light of a lantern, the farmer measured and recorded the height of his wife, as well as of each of his six children and his servants, against the oaken door-post, and finally insisted that he himself, a veritable giant, should submit to the test, and gave orders for a chair to be fetched that "mother," a stout little woman of some sixty inches in height and, also, in circumference, might mount to the level necessary for "chalking his mark." One day a keen naturalist and sportsman, whose acquaintance I had recently formed, proposed to join me in my vigil near the badger's home. In the declining afternoon, we left the village, crossed the bridge, and made a detour of the river path. As we passed along, I showed him an otter's "holt" under a shelving bank, where, on the fine, wet sand, the prints of the creature's pads were fresh and clearly outlined. We then visited an "earth" within the wood, in which dwelt a lonely old fox I had often watched as he stole along the rabbit-tracks towards the Crag of Vortigern; and there I pointed out how crafty Reynard, having selected a convenient rabbit burrow, had blocked up every hole--but one, in a thick clump of brambles--with soil thrown out in digging, and how the grass and the ground-ivy had luxuriantly covered the bare mounds, and so encroached on the fox's winding track through the wood and about the bramble clump, that even to an experienced visitor the only fox-sign likely to be detected was in the loose arrangement of the bents and the twigs by the arch of the run-way as it entered the thicket. Rabbits, as well as water-voles and field-voles, are particularly careful to nibble off wind-blown or sprouting twigs that encroach on their tracks through the undergrowth; but foxes, otters, and badgers simply brush them aside as they pass. The sun had not yet gone down when we arrived at the "set." I had planned an early visit, so that my friend might have an opportunity of examining the much frequented track-ways, the footprints of the badgers on the soft earth of the mound, and the scratches on the tree-trunk where the badgers had sharpened their claws and incidentally measured themselves. These numerous claw-marks were especially interesting, and, on a certain tree by the "set," they formed irregular lines extending from a foot above the ground to a height of three feet or rather more. The lowest scratches had been made by the cubs seated on their haunches and facing the tree; a little higher, the marks were those of the parent animals while in a similar position; after a space in which a few abrasions occurred, the marks showed how the cubs had gradually grown till they could reach within a few inches of the clear, deep furrows scratched by the old male badger as he measured his full length against the tree. [Illustration: "AS HE MEASURED HIS FULL LENGTH AGAINST THE TREE." (_See_ p. 419).] After making observations with the utmost wariness, we hurried away, so that, before dusk, our scent might evaporate, and become almost imperceptible in the vicinity of the principal entrance to the lonely burrow. After a second ramble by the riverside, we returned in the face of the wind, and at twilight began our silent watch. A robin sang plaintively from the hawthorns on the outskirts of the wood; the rooks sailed slowly above us, and then, gossiping loudly of the day's events, congregated around their nests in the great elms dimly outlined against the pearly southern sky; the wood-pigeons dropped one by one into the beech-trees near us; and a jay, uttering his harsh alarm, hopped in and out of some young hazels fringing the glade beyond the "set." Presently, a brown owl, in a group of tall pines near the little rill that made faint music in the woods, began to mutter and complain, in those low, peculiar notes that are often heard before she leaves her daytime resting place. Then no sound disturbed the stillness but the far-off cawing of the rooks, and the only creatures visible were some rabbits playing in the moonlit glade, and a glow-worm shining with her soft green light on a bramble spray within my reach. Nearly half an hour passed by, and no sign of life came from the badgers' home. Then the familiar white and black striped head, framed in the darkness beneath the gnarled tree-root, suddenly appeared, and as suddenly vanished. Another half-hour went by, and yet another, but no further sign was given. My companion, unused to such a long vigil, shifted uneasily, and protested that he was tingling with cramp and longing for sleep; presently, unable to endure his discomfort, he arose, and stretched his limbs before settling down again amid the briars. Our patience was in vain. Once more the badger came in sight, but my companion did not see what I myself had noticed, for sleep had sealed his tired eyes, and when I nudged him he awoke with such a start that the badger instantly withdrew into the burrow. By the glow-worm's lamp, I found from my watch that midnight had long passed; and so, since the hour was towards dawn and the moon was not favourable for close observation of the "earth-pigs," even if they crossed the open glade, I whispered to my friend that the proceedings, in which his interest had manifestly waned, were over for the night. His disappointment was keen, and though to me the night seemed warm, he, accustomed to a tropical climate, chattered with the cold. He had not even noticed the first appearance of the "earth-pig," and henceforth night watching held no charm for him. My own disappointment, if only for my friend's sake, was also keen; but, on the evening following those hours of fruitless watching, I discovered the vixen's lair in the furze-brake, and learned why she resorted thither with her cubs, before the badger family had awakened from their day-dreams, or the pale glow-worm's rays had lit up the dew-besprinkled spider-webs. Knowing that badgers are, as the country folk say, _pwdu_ (pouty) creatures, likely to sulk at home for several nights if they consider it unsafe to roam abroad, I carefully examined the mound of earth and the beech-trunk near the "set," that I might learn whether the animals had been out of doors since my previous visit. On the soil, fresh footprints could be seen, their outlines clearly lit and deeply shadowed as the sun sank in the west, and, in some of the scratches on the beech, the pith had barely changed its colour from creamy white to the faintest tinge of brown. I concluded, therefore, that the badgers had been out, as usual, some time before the dawn. My eyes, however, were not sufficiently trained to detect any sure evidence of the recent movements of the vixen and her cubs. Walking along the tracks, I chanced to notice that the path by which the vixen sought the shelter of the furze-brake branched off at a sharp angle, and led into the thicket at a bend that was hidden from my sight while I watched near the "set." Picking my way in a line straight through the tangle and parallel with this path, I came to an opening where the grass was beaten down for about six square yards--more particularly for two or three yards in the part nearest the spot at which the tunnelled run-way entered it. Along the margin of this open place, I could find no second entrance; everywhere at the foot of the surrounding gorse-bushes the long grass grew in an unbroken line, except close to the mouth of the run-way. There I found a shallow depression, not unlike the "form" of a hare, but longer and broader, and I determined to keep strict watch evening after evening, till I learned the reason for the occasional visits of the vixen and her cubs to the brake. But I little imagined that the secret would quickly be disclosed, for it was my belief that, should the vixen venture to the mouth of the "set" before the gloom was deepening into night, she would cross the line of my scent, and either move away from the direction of the furze-brake or return to her underground chamber. And yet previous experiences led me to hope that, if certain atmospherical conditions should prevail, the scent would probably become so weak that she would recognise no cause for alarm. It was the work of a few minutes for me to make couch of grass and twigs behind a screen of broken furze-branches well in from the grassy opening. Then, by raising with a prong-shaped stake the grass I had trodden down, and by thrusting back the bramble-trails and fern-fronds I had brushed aside, I carefully removed as far as possible all traces of my visit. I had scarcely settled down to watch and listen, when the faint snap of a twig reached my ears, and I saw that the vixen with her cubs had arrived on the scene. She walked around the enclosure, sniffing now and again in the grass, while the young foxes frisked and gambolled with each other, or trotted demurely by her side. She was at first suspicious, but for some reason she soon gained confidence; then she squatted in her lair, and surrendered herself, with patient motherhood, to be the plaything of her healthy, headstrong youngsters. For more than a half hour I watched the happy family, the little ones climbing over the mother's back, and licking or biting her ears, her pads, her brush, or racing over the grassy plot, frolicking with each other till some little temper was aroused and play degenerated into a fight. In general, they behaved like wild children without a thought of care, yet they never went beyond the grass-fringe into the thicket, and to each low note of warning or encouragement from their dam they gave immediate attention. Sometimes the vixen bounded gaily about the edge of the gorse, stooping again and again to snap with pretended rage at one or another of her offspring. But for most of the time she remained in her lair, listening intently for the slightest sound of danger, and guarding the only approach through the bushes. I longed to discover what she would have done had I suddenly come upon her and cut off her retreat, but I dared not move for fear of raising alarm. It is more than likely that, finding me in the path, she, snarling and hissing, would have dashed without hesitation into any part of the furze-brake, and her young would have followed with desperate haste and vanished at her heels within the shadows. By-and-by she led her little ones back through the run-way, and when, a few minutes afterwards, I stole to the outer edge of the thicket, I saw the merry family stooping in a row beside the rill, and lapping the cool, delicious water, which refreshed them after their rough-and-tumble sport. From the rill they wandered off into the gloom beneath the beech-trees, and I, satisfied with having added to my knowledge of the life of the woods, returned homewards in the light of the rising moon. II. THE CRAG OF VORTIGERN. One of the chief difficulties with which the naturalist has to contend while watching at night is the frequent invisibility of wild creatures among the shadows, even when the full moon is high and unclouded. The contrasts of light and shade are far more marked by night than by day; by night everything seems severely white where the moonbeams glance between the trees, or over the fields, or on the river, and the shadows are colourless, mysterious, profound; whereas by day variety of tone and colour may be observed in both light and shade, and every hour new and unexpected charms are unfolded in bewildering succession. The wild creatures of the night often seem to be aware of their invisibility in the gloom, and of the risk they run while crossing open spaces towards trees and hedgerows where an enemy may lurk awaiting their approach. A fox is so familiar with his immediate surroundings that, till his keen senses detect signs of danger, he will roam unconcernedly hither and thither in the dark woods near his "earth," frolicking with his mate, or hunting the rabbits and the mice, or sportively chasing the wind-blown leaves, as if a hound could never disturb his peace. The fox knows the shape of each tree and bush, and of each shadow thrown on the grass; he notes the havoc of the tempest and the work of the forester. When the wind roars loudly in the branches overhead, or the raindrops patter ceaselessly on the dead herbage underfoot, or the mists blot out the vistas of the woods, he seldom wanders far from home, for at such times Nature plays curious tricks with sound and scent and sight, and danger steals upon him unawares. The hunted creatures of the night so dislike the rain, that during a storm Reynard would have difficulty in obtaining sufficient food; but down in the river-pools below the wood, fearless Lutra, unaffected by the inclement weather, swims with her cubs from bank to bank, and learns that frogs and fish are as numerous in the time of tempest as when the moon is bright and the air is warm and still. Since my earliest years of friendship with Ianto the fisherman and Philip the poacher, I have regarded night watching in the woods or by the riverside as a fascinating sport, in which my knowledge of Nature is put to its severest test. By close, patient observation alone, can the naturalist learn the habits of the creatures of the night; and if it should be his good fortune to become the friend of such men as I have mentioned he would find their help of inestimable value. To Ianto and Philip I owe a debt of gratitude, of which I become increasingly conscious with the passing of the years. I could never make them an adequate return for their kindness; but I am solaced by my recollection that I was able to comfort such staunch old friends when they were passing into the darkness of death--haply to find, beyond, some fair dawn brighter than any we had together seen from the hills around my home. Often, as I write, I see them sitting in the evening sunlight of my little room; often, in my garden, I see them walking up the path attended by my dogs that now are dead; often, in the river valley, whether I wander by night or by day, I see them at my side. Ianto and Philip were always eager to help me by every means in their power, but Philip, because of the risk to my health, would never invite me to accompany him when the night was cold and stormy. One afternoon, as Ianto and I were returning home from the riverside, the old fisherman remarked: "I met Philip last night, sir, and he wants you and me to come along with him for a ramble to the woods above the Crag. He's got something to show you; I think it's an old earth-pig that lives in the rocks. What do you say to joining me by the church as soon as you've had something to eat? Then we'll go together as far as the bridge, but I'll leave you there, for I've got a little job on hand that'll keep me till sundown, I think. You'll find Philip at the 'castell' (prehistoric earth-work) above the Crag, and I'll wade the river and be with you again sometime 'between the lights.' Keep to cover, or to the hedges and the lanes, and look about you well, most of all afore you cross a gap, and when you're going out of cover or into it. Nobody must have a chance of following you to-night to the Crag; so, if you meet a farm labourer sudden-like, make off to the furze by the river farm, and double back through the woods. You'll get to Philip early enough. He's going to net the river after we leave him. It's a game I don't care much for--maybe because I've given it up myself--but I've promised to do something aforehand, that, if Philip didn't want you particular, he'd be bound to do hisself. That's why I'm to leave you at the bridge." I was tired after a day's hard fishing, but I readily fell in with the arrangements my two old friends had made. On the way to the bridge, Ianto gave me further instructions. "If, when you're nigh the Crag, sir, you happen to come across a farm servant, or even if you think, from seeing a _corgi_ (sheep-dog), that a farm servant is near, get right away, and, as soon as you're sure nobody knows where you are, give that signal I taught you--four quick barks of a terrier with a howl at the end of 'em. Philip'll understand. But if everything goes well till you get to the Crag, make that other signal--the noise of young wood-owls waking up for the night--and Philip's sure to answer with a hoot. Then let him come up to you; but, mind, don't you go to him." A little mystified by Ianto's last injunction, I crossed the bridge, passed through a succession of grassy lanes that for years had fallen into disuse, picked my footsteps cautiously through the woods, and arrived without adventure at the top of the Crag. Getting down into the oak-scrub, I stood within the deep shadows at the base of the great rock, and gave the signal--a harsh, unmusical cry, such as a hungry young owl would utter at that time of the evening. The cry had scarcely gone forth, when I was startled by a voice from some hollow quite close to my side: "I'm Philip. Don't move--don't speak. A man's watching you from the blackthorns at the top of the wood. He hasn't seen me. Don't look his way, but walk along the path below, and when you reach the end of the wood turn up and hide in the cross-hedges, so that you can watch him if he comes out anywhere in the open. And, mind, don't let him see you then. If he goes back to the farm, give the signal again; or, if I give two hoots, one about ten seconds after the other, come to me, but don't pass this place. The fellow isn't of much account, but we must get rid of him before I can stir. He's kept me here for the last half-hour." Philip ceased speaking, and I walked carelessly down the wood, pausing here and there to peep through a patch of undergrowth and to satisfy myself that the man at the top of the wood had not moved. When outside the wood, I turned rapidly up the hill and found an excellent hiding place among some brambles on a thick hedge. From this spot I could command a view of the meadows above the wood, and could easily retreat unseen if the farm labourer happened to come towards me. I watched patiently for twenty minutes or so, then heard Philip's welcome signal from a fir-spinney on the far side of the Crag, and hastened to his side. In reply to my question as to what had become of the man who had watched from the blackthorn thicket, he pointed to the opposite hillside, where a dim figure could be seen ascending the ploughland in the direction of a distant farmstead. "I expect to be able to show you a badger to-night," he said, "but of course I'm not sure about it. A badger's comings and goings are as uncertain as the weather. But first we'll climb further up the hill. You were asking me about the leaping places of the hares: I know of one of these leaping places, and I think I know of two hares that use them and have lately 'kittled' in snug little 'forms' not far away. We must hurry, else the does will have left the leverets and gone to feed in the clover. You go first. Wait for me in the furze by the pond on the very top of the hill." When Philip had rejoined me on the hill-top, he rapidly led the way to the fringe of the covert, where he pointed to a low hedge-bank between the gorse and a peat-field partly covered with water. "Hide in the hedge about ten yards from this spot," he said, "so that you can see on either side of the bank, then watch the path on this side." With a smile he added: "This isn't a bad locality for a fern-owl. So, if you happen to hear the rattle of that bird, you'll know the hare has started from her 'form.'" Then, turning quickly into the furze and taking a bypath through the thickest part of the tangle, Philip left me, and, soon afterwards, I moved to my allotted hiding place. Before I had waited long, the cry of the fern-owl reached me with astonishing clearness from an adjoining field. Presently, I saw a hare emerge from the gorse and come along the path towards me. At the exact spot indicated by the poacher, she paused, and then with a single bound cleared the wide space between herself and the hedge. With another bound she landed on the marsh beyond, where she splattered away through the shallow water till a dry reed-bed was reached on a slight elevation in the marsh. There she was lost to view; the rank herbage screened her further line of flight. A minute afterwards, the fern owl's rattle once more broke on the quiet evening, now from a few fields away to my right. For some time, I closely watched the open space around the hedge-bank, but no animal moved on the path. Suddenly, however, I thought I detected a slight movement in a bracken frond beside the furze. It was not repeated, and I had concluded that it signified nothing, when, to my amazement, I caught sight of a second hare squatting in the middle of the path near the bracken. How she came there I was unable to understand; for some time my eyes had been directed towards the spot, and certainly I had not seen her leave the ferns. She seemed to have risen from the earth--something intangible that had instantly assumed the shape of a living creature. She took a few strides towards my hiding place, but, exactly where the first hare had leaped, she turned sharply at right angles to the path, and with a long, easy bound sprang to the top of the hedge-bank; then with another bound she flung herself into the marshy field. Making straight for the reed-bed, she, too, was soon out of sight. All that thus happened appeared to be the outcome of long experience; the adoption by the hares of a more perfect plan to mislead a single enemy pursuing by scent could hardly be conceived. A pack of hounds, "checking" on the path, would in all probability have "cast" around, and, sooner or later, would have struck the line afresh in the marshy field, but a fox or a polecat would surely have been baffled, either at the leaping places or where the hares had crossed through the shallow water. Man's intelligence, united with the intelligence, the eagerness, the pace, the endurance, and the marvellous powers of scent possessed by a score of hounds, and then pitted against a single creature fleeing for its life, should well nigh inevitably attain its end. Nature has not yet taught her weaklings how to match that powerful combination. And so a naturalist, in studying the artifices adopted by hunted animals, should be interested chiefly as to how such artifices would succeed against pursuers unassisted by human intelligence. I am inclined to believe that even a pack of well-trained harriers would have been unable to follow the doe-hares I have referred to, unless the scent lay unusually well on the surface of the marsh. I stayed in the covert awhile, but when the call came for me to rejoin Philip I hastened to the field in which he was waiting. I told him what I had seen, and, together, we paid a visit to the doe-hares' "forms." One of the "forms" lay in a clump of fern and brambles near the corner of a fallow, the other on a slight elevation where a hedger had thrown some "trash" beside a ditch in a field of unripe wheat. While we stood in the wheat-field, Philip remarked: "We mustn't stay long before going back to the Crag; but I'll call the doe I sent you from this 'form,' and perhaps you'll see one of her tricks to mislead a fox as she returns home. She's very careful of her young till they're about a fortnight old, though soon afterwards she lets them 'fend' for themselves. We'll hide in the ditch, and I'll imitate a leveret's cry. But I mustn't imitate it so that she may think her little one is hurt, else she's as likely as not to come with a rush, and you won't see how she'd act under ordinary circumstances." When we were comfortably settled in the fern, the poacher twice uttered a feeble, wailing cry, and, after being silent for some minutes, repeated the quavering call. Then, after a long interval, he again, though in a much lower tone, repeated the cry. No answering cry was heard, but suddenly, as she had appeared on the path by the furze, the doe-hare came in sight at the edge of the ditch a little distance away. She approached for several yards, then disappeared, with two or three long, graceful bounds, into the corn that waved about her as she leaped. She appeared once more, and squatted in the ditch on the other side of the field; hence she jumped high into the air, and alighted on the hedge; then, by a longer bound than any I had previously seen, she gained a spot well out into the field, and raced along, till, directly opposite us, she yet again leaped into the hedge, and from the hedge into the wheat-field, where she immediately lay down with her little ones in the "form." Ianto, Philip, and I at last settled quietly to watch for the badger's visit to the clearing. Philip told in a whisper of jokes he had played on the keeper; Ianto capped these stories with reminiscences of younger days and nights; and I, though hating bitterly the ruffian loiterers of the village who subsisted on the spoils of the trap, the snare, and the net, and were guilty of cowardly acts of revenge when checkmated in the very game they chose to play, felt a certain sympathy with the two old men by my side, who, as I was convinced, had fairly and squarely entered into the game, and taken their few reverses without retaliation, only becoming afterwards keener than ever to avoid all interference. In the height of my enjoyment of an unusually good story, Philip, with a slight movement, drew my attention to a faint, crackling noise coming from the margin of the glade, where moonlight and shadow lay in sharp contrast at the foot of the trees; he then whispered that the old badger was standing there. Ianto almost simultaneously drew my attention thither, but all that I could see at the spot indicated were small, flickering patches of light and shadow. I quietly drew close to Philip, and murmured in his ear: "Are you sure it's the badger?" He nodded; and I continued, "I see a movement in the leaves, but nothing else." The old man turned his head slightly, and replied, "What you see is the badger scratching his neck against a tree; the ticks are evidently tickling him." And he chuckled as he recognised his unintentional pun. For some minutes I could hardly believe he was right; then, slowly, I recognised the shape of the badger's head, and what I had taken to be flickering lights and shadows on the leaves changed to the black and white markings of the creature's face. I had never before seen a badger under similar conditions; and I had often wondered what purpose those boldly contrasted markings could serve. Now, as their purpose was revealed, I was startled by the manifestation of Nature's protective mimicry. Even when, a little later, the animal ventured out from the oak, and stood alert for the least sight or sound or scent of danger, the moonlight and the shadow blended so harmoniously with the white and the black of his face markings, and with the soft blue-grey of his body, that he seemed completely at one with his surroundings, and likely to elude the most observant enemy. Fully a half hour went by before he decided to cross the glade. Then, as if irritated by a sense of his own timidity, he abandoned his excessive caution, and hastened along his run-way through the clearing; and, as he passed, I noted his queer, rolling gait, and heard his squeaks and grunts as if he were angrily complaining to himself of some recent wrong, and vowing vengeance; I heard, also, the snapping of leaves and twigs beneath his clumsy feet, and I smelt the sure and certain smell of a badger. Soon, the fisherman and I turned homewards, and left the poacher to less innocent sport. As we gained the crest of the hill, the melancholy cry of the brown owl came to our ears; and Ianto said, "Philip is a big vagabond--bigger than me, I think. No doubt he's fetched his nets from the cave beneath the Crag, and is down at the river by now. Promise me, sir, as you'll never go nigh that cave when he's alive. It's his secret place, as only him and me knows anything about. He told me to ask you that favour." Long after both Ianto and Philip were dead, I happened one day, while in the woods, to remember the incidents I have just related, and I made my way to the foot of the Crag. I found no opening in the face of the rock, except one--apparently a rabbit hole--near a rent in the boulder. Climbing around the rock, however, I noticed that a large, flat stone lay in a rather unexpected position on a narrow cleft. I removed it, and saw that it covered the entrance to a dark hollow. At the same moment I heard a slight rustle behind me, as some animal darted from the hole I had previously examined. I scrambled down into the chamber, and there, when my eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, I saw three tiny fox-cubs huddled on the damp, mossy ground. As I knelt to stroke them gently, and my hand rested for a moment on the floor beside them, I touched the remains of an old, rotting net. [Illustration: Decoration] FOOTNOTES: [1] In "Ianto the Fisherman, and Other Sketches of Country Life." INDEX. Animals, wild, awakening from hibernation, 146 ----, ----, dislike rain, 428 ----, ----, feet made tender by hibernation, 154 ----, ----, habit of sociable, 160 ----, ----, keeping to old haunts, 298 ----, ----, selfishness of, 318 Ant, habits of queen, 156 ----, habits of yellow, 65, 66 Autumn, bird-migration in, 12 Badger, and fox-hounds, 349 ----, and stoat, 323 ----, attempt to unearth, 367-373 ----, fondness of, for honey, 335, 336, 345 ----, food of, 305, 310-313, 324, 335 ----, mocked by birds when abroad in daylight, 309 ----, persecuted for supposed sheep-killing, 353-355 ----, regular habits in returning to "set" at dawn, 350 ----, sociability of, 332, 333 ----, winter habits of, 340, 341 Badger-cub, and wasps, 337 ----, caught in trap, 326, 327 Badger-cubs, at play, 301, 302, 346 ----, closely confined by parents, 303 Badger-cubs, dying from distemper, 338 ----, less nervous than fox-cubs, 321 Badgers, at play, 359 ----, carrying bedding to "set," 361 ----, reconnoitring before young leave "set," 415 ----, sulking at home if suspicious of danger, 422 ----, two families inhabiting same "set," 359 Bank-voles, and kestrel, 147 ----, colony of, 147 Basset-hounds, described, 278 ----, hunting with, 280-282 Bell, use of, hung round ram's neck, 18 Blood, significance of fresh-spilt, 75 Bob, the black-and-tan terrier, 55-62 Character, differences of, in animals of one species, 64 ----, human, developed by independence of action, 23 Collie, sheep-killing, 354-356 Dabchick, oar-like wings of, 12 Ducks, wild, at play, 31 ----, ----, wedge-shaped flight of, 32 "Earth," fox's artificial, 194 Fear, how it affects wild creatures, 401 Field-vole, and carrion crow, 165 ----, and fox, 164 ----, and kestrel, 148, 149 ----, and owl, 144, 145, 157, 167, 175 ----, and weasel, 137, 140 ----, avoiding rabbit's "creeps," 160 ----, enemies of, 164 ----, food of, 137, 142, 143, 154, 155 ----, hibernation of, 145, 146, 150 ----, home of, 149 ----, limbs of, cramped by winter sleep, 153 ----, restlessness of, in spring, 157 Field-voles, described, 162 ----, harvesting seeds, 141, 142 ----, plague of, 173, 174 ----, stung to death by adder, 172 Fox, see also _Vixen_ ----, and hedgehog, 382-384 ----, and moorhen, 400 ----, and wasp, 229 ----, avoiding traps, 236 ----, burying rat, 184 ----, careful not to sleep on straight trail, 237 ----, careful not to tread on rustling leaves, 220 ----, entering "breeding-earth" when close pressed, 191 ----, finding hen's nest in hedgerow, 182 ----, fight with rival, 227 ----, hating jays and magpies, 234 ----, knowledge of the countryside, 238, 428 ----, luring rabbits, 403 ----, methods of hunting rabbits, 180 ----, robbed of spoil by vixen, 183 ----, seeks mate, 225 ----, taught by mate, 227 Fox-cub, chased by lurcher, 222 ----, cleanly habits of, 212 ----, described, 203 ----, food of, 218, 235 ----, killing hare, 219 ----, killing polecat, 215, 216 ----, stealing chickens, 24 Fox-cubs and partridges, 211 ----, at play, 412, 422-426 ----, eagerness of, for flesh, 209 Foxes, method of preparing "breeding earth," 232 Fox-hound, "rioting" on cold scent, 189 Fox-hunt, 186-193 Frogs, devoured by otters, 35 Geese, wild, 31 Gipsy, seeking hedgehogs, 387-389 Hare, and renegade cat, 288 ----, and peregrine falcon, 265, 266 ----, and poacher, 276, 285, 286 ----, bravely defends young, 265 ----, covered with fur at birth, 245 ----, dislikes entering damp undergrowth, 274 ----, does not wander far in wet weather, 258 ----, food of, 248, 249, 251, 260 ----, "form" described, 245 ----, killed by lightning, 291 ----, "leaping places" of, 434 ----, method of fighting among males, 264 ----, netted by keeper, 255 ----, productiveness of, probably influenced by food supply, 276 ----, recklessness of, in early spring, 263 ----, running through flock of sheep, 283 ----, suffers from want of exercise, 259 ----, suffers less from frost than from rain, 260 ----, swims across river, 273 ----, winter habits of, 287 ----, withholds scent when hard pressed, 283 Hedgehog, and fox, 382-384 ----, and moorhens, 400, 401, 403-405 ----, and owl, 385 ----, and terrier, 388 ----, food of, 394, 395, 398, 399 ----, haunt of, 377 ----, killing snake, 396, 397 ----, nest of, 379, 389 History, vicissitudes of, affecting wild animals, 329 Hounds, miscellaneous pack, 54, 83 Hunt, rival, 60 ----, village, 77, 78, 83 Huntsman, feeding fox-cubs, 209 Ianto, the fisherman, 28, 30, 83, 429-442 Joker, the bob-tailed sheep-dog, 54, 55, 58-60 Kestrel, attacking field-voles, 148 ----, preying on bank-voles, 147 Man, dreaded by wild animals, 13, 40 ----, senses dulled by immunity from fear, 72 Mange, attacking carnivorous animals, 212 March, great changes to wild life in, 263 Minnows, playing about ledges of rock, 103 Moorhen, eluding terrier, 61 ----, killed by otter, 32 Mouse, singing, 82 Nature, haunted by Fear, 75 ----, spirit of restlessness in, 156 Night, described, 3, 85, 86 ----, spiritual influence of, 85 ---- -watching, difficulties of, 427 ---- - ----, methods of, 410 Otter, and big trout, 106 ----, and dabchick, 12 ----, and "red" fish, 101 ----, and water-vole, 86-89, 101 ----, fighting terrier, 42 ----, food of, 15, 35, 47, 48 ----, hunting methods of, 20 ----, inhabiting drain-pipe, 9 ----, in winter, 15, 47 ----, migrating to sea, 46 ----, playing in heavy stream, 33, 34 ----, position of, when sleeping, 33 ----, related to weasel, 22 ---- -cub, capturing salmon, 22 ----, described, 21 ----, learns to swim, 9 ---- -cubs, at play, 11 ---- -hounds, 36 ---- -hunt, 37-39, 41-44, 84 Owl, brown, described, 385, 386 ----, and fox-cub, 205, 214 ----, and water-vole, 88, 89 ----, attacks hedgehog, 385, 386 ----, preying on field-voles, 157 Owls, as friends of farmer, 169 Owls, inhabiting farm buildings, 7 Philip, the poacher, 429-443 Polecats, enemies of young hedgehogs, 384 Rabbit, burrowing in badgers' "set," 314, 315 Rabbits, clearing tracks, 418 Rat, brown, attacked by water-voles, 123 ----, ----, habits of, 64, 110 ---- -hunting, by riverside, 58-60 Rats, migration of, 110 "Redd" of salmon, 99 Salmon, migration of, 95, 96 ---- -fishing, experiences in, 26-30 ---- -pool, seldom visited, 25 ---- -spawn, destroyers of, 99 ---- - ----, guarded by salmon, 98, 100, 101 Sheep-dog, and otter, 17 Sorrel, as medicinal herb for wild animals, 335 Sport, winter, 54 Squirrel, harvesting only ripe seeds and nuts, 105 ----, inquisitive, 92 Stoats, following rats in migration, 110 Stone-fly, 20 Teal, 31 Terrier, worsted by otter, 44 Thrush, autumn song of, 24 ----, defending young against hedgehog, 405 Trick, poacher's, to capture hare, 276 Trout, an old, carnivorous, 95 ----, habit of, in spring, 19 Viper, attacked by hedgehog, 397 ----, enemy of young hedgehogs, 398 Vixen, dispossessing another of "breeding earth," 201 ----, life spared by hounds, 219 ----, routing terrier from "breeding earth," 191 Vixen-cubs, quicker to learn than fox-cubs, 210 Voles, see _Bank-voles, Field-voles, Water-voles_ Water-shrew, described, 93 ----, food of, 93, 94, 106, 107 ----, habits of, 93, 94 Water-vole, and otter, 86-89 ----, and owl, 89, 118 ----, and trout, 94, 125 ----, as singer, 79-82, 89 ----, constructing nest, 121, 122 ----, described, 121 ----, enemies of, 79 ----, food of, 71, 105, 106 ----, habits studied, 80 ----, home of, 68, 69, 103, 109, 110, 117, 126 ----, love episodes of, 117-120 ----, methods of fighting, 119, 123 ----, winter storehouse of, 105, 109, 126 Water-voles, attacking brown rat, 123 Weasel, ferocity of, 76 ----, food for fox-cub, 213 Weasels, following rats in migration, 110 PRINTED AT THE EDINBURGH PRESS, 9 AND 11 YOUNG STREET 
31787	----	THE BIRD AND INSECTS' POST-OFFICE. [Illustration: _Frontispiece._ THE BIRD AND INSECTS' POST-OFFICE.] THE BIRD AND INSECTS' POST-OFFICE. BY ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, _Author of "The Farmer's Boy," "Rural Tales", &c. &c._ WITH THIRTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON AND CO. GRIFFITH AND FARRAN: ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD, LONDON. [_The Rights of Translation and Reproduction are Reserved._] PREFACE. "THE BIRD AND INSECTS' POST-OFFICE" was projected and written by ROBERT BLOOMFIELD, author of the "Farmer's Boy," &c., excepting Letters VIII., X., XI., and XVI. by his eldest son, Charles. It was the author's intention to publish it uniformly with his other juvenile work, the "HISTORY OF LITTLE DAVY'S NEW HAT," but he did not live to do so, and it was therefore included in his literary _Remains_, published in 1824--a year after the poet's death--in two volumes, price twelve shillings. Its circulation, in consequence, has been extremely limited, its form of publication preventing its introduction to children; for this reason, and because I think it would be a pity for it to be shut up for ever in a dusty old volume from the little ones, for whom it was written, I have sent it forth in the form originally intended for it to assume. The original manuscript, in the author's autograph, I recently presented to the Trustees of the British Museum. WALTER BLOOMFIELD. _March 1st, 1879._ CONTENTS. LETTER PAGE I.--FROM THE MAGPIE TO THE SPARROW 19 II.--THE SPARROW'S REPLY 22 III.--FROM A YOUNG GARDEN-SPIDER TO HER MOTHER 29 IV.--FROM A YOUNG NIGHTINGALE TO A WREN 33 V.--FROM AN EARWIG, DEPLORING THE LOSS OF ALL HER CHILDREN 39 VI.--FROM THE WILD DUCK TO THE TAME DUCK 42 VII.--THE TAME DUCK'S REPLY 47 VIII.--FROM THE GANDER TO THE TURKEY-COCK. _By Charles Bloomfield_ 53 IX.--FROM THE DUNGHILL-COCK TO THE CHAFFINCH 58 X.--FROM THE BLUE-BOTTLE FLY TO THE GRASSHOPPER _By Charles Bloomfield_ 63 XI.--FROM THE GLOW-WORM TO THE BUMBLE-BEE. _By Charles Bloomfield_ 66 XII.--FROM THE PIGEON TO THE PARTRIDGE 71 XIII.--FROM THE WOOD-PIGEON TO THE OWL 78 XIV.--THE OWL IN REPLY TO THE WOOD-PIGEON 85 XV.--FROM A SWALLOW IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE TO AN ENGLISH ROBIN 88 XVI.--ON HEARING THE CUCKOO AT MIDNIGHT, MAY 1ST. 1822. _By Charles Bloomfield_ 95 LIST OF FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE THE BIRD AND INSECTS' POST-OFFICE _Frontispiece._ MAGPIE 18 SPARROWS 23 SPIDERS 28 NIGHTINGALE 32 WRENS 35 WILD DUCKS 43 SPARROWS 49 GOOSE 55 COCK 59 PARTRIDGES 70, 74 PIGEONS 72, 76 OWLS 79, 83 SWALLOWS 89, 92 AND SEVERAL SMALLER ONES IN THE TEXT. AUTHOR'S PREFACE. We all know that Æsop has made his birds and beasts talk, and reason too; and that so well as still to make the volume bearing his name a favourite with thousands. Perhaps, too, we all know that same French author has objected to this method of teaching, alleging that children should not be imposed upon (or something to that effect), and led to believe in the _reality_ of talking birds and beasts. To me it appears plainly that they do not, nor are they inclined to, believe in any such reality. Observe two or three children at play with a favourite kitten. When one of them, in mere wantonness, shall give the little animal a rap on the nose, or a squeeze by the tail, the owner of the cat will instantly exclaim, "Poor little pussy! she does not like that, _she says_." Now, the child knows very well that the cat did not say a word about the matter, but she looked and acted as if she had, and that was enough. In the following pages I have endeavoured to make my winged and creeping correspondents talk in their own characters, according to their well-known habits and pursuits. I have added a few notes, sometimes of illustration, and sometimes of inquiry; for, as natural history is almost a boundless field, I may stand in need of correction myself. It will be obvious that I have taken only some of the plainest and simplest subjects, for the purpose of trying whether any interest can be awakened in young minds by such means. And as I like to write for children, and think a great deal of information might be blended with amusement in this way, I hold myself acquitted of the charge of trifling and puerility, and am the young reader's friend and well-wisher, R[OBERT] B[LOOMFIELD.] THE BIRD AND INSECT'S POST-OFFICE. [Illustration: MAGPIE.] [Illustration: Illustration] LETTER I. _FROM THE MAGPIE TO THE SPARROW._ LITTLE JABBERER, I have many times thought of addressing to you a few words of advice, as you seem to stand in need of such a friend. You know that I do not stand much upon ceremony; I am always ready for talking and for giving advice, and really wonder how other birds can keep themselves so quiet. Then you will pardon my frankness, since you know my character, when I inform you that I think you remarkably tame and spiritless: you have no enterprise in you. In an old farmyard, shuffling amongst the straw, there you may be found morning, noon and night; and you are never seen in the woods and groves with me and my companions, where we have the blessing of free liberty, and fly where we please. You must often have heard me sing; that cannot be doubted, because I am heard a great way. As to me, I never come down to your farm, unless I think I can find a hen's egg or two amongst the nettles, or a chicken or duck just hatched. I earnestly advise you to change your manner of life and take a little free air, as I do. Stop no longer in your dull yard, feeding upon pigs' leavings, but come abroad with me. But I must have done till a better opportunity; for the gamekeeper with his gun has just turned the corner. Take my advice, and you may be as well off, and learn to sing as well as I do. Yours, in great haste, MAG. [Illustration] LETTER II. _THE SPARROW'S REPLY._ OLD MAG (I won't say Neighbour), I was hopping along the top ridge of the house when I received your insolent and conceited epistle, which does you no credit, but is very much in your usual style. "Little Jabberer" indeed! and pray, what is your letter of advice? Nothing but jabber from beginning to end. You _sing_, you say. I have heard you often enough; but if yours is singing, then I must be allowed to be no judge of the matter. You say you are afraid of the gamekeeper; this, perhaps, allows some sense in you, for he is paid for killing all kinds of vermin. [Illustration: SPARROWS.] And so you come down to our farm when you think you can steal something! Thus, if I did not hide my eggs and my young ones, in a hole too small for you to enter, I can see pretty plainly how I should come off with your thieving and your advice. Be advised in _your_ turn; keep away from our yard, for my master has a gun too; and your chattering, which I suppose you call singing, he abominably hates. You will be in danger of catching what the gamekeeper threatens, and then where is the great difference between your station and mine? From my lodging under the thatch of the stable, I am, as you may happen to behave yourself, Yours, at a convenient distance, &c. &c. [Illustration: SPIDERS.] LETTER III. _FROM A YOUNG GARDEN-SPIDER TO HER MOTHER._ DEAR MOTHER, I cannot exactly tell what happened before I came out of the shell; but, from circumstances, I can give you some information. When I came to life, amongst some scores of other little merry yellow creatures, I found myself, and all of us, enclosed in a thing, through which we, with our eight eyes, could see very well, but could not instantly get out. I soon perceived that we, in the egg state, wrapped in a white bag, as you left us, had been put into a thing called a bottle, by one of those great creatures whom we always call _striders_; but this was a particular one of that tribe, who wanted to play tricks with us--one whom they would perhaps call a philosopher.[1] Well, his own sense (if he had any) told him that we could not live without air; so he left the cork out, and went about his business; no doubt of much less consequence than the lives of all us prisoners--but that they do not mind. But how long were we prisoners? Why, as soon as ever we were out of the shell we began to spin, and linked our webs so thick together that the philosopher's bottle would hold us no longer. We climbed out in a crowd, and spread our webs over the room, up to the very ceiling. I shall never forget how the great booby stared when he saw us all climbing up our own rope-ladders! I wonder if those great creatures are not sometimes caught in webs spun by their fellow-creatures, and whether they are not sometimes put by hundreds into a bottle without possessing any means of escape? But I am but a child, and must live and learn before I talk more freely. Long life to you, dear mother, and plenty of flies. Yours ever, &c. [Illustration: NIGHTINGALE.] LETTER IV. _FROM A YOUNG NIGHTINGALE TO A WREN._ Dated "Home Wood." NEIGHBOUR, When we last met you seemed very lively and agreeable, but you asked an abundance of questions, and particularly wanted to know whether we nightingales really do, as is said of us, cross the great water every year, and return in the spring to sing in your English groves. Now, as I am but young, I must be modest, and not prate about what I cannot as yet understand. I must say, nevertheless, that I never heard my parents talk of any particular long journey which they had performed to reach this country, or that they should return, and take me and the rest of the family with them, at this particular time or season. I know this, that I never saw my parents fly further at one flight than from one side of a field to another or from one grove to the next. Who are they who call us "birds of passage"?[2] They certainly may know more of the extent of the GREAT WATERS than we can, neighbour Wren; but have they considered our powers, and the probability of what they assert? I am sure, if my parents should call on me to go with them, I shall be flurried out of my life. But it is my business to obey. I have so lately got my feathers, that I cannot be a proper judge of the matter. As to the swallows and many other birds going to a vast distance, there is no wonder in that, if you look at their wings; but how would you, for instance, perform such a journey--you who, even when you sing, put yourself into a violent passion, as if you had not a minute to live? We nightingales are the birds for song. This you will acknowledge, I dare say, though I have not begun yet. I will give you a specimen when I come back (if I am really to go), and you will hear me in "_Home Wood_" when it is dark, and you have crept into your little nest in the hovel. [Illustration: WRENS.] Believe me, I have a great respect for you, and am your young friend, THIRD-IN-THE-NEST. [Illustration] LETTER V. _FROM AN EARWIG, DEPLORING THE LOSS OF ALL HER CHILDREN._ DEAR AUNT, You cannot think how distressed I have been, and still am; for, under the bark of a large elm, which, I dare say, has stood there a great while, I had placed my whole family, where they were dry, comfortable, and, as I foolishly thought, secure. But only mark what calamities may fall upon earwigs before they are aware of them! I had just got my family about me, all white, clean, and promising children, when pounce came down that bird they call a woodpecker; when, thrusting his huge beak under the bark where we lay, down went our whole sheltering roof! and my children, poor things, running, as they thought, from danger, were devoured as fast as the destroyer could open his beak and shut it. For my own part, I crept into a crack in the solid tree, where I have thus far escaped; but as this bird can make large holes into solid timber, I am by no means safe. This calamity is the more heavy, as it carries with it a great disappointment; for very near our habitation was a high wall, the sunny side of which was covered with the most delicious fruits--peaches, apricots, nectarines, &c.--all just then ripening; and I thought of having such a feast with my children as I had never enjoyed in my life. I am surrounded by woodpeckers, jackdaws, magpies, and other devouring creatures, and think myself very unfortunate. Yet, perhaps, if I could know the situation of some larger creatures--I mean particularly such as would tread me to death if I crossed their path--they may have complaints to make as well as I. Take care of yourself, my good old aunt, and I shall keep in my hiding-place as long as starvation will permit, And, after all, perhaps the fruit was not so delicious as it looked--I am resolved to think so, just to comfort myself. Yours, with compliments, as usual. [Illustration] LETTER VI. _FROM THE WILD DUCK TO THE TAME DUCK._ Dated Lincoln and Ely Fens. DEAR COUSIN, I suppose I must call you so, though I declare I know not how we are related. But, though I am thought so very wild and shy, I have still a kind of fellow-feeling for you; and, if you have not gone to the spit before this comes to you, I should be glad of your reply in a friendly way. You know very well that you are intended to be eaten, and so are we--when they can catch us. I understand that you never fly and that you seldom waddle above a meadow's length from your pond, where you keep puddling and groping from daylight till dark. This, I assure you, is not the life that I lead. We fly together in vast numbers in the night, for many miles over this flat, wet country; so, as to water, we have an inexhaustible store: we may swim ourselves tired. But, I dare say, every station of our duck-lives is subject to some disadvantages and some calamities. Thus, with all our wildness, we are not secure; for we are taken sometimes by hundreds in a kind of trap which is called a decoy. [Illustration: WILD DUCKS.] Some of our tribe have been made tame like you (but I hope you are not so false-hearted), and then their masters feed them plentifully, in a place contrived on purpose, with a narrow entrance, with which these _traitor ducks_ are well acquainted, so that they can pass in and out at a place we strangers should never have thought of. They are sent out in the dusk of the evening, when they soon join with large companies of us strangers; and knowing, as they do, their way home, and that they shall find food, they set off, close at each other's tails, along a ditch, or watercourse, and we fools follow them. The entrance, as far as I could see of it, is very narrow; for I have been twice within a hair's breadth of being caught, and do not pretend to know all about it; but I wish heartily that every duck and drake in the country--ay, and every one of our allies, the geese, too, could say as much--could say that "they had twice been on the verge of destruction by keeping bad company, but had escaped." What becomes of my companions, when taken, I think I have heard pretty accurately; for there is somewhere a very large assemblage of fellow-creatures to those who catch us, and whose demand seems never to be satisfied. Well, never mind, cousin; I am determined to fly, and swim too, as long as I can, and I advise you to do the same, and make the most of your day. Hoping to hear from you, I am, affectionately, your wild cousin. [Illustration] [Illustration] LETTER VII. _THE TAME DUCK'S REPLY._ COUSIN WILDING, I confess I did not at all expect to hear from you; for I always believed you to be one of those thoughtless young creatures which are to be found in other stations of life as well as in yours and mine, who, as soon as they get fledged and able to get abroad, care no more for their parents and those who brought them up than I care for a shower of rain. However, you have escaped danger _twice_, and you have reason to congratulate yourself. I have been sitting here upon ten eggs for three weeks past, and of course have another week to be confined; but then the thoughts of the pleasure I shall have in hatching and guiding my young ones to the water, is ample payment for all my pains. They will look so clean and so delighted, and will do as they are bid by the smallest quack that I can utter, that I must be a bad mother indeed if I am not proud of them. Perhaps you will wonder when I tell you that we have a creature here--fledged indeed--which is called a hen; a strange, cackling, flying, useless, noisy, silly creature, which is as much afraid of water as you are of your decoy. I have often known one of these birds to hatch nine or ten of my eggs; and then, if you wanted to ridicule the lifted foot of conceit, and the dignity of assumed importance, you should see her lead her young, or more properly, see the young lead her to the nearest water they can find. In they go, and she begins to call and scold, and run round the edge to save them from drowning! Now, what fools these hens must be compared to us ducks! at least, I, for one, am determined to think so. I have seen this same hen with the brood about her scratching in our farmyard with all her might; when, not considering who was behind her, or who under her feathers, she has tricked away one little yellow duck with one of her claws, and another with the other, till I wished I had her in a pond; I would have given her a good sousing, depend upon it. But really, cousin, don't you think that this way of contradicting our natures and propensities is very wrong? Suppose, for instance, I should sit upon a dozen of that silly creature's eggs which I mentioned above--for I will never consent to have them matched with us--I should then, to be sure, have a week's holiday, as they sit but three weeks; but what should I bring to light? a parcel of little, useless, tip-toed, cowardly things, that would not follow me into the pond--I cannot bear to think of it. I have written you a long letter, and can think of no more but Quack! quack! quack! and farewell. [Illustration: SPARROWS.] [Illustration] [Illustration] LETTER VIII. _FROM THE GANDER TO THE TURKEY-COCK._ (CHARLES BLOOMFIELD.) Old friend, you certainly have merit; You really are a bird of spirit. I'm quite surprised, I must confess; I did not think you did possess Such valour as you've lately shown-- In fact, 'tis nearly like my own. You know I've always been renown'd For bravery, since first I found That I could hiss; and feel I'm bolder Each year that I am growing older. [Illustration] [Illustration: GOOSE.] You must, I'm sure, have often seen, When in the pond, or on the green, With all my family about me (I can't think how they'd do without me), Some human thing come striding by, And how, without a scruple, I March after him, and bite his heel; And then, you know, the pride I feel To hear, as back I march again, The feat extoll'd by all my train. But if I were to tell you all The valiant actions, great and small, That ever were achieved by me, I never should have done, I see; For cows, and pigs, and horses know The consequence of such a foe. However, I am glad to find That you have such a noble mind, And think, my friend, that by and by You'll rise to be as great as I. Your old friend, HISS. [Illustration] LETTER IX. _FROM THE DUNGHILL-COCK TO THE CHAFFINCH._ I have often, during the spring and summer, heard you of a morning piping away in the hedges, sometimes as soon as I was up myself, and thought your singing pretty fair, and that you conducted yourself as you ought to do. But this I cannot say lately; for it is quite overstepping the bounds of decency and good manners when you and your brother pilferers, now the winter is come, make it your daily practice to come by scores, as you do, into our yard, and, without any ceremony, eat up all the barley you can lay your beaks to. I suppose when the spring comes again, and you find more to satisfy you outside a farmyard than within, you will be off to the hedges again. I shall let you alone, unless the barley runs short, which is to support my wives and children; when if you still venture to continue your pilferings, you must not be surprised should some of you feel the weight of my displeasure. [Illustration: COCK.] [Illustration] I must go after my family, who are all out of my sight, since I have been writing this. Yours in haste, and a friend if possible, CHANTICLEER. LETTER X. _FROM THE BLUE-BOTTLE FLY TO THE GRASSHOPPER._ (CHARLES BLOOMFIELD.) [Illustration] I. As I roamed t'other day, Neighbour Hop, in my way I discovered a nice rotten plum, Which you know is a treat; And, to taste of the sweet, A swarm of relations had come. II. So we all settled round, As it lay on the ground, And were feasting ourselves with delight; But, for want of more thought To have watched, as we ought, We were suddenly seized--and held tight. III. In a human clenched hand, Where, unable to stand, We were twisted and tumbled about; But, perceiving a chink, You will readily think I exerted myself--I got out. IV. How the rest got away I really can't say; But I flew with such ardour and glee. That again, unawares, I got into the snares Of my foe Mr. Spider, you see; V. Who so fiercely came out Of his hole, that no doubt He expected that I was secure: But he found 'twould not do, For I forced my way through, Overjoyed on escaping, you're sure. [Illustration] VI. But I'll now take my leave, For the clouds I perceive Are darkening over the sky; The sun has gone in, And I really begin To feel it grow colder.--Good bye! I'm, as ever, yours, BLUE-BOTTLE FLY. [Illustration] LETTER XI. _FROM THE GLOW-WORM TO THE HUMBLE-BEE._ (CHARLES BLOOMFIELD.) Excuse, Mr. Bee, this epistle, to one Whose time, from the earliest gleam of the sun Till he sinks in the west, is so busily spent, That I fear I intrude;--but I write with intent To save your whole city from pillage and ruin, And to warn you in time of a plot that is brewing. Last night, when, as usual, enjoying the hour When the gloaming had spread, and a trickling shower Was beading the grass as it silently fell, And day with reluctance was bidding farewell; When down by yon hedge, nearly opposite you, And your City of Honey, as proudly I threw The rays from my lamp in a magical round; I listened, alarmed upon hearing the sound Of human intruders approaching more near; But I presently found _I_ had nothing to fear, For the hedge was between us, and I and my gleam Lay hid from their view: when the following scheme I heard, as they sheltered beneath the old tree, And send you each creature's own words, Mr. Bee:-- "See, Jack, there it is; now suppose you and I, With a spade and some brimstone, should each of us try Some night, when we're sure all the bees are at rest, To smother them all, and then dig out the nest." "I know we can do it," said Jack with delight; "I can't come to-morrow; but s'pose the next night We both set about it, if you are inclined; And then we will halve all the honey we find?" "Agreed," said the other, "but let us be gone." And they left me in thought until early this morn; When I certainly meant, if your worship had stay'd But a minute or two, till my speech I had made, To have saved you the reading, as well as the cost Of a letter by post--but my words were all lost; For though they were lavished each time you came near, Or was close overhead, and I thought you _should_ hear, Yet the buzz of importance, as onward you flew, Bobbing into each flower the whole meadow through, So baffled your brains that I let you alone, For I found that I might as well speak to a drone: Yet, rather than quietly leave you to fate (Such a villainous thought never entered my pate), I send you this letter, composed by the light Of my silvery lamp in the dead of the night, And about the same time, and the very same place, That a few nights ago, when the moon hid her face, I beheld, nearly hid in the grass as I lay, And my lamp in full splendour reflecting its ray In the eye of each dewdrop, the fairies unseen To all human vision, trip here with their Queen, To pay me a visit, to dance and to feast; And their revels continued, till full in the east The sun tinged the clouds for another bright day, When each took the warning and bounded away: 'Tis the same at this moment. Farewell, Mr. Hum, I've extinguished my lamp, for the morning is come. SPANGLE. [Illustration: PARTRIDGES.] LETTER XII. _FROM THE PIGEON TO THE PARTRIDGE._ What a long time it is since I received your kind letter about the ripening corn, and the dangers you were presently to be subject to with all your children! [Illustration: PIGEONS.] You will think me very idle, or very unfeeling, if I delay answering you any longer; I will therefore tell you some of my own troubles, to convince you that I have had causes of delay, which you can have no notion of until I explain them. You must know, then, that we are subject to more than the random gun-shot in the field, for we are sometimes taken out of our house a hundred at a time, and put into a large basket to be placed in a meadow or spare plat of ground suiting the purpose, there to be murdered at leisure. This they call "shooting from the trap,"[3] and is done in this way: We being imprisoned, as I have said, as thick as we can stand in the basket, a man is placed by us to take us out _singly_, and carry us to a small box, at the distance of fifty or sixty yards; this box has a lid, to which is attached a string, by means of which, he, the man (if he is a man) can draw up the lid and let us fly at a signal given. Every sensible pigeon of course flies for his life, for, ranged on each side, stand from two to four or six men with guns, who fire as the bird gets upon the wing; and the cleverest fellows are those who can kill most;--and this they call _sport_! [Illustration: PARTRIDGES.] I have sad cause to know how this sport is conducted, for I have been in the trap myself. Only one man, or perhaps a boy, fired at me as I rose; but I received two wounds, for one shot passed through my crop, but I was astonished to find how soon it got well; the other broke my leg just below the feathers. Oh, what anguish I suffered for two months! at the end of which time it withered and dropped off. So now, instead of running about amongst my red-legged brethren, as a pigeon ought, I am obliged to hop like a sparrow. But only consider what glory this stripling must have acquired, to have actually fired a gun and broke a pigeon's leg! Well, we both know, neighbour Partridge, what the Hawk is; he stands for no law, nor no season, but eats us when he is hungry. He is a perfect gentleman compared to these "Lords of the Creation," as I am told they call themselves; and I declare to you upon the honour of a pigeon, that I had much rather be torn to pieces by the Hawk than be shut up in a box at a convenient distance to be shot at by a dastard. You partridges are protected during great part of the year by severe laws, but whether such laws are wise, merciful, or just, I cannot determine, but I know that they are strictly kept and enforced by those who make them. Take care of yourself, for the harvest is almost ripe. I am, your faithful, ONE-LEGGED FRIEND AT THE GRANGE. [Illustration] LETTER XIII. _FROM THE WOOD-PIGEON TO THE OWL._ MY GOOD, OLD, WISE, SECLUDED, AND QUIET FRIEND, I write to you in the fulness of my heart, for I have been grossly insulted by the Magpie, in a letter received this morning; in which I am abused for what my forefathers did long before I was born. I know of nothing more base, or more unjust, than thus raking up old quarrels[4] and reproaching those who had nothing to do with them. The letter must have come through your office, but I know you have not the authority to break open and examine letters passing between those who should be friends; I therefore do not accuse you; but sometimes the heart is relieved by stating its troubles even when no redress can be expected. I know that you cannot bring to punishment that slanderer, that babbler of the woods, any more than I can; but I wish you would give me a word of comfort, if it is ever so short. [Illustration: OWL.] From the plantation of firs, Near the forest-side, WOOD-PIGEON. [Illustration] LETTER XIV. _THE OWL IN REPLY TO THE WOOD-PIGEON._ DISTRESSED NEIGHBOUR, I am sorry for your trouble, but cheer up your spirits, and though you are insulted, remember who it is that gives the affront, it is only the magpie; and depend upon it that in general the best way to deal with impudent fools is to be silent and take no notice of them. I should have enough to do if I were to resent all her impertinences. She will come sometimes round the ivy where I lodge in the old elm, or into the tower on the top of the hill; and there she will pimp and pry into my private concerns, and mob me, and call me "Old Wigsby" and "Doctor Winkum," and such kind of names, and all for nothing. I assure you it is well for her that she is not a mouse, or she should not long escape my talons; but who ever heard of such a thing as eating a magpie? I live chiefly on mice (when I am at liberty to catch them), but I have my complaints to make as well as you, for you know I hold a high situation in the Post-office, and I suppose you know, likewise, that the letters are brought in so very late that it often takes me half the night to sort them, and night is the very time when I ought to get my own food! At this rate of going on, and if the cats are industrious as usual, there will not be a mouse left for me, if I do not give up my place. I have heard that my family are famed for wisdom; but for my part I will not boast of any such thing: yet I am wise enough to know that other people in high offices expect either a good salary or perquisites, as a reward for their labour, or what is easier still, somebody to do all the work for them. If I hold in my present mind until next quarter, I will certainly send in my resignation. Thus you see what an important thing it is to suit the person to the office, or the office to the person on whom it is conferred; for had the magpie, for instance, been secretary, every one of the letters would have been peeped into, for a certainty, for nothing can escape her curiosity. I will try to bear with my situation a little longer, and believe me to be Your true friend, SECRETARY TO THE BOARD OF MANAGERS. [Illustration] LETTER XV. _FROM A SWALLOW IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE TO AN ENGLISH ROBIN._ DEAR LITTLE BOB, I remember your peaceful singing on the top of your shed, near my late dwelling, and I remember also that I promised to write you some account of my journey. You may recollect that, at the close of your summer, when flies became scarce, we all assembled on a sunny morning, on the roof of the highest building in the village, and talked loudly of the flight we intended to take. At last came the day appointed, and we mounted up in a vast body and steered southward. [Illustration: SWALLOWS.] Being hatched in England, I had thought your valleys and streams matchless in beauty; and for anything I know to the contrary they certainly are; but I am now a traveller, and have a traveller's privilege to say what I like. When we reached the great water I was astonished at its width, but more still to see many travelling houses going at a prodigious rate, and sending forth from iron chimneys columns of black smoke over the face of the water, reaching further than you ever flew in your life; they have a contrivance on each side which puts the waves all in commotion, but they are not wings. My mother says that in old times, when swallows came to England, there were no such things to be seen. We crossed this water, and a fine sunny country beyond it, until I was tired, and we now found flies more abundant, though the oldest amongst us assure me that we must travel further still, over another wide water, into a country where men's faces are of the same colour as my feathers, black and tawny; but travellers see strange things. When I come to England again I will endeavour to find out your village.[5] I hope, for your sake, you may have a mild winter and good lodgings. This is all the news worth sending, and I must catch flies for myself now, you know. [Illustration] [Illustration] So farewell, For I am in haste. [Illustration] LETTER XVI. _ON HEARING THE CUCKOO AT MIDNIGHT, MAY 1st. 1822._ (CHARLES BLOOMFIELD.) 'Twas the blush of the spring, vegetation was young, And the birds with a maddening ecstasy sung To welcome a season so lovely and gay-- But a scene the most sweet was the close of May-day. For the air was serene, and the moon was out bright, And Philomel boldly exerted her might In her swellings and trillings, to rival the sound Of the distant defiance of nightingales round. While the cuckoo as proudly was heard to prolong, Though daylight was over, her own mellow song, And appeared to exult; and at intervals, too, The owl in the distance joined in with "Too-whoo!" Unceasing, unwearied, each, proud of his power, Continued the contest from hour to hour; The nightingale vaunting--the owl in reply-- With the cuckoo's response--till the moon from the sky Was hastening down to the west, and the dawn Was spreading the east; and the owl in the morn Sat silently winking his eyes at the sight; And the nightingale also had bidden "good-night." The cuckoo, left solus, continued with glee, His notes of defeat from his favourite tree; At length he departed; but still as he flew, Was heard his last notes of defiance, "Cuckoo!" THE END. _London: R. Clay, Sons, and Taylor, Printers_ * * * * * NOTES: [1] This part of the letter is very difficult of translation, as the plain word, in spiders' language, means merely "a deep one."--R. B. [2] Cowper, that excellent man and poet, and close observer of nature, writes as follows to his friend, on the 11th of March, 1792:-- "_TO JOHN JOHNSON, ESQ._ "You talk of primroses that you pulled on Candlemas Day, but what think you of me, who heard a nightingale on New Year's Day? Perhaps I am the only man in England who can boast of such good fortune. Good indeed! for if was at all an omen, it could not be an unfavourable one. The winter, however, is now making himself amends, and seems the more peevish for having been encroached on at so undue a season. Nothing less than a large slice out of the spring will satisfy him." He adds the following lines on the occasion:-- "_TO THE NIGHTINGALE, WHICH THE AUTHOR HEARD SING ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1792._ "Whence is it that amazed I hear From yonder wither'd spray, This foremost morn of all the year, The melody of May? "And why, since thousands would be proud Of such a favour shown, Am I selected from the crowd, To witness it alone? "Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me, For that I also long Have practised in the groves like thee, Though not like thee in song? "Or, sing'st thou rather under force Of some divine command, Commissioned to presage a course Of happier days at hand? "Thrice welcome then! for many a long And joyless year have I, As thou to-day, put forth my song Beneath a wintry sky. "But thee no wintry skies can harm, Who only need'st to sing To make e'en January charm, And every season spring. R.B." [3] I once witnessed this silly and barbarous sport, and saw at least a score of maimed and wounded birds upon the barns, and stables, and outhouses of the village. I was utterly disgusted, and it required a strong effort of the mind to avoid wishing that one of the gunners at least had hobbled off the ground with a dangling leg, which might for one half-year have reminded him of the cowardly practice of "shooting from the trap."--R. B. [4] The poor pigeon, I think, must here allude to the old well-known quarrel between the two families about building their nests. The magpie once undertook to teach the pigeon how to build a more substantial and commodious dwelling, and certainly it would have become the learner to have observed her progress, and not interrupt the teacher; but the pigeon kept on her usual cry, "Take two, Taffy, take two" (for thus it is translated in Suffolk), but Mag insisted this was wrong, and that one stick at a time was quite enough; still the pigeon kept on her cry, "Take two, take two," until the teacher in a violent passion gave up the undertaking, exclaiming, "I say that one at a time is plenty, and if you think otherwise, you may act about the work yourself, for I will have no more to do with it." Since that time the wood-pigeon has built a wretched nest, sure enough, so thin that you may frequently see her two eggs through it, and if not placed near the body of a tree, or on strong branches, it is often thrown down by the wind, or the eggs rolled out; yet the young of this bird, before they are half grown, will defend themselves against any intruder, at which time the parent bird will dash herself down amongst the standing corn or high grass, and behave as though her wings were broken, and she was utterly disabled; and this she does to draw off the enemy from her young; so that this bird is not so foolish as Mag would make us believe.--R. B. [5] It is much to be wished that the above letter had contained some information on a very curious subject, for I would rather believe the swallow himself than many tales told of them. It has been said that, instead of flying to southern countries, where they can find food and a congenial climate, they dive into the waters of a bog, and lie in a torpid state, through the winter, round the roots of flags and weeds.--R. B. 
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29816	----	_THE CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE SERIES._ EDITED BY HAVELOCK ELLIS. THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. BY FRÉDÉRIC HOUSSAY. WITH 44 ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 WARWICK LANE, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1893. NOTE. The English edition of this book has been revised throughout and enlarged, with the author's co-operation. Numerous bibliographical references have also been added. The illustrations, when not otherwise stated, are in most cases adapted from Brehm's _Thierleben_. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION The naturalists of yesterday and the naturalists of to-day--Natural history and the natural sciences--The theory of Evolution--The chief industries of Man--The chief industries of Animals--Intelligence and instinct--Instinctive actions originate in reflective actions--The plan of study of the various industries. CHAPTER II. HUNTING--FISHING--WARS AND EXPEDITIONS The Carnivora more skilful hunters than the Herbivora--Different methods of hunting--Hunting in ambush--The baited ambush--Hunting in the dwelling or in the burrow--Coursing--Struggles that terminate the hunt--Hunting with projectiles--Particular circumstances put to profit--Methods for utilising the captured game--War and brigandage--Expeditions to acquire slaves--Wars of the ants. CHAPTER III. METHODS OF DEFENCE Flight--Feint--Resistance in common by social animals--Sentinels. CHAPTER IV. PROVISIONS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS Provisions laid up for a short period--Provisions laid up for a long period--Animals who construct barns--Physiological reserves--Stages between physiological reserves and provisions--Animals who submit food to special treatment in order to facilitate transport--Care bestowed on harvested provisions--Agricultural ants--Gardening ants--Domestic animals of ants--Degrees of civilisation in the same species of ants--Aphis-pens and paddocks--Slavery among ants. CHAPTER V. PROVISION FOR REARING THE YOUNG The preservation of the individual and the preservation of the species--Foods manufactured by the parents for their young--Species which obtain for their larvæ foods manufactured by others--Carcasses of animals stored up--Provision of paralysed living animals--The cause of the paralysis--The sureness of instinct--Similar cases in which the specific instinct is less powerful and individual initiative greater--Genera less skilful in the art of paralysing victims. CHAPTER VI. DWELLINGS Animals naturally provided with dwellings--Animals who increase their natural protection by the addition of foreign bodies--Animals who establish their home in the natural or artificial dwellings of others--Classification of artificial shelters--Hollowed dwellings--Rudimentary burrows--Carefully-disposed burrows--Burrows with barns adjoined--Dwellings hollowed out in wood--Woven dwellings--Rudiments of this industry--Dwellings formed of coarsely-entangled materials--Dwellings woven of flexible substances--Dwellings woven with greater art--The art of sewing among birds--Modifications of dwellings according to season and climate--Built dwellings--Paper nests--Gelatine nests--Constructions built of earth--Solitary masons--Masons working in association--Individual skill and reflection--Dwellings built of hard materials united by mortar--The dams of beavers. CHAPTER VII. THE DEFENCE AND SANITATION OF DWELLINGS General precautions against possible danger--Separation of females while brooding--Hygienic measures of Bees--Prudence of Bees--Fortifications of Bees--Precautions against inquisitiveness--Lighting up the nests. CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION Degree of perfection in industry independent of zoological superiority--Mental faculties of the lower animals of like nature to Man's. APPENDIX INDEX THE INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. THE NATURALISTS OF YESTERDAY AND THE NATURALISTS OF TO-DAY--NATURAL HISTORY AND THE NATURAL SCIENCES--THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION--THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF MAN--THE CHIEF INDUSTRIES OF ANIMALS--INTELLIGENCE AND INSTINCT--INSTINCTIVE ACTIONS ORIGINATE IN REFLECTIVE ACTIONS--THE PLAN OF STUDY OF THE VARIOUS INDUSTRIES. _The naturalists of yesterday and the naturalists of to-day._--The study of animals, plants, rocks, and of natural objects generally, was formerly called "natural history"; but this term is tending to disappear from our vocabulary and to give place to the term "natural sciences." What is the reason of this change, and to what does it correspond? for it is rare for a word to be modified in so short a time if the thing designated has not itself varied. Exterior forms have certainly changed, and the naturalist of yesterday makes upon us the impression of a legendary being. I refer to the person described in George Sand's romances, marching vigorously over hills and valleys in search of a rare insect, which he pricked with delight, or of a plant difficult to reach, which he triumphantly dried and fixed on a leaf of paper bearing the date of the discovery and the name of the locality. A herbarium became a sort of journal, recalling to its fortunate possessor all the wanderings of the happy chase, all the delightful sounds and sights of the country. Every naturalist concealed within him a lover of idylls or eclogues. Assuredly all the preliminary studies which resulted from these excursions were necessary; we owe gratitude to our predecessors, and we profit from their labours, sometimes regretting the loss of the picturesque fashion in which their researches were carried out. The naturalist of to-day usually lives more in the laboratory than in the country. Occasional expeditions to the coast or dredgings are the only links that attach him to nature; the scalpel and the microtome have replaced the collector's pins, and the magnifying glass gives place to the microscope. When the observer begins to pursue his studies in the laboratory he no longer cares to pass the threshold. He has still so much to learn concerning the most common creatures that it seems useless to him to waste his time in seeking those that are rarer, unless he takes into account the unquestionable pleasure of rambling through woods or along coasts;--but such a consideration does not belong to the scientific domain. A change of conditions of this nature does not suffice to create a science. To take away from a study all that rendered it pleasant and easy, and to make it the property of a small coterie, when it was formerly accessible to all, is not sufficient to render it scientific. It is a fatality rather than a triumph to have undergone such a change. The change is an effect rather than a cause. When little or nothing was known it was necessary to begin by examining the phenomena which first met the eyes of the observer, such as the customs of animals and the characters which distinguished them from each other. Their differences and resemblances were studied; they were formed into groups, classed and arranged in an order recalling as much as possible their natural relations. In classifying it is impossible to consider all the facts or the result would be chaos; it is necessary to choose the characters and to give preponderance to certain of them. This sorting of characters has been executed with the sagacity of genius by the illustrious naturalists of the last century and the beginning of the present. But the frames which they have traced are fixed and rigid; nature with her infinite plasticity escapes from them. We render a great homage to the classifiers when we say that they have confined the facts as closely as it is possible to do. The catalogues which they have prepared are of a utility which is unquestionable, although their _rôle_ is to be useful only; we cannot pretend to make them the expression, the symbol, the formula in which all natural phenomena are to be enclosed. To confound classification with science is to confound the lever with the effect which we expect from it. Curiosity, moreover, always impels towards that which is least known. External appearances having been studied, the form and function of internal organs were investigated. Physiology and comparative anatomy were born and developed; researches abounded and observers abandoned the field for the laboratory. The difference in methods of research and the pushing of precision to its extreme limits--an inevitable result of the different nature of the observations to be made--did not however yet render legitimate the claim for natural studies to be called "science." _Natural history and the natural sciences._--A more important event has taken place. The ancient naturalists, like their contemporaries, had firm beliefs which they used as unquestionable principles for the comprehension of all facts. The explanation of an observation was ready in advance. The study of facts invariably brought to the pen of the writer the same enthusiastic admiration of the marvellous part played by Providence in nature.[1] The phenomena in which this action was not strikingly apparent were merely described without any attempt to relate them with each other, or with the other facts. A hypothesis which left a great number of facts without explanation was necessarily insufficient. The descriptions, in spite of all their individual interest, did not constitute a homogeneous whole, a science. They were merely a collection of more or less natural histories. [1] See, for example, Réaumur, _Mémoires pour l'histoire des Insectes_, t. i., pp. 23-25. Science only begins on the day when we have found the simple theory which binds together all the facts at that time known, without of course prejudicing the future. As the number of acquired facts increases, if the theory in question continues to explain the new as it explained the old, the science becomes more firmly established. If we can imagine a time arriving when all the possible phenomena are known, and the existing hypothesis still explains them, nothing henceforth can overturn it, the science is completed. That is the simple case in which a theory has been victorious; but if it is contradicted by a single well-authenticated fact it must fall or become modified. The more things a theory explains in the present the more chance it has of success in the future. It is still only a matter of chances, for the theory is always at the mercy of unforeseen observation, which may rudely overthrow it. There is no theory which must not be modified constantly, at least in its details. To render it more and more general by successive improvements is the aim to be pursued. A collection of studies constitutes a science when a hypothesis has arisen already sufficiently strong to oblige us to refer to it all new acquisitions, and to compel us to see if they fortify or oppose it. It would indeed be a narrow conception if we were to consider as scientific the partisans of the theory alone; more than anywhere else discussion is fruitful in the natural sciences; and if it is necessary to be constantly preoccupied with the general ideas of the day, it is not at all necessary to adhere to them servilely. The naturalists of to-day are in possession of a formula with which we must always preoccupy ourselves; in other words, there are natural sciences. _The theory of Evolution._--This hypothesis which comes before all others is the theory of evolution. This is not the place to expound it, to go over the proofs which have been amassed to build it up, nor the criticisms which have been directed against it. It has to-day come out of the struggle victoriously. A prodigious quantity of facts, of comparative anatomy and of embryology, inexplicable without it, emerge from the chaos and constitute a whole, truly and marvellously homogeneous. Issued from the natural sciences, the doctrine of evolution now overflows them and tends to embrace everything that concerns man: history, sociology, political economy, psychology. The moralists seek, and will surely find, compromises permitting ethical laws to endure the rule of this overwhelming hypothesis. Without going too far back into history, let us look towards the end of the last century and the beginning of this. Cuvier, Lamarck,[2] and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,[3] all preoccupied with general ideas, were each trying to build up a doctrine. The theory of evolution was born beneath the pen of Lamarck, but immediately fell under the attacks of Cuvier.[4] It is to Darwin that the honour belongs of having rescued it from oblivion and of having initiated the movement which to-day rules the natural sciences. Studies in embryology and anatomy are rising without number beneath this impulse; and perhaps it may be said that these new sciences, so fruitful in results, absorb a little too much attention and leave in the shade subjects longer known, but which, however, gain new interest by the way they fit into present scientific theories. [2] _Philosophie zoologique_, 2e édition, Paris, 1830; _Histoire des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, Introduction, 1835. [3] _Philosophie anatomique_, 1818; _Zoologie générale_, 1841. [4] _Le Règne Animal_, 1829; _Leçons d'Anatomie comparée_, 2e édition, 1835-46. I wish to speak of the manners of animals; the facts regarding them are of sufficient interest if we consider them one by one, and they become much more interesting when we attempt to show the close way in which they are bound together. Volumes would not suffice to exhaust the subject; but if the entire task is too considerable, I may at least hope to accomplish a part of it by treating of those facts which may be brought together under the common title of Animal Industries. Taken separately, they may be reproached with a certain anecdotal character, but we cannot fail to agree that taken altogether they constitute an important chapter in the sciences of life. _The chief industries of Man._--Let us first throw a rapid glance at the various stages which the civilisation and industry of Man have gone through before arriving at their present condition. To make clear these phases we might either follow the state of civilisation in any given country by tracing back the course of centuries, or else at a given epoch find out in different parts of the earth all the stages of human evolution. The savage men of to-day are not further advanced in their evolution than our own ancestors who have now gone to fossil. However it may be, Man, at first frugivorous, as his dentition shows as well as his zoological affinities, in consequence of a famine of fruit or from whatever other cause, gradually began to nourish himself with the flesh of other animals. To search for this fleeing prey developed in him the art of hunting and fishing. His intelligence, still feeble, was entirely concentrated on this one point: to seize on an animal and to feed on it, although neither his nails nor his teeth nor his muscles make it natural to him. To hunt, to fish, to defend his territory against the wild beasts who attacked it and himself, to drive back tribes of his fellows who would diminish his provisions, these were the first rudiments of the industry of Man. Having become more skilful, he obtained in an expedition more game than he could consume at once; he then kept near him living beasts in order to sacrifice them when hunger came. His reserve of animals increased; they became accustomed to live near him; and he took care of his larder. A flock was gradually constituted, and the owner learnt to profit from all the resources which it offered him, from milk to wool. Henceforth he became economical with his beasts, and moved about in order to procure for them abundance of grass and water. He was still always hunting and fighting; but there were now accessory industries, and he was especially occupied in the domestication of animals. Then it happened that he acquired a taste for a graminaceous grain--corn. To seek the blades one by one is not a very fruitful labour, and decidedly troublesome. Man collected a supply of them, cultivated them, possessed fields which he sowed and harvested. He was henceforth obliged to renounce his herds, which had become immense; for he could not leave the soil where his corn was ripening, if he wished to gather it himself, and his cattle were lacking pasture. The number of beasts diminished; bread had killed milk. Man only kept near him a small flock capable of feeding on a moderate territory. He abandoned his temporary shelters, tents of skin or of woven wool, and since he must henceforth live on the same piece of land, he constructed there a fixed dwelling. Such is, taken altogether, the genesis of the industry of the dwelling connected with the culture of the soil; to earlier periods corresponded the natural or hollowed cave and the woven tent. _The chief industries of Animals._--In a more or less perfect degree we find the same industries among animals generally. In order to make just comparisons, we ought especially to consider the methods of those who are not endowed with specially appropriated organs, for in this case their task is rendered too simple. To take an example. The Lion is certainly an incomparable hunter; but his whole organisation tends to facilitate the capture of living prey. His agility and the strength of his muscles enable him to seize it at the first leap before it can escape. With his sharp claws he holds it; his teeth are so keen and his jaw so strong that he kills it immediately; with such natural advantages what need has he of ingenuity? But in the case of the Wolf or the Fox it is quite another matter; they hunt with a veritable art which Man himself has not disdained, since he has taken as his associate their relative, the Dog. It is the same with the Eagle and the Crow. The latter, in order to seize the prey which he desires, needs much more varied resources than the great bird of rapine for whom nature has done everything. We find among animals not only hunting and fishing but the art of storing in barns, of domesticating various species, of harvesting and reaping--the rudiments of the chief human industries. Certain animals in order to shelter themselves take advantage of natural caverns in the same way as many races of primitive men. Others, like the Fox and the Rodents, dig out dwellings in the earth; even to-day there are regions where Man does not act otherwise, preparing himself a lodging by excavations in the chalk or the tufa. Woven dwellings, constructed with materials entangled in one another, like the nests of birds, proceed from the same method of manufacture as the woollen stuffs of which nomad tribes make their tents. The Termites who construct vast dwellings of clay, the Beavers who build huts of wood and of mud, have in this industry reached the same point as Man. They do not build so well, no doubt, nor in so complex a fashion as modern architects and engineers, but they work in the same way. All these ingenious artisans operate without organs specially adapted to accomplish the effect which they reach. It is with such genuine industries that we have to deal, for the most part neglecting other productions, more marvellous in certain ways, which are formed by particular organs, or are elaborated within the organism, and are not the result of the intelligent effort of the individual. To this category belong the threads which the Spider stretches, and the cocoon with which the Caterpillar surrounds himself to shelter his metamorphosis. _Intelligence and instinct._--By attentive observation it is possible to find in animals all the intermediate stages between a deliberate reflective action and an act that has become instinctive and so inveterate to the species that it has re-acted on its body, and thus profoundly modified it so as to produce a new organ in such a way that the phenomena are accomplished as a simple function of vegetative life, in the same way as respiration or digestion. If an individual is led to reproduce often the same series of actions it contracts a _habit_; the repetition may be so frequent that the animal comes to accomplish it without knowing it; the brain no longer intervenes; the spinal cord or the chain of ganglia alone govern this order of acts, to which has been given the name of _reflex actions_. A reflex may be so powerful as to be transmitted by heredity to the descendants; it then becomes an _instinct_. Thus by its nature instinct does not differ from intelligence, but is intimately connected with it by a chain of which all the links may be counted. The most intelligent of beings, Man, performs actions that are purely mechanical; many indeed can with justice be called instinctive; and, on the other hand, an animal for whom an innate hereditary instinct is sufficient in ordinary life will give proof of intelligence and reflection if circumstances in which his instinct is generally efficacious become modified so that he can no longer profit by them. Among other ingenious experiments to show the supposed difference between instinctive and reflective acts, Fabre brings forward the following[5]:--The _Chalicodoma_, a hymenopterous relative of the Bees, constructs nests composed of cells formed of mud agglutinated with saliva. The cell once constructed, the insect begins to fill it with honey before laying an egg there. He returns with his booty and wishes to disburse himself in the nest, finds the cellule which he has to fill, and proceeds always in the same order: first, he plunges his head in the cell and disgorges the honey which fills his crop; secondly, he emerges from the cell, turns round, and lets fall the pollen which remains attached to his legs. Suppose that an insect has just disgorged his honey, the observer touches his belly with a straw; the little animal, disturbed in his operation, returns to it having only the second act to perform. But he re-commences the whole of his operations though having nothing more to disgorge; he again plunges his head into the cell and goes through a pretence of disgorging, then turns round and frees himself from the pollen. Although touched twice, thrice, or more frequently, he always repeats the first action before executing the second. It is, says Fabre, almost like the movement of a machine of which the wheelwork will not act until one has begun to turn the wheel which directs it. [5] J. H. Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, Paris, 1879, pp. 275 _et seq._ It is incontestable; but I would add, as this conscientious observer does not, that that does not prove that the intelligence of the insect differs essentially from ours; it is a simple question of degree. Look at a boy who is going to jump over a ditch: he begins by spitting into his hands and rubbing them one against the other before taking his spring. In what has this served him? It is not more intelligent than the gesture of the bee who first plunges his head in the cell before freeing his claws, although the first gesture is useless.[6] [6] It should perhaps be added that while the boy's action is not consciously intelligent, it is by no means purposeless, and is therefore not quite parallel with the insect's. By vigorously irritating the sensory nerves of the hand the boy imparts a stimulus to his muscular system. His act belongs to a large group which has been especially studied by Féré. See his _Sensation et Mouvement_ (1887), and _Pathologie des Emotions_ (1892). And, from another side, if nothing is more instinctive than the manner in which domestic Bees construct their cells of wax with geometric regularity, there are other circumstances in which these same insects give proof of remarkable reflection, sagacity, and intelligence in co-ordinating their actions in the presence of an event to which they are not accustomed, and in attaining an end which has presented itself by accident. Such are, for example, the arrangements which they make to defend their honey against the attacks of a great nocturnal Moth, the Death's Head. I shall have to revert to these facts. We must not then regard instinct, as has often been done, as a rudiment of intelligence, susceptible or not of development; but much rather as a series of intelligent acts at first reasoned, then by their frequent repetition become habitual, reflex, and at last, by heredity, instinctive. What the individual loses in individuality and in personal initiative, heredity restores to him in the form of instinct which is, as it were, the condensed and accumulated intelligence of his ancestors. He himself no longer needs to take thought either to preserve his life or to assure the perpetuation of his race. The qualities which he received at birth render reflection less necessary; thus species endowed with some powerful instinct seem not to be intelligent when they live sheltered from unforeseen events. From one point of view instinct appears to be a degradation rather than a perfecting of intelligence, because the acts which proceed from it are neither so spontaneous nor so personal; but from another point of view they are much better executed, with less hesitation, with a slighter expenditure of cerebral force and a minimum of muscular effort. A habitual act costs us much less to execute than a deliberate and reflective act. It is thus that the constructions of bees are more perfect than those of ants; the former act by instinct, the latter reason their acts at each step. _Instinctive actions originate in reflective actions._--No doubt it may be said: It is a pure hypothesis thus to consider instinct as derived from intelligence; why not admit as well that instinctive acts have been such from the beginning--in other words, that species have been created such as we see them to-day? The preceding explanation, however, has the advantage of being in harmony with the general theory of evolution, which, whether true or not, so well explains the most complicated facts that for the present it must be accepted. For the rest, if it is not possible to appraise the psychic faculties possessed by the ancestors of existing animals we may at least observe certain facts which put us on the road of explanation. An interesting member of the Hymenoptera, the _Sphex_, assures food for the early days of the life of its larvæ in a curious way.[7] Before laying its eggs it seizes a cricket, paralyses it with two strokes of its sting--one at the articulation of the head and the neck, the other at the articulation of the first ring of the thorax with the second--each stab traversing and poisoning a nervous ganglion. The cricket is paralysed without being killed; its flesh does not putrefy, and yet it makes no movement. The _Sphex_ places an egg on this motionless prey, and the larva which emerges from it devours the cricket. Here assuredly is a marvellous and certain instinct. One cannot even object that the strokes of the sting are inevitably directed to these points because the chitinous envelope of the victim offers too much resistance in other spots for the dart to penetrate, because here is the _Ammophila_, a near relative of the _Sphex_, which chooses for its prey a caterpillar. It is free to introduce its sting into any part of the body, and yet with extreme certainty it strikes the two ganglions already mentioned.[8] [7] "Étude sur l'Instinct et les Metamorphoses des Sphégiens," _Ann. Sc. Nat._, iv. Série, t. 6, 1856. [8] P. Marchal, "Observations sur _l'Ammophila affinis_," _Arch. de Zool. expér. et génér._, ii. Série, t. 10, 1892. We cannot suppose that the insect has anatomical and physiological knowledge to inform it of what it is doing. The act is distinctly instinctive, and seems imprinted by a fatality involving no possible connection with intelligence. But let us suppose that the ancestors of these Hymenoptera have thus attacked crickets and killed (not paralysed) them with one or more wounds at any point. By chance some of these insects, either in consequence of their manner of attacking the prey or from any other cause, happen to deliver their blows at the points in question. Their larvæ on this account are placed in more favourable conditions than those of their relatives whom chance has less well served; they will prosper and develop sooner. They inherit this habit, which gradually becomes through the ages that which we know. It is possible; but why, it may be asked, this hypothesis, apparently gratuitous, of strokes of the sting given at random? Are there any facts which render this explanation plausible? Assuredly. Thus the _Bembex_, which especially attacks Diptera to make them the prey of its larvæ, throws itself suddenly on them and kills them with one blow in any part of the body. It is unable in this way to amass in advance sufficient provision for its larvæ; the corpses would putrefy. It is obliged to return from time to time bearing new pasture.[9] Again, M. Paul Marchal, taking up the study of instinct in the _Cerceris ornata_,[10] has shown that in this species at least of _Sphegidæ_ the stings have not so considerable an effect. This insect attacks a wild bee, the _Halictus_. He strikes his victim with two or three strokes of the sting beneath the thorax, but the paralysis is not definite, perhaps on account of the nature of the venom, which is not identical in all species. The tortured creature may regain life at the end of some hours. Thus the _Cerceris_ is obliged to destroy the upper part of the neck by repeated malaxation of that part for several minutes at a time. The effect of this second act, by injuring the cerebroid ganglia, is to render impossible the return of action; moreover, it permits the aggressor to satisfy personal gluttony, and to feed on the liquids of the organism of the vanquished, which is easy, because the dorsal blood-vessel passes at this level. It can thus satisfy a personal need while thinking of the future of the race. [9] J. H. Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, pp. 225 _et seq._ [10] "Étude sur l'Instinct du _Cerceris ornata_," _Archives de Zoologie expérimentale_, ii. Série, t. 5, 1887. It has been said in this connection that in such cases the sure instinct with which these species were originally endowed has been distorted, but that is to admit some degree of variation; the hypothesis of degeneration is as gratuitous as the other, and if we go so far as to risk a hypothesis, it would be better to use it to explain facts and not to entangle them. _Plan of study of the various industries._--The different industries carried on by animals may be divided into a certain number of groups. In the case of each of these categories I propose to arrange the facts in such a way as to bring forward first those animals which, having no special organs, are obliged to exercise the greatest ingenuity, and then to indicate the facts which show how variations have arisen which enable other species to accomplish these acts with marvellous ease. We will first examine the simplest industries: hunting and fishing, those industries of which the object is the immediate search for prey; and to these may be added those which are related to them as re-action is to action--that is to say, the industries of which the effect is to provide for the immediate safety of the individual. Then in an exposition parallel to the march of progress followed by human civilisations, we shall study among animals the art of collecting provisions, of domesticating and exploiting flocks, of reducing their fellows to slavery. Finally, we shall investigate the series of modifications which the dwelling undergoes, and we shall see how certain species, after having constructed admirably-arranged houses, know how to make them healthy, and how to defend them against attacks from without. CHAPTER II. HUNTING--FISHING--WARS AND EXPEDITIONS. THE CARNIVORA MORE SKILFUL HUNTERS THAN THE HERBIVORA--DIFFERENT METHODS OF HUNTING--HUNTING IN AMBUSH--THE BAITED AMBUSH--HUNTING IN THE DWELLING OR IN THE BURROW--COURSING--STRUGGLES THAT TERMINATE THE HUNT--HUNTING WITH PROJECTILES--PARTICULAR CIRCUMSTANCES PUT TO PROFIT--METHODS FOR UTILISING THE CAPTURED GAME--WAR AND BRIGANDAGE--EXPEDITIONS TO ACQUIRE SLAVES--WARS OF THE ANTS. _The Carnivora more skilful hunters than the Herbivora._--The search for food has necessarily been the cause of the earliest industries among animals. It is easy to understand that the herbivora need little ingenuity in seeking nourishment; they are so superior to their prey that they can obtain it and feed on it by the sole fact of an organisation adapted to its assimilation. They are, it is true, at the mercy of circumstances over which they have no control, and which lead to famine. The carnivora also may have to suffer from the absence of prey, but even in the most favourable seasons, and in the regions where the animals on which they live abound, it is necessary to them to develop a special activity to obtain possession of beings who are suspicious, prompt in flight, and as fleet as themselves. Thus it is among these that we expect to find the art of hunting most cultivated; especially if we put aside the more grossly carnivorous of them, whose whole organisation is adapted for rapid and effective results. _Different methods of hunting._--Like Man, some animals hunt in ambush or by coursing; others know how to overturn the desired victim by throwing some object at it. These profit by all the exterior circumstances which are capable of frightening the game, of stunning it, and of rendering capture easy. But it is by studying each separate feature that we shall best be able to observe the close way in which these industries are related to our own. It is impossible to bring forward all the facts relating to the search for prey among animals; we can only take a few as signposts which mark the road. _Hunting in ambush._--The most rudimentary method of hunting in ambush is simply to take advantage of some favourable external circumstance to obtain concealment, and then to await the approach of the prey. Some animals place themselves behind a tuft of grass, others thrust themselves into a thicket, or hang on to the branch of a tree in order to fall suddenly on the victim who innocently approaches the perfidious ambush. The Crocodile, as described by Sir Samuel Baker, conceals himself by his skill in plunging noiselessly. On the bank a group of birds have alighted. They search the mud for insects or worms, or simply to approach the stream to drink or bathe. In spite of his great size and robust appetite the Crocodile does not disdain this slight dish; but the least noise, the least wrinkle on the surface of the water would cause the future repast to vanish. The reptile plunges, the birds continue without suspicion to come and go. Suddenly there emerges before them the huge open jaw armed with formidable teeth. In the moment of stupor and immobility which this unforeseen apparition produces a few imprudent birds have disappeared within the reptile's mouth, while the others fly away. In the same sly and brutal manner he snaps up dogs, horses, oxen, and even men who come to the river to drink. One of the most dangerous ambushes which can be met on the road by animals who resort to a spring is that prepared by the Python. This gigantic snake hangs by his tail to the branch of a tree and lets himself droop down like a long creeper. The victim who comes within his reach is seized, enrolled, pounded in the knots which the snake forms around him. It is not necessary to multiply examples of this simple and widespread method of hunting. Not content with utilising the natural arrangements they meet with, there are animals which construct genuine ambushes, acting thus like Man, who builds in the middle or on the edge of ponds, cabins in which to await wild ducks, or who digs in the path of a lion a hole covered with trunks of trees, at the bottom of which he may kill the beast without danger. Certain insects practise this method of hunting. The Fox, for instance, so skilful a hunter in many respects, constructs an ambush when hunting hares.[11] [11] C. St. John, _Wild Sports, etc._, chap. xx. The larva of the Tiger Beetle (_Cicindela campestris_) constructs a hole about the size of a feather quill, disposed vertically, and of a depth, enormous for its size, of forty centimetres. It maintains itself in this tube by arching its supple body along the walls at a height sufficient for the top of its head to be level with the surface of the soil, and to close the opening of the hole. (Fig. 1.) A little insect--an ant, a young beetle, or something similar--passes. As soon as it begins to walk on the head of the larva, the latter letting go its hold of the wall allows itself to fall to the bottom of the trap, dragging its victim with it. In this narrow prison it is easily able to obtain the mastery over its prey, and to suck out the liquid parts.[12] [12] Lamarck, _Histoire des Animaux sans Vertèbres_, 2e édition, 1835, p. 676. [Illustration: FIG. 1.] The _Staphilinus Cæsareus_ acts with still greater shrewdness; not only is his pit more perfect, but he takes care to remove all traces of preceding repasts which might render the place obviously one of carnage. He chooses a stone, beneath which he hollows a cylindro-conical hole with extremely smooth walls. This hole is not to serve as a trap, that is to say that the proprietor has no intention of causing any pedestrian to roll to the bottom. It is simply a place of concealment in which he awaits the propitious moment. No creature is more patient than this insect, and no delay discourages him. As soon as some small animal approaches his hiding-place he throws himself on it impetuously, kills it, and devours it. Near his ditch he has hollowed a second of a much coarser character, the walls of which have not been smoothed with the same care. One here sees elytra and claws piled up; they are the hard and horny parts which he has not been able to eat. The heap in this ditch is not then an alimentary store. It is the _oubliette_ in which the _Staphilinus_ buries the remains of his victims. If he allowed them to accumulate around his hole all pedestrians would come to fear this spot and to avoid it. It would be like the dwelling of a Polypus, which is marked by the numerous carapaces of crabs and shells which strew the neighbourhood. The ambuscade of the Ant-lion is classic; it does not differ greatly from the others. He excavates a conical pitfall, in which he conceals himself, and seizes the unfortunate ants and other insects whom ill-chance causes to roll into it.[13] [13] See _e.g._ Tennent, _Ceylon_, vol. i. p. 252. Also Réaumur, _Mémoires pour d'histoire des Insectes_, t. i. p. 14, and t. vi. p. 333. _The baited ambush._--A variety of ambush which brings this method of hunting to considerable perfection lies in inciting the prey to approach the hiding-place instead of trusting to chance to bring it there. In such circumstances Man places some allurement in the neighbourhood--that is to say, one of the foods preferred by the desired victim, or at least some object which recalls the form of that food, as, for example, an artificial fly to obtain possession of certain fishes. It is curious to find that fish themselves utilise this system; it is the method adopted by the Angler and the _Uranoscopus_.[14] The _Uranoscopus scaber_ lives in the Mediterranean. At the end of his lower jaw there is developed a mobile and supple filament which he is able to use with the greatest dexterity. Concealed in the mud, without moving and only allowing the end of his head to emerge, he agitates and vibrates his filament. The little fishes who prowl in the neighbourhood, delighted with the sight of this apparent worm, regarding it as a destined prey, throw themselves on to it, but before they are able to bite and recognise their error they have disappeared in the mouth of the proprietor of the bait. [14] Lacepède, _Histoire des Poissons_, 1798-1803. The Angler (_Lophius piscatorius_) has not usurped his rather paradoxical name. He retires to the midst of the sea-weed and algæ. On his body and all round his head he bears fringed appendages which, by their resemblance to the leaves of marine plants, aid the animal to conceal himself. The colour of his body also does not contrast with neighbouring objects. From his head arise three movable filaments formed by three spines detached from the upper fin. He makes use of the anterior one, which is the longest and most supple. Working in the same way as the _Uranoscopus_, the Angler agitates his three filaments, giving them as much as possible the appearance of worms, and thus attracting the little fish on which he feeds. In these two examples we see a special organ utilised for a particular function; it is one of the intermediate cases, already referred to, between the true industries involving ingenuity and the simple phenomena due to adaptations and modifications of the body. _Hunting in the dwelling or in the burrow._--All these methods of hunting or of fishing by surprise are for the most part practised by the less agile species which cannot obtain their prey by superior fleetness. Midway between these two methods may be placed that which consists in surprising game when some circumstance has rendered it motionless. Sometimes it is sleep which places it at the mercy of the hunter, whose art in this case consists in seeking out its dwelling. Sometimes he profits by the youth of the victim, like all bird-nesters, whose aim is to eat the eggs or to devour the young while still incapable of flying. The animals who eat birds' eggs are numerous both among mammals and reptiles, as well as among birds themselves. The Alligator of Florida and of Louisiana delights in this chase. He seeks in particular the Great Boat-Tail (_Quiscalus major_) which nests in the reeds at the edge of marshes and ponds. When the young have come out and are expecting from their parents the food which the chances of the hunt may delay, they do not cease chirping and calling by their cries. But the parents are not alone in hearing these appeals. They may also strike the ears of the alligator, who furtively approaches the imprudent singers. With a sudden stroke of his tail he strikes the reeds and throws into the water one or more of the hungry young ones, who are then at his mercy. (Audubon.) The animals who feed on species living in societies either seize on their prey when isolated or when all the members of the colony are united in their city. A search for the nest is necessary in the case of creatures who are very small in comparison with the hunter, as in the case of ants and the Ant-eater. But the ant-eater possesses a very long and sticky tongue, which renders the capture of these insects extremely easy; when he finds a frequented passage it is enough to stretch out his tongue; all the ants come of their own accord and place themselves on it, and when it is sufficiently charged he withdraws it and devours them. The African _Orycteropus_ (Fig. 2), who is also a great eater of ants and especially of termites, is equally aided by a very developed tongue; but he has less patience than the ant-eater, and he adds to this resource other proceedings which render the hunt more fruitful and enable him to obtain a very large number of insects at one time. Thanks to his keenness of scent he soon discovers an ant-path bearing the special and characteristic odour which these Hymenoptera leave behind them, and he follows the track which leads to their nest. On arriving there, without troubling himself about the scattered insects that prowl in the neighbourhood, he sets himself to penetrate into the midst of the dwelling, and with his strong claws hollows out a passage which enables him to gain access. On the way he pierces walls, breaks down floors, gathering here and there some fugitives, and arrives at last at the centre, in which millions of animals swarm. He then swallows them in large mouthfuls and retires, leaving behind him a desert and a ruin in the spot before occupied by a veritable palace, full of prodigious activity. [Illustration: FIG. 2.] The colonies are not only exposed to the devastations of those who feed on their members; they have other enemies in the animals who covet their stores of food. The most inveterate robber of bees is the nocturnal Death's Head Moth. When he has succeeded in penetrating the hive the stings of the proprietors who throw themselves on him do not trouble him, thanks to his thick fleece of long hairs which the sting cannot penetrate; he makes his way to the cells, rips them open, gorges himself with honey, and causes such havoc that in Switzerland, in certain years when these butterflies were abundant, numbers of hives have been found absolutely empty.[15] Many other marauders and of larger size, such as the Bear, also spread terror among these laborious insects and empty their barns. No animal is more crafty than the Raven, and the fabulist who wished to make him a dupe was obliged to oppose to him the very cunning Fox in order to render the tale fairly life-like. A great number of stories are told concerning the Raven's cleverness, and many of them are undoubtedly true. There is no bolder robber of nests. He swallows the eggs and eats the little ones of the species who cannot defend themselves against him; he even seeks the eggs of Sea-gulls on the coast; but in this case he must use cunning, for if he is discovered it means a serious battle. On the coast also the Raven seeks to obtain possession of the Hermit-crab. This Crustacean dwells in the empty shells of Gasteropods. At the least alarm he retires within this shell and becomes invisible, but the bird advances with so much precaution that he is often able to seize the crab before he has time to hide himself. If the raven fails he turns the shell over and over until the impatient crustacean allows a claw to emerge; he is then seized and immediately devoured. [15] Huber, _Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles_, t. ii. p. 291. If there is a question of hunting larger game like a Hare, the Raven prefers to take an ally. They start him at his burrow and pursue him flying. In spite of his proverbial rapidity the hare is scarcely able to flee more than two hundred yards. He succumbs beneath vigorous blows on his skull from the beaks of his assailants. During winter, in the high regions of the Alps, when the soil is covered with snow, this chase is particularly fruitful for ravens. The story is told of that unfortunate hare who had hollowed out in the snow a burrow with two entrances. Two of these birds having recognised his presence, one entered one hole in order to dislodge the hare, the other awaited him at the other opening to batter his head with blows from his beak and kill him before he had time to gain presence of mind.[16] [16] F. von Tschüdi, _Les Alpes_, Berne and Paris, 1859. Rooks sometimes hunt in burrows by ingeniously-concerted operations. Mr. Bernard[17] has described the interesting way in which the Rook hunts voles or field-mice in Thuringia. His curiosity was excited by the way in which numerous rooks stood about a field cawing loudly. In a few days this was explained: the field was covered with rooks; the original assemblage had been calling together a mouse-hunt, which could only be successfully carried out by a large number of birds acting in conjunction. By diligently probing the ground and blocking up the network of runs, the voles, one or more at a time, were gradually driven into a corner. The hunt was very successful, and no more voles were seen in that field during the winter. [17] _Zoologist_, October 1892. _Coursing._--Other animals are not easily discouraged by the swiftness of their prey; they count on their own resistance in order to tire the game; some of them also manage their pursuit in the most intelligent way, so as to preserve their own strength while the tracked animal's strength goes on diminishing until exhaustion and fatigue place him at their mercy. Mammals especially, such as Dogs, Wolves, and Foxes, exercise this kind of chase; it is, exactly, the coursing which Man has merely had to direct for his own benefit. Wild dogs pursue their prey united in immense packs. They excite each other by barking while they frighten the game and half paralyse his efforts. No animal is agile and strong enough to be sure of escaping. They surround him and cut off his retreat in a most skilful manner; Gazelles and Antelopes, in spite of their extreme nimbleness and speed, are caught at last; Boars are rapidly driven into a corner; their vigorous defence may cost the life of some of the assailants, but they nevertheless become the prey of the band who rush on to the quarry. In Asia wild dogs do not fear even to attack the tiger. Many no doubt are crushed by a blow of the animal's paw or strangled in his jaws, but the death of comrades does not destroy either the courage or the greediness of the surviving aggressors. Their number also is such that the great beast, covered by agile enemies who cling to him and wound him in every part, must at last succumb. Wolves hunt also in considerable bands. Their audacity, especially when pressed by hunger in the bad season, is well known. In time of war they follow armies, to attack stragglers and to devour the dead. In Siberia they pursue sledges on the snow with terrible perseverance, and the pack is not delayed by the massacre of those who are shot. A few stop to devour at once their fallen comrades, while the others continue the pursuit. Besides these brutal chases wolves seem able to exercise a genuine feint. Sometimes it is a couple who hunt in concert. If they meet a flock, as they are well aware that the dog will bravely defend the animals entrusted to him, that he is vigilant, and that his keen scent will bring him on them much sooner than the shepherd, it is with him that they first occupy themselves. The two wolves approach secretly; then suddenly one of them unmasks and attracts the attention of the dog, who rushes after him with such ardour that he fails to perceive that in the meantime the second thief has seized the sheep and dragged it into the wood. The dog finally renounces his pursuit of the fugitive and returns to his flock. Then the two confederates join each other and share the prey. In other circumstances it is a wolf who hunts with his female. When they wish to obtain possession of a deer, whose robust flight may last a long time, one of the couple, the male for example, pursues him and directs his chase in such a way that the game must pass by a place where the female wolf is concealed. She then takes up the chase while the male reposes. It is an organised system of relays. The strength of the deer becomes necessarily exhausted; he cannot resist the animation shown by his active foe, and is seized and killed. Then the other wolf calmly approaches the place of the feast to share his part of the booty. The small but bold Hawk called the Merlin also courses in relays in exactly the same manner. These birds pursue a Lark or a Swallow in the most systematic manner. First one Merlin chases the bird for a short time, while his companion hovers quietly at hand; then the latter relieves his fellow-hunter, who rests in his turn. The victim is soon tired out and caught in mid-air by one of the Merlins, who flies away with him, leaving his companion to hunt alone, while he feeds the young brood.[18] [18] C. St. John, _Wild Sports and Natural History of the Highlands_, chap. xi. The Fox also successfully uses this method of coursing with relays. There are indeed few animals who possess so many tricks of all kinds to gain possession of their prey. Constantly prowling about the fields, he neglects no propitious circumstance, and profits by all the advantages furnished by the situation of places or the habits of the game he is seeking. He pursues tired or wounded animals whom he meets, and easily masters them. If he finds a burrow, he quickly hollows a hole and brings to light the young rabbits who thought themselves in safety in the bowels of the earth; he robs nests placed in the thickets, and devours the young birds. Beehives are not protected against his greediness by the stings of the swarms; he rolls on the earth, crushes his assailants, and finally triumphs over the discouraged insects and gorges himself with honey. [Illustration: FIG. 3.] Birds of prey also invent ingenious combinations to reach a good flier. Most of the great rapacious birds of rapid flight or with powerful talons are so well organised for the chase that they have no need of cunning. To see the prey, to seize it and devour it, are acts accomplished in a moment by the single fact of their natural organisation. It is rather among those who are less well endowed that one finds real art and frequent ruses. The Goshawk (_Astur palumbarius_, Fig. 3) is sufficiently strong and flies sufficiently well to seize small birds; but in order to obtain a copious repast at one snatch he prefers to attack pigeons. Generally the strength of their wings promptly places them in safety. He therefore hides himself in the neighbourhood of the pigeon-house, ready to fall on those pigeons who pick up food around. But the pigeons are suspicious, and if they recognise his presence they remain hidden in their dwellings. In this case it has sometimes been found that the Goshawk has quietly flown up to their house and alighted on its summit; there, by violently beating his wings, he gives a succession of sudden blows to the roof. Startled and frightened by this unaccustomed noise, the inhabitants dart out, and the bird of prey can then profit by their alarm to seize one or two.[19] [19] Wodzicki, "Ornithologische Miscell.," _Journ. f. Ornithol._, 1856. The _Pseudaetus_ is also obliged to have recourse to a subterfuge in order to gain birds that fly well. He easily destroys fowls, and hunts them so successfully that in Spain, in certain isolated farms, it has been necessary to give up rearing fowls in consequence of these numerous depredations. But to seize pigeons is not so easy a matter. Generally, according to Jerdon, two birds unite to attack a band. One of the aggressors pretends to wish to seize them from below. This is a very unusual method, for birds of prey always rise above the game in order to throw themselves down on it. This puts out the pigeons, and they fear the manoeuvre all the more because they are unaccustomed to it. During this instant of confusion the second assailant passes unperceived above them, plunges into the midst and seizes a pigeon; there is a new panic, by which the first aggressor profits in order to rise rapidly in his turn and seize a second victim. _Struggles that terminate the hunt._--It is not always sufficient for the hunter to find game and to reach it. If the game is of large size it may be able to hold its own, and the pursuit may end in a violent struggle, in which both skill and cunning are necessary to obtain conquest. The Bald Eagle of North America (_Haliäetus leucocephalus_) hides himself on a rock by the edge of a stream and awaits the passing of a swan. This eagle is brave and strong, but the palmiped is vigorous, and though inferior in the air, he has an advantage on the water, and may escape death by plunging. The eagle knows this advantage, so he compels the swan to remain in the air by attacking him from below and repeatedly striking his belly. Weakened by the flow of blood, and obliged to fly, not being able to reach the water without finding the sharp beak which strikes him, the swan succumbs in this unequal combat, which has been vividly described by Audubon. [Illustration: FIG. 4.] The bird who displays the most remarkable qualities in this struggle which terminates the chase, exhibiting indeed a real fencing match, is the Secretary Bird (_Gypogeranus reptilivorus_. Fig. 4.) He is the more interested in striking without being himself struck since the fangs with which his prey, the snake, is generally armed might at the first blow give him a mortal wound. In South Africa he pursues every snake, even the most venomous. Warned by instinct of the terrible enemy he has met, the reptile at first seeks safety in flight; the Secretary follows him on foot, and the ardour of the chase does not prevent him from being constantly on guard. This is because the snake, finding himself nearly overtaken, suddenly turns round, ready to use his defensive weapons. The bird stops, and turns in one of his wings to protect the lower parts of his body. A real duel then begins. The snake throws himself on his enemy, who at each stroke parries with the end of his wing; the fangs are buried in the great feathers which terminate it, and there leave their poison without producing any effect. All this time with the other wing the Secretary repeatedly strikes the reptile, who is at last stunned, and rolls over on the earth. The conqueror rapidly thrusts his beak into his skull, throws his victim into the air, and swallows him.[20] [20] The combat was minutely described by Le Vaillant (_Hist. Nat. des Oiseaux d'Afrique_, Paris, 1798, t. i. p. 177), whose account has been confirmed by many subsequent observers. [Illustration: FIG. 5.] _Hunting with projectiles._--It has often been repeated that Man is the only creature sufficiently intelligent to utilise as weapons exterior objects like a stone or a stick; in a much greater degree, therefore, it was said, was he the only creature capable of striking from afar with a projectile. Nevertheless creatures so inferior as fish exhibit extreme skill in the art of reaching their prey at a distance. Several act in this way. There is first the _Toxotes jaculator_, who lives in the rivers of India. His principal food is formed by the insects who wander over the leaves of aquatic plants. To wait until they fell into the water would naturally result in but meagre fare. To leap at them with one bound is difficult, not to mention that the noise would cause them to flee. The _Toxotes_ knows a better trick than that. He draws in some drops of water, and, contracting his mouth, projects them with so much force and certainty that they rarely fail to reach the chosen aim, and to bring into the water all the insects he desires.[21] (Fig. 5.) Other animals also squirt various liquids, sometimes in attack, but more especially in defence. The Cephalopods, for example, emit their ink, which darkens the water and allows them to flee. Certain insects exude bitter or foetid liquids; but in all these cases, and in others that are similar, the animal finds in his own organism a secretion which happens to be more or less useful to his conservation. The method of the _Toxotes_ is different. It is a foreign body which he takes up, and it is an intended victim at which he takes aim and which he strikes; his movements are admirably co-ordinated to obtain a precise effect. [21] Cuvier et Valenciennes, _Hist. Nat. des Poissons_, Paris, 1831, t. vii. p. 231. Another fish, the _Chelinous_ of Java, also acts in this manner. He generally lives in estuaries. It is therefore a brackish water which he takes up and projects by closing his gills and contracting his mouth; he can thus strike a fly at a distance of several feet. Usually he aims sufficiently well to strike it at the first blow, but sometimes he fails. Then he begins again until he has succeeded, which shows that his movements are not those of a machine. He knows what he is doing, what effect ought to be produced, and whether this desired result has happened, and he perseveres until the insect has fallen. These facts are unquestioned; the Chinese preserve these curious fish in jars, and amuse themselves by making them carry on this little exercise. Many observers have witnessed and described it. _Particular circumstances put to profit._--In the various kinds of hunting which we have been passing in review, it is certain that the animals in question generally exercise them nearly always in the same manner. If an animal has carried out a ruse successfully he does not abandon it, but reproduces it as often as it is efficacious. When, however, conditions happen to change, animals are prompt to profit by them, and one sees how all these acts are derived from reflection. This is the clearer the more the favourable circumstance is accidental and unforeseen, when it is not possible to consider the animals as accustomed to profit by it. In the wild regions of Africa it happens that from some reason or another, perhaps from the effect of lightning on immense forests, dense thickets or plains covered by tall plants become the prey of gigantic fires which spread as long as they find food on their road. The heat as of a furnace arises above and around; an acrid smoke veils everything, and the frightened animals flee before the scourge. Travellers who have witnessed these magnificent scenes often insist on the panics thus produced, and describe the inoffensive lion fleeing in the midst of a herd of gazelles. All are seized by the same fear, because all are exposed to the same danger. But birds, whose wings can carry them at will afar from the furnace, preserve greater presence of mind, and profit by the public calamity and general anxiety to make a successful hunt and copious feasts. One may see the birds of prey flying in front of the fire and seizing easy victims. Certain birds of Africa are the most furious hunters during a fire. Legions of insects flee far from the tall dried plants, and clouds of birds arrive to throw themselves on them. They pursue them with incredible audacity through the smoke close to the flames and always retire in time to avoid singeing. A member of the Crow family who inhabits India, _Anomalocorax splendens_, enjoys a deserved reputation of astuteness and allows no opportunity to escape without seizing it by the forelock. In ordinary times his food is composed of very varied substances--crabs, insects, worms, etc.; but if he perceives afar an ascending cloud he immediately abandons his small researches, knowing there is something better to be done over there. He is not selfish, and he calls a few comrades and they all put themselves into position to await events. They know very well the relation that exists between this smoke and the prey they covet. The fire indicated by the smoke can have no other reason in this hot country than the cooking of food. A Hindoo family are in fact installed and preparing their repast. The birds see all this and observe. The Hindoos are accustomed to throw outside the remains of their meals, and the _Anomalocorax_, who have come together from afar to await patiently this result, then throw themselves on the quarry. (Jerdon.) Tennent narrates a singular trick which was twice, to his knowledge, played on a dog by two of these small glossy crows of Ceylon. The dog was gnawing a bone and would not be disturbed from the pure delight of sucking the marrow of which he was the legitimate proprietor. A crow approached the scene of the feast, and conceived the design of taking possession of it; he began by hopping around the dog, going and coming, trying to attract the animal's attention and ready to profit by the first distraction. His gambols remaining without result, he understood that he would not succeed and he flew away; but it was only to return accompanied by a friend possessing as little respect as himself for the property of others. The associate perched on a branch a few steps away, while the first crow renewed his attempts by flying around the bone and the dog; but the latter remained impassive. Then the second personage, whose part had hitherto been to remain contemplative, flew off his branch, threw himself on the dog and gave him a formidable blow on the spine. Seized with indignation, the dog turned round to punish the author of this unjustifiable aggression; but the bird was already far away, and in the meanwhile from the other side the first _Anomalocorax_ seized the long-coveted bone and also took flight. The feelings of the sheepish dog who saw both his vengeance and his repast flying away in the air may be better imagined than described.[22] [22] Tennent, _Ceylon_, vol. i. p. 171. All the birds, indeed, of this family know how to reach their ends. I have already spoken of certain hunts of the Raven; it is even said that in Iceland he knows when a ewe is going to give birth to young, and awaits this moment with immense patience. As soon as the lamb appears the Raven alights on him, digs out his eyes, and devours them. The Quelelis or Guadaloupe Caracara (_Polyborus lutosus_), a Californian bird of prey, is a cruel enemy to animals like the goat when they are about to bring forth their young. No sooner is one kid born, and while the mother is yet in labour with the second, than the birds pounce upon it, and should the mother be able to interfere, she is assaulted also. If there are a number of young kids together, the birds unite their forces and with great noise and flapping of wings succeed in separating the weakest and killing it.[23] [23] Bendire, _Life Histories of North American Birds_, 1892, p. 319. Dr. J. Lowe has recently called attention to a very curious method of attracting prey adopted by the Blackcap (_Sylvia atricapilla_) at Orotava, Teneriffe.[24] This bird has discovered that the juice exuded by certain flowers (_Hibiscus Rosa sinensis_ and _Abutilon frondosum_) is attractive to the insects upon which he preys; he therefore punctures the petals of these flowers in order to promote the exudation of this viscid secretion. [24] Linnæan Society, 1st June 1893. Many of us in our schooldays have admired the intelligence of Jackdaws having their nests in some old tower or belfry. They are able to distinguish according to the hour the significance of the various school bells. Most of these clangs do not move them, and they continue to attend to their affairs without paying attention. Their attention is only attracted by the ringing which marks the beginning and the end of recreation time. At the sound of the first they all flee and abandon the courts before even a single pupil has yet appeared. The bell, on the contrary, which marks the end of recreation time invites them to descend in a band to collect the crumbs of lunch. They arrive in a hurry, so as to be the first to profit by the repast, not waiting even until the place is abandoned; they know very well that the young people still there are not to be feared, having no time now to be occupied with them. In this class of facts, there are a certain number which may be considered as more marked by custom and perhaps less marked by spontaneous reflection. Such, for example, is the custom of Sharks and Seagulls to follow ships. In the seas where Dog-fish are abundant, one or more of them become attached to a ship, and quit it neither night nor day. One may believe sometimes that they are not there; but if any object is thrown into the sea, the fin of one of these monsters appears at the surface; everything which is thrown overboard disappears in their large jaws--kitchen refuse, bottles, etc. When a dead body is thrown into the sea it is soon seized by the shark, while living men who fall into the water have great difficulty in escaping, and are often drawn up horribly mutilated and half dead. Sea-gulls also follow vessels when they approach the coast. It is a pleasant sight to see the noisy band animating the monotonous splendour of the ocean; they arrive as soon as a vessel is one or two days' journey from land. Henceforth they do not leave her, flying behind and plunging in her wake; they profit by the disturbance produced by the gigantic machine to capture the stunned fishes. On land exactly the same kind of chase is carried on by Rooks, Crows, and Magpies, who follow the plough to seize the worms which the ploughshare turns up in the open earth. In autumn they cover the fields, animated and active, pilfering as the furrow is hollowed out. Certain rapacious birds who are awkward in hunting, especially Kites, make up for their lack of skill by audacious impudence. Constantly on the watch for better hunters like the Falcon, they throw themselves on him as soon as he has seized his prey. The proud bird, though much more courageous, stronger, and more skilful than these thieves, usually abandons the prey either because the burden embarrasses him in the struggle, or else because he knows that he can easily find another. These highway robbers of the air often unite to gain possession of a prey already taken and killed, and ready to be eaten. A handsome Falcon of the Southern States of North America, the Caracara Eagle (_Polyborus cheriway_), frequently steals fish from the Brown Pelicans on the coast of Texas. When the Pelicans are returning from their expeditions with pouches filled with fish, the Caracaras attack them until they disgorge, and then alight to devour the stolen prey. They do not attack the outgoing birds, but only the incoming ones, and they wait until they reach the land (so that the contents of the pouches may not fall into the water) before pouncing on them.[25] [25] Bendire, _Life Histories of North American Birds_, p. 315. Among other animals a habit has been formed from some special circumstance. As an extreme case in this group we meet with parasites of whom some cannot live outside a particular nest, and are even absolutely transformed by this kind of life. But between these and independent hunters there are an extreme number of intermediate stages, of which it is sufficient to mention a few.[26] [26] For a discussion of this subject, see P. van Beneden, _Commensaux et Parasites_, Paris, 1875. The _Fierasfer_, a little fish of the Mediterranean, installs himself in the respiratory cavity of a Holothurian; he does not live at the expense of his host's flesh, but contents himself with levying a tax on the foods which enter the cavity. It is a case of commensalism of which there are very numerous examples. Other cases may be mentioned which are still further removed from parasitism. Among these may be mentioned the birds who relieve large mammals of their vermin. One of them, the Red-beaked Buffalo bird (_Buphaga erythrorhyncha_), lives in Abyssinia. This bird is insectivorous. He has remarked that the ruminants constitute baits for flies; therefore he never leaves these animals, hops about on their backs and delivers them from annoying parasites; the buffaloes, who recognise this service, allow the bird to wander quietly over their hide. The _Buphaga_, who gives himself up entirely to this kind of chase, is often called the Beef-eater. He is only found in the society of flocks, of camels, buffaloes, or oxen. He settles on the back, legs, and snouts of these living baits. They remain passive even when he opens the skin in order to draw out the flies' larva; they know the benefit of this little operation. The patience of the oxen is certainly due to custom, for it is observed that herds which are not used to this bird manifest great terror when he prepares to alight on them, so that they even take flight from this small aggressor. Sometimes it is not easy to understand the advantages derived by the animal from the conditions in which he is usually found. Thus, for example, there is a fish, the _Polyprion cernium_, which accompanies driftwood on which Barnacles have fixed themselves. Yet the remains of these Crustaceans are never found in his stomach, and it is known on the contrary that he lives exclusively on other small fish. It is possible that these find their food in fragments of wood at the expense of the barnacles, and that therefore the _Polyprion_ which hunts them is always near driftwood thus garnished. _Methods of utilising the captured game._--Frequently it is not enough for the animal to obtain possession of his prey. Before making his meal it is still necessary to find a method of making use of it, either because the eatable parts are buried in a thick shell which he is unable to break, or because he has captured a creature which rolls itself into a ball and bristles its plumes. Here are some of the more curious practices followed in such cases. Sometimes it is a question of carrying off a round fruit which offers no prominence to take hold of. The Red-headed Melanerpes (_Melanerpes erythrocephalus_) of North America is very greedy with regard to apples, and feeds on them as well as on cherries. It takes him a considerable time to consume an apple, and as he is well aware of the danger he runs by prolonging his stay in an orchard, he wishes to carry away his booty to a safe and sheltered spot. He vigorously plunges his open beak into the apple; the two mandibles enter separately, and the fruit is well fixed; he detaches it and flies away to the chosen retreat. Apes are very skilful in utilising their booty. Cocoa-nuts are rather hard to open, but Apes do not lose any part of them; they first tear off the fibrous envelope with their teeth, then they enlarge the natural holes with their fingers, and drink the milk. Finally, in order to reach the kernel they strike the nut on some hard object exactly as Man would do. The Baboons (_Cynocephali_), whose courage is prodigious, since they will fight in a band against a pack of dogs or even against a leopard, are also very prudent and very skilful. They know that courage is no use against the sting of a venomous snake, and that the best thing is to avoid being bitten. The scorpion, whose dart is perfidious, also inspires their distrust, but as they like eating him they endeavour to catch him. This is not indeed very difficult if one carefully observes his movements, and it is possible to seize him suddenly by the tail, as I have often done, without being stung. Apes employ this method, pull out his sting, and crunch the now inoffensive Arachnid. They also like ants, but fear being bitten by them; when they wish to enjoy them, they place an open hand on an ant-hill and remain motionless until it is covered by insects. They can then absorb them at one stroke without fear. One would not think that an animal so well defended as the Hedgehog need fear becoming the prey of the Fox. Rolled in a ball, bristling with hard prickles which cruelly wound an assailant's mouth, nothing will induce him to unroll so long as he supposes the enemy still in the neighbourhood. It is vain to strike him or to rub him on the earth; he remains on the armed defensive. Only one circumstance disturbs him to the point of making him quit his prudent posture; it is to feel himself in the water, or even simply to be moist. The fox is acquainted with this weakness, therefore as soon as he has captured a hedgehog he rolls him in the nearest marsh to strangle him as soon as his head appears. It may happen that there is no puddle in the neighbourhood suitable for this bath; it is said that in this case the fox is not embarrassed for so small a matter, and provides from his own body the wherewithal to moisten the hedgehog. The combination is complicated, and approaches more nearly the methods employed by Man when the animal makes use of a foreign body, as a tool or as a fulcrum, to achieve his objects. A snake is very embarrassed when he has swallowed an entire egg with the shell; he cannot digest it in that condition, and the muscles of his stomach are not strong enough to break it. The snake often finds himself in this condition, and is then accustomed either to strike his body against hard objects or to coil himself around them until he has broken the envelope of the eggs he contains. The Snake himself is treated in this way in South America. The Sulphur Tyrant-bird picks up a young snake by the tail, and, flying to a branch or stone, uses it like a flail until its life is battered out.[27] [27] W. H. Hudson, _Naturalist in La Plata_, p. 73. It would be a paradox to attribute great intelligence to Batrachians; yet certain facts are recorded which show them to be capable of reflection. Among others the case is quoted of a green frog who obtained possession of a small red frog, and who proposed to swallow him. The other was naturally opposed to the realisation of this scheme and struggled with energy. Seeing that he would not succeed, the green frog went towards the trunk of a tree and, still holding his victim, struck him many times vigorously against it. At last the red frog was stunned, and could then be swallowed at leisure. Gasteropods are not always protected by their calcareous shells any more than tortoises are by their carapaces; for certain birds know very well how to break them. Ravens drop snails from a height, and thus get possession of the contents of the shell. The most celebrated breaker of shells is the Bearded Vulture or Lammergeyer (_Gypäetos barbatus_). This rapacious bird is very common in Greece, where he does not usually live on large prey. If he sometimes carries away a fowl, it is exceptional; he prefers to live on carrion or bones, the remains of the feasts of man or of the true vulture. He rises very high carrying these bones in his talons and allows them to fall on a stone, swallowing the fragments after having sucked out the marrow. He is also greedy of tortoises, and uses the same method to break their carapaces, eating the soft parts. These facts have been many times observed by Brehm and other trustworthy naturalists. It is even said that in Greece every Lammergeyer chooses a rock on which he always comes to execute the tortoises he has captured. It was no doubt beneath one of these birds so occupied that, according to the story, mischance conducted Æschylus. Neither the beak nor the claws of the Shrike or Butcher-bird (_Lanius excubitor_) are strong enough to enable him to tear his prey easily. When he is not too driven by hunger he installs himself in a comfortable fashion for this carving process, places on a thorn or on a pointed branch the victim he has made, and when it is thus fixed easily devours it in threads. The _Lanius collurio_, an allied bird, uses this method still more frequently. He even prepares a small larder before feasting. One may thus see on a thorny branch spitted side by side Coleoptera, crickets, grasshoppers, frogs, and even young birds, which he has seized when they were in flight.[28] (Fig. 6.) [28] Naumann, _Naturgeschichte der Vögel Deutschlands, etc._, Stuttgart, 1846-53. [Illustration: FIG. 6.] Of all these well-attested facts that which perhaps best shows how animals in certain circumstances may take advantage of a foreign body to utilise the product of the chase, is the following, the observation of which is due to Parseval-Deschênes.[29] He followed during several hours an ant bearing a heavy burden. On arriving at the foot of a little hillock the animal was unable to mount with his load, and abandoned it--a very extraordinary fact for one who knows the inconceivable tenacity of insects. The abandonment therefore left hope of return. The ant at last met one of his companions, who was also carrying a burden. They stopped, took counsel for an instant, bringing their antennæ together, and started for the hillock. The second ant then left his burden, and both together then seized a twig and introduced its end beneath the first load which had been abandoned because of its weight. By acting on the free extremity of the twig they were able to use it exactly as a lever, and succeeded almost without trouble in passing their booty on to the other side of the little hillock. It seems to me that these ants who invented the lever are worthy of admiration, and that their ingenuity does not yield to our own. [29] Gratien de Semur, _Traité des erreurs et des préjugés_, Paris, 1848, p. 70. I will, finally, give an example of the methods of surmounting a difficulty of another order in utilising captured prey. It is not enough to capture prey, or even to possess the means of utilising the prey when captured. It is sometimes also necessary to prevent the booty being taken possession of by some other member of the same species as the hunter. Spiders are specially liable to this danger, because their victims are noisy when caught. Hudson has described an ingenious device made use of by a species of _Pholcus_--a quiet inoffensive Spider found in Buenos Ayres--to escape this risk. This spider, though large, is a weak creature, and possesses little venom to despatch a fly quickly. The task of killing it is therefore long and laborious, and the loud outcries of the victim may be heard for a long time, sometimes for ten or twelve minutes. The other spiders in the vicinity are naturally excited by this noise, and hurry out from their webs to the scene of conflict, and the strongest or most daring sometimes succeeds in carrying away the fly from its rightful captor. Where, however, a large colony have been long in undisturbed possession of a ceiling, when one has caught a fly he rapidly throws a covering of web over it, cuts it away, and drops it down to hang suspended by a line at a distance of two or three feet from the ceiling. The other spiders arrive on the scene, but not finding the cause of the disturbance retire to their own webs again. When the coast is thus clear, our spider proceeds to draw up the captive fly, now exhausted by its struggles.[30] [30] W. H. Hudson, _Naturalist in La Plata_, 1892, p. 189. _War and brigandage._--When Man attacks animals of another species, either to kill them and feed on their flesh, or to steal the provisions which they have amassed for themselves or their young, this is called "hunting," and is considered as perfectly legitimate. When men turn to beings of their own species either to kill them or to rob them, several different cases are distinguished. If the assailants are few in number, it is called "brigandage," and is altogether reprehensible; but if both assailant and assailed are considerable in number, the action is called "war," and receives no reprobation. There are hunters among animals as well as among ourselves, and we have seen their various methods of procedure; but there are also brigands and warriors, and our superiority even in this department is not so absolute as might be imagined. Independently of ordinary brigandage, which is a brutal and simple form of the struggle for life, manifested every time the animals find themselves before a single repast, there are interesting facts to be noted concerning robbers who act in a manner that Man himself would not disavow. It is worthy of remark that it is the most sociable animals who furnish us with the most characteristic examples. Bees have a just renown as honest and laborious insects; there are, however, some who depart from the right road, and they do not do it by halves.[31] Among Hymenoptera the lazy profess the theory that pollen belongs to all bees, and that stored-up honey does not constitute private property. Therefore, to protest against work and economy, sly methods are employed by a few to utilise as their own private property the resources which Nature has made for all; they adopt the plan of plundering the working insects, and carrying away for themselves the pollen which the others had had the audacity to seek among the flowers. [31] L. Büchner, _Aus d. Geistesleben d. Thiere_, Berlin, 1879. To arrive at these ends these clever Hymenoptera employ cunning, and endeavour to pose as workers. They place themselves at the approaches to a hive, and when a worker arrives laden with its burden they advance towards it, caress it with their antennæ, take possession of its pollen as if to relieve it of a burden, and then fly away to their own hive. Others adopt less diplomatic proceedings. Some unite to intrude in a badly-guarded hive, and gorge themselves with the honey to which they have no right. Following up this success, they bring accomplices; a veritable band of brigands is organised, who have no other industry than to seize honey already manufactured in order to fill their own cells. Their audacious enterprises are not always crowned with success; they are repulsed in populous and well-organised hives, but they are successful in the weaker ones. Sometimes they act with violence, and to reduce a swarm they first fall on the queen and kill her with their stings. Disconcerted by her death, the bees allow the pillage of their dwelling, and the cells are robbed from top to bottom. In some cases the deprived proprietors, in their turn carried away by this insanity of rapine, even go over themselves to the assailing party, and carry their own honey to the house of the bandits. Henceforth they unite their fortune to that of the others, and share in their easy and adventurous life.[32] [32] P. Huber, _Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis indigènes_, Paris and Genève, 1810, chap. ix. Bates has given a vivid description of the armies of the South American Foraging Ants (_Eciton_). They are carnivorous hunters who march in large armies, and are found on the banks of the Amazon, especially in the open campos of Santarem. The _Eciton legionis_ chiefly carry off the mangled larvæ and pupæ of other ants. They will attack the nests of a bulky species of the genus _Formica_; they lift out the bodies of these ants and tear them in pieces, as they are too large for a single _Eciton_ to carry off, a number of carriers seizing each fragment. They seem to divide into parties, one party excavating and the other carrying away the grains of earth to a distance from the hole just sufficient to prevent them rolling back into it. There is, however, no rigid distribution of labour, the miners sometimes becoming carriers, and then again assuming the office of carrying off the prey. In marching off they form a broad and compact column, sixty or seventy yards in length, those who may be empty-handed assisting heavily-laden comrades. The _Eciton drepanophora_ attacks and carries off all kinds of insects, especially wingless species, such as maggots, caterpillars, larvæ of cockroaches, etc. An eyeless species,[33] the _Eciton erratica_, rapidly forms covered passages under which to advance, and shows great skill in fitting the keystone to these convex arcades.[34] [33] Belt points out that blindness is an advantage in the particular mode of hunting adopted by these ants, enabling them to keep together. Those species of _Eciton_ which hunt singly have very well developed eyes. [34] Bates, _Naturalist on the Amazons_ (edition of 1892), pp. 355-363. Belt has also made some extremely interesting observations on the _Ecitons_, whom for intelligence he places first among the ants of Central America, and as such at the head of the Articulata.[35] [35] See _Naturalist in Nicaragua_, 1888, pp. 17-29. _Expeditions to acquire slaves._--In order to reduce one's own species to slavery, it seems at first that an intelligence is required as developed as that of Man. It is necessary in fact to attack beings nearly equally well endowed from an intellectual and physical point of view. The enterprise evidently presents every possible difficulty; but in case of success, the result more than compensates for the effort. The master in future need not trouble to work, for he possesses a tool capable of doing everything as well as himself, since by means of language he can easily impress his will on the acts of the other; a domestic animal is only an auxiliary, the slave entirely replaces his owner in every labour. Several species of ants thus obtain slaves. The best known of these is the _Polyergus rufescens_. We shall see in another chapter in what way they take advantage of slaves, and what relations they have with them. At present it is only necessary to say how the slaves are obtained. The expeditions organised for this purpose are simply a perfected chase, both by the way in which they are conducted, and by the result to which they are to lead. It is not a question of brutally seizing a prey to be devoured immediately. The captured animal must be carefully managed, carried away alive and in such a condition that it has not yet known a free life, and can accustom itself to new conditions. When the _Polyergus_ or Amazon ants desire to increase their band of slaves, one first remarks extreme excitement in the neighbourhood of the nest. They all come out helter-skelter, but this disorder lasts only for a short time; they soon form in line, and a regular serried column is formed, longer or shorter according to the swarm; it has been found to measure more than five metres long by fifteen centimetres broad. The Amazons advance, often changing their direction like a dog who is seeking a scent: this is exactly what they are doing, they smell the ground with their antennæ in order to recognise traces of the _Formica fusca_. In this march the eminently republican instinct of the ants comes out. The band has no chief; those who are at the head go forward smelling the ground; this slackens their pace, so that they are passed by those in the ranks behind. Little by little they fall into single file, and this continuing during the whole course of the march, a particular ant may sometimes be at the head of the column, sometimes in the middle, sometimes in the rear. At the end of a longer or shorter period the expedition discovers a scent, which it follows up to the nest of the _Formica fusca_. The alarm is immediately given in the threatened ant-hill; the approach is announced of a band of slavers, and they all rush out, some to face their terrible adversaries while the others take up the nymphs and eggs in their mandibles and flee in all directions to save as many as possible of their offspring. The small ants endeavour with their burdens to climb to the summits of blades of grass; those who succeed are in safety with the eggs that they carry, for the Amazons do not climb. In the meanwhile a fierce battle is going on in the neighbourhood of the nest between the _Formica fusca_, who have made a sortie, and the slavers. It is an unequal struggle, because the latter are armed with formidable jaws, strong and sharp, borne by a large head with powerful muscles. The defenders of the nest are seized and placed _hors de combat_. They flee discouraged, and the assailants force the entry of the dwelling. They then take possession of the larvæ and nymphs and come out again holding them in their mandibles. The _Polyergus_ thus laden flee as fast as possible, escaping as well as they can from the bereaved parents, who endeavour to save their offspring. The band returns to the nest by the same road that it came, although not the shortest, for these insects seem to lack the sense of direction and are guided by smell, so that they have to retrace all the windings of the road. The march is slackened by the weight of the booty (Fig. 7), and each travels according to his fancy, without following the regular order of the departure. At last the ants regain their household. The slaves, warned of the return of the victorious army, rush out to meet it and relieve the arrivals of their burdens, some in their zeal even carrying at the same time both the master and his burden. The nymphs transported into the ant-hill are henceforth cared for by their fellow-slaves; the _Polyergus_ do not trouble themselves further. [Illustration: FIG. 7.] [Illustration: FIG. 8.] _Wars of the ants._--As sociable as man, the manners of ants present more than one resemblance to his. Slave-hunting expeditions are among these; the wars that these insects undertake also resemble human wars. The causes of the quarrel are of various nature, most often they result from the close proximity of two ant swarms. The rival colonies are always meeting in the same regions and seeking the same material; their mutual rivalry strains their relations. A moment comes when one of them is decidedly in the way of the other. At such a period, which is almost a diplomatic crisis, great excitement is observed in the two camps; there is a continual coming and going. One fine day, as the result of some unknown act,--some mysterious _casus belli_ or declaration of war,--two armies place themselves on the march against each other. They advance in serried ranks. All ants do not follow the same tactics; some throw themselves out in a thicker line, while others form in squares. But as soon as action commences the individual regains his rights. It is a series of duels, of fierce hand-to-hand struggles. Legs are torn away, heads are cut off by strokes of the jaws, abdomens are disembowelled; a terrible fury animates the combatants, and nothing will disturb them from the battle. (Fig. 8.) By-and-by victory remains with the fiercest or the strongest; the vanquished draw in, carrying away as far as possible their wounded and their dead. Nothing more is seen on the field of carnage but separated limbs or heads which strew the ground like a multitude of small black points. Often the enmity is not extinguished after a battle, and several defeats are necessary before the weaker swarm is destroyed or forced to emigrate.[36] [36] P. Huber, _Moeurs des Fourmis indigènes_, chap. ix. Many of the chief observations--given in the words of the original observers--as well as a summary of the facts known regarding the social activities of ants generally, will be found in the useful volume by Romanes in the International Scientific Series, _Animal Intelligence_, 1882. CHAPTER III. METHODS OF DEFENCE. FLIGHT--FEINT--RESISTANCE IN COMMON BY SOCIAL ANIMALS--SENTINELS. Studying the animal kingdom in the manner here adopted, that is to say by passing in review the various manifestations of zoological life, we are necessarily led to find certain industries which are opposed to others. We have seen the various methods of hunting; but attack calls forth defence. In the struggle for life we find the action of beings on other beings, and the re-action of these latter; the final result is the expression of the difference between the two according as one or the other is stronger. _Flight._--Just as the most rudimentary method of attack is simple pursuit, so the most simple and natural method of defence is flight; but if very fleet animals like hares, gazelles, and deer can escape by simply exerting their maximum rapidity, it is not always thus, and certain species exercise in flight perfected methods appropriate to circumstances, and so raise this method of defence to an art. Of all animals the Ape most skilfully directs his flight. There is no question that in his intelligence we may find every rudiment of our own; but of all his qualities none more nearly approximates him to us than his courage. There are no animals, not even the great beasts of prey, who are so brave as Man and the Ape, and who are capable of so much presence of mind. It is perhaps this bravery which, joined to his sociability, has most contributed to assure the supremacy of the one. As to the other, the road has been barred to him by his better-endowed cousin; he is disappearing before Man, and not before nature or other animals. In thinly-inhabited regions he is still the king. It is generally considered that the Lion is the incarnation of courage, but he is the strongest and the best armed; there is none before whom he need tremble. In captivity he allows himself to be struck by the tamer, which the most miserable ape would never suffer. The Lion will struggle with extreme energy without calculating the difference of strength between his opponent and himself, and will resist as long as he is able to move. The Ape directs all his courage and presence of mind to order his flight when he has recognised a danger that is insurmountable. He does not act like those infatuated beasts who lose their head and rush away trembling, in their precipitation paralysing a great part of their resources. A band of apes in flight utilises all obstacles that can be interposed between themselves and the pursuer; they retire without excessive haste and take advantage of the first shelter met with; a female never abandons her young, and if a young one remains behind, and is in danger of being taken, the old males of the troop go back boldly to save it at the peril of their lives. In this connection many heroic facts have been narrated. This animal has too frequently been judged by comparison with ourselves; he has been regarded as a human caricature and covered with ridicule. We obtain a very much higher idea of him if we compare him with other animals. Always and everywhere there has been a prejudiced insistence on his defects; we perceive them so easily because they are an exaggeration of our own; but he also possesses qualities of the first order. As an example of flight arranged with intelligence, we have already seen how the _Formica fusca_ profits by the difficulty experienced by the _Polyergus_ in climbing. It hastily gains the summit of a blade of grass, to place there in safety the larvæ which the others wish to carry away. The ruses adopted in flight are as varied as those of attack. Every animal tries to profit as much as possible by all his resources. Larks, a feeble race of birds, rise higher in the air than any rapacious bird, and this is often a cause of safety. Their greatest enemy is the Hobby (_Hypotriorchis sublutes_). They fear him greatly, so that as soon as one appears singing ceases, and each suddenly closes his wings, falls to the earth and hides against the soil. But some have mounted so high to pour out their clear song that they cannot hope to reach the earth before being seized. Then, knowing that the bird of prey is to be feared when he occupies a more elevated position from which he can throw himself on them, they endeavour to remain always above him. They mount higher and higher. The enemy seeks to pass them, but they mount still, until at last the Hobby, heavier, and little accustomed to this rarefied air, grows tired and gives up the pursuit.[37] [37] _Naturgeschichte der Vögel Deutschlands_, etc. The Gold-winged Woodpecker of the United States (_Colaptes auratus_) often escapes Falcons either by throwing himself into the first hole that he finds, or if he cannot find one, through seizing the trunk of a tree with his claws. As he is a very good climber, he describes rapid spirals around it, and the falcon cannot in flying trace such small circles. By this method the _Colaptes_ usually escapes.[38] [38] Audubon, _Ornithological Biography_, New York and Edinburgh, 1831-49. The Fox, who is so ingenious in hunting, is not less so when his own safety is concerned. He knows when it is best to flee or to remain; he is suspicious in a surprising degree, not only of man but also of the engines which man prepares against him. He recognises them or smells them. Certain facts almost lead us to suspect that he understands their mechanism. When one of them has been surprised in his hole, and the trap has been placed before every opening, he will not emerge from the burrow. If hunger becomes too imperious, he recognises that patience will only change the manner of his death, and then he decides to dare fate; but previously he had done everything to flee without passing over the snare. As long as he had claws and strength he hollowed out the earth to form a new issue, but hunger rapidly exhausted his vigour and he was not able to complete the work. Foxes thus trapped have recognised immediately when one of these engines went off, either owing to another animal being caught or from some other reason. In this case the captive understands very well that the mechanism has produced its effect, that it is no longer to be dreaded, and he boldly emerges. It has happened that foxes have been caught in a trap by a paw or else by the tail, when delicately endeavouring to extract the bait. Recognising the manner in which they are retained prisoners, certain of them have had the intelligence and the courage to cut off with their teeth the part engaged in the trap, and to escape thus mutilated. St. John knew a fox who thus escaped by amputating a paw, and who was able to earn his living for three or four years subsequently, when he was finally caught. In Australia great kangaroo hunts are organised. Generally the capture is sufficiently easy, and the dogs are able to seize the kangaroo, but sometimes he makes a long and rather original defence. If possible, he directs his flight towards a river. If he reaches it he enters, and, thanks to his great height, he is able to go on foot to a depth where the dogs are obliged to swim. Arrived there, he plants himself on his two posterior legs and his tail, and, up to his shoulders in the water, awaits the arrival of the pack. With his anterior paws he seizes by the head the first dog who approaches him, and, as he is more solidly balanced than his assailant, he holds the dog's nose beneath the water as long as he can. Unless a second dog speedily comes to the rescue the first is inevitably drowned. If a companion arrives to free him, he is so disturbed by this unexpected bath that he regains the bank as quickly as possible, and has no further desire to attack this suffocating prey. A strong and courageous old male can thus hold his own against twenty or thirty dogs, drowning some and frightening others, and the hunter is obliged to intervene and put an end to this energetic defence by a bullet.[39] [39] J. Gould, _The Mammals of Australia_, London, 1845-60. _Feint._--Many animals, when they cannot escape danger by flight, seek safety by various feints. The device of feigning death is especially widespread. Many coleopterous insects and Spiders simulate death to perfection, although it has been ascertained that they do not always adopt the attitude which members of their species fall into when really dead. But they remain perfectly motionless; neither leg nor antenna stirs. McCook, who has devoted such loving study to Spiders, remarks in his magnificent work, that the Orbweavers, especially, possess this habit. "One who touches an Orbweaver when hanging upon its web will often be surprised to see it suddenly cast itself from the snare, or appear to drop from it, as though shot off by some unseen force. Unless he understands the nature of the creature he will be utterly at a loss to know what has become of it. In truth it has simply dropped upon the ground by a long thread which had been instantaneously emitted, and had maintained the Aranead in its remarkable exit, so that its fall was not only harmless, but its return to the web assured. The legs are drawn up around the body, and to the inexperienced eye it has the external semblance of death. In this condition it may be handled, it may be turned over, it may be picked up, and, for a little while at least, will retain its death-like appearance." Preyer, who has studied this phenomenon in various animals, comes to the conclusion that it is usually due to unconsciousness as the result of fright.[40] McCook is unable to accept this theory of kataplexy, so far as Spiders are concerned. "I have frequently watched Spiders in this condition," he observes, "to determine the point in question, and their behaviour always impressed me as being a genuine feigning of death, and therefore entirely within their volition. The evidence is of such indefinite nature that one can hardly venture to give it visible expression, but my conviction is none the less decided. I may say, however, that my observations indicate that the Spiders remained in this condition as long as there seemed to be any threatened danger; now and again the legs would be relaxed slightly, as though the creature were about getting ready to resume its normal condition, but at the slightest alarm withheld its purpose and relapsed into rigidity. The slight unclasping of the legs, the faint quivering indications of a purpose to come to life, and then the instant suppression of the purpose, were so many evidences that the power of volition was retained, and that the Aranead might have at once recovered if it had been disposed to do so. Again, I think that I have never noticed anything like that gradual emergence from the kataplectic condition which one would naturally expect if the act were not a voluntary one. On the contrary, the spider invariably recovered, immediately sprang upon its legs, and hoisted itself to its snare, or ran vigorously away among the grasses."[41] [40] _Sammlung physiologischer Abhandlungen_, Zweite Reihe, Erster Heft, 1878. [41] H. C. McCook, _American Spiders_ (1889, etc.), vol. ii. pp. 437-445. Romanes has an interesting discussion of the habit of feigning death among animals, and cautiously reaches the conclusion that it is very largely due, not to kataplexy, but to intelligent action.--_Mental Evolution in Animals_, pp. 303-316. And for some remarks on this subject by Darwin in his Essay on Instinct, see the same volume, pp. 365, 366. Also Alix, _Esprit de nos Bêtes_, 1890, pp. 543-548. Among fish, the Perch and the Sturgeon feign death; according to Couch,[42] the Landrail, the Skylark, the Corncrake adopt the same device. Among mammals, the best-known example is probably the Opossum. [42] _Illustrations of Instinct_, 1847. An Opossum (_Didelphys azaræ_) of South America enters farms to devastate the poultry yards. When he is discovered he runs away, but is soon caught, and blows from sticks rain upon him. Seeing that he cannot escape correction he seeks at least to save his life. Letting his head fall and straightening his inert legs he receives the blows without flinching. Often he is considered dead, and abandoned. The cunning little beast, who desires nothing better, arises, shakes himself, and rather bruised, but at all events alive, takes his way back to the wood. The Argentine Fox (_Canis azaræ_), when caught in a trap or run down by dogs, though it fights savagely at first, after a time drops down and apparently dies. "When in this condition of feigning death," Mr. W. H. Hudson remarks, "I am quite sure that the animal does not altogether lose consciousness. It is exceedingly difficult to discover any evidence of life in the opossum, but when one withdraws a little way from the feigning fox, and watches him very attentively, a slight opening of the eye may be detected; and, finally, when left to himself, he does not recover and start up like an animal that has been stunned, but slowly and cautiously raises his head first, and only gets up when his foes are at a safe distance. Yet I have seen _guachos_, who are very cruel to animals, practise the most barbarous experiments on a captive fox without being able to rouse it into exhibiting any sign of life. This has greatly puzzled me, since, if death-feigning is simply a cunning habit, the animal could not suffer itself to be mutilated without wincing. I can only believe that the fox, though not insensible, as its behaviour on being left to itself appears to prove, yet has its body thrown by extreme terror into that benumbed condition which simulates death, and during which it is unable to feel the tortures practised on it. The swoon sometimes actually takes place before the animal has been touched, and even when the exciting cause is at a considerable distance."[43] [43] W. H. Hudson, _Naturalist in La Plata_, p. 203. It is probably a measure of prudence which impels certain birds to imitate successively the cries of neighbouring animals, in order to persuade their enemies that all the beasts in creation are brought together in this spot except themselves. It is perhaps going a little too far to suppose so reflective and diplomatic a motive, but it is not doubtful that in certain cases this custom can be very useful to them by putting their enemies on the wrong scent. In North America nearly all the species of the Cassique family have this custom. If they wish to deceive the ears of the great Falcons who watch them--or is it simple amusement?--they interrupt their own song to introduce the most varied melodies. If a sheep bleats, the bird immediately replies to the bleating; the clucking of a turkey, the cackling of a goose, the cry of the toucan are noted and faithfully reproduced. Then the Cassique returns to his own special refrain, to abandon it anew on the first opportunity.[44] [44] Waterton, _Wanderings in South America_ (First Journey), ch. iii. Not only do animals thus feign death in order to secure their own safety, but the female sometimes endeavours to attract an enemy's attention and feigns to be wounded in order to decoy him away from her young. This trick is adopted especially by birds. In illustration of this it will be sufficient to quote from Bendire's _Life Histories of North American Birds_ some observations by Mr. Ernest Thompson of Toronto, regarding the Canadian Ruffled Grouse (_Bonasa umbellus togata_), commonly called the Partridge by Canadians:--"Every field man must be acquainted with the simulation of lameness, by which many birds decoy or try to decoy intruders from their nests. This is an invariable device of the Partridge, and I have no doubt that it is quite successful with the natural foes of the bird; indeed it is often so with Man. A dog, as I have often seen, is certain to be misled and duped, and there is little doubt that a mink, skunk, racoon, fox, coyote, or wolf would fare no better. Imagine the effects of the bird's tactics on a prowling fox: he has scented her as she sits; he is almost upon her, but she has been watching him, and suddenly, with a loud 'whirr,' she springs up and tumbles a few yards before him. The suddenness and noise with which the bird appears cause the fox to be totally carried away; he forgets all his former experience, he never thinks of the eggs, his mind is filled with the thought of the wounded bird almost within his reach; a few more bounds and his meal will be secured. So he springs and springs, and very nearly catches her, and in his excitement he is led on, and away, till finally the bird flies off, leaving him a quarter of a mile or more from the nest. "If instead of eggs the Partridge has chicks, she does not await the coming of the enemy, but runs to meet and mislead him ere yet he is in the neighbourhood of the brood; she then leads him far away, and returning by a circuitous route, gathers her young together again by her clucking. When surprised she utters a well-known danger-signal, a peculiar whine, whereupon the young ones hide under logs and among grass. Many persons say they will each seize a leaf in their beaks and then turn over on their backs. I have never found any support for this idea, although I have often seen one of the little creatures crawl under a dead leaf."[45] [45] Bendire, _Life Histories of North American Birds_ (_Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge_, vol. xxviii.), 1892, p. 64. _Resistance in common by social animals._--If neither flight nor feint has saved an animal from the hunter, he naturally fights as long as he can, but this struggle _in extremis_ is rarely crowned with success. Certain species, especially those which live in society, are able nevertheless, by uniting their efforts, to resist enemies who would easily triumph over them if they were isolated. Among tribes of Apes mutual assistance, as described by Brehm, is common. When by chance a bird of prey, such as an eagle, has thrown himself on a young ape who is amusing himself far from the maternal eye, the little one does not let himself be taken without resistance; he clings to the branches and utters shrill and despairing cries. His appeals are heard, and in an instant a dozen agile males arrive to save him; they throw themselves on the imprudent ravisher and seize him, one by the claw, another by the neck, another by a wing, pulling him about and harassing him. The bird struggles as well as he can, distributing around him blows from talons and beak. But he is often strangled, and when his temerity does not receive this extreme punishment, the feathers which fall from him when he flies away bear witness that he has not emerged unscathed from the scuffle. Animals like Buffaloes resist by a common defence the most terrible Carnivora. Even the Tiger is their victim, although if one of them met that wild beast alone he would surely become its prey. Being very agile, the tiger can reach by one leap the back of the ruminant, whose brutal and massive force cannot thus be exercised; but the feline who falls into the midst of a troop fares very badly. One buffalo falls on him with lowered horns, and with a robust blow of the head throws him into the air. The tiger cannot regain his senses, for as soon as he reaches the ground, and often even before, he is again seized and thrown towards other horns. Thus thrown from one to another like a ball, he is promptly put to death. The less terrible Carnivora give Buffaloes no trouble. Wolves do not dare to attack them when they are united; they await in ambush the passage of some strayed calf, and rapidly gain possession of it before the rest of the flock are aware, or they would dearly pay for their attack. The Bisons of North America, near relatives of the Buffaloes, also repulse Wolves in common; and if Man succeeds better against them it is owing to the skill which he shows in hiding himself and not attracting their attention. Every one knows how Indians hunt the Bison with arrows, and his pursuit is very risky to the hunter, for he must not be discovered by the game, as he would then be trodden underfoot or disembowelled. In the immense prairies where these ruminants feed, a few Indians covered by bisons' skins advance on all fours, so that nothing betrays their presence. The victims fall one by one beneath silent blows, and their companions, who can see nothing suspicious in the neighbourhood, are not disturbed, supposing them, no doubt, to be peacefully resting. It is not only against other animals that these great mammals have to defend themselves; they are much afraid of heat, and they are accustomed, especially in the south of Persia, to ruminate while lying in the water during the hot hours of the day. They only allow the end of the snout, or at most the head, to appear. It is a curious spectacle when fording a river to see emerge from the reeds the great heads and calm eyes of the Buffaloes, who follow with astonishment all the movements of the horsemen, although nothing will disturb their sweet and fresh siesta. But let us return to defences arranged in common. Horses are extremely sociable, and in the immense pampas of South America those who become wild again live in large troops. In difficult circumstances they help one another. If a great danger threatens them all the colts and mares assemble together, and the stallions form a circle round the group, ready to drive back the assailant. But they do not accomplish this manoeuvre in the presence of an enemy of small importance. When a wolf appears on the plain all the males run after him, seeking to strike him with their feet and kill him, unless prompt flight delivers him from their blows. The sociable humour of these horses makes them compassionate towards their fellows who are enslaved by man, and if a harnessed cart meets on its road a free band, it is a serious matter to the owner. They run up and surround the enslaved horse, saluting him with their cries and gambols, having the air of inviting him to throw his harness to the winds and follow them on the plain, where grass grows for all without work. Naturally the driver endeavours to preserve his noble conquest, and distributes blows with the whip to those who wish to debauch it. Then the wild horses become furious, and throw themselves on the vehicle; they break it with their feet and cut their comrade's traces with their teeth to enable him to share their own free life. The enterprise satisfactorily concluded, they gallop away neighing in triumph. It is owing to their union in large bands that Crows have so little to fear from diurnal birds of prey; if one approaches, they do not hesitate to throw themselves on him altogether. The Great Horn Owl, however, causes many ravages among them; for when asleep at night the Crow is without defence against the ravisher, for whom, on the contrary, obscurity is propitious. Thus they recognise him as a hereditary enemy, and never allow an opportunity of revenge to pass without profiting by it. If by chance an owl appears by day and one of them perceives him, immediately a clamour arises--a veritable cry of war; all those who are in the neighbourhood fly to the spot, and business ceases; the nocturnal bird of prey is assaulted, riddled with blows from beaks, stunned, his feathers torn out, and, notwithstanding his defence, he succumbs to numbers. In all the preceding examples the social species unite for the common security the forces and effects which they can derive from their own organs. I have spoken of the Apes and described how they defend themselves with their hands and teeth; but in certain cases they use weapons, employing foreign objects like a club or like projectiles. Acts of this nature are considered to indicate a high degree of development, and it has often been repeated that they are the appanage of man alone; we have, however, seen the _Toxotes_, who, like all fishes, is not particularly intelligent, squirt water on to his victims. It is not easy to understand how a greater intellectual effort is required to throw a stone with the hand than to project water with the mouth. This is what the apes do, throwing on their assailants from the heights of trees everything which comes to hand: cocoa-nuts, hard fruits, fragments of wood, etc. Baboons (_Cynocephali_) who usually live in the midst of rocks protect their retreat by rolling very heavy blocks on to their aggressors, or by forcibly throwing stones about the size of the fist. As these bands may contain from a hundred to one hundred and fifty individuals, it is a veritable hail of stones of all sizes which they roll down from the heights of the mountains where they find shelter. _Sentinels._--Not only do Apes know how to face danger or to avoid it by a prudent flight, but they also seek to foresee it, and to avoid exposing themselves to it. A troop of Apes, according to Brehm, generally places the leadership in the hands of a robust and experienced male. This primitive royalty is founded partly on the confidence inspired by an old chief, and partly by the fear inspired by his muscular arms and ferocious canine teeth. (Fig. 9.) He gives himself a great deal of trouble for the security of his subjects, and does not abuse the authority which he possesses. Always at the head, he leaps from branch to branch, and the band follows him. From time to time he scales a tall tree, and from its heights scrutinises the neighbourhood. If he discovers nothing suspicious a particular guttural grunt gives information to his companions. If, on the contrary, he perceives some danger he warns them by another cry, and all draw in ready to follow him in his retreat, which he directs in the same way as he guided the forward march. Apes are not alone in relying on the experience of one of their members. Many other animals act in the same way: antelopes, gazelles, elephants, who advance in troops always conducted by an old male or female who knows all the forest paths, all the places favourable to pasture, and all the regions which must be avoided. [Illustration: FIG. 9.] Others, more democratic, instead of giving up the care of their safety to one individual, which cannot be done without abdicating some degree of individual independence, dispose around the place which they occupy a certain number of sentinels charged to watch over the common safety. This custom exists among prairie dogs, moufflons, crows, paroquets, and a great many other animals. The sentinels of the crows are not only always on the watch, but they are extremely discriminating; they do not give a warning at the wrong time. It is certain that these birds can distinguish a man armed with a gun from another who merely carries a stick, and they allow the second to approach much nearer than the first before giving the alarm. Paroquets of all species live in joyous and noisy bands. After having passed the night on the same tree they disperse in the neighbourhood, not without having first posted watchers here and there, and they are very attentive to their cries and indications. The great Aras or Macaws, the large and handsome parrots of the Andes, act with much prudence when circumstances make it advisable, and they know when they ought to be on their guard. When they are in the depths of the forest, their own domain, they gather fruits in the midst of a deafening noise; each one squalls and cries according to his own humour. But if they have resolved to pillage a field of maize, as experience has taught them that these joyous manifestations would then be unseasonable and would not fail to attract the furious proprietor, they consummate the robbery in perfect silence. Sentinels are placed on the neighbouring trees. To the first warning a low cry responds; on the second, announcing a nearer danger, all the band fly away with vociferations which need no longer be restrained. The common Crane (_Grus cinerea_), still more far-seeing to avoid a possible future danger, despatches scouts who are thus distinct from sentinels who inform their fellows of present danger.[46] [46] E. Poppig, _Fragmenta zoologica itineris Chilensis_, 1829-30. When these birds have been disturbed in any spot, they never return without great precautions. Before arriving, they stop; a few only go circumspectly forward, examining everything, and coming back to make their report. If this is not satisfactory the troop remains suspicious, sending new messengers. When they are at last assured that there is really nothing to fear, the rest follow. Thus by the most varied methods animals endeavour to save their threatened lives, and succeed to some extent in attaining safety. Destruction and the chase on one side, conservation and flight on the other: these are the two chief acts which occupy living beings. Many, however, less threatened, succeed in perfecting their manner of life, and employ their industry in less pressing occupations than eating others or preventing others from eating them. CHAPTER IV. PROVISIONS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS. PROVISIONS LAID UP FOR A SHORT PERIOD--PROVISIONS LAID UP FOR A LONG PERIOD--ANIMALS WHO CONSTRUCT BARNS--PHYSIOLOGICAL RESERVES--STAGES BETWEEN PHYSIOLOGICAL RESERVES AND PROVISIONS--ANIMALS WHO SUBMIT FOOD TO SPECIAL TREATMENT IN ORDER TO FACILITATE TRANSPORT--CARE BESTOWED ON HARVESTED PROVISIONS--AGRICULTURAL ANTS--GARDENING ANTS--DOMESTIC ANIMALS OF ANTS--DEGREES OF CIVILISATION IN THE SAME SPECIES OF ANTS--APHIS-PENS AND PADDOCKS--SLAVERY AMONG ANTS. The industries of the chase which are derived immediately from the most imperious of needs--that of assuring the existence of the individual--never arrive at a very extraordinary degree of perfection; or at all events, as they are indispensable to existence, we are not surprised at their development. It is unquestionable that an industry marks a higher degree of civilisation not only by its development, but still more by its reference to the less necessary things of life; in every species the importance of the place given to the superfluous is a mark of superiority. The animals who, foreseeing a hard season, or fearing the days when hunting will not be productive, lay up provisions to utilise in such times of famine, rise a degree higher than even the most skilful hunters. Not all amass with the same sagacity, and we shall find different examples of foresight, from the most rudimentary to the highest, very near what we may observe in Man. The provisions harvested by animals have more than one destination: some are for the individual himself who has gathered them; others, on the contrary, are to serve as the food for his young at the age when they are not yet capable of seeking their own food. I will deal with these latter in another chapter, and propose at present only to speak of those animals who provision barns with the intention of themselves profiting by them. The foresight of the animal is so much the greater the more remote the future for which he prepares. The Carnivora live from day to day and lay up no stores; it is the Rodents, certain frugivorous birds, and insects who exhibit the most complicated acts of economy. _Provisions laid up for a short period._--As a rudimentary example of the art of preserving food in view of possible famine, I may mention the case of the _Lanius collurio_. I have already spoken of this bird and of his custom in days of abundance of spitting on thorns all the captures he has made. One may see side by side Coleoptera, crickets, grasshoppers, frogs, and small birds. It is evident that these reserves cannot be preserved for more than a day, or at most two days. The bird amasses just enough to show us his apprehensions of the possible future lack of success in hunting, and his thought of preserving the surplus of the present in view of privations to come.[47] [47] Naumann, _Naturgeschichte der Vögel Deutschlands_, etc. The Fox, a very skilful hunter, has no trouble in finding game; of all the Carnivora he is, however, the only one who is truly foreseeing. The others in presence of abundant food gorge themselves, and abandon the rest at the risk of suffering to-morrow. The fox is not so careless. If he has had the good fortune to discover a poultry yard, well supplied but ill watched, he carries away as many fowls as he can before dawn and hides them in the neighbourhood of his burrow. He places each by itself, one at the foot of a hedge, another beneath a bush, a third in a hole rapidly hollowed out and closed up again. It is said that he thus scatters his treasures to avoid the risk of losing all at one stroke, although this prudence complicates his task when he needs to utilise his provisions. The fox, however, loses nothing, and knows very well where to find his stores. The very nature of the game prevents him from keeping it more than a few days. _Provisions laid up for a long period._--The Rodents, who live on dry fruits or grains, can on the other hand preserve them for a long time in their barns. The Squirrel, who may be seen all the summer leaping like a little madman from branch to branch, and who seems to have no cares except to exhibit his red fleece and show off his tail, is, contrary to appearance, a most sensible and methodical animal. He knows that winter is a hard time for poor beasts, and that fruits are then rare or hidden beneath the snow; in the autumn, therefore, when all the riches of the earth are abundant, and beech-nuts, acorns, and chestnuts have ripened, he harvests quantities of them and hides them wherever he can. Making use of the cavities he is acquainted with around his domain, hollow trees, holes that he makes in the earth beneath bushes, etc., he fills them with fruits, and when winter has come he extracts them to munch. _Animals who construct barns._--The Field Rat of Hungary and Asia (_Psammomys_) gathers wheat during the summer. He cuts the blades and transports them to his home, where he stores them up in very considerable quantities; and during rigorous winters when famine appears also among men, gleaners of another species appear on the scene and seek for corn under the earth in the nests of the _Psammomys_. A single rat can store up more than a bushel. Those who are skilful in finding their holes can thus in a day glean a good harvest, to the detriment of the rats who are thus in their turn reduced to beggary. The Hamster also makes provision of grain, but he introduces two improvements: the first at the harvest by only taking the edible part of the ear, and the second by constructing barns distinct from his home. Each possesses a burrow composed of a sleeping chamber, around which he has hollowed one or two others communicating with the first by passages, and intended to serve as barns. The old and more experienced animals prepare even four or five of these storehouses. The end of summer is their season for work. They scatter themselves in the fields of barley or wheat, pull down the stalks of the cereals with their anterior paws, and then cut off the ear with their teeth. This done, they set about thrashing their wheat--that is to say, they separate the grain from the straw by turning the ear round and round between their paws. When the grains come out they pile them up in their cheeks, and thus transport them to one of the chambers already mentioned; they then return to exploit the field and continue these labours until they have completed the stores for winter. A certain Vole (_Arvicola economus_) acts in much the same way as the Hamster, though he harvests a different class of objects. It is not wheat which he collects but roots. He has to find these roots, to dig them up, to cut them into fragments of suitable dimensions for transport, and finally to pile them up in rooms disposed to receive them. This species, which inhabits Siberia, measures about twelve centimetres in length, but during summer and autumn Voles accomplish an amount of work which is surprising having regard to their size. The moment having arrived to think about winter, the Voles spread themselves about the steppe. Each hollows little pits around the roots he wishes to extract. After having bared them he cleans them while still in position, so as not to encumber his storehouses with useless earth. This preparatory labour having been completed, he divides the root into slices of a weight proportioned to his strength, and carries away the fragments one by one. Seizing each with his teeth, he walks backwards drawing it after him, and thus traverses a long road, crossing paths, going round tufts of grass or other obstacles, not letting himself be rebuffed by the difficulty and length of the task. Arrived at his hole, he enters this also backwards, drawing his burden through all his galleries. His dwelling, though the entrance is rather more complicated, resembles that of the Hamster. Like the latter, it is composed of a central room placed in communication with the outside by a maze of passages, which cross one another. That is the sleeping-room, the walls of which are well formed, and which is carpeted with hay. From this various underground passages start which lead to the storerooms, which are three or four in number. It is to these that the Vole bears his harvest. Each compartment is large enough to contain four or five kilogrammes of roots, so that the little rodent finds himself at the end of the season the proprietor of about fifteen kilogrammes of food in reserve. He would have enough to enable him to revel in abundance if he were able to reckon without his neighbours. This diligent animal has in fact one terrible parasite. This is Man, who will not allow him to enjoy in peace the fruits of his long labour and economy. In Siberia, a long and severe winter follows a very hot summer; in this season the inhabitants often lack provisions. A moment comes when they are glad to make up for want of bread by edible roots; but the search for these is long and troublesome, and should indeed have been thought of during summer. Man, during the fine weather less foreseeing than the rodent, does not hesitate when famine has come to turn to him for help. As he is the weaker, the Vole is obliged to submit to this vexatious tax. According to Pallas,[48] the inhabitants seek these nests full of provisions and dig them up. The conqueror takes all he pleases, and abandons the rest to the unfortunate little beast, who, whether he likes it or not, has to be content. In this region the burrows of the Vole abound; therefore this singular tithe ensures a considerable revenue to those who levy it, as may be understood when we remember the extent of the stores amassed by the animal. [48] Pallas, _Ueber d. am Volgastrome bemerkten Wanderungen der grossen Wassermäuse (Arvicola amphibius), Nord­-Beitr._, vol. i., 1781, p. 335. A Vole resembling the _Arvicola arvalis_, but larger, paler, and more rat-like, with large shining eyes and very short tail, overran in 1892-93 the classic land of Thessaly, the land of Olympus, and the Vale of Tempe. It has always inhabited this region, and the old Greeks had an Apollo Smintheus, or Myoktonos, the Mouse-destroying God. "At the beginning of March," according to Prof. Loeffler, who has given an account of this invasion,[49] "the Voles were only beginning to troop from the slopes of the hills and the fallow-lands to the cultivated fields. It was frequently observed that they followed regular paths during their inroads. Thus they advanced along the railway embankment. Their progress seemed to be rather slow. Perhaps they do not advance further till the inhabitants of one of their strongholds or so-called castles have become too numerous. The runs which they excavate are at a depth of about twenty to thirty centimetres below the surface of the ground. The extent of their runs varies, and we found them extending in length from thirty to forty metres and more. These runs are connected with the surface by vertical holes of about five centimetres in diameter. In many places four, five, and more holes have led to the same run. In such cases there is generally, not far off, an enlargement for the nest, lined with finely-ground vegetable material, where the young are produced and reared. In front of newly-opened holes the earth, which has been thrown far out, forms smooth hillocks. There were many well-defined and well-trodden paths on the ground, by which the Voles pass from one hole to another. They are never seen out of their holes by day, not even in places where the entire ground is riddled with holes like a sieve. They do not come out in search of food till the evening; even then not many are to be seen, but the peculiar squeaking noise they make is to be heard everywhere. Next day all sorts of freshly-severed plants are to be found in the holes. Stalks of corn they manipulate by standing on their hind legs and gnawing through the stalk; when this is bitten off they drag it into their holes to devour it there, sometimes making it smaller. They do their work with amazing rapidity. One evening a field was visited which was to be mowed next day, but when the labourers came in the morning they found nothing to cut. The Voles had destroyed the entire crop in a single night. A miller in the neighbourhood of Velestino reported that he went to his field early one morning, cut a measure of corn, loaded it on his ass, and brought it to his mill. When he returned to his mill with a second load he found scarcely a vestige of the first remaining. Thinking it had been stolen he kept watch for the thief; but suddenly, to his great astonishment, hosts of Voles appeared and set to work to carry off the second load." Such facts as these recorded by Loeffler are by no means a merely recent phenomenon; Aristotle was familiar with the devastations of the Voles, and wrote that "some small farmers, having one day observed that their corn was ready for harvest, when they went the following day to cut their corn, found it all eaten." Other ancient writers record similar facts.[50] [49] _Centralblatt f. Bak. u. Parasitenkunde_, July 1892, and _Zoologist_, September 1892. [50] _Zoologist_, May 1893. It may be added that the Scottish Vole, which was so destructive about the same time, does not burrow to a depth like the Thessaly Vole, but lives in shallow runs amongst the roots of herbage. Its exploits are recorded in a Report on the Plague of Field-Mice in Scotland, made by a committee appointed by the President of the Board of Agriculture, 1893. Two birds of North America, belonging to the Woodpecker family, prepare their provisions for the bad season with consummate art; not only do they harvest them and place them in shelter, but they arrange them in such a manner that at the right moment they can utilise them in the most convenient manner. One of them which is common in California, the _Melanerpes formicivorus_, nourishes himself, as his name indicates, by insects, and especially ants. All the summer he gives himself up to this hunt, but at the same time he collects acorns, which he does not touch, however, so long as he can find other food. He amasses them in the following ingenious manner: he chooses a tree and hollows out in its trunk a cavity just capable of receiving one acorn. He then carries a fruit and introduces it forcibly into the hole he has just made. Thus buried, the acorn can neither fall nor become the prey of another animal. In the domain of these birds trees may be found which are riddled like a sieve with holes stopped up by an acorn as by a plug. When the hunting of insects ceases to be fruitful, the _Melanerpes_ visits his barns. If an ordinary bird wished to eat one of these fruits, at each stroke of his beak, on account of the polish and convexity of the acorn's surface, it would escape him, and only by a series of reiterated efforts would the interior be exposed; but for the American woodpecker the task is simplified; each acorn being maintained firmly in the bark, it is sufficient to break the envelope and the pulp is easily seized.[51] [51] See, for instance, _Nature_, 20th July 1871; also A. L. Heermann, "Notes on the Birds of California," _Journ. Acad. Nat. Sc. Philadelphia_, 2nd Series, vol. ii., 1853, p. 259. A relation of this bird, the _Colaptes mexicanus_, does not yield to him in economy and skill. He places his barn in the interior of a plant which is very abundant in the zone he inhabits. Insectivorous during a part of the year, he is forced to renounce this diet during the dry season. In the regions of Mexico where this bird is found the dry period is so absolute that he would die of hunger for want of insects or fruits if he had not taken the precaution of laying up stores during spring. His store consists of acorns. He has not time to fix them one by one, like the _Melanerpes_, and only thinks at first of rapidly collecting a large quantity. But it is in deciding the question as to where they are to be laid up that the _Colaptes_ shows his remarkable intelligence. In the forests where he lives are to be found aloes, yuccas, and agaves. When the agaves have flowered, the flower-bearing stem, two or three metres in length, shrivels, but remains standing for some time. Its peripheral portion is hardened by the heat, while the sap in the interior almost entirely disappears. A hollow cylinder with a well-sheltered cavity is thus formed, and the _Colaptes_ proposes to utilise it as a storehouse. His acorns will there be well protected against external influences and against the birds whose beaks are too weak to pierce the agave. It is then a question of filling the tube. The animal first pierces the wall towards the base of the stalk; through this hole he introduces acorns until he has filled the lower part of the cavity. This done, he makes a new hole rather above the first, and fills the interval between the two, continuing this process until he has arrived at the top of the stalk and filled the whole interior. (Figs. 10 and 11.) The bird seems at first to take unnecessary trouble by boring so many holes. He would reach his end as well, it would seem, by making a single hole at the top to fill his storehouse, and another at the bottom to empty it. But we must not thus accuse him of lack of judgment. The interior of the tube is just large enough for the passage of an acorn; but at certain points the sap is not entirely absorbed, and there might easily be an impediment which would leave a large part of the cavity empty. Hence the necessity for a number of openings. When the sun has scorched up plants, and provisions are rare, he turns to his barns of abundance. Now and every time that he has need he can utilise the method that has been employed by his cousin the _Melanerpes_. In order to feed on each acorn without too much trouble, or allowing it to slip from his beak, the bird places it in a vice. He hollows a hole in the trunk of a tree, introduces the fruit there forcibly, and eats it at his ease.[52] [52] Henri de Saussure, "Observations sur les moeurs de divers oiseaux du Mexique," _Arch. Sci. phys. et natur._, 1859, pp. 21-41. [Illustration: FIG. 10.] [Illustration: FIG. 11.] The provisions collected by these two birds reveal a remarkable fact. They possess indeed two distinct diets; they do not preserve for the period of famine the overplus of the foods which they consume in the period of abundance. They chase insects and feed on them as long as they can find them, while they gather up in their storehouses an entirely different food. _Physiological reserves._--All the animals of which I have just spoken place their provisions for the future in barns in the same manner as Man. Those who have not this foresight are either able to nourish themselves in all seasons by the chase, or else, after having feasted one half of the year, they fast during the other half. In the latter case they consume during the fasting period a portion of their own substance, and use up materials placed in reserve in their organism, in the form of fat for example. This arrangement, which allows them to prolong life, though growing thin, until the next season of prosperity, is not under the control of the will. It is a complication of physiological phenomena resulting from the functioning of different parts of the organism. _Stages between physiological reserves and provisions._--Between physiological reserves and industrial stores we may place as an intermediate stage the interesting case of the Honey Ants.[53] [53] H. C. McCook, _The Honey Ants of the Garden of the Gods, and the Ants of the American Plains_, Philadelphia, 1882. [Illustration: FIG. 12.] [Illustration: FIG. 13.] These insects (_Myrmecocystus_) live in Texas, and form colonies in which certain individuals play a very special part They exaggerate to an extreme point the power of preserving provisions in their crops. These materials are not assimilated; they do not form part of the animal's body, and although placed inside it cannot be compared to physiological reserves. It is especially curious that they are not to be utilised only by the animal itself, but also by the other members of the colony who are not able to form such stores. Among the _Myrmecocystus_ there are workers of two sorts; the first kind resemble other ants with some differences of detail, and build and hollow the earth nest which shelters the community. The second kind is quite different; the abdomen in these workers is enormously distended so as to constitute a voluminous sphere, which may become four or five times larger than the thorax and head together. (Fig. 12.) On this distended receptacle appear several darker plates; these are the remains of the chitinous parts of the primitive wings. In the fine season these ants go out in a band and collect a sweet liquor which forms pearly drops on certain galls of oak leaves. These drops, elaborated into honey, gradually fill the crop, distending it and pushing back neighbouring organs until it receives its globular form. When they have arrived at this obese condition, the heavy honey ants no longer leave the nest. They remain without movement, hanging by their legs to the roof or lying against the walls of a room. The workers who have remained slender come and go, attending to their usual occupations, and pass near the others without paying attention to them or going out of the way to lend assistance to their impotent sisters when one of them has rolled over on the ground and can no longer arise unaided. (Fig. 13.) They only cease to be indifferent when impelled by the selfish sentiment of hunger, and then it is to ask and not to give assistance. The fat ants in fact could not themselves consume all the honey that they have elaborated; the others in times of famine approach them, caress them with their antennæ, and obtain by solicitation a drop of honey which the large ones disgorge from the crop. Here, then, is a colony in which the division of labour has reached a remarkable degree of polymorphism. Some of the members accomplish the work of engineers and masons, while the others fabricate for the community a store of honey. Instead of depositing these provisions in cells like bees, they preserve them in their own digestive tube. This custom has re-acted to such an extent on the form of their bodies that at first sight they seem to belong to a different species. [Illustration: FIG. 14.] _Animals who submit foods to special preparation in order to facilitate transport._--Not content with collecting materials as they are found in nature, certain animals submit them to preparation with various aims, either to render transport easier or that they may not deteriorate when stored. Among those of whom I have just spoken, some collect with the view of utilising their stores in a more remote future than others. The _Ateucus sacer_ intends to consume the provisions he prepares almost immediately. Yet he acts in so careful a manner that I cannot pass him in silence. This beetle is the sacred Scarabæus so venerated by the Egyptians, who have everywhere reproduced his image in porphyry and granite. He is a most singular insect. The celebrated Fabre has given a complete and very picturesque history of his customs.[54] I have myself had an opportunity of seeing him at work. It was in Persia, in the plain of Susiana, on a hot morning in March. We had passed the night in the open air, proposing to continue our journey in the early morning, but our mules, rendered rather lively by the fresh grass brought out by the spring weather, had decided otherwise. They had all decamped to take a ramble on their own account. In order to pass away the hours taken up by the muleteers in searching for the strayed animals, the Scarabæus would, I thought, furnish me with an amusing and instructive spectacle. During the night the mules had not failed to leave here and there the relics of their digestion. The aroma, borne on the morning breeze, had struck the Scarabæus on awaking. It was his favourite dish. From all points of the sky their heavy silhouettes could be seen against the blue. It was still fresh, the sun having only risen about an hour before; the heat would soon become oppressive, and the sybaritic beetle, without attending to his morning appetite, which his fresh meal could not fail to excite, nourishes the bourgeois dream of making his little pile in order to enjoy himself sheltered from the hot rays. Immediately on arriving on the scene of the accident each began to display feverish activity. All set to work. With their heads, the anterior edge of which is flat and supplied with six strong spines, they raised their provisions; with their anterior feet, which are large and also armed with spines, they moulded the paste and placed it beneath the abdomen between the four other legs, giving it a rounded form. Little by little the sphere increased and acquired the size of a small apple. That was sufficiently large, and besides it was already becoming hot. The insect set about carting away his prize to a sheltered dining-room. He placed his four posterior legs on the ball; with the two last, which were continually moving, he made certain of the equilibrium of the mass; then resting his head and two anterior feet on the ground he pushed backwards, and with extreme rapidity. (Fig. 14.) There was enough for all; each worker could find the just reward for his labour; I witnessed none of the regrettable facts narrated by Fabre. It happens sometimes, according to this ingenious observer, that a cunning Scarabæus, who has taken no part in the laborious labour of moulding the paste, arrives when it is on the road to aid the convoy, or even simply to pretend to help, in order that when the moment has come he may claim a share in the coveted meal, or even carry it all away if he can profit by a momentary inattention on the part of the lawful proprietor. I followed one of these Coleoptera for more than five metres from the place where his labour began. After having deposited his ball he began to dig up the earth around it;[55] but the mules had returned and I was obliged to depart. [54] J. H. Fabre, _Souvenirs entomologiques_, 1879. [55] In captivity also, as Mrs. Brightwen found, the Scarabæus always attempts to bury its ball in the earth. I have no doubt that subsequent events were not exactly the same as narrated by Fabre for the Scarabæus of Provence. The insect having made his hole, buries himself in it for a _tête à tête_ with the precious sphere. He immediately sets about passing the whole through his body. Without haste but without rest, for a week or a fortnight, as long as there is any of it left, he eats continuously, and continuously digests. He does not stop for a moment, his jaws are working the whole time; and Fabre has called attention to the fact that from the opposite extremity of the animal a continuous thread emerges without breaking, and becomes coiled up. _Care bestowed on harvested provisions._--Among the animals who take particular care of the provisions they have amassed, special mention must be made of certain species of Ants. It was formerly believed that these industrious Hymenoptera are not accustomed to store up in barns for the winter. This opinion long prevailed owing to the authority of Huber, so competent in these matters, although the ancients were well acquainted with the storehouses of ants.[56] But it was founded on an exclusive study of these insects in northern countries, in which, during the cold season, they become torpid and buried in their hybernal sleep. Naturally they have no need of food during this period, but it was incorrect to generalise from this fact. The ants of the south are active all the year round. An English naturalist, Moggridge, who passed several winters at Mentone, has placed this fact out of doubt. Suffering from an incurable disease, he occupied the last years of his life in observing and setting down for the instruction of others the habits of these insects. He found that ants of the species _Atta barbara_ store up grains. They utilise plants of various kinds, but usually fumitory, oats, nettle, various species of _Veronica_, etc. They procure these grains towards the end of autumn, collecting them on the soil, or even, when they do not fall in sufficient quantities, climbing up the plants and gathering them in position. An ant will, for instance, ascend the stem of a fruiting plant, of shepherd's-purse, let us say, and select a well-filled but green pod, mid-way up the stem, those below being ready to shed their seeds at a touch. Then seizing it in its jaws, and fixing its hind legs firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so to strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk until they snap; it then patiently backs down the stem. Sometimes two ants combine their efforts; one, at the base of the peduncle, gnaws at the point of greatest tension, while the other hauls upon it and twists it. And sometimes the ants drop the capsules to their companions below, corresponding with the curious account given by Ælian of the way the spikelets of corn are thrown down "to the people below." In this labour they display the activity usual in their race, and do not stop until they have carried away to their barns the amount of provision they desire. When their wealth is stored up in the nest, the ants pile up the grains in some hundred little rooms designed for this purpose, each measuring from seven to eight centimetres in diameter, and three or four in height; the average granary being about the size of a gentleman's gold watch. Adding up the quantities of grain divided between these different barns, it is found that they may be estimated at about 500 or 600 grammes, which represents a very large number of meals for such small appetites, and must cost colossal labour if we take into consideration the size of the workers. But when the harvest is completed, the _Atta barbara_ have not completed their task; they are too ingenious to limit themselves to waiting with crossed legs for the moment to come when they may enjoy their labour, without considering the damage that may arise. Their first care is to prevent the grains from germinating for some weeks. How they obtain this result is not exactly known, but it is certain that germination does not take place, although all the conditions of heat and moisture offered by the interior of the ant-hill are favourable to it; it is not less certain that this arrest is due to the ants. This is shown in a very simple manner. It is sufficient to prevent the access of the insects to one of these chambers to cause the grains to germinate immediately. We can only suppose some direct action of the ants, every other hypothesis falling before this single fact: the arrested phenomenon is produced as soon as the _Atta barbara_ no longer acts on it. Therefore they arrest germination without rendering it impossible, and when the moment arrives for utilising the accumulated stores, their first care is to allow the grains to follow the normal course of evolution. The envelope breaks, the little plant makes its appearance; radicle and stalk come to light. But the ants do not permit the development to go too far. The little plant, in order to grow, digests the starch which is associated with the albumen, for it is not yet able to draw its nourishment direct from the soil. To be absorbed and assimilated this starch must first be transformed into sugar. This chemical transformation being effected, the grain is in the condition in which the ants prefer it. Like a wine-grower who watches over the fermentation in his vat, and stops it before the wine turns sour, they stop the digestion of the starch at this stage. If we do not know how they retard germination, we know at all events how they render it impossible at this later stage. It is the young plant which absorbs the glucose, and which must therefore be destroyed; they cut off the radicle with their mandibles, and gnaw the stalk; the germ is thus suppressed. They have not yet finished their manipulations, which must enable them to preserve without further alteration the provisions which they have already rendered palatable. They bring out all their provisions to the sun, dry them, and take them back to the barns. As long as winter lasts they feed on this sweet flour. An anatomical peculiarity enables them to make the most of it; their mouth is so arranged that they can absorb solid particles and eat the albuminous powder. In this they differ from their northern kin, who are obliged to feed exclusively on juices. [56] See chapter on "The Ancient Belief in Harvesting Ants," in McCook's _Agricultural Ants_. I have compared the labours of these ants to those of the wine-grower. Both of them in fact utilise the chemical phenomena going on in living matter; both of them know how at a given moment to prevent the transformation from going further. Neither of them for the rest take into account the part played by diastasis and ferments. The ancestors of one as of the other have by chance found out the method, and they transmit it from generation to generation.[57] [57] J. Treherne Moggridge, _Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders_, London, 1873, pp. 16-60. _Agricultural Ants._--The art of amassing stores is still more highly perfected by an Ant which inhabits North America. It is called the _Pogonomyrmex barbatus_, or, on account of its customs, the Agricultural Ant. It carries out a certain number of preparatory acts, and pushes foresight further than any other animal, since it looks after its property while still growing. It is grain which these insects collect, but only a single species of graminaceous grain. This choice leads them to spend great trouble on their preferred plant. They act in such a way that in the case of men we should say, purely and simply, that they were cultivating. The art of treating the earth with a view of augmenting the products which it yields is certainly of all the manifestations of human activity that which we should least expect to find among animals. It is, however, impossible otherwise to describe the conduct of Agricultural Ants. The field which they prepare is found in front of their ant-hill; it is a terrace in extent about a square metre or more; there they will allow no other plant to grow but that from which they propose to gather fruit. This latter (_Aristida stricta_) is rather like a grain of oats, and in taste resembles rice; in America it is called ant rice. This culture represents for these insects a much more important property than a wheat field for man. It is, in relation to their size, a forest planted with great trees, in comparison with which baobabs and sequoias are dwarfs. It is not known if the _Pogonomyrmex_ sow their rice; Lincecum asserted that the ants actually sow the seeds, that he had seen the process going on year after year; "there can be no doubt," he concludes, "of the fact that this particular species of grass is intentionally planted, and in farmer-like manner carefully divested of all other grasses and weeds during the time of its growth."[58] McCook is not able to accept this unqualified conclusion. "I do not believe that the ants deliberately sow a crop, as Lincecum asserts, but that they have, for some reason, found it to their advantage to permit the _Aristida_ to grow upon their disks, while they clear off all other herbage; that the crop is seeded yearly in a natural way by droppings from the plant, or by seeds cast out by the ants, or dropped by them; that the probable reason for protecting the _Aristida_ is the greater convenience of harvesting the seed; but, finally, that there is nothing unreasonable, nor beyond the probable capacity of the emmet intellect, in the supposition that the crop is actually sown. Simply, it is the Scotch verdict--Not proven."[59] However it may be, they certainly allow no other plant to grow in the neighbourhood of their grain, to withdraw the nourishment which they wish to reserve entirely for it. Properly speaking, they weed their field, cutting off with their jaws all the troublesome plants which appear above the soil. They pursue this labour very diligently, and no strange shoot escapes their investigations. Thus cared for, their culture flourishes, and at the epoch of maturity the grains are collected one by one and carried within. Like all harvesters, these Hymenoptera are at the mercy of a shower that may fall during the harvest. They are well aware that in this case their provisions would be damaged, and that they would run the risk of germination or decay in the barns. Therefore, on the first sunny day all the ants, as observed by Lincecum and Buckley, may be seen carrying their grains outside, only bringing them back when they have been thoroughly dried, and always leaving behind those that have sprouted.[60] [58] Lincecum's most important published paper on the habits of the _Myrmica molefaciens_ appeared in the _Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia_, vol. xviii., 1866, p. 323-331. See also Darwin, _Proceedings of the Linnæan Soc._, 1861. [59] H. C. McCook, _Natural History of the Agricultural Ants of Texas_, Philadelphia, 1879, pp. 33-39. [60] McCook, _Agricultural Ants of Texas_, pp. 105-107. _Gardening Ants._--The Leaf-cutting Ants (_Oecodoma_) of tropical America are often alluded to by travellers on account of their ravages on vegetation; and they are capable of destroying whole plantations of orange, mango, and lemon trees. They climb the tree, station themselves on the edge of a leaf and make a circular incision with their scissor-like jaws; the piece of leaf, about the size of a sixpence, held vertically between the jaws, is then borne off to the formicarium. This consists of low wide mounds, in the neighbourhood of which no vegetation is allowed, probably in order that the ventilation of the underground galleries may not be interfered with. For a long time there was considerable doubt as to the use to which the leaf-cutting ants put the leaves; some naturalists supposed they are used directly as food, others that the ants roof their underground dwellings with them. The question was set at rest by Fritz Müller, who observed these ants in Brazil,[61] and independently by Belt, who studied them in Nicaragua, and has written an interesting account of their proceedings.[62] The real use of the leaves is as manure on which to grow a minute species of fungus; these ants are, in reality, mushroom growers and eaters. Belt several times exposed the underground chambers to observation and found that they were always about three parts filled with "a speckled, brown, flocculent, spongy-looking mass of a light and loosely-connected substance." Scattered throughout these masses were the pupæ and larvæ, together with the smallest division of workers who do not engage in leaf-carrying, but whose duties appear to be to cut up the leaves into small fragments and to care for the young. On examination the masses proved to be composed of "minutely sub-divided pieces of leaves, withered to a brown colour, and overgrown and lightly connected together by a minute white fungus that ramified in every direction throughout it." That they do not eat the leaves themselves was shown by the fact that near the tenanted chambers were found deserted ones filled with the refuse of leaves that had been exhausted as manure, and which served as food for the larvæ of various beetles. There are numerous holes leading up from the underground chambers, and these are opened out or closed up, apparently in order to regulate the temperature below. Great care is also taken that the nest should be neither too dry nor too damp; if a sudden shower comes on the leaves are left near the entrance, and carried down when nearly dry; during very hot weather, on the other hand, when the leaves would be parched in a very short time, the ants only work in the cool of the day and during the night. Occasionally, inexperienced ants carry in grass and unsuitable leaves; these are invariably brought out again and thrown away.[63] [61] _Nature_, 11th June 1874. And see Appendix. [62] _Naturalist in Nicaragua_, 2nd edition, 1888, pp. 71-84. [63] For a brief discussion of the relation of ants to plants generally, see Lubbock's _Ants, Bees, and Wasps_, 1882, chap. iii. _Domestic animals of Ants._--Following through different species the perfection reached in the art of laying up provisions for the future, we have gradually arrived at methods resembling those of Man. But a foresight still greater and nearer to his is manifested by those ants who breed and keep near them animals of different species, not for the sake of their flesh, but for certain secretions, just as man utilises the milk of the cow or the goat. Ants have true domestic animals belonging to a variety of species, but the most widely spread are the _Claviger_ and the Aphides or plant-lice. To keep these insects at their disposal, Hymenoptera act in various ways: some, who are a little experienced, are content to take advantage of a free aphis which chance may put in their way; others shut up their cattle in stables situated in the midst of the ant-hill, or else pen them in the country at a spot where they can best find their food. These facts have long since been carefully studied and leave no room for doubt. The _Claviger testaceus_ is a small beetle, often met in the dwellings of ants. Nature has not been very generous on its behalf. It is blind, and its eyes are indeed altogether atrophied. The elytra are soldered at the median edge, so that it cannot spread its wings to fly. It is an animal predestined to the yoke; and for the rest its masters treat it with extreme kindness. The yellow ants, according to Müller,[64] have reduced this outcast beetle to domesticity, and it is almost a piece of good fortune for him to have lost his freedom and to have gained in exchange a shelter and a well-furnished trough. These insects are in fact cared for by their masters, who feed them by disgorging into their mouths the sweet liquids they have gathered here and there. If a nest is disturbed the ants hasten to carry their eggs and larvæ out of danger; they display the same solicitude with regard to the _Claviger_, and carefully bear them to the depth of their galleries. It must not be believed that the practical insect takes so much care in order to repair the injustice of nature towards the beetle; the part of a devoted sick nurse would not suit him; he cares for the _Claviger_ because it is his property, a capital which brings in interest in the shape of excellent sweet little drops which are good to suck.[65] [64] Ph. W. J. Müller, "Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Gattung _Claviger_," _Germer u. Zincken's Magaz. d. Entomol._, iii., 1881, pp. 69-112. [65] There is little doubt, however, that some species of Aphides and allied Coccidæ would be liable to extermination if not protected by their ant masters. See, for instance, Forel, _Bull. Soc. Vaud._, 1876. Mr. Cockerell in Jamaica has noted an interesting Coccid, _Icerya rosæ_, which is protected by ants; "at the present moment some of these _Iceryæ_ are enjoying life, which would certainly have perished at my hands but for the inconvenience presented by the numbers of stinging ants."--_Nature_, 27th April 1893. Mr. Romanes (_Nature_, 18th May 1893) quotes as follows from a letter addressed to him by the Rev. W. G. Proudfoot:--"On looking up I noticed that hundreds of large black ants were going up and down the tree, and then I saw the aphides.... But what struck me most was that the aphides showered down their excretions independently of the ants' solicitations, while at other times I noticed that an ant would approach an aphis without getting anything, and would then go to another. I was struck with this, because I remembered Mr. Darwin's inability to make the aphides yield their secretion after many experiments. A large number of hornets were flying about the tree, but seemed afraid of the ants; for when they attempted to alight, an ant would at once rush to the spot, and the hornet would get out of its way." A yellow ant, who wishes to enjoy the result of the cares given to his pensioner, approaches it and gently caresses it with his antennæ; the other shows signs of pleasure at this visit, and soon a pearly drop appears on the tuft of hairs at the edge of its elytra, and this the ant hastens to lick. The beetle is thus exploited and tickled by all the members of the community to which he belongs who meet him on their road. But when it has been milked two or three times it ceases to secrete. A solicitous ant arriving at this moment finds its efforts in vain, but still behaves like a good shepherd; it shows no impatience or anger towards its exhausted beast, knowing well that it is only necessary to come back a little later or to go to another member of the herd. Nor are his cares lessened by finding the source dried up. He foresees that it will still be good after repose, and if it is hungry he disgorges food for it. _Degrees of civilisation in the same species of Ants._--These facts are sufficiently marvellous in themselves, but are more surprising when we recollect that they cannot be regarded as an innate and unreflecting instinct with which all the individuals of the same species are endowed. The art of domesticating the _Claviger_ is a stage of civilisation reached by some tribes and not by others. Lespès[66] has placed this out of doubt in the following manner. He had specimens of _Lasius niger_ who exploited a flock of Coleoptera. Having met ants of the same species who possessed no flocks, he brought them some. At the sight of the little insects they threw themselves on them, killed them, and devoured them. If we compare these facts with those which pass in human societies, it will seem to us that these latter Hymenoptera behave like a horde of hunters in the presence of a flock of sheep, while the first have already arrived at the sheep-herding stage. [66] "Recherches sur quelques Coleoptères aveugles," _Ann. Sc. Nat._, v. Série, t. ix., 1868, p. 71. _Aphis-pens and paddocks._--Ants can also keep Aphides in their homes. In this case, fearing that the adult beasts may not be able to adopt a change of surroundings and food, they bring the eggs to their nests and care for them at the same time as their own children. In time they come out and constitute a flock easy to tame. Other ants, still more intelligent, have discovered a method of holding the Aphides captive, while allowing them to enjoy their accustomed life, and to feed at will on the foods they prefer on their own favourite spots. It is sufficient for this purpose to establish barriers around a group of cattle who have themselves fixed the place of their sojourn. The _Lasius niger_, a skilful architect, constructs vaulted passages from his dwelling into the country. These covered roads, built with earth moistened with saliva, have various ends; some have been made in order to reach remote work sheltered from the sun, or to give concealment from enemies. Many lead to the pens of the Aphides; they reach from the anthill as far as the foot of a plant where these insects are abundant. In order to have their milkers at their disposal, without removing them from pasture, the ants make tunnels along the stalk, and enclose within it all the Aphides they meet. They thus prevent any desire for a distant ramble. But in order that the flock may not be too closely confined, the _Lasius niger_ enlarge the galleries in places, and make a sort of chamber or stable in which the beasts may disport themselves at ease. These halls, which are proportionately very vast, are supported against the branches and leaves of the plant which bears up the walls and the vaults. The captives find themselves then with all the advantages of material life, and may be milked with every facility.[67] [67] P. Huber, _Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis indigènes_, pp. 176-200. An allied species of ant, the _Lasius brunneus_, lives almost entirely on the sweet secretion of large Aphides in the bark of oaks and walnut trees. The ants construct around these insects cabins made of fragments of wood, and wall them in completely so as to keep them at their own disposal. The _Myrmica_ also forms similar pasture lands; its system is rather less perfect than that of the _Lasius_, as it does not form covered galleries to reach its stables. It is content to build large earth huts around a colony. A large hole, which allows the passage of the ants, but not the escape of the flock, is formed so that they may come to milk their cows. They use the same methods we have seen practised on the _Claviger_, caressing the insect with their antennæ until the sugared drop appears.[68] [68] In Central America, Belt has described how the Leaf-hoppers are milked for their honey by various species of Ants, and also by a Wasp. He considered that some species of Leaf-hopper would be exterminated if it were not for the protection they received from Ants.--_Naturalist in Nicaragua_, 1888, pp. 227-230. An example is quoted which shows still greater intelligence and foresight in Ants. They have been known to repopulate their territories after an epidemic, or at least after the destruction of their Aphides. The proprietor of a tree, finding it covered with these exploited beasts, cleared it of its inconvenient guests by repeated washes; but the dispossessed Hymenoptera, considering that this pasture close to their nest was very convenient for a flock, resolved to repopulate it, and for some time these tenacious insects could be seen bringing back among the foliage Aphides captured elsewhere.[69] [69] P. Huber, _Recherches_, etc., pp. 210-250; Lubbock, "On the Habits of Ants," _Wiltshire Arch. and Nat. Hist. Mag._, 1879, pp. 49-62. _Slavery among Ants._--The custom of making slaves is widely spread in the ant world; I have already described the expeditions organised to obtain them. We will now consider the relations of these insects among themselves. The _Formica sanguinea_ takes possession of the eggs of the _Formica fusca_ and rears them with its own. When the slaves reach the adult condition they live beside their masters and share their labours, for the latter work, are skilful in all tasks, and can by their own activity construct an ant-hill and keep it going. If they desire servants, it is not in order to throw all the work on them, but to have intelligent assistants. This is the primitive form of slavery as it first existed among men. It was not until later that it became modified, to become at last an institution against which the sentiment of justice arose. Other species of Ants have pushed the exploitation of slaves to a point Man has never reached. But the _Formica sanguinea_ are companions to their helpers rather than masters, and even show them great consideration. When the colony emigrates one may see the owners of the nest, who are of larger size than the _Formica fusca_, take these up in their jaws and carry them the entire way. The Amazons (_Polyergus rufescens_) act otherwise. Very skilful in obtaining slaves and powerfully armed for triumphant raids, their nests always contain legions of servants, and the custom of being waited upon has become so impressed on the race by heredity that it is an instinct stronger even than personal preservation. The master ant has not only lost the taste and the idea of work, but even the habit of feeding himself, and would die of hunger beside a pile of honey or sugar if a grey ant was not there to put it into his mouth. Thus Huber, the earliest accurate observer of these ants, enclosed thirty Amazons with several pupæ and larvæ of their own species, and twenty negro pupæ, in a glass box, the bottom of which was covered with a thick layer of earth; honey was given to them, so that, although cut off from their auxiliaries, the Amazons had both shelter and food. At first they appeared to pay some little attention to the young; this soon ceased, and they neither traced out a dwelling nor took any food; in two days one-half died of hunger, and the other remained weak and languid. Commiserating their condition, he gave them _one_ of their black companions. This little creature, unassisted, formed a chamber in the earth, gathered together the larvæ, put everything into complete order, and preserved the lives of those which were about to perish. All their industry is expended in the acquisition of captives. The _Polyergus_ avoid introducing into their houses adults who would not become reconciled to the loss of liberty, and would prefer to die rather than work for others. They carry off the larvæ of _Formica fusca_ and _Formica cunicularia_. When brought into the ant-hill these larvæ are placed in the jaws of slaves of their own species, who care for them; they are born captives, and have neither the regret nor the idea of a free life. Among the Amazons the slaves undertake every labour; it is they who build and who care for the larvæ of their masters, as well as those carried away in expeditions. They have also complicated personal services towards the _Polyergus_. They bring them food, lick off the dust from their hairs, clean them, carry them from one place to another, if there is need to emigrate, although they themselves are much smaller. The masters, by force of losing interest in work, lose also their votes when it is a question of taking a resolution concerning the whole colony. The servants act on their own initiative and their own responsibility, direct constructions according to their own ideas, and even in grave concerns, such as emigration, the idle masters do not seem to be consulted. The workers deliberate among themselves, and having come to a decision, proceed to execute it. They transport the household goods, the eggs, the future of the city, and the Amazons who have become its parasites. It is a most curious fact that the slaves should submit to this precarious fate when their masters are absolutely dependent on them. It is just to add that the robust mandibles of the latter may contribute to preserve the position they enjoy.[70] [70] Lubbock has a brief discussion on the relations of Ants to their domestic animals and to their slaves, _Ants, Bees, and Wasps_, chap. iv. CHAPTER V. PROVISION FOR REARING THE YOUNG. THE PRESERVATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE PRESERVATION OF THE SPECIES--FOODS MANUFACTURED BY THE PARENTS FOR THEIR YOUNG--SPECIES WHICH OBTAIN FOR THEIR LARVÆ FOODS MANUFACTURED BY OTHERS--CARCASSES OF ANIMALS STORED UP--PROVISION OF PARALYSED LIVING ANIMALS--THE CAUSE OF THE PARALYSIS--THE SURENESS OF INSTINCT--SIMILAR CASES IN WHICH THE SPECIFIC INSTINCT IS LESS POWERFUL AND INDIVIDUAL INITIATIVE GREATER--GENERA LESS SKILFUL IN THE ART OF PARALYSING VICTIMS. _The preservation of the individual and the preservation of the species._--In the previous chapter we have seen animals preparing for the future, and amassing materials for their own subsistence. In other cases these provisions are destined to feed the young. It is the same industry, sometimes exercised for the preservation of the individual, sometimes for the perpetuation of the race. We must expect to find acts of the last kind more instinctive and less reflective than those of the first, and this agrees well with what we know of natural selection. If we now see living beings display so many resources and calculate with such certainty all that will favour the healthy development of their descendants, we must not necessarily conclude that the species possess these instincts from the beginning. They are not to be regarded as mechanisms artfully wound up and functioning since the appearance of life on the earth with the same inevitable regularity. The qualities which we find in them were weak at first; they have developed in the course of ages, and have finally, by heredity, been impressed upon the creatures to manifest themselves by necessary acts from which there is no longer any escape. There is no need for surprise if we meet to-day, I do not say among all, but among a very large number of animals, this foresight for offspring in a well-marked form. It is easy to understand that the species that first acquired and fixed an instinct propitious to the increase of the race has rapidly prospered, stifling beneath its extension those that are less favoured from this point of view, which is of capital importance in a struggle for a place beneath the sun. At the present day if the struggle of animal life offers few facts of lack of foresight for the rearing of young, it is because this defect has killed the races who were subject to it; they have disappeared, or have only been saved by qualities of another order. For the rest, if it is difficult to reconstitute except in imagination the different stages through which, in time, and in a determined species, acts at first imperfect, but designed, have become perfect and instinctive, we can at least find in space different degrees of the same instinct in allied genera which lead us by a succession of transitions from mechanical action to reflective action. As I cannot quote all the facts showing this care for the future, I will select a few. It must be said at first that a considerable number of animals show nothing of the kind. Let us leave aside all the inferior beings to speak of those among whom we may expect some degree of method. Crustacea, fish, Batrachians, and many others lay their eggs, are contented to conceal them a little so that they may not become a too easy prey, and are altogether indifferent as to what may happen afterwards. As soon as they come out, the young obtain their own food from day to day; myriads are destroyed, and if the races remain so strong numerically it is because they are saved by the innumerable quantity of eggs produced by a single female. If it were not for this prodigious fecundity these species would have disappeared. Birds make no provision for their young; but, on the other hand, as long as the latter are weak and unable to obtain their own prey, the parents feed them every day by hunting both for themselves and the brood. I will not insist on those beings who, like mammals, produce physiological reserves, not for their own use, but for the profit of their young. The females of these animals elaborate materials from their own organism and store them up in the form of milk to nourish the young. This fact is related to foresight, with a view to offspring, exactly in the same way as the Honey Ants show a transformation of foresight for the individual. In both cases industry is replaced by the function of a specially adapted organ. _Foods manufactured by the parents for the young._--It is especially insects with whose industries we are here concerned, and they are more or less instinctive in various cases. Every one knows how the Hymenoptera prepare honey from the pollen of flowers, to some extent for themselves, but especially in order that their young may at the moment of appearance possess a food which will enable them to undergo their first metamorphosis sheltered from the inclemencies outside. These foods are enclosed with great art, according to the species, either in skilfully-constructed cells of wax, as by Bees, or in nests of paper or cardboard which the Wasps fabricate, or again in huts built of earth in the manner of the _Chalicodoma_. _Species which obtain for their larvæ foods manufactured by others._--Other insects have not this taste for lengthy labours, and do not know how to execute them; but they do not intend that their young shall be the victims of maternal lack of skill, and they display marvellous resources to enable them to profit by the foresight of others. [Illustration: FIG. 15.] The _Sitaris muralis_, a beetle whose customs have been described by Fabre in a remarkable manner,[71] may be counted among the cleverest in assuring to its larvæ the goods of others. It puts them in a position to profit by it, and when they are installed they know sufficiently well what to do. The species has so long perpetuated itself by this process that it has become, both in mother and offspring, highly automatic. It is a hymenopterous insect which this family, whose first vital manifestation is theft, thus levies a contribution on. It is called the _Anthophora pilifera_, and during the fine weather it makes a collection of honey intended to be absorbed by its own larvæ, if it had not the misfortune to be watched by one of these intriguing Coleoptera. Wherever in Provence there is a perpendicular wall, natural or artificial, a little cliff, a sloping ditch, or the wall of one of those caves which the people of the country use for putting their tools in, the _Anthophora_ hollows out galleries, at the bottom of which he builds a certain number of chambers. He fills each of them with honey, places in it an egg which floats in the midst of this little lake of nectar, and closes it all up. The _Sitaris_ covets this honey to nourish its offspring, and the chamber to shelter it. After having discovered one of the galleries of which I have spoken, the female _Sitaris_ comes about the beginning of September to lay her eggs, which are numerous, being not generally fewer than two thousand. In the following month the larvæ appear; they are black, and swarm in a little heap mixed up with the remains of egg-shells. They vegetate in this condition for a long time, and may still be found there in May. At this period they have become more active, and, in order to complete their development, are thinking of profiting by their favourable situation near the entrance to a gallery of the Hymenoptera; when a male _Anthophora_ comes within reach, two or three of them catch hold of him and climb on to his thorax. They maintain themselves there by clinging to the hairs. At the moment of fertilisation the male, thus burdened, comes in contact with the female; the coleopterous larvæ then pass on to her, so that, according to Fabre's expression, the meeting of the sexes brings death and life to the eggs at the same time. Henceforth fixed on this laying insect, the little _Sitaris_ remain quiet, and have only to wait; their future is assured. The _Anthophora_ has made her chambers, and with the greatest care has filled each of them with honey. Then in the midst she deposits an egg, which remains floating on the surface like a little boat; when her task is accomplished, the mother passes to a new cell to confide to it another of her descendants. During this time the parasite larva hastily descends the abdominal hairs and allows itself to fall on the egg of the _Anthophora_, to be then borne upon it as upon a raft; its fall must take place at the precise instant which will enable it to embark without falling into the honey, in which just now it would be glued fast, and perish. This series of circumstances results only in the introduction of a single _Sitaris_ into a chamber; the moment which must be profited by is too short for many of them to seize. If the female _Anthophora_ carries others hidden in her hairs, they are obliged to await a new hatching to let themselves glide off. Thus enclosed with the egg of the _Anthophora_ and its provision of honey, the larva has no other rival to fear, and may alone utilise the whole store. This parasitism has to such an extent become a habit with the species, that the larva's organisation has become modified by it. At the moment when it falls into the cell it cannot feed on honey. It is indispensable for its development that it should first devour the egg on which it floats; it can at this period be nourished by no other food. In acting in this way it also frees itself from a voracious being who would require much food. This first repast lasts about eight days, at the end of which it undergoes a moult, takes another form, and begins to float on the honey, gradually devouring it, for at this stage it becomes able to assimilate honey. Slowly its development is completed, with extremely interesting details with which we need not now concern ourselves. The larva of _Sitaris_ is then in conditions exceptionally favourable for growth; but, in spite of appearances, there is no reason for admiring the marvellous foresight and extraordinary sureness of instinct; nearly everything depends on a fortuitous circumstance, a chance. This becomes very evident if we study another related beetle; it is called the _Sitaris colletis_, and lives at the expense of the hymenopterous _Colletes_, as its relative at the expense of the _Anthophora_. But these two species of the same genus are very unequally aided by chance. The one whose history we have just traced attaches itself to an insect whose egg floats above a store of honey; the second chooses a victim who attaches its egg to the walls of a chamber. (Fig. 15.) This almost insignificant difference has a considerable influence on the parasite's evolution. In the first case it is alone, and may develop with certainty; in the second, on the contrary, several _Sitaris_ penetrate the chamber and climb up to attack the egg, which in this case also must be their first food. This rivalry causes a struggle to the death. If one of the larvæ is notably more vigorous than its rivals, it may free itself from them and survive. Let us consider the fate in store for the two species. The first is much more favoured, since a happy chance permits each germ to produce an individual; in the second, each individual which completes its evolution deprives several of its brothers of life. And even this only happens in the most favourable cases, for it may be that not one _Sitaris_ in the chamber may reach the adult state. If the first arrival begins to absorb the egg of the _Colletes_, a second hungry one may kill it in the midst of its repast and take its place. But the conqueror finds the provisions already reduced and insufficient to enable it to reach the moulting stage, at the end of which it could profit by the honey. Ill-nourished and weakened, it cannot support this crisis, and its corpse falls beside that of its fellow whom it had sacrificed. Three or four parasites may thus succeed to the same feast, and the victory of the last is useless to him. His first struggle for life and his first triumph are followed by irreparable defeat. These two examples show very well how a slight difference may favour a species, and how a happy quality is capable of being perpetuated by heredity, since by its very nature it is destined to be extended to more numerous beings. [71] "Hypermetamorphoses et Moeurs des Meloïdes," _Ann. Sc. Nat._, iv. Série, t. 7, 1857, p. 299; also "Nouvelles observations sur l'hypermetamorphose et les Moeurs des Meloïdes," _ibid._, t. 9, 1858, p. 265. [Illustration: FIG. 16.] _Carcasses of animals stored up._--These insects lay up for their offspring stores manufactured by themselves or by others. The class we are now about to consider makes provision of animals either dead or in a torpid condition, with more or less art and more or less sure instinct. Most people have seen the _Necrophorus_ or Burying Beetle working in fields or gardens. These are large Coleoptera who feed on abandoned carrion; everything is good to them--bodies of small mammals, birds, or frogs; they are very easy to please, and as long as the beast is dead that is all they require. When they have found such remains, and consider only how to satisfy their hunger, they do not take much trouble, and gnaw the prey on the spot where they have found it. They are not alone at the feast, and in spite of their diligence numerous rivals come up to dispute it; it is necessary to share with a great number of noisy and voracious flies and insects. In the adult state they come out well from this competition; but as good parents they wish to save their larvæ from it, as in a feeble condition these might suffer severely. They desire to lay up a carcass for their young alone, and with this object they bury it in the earth. The eggs also which will thus develop in the soil have more chance of escaping destruction by various insectivorous animals. If these diggers find a rat (Fig. 16) or a dead bird, three or four unite their efforts, glide beneath it, and dig with immense activity, kicking away with their hind legs the earth withdrawn from the hole. They do not pause, and their work soon perceptibly advances. The rat gradually sinks in the pit as it grows deeper. When they have the good fortune to find the earth soft they can sink the prey in less than two hours to a depth of thirty centimetres. At this level they stop, and throw back into the hole the earth they have dug out, carefully smoothing the hillock which covers the grave. Thus stored up, the carcass is ready to receive the _Necrophorus_ eggs. The females enter the soil and lay on the buried mammal; then they retire, satisfied to leave their little ones, when they appear, face to face with such abundant nourishment. When they emerge from the envelope the young larvæ find themselves in the presence of this stored food, which has been softened by putrefaction and rendered more easy of digestion. If the treasure has not fallen on a spot easy to dig, the _Necrophorus_ quickly recognise the fact, and do not waste time in useless labour. Endowed with considerable strength relatively to their size, three or four of them creep beneath the prey, and co-ordinating their efforts they transport it several metres off to a spot which they know by experience to be suitable for their labours. It may happen that soft earth is too far away, and transport becoming too difficult a task, they renounce it. But as good food should never be wasted, they utilise it by feeding themselves, awaiting a more manageable god-send for their offspring. Many observers have studied these beetles, and all are surprised at their sagacity, and the way in which their various operations are adapted to circumstances; genuine reflection governs their acts, which are always combined to produce a definite effect. _Provision of paralysed living animals._--It is unnecessary to say how much better it would be for the young larva to have at its disposal instead of a carcass a living animal, but paralysed and rendered motionless by some method. It is difficult to believe the thing possible, yet nothing is better established. There is a hymenopterous relative of the Wasp called the _Sphex_. Instead of laying up honey they store animal provisions for their larvæ. Fabre has studied one of them, the _Sphex flavipennis_.[72] It is in September that this wasp lays her eggs; during this month to shelter her little ones she hollows out a dozen burrows and provisions them. She has then to devote about three days' work to each of them, for there is much to do, as may be imagined. For each of these hiding-places the _Sphex_ first pierces a horizontal gallery about two or three inches long; then she bends it obliquely so that it penetrates deeply into the earth, and it is again continued in this direction for about three inches. At the end of this passage three or four chambers are made, usually three; each of these is meant to receive one egg. The insect interrupts its mining task, not forming the three chambers consecutively; when the first is completed she provisions it--we shall soon see in what manner--and lays an egg there; then she blocks it up, suppressing all communication between this cell and the gallery; this done she bores a second passage, provisions it, and lays another egg, closes up the orifice, and proceeds to prepare the third. This work is pushed on with great activity, and when completed the _Sphex_ entirely fills up the subterranean passage, and completely isolates the hope of the race at a depth sufficient to shelter it well. A last precaution is taken: before leaving, the rubbish in front of the obstructed opening is cleared away, and every trace of the operation disappears. The nest is then definitely abandoned, and another one prepared. [72] "Étude sur l'instinct et les metamorphoses des Sphégiens," _Ann. Sci. Nat._, 1856. The chambers in which the larvæ are enclosed--hastily made with little care, and with rough unsmoothed walls--are not very solid, and could not last long without slipping; but as they only have to last for a single season they possess sufficient resistance for the insect's purpose. The larva also knows very well how to protect itself against the roughness of the walls, and overlays them with a silky secretion produced by its glands. We have now to consider the nature of the provisions placed by the _Sphex_ near the egg. Each cell must contain four crickets. That is the amount of food necessary for a larva during its evolution, and these insects are in fact large enough to supply a considerable amount of nourishment. When the _Sphex_ interrupts digging operations it is to fly on a hunting expedition. It soon returns with a cricket it has seized, holding it by one antenna which it turns round in its jaws. It is a heavy burden for the slender _Sphex_ to bear. Sometimes on foot, dragging its burden after it, sometimes flying, and carrying the suspended cricket always in a passive condition, the burrow is gradually reached, not without difficulty. In spite of appearances, the cricket is not dead; it cannot move, but if kept for several days it will not putrefy, and its joints remain supple. It is simply the victim of a general paralysis. _The cause of the paralysis._--It was evidently of the greatest interest to know how the _Sphex_ contrived this capture, and what method it used to suppress the movements of the prey. In order to obtain the solution of this problem, Fabre during a long period accumulated experiments and observations, and at last discovered in every detail how the thing was done. In order to compel the _Sphex_ to act in his presence, he placed himself in front of the orifice of a gallery in which the insect was working; he soon saw it returning with a paralysed cricket. Arrived at the burrow, the insect placed the prey on the ground for a moment and disappeared in the passage to see that everything was in order, and that no damage had taken place since its departure. Everything was going well, and it reappeared, took up its burden, and again entered the subterranean passage, drawing the victim along. It brought it into the chamber for which it was destined, placing it on its back, the head down and the feet towards the door. Then it set out hunting again until it had ranged four crickets side by side. Before attempting a decisive experiment, the observer felt his way. At the moment when the _Sphex_ was buried in the earth examining the chamber, Fabre withdrew the prey a short distance and awaited events. Having made the domiciliary visit, the _Sphex_ then went straight to the place where it had left its insect, but could not find it. It was naturally very perplexed, and examined the neighbourhood with extreme agitation, not knowing what had happened, and evidently regarding the whole affair as very extraordinary; at last it found the victim it was seeking. The cricket still preserved the same immobility; its executioner seized it by an antenna and drew it anew to the entrance of the hole. In the interior of the subterranean domain everything is in good order; the insect had just assured itself of the fact, and we should expect to see it enter with its prey; not at all, it entered alone, and only decided to introduce the prey after it had made a fresh inspection. This fact is surprising, and it is still more surprising that if the practical joke of removing the cricket is repeated several times in succession, the _Sphex_ drags it anew every time to the entrance of the burrow and first descends alone; forty times over this experiment succeeded without the insect deciding to renounce the habitual manoeuvre. Fabre insists on this fact, and rightly, for nothing should be neglected; he makes it a text to show how automatic instinct is, and how the acts which proceed from it are invariably regulated so as to succeed one another always in the same order. In their nature these acts are quite indistinguishable from intelligent acts; only the creature is not capable of modifying them to bring them into harmony with unforeseen circumstances. All this is correct, but where it becomes excessive is in endowing animals alone with instinct and separating them from this point of view from Man. It is incontestable that the custom of visiting the burrow before introducing a victim into it has become so imperious in the _Sphex_ that it cannot be broken, even when it is of no use. It is a mechanical instinct. But we may see an exactly parallel manifestation of human intelligence. In face of danger man utters cries of distress; they are heard and assistance comes. But these appeals are not intelligent and appropriate to the end; they are instinctive. Place the same individual in a situation where he knows very well that his voice cannot be heard; this will not hinder him from reproducing the same acts if he finds himself in the presence of danger. It is thus that the _Sphex_ proceeds, guided by instincts, and it is no reason for despising it. And even in the course of this little experiment the insect gives proof of judgment. When it finds its cricket, it is perfectly aware that it is the same cricket which it brought, that there is no life in it, and that there is no need to re-commence the struggle; it sees too that it is not an ordinary corpse liable to putrefaction, but the very same cricket, and it does not hesitate to utilise it at once. These habits being ascertained, Fabre proceeded to find out how the paralysis is produced. He awaited near a burrow the _Sphex's_ arrival, dragging a victim by an antenna, and while the insect was occupied in the subterranean survey he substituted a living cricket for that which the _Sphex_ had left, expecting to find it on the spot where it had been placed. On emerging it perceives the cricket scampering away; not a moment was to be lost, and without reflection it leapt on the refractory victim. A lively struggle followed, a duel to the death among the blades of grass; it was a truly dramatic spectacle, the agile assailant whirling around the Cricket, who kicked violently with his hind legs. If a blow were to reach the _Sphex_ it would be disembowelled; but it avoids the blows skilfully without ceasing its own violent attack. At last the combat ends; the cricket is brought to earth, turned on to its back, and maintained in this position by the _Sphex_. Still on its guard, the latter seizes in its jaws one of the filaments which terminate the abdomen of the vanquished, placing its legs on the belly; with the two posterior legs it holds the head turned back so as to stretch the under side of the neck. The cricket is unable to move and the conqueror's sting wanders over the horny carapace seeking a joint, feeling for a soft place in which it can enter to give the finishing stroke. The dart at last reaches, between the head and the neck, the spot where the hard portions articulate, leaving between them a space without covering. The joint in the armour is found. The _Sphex's_ abdomen is agitated convulsively; the sting penetrates the skin, piercing a ganglion situated just beneath this point; the venom spreads and acts on the nervous cells, which can no longer convey messages to the muscles. That is not all; the sting wanders over the cricket's belly, this time seeking the joint between the neck and the thorax; it finds it, and is again thrust in with fury; a second ganglion of the nervous chain is thus perforated and poisoned. After these two wounds the victim is completely paralysed. As already mentioned, several facts enable us to recognise that the Cricket is by no means dead. It is simply incapable of movement, as would happen after an injection of curare. This poison kills a superior animal, for it hinders the muscular movements of the chest and diaphragm, necessary to respiration; but if a frog, which can breathe through its skin, is thus acted on it comes to life again at the end of twenty-four or forty-eight hours if the dose has not been too strong. The cricket is in a similar condition; it neither eats nor breathes; being incapable also of movement, there is no vital expenditure; it remains in a sort of torpor, or latent life, awaiting the tragic fate that is reserved for it. When it has been deposited in the little mortuary chamber the _Sphex_ lays an egg on its thorax. The larva will soon come out to penetrate the body of the prey by enlarging the hole left by the sting. It thus finds for its first meals a food which unites the flavour of living flesh with the immobility of death. Nothing can be more convenient. When the first body is eaten it proceeds to the second, and thus devours successively the four victims stored up by maternal foresight. In order not to interrupt the description and interfere with the succession of the acts, I have passed without remark the experiment in which Fabre substituted a living animal for the _Sphex's_ already paralysed captive. It seems to me, however, that in this circumstance the insect showed judgment, and knew how to act in accordance with new requirements. It was evidently the first time in insect memory in which so surprising a phenomenon had been seen as a victim at the last moment again taking the field. We cannot make instinct intervene here. If the _Sphex's_ acts are so automatic as we are sometimes led to believe, in accordance with facts which are perfectly accurate, we ought always to observe the following succession of acts: first, hollowing of the burrow; second, the chase; third, the blows of the dart; fourth, the different manoeuvres for placing the victim in the sarcophagus. Now in the present case the insect had accomplished the first three series of actions, and had even begun the fourth; it ought next to drag the cricket into the burrow without listening to the recriminations which the latter had no business to make, since it was to be regarded as having received the two routine doses of poison. But the _Sphex_ sees its victim come to life, understands this fact, and without seeking to fathom the cause judges that a new struggle and new blows of the sting are necessary; he understands that it is necessary to begin afresh, since the usual result has not been attained. He is then capable of reflection, and the series of acts which he accomplishes are not ordained with such inflexibility that it is impossible for him to modify them in order to conform them to varying circumstances. The _Sphex occitanica_ acts in the same manner as its relative in this complicated art of laying up provisions for the family. The differences are only in detail. Instead of hollowing the burrow first and then setting out on the chase to fill it, it does not devote itself to the labour of digging until a successful expedition has already assured the victim. (Fig. 17.) Instead of attacking crickets it seeks a larger orthopterous insect, the _Ephippigera_. The struggle is no doubt more difficult, but the result is proportionately greater, and the pursuit does not need to be so often renewed; a single captive is sufficient for its larva.[73] [73] For some remarks on the action of the _Sphex_, and for Darwin's opinion on the matter, see Romanes' _Mental Evolution in Animals_, pp. 299-303. [Illustration: FIG. 17.] _The sureness of instinct._--It is not doubtful that a sure inherited instinct conducts the _Sphex_ to prick its victim in the situation of the nervous ganglia, which will be wounded in the act. It may be said that the lesion results from the position in which the hymenopterous insect maintains its victim; for the sting is on the median line, and can only penetrate at the soft points; the two points attacked are then rigorously determined by physical circumstances. But these arguments have no bearing if we consider the method of procedure adopted by the _Ammophila_,[74] a hymenopterous insect related to the preceding, which paralyses caterpillars. It is free in this case to insert its sting at any portion of the body; yet it knows how to turn over and arrange the captive so that the dart shall penetrate both times at two points where ganglia will be poisoned and immobility without death be induced. It must then be agreed that there is here an instinct much too sure to be called mechanical; but these facts, which considered alone seem simply marvellous, become much less so, and lend themselves to evolutionary interpretation, when it is recognised that they are related by insensible degrees to other facts of the same order, much more intelligent and at the same time less sure. [74] Paul Marchal, "Observations sur _l'Ammophila affinis_," _Arch. de Zool. exp. et génér._, ii. Série, t. x., 1892. _Similar cases in which the specific instinct is less powerful and individual initiative greater._--Here is, for instance, the case of the _Chlorion_, where each animal possesses more considerable initiative.[75] It attacks the Cockroach. These insects are of an extremely varied size, according to age, and as they are also very agile the _Chlorion_ is not certain of being always able to obtain victims of the same dimension. The orifice of its burrow, which it hollows in walls between the crevices of the stones, is calculated on the average size of its victims. It has also the habit of paralysing the cockroach by stinging it on the nervous chain. These preliminary operations do not impede it, but it is embarrassed when it wishes to introduce through the entrance of its gallery an insect which is too large. It pulls at first as much as it can, but seeing the failure of its efforts it does not persevere in this attempt, and comes out to survey the situation. Decidedly the victim is too large and cannot pass through. The _Chlorion_ begins by cutting off the elytra, which maintain it rigid and prevent it from being compressed. This done, it harnesses itself anew and re-commences its efforts. But this is not sufficient, and the victim still resists. The insect returns, and again examines the situation. Now it is a leg which is placed cross-ways and opposes the introduction of the body; strong diseases need strong remedies, and our _Chlorion_ sets itself to amputate this encumbering appendage. It triumphs at last; the cockroach yields to its efforts, and little by little penetrates the hole. As may be seen, the labour is laborious and painful, and may present itself beneath various aspects which call for a certain ingenuity on the part of the animal. [75] Réaumur, _Memoires pour servir à l'histoire des Insectes_, Paris, 1742, t. vi., pp. 282-284. Up to recent years the _Cerceris_ was considered to act with as much certainty as the _Sphex_, and to obey an infallible instinct which always guided it for the best in the interests of its offspring. The insects it attacks belong to the genus _Buprestis_. It consumes them in considerable numbers. Its manner of action, as described by Léon Dufour,[76] much resembles that of the _Sphex_, and it would be superfluous to describe it. The only fact which I wish to mention, and which has been put out of doubt by the illustrious naturalist, is this: the _Buprestis_ are paralysed, not dead; all the joints of the antennæ and legs remain flexible and the intestines in good condition. He was able to dissect some which had been in a state of lethargy for at least a week or a fortnight, although, under normal conditions, these insects in summer decay rapidly, and after forty-eight hours cannot be used for anatomical purposes. Another observer, Paul Marchal, took up this question afresh, and the results which he obtained seemed to indicate an instinct much less firm than earlier studies tended to show.[77] [76] "Histoire des _Cerceris_," _Ann. Sc. Nat._, ii. Série, t. xv., 1841, pp. 353-370. [77] _Arch. de Zool. exp._, 1887. _Genera less skilful in the art of paralysing victims._--These researches show us that in the _Cerceris_ instinct is still subject to defect. In some neighbouring genera we can seize it, as it were, in process of formation. The way in which the _Bembex_, or Sand Wasp, provisions burrows by maternal foresight is much less mechanical than that of the _Sphex_. It is again Fabre who has described with most care the customs of this hymenopterous insect.[78] It hollows out for each egg a chamber communicating with the air by a gallery, and performs this work with little care and very roughly. Less skilful than the others, it does not amass at once all the provisions which its larvæ will need during the period of evolution. When the offspring has absorbed the last prey brought, it is necessary to bring a new victim. This insect is scarcely more advanced than birds, who feed their young from day to day. And it is a great labour to re-open every time the gallery which leads to the nursery; on all these visits, in fact, the _Bembex_ fills it up on leaving, and causes the disappearance of all revealing traces. It is obliged to take so much trouble, because it has not inherited from its ancestors the receipt for the paralysing sting; it throws itself without care on its victim, delivers a few chance blows, and kills it. Necessarily it cannot, under these conditions, lay up provisions for the future; they would corrupt, and the larvæ would not be benefited; hence the obligation of frequently returning to the nest, and of a perpetual hunt to feed descendants whom nature has gifted with an excellent appetite. According to the age of the offspring, the mother chooses prey of different sizes; at first she brings small Diptera; then, when it has grown, she captures for it large blow-flies, and lastly gadflies.[79] It will be seen, then, that if we suppose the instinct of the _Sphex_ to be slowly developed by being derived from a sting given at random, we make a supposition which is quite admissible and rests on ascertained facts. However this may be, the _Bembex_, returning to its burrow, is able to find it again with marvellous certainty, in spite of the care taken to hide it by removing every trace that might reveal its existence. It is guided by an extraordinary topographic instinct, which men not only do not possess, but cannot even understand the nature of. [78] _Souvenirs entomologiques_, 1879, pp. 225 _et seq._ [79] A Wasp found in La Plata, the _Monedula punctata_, as described by Hudson (_Naturalist in La Plata_, pp. 162-164), is an adroit fly-catcher, and thus supplies her grub with fresh food, carefully covering the mouth of the hole with loose earth after each visit; as many as six or seven freshly-killed insects may be found for the use of one grub. It would appear that certain Hymenoptera, fearing to kill their victim with the sting, and not knowing the art of skilful lesions, attempt to immobilise them by wounds of another sort. This is the case with the _Pompilius_, according to Goureau,[80] who has studied it. This insect nourishes its larvæ with spiders; it seems certain that in most cases the spider is not pricked. Victims who have been taken from the interior of provision burrows can live for a long time in spite of their wounds; they cannot, therefore, have received venom by inoculation. The author already quoted believes that the Pompilius seizes its captive by the pedicle which unites the abdomen to the cephalothorax, and that it triturates this point between its jaws. From this either death or temporary immobility may follow. The _Pompilius_ also makes up for its relative ignorance by considerable ingenuity. Thus sometimes, when it fears a return to life of the victim destined for its larvæ, it cuts off the legs while it is still passive. Goureau has found in the nest of this insect living spiders with their legs cut off. [80] "Observations pour servir à l'histoire de quelques Insectes," _Ann. Soc. entomol. de France_, t. 8, 1839, p. 541. CHAPTER VI. DWELLINGS. ANIMALS NATURALLY PROVIDED WITH DWELLINGS--ANIMALS WHO INCREASE THEIR NATURAL PROTECTION BY THE ADDITION OF FOREIGN BODIES--ANIMALS WHO ESTABLISH THEIR HOME IN THE NATURAL OR ARTIFICIAL DWELLINGS OF OTHERS--CLASSIFICATION OF ARTIFICIAL SHELTERS--HOLLOWED DWELLINGS--RUDIMENTARY BURROWS--CAREFULLY-DISPOSED BURROWS--BURROWS WITH BARNS ADJOINED--DWELLINGS HOLLOWED OUT IN WOOD--WOVEN DWELLINGS--RUDIMENTS OF THIS INDUSTRY--DWELLINGS FORMED OF COARSELY-ENTANGLED MATERIALS--DWELLINGS WOVEN OF FLEXIBLE SUBSTANCES--DWELLINGS WOVEN WITH GREATER ART--THE ART OF SEWING AMONG BIRDS--MODIFICATIONS OF DWELLINGS ACCORDING TO SEASON AND CLIMATE--BUILT DWELLINGS--PAPER NESTS--GELATINE NESTS--CONSTRUCTIONS BUILT OF EARTH--SOLITARY MASONS--MASONS WORKING IN ASSOCIATION--INDIVIDUAL SKILL AND REFLECTION--DWELLINGS BUILT OF HARD MATERIALS UNITED BY MORTAR--THE DAMS OF BEAVERS. Animals construct dwellings either to protect themselves from the cold, heat, rain, and other chances of the weather, or to retire to at moments when the search for food does not compel them to be outside and exposed to the attacks of enemies. Some inhabit these refuges permanently; others only remain there during the winter; others, again, who live during the rest of the year in the open air set up dwellings to bring forth their young, or to lay their eggs and rear the offspring. Whatever the object may be for which these retreats are built, they constitute altogether various manifestations of the same industry, and I will class them, not according to the uses which they are to serve, but according to the amount of art displayed by the architect. In this series, as in those which we have already studied, we shall find every stage from that of beings provided for by nature, and endowed with a special organ which secretes for them a shelter, up to those who are constrained by necessity to seek in their own intelligence an expedient to repair the forgetfulness of nature. These productions, so different in their origin, can only be compared from the point of view of the part they play; there are analogies between them but not the least homology. _Animals naturally provided with dwellings._--Nearly all the Mollusca are enveloped by a very hard calcareous case, secreted by their mantle: this shell, which is a movable house, they bear about with them and retire into at the slightest warning. Caterpillars which are about to be transformed into chrysalides weave a cocoon, a very close dwelling in which they can go through their metamorphosis far from exterior troubles. It is an organic form of dwelling, or produced by an organ. It is not necessary to multiply examples of this kind; they are extremely numerous. In the same category must be ranged the cells issuing from the wax-glands which supply Bees with materials for their combs in which they enclose the eggs of the queen with a provision of honey. I do not wish to insist on creations of this kind which are independent of the animal's will and reflection. Near these facts must be placed those in which animals, still using a natural secretion, yet endeavour to obtain ingenious advantages from it unknown by related species. [Illustration: FIG. 18.] There is, for example, the _Macropus viridi-auratus_, or Paradise-fish, which blows air bubbles in the mucus produced from its mouth. This mucus becomes fairly resistant, and all the bubbles imprisoned and sticking aside by side at last form a floor. It is beneath this floating shelter that the fish suspends its eggs for its little ones to undergo their early development. _Animals who increase their natural protection by the addition of foreign bodies._--Certain tubicolar Annelids, whose skin furnishes abundant mucus which does not become sufficiently hard to form an efficacious protection, utilise it to weld together and unite around them neighbouring substances, grains of sand, fragments of shell, etc. They thus construct a case which both resembles formations by special organs and manufacture by the aid of foreign materials. The larvæ of _Phryganea_, who lead an aquatic life, use this method to separate themselves from the world and prepare tubes in which to dwell. (Fig. 18.) All the fragments carried down by the stream are good for their labours on condition only that they are denser than the water. They take possession of fragments of aquatic leaves, and little fragments of wood which have been sufficiently long in the water to have thoroughly imbibed it and so become heavy enough to keep themselves at the bottom, or at least to prevent them from floating to the surface. It is the larva of _Phryganea striata_ which has been best studied; those of neighbouring species evidently act much in the same way, with differences only in detail. The little carpenter stops a fragment rather longer than his own body, lies on it and brings it in contact with other pieces along his own sides. He thus obtains the skeleton of a cylinder. The largest holes are filled up with detritus of all kinds. Then these materials are agglutinated by a special secretion. The larva overlays the interior of its tube with a covering of soft silk which renders the cylinder watertight and consolidates the earlier labours. The insect is thus in possession of a safe retreat. Resembling some piece of rubbish, it completes its metamorphosis in peace, undisturbed by the carnivora of the stream. There is here already a tendency towards the dwellings of which I shall speak later on, and which are entirely formed of the external environment. _Animals who establish their home in the natural or artificial dwellings of others._--Between the beings whom nature has endowed with a shelter and those who construct it by their own industry, we may intercept those who, deprived of a natural asylum and not having the inclination or the power to make one, utilise the dwellings of others, either when the latter still inhabit them, or when they are empty on account of the death or departure of the owner. In the natural sciences there is no group of facts around which may be traced a clear boundary; each of them is more or less closely related to a group which appears at first of an entirely different nature. Thus it does not enter into our plan to speak of parasites. Yet, if among these some turn to a host to demand of him both food and shelter, if even they can come to be so modified and so marked by parasitism that they can live in no other way, there are others who ask for lodging only from an animal better protected than they are themselves. It is these whose customs we are called upon to consider. In the interior of the branchial chamber of many bivalvular Mollusca, and especially the Mussel, there lives a little crustaceous commensal called the Pea-crab (_Pinnoteres pisum_). He goes, comes, hunts, and retires at the least alarm within his host's shell. The mussel, as the price of its hospitality, no doubt profits by the prizes which fall to the little crab's claws. It is even said that the crab in recognition of the benefits bestowed by his indolent friend keeps him acquainted with what is passing on around, and as he is much more active and alert than his companion he sees danger much farther away, and gives notice of it, asking for the door to be shut by lightly pinching the mussel's gill. But this gratitude of the Crustacean towards a sympathetic bivalve is merely a hypothesis; we do not exactly know what passes in the intimacy of these two widely-differing natures. For birds like the Cuckoo and the _Molothrus_ it is not possible to plead attenuating circumstances. They occupy a place in an inhabited house without paying any sort of rent. Every one knows the Cuckoo's audacity. The female lays her eggs in different nests and troubles herself no further about their fate. She seeks for her offspring a shelter which she does not take the trouble to construct, and moreover at the same time assures for them the cares of a stranger in place of her own. In North America a kind of Starling, the _Molothrus pecoris_, commonly called the Cow-bird, acts in the same careless fashion. It lives in the midst of herds, and owes its specific name to this custom; it feeds on the parasites on the skin of cattle. This bird constructs no nest. At the moment of laying the female seeks out an inhabited dwelling, and when the owner is absent she furtively lays an egg there. The young intruder breaks his shell after four days' incubation, that is to say, usually much before the legitimate children; and the parents, in order to silence the beak of the stranger who, without shame, claims his share with loud cries, neglect their own brood which have not yet appeared, and which they abandon. Their foster children repay them, however, with the blackest ingratitude. As soon as the little _Molothrus_ feels his body covered with feathers and his little wings strong enough to sustain him he quits his adopted parents without consideration. These birds show a love of independence very rare among animals, with whom conjugal fidelity has become proverbial; they do not unite in couples; unions are free, and the mother hastens to deliver herself from the cares of bringing up her young in the manner we have seen. Two other species of _Molothrus_ have the same habit, as have the American Cuckoo and the Golden Cuckoo of South Africa. The habits of the _Molothrus bovariensis_, a closely allied Argentine Cow-bird, have been carefully studied by Mr. W. H. Hudson, who has also some interesting remarks as to the vestiges of the nesting instinct in this interesting parasitical bird, which now is constantly dropping eggs in all sorts of places, even on the ground, most of them being lost. "Before and during the breeding-season the females, sometimes accompanied by the males, are seen continually haunting and examining the domed nests of the _Dendrocolaptidæ_. This does not seem like a mere freak of curiosity, but their persistence in their investigations is precisely like that of birds that habitually make choice of such breeding-places. It is surprising that they never do actually lay in such nests, except when the side or dome has been accidentally broken enough to admit the light into the interior. Whenever I set boxes up in my trees, the female Cow-birds were the first to visit them. Sometimes one will spend half a day loitering about and inspecting a box, repeatedly climbing round and over it, and always ending at the entrance, into which she peers curiously, and when about to enter starting back, as if scared at the obscurity within. But after retiring a little space she will return again and again, as if fascinated by the comfort and security of such an abode. It is amusing to see how pertinaciously they hang about the ovens of the Oven-birds, apparently determined to take possession of them, flying back after a hundred repulses, and yet not entering them even when they have the opportunity. Sometimes one is seen following a Wren or a Swallow to its nest beneath the eaves, and then clinging to the wall beneath the hole into which it disappeared. That it is a recurrence to a long-disused habit I can scarcely doubt. I may mention that twice I have seen birds of this species attempting to build nests, and that on both occasions they failed to complete the work. So universal is the nest-making instinct that one might safely say the _M. bovariensis_ had once possessed it, and that in the cases I have mentioned it was a recurrence, too weak to be efficient, to the ancestral habit." Mr. Hudson suggests that this bird lost the nest-making instinct by acquiring the semi-parasitical habit, common to many South American birds, of breeding in the large covered nests of the _Dendrocolaptidæ_, although, owing to increased severity in the struggle for the possession of such nests, this habit was defeated.[81] [81] P. L. Sclater and W. H. Hudson, _Argentine Ornithology_, 1888, vol. i. pp. 72-86. A brief summary of the facts regarding parasitism among birds will be found in Girod's _Les Sociétés chez les Animaux_, 1891, pp. 287-294. The _Rhodius anarus_, a fish of European rivers, also ensures a quiet retreat for his offspring by a method which is not less indiscreet. At the period of spawning, a male chooses a female companion and with great vigilance keeps off all those who wish to approach her. When the laying becomes imminent, the _Rhodius_, swimming up and down at the bottom of the stream, at length discovers a _Unio_. The bivalve is asleep with his shell ajar, not suspecting the plot which is being formed against him. It is a question of nothing less than of transforming him into furnished lodgings. The female fish bears underneath her tail a prolongation of the oviduct; she introduces it delicately between the Mollusc's valves and allows an egg to fall between his branchial folds. In his turn the male approaches, shakes himself over it, and fertilises it. Then the couple depart in search of another _Unio_, to whom to confide another representative of the race. The egg, well sheltered against dangers from without, undergoes development, and one fine day the little fish emerges and frisks away from his peaceful retreat. Other animals, more respectful of property, avoid using another's dwelling until it is abandoned by its proprietor, and no reproach of indelicacy can be addressed to the _Gobius minutus_, a fish which lives on our coasts at the mouth of rivers. The female lays beneath overturned shells, remains of Oysters, or Cardium shells. The valve is buried beneath several centimetres of sand, which supports it like a vault. It forms a solid roof, beneath which the eggs undergo their evolution. Sometimes the male remains by the little chamber to watch over their fate. It is possible to distinguish the two holes of entrance and exit which mark his habitual passage. [Illustration: FIG. 19.] The Hermit-crab perhaps knows best how to take advantage of old clothes. (Fig. 19.) He collects shells of Gasteropods, abandoned flotsam, the first inhabitant of which has died. The Hermit-crab (_Pagurus Bernhardus_) is a Decapod Crustacean--that is to say, he resembles a very small Crab. But his inveterate habit during so many generations of sheltering his abdomen in a shell prevents this part from being encrusted with lime and becoming hard. The legs and the head remain in the ordinary condition outside the house, and the animal moves bearing it everywhere with him; on the least warning he retires into it entirely. But the Crustacean grows. When young he had chosen a small shell. A Mollusc, in growing, makes his house grow with him. The Hermit-crab cannot do this, and when his dwelling has become too narrow he abandons it for one that is more comfortable. At first enclosed in the remains of a _Trochus_, he changes into that of a _Purpura_; a little later he seeks asylum in a Whelk. Beside the shelter which these shells assure to the Crustacean, they serve to mask his ferocity, and the prey which approaches confidently what it takes to be an inoffensive Mollusc, becomes his victim. The Great Horned Owl likewise does not construct a nest; but takes possession of the dwellings abandoned by others. These birds utilise for laying their eggs sometimes the nest of a Crow or a Dove, sometimes the lair which a Squirrel had considered too dilapidated. The female, without troubling about the bad state of these ruins, or taking pains to repair them, lays her eggs here and sits on them. _Classification of artificial shelters._--It is time to turn to animals who have more regard for comfort, and who erect dwellings for themselves or their offspring. These dwellings may be divided into three groups: (1) Those which are hollowed in earth or in wood; (2) those which in the simplest form result from the division of material of any kind; then, as a complication, of materials bound together; then, as a last refinement, of delicate materials, such as blades of grass or threads of wool woven together; such are the nests of certain birds and the tents of nomads; (3) those which are built of moist earth which becomes hard on drying; the perfection of this method consists of piling up hard fragments, pieces of wood or ashlar, the moist earth being only a mortar which unites the hard parts together. Animals exercise with varying success these different methods, all of which Man still practises. _Hollowed dwellings--Rudimentary burrows._--We will first occupy ourselves with the dwelling hollowed in the earth. It is the least complicated form. The number of creatures who purely and simply bury themselves thus to obtain shelter is incalculable; I will only mention a few examples, and pass on from simple combinations to the more perfected industries, of which they present the first sketch. It is known that at a certain epoch of the year Crabs abandon their hard carapaces. This phenomenon is known by the name of the moult; they remain in this condition for some time; it is the period during which they grow; then their integuments are encrusted anew with lime and again become resistant. While they are thus deprived of their ordinary protection they are exposed to a crowd of dangers, and they are so well aware of this that they remain hidden beneath rocks and pebbles. A crab of Guadeloupe, called _Gecarinus ruricola_, escapes the perils of this situation, thanks to its kind of life and its habit of hollowing out a burrow to live in while it is deprived of its habitual defence. This Crustacean lives on the earth, at a distance of about ten or twelve kilometres from the sea-shore, and nourishes itself on animal and vegetable remains. It approaches the water only at the period of laying eggs, turning towards the coast in the months of February and March. This migration does not take place, like some others, in compact bands; each follows the road in independence, and preserves a certain amount of liberty with regard to the path and the epoch of the journey. They lead an aquatic life till May or June; then the female abandons her little ones, who had begun their development attached to her claws, and they return to land. The moult takes place in August. At the approach of this dreaded crisis each hollows a hole between two roots, supplies it with green leaves, and carefully stops up the entrance. These labours accomplished, the crab is entirely sheltered; it undergoes the moult in safety, and does not emerge from its retreat until it is again capable of facing enemies, and of seizing food with its claws, which have become hard again. This seclusion appears to last a month. Here is, then, an example of a temporary dwelling rendered necessary by special conditions of defect for external life. We are here still in the infancy of the art. Speaking generally, birds are accomplished architects. Certain of them are, however, content with a rudimentary cavern. There is no question here of those who retire to clefts in the rock or in trunks of trees, for in these cases the cavity is only the support of the true house, and it is in the construction of this that the artist reveals his talent. I wish to speak of animals which remain in a burrow without making a nest there. A Parroquet of New Zealand called the _Kakapo_ (_Strigops habroptilus_) thus dwells in natural or hollowed excavations. It is only found in a restricted portion of the island and leads a miserable life there, habitually staying in the earth and pursued by numerous enemies, especially half-wild dogs. It tries to hold its own, but its wings and beak do not suffice to protect it, and the race would have completely disappeared if these birds were not able to resist, owing to the prudence with which they stay within their dwellings. They profit by a natural retreat, or one constructed in rocks or beneath roots of trees; they only come out when impelled by hunger, and return as soon as they can in case of danger. A large number of animals also hollow out shelters for their eggs, with the double object of maintaining them at a constant temperature and of concealing them. Most reptiles act in this manner. The way in which a Tortoise, the _Cistudo lunaria_, prepares its nest is extremely curious. When the time for this labour arrives, the tortoise chooses a site. It commences by boring in the earth with the end of its tail, the muscles of which are held firmly contracted; it turns the tail like a gimlet and succeeds in making a conical hole. Gradually the depth of the hole becomes equal to the length of the tail, and the tool then becomes useless. The _Cistudo_ enlarges the cavity with the help of its posterior legs. Using them alternately it withdraws the earth and kicks it away, then piles up this rubbish on the edge of the hole, arranging it so as to form a circular rampart. Soon the posterior members can take nothing more from the too distant bottom. The moment for laying has now come. As soon as the egg arrives at the cloaca one of the feet seizes it and lowers it gently into the nest, while the second foot seizes another egg, which during this time had appeared at the orifice. This manipulation lasts until the end of the operation, when the tortoise buries all its family, and to flatten the prominence which results she strikes it repeatedly with her plastron, raising herself on her legs. It is not only land animals which adopt this custom of living in the earth, and there sheltering their offspring. Fish also make retreats on the bank or at the bottom. To mention only one case, the Bullhead (_Cottus gobio_) of our rivers, which spawns in the Seine in May, June, and July, acts in this manner. Beneath a rock in the sand it prepares a cavity; then seeks females and brings them to lay eggs in its little lodging. During the four or five weeks before they come out it watches the eggs, keeping away as far as possible every danger which threatens them. It only leaves its position when pressed by hunger, and as soon as the hunt is concluded, returns to the post of duty. Other animals when digging have a double object; they wish to shelter themselves, and at the same time to find the water which they need for themselves or for the development of their young. It is well known that Frogs and Toads generally go in the spring to lay their eggs in streams and ponds. A Batrachian of Brazil and the hot regions of South America, the _Cystignathus ocellatus_, no doubt fearing too many dangers for the spawn if deposited in the open water, employs the artifice of hollowing, not far from the bank, a hole the bottom of which is filled by infiltration. It there places its eggs, and the little ones on their birth can lead an aquatic life while being guaranteed against its risks. A terrestrial Crab, the _Cardisoma carnifex_, found in Bengal and the Antilles, acts in the same manner; but in this case it has in view its own convenience and not care for its offspring. Its habitat is especially in low-lying spots near the shore, where water may be found at a trifling depth beneath the soil. To establish its dwelling, the Crustacean first buries itself until it reaches the liquid level. Arrived at this point, it makes a large lair in the soft soil, and effects communication with the outside by various openings. It can thus easily come and go and retire into its cave, where it finds security and a humidity favourable for branchial respiration. From time to time it cleans out the dirt and rubbish which accumulate in the hole. It makes a little pile of all the refuse which it finds, and, seizing it between its claws and abdomen, carries it outside. Executing several journeys very rapidly, it soon clears out its dwelling. The dipnoid _Protopterus_, which inhabits the marshes of Senegal and Gambia, is curious in more than one respect. Firstly, it can breathe oxygen, whether, like other fish, it finds it dissolved in water or in the atmospheric air. When during the summer the marshes in which it lives dry up, it takes refuge in the mud at the bottom, which hardens and imprisons it, and it thus remains curled up until the time when the water after the rainy season has softened the earth which surrounds it. This fact had been known for some time; travellers had brought back lumps of dried earth of varied size, the largest about as big as two fists. On opening them the same fish was always found within, and the chamber in which it is contained was lined with a sort of cocoon, having the appearance of dry gelatine. Duméril was able to observe one of these animals in captivity. At the period corresponding to the dry period of its own country, the _Protopterus_ buried itself in the mud which had been placed at the bottom of the aquarium. In order to realise the conditions found in nature, the water which covered it was gradually withdrawn. The earth hardened in drying, and when broken the recluse was seen surrounded by hardened mucus, exactly like those which came from Senegal. _Carefully-disposed burrows._--All the cases which we have considered show us the industry of the hollowed dwelling in its primitive state; but other animals know how to furnish it with greater luxury. I will continue in the same order of increasing complication. Many beings live permanently in a burrow; Reptiles--Snakes or Lizards--are to be placed among these. Among others, the _Lacerta stirpium_ arranges a narrow and deep hole, well hidden beneath a thicket, and retires into it for the winter, when cold renders it incapable of movement and at the mercy of its enemies. Before giving itself up to its hybernal sleep, it is careful to close hermetically the opening of the dwelling with a little earth and dried leaves. When spring returns and the heat awakens the reptile, it comes out to warm itself and to hunt, but never abandons its dwelling, always retiring into it in case of alarm and to pass there cold days and nights. Darwin has observed and described[82] how a little Lacertilian, the _Conolophus subcristatus_, conducts its work of mining and digging. It establishes its burrow in a soft tufa, and directs it almost horizontally, hollowing it out in such a way that the axis of the hole makes a very small angle with the soil. This reptile does not foolishly expend its strength in this troublesome labour. It only works with one side of its body at a time, allowing the other side to rest. For instance, the right anterior leg sets to work digging, while the posterior leg on the same side throws out the earth. When fatigued, the left legs come into play, allowing the others to repose. [82] _Voyage of the Beagle_. Other animals, without building their cavern with remarkable skill, show much sagacity in the choice of a site calculated to obtain certain determined advantages. In Egypt there are dogs which have become wild. Having shaken off the yoke of man, which in the East affords them little or no support, they lead an independent life. During the day they remain quiescent in desert spots or ruins, and at night they prowl about like jackals, hunting living prey or feeding on abandoned carcasses. There are hills which have in a manner become the property of these animals. They have founded villages there, and allow no one to approach. These hills have an orientation from north to south, so that one slope is exposed to the sun from morning to mid-day and the other from mid-day to evening. Now, dogs have a great horror of heat. They fear the torrid heat of the south as much as in our climate they like to lie warmed by gentle rays; there is no shadow too deep for their siesta. Therefore, on these Egyptian hills every dog hollows out a lair on both slopes. One of these dwellings is thus turned towards the east, the other towards the west. In the morning, when he returns from his nocturnal expeditions, the animal takes refuge in the second, and remains there until mid-day, sunk in refreshing sleep. At that hour the sun begins to reach him, and to escape it he passes over to the opposite slope; it is a curious sight to see them all, with pendent heads and sleepy air, advance with trailing steps to their eastern retreat, settle down in it, and continue their dream and their digestion till evening, when they again set forth to prowl. We never grow tired of admiring the intelligence of their domesticated fellows, but this trait seems to me worthy of remark; it proves a very developed power of observation and reflection. [Illustration: FIG. 20.] [Illustration: FIG. 21.] The Trap-door Spiders of the south of Europe construct burrows which have been studied with great care and in much detail by Moggridge.[83] He found that there were four chief types of burrow, shown in the accompanying illustration (Fig. 20) at about one-third the actual size (except C1 and D1, which are of natural size). While A and B have only one door, C and D, besides the surface door, have another a short way under ground. The whole burrow as well as the door are lined with silk, which also forms the hinge. The great art of the Trap-door Spider lies in her skilful forming of the door, which fits tightly, although it opens widely when she emerges, and which she frequently holds down when an intruder strives to enter, and in the manner with which the presence of the door is concealed, so as to harmonise with surrounding objects. Perhaps in no case is the concealment more complete than when dead leaves are employed to cover the door. In some cases a single withered olive leaf is selected, and it serves to cover the entrance; in other cases several are woven together with bits of wood or roots, as in the accompanying illustration, which represents such a door when open and when shut. (Fig. 21.) [83] J. T. Moggridge, _Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders_, contained in two elaborately illustrated volumes, London, 1873-74. The Trap-door Spider (_Mygale henzii_, Girard), which is widely diffused in California, forms a simple shaft-like burrow, but, like the European Trap-door Spider, it is very skilful in forming an entrance and in concealing its presence. Its habits have lately been described by D. Cleveland of San Diego.[84] In the adobe land hillocks are numerous; they are about a foot in height, and some three or four feet in diameter. These hillocks are selected by the spiders--apparently because they afford excellent drainage, and cannot be washed away by the winter rains--and their stony summits are often full of spiders' nests. These subterranean dwellings are shafts sunk vertically in the earth, except where some stony obstruction compels the miner to deflect from a downward course. The shafts are from five to twelve inches in depth, and from one-half to one and a half inches in diameter, depending largely upon the age and size of the spider. [84] _Science_, 20th January 1893. When the spider has decided upon a location, which is always in clay, adobe or stiff soil, he excavates the shaft by means of the sharp horns at the end of his mandibles, which are his pick and shovel and mining tools. The earth is held between the mandibles and carried to the surface. When the shaft is of the required size, the spider smoothes and glazes the wall with a fluid which is secreted by itself. Then the whole shaft is covered with a silken paper lining, spun from the animal's spinnerets. The door at the top of the shaft is made of several alternate layers of silk and earth, and is supplied with an elastic and ingenious hinge, and fits closely in a groove around the rim of the tube. This door simulates the surface on which it lies, and is distinguishable from it only by a careful scrutiny. The clever spider even glues earth and bits of small plants on the upper side of his trap-door, thus making it closely resemble the surrounding surface. The spider generally stations itself at the bottom of the tube. When, by tapping on the door, or by other means, a gentle vibration is caused, the spider runs to the top of his nest, raises the lid, looks out and reconnoitres. If a small creature is seen, it is seized and devoured. If the invader is more formidable, the door is quickly closed, seized and held down by the spider, so that much force is required to lever it open. Then, with the intruder looking down upon him, the spider drops to the bottom of his shaft. It has been found by many experiments that when the door of his nest is removed, the spider can renew it five times--never more than that. Within these limitations, the door torn off in the evening was found replaced by a new one in the morning. Each successive renewal showed, however, a greater proportion of earth, and a smaller proportion of silk, until finally the fifth door had barely enough silk to hold the earth together. The sixth attempt, if made, was a failure, because the spinnerets had exhausted their supply of the web fluid. When the poor persecuted spider finds his domicile thus open and defenceless, he is compelled to leave it, and wait until his stock of web fluid is renewed.[85] [85] The Trap-door Spiders of various parts of the world have been carefully studied, and the gradual development of their skill traced through various species, by Eugène Simon; see, for example, _Actes de la Soc. Lin. de Bordeaux_, 1888. Skilful diggers prepare burrows with several entrances; some even arrange several rooms, each for a special object. The Otter seeks its food in the water, and actively hunts fish in ponds and rivers. But when fishing is over, it likes to keep dry and at the same time sheltered from terrestrial enemies. Its dwelling must also present an easy opening into the water. In order to fulfil all these conditions, its house consists first of a large room hollowed in the bank at a level sufficiently high to be beyond reach of floods. From the bottom of this keep a passage starts which sinks and opens about fifty centimetres beneath the surface of the water. It is through here that the Otter noiselessly glides to find himself in the midst of his hunting domain without having been seen or been obliged to make a noisy plunge which would put the game to flight. If this were all, the hermetically-closed dwelling would soon become uninhabitable, as there would be no provision for renewing the air, so the Otter proceeds to form a second passage from the ceiling of the room to the ground, thus forming a ventilation tube. In order that this may not prove a cause of danger, it is always made to open up in the midst of brushwood or in a tuft of rushes and reeds. Marmots also are not afraid of the work which will assure them a warm and safe refuge in the regions they inhabit, where the climate is rough. In summer they ascend the Alps to a height of 2,500 to 3,000 metres and rapidly hollow a burrow like that for winter time, which I am about to describe, but smaller and less comfortable. They retire into it during bad weather or to pass the night. When the snow chases them away and causes them to descend to a lower zone, they think about constructing a genuine house in which to shut themselves during the winter and to sleep. Twelve or fifteen of these little animals unite their efforts to make first a horizontal passage, which may reach the length of three or four metres. They enlarge the extremity of it into a vaulted and circular room more than two metres in diameter. They make there a good pile of very dry hay on which they all install themselves, after having carefully protected themselves against the external cold by closing up the passage with stones and calking the interstices with grass and moss. In solitary woods or roads the Badger (_Meles_), who does not like noise, prepares for himself a peaceful retreat, clean and well ventilated, composed of a vast chamber situated about a metre and a half beneath the surface. He spares no pains over it, and makes it communicate with the external world by seven or eight very long passages, so that the points where they open are about thirty paces distant from one another. In this way, if an enemy discovers one of them and introduces himself into the Badger's home, the Badger can still take flight through one of the other passages. In ordinary times they serve for the aëration of the central room. The animal attaches considerable importance to this. He is also very clean in his habits, and every day may be seen coming out for little walks, having an object of an opposite nature to the search for food. This praiseworthy habit is, as we shall see, exploited by the Fox in an unworthy manner. The Fox has many misdeeds on his conscience, but his conduct towards the Badger is peculiarly indelicate. The Fox is a skilful digger, and when he cannot avoid it, he can hollow out a house with several rooms. The dwelling has numerous openings, both as a measure of prudence and of hygiene, for this arrangement enables the air to be renewed. He prepares several chambers side by side; one of which he uses for observation and to take his siesta in; a second as a sort of larder in which he piles up what he cannot devour at once; a third, in which the female brings forth and rears her young. But he does not hesitate to avoid this labour when possible. If he finds a rabbit warren he tries first to eat the inhabitants, and then, his mind cleared from this anxiety, arranges their domicile to his own taste, and comfortably installs himself in it. In South America, again, the Argentine Fox frequently takes up permanent residence in a vizcachera, ejecting the rightful owners; he is so quiet and unassuming in his manners that the vizcachas become indifferent to his presence, but in spring the female fox will seize on the young vizcachas to feed her own young, and if she has eight or nine, the young of the whole village of vizcachas may be exterminated. The Badger's dwelling appears to the Fox particularly enviable. In order to dislodge the proprietor he adopts the following plan. Knowing that the latter can tolerate no ordure near his home, he chooses as a place of retirement one of the passages which lead to the chamber of the peaceful recluse. He insists repeatedly, until at last the Badger, insulted by this grossness, and suffocated by the odour, decides to move elsewhere and hollow a fresh palace. The Fox is only waiting for this, and installs himself without ceremony. The Vizcacha (_Lagostomus trichodactylus_) is a large Rodent inhabiting a vast extent of country in the pampas of La Plata, Patagonia, etc. Unlike most other burrowing species, the Vizcacha prefers to work on open level spots. On the great grassy plains it is even able to make its own conditions, like the Beaver, and is in this respect, and in its highly-developed social instinct, among the two or three Mammals which approach Man, although only a Rodent, and even in this order, according to Waterhouse, coming very low down by reason of its marsupial affinities. The Vizcacha lives in small communities of from twenty to thirty members, in a village of deep-chambered burrows, some twelve or fifteen in number, with large pit-like entrances closely grouped together, and as the Vizcachera, as this village is called, endures for an indefinitely long period, the earth which is constantly brought up forms an irregular mound thirty or forty feet in diameter, and from fifteen to thirty inches above the level of the road; this mound serves to protect the dwelling from floods on low ground. A clearing is made all round the abode and all rubbish thrown on the mound; the Vizcachas thus have a smooth turf on which to disport themselves, and are freed from the danger of lurking enemies. The entire village occupies an area of one hundred to two hundred square feet of ground. The burrows vary greatly in extent; usually in a Vizcachera there are several that, at a distance of from four to six feet from the entrance, open into large circular chambers. From these chambers other burrows diverge in all directions, some running horizontally, others obliquely downwards to a maximum depth of six feet from the surface; some of these galleries communicate with those of other burrows. On viewing a Vizcachera closely, the first thing that strikes the observer is the enormous size of the entrances to the central burrows in the mound; there are usually several smaller outside burrows. The entrance to some of the principal burrows is sometimes four to six feet across the mouth, and sometimes it is deep enough for a tall man to stand in up to the waist. It is not easy to tell what induces a Vizcacha to found a new community, for they increase very slowly, and are very fond of each other's society. It is invariably one individual alone who founds the new village. If it were for the sake of better pasture he would remove to a considerable distance, but he merely goes from forty to sixty yards off to begin operations. Sooner or later, perhaps after many months, other individuals join the solitary Vizcacha, and they become the parents of innumerable generations in the same village: old men, who have lived all their lives in one district, remember that many of the Vizcacheras around them existed when they were children. It is always a male who begins the new village. Although he does not always adopt the same method, he usually works very straight into the earth, digging a hole twelve or fourteen inches wide, but not so deep, at an angle of about 25° with the surface. After he has progressed inwards for a few feet, the animal is no longer content merely to scatter the loose earth; he cleans it away in a straight line from the entrance, and scratches so much on this line, apparently to make the slope gentler, that he soon forms a trench a foot or more in depth, and often three or four feet in length. This facilitates the conveyance of the loose earth as far as possible from the entrance of the burrow. But after a while the animal is unwilling that earth should accumulate even at the end of this long passage, and proceeds to form two additional trenches, making an acute or right angle converging into the first trench, so that the whole when completed takes a Y shape. These trenches are continually deepened and lengthened in this manner, the angular segment of earth between them being scratched away, until by degrees it gives place to one large deep irregular mouth. The burrows are made best in the black and red moulds of the pampas; but even in such soils the entrances may be varied. In some the central trench is wanting, or so short that there appear to be but two passages converging directly into the burrow, or these two trenches may be so curved inwards as to form the segment of a circle. Usually, however, the varieties are only modifications of the Y-shaped system. On the pampas a wide-mouthed burrow possesses a distinct advantage over the more usual shape. The two outer trenches diverge so widely from the mouth that half the earth brought out is cast behind instead of before it, thus creating a mound of equal height about the entrance, by which it is secured from water during great rainfalls, while cattle avoid treading over the great pit-like entrances, though they soon tread and break in the burrows of the Armadillo and other species when these make their homes on perfectly level ground. The Vizcachas do not usually leave their burrows until dark, but in summer they come out before sunset. Usually one of the old males first appears, and sits on some prominent place on the mound, apparently in no haste to begin his evening meal. Other Vizcachas soon begin to appear, each quietly taking up his position at the burrow's mouth. The females, known by their smaller size and lighter colour, sit upright on their haunches, as if to command a better view; they are always wilder and sprightlier in their gestures than the males. They view a human stranger with a mixture of fear and curiosity, sometimes allowing him to come within five or six paces of them; in desert regions, however, where enemies are numerous, the Vizcacha is very timid and wary. These animals are very sociable, and their sociability extends beyond their own vizcachera. On approaching a vizcachera at night, usually some of the Vizcachas on it scamper off to distant burrows. These are neighbours merely come to pay a friendly visit. The intercourse is so frequent that little straight paths are formed from one village to another. Their social instinct leads members of one village to assist those of another when in trouble. Thus, if a vizcachera is covered over with earth in order to destroy the animals within, Vizcachas from distant burrows will subsequently be found zealously digging out their friends. The hospitality of the Vizcacha does not, however, extend to his burrow; he has a very strong feeling with regard to the sanctity of the burrow. A Vizcacha never enters another's burrow, and if by chance driven into one by dogs will emerge speedily, apparently finding that the danger within is greater than the danger without. In connection with the sociability of the Vizcacha, we must take into consideration the fact that Vizcachas possess a wonderfully varied and expressive language, and are engaged in perpetual discussion all night long.[86] [86] The Vizcacha has been carefully studied by Mr. W. H. Hudson, whose account has here been closely followed, _Proceedings of the Zoological Society_, 1872, and _Naturalist in La Plata_, 1892, pp. 289-313. _Burrows with barns adjoined._--Certain Rodents have carried hollow dwellings to great perfection. Among these the Hamster of Germany (_Cricetus frumentarius_) is not the least ingenious. To his dwelling-room he adds three or four storehouses for the amassed provisions of which I have already had occasion to speak. The burrow possesses two openings: one, which the animal prefers to use, which sinks vertically into the soil; the other, the passage of exit with a gentle and very winding slope. The bottom of the central room is carpeted with moss and straw, which make it a warm and pleasant home. A third tunnel starts from this sleeping chamber, soon forking and leading to the wheat barns. Thus during the winter the Hamster has no pressing need to go out except on fine days for a little fresh air. He has everything within his reach, and can remain shut up with nothing to fear from the severity of the season. _Dwellings hollowed out in wood._--It is not only the soil which may serve for retreat; wood serves as an asylum for numerous animals, who bore it, and find in it both food and shelter. In this class must be placed a large number of Worms, Insects, and Crustaceans. One of these last, the _Chelura terebrans_, a little Amphipod, constitutes a great danger for the works of man. It attacks piles sunken to support structures, and undermines them to such a degree that they eventually fall. Wood is formed of concentric layers alternately composed of large vessels formed during the summer, and smaller vessels formed during the winter. The latter zones are more resistant, the former are softer. When one of these Crustaceans attacks a pile, it first bores a little horizontal passage, stopping at a layer of summer-growth. It there hollows a large grotto, leaving here and there pillars of support. It lays in this space. The new generation working around the parents increases the space and feeds on the wood removed. A second generation is produced, and the inhabitants become pressed for space. The new-born pierce numerous passages and penetrate towards the interior of the pile as far as the next summer layer. There they spread themselves, always boring; they construct new rooms like the first, and arrange pillars here and there. Their descendants gain the subjacent zone, and so the process goes on. During this time the early ancestors who hollowed the surface dwellings have died, and the holes which they made are no longer habitable; but they have all contributed to diminish the resistance of the wood, and this continues as long as the race which they produced makes its way towards the centre of the stake. [Illustration: FIG. 22.] An insect, the _Xylocopa violacea_ (Fig. 22), related to our Humble-bee, from which it differs in several anatomical characters, and by the dark violet tint of its wings, brings an improvement to the formation of the shelter which it makes in wood for its larvæ. Instead of hollowing a mere retreat to place there all its eggs indiscriminately, it divides them into compartments, separated by horizontal partitions. It is the female alone who accomplishes this task, connected with the function of perpetuating the race. She chooses an old tree-trunk, a pole, or the post of a fence, exposed to the sun and already worm-eaten, so that her labour may be lightened. She first attacks the wood perpendicularly to the surface, then suddenly turns and directs downwards the passage, the diameter of which is about equal to the size of the insect's body. The _Xylocopa_ thus forms a tube about thirty centimetres in length. Quite at the bottom she places the first egg, leaving beside it a provision of honey necessary to nourish the larva during its evolution; she then closes it with a partition. This partition is made with fragments of the powder of wood glued together with saliva. A first horizontal ring is applied round the circumference of the tube; then in the interior of this first ring a second is formed, and so on continuously, until the central opening, more and more reduced, is at last entirely closed up. This ceiling forms the floor for the next chamber, in which the female deposits a new egg, provided, like the other, with abundant provisions. The same acts are repeated until the retreat becomes transformed into a series of isolated cells in which the larvæ can effect their development, and from which they will emerge either by themselves perforating a thin wall which separates them from daylight, or by an opening which the careful mother has left to allow them to attain liberty without trouble.[87] [87] Réaumur, _Memoires pour servir à l'histoire des Insectes_, pp. 97 _et seq._ _Woven dwellings._--The second class of habitation, which I have called the woven dwelling, proceeds at first from the parcelling up of substances, then of objects capable of being entangled like wisps of wood or straw, then of fine and supple materials which the artisan can work together in a regular manner, that is to say by felting or weaving. Facts will show us the successive stages of improvement which have been introduced into this industry. I will begin with the more rudimentary. _Rudiments of this industry._--There are, first, cases in which the will of the animal does not intervene, or at least is very slightly manifested. The creature is found covered and protected by foreign bodies which are often living beings. Spider-crabs (_Maïa_), for example, have their carapaces covered with algæ and hydroids of all sorts. Thus garnished, the Crustaceans have the advantage of not being recognised from afar when they go hunting, since beneath this fleece they resemble some rock. H. Fol has observed at Villefranche-sur-Mer a _Maïa_ so buried beneath this vegetation that it was impossible at first sight to distinguish it from the stones around. Under these conditions the animal submits to a shelter rather than creates it. Yet it is not so passive as one might at first be led to suppose. When the algæ which flourish on its back become too long and impede or delay its progress, it tears them off with its claws and thoroughly cleans itself. The carapace being quite clean, the animal finds itself too smooth and too easy to distinguish from surrounding objects; it therefore takes up again fragments of algæ and replaces them where they do not delay to take root like cuttings and to flourish anew. This culture is therefore intentional; the crab directs it and arrests its exuberance; it is no more the victim of it than the gardener is the slave of the vegetables which he waters day by day. From generation to generation this crab has acquired the habit, the instinct if one prefers, of thus covering itself so that it may be confused with neighbouring objects. Naturally it is ignorant of botany, and knows nothing of cuttings. If placed in an aquarium with little fragments of paper it will seize them and place them on its back, as it would have done with algæ, without troubling as to whether they become fixed or not. In spite of this lack of judgment, we cannot fail to recognise in this _Maïa_ a certain ingenuity in self-concealment. [Illustration: FIG. 23.] The Sponge-crab (_Dromia vulgaris_) also practises this method of shelter. It seizes a large sponge and maintains it firmly over its carapace with the help of the posterior pair of limbs. The sponge continues to prosper and to spread over the Crustacean who has adopted it. (Fig. 23.) The two beings do not seem to be definitely fixed to each other; the contact of a sudden wave will separate them. When the divorce is effected, the _Dromia_ immediately throws itself on its cherished covering and replaces it. M. Künckel d'Herculais tells of one of these curious crustaceans which delighted the workers in the laboratory of Concarneau. The need for covering themselves experienced by these Crabs is so strong that in aquariums when their sponge is taken away they will apply to the back a fragment of wrack or of anything which comes to hand. A little white cloak with the arms of Brittany was manufactured for one of these captives, and it was very amusing to see him put on his overcoat when he had nothing else wherewith to cover himself.[88] [88] Brehm, édition Française, _Crustacés_, p. 738. In these two cases which I have brought forward to exhibit the rudiments of this industry, the animals' reflection and will play but a small part; even in the _Dromia_ custom is so inveterate in the race that it has reacted on the animal's organisation, and its four posterior legs are profoundly modified for the purpose of firmly holding the sheltering sponge; they no longer serve for swimming or walking. The animals of which I have now to speak possess more initiative; although all do not act with the same success, or show themselves equally skilful. Let us turn first to the least experienced. An Australian bird, the _Catheturus Lathami_, as described by Gould, is still in the rudiments, and limits itself to preparing an enormous pile of leaves. It begins its work some weeks before laying its eggs; with its claws it pushes behind it all the dead leaves which fall on the earth and brings them into a heap. The bird throws new material on the summit until the hole is of suitable height. This detritus ferments when left to itself, and a gentle heat is developed in the centre of the edifice. The _Catheturus_ returns to lay near this coarse shelter; it then takes each egg and buries it in the heap, the larger end uppermost. It places a new layer above, and quits its labour for good. Incubation takes place favoured by the uniform heat of this decomposing mass, hatching is produced, and the young emerge from their primitive nest. [Illustration: FIG. 24.] Birds are not alone in constructing temporary dwellings in which to lay their eggs; some Fish are equally artistic in this kind of industry, and even certain Reptiles. The Alligator of the Mississippi would not perhaps at first be regarded as a model of maternal foresight. Yet the female constructs a genuine nest. She seeks a very inaccessible spot in the midst of brushwood and thickets of reeds. With her jaw she carries thither boughs which she arranges on the soil and covers with leaves. She lays her eggs and conceals them with care beneath vegetable remains. Not yet considering her work completed, she stays in the neighbourhood watching with jealous eye the thicket which shelters the dear deposit, and never ceases to mount guard threateningly until the day when her young ones can follow her into the stream. A hymenopterous relative of the Bees, the _Megachile_, cuts out in rose-leaves fragments of appropriate form which it bears away to a small hole in a tree, an abandoned mouse nest or some similar cavity. There it rolls them, works them up, and arranges them with much art, so as to manufacture what resemble thimbles, which it fills with honey and in which it lays.[89] (Fig. 24.) [89] Réaumur, _Memoires pour servir à l'histoire des Insectes_, pp. 97 _et seq._ The _Anthocopa_ acts in a similar manner, carpeting the holes of which it takes possession with the delicate petals of the corn poppy. The retreats of nocturnal birds of prey do not differ in method of construction from these two kinds of nests. They are holes in trees, in ruins, in old walls, and are lined with soft and warm material. These dwellings are related, not to the type of the hollowed cave, but to that of the habitation manufactured from mingled materials. They constitute an inferior form in which the pieces are not firmly bound together but need support throughout. The cavity is the support which sustains the real house. _Dwellings formed of coarsely-entangled materials._--Diurnal birds of prey are the first animals who practise skilfully the twining of materials. Their nests, which have received the name of eyries, are not yet masterpieces of architecture, and reveal the beginning of the industry which is pushed so far by other birds. Usually situated in wild and inaccessible spots, the young are there in safety when their parents are away on distant expeditions. The abrupt summits of cliffs and the tops of the highest forest trees are the favourite spots chosen by the great birds of prey. The eyrie generally consists of a mass of dry branches which cross and mutually support one another, constituting a whole which is fairly resistant. Even these primitive nests are not, however, without more complicated details of interest. Thus Mr. Denis Gale wrote to Bendire concerning the Golden Eagle in America: "Here in Colorado, in the numerous glades running from the valleys into the foothills, high inaccessible ledges are quite frequently met with which afford the Eagles secure sites for their enormous nests. I know of one nest that must contain two waggon-loads of material. It is over seven feet high, and quite six feet wide on its upper surface. In most cases the cliff above overhangs the site. At the end of February or the beginning of March, the needful repairs to the nest are attended to, and the universal branch of evergreen is laid upon the nest, seemingly for any purpose save that of utility. This feature has been present in all the nests I have examined myself, or have had examined by others; it would seem to be employed as a badge of occupancy."[90] This curious feature is also found in the nests of the Bald or American Eagle. Thus Dr. W. L. Ralph furnished Bendire with the following observations made in Florida on the dwellings of this, the national bird of the United States:--"The nests are immense structures, from five to six feet in diameter, and about the same in depth, and so strong that a man can walk around in one without danger of breaking through; in fact, my assistant would always get in the nest before letting the eggs down to me. They are composed of sticks, some of which are two or three inches thick, and are lined with marsh grass or some similar material. There is usually a slight depression in the centre, where the eggs are placed, but the edge of the nest extends so far beyond this that it is almost impossible to see the bird from below, unless it has its head well up. I have frequently found foreign substances in their nests, usually placed on the edges of it, the object of which I cannot account for. Often it would be a ball of grass, wet or dry, sometimes a green branch from a pine tree, and again a piece of wood, bark, or other material. It seemed as if they were placed in the nests as if to mark them. From its frequent occurrence, at least, it seemed to me as if designedly done."[91] [90] _Life Histories of North American Birds_, 1892, p. 265. [91] _Life Histories of American Birds_, p. 275. The abodes of Squirrels, though exhibiting more art, are constructions of the same nature; that is to say, they are formed of interlaced sticks. This animal builds its home to shelter itself there in the bad season, to pass the night in it, and to rear its young. Very agile, and not afraid of climbing, it places its domicile near the tops of our highest forest trees. Rather capricious also, and desiring change of residence from time to time, it builds several of them; at least three or four, sometimes more. The materials which it needs are collected on the earth among fallen dead branches, or are torn away from the old abandoned nest of a crow or some other bird. The Squirrel firsts builds a rather hollow floor by intermingling the fragments of wood which it has brought. In this state its dwelling resembles a magpie's nest. But the fastidious little animal wishes to be better protected and not thus to sleep in the open air. Over this foundation he raises a conical roof; the sticks which form it are very skilfully disposed, and so well interlaced that the whole is impenetrable to rain. The house must still be furnished, and this is done with oriental luxury; that is to say, the entire furniture consists of a carpet, a carpet of very dry moss, which the Squirrel tears from the trunks of trees, and which it piles up so as to have a soft and warm couch. An entrance situated at the lower part gives access to the aërial castle; it is usually directed towards the east. On the opposite side there is another orifice by which the animal can escape if an enemy should invade the principal entrance. In ordinary times also it serves to ventilate the chamber by setting up a slight current of air. The Squirrel greatly fears storms and rain, and during bad weather hastens to take refuge in his dwelling. If the wind blows in the direction of the openings, the little beast at once closes them with two stoppers of moss, and keeps well shut in as long as the storm rages. The great Anthropoid Apes have found nothing better for shelter than the Squirrels' method. It must, however, be taken into account that they have much more difficulty in arranging and maintaining much heavier rooms, and in building up a shelter with larger surface. The Orang-outang, which lives in the virgin forests of the Sunda Archipelago, does not feel the need of constructing a roof against the rain. He is content with a floor established in the midst of a tree, and made of broken and interlaced branches. He piles up on this support a considerable mass of leaves and moss; for the Orang does not sleep seated like the other great apes, but lies down in the manner of Man, as has often been observed when he is in captivity. When he feels the cold he is ingenious enough to cover himself with the leaves of his couch. In Upper and Lower Guinea the Chimpanzee (_Troglodytes niger_) also establishes his dwelling on trees. He first makes choice of a large horizontal branch, which constitutes a sufficient floor for the agile animal. Above this branch he bends the neighbouring boughs, crosses them, and interlaces them so as to obtain a sort of framework. When this preliminary labour is accomplished, he collects dead wood or breaks up branches and adds them to the first. Before commencing he had taken care when choosing the site that the whole was so arranged that a fork was within reach to sustain the roof. He thus constructs a very sufficient shelter. These apes are sociable and prefer to live in each other's neighbourhood. They even go on excursions in rather large bands. Notwithstanding this, more than one or two cabins are never seen on the same tree; perhaps this is because the complicated conditions required for the construction are not likely to be realised several times on the same tree; perhaps also it is a desire for independence which impels the Chimpanzees not to live too near to each other.[92] [92] Savage, "Observations on the External Characters and Habits of the _Troglodytes niger_," _Boston Journal Nat. Hist._, 1843, pp. 362-376. The _Troglodytes calvus_, a relative of the preceding, inhabiting the same regions, as described by Du Chaillu, shows still more skill in raising his roof. A tree is always chosen for support. He breaks off boughs and fastens them by one end to the trunk, by the other to a large branch. To fix all these pieces he employs very strong creepers, which grow in abundance in his forests. Above this framework, which indicates remarkable ingenuity, the animal piles up large leaves, forming in layers well pressed down and quite impenetrable to the rain. The whole has the appearance of an open parasol. The ape sits on a branch beneath his handiwork, supporting himself against the trunk with one arm. He has thus an excellent shelter against the mid-day sun as well as against tropical showers. Male and female each possess a dwelling on two neighbouring trees, the principle of conjugal cohabitation not being admitted in this species. As to the child, it appears that it sleeps near its mother, until it is of age to lead an independent life. There exists in Australia, the country of zoological singularities, a bird with very curious customs. This is the Satin Bower-bird. The art displayed in this bird's constructions is not less interesting than the sociability he gives evidence of, and his desire to have for his hours of leisure a shelter adorned to his taste. The bowers which he constructs, and which present on a small scale the appearance of the arbours in our old gardens, are places for re-union and for warbling and courtship, in which the birds stay during the day, when no anxiety leads them to disperse. They are not, properly speaking, nests built for the purpose of rearing young; for at the epoch of love each couple separates and constructs a special retreat in the neighbourhood of the bower. These shelters are always situated in the most retired parts of the forest, and are placed on the earth at the foot of trees. Several couples work together to raise the edifice, the males performing the chief part of the work. At first they establish a slightly convex floor, made with interlaced sticks, intended to keep the place sheltered from the moisture of the soil. The arbour rises in the centre of this first platform. Boughs vertically arranged are interlaced at the base with those of the floor. The birds arrange them in two rows facing each other; they then curve together the upper extremities of these sticks, and fix them so as to obtain a vault. All the prominences in the materials employed are turned towards the outside, so that the interior of the room may be smooth and the birds may not catch their plumage in it. This done, the little architects, to embellish their retreat, transport to it a number of conspicuous objects, such as very white stones from a neighbouring stream, shells, the bright feathers of the parroquet, whatever comes to their beak. All these treasures are arranged on the earth, before the two entries to the bower, so as to form on each side a carpet, which is not smooth, but the varied colours of which rejoice the eye. The prettiest treasures are fixed into the wall of the hut. These houses of pleasure, with all their adornments, form a dwelling very much to the taste of this winged folk, and the birds pass there the greater part of the day, preening their feathers and narrating the news of the forest. Bower-birds' clubs are drawing-rooms raised at the common expense by all who frequent them. The Spotted Bower-bird, the _Chlamydera maculata_, which also lives in the interior of Australia, exercises this method of construction with equal success. The bowers built by these birds may be one metre in length; this is on a very luxurious scale, the animal itself only measuring twenty-five centimetres. In this species, as among other Bower-birds, the bowers are not the labour and the property of a single couple; they are the result of the collaboration of several households, who come together to shelter themselves there. These birds feed only on grains, so that it is to a very pronounced taste for collecting that we must attribute this mania of piling up before the entrance of the bower white stones, shells, and small bones. (Fig. 25.) These objects are intended solely for the delight of these feathered artists. They are very careful also only to collect pieces which have been whitened and dried by the sun.[93] [93] Gould first accurately described the habits of the Bower-birds, _Proceed. Zool. Soc._; _London_, 1840, p. 94; also _Handbook to the Birds of Australia_ (1865), vol. i. pp. 444-461. See also Darwin's _Descent of Man_ (1881), pp. 381 and 413-414. Certain Humming-birds also, according to Gould, decorate their dwellings with great taste. "They instinctively fasten thereon," he stated, "beautiful pieces of flat lichen, the larger pieces in the middle, and the smaller on the part attached to the branch. Now and then a pretty feather is intertwined or fastened to the outer sides, the stem being always so placed that the feather stands out beyond the surface."[94] [94] Gould, _Introduction to the Trochilidæ_, 1861, p. 19. _Dwellings woven of flexible substances._--In spite of their lack of skill and the inadequacy of their organs for this kind of work, Fish are not the most awkward architects. The species which construct nests for laying in are fairly numerous; the classical case of the Stickleback is always quoted, but this is not the only animal of its class to possess the secret of the manufacture of a shelter for its eggs. A fish of Java, the Gourami (_Osphronemus olfax_), establishes an ovoid nest with the leaves of aquatic plants woven together. It makes its work about the size of a fist, takes no rest until it is completed, and is able to finish it in five or six days. It is the male alone who weaves this dwelling; when it is ready a female comes to lay there, and generally fills it; it may contain from six hundred to a thousand eggs. [Illustration: FIG. 25.] In the sea of Sargasso lives a fish which has received the name of the _Antennarius marmoratus_. Its flattened and monstrous head gives it a strange aspect, and it is marbled with brown and yellow. These colours are those of the tufts of floating seaweed around it, and, thanks to this arrangement, it can easily hide itself amid them without being recognised from afar. This animal constructs for its offspring a fairly safe retreat. The materials which it employs are tufts of Sargasso so abundant in this portion of the Atlantic. It collects all the filaments, and unites them solidly by surrounding them with viscous mucus which it secretes and which hardens. When its work is sufficiently firm not to be destroyed by the waves it lays its eggs in it, and the floating nest is abandoned to its fate. The little ones come out and find within it a sufficient protection for their early age. These dwellings thus floating on the surface of the sea are rounded and about the size of a cocoa-nut. In Guiana and Brazil another species, the _Choestostomus pictus_, is found, which is equally skilful. With aquatic plants it constructs a spherical nest and arranges it in the midst of the reeds, level with the water. At the lower part a hole is left, through which the female comes to lay. After fertilisation, the couple, as is rarely found among fish, remain in the neighbourhood of their offspring to assist them if necessary. This praiseworthy sentiment is often the cause of their ruin. The inhabitants of the banks speculate on the love of these fish for their offspring to gain possession of them. It is sufficient to place a basket near the entrance of the dwelling, which is then lightly struck. The animal, threatened in its affections, darts furiously forward with bristling spines and throws itself into the trap. It is scarcely necessary to recall the skilful art with which the Stickleback which inhabits all our streams plaits its nest and remains sentinel near it. (Fig. 26.) This fish has indeed monopolised our admiration, and is considered as the most skilful, if not the only aquatic architect. Yet, besides those which I have already mentioned, there is one which equals the Stickleback in the skill it displays in constructing a shelter for its spawn. This is the _Gobius niger_ met on our coasts, especially in the estuaries of rivers. The male interlaces and weaves the leaves of algæ, etc., and when he has finished his preparations, he goes to seek females, and leads them one by one to lay in the retreat he has built. Then he remains in the neighbourhood until the young come out, ready to throw himself furiously with his spines on any imprudent intruders. [Illustration: FIG. 26.] [Illustration: FIG. 27.] _Dwellings woven with greater art._--Without doubt the class of Birds furnishes the most expert artisans in the industry of the woven dwelling. In our own country we may see them seeking every day to right and left, carrying a morsel of straw, a pinch of moss, a hair from a horse's tail, or a tuft of wool caught in a bush. They intermingle these materials, making the framework of the construction with the coarser pieces, keeping those that are warmer and more delicate for the interior. These nests, attached to a fork in a branch or in a shrub, hidden in the depth of a thicket, are little masterpieces of skill and patience. To describe every form and every method would fill a volume. But I cannot pass in silence those which reveal a science sure of itself, and which are not very inferior to what man can do in this line. The Lithuanian Titmouse (_Ægithalus pendulinus_), whose works have been well described by Baldamus, lives in the marshes in the midst of reeds and willows in Poland, Galicia, and Hungary. Its nest, which resembles none met in our own country, is always suspended above the water, two or three metres above the surface, fixed to a willow branch.[95] All individuals do not exhibit the same skill in fabricating their dwelling; some are more careful and clever than others who are less experienced. Some also are obliged by circumstances to hasten their work. It frequently happens that Magpies spoil or even altogether destroy with blows of their beaks one of these pretty nests. The unfortunate couple are obliged to recommence their task, and if this accident happens two or three times to the same household, it can easily be imagined that, discouraged and depressed by the advancing season, they hasten to build a shelter anyhow, only doing what is indispensable, and neglecting perfection. However this may be, the nests which are properly finished have the form of a purse, twenty centimetres high and twelve broad. (Fig. 27.) At the side an opening, prolonged by a passage which is generally horizontal, gives access to the interior. Sometimes another opening is found without any passage. Every nest in the course of construction possessed this second entry, but it is usually filled up when the work is completed. When the bird has resolved to establish its retreat, it first chooses a hanging branch presenting bifurcations which can be utilised as a rigid frame on which to weave the lateral walls of the habitation. It intercrosses wool and goat's hair so as to form two courses which are afterwards united to each other below, and constitute the first sketch of the nest, at this moment like a flat-bottomed basket. This is only the beginning. The whole wall is reinforced by the addition of new material. The architect piles up down from the poplar and the willow, and binds it all together with filaments torn from the bark of trees, so as to make a whole which is very resistant. Then a couch is formed by heaping up wool and down at the bottom of the nest. [95] Baldamus, _Beiträge zur Oologie und Nidologie_, 1853, pp. 419-445. The American Baltimore Oriole, also called the Baltimore Bird, is a distinguished weaver. With strong stalks and hemp or flax, fastened round two forked twigs corresponding to the proposed width of nest, it makes a very delicate sort of mat, weaving into it quantities of loose tow. The form of the nest might be compared to that of a ham; it is attached by the narrow portion to a small branch, the large part being below. An opening exists at the lower end of the dwelling, and the interior is carefully lined with soft substances, well interwoven with the outward netting, and it is finished with an external layer of horse-hair, while the whole is protected from sun and rain by a natural canopy of leaves. The Rufous-necked Weaver Bird, as described by Brehm, shows itself equally clever. Its nest is woven with extreme delicacy, and resembles a long-necked decanter hung up with the opening below. From the bottom of the decanter a strong band attaches the whole to the branch of a tree. (Fig. 28.) The Yellow Weaver Bird of Java, as described by Forbes, constructs very similar retort-shaped nests.[96] [96] H. O. Forbes, _A Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago_, 1885, pp. 56-58. These birds have no monopoly of these careful dwellings; a considerable number of genera have carried this industry to the same degree of perfection. [Illustration: FIG. 28.] [Illustration: FIG. 29.] When animals apply themselves in association to any work, they nearly always exhibit in it a marked superiority over neighbouring species among whom the individuals work in isolation. The construction of dwellings is no exception, and the nests of the Sociable Weaver Birds of South Africa are the best constructed that can be found. These birds live together in considerable colonies; the members of an association are at least two hundred in number, and sometimes rise to five hundred. The city which they construct is a marvel of industry. They first make with grass a sloping roof; giving it the form of a mushroom or an open umbrella, and they place it in such a way that it is supported by the trunk of a tree and one or two of the branches. (Fig. 29.) This thatch is prepared with so much care that it is absolutely impenetrable to water. Beneath this protecting shelter each couple constructs its private dwelling. All the individual nests have their openings below, and they are so closely pressed against one another that on looking at the construction from beneath, the divisions cannot be seen. One only perceives a surface riddled with holes like a skimmer; each of these holes is the door of a nest. The work may endure for several years; as long as there is room beneath the roof the young form pairs near their cradle; but at last, as the colony continues to increase, a portion emigrate to found a new town on another tree in the forest.[97] [97] An early description of this bird is to be found in W. Paterson's _Narrative of Four Journeys into the Country of the Hottentots_, 1789; also in Le Vaillant's _Second Voyage dans l'intérieur de l'Afrique_, 1803, t. iii., p. 322. [Illustration: FIG. 30.] The industry of the woven dwelling does not flourish among mammals; but there is one which excels in it. This is the Dwarf Mouse (_Mus minutus_), certainly one of the smallest Rodents. It generally lives amidst reeds and rushes, and it is perhaps this circumstance which has impelled it to construct an aërial dwelling for its young, not being able to deposit them on the damp and often flooded soil. This retreat is not used in every season; its sole object is for bringing forth the young. It is therefore a genuine nest, not only by the manner in which it is made, but by the object it is intended to serve. The mouse chooses in the midst of its usual domain a tuft with leaves more or less crossed; but not too inextricable, so that there may remain in the midst an empty space, in the centre of which the work will be arranged. Great ingenuity is shown in the preliminaries; the mouse simplifies its task by utilising material within its reach instead of going afar to collect them with trouble. The little animal examines the thicket, and on reflection chooses some thirty leaves which appear suitable. Then, without detaching them, it tears each into seven or eight threads which are held together by the base, and remain attached to the reeds. It is a clever idea to avoid losing a natural point of support. The little bands being thus prepared, they are interlaced and crossed with much art, the animal comes and goes, placing first one of them, then another above, taken from a different leaf. It has soon woven a ball about the size of the fist, and hollowed out the interior. (Fig. 30.) Delicate materials are not lacking around to make a soft bed. The mouse gleans and constantly brings in the light down of the willow, grains with cottony crests, and the petals of flowers. This is all carefully fitted, and when the edifice is completed the female retires into it to bring forth her young, which are there well sheltered against the dangers without, and the caprices of storms and floods. The nest is made with as much delicacy as that of any bird, and no other mammal except Man is capable of executing such weaver's work. _The art of sewing among birds._--There are birds which have succeeded in solving a remarkable difficulty. Sewing seems so ingenious an art that it must be reserved for the human species alone. Yet the Tailor Bird, the _Orthotomus longicauda_, and other species possess the elements of it. They place their nests in a large leaf which they prepare to this end. With their beaks they pierce two rows of holes along the two edges of the leaf; they then pass a stout thread from one side to the other alternately. With this leaf, at first flat, they form a horn in which they weave their nest with cotton or hair. (Fig. 31.) These labours of weaving and sewing are preceded by the spinning of the thread. The bird makes it itself by twisting in its beak spiders' webs, bits of cotton, and little ends of wool. Sykes found that the threads used for sewing were knotted at the ends.[98] It is impossible not to admire animals who have skilfully triumphed over all the obstacles met with in the course of these complicated operations.[99] [98] _Catalogue of Birds, etc._, p. 16. [99] Tristram, "On the Ornithology of Northern Africa," _Isis_, 1859-60. [Illustration: FIG. 31.] Certain Spiders, while they do not actually sew in the sense that they perforate the leaves they use to build their nest, and draw the thread through them, yet subject the leaves to an operation which cannot well be called anything else but sewing it.[100] [100] McCook describes, and gives good illustrations of, these nests in various stages of progress, _American Spiders_, vol i. p. 302. _Modifications of dwellings according to season and climate._--A certain number of facts show that these various industries are not fixed and immutable instincts imposed on the species. Certain Birds change the form of their dwelling according to the climate, or according to the season in which they inhabit it. For example, the Crossbill, _Loxia tænioptera_ (Fig. 32), does not build its nest according to the same rules in Sweden as in France. It builds in every season. The winter shelter is spherical, constructed with very dry lichens, and it is very large. A very narrow opening, just sufficient for the passage of the owner, prevents the external cold from penetrating within. The summer nests are much smaller, in consequence of a reduction in the thickness of the walls. There is no longer need to fear that the cold will come through them, and the animal gives itself no superfluous trouble. [Illustration: FIG. 32.] Again, the Baltimore Oriole, which inhabits both the Northern and Southern States of North America, knows very well how to adapt his manner of work to the external circumstances in which he lives. Thus, in the Southern States the nest is woven of delicate materials united in a rather loose fashion, so that the air can circulate freely and keep the interior fresh; it is lined with no warm substance, and the entrance is turned to the west so that the sun only sends into it the oblique evening rays. In the north, on the contrary, the nest is oriented to the south to profit by all the warm sunshine; the walls are thick, without interstices, and the dwelling is carpeted in the warmest and softest manner. Even in the same region there is great diversity in the style, neatness, and finish of the nests, as well as in the materials used. Skeins of silk and hanks of thread have frequently been found in the Baltimore Bird's nest, so woven up and entangled that they could not be withdrawn. As such materials could not be obtained before the introduction of Europeans, it is evident that this bird, with the sagacity of a good architect, knows how to select the strongest and best materials for his work. Many other facts might be quoted, but these suffice to show that the species is not animated by an inevitable instinct, but that each individual, skilful no doubt by heredity, can modify the methods transmitted to him by his ancestors, according to his own experience and his own judgment. _Built dwellings._--The built dwelling, the expression of the highest civilisation, still remains to be studied. Man has only known how to construct this kind of shelter at a comparatively late period in his evolution; and among animals we do not find it widely spread, much less so, certainly, than the two foregoing methods, especially the first. The difficulty of this work is greater, and it only arrives at considerable development among very sociable species, since the united efforts of a great number of individuals are needed to carry it on. There are, however, masons who operate separately; but their constructions are rudimentary. The characteristic of all these works is that they are manufactured with some substance to which the animal gives a determined form while it is still soft, and that in drying it preserves this form and acquires solidity. The matter most usually employed is softened and tempered earth--mortar; but there are animals who use with success more delicate bodies. Two examples will suffice to indicate the nature of these exceptions: the labours of Wasps and those of certain Swallows. [Illustration: FIG. 33.] _Paper nests._--Certain Wasps, by the material of their dwellings, approach the Japanese; they build with paper. This paper or cardboard is very strong and supplies a solid support; moreover, being a bad conductor of heat, it contributes to maintain an equable temperature within the nest. The constructions of these insects, though they do not exhibit the geometric arrangement of those of Bees, are not less interesting. The paper which they employ is manufactured on the spot, as the walls of the cells develop. Detritus of every kind enters into its preparation: small fragments of wood, sawdust, etc.; anything is good. These Hymenoptera possess no organ specially adapted to aid them; it is with their saliva that they glue this dust together and make of it a substance very suitable for its purpose. The dwellings often reach considerable size, yet they are always begun by a single female, who does all the work without help until the moment when the first eggs come out; she is thus furnished with workers capable of taking a share in her task. The _Vespa sylvestris_ builds a paper nest of this kind, hanging to the branch of a tree, like a great grey sphere prolonged to a blunt neck. (Fig. 33.) The Hornet's nest is similar in construction. _Gelatine nests._--These are made by certain Swallows who nest in grottoes or cliffs on the edge of the sea. After having collected from the water a gelatinous substance formed either of the spawn of fish or the eggs of Mollusca, they carry this substance on to a perpendicular wall, and apply it to form an arc of a circle. This first deposit being dry, they increase it by sticking on to its edge a new deposit. Gradually the dwelling takes on the appearance of a cup and receives the workers' eggs. (Fig. 34.) These dwellings are the famous swallows' nests, so appreciated by the epicures of the extreme East, which are edible in the same way as, for example, caviare. _Constructions built of earth--Solitary masons._--Certain animals, whose dwelling participates in the nature of a hollow cavern, make additions to it which claim a place among the constructions with which we are now occupied. [Illustration: FIG. 34.] [Illustration: FIG. 35.] The _Anthophora parietina_ is in this group; it is a small bee which lives in liberty in our climate. As its name indicates, it prefers to frequent the walls of old buildings and finds a refuge in the interstices, hollowing out the mortar half disintegrated by time. The entrance to the dwelling is protected by a tube curved towards the bottom, and making an external prominence. (Fig. 35.) The owner comes and goes by this passage, and as it is curved towards the earth the interior is protected against a flow of rain, while at the same time the entry is rendered more difficult for _Melectes_ and _Anthrax_. These insects, in fact, watch the departure of the _Anthophora_ to endeavour to penetrate into their nests and lay their eggs there. The gallery of entry and exit has been built with grains of sand, the _débris_ produced by the insect in working. These grains of sand glued together form, on drying, a very resistant wall.[101] [101] Latreille, "Observations sur l'abeille parietine (_Anthophora parietina_)," _Annales du Muséum d'Hist. Nat._, t. iii., 1804, p. 257. The other animals of which I have to speak are genuine masons, who prepare their mortar by tempering moistened earth. Every one has seen the Swallow in spring working at its nest in the corner of a window. It usually establishes its dwelling in an angle, so that the three existing walls can be utilised, and to have an enclosed space there is need only to add the face. It usually gives to this the form of a quarter of a sphere, and begins it by applying earth more or less mixed with chopped hay against the walls which are to support the edifice. At the summit of the construction a hole is left for entry and exit. During the whole of its sojourn in our country the Swallow uses this dwelling, and even returns to it for many years in succession, as long as its work will support the attacks of time. The faithful return of these birds to their old nest has been many times proved by attaching ribbons to their claws; they have always returned with the distinctive mark. [Illustration: FIG. 36.] The _Chalicodoma_, whose name of Mason Bee indicates the industry it exercises, is a hymenopterous relative to our Bees, long since carefully studied by Réaumur. It does not live in societies like the latter, and exhibits individual initiative and skill as great as the swallows. The females accomplish the work which I am about to describe. The little cells which they build are arranged, to the number of eight or ten together, in the most various places; sometimes on a pebble, sometimes on a branch, or, again, on a stone wall. (Fig. 36.) The insect collects earth as fine as possible, such as the dust of a trodden path, and tempers it with its own saliva. It places side by side these little balls of mortar and the work soon takes the form of a cupola, to the edge of which it constantly adds new deposits. The sun quickly dries the hole and gives it the necessary consistence. When the cell has acquired sufficient height, the _Chalicodoma_ abandons its occupation of mason, and visits flowers for pollen and nectar wherewith to fill the little chamber. It goes back to the nest, disgorges its supply, and returns to the field, until the little cup of earth is full to the edge. When the dwelling is thus prepared and provisioned, the insect lays an egg there and closes the upper part with a vault, built by successive deposits over the opening, which is more and more narrowed until it is finally shut up. Having completed a chamber, it passes on to the next, and so on until it has assured the fate of all its descendants. This hymenopterous insect certainly shows in its acts as an artisan an inevitable instinct: hereditary intelligence has become less personal and less spontaneous. In certain cases, however, the instinct loses its rigidity and automatism. Thus, when a _Chalicodoma_, at the moment of preparing to accomplish its task, finds an old nest, still capable of repair although dilapidated, it does not hesitate to take possession of it and to silence its assumed innate instinct of building. It profits by the work already done, and is content to fill up the cracks or to re-establish the masonry where defective; then it provisions the renewed cells with honey, and lays its eggs in them. In certain circumstances it shows itself still more sparing of trouble, and boldly rebels against the law which seems to be imposed on it by nature. If it feels itself sufficiently strong, the _Chalicodoma_ throws itself on one of its fellows, a peaceful constructor that has almost completed its work; it chases it away, and takes possession of its property to shelter its own eggs. Instead of manufacturing the cell from bottom to top, it has only to complete it. Such acts evidently show the reflection appearing through instinct. Besides the Swallows, of which I have already spoken, birds offer us several types of skilful construction with tempered earth. The Flamingo, which lives in marshes, cannot place its eggs on the earth nor in the trunks of trees, which are often absent from its domain. It builds a cone of mud, which dries and becomes very resistant, and it prepares at the summit an excavation open to the air; this is the nest. The female broods by sitting with her legs hanging over the sides of the hillock on which her little family prospers above the waters and the damp soil. A Perch in the Danube also manufactures a dwelling of dried earth. It gives it the form of an elliptic cupola, and prepares a semicircular opening for entry and exit. The bird which shows itself the most skilful mason is probably the Oven-Bird (_Furnarius rufus_) of Brazil and La Plata. Its name is owing to the form of the nest which it constructs for brooding, and which has the appearance of an oven. It is very skilful and knows how to build a dome of clay without scaffolding, which is not altogether easy. Having chosen for the site of its labours a large horizontal branch, it brings to it a number of little clay balls more or less combined with vegetable _débris_, works them altogether, and makes a very uniform floor, which is to serve as a platform for the rest of the work. When this is done, and while the foundation is drying, the bird arranges on it a circular border of mortar slightly inclined outwards. This becomes hard; it raises it by a new application, this time inclined inwards. All the other layers which will be placed above this will also be inclined towards the interior of the chamber. As the structure rises, the circle which terminates it above becomes more and more narrow. Soon it is quite small, and the animal, closing it with a little ball of clay, finds itself in possession of a well-made dome. Naturally it prepares an entrance; the form of this is semicircular. But this is not all. In the interior it arranges two partitions: one vertical, the other horizontal, separating off a small chamber. The vertical partition begins at one of the edges of the door, so that the air from without cannot penetrate directly into the dwelling, which is thus protected against extreme variations of temperature. It is in the compartment thus formed that the female lays her eggs and broods, after having taken care to carpet it with a thick layer of small herbs. "In favourable seasons, the Oven-birds begin building in the autumn," Hudson tells us, "and the work is resumed during the winter whenever there is a spell of mild, wet weather. Some of their structures are finished early in winter, others not until spring, everything depending on the weather and the condition of the birds. In cold, dry weather, and when food is scarce, they do not work at all. The site chosen is a stout horizontal branch, or the top of a post, and they also frequently build on a cornice or the roof of a house; and sometimes, but rarely, on the ground. The material used is mud, with the addition of horse hair or slender fibrous rootlets, which make the structure harder and prevent it from cracking. I have frequently seen a bird engaged in building first pick up a thread or hair, then repair to a puddle, where it was worked into a pellet of mud about the size of a filbert, then carried to the nest. When finished the structure is shaped outwardly like a baker's oven, only with a deeper and narrower entrance. It is always placed very conspicuously, and with the entrance facing a building, if one be near, or if at a roadside it looks towards the road; the reason for this being, no doubt, that the bird keeps a continuous eye on the movements of people near it while building, and so leaves the nest opened and unfinished on that side until the last, and then the entrance is necessarily formed. When the structure has assumed the globular form with only a narrow opening, the wall on one side is curved inwards, reaching from the floor to the dome, and at the inner extremity an aperture is left to admit the bird to the interior or second chamber, in which the eggs are laid. A man's hand fits easily into the first or entrance chamber, but cannot be twisted about so as to reach the eggs in the interior cavity, the entrance being so small and high up. The interior is lined with dry soft grass, and five white pear-shaped eggs are laid. The oven is a foot or more in diameter, and is sometimes very massive, weighing eight or nine pounds, and so strong that, unless loosened by the swaying of the branch, it often remains unharmed for two or three years. A new oven is built every year, and I have more than once seen a second oven built on the top of the first, when this has been placed very advantageously, as on a projection and against a wall."[102] [102] P. L. Sclater and W. H. Hudson, _Argentine Ornithology_, 1888, vol. i. pp. 168, 169. See also Burmeister, "Ueber die Eier und Nester einiger brasilianischen Vögel," _Cabani's Journal für Ornith._, 1853, pp. 161-177. _Masons working in association._--Ants have already furnished us with numerous proofs of their intelligence and their prodigious industry. So remote from Man from the anatomical point of view, they are of all animals those whose psychic faculties bring them nearest to him. Sociable like him, they have undergone an evolution parallel to his which has placed them at the head of Insects in the same way as he has become superior to all other Mammals. The brain in Ants as in Man has undergone a disproportionate development. Like Man, they possess a language which enables them to combine their efforts, and there is no human industry in which these insects have not arrived at a high degree of perfection. If in certain parts of the earth human societies are superior to those of Ants, in many others the civilisation of Ants is notably superior. No village of Kaffirs can be compared to a palace of the Termites. The classifications separate these insects (sometimes called "White Ants") from the Ants, since the latter are Hymenoptera, while the former are ranked among the Neuroptera, but their constructions are almost alike, and may be described together. These small animals, relatively to their size, build on a colossal scale compared to Man; even our most exceptional monuments cannot be placed beside their ordinary buildings. (Fig. 37.) The domes of triturated and plastered clay which cover their nests may rise to a height of five metres; that is to say, to dimensions equal to one thousand times the length of the worker. The Eiffel Tower, the most elevated monument of which human industry can boast, is only one hundred and eighty-seven times the average height of the worker. It is three hundred metres high, but to equal the Termites' audacity, it would have to attain a height of 1,600 metres. [Illustration: FIG. 37.] [Illustration: FIG. 38. 1. King before wings are cast off; 2. Worker (neuter); 3. Queen with abdomen distended with eggs; 4. Soldier (neuter); 5. Young (resembling adults).] The different species of Termite are not equally industrious. The _T. bellicosus_ seems to have carried the art of construction to the highest point. All the individuals of the species are not alike; there exists a polymorphism which produces creatures of three sorts: 1, the _soldiers_, recognised by their large heads and long sharp mandibles, moved by powerful muscles; it is their mission to defend the whole colony against its adversaries, and the wounds they can produce, fatal to creatures of their own size, are painful even to man; 2, the _workers_, who labour as navvies and architects, and take charge of the pupæ: they form the great majority of the community; 3, the _king_ and _queen_. (Fig. 38.) To each nest there is usually only a single fertile and lazy couple. These two personages do absolutely nothing; the soldiers and the workers care for them and bring them food. They have both possessed wings, but these fall off. The queen reigns but does not govern; she lays. The king is simply the husband of the queen. The internal administration of the palace is bound up with the parts played by these three kinds of beings. [Illustration: FIG. 39.] The lofty nest, or Termitarium, constitutes a hillock in the form of a cupola. The interior arrangement is very complicated, and at the same time very well adapted to the life of the inhabitants. There are four storeys in all, covered by the general exterior walls. (Fig. 39.) The walls of the dome are very thick; at the base they measure from sixty to eighty centimetres. The clay in drying attains the hardness of brick, and the whole is very coherent. The sentinels of herds of wild cattle choose these tumuli as observatories and do not break them down. The walls of this exterior _enceinte_ are hollowed by galleries of two kinds: some horizontal and giving access from outside to all the storeys; the others mounting spirally in the thickness of the wall to the summit of the dome. When the colony is in full activity, after the construction is completed, these little passages have no further use. They served for the passage of the masons when building the cupola; and they could be utilised again if a breach should be made in the wall. At the lower part these galleries in the wall are very wide, and they sink into the earth beneath the palace to a depth of more than 1 metre 50. These subterranean passages (_c_) are the catacombs of the Termites, and have a very close analogy with those of old and populous human cities. Their origin is similar; they are ancient quarries. The insects hollowed them in obtaining the necessary clay for their labours. Later, when the rains come, they serve as drains to carry off the water which might threaten to invade the dwelling. Such is the external wall within which a busy population swarms. On passing to the interior let us first enter the ground-floor. In the centre is found the royal chamber (_r_). The walls are extremely strong and are supplied with windows for ventilation, and with doors to enable the Termites to render their services. It is necessary to renew the air in this chamber, which constantly contains more than two thousand insects. The openings are large enough for the passage of the workers, but the queen cannot pass through them. She is therefore a prisoner, as immured as a goddess in her temple. The chain which holds her is the prodigious development of her abdomen. As a virgin she could enter, when fertilised she cannot henceforth go out. She continuously elaborates eggs; every moment one appears at the orifice of the oviduct. The king remains near her, to give his assistance when occasion arises; hence he has received the title, absolutely justified under the circumstances, of Father of the People. Around the couple zealous attendants crowd. There are about two thousand of them, workers and soldiers, licking the two royal captives to remove any dust from their hairs, and bringing them food. As soon as the queen lays an egg, one of the workers hastens to take it gently between its jaws; it is the property of the state, and is carefully carried off to the second storey where the state nursery is situated. The centre of the ground-floor, therefore, is occupied by the royal apartment; around this, and communicating with it by means of numerous entrances, are a number of cells used by the attendants on the queen (_s_). These little chambers are surrounded by a labyrinth of passages. The central room and its dependencies constitute a solid mass, around which other chambers are grouped. The whole space between it and the general wall is filled by vast storehouses, divided into many very spacious compartments. Within them are piled up the provisions which the Termites harvest every day; they consist especially of gums and the juices of plants, dried and pulverised so as to form a fine powder. Access to this property is given by means of large corridors which cross one another, and conduct to the outside through the horizontal galleries traversing the wall. Above the whole of this ground-floor rests a thick vault of clay, which forms a strong floor for the first storey (B). This is composed of only a single room; it is put to no use, unless to isolate and support the apartments of the second floor, in the arrangement of which great care is exercised. There are no partitions on this floor, nothing but massive columns of clay to support the ceiling. These columns are more than a metre in height. It is a gigantic cathedral in which the lilliputian architects have displayed considerable art. By means of this immense empty chamber a huge reservoir of air is placed in the very centre of the construction; through the galleries in the external wall it is sufficiently renewed for the purposes of respiration without too great a change in temperature. The second storey rests on the first. To this the eggs are brought, and here the larvæ go through their evolution. Partitions of clay divide the space into a few large halls (_a_); these are again subdivided, this time not by earth, which is employed throughout the rest of the building, but by materials of a more delicate kind, which are, moreover, very bad conductors of heat (_b_). It is a question, in fact, of maintaining these little chambers at an almost constant temperature, favourable for the development of the eggs. The substances utilised for this purpose are fragments of wood and of gum. The Termites glue them together and thus form the walls of these important cells. The arrangement of the top storey (D) is also disposed with a view of protecting the young who are the future of the city. It constitutes the attic, situated just beneath the cupola, and contains absolutely nothing; it simply serves to interpose beneath the summit of the edifice and the storey below a layer of air, which is a bad conductor of heat. The chamber devoted to the young is thus placed between two gaseous layers, a precaution which, combined with the choice of material, places it in the very best conditions for protection against the alternation of cold at night and torrid heat during the day. It is difficult to know which to admire most--the audacity and vastness of the labour undertaken by these insects, or the ingenious foresight by which they ensure to their delicate larvæ a comfortable youth. There can be no doubt that these animals show themselves very superior to Man, taking into consideration his enormous size compared to theirs, in the art of building. Pillars, cupolas, vaults--nothing is too difficult or too complicated for these small and patient labourers.[103] [103] The earliest comprehensive account of the Termites and their industries was by Smeathman in the _Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society_, vol. lxxi., 1781, pp. 139-192. Later they were studied by Lespès: "Recherches sur l'organisation et les moeurs du Termite lucifuge," _Ann. des Sci. Nat._, 4me Série, t. v., fasc. 4 and 5, Paris, 1856. For a description of the South American Termitarium see also Bates's _Naturalist on the Amazons_ (unabridged edition, 1892), pp. 208-214; and for the African Termites of Victoria Nyanza, a chapter in H. Drummond's _Tropical Africa_, 1888, pp. 123-158; while Forbes has briefly described them in Java, _Naturalist's Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago_, pp. 73, 74. The Ants of our own lands do not yield to the Termites in this industry, and their dwellings are models of architecture. As they have been more carefully studied we know more exactly how they work, and the considerable sum of intelligence and initiative which they reveal in the accomplishment of their task. At the foot of hedges, on the outskirts of woods, they raise their frail monuments. The species are not equally skilful, and such differences as we have found in other industries may also be found here. In a general manner it was soon found that Ants do not, like Bees, obey a rigid instinct which ordains the line of conduct under every circumstance, and impels each individual to act so that his efforts are naturally combined and harmonised with those of his neighbours in the workshop. One soon perceives when observing an ant-hill that any individual insect follows, when working, a personal idea which it has conceived, and which it realises without troubling itself about the others. Often these latter are executing a quite contradictory plan. It is rather an anarchistic republic. Happily Ants are not obstinate, and when they see the idea of one of them disengaging itself from the labour commenced, they are content to abandon their own less satisfactory idea and to collaborate in the other's work. They are able, for the rest, to concert plans; the movements of their antennæ are a very complicated language containing many expressions, and the worker who desires the acceptance of his own point of view is not sparing in their use.[104] It sometimes happens that his efforts are vain, and that his companions manoeuvre to thwart his schemes. In the presence of such resistance those who are determined to obtain the adoption of their own plans destroy the labours of their opponents; fierce struggles ensue, and here it is the strongest who becomes the architect-general. [104] For a discussion of the methods of communication among Ants, tending to the conclusion that these methods "almost amount to language," see Lubbock's _Ants, Bees, and Wasps_, chap. vi. And for a general discussion of language among animals, see Alix, _L'esprit de nos Bêtes_, pp. 331-367. The _Formica fusca_ constructs its nest of plastered earth. The different superimposed storeys have been added one by one to the upper part of the old dwelling when the latter became too small for the growing colony. In opening an ant-hill, they are found to be quite distinct from each other; each is divided by a large number of partitions into vaulted compartments. In the larger ones pillars of earth support the ceiling. The rooms communicate with one another by means of bull's-eye passages formed in the separating walls. The whole is small, proportioned to the size of the works, but excellently arranged. When, in the council of the republic, it has been resolved to raise a common habitation, the workers operate in a singular manner. All the ants scatter themselves abroad, and with extreme activity take fragments of earth between their mandibles and place them on the summit of the dwelling. After some time the result of this microscopical work appears. The ancient roof, strengthened by all this material, becomes a thick terrace which the insects first cover very evenly. The earth, having been brought in grain by grain, is soft and easy to dig. The construction of the new storey begins at first by the hollowing out of a number of trenches. The ants scrape away in places the terrace which they have just made. They thus diminish the thickness of the layer at the spots where rooms, corridors, etc., are to be formed, and with the material thus obtained they form walls, partitions, and pillars. Soon the entire plan of the new storey may be perceived. It differs essentially from that which Man would adopt; in the latter case the walls would be shown by the hollowing out of the foundations; the work of these Hymenoptera, on the contrary, shows them in relief. These first arrangements made, the six-footed architects have only to complete their constructions by new deposits from without. Gradually the storey reaches a sufficient height. It remains to cover it, and this is not the easiest part of the business. The ceiling is formed of vaults going from one wall to another, or from a wall to a column. When one of these vaults is to be small, some millimetres at the most, the _Formica fusca_ constructs it with the help of two ledges, which are made facing each other on the tops of two partitions. These prominences, formed of materials glued together by saliva, are enlarged by additions to their free edges. They advance to meet each other and soon join; it is wonderful to see each insect, following its individual initiative, profit by every twig or fragment capable of bearing any weight, in order to enlarge the overhanging ledges. _Individual skill and reflection._--This personality in work, which reveals the intelligent effort of each, has certainly its inconveniences for the common work. Badly-concerted operations may not succeed, and Huber witnessed an accident due to this cause.[105] Two walls facing each other were to be united by an arch. A foolish worker had begun to form a horizontal ledge on the summit of one of the walls without paying attention to the fact that the other wall was very much higher. By continuing the project the ceiling would have come against the middle of the opposite ceiling instead of resting on its summit. Another ant passes, examines affairs with an intelligent air, and evidently considers that this sort of work is absurd. Without consideration for the _amour-propre_ of its unskilful fellow-citizen, it demolishes its work, raises the wall that is too low, and re-makes the construction correctly in the presence of the observer. If this incident reveals inconceivable thoughtlessness in one of the members of this serious republic, it also brings to light the judgment, reflection, and decision of which they are capable, as well as a freedom which cannot be found in the works of instinct. [105] _Recherches sur les Moeurs des Fourmis indigènes_, pp. 47, 48. This _Formica fusca_ sometimes finds itself in the presence of other difficulties. It may happen that the hall to be roofed is too large and the arch too considerable to allow of the cohesion of the materials employed. The insects soon become aware of the existence of this embarrassing state of things and remedy it in various ways, either by hastily constructing pillars in the centre of the too large room, or by some other method. Ebrard describes an artifice he has seen employed, which shows to what an extent ants can quickly appreciate and take advantage of the most unforeseen circumstances.[106] A worker was labouring to cover a large cell; two prominences, parts of opposite walls, were advancing towards each other, but there was still a space of from twelve to fifteen millimetres between them, and it seemed no longer possible to burden the two sides without risking a general downfall. The little mason was much disturbed. A graminaceous plant was growing near. The ant seemed anxious to take advantage of it, for it went to it and climbed up the stalk. After having examined and devised, it set about curving it in the direction of the edifice. To attain this object, it placed a little mass of moist earth on the extremity of the leaf, and fixed it there. Under the influence of this weight flexion was produced, but only at the end. This could not satisfy the insect; it became a question of decreasing the resistance at the base. The ant gnawed a little at this spot; the desired result was attained, and the whole length of the leaf became bent over the building in course of construction. To prevent it bending back, and to ensure its remaining adherent to the roof, the worker returned to the plant and placed earth between the sheath and the stalk. This time all difficulties were surmounted, and there was a solid scaffolding to support the materials for the roof. [106] Ebrard, _Études de Moeurs_, Genève, 1864, p. 3. Among the _Lasius niger_ the independence of the workers is perhaps still greater; no doubt they do their best to concert their efforts, but they do not succeed so well as if an inevitable instinct impelled them. Notwithstanding the irregularities of the construction, it is possible to recognise in it a whole formed of hollowed, concentric half-spheres; they have been added one after the other to the surface to increase the dwelling. The interval between these clay spheres constitutes a storey, cut up by the partitions which divide it into chambers and communicating galleries; the roofs of the largest halls are supported by numerous pillars. (Fig. 40.) [Illustration: FIG. 40.] These ants, as Huber has shown, are highly accomplished in the art of constructing a cupola. When they wish to increase their nest by a new layer, they take advantage of the first wet day, the rain serving to agglutinate and unite the materials. They operate in almost the same way as the _Formica fusca_, though exhibiting more skill and resource as architects; they know better how to calculate beforehand the number of pillars required in a hall of a determined size. As soon as the rain has given the signal for work, they spread themselves abroad and prepare a very thick terrace on the external surface of the dwelling which has become too small. They carry to it small balls of earth ground very fine by their jaws, and then lightly piled up so as to pulverise afresh; these are then spread over the construction with the anterior legs. Then, by hollowing out, the ants trace the plan of the new storey, leaving the walls, partitions, and columns in relief. After having raised these parts to a sufficient height, all work together to cover them with a general ceiling, each ant applying itself to one small corner of the work. The vaulting is executed by the method already described; horizontal ledges, slanting from the summit of pillar or wall, are formed to meet one another. The insects are intelligent enough to begin their labour at the spots best fitted to give strong support to the overhanging materials, as for instance, at the angle of two walls. There is so much activity among the workers, and they are so anxious to take advantage of the damp, that the storey is sometimes completely finished in seven or eight hours. If the rain suddenly stops in the course of the work, they abandon operations, to complete them as soon as another shower falls. I have already had occasion to speak of the covered passages and Aphis-pens built by Ants outside their dwellings. Besides these constructions, they also make roads in the fields, tearing up the grass and hollowing out the earth so as to form a beaten path free from the lilliputian bushes in which there would be danger of becoming entangled, on returning to the nest laden with various and often embarrassing burdens. Nor are Ants by any means alone in exhibiting the results of individual skill and reflection. It will, however, be sufficient to mention only one other example, that furnished by Spiders. McCook, in his great work, after elaborately describing and carefully illustrating the skill exhibited in individual cases by Spiders in their aërial labours, considers himself justified in concluding as follows:--"The manner in which the ends of the radii which terminate upon the herb are wrapped roundabout and braced by the notched zone; the manner in which the wide non-viscid scaffold lines are woven in order to give vantage ground from which to place the close-lying and permanent viscid spirals, upon which the usefulness of the orb depends--all these, to mention no other points, seem to indicate a very delicate perception of those modes (shall I also say principles?) of construction which are continually recognised in the art of the builder, the architect, and the engineer."[107] [107] _American Spiders_, vol. i. p. 228. _Dwellings built of hard materials united by mortar._--Among mammals few animals have become so skilful in the art of building houses as the insects we have just been considering. There are, however, two who equal if they do not surpass them--the Musk-rat and its relative, the Beaver. The Musk-rats of Canada live in colonies on the banks of streams or deep lakes, and construct dwellings which are very well arranged. In their methods we find combined the woven shelter with the house of built earth. Their cabins are established over the highest level of the water and look like little domes. In building them the animals begin by placing reeds in the earth; these they interlace and weave so as to form a sort of vertical mat. They plaster it externally with a layer of mud, which is mixed by means of the paws and smoothed by the tail. At the upper part of the hut the reeds are not pressed together or covered with earth, so that the air may be renewed in the interior. A dwelling of this kind, intended to house six or eight individuals who have combined to build it, may measure up to 65 centimetres in diameter. There is no door directly opening on to the ground. A subterranean gallery starts from the floor and opens out beneath the water. It presents secondary branches, some horizontal, through which the animal goes in search of roots for food, while others descend vertically to pits specially reserved for the disposal of ordure. But it is, above all, the Beaver (_Castor fiber_) who exhibits the highest qualities as an engineer and mason. This industrious and sagacious Rodent is well adapted to inconvenience the partisans of instinct as an entity, apart from intelligence, which renders animals similar to machines and impels them to effect associated acts, without themselves being able to understand them, and with a fatality and determination from which they can under no circumstance escape. Beavers now only live in Canada. A few individuals may, however, still be found on the banks of the lower Rhône, in Camargue, and on a few other European rivers. Several centuries ago they existed in the neighbourhood of Paris in considerable numbers. The Bièvre gained its name from the old French word for Beaver, and its resemblance to the English name, as well as to the German (_Biber_), is striking. In the sixteenth century, according to Bishop Magnus of Upsala, the Beaver was still common on the banks of the Rhine, the Danube, and on the shores of the Black Sea, and in the North it still exercised great art in its constructions. In the twelfth century it was found in Scotland and Wales. If we go back to ancient times, we find that Herodotus mentions that the Budini who lived in the neighbourhood of the Black Sea used the skins of the Beavers, which abounded there, on the borders of their garments; and in the time of Pliny the Beaver was so common there that he speaks of it as the Pontic Beaver. Fossil remains of the Beaver have also been found throughout Europe in conjunction with those of the Mammoth and other extinct animals. But the civilisation of the Beaver has perished in the presence of Man's civilisation, or rather of his persecution. In regions where it is tracked and disturbed by Man the Beaver lives in couples, and is content to hollow out a burrow like the Otter's, instead of showing its consummate art. It merely vegetates, fleeing from enemies who are too strong for it, and depriving itself of a dangerous comfort. But when the security of solitude permits these animals to unite in societies, and to possess, without too much fear, a pond or a stream, they then exhibit all their industry. They build very well arranged dwellings, although at first sight they look like mere piles of twigs, branches, and logs, heaped in disorder on a small dome of mud. At the edge of a pond each raises his own lodge, and there is no work by the colony in common. If, however, there is a question of inhabiting the bank of a shallow stream, certain preliminary works become necessary. The rodents establish a dam, so that they may possess a large sheet of water which may be of fair depth, and above all constant, not at the mercy of the rise and fall of the stream. A sudden and excessive flood is the one danger likely to prove fatal to these dykes; but even our own constructions are threatened under such circumstances. When the Beavers, tempted by abundance of willows and poplars, of which they eat the bark and utilise the wood in construction, have chosen a site, and have decided to establish a village on the edge of the water, there are several labours to be successively accomplished. Their first desire is to be in possession of a large number of felled trunks of trees. To obtain them they scatter themselves in the forest bordering the stream and attack saplings of from twenty to thirty centimetres in diameter. They are equipped for this purpose. With their powerful incisors, worked by strong jaws, they can soon gnaw through a tree of this size. But they are capable of attacking trees, even more than 100 cc. in circumference and some forty metres in height, with great skill and adaptability; "no better work could be accomplished by a most highly-finished steel cutting tool, wielded by a muscular human arm" (Martin). They operate seated on their hind quarters, and they make their incision in the wood with a feather edge. It was once supposed that they always take care so to direct their wood-cutting task that the tree may fall on the water-side, but this is by no means the case, and appears to be simply due, as Martin points out, to the fact that trees by the water-side usually slope towards the water. The austerity of labour alternates, it may be added, with the pleasures of the table. From time to time the Beavers remove the bark of the fallen trees, of which they are very fond, and feed on it. Mr. Lewis H. Morgan studied the American Beaver with great care and thoroughness, more especially on the south-west shore of Lake Superior; he devotes fifty pages to the dams, and it is worth while to quote his preliminary remarks regarding them. "The dam is the principal structure of the beaver. It is also the most important of his erections as it is the most extensive, and because its production and preservation could only be accomplished by patient and long-continued labour. In point of time, also, it precedes the lodge, since the floor of the latter and the entrances to its chamber are constructed with reference to the level of the water in the pond. The object of the dam is the formation of an artificial pond, the principal use of which is the refuge it affords to them when assailed, and the water-connection it gives to their lodges and to their burrows in the banks. Hence, as the level of the pond must, in all cases, rise from one to two feet above these entrances for the protection of the animal from pursuit and capture, the surface-level of the pond must, to a greater or less extent, be subject to their immediate control. As the dam is not an absolute necessity to the beaver for the maintenance of his life, his normal habitation being rather natural ponds and rivers, and burrows in their banks, it is, in itself considered, a remarkable fact that he should have voluntarily transferred himself, by means of dams and ponds of his own construction, from a natural to an artificial mode of life. "Some of these dams are so extensive as to forbid the supposition that they were the exclusive work of a single pair, or of a single family of beavers; but it does not follow, as has very generally been supposed, that several families, or a colony, unite for the joint construction of a dam. After careful examination of some hundreds of these structures, and of the lodges and burrows attached to many of them, I am altogether satisfied that the larger dams were not the joint-product of the labour of large numbers of beavers working together, and brought thus to immediate completion; but, on the contrary, that they arose from small beginnings, and were built upon year after year, until they finally reached that size which exhausted the capabilities of the location; after which they were maintained for centuries, at the ascertained standard, by constant repairs. So far as my observations have enabled me to form an opinion, I think they were usually, if not invariably, commenced by a single pair, or a single family of beavers; and that when, in the course of time, by the gradual increase of the dam, the pond had become sufficiently enlarged to accommodate more families than one, other families took up their residence upon it, and afterwards contributed by their labour to its maintenance. There is no satisfactory evidence that the American beavers either live or work in colonies; and if some such cases have been observed, it will either be found to be an exception to the general rule, or in consequence of the sudden destruction of a work upon the maintenance of which a number of families were at the time depending. "The great age of the larger dams is shown by their size, by the large amount of solid materials they contain, and by the destruction of the primitive forest within the area of the ponds; and also by the extent of the beaver-meadows along the margins of the streams where dams are maintained, and by the hummocks formed upon them by and through the annual growth and decay of vegetation in separate hills. These meadows were undoubtedly covered with trees adapted to a wet soil when the dams were constructed. It must have required long periods of time to destroy every vestige of the ancient forest by the increased saturation of the earth, accompanied with occasional overflows from the streams. The evidence from these and other sources tends to show that these dams have existed in the same places for hundreds and thousands of years, and that they have been maintained by a system of continuous repairs. "At the place selected for the construction of a dam, the ground is usually firm and often stony, and when across the channel of a flowing stream, a hard rather than a soft bottom is preferred. Such places are necessarily unfavourable for the insertion of stakes in the ground, if such were, in fact, their practice in building dams. The theory upon which beaver-dams are constructed is perfectly simple, and involves no such necessity. Soft earth, intermixed with vegetable fibre, is used to form an embankment, with sticks, brush, and poles embedded within these materials to bind them together, and to impart to them the requisite solidity to resist the effects both of pressure and of saturation. Small sticks and brush are used, in the first instance, with mud and earth and stones for down-weight. Consequently these dams are extremely rude at their commencement, and they do not attain their remarkably artistic appearance until after they have been raised to a considerable height, and have been maintained, by a system of annual repairs, for a number of years."[108] [108] L. H. Morgan, _The American Beaver and his Works_, Philadelphia, 1868, pp. 82-86. There are two different kinds of beaver-dams, although they are both constructed on the same principle. One, the stick-dam, consists of interlaced stick and pole work below, with an embankment of earth raised with the same material upon the upper or water face. This is usually found in brooks or large streams with ill-defined banks. The other, the solid-bank dam, is not so common nor so interesting, and is usually found on those parts of the same stream where the banks are well defined, the channel deep, and the current uniform. In this kind the earth and mud entirely buries the sticks and poles, giving the whole a solid appearance. In the first kind the surplus water percolates through the dam along its entire length, while in the second it is discharged through a single opening in the crest formed for that purpose. The materials being prepared in the manner I have previously described, the animals make ready to establish their dyke. They intermix their materials--driftwood, green willows, birch, poplars, etc.--in the bed of the river, with mud and stones, so making a solid bank, capable of resisting a great force of water; sometimes the trees will shoot up forming a hedge. The dam has a thickness of from three to four metres at the base, and about sixty centimetres at the upper part. The wall facing up-stream is sloping, that directed down-stream is vertical; this is the best arrangement for supporting the pressure of the mass of water which is thus expended on an inclined surface. In certain cases Beavers carry hydraulic science still further. If the course of the water is not very rapid, they generally make an almost straight dyke, perpendicular to the two banks, as this is then sufficient; but if the current is strong, they curve it so that the convexity is turned up-stream. In this way it is much better fitted to resist. Thus they do not always act in the same way, but arrange their actions so as to adapt them to the conditions of the environment. The embankment being completed, the animals construct their lodges. Fragments of wood, deprived of the bark, are arranged and united by clay or mud which the Beavers take from the riverside, transport, mix, and work with their fore-paws. During a single night they can collect as much mud at their houses as amounts to some thousands of their small handfuls. They thus plaster their houses with mud every autumn; in the winter this freezes as hard as a stone and protects them from enemies. These cabins form domes from three to four metres in diameter at the base, and from two to two and a half metres in height. The floor is on a level with the surface of the artificial pond. A passage sinks in the earth and opens about one and a half metres below the level of the water, so that it cannot be closed up by ice during the severe winters of these regions. Within, near the entry, the beavers form, with the aid of a partition, a special compartment to serve as a storehouse, and they there pile up enormous heaps of nenuphar roots as provisions for the days when ice and snow will prevent them from barking the young trunks. A dwelling of this kind may last for three or four years, and the animal here tranquilly enjoys the fruits of its industry, as long as man fails to discover the retreat; for the beaver can escape by swimming from all carnivorous animals excepting, perhaps, the Otter. During floods the level of the water nearly reaches the hut; if the inundation is prolonged and the animal runs the risk of being asphyxiated beneath his dome, it breaks through the upper part with its teeth and escapes. When the water returns to its bed the beaver comes back, makes the necessary repairs, and resumes the usual peaceful course of its life.[109] [109] The Beaver has been fully studied by Lewis H. Morgan, _The American Beaver_, 1868. See also Horace T. Martin's recent work, _Castorologia, or the History and Traditions of the Canadian Beaver_, 1892; in an appendix to this work will be found Samuel Hearne's classical account of the Beaver, written nearly two hundred years ago, and free from the many exaggerations and superstitions which have grown up around this animal. We have thus seen, from a shapeless hole to these complex dwellings, every possible stage; we have found among animals the rudiments of the different human habitations, certain animals, indeed, having arrived at a degree of civilisation which Man himself in some countries has not yet surpassed, or even indeed yet attained. CHAPTER VII. THE DEFENCE AND SANITATION OF DWELLINGS. GENERAL PRECAUTIONS AGAINST POSSIBLE DANGER--SEPARATION OF FEMALES WHILE BROODING--HYGIENIC MEASURES OF BEES--PRUDENCE OF BEES--FORTIFICATIONS OF BEES--PRECAUTIONS AGAINST INQUISITIVENESS--LIGHTING UP THE NESTS. The building of comfortable dwellings is not the last stage reached by the industry of animals. There are among them some who show genuine skill in rendering them healthy and defending them against invasions from without. _General precautions against possible danger._--Some animals show, even during the construction of the nest, extreme prudence in preventing its site from being discovered. Several authors refer to the stratagem of the Magpie, who begins several nests at the same time; but only one is intended to receive the brood, and that only is completed. The aim of the others is merely to distract attention. It is around these latter that the bird shows ostentatious activity, while it works at the real nest only for a few hours during the day, in the morning and evening. The Crane takes equally ingenious precautions in order that its constant presence at the same spot may not arouse suspicion. It never comes or goes flying, but always on foot, concealing itself along tufts of reeds. De Homeyer even reports that the female at the time of laying covers her wings and back with mud. When dried this gives the animal a red tone, which causes it to be confused with neighbouring objects; this is intentional mimicry. The Linnet (Fig. 41) again, wrongly accused of wanting judgment, is well aware that a pile of excrement at the foot of a tree announces a nest in the branches. It is careful to suppress this revealing sign, and every day takes it away in its beak to disperse it afar. [Illustration: FIG. 41.] Birds will sometimes take the trouble to remove the eggs or the nest altogether, when the latter has been discovered, in order to avoid further risks of danger. The American Sparrow Hawk has been observed to do this, and the following incident is quoted by Bendire, from MacFarlane's _Manuscript Notes on Birds Nesting in British America_, concerning the Pigeon Hawk (_Falco columbarius_):--"On May 25, 1864, a trusty Indian in my employ found a nest placed in a thick branch of a pine tree at a height of about six feet from the ground. It was rather loosely constructed of a few dry sticks and a small quantity of coarse hay; it then contained two eggs; both parents were seen, fired at, and missed. On the 31st he revisited the nest, which still held but two eggs, and again missed the birds. Several days later he made another visit thereto, and, to his surprise, the eggs and parents had disappeared. His first impression was that some other person had taken them; but after looking carefully around he perceived both birds at a short distance, and this led him to institute a search which soon resulted in finding that the eggs must have been removed by the parent birds to the face of a muddy bank at least forty yards distant from the original nest. A few decayed leaves had been placed under them, but nothing else in the way of lining. A third egg had been added in the interim. There can hardly be any doubt of the truth of the foregoing facts."[110] [110] Bendire, _Life Histories of North American Birds_, 1892, p. 301. _Separation of females while brooding._--The Hornbill of Malacca[111] assures the protection of its nest and of the female while she is brooding in a singular manner. She lays in the hollow of a tree; as soon as she begins to sit on her eggs, the male closes the opening with diluted clay, only leaving a hole through which the captive can pass her beak to receive the fruits which he brings her in abundance. If the lady is thus cloistered as closely as in the most jealous harem, her lord and master at least expends on her the most attentive cares. [111] Bernstein, "Ueber Nester und Eier einiger Javaschen Vögel," _Cabani's Journ. f. Ornith._, 1859. What can be the object of this strange custom? It has been asserted that during incubation the female loses her feathers and becomes unable to fly. The male would thus only wall her up as a precaution for fear of seeing her fall from the nest; because if this deplorable accident happened she would not be able to get back again. It seems to me that the effect is here taken for the cause, and that the falling off of feathers and torpidity must be the result rather than the motive of cloistration. One is tempted to believe that the male desires by this method to guarantee his female and her offspring against the attacks of squirrels or rapacious birds. _Hygienic measures of Bees._--Among the animals who expend industry on hygiene and the protection of their dwellings, we must place Bees in the first line. It may happen that mice, snakes, and moths may find their way into a hive. Assaulted by the swarm, and riddled with stings, they die without being able to escape. These great corpses cannot be dragged out by the Hymenoptera, and their putrefaction threatens to cause disease. To remedy this scourge the insects immediately cover them with _propolis_--that is to say, the paste which they manufacture from the resin of poplars, birches, and pines. The corpse thus sheltered from contact with the air does not putrefy. In other respects Bees are very careful about the cleanliness of their dwellings; they remove with care and throw outside dust, mud, and sawdust which may be found there. Bees are careful also not to defile their hives with excrement, as Kirby noted; they go aside to expel their excretions, and in winter, when prevented by extreme cold or the closing of the hive from going out for this purpose, their bodies become so swollen from retention of fæces that when at last able to go out they fall to the ground and perish. Büchner records the observations of a friend of his during a season in which a severe epidemic of dysentery had broken out among the bees, which interfered with the usual habits of the insects; on careful examination of a hive it was found that a cavity in the posterior wall of the hive, containing crumbled clay, had been used as an earth closet. Many mammals are equally careful in this respect; thus, for example, the Beaver, as Hearne observed, always enters the water, or goes out on the ice, to urinate or defæcate; the fæces float and are soon disintegrated. Animals are also careful about aëration. Thus, among Bees, in a hive full of very active insects the heat rises considerably and the air is vitiated. A service for aëration is organised. Bees ranged in files one above the other in the interior agitate their wings with a feverish movement; this movement causes a current of air which can be felt by holding the hand before the opening of the hive. When the workers of the corps are fatigued, comrades who have been resting come to take their place. These acts are not the result of a stupid instinct which the Hymenoptera obey without understanding. If we place a swarm, as Huber did, in a roomy position where there is plenty of air, they do not devote themselves to an aimless exercise. This only takes place in the narrow dwellings which Man grants to his winged guests. The attention of Ants to public hygiene is more than equalled by their attention to personal hygiene. Without going into the question of their athletic exercises, which have attracted considerable attention, it is sufficient to quote one observer as to their habits of cleanliness. McCook remarks:--"The Agricultural Ants--and the remark applies to all other Ants of which I have knowledge--is one of the neatest of creatures in her personal habits. I think I have never seen one of my imprisoned harvesters, either _Barbatus_ or _Crudelis_, in an untidy condition. They issue from their burrows, after the most active digging, even when the earth is damp, without being perceptibly soiled. Such minute particles of dust as cling to the body are carefully removed. Indeed, the whole body is frequently and thoroughly cleansed, a duty which is habitually, I might almost venture to say invariably, attended to after eating and after sleep. In this process the Ants assist one another; and it is an exceedingly interesting sight which is presented to the observer when this general 'washing up' is in progress."[112] [112] H. C. McCook, _Agricultural Ants of Texas_, 1879, chapter on "Toilet, Sleeping, and Funeral Habits," p. 125. _Prudence of Bees._--Certain species exhibit very great prudence, especially the _Melipona geniculata_, which lives in a wild state in South America. They place their combs in the hollow of a tree or the cleft of a rock; they fill up all the crevices and only leave a round hole for entry. And even this they are accustomed to close every evening by a small partition, which they remove in the morning. This door is shut with various materials, such as resin or even clay, which the bees bring on their legs as those of our own country bring pollen. All these facts were observed with great exactness in a swarm given in 1874 by M. Drory (who during a long period of years studied every Brazilian species of _Melipona_ at Bordeaux) to the Jardin d'Acclimatation. It was even seen that the door might be put up under certain circumstances in open day, as for example, when a storm or sudden cold delays the appearance of the workers. If one of them happened to be late it had to perforate the partition, and the hole was then stopped up again. [Illustration: FIG. 42.] _Fortifications of Bees._--As these facts take place always they may be called instinctive; but that is not the case with regard to defences elevated with a view to a particular circumstance, and which disappear when the danger to which they correspond disappears. Such are the labours of the bees to repel the invasions of the large nocturnal Death's-head Moth. (Fig. 42.) He is very greedy of honey, and furtively introduces himself into the hives. Protected by the long and fluffy hairs which cover him, he has little to fear from stings, and gorges himself with the greatest freedom on the stores of the swarm. Huber, in his admirable investigations,[113] narrates that one year in Switzerland numbers of hives were emptied, and contained no more honey in summer than in the spring. During that year Death's-head Moths were very numerous. The illustrious naturalist soon became certain that this moth was guilty of the thefts in question. While he was reflecting as to what should be done, the bees, who were more directly interested, had invented several different methods of procedure. Some closed the entrance with wax, leaving only a narrow opening through which the great robber could not penetrate. Others built up before the opening a series of parallel walls, leaving between them a zigzag corridor through which the Hymenoptera themselves were able to enter. But the intruder was much too long to perform this exercise successfully. Man utilises defences of this kind; it is thus at the entrance of a field, for example, he places a turnstile, or parallel bars that do not face each other; the passage is not closed for him, but a cow is too long to overcome the obstacle. In years when the Death's-head Moth is rare the bees do not set up these barricades, which, indeed, they themselves find troublesome. For two or three consecutive years they leave their doors wide open. Then another invasion occurs, and they immediately close the openings. It cannot be denied that in these cases their acts agree with circumstances that are not habitual.[114] [113] Huber, _Nouvelles observations sur les Abeilles_. [114] These facts have recently been observed and recorded afresh by Mr. Clifford in _Nature Notes_, January 1893. _Precautions against inquisitiveness._--I will finally quote a fact of defence which took place under circumstances that were absolutely exceptional, and which therefore exhibits genuine reflection in these insects. During the first exhibition of 1855 an artificial hive was set up, one face of which was closed by a glass pane. A wooden shutter concealed this pane, but passers-by opened it every moment to contemplate the work of the small insects. Annoyed by this inquisitiveness, the bees resolved to put an end to it, and cemented the shutter with _propolis_. When this substance dried it was no longer possible to open the shutter. The bees were visible to nobody. [Illustration: FIG. 43.] [Illustration: FIG. 44.] _Lighting up the nests._--An improvement of another nature in the comfort of the dwelling is introduced by the _Baya_, and if the facts narrated are correct they are the most marvellous of all. It is a question of lighting up a nest by means of Glow-worms. The _Melicourvis baya_ inhabits India; it is a small bird related to the _Loxia_, already spoken of in this book. Like the latter it constructs a nest that is very well designed and executed. (Fig. 43.) It suspends it in general from a palm tree, but sometimes also from the roofs of houses. In these shelters, woven with extreme art, are always to be found little balls of dry and hardened clay. Why does the bird amass these objects? Is it impelled by a collector's instinct less perfect than that of the Bower-bird? There is no reason to suppose this. Nor does it appear that he wishes to make the nest heavier and prevent it by this ballast from being blown about by every breeze when the couple are out, and the young not heavy enough to ensure the stability of the edifice. The part played by these little balls is much more remarkable, if we may trust the evidence of the natives, as confirmed by competent European observers. Thus Mr. H. A. Severn writes:--"I have been informed on safe authority that the Indian Bottle-bird protects his nest at night by sticking several of these glow-beetles around the entrance by means of clay; and only a few days back an intimate friend of my own was watching three rats on a roof-rafter of his bungalow when a glow-fly lodged very close to them; the rats immediately scampered off."[115] These observations are confirmed by Captain Briant, as reported by Professor R. Dubois.[116] In tropical regions luminous insects give out a brilliant light, of which the Glow-worms of northern countries can only give a feeble idea. These flying or climbing stars are the constellations of virgin forests. In South America the Indians utilise one of these insects, the _Cucujo_, by fastening it to the great toe like a little lantern, and profit by its light to find their road or to preserve their naked feet from snakes. The first missionaries to the Antilles, lacking oil for their lamps, sometimes replaced them by Fire-flies to read matins by.[117] The _Melicourvis baya_ had already discovered this method of lighting, and the mysterious little balls of clay were nothing more than candlesticks in which these birds set Glow-worms, when they are fresh, to act as candles. The entrance to the nest is thus luminous. (Fig. 44.) Apparently this lighting up is a defensive measure, for the birds have nothing to do at night except to sleep, and must be rather incommoded than cheered by this light. But the terrible enemy of all broods, the Snake, is, it is said, frightened by this illumination, which is able to penetrate the meshes of the nest, and will not dare to enter. The system is ingenious, and the Roman Emperors, when they used burning Christians as torches, were only plagiarising from this little bird, which paves with martyrs the threshold of its house of love. [115] "Notes on the Indian Glow-fly," _Nature_, 23rd June 1881. [116] _Science et Nature_, t. iv. (1885), No. 94, p. 232. [117] P. Dutertre, _Hist. des Antilles française_, 1667. CHAPTER VIII. CONCLUSION. DEGREE OF PERFECTION IN INDUSTRY INDEPENDENT OF ZOOLOGICAL SUPERIORITY--MENTAL FACULTIES OF THE LOWER ANIMALS OF LIKE NATURE TO MAN'S. _Degree of perfection in industry independent of zoological superiority._--As the result of our study we see the fundamental industries of Man dispersed throughout the animal kingdom, though not, indeed, all of them, nor the more subtle, which were only born yesterday. We may remark the extent to which intellectual manifestations of this sort are independent of the more or less elevated rank assigned to species in zoological classification. The latter, as it should be, brings together or separates beings according to their physical character. But intelligence does not depend on the whole body; its superior or inferior development is related to a certain corresponding complexity in the surface, volume, and histologic structure of the nervous centres. It happens with the cerebral as with the other functions. An animal's superiority is not exhibited in all his organs nor in all his qualities; it results from a certain grouping of characters in which there may be weak points. The highest in organisation are not necessarily the swiftest or the strongest, any more than they are necessarily the most intelligent. It may happen; it happens in the case of Man; but it as easily fails to happen. In organisation the Horse is nearer to Man than the Ant; but it is far otherwise as regards intellectual development. For this reason, when following the progress of any industry, I have taken my examples first in one group, then in another far-removed group, to return afterwards to the first. There are not, and cannot be, bonds between a solitary function of the being and its place in classification--a place which has been determined by the form of all the organs, without even taking into account their methods of activity. Comparative anatomy has long since removed the barriers, once thought impassable, raised by human pride between Man and the other animals. Our bodies do not differ from theirs; and moreover, such glimpses as we are able to obtain allow us to conclude that their psychic faculties are of the same nature as our own. Man in his evolution introduces no new factor. The industries in which the talents of animals are exercised demonstrate that, under the influence of the same environment, animals have reacted in the same manner as Man, and have formed the same combinations to protect themselves from cold or heat, to defend themselves against the attacks of enemies, and to ensure sufficient provision of food during those hard seasons of the year when the earth does not yield in abundance. It must only be added, to avoid falling into exaggeration, that Man excels in all the arts, of which only scattered rudiments are found among the other animals; and we may safeguard our pride by affirming that we need not fear comparison. If our intelligence is not essentially different from that of animals, we have the satisfaction of knowing that it is much superior to theirs. APPENDIX. BIBLIOGRAPHY. _Brehm's Thierleben_ is the great repository of facts concerning the social lives of the higher animals. The third edition, in ten large volumes, fully illustrated, and edited by Pechuel Lösche, has lately appeared (Leipzig und Wien, Bibliog. Institute, 1890-92). It is, indeed, as Virchow has lately termed it, "a sort of zoological library," popular in character, and almost purely descriptive. (There is a French edition of this work in nine volumes, but, with the exception of one fragment, it has not appeared in English. The nearest approach to Brehm's work in England is Cassell's _New Natural History_, and in America the _Riverside Natural History_.) It is impossible to enumerate the numberless works by travellers and others on which the knowledge of animal industries is founded. The works of Huber, Fabre, Audubon, Le Vaillant, C. St. John, Belt, Bates, Tennent, are frequently quoted in the course of this work. Many of the most important and detailed studies of animal industries are scattered through the pages of the scientific periodicals of all countries. References to a few of the chief of these studies will be found in the text. For a scientific discussion of the phenomena of animal skill and intelligence we may perhaps best turn to Professor C. Lloyd Morgan, whose work is always both acute and cautious. In _Animal Life and Intelligence_ (1890) he has furnished an excellent introduction to the subject. In his _Introduction to Comparative Psychology_ (shortly to appear in the Contemporary Science Series) he discusses the fundamental problems of mental processes in animals, and the transition from animal intelligence to human intelligence. Romanes' _Mental Evolution in Animals_ (1883) and other works by this writer, dealing with the same subject, but proceeding on a different method, should also be studied; and his _Animal Intelligence_ (International Science Series) is an excellent critical summary of the facts. Büchner's _Aus dem Geistesleben der Thiere_ (Berlin, 1877) and Houzeau's _Facultés Mentales des Animaux_ (Brussels, 1877) may also be mentioned, and Espinas' _Sociétés Animales_ (1877), though dealing primarily with sociology, is an original and suggestive study of great value. As a general introduction, of a popular but not unscientific character, to all the various aspects of animal life, J. Arthur Thomson's little book, _The Study of Animal Life_ (University Extension Manuals, 1892), may be recommended. At the end of Mr. Thomson's volume will be found a useful classified list of the "Best Books" on animal life. GARDENING ANTS. The operations of various species of Gardening Ants have recently been very thoroughly investigated at Blumenau by Herr Alfred Möller, nephew of Dr. Fritz Müller ("Die Pilzgärten einiger südamerikanischer Ameisen." Heft 6 of Schimper's "Botanische Mittheilungen aus den Tropen." Jena: G. Fischer, 1893. Herr Möller's work is clearly summarised by Mr. John C. Willis in "The Fungus Gardens of certain South American Ants," _Nature_, 24th August 1893). The ants of Blumenau chiefly differ from those described by Belt in that they form very narrow streets, in which they travel only in single file, and also that their nests occur both in the forest and in the open. The commonest species is the _Atta_ (_Acromyrmex_) _discigera_, Mayr, and the workers are never more than 6.5 mm. long. There are other species of _Atta_ which have very similar streets; one, the _Atta hystrix_, Latr., appears to work only at night. A minute description is given of a street of _A. discigera_, which was 26 metres long and about 1.5 cm. wide and high, roofed in in parts wherever possible. It led to a number of small Cupheas, whose leaves the ants were cutting. In the street could be seen a procession of loaded ants going towards the nest, and others empty-handed, going in the opposite direction. Some of the large workers run up and down the road unloaded, and act as road-menders if any accident happens to a part of the track. Other very small workers, which do not cut leaves, may also be seen carried upon the backs or even upon the loads of the actual leaf-cutters. An ant carrying a peculiarly shaped piece of leaf was watched from end to end of the track, and travelled the 26 m. in 70 minutes. The load was twice as heavy as itself. The plants attacked by the ants were found to be very numerous, and the ants seemed to be very capricious in this respect, one day stripping a plant and the next day leaving it untouched. The jaws of the ants are very strong, with serrated edges, and clash together laterally. The ant begins at the edge of a leaf, and cuts out a piece in about five minutes, revolving on one of its hind legs as a centre. When the piece is almost freed, the ant goes on to the main portion of the leaf, cuts through the last piece uniting it with the severed portion, drags up the latter, balances it on edge between its forelegs, and then, grasping it with its jaws, lifts it up above its head, so that the centre of gravity of the load is above the ant itself. It then marches off, down the stem, to the base, over the ground to the end of the street, and along this to the nest, travelling at a very uniform speed, and never letting go its load. The weight thus carried was found, on an average, to be twice that of the ant; but many were found carrying heavier loads, even as much as ten times their own weight! The nests are usually below the surface of the soil, but covered, wherever necessary, with a thick mass of withered pieces of leaves and twigs, etc. They may be as much as 1-1/2 metres in diameter. In the nests of all species examined there is found, filling up the interior, a curious grey spongy mass, full of chambers, like a coarse sponge, in which the ants may be seen running about, and in which, here and there, occur eggs, larvæ, and pupæ. This is the fungus garden. It is separated from the roof and lateral walls of the nest by a clear space. The walls and roof are much thicker in winter than in summer; one nest examined had a roof 25 cm. thick and wall 40 cm. The garden consists of two parts, differently coloured, but not very sharply marked off from each other. The older part is yellowish-red in colour; the newly-built portions, forming the surface of the garden, are of a blue-black colour. It is this part which is of the greater importance to the ants. The garden is found, on examination, to consist of an immense conglomeration of small round particles of not more than .5 mm. in diameter, of a dark green colour when quite fresh, then blue-black, and finally yellowish-red. They are penetrated by, and enveloped in, white fungus hyphæ, which hold the particles together. These hyphæ are similar throughout the nest. Strewn thickly upon the surface of the garden are seen round white bodies about .25 mm. in diameter; they always occur in the nests, except in the very young portion of the gardens. They consist of aggregations of peculiar swollen hyphæ, and are termed by Möller the "Kohl-rabi clumps." The hyphæ swell out at the ends into large spherical thickenings, filled with richly vacuolated protoplasm like the ordinary hyphæ. These clumps of "Kohl-rabi" are only found on the surface of the garden, and form the principal food of the ants; they have no doubt reached their present form under the cultivation and selection of the ants. The fungus was found to belong to the genus _Rozites_, and the species was named _R. gongylophora_. A microscopic examination of the particles of which the garden is composed shows that they contain remains of leaves; bits of epidermis, stomata, spiral vessels, etc., occur in them. If a nest is broken into and the fungus garden scattered, the ants collect it as quickly as possible, especially the younger parts, taking as much trouble over it as over the larvæ. They also cover it up again as soon as possible to protect it from the light. A nest, 1 metre × 50 cm., was opened, and in twenty-four hours the ants had put on a new roof 10 cm. deep. Some ants' nests were placed under a bell jar and supplied with leaves; they made no use of them and presently died. If they were supplied with a piece of "garden," they rebuilt it and covered it so far as they could. It was seen to shrink from day to day, the ants bringing out the old pieces and adding them to the wall; finally it was exhausted and the ants died. Others were starved for five days, and then supplied with a bit of garden; they at once began to eat the Kohl-rabi clumps. Finally, by supplying the ants with bits of garden, a damp sandy floor, and fresh leaves, they were induced to build in captivity. The dish in which they worked was covered by a glass lid, and when this was covered with a dark cloth or otherwise kept dark, the ants built under it without covering the garden. In this way the whole process was observed. An ant bringing in a piece of leaf proceeds to cut it into halves, repeating the process till it has got a very small piece left, which it holds between its fore feet and turns round, crushing it in its jaws until the whole is reduced to a round ball of pulp about .25 mm. thick. This it then takes and adds to the garden. So well is the kneading performed that no single cell remains uninjured, and it was observed that the hyphæ of the fungus grew through and round one of these particles within a few hours. Belt supposed that this process was performed by the small workers above-mentioned, but it is not so, as we have just seen. The small workers perform the function of weeding the garden, and this is so well done that a portion of it removed and grown in a nutrient solution gives a perfectly pure culture, not even containing bacteria! In the course of these investigations it was found that somewhat similar fungus gardens occur in the nests of the hairy ant, _Apterostigma_, but the fungus appeared to belong to a different genus, and the hairy ants, who live in decaying wood and have small gardens built of bits of wood-fibre, beetle-dung, etc., have not succeeded in cultivating and selecting Kohl-rabi to the same high degree. An allied genus of ants, _Cyphomyrmex_, were also found to be fungus-growers. This elaborate study, which is illustrated by beautiful plates and photographs of the mushroom gardens, constitutes, as Mr. Willis (whose summary has here been followed) remarks, one of the most fascinating contributions to our knowledge of mycology and of animal industries which have been made for many years. INDEX. _Ægithalus pendulinus_ Ælian Alix Alligator as a hunter; its nest Ambush, hunting in; baited _Ammophila affinis_ Angler's baited ambush _Anomalocorax splendens_ Ant, foraging; wars; honey; harvesting; agricultural; gardening; domestic animals; aphis-pens and paddocks; slaves; masons; attention to personal hygiene _Antennarius marmoratus_ _Anthocopa_ _Anthophora parietina_ _Anthophora pilifera_ Ape Aphis-pens of ants Aras Aristotle _Arvicola_ _Astur palumbarius_ _Ateucus sacer_ _Atta barbara_ Audubon Baboon Badger Baited ambush Baker, Sir S. Baldamus Baltimore bird Bates Bear Beaver Bee Beef-eater Belt _Bembex_ Bendire Beneden Bernard Bernstein Bison Blackcap _Bonasa togata_ Bower-birds Brehm Briant Brightwen, Mrs. Büchner Buffalo Buffalo-bird Bullhead _Buphaga_ Burmeister Burying-beetle _Cam's azaræ_ Caracara, Guadeloupe _Cardisoma carnifex_ Cassique _Castor fiber_ _Catheturus Lathami_ _Cerceris ornata_ _Chalicodoma_ _Chelinous_ _Cheliura terebrans_ _Chlamydera maculata_ _Chlorion_ _Choestostomus pictus_ _Cicindela campestris_ _Cisludo lunaria_ _Claviger testaceus_ Cleveland, D. _Colaptes auratus_ _Colaptes Mexicanus_ _Conolophus subcristatus_ _Cottus gobio_ Couch Coursing by animals Cow-bird Crab Crane _Cricetus frumentarius_ Crocodile as a hunter Crossbill Crows Cuckoo _Cucujo_ Cuvier _Cystignathus ocellatus_ Darwin Death, feigning Death's-head Moth Defence of dwellings _et seq._ _Didelphys azaræ_ Dog; wild Dog-fish _Dromia vulgaris_ Drory Drummond, H. Dubois, R. Dufour Duméril Dutertre Dwellings of animals _et seq._ Eagle, Bald; Caracara; Golden Ebrard _Eciton_ Espinas Evolution, the theory of Fabre Falcon Feint Féré Flamingo Flights, methods of Fol, H. Foraging ants Forbes, H. O. _Formica_ Fox Frog _Furnarius rufus_ _Gecarinus ruricola_ Gelatine nests Girod Glow-worm _Gobius minutus_ _Gobius niger_ Goshawk Gould Gourami Goureau Grouse _Grus cinerea_ _Gypäetos barbatus_ _Gypogeranus reptilivorus_ _Haliäetus leucocephalus_ Hamster Hearne, S. Hedgehog Heermann Hermit-crab Hobby Hornbill Hornet's nest Horse Houzeau Huber Hudson, W. H. Humming-bird Hunting _et seq._; in ambush; in the burrow Hygiene among animals _et seq._ Intelligence and instinct _et seq._ Jackdaw Jerdon Kakapo Kangaroo Kataplexy Kirby Kite _Lacerta stirpium_ Lacepède _Lagostomus trichodactylus_ Lamarck Lammergeyer _Lanius_ Lark _Lasius_ Latreille Le Vaillant Lespès Lighting up nests Lincecum Linnet Loeffler _Lophius piscatorius_ Lowe, J. _Loxia_ Lubbock Macaw _Macropus viridi-auratus_ _Maïa_ Magpie Man's industries Marchal, P. Marmot Martin, H. T. Mason-bee McCook _Megachile_ _Melanerpes erythrocephalus_ _Melanerpes formicivorus_ _Meles_ _Melicourvis baya_ _Melipona geniculata_ Merlin Moggridge _Molothrus_ _Monedula punctata_ Morgan, C. L. Morgan, L. H. Mouse Müller, Fritz Müller, P. W. J. _Mus minutus_ Musk-rat _Mygale henzii_ _Myrmecocystus_ _Myrmica_ Natural history and the natural sciences Naturalist of yesterday and to-day Naumann _Necrophorus_ Nests _et seq._ _Oecodoma_ _Opossum_ _Orthotomus longicauda_ _Orycteropus_ _Osphronemus olfax_ Otter Oven-bird Owl _Pagurus Bernhardus_ Pallas Paradise-fish Parroquet Parseval-Deschênes Paterson, W. Pea-crab Pelican, Brown Perch _Pholcus_ _Phryganea striata_ Physiological reserves _Pinnoteres pisum_ _Pogonomyrmex barbatus_ _Polyborus lutosus_ _Polyborus cheriway_ _Polyergus rufescens_ _Pompilius_ Poppig Preyer Projectiles, hunting with _Protopterus_ _Psammomys_ _Pseudaetus_ Python's ambush Quelelis _Quiscalus major_ Raven Réaumur _Rhodius anarus_ Romanes Rook Saint-Hilaire, G. St. John, C. Sand-wasp Sanitation of dwellings _et seq._ Saussure, H. de Scarabæus Sea-gulls Secretary-bird Sentinels Severn, H. A. 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Edited by Walter Jerrold. 70 VINDICATION OF THE RIGHTS OF WOMAN. By Mary Wollstonecraft. Introduction by Mrs. E. Robins Pennell. 71 "THE ATHENIAN ORACLE." A SELECTION. Edited by John Underhill, with Prefatory Note by Walter Besant. 72 ESSAYS OF SAINTE-BEUVE. Translated and Edited, with an Introduction, by Elizabeth Lee. 73 SELECTIONS FROM PLATO. From the Translation of Sydenham and Taylor. Edited by T. W. Rolleston. 74 HEINE'S ITALIAN TRAVEL SKETCHES, ETC. Translated by Elizabeth A. Sharp. With an Introduction from the French of Théophile Gautier. 75 SCHILLER'S MAID OF ORLEANS. Translated, with an Introduction, by Major-General Patrick Maxwell. 76 SELECTIONS FROM SYDNEY SMITH. Edited, WITH an Introduction, by Ernest Rhys. 77 THE NEW SPIRIT. By Havelock Ellis. 78 THE BOOK OF MARVELLOUS ADVENTURES. From the "Morte d'Arthur." Edited by Ernest Rhys. [This, together with No. 1, forms the complete "Morte d'Arthur."] 79 ESSAYS AND APHORISMS. By Sir Arthur Helps. With an Introduction by E. A. 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George Saintsbury, in The _Illustrated London News_, says:--"In this little volume the wayfaring man who has no time to devour libraries will find most things that it concerns him to know about Voltaire's actual life and work put very clearly, sufficiently, and accurately for the most part." LIFE OF LEIGH HUNT. By COSMO MONKHOUSE. LIBRARY EDITION OF "GREAT WRITERS," Demy 8vo, 2s. 6d. London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 Warwick Lane. SELECTED THREE-VOL. SETS IN NEW BROCADE BINDING. 6s. per Set, in Shell Case to match. May also be had bound in Roan, with Roan Case to match, 9s. per Set. _THE FOLLOWING SETS CAN BE OBTAINED--_ POEMS OF WORDSWORTH KEATS SHELLEY LONGFELLOW WHITTIER EMERSON HOGG ALLAN RAMSAY SCOTTISH MINOR POETS SHAKESPEARE BEN JONSON MARLOWE SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY SONNETS OF EUROPE AMERICAN SONNETS HEINE GOETHE HUGO COLERIDGE SOUTHEY COWPER BORDER BALLADS JACOBITE SONGS OSSIAN CAVALIER POETS LOVE LYRICS HERRICK CHRISTIAN YEAR IMITATION of CHRIST HERBERT AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE ENGLISH HUMOROUS VERSE BALLADES AND RONDEAUS EARLY ENGLISH POETRY CHAUCER SPENSER HORACE GREEK ANTHOLOGY LANDOR GOLDSMITH MOORE IRISH MINSTRELSY WOMEN POETS CHILDREN OF POETS SEA MUSIC PRAED HUNT AND HOOD DOBELL MEREDITH MARSTON LOVE LETTERS BURNS'S SONGS BURNS'S POEMS LIFE OF BURNS, BY BLACKIE SCOTT'S MARMION, &c. SCOTT'S LADY OF LAKE, &c. LIFE OF SCOTT, BY PROF. YONGE London: WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. SELECTED THREE-VOL. SETS IN NEW BROCADE BINDING. _6s. PER SET, IN SHELL CASE TO MATCH._ Also Bound in Roan, in Shell Case, Price 9s. per Set. _O. W. Holmes Set--_ Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table. Professor at the Breakfast-Table. Poet at the Breakfast-Table. _Landor Set--_ Lando's Imaginary Conversations. Pentameron. Pericles and Aspasia. _Three English Essayists--_ Essays of Elia. Essays of Leigh Hunt. Essays of William Hazlitt. _Three Classical Moralists--_ Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. Teaching of Epictetus. Morals of Seneca. _Walden Set--_ Thoreau's Walden. Thoreau's Week. Thoreau's Selections. _Famous Letters Set--_ Letters of Byron. Letters of Chesterfield. Letters of Burns. _Lowell Set--_ My Study Windows. The English Poets. The Biglow Papers. _Heine Set--_ Life of Heine. Heine's Prose. Heine's Travel-Sketches. _Three Essayists--_ Essays of Mazzini. Essays of Sainte-Beuve. Essays of Montaigne. _Schiller Set--_ Life of Schiller. Maid of Orleans. William Tell. _Carlyle Set--_ Life of Carlyle. Sartor Resartus. Carlyle's German Essays. London: WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 Warwick Lane, Paternoster Row. Crown 8vo, about 350 pp. each, Cloth Cover, 2s. 6d. per vol. Half-polished Morocco, gilt top, 5s. COUNT TOLSTOÏ'S WORKS. The following Volumes are already issued-- A RUSSIAN PROPRIETOR. THE COSSACKS. IVAN ILYITCH, AND OTHER STORIES. MY RELIGION. LIFE. MY CONFESSION. CHILDHOOD, BOYHOOD, YOUTH. THE PHYSIOLOGY OF WAR. ANNA KARÉNINA 3s. 6d. WHAT TO DO? WAR AND PEACE. (4 VOLS.) THE LONG EXILE, AND OTHER STORIES FOR CHILDREN. SEVASTOPOL. THE KREUTZER SONATA, AND FAMILY HAPPINESS. Uniform with the above. IMPRESSIONS OF RUSSIA. By DR. GEORG BRANDES. London: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 Warwick Lane. IBSEN'S PROSE DRAMAS. EDITED BY WILLIAM ARCHER. Complete in Five Vols. Crown 8vo, Cloth, Price 3/6 each. Set of Five Vols., in Case, 17/6; in Half Morocco, in Case, 32/6. "_We seem at last to be shown men and women as they are; and at first it is more than we can endure.... All Ibsen's characters speak and act as if they were hypnotised, and under their creators imperious demand to reveal themselves. There never was such a mirror held up to nature before: it is too terrible.... Yet we must return to Ibsen, with his remorseless surgery, his remorseless electric-light, until we, too, have grown strong and learned to face the naked--if necessary, the flayed and bleeding--reality._"--SPEAKER (London). Vol. I. "A DOLL'S HOUSE," "THE LEAGUE OF YOUTH," and "THE PILLARS OF SOCIETY." With Portrait of the Author, and Biographical Introduction by WILLIAM ARCHER. Vol. II. "GHOSTS," "AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE," and "THE WILD DUCK." With an Introductory Note. Vol. III. "LADY INGER OF ÖSTRÅT," "THE VIKINGS AT HELGELAND," "THE PRETENDERS." With an Introductory Note and Portrait of Ibsen. Vol. IV. "EMPEROR AND GALILEAN." With an Introductory Note by WILLIAM ARCHER. Vol. V. "ROSMERSHOLM," "THE LADY FROM THE SEA," "HEDDA GABLER." Translated by WILLIAM ARCHER. With an Introductory Note. The sequence of the plays _in each volume_ is chronological; the complete set of volumes comprising the dramas thus presents them in chronological order. "The art of prose translation does not perhaps enjoy a very high literary status in England, but we have no hesitation in numbering the present version of Ibsen, so far as it has gone (Vols. I. and II.), among the very best achievements, in that kind, of our generation."--_Academy_. "We have seldom, if ever, met with a translation so absolutely idiomatic."--_Glasgow Herald_. LONDON: WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 WARWICK LANE. THE CANTERBURY POETS. EDITED BY WILLIAM SHARP. IN 1/- MONTHLY VOLUMES. Cloth, Red Edges 1s. Cloth, Uncut Edges 1s. Red Roan, Gilt Edges, 2s. 6d. Pad. Morocco, Gilt Edges, 5s. THE CHRISTIAN YEAR By the Rev. John Keble. COLERIDGE Edited by Joseph Skipsey. LONGFELLOW Edited by Eva Hope. CAMPBELL Edited by John Hogben. SHELLEY Edited by Joseph Skipsey. WORDSWORTH Edited by A. J. Symington. BLAKE Edited by Joseph Skipsey. WHITTIER Edited by Eva Hope. POE Edited by Joseph Skipsey. CHATTERTON Edited by John Richmond. BURNS. Poems Edited by Joseph Skipsey. BURNS. Songs Edited by Joseph Skipsey. MARLOWE Edited by Percy E. Pinkerton. KEATS Edited by John Hogben. HERBERT Edited by Ernest Rhys. HUGO Translated by Dean Carrington. COWPER Edited by Eva Hope. SHAKESPEARE'S POEMS, Etc. Edited by William Sharp. EMERSON Edited by Walter Lewin. SONNETS OF THIS CENTURY Edited by William Sharp. WHITMAN Edited by Ernest Rhys. SCOTT. Marmion, etc. Edited by William Sharp. SCOTT. Lady of the Lake, etc. Edited by William Sharp. PRAED Edited by Frederick Cooper. HOGG Edited by his Daughter, Mrs. Garden. GOLDSMITH Edited by William Tirebuck. LOVE LETTERS, Etc. By Eric Mackay. SPENSER Edited by Hon. Roden Noel. CHILDREN OF THE POETS Edited by Eric S. Robertson. JONSON Edited by J. Addington Symonda. BYRON (2 Vols.) Edited by Mathilde Blind. THE SONNETS OF EUROPE Edited by S. Waddington. RAMSAY Edited by J. Logie Robertson. DOBELL Edited by Mrs. Dobell. DAYS OF THE YEAR With Introduction by William Sharp. POPE Edited by John Hogben. HEINE Edited by Mrs. Kroeker. BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER Edited by John S. Fletcher. BOWLES, LAMB, &c. Edited by William Tirebuck. EARLY ENGLISH POETRY Edited by H. Macaulay Fitzgibbon. SEA MUSIC Edited by Mrs Sharp. HERRICK Edited by Ernest Rhys. BALLADES AND RONDEAUS Edited by J. Gleeson White. IRISH MINSTRELSY Edited by H. Halliday Sparling. MILTON'S PARADISE LOST Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D. JACOBITE BALLADS Edited by G. S. Macquoid. AUSTRALIAN BALLADS Edited by D. B. W. Sladen, B.A. MOORE Edited by John Dorrian. BORDER BALLADS Edited by Graham R. Tomson. SONG-TIDE By Philip Bourke Marston. ODES OF HORACE Translations by Sir Stephen de Vere, Bt. OSSIAN Edited by George Eyre-Todd. ELFIN MUSIC Edited by Arthur Edward Waite. SOUTHEY Edited by Sidney R. Thompson. CHAUCER Edited by Frederick Noël Paton. POEMS OF WILD LIFE Edited by Charles G. D. Roberts, M.A. PARADISE REGAINED Edited by J. Bradshaw, M.A., LL.D. CRABBE Edited by E. Lamplough. DORA GREENWELL Edited by William Dorling. FAUST Edited by Elizabeth Craigmyle. AMERICAN SONNETS Edited by William Sharp. LANDOR'S POEMS Edited by Ernest Radford. GREEK ANTHOLOGY Edited by Graham R. Tomson. HUNT AND HOOD Edited by J. Harwood Panting. HUMOROUS POEMS Edited by Ralph H. Caine. LYTTON'S PLAYS Edited by R. Farquharson Sharp. GREAT ODES Edited by William Sharp. MEREDITH'S POEMS Edited by M. Betham-Edwards. PAINTER-POETS Edited by Kineton Parkes. WOMEN POETS Edited by Mrs. Sharp. LOVE LYRICS Edited by Percy Hulburd. AMERICAN HUMOROUS VERSE Edited by James Barr. MINOR SCOTCH LYRICS Edited by Sir George Douglas. CAVALIER LYRISTS Edited by Will H. Dircks. GERMAN BALLADS Edited by Elizabeth Craigmyle. SONGS OF BERANGER Translated by William Toynbee. HON. RODEN NOEL'S POEMS. With an Introduction by R. Buchanan. SONGS OF FREEDOM. Selected, with an Introduction, by H. S. Salt. NEW EDITION IN NEW BINDING. In the new edition there are added about forty reproductions in fac-simile of autographs of distinguished singers and instrumentalists, including Sarasate, Joachim, Sir Charles Hallé, Paderewsky, Stavenhagen, Henachel, Trebelli, Miss Macintyre, Jean Gérardy, etc. _Quarto, cloth elegant, gilt edges, emblematic design on cover, 6s. May also be had in a variety of Fancy Bindings._ THE MUSIC OF THE POETS: A MUSICIANS' BIRTHDAY BOOK. EDITED BY ELEONORE D'ESTERRE KEELING. This is a unique Birthday Book. Against each date are given the names of musicians whose birthday it is, together with a verse-quotation appropriate to the character of their different compositions or performances. A special feature of the book consists in the reproduction in fac-simile of autographs, and autographic music, of living composers. Three sonnets by Mr. Theodore Watts, on the "Fausts" of Berlioz, Schumann, and Gounod, have been written specially for this volume. It is illustrated with designs of various musical instruments, etc.; autographs of Rubenstein, Dvorâk, Greig, Mackenzie, Villiers Stanford, etc., etc. London: WALTER SCOTT, LTD., 24 Warwick Lane Transcriber's Note: The list of books that comprise _The Contemporary Science Series_ has been moved from the front of the book to after the index. 
44849	----	Transcriber's Note Italic text has been formatted as _text_ and superscript text as ^{text}. COLOURATION IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. BY THE LATE ALFRED TYLOR, F.G.S. _Edited by_ SYDNEY B. J. SKERTCHLY, F.G.S., LATE OF H.M. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. LONDON: PRINTED BY ALABASTER, PASSMORE, AND SONS, FANN STREET, ALDERSGATE STREET, E.C. 1886. IN MEMORY OF A FRIENDSHIP OF MANY YEARS, THIS BOOK IS Affectionately Inscribed TO THE RIGHT HON. GEORGE YOUNG, P.C. 1885. PREFACE. This little book is only a sketch of what its Author desired it to be, and he never saw the completed manuscript. Beginning with the fundamental idea that decoration is based upon structure, he saw that this was due to the fact that in the lower, transparent, animals, colour is applied directly to the organs, and that the decoration of opaque animals is carried out on the same principle--the primitive idea being maintained. Where function changes the pattern alters, where function is localized colour is concentrated: and thus the law of emphasis was evolved. Symmetry was a necessary consequence, for like parts were decorated alike, and this symmetry was carried out in detail apparently for the sake of beauty, as in the spiracular markings of many larvæ. Hence the reason for recognizing the law of repetition. With the developing of these ideas the necessity for recognizing some sort of consciousness even in the lowest forms of life was forced upon the Author, until inherited memory formed part of his scientific faith. This he saw dimly years ago, but only clearly when Mr. S. Butler's remarkable "Life and Habit" appeared, and he was gratified and strengthened when he found Mr. Romanes adopting that theory in his "Mental Evolution." The opening chapters are designedly elementary; for the Author had a wise dread of locking intellectual treasures in those unpickable scientific safes of which "the learned" alone hold keys. Only a very small portion of the vast array of facts accumulated has been made use of, and the Author was steadily working through the animal kingdom, seeking exceptions to his laws, but finding none, when death closed his patient and far-seeing eyes. A few days before the end he begged me to finish this abstract, for I had been at his side through all his labours. The work contains his views as clearly as I could express them, though on every page I feel they suffer from want of amplification. But I feared the work might become the expression of my own thoughts, though want of leisure would probably have prevented that unhappy result. Now it is finished, I would fain write it all over again, for methinks between the lines can be seen gleams of brighter light. SYDNEY B. J. SKERTCHLY. CARSHALTON, _July 17th, 1886_. The coloured illustrations were drawn by Mrs. Skertchly chiefly from nature, and very carefully printed by Messrs. Alabaster, Passmore, and Sons. [Illustration] CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. INHERITED MEMORY 8 III. INTRODUCTORY SKETCH 16 IV. COLOUR, ITS NATURE AND RECOGNITION 25 V. THE COLOUR SENSE 32 VI. SPOTS AND STRIPES 39 VII. COLOURATION IN THE INVERTEBRATA 49 VIII. DETAILS OF PROTOZOA 56 IX. DETAILS OF COELENTERATA 59 X. THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS 68 XI. THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS 75 XII. ARACHNIDA 82 XIII. COLOURATION OF INVERTEBRATA 85 XIV. COLOURATION OF VERTEBRATA 88 XV. THE COLOURATION OF PLANTS 95 XVI. CONCLUSIONS 97 LIST OF WOODCUTS. Fig. 1. Part of Secondary Feather of Argus Pheasant. Fig. 2. Ditto Wing-feather of ditto. Fig. 3. Diagram of Butterfly's Wing. Fig. 4. Python. Fig. 5. Tiger's Skin. Fig. 6. Ditto. Fig. 7. Tiger's Head, side view. Fig. 8. Ditto, crown. Fig. 9. Leopard's Skin. Fig. 10. Ditto. Fig. 11. Leopard's Head, side view. Fig. 12. Ditto, crown. Fig. 13. Lynx' Skin. Fig. 14. Ditto. Fig. 15. Ocelot. Fig. 16. Badger. Fig. 17. Begonia Leaf. DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. PLATE I. _Kallima Inachus_, the Indian Leaf Butterfly. _p._ 28. Fig. 1. With wings expanded. Fig. 2. Two Butterflies at rest, showing their exact resemblance to dead leaves. This insect affords one of the best examples of protective resemblance. PLATE II. Illustration of mimicry in butterflies. _p._ 30. Fig. 1. Male of _Papilio merope_. Fig. 2. Female of ditto mimicking Fig. 3. Fig. 3. _Danais niavius._ On the African continent both species occur, but in Madagascar _D. niavius_ is wanting, and the female _P. merope_ is coloured like the male. PLATE III. Fig. 1. _Gonepteryx Cleopatra._ _p._ 40. Fig. 2. _Gonepteryx rhamni_, male. _Note._--The orange spot in Fig. 2 has spread over the wing in Fig. 1. Fig. 3. _Vanessa Antiopa._ Fig. 4. _Panopoea hirta._ Fig. 5. _Acrea gea._ These two last belong to widely different genera, but are admirable examples of mimicry. PLATE IV. Fig. 1. _Leucophasia Sinapis._ _p._ 42. Fig. 2. Ditto, var. _diniensis_. Fig. 3. _Anthocaris cardamines_, male. Fig. 4. Ditto, female. Fig. 5. _Anthocaris belemia._ Fig. 6. _Anthocaris belia._ Fig. 7. Ditto, var. _simplonia_. Fig. 8. _Anthocaris eupheno_, female. Fig. 9. Ditto, male. Fig. 10. _Anthocaris euphemoides._ Fig. 11. _Papilio machaon._ Fig. 12. _Papilio podalirius._ Fig. 13. _Pieris napi_, summer form. Fig. 14. Ditto, winter form. Fig. 15. Ditto, var. _bryoniæ_ (alpine form). Fig. 16. Ditto, summer form, underside. Fig. 17. Ditto, winter form, underside. Fig. 18. Ditto, var. _bryoniæ_, underside. Figs. 13-18 illustrate admirably the variations of the yellow and black in the same species. PLATE V. Fig. 1. _Araschnia prorsa_, male. _p._ 44. Fig. 2. Ditto, female. Fig. 3. _Araschnia levana_, female. Fig. 4. Ditto, male. Fig. 5. _Paragra ægeria._ Fig. 6. _Araschnia porima._ Fig. 7. Ditto, var. _meione_. Fig. 8. _Grapta interrogationis._ Fig. 9. Ditto. Fig. 10. Ditto. Fig. 11. _Papilio Ajax_, var. _Walshii_. Fig. 12. Ditto, var. _telamonides_. Fig. 13. Ditto, var. _Marcellus_. Figs. 1-5 are all one species; _levana_ being the winter form, _prorsa_ the summer form, and _porima_ intermediate. Similarly 6-7 are the same species, _meione_ being the southern form. So with 8-9 and 11-13, which are only seasonal varieties. Here we can actually trace the way in which varieties are formed. _See_ Weismann's work, cited in the text. PLATE VI. _Syncoryne pulchella_, magnified. After Professor Allman. _p._ 62. Gymnoblastic or Tubularian Hydroids. Ray Soc., 1871, pl. vi., figs. 1 and 3. Fig. 1. A planoblast as seen passively floating in the water after liberation. Fig. 2. The entire hydrosoma of syncoryne. _a._ The spadix. _b._ The medusæ or planoblasts in various stages of development. PLATE VII. _p._ 80. Fig. 1. _Deilephila galii_, immature. Fig. 2. Ditto brown variety, adult. Fig. 3. _Deilephila euphorbiæ._ Fig. 4. _Sphinx ligustri._ Fig. 5. _Deilephila euphorbiæ_, dorsal view. Fig. 6. _Orgyia antiqua._ Fig. 7. _Abraxas grossulariata._ Fig. 8. _Bombyx neustria._ Fig. 9. _Callimorpha dominula._ Fig. 10. _Euchelia jacobæa._ Fig. 11. _Papilio machaon._ SPIDERS. PLATE VIII. Fig. 1. _Segestria senoculata_, female. _p._ 84. Fig. 2. _Sparassus smaragdulus_, male. Fig. 3. _Lycosa piscatoria_, female. Fig. 4. ---- _andrenivora_, male. Fig. 5. ---- ---- female. Fig. 6. ---- _allodroma_, male. Fig. 7. ---- _agretyca_, male. Fig. 8. ---- _allodroma_, female. Fig. 9. Diagram of _Lycosa_, showing form and position of vessels. After Gegenbaur. Fig. 10. _Lycosa campestris_, female. Fig. 11. _Thomisus luctuosus_, male. Fig. 12. _Salticus scenicus_, female. Fig. 13. _Lycosa rapax_, female. Fig. 14. ---- _latitans_, female. Fig. 15. _Theridion pictum_, female. Fig. 16. _Lycosa picta_, female. Fig. 17. ---- ---- male. All the above are British species, and copied from Blackwell's "Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland." Ray Soc., 1862. FISHES. PLATE IX. Fig. 1. Windermere Char. _Salmo Willughbii._ A species _p._ 88. peculiar to our North of England lakes. Fig. 2. Perch, _Perca fluviatilis_, showing the modified rib-like markings. SUNBIRDS. PLATE X. Fig. 1. _Nectarinea chloropygia._ _p._ 90. Fig. 2. _Nectarinea christinæ._ These birds illustrate regional colouration well. LEAVES. PLATE XI. Fig. 1. Horse Chestnut, _Æschulus hippocastanum_, decaying. _p._ 95. Fig. 2. _Coleus._ Fig. 3. _Begonia rex._ Fig. 4. _Begonia_. Fig. 5. _Caladium bicolor._ Fig. 6. _Anoechtochilus xanthophyllus._ FLOWERS. PLATE XII. Fig. 1. _Gloxinia_, with 5 petals, showing uneven _p._ 96. colouring. Fig. 2. _Gloxinia_, with 6 petals, showing regular colouring. Figs. 3 and 4. Pelargoniums, showing the variation of the dark markings with the different sized petals. [Illustration] COLOURATION IN ANIMALS AND PLANTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION. Before Darwin published his remarkable and memorable work on the Origin of Species, the decoration of animals and plants was a mystery as much hidden to the majority as the beauty of the rainbow ere Newton analysed the light. That the world teemed with beauty in form and colour was all we knew; and the only guess that could be made as to its uses was the vague and unsatisfactory suggestion that it was appointed for the delight of man. Why, if such was the case, so many flowers were "born to blush unseen," so many insects hidden in untrodden forests, so many bright-robed creatures buried in the depths of the sea, no man could tell. It seemed but a poor display of creative intelligence to lavish for thousands of years upon heedless savage eyes such glories as are displayed by the forests of Brazil; and the mind recoiled from the suggestion that such could ever have been the prime intention. But with the dawn of the new scientific faith, light began to shine upon these and kindred questions; nature ceased to appear a mass of useless, unconnected facts, and ornamentation appeared in its true guise as of extreme importance to the beings possessing it. It was the theory of descent with modification that threw this light upon nature. This theory, reduced to its simplest terms, is that species, past and present, have arisen from the accumulation by inheritance of minute differences of form, structure, colour, or habit, giving to the individual a better chance, in the struggle for existence, of obtaining food or avoiding danger. It is based on a few well-known and universally admitted facts or laws of nature: namely, the law of multiplication in geometrical progression causing the birth of many more individuals than can survive, leading necessarily to the struggle for existence; the law of heredity, in virtue of which the offspring resembles its parents; the law of variation, in virtue of which the offspring has an individual character slightly differing from its parents. To illustrate these laws roughly we will take the case of a bird, say, the thrush. The female lays on the average five eggs, and if all these are hatched, and the young survive, thrushes would be as seven to two times as numerous in the next year. Let two of these be females, and bring up each five young; in the second year we shall have seventeen thrushes, in the third thirty-seven, in the fourth seventy-seven, and so on. Now common experience tells us not merely that such a vast increase of individuals does not take place, but can never do so, as in a very few years the numbers would be so enormously increased that food would be exhausted. On the other hand, we know that the numbers of individuals remain practically the same. It follows, then, that of every five eggs four fail to arrive at maturity; and this rigorous destruction of individuals is what is known as the struggle for existence. If, instead of a bird, we took an insect, laying hundreds of eggs, a fish, laying thousands, or a plant, producing still greater quantities of seed, we should find the extermination just as rigorous, and the numbers of individuals destroyed incomparably greater. Darwin has calculated that from a single pair of elephants nearly nineteen millions would be alive in 750 years if each elephant born arrived at maturity, lived a hundred years, and produced six young--and the elephant is the slowest breeder of all animals. The struggle for existence, then, is a real and potent fact, and it follows that if, from any cause whatever, a being possesses any power or peculiarity that will give it a better chance of survival over its fellows--be that power ever so slight--it will have a very decided advantage. Now it can be shown that no two individuals are exactly alike, in other words, that variation is constantly taking place, and that no animal or plant preserves its characters unmodified. This we might have expected if we attentively consider how impossible it is for any two individuals to be subjected to exactly the same conditions of life and habit. But for the proofs of variability we have not to rely upon theoretical reasoning. No one can study, even superficially, any class or species without daily experiencing the conviction that no two individuals are alike, and that variation takes place in almost every conceivable direction. Granted then the existence of the struggle for existence and the variability of individuals, and granting also that if any variation gives its possessor a firmer hold upon life, it follows as a necessity that the most favoured individuals will have the best chance of surviving and leaving descendants, and by the law of heredity, we know these offspring will tend to inherit the characters of their parents. This action is often spoken of as the preservation of favoured races, and as the survival of the fittest. The gradual accumulation of beneficial characters will give rise in time to new varieties and species; and in this way primarily has arisen the wonderful diversity of life that now exists. Such, in barest outline, is the theory of descent with modification. Let us now see in what way this theory has been applied to colouration. The colours, or, more strictly, the arrangement of colours, in patterns is of several kinds, viz.:-- 1. _General Colouration_, or such as appears to have no very special function _as_ colour. We find this most frequently in the vegetable kingdom, as, for instance, the green hue of leaves, which, though it has a most valuable function chemically has no particular use as colour, so far as we can see. 2. _Distinctive Colouration_, or the arrangement of colours in different patterns or tints corresponding to each species. This is the most usual style of colouring, and the three following kinds are modifications of it. It is this which gives each species its own design, whether in animals or plants. 3. _Protective Resemblance_, or the system of colouring which conceals the animal from its prey, or hides the prey from its foe. Of this class are the green hues of many caterpillars, the brown tints of desert birds, and the more remarkable resemblances of insects to sticks and leaves. 4. _Mimetic Colouration_, or the resemblance of one animal to another. It is always the resemblance of a rare species, which is the favourite food of some creature, to a common species nauseous to the mimicker's foe. Of this character are many butterflies. 5. _Warning Colours_, or distinctive markings and tints rendering an animal conspicuous, and, as it were, proclaiming _noli me tangere_ to its would-be attackers. 6. _Sexual Colours_, or particular modifications of colour in the two sexes, generally taking the form of brilliancy in the male, as in the peacock and birds of paradise. Under one or other of these headings most schemes of colouration will be found to arrange themselves. At the outset, and confining ourselves to the animal kingdom for the present, bearing in mind the fierce intensity of the struggle for life, it would seem that any scheme of colour that would enable its possessor to elude its foes or conceal itself from its prey, would be of vital importance. Hence we might infer that protective colouring would be a very usual phenomenon; and such we find to be the case. In the sea we have innumerable instances of protective colouring. Fishes that lie upon the sandy bottom are sand-coloured, like soles and plaice, in other orders we find the same hues in shrimps and crabs, and a common species on our shores (_Carcinus mænas_) has, just behind the eyes, a little light irregular patch, so like the shell fragments around that when it hides in the sand, with eyes and light spot alone showing, it is impossible to distinguish it. The land teems with protective colours. The sombre tints of so many insects, birds and animals are cases in point, as are the golden coat of the spider that lurks in the buttercup, and the green mottlings of the underwings of the orange-tip butterfly. Where absolute hiding is impossible, as on the African desert, we find every bird and insect, without exception, assimilating the colour of the sand. But if protective colour is thus abundant, it is no less true that colour of the most vivid description has arisen for the sole purpose of attracting notice. We observe this in the hues of many butterflies, in the gem-like humming birds, in sun-birds, birds of paradise, peacocks and pheasants. To see the shining metallic blue of a Brazilian Morpho flashing in the sun, as it lazily floats along the forest glades, is to be sure that in such cases the object of the insect is to attract notice. These brilliant hues, when studied, appear to fall into two classes, having very diverse functions, namely Sexual and Warning Colours. Protection is ensured in many ways, and among insects one of the commonest has been the acquisition of a nauseous flavour. This is often apparent even to our grosser senses; and the young naturalist who captures his first crimson-and-green Burnet Moth or Scarlet Tiger, becomes at once aware of the existence of a fetid greasy secretion. This the insectivorous birds know so well that not one will ever eat such insects. But unless there were some outward and visible sign of this inward and sickening taste, it would little avail the insect to be first killed and then rejected. Hence these warning colours--they as effectively signal danger as the red and green lamps on our railways. It may here be remarked that wherever mimickry occurs in insects, the species mimicked is always an uneatable one, and the mimicker a palatable morsel. It is nature's way of writing "poison" on her jam-pots. The other class of prominent colours--the Sexual--have given rise to two important theories, the one by Darwin, the counter-theory by Wallace. Darwin's theory of Sexual Selection is briefly this:--He points out in much detail how the male is generally the most powerful, the most aggressive, the most ardent, and therefore the wooer, while the female is, as a rule, gentler, smaller, and is wooed or courted. He brings forward an enormous mass of well-weighed facts to show, for example, how often the males display their plumes and beauties before their loves in the pairing season, and his work is a long exposition of the truth that Tennyson proclaimed when he wrote:-- "In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast, In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest, In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove, In the spring the young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love." That birds are eminently capable of appreciating beauty is certain, and numerous illustrations are familiar to everyone. Suffice it here to notice the pretty Bower Birds of Australia, that adorn their love arbours with bright shells and flowers, and show as unmistakable a delight in them as the connoisseur among his art treasures. From these and kindred facts Darwin draws the conclusion that the females are most charmed with, and select the most brilliant males, and that by continued selection of this character, the sexual hues have been gradually evolved. To this theory Wallace takes exception. Admitting, as all must, the fact of sexually distinct ornamentation, he demurs to the conclusion that they have been produced by sexual selection. In the first place, he insists upon the absence of all proof that the least attractive males fail to obtain partners, without which the theory must fail. Next he tells us that it was the case of the Argus pheasant, so admirably worked out by Darwin, that first shook his faith in sexual selection. Is it possible, he asks, that those exquisite eye-spots, shaded "like balls lying loose within sockets" (objects of which the birds could have had no possible experience) should have been produced ... "through thousands and tens of thousands of female birds, all preferring those males whose markings varied slightly in this one direction, this uniformity of choice continuing through thousands and tens of thousands of generations"?[1] As an alternative explanation, he would advance no new theory, but simply apply the known laws of evolution. He points out, and dwells upon, the high importance of protection to the female while sitting on the nest. In this way he accounts for the more sombre hues of the female; and finds strong support in the fact that in those birds in which the male undertakes the household duties, he is of a domestic dun colour, and his gad-about-spouse is bedizened like a country-girl at fair time. With regard to the brilliant hues themselves, he draws attention to the fact that depth and intensity of colour are a sign of vigour and health--that the pairing time is one of intense excitement, and that we should naturally expect to find the brightest hues then displayed. Moreover, he shows--and this is most important to us--that "the most highly-coloured and most richly varied markings occur on those parts which have undergone the greatest modification, or have acquired the most abnormal development."[2] It is not our object to discuss these rival views; but they are here laid down in skeleton, that the nature of the problem of the principles of colouration may be easily understood. Seeing, then, how infinitely varied is colouration, and how potently selection has modified it, the question may be asked, "Is it possible to find any general system or law which has determined the main plan of decoration, any system which underlies natural selection, and through which it works"? We venture to think there is; and the object of this work is to develop the laws we have arrived at after several years of study. [Illustration] [1] Wallace, Tropical Nature, p. 206. [2] _Op. cit._, p. 206. CHAPTER II. INHERITED MEMORY. Many of our observations seemed to suggest a quasi-intelligent action on the part of the beings under examination; and we were led, early in the course of our studies, to adopt provisionally the hypothesis that memory was inherited--that the whole was consequently wiser than its parts, the species wiser than the individual, the genus wiser than the species. One illustration will suffice to show the possibility of memory being inherited. Chickens, as a rule, are hatched with a full knowledge of how to pick up a living, only a few stupid ones having to be taught by the mother the process of pecking. When eggs are hatched artificially, ignorant as well as learned chicks are produced, and the less intelligent, having no hen instructor, would infallibly die in the midst of plenty. But if a tapping noise, like pecking, be made near them, they hesitate awhile, and then take to their food with avidity. Here the tapping noise seems certainly to have awakened the ancestral memory which lay dormant. It may be said all this is habit. But what is habit? Is it any explanation to say a creature performs a given action by habit? or is it not rather playing with a word which expresses a phenomenon without explaining it? Directly we bring memory into the field we get a real explanation. A habit is acquired by repetition, and could not arise if the preceding experience were forgotten. Life is largely made up of repetition, which involves the formation of habits; and, indeed, everyone's experience (habit again) shows that life only runs smoothly when certain necessary habits have been acquired so perfectly as to be performed without effort. A being at maturity is a great storehouse of acquired habits; and of these many are so perfectly acquired, _i.e._, have been performed so frequently, that the possessor is quite unconscious of possessing them. Habit tends to become automatic; indeed, a habit can hardly be said to be formed until it is automatic. But habits are the result of experience and repetition, that is, have arisen in the first instance by some reasoning process; and reasoning implies consciousness. Nevertheless, the action once thought out, or reasoned upon, requires less conscious effort on a second occasion, and still less on a third, and so on, until the mere occurrence of given conditions is sufficient to ensure immediate response without conscious effort, and the action is performed mechanically or automatically: it is now a true habit. Habit, then, commences in consciousness and ends in unconsciousness. To say, therefore, when we see an action performed without conscious thought, that consciousness has never had part in its production, is as illogical as to say that because we read automatically we can never have learned to read. The thorough appreciation of this principle is absolutely essential to the argument of this work; for to inherited memory we attribute not only the formation of habits and instincts, but also the modification of organs, which leads to the formation of new species. In a word, it is to memory we attribute the possibility of evolution, and by it the struggle for existence is enabled to re-act upon the forms of life, and produce the harmony we see in the organic world. Our own investigations had led us very far in this direction; but we failed to grasp the entire truth until Mr. S. Butler's remarkable work, "Life and Habit," came to our notice. This valuable contribution to evolution smoothed away the whole of the difficulties we had experienced, and enabled us to propound the views here set forth with greater clearness than had been anticipated. The great difficulty in Mr. Darwin's works is the fact that he starts with variations ready made, without trying, as a rule, to account for them, and then shows that if these varieties are beneficial the possessor has a better chance in the great struggle for existence, and the accumulation of such variations will give rise to new species. This is what he means by the title of his work, "The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." But this tells us nothing whatever about the origin of species. As Butler puts it, "Suppose that it is an advantage to a horse to have an especially broad and hard hoof: then a horse born with such a hoof will, indeed, probably survive in the struggle for existence; but he was not born with the larger and harder hoof _because of his subsequently surviving_. He survived because he was born fit--not he was born fit because he survived. The variation must arise first and be preserved afterwards."[3] Mr. Butler works out with admirable force the arguments, first, that habitual action begets unconsciousness; second, that there is a unity of personality between parent and offspring; third, that there is a memory of the oft-repeated acts of past existences, and, lastly, that there is a latency of that memory until it is re-kindled by the presence of associated ideas. As to the first point, we need say no more, for daily experience confirms it; but the other points must be dealt with more fully. Mr. Butler argues for the absolute identity of the parent and offspring; and, indeed, this is a necessity. Personal identity is a phrase, very convenient, it is true, but still only a provisional mode of naming something we cannot define. In our own bodies we say that our identity remains the same from birth to death, though we know that our bodily particles are ever changing, that our habits, thoughts, aspirations, even our features, change--that we are no more really the same person than the ripple over a pebble in a brook is the same from moment to moment, though its form remains. If our personal identity thus elude our search in active life, it certainly becomes no more tangible if we trace existence back into pre-natal states. We _are_, in one sense, the same individual; but, what is equally important, we _were_ part of our mother, as absolutely as her limbs are part of her. There is no break of continuity between offspring and parent--the river of life is a continuous stream. We judge of our own identity by the continuity which we see and appreciate; but that greater continuity reaching backwards beyond the womb to the origin of life itself is no less a fact which should be constantly kept in view. The individual, in reality, never dies; for the lamp of life never goes out. For a full exposition of this problem, Mr. Butler's "Life and Habit" must be consulted, where the reader will find it treated in a masterly way. This point was very early appreciated in our work; and in a paper read before the Anthropological Institute[4] in the year 1879, but not published, this continuity was insisted upon by means of diagrams, both of animal and plant life, and its connection with heredity was clearly shown, though its relation to memory was only dimly seen. From this paper the following passage may be quoted: "If, as I believe, the origin of form and decoration is due to a process similar to the visualising of object-thoughts in the human mind, the power of this visualising must commence with the life of the being. It would seem that this power may be best understood by a correct insight into biological development. It has always excited wonder that a child, a separate individual, should inherit and reproduce the characters of its parents, and, indeed, of its ancestors; and the tendency of modern scientific writing is often to make this obscure subject still darker. But if we remember that the great law of all living matter is, that the child is _not_ a separate individual, but a part of the living body of the parent, up to a certain date, when it assumes a separate existence, then we can comprehend how living beings inherit ancestral characters, for they are parts of one continuous series in which not a single break has existed or can ever take place. Just as the wave-form over a pebble in a stream remains constant, though the particles of water which compose it are ever changing, so the wave-form of life, which is heredity, remains constant, though the bodies which exhibit it are continually changing. The retrospection of heredity and memory, and the prospection of thought, are well shown in Mrs. Meritt's beautiful diagram." This passage illustrates how parallel our thoughts were to Mr. Butler's, whose work we did not then know. What we did not see at the time was, that the power of thinking or memory might antedate birth. It is quite impossible adequately to express our sense of admiration of Mr. Butler's work. Granting then the physical identity of offspring and parent, the doctrine of heredity becomes plain. The child becomes like the parent, because it is placed in almost identical circumstances to those of its parent, and is indeed part of that parent. If memory be possessed by all living matter, and this is what we now believe, we can clearly see how heredity acts. The embryo develops into a man like its parent, because human embryos have gone through this process many times--till they are unconscious of the action, they know how to proceed so thoroughly. Darwin, after deeply pondering over the phenomena of growth, repair of waste and injury, heredity and kindred matters, advanced what he wisely called a provisional hypothesis--pangenesis. "I have been led," he remarks, "or, rather, forced, to form a view which to a certain extent, connects these facts by a tangible method. Everyone would wish to explain to himself even in an imperfect manner, how it is possible for a character possessed by some remote ancestor suddenly to reappear in the offspring; how the effects of increased or decreased use of a limb can be transmitted to the child; how the male sexual element can act, not solely on the ovules, but occasionally on the mother form; how a hybrid can be produced by the union of the cellular tissue of two plants independently of the organs of generation; how a limb can be reproduced on the exact line of amputation, with neither too much nor too little added; how the same organism may be produced by such widely different processes as budding and true seminal generation; and, lastly, how of two allied forms, one passes in the course of its development through the most complex metamorphoses, and the other does not do so, though when mature both are alike in every detail of structure. I am aware that my view is merely a provisional hypothesis or speculation; but until a better one be advanced, it will serve to bring together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient cause."[5] After showing in detail that the body is made up of an infinite number of units, each of which is a centre of more or less independent action, he proceeds as follows:-- "It is universally admitted that the cells or units of the body increase by self-division or proliferation, retaining the same nature, and that they ultimately become converted into the various tissues of the substances of the body. But besides this means of increase I assume that the units throw off minute granules, which are dispersed throughout the whole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply by self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those from which they were originally derived. These granules may be called gemmules. They are collected from all parts of the system to constitute the sexual elements, and their development in the next generations forms a new being; but they are likewise capable of transmission in a dormant state to future generations, and may then be developed. Their development depends on their union with other partially developed or nascent cells, which precede them in the regular course of growth.... Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every unit; not only during the adult state, but during each stage of development of every organ; but not necessarily during the continued existence of the same unit. Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other, leading to their aggregation into buds, or into the sexual elements. Hence, it is not the reproductive organs or buds which generate new organisms, but the units of which each individual is composed."[6] Now, suppose that instead of these hypothetic gemmules we endow the units with memory in ever so slight a degree, how simple the explanation of all these facts becomes! What an unit has learned to do under given conditions it can do again under like circumstances. Memory _does_ pass from one unit to another, or we could not remember anything as men that happened in childhood, for we are not physically composed of the same materials. It is not at all necessary that an unit should remember it remembers any more than we in reading are conscious of the efforts we underwent in learning our letters. Few of us can remember learning to walk, and none of us recollect learning to talk. Yet surely the fact that we do read, and walk, and talk, proves that we have not forgotten how. Bearing in mind, then, the fundamental laws that the offspring is one in continuity with its parents, and that memory arises chiefly from repetition in a definite order (for we cannot readily reverse the process--we cannot sing the National Anthem backwards), it is easy to see how the oft-performed actions of an individual become its unconscious habits, and these by inheritance become the instincts and unconscious actions of the species. Experience and memory are thus the key-note to the origin of species. Granting that all living matter possesses memory, we must admit that all actions are at first conscious in a certain degree, and in the "sense of need" we have the great stimulation to action. In Natural Selection, as expounded by Mr. Darwin, there is no principle by which small variations can be accumulated. Take any form, and let it vary in all directions. We may represent the original form by a spot, and the variations by a ring of dots. Each one of these dots may vary in all directions, and so other rings of dots must be made, and so on, the result not being development along a certain line, but an infinity of interlacing curves. The tree of life is not like this. It branches ever outwards and onwards. The eyes of the Argus pheasant and peacock have been formed by the accumulation, through long generations, of more and more perfect forms; the mechanism of the eye and hand has arisen by the gradual accumulation of more and more perfect forms, and these processes have been continued along definite lines. If we grant memory we eliminate this hap-hazard natural selection. We see how a being that has once begun to perform a certain action will soon perform it automatically, and when its habits are confirmed its descendants will more readily work in this direction than any other, and so specialisation may arise. To take the cases of protective resemblance and mimicry. Darwin and Wallace have to start with a form something like the body mimicked, without giving any idea as to how that resemblance could arise. But with this key of memory we can open nature's treasure house much more fully. Look, for instance, at nocturnal insects; and one need not go further than the beetles (_Blatta_) in the kitchen, to see that they have a sense of need, and use it. Suddenly turn up the gas, and see the hurried scamper of the alarmed crowd. They are perfectly aware that danger is at hand. Equally well do they feel that safety lies in concealment; and while all the foraging party on the white floor are scuttling away into dark corners, the fortunate dweller on the hearth stands motionless beneath the shadow of the fire-irons; a picture of keen, intense excitement, with antennæ quivering with alertness. On the clean floor a careless girl has dropped a piece of flat coal, and on it beetles stand rigidly. They are as conscious as we are that the shadow, and the colour of the coal afford concealment, and we cannot doubt that they have become black from their sense of the protection they thus enjoy. They do not say, as Tom, the Water Baby, says, "I must be clean," but they know they must be black, and black they are. There is, then, clearly an effort to assimilate in hue to their surroundings, and the whole question is comparatively clear. Mr. Wallace, in commenting upon the butterfly (_Papilio nireus_)--which, at the Cape, in its chrysalis state, copies the bright hues of the vegetation upon which it passes its dormant phase--says that this is a kind of natural colour photography; thus reducing the action to a mere physical one. We might as well say the dun coat of the sportsman among the brown heather was acquired mechanically. Moreover, Wallace distinctly shows that when the larvæ are made to pupate on unnatural colours, like sky-blue or vermilion, the pupæ do not mimic the colour. There is no reason why "natural photography" should not copy this as well as the greens, and browns, and yellows. But how easy the explanation becomes when memory, the sense of need, and Butler's little "dose of reason," are admitted! For ages the butterfly has been acquainted with greens, and browns, and yellows, they are every day experiences; but it has no acquaintance with aniline dyes, and therefore cannot copy them. The moral of all this is that things become easy by repetition; that without experience nothing can be done well, and that the course of development is always in one direction, because the memory of the road traversed is not forgotten. [Illustration] [3] Evolution, Old and New, p. 346. [4] On a New Method of Expressing the Law of Specific Change. By A. Tylor. [5] Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii., p. 350. [6] Animals and Plants under Domestication, vol. ii., p. 370. CHAPTER III. INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. Natural science has shown us how the existing colouration of an animal or plant can be laid hold of and modified in almost infinite ways under the influence of natural or artificial evolution. It shows us, for example, how the early pink leaf-buds have been modified into attractive flowers to ensure fertilisation; and it has tracked this action through many of its details. It has explained the rich hue of the bracts of _Bougainvillea_, in which the flowers themselves are inconspicuous, and the coloured flower-stems in other plants, as efforts to attract notice of the flower-frequenting insects. It has explained how a blaze of colour is attained in some plants, as in roses and lilies by large single flowers; how the same effect is produced by a number of small flowers brought to the same plane by gradually increasing flower-stalks, as in the elderberry, or by still smaller flowers clustered into a head, as in daisies and sunflowers. It teaches us again how fruits have become highly coloured to lure fruit-eating birds and mammals, and how many flowers are striped as guides to the honey-bearing nectary. Entering more into detail, we are enabled to see how the weird walking-stick and leaf-insects have attained their remarkable protective resemblances, and how the East Indian leaf-butterflies are enabled to deceive alike the birds that would fain devour them, and the naturalist who would study them. Even the still more remarkable cases of protective mimicry, in which one animal so closely mimics another as to derive all the benefits that accrue to its protector, are made clear. All these and many other points have been deeply investigated, and are now the common property of naturalists. But up to the present no one has attempted systematically to find out the principles or laws which govern the distribution of colouration; laws which underlie natural selection, and by which alone it can work. Natural selection can show, for instance, how the lion has become almost uniform in colour, while the leopard is spotted, and the tiger striped. The lion living on the plains in open country is thus rendered less conspicuous to his prey, the leopard delighting in forest glades is hardly distinguishable among the changing lights and shadows that flicker through the leaves, and the tiger lurking amid the jungle simulates the banded shades of the cane-brake in his striped mantle. Beyond this, science has not yet gone; and it is our object to carry the study of natural colouration still further: to show that the lion's simple coat, the leopard's spots, and the tiger's stripes, are but modifications of a deeper principle. Let us, as an easy and familiar example, study carefully the colouration of a common tabby cat. First, we notice, it is darker on the back than beneath, and this is an almost universal law. It would, indeed, be quite universal among mammals but for some curious exceptions among monkeys and a few other creatures of arboreal habits, which delight in hanging from the branches in such a way as to expose their ventral surface to the light. These apparent exceptions thus lead us to the first general law, namely, that colouration is invariably most intense upon that surface upon which the light falls. As in most cases the back of the animal is the most exposed, that is the seat of intensest colour. But whenever any modification of position exists, as for instance in the side-swimming fishes like the sole, the upper side is dark and the lower light. The next point to notice in the cat is that from the neck, along the back to the tail, is a dark stripe. This stripe is generally continued, but slighter in character across the top of the skull; but it will be seen clearly that at the neck the pattern changes, and the skull-pattern is quite distinct from that on the body. From the central, or what we may call the back-bone stripe, bands pass at a strong but varying angle, which we may call rib-stripes. Now examine the body carefully, and the pattern will be seen to change at the shoulders and thighs, and also at each limb-joint. In fact, if the cat be attentively remarked, it will clearly be seen that the colouration or pattern is _regional_, and dependent upon the structure of the cat. Now a cat is a vertebrate or backboned animal, possessing four limbs, and if we had to describe its parts roughly, we should specify the head, trunk, limbs and tail. Each of these regions has its own pattern or decoration. The head is marked by a central line, on each side of which are other irregular lines, or more frequently convoluted or twisted spots. The trunk has its central axial backbone stripe and its lateral rib-lines. The tail is ringed; the limbs have each particular stripes and patches. Moreover, the limb-marks are largest at the shoulder and hip-girdles, and decrease downwards, being smallest, or even wanting, on the feet; and the changes take place at the joints. All this seems to have some general relation to the internal structure of the animal. Such we believe to be the case; and this brings us to the second great law of colouration, namely, that it is dependent upon the anatomy of the animal. We may enunciate these two laws as follows:-- I. THE LAW OF EXPOSURE. Colouration is primarily dependent upon the direct action of light, being always most intense upon that surface upon which the light falls most directly. II. THE LAW OF STRUCTURE. Colouration, especially where diversified, follows the chief lines of structure, and changes at points, such as the joints, where function changes. It is the enunciation and illustration of these two laws that form the subject of the present treatise. In the sequel we shall treat, in more or less detail, of each point as it arises; but in order to render the argument clearer, this chapter is devoted to a general sketch of my views. Of the first great law but little need be said here, as it is almost self-evident, and has never been disputed. It is true not only of the upper and under-sides of animals, but also of the covered and uncovered parts or organs. For example, birds possess four kinds of feathers, of which one only, the contour feathers, occur upon the surface and are exposed to the light. It is in these alone that we find the tints and patterns that render birds so strikingly beautiful, the underlying feathers being invariably of a sober grey. Still further, many of the contour feathers overlap, and the parts so overlapped, being removed from the light are grey also, although the exposed part may be resplendent with the most vivid metallic hues. A similar illustration can be found in most butterflies and moths. The upper wing slightly overlaps the lower along the lower margin, and although the entire surface of the upper wing is covered with coloured scales, and the underwing apparently so as well, it will be found that the thin unexposed margin is of an uniform grey, and quite devoid of any pattern. The law of structure, on the other hand, is an entirely new idea, and demands more detailed explanation. Speaking in the broadest sense, and confining ourselves to the animal kingdom, animals fall naturally into two great sections, or sub-kingdoms, marked by the possession or absence of an internal bony skeleton. Those which possess this structure are known as _Vertebrata_, or backboned animals, because the vertebral-column or backbone is always present. The other section is called the _Invertebrata_, or backboneless animals. Now, if we take the Vertebrata, we shall find that the system of colouration, however modified, exhibits an unmistakably strong tendency to assume a vertebral or axial character. Common observation confirms this; and the dark stripes down the backs of horses, asses, cattle, goats, etc., are familiar illustrations. The only great exception to this law is in the case of birds, but here, again, the exception is more apparent than real, as will be abundantly shown in the sequel. This axial stripe is seen equally well in fishes and reptiles. For our present purpose we may again divide the vertebrates into limbed and limbless. Wherever we find limbless animals, such as snakes, the dorsal stripe is prominent, and has a strong tendency to break up into vertebra-like markings. In the limbed animals, on the other hand, we find the limbs strongly marked by pattern, and thus, in the higher forms the system of colouration becomes axial and appendicular. As a striking test of the universality of this law we may take the cephalopoda, as illustrated in the cuttle-fishes. These creatures are generally considered to stand at the head of the Mollusca, and are placed, in systems of classification, nearest to the Vertebrata; indeed, they have even been considered to be the lowest type of Vertebrates. This is owing to the possession of a hard axial organ, occupying much the position of the backbone, and is the well-known cuttle-bone. Now, these animals are peculiar amongst their class, from possessing, very frequently, an axial stripe. We thus see clearly that the dorsal stripe is directly related to the internal axial skeleton. Turning now to the invertebrata, we are at once struck with the entire absence of the peculiar vertebrate plan of decoration; and find ourselves face to face with several distinct plans. From a colouration point of view, we might readily divide the animal kingdom into two classes, marked by the presence or absence of distinct organs. The first of these includes all the animals except the Protozoa--the lowest members of the animal kingdom--which are simply masses of jelly-like protoplasm, without any distinct organs. Now, on our view, that colouration follows structure, we ought to find an absence of decoration in this structureless group. This is what we actually do find. The lowest Protozoa are entirely without any system of colouring; being merely of uniform tint, generally of brown colour. As if to place this fact beyond doubt, we find in the higher members a tendency to organization in a pulsating vesicle, which constantly retains the same position, and may, hence, be deemed an incipient organ. Now, this vesicle is invariably tinged with a different hue from the rest of the being. We seem, indeed, here to be brought into contact with the first trace of colouration, and we find it to arise with the commencement of organization, and to be actually applied to the incipient organ itself. Ascending still higher in the scale, we come to distinctly organized animals, known as the _Coelenterata_; of which familiar examples are found in the jelly-fishes and sea anemonies. These animals are characterized by the possession of distinct organs, are transparent, or translucent, and the organs are arranged radially. No one can have failed to notice on our coasts, as the filmy jelly-fishes float by, that the looped canals of the disc are delicately tinted with violet; and closer examination will show the radiating muscular bands as pellucid white lines; and the sense organs fringing the umbrella are vividly black--the first trace of opaque colouration in the animal kingdom. These animals were of yore united with the star-fishes and sea-urchins, to form the sub-kingdom Radiata, because of their radiate structure. Now, in all these creatures we find the system of colouration to be radiate also. Passing to the old sub-kingdom Articulata, which includes the worms, crabs, lobsters, insects, etc., we come to animals whose structure is segmental; that is to say, the body is made up of a number of distinct segments. Among these we find the law holds, rigidly that the colouration is segmental also, as may be beautifully seen in lobsters and caterpillars. Lastly, we have the Molluscs, which fall for our purpose into two classes, the naked and the shelled. The naked molluscs are often most exquisitely coloured, and the feathery gills that adorn many are suffused with some of the most brilliant colours in nature. The shelled molluscs differ from all other animals, in that the shell is a secretion, almost as distinct from the animals as a house is from its occupant. This shell is built up bit by bit along its margin by means of a peculiar organ known as the mantle--its structure is marginate--its decoration is marginate also. We have thus rapidly traversed the animal kingdom, and find that in all cases the system of decoration follows the structural peculiarity of the being decorated. Thus in the:-- Structureless protozoa there is no varying colouration. Radiate animals--the system is radiate. Segmented " " segmental. Marginate " " marginal. Vertebrate " " axial. We must now expound this great structural law in detail, and we shall find that all the particular ornamentations in their various modifications can be shown to arise from certain principles, namely-- 1. The principle of Emphasis, 2. The " Repetition. The term _Emphasis_ has been selected to express the marking out or distinguishing of important functional or structural regions by ornament, either as form or colour. It is with colour alone that we have to deal. Architects are familiar with the term emphasis, as applied to the ornamentation of buildings. This ornamentation, they say, should _emphasize_, point out, or make clear to the eye, the use or function of the part emphasized. They recognise the fact that to give sublimity and grace to a building, the ornamentation must be related to the character of the building as a whole, and to its parts in particular. Thus in a tower whose object or function is to suggest height, the principal lines of decoration must be perpendicular, while in the body of a building such as a church, the chief lines must be horizontal, to express the opposite sentiment. So, too, with individual parts. A banded column, such as we see in Early English Gothic, looks weak and incapable of supporting the superincumbent weight. It suggests the idea that the shaft is bound up to strengthen it. On the other hand, the vertical flutings of a Greek column, at once impress us with their function of bearing vertical pressure and their power to sustain it. This principle is carried into colour in most of our useful arts. The wheelwright instinctively lines out the rim and spokes and does not cross them, feeling that the effect would be to suggest weakness. Moreover, in all our handicraft work, the points and tips are emphasized with colour. This principle seems to hold good throughout nature. It is not suggested that the colouration is applied to important parts _in order to_ emphasize them, but rather that being important parts, they have become naturally the seats of most vivid colour. How this comes about we cannot here discuss, but shall refer to it further on. It is owing to this pervading natural principle, that we find the extreme points of quadrupeds so universally decorated. The tips of the nose, ears and tail, and the feet also proclaim the fact, and the decoration of the sense organs, even down to the dark spots around each hair of a cat's feelers, are additional proofs. Look, for instance, at a caterpillar with its breathing holes or spiracles along the sides, and see how these points are selected as the seats of specialized colour, eye-spots and stripes in every variety will be seen, all centred around these important air-holes. This leads us to our second principle, that of repetition, which simply illustrates the tendency to repeat similar markings in like areas. Thus the spiracular marks are of the same character on each segment. The principle of repetition, however, goes further than this, and tends to repeat the style of decoration upon allied parts. We see this strongly in many caterpillars in which spiracular markings are continued over the segments which lack spiracles; and it is probably owing to this tendency that the rib-like markings on so many mammals are continued beyond the ribs into the dorsal region. Upon these two principles the whole of the colouration of nature seems to depend. But the plan is infinitely modified by natural selection, otherwise the result would have been so patent as to need no elucidation. Natural selection acts by suppressing, or developing, structurally distributed colour. So far as our researches have gone, it seems most probable that the fundamental or primitive colouration is arranged in spots. These spots may expand into regular or irregular patches, or run into stripes, of which many cases will be given in the sequel. Now, natural selection may suppress certain spots, or lines, or expand them into wide, uniform masses, or it may suppress some and repeat others. On these simple principles the whole scheme of natural colouration can be explained; and to do this is the object of the following pages. Into the origin of the colour sense it is not our province to enlarge; but, it will reasonably be asked, How are these colours of use to the creature decorated? The admiration of colour, the charm of landscape, is the newest of human developments. Are we, then, to attribute to the lower animals a discriminative power greater than most races of men possess, and, if so, on the theory of evolution, how comes it that man lost those very powers his remote ancestors possessed in so great perfection? To these questions we will venture to reply. Firstly, then, it must be admitted that the higher animals do actually possess this power; and no one will ever doubt it if he watches a common hedge-sparrow hunting for caterpillars. To see this bird carefully seeking the green species in a garden, and deliberately avoiding the multitudes of highly coloured but nauseous larvæ on the currant bushes, arduously examining every leaf and twig for the protected brown and green larvæ which the keen eye of the naturalist detects only by close observation; hardly deigning to look at the speckled beauties that are feeding in decorated safety before his eyes, while his callow brood are clamouring for food--to see this is to be assured for ever that birds can, and do, discriminate colour perfectly. What is true of birds can be shown to be true of other and lower types; and this leads us to a very important conclusion--that colouration has been developed with the evolution of the sense of sight. We can look back in fancy to the far off ages, when no eye gazed upon the world, and we can imagine that then colour in ornamental devices must have been absent, and a dreary monotony of simple hues must have prevailed. With the evolution of sight it might be of importance that even the sightless animals should be coloured; and in this way we can account for the decoration of coral polyps, and other animals that have no eyes; just as we find no difficulty in understanding the colouration of flowers. Colour, in fact, so far as external nature is concerned, is all in all to the lower animals. By its means prey is discovered, or foes escaped. But in the case of man quite a different state of things exists. The lower animals can only be modified and adapted to their surroundings by the direct influence of nature. Man, on the other hand, can utilise the forces of nature to his ends. He does not need to steal close to his prey--he possesses missiles. His arm, in reality, is bounded, not by his finger tips, but by the distance to which he can send his bolts. He is not so directly dependent upon nature; and, as his mental powers increase, his dependence lessens, and in this way--the æsthetic principle not yet being awakened--we can understand how his colour sense, for want of practice, decayed, to be reawakened in these our times, with a vividness and power as unequalled as is his mastery over nature--the master of his ancestors. [Illustration] CHAPTER IV. COLOUR, ITS NATURE AND RECOGNITION. This chapter will be devoted to a slight sketch of the nature of light and colour, and to proofs that niceties of colour are distinguished by animals. First, as to the nature of light and colour. Colour is essentially the effect of different kinds of vibrations upon certain nerves. Without such nerves, light can produce no luminous effect whatever; and to a world of blind creatures, there would be neither light nor colour, for as we have said, light and colour are not material things, but are the peculiar results or effects of vibrations of different size and velocity. These effects are due to the impact of minute undulations or waves, which stream from luminous objects, the chief of which is the sun. These waves are of extreme smallness, the longest being only 226 _ten-millionths_ of an inch from crest to crest. The tiny billows roll outwards and onwards from their source at inconceivable velocities, their mean speed being 185,000 miles in a second. Could we see these light billows themselves and count them as they rolled by, 450 billions (450,000,000,000,000) would pass in a single second, and as the last ranged alongside us, the first would be 185,000 miles away. We are not able, however, to see the waves themselves, for the ocean whose vibrations they are, is composed of matter infinitely more transparent than air, and infinitely less dense. Light, then, be it clearly understood, is not the ethereal billows or waves themselves, but only the effect they produce on falling upon a peculiar kind of matter called the optic nerve. When the same vibrations fall upon a photographic sensitive film, another effect--chemical action--is produced: when they fall upon other matter, heat is the result. Thus heat, light and chemical action are but phases, expressions, effects or results of the different influences of waves upon different kinds of matter. The same waves or billows will affect the eye itself as light, the ordinary nerves as warmth, and the skin as chemical action, in tanning it. Though we cannot see these waves with the material eye, they are visible indeed to the mental eye; and are as amenable to experimental research as the mightiest waves of the sea. Still, to render this subject clearer, we will use the analogy of sound. A musical note, we all know, is the effect upon our ears of regularly recurring vibrations. A pianoforte wire emits a given note, or in other words, vibrates at a certain and constant rate. These vibrations are taken up by the air, and by it communicated to the ear, and the sensation of sound is produced. Here we see the wire impressing its motion on the air, and the air communicating its motion to the ear; but if another wire similar in all respects is near, it will also be set in motion, and emit its note; and so will any other body that can vibrate in unison. Further, the note of the pianoforte string is not a simple tone, but superposed, as it were, upon the fundamental note, are a series of higher tones, called harmonics, which give richness. Now, a ray of sun-light may be likened to such a note; it consists not of waves all of a certain length or velocity, but of numbers of waves of different lengths and speed. When all these fall upon the eye, the sensation of white light is produced, white light being the compound effect, like the richness of the tone of the wire and its harmonies; or we may look upon it as a luminous chord. When light strikes on any body, part or all is reflected to the eye. If all the waves are thus reflected equally, the result is whiteness. If only a part is reflected, the effect is colour, the tint depending upon the particular waves reflected. If none of the waves are reflected, the result is blackness. Colour, then, depends upon the nature of the body reflecting light. The exact nature of the action of the body upon the light is not known, but depends most probably upon the molecular condition of the surface. Bodies which allow the light to pass through them, are in like manner coloured according to the waves they allow to pass. We find in nature, however, a somewhat different class of colour, namely, the iridescent tints, like mother of pearl or shot silk, which give splendour to such butterflies, as some Morphos and the Purple Emperor. These are called diffraction colours, and are caused by minute lines upon the reflecting surface, or by thin transparent films. These lines or films must be so minute that the tiny light waves are broken up among them, and are hence reflected irregularly to the eye. Dr. Hagen has divided the colours of insects into two classes, the epidermal and hypodermal. The epidermal colours are produced in the external layer or epidermis which is comparatively dry, and are persistent, and do not alter after death. Of this nature are the metallic tints of blue, green, bronze, gold and silver, and the dead blacks and browns, and some of the reds. The hypodermal colours are formed in the moister cells underlying the epidermis, and on the drying up of the specimen fade, as might be expected. They show through the epidermis, which is more or less transparent. These colours are often brighter and lighter in hue than the epidermal; and such are most of the blues, and greens, and yellow, milk white, orange, and the numerous intermediate shades. These colours are sometimes changeable by voluntary act, and the varying tints of the chameleon and many fishes are of this character. In this connection, Dr. Hagen remarks, that probably all mimetic colours are hypodermal. The importance of this suggestion will be seen at once, for it necessitates a certain consciousness or knowledge on the part of the mimicker, which we have shown, seems to be an essential factor in the theory of colouration. This author further says, that "the pattern is not the product of an accidental circumstance, but apparently the product of a certain law, or rather the consequence of certain actions or wants in the interior of the animal and in its development." This remarkable paper, to which our attention was called after our work was nearly completed, is the only record we have been able to find which recognises a law of colouration. From what has been said of the nature of light, and the physical origin of colour, we see that to produce any distinct tint such as red, yellow, green, or blue, a definite physical structure must be formed, capable of reflecting certain rays of the same nature and absorbing others. Hence, whenever we see any distinct colour, we may be sure that a very considerable development in a certain direction has taken place. This is a most important conclusion, though not very obvious at first sight. Still, when we bear in mind the numbers of light waves of different lengths, and know that if these are reflected irregularly, we get only mixed tints such as indefinite browns; we can at once see how, in the case of such objects as tree trunks, and, still more, in inanimate things like rocks and soils, these, so-to-say, undifferentiated hues are just what we might expect to prevail, and that when definite colours are produced, it of necessity implies an effort of some sort. Now, if this be true of such tints as red and blue, how much more must it be the case with black and white, in which all the rays are absorbed or all reflected? These imply an even stronger effort, and _a priori_ reasoning would suggest that where they occur, they have been developed for important purposes by what may be termed a supreme effort. Consequently, we find them far less common than the others; and it is a most singular fact that in mimetic insects, these are the colours that are most frequently made use of. It would almost seem as if a double struggle had gone on: first, the efforts which resulted in the protective colouring of the mimicked species, and then a more severe, because necessarily more rapid, struggle on the part of the mimicker. Yet another point in this connection. If this idea be correct, it follows that a uniformly coloured flower or animal must be of extreme rarity, since it necessitates not merely the entire suppression of the tendency to emphasize important regions in colour, but also the adjustment of all the varying parts of the organism to one uniform molecular condition, which enables it to absorb all but a certain closely related series of light waves no matter how varied the functions of the parts. Now, such "self-coloured" species, as florists would call them, are not only rare, but, as all horticulturists know, are extremely difficult to produce. When a pansy grower, for instance, sets to work to produce a self-coloured flower--say a white pansy without a dark eye--his difficulties seem insurmountable. And, in truth, this result has never been quite obtained; for he has to fight against every natural tendency of the plant to mark out its corolla-tube in colour, and when this is overcome, to still restrain it, so as to keep it within those limits which alone allow it to reflect the proper waves of light. [Illustration: Plate I. KALLIMA INACHUS.] The production of black and white, then, being the acme of colour production, we should expect to find these tints largely used for very special purposes. Such is actually the case. The sense organs are frequently picked out with black, as witness the noses of dogs, the tips of their ears, the insertion of their vibrissæ, or whiskers, and so on; and white is the most usual warning or distinctive colour, as we see in the white stripes of the badger and skunk, the white spots of deer, and the white tail of the rabbit. Colour, then, as expressed in definite tints and patterns, is no accident; for although, as Wallace has well said, "colour is the normal character," yet we think that this colour would, if unrestrained and undirected, be indefinite, and could not produce definite tints, nor the more complicated phenomenon of patterns, in which definite hues are not merely confined to definite tracts, but so frequently contrasted in the most exquisite manner. As we write, the beautiful Red Admiral (_V. atalanta_) is sporting in the garden; and who can view its glossy black velvet coat, barred with vividest crimson, and picked out with purest snow white, and doubt for an instant that its robe is not merely the product of law, but the supreme effort of an important law? Mark the habits of this lovely insect. See how proudly it displays its rich decorations; sitting with expanded wings on the branch of a tree, gently vibrating them as it basks in the bright sunshine; and you know, once and for all, that the object of that colour is display. But softly--we have moved too rudely, and it is alarmed. The wings close, and where is its beauty now? Hidden by the sombre specklings of its under wings. See, it has pitched upon a slender twig, and notice how instinctively (shall we say?) it arranges itself in the line of the branch: if it sat athwart it would be prominent, but as it sits there motionless it is not only almost invisible, _but it knows it_; for you can pick it up in your hands, as we have done scores of times. It is not enough, if we would know nature, to study it in cabinets. There is too much of this dry-bone work in existence. The object of nature is _life_; and only in living beings can we learn how and why they fulfil their ends. Here, in this common British butterfly, we have the whole problem set before us--vivid colour, the result of intense and long continued effort; grand display, the object of that colour; dusky, indefinite colour, for concealment; and the "instinctive" pose, to make that protective colour profitable. The insect _knows_ all this in some way. How it knows we must now endeavour to find out. In attacking this problem we must ask ourselves, What are the purposes that colouration, and, especially, decoration, can alone subserve? We can only conceive it of use in three ways: first, as protection from its enemies; second, as concealment from its prey; third, as distinctive for its fellows. To the third class may be added a sub-class--attractiveness to the opposite sex. The first necessity would seem to be distinctness of species; for, unless each species were separately marked, it would be difficult for the sexes to discriminate mates of their own kind, in many instances; and this is, doubtless, the reason why species _are_ differently coloured. But protective resemblance, as in _Kallima_,[7] the Leaf-butterfly, and mimicry, as in _D. niavius_ and _P. merope_,[8] sometimes so hide the specific characters that this process seems antagonistic to the prime reason for colouration, by rendering species less distinct. Now, doubtless, protective colouring could not have been so wonderfully developed _if the organ of sight were the only means of recognition_. But it is not. Animals possess other organs of recognition, of which, as everyone knows, smell is one of the most potent. A dog may have forgotten a face after years of absence, but, once his cold nose has touched your hand, the pleased whine and tail-wagging of recognition, tells of awakened memories. Even with ourselves, dulled as our senses are, the odour of the first spring violet calls up the past; as words and scenes can never do. What country-bred child forgets the strange smell of the city he first visits? and how vividly the scene is recalled in after years by a repetition of that odour! But insects, and, it may be, many other creatures, possess sense organs whose nature we know not. The functions of the antennæ and of various organs in the wings, are unknown; and none can explain the charm by which the female Kentish Glory, or Oak Egger moths lure their mates. You may collect assiduously, using every seduction in sugars and lanterns, only to find how rare are these insects; but if fortune grant you a virgin female, and you cage her up, though no eye can pierce her prison walls, and though she be silent as the oracles, she will, in some mysterious way, attract lovers; not singly, but by the dozen; not one now and another in an hour, but in eager flocks. Many butterflies possess peculiar scent-pouches on their wings, and one of these, a _Danais_, is mimicked by several species. It is the possession of these additional powers of recognition that leaves colouration free to run to the extreme of protective vagary, when the species is hard pressed in the struggle for life. [Illustration: Plate II. MIMICRY.] Nevertheless, though animals have other means of recognition, the distinctive markings are, without doubt, the prime means of knowledge. Who, that has seen a peacock spread his glorious plumes like a radiant glory, can doubt its fascination? Who, that has wandered in America, and watched a male humming-bird pirouetting and descending in graceful spirals, its whole body throbbing with ecstasy of love and jealousy, can doubt? Who can even read of the Australian bower-bird, lowliest and first of virtuosi, decorating his love-bower with shells and flowers, and shining stones, running in and out with evident delight, and re-arranging his treasures, as a collector does his gems, and not be certain that here, at least, we have the keenest appreciation, not only of colour, but of beauty--a far higher sense? It has been said that butterflies must be nearly blind, because they seldom fly directly over a wall, but feel their way up with airy touches. Yet every fact of nature contradicts the supposition. Why have plants their tinted flowers, but to entice the insects there? Why are night-blooming flowers white, or pale yellows and pinks, but to render them conspicuous? Why are so many flowers striped in the direction of the nectary, but to point the painted way to the honey-treasures below? The whole scheme of evolution, the whole of the new revelation of the meanings of nature, becomes a dead letter if insects cannot appreciate the hues of flowers. The bee confines himself as much as possible to one species of flower at a time, and this, too, shows that it must be able to distinguish them with ease. We may, then, take it as proven that the power of discriminating colours is possessed by the lower animals. [Illustration] [7] Pl. I., Figs 1-3. [8] Pl. II., Figs. 1-3. CHAPTER V. THE COLOUR SENSE. The previous considerations lead us, naturally, to enquire in what manner the sense of colour is perceived. In thinking over this obscure subject, the opinion has steadily gathered strength that form and colour are closely allied; for form is essential to pattern; and colour without pattern, that is to say, colour indefinitely marked, or distributed, is hardly decoration at all, in the sense we are using the term. That many animals possess the power of discriminating form is certain. Deformed or monstrous forms are driven from the herds and packs of such social animals as cattle, deer, and hogs, and maimed individuals are destroyed. Similar facts have been noticed in the case of birds. This shows a power of recognising any departure from the standard of form, just as the remorseless destruction of abnormally coloured birds, such as white or piebald rooks and blackbirds, by their fellows, is proof of the recognition and dislike of a departure from normal colouring. Authentic anecdotes of dogs recognising their masters' portraits are on record; and in West Suffolk, of late years, a zinc, homely representation of a cat has been found useful in protecting garden produce from the ravages of birds. In this latter case the birds soon found out the innocent nature of the fraud, for we have noticed, after a fortnight, the amusing sight of sparrows cleaning their beaks on the whilom object of terror. Many fish are deceived with artificial bait, as the pike, with silvered minnows; the salmon, and trout, with artificial flies; the glitter of the spoon-bait is often most attractive; and mackerel take greedily to bits of red flannel. Bees sometimes mistake artificial for real flowers; and both they and butterflies have been known to seek vainly for nourishment from the gaudy painted flowers on cottage wall-papers. Sir John Lubbock has demonstrated the existence of a colour sense in bees, wasps, and ants; and the great fact that flowers are lures for insects proves beyond the power of doubt that these creatures have a very strong faculty for perceiving colour. The pale yellows and white of night-flowering plants render them conspicuous to the flower-haunting moths; and no one who has ever used an entomologist's lantern, or watched a daddy-long-legs (_Tipula_) dancing madly round a candle, can fail to see that intense excitement is caused by the flame. In the dim shades of night the faint light of the flowers tells the insects of the land of plenty, and the stimulus thus excited is multiplied into a frenzy by the glow of a lamp, which, doubtless, seems to insect eyes the promise of a feast that shall transcend that of ordinary flowers, as a Lord Mayor's feast transcends a homely crust of bread and cheese. We take it, then, as proven that the colour sense does exist, at least, in all creatures possessing eyes. But there are myriads of animals revelling in bright tints; such as the jelly-fishes and anemones, and even lower organisms, in which eyes are either entirely wanting or are mere eye-specks, as will be explained in the sequel. How these behave with regard to colour is a question that may, with propriety, be asked of science, but to which, at present, we can give no very definite reply. Still, certain modern researches open to us a prospect of being able, eventually, to decide even this obscure problem. The question, however, is not a simple one, but involves two distinct principles; firstly, as to how colour affects the animal coloured, and, secondly, how it affects other animals. In other words, How does colour affect the sensibility of its possessor? and how does it affect the sense organs of others? To endeavour to answer the first question we must start with the lowest forms of life, and their receptivity to the action of light; for, as colour is only a differentiation of ordinary so-called white light, we might _a priori_ expect that animals would show sensibility to light as distinguished from darkness, before they had the power of discriminating between different kinds of light. This appears to be the case, for Engelmann has shown[9] that many of the lowest forms of life, which are almost mere specks of protoplasm, are influenced by light, some seeking and others shunning it. He found, too, that in the case of _Euglena viridis_ it would seek the light only if it "were allowed to fall upon the anterior part of the body. Here there is a pigment spot; but careful experiment showed that this was not the point most sensitive to light, a colourless and transparent area of protoplasm lying in front of it being found to be so." Commenting upon this Romanes observes, "it is doubtful whether this pigment spot is or is not to be regarded as an exceedingly primitive organ of special sense." Haeckel has also made observations upon those lowest forms of life, which, being simply protoplasm without the slightest trace of organization, not even possessing a nucleus, form his division _Protista_, occupying the no-man's-land between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. He finds that "already among the microscopic Protista there are some that love light, and some that love darkness rather than light. Many seem also to have smell and taste, for they select their food with great care.... Here, also, we are met by the weighty fact that sense-function is possible without sense organs, without nerves. In place of these, sensitiveness is resident in that wondrous, structureless, albuminous substance, which, under the name of protoplasm, or organic formative material, is known as the general and essential basis of all the phenomena of life."[10] Now, whether Romanes be correct in doubting whether the pigment-spot in Euglena is a sense organ or not, matters little to our present enquiry, but it certainly does seem that the spot, _with its accompanying clear space_, looks like such an organ. And when we are further told that after careful experiment it is found that _Euglena viridis_ prefers blue to all the colours of the spectrum, the fundamental fact seems to be established that even as low down as this the different parts of the spectrum affect differently the body of creatures very nearly at the bottom of the animal scale. This implies a certain selection of colour, and, equally, an abstention from other colours. It is not part of our scheme, however, to follow out in detail the development of the organs of special sense, and the reader must be referred to the various works of Mr. Romanes, who has worked long and successfully at this and kindred problems. Suffice it to say that in this and other cases he has been led to adopt the theory of inherited memory, though not, as we believe, in the fulness with which it must ultimately be acquired. This, however, seems certain, that the development, not only of the sense organs, but of organs in general--that is, the setting aside of certain portions for the performance of special duties, and the modifications of those parts in relation to their special duties, is closely related to the activity of the organism. Thus, we find in those animals, like some of the Coelenterata, which pass some portion of their existence as free-swimming beings, and the remainder in a stationary or sessile condition, that the former state is the most highly organized. This is shown to a very remarkable degree in the Sea Squirts (Ascidians), a class of animals that are generally grouped with the lower Mollusca, but which Prof. Ray Lankester puts at the base of the Vertebrata. These animals are either solitary or social, fixed or free; but even when free, have little or no power of locomotion, simply floating in the sea. Their embryos are, however, free-swimming, and some of the most interesting beings in nature. Some are marvellously like young tadpoles, and possess some of the distinctive peculiarities of the Vertebrata. Thus, the body is divided into a head and body, or tail, as in tadpoles. The head contains a large nerve centre, corresponding with the brain, which is produced backwards into a chord, corresponding to the spinal chord. In the head, sense organs are clearly distinguishable; there is a well-marked eye, an equally clear ear, and a less clearly marked olfactory organ. Besides this, the spinal-cord is supported below by a rod-like structure, called the notochord. In the vertebrate embryo this structure always precedes the development of the true vertebral column, and in the lowest forms is persistent through life. We have thus, in the ascidian larva, a form which, if permanent, would most certainly entitle it to a place in the vertebrate sub-kingdom. It is now an active free-swimming creature, but as maturity approaches it becomes fixed, or floating, and all this pre-figurement of a high destiny is annulled. The tail, with its nervous cord and notochord atrophies, and in the fixed forms, not only do the sense organs pass away, but the entire nervous system is reduced to a single ganglion, and the creature becomes little more than an animated stomach. It is, as Ray Lankester has pointed out, a case of degeneration. In the floating forms, which still possess a certain power of locomotion, this process is not carried to such extremes, and the eye is left. Now, cases of this kind are important as illustrating the direct connection between an active life and advancement; and they also add indirectly to the view Wallace takes of colouration, namely, that the most brilliant colour is generally applied to the most highly modified parts, and is brightest in the seasons of greatest activity. But they have a higher meaning also, for they may point us to the prime cause of the divergence of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. In thinking over this matter, one of us ventured to suggest that probably the reason why animals dominate the world, and not plants, is, that plants are, as a rule, stationary, and animals lead an active existence. We can look back to the period prior to the divergence of living protoplasm into the two kingdoms. Two courses only were open to it, either to stay at home, and take what came in its way, or to travel, and seek what was required. The stay-at-homes became plants, and the gad-abouts animals. In a letter it was thus put; "It is a truly strange fact that a free-swimming, sense-organ-bearing animal should degenerate into a fixed feeding and breeding machine. It seems to me that the power of locomotion is a _sine qua non_ for active development of type, as it necessarily sharpens the wits by bringing fresh experiences and unlooked-for adventures to the creature. I almost think, and this, I believe may be a great fundamental fact, that the only reason why animals rule the world instead of plants is that plants elected to stay at home, and animals did not. They had equal chances. Both start as active elements; the one camps down, and the other looks about him." Talking over this question with Mr. Butler, he astonished the writer by quoting from his work, "Alps and Sanctuaries" (p. 196), the following passage:-- "The question of whether it is better to abide quiet, and take advantage of opportunities that come, or to go farther afield in search of them, is one of the oldest which living beings have to deal with. It was on this that the first great schism or heresy arose in what was heretofore the catholic faith of protoplasm. The schism still lasts, and has resulted in two great sects--animals and plants. The opinion that it is better to go in search of prey is formulated in animals; the other--that it is better, on the whole, to stay at home, and profit by what comes--in plants. Some intermediate forms still record to us the long struggle during which the schism was not yet complete. "If I may be pardoned for pursuing this digression further, I would say that it is the plants, and not we, who are the heretics. There can be no question about this; we are perfectly justified, therefore, in devouring them. Ours is the original and orthodox belief, for protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable. It is much more true to say that plants have descended from animals than animals from plants. Nevertheless, like many other heretics, plants have thriven very fairly well. There are a great many of them, and, as regards beauty, if not wit--of a limited kind, indeed, but still wit--it is hard to say that the animal kingdom has the advantage. The views of plants are sadly narrow; all dissenters are narrow-minded; but within their own bounds they know the details of their business sufficiently well--as well as though they kept the most nicely-balanced system of accounts to show them their position. They are eaten, it is true; to eat them is our intolerant and bigoted way of trying to convert them: eating is only a violent mode of proselytizing, or converting; and we do convert them--to good animal substance of our own way of thinking. If we have had no trouble we say they have 'agreed' with us; if we have been unable to make them see things from our point of view, we say they 'disagree' with us, and avoid being on more than distant terms with them for the future. If we have helped ourselves to too much, we say we have got more than we can 'manage.' And an animal is no sooner dead than a plant will convert it back again. It is obvious, however, that no schism could have been so long successful without having a good deal to say for itself. "Neither party has been quite consistent. Whoever is or can be? Every extreme--every opinion carried to its logical end will prove to be an absurdity. Plants throw out roots and boughs and leaves: this is a kind of locomotion; and as Dr. Erasmus Darwin long since pointed out, they do sometimes approach nearly to what is called travelling; a man of consistent character will never look at a bough, a root, or a tendril, without regarding it as a melancholy and unprincipled compromise. On the other hand, many animals are sessile; and some singularly successful genera, as spiders, are in the main liers-in-wait." This exquisitively written passage the writer was quite unaware of having read, though he possessed and had perused the work quoted, nor can he understand how such an admirable exposition could have escaped notice. Had he read it: had he assimilated it so thoroughly as to be unconscious of its existence; is this a case of rapid growth of automatism? He cannot say. To return to the main point, it would seem that specialization is directly proportionate to activity, and when we compare the infinitely diverse organization of the animal with the comparative simplicity of the vegetable world, this conclusion seems to be inevitable. [Illustration] [9] Pflüger's Archiv. f. d. ges. Phys. Bd. xxix, 1882, quoted by Romanes. Mental Evolution, p. 80, 1883. _Op. cit._ p. 80. [10] Quoted by Romanes, _op. cit._ p. 81. CHAPTER VI. SPOTS AND STRIPES. Bearing in mind the great tendency to repetition and symmetry of marking we have shown to exist, it becomes an interesting question to work out the origin of the peculiar spots, stripes, loops and patches which are so prevalent in nature. The exquisite eye-spots of the argus pheasant, the peacock, and many butterflies and moths have long excited admiration and scientific curiosity, and have been the subject of investigation by Darwin,[11] the Rev. H. H. Higgins,[12] Weismann,[13] and others, Darwin having paid especial attention to the subject. His careful analysis of the ocelli or eye-spots in the Argus pheasant and peacock have led him to conclude that they are peculiar modifications of the bars of colour as shown by his drawings. Our own opinion, founded upon a long series of observations, is that this is not the whole case, but that, in the first place, bars are the result of the coalescence of spots. It is not pretended that a bar of colour is the result of the running together of a series of perfect ocelli like those in the so-called tail of the peacock, but merely that spots of colour are the normal primitive commencement of colouring, and that these spots may be developed on the one hand into ocelli or eye-spots, and on the other into bars or even into great blotches of a uniform tint, covering large surfaces. Let us first take the cases of abnormal marking as shown in disease. An ordinary rash, as in measles, begins as a set of minute red spots, and the same is the case with small pox, the pustules of which sometimes run together, and becoming confluent form bars, which again enlarging meet and produce a blotch or area abnormally marked. It was these well-known facts that induced us to re-examine this question. Colouration and discolouration arise from the presence or absence of pigment in cells, and thus having, as it were independent sources, we should expect colour first to appear in spots. We have already stated, and shall more fully show in the sequel, how colouration follows structure, and would here merely remark that it seems as if any peculiarity of structure, or intensified function modifying structure, has a direct tendency to influence colour. Thus in the disease known as frontal herpes, as pointed out to us by Mr. Bland Sutton, of the Middlesex Hospital, the affection is characterized by an eruption on the skin corresponding exactly to the distribution of the ophthalmic division of the fifth cranial nerve, mapping out all its little branches, even to the one which goes to the tip of the nose. Mr. Hutchinson, F.R.S., the President of the Pathological Society, who first described this disease, has favoured us with another striking illustration of the regional distribution of the colour effects of herpes. In this case decolouration has taken place. The patient was a Hindoo, and upon his brown skin the pigment has been destroyed in the arm along the course of the ulnar nerve, with its branches along both sides of one finger and the half of another. In the leg the sciatic and saphenous nerves are partly mapped out, giving to the patient the appearance of an anatomical diagram.[14] In these cases we have three very important facts determined. First the broad fact that decolouration and colouration in some cases certainly follow structure; second, that the effect begins as spots; thirdly, that the spots eventually coalesce into bands and blotches. In birds and insects we have the best means of studying these phenomena, and we will now proceed to illustrate the case more fully. The facts seem to justify us in considering that starting with a spot we may obtain, according to the development, either an ocellus, a stripe or bar, or a blotch, and that between, these may have any number of intermediate varieties. * * * * * Among the butterflies we have numerous examples of the development from spots, as illustrated in plates. A good example is seen in our common English Brimstone (_Gonepteryx rhamni_) Fig. 2, Plate III. In this insect the male (figured) is of a uniform sulphur yellow, with a rich orange spot in the cell of each wing; the female is much paler in colour, and spotted similarly. In an allied continental species (_G. Cleopatra_) Fig. 1, Plate III., the female is like that of _rhamni_ only larger; but the male, instead of having an orange spot in the fore-wing, has nearly the whole of the wing suffused with orange, only the margins, and the lower wings showing the sulphur ground-tint like that of _rhamni_. Intermediate forms between these two species are known. In a case like this we can hardly resist the conclusion that the discoidal spot has spread over the fore-wing and become a blotch, and in some English varieties of _rhamni_ we actually find the spot drawn out into a streak. [Illustration: Plate III. BUTTERFLIES.] The family of _Pieridæ_, or whites, again afford us admirable examples of the development of spots. The prevailing colours are white, black and yellow: green _appears_ to occur in the Orange-tips (_Anthocaris_), but it is only the optical effect of a mixture of yellow and grey or black scales. The species are very variable, as a rule, and hence of importance to us; and there are many intermediate species on the continent and elsewhere which render the group a most interesting study. The wood white (_Leucophasia sinapis_) Fig. 1, Plate IV., is a pure white species with an almost square dusky tip to the fore-wings of the male. In the female this tip is very indistinct or wanting, Fig. 4, Plate IV. In the variety _Diniensis_, Fig. 2, Plate IV., this square tip appears as a round spot. The Orange-tips, of which we have only one species in Britain (_Anthocaris cardamines_) belongs to a closely allied genus, as does also the continental genus Zegris. The male Orange-tip (_A. cardamines_) is white with a dark grey or black tip, and a black discoidal spot. A patch of brilliant orange extends from the dark tip to just beyond the discoidal spots. In the female this is wanting, but the dark tip and spot are larger than in the male. Let us first study the dark tip. In _L. sinapis_ we have seen that it extends right to the margin of the wing in the male, but in the female is reduced to a dusky spot away from the margin. In _A. cardamines_ the margin is not coloured quite up to the edge, but a row of tiny white spots, like a fringe of seed pearls, occupies the inter-spaces of the veins. On the underside these white spots are prolonged into short bars, see Plate IV. In the continental species _A. belemia_ we see the dark tip to be in a very elementary condition, being little more than an irregular band formed of united spots, there being as much white as black in the tip, Fig. 5, Plate IV. In _A. belia_, Fig. 6, Plate IV., the black tip is more developed, and in the variety _simplonia_ still more so, Fig. 7, Plate IV. We here see pretty clearly that this dark tip has been developed by the confluence of irregular spots. Turning now to the discoidal spot we shall observe a similar development. Thus in:-- _A. cardamines_, male, it is small and perfect. Do. female, " larger " _A. belemia_ " large " _A. belia_ " large with white centre. Do. _v. simplonia_ " small and perfect. [15]_A. eupheno_, female, " nearly perfect. Do. male, " a band. We here find two distinct types of variation. In _A. belia_ we have a tendency to form an ocellus, and in _A. eupheno_ the spot of the female is expanded into a band in the male. The orange flush again offers us a similar case; and with regard to this colour we may remark that it seems to be itself a development from the white ground-colour of the family in the direction of the red end of the spectrum. Thus in the Black-veined white (_Aporia cratægi_) we have both the upper and under surfaces of the typical cream-white, for there is no pure white in the family. In the true whites the under surface of the hind-wings is lemon-yellow, in the female of _A. eupheno_ the ground of the upper surface is faint lemon-yellow, and in the male this colour is well-developed. The rich orange, confined to a spot in _G. rhamni_ becomes a flush in _G. Cleopatra_, and a vivid tip in _A. cardamines_. These changes are all developments from the cream white, and may be imitated accurately by adding more and more red to the primitive yellow, as the artist actually did in drawing the plate. [Illustration: Plate IV. SPOTS AND STRIPES.] In _A. cardamines_ the orange flush has overflowed the discoidal spot, as it were, in the male, and is absent in the female. But in _A. eupheno_ we have an intermediate state, for as the figures show, in the female, Fig. 8, the orange tip only extends half-way to the discoidal spot, and in the male it reaches it. Moreover it is to be noticed that the flow of colour, to continue the simile, is unchecked by the spot in _cardamines_, but where the spot has expanded to a bar in _eupheno_ it has dammed the colour up and ponded it between bar and tip. An exactly intermediate case between these two species is seen in _A. euphemoides_, Fig. 10, Plate IV., in which the spot is elongated, and dribbles off into an irregular band, into which the orange has trickled, as water trickles through imperfect fascines. This series of illustrations might be repeated in almost any group of butterflies, but sufficient has been said to show how spots can spread into patches, either by the spreading of one or by the coalescence of several. We will now take an illustration of the formation of stripes or bars from spots, and in doing so must call attention to the rarity of true stripes in butterflies. By a true stripe I mean one that has even edges, that is, whose sides are uninfluenced by structure. In all our British species such as _P. machaon_, _M. artemis_, _M. athalia_, _V. atalanta_, _L. sibilla_, _A. iris_, and some of the Browns, Frittilaries and Hair-streaks, which can alone be said to be striped, the bands are clearly nothing more than spots which have spread up to the costæ, and still retain traces of their origin either in the different hue of the costæ which intersect them, or in curved edges corresponding with the interspaces of the costæ. This in itself is sufficient to indicate their origin. But in many foreign species true bands are found, though they are by no means common. Illustrations are given in Plate IV., of two Swallow-tails, _Papilio machaon_, Fig. 11, and _P. podalirius_, Fig. 12, in which the development of a stripe can readily be seen. In _machaon_ the dark band inside the marginal semi-lunar spots of the fore-wings retain traces of their spot-origin in the speckled character of the costal interspaces, and in the curved outlines of those parts. In _podalirius_ the semi-lunar spots have coalesced into a stripe, only showing its spot-origin in the black markings of the intersecting costæ; and the black band has become a true stripe, with plain edges. Had only such forms as this been preserved, the origin of the spots would have been lost to view. It may, however, be said, though I think not with justice, that we ought not to take two species, however closely allied, to illustrate such a point. But very good examples can be found in the same species. A common German butterfly, _Araschnia Levana_, has two distinct varieties, _Levana_ being the winter, and _prorsa_ the summer form; and between these an intermediate form, _porima_, can be bred from the summer form by keeping the pupæ cold. Dr. Weismann, who has largely experimented on this insect, has given accurate illustrations of the varieties. Plate V. is taken from specimens in our possession. In the males of both _Levana_, Fig. 4, and _prorsa_, Fig. 1, the hind-wing has a distinct row of spots, and a less distinct one inside it, and in the females of both these are represented by dark stripes. In _porima_ we get every intermediate form of spots and stripes, both in the male and female, and as these were hatched from the same batch of eggs, or, are brothers and sisters, it is quite impossible to doubt that here, at least, we have an actual proof of the change of spots into stripes. [Illustration: Fig. 1. Part of secondary feather of Argus Pheasant. _a. a._ Elongated spots, incipient ocelli. _b._ Interspaces. _c. c._ Axial line. _d. d._ Double spots, incipient ocelli. _e._ Minute dottings. _f. f._ Shaft. _k. k._ Line of feathering.] [Illustration: Fig. 2. Part of secondary wing feather of Argus Pheasant. _a._ Oval. Axis at right angles. _b._ Round. _c. c._ Shaft. _d._ Imperfect ocellus. _e._ Expansion of stripe. _f._ Interspace. _g._ Stalk. _h._ Edge of feather. _k._ Line of feathering.] [Illustration: Plate V. SEASONAL VARIETIES.] The change of spots more or less irregular into eye-spots, or ocelli, is equally clear; and Darwin's drawing of the wings of _Cyllo leda_[16] illustrates the point well. "In some specimens," he remarks, "large spaces on the upper surfaces of the wings are coloured black, and include irregular white marks; and from this state a complete gradation can be traced into a tolerably perfect ocellus, _and this results from the contraction of the irregular blotches of colour_. In another series of specimens a gradation can be followed from excessively minute white dots, surrounded by a scarcely visible black line, into perfectly symmetrical and larger ocelli." In the words we have put in italics Darwin seems to admit these ocelli to be formed from blotches; and we think those of the Argus pheasant can be equally shown to arise from spots. Darwin's beautiful drawings show, almost as well as if made for the purpose, that the bars are developed from spots.[17] In Fig. 1 is shown part of a secondary wing feather, in which the lines _k. k._ mark the direction of the axis, along which the spots are arranged, perfectly on the right, less so on the left. The lengthening out of the spots towards the shaft is well seen on the right, and the coalescence into lines on the left. In Fig. 2 we have part of another feather from the same bird, showing on the left elongated spots, with a dark shading round them, and on the right double spots, like twin stars, with one atmosphere around them. Increase the elongation of these latter, and you have the former, and both are nascent ocelli. We here, then, have a regular gradation between spots, bands, and ocelli, just as we can see in insects. In some larvæ, those of the _Sphingidæ_ especially, ocelli occur, and these may be actually watched as they grow from dots to perfect eye-spots, with the maturity of the larva. Even in some mammals the change from spots to stripes can be seen. Thus, the young tiger is spotted, and so is the young lion; but, whereas in the former case the spots change into the well-known stripes (which are really loops), in the latter they die away. The horse, as Darwin long ago showed, was probably descended from a striped animal, as shown by the bars on a foal's leg. But before this the animal must have been spotted; and the dappled horses are an example of this; and, moreover, almost every horse shows a tendency to spottiness, especially on the haunches. In the museum at Leiden a fine series of the Java pig (_Sus vittatus_) is preserved. Very young animals are banded, but have spots over the shoulders and thighs; these run into stripes as the animal grows older; then the stripes expand, and, at last meeting, the mature animal is a uniform dark brown. Enough has now, I trust, been said upon this point to show that from spots have been developed the other markings with which we are familiar in the animal kingdom. The vegetable kingdom illustrates this fact almost as well. Thus, the beautiful leaves of the Crotons are at first green, with few or no coloured spots; the spots then grow more in number, coalesce, form irregular bands, further develop, and finally cover the whole, or almost the whole, of the leaf with a glow of rich colour. Some of the pretty spring-flowering orchid callitriche have sulphur-yellow petals, with dark rich sepia spots; these often develop to such an extent as to overspread nearly all the original yellow. Many other examples might be given. Hitherto we have started with a spot, and traced its development. But a spot is itself a developed thing, inasmuch as it is an aggregation of similarly coloured cells. How they come about may, perhaps, be partly seen by the following considerations. Definite colour-pattern has a definite function--that of being seen. We may, therefore, infer that the more definite colour is of newer origin than the less definite. Hence, when we find the two sexes differently coloured, we may generally assume that the more homely tinted form is the more ancient. For example, some butterflies, like the gorgeous Purple Emperor (_Apatura iris_), have very sombre mates; and it seems fair to assume that the emperor's robes have been donned since his consort's dress was originally fashioned. That the object of brilliant colour is display is shown partly by the fact that in those parts of the wings of butterflies which overlap the brilliant colour is missing, and partly by the generally brighter hues of day-flying butterflies and moths than of the night-flying species. Now, the sombre hues of nocturnal moths are not so much protective (like the sober tints of female butterflies and birds), because night and darkness is their great defender, as the necessary result of the darkness: bright colours are not produced, because they could not be seen and appreciated. In these cases it is very noticeable how frequently the colour is irregularly dotted about--irrorated or peppered over the wings, as it were. This irregular distribution of the pigment cells, if it were quite free from any arrangement, might be looked upon as primitive colouring, undifferentiated either into distinct colour or distinct pattern. If we suppose a few of the pigment cells here and there to become coloured, we should have irregular brilliant dottings, just as we actually see in many butterflies, along the costa. The grouping together of these colour dots would give rise to a spot, from which point all is clear. That some such grouping or gathering together, allied to segregation, does take place, a study of spots, and especially of eye-spots, renders probable. What the nature of the process is we do not know, nor is it easy to imagine. But let us suppose a surface uniformly tinted brown. Then, if we gather some of the colouring matter into a dark spot we shall naturally leave a lighter area around it, just as we see in all our Browns and Ringlets. In this way we can see how a ring-spot can be formed. To make it a true eye-spot, with a light centre, we must also suppose a pushing away of the colour from that centre. A study of ocelli naturally suggests such a process, which is analogous to the banding of agates, and all concentric nodules. Darwin, struck with this, seems to adopt it as a fact, for he says, "Appearances strongly favour the belief that, on the one hand, a dark spot is often formed by the colouring matter being drawn towards a central point from a surrounding zone, which is thus rendered lighter. And, on the other hand, a white spot is often formed by the colour being driven away from a central point, so that it accumulates in a surrounding darker zone."[18] The analogy between ocelli and concretions may be a real one. At any rate beautiful ocelli of all sizes can be seen forming in many iron-stained sand-stones. The growth of ocelli may thus be a mechanical process adapted by the creature for decorative purposes, but the artistic colouring of many eye-spots implies greater effort. There is, however, one set of colour lines in birds and insects that do not seem to arise from spots in the ordinary way. These are the coloured feather-shafts of birds, and the coloured nerves or veins in a butterfly's wing, In these the colour has a tendency to flow all along the structure in lines. _Conclusion._ The results arrived at in this chapter may be thus summarised:-- Spots, ocelli, stripes, loops, and patches may be, and nearly always are, developed from more or less irregular spots. This is shown both by the study of normal colouring, or by abnormal colouring, or decolouring in disease. Even the celebrated case of the Argus Pheasant shows that the bands from which the ocelli are developed arose from spots. [Illustration] [11] Descent of Man, vol. ii., p. 132. [12] Quart. Journ. Sci., July 1868, p. 325. [13] Studies in the Theory of Descent. [14] See photographs in Hutchinson's Illustrations of Clinical Surgery. [15] See Plate IV. [16] Desc. Man, vol. ii, p. 133, fig. 52. [17] Compare his figs. 56 to 58 op. cit. [18] Desc. Man, vol. ii., p. 134. CHAPTER VII. COLOURATION IN THE INVERTEBRATA. If the principle of the dependence of colour-pattern upon structure, enunciated in the preceding pages be sound, we ought to find certain great schemes of colouration corresponding to the great structural subdivisions of the animal kingdom. This is just what we do find; and before tracing the details, it will be as well to group the great colour-schemes together, so that a general view of the question can be obtained at a glance. The animal kingdom falls naturally into two divisions, but the dividing line can be drawn in two ways. If we take the most simple classification, we have:-- 1. _Protozoa_, animals with no special organs. 2. _Organozoa_, animals possessing organs. Practically this classification is not used, but we shall see that from our point of view it is a useful one. In the most general scheme the divisions are:-- 1. _Invertebrata_, animals without backbones. 2. _Vertebrata_, animals with backbones. The invertebrata are divided into sub-kingdoms, of which the protozoa form one. These protozoa possess, as it were, only negative properties. In their simplest form they are mere masses of protoplasm, even lacking an investing membrane or coat, and never, even in the highest forms, possessing distinct organs. It is this simplicity which at once separates them entirely from all other animals. The other sub-kingdoms are:-- _Coelenterata_, of which the jelly-fishes are a type; animals possessing an alimentary canal, fully communicating with the general cavity of the body, but without distinct circulatory or nervous systems. _Annuloida_, of which the star-fishes are a type; animals having the alimentary canal shut off from the body-cavity, and possessing a nervous system, and in some a true circulatory system. _Annulosa_, of which worms, lobsters, and insects are types; animals composed of definite segments, arranged serially, always possessing true circulatory and nervous systems. _Mollusca_, of which oysters and whelks are types; animals which are soft-bodied, often bearing a shell, always possessing a distinct nervous system and mostly with a distinct heart. In old systems of classification, the _Coelenterata_ and _Annuloida_ were united into one sub-kingdom, the _Radiata_, in consequence of their radiate or star-like structures. As colouration, according to the views here set forth, depends upon structure, we may classify the Invertebrata thus:-- Protozoa Structureless. Coelenterata } Radiata. Radiate structure. Annuloida } Annulosa Segmented " Mollusca Marginate " The mollusca are said to be marginate in structure because, in those possessing shells--the mollusca proper--the shell is formed by successive additions to the margin or edge of the shell, by means of the margin of the mantle, or shell-secreting organ. Now we shall proceed to show that the schemes of colouration follow out these structure-plans, and thus give additional force to the truth of the classification, as well as showing that, viewed on a broad scale, the present theory is a true one. We can, in fact, throw the whole scheme into a table, as follows:-- SYSTEMS OF COLOURATION. +--+-------------------------+------------------------+------------------+ | | System of Colouring. | Structure. | Sub-kingdoms. | +--+-------------------------+------------------------+------------------+ | |_A. No Axial Decoration._|_A. No Axial Structure._|_A. Invertebrata._| |1.| No definite system. | No definite organs. | Protozoa. | |2.| Radiate system. | Radiate structure. | Coelenterata, | | | | | Annuloida.| |3.| Segmental system. | Segmental structure. | Annulosa. | |4.| Marginate system. | Marginate growth. | Mollusca. | | | | | | | | _B. Axial Decoration._ | _B. Axial Structure._ | _B. Vertebrata._ | |5.| Axial system. | Axial structure. | Vertebrata. | +--+-------------------------+------------------------+------------------+ _Protozoa._ The protozoa are generally very minute, and always composed of structureless protoplasm. Their peculiarities are rather negative than positive, there being neither body segments, muscular, circulatory, nor nervous systems. Even the denser exterior portion (_ectosarc_) possessed by some of them seems to be rather a temporary coagulation of the protoplasm than a real differentiation of that material. Here, then, we have to deal with the simplest forms of life, and if colouration depends upon structure, these structureless transparent creatures should lack all colour-pattern, and such is really the case. Possessing no organs, they have no colouration, and are generally either colourless or a faint uniform brown colour, and through their colourless bodies the food particles show, often giving a fictitious appearance of colouring. To this general statement there is a curious and most telling exception. In a great many protozoa there exists a curious pulsating cell-like body, called the contractile vesicle, which seems to be a rudimentary organ, whose function is unknown. Here, then, if anywhere, traces of colouring should be found, and here it is accordingly found, for, though generally clear and colourless, it sometimes assumes a pale roseate hue. This may be deemed the first attempt at decoration in the animal kingdom, and it is directly applied to the only part which can be said to possess structure. Beautiful examples are plentiful in Leidy's magnificent volume on Freshwater Rhizopods. _Coelenterata._ These animals fall into two groups, the _Hydrozoa_, of which the hydra and jelly-fishes are types, and the _Actinozoa_, of which the sea-anemonies and corals are types. Most of the coelenterata are transparent animals, but it is amongst them we first come across opaque colouring. Of the lowest forms, the hydras, nothing need be said here, as they are so much like the protozoa in their simplicity of structure. The _Corynida_, familiar to many of our sea-side visitors by their horny brown tubes (_Tubularia_), attached to shells and stones, are next in point of complexity. Within the tube is found a semi-fluid mass of protoplasm, giving rise at the orifice to the polypite, which possesses a double series of tentacles. These important organs are generally of a vivid red colour, thus emphasizing their importance in the strongest manner. Other members of the order are white, with pink stripes. In the larval stage many of the animals belonging to the above and allied orders, are very like the true jelly-fishes. These free swimming larvæ, or _gonophores_, possess four radiating canals, passing from the digestive sac to the margins of the bell, and these are often the seat of colour. In these creatures, too, we find the earliest trace of sense organs, and consequently, the first highly differentiated organs, and they appear as richly coloured spots on the margins of the bell. The true oceanic Hydrozoa again afford us fine examples of structural colouration. The beautiful translucent blue-purple _Velella_, which is sometimes driven on to our shores, is a case in point; and its delicate structure lines are all emphasized in deeper hues. The true jelly-fishes (_Medusidæ_) with their crystal bells and radiating canals, frequently show brilliant colour, and it is applied to the canals, and also to the rudimentary eye-specks, which are frequently richly tinted, and in all cases strongly marked. In the so-called "hidden-eyed" Medusæ we find the same arrangement of colour, the same emphasized eye-specks, and the reproductive organs generally appear as a vivid coloured cross, showing through the translucent bell. Turning now to the _Actinozoa_, of which the sea anemonies and corals are types, we are brought first into contact with general decorative, more or less opaque colour, applied to the surface of the animal. In the preceding cases the animals have been almost universally transparent or translucent, and the colouration is often applied to the internal organs, and shows through. In the sea-anemonies we find a nearer approach to opacity, in the dense muscular body, though even this is often translucent, and the tentacles generally so, often looking like clouded chalcedony. The wealth of colour to be found in these animals gives us a very important opportunity of studying decoration, where it first appears in profusion. One of the first points that strikes even a casual observer is that amongst the sea-anemonies the colouration is extremely variable, even in the same species and in the same locality. This is in strong contrast to what we generally find amongst the higher organisms, such as insects and birds; for though considerable variation is found in them, it does not run riot as in the anemonies. It would almost appear as if the actual colour itself was of minor importance, and only the pattern essential; the precise hue is not fixed, is not important, but the necessity of colour of some sort properly arranged is the object to be attained. Whether this idea has a germ of truth in it or not, it is hard to say, but when we take the fact in connection with its occurrence just where opacity begins, connecting this with the transparency of the lower organisms, and the application of vivid colour to their internal organs, one seems to associate the instability of the anemony's colouring with the transference of colour from the interior to the exterior. Certain it is, that vivid colour never exists in the interior of opaque animals; it is always developed under the influence of light. The white bones, nerves and cartilages, and the uniform red of mammalian muscles, are not cases of true decorative colouring in our sense of the term, for all bodies must have some colour. All bone is practically white, all mammalian muscle red, but for these colours to be truly decorative, it would be necessary for muscles of apparently the same character often to be differently tinted, just as the apparently similar hairs on a mammal, and scales on an insect, are variously painted. This we do not find, for the shaft-bones and plate-bones, and even such odd bones as the hyoid are all one colour; and no one would undertake to tell, by its hue, a piece of striped from a piece of unstriped muscle. Decorative colouring _must_ be external in an opaque animal; it _may_ be internal in a transparent one. The connection thus shown between decoration and transparency seems to suggest that hypodermal colour is the original, and epidermal the newer scheme: that the latter was derived from the former. This agrees with Haagen's shrewd hint that all mimetic colour was originally hypodermal. Certain it is that the protective colour that is still under personal control, as in the chameleon, &c., is always hypodermal. The common crass (_Bunodes crassicornis_) is so extremely variable, that all one can say of it is, that it is coloured red and green. But this colour is distributed in accordance with structure. The base, or crawling surface, not being exposed to the light, is uncoloured. The column, or stem, is irregularly spotted, and striped in accordance with the somewhat undifferentiated character of its tissue, but the important organs, the tentacles, are most definitely ornamented, the colour varying, but the pattern being constant. This pattern is heart-shaped, with the apex towards the point of the tentacle; that is to say, the narrow part of the pattern points to the narrow part of the tentacle. In the common _Actinea mesembryanthemum_, which is often blood red, the marginal bodies, probably sense-organs, are of the most exquisite turquoise blue colour, and the ruby disc thus beaded is as perfect an example of simple structural decoration as could be desired. A zone of similar blue runs round the base of the body. Turning now to the corals, which are simply like colonies of single anemonies with a stony skeleton, we have quite a different arrangement of hues. No sight is more fascinating than that of a living-coral reef, as seen through the clear waters of a lagoon. The tropical gardens ashore cannot excel these sea-gardens in brilliancy or variety of colour. Reds, yellows, purples, browns of every shade, almost bewilder the eye with their profusion; and here again we find structural decoration carried out to perfection. The growing points of white branching corals (_Madrepores_) are frequently tipped with vivid purple, and the tiny polyps themselves are glowing gem-stars. In the white brain-corals, the polyps are vivid red, green, yellow, purple and so on; but in almost every case vividly contrasting with the surrounding parts, the colour changing as the function changes. The _Alcyonariæ_, which include the sea-fans, sea-pens, and the red coral of commerce, practically bring us to the end of the _Coelenterata_, and afford us fresh proof of the dependence of colour upon structure and function. The well-known organ-pipe coral (_Tubipora musica_) is of a deep crimson colour, and the polyps themselves are of the most vivid emerald green, a contrast that cannot be excelled. Almost equally beautiful is the commercial coral (_Corallium rubrum_) whose vivid red has given a name to a certain tint. In this coral the polyps are of a milk-white colour. It must be remembered that in these cases the colour seems actually to be intentional, so as to form a real and not merely an accidental contrast between the stony polypidom and the polyp, for the connecting tissue (_coenosarc_) is itself as colourless as it is structureless. Gathering together the facts detailed in this chapter we find:-- 1. That the Protozoa are practically colourless and structureless. 2. That in those species which possess a rudimentary organ (contractile vesicle) a slight decoration is applied to that organ. 3. That in the Coelenterata the colouration is directly dependent upon the structure. 4. That in transparent animals the colouration is applied directly to the organ whether it be internal as in the canals or ovaries, or external, as in the eye-specks. 5. That in opaque animals, as in the sea-anemonies, the colouring is entirely external. 6. That it is very variable in hue, but not in pattern. 7. That the most highly differentiated parts (tentacles, eye-specks), are the most strongly coloured. 8. That in the corals an emphatic difference occurs between the colour of the polypidom (or "coral") and the polyp. [Illustration] CHAPTER VIII. DETAILS OF PROTOZOA. The Protozoa are divided into three orders. I.--_Gregarinidæ._ II.--_Rhizopoda._ III.--_Infusoria._ I. The _Gregarinidæ_ consist of minute protozoa, parasitic in the interior of insects, &c., and like other internal parasites are colourless, as we should expect. II. The _Rhizopoda_ may, for our purpose, be divided into the naked forms like _Amoeba_, and those which possess a skeleton, such as the Radiolaria, the Foraminifera and the Spongia. Of these the naked forms are colourless, or uniformly tinted, excepting the flush already described as emphasizing the contractile vesicle. The _Foraminifera_ are the earliest animals that possess a skeleton or shell, and though generally very small, this shell is often complex, and of extreme beauty, though their bodies retain the general simplicity of the protozoa, indeed, they are said to possess no contractile vesicle. Still the complexity of their shells places them on a higher level than the naked rhizopoda. In these animals we find the first definite colour, not as a pattern, but as simple tinting of the protoplasm. The general hue is yellowish-brown (as in _Amoeba_), but deep red is not uncommon. The deepest colour is found in the oldest central chambers, becoming fainter towards the periphery, where it is often almost unrecognisable.[19] The _Radiolaria_ are minute organisms with still more complex skeletons, and are considered by Haeckel[20] to be more highly organized than the preceding order. They consist of a central portion containing masses of minute cells, and an external portion containing yellow cells. Here we have the first differentiation of parts in the external coating and internal capsule, and side by side with this differentiation we find colour more pronounced, and even taking regional tints in certain forms. We may notice the following genera as exhibiting fine colour:-- _Red._ Eucecryphalus, Arachnocorys, Eucrytidium, Dictyoceras. _Yellow._ Carpocanium, Dictyophimus, Amphilonche. _Purple._ Eucrytidium, Acanthostratus. _Blue._ Cyrtidosphæra, Coelodendrum. _Green._ Cladococeus, Amphilonche. _Brown._ Acanthometra, Amphilonche. Examples of these may be seen in the plates of Haeckel's fine work, and as an illustration of regional decoration we cite _Acanthostratus purpuraceus_, in which the central capsule is seen to run from red to orange, and the external parts to be colourless, with red markings in looped chains. _Spongocyclia_ also exhibits this regional distinction of colour very clearly, the central capsule being red and the external portion yellow. The _Spongida_, or sponges, are, broadly speaking, assemblages or colonies of amoeba-like individuals, united into a common society. Individually the component animals are low, very low, in type, but their union into colonies, and the necessity for a uniform or common government has given rise to peculiarities that in a certain sense raise them even above the complex radiolaria. Some, it is true, are naked, and do not possess the skeleton that supports the colony, which skeleton forms what we usually call the sponge; but even amongst these naked sponges the necessity for communal purposes over and above the mere wants of the individual, raises them a step higher in the animal series. A multitude of individuals united by a common membrane, living in the open sea, it must have happened that some in more immediate contact with the food-producing waters, would have thriven at the expense of those in the interior who could only obtain the nutriment that had passed unheeded by the peripheral animals. But just as in higher communities we have an inflowing system of water and an out-flowing system of effete sewerage quite uncontrolled, and, alas, generally quite unheeded by the individuals whose wants are so supplied; so in the sponges we have a system of inflowing food-bearing water and an out-flowing sewage, or exhausted-water system. This is brought about by a peculiar system of cilia-lined cells which, as it were, by their motion suck the water in, bringing with it the food, and an efferent system by which the exhausted liquid escapes. These cilia-lined cells are the first true organs that are to be found in the animal kingdom, and according to the views we hold, they ought to be emphasized with colour, even though their internal position renders the colouration less likely. This we find actually to be the case, and these flagellated cells, as they are called, are often the seat of vividest colour. The animal matter, or sarcode, or protoplasm of sponges falls into three layers, just as we find the primitive embryo of the highest animals; and just as the middle membrane of a mammalian ovum develops into bone, muscle and nerve, so the middle membrane (mesosarc) of the sponges develops the hard skeleton, and in this most important part we find the colour cells prevail. Sollas, one of our best English authorities upon sponges, writes, "The colours of sponges, which are very various, are usually due to the presence of pigment granules, interbedded either in the _endosarc of the flagellated cells_, or in the mesodermic cells, usually of the skin only, but sometimes of the whole body."[21] We can, then, appeal most confidently to the protozoa as illustrating the morphological character of colouration. [Illustration] [19] Leidy. Rhizopoda of N. America, p. 16. [20] Haeckel. Die Radiolarien, Berlin, 1862. [21] Sollas. Spongidæ. Cassell's Nat. Hist. Vol. vi., p. 318. CHAPTER IX. DETAILS OF COELENTERATA. I. HYDROZOA. _A. Hydrida._ The Hydras, as a rule, are not coloured in our sense of the term; that is to say, they are of a general uniform brown colour. But in one species, _H. viridis_, the endoderm contains granules of a green colour, which is said to be identical with the green colouring matter of leaves (_chlorophyll_). This does not occur in all the cells, though it is present in most. The green matter occurs in the form of definite spherical corpuscles, and these colour-cells define the inner layer of the integument (the endoderm), and render it distinct.[22] That portion of the endoderm which forms the boundary of the body-cavity has fewer green corpuscles, but contains irregular brown granules, thus roughly mapping out a structural region. We thus see that even in so simple a body as the Hydra the colouring matter is distributed strictly according to morphological tracts. _B. Tubularida._ The Tubularian Hydroids are the subject of an exhaustive and admirably illustrated monograph by Prof. J. Allman, from which the following details are culled. These animals are with few exceptions marine, and consist either of a single polypite or of a number connected together by a common flesh, or coenosarc. Some are quite naked, others have horny tubes, into which, however, the polypites cannot retreat. The polypites consist essentially of a sac surrounded with tentacles; and one of their most striking characters is their mode of reproduction. Little buds (_gonophores_) grow from the coenosarc, and gradually assume a form exactly like that of a jelly-fish. These drop off, and swim freely about; and are so like jelly-fishes that they have been classed among them as separate organisms. The Tubulariæ are all transparent; and in them we find structural colouration finely shown, the colour, as is usual in transparent animals, being applied directly to the different organs. Writing of the colour, Prof. Allman says: "That distinct secretions are found among the Hydroida, and that even special structures are set aside for their elaboration, there cannot now be any doubt. "One of the most marked of these secretions consists of a coloured granular matter; which is contained at first in the interior of certain spherical cells, and may afterwards become discharged into the somatic fluid. These cells, as already mentioned, are developed in the endoderm;[23] in which they are frequently so abundant as to form a continuous layer upon the free surface of this membrane. It is in the proper gastric cavity of the hydranth and medusa, in the spadix of the sporosac, and in the bulbous dilatations which generally occur at the bases of the marginal tentacles of the medusæ, that they are developed in greatest abundance and perfection; but they are also found, more or less abundantly, in the walls of probably the whole somatic cavity, if we except that portion of the gastrovascular canals of the medusa which is not included within the bulbous dilatations. "In the parts just mentioned as affording the most abundant supply of these cells, they are chiefly borne on the prominent ridges into which the endoderm is thrown in these situations; when they occur in the intervals between the ridges they are smaller, and less numerous. "The granular matter contained in the interior of these cells varies in its colour in different hydroids. In many it presents various shades of brown; in others it is a reddish-brown, or light pink, or deeper carmine, or vermilion, or orange, or, occasionally, a fine lemon-yellow, as in the hydranth of _Coppinia arcta_, or even a bright emerald green, as in the bulbous bases of the marginal tentacles of certain medusæ. No definite structure can be detected in it; it is entirely composed of irregular granules, irregular in form, and usually aggregated into irregularly shaped masses in the interior of the cells. It is to this matter that the colours of the _Hydroida_, varying, as they do, in different species, are almost entirely due. "The coloured granular matter is undoubtedly a product of true secretion; and the cells in which it is found must be regarded as true secreting cells. These cells are themselves frequently to be seen as secondary cells in the interior of parent cells, from which they escape by rupture, and then, falling into the somatic fluid, are carried along by its currents, until, ultimately, by their own rupture, they discharge into it their contents. "We have no facts which enable us to form a decided opinion as to the purpose served by this secretion. Its being always more or less deeply coloured, and the fact of its being abundantly produced in the digestive cavity, might suggest that it represented the biliary secretion of higher animals. This may be its true nature, but as yet we can assert nothing approaching to certainty on the subject; indeed, considering how widely the cells destined for the secretion of coloured granules are distributed over the walls of the somatic cavity, it would seem not improbable that the import of the coloured matter may be different in different situations; that while some of it may be a product destined for some further use in the hydroid, more of it may be simply excretive, taking no further part in the vital phenomena, and intended solely for elimination from the system."[24] Here we have very definite statements by a highly trained observer of the distribution of colour in the whole of these animals, and of the conclusions he draws from them. Firstly as to the colour itself. We find it true colour--brown, pink, carmine, vermilion, orange, lemon-yellow, and even emerald green; a set of hues as vivid as any to be found in the animal kingdom. It is difficult to conceive these granules to be merely excrementitious matter; for in such simple creatures, feeding upon such similar bodies, one would hardly expect the excretive matter to be so diversified in tint. Moreover, excrementitious matter is not, as a rule, highly coloured, but brown. Thus, we see in the Rhizopods the green vegetable matter which has been taken in as food becomes brown as the process of assimilation goes on; and, indeed, colour seems almost always to be destroyed by the act of digestion. Still, it by no means follows that this colour, even if it is produced for the sake of decoration, as we suggest, may not owe its direct origin to the process of digestion. The digestive apparatus is the earliest developed in the animal kingdom, and in these creatures is by far the most important; the coelenterata being, in fact, little more than living stomachs. If, then, colouration be structural, what is more likely than that the digestive organs should be the seat of decoration in such transparent creatures? Secondly, as to the distribution of the colour. We find it "frequently forming a continuous layer upon the free surface of" the endoderm, in the "spadix of the sporosac," and in the "bulbous terminations" of the canals, that colour is best developed. In other words, the colour is distributed structurally, and is most strongly marked where the function is most important. Prof. Allman gives no hint that the colour may be purely decorative, and is naturally perplexed at the display of hues in such vigour; but if this be one of the results of the differentiation of parts, of the specialization of function, then we can, at least, understand why we find such brilliant colour in these creatures, and why it is so distributed. As an illustration of the _Tubularia_ we have selected _Syncoryne pulchella_, Fig. 2, Pl. VI., and its medusa, Fig. 1. The endoderm of the spadix of the hydranths is of a rich orange colour, which becomes paler as it descends towards the less highly organized stem. Medusæ are seen in various stages of development, and one, mature and free, is shown. In these the manubrium, and the bulbous terminations of the canals are also seen to be coloured orange. In these medusæ we find the first appearance of sensory organs. They consist of pigment-cells enclosed in the ectoderm, or outside covering; and are singular as presenting the first true examples of opaque colouring in the animal kingdom. They are associated with nerve cells attached to a ring of filamentous nerve matter, surrounding the base of the bell. In some important respects the pigment differs from that in other parts of the animal. It is more definite in structure; and the whole ocellus is "aggregation of very minute cells, each filled with a homogeneous coloured matter."[25] These ocelli, and similar sense organs, called _lithocysts_, are always situated over the bulbous termination of the canals. The pigment is black (as in this case), vermilion, or deep carmine. [Illustration: Plate VI. SYNCORYNE PULCHELLA.] The dependence of colour upon structure is thus shown to hold good throughout these animals in a most remarkable manner, and the acceptance of the views here set forth gives us an insight into the reasons for this colouration which, as we have seen, did not arise from the study of the question from the ordinary point of view. _C. Sertularida._ These animals are very similar to the last, but they are all compound, and the polypites can be entirely withdrawn within the leathery investment or polypary. Their mode of reproduction is also similar, and their colouration follows the same general plan. Being so like the preceding order, it is unnecessary to describe them. _B. Siphonophora._ The Siphonophora are all free-swimming, and are frequently called Oceanic Hydrozoa. They are divided into three orders, viz.:-- _a. Calycophoridæ._ _b. Physophoridæ._ _c. Medusidæ._ _a. Calycophoridæ._ These animals have a thread-like coenosarc, or common protoplasm, which is unbranched, cylindrical, and contractile. They are mostly quite transparent, but where colour exists it is always placed structurally. Thus, in _Diphyes_ the sacculi of the tentacles are reddish, in _Sphæronectes_ they are deep red, and in _Abyla_ the edges of the larger specimens are deep blue.[26] _b. Physophoridæ._ These creatures are distinguished by the presence of a peculiar organ, the float, or _pneumatophore_, which is a sac enclosing a smaller sac. The float is formed by a reflexion of both the ectoderm and endoderm, and serves to buoy up the animal at the surface of the sea. The best known species is the Physalia, or Portuguese Man-o'-War. Prof. Huxley, in his monograph on the Oceanic Hydrozoa, gives many details of the colouration; and, not having had much opportunity of studying them, the following observations are taken from his work. It will be seen that the Physophoridæ illustrate the structural distribution of colour in a remarkable manner. _Stephanomia amphitridis_, the hydrophyllia, colourless, and so transparent as to be almost imperceptible in water, coenosarc whitish, enlarged portions of polypites, pink or scarlet, sacs of tentacles scarlet. The enlarged portion of the polypites is marked with red striæ, "which are simply elevations of the endoderm, containing thread-cells and coloured granules." The small polypites do not possess these elevations, and are colourless. _Agalma breve_, like a prismatic mass of crystal, with pink float and polypites. _Athorybia rosacea_, float pink, with radiating dark-brown striæ, made up of dots; polypites lightish red, shading to pink at their apices; tentacles yellowish or colourless, with dark-brown sacculi; thread-cells dark brown. _Rhizophysa filiformis_, pink, with deep red patch surrounding the aperture of the pneumatocyst. _Physalia caravilla_, bright purplish-red, with dark extremities, and blue lines in the folds of the crest; polypites violet, with whitish points, larger tentacles red, with dark purple acetabula, smaller tentacles blue, bundles of buds reddish. _P. pelagica_, in young individuals pale blue, in adult both ends green, with highest part of crest purple, tentacles blue, with dark acetabula; polypites dark blue, with yellow points. _P. utriculus._ Prof. Huxley describes a specimen doubtfully referred to this species very fully, as follows:-- "The general colour of the hydrosoma is a pale, delicate green, passing gradually into a dark, indigo blue, on the under surface. "The ridge of the crest is tipped with lake, and the pointed end is stained deep bluish-green about the aperture of the pneumatocyst. "The bases of the tentacles are deep blue; the polypites deep blue at their bases, and frequently bright yellow at their apices; the velvetty masses of reproductive organs and buds on the under surface are light green." He further remarks that the tentacles have reniform thickenings at regular intervals, and "the substance of each thickening has a dark blue colour, and imbedded within it are myriads of close-set, colourless, spherical thread-cells." It would not be possible to find a more perfect example of regional colouration. Not only is each organ differently coloured, but the important parts of each organ, like the ridge of the crest, the bases of the tentacles, and the thread-cell bearing ridges of the tentacles, are also emphasized with deep colour. _Velella._ This beautiful creature, which sometimes finds its way to our shores, is like a crystal raft fringed with tentacles, and having an upright oblique crest, or sail. The margins of the disk and crest are often of a beautiful blue colour, and the canals of the disk become deep blue as they approach the crest. The polypites may be blue, purple, green, or brown. _C. Medusidæ._ The structure and colouration of the true Medusæ are so like that of the medusiform larvæ of the other Hydrozoa, that they need not be particularly described. _D. Lucernarida._ Of this sub-class we need only cite the _Lucernaria_ themselves; which are pretty bell-shaped animals, having the power of attaching themselves to seaweeds, etc., and also of swimming freely about. Round the margin are eight tufts of tentacles, opposite eight lobes, the membrane between the lobes being festooned. In _L. auricula_, a British species, the membrane is colourless and transparent, the lobes bright red, or green, and the tentacles blue. As a group the Hydrozoa display regional colouration in a very perfect manner. II. ACTINOZOA. It is not necessary to trace the colouration through all the members of this group, but we will trace the variation of colour through two species of anemonies, which have been admirably studied by Dr. A. Andres.[27] The first column shows the general hue, the second the tints of that hue which are sufficiently marked to form varieties as cochineal red, chocolate, bright red, rufous, liver-coloured, brown, olive, green and glaucous. The third column gives the spotted varieties, from which it will be seen that the chocolate, liver, and green coloured forms have each coloured varieties. It will be seen that the range of colour is very great, passing from pale pink, through yellowish-brown to blue-green. -----------+-----------+-----------+---------------- Prevailing | Uniform | Spotted | colour. |varieties. |varieties. | Allied species. -----------+-----------+-----------+---------------- White. | ? | | A. candida. " | coccinea. | | " | chiocca. | tigrina. | Red. | rubra. | | " | rufosa. | | Yellow. | hepatica. | fragacea. | " | umbra. | | " | olivacea. | | " | viridis. | opora. | " | glaucus. | | Blue. | ? | | -----------+-----------+-----------+---------------- Varieties of Actinea Cari. The following brief descriptions illustrate the distribution of the colour:-- _Actinea Cari._ Uniform varieties (_Homochroma_). ----------------------+---------------+----------------+--------+----------- | Column. | Tentacles. |Gonidia.| Zone. ----------------------+---------------+----------------+--------+----------- [alpha]. _Hepatica_ | red brown. | azure. | azure. | azure. [beta]. _Rubra_ | crimson. | violet. | |{wanting, [gamma]. _Chiocca_ | scarlet. | white. | |{or flesh | | | |{coloured. | | | | [delta]. _Coccinea_ | cochineal. | yellowish. | | [epsilon]. _Olivacca_ | olive-brown | azure. | azure. | | green. | | | [zeta]. _Viridis_ | green. | azure. | azure. | azure. | | | | Spotted varieties (_Heterochroma_). | | | | [eta]. _Tigrina_ |red, spotted | | | | yellow. | | | [theta]. _Fragacea_ |liver, spotted | | | | clear green. | azure or white.| |indistinct. [iota]. _Opora_ |green spotted, | | | | and striped | | | | yellow. | azure. | | ----------------------+---------------+----------------+--------+----------- In this table the varieties above mentioned are further particularized. The column is the stalk or body, the tentacles are the arms, the gonidia the eye spots, and the zone the line round the base. It will be noticed that these regions are often finely contrasted in colour. _Bunodes gemmaceus_ is another variable form, and the following varieties are recognised. _Heterochroma._ [alpha]. Ocracea, } peristome ochre yellow, zone black, tentacles grey, (type) } with blue and white spots. [beta]. _Pallida_, peristome whitish grey unbanded, tentacles with white spots. [gamma]. _Viridescens_, peristome greenish white unbanded, tentacles with white spots and rosy shades. [delta]. _Aurata_, column at base golden, peristome intenser yellow with crimson flush, tentacles grey with ochreous and white spots. [epsilon]. _Carnea_, column at base flesh coloured, peristome rosy, tentacles rosy, with white spots. _Homochroma._ [zeta]. _Rosea_, like [epsilon], but with rosy tubercles. [eta] . _Nigricans_, peristome blackish, with blue and green reflexions (riflessi). A few other examples may be given, all of which can be studied in Dr. André's magnificently coloured plates. _Aiptasia mutabilis_ is yellow brown, the tentacles spotted in longitudinal rows, the spots growing smaller towards the tip, thus affording a perfect example of the adaptation of colour to structure. _Anemonia sulcata_ has normally long light yellow pendulous tentacles tipped with rose, but a variety has the column still yellow but the tentacles pale green, tipped with rose. _Bunodes rigidus_ has the column green, with rows of crimson tubercles, the tentacles are flesh-coloured, except the outer row which are pearly; the peristome is green, with brown lips. [Illustration] [22] Allman's Hydroids. Ray. Soc., p. 123. [23] Compare with Hydra above. [24] Allman. Monograph of Tubularian Hydroida. Ray. Soc., p. 135. [25] Allman, _op. cit._, p. 139. [26] Huxley. Oceanic Hydrozoa, pp. 32, 46, 50. [27] Fauna und Flora des Golfes von Neapel. Die Actinien. 1884. CHAPTER X. THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS. In the decoration of insects and birds, nature has exerted all her power; and amongst the wealth of beauty here displayed we ought to find crucial tests of the views herein advocated. It will be necessary, therefore, to enter somewhat into detail, and we shall take butterflies as our chief illustration, because in them we find the richest display of colouring. The decoration of caterpillars will also be treated at some length, partly because of their beauty, and partly because amongst them sexual selection cannot possibly have had any influence. Butterflies are so delicate in structure, so fragile in constitution, so directly affected by changes of environment, that upon their wings we have a record of the changes they have experienced, which gives to them a value of the highest character in the study of biology. In them we can study every variation that geographical distribution can effect; for some species, like the Swallow-tail (_Papilio machaon_) and the Painted Lady (_Cynthia cardui_), are almost universal, and others, like our now extinct Large Copper (_Lycæna dispar_), are excessively local, being confined to a very few square miles. From the arctic regions to the tropics, from the mountain tops to the plains, on the arid deserts and amidst luxuriant vegetation, butterflies are everywhere to be found. Before entering into details, it will be as well to sketch some of the broad features of butterfly decoration. In the first place they are all day-fliers, and light having so strong an influence upon colour, there is a marked difference in beauty between them and the night-flying moths. A collection of butterflies viewed side by side with a collection of moths brings out this fact more strongly than words can describe, especially when the apparent exceptions are considered; for many moths are as brightly coloured as butterflies. These will be found to belong either to day-flying species, like the various Burnets (_Zygæna_), Tiger Moths (_Arctia_), or evening flyers like the Hawk Moths (_Sphyngidæ_.) The true night-flying, darkness-loving moths cannot in any way compare with the insects that delight in sunshine. We see the same thing in birds, for very few nocturnal species, so far as we are aware, are brilliantly decorated. Another salient feature is the difference that generally exists between the upper and lower surfaces of the wings. As a rule, the upper surface is the seat of the brightest colour. Most butterflies, perhaps all, close their wings when at rest, and the upper wing is generally dropped behind the under wing, so that only the tip is visible. The under surface is very frequently so mottled and coloured as to resemble the insect's natural surroundings, and so afford protection. It does not follow that this protective colouring need be dull, and only when we know the habit of the insect can we pronounce upon the value of such colouring. The pretty Orange-tip has its under wings veined with green, and is most conspicuous in a cabinet, but when at rest upon some umbelliferous plant, with its orange tip hidden, these markings so resemble the environment as to render the insect very inconspicuous. The brilliant _Argynnis Lathonia_, with its underside adorned with plates of metallic silver, is in the cabinet a most vivid and strongly-marked species; but we have watched this insect alight among brown leaves, or on brown stones, outside Florence, where it is very common, and find that these very marks are a sure protection, for the insect at rest is most difficult to see, even when it is marked down to its resting-place. But some butterflies have parts of the under surface as gaily decorated as the upper; and this not for protection. This may be seen to some extent in our own species, for instance in the orange-tip of the Orange-tip, and the red bar in the upper wing of the Red Admiral (_V. atalanta_). If we watch these insects, the conviction that these are true ornaments is soon forced upon us. The insect alights, perhaps alarmed, closes its wings, and becomes practically invisible. With returning confidence it will gradually open its wings and slowly vibrate them, then close them again, and lift the upper wing to disclose the colour. This it will do many times running, and the effect of the sudden appearance and disappearance of the bright hues is as beautiful as it is convincing. None can doubt the love of display exhibited in such actions. The delicacy of their organization renders butterflies peculiarly susceptible to any change, and hence they exhibit strong tendencies to variation, which make them most valuable studies. Not only do the individuals vary, but the sexes are often differently coloured. Where two broods occur in a season they are sometimes quite differently decorated, and finally a species inhabiting widely different localities may have local peculiarities. We can thus study varieties of decoration in many ways, and we shall treat of them as follows:-- 1. _Simple Variation_, in which the different individuals of a species vary in the same locality. 2. _Local Variation_, in which the species has marked peculiarities in different localities. 3. _Sexual Dimorphism_, in which the sexes vary. 4. _Seasonal Dimorphism_, in which the successive broods differ. [Illustration: Fig. 3. Diagram of Butterfly's Wing. A. Upper Wing. B. Lower Wing. _a._ Costal Margin. _b._ Hind Margin. _c._ Inner " _d._ Anal Angle. _e._ Costa. _f._ Costal nervure. _g._ Sub-costal do. _g_^{1-4}. Branches of do. _h._ Median nervure. _i._ Sub-median do. _j._ Discoidal Cell. _k._ Discoidal Veins.] In order fully to understand the bearing of the following remarks it is necessary to know something of the anatomy and nomenclature of butterflies. Fig. 3 is an ideal butterfly. The wing margins are described as the _Costal_, which is the upper strong edge of the wing, the _Hind_ margin, forming the outside, and the _Inner_ margin, forming the base. The nervures consist of four principal veins; the _Costal_, a simple nervure under the costa, the _Sub-costal_, which runs parallel to the costal and about halfway to the tip emits branches, generally four in number; the _Median_ occupying the centre of the wing and sending off branches, usually three in number, and the _Sub-median_ below which is always simple. There are thus two simple nervures, one near the costal the other near the inner margin, and between them are two others which emit branches. Between these two latter is a wide plain space known as the _discoidal cell_. Small veins called the _discoidal_ pass from the hind margin towards the cell, and little transverse nervures, known as sub-discoidal, often close the cell. By these nervures the wing is mapped out into a series of spaces of which one, the discoidal cell, is the most important. The nervures have two functions, they support and strengthen the wing, and being hollow serve to convey nutritive fluid and afterwards air to the wing. The wings are moved by powerful muscles attached to the base of the wings close to the body and to the inside of the thorax, all the muscles being necessarily internal. "There are two sets which depress the wings; firstly a double dorsal muscle, running longitudinally upwards in the meso-thorax;[28] and, secondly, the dorso-ventral muscles of the meso- and meta-thorax,[29] which are attached to the articulations of the wings above, and to the inside of the thorax beneath. Between these lie the muscles which raise the wings and which run from the inner side of the back of the thorax to the legs."[30] When we consider the immense extent of wing as compared with the rest of the body, the small area of attachment, and the great leverage that has to be worked in moving the wings, it is clear that the area of articulation of the wing to the body is one in which the most violent movement takes place. It is here that the waste and repair of tissue must go on with greatest vigour, and we should, on our theory, expect it to be the seat of strong emphasis. Accordingly we commonly find it adorned with hairs, and in a vast number of cases the general hue is darker than that of the rest of the wing, and so far as we have been able to observe, never lighter than the body of the wing. Even in the so-called whites (Pieris) this part of the wing is dusky, and instances are numerous on Plate IV. The scales, which give the colour to the wings, deserve more than a passing notice. They are inserted by means of little stalks into corresponding pits in the wing-membrane, and overlap like tiles on a roof; occasionally the attachment is a ball and socket (_Morphinæ_), in which case it is possible the insect has the power of erecting and moving its scales. The shapes are very numerous, but as a rule they are short. To this there is a remarkable exception on the wings of the males of certain butterflies, consisting of elongated tufted prominences which appear to be connected with sense-organs. They are probably scent-glands, and thus we find, even in such minute parts as scales, a difference of function emphasized by difference of ornamentation, here showing itself in variety of forms; but, as we have said, ornamentation in form is often closely allied to ornamentation in colours. In some butterflies, indeed, these scales are aggregated into spots, as in _Danais_, and have a different hue from the surrounding area. The scales are not simple structures, but consist of two or more plates, which are finely striated. The colouring matter consists of granules, placed in rows between the striæ, and may exist upon the upper surface of the upper membrane (epidermal), or the upper surface of the under or middle plate (hypodermal), or the colour may be simple diffraction colour, arising from the interference of the lightwaves by fine striæ. Dr. Haagen, in the admirable paper before mentioned, has examined this question thoroughly, and gives the results set forth in the following table:-- _Epidermal Colours._ Metallic blues and greens } Bronze } Gold } Silver } Persistent after death. Black } Brown } Red (rarely) } _Hypodermal Colours._ Blue } Green } Yellow } Milk-white } Fading after death. Orange and } shades between } Red } The hypodermal colours are usually lighter than the epidermal, and are sometimes changed by a voluntary act. Hypodermal and epidermal colours are, of course, not peculiar to insects; and, as regards the former, it is owing to their presence that the changing hues of fishes, like the sole and plaice, and of the chameleon are due. The great order Lepidoptera, including butterflies and moths, seems to the non-scientific mind to be composed of members which are pretty much alike, the differences being of slight importance; but this is not in reality the case, for the lepidoptera might, with some accuracy, be compared to the mammalia, with its two divisions of the placental and non-placental animals. Comparing the butterflies (Rhopalocera) to the placental mammals, we may look upon the different families as similar to the orders of the mammalia. Were we as accustomed to notice the differences of butterflies as we are to remark the various forms of familiar animals, we should no longer consider them as slight, but accord to them their true value. When in the mammalia we find animals whose toes differ in number, like the three-toed rhinoceros and the four-toed tapir, we admit the distinction to be great, even apart from other outward forms. So, too, the seal and lion, though both belonging to the carnivora, are readily recognized as distinct, but the seals may easily be confounded by the casual observer with the manatees, which belong to quite a different order. Thus it is with the Lepidoptera, for from six-legged insects, whose pupæ lie buried beneath the soil, like most moths, we pass to the highest butterflies, whose fore-legs are atrophied, and whose pupæ hang suspended in the open air; and this by easy intermediate stages. Surely, if six-legged mammals were the rule, we should look upon four-legged ones as very distinct; and this is the case with the butterflies. It is necessary to make this clear at starting, in order that we may appreciate to its full value the changes that have taken place in the insects under study. Butterflies (_Rhopalocera_) are grouped into four sub-families, as under:-- 1. _Nymphalidæ_, having the fore-legs rudimentary, and the pupæ suspended from the base of the abdomen. 2. _Erycinidæ_, in which the males only have rudimentary fore-legs. 3. _Lycænidæ_, in which the fore-legs of the males are smaller than those of the females, and terminate in a simple hook. 4. _Papilionidæ_, which have six perfect pairs of legs, and in which the pupæ assume an upright posture, with a cincture round the middle. It may, at first sight, appear curious that the imperfect-legged _Nymphalidæ_ should be placed at the head of the list, but this is based upon sound reasoning. The larva consists of thirteen segments, and, in passing to the mature stage, the second segment alone diminishes in size, and it is to this segment that the first pair of legs is attached. Looking now to the aerial habits of butterflies, we can understand how, in the process of evolution towards perfect aerial structure, the legs, used only for walking, would first become modified; and, naturally, those attached to the segment which decreases with development would be the first affected. When this is found to be combined with an almost aerial position of the pupæ, we see at once how such insects approach nearest to an ideal flying insect. It is a general law that suppression of parts takes place as organisms become specialized. Thus, in the mammalia, the greatest number of toes and teeth are found in the lowest forms and in the oldest, simplest fossil species. A butterfly is, indeed, little more than a beautiful flying machine; for the expanse of wing, compared with the size of the body, is enormous. [Illustration] [28] The middle division of the thorax. [29] Hinder division of thorax. [30] Dallas in Cassell's Nat. Hist., vol. vi., p. 27. CHAPTER XI. THE COLOURATION OF INSECTS. (_Continued._) _General Scheme of Colouring._ So various are the patterns displayed upon the wings of butterflies, that amidst the lines, stripes, bars, dots, spots, ocelli, scalloppings, etc., it seems at first hopeless to detect any general underlying principle of decoration; and this is the opinion that has been, and is still, held by many who have made these insects a special study. Nevertheless, we will try to show that beneath this almost confused complexity lie certain broad principles, or laws, and that these are expressed by the statement that decoration is primarily dependent upon structure, dependent upon the laws of emphasis and repetition, and modified by the necessity for protection or distinction. To render this subject as plain as possible, British species will be selected, as far as possible, and foreign ones only used when native forms do not suffice. The body of by far the greater number of species is either darker or of the same tint as the mass of the wings; and only in rare cases lighter. When the body has different tints, it is generally found that the thorax and abdomen differ in colour, and in many cases the base of the thorax is emphasized by a dark or light band. On the wings the functional importance of the parts attached to the body is generally darker, perhaps never lighter, than the ground of the wing, and is frequently further emphasized by silky hairs. This has already been sufficiently pointed out. The wing area may be divided into the strong costal margin, the hind margin, the nervules, and the spaces; and, however complex the pattern may be, it is always based upon these structure lines. In the majority of insects the costal margin is marked with strong colour. This may be noticed in _Papilio Machaon_, _P. merope_, _Vanessa antiopa_, and the whites in Plate IV. The extreme tip of the fore-wings is nearly always marked with colour, though this may run into the border pattern. This colour is dark or vividly bright, and we know no butterfly, not even dark ones, that has a light tip to the wings. Sometimes, it is true, the light bead-border spots run to the tip, but these are not cases in point. The development of tips has been traced in Chapter VI., and need not be repeated. The hind margin of both wings is very commonly emphasized by a border, of which _V. Antiopa_, Pl. III. Fig. 3, is a very perfect example. The border pattern may consist of one or more rows of spots, lines, bands, or scallops;[31] and there is frequently a fine fringe, which in many cases is white, with black marks, and to which the term bead-pattern may be applied. A definite relation subsists in most cases between the shape of the hind margin and the character of the border-pattern. The plain or simple bordered wings have plain border patterns, and the scalloped wings have scalloped borders; or rather scalloped borders are almost exclusively confined to scalloped wings. In our English butterflies, for instance, out of the 62 species:-- 33 have plain margins to the wings. In all the border is plain, or wanting. 20 have the fore-wings plain, and the hind-wings scalloped, and in all the hind-wings are scalloped and the fore-wings plain, or with slightly scalloped border-patterns. 9 have scalloped margins and scalloped border-patterns. Another relation between structure and pattern is found in those insects which have tailed hind-wings, for the tail is very frequently emphasized by a spot, often of a different colour from the rest of the wing as in the Swallow-Tails, Plates IV. and V. Yet another point may be noticed. In each wing there is a space, the discoidal cell, _j_ Fig. 3, at the apex of which several nervures join, forming knots. These are points at which obstacles exist to the flow of the contents, and they are almost always marked by a distinct pattern. We thus have a discoidal spot in very many butterflies, in nearly all moths; and in the other orders of winged insects the decoration is even more pronounced, as any one may see who looks at our dragon-flies, wasps, bees, or even beetles. In some insects the decoration of the body is very marked, as in our small dragon-flies, the Agrions. In one species, for example, _A. Puella_, the male is pale blue banded with black, and the female bronze black, with a blue band on the segment, bearing the sexual organ; the ovipositors are also separately decorated. The male generative organs are peculiar, in that the fertilizing fluid is conveyed from one segment to a reservoir at the other end of the abdomen. Both the segments bearing these organs are marked by special decoration. The peculiar arrangement of the sexual organs in dragon-flies is very variable, and certain segments are modified or suppressed in some forms, as was shown by J. W. Fuller.[32] In every case the decoration follows the modification. In the thorax of dragon-flies, too, the principal muscular bands are marked out in black lines. This distinct representation of the internal structure is beautifully shown in _Æschna_ and _Gomphina_, and in the thorax of _Cicada_, as shown by Dr. Haagen in the paper quoted in the last chapter. We may, then, safely pronounce that the decoration of insects is eminently structural. _Simple Variation._ Cases of simple variation have been already cited in our description of spots and stripes, and it only remains to show that in this, as in all other cases, the variation is due to a modification of original structural decoration. To take familiar examples. Newman, in his British Butterflies, figures the varieties of the very common Small Tortoiseshell (_Vanessa urticæ_). In the normal form there is a conspicuous white spot on the disc of the fore-wings, which is absent in the first variety, owing to the spreading of the red-brown ground colour. This variety is permanent on the Mediterranean shores. In variety two, the second black band, running from the costa across the cell, is continued across the wing. The third variety, Mr. Newman remarks, is "altogether abnormal, the form and colouring being entirely altered." Still, when we examine the insect closely, we find it is only a modification of the original form. The first striking difference is in the margin of the wings, which in the normal form is scalloped with scallop-markings, whereas, in the variety the margins are much simpler, and the border pattern closely corresponds with it, having lost its scalloping. In the fore-wing some of the black bands and spots are suppressed or extended, and the extensions end rigidly at nervules. The dark colouring of the hind-wings has spread over the whole wing. We thus see that the decoration, even in varieties called abnormal, still holds to structural lines, and is a development of pre-existing patterns. No one can have examined large series of any species without being impressed with the modification of patterns in almost every possible way. For instance, we have reared quantities of _Papilio Machaon_, and find great differences, not only in the pattern, but in the colour itself. A number of pupæ from Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire, were placed in cages, into which only coloured light could fall, and though these experiments are not sufficiently extended to allow us to form any sound conclusions as to the effect of the coloured light, we got more varieties than could be expected from a batch of pupæ from the same locality. The tone of the yellow, the quantity of red, the proportion of the yellow to the blue scales in the clouds, varied considerably, but always along the known and established lines. The variations in the colour of Lepidoptera has been most admirably treated by Mr. J. Jenner Weir in a paper, only too short, read before the West Kent Natural History Society.[33] He divides variations into two sections, Aberrations or Heteromorphism, and constant variations or Orthopæcilism, and subdivides each into six classes, as under:-- _Heteromorphism._ Albinism ... ... white varieties. Melanism ... ... black do. Xanthism ... ... pallid do. Sports ... ... or occasional variations not included in the above. Gynandrochomism ... females coloured as males. Hermaphroditism ... sexes united. _Orthopæcilism._ Polymorphism ... variable species. Topomorphism ... local varieties. Atavism ... ... reversion to older forms. Dimorphism ... ... two constant forms. Trimorphism ... ... three do. do. Horeomorphism ... seasonal variation. In some cases, he remarks, variations are met with which may with equal propriety be classed in either section. Albinism he finds to be very rare in British species, the only locality known to him being the Outer Hebrides. This reminds us of Wallace's remark upon the tendency to albinism in islands. Xanthism, he finds to be more plentiful, and quotes the common Small Heath (_Cænonympha pamphilus_) as an illustration. In these varieties we have simply a bleaching of the colouring matter of the wings, and therefore no departure from structural lines. Melanism arises from the spreading of large black spots or bars, or, as in _Biston betularia_, a white moth peppered with black, dots by the confluence of small spots; for this insect in the north is sometimes entirely black. It is singular that insects have a tendency to become melanic in northern and alpine places, and this is especially the case with white or light coloured species. (_See_ Plate IV., Fig. 17) It has recently been suggested that this darkening of these delicate membranous beings in cold regions is for the purpose of absorbing heat, and this seems very probable.[34] Of ordinary spots it is merely necessary to remark, that they are all cases in our favour. Thus, in _Satyrus hyperanthus_ we have "the ordinary round spots ... changed into lanceolate markings"; this takes place also in _C. davus_. The other cases of aberration do not concern us. When, however, we come to the cases in which a species has two or more permanent forms, it is necessary to show that they are in all cases founded on structure lines. The patterns, as shown in Plate V., Figs. 1-13, are always arranged structurally, and the fact that not only are intermediate forms known, as in _Araschnia porima_, Plate V., Fig. 6, but that the various forms are convertible into one another, would in itself be sufficient to show that in these cases there is no departure from the general law. In _Grapta interrogationis_, Plate V., Figs. 8-10, we see in the central figure one large spot above the median nervure, in the left-hand form this is surmounted by another spot above the lowest sub-costal branch, and in the right-hand figure this latter spot is very indistinct. We have here a perfect gradation, and the same may be said of the colouration of the lower wings. Take again the three forms of _Papilio Ajax_ in the same plate, Figs. 11-13, and we have again only modifications of the same type. In local varieties, as in seasonal forms, we have again nothing more than developments of a given type, as is well shown in Plates IV. & V., Figs. 13-18 & 1-13. When, however, we come to mimetic forms, whether they mimic plants, as in Plate I., or other species, as in Plates II. & III., a difficulty does seem to arise. The leaf butterfly (_Kallima inachus_), Plate I., offers no trouble when we view the upper surface only with its orange bands, but its under surface, so marvellously like a dead leaf that even holes and microscopic fungi are suggested, does seem very like a case in which structure lines are ignored. Take, for instance, the mark which corresponds to the mid-ribs, running from the tail to the apex of the upper wing; it does not correspond to any structure line of the insect. But if we take allied and even very different species and genera of Indian and Malayan butterflies, we shall find every possible intermediate form between this perfect mimicry and a total lack of such characters. To cite the most recent authority, the various species of the Genera Discophora, Amathusia, Zeuxidia, Thaumantis, Precis, &c., figured so accurately in Distant's Rhopalocera Malayana, will give all the steps. In the cases of true mimicry, as in Figs. 1-3, Plates II. & III., where insects as different as sheep from cats copy one another, we find that of course structure lines are followed, though the pattern is vastly changed. The _Papilio merope_, Fig. 1, Plate II., which mimics _Danais niavius_, Fig. 3, does so by suppressing the tail appendage, changing the creamy yellow to white--a very easy change, constantly seen in our own Pieridæ--and diffusing the black. A similar case is seen in Figs. 4-5, Plate III., where a normally white butterfly (_Panopoea hirta_) mimics a normally dark one of quite a different section. Here again the change is not beyond our power of explanation. Where a Papilio like _merope_ mimics a brown species like _Danais niavius_, we have a still greater change in colour, but not in structural pattern. If we ascribe to these insects the small dose of intelligence we believe them to possess, we can readily see how the sense of need has developed such forms. Local varieties present no difficulty under such explanation. The paramount necessity for protection has given the Hebridran species the grey colour of the rocks, and the desert species their sandy hue. [Illustration: Plate VII. CATERPILLARS.] Finally, to take the case of caterpillars, Weismann has admirably worked out the life history of many forms, and shows how the complex markings have arisen by development. Broadly, a caterpillar consists of 13 segments, the head being one. The head is often marked with darker colour, and the last segment with its clasping feet is also very frequently emphasized, as in Figs. 1 & 3, Plate VII. The spiracles are generally marked by a series of spots, and often connected by a line. Here the tendency to repetition shows itself strongly, for not only the spiracles themselves, but the corresponding points in the segments without spiracles are frequently spotted, and, moreover, these spots are frequently repeated in rows above the spiracular line. Of this, _Deilephila galii_ and _D. Euphorbiæ_, Figs. 1-5, Plate VII., are good examples. The segmentation is also generally emphasized, as shown in all the examples on the plate, but in its simplicity in Fig. 10. Running down the centre of the back a more or less distinct line is often seen, as shown in the figures. This corresponds with the great dorsal alimentary canal lying just below the skin, and Weismann has shown that in young larvæ this line is transparent, and the green food can be seen through the skin. We have here, perhaps, a relic of the direct colouration noticed in the transparent coelenterata. Where larvæ possess horns either upon the head, as in _Apatura iris_ and _Papilio machaon_, or on the tail, as in many of the sphyngidæ, like Figs. 1-5, Plate VII., these appendages are always emphasized in colour. As they are frequently oblique, we often find that this obliquity is continued as a slanting spot, as in _D. galii_ and _euphorbiæ_, and sometimes repeated as a series of oblique stripes, as in Fig. 4. It must be admitted that in insects we have strong evidence of structural decoration. [Illustration] [31] In the true scallop pattern the convexity is turned towards the body of the insect. [32] J. W. Fuller on the Breathing Apparatus of Aquatic Larvæ. Proc. Bristol Nat. Soc. [33] Entomologist, vol. xvi., p. 169, 1883. [34] Nature. R. Meldola on Melanism, 1885. CHAPTER XII. ARACHNIDA. The Arachnida include the scorpions and spiders, and as the former are tolerably uniform in colour, our remarks will be confined to the latter. The thorax is covered with a horny plate, while the abdomen only possesses a soft skin, and neither show any traces of segmentation. From the thorax spring four pairs of legs, and a pair of palpi, or feelers. Immediately beneath the skin of the abdomen lies the great dorsal vessel, which serves as a heart. This vessel is divided into three chambers, the general aspect of which is shown in Fig. 9, Plate VIII., taken from Gegenbaur's Comparative Anatomy.[35] From this heart the blood passes by vessels to each of the limbs, the palpi, etc., as offsets from the double-branched aorta. The shape of this dorsal vessel is peculiar, and its importance in respect to colouration will be immediately apparent. The primary scheme of colouration in the Arachnida seems to be the distinguishing of the cephalothorax from the abdomen by a different colour. Thus, of the 272 species of British spiders represented in Blackwell's work,[36] no less than 203 have these parts differently coloured, and only 69 are of the same hue, and even in these there is often a difference of tint. So marked is this in certain cases that the two parts form vivid contrasts. Of this cases are given in the following list. Cephalothorax. Abdomen. _Eresus cinnabarinus_, Black, Bright Red. _Thomisus floricolens_, Green, Brown. ---- _cinereus_, Brown, Blue. ---- _trux_, Red, Brown. _Sparassus smaragdulus_, Green, Red and yellow. As a rule the abdomen is darker than the cephalothorax, and many species have the former red-brown and the latter black. The legs, usually, take the colour of the cephalothorax, and are, hence, generally lighter than the abdomen, but to this there are exceptions. Where the individual legs differ in colour, the two first pairs are the darkest, and the dark hue corresponds in tint with the dark markings on the cephalothorax. The joints of the legs are in many species emphasized with dark colour, which is often repeated in bands along the limb. The most remarkable point is, however, the pattern on the abdomen, which, though varied in all possible ways, always preserves a general character, so that we might speak with propriety of a spider-back pattern. This pattern is fairly well illustrated in the genus _Lycosa_, but is seen to perfection, and in its simplest form in _Segestria senoculata_, Plate VIII., Fig. 1, and in _Sparassus smaragdulus_, Plate VIII., Fig. 2. This peculiar pattern is so like the dorsal-vessel that lies just beneath, that it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have here an actual case of the influence of internal organs on the integument, and this we believe to be the case. No matter how curious the abdominal markings may seem to be, they never so far depart from this fundamental pattern as to appear independent of it. Thus, in the genus _Lycosa_, which is by no means the best for the purpose, but is chosen as illustrating Gegenbaur's diagram, Pl. VIII., we have the dorsal-vessel well marked in _L. piscatoria_, Plate VIII., Fig. 3, from which may be developed the other forms. In _L. andrenivora_, Plate VIII., Fig. 4, the male shows the vessel-mark attenuated posteriorly; and in the female, Fig. 5, the hinder part has become broken up into detached marks, still preserving the original shape, while the upper part remains practically unchanged. In _L. allodroma_ the disintegration of the mark has further advanced, for in the male, Fig. 6, the upper portion has lost something of its shape, and the lower part is a series of isolated segments. This process is carried still further in the female, Fig. 8, where the upper portion is simplified, and the lower almost gone. In _L. campestris_, Fig. 10, the mark is reduced to a stripe, corresponding with the upper part of the vessel-mark only: and, lastly, in the male _L. agretyca_, Fig. 7, this upper part is represented by two spots, though even here traces of the original form can be seen. A simplification of marking of another sort is seen in _L. rapax_, Fig. 13, where the chamber-markings are almost obliterated, and merely an irregular stripe left. The stages by which this modification is arrived at are too obvious to need illustration. In some species the lower portion of the vessel-mark is reduced to small dots, as in _L. cambrica_, _fluviatilis_, _piratica_, and others; and the stages are very clear. Starting with the isolated chamber-marks, as in _L. allodroma_, Fig. 5, we get, firstly, a set of spots, as in _L. picta_, which, in the female, Fig. 16, are still connected with the chamber-marks, but in the male, Fig. 17, are isolated. This leads us, by easy steps, to such forms as _L. latitans_, Fig. 14, which consists of a double row of spots upon dark stripes. The intimate connection thus shown to subsist between the characteristic decoration of the abdomen of spiders, and the shape of the important dorsal organ beneath, seems to be strong evidence of effect that internal structure may have upon external decoration.[37] The cephalothorax of spiders, being covered with a hardened membrane, does not show such evidence clearly, for it appears to be a law that the harder the covering tissue, the less does it reflect, as it were, the internal organs. The hard plates of the armadillo are thus in strong contrast to the softer skins of other animals. Nevertheless, there does appear, occasionally, to be some trace of this kind of decoration in the cephalothorax of certain spiders, though it would be hard to prove. The blood vessels of this part (see Fig. 9), though large, are not nearly so prominent as the great dorsal vessel. The chief artery enters the cephalothorax as a straight tube, forks, and sends branches to the limbs, palpi, and eyes. In many species, notably in the genus _Thomisus_, a furcate mark seems to shadow the forked aorta. This is best shown in _T. luctuosus_, Plate VIII., Fig. 11. Moreover, in this and other genera, lines frequently run to the outer pair of eyes, which alone are supplied with large arteries, see Fig. 9. However this may be, it is certain that the entire decoration of spiders follows structural lines, and that the great dorsal vessel has been emphasized by the peculiar pattern of the abdomen. [Illustration: Plate VIII. SPIDERS.] [35] Elements of Comparative Anatomy, by C. Gegenbaur. Translated by Jeffrey Bell and Ray Lankester, 1878, p. 285. [36] Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland, J. Blackwell. Ray. Soc., 1861. [37] The decoration of many of the Hoverer flies and wasps is of a similar character. CHAPTER XIII. COLOURATION OF INVERTEBRATA (_Continued_). Of the Arthropoda, including the lobsters, crabs, shrimps, etc., little can be said here, as we have not yet been able to study them with anything like completeness. Still, we find the same laws to hold good. The animals are segmented, and we find their system of colouration segmental also. Thus, in the lobsters and crabs there is no dorsal line, but the segments are separately and definitely decorated. The various organs, such as the antennæ and eyes, are picked out in colour, as may be beautifully seen in some prawns. When we come to the Mollusca, we meet with two distinct types, so far as our subject is concerned; the naked and the shelled. In the naked molluscs, like the slugs, we have decoration applied regionally, as is shown to perfection in the _Nudibranchs_, whose feathery gills are often the seat of some of the most vivid hues in nature. The shell-bearing mollusca are proverbial for their beauty, but it is essential to bear in mind that the shell does not bear the same relation to the mollusc that the "shell" of a lobster does to that animal. The lobster's shell is part of its living body; it is a true exo-skeleton, whereas the shell of a mollusc is a more extraneous structure--a house built by the creature. We ought, on our view, to find no more relation between the decoration of a shell and the structure of its occupant, than we do in the decoration of a human dwelling-house to the tenant. The shell consists of carbonate of lime, under one or both of the forms known to mineralogists as calcite and aragonite. This mineral matter is secreted by an organ called the mantle, and the edge, or lip, of the mantle is the part applied to this purpose. The edge of the mantle is the builder's hand, which lays the calcareous stones of the edifice. The shell is built up from the edge, and the action is not continuous but seasonal, hence arise the markings known as lines of growth. In some cases the mantle is expanded at times into wing-like processes, which are turned back over the shell, and deposit additional layers, thus thickening the shell. In all the forms of life hitherto considered the colouring matter is deposited, or formed, in the substance of the organ, or epidermal covering, but in the mollusca this is not the case. The colouring matter is entirely upon the surface, and is, as it were, stencilled on to the colourless shell. This is precisely analogous to the colouring of the shells of birds' eggs. They, too, are calcareous envelopes, and the colouring matter is applied to the outside, as anyone can see by rubbing a coloured egg. In some eggs several layers of colouring matter are superimposed. In no case does the external decoration of molluscan shells follow the structure lines of the animal, but it does follow the shape of the mantle. The secreting edge may be smooth, as in _Mactra_, regularly puckered, as in most _Pectens_, puckered at certain points, as in _Trigonia_, or thrown into long folds, as in _Spondylus_. In each of these cases the shell naturally takes the form of the mantle. It is smooth in _Mactra_, regularly ribbed in _Pecten_, tubercled in _Trigonia_, and spined in _Spondylus_. Where the inside of the shell is coloured as in some Pectens, regional decoration at once appears and the paleal lines, and muscular impressions are bounded or mapped out with colour. It is a significant fact that smooth bivalves are not so ornate as rugose ones, and that the ridges, spines, and tubercles of the latter are the seats of the most prominent colour. Similar remarks apply to univalve shells, which are wound on an imaginary vertical axis. They may be smooth, as in _Conus_ and _Oliva_, rugose, as in _Cerithium_, or spined, as in _Murex_. The structure of these shells being more complex than that of bivalves, we find, as a rule, they are more lavishly ornamented, and the prominent parts of the shell, and especially the borders, are the seat of strongest colour. In some cases, as in adult Cowries (_Cypræa_), the mantle is reflexed so as to meet along the median line, where we see the darkest colour. The rule amongst spiral shells is to possess spiral and marginal decoration, and this is what we should expect. The Nautilus repeats in the red-brown markings of its shell, the shape of the septa which divide the chambers, though, as is often the case, they are generally more numerous than the septa. The naked Cephalopoda, or cuttle-fishes, often possess a distinct dorsal stripe, and when our views were first brought before the Zoological Society, this fact was cited as an objection. To us it seems one of the strongest of favourable cases, for these animals possess a sort of backbone--the well-known cuttle-bone--and hence they have a dorsal line. Some shells, as _Margarita catenata_, have a chain-pattern, and in this case the action of the pigment cells takes place at regular and short intervals. Others, as _Mactra stultorum_, the stencilling forms a series of lines and spots, generally enlarging into rays. The whole subject of the decoration of shells deserves much more time than we have been able to give to it as yet. [Illustration] CHAPTER XIV. COLOURATION OF VERTEBRATA. The vertebrata, as their name implies, are distinguished by the possession of an internal skeleton, of which the backbone is the most essential part, and the general, but not universal, possession of limbs or appendages. Consequently we find that the dorsal and ventral surfaces are almost invariably coloured differently, and the dorsal is the darker in the great majority of instances. Generally the spine is marked by a more or less defined central line, and hence this system of colouration may be termed axial, because it is in the direction of the axes, or applied about the axes. _Fishes._ Where fishes have not been modified out of their original form, as are the soles, plaice, and other flat fish, we find the dorsal region darker than the ventral, and even here the under surfaces are the lightest. Even in cases like the Char, Fig. 1, Plate IX., where vivid colour is applied to the abdomen, the dorsum is the darker. The dorsum is often marked by a more or less well-defined dark band, as in the mackerel and perch, Fig. 2, Plate IX. There are sometimes parallel bands at right angles to the above, as in the perch and mackerel; and this is a common feature, and apparently a very old one, as we find it in the young of fishes whose adults are without these rib-like marks, such as the trout and pike. It is only necessary to inspect any drawings of fishes to see that their colouration is on a definite principle, although rather erratic. Important functional parts, like the gills, fins, and tail, are generally marked in colour more or less distinctly, as may be seen, for instance, in our common fresh-water fishes, like the roach and perch. The line of mucus-secreting glands running along the sides is usually marked by a dark line. These facts point distinctly to structural decoration. [Illustration: Plate IX. CHAR AND PERCH.] There are in some fishes, like the John Dory, curious eye-like dark spots, which we cannot refer to a structural origin, though a better acquaintance with the class might reveal such significance. The Amphibia have not been well studied by us, and we must leave them with the remark that they seem to bear out the view of structural decoration, as is seen in our English newts. Some are, however, modified out of all easy recognition. _Reptiles._ Among the reptiles, the snakes, Fig. 4, may be selected for illustration. Snakes are practically little more than elongated backbones, and are peculiar from the absence of limbs. The colouring matter does not reside so much in the scales as in the skin beneath, so that the sloughs do not illustrate the decoration. Hence, we might expect to find here a direct effect of morphological emphasis. The ornamentation of snakes is very similar throughout the class, both in water and land snakes; as may be seen by Sir W. Fayrer's work on Venomous Snakes. This ornamentation is of a vertebral pattern, placed along the dorsal surface, with cross lines, which may represent ribs. Where the ribs are wanting, as in the neck, the pattern changes, and we get merely longitudinal markings. In the Python, Fig. 4, there are, near the central line, numerous round spots, which apparently emphasize the neural processes. There are diagonal markings on some species which illustrate the development of colour-spots already alluded to. This snake-pattern is very singular and striking. The markings are fewer in number than the vertebræ, yet their true vertebral character is most obvious. In Snakes, again, we find the dorsal region is darker than the ventral. In the Lizards there are patches of colour placed axially, while each patch covers a number of scales. _Birds._ Birds have their whole economy modified to subserve their great functional peculiarity of flight. Immense muscles are required for the downward stroke of the wing, and to give attachment to these the sternum has a strongly developed keel. To bring the centre of gravity low, even the muscles which raise the wing are attached to the sternum, or breastbone, instead of to the dorsal region, as might be expected; and to brace the wings back a strong furculum--the merry-thought--is attached. The breast, then, is the seat of the greatest functional activity in birds, and, consequently, we find in a vast number of birds that the breast is the seat of vivid colour. As many birds are modified for protective purposes, the brightest species were selected to test our views, namely, the Birds of Paradise (Paradisea), Humming Birds (Trochilidæ), and Sun Birds (Nectarinidæ). In these birds it is clear that colour has had full sway, untramelled by any necessity for modification. Nothing is more striking than the mapping out of the surface of these birds into regions of colour, and these regions are always bounded by structural lines. Take, for instance, _Paradisea regia_. In this bird we find the following regions mapped in colour:-- Sternum brown. Clavicle yellow. Pelvis yellow. Band brown. Frontal bone black. Parietal bones green. Occiput yellow. A beautiful ruff emphasizes the pectoral muscles, and the tail appendages emphasize the share-like caudal vertebræ. If we turn to the other species of this genus, we find in _P. Papuana_ the claret breast suddenly change to green at the furculum; and similar changes take place in _P. speciosa_, while in _P. Wallacei_ and _Wilsoni_ this region is decorated with a wonderful apron of metallic green. The region of the furculum is equally well marked in the Toucans and Sun-birds. If now we observe the back of a bird, and view the skeleton with the wings at rest, we shall find it falls into three morphological tracts. First, the shoulder, or scapular track; second, the thigh, or pelvic; third, the tail, or caudal region; and in all these birds the several tracts are beautifully marked by sudden and contrasted change of colour. In _P. Wilsoni_ all the tracts are brilliant red, but they are separated by jet-black borders. In _Nectarinea chloropygia_ the scapular region is red, the pelvic yellow, and the caudal green. [Illustration: Plate X. SUN BIRDS.] In _P. Wilsoni_ we have a wonderful example of morphological emphasis. The head is bare of feathers, and coloured blue, except along the sutures of the skull, where lines of tiny black feathers map out the various bones. But morphological emphasis exists everywhere in birds. The wing-primaries, which attach to the hand, are frequently differently decorated from the secondaries, which feathers spring from the ulna; and the spur-feathers of the thumb, or pollux, are different in shape, and often in colour, from the others, as every fly-fisher who has used woodcock spur-feathers knows full well. The wing-coverts and tail-coverts are frequently mapped in colour; and the brain case is marked by coloured crests. The eye and ear are marked by lines and stripes; and so we might go on throughout the whole bird. We may remark that these very tracts are most valuable for the description and detection of species, and among ornithologists receive special names. Now, this distribution of colour is the more remarkable inasmuch as the feathers which cover the surface--the contour feathers--are not evenly distributed over the body, but are confined to certain limited tracts, as shown by Nitzsch; and though these tracts have a morphological origin, they are rendered quite subsidiary to the colouration, which affects the whole bird, and not these regions in particular. In fact, the colouration is dependent upon the regions on which the feathers lie, and not upon the area from which they spring. In other words, we seem to have in birds evidence of the direct action of underlying parts upon the surface. In more obscurely coloured birds, and those which seem to be evenly spotted, close examination shows that even here the decoration is not uniform, but the sizes and axes of the spots change slightly as they occupy different regions; as may be seen in Woodpeckers and Guinea-fowl. Although the same tone of colour may prevail throughout the plumage, as in the Argus Pheasant, great variety is obtained by the fusion of spots into stripes. A symmetrical effect is produced by the grouping of unsymmetrical feathers; as is so often seen in plants, where irregular branches and leaves produce a regular contour. Sometimes, especially on the breast and back, the feathers of one region seem to unite so as to form one tract, so far as colour is concerned. Thus, if in _P. Wilsoni_ the black borders of the dorsal regions were suppressed, all three areas would be of one hue. This seems to have been the case in the breast region of Humming Birds, where only the throat is highly coloured. In the Toucans the breast and throat regions are often marked with colour; but sometimes the hue is the same and the boundaries of the regions marked with a band of another colour; if this boundary band be increased, the regions do not seem so well shown, for the boundary becomes as broad as the area; yet, in all these cases the dependence upon regional decoration is manifest. No doubt the few uniformly coloured birds were derived from species which were once variously hued; the gradation of colour being lost in transmission. _Mammalia._ The axial decoration of the mammalia is very definite, and nearly all species have a dorsal tract marked with colour. The dark bands on the back of the horse, ox, and ass, are cases in point. In nearly every case the dorsal is darker than the ventral surface. If we take highly decorated species, that is, animals marked by alternate dark and light bands, or spots, such as the zebra, some deer, or the carnivora, we find, first, that the region of the spinal column is marked by a dark stripe (Figs. 9 & 16); secondly, that the regions of the appendages, or limbs, are differently marked; thirdly, that the flanks are striped, or spotted, along or between the regions of the lines of the ribs; fourthly, that the shoulder and hip regions are marked by curved lines; fifthly, that the pattern changes, and the direction of the lines, or spots, at the head, neck, and every joint of the limbs; and lastly, that the tips of the ears, nose, tail, and feet, and the eye are emphasized in colour. In spotted animals the greatest length of the spot is generally in the direction of the largest development of the skeleton. This morphological arrangement can be traced even when the decoration has been modified. Thus, in the carnivora we have the lion and puma, which live in open country, with plain skins, the tiger with stripes, an inhabitant of the jungle, and the leopard, ocelot, and jaguar with spots, inhabiting the forests. But the lion has a dark dorsal stripe, and the nose, etc., are emphasized in colour, and, moreover, the lion has probably lost its marked decoration for protective purposes, for young lions are spotted. The tiger's stripes start from the vertebræ, and still follow the lines of the ribs. In the tiger the decoration changes at the neck, and on the head, and the cervical vertebræ are often indicated by seven stripes. See Fig. 5. The markings over the vertebræ are not in continuous lines, as in many mammals, but form a series of vertebra-like spots. This plan of decoration is continued even on the tail, which is coloured more on the upper than on the lower surface. The spotted cats have their spot-groups arranged on the flanks in the direction of the ribs, at the shoulder and haunch in curves, at the neck in another pattern, on the back of the head in another; and the pattern changes as each limb-joint is reached, the spots decreasing in size as the distance is greater from the spine. See Figs. 9-15. There is in tigers, and the cat-tribe generally, a dark stripe over the dental nerve; and the zygoma, or cheek-bone, is often marked by colour. Even the supraorbital nerve is shown in the forehead, and there are dark rings round the ears. In dissecting an ocelot at the Zoological Gardens in 1883, a forked line was found immediately over the fork of the jugular vein. The colouration in these animals seems often to be determined by the great nerves and nerve-centres, and the change from spots, or stripes, to wrinkled lines on the head are strikingly suggestive of the convolutions of the brain, falling, as they do, into two lateral masses, corresponding with the cerebral hemispheres, separated by a straight line, corresponding with the median fissure. This is well shown in the ocelot, Fig. 15, and in many other cats. That the nerves can affect the skin has already been pointed out in Chapter VI., in the case of herpes, and that it can affect colour is shown in the Hindoo described in the same place. So marked, indeed, is this emphasis of sensitive parts that every hair of the movable feelers of a cat is shown by colour to be different in function from the hairs of the neck, or from the stationary mass of hair from which the single longer hair starts. In the Badger, Fig. 16, there is a bulge-shaped mass of coloured hair near the dorsal and lumbar regions, but it is axially placed. The shoulder and loins are well marked, although in a different manner from other species. In some species of deer, and other mammalia, there are white or coloured lines parallel to the spine, and also, as in birds, spots coalesce and form lines, and lines break up into spots. The great anteater has what at first seems an exceptional marking on the shoulder, but a careful examination of the fine specimen which died at the Zoological Gardens in 1883, we were struck with the abnormal character of the scapula, and we must remember that, as Wallace and Darwin have pointed out, all abnormal changes of the teeth are correlated with changes in the hair. Moreover the muscles of the shoulder region are so enormously developed as to render this otherwise defenceless animal so formidable that even the jaguar avoids an embrace which tightens to a death-grip. This region is, therefore, precisely the one we should expect to be strongly emphasized. This being the case, we have really no exception in this creature. Certain mammals are banded horizontally along their sides, thus losing most of their axial decoration, and this is well shown among the Viverridæ, and smaller rodents. Now, however conspicuous such animals may appear in collections, they are in their native haunts very difficult to detect. In all cases there is a marked dorsal line; and we suggest that the mature decoration is due to a suppression of the axial decoration for protective purposes, and a repetition of the dorsal decoration according to the law before enunciated. Indeed, in one case we were able to trace this pretty clearly, in the beautiful series of _Sus vittatus_ in the museum at Leyden. This pig, an inhabitant of Java, when mature is a dark brown animal, but in the very young state it is clearly marked in yellow and brown, with a dark dorsal stripe, and spots, taking the line of the ribs, and over the shoulder and thigh. As the animal grows older, the spots run into stripes, and it becomes as clearly banded horizontally as the viverridæ. Finally the dark bands increase in width, until they unite, and the creature becomes almost uniformly brown. We have not been able to see young specimens of the viverridæ, but a similar change may there occur, or it may have occurred in former times. We must also remember that these creatures are long-bodied, like the weasels, and hence they may have a tendency to produce long stripes. In the case of our domestic animals, especially the oxen, the decoration seems often to have become irregular, but even here the emphasis of the extremities is generally clearly made out, and that of the limbs can often be traced. In horses this is better shown, and dappled varieties often well illustrate the points. Most horses at some time show traces of spots. Sufficient has now been said to point out the laws we believe to have regulated the decoration of the animal kingdom. The full working out of the question must be left to the future, but it is hoped that a solid groundwork has been laid down. [Illustration: Plate XI. LEAVES.] CHAPTER XV. THE COLOURATION OF PLANTS. The general structure of plants is so simple in comparison with that of animals that our remarks upon this sub-kingdom need only be short. With regard to leaves, especially such as are brightly coloured, like the Begonias, Caladiums, Coleus, and Anoechtochilus, Plate XI., the colour follows pretty closely the lines of structure. We have border decoration, marking out the vein-pattern of the border; the veins are frequently the seat of vivid colour, and when decolouration takes place, as in variegated plants, we find it running along the interspaces of the veins. These facts are too patent to need much illustration; for our zonale geraniums, ribbon grasses, and beautiful-leaved plants generally, are now so common that everyone knows their character. When decay sets in, and oxidation gives rise to the vivid hues of autumn, we find the tints taking structural lines, as is well shown in dying vine and horse-chestnut leaves, Fig. 1, Plate XI. This shows us that there is a structural possibility of acquiring regional colouration. We must remember, too, that the negative colouration of these dying leaves is of very much the same character as the positive colouration of flowers, for flowers are modified leaves, and their hues are due to the oxidation of the valuable chlorophyll. In leaves the tendency of spots to elongate in the direction of the leaf is very marked, as may be well seen in Begonia. Fig. 17, drawn to illustrate another point, shows this partly. When leaves are unsymmetrical, like the begonias, the pattern is unsymmetrical also. Among parallel veined leaves we find parallel decoration. Thus, in the _Calatheas_ we have dark marks running along the veins. In _Dracæna ferrea_ we have a dark green leaf, with a red border and tip, the red running downwards along the veins. This action may be continued until the leaf is all red except the mid-rib, which remains green. In long net-veined leaves we may cite _Pavetta Borbonica_, whose dark green blade has a crimson mid-rib. Of unsymmetrical leaves those in the plate may suffice. When we come to flowers, the same general law prevails, and is generally more marked in wild than in cultivated forms, which have been much, and to some extent unnaturally, modified. Broadly speaking, when a flower is regular the decoration is alike on all the parts; the petals are alike in size, the decoration is similar in each, but where they differ in size the decoration changes. Thus, in _Pelargoniums_ we may find all five petals alike, or the two upper petals may be longer or shorter than the lower three. In the first case each is coloured similarly, in the other the colour pattern varies with the size of the petal. The same may be seen in Rhododendron. Where the petals are united the same law holds good. In regular flowers, like the lilies, the colouration is equal. In irregular flowers, like the snapdragon and foxglove, the decoration is irregular. In Gloxinia the petals may be either regular or irregular, and the decoration changes in concert. A very instructive case was noticed by one of us in _Lamium galeobdolon_, or yellow Archangel. This plant is normally a labiate with the usual irregular corolla, but we have found it regular, and in this instance the normal irregular decoration was changed to a regular pattern on each petal. In gamopetalous flowers the line of junction of the petals is frequently marked with colour, and we know of no case in which a pattern runs deliberately across this structure line, though a blotch may spread from it. When we remember that flowers are absolutely the result of the efforts of plants to secure the fertilizing attention of insects, and that they are supreme efforts, put forth at the expense of a great deal of vegetable energy--that they are sacrifices to the necessity for offspring--it does strike us forcibly when we see that even under these circumstances the great law of structural decoration has to be adhered to. [Illustration: Plate XII. FLOWERS.] CHAPTER XVI. CONCLUSIONS. We have now, more or less fully, examined into the system of colouration in the living world, and have drawn certain inferences from the facts observed. It appears that colouration began--perhaps as a product of digestion--by the application of pigment to the organs of transparent creatures. Supposing that evolution be true--and, if we may not accept this theory there is no use in induction whatever--it must follow that even the highest animals have in the past been transparent objects. This was admirably illustrated by Prof. Ray Lankester in a lecture on the development of the eyes of certain animals, before the British Association meeting at Sheffield, in which it was shown that the eyes commenced below the surface, and were useful even then, for its "body was full of light." Granting this, it follows that the fundamental law of decoration is a structural one. Assuming, as we do, that memory has played a most important part in evolution, it follows that all living matter has a profound experience in decorating its organs--it is knowledge just as anciently acquired, and as perfectly, as the power of digestion. This colour was produced under the influence of light--so it is even in opaque animals. With a knowledge so far reaching, we might expect that even in opaque animals the colouring would still follow structural lines, and there should still be traces of this, more or less distinct. This is precisely what we do find; and, moreover, we sometimes get a very fair drawing of the important hidden parts, even where least expected, as in a cat's head, a snake's body, a dragon-fly's thorax, a spider's abdomen, a bird's skull. But if animals thus learned to paint themselves in definite patterns, we might expect that when called upon to decorate _for the sake of beauty_ certain parts not structurally emphatic, they would adopt well-known patterns, and hence arose the law of repetition. But with wider experience came greater powers, and the necessity for protection arising, the well-known patterns were enlarged, till an uniform tint is produced, as in the Java pig, or some repeated at the expense of others, as in the civets. But so ingrained is the tendency to structural decoration that even where modification has reached its highest level, as in the leaf-butterflies, some trace of the plan that the new pattern was founded on is recognisable, just as the rectangular basis can be traced in the arabesque ornaments of the Alhambra. The pointing out of this great fact has seemed to us a useful addition to the great law of evolution. It supplements it; it gives a reason why. Could he who first saw these points have read these final pages, it would have lightened the responsibility of the one upon whom the completion of the work has fallen. But he died when the work was nearly finished. The investigation is of necessity incomplete, but nothing bears such misstatements as truth, and though specialists may demur to certain points, the fundamental arguments will probably remain intact. [Illustration: FINIS.] GLOSSARY. ACETABULA. Lat. _acetabulum_, a little vessel. Sucking discs as on the tentacles of _Physalia_. AORTA. Gr. The chief artery. CEPHALOTHORAX. Gr. _kephale_, head; _thorax_, chest. The anterior division of the body in Crustacea and Arachnida, composed of the amalgamated segments of the head and thorax. CILIA. Lat. _cilium_, an eyelash. Microscopic filaments having the power of vibratory movement. C[OE]NOSARC. Gr. _Koinos_, common; _sarx_, flesh. The common stem uniting the separate animals of compound hydrozoa, &c. CORPUSCLE. Lat. _corpusculum_, a little body. Small coloured bodies, as in the endoderm of hydra, p. 59. DIFFERENTIATED. Modified into definite organs, or parts; as distinct from structureless protoplasm. ECTODERM. Gr. _ektos_, outside; _derma_, skin. The internal layer or skin of the Coelenterata. EFFERENT. Lat. _effero_, to carry out. A vessel which carries fluids out of the body is said to be efferent. ENDODERM. Gr. _endon_, within; _derma_, skin. The inner layer or skin of Coelenterata. _See_ ECTODERM. ENDOSARC. Gr. _endon_, within; _sarx_, flesh. The inner layer of sponges. EPIDERMAL. Gr. _epi_, upon; _derma_, skin. Relating to the outer layer of skin. As applied to colour, surface pigment as distinct from hypodermal, or deep-seated colour. GASTROVASCULAR CANAL. Gr. _gaster_, belly; Lat. _vasculum_, a little vessel. The canals or vessels in the umbrella (_manubrium_) of hydrozoa. GONIDIA. Gr. _gonos_, offspring; _oidos_, like. Reproductive bodies in Sea-anemones. HYDRANTH. Gr. _hudor_, water; _anthos_, flower. The bodies or polypes of hydroids which exercise nutritive functions. They were called polypites by Huxley. HYDROPHYLLIA. Gr. _hudor_ and _phyllon_, a leaf. Leaf-like organs protecting the polypites of hydrozoa. HYDROSOMA. Gr. _hudor_ and _soma_, body. The entire organism of a hydrozöon. HYPODERMAL. Gr. _hypo_, beneath; _derma_, skin. In colour, such as lies beneath the surface, as distinct from epidermal. LYTHOCYSTS. Gr. _lythos_, stone, _kystis_, a bladder. Sense organs in hydroids, consisting of transparent capsules inclosing round transparent concretions. MANUBRIUM. Lat. a handle. The central polypite suspended from the interior of the umbrella of hydroids. MESODERM. Gr. _mesos_, intermediate; _derma_, skin. The middle layer of sponges, &c. MESOTHORAX. Gr. _mesos_ and _thorax_. The middle division of the thorax in insects, carrying the second pair of legs. PERISTOME. Gr. _peri_, about; _stoma_, a mouth. The area surrounding the mouth in sea-anemones. PNEUMATOCYST. Gr. _pneuma_, air; _kystis_ a bladder. The air-sac contained in the pneumatophore, see below. PNEUMATOPHORE. Gr. _pneuma_; _phero_, to carry. The float of certain hydrozoa (_Physophoridæ_.) POLYPITE. Gr. _polus_, many; _pous_, foot. The separate animal or zöoid of a hydrozöon. _See_ HYDRANTH. PROTOPLASM. Gr. _protos_, first; _plasso_, I mould. The jelly-like matter which forms the basis of all tissues. It is identical with the _sarcode_ or flesh of protozoa. SAC. Lat. _saccus_, a bag, a small cell. SARCODE. Gr. _sarx_, flesh; _eidos_, form. The protoplasm of protozoa, &c., which see. SPADIX. Lat. _spadix_, a broken palm branch. In zoology a hollow process occupying the axis of the generative buds of hydrozoa. SPOROSAC. Gr. _spora_, a seed, and _sac_. The body containing the ova of hydrozoa. SOMATIC FLUID. Gr. _soma_, the body. The fluid which contains digested food, and taking the place of blood, circulates through the body of hydrozoa. TENTACLES. Lat. _tentaculus_, a little arm. The arms or prehensile organs of Sea-anemones, &c. THREAD CELLS. Cells containing an extensible microscopic thread, possessing stinging properties, common among the _Coelenterata_. THORAX. Gr. a breastplate. The chest. INDEX. PAGE _Abyla_ 63 _Acanthometra_ 57 _Actinea Cari_, varieties of 66 ---- _mesembryanthemum_ 54 _Acanthostratus_ 57 _Actinozoa_ 51, 52 _Æschna_ 77 _Agalma breve_ 64 _Agrion puella_ 77 _Aiptasia mutabilis_ 67 Albinism in butterflies 79 _Alcyonariæ_ 54 Allman, Prof., on Hydroids 59, 60 "Alps and Sanctuaries" quoted 36 _Amoeba_ 56 Amphibia 89 _Amphilonche_ 57 Andres, Dr., on Hydrozoa 65 _Anemonia sulcata_ 67 Anemones, Sea 52 Animals and Plants, origin of 36 ---- classification of 49 _Anoechtochilus_ 95 Anteater 93 _Anthocaris belemia_ 41 ---- _belia_ 42 ---- _cardamines_ 41, 42 ---- _euphemoides_ 43 ---- _eupheno_ 42 ---- _simplonia_ 42 _Apatura iris_ 46 ---- larvæ of 81 _Arachnida_ 82 _Araschnia Levana_ 43, 45 ---- _porima_ 43, 45, 79 ---- _prorsa_ 43, 45 _Arctia_ 69 _Arachnocorys_ 57 Argus Pheasant 6, 39, 91 _Argynnis Lathonia_ 69 Armadillo 84 Arthropoda, colouration of 85 Ascidians 35 Automatic habits 9 _Arthorybia rosacea_ 64 Badger 93 _Begonia_ 95 Birds, colouration of 89 ---- of Paradise 90 _Biston betularia_ 79 Black and White, production of 28 Blackwell, J., on British Spiders 82 _Blatta_ 14 Bougainvillea 16 Bower Birds 5 _Bunodes crassicornis_ 54 ---- _gemmaceus_, varieties of 66 ---- _rigidus_ 67 Burnet Moths 5, 69 Butler S., on inherited memory 9, 10, 11, 15 ---- on origin of animals and plants 36 Butterflies, albinism in 79 ---- classification of 74 ---- sense organs of 30 ---- varieties of 77 _Caladium_ 95 _Calathea_ 96 _Calycophoridæ_ 63 _Carcinus moenas_ 4 _Carpocanium_ 57 Cats, colouration of 17, 92 ---- recognising form 32 Caterpillars, colours of 81 ---- spiracular markings 22 _Cephalopoda_ 87 _Cerithium_ 86 Char 88 Chlorophyll in hydra 59 Cicada 77 _Cladococeus_ 57 Classification of animals 49 ---- of butterflies 74 _Coelenterata_ 20 ---- colouration in 51 _Coelodendrum_ 57 _Coenonympha davus_ 79 ---- _pamphilus_ 79 Coenosarc 55 _Coleus_ 95 Colour and form 32 ---- and transparency 53 ---- epidermal 72 ---- following structure 83, 91 ---- hypodermal 53, 73 ---- nature of 25 ---- of day-and-night flying insects 47, 69 ---- opaque 53 ---- perception of 5, 23, 25, 32 ---- uniform, why rare 28 Colouration 3 ---- laws of 21, 51 ---- of desert animals 4 ---- of arthropoda 85 ---- of coelenterata 51, 59 ---- of insects 68 ---- of invertebrata 49 ---- of molluscs 85 ---- of plants 94 ---- of protozoa 51 ---- of spiders 82 ---- of vertebrata 88 ---- sexual 5 ---- varieties of 3 Contour feathers 91 _Conus_ 86 _Coppinia arcta_ 60 _Corallium rubrum_ 54 Corals 54 Correlation of teeth and hair 94 _Corynida_ 52 Cowries 86 Crab, shore 4 Croton 46 Cuttle-fishes 19, 87 _Cyllo leda_ 45 _Cynthia cardui_ 68 _Cypræa_ 86 _Cyrtidosphæra_ 57 Dallas, W. S., on butterflies 71 _Danais_ 72 ---- niavius 30, 80 Darwin, C. 1, 2, 5, 9, 11, 14, 45, 47, 94 Darwin, Dr. E., cited 37 Deer 92 Deformity, antipathy to 32 _Deilephila Euphorbiæ_ 81 ---- _galii_ 81 Descent with modification 1 Desert animals, colour of 4 _Dictyoceras_ 57 _Dictyophimus_ 57 _Diphyes_ 63 Disease, markings in 39, 44 Distant, W. L., on Malayan butterflies 80 Distinctive Colouration 3 Dogs recognising portraits 32 _Dracæna ferrea_ 96 Elephant, increase of 2 Engelmann on _Euglena_ 34 Epidermal colour 72 _Eresus cinnabarinus_ 82 _Eucecryphalus_ 57 _Eucrytidium_ 57 _Euglena viridis_ 34 Evolution 1-98 Eye-spots 45, 47 Fayrer, Sir W., on snakes 89 Feathers 91 Fishes, colours of 88 Foal, stripes on 46 _Foraminiferæ_ 56 Fuller, W. J., on aquatic larvæ 77 Gamopetalous flowers 96 Gegenbaur's "Comparative Anatomy" cited 82 General colouration 3 _Gloxinia_ 96 _Gomphina_ 77 _Gonepteryx Cleopatra_ 41, 42 ---- _rhamni_ 40, 42 Gonophores 52 _Grapta interrogationis_ 79 _Gregarinidæ_ 56 Guinea-fowl 91 Haagen, Dr., on colour 53, 72 Habits 8 Haeckel, Prof., on _Radiolaria_ 57 Hair and teeth, correlation of 94 Hawk moths 69 Hebrides, colours of insects in 80 Heredity 2 Herpes 40, 93 Heteromorphism 78 Higgins, Rev. H. H. 39 Hoverer flies 84 Humming birds 90, 92 Hutchinson, Mr., on herpes 40 Huxley, Prof., on hydrozoa 63 _Hydra viridis_ 59 _Hydrida_ 59 Hydrozoa 51, 59 Hypodermal colour 53, 72 Identity of offspring and parent 11 Identity, personal 10 Inherited memory 8 Insects, colour in 68, 75 John Dory 89 _Kallima inachus_ 30, 80 Kentish Glory Moth 30 _Lamium galeobdolon_ 96 Lankester, Prof. Ray, on development of eyes 97 Large Copper Butterfly 68 Larvæ, colours of 45, 81 Laws of emphasis 21 ---- exposure 18 ---- heredity 2 ---- multiplication 2 ---- repetition 21, 22 ---- structure 18 ---- variation 2 Leaf-butterfly 16, 30 Leidy, Prof., on _Rhizopoda_ 56 Leopard 17, 92 _Leucophasia diniensis_ 41 ---- _sinapis_ 41 "Life and Habit" cited 9 Light, reflected 26 ---- sensibility to 33 ---- waves 25 _Liminitis sibilla_ 43 Lion 17, 92 ---- stripes on young 46 Lithocysts of hydroids 62 _Lucernaria auricula_ 65 _Lycæna dispar_ 68 _Lycosa agretyca_ 83 ---- _allodroma_ 83 ---- _andrenivora_ 83 ---- _cambria_ 84 ---- _campestris_ 83 ---- _latitans_ 84 ---- _picta_ 84 ---- _piratica_ 84 ---- _rapax_ 83 Mackerel 88 _Mactra_ 86 ---- _stultorum_ 87 Madrepores 54 Mammalia, colouration in 92 _Margarita catenata_ 87 Measles 39 Medusæ 52, 65 Melanism in insects 79 Meldola, Prof. R., on Melanism 79 _Melitæa artemis_ 43 ---- _athalia_ 43 Mimicry 3, 4 Mollusca 21 ---- colouration in 85 Monstrosities, antipathy to 32 _Morphinæ_ 72 _Morpho_ 4 _Murex_ 86 Muscles of insects 71 _Nectarinea chloropygea_ 90 Newman, Mr., on varieties of butterflies 77 Newts 89 Nitzsch on feather-tracts 91 Nudibranchs 85 _Nymphalidæ_ 74 Oak Egger Moth 30 Ocelli 47 Ocelot 93 _Oliva_ 86 Opaque colouring 53 Organ-pipe coral 54 Origin of animals and plants 36 ---- -- species 1 Orthopoecilism 78 Oxen 94 Painted Lady Butterfly 68 Pangenesis 12 _Papilio Ajax_ 79 ---- _machaon_ 43, 68, 76, 78 ---- ---- larva of 81 ---- _merope_ 30, 76, 80 ---- _nireus_ 14 ---- _podalirius_ 43 _Paradisea Papuana_ 90 ---- _regia_ 90 ---- _speciosa_ 90 ---- _Wallacei_ 90 ---- _Wilsoni_ 90, 91 _Pavetta Borbonica_ 96 _Pecten_ 86 Pelargonium 96 Perch 88 Personal identity 10 _Physalia_ 63 ---- _caravilla_ 64 ---- _pelagica_ 64 ---- _utriculus_ 64 _Physophoridæ_ 63 Plaice 88 Plants and animals, origin of 36 ---- colour in 95 Pneumatophores 63 Portuguese Man o' War 63 Protective resemblance 3 _Protista_ 34 Protozoa 20 ---- colouration in 51, 56 Python 89 _Radiolaria_ 57 Rarity of uniform colour 28 Ray Lankester, Prof., on Ascidians 35 Red Admiral Butterfly 29 Repetition, effects of 8 Reptilia, colouration in 89 Resemblance, Protective 3 _Rhizophora filiformis_ 64 _Rhizopoda_ 56 Rhododendron 96 Ringlet Butterflies, eye-spots of 47 Roach 88 Romanes, Prof., cited 33, 34 _Satyrus hyperanthus_ 79 Scales of insects, structure of 72 Scarlet Tiger Moth 5 Sea anemones 52 ---- ---- colours of 67 Seasonal dimorphism 70 Sea squirts 35 _Segestria senoculata_ 83 Selection, sexual 5 Self-coloured flowers 28 Sense organs of Butterflies 30 _Sertularidæ_ 63 Sexual colours 4 ---- selection 5 ---- dimorphism 70 Shell, Structure of 85 Shore Crab 4 Simple variation in Butterflies 77 _Siphonophora_ 63 Small pox 39 Snakes, patterns of 89 Sollas, Prof., on Sponges 58 Soles 88 _Sparassus smaragdulus_ 82 Species, origin of 1 _Sphæronectes_ 63 _Sphingidæ_ 45, 69 Spiders, structure and colour of 82 Spiracles of larvæ 22 _Spondylus_ 86 Sponges 57 _Spongida_ 57 _Spongocyclia_ 57 Spots and Stripes 39 _Stephanomia amphitridis_ 63 Struggle for existence 2 Sun-birds 90 _Sus vittatus_ 46, 94 Sutton, Mr. Bland, on Herpes 40 Swallow-tailed Butterflies 68 _Syncoryne pulchella_ 62 Systems of colouration 51 Teeth and Hair, correlation of 94 _Thomisus cinereus_ 82 ---- _floricolens_ 82 _Thomisus luctuosus_ 84 ---- _trux_ 82 Thrush, increase of 2 Tiger 17, 92 ---- Moths 69 _Tipula_ 33 Toucans 90, 92 Transparency and colour 53 _Trigonia_ 86 _Tubipora musica_ 54 _Tubularida_ 59 Tylor, A., on Specific change 10 _Vanessa Antiopa_ 76 ---- _atalanta_ 29, 43, 69 ---- _urticæ_ 77 Variation in insects 70 ---- law of 2 ---- simple, in Butterflies 77 _Velella_ 52, 65 Vertebrata, colouration of 88 _Viverridæ_ 94 Wallace, A. R., on sexual selection 5, 6, 14, 15 ---- on colour 29 ---- on abnormal structures 94 Warning colours 4 Wasps 84 Weir, J. Jenner, on variation in insects 78 Weismann, Dr., on Caterpillars 81 Wing of Butterfly, typical 70 ---- patterns of 76 Woodpecker 91 Yellow Archangel 96 Zebra 92 _Zygæna_ 69 [Illustration] [Illustration: Fig. 4.--PYTHON. _Showing vertebra-like markings._] [Illustration: Fig. 5.--TIGER. _The pattern changes at the points lettered._] [Illustration: Fig. 6.--TIGER.] [Illustration: Fig. 7.--TIGER. _Showing supra-orbital nerve mark._] [Illustration: Fig. 8.--TIGER. _Showing cerebral markings, and markings over nerves near the eyes._] [Illustration: Fig. 9.--LEOPARD. _The pattern changes at the points lettered._] [Illustration: Fig. 10.--LEOPARD. _The pattern changes at the points lettered._] [Illustration: Figs. 11, 12.--LEOPARDS' HEADS.] [Illustration: Fig. 13.--LYNX. _The colour changes at the points lettered._] [Illustration: Fig. 14.--LYNX.] [Illustration: Fig. 15.--OCELOT. _Showing changes of pattern at the joints, &c., with enlargement of head-pattern._] [Illustration: Fig. 16.--BADGER. _The colour changes at the points lettered._] [Illustration: Fig. 17.--BEGONIA LEAF.] Transcriber's Notes: Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error. "Haeckel" and "Hæckel" were used interchangeably and have been standardized to "Haeckel". Image tags interrupting paragraphs have been moved. Footnotes have been moved to end of chapters. 
8729	----	[Illustration: DANCING MICE--SNIFFING AND EATING.] THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR SERIES. VOLUME I THE DANCING MOUSE A Study in Animal Behavior BY ROBERT M. YERKES, Ph.D. INSTRUCTOR IN COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY The Cartwright Prize of the Alumni Association of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, was awarded, in 1907, for an Essay which comprised the first twelve chapters of this volume. 1907 IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER PREFACE This book is the direct result of what, at the time of its occurrence, seemed to be an unimportant incident in the course of my scientific work-- the presentation of a pair of dancing mice to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. My interest in the peculiarities of behavior which the creatures exhibited, as I watched them casually from day to day, soon became experiment-impelling, and almost before I realized it, I was in the midst of an investigation of their senses and intelligence. The longer I observed and experimented with them, the more numerous became the problems which the dancers presented to me for solution. From a study of the senses of hearing and sight I was led to investigate, in turn, the various forms of activity of which the mice are capable; the ways in which they learn to react adaptively to new or novel situations; the facility with which they acquire habits; the duration of habits; the roles of the various senses in the acquisition and performance of certain habitual acts; the efficiency of different methods of training; and the inheritance of racial and individually acquired forms of behavior. In the course of my experimental work I discovered, much to my surprise, that no accurate and detailed account of this curiously interesting animal existed in the English language, and that in no other language were all the facts concerning it available in a single book. This fact, in connection with my appreciation of the exceptional value of the dancer as a pet and as material for the scientific study of animal behavior, has led me to supplement the results of my own observation by presenting in this little book a brief and not too highly technical description of the general characteristics and history of the dancer. The purposes which I have had in mind as I planned and wrote the book are three: first, to present directly, clearly, and briefly the results of my investigation; second, to give as complete an account of the dancing mouse as a thorough study of the literature on the animal and long-continued observation on my own part should make possible; third, to provide a supplementary text-book on mammalian behavior and on methods of studying animal behavior for use in connection with courses in Comparative Psychology, Comparative Physiology, and Animal Behavior. It is my conviction that the scientific study of animal behavior and of animal mind can be furthered more just at present by intensive special investigations than by extensive general books. Methods of research in this field are few and surprisingly crude, for the majority of investigators have been more deeply interested in getting results than in perfecting methods. In writing this account of the dancing mouse I have attempted to lay as much stress upon the development of my methods of work as upon the results which the methods yielded. In fact, I have used the dancer as a means of exhibiting a variety of methods by which the behavior and intelligence of animals may be studied. As it happens the dancer is an ideal subject for the experimental study of many of the problems of animal behavior. It is small, easily cared for, readily tamed, harmless, incessantly active, and it lends itself satisfactorily to a large number of experimental situations. For laboratory courses in Comparative Psychology or Comparative Physiology it well might hold the place which the frog now holds in courses in Comparative Anatomy. Gratefully, and with this expression of my thanks, I acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Hugo Münsterberg for placing at my command the resources of the Harvard Psychological Laboratory and for advice and encouragement throughout my investigation; to Professor Edwin B. Holt for valuable assistance in more ways than I can mention; to Professor Wallace C. Sabine for generous aid in connection with the experiments on hearing; to Professor Theobald Smith for the examination of pathological dancers; to Miss Mary C. Dickerson for the photographs of dancing mice which are reproduced in the frontispiece; to Mr. Frank Ashmore for additional photographs which I have been unable to use in this volume; to Mr. C. H. Toll for the drawings for Figures 14 and 20; to Doctors H. W. Rand and C. S. Berry for valuable suggestions on the basis of a critical reading of the proof sheets; and to my wife, Ada Watterson Yerkes, for constant aid throughout the experimental work and in the preparation of this volume. R. M. Y. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, August, 1907. CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LITERATURE ON THE DANCING MOUSE CHAPTER I CHARACTERISTICS, ORIGIN, AND HISTORY Peculiarities of the dancing mouse--Markings and method of keeping record of individuals--The dancer in China and Japan (Kishi, Mitsukuri, Hatai)-- Theories concerning the origin of the race: selectional breeding; the inheritance of an acquired character; mutation, inheritance, and selectional breeding; pathological changes; natural selection--Instances of the occurrence of dancers among other kinds of mice--Results of crossing dancer with other kinds of mice. CHAPTER II FEEDING, BREEDING, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG Methods of keeping and caring for dancers--Cages, nest-boxes, and materials for nest--Cleansing cages--Food supply and feeding--Importance of cleanliness, warmth, and pure food--Relations of males and females, fighting--The young, number in a litter--Care of young--Course of development--Comparison of young of dancer with young of common mouse-- Diary account of the course of development of a typical litter of dancers. CHAPTER III BEHAVIOR: DANCE MOVEMENTS Dancing--Restlessness and excitability--Significance of restlessness-- Forms of dance: whirling, circling, and figure-eights--Direction of whirling and circling: right whirlers, left whirlers, and mixed whirlers-- Sex differences in dancing--Time and periodicity of dancing--Influence of light on activity--Necessity for prolonged observation of behavior. CHAPTER IV BEHAVIOR: EQUILIBRATION AND DIZZINESS Muscular coordination--Statements of Cyon and Zoth concerning behavior-- Control of movements, orientation, equilibration, movement on inclined surfaces, climbing--The tracks of the dancer--Absence of visual dizziness--Comparison of the behavior of the dancer with that of the common mouse when they are rotated in a cyclostat--Behavior of blinded dancers (Cyon, Alexander and Kreidl, Kishi)--Cyon's two types of dancer-- Phenomena of behavior for which structural bases are sought: dance movements; lack of response to sounds; deficiency in equilibrational ability; lack of visual and rotational dizziness. CHAPTER V STRUCTURAL PECULIARITIES AND BEHAVIOR The functions of the ear--Structure of the ear of the dancer as described by Rawitz, by Panse, by Baginsky, by Alexander and Kreidl, and by Kishi-- Cyon's theory of the relation of the semicircular canals to space perception--Condition of the auditory organs--Condition of the equilibrational organs--Condition of the sound-transmitting organs--The bearing of the results of anatomical investigations upon the facts of behavior. CHAPTER VI THE SENSE OF HEARING Experiments on hearing in the dancer made by Rawitz, by Panse, by Cyon, by Alexander and Kreidl, by Zoth, and by Kishi--Hearing and the voice-- Methods of testing sensitiveness to sounds--Results of tests with adults-- Importance of indirect method of experimentation--Results of tests with young--The period of auditory sensitiveness--Individual differences. CHAPTER VII THE SENSE OF SIGHT: BRIGHTNESS VISION What is known concerning sight in the dancer--Brightness vision and color vision--Methods of testing brightness vision, the visual discrimination apparatus--Motives for discrimination and choice--Punishment versus reward as an incentive in animal experiments--Hunger as an incentive--An electric stimulus as an incentive--Conditions for brightness vision tests-- White-black vision--Evidence of preference--Check experiments--Conclusion. CHAPTER VIII THE SENSE OF SIGHT: BRIGHTNESS VISION (_Continued_) The delicacy of brightness discrimination--Methods of testing the dancer's ability to detect slight differences in brightness--Results of tests with gray papers--Relation of intensity of visual stimuli to the threshold of discrimination--Weber's law apparatus and method of experimentation-- Results of Weber's law tests--Practice effects, the training of vision-- Description of the behavior of the dancer in the discrimination box experiments--Modes of choice: by affirmation; by negation; by comparison-- Evidence of indiscriminable visual conditions. CHAPTER IX THE SENSE OF SIGHT: COLOR VISION Does the dancer see colors?--The food-box method of testing color vision-- Waugh's food-box method--Results of tests--Tests by the use of colored papers in the visual discrimination box--Yellow-red vision--Blue-orange vision--Brightness vision _versus_ color vision--Brightness check tests--Green-blue vision--Violet-red vision--Conclusions. CHAPTER X THE SENSE OF SIGHT: COLOR VISION (_Continued_) The use of color filters--Testing color vision by the use of transmitted light--Green-blue vision--Green-red vision--Blue-red vision--Stimulating value of different portions of the spectrum--Does red appear darker to the dancer than to us?--Conclusions concerning color vision--Structure of the retina of the dancer and its significance. CHAPTER XI THE ROLE OF SIGHT IN THE DAILY LIFE OF THE DANCER. Sight and general behavior--Behavior of blinded dancers--Experimental tests of ability to perceive form--Visual guidance in mazes--Following labyrinth paths in the dark--The relative importance of visual, olfactory, and kinaesthetic stimuli--Conditions for the acquisition of a motor habit--Conditions for the execution of an habitual act. CHAPTER XII EDUCABILITY: METHODS OF LEARNING The modifiability of behavior--Educational value of experimental studies of modifiability--Methods: the problem method; the labyrinth method; the discrimination method--Relation of method to characteristics of animal-- Simple test of the docility of the dancer--Lack of imitative tendency-- Persistence of useless acts--Manner of profiting by experience--Individual differences in initiative. CHAPTER XIII HABIT FORMATION: THE LABYRINTH HABIT The labyrinth method--Problems--Preliminary tests--Comparison of the behavior of the dancer in a maze with that of the common mouse--Evolution of a labyrinth method--Records of time and records of errors--Simple and effective method of recording the path--Curves of habit formation--Regular and irregular labyrinths--Points for a standard labyrinth--Values and defects of the labyrinth method. CHAPTER XIV HABIT FORMATION: THE DISCRIMINATION METHOD Quantitative _versus_ qualitative results--Motives--Precautions-- Preference--Results of systematic habit-forming experiments--Curves of habit formation--Meaning of irregularity in curve--Individual differences--Comparison of curves for discrimination habits with those for labyrinth habits--Averages--The index of modifiability as a measure of docility--Reliability of the index. CHAPTER XV THE EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING METHODS Importance of measuring the efficiency of educational methods--Rapidity of learning and permanency of modifications wrought by training--Results of a study of the efficiency of discrimination methods--Comparison by means of indices of modifiability--Number of tests per series versus number of series--Efficiency as measured by memory tests. CHAPTER XVI THE DURATION OF HABITS: MEMORY AND RE-LEARNING Measures of the permanency of modifications in behavior--The duration of brightness and color discrimination habits--The relation of learning to re-learning--Can a habit which has been lost completely be re-acquired with greater facility than it was originally acquired?--Relation of special training to general efficiency--Does the training in one form of labyrinth aid the dancer in acquiring other labyrinth habits? CHAPTER XVII INDIVIDUAL, AGE, AND SEX DIFFERENCES IN BEHAVIOR Individual peculiarities in sensitiveness, docility, and initiative--The relation of docility to age--The individual result and the average--How averages conceal facts--Sex differences in docility and initiative-- Individual differences of motor capacity which seem to indicate varieties--Is the dancer pathological? CHAPTER XVIII THE INHERITANCE OF FORMS OF BEHAVIOR Characteristics of the race--Inheritance of the tendency to whirl in a particular way--Tests of the inheritance of individually acquired forms of behavior. INDEX ILLUSTRATIONS Dancing Mice--sniffing and eating _Frontispiece_ FIGURE 1. Color patterns of dancers. Record blanks 2. Double cage, with nest-boxes and water dishes 3. Double cages in frame 4. Photographs of dancers climbing (After Zoth) 5. Tracks of common mouse (After Alexander and Kreidl) 6. Tracks of dancer (After Alexander and Kreidl) 7. The inner ear of the rabbit (Retzius) 8. The membranous labyrinth of the ear of the dancer (After Rawitz) 9. Same 10. Same it. Model of the ear of the dancer (After Baginsky) 12. Ear of the dancer (After Kishi) 13. Ear of the dancer (After Kishi) 14. Discrimination box 15. Ground plan of discrimination box 16. Nendel's gray papers 17. Weber's law apparatus 18. Food-box apparatus 19. Waugh's food-box apparatus 20. Color discrimination apparatus 21. Ground plan of color discrimination apparatus 22. Cards for form discrimination 23. Labyrinth B 24. Labyrinth B on electric wires 25. Labyrinth A 26. Curves of habit formation for labyrinth B 27. Plan of labyrinth C, and path records 28. Labyrinth D 29. Curve of learning for white-black discrimination, twenty individuals 30. Curve of learning for white-black discrimination, thirty individuals 31. Curve of habit formation for labyrinth D 32. Curves of learning and re-learning 33. Plasticity curves LITERATURE ON THE DANCING MOUSE 1. ALEXANDER, G. UND KREIDL, A. "Zur Physiologie des Labyrinths der Tanzmaus." _Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie_, Bd. 82: 541-552. 1900. 2. ALEXANDER, G. UND KREIDL, A. "Anatomisch-physiologische Studien über das Ohrlabyrinth der Tanzmaus." II Mittheilung. _Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie_. Bd. 88: 509-563. 1902. 3. ALEXANDER, G. UND KREIDL, A. "Anatomisch-physiologische Studien über das Ohrlabyrinth der Tanzmaus." III Mittheilung. _Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie_, Bd. 88: 564-574. 1902. 4. BAGINSKY, B. "Zur Frage über die Zahl der Bogengänge bei japanischen Tanzmäusen." _Centralblatt für Physiologie_, Bd. 16: 2-4. 1902. 5. BATESON, W. "The present state of knowledge of colour-heredity in mice and rats." _Proceedings of the Zoölogical Society of London_, Vol. 2: 71-99. 1903. 6. BREHM, A. E. "Tierleben." Dritte Auflage. Saugetiere, Bd. 2: 513-514. 1890. 7. BREHM, A. E. "Life of Animals." Translated from the third German edition of the "Tierleben" by G. R. Schmidtlein. Mammalia, p. 338. Marquis, Chicago. 1895. 8. CYON, E. DE. "Le sens de l'espace chez les souris dansantes japonaises." _Cinquantenaire de la Société de Biologie_ (Volume jubilaire). p. 544-546. Paris. 1899. 9. CYON, E. VON. "Ohrlabyrinth, Raumsinn und Orientirung." _Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie_, Bd. 79: 211-302. 1900. 10. CYON, E. DE. "Presentation de souris dansantes japonaises." _Comptes rendus du XIII Congrès International de Paris, Section de physiologie_, p. 160-161. 1900. 11. CYON, E. VON. "Beiträge zur Physiologie des Raumsinns." I Theil. "Neue Beobachtungen an den japanischen Tanzmäusen." _Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie_, Bd. 89: 427-453. 1902. 12. CYON, E. DE. "Le sens de l'espace." Richet's "Dictionnaire de physiologie," T. 5: 570-571. 1901. 13. DARBISHIRE, A. D. Note on the results of crossing Japanese waltzing mice with European albino races. _Biometrica_, Vol. 2: 101-104. 1902. 14. DARBISHIRE, A. D. Second report on the result of crossing Japanese waltzing mice with European albino races. _Biometrica_, Vol.2: 165-173. 1903. 15. DARBISHIRE, A. D. Third report on hybrids between waltzing mice and albino races. _Biometrica_, Vol. 2: 282-285. 1903. 16. DARBISHIRE, A. D. On the result of crossing Japanese waltzing with albino mice. _Biometrica_, Vol 3: 1-51. 1904. 17. GUAITA, G. v. "Versuche mit Kreuzungen von verschiedenen Rassen der Hausmaus." _Berichte der naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Freiburg i. B_., Bd. 10: 317-332. 1898. 18. GUAITA, G. v. "Zweite Mitteilung uber Versuche mit Kreuzungen von verschiedenen Hausmausrassen." _Berichte der naturforschenden Gesellschaft zu Freiburg i. B_., Bd. 11: 131-138. 1900. 19. HAACKE, W. "Ueber Wesen, Ursachen und Vererbung von Albinismus und Scheckung und über deren Bedeutung für vererbungstheoretische und entwicklungsmechanische Fragen." _Biologisches Centralblatt_, Bd. 15: 44-78. 1895. 19a. HUNTER, M. S. "A Pair of Waltzing Mice." _The Century Magazine_, Vol. 73: 889-893. April, 1907. 20. KAMMERER, P. "Tanzende Waldmaus und radschlagende Hausmaus." _Zoölogische Garten_, Bd. 41: 389-390. 1900. 21. KISHI, K. "Das Gehörorgan der sogenannten Tanzmaus." _Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoölogie_, Bd. 71: 457-485. 1902. 22. LANDOIS, H. "Chinesische Tanzmäuse." _Jahresbericht des Westfähschen Provinzial-Vereins_, Munster, 1893-1894: 62-64. 22a. LOSE, J. "Waltzing Mice." _Country Life in America_, September, 1904. p. 447. 23. PANSE, R. Zu Herrn Bernhard Rawitz' Arbeit: "Das Gehörorgan der japanischen Tanzmäuse." _Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie_, Physiologische Abtheilung, 1901: 139-140. 24. PANSE, R. "Das Gleichgewichts- und Gehörorgan der japanischen Tanzmäuse." _Münchener medicinische Wochenschrift_, Jahrgang 48, Bd. I: 498-499. 1901. 25. RAWITZ, B. "Das Gehörorgan der japanischen Tanzmäuse." _Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie_, Physiologische Abtheilung, 1899: 236-243. 26. RAWITZ, B. "Neue Beobachtungen über das Gehörorgan japanischer Tanzmäuse." _Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie_, Physiologische Abtheilung, 1901, Supplement: 171-176. 27. RAWITZ, B. "Zur Frage über die Zahl der Bogengänge bei japanischen Tanzmäusen." _Centralblatt für Physiologie_, Bd. 15: 649-651. 1902. 28. SAINT-LOUP, R. "Sur le mouvement de manège chez les souris." _Bulletin de la Société Zoölogique de France_, T. 18: 85-88. 1893. 29. SCHLUMBERGER, C. "A propos d'un netzukè japonais." _Memoires de la Société Zoölogique de France_, T. 7: 63-64. 1894. 30. WELDON, W. F. R. Mr. Bateson's revisions of Mendel's theory of heredity. _Biometrica_, Vol. 2: 286-298. 1903. 31. ZOTH, O. "Ein Beitrag zu den Beobachtungen und Versuchen an japanischen Tanzmäusen." _Archiv für die gesammte Physiologie_, Bd. 86: 147-176. 1901. 32. ANONYMOUS. "Fancy Mice: Their Varieties, Management, and Breeding." Fourth edition. London: L. Upcott Gill. No date. CHAPTER I CHARACTERISTICS, ORIGIN, AND HISTORY The variety of mouse which is known as the Japanese dancing or waltzing mouse has been of special interest to biologists and to lovers of pets because of its curious movements. Haacke in Brehm's "Life of Animals" (7 p. 337)[1] writes as follows concerning certain mice which were brought to Europe from China and Japan: "From time to time a Hamburg dealer in animals sends me two breeds of common mice, which he calls Chinese climbing mice (Chinesische Klettermäuse) and Japanese dancing mice (Japanische Tanzmäuse). It is true that the first are distinguished only by their different colors, for their climbing accomplishments are not greater than those of other mice. The color, however, is subject to many variations. Besides individuals of uniform gray, light yellow, and white color, I have had specimens mottled with gray and white, and blue and white. Tricolored mice seem to be very rare. It is a known fact that we also have white, black, and yellow mice and occasionally pied ones, and the Chinese have profited by these variations of the common mouse also, to satisfy their fancy in breeding animals. The Japanese, however, who are no less enthusiastic on this point, know how to transform the common mouse into a really admirable animal. The Japanese dancing mice, which perfectly justify their appellation, also occur in all the described colors. But what distinguishes them most is their innate habit of running around, describing greater or smaller circles or more frequently whirling around on the same spot with incredible rapidity. Sometimes two or, more rarely, three mice join in such a dance, which usually begins at dusk and is at intervals resumed during the night, but it is usually executed by a single individual." [Footnote 1: The reference numbers, of which 7 is an example, refer to the numbers in the bibliographic list which precedes this chapter.] As a rule the dancing mouse is considerably smaller than the common mouse, and observers agree that there are also certain characteristic peculiarities in the shape of the head. One of the earliest accounts of the animal which I have found, that of Landois (22 p. 62), states, however, that the peculiarities of external form are not remarkable. Landois further remarks, with reason, that the name dancing mouse is ill chosen, since the human dance movement is rather a rhythmic hopping motion than regular movement in a circle. As he suggests, they might more appropriately be called "circus course mice" (22 p. 63). Since 1903 I have had under observation constantly from two to one hundred dancing mice. The original pair was presented to the Harvard Psychological Laboratory by Doctor A.G. Cleghorn of Cambridge. I have obtained specimens, all strikingly alike in markings, size, and general behavior, from animal dealers in Washington, Philadelphia, and Boston. Almost all of the dancers which I have had, and they now number about four hundred, were white with patches, streaks, or spots of black. The black markings occurred most frequently on the neck, ears, face, thighs, hind legs, about the root of the tail, and occasionally on the tail itself. In only one instance were the ears white, and that in the case of one of the offspring of a male which was distinguished from most of his fellows by the possession of one white ear. I have had a few individuals whose markings were white and gray instead of white and black. The method by which I was able to keep an accurate record of each of my dancers for purposes of identification and reference is illustrated in Figure 1. As this method has proved very convenient and satisfactory, I may briefly describe it. With a rubber stamp[1] a rough outline of a mouse, like that of Figure 1 A, was made in my record book. On this outline I then indicated the black markings of the individual to be described. Beside this drawing of the animal I recorded its number, sex,[2] date of birth, parentage, and history. B, C, and D of Figure 1 represent typical color patterns. D indicates the markings of an individual whose ears were almost entirely white. The pattern varies so much from individual to individual that I have had no trouble whatever in identifying my mice by means of such records as these. [Footnote 1: For the use of the plate from which this stamp was made, I am indebted to Professor W.E. Castle, who in turn makes acknowledgment to Doctor G.M. Allen for the original drawing.] [Footnote 2: I have found it convenient to use the even numbers for the males and the odd numbers for the females. Throughout this book this usage is followed. Wherever the sex of an individual is not specially given, the reader therefore may infer that it is a male if the number is even; a female if the number is odd.] All of my dancers had black eyes and were smaller as well as weaker than the albino mouse and the gray house mouse. The weakness indicated by their inability to hold up their own weight or to cling to an object curiously enough does not manifest itself in their dancing; in this they are indefatigable. Frequently they run in circles or whirl about with astonishing rapidity for several minutes at a time. Zoth (31 p. 173), who measured the strength of the dancer in comparison with that of the common mouse, found that it can hold up only about 2.8 times its own weight, whereas the common white mouse can hold up 4.4 times its weight. No other accurate measurements of the strength, endurance, or hardiness of the dancer are available. They are usually supposed to be weak and delicate, but my own observations cause me to regard them as exceptionally strong in certain respects and weak in others. [Illustration: FIGURE I.--Typical markings of dancers. A, blank outline of mouse for record. B, markings of No. 2 [symbol for male], born September 7, 1905, of unknown parents, died March 30,1907. C, markings of No 43 [symbol for female], born November 10, 1906, of 212 and 211. D, markings of No. 151 [symbol for female], born February 28, 1906, of 1000 and 5, died February 26, 1907.] What the Japanese have to say about the dancing mouse is of special importance because Japan is rather commonly supposed to be its home. For this reason, as well as because of the peculiar interest of the facts mentioned, I quote at length from Doctor Kishi (21 p. 457). "The dancing mouse has received in Europe this name which it does not bear in its own home, because of the fact that the circular movements which it makes are similar to the European (human) dance. Sometimes it is also called the Japanese or Chinese mouse; originally, however, China must have been its home, since in Japan it is mostly called '_Nankin nesumi_,' the mouse from Nankin. When this animal came from China to Japan I shall inquire at a later opportunity. There were originally in Japan two different species of mouse, the gray and the white; therefore in order to distinguish our dancing mouse from these it was necessary to use the name of its native city. "In Japan, as in Europe, the animal lives as a house animal in small cages, but the interest which is taken in it there is shown in quite another way than in Europe, where the whirling movements, to which the name dancing mouse is due, are of chief interest. For this reason in Europe it is given as much room as possible in its cage that it may dance conveniently. In Japan also the circular movements have been known for a long time, but this has had no influence upon our interest in the animal, for the human fashion of dancing with us is quite different from that in Europe. What has lent interest to the creature for us are its prettiness, its cleverness in tricks, and its activity. It is liked, therefore, as an amusement for children. For this purpose it is kept in a small cage, usually fifteen centimeters square, sometimes in a somewhat broader wooden box one of whose walls is of wire netting. In this box are built usually a tower, a tunnel, a bridge, and a wheel. The wheel is rather broad, being made in the form of a drum and pierced with holes on one side through which the animal can slip in and out. Running around on the inside, the mouse moves the wheel often for hours at a time, especially in the evening. Moreover, there are found in the box other arrangements of different kinds which may be set in motion by the turning of the wheel. No space remains in the box in which the animal may move about freely, and therefore one does not easily or often have an opportunity to observe that the animal makes circular movements, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. This is the reason that in its home this interesting little animal has never been studied by any one in this respect." It is odd indeed that the remarkable capacity of the dancer for the execution of quick, graceful, dextrous, bizarre, and oft-repeated movements has not been utilized in America as it has in Japan. The mice are inexhaustible sources of amusement as well as invaluable material for studies in animal behavior and intelligence. Concerning the origin and history of this curious variety of mouse little is definitely known. I have found no mention of the animal in scientific literature previous to 1890. The fact that it is called the Chinese dancing mouse, the Japanese dancing mouse, and the Japanese waltzing mouse is indicative of the existing uncertainty concerning the origin of the race. Thinking that Japanese literature might furnish more information bearing on the question of racial history than was available from European sources, I wrote to Professor Mitsukuri of the University of Tokyo, asking him whether any reliable records of the dancer existed in Japan. He replied as follows: "I have tried to find what is known in Japan about the history of the Japanese waltzing mice, but I am sorry to say that the results are wholly negative. I cannot find any account of the origin of this freak, either authentic or fictitious, and, strange as it may seem to you, no study of the mice in a modern sense has been made, so you may consider the literature on the mouse in the Japanese language as absolutely _nil_." In explanation of this somewhat surprising ignorance of the origin of the race in what is commonly supposed to be its native land, Professor Mitsukuri adds: "The breeders of the mice have mostly been ignorant men to whom writing is anything but easy." In response to similar inquiries, I received the following letter, confirmatory of Professor Mitsukuri's statements, from Doctor S. Hatai of Wistar Institute, Philadelphia: "If I remember rightly the so-called Japanese dancing mouse is usually called by us _Nankin-nedzumi_. _Nankin_ means anything which has been imported from China, and _nedzumi_ means rat-like animal, or in this case mouse, or Chinese mouse. I referred to one of the standard Japanese dictionaries and found the following statement: 'The _Nankin-nedzumi_ is one of the varieties of _Mus spiciosus_ (_Hatszuka-nedzumi_), and is variously colored. It was imported from China. These mice are kept in cages for the amusement of children, who watch their play.' _Mus spiciosus_, if I remember correctly, is very much like _Mus musculus_ in color, size, and several other characteristics, if not the same altogether." In Swinhoe's list of the mammals of China, which appeared in the _Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London_ for 1870, _Mus musculus L_. is mentioned as occurring in houses in South China and in Formosa. It is further stated that black and white varieties which are brought from the Straits are often kept by the Chinese (p. 637). The statements of Kishi, Mitsukuri, and Hatai which have been quoted, taken in connection with the opinions expressed by various European scientists who have studied the dancer, make it seem highly probable that the race appeared first in China, and was thence introduced into Japan, from which country it has been brought to Europe and America. Accepting for the present this conclusion with reference to the place of origin of the dancer, we may now inquire, how and when did this curious freak, as Professor Mitsukuri has called it, come into existence? Concerning these matters there is wide divergence of opinion. Haacke (6 p. 514), as quoted in Brehm's "Tierleben," says that an animal dealer with whom he discussed the question of the possible origin of the dancer maintained that it came from Peru, where it nests in the full cotton capsules, arranging the cotton fibers in the form of a nest by running about among them in small circles. Hence the name cotton mouse is sometimes applied to it. Haacke himself believes, however, that the race originated either in China or Japan as the result of systematic selectional breeding. Of this he has no certainty, for he states that he failed to find any literature on the "beautiful mice of China and Japan." Whether Haacke's description of the dancing mouse was published elsewhere previous to its appearance in Brehm's "Tierleben" I am unable to state; I have found nothing written on the subject by him before 1890. Zoth (31 p. 176) also thinks that the race was developed by systematic breeding, or in other words, that it is a product of the skill of the Asiatic animal breeders. Another account of the origin of the race is that accepted by Kishi (21 p. 481) and some other Japanese biologists. It is their belief that the forms of movement acquired by the individual as the result of confinement in narrow cages are inherited. Thus centuries of subjection to the conditions which Kishi has described (p. 6) finally resulted in a race of mice which breed true to the dance movement. It is only fair to add, although Kishi does not emphasize the fact, that in all probability those individuals in which the dancing tendency was most pronounced would naturally be selected by the breeders who kept these animals as pets, and thus it would come about that selectional breeding would supplement the inheritance of an acquired character. Few indeed will be willing to accept this explanation of the origin of the dancer so long as the inheritance of acquired characters remains, as at present, unproved. Still another mode of origin of the mice is suggested by the following facts. In 1893 Saint Loup (28 p. 85) advanced the opinion that dancing individuals appear from time to time among races of common mice. The peculiarity of movement may be due, he thinks, to an accidental nervous defect which possibly might be transmissible to the offspring of the exceptional individual. Saint Loup for several months had under observation a litter of common mice whose quick, jerky, nervous movements of the head, continuous activity, and rapid whirling closely resembled the characteristic movements of the true dancers of China. He states that these mice ran around in circles of from 1 to 20 cm. in diameter. They turned in either direction, but more frequently to the left, that is, anticlockwise. At intervals they ran in figure-eights ([Symbol: figure eight]) as do the true dancers. According to Saint Loup these exceptional individuals were healthy, active, tame, and not markedly different in general intelligence from the ordinary mouse. One of these mice produced a litter of seven young, in which, however, none of the peculiarities of behavior of the parents appeared. In view of this proof of the occurrence of dancing individuals among common mice, Saint Loup believes that the race of dancers has resulted from the inheritance and accentuation of an "accidental" deviation from the usual mode of behavior. It is scarcely necessary to say that this opinion would be of far greater weight had he observed, instead of postulating, the inheritance of the peculiarities of movement which he has described. It might be objected, to the first of his so-called facts, that the litter resulted from the mating of mice which possessed dancer blood. Until the occurrence of dancers among varieties of mice which are known to be unmixed with true dancers is established, and further, until the inheritance of this peculiar deviation from the normal is proved, Saint Loup's account of the origin of the dancing mouse race must be regarded as an hypothesis. The occurrence of dancing individuals among common mice has been recorded by several other observers. Kammerer (20 p. 389) reports that he found a litter of young wood mice (_Mus sylvaticus L_.) which behaved much as do the spotted dancers of China. He also observed, among a lot of true dancers, a gray individual which, instead of spinning around after the manner of the race, turned somersaults at frequent intervals. It is Kammerer's opinion, as a result of these observations, that the black and white dancers of China and Japan have been produced by selectional breeding on the basis of this occasional tendency to move in circles. Among albino mice Rawitz (25 p. 238) has found individuals which whirled about rapidly in small circles. He states, however, that they lacked the restlessness of the Chinese dancers. Some shrews (_Sorex vulgaris L_.) which exhibited whirling movements and in certain other respects resembled the dancing mouse were studied for a time by Professor Häcker of Freiburg in Baden, according to a report by von Guaita (17 p. 317, footnote). Doctor G. M. Allen of Cambridge has reported to me that he noticed among a large number of mice kept by him for the investigation of problems of heredity[1] individuals which ran in circles; and Miss Abbie Lathrop of Granby, Massachusetts, who has raised thousands of mice for the market, has written me of the appearance of an individual, in a race which she feels confident possessed no dancer blood, which whirled and ran about in small circles much as do the true dancers. [Footnote 1: Allen, G.M. "The Heredity of Coat Color in Mice." Proc. Amer. Academy, Vol. 40, 59-163, 1904.] Although it is possible that some of these cases of the unexpected appearance of individuals with certain of the dancer's peculiarities of behavior may have been due to the presence of dancer blood in the parents, it is not at all probable that this is true of all of them. We may, therefore, accept the statement that dancing individuals now and then appear in various races of mice. They are usually spoken of as freaks, and, because of their inability to thrive under the conditions of life of the race in which they happen to appear, they soon perish. Another and a strikingly different notion of the origin of the race of dancers from those already mentioned is that of Cyon (11 p. 443) who argues that it is not a natural variety of mouse, as one might at first suppose it to be, but instead a pathological variation. The pathological nature of the animals is indicated, he points out, by the exceptionally high degree of variability of certain portions of the body. According to this view the dancing is due to certain pathological structural conditions which are inherited. Cyon's belief raises the interesting question, are the mice normal or abnormal, healthy or pathological? That the question cannot be answered with certainty off-hand will be apparent after we have considered the facts of structure and function which this volume presents. Everything organic sooner or later is accounted for, in some one's mind, by the action of natural selection. The dancing mouse is no exception, for Landois (22 p. 62) thinks that it is the product of natural selection and heredity, favored, possibly, by selectional breeding in China. He further maintains that the Chinese dancer is a variety of _Mus musculus L._ in which certain peculiarities of behavior appear because of bilateral defects in the brain. This author is not alone in his belief that the brain of the dancer is defective, but so far as I have been able to discover he is the only scientist who has had the temerity to appeal to natural selection as an explanation of the origin of the race. Milne-Edwards, as quoted by Schlumberger (29 p. 63), is of the opinion that the Chinese dancer is not a natural wild mouse race, but instead the product of rigid artificial selection. And in connection with this statement Schlumberger describes a discovery of his own which seems to have some bearing upon the problem of origin. In an old Japanese wood carving which came into his possession he found a group of dancing mice. The artist had represented in minute detail the characteristics of the members of the group, which consisted of the parents and eight young. The father and mother as well as four of the little mice are represented as white spotted with black. Of the four remaining young mice, two are entirely black and two entirely white. The two pure white individuals have pink eyes, as has also the mother. The eyes of all the others are black. From these facts Schlumberger infers that the dancer has resulted from the crossing of a race of black mice with a race of albinos; the two original types appear among the offspring in the carving. Experimental studies of the inheritance of the tendency to dance are of interest in their bearing upon the question of origin. Such studies have been made by Haacke (19), von Guaita (17, 18), and Darbishire (13, 14, 15, 16), and the important results of their investigations have been well summarized by Bateson (5). By crossing dancing mice with common white mice both Haacke and von Guaita obtained gray or black mice which are very similar to the wild house mouse in general appearance and behavior. The characteristic movements of the dancers do not appear. As the result of a long series of breeding experiments, Darbishire (16 pp. 26, 27) says: "When the race of waltzing mice is crossed with albino mice which do not waltz, the waltzing habit disappears in the resulting young, so that waltzing is completely recessive in Mendel's sense; the eye-color of the hybrids is always dark; the coat-color is variable, generally a mixture of wild-gray and white, the character of the coat being distinctly correlated with characters transmitted both by the albino and by the colored parent." When hybrids produced by the cross described by Darbishire are paired, they produce dancers in the proportion of about one to five. Bateson (5 p. 93, footnote), in discussing the results obtained by Haacke, von Guaita, and Darbishire, writes: "As regards the waltzing character, von Guaita's experiments agree with Darbishire's in showing that it was always recessive to the normal. No individual in F1 [thus the first hybrid generation is designated] or in families produced by crossing F1 with the pure normal, waltzed. In Darbishire's experiments F1 x F1 [first hybrids mated] gave 8 waltzers in 37 offspring, indicating 1 in 4 as the probable average. From von Guaita's matings in the form DR x DR the totals of families were 117 normal and 21 waltzers.... There is therefore a large excess of normals over the expected 3 to 1. This is possibly due to the delicacy of the waltzers, which are certainly much more difficult to rear than normals are. The small number in von Guaita's litters makes it very likely that many were lost before such a character as this could be determined." Bateson does not hazard a guess at the origin of the dancer, but merely remarks (5 p. 86) that the exact physiological basis of the dancing character is uncertain and the origin of this curious variation in behavior still more obscure. "Mouse fanciers have assured me," he continues, "that something like it may appear in strains inbred from the normal type, though I cannot find an indubitable case. Such an occurrence may be nothing but the appearance of a rare recessive form. Certainly it is not a necessary consequence of inbreeding, witness von Guaita's long series of inbred albinos." (von Guaita (17 p. 319) inbred for twenty-eight generations.) From the foregoing survey of the available sources of information concerning the origin and history of the race of dancing mice the following important facts appear. There are four theories of the origin of the race: (1) origin by selectional breeding (Haacke, Zoth, Milne- Edwards); (2) origin through the inheritance of an acquired character (Kishi); (3) origin by mutation, inheritance, and selectional breeding (Saint Loup, Kammerer, Cyon); (4) origin by natural selection, and inheritance, favored by selectional breeding (Landois). Everything indicates that the race originated in China. It is fairly certain that individuals with a tendency to move in circles appear at rare intervals in races of common mice. It seems highly probable, in view of these facts, that the Chinese took advantage of a deviation from the usual form of behavior to develop by means of careful and patient selectional breeding a race of mice which is remarkable for its dancing. Even if it should be proved that the mutation as it appears among common mice is not inherited, the view that slight deviations were taken advantage of by the breeders would still be tenable. The dancing tendency is such in nature as to unfit an individual for the usual conditions of mouse existence, hence, in all probability human care alone could have produced and preserved the race of dancers. In answer to the question, how and when did the race of dancers originate, it may be said that historical research indicates that a structural variation or mutation which occasionally appears in _Mus musculus_, and causes those peculiarities of movement which are known as dancing, has been preserved and accentuated through selectional breeding by the Chinese and Japanese, until finally a distinct race of mice which breeds true to the dance character has been established. The age of the race is not definitely known, but it is supposed to have existed for several centuries. CHAPTER II FEEDING, BREEDING, AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG In this chapter I shall report, for the benefit of those who may wish to know how to take care of dancing mice, my experience in keeping and breeding the animals, and my observations concerning the development of the young. It is commonly stated that the dancer is extremely delicate, subject to diseases to an unusual degree and difficult to breed. I have not found this to be true. At first I failed to get them to breed, but this was due, as I discovered later, to the lack of proper food. For three years my mice have bred frequently and reared almost all of their young. During one year, after I had learned how to care for the animals, when the maximum number under observation at any time was fifty and the total number for the year about one hundred, I lost two by disease and one by an accident. I very much doubt whether I could have done better with any species of mouse. There can be no doubt, however, that the dancer is delicate and demands more careful attention than do most mice. In March, 1907, I lost almost all of my dancers from what appeared to be an intestinal trouble, but with this exception I have had remarkably good luck in breeding and rearing them. My dancers usually were kept in the type of cage of which Figure 2 is a photograph.[1] Four of these double cages, 70 cm. long, 45 cm. wide, and 10 cm. deep in front, were supported by a frame as is shown in Figure 3. The fact that the covers of these cages cannot be left open is of practical importance. A similar type of cage, which I have used to some extent, consists of a wooden box 30 by 30 cm. by 15 cm. deep, without any bottom, and with a hinged cover made in part of 1 cm. mesh wire netting. Such a cage may be placed upon a piece of tin or board, or simply on a newspaper spread out on a table. The advantage of the loose bottom is that the box may be lifted off at any time, and the bottom thoroughly cleansed. I have had this type of cage constructed in blocks of four so that a single bottom and cover sufficed for the block. If the mice are being kept for show or for the observation of their movements, at least one side of the cages should be of wire netting, and, as Kishi suggests, such objects as a wheel, a tower, a tunnel, a bridge, and a turntable, if placed in the cage, will give the animals excellent opportunity to exhibit their capacity for varied forms of activity. [Footnote 1: This cage was devised by Professors W.E. Castle and E.L. Mark, and has been used in the Zoological Laboratories of Harvard University for several years.] [Illustration: FIGURE 2.--Double cage, with nest boxes and water dishes.] The floors of the cages were covered with a thin layer of sawdust for the sake of cleanliness, and in one corner of each cage a nest box of some sort was placed. During the warm months I found it convenient and satisfactory to use berry boxes, such as appear in Figure 2, with a small entrance hole cut in one side; and during the cold months cigar boxes, with an entrance hole not more than 5 cm. in diameter at one end. In the nest box a quantity of tissue paper, torn into fragments, furnished material for a nest in which the adults could make themselves comfortable or the female care for her young. Cotton should never be used in the nest boxes, for the mice are likely to get it wound about their legs with serious results. Apparently they are quite unable to free themselves from such an incumbrance, and their spinning motion soon winds the threads so tightly that the circulation of the blood is stopped. [Illustration: FIGURE 3.--Double cages in frame.] The cages and nest boxes were emptied and thoroughly cleaned once a week with an emulsion made by heating together one part of kerosene and one part of water containing a little soap. This served to destroy whatever odor the cages had acquired and to prevent vermin from infesting the nests. In hot weather far greater cleanliness is necessary for the welfare of the mice than in cold weather. The animals attend faithfully to their own toilets, and usually keep themselves scrupulously clean. For water and food dishes I have used heavy watch glasses[1] 5 cm. in diameter and 1/2 cm. deep. They are convenient because they are durable, easily cleaned, and not large enough for the young mice to drown in when they happen to spin into one which contains water. It is said that mice do not need water, but as the dancers seem very fond of a little, I have made it a rule to wash the watch glasses thoroughly and fill them with pure fresh water daily. The food, when moist, may be placed in the cages in the same kind of watch glass. [Footnote 1: Minot watch glasses.] There is no need of feeding the animals oftener than once a day, and as they eat mostly in the evening and during the night, it is desirable that the food should be placed in the cage late in the afternoon. For almost a year I kept a pair of dancers on "force"[1] and water. They seemed perfectly healthy and were active during the whole time, but they produced no young. If the animals are kept as pets, and breeding is not desired, a diet of "force," "egg-o-see,"[1] and crackers, with some bird-seed every few days, is likely to prove satisfactory. As with other animals, a variety of food is beneficial, but it appears to be quite unnecessary. Too much rich food should not be given, and the mice should be permitted to dictate their own diet by revealing their preferences. They eat surprisingly little for the amount of their activity. I have had excellent success in breeding the mice by feeding them a mixture of dry bread- crumbs, "force," and sweet, clean oats slightly moistened with milk. The food should never be made soppy. A little milk added thus to the food every other day greatly increases fertility. About once a week a small quantity of some green food, lettuce for example, should be given. It is well, I have found, to vary the diet by replacing the bread and "force" at intervals with crackers and seeds. Usually I give the food dry every other day, except in the case of mice which are nursing litters. One person to whom I suggested that lettuce was good for the dancers lost four, apparently because of too much of what the mice seemed to consider a good thing. This suggests that it should be used sparingly. [Footnote 1: A cereal food.] Success in keeping and breeding dancing mice depends upon three things: cleanliness, warmth, and food supply. The temperature should be fairly constant, between 60° and 70° Fahr. They cannot stand exposure to cold or lack of food. If one obtains good healthy, fertile individuals, keeps them in perfectly clean cages with soft nesting materials, maintains a temperature of not far above or below 65°, and regularly supplies them with pure water and food which they like, there is not likely to be trouble either in keeping or breeding these delicate little creatures. Several persons who have reported to me difficulty in rearing the young or in keeping the adults for long periods have been unable to maintain a sufficiently high or constant temperature, or have given them food which caused intestinal trouble. The males are likely to fight if kept together, and they may even kill one another. A male may be kept with one or more females, or several females may be kept together, for the females rarely, in my experience, fight, and the males seldom harm the females. Unless the male is removed from the cage in which the female is kept before the young are born, he is likely to kill the newborn animals. When a female is seen to be building a nest in preparation for a litter, it is best to place her in a cage by herself so that she may not be disturbed. The sex of individuals may be determined easily in most cases, at the age of 10 to 12 days, by the appearance of teats in the case of females. The period of gestation is from 18 to 21 days. The maximum number born by my dancers in any single litter was 9, the minimum number 3. In 25 litters of which I have accurate records, 135 individuals were born, an average of 5.4. The average number of males per litter was precisely the same, 2.7, as the number of females. On the birth of a litter it is well to see that the female has made a nest from which the young are not likely to escape, for at times, if the nest is carelessly made, they get out of it or under some of the pieces of paper which are used in its construction, and perish. Several times I have observed nests so poorly built that almost all of the young perished because they got too far away to find their way back to the mother. It is surprising that the female should not take more pains to keep her young safe by picking them up in her mouth, as does the common mouse, and carrying them to a place where they can obtain warmth and nourishment. This I have never seen a dancing mouse do. For the first day or two after the birth of a litter the female usually remains in the nest box almost constantly and eats little. About the second day she begins to eat ravenously, and for the next three or four weeks she consumes at least twice as much food as ordinarily. Alexander and Kreidl (3 p. 567) state that the female does not dance during the first two weeks after the birth of a litter, but my experience contradicts their statement. There is a decreased amount of activity during this period, and usually the whirling movement appears but rarely; but in some cases I have seen vigorous and long-continued dancing within a few hours after the birth of a litter. There is a wide range of variability in this matter, and the only safe statement, in the light of my observations, is that the mother dances less than usual for a few days after a litter is born to her. The development of the young, as I have observed it in the cases of twenty litters, for ten of which (Table I) systematic daily records were kept, may be sketched as follows. At birth the mice have a rosy pink skin which is devoid of hair and perfectly smooth; they are blind, deaf, and irresponsive to stimulation of the vibrissae on the nose. During the first week of post-natal life the members of a litter remain closely huddled together in the nest, and no dance movements are exhibited. The mother stays with them most of the time. On the fourth or fifth day colorless hairs are visible, and by the end of the week the body is covered with a coat which rapidly assumes the characteristic black and white markings of the race. For the first few days the hind legs are too weak to support the body weight, and whatever movements appear are the result of the use of the fore legs. As soon as the young mice are able to stand, circling movements are exhibited, and by the end of the second week they are pronounced. Somewhere about the tenth day the appearance of the teats in the case of the females serves to distinguish the sexes plainly. Between the tenth and fifteenth days excitability, as indicated by restless jerky movements in the presence of a disturbing condition, increases markedly; the auditory meatus opens, and, in the case of some individuals, there are signs of hearing. On or after the fifteenth day the eyes open and the efforts to escape from the nest box rapidly become more vigorous. About this time the mother resumes her dancing with customary vigor, and the young, when they have opportunity, begin to eat of the food which is given to her. They now dance essentially as do the adults. From the end of the third week growth continues without noteworthy external changes until sexual maturity is attained, between the fourth and the sixth week. For several weeks after they are sexually mature the mice continue to increase in size. TABLE I DEVELOPMENT OF THE YOUNG NUMBER JERKY REACT IN HAIR TEATS MOVE- EARS TO EYES PARENTS LITTER VISIBLE VISIBLE MENTS OPEN SOUND OPEN M F APPEAR 152+151 5 0 4th day -- 13th day 14th day 14th day 16th day 152+151 1 3 4th day 9th day 10th day 12th day 13th day 15th day 410+415 4 1 5th day 11th day 14th day 15th day 15th day 17th day 410+415 2 4 5th day 10th day 13th day 14th day 14th day 16th day 420+425 0 2 4th day 10th day 12th day 14th day 14th day 16th day 210+215 4 1 -- -- 17th day 13th day 17th day 15th day 210+215 3 3 5th day 11th day 11th day 14th day No 16th day 212+211 1 3 4th day 10th day 15th day 14th day No 15th day 220+225 2 4 4th day 10th day 16th day 14th day No 15th day 220+225 3 3 4th day 10th day 17th day 13th day No 15th day A course of development very similar to that just described was observed by Alexander and Kreidl (3 p. 565) in three litters of dancing mice which contained 3, 5, and 7 individuals respectively. These authors, in comparing the development of the dancer with that of the common mouse, say that at birth the young in both cases are about 24 mm. in length. The young common mouse grows much more rapidly than the dancer, and by the ninth day its length is about 43 mm. as compared with 31 mm. in the case of the dancer. According to Zoth (31 p. 148) the adult dancer has a body length of from 7 to 7.5 cm., a length from tip of nose to tip of tail of from 12 to 13 cm., and a weight of about 18 grams. The movement of the dancer from the first tends to take the form of circles toward the middle of the nest; that of the common mouse has no definite tendency as to direction. When the common mouse does move in circles, it goes first in one direction, then in the other, and not for any considerable period in one direction as does the true dancer. Neither the young dancer nor the common mouse is able to equilibrate itself well for the first few days after birth, but the latter can follow a narrow path with far greater accuracy and steadiness than the former. The uncertain and irregular movements of the common mouse are due to muscular weakness and to blindness, but the bizarre movements of the young dancer seem to demand some additional facts as an explanation. A brief account of the development of the dancer given by Zoth (31 p. 149) adds nothing of importance to the description given by Alexander and Kreidl. As my own observations disagree with their accounts in certain respects, I shall now give, in the form of a diary, a description of the important changes observed from day to day in a normal litter. The litter which I have selected as typical of the course of development in the dancer grew rapidly under favorable conditions. I have observed many litters which passed through the various stages of development mentioned in this description anywhere from a day to a week later. This was usually due to some such obviously unfavorable condition as too little food or slight digestive or bowel troubles. According to the nature of the conditions of growth the eyes of the dancer open anywhere from the fourteenth to the twentieth day. This statement may serve to indicate the degree of variability as to the time at which a given stage of development is reached by different litters. On July 14, 1906, No. 151 (female) and No. 152 (male) were mated, and on August 3 a litter of six was born to them. The course of the development of this litter during the first three weeks was as follows:-- _First day_ The skin is pink and hairless, several vibrissae are visible on the nose and lips, but there is no definite response when they are touched. The mice are both blind and deaf, but they are able to squeak vigorously. The mother was not seen to dance or eat during the day. _Second day_. There is a very noticeable increase in size. The vibrissae are longer, but touching them still fails to cause a reaction. No hairs are visible on the body. The mother danced rapidly for periods of a minute several times while the record was being made. She ate very little to-day. _Third day_. Scales began to appear on the skin to-day. The animals are rapidly increasing in strength; they can now crawl about the nest easily, but they are too weak to stand, and constantly roll over upon their sides or backs when they are placed on a smooth surface. Because of their inability to progress it is impossible to determine with certainty whether they have a tendency to move in circles. The mother was seen out of the nest dancing once to-day. She now eats ravenously. _Fourth day_. One of the six young mice was found under a corner of the nest this morning dead, and the others were scattered about the nest box. I gathered them together into a nest which I made out of bits of tissue paper, and the mother immediately began to suckle them. They are very sensitive to currents of air, but they do not respond to light or sound and seldom to contact with the vibrissae. _Fifth day_. When placed on a smooth surface, they tend to move in circles, frequently rolling over. When placed on their sides or backs, they immediately try to right themselves. They do not walk, for their legs are still too weak to support the weight of the body; instead they drag themselves about by the use of the fore legs. Fine colorless hairs are visible over the entire body surface. When the vibrissae are touched, the head is moved noticeably. The mother dances a great deal and eats about twice as much as she did before the birth of the litter. _Sixth day_. Certain regions of the skin, which were slightly darker than the remainder on the fourth and fifth days, are now almost black. It is evident that they are the regions in which the black hair is to appear. The movement in circles is much more definite today, although most of the individuals are still too weak to stand on their feet steadily for more than a few seconds at a time. Most of their time, when they are first taken from the nest, is spent in trying to maintain or regain an upright position. The hair is now easily visible, and the skin begins to have a white appearance as a result. _Seventh day_. Although they are strong enough to move about the nest readily, none of the young has attempted to leave the nest. They huddle together in the middle of it for warmth. The epidermal scales, which have increased in number since the third day, are dropping off rapidly. Contact with the vibrissae or with the surface of the body, frequently calls forth a motor reaction but neither light nor sound produces any visible change in behavior. The black and white regions of the skin are sufficiently definite now to enable one to distinguish the various individuals by their markings. The mother was seen to dance repeatedly today, and she ate all the food that was given to her. _Eighth day_. A fold is plainly visible where later the eyelids will separate. The black pigment in the skin has increased markedly. _Ninth day_. The eyelids are taking form rapidly, but they I have not separated. The body is covered with a thick coat of hair which is either pure white or black. Standing on the four legs is still a difficult task. _Tenth day_. To-day teats are plainly visible in the case of four of the five individuals of the litter. Up to this time I had thought, from structural indications, that there were three males and two females; it is now evident that there are four females and one male. The external ear, the pinna, is well formed, and has begun to stand out from the head, but no opening to the inner portion of the ear is present. The eyelids appear to be almost fully formed. _Eleventh day_. There are no very noticeable changes in appearance except in size, which continues to increase rapidly. They are able to regain their normal upright position almost immediately when they happen to roll over. The mother dances as usual. _Twelfth day_. It appears to-day as if the eyes were about to open. The ears are still closed, and there is no evidence of a sense of hearing. They squeaked considerably when in the nest, but not at all when I took them out to note their development. The mother stays outside of the nest box much of the time now, probably to prevent the young ones from sucking continuously. _Thirteenth day_. One of the little mice came out of the nest box while I was watching the litter this morning, and was able to find his way back directly despite the lack of sight. The mice are still dependent upon the mother for nourishment. I have not seen any of them attempt to eat the food which is given to the mother. They are extremely neat and clean. I watched one of them wash himself this morning. Each foot was carefully licked with the tongue. There seems to be special care taken to keep the toes perfectly clean. _Fourteenth day_. An opening into the ear is visible to-day. When tested with the Galton whistle, all five responded with quick, jerky movements of the head and legs. They evidently hear certain tones. During the past two days the ears have changed rapidly. In one of the females, which seems to be a little in advance of the others in development, certain peculiarities of behavior appeared to-day. She jumped and squeaked sharply when touched and sprang out of my hand when I attempted to take her up. This is in marked contrast with her behavior previously. _Fifteenth day_. The eyes are partly opened. All of the members of the litter came out of the nest box this morning and ran around the cage, dancing frequently and trying to eat with the mother. Three out of the five gave auditory reactions on first being stimulated; none of them responded to repetitions of the stimulus. All appeared to be less sensitive to sounds than yesterday. The quick, nervous, jerky movements are very noticeable. _Sixteenth day_. The eyes of all five are fully opened. They dance vigorously and are outside the nest much of the time. _Seventeenth day_. No reactions to sound could be detected to-day. The sense of sight gives evidence of being well developed. The nervous jumping movements persist. _Eighteenth day_. The young mice continue to suck, although they eat of the food which is given to the mother. They are now able to take care of themselves. _Nineteenth day_. There are no noteworthy changes except increase in size and strength. _Twentieth day_. No auditory reactions were obtained today, but other forms of stimulation brought about unmistakable responses. _Twenty-first day_. They are now about half grown and there is no other change of special interest to be recorded. Growth continues for several weeks. The statement made by Alexander and Kreidl to the effect that the dancer is almost full grown by the thirty-first day of life is false. At that age they may be sexually mature, but usually they are far from full grown. CHAPTER III BEHAVIOR: DANCE MOVEMENTS The peculiarities of behavior of the dancing mouse are responsible alike for the widespread interest which it has aroused, and for its name. In a little book on fancy varieties of mice, in which there is much valuable information concerning the care of the animals, one who styles himself "An old fancier" writes thus of the behavior of the dancer: "I believe most people have an idea that the waltzing is a stately dance executed on the hind feet; this is not so. The performer simply goes round and round on all fours, as fast as possible, the head pointing inwards. The giddy whirl, after continuing for about a dozen turns, is then reversed in direction, and each performance usually occupies from one to two minutes. Whether it is voluntary or not, is difficult to determine, but I am inclined to think the mouse can refrain if it wishes to do so, because I never see them drop any food they may be eating, and begin to waltz in the midst of their meal. The dance, if such it can be called, generally seizes the mouse when it first emerges from its darkened sleeping place, and this would lead one to suppose that the light conveys an impression of shock to the brain, through the eyes, which disturbs the diseased centers and starts the giddy gyrations. The mice can walk or run in a fairly straight line when they wish to do so." Some of the old fancier's statements are true, others are mere guesses. Those who have studied the mice carefully will doubtless agree that he has not adequately described the various forms of behavior of which they are capable. I have quoted his description as an illustration of the weakness which is characteristic of most popular accounts of animal behavior. It proves that it is not sufficient to watch and then describe. The fact is that he who adequately describes the behavior of any animal watches again and again under natural and experimental conditions, and by prolonged and patient observation makes himself so familiar with his subject that it comes to possess an individuality as distinctive as that of his human companions. To the casual observer the individuals of a strange race are almost indistinguishable. Similarly, the behavior of all the animals of a particular species seems the same to all except the observer who has devoted himself whole-heartedly to the study of the subject and who has thus become as familiar with their life of action as most of us are with that of our fellow-men; for him each individual has its own unmistakable characteristics. I shall now describe the behavior of the dancing mouse in the light of the results of the observation of scores of individuals for months at a time, and of a large number of experiments. From time to time I shall refer to points in the accounts of the subject previously given by Rawitz (25 p. 236), Cyon (9 p. 214), Alexander and Kreidl (1 p. 542), Zoth (31 p. 147), and Kishi (21 p. 479). The most striking features of the ordinary behavior of the dancer are restlessness and movements in circles. The true dancer seldom runs in a straight line for more than a few centimeters, although, contrary to the statements of Rawitz and Cyon, it is able to do so on occasion for longer distances. Even before it is old enough to escape from the nest it begins to move in circles and to exhibit the quick, jerky head movements which are characteristic of the race. At the age of three weeks it is able to dance vigorously, and is incessantly active when not washing itself, eating, or sleeping. According to Zoth (31 p. 149) the sense of sight and especially the sense of smell of the dancer "seem to be keenly developed; one can seldom remain for some time near the cage without one or another of the animals growing lively, looking out of the nest, and beginning to sniff around in the air (_windet_). They also seem to have strongly developed cutaneous sensitiveness, and a considerable amount of curiosity, if one may call it such, in common with their cousin, the white mouse." I shall reserve what I have to say concerning the sense of sight for later chapters. As for the sense of smell and the cutaneous sensitiveness, Zoth is undoubtedly right in inferring from the behavior of the animal that it is sensitive to certain odors and to changes in temperature. One of the most noticeable and characteristic activities of the dancer is its sniffing. Frequently in the midst of its dancing it stops suddenly, raises its head so that the nose is pointed upward, as in the case of one of the mice of the frontispiece, and remains in that position for a second or two, as if sniffing the air. The restlessness, the varied and almost incessant movements, and the peculiar excitability of the dancer have repeatedly suggested to casual observers the question, why does it move about in that aimless, useless fashion? To this query Rawitz has replied that the lack of certain senses compels the animal to strive through varied movements to use to the greatest advantage those senses which it does possess. In Rawitz's opinion the lack of hearing and orientation is compensated for by the continuous use of sight and smell. The mouse runs about rapidly, moves its head from side to side, and sniffs the air, in order that it may see and smell as much as possible. In support of this interpretation of the restlessness of the dancer, Rawitz states that he once observed similar behavior in an albino dog which was deaf. This suggestion is not absurd, for it seems quite probable that the dancer has to depend for the guidance of its movements upon sense data which are relatively unimportant in the common mouse, and that by its varied and restless movements it does in part make up for its deficiency in sense equipment. The dancing, waltzing, or circus course movement, as it is variously known, varies in form from moment to moment. Now an individual moves its head rapidly from side to side, perhaps backing a little at the same time, now it spins around like a top with such speed that head and tail are almost indistinguishable, now it runs in circles of from 5 cm. to 30 cm. in diameter. If there are any objects in the cage about or through which it may run, they are sure to direct the expression of activity. A tunnel or a hole in a box calls forth endless repetitions of the act of passing through. When two individuals are in the same cage, they frequently dance together, sometimes moving in the same direction, sometimes in opposite directions. Often, as one spins rapidly about a vertical axis, the other runs around the first in small circles; or again, both may run in a small circle in the same direction, so that their bodies form a living ring, which, because of the rapidity of their movements, appears perfectly continuous. The three most clearly distinguishable forms of dance are (1) movement in circles with all the feet close together under the body, (2) movement in circles, which vary in diameter from 5 cm. to 30 cm., with the feet spread widely, and (3) movement now to the right, now to the left, in figure eights ([Symbol: figure eight]). For convenience of reference these types of dance may be called _whirling, circling_, and the _figure eight dance_. Zoth, in an excellent account of the behavior of the dancer (31 p. 156), describes "manège movements," "solo dances," and "centre dances." Of these the first is whirling, the second one form of circling, and the third the dancing of two individuals together in the manner described above. Both the whirling and the circling occur to the right (clockwise) and to the left (anticlockwise). As certain observers have stated that it is chiefly to the left and others that it is as frequently to the right, I have attempted to get definite information concerning the matter by observing a number of individuals systematically and at stated intervals. My study of this subject soon convinced me that a true conception of the facts cannot be got simply by noting the direction of turning from time to time. I therefore planned and carried out a series of experimental observations with twenty dancers, ten of each sex. One at a time these individuals were placed in a glass jar, 26 cm. in diameter, and the number of circle movements executed to the right and to the left during a period of five minutes was determined as accurately as possible. This was repeated at six hours of the day: 9 and 11 o'clock A.M., and 2, 4, 6, and 8 o'clock P.M. In order that habituation to the conditions under which the counts of turning were made might hot influence the results for the group, with ten individuals the morning counts were made first, and with the others the afternoon counts. No attempt was made in the counting to keep a separate record of the whirling and circling, although had it been practicable this would have been desirable, for, as soon became evident to the observer, some individuals which whirl in only one direction, circle in both. In Table 2 the results of the counts for the males are recorded; in Table 3 those for the females. Each number in the column headed "right" and "left" indicates the total number of circles executed by a certain dancer in a period of five minutes at the hour of the day named at the head of the column. I may point out briefly the curiously interesting and entirely unexpected new facts which this method of observation revealed to me. First, there are three kinds of dancers: those which whirl almost uniformly toward the right, those which whirl just as uniformly toward the left, and those which whirl about as frequently in one direction as in the other. To illustrate, No. 2 of Table 2 may be characterized as a "right whirler," for he turned to the right almost uniformly. In the case of the 6 P.M. count, for example, he turned 285 times to the right, not once to the left. No. 152, on the contrary, should be characterized as a "left whirler," since he almost always turned to the left. From both of these individuals No. 210 is distinguished by the fact that he turned now to the left, now to the right. For him the name "mixed whirler" seems appropriate. Second, the amount of activity, as indicated by the number of times an individual turns in a circle within five minutes, increases regularly and rapidly from 9 A.M. to 8 P.M. According to the general averages which appear at the bottom of Table 2, the average number of circles executed by the males at 9 A.M. was 89.8 as compared with 207.1 at 8 P.M. In other words, the mice dance more in the evening than during the day. Third, as it appears in a comparison of the general averages of Tables 2 and 3, the females dance more than the males, under the conditions of observation. At 9 A.M. the males circled 89.8 times, the females 151.0 times; at 8 P.M. the males circled 207.1 times, the females, 279.0 times. Fourth, according to the averages for the six counts made with each individual, as they appear in Table 4, the males turn somewhat more frequently to the left than to the right (the difference, however, is not sufficient to be considered significant); whereas, the females turn much more frequently to the right than to the left. I do not wish to emphasize the importance of this difference, for it is not improbable that counts made with a larger number of animals, or even with another group of twenty, would yield different results. TABLE 2 NUMBER or WHIRLS TO THE RIGHT AND TO THE LEFT DURING FIVE-MINUTE INTERVALS AS DETERMINED BY COUNTS MADE AT SIX DIFFERENT HOURS, FOR EACH OF TEN MALE DANCERS NUMBER 9 A.M 11 A.M. 2 P.M. OF ANIMAL RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT 2 11 2 23 4 194 1 30 20 1 134 1 109 2 34 2 16 2 48 4 92 36 194 21 180 11 143 65 152 7 48 3 171 6 79 156 63 8 53 9 27 6 210 3 9 7 41 225 21 220 168 105 39 43 47 5 410 2 67 10 27 8 103 420 15 142 5 214 16 238 Averages 48.5 41.3 45.6 56.9 77.9 61.2 Gen. Av. 89.8 102.5 139.1 NUMBER 4 P.M 6 P.M. 8 P.M. OF ANIMAL RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT 2 70 3 285 0 237 10 30 154 0 107 6 134 5 34 7 158 5 118 6 147 36 173 14 170 11 325 19 152 0 91 16 210 9 223 156 85 2 72 26 139 26 210 159 18 31 82 47 201 220 45 38 78 17 69 33 410 9 155 9 394 24 94 420 18 243 16 291 3 320 Averages 72.0 72.2 78.9 115.5 99.3 107.8 Gen. Av. 144.2 194.4 207.1 TABLE 3 NUMBER OF WHIRLS TO THE RIGHT AND TO THE LEFT DURING FIVE-MINUTE INTERVALS AS DETERMINED BY COUNTS MADE AT SIX DIFFERENT HOURS, FOR EACH OF TEN FEMALE DANCERS NUMBER 9 A.M. 11 A.M. 2 P.M. OF ANIMAL RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT 29 9 18 17 30 7 22 33 287 0 329 1 352 3 35 48 15 198 46 208 14 151 13 88 7 75 3 167 157 57 6 50 45 53 12 211 218 21 31 55 66 5 215 67 216 33 105 37 226 225 46 39 72 49 143 44 415 23 0 156 0 34 3 425 43 296 12 201 12 210 Averages 81.1 69.9 90.5 60.7 91.5 70.6 Gen. Av. 151.0 151.2 162.1 NUMBER 4 P.M. 6 P.M. 8 P.M. OF ANIMAL RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT 29 33 114 31 36 45 99 33 436 7 408 3 364 2 35 279 6 165 24 353 10 151 3 8 2 285 2 217 157 52 15 19 125 51 104 211 190 7 86 31 67 250 215 15 292 45 336 150 232 225 133 86 48 39 177 81 415 268 3 437 7 382 8 425 12 242 19 210 4 192 Averages 142.1 78.0 126.0 109.6 159.5 119.5 Gen. Av. 220.1 235.6 279.0 The most important results of this statistical study of turning are the demonstration of the existence of individual tendencies to turn in a particular direction, and of the fact that the whirling increases in amount from morning to evening. In order to discover whether the distribution of the dancers among the three groups which have been designated as right, left, and mixed whirlers agrees in general with that indicated by Table 4 (approximately the same number in each group) I have observed the direction of turning in the case of one hundred dancers, including those of the foregoing tables, and have classified them in accordance with their behavior as is indicated below. RIGHT LEFT MIXED WHIRLERS WHIRLERS WHIRLERS Males 19 19 12 Females 12 23 15 Totals 31 42 27 The left whirlers occur in excess of both the right and the mixed whirlers. This fact, together with the results which have already been considered in connection with the counts of turning, suggests that a tendency to whirl in a certain way may be inherited. I have examined my data and conducted breeding experiments for the purpose of ascertaining whether this is true. But as the results of this part of the investigation more properly belong in a special chapter on the inheritance of behavior (XVIII), the discussion of the subject may be closed for the present with the statement that the preponderance of left whirlers indicated above is due to a strong tendency to turn to the left which was exhibited by the individuals of one line of descent. TABLE 4 AVERAGE NUMBER OF WHIRLS TO THE RIGHT AND TO THE LEFT FOR THE SIX INTERVALS OF TABLES 2 AND 3, WITH A CHARACTERIZATION OF THE ANIMALS AS RIGHT WHIRLERS, LEFT WHIRLERS, OR MIXED WHIRLERS. AVERAGE NO. AVERAGE NO. MALES AGE OF WHIRLS OF WHIRLS CHARACTERIZATION 2 12 mo. 136.7 3.3 Right whirler 30 2 mo. 109.7 2.5 Right whirler 34 2 mo. 4.3 96.5 Left whirler 36 2 mo. 197.5 23.5 Right whirler 152 6 mo. 6.8 137.0 Left whirler 156 1 mo. 73.2 12.8 Right whirler 210 3 mo. 78.7 62.0 Mixed whirler 220 4 mo. 74.3 40.2 Mixed whirler 410 3 mo. 10.3 139.0 Left whirler 420 3 mo. 12.2 241.3 Left whirler Average 70.4 75.8 4 Right whirlers 4 Left whirlers 2 Mixed whirlers FEMALES 29 2 mo. 23.7 53.2 Left whirler 33 2 mo. 362.7 2.7 Right whirler 35 2 mo. 208.5 19.2 Left whirler 151 6 mo. 5.0 140.0 Right whirler 157 1 mo. 47.0 51.2 Left whirler 211 3 mo. 109.7 61.5 Right whirler 215 3 mo. 57.8 234.5 Mixed whirler 225 4 mo. 103.2 56.3 Mixed whirler 415 3 mo. 216.7 3.5 Left whirler 425 3 mo. 17.0 225.2 Left whirler Average 115.1 84.7 3 Right whirlers 4 Left whirlers 3 Mixed whirlers The tendency of the dancer's activity to increase in amount toward evening, which the results of Tables 2, 3, and 4 exhibit, demands further consideration. Haacke (7 p. 337) and Kishi (21 p. 458) agree that the dancing is most vigorous in the evening; but Alexander and Kreidl (i p. 544) assert, on the contrary, that the whirling of the individuals which they observed bore no definite relation to the time of day and apparently was not influenced in intensity thereby. Since the results of my own observations contradict many of the statements made by the latter authors, I suspect that they may not have watched their animals long enough to discover the truth. The systematic records which I have kept indicate that the mice remain quietly in their nests during the greater part of the day, unless they are disturbed or come out to obtain food. Toward dusk they emerge and dance with varying intensity for several hours. I have seldom discovered one of them outside the nest between midnight and daylight. The period of greatest activity is between 5 and 10 o'clock P.M. Zoth states that he has observed the adult dancer whirl 79 times without an instant's interruption, and I have counted as many as 110 whirls. It seems rather absurd to say that an animal which can do this is weak. Evidently the dancer is exceptionally strong in certain respects, although it may be weak in others. Such general statements as are usually made fail to do justice to the facts. The supposition that light determines the periodicity of dancing is not borne out by my observations, for I have found that the animals continue to dance most vigorously toward evening, even when they are kept in a room which is constantly illuminated. In all probability the periodicity of activity is an expression of the habits of the mouse race rather than of the immediate influence of any environmental condition. At some time in the history of the dancer light probably did have an influence upon the period of activity; but at present, as a result of the persistence of a well-established racial tendency, the periodicity of dancing depends to a greater extent upon internal than upon external conditions. During its hours of quiescence it is possible to arouse the dancer and cause it to whirl more or less vigorously by stimulating it strongly with intense light, a weak electric current, or by placing two individuals which are strangers to one another in the same cage; but the dancing thus induced is seldom as rapid, varied, or as long-continued as that which is characteristic of the evening hours. One of the most interesting results of this study of the direction of turning, from the observer's point of view, is the demonstration of the fact that the truth concerning even so simple a matter as this can be discovered only by long and careful observation. The casual observer of the dancer gets an impression that it turns to the left more often than to the right; he verifies his observation a few times and then asserts with confidence that such is the truth about turning. That such a method of getting knowledge of the behavior of the animal is worse than valueless is clear in the light of the results of the systematic observations which have just been reported. But, however important the progress which we may have made by means of systematic observation of the phenomenon of turning, it must not for one moment be supposed that the whole truth has been discovered. Continued observation will undoubtedly reveal other important facts concerning circling, whirling, and the periodicity of dancing, not to mention the inheritance of peculiarities of dancing and the significance of the various forms of activity. CHAPTER IV BEHAVIOR: EQUILIBRATION AND DIZZINESS Quite as interesting and important as the general facts of behavior which we have been considering are the results of experimental tests of the dancer's ability to maintain its position under unusual spatial conditions--to climb, cross narrow bridges, balance itself on high places. Because of its tendency to circle and whirl, to dart hither and thither rapidly and apparently without control of its movements, the study of the mouse's ability to perform movements which demand accurate and delicate muscular coördination, and to control its expressions of activity, are of peculiar scientific interest. That observers do not entirely agree as to the facts in this field is apparent from the following comparison of the statements made by Cyon and Zoth (31 p. 174). Cyon states that the dancer Cannot run in a straight line, Cannot turn in a narrow space, Cannot run backward, Cannot run up an incline, Cannot move about safely when above the ground, because of fear and visual dizziness, Can hear certain tones. Zoth, on the contrary, maintains that the animal Can run in a straight line for at least 20 cm., Can and repeatedly does turn in a narrow space, Can run backward, for he has observed it do so, Can run up an incline unless the surface is too smooth for it to gain a foothold, Can move about safely when above the ground, and gives no signs of fear or dizziness, Cannot hear, or at least gives no signs of sensitiveness to sounds. Such contradictory statements (and unfortunately they are exceedingly common) stimulated me to the repetition of many of the experiments which have been made by other investigators to test the dancer's behavior in unusual spatial relations. I shall state very briefly the general conclusions to which these experiments have led me, with only sufficient reference to methods and details of results to enable any one who wishes to repeat the tests for himself to do so. For the sake of convenience of presentation and clearness, the facts have been arranged under three rubrics: equilibrational ability, dizziness, and behavior when blinded. To our knowledge of each of these three groups of facts important contributions have come from the experiments of Cyon (9 p. 220), Alexander and Kreidl (1 p. 545), Zoth (31 p. 157), and Kishi (21 p. 482), although, as has been stated, in many instances their results are so contradictory as to demand reexamination. All in all, Zoth has given the most satisfactory account of the behavior and motor capacity of the dancer. If the surface upon which it is moving be sufficiently soft or rough to furnish it a foothold, the dancer is able to run up or down inclines, even though they be very steep, to cross narrow bridges, to balance itself at heights of at least 30 cm. above the ground, and even to climb up and down on rods, as is shown by certain of Zoth's photographs which are reproduced in Figure 4. Zoth himself says, and in this I am able fully to agree with him on the basis of my own observations, "that the power of equilibration in the dancing mouse, is, in general, very complete. The seeming reduction which appears under certain conditions should be attributed, not to visual dizziness, but in part to excitability and restlessness, and in part to a reduced muscular power" (31 p. 161). The dancer certainly has far less grasping power than the common mouse, and is therefore at a disadvantage in moving about on sloping surfaces. One evidence of this fact is the character of the tracks made by the animal. Instead of raising its feet from the substratum and placing them neatly, as does the common mouse (Figure 5), it tends to shuffle along, dragging its toes and thus producing on smoked paper such tracks as are seen in Figure 6. From my own observations I am confident that these figures exaggerate the differences. My dancers, unless they were greatly excited or moving under conditions of stress, never dragged their toes as much as is indicated in Figure 6. However, there can be no doubt that they possess less power of grasping with their toes than do common mice. The animal is still further incapacitated for movement on inclined surfaces or narrow places by its tendency to move in circles and zigzags. The results of my own experiments indicate that the timidity of the adult is greater than that of the immature animal when it is placed on a bridge 1 or 2 cm. wide at a distance of 20 cm. from the ground. Individuals three weeks old showed less hesitation about trying to creep along such a narrow pathway than did full-grown dancers three or four months old; and these, in turn, were not so timid apparently as an individual one year old. But the younger animals fell off more frequently than did the older ones. [Illustration: FIGURE 4.--Zoth's photographs of dancers crossing bridges and climbing rods. Reproduced from _Pfluger's Archiv_, Bd. 86.] [Illustration: FIGURE 5--Tracks of common mouse Reproduced from Alexander and Kreidl's figure in _Pfluger's Archiv_, Bd 82] [Illustration: FIGURE 6--Tracks of dancing mouse Reproduced from Alexander and Kreidl's figure in _Pfluger's Archiv_ Bd 82] Additional support for these statements concerning equilibrational ability is furnished by the observations of Kishi (21 p. 482). He built a wooden bridge 60 cm. long, 1 cm. wide at one end, and 1/2 cm. at the other, and supported it at a height of 30 cm. above the ground by posts at the ends. On this bridge ten dancers were tested. Some attempted to move sidewise, others began to whirl and fell to the ground; only one of the ten succeeded in getting all the way across the bridge on the first trial. The second time he was tested this individual crossed the bridge and found the post; and the third time he crossed the bridge and climbed down the post directly. The others did not succeed in descending the post even after having crossed the bridge safely, but, instead, finally fell to the floor from awkwardness or exhaustion. On the basis of these and other similar observations, Kishi says that the dancer possesses a fair degree of ability to orient and balance itself. Inasmuch as equilibration occurs similarly in darkness and in daylight, Zoth thinks that there is neither visual dizziness nor fear of heights. But it is doubtful whether he is right concerning fear. There is no doubt in my mind, in view of the way the mice behave when placed on an elevated surface, that they are timid; but this is due probably to the uncomfortable and unusual position rather than to perception of their distance from the ground. That they lack visual dizziness seems fairly well established. When rotated in a cyclostat[1] the dancer, unlike the common mouse, does not exhibit symptoms of dizziness. The following vivid description of the behavior of both kinds of mice when rotated is given by Alexander and Kreidl (1 p. 548). I have not verified their observations. [Footnote 1: An apparatus consisting of a glass cylinder with a mechanism for turning it steadily and at different speeds about its vertical axis.] The common mouse at first runs with increasing rapidity, as the speed of rotation of the cyclostat cylinder is increased, in the direction opposite to that of the cylinder itself. This continues until the speed of rotation has increased to about 60 revolutions per minute. As the rotation becomes still more rapid the mouse begins to crawl along the floor, its body stretched out and clinging to the floor. At a speed of 250 revolutions per minute it lies flat on the floor with its limbs extended obliquely to the movement of rotation, and at times with its back bent against the axis of the cylinder; in this position it makes but few and feeble efforts to crawl forward. When the rotation is suddenly stopped, the animal pulls itself together, remains for some seconds with extended limbs lying on the floor, and then suddenly falls into convulsions and trembles violently. After several attacks of this kind, cramps appear and, despite its resistance, the animal is thrown about, even into the air at times, as if by an external force. This picture of the position assumed during rapid rotation, and of cramps after the cessation of rotation (the typical picture of rotation dizziness), is repeated with great uniformity in the case of the common mouse. Within fifteen minutes after being returned to its cage the animal recovers from the effects of its experience. This description of the symptoms of rotation dizziness in the common mouse applies equally well to the blinded and the seeing animal. In sharp contrast with the behavior of the common mouse in the cyclostat is that of the dancer. As the cylinder begins to rotate the dancer runs about as usual in circles, zigzags, and figure-eights. As the speed becomes greater it naturally becomes increasingly difficult for the mouse to do this, but it shows neither discomfort nor fear, as does the common mouse. Finally the centrifugal force becomes so great that the animal is thrown against the wall of the cylinder, where it remains quietly without taking the oblique position. When the cyclostat is stopped suddenly, it resumes its dance movements as if nothing unusual had occurred. It exhibits no signs of dizziness, and apparently lacks the exhaustion which is manifest in the case of other kinds of mice after several repetitions of the experiment. The behavior of the blinded dancer is very similar. If these statements are true, there is no reason to believe that the dancer is capable of turning or rotation dizziness. If it were, its daily life would be rendered very uncomfortable thereby, for its whirling would constantly bring about the condition of dizziness. Apparently, then, the dancer differs radically from most mammals in that it lacks visual and rotational dizziness. In the next chapter we shall have to seek for the structural causes for these facts. The behavior of the blinded animal is so important in its bearings upon the facts of orientation and equilibration that it must be considered in connection with them. Cyon insists that the sense of vision is of great importance to the dancer in orienting and equilibrating itself. When the eyes are covered with cotton wads fastened by collodion, this writer states (9 p. 223) that the mice behave as do pigeons and frogs whose semicircular canals have been destroyed. They perform violent forced movements, turn somersaults forward and backward, run up inclines and fall over the edges, and roll over and over. In a word, they show precisely the kind of disturbances of behavior which are characteristic of animals whose semicircular canals are not functioning normally. Cyon, however, observed that in certain dancers these peculiarities of behavior did not appear when they were blinded, but that, instead, the animals gave no other indication of being inconvenienced by the lack of sight than do common white mice. This matter of individual differences we shall have to consider more fully later. No other observer agrees with Cyon in his conclusions concerning vision, or, for that matter, in his statements concerning the behavior of the blind dancer. Alexander and Kreidl (1 p. 550) contrast in the following respects the behavior of the white mouse and that of the dancer when they are blinded. The white mouse runs less securely and avoids obstacles less certainly when deprived of vision. The dancer is much disturbed at first by the shock caused by the removal of its eyes, or in case they are covered, by the presence of the unusual obstruction. It soon recovers sufficiently to become active, but it staggers, swerves often from side to side, and frequently falls over. It moves clumsily and more slowly than usual. Later these early indications of blindness may wholly disappear, and only a slightly impaired ability to avoid obstacles remains. It was noted by Kishi (21 p. 484), that the dancer when first blinded trembles violently, jumps about wildly, and rolls over repeatedly, as Cyon has stated; but Kishi believes that these disturbances of behavior are temporary effects of the strong stimulation of certain reflex centers in the nervous system. After having been blinded for only a few minutes the dancers observed by him became fairly normal in their behavior. They moved about somewhat more slowly than usually, especially when in a position which required accurately coordinated movements. He therefore fully agrees with Alexander and Kreidl in their conclusion that vision is not so important for the guidance of the movements of the dancer as Cyon believes. In summing up the results of his investigation of this subject Zoth well says (31 p. 168), "the orientation of the positions of the body with respect to the horizontal and vertical planes seems to take place without the assistance of the sense of sight." And, as I have already stated, this excellent observer insists that the ability of the dancer to place its body in a particular position (orientation), and its ability to maintain its normal relations to its surroundings (equilibration) are excellent in darkness and in daylight, provided only the substratum be not too smooth for it to gain a foothold. It must be admitted that the contradictions which exist in the several accounts of the behavior of the dancer are too numerous and too serious to be explained on the basis of careless observation. Only the assumption of striking individual differences among dancers or of the existence of two or more varieties of the animal suffices to account for the discrepancies. That there are individual or variety differences is rendered practically certain by the fact that Cyon himself worked with two groups of dancers whose peculiarities he has described in detail, both as to structure and behavior. In the case of the first group, which consisted of three individuals, the snout was more rounded than in the four individuals of the second group, and there were present on the head three large tufts of bristly black hair which gave the mice a very comical appearance. The animals of the second group resembled more closely in appearance the common albino mouse. They possessed the same pointed snout and long body, and only the presence of black spots on the head and hips rendered them visibly different from the albino mouse. In behavior the individuals of these two groups differed strikingly. Those of the first group danced frequently, violently, and in a variety of ways; they seldom climbed on a vertical surface and when forced to move on an incline they usually descended by sliding down backwards or sidewise instead of turning around and coming down head first; they gave no signs whatever of hearing sounds. Those of the second group, on the contrary, danced very moderately and in few ways; they climbed the vertical walls of their cage readily and willingly, and when descending from a height they usually turned around and came down head first; two of the four evidently heard certain sounds very well. No wonder that Cyon suggests the possibility of a different origin! It seems not improbable that the individuals of the second group were of mixed blood, possibly the result of crosses with common mice. As I shall hope to make clear in a subsequent discussion of the dancer's peculiarities of behavior, in a chapter on individual differences, there is no sufficient reason for doubting the general truth of Cyon's description, although there is abundant evidence of his inaccuracy in details. If, for the present, we accept without further evidence the statement that there is more than one variety of dancer, we shall be able to account for many of the apparent inaccuracies of description which are to be found in the literature on the animal. As a result of the examination of the facts which this chapter presents we have discovered at least six important peculiarities of behavior of the dancer which demand an explanation in terms of structure. These are: (1) the dance movements--whirling, circling, figure-eights, zigzags; (2) restlessness and the quick, jerky movements of the head; (3) lack of responsiveness to sounds; (4) more or less pronounced deficiency in orientational and equilibrational power; (5) lack of visual dizziness; (6) lack of rotational dizziness. Naturally enough, biologists from the first appearance of the dancing mouse in Europe have been deeply interested in what we usually speak of as the causes of these peculiarities of behavior. As a result, the structure of those portions of the body which are supposed to have to do with the control of movement, with the phenomena of dizziness, and with the ability to respond to sounds, have been studied thoroughly. In the next chapter we shall examine such facts of structure as have been discovered and attempt to correlate them with the facts of behavior. CHAPTER V STRUCTURAL PECULIARITIES AND BEHAVIOR The activities of an animal are expressions of changes which occur in its structure, and they can be explained satisfactorily only when the facts of structure are known. Such peculiarities of activity as are exhibited by the dancing mouse, as contrasted with the common mouse, suggest at once that this creature has a body which differs in important respects from that of the ordinary mouse. In this chapter I shall present what is known concerning the structural bases for the whirling, the lack of equilibrational ability and of dizziness, the quick jerky head movements, the restlessness, and the partial or total deafness of the dancing mouse. Comparative physiologists have discovered that the ability of animals to regulate the position of the body with respect to external objects and to respond to sounds is dependent in large measure upon the groups of sense organs which collectively are called the ear. Hence, with reason, investigators who sought structural facts with which to explain the forms of behavior characteristic of the dancer turned their attention first of all to the study of the ear. But the ear of the animal is not, as might be supposed on superficial examination, a perfectly satisfactory natural experiment on the functions of this group of sensory structures, for it is extremely uncertain whether any one of the usual functions of the organ is totally lacking. Dizziness may be lacking, and in the adult hearing also, but in general the functional facts lead the investigator to expect modifications of the sense organs rather than their absence. I shall now give an account of the results of studies concerning the structure of the ear and brain of the dancer. Since the descriptions given by different anatomists contradict one another in many important points, the several investigations which have been made may best be considered chronologically. Bernhard Rawitz (25 p. 239) was the first investigator to describe the structure of the ear of the Japanese or Chinese dancers, as he calls them. The definite problem which he proposed to himself at the beginning of his study was, what is the structural basis of the whirling movement and of the deafness of the mice? In his first paper Rawitz described the form of the ears of five dancers. His method of work was to make microscopic preparations of the ears, and from the sections, by the use of the Born method, to reconstruct the ear in wax. These wax models were then drawn for the illustration of the author's papers (Figures 8, 9, 10). The principal results of the early work of Rawitz are summed up in the following quotation from his paper: "The Japanese dancing mice have only one normal canal and that is the anterior vertical. The horizontal and posterior vertical canals are crippled, and frequently they are grown together. The utriculus is a warped, irregular bag, whose sections have become unrecognizable. The utriculus and sacculus are in wide-open communication with each other and have almost become one. The utriculus opens broadly into the scala tympani, and the nervous elements of the cochlea are degenerate. "The last-mentioned degeneration explains the deafness of the dancing mice; but in my opinion it is a change of secondary nature. The primary change is the broad opening between the utriculus and the scala tympani from which results the streaming of the endolymph from the semicircular canals into the cochlea. When, as a consequence of the rapid whirling movements, a great part of the endolymph is hurled into the scala tympani, the organ of Corti in the scala vestibuli is fixed and its parts are rendered incapable of vibration. The condition of atrophy which is observable in the sense cells and in the nerve elements is probably due to the impossibility of functional activity; it is an atrophy caused by disuse "(25 p. 242). Ampulla externa Ampulla anterior Ramus utriculi Membrana basilaris Lagena Canalis utriculo-saccularis Membrana basilaris Ampulla posterior Macula acustica sacculi [Illustration: FIGURE 7.--The inner ear of the rabbit. Reproduced from Selenka after Retzius.] To render the terms which occur in this and subsequent descriptions of the ear of the dancer somewhat more intelligible to those who are not familiar with the general anatomy of the vertebrate ear, a side view of the inner ear of the rabbit is reproduced from a drawing by Retzius (Figure 7). I have chosen the ear of the rabbit for this purpose, not in preference to that of the common mouse, but simply because I failed to find any reliable description of the latter with drawings which could be reproduced. The rabbit's ear, however, is sufficiently like that of the mouse to make it perfectly satisfactory for our present purpose. This drawing of the rabbit's ear represents the three semicircular canals, which occur in the ear of all mammals, and which are called, by reason of their positions, the anterior vertical, the posterior vertical, and the horizontal. Each of these membranous canals possesses at one end, in an enlargement called the ampulla, a group of sense cells. In Figure 7 the ampullae of the three canals are marked respectively, ampulla anterior, ampulla posterior, and ampulla externa. This figure shows also the cochlea, marked lagena, in which the organ of hearing of mammals (the organ of Corti) is located. The ear sac, of which the chief divisions are the utriculus and the sacculus, with which the canals communicate, is not shown well in this drawing. Within a few months after the publication of Rawitz's first paper on the structure of the dancer's ear, another European investigator, Panse (23 and 24) published a short paper in which he claimed that previous to the appearance of Rawitz's paper he had sectioned and mounted ears of the common white mouse and the dancing mouse side by side, and, as the result of careful comparison, found such slight differences in structure that he considered them unworthy of mention. Panse, therefore, directly contradicts the statements made by Rawitz. In fact, he goes so far as to say that he found even greater differences between the ears of different white mice than between them and the ears of the dancer (23 p. 140). In a somewhat later paper Panse (24 p. 498) expresses his belief that, since there are no peculiarities in the general form, sensory structures, or nerve supply of the ear of the dancer, which serve to explain the behavior of the animal, it is probable that there are unusual structural conditions in the brain, perhaps in the cerebellum, to which are due the dance movements and the deafness. The work of Panse is not very convincing, however, for his figures are poor and his descriptions meager; nevertheless, it casts a certain amount of doubt upon the reliability of the descriptions given by Rawitz. [Illustration: FIGURE 8.--The membranous labyrinth of the dancer's ear. Type I. This figure, as well as 9 and 10, are reproduced from Rawitz's figures in the _Archiv für Anatomie und Physiologie, Physiologische Abtheilung_, 1899. _C.s._, anterior vertical canal; _C.p._, posterior vertical canal; _C.e._, horizontal canal; _U._, utriculus.] The unfavorable light in which his report was placed by Panse's statements led Rawitz to examine additional preparations of the ear of the dancer. Again he used the reconstruction method. The mice whose ears he studied were sent to him by the physiologist Cyon. As has been noted in Chapter IV, Cyon discovered certain differences in the structure and in the behavior of these dancers (11 p. 431), which led him to classify them in two groups. The individuals of one group climbed readily on the vertical walls of their cages and responded vigorously to sounds; those of the other group could not climb at all and gave no evidences of hearing. After he had completed his study of their behavior, Cyon killed the mice and sent their heads to Rawitz; but unfortunately those of the two groups became mixed, and Rawitz was unable to distinguish them. When he examined the structure of the ears of these mice, Rawitz did find, according to his accounts, two structural types between which very marked differences existed. Were it not for the carelessness which is indicated by the confusion of the materials, and the influence of Cyon's suggestion that there should be different structures to account for the differences in behavior, Rawitz's statements might be accepted. As matters stand there can be no doubt of individual differences in behavior, external appearance, and the structure of the ear; but until these have been correlated on the basis of thoroughgoing, careful observation, it is scarcely worth while to discuss their relations. [Illustration: FIGURE 9.--The membranous labyrinth of the dancer's ear. Type II.] [Illustration: FIGURE 10.--The membranous labyrinth of the dancer's ear. Type III.] To his previous description of the conditions of the ear sacs, sense organs, and nerve elements of the dancer's ear, Rawitz adds nothing of importance in his second paper (26 p. 171). He merely reiterates his previous statements concerning the form of the canals, on the basis of his findings in the case of six additional dancers. Figures 8, 9, and 10 are reproduced from Rawitz to show the anatomical conditions which he claims that he found. As these figures indicate, the canals were found to be extremely variable, as well as unusual in form, and the sacs distorted. In the ears of some specimens there were only two canals, and in all cases they were more or less reduced in size, distorted, or grown together. [Illustration: FIGURE 11.--Photograph of a wax model of the membranous labyrinth of the ear of the dancer. Reproduced from Baginsky's figure in the _Centralblatt für Physiologie_, Bd. 16.] The work of Rawitz was unfavorably criticised by Alexander and Kreidl (2), Kishi (21), and Baginsky (4), as well as by Panse (23 and 24). To their criticisms Rawitz replied by insisting that the other investigators could not with right attack his statements because they had not used the reconstruction method. In order to test the value of this contention, and if possible settle the question of fact, Baginsky had a model of the ear of the dancer constructed by a skilled preparator (Herr Spitz) from sections which had been prepared by the best neurological methods. This model was made eighty times the size of the ear. It was then reduced in the process of photographic reproduction to sixteen times the natural size of the ear in the mouse. Figure 11 is a photograph of Baginsky's model. It shows beyond question the presence of three canals of the same general form and relations as those of the common mouse and of other mammals. Baginsky's paper is brief and to the point. His criticisms of the work of both Cyon and Rawitz are severe, but they are justified in all probability by the carelessness of these investigators in the fixation of their materials. Of the five skilled histologists who have examined the ear of the dancer, Rawitz alone found markedly abnormal canals. It is highly probable, therefore, that the canals in his preparations in some way became distorted before the ears were sectioned. He doubtless described accurately the conditions which he found, but the chances are that those conditions never existed in the living animals. The conflicting statements of Rawitz and Panse stimulated interest, and as a result two other investigators, without knowledge of one another's work, began careful researches on the dancer's ear. One, Alexander (2 and 3), worked in coöperation with the physiologist Kreidl; the other, Kishi (21), worked independently. The anatomical papers of Alexander and Kishi appeared at about the same time, and since neither contains a reference to the other, it is evident that the investigations were carried on almost simultaneously. Alexander's descriptions are more detailed than those of Rawitz and Panse, and in certain respects Kishi's are even more thoroughgoing. The first paper published by Alexander and Kreidl (1) contains the results of observations on the habits and behavior of the dancers. Having examined the chief facts of function, these investigators attempted to discover the structural conditions for the peculiarities of behavior which they had observed. As material for their anatomical work they made use of four dancers, one albino mouse, and four common gray mice. The ears of these individuals were fixed, sectioned, and examined microscopically in connection with parts of the brain. In all, eight dancer ears and six common mouse ears were studied. Very extensive descriptions of these preparations, together with measurements of many important portions of the ear, are presented in their paper, the chief conclusions of which are the following:-- 1. The semicircular canals, the ampullae, the utriculus, and the cristae acusticae of the canals are normal in their general form and relations to one another as well as in their histological conditions (2 p. 529). This is contradictory of the statements made by Rawitz. 2. There is destruction of the macula sacculi (2 p. 534). 3. There is destruction also of the papilla basilaris cochleae, with encroachment of the surrounding tissues in varying degrees. 4. There is diminution in the number of fibers of the branches and roots of the ramus superior and ramus medius of the eighth nerve, and the fiber bundles are very loosely bound together. 5. Similarly the number of fibers in the inferior branch (the cochlear nerve) of the eighth nerve is very much reduced. 6. There is moderate reduction in the size of the two vestibular ganglia as a result of the unusually small number of nerve cells. 7. The ganglion spirale is extremely degenerate. There is therefore atrophy of the branches, ganglia, and roots of the entire eighth nerve, together with atrophy and degeneration of the pars inferior labyrinthii. The nerve endings are especially degenerate (2 p. 534). The above structural deviations of the ear of the dancer from that of the common mouse may be considered as primary or secondary according as they are inherited or acquired. Since, according to Alexander and Kreidl, the dancers' peculiarities of behavior and deafness are directly and uniformly inherited, it is obvious that certain primary structural deviations must serve as a basis for these functional facts. But it is equally clear, in the opinion of Alexander and Kreidl (2 p. 536), that other structural peculiarities of the dancer are the result of the primary changes, and in no way the conditions for either the dancing or the deafness. These authors feel confident that the facts of behavior which are to be accounted for are almost certainly due to the pathological changes which they have discovered in the nerves, ganglia, and especially in the peripheral nerve endings of the ear of the mouse (2 p. 537). It is further claimed by Alexander and Kreidl that there are very marked individual differences among the dancers in the structure of the ear. In some cases the otoliths and the sensory hairs are lacking; in others, they are present in the state of development in which they are found in other varieties of mouse. Sometimes the cochlea is much reduced in size; at other times it is found to be of normal size (2 p. 538). These variations in structure, if they really exist, go far toward justifying the tendency of Cyon and Alexander and Kreidl, as well as many other investigators, to regard the dancer as abnormal or even pathological. The functions of the ear as at present known to the comparative physiologist are grouped as the acoustic and the non-acoustic. The cochlea is supposed on very good grounds to have to do with the acoustic functions, and the organs of the semicircular canals on equally good evidence are thought to have to do with such of the non-acoustic functions as equilibration and orientation. Just what the functions of the organs of the ear sacs are is not certainly known. These facts are of importance when we consider the attempts made by Alexander and Kreidl to correlate the various peculiarities of behavior shown by the dancer with the structural facts which their work has revealed. This correlation is indicated schematically below. The physiological facts to be accounted for in terms of structure are presented in the first column, and the anatomical facts which are thought to be explanatory, in the second (2 p. 539). FUNCTION 1 Lack of sensitiveness to auditory stimuli. {Structure 1,2,3 below} 2 Defective equilibrational ability. {Structure 4,5,6 below} 3 Lack of turning dizziness. {Structure 4,5,6 below} 4 Normal reactions to galvanic stimulation. (not related in table to any Structure) STRUCTURE 1 Destruction of the papilla basilaris cochleae, etc. 2 Diminution of the inferior branch of the eighth nerve. 3 Marked degeneration of the ganglion spirale. 4 Destruction of the macula sacculi. 5 Diminution of the branches and roots of the superior and middle branches of the eighth nerve. 6 Diminution of both ganglia vestibulii and of the nerve cells. Alexander and Kreidl themselves believe that the partial deafness of the dancers (for they admit that the total lack of hearing has not been satisfactorily proved) is due to the defective condition of the cochlea. They account for the imperfect equilibrational ability of the animals by pointing out the structural peculiarities of the sacculus, the vestibular ganglia, and the peripheral nerves. Similarly, the lack of dizziness they suppose to be due to the diminution of the fibers of the nerves which supply the canal organs, the atrophied condition of the vestibular ganglia, and a disturbance of the peripheral sense organs. Furthermore, there are no anatomical facts which would indicate a lack of galvanic dizziness (2 p. 552). Despite the fact that they seem to explain all the functional peculiarities of the dancer, the statements made by Alexander and Kreidl are neither satisfying nor convincing. Their statements concerning the structure of the ear have not been verified by other investigators, and their correlation of structural with functional facts lacks an experimental basis. In this connection it may be worth while to mention that a beautiful theory of space perception which Cyon (9) had constructed, largely on the basis of the demonstration by Rawitz that the dancers have only one normal canal, is totally destroyed by Panse, Baginsky, Alexander and Kreidl, and Kishi, for all of these observers found in the dancer three canals of normal shape. Cyon had noted that the most abnormal of the voluntary as well as of the forced movements of the dancer occur in the plane of the canal which Rawitz found to be most strikingly defective. This fact he connected with his observation that the fish Petromyzon, which possesses only two canals, moves in only two spatial dimensions. The dancer with only one functional canal in each ear moves in only one plane, and neither it nor Petromyzon is able to move far in a straight line (11 p. 444). From these and similar surmises, which his eagerness to construct an ingenious theory led him to accept as facts quite uncritically, Cyon concluded that the perception of space depends upon the number and arrangement of the semicircular canals, and that the dancer behaves as it does because it possesses canals of unusual shape and relations to one another. The absurdity of Cyon's position becomes obvious when it is shown that the structural conditions of which he was making use do not exist in the dancer. The results obtained by Kishi in his study of the ear of the dancer differ in many important respects from those of all other investigators, but especially from those of Rawitz and Alexander and Kreidl. Kishi's work was evidently done with admirable carefulness. His methods in the preparation of his materials, so far as can be judged from his report, were safe and satisfactory, and his descriptions of results are minute and give evidence of accuracy and conscientious thoughtfulness. The material for his histological work he obtained from three different animal dealers. It consisted of fifteen adult and nineteen young dancers, and, as material for comparison, ten common gray mice. The animals were studied first biologically, that their habits and behavior might be described accurately and so far as possible accounted for in the light of whatever histological results might be obtained subsequently; then they were studied physiologically, that the functional importance of various organs which would naturally be supposed to have to do with the peculiarities of the mouse might be understood; and, finally, they were killed and their ears and portions of their brains were studied microscopically, that structural conditions for the biological and physiological facts might be discovered. The ear, which was studied by the use of several series of sections, as well as in gross dissections, is described by Kishi under three headings:-- (1) The sound-receiving apparatus (auditory organs). (2) The static apparatus (equilibrational organs). (3) The sound-transmitting apparatus (ear drum, ear bones, etc.). The chief results of his structural investigation may be stated briefly under these three headings. In the sound-receiving or auditory apparatus, Kishi failed to find the important deviations from the usual structure of the mammalian ear which had been described by Rawitz. The latter distinctly says that although the organ of Corti is present in all of the whirls of the cochlea, the auditory cells in it are noticeably degenerate. Kishi does not agree with Panse's statement (21 p. 476) that the auditory organ of the dancer differs in no important respects from that of the common mouse, for he found that in certain regions the hair cells of the organ of Corti were fewer and smaller in the dancer. He therefore concludes that the auditory organ is not entirely normal, but at the same time he emphasizes the serious discrepancy between his results and those of Rawitz. In not one of the ears of the twelve dancers which he studied did Kishi find the direct communication between the utriculus and the scala tympani which Rawitz described, and such differences as appeared in the organ of Corti were in the nature of slight deviations rather than marked degenerations. In the outer wall of the ductus cochlearis of the dancer the stria vasculosa is almost or totally lacking, while in the gray mouse it is prominent. This condition of the stria vasculosa Kishi was the first to notice in the dancer; Alexander and Kreidl had previously described a similar condition in an albino cat. If, as has been supposed by some physiologists, the stria vasculosa is really the source of the endolymph, this state of affairs must have a marked influence on the functions of the auditory apparatus and the static apparatus, for pressure differences between the endolymph and the perilymph spaces must be present. And, as Kishi points out, should such pressure differences be proved to exist, the functional disturbance in the organ of hearing which the lack of responses to sounds seems to indicate might better be ascribed to them than to the streaming of the endolymph from the canals into the cochlea as assumed by Rawitz (21 p. 477). Kishi merely suggests that the condition of the stria may account for the deafness of the mouse; he does not feel at all confident of the truth of his explanation, and he therefore promises in his first paper a continuation of his work in an investigation of the functions of the stria. This, however, he seems not to have accomplished thus far. [Illustration: FIGURE 12.--The inner ear of the dancer. Reproduced from Kishi's figure in the _Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoölogie_, Bd. 71. _c.c._ crus simplex; o.b. anterior vertical canal; _h.b._ posterior vertical canal; _a.b._ horizontal canal.] The static apparatus Kishi describes as closely similar in form to that of the gray mouse. In none of his twelve preparations of the ear of the dancer did he find such abnormalities of form and connections in the semicircular canals as Rawitz's figures and descriptions represent. Rawitz states that the anterior canal is normal except in its lack of connection with the posterior and that the posterior and horizontal are much reduced in size. Kishi, on the contrary, insists that all of the three canals are normal in shape and that the usual connection between the anterior and the posterior canals, the crus simplex, exists. He justifies these statements by presenting photographs of two dancer ears which he carefully removed from the head. Comparison of these photographs (Figures 12 and 13) with Rawitz's drawings of the conditions of the canals and sacs as he found them (Figures 8, 9, and 10), and of both with the condition in the typical mammalian ear as shown by Figure 7, will at once make clear the meaning of Kishi's statements. That Rawitz's descriptions of the canals are not correct is rendered almost certain by the fact that Panse, Baginsky, Alexander and Kreidl, and Kishi all agree in describing them as normal in form. The only important respects in which Kishi found the membranous labyrinth, that is, the canals and the ear sacs, of the dancer to differ from that of the gray mouse are the following. In the dancer the cupola of the crista acustica is not so plainly marked and not so highly developed, and the raphae of the ampullae and canals, which frequently are clearly visible in the gray mouse, are lacking (21 p. 478). [Illustration: FIGURE 13.--The inner ear of the dancer, showing the spiral form of the cochlea. After Kishi.] The sound-transmitting apparatus of the dancer, according to Kishi, differs only very slightly from that of the gray mouse, and there is no reason to consider the differences which appear as important (21 p. 478). Almost as amusing as the way in which Cyon's theory of space perception disappears in the light of critical research is Panse's explanation of the deafness of the dancer. Failing to find any defects in the auditory apparatus of the inner ear which seemed adequate to account for the obvious lack of responsiveness to sounds, this investigator concluded that plugs of wax which he had noticed in the auditory meatus of the dancer excluded sounds or in some way interfered with the functioning of the tympanic membrane. Kishi reports that he found such plugs of wax in the ears of one gray mouse, but in none of the dancers which he examined did he discover them (21 p. 479). Panse's explanation of the defective hearing of the dancer neither needs nor deserves further comment. As one result of his investigation, Kishi is convinced that the dance movements are not due to peculiarities in the semicircular canals and their sense organs, as Rawitz claimed, for the general form and finer structure of these organs in the dancer is practically the same as in the common mouse. Kishi is just as certain that the whirling is not due to defects in the canal organs, as Rawitz is that it is due to such structural conditions! It is rather surprising that any one should feel confident of the power of the microscope to reveal all those structural conditions which are important as conditions of function. Probably there are histological differences between the ear of the dancer and that of the gray mouse, which, although undetectable by scientific means at present, furnish the structural basis for the marked differences in behavior. As has been set forth already (p. 9), Kishi accounts for the dance movements by assuming the inheritance of an acquired character of behavior. This inherited tendency to dance, he thinks, has been accentuated by the confinement of the mice in narrow cages and their long-continued movement in the wheels which are placed in the cages (21 p. 481). Rawitz, Cyon, and Alexander and Kreidl felt themselves under the necessity of finding peculiarities of behavior in the dancer which could be referred to the various abnormalities of structure which they had either seen or accepted on faith; Kishi found himself in a very different predicament, for he had on his hands the commonly accepted statement that the animals are deaf, without being able to find any structural basis for this defect. To avoid the difficulty he questions the existence of deafness! If perchance they are deaf, he thinks that it is possibly because of the defect in the stria vasculosa. This suggestion Kishi makes despite the fact that our ignorance of the function of the stria renders it impossible for us to do otherwise than guess at its relation to hearing. We have now briefly reviewed the results of the various important investigations of the behavior and structure of the dancer. The observations of Cyon, Zoth, and the writer establish beyond doubt the existence of important individual differences in behavior if not of distinct divisions within the species of mouse, and the general results of the several anatomical investigations make it seem highly probable that the structure of the ear, as well as the externally visible structural features of the animals, vary widely. Unfortunately, the lack of agreement in the descriptions of the ear given by the different students of the subject renders impossible any certain correlation of structural and functional facts. That the whirling and the lack of dizziness and of hearing have their structural bases no one doubts, but whether it is in the brain itself, in the sense organs, or in the labyrinth, our knowledge does not permit us to say. With this statement Rawitz, Cyon, and Alexander and Kreidl would not agree, for they believe that they have discovered structural peculiarities which fully explain the behavior of the dancer. Panse and Kishi, on the other hand, contend that the ear gives no structural signs of such peculiarities as the dancing and deafness suggest; they therefore look to the cerebellum for the seat of the disturbance. With the same possibility in mind the author of "Fancy Varieties of Mice" writes: "These quaint little creatures make amusing pets for any one who is not scientific, or very fond of knowing 'the reason why.' In their case, the reason of the peculiarity which gives them their name is rather a sad one. It is now pretty conclusively established that they are no more Japanese than they are of any other country in particular, but that the originators of the breed were common fancy mice which were suffering from a disease of the brain analogous to the 'gid' in sheep. In the latter, the complaint is caused by a parasite in the brain; in the case of the Waltzing Mouse, it is probably due to an hereditary malformation therein. Be this as it may, the breed is now a firmly established one, and the children of waltzing mice waltz like their parents" (32 p. 45). Although it is quite possible that peculiarities in the central nervous system, rather than in the peripheral nervous system, may be responsible for the forms of behavior exhibited by the dancer, it must be remembered that no such peculiarities have been revealed by the examination of the central nervous system. The old fancier has neither better nor worse grounds for his belief than have Panse and Kishi. So far as the reliability of the anatomical work which has been discussed is in question, it would seem that Rawitz's results are rendered somewhat unsatisfactory by the carelessness of Cyon in fixing the materials; that Panse's descriptions and comparisons are neither careful nor detailed enough to be convincing; that the work of Alexander and Kreidl, as well as that of Kishi, gives evidence of accuracy and trustworthiness. The fact that the statements of Alexander and Kreidl frequently do not agree with those of Kishi proves that there are serious errors in the work of one or another of these investigators. Cyon's discussion of the anatomy of the dancer is not to be taken too seriously, for by his theory of space perception and of a sixth sense he was unduly biased in favor of the structural peculiarities described by Rawitz. Nevertheless, his discussion is not without interest, for the way in which he succeeded in making every structural fact which Rawitz suggested fit into his theories and help to account for the functional peculiarities which he had himself observed, is extremely clever and indicates a splendid scientific imagination. To sum up: All the facts of behavior and physiology which have been established lead us to expect certain marked structural differences between the dancer and the common mouse. The bizarre movements, lack of equilibrational ability, and the nervous shaking of the head suggest the presence of peculiar conditions in the semicircular canals or their sense organs; and the lack of sensitiveness to sounds indicates defects in the cochlea. Yet, strange as it may seem to those who are not familiar with the difficulties of the study of the minute structure of these organs, no structural conditions have been discovered which account satisfactorily for the dancer's peculiarities of behavior. That the ear is unusual in form is highly probable, since three of the four investigators who have studied it carefully agree that it differs more or less markedly from that of the common mouse. But, on the other hand, the serious lack of agreement in their several descriptions of the conditions which they observed renders their results utterly inconclusive and extremely unsatisfactory. The status of our knowledge of the structure of the central nervous system is even less satisfactory, if possible, than that of our knowledge of those portions of the peripheral nervous system which would naturally be supposed to have to do with such functional peculiarities as the dancer exhibits. So far as I have been able to learn, no investigator has carefully examined the brain and spinal cord in comparison with those of the common mouse, and only those who have failed to find any structural basis for the facts of behavior in the organs of the ear have attempted to account for the dancer's whirling and deafness by assuming that the cerebellum is unusual in structure. We are, therefore, forced to conclude that our knowledge of the nervous system of the dancing mouse does not at present enable us to explain the behavior of the animal. It seems highly probable to me, in the light of my observation of the dancer and my study of the entire literature concerning the animal, that no adequate explanation of its activities can be given in terms of the structure of the peripheral or the central nervous system, or of both, but that the structure of the entire organism will have to be taken into account. The dancer's physiological characteristics, in fact, suggest multitudinous structural peculiarities. I have confined my study to its behavior, not because the problems of structure seemed less interesting or less important, but simply because I found it necessary thus to limit the field of research in order to accomplish what I wished within a limited period. That there are structural bases for the forms of behavior which this book describes is as certain as it could be were they definitely known; that they, or at least some of them, are discoverable by means of our present- day histological methods is almost as certain. It is, therefore, obvious that this is an excellent field for further research. It is not an agreeable task to report inconclusive and contradictory results, and I have devoted this chapter to a brief account of the work that has been done by others on the structure of the ear of the dancer rather for the sake of presenting a complete account of the animal as it is known to-day than because of the value of the facts which could be stated. CHAPTER VI THE SENSE OF HEARING Repeatedly in the foregoing chapters mention has been made of the dancer's irresponsiveness to sounds, but it has not been definitely stated whether this peculiarity of behavior is due to deafness or to the inhibition of reaction. This chapter is concerned with the evidence which bears upon the problem of the existence of a sense of hearing. Again I may be permitted to call attention to the observations of other investigators before presenting the results of my own experiments and stating the conclusions which I have reached through the consideration of all available facts. By the results of various simple tests which he made, Rawitz (25 p. 238) was convinced that the adult dancer is totally deaf. He did not experiment with the young, but he says he thinks they may be able to hear, since the necessary structural conditions are present. This guess which Rawitz made on the basis of very indefinite and uncertain knowledge of the histology of the ear of the young dancer is of special interest in the light of facts revealed by my own experiments. Unfortunately the study of hearing made by Rawitz is casual rather than thorough, and although it may turn out that all of his statements are justified by his observations, the reader is not likely to get much satisfaction from his discussion of the subject. Inasmuch as he could discover no structural basis for deafness, Panse (23 p. 140) expressed himself as unwilling to believe that the mice are deaf, and this despite the fact that he observed no responses to the sounds made by a series of tuning forks ranging from C5 to C8. He believes rather that they are strangely irresponsive to sounds and that their sensitiveness is dulled, possibly, by the presence of plugs of wax in the ears. Since another investigator, Kishi, has observed the presence of similar plugs of wax in the ears of common mice which could hear, there is but slight probability that Panse is right in considering the plugs of wax as the cause of the dancer's irresponsiveness to sounds. Far more thoroughgoing tests than those of Rawitz or Panse were made by Cyon (9 p. 218), who holds the unique position of being the only person on record who has observed the adult dancer give definite reactions to sounds. To a König Galton whistle so adjusted that it gave a tone of about 7000 complete vibrations per second, which is said to be about the pitch of the voice of the dancer, some of the animals tested by Cyon responded unmistakably, others not at all. In one group of four mice, two not only reacted markedly to the sound of the whistle but apparently listened intently, for as soon as the whistle was blown they ran to the side of the cage and pressed their noses against the walls as if attempting to approach the source of the stimulus. The remaining two mice gave not the slightest indication that the sound acted as a stimulus. By the repetition of this sound from eight to twelve times Cyon states that he was able to arouse the mice from sleep. When thus disturbed, the female came out of the nest box before the male. Similarly when the mice were disturbed by the whistle in the midst of their dancing, the female was first to retreat into the nest box. There is thus, according to Cyon, some indication of sex, as well as individual, differences in sensitiveness to the sound of the whistle. Cyon's statement that in order to evoke a response the whistle must be held above the head of the dancer suggests at once the possibility that currents of air or odors instead of sounds may have been responsible for the reactions which he observed. The work of this investigator justifies caution in the acceptance of his statements. Neither the conditions under which the auditory tests were made nor the condition of the animals is described with sufficient accuracy to make possible the comparison of Cyon's work with that of other investigators. As will appear later, it is of the utmost importance that the influence of other stimuli than sound be avoided during the tests and that the age of the mouse be known. The conclusion reached by Cyon is that some dancers are able to hear sounds of about the pitch of their own cries. The fact, emphasized by Cyon, that the mice respond to tones of about the pitch of their own voice is of peculiar interest in its relation to the additional statements made by the same author to the effect that the female dancer is more sensitive to sounds than the male, and that the males either do not possess a voice or are much less sensitive to disagreeable stimuli than the females. In the case of the dancers which he first studied (9 p. 218), Cyon observed that certain strong stimuli evoked pain cries; but later in his investigation he noticed that four individuals, all of which were males, never responded thus to disagreeable stimulation (11 p.431). He asks, therefore, does this mean that the males lack a voice or that they are less sensitive than the females? The fact that he did not succeed in getting a definite answer to this simple question is indicative of the character of Cyon's work. My dancers have provided me with ample evidence concerning the matter. Both the males and the females, among the dancers which I have studied, possess a voice. The females, especially during periods of sexual excitement, are much more likely to squeak than the males. At such times they give their shrill cry whenever they are touched by another mouse or by the human hand. A slight pinching of the tail will frequently cause the female to squeak, but the male seldom responds to the same stimulus by crying out. The most satisfactory way to demonstrate the existence of a voice in the male is to subject him to the stimulating effect of an induced current, so weak that it is barely appreciable to the human hand. To this unexpected stimulus even the male usually responds by a sudden squeak. There can be no doubt, then, of the possession of a voice by both males and females. The males may be either less sensitive or less given to vocal expression, but they are quite able to squeak when favorable conditions are presented. The possession of a voice by an animal is presumptive evidence in favor of a sense of hearing, but it would scarcely be safe to say that the mice must be able to hear their own voices. Cyon, however, thinks that some dancers can. What further evidence is to be had? Although they obtained no visible motor reactions to such noises as the clapping of the hands, the snapping of the fingers, or to the tones of tuning forks of different pitches and the shrill tones of the Galton whistle, Alexander and Kreidl (1 p. 547) are not convinced of the total deafness of the dancer, for, as they remark, common mice which undoubtedly hear do not invariably respond visibly to sounds. Furthermore, the anatomical conditions revealed by their investigation of the ear of the dancer are not such as to render sensitiveness to sounds impossible. They recognize also that the existence of the ability to produce sounds is an indication of hearing. They have no confidence in the results reported by Cyon, for they feel that he did not take adequate precautions to guard against the action of other than auditory stimuli. Zoth (31 p. 170) has pointed out with reason and force that testing the sensitiveness of the mice is especially difficult because of their restlessness. They are almost constantly executing quick, jerky movements, starting, stopping, or changing the direction of movement, and it is therefore extremely difficult to tell with even a fair degree of certainty whether a given movement which occurs simultaneously with a sound is a response to the sound or merely coincident with it. With great care in the exclusion of the influence of extraneous stimuli, Zoth tried a large number of experiments to test the hearing of both young and adult dancers. Not once did he observe an indubitable auditory reaction. As he says, "I have performed numerous experiments with the Galton whistle, with a squeaking glass stopper, with caps and cartridges, without being able to come to any certain conclusion. With reference to the Galton whistle and particularly to the tone which was said to have been heard extremely well by Cyon's mice, I believe I am rather safe in asserting that my mice, young (12-13 days) as well as old, do not react to the König Galton whistle (7210 Vs.). They could not be awakened out of sleep by repetitions of the sound, nor enticed out of their nests, and their dancing could not be interrupted" (31 p. 170). Zoth's experiments appear to be the most careful and critical of those thus far considered. Last to be mentioned, but in many respects of greatest interest and value, is the work of Kishi (21 p. 482) on the problem of hearing. To this acute observer belongs the credit of calling attention emphatically to the ear movements which are exhibited by the dancer. Frequently, as he remarks, the ears move as if the animal were listening or trying to determine the direction whence comes a sound, yet usually the mouse gives no other sign of hearing. That the absence of ordinary reactions to sounds is due to deafness, Kishi, like Panse, is led to doubt because his anatomical studies have not revealed any defects in the organs of hearing which would seem to indicate the lack of this sense. This historical survey of the problem of hearing has brought out a few important facts. No one of the several investigators of the subject, with the exception of Cyon, is certain that the dancer can hear, and no one of them, with the exception of Rawitz, is certain that it cannot hear! Cyon almost certainly observed two kinds of dancing mice. Those of his dancers which exhibited exceptional ability to climb in the vertical direction and which also gave good evidence of hearing certain sounds may have been hybrids resulting from the crossing of the dancer with a common mouse, or they may have been exceptional specimens of the true dancer variety. A third possibility is suggested by Rawitz's belief in the ability of the young dancer to hear. Cyon's positive results may have been obtained with immature individuals. I am strongly inclined to believe that Cyon did observe two types of dancer, and to accept his statement that some of the mice could hear, whereas others could not. It is evident, in the light of our examination of the experimental results thus far obtained by other investigators, that neither the total lack of sensitiveness to sounds in the adult nor the presence of such sensitiveness in the young dancer has been satisfactorily proved. I shall now report in detail the results of my own study of the sense of hearing in the dancer. As the behavior of the young differs greatly from that of the adult, by which is meant the sexually mature animal, I shall present first the results of my experiments with adults and later, in contrast, the results obtained with mice from one to twenty-eight days old. My preliminary tests were made with noises. While carefully guarding against the interference of visual, tactual, temperature, and olfactory stimuli, I produced noises of varying degrees of loudness by clapping the hands together suddenly, by shouting, whistling, exploding pistol caps, striking steel bars, ringing an electric bell, and causing another mouse to squeak. To these sounds a common mouse usually responds either by starting violently, or by trembling and remaining perfectly quiet for a few seconds, as if frightened. The adult dancers which I have tested, and I have repeated the experiment scores of times during the last three years with more than a hundred different individuals, have never given unmistakable evidence of hearing. Either they are totally deaf or there is a most surprising lack of motor reactions. Precisely the same results were obtained in tests made with the Galton whistle throughout its range of pitches, and with Appuun whistles which, according to their markings, ranged from 2000 Vs. (C_4) to 48,000 (G_9), but which undoubtedly did not correspond at all exactly to this range, and with a series of König tuning forks which gave tones varying in pitch from 1024 to 16,382 complete vibrations. I am willing to trust these experimental results the more fully because during all the time I have had adult dancers under observation I have never once seen a reaction which could with any fair degree of certainty be referred to an auditory stimulus. Never once, although I have tried repeatedly, have I succeeded in arousing a dancer from sleep by producing noises or tones, nor have I ever been able to observe any influence of sounds on the dance movements. All of Cyon's signs have failed with my mice. Occasionally what looked like a response to some sound appeared, but critical observation invariably proved it to be due to some other cause than the auditory stimulus. A sound produced above the animal is very likely to bring about a motor reaction, as Cyon claims; but I have always found it to be the result of the currents of air or odors, which usually influence the animal when the experimenter is holding any object above it. I do not wish to maintain that Cyon's conclusions are false; I merely emphasize the necessity for care in the exclusion of other stimuli. The mice are extremely sensitive to changes in temperature, such, for example, as are produced by the breath of the experimenter, and one must constantly guard against the misinterpretation of behavior. In a single experiment with mice over a month old, I observed what might possibly indicate sensitiveness to sound. While holding a mouse, thirty- five days old, in my hand I pursed my lips and made a very shrill sound by drawing in air; the mouse seemed to start perceptibly according to the indications given by my sense of touch. I repeated the stimulus several times and each time I could see and feel the animal start slightly. With two other individuals which I tested the reaction was less certain, and with several others I failed to get any indication of response. This would seem to prove that the three individuals which responded happened to be sensitive to that particular tone at the age of five weeks. The test is unsatisfactory because the vibrations from my own body may have brought about the reaction instead of the air vibrations produced by my lips, and I therefore merely mention it in the enumeration of the various experimental tests which I have made. If we should conclude from all the negative evidence that is available, or that could be obtained, that the dancer is totally deaf, it might fairly be objected that the conclusion is unsafe, since an animal does not necessarily respond to stimuli by a visible change in the position or relations of its body. Death feigning may fairly be considered a response to a stimulus or stimulus complex, yet there may be no sign of movement. The green frog when observed in the laboratory usually gives no indication whatever, by movements that are readily observable, that it hears sounds which occur about it, but I have been able to show by means of indirect methods of study that it is stimulated by these same sounds.[1] Its rate of respiration is changed by the sounds, and although a sound does not bring about a bodily movement, it does very noticeably influence movements in response to other stimuli which occur simultaneously with the sound. I discovered that under certain rather simple experimental conditions the green frog would regularly respond to a touch on the back by drawing its hind leg up toward the body. Under the same conditions the sound of an electric bell caused no visible movement of the leg, but if at the instant the back was touched the bell was rung, the leg movement was much greater than that brought about by the touch alone. This suggests at once the desirability of studying the sense of hearing in the dancer by some indirect method. The animal may be stimulated, and yet it may not give any visible sign of the influence of the auditory stimulus. [Footnote 1: "The Sense of Hearing in Frogs." _Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology_, Vol. XV, p. 288, 1905.] Were not the dancing so extremely variable in rapidity and duration, it might be used as an index of the influence of auditory stimuli. Cyon's statements would indicate that sounds interfere with the dancing, but as I obtained no evidence of this, I worked instead with the following indirect method, which may be called the method of auditory choice. The apparatus which was used is described in detail in Chapter VII. Figures 14 and 15 will greatly aid the reader in understanding its essential features. Two small wooden boxes, identical in form and as closely similar as possible in general appearance, were placed in a larger box in such positions that a mouse was forced to enter and pass through one of them in order to get to the nest-box. On the bottom of each of these small boxes was a series of wires through which an electric current could be made to pass at the will of the experimenter. The boxes could readily be interchanged in position. At one side of the large wooden box and beyond the range of vision of the mouse was an electric bell which could be caused to ring whenever the mouse approached the entrance to one of the small boxes. The point of the experiment was to determine whether the dancer could learn to avoid the box-which-rang when it was approached. The method of conducting the tests was as follows. Each day at a certain hour the mouse was placed in that part of the large box whence it could escape to the nest-box only by passing through one of the small boxes. If it approached the wrong box (whether it happened to be the one on the right or the one on the left depended upon the experimenter's decision), the bell began to ring as a warning against entering; if it approached the other box, all was silent. As motives for the choice of the box-which-did- not-ring both reward and punishment were employed. The reward consisted of freedom to return to the nest-box _via_ the passage which led from the box-which-did-not-ring; the punishment, which consisted of a disagreeable electric shock, was given whenever the mouse entered the wrong box, that is, the one which had the sound as a warning. Entering the wrong box resulted in a disagreeable stimulus and in the necessity of returning to the large box, for the exit to the nest-box by way of the passage from this box was closed. My assumption, on the basis of extended study of the ability of the dancer to profit by experience, was that if it could hear the sound of the bell it would soon learn to avoid the box-that-rang and enter instead the one which had no sound associated with it. Systematic tests were made with No. 4 from the 3d to the 12th of February, inclusive, 1906. Each day the mouse was permitted to find his way to the nest-box through one of the small boxes ten times in succession. Usually the experimenter rang the bell alternately for the box on the left and the box on the right. The time required for such a series of experiments varied, according to the rapidity with which the mouse made his choice, from ten to thirty minutes. If in these experiments the animal approached and entered the right, or soundless box, directly, the choice indicated nothing so far as ability to hear is concerned; if it entered the wrong, or sounding box, despite the ringing of the bell, it indicated either the lack of the influence of experience or inability to hear the sound; but if it regularly avoided the box-which-sounded it thus gave evidence of ability to hear the sound of the bell. The purpose of the test was to determine, not whether the mouse could learn, but whether it could hear. For ten successive days this experiment was carried on with No. 4 without the least indication of increasing ability to avoid the wrong box by the association of the sound of the bell with the disagreeable electric shock and failure to escape to the nest-box. In fact, the experiment was discontinued because it became evident that an impossible task had been set for the mouse. Day by day as the tests were in progress I noticed that the animal became increasingly afraid of the entrances to the small boxes; it seemed absolutely helpless in the face of the situation. Partly because of the definiteness of the negative results obtained with No. 4 and partly because of the cruelty of subjecting an animal to disagreeable conditions which it is unable to avoid, the experiment was not repeated with other individuals. I have never conducted an experiment which gave me as much discomfort as this; it was like being set to whip a deaf child because it did not learn to respond to stimuli which it could not feel. By a very similar method No. 18 was tested for his sensitiveness to the noise and jar from the induction apparatus which was used in connection with many of my experiments on vision and the modifiability of behavior. In this experiment the wrong box was indicated by the buzzing sound of the apparatus and the slight vibrations which resulted from it. Although No. 18 was tested, as was No. 4, for ten successive days, ten trials each day, it gave no evidence of ability to avoid the box-which-buzzed. Since both direct and indirect methods of testing the hearing of the dancer have uniformly given negative results, in the case of mice more than five weeks old, I feel justified in concluding that they are totally deaf and not merely irresponsive to sounds. Rawitz's statements, and the fact that what may have been auditory reactions were obtained with a few individuals of five weeks of age, suggest that the mice may be able to hear at certain periods of life. To discover whether this is true I have tested the young of twenty different litters from the first day to the twenty-eighth, either daily or at intervals of two or three days. In these tests König forks, steel bars, and a Galton whistle were used. The results obtained are curiously interesting. During the first two weeks of life none of the mice which I tested gave any visible motor response to the various sounds used. During the third week certain of the individuals responded vigorously to sudden high tones and loud noises. After the third week I have seen only doubtful signs of hearing. I shall now describe in detail the method of experimentation, the condition of the animals, and the nature of the auditory reactions. Between the twelfth and the eighteenth day the auditory canal becomes open to the exterior. The time is very variable in different litters, for their rate of growth depends upon the amount of nourishment which the mother is able to supply. Without exception, in my experience, the opening to the ear appears before the eyes are open. Consequently visual stimuli usually are not disturbing factors in the auditory tests with mice less than sixteen days old. There is also a sudden and marked change in the behavior of the mice during the third week. Whereas, for the first fourteen or eighteen days they are rather quiet and deliberate in their movements when removed from the nest, some time in the third week their behavior suddenly changes and they act as if frightened when taken up by the experimenter. They jump out of his hand, squeak, and sometimes show fight. This is so pronounced that it has attracted my attention many times and I have studied it carefully to determine, if possible, whether it is due to some profound change in the nervous system which thus suddenly increases the sensitiveness of the animal or to the development of the sexual organs. I am inclined to think that it is a nervous phenomenon which is intimately connected with the sexual condition. Within a day or two after it appears the mice usually begin to show auditory reactions and continue to do so for three to five days. I shall now describe the results obtained with a few typical litters. A litter born of Nos. 151 and 152 gave uniformly negative results in all auditory tests up to the fourteenth day. On that day the ears were open, and the following observations were recorded. The five individuals of the litter, four females and one male, were taken from the nest one at a time at 7 A.M. and placed on a piece of paper in the bright sunlight. The warmth of the sun soon quieted them so that auditory tests could be made to advantage. As soon as an individual had become perfectly still, the Galton whistle was held at a distance of about four inches from its head in such a position that it could not be seen nor the currents of air caused by it felt, and suddenly blown. Each of the five mice responded to the first few repetitions of this stimulus by movements of the ears, twitchings of the body, and jerky movements of the legs. The most violent reactions resulted when the individual was lying on its back with its legs extended free in the air. Under such circumstances the four legs were often drawn together suddenly when the whistle was sounded. Similar responses were obtained with the lip sound already mentioned. Two other observers saw these experiments, and they agreed that there can be no doubt that the mice responded to the sound. The sounds which were effective lay between 5000 and 10,000 complete vibrations. On the fifteenth day the eyes were just beginning to open. Three of the mice responded definitely to the sounds, but the other two slightly, if at all. On the sixteenth day they were all too persistently active for satisfactory auditory tests, and on the seventeenth, although they were tested repeatedly under what appeared to be favorable conditions, no signs of sensitiveness were noted. Although I continued to test this litter, at intervals of three or four days, for two weeks longer, I did not once observe a response to sound. This was the first litter with which I obtained perfectly definite, clear- cut responses to sounds. That the reactive ability had not been present earlier than the fourteenth day I am confident, for I had conducted the tests in precisely the same manner daily up to the time of the appearance of the reactions. To argue that the mice heard before the fourteenth day, but were unable to react because the proper motor mechanism had not developed sufficiently would be short-sighted, for if the response depended upon the development of such a mechanism, it is not likely that it would disappear so quickly. I am therefore satisfied that these reactions indicate hearing. With another litter the following results were obtained. On the thirteenth day each of the eight members of the litter responded definitely and uniformly to the Galton whistle, set at 5 (probably about 8000 complete vibrations), and to a König steel bar of a vibration rate of 4096 Vs. The largest individuals, for almost always there are noticeable differences in size among the members of a litter, appeared to be most sensitive to sounds. On the fifteenth day and again on the seventeenth unmistakable responses to sound were observed; on the eighteenth the responses were indefinite, and on the nineteenth none were obtained. I continued the tests up to the twenty-eighth day without further indications of hearing. Certain individuals in this litter reacted so vigorously to the loud sound produced by striking the steel bar a sharp blow and also to the Galton whistle, during a period of five days, that I have no hesitation in saying that they evidently heard during that period of their lives. Other members of the litter seemed to be less sensitive; their reactions were sometimes so indefinite as to leave the experimenter in doubt about the presence of hearing. A third litter, which developed very slowly because of lack of sufficient food, first showed unmistakable reactions to sound on the twenty-first day. On this day only two of the five individuals reacted. The reactions were much more obvious on the twenty-second day, but thereafter they became indefinite. Still another litter, which consisted of one female and four males, began to exhibit the quick, jerky movements, already mentioned, on the fourteenth day. On the morning of the fifteenth day three members of the litter definitely reacted to the tone of the steel bar, and also to the hammer blow when the bar was held tightly in the hand of the experimenter. My observations were verified by another experimenter. Two individuals which appeared to be very sensitive were selected for special tests. Their reactions were obvious on the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth days; on the nineteenth day they were indefinite, and on the twentieth none could be detected. Some individuals of this litter certainly had the ability to hear for at least five days. A sixth litter of four females and two males first gave indications of the change in behavior which by this time I had come to interpret as a sign of the approach of the period of auditory sensitiveness, on the seventeenth day. I had tested them almost every day previous to this time without obtaining evidence of hearing. The tests with the steel bar and the Galton whistle were continued each day until the end of the fourth week without positive results. To all appearances the individuals of this litter were unable to hear at any time during the first month of life. Practically the same results were obtained with another litter of four females. The change in their behavior was obvious on the eighteenth day, but at no time during the first month did they give any satisfactory indications of hearing. In the accompanying table, I have presented in condensed form the results of my auditory tests in the case of twelve litters of young dancers. TABLE 5 PERIOD OF AUDITORY REACTION IN YOUNG DANCERS PARENTS No. in Change in Ears Auditory Reactions Litter Behavior Open Appear Disappear 152+151 5 13th day 14th day 14th day 16th day 152+15l 8 (?) 13th day 13th day 17th day 152+151 5 13th day 13th day 13th day 17th day 152+151 4 10th day 12th day 13th day 15th day 410+415 5 14th day 15th day 15th day 19th day 410+415 6 13th day 14th day 14th day 18th day 420+425 2 12th day 14th day 14th day 17th day 210+215 5 17th day 13th day 17th day 19th day 210+215 6 11th day 14th day No reactions 220+225 6 16th day 14th day No reactions 220+225 6 17th day 13th day No reactions 212+211 4 15th day 14th day No reactions Certain of the litters tested responded definitely to sounds, others gave no sign of hearing at any time during the first four weeks of life. Of the twelve litters for which the results of auditory tests are presented in Table 5, eight evidently passed through an auditory period. It is important to note that all except one of these were the offspring of Nos. 151 and 152, or of their descendants Nos. 410 and 415 and Nos. 420 and 425. In fact every one of the litters in this line of descent which I have tested, and they now number fifteen, has given indications of auditory sensitiveness. And, on the other hand, only in a single instance have the litters born of Nos. 210 and 215, or of their descendants, given evidence of ability to hear. These two distinct lines of descent may be referred to hereafter as the 400 and the 200 lines. I have observed several important differences between the individuals of these groups in addition to the one already mentioned. The 200 mice were sometimes gray and white instead of black and white; they climbed much more readily and danced less vigorously than those of the 400 group. These facts are particularly interesting in connection with Cyon's descriptions of the two types of dancer which he observed. In criticism of my conclusion that the young dancers are able to hear certain sounds for a few days early in life, and then become deaf, it has been suggested that they cease to react because they rapidly become accustomed to the sounds. That this is not the case, is evident from the fact that the reactions often increase in definiteness during the first two or three days and then suddenly disappear entirely. But even if this were not true, it would seem extremely improbable that the mouse should become accustomed to a sudden and startlingly loud sound with so few repetitions as occurred in these tests. On any one day the sounds were not made more than five to ten times. Moreover, under the same external condition, the common mouse reacts unmistakably to these sounds day after day when they are first produced, although with repetition of the stimulus at short intervals, the reactions soon become indefinite or disappear. The chief results of my study of hearing in the dancer may be summed up in a very few words. The young dancer, in some instances, hears sounds for a few days during the third week of life. The adult is totally deaf. Shortly before the period of auditory sensitiveness, the young dancer becomes extremely excitable and pugnacious. CHAPTER VII THE SENSE OF SIGHT: BRIGHTNESS VISION The sense of sight in the dancer has received little attention hitherto. In the literature there are a few casual statements to the effect that it is of importance. Zoth, for example (31 p. 149), remarks that it seems to be keenly developed; and other writers, on the basis of their observation of the animal's behavior, hazard similar statements. The descriptions of the behavior of blinded mice, as given by Cyon, Alexander and Kreidl, and Kishi (p.47), apparently indicate that the sense is of some value; they do not, however, furnish definite information concerning its nature and its role in the daily life of the animal. The experimental study of this subject which is now to be described was undertaken, after careful and long-continued observation of the general behavior of the dancer, in order that our knowledge of the nature and value of the sense of sight in this representative of the Mammalia might be increased in scope and definiteness. The results of this study naturally fall into three groups: (1) those which concern brightness vision, (2) those which concern color vision, and (3) those which indicate the role of sight in the life of the dancer. Too frequently investigators, in their work on vision in animals, have assumed that brightness vision and color vision are inseparable; or, if not making this assumption, they have failed to realize that the same wave-length probably has markedly different effects upon the retinal elements of the eyes of unlike organisms. In a study of the sense of sight it is extremely important to discover whether difference in the quality, as well as in the intensity, of a visual stimulus influences the organism; in other words, whether color sensitiveness, as well as brightness sensitiveness, is present. If the dancer perceives only brightness or luminosity, and not color, it is evident that its visual world is strikingly different from that of the normal human being. The experiments now to be described were planned to show what the facts really are. [Illustration: Figure 14.--Discrimination box. _W_, electric-box with white cardboards; B, electric-box with black cardboards. Drawn by Mr. C.H. Toll.] As a means of testing the ability of the dancer to distinguish differences in brightness, the experiment box represented by Figures 14 and 15 was devised. Figure 14 is the box as seen from the position of the experimenter during the tests. Figure 15 is its ground plan. This box, which was made of wood, was 98 cm. long, 38 cm. wide, and 17 cm. deep, as measured on the outside. The plan of construction and its significance in connection with these experiments on vision will be clear from the following account of the experimental procedure. A mouse whose brightness vision was to be tested was placed in the nest-box, A (Figure 15). Thence by pushing open the swinging door at _I_, it could pass into the entrance chamber, _B_. Having entered _B_ it could return to _A_ only by passing through one of the electric-boxes, marked _W_, and following the alley to _O_, where by pushing open the swing door it could enter the nest-box. The door at _I_ swung inward, toward _B_, only; those at _O_, right and left, swung outward, toward _A_, only. It was therefore impossible for the mouse to follow any other course than _A-I-B-L-W-E-O_ or _A-I-B-R-W-E-O_. The doors at _I_ and _O_ were pieces of wire netting of 1/2 cm. mesh, hinged at the top so that a mouse could readily open them, in one direction, by pushing with its nose at any point along the bottom. On the floor of each of the electric-boxes, _W_, was an oak board 1 cm. in thickness, which carried electric wires by means of which the mouse could be shocked in _W_ when the tests demanded it. The interrupted circuit constituted by the wires in the two electric-boxes, in connection with the induction apparatus, _IC_, the dry battery, _C_, and the hand key, _K_, was made by taking two pieces of No. 20 American standard gauge copper wire and winding them around the oak board which was to be placed on the floor of each electric-box. The wires, which ran parallel with one another, 1/2 cm. apart, fitted into shallow grooves in the edges of the board, and thus, as well as by being drawn taut, they were held firmly in position. The coils of the two pieces of wire alternated, forming an interrupted circuit which, when the key _K_ was closed, was completed if the feet of a mouse rested on points of both pieces of wire. Since copper wire stretches easily and becomes loose on the wooden base, it is better to use phosphor bronze wire of about the same size, if the surface covered by the interrupted circuit is more than three or four inches in width. The phosphor bronze wire is more difficult to wind satisfactorily, for it is harder to bend than the copper wire, and it has the further disadvantage of being more brittle. But when once placed properly, it forms a far more lasting and satisfactory interrupted circuit for such experiments as those to be described than does copper wire. In the case of the electric-boxes under consideration, the oak boards which carried the interrupted circuits were separate, and the two circuits were joined by the union of the wires between the boxes. The free ends of the two pieces of wire which constituted the interrupted circuit were connected with the secondary coil of a Porter inductorium whose primary coil was in circuit with a No. 6 Columbia dry battery. In the light of preliminary experiments, made in preparation for the tests of vision, the strength of the induced current received by the mouse was so regulated, by changing the position of the secondary coil with reference to the primary, that it was disagreeable but not injurious to the animal. What part the disagreeable shock played in the test of brightness vision will now be explained. [Illustration: FIGURE 15.--Ground plan of discrimination box. _A_, nest- box; _B_, entrance chamber; _W,W_, electric-boxes; _L_, doorway of left electric-box; _R_, doorway of right electric-box; _E_, exit from electric- box to alley; _I_, swinging door between _A_ and _B_; _O_, swinging door between alley and _A_; _IC_, induction apparatus; _C_, electric cell; _K_, key in circuit.] An opportunity for visual discrimination by brightness difference was provided by placing dead black cardboard at the entrance and on the inside of one of the electric-boxes, as shown in Figure 14, _B_, and white cardboard similarly in the other box. These cardboards were movable and could be changed from one box to the other at the will of the experimenter. The test consisted in requiring the mouse to choose a certain brightness, for example, the white cardboard side, in order to return to the nest-box without receiving an electric shock. The question which the experimenter asked in connection with this test really is, Can a dancer learn to go to the white box and thus avoid discomfort? If we assume its ability to profit by experience within the limits of the number of experiences which it was given, such a modification of behavior would indicate discrimination of brightness. Can the dancer distinguish white from black; light gray from dark gray; two grays which are almost of the same brightness? The results which make up the remainder of this and the following chapter furnish a definite answer to these questions. To return to the experimental procedure, the mouse which is being tested is placed by the experimenter in the nest-box, where frequently in the early tests food and a comfortable nest were attractions. If it does not of its own accord, as a result of its abundant random activity, pass through _I_ into _B_ within a few seconds, it is directed to the doorway and urged through. A choice is now demanded of the animal; to return to the nest-box it must enter either the white electric-box or the black one. Should it choose the white box, it is permitted to return directly to _A_ by way of the doorway _E_, the alley, and the swinging door at _O_, and it thus gets the satisfaction of unobstructed activity, freedom to whirl, to feed, and to retreat for a time to the nest. Should it choose to attempt to enter the black box, as it touches the wires of the interrupted circuit it receives a shock as a result of the closing of the key in the circuit by the experimenter, and further, if it continues its forward course instead of retreating from the "stinging" black box, its passage through _E_ is blocked by a barrier of glass temporarily placed there by the experimenter, and the only way of escape to the nest-box is an indirect route by way of _B_ and the white box. Ordinarily the shock was given only when the mouse entered the wrong box, not when it retreated from it; it was never given when the right box was chosen. The box to be chosen, whether it was white, gray, or black, will be called the right box. The electric shock served as a means of forcing the animal to use its discriminating ability. But the question of motives in the tests is not so simple as might appear from this statement. The reader will wonder why the mouse should have any tendency to enter _B_, and why after so doing, it should trouble to go further, knowing, as it does from previous experiences, that entering one of the electric-boxes may result in discomfort. The fact is, a dancer has no very constant tendency to go from _A_ to _B_ at the beginning of the tests, but after it has become accustomed to the box and has learned what the situation demands, it shows eagerness to make the trip from _A_ to _B_, and thence by way of either the right or the left route to _A_. That the mouse should be willing to enter either of the electric-boxes, after it has experienced the shock, is even more surprising than its eagerness to run from _A_ to _B_. When first tested for brightness discrimination in this apparatus, a dancer usually hesitated at the entrance to the electric-boxes, and this hesitation increased rapidly unless it were able to discriminate the boxes by their difference in brightness and thus to choose the right one. During the period of increasing hesitancy in making the choice, the experimenter, by carefully moving from _I_ toward the entrances to the electric-boxes a piece of cardboard which extended all the way across _B_, greatly increased the mouse's desire to enter one of the boxes by depriving it of dancing space in _B_. If an individual which did not know which entrance to choose were permitted to run about in _B_, it would often do so for minutes at a time without approaching the entrance to the boxes; but the same individual, when confined to a dancing space 4 or 5 cm. wide in front of the entrances, would enter one of the electric-boxes almost immediately. This facilitation of choice by decrease in the amount of space for whirling was not to any considerable extent the result of fear, for all the dancers experimented with were tame, and instead of forcing them to rush into one of the boxes blindly and without attempt at discrimination, the narrowing of the space simply increased their efforts to discriminate. The common mouse when subjected to similar experimental conditions is likely to be frightened by being forced to approach the entrances to the boxes, and fails to choose; it rushes into one box directly, and in consequence it is as often wrong as right. The dancer always chooses, but its eagerness to choose is markedly increased by the restriction of its movements to a narrow space in front of the entrances between which it is required to discriminate. It is evident that the animal is uncomfortable in a space which is too narrow for it to whirl in freely. It must have room to dance. This furnished a sufficiently strong motive for the entering of the electric-boxes. It must avoid disagreeable and unfavorable stimuli. This is a basis for attempts to choose, by visual discrimination, the electric-box in which the shock is not given. It may safely be said that the success of the majority of the experiments of this book depended upon three facts: (1) the dancer's tendency to avoid disagreeable external conditions, (2) its escape-from-confinement- impelling need of space in which to dance freely, and (3) its abundant and incessant activity. Of these three conditions of success in the experiments, the second and third made possible the advantageous use of the first. For the avoidance of a disagreeable stimulus could be made use of effectively in the tests just because the mice are so restless and so active. In fact their eagerness to do things is so great that the experimenter, instead of having to wait for them to perform the desired act, often is forced to make them wait while he completes his observation and record. In this respect they are unlike most other animals. My experiments with the dancer differ from those which have been made by most students of mammalian behavior in one important respect. I have used punishment instead of reward as the chief motive for the proper performance of the required act. Usually in experiments with mammals hunger has been the motive depended upon. The animals have been required to follow a certain devious path, to escape from a box by working a button, a bolt, a lever, or to gain entrance to a box by the use of teeth, claws, hands, or body weight and thus obtain food as a reward. There are two very serious objections to the use of the desire for food as a motive in animal behavior experiments--objections which in my opinion render it almost worthless in the case of many mammals. These are the discomfort of the animal and the impossibility of keeping the motive even fairly constant. However prevalent the experience of starvation may be in the life of an animal, it is not pleasant to think of subjecting it to extreme hunger in the laboratory for the sake of finding out what it can do to obtain food. Satisfactory results can be obtained in an experiment whose success depends chiefly upon hunger only when the animal is so hungry that it constantly does its best to obtain food, and when the desire for food is equally strong and equally effective as a spur to action in the repetitions of the experiment day after day. It is easy enough to get almost any mammal into a condition of utter hunger, but it is practically impossible to have the desire for food of the same strength day after day. In short, the desire for food is unsatisfactory as a motive in animal behavior work, first, because a condition of utter hunger, as has been demonstrated with certain mammals, is unfavorable for the performance of complex acts, second, because it is impossible to control the strength of the motive, and finally, because it is an inhumane method of experimentation. In general, the method of punishment is more satisfactory than the method of reward, because it can be controlled to a greater extent. The experimenter cannot force his subject to desire food; he can, however, force it to discriminate between conditions to the best of its knowledge and ability by giving it a disagreeable stimulus every time it makes a mistake. In other words, the conditions upon which the avoidance of a disagreeable factor in the environment depends are far simpler and much more constant than those upon which the seeking of an agreeable factor depends. Situations which are potentially beneficial to the animal attract it in varying degrees according to its internal condition; situations which are potentially disagreeable or injurious repel it with a constancy which is remarkable. The favorable stimulus solicits a positive response; the unfavorable stimulus demands a negative response. Finally, in connection with the discussion of motives, it is an important fact that forms of reward are far harder to find than forms of punishment. Many animals feed only at long intervals, are inactive, do not try to escape from confinement, cannot be induced to seek a particular spot, in a word, do not react positively to any of the situations or conditions which are employed usually in behavior experiments. It is, however, almost always possible to find some disagreeable stimulus which such an animal will attempt to avoid. As it happens, the dancer is an animal which does not stand the lack of food well enough to make hunger a possible motive. I was driven to make use of the avoiding reaction, and it has proved so satisfactory that I am now using it widely in connection with experiments on other animals. The use of the induction shock, upon which I depended almost wholly in the discrimination experiments with the dancer, requires care; but I am confident that no reasonable objection to the conduct of the experiments could be made on the ground of cruelty, for the strength of the current was carefully regulated and the shocks were given only for an instant at intervals. The best proof of the humaneness of the method is the fact that the animals continued in perfect health during months of experimentation. The brightness discrimination tests demanded, in addition to motives for choice, adequate precautions against discrimination by other than visual factors, and, for that matter, by other visual factors than that of brightness. The mouse might choose, for example, not the white or the black box, but the box which was to the right or to the left, in accordance with its experience in the previous test. This would be discrimination by position. As a matter of fact, the animals have a strong tendency at first to go uniformly either to the right or to the left entrance. This tendency will be exhibited in the results of the tests. Again, discrimination might depend upon the odors of the cardboards or upon slight differences in their shape, texture, or position. Before conclusive evidence of brightness discrimination could be obtained, all of these and other possibilities of discrimination had to be eliminated by check tests. I shall describe the various precautions taken in the experiments to guard against errors in interpretation, in order to show the lengths to which an experimenter may be driven in his search for safely interpretable results. To exclude choice by position, the cardboards were moved from one electric-box to the other. When the change was made regularly, so that white was alternately on the right and the left, the mouse soon learned to go alternately to the right box and the left without stopping to notice the visual factor. This was prevented by changing the position of the cardboards irregularly. Discrimination by the odor, texture, shape, and position of the cardboards was excluded by the use of different kinds of cardboards, by changing the form and position of them in check tests, and by coating them with shellac. The brightness vision tests described in this chapter were made in a room which is lighted from the south only, with the experiment box directed away from the windows. The light from the windows shone upon the cardboards at the entrances to the electric-boxes, not into the eyes of the mouse as it approached them. Each mouse used in the experiments was given a series of ten tests in succession daily. The experiment was conducted as follows. A dancer was placed in _A_, where it usually ran about restlessly until it happened to find its way into _B_. Having discovered that the swing door at _I_ could be pushed open, the animal seemed to take satisfaction in passing through into _B_ as soon as it had been placed in or had returned to _A_. In _B_, choice of two entrances, one of which was brighter than the other, was forced by the animal's need of space for free movement. If the right box happened to be chosen, the mouse returned to _A_ and was ready for another test; if it entered the wrong box, the electric shock was given, and it was compelled to retreat from the box and enter the other one instead. In the early tests with an individual, a series sometimes covered from twenty to thirty minutes; in later tests, provided the condition of discrimination was favorable, it did not occupy more than ten minutes. To exhibit the methods of keeping the records of these experiments and certain features of the results, two sample record sheets are reproduced below. The first of these sheets, Table 6, represents the results given by No. 5, a female,[1] in her first series of white-black tests. Table 7 presents the results of the eleventh series of tests given to the same individual. [Footnote 1: It is to be remembered that the even numbers always designate males; the odd numbers, females.] In the descriptions of the various visual experiments of this and the following chapters, the first word of the couplet which describes the condition of the experiment, for example, white-black, always designates the visual condition which the animal was to choose, the second that which it was to avoid on penalty of an electric shock. In the case of Tables 6 and 7, for example, white cardboard was placed in one box, black in the other, and the animal was required to enter the white box. In the tables the first column at the left gives the number of the test, the second the positions of the cardboards, and the third and fourth the result of the choice. The first test of Table 6 was made with the white cardboard on the box which stood at the left of the mouse as it approached from _A_, and, consequently, with the black cardboard on the right. As is indicated by the record in the "wrong" column, the mouse chose the black instead of the white. The result of this first series was choice of the white box four times as compared with choice of the black box six times. On the eleventh day, that is, after No. 5 had been given 100 tests in this brightness vision experiment, she made no mistakes in a series of ten trials (Table 7). TABLE 6 BRIGHTNESS DISCRIMINATION White-Black, Series 1 Experimented on No. 5 January 15, 1906 POSITION OF TEST CARDBOARDS RIGHT WRONG 1 White left -- Wrong 2 White right -- Wrong 3 White left -- Wrong 4 White right -- Wrong 5 White left Right -- 6 White right Right -- 7 White left -- Wrong 8 White right Right -- 9 White left -- Wrong 10 White right Right -- Totals 4 6 Before tests, such as have been described, can be presented as conclusive proof of discrimination, it must be shown that the mouse has no preference for the particular brightness which the arrangement of the test requires it to select. That any preference which the mouse to be tested might have for white, rather than black, or for a light gray rather than a dark gray, might be discovered, what may be called preference test series were given before the discrimination tests were begun. These series, two of which were given usually, consisted of ten tests each, with the white alternately on the left and on the right. The mouse was permitted to enter either the white or the black box, as it chose, and to pass through to the nest-box without receiving a shock and without having its way blocked by the glass plate. The conditions of these preference tests may be referred to hereafter briefly as "No shock, open passages." The preference tests, which of course would be valueless as such unless they preceded the training tests, were given as preliminary experiments, in order that the experimenter might know how to plan his discrimination tests, and how to interpret his results. TABLE 7 BRIGHTNESS DISCRIMINATION White-Black, Series II Experimented on No. 5 February 2, 1906 POSITION TEST OF CARDBOARDS RIGHT WRONG 1 White left Right -- 2 White left Right -- 3 White right Right -- 4 White right Right -- 5 White right Right -- 6 White left Right -- 7 White left Right -- 8 White left Right -- 9 White right Right -- 10 White right Right -- Totals 10 0 The results given in the white-black preference tests by ten males and ten females are presented in Table 8. Three facts which bear upon the brightness discrimination tests appear from this table: (1) black is preferred by both males and females, (2) this preference is more marked in the first series of tests than in the second, and (3) it is slightly stronger for the first series in the case of females than in the case of males. TABLE 8 WHITE-BLACK PREFERENCE TESTS MALES FIRST SERIES SECOND SERIES WHITE BLACK WHITE BLACK No. 10 3 7 3 7 18 5 5 5 5 20 2 8 4 6 152 4 6 6 4 210 4 6 4 6 214 6 4 3 7 220 5 5 3 7 230 4 6 2 8 410 4 6 5 5 420 4 6 9 1 Averages 4.1 5.9 4.4 5.6 FEMALES FIRST SERIES SECOND SERIES WHITE BLACK WHITE BLACK No. 11 5 5 4 6 151 6 4 5 5 215 2 8 2 8 213 2 8 5 5 225 4 6 2 8 227 4 6 6 4 235 6 4 4 6 415 2 8 4 6 425 5 5 8 2 229 2 8 5 5 Averages 3.8 6.2 4.5 5.5 That the dancers should prefer to enter the dark rather than the light box is not surprising in view of the fact that the nests in which they were kept were ordinarily rather dark. But whatever the basis of the preference, it is clear that it must be taken account of in the visual discrimination experiments, for an individual which strongly preferred black might choose correctly, to all appearances, in its first black-white series. Such a result would demonstrate preference, and therefore one kind of discrimination, but not the formation of a habit of choice by discrimination. The preference for black is less marked in the second series of tests because the mouse as it becomes more accustomed to the experiment box tends more and more to be influenced by other conditions than those of brightness. The record sheets for both series almost invariably indicate a strong tendency to continue to go to the left or the right entrance according to the way by which the animal escaped the first time. This cannot properly be described as visual choice, for the mouse apparently followed the previous course without regard to the conditions of illumination. We have here an expression of the tendency to the repetition of an act. It is only after an animal acquires considerable familiarity with a situation that it begins to vary its behavior in accordance with relatively unimportant factors in the situation. It is this fact, illustrations of which may be seen in human life, as well as throughout the realm of animal behavior, that renders it imperative that an animal be thoroughly acquainted with the apparatus for experimentation and with the experimenter before regular experiments are begun. Any animal will do things under most experimental conditions, but to discover the nature and scope of its ability it is necessary to make it thoroughly at home in the experimental situation. As the dancer began to feel at home in the visual discrimination apparatus it began to exercise its discriminating ability, the first form of which was choice according to position. Since there appears to be a slight preference on the part of most dancers' for the black box in comparison with the white box, white-black training tests were given to fifty mice, and black-white to only four. The tests with each individual were continued until it had chosen correctly in all of the tests of three successive series (thirty tests). As the reproduction of all the record sheets of these experiments would fill hundreds of pages and would provide most readers with little more information than is obtainable from a simple statement of the number of right and wrong choices, only the brightness discrimination records of Tables 6 and 7 are given in full. As a basis for the comparison of the results of the white-black tests with those of the black-white tests, two representative sets of data for each of these conditions of brightness discrimination are presented (Tables 9 and 10). In these tables only the number of right and wrong choices for each series of ten tests appears. Tables 9 and 10 indicate--if we grant that the precautionary tests to be described later exclude the possibility of other forms of discrimination-- that the dancer is able to tell white from black; that it is somewhat easier, as the preference tests might lead us to expect, for it to learn to go to the black than to the white, and that the male forms the habit of choosing on the basis of brightness discrimination more quickly than the female. TABLE 9 WHITE-BLACK TESTS No. 210 No. 215 AGE, 28 DAYS AGE, 28 DAYS SERIES DATE RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (WHITE) (BLACK) (WHITE) (BLACK) A June 22 4 6 2 8 B 23 4 6 2 8 1 24 4 6 3 7 2 25 6 4 5 5 3 26 7 3 7 3 4 27 5 5 8 2 5 28 7 3 9 1 6 29 8 2 8 2 7 30 9 1 9 1 8 July 1 10 0 10 0 9 2 10 0 9 1 10 3 10 0 10 0 11 4 -- -- 10 0 12 5 -- -- 10 0 TABLE 10 WHITE-BLACK TESTS No. 14 No. 13 AGE, 32 DAYS AGE, 32 DAYS SERIES DATE RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (WHITE) (BLACK) (WHITE) (BLACK) 1 May 13[1] 5 5 7 3 2 14 8 2 6 4 3 15 7 3 9 1 4 16 9 1 9 1 5 17 10 0 10 0 6 18 10 0 9 1 7 19 10 0 10 0 8 20 -- -- 10 0 9 21 -- -- 10 0 [Footnote 1: No preference tests were given.] It is now necessary to justify the interpretation of these results as evidence of brightness discrimination by proving that all other conditions for choice except brightness difference may be excluded without interfering with the animal's ability to select the right box. We shall consider in order the possibility of discrimination by position, by odor, and by texture and form of the cardboards. The tendency which the dancer has in common with many, if not all, animals to perform the same movement or follow the same path under uniform conditions is an important source of error in many habit-formation experiments. This tendency is evident even from casual observation of the behavior of the dancer. The ease with which the habit of choosing the box on the left or the box on the right is formed in comparison with that of choosing the white box or the black box is strikingly shown by the following experiment. Five mice were given one series of ten trials each in the discrimination box of Figure 14 without the presence of cardboards or of other means of visual discrimination. The electric shock was given whenever the box on the left was entered. Thus without other guidance than that of direction, for the boxes themselves were interchanged in position, and, as was proved by additional tests, the animals were utterly unable to tell one from the other, the mouse was required to choose the box on its right. Only one of the five animals went to the box on the left after once experiencing the electric shock. The results of the series are given in Table 11. TABLE 11 CHOICE BY POSITION Choices of Choices of Box on Right Box on Left First mouse 9 1 Second mouse 8 2 Third mouse 9 1 Fourth mouse 9 1 Fifth mouse 9 1 This conclusively proves that the habit of turning in a certain direction or of choosing by position can be formed more readily than a habit which depends upon visual discrimination. A rough comparison justifies the statement that it takes from six to ten times as long for the dancer to learn to choose the white box as it does to learn to choose the box on the right. Since this is true, it is exceedingly important that the possibility of choice by position or direction of movement be excluded in the case of tests of brightness discrimination. To indicate how this was effectively accomplished in the experiments, the changes in the position of the cardboards made in the case of a standard set of white-black series are shown in Table 12. The number of the series, beginning at the top of the table with the two lettered preference series, is given in the first column at the left, the number of the tests at the top of the table, and the position of the white cardboard, left or right, is indicated below by the letters l (left) and r (right). TABLE 12 POSITION OF WHITE CARDBOARDS FOR A SET OF 150 TESTS SERIES 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Preference A l r l r l r l r l r B r l r l r l r l r l 1 r l r l r l r l r l 2 l l r r l r l l r r 3 r r l r l l r l r l 4 l l l r r r l r r l 5 r l r l r l r l r l 6 l l r l r r l r l r 7 r l l l r r r l r l 8 r r l l r l r l r l 9 r r r l l l r l r l 10 l l l l r r r r l r 11 r l r r r l l l r l 12 r l r l r r l l r l 13 r l r l l l r r r l 14 l l l l r r r r l r 15 r l r r r l l l r l It is to be noted that in the case of each series of ten tests the white cardboard was on the left five times and on the right five times. Thus the establishment of a tendency in favor of one side was avoided. The irregularity of the changes in position rendered it impossible for the mouse to depend upon position in its choice. It is an interesting fact that the dancer quickly learns to choose correctly by position if the cardboards are alternately on the left box and on the right. The prevalent, although ill-founded, impression that mice have an exceedingly keen sense of smell might lead a critic of these experiments to claim that discrimination in all probability was olfactory rather than visual. As precautions against this possibility the cardboards were renewed frequently, so that no odor from the body of the mouse itself should serve as a guiding condition, different kinds of cardboard were used from time to time, and, as a final test, the cardboards were coated with shellac so that whatever characteristic odor they may have had for the dancer was disguised if not totally destroyed. Despite all these precautions the discrimination of the boxes continued. A still more conclusive proof that we have to do with brightness discrimination, and that alone, in these experiments is furnished by the results of white- black tests made with an apparatus which was so arranged that light was transmitted into the two electric-boxes through a ground glass plate in the end of each box. No cardboards were used. The illumination of each box was controlled by changes in the position of the sources of light. Under these conditions, so far as could be ascertained by critical examination of the results, in addition to careful observation of the behavior of the animals as they made their choices, there was no other guiding factor than brightness difference. Nevertheless the mice discriminated the white from the black perfectly. This renders unnecessary any discussion of the possibility of discrimination by the texture or form of the cardboards. Since a variety of precautionary tests failed to reveal the presence, in these experiments, of any condition other than brightness difference by which the mice were enabled to choose correctly, and since evidence of ability to discriminate brightness differences was obtained by the use of both reflected light (cardboards) and transmitted light (lamps behind ground glass), it is necessary to conclude that the dancer possesses brightness vision. CHAPTER VIII THE SENSE OF SIGHT: BRIGHTNESS VISION (Continued) Since the ability of the dancer to perceive brightness has been demonstrated by the experiments of the previous chapter, the next step in this investigation of the nature of vision is a study of the delicacy of brightness discrimination, and of the relation of the just perceivable difference to brightness value. Expressed in another way, the problems of this portion of the investigation are to determine how slight a difference in brightness enables the dancer to discriminate one light from another, and what is the relation between the absolute brightnesses of two lights and that amount of difference which is just sufficient to render the lights distinguishable. It has been discovered in the case of the human being that a stimulus must be increased by a certain definite fraction of its own value if it is to seem different. For brightness, within certain intensity limits, this increase must be about one one-hundredth; a brightness of 100 units, for example, is just perceivably different from one of 101 units. The formulation of this relation between the amount of a stimulus and the amount of change which is necessary that a difference be noted is known as Weber's law. Does this law, in any form, hold for the brightness vision of the dancing mouse? Two methods were used in the study of these problems. For the first problem, that of the delicacy of brightness discrimination, I first used light which was reflected from gray papers, according to the method of Chapter VII. For the second, the Weber's law test, transmitted light was used, in an apparatus which will be described later. Either of these methods might have been used for the solution of both problems. Which of them is the more satisfactory is definitely decided by the results which make up the material of this chapter, Under natural conditions the dancer probably sees objects which reflect light more frequently than it does those which transmit it; it would seem fairer, therefore, to require it to discriminate surfaces which differ in brightness. This the use of gray papers does. But, on the other hand, gray papers are open to the objections that they may not be entirely colorless (neutral), and that their brightness values cannot be changed readily by the experimenter. As will be made clear in the subsequent description of the experiments with transmitted light, neither of these objections can be raised in connection with the second method of experimentation. To determine the delicacy of discrimination with reflected light it is necessary to have a series of neutral grays (colorless) whose adjacent members differ from one another in brightness by less than the threshold of discrimination of the animal to be tested. A series which promised to fulfill these conditions was that of Richard Nendel of Berlin. It consists of fifty papers, beginning with pure white, numbered 1, and passing by almost imperceptible steps of decrease in brightness through the grays to black, which is numbered 50. For the present we may assume that these papers are so nearly neutral that whatever discrimination occurs is due to brightness. The differences between successive papers of the series are perceptible to man. The question is, can they, under favorable conditions of illumination, be perceived by the dancer? On the basis of the fact that the dancer can discriminate between white and black, two grays which differed from one another in brightness by a considerable amount were chosen from the Nendel series; these were numbers 10 and 20. It seemed certain, from the results of previous experiments, that the discrimination of these papers by brightness difference would be possible, and that therefore the use of papers between these two extremes would suffice to demonstrate the delicacy of discrimination. In Figure 16 we have a fairly accurate representation of the relative brightness of the Nendel papers Nos. 10, 15, and 20. [Illustration: FIGURE 16. Three of Nendel's gray papers: Nos. 10, 15, and 20. To exhibit differences in brightness.] Pieces of the gray papers were pasted upon cardboard carriers so that they might be placed in the discrimination box as were the white and black cardboards in the tests of brightness vision previously described. Mice which had been trained to choose the white box by series of white-black tests were now tested with light gray (No. 10) and dark gray (No. 20), my assumption being that they would immediately choose the brighter of the two if they were able to detect the difference. As a matter of fact this did not always occur; some individuals had to be trained to discriminate gray No. 10 from gray No. 20. As soon as an individual had been so trained that the ability to choose the lighter of these grays was perfect, it was tested with No. 10 in combination with No. 15. If these in turn proved to be discriminable, No. 10 could be used with No. 14, with No. 13, and so on until either the limit of discrimination or that of the series had been reached. That it was not necessary to use other combinations than 10 with 20, and 10 with 15 is demonstrated by the results of Table 13. Mouse No. 420, whose behavior was not essentially different from that of three other individuals which were tested for gray discrimination, learned with difficulty to choose gray No. 10 even when it was used with No. 20. Two series of ten tests each were given to this mouse daily, and not until the twentieth of these series (200 tests) did he succeed in making ten correct choices in succession. Immediately after this series of correct choices, tests with grays No. 10 and No. 15 were begun. In the case of this amount of brightness difference twenty series failed to reveal discrimination. The average number of right choices in the series is slightly in excess of the mistakes, 5.8 as compared with 4.2. From the experiments with gray papers we may conclude that under the conditions of the tests the amount by which Nendel's gray No. 10 differs in brightness from No. 20 is near the threshold of discrimination, or, in other words, that the difference in the brightness of the adjacent grays of Figure 16 is scarcely sufficient to enable the dancer to distinguish them. TABLE 13 GRAY DISCRIMINATION The Delicacy of Brightness Discrimination No. 420 GRAYS NOS. 10 GRAYS NOS. 20 AND 20 AND 15 SERIES DATE DATE NO. 10 NO. 2 NO. 10 NO. 15 (RIGHT) (WRONG) (RIGHT) (WRONG) 1 Jan. 26 5 5 Feb. 6 8 2 2 27 8 2 6 5 5 3 28 6 4 7 9 1 4 28 2 8 7 7 3 5 29 1 9 8 5 5 6 29 6 4 8 6 4 7 30 9 1 9 5 5 8 30 7 3 9 6 4 9 31 6 4 10 8 2 10 31 4 6 10 3 7 11 Feb. 1 7 3 11 4 6 12 1 8 2 11 4 6 13 2 7 3 12 7 3 14 2 8 2 12 7 3 15 3 9 1 13 6 4 16 3 9 1 13 4 6 17 4 6 4 14 4 6 18 4 9 1 14 5 5 19 5 6 4 15 5 5 20 5 10 0 15 8 2 Averages 6.6 3.4 5.8 4.2 This result of the tests with gray papers surprised me very much at the time of the experiments, for all my previous observation of the dancer had led me to believe that it is very sensitive to light. It was only after a long series of tests with transmitted light, in what is now to be described as the Weber's law apparatus, that I was able to account for the meager power of discrimination which the mice exhibited in the gray tests. As it happened, the Weber's law experiment contributed quite as importantly to the solution of our first problem as to that of the second, for which it was especially planned. For the Weber's law experiment a box similar to that used in the previous brightness discrimination experiments (Figure 14) was so arranged that its two electric-boxes could be illuminated independently by the light from incandescent lamps directly above them. The arrangements of the light-box and the lamps, as well as their relations to the other important parts of the apparatus, are shown in Figure 17. The light-box consisted of two compartments, of which one may be considered as the upward extension of the left electric-box and the other of the right electric-box. The light- box was pivoted at A and could be turned through an angle of 180° by the experimenter. Thus, by the turning of the light-box, the lamp which in the case of one test illuminated the left electric-box could be brought into such a position that in the case of the next test it illuminated the right electric-box. The practical convenience of this will be appreciated when the number of times that the brightnesses of the two boxes had to be reversed is considered. The light-box was left open at the top for ventilation and the prevention of any considerable increase in the temperature of the experiment box. In one side of each of the compartments of the light-box a slit (B, B of the figure) was cut out for an incandescent lamp holder. A strip of leatherette, fitted closely into inch grooves at the edges of the slit, prevented light from escaping through these openings in the sides of the light-box. By moving the strips of leatherette, one of which appears in the figure, C, the lamps could be changed in position with reference to the bottom of the electric-box. A scale, S, at the edge of each slit enabled the experimenter to determine the distance of the lamp from the floor of the electric-box. The front of the light-box was closed, instead of being open as it appears in the figure. [Illustration: Figure l7.--Weber's law apparatus for testing brightness discrimination. Lower part, discrimination box similar to that of Figure 14. Upper part, rotatory light-box, pivoted at A, and divided into two compartments by a partition P in the middle. L, L, incandescent lamps movable in slits, B, B, in which a narrow strip of leatherette, C, serves to prevent the escape of light. S, scale.] This apparatus has the following advantages. First, the electric-boxes, between which the mouse is expected to discriminate by means of their difference in brightness, are illuminated from above and the light therefore does not shine directly from the lamps into the eyes of the animal, as it approaches the entrances to the boxes. Choice is required, therefore, between illuminated spaces instead of between two directly illuminated surfaces. Second, the amount of illumination of each electric- box can be accurately measured by the use of a photometer. Third, since the same kind of lamp is used in each box, and further, since the lamps may be interchanged at any time, discrimination by qualitative instead of quantitative difference in illumination is excluded. And finally, fourth, the tests can be made expeditiously, conveniently, and under such simple conditions that there should be no considerable error of measurement or of observation within the range of brightness which must be used. It was my purpose in the experiment with this apparatus to ascertain how great the difference in the illumination of the two electric-boxes must be in order that the mouse should be able to choose the brighter of them. This I attempted to do by fixing an incandescent lamp of a certain known illuminating power at such a position in one compartment of the light-box that the electric-box below it was illuminated by what I call a standard value, and by moving the incandescent lamp in the other compartment of the light-box until the illumination of the electric-box below it was just sufficiently less than that of the standard to enable the dancer to distinguish them, and thereby to choose the brighter one. The light which was changed from series to series I shall call the _variable_, in contrast with the _standard_, which was unchanged. The tests, which were made in a dark-room under uniform conditions, were given in series of fifty each; usually only one such series was given per day, but sometimes one was given in the morning and another in the afternoon of the same day. To prevent choice by position the lights were reversed in position irregularly, first one, then the other, illuminating the right electric-box. For the fifty tests of each initial series the order of the changes in position was as follows: standard (brighter light) on the _l_ (left), _l, r_ (right), _r, l, l, r, r, l, r, l, r, l, l, r, r, l, l, r, r, l, l, l, r, r, r, l, r, l, r, r, r, l, l, l, r, r, r, l, l, r, l, r, l, r, l, r, l, r, l_. Twenty-five times in fifty the standard light illuminated the right electric-box, and the same number of times it illuminated the left electric-box. When a second series was given under the same conditions of illumination, a different order of change was followed. In order to discover whether Weber's law holds in the case of the brightness vision of the dancer it was necessary for me to determine the just perceivable difference between the standard and the variable lights for two or more standard values. I chose to work with three values, 5, 20, and 80 hefners, and I was able to discover with a fair degree of accuracy how much less than 5, 20, or 80 hefners, as the case might be, the variable light had to be in order that it should be discriminable from the other. For the work with the 5 hefner standard I used 2-candle-power lamps,[1] for the 20, 4-candle-power, and for the 80, 16-candle-power. [Footnote 1: I give merely the commercial markings of the lamps. They had been photometered carefully by two observers by means of a Lummer-Brodhun photometer and a Hefner amyl acetate lamp previous to their use in the experiment. For the photometric measurements in connection with the Weber's law tests I made use of the Hefner lamp with the hope of attaining greater accuracy than had been possible with a standard paraffine candle, in the case of measurements which I had made in connection with the experiments on color vision that are reported in Chapters IX and X. The Hefner unit is the amount of light produced by an amyl acetate lamp at a flame height of 40 mm. (See Stine's "Photometrical Measurements.") A paraffine candle at a flame height of 50 mm. is equal to 1.2 Hefner units.] For reasons which will soon appear, Weber's law tests were made with only one dancer. This individual, No. 51, had been thoroughly trained in white- black discrimination previous to the experiments in the apparatus which is represented in Figure 17. Having given No. 51 more than two hundred preliminary tests in the Weber's law apparatus with the electric-boxes sufficiently different in brightness to enable her to discriminate readily, I began my experiments by trying to ascertain how much less the value of the illumination of one electric-box must be in order that it should be discriminable from a value of 20 hefners in the other electric- box. In recording the several series of tests and their results hereafter, I shall state in Hefner units the value of the fixed or standard light and the value of the variable light, the difference between the two in terms of the former, and the average number of wrong choices in per cent. With the lamps so placed that the difference in the illumination of the two electric-boxes was .53 of the value of the standard, that is about one half, No. 51 made twenty wrong choices in one hundred, or 20 per cent. When the difference was reduced to .36 (one third) the number of errors increased to 36 per cent, and with an intermediate difference of .48 there were 26 per cent of errors (see Table 14). Are these results indicative of discrimination, or are the errors in choice too numerous to justify the statement that the dancer was able to distinguish the boxes by their difference in brightness? Evidently this question cannot be answered satisfactorily until we have decided what the percentage of correct choices should be in order that it be accepted as evidence of ability to discriminate, or, to put it in terms of errors, what percentage of wrong choices is indicative of the point of just perceivable difference in brightness. Theoretically, there should be as many mistakes as right choices, 50 per cent of each, when the two electric-boxes are equally illuminated (indiscriminable), but in practice this does not prove to be the case because the dancer tends to return to that electric-box through which in the previous test it passed safely, whereas it does not tend in similar fashion to reënter the box in which it has just received an electric shock. The result is that the percentage of right choices, especially in the case of series which have the right box in the same position two, three, or four times in succession, rises as high as 60 or 70, even when the visual conditions are indiscriminable. Abundant evidence in support of this statement is presented in Chapters VII and IX, but at this point I may further call attention to the results of an experiment in the Weber's law apparatus which was made especially to test the matter. The results appear under the date of May 27 in Table 14. In this experiment, despite the fact that both boxes were illuminated by 80 hefners, the mouse chose the standard (the illumination in which it was not shocked) 59 times in 100. In other words the percentage of error was 41 instead of 50. It is evident, therefore, that as low a percentage of errors as 40 is not necessarily indicative of discrimination. Anything below 40 per cent is likely, however, to be the result of ability to distinguish the brighter from the darker box. To be on the safe side we may agree to consider 25 wrong choices per 100 as indicative of a just perceivable difference in illumination. Fewer mistakes we shall consider indicative of a difference in illumination which is readily perceivable, and more as indicative of a difference which the mouse cannot detect. The reader will bear in mind as he examines Table 14 that 25 per cent of wrong choices indicates the point of just perceivable difference in brightness. TABLE 14 RESULTS OF WEBER'S LAW EXPERIMENTS Brightness vision DATE NUMBER STANDARD VARIABLE DIFFERENCE % OF ERRORS OF TESTS LIGHT LIGHT May 13 100 20 9.4 .53 20 15 100 20 12.8 .36 36 16 100 20 10.8 .46 26 20 50 80 37.6 .53 6 21 50 80 51.3 .36 10 22 100 80 71.1 .11 35 24 100 80 60.0 .25 21 25 100 80 65.0 .19 25 27 100 80 80 0 41 28 50 5 2.5 .50 18 29 50 5 4.0 .20 14 29 100 5 4.5 .10 25 31 50 5 4.25 .15 20 June 1 50 5 4.85 .03 48 2 50 20 15.0 .25 16 3 50 20 17.4 .13 22 3 100 20 18.0 .10 22 4 100 80 72.0 .10 18 5 100 5 4.5 .10 12 7 100 5 4.67 .067 46 8 50 80 74.67 .067 56 9 50 20 18.67 .067 44 If we apply this rule to the results of the first tests, reported above, it appears that a standard of 20 hefners was distinguished from a variable of 9.4 hefners (.53 difference), for the percentage of errors was only 20. But in the case of a difference of .36 in the illuminations lack of discrimination is indicated by 36 per cent of errors. A difference of .46 gave a frequency of error so close to the required 25 (26 per cent) that I accepted the result as a satisfactory determination of the just perceivable difference for the 20 hefner standard and proceeded to experiment with another standard value. The results which were obtained in the case of this second standard, the value of which was 80 hefners, are strikingly different from those for the 20 hefner standard. Naturally I began the tests with this new standard by making the differences the same as those for which determinations had been made in the case of the 20 standard. Much to my surprise only 6 per cent of errors resulted when the difference in illumination was .53. I finally discovered that about .19 difference (about one fifth) could be discriminated with that degree of accuracy which is indicated by 25 per cent of mistakes. So far as I could judge from the results of determinations for the 20 and the 80 hefner standards, Weber's law does not hold for the dancer. With the former a difference of almost one half was necessary for discrimination; with the latter a difference of about one fifth could be perceived. But before presenting additional results I should explain the construction of Table 14, and comment upon the number of experiments which constitutes a set. The table contains the condensed results of several weeks of difficult experimentation. From left to right the columns give the date of the initial series of a given set of experiments, the number of experiments in the set, the value of the standard light in hefners, the value of the variable light, the difference between the lights in terms of the standard (the variable was always less than the standard), and the percentage of errors or wrong choices. Very early in the investigation I discovered that one hundred tests with any given values of the lights sufficed to reveal whatever discriminating ability the mouse possessed at the time. In some instances either the presence or the lack of discrimination was so clear, as the result of 50 tests (first series), that the second series of 50 was not given. Consequently in the table the number of tests for the various values of the lights is sometimes 100, sometimes 50. After finishing the experiments with the 80 standard on May 27 (see table) I decided, in spite of the evidence against Weber's law, to make tests with 5 as the standard, for it seemed not impossible that the lights were too bright for the dancer to discriminate readily. I even suspected that I might have been working outside of the brightness limits in which Weber's law holds, if it holds at all. The tests soon showed that a difference of one tenth made discrimination possible in the case of this standard. If the reader will examine the data of the table, he will note that a difference of .20 gave 14 per cent of mistakes; a difference of .03, 48 per cent. Evidently the former difference is above the threshold, the latter below it. But what of the interpretation of the results in terms of Weber's law? The difference instead of being one half or one fifth, as it was in the cases of the 20 and 80 standards respectively, has now become one tenth. Another surprise and another contradiction! Had these three differences either increased or decreased regularly with the value of the standard I should have suspected that they indicated a principle or relationship which is different from but no less interesting than that which Weber's law expresses. But instead of reading 5 standard, difference one tenth; 20 standard, difference one fifth; 80 standard, difference one half: or 5 standard, difference one half; 20 standard, difference one fifth; 80 standard, difference one tenth: they read 5 standard, difference one tenth; 20 standard, difference one half; 80 standard, difference one fifth. What does this mean? I could think of no other explanation than that of the influence of training. It seemed not impossible, although not probable, that the mouse had been improving in ability to discriminate day by day. It is true that this in itself would be quite as interesting a fact as any which the experiment might reveal. To test the value of my supposition, I made additional experiments with the 20 standard, the results of which appear under the dates June 2 and 3 of the table. These results indicate quite definitely that the animal had been, and still was, improving in her ability to discriminate. For instead of requiring a difference of about one half in order that she might distinguish the 20 standard from the variable light she was now able to discriminate with only 22 per cent of errors when the difference was one tenth. As it seemed most improbable that improvement by training should continue much longer, I next gave additional tests with the 80 standard. Again a difference of one tenth was sufficient for accurate discrimination (18 per cent of errors). These series were followed immediately by further tests with the 5 standard. As the results indicated greater ease of discrimination with a difference of one tenth in the case of this standard than in the case of either of the others I was at first uncertain whether the results which I have tabulated under the dates June 3, 4, and 5 of the table should be interpreted in terms of Weber's law. Up to this point the experiments had definitely established two facts: that the dancer's ability to discriminate by means of brightness differences improves with training for a much longer period and to a far greater extent than I had supposed it would; and that a difference of one tenth is sufficient to enable the animal to distinguish two lights in the case of the three standard values, 5, 20, and 80 hefners. The question remains, is this satisfactory evidence that Weber's law holds with respect to the brightness vision of the dancer, or do the results indicate rather, that this difference is more readily detected in the case of 5 as a standard (12 per cent error) than in the case of 20 as a standard (22 per cent error)? For the purpose of settling this point I made tests for each of the three standards with a difference of only one fifteenth. In no instance did I obtain the least evidence of ability to discriminate. These final tests, in addition to establishing the fact that the limit of discrimination for No. 51, after she had been subjected to about two thousand tests, lay between one tenth and one fifteenth, proved to my satisfaction, when taken in connection with the results already discussed, that Weber's law does hold for the brightness vision of the dancer. In concluding this discussion of the Weber's law experiment I wish to call attention to the chief facts which have been revealed, and to make a critical comment. In my opinion it is extremely important that the student of animal behavior should note the fact that the dancer with which I worked week after week in the Weber's law investigation gradually improved in her ability to discriminate on the basis of brightness differences until she was able to distinguish from one another two boxes whose difference in illumination was less than one tenth[1] that of the brighter box. At the beginning of the experiments a difference of one half did not enable her to choose as certainly as did a difference of one tenth after she had chosen several hundred times. Evidently we are prone to underestimate the educability of our animal subjects. [Footnote 1: Under the conditions of the experiment I was unable to distinguish the electric-boxes when they differed by less than one twentieth.] The reason that the experiments were carried out with only one mouse must now be apparent. It was a matter of time. The reader must not suppose that my study of this subject is completed. It is merely well begun, and I report it here in its unfinished state for the sake of the value of the method which I have worked out, rather than for the purpose of presenting the definite results which I obtained with No. 51. The critical comment which I wish to make for the benefit of those who are working on similar problems is this. The phosphor bronze wires, on the bottom of the electric-boxes, by means of which an electric shock could be given to the mouse when it chose the wrong box, are needless sources of variability in the illumination of the boxes. They reflect the light into the eyes of the mouse too strongly, and unless they are kept perfectly clean and bright, serious inequalities of illumination appear. To avoid these undesirable conditions I propose hereafter to use a box within a box, so that the wires shall be hidden from the view of the animal as it attempts to discriminate. A brief description of the behavior of the dancer in the brightness discrimination experiments which have been described may very appropriately form the closing section of this chapter. For the experimenter, the incessant activity and inexhaustible energy of the animal are a never-failing source of interest and surprise. When a dancer is inactive in the experiment box, it is a good indication either of indisposition or of too low a temperature in the room. In no animal with which I am familiar is activity so much an end in itself as in this odd species of mouse. With striking facility most of the mice learn to open the wire swing doors from either side. They push them open with their noses in the direction in which they were intended by the experimenter to work, and with almost equal ease they pull them open with their teeth in the direction in which they were not intended to work. In the rapidity with which this trick is learned, there are very noticeable individual differences. The pulling of these doors furnished an excellent opportunity for the study of the imitative tendency. When confronted with the two entrances of the electric-boxes, the dancer manifested at first only the hesitation caused by being in a strange place. It did not seem much afraid, and usually did not hesitate long before entering one of the boxes. The first choice often determined the majority of the choices of the preference series. If the mouse happened to enter the left box, it kept on doing so until, having become so accustomed to its surroundings that it could take time from its strenuous running from _A_ by way of the left box to the alley and thence to _A_, to examine things in _B_ a little, it observed the other entrance and in a seemingly half-curious, half-venturesome way entered it. In the case of other individuals, the cardboards themselves seemed to determine the choices from the first. The electric shock, as punishment for entering the wrong box, came as a surprise. At times an individual would persistently attempt to enter, or even enter and retreat from the wrong box repeatedly, in spite of the shock. This may have been due in some instances to the effects of fright, but in others it certainly was due to the strength of the tendency to follow the course which had been taken most often previously. The next effect of the shock was to cause the animal to hesitate before the entrances to the boxes, to run from one to the other, poking its head into each and peering about cautiously, touching the cardboards at the entrances, apparently smelling of them, and in every way attempting to determine which box could be entered safely. I have at times seen a mouse run from one entrance to the other twenty times before making its choice; now and then it would start to enter one and, when halfway in, draw back as if it had been shocked. Possibly merely touching the wires with its fore paws was responsible for this simulation of a reaction to the shock. The gradual waning of this inhibition of the forward movement was one of the most interesting features of the experiment. Could we but discover what the psychical states and the physiological conditions of the animal were during this period of choosing, comparative psychology and physiology would advance by a bound. If the conditions at the entrances of the two boxes were discriminable, the mouse usually learned within one hundred experiences to choose the right box without much hesitation. Three distinct methods of choice were exhibited by different individuals, and to a certain extent by the same individual from time to time. These methods, which I have designated _choice by affirmation_, _choice by negation_, and _choice by comparison_, are of peculiar interest to the psychologist and logician. When an individual runs directly to the entrance of the right box, and, after stopping for an instant to examine it, enters, the choice may be described as recognition of the right box. I call it choice by affirmation because the act of the animal is equivalent to the judgment--"this is it." If instead it runs directly to the wrong box, and, after examining it, turns to the other box and enters without pause for examination, its behavior may be described as recognition of the wrong box. This I call choice by negation because the act seems equivalent to the judgment--"this is not it." Further, it seems to imply the judgment--"therefore the other is it." In the light of this fact, this type of choice might appropriately be called choice by exclusion. Finally, when the mouse runs first to one box and then to the other, and repeats this anywhere from one to fifty times, the choice may be described as comparison of the boxes; therefore, I call it choice by comparison. Certain individuals choose first by comparison, and later almost uniformly by affirmation and negation. Whenever the conditions are difficult to discriminate, choice by comparison occurs most frequently and persistently. If, however, the conditions happen to be absolutely indiscriminable, as was true, for example, in the case of the sound tests, in certain of the Weber's law tests, and in the plain electric-box tests, the period of hesitation rapidly increases during the first three or four series of tests, then the mouse seems to lessen its efforts to discriminate and more and more tends to rush into one of the boxes without hesitation or examination, and apparently with the expectation of a shock, but with the intention of getting it over as soon as possible. Now and then under such conditions there is a marked tendency to enter the same box each time. Indiscriminable conditions are likely to render the animals fearful of the experiment; instead of going from _A_ to _A_ willingly, they fight against making the trip. They refuse to pass from _A_ to _B_; and when in _B_, they fight against being driven toward the entrances to the electric- boxes. In marked contrast with this behavior on the part of the mouse under conditions which do not permit it to choose correctly is that of the animal which has learned what is expected of it. The latter, far from holding back or fighting against the conditions which urge it forward, is so eager to make the trip that it sometimes has to be forced to wait while the experimenter records the results of the tests. There is evidence of delight in the freedom of movement and in the variety of activity which the experiment furnishes. The thoroughly trained dancer runs into _B_ almost as soon as it has been placed in _A_ by the experimenter; it chooses the right entrance by one of the three methods described above, immediately, or after whirling about a few times in _B_; it runs through _E_ and back to _A_ as quickly as it can, and almost before the experimenter has had time to record the result of the choice it is again in _B_ ready for another choice. CHAPTER IX THE SENSE OF SIGHT: COLOR VISION Is the dancing mouse able to discriminate colors as we do? Does it possess anything which may properly be called color vision? If so, what is the nature of its ability in this sense field? Early in my study of the mice I attempted to answer these and similar questions, for the fact that they are completely deaf during the whole or the greater part of their lives suggested to me the query, are they otherwise defective in sense equipment? In the following account of my study of color vision, I shall describe the evolution of my methods in addition to stating the results which were obtained and the conclusions to which they led me. For in this case the development of a method of research is quite as interesting as the facts which the method in its various stages of evolution revealed. Observation of the behavior of the dancer under natural conditions caused me to suspect that it is either defective in color vision or possesses a sense which is very different from human vision. I therefore devised the following extremely simple method of testing the animal's ability to distinguish one color from another. In opposite corners of a wooden box 26 cm. long, 23 cm. wide, and 11 cm. deep, two tin boxes 5 cm. in diameter and 1.5 cm. deep were placed, as is shown in part I of Figure 18. One of these boxes was covered on the outside with blue paper (_B_ of Figure 18), and the other with orange[1] (_O_ of Figure 18). A small quantity of "force" was placed in the orange box. As the purpose of the test was to discover whether the animals could learn to go directly to the box which contained the food, the experiments were made each morning before the mice had been fed. The experimental procedure consisted in placing the individual to be tested in the end of the large wooden box opposite the color boxes, and then permitting it to run about exploring the box until it found the food in the orange box. While it was busily engaged in eating a piece of "force" which it had taken from the box and was holding in its fore paws, squirrel fashion, the color boxes were quickly and without disturbance shifted in the directions indicated by the arrows of Figure 18, I. Consequently, when the animal was ready for another piece of "force," the food-box was in the corresponding corner of the opposite end of the experiment box (position 2, 18, II). After the mouse had again succeeded in finding it, the orange box was shifted in position as is indicated by the arrows in Figure 18, II. Thus the tests were continued, the boxes being shifted after each success on the part of the animal in such a way that for no two successive tests was the position of the food- box the same; it occupied successively the positions 1, 2, 3, and 4 of the figure, and then returned to 1. Each series consisted of 20 tests. [Footnote 1: These were the Milton Bradley blue and orange papers.] [Illustration: FIGURE 18.--Food-box apparatus for color discrimination experiments. _O_, orange food-box; _B_, blue food-box; 1, 2, 3, 4, different positions of the food-boxes, _O_ and _B_; I, II, III, IV, figures in which the arrows indicate the direction in which the food-boxes were moved.] [Illustration: FIGURE 19.--Food-box apparatus with movable partitions. _O_, orange food-box; _B_, blue food-box; _X_, starting point for mouse; _A_, point at which both food-boxes become visible to the mouse as it approaches them; 1, 2, two different positions of the food-boxes; _T_, _T_, movable partitions. (After Doctor Waugh.)] An improvement on this method, which was suggested by Doctor Karl Waugh, has been used by him in a study of the sense of vision in the common mouse. It consisted in the introduction, at the middle of the experiment box, of two wooden partitions which were pivoted on their mid-vertical axes so that they could be placed in either of the positions indicated in Figure 19. Let us suppose that a mouse to be tested for color vision in this apparatus has been placed at _X_. In order to obtain food it must pass through _A_ and choose either the orange or the blue box. If it chooses the former, the test is recorded as correct; if it goes to the blue box first, and then to the orange, it is counted an error. While the animal is eating, the experimenter shifts the boxes to position 1 of Figure 19, and at the same time moves the partitions so that they occupy the position indicated by the dotted lines. The chief advantage of this improvement in method is that the animal is forced to approach the color boxes from a point midway between them, instead of following the sides of the experiment box, as it is inclined to do, until it happens to come to the food-box. This renders the test fairer, for presumably the animal has an opportunity to see both boxes from _A_ and can make its choice at that point of vantage. Two males, A and B, of whose age I am ignorant, were each given seventeen series of tests in the apparatus of Figure 18. A single series, consisting of twenty choices, was given daily. Whether the animal chose correctly or not, it was allowed to get food; that is, if it went first to the blue box, thus furnishing the condition for a record of error, it was permitted to pass on to the orange box and take a piece of "force." No attempt was made to increase the animal's desire for food by starving it. Usually it sought the food-box eagerly; when it would not do so, the series was abandoned and work postponed. "Force" proved a very convenient form of food in these tests. The mice are fond of it, and they quickly learned to take a flake out of the box instead of trying to get into the box and sit there eating, for when they attempted the latter they were promptly pushed to one side by the experimenter and the box, as well as the food, was removed to a new position. The results of the tests appear in Table 15. No record of the choices in the first two of the 17 series was kept. The totals therefore include 15 series, or 300 tests, with each individual. Neither the daily records nor the totals of this table demonstrate choice on the basis of color discrimination. Either the dancers were not able to tell one box from the other, or they did not learn to go directly to the orange box. It might be urged with reason that there is no sufficiently strong motive for the avoidance of an incorrect choice. A mistake simply means a moment's delay in finding food, and this is not so serious a matter as stopping to discriminate. I am inclined, in the light of result of other experiments, to believe that there is a great deal in this objection to the method. Reward for a correct choice should be supplemented by some form of punishment for a mistake. This conclusion was forced upon me by the results of these preliminary experiments on color vision and by my observation of the behavior of the animals in the apparatus. At the time the above tests were made I believed that I had demonstrated the inability of the dancer to distinguish orange from blue, but now, after two years' additional work on the subject, I believe instead that the method was defective. The next step in the evolution of a method of testing the dancer's color vision was the construction of the apparatus (Figures 14 and 15) which was described in Chapter VII. In connection with this experiment box the basis for a new motive was introduced, namely, the punishment of mistakes by an electric shock. Colored cardboards, instead of the white, black, or grays of the brightness tests, were placed in the electric-boxes. TABLE 15 ORANGE-BLUE TESTS, WITH FOOD-BOX MOUSE A MOUSE B SERIES DATE 1904 RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (ORANGE) (BLUE) (ORANGE) (BLUE) 1 Dec. 6 -- -- -- -- 2 7 -- -- -- -- 3 8 12 8 12 8 4 9 10 10 9 11 5 10 15 5 10 10 6 11 10 10 12 8 7 12 9 11 9 11 8 13 10 10 9 11 9 14 12 8 12 8 10 15 13 7 12 8 11 16 13 7 10 10 12 17 12 8 10 10 13 18 11 9 10 10 14 19 13 7 8 12 15 20 13 7 9 11 16 22 14 6 12 8 17 23 10 10 9 11 TOTALS 177 123 153 147 In preliminary tests, at the rate of four per day, the colored cardboards were placed only at the entrances to the boxes, not inside, and as was true also in the case of brightness tests under like conditions, no evidence of discrimination was obtained from ten days' training. This seemed to indicate that a considerable area of the colored surface should be exposed to the mouse's view, if discrimination were to be made reasonably easy. This conclusion was supported by the results of other preliminary experiments in which rectangular pieces of colored papers[1] 6 by 3 cm., were placed on the floor at the entrances to the electric-boxes, instead of on the walls of the boxes. Mouse No. 2 was given five series of ten tests each with a yellow card to indicate the right box and a red card at the entrance to the wrong box. At first he chose the red almost uniformly, and at no time during these fifty tests did he exhibit ability to choose the right box by color discrimination. I present the results of these series in Table 16, because they indicate a fact to which I shall have to refer repeatedly later, namely, that the brightness values of different portions of the spectrum are not the same for the dancer as for us. Previous to this yellow-red training, No. 2, as a result of ten days of white-black training (two tests per day), had partially learned to go to the brighter of the two electric-boxes. It is possible therefore that the choice of the box in the case of these color experiments was in reality the choice of what appeared to the mouse to be the brighter box. If this were not true, how are the results of Table 16 to be accounted for? [Footnote 1: These were the only Hering papers used in my experiments.] TABLE 16 YELLOW-RED TESTS In Color Discrimination Box with 6 by 3 cm. Pieces of Hering Papers at Entrances to Boxes No. 2 SERIES DATE RIGHT WRONG 1906 (Yellow) (Red) 1 Jan. 16 1 9 2 17 3 7 3 18 4 6 4 19 5 5 5 20 5 5 Without further mention of the many experiments which were necessary for the perfecting of this method of testing color vision, I may at once present the final results of the tests which were made with reflected light. These tests were made with the discrimination apparatus in essentially the same way as were the brightness discrimination tests of Chapter VII. In all of the color experiments, unless otherwise stated, a series of ten tests each day was given, until satisfactory evidence of discrimination or proof of the lack of the ability to discriminate had been obtained. The difficulties of getting conclusive evidence in either direction will be considered in connection with the results themselves. For all of these tests with reflected light the Milton Bradley colored papers were used. These colored papers were pasted on white cardboard carriers. I shall designate, in the Bradley nomenclature, the papers used in each experiment. With colored cardboards inside the electric-boxes as well as at their entrances (see Figure 14 for position of cardboards) blue-orange tests were given to Nos. 2 and 3 until they discriminated perfectly. The papers were Bradley's blue tint No. 1 and orange. Number 2 was perfect in the twelfth series (Table 17), No 3 in the fourteenth and again in the sixteenth. They were then tested with a special brightness check series which was intended by the experimenter to reveal any dependence upon a possible brightness difference rather than upon the color difference of the boxes. TABLE 17 LIGHT BLUE-ORANGE TESTS IN COLOR DISCRIMINATION BOX SERIES DATE NO. 2 NO. 3 1906 RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (LIGHT (ORANGE) (LIGHT (ORANGE) BLUE) BLUE) 1 Jan. 26 7 3 1 9 2 27 7 3 5 5 3 28 7 3 6 4 4 29 7 3 7 3 5 30 7 3 4 6 6 31 10 0 7 3 7 Feb. 1 9 1 7 3 8 2 8 2 6 4 9 3 9 1 9 1 10 5 7 3 5 5 11 6 8 2 5 5 12 7 10 0 5 5 Special brightness check series (see Table 18) 13 8 10 0 7 3 Special light blue-dark blue series 14 9 8 2 10 0 15 10 9 1 9 1 Special light blue-dark blue series 16 11 9 1 10 0 Special brightness check series 17 12 10 0 9 1 TABLE 18 LIGHT BLUE-ORANGE Brightness check series Mouse No. 2, Series 13 Feb. 8, 1906 TEST CONDITION RIGHT WRONG 1 Light blue on right Orange on left Right ____ 2 Light blue on left Orange on right Right ____ 3 Light blue on right Red substituted for orange Right ____ 4 Light blur on left Red substituted for orange Right ____ 5 Dark blue on right Orange on left Right ____ 6 Dark blue on left Orange on right Right ____ 7 Dark blue on left Orange on right Right ____ 8 Dark blue on right Red substituted for orange Right ____ 9 Dark blue on left Red substituted for orange Right ____ 10 Dark blue on left Red substituted for orange Right ____ Totals 10 0 The nature of this brightness check series, as well as the results which No. 2 gave when tested by it, may be appreciated readily by reference to Table 18. Tint No. 1 of the blue, which is considerably brighter, in my judgment, than the Bradley blue, was replaced at intervals in this series by the latter. For it was thought that in case the mouse were choosing the blue of the series because it seemed brighter than the orange, this substitution might mislead it into choosing the orange. These blues are referred to in the table as light blue (tint No. 1) and dark blue (standard blue). Again a change in the opposite direction was made by substituting Bradley red for orange. As this was for the human eye the substitution of a color whose brightness was considerably less than that of the orange, it seemed possible that the mouse, if it had formed the habit of choosing the box which seemed the darker, might by this change be misled into choosing the red instead of the light blue. In a word, changes in the conditions of the experiments were made in such a way that now one color, now the other, appeared to be the brighter. But I did not attempt to exclude brightness discrimination on the part of the mouse by dependence upon the human judgment of brightness equality, for it is manifestly unsafe to assume that two colors which are of the same brightness for the human eye have a like relation for the eye of the dancer or of any other animal. My tests of color vision have been conducted without other reference to human standards of judgment or comparisons than was necessary for the description of the experimental conditions. In planning the experiments I assumed neither likeness nor difference between the human retinal processes and those of the dancer. It was my purpose to discover the nature of the mouse's visual discriminative ability. As is indicated in the tables, neither the substitution of dark blue for light blue, nor the replacement of the orange by red or dark blue rendered correct choice impossible, although certain of the combinations did render choice extremely difficult. In other words, despite all of the changes which were made in the brightness of the cardboards in connection with the light blue-orange tests, the mice continued to make almost perfect records. What are we to conclude from this? Either that the ability to discriminate certain colors is possessed by the dancer, or that for some reason the tests are unsatisfactory. If it be granted that the possibility of brightness discrimination was excluded in the check series, the first of these alternatives apparently is forced upon us. That such a possibility was not excluded, later experiments make perfectly clear. The fact was that not even in the check series was the brightness value of the orange as great as that of the blue. Consequently the mice may have chosen the brighter box each time while apparently choosing the blue. Although conclusive proof of the truth of this statement is furnished only by later experiments, the results of the light blue-orange series, as given in Table 17, strongly suggest such a possibility. Mouse No. 3 had not been experimented with previous to these color discrimination tests. Her preference for the orange, which in the case of the first series was 9 to 1, consequently demands an explanation. If she had been trained previously to choose the white instead of the black, as was true of No. 2, it might be inferred that she went to the orange box because it appeared brighter than the blue. As this explanation is not available, we are driven back upon the results of the white-black preference tests in Chapter VII, which proved that many dancers prefer the black to the white. This may mean that they prefer the lower degree of brightness or illumination, and if so it might be argued, in turn, that the orange was chosen by No. 3 because it appeared darker than the blue. Since, as has already been stated, the orange was far brighter for me than the blue, this would also mean that the brightness values of different colors are not the same for man and mouse. Practically the same kind of color tests as those described for Nos. 2 and 3 were given to Nos. 1000 and 5. The results appear in Table 19. These tests followed upon the formation of a habit to choose white instead of black (that is, the greater brightness). From the first both No. 1000 and No. 5 chose the light blue in preference to the orange or the red. It therefore seems probable that the former was considerably brighter than the latter. Number 1000, to be sure, was led into three erroneous choices by the brightness check series (series 7), but, on the other hand, No. 5 was not at all disturbed in her choices by similar check tests. It seems natural to conclude from these facts that both of these mice chose the blue at first because of its relatively greater brightness, and that they continued to do so for the same reason. In other words, their behavior indicates that the brightness check tests were valueless because not enough allowance had been made for the possible differences between the vision of mouse and man. TABLE 19 LIGHT BLUE-ORANGE AND DARK BLUE-RED TESTS No. 1000 No. 5 SERIES DATE Condition Right Wrong Right Wrong (Light (Orange (Light (Orange Blue or or Blue or Dark Red) Dark Red) Blue) Blue) 1 Jan. 25 Blue-red 8 2 10 0 2 26 Blue-red or Light blue-orange 10 0 10 0 3 27 Light blue-orange 10 0 5 5 4 29 Light blue-orange 9 1 8 2 5 30 Light blue-orange 10 0 8 2 6 31 Light blue-orange 10 0 10 0 7 Feb. 1 Light blue-orange or Dark blue-red 7 3 10 0 If only the final results of my experiments with the dancer and the conclusions to which they lead were of interest, all of this description of experiments which served merely to clear the ground and thus make possible crucial tests might be omitted. It has seemed to me, however, that the history of the investigation is valuable, and I am therefore presenting the evolution of my methods step by step. To be sure, not every detail of this process can be mentioned, and only a few of the individual results can be stated, but my purpose will have been fulfilled if I succeed in showing how one method of experimentation pointed the way to another, and how one set of results made possible the interpretation of others. As the results of my color vision experiments seemed to indicate that the red end of the spectrum appears much darker to the dancer than to us, tests were now arranged with colors from adjacent regions of the spectrum, green and blue. The papers used were the Bradley green and tint No. 1 of the blue. They were not noticeably different in brightness for the human eye. Green marked the box to be chosen. Three of the individuals which had previously been used in the light blue-orange series, and which therefore had perfect habits of going to the light blue, were used for the green- light blue tests. Of these individuals, No. 1000 became inactive on the fifth day of the experiment, and the tests with him were discontinued. Twenty series were given to each of the other mice, with the results which appear in Table 20. To begin with, both No. 4 and No. 5 exhibited a preference for the light blue, as a result of the previous light blue- orange training. As this preference was gradually destroyed by the electric shock which was received each time the light blue box was entered, they seemed utterly at a loss to know which box to enter. Occasionally a record of six, seven, or even eight right choices would be made in a series, but in no case was this unquestionably due to color discrimination; usually it could be explained in the light of the order of the changes in the positions of the cardboards. For example, series 9, in which No. 5 made a record of 8 right and 2 wrong, had green on the right for the first three tests. The animal happened to choose correctly in the first test, and continued to do so three times in succession simply because there was no change in the position of the cardboards. I have occasionally observed a record of seven right choices result when it was perfectly evident to the observer that the mouse could not discriminate visually. It was to avoid unsafe conclusions and unfair comparisons, as the result of such misleading series, that three perfect series in succession were required as evidence of a perfectly formed habit of discrimination. TABLE 20 GREEN-LIGHT BLUE TESTS Date No. 1000 No. 4 No. 5 SERIES 1906 RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (GREEN) (BLUE) (GREEN) (BLUE) (GREEN) (BLUE) 1 Feb.3 2 8 3 7 3 7 2 5 7 3 5 5 5 5 3 6 5 5 6 4 5 5 4 7 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 8 2 8 5 5 4 6 6 9 7 3 7 3 7 10 4 6 3 7 8 10 6 4 4 6 9 12 6 4 8 2 10 13 6 4 6 4 11 14 5 5 3 7 12 15 6 4 7 3 13 16 5 5 7 3 14 17 3 7 6 4 15 19 6 4 6 4 16 20 7 3 5 5 17 21 4 6 8 2 18 22 3 7 4 6 19 23 6 4 4 6 20 24 6 4 5 5 Twenty series, 200 tests for each of the individuals in the experiment, yielded no evidence whatever of the dancer's ability to tell green from blue. As it has already been proved that they readily learn to choose the right box under discriminable conditions, it seems reasonable to conclude either that they lack green-blue vision, or that they have it in a relatively undeveloped state. If it be objected that the number of training tests given was too small, and that the dancer probably would exhibit discrimination if it were given 1000 instead of 200 tests in such an experiment, I must reply that the behavior of the animal in the tests is even more satisfactory evidence of its inability to choose than are the results of Table 20. Had there been the least indication of improvement as the result of 200 tests, I should have continued the experiment; as a matter of fact, the mice each day hesitated more and more before choosing, and fought against being driven toward the entrance to the experiment box. That they were helpless was so evident that it would have been manifestly cruel to continue the experiment. TABLE 21 VIOLET-RED TESTS With Odor of All Cardboards the Same SERIES DATE NO. 7 NO. 998 RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (VIOLET) (RED) (VIOLET) (RED) A MAR. 7 8 2 5 5 B 7 3 7 2 8 1 14 3 7 6 4 2 15 4 6 4 6 3 16 5 5 5 5 4 19 4 6 4 6 5 20 5 5 6 4 6 21 4 6 8 2 7 22 8 2 4 6 8 23 4 6 6 4 9 24 6 4 4 6 10 25 4 6 6 4 Further color tests with reflected light were made with violet and red. Two dancers, Nos. 998 and 7, neither of which had been in any experiment previously, were subjected to the ten series of tests whose results are to be found in Table 21. In this experiment the cardboards used had been coated with shellac to obviate discrimination by means of odor. It is therefore impossible to give a precise description of the color or brightness by referring to the Bradley papers.[1] Both the violet and the red were rendered darker, and apparently less saturated, by the coating. [Footnote 1: The violet was darker than Bradley's shade No. 2, and the red was lighter than Bradley's red.] These violet-red tests were preceded by two series of preference tests (_A_ and _B_), in which no shock was given and escape was possible through either electric-box. Although the results of these preference tests as they appear in Table 21 seem to indicate a preference for the red on the part of No. 998, examination of the record sheets reveals the fact that neither animal exhibited color preference, but that instead both chose by position. Number 998 chose the box on the right 15 times in 20, and No. 7 chose the box on the left 15 times in 20. Ten series of tests with the violet-red cardboards failed to furnish the least indication of discrimination. The experiment was discontinued because the mice had ceased to try to discriminate and dashed into one or the other of the boxes on the chance of guessing correctly. When wrong they whirled about, rushed out of the red box and into the violet immediately. They had learned perfectly as much as they were able to learn of what the experiment required of them. Although we are not justified in concluding from this experiment that dancers cannot be taught to distinguish violet from red, there certainly is good ground for the statement that they do not readily discriminate between these colors. The experiments on color vision which have been described and the records which have been presented will suffice to give the reader an accurate knowledge of the nature of the results, only a few of which could be printed, and of the methods by which they were obtained. In brief, these results show that the dancer, under the conditions of the experiments, is not able to tell green from blue, or violet from red. The evidence of discrimination furnished by the light blue-orange tests is not satisfactory because the conditions of the experiment did not permit the use of a sufficiently wide range of brightnesses. It is obvious, therefore, that a method of experimentation should be devised in which the experimenter can more fully control the brightness of the colors which he is using. I shall now describe a method in which this was possible. CHAPTER X THE SENSE OF SIGHT: COLOR VISION (_Continued_) There are three well-known ways in which colors may be used as stimuli in experiments on animals: by the use of colored papers (reflected light); by the use of a prism (the spectrum which is obtained may be used as directly transmitted or as reflected light); and by the use of light filters (transmitted light). In the experiments on the color vision of the dancer which have thus far been described only the first of these three methods has been employed. Its advantages are that it enables the experimenter to work in a sunlit room, with relatively simple, cheap, and easily manipulated apparatus. Its chief disadvantages are that the brightness of the light can neither be regulated nor measured with ease and accuracy. The use of the second method, which in many respects is the most desirable of the three, is impracticable for experiments which require as large an illuminated region as do those with the mouse; I was therefore limited to the employment of light filters in my further tests of color discrimination. The form of filter which is most conveniently handled is the colored glass, but unfortunately few glasses which are monochromatic are manufactured. Almost all of our so-called colored glasses transmit the light of two or more regions of the spectrum. After making spectroscopic examinations of all the colored glasses which were available, I decided that only the ruby glass could be satisfactorily used in my experiments. With this it was possible to get a pure red. Each of the other colors was obtained by means of a filter, which consisted of a glass box filled with a chemical solution which transmitted light of a certain wave length. For the tests with transmitted light the apparatus of Figures 20 and 21 was constructed. It consisted of a reaction-box essentially the same as that used in the brightness vision tests, except that holes were cut in the ends of the electric-boxes, at the positions _G and R_ of Figure 20, to permit the light to enter the boxes. Beyond the reaction-box was a long light-box which was divided lengthwise into two compartments by a partition in the middle. A slit in the cover of each of these compartments carried an incandescent lamp _L_ (Figure 20). Between the two lamps, _L, L_, and directly over the partition in the light-box was fastened a millimeter scale, _S_, by means of which the experimenter could determine the position of the lights with reference to the reaction-box. The light- box was separated from the reaction-box by a space 6 cm. wide in which moved a narrow wooden carrier for the filter boxes. This carrier, as shown in Figure 20, could be moved readily from side to side through a distance of 20 cm. The filter boxes, which are represented in place in Figures 20 and 21, consisted of three parallel-sided glass boxes 15 cm. long, 5 cm. wide, and 15 cm. deep. Each box contained a substance which acted as a ray filter. Tightly fitted glass covers prevented the entrance of dust and the evaporation of the solutions in the boxes. Figures 20 and 21 represent the two end boxes, _R, R_, as red light filters and the middle one, _G_, as a green light filter. Three filters were used thus side by side in order that the position of a given color with reference to the electric-boxes might be changed readily. As the apparatus was arranged, all the experimenter had to do when he wished to change from green-left, red-right to green-right, red-left was to push the carrier towards the right until the green filter covered the hole on the right at the end of the electric- box. When this had been accomplished the red filter at the left end of the carrier covered the hole on the left at the end of the electric-box. Thus quickly, noiselessly, easily, and without introducing any other change in conditions than that of the interchange of lights, the experimenter was able to shift the positions of his colored lights at will. [Illustration: FIGURE 20.--Color discrimination apparatus. _A,_ nest-box; _B,_ entrance chamber; _R, R,_ red filters; _G,_ green filter; _L, L,_ incandescent lamps in light-box; _S,_ millimeter scale on light-box; _I,_ door between _A_ and _B; O, O,_ doors between alleys and _A_.] [Illustration: FIGURE 21--Ground plan of color discrimination apparatus. _E, E_, exits from electric-boxes. _LB_, light-box; _R, G, R_, filter boxes on carrier; _L_, left electric-box; _R_, right electric-box; _IC_ induction apparatus; _C_, electric cell; _K_, key; _S_, millimeter scale.] In the tests which are now to be reported, three portions of the spectrum were used: the red end, the blue-violet end, and a middle region, chiefly green. The red light was obtained by the use of a filter which was made by placing two plates of ruby glass in one of the glass boxes, filling the box with filtered water and then sealing it to prevent evaporation. The blue-violet was obtained by the use of a filter box which contained a 5 per cent solution of copper ammonium sulphate. The green, which, however, was not monochromatic, was obtained by the use of a filter box which contained a saturated solution of nickel nitrate. These three sets of filters were examined spectroscopically both before the experiments had been made and after their completion.[1] The red filters, of which I had two for shifting the lights, transmitted only red light. The blue-violet filters, two also, at first appeared to transmit only portions of the blue and violet of the spectrum, but my later examination revealed a trace of green. It is important to note, however, that the red and the blue-violet filters were mutually exclusive in the portions of the spectrum which they transmitted. Of all the filters used the green finally proved the least satisfactory. I detected some yellow and blue in addition to green in my first examination, and later I discovered a trace of red. Apparently the transmitting power of the solutions changed slightly during the course of the experiments. On this account certain solutions are undesirable for experiments on color vision, for one must be certain of the constancy of the condition of stimulation. It is to be understood, of course, that each of the three filters transmitted, so far as the eye is concerned, only the color named. I consider the red filter perfectly satisfactory, the blue- violet very good, and the green poor. Henceforth, in testing color vision in animals, I shall make use of colored glasses as filters, if it is in any way possible to obtain or have manufactured blue, green, and yellow glasses which are as satisfactory as the ruby. [Footnote 1: A Janssen-Hoffman spectroscope was used.] The apparatus needs no further description, as its other important features were identical with those of the reflected light experiment box. The use of artificial light for the illumination of the electric-boxes made it necessary to conduct all of the following tests in a dark-room. The method of experimentation was practically the same as that already described. A mouse which had been placed in _A_ by the experimenter was permitted to enter _B_ and thence to return to _A_ by entering one of the electric-boxes, the red or blue or green one, as the case might be. Mistakes in choice were punished by an electric shock. One further point in the method demands description and discussion before the results of the tests are considered, namely, the manner of regulating and measuring the brightness of the lights. Regulating brightness with this apparatus was easy enough; measuring it accurately was extremely difficult. The experimenter was able to control the brightness of each of the two colored lights which he was using by changing the position or the power of the incandescent lamps in the light- box. The position of a lamp could be changed easily between tests simply by moving it along toward or away from the electric-box in the slit which served as a lamp carrier. As the distance from the entrances of the electric-boxes to the further end of the light-box was 120 cm., a considerable range or variation in brightness was possible without change of lamps. Ordinarily it was not necessary to change the power of the lamps, by replacing one of a given candle power by a higher or lower, during a series of tests. Both the candle power of the lamps and their distance from the filters were recorded in the case of each test, but for the convenience of the reader I have reduced these measurements to candle meters[1] and report them thus in the descriptions of the experiments. [Footnote 1: The illuminating power of a standard candle at a distance of one meter.] But measuring the actual brightness of the red light or the green light which was used for a particular series of tests, and the variations in their brightnesses, was not so simple a matter as might appear from the statements which have just been made. The influence of the light filters themselves upon the brightness must be taken into account. The two red filters were alike in their influence upon the light which entered them, for they were precisely alike in construction, and the same was true of the two blue-violet filters. The same kind of ruby glass was placed in each of the former, and a portion of the same solution of copper ammonium sulphate was put into each of the filter boxes for the latter. But it is difficult to say what relation the diminution in brightness caused by a red filter bore to that caused by a blue-violet or a green filter. My only means of comparison was my eye, and as subjective measurement was unsatisfactory for the purposes of the experiment, no attempt was made to equalize the amounts of brightness reduction caused by the several filters. So far as the value of the tests themselves, as indications of the condition of color vision in the dancer is concerned, I have no apology for this lack of measurement, but I do regret my inability to give that accurate objective statement of brightness values which would enable another experimenter with ease and certainty to repeat my tests. The nearest approach that it is possible for me to make to such an objective measurement is a statement of the composition and thickness of the filters and of the candle-meter value of the light when it entered the filter. The distance from this point to the entrance to the electric-box was 20 cm. To sum up and state clearly the method of defining the brightness of the light in the following experiments: the candle-meter value of each light by which an electric-box was illuminated, as determined by the use of a Lummer-Brodhun photometer and measurements of the distance of the source of light from the filter, is given in connection with each of the experiments. This brightness value less the diminution caused by the passage of the light through a filter, which has been defined as to composition and thickness of the layer of solution, gives that degree of brightness by which the electric-box was illuminated. Tests of the dancer's ability to discriminate green and blue[1] in the transmitted light apparatus were made with four animals. An incandescent lamp marked 16-candle-power was set in each of the light-boxes. These lamps were then so placed that the green and the blue seemed to be of equal brightness to three persons who were asked to compare them carefully. Their candle-meter values in the positions selected were respectively 18 and 64, as appears from the statement of conditions at the top of Table 22. [Footnote 1: Hereafter the light transmitted by the blue-violet filter will be referred to for convenience as blue.] TABLE 22 GREEN-BLUE TESTS Brightnesses Equal for Human Eye Green 18 candle meters Blue 64 candle meters SERIES DATE NO. 10 NO. 11 1906 RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (GREEN) (BLUE) (GREEN) (BLUE) A and B[1] April 2 10 10 12 8 1 3 6 4 5 5 2 4 5 5 6 4 3 5 5 5 5 5 4 6 5 5 5 5 5 7 7 3 5 5 6 8 7 3 3 7 7 9 7 3 5 5 8 10 3 7 7 3 9 11 5 5 4 6 10 12 5 5 6 4 [Footnote: A single preference series of twenty tests.] Numbers 10 and 11 exhibited no preference for either of these colors in the series of 20 tests which preceded the training tests, and neither of them gave evidence of ability to discriminate as the result of ten series of training tests. In this case, again, the behavior of the animals was as strongly against the inference that they can tell green from blue as are the records of choices which appear in the table. Granted, that they are unable to discriminate green from blue when these colors are of about the same brightness for the human eye, what results when they differ markedly in brightness? Table 23 furnishes a definite answer to this question. Numbers 5 and 12 were given eight series of green-blue tests with each light at 18 candle meters. Little, if any, evidence of discrimination appeared. Then, on the supposition that the difference was not great enough for easy discrimination, the blue light was reduced almost to 0, the green being left at 18. The tests (series 9) immediately indicated discrimination. For series 10 the green was made 64 candle meters, the blue 18, and again there was discrimination. These results were so conclusively indicative of the lack of color vision and the presence of brightness vision, that there appeared to be no need of continuing the experiment further. Accepting provisionally the conclusion that the dancers cannot tell green from blue except by brightness differences, we may proceed to inquire whether they can discriminate other colors. Are green and red distinguishable? Green-red discrimination now was tested by a method which it was hoped might from the first prevent dependence upon brightness. The light in the light-box on the left was so placed that it had a value of 18 candle meters, that in the light-box on the right so that it had a value of 1800 candle meters. Neither light was moved during the first four series of the green-red tests which were given to Nos. 151 and 152. TABLE 23 GREEN-BLUE TESTS Brightnesses Different for Human Eye Green 18 candle meters Blue 18 candle meters No. 5 No. 12 DATE SERIES 1906 RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (GREEN) (BLUE) (GREEN) (BLUE) 1 April 10 6 4 5 5 2 11 5 5 7 3 3 12 6 4 7 3 4 13 4 6 7 3 5 14 7 3 5 5 6 15 4 6 6 4 7 16 6 4 8 2 8 17 5 5 4 6 As it was now evident that the intensity difference was not sufficient to render discrimination easy, the blue was reduced to 0 and the green left at 18. 9 17 7 3 8 2 Now the brightnesses were made, green 64, blue 18, just the reverse of those of series of Table 22. 10 17 8 2 8 2 Each of these series consisted of 20 tests instead of 10. As a result of the arrangement of the lights just mentioned, the green appeared to me very much brighter than the red when it was on the right and very much darker when it was on the left. If this were true for the mouse also, it is difficult to see how it could successfully depend upon brightness for guidance in its choices. Such dependence would cause it to choose now the green, now the red. The first four series of green-red tests so clearly demonstrated discrimination, of some sort, that it was at once necessary to alter the conditions of the experiment. The only criticism of the above method of excluding brightness discrimination, of which I could think, was that the red at no time had been brighter than the green. In other words, that despite a value of 1800 candle meters for the red and only 18 candle meters for the green, the latter still appeared the brighter to the mouse. To meet this objection, I made the extreme brightness values 1 and 1800 candle meters in some of the later series, of which the results appear in Table 24. From day to day different degrees of brightness were used, as is indicated in the second column of the table. Instead of having first one color and then the other the brighter, after the fourth series I changed the position of the lights each time the position of the filters was changed; hence, the table states a certain brightness value for each color instead of for each electric-box. Series 5 to 14 so clearly indicated discrimination, that it seemed necessary to devise some other means than that of changing the brightnesses of the colored lights themselves to test the assumption that the animals were choosing the brighter light. I therefore removed the light filters so that the colors which had been present as conditions of discrimination were lacking, and arranged the apparatus so that first one box, then the other, was illuminated the more brightly. The purpose of this was to discover whether as the result of their green-red training the mice had acquired the habit of choosing uniformly either the lighter or the darker box. One series was given under the conditions of illumination specified in Table 24 with the result that the brighter box was chosen eight times in ten by No. 151 and every time by No. 152. Since neither of these individuals had previously been trained by white-black tests to go to the white, and since, furthermore, the dancers usually manifest a slight preference for the lower instead of the higher illumination, this result may be interpreted as indicative of dependence upon brightness in the previous color tests. It looks very much indeed as if the green had been chosen, not because of its greenness, but on account of its relatively greater brightness. This test of brightness preference was followed by two series, 16 and 17, under conditions similar to those of the first four series of the table. For series 16 the value of the light in the left box was 1 candle meter, that of the light in the right box 1800 candle meters. Discrimination was perfect. For series 17 the value for the left remained at 1 candle meter, but that of the right box was decreased to 0. In this series No. 152 was entirely at a loss to know which box to choose. Of course this was an entirely new set of conditions for choice, namely, a colored box, the green or the red as the case might be, beside a dark box, the one which was not illuminated. If the mice really had been choosing correctly because of a habit of avoiding the red or of seeking the green, this method should bring out the fact, for the red box, since with it the disagreeable electric shock had always been associated, should be a box to be avoided. For No. 151 this seemed to be the case. Series 23 to 27 of Table 24 were given as final and crucial tests of the relation of brightness discrimination to color discrimination. As it is not possible to express in a simple formula the conditions of the tests, a sample series which indicates the brightness of the colors in each of the twenty tests of a series, and in addition the results given by No. 151 in the first of these final series, is reproduced in Table 25. For an animal which had presumably learned perfectly to choose green in preference to red, the record of 8 mistakes in 20 choices as a result of changes in relative brightness is rather bad, and it renders doubtful the existence of color discrimination in any of these experiments. No. 152 showed no ability whatever to choose the green in the first of the series (series 23 of Table 24) of which that of Table 25 is a sample. His record, 10 mistakes in 20 choices, was even poorer than that of No. 151. That both of these mice learned to choose fairly accurately in these final tests is shown by the results of series 24, 25, 26, and 27. I must admit, however, that these records indicate little ability on the part of the animals to discriminate colors. TABLE 24 GREEN-RED TESTS Brightnesses Extremely Different for Human Eye Intensities are given in candle meters (c.m.) NO. 151 NO. 152 SERIES DATE CONDITIONS RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (GREEN) (RED) (GREEN) (RED) 1 April 26 18 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 11 9 7 13 2 27 Same 16 4 16 4 3 28 Same 20 0 17 3 4 29 Same 19 1 19 1 5 30 Green 18 c.m. Red 18 c.m. 9 1 10 0 6 30 Green 64 c.m. Red 18 c.m. 9 1 8 2 7 May 1 Green 6 c.m. Red 1500 c.m. 7 3 9 1 8 1 Green 4 c.m. Red 1500 c.m. 8 2 7 3 9 2 Both varied from 4 to 1500 c.m. 18 2 18 2 10 3 Green 2 c.m. Red 1800 c.m. 6 4 7 3 11 3 Same 10 0 10 0 12 4 Same 7 3 8 2 13 4 Same 8 2 6 4 14 5 Green 1 c.m. Red 1800 c.m. 19 1 19 1 Filters were now removed. An illumination of 15 c.m. was established on one side and an illumination of 0 on the other side, in order to ascertain whether the mice would choose the brighter box. This was done to test the assumption that the green in the previous tests had always appeared brighter to the mice than did the red, and that in consequence they had chosen the brighter box instead of the green box. TABLE 24--CONTINUED No. 151 No. 152 SERIES DATE CONDITIONS RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (GREEN) (RED) (GREEN) (RED) 15 May 5 Brighter 15 c.m. 8[1] 2[2] 10[1] 0[2] Darker 0 c.m. 16 5 1 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 10 0 10 0 17 5 1 c.m. on left 0 c.m. on right 9 1 4 6 18 5 Green 18 c.m. Red 18 c.m. 19 1 17 3 19 9 Same 9 1 9 1 20 9 Same 10 0 10 0 21 10 Same 10 0 10 0 22 11 Same 10 0 10 0 23 June 1 Both varied from 1 to 1800 c.m. 12 8 10 10 24 2 Same 18 2 14 6 25 June 3 Both varied from 2 to 1800 c.m. 19 1 17 3 26 4 Same 17 3 17 3 27 5 Same 18 2 18 2 [Footnote 1: Brighter.] [Footnote 2: Darker.] These long-continued and varied tests with Nos. 151 and 152 revealed three facts: that the mice depend chiefly upon brightness differences in visual discrimination; that they probably have something which corresponds to our red-green vision, although their color experience may be totally unlike ours; and that the red end of the spectrum seems much darker to them than to us, or, in other words, that the least refrangible rays are of lower stimulating value for them than for us. TABLE 25 GREEN-RED TESTS June 1, 1906 No. 151 BRIGHTNESS VALUE IN CANDLE RIGHT WRONG TEST POSITION METERS (GREEN) (RED) 1 Green on left Green 4, Red 448 Right -- 2 Green on right Green 448, Red 4 Right -- 3 Green on right Green 4, Red 448 Right -- 4 Green on left Green 448, Red 4 Right -- 5 Green on left Green 3, Red 1800 -- Wrong 6 Green on right Green 1800, Red 3 -- Wrong 7 Green on right Green 3, Red 1800 -- Wrong 8 Green on left Green 1800, Red 3 Right -- 9 Green on right Green 5, Red 34 Right -- 10 Green on left Green 34, Red 5 Right -- 11 Green on right Green 6, Red 74 Right -- 12 Green on left Green 74, Red 6 Right -- 13 Green on left Green 4, Red 448 -- Wrong 14 Green on right Green 448, Red 4 Right -- 15 Green on right Green 4, Red 448 -- Wrong 16 Green on left Green 448, Red 4 Right -- 17 Green on right Green 3, Red 1800 -- Wrong 18 Green on left Green 1800, Red 3 -- Wrong 19 Green on right Green 1800, Red 3 -- Wrong 20 Green on left Green 3, Red 1800 Right -- Totals 12 8 So many of the results of my color experiments have indicated the all- important role of brightness vision that I have hesitated to interpret any of them as indicative of true color discrimination. But after I had made all the variations in brightness by which it seemed reasonable to suppose that the mouse would be influenced under ordinary conditions, and after I had introduced all the check tests which seemed worth while, there still remained so large a proportion of correct choices that I was forced to admit the influence of the quality as well as of the intensity of the visual stimulus. The first of the facts mentioned above, that brightness discrimination is more important in the life of the mouse than color discrimination, is attested by almost all of the experiments whose results have been reported. The second fact, namely, that the dancer possesses something which for the present we may call red-green vision, also has been proved in a fairly satisfactory manner by both the reflected and the transmitted light experiments. I wish now to present, in Table 26, results which strikingly prove the truth of the statement that red appears darker to the dancer than to us. The brightness conditions which appeared to make the discrimination between green and red most difficult were, so far as my experiments permit the measurement thereof, green from 1 to 4 candle meters with red from 1200 to 1600. Under these conditions the red appeared extremely bright, the green very dark, to the human subject. According to the description of conditions in Table 26, Nos. 2 and 5 were required to distinguish green from red with the former about 3 candle meters in brightness and the latter about 1800 candle meters. In the eighth series of 20 tests, each of these animals made a perfect record. As it seemed possible that they had learned to go to the darker of the two boxes instead of to the green box, I arranged the following check test. The filters were removed, the illumination of one electric-box was made 74 candle meters, that of the other 3, and the changes of the lighter box from left to right were made at irregular intervals. In February, No. 2 had been trained to go to the black in black-white tests, and at the same time No. 5 had been trained to go to the white in white-black tests. The results of these brightness check tests, as they appear in the table, series 8 _a_, are indeed striking. Number 2 chose the darker box each time; No. 5 chose it eight times out of ten. Were it not for the fact that memory tests four weeks after his black-white training had proved that No. 2 had entirely lost the influence of his previous experience (he chose white nine times out of ten in the memory series), it might reasonably be urged that this individual chose the darker box because of his experience in the black-white experiment. And what can be said in explanation of the choices of No. 5? I can think of no more reasonable way of accounting for this most unexpected result of the brightness tests than the assumption that both of these animals had learned to discriminate by brightness difference instead of by color. TABLE 26 GREEN-RED TESTS Brightnesses Different for Human Eye No. 2 No. 5 SERIES DATE BRIGHTNESS RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG VALUES (GREEN) (RED) (GREEN) (RED) 1 May 7 Green Red 1800 c.m. 10 10 12 8 2 8 Same 12 8 11 9 3 9 Same 15 5 14 6 4 10 Same 18 2 12 8 5 11 Same 18 2 14 6 6 12 Same 19 1 16 4 7 13 Same 19 1 18 2 8 14 Same 20 0 20 0 Brightness tests without colors were now given to determine whether the mice had been choosing the brighter or the darker instead of the green. TABLE 26--CONTINUED NO. 2 NO. 5 SERIES DATE BRIGHTNESS VALUES RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (GREEN) (RED) (GREEN) (RED) 8a 14 Brighter 74 c.m. 0[1] 10[2] 2[1] 8[2] Darker 3 c.m. 9 15 3 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 8 12 16 4 10 16 4 c.m. on left 36 c.m. on right 5 5 7 3 11 16 Green 4 c.m. Red 36 c.m. 9 1 8 2 12 17 11 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 7 3 6 4 13 17 Green 11 c.m. Red 1800 c.m. 9 1 8 2 14 18 Mixed values 3 to 1800 c.m. 7 3 8 2 15 19 Same 7 3 7 3 16 20 Same 7 3 7 3 17 21 Same 7 3 9 1 18 22 Same 9 1 8 2 19 23 Same 7 3 9 1 20 24 Same 10 0 8 2 21 25 Same 10 0 9 1 22 26 Same 9 1 10 0 [Footnote 1: Brighter] [Footnote 2: Darker] Immediately after the brightness series, the influence of making first one color, then the other, the brighter was studied. Throughout series 9 the brightness value of the left box remained 3 candle meters, that of the right side 1800 candle meters. Number 2 was so badly confused by this change that his mistakes in this series numbered 12; No. 5 made only 4 incorrect choices. Then series after series was given under widely differing conditions of illumination. The expression "mixed values," which occurs in Table 26 in connection with series 14 to 22 inclusive, means that the brightnesses of the green and the red boxes were changed from test to test in much the way indicated by the sample series of Table 25. In view of the results of these 22 series, 320 tests for each of two mice, it is evident that the dancer is able to discriminate visually by some other factor than brightness. What this factor is I am not prepared to say. It may be something akin to our color experience, it may be distance effect. No other possibilities occur to me. Table 26 shows that discrimination was relatively easy for Nos. 2 and 5 with green at 3 candle meters and red at 1800. That their discrimination was made on the basis of the greater brightness of the red, instead of on the basis of color, is indicated by the results of the brightness check series 8a. Increase in the brightness of the green rendered discrimination difficult for a time, but it soon improved, and by no changes in the relative brightness of the two colors was it possible to prevent correct choice. In addition to giving point to the statement that red appears darker to the dancer than to us, the above experiment shows that the animals depend upon brightness when they can, and that their ability to discriminate color differences is extremely poor, so poor indeed that it is doubtful whether their records are better than those of a totally color blind person would be under similar conditions. Surely in view of such results it is unsafe to claim that the dancer possesses color vision similar to ours. Perfectly trained as they were, by their prolonged green-red tests, to choose the green, or what in mouse experience corresponds to our green, Nos. 2 and 5 offered an excellent opportunity for further tests of blue- green discrimination. For in view of their previous training there should be no question of preference for the blue or of a tendency to depend upon brightness in the series whose results constitute Table 27. TABLE 27 BLUE-GREEN TESTS NO. 2 NO. 5 SERIES DATE BRIGHTNESS VALUES RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (BLUE) (GREEN) (BLUE) (GREEN) 1 June 1 Blue 74 c.m. Green 36 c.m. 3 7 3 7 2 2 Same 5 5 4 6 3 3 Same 5 5 6 4 4 4 Same 6 4 3 7 5 5 Same 6 4 5 5 6 6 Blue 21 c.m. Green 21 c.m. 6 4 7 3 7 7 Same 2 8 3 7 8 8 Same 5 5 4 6 9 9 Same 3 7 6 4 10 10 Same 2 8 4 6 11 12 Same 6 4 3 7 12 13 Blue 36 c.m. Green 21 c.m. 3 7 4 6 13 14 Same 5 5 14 15 Blue 62 c.m. Green 21 c.m. 4 6 15 16 Same 5 5 16 17 Same 5 5 17 18 Same 6 4 Now, as a final test, blue and green glasses were placed over the electric-boxes, the brightness of the two was equalized for the human eye, and the tests of series 18 and 19 were given to No. 2:-- TABLE 27--CONTINUED NO. 2 SERIES DATE BRIGHTNESS VALUES RIGHT WRONG (Blue) (Green) 18 18 Blue 62 c.m. Green 21 c.m 4 6 19 19 Same 6 4 20 20 Blue 21 c.m. Green 88 c.m. 2 8 The green was now made much the brighter. 21 21 Blue 21 c.m. Green 18 c.m. 7 3 22 23 Same 8 2 To begin with, the blue and the green were made quite bright for the human subject, blue 74 candle meters, green 36. Later the brightness of both was first decreased, then increased, in order to ascertain whether discrimination was conditioned by the absolute strength of illumination. No evidence of discrimination was obtained with any of the several conditions of illumination in seventeen series of ten tests each. On the supposition that the animals were blinded by the brightness of the light which had been used in some of the tests, similar tests were made with weaker light. The results were the same. I am therefore convinced that the animals did justice to their visual ability in these experiments. Finally, it seemed possible that looking directly at the source of light might be an unfavorable condition for color discrimination, and that a chamber flooded with colored light from above and from one end would prove more satisfactory. To test this conjecture two thicknesses of blue glass were placed over one electric-box, two plates of green glass over the other; the incandescent lamps were then fixed in such positions that the blue and the green within the two boxes appeared to the experimenter, as he viewed them from the position at which the mouse made its choice, of the same brightness. Mouse No. 2 was given two series of tests, series 18 and 19, under these conditions, with the result that he showed absolutely no ability to tell the blue box from the green box. The opportunity was now taken to determine how quickly No. 2 would avail himself of any possibility of discriminating by means of brightness. With the blue at 21 candle meters, the green was increased to about 1800. Immediately discrimination appeared, and in the second series (22 of Table 27) there were only two mistakes. The results of the blue-green experiments with light transmitted from in front of the animal and from above it are in entire agreement with those of the experiments in which reflected light was used. Since the range of intensities of illumination was sufficiently great to exclude the possibility of blinding and of under illumination, it is necessary to conclude that the dancer does not possess blue-green vision. Again I must call attention to the fact that the behavior of the mice in these experiments is even more significant of their lack of discriminating ability than are the numerical results of the tables. After almost every series of tests, whether or not it came out numerically in favor of discrimination, I was forced to add the comment, "No satisfactory evidence of discrimination." We have now examined the results of green-red, green-blue, and blue-green tests. One other important combination of the colors which were used in these experiments is possible, namely, blue-red. This is the most important of all the combinations in view of the results already described, for these colors represent the extremes of the visible spectrum, and might therefore be discriminable, even though those which are nearer together in the spectral series were not. TABLE 28 BLUE-RED TESTS No. 2 No. 205 SERIES DATE BRIGHTNESS VALUES RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (BLUE) (RED) (BLUE) (RED) 1 July 31 1800 c.m. on left 24 c.m. on right 5 5 6 4 2 Aug. 1 21 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 6 4 6 4 3 2 1800 c.m. on left 21 c.m. on right 8 2 6 4 4 3 19 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 9 1 6 4 5 4 1800 c.m. on left 7 c.m. on right 7 3 5 5 6 5 6 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 10 0 7 3 7 6 18 c.m. on left 74 c.m. on right 10 0 9 1 8 7 1800 c.m. on left 7 c.m. on right 8 2 8 2 9 8 7 c.m. on left 1800 c.m. on right 7 3 8 2 10 9 Mixed values 6 to 1800 c.m. 8 2 9 1 11 10 Blue 3 c.m. Red 1800 c.m. 7 3 6 4 Brightness tests were now made, without the use of colors. 11a 10 4 6 5 5 12 10 Blue 3 c.m. Red 8 c.m. 4 6 6 4 13 11 Blue 3 c.m. Red 7200 c.m. 8 2 5 5 14 13 Mixed values 3 to 7200 c.m. 7 3 7 3 15 13 Same 7 3 9 1 16 14 Blue 3 to 6 c.m. Red 112 to 3650 c.m. 10 0 10 0 Series were now given to test the assumption that red appears dark to the dancer. 17 14 Darkness on one side Red 3 c.m. 5 5 7 3 18 14 Blue 3 to 3650 c.m. Red 3 to 3650 c.m. 10 0 10 0 19 15 Darkness on one side Red 3 c.m. 5 5 4 6 20 15 Blue 3 to 3650 c.m. Red 3 to 3650 c.m. 10 0 9 1 21 16 Darkess on one side Red 72 c.m. 5 5 7 3 22 16 Darkness on one side Red 1800 c.m. 6 4 10 0 As is shown by the results in Table 28, no combination of brightnesses rendered correct choice impossible in the case of the blue-red tests which are now to be described. Choice was extremely difficult at times, even more so perhaps than the table would lead one to suppose, and it is quite possible that color played no part in the discrimination. But that brightness difference in the colors was not responsible for whatever success these mice attained in selecting the right box is proved by the brightness-without-color series which follows series II of the table. Neither No. 2 nor No. 205 showed preference for the lighter or the darker box. At the end of the sixteenth blue-red series, I was convinced that one of two conclusions must be drawn from the experiment: either the dancers possess a kind of blue-red vision, or red is of such a value for them that no brightness of visible green or blue precisely matches it. The latter possibility was further tested by an experiment whose results appear in series 17 to 22 inclusive, of Table 28. The conditions of series 17 were a brightness value of 0 in one box (darkness) and in the other red of a brightness of 3 candle meters. Despite the fact that they had been perfectly trained in _blue-red tests_ to avoid the red, neither of the mice seemed able to discriminate the red from the darkness and to avoid it. This was followed by a series in which the brightness of both the blue and the red was varied between 3 and 3650 candle meters, with the striking result that neither mouse made any mistakes. In series 19 red was used with darkness as in series 17, and again there was a total lack of discrimination. Series 20 was a repetition of series 18, with practically the same result. I then attempted to find out, by increasing the brightness of the red, how great must be its value in order that the dancers should distinguish it readily from darkness. For the tests of series 21 it was made 72 candle meters, but discrimination did not clearly appear. At 1800 candle meters, as is shown in series 22, the red was sufficiently different in appearance from total darkness to enable No. 205 to discriminate perfectly between the two electric-boxes. For No. 2 discrimination was more difficult, but there was no doubt about his ability. It would appear from these tests that the dancers had not learned to avoid red. Therefore we are still confronted with the question, can they see colors? TABLE 29 VISUAL CHECK TESTS With the Electric-boxes Precisely Alike Visually No. 151 No. 152 SERIES DATE RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG 1 Sept. 29 6 4 4 6 2 30 5 5 6 6 3 Oct. 1 3 7 4 6 4 2 5 5 3 7 5 3 3 7 5 5 6 4 6 4 5 5 7 5 5 5 5 5 8 6 -- -- 3 7 9 7 -- -- 6 4 10 8 -- -- 4 6 Averages 4.7 5.3 4.5 5.5 The account of my color vision experiments is finished. If it be objected that other than visual conditions may account for whatever measure of discriminating ability, apart from brightness discrimination, appears in some of the series, the results of the series of Table 29, in which all conceivable visual means of discrimination were purposely excluded, and those of the several check tests which have been described from time to time in the foregoing account, should furnish a satisfactory and definite answer. I am satisfied that whatever discrimination occurred was due to vision; whether we are justified in calling it color vision is quite another question. I conclude from my experimental study of vision that although the dancer does not possess a color sense like ours, it probably discriminates the colors of the red end of the spectrum from those of other regions by difference in the stimulating value of light of different wave lengths, that such specific stimulating value is radically different in nature from the value of different wave lengths for the human eye, and that the red of the spectrum has a very low stimulating value for the dancer. In the light of these experiments we may safely conclude that many, if not most, of the tests of color vision in animals which have been made heretofore by other investigators have failed to touch the real problem because the possibility of brightness discrimination was not excluded. Under the direction of Professor G. H. Parker, Doctor Karl Waugh has examined the structure of the retina of the dancing mouse for me, with the result that only a single type of retinal element was discovered. Apparently the animals possess rod-like cells, but nothing closely similar to the cones of the typical mammalian retina. This is of peculiar interest and importance in connection with the results which I have reported in the foregoing pages, because the rods are supposed to have to do with brightness or luminosity vision and the cones with color vision. In fact, it is usually supposed that the absence of cones in the mammalian retina indicates the lack of color vision. That this inference of functional facts from structural conditions is correct I am by no means certain, but at any rate all of the experiments which I have made to determine the visual ability of the dancer go to show that color vision, if it exists at all, is extremely poor. It is gratifying indeed to learn, after such a study of behavior as has just been described, that the structural conditions, so far as we are able to judge at present, justify the conclusions which have been drawn. CHAPTER XI THE ROLE OF SIGHT IN THE DAILY LIFE OF THE DANCER Darting hither and thither in its cage, whirling rapidly, now to the left, now to the right, running in circles, passing through holes in the nest box quickly and neatly, the dancer, it would seem, must have excellent sight. But careful observation of its behavior modifies this inference. For it appears that a pair of mice dancing together, or near one another, sometimes collide, and that it is only those holes with which the animal is familiar that are entered skillfully. In fact, the longer one observes the behavior of the dancer under natural conditions, the more he comes to believe in the importance of touch, and motor tendencies. Sight, which at first appears to be the chief guiding sense, comes to take a secondary place. In this chapter it is my purpose to show by means of simple experiments what part sight plays in the dancer's life of habit formation. The evidence on this subject has been obtained from four sources: (1) observation of the behavior of dancers in their cages; (2) observation of their behavior when blinded; (3) observation of their behavior in a great variety of discrimination experiments, many of which have already been described; and (4) observation of their behavior in labyrinth experiments which were especially planned to exhibit the importance of the several kinds of vision which the dancer might be supposed to possess. The evidence from the first three of these sources may be presented summarily, for much of it has already appeared in earlier chapters. That from the fourth source will constitute the bulk of the material of this chapter. My observation of the behavior of the mice has furnished conclusive evidence of their ability to see moving objects. But that they do not see very distinctly, and that they do not have accurate perception of the form of objects, are conclusions which are supported by observations that I have made under both natural and experimental conditions. In Chapters VII, VIII, IX, and X, I have presented an abundance of evidence of brightness vision and, in addition, indications of a specific sensitiveness to wave length which may be said to correspond to our color vision. It is noteworthy, however, that all of the experimental proofs of visual ability were obtained as the result of long periods of training. Seldom, indeed, in my experience with them, have the dancers under natural conditions exhibited forms of activity which were unquestionably guided by vision. It is claimed by those who have experimented with blinded dancers that the loss of sight decreases the amount and rapidity of movement, and the ability of the animals to avoid obstacles. By means of the discrimination method previously used in the preliminary experiments on color vision, a full description of which may be found in Chapter IX, p. 133, the dancers' ability to perceive form was tested. Immediately after the two males _A_ and _B_ had been given the "food-box" tests, whose results appear in Table 15, they were tested in the same apparatus and by the same method for their ability to discriminate a rectangular food-box from a round one. In the case of the color discrimination tests, it will be remembered that the circular tin boxes 5 cm. in diameter by 1.5 cm. in depth, one of which was covered with blue paper, the other with orange, were used. For the form discrimination tests I used instead one of the circular boxes of the dimensions given above and a rectangular box 8.5 cm. long, 5.5 cm. wide and 2.5 cm. deep. "Force" was placed in the circular box. The tests were given, in series of 20, daily. TABLE 30 VISUAL FORM TESTS SERIES DATE MOUSE A MOUSE B RIGHT WRONG RIGHT WRONG (CIRCULAR (RECTANGU- (CIRCULAR (RECTANGU- BOX) LAR BOX) BOX) LAR BOX) 1 Jan. 5 10 10 9 11 2 7 12 8 13 7 3 10 6 14 10 10 4 11 7 13 10 10 5 12 9 11 10 10 6 13 11 9 11 9 7 14 13 7 9 11 8 15 10 10 11 9 9 16 10 10 11 9 10 17 11 9 9 11 11 18 11 9 12 8 12 19 12 8 10 10 13 20 10 10 12 8 14 21 10 10 8 12 15 22 10 10 10 10 Totals 152 148 155 145 The results of 15 series of these tests, as may be seen by the examination of Table 30, are about as definitely negative, so far as form discrimination is in question, as they possibly could be. From the first series to the last there is not one which justifies the inference that either of the dancers depended upon the form of the boxes in making its choice. In view of the general criticisms I have made concerning the use of hunger as a motive in experiments on animal behavior, and in view of the particular criticisms of this very method of testing the discriminating powers of the mouse, it may seem strange that space should be given to a report of these tests. I sympathize with the feeling, if any one has it, but, at the same time, I wish to call attention to the fact that almost any mammal which is capable of profiting by experience, and which, under the same conditions, could distinguish the rectangular box from the circular one, would have chosen the right box with increasing accuracy as the result of such experience. The results are important in my opinion, not because they either prove or disprove the ability of the dancer to discriminate these particular forms, the discrimination of which might fairly be expected of any animal with an image-forming eye, but because they demonstrate an important characteristic of the dancing mouse, namely, its indifference to the straightforward or direct way of doing things. Most mammals which have been experimentally studied have proved their eagerness and ability to learn the shortest, quickest, and simplest route to food without the additional spur of punishment for wandering. With the dancer it is different. It is content to be moving; whether the movement carries it directly towards the food is of secondary importance. On its way to the food-box, no matter whether the box be slightly or strikingly different from its companion box, the dancer may go by way of the wrong box, may take a few turns, cut some figure-eights, or even spin like a top for seconds almost within vibrissa-reach of the food-box, and all this even though it be very hungry. Activity is pre-eminently important in the dancer's life. In passing I may emphasize the importance of the fact that at no time did the brightness or color discrimination tests furnish evidence of attempts on the part of the dancers to choose by means of slight differences in the form of the cardboards or the cardboard carriers. Several times form differences, which were easily perceivable by the human subject, were introduced in order to discover whether the mice would detect them and learn to discriminate thereby instead of by the visual conditions of brightness or color. As these experiments failed to furnish evidences of form discrimination, the following special test in the discrimination box was devised. [Illustration: FIGURE 22.--Cards used for tests of form discrimination.] The color discrimination box of Chapter X was arranged so that the light at the entrance to each electric-box had a value of 20 candle meters, less the diminution caused by a piece of ground glass which was placed over the end of the electric-boxes to diffuse the light. The windows through which the light entered the electric-boxes were covered with pieces of black cardboard; in one of these cardboards I had cut a circular opening 4 cm. in diameter, and in the other an opening of the same area but markedly different shape. These openings are shown in Figure 22. As the mouse approached the entrance to the electric-boxes, it was confronted by these two equally illuminated areas, whose chief difference was one of form. Difference in the amount of light within the boxes was excluded so far as possible. The question which I asked was, can the dancer discriminate by means of this difference in visual form? For the purpose of settling this point and of gaining additional knowledge of the role of vision, two individuals were tested in the discrimination box under the conditions which have just been described. During the first ten days of the experiment each of these mice, Nos. 420 and 425, was given a series of ten tests daily. At the end of this period experimentation with No. 425 had to be discontinued, and the number of daily tests given to No. 420 was increased to twenty. Instead of taking space for the presentation of the daily records, I may state the general results of the tests. Neither of the mice learned to choose the right box by means of form discrimination. In fact, there was absolutely no sign of discrimination at any time during the tests. This result is as surprising as it is interesting. I could not at first believe that the mice were unable to perceive the difference in the lighted areas, but assumed that they were prevented from getting the outlines of the areas by the blinding effect of the light. However, decreasing the intensity of the illumination did not alter the result. According to the indications of this experiment, the dancer's ability to perceive visual form is extremely poor. Thus far the purpose of our experiments has been to ascertain what the dancer is enabled to do by sight. Suppose we now approach the problem of the role of this sense by trying to find out what it can do without sight. [Illustration: FIGURE 23.--Labyrinth B. _I_, entrance; _O_, exit; 1, 2, 3, doorways between alleys.] For the investigation of this matter the labyrinth method seemed eminently suitable. The first form of labyrinth which was used in these visual tests appears in ground plan in Figure 23. It was made of 1-1/2 cm. boards. The length was 52 cm., the width 17 cm., the depth 10 cm. Each of the doorways, _I_ (the entrance), 1, 2, 3, and _O_ (the exit), was 5 by 5 cm. The alleys were 2-1/2 cm. wide. For this width the necessity is obvious from what has already been said of the animal's propensity to whirl on all occasions. As the mice almost never tried to climb up the walls, no cover for the labyrinth was needed. The direct route is indicated by the symbols _I_-1-2-3-_O_. If an error be defined as a choice of the wrong path as the animal progressed toward the exit, five mistakes were possible in the forward course: the first by turning to the left at the entrance; the second by failing to pass through doorway 1; the third by turning to the right after passing through doorway 1; the fourth by failing to pass through doorway 3, and the fifth by turning to the left after passing through 3. In case the mouse retraced its course, any mistakes made as it again progressed towards _O_ were counted, as at first, no matter how many times it went over the same ground. Thus an individual might make the same mistake several times in the course of a single test in the labyrinth. With this labyrinth Nos. 7, 998, 15, 16, 151, and 152 were tested. At first a record was kept of the time which elapsed from the instant the animal entered _I_ to the instant it emerged at _O_, of the path which it followed, and of the number of errors which it made; but later only the number of errors was recorded. TABLE 31 THE ROLE OF SIGHT Labyrinth-B Experiments NO. 7 NO. 998 TEST DATE TIME ERRORS TIME ERRORS 1 June 16 66" 8 127" 19 2 16 11 0 94 12 3 16 15 2 18 3 4 16 7 0 13 2 5 16 5 0 10 1 6 18 61 15 12 3 7 18 13 3 14 4 8 18 14 5 8 1 9 18 24 9 16 2 10 18 10 1 9 1 11 19 36 13 80 17 12 19 8 3 10 1 13 19 6 1 7 1 14 19 9 1 8 0 15 19 12 2 7 0 16 20 14 1 25 0 17 20 28 3 18 20 No efforts No efforts to escape to escape TABLE 32 LABYRINTH-B EXPERIMENTS with Electric Shock given as Punishment for Mistakes No. 7 No. 998 TEST DATE CONDITION ERRORS CONDITION ERRORS 1 June 29 Light 4 Light 9 2 29 Light 1 Light 3 3 29 Light 1 Light 2 4 29 Light 0 Light 0 5 29 Light 0 Light 0 6 29 Light 0 Light 0 7 29 Light 1 Light 0 8 29 Light 0 Light 0 9 29 Light 1 Darkness 0 10 29 Light 1 Light 0 11 29 Light 1 Darkness 0 12 29 Light 0 Light 0 13 29 Light 0 Light 0 14 29 Light 0 Light 0 15 29 Light 0 Light 0 16 29 Light 0 Light 0 17 29 Darkness 2 Darkness 0 18 29 Light 2 Light 0 with paper 19 29 Light 0 Light 0 20 29 Darkness 0 Light 0 with paper 21 29 Light 0 Light 0 22 29 Light 0 Darkness 0 23 29 Light 0 Odorless 0 24 June 29 Light 0 Darkness 0 25 29 Light 0 26 29 Darkness 4 27 29 Light with paper 1 28 29 Light 0 29 29 Light with paper 1 30 29 Darkness 0 31 29 Odorless 2 32 29 Darkness 4 As the results in Table 31 show, the time and number of errors rapidly diminished. Number 7, for example, made no errors in the second test. The chiefly significant fact which appeared in these preliminary experiments, however, was that the mice soon ceased to care whether they got out of the labyrinth or not. After they knew the path perfectly, they would enter the wrong passages repeatedly and wander about indefinitely. It was obvious, therefore, that the labyrinth could not be used to reveal the role of sight unless some sufficiently strong motive for continuous effort to escape from it could be discovered. Naturally I looked to the electric shock for aid. The labyrinth of Figure 23, which for convenience in distinguishing it from several other forms to be described later I have designated as labyrinth B, was placed upon a board 90 cm. long and 30 cm. wide about which had been wound two pieces of phosphor bronze wire after the manner described on p. 94. At _O_, Figure 24, there was an opening closed by a swinging door which led into a box 40 by 24 cm. In one corner of this box was a small nest-box. The significance of this rearrangement of the labyrinth is apparent. As in the preliminary tests, the dancer was started at I, but instead of being allowed to wander about without any other result than delay in escape, it was given a shock each time it made an error. The satisfaction of escaping from the narrow bounds of the labyrinth's passages, which alone was not strong enough to impel a dancer constantly to do its best to escape, was thus supplemented by the powerful and all-controlling tendency to avoid the disagreeable stimulus which resulted from entering certain of the passages. The result of this modification of method is strikingly exhibited by the data of Table 32. [Illustration: Figure 24.--Labyrinth B on an interrupted circuit board. _I_-1-2-3-_O_, labyrinth path; _B_, nest-box; _N_, nest; _EW_, board wound with phosphor bronze wire; _IC_, induction apparatus; _C_ electric cell; _K_, key.] This table was constructed for the purpose of exhibiting the principal features of the results obtained with labyrinth _B_ in certain preliminary experiments in which the conditions were changed in various ways. Chief among the important facts which appear in the illustrative data (for Nos. 7 and 998) which are presented, are the following. The dancers readily learn the path of labyrinth B so that they can follow it quickly and with perfect accuracy. After familiarity with the direct path from entrance to exit has been gained, they become indifferent about escaping and tend to wander aimlessly. The introduction of the electric shock as punishment for the choice of the wrong passage impels them to do their best to avoid errors. The path once learned can be followed in total darkness with few or no errors. Table 32 indicates marked differences in the behavior of No. 7 and No. 998. The latter learned the path readily and was little disturbed by any of the changes in conditions. In total darkness he followed the path rapidly and accurately, as was indicated by the time of the trip and the path that he left on a sheet of smoked paper that had been placed on the floor of the labyrinth as a means of obtaining a record of the errors made. The presence of the smoked paper did not seem to interfere at all with his behavior, nor did the thorough washing of the labyrinth and the resultant removal of its odors. In the case of No. 7 the opposite was true. She did not learn the path readily, was confused by any change in conditions, had great difficulty in finding her way in darkness, made errors when the smoked paper was placed on the floor and after the odors of the labyrinth had been removed by washing. Of the six dancers which were observed in these preliminary tests, No. 7 alone gave convincing evidence of the importance of sight. I think we may say in the light of the results of the table that such errors as appear in the darkness tests are due rather to the disturbing influence of a change in the conditions of the experiment than to the exclusion of visual data, for as many or more errors were sometimes caused simply by changing the position of the labyrinth, placing smoked paper on the floor, or by introducing a new odor at some point. The exclusion of the possibility of guidance by smell and touch did not seriously interfere with the animal's ability to follow the path. The results which have just been considered seemed to be of sufficient interest and importance to justify the further use of the labyrinth method in the investigation of the role of vision. A series of experiments with labyrinth B was therefore planned so that the importance of sight, touch, and smell in connection with this form of habit should be more satisfactorily exhibited. Does the dancer follow the path by sight, touch, smell, by all, or by no one of them? This series of tests with labyrinth B, whose several purposes may best be explained in connection with the various kinds of tests enumerated below, consisted of: I. A preliminary test in which the dancer was permitted to wander about in the labyrinth, without being shocked, until it finally escaped to the nest-box by way of the exit. Thus the animal was given an opportunity to discover that escape from the maze was possible. II. This was immediately followed by a series of tests at the rate of about one per minute, with an electric shock as punishment for every mistake. This was continued without interruption until the path had been followed without error five times in succession. III. The labyrinth was now moved about 3 cm. to one side so that it covered a new floor area, and a test was given for the purpose of ascertaining whether the mouse had been following a trail on the floor. IV. Tests with smoked paper on the floor were now alternated with tests in which the floor was plain. The alternation was rendered necessary by the fact that the paper was laid over the electric wires and therefore prevented the punishment of mistakes. The purpose of these tests was to discover whether the smoked paper, which was an essential condition for the next test, was itself a disturbing condition. These tests were continued until the animal had followed the path correctly, despite the smoked paper, twice in succession. V. The electric lights were now turned out and tests were given in total darkness, with smoked paper on the floor as a means of obtaining a record of the number of errors. These tests were continued until the path had been followed once correctly. VI. The labyrinth was now thoroughly washed with warm water, to which a little kerosene had been added, and quickly dried over a steam radiator. This usually necessitated a delay of about five minutes. As soon as the labyrinth was dry, tests were given to discover whether the odors of the various passages had been serving as important guiding conditions. These tests were continued until the path had been followed once without error. VII. A final test in darkness completed the series. As it was not possible for the observer to watch the animal and thus to count the number of mistakes which it made in total darkness, the simple method of placing a piece of smoked paper on the floor of the labyrinth was used. The mouse left a graphic record of its path on the paper and from this the number of errors could be ascertained. In the tests now to be described the smoked paper was placed upon the electric wires, but later a form of electric labyrinth was devised in which it was underneath and therefore did not interfere with the electric shock. The above series of tests was given under the same external conditions in a dark-room to six pairs of dancers. In all cases, two individuals, a male and a female, which had been kept in the same cage, were experimented with at the same time, _i.e._ one was permitted to rest in the nest-box while the other was being put through a test. This was done in order that the comparison of the results for males and females should be perfectly fair. The detailed results of this long series of tests may be presented for only two individuals, Nos. 210 and 215, Table 33. In this table lines separate the results of the seven different kinds of tests. TABLE 33 THE ROLE OF SIGHT, TOUCH, AND SMELL IN LABYRINTH EXPERIMENTS No. 210 No. 215 TEST CONDITION ERRORS CONDITION ERRORS I. 1 No shock 9 I. No shock 2 II. 2 Shock 5 II. Shock 3 3 Shock 4 Shock 1 4 Shock 2 Shock 0 5 Shock 3 Shock 0 6 Shock 0 Shock 0 7 Shock 0 Shock 0 8 Shock 0 Shock 0 9 Shock 0 III. Labyrinth 0 moved 10 Shock 0 IV. Paper on floor 4 III. 11 Labyrinth 0 No paper (shock) 0 moved IV. 12 Paper on 0 0 floor 13 No paper 0 No paper 0 (shock) 14 Paper 1 Paper 1 15 No paper 0 No paper 0 16 Paper 7 Paper 4 17 No paper 0 No paper 0 18 Paper 0 Paper 0 19 No paper 0 No paper 0 20 Paper 4 Paper 0 21 No paper 0 No paper 0 22 Paper 2 V. Darkness 0 23 No paper 2 VI. Labyrinth 2 24 Paper 1 washed 0 25 No paper 0 VII. Darkness 2 26 Paper 0 27 No paper 0 28 Paper 0 29 No paper 0 V. 30 Darkness 0 VI. 31 Labyrinth 2 washed 32 0 VII. 33 Darkness 0 The average results for the twelve individuals (six of each sex) which were subjected to the tests, I have arranged in Table 34. The Roman numerals at the top of the table designate the seven groups of tests, and the figures under each, the numerical results of the tests. I may explain and comment upon the averages of the several columns of this table in turn. Column I gives the number of errors made in the preliminary test. Curiously enough, the males made many more errors than the females. For the second group of tests (II) two results have been tabulated: the number of the first correct test, and the total number of tests before the path was followed correctly five times in succession. The first correct trip came usually after not more than five or six tests, but five successive correct trips demanded on the average at least fourteen training tests. Destruction of the floor path by movement of the labyrinth to one side, without changing its relations to the points of the compass, disturbed the mice very little. Only four of the twelve individuals made any mistakes as a result of the change in the tactual conditions, and the average error as it appears in Column III is only .3. TABLE 34 ROLE OF SIGHT, TOUCH, AND SMELL IN LABYRINTH EXPERIMENTS II. IV. TRAINING TESTS SMOKED I. NO OF TESTS BEFORE III. PAPER ON MALES PRELIMINARY CORRECT LABYRINTH FLOOR TEST. _____________________ MOVED. NO OF TIMES ERRORS FIRST TIME FIVE TIMES ERRORS BEFORE COR- RECT TWICE 210 9 5 9 0 9 212 2 3 8 1 3 214 6 10 28 0 22 220 25 4 8 0 14 410 11 6 20 0 10 420 14 6 14 1 7 AVERAGES 11.2 5.7 14.5 .3 10.8 FEMALES 211 16 6 10 1 5 213 7 5 14 1 21 215 2 3 7 0 6 225 14 6 18 0 14 415 6 6 13 0 3 425 10 7 13 0 8 AVERAGES 9.2 5.5 12.5 .3 9.5 V. DARKNESS VI. MALES LABYRINTH VII. ERRORS IN NO. OF TESTS WASHED. DARKNESS. FIRST TEST BEFORE COR'CT ERRORS ERRORS 210 0 1 2 0 212 2 2 0 0 214 0 1 -- 0 220 2 4 2 0 410 1 3 2 1 420 2 4 1 4 Averages 1.2 2.5 1.2 0.8 FEMALES 211 2 2 0 0 213 2 2 -- 3 215 0 1 2 2 225 3 2 0 0 415 1 3 2 1 425 1 7 0 0 Averages 1.5 2.8 0.7 1.0 That covering the floor with smoked paper forced the mice to relearn the path, in large measure, is evident from the results of Column IV. An average of ten tests was necessary to enable the mice to follow the path correctly. It is almost certain, however, that the interference with the perfectly formed labyrinth habit which this change in the condition of the floor caused was not due to the removal of important tactual sense data. As Column V shows, the number of errors in total darkness is very small. Some individuals gave no sign of being disturbed by the absence of visual guidance, others at first seemed confused. I have given in the table the number of errors in the first darkness test and the number of the first test in which no mistakes occurred. No more disturbance of the dancer's ability to follow the path which it had learned resulted from washing the labyrinth thoroughly than from darkening the room. Indeed it is clear from Column VI that the path was not followed by the use of smell. However, the test in darkness, after the odor of the box had been removed, proved conclusively that in most cases the mice could follow the path correctly without visual or olfactory guidance. The behavior of 18 individuals as it was observed in labyrinth B makes perfectly evident three important facts, (1) In following the path which it has learned, the dancer in most instances is not guided to any considerable extent by a trail (odor or touch) which has been formed by its previous journeys over the route; (2) sight is quite unnecessary for the easy and perfect execution of the labyrinth habit, for even those individuals which are at first confused by the darkening of the experiment room are able after a few tests to follow the path correctly; (3) and, finally, smell, which according to current opinion is the chiefly important sense of mice and rats, is not needful for the performance of this habitual act. At this point we may very fittingly ask, what sense data are necessary for the guidance of the series of acts which constitutes the labyrinth habit? I answer, probably none. A habit once formed, the senses have done their part; henceforth it is a motor process, whose initiation is conditioned by the activity of a receptive organ (at times a sense receptor), but whose form is not necessarily dependent upon immediate impressions from eye, nose, vibrissae, or even from internal receptors. These are statements of my opinion; whether they express the truth, either wholly or in part, only further experimentation can decide. In considering the results of these labyrinth tests it is important that we distinguish clearly those which have to do with the conditions of habit formation from those which instead have to do with the conditions of habit performance. Sense data which are absolutely necessary for the learning of a labyrinth path may be of little or no importance for the execution of the act of following the path after the learning process has been completed. Thus far in connection with the labyrinth tests we have discussed only the relations of sight, touch, and smell to what I have called habit performance. We may now ask what part these senses play in the formation of a labyrinth habit. A very definite answer to this question is furnished by observation of the behavior of the dancers in the tests. Most of them continuously made use of their eyes, their noses, and their vibrissae. Some individuals used one form of receptive organ almost exclusively. I frequently noticed that those individuals which touched and smelled of the labyrinth passages most carefully gave least evidence of the use of sight. It is safe to say, then, that under ordinary conditions habit formation in the dancer is conditioned by the use of sight, touch, and smell, but that these senses are of extremely different degrees of importance in different individuals. And further, that, although in the case of some individuals the loss of sight would not noticeably delay habit formation, in the case of others it would seriously interfere with the process. When deprived of one sense, the dancer depends upon its remaining channels of communication with environment. Indeed there are many reasons for inferring that if deprived of sight, touch, and smell it would still be able to learn a labyrinth path; and there are reasonable grounds for the belief that a habit once formed can be executed in the absence of all special sense data. Apparently the various receptive organs of the body furnish the dancer with impressions which serve as guides to action and facilitate habit formation, although they are not necessary for habit performance. The reader may wonder why I have not carried out systematic experiments to determine accurately and quantitatively the part which each sense plays in the formation of a labyrinth habit instead of basing my inferences upon incidental observation of the behavior of the dancers. The reason is simply this: the number and variety of experiments which were suggested by the several directions in which this investigation developed rendered the performance of all of them impossible. I have chosen to devote my time to other lines of experimentation because a very thorough study of the conditions of habit formation has recently been made by Doctor Watson.[1] [Footnote 1: Watson, J. B., _Psychological Review_, Monograph Supplement, Vol. 8, No. 2, 1907.] What is the role of sight in the dancing mouse? How shall we answer the question? The evidence which has been obtained in the course of my study of the animal indicates that brightness vision is fairly acute, that color vision is poor, that although form is not clearly perceived, movement is readily perceived. My observations under natural conditions justify the conclusion that sight is not of very great importance in the daily life of the dancer, and my observations under experimental conditions strongly suggest the further conclusion that movement and changes in brightness are the only visual conditions which to any considerable extent control the activity of the animal. CHAPTER XII EDUCABILITY: METHODS OF LEARNING Nearly all of the experiments described in earlier chapters have revealed facts concerning the educability of the dancer. In order to supplement the knowledge of this subject thus incidentally gained and to discover the principles of educability, the specially devised experiments whose results appear in this and succeeding chapters were arranged and carried out with a large number of mice. In the work on the modifiability of behavior I have attempted to determine (1) by what methods the dancer is capable of profiting by experience, (2) the degree of rapidity of learning, (3) the permanency of changes wrought in behavior, (4) the effect of one kind of training upon others, (5) the relation of re-training to training, and (6) the relation of all these matters to age, sex, and individuality. As it is obvious that knowledge of these subjects is a necessary condition for the intelligent appreciation of the capacities of an animal, as well as of the choice of methods by which it may be trained advantageously, perhaps it is not too much to expect that this investigation of the nature and conditions of educability in the dancing mouse may give us some new insight into the significance of certain aspects of human education and may serve to suggest ways in which we may measure and increase the efficiency of our educational methods. Merely for the sake of convenience of description I shall classify the methods which have been employed as problem methods, labyrinth methods, and discrimination methods. That these names are not wholly appropriate is suggested by the fact that discrimination necessarily occurs in connection with each of them. As problem methods we may designate those tests of initiative and modifiability which involve the opening of doors by pushing or pulling them, and the climbing of an inclined ladder. An example of the labyrinth method has been presented in Chapter XI. The name discrimination method I have applied to those tests which involve the choice of one of two visual, tactual, or olfactory conditions. The white-black discrimination tests, for example, served to reveal the rapidity and permanency of learning as well as the presence of brightness vision. In the case of most mammals whose educability has been studied experimentally, problem methods have proved to be excellent tests of docility and initiative. The cat, the raccoon, the monkey, in their attempts to obtain food, learn to pull strings, turn buttons, press latches, slide bolts, pull plugs, step on levers. The dancer does none of these things readily. Are we therefore to infer that it is less intelligent, that it is less docile, than the cat, the raccoon, or the monkey? Not necessarily, for it is possible that these methods do not suit the capacity of the animal. As a matter of fact, all of the tests which are now to be described in their relation to the educability of the dancer bear witness to the importance of the selection of methods in the light of the motor equipment and the habits of the animal which is to be tested. Judged by ordinary standards, on the basis of results which it yields in problem and labyrinth tests, the dancer is extremely stupid. But that this conclusion is not justified is apparent when it is judged in the light of tests which are especially adapted to its peculiarities. Problems which are easy for other mammals because of their energetic and persistent efforts to secure food in any way which their motor capacity makes possible are useless as tests of the dancer's abilities, because it is not accustomed to obtain its food as the result of strenuous and varied activities. There are problems and problems; a condition or situation which presents a problem to one organism may utterly lack interest for an organism of different structure and behavior. What is a problem test in the case of the cat or even of the common mouse, is not necessarily a problem for the dancer. Similarly, in connection with the labyrinth method, it is clear that the value of the test depends upon the desire of the organism to escape from the maze. The cat, the rat, the tortoise do their best to escape; the dancer is indifferent. Clearly, then, methods of training should be chosen on the basis of a knowledge of the characteristics of the animal whose educability is to be investigated. The simplest possible test of the intelligence of the dancer which I could devise was the following. Beside the cage in which the mice were kept I placed a wooden box 26 cm. long, 23 cm. wide, and 12 cm. deep. Neither this box nor the cage was covered, for the animals did not attempt to climb out. As a way of passing from one of these boxes to the other I arranged a ladder made of wire fly-screen netting. This ladder was about 8 cm. broad and it extended from the middle of one side of the wooden box upward at an angle of about 30° to the edge of the box and then descended at the same angle into the cage. A dancer when taken from the nest-box and placed in the wooden box could return to its cage and thus find warmth, food, and company by climbing the ladder. It was my aim to determine, by means of this apparatus, whether the dancers can learn such a simple way of escape and whether they learn by watching one another. As it turned out, a third value belonged to the tests, in that they were used also to test the influence of putting the mice through the act. In the first experiment three dancers, Nos. 1000, 2, and 6, were together placed in the wooden box. At the end of 15 minutes not one of them had succeeded in returning to the cage. They were then driven to the bottom of the ladder and started upward by the experimenter; with this assistance all escaped to the nest-box. At the expiration of 5 minutes they were again placed in the wooden box, whence the chilly temperature (about 60° F.) and the lack of food made them eager to return to their cage. No attempt to climb up the ladder was made by any of them within 15 minutes, so the experimenter directed them to the ladder and started them upward as in the first test. This completed the experiment for the day. The following day two tests were given in the same way. In the second of these tests, that is, on its fourth trial, No. 1000 climbed over of his own initiative in 5 minutes. The others had to be assisted as formerly. On the third day No. 1000 found his way back to the nest-box quickly and fairly directly, but neither No. 2 or No. 6 climbed of its own initiative in the first test. When their movements were restricted to the region of the box about the base of the ladder, both of them returned to the cage quickly. And on the second test of the third day all the mice climbed the ladder directly. In Table 35 I have given the time required for escape in the case of 40 tests which were given to these 3 individuals at the rate of 2 tests per day. When the time exceeded 15 minutes the mice were helped out by the experimenter; a record of 15 minutes, therefore, indicates failure. Naturally enough the motives for escape were not sufficiently strong or constant to bring about the most rapid learning of which the dancer is capable. Sometimes they would remain in the wooden box washing themselves for several minutes before attempting to find a way of escape. On this account I made it a rule to begin the time record with the appearance of active running about. The daily average time of escape as indicated in the table does not decrease regularly and rapidly. On the fourth day, which was the first on which all three of the dancers returned to the cage by way of the ladder of their own initiative in both tests, the average is 214 seconds. In contrast with this, on the twentieth day the time was only 5 seconds. It is quite evident that the dancers had learned to climb the ladder. At the end of the twentieth day the experiment was discontinued with Nos. 2 and 6, and after two weeks they were given memory tests, which showed that they remembered perfectly the ladder-climbing act, for when placed in the wooden box, with Nos. 4 and 5 as controls, they returned to the cage by way of the ladder immediately and directly. TABLE 35 LADDER CLIMBING TEST Time in Minutes and Seconds No. of Date No. 1000 No. 2 No. 6 Average Daily Av. Exp. 1905 For All For All 1 Nov. 14 15' 15' 15' -- -- 2 15' 15' 15' -- -- 3 15 15' 15' 15' -- -- 4 300" 15' 15' -- -- 5 16 480" 15' 15' -- -- 6 180" 300" 420" 300" 300" 7 17 450" 240" 540" 410" 8 20" 15" 18" 18" 214" 9 18 90" 180" 135" 135" 10 135" 105" 165" 135" 135" 11 19 480" 240" 330" 350" 12 30" 120" 90" 80" 143" 13 20 360" 75" 120" 185" 14 5" 6" 8" 6" 95" 15 21 105" 450" 120" 192" 16 8" 80" 20" 54" 123" 17 22 255" 300" 180" 245" 18 10" 30" 270" 103" 174" 19 23 300" 660" 450" 470" 20 90" 120" 150" 120" 295" 21 24 240" 125" 225" 197" 22 4" 6" 168" 59" 128" 23 Nov. 25 305" 85" 130" 173" 24 5" 6" 118" 43" 108" 25 26 3" 8" 44" 18" 26 19" 1" 176" 98" 58" 27 27 150" 79" 269" 166" 28 26" 3" 31" 20" 93" 29 28 214" 18" 267" 166" 30 40" 3" 4" 16" 91" 31 29 130" 45" 250" 142" 32 12" 3" 25" 13" 77" 33 Dec. 2 61" 35" 44" 47" 34 50" 5" 24" 26" 36" 35 3 66" 18" 2" 29" 36 8" 5" 10" 8" 19" 37 4 9" 4" 3" 5" 38 10" 5" 6" 7" 6" 39 5 5" 3" 5" 4" 40 10" 4" 3" 6" 5" One of the most interesting and important features of the behavior of the dancer in the ladder experiment was a halt at a certain point on the ladder. It occurred just at the edge of the wooden box at the point where the ladder took a horizontal position, and led over into the cage. Every individual from the first test to the last made this halt. Although from the point of view of the experimenter the act was valueless, it may have originated as an attempt to find a way to escape from the uncomfortable position in which the animal found itself on reaching the top of the ladder. Its persistence after a way of escape had been found is an indication of the nature of habit. Day after day the halt became shorter until finally it was little more than a pause and a turn of the head toward one side of the ladder. I think we may say that in this act we have evidence of the persistence of a particular resolution of physiological states which is neither advantageous nor disadvantageous to the organism. Had the act resulted in any gain, it would have become more marked and elaborate; had it resulted in injury or discomfort, it would have disappeared entirely. I have observed the same kind of behavior in the frog and in other animals. What the animal begins to do it persists in unless the act is positively harmful or conflicts with some beneficial activity. The only explanation of certain features of behavior is to be found in the conditions of their original occurrence. They persist by sheer force of conservatism. They have value only in the light of the circumstances under which they first appeared. Although this is merely a fact of habit formation, it suggests that many of the problems which have puzzled students of behavior for ages may be solved by a study of the history of activity. That there are marked individual differences in intelligence in the dancing mice is apparent from the results of the ladder-climbing experiment. No. 1000 learned to climb quickly, and largely by his own initiative; Nos. 2 and 6, on the contrary, learned only by reason of tuition (being put through the required act by the experimenter). It occurred to me that this experiment, since it was difficult for some individuals and easy for others, might be used to advantage as a test of imitation. If a dancer which knows how to escape to the cage by way of the ladder be placed in the wooden box with one which, despite abundant opportunity, has proved unable to form the habit on his own initiative, will the latter profit by the activity of the former and thus learn the method of escape? On November 20, Nos. 4 and 5 were placed in the wooden box and left there for half an hour. As they had failed to escape at the end of this interval, they were taken out of the box by the experimenter and returned to the nest-box. November 21 and 22 this test of their ability to learn to climb the ladder was repeated with the same result. On November 23 they were placed in the box with the three mice which had previously been trained to climb the ladder. The latter escaped at once. Apparently the attention of Nos. 4 and 5 was drawn to the ladder by the disappearance of their companions, for they approached its foot and No. 5 climbed up a short distance. Neither succeeded in escaping, however, and they made no further efforts that day. On the 24th, and daily thereafter until the 29th, these two dancers were placed in the box for half an hour, with negative results. At the end of the half hour on the 29th, Nos. 2 and 6 were placed in the box and permitted to go back and forth from one box to the other repeatedly within sight of Nos. 4 and 5. The latter made no attempts to follow them, although at times they seemed to be watching their movements as they ascended the ladder. To render the results of this test of imitation still more conclusive No. 5 was given further opportunity to learn from No. 1000. Beginning December 2, the following method of experimentation was employed with these two individuals. They were placed in the wooden box together. No. 1000 usually climbed out almost immediately. Sometimes No. 5 apparently saw him disappear up the ladder; sometimes she paid no attention whatever either to the presence or absence of her companion. After he had been in the nest-box for a few seconds, No. 1000 was returned to the wooden box by the experimenter and again permitted to climb out for the benefit of No. 5. This mode of procedure was kept up until No. 1000 had made from three to ten trips. No. 5 was left in the box for half an hour each day. This test was repeated on 18 days within a period of 3 weeks. No. 5 showed no signs of an imitative tendency, and she did not learn to climb the ladder. To this evidence of a lack of an imitative tendency in the dancer I may here add the results of my observations in other experiments. In the discrimination tests and in the labyrinth tests I purposely so arranged conditions, in certain instances, that one individual should have an opportunity to imitate another. In no case did this occur. Seldom indeed did the animals so much as follow one another with any considerable degree of persistence. They did not profit by one another's acts. Excellent evidence in support of this conclusion was furnished by the behavior of the mice in the discrimination experiments. Some individuals learned to pull as well as to push the swinging wire doors of the apparatus and were thus enabled to pass through the doorways in either direction; other individuals learned only to pass through in the direction in which the doors could be pushed open. Naturally I was interested to discover whether those which knew only the trick of opening the doors by pushing would learn to pull the doors or would be stimulated to try by seeing other individuals do so. At first I arranged special tests of imitation in the discrimination box; later I observed the influence of the behavior of one mouse upon that of its companion in connection with visual discrimination experiments. This was made possible by the fact that usually a pair of individuals was placed in the discrimination box and the tests given alternately to the male and to the female. Both individuals had the freedom of the nest-box and each frequently saw the other pass through the doorway between the nest-box, _A_, and the entrance chamber, _B_ (Figure 14), either from _A_ to _B_ by pushing the swing door or from _B_ to _A_ by pulling the door. Although abundant opportunity for imitation in connection with the opening of the doors in the discrimination box was given to twenty-five individuals, I obtained no evidence of ability to learn by imitation. The dancers did not watch the acts which were performed by their companions, and in most instances they did not attempt to follow a mate from nest-box to entrance chamber. These problem tests, simple as they are, have revealed two important facts concerning the educability of the dancer. First, that it does not learn by imitation to any considerable extent, and, second, that it is aided by being put through an act. Our general conclusion from the results of the experiments which have been described in this chapter, if any general conclusion is to be drawn thus prematurely, must be that the dancing mouse in its methods of learning differs markedly from other mice and from rats. CHAPTER XIII HABIT FORMATION: THE LABYRINTH HABIT The problem method, of which the ladder and door-opening tests of the preceding chapter are examples, has yielded interesting results concerning the individual initiative, ingenuity, motor ability, and ways of learning of the dancer; but it has not furnished us with accurate measurements of the rapidity of learning or of the permanency of the effects of training. In this chapter I shall therefore present the results of labyrinth experiments which were planned as means of measuring the intelligence of the dancer. The four labyrinths which have been used in the investigation may be designated as _A, B, C,_ and _D_. They differ from one another in the character of their errors, as well as in the number of wrong choices of a path which the animal might make on its way from entrance to exit. In the use of the labyrinth method, as in the case of the discrimination method of earlier chapters, the steps by which a satisfactory form of labyrinth for testing the dancer was discovered are quite as interesting and important for those who have an intelligent appreciation of the problems and methods of animal psychology as are the particular results which were obtained. For this reason, I shall describe the various forms of labyrinth in the order in which they were used, whether they proved satisfactory or not. At the outset of this part of my investigation, it was my purpose to compare directly the capacity for habit formation in the dancer with that of the common mouse. This proved impracticable because the same labyrinth is not suited to the motor tendencies of both kinds of mice. [Illustration: FIGURE 25.--Labyrinth A. _I_. entrance; _O_, exit; 1, 2, 3, 4, blind alleys.] The first of the four labyrinths, A, appears in ground plan in Figure 25. It was constructed of wood, as were the other labyrinths also, and measured 60 cm. in length and width, and 10 cm. in depth. The outside alleys were 5 cm. wide. In the figure, _I_ marks the starting point or entrance to the maze, and _O_ the exit through which the mouse was permitted to pass into its nest-box. Any turn in the wrong direction which the animal made in its progress from entrance to exit was recorded as an error. The four errors, exclusive of the mistake of turning back, which were possible in this labyrinth, are indicated in the figure by the numerals 1, 2, 3, and 4. By retracing its steps a mouse might repeat any one or all of these errors, and add to them the error of turning back. In the experiments a mouse was permitted to enter the maze from a small box which had been placed by the experimenter at _I_, and an accurate record was kept of the number of errors which it made in finding its way from entrance to exit, and of the time occupied. Each of five dancers was given 31 tests in this labyrinth. The number of tests per day varied, as is indicated in Table 36, from 1 to 4. The results of the tests, so far as errors and times are in question, appear in the table. _T_ at the head of a column is an abbreviation for time, _E_ for errors. The dancers did not learn to escape from this labyrinth easily and quickly. In fact, the average time of the thirty-first test (198") is considerably longer than that of the first (130"). The number of errors decreased, it is true, but even for the last test it was 6.6 as compared with only a little more than twice that number for the first test. The last column of the table furnishes convincing proof of the truth of the statement that the animals did not acquire a perfect labyrinth-A habit. Was this due to inability to learn so complex a path, or to the fact that the method is not adapted to their nature? Observation of the behavior of the mice in the experiments enables me to say with certainty that there was no motive for escape sufficiently strong to establish a habit of following the direct path. Often, especially after a few experiences in the maze, a dancer would wander back and forth in the alleys and central courts, dancing much of the time and apparently exploring its surroundings instead of persistently trying to escape. This behavior, and the time and error results of the accompanying table, lead me to conclude that the labyrinth method, as it has been employed in the study of the intelligence of several other mammals, is not a satisfactory test of the ability of the dancer to profit by experience. That the fault is not in the labyrinth itself is proved by the results which I obtained with common mice. TABLE 36 RESULTS OF LABYRINTH A TESTS WITH DANCERS AVERAGE TEST DATE No. 1000 No. 2 No. 6 No. 4 No. 5 FOR ALL 1905 T E T E T E T E T E T E 1 Nov 23 130" 14 100" 8 170" 13 60" 6 190" 26 130" 13.4 2 24 140 19 78 7 60 8 149 6 211 25 128 13.0 3 25 392 31 87 1 98 5 185 13 120 9 176 11.8 4 26 448 38 38 3 47 2 50 3 121 12 141 11.3 5 27 142 8 21 2 27 3 27 2 17 1 47 3.2 6 28 45 2 61 7 63 5 102 8 33 4 61 5.2 7 29 303 17 64 7 36 3 42 2 57 4 100 6.6 8 30 222 15 26 2 37 5 42 3 7 0 67 5.0 9 Dec 1 185 9 36 5 48 3 63 3 94 8 85 5.6 10 2 52 2 71 4 19 0 196 5 95 11 87 4.4 11 3 180 8 32 2 107 4 52 3 38 4 82 4.2 12 4 310 10 133 11 65 3 242 6 125 6 175 7.2 13 4 153 9 335 55 130 10 195 15 154 18 193 21.4 14 5 330 7 69 2 42 2 201 6 130 10 154 5.4 15 5 287 7 34 4 61 4 136 7 25 2 109 4.8 16 5 455 15 65 4 25 0 110 8 160 15 183 8.4 17 6 120 15 280 9 33 0 168 4 39 2 128 6.0 18 6 120 4 164 10 81 4 101 5 85 4 110 5.4 19 6 132 12 78 7 110 6 40 2 151 12 102 7.8 20 7 258 10 223 16 33 1 92 5 37 1 129 6.6 21 7 110 7 23 3 44 4 20 4 305 23 100 8.2 22 7 100 4 60 8 167 15 44 7 58 4 86 7.6 23 8 43 1 179 7 356 6 34 3 65 3 135 4.0 24 8 92 5 56 5 42 3 17 1 23 1 46 3.0 25 9 85 5 114 3 62 3 129 8 31 0 84 3.8 26 9 30 2 36 4 109 15 12 1 34 2 44 4.8 27 9 69 5 40 4 85 6 36 3 16 1 49 3.8 28 10 169 7 80 3 28 0 142 5 35 2 89 3.4 29 10 155 5 266 8 91 5 27 0 37 2 115 4.0 30 10 29 1 25 2 124 14 83 6 111 12 74 7.0 31 10 465 6 208 8 95 3 65 3 159 13 198 6.6 On the basis of two tests per day, two common mice, a white one and a gray one, quickly learned to escape from labyrinth _A_ by the shortest path. The time of escape for the gray individual (Table 37) decreased from 180" in the first test to 21" in the tenth, and the number of errors from 6 to 1. Similarly in the case of the white individual, the time decreased from 122" to 8", and the errors from 5 to 1. A fraction of the number of tests to which the dancer had been subjected sufficed to establish a habit of escape in the common mouse. It is evident, therefore, that the dancer differs radically from the common mouse in its behavior in a maze, and it is also clear that the labyrinth method, if it is to be used to advantage, must be adapted to the motor tendencies of the animal which is to be tested. TABLE 37 RESULTS OF LABYRINTH A TESTS WITH COMMON MICE GREY MOUSE WHITE MOUSE TEST T E T E 1 180" 6 122" 5 2 26 2 80 6 3 37 1 56 4 4 18 0 27 1 5 68 2 33 2 6 10 1 19 1 7 11 1 17 1 8 13 1 17 1 9 10 0 8 1 10 21 1 8 1 The behavior of the dancer made obvious two defects in labyrinth A. Its passages are so large that the mouse is constantly tempted to dance, and it lacks the basis for a strong and constant motive of escape by the direct path. To obviate these shortcomings labyrinth B was constructed, as is shown in Figures 23 and 24, with very narrow passages, and a floor which was covered with the wires of an interrupted electric circuit so that errors might be punished. The length of this labyrinth was 52 cm. and the passages were 2.5 cm. wide and 10 cm. deep. Dancing in these narrow alleys was practically impossible, for the mice could barely turn around in them. In the case of all except the common mice and two dancers, a depth of 10 cm. was sufficient to keep the animals in the maze without the use of a cover. As an account of the behavior of the dancer in labyrinth B has already been given in Chapter XI, I may now state the general results of the experiments. In all, thirty individuals were trained in this labyrinth. Each individual was given tests at the rate of one per minute until it had succeeded in following the correct path five times in succession. The weak electric shock, which was given as a punishment for mistakes, provided an activity-impelling motive for escape to the nest-box. An idea of the extreme individual difference in the rapidity with which the labyrinth-B path was learned by these dancers may be obtained by an examination of Table 38, from which it appears that the smallest number of training tests necessary for a successful or errorless trip through the maze was one and the largest number fourteen. It is to be remembered that each mouse was given an opportunity to pass through the labyrinth once without punishment for errors, and thus to discover, before the training tests were begun, that a way of escape existed. This first test we may designate as the preliminary trial. Table 38 further indicates that the females acquired the labyrinth habit more quickly than did the males. TABLE 38 RESULTS OF LABYRINTH-B EXPERIMENTS, WITH TWENTY DANCERS MALES FEMALES NO. OF NO. OF FIRST NO. OF LAST OF NO. OF NO. OF FIRST NO. OF LAST OF MOUSE CORRECT FIVE CORRECT MOUSE CORRECT FIVE CORRECT TEST TESTS TEST TESTS 76 8 14 75 4 15 78 5 20 77 7 11 86 13 22 87 12 22 58 2 14 49 1 5 50 6 23 57 3 20 60 13 37 59 14 28 410 6 20 415 4 13 220 4 8 225 6 18 212 3 7 211 6 10 214 10 28 213 5 14 AV. 7.0 19.3 AV. 6.2 15.6 A graphic representation of certain of the important features of the process of formation of the labyrinth-B habit is furnished by Figure 26 in which the solid line is the curve of learning for the ten males of Table 38, and the broken line for the ten females. These two curves were plotted from the number of errors made in the preliminary trial (P in the figure) and in each of the subsequent tests up to the sixteenth. In the case of both the males and the females, for example, the average number of errors in the preliminary trial was 11.3, as is indicated by the fact that the curves start at a point whose value is given in the left margin as 11.3. In the second training test the number of errors fell to 3.3 for the males and 2.7 for the females. The number of the test is to be found on the base line; the number of errors in the left margin. If these two curves of learning were carried to their completion, that for the males would end with the thirty-seventh test, and that for the females with the twenty- eighth. [Illustration: FIGURE 26.--Curves of habit formation, plotted from the data of labyrinth-B tests with ten males and ten females. The figures in the left margin indicate the number of errors; those below the base line the number of the test. _P_ designates the preliminary test. Males ____[solid line]; Females ----[broken line].] Time records are not reported for these and subsequent labyrinth tests because they proved to be almost valueless as measures of the rapidity of habit formation. At any point in its progress through a labyrinth, the dancer may suddenly stop to wash its face, look about or otherwise examine its surroundings; if a shock be given to hurry it along it may be surprised into an error. It is my experience, and this is true of other animals as well as of the dancing mouse, that a long trip, as measured in time units, does not necessarily indicate the lack of ability to follow the labyrinth path correctly and rapidly. Hence, whenever it is possible (and the experimenter can always plan his tests so that it shall be possible), the number of errors should be given first importance and the time of the test second place. I have presented in Table 38 the number of the first correct test, and the number of the last of five successive correct tests. Space cannot be spared for records of the errors made in the several tests by each individual. In general, labyrinth B proved very satisfactory as a means of testing the ability of the dancer to learn a simple path. The narrow passages effectively prevented dancing, and the introduction of the electric shock as a punishment for mistakes developed a motive for escape which was uniform, constant, and so strong that the animals clearly did their best to escape from the labyrinth quickly and without errors. This maze was so simple that it did not tend to discourage them as did the one which is next to be described. It must be admitted, however, that, though labyrinth B is perfectly satisfactory as a test of the dancer's ability to learn to follow a simple path, it is not an ideal means of measuring the rapidity of habit formation. This is due to the fact that the preliminary trial and the first training test play extremely different roles in the case of different individuals. A dancer which happens to follow the correct path from entrance to exit in the preliminary trial may continue to do so, with only an occasional error, during several of the early training tests, and it may therefore fail for a considerable time to discover that there are errors which should be avoided. The learning process is delayed by its accidental success. On the other hand, an individual which happens to make many mistakes to begin with immediately attempts to avoid the points in the maze at which it receives the electric shock. I was led to conclude, as a result of the labyrinth-B experiments, that the path was too easy, and that a more complex labyrinth would, in all probability, furnish a more satisfactory means of measuring the rapidity of habit formation. [Illustration: FIGURE 27--A record sheet, showing the plan of labyrinth C (as made on the sheet by means of a rubber stamp) on which the experimenter recorded the path followed by the mouse. This sample sheet presents the path records for the first, fifth, tenth, and eleventh tests of No. 2 in labyrinth C. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 designate the several errors of the labyrinth.] On the basis of the supposition that a maze whose path was so complex that the animal would not be likely to follow it correctly in the early trials would be more to the purpose than either A or B, labyrinth C was devised. As is shown in the plan of this maze, Figure 27, five mistakes in choice of path were possible on the forward trip. These errors, as a rule, were more difficult for the dancers to avoid than those of labyrinths A and B. Those which are designated by the numerals 2, 3, and 4 were especially difficult. Error 4 was much more troublesome for left whirlers than for right whirlers because, after turning around abruptly at the entrance to the blind alley, the former type of dancer almost always followed the side wall of the maze so far that it missed the correct path. Undoubtedly the various errors are not of the same value for different individuals; but it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to devise a maze which should be equally difficult for several normal individuals. In order that records of the path followed by a mouse in test after test might be kept with ease and accuracy by the experimenter, the plan of this labyrinth, and also that of labyrinth D, were cast in rubber. The outlines of labyrinths C and D which appear in Figures 27 and 28 respectively were made with the rubber stamps which were thus obtained. Figure 27 is the reproduction of a record sheet which presents the results of the first, the fifth, the tenth, and the eleventh tests of No. 2 in labyrinth C. The path followed by this individual in the first test was far too complex to be traced accurately on the record sheet. The record therefore represents merely the number of errors which was made in each region of the maze. For the fifth test, and again for the tenth and the eleventh, the path was recorded accurately. This simple device for making record blanks which can readily be filled in at the time of the experiment should recommend itself to all students of animal behavior. In labyrinth C ten pairs of dancers were given continuous training tests at the rate of one test per minute until they were able to follow the direct path correctly. Because of the difficulty in learning this maze perfectly, it was not demanded of the mice that they should follow the path correctly several times in succession, but instead the training was terminated after the first successful trip. TABLE 39 RESULTS OF LABYRINTH-C EXPERIMENTS, WITH TWENTY DANCERS MALES FEMALES NO. OF NO. OF FIRST NO. OF NO. OF FIRST MOUSE CORRECT TEST MOUSE CORRECT TEST 2 11 29 15 30 33 49 34 50 49 57 15 52 22 59 15 58 16 215 10 60 17 415 10 76 3 75 8 78 6 77 11 86 5 87 9 88 25 85 11 AV. 18.7 AV. 13.8 The results of the experiments with this labyrinth as they are presented in Table 39 indicate that its path is considerably more difficult for the dancer to learn than that of labyrinth B, that the females learn more quickly than the males, and finally, that individual differences are just as marked as they were in the case of the simpler forms of labyrinth. It therefore appears that increasing the complexity of a labyrinth does not, as I had supposed it might, diminish the variability of the results. Certain of the individual differences which appear in Table 39 are due, however, to the fact that in some cases training in labyrinth B had preceded training in labyrinth C, whereas in the other cases C was the first labyrinth in which the animals were tested. But even this does not serve to account for the wide divergence of the results given by No. 2 and No. 50, for the latter had been trained in B previous to his training in C, and the former had not been so trained. Yet, despite the advantage which previous labyrinth experience gave No. 50, he did not learn the path of C as well in fifty tests as No. 2 did in eleven. The facts concerning the value of training in one form of labyrinth for the learning of another, as they were revealed by these experiments, may more fittingly be discussed in a later chapter in connection with the facts of memory and re-learning. [Illustration: FIGURE 28.--Plan of Labyrinth _D_, as reproduced from a print made with a rubber stamp. _I_, entrance; _O_, exit; numerals 1 to 13, errors.] Labyrinth C is a type of maze which might properly be described as irregular, since the several possible errors are extremely different in nature. In view of the results which this labyrinth yielded, it seemed important that the dancer be tested in a perfectly regular maze of the labyrinth-D type. The plan which I designed as a regular labyrinth has been reproduced, from a rubber stamp print, in Figure 28. As is true also of the mazes previously described, it provides four kinds of possible mistakes: namely, by turning to the left (errors 1, 5, 9, and 13), by turning to the right (errors 3, 7, and 11), by moving straight ahead (errors 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12), and by turning back and retracing the path just followed. The formula for the correct path of _D_ is simple in the extreme, in spite of the large number of mistakes which are possible, for it is merely "a turn to the right at the entrance, to the left at the first doorway, and thereafter alternately to the right and to the left until the exit is reached." This concise description would enable a man to find his way out of such a maze with ease. Labyrinth D had been constructed with an exit at 10 so that it might be used as a nine-error maze if the experimenter saw fit, or as a thirteen-error maze by the closing of the opening at 10. In the experiments which are now to be described only the latter form was used. Can the dancer learn a regular labyrinth path more quickly than an irregular one? Again, I may give only a brief statement of results. Each of the twenty dancers, of Table 40, which were trained in labyrinth D had previously been given opportunity to learn the path of C, and most of them had been trained also in labyrinth B. All of them learned this regular path with surprising rapidity. The numerical results of the tests with labyrinths B, C, and D, as well as the behavior of the mice in these several mazes, prove conclusively that the nature of the errors is far more important than their number. Labyrinth D with its thirteen chances of error on the forward trip was not nearly as difficult for the dancer to learn to escape from as labyrinth C with its five errors. That the facility with which the twenty individuals whose records are given in Table 40 learned the path of D was not due to their previous labyrinth experience rather than to the regularity of the maze is proved by the results which I obtained by testing in D individuals which were new to labyrinth experiments. Even in this case, the number of tests necessary for a successful trip was seldom greater than ten. If further evidence of the ease with which a regular labyrinth path may be followed by the dancer were desired, it might be obtained by observation of the behavior of an individual in labyrinths C and D. In the former, even after it has learned the path perfectly, the mouse hesitates at the doorways from time to time as if uncertain whether to turn to one side or go forward; in the latter there is seldom any hesitation at the turning points. The irregular labyrinth is followed carefully, as by choice of the path from point to point; the regular labyrinth is followed in machine fashion,--once started, the animal dashes through it. TABLE 40 RESULTS OF LABYRINTH-D EXPERIMENTS, WITH TWENTY DANCERS MALES FEMALES NO. OF NO. OF FIRST NO. OF LAST OF NO. OF NO. OF FIRST NO. OF LAST OF MOUSE CORRECT TWO CORRECT MOUSE CORRECT TWO CORRECT TEST TESTS TEST TESTS 2 3 7 29 10 11 58 7 10 49 7 8 30 9 10 57 3 6 60 10 14 215 6 10 402 10 11 415 7 8 76 4 7 75 4 13 78 4 5 77 11 12 86 3 9 87 4 9 88 4 8 85 3 4 90 7 8 83 4 7 Av. 6.1 8.9 Av. 5.9 8.8 From the results of these labyrinth experiments with dancers I am led to conclude that a standard maze for testing the modifiability of behavior of different kinds of animals should be constructed in conformity with the following suggestions. Errors by turning to the right, to the left, and by moving forward should occur with equal frequency, and in such order that no particular kind of error occurs repeatedly in succession. If we should designate these three types of mistake by the letters _r, l_, and _s_ respectively, the error series of labyrinth C would read _l-l-r-s-l_. It therefore violates the rule of construction which I have just formulated. In the case of labyrinth D the series would read _l-s-r-s-l-s-r-s-l-s-r-s- l_. This also fails to conform with the requirement, for there are three errors of the first type, four of the second, and six of the third. Again, in a standard maze, the blind alleys should all be of the same length, and care should be taken to provide a sufficiently strong and uniform motive for escape. In the case of one animal the desire to escape from confinement may prove a satisfactory motive; in the case of another, the desire for food may conveniently supplement the dislike of confinement; and in still other cases it may appear that some form of punishment for errors is the only satisfactory basis of a motive for escape. Readers of this account of the behavior of the dancing mouse must not infer from my experimental results that the electric shock as a means of forcing discrimination will prove satisfactory in work with other animals or even with all other mammals. As a matter of fact it has already been proved by Doctor G. van T. Hamilton that the use of an electric shock may so intimidate a dog that experimentation is rendered difficult and of little value. And finally, in connection with this discussion of a standard Labyrinth, I wish to emphasize the importance of so recording the results of experiments that they may be interpreted in terms of an animal's tendency to turn to the right or to the left. My work with the dancer has clearly shown that the avoidance of a particular error may be extremely difficult for left whirlers and very easy for right whirlers. I hope I have succeeded in making clear by the foregoing account of my experiments that the labyrinth method is more satisfactory in general than the problem method as a means of measuring the rapidity of habit formation in the dancer, and I hope that I have made equally clear the fact that it is very valuable as a means of discovering the roles of the various senses in the acquirement of a habit (Chapter XI). From my own experience in the use of the labyrinth with the dancer and with other animals, I am forced to conclude that its chief value lies in the fact that it enables the experimenter so to control the factors of a complex situation that he may readily determine the importance of a given kind of sense data for the formation or the execution of a particular habit. As a means of measuring the intelligence of an animal, of determining the facility with which it is capable of adjusting itself to new environmental conditions, and of measuring the permanency of modifications which are wrought in its behavior by experimental conditions, I value the labyrinth method much less highly now than I did previous to my study of the dancer. It is necessarily too complex for the convenient and reasonably certain interpretation of results. Precisely what is meant by this statement will be evident in the light of the results of the application of the discrimination method to the dancer, which are to be presented in the next chapter. The labyrinth method is an admirable means of getting certain kinds of qualitative results; it is almost ideal as a revealer of the role of the senses, and it may be used to advantage in certain instances for the quantitative study of habit formation and memory. Nevertheless, I think it may safely be said that the problem method and the discrimination method are likely to do more to advance our knowledge of animal behavior than the labyrinth method. CHAPTER XIV HABIT FORMATION: THE DISCRIMINATION METHOD Discrimination is demanded of an animal in almost all forms of the problem and labyrinth methods, as well as in what I have chosen to call the discrimination method. In the latter, however, discrimination as the basis of a correct choice of an electric-box is so obviously important that it has seemed appropriate to distinguish this particular method of measuring the intelligence of the dancer from the others which have been used, by naming it the discrimination method. It has been shown that neither the problem nor the labyrinth method proves wholly satisfactory as a means of measuring the rapidity of learning, or the duration of the effects of training, in the case of the dancer. The former type of test serves to reveal to the experimenter the general nature of the animal's capacity for profiting by experience; the latter serves equally well to indicate the parts which various receptors (some of which are sense organs) play in the formation and execution of habits. But neither of them is sufficiently simple, easy of control, uniform as to conditions which constitute bases for activity, and productive of interpretable quantitative results to render it satisfactory. The problem method is distinctly a qualitative method, and, in the case of the dancing mouse, my experiments have proved that the labyrinth method also yields results which are more valuable qualitatively than quantitatively. I had anticipated that various forms of the labyrinth method would enable me to measure the modifiability of behavior in the dancer with great accuracy, but, as will now be made apparent, the discrimination method proved to be a far more accurate method for this purpose. Once more I should emphasize the fact that my statements concerning the value of methods apply especially to the dancing mouse. Certain of the tests which have proved to be almost ideal in my study of this peculiar little rodent would be useless in the study of many other mammals. An experimenter must work out his methods step by step in the light of the daily results of patient and intelligent observation of the motor capacity, habits, instincts, temperament, imitative tendency, intelligence, hardihood, and life-span of the animal which he is studying. The fact that punishment has proved to be more satisfactory than reward in experiments with the dancer does not justify the inference that it is more satisfactory in the case of the rat, cat, dog, or monkey. Methods which yielded me only qualitative results, if applied to other mammals might give accurate quantitative results; and, on the other hand, the discrimination method, which has proved invaluable for my quantitative work, might yield only qualitative results when applied to another kind of animal. The form of the discrimination method whose results are to be presented in this chapter has already been described as white-black discrimination. In the discrimination box (Figures 14 and 15, p. 92) the two electric-boxes which were otherwise exactly alike in appearance were rendered discriminable for the mouse by the presence of white cardboards in one and black cardboards in the other. In order to escape from the narrow space before the entrances to the two electric-boxes, the dancer was required to enter the white box. If it entered the black box a weak electric shock was experienced. After two series of ten tests each, during which the animal was permitted to choose either the white or the black box without shock or hindrance, the training was begun. These two preliminary series serve to indicate the natural preference of the animal for white or black previous to the training. An individual which very strongly preferred the white might enter, from the first, the box thus distinguished, whereas another individual whose preference was for the black might persistently enter the black box in spite of the disagreeable shocks. First of all, therefore, the preliminary tests furnish a basis for the evaluation of the results of the subsequent training tests. On the day succeeding the last series of preliminary tests, and daily thereafter until the animal had acquired a perfect habit of choosing the white box, a series of training tests was given. These experiments were usually made in the morning between nine and twelve o'clock, in a room with south-east windows. The entrances to the electric-boxes faced the windows, consequently the mouse did not have to look toward the light when it was trying to discriminate white from black. All the conditions of the experiment, including the strength of the current for the shock, were kept as constant as possible. Choice by position was effectively prevented, as a rule, by shifting the cardboards so that now the left now the right box was white. The order of these shifts for the white-black series whose results are quantitatively valuable appear in Table 12 (p. III). That the order of these changes in position may be criticised in the light of the results which the tests gave, I propose to show hereafter in connection with certain other facts. The significant point is that the defects which are indicated by the averages of thousands of tests could not have been predicted with certainty even by the most experienced investigator in this field. In Table 41 are to be found the average number of errors in each series of ten white-black discrimination tests for five males and for five females which were trained by being given ten tests per day, and similarly for the same number of individuals of each sex, trained by being given twenty tests per day. Since the results for these two conditions of training are very similar, the averages for the twenty individuals are presented in the last column of the table. For the present we may neglect the interesting individual, sex, and age differences which these experiments revealed and examine the significant features of the general averages, and of the white-black discrimination curve (Figure 29). TABLE 41 WHITE BLACK DISCRIMINATION TESTS. NUMBER OF ERRORS IN THE VARIOUS SERIES MALES FEMALES AVERAGES AVERAGES GENERAL AVERAGES AVERAGES GENERAL AVERAGES SERIES FOR 5, FOR 5, AVERAGES FOR 5, FOR 5, AVERAGES FOR ALL 10 TESTS 20 TESTS FOR 10 10 TESTS 20 TESTS FOR 10 (20) MALES PER DAY PER DAY PER DAY PER DAY AND FEMALES A 5.8 6.0 5.9 5.8 5.8 5.8 5.85 B 5.6 6.2 5.9 5.8 5.6 5.7 5.8 1 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.6 4.6 5.1 5.05 2 2.6 4.6 3.6 4.4 5.0 4.7 4.15 3 3.0 3.4 3.2 3.4 3.4 3.4 3.3 4 2.6 3.8 3.2 2.4 2.2 2.3 2.75 5 2.4 2.0 2.2 2.6 1.8 2.2 2.2 6 1.6 1.6 1.6 1.0 2.2 1.6 1.6 7 1.0 1.4 1.2 2.0 0.4 1.2 1.2 8 0.2 0.6 .4 1.4 1.6 1.5 .95 9 0.2 1.0 .6 0.6 0.8 .7 .65 10 0 .8 .4 1.0 0.8 .9 .65 11 0 .8 .4 0.8 0 .4 .40 12 0 .6 .3 0.4 0 .2 .25 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 0 0 [Illustration: FIGURE 29.--Error curve plotted from the data given by twenty dancers in white-black discrimination tests. The figures in the left margin indicate the number of errors; those below the base line, the number of the series. _A_ and _B_ designate the preference series.] The preference series, _A_ and _B_, reveal a constant tendency to choose the black box, whose strength as compared with the tendency to choose the white box is as 5.8 is to 4.2. In other words, the dancer on the average chooses the black box almost six times in ten. The first series of training tests reduced this preference for black to zero, and succeeding series brought about a rapid and fairly regular decrease in the number of errors, until, in the thirteenth series, the white was chosen every time. Since I arbitrarily define a perfect habit of discrimination as the ability to choose the right box in three successive series of ten tests each, the tests ended with the fifteenth series. The discrimination curve, Figure 29, is a graphic representation of the general averages of Table 41.--It is an error curve, therefore. Starting at 5.85 for the first preliminary series, it descends to 5.8 for the second series, and thence abruptly to 5.05 for the first training series. This series of ten tests therefore served to reduce the black preference very considerably. The curve continues to descend constantly until the tenth series, for which the number of errors was the same as for the preceding series, .65. This irregularity in the curve, indicative, as it would appear, of a sudden cessation in the learning process, demands an explanation. My first thought was that an error in computation on my part might account for the shape of the curve. The error did not exist, but in my search for it I discovered what I now believe to be the cause of the interruption in the fall of the error curve. In all of the training series up to the tenth the white cardboard had been on the right and the left alternately or on one side two or three times in succession, whereas in the tenth series, as may be seen by referring to Table 12 (p.111), it was on the left for the first four tests, then on the right four times, and, finally, on the left for the ninth test and on the right for the tenth. This series was therefore a decidedly more severe test of the animal's ability to discriminate white from black and to choose the white box without error than were any that had preceded it. If my interpretation of the results is correct, it was so much more severe than the ninth series that the process of habit formation was obscured. It would not be fair to say that the mouse temporarily ceased to profit by its experience; instead it profited even more than usually, in all probability, but the unavoidably abrupt increase in the difficultness of the tests was just sufficient to hide the improvement. As I have suggested, the plan of experimentation may be criticised adversely in the light of this irregularity in the error curve. Had the conditions been perfectly satisfactory the curve would not have taken this form. I admit this, but at the same time I am glad that I chose that series of shifts in the position of the cardboards which, as it happens, served to exhibit an important aspect of quantitative measures of the modifiability of behavior that otherwise would not have been revealed. Our mistakes in method often teach us more than our successes. I have taken pains, therefore, to describe the unsatisfactory as well as the satisfactory steps in my study of the dancer. [Illustration: FIGURE 30.--Error curve plotted from the data given by thirty dancers, of different ages and under different conditions of training, in white-black discrimination tests.] The form of the white-black discrimination curve of Figure 29 is more surprising than disappointing to me, for I had anticipated many more irregularities than appear. What I had expected, as the result of training five or even ten pairs of mice, was the kind of curve which is presented, for contrast with the one already discussed, in Figure 30. This also is an error curve, but, unlike the previous one, it is based upon results which were got from individuals of different ages which were trained according to the following different methods. Ten of these individuals were given two or five tests daily, ten were given ten tests daily, and ten were given twenty tests daily. The form of the curve serves to call attention to the importance of uniform conditions of training, in case the results are to be used as accurate measures of the rapidity of learning. Examination of the detailed results of the white-black discrimination tests as they appear in the tables of Chapter VII will reveal the fact that some individuals succeeded in choosing correctly in a series of ten tests after not more than five series, whereas others required at least twice as many tests as the basis of a perfect series. In very few instances, however, was a perfect habit of discrimination established by fewer than one hundred tests. As the averages just presented in Table 41 indicate, fifteen series, or one hundred and fifty tests, were required for the completion of the experiment. One might search a long time, possibly, for another mammal whose curve of error in a simple discrimination test would fall as gradually as that of the dancer. It is fair to say that this animal learns very slowly as compared with most mammals which have been carefully studied. It is to be remembered, however, that quantitative results such as are here presented for the dancer are available for few if any other animals except the white rat. Neither in the form of the curve of learning nor in the behavior of the animal as it makes its choice of an electric-box is there evidence of anything which might be described as a sudden understanding of the situation. The dancer apparently learns by rote. It exhibits neither intelligent insight into an experimental situation nor ability to profit by the experience of its companions. That the selection of the white box occurs in various ways in different individuals, and even in the same individual at different periods in the training process, is the only indication of anything suggestive of implicit reasoning. Naturally enough comparison of the two boxes is the first method of selection. It takes the dancers a surprisingly long time to reach the point of making this comparison as soon as they are confronted by the entrances to the two electric-boxes. The habit of running from entrance to entrance repeatedly before either is entered, once having been acquired, is retained often throughout the training experiments. But in other cases, an individual finally comes to the point of choosing by what appears to be the immediate recognition of the right or the wrong box. In the former case the mouse enters the white box immediately; in the latter, it rushes from the black box into the white one without hesitation. So much evidence the discrimination tests furnish of forms of behavior which in our fellow-men we should interpret as rational. [Illustration: FIGURE 31.--Curve of habit formation, plotted from the data of labyrinth-D tests with ten males and ten females.] Comparison of the error curves for the labyrinth tests (Figures 26 and 31) with those for the discrimination tests (Figures 29 and 30) reveals several interesting points of difference. The former fall very abruptly at first, then with decreasing rapidity, to the base line; the latter, on the contrary, fall gradually throughout their course. Evidently the labyrinth habit is more readily acquired by the dancer than is the visual discrimination habit. Certain motor tendencies can be established quickly, it would seem, whereas others, and especially those which depend for their guidance upon visual stimuli, are acquired with extreme slowness. From this it might be inferred that the labyrinth method is naturally far better suited to the nature of the dancer than is any form of the discrimination method. I believe that this inference is correct, but at the same time I am of the opinion that the discrimination method is of even greater value than the labyrinth method as a means of discovering the capacity of the animal for modification of behavior. Inasmuch as my first purpose in the repetition of white-black discrimination tests with a number of individuals was to obtain quantitative results which should accurately indicate individual, age, and sex differences in the rapidity of learning, it is important to consider the reliability of the averages with which we have been dealing. Possibly two groups of five male dancers each, chosen at random, would yield very different results in discrimination tests. This would almost certainly be true if the animals were selected from different lots, or were kept before and during the tests under different environmental conditions. But from my experiments it has become apparent that the average of the results given by five individuals of the same sex, age, and condition of health, when kept in the same environment and subjected to the same experimental tests, is sufficiently constant from group to group to warrant its use as an index of modifiability for the race. This expression, index of modifiability, is a convenient mode of designating the average number of tests necessary for the establishment of a perfect habit of white-black discrimination. Hereafter I shall use it instead of a more lengthy descriptive phrase. As an indication of the degree of accuracy of measurements of the rapidity of learning which are obtained by the use of 5 individuals I may offer the following figures. For one of two directly comparable groups of 5 male dancers which were chosen from 16 individuals which had been trained, the number of tests which resulted in a perfect habit of white-black discrimination was 92; for the other group it was 96. These indices for strictly comparable groups of 5 individuals each differ from one another by less than 5 per cent. Similarly, in the case of two groups of females, the indices of modifiability were 94 and 104. These figures designate the number of tests up to the point at which errors ceased for at least three successive series (30 tests). The determination of the probable error of the index of modifiability further aids us in judging of the reliability of the measure of the rapidity of learning which is obtained by averaging the results for 5 individuals. For a group of 5 males (Table 43, p. 243) the index was 72 ± 3.5; and for a group of 5 females of the same age as the males and strictly comparable with respect to conditions of white-black training, it was 104 ± 2.9. A probable error of ± 3.5 indicates the reliability of the first of these indices of modifiability; one of ± 2.9, that of the second. I do not doubt that 10 individuals would furnish a more reliable average than 5, but I do doubt whether the purposes of my experiments would have justified the great increase in work which the use of averages based upon so large a group would have necessitated. Further discussion of the index of modifiability may be postponed until the several indices which serve as measures of the efficiency of different methods of training have been presented in the next chapter. From the data which constitute the materials of the present chapter it is apparent that the results of the discrimination method are amenable to much more accurate quantitative treatment than are those of the problem method or the labyrinth method. But I have done little more as yet than describe the method by which it is possible to measure certain dimensions of the intelligence of the dancer, and to state some general results of its application. In the remaining chapters it will be our task to discover the value of this method and of the results which it has yielded. CHAPTER XV THE EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING METHODS The nature of the modifications which are wrought in the behavior of an organism varies with the method of training. This fact is recognized by human educators, as well as by students of animal behavior (makers of the science of comparative pedagogy), but unfortunately accurate measurements of the efficiency of our educational methods are rare. Whatever the subject of investigation, there are two preeminently important aspects of the educative process which may be taken as indications of the value of the method of training by which it was initiated and stimulated. I refer to the rapidity of the learning process and its degree of permanency, or, in terms of habit formation, to the rapidity with which a habit is acquired, and to its duration. Of these two easily measurable aspects of the modifications in which training results, I have chosen the first as a means to the special study of the efficiency of the training to which the dancing mouse has been subjected in my experiments. The reader who has followed my account of the behavior of the dancer up to this point will recall that in practically all of the discrimination experiments the number of tests in a series was ten. Some readers doubtless have wondered why ten rather than five or twenty tests was selected as the number in each continuous series. I shall now attempt to answer the question. It was simply because the efficiency of that number of tests, given daily, when taken in connection with the amount of time which the conduct of the experiments required, rendered it the most satisfactory number. But this statement demands elaboration and explanation. Very early in my study of the dancer, I learned that a single experience in a given experiment day after day had so little effect upon the animal that a perfect habit could not be established short of several weeks or months. Similarly, experiments in which two tests per day were given proved that even a simple discrimination habit cannot be acquired by the animal under this condition of training with sufficient rapidity to enable the experimenter to study the formation of the habit advantageously. Next, ten tests in succession each day were given. The results proved satisfactory, consequently I proceeded to carry out my investigation on the basis of a ten-test series. After this method had been thoroughly tried, I decided to investigate the efficiency of other methods for the purpose of instituting comparisons of efficiency and discovering the number of tests per day whose efficiency, as measured by the rapidity of the formation of a white-black discrimination habit, is highest. For this purpose I carefully selected five pairs of dancers of the same age, descent, and previous experience, and gave them white-black tests in series of two tests per day (after the twentieth day the number was increased to five) until they had acquired a perfect habit of discriminating. Similarly other dancers were trained by means of series of ten tests, twenty tests, or one hundred tests per day. Since it was my aim to make the results of these various tests strictly comparable, I spared no pains in selecting the individuals, and in maintaining constancy of experimental conditions. The order of the changes in the position of the cardboards which was adhered to in these efficiency tests was that given in Table 12. At the beginning of the two-test training I thought it possible that the animals might acquire a perfect habit with only a few more days' training than is required by the ten-test method. This did not prove to be the case, for at the end of the twentieth day (after forty tests in all) the average number of mistakes, as Table 42 shows, was 3.2 for the males and 3.0 for the females. Up to this time there had been clear evidence of the formation of a habit of discriminating white from black, but, on the other hand, the method had proved very unsatisfactory because the first test each day usually appeared to be of very different value from the second. On account of the imminent danger of the interruption of the experiment by the rapid spread of an epidemic among my mice, I decided to increase the number of tests in each series to five in order to complete the experiment if possible before the disease could destroy the animals. On the twenty- first day and thereafter, five-test series were given instead of two-test. Unfortunately I was able to complete the experiment up to the point of thirty successive correct tests with only six of the ten individuals whose numbers appear at the top of Table 42. That the results of this table are reliable, despite the fact that some of the individuals had to be taken out of the experiment on account of bad condition, is indicated by the fact that all the mice continued to do their best to discriminate so long as they were used. Possibly the habit would have been acquired a little more quickly by some of the individuals had they been stronger and more active. It should be explained at this point that the results in all the efficiency-of-training tables of this chapter are arranged, as in the previous white-black discrimination tables, in tens, that is, each figure in the tables indicates the number of errors in a series of ten tests. In all cases _A_ and _B_ mark preliminary series of tests which were given at the rate of ten tests per series. The numbers in the first column of these tables designate groups of ten tests each, and not necessarily daily series. In Table 42, for example, 1 includes the results of the first five days of training, 2, of the next five days, and so on. The table shows that No. 80 made seven wrong choices in the first five series of two tests each. This method of grouping results serves to make the data for the different methods directly comparable, and at the same time it saves space at the sacrifice of very little valuable information concerning the nature of the daily results. It is to be noted, with emphasis, that the two-five tests per day training established a perfect habit after four weeks of training. This method is therefore costly of the experimenter's time. TABLE 42 EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING. WHITE-BLACK TESTS AT THE RATE OF 2 OR 5 PER DAY MALES FEMALES SETS 80 82 84 86 88 AV. 73 79 83 85 89 AV. OF 10 A 5 5 4 8 5 5.4 5 6 7 7 6 6.2 B 5 3 6 5 6 5.0 7 5 7 6 7 6.4 1 7 7 6 6 6 6.4 7 6 9 4 6 6.4 2 2 1 0 6 6 3.0 6 5 6 5 5 5.4 3 4 5 5 1 2 3.2 6 5 2 4 1 3.6 4 3 4 7 2 0 3.2 4 3 1 4 3 3.0 5 2 3 3 2 4 2.8 - 3 4 3 1 2.7 6 2 2 - 2 2 2.0 - 0 2 2 0 1.0 7 - 1 - 0 1 0.7 - 1 0 2 1 1.0 8 - - - 1 1 1.0 - 1 1 0 0 0.5 9 - - - 0 1 0.5 0 1 1 0 0 0.5 10 - - - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 0 0 11 - - - 0 0 0 - 0 0 0 12 - - - 0 0 - 0 0 0 TABLE 43 EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING. WHITE-BLACK TESTS AT THE RATE OF 10 PER DAY MALES FEMALES SETS 210 220 230 410 420 AV. 215 225 235 415 425 AV. OF 10 A 6 5 6 6 6 5.8 8 4 4 8 5 5.8 B 6 8 8 5 1 5.6 8 7 6 6 2 5.8 1 6 7 6 2 4 5.0 7 6 5 6 4 5.6 2 4 3 1 2 3 2.6 5 6 4 2 5 4.4 3 3 1 4 3 4 3.0 3 3 4 2 5 4.4 4 5 0 3 3 2 3.2 2 1 3 3 3 2.4 5 3 0 4 1 4 2.4 1 3 3 3 3 2.6 6 2 1 4 0 1 1.6 2 1 1 1 0 1.0 7 1 0 3 1 0 1.0 1 1 2 3 3 2.0 8 0 0 1 0 0 0.2 0 0 2 2 3 2.0 9 0 0 0 1 0 0.2 1 0 0 1 1 0.6 10 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 2 1.0 11 0 0 0 0 3 0 1 0 0.8 12 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0.4 13 0 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 15 0 0 TABLE 44 EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING. WHITE-BLACK TESTS AT THE RATE OF 20 PER DAY MALES FEMALES SETS 72 74 208 240 402 AV. 217 230 245 403 407 AV. OF 10 A 4 6 7 7 6 6.0 5 4 7 7 6 5.8 B 6 4 6 8 7 6.2 7 3 5 8 5 5.6 1 3 5 7 5 5 5.0 3 6 4 4 6 4.6 2 4 3 7 5 4 4.6 7 3 5 4 6 5.0 3 3 3 3 5 3 3.4 4 3 3 2 5 3.4 4 6 3 1 4 5 3.8 5 0 1 2 3 2.2 5 4 1 0 2 3 2.0 6 0 0 1 2 1.8 6 3 1 0 2 2 1.6 4 1 1 0 6 2.2 7 3 2 0 1 1 1.4 1 0 0 0 1 0.4 8 2 0 1 1 0.6 0 3 3 0 2 1.6 9 2 1 1 1 1.0 1 0 0 3 0.8 10 1 2 1 0 0.8 0 1 1 2 0.8 11 3 1 0 0 0.8 0 0 0 0 0 12 1 2 0 0 0.6 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 The results of the ten-test training as they appear in Table 43 need no special comment, for quite similar data have already been examined in other connections. In the case of this table it is to be remembered that each figure represents the number of errors for a single day as well as for a series of ten successive tests. The results of Table 44, on the other hand, appear as subdivided series, since each daily series was constituted by two series of ten tests, or in all twenty tests. Finally, in Table 45 I have arranged the results of what may fairly be called the continuous training method. In connection with several of the labyrinth experiments of Chapter XIII continuous training proved very satisfactory. It therefore seemed worth while to ascertain whether the same method would not be more efficient than any other for the establishment of a white-black discrimination habit. That this method was not applied to ten individuals as were the two-five-test, the ten-test, and the twenty-test methods is due to the fact that it proved practically inadvisable to continue the tests long enough to complete the experiment. I have usually designated the method as one hundred or more tests daily. I applied this training method first to individuals Nos. 51 and 60. At the end of one hundred and twenty tests with each of these individuals I was forced to discontinue the experiment for the day because of the approach of darkness. In the table the end of a series for the day is indicated by a heavy line. The following day Nos. 51 and 60 succeeded in acquiring a perfect habit after a few more tests. TABLE 45 EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING. WHITE-BLACK TESTS AT THE RATE OF 100 OR MORE PER DAY SETS 51[1] 60 87 Av. OF 10 A 5 5 6 5.3 B 5 3 7 5.0 1 6 6 5 5.7 2 3 2 5 3.3 3 5 4 7 5.3 4 7 4 5 5.3 5 6 2 3 3.7 6 1 1 3 1.7 7 4 2 3 3.0 8 3 3 0 2.0 9 2 2 3 2.3 10 5 0 2 2.3 11 1 2 2 1.7 12 2 1 1 1.3 13 4 1 2 2.3 14 1 2 1 1.3 15 3 1 5 3.0 16 3 3 2 2.7 17 1 0 1 0.7 18 2 0 1 1.0 19 0 0 2 0.7 20 0 0 0 21 0 1 0.3 22 - 23 - 24 - [Footnote 1: Age of No. 51, 22 weeks. Age of No. 60, 17 weeks. Age of No. 87, 8 weeks.] The results of the continuous training method for these two mice were so strikingly different from those yielded by the other methods that I at once suspected the influence of some factor other than that of the number of tests per day. The ages of Nos. 51 and 60 at the time of their tests were twenty-two and seventeen weeks, respectively, whereas all the individuals used in connection with the other efficiency tests were four weeks of age. It seemed possible that the slow habit formation exhibited in the continuous training experiments might be due to the greater age of the mice. I therefore selected a healthy active female which was only eight weeks old, and tried to train her by the continuous training method. With this individual, No. 87, the results were even more discouraging than those previously obtained, for she was still imperfect in her discrimination at the end of two hundred and ten tests. At that point the experiment was interrupted, and it seemed scarcely worth while to continue it further at a later date. The evidence of the extremely low efficiency of the continuous method in comparison with the other methods which we have been considering is so conclusive that further comment seems superfluous. We are now in a position to compare the results of the several methods of training which have been applied to the dancer, and to attempt to get satisfactory quantitative expressions of the efficiency of each method. I have arranged in Table 46 the general averages yielded by the four methods. Although these general results hide certain important facts which will be exhibited later, they clearly indicate that an increase in the number of tests per day does not necessarily result in an increase in the rapidity of habit formation. Should we attempt, on superficial examination, to interpret the figures of this table, we would doubtless say that in efficiency the two-five-test method stands first, the continuous-test method last, while the ten-test and twenty-test methods occupy intermediate positions. TABLE 46 EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING Number of Errors in White-Black Series for Different Methods of Training SETS OF 10 2 OR 5 TESTS 10 TESTS 20 TESTS 100 OR MORE PER DAY PER DAY PER DAY TESTS PER DAY A 5.8 5.8 5.9 5.3 B 5.7 5.7 5.9 5.0 1 6.4 5.3 4.8 5.7 2 4.2 3.5 4.8 3.3 3 3.4 3.2 3.4 5.3 4 3.1 2.5 3.0 5.3 5 2.7 2.5 1.9 3.7 6 1.5 1.3 1.9 1.7 7 0.9 1.5 0.9 3.0 8 0.7 0.8 1.1 2.0 9 0.5 0.4 0.9 2.3 10 0 0.5 0.8 2.3 11 0 0.4 0.4 1.7 12 0 0.2 0.3 1.3 13 0 0 2.3 14 0 0 1.3 15 0 0 3.0 16 2.7 17 0.7 18 1.0 19 0.7 20 0 We may now apply to the results of our efficiency-of-training tables the method of measuring efficiency which was mentioned at the end of the preceding chapter as the _index of modifiability (that number of tests after which no errors occur for at least thirty tests)_. By taking the average number of tests for the several individuals in each of the Tables 42, 43, 44, and 45 we obtain the following expressions of efficiency:-- METHOD INDEX OF MODIFIABILITY (EFFICIENCY) Two-five-test 81.7 ± 2.7 Ten-test 88.0 ± 4.1 Twenty-test 91.0 ± 5.3 Continuous-test 170.0 ± 4.8 Since the difference between the indices for the ten-test and the twenty- test methods lies within the limits of their probable errors (±4.1 and ±5.3) it is evident that it is not significant. Except for this, I think these indices may be accepted as indications of real differences in the value of the several methods of training. A somewhat different interpretation of our results is suggested by the grouping of individuals according to sex. In Table 47 appear the general averages for the males and the females which were tested by the several methods. The most striking fact exhibited by this table is that of the high efficiency of the twenty-test method for the females. Apparently they profited much more quickly by this method than by the ten-test method, whereas just the reverse is true of the males. I present the data of this table merely to show that general averages may hide important facts. TABLE 47 EFFICIENCY OF TRAINING CONDITION MALES FEMALES INDEX OF MODIFIABILITY INDEX OF MODIFIABILITY 2 or 5 tests per day 85.0 80.0 10 tests per day 72.0 104.0 20 tests per day 94.0 88.0 100 or more tests per day 160.0 180.0 From all considerations that have been mentioned thus far the reader would be justified in concluding that I made a mistake in selecting the ten-test method for my study of the modifiability of the behavior of the dancer. That this conclusion is not correct is due to the time factor in the experiments. If the dancer could acquire a perfect habit as a result of twelve days' training, no matter whether two, five, ten, or twenty tests were given daily, it would, of course, be economical of time for the experimenter to employ the two-test method. But if, on the contrary, the two-test method required twice as many days' training as the five-test method, it would be economical for him to use the five-test method despite the fact that he would have to give a larger number of tests than the two- test method would have demanded. In a word, the time which the work requires depends upon the number of series which have to be given, as well as upon the number of tests in each series. As it happens, the ten-test method demands less of the experimenter's time than do methods with fewer tests per day. The twenty-test method is even more economical of time, but it has a fatal defect. It is at times too tiresome for both mouse and man. These facts indicate that a balance should be struck between number of tests and number of series. The fewer the tests per day, within the limits of two and one hundred, the higher the efficiency of the method of training, as measured in terms of the total number of tests necessary for the establishment of a perfect habit, and the lower its efficiency as measured in terms of the number of series given. The greater the number of tests per day, on the other hand, the higher the efficiency of the method in terms of the number of series, and the lower its efficiency in terms of the total number of tests. By taking into account these facts, together with the fact of fatigue, we are led to the conclusion that ten tests per day is the most satisfactory number. If my time and attention had not been fully occupied with other problems, I should have determined the efficiency of various methods of training in terms of the duration of habit, as well as in terms of the rapidity of its formation. As these two measures of efficiency might give contradictory results, it is obvious that a training method cannot be fairly evaluated without consideration of both the rapidity of habit formation and the permanency of the habit. A _priori_ it seems not improbable that slowness of learning should be directly correlated with a high degree of permanency. By the further application of the method which I have used in this study of the efficiency of training we may hope to get a definite answer to this and many other questions concerning the nature of the educative process and the conditions which influence it. CHAPTER XVI THE DURATION OF HABITS: MEMORY AND RE-LEARNING The effects of training gradually disappear. Habits wane with disuse. In the dancer, it is not possible to establish with certainty the existence of memory in the introspective psychological sense; but it is possible to measure the efficiency of the training to which the animal is subjected, and the degree of permanency of habits. The materials which constitute this chapter concern the persistence of unused habits, and the influence of previous training on the re-acquisition of a habit which has been lost or on the acquisition of a new habit. For convenience of description, I shall refer to certain of the facts which are to be discussed as facts of memory, with the clear understanding that consciousness is not necessarily implied. By memory, wherever it occurs in this book, I mean the ability of the dancer to retain the power of adaptive action which it has acquired through training. I first discovered memory in the dancer, although there was previously no reason for doubting its existence, in connection with the ladder-climbing tests of Chapter XII. In this experiment two individuals which had perfectly learned to escape from the experiment box to the nest-box by way of the wire ladder, when tested after an interval of two weeks, during which they had remained in the nest-box without opportunity to exercise their newly acquired habit, demonstrated their memory of the method of escape by returning to the nest-box by way of the ladder as soon as they were given opportunity to do so. As it did not lend itself readily to quantitative study, no attempts were made to measure the duration of this particular habit. At best the climbing of a wire ladder is of very uncertain value as an indication of the influence of training. Similarly, the persistence of habits has been forced upon my attention day after day in my various experiments with the mice. It is obvious, then, that the simple fact of memory is well established, and that we may turn at once to an examination of the facts revealed by special memory and re- learning experiments. The visual discrimination method, which proved invaluable as a means of measuring the rapidity of habit formation, proved equally serviceable in the measurement of the permanency or duration of habits. Memory tests for discrimination habits were made as follows. After a dancer had been trained in the discrimination box so that it could choose the correct electric-box, white, red, blue, or green as it might be, in three successive daily series of ten tests each, it was permitted to remain for a certain length of time without training and without opportunity to exercise its habit of visual discrimination and choice. At the expiration of the rest interval, as we may designate the period during which the habit was not in use, the mouse was placed in the discrimination box under precisely the same conditions in which it had been trained and was given a series of ten memory tests with the box to be chosen alternately on the right and on the left. In order that the entire series of ten tests, and sometimes two such series given on consecutive days, might be available as indications of the duration of a habit, the mouse was permitted to enter and pass through either of the electric-boxes without receiving a shock. Had the shock been given as punishment for a wrong choice, it is obvious that only the first test of the memory series would be of value as an indication of the existence of a previously acquired habit. Even under the conditions of no shock and no stop or hindrance the first test of each memory series is of preeminent importance, for the mouse tends to persist in choosing either the side or the visual condition (sometimes one, sometimes the other) which it chooses in the first test. If the wrong box is chosen to begin with, mistakes are likely to continue because of the lack of punishment; in this case the animal discriminates, but there is no evidence that it remembers the right box. Likewise, if the right electric- box is chosen in the first test, correct choices may continue simply because the animal has discovered that it can safely enter that particular box; again, the animal discriminates without depending necessarily upon its earlier experience. I have occasionally observed a series of ten correct choices, made on the basis of an accidental right start, followed by another series in which almost every choice was wrong, because the animal happened to start wrong. As the results of my tests of memory are of such a nature that they cannot advantageously be averaged, I have arranged in Table 48 a number of typical measurements of the duration of visual discrimination habits. In this table I have indicated the number and age of the individual tested, the habit of discrimination which had been acquired, the length of the rest interval, the result of the first test (right or wrong), and the number of errors made in each series of ten memory tests. TABLE 48 MEASUREMENTS OF THE DURATION OF A HABIT Memory ERRORS NO. AGE NAME OF TEST REST FIRST FIRST SECOND INTERVAL CHOICE SERIES SERIES 1000 25 weeks White-black 4 weeks Right 0 5 27 White-black 4 Right 5 7 210 15 White-black 8 Right 5 220 15 White-black 8 Right 4 230 15 White-black 8 Wrong 5 215 15 White-black 8 Right 5 225 15 White-black 8 Right 2 235 15 White-black 8 Right 7 410 15 White-black 8 Wrong 4 415 15 White-black 8 Wrong 6 420 15 White-black 8 Wrong 3 425 15 White-black 8 Right 3 2 28 Black-white 4 Wrong 9 7 17 Black-white 2 Wrong 1 7 21 Black-white 6 Right 1 7 27 Black-white 10 Right 1 6 998 18 Black-white 2 Wrong 3 998 22 Black-white 4 Right 0 998 28 Black-white 10 Right 5 5 13 10 Black-white 4 Right 3 14 10 Black-white 4 Right 3 15 10 Black-white 4 Right 2 16 10 Black-white 4 Right 4 1000 25 Light blue-orange 4 Right 4 2 28 Light blue-orange 2 Wrong 5 5 28 Light blue-orange 6 Wrong 4 6 3 25 Light blue-orange 4 Wrong 8 10 24 Light blue-orange 2 Right 8 10 26 Light blue-orange 2 Right 5 11 25 Light blue-orange 2 Right 6 11 27 Light blue-orange 2 Wrong 5 151 13 Green-red 2 Right 1 0 152 13 Green-red 2 Right 5 1 This quantitative study of the duration of simple habits of choice showed that in the majority of cases a perfectly acquired habit persists for at least two weeks. To be perfectly fair to the animal I must restrict this statement to visual conditions other than colors, for the dancer exhibited little ability either to acquire or to retain a habit of distinguishing spectral colors. Altogether, I made a large number of white-black and black-white memory tests after rest intervals of four, six, eight, or ten weeks. The results for the four-week interval show extreme individual differences in memory. Number 1000, for example, was able to choose correctly every time in a series of white-black tests after a rest interval of four weeks, whereas No. 5 was wrong as often as she was right after the same interval. I have placed the results for these two individuals at the head of the table because they suggest the variations which render averages undesirable. Number 1000 had a perfect habit at the end of four weeks of disuse; No. 5 had no habit whatever. I shall reserve further discussion of age, sex, and individual differences in the permanency of habits for the next chapter. With Nos. 7 and 998 memory tests were made after three different rest intervals. At the end of two weeks the black-white habit was present in both individuals, although it was not perfect. After six and four weeks, respectively (see Table 48), it still persisted; in fact, it apparently had improved as the result of additional training after the earlier memory tests. At the expiration of ten weeks it had wholly disappeared. In her first series of memory tests after the ten-week interval No. 7 made only one error, but a chance choice of the black (right) in the first test and the subsequent choice of the box in which no shock had been received serve to account for results which at first appear to be indicative of memory. That this explanation is correct is proved by the fact that a second memory series, in which the first choice happened to be wrong, resulted in six mistakes. Evidently she had lost the habit. In no instance have memory tests definitely indicated the presence of a habit after a rest interval of more than eight weeks. It is safe, therefore, to conclude from the results which have been obtained that a white-black or black-white discrimination habit may persist during an interval of from two to eight weeks of disuse, but that such a habit is seldom perfect after more than four weeks. The measurements of memory which were made in connection with color discrimination experiments are markedly different from those which were obtained in the brightness tests. As might have been anticipated (?), in view of the extreme difficulty with which the dancer learns to discriminate colors, the habit of discriminating between qualitatively different visual conditions does not persist very long. I have never obtained evidence of a perfect habit after an interval of more than two weeks, and usually, as is apparent from Table 48, the tests indicated very imperfect memory at the end of that interval. It seems probable that even in these so-called color tests discrimination is partly by brightness difference, and that the imperfection of the habit and its short duration are due to the fact that the basis of discrimination is inadequate. This is the only explanation which I have to offer for the difference which has been demonstrated to exist between the duration of brightness discrimination habits and color discrimination habits. The duration of a discrimination habit having been measured with a fair degree of accuracy, I undertook the task of ascertaining whether training whose results have wholly disappeared, so far as memory tests are in question, influences the re-acquisition of the same habit. Can a habit be re-acquired with greater facility than it was originally acquired? Is re- learning easier than learning? To obtain an answer to the question which may be asked in these different forms, ten individuals were experimented with in accordance with a method whose chief features are now to be stated. In each of these ten individuals a perfect white-black habit was established by the use of the standard series of tests the order of which is given in Table 12. At the expiration of a rest interval of eight weeks precisely the same series of tests were repeated as memory and re-training tests. In this repetition, the preliminary series, _A_ and _B_, served as memory tests, and the subsequent training series, as re-training series. [Illustration: FIGURE 32.--Error curves plotted from the data given by ten dancers in white-black discrimination tests. The solid line ([Symbol: solid line]) is the error curve of the original learning process; the broken line (------) is that of the re-learning process, after an interval of eight weeks.] The striking results of this investigation of re-learning are exhibited in the curves of learning and re-learning of Figure 32. These curves make it appear that the mice re-acquired the white-black discrimination habit much more readily than they had originally acquired it. But in addition to furnishing the basis for some such statement as the foregoing, the curves suggest a serious criticism of the experiment. In the original tests, the preliminary series indicated a strong preference for black. In series _A_ it was chosen on the average 5.8 times in 10, and in series _B_, 5.7 times. This preference was rapidly overcome by the training series, and at the end of 130 tests discrimination was perfect. All this appears in the curve of learning (solid line of figure). On the other hand, these preliminary series when repeated as memory tests, after a rest-interval of eight weeks, gave markedly different results. Series _A_ indicated preference for white (5.6 times in 10) instead of black, and series _B_ indicated only a slight preference for black. In brief, series _A_ and _B_ show that the preference for black was considerably stronger at the beginning of the training than at the beginning of the re-training. In the light of these facts it is fair to claim that the effects of the white-black training had not wholly disappeared as the result of eight weeks of rest, and that the experiment therefore fails to furnish satisfactory grounds for the statement that re-learning occurs more rapidly than learning. I accept this criticism as pertinent, although not necessarily valid, and at the same time I freely admit that the results have a significance which I had not anticipated. But they are not less interesting or valuable on that account. Granting, then, that at least some of the ten individuals which took part in the experiment had not completely lost the memory of their white-black training at the end of eight weeks, it is still possible that an examination of the individual results may justify some conclusion concerning the question which was proposed at the outset of the investigation. Such an examination is made possible by Tables 49 and 50, in which I have arranged separately the results for the males and the females. TABLE 49 WHITE-BLACK TRAINING. TEN TESTS PER DAY Males TRAINING RETRAINING 210 220 230 410 420 AV. 210 220 230 410 420 AV. A 6 5 6 6 6 5.8 5 4 5 4 3 4.2 B 6 8 8 5 1 5.6 8 4 5 4 6 5.4 1 6 7 6 2 4 5.0 3 3 4 7 3 4.0 2 4 3 1 2 3 2.6 2 4 2 5 3 3.2 3 3 1 4 3 4 3.0 1 4 1 4 1 2.2 4 5 0 3 3 2 2.6 0 1 0 1 2 0.8 5 3 0 4 1 4 2.4 0 2 0 2 0 0.8 6 2 1 4 0 1 1.6 0 1 0 0 2 0.6 7 1 0 3 1 0 1.0 0 0 0 0 8 0 0 1 0 0 0.2 0 0 1 0.2 9 0 0 0 1 0 0.2 0 0 0 10 0 0 0 0 1 0.2 11 0 0 0 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 14 15 Only three of the ten individuals failed to re-acquire the habit of white- black discrimination more quickly than it had originally been acquired, and, in the case of these exceptions, No. 220 required exactly the same number of tests in each case, and No. 420 was placed at a slight disadvantage in the re-learning series by an interruption of the training between the seventh and the eighth series. Had his training been completed by the sixth series he too would have had the same number of tests in training and re-training. Moreover, and this is of preëminent importance for a fair interpretation of the results, in several instances even those individuals which exhibited as strong a preference for the black in the memory series as in the preliminary series re-learned more quickly than they had learned. Number 210, for example, although he gave no evidence of memory, and, in fact, chose the black more frequently in the memory series than he did in the preliminary series, re-acquired the discrimination habit in less than half the number of tests which had been necessary for the establishment of the habit originally. TABLE 50 WHITE-BLACK TRAINING. TEN TESTS PER DAY Females TRAINING RE-TRAINING 215 225 235 415 425 Av. 215 225 235 415 425 Av. A 8 4 4 8 5 5.8 5 2 7 6 3 4.6 B 8 7 6 6 2 5.8 8 5 6 4 3 5.2 1 7 6 5 6 4 5.6 4 1 5 4 3 3.4 2 5 6 4 2 5 4.4 1 1 1 2 3 1.6 3 3 3 4 3 4 3.4 1 0 3 6 0 2.0 4 2 1 3 3 3 2.4 0 0 3 3 1 1.4 5 1 3 3 3 3 2.6 0 0 died 2 0 0.5 6 2 1 1 1 0 1.0 0 1 0 0.2 7 1 1 2 3 3 2.0 0 0 0 8 0 0 2 2 3 1.4 1 0.2 9 1 0 0 1 1 0.6 0 0 10 0 2 1 0 2 1.0 0 0 11 0 3 0 1 0 0.8 0 0 12 0 0 0 2 0 0.4 13 0 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 15 0 0 The facts which have been presented thus far become more significant when the indices of modifiability for the learning and the re-learning processes are compared. INDICES OF MODIFIABILITY LEARNING RE-LEARNING Females . . . . . . . 104 42.5 Males . . . . . . . . 72 54 The behavior of the mice in the experiments, the detailed results of Tables 49 and 50, and the indices of modifiability together justify the following conclusions. Most of the ten dancers, at the end of a rest interval of eight weeks, had so far lost the habit of white-black discrimination that memory tests furnished no conclusive evidence of the influence of previous training; a few individuals seemed to possess traces of the habit after such an interval. In the case of each group of individuals re-training brought about the establishment of a perfect habit far more quickly than did the original training. This suggests the existence of two kinds or aspects of organic modification in connection with training; those which constitute the basis of a definite form of motor activity, and those which constitute the bases or dispositions for the acquirement of certain types of behavior. There are several indications that further study of the modifiability of behavior will furnish the facts which are necessary to render this suggestion meaningful. Closely related to the facts which have been revealed by the re-training experiments are certain results of the labyrinth experiments. For the student of animal behavior, as for the human educator, it is of importance to learn whether one kind of training increases the efficiency of similar forms of training. Can a dancer learn a given labyrinth path the more readily because it has previously had experience in another form of labyrinth? The answer to this question, which my experimental results furnish, is given in Table 51. In the upper half of the table have been arranged the results for six individuals which were trained first in labyrinth B, then in labyrinth C, and finally in labyrinth D. Below, in similar fashion, are given the results for six individuals which were trained in the same three labyrinths in the order C, B, D, instead of B, C, D. My purpose in giving the training in these two orders was to ascertain whether labyrinth C, which had proved to be rather difficult for most individuals, would be more easily learned if the training in it were preceded by training in labyrinth C. TABLE 51 THE INFLUENCE OF ONE LABYRINTH HABIT UPON THE FORMATION OF ANOTHER LABYRINTH B LABYRINTH C LABYRINTH D NO. OF NO. OF NO. OF NO. OF NO. OF NO. OF NO. FIRST COR- LAST OF FIRST COR- LAST OF FIRST COR- LAST OF RECT TEST FIVE COR- RECT TEST FIVE COR- RECT TEST FIVE COR- RECT TESTS RECT TESTS RECT TESTS 76 8 14 3 19 4 7 78 5 20 6 14 4 5 86 13 22 5 12 3 9 75 4 15 8 19 4 13 77 7 11 11 29 11 12 87 12 22 9 20 4 9 AV. 8.2 17.3 7.0 18.8 5.0 9.2 LABYRINTH C LABYRINTH B LABYRINTH D 58 16 -- 2 14 7 10 60 17 -- 13 37 10 14 88 25 35 9 22 4 8 49 34 -- 1 5 7 8 57 15 -- 3 20 3 6 85 11 18 2 11 3 4 AV. 19.7 26.5 5.0 18.2 5.7 8.3 The results are sufficiently definite to warrant the conclusion that experience in B rendered the learning of C easier than it would have been had there been no previous labyrinth training. Those individuals whose first labyrinth training was in C made their first correct trip as the result of 19.7 trials, whereas those which had previously been trained in labyrinth B were able to make a correct trip as the result of only 7.0 trials. Similarly the table shows that training in C rendered the subsequent learning of B easier. To master B when it was the first labyrinth required 8.2 trials; to master it after C had been learned required only 5 trials. In addition to proving that the acquisition of one form of labyrinth habit may facilitate the acquisition of others, comparison of the averages of Table 51 furnishes evidence of the truth of the statement that no results of training can be properly interpreted in the absence of knowledge of the previous experience of the organism. CHAPTER XVII INDIVIDUAL, AGE, AND SEX DIFFERENCES IN BEHAVIOR All dancers are alike in certain important respects, but to the trained observer of animal behavior their individual peculiarities are quite as evident, and even more interesting than their points of resemblance. Omitting consideration of the structural marks of individuality, we shall examine the individual, age, and sex differences in general behavior, rapidity of learning, memory, and discrimination, which have been revealed by my experiments. Observations which bear on the subject of differences are scattered through the preceding chapters, but in no case have they been given sufficient prominence to force them upon the attention of those who are not especially interested in individual peculiarities. It has seemed worth while, therefore, to assemble all the available material in this chapter for systematic examination and interpretation. In the pages which follow, individual, age, and sex peculiarities are discussed in turn. Within each of these three groups of differences I have arranged in order what Royce has appropriately named the facts of discriminating sensitiveness, docility, and initiative. Individuals of the same age and sex no less than those which differ in sex or age exhibit important differences in ability to discriminate among sense impressions ("discriminative sensitiveness"), in ability to profit by experience ("docility"), and in ability to try new kinds of behavior ("initiative"). Individual differences in sensitiveness to visual, auditory, tactual, and olfactory stimuli have been revealed by many of my experiments. The brightness discrimination tests conclusively proved that a degree of difference in illumination which is easily detectable by one dancer may be beyond the discriminating sensitiveness of another. Both the tests with gray papers and those with the Weber's law apparatus furnished striking evidence of individual differences in the kind of visual sensitiveness which throughout this book has been called brightness vision. I suspect that certain of the differences which were observed should be referred to the experience of the individuals rather than to the capacity of the visual organs, for training improves visual discrimination to a much greater extent than would ordinarily be thought possible. To the truth of this statement the results of the Weber's law experiments with No. 51 bear witness. Likewise in color discrimination there are individual differences, examples of which may be discovered by the examination of the results given in Chapters IX and X. No differences in auditory sensitiveness appeared in my adult dancers, for in none of them was there definite response to sounds, but among the young individuals differences were prominent. I may call attention to the data on this subject which Table 5, p. 89, contains. The mice in four out of twelve litters gave no indications of hearing any sounds that I was able to produce; the remaining individuals responded with varying degrees of sensitiveness. I made no attempt to measure this sensitiveness, but it obviously differed from mouse to mouse. I feel justified, therefore, in stating that the young dancers exhibit extreme individual difference in sensitiveness to sounds. My observations of differences in sensitiveness to other forms of stimulation were made in connection with training tests, and although they are not quantitative, I venture to call attention to them. Indeed, I am led by the results of my study of various aspects of the dancer's behavior to conclude that the race exhibits individual differences in discriminating sensitiveness to a far greater extent than do most mammals, not excepting man. The importance of this fact (for I am confident that any one who carefully examines the detailed results of the various experiments which are described in this book will agree that it is an established fact) cannot be overlooked. It alters our interpretation of the results of training, memory, heredity, and discrimination experiments, and it leads us to suspect that the dancing race is exceedingly unstable. I do not venture to make comparison of my own observations of the dancer's sense equipment with those of Cyon, Rawitz, Zoth, and Kishi, for the differences are too great in many instances to be thought of as other than species or variety peculiarities. It has seemed fairer to compare only individuals of the same breed, or, as I have done and shall continue to do throughout this chapter, of two lines of descent. With respect to docility individual differences are prominent. We need only turn to the various tables of results to discover that in modifiability of behavior, in memory, in re-learning, not to mention other aspects of docility, dancers of the same sex and age differed strikingly. Let me by way of illustration cite a few cases of difference in docility. Number 1000 learned to discriminate white from black more quickly and retained his habit longer than any other dancer with which I have experimented. I should characterize him as an exceptionally docile individual. Table 44 offers several examples. Numbers 403 and 407, though they were born in the same litter and were alike in appearance and in conditions of life, acquired the white-black habit with a difference in rapidity which is expressed by the indices of modifiability 50 and 100. In other words, it took No. 407 twice as long to acquire this habit as it took No. 403. Similarly the ladder-climbing tests revealed important individual differences in ability to profit by experience. In the tables of labyrinth tests (38, 39, 40) individual differences are too numerous to mention. It required forty-nine tests to establish in No. 50 a labyrinth-C habit which was approximately equal in degree of perfection to that which resulted from twenty-two tests in the case of No. 52. The figures in this and other instances do not exaggerate the facts, for repeatedly I have tested individuals of the same litter, the same sex, and, so far as I could judge, of the same stage of development, and obtained results which differ as markedly as do those just cited. If space limits permitted, I could present scores of similar differences in docility which the problem, labyrinth, and discrimination methods have revealed. In examining the detailed individual results of the various tables for differences of this sort, it is important to bear in mind that sex, age, and descent should be taken into account, for with each of them, as will be shown clearly later in this chapter, sensitiveness, docility, and initiative vary. I have therefore based my statements concerning individual differences in docility upon the results of comparison of mice of the same litter, sex, and age. It is safe to say that human beings similarly selected for comparison do not exhibit greater differences in ability to profit by experience than did these dancing mice. The facts concerning individual differences in initiative which I have discovered are not less definite than those of the preceding paragraphs. From the beginning of my study of the dancer I observed that what one individual would readily learn of his own initiative another never learned. For example, in the ladder-climbing experiment No. 1000 distinguished himself for his initiative, whereas Nos. 4 and 5 never acquired the habit of escaping from confinement by using the ladder. I noticed, in this test of the animal's ability to learn, that while one individual would be scurrying about trying all ways of escape, investigating its surroundings, looking, sniffing, and dancing by turns, another would devote all its time to whirling, circling, or washing itself. One in the course of its activity would happen upon the way of escape, the other by reason of the limited scope of its activity, not the lack of it, would fail hour after hour to discover even the simplest way of getting back to its nest, to food, and to its companions. Hundreds of times during the past three years I have noticed important individual differences in initiative in connection with the discrimination experiments. The swinging wire doors which one dancer learned to push open before he had been in the box five minutes, another might not become familiar with through his own initiative for hours or days. In fact, it was not seldom that I had to teach an individual to pass from one compartment to the other by gently pushing him against the door until it opened sufficiently to allow him to squeeze through. Occasionally a mouse learned to pull the doors open so that he could pass through the openings in either direction with facility. This was a form of individual initiative which I had not anticipated and did not especially desire, so I did not encourage its development, but, nevertheless, at least one fourth of the mice which I experimented with in the discrimination box learned the trick. The other three fourths, although they were used in the box day after day sometimes for weeks, never discovered that they might return to the nest-box by pulling the swing-door through which they had just passed as well as by entering one of the electric-boxes. Another indication of individual initiative in action appeared in the tendency of certain mice to climb out of the experiment boxes or labyrinths. It would have been extremely easy for any of the mice to escape from the labyrinths by scaling the walls of the alleys, for they were only 10 cm. in height, and when a dancer stood on its hind legs it could easily reach the top with its nose. But, strange though it will seem to any one who has not worked with the dancer, not more than one in ten of the animals which I observed made any attempt to escape in this manner. They lacked initiative. That it was not due to a lack of the power to climb, I abundantly demonstrated by teaching a few individuals that a scramble in one corner meant easy escape from the maze of paths. I do not think any one of the mice was physically incapable of climbing, but I am confident that they differed markedly, not only in the willingness to try new modes of action, but in the readiness with which they could climb. I have already said that individuals differ noticeably in the scope of their activity. By this statement I mean that they try a varying number of kinds of activity. As in the case of men, so in mice, one individual will do a greater number of things in a few hours than another will in weeks or months. The dancers differ in versatility, in individual initiative, as do we, albeit not so markedly. Important differences which may with certainty be described as age differences are not so obvious as are such marks of individuality as have been set forth in the preceding pages. I have noted few changes in discriminative sensitiveness, other than those with regard to auditory sensitiveness, which could be correlated with age. In certain instances adults appeared to be able to discriminate more accurately and more easily than young mice, but it is difficult to say whether this change belongs under sensitiveness or docility. I have not made an ontogenetic study of the senses, and I am therefore unable to describe in detail the course of their development and decline. Of one important fact I am certain, that discriminative sensitiveness increases up to a certain point with age and with training. Differences in docility which are obviously to be correlated with age abound. In the prime of its life (from the second to the tenth month) the dancer is active, full of energy, quick to learn; in its senility (during the second year) it is inactive, but at times even more docile than during the period of greatest physical development. Frequently I have noticed in connection with labyrinth tests that individuals of the age of a year or more learn much more quickly than do individuals of the age of two or three months. But, on the other hand, I have contradictory observations, for now and then I obtained just the opposite result in experiments to test docility. Evidently this is a matter which demands systematic, quantitative investigation. Casual observation may suggest conclusions, but it will not justify them. Early in my investigation of the behavior of the dancer I conceived the idea of determining the relation of modifiability of behavior (docility) to age. The question which was foremost in my mind and for which I first sought an answer may be stated thus: can the dancer acquire a given habit with the same facility at different ages? Since the visual discrimination experiment seemed to be well suited for the investigation of this problem I planned to train, in the white-black discrimination experiment, five pairs of dancers at the age of one month, and the same number for each of the ages four, seven, ten, thirteen, sixteen, and nineteen months.[1] [Footnote 1: I have not been able thus far to determine the average length of the dancer's life. The greatest age to which any of my individuals has attained is nineteen months.] To test the same individuals month after month would be the ideal way of obtaining an answer to our question, but I could devise no satisfactory way of doing this. The effects of training last so long, as the results of the previous chapter proved, and the uncertainty of their entire disappearance is so serious, that the same training process cannot be used at successive ages. The use of different methods of training is even more unsatisfactory because it is extremely difficult to make accurate quantitative comparison of their results. It was these considerations that forced me to attempt to discover the relation of docility to age by carrying out the same experiments with groups of individuals of different ages. As my plan involved the execution of precisely the same set of tests with at least seventy individuals whose age, history, and past experience were accurately known, and of which some had to be kept for nineteen months before they could be trained, the amount of labor and the risk of mishap which it entailed were great. To make possible the completion of the investigation within two years, I accumulated healthy individuals for several months without training any of them. In March, 1907, I had succeeded in completing the tests for the age of one month, and I had on hand for the remaining tests almost a hundred individuals, whose ages ranged from a few days to eighteen months. Had everything gone well, the work would have been finished within six months. Suddenly, and without discoverable external cause, my mice began to die of an intestinal trouble, and despite all my efforts to check the disease by changing food supply and environment, all except a single pair died within a few weeks. Thus ended a number of experiments whose final results I had expected to be able to present in this volume. However, the work which I have done is still of value, for the single pair of survivors have made possible the continuance of my tests with other individuals of the same line of descent as those which perished, and I have to regret only the loss of time and labor. As I have on hand results for ten individuals of the age of one month, and for four individuals of the age of four months, it has seemed desirable to state the problem, method, and incomplete results of this study of the relation of modifiability to age. The indices of modifiability for these two groups of dancers differ so strikingly that I feel justified in persisting in my efforts to obtain comparable data for the seven ages which have been mentioned. TABLE 52 PLASTICITY (RELATION or MODIFIABILITY TO AGE) Number of Errors in Successive Daily Series of Ten White-Black Tests, with Dancers Four Months Old SERIES MALES FEMALES NO. 76 NO. 78 AV. NO. 75 NO. 77 AV. GENERAL AV. A 7 7 7.0 4 8 6.0 6.50 B 8 6 7.0 6 5 5.5 6.25 1 5 5 5.0 5 5 5.0 5.00 2 5 4 4.5 2 2 2.0 3.25 3 4 5 4.5 2 5 3.5 4.00 4 3 4 3.5 1 1 1.0 2.25 5 5 2 3.5 0 1 0.5 2.00 6 3 2 2.5 1 0 0.5 1.50 7 2 1 1.5 1 2 1.5 1.50 8 5 1 3.0 0 0 0 1.50 9 1 3 2.0 0 0 0 1.00 10 1 2 1.5 1 0 0.5 1.00 11 1 1 1.0 0 0 0.50 12 1 1 1.0 0 0 0.50 13 0 0 0 0 0 0 14 0 0 0 0 15 0 0 0 0 [Illustration: FIGURE 33.--Plasticity curves. In the left margin are given the indices of modifiability (the number of tests necessary for the establishment of a perfect habit). Below the base line the age of the individuals is given in months. Curve for males, --�--�--�--; curve for females, - - - -; curve for both males and females,----. When these three plasticity curves are completed, they will represent the indices of modifiability as determined for ten individuals at the age of 1 month, and similarly for the same number of individuals at each of the ages, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19 months.] The detailed results for the one-month old individuals appear in Table 43; those for the four-month individuals in Table 52. The general averages for the former are to be found in the third column of Table 46, under the heading "10 tests per day"; those for the latter in the last column of Table 52. Mere inspection of these tables reveals the curious sex difference which goes far towards justifying the presentation of this uncompleted work. The index of modifiability for the ten one-month individuals is 88 (that is, 88 tests were necessary for the establishment of a habit); for the four-month individuals it is 102.5. The heavy solid line of Figure 33 joins the points on the ordinates at which these values are located. Apparently, then, the dancer acquires the white-black discrimination habit less readily at the age of four months than at the age of one month. Further analysis of the results proves that this statement is not true. When the averages for the two sexes are compared, it appears that the males learned much less quickly at four months than at one month, whereas just the reverse is true of the females. The dash and dot line of the figure extends from the index of modifiability of the one-month males (72) to that of the four-month males (120); and the regularly interrupted line similarly joins the indices of the one-month (104) and the four-month (85) females. In seeking to discover age differences in docility or ability to profit by experience we have stumbled upon what appears to be an important sex difference. Perhaps I should add to this presentation of partial results the following statement. Since there are only four individuals in the four-month group, two of each sex, the indices are not very reliable, and consequently too much stress should not be laid upon the age and sex differences which are indicated. In view of this impressive instance of the way in which averages may conceal facts and lead the observer to false inferences, I wish to remark that my study of the dancer has convinced me of the profound truth of the statement that the biologist, whether he be psychologist, anthropologist, physiologist, or morphologist, should work with the organic individual and should first of all deal with his results as individual results. Averages have their place and value, but to mass data before their individual significance has been carefully sought out is to conceal or distort their meaning. Too many of us, in our eagerness for quantitative results and in our desire to obtain averages which shall justify general statements, get the cart before the horse. Figure 33 presents the beginning of what I propose to call plasticity curves. When these three curves are completed on the basis of experiments with five dancers of each sex for each of the ages indicated on the base line of the figure, they will indicate what general changes in plasticity, modifiability of behavior, or ability to learn (for all of these expressions have been used to designate much the same capacity of the organism) occur from the first month to the nineteenth in the male and the female dancer, and in the race without respect to sex. So far as I know, data for the construction of plasticity curves such as I hope in the near future to be able to present for the dancing mouse have not been obtained for any mammal. At present it would be hazardous for me to attempt to state any general conclusion concerning the relation of docility to age. The initiative of the dancer certainly varies with its age. In scope the action system rapidly increases during the first few months of life, and if the animal be subjected to training tests, this increase may continue well into old age. The appearance of noticeable quiescence does not necessarily indicate diminished initiative. Frequently my oldest mice have shown themselves preëminent in their ability to adjust their behavior to new conditions. However, I have not studied individuals of more than eighteen months in age. One would naturally expect initiative to decrease in senility. All that I can say is that I have seen no indications of it. We may now briefly consider the principal sex differences which have been revealed by the experiments. In sensitiveness I have discovered no difference, but it should be stated that no special attention has been given to the matter. In docility the males usually appeared to be superior to the females. This was especially noticeable early in my visual discrimination tests. The males almost invariably acquired a perfect habit quicker than the females. I may cite the following typical instances. Number 14 acquired the black-white habit with 40 tests; No. 13, with 60 (Table 10, p. 109). Of the five pairs of individuals whose records in white-black training appear in Table 43, not one contradicts the statement which has just been made. It is to be noted, however, that under certain conditions of training, for example, 20 tests per day, the female is at an advantage. Recently I have with increasing frequency obtained measures of docility which apparently favor the female. That this difference in the results is due to a difference in age is probable. In labyrinth tests the female is as much superior to the male as the male is to the female in discrimination tests. From the tables of Chapter XIII I may take a few averages to indicate the quantitative nature of this difference. A degree of proficiency in labyrinth B attained by the males after 7.0 trials was equaled by the females after 6.2 trials. In labyrinth C the males acquired a habit as a result of 18.7 trials; the females, as a result of 13.8. And similarly in labyrinth D, 6.1 trials did no more for the males than 5.9 did for the females. That at the age of about one month the male dancer should be able to acquire a visual discrimination habit more rapidly than the female, whereas the female can acquire a labyrinth habit more readily than the male, suggests an important difference in the nature of their equipment for habit formation. One might hazard the suggestion that the male depends more largely upon discrimination of external conditions, whereas the female depends to a greater extent than does the male upon the internal, organic changes which are wrought by acts. At any rate the female seems to follow a labyrinth path more mechanically, more accurately, more easily, and with less evidence of sense discrimination than does the male. Finally, in concluding this chapter, I may add that in those aspects of behavior which received attention in the early chapters of this volume the dancers differ very markedly. Some climb readily on vertical or inclined surfaces to which they can cling; others seldom venture from their horizontally placed dance floor. Some balance themselves skillfully on narrow bridges; others fall off almost immediately. My own observations, as well as a comparison of the accounts of the behavior of the dancer which have been given by Cyon, Zoth, and other investigators, lead me to conclude that there are different kinds of dancing mice. This may be the result of crosses with other species of mice, or it may be merely an expression of the variability of an exceptionally unstable race. I can see no satisfactory grounds for considering the dancer either abnormal or pathological. It is a well-established race, with certain peculiarities to which it breeds true; and no pathological structural conditions, so far as I have been able to learn, have been discovered. I have presented in this chapter on differences a program rather than a completed study. To carry out fully the lines of work which have been suggested by my observations and by the presentation of results would occupy a skilled observer many months. I have not as yet succeeded in accomplishing this, but my failure is not due to lack of interest or of effort. CHAPTER XVIII THE INHERITANCE OF FORMS OF BEHAVIOR In a general way those peculiarities of behavior which suggested the name dancing mouse are inherited. Generation after generation of the mice run in circles, whirl, and move the head restlessly and jerkily from side to side. But these forms of behavior vary greatly. Some individuals whirl infrequently and sporadically; others whirl frequently and persistently, at certain hours of the day. Some are unable to climb a vertical surface; others do so readily. Some respond to sounds; others give no indications of ability to hear. I propose in this chapter to present certain facts concerning the inheritance of individual peculiarities of behavior, and to state the results of a series of experiments by which I had hoped to test the inheritance of individually acquired forms of behavior. My study of the nature of the whirling tendency of the dancer has revealed the fact that certain individuals whirl to the right almost uniformly, others just as regularly to the left, and still others now in one direction, now in the other. On the basis of this observation, the animals have been classified as right, left, or mixed whirlers. Does the dancer transmit to its offspring the tendency to whirl in a definite manner? Records of the direction of whirling of one hundred individuals have been obtained. For twenty of these mice the determination was made by counting the number of complete turns in five-minute intervals at six different hours of the day. For the remaining eighty individuals the direction was discovered by observation of the activity of the animals for a brief interval at five different times. Naturally, the former results are the more exact; in fact, they alone have any considerable quantitative value. But for the problem under consideration all of the determinations are sufficiently accurate to be satisfactory. The distribution of the individuals which were examined as to direction of whirling is as follows. RIGHT WHIRLERS LEFT WHIRLERS MIXED WHIRLERS TOTAL Males 19 19 12 50 Females 12 23 15 50 The frequency of occurrence of left whirlers among the females is unexpectedly high. Is this to be accounted for in terms of inheritance? In my search for an answer to this question I followed the whirling tendency from generation to generation in two lines of descent. These two groups of mice have already been referred to as the 200 line and the 400 line. The former were descended from Nos. 200 and 205, and the latter from Nos. 152 and 151. Individuals which resulted from the crossing of these lines will be referred to hereafter as of mixed descent. There were some striking differences in the behavior of the mice of the two lines of descent. As a rule the individuals of the 200 line climbed more readily, were more active, danced less vigorously, whirled less rapidly and less persistently, and were in several other respects much more like common mice than were the individuals of the 400 line. It is also to be noted (see Table 5) that few of the litters of the 200 line exhibited auditory reactions, whereas almost all of the litters of the 400 line which were tested gave unmistakable evidence of sensitiveness to certain sounds. These differences at once suggest the importance of an examination of the whirling tendency of each line of descent. The results for the several generations of each line which I had opportunity to examine are unexpectedly decisive so far as the question in point is concerned. INDIVIDUALS OF THE 200 LINE MALES FEMALES First generation No. 200, ? No. 205, ? Second generation No. 210, Mixed whirler No. 215, Left whirler Third generation No. 220, Mixed whirler No. 225, Mixed whirler Fourth generation No. 230, Right whirler No. 235, Mixed whirler Fifth generation No. 240, Right whirler No. 245, Left whirler INDIVIDUALS OF THE 400 LINE MALES FEMALES First generation No. 152, Left whirler No. 151, Left whirler Second generation No. 410, Left whirler No. 415, Right whirler Third generation No. 420, Left whirler No. 425, Left whirler One line of descent exhibited no pronounced whirling tendency; the other exhibited a strong tendency to whirl to the left. Are these statements true for the group of one hundred individuals whose distribution among the three classes of whirlers has been given? In order to obtain an answer to this question I have reclassified these individuals according to descent and direction of whirling. INDIVIDUALS OF THE 200 LINE RIGHT WHIRLERS LEFT WHIRLERS MIXED WHIRLERS TOTAL Males 7 6 8 21 Females 5 8 8 21 12 14 16 42 INDIVIDUALS OF THE 400 LINE RIGHT WHIRLERS LEFT WHIRLERS MIXED WHIRLERS TOTAL Males 4 9 1 14 Females 6 9 4 19 10 18 5 33 INDIVIDUALS OF MIXED DESCENT 9 10 6 25 Three interesting facts are indicated by these results: first, the inheritance of a tendency to whirl to the left in the 400 line of descent; second, the lack of any definite whirling tendency in the 200 line; and third, the occurrence of right and left whirlers with equal frequency as a result of the crossing of these two lines of descent. It is quite possible, and I am inclined to consider it probable, that the pure dancer regularly inherits a tendency to whirl to the left, and that this is obscured in the case of the 200 line by the influences of a cross with another variety of mouse. It is to be noted that the individuals of the 200 line were predominantly mixed whirlers, and I may add that many of them whirled so seldom that they might more appropriately be classed as circlers. THE INHERITANCE OF INDIVIDUALLY ACQUIRED FORMS OF BEHAVIOR The white-black discrimination experiments which were made in connection with the study of vision and the modifiability of behavior were so planned that they should furnish evidence of any possible tendency towards the inheritance of modifications in behavior. The problem may be stated thus. If a dancing mouse be thoroughly trained to avoid black, by being subjected to a disagreeable experience every time it enters a black box, will it transmit to its offspring a tendency to avoid black? Systematic training experiments were carried on with individuals of both the 200 and 400 lines of descent. For each of these lines a male and a female were trained at the age of four weeks to discriminate between the white and the black electric-boxes and to choose the former. After they had been thoroughly trained these individuals were mated, and in course of time a male and female, chosen at random from their first litter, were similarly trained. All the individuals were trained in the same way and under as nearly the same conditions as could be maintained, and accurate records were kept of the behavior of each animal and of the number of errors of choice which it made in series after series of tests. What do these records indicate concerning the influence of individually acquired forms of behavior upon the behavior of the race? TABLE 53 THE INHERITANCE OF THE HABIT OF WHITE-BLACK DISCRIMINATION Number of Errors in Daily Series of Ten Tests MALES FEMALES SERIES FIRST SECOND THIRD FOURTH FIRST SECOND THIRD FOURTH GENERA- GENERA- GENERA- GENERA- GENERA- GENERA- GENERA- GENERA- TION TION TION TION TION TION TION TION No. 210 No. 220 No. 230 No. 240 No. 215 No. 225 No. 235 No. 245 A 6 5 6 7 8 4 4 7 B 6 8 8 8 8 7 6 5 1 6 7 6 5 7 6 5 4 2 4 3 1 5 5 6 4 5 3 3 1 4 5 3 4 4 3 4 5 0 3 4 2 1 3 1 5 3 0 4 2 1 3 3 0 6 2 1 4 2 2 1 1 1 7 1 0 3 1 1 1 2 0 8 0 0 1 0 0 0 2 3 9 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 10 0 0 1 0 2 1 1 11 0 0 0 3 0 0 12 0 0 0 0 0 13 0 0 0 0 14 0 I have records for four generations in the 200 line and for three generations in the 400 line.[1] As the results are practically the same for each, I shall present the detailed records for the former group alone. In Table 53 are to be found the number of errors made in successive series of ten tests each by the various individuals of the 200 line which were trained in this experiment. The most careful examination fails to reveal any indication of the inheritance of a tendency to avoid the black box. No. 240, in fact, chose the black box more frequently in the preference series than did No. 210, and he required thirty more tests for the establishment of a perfect habit than did No. 210. Apparently descent from individuals which had thoroughly learned to avoid the black box gives the dancer no advantage in the formation of a white-black discrimination habit. There is absolutely no evidence of the inheritance of this particular individually acquired form of behavior in the dancer. [Footnote 1: This experiment was interrupted by the death of the animals of both lines of descent.] INDEX Abnormal dancers. Acquired forms of behavior. Act, useless, repeated. Activity, periods of. Affirmation, choice by. Age, peculiarities; maximum age; and intelligence. Albino cat; dog. Alexander and Kreidl, young dancer; behavior; tracks of mice; behavior in cyclostat; behavior of white mouse and dancer; structure of ear; deafness. Allen, G. M., drawing of dancer; heredity in mice. Alleys, width of, in labyrinths. Amyl acetate for photometry. Anatomy of dancer. Animals, education of. Appuun whistles. Audition. _See_ Hearing. Averages, dangers in. Baginsky, B., model of ear of dancer. Bateson, W., breeding experiments. Behavior, of dancer; inheritance of; when blinded; equilibration; dizziness; structural bases of; of young; changes in; useless acts; under experimental conditions; in indiscriminable conditions; value of sight; in labyrinth experiments; modifiability of; history of; explanations of; individual differences in. Blinded dancers, behavior of. Blue-orange tests; blue-red tests; blue-green tests; blue-green blindness. Bradley papers. Brain, structure of. Breeding of dancers. Brehm, A. E., "Tierleben". Brightness vision; preference; check experiments; relation to color vision. Cages for dancers. Candle meter. Candle power. Cardboards, for tests of vision; positions of. Care of dancer. Castle, W. E., drawing of mouse; cages. Cat, albino; training of. Cerebellum of dancer. Characters, acquired. Check experiments. China, dancers of. Choice, exhibition of; by affirmation; by negation; by comparison; methods of. Circling, a form of dance. Circus course mice. Cleghorn, A. G. Climbing of dancer. Cochlea, functions of. Color blindness. Color discrimination apparatus. Colored glasses. Colored papers. Color patterns of dancers. Color vision, problem; methods of testing; tests with colored papers, tests with ray filters, orange-blue tests, yellow-red tests, light blue-orange tests, dark blue-red tests, green-light blue tests, violet-red tests, green-blue tests, green-red tests, blue-green tests, blue-red tests, structure of the retina, conclusions, of different animals, Comparative pedagogy, Comparison, choice by, Cones, lacking in eye of dancer, Corti, organ of, in dancer, Cotton mouse, Curves, of habit formation, irregularities of, of labyrinth habit, of discrimination habit, of learning and re-learning, of plasticity, Cyclostat, behavior of dancer in, Cyon, E. de, dancer pathological, behavior, behavior of blinded dancers, varieties of dancer, space perception, individual differences, anatomy of dancer, hearing of dancer, pain cries. Dancers, occurrence among common mice, varieties of, hybrid, Dancing, forms of dance movement, whirling, circling, figure-eights, manège movements, solo dance, centre dance, direction of, periods of, amount of, causes of, sex differences in, individual differences in, Darbishire, A. D., breeding experiments with dancers, Deafness of dancer, causes of, Descent, lines of, Development of young dancer, Differences, individual, sex, Direction of movement, choice by, Direction of whirling, Discrimination, visual, box, of brightness, white-black and black-white, of grays, habits, by odor, by form, method, habit defined, Diseases of dancer, Dizziness, visual, rotational, Docility, Dog, albino, training of, fear of electric shock. Ear, structure of, structural types, model of, of rabbit, functions of, movements of, Educability of dancer, Education, human, methods of, of vision, Efficiency of training, Electric-box for visual tests, Electric-labyrinth for habit experiments, Electric-shock as punishment for mistakes, Epidemic among dancers, Equilibration in dancer, Error curves, form of, Error records versus time records, Errors, in labyrinths, nature of, types of, value of, number of, Even numbers to designate males, Excitability of dancer, Experience, value of, influence of, Eyes, of dancer opening of retina of Fear, in dancer Females, designated by odd numbers dancing of voice of _See_ Sex Fighting of dancers Figure eight dance Filters for obtaining colored light Food of dancer Form discrimination Frog, reactions of repetition of act by Functions of eye Galton whistle Gestation, period of, in dancer Gray papers Green blue tests Green-red tests Grouping for averages Guaita, G von, breeding experiments with dancers Haacke, W, description of dancer, origin of dancer breeding experiments Habit, of dancing, discrimination, useless labyrinth, duration of, reacquisition of, relations of, Habit formation, and the senses, _versus_ habit performance, in the dancer and in the common mouse, curves of, speed of Habituation to sounds Hacker, dancing shrews Hair, appearance of Hamilton, G V, experiments with dog Hatai, S, the dancer Head, shape of, in dancer Hearing, in dancer in young in adult methods of testing, in frog Hefner unit of light Heredity _See_ Inheritance Hering, E, colored papers History, of dancer of acts Hunger as motive in experiments Hybrid dancers Imitation in dancer Index of modifiability Individuality Inheritance Inhibition of an act Initiative of dancer Insight of dancer Intelligence, measures of, comparisons Interrupted circuit for experimental use Irregular labyrinths Janssen-Hoffman spectroscope Japan, dancers in Judgment in dancer Kammerer, P, dancing wood mice, Kishi, K, dancer in Japan origin of race, equilibration, blinded dancer, structure of ear, wax in ears, tests of hearing König tuning forks, steel bars Kreidl, A _See_ Alexander Labyrinth, forms of, labyrinth A, errors in, tests, labyrinth B, tests, labyrinth C, labyrinth D, a standard labyrinth, regular and irregular labyrinths Labyrinth errors and individual tendencies Labyrinth habits, Labyrinth method, Labyrinth path, formula, method of recording, Ladder climbing tests, Landois, H, account of dancer, Lathrop, A, dancers, Learning, process, methods of in dancer, by being put through act, by imitation, by rote, rapidity of, permanency of, learning and relearning, curves of, Left whirlers, Life span of dancer, Light, reflected, transmitted, unit of measurement, control of, Litter, size of, in dancer, Lummer-Brodhun photometer. Males, dancing of, fighting and killing young, designation of, voice of, _See_ Sex Manège movements, Mark, E L, cages, Maze _See_ Labyrinth Measurements, of light, of rapidity of habit formation, of intelligence, of efficiency of training, Memory, defined, for ladder climbing, tests of, measurements of, span of, for brightness, for color, Method, of studying dance, for testing hearing, indirect, for testing vision, motives, for brightness vision, for color vision, of shifting filters, of testing form discrimination, of testing Weber's law, development of methods, of choice, food box, labyrinth, of recording errors, of training problem method, labyrinth method, discrimination method, of recording labyrinth path, qualitative versus quantitative, of studying senses, values of methods, of measuring intelligence, quantitative, comparisons of, Milne-Edwards, origin of dancer, Mitsukun, K, the dancer in Japan, Mixed whirlers, Modifiability, of behavior, of useless acts, index of, Motives, for activity, for choice, avoidance of discomfort, in labyrinths, desire to escape, to get food, to avoid pain, Motor, tendencies, ability, capacity Movements, of ears, _Mus musculus L_, _Mus spiciosus L_, _Mus sylvaticus L_. _Nankin nesumi_, name for dancer, Negation, choice by, Nendel, R, gray papers, Nerve, eighth, Nervous system, Nest materials, Noises, effects of, Numbers, odd for females, even for males, reference, _See_ Bibliographic List. Odors, discrimination by, Old Fancier's description of dancer, Olfactory sense _See_ Smell Orange-blue tests, Orientation of dancer, Origin of dancer; by selectional breeding; by inheritance of an acquired character; by mutation; by pathological changes; by natural selection. Panse, R., structure of ear; explanation of deafness. Papers, Nendel's grays; Bradley's colored; Hering's colored. Parker, G. H. Path in labyrinth, record of. Pathological condition of dancer. Pedagogy, comparative. Perception, of brightness; of color; of movement; of form. Peru, dancers in. Petromyzon, semicircular canals of. Photometer, Lummer-Brodhun. Plasticity of dancer; curves of. Position choice by, of cardboards. Preference for brightness, tests of. Preliminary tests. Probable error. Problems, of structure; of method. Punishment versus reward. Putting-through, training by. Qualitative methods. Quantitative methods. Rabbit, ear of. Rawitz, B., behavior of dancer; structure of ear; deafness of dancer; hearing in young. Ray filters. Reactions, to sounds; to disagreeable stimuli; valueless. Reasoning, implicit. Reconstruction method. Records, of markings of dancers; of time; of errors; of path. Red, stimulating value of; vision. Reference numbers to literature. _See_ Literature on Dancer. Reflected light. Refrangibility and vision of dancer. Regular labyrinth. Re-learning, relation to learning; curves of. Reliability of averages. Repetition of useless acts. Rest-interval. Restlessness, of dancer; cause of. Retina of dancer. Retzius, ear of rabbit. Reward, for performance of act; versus punishment. Right whirlers; behavior in labyrinth; occurrence of; inheritance of tendency. Rods of retina. Rotational dizziness. Rubber stamps of labyrinths. Saint-Loup, R. Schlumberger, C.; wood carving with dancers. Selenka, ear of rabbit. Semicircular canals. Sense organs. Senses, and habit formation; differences in. Sensitiveness Sex, recognition of, designation of, peculiarities Shellac to coat cards Shrews, dancing Sight, role of, _See_ Vision, Brightness Vision, and Color Vision Smell sense of, in labyrinth habits Sniffing by dancer Solutions as ray filters _Sorex vulgaris L_ Sound, reactions to Space perception Spectroscope Spectrum, stimulating value of Standard, candle, light, labyrinth Stine, W M, photometrical measurements Strength of dancer Structure, of brain, of ear, of eye Swinhoe, mice in China Temperament of animal Temperature sense Tests, visual, number of, per day, Threshold of discrimination Time records Touch, and labyrinth habits Training conditions of, Weber's law, methods of, and retraining, in labyrinths, efficiency of, two test, ten-test, twenty-test, continuous, relation to methods, spread of Transmitted light. Variability of dancer, Variable light. Varieties of dancer Violet red tests Vision, brightness vision, color vision, training of, importance of, conclusions concerning Visual dizziness Voice of dancer Watson, J B, habit formation Waugh, K, color vision apparatus, retina of mouse Wax, plugs of, in ear of mouse Weber's law, tests of, apparatus Weldon, W F R, breeding experiments, Whirling of dancer Yellow Red tests Young dancers, killing of, by male, description of, development of, hearing of, intelligence of, size of Zoth, O, origin of dancer, size of young mice, the senses of dancer, behavior, dancing, equilibration, climbing dancers, individual differences, tests of hearing, vision 
33434	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: THE FOX AND THE HEDGEHOG. Page 202.] THE SQUIRRELS AND OTHER ANIMALS; OR, ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF MANY OF THE SMALLER BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. BY GEORGE WARING. LONDON: HARVEY AND DARTON, GRACECHURCH STREET. THE SQUIRRELS AND OTHER ANIMALS. CHAPTER I. "Bless me, I do believe I have been asleep!" said a squirrel, one fine morning in early spring, when the delicious warmth of the sun had reached him in his winter retreat, and roused the lazy little fellow from a two months' nap. The truth is, that he and his family had fallen asleep at the first setting in of the cold weather, and had passed the dismal winter in a state of profound repose, except, that, during a warm day or two in January, they had roused themselves for a short time, and eaten a few nuts and acorns from their winter store. "Yes, I have certainly been asleep," said the squirrel, "and I fancy I have had a pretty long nap too. Well, I declare, my lazy wife and children are lying there still, curled up like so many dead things! Hallo, Mrs. Brush! come, get up and eat some breakfast. Here is the sun shining in most gloriously at the mouth of the hole, and I hear the blackbird's merry whistle in the grove below. Ah! they wont move, so I'll have a run this fine morning, and see how the world looks now. Perhaps when I come back they may be awake." So Master Brush went to the entrance of his nest, which was situated at a great height from the ground, in a commodious hollow of a magnificent oak-tree. "Oh joy!" he exclaimed, when he had looked around him for half a minute, "I see those delicious buds are beginning to sprout. Nobody can tell how I long for some fresh green food again! Nuts and acorns are all very well, but then they are _terribly dry_. Here goes for a leap, then!" [Illustration: THE SQUIRREL. Page 4.] So saying, the active little fellow sprang from his hole, and if you had seen him, you would have thought that no animal without wings could have ventured upon such a leap without being dashed to pieces upon the ground. But Brush had nothing to fear; for though he had no wings, he knew that his beautiful bushy tail, and his legs, stretched out straight from his body, would bear him up in the air, and prevent his falling too heavily. Then he had very strong legs for his size, especially his hind legs, and his claws were so sharp and hooked, that he could skip along the boughs, without the least danger of falling off, and he could even run up and down the perpendicular trunks of trees, almost as easily as we can walk upon the level ground. So when Brush leaped from the entrance of his hole, instead of falling to the earth, he pitched lightly upon a bough of the tree a long way below him, and ran along it for a short distance. Then he leaped to another bough still lower, from the end of which, he very easily reached the next tree, and so on, from tree to tree, till he found himself in a well-known grove of young larches, at some distance. Here he immediately fell to work, nibbling the fresh green buds and tender bark. He sat upright, as squirrels generally do when they are eating, using his fore-feet as hands to hold his food, and very pretty he looked. But I think, that, if the gamekeeper had seen him injuring the young trees,[1] he would not have been very well pleased, and perhaps he would have put his gun to his shoulder and shot poor little Brush, if he had not received orders to the contrary. For though his master knew that the squirrels injured his young trees sometimes, he would not allow them to be killed. [1] I should be sorry to bring a false accusation against the squirrels, the most beautiful and entertaining of all the British quadrupeds. But the whole truth must be told. They _do_ occasionally injure young trees by feeding on the buds and bark; and a relation of mine, who has an estate in the West of England, informs me that his plantations have suffered considerably from their attacks. In his woods, squirrels are unusually abundant, and in consequence their depredations are the more evident. But, generally speaking, these animals are not sufficiently numerous to cause any serious injury to our plantations, and the pleasure they afford us by exhibiting their wonderful leaps and feats of agility among the summer branches, more than repay us for their very trifling thefts. This gentleman had a particular reason for protecting the squirrels in his woods. One day the gamekeeper shot a very fine one, and brought it up to the house as a present for his master's little daughter Jane, who was confined with a disease from which she never recovered. At first, the child was pleased with her new plaything, but her tender heart was pained when she saw its beautiful eyes becoming dim, and recollected that, perhaps it had left in its nest some young ones, that were perishing for want of its care. Her grief was increased by fancying that, as the animal had been killed on purpose for her, she had been the cause of its death, and though her parents said all they could to comfort her, they could hardly make her believe that she was not to blame; for when people are very ill they often have strange fancies. Poor little Jane died a few days after, and almost the last words she spoke were, "Papa, don't let Harvey kill any more squirrels." Her father carefully attended to this request of his darling little girl--his only child--the joy of his heart--and though, like most country gentlemen, he was exceedingly angry if any person stole his game, I believe he would rather have lost fifty pheasants or hares than one squirrel. _And so would I_, had I been poor little Jane's papa! But we must not forget Master Brush, who has been seated all this time in the larch-plantation, making a famous meal upon the aromatic buds and tender bark. "Ah!" said he to himself, "if those lazy creatures in the nest yonder did but know what delicious food there is here!" Then he continued munching and skipping about the trees for some time longer. But presently the weather began to change. The sun hid his glorious face behind dark clouds; a fierce easterly wind whistled through the trees; a cold driving rain came on, and winter seemed to be returned again. "Oh, dear me," said Brush, "this will never do! I don't like this sort of thing at all! the nest is the best place I declare." When he reached his own tree, he was obliged to ascend to his nest by a different way, for squirrels cannot leap up to any place that is very far above them; so he ran along the ground for a little distance, to the bottom of the oak, which was surrounded by a very close thicket of brambles. In this thicket lived several families of dormice, who were Brush's relations, and the waggish squirrel called out to one of them as he passed, "Hallo, cousin Gotobed! The summer is almost over. If you don't make haste, all the nuts and acorns will be gone!" But there was no possibility of making his cousin Gotobed hear; for you must know, that a dormouse is a very sleepy little fellow indeed; even more so than a squirrel. Brush was soon in his own warm nest, where he found all his family safe, and sound asleep, as he had left them. This nest, as I have mentioned, was made in a hole in the upper part of a very large oak-tree, and was almost as dry and warm as any bedroom in our houses. It was lined with dry leaves and soft moss, and in another part of the hole, which was large enough for five or six squirrels' nests, there was a great heap of nuts, acorns, and beechmast, which the careful Brush and his family had collected in the autumn. Besides this stock of food, there were two more hoards, hidden in holes in different parts of the tree for the cunning squirrels thought, that, if some thief should wish to rob them of their treasures, he would not be very likely to discover all three of their storehouses. If it were not for this large stock of provisions, the poor squirrels would be starved to death, in very mild winters, because then they do not sleep so much, and fresh food cannot be procured. When Brush was in his comfortable nest, safe from the cold wind and rain, though he had almost filled his stomach with young buds, he thought he would try one of his nuts, just to see how they had kept through the winter. Holding the nut in his hands, his sharp teeth soon gnawed through the shell, and when he had reached the kernel, the dainty little fellow would not eat a bit till he had carefully removed every particle of the dry brown skin from it. "A very sweet nut, I declare," said he, "nuts are not to be despised, after all. Dear me, I think I feel rather sleepy again! Nuts are not bad things, but as I was saying before, rather dry, when one has nothing else. But really I am very sleepy. 'Tis either the cold wind, or the famous breakfast I have made, I suppose;--very sleepy--indeed,--upon--my--word." The last words sounded exactly as your voice would, if your head was covered up under the bed-clothes. The truth is, that, while Brush was talking to himself, he had gradually changed his position from sitting upright to lying down on his side. Then he slowly rolled himself up into a round ball, with his head and back closely covered by his beautiful tail. This served him famously for a blanket, and so we may say, that his last words were really spoken _with his head under the bed-clothes_. By way of filling up the time till the fine weather returns, and our sleeping friend uncurls himself again, I will give you a very short description of another sort of squirrel, which lives in the woods of America, and is even a much better leaper than ours. It is called the flying squirrel, though that is not a very proper name, for it cannot really fly; I mean that it cannot raise itself from the ground, like a bird can. But it can leap to a surprising distance, for besides a large bushy tail, it has a very curious membrane, or skin, on each side of its body, reaching from the fore to the hind leg. So when the flying squirrel leaps, it stretches out this skin as wide as possible, and as the air bears it up, it appears almost to _fly_ from one tree to another. Travellers who have seen them, tell us that when a number of them leap at the same time, they appear, at a distance, like leaves blown off by the wind. CHAPTER II. After several days of cold wintry weather, the sun burst through the clouds again, calling into life plants, and insects, _and squirrels_. Brush and his wife, and their three children, who were born the preceding summer, and had lived with their parents through the winter, were all awake and enjoying themselves again. How they frolicked and chased each other about from tree to tree, and played at hide-and-seek among the branches! You would have thought that they had laid wagers with each other, who should venture upon the most difficult and dangerous leaps. Then what feasting there was upon buds and young bark! and though this fresh green food was very nice as a change, still they all seemed to agree with our friend Brush, that nuts and acorns were not to be despised neither. Once or twice the gamekeeper gave the young squirrels a terrible fright by shouting to them, when they were making free with the tender bark of his master's trees; but their parents told them, as they had often done before, that there was nothing to fear from Harvey, nor from his frightful looking gun. I hope you have not forgotten who it was that had saved the lives of so many squirrels. But if Harvey's frolicsome young spaniels, Flora and Juno, had met with one of our friends at a distance from any tree, I am afraid it would have been a bad business, for squirrels cannot run very fast on the ground, and their bushy tails seem rather in the way there. And the cunning little animals appear to know this, for though they sometimes come down to the ground, you will very seldom see them at any great distance from a tree. A few days after the squirrels roused themselves from their long winter sleep, their cousins, the dormice, in the thicket at the foot of the tree, opened their sleepy eyes at last, and came out of their nests. But when they were once thoroughly awake, their eyes did not look sleepy at all, but on the contrary, were most beautifully bright and dark, and rather large for the size of the animal. [Illustration: THE DORMICE. Page 23.] I call the dormouse a relation to the squirrel,[2] because in some respects, he is really very like him, though at first sight you would not think so, and would perhaps say, that he was very little different from a common mouse, except in being rather fatter, and of a prettier colour. But his tail, though not nearly so large and bushy, is something like the squirrel's, and not at all like that of the mouse, which is almost entirely bare of hair, and in my opinion, has a very ugly and disagreeable appearance. The tail of the dormouse is handsome, and useful also, for when he sleeps he curls it over his head and back, to keep him warm and comfortable. Then in his habits he resembles the squirrel, for like him he can climb trees well, though he cannot leap very far, and he likes to dwell in the shade and retirement of the pleasant woods, far from the habitations of man. Here he generally makes his nest, which is composed of moss and leaves, in the thickest parts of bushes or underwood, and he lays up a winter store, like the squirrel. [2] The genus _myoxus_, to which the dormouse belongs, appears to be intermediate between the genera _sciurus_ and _mus_, in each of which this animal has been placed by different naturalists. Dormice are such sociable little creatures, that several families are sometimes found living close together, like those that had chosen their habitations at the foot of our squirrel's great oak-tree. Perhaps before I have finished this tale I may have something more to tell you about little Gotobed, the dormouse. Do you suppose that Brush and his family spent the whole of the summer in frolicking and feasting? No, indeed! for even squirrels have work to do, and duties to perform. So, after a few days spent in the merry way I have described, one afternoon, when their children were gone on an excursion to the larch-grove, Mr. and Mrs. Brush perched themselves up on the topmost branch of their own oak-tree, and had some very serious conversation together. At least, they meant that the conversation should be serious; but Brush was such a merry waggish fellow, that he seldom could talk very long upon any subject without a laugh or a joke. "Well, my dear," he began very gravely, "this is the third family you and I have seen playing around us. For three years we have lived happily together in this old oak, and a finer tree or a more comfortable nest than ours I do not believe can be found in the whole world." Here in the gaiety of his heart he darted off to a neighbouring bough, and after performing a few strange antics for his companion's amusement, he was again perched up by her side, and went on with his speech. "Three years," continued he, "yes, I declare, it is three years since I persuaded you to have nothing more to say to that tiresome old fellow Bigtail, and to take me for a companion instead." "Come, come, you rogue," said his wife, "if this is the serious conversation you wanted to have with me, you may as well hold your tongue." "Ha! ha!" he proceeded without attending to the interruption, "ha! ha! I remember that conceited old fellow Bigtail, and how you preferred him to me, because his tail was the least bit in the world longer than mine. I made him ashamed of his fine tail though at last. Oh, what fun! I shall never forget it! He was stuck up by your side, talking the most ridiculous stuff, I dare say, when I leaped down suddenly upon him from the branch above. I never did anything better in my life! Over he went like a dead thing. The old fellow was too much frightened, and too stiff in his joints, to catch hold of the boughs below, so down he tumbled to the ground. I declare I thought he was killed! But no, he only broke--ha! ha! ha! I am ready to die when I think of it--he only _broke his tail_! Ha! ha! he never could hold it up over his back afterwards, so there it was always dragging behind him, like a bundle of dead grass. What a ridiculous old fellow! After that tumble, he always went by the name Brokentail, instead of Bigtail; and from that time you never could abide him, you know." "Really, Mr. Brush," said his partner, "if you make such a fool of yourself, I wont speak another word to you all day. What has all this nonsense to do with the serious conversation you wished to have with me about the children?" "Oh yes, it was about the children I wanted to talk to you," replied Brush, "and not about old Broken----. Well, well, I wont say anything more about him, then, so come and sit down quietly again, and I'll be very serious indeed! There! now we are all right once more. Well, my dear, now then about these children of ours. I believe you know what I am going to say--_we must part from them_, Mrs. Brush! It is high time for you and me to see about putting the nest in order for another family, and these three children of ours must go and see the world, and find companions for themselves, for the rest of their lives. I only hope that when the boys are seeking for companions they will not break their tails like old ----; I mean, I hope they will both meet with as good a partner as their mother has been to me." The two old squirrels had a great deal more talk upon this subject, but as conversation about family affairs is often rather tiresome, I shall not repeat all they said about the matter. Though they both regretted parting from their children, they were convinced that a separation was necessary, and they agreed that the sooner it took place the better. Perhaps you may think they were rather unamiable and hard-hearted, in treating their children in this manner; but you must remember that, though these were not yet a year old, they were very nearly, if not quite, as large as their parents, and were well able to take care of themselves. When the young squirrels were informed of this determination, they were very sorry at first; but the thoughts of being their own masters, and of having comfortable nests of their own, reconciled them to the separation. I never heard what good advice their parents gave them at parting, but I have not the least doubt that Brush cautioned them to beware of the sad fate of old Brokentail. So the three children, leaving their native tree, set off by themselves into the wide world, and I have nothing more to tell you about _them_. We must see what Brush and his companion did during the rest of the summer, what adventures they met with, and what new acquaintances they found among the various animals that lived in the neighbourhood of their beautiful oak-tree. Here I must give you a short description of the place where this tree grew, and where it had flourished for five or six hundred years at least. It was in a small, but very beautiful valley, through which ran a brook of the clearest water imaginable. This little stream came down from the hills, and ran through the upper part of the valley, in a very furious manner, as if it were in a hurry to be gone, that it might join the dark deep river, and reach the wide ocean at last. But just at the spot where our oak raised its head very far above all the trees around it, the impatient stream gradually changed its manner of proceeding, and began to run more slowly, as if desirous of remaining a little longer in such a delightful spot. So, after quietly winding backwards and forwards for some time, it spread itself out at last into the form of a most beautiful little pond, through which the current was so slow that it was hardly perceptible. The gentleman to whom this valley, and the country around it, belonged, had spent many hundreds of pounds, and had employed the most skilful people he could find, in making his gardens and pleasure-grounds as gay and beautiful as possible. And yet, if you had walked all over his property, you would have said that no part of it was half so lovely as this little retired valley, where the art of man had never done anything to add to its exceeding beauty. The gardener's spade and pruning-knife had never been used here. Everything you saw was fresh and unaltered from the hand of God himself. I think the most beautiful part was the pond, and the open space just around it; for here the finest wild-flowers grew in abundance, and the noble oak-tree was so near, that, when the winds of autumn came down the valley, the trout, that delighted to swim in those pure waters, were sometimes startled by a shower of acorns, falling down from the outermost branches, and making a terrible splash over their heads. I have not time to describe more than a very few of the plants which were to be found in the pond and on its banks. There was the water-lily, with its large green leaves laying flat upon the water, and its splendid white flowers, just raising their heads above the surface; the flowering-rush, which bears a bunch of beautiful pink blossoms on a high tapering stem; and the buckbean, which, though at a distance it does not look so grand as the other two, has such an exquisitely beautiful fringe on its pinky-white flowers, that the most skilful painter has never yet been able to produce even a tolerable imitation of it. Many other lovely plants there were growing round the pond, and in other parts of this delightful little valley: plants which exceeded in beauty many of those we cultivate with so much care in our gardens and hot-houses. But when I began this little history I meant to write about "Squirrels and other Animals," and not to give a description of plants. We must therefore return to our friends in the oak-tree. CHAPTER III. After the departure of their children the squirrels felt, as you may suppose, rather dull and lonely at first, but they very wisely made use of a remedy for low spirits, which I would strongly recommend to you, whenever you find yourself melancholy or uncomfortable in your mind from any cause. And particularly when you are so, _without_ any apparent cause; for we sometimes see people very dismal and melancholy, when they have every good thing they can wish, and _ought_ to be cheerful and happy. This wonderful and never failing remedy for low spirits is _employment_! Try it, my dear melancholy young reader, and whether you have a good reason for your sadness or not, you will at least have met with something worth remembering in this history. Our squirrels, then, instead of sitting moping side by side on a bough, and grumbling out to each other, "What miserable creatures we are!" instead of thus giving way to their melancholy thoughts, they immediately began to make use of the _remedy_ I have mentioned. The first thing they did was carefully to examine the nest, to see what repairs it stood in need of. It would at any rate require a fresh lining of moss and leaves; so all the old bedding, which I must confess was rather dusty and untidy, was taken off, and kicked out of the hole, together with a quantity of nut-shells and other rubbish, which had been collecting there for some months. When this work was finished, it was found that the under part, or groundwork of the nest, which consisted of small twigs and fibres curiously interlaced, was very rotten, and required to be almost entirely renewed. So there was plenty of work to do, and very diligently the squirrels laboured to complete it. Not that they worked like slaves, from morning till night. Oh no! they allowed themselves abundance of time for feasting and fun, for they were such merry, light-hearted creatures, that they could not live without a good game of play now and then. They even mixed play with their work; for when they had to go to a little distance for some particularly fine soft moss, or other materials for nest-building, they were sure to have a race, to try which of them could reach the place first. So the days passed by right merrily. "It is very odd," said Brush, one evening, just before he rolled himself up for the night in the warm _blanket_ I have before mentioned; "It is very odd that we should have lived almost all our lives so near that family of water-rats, in the bank of the pond, and have known so little about them. I always thought them a savage, bloodthirsty, set of fellows, and that they would make no scruple of killing fish, or young birds, or mice, or any other small animal that they could master. But what do you think Gotobed told me just now, as I came up the tree? Why, he says, that it is all a mistake, and that he is certain that these water-rats are a very decent, quiet sort of people, feeding on vegetables, like ourselves. He says, that as he was creeping about just now among the grass, close to the edge of the pond, but a long way from the water-rats' holes, which are all on the opposite side, he suddenly found himself quite close to one of these creatures, who was perched up on a flat stone, and busily gnawing the root of some plant. Our poor little cousin, you know, has not much presence of mind, so in his fright, and terrible hurry to escape from the monster, he slipped off the bank, and rolled into the water. The splash he made frightened the rat, who plumped into the water too, and so there they were both swimming close together. Gotobed expected to be eaten up in a minute, but the rat only said to him, 'Ha! ha! little fellow, is it only you? Not much used to swimming I see! But come down some fine evening, and I'll teach you. The water is too cold just now for such as you.' "Gotobed was too much frightened to say a word, so he scrambled up the bank, and ran home to his nest as fast as possible. Poor little thing! he looked so miserable, with his beautiful fur dripping wet, and sticking close to his body." "What a ridiculous story," said Mrs. Brush, who could hardly keep herself awake till it was finished; "Why I have heard Gotobed say, that his mother used to tell a story about a relation of hers, who lived a good way off, who was killed and eaten up in a moment, by one of these very water-rats. I have even heard it said, that the males will often kill and eat the young ones, if their mothers are not careful to hide them. Depend upon it, they are a horrid set, and I often wish they did not live quite so near us." "Well," said Brush, gaping, "I'll try to find out something more about them to-morrow; but I declare I can't keep awake any longer just now." So the next afternoon, our squirrel, who had some courage, and a great deal of curiosity, determined, if possible, to learn something about the character of these water-rats, one of whom, by a kind word spoken to little Gotobed, had so altered his opinion of their disposition and manner of living. Brush chose the afternoon for his visit, because he had observed that these animals came out of their holes more at that time than in the middle of the day. But our inquisitive friend did not allow his curiosity to lead him into any danger, in this inquiry into the proceedings of his neighbours. He therefore crept through the high grass to the other side of the pond, and very quietly climbed up into a low willow-tree, overhanging the bank, in which the water-rats had made their habitations. Here, concealed among the leaves, he had a full view of all that passed below. Close to the steep bank, in which these animals had bored many round holes, was a small flat space of fine pebbles and sand, sloping down into the water on one side, and on the other, bordered by a thick bed of the sweet-smelling water-mint, with here and there a stem of the plant called horsetail, towering up like a gigantic palm-tree in the midst of a forest. On this pleasant little pebbly beach, Brush perceived several water-rats, both old and young; and some very grave looking faces were peeping out of their holes in the bank, watching the proceedings of their companions below. One of those on the beach had his attention entirely engaged by the root of some plant, which he was nibbling; another was busily cleaning his fur with his fore-paws; and two very young ones were paddling about in the shallow water, into which their mother, as Brush supposed, had taken them, for the first time in their lives, to give them a lesson in swimming. Sometimes one of the grave looking gentlemen in the bank, either for amusement, or in search of food, would leap, or rather _tumble_, from the mouth of his hole, into the water, and dive at once to the bottom, with the greatest ease imaginable; but he could not remain under much more than a minute at a time, for want of breath. When he came up again to the surface, Brush was exceedingly surprised to see that, instead of appearing wet and miserable, like poor little Gotobed after his ducking, his hair was as dry as if he had never been into the water at all. "How delightful it must be to dive and swim about like that!" said the squirrel to himself, and he could hardly help jumping in to try his skill, forgetting that he was not formed for moving through the water, but for running and leaping about among the branches of trees. I wonder how he would have managed his bushy tail in swimming, and how funny it would have looked with the long hair all wet and sticking together! Perhaps he thought of this himself. At any rate, he did not jump into the water just then, but remained looking down from his hiding-place in the willow-tree, very much pleased with what he had hitherto seen of these clever divers and swimmers. "Well," said he to himself, "they don't eat their own young ones, that is clear enough; but how they might treat any other small animal that came in their way I cannot possibly tell. And yet the great old rat that frightened poor Gotobed so terribly, behaved very well, I am sure; but then perhaps he was not hungry just then, and only asked him to come again and be taught to swim that he might make a meal of him another time. So I won't have anything to say to them just yet. Perhaps if I wait here a little longer, I may see something that will decide the matter." And the matter _was_ decided, sooner than Brush expected. At a little distance from the water-rats' station, he now perceived a most singular looking animal, which was quite a stranger to him, though he had a pretty large acquaintance among his neighbours. It was about the size of a common mouse, but of a deep velvety black above, and white underneath, and its nose was very long and pointed, like the snout of a pig. His eyes were very small indeed, and looked like little black beads deeply set in his head. This curious, but beautiful little animal behaved exactly like a person who knows that he has a great deal of work to get through in a very short time. I mean, that he was very diligent and active, and seemed determined not to lose a moment by stopping to rest himself, or to consider what he should do next. He appeared to be an excellent swimmer and diver, thrusting his long nose under the leaves at the bottom of the water, in search of insects I suppose, and when he came to the surface again, his fur was quite dry, like that of the water-rats. So when he dived, this water-repelling property in his fur made him appear of a beautiful silvery white colour, from the number of small air bubbles he carried down with him. He was never still for a moment, either diving to the bottom, or swimming, with a very quick wriggling motion on the surface, and every now and then he would come to the shore, from which he seldom ventured very far. "A very queer little fellow indeed, upon my word!" said Brush, "I wonder who he is. I cannot help liking him though, for he seems so clever and industrious. Oh dear me! how I wish I could dive in that beautiful clear water! But I declare he is coming nearer and nearer every minute to that old rat, who is so busy gnawing his root. Now, when the little one passes him, we shall see what will happen. I am sure the old rat must be terribly hungry, or he would not gnaw that disagreeable looking root so eagerly, and if he does not pounce upon the little black fellow, and tear him to pieces, I shall be very much astonished indeed." The squirrel was not long kept in suspense, for just as he had finished talking the matter over to himself, the little velvet-coated swimmer, intent upon his own important business, came paddling along very near the shore, and at last landed quite close to the spot where the rat was still engaged with his root. But when he perceived the visitor, he immediately left off eating, and slowly turned his head towards him! [Illustration: THE WATER-RAT AND WATER-SHREWMOUSE. Page 61.] "Horrible! he'll have him now! 'Tis all over with him," said Brush, quite trembling with eagerness to see the end of the affair. "'Tis all over with the little black fellow, and these rats are rascals after all!" But he was very much mistaken, for the only animal that lost its life upon the occasion, was a small insect, which the bead-like eyes of little velvet-coat had perceived crawling upon a stone, near the water's edge, and in his eagerness to secure this valuable prize, I suppose he did not observe that such a large fierce-looking creature was close by, or perhaps he had found from experience that there was nothing to fear from him. However, the little fellow boldly seized his prey, and darted off with it into the water, while the quiet old gentleman went on munching his root again. Now when Brush witnessed this peaceable meeting of the two animals, proving that water-rats were not the cruel, savage tempered creatures, they are generally supposed to be, he was so delighted, that he quite forgot that he had intended to have been a concealed spectator of their proceedings. So he called out as loud as he could,-- "Capital, I declare! 'Tis all a lie from beginning to end. Little Gotobed was right after all. They _are_ a very decent, quiet set, as he said." But this expression of his sentiments quite interrupted the peaceable employments of the company below, for the loud strange voice nearly over their heads frightened them so, that they all either dived under water, or retreated into their holes. However, the squirrel had now satisfied his curiosity, and as he was rather frightened himself at the disturbance he had made, he hastily leaped down from his hiding-place, and scampered home to his nest. As for little velvet-coat, I never heard what became of him, but no doubt he found a place to hide himself in. But I believe I have never told you who he was. He was a _water-shrewmouse_,[3] and very much like the common shrewmouse that we often find lying dead in lanes and pathways. But he was larger than the common shrewmouse, and altogether a much handsomer animal. [3] Though this beautiful and interesting little animal, the water-shrewmouse, was for a long time almost unnoticed by the naturalists of this country, it cannot be considered as a rare species. Bell, in his History of British Quadrupeds, informs us, that it is not uncommon in many parts of England, and he says, that its black velvet-like fur and long snout have sometimes given rise to an opinion, that it is a small species of mole, to which animal its structure and habits indicate a near affinity. CHAPTER IV. When Brush gave an account of all that he had seen to his partner, who was of a much more cautious disposition than himself, he was rather vexed that she still seemed not quite convinced that these water-rats were such peaceable, good-tempered animals as he believed them to be. It was very tiresome, to be sure, but she _would_ keep on relating all the foolish old tales she had ever heard about their killing other animals, and even their own children. We all know how disagreeable it is when we have been taking a great deal of trouble to persuade other people to think like ourselves on any subject, to find at last, after half-an-hour's talking, that they are just as much attached to their own opinions as ever. Now our squirrel was really a very good-tempered fellow in general, but I must confess that he was rather cross on this occasion; and though he did not say much about it, he showed that he was "a little out of sorts," as people say, by curling himself up for the night fully half an hour before his usual time of going to sleep. But the next morning he awoke in a very good-humoured mood indeed, and worked hard all day with his companion, to complete the nest. He seemed to have forgotten the subject of their dispute, till towards evening, when, as he was sitting alone on a branch of the oak, on the side nearest the pond, a _bat_ suddenly fluttered by, skimming with zigzag flight over the still water. "There goes old Leatherwing, I declare!" exclaimed Brush: "the very person I was wishing to see! I'll call out to him to stop the next time he passes, and ask him to set me right about those water-rats. He is a very learned old fellow, and I believe knows something about every animal in the woods. To be sure, old Leatherwing is often rather tiresome and prosy, and he _will_ talk a great deal about his own affairs; but then he is a very clever old gentleman for all that, and has seen a great deal of the world." For some time Leatherwing continued flying backwards and forwards, over the upper end of the pond, and seemed determined not to approach the oak-tree. The truth is, that his game, which consisted of gnats and other small insects, was abundant just at that spot, and a very hearty supper he made that evening. I suppose he found the legs and wings of these insects rather dry food, for sometimes, as he skimmed over the water, he would dip in like a swallow, and drink a few drops as he passed, in order to wash them down. While he is eating his supper, I intend to give you a short, and I hope not a very uninteresting description of his curious wings. As for his habits and manner of passing his time, I dare say that he will take care to say something upon that subject himself, when he gets into conversation with Brush, who has just informed us that "old Leatherwing _will_ talk a great deal about his own affairs." Almost every person, whether living in the town or country, must often have observed the bat flitting about trees and houses in a calm summer evening, but many have never taken the trouble to examine him more closely, or have not had an opportunity of doing so. To form a proper idea of the structure of the bat's wings you must understand, that his fore-legs, or his _arms_, as I will call them, are almost as long as his body, and that all the four fingers of his hands are _quite as long as his arms_. Between these immensely long and slender fingers, is stretched, (like the silk on the framework of an umbrella,) a very thin elastic skin, or membrane,[4] which is continued from the tips of the little fingers to the ankles of the hind-legs, and then very nearly to the end of the tail, which is almost as long as his body. So that the animal, when spread out in the flying position, is entirely surrounded with the membrane, except at the head and neck. The toes of the hind-foot, and the thumb of the hand, are not attached to the skin, and are not longer than those of other animals. These are furnished with sharp and hooked claws, so that the bat can cling very firmly to walls and perpendicular rocks. [4] The membrane of the bat's wing appears to possess a most exquisite and inconceivable sensibility. Cruel experiments have proved that this animal, when deprived of the senses of seeing, hearing, and smelling, will still fly about a room, without ever coming into contact with the walls, or with threads stretched across in all directions. Cuvier supposes, that "the propinquity of solid bodies is perceived by the manner in which the air re-acts upon the surface of the wings." This astonishing faculty, which almost indicates the possession of a sixth sense unknown to us, is no doubt of great use to the bat, as it enables him to pursue his rapid zigzag flight in the dark, without fear of striking against the boughs of trees, or other obstacles. The animal introduced in the tale is the common bat, _Vespertilio pipistrellus_ of modern naturalists. It is now ascertained that no less than seventeen species of this singular family are natives of this country. Some of them are very much larger than the common bat, measuring fifteen inches in the extent of their wings. It has been said, that the bat is nothing more than a _mouse with wings_. Nonsense! except in its size, it has no more resemblance to the _mouse_, than it has to the _lion_; and those who think that the two animals are at all alike can never have examined them attentively. However, in some parts of the country the bat is still called by its old English name, "_the flittermouse_," that is, the mouse that _flitters_, or _flutters_ about. When Leatherwing had caught most of the insects at the upper end of the pond, he thought he would try what success he could meet with lower down; and then he came so near the oak-tree that Brush managed to make him hear at last. So the bat, who happened to be in rather a talkative mood, left off insect-hunting for the present, for the sake of enjoying a little gossip with his old acquaintance. He settled on a branch close by, but instead of sitting down like other animals, the queer little creature chose to hang himself up by his hind-claws, with his head downwards, and his wings closely folded round him. In this strange, and, as most people would think, extremely uncomfortable position, old Leatherwing began the following conversation:-- LEATHERWING. Well, Master Brush, what do you want with me now? Just made such a glorious supper! Do you know, I fancy that the insects about this pond of yours are fatter and better tasted than any others, and that's the reason I come so far after them. For _'tis_ a good way off, you know, to the old church-tower where I live. Well, but as I was saying, what do you want with me this evening? BRUSH. Why, I want to ask you a question, for to tell you the truth, yesterday evening Mrs. B. and I had a little---- LEATHERWING. What! a little addition to your family? you don't say so! Well, I thought it was almost time, for we are nearly in the middle of summer. Now do you know Mrs. Leatherwing was confined several days ago, and that's the reason she is not with me this evening. I left her flying up and down a shady lane nearer home, carrying her baby about with her, as she always does, you know, till it grows pretty strong. She had only one this time. And so Mrs. Brush is confined, is she? Well, I congratulate you. How many has she got? Five or six, I'll be bound! BRUSH. She hasn't got any at all yet, Mr. Leatherwing, though what may happen in the course of a few days I cannot possibly tell. But I want to ask you a question about something that has puzzled us very much lately. LEATHERWING. To be sure, I dare say I shall be able to answer it; for though I say it myself, I _am_ able to give you an answer to almost any question. For you see, friend Brush, I have lived all my life in towns and villages, and so I have heard and seen a good deal of what passes in the world. Then I am not like you sleepy animals, who hardly ever wake up more than once or twice during the whole winter. To be sure, I take a little nap myself, of about a couple of months, in the very coldest weather, when there are no insects stirring. We bats, you know, can't eat nuts, and such sort of trash; and so when there is no wholesome food to be met with, we are obliged to sleep a little, just to pass away the time. Now, if I could contrive to keep a winter stock of _gnats_, as easily as you can of _nuts_, I declare I would not sleep much more in winter than in summer. For I don't mind a little frost, not I! only in cold weather, instead of flying about in the evening, as I do at this time of the year, I choose the sunshine in the middle of the day, because then I have the best chance of meeting with some game. And yet ignorant people say that I cannot bear the light of the sun! I can tell you, that I picked up a pretty good meal of insects one bright day last winter, when the ground was frozen hard, and I heard some of the stupid boys in our village call out, as I passed them, 'Why! there's a bat! Throw thy cap at him, Jem! What business has _he_ got to be flying about now, I wonder?' And then another said, 'Throw at him! Well done! Once get him down on the ground, and he can neither run nor fly. These fellows can't raise themselves off the ground, dost know!' "Great fools! I might easily have shown them that I can both run very well on the ground, and fly up from it when I choose; but I did _not_ choose to try it just then. But let me see, what were we talking about? You were going to ask me a question, I think." As Brush had now an opportunity of speaking at last, he related to Leatherwing all the tales he had heard about the evil doings of the water-rats, and also what he had himself observed of their habits. Then he asked the bat for his opinion upon this puzzling question, and the old fellow gave it as follows:-- LEATHERWING. The longer I live in the world, my good friend Brush, and the more I see of the world, the more I am astonished at the stupidity and amazing ignorance of the people I meet with! To be sure, everybody has not had such good opportunities as myself of obtaining information, or has not made such good use of them. But let that pass. Now for these water-rats. In the first place, then, they _are_ a very quiet, inoffensive people, and would no more think of killing a mouse, or a young bird, or any other small animal, than you would. The only mischief they ever do is by boring their holes through the embankments of canals and ponds, and in this manner the meadows have sometimes been flooded. In the second place, all the other wicked deeds that they have been accused of should be laid to the charge of the _common brown rat_, a ferocious, savage-tempered creature, which often lives in the banks of ditches, and is then supposed by silly people to be the same animal as the water-rat. BRUSH. Capital! so I was right after all about the character of these good-tempered neighbours of ours. Ho, ho! Mrs. Brush, I shall have something to tell you presently! Then it must have been one of these common brown rascal that killed little Gotobed's relation. LEATHERWING. To be sure it was, for as I tell you, they are fierce, savage creatures, and are so voracious that they will eat anything. They destroy young birds and other animals; and if no other food could be found, I dare say they would be wicked and unnatural enough to make a meal of their own young ones. And yet, let me tell you, they are very clever, sensible creatures, if they would but make a better use of their abilities. The worst of it all is that they are _foreigners_, and have no business in this country at all, though from what part of the world they came I cannot tell you.[5] And if I cannot answer this question, you may be sure, friend Brush, that there are not many people living who can. However, here the rascals are; and what do you think they have been endeavouring to do ever since they came? Why, they have been trying to destroy all the rats that had possession of the country before their arrival; and as these old English black rats, as they are called from their colour, are smaller and weaker than themselves, I dare say that they will at last succeed in their wicked designs. So as this vile foreign brown rat is fond of living in the banks of ditches and of ponds, near mills and stables, he is often thought to be the same as the quiet respectable water-rat. For, as I say, the stupidity and ignorance of people is really amazing! Why, the two animals are no more alike than you and I are, I was going to say; certainly not nearly so much alike, except in size, as yourself and the little Gotobeds down below, there. No! these water friends of yours should never acknowledge the common rat as a cousin; but they are not very distantly related to a much more noble animal--to the _beaver_,[6] friend Brush, though perhaps you have never heard of such a creature. [5] The common brown rat, which has now been an inhabitant of this island for about one hundred years, is often improperly called the "Norway rat," as if it came originally from that country; whereas, it was quite unknown there when it first received that name. Pennant believes that it was brought over in merchant-vessels from the East Indies. It is even supposed, that the old English black rat, as it is called, is not originally a native of this island, as no mention is made of it in any author earlier than the middle of the sixteenth century. [6] The characters of the teeth, the form of the body, and the habits of the water-rat, fully justify its removal from the genus _mus_, to which the common rat belongs, and indicate a pretty close affinity to the beaver. Linnæus himself appears struck with this, for though in his _Systema Naturæ_ he has placed the water-rat in the genus _mus_, in a subsequent work he has removed it to that of _castor_. Well, well, we must not expect too much from people who have never had an opportunity of learning. I could tell you a good deal about this relation of the water-rat, this clever fellow called the beaver, and about the famous wooden houses he makes of the trunks and branches of trees. But I declare I must fly home, and see how Mrs. Leatherwing is getting on. Oh! stop a minute, though; I forgot one thing. Perhaps _you_ don't believe that I can run on a level surface, or raise myself from it, as you may never have seen me do it. Look here, then! So saying, the funny little creature made what he called a _run_, along the large branch upon which Brush was seated, and at the end of this _run_ of two or three feet in length, he gave a sort of a little spring into the air, and instantly spreading his beautiful wings, he sailed away from the tree, saying, "Good bye, Brush! what d'ye think of that, eh?" But the squirrel did not return the farewell, for when he saw the very ridiculous manner in which his friend shuffled along, while he performed the feat which he called _running_, he was seized with such a fit of laughter that he could make no reply, and he was even obliged to hold fast, lest he should fall off the branch. When he had recovered from his merriment, he began to talk to himself, in an unusually grave and moralizing strain. "Well, Mr. Leatherwing," said he, "you are an odd fellow, a very odd little fellow indeed! But I have learned something from you this evening, besides the information you gave me about those rats. I have learned that every animal has a different part to perform in the world, and that we all should be content with our situations, and not attempt to do things for which we were never intended. Now I suppose nobody will deny that I can run and leap famously, so that I am quite at home among the boughs of this beautiful oak; but I cannot fly at all, and I believe I should be a very poor swimmer. Then there is my neighbour, the water-rat, who can both dive and swim like a fish, but he can no more fly than myself, and I am sure he cannot leap half so well. As for old Leatherwing, the _air_ is for him, and most delightful it must be to fly and sail about as he does. But then he must be content with _flying only_, for I think he would be much worse off in the water than I should, and when he attempts to run or to leap--Ha! ha! what fun! I must go and tell Mrs. Brush all about that." CHAPTER V. The important event upon which Leatherwing had been in such haste to congratulate his friend, really took place in two days after the conversation just related. In other words, the joys and cares of our squirrels were increased by the presence of four young ones, as fine healthy little creatures as their hearts could desire. And I am sure that more attentive and affectionate parents than Brush and his companion could not be found, even among the human race. For many days they made a point of never leaving the nest at the same time, for fear their tender family should suffer for want of their parents' warmth and protection. And though Brush was naturally such a playful rattling fellow, you might have observed some difference in his behaviour, since he became the father of four helpless children. I mean, that he spent less time in play, and seldom rambled to any great distance from the oak-tree. So for a week or two our squirrels passed their time very sedately and quietly, taking care of their children, and watching with great delight their rapid growth from day to day. One evening, just before bed-time, Brush was peering out at the entrance of his hole, as he often did before he curled himself up for the night, perhaps that he might see what sort of weather it was likely to be the next day. Whatever his object might have been, he certainly _was_ looking out of his hole on this particular evening; when, casting his eyes down the valley, he perceived a small dark speck dancing about in the air, and as it drew nearer, and became more distinct, he saw that it was his friend Leatherwing, coming to enjoy his favourite sport of gnat-catching, over the surface of the pond. "I feel rather sleepy," said Brush, "but I have not seen the old fellow for some time, and I _must_ tell him what has happened since he was here last." So he ran out to the end of a branch, and when the bat came within hail he begged him to stop for a few minutes' chat. Now, though Leatherwing was very hungry, and his game was abundant, yet his love of a little gossip was so great, that it overcame his dislike to the feeling of an empty stomach, and he was just going to alight on the branch, by the side of his friend, when he suddenly called out in a voice of extreme terror, "Back, friend Brush! Run back to your hole directly! Back, you foolish fellow, or the cruel wild-cat will have you!" [Illustration: THE WILD-CAT. Page 99.] Horrible! the monstrous wild-cat, the British tigress as she has been called, was in the tree indeed! She was crouching down on a neighbouring branch, between the squirrel and the nest, preparing herself for the fearful spring, by that peculiar wriggling motion of the hinder part of the body which you may often have observed in your favourite kitten, when she is just going to dart at the plaything you have kindly made for her amusement. At first sight of the monster, the poor little squirrel was so terrified that he had no power to move, for her great savage eyes were fixed upon him, and sent forth a horrible greenish coloured light, which seemed to have the effect of preventing any attempt at escape. But he recovered himself at last, and it was well for him that he did so; for hardly, by means of a tremendous spring, had he reached a distant bough, when his fierce pursuer, who must have leaped at the same instant, alighted on the very spot he had just quitted. And now between these two animals, so unequally matched in strength and size, you might have seen a most exciting and hardly contested race; the squirrel doing his utmost to secure his safety, by reaching his hole, and the wild-cat following with terrible eagerness, in hopes of obtaining a most delicate and favourite morsel for her supper. Had they both started fairly, I think that the fierce beast would have had no chance of overtaking her prey; but, as I have mentioned, she was between the squirrel and his fortress when the chase began, so that he could not run at once to his only place of refuge. Poor Brush! he was hardly pressed indeed, and several times, when he found his retreat to his hole cut off, he gave himself up for lost. He owed his safety at last, not to his wonderful agility alone, but also to his _lightness_, which enabled him to pass over the smaller branches that would have bent or broken with the weight of his enemy. To keep you no longer in suspense, you must know, then, that the poor breathless terrified squirrel reached his hole at last, and no sooner was he safe within it, than an immense paw, furnished with terribly sharp, hooked claws, was thrust in as far as it could reach, and Brush could see the light of those horrid, yellow-green eyes, gleaming in upon him through the narrow opening. He even fancied he could smell her hot tainted breath, as she growled with rage and disappointment. "Baulked, Mrs. Wild-cat! Exactly three seconds too late, Mrs. Tabby! Yes, Madam, if you had reached the hole only three seconds earlier, you would have made a very nice supper of poor Brush, and his nest would that night have contained a sorrowful widow and four fatherless children. A little too late, I am happy to say, Mrs. Tabby! Only a very little too late, but 'a miss is as good as a mile,' as people say. What! you are in a terrible rage now, are you? And you will growl, and spit, and try to thrust your great ugly head into a hole only just large enough for the slender body of Brush to pass easily through it. There! you may do your worst, and when you have tired yourself, you may go and look for a supper elsewhere, only I cannot possibly wish that good luck may attend upon your hunting. One thing I _squirrels_ wish though, that Harvey was under the tree just now with his gun. Well, never mind! Your time will come, I dare say." Yes, the squirrel had escaped from his terrible enemy for that time. He and his family were safe as long as they remained in their castle, and they had still sufficient food in their hoard to stand a pretty long siege, though I cannot tell what they would have done for want of water. But then how miserable it would be, to be kept close prisoners for days, or even weeks; for how could they ever be certain that their enemy was not still in the neighbourhood, or perhaps lying in wait for them behind some branch of their own oak-tree? Truly a very pitiable situation indeed! It is wonderful how we become accustomed to dangers of all kinds, and yet those who have often risked their lives in battle will tell you, that this is really the case. In his first trial the young soldier will perhaps be so terribly frightened that nothing but the certainty of being disgraced prevents his running away. But after some years spent amid dangers, the coward becomes by degrees a bold fellow, who can hear bullets whistle around him, and see bright steel flash before his eyes, if not with indifference, at least, with perfect coolness and steadiness. But what has all this about soldiers to do with the poor prisoners in the oak tree? There does not appear to be much connexion between the two subjects, certainly; but I was going to say that our _squirrels_ resembled _soldiers_ in one respect. I mean, that _they_ became rather more courageous by being accustomed to live in continual danger. For the first day or two after the chase, they were afraid to venture more than a few yards from the nest; but they rambled further by degrees, though, whenever they returned to the oak, they took care to stop in a tree at a little distance, that they might see if the enemy was not lying in ambush for them near the hole. In this manner many days passed, and they were beginning to hope that the wild-cat had quite left the neighbourhood, when they had a conversation with Leatherwing about this dreadful animal. It was really surprising what a vast deal of information this funny little fellow had picked up; but, perhaps, as he said himself, his having lived so much in towns and villages, where he could overhear the conversation of Man, might partly account for his cleverness. From him the squirrels learned that these terrible wild-cats were formerly very common in the neighbouring forests,[7] but that for many years they had been gradually diminishing in numbers, and it was now almost certain that the fierce beast which had caused them so much alarm, was the last of her race in that part of the country. Wild-cats are always much larger than the tame animals, but this creature was one of the largest that had ever been seen or heard of. She was really a formidable beast, and since she had taken up her abode in the neighbourhood, she had done a great deal of mischief to the farmers by killing their poultry, and even their young lambs. She had often been chased by the gamekeepers and others, but long experience had made her so watchful and cunning, that she had always escaped with her life, though she had sometimes smarted a little from a few shot penetrating her skin. But her fur was so thick and close that small shot could not injure her much, unless fired from a very short distance, and she took care that her enemies should not approach too near. [7] The wild-cat is now almost, if not quite extinct in England, except in the northern parts. It is still, however, to be met with in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. But the numbers of these animals that have been killed in different parts of the country have no doubt been much over-rated, as it is well known that the domestic cat will sometimes stray into the woods, bringing forth its young there, living on birds and small quadrupeds, and becoming a terrible destroyer of game. When, therefore, one of these half-wild cats happens to resemble the true wild-cat in colour, (which is an indistinct tabby,) it is at once pronounced to be a specimen of that animal. But Mr. Bell, (who, however, differs from almost all other naturalists on this point,) considers that the native wild-cat of Britain is quite a distinct species from the domestic cat, and that the latter does not owe its origin to the wild animal at all, though from what country the breed has been derived he is at a loss to determine. Such dreadful tales did Leatherwing relate of the extraordinary cunning and fierceness of this hideous animal! When he had finished, the squirrels became so terrified that they ran and hid themselves in their snug retreat, declaring to each other that they never should be happy till they were sure that the monster had been killed. They were particularly uneasy too about their young ones, who were now grown so strong that they were able to leave the nest; but their parents never allowed them to go out of their sight, or to ramble beyond the branches of the oak. One day Brush said to his partner, "Well, this is miserable work! I declare I have no peace night or day, but am always thinking or dreaming about this horrid wild-cat; I almost wish I had never been born, or at least, that I had been a water-rat, or, better still, that curious fellow called a mole, that Leatherwing talked to me about once." "And where does this mole live?" said Mrs. Brush. "Why, he spends almost all his life under the ground, and though it must be very dark and damp there, he is at least safe from being eaten up by wild beasts. He makes famous long caverns, branching out from each other and in one place he has a very comfortable nest, lined with dry grass and leaves, and among the roots of some tree he makes what Leatherwing called his fortress, because he always goes there when he is frightened. And all these nice places are safe under the ground. Oh! I really wish I was a mole! The wild-cat might come as soon as she pleased, then." "I think she would scratch the earth up with her great claws, and pull you out of your fortress, as you call it." "How could she? Why there are I don't know how many caverns, all leading from the fortress, and I could easily escape by one or other of them. Then I could dig through the earth a great deal faster than she could, if I were a mole; for Leatherwing says, that his fore-feet are amazingly large and strong. Oh! ten times stronger than mine! Then he never goes to sleep much more in the winter than in the summer, for when the ground is frozen hard, all he has to do is to dig down a little deeper, till he finds the earth soft; so he never cares what sort of weather it is, and he has no need to trouble himself about laying up a store of provisions for the winter. Oh! it must be very nice to be a mole!" "I should be afraid that my eyes would be filled with dust and dirt, when I was digging under the ground." "_Your_ great staring eyes would, I dare say, but the mole's are very different. They are so small, and covered over with fur, that he is sometimes thought to be quite blind.[8] For, as Leatherwing says, people _are_ so stupid and ignorant! But I believe the mole's little eyes are not often of much use to him, for he seldom comes out of his caverns, and when he does it is at night. I think he would be much wiser to keep _always_ under ground, and then he would be quite safe. I asked old Leatherwing how the mole could find out his food, as he always lives in the dark, and he said that his nose is more useful to him than his eyes, for he can smell anything at a great distance." [8] That acute observer, Aristotle, has been accused of inaccuracy, in saying, that the mole is absolutely blind. It has, however, been ascertained that in the South of Europe there exists another species of mole, the eyelids of which are _totally closed_, and it was probably this animal that fell under the observation of Aristotle. The mole has never been found in any part of Ireland. "And what can he find to eat under ground, I should like to know?" "Horrible! I forgot all about that when I wished to be a mole. His food, I can hardly bear even to talk about it! He lives almost entirely on _worms_! Horrid, long, twining worms! Oh! I had rather be hunted by the wild-cat every day, than eat such disgusting food as that. No, no, I don't wish to change places with the mole now, I am sure." So as Brush had neither the inclination nor the power to be transformed into a worm-devourer, he was obliged to be content with his situation as a _nut-cracker_. CHAPTER VI. Time passed rapidly on, and the autumn drew near. The young squirrels were now become so strong and active, and so fond of scampering about, that their parents could hardly prevent them from rambling away by themselves much further than was safe for them. One morning Brush was almost certain that he had seen their terrible enemy in a distant tree, and as his children happened to be unusually frolicsome just then, and determined to have their own way, he thought he would try to keep them at home, by relating a little story which he had heard at different times, from Leatherwing. The old fellow said, that, one evening, as he was flying about in a garden, he observed a very young lady sitting in a summer-house, holding in her hand the smallest mouse he had ever seen, fastened by a string and a leather collar round its neck. So, as the bat was of a very inquisitive, prying disposition, he hung himself up to the ceiling of the summer-house, determined to overhear the conversation that was going on below. It appeared that the mouse was relating his adventures to his mistress. Now to tell you the truth, this little history has no connexion with the other parts of my tale; so if you are in a very great hurry to get to the end of the book, you can skip it altogether, but I hope you will not behave so rudely to a poor author, who has really done his best to entertain his readers. Leatherwing's tale was called-- SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF THE SMALLEST QUADRUPED IN THE WORLD.[9] [9] When this was written, I was not aware that there existed in other countries a quadruped still more diminutive than our little harvest-mouse. However, as "Minimus" declares that he was much smaller than others of his species, the title of his history may still be correct. "Don't push and squeeze so Tiney! you take up more room than three or four of us." "What a story! It is you Softsides, that want to have half the nest for yourself." "Yes," squeaked sister Sleek, "and he has almost scratched my poor eye out,--the cross creature! only because I asked him to let me suck when he had had enough, and he knew how dreadfully thirsty I was." "Be quiet children, will you?" said mamma; "and let me go to sleep. You forget what a terrible headache I have, and how tired I am with running away from that frightful weasel that chased me almost to death this morning. I should like to know what you would have done if he had caught me! Now mind! if I hear any more quarrelling, as surely as a grain of wheat has a husk, I will kick some of you out of the nest, and let the weasel or the owl make a meal of you." This little specimen of a family quarrel, which took place when my brothers and sisters and myself were a few days old, and were not so large as hazel-nuts, is the earliest circumstance of my life of which I have any recollection. At this time we were eight in number, and though all of the same age, I was much the smallest and weakest of the brood, for which reason I suppose they called me "Mini-mus," or "the little mouse." My brothers and sisters despised me so for my poor health, and were so cross and tyrannical, that I verily believe I should have perished in infancy if my mother had not taken pity on me, and allowed me to suck sometimes out of my turn. The truth is, I was rather a favourite with my dear mamma; why, I cannot imagine, for I was a miserable looking little object, and was often very cross and rude to her. But since I have seen more of the world, I find that mothers of your species, my dear mistress, often show the strongest attachment to those children who are the most worthless in mind and body, and the least deserving of their affection. Well! thanks to my dear mother's care, I got through my infancy pretty well, though I am still much smaller than the rest of my family. But if you could have seen my poor brother Softsides! oh, he was a noble animal! Will you believe it? he was nearly twice my size, and such a runner and leaper! He made nothing of jumping up to our nest at one bound, without taking the trouble to climb up in the usual way. But I must leave Softsides for the present, and tell you what sort of a house our careful mother had provided for us. It was built on the top of a thistle at a little distance from the ground, and was nicely sheltered from the wind and rain by a high close hedge. It was as round as a ball, and was made entirely of the blades of grass and small straws, carefully woven together like basket-work, while the inside was as smooth and warm as possible; for there was only one very small opening, and even that was closed at night, and in the daytime when the weather was cold. A most delightfully warm, snug house it was, I assure you; but as we increased in size, it became rather too small for us, and, as I have already mentioned, we sometimes squabbled a little for want of room. Indeed I once heard mamma saying to herself, when she thought we were all asleep, "Well, if I had known that I should have had such a large family I would have built a bigger house." Now you must know that she was only one year old herself, and we were her first brood of young ones. But though this was the first nest she had ever made, she had shown great judgment in choosing a situation, which was not, as is usually the case with our tribe, in a corn-field, where both the nests and the inhabitants are often destroyed by the reapers. Fearful of this dreadful disaster, our mother had built her nest on a grassy bank, in an unfrequented meadow, in which there was no public path, and where a few quiet sheep were our only companions. The field adjoining ours was a wheat-field, and so we had an abundant supply of food on the other side of the hedge. For the first week or two we never left the nest; but mamma soon began to feed us with seeds, and when our teeth were too weak to nibble hard grains, she brought us the soft, unripe wheat, which was delicious juicy food for tender infants. Never shall I forget the terrible fright I was in the first time I ventured to leave the nest, and clamber down the thistle-stalk to the ground! My brothers and sisters had been down the day before, and laughed at my timidity; and then they boasted that they had scrambled up the bank, and looked through the hedge, into the wheat-field, where they had seen the reapers at work; and they told me that they had been terribly frightened by the barking of a large dog. But Softsides said that _he_ was not frightened a bit, and that he only came back to the nest because he wanted his dinner; and he declared that he would fight the dog the next time he saw him. Then they told me that they had seen a little girl in the wheat-field, gathering flowers, and that they had heard her sing most divinely--something about "Trip with me," and "the moon shining bright." And Softy said that he had learned part of the song, and that if we would give over prating so, and would listen to him, he would sing it as sweetly as the little girl did. So he sat up on his hinder parts, and began, "Trip with me, trip with me," but he made such a funny whistling noise through his long front teeth, that we all laughed till we cried. Then brother Softsides was angry, and bit my ear till I cried most bitterly, without laughing at all. The next day, with the help of mamma, I managed to get down to the ground, and to climb up the bank; and in the wheat-field was the little girl again, singing her pretty song, and gathering wild-flowers in the hedge. But either because she had had more practice in singing than Softy, or because her front teeth were not so long as his, her performance was much more pleasing, to my ears at least, and I did not feel at all inclined to laugh at her. Presently, another little girl, who had been all the morning gleaning, came up to her, crying, and complaining that somebody had stolen a large bunch of wheat that she had collected and hid in a corner of the field. Then we saw that the young lady with the sweet voice had a sweet disposition also, for she gave the little gleaner her last sixpence, and sent her home as happy as a bird. [Illustration: THE HARVEST-MICE. Page 134.] I was dreadfully tired with this expedition, and was quite lame for several days after, with a thorn in my left hind-foot, but at last mamma sucked it out for me. When it got well, I took courage to leave the nest again, and joined my brothers and sisters in their games of play, among the high grass, at the foot of the thistle, while mamma would sit on the nest, keeping watch lest some enemy should approach. As we became stronger and more courageous, we rambled further from home, and when the distance was not too great, I generally joined the party. All my family were now very kind to me, and I hope that I was less pettish in my behaviour to them, for mamma had convinced us how silly and wicked it is for brothers and sisters to quarrel with each other. And now I must tell you of the dreadful fate of brother Softsides. Poor fellow! he was very vain of his running and leaping abilities, and at last he perished miserably by his rashness. One fine afternoon, when we were more than half grown, Softsides, Tiney, and Sleek set off for a very long ramble along the hedge, nearly to the bottom of the field. I was too weak to join the party, but sister Sleek gave me a particular account of this unfortunate expedition. Softy was in very high spirits, and was trying to make Tiney lay wagers of so many grains of corn, about the distance he could leap. Fine fun they had, jumping and tumbling about; but at last they came to a place where some labourers had been dining, and had left a basket, with bread and cheese in it, and a small keg of beer, or cider. Our party made a glorious meal on the cheese, which was quite new food to them; and then Softsides said he would try to leap on to the keg, to enjoy the beautiful prospect. But sister Sleek begged him not to make the attempt, saying that she was sure he would come to some mischief if he did. Now I must tell you, that Sleek, though very demure and quiet in her manners, was considered to be much the most sensible of all our family; and indeed mamma, who was confined at home that day by a sprained ankle, had made her join this exploring party, in the hopes that she would keep the boys out of mischief. "Now what harm can there possibly be in trying to jump on to this keg, I should like to know?" said Softsides; "but sister Sleek, or _Meek_, if you like that name better, you are always spoiling my fun." "You may call me what name you like, Softy," replied his sister, "but I feel quite convinced in my own mind that if you don't take my advice, something dreadful will happen." And sure enough something dreadful did happen--something very dreadful indeed: for poor brother Softsides, taking a run of about a couple of feet, jumped on to the fatal keg, pretty easily, but, alas! he never jumped down again! for the heat of the sun had forced the bung out, though we could not see this from the ground. Poor Softy saw it, when too late, for he could not save himself from tumbling down headlong into the keg, where he was soon drowned, while his brother and sister were horrified by hearing him screaming for assistance, which they could not possibly give him, and lamenting that he had not taken Sleek's advice. So Tiney and his sister came back, frightened and sorrowful enough, and our cheerful home became a house of mourning. Mamma was in hysterics all night, and I verily thought we should have lost her. But sister Sleek, who knew something of the virtues of herbs, sent two of the boys into the wheat-field for a red poppy-head, which she persuaded mamma to eat, and soon after she became quiet, and slept all the next day and night. Then we were terribly afraid that she had taken so much of this powerful medicine that she would never wake again; and though Sleek said that she was not at all alarmed, I am sure she seemed very nervous and agitated, till at last our dear mother opened her eyes, and asked for some food. In one corner of our field was an old deserted stable, which we sometimes visited, partly for the sake of a few horse-beans which we found on the floor, and partly to have a chat with a very odd creature who had taken up his abode there, and with whom we had formed a sort of acquaintance. This creature was an immense _toad_, a very strange companion, you will say, for a family of little mice. Certainly, he _was_ an odd fellow, and a very ugly fellow too; but then he had the most beautiful eyes in the world, and I am sure he gave us very good advice, if we had been wise enough to have attended to it, instead of laughing at his croaking voice, and formal manner of talking. The first time we visited the hermit, as we called him, after the loss of our brother, we were almost afraid to tell him of the accident, expecting he would say that poor Softsides was rightly served, and that we should all perish like him, by our folly, if we did not pay a little more attention to the advice of our elders. But Toady had a more feeling heart than you would have supposed from his manners and appearance, and when he had heard the sad tale to an end, and we were expecting a terrible lecture, he closed his searching eyes for a minute or two, and then said, "Children, I commiserate your distress. My spirit is pained, yea, what if I say, sorely troubled and grieved, at this sad catastrophe! Unfortunate Softsides! truly he was a handsome juvenal, and active of limb withal. Know, my children, that he found favour in my sight, more especially inasmuch as I have sometimes thought that I resembled him not a little, both in feature and disposition, in the joyous days of my youth. Leave me now to meditate for a season upon this grievous visitation. In that corner you will find a few beans which I have collected for you. Peradventure, when you have finished them, I may relate some little tale or fable for your amusement. Yea, and for your instruction also, if you will receive it." So when we had finished the luncheon which the good hermit had provided for us, we seated ourselves around the entrance of his hole, when, after a few minutes' recollection, and his usual preparation for a speech, by closing his eyes for a time, he related the following FABLE OF THE SUNFLOWER AND THE MIGNIONETTE. A gigantic Sunflower reared his many-headed stem very far above all the other plants in the parterre, and affected not a little to despise their lowly condition and insignificance. A bed of Mignionette, which grew close to him, particularly excited the anger of this arrogant fellow. And "what," exclaimed he, "could the stupid gardener be thinking of, when he planted such miserable, little half-starved wretches as you in the same border as a kingly Sunflower! Does not my very name declare my rank and noble origin, in token whereof, I never fail to pay my respects to the glorious lord of the skies, by turning my head towards him, whenever he deigns to remove the misty veil from his countenance? But as for you---- By the by, do you ever mean to blossom, or have you the vanity to say, that those yellowish tufts (which at this height I can hardly distinguish from leaves) deserve the name of flowers? Ridiculous! I have a great mind to say, that if the mistress of this garden does not remove you, and some other of your vulgar companions, a little further off, I won't expand another blossom this summer; I'll kill myself in spite! I will, I declare!" The Mignionette plants were so diverted at this threat, that for some time they could not reply to his abusive speech. At length one of them quietly said, "Vain babbler! to be angry at thy impertinence would prove that we were as silly as thyself. But know this, thou empty-pated, and worthless one,--though mean in appearance, and dwarfish in stature, we are nevertheless especial favourites with our mistress, who is so delighted with the rich perfume of our 'yellowish tufts,' as thou hast the impertinence to call them, that she frequently honours them with a place in her bosom. Flowers must be very scarce before any of thy huge gaudy-coloured blossoms attain to that envied situation, I trow. But thy pride will soon be humbled, for yesterday I overheard our mistress complaining of thy encroaching shade, and directing the gardener to root thee up, and cast thee forth, to rot like a vile weed upon the dunghill, that the more humble inhabitants of the flower-bed may benefit by the life-bestowing rays of that being whom we all worship, though we are not honoured, like thyself, by bearing his name. Lo! while I speak, the gardener draweth near with his spade, and thy destruction is at hand." * * * * * Our hermit was explaining to us how we might derive instruction from this fable, when suddenly a fierce weasel and a half-grown young one bounced in through the open doorway; but fortunately for us poor little mice they did not see us for half a minute, and this delay enabled the worthy Toady to save our lives. Scrambling out of his hole, with a great deal more activity than could be expected in such a corpulent old gentleman, he exclaimed, "Enter speedily, my children!" For once we followed his advice, without asking for a reason why; but we had hardly time to take refuge, when Mother Weasel espied the last tail whisking into the hole, and screeching out to her son, "A prey! a prey! I thought I smelt mice!" at a single bound she reached the entrance. She was too late, for our protector had backed his fat body into the hole, which he fitted so exactly, that the smallest beetle could hardly have passed him. "Friend Weasel," said he, "I dispute not that thou mayst have _smelt_ mice, but this day shalt thou _taste_ none, if my protection availeth anything. Verily, it appeareth to me that for once in thy life thou art baulked." Now you must know that most animals are rather afraid to attack a toad, believing that he is a magician, and has the power of injuring his enemies by spitting at them. Whether this be true or not I cannot say, but I am sure that our friend was the most quiet, inoffensive creature on earth. But Mrs. Weasel seemed to think differently, for bounding away towards the door-way, she said to her son, "Come along, my boy! my nose tells me that they are nothing but little miserable harvest-mice. Let us try if we cannot meet with some of the great fat field-mice in the wheat-field, they are six times as large as these little wretches. For my part I am not at all hungry, but 'tis glorious fun hunting them to death." But there was another animal close at hand, who was also very fond of hunting, and for the same reason; because he thought it was "_glorious fun_." This was the little terrier dog "Pepper," whose master, Farmer Winter, had come into the meadow that morning, to see how his sheep were getting on. Now it so happened that "Pep" took it into his random head to visit the stable, and he entered exactly as Mistress and Master W. were going out. Of course our situation prevented us from witnessing this interesting meeting, but we heard a scuffle, and two loud squeaks, which our protector, who saw the whole affair from the mouth of his den, informed us were the last sounds ever uttered by the long-backed mother and son. But though Pepper had kindly shaken our enemies to death, we did not like to trust ourselves in his power, thinking that he would most likely serve us in the same manner; so we remained quietly in the hole, till our kind friend had seen that the coast was clear, and then, having thanked him for his protection, we ran home as fast as possible. We passed by the dead bodies of the weasels, and found that they were much handsomer animals than we had supposed, for though their backs were ridiculously long, their colours were very pretty; a beautiful reddish brown on the upper parts, but underneath they were as white as snow, or as your frock, my dear mistress. The hermit informed us afterwards, that they are the boldest animals for their size in the world, and that they will sometimes kill even young rabbits and hares. He said, that when a weasel attacks an animal so much larger than himself, he sticks fast to his neck, and though the poor creature runs away, he cannot get rid of his tormentor, but is soon exhausted and killed. Toady said, he once saw a weasel seized by a kite, and carried up into the air. After a little while, however, the bird began to fly very oddly, as if in pain, and at last fell down quite dead, close to the spot where the hermit was sitting. While he was in the air the weasel had killed the kite by gnawing a great hole in his side. So they both came down together, but the conqueror was not at all injured by his fall. After our fortunate escape, nothing worth relating occurred till the day I was caught by that cruel boy from whose hands you so kindly rescued me. Being now nearly full grown our mother allowed us to take care of ourselves in the daytime, but she made two of my sisters and myself sleep in the nest with her at night. One morning, wishing to see a little of the world, I set off by myself across the meadow, intending to visit a pleasant little wood we could just see from the bank above our house. But I had hardly reached the middle of the field, when a tremendous hail-storm came on. Oh! what a dreadful predicament I was in! The sheep had eaten down the grass so close that it gave me no shelter whatever, neither could I find any hole or crack to creep into, till the storm was over. So I made the best of my way back again, though dreadfully bruised by the hail-stones, and at last a very heavy one struck me such a blow on the top of my head, that I was quite stunned; and I can remember nothing more, till I found myself in the hands of your papa's stable-boy, Tom. He had picked me up, when looking for mushrooms in the meadow, and thought perhaps that I should make a nice breakfast for his kitten. But when he found me come to life again, he said he would tame me, and make me draw a little pasteboard cart to amuse his sister Jenny. You cannot think how cruelly he used me, and how he made my lips bleed by forcing an iron bit into my mouth. And then he almost killed me by trying to make me swallow raw meat, which is a sort of food none of our species can abide. Truly, I should never have lived to have related this history, if you had not come into the stable-yard to see the young rabbits. Most fortunately for me, you were singing your favourite song. I remembered the words and the sweet clear voice instantly, and I said to myself, "Perhaps the young lady that was so kind to the little gleaner, may have compassion on a poor harvest-mouse." You know the rest: I squeaked with all my might; you heard me, and soon persuaded Tom to give up his prize in exchange for a dozen fine apples from your own little tree. And now, my dear kind mistress, will you not fulfil your promise, and give me my liberty? I have been very happy with you, but I long exceedingly to return to the beautiful green bank again, and to see dear mamma, who must be dreadfully anxious about me, for it is now six days since I left the nest. Hold me up to your face, and let me read my fate in your beautiful eyes, which I declare are almost as bright and dark as my mother's. Bring me closer, quite close, for I am rather near-sighted. That will do. Oh joy! I see by those sweet sparklers, that my petition is granted, and that I shall sleep to-night by my mother's side in the downy nest on the thistle. * * * * * When this history was finished, Leatherwing said, that the little girl pressed her captive to her lips, and then, putting on her straw hat, she immediately walked out into the fields, with Minimus perched upon her hand. CHAPTER VII. It was now the season for collecting nuts, acorns, and beech-mast; and it was time that the squirrels attended to the important business of filling their several storehouses with a supply of provisions for the winter. Now their own oak would furnish acorns for hundreds of squirrels, and some beech-trees, laden with mast, were close at hand; but in order to procure hazle-nuts, their favourite food, it was necessary to go rather further from home. The nearest spot where the business of nutting could be carried on with much success, was a large hazel-copse, on the side of a hill, at the upper end of the valley. But the great difficulty was, how to obtain these nuts without risking their lives. For since the appearance of the wild-cat in the neighbourhood the squirrels had always avoided the thick bushes and underwood, knowing that she could more easily surprise them there, than among the open branches of large trees. Even in the trees they were very careful to look well about them, as they fully believed that the enemy was still in the neighbourhood, for Leatherwing, who had promised to give them early information, could hear no account of her having been killed. Indeed, he had very lately overheard a farmer complaining to a neighbour, that the night before, he had had three fine lambs killed, and several others sadly mangled by this destructive wild beast. But to pass the tedious winter without a supply of nuts appeared as great a hardship to the squirrels as it would be to us to live for several months upon bread and water. Therefore, after several consultations on the subject, it was at length agreed, that _nuts they would have_, at all hazards; for said Brush, "Better to be eaten up by the wild-cat than starved." So one fine morning the whole party set off to the hazel-copse. Now this reminds me of the happy hours I have myself passed in the woods, when I have joined a merry party of my young friends on one of those most joyful occasions, a _nutting expedition_. How can a day be passed more pleasantly? Oh! the delight of gathering the lovely brown clusters of five or six, or even sometimes seven or eight together! Then the dinner by the side of the clear stream, whose pure waters furnish not the least grateful part of the repast! and the notes of unrestrained merriment and joy, filling the woods with the echoes of sweet young voices! Even the torn frocks, and scratched hands and arms, are disregarded; and they are such common attendants upon these joyous expeditions, that to return from them with perfectly whole garments and _skins_, would imply that the bag of nuts might have been heavier, if the party had been less fearful of the brambles and thorns. Now for the squirrels again. The nuts were exactly in that state in which I like to find them--quite full and brown, and _almost_ ready to fall out of their husks. But not _quite_ ripe enough to do this, for then a great many are shaken out upon the ground, and lost. But the nuts were in perfection, and our party were employed the whole day in journeying backwards and forwards, between the hazel-copse and their storehouses in the old oak. No wild-cat or other enemy appeared, and the young squirrels began to think that their parents' continual cautions to be on the look out for this animal were unnecessary. The next day the party were again hard at work, and even the old squirrels were so busily employed in filling their own mouths, and in teaching their children how to select the ripest and soundest nuts, that they seemed almost to have forgotten that they had a single enemy in the world. They had already made several journeys, and were now eagerly engaged in some large old hazel-trees, close to a wide pathway, which had been cut through the wood for the convenience of the sportsmen. Suddenly Brush perceived, partly concealed among the thick underwood, a dark, fearful-looking object, which--_could_ it be the dreaded foe, or was it only the brown trunk of a tree? He was not long in doubt, for now the head of the monster appeared from among the leaves, and then those savage eyes! having once seen them how could he possibly mistake their terrible glances? Brush was so frightened, that he absolutely allowed three remarkably fine nuts to fall out of his mouth upon the ground, and at last he gave the note of alarm. "Fly all of you," cried he, "the enemy is close at hand!" Then he recovered sufficient presence of mind to remember how he had himself escaped from his pursuer in the oak, and he desired his family to retreat to the small outer branches of the trees, where they would but just support their weight, for he knew that the young ones were too small and weak to make their escape by flight. But this clever plan did not succeed so well in these low nut-trees as among the lofty branches of the oak, where a tumble to the ground would most likely have broken some of the adversary's bones. The cunning beast appeared to understand the difference between the two situations, but for a minute or two she remained motionless, as if she were planning the best way of making her attack. At last, with a single bound she was in the tree. She fearlessly dashed at one of the young squirrels, who sat trembling at the farther end of a branch, overhanging the pathway; it gave way beneath her weight, and both animals fell to the ground below. But while the poor little squirrel was so shaken by the fall that he could only crawl slowly away, the cat, like all animals of her kind, pitched unhurt upon her feet,[10] and was just upon the point of seizing her prey in her terrible hooked claws, when bang!--the report of a gun from the adjoining thicket. [10] It is well known that cats have the power of turning themselves over in the air, so as to bring their legs undermost, when they fall, or are thrown, from a height; but how this desirable change of position is brought about or maintained, it is not very easy to explain. One would have supposed that the centre of gravity would have brought the _back_ undermost. To prove that these animals _do_ possess the power of turning over in the air, take a cat, or a kitten, and hold her by her four feet, two in each of your hands, with her back downwards, at about the height of the table from the ground. Now if you open both your hands suddenly, your assistant in the experiment will change her position almost as quickly as a shuttlecock turns round when struck by the battledore, and will alight safely on her feet. But if you hold her at a _very short_ distance from the ground, poor puss will not have time to execute her clever feat, and will fall on her back. Therefore, for her sake, practise this experiment _over a bed_. Here I must inform you, that Harvey, the gamekeeper, who had long been looking out for the destroyer, had this morning been informed by some boys who were nutting in the copse, that they had seen her running across an open space, with a fine cock pheasant in her mouth. Now the keeper had found, from his experience on two former occasions, that it was useless to fire small shot at an animal who had such a defence in her thick close fur, and who was too wary to allow him to approach very near. Therefore, giving his double-barrelled fowling-piece into the hands of his son, a lad of about fourteen, who accompanied him, he armed himself with a _rifle_, which is a gun made on purpose for throwing bullets very accurately, to a long distance. He left all his dogs at home, thinking they would be of more harm than use. Harvey and his boy had already been some hours in the wood, and were beginning to think that they had received false information, when young Dick, who was a remarkably sagacious, intelligent fellow, suddenly stopped his father, and pointed to some trees at a little distance. "Well, lad," whispered Harvey, "what dost see now?" "Look at those squirrels, father!" "I see 'em plain enough, but it won't do. Though if it wasn't for master's orders, I should like to try the rifle upon one of 'em, I must say." "No, no, father," replied Dick, "that isn't what I mean. But only look at them! They aint eating, nor doing nothing, but they have all got their heads one way, and they stick themselves up as if they were frightened at something. Depend upon it, father, the wild-cat isn't far from those squirrels, if she is in the wood at all." "_I see!_" replied his father: "that's as bright a thought as ever came into thy head, son Dick! But we have no chance among these plaguy thick bushes. We must creep quietly out into the path, and then perhaps we may get a shot at the varmint." So the two cat-hunters concealed themselves behind a tree, by the side of the path, and just as the wild-cat was pouncing upon her prey, a ball from the keeper's well-directed rifle laid her howling upon the ground, with the bone of her hind-leg smashed to atoms. But he who supposes that one of these ferocious animals is conquered merely because her leg is broken, will find himself very much mistaken. A wild-cat conquered! no, indeed! You may kill her, but she _never yields_, so long as she has any life remaining. And so Harvey found to his cost. For when he saw the animal rolling upon the ground, supposing her to be mortally wounded, he ran up towards her, intending to finish the affair with a blow from the butt end of his rifle. Now this imprudent conduct proved that he had never encountered a wounded wild-cat before. No sooner had he approached within a few yards of her, than, regardless of her broken leg, she sprang upon him like a fury, and before he could aim a blow at her, she was at his throat, with her fore-legs clasped round his neck. Frightful! only imagine the horrors of such an embrace! In vain poor Harvey strove with all his might to cast off the savage creature from him, and I cannot tell how the affair might have ended, if Dick had not been at hand to render assistance. Waiting for a favourable opportunity, he put the muzzle of his gun close to the creature's body, and firing both barrels at once, in his eagerness to do the business effectually, he made such a terrible hole in her side, that, if she had had nine hundred lives, instead of the usual moderate number of nine, they would all have taken flight through the wound in an instant. She fell to the ground, a mangled, blackened corpse. And how did poor Harvey escape? Better than could have been expected, considering the powerful teeth and claws of his adversary. To be sure, he was pretty severely bitten and scratched, but his wounds were not dangerous; and when he had recovered his breath, and wiped the blood from his face, the first thing he did was to stretch his vanquished foe at her full length upon the ground. Then laying his rifle by her side, he said to Dick, "She's full four feet long, if she's an inch, and I have gained my wager! I laid a bet of a guinea, with Lord What's-his-name's keeper, that she would turn out to be four feet long, and so she is, and more, as I can tell by the length of this barrel. But only look at her teeth, Dick, and her terrible claws!" "And what a great bushy tail!" said Dick, rubbing it through his hands; "and see, father, 'tis the same size from end to end, and quite black at the tip, just as that learned stranger gentleman up at the hall said that all real wild-cats were." "A learned gentleman! Let me tell thee, son Dick, if thee hadst had thy face and hands clawed to pieces like mine are, thee wouldst have said the varmint was _wild_ enough, in all conscience, without waiting for any _learned gentleman_ to tell thee so. How my face do smart to be sure! And look at my new jacket! All burnt and torn to pieces! 'T was a wonder my arm wasn't blown off too. Well, boy, 't was a bold shot, and I can't tell what I should have done if somebody hadn't been by. But come, throw the beast over thy shoulder. I must go home and get mother to put some plaister on these bites and scratches." At the very beginning of this fierce conflict, all the squirrels, except the father of the family, fled from the scene of action, and in five minutes they were safe in the nest. But Brush was so determined to see the end of the affair, that he remained concealed in the hazel-tree, till Dick had fired the finishing shot; and then, being convinced that he had nothing more to fear from his old enemy, he scampered off to his home, to relate what he had seen. CHAPTER VIII. I have not much more to tell you about "Squirrels and other Animals," for by the time the tenants of the oak-tree had collected a good stock of provisions, the weather had become rather cold and dismal, and it seemed likely that the winter would set in very early that year. But the time for their long sleep was not yet quite arrived, and on fine days they were still to be seen abroad, roaming about from tree to tree, and sometimes bringing home a few more nuts and acorns. But to find these they were now obliged to search on the ground, for the wind had shaken the ripe fruit from the trees. Now they were relieved from the dread of being seized by their terrible enemy, they could ramble about where they pleased. One day as they were rummaging about among the dry leaves, under the hazel-bushes, the squirrels fell in with the very oddest creature they had ever seen. They had heard from Leatherwing that such an animal lived in the woods, but they did not think they should ever meet with him, as the bat had told them that he never came abroad till it was dark. But the old fellow was mistaken a little for once in his life, for here this most extraordinary looking creature certainly was, in the middle of the day.[11] From the description Brush had received of this animal, he knew at once that he was one _Touchmenot_, a hedgehog; and that though he was considered to be rather a queer-tempered fellow, he was not likely to do him any harm. But the young squirrels and their mother were so frightened at his very warlike appearance, that they leaped up into the bushes overhead. [11] I can bear witness, that hedgehogs are not always nocturnal animals, having more than once seen them running about in the daytime, and I remember capturing one that was trotting across the corner of a field when the mid-day sun was shining brightly. And if the hedgehog occasionally kills snakes, as Mr. Bell informs us, how can he meet with these animals by night, when they are invariably safe in their holes? [Illustration: THE SQUIRREL AND THE HEDGEHOG. Page 189.] Brush remained on the ground, but his family observed that he took care to keep close to the stem of a small tree, for he thought that if his new acquaintance should become uncivil, he could not possibly climb up after him. After the two animals had looked at each other for some time in silence, Touchmenot began the conversation. * * * * * TOUCHMENOT. Well! what d'ye stare at? What d'ye want? Never saw me before, eh? Hope you will remember me when we meet again, for you have looked at me long enough, I am sure, with those great black eyes of yours. Oh! don't be frightened! You may stare at me till you are blind for all I care. I'm not ashamed of myself. Oh dear no! Well, now you have examined me pretty well, who d'ye think I am, eh? BRUSH, (_Rather frightened at the surly address of the stranger_). I believe you are called Mr. Touchmenot, are you not, Sir? TOUCHMENOT. Touchmenot, indeed! What fool told you that? Well, I don't care, they may call me so if they please. Ha! ha! no bad name neither! _Touch me not_, I advise you, or you will smart for it! So _that's_ the name they give me, is it? Oh, with all my heart! And what else have you heard about me, Mr. Greateyes? BRUSH. Oh, nothing very particular. Yes, now I recollect, I have heard that you have got a very odd way of defending yourself, by rolling up into a ball, when you see any animal coming that you think is an enemy. TOUCHMENOT. That I _think_ is an enemy? I consider _all_ animals my enemies. Except my own family, I don't believe I have a friend in the world. My comfort is, that I am very well able to take care of myself; and yet I can neither fly like a bird, nor run like a hare, nor swim like a fish, nor leap like yourself. No, I can do none of these; but I can _roll up_, and so set all my enemies at defiance; and I had half a mind to have done so when I first saw you, but it was hardly worth while, for you are much smaller than I am, and, besides, to tell you the truth, you look rather like a good-tempered fellow. Now what other tales have you heard about my doings? BRUSH. Why if you wont be angry, I was going to say, though I didn't believe it at the time, but I _have_ heard it said that you are _rather fond of milk_, and don't mind sucking the farmers' cows sometimes. TOUCHMENOT. So you have heard that ridiculous story, have you? Well, you say you don't believe it, so I sha'n't take the trouble to prove what a monstrous fib it is. Now then, I'll tell you what I have heard about _you_. I have heard that you _are rather fond of nuts_, and that, not content with eating as many as you can possibly cram, you are such a glutton that you carry a great many home with you, on purpose to stuff yourself with in the winter. BRUSH. Well, and what harm? Nuts are very wholesome food, I am sure. And don't _you_ lay up any store of provisions for the winter, then? TOUCHMENOT. Not I, indeed! I am better employed in the winter than in eating. I sleep _all_ the winter, Mr. Nutcracker! When the weather gets a little colder, perhaps in a few days, I shall creep into my snug nest which I have made under the roots of a great tree. There I shall roll myself up, in my bed of dry leaves, and when once fairly asleep, I am safe till next spring. Nothing can make _me_ wake up. What a fool I should be to trouble myself about collecting a quantity of food for the winter, when I am sound asleep all the time! BRUSH. And what do you live upon, when you _are_ awake, if it isn't an unfair question? TOUCHMENOT. Oh, I am not very particular. Almost anything will do at a pinch. I often make a meal upon roots and vegetables, when I can find nothing else. But I like animal food much better, such as insects, worms, snails, bird's eggs, frogs, mice, and now and then I dine upon a snake when I can contrive to catch him. Well! what's the matter now? What do you jump up into the tree for? BRUSH. Oh, shocking! I never heard anything so dreadful in my life! I beg your pardon. I mean, I should not like to dine upon snake at all. TOUCHMENOT. Very likely not. Tastes differ, you know. But here comes a gentleman who will most certainly _dine upon you_, if you don't get up a little higher into the tree; for though he can't climb, he is a pretty good leaper. For my part, I scorn to run away from any animal, large or small. Stay where you are, and you will see some fun. * * * * * The animal that now approached was a hungry young fox, who would certainly have made a meal of the squirrel if he could have caught him. But after trying to reach him, by jumping till he was tired, he gave it up at last for a bad job; and then, spying the hedgehog, he dashed at him, as if he had intended to have swallowed him at a single mouthful. But Touchmenot was quite prepared for the attack, for he had rolled himself up into a round ball, with nothing but sharp spines sticking out on every side; and when the fox attempted to seize his prey, you would have laughed to have seen how very much surprised and disappointed he looked. As he was but young, though he appeared more than half-grown, I suppose he had never seen a hedgehog before, or he would not have acted so imprudently, for he pounced upon this ball of spines as he would upon a rabbit, or a pheasant, but he soon found out his mistake, and retreated to a little distance, howling dismally, and licking his bleeding lips and nose. When he recovered a little from his surprise, he made another attempt. But now he proceeded more cautiously, and rolled old Touchmenot over and over with his paws, hoping to find some part of him that was not protected by this spiny coat of armour. He could make nothing of it! This strange-looking ball was spines above, spines below--strong, sharp spines on every side. It was really very provoking, for it contained a nice meal inside, no doubt, if he could but get at it. After watching his vain attempts for some time, the squirrels saw that the fox had no chance of succeeding, and they made the best of their way home, keeping on the trees for fear he should leave Touchmenot, and follow them instead. However, they had nothing to fear from this silly young fellow, for he seemed fully occupied in rolling this tiresome ball about, but how long he continued his amusement, I cannot tell. However, I must inform you, that the hedgehog boasted rather too much, when he said he could set _all_ his enemies at defiance, by his strange plan of defence; for though very few animals will venture to attack him when rolled up, it sometimes happens that a thoroughly game and courageous terrier-dog will seize him, and kill him too, in spite of his prickly armour. Of course, his own lips and mouth must suffer severely from the animal's sharp spines. A week or two after the interview with the hedgehog, one very cold dismal afternoon, all the squirrels were in the nest, except the father of the family, and he was gone abroad for a short time, just to stretch his legs a little. Suddenly he darted into the hole, as if he had been pursued by another wild-cat, and when he was asked what was the matter, he exclaimed, "_Snow!_ cold, dismal _snow_! Flakes of snow as large as white butterflies, and falling so thickly that I could hardly see my way back to the nest! Here I am, however, and here I mean to stay till fine weather comes again. It will be a long while before that happens though, I fancy." Brush was a true prophet. The weather became colder and colder every day, till at last, after a sharp frosty night, the squirrels quite forgot to wake up in the morning, and then their first long nap of several weeks began. If you could have looked in upon them in their comfortable nest, you could hardly have believed that the little curled up squirrels, with their blankets over their heads, were the same active, playful creatures, whose summer gambols among the branches had afforded you so much amusement. Well, then, there _can_ be nothing more to say about these sleeping squirrels, and now I must inform you what effect the cold weather had upon the other animals, whose summer habits have been imperfectly described in this history. The dormice, in their nests at the bottom of the oak-tree, and the water-rats, in their holes in the bank of the pond, were sound asleep also; but all these animals had taken the precaution to provide a store of provisions for the early part of the spring, and in case they should wake up for a few days in the winter. Now, with respect to the curious little water-shrew-mouse, Velvet-coat, I am not quite so certain about his winter habits. But no doubt he slept comfortably in his hole till the spring; and as he was an insect-feeder, we may conclude that he followed the example of Touchmenot, in not laying up any food for the winter. If we could have questioned old Leatherwing, I think he would have told us that the harvest-mice, whose history he overheard related by Minimus, abandoned their nest on the thistle, and made themselves a warmer house, deep under the ground, where they passed the cold weather in sleeping, and now and then nibbling the grains of wheat which they had buried with them. The bat has already related how he passed the winter himself, and how he was obliged to waste some part of it in sleep, not altogether from the effects of cold, but also from the want of food. CHAPTER IX. Though the history of the squirrels and their companions was finished in the last chapter, I still feel unwilling to part from my young friends, who have kindly taken some interest in the events I related for their amusement. It is true, that in the following tale no mention will be made of any of those "smaller British quadrupeds" of whose "habits and instincts" the title-page has engaged to communicate some information. But it is always better to do _more_ than _less_ than we have promised. Therefore, perhaps you will not be displeased if this little book should contain something that you did not expect to find there, and I hope you will think this additional chapter not less entertaining than those you have already read. You may remember, that Leatherwing related to the squirrel the History of Minimus, or "Some Passages in the Life of the smallest Quadruped in the World." In the following pages, you will find a companion to the bat's story, and the title shall be, SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF THE LARGEST QUADRUPED IN THE WORLD! As inquisitive readers may perhaps wish to be informed by what means the following little history came into my possession, I will endeavour to satisfy them as to its authenticity, by telling them that it was related to me by an old man, a native of Sumatra, in which island, "the largest quadrupeds in the world" are, or were, abundant in a wild state. This old fellow was cook on board the ship, "All's Well," in which (fifty-three years ago,) I first went to sea as an apprentice, and he was called "Jolly," but what his real name was no one on board knew nor cared. He was a merry-hearted old man, and had made himself a great favourite, especially with us boys, by his extraordinary abilities in "_spinning a good yarn_," as the sea-phrase goes, meaning neither more nor less than telling a good story. The following strange history was a favourite "yarn" of old Jolly's; and though it is now more than half a century since I first heard it, it is still fresh in my memory, having so often related it to my little brothers, who, on my return home, were always very eager in their inquiries about "the doings of the dreadful wild-beasts of foreign countries." But I must mention, that our old friend Jolly boasted of other accomplishments more extraordinary than story-telling, such as the art of foretelling future events, of understanding the language of birds and beasts, and he sometimes hinted, that he had the dangerous power of killing an enemy who might be five hundred leagues distant, by the performance of certain magical ceremonies. Perhaps you are not disposed to believe that Jolly was such a clever old fellow. Well, I cannot help it. I have no time now to endeavour to convince you, but here is his story, though not in his own words, for if I had not corrected his bad English, the narrative would be almost unintelligible to those who were not accustomed to his extraordinary mixture of languages. * * * * * (JOLLY _begins his Story_.) Tell you about the elephants again? Why, I have given you a dozen stories at least about them this voyage! Well, if you must have it, here goes. You must know, then, that about two years before, (like a great fool that I was,) I left my dear native island: I accompanied my father, and twenty or thirty of our tribe, on an elephant-catching expedition, to the banks of a large river more than fifty miles from our village. We were five days on our journey, for we had to pass through deep and tangled forests. As our object was merely to procure the valuable tusks, which we bartered at the Dutch settlement, for linen cloth, and other European articles, we did not attempt to take our game alive, but contented ourselves with digging deep pit-falls in the forest-paths made by the elephants in their visits to the river-side; for you must know that elephants are very fond of bathing and splashing about in the water. These pits of ours were slightly covered over with branches of trees and grass, and at the bottom we fixed a strong, sharp-pointed stake, on which, when they tumbled down headlong, the unwieldy animals were impaled and killed. We always took care to bait our traps with green boughs and tempting fruits. When we were so fortunate as to entrap an elephant in this manner, some of our party would descend to cut out the valuable tusks with a hatchet; and as we were quite unable to raise the immense carcass out of the pit, we were obliged to fill it up and dig another. This method of catching elephants was generally adopted by our nation, for at that time fire-arms were not in use among us. But I have heard that in some countries, when the hunters wish to take the animals alive, they make large enclosures of very strong stakes, and employ tame elephants to entice the wild ones inside, when the door is shut, and they are immediately bound fast with ropes, and kept without food for several days, till they are partly tamed. But I must return to our expedition. At this time we were very unfortunate indeed. Though the herd of elephants was numerous, and we had dug a great number of pit-falls, more than a week had passed, and we had made only one capture, a very young animal whose tusks were hardly worth taking home. This bad luck was not occasioned by our want of skill, for some of our party, my father and elder brother in particular, were the most experienced hunters of our nation, and our traps were covered over and baited with the greatest care. It was of no use; after the little fellow who met with his fate on the second day of our falling in with the herd, not a single elephant would venture his life for the most tempting baits we could select; and in some places where the path was so narrow that there was no room to pass the trap, these provoking animals would either return, or make another track by the side of it, by tearing up the trees with their trunks, and trampling down the bushes and underwood. "This will never do!" said my father; "these rascals are too cunning for us. We must find another herd. If we do not get some ivory soon, the Dutch ships will have left the port, and then we shall not be able to sell our tusks for a pretty while." So it was agreed, that the next day we would move further up the river, in hopes of falling in with a less sagacious herd. But the same afternoon a circumstance occurred which explained the cause of our want of success in a very satisfactory manner, to _me_ at least, though some of our company were so stupid as to say that what I am now going to relate was all nonsense, and that I had been dreaming. I was stationed in the upper part of a lofty tree within view of one of our pit-falls, when I perceived three elephants approaching. Two were of moderate size, but the third was by far the largest animal I had ever seen or heard of. He seemed almost decrepit with age, and had a very remarkable appearance, from one of his immense tusks being broken off, leaving a ragged stump of about a foot in length. He and his companions had been enjoying a cool bathe in the river, as I could perceive from the light-coloured mud on their legs and sides, and their way lay directly by the trap I was appointed to watch. But this peril they took especial care to avoid. However, I observed the old elephant point at it with his trunk, whereupon they all three tossed up their heads with an indignant snort. So they paced leisurely along till they reached my tree, at the foot of which, the old gentleman, apparently exhausted with fatigue, threw himself down on his side so suddenly, that he occasioned a partial earthquake. The others kept watch by him. After lying perfectly still for about an hour, during which time, we may safely conclude that he was refreshed by a comfortable nap, the venerable patriarch raised his immense bulk till he was in a sort of squatting posture, and began to converse with his companions; but I was at such a great height above him, that I could only catch a word or two here and there. But what are you laughing at, Bill Stacey? Do you think everybody is as deaf and as stupid as yourself? You had better say at once that you don't believe I could understand the elephant's language, and then I'll leave off and turn in for the rest of the watch. Well, then, behave yourself, my boy, and don't interrupt me any more, or I won't say another word to-night. Let me see, where was I? Oh, I told you that I was too high up in the tree to make out what the elephants were saying, but no doubt their conversation related to the pitfall, as the old fellow grumbled out the words, "stupid idiots!" "shallow contrivance!" and "whoever saw fruit growing on a beaten path?" Hoping to gain some useful information, I now, with extreme caution, descended from the top of the tree till I reached a branch about twenty feet from the ground, and concealed myself among the thick leaves. For some time after I had been in this situation there was a dead silence below, and I almost feared that the elephants had heard or smelt me, and were meditating some mischief. But there was a strong breeze blowing, and this prevented them from hearing me. In a few minutes, the patriarch, after casting a very affectionate glance on his companions, and giving utterance to a tremendous grunt, which I suppose he meant for a _sigh_, though you might have heard it at the distance of a mile, began a sort of history of his life, which I will repeat, if Bill Stacey will be quiet. * * * * * (_The old_ ELEPHANT _speaks for himself at last_.) True, my dear children, I have often promised to relate to you as much as I can remember of my long life and experience, and as my increasing bodily infirmities warn me that my days are drawing to a close, I cannot do better than embrace this opportunity when we are not likely to be interrupted by our companions. I am now going to put you in possession of a secret, which I should be very unwilling to make public. It is universally believed by our company, that I have spent many years in the service of man, and that at this period of my life, I acquired that knowledge of his ways which has been so useful in enabling me to detect and avoid his wicked devices for the destruction of our noble race. To this belief I am indebted for the influence I possess in our councils, and though my years and experience might still be respected, I am certain, that the ungrateful herd, ever fond of change, would immediately choose a new leader, if they had the least suspicion of what I am going to communicate to you. Know, then, my children, that I have never been a slave to the tyrant! that I have never been that most abject of creatures, "_a tame elephant_." No! my last days are not embittered by the consideration, that I have ever in the smallest degree contributed to the happiness of the two-legged monster. On the contrary, I am cheered by the recollection, that a great part of my life has been spent in detecting his tricks, and in thwarting his wicked designs. If our laws did not forbid us to take the life of any creature except in self-defence, with my knowledge of our enemies' weakness, we might easily take such terrible vengeance, as would induce him at least to confine himself to the neighbourhood of his own towns and settlements. But he cannot do us much injury. So successful have I been in detecting his ridiculous traps and pit-falls, that, for the last fifty years, not one of our herd has fallen a victim to his vile designs, except the poor young creature who threw his life away a few days ago, when, foolishly confident in his own knowledge, he persisted in rambling about by himself. Even in this melancholy affair, we may comfort ourselves that we could better spare him than any other of his companions, and that our enemies have gained little or nothing by his capture. But you will ask, if I have never been the companion of man, by what means have I obtained that superior intelligence and knowledge of his arts, for which our tribe are pleased to give me credit? I answer, simply by keeping my _eyes_ and my _ears_ open, and by remembering what I have _seen_ and _heard_. Follow my example, my dear children, and if you ever arrive at my age, you will no longer wonder at the extent of my information. Now let me endeavour to remember some of the most remarkable incidents of my life. I have but a confused recollection of my very early childhood, or of anything that happened before my thirteenth year, but about that time I well remember I was in terrible distress at the loss of my first tusks, and that my mother could hardly make me believe that they would ever be replaced by others. But when these long-looked-for second tusks really made their appearance, and had reached about the length of my present miserable stump, I used to plague all my acquaintance, by asking them whether they thought my tusks had grown lately, or whether they would ever be as large and strong as our leader's. At last I met with a cutting reproof from a surly old fellow, who had often been pestered by me in this manner. "You impertinent young scamp," said he, "what do I care about your tusks, or whether they grow or not? One thing I know, and will tell you for your comfort. If, when you grow up, your head should be as deficient in _ivory_ as it is in _sense_, you need have no fear whatever of the hunters, for I am sure you would not repay them for the trouble of killing you." This was very severe; but I must tell you that the old brute was particularly cross on this occasion, for the day before he had been terribly disappointed by not being chosen leader of the herd, and he had found out, as I was afterwards informed, that he had lost his election by the influence of my mother and some others of our family. Well, my children, if I was once proud of my tusks, I have no cause for such foolish vanity now with this hideous stump, though the other is still nearly half as long again as any in the herd. I will now relate to you how I first became acquainted with that contemptible little animal, who has the vanity to call himself "the lord of the creation." I think it was in my twentieth year, just at the end of the rainy season, that our herd had approached within less than fifty miles of the Dutch settlement, for the purpose of visiting a tract of marshy land overrun with high canes, the tender tops of which, you well know, are such delicious food. I was busily employed in a cane-brake, close to the banks of the river, in company with my mother and two of my younger brothers, when one of the latter, who had left us for a few minutes to wash the clammy juice of the canes from his mouth and trunk, returned in such haste and agitation, that for some time not a sound could he utter, except unintelligible gruntings and sputterings. At last, he stammered out, "Mother! mother! dreadful! I have seen such a thing! Great monstrous monkeys, with long poles in their paws, and sitting upright on the backs of immense deer, or some such creatures, only they have got no horns on their heads!" Upon this, my mother, raising her trunk high in the air, immediately sounded the well-known signal of alarm, and saying to us, "Follow, boys, follow!" she darted through the cane-brake like a mad thing, only stopping now and then to see how we kept up with her. We did our best; but it was very laborious work, forcing our way at our utmost speed through the thick canes, which were much higher than our heads, and in some places; the ground was so soft, that we sunk in up to our bellies. What a tremendous crash and splash we made, and how we did grunt and snort! However, at last we reached the open country, two or three miles from the bank of the river. Here we found more than half of the herd, (we were seventy-five in number at that time,) and others were every minute making their appearance from the canes. And now my mother, when she had a little recovered her breath, turning to my brother who had first given the alarm, explained to us the cause of this sudden retreat. "My son," said she, "not _monkeys_ sitting upon _deer_ have you seen, but _men_ upon _horses_, and the _long poles_ are _cruel spears_ intended for your destruction." Our careful leader now called over the names of his company, and finding that two were missing, he ordered us to retreat to a thick wood at a short distance, while himself and his brother, a steady sedate old fellow, entered the cane-brake again, in hopes of falling in with the lost ones. Being now collected together, we did not fear the enemy, who is too cowardly to attack any but stragglers from the main body; but we were very anxious about the fate of our missing friends, especially as they were both rather young and giddy. In about an hour we perceived the leader and his brother issuing from the cane-brake, supporting between them one of the stragglers, who appeared quite unable to walk by himself, and as they came near, we could see that he was bleeding from several wounds in his body, and that he had lost the use of one of his hind-legs. But what a dreadful account he gave us! He said that he and his brother, whose name was Brisk, were feeding in an open space close to the river, when they heard my mother's alarm-call, which Brisk said was nothing more than her usual voice when she was scolding her children. So he refused to retreat, and persuaded his brother to remain with him, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded by ten or twelve hunters mounted on horse-back, and armed with long spears. They made the best resistance they could, and killed one of the hunters; but at length our wounded friend, finding himself weak from his wounds, rolled down the steep bank into the river, where he was concealed by the overhanging trees, and as the cold water refreshed and strengthened him, he swam gently down the stream, keeping close under the bank till he came to a good landing-place. Here, he with difficulty managed to scramble on shore, and was proceeding slowly and in great pain through the canes, when he was found by the leader and his brother, without whose assistance he said he should never have reached the herd, for he was bleeding fast, and a deep spear-wound in the upper joint of his hind-leg was becoming more and more painful at every step. After his wounds had been examined, and the bleeding had been stopped by the application of the proper herbs, our poor friend was questioned as to the fate of his brother, when he immediately swooned from excess of agitation. Recovering a little, in a low voice and in broken words he endeavoured to communicate the sad tidings. "Brother," said he, "brother Brisk--brother Brisk barbarously"--then suddenly, to our amazement, jumping up on his three legs, he bellowed forth with tremendous energy, "Brother Brisk barbarously butchered!" Whereupon the whole herd, old and young, with quivering trunks high raised in air, continued for some minutes to thunder forth in their loudest tones, "Brother Brisk barbarously butchered! Brother Brisk barbarously butchered!" Did that wild cry of despair reach the ears of the hunters? If so, I envy them not their feelings. We continued in a close body all night with watchful sentinels on the look-out. The next morning a council was held, from which my youth excluded me; but we were soon informed, that our elders had determined that we should retreat fifty or a hundred miles up the river, not (as they were very particular in declaring) that they had any fear of the enemy themselves, but on account of the number of young ones in the herd, who, by wandering to a distance from the rest, would run great risk of sharing the fate of poor Brisk. So, after waiting three or four days for our wounded companion to recover a little, we set off on our journey, keeping near the banks of the river, for the sake of the canes and the opportunity of bathing. On the second day, coming to a narrow part of the river, we determined to cross it as a greater security. It was so shallow, that most of us could walk on the bottom with our trunks raised above the surface of the water to breathe through, but the very young ones either swam or were helped over by their mothers. When we were all collected together, we heard a loud shout from the opposite bank of the river, and lo! there were our enemies again, eight in number, mounted on horses, and with their long steel lances glittering in the sun. They had no doubt been following us closely all day, looking out for stragglers. Some of our company who had complained bitterly of our leader's strict discipline in obliging us to march in a close body, now began to look rather silly. In a few minutes, another horseman who appeared more heavily laden than his companions rode up to them, and, oh! sight of horror! from his saddle were hanging a pair of tusks, which no doubt a few days before had adorned the head of the unfortunate Brisk! After looking at us for some time, one of the hunters, more courageous or more foolish than his companions, rode into the river as far as his horse could go without swimming, till he was nearly half-way across, and then, for the first time in my life, I had a fall view of the human form and countenance. Never before had I seen such a ridiculous object as this hunter, who was pronounced to be an Englishman by some knowing ones in our company. He was larger, certainly, than our amusing friends the monkeys, but his pale face was not half so agreeable and intelligent, and as he sat on his horse with his long thin legs dangling in the water, he looked so disappointed and miserable, that, forgetting for a moment his villanous cruelty, I almost pitied him. And so much for "the majesty of the human countenance" which I have heard spoken of, but could never yet perceive. It has been said that a bold man can subdue the rage even of the ferocious tiger, merely by fixing his eye upon him. Very likely, for the tiger is as cowardly as he is cruel; but did anybody ever hear of an _elephant_, old or young, being frightened at a couple of little twinkling eyes? Oh! most absurd! After a little while the monkey--I mean the man in the river--joined his companions on the bank, and when they had consulted together, they seemed to give it up as a bad job. So they rode back down the river, and we proceeded quietly on our journey. It was more than fifty years after this adventure before I again encountered any of these savage disturbers of the peace of the wilderness, though we often heard of them from herds who had lost some of their number by the treacherous devices of the enemy. During this long period of tranquillity, so little occurred worth noticing, that I shall leave the relation of this part of my life till another opportunity, and hasten to give you an account of my next interview with man, on which occasion it was that I began those observations on his manner of making pit-falls, and other contrivances for our destruction, which have been of such service in enabling us to avoid these dangers. At this time, instead of losing one of our companions, we had the pleasure of rescuing a member of another community from a lingering and dreadful death. We were quite on the other side of the island, several hundred miles from the scene of the last tragedy. For some days we had been aware of the neighbourhood of man from the smell of his watch-fires, and accordingly we had doubled the number of our sentinels, and had taken care not to wander far from each other. But we neither saw nor heard anything of the enemy until about noon of a burning hot day, when, as we were sheltering ourselves from the sun in a thick wood, we were suddenly startled by loud shouts and yells, so discordant and hideous, that we were sure they could be produced by no other animal but man. To these cries we paid little attention, but presently was heard in the same direction another sound--a sound which caused our very hearts to burn within us, as we recognised the peculiar cry which a female of our own species utters when in terrible distress and danger. A hasty council was immediately called, when it was determined to rescue the sufferer at all hazards, and twenty strong fellows, myself having the command of the party, set off at full speed through the wood in the direction of the cries,--every one of us bellowing as loud as we were able. A very short time sufficed to bring us within sight of the enemy. In an open part of the forest was a troop of twenty or thirty hunters, but very different in their appearance from those I have before described; for these were nearly naked savages, on foot, and armed only with those ridiculous things, bows and arrows--weapons which our good stout skins enable us to laugh at. These wretches, as soon as they caught sight of our formidable band, took to their heels in great confusion, flying in every direction, like a herd of antelopes before the cruel tiger; we did not deign to follow them, but hastened at once to the spot they had left. Here we found a deep pit-fall, and at the bottom was an exceedingly beautiful and very black female elephant unhurt by the fall, for the pit being large, she had fortunately escaped the murderous sharp-pointed stake, and her cry of distress was soon exchanged for one of joyful recognition, as she saw so many of her friends looking down upon her, and assuring her that they would leave no means untried to rescue her from her prison. But this was a much more difficult matter than we had supposed; for the pit was so deep, that, when the captive stood up on her hind-legs, her eyes were but just level with the ground, and though we made many efforts to lift her out with our trunks, our attempts were always ended by our poor friend's tumbling back again with great violence into the pit, and nearly pulling three or four of us down with her. I now sent off a messenger for our leader, who soon arrived, bringing the whole herd with him; but numbers could not help us out of the difficulty. At length, when we were beginning almost to despair, I chanced to remember a plan, which I had heard was sometimes adopted by the hunters, when they wished to take an elephant alive out of a pitfall. Here, my children, was an instance of the advantage of _remembering what we have heard_; and of remembering it at the right time too, for our knowledge and experience are doubly useful to us when they enable us to decide not only _wisely_, but _quickly_, in affairs of difficulty. The method, which, at my suggestion, we now adopted, was this;--with our tusks we dug up the earth around the pit, and then shovelled it in with our feet, while our friend below trampled it down hard as fast as it came in. This was very laborious, tedious work for both parties, but we were amply rewarded for our toil; for at length the pit was so far filled up, that, with the assistance of our trunks, the poor captive managed to scramble out of her dungeon. She was dreadfully exhausted with fatigue and hunger, for she told us that she had been in captivity for three days, and she had no doubt that the hunters intended to starve her to death, for they had made no attempts either to release her, or to put an end to her sufferings. I need not tell you that our unfortunate friend received the hearty congratulations of our community, and that she was supplied with abundance of the most nourishing food we could collect, having first been conducted by two of our females to the river to wash and refresh herself after her sufferings. So, when she was a little recovered, she informed us that she had strayed away from her herd nearly a moon before, and that she was in search of her companions when she met with her grievous disaster. Then she begged permission to join our community, and the question being put to the vote, was decided unanimously in her favour. Who was this adopted stranger? My children, she was _your mother_! the faithful friend, who for seventy years has rewarded me, by her affectionate companionship, for my exertions in rescuing her from the cruel grasp of her enemies. * * * * * At this part of his story, said Jolly, the old elephant became so prosy and tiresome, talking of his family affairs, and praising his great fat black wife, that I have almost forgotten the rest of his adventures. But I remember that he was chosen leader of the herd soon after his marriage, partly on account of his cleverness in getting the old lady out of the pit, but chiefly because, as he has already told us, his companions believed that he had formerly been a tame elephant. He also reminded his sons, that, though so old and infirm, he had lately broken his tusk by fighting with and killing a very fierce rhinoceros. So when the old fellow had finished his history, he and his sons moved off slowly towards the thickest part of the forest, and as soon as they were out of sight I slid down from the tree and ran home to our encampment. We set off next day in pursuit of another herd, which we soon fell in with, and had good luck with our traps, so that we quickly loaded ourselves with ivory. I persuaded my companions not to put any bait on the pit-falls, for sure enough, as the elephant observed, it _does_ look very unnatural to see fruit and green branches growing on a beaten path. But whether our success was occasioned by this alteration in our plans, or to the elephants being less cunning than the others, I cannot pretend to tell you; but I say, boys, how angry the old leader would have been, if he had thought, that, by letting out this secret, he had lent a helping hand to "the contemptible little animals," as he had the impertinence to call us! But I have talked myself hoarse, and it is high time to turn in. So good night, youngsters, all! * * * * * Now _all_ my tales are finished, and I am going to add what an Irishman might call a _Preface_, at the _end_ of the book. I have a reason for this. If my preface had been placed at the beginning, perhaps you would never have read it at all, but would have skipped over it, in hopes of finding something more entertaining. For I was a _stranger_ to you when you first took this little book into your hand, but now you have finished it, I hope you will consider the author as a _friend_, who will be very much grieved if you refuse to listen to his parting words. And a very few words they shall be. Do you think this book has been written for your _amusement_ only? That was my principal object, certainly; but I also intended slyly to convey a little _instruction_ also. Therefore, in the descriptions of the forms and habits of animals, some of which, though not uncommon in this country, were perhaps almost unknown to you before, the greatest care has been taken to insert no information which had not been proved to be correct, either from consulting the best authors on the subject,[12] or from my own observation. This may be called a _true story_, then, except in one respect, that the characters have been endowed with the gifts of speech and reason. How could I write a tale about animals that could neither speak to each other, nor understand what was spoken to them? And how can we be sure that "dumb creatures," as they are often called, are not improperly named so, and that they do not possess a sort of language of their own? That they have the power of expressing some of their sentiments to each other is certain. [12] Especially "Bell's History of British Quadrupeds," a work abounding in valuable and most interesting matter, and adorned with beautiful wood-cuts, many of which are complete portraits of the animals they represent. In studying the natural history of animals, we might at first suppose, that some were less fitted for enjoyment than others, and we might say that the mole, for instance, has had a hard lot assigned him, because he is nearly deprived of sight, and is condemned to labour all his days in searching for his food under the earth. But a more perfect knowledge of the form and structure of this and other animals will convince us, that they are _all_ so beautifully fitted for the situations for which they were designed, that each may be said to pass its life in the enjoyment of almost perfect happiness and abundance. For the Great Spirit who called them into existence loves _all_ his creatures, even the meanest and smallest. Do you believe this? You cannot doubt it, if you have made even a small progress in the study of Natural history. The Creator's love for every breathing thing, and provident care for its happiness, must be evident to all those who pay attention to the works of his hands. What a great crime, then, shall we be guilty of, if we inflict unnecessary suffering on any of those creatures he has placed in our power! Creatures beloved and cared for by God, but so frequently despised and ill-used by us! Let us think of this, when we are treating any animal unkindly, and beware lest we "be found even to _fight against God_," by thwarting his benevolent designs for the happiness of every creature he has sent forth upon the earth. THE END. J. Rickerby, Printer, Sherbourn Lane. New and Interesting Works for Young People, PUBLISHED BY HARVEY AND DARTON, GRACECHURCH-STREET. Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged, HISTORICAL PRINTS. REPRESENTING SOME OF THE MOST MEMORABLE EVENTS IN ENGLISH HISTORY, IN WHICH THE COSTUMES OF THE TIMES ARE CAREFULLY PRESERVED. WITH DESCRIPTIONS BY EMILY TAYLOR, Author of "Tales of the Saxons," &c. TO WHICH IS ADDED, A BRIEF CHRONOLOGY OF THE KINGS OF ENGLAND. Foolscap 8vo., cloth, gilt edges. Price 6s. A VOYAGE TO INDIA; OR, THREE MONTHS ON THE OCEAN. SHOWING HOW PHILIP GREY IMPROVED AND BEGUILED HIS TIME AT SEA. By the Author of "Charlie's Discoveries." With Cuts. 16mo. Price 4s. THE SQUIRRELS AND OTHER ANIMALS; OR, ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE HABITS AND INSTINCTS OF MANY OF THE SMALLER BRITISH QUADRUPEDS. BY GEORGE WARING. With Cuts. Square 16mo. Price 3s. 6d. NAOMI: OR, THE LAST DAYS OF JERUSALEM. BY MRS. J. B. WEBB, AUTHOR OF "THE CHILD'S COMMENTARY ON ST. LUKE," "TRAVELS OF DURAND," &c. "Behold, your house is left unto you desolate." Foolscap 8vo. cloth lettered. Price 7s. 6d. HYMNS AND SKETCHES IN VERSE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "TALES OF THE GREAT AND BRAVE," "TALES OF MANY LANDS," &c. With fine Wood-cut Illustrations. 16mo. cloth lettered. Price 4s. 6d. Also, by the same Author, MY BOY'S FIRST BOOK. Price 3s. 6d. THE ORATORY; OR, THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE ON THE SUBJECT OF PRAYER. BY LUCY BARTON. Royal 32mo. cloth gilt. Price 2s. 6d. CHILDHOOD, ILLUSTRATED IN A SELECTION FROM THE POETS. BY H. M. R. "Oh children they are holy things Beloved of earth and heaven, And angels shield with guardian wings The home where they are given." BLACKWOOD'S MAG. Foolscap 8vo. cloth lettered. Price 5s. _Published by Harvey and Darton._ THE OLD OAK-CHEST; OR, A BOOK A GREAT TREASURE. BY THE AUTHOR OF "CHARLIE'S DISCOVERIES," "LITTLE FRANK," AND "WALTER O'NEIL." 16mo. cloth, with many Cuts. Price 3s. 6d. TALES OF TRAVEL THROUGH SOME OF THE MOST INTERESTING PARTS OF THE WORLD. BY F. B. MILLER. 18mo. cloth lettered. Price 2s. 6d. RURAL SCENES; OR, A PEEP INTO THE COUNTRY. A NEW AND REVISED EDITION, WITH EIGHTY-EIGHT CUTS. Foolscap 8vo. cloth lettered. Price 2s. 6d. JUVENILE ANECDOTES. BY PRISCILLA WAKEFIELD. 18mo. cloth lettered, with Coloured Frontispiece. Price 2s. 6d. A NEW DERIVATIVE AND ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF SUCH ENGLISH WORDS AS HAVE THEIR ORIGIN IN THE GREEK AND LATIN LANGUAGES, ARRANGED ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF SYLLABLES, WITH THE WORDS ACCENTED: Intended as a Guide to a thorough Knowledge of Scientific, Technical, and other Terms in common use. BY J. ROWBOTHAM, F.R.A.S. Foolscap, cloth lettered Price 7s. _Harvey and Darton's New and Interesting Works._ GRECIAN STORIES. BY MARIA HACK. AUTHOR OF "ENGLISH STORIES OF THE OLDEN TIMES," "WINTER EVENINGS," "GEOLOGICAL SKETCHES," "HARRY BEAUFOY," &c. "I find that men as high as trees will write Dialogue-wise, yet no man doth them slight For writing so."--BUNYAN. With Thirty-eight fine Illustrations by GILBERT, engraved by WRIGHT and FOLKARD. 12mo. cloth lettered. Price 8s. EARLY DAYS IN THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. EXEMPLIFYING THE OBEDIENCE OF FAITH IN SOME OF ITS FIRST MEMBERS. BY MARY ANN KELTY, AUTHOR OF "STRAIGHTFORWARDNESS," "INDIVIDUAL INFLUENCE," &c. 12mo. cloth. Price 7s. 6d. "I would recommend you," says Charles Lamb, whose relish for all that was individual and unworldly was strong to the last hour of his life, "above all church narratives, to read Sewell's History of the Quakers; here is nothing to stagger you, nothing to make you mistrust, no suspicion of alloy, no drop or dreg of the worldly or ambitious spirit." Mary Ann Kelty's book is abridged from Sewell, and may, we think, be perused with interest, as a record of the early struggles of a body of conscientious men, apart from the peculiar doctrines it is intended to enforce and illustrate.--_Athenæum._ Also, by the same Author, FACTS AND FEELINGS, ILLUSTRATIVE OF INTERIOR RELIGION; ACCOMPANIED BY MEMORIALS OF MADAME GUYON, FENELON, AND OTHER SPIRITUAL PERSONS, WITH EXTRACTS FROM THEIR WORKS. 8vo. cloth lettered. Price 4s. CHARLIE'S DISCOVERIES; OR, A GOOD USE FOR EYES AND EARS. BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE OLD OAK CHEST," "WALTER O'NEIL," &c. WITH MANY CUTS, BY T. WILLIAMS. 16mo. Cloth. Gilt edges. Price 4s. 6d. "Charlie's Discoveries, being set forth in a lively and attractive manner, and illustrated with beautiful wood-cuts, are calculated to make more juvenile discoveries of the wonders that are everywhere about us, though but little known."--_Spectator._ 
6052	----	[Illustration with caption: OVERPOWERING CURIOSITY OF A MOUNTAIN SHEEP This "lava ram" stood thus on a lava crest in the Pinacate Mountains for about twenty minutes, gazing spellbound at two men and a pack mule. (See page 149)] THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS A BOOK OF PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY, Sc.D., A.M. DIRECTOR OF THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK. AUTHOR OF "THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY," "TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE," "CAMP FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES," "OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE," ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS _The wild animal must think, or die._* * * * * _"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good."_ COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY Printed in the United States of America _The right of translation is reserved_ Published May, 1922 TO THE OFFICERS AND MEN OF THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK, WHOSE SAFETY DEPENDS UPON THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF THE MINDS OF WILD ANIMALS, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED AS A TOKEN OF APPRECIATION AND REGARD CONTENTS I. A SURVEY OF THE FIELD I. THE LAY OF THE LAND II. WILD ANIMAL TEMPERAMENT & INDIVIDUALITY III. THE LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS IV. THE MOST INTELLIGENT ANIMALS V. THE RIGHTS OF WILD ANIMALS II. MENTAL TRAITS OF WILD ANIMALS VI. THE BRIGHTEST MINDS AMONG ANIMALS VII. KEEN BIRDS AND DULL MEN VIII. THE MENTAL STATUS OF THE ORANG-UTAN IX. THE MAN-LIKENESS OF THE CHIMPANZEE X. THE TRUE MENTAL STATUS OF THE GORILLA XI. THE MIND OF THE ELEPHANT XII. THE MENTAL AND MORAL TRAITS OF BEARS XIII. MENTAL TRAITS OF A FEW RUMINANTS XIV. MENTAL TRAITS OF A FEW RODENTS XV. THE MENTAL TRAITS OF BIRDS XVI. THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT XVII. THE TRAINING OF WILD ANIMALS III. THE HIGHER PASSIONS XVIII. THE MORALS OF WILD ANIMALS XIX. THE LAWS OF THE FLOCKS AND HERDS XX. PLAYS AND PASTIMES OF WILD ANIMALS XXI. COURAGE IN WILD ANIMALS IV. THE BASER PASSIONS XXII. FEAR AS A RULING PASSION XXIII. FIGHTING AMONG WILD ANIMALS XXIV. WILD ANIMAL CRIMINALS AND CRIME XXV. FIGHTING WITH WILD ANIMALS THE CURTAIN. PREFACE During these days of ceaseless conflict, anxiety and unrest among men, when at times it begins to look as if "the Caucasian" really is "played out," perhaps the English-reading world will turn with a sigh of relief to the contemplation of wild animals. At all events, the author has found this diversion in his favorite field mentally agreeable and refreshing. In comparison with some of the alleged men who now are cursing this earth by their baneful presence, the so-called "lower animals" do not seem so very "low" after all! As a friend of the animals, this is a very proper time in which to compare them with men. Furthermore, if thinking men and women desire to know the leading facts concerning the intelligence of wild animals, it will be well to consider them now, before the bravest and the best of the wild creatures of the earth go down and out under the merciless and inexorable steam roller that we call Civilization. The intelligence and the ways of wild animals are large subjects. Concerning them I do not offer this volume as an all-in-all production. Out of the great mass of interesting things that might have been included, I have endeavored to select and set forth only enough to make a good series of sample exhibits, without involving the general reader in a hopelessly large collection of details. The most serious question has been: What shall be left out? Mr. A. R. Spofford, first Librarian of Congress, used to declare that "Books are made from books"; but I call the reader to bear witness that this volume is not a mass of quotations. A quoted authority often can be disputed, and for this reason the author has found considerable satisfaction in relying chiefly upon his own testimony. Because I always desire to know the _opinions_ of men who are writing upon their own observations, I have felt free to express my own conclusions regarding the many phases of animal intelligence as their manifestation has impressed me in close-up observations. I have purposely avoided all temptations to discuss the minds and manners of domestic animals, partly because that is by itself a large subject, and partly because their minds have been so greatly influenced by long and close association with man. The domestic mammals and birds deserve independent treatment. A great many stories of occurrences have been written into this volume, for the purpose of giving the reader all the facts in order that he may form his own opinions of the animal mentality displayed. Most sincerely do I wish that the boys and girls of America, and of the whole world, may be induced to believe that _the most interesting thing about a wild animal is its mind and its reasoning,_ and that a dead animal is only a poor decaying thing. If the feet of the young men would run more to seeing and studying the wild creatures and less to the killing of them, some of the world's valuable species might escape being swept away tomorrow, or the day after. The author gratefully acknowledges his indebtedness to Munsey's Magazine, McClure's Magazine and the Sunday Magazine Syndicate for permission to copy herein various portions of his chapters from those publications. W. T. H. The Anchorage, Stamford, Conn. December 19, 1921. ILLUSTRATIONS Overpowering Curiosity of a Mountain Sheep Christmas at the Primates' House The Trap-Door Spider's Door and Burrow Hanging Nest of the Baltimore Oriole Great Hanging Nests of the Crested Cacique "Rajah," the Actor Orang-Utan Thumb-Print of an Orang-Utan The Lever That Our Orang-Utan Invented Portrait of a High-Caste Chimpanzee The Gorilla With the Wonderful Mind Tame Elephants Assisting in Tying a Wild Captive Wild Bears Quickly Recognize Protection Alaskan Brown Bear, "Ivan," Begging for Food The Mystery of Death The Steady-Nerved and Courageous Mountain Goat Fortress of an Arizona Pack-Rat Wild Chipmunks Respond to Man's Protection An Opossum Feigning Death Migration of the Golden Plover. (Map) Remarkable Village Nests of the Sociable Weaver Bird Spotted Bower-Bird, at Work on Its Unfinished Bower Hawk-Proof Nest of a Cactus Wren A Peace Conference With an Arizona Rattlesnake Work Elephant Dragging a Hewn Timber The Wrestling Bear, "Christian," and His Partner Adult Bears at Play Primitive Penguins on the Antarctic Continent, Unafraid of Man Richard W. Rock and His Buffalo Murderer "Black Beauty" Murdering "Apache" THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS MAN AND THE WILD ANIMALS If every man devoted to his affairs, and to the affairs of his city and state, the same measure of intelligence and honest industry that every warm-blooded wild animal devotes to its affairs, the people of this world would abound in good health, prosperity, peace and happiness. To assume that every wild beast and bird is a sacred creature, peacefully dwelling in an earthly paradise, is a mistake. They have their wisdom and their folly, their joys and their sorrows, their trials and tribulations. As the alleged lord of creation, it is man's duty to know the wild animals truly as they are, in order to enjoy them to the utmost, to utilize them sensibly and fairly, and to give them a square deal. I. A SURVEY OF THE FIELD I THE LAY OF THE LAND There is a vast field of fascinating human interest, lying only just outside our doors, which as yet has been but little explored. It is the Field of Animal Intelligence. Of all the kinds of interest attaching to the study of the world's wild animals, there are none that surpass the study of their minds, their morals, and the acts that they perform as the results of their mental processes. In these pages, the term "animal" is not used in its most common and most restricted sense. It is intended to apply not only to quadrupeds, but also to all the vertebrate forms,--mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes. For observation and study, the whole vast world of living creatures is ours, throughout all zones and all lands. It is not ours to flout, to abuse, or to exterminate as we please. While for practical reasons we do not here address ourselves to the invertebrates, nor even to the sea-rovers, we can not keep them out of the background of our thoughts. The living world is so vast and so varied, so beautiful and so ugly, so delightful and so terrible, so interesting and so commonplace, that each step we make through it reveals things different and previously unknown. The Frame of Mind. To the inquirer who enters the field of animal thought with an open mind, and free from the trammels of egotism and fear regarding man's place in nature, this study will prove an endless succession of surprises and delights. In behalf of the utmost tale of results, the inquirer should summon to his aid his rules of evidence, his common sense, his love of fair play, and the inexorable logic of his youthful geometry. And now let us clear away a few weeds from the entrance to our field, and reveal its cornerstones and boundary lines. To a correct understanding of any subject a correct point of view is absolutely essential. In a commonplace and desultory way man has been mildly interested in the intelligence of animals for at least 30,000 years. The Cro- Magnons of that far time possessed real artistic talent, and on the smooth stone walls and ceilings of the caves of France they drew many wonderful pictures of mammoths, European bison, wild cattle, rhinoceroses and other animals of their period. Ever since man took unto himself certain tractable wild animals, and made perpetual thralls of the horse, the dog, the cat, the cattle, sheep, goats and swine, he has noted their intelligent ways. Ever since the first caveman began to hunt wild beasts and slay them with clubs and stones, the two warring forces have been interested in each other, but for about 25,000 years I think that the wild beasts knew about as much of man's intelligence as men knew of theirs. I leave to those who are interested in history the task of revealing the date, or the period, when scholarly men first began to pay serious attention to the animal mind. In 1895 when Mr. George J. Romanes, of London, published his excellent work on "Animal Intelligence," on one of its first pages he blithely brushed aside as of little account all the observations, articles and papers on his subject that had been published previous to that time. Now mark how swiftly history can repeat itself, and also bring retribution. In 1910 there arose in the United States of America a group of professional college-and-university animal psychologists who set up the study of "animal behavior." They did this so seriously, and so determinedly, that one of the first acts of two of them consisted in joyously brushing aside as of no account whatever, and quite beneath serious consideration, everything that had been seen, done and said previous to the rise of their group, and the laboratory Problem Box. In view of what this group has accomplished since 1910, with their "problem boxes," their "mazes" and their millions of "trials by error," expressed in solid pages of figures, the world of animal lovers is entitled to smile tolerantly upon the cheerful assumptions of ten years ago. But let it not at any time be assumed that we are destitute of problem boxes; for the author has two of his own! One is called the Great Outdoors, and the other is named the New York Zoological Park. The first has been in use sixty years, the latter twenty-two years. Both are today in good working order, but the former is not quite as good as new. A Preachment to the Student. In studying the wild-animal mind, the boundary line between Reality and Dreamland is mighty easy to cross. He who easily yields to seductive reasoning, and the call of the wild imagination, soon will become a dreamer of dreams and a seer of visions of things that never occurred. The temptation to place upon the simple acts of animals the most complex and far- fetched interpretations is a trap ever ready for the feet of the unwary. It is better to see nothing than to see a lot of things that are not true. In the study of animals, we have long insisted that _to the open eye and the thinking brain, truth is stranger than fiction._ But Truth does not always wear her heart upon her sleeve for zanies to peck at. Unfortunately there are millions of men who go through the world looking at animals, but not seeing them. Beware of setting up for wild animals impossible mental and moral standards. The student must not deceive himself by overestimating mental values. If an estimate must be made, make it under the mark of truth rather than above it. While avoiding the folly of idealism, we also must shun the ways of the narrow mind, and the eyes that refuse to see the truth. Wild animals are not superhuman demigods of wisdom; but neither are they idiots, unable to reason from cause to effect along the simple lines that vitally affect their existence. Brain-owning wild animals are not mere machines of flesh and blood, set agoing by the accident of birth, and running for life on the narrow-gauge railway of Heredity. They are not "Machines in Fur and Feathers," as one naturalist once tried to make the world believe them to be. Some animals have more intelligence than some men; and some have far better morals. What Constitutes Evidence. The best evidence regarding the ways of wild animals is one's own eye-witness testimony. Not all second- hand observations are entirely accurate. Many persons do not know how to observe; and at times some are deceived by their own eyes or ears. It is a sad fact that both those organs are easily deceived. The student who is in doubt regarding the composition of evidence will do well to spend a few days in court listening to the trial of an important and hotly contested case. In collecting real evidence, all is not gold that glitters. Many a mind misinterprets the thing seen, sometimes innocently, and again wantonly. The nature fakir is always on the alert to see wonderful phenomena in wild life, about which to write; and by preference he places the most strained and marvellous interpretation upon the animal act. Beware of the man who always sees marvellous things in animals, for he is a dangerous guide. There is one man who claims to have seen in his few days in the woods more wonders than all the older American naturalists and sportsmen have seen added together. Now, Nature does not assemble all her wonderful phenomena and hold them in leash to be turned loose precisely when the great Observer of Wonders spends his day in the woods. Wise men always suspect the man who sees too many marvelous things. The Relative Value of Witnesses. It is due that a word should be said regarding "expert testimony" in the case of the wild animal. Some dust has been raised in this field by men posing as authorities on wild animal psychology, whose observations of the world's wild animals have been confined to the chipmunks, squirrels, weasels, foxes, rabbits, and birds dwelling within a small circle surrounding some particular woodland house. In another class other men have devoted heavy scientific labors to laboratory observations on white rats, domestic rabbits, cats, dogs, sparrows, turtles and newts as the handpicked exponents of the intelligence of the animals of the world! Alas! for the human sense of Proportion! Fancy an ethnologist studying the Eskimo, the Dog-Rib Indian, the Bushman, the Aino and the Papuan, and then proceeding to write conclusively "On the Intelligence of the Human Race." The proper place in which to study the minds, manners and morals of wild animals is in the most thickly populated haunts of the most intelligent species. The free and untrammeled animal, busily working out its own destiny unhindered by man, is the beau-ideal animal to observe and to study. Go to the plain, the wilderness, the desert and the mountain, not merely to shoot everything on foot, but to SEE _animals at home,_ and there use your eyes and your field-glass. See what _normal wild animals_ do as "behavior," and then try to find out why they do it. The next best place for study purposes is a spacious, sanitary and well-stocked zoological park, wherein are assembled great collections of the most interesting land vertebrates that can be procured, from all over the earth. There the student can observe many new traits of wild animal character, as they are brought to the surface by captivity. There will some individuals reveal the worst traits of their species. Others will reveal marvels in mentality, and teach lessons such as no man can learn from them in the open. To study temperament, there is no place like a zoo. Even there, however, the wisest course,--as it seems to me,--is not to introduce too many appliances as aids to mental activity, but rather to see what the animal subject thinks and does _by its own initiative._ In the testing of memory and the perceptive faculties, training for performances is the best method to pursue. The reader has a right to know that the author of this volume has enjoyed unparalleled opportunities for the observation and study of highly intelligent wild animals, both in their wild haunts and in a great vivarium; and these combined opportunities have covered a long series of years. Before proceeding farther, it is desirable to define certain terms that frequently will be used in these pages. THE ANIMAL BRAIN is the generator of the mind, and the clearing- house of the senses. As a mechanism, the brain of man is the most perfect, and in the descent through the mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fishes, the brain progressively is simplified in form and function. THOUGHT is the result of the various processes of the brain and nervous system, stimulated by the contributions of the senses. SANITY is the state of normal, orderly and balanced thought, as formulated by a healthy brain. INSANITY is a state of mental disease, resulting in disordered, unbalanced and chaotic thought, destitute of reason. REASON is the manifestation of correct observation and healthful thought which recognizes both cause and effect, and leads from premise to conclusion. INTELLIGENCE is created by the possession of knowledge either inherited or acquired. It may be either latent or active; and it is the forerunner of reason. INSTINCT is the knowledge or impulse which animals or men derive from their ancestors by inheritance, and which they obey, either consciously or subconsciously in working out their own preservation, increase and betterment. Instinct often functions as a sixth sense. EDUCATION is the acquirement of knowledge by precept or by observation; but animals as well as men may be self-taught, and become self-educated, by the diligent exercise of the observing and reasoning faculties. The adjustment of a wild animal mind to conditions unknown to its ancestors is through the process of self-education, and by logical reasoning from premise to conclusion. The wild animal must think, or die. Animal intelligence varies in quantity and quality as much as animals vary in size. Idiots, maniacs and sleeping persons are the only classes of human beings who are devoid of intelligence and reasoning power. Idiots and maniacs also are often devoid of the common animal _instinct_ that ordinarily promotes self- preservation from fire, water and high places. A heavily sleeping person is often so sodden in slumber that his senses of smell and hearing are temporarily dead; and many a sleeping man has been asphyxiated by gas or smoke, or burned to death, because his deadened senses failed to arouse him at the critical moment. (This dangerous condition of mind can be cured by efforts of the will, exercised prior to sleep, through a determination resolutely to arouse and investigate every unusual sensation that registers "danger" on any one of the senses.) The normal individual sleeps with a subconscious and sensitive mind, from which thought and reason have not been entirely eliminated. Every act of a man or animal, vertebrate or invertebrate, is based upon either _reason_ or _hereditary instinct._ It is a mistake to assume that because an organism is small it necessarily has no "mind," and none of the propelling impulse that we call thought. The largest whale may have less intelligence and constructive reasoning than a trap-door spider, a bee or an ant. To deny this is to deny the evidence of one's senses. A MEASURE FOR ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. The intelligence of an animal may be estimated by taking into account, separately, its mental qualities, about as follows: 1. General knowledge of surrounding conditions. 2. Powers of independent observation and reasoning. 3. Memory. 4. Comprehension under tuition. 5. Accuracy in the execution of man's orders. Closely allied to these are the _moral qualities_ which go to make up an animal's temperament and disposition, about as follows: 1. Amiability, which guarantees security to its associates. 2. Patience, or submission to discipline and training. 3. Courage, which gives self-confidence and steadiness. 4. A disposition to obedience, with cheerfulness. All normal vertebrate animals exercise their intelligence in accordance with their own rules of logic. Had they not been able to do so, it is reasonable to suppose that they could never have developed into vertebrates, reaching even up to man himself. According to the laws of logic, this proposition is no more open to doubt or dispute than is the existence of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado. But few persons have seen the Canyon, and far fewer ever have proven its existence by descending to its bottom; but none the less Reason admonishes all of us that the great chasm exists, and is not a debatable question. To men and women who really know the vertebrate animals by contact with some of them upon their own levels, the reasoning power of the latter is not a debatable question. The only real question is: how far does their intelligence carry them? It is with puzzled surprise that we have noted the curious diligence of the professors of animal psychology in always writing of "animal _behavior_," and never of old-fashioned, common-sense _animal intelligence_. Can it be possible that any one of them really refuses to concede to the wild animal the possession of a mind, and a working intelligence? Yes. Animals do reason. If any one truth has come out of all the critical or uncritical study of the animal mind that has been going on for two centuries, it is this. Animals do reason; they always have reasoned, and as long as animals live they never will cease to reason. The higher wild animals possess and display the same fundamental passions and emotions that animate the human race. This fact is subject to intelligent analysis, discussion and development, but it is not by any means a "question" subject to debate. In the most intellectual of the quadrupeds, birds and reptiles, the display of fear, courage, love, hate, pleasure, displeasure, confidence, suspicion, jealousy, pity, greed and generosity are so plainly evident that even children can and do recognize them. To the serious and open-minded student who devotes prolonged thought to these things, they bring the wild animal very near to the "lord of creation." To the question, "Have wild animals souls?" we reply, "That is a debatable question. Read; then think it over." METHODS WITH THE ANIMAL MIND. In the study of animal minds, much depends upon the method employed. It seems to me that the problem- box method of the investigators of "animal behavior" leaves much to be desired. Certainly it is not calculated to develop the mental status of animals along lines of natural mental progression. To place a wild creature in a great artificial contrivance, fitted with doors, cords, levers, passages and what not, is enough to daze or frighten any timid animal out of its normal state of mind and nerves. To put a wild sapajou monkey,-- weak, timid and afraid,--in a strange and formidable prison box filled with strange machinery, and call upon it to learn or to invent strange mechanical processes, is like bringing a boy of ten years up to a four-cylinder duplex Hoe printing-and-folding press, and saying to him: "Now, go ahead and find out how to run this machine, and print both sides of a signature upon it." The average boy would shrink from the mechanical monster, and have no stomach whatever for "trial by error." I think that the principle of determining the mind of a wild animal _along the lines of the professor_ is not the best way. It should be developed _along the natural lines of the wild-animal mind._ It should be stimulated to do what it feels most inclined to do, and educated to achieve real mental progress. I think that the ideal way to study the minds of apes, baboons and monkeys would be to choose a good location in a tropical or sub- tropical climate that is neither too wet nor too dry, enclose an area of five acres with an unclimbable fence, and divide it into as many corrals as there are species to be experimented upon. Each corral would need a shelter house and indoor playroom. The stage properties should be varied and abundant, and designed to stimulate curiosity as well as activity. Somewhere in the program I would try to teach orang-utans and chimpanzees the properties of fire, and how to make and tend fires. I would try to teach them the seed-planting idea, and the meaning of seedtime and harvest. I would teach sanitation and cleanliness of habit,--a thing much more easily done than most persons suppose. I would teach my apes to wash dishes and to cook, and I am sure that some of them would do no worse than some human members of the profession who now receive $50 per month, or more, for spoiling food. In one corral I would mix up a chimpanzee, an orang-utan, a golden baboon and a good-tempered rhesus monkey. My apes would begin at two years old, because after seven or eight years of age all apes are difficult, or even impossible, as subjects for peaceful experimentation. I would try to teach a chimpanzee the difference between a noise and music, between heat and cold, between good food and bad food. Any trainer can teach an animal the difference between the blessings of peace and the horrors of war, or in other words, obedience and good temper versus cussedness and punishment. Dr. Yerkes' laboratory in Montecito, California, and his experiments there with an orang-utan and other primates, were in a good place, and made a good beginning. It is very much to be hoped that means will be provided by which his work can be prosecuted indefinitely, and under the most perfect conditions that money can provide. I hope that I will live long enough to see Dr. Yerkes develop the mind of a young grizzly bear in a four-acre lot, to the utmost limits of that keen and sagacious personality. II WILD ANIMAL TEMPERAMENT AND INDIVIDUALITY In man and in vertebrate animals generally, temperament is the foundation of intelligence and progress. Fifty years ago Fowler and Wells, the founders of the science of phrenology and physiognomy, very wisely differentiated and defined four "temperaments" of mankind. The six types now recognized by me are the _morose, lymphatic, sanguine, nervous, hysterical_ and _combative_; and their names adequately describe them. This classification applies to the higher wild animals, quite as truly as to men. By the manager of wild animals in captivity, wild-animal temperament universally is recognized and treated as a factor of great practical importance. Mistakes in judging the temper of dangerous animals easily lead to tragedies and sudden death. Fundamentally the temperament of a man or an animal is an inheritance from ancestors near or remote. In the human species a morose or hysterical temperament may possibly be corrected or improved, by education and effort. With animals this is rarely possible. The morose gorilla gives way to cheerfulness only when it is placed in ideally pleasant and stimulating social conditions. This, however, very seldom is possible. The nervous deer, bear or monkey is usually nervous to the end of its days. The morose and hysterical temperaments operate against mental development, progress and happiness. In the human species among individuals of equal mental calibre, the sanguine individual is due to rise higher and go farther than his nervous or lymphatic rivals. A characteristic temperament may embrace the majority of a whole species, or be limited to a few individuals. Many species are permanently characterized by the temperament common to the majority of their individual members. Thus, among the great apes the gorilla species is either morose or lymphatic; and it is manifested by persistent inactivity and sullenness. This leads to loss of appetite, indigestion, inactivity and early death. Major Penny's "John Gorilla" was a notable exception, as will appear in Chapter IX. The orang-utan is sanguine, optimistic and cheerful, a good boarder, affectionate toward his keepers, and friendly toward strangers. He eats well, enjoys life, lives long, and is well liked by everybody. Except when quite young, the chimpanzee is either nervous or hysterical. After six years of age it is irritable and difficult to manage. After seven years of age (puberty) it is rough, domineering and dangerous. The male is given to shouting, yelling, shrieking and roaring, and when quite angry rages like a demon. I know of no wild animal that is more dangerous per pound than a male chimpanzee over eight years of age. When young they do wonders in trained performances, but when they reach maturity, grow big of arm and shoulder, and masterfully strong, they quickly become conscious of their strength. It is then that performing chimpanzees become unruly, fly into sudden fits of temper, their back hair bristles up, they stamp violently, and sometimes leap into a terrorized orchestra. Next in order, they are retired willy-nilly from the stage, and are offered for sale to zoological parks and gardens having facilities for confinement and control. The baboons are characteristically fierce and aggressive, and in a wild state they live in troops, or even in herds of hundreds. Being armed with powerful canine teeth and wolf-like jaws, they are formidable antagonists, and other animals do not dare to attack them. It is because of their natural weapons, their readiness to fight like fiends, and their combined agility and strength that the baboons have been able to live on the ground and survive and flourish in lands literally reeking with lions, leopards, hyenas and wild dogs. The awful canine teeth of an old male baboon are quite as dangerous as those of any leopard, and even the leopard's onslaught is less to be feared than the wild rage of an adult baboon. In the Transvaal and Rhodesia, it is a common occurrence for an ambitious dog to go after a troop of baboons and never return. Temperamentally the commoner groups of monkeys are thus characterized: The rhesus monkeys of India are nervous, irritable and dangerous. The green monkeys of Africa are sanguine, but savage and treacherous. The langur monkeys of India are sanguine and peace-loving. The macaques of the Far East vary from the sanguine temperament to the combative. The gibbons vary from sanguine to combative. The lemurs of Madagascar are sanguine, affectionate and peaceful. Nearly all South American monkeys are sanguine, and peace-loving, and many are affectionate. The species of the group of Carnivora are too numerous and too diversified to be treated with any approach to completeness. However, to illustrate this subject the leading species will be noticed. TEMPERAMENTS OF THE LARGE CARNIVORES The lion is sanguine, courageous, confident, reposeful and very reliable. The tiger is nervous, suspicious, treacherous and uncertain. The black and common leopards are nervous and combative, irreconcilable and dangerous. The snow leopard is sanguine, optimistic and peace-loving. The puma is sanguine, good natured, quiet and peaceful. The wolves are sanguine, crafty, dangerous and cruel. The foxes are hysterical, timid and full of senseless fear. The lynxes are sanguine, philosophic, and peaceful. The mustelines are either nervous or hysterical, courageous, savage, and even murderous. The bears are so very interesting that it is well worth while to consider the leading species separately. Possibly our conclusions will reveal some unsuspected conditions. BEAR TEMPERAMENTS, BY SPECIES. The polar bears are sanguine, but in captivity they are courageous, treacherous and dangerous. The Alaskan brown bears in captivity are sanguine, courageous, peaceful and reliable, but in the wilds they are aggressive and dangerous. The grizzlies are nervous, keen, cautious, and seldom wantonly aggressive. The European brown bears are sanguine, optimistic and good- natured. The American black bears are sanguine and quiet, but very treacherous. The sloth bears of India are nervous or hysterical, and uncertain. The Malay sun bears are hysterical, aggressive and evil-tempered. The Japanese black bears are nervous, cowardly and aggressive. To those who form and maintain large collections of bears, involving much companionship in dens, it is necessary to keep a watchful eye on the temperament chart. THE DEER. In our Zoological Park establishment there is no collection in which both the collective and the individual equation is more troublesome than the deer family. In their management, as with apes, monkeys and bears, it is necessary to take into account the temperament not only of the species, but also of each animal; and there are times when this necessity bears hard upon human nerves. The proneness of captive deer to maim and to kill themselves and each other calls for the utmost vigilance, and for heroic endurance on the part of the deer keeper. Even when a deer species has a fairly good record for common sense, an individual may "go crazy" the instant a slightly new situation arises. We have seen barasingha deer penned up between shock-absorbing bales of hay seriously try to jump straight up through a roof skylight nine feet from the floor. We have seen park-bred axis deer break their own necks against wire fences, with 100 per cent of stupidity. CHARACTERS OF DEER SPECIES The white-tailed deer is sanguine, but in the fall the bucks are very aggressive and dangerous, and to be carefully avoided. The mule deer is sanguine, reasonable and not particularly dangerous. The elk is steady of nerve, and sanguine in temperament, but in the rutting season the herd-masters are dangerous. The fallow deer species has been toned down by a hundred generations of park life, and it is very quiet, save when it is to be captured and crated. The axis deer is nervous, flighty, and difficult to handle. The barasingha deer is hysterical and unaccountable. The Indian and Malay sambar deer are lymphatic, confident, tractable and easily handled. Never keep a deer as a "pet" any longer than is necessary to place it in a good home. All "pet deer" are dangerous, and should be confined all the time. Never go into the range or corral of a deer herd unless accompanied by the deer-keeper; and in the rutting season do not go in at all. The only thoroughly safe deer is a dead one; for even does can do mischief. A SAMPLE OF NERVOUS TEMPERAMENT. As an example of temperament in small carnivores, we will cite the coati mundi of South America. It is one of the most nervous and restless animals we know. An individual of sanguine temperament rarely is seen. Out of about forty specimens with which we have been well acquainted, I do not recall one that was as quiet and phlegmatic as the raccoon, the nearest relative of _Nasua_. With a disposition so restless and enterprising, and with such vigor of body and mind, I count it strange that the genus _Nasua_ has not spread all over our south-eastern states, where it is surely fitted to exist in a state of nature even more successfully than the raccoon or opossum. The temper of the coati mundi is essentially quarrelsome and aggressive. While young, they are reasonably peaceful, but when they reach adult age, they become aggressive, and quarrels are frequent. Separations then are very necessary, and it is rare indeed that more than two adult individuals can be caged together. Even when two only are kept together, quarrels and shrill squealings are frequent. But they seldom hurt each other. The coati is not a treacherous animal, it is not given to lying in wait to make a covert attack from ambush, and being almost constantly on the move, it is a good show animal. THE STRANGE COMBATIVE TEMPERAMENT OF THE GUANACO. In appearance the guanaco is the personification of gentleness. Its placid countenance indicates no guile, nor means of offense. Its lustrous gazelle-like eyes, and its soft, woolly fleece suggest softness of disposition. But in reality no animal is more deceptive. In a wild state amongst its own kind, or in captivity,--no matter how considerately treated,--it is a quarrelsome and at times intractable animal. "A pair of wild guanacos can often be seen or heard engaged in desperate combat, biting and tearing, and rolling over one another on the ground, uttering their gurgling, bubbling cries of rage. Of a pair so engaged, I shot one whose tail had then been bitten off in the encounter. In confinement, the guanaco charges one with his chest, or rears up on his hind legs to strike one with his fore-feet, besides biting and spitting up the contents of the stomach."--Richard Crawshay in "The Birds of Terra del Fuego." MENTAL TRAITS AND TEMPER OF THE ATLANTIC WALRUS Mr. Langdon Gibson, of Schenectady, kindly wrote out for me the following highly interesting observations on a remarkable arctic animal with which we are but slightly acquainted: "In the summer of 1891, as a member of the first Peary Expedition I had an opportunity of observing some of the traits of the Atlantic walrus. I found him to be a real animal, of huge size, with an extremely disagreeable temper and most belligerently inclined. We hunted them in open whale-boats under the shadows of Greenland's mountain-bound coast, in the Whale Sound region, Lat. 77 degrees North. "We hunted among animals never before molested, except by the Eskimo who (so far as I was able to ascertain) hunt them only during the winter season on the sea ice. We found animals whose courage and belief in themselves and their prowess had hitherto been unshaken by contact with the white man and his ingenious devices of slaughter. "The walrus has a steady nerve and a thoroughly convincing roar. They have fought their kind and the elements for centuries and centuries, and know no fear. This, then, was the animal we sought in order to secure food for our dog teams. I can conceive of no form of big game hunting so conducive to great mental excitement and physical activity as walrus hunting from an open whale-boat. At the completion of such a hunt I have seen Eskimo so excited and worked up that they were taken violently sick with vomiting and headache. "The walrus is a gregarious animal, confederating in herds numbering from ten to fifty, and in some instances no doubt larger numbers may be found together. On calm days they rest in unmolested peace on pans of broken ice which drift up and down the waters of Whale Sound. It is unfortunate that no soundings were taken in the region where the walrus were found, as a knowledge of the depth of water would have furnished some information as to the distances to which the animal will dive in search of food. "The stomachs of all half- and full-grown walrus taken in Whale Sound were without exception well filled with freshly opened clams, with very few fragments of shells in evidence; the removal of the clam from the shell being as neatly accomplished as though done by an expert oysterman. "In most cases these segregated herds of walrus were in charge of a large bull who generally occupied a central position in the mass of animals. Upon approaching such a herd for the first time, and when within about 200 feet, a large bull would lift his head, sniff audibly in our direction and give a loud grunt which apparently struck a responsive chord in the other sleeping animals. They would grunt in unison, in more subdued tones, after which the old walrus would drop his head to resume his interrupted nap. Their contempt for us was somewhat disconcerting. "At the first crack of a rifle, however, the animals immediately aroused, and then during the fusillade which followed there occurred what might be called an orderly scramble for the water. In the first place the young ones were hustled to the edge of the ice-pan, and there, apparently under the protection of the mother's flipper, pushed into the water, immediately followed by the mother. The young bulls followed, and I recall no exceptions where the last animal into the water was not the big bull, who before diving would give our boat a wicked look and a roar of rage. "The animals would immediately dive, and then we first became aware of a remarkable phenomenon. We found that when excited they would continue their roaring under water, and these strange sounds coming to us from below added considerably to the excitement of the chase. Although the cows and young animals would generally swim to places of safety, the other full grown animals would hover beneath our boat and from time to time come to the surface and charge. These charges were in all cases repulsed by the discharge of our rifles in the faces of the animals. The balls, however, from our .45 calibre carbines would flatten out under the skin on the massive bony structure of the animal's skull, and cause only a sort of rage and a sneeze, but it however had the effect of making them dive again. It is my belief that when enraged the walrus if not resisted would attack and attempt to destroy a boat. Icquah, one of our native hunters, showed me in the deck of his kyak two mended punctures which he told me were made by the tusks of a walrus that had made an _unprovoked_ attack upon him. "On more than one occasion I have seen two strong uninjured animals come to the assistance of a wounded companion, and swim away with it to a position of safety, _the injured animal being supported on both sides_, giving the appearance of three animals swimming abreast. The first time I witnessed this I did not comprehend its real meaning, but on another occasion in McCormick Bay I saw a wounded animal leaving a trail of blood and oil, supported on either side by two uninjured ones. They were making a hasty retreat and would occasionally dive together, but would quickly return to the surface. "We found the most effective exposed spot to place a bullet was at the base of the animal's skull. A walrus instantly killed this way generally sinks, leaving a trail of blood and oil to mark the place of his descent. When hunting these animals it is well to have an Eskimo along with harpoon and line in readiness to make fast; otherwise one is apt to lose his quarry. "In the early winter we usually found the walrus in smaller groups up in the bays. This was after the ice had begun to make, and in coming to the surface to breathe the animals found it necessary to butt their noses against the ice to break it. I have seen this done in ice at least four inches in thickness. In some instances I have seen a fractured star in the ice, a record of an unsuccessful attempt to make a breathing hole." Around these breathing holes we frequently found fragments of clam-shells, sections of crinoids and sea-anemones. It is evident that after raking the bottom with his tusks and filling his mouth with food, the walrus separates the food he desires to retain and rejects on his way up and at the surface such articles as he has picked up in haste and does not want. "From the fact that the walrus is easily approached it is a simple matter to kill him with the modern high power rule. It is therefore to be hoped that future expeditions into the arctic seas will kill sparingly of these tremendous brutes which from point of size stand in the foremost rank among mammals." The Elephant, Rhinoceros and Hippopotamus. _Individual Elephants_ vary in temperament far more than do rhinoceroses or hippopotami, and the variations are wide. In a wild state, elephants are quiet and undemonstrative, almost to the point of dullness. They do not domineer, or hector, or quarrel, save when a rogue develops in the ranks, and sets out to make things interesting by the commission of lawless acts. A professional rogue is about everything that an orthodox elephant should not be, and he soon makes of himself so great a nuisance that he is driven out of the herd. The temperament of the standardized and normal elephant is distinctly sanguine, _but a nervous or hysterical individual is easily developed by bad conditions or abuse_. Adult male elephants are subject to various degrees of what we may as well call sexual insanity, which is dangerous in direct proportion to its intensity. This causes many a "bad" show elephant to be presented to a zoological garden, where the dangers of this mental condition can at least be reduced to their lowest terms. Our Indian elephant who was known as Gunda was afflicted with sexual insanity, and he gradually grew worse, and increasingly dangerous to his keepers, until finally it was necessary to end his troubles painlessly with a bullet through his brain. _The Rhinoceros_ is a sanguine animal, of rather dull vision and slow understanding. In captivity it gives little trouble, and lives long. Adults individually often become pettish, or peevish, and threaten to prod their keepers without cause, but I have never known a keeper to take those lapses seriously. The average rhino is by no means a dull or a stupid animal, and they have quite enough life to make themselves interesting to visitors. In British East Africa a black rhinoceros often trots briskly toward a caravan, and seems to be charging, when in reality it is only desiring a "close-up" to satisfy its legitimate curiosity. _Every Hippopotamus_, either Nile or pygmy, is an animal of serene mind and steady habits. Their appetites work with clock- like regularity, and require no winding. I can not recall that any one of our five hippos was ever sick for a day, or missed a meal. When the idiosyncrasies of Gunda, our bad elephant, were at their worst, the contemplation of Peter the Great ponderously and serenely chewing his hay was a rest to tired nerves. Keeper Thuman treats the four pygmy hippos like so many pet pigs,--save the solitary adult male, who sets himself up to be peevish. The breeding female is a wise and good mother, with much more maternal instinct than our chimpanzee "Suzette." It may be set down as an absolute rule that hippos are lymphatic, easy-going, contented, and easy to take care of _provided_ they are kept scrupulously clean, and are fed as they should be fed. They live long, breed persistently, give no trouble and have high exhibition value. _Giraffe_ individuals vary exceedingly,--beyond all other hoofed animals. Each one has its own headful of notions, and rarely will two be found quite alike in temperament and views of life. Some are sanguine and sensible, others are nervous, crotchety, and full of senseless fears. Those who are responsible for them in captivity are constantly harassed by fears that they will stampede in their stalls or yards, and break their own necks and legs in most unexpected ways. They require greater vigilance than any other hoofed animals we know. Sometimes a giraffe will develop foolishness to such a degree as to be unwilling to go out of its own huge door, into a shady and comfortable yard. III THE LANGUAGE OF WILD ANIMALS Language is the means by which men and animals express their thoughts. Of language there are four kinds: vocal, pictured, written and sign language. Any vocal sound uttered for the purpose of conveying thought, or influencing thought or action, is to be classed as vocal language. Among the mammals below man, _speech_ is totally absent; but parrots, macaws, cockatoos and crows have been taught to imitate the sound of man's words, or certain simple kinds of music. The primitive races of mankind first employed the sign language, and spoken words. After that comes picture language, and lastly the language of written words. Among the Indians and frontiersmen of the western United States and Canada, the sign language has reached what in all probability is its highest development, and its vocabulary is really wonderful. The higher wild animals express their thoughts and feelings usually by sign language, and rarely by vocal sounds. Their power of expression varies species by species, or tribe by tribe, quite as it does among the races and tribes of men. It is our belief that there are today several living races of men whose vocabularies are limited to about 300 words. Very many species of animals appear to be voiceless; but it is hazardous to attempt to specify the species. Sometimes under stress of new emergencies, or great pain, animals that have been considered voiceless suddenly give tongue. That hundreds of species of mammals and birds use their voices in promoting movements for their safety, there is no room to doubt. The only question is of the methods and the extent of voice used. Birds and men give expression to their pleasure or joy by singing. In the jungle and the heavily wooded wilderness, one hears really little of vocal wild-animal language. Through countless generations the noisiest animals have been the first ones to be sought out and killed by their enemies, and only the more silent species have survived. All the higher animals, as we call the higher vertebrates, have the ability to exchange thoughts and convey ideas; and that is language. At the threshold of this subject we are met by two interesting facts. Excepting the song-birds, the wild creatures of today have learned through instinct and accumulated experience that silence promotes peace and long life. The bull moose who bawls through a mile of forest, and the bull elk who bugles not wisely but too well, soon find their heads hanging in some sportsman's dining- room, while the silent Virginia deer, like the brook, goes on forever. Association with man through countless generations has taught domestic animals not only the fact of their safety when giving voice, but also that very often there is great virtue in a vigorous outcry. With an insistent staccato neigh, the hungry horse jars the dull brain of its laggard master, and prompts him to "feed and water the stock." But how different is the cry of a lost horse, which calls for rescue. It cannot be imitated in printed words; but every plainsman knows the shrill and prolonged trumpet-call of distress that can be heard a mile or more, understandingly. And think of the vocabulary of the domestic chicken! Years of life in fancied security have developed a highly useful vocabulary of language calls and cries. The most important, and the best known, are the following: "Beware the hawk!"--"Coor! Coor!" "Murder! Help!"--"Kee- _owk_! Kee-_owk_! Kee-_owk_!" "Come on"--"Cluck! Cluck! Cluck!" "Food here! Food!"--"Cook-cook-cook-cook!" Announcement, or alarm--"Cut-cut-cut-_dah_-cut!" But does the wild jungle-fowl, the ancestor of our domestic chicken, indulge in all those noisy expressions of thought and feeling? By no means. I have lived for months in jungles where my hut was surrounded by jungle-fowl, and shot many of them for my table; but the only vocal sound I ever heard from their small throats was the absurdly shrill bantam-like crow of the cock. And even that led to several fatalities in the ranks of _Gallus stanleyi_. Domestic cattle, swine and fowls have each a language of their own, and as far as they go they are almost as clear-cut and understandable as the talk of human beings. Just how much more is behind the veil that limits our understanding we cannot say; but no doubt there is a great deal. But it is with the language of wild animals that we are most concerned. As already pointed out, wild creatures, other than song-birds, do not care to say much, because of the danger of attracting enemies that will exterminate them. Herein lies the extreme difficulty of ascertaining how wild beasts communicate. In the Animallai Hills of southern India I hunted constantly for many weeks through forests actually teeming with big game. There were herds upon herds of elephants, gaur, axis deer, sambar deer, monkeys by the hundred, and a good sprinkling of bears, wild hogs and tigers. We saw hundreds upon hundreds of animals; but with the exception of the big black monkeys that used to swear at us, I can almost count upon my fingers the whole number of times that we heard animals raise their voices to communicate with each other. Ape Voices. Naturally it is of interest to know something of the voices of the animals that physically and mentally stand nearest to man. The wild gorilla has a voice almost equal to that of the chimpanzee, but in captivity he rarely utters any vocal sound other than a shriek, or scream. The baby orang-utan either whines or shrieks like a human child. The half-grown or adult orang when profoundly excited bellows or roars, in a deep bass voice. Usually, however, it is a persistently silent animal. The chimpanzee has a voice, and vociferously expresses its emotions. First and most often is the plaintive, coaxing note, "Who'-oo! who'-oo! who'-oo!" Then comes the angry and threatening, "Wah', wah', wah-! _Wah'_-hool _Wah'_-hool" Lastly we hear the fearful, high-pitched yell or shriek, "Ah-h-h- h!" or "E-e-e-e." The shriek, or scream, can be heard half a mile, and at close range it is literally ear-splitting. Usually it is accompanied by violent stamping or pounding with the feet upon the floor. It may signify rage, or nothing more than the joy of living, and of having a place in which to yell. It is this cry that is uncannily human-like in sound, and when heard for the first time it seems to register anguish. In its Bornean jungle home, the orang-utan is nearly as silent as the grave. Never save once did I hear one utter a vocal sound. That was a deep bass roar emitted by an old male that I disturbed while he was sleeping on the comfortable nest of green branches that he had built for himself. Concerning the chimpanzee, the late Mr. Richard L. Garner testified as follows: "Not only does the chimpanzee often break the silence of the forest when all other voices are hushed, but he frequently answers the sounds of other animals, as if in mockery or defiance. ... Although diurnal in habit, the chimpanzees often make the night reverberate with the sounds of their terrific screaming, which I have known them to continue at times for more than an hour, with scarcely a moment's pause,--not one voice but many, and within the area of a square mile or so I have distinguished as many as seven alternating adult male voices. "The gorilla is more silent and stoical than the chimpanzee, but he is far from being mute. He appears to be devoid of all risibility, but he is often very noisy. Although diurnal in habit, he talks less frequently during the day than at night, but his silence is a natural consequence of his stealth and cunning. There are times, however, when he ignores all danger of betraying his whereabouts or his movements, and gives vent to a deluge of speech. At night his screams and shouts are terrific." The gibbons (including the siamang) have tremendous voices, with numerous variations, and they love to use them. My acquaintance with them began in Borneo, in the dense and dark coastal forest that there forms their home. I remember their cries as vividly as if I had heard them again this morning. While feeding, or quietly enjoying the morning sun, the gray gibbon (_Hylobates concolor_) emits in leisurely succession a low staccato, whistle-like cry, like "Hoot! Hoot! Hoot!" which one can easily counterfeit by whistling. This is varied by another whistle cry of three notes, thus: "Who-ee-hoo! Who-ee-hoo!" also to be duplicated by whistling. In hunting for specimens of that gibbon, for American museums, I could rarely locate a troop save by the tree- top talk of its members. But all this was only childish prattle in comparison with the daily performances of the big white-handed, and the black hoolock gibbons, now and for several years past residing in our Primate House. Every morning, and perhaps a dozen times during the day, those three gibbons go on a vocal rampage and utter prolonged and ear-splitting cries and shrieks that make the welkin ring. The shrieking chorus is usually prolonged until it becomes tiresome to the monkeys. In all our ape and monkey experience we never have known its equal save in the vocal performances of Boma, our big adult male chimpanzee, the husband of Suzette. A baboon emits occasionally, and without any warning, a fearful explosive bark, or roar, that to visitors is as startling as the report of a gun. The commonest expressions are "Wah!" and "_Wah'_-hoo!", and the visitor who can hear it close at hand without jumping has good nerves. The big and solemn long-nosed monkey of Borneo (_Nasalis larvatus_) utters in his native tree-top (overhanging water), a cry like the resonant "honk" of a saxophone. He says plainly, "Kee honk," and all that I could make of its meaning was that it is used as the equivalent of "All's well." Of all the monkeys that I have ever known, either wild or in captivity, the red howlers of the Orinoco, in Venezuela, have the most remarkable voices, and make the most remarkable use of them. The hyoid cartilage is expanded,--for Nature's own particular reasons,--into a wonderful sound-box, as big as an English walnut, which gives to the adult voice a depth of pitch and a booming resonance that is impossible to describe. The note produced is a prolonged bass roar, in alternately rising and falling cadence, and in reality comprising about three notes. It is the habit of troops of red howlers to indulge in nocturnal concerts, wherein four, five or six old males will pipe up and begin to howl in unison. The great volume of uncanny sound thus produced goes rolling through the still forest, far and wide; and to the white explorer who lies in his grass hammock in pitchy darkness, fighting off the mosquitoes and loneliness, and wondering from whence tomorrow's meals will come, the moral effect is gruesome and depressing. In captivity the youthful howler habitually growls and grumbles in a way that is highly amusing, and the absurd pitch of the deep bass voice issuing from so small an animal is cause for wonder. It is natural that we should look closely to the apes and monkeys for language, both by voice and sign. In 1891 there was a flood of talk on "the speech of monkeys," and it was not until about 1904 that the torrent stopped. At first the knowledge that monkeys can and do communicate to a limited extent by vocal sounds was hailed as a "discovery"; but unfortunately for science, nothing has been proved beyond the long-known fact that primates of a given species understand the meaning of the few sounds and cries to which their kind give utterance. Thus far I have never succeeded in teaching a chimpanzee or orangutan to say even as much as "Oh" or "Ah." Nothing seems to be further from the mind of an orang than the idea of a new vocal utterance as a means to an end. Our Polly was the most affectionate and demonstrative chimpanzee that I have ever seen, and her reaction to my voice was the best that I have found in our many apes. She knew me well, and when I greeted her in her own language, usually she answered me promptly and vociferously. Often when she had been busy with her physical- culture exercises and Delsartean movements on the horizontal bars or the trapeze in the centre of her big cage, I tested her by quietly joining the crowd of visitors in the centre of the room before her cage, and saying to her: "Polly! Wah! Wah! Wah!" Nearly every time she would stop short, give instant attention and joyously respond "Wah! Wah! Wah!", repeating the cry a dozen times while she clambered down to the lower front bars to reach me with her hands. When particularly excited she would cry "_Who_-oo! _Who_-oo! _Who_-oo!" with great clearness and vehemence, the two syllables pitched four notes apart. This cry was uttered as a joyous greeting, and also at feeding-time, in expectation of food; but, simple as the task seems to be, I really do not know how to translate its meaning into English. In one case it appears to mean "How do you do?" and in the other it seems to stand for "Hurry up!" Polly screamed when angry or grieved, just like a naughty child; and her face assumed the extreme of screaming-child expression. She whined plaintively when coaxing, or when only slightly grieved. With these four manifestations her vocal powers seemed to stop short. Many times I opened her mouth widely with my fingers, and tried to surprise her into saying "Ah," but with no result. It seems almost impossible to stamp the vocal-sound idea upon the mind of an orang-utan or chimpanzee. Polly uttered two distinct and clearly cut syllables, and it really seemed as if her vocal organs could have done more if called upon. The cries of the monkeys, baboons and lemurs are practically nothing more than squeals, shrieks or roars. The baboons (several species, at least) bark or roar most explosively, using the syllable "Wah!" It is only by the most liberal interpretation of terms that such cries can be called language. The majority express only two emotions--dissatisfaction and expectation. Every primate calls for help in the same way that human beings do, by shrill screaming; but none of them ever cry "Oh" or "Ah." The only members of the monkey tribe who ever spoke to me in their native forests were the big black langurs of the Animallai Hills in Southern India. They used to glare down at us, and curse us horribly whenever we met. Had we been big pythons instead of men they could not have said "Confound you!" any more plainly or more vehemently than they did. In those museum-making days our motto was "All's fish that cometh to net"; and we killed monkeys for their skins and skeletons the same as other animals. My brown-skinned Mulcer hunters said that the bandarlog hated me because of my white skin. At all events, as we stalked silently through those forests, half a dozen times a day we would hear an awful explosion overhead, startling to men who were still-hunting big game, and from the middle zone of the tree-tops black and angry faces would peer down at us. They said: "Wah! Wah! Wah! Ah-^oo-oo-Aoo-oo-^oo-oo!" and it was nothing else than cursing and blackguarding. How those monkeys did hate us! I never have encountered elsewhere anything like it in monkey-land. la 1902 there was a startling exhibition of monkey language at our Primate House. That was before the completion of the Lion House. We had to find temporary outdoor quarters for the big jaguar, "Senor Lopez"; and there being nothing else available, we decided to place him, for a few days only, in the big circular cage at the north end of the range of outside cages. It was May, and the baboons, red-faced monkeys, rhesus, green and many other of the monkeys were in their outside quarters. I was not present when Lopez was turned into the big: cage; but I heard it. Down through the woods to the polar bears' den, a good quarter of a mile, came a most awful uproar, made by many voices. The bulk of it was a medley of raucous yells and screeches, above which it was easy to distinguish the fierce, dog-like barks and roars of the baboons. We knew at once that Lopez had arrived. Hurrying up to the Primate House, we found the wire fronts of the outside cages literally plastered with monkeys and baboons, all in the wildest excitement. The jaguar was in full view of them, and although not one out of the whole lot, except the sapajous, ever had an ancestor who had seen a jaguar, one and all recognized a hostile genus, and a hereditary enemy. And how they cursed him, reviled him, and made hideous faces at him! The long-armed yellow baboons barked and roared until they were heard half a mile away. The ugly-tempered macaques and rhesus monkeys nearly burst with hatred and indignation. The row was kept up for a long time, and the monkey language that was lost to science on that occasion was, both in quantity and quality, beyond compare. Bear Language. In their native haunts bears are as little given to loud talk as other animals; but in roomy and comfortable captivity, where many are yarded together, they rapidly develop vocal powers. Our bears are such cheerful citizens, and they do so many droll things, that the average visitor works overtime in watching them. I have learned the language of our bears sufficiently that whenever I hear one of them give tongue I know what he says. For example: In warning or threatening an enemy, the sloth bear says: "Ach! Ach! Ach!" and the grizzly says: "Woof! Woof!" A fighting bear says: "Aw-aw-aw!" A baby's call for its mother is "Row! Row!" A bear's distress call is: "Err-_wow_-oo-oo-oof!" But even in a zoological park it is not possible for everyone to recognize and interpret the different cries of bears, although the ability to do so is sometimes of value to the party of the second part. For example: One day in February I was sitting in my old office in the Service Building, engrossed in I know not what important and solemn matter. The park was quiet; for the snow lay nine inches deep over all. There were no visitors, and the maintenance men were silently shovelling. Over the hill from the bear dens came the voice of a bear. It said, as plainly as print: "Err-wow!" I said to myself: "That sounds like a distress call," and listened to hear it repeated. Again it came: "Err-wow!" I caught up my hat and hastened over the hill toward the bear dens. On the broad concrete walk, about a hundred feet from the dens, four men were industriously shovelling snow, unaware that anything was wrong anywhere except on the pay-roll, opposite their names. Guided by the cries that came from "The Nursery" den, where six yearling cubs were kept, I quickly caught sight of the trouble. One of our park-born brown bear cubs was hanging fast by one forefoot from the top of the barred partition. He had climbed to the top of the ironwork, thrust one front paw through between two of the bars (for bears are the greatest busybodies on earth), and when he sought to withdraw it, the sharp point of a bar in the overhang of the tree-guard had buried itself in the back of his paw, and held him fast. It seemed as if his leg was broken, and also dislocated at the shoulder. No wonder the poor little chap squalled for help. His mother, on the other side of the partition, was almost frantic with baffled sympathy, for she could do nothing to help him. It did not take more than a quarter of a minute to have several men running for crowbars and other things, and within five minutes from the discovery we were in the den ready for action. The little chap gave two or three cries to let us know how badly it hurt his leg to hang there, then bent his small mind upon rendering us assistance. First we lifted him up bodily, and held him, to remove the strain. Then, by good luck, we had at hand a stout iron bar with a U- shaped end; and with that under the injured wrist, and a crowbar to spring the treacherous overhang, we lifted the foot clear, and lowered little Brownie to the floor. From first to last he helped us all he could, and seemed to realize that it was clearly "no fair" to bite or scratch. Fortunately the leg was neither broken nor dislocated, and although Brownie limped for ten days, he soon was all right again. After the incident had been closed, I gave the men a brief lecture on the language of bears, and the necessity of being able to recognize the distress call. You can chase bison, elephants and deer all day without hearing a single vocal utterance. They know through long experience the value of silence. The night after I shot my second elephant we noted an exception. The herd had been divided by our onslaught. Part of it had gone north, part of it south, and our camp for the night (beside the dead tusker) lay midway between the two. About bedtime the elephants began signalling to each other by trumpeting, and what they sounded was "The assembly." They called and answered repeatedly; and finally it became clear to my native followers that the two herds were advancing to unite, and were likely to meet in our vicinity. That particular trumpet call was different from any other I have ever heard. It was a regular "Hello" signal- call, entirely different from the "Tal-_loo_-e" blast which once came from a feeding herd and guided us to it. But it is only on rare occasions that elephants communicate with each other by sound. I once knew a general alarm to be communicated throughout a large herd by the sign language, and a retreat organized and carried out in absolute silence. Their danger signals to each other must have been made with their trunks and their ears; but we saw none of them, because all the animals were concealed from our view except when the two scouts of the herd were hunting for us. In captivity an elephant trumpets in protest, or through fear, or through rage; but I am obliged to confess that as yet I cannot positively distinguish one from the other. Once in the Zoological Park I heard our troublesome Indian elephant, Alice, roaring continuously as if in pain. It continued at such a rate that I hurried over to the Elephant House to investigate. And there I saw a droll spectacle. Keeper Richards had taken Alice out into her yard for exercise and had ordered her to follow him. And there he was disgustedly marching around the yard while Alice marched after him at an interval of ten paces, quite free and untrammeled, but all the while lustily trumpeting and roaring in indignant protest. The only point at which she was hurt was in her feelings. Two questions that came into public notice concerning the voices of two important American animals have been permanently settled by "the barnyard naturalists" of New York. The Voice of the American Bison. In 1907 the statement of George Catlin, to the effect that in the fall the bellowing of buffalo bulls on the plains resembled the muttering of distant thunder, was denied and severely criticized in a sportsman's magazine. On October 4 of that year, while we were selecting the fifteen bison to be presented to the Government, to found the Wichita National Bison Herd, four of us heard our best bull _bellow_ five times, while another did the same thing four times. The sound uttered was a deep-voiced roar,--not a grunt,--rising and falling in measured cadence, and prolonged about four or five seconds. It was totally different from the ordinary grunt of hunger, or the menace of an angry buffalo, which is short and sharp. In discussing the quality of the bellow, we agreed that it could properly be called a low roar. It is heard only in the rutting season,--the period described by Catlin,--and there is good reason to believe that Caitlin's description is perfectly correct. The Scream of the Puma. This is a subject that will not lie still. I presume it will recur every five years as long as pumas endure. Uncountable pages of controversial letters have been expended upon the question: "Does the puma ever scream, like a woman in distress?" The true answer is easy, and uncontestable by people whose minds are open to the rules of evidence. Yes; the adult female puma DOES scream,-_in the mating season_, whenever it comes. It is loud, piercing, prolonged, and has the agonized voice qualities of a boy or a woman screaming from the pain of a surgical operation. To one who does not know the source or the cause, it is nerve-racking. When heard in a remote wilderness it must be truly fearsome. It says "Ow-w-w-w!" over and over. We have heard it a hundred times or more, and it easily carries a quarter of a mile. The language of animals is a long and interesting subject,--so much so that here it is possible only to sketch out and suggest its foundations and scope. On birds alone, an entire volume should be written; but animal intelligence is a subject as far reaching as the winds of the earth. No man who ever saw high in the heavens a V-shaped flock of wild geese, or heard the honk language either afloat, ashore or in the air, will deny the spoken language of that species. If any one should do so, let him listen to the wild-goose wonder tales of Jack Miner, and hear him imitate (to perfection) the honk call of the gander at his pond, calling to wild flocks in the sky and telling them about the corn and safety down where he is. The woodpecker drums on the high and dry limb of a dead tree his resounding signal-call that is nothing more nor less (in our view) than so much sign language. It was many years ago that we first heard in the welcome days of early spring the resounding _"Boo-hoo-hoo"_ courting call of the cock pinnated grouse, rolling over the moist earth for a mile or more in words too plain to be misunderstood. The American magpie talks beautifully; but I regret to say that I do not understand a word of its language. One summer we had several fine specimens in the great flying-cage, with the big and showy waterfowl, condor, griffon vulture, ravens and crows. One of those magpies often came over to the side of the cage to talk to me, and as I believe, make complaints. Whether he complained about his big and bulky cagemates, or the keepers, or me, I could not tell; but I thought that his grievances were against the large birds. Whenever I climbed over the guard rail and stooped down, he would come close up to the wire, stand in one spot, and in a quiet, confidential tone talk to me earnestly and gesticulate with his head for five minutes straight. I have heard senile old men run on in low-voiced, unintelligible clack in precisely the same way. The modulations of that bird's voice, its inflections and its vocabulary were wonderful. From his manner a messenger from Mars might easily have inferred that the bird believed that every word of the discourse was fully understood. The lion roars, magnificently. The hyena "laughs"; the gray wolf gives a mournful howl, the coyote barks and howls, and the fox yaps. The elk bugles, the moose roars and bawls, in desire or defiance. The elephant trumpets or screams in the joy of good feeding, or in fear or rage; and it also rumbles deeply away down in its throat. The red squirrel barks and chatters, usually to scold some one whom he hates, but other small rodents know that silence is golden. The birds have the best voices of all creatures. They are the sweet singers of the animal world, and to the inquiring mind that field is a wonderland. The frogs are vociferous; and now if they were more silent they would last longer. Of all the reptiles known to me, only two utter vocal sounds,--the alligator and the elephant tortoise. The former roars or bellows, the latter grunts. IV THE MOST INTELLIGENT ANIMALS To the professional animal-man, year in and year out comes the eternal question, "Which are the most intelligent animals?" The question is entirely legitimate. What animals are the best exponents of animal intelligence? It seems to me that the numerous factors involved, and the comparisons that must be made, can best be expressed in figures. Opinions that are based upon only one or two sets of facts are not worth much. There are about ten factors to be taken into account and appraised separately. In order to express many opinions in a small amount of space, we submit a table of estimates and summaries, covering a few mammalian species that are representative of many. But, try as they will, it is not likely that any two animal men will set down the same estimates. It all depends upon the wealth or the poverty of first-hand, eye-witness evidence. When we enter the field of evidence that must stand in quotation marks, we cease to know where we will come out. We desire to state that nearly all of the figures in the attached table of estimates are based upon the author's own observations, made during a period of more than forty years of ups and downs with wild animals. ESTIMATES OF THE COMPARATIVE INTELLIGENCE AND ABILITY OF CERTAIN CONSPICUOUS WILD ANIMALS, BASED UPON KNOWN PERFORMANCES, OR THE ABSENCE OF THEM. [Footnote: To the author, correspondence regarding the reasons for these estimates is impossible.] [beginning of chart] Perfection in all=100 [list of categories below are written vertically above the columns, with the last column unnamed and representing a total score of animal intelligence/1000] Hereditary Knowledge Perceptive Faculties Original Thought Memory Reason Receptivity in Training Efficiency in Execution Nervous Energy Keenness of the Senses Use of the Voice Primates Chimpanzee . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 100 75 100 100 100 100 50 925 Orang-Utan . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 75 100 75 100 75 100 25 850 Gorilla. . . . . . . . . . . . .50 50 50 50 75 25 25 50 100 25 500 Ungulates Indian Elephant . . . . . .100 100 100 100 100 100 100 75 50 25 850 Rhinoceros. . . . . . . . .25 25 25 25 25 0 0 25 25 0 175 Giraffe . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 25 25 25 25 25 0 25 100 0 300 White-Tailed Deer . . .100 100 100 25 50 0 0 100 100 0 575 Big-Horn Sheep . . . . . .100 100 50 25 50 0 0 100 100 0 525 Mountain Goat. . . . . . .100 100 100 25 100 0 0 100 100 0 625 Domestic Horse. . . . . .100 100 100 75 75 75 75 100 100 50 850 Carnivores Lion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 100 50 75 50 75 50 100 100 25 725 Tiger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 75 50 50 50 25 25 100 100 0 575 Grizzly Bear . . . . . . . . .100 100 50 25 50 75 50 75 100 25 725 Brown Bear (European)100 100 50 25 50 75 50 75 100 25 650 Gray Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . 100 100 100 25 75 00 100 100 25 625 Coyote . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 75 50 25 50 0 0 75 100 25 500 Red Fox . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 100 50 75 100 0 0 100 100 25 650 Domestic Dog . . . . . . . . .50 100 75 75 75 75 100 100 100 100 850 Wolverine . . . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 25 100 0 75 100 100 0 700 Beaver . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100 100 100 25 100 0 100 100 100 0 725 According to the author's information and belief, _these are "the most intelligent" animals:_ The Chimpanzee is the most intelligent of all animals below man. His mind approaches most closely to that of man, and it carries him farthest upward toward the human level. He can learn more by training, and learn more easily, than any other animal. The Orang-Utan is mentally next to the chimpanzee. The Indian Elephant in mental capacity is third from man. The high-class domestic Horse is a very wise and capable animal; but this is chiefly due to its age-long association with man, and education by him. Mentally the wild horse is a very different animal, and in the intellectual scale it ranks with the deer and antelopes. The Beaver manifests, in domestic economy, more intelligence, mechanical skill and reasoning power than any other wild animal. The Lion is endowed with keen perceptive faculties, reasoning ability and judgment of a high order, and its mind is surprisingly receptive. The Grizzly Bear is believed to be the wisest of all bears. The Pack Rat (_Neotona_) is the intellectual phenomenon of the great group of gnawing animals. It is in a class by itself. The White Mountain Goat seems to be the wisest of all the mountain summit animals whose habits are known to zoologists and sportsmen. A high-class Dog is the animal that mentally is in closest touch with the mind, the feelings and the impulses of man; and it is the only one that can read a man's feelings from his eyes and his facial expression. The Marvelous Beaver. Let us consider this animal as an illuminating example of high-power intelligence. In domestic economy the beaver is the most intelligent of all living mammals. His inherited knowledge, his original thought, his reasoning power and his engineering and mechanical skill in constructive works are marvelous and beyond compare. In his manifold industrial activities, there is no other mammal that is even a good second to him. He builds dams both great and small, to provide water in which to live, to store food and to escape from his enemies. He builds air-tight houses of sticks and mud, either as islands, or on the shore. When he cannot live as a pond-beaver with a house he cheerfully becomes a river-beaver. He lives in a river-bank burrow when house-building in a pond is impossible; and he will cheerfully tunnel under a stone wall from one-pond monotony, to go exploring outside. [Illustration: CHRISTMAS AT THE PRIMATES' HOUSE Chimpanzees (with large ears) and orang-utans (small ears). The animal on the extreme right is an orang of the common caste] He cuts down trees, both small and large, and he makes them fall as he wishes them to fall. He trims off all branches, and leaves no "slash" to cumber the ground. He buries green branches, in great quantity, in the mud at the bottom of his pond, so that in winter he can get at them under a foot of solid ice. He digs canals, of any length he pleases, to float logs and billets of wood from hinterland to pond. If you are locating beavers in your own zoo, and are wise, you can induce beavers to build their dam where you wish it to be. This is how we did it! We dug out a pond of mud in order that the beavers might have a pond of water; and we wished the beavers to build a dam forty feet long, at a point about thirty feet from the iron fence where the brook ran out. On thinking it over we concluded that we could manage it by showing the animals where we wished them to go to work. We set a l2-inch plank on its edge, all the way across the dam site, and pegged it down. Above it the water soon formed a little pool and began to flow over the top edge in a very miniature waterfall. Then we turned loose four beavers and left them. The next morning we found a cart-load of sticks and fresh mud placed like a dam against the iron fence. In beaver language this said to us: "We would rather build our dam here,--if you don't mind. It will be easier for us, and quicker." We removed all their material; and in our language that action said: "No; we would rather have you build over the plank." The next night more mud and sticks piled against the fence said to us, "We really _insist_ upon building it here!" We made a second clearance of their materials, saying in effect: "You _shall not_ build against the fence! You _must_ build where we tell you!" Thereupon, the beavers began to build over the plank, saying, "Oh, well, if you are going to make a fuss about it, we will let you have your way." So they built a beautiful water-tight dam precisely where we suggested it to them, and after that our only trouble was to keep them from overdoing the matter, and flooding the whole valley. I am not going to dwell upon the mind and manners of the beaver. The animal is well known. Three excellent books have been written and pictured about him, in the language that the General Reader understands. They are as follows: "The American Beaver and His Works," Lewis H. Morgan (1868); "The Romance of the Beaver," A. R. Dugmore (no date); "History and Traditions of the Canada Beaver," H. T. Martin (1892). "Clever Hans," the "Thinking Horse." From 1906 to 1910 the world read much about a wonderful educated horse owned and educated by Herr von Osten, in Germany. The German scientists who first came in touch with "Hans" were quite bowled over by the discovery that that one horse could "think." The _Review of Reviews_ said, in 1910: "It may be recalled that Clever Hans knew figures and letters, colors and tones, the calendar and the dial, that he could count and read, deal with decimals and fractions, spell out answers to questions with his right hoof, and recognize people from having seen their photographs. In every case his 'replies' were given in the form of scrapings with his right forehoof. "Whether the questioner was von Osten, who had worked with him for seven years, or a man like Schillings, who was a complete stranger, seemed immaterial; and this went farthest, perhaps, in disposing of all talk of 'collusion' between master and beast." Now, by the bald records of the case the fact was fixed for all time that Hans was the most wonderful mental prodigy that ever bore the form of a four-footed animal. His learning and his performances were astounding, and even uncanny. I do not care how he was trained, nor by what process he received ideas and reacted to them! He was a phenomenon, and I doubt whether this world ever sees his like again. His mastery of figures alone, no matter how it was wrought, was enough to make any animal or trainer illustrious. But eventually Clever Hans came to grief. He was ostensibly thrown off his pedestal, in Germany, by human jealousy and egotism. Several industrious German scientists deliberately set to work to discredit him, and they stuck to it until they accomplished that task. The chief instrument in this was no less a man than the director of the "Psychological Institute" of the Berlin University, Professor Otto Pfungst. He found that when Hans was put on the witness stand and subjected to rigid cross examinations _by strangers_, his answers were due partly to _telepathy and hypnotic influence_! For example, the discovery was made that Hans could not always give the correct answer to a problem in figures unless it was known to the questioner himself. To Hans's inquisitors this discovery imparted a terrible shock. It did not look like "thinking" after all! The mental process was _different_ from the process of the German mind! The wonderful fact that Hans could remember and recognize and _reproduce_ the ten digits was entirely lost to view. At once a shout went up all over Germany,--in the scientific circle, that Hans was an "impostor," that he could not "think," and that his mind was nothing much after all. Poor Hans! The glory that should have been his, and imperishable, is gone. He was the victim of scientists of one idea, who had no sense of proportion. He truly WAS a thinking horse; and we are sure that there are millions of men whose minds could not be developed to the point that the mind of that "dumb" animal attained,--no, not even with the aid of hypnotism and telepathy. The bare fact that a horse _can_ be influenced by occult mental powers proves the close parallelism that exists between the brains of men and beasts. The Trap-Door Spider. Let no one suppose for one moment that animal mind and intelligence is limited to the brain-bearing vertebrates. The scope and activity of the notochord in some of the invertebrates present phenomena far more wonderful per capita than many a brain produces. Interesting books have been written, and more will be written hereafter, on the minds and doings of ants, bees, wasps, spiders and other insects. Consider the ways and means of the ant-lion of the East, and the trap-door spider of the western desert regions. As one object lesson from the insect world, I will flash upon the screen, for a moment only, the trap-door spider. This wonderful insect personage has been exhaustively studied by Mr. Raymond L. Ditmars, in the development of a series of moving pictures, and at my request he has contributed the following graphic description of this spider's wonderful work. "The trap-door spiders, inhabiting the warmer portions of both the Old and New Worlds, dig a deep tunnel in the soil, line this with a silken wallpaper, then construct a hinged door at the top so perfectly fitted and camouflaged with soil, that when it is closed there is no indication of the burrow. Moreover, the inside portion of the door of some species is so constructed that it may be "latched," there being two holes near the edge, precisely placed where the curved fangs may be inserted and the door held firmly closed. Also, the trap-door of a number of species is so designed as to be absolutely rain-proof, being bevelled and as accurately fitting a corresponding bevel of the tube as the setting of a compression valve of a gasolene engine. [Illustration: THE TRAP-DOOR SPIDER'S DOOR AND BURROW By R. L. Ditmars 1. The door closed. Its top carefully counterfeits the surrounding ground. 2. The door with silken hinge, held open by a needle. 3. The spider in its doorway, looking for prey. 4. Section of the burrow and trap- door.] "The study of a number of specimens of our southern California species, which builds the cork-type door, including observations of them at night, when they are particularly active, indicates that the construction of the tube involves other material than the silken lining employed by many burrowing spiders. In the excavation of the tube and retention of the walls, the spider appears to employ a glairy substance, which thoroughly saturates the soil and renders the interior of the tube of almost cement- like hardness. It is then plastered with a thick jet of silk from the spinning glands. This interior finishing process appears to be quite rapid, a burrow being readily lined within a couple of hours. "The construction of the trap-door is a far more complicated process, this convex, beautifully bevelled entrance with its hinge requiring real scientific skill. Judging from observations on a number of specimens, the work is done from the outside, the spider first spinning a net-like covering over the mouth of the tube. This is thickened by weaving the body over the net, each motion leaving a smoky trail of silk. Earth is then shoveled into the covering, the spider carefully pushing the particles toward the centre, which soon sags, and assumes the proper curvature, and automatically moulds against the bevelled walls of the tube. "The shoveling process must be nicely regulated to produce the proper bevel and thickness of the door. Then the cementing process is applied to the top, rendering the door a solid unit. From the actions of these spiders,--which often calmly rest an hour without a move,--it appears that the edges of the door are now subjected, by the stout and sharp fangs, to a cutting process like that of a can opener, leaving a portion of the marginal silk to act as a hinge. This hinge afterward receives some finishing touches, and the top of the door is either pebbled or finished with a few fragments of dead vegetation, cemented on, in order to exactly match the surrounding soil." V THE RIGHTS OF WILD ANIMALS Every harmless wild bird and mammal has the right to live out its life according to its destiny; and man is in honor bound to respect those rights. At the same time it is a mistake to regard each wild bird or quadruped as a sacred thing, which under no circumstances may be utilized by man. We are not fanatical Hindus of the castes which religiously avoid the "taking of life" of any kind, and gently push aside the flea, the centipede and the scorpion. The reasoning powers of such people are strictly limited, the same as those of people who are opposed to the removal by death of the bandits and murderers of the human race. The highest duty of a reasoning being is to reason. We have no moral or legal right to act like idiots, or to become a menace to society by protecting criminal animals or criminal men from adequate punishment. Like the tree that is known by its fruit, every alleged "reasoning being" is to be judged by the daily output of his thoughts. Toward wild life, our highest duty is to be sane and sensible, in order to be just, and to promote the greatest good for the greatest number. Be neither a Hindu fanatic nor a cruel game- butcher like a certain wild-animal slaughterer whom I knew, who while he was on earth earned for himself a place in the hottest corner of the hereafter, and quickly passed on to occupy it. The following planks constitute a good platform on which to base our relations with the wild animal world, and by which to regulate our duty to the creatures that have no means of defense against the persecutions of cruel men. They may be regarded as representing the standards that have been fixed by enlightened and humane civilization. THE WILD ANIMALS' BILL OF RIGHTS This Bill of Rights is to be copied and displayed conspicuously in all zoological parks and gardens, zoos and menageries; in all theatres and shows where animal performances are given, and in all places where wild animals and birds are trained, sold or kept for the pleasure of their owners. Article 1. In view of the nearness of the approach of the higher animals to the human level, no just and humane man can deny that those wild animals have certain rights which man is in honor bound to respect. Art. 2. The fact that God gave man "dominion over the beasts of the field" does not imply a denial of animal rights, any more than the supremacy of a human government conveys the right to oppress and maltreat its citizens. Art. 3. Under certain conditions it is justifiable for man to kill a limited number of the so-called game animals, on the same basis of justification that domestic animals and fowls may be killed for food. Art. 4. While the trapping of fur-bearing animals is a necessary evil, that evil must be minimized by reducing the sufferings of trapped animals to the lowest possible point, and by preventing wasteful trapping. Art. 5. The killing of harmless mammals or birds solely for "sport," and without utilizing them when killed, is murder; and no good and humane man will permit himself to engage in any such offenses against good order and the rights of wild creatures. Art. 6. Shooting at sea-going creatures from moving vessels, without any possibility of securing them if killed or wounded, is cruel, reprehensible, and criminal, and everywhere should be forbidden by ship captains, and also by law, under penalties. Art. 7. The extermination of a harmless wild animal species is a crime; but the regulated destruction of wild pests that have been proven guilty, is sometimes necessary and justifiable. Art. 8. No group or species of birds or mammals that is accused of offenses sufficiently grave to merit destruction shall be condemned undefended and unheard, nor without adequate evidence of a character which would be acceptable in a court of law. Art. 9. The common assumption that every bird or mammal that offends, or injures the property of any man, is necessarily deserving of death, is absurd and intolerable. The death penalty should be the last resort, not the first one! Art. 10. Any nation that fails adequately to protect its crop-and- tree-protecting birds deserves to have its fields and forests devastated by predatory insects. Art. 11. No person has any moral right to keep a wild mammal, bird, reptile or fish in a state of uncomfortable, unhappy or miserable captivity, and all such practices should be prevented by law, under penalty. It is entirely feasible for a judge to designate a competent person as a referee to examine and decide upon each case. Art. 12. A wild creature that cannot be kept in comfortable captivity should not be kept at all; and the evils to be guarded against are cruelly small quarters, too much darkness, too much light, uncleanliness, bad odors, and bad food. A fish in a glass globe, or a live bird in a cage the size of a collar-box is a case of cruelty. Art. 13. Every captive animal that is suffering hopelessly from disease or the infirmities of old age has the right to be painlessly relieved of the burdens of life. Art. 14. Every keeper or owner of a captive wild animal who through indolence, forgetfulness or cruelty permits a wild creature in his charge to perish of cold, heat, hunger or thirst because of his negligence, is guilty of a grave misdemeanor, and he should be punished as the evidence and the rights of captive animals demand. Art. 15. An animal in captivity has a right to do all the damage to its surroundings that it can do, and it is not to be punished therefor. Art. 16. The idea that all captive wild animals are necessarily "miserable" is erroneous, because some captive animals are better fed, better protected and are more happy in captivity than similar animals are in a wild state, beset by dangers and harassed by hunger and thirst. It is the opinion of the vast majority of civilized people that there is no higher use to which a wild bird or mammal can be devoted than to place it in perfectly comfortable captivity to be seen by millions of persons who desire to make its acquaintance. Art. 17. About ninety-five per cent of all the wild mammals seen in captivity were either born in captivity or captured when in their infancy, and therefore have no ideas of freedom, or visions of their wild homes; consequently their supposed "pining for freedom" often is more imaginary than real. Art. 18. A wild animal has no more inherent right to live a life of lazy and luxurious ease, and freedom from all care, than a man or woman has to live without work or family cares. In the large cities of the world there are many millions of toiling humans who are worse off per capita as to burdens and sorrows and joys than are the beasts and birds in a well kept zoological park. "Freedom" is comparative only, not absolute. Art. 19. While the use of trained animals in stage performances is not necessarily cruel, and while training operations are based chiefly upon kindness and reward, it is necessary that vigilance should be exercised to insure that the cages and stage quarters of such animals shall be adequate in size, properly lighted and acceptably ventilated, and that cruel punishments shall not be inflicted upon the animals themselves. Art. 20. The training of wild animals may, or may not, involve cruelties, according to the intelligence and the moral status of the trainer. This is equally true of the training of children, and the treatment of wives and husbands. A reasonable blow with a whip to a mean and refractory animal in captivity is not necessarily an act of cruelty. Every such act must be judged according to the evidence. Art. 21. It is unjust to proclaim that "all wild animal performances are cruel" and therefore should be prohibited by law. The claim is untrue, and no lawmaker should pay heed to it. Wild animal performances are no more cruel or unjust than men-and-women performances of acrobatics. Practically all trained animals are well fed and tended, they welcome their performances, and go through them with lively interest. Such performances, when good, have a high educational value,--but not to closed minds. Art. 22. Every bull-fight, being brutally unfair to the horses and the bull engaged and disgustingly cruel, is an unfit spectacle for humane and high-minded people, and no Christian man or woman can attend one without self-stultification. Art. 23. The western practice of "bulldogging," now permitted in some Wild West shows, is disgusting, degrading, and never should be permitted. Art. 24. The use of monkeys by organ-grinders is cruel, it is degrading to the monkeys, and should in all states be prohibited by law. Art. 25. The keeping of live fishes in glass globes nearly always ends in cruelty and suffering, and should everywhere be prohibited by law. A round glass straight-jacket is just as painful as any other kind. Art. 26. The sale and use of chained live chameleons as ornaments and playthings for idiotic or vicious men and children always means death by slow torture for the reptile, and should in all states be prohibited by law. II. MENTAL TRAITS OF WILD ANIMALS VI THE BRIGHTEST MINDS AMONG AMERICAN ANIMALS We repeat that _the most interesting features of a wild animal are its mind, its thoughts, and the results of its reasoning._ Besides these, its classification, distribution and anatomy are of secondary importance; but at the same time they help to form the foundation on which to build the psychology of species and individuals. Let no student make the mistake of concluding that when he has learned an animal's place in nature there is nothing more to pursue. After fifty years of practical experience with wild animals of many species, I am reluctantly compelled to give the prize for greatest cunning and foresight _in self-preservation_ to the common brown rat,--the accursed "domestic" rat that has adopted man as his perpetual servant, and regards man's goods as his lawful prey. When all other land animals have been exterminated from the earth, the brown rat will remain, to harry and to rob the Last Man. The brown rat has persistently accompanied man all over the world. Millions have been spent in fighting him and the bubonic-plague flea that he cheerfully carries in his offensive fur. For him no place _that contains food_ is too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry. Many old sailors claim to believe that rats will desert at the dock an outward-bound ship that is fated to be lost at sea; but that certificate of superhuman foreknowledge needs a backing of evidence before it can be accepted. Of all wild animals, rats do the greatest number of "impossible" things. We have matched our wits against rat cunning until a madhouse yawned before us. Twice in my life all my traps and poisons have utterly failed, and left me faintly asking: _Are_ rats possessed of occult powers? Once the answer to that was furnished by an old he-one who left his tail in my steel trap, but a little later _caught himself_ in a trap-like space in the back of the family aeolian, and ignominiously died there,--a victim of his own error in judging distances without a tape line. Tomes might be written about the minds and manners of the brown rat, setting forth in detail its wonderful intelligence in quickly getting wise to new food, new shelter, new traps and new poisons. Six dead rats are, as a rule, sufficient to put any _new_ trap out of business; but poisons and infections go farther before being found out. [Footnote: For home use, my best rat weapon is rough-on-rats, generously mixed with butter and spread liberally on very thin slices of bread. It has served me well in effecting clearances.] The championship for keen strategy in self-preservation belongs to the musk-oxen for their wolf-proof circle of heads and horns. Every musk-ox herd is a mutual benefit life insurance company. When a gaunt and hungry wolf-pack appears, the adult bull and cow musk-oxen at once form a close circle, with the calves and young stock in the centre. That deadly ring of lowered heads and sharp horns, all hung precisely right to puncture and deflate hostile wolves, is impregnable to fang and claw. The arctic wolves know this well. Mr. Stefansson says it is the settled habit of wolf packs of Banks Land to pass musk-ox herds without even provoking them to "fall in" for defense. Judging by the facts that Charles L. Smith and the Norboe brothers related to Mr. Phillips and me around our camp-fires in the Canadian Rockies, the wolverine is one of the most cunning wild animals of all North America. This is a large order; for the gray wolf and grizzly bear are strong candidates for honors in that contest. The greatest cunning of the wolverine is manifested in robbing traps, stealing the trapper's food and trap-baits, and at the same time avoiding the traps set for him. He is wonderfully expert in springing steel traps for the bait or prey there is in them, without getting caught himself. He will follow up a trap line for miles, springing all traps and devouring all baits as he goes. Sometimes in sheer wantonness he will throw a trap into a river, and again he will bury a trap in deep snow. Dead martens in traps are savagely torn from them. Those that can not be eaten on the spot are carried off and skilfully cached under two or three feet of snow. Trapper Smith once set a trap for a wolverine, and planted close behind it a young moose skull with some flesh upon it. The wolverine came in the night, started at a point well away from the trap, dug a tunnel through six feet of snow, fetched up well behind the trap,--and triumphantly dragged away the head through his tunnel. From the testimony of W. H. Wright, of Spokane, in his interesting book on "The Grizzly Bear," and for other reasons, I am convinced that the Rocky Mountain silver-tip grizzly is our brightest North American animal, and very keen of nose, eye, ear and brain. Mr. Wright says that "the grizzly bear far excels in cunning any other animal found throughout the Rocky Mountains, and, for that matter, he far excels them all combined." While the last clause is a large order, I will not dispute the opinion of a man of keen intelligence who has lived much among the most important and interesting wild animals of the Rockies. In the Bitter Root Mountains Mr. Wright and his hunting party once set a bear trap for a grizzly, in a pen of logs, well baited with fresh meat. On the second day they found the pen demolished, the bait taken out, and everything that was movable piled on the top of the trap. The trap was again set, this time loosely, under a bed of moss. The grizzly came and joyously ate all the meat that was scattered around the trap, but the moss and the trap were left untouched. And then followed a major operation in bear trapping. A mile away there was a steep slope of smooth rock, bounded at its foot by a creek. On one side was a huge tangle of down timber, on the other side loomed some impassable rocks; and a tiny meadow sloped away at the top. The half-fleshed carcasses of two dead elk were thrown half way down the rock slide, to serve as a bait. On the two sides two bear guns were set, and to their triggers were attached two long silk fish-lines, stretched taut and held parallel to each other, extending across the rocky slope. The idea was that the bear could not by any possibility reach the bait from above or below, without setting off at least one gun, and getting a bullet through his shoulders. On the first night, no guns went off. The next morning it was found that the bear had crossed the stream and climbed straight up toward the bait until he reached the first fish-line; where he stopped. Without pressing the string sufficiently to set off its gun, he followed it to the barrier of trees. Being balked there, he turned about, retraced his steps carefully and followed the string to the barrier of rocks. Being blocked there, he back- tracked down the slide and across the stream, over the way he came. Then he widely circled the whole theatre, and came down toward the bait from the little meadow at its top of the slide. Presently he reached the upper fish-line, twelve feet away from the first one. First he followed this out to the log barrier, then back to the rock ledge that was supposed to be unclimbable. There he scrambled up the "impossible" rocks, negotiated the ledge foot by foot, and successfully got around the end of line No. 2. Getting between the two lines he sailed out across the slope to the elk carcasses, feasted sumptuously, and then meandered out the way he came, without having disturbed a soul. All this was done at night, and in darkness; and presumably that bear is there to this day, alive and well. No wonder Mr. Wright has a high opinion of the grizzly bear as a thinking animal. In hiding their homes and young, either in burrows or in nests on the ground, wild rabbits and hares are wonderfully skilful, even under new conditions. Being quite unable to fight, or even to dig deeply, they are wholly dependent upon their wits in keeping their young alive by hiding them. Thanks to their keenness in concealment, the gray rabbit is plentiful throughout the eastern United States in spite of its millions of enemies. Is it not wonderful? The number killed by hunters last year in Pennsylvania was about 3,500,000! The most amazing risk that I ever saw taken by a rabbit was made by a gray rabbit that nested in a shallow hole in the middle of a lawn-mower lawn east of the old National Museum building in Washington. The hollow was like that of a small wash-basin, and when at rest in it with her young ones the neutral gray back of the mother came just level with the top of the ground. At the last, when her young were almost large enough to get out and go under their own steam, a lawn-mower artist chanced to look down at the wrong moment and saw the family. Evidently that mother believed that the boldest ventures are those most likely to win. Among the hoofed and horned animals of North America the white- tailed deer is the shrewdest in the recognition of its enemies, the wisest in the choice of cover, and in measures for self- preservation. It seems at first glance that the buck is more keen- witted than the doe; but this is a debatable question. Throughout the year the buck thinks only of himself. During fully one-half the year the doe is burdened by the cares of motherhood, and the paramount duty of saving her fawns from their numerous enemies. This, I am quite sure, is the handicap which makes it so much easier to kill a doe in the autumn hunting season than to bag a fully antlered and sophisticated buck who has only himself to consider. The white-tailed deer saves its life by skulking low in timber and thick brush. This is why it so successfully resists the extermination that has almost swept the mule deer, antelope, white goat, moose and elk from all the hunting-grounds of the United States. Thanks to its alertness in seeing its enemies first, its skill and quickness in hiding, _and its mental keenness in recognizing and using deer sanctuaries,_ the white- tailed or "Virginia" deer will outlive all the other hoofed animals of North America. In Pennsylvania they know enough to rush for the wire-bounded protected area whenever the hunters appear. That state has twenty-six such deer sanctuaries,--well filled with deer. The moose and caribou dwell upon open or half-open ground, and are at the mercy of the merciless long-range rifles. Their keenness does not count much against rifles that can shoot and kill at a quarter of a mile. In the rutting season the bull moose of Maine or New Brunswick is easily deceived by the "call" of a birch-bark megaphone in the hands of a moose hunter who imitates the love call of the cow moose so skilfully that neither moose nor man can detect the falsity of the lure. The mountain sheep is wide-eyed, alert and ready to run, but he dwells in exposed places from the high foothills up to the mountain summits, and now even the most bungling hunter can find him and kill him at long range. In the days of black powder and short ranges the sheep had a chance to escape; but now he has none whatever. He has keener vision and more alertness than the goat, but as a real life-saving factor that amounts to nothing! Wild sheep are easily and quickly exterminated. The mountain goat has no protection except elevation and precipitous rocks, and to the hunter who has the energy to climb up to him he, too, is easy prey. Usually his biped enemy finds him and attacks him in precipitous mountains, where running and hiding are utterly impossible. When discovered on a ledge two feet wide leading across the face of a precipice, poor Billy has nothing to do but to take the bullets as they come until he reels and falls far down to the cruel slide-rock. He has a wonderful mind, but its qualities and its usefulness belong in Chapter XIII. Warm-Coated Animals Avoid "Fresh Air." On this subject there is a strange divergence of reasoning power between the wild animals of cold countries and the sleeping-porch advocates of today. Even the most warm-coated of the fur-bearing animals, such as the bears, foxes, beavers, martens and mink, and also the burrowing rodents, take great pains to den up in winter just as far from the "fresh air" of the cold outdoors as they can attain by deep denning or burrowing. The prairie-dog not only ensconces himself in a cul-de-sac at the end of a hole fourteen feet deep and long, but as winter sets in he also tightly plugs up the mouth of his den with moist earth. When sealed up in his winter den the black bear of the north draws his supply of fresh air through a hole about one inch in diameter, or less. But the human devotees of fresh air reason in the opposite direction. It is now the regular thing for mothers to open wide to the freezing air of out-doors either one or all the windows of the rooms in which their children sleep, giving to each child enough fresh air to supply ten full-grown elephants, or twenty head of horses. And the final word is the "sleeping-porch!" It matters not how deadly damp is the air along with its 33 degrees of cold, or the velocity of the wind, the fresh air must be delivered. The example of the fat and heavily furred wild beast is ignored; and I just wonder how many people in the United States, old and young, have been killed, or permanently injured, by fresh air, during the last fifteen years. And furthermore. Excepting the hoofed species, it is the universal rule of the wild animals of the cold-winter zones of the earth that the mother shall keep her helpless young close beside her in the home nest and keep them warm partly by the warmth of her own body. The wild fur-clad mother does not maroon her helpless offspring in an isolated cot in a room apart, upon a thin mattress and in an atmosphere so cold that it is utterly impossible for the poor little body and limbs to warm it and keep it warm. Yet many human mothers do just that, and some take good care to provide a warmer atmosphere for themselves than they joyously force upon their helpless infants. No dangerous fads should be forced upon defenseless children or animals. A proper amount of fresh air is very desirable, but the intake of a child is much less than that of an elephant. Besides, if Nature had intended that men should sleep outdoors in winter, with the moose and caribou, we would have been furnished with ruminant pelage and fat. VII KEEN BIRDS AND DULL MEN If all men could know how greatly the human species varies from highest to lowest, and how the minds and emotions of the lowest men parallel and dove-tail with those of the highest quadrupeds and birds, we might be less obsessed with our own human ego, and more appreciative of the intelligence of animals. A thousand times in my life my blood has been brought to the boiling point by seeing or reading of the cruel practices of ignorant and vicious men toward animals whom they despised because of their alleged standing "below man." By his vicious and cruel nature, many a man is totally unfitted to own, or even to associate with, dogs, horses and monkeys. Many persons are born into the belief that every man is necessarily a "lord of creation," and that all animals per se are man's lawful prey. In the vicious mind that impression increases with age. Minds of the better classes can readily learn by precept or by reasoning from cause to effect the duty of man to observe and defend the God- given rights of animals. It was very recently that I saw on the street a group that represented man's attitude toward wild animals. It consisted of an unclean and vicious-looking man in tramp's clothing, grinding an offensive hand-organ and domineering over a poor little terrorized "ringtail" monkey. The wretched mite from the jungle was encased in a heavy woolen straight-jacket, and there was a strap around its loins to which a stout cord was attached, running to the Root of All Evil. The pavement was hot, but there with its bare and tender feet on the hot concrete, the sad-eyed little waif painfully moved about, peering far up into the faces of passers-by for sympathy, but all the time furtively and shrinkingly watching its tormentor. Every now and then the hairy old tramp would jerk the monkey's cord, each time giving the frail creature a violent bodily wrench from head to foot. I think that string was jerked about forty times every hour. And that exhibition of monkey torture in a monkey hell continues in summer throughout many states of our country,--because "it pleases the children!" The use of monkeys with hand-organs is a cruel outrage upon the monkey tribe, and no civilized state or municipality should tolerate it. I call upon all humane persons to put an end to it. As an antidote to our vaulting human egotism, we should think often upon the closeness of mental contact between the highest animals and the lowest men. In drawing a parallel between those two groups, there are no single factors more valuable than the home, and the family food supply. These hark back to the most primitive instincts of the vertebrates. They are the bedrock foundations upon which every species rests. As they are stable or unstable, good or bad, so lives or dies the individual, and the species also. In employing the term "highest animals" I wish to be understood as referring to the warm-blooded vertebrates, and not merely the apes and monkeys that both structurally and mentally are nearest to man. Throughout my lifetime I have been by turns amazed, entertained and instructed by the marvelous intelligence and mechanical skill of small mammals in constructing burrows, and of certain birds in the construction of their nests. Today the hanging nest of the Baltimore oriole is to me an even greater wonder than it was when I first saw one over sixty years ago. Even today the mechanical skill involved in its construction is beyond my comprehension. My dull brain can not figure out the processes by which the bird begins to weave its hanging purse at the tip end of the most unstable of all earthly building sites,--a down-hanging elm-tree branch that is swayed to and fro by every passing breeze. The situation is so "impossible" that thus far no moving picture artist has ever caught and recorded the process. Take in your hand a standard oriole nest, and examine it thoroughly. First you will note that it is very strong, and thoroughly durable. It can stand the lashings of the fiercest gales that visit our storm-beaten shore. How long would it take a man to unravel that nest, wisp by wisp, and resolve it into a loose pile of materials? Certainly not less than an entire day. Do you think that even your skilful fingers,-- unassisted by needles,--could in two days, or in three, weave of those same materials a nest like that, that would function as did the original? I doubt it. The materials consist of long strips of the thin inner bark of trees, short strings, and tiny grass stems that are long, pliable and tough. Who taught the oriole how to find and to weave those rare and hard-to-find materials? And how did it manage all that weaving with its beak only? Let the wise ones answer, if they can; for I confess that I can not! Down in Venezuela, in the delta of the Orinoco River, and elsewhere, lives a black and yellow bird called the giant cacique (pronounced cay-seek'), which as a nest-builder far surpasses our oriole. Often the cacique's hanging nest is from four to six feet long. The oriole builds to escape the red squirrels, but the cacique has to reckon with the prehensile-tailed monkeys. Sometimes a dozen caciques will hang their nests in close proximity to a wasps' nest, as if for additional protection. A cacique's nest hangs like a grass rope, with a commodious purse at its lower end, entered by a narrow perpendicular slit a foot or so above the terminal facilities. It is impossible to achieve one of these nests without either shooting off the limb to which it hangs, or felling the tree. If it hangs low enough a charge of coarse shot usually will cut the limb, but if high, cutting it down with a rifle bullet is a more serious matter. [Illustration with caption: HANGING NEST OF THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE (From the "American Natural History")] [Illustration with caption: GREAT HANGING NESTS OF THE CRESTED CACIQUE As seen in the delta of the Orinoco Rover, Venezuela.] To our Zoological Park visitors the African weaver birds are a wonder and a delight. Orioles and caciques do not build nests in captivity, but the weavers blithely transfer their activities to their spacious cage in our tropical-bird house. The bird-men keep them supplied with raffia grass, and they do the rest. Fortunately for us, they weave nests for fun, and work at it all the year round! Millions of visitors have watched them doing it. To facilitate their work the upper half of their cage is judiciously supplied with tree-branches of the proper size and architectural slant. The weaving covers many horizontal branches. Sometimes a group of nests will be tied together in a structure four feet long; and it branches up, or down, or across, seemingly without rhyme or reason. Some of the weavers, which inhabit Africa, Malayana and Australia, are "communal" nest-builders. They build colonies of nests, close together. Imagine twenty-five or more Baltimore orioles massing their nests together on one side of a single tree, in a genuine village. That is the habit of some of the weaver birds;--and this brings us to what is called the most wonderful of all manifestations of house-building intelligence among birds. It is the community house of the little sociable weaver-bird of South Africa (_Philetoerus socius_). Having missed seeing the work of this species save in museums, I will quote from the Royal Natural History, written by the late Dr. Richard Lydekker, an excellent description: --This species congregates in large flocks, many pairs incubating their eggs under the same roof, which is composed of cartloads of grass piled on a branch of some camel- thorn tree in one enormous mass of an irregular umbrella shape, looking like a miniature haystack and almost solid, but with the under surface (which is nearly flat) honeycombed all over with little cavities, which serve not only as places for incubation, but also as a refuge against rain and wind. "They are constantly being repaired by their active little inhabitants. It is curious that even the initiated eye is constantly being deceived by these dome-topped structures, since at a distance they closely resemble native huts. The nesting- chambers themselves are warmly lined with feathers." Here must we abruptly end our exhibits of the intelligence of a few humble little birds as fairly representative of the wonderful mental ability and mechanical skill so common in the ranks of the birds of the world. It would be quite easy to write a volume on The Architectural Skill of Birds! Now, let us look for a moment into the house-building intelligence and skill of some of the lower tribes of men. Out of the multitude of exhibits available I will limit myself to three, widely separated. In the first place, the habitations of the savage and barbaric tribes are usually the direct result of their own mental and moral deficiencies. The Eskimo is an exception, because his home and its location are dictated by the hard and fierce circumstances which dictate to him what he must do. Often he is compelled to move as his food supply moves. The Cliff-Dweller Indian of the arid regions of the Southwest was forced to cliff- dwell, in order to stave off extermination by his enemies. Under that spur he became a wonderful architect and engineer. For present purposes we are concerned with three savage tribes which might have been rich and prosperous agriculturists or herdsmen had they developed sufficient intelligence to see the wisdom of regular industry. Consider first the lowest of three primitive tribes that inhabit the extreme southern point of Patagonia, whose real estate holdings front on the Strait of Magellan. That region is treeless, rocky, windswept, cold and inhospitable. I can not imagine a place better fitted for an anarchist penal colony. North of it lie plains less rigorous, and by degrees less sterile, and finally there are lands quite habitable by cattle-and-crop-growing men. But those three tribes elect to stick to the worst spot in South America. The most primitive is the tribe of "canoe Indians" of Tierra del Fuego, which probably represents the lowest rung of the human ladder. Beside them the cave men of 30,000 years ago were kings and princes. Their only rivals seem to be the Poonans of Central Borneo, who, living in a hot country, make no houses or shelters of any kind, and have no clothing but a long strip of bark cloth around the loins. The Fuegians have long been known to mariners and travellers. They inhabit a region that half the year is bleak, cold and raw, but they make nothing save the rudest of the rude in canoes--of rough slabs tied together and caulked _with moss,_--and rough bone- pointed spears, bows, arrows and paddles. Their only clothing consists of skins of the guanacos loosely hung from the neck, and flapping over the naked and repulsive body. They make no houses, and on shore their only shelters from the wind and snow and chilling rains are rabbit-like forms of brush, broken off by hand. These people are lower in the scale of intelligence than any wild animal species known to me; for they are mentally too dull and low to maintain themselves on a continuing basis. Their hundred years of contact with man has taught them little; and numerically they are decreasing so rapidly that the world will soon see the absolute finish of the tribe. In the best of the three tribes, the Tchuelclus, the birth rate is so low that within recent times the tribe has diminished from about 5,000 to a remnant of about 500. Now, have those primitive creatures "immortal souls?" Are they entitled to call chimpanzees, elephants, bears and dogs "lower animals?" Do they "think," or "reason," any more than the animals I have named? It is a far cry from the highest to the lowest of the human race; and we hold that the highest animals intellectually are higher than the lowest men. Now go with me for a moment to the lofty and dense tropical forest in the heart of the Territory of Selangor, in the Malay Peninsula. That forest is the home of the wild elephant, rhinoceros and sladang. And there dwells a jungle tribe called the Jackoons, some members of which I met at their family home, and observed literally in their own ancestral tree. Their house was not wholly bad, but it might have been 100 per cent better. It was merely a platform of small poles, placed like a glorified bird's nest in the spreading forks of a many-branched tree, about twenty feet from the ground. The main supports were bark-lashed to the large branches of the family tree. Over this there was a rude roof of long grass, which had a fairly intelligent slope. As a shelter from rain, the Jackoon house left much to be desired. The scanty loin cloths of the habitants knew no such thing as wash-day or line. With all its drawbacks, however, this habitation was far more adequate to the needs of its builders than the cold brush rabbit-forms of the Patagonian canoe Indians. We now come to a tribe which has reduced the problem of housing and home life to its lowest common denominator. The Poonans of Central Borneo, discovered and described by Carl Bock, build _no houses of any kind,_ not even huts of green branches; and their only overture toward the promotion of personal comfort in the home is a five-foot grass mat spread upon the sodden earth, to lie upon when at rest. And this, in a country where in the so-called "dry season" it rains half the time, and in the "wet season" all the time. The Poonans have rudely-made spears for taking the wild pig, deer and smaller game, their clothes consist of bark cloth, around the loins only. They know no such thing as agriculture, and they live off the jungle. It was said some years ago that a similarly primitive jungle tribe of Ceylon, known as the Veddahs, could count no more than five, that they could not comprehend "day after to-morrow," and that their vocabulary was limited to about 200 words. It is very probable that the language of the Poonans and the Jackoons is equally limited. And what are we to conclude from all the foregoing? Briefly, I should say that the architectural skill of the orioles, the caciques and the weaver birds is greater than that of the South Patagonia native, the Jackoon and the Poonan. I should say that those bird homes yield to their makers more comfort and protection, and a better birth-rate, than are yielded by the homes of those ignorant, unambitious and retrogressive tribes of men now living and thinking, and supposed to be possessed of reasoning powers. If the whole truth could be known, I believe it would be found that the stock of ideas possessed and used by the groups of highly-endowed birds would fully equal the ideas of such tribes of simple-minded men as those mentioned. If caught young, those savages could be trained by civilized men, and taught to perform many tricks, but so can chimpanzees and elephants. Curiously enough, it is a common thing for even the higher types of civilized men to make in home-building just as serious mistakes as are made by wild animals and savages. For example, among the men of our time it is a common mistake to build in the wrong place, to build entirely too large or too ugly, and to build a Colossal Burden instead of a real Home. From many a palace there stands forth the perpetual question: "_Why_ did he do it?" Any reader who at any time inclines toward an opinion that the author is unduly severe on the mentality of the human race, even as it exists today in the United States, is urged to read in the _Scientific Monthly_ for January, 1922, an article by Professor L. M. Tennan entitled "Adventures in Stupidity.--A Partial Analysis of the Intellectual Inferiority of a College Student." He should particularly note the percentages on page 34 in the second paragraph under the subtitle "The Psychology of Stupidity." VIII THE MENTAL STATUS OF THE ORANG-UTAN My first ownership of a live orang-utan began in 1878, in the middle of the Simujan River, Borneo, where for four Spanish dollars I became the proud possessor of a three-year old male. No sooner was the struggling animal deposited in the bottom of my own boat than it savagely seized the calf of my devoted leg and endeavored to bite therefrom a generous cross section. My leggings and my leech stockings saved my life. That implacable little beast never gave up; and two days later it died,--apparently to spite me. My next orang was a complete reverse of No. 1. He liked not the Dyaks who brought him to me, but in the first moment of our acquaintance he adopted me as his foster-father, and loved me like a son. Throughout four months of jungle vicissitudes he stuck to me. He was a high-class orang,--and be it known that many orangs are thin-headed scrubs, who never amount to anything. His skull was wide, his face was broad, and he had a dome of thought like a statesman. He had a fine mind, and I am sure I could have taught him everything that any ape could learn. During the four months that he lived with me I taught him, almost without effort, many things that were necessary in our daily life. Even the Dyaks recognized the fact that the "Old Man" was an orang (or "mias") of superior mind, and some of them traveled far to see him. Unfortunately the exigencies of travel and work compelled me to present him to an admiring friend in India. Mr. Andrew Carnegie and his then partner, Mr. J. W. Vandevorst, convoyed my Old Man and another small orang from Singapore to Colombo, Ceylon, whence they were shipped on to Madras, received there by my old friend A. G. R. Theobald,--and presented at the court of the Duke of Buckingham. Up to a comparatively recent date, the studies of the psychologists that have been devoted to the minds of animals below man, have been chiefly concerned with low and common types. Comparatively few investigators have found it possible to make extensive and prolonged observations of the most intelligent wild animals of the world, even in zoological gardens, and their observations on wild animals in a state of nature seem to have been even more circumscribed. I know only three who have studied any of the great apes. In attempting to fathom the mental capacity and the mental processes of some of the highest mammals, there is the same superior degree of interest attaching to the study of wild species that the ethnologist finds in the study of savage races of men that have been unspoiled by civilization. Obviously, it is more interesting to fathom the mind of a creature in an absolute state of nature than of one whose ancestors have been bred and reared in the trammels of domestication and for many successive generations have bowed to the will of man. The natural fury of the Atlantic walrus, when attacked, is much more interesting as a psychologic study than is the inbred rage of the bull-dog; and the remarkable defensive tactics of the musk-ox far surpass in interest the vagaries of range cattle. For several reasons, the great apes, and particularly the chimpanzees and orang-utans, are the most interesting subjects for psychologic study of all the wild-animal species with which the writer is acquainted. Primarily this is due to the fact that intellectually and temperamentally, as well as anatomically, these animals stand very near to man himself, and closely resemble him. The great apes mentioned can give visible expression to a wide range of thoughts and emotions, The voice of the adult orang-utan is almost absent, and only sufficient to display on rare occasions. What little there is of it, in animals over six years of age, is very deep and guttural, and may best be described as a deep-bass roar. Under excitement the orang can produce a roar by inhalation. Young orangs under two years of age often whine, or shriek or scream with anger, like excited human children, but with their larger growth that vocal power seems to leave them. Despite the difference in temperament and quickness in delivery, I regard the measure of the orang-utan's mental capacity as being equal to that of the chimpanzee; but the latter is, and always will remain, the more alert and showy animal. The superior feet of the chimpanzee in bipedal work is for that species a great advantage, and the longer toes of the orang are a handicap. Although the orang's sanguine temperament is far more comforting to a trainer than the harum-scarum nervous vivacity of the chimpanzee, the value of the former is overbalanced, on the stage, by the superior acting of the chimp. For these reasons the trainers generally choose the chimp for stage education. The chimpanzee is not only nervous and quick in thought and in action, but it is equally so _in temper._ It will play with any good friend to almost any extent, but the moment it suspects malicious unfairness, or what it regards as a "mean trick," it instantly becomes angry and resentful. Once when I attempted to take from our large black-faced chimpanzee, called Soko, a small lump of rubber which I feared she might swallow, my efforts were kindly but firmly thwarted. At last, when I diverted her by small offerings of chocolate, and at the right moment sought by a strategic movement to snatch the rubber from her, the palpable unfairness of the attempt caused the animal instantly to fly into a towering passion, and seek to wreak vengeance upon me. Her lips drew far back in a savage snarl, and she denounced my perfidy by piercing cries of rage and indignation. She also did her utmost to seize and drag me forcibly within reach of her teeth, for the punishment which she felt that I deserved. A large male orang-utan named Dohong, under a similar test, revealed a very different mental attitude. He dexterously snatched a valuable watch-charm from a visitor who stood inside the railing of his cage, and fled with it to the top of his balcony. As quickly as possible I thrust my handkerchief between the bars, and waved it vigorously, to attract him. At once the animal came down to me, to secure another trophy, and before he realized his position I successfully snatched the charm from him, and restored it unharmed to its owner. Dohong seemed to regard the episode as a good joke. Without manifesting any resentment he turned a somersault on his straw, then climbed upon his trapeze and began to perform, as if nothing in particular had occurred. The orang is distinctly an animal of more serene temper and more philosophic mind than the chimpanzee. This has led some authors erroneously to pronounce the orang an animal of morose and sluggish disposition, and mentally inferior to the chimpanzee. After a close personal acquaintance with about forty captive orangs of various sizes, I am convinced that the facts do not warrant that conclusion. The orang-utans of the New York Zoological Park certainly have been as cheerful in disposition, as fond of exercise and as fertile in droll performances as our chimpanzees. Even though the mind of the chimpanzee does act more quickly than that of its rival, and even though its movements are usually more rapid and more precise, the mind of the orang carries that animal precisely as far. Moreover, in its native jungles the orang habitually builds for itself a very comfortable nest on which to rest and sleep, which the chimpanzee ordinarily does not do. I think that the exact mental status of an anthropoid ape is best revealed by an attempt to train it to do some particular thing, in a manner that the trainer elects. Usually about five lessons, carefully observed, will afford a good index of the pupil's mental capabilities. Some chimpanzees are too nervous to be taught, some are too obstinate, and others are too impatient of restraint. Some orang-utans are hopelessly indifferent to the business in hand, and refuse to become interested in it. I think that no orang is too dull to learn to sit at a table, and eat with the utensils that are usually considered sacred to man's use, but the majority of them care only for the food, and take no interest in the function. On the other hand, the average chimpanzee is as restless as a newly-caught eel, and its mind is dominated by a desire to climb far beyond the reach of restraining hands, and to do almost anything save that which is particularly desired. Among the twenty or more orangs which up to 1922 have been exhibited in the Zoological Park, two stand out with special prominence, by reason of their unusual mental qualities. They differed widely from each other. One was a born actor and imitator, who loved human partnership in his daily affairs. The other was an original thinker and reasoner, with a genius for invention, and at all times impatient of training and restraint. The first was named Rajah, the latter was called Dohong. Rajah was a male orang, and about four years of age when received by us. His high and broad forehead, large eyes and general breadth of cranium and jaw marked him at once as belonging to the higher caste of orangs. Dealers and experts have no difficulty in recognizing at one glance an orang that has a good brain and good general physique from those which are thin-headed, narrow-jawed, weak in body and unlikely to live long. At the Zoological Park we have tested out the orang-utan's susceptibility to training, and proven that the task is so simple and easy that even amateurs can accomplish much in a short time. Desiring that several of our orangs should perform in public, we instructed the primate keepers to proceed along certain lines and educate them to that idea. Naturally, the performance was laid out to match our own possibilities. In a public park, where only a very little time can be devoted to training, we do not linger long over an animal that is either stupid or obstinate. Those which cannot be trained easily and quickly are promptly set aside as ineligible. Without any great amount of labor, and with no real difficulty, our orangs were trained to perform the following simple acts: 1. To sit at table, and eat and drink like humans. This involved eating sliced bananas with a fork, pouring out milk from a teapot into a teacup, drinking out of a teacup, drinking out of a beer- bottle, using a toothpick, striking a match, lighting a cigarette, smoking and spitting like a man. 2. To ride a tricycle, or bicycle. 3. To put on a pair of trousers, adjust the suspenders, put on a sweater or coat, and a cap, reversing the whole operation after the performance. 4. To drive nails with a hammer. 5. Use a key to lock and unlock a padlock. The animal most proficient in this became able to select the right Yale key out of a bunch of half a dozen or more, with as much quickness and precision as the average man displays. The orang Dohong learned to pedal and to guide a tricycle in about three lessons. He caught the two ideas almost instantly, and soon brought his muscles under control sufficiently to ride successfully, even under difficult conditions. It was quickly recognized that our Rajah was a particularly good subject, and with him the keepers went farther than with the four others. From the first moment, the training operations were to him both interesting and agreeable. The animal enjoyed the work, and he entered into it so heartily that in two weeks he was ready to dine in public, somewhat after the manner of human beings. A platform eight feet in height was erected in front of the Reptile House, and upon it were placed a table, a high chair such as small children use, and various dishes. To the platform a step- ladder led upward from the ground. Every day at four o'clock lusty Rajah was carried to the exhibition space, and set free upon the ground. Forthwith the keepers proceeded to dress him in trousers, vest, coat and cap. The moment the last button had been fastened and the cap placed upon his head, he would promptly walk to the ladder, climb up to the platform, and in the most business-like way imaginable, seat himself in his chair at the table, all ready to dine. He used a napkin, ate his soup with a spoon, speared and conveyed his sliced bananas with his fork, poured milk from a teapot into his teacup, and drank from his cup with great enjoyment and decorum. When he took a drink (of tea) from a suspicious-looking black bottle, the audience always laughed. When he elevated the empty bottle to one eye and looked far into it, they roared; and when he finally took a toothpick and gravely placed it in his mouth, his auditors were delighted. Several times during the progress of each meal, Rajah would pause and benignly gaze down upon the crowd, like a self-satisfied judge on his bench. Not once did Rajah spoil this exhibition, which was continued throughout an entire summer, nor commit any overt act of impatience, indifference or meanness. The flighty, nervous temper of the chimpanzee was delightfully absent. The most remarkable feature of it all was his very evident enjoyment of his part of the performance, and his sense of responsibility to us and to his audiences. Rajah easily and quickly learned to ride a tricycle, and guide it himself. But for his untimely death, through a remarkable invasion of a microscopic parasite (_Balentidium coli_) imported from the Galapagos Islands by elephant tortoises, his mind would have been developed much farther. Since his death, in 1902, we have had other orang-utans that were successfully taught to dine, but none of them entered into the business with the same hearty zest which characterized Rajah, and made his performances so interesting. We now come to a consideration of simian mental traits of very different character. Another male orang, named Dohong, of the same age and intellectual caste as Rajah, developed a faculty for mechanics and invention which not only challenged our admiration, but also created much work for our carpenters. He discovered, or invented, as you please, the lever as a mechanical force,--as fairly and squarely as Archimedes discovered the principle of the screw. Moreover, he delighted in the use of the new power thus acquired, quite as much as the successful inventor usually does. At the same time, two very bright chimpanzees of his own age, and with the same opportunities, discovered nothing. [Illustration caption: THUMB-PRINT OF AN ORANG-UTAN A group of fourteen experts in the New York City Departement of Criminal Records were unable to recognise this thumb print as anything else than that of a man] [Illustration caption: "RAJAH," THE ACTOR ORANG-UTAN In three lessons he learned to ride a tricycle] Dohong was of a reflective turn of mind, and never was entirely willing to learn the things that his keepers sought to teach him. To him, dining at a table was tiresomely dull, and the donning of fashionable clothing was a frivolous pastime, On the other hand, the interior of his cage, and his gymnastic appliances of ropes, trapeze and horizontal bars, all interested him greatly. Every square inch of surface, and every piece of material in his apartment, was carefully investigated, many times over. When three years old he discovered his own strength, and at first he used it good-naturedly to hector his cage-mate, a female chimpanzee smaller than himself. That, however, was of trifling interest. The day on which he made the discovery that he could break the wooden one and one-half inch horizontal bars that were held out from his cage walls on cast iron brackets, was for him a great day. Before his discovery was noted by the keepers he had joyfully destroyed two bars, and with a broken piece used as a lever was attacking a third. These bars were promptly replaced by larger bars, of harder wood, but screwed to the same cast-iron brackets that had carried the first series. For a time, the heavier bars endured; but in an evil moment the ape swung his trapeze bar, of two-inch oak, far over to one side of his cage, and applied the bar as a lever, inside of a horizontal bar and from above. The new force was too much for the cast-iron brackets, and one by one they gave way. Some were broken off, and others were torn from the wall by the breaking of the screws that held them. Knowing that all those brackets must be changed immediately, Dohong was left to destroy them; which he did, promptly and joyfully. We then made heavy brackets of flat wrought iron bars, 1/2 by 21/2 inches, unbreakable even with a lever. These were screwed on with screws so large and heavy that our carpenters knew they were quite secure. [Illustration caption: THE LEVER THAT OUR ORANG-UTAN INVENTED, AND THE WAY HE APPLIED IT By W. A. Camadeo, in the "Scientific American," 1907] In due time, Dohong tested his lever upon the bars with their new brackets, and at first they held securely. Then he engaged Polly, his chimpanzee companion, to assist him to the limit of her strength. While Dohong pulled on the lever, Polly braced her absurd little back against the wall, and pushed upon it, with all her strength. At first nothing gave way. The combined strength exerted by the three brackets was not to be overcome by prying at the horizontal bar itself. It was then that Dohong's inventive genius rose to its climax. He decided to attack the brackets singly, and conquer them one by one. On examining the situation very critically, he found that each bracket consisted of a right- angled triangle of wrought iron, with its perpendicular side against the wall, its base uppermost, and its hypotenuse out in the air. Through the open centre of the triangle he introduced the end of his trapeze bar, chain and all, as far as it would go, then gave a mighty heave. The end of his lever was against the wall, and the power was applied in such a manner that few machine screws could stand so great a strain. One by one, the screws were torn out of the wood, and finally each bracket worked upon was torn off. But there was one exception. The screws of one bracket were so firmly set in a particularly hard strip of the upright tongued- and-grooved yellow pine flooring that formed the wall, the board itself was finally torn out, full length! The board was four inches wide, seven-eighths of an inch thick, and seven feet long. Originally it was so firmly nailed that no one believed that it could be torn from its place. [Footnote: In the Winter of 1921 about a dozen newspapers in the United States published a sensational syndicated article, occupying an entire page, in which all of Dohong's lever discovery and cage-wrecking performances were reported as of recent occurrence, and credited to a stupid and uninteresting young orang called Gabong, now in the Zoological Park, that has not even the merit of sufficient intelligence to maintain a proper state of bodily uprightness, let alone the invention of mechanical principles.] Without delay, Dohong started in with his lever to pry off the remaining boards of the wall, but this movement was promptly checked. Our next task consisted in making long bolts by which the brackets of the horizontal bars were bolted entirely through the partition walls and held so powerfully on the other side that even the lever could not wreck them. As soon as the brackets were made secure, Dohong turned his attention to the two large sleeping boxes which were built very solidly on the balcony of his cage. Both of those structures he tore completely to pieces,--always working with the utmost good nature and cheerfulness. Realizing that they could not exist in the cage with him, we gave him a permit to tear them out--and save the time of the carpenters. Dohong's use of his lever was seen by hundreds of visitors, and one frequent visitor to the Park, Mr. L. A. Camacho, an engineer, was so much impressed that he published in the _Scientific American_ an illustrated account of what he saw. For a long period, Dohong had been more or less annoyed by the fact that he could not get his head out between the front bars of his cage, and look around the partition into the home of his next- door neighbor. Very soon after he discovered the use of the lever, he swung his trapeze bar out to the upper corner of his cage, thrust the end of it out between the first bar and the steel column of the partition, and very deftly bent two of the iron bars outward far enough so that he could easily thrust his head outside and have his coveted look. One of our later and largest orangs made a specialty of twisting the straw of his bedding into a rope six or seven feet long, then throwing it over his trapeze bar and swinging by it, forward and back. Time and space will not permit the enumeration of the various things done by that ape of mechanical mind with his swinging rope and his trapeze, with ropes of straw _twisted by himself,_ with keys, locks, hammer, nails and boxes. Any man who can witness such manifestations as those described above, and deny the existence in the animal of an ability to reason from cause to effect, must be prepared to deny the evidence of his own senses. The individual variations between orangs, as also between chimpanzees, are great and striking. It may with truth be said that no two individuals of either species are really quite alike in physiognomy, temperament and mental capacity. As subjects for the experimental psychologist, it is difficult to see how any other could be found that would be even a good second in living interest to the great apes. The facts thus far recorded, so I believe, present only a suggestion of the rich results that await the patient scientific investigator. In the year 1915 Dr. Robert M. Yerkes, of Harvard University, conducted at Montecito, southern California, in a comfortable primate laboratory, six months of continuous and diligent experiments on the behavior of orang-utans and monkeys. His report, published under the title of "The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes: A Study of Ideational Behavior," is a document of much interest and value. Dr. Yerkes' use of the orang-utan as a subject was a decided step forward in the study of "animal behavior" in America. IX THE MAN-LIKENESS OF THE CHIMPANZEE During the past twenty years, millions of thinking people have been startled, and not a few shocked, by the amazing and uncanny human-likeness of the performances of trained chimpanzees on the theatrical stage. Really, when a well trained "chimp" is dressed from head to foot like a man, and is seen going with quickness, precision and spirit through a performance half an hour in length, we go away from it with an uncomfortable feeling that speech is all that he lacks of being a citizen. In 1904 the American public saw Esau. Next came Consul,--in about three or four separate editions! In 1909 we had Peter. Then came I know not how many more, including the giant Casey and Mr. Garner's Susie; and finally in 1918 our own Suzette. The theatre-going public has been well supplied with trained chimpanzees, and the mental capacity of that species is now more widely known and appreciated than that of any other wild animal except the Indian elephant. There are several reasons why chimpanzees predominate on the stage, and why so few performing orang-utans have been seen. They are as follows: 1. The orang is sanguine, and slower in execution than the nervous chimpanzee. 2. The feet of the orang are not good for shoes, and biped work. 3. The orang is rather awkward with its hands, and finally, 4. There are fully twice as many chimps in the market. But the chimpanzee has certain drawbacks of his own. His nervous temper and his forced-draught activities soon wear him out. If he survives to see his sixth or seventh year, it is then that he becomes so strong and so full of ego that he becomes dangerous and requires to be retired. Bright minds are more common among the chimpanzee species than among the orangs. Three chimps out of every five are good for training, but not more than two orangs out of five can be satisfactorily developed. Some sensitive minds shrink from the idea that man has "descended" from the apes. I never for a moment shared that feeling. I would rather descend from a clean, capable and bright-minded genus of apes than from any unclean, ignorant and repulsive race of the genus _Homo._ In comparing the chimpanzees of Fernan Vaz with the Canoe Indians of the Strait of Magellan and other human tribes we could name, I think the former have decidedly the best of it. There are millions of members of the human race who are more loathsome and repulsive than wild apes. The face of the chimpanzee is highly mobile, and the mouth, lips, eyes and voice express the various emotions of the individual with a degree of clearness and precision second only to the facial expression of man himself. In fact, the face of an intelligent chimpanzee or orang-utan is a fairly constant index of the state of mind of the individual. In their turn, those enormously expansive lips and keen brown eyes express contentment, doubt, fear and terror; affection, disapproval, jealousy, anger, rage; hunger and satiety; lonesomeness and illness. The lips of the chimpanzee afford that animal several perfectly distinct expressions of the individual's mind and feelings. While it is not possible to offer a description of each which will certainly be recognizable to the reader, the two extremes will at least be appreciated. When coaxing for food, or attention, the lips are thrust far out beyond the teeth, and formed into a funnel with the small end outermost. When the chimpanzee flies into a rage at some real or fancied offense, the snarling lips are drawn back, and far up and down, until the teeth and gums are fully exposed in a ghastly threat of attack. At the same time, the voice gives forth shrill shrieks of rage, correctly represented by the syllable "Ee-ee-ee!", prolonged, and repeated with great force, three or four times. On such occasions as the latter, the offending party must look out for himself, or he may be roughly handled. The voice of the chimpanzee is strong, clear, and in captivity it is very much in evidence. Two of its moderate tones are almost musical. It is heard when the animal says, coaxingly, "Who'-oe! Who'-oe!" A dozen times a day, our large specimens indulge in spells of loud yelling, purely for their own amusement. Their strident cry sounds like "Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! _Wah'_-hoo! _Wah'_-hoo! Hoo'-hoo! _Wah_-h-h-h! _Wah_-h-h!" The second combination, "Wah-hoo," consists of two sounds, four notes apart. It is with their voices that chimpanzees first manifest their pleasure at seeing cherished friends of the human species, or their anger. Their recognition, and their exuberant joy on such occasions, is quite as apparent to every observer as are the manifestations of welcome of demonstrative human beings. Like all other groups of species, the apes of various genera now living vary widely in their mentalities. The chimpanzee has the most alert and human-like mind but with less speed the orang-utan is a good second. The average captive gorilla, if judged by existing standards for ape mentality, is a poor third in the anthropoid scale, below the chimp and orang; but since the rise of Major Penny's family-pet gorilla, named John, we must revise all our former views of that species, and concede exceptions. In studying the mental status of the primates I attach great importance to the work and results of the professional trainers who educate animals for stage performances. If the trainer does not know which are the brightest species of apes, baboons and monkeys, then who does? Their own fortunes depend upon their estimate of comparative mentality in the primates. Fortunately for our purposes, the minds of the most intelligent and capable apes, baboons, and monkeys have been partially developed and exploited by stage trainers, and to a far less extent by keepers in zoological parks. Some wonderful results have been achieved, and the best of these have been seen by the public in theatres, in traveling shows and in zoological parks. All these performances have greatly interested me, because they go so far as measures of mental capacity. I wish to make it clear that I take them very seriously. [Illustration with caption: PORTRAIT OF A HIGH-CASTE CHIMPANZEE "Baldy" was an animal of fine intelligence and originality in thought. He was a natural comedian] While many of the acts of trained animals are due to their power of mimicry and are produced by imitation rather than by original thought, even their imitative work reveals a breadth of intelligence, a range of memory and of activity and precision in thought and in energy which no logical mind can ignore. To say that a chimpanzee who can swing through thirty or forty different acts "does not think" and "does not reason," is to deny the evidence of the human senses, and fall outside the bounds of human reason. Training Apes for Performances. As will appear in its own chapter, there is nothing at all mysterious in the training of apes. The subject must be young, and pliant in mind, and of cheerful and kind disposition. The poor subjects are left for cage life. The trainer must possess intelligence of good quality, infinite patience and tireless industry. Furthermore, the stage properties must be ample. An outfit of this kind can train any ape that is mentally and physically a good subject. Of course in every animal species, wild or domestic, there are individuals so dull and stupid that it is inexpedient to try to educate them. The chimpanzee Suzette who came to us direct from the vaudeville stage performed every summer in her open-air "arena cage," until she entered motherhood, which put an end to her stage work. She was a brilliant "trick" bicycle rider. She could stand upright on a huge wooden ball, and by expert balancing and foot-work roll it up a steep incline, down a flight of stairs, and land it safely upon the stage, without once losing her balance or her control. She was entirely at home on roller skates, and when taken out upon the pavement of Baird Court she would go wildly careering around the large grass plat at high speed. All the above acts were acrobatic feats that called for original thought and action, and were such as no dull mind and body could exert. All the training skill in the world could not take a machine and teach it to ride a bicycle through a collection of bottles, and an intelligent ape is a million years from being a "machine in fur and feathers." More than once I have been astounded by the performances of apes on the stage. Mr. J. S. Edwards' orang-utan Joe was a very capable animal, and his performances were wonderful. He could use a hammer in driving nails, and a screwdriver in inserting and extracting screws, with wonderful dexterity. The most remarkable chimpanzee performance that I ever saw was given in a New York theatre in 1909. The star actor was a fine male animal about six years old, called Peter. I made a complete record of his various acts, and the program was as follows PERFORMANCE OF PETER, A CHIMPANZEE Stage properties: a suit of clothes, shoes, chair, table, bed, bureau, hatrack, candle, cigarette, match, cuspidor, roller skates, bottles, flag, inclined plane and steps; plate, napkin, cup, spoon, teapot. As Peter entered, he bowed to the audience, took off his cap and hung it upon a hatrack. He went to the table, seated himself in the chair, unfolded and put on a napkin, and with a string fastened it in place under his chin. With a fork he speared some slices of banana and ate them. Into his tumbler he poured liquid from a bottle, drank, then corked the bottle. Next, he poured tea into a cup, put in sugar and cream, took tea from the spoon, then drank from the cup. After that he took a toothpick and used it elaborately. Striking a match he lit a cigarette, and smoked. In perfect man- fashion he took the cigarette between his fingers, gave his keeper a light, smoked again, and blew puffs of smoke first from one corner of his mouth and then the other. Then he elaborately spat into the cuspidor. Next in order he went to the bureau, cleaned his teeth with a tooth-brush, brushed his hair on both sides, looked into the mirror and powdered his face. Finally he bit a coin and put it on the keeper's plate as a tip. He pulled off his coat, took off his cuffs and vest, and thus half undressed he joyously danced about, beating a tambourine. Then he removed his shirt, trousers, shoes, garters and socks. Lighting his candle he walked to his bed, blew out the candle and went to bed. Very soon he rose, put on his trousers and a pair of roller skates and playfully pursued a young woman who ran before him. His use of the roller skates was excellent. The stage was cleared of furniture, and a bicycle was brought out. He mounted it and started off, at the first trial, and swiftly rode around the stage about fifteen times. While riding he took off his cap and waved it. He rode up an inclined plane and down four steps without falling off, repeating for an encore,--but here he became peeved about something. Five bottles were set in a figure 8, and he rode between them several times. At last he took up a bottle and drank out of it. Then he drank out of a tumbler, all while riding. After much flag- waving and swift riding, Peter stopped at the center of the stage, dismounted, bowed, clapped his hands vigorously and retired. Peter's performance was remarkable because of the great length of it, the absolute skill and precision of it, and the animal's easy mastery of every situation. There was a notable absence of hesitations and mistakes, and of visible direction. The trainer seemed to do nothing save to assist with the stage properties, just as an assistant helps any acrobat through the property business of his act. If any commands or signs were given, the audience was not aware of it. Later on I learned that sometimes Peter did not perform with such spirit, and required some urging to be prompt. The trainer was kept hustling to keep up with his own duties. The animal seemed to remember, and I believe he did remember, the sequence of a performance of _fifty-six separate acts!_ When I witnessed Peter's performance in New York, saw the length of it and noted the immense amount of nervous energy that each performance used up, I made the prediction that he could not for one year endure such a strain. It was reported to me that he died nine months from that time. In October, 1909, when Peter went to Philadelphia, he was frequently and closely studied and observed by Dr. Lightner Witmer, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and his mentality was tested at the laboratory of the University. Dr. Witmer's conclusions, as set forth in a paper in the December (1909) issue of the _Psychological Clinic,_ are of very great interest. He approached Peter's first performance in a skeptical frame of mind. I gladly waive the opportunity to express my own views regarding Peter in order to put upon the stand a more competent witness. Hear Dr. Witmer: "As I entered the theatre," he says, "my feelings were commingled interest and doubt. My doubts were bred from knowledge of the difficulty of judging the intelligence of an animal from a stage performance. So-called educated horses and even educated seals and fleas have made their appeal in large number to the credulity of the public. Can any animal below man be educated in the proper sense of the word? Or is the animal mind susceptible of nothing more than a mechanical training, and only given the specious counterfeit of an educated intelligence when under the direct control of the trainer? "Since that day I have seen Peter in five public performances, have tested him at my psychological clinic and privately on three occasions. I now believe that in a very real sense the animal is himself giving the stage performance. He knows what he is doing, he delights in it, he varies it from time to time, he understands the succession of tricks which are being called for, he is guided by word of mouth without any signal open or concealed, and the function of his trainer is exercised mainly to steady and control. "I am prepared to accept the statement of his trainers, Mr. and Mrs. McArdle, that Peter's proficiency is not so much the result of training as of downright self-education." Peter was put through many of the tests which Dr. Witmer uses for the study of backward children. He performed many of these tests in a very satisfactory manner. He was able to string beads the first time he tried it. He put pegs in the ordinary kindergarten pegging board. He opened and closed a very difficult lock. He used hammer and screw driver, and distinguished without any mistake between nails and screws. A peculiar kind of hammer was given to him in order to fool him, but Peter was not fooled. He felt both ends of the hammer and used the flat end instead of the round end. Showing his initiative during the tests, Peter got away from those who were watching him and darted for a washstand, quickly turned the faucet and put his mouth to the spigot and secured a drink before he was snatched away by his trainers. He understood language and followed instructions without signs. He was able to say "mamma," and Doctor Witmer taught him in five minutes to give the sound of "p." The most remarkable performance was making the letter "w" on the blackboard, in which he imitated Doctor Witmer's movements exactly, and reproduced a fair copy of the letter. The last four paragraphs reproduced above have been copied from an article which appeared in the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_ on December 17, 1909. Dr. Witmer declares that the study of this ape's mind is a subject fit, not for the animal psychologist, but for the child psychologist. Suzette's Failure in Maternal Instinct. As a closing contribution to our observations on the chimpanzee, I must record a tragic failure in maternal instinct, as well as in general intelligence, in a chimpanzee. In 1919 our two fine eight-year old chimpanzees, Boma and Suzette, were happily married. It was a genuine love match, and strictly monogamous at that; for while big Fanny Chimp in the cage next door to Boma loved Boma and openly courted him, he was outrageously indifferent to her, and even scorned her. After seven months of gestation, a very good baby was born to Suzette, quite naturally and successfully. Boma's shouts of excitement and delight carried half a mile throughout the Park. Everything looked most auspicious for the rearing of a wonderful cage-bred and cage-born chimpanzee, the second one ever born in captivity. Instead of carrying her infant astride her hip, as do orang mothers, and the coolie women of India, Suzette astonished us beyond measure by tucking it _into her groin,_ between her thigh and her abdomen, head outward. It was a fine place,--warm and soft,--but not good when overdone! When Suzette walked, as she freely did, she held up the leg responsible for the baby, to hold it securely in place, and walked upon the other foot and her two hands. About all this there was one very bad thing. The baby was perfectly helpless! As long as the mother chose to keep it in her groin prison, it could not get free. Suzette was completely isolated, kept absolutely quiet, and every chance was given her to go on with the functions of motherhood. Her breasts contained plenty of milk, and the flow was due to start on the second day after the infant's arrival. Day and night the baby was jealously confined in that massive and powerful groin,--and _under too much pressure!_ When the baby cried, and kicked, and struggled to get free, Suzette would nervously rearrange her straw bed, carefully pick from the tiny fingers every straw that they had clutched, and settle down again. If the struggle was soon renewed, Suzette would change the infant over to the other groin, and close upon it as before. Sleeping or waking, walking, sitting or lying down, she held it there. If we attempted to touch the infant, the mother instantly became savage and dangerous. Not one human finger was permitted to touch it. For hours, and for days, we anxiously watched for nursing to begin; but in vain. At last we became almost frantic from the spectacle of the infant being slowly starved to death because the mother did not realize that it needed her milk, and that she alone could promote nursing. _Her mother instinct utterly failed to supply the link that alone could connect infancy to motherhood, and furnish life._ Of course this failure was due to poor Suzette's artificial life, and unnatural surroundings. Had she been all alone, in the depths of a tropical forest, Nature would have proceeded along her usual lines. But in our Primate House, Suzette felt that her infant was surrounded by a host of strange enemies, from whom it must be strongly and persistently _guarded and defended._ That was the idea that completely dominated her mind, ruled out all human help, and blocked the main process of nature. During the eight days that the infant lived, it was able to reach her breast and nurse only once, for about one minute; and then back it went to its prison, where it died from sheer lack of nourishment. In 1920, that same history was repeated, except that on this occasion our Veterinary Surgeon, Dr. W. Reid Blair, worked (on the fifth day) for seven hours without intermission to stupefy Suzette with chloroform, or other opiates, sufficiently to make it possible to remove the baby without a fight with the mother and its certain death. Owing to her savage temper all the work had to be done between iron bars, to keep from losing hands or arms, and the handicap on the human hand was too great. Even when Suzette had received chloroform for an hour and twenty minutes, and was regarded as _half dead,_ at the first touch of a human finger upon her thigh she instantly aroused and sprang up, raging and ready for battle. The whole effort failed. To rope Suzette and attempt to control her by force would have been sheer folly, or worse. In such a struggle the infant would have been torn to pieces. The second one died as the first one did, and for an awful week we were unable to gain possession of the decomposing cadaver. Suzette knew that something was wrong, and she realized the awful odor, but that idea of defense of her offspring obscured all others. In maintaining her possession of that infant, nothing could surpass the cunning of that ape mother. Will we ever succeed in outwitting her, and in getting one of her babies alive into a baby incubator? Who can say? X THE TRUE MENTAL STATUS OF THE GORILLA The true mental status of the gorilla was discovered in 1919 and 1920, at 15 Sloane Street, London, by Major Rupert Penny, of the Royal Air Service, and his young relative, Miss Alyse Cunningham. Prior to that time, through various combinations of retarding circumstances, no living gorilla had ever been placed and kept in an environment calculated to develop and display the real mental calibre of the gorilla mind. It seems that an exhibition cage, in a zoological park or garden thronged with visitors, actually tends to the suppression, or even the complete extinguishment, of true gorilla character. The atmosphere of the footlights and the stage in which the chimpanzee delights and thrives is to the gorilla repulsive and unbearable. Judging by Major Penny's "John," the gorilla wishes to live in a high-class human family, in a modern house, and be treated like a human being! It is now definitely recognized by us, and also by our colleagues in the London Zoological Gardens, that gorillas can not live long and thrive on public exhibition, before great crowds of people, and that it is folly to insist upon trying to compel them to do so. The male individual that lived several years in the Breslau Zoological Garden and attained the age of seven years was a striking exception. We have had two gorillas at our Park, one of which, a female named Dinah, arrived in good health, and lived with us eleven and one- half months. Her mind was dull and hopelessly unresponsive. She learned next to nothing, and she did nothing really interesting. Other captive gorillas I have known have been equally morose and unresponsive, and lived fewer months than Dinah. It is because of such animals as Dinah that for fifty years the mental status of the gorilla species has been under a cloud. Until now it has been much misunderstood and unappreciated. Of the few gorillas that have been seen in England and America, I think that all save John have been so morose and unresponsive, _and so undeveloped by companionship and training_, that mentally they have been rated far below the chimpanzee and orang. Our own Dinah was no exception to the rule. Personally she was a stupid little thing, even when in excellent health. Her most pronounced and exasperating stupidities were shown in her refusal to eat, or to taste, strange food, even when very hungry. Any ape that does not know enough to eat a fine, ripe banana, and will only mince away at the _inner lining_ of the banana skin, is an unmitigated numskull, and hardly fit to live. Dinah was all that, and more. But, alas! We have seen a few stupid human children who obstinately refused even to taste certain new and unknown kinds of food, because they "know" they will not like them! So Dinah was not alone in her childish folly. At last a chain of circumstances placed an intellectual and sensible gorilla, two years of age, in the hands of a family specially fitted by education and home surroundings to develop its mind and its manners. The results of those efforts have given to the gorilla an entirely new mental status. Thanks to the enterprise and diligence of Major Rupert Penny and Miss Cunningham in purchasing and caring for a sick and miserable young male gorilla,--a most hazardous risk,--a new chapter in wild-animal psychology now is to be written. In December, 1918, "John Gorilla" was purchased in a London department store, out of a daily atmosphere heated to _85 degrees_, and a nightly condition of solitude and terror. From that awful state it was taken to live in Major Penny's comfortable apartments. John was seriously ill. He was in a "rickety" condition, and he weighed only 32 pounds. With a pure atmosphere, kept at 65 degrees only, and amid good surroundings, he soon became well. He attained such robust health and buoyant spirits that in March, 1921, he stood 40 1/2 inches high and weighed 112 pounds. At my solicitation Miss Cunningham wrote out for me the very remarkable personal history of that wonderful animal,--apparently the most wonderful gorilla ever observed in captivity. It is a clear, straightforward and convincing record, and not one of its statements is to be for one moment doubted. While it is too long to reproduce here in its entirety, I will present a condensation of it, in Miss Cunningham's own words that will record the salient facts,--with no changes save in arrangement. Miss Cunningham says: LONELINESS. "We soon found it was impossible to leave him alone at night, because he shrieked every night, and nearly all night, from loneliness and fear. This we found he had done in the store where he lived before coming to us. He always began to cry directly he saw the assistants putting things away for the night. We found that this loneliness at night was trying on his health and appetite. As soon as possible my nephew had his bed made up every night in the room adjoining the cage, with the result that John was quite happy, and began to grow and put on fat. TREATMENT. "I fed him, washed his hands, face and feet twice a day, and brushed and combed his hair,--which he would try to do himself whenever he got hold of the brush or comb. He soon got to like all this. TRAINING. "My next idea was to teach him to be strictly clean in his habits. It was my ambition to be able to have him upstairs in our house as an ordinary member of the household. I taught him first as a child is taught and handled. This took some time. At first I could not make him understand what we expected of him, even though I always petted him and gave him grapes (of which he was especially fond), but I think at first he imagined that this treatment was a punishment. At first, without other reasons, he would roll on the floor and shriek, but directly he understood what was expected of him he soon learned, and began to behave excellently. "This training occupied quite six weeks. About February, 1919, we took him out of his cage, and allowed him the freedom of the house. Thereafter he would run upstairs to the bathroom of his own accord, turning the doorknob of whatever room he was in, and also opening the door of the bathroom.... He would get out of bed in the night by himself, go back to bed, and pull the blankets over himself quite neatly. FOOD. "John's appetite seemed to tire of foods very quickly. The only thing he stuck to was milk, which he liked best when warmed. We began by giving him a quart a day, rising to three and one-half quarts a day. I found that he preferred to choose his own food, so I used to prepare for him several kinds, such as bananas, oranges, apples, grapes, raisins, currants, dates and any small fruits in season, such as raspberries or strawberries, _all of which he liked to have warmed!_ "These displays I placed on a high shelf in the kitchen, where he could get them with difficulty. I think that he thought himself very clever when he stole anything. He never would eat anything stale. He was extremely fond of fresh lemon jelly, but he never would touch it after the second day. He loved roses, _to eat_, more than anything. The more beautiful they were, the more he liked them, but he never would eat faded roses. He never cared much for nuts of any other kind than baked peanuts, save walnuts. I found that nuts gave him dreadful spells of indigestion. USE OF TOOLS. "He knew what hammers and chisels were for, but for obvious reasons we never encouraged him in anything to do with carpentry. With cocoanuts he was very funny. He knew that they had to be broken, and he would try to break them on the floor. When he found he couldn't manage that, he would bring the nut to one of us and try to make us understand what he wished. If we gave him a hammer he would try to use it on the nut, and on not being able to manage that, he would give back to us both the hammer and the cocoanut. GAMES AND PLAY. "We never taught him any tricks; he simply acquired knowledge himself. A game he was very fond of was to pretend he was blind, shutting his eyes very tightly, and running around the room knocking against tables and chairs. . . . We found that exercise was the thing he required to keep him in health, and my nephew used to give him plenty of that by playing hide and seek with him in the morning before breakfast, and in the evening before dinner,--up and down stairs, in and out of all the rooms. He simply loved that game, and would giggle and laugh while being chased.... If he saw that a stranger was at all nervous about him, he loved running past him, and giving him a smack on the leg,--and you could see him grin as he did so. "A thing he greatly enjoyed was to stand on the top rail of his bed and jump on the springs, head over heels, just like a child. CAUTION. "He was very cautious. He would never run into a dark room without first turning on the light. FEAR. "John seemed to realize danger for other people in high places, for if anyone looked out of a high window he always pushed them away if he were at the window himself, but if he was away from it he would run and pull them back. . . . He was very much afraid of full-grown sheep, cows and horses, but he loved colts, calves and lambs, proving to us that he recognized youth. WOODS VS. FIELDS. "We found he did not like fields or open country, but he was very happy in a garden, or in woods. . . . He always liked nibbling twigs, and to eat the green buds of trees. TABLE MANNERS. "His table manners were really very good. He always sat at the table, and whenever a meal was ready, would pull his own chair up to his place. He did not care to eat a great deal, but he especially liked to drink water out of a tumbler. . . . He was the least greedy of all the animals I have ever seen. He never would snatch anything, and always ate very slowly. He always drank a lot of water, which he would always get himself whenever he wanted it by turning on a tap. Strange to say, he always turned off the water when he had finished drinking. PLAYING TO THE GALLERY. "John seemed to think that everyone was delighted to see him, and he would throw up the window whenever he was permitted. If he found the sash locked he would unfasten it, and when a big crowd had collected outside he would clap his chest and his hands. [Footnote: In the summer of 1920 a globe-trotter just arrived from England excitedly reported to me: "While driving along a street in London _I saw a live gorilla_ in the upper window of an apartment. It was a _real gorilla;_ and it clapped its hands at us as we looked! Now _what_ did it all mean?" Fortunately I was able to explain it.] PUNISHMENT AND REPENTANCE. "We made one very great mistake with John. His cage was used as a punishment, with the result that we never could leave him there alone, for he would shriek all the time. . . . Now, a stick was the one thing that our gorilla would not stand from anyone, save Major Penny and myself. Presently we found out that the only way to deal with him was to tell him that he was very naughty, and push him away from us; when he would roll on the floor and cry, and be very-repentant, holding one's ankles, and putting his head on our feet. AFFECTION FOR A CHILD. "He was especially fond of my little niece, three years old. John and she used to play together for hours, and he seemed to understand what she wanted him to do. If she ever cried, and her mother would not go and pick her up, John would always try and nip the mother, or give her a smack with the full weight of his hand, evidently thinking she was the cause of the child's tears. A SENSE OF GOOD ORDER. "He loved to take everything out of a wastepaper basket and strew the contents all over the room, after which, when told to do so he would pick up everything and put it all back, but looking very bored all the while. If the basket was very full he would push it all down very carefully, to make room for more. He would always put things back when told to do so, such as books from a bookshelf or things from a table. [Illustration caption: THE GORILLA WITH THE WONDERFUL MIND Owned by Major Rupert Penny, educated by Miss Alyse Cunningham, London, 1918-1921] TWO CASES OF ORIGINAL THOUGHT. (1) "One day we were going out, for which I was sitting ready dressed, when John wished to sit in my lap. My sister, Mrs. Penny, said: 'Don't let him. He will spoil your dress.' "As my dress happened to be a light one I pushed him away, and said, 'No!' He at once lay on the floor and cried just like a child, for about a minute. Then he rose, looked round the room, found a newspaper, went and picked it up, spread it on my lap and climbed up. This was quite the cleverest thing I ever saw him do. _Even those who saw it said they would not have believed it had they not seen it themselves!_ Both my nephews, (Major Penny and Mr. E. C. Penny), his wife and my sister (Mrs. Penny) were in the room, and can testify to the correctness of the above record. (2) "Another clever thing John did, although I suspect this was due more to instinct that to downright cleverness. A piece of filet beefsteak had just come from the butcher. Inasmuch as occasionally I gave him a small mouthful of raw beef, a small piece of the coarser part of the steak was cut off, and I gave it to him. He tasted it, then gravely handed it back to me. Then he took my hand and put it on the finer part of the meat. From that I cut off a tiny piece, gave it to him, and he ate it. When my nephew came home he wouldn't believe it, so I tried it again, with the same result, except that then he did not even attempt to eat the coarser meat." * * * * * Concerning Miss Cunningham's wonderful story, I wish to state that I believe all of it,--because there is no reason to do otherwise! It sets a new mark in gorilla lore, and it lifts a curtain from an animal mind that previously was unknown, and very generally misunderstood. To the Doubting Thomases who will doubt some portions of Miss Cunningham's story, let me cite, by way of caution, the following history: When Du Chaillu discovered the gorilla, and came to America and England with his specimens to tell about it, he said that when a big gorilla is attacked and made angry it beats its breast, repeatedly, with its clenched fists. The wiseacres of that day solemnly shook their heads and said: "Oh, no! That can not be true. No ape ever did that. He is romancing!" But now we know that this breast-beating and chest-clapping habit is to a gorilla a common-place performance, even in captivity. Sometimes there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in all our philosophy. XI THE MIND OF THE ELEPHANT It was in the jungles of the Animallai Hills of southern India that I first became impressed by the mental capacity of the Indian elephant. I saw many wild herds. I saw elephants at work, and at one period I lived in a timber camp, consisting of working elephants and mahouts. I saw a shrewd young elephant-driver soundly flogged for stealing an elephant, farming it out to a native timber contractor for four days, and then elaborately pretending that the animal had been "lost." Later on I saw elephant performances in the "Greatest Show on Earth" and elsewhere, and for eighteen years I have been chief mourner over the idiosyncrasies of Gunda and Alice. If I do not now know something about elephants, then my own case of animal intelligence is indeed hopeless. To me it seems that the only thing necessary to establish the elephant as an animal of remarkable intellect and power of original reasoning is to set forth the unadorned facts that lie ready to hand. Cuvier recorded the opinion that in sagacity the elephant in no way excels the dog and some other species of carnivora. Sir Emerson Tennent, even after some study of the elephant, was disposed to award the palm for intelligence to the dog, but only "from the higher degree of development consequent on his more intimate domestication and association with man." In the mind of G. P. Sanderson we fear that familiarity with the elephant bred a measure of contempt; and this seems very strange. He says: "Its reasoning faculties are undoubtedly far below those of the dog, and possibly of other animals; and in matters beyond its daily experience it evinces no special discernment." To me it seems that all three of those opinions are off the target. The dog is not a wild, untrammeled animal; and neither dogs, cats nor savage men evince any special discernment "beyond the range of their daily experience." Moreover, there are some millions of tame men of whom the same may be said with entire safety. Very often the question is asked: "Is the African elephant equal in intelligence and training capacity to the Indian species?" To this we must answer: Not proven. We do not know. The African species never has been tried out on the same long and wide basis as the Indian. Many individual African elephants, very intelligent, have been trained, successfully, and have given good accounts of themselves. For my own part I am absolutely sure that when taken in hand at the same age, and trained on the same basis as the Indian species, the African elephant will be found mentally quite the equal of the Indian, and just as available for work or performances. No negro tribe really likes to handle elephants and train them. The Indian native loves elephants, and enjoys training them and working with them. It is these two conditions that have left the African elephant far behind the procession. The African elephant belongs to the great Undeveloped Continent. He has been, and he still is, mercilessly pursued and slaughtered for his tusks. All the existing species of African elephants are going down and out before the ivory hunters. We fear that they will all be dead one hundred years from this time, or even less. A century hence, when the last _africanus_ has gone to join the mammoth and the mastodon, his well protected wild congener in India still will be devouring his four hundred pounds of green fodder per day, and the tame ones will be performing to amuse the swarming human millions of this overcrowded world. In the minds of our elephant keepers, familiarity with elephants has bred just the reverse of contempt. Both Thuman and Richards are quite sure that elephants are the wisest of all wild animals. Despite the very great amount of trouble made for Keeper Thuman by Gunda, the Indian, and Kartoum, the African, Thuman grows enthusiastic over the shrewdness of their "cussedness." He is particularly impressed by their skill in opening chain shackles, and unfastening the catches and locks of doors and gates. And really, Kartoum's ingenuity in finding out how to open latches and bolts is almost inexhaustible, as well as marvelous. Keeper Richards declares that our late African pygmy elephant, Congo, was the wisest animal he ever has known. I have elsewhere referred to his ability in shutting his outside door. Richards taught him to accept coins from visitors, deposit them in a box, then pull a cord to ring a bell, one pull for each coin represented. The keeper devised four different systems of intimate signals by which he could tell Congo to stop at the right point, and all these were so slight that no one ever detected them. One was by a voice-given cue, another by a hand motion, and a third was by an inclination of the body. Keeper Richards relates that Congo would go out in his yard, collect a trunkful of peanuts from visitors, bring them inside and secretly cache them in a corner behind his feed box. Then he would go out for more graft peanuts, bring them in, hide them and proceed to eat the first lot. There are millions of men who do not know what it is to conserve something that can be eaten. In this discussion of the intellectual powers and moral qualities of the elephant I will confine myself to my own observations on _Elephas indicus_, except where otherwise stated. A point to which we ask special attention is that in endeavoring to estimate the mental capacity of the elephant, we will base no general conclusions upon _any particularly intelligent individual_, as all mankind is tempted to do in discussions of the intelligence of the dog, the cat, the horse, parrot and ape. On the contrary, it is our desire to reveal the mental capacity of _every elephant living_, tame or wild, except the few individuals with abnormal or diseased minds. It is not to be shown how successfully _an_ elephant has been taught by man, but how _all_ elephants in captivity have been taught, and the mental capacity of _every_ elephant. Under the head of intellectual qualities we have first to consider the elephant's POWERS OF INDEPENDENT OBSERVATIONS, AND REASONING FROM CAUSE TO EFFECT While many wonderful stories are related of the elephant's sagacity and independent powers of reasoning, it must be admitted that a greater number of more wonderful anecdotes are told on equally good authority of dogs. But the circumstances in the case are wholly to the advantage of the universal dog, and against the rarely seen elephant. While the former roams at will through his master's premises, through town and country, mingling freely with all kinds of men and domestic animals, with unlimited time to lay plans and execute them, the elephant in captivity is chained to a stake, with no liberty of action whatever aside from begging with his trunk, eating and drinking. His only amusement is in swaying his body, swinging one foot, switching his tail, and (in a zoological park) looking for something that he can open or destroy. Such a ponderous beast cannot be allowed to roam at large among human beings, and the working elephant never leaves his stake and chain except under the guidance of his mahout. There is no means of estimating the wonderful powers of reasoning that captive elephants might develop if they could only enjoy the freedom accorded to all dogs except the blood-hound, bull-dog and a few others. In the jungles of India the writer frequently has seen wild elephants reconnoitre dangerous ground by means of a scout or spy; communicate intelligence by signs; retreat in orderly silence from a lurking danger, and systematically march, in single file, like the jungle tribes of men. Once having approached to within fifty yards of the stragglers of a herd of about thirty wild elephants, which was scattered over about four acres of very open forest and quietly feeding, two individuals of the herd on the side nearest us suddenly suspected danger. One of them elevated his trunk, with the tip bent forward, and smelled the air from various points of the compass. A moment later an old elephant left the herd and started straight for our ambush, scenting the air with upraised trunk as he slowly and noiselessly advanced. We instantly retreated, unobserved and unheard. The elephant advanced until he reached the identical spot where we had a moment before been concealed. He paused, and stood motionless as a statue for about two minutes, then wheeled about and quickly but noiselessly rejoined the herd. In less than half a minute the whole herd was in motion, heading directly away from us, and moving very rapidly, but _without the slightest noise_. The huge animals simply vanished like shadows into the leafy depths of the forest. Before proceeding a quarter of a mile, the entire herd formed in single file and continued strictly in that order for several miles. Like the human dwellers in the jungle, the elephants know that the easiest and most expeditious way for a large body of animals to traverse a tangled forest is for the leader to pick the way, while all the others follow in his footsteps. In strong contrast with the stealthy and noiseless manner in which elephants steal away from a lurking danger, or an ambush discovered, from an open attack accompanied with the noise of fire-arms they rush away at headlong speed, quite regardless of the noise they make. On one occasion a herd which I was designing to attack, and had approached to within forty yards, as its members were feeding in some thick bushes, discovered my presence and retreated so silently that they had been gone five minutes before I discovered what their sudden quietude really meant. In this instance, as in several others, the still alarm was communicated by silent signals, or sign-language. At the Zoological Park we reared an African pygmy elephant (_Elephas pumilio_). When his slender little tusks grew to eighteen inches in length he made some interesting uses of them. Once when the keepers wished to lead him upon our large platform scales, the trembling of the platform frightened him. He conceived the idea that it was unsafe, and therefore that he must keep off. He backed away, halted, and refused to leave solid ground. The men pushed him. He backed, and trumpeted a shrill protest. The men pushed harder, and forced him forward. Trumpeting his wild alarm and his protest against what he regarded as murder, he fell upon his knees and drove his tusks into the earth, quite up to his mouth, to anchor himself firmly to the solid ground. It was pathetic, but also amusing. When Congo finally was pushed upon the scales and weighed, he left the trembling instrument of torture with an air of disgust and disapproval that was quite as eloquent as words. On several occasions when taken out for exercise in the park, he endeavored to hinder the return to quarters by anchoring himself to Mother Earth. Congo once startled us by his knowledge of the usefulness of doors. For a time he was kept in a compartment that had an outside door running sidewise on a trolley track, and controlled by two hanging chains, one to close it and one to open it. Each chain had on its end a stout iron ring for a handle. One chilly morning when I went to see Congo, I asked his keeper to open his door, so that he could go out. The keeper did so, by pulling the right hand chain. The moment the draft of chilly outer air struck Congo, who stood in the centre of his stall facing me, he impatiently wheeled about, walked up to the left hand chain, grabbed it with his trunk, slipped the ring over one of his tusks, then inclined his head downward and with an irritated tug pulled the door shut with a spiteful slam. "Open it again," I said to the keeper. He did so, and in the same way, but with a visible increase in irritation, Congo closed it in the same manner as before. Again the keeper opened the door, and this time, with a real exhibition of temper Congo again thrust the ring over his tusk, and brought the door shut with a resounding bang. It was his regular habit to close that door, or to open it, when he felt like more air or less air; and who is there who will say that the act was due to "instinct" in a jungle-bred animal, or anything else than original thought. The ring on his tusk was his own invention, as a means to a desired end. Every elephant that we ever have had has become, through his own initiative and experimenting, an expert in unfastening the latches of doors and gates, and in untying chains and ropes. Gunda always knew enough to attack the padlocks on his leg chains, and break them if possible. No ordinary clevis would hold him. When the pin was threaded at one end and screwed into its place, Gunda would work at it, hour by hour, until he would start it to unscrewing, and then his trunk-tip would do the rest. The only clevis that he could not open was one in which a stout cotter pin was passed through the end of the clevis-pin and strongly bent. Through reasons emanating in his own savage brain, Gunda took strong dislikes to several of our park people. He hated Dick Richards,--the keeper of Alice. He hated a certain messenger boy, a certain laborer, a painter and Mr. Ditmars. Toward me he was tolerant, and never rushed at me to kill me, as he always did to his pet aversions. He stood in open fear of his own keeper, Walter Thuman, until he had studied out a plan to catch him off his guard and "get him." Then he launched his long-contemplated attack, and Thuman was almost killed. Our present (1921) male African elephant, Kartoum, is not so hostile toward people, but his insatiable desire is to break and to smash all of his environment that can be bent or broken. His ingenuity in finding ways to damage doors and gates, and to bend or to break steel beams, is amazing. His greatest feat consisted in breaking squarely in two, by pushing with his head, a 90-pound steel railroad iron used as the top bar of his fence. He knows the mechanism of the latch of the ponderous steel door between his two box stalls, and nothing but a small pin that only human fingers can manipulate suffices to thwart his efforts to control the latch. Kartoum has gone over every inch of surface of his two apartments, his doors, gates and fences, to find something that he can break or damage. The steel linings of his apartment walls, originally five feet high, we have been compelled to extend upward to a height of nine feet, to save the brick walls from being battered and disfigured. He has searched his steel fences throughout, in order to find their weakest points, and concentrate his attacks upon them. If the sharp-pointed iron spikes three inches long that are set all over his doors are perfectly solid, he respects them, but if one is the least bit loose in its socket, he works at it until he finally breaks it off. I invite any Doubting Thomas who thinks that Kartoum does not "think" and "reason" to try his own thinking and reasoning at inventing for Kartoum's door a latch that a keeper can easily and surely open and close at a distance of ten feet, and that will be Kartoum-proof. As for ourselves, three or four seemingly intelligent officers and keepers, and a capable foreman of construction, have all they can do to keep ahead of that one elephant, so great is his ingenuity in thwarting our ways and means to restrain him. In about two days of effort our elephant keepers taught Gunda to receive a coin from the hand of a visitor, or pick it off the floor, lift the lid of a high-placed cash-box, drop the coin into it and ring a bell. This very amusing industry was kept up for several years, but finally it became so popular that it had to be discontinued. Keeper Dick Richards easily taught Alice to blow a mouth organ, and to ring a telephone, to take the receiver off its hook and hold it to her ear and listen. For years Alice has rendered, every summer, valuable services of a serious nature in carrying children and other visitors around her yard, and only once or twice has she shown a contrary or obstinate spirit. Tame elephants never tread on the feet of their attendants or knock them down by accident; or, at least, no instances of the kind have come to my knowledge. The elephant's feet are large, his range of vision is circumscribed, and his extreme and wholly voluntary solicitude for the safety of his human attendants can not be due to anything else than independent reasoning. The most intelligent dog is apt to greet his master by planting a pair of dirty paws against his coat or trousers. The most sensible carriage-horse is liable to step on his master's foot or crowd him against a wall in a moment of excitement; but even inside the keddah, with wild elephants all about, and a captive elephant hemmed in by three or four tame animals, the noosers safely work under the bodies and between the feet of the tame elephant until the feet of the captive are tied. All who have witnessed the tying of captives in a keddah wherein a whole wild herd has been entrapped, testify to the uncanny human- like quality of the intelligence displayed by the tame elephants who assist in tying, leading out and subjugating the wild captives. They enter into the business with both spirit and understanding, and as occasion requires will deceitfully cajole or vigorously punish a troublesome captive. Sir Emerson Tennent asserts that the tame elephants display the most perfect conception of every movement, both of the object to be attained and the means to accomplish it. Memory in the Elephant. So far as memory may be regarded as an index of an animal's mental capacity, the weight of evidence is most convincingly creditable to the elephant. As a test of memory in an animal, we hold that a trained performance surpasses all others. During the past forty years millions of people have witnessed in either Barnum's or Ringling Brothers' shows, or in the two combined, an imitation military drill performed by from twelve to twenty elephants which in animals of any other species would be considered a remarkable performance. The following were the commands given by one trainer, understood and remembered by each elephant, and executed without any visible hesitation or mistake. These we will call the Accomplishments of Performing Elephants. 1. Fall in line. 2. Roll-call. (As each elephant's name is called, he takes his place in the ranks). 3. Present arms. (The trunk is uplifted, with its tip curved forward and held in that position for a short time.) 4. Forward, march. 5. File left, march. 6. Right about face, march. 7. Left about face, march. 8. Right by twos, march. 9. Double quick, march. 10. Single file, march. 11. File right. 12. Halt. 13. Ground arms. (All lie down, and lie motionless.) 14. Attention (All arise.) 15. Shoulder arms. (All stand up on their hind-legs.) In all, fifteen commands were obeyed by the whole company of elephants. It being impossible, or at least impracticable, to supply so large a number of animals with furniture and stage properties for a further universal performance, certain individuals were supplied with the proper articles when necessary for a continuation of the performance, as follows: 16. Ringing bells. 17. Climbing up a step-ladder. 18. Going lame in a fore leg. 19. Going lame in a hind leg. 20. Stepping up on a tub turned bottom up. [Illustration with caption: TAME ELEPHANTS ASSISTING IN TYING A WILD CAPTIVE The captive elephant is marked "C." The tame elephants have been quietly massed around him to keep him still and to give the noosers a chance to work at his legs from under the bodies of the tame elephants. The black figures on the tame elephants are their mahouts, wrapped in blankets and lying down. (From A. G. R. Theobald, Mysore)] 21. Standing on a tub on right legs only. 22. The same, on opposite legs. 23. The same, on the fore legs only. 24. The same, on the hind legs only. 25. Using a fan. 26. Turning a hand-organ. 27. Using a handkerchief to wipe the eyes. 28. Sitting in a chair. 29. Kneeling, with the fore legs. 30. Kneeling with the hind legs. 31. Walking astride a man lying lengthwise. 32. Stepping over a man lying down. 33. Forming a pyramid of elephants, by using tubs of various sizes. While it is true that not all of the acts in the latter part of this performance were performed by each one of the elephants who went through the military drill, there is no reason to doubt the entire ability of each individual to be trained to obey the whole thirty-three commands, and to remember them all accurately and without confusion. The most astonishing feature of the performance, aside from the perfect obedience of the huge beasts, was their easy confidence and accuracy of memory. We come now to a consideration of the Accomplishments of Working Elephants. In all the timber-forests of southern India every captive elephant is taught to perform all the following acts and services, as I have witnessed on many occasions: 1. To _salaam,_ or salute, by raising the trunk. 2. To kneel, to receive a load or a passenger. 3. When standing, to hold up a fore-foot, to serve the driver as a step in climbing to his place. 4. To lie down to be washed, first on one side and then on the other. 5. To open the mouth. 6. To "hand up" any article from the ground to the reach of a person riding. 7. To pull down an obstructing bough. 8. To halt. 9. To back. 10. To pick up the end of a drag-rope and place it between the teeth. 11. To drag a timber. 12. To kneel and with the head turn a log over, or turn it with the tusks if any are present. 13. To push a log into position parallel with others. 14. To balance and carry timbers on the tusks, if possessing tusks of sufficient size. 15. To "speak," or trumpet. 16. To work in harness. Every working elephant in India is supposed to possess the intelligence necessary to the performance of all the acts enumerated above at the command of his driver, either by spoken words, a pressure of the knees or feet, or a touch with the driving goad. For the sake of generalization I have purposely excluded from this list all tricks and accomplishments which are not universally taught to working elephants. We have seen, however, that performing elephants are capable of executing nearly double the number of acts commonly taught to the workers; and, while it is useless to speculate upon the subject, it must be admitted that, were a trainer to test an elephant's memory by ascertaining the exact number of commands it could remember and execute in rotation, the result would far exceed anything yet obtained. For my own part, I believe it would exceed a hundred. The performance in the circus-ring is limited by time and space, and not by the mental capacity of the elephants. Comprehension under Training. When we come to consider the comparative mental receptivity and comprehension of animals under man's tuition, we find the elephant absolutely unsurpassed. On account of the fact that an elephant is about eighteen years in coming to anything like maturity, according to the Indian Government standard for working animals, it is far more economical and expeditious to catch full-grown elephants in their native jungles, and train them, than it is to breed and rear them. About ninety per cent of all the elephants now living in captivity were caught in a wild state and tamed, and of the remainder at least eighty per cent were born in captivity of females that were gravid when captured. It will be seen, therefore, that the elephant has derived no advantage whatever from ancestral association with man, and has gained nothing from the careful selection and breeding which, all combined, have made the collie dog, the pointer and the setter the wonderfully intelligent animals they are. For many generations the horse has been bred for strength, for speed, or for beauty of form, but the breeding of the dog has been based _chiefly_ on his intelligence as a means to an end. _With all his advantages, it is to be doubted whether the comprehensive faculties of the dog, even in the most exceptional individuals of a whole race, are equal to those of the adult wild elephant fresh from the jungle._ The extreme difficulty of teaching a dog _of mature age_ even the simplest thing is so well known that it has passed into a proverb: "It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." In other words, the conditions _must_ be favorable. But what is the case with the elephant? The question shall be answered by G. P. Sanderson. In his "Wild Beasts of India," he says: "_Nor are there any elephants which can not be easily subjugated, whatever their size or age. The largest and oldest elephants are frequently the most easily tamed, as they are less apprehensive than the younger ones._" Philosophy of the Elephant in Accepting Captivity and Making the Best of It. The most astounding feature in the education of an elephant is the suddenness of his transition from a wild and lawless denizen of the forest to the quiet, plodding, good- tempered, and cheerful beast of draught or burden. I call it astounding, because in comparison with what could _not_ be done with other wild animals caught when adult, no other word is adequate to express the difference. The average wild animal caught fully grown is "a terror," and so far as training is concerned, perfectly impossible. There takes place in the keddah, or pen of capture, a mighty struggle between the giant strength of the captive and the ingenuity of man, ably seconded by a few powerful tame elephants. When he finds his strength utterly overcome by man's intelligence, he yields to the inevitable, and accepts the situation philosophically. Sanderson once had a narrow escape from death while on the back of a tame elephant inside a keddah, attempting to secure a wild female. She fought his elephant long and viciously, with the strength and courage of despair, but finally she was overcome by superior numbers. Although her attack on Sanderson in the keddah was of the most murderous description, he states that her conduct after her defeat was most exemplary, and she never afterward showed any signs of ill-temper. Mr. Sanderson and an elephant-driver once mounted a full-grown female elephant _on the sixth day after her capture, without even the presence of a tame animal._ Sir Emerson Tennent records an instance wherein an elephant fed from the hand on the first night of its capture, and in a very few days evinced pleasure at being patted on the head. Such instances as the above can be multiplied indefinitely. To what else shall they be attributed than philosophic reasoning on the part of the elephant? The orang-utan and the chimpanzee, so often put forward as his intellectual superior, when captured alive at any other period than that of helpless infancy, are vicious, aggressive, and intractable not only for weeks and months, but for the remainder of their lives. Orangs captured when fully adult exhibit the most tiger-like ferocity, and are wholly intractable. If dogs are naturally superior to elephants in natural intellect, it should be as easy to tame and educate newly-caught wild dogs or wolves of mature age, as newly-caught elephants. But, so far from this being the case, it is safe to assert that it would be _impossible_ to train even the most intelligent company of pointers, setters or collies ever got together to perform the feats accomplished with such promptness and accuracy by all regularly trained work elephants. The successful training of all elephants up to the required working point is so fully conceded in India that the market value of an animal depends wholly upon its age, sex, build and the presence or absence of good tusks. The animal's education is either sufficient for the buyer, or, if it is not, he knows it can be made so. Promptness and Accuracy in the Execution of Man's Orders. This is the fourth quality which serves as a key to the mental capacity and mental processes of an animal. To me the most impressive feature of a performance of elephants in the circus-ring is the fact that every command uttered is obeyed with true military promptness and freedom from hesitation, and so accurately that an entire performance often is conducted and concluded without the repetition of a single command. One by one the orders are executed with the most human-like precision and steadiness, amounting sometimes to actual nonchalance. Human beings of the highest type scarcely could do better. To some savage races--for example, the native Australians, the Veddahs of Ceylon, or the Jackoons of the Malay Peninsula, I believe that such a performance would be impossible, even under training. I do not believe their minds act with sufficient rapidity and accuracy to enable a company of them to go through with such a wholly artificial performance as successfully as the elephants do. The thoughtful observer does not need to be told that the brain of the ponderous quadruped acts, as far as it goes, with the same rapidity and precision as that of an intelligent man,--and this, too, in a performance that is wholly artificial and acquired. In the performance of Bartholomew's horses, of which I once kept a record in detail, even the most accomplished members of his troupe often had to be commanded again and again before they would obey. A command often was repeated for the fifth or sixth time before the desired result was obtained. I noted particularly that not one of his horses,--which were the most perfectly trained of any ever seen by me,--was an exception to this rule, or performed his tasks with the prompt obedience and self-confidence so noticeable in _each one_ of the sixteen Barnum elephants. The horses usually obeyed with tardiness and hesitation, and very often manifested nervousness and uncertainty. In the mind of the elephant, e. g., _each_ elephant, there was no confusion of ideas or lapses of memory, but, on the contrary, the mental grasp on the whole subject was so secure and comprehensive that the animal felt himself the master of the situation. I have never yet seen a performance of trained dogs which could be considered worthy of serious comparison with the accomplishments of either performing or working elephants. In the matter of native educational capacity the dog can not on any grounds be considered the rival of the elephant. The alleged mental superiority of the dog is based almost wholly upon his powers of independent reasoning and observation as exhibited in a state of almost perfect _freedom._ Until the elephant who has grown to maturity under man's influence, is allowed the dog's freedom to plan and execute, no conclusive comparison between them can be made. Moral Qualities of the Elephant. Finally, we come to a consideration of the elephant's moral qualities that have a direct bearing upon our subject. In India, excepting the professional "rogue," the elephant bears a spotless reputation for patience, amiability and obedience. The "rogue" is an individual afflicted with either an incorrigible disposition, or else is afflicted with insanity, either temporary or permanent. I know of no instance on record wherein a _normal elephant_ with a _healthy mind_ has been guilty of unprovoked homicide, or even of attempting it. I have never heard of an elephant in India so much as kicking, striking or otherwise injuring either human beings or other domestic animals. There have been several instances, however, of persons killed by elephants which were temporarily insane, or "_must,_" and also by others permanently insane. In America several persons have been killed in revenge for ill treatment. In Brooklyn a female elephant once killed a civilian who burned her trunk with a lighted cigar. It is the misfortune but not the fault of the elephant that in advanced age or by want of necessary exercise, he is liable to be attacked by _must,_ or sexual insanity, during which period he is clearly irresponsible for his acts. So many men have been killed by elephants in this country that of late years the idea has been steadily gaining ground that elephants are naturally ill-tempered, and vicious to a dangerous extent. Under fair conditions, nothing could be farther from the truth. We have seen that in the hands of the "gentle Hindu" the elephant is safe and reliable, and never attacks man except under the circumstances already stated. In this country, however, many an elephant is at the mercy of quick-tempered and sometimes revengeful showmen, who very often do not understand the temperaments of the animals under their control, and who during the traveling season are rendered perpetually ill-tempered and vindictive by reason of overwork and insufficient sleep. With such masters as these it is no wonder that occasionally an animal rebels, and executes vengeance. In Minneapolis in December an elephant once went on a rampage through the freezing of its ears. I am quite convinced that an elephant could by ill treatment be driven to insanity, and I have no doubt that this has been done many times. Our bad elephant, Gunda, was bad by nature, but finally he became afflicted with sexual insanity, for which there was no cure. When commanded by man, the elephant will tear a criminal limb from limb, or crush him to death with his knees, or go out to battle holding a sword in his trunk. He will, when told to do so, attack his kind with fury and persistence; but in the course of many hours, and even days, spent in watching wild herds, I never yet saw a single individual show any signs of impatience or ill-temper toward his fellows. It is safe to say that, thus far, not one half the elephant's mental capabilities have been developed, or even understood. It would be of great interest to determine by experiment the full educational capacity of this interesting quadruped. It would be equally interesting to determine the limit of its reasoning powers in applied mechanics. An animal that can turn a hand-organ at the proper speed, or ring a telephone and go through the motions of listening with a receiver, can be taught to push a smoothing-plane invented purposely for him; but whether he would learn of himself to plane the rough surface smooth, and let the smooth ones remain untouched, is an open question. While it is generally fruitless and unsatisfactory to enter the field of speculation, I can not resist the temptation to assert my belief that an elephant can be taught to read written characters, and also to express some of his own thoughts or states of feeling in writing. It would be a perfectly simple matter to prepare suitable appliances by which the sagacious animal could hold a crayon in his trunk, and mark upon a surface adapted to his convenience. Many an elephant has been taught to make chalk-marks on a blackboard. In Julian's work on "The Nature of Animals," the eleventh chapter of the second book, he describes in detail the wonderful performances of elephants at Rome, all of which he saw. One passage is of peculiar interest to us, and the following has been given as a translation: "...I saw them writing letters on Roman tablets with their trunks, neither looking awry nor turning aside. The hand, however, of the teacher was placed so as to be a guide in the formation of the letters; and, while it was writing, the animal kept its eye fixed down in an accomplished and scholar- like manner." I can conceive how an elephant may be taught that certain characters represent certain ideas, and that they are capable of intelligent combinations. The system and judgment and patient effort which developed an active, educated, and even refined intellect in Laura Bridgman--deaf, dumb and blind from birth-- ought certainly to be able to teach a clear-headed, intelligent elephant to express at least _some_ of his thoughts in writing. I believe it is as much an act of murder to wantonly take the life of a healthy elephant as to kill a native Australian or a Central- African savage. If it is more culpable to kill an ignorant human savage than an elephant, it is also more culpable to kill an elephant than an echinoderm. Many men are both morally and intellectually lower than many quadrupeds, and are, in my opinion, as wholly destitute of that indefinable attribute called soul as all the lower animals commonly are supposed to be. If an investigator like Dr. Yerkes, and an educator like Dr. Howe, should take it in hand to develop the mind of the elephant to the highest possible extent, their results would be awaited with peculiar interest, and it would be strange if they did not necessitate a revision of the theories now common among those who concede an immortal soul to every member of the human race, even down to the lowest, but deny it to all the animals below man. Curvature in the Brain of an Elephant. There is curvature of the spine; and there is curvature in the brain. It afflicts the human race, and all other vertebrates are subject to it. In the Zoological Park we have had, and still have, a persistent case of it in a female Indian elephant now twenty-three years of age, named "Alice." Her mental ailment several times manifested itself in Luna Park, her former home; but when we purchased the animal her former owners carelessly forgot to mention it. Four days after Alice reached her new temporary home in our Antelope House, and while being marched around the Park for exercise, she heard the strident cry of one of our mountain lions, and immediately turned and bolted. Young as she was at that time, her two strong and able-bodied keepers, Thuman and Bayreuther, were utterly unable to restrain her. She surged straight forward for the front door of the Reptile House, and into that building she went, with the two keepers literally swinging from her ears. As the great beast suddenly loomed up above the crowd of sightseers in the quiet building, the crowd screamed and became almost panic-stricken. Partly by her own volition and partly by encouragement, she circumnavigated the turtle-bank and went out. Once outside she went where she pleased, and the keepers were quite unable to control her. Half an hour later she again headed for the Reptile House and we knew that she would again try to enter. In view of the great array of plate glass cases in that building, many of them containing venomous cobras, rattlesnakes, moccasins and bushmasters, we were thoroughly frightened at the prospect of that crazy beast again coming within reach of them. With our men fighting frantically, and exhausted by their prolonged efforts to control her, Alice again entered the Reptile House. As she attempted to pass into the main hall,--the danger zone,--our men succeeded in chaining her front feet to the two steel posts of the guard rail, set solidly in concrete on each side of the doorway. Alice tried to pull up those posts by their roots, but they held; and there in front of the Crocodile Pool the keepers and I camped for the night. We fed her hay and bread, to keep her partially occupied, and wondered what she would do in the morning when we would attempt to remove her. Soon after dawn a force of keepers arrived. Chaining the elephant's front feet together so that she could not step more than a foot, we loosed the chains from the two posts and ordered her to come to an "about face," and go out. Instead of doing that she determinedly advanced toward the right, and came within reach of twelve handsome glazed cases of live reptiles that stood on a long table. Frantically the men tried to drive her back. For answer she put her two front feet on the top bar of the steel guard rail and smashed ten feet of it to the floor. Then she began to butt those glass snake cages off their table, one by one. _"Boom!" "Bang!" "Crash!"_ they went on the floor, one after another. Soon fourteen banded rattlesnakes of junior size were wriggling over the floor. "Smash" went more cases. The Reptile House was in a great uproar. Soon the big wall cases would be reached, and then--I would be obliged to shoot her dead, to avoid a general delivery of poisonous serpents, and big pythons from twenty to twenty-two feet long. The room resounded with our shouts, and the angry trumpeting of Alice. At last, by vigorous work with the elephant hooks, Alice was turned and headed out of the building. A foot at a time she passed out, then headed toward the bear dens. Midway, we steered her in among some young maple trees, and soon had her front legs chained to one of them. Alice tried to push it over, and came near to doing so. Then we quickly tied her hind legs together,--and she was all ours. Seeing that all was clear for a fall, we joyously pushed Alice off her feet. She went over, and fell prone upon her side. In three minutes all her feet were securely anchored to trees, and we sat down upon her prostrate body. At that crowning indignity Alice was the maddest elephant in the world for that day. We gave her food, and the use of her trunk, and left her there twenty-four hours, to think it over. She deserved a vast beating with canes; but we gave her no punishment whatever. It would have served no good purpose. During the interval we telephoned to Coney Island, and asked Dick Richards, the former keeper of Alice, to come and reason with her. Promptly he came,--and he is still guiding as best he can the checkered destinies of that erring female. When Alice was unwound and permitted to arise,--with certain limitations as to her progress through the world,--it was evident that she was in a chastened mood. She quietly marched to her quarters at the Antelope House, and there we interned her. But that was not all of Alice. Very soon we had to move her to the completed Elephant House, half a mile away. Keeper Richards said that two or three times she had bolted into buildings at Luna Park; so we prepared to overcome her idiosyncrasies by a combination of force and strategy. I had the men procure a strong rope about one hundred feet long, in the middle of which I had them fix a very nice steel hook, large enough to hook suddenly around a post or a tree. One end of that rope we tied to the left foot of Charming Alice, and the remainder of the rope was carried out at full length in front of her. Willingly enough she started from the Antelope House, and Richards led her about three hundred feet. Then she stopped, and disregarding all advice and hooks, started to come about, to return to the Antelope House. Quickly the anchor was hooked around the nearest fence post, and Alice fetched up against a force stronger than herself. She was greatly annoyed, but in a few minutes decided to go on. Another lap of two hundred feet, and the same act was repeated, without the slightest variation. This process continued for nearly half a mile. By that time we were opposite the Elk House and Alice had become wild with baffled rage. She tried hard to smash fences and uproot trees. At last she stood still and refused to move another foot; and then we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant a three-foot step forward for Gentle Alice,--willy-nilly. As she raged and roared, the men heaved and laughed. A yard at a time they pulled that fatal left foot, into the corral and into the apartment of Alice; and she had to follow it. Ever since that time, Alice has been permanently under arrest, and confined to her quarters; but within the safe precincts of two steel-bound yards she carries children on her back, and in summer earns her daily bread. Elephant Mentality in the Jungle. Mr. A. E. Ross, while Commissioner of Forests in Burma, had many interesting experiences with elephants, and he related the following: A bad-tempered mahout who had been cruel to his work-elephant finally so enraged the animal that it attempted to take revenge. To forestall an accident, the mahout was discharged, and for two years he completely disappeared. After that lapse of time he quietly reappeared, looking for an engagement. As the line of elephants stood at attention at feeding time, with a score of persons in a group before them, the elephant instantly recognized the face of his old enemy, rushed for him, and drove him out of the camp. An ill-tempered and dangerous elephant, feared by everybody, once had the end of his trunk nearly cut off in an accident. While the animal was frantic with the pain of it, Mr. Ross ordered him to lie down. As the patient lay in quiet submission, he dressed the wound and put the trunk in rude bamboo splints. The elephant wisely aided the amateur elephant doctor until the wound healed; and afterward that once dangerous animal showed dog-like affection for Mr. Ross. XII THE MENTAL AND MORAL TRAITS OF BEARS Considered as a group, the bears of the world are supremely interesting animals. In fact, no group surpasses them save the Order Primates, and it requires the enrollment of all the apes, baboons and monkeys to accomplish it. From sunrise to sunrise a bear is an animal of original thought and vigorous enterprise. Put a normal bear in any new situation that you please, he will try to make himself master of it. Use any new or strange material that you please, of wood, metal, stone or concrete, and he will cheerfully set out to find its weakest points and destroy it. If one board in a wall happens to be of wood a little softer than its fellows, with wonderful quickness and precision he will locate it. To tear his way out of an ordinary wooden cage he asks nothing better than a good crack or a soft knot as a starting point. Let him who thinks that all animals are mere machines of heredity and nothing more, take upon himself the task of collecting, yarding, housing and KEEPING a collection of thirty bears from all over the world, representing from ten to fifteen species. In a very short time the believer in bear knowledge by inheritance only, will begin to see evidences of new thought. In spite of our best calculations, in twenty-two years and a total of about seventy bears, we have had three bear escapes. The species involved were an Indian sloth bear, an American black bear and a Himalayan black bear. The troublesome three laboriously invented processes by which, supported by surpassing acrobatics, they were able to circumvent our overhanging bars. Now, did the mothers of those bears bequeath to them the special knowledge which enabled them to perform the acrobatic mid-air feat of warping themselves over that sharp-pointed overhang barrier? No; because none of their parents ever saw steel cage-work of any kind. Universal Traits. The traits common to the majority of bear _species_ as we see them manifested in captivity are the following: First, playfulness; second, spasmodic treachery; third, contentment in comfortable captivity; fourth, love of water; fifth, enterprise in the mischievous destruction of things that can be destroyed. The bears of the world are distributed throughout Asia, Borneo, the heavy forests of Europe, all North America, and the northwestern portion of South America. In view of their wonderfully interesting traits, it is surprising that so few books have been written about them. The variations in bear character and habit are almost as wide as the distribution of the species. There are four books in English that are wholly devoted to American bears and their doings. These are "The Grizzly Bear" and "The Black Bear," by William H. Wright, of Spokane(Scribner's), "The Grizzly Bear," by Enos A. Mills, and "The Adventures of James Capen Adams." In 1918 Dr. C. Hart Merriam published as No. 41 of "North American Fauna" a "Review of the Grizzly and Brown Bears of North America" (U.S. Govt.). This is a scientific paper of 135 pages, the product of many years of collecting and study, and it recognizes and describes eighty-six species and sub-species of those two groups in North America. The classification is based chiefly upon the skulls of the animals. It is unfortunate that up to date no bear student with a tireless pen has written The Book of Bears. But let no man rashly assume that he knows "all about bears." While many bears do think and act along certain lines, I am constantly warning my friends, "Beware of the Bear! You never can tell what he will do next." I hasten to state that of all the bears of the world, the "pet" bear is the most dangerous. A Story of a "Pet" Bear. In one of the cities of Canadaa gentleman greatly interested in animals kept a young bear cub, as a pet; and once more I say--if thine enemy offend thee, present him with a black-bear cub. The bear was kept in a back yard, chained to a post, and after his first birthday that alleged "pet" dominated everything within his circumpolar region. One day a lady and gentleman called to see the pet, to observe how tame and good-natured it was. The owner took on his arm a basket of tempting apples, and going into the bear's territory proceeded to show how the Black One would eat from his owner's hand. The bear was given an apple, which was promptly eaten. The owner reached for a second, but instead of accepting it, the bear instantly became a raging demon. He struck Mr. C. a lightning- quick and powerful blow upon his head, ripping his scalp open. With horrible growls and bawling, the beast, standing fully erect, struck again and again at his victim, who threw his arms across his face to save it from being torn to pieces. Fearful blows from the bear's claw-shod paws rained upon Mr. C.'s head, and his scalp was almost torn away. In the melee he fell, and the bear pounced upon him, to kill him. The visiting gentleman rushed for a club. Meanwhile the lady visitor, rendered frantic by the sight of the bear killing her host, did a very brave but suicidally dangerous thing. She _seized the hindquarters_ of the bear, gripping the fur in her bare hands, and actually dragged the animal off its victim! Fortunately at that dangerous juncture the lady's husband rushed up with a club, beat the raging animal as it deserved, and mastered it. The owner of the bear survived his injuries, and by a great effort the surgeons saved his scalp. A "pet" bear in its second year may become the most dangerous of all wild animals. This is because it _seems_ so affectionate and docile, and yet is liable to turn in one second,--and without the slightest warning, --into a deadly enemy. Scores of times we have seen this quick change in temper take place in bears inhabiting our dens. Four bears will be quietly and peacefully consuming their bread and vegetables when,-- "_biff!_" Like a stroke of lightning a hairy right arm shoots out and lands with a terriffic jolt on the head of a peaceful companion. The victim roars,--in surprise, pain and protest, and then a fight is on. The aggressor roars and bawls, and follows up his blow as if to exterminate his perfectly inoffensive cage-mate. Mean and cruel visitors are fond of starting bear fights by throwing into the cages tempting bits of fruit, or peanuts; and sometimes a peach stone kills a valuable bear by getting jammed in the pyloric orifice of the stomach. The owners of bears should NEVER allow visitors to throw food to them. Unlimited feeding by visitors will spoil the tempers of the best bears in the world. Power of Expression in Bears. Next to the apes and monkeys, I regard bears as the most demonstrative of all wild animals. The average bear is proficient in the art of expression. The position of his ears, the pose of his head and neck, the mobility of his lips and his walking or his resting attitudes all tell their story. To facial and bodily expression the bear adds his voice; and herein he surpasses most other wild animals! According to his mood he whines, he threatens, or warns by loud snorting. He roars with rage, and when in pain he cries, or he bawls and howls. In addition to this he threatens an enemy by snapping his jaws together with a mighty ominous clank, accompanied by a warning nasal whine. An angry bear will at times give a sudden rake with his claws to the ground, or the concrete on which he stands. Now, with all this facility for emotional expression, backed by an alert and many-sided mind, boundless energy and a playful disposition, is it strange that bears are among the most interesting animals in the world? Bears in Captivity. With but few exceptions the bears of the world are animals with philosophic minds, and excellent reasoning power, though rarely equal to that of the elephant. One striking proof of this is the promptness with which adult animals accept _comfortable_ captivity, and settle down in contentment. What we mean by comfortable captivity very shortly will be defined. No bear should be kept in a cage with stone walls and an uneven floor; nor without a place to climb; and wherein life is a daily chapter of inactive and lonesome discomfort and unhappiness. The old-fashioned bear "pit" is an abomination of desolation, a sink- hole of misery, and all such means of bear torture should be banished from all civilized countries. He who cannot make bears comfortable, contented and happy should not keep any. A large collection of bears of many species properly installed may be relied upon to reveal many variations of temperament and mentality, from the sanguine and good-natured stoic to the hysterical demon. Captivity brings out many traits of character that in a wild state are either latent or absent. Prominent Traits of Prominent Species. After twenty years of daily observation we now know that The grizzly is the most keen-minded species of all bears. The big Alaskan brown bears are the least troublesome in captivity. The polar bear lives behind a mask, and is not to be trusted. The black bear is the nearest approach to a general average in ursine character. The European brown bears are best for training and performances. The Japanese black bear is nervous, cowardly and hysterical; the little Malay sun bear is the most savage and unsatisfactory. The Lesson of the Polar and Grizzly. The polar bears of the north, and the Rocky Mountain grizzlies, a hundred years ago were bold and aggressive. That was in the days of the weak, small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles, black powder and slow firing. Today all that is changed. All those bears have recognized the fearful deadliness of the long-range, high-power repeating rifle, and the polar and the grizzly flee from man at the first sight of him, fast and far. No grizzly attacks a man unless it has been attacked, or wounded, or cornered, or _thinks_ it is cornered. As an exception, Mr. Stefansson observed two or three polar bears who seemed to be quite unacquainted with man, and but little afraid of him. The great California grizzly is now believed to be totally extinct. The campaign of Mr. J. A. McGuire, Editor of _Outdoor Life_ Magazine, to secure laws for the reasonable protection of bears, is wise, timely and thoroughly deserving of success because such laws are now needed. The bag limit on grizzlies this side of Alaska should be one per year, and no trapping of grizzlies should be permitted anywhere. The big brown bears of Alaska have not yet recognized the true deadliness of man. They have vanquished so many Indians, and injured or killed so many white men that as yet they are unafraid, insolent, aggressive and dangerous. They need to be shot up so thoroughly that they will learn the lesson of the polars and grizzlies,--that man is a dangerous animal, and the only safe course is to run from him at first sight. Bears Learn the Principles of Wild Life Protection. Ordinarily both the grizzlies and black bears are shy, suspicious and intensely "wild" creatures; and therefore the quickness and thoroughness with which they learn that they are in sanctuary is all the more surprising. The protected bears of the Yellowstone Park for years have been to tourists a source of wonder and delight. The black bears are recklessly trustful, and familiar quite to the utmost limits. The grizzlies are more reserved, but they have done what the blacks have very wisely not done. They have broken the truce of protection, and attacked men on their own ground. Strange to say, of several attacks made upon camping parties, the most serious and most nearly fatal was that of 1917 upon Ned Frost, the well-known guide of Cody, Wyoming, and his field companion. They were sleeping under their wagon, well wrapped from the cold in heavy blankets and comfortables, and it is to their bedding alone that they owe their lives. They were viciously attacked by a grizzly, dragged about and mauled, and Frost was seriously bitten and clawed. Fortunately the bedding engaged the activities of their assailant sufficiently that the two men finally escaped alive. How Buffalo Jones Disciplined a Bad Grizzly. The most ridiculous and laughable performance ever put up with a wild grizzly bear as an actor was staged by Col. C. J.("Buffalo") Jones when he was superintendent of the wild animals of the Yellowstone Park. He marked down for punishment a particularly troublesome grizzly that had often raided tourists' camps at a certain spot, to steal food. Very skilfully he roped that grizzly around one of his hind legs, suspended him from the limb of a tree, and while the disgraced and outraged silver-tip swung to and fro, bawling, cursing, snapping, snorting and wildly clawing at the air, Buffalo Jones whaled it with a bean-pole until he was tired. With commendable forethought Mr. Jones had for that occasion provided a moving-picture camera, and this film always produces roars of laughter. Now, here is where we guessed wrongly. We supposed that whenever and wherever a well-beaten grizzly was turned loose, the angry animal would attack the lynching party. But not so. When Mr. Jones' chastened grizzly was turned loose, it thought not of reprisals. It wildly fled to the tall timber, plunged into it, and there turned over a new leaf. I once said: "C. J., you ought to shoot some of those grizzlies, and teach all the rest of them to behave themselves." [Illustration with caption: WILD BEARS QUICKLY RECOGNIZE PROTECTION The truce of the black bears of the Yellowstone Park. The grizzlies are not nearly so trustful. Photographed by Edmund Heller, 1921. (All rights reserved.)] "I know it!" he responded, "I know it! But Col. Anderson won't let me: He says that if we did, some people would make a great fuss about it; and I suppose they would." Recently, however, it has been found imperatively necessary to teach the Park grizzlies a few lessons on the sanctity of a sanctuary, and the rights of man. We will now record a few cases that serve to illustrate the mental traits of bears. Case I. The Steel Panel. Two huge male Alaskan brown bears, Ivan and Admiral, lived in adjoining yards. The partition between them consisted of panels of steel. The upper panels were of heavy bar iron. The bottom panels, each four feet high and six feet long, were of flat steel bars woven into a basket pattern. The ends of these flat bars had been passed through narrow slots in the heavy steel frame, and firmly clinched. We would have said that no land animal smaller than an elephant could pull out one of those panels. By some strange aberration in management, one day it chanced that Admiral's grizzly bear wife was introduced for a brief space into Ivan's den. Immediately Admiral went into a rage, on the ground that his constitutional rights had been infringed. At once he set to work to recover his stolen companion. He began to test those partition panels, one by one. Finally he found the one that seemed to him least powerful, and he at once set to work to tear it out of its frame. The keepers knew that he could not succeed; but he thought differently. Hooking his short but very powerful claws into the meshes he braced backward and pulled. After a fierce struggle an upper corner yielded. Then the other corner yielded; and at last the whole upper line gave way. I reached the scene just as he finished tearing both ends free. I saw him bend the steel panel inward, crush it down with his thousand pounds of weight, and dash through the yawning hole into his rival's arena. Then ensued a great battle. The two huge bears rose high on their hind legs, fiercely struck out with their front paws, and fought mouth to mouth, always aiming to grip the throat. They bit each other's cheeks but no serious injuries were inflicted, and very soon by the vigorous use of pick-handles the two bear keepers drove the fighters apart. Case 2. Ivan's Begging Scheme. Ivan came from Alaska when a small cub and he has long been the star boarder at the Bear Dens. He is the most good-natured bear that we have, and he has many thoughts. Having observed the high arm motion that a keeper makes in throwing loaves of bread over the top of the nine-foot cage work, Ivan adopted that motion as part of his sign language when food is in sight outside. He stands up high, like a man, and with his left arm he motions, just as the keepers do. Again and again he waves his mighty arm, coaxingly, suggestively, and it says as plain as print: "Come on! Throw it in! Throw it!" If there is too much delay in the response, he motions with his right paw, also, both arms working together. It is irresistible. At least 500 times has he thus appealed, and he will do it whenever a loaf of bread is held up as the price of an exhibition of his sign language. Of course Ivan thought this out himself, and put it into practice for a very definite purpose. Case 3. Ivan's Invention for Cracking Beef Bones. Ivan invented a scheme for cracking large beef bones, to get at the ultimate morsels of marrow. He stands erect on his hind feet, first holds the picked bone against his breast, then with his right paw he poises it very carefully upon the back of his left paw. When it is well balanced he flings it about ten feet straight up into the air. When it falls upon the concrete floor a sufficient number of times it breaks, and Ivan gets his well-earned reward. This same plan was pursued by Billy, another Alaskan brown bear. Case 4. A Bear's Ingenious Use of a Door. When Admiral is annoyed and chased disagreeably by either of his two cage-mates he runs into his sleeping-den, slams the steel door shut from the inside, and thus holds his tormentors completely at bay until it suits him to roll the door back again and come out. At night in winter when he goes to bed he almost always shuts the door tightly from within, and keeps it closed all night. He does not believe in sleeping- porches, nor wide-open windows in sleeping-quarters. Case 5. Admiral Will Not Tolerate White Boots. Recently our bear keepers have found that Admiral has violent objections to boots of white rubber. Keeper Schmidt purchased a pair, to take the place of his old black ones, but when he first wore them into the den for washing the floor the bear flew at him so quickly and so savagely that he had all he could do to make a safe exit. A second trial having resulted similarly, he gave the boots a coat of black paint. But one coat was not wholly satisfactory to Admiral. He saw the hated white through the one coat of black, promptly registered "disapproval," and the patient keeper was forced to add another coat of black. After that the new boots were approved. Case 6. The Mystery of Death. Once upon a time we had a Japanese black bear named Jappie, quartered in a den with a Himalayan black bear,--the species with long, black side-whiskers and a white tip to its chin. The Japanese bear was about one-third smaller than the Himalayan black. One night the Japanese bear died, and in the morning the keepers found it lying on the level concrete top of the sleeping dens. At once they went in to remove the body; but the Himalayan black bear angrily refused to permit them to touch it. For half an hour the men made one effort after another to coax, or entice or to drive the guardian bear away from the dead body, but in vain. When I reached the strange and uncanny scene, the guardian bear was in a great rage. It took a position across the limp body, and from that it fiercely refused to move or to be driven. As an experiment we threw in a lot of leaves, and the guardian promptly raked them over the dead one and stood pat. We procured a long pole, and from a safe place on the top of the nearest overhang, a keeper tried to prod or push away the guardian of the dead. The living one snarled, roared, and with savage vigor bit the end of the pole. By the time the bear was finally enticed with food down to the front of the den, and the body removed, seven hours had elapsed. Now, what were the ideas and emotions of the bear? One man can answer about as well as another. We think that the living bear realized that something terrible had happened to its cage-mate,-- in whom he never before had manifested any guardianship interest,--and he felt called upon to defend a friend who was very much down and out. It was the first time that he had encountered the great mystery, Death; and whatever it was, he resented it. Case 7. A Terrible Punishment. Once we had a particularly mean and vicious young Adirondack black bear named Tommy. In a short time he became known as Tommy the Terror. We put him into a big yard with Big Ben, from Florida, and two other bears smaller than Ben, but larger than himself. In a short time the Terror had whipped and thoroughly cowed Bruno and Jappie. Next he tackled Ben; but Ben's great bulk was too much for him. Finally he devoted a lot of time to bullying and reviling _through the bars_ a big but good-natured cinnamon bear, named Bob, who lived in the next den. In all his life up to that time, Bob had had only one fight. Tommy's treatment of Bob was so irritating to everybody that it was much remarked upon; and presently we learned how Bob felt about it. One morning while doing the cage work, the keeper walked through the partition gate from Bob's den into Tommy's. He slammed the iron gate behind him, as usual, but this time the latch did not catch as usual. In a moment Bob became aware of this unstable condition. Very innocently he sauntered up to the gate, pushed it open, and walked through into the next den. The keeper was then twenty feet away, but a warning cry from without set him in motion to stop the intruder. [Illustration with caption: ALASKAN BROWN BEAR "IVAN" BEGGING FOR FOOD He invented the very expressive sign language that he employs.] [Illustration with caption: THE MYSTERY OF DEATH. Himalayan bear jealously guarding the body of a dead cage-mate.] Having no club to face, Bob quietly ignored the keeper's broom. Paying not the slightest attention to the three inoffensive bears, Bob fixed his gaze on the Terror, at the far end of the den, then made straight for him. Tommy made a feeble attempt at defense, but Bob seized him by the back, bit him, and savagely shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. The Terror yelled lustily "Murder! Murder! Help!" but none of the other bears made a move for his defense. Bob was there to give Tommy the punishment that was due him for his general meanness and his insulting behavior. The horrified keeper secured his pike-pole, with a stout spike set in the end for defense, and drove the spike into Bob's shoulder. Bob went right on killing the Terror. Again the keeper drove in his goad, and blood flowed freely; but Bob paid not the slightest attention to this severe punishment. Then the keeper began to beat the cinnamon over the nose; and that made him yield. He gave the Terror a parting shake, let him go, and with a bloody shoulder deliberately walked out of that den and into his own. The punishment of the Terror went to the full limit, and we think all those bears approved it. In a few hours he died of his injuries. Case 8. The Grizzly Bear and the String. One of the best illustrations I know of the keenness and originality of a wild bear's mind and senses, is found in Mr. W. H. Wright's account of the grizzly bear he did not catch with an elk bait and two set guns, in the Bitter Root Mountains. This story is related in Chapter VI. Case 9. Silver King's Memory of His Capture. At this moment we have a huge polar bear who refuses to forget that he was captured in the water, in Kane Basin, and who now avoids the water in his swimming pool, almost as much as any burned child dreads fire. Throughout the hottest months of midsummer old Silver King lies on the rock floor of his huge and handsome den, grouching and grumbling, and not more than once a week enjoying a swim in his spacious pool. No other polar bear of ours ever manifested such an aversion for water. The other polar bears who have occupied that same den loved that pool beyond compare, and used to play in its waters for hours at a time. Evidently the chase of Silver King through green arctic water and over ice floes, mile after mile, his final lassoing, and the drag behind a motor boat to the ship were, to old Silver King, a terrible tragedy. Now he regards all deep water as a trap to catch bears, but, strange to relate, the winter's snow and ice seem to renew his interest in his swimming pool. Occasionally he is seen at play in the icy water, and toying with pieces of ice. Memory in Bears. I think that ordinarily bear memory for human faces and voices is not long. Once I saw Mr. William Lyman Underwood test the memory of a black bear that for eighteen months had been his household pet and daily companion. After a separation of a year, which the bear spent in a public park near Boston, Mr. Underwood approached, alone, close up to the bars of his cage. He spoke to him in the old way, and called him by his old name, but the bear gave absolutely no sign of recognition or remembrance. How a Wild Grizzly Bear Caches Food. The silver-tip grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains has a mental trait and a corresponding habit which seems to be unique in bear character. It is the habit of burying food for future use. Once I had a rare opportunity to observe this habit. It was in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, in the month of September(1905), while bears were very activism. John M. Phillips and I shot two large white goats, one of which rolled down a steep declivity and out upon the slide- rock, where it was skinned. The flensed body of the other was rolled over the edge of a cliff, and fell on a brushy soil-covered spot about on the same level as the remains of goat No. 1. The fresh goat remains were promptly discovered by a lusty young grizzly, which ate to satiety from Goat No. 1. With the remains of. Goat No. 2 the grizzly industriously proceeded to establish a cache of meat for future use. The goat carcass was dragged to a well chosen spot of seclusion on moss-covered earth. On the steep hillside a shallow hole was dug, the whole carcass rolled into it, and then upon it the bear piled nearly a wagon load of fresh earth, moss, and green plants that had been torn up by the roots. Over the highest point of the carcass the mass was twenty-four inches deep. On the ground the cache was elliptical in shape, and its outline measured about seven by nine feet. On the lower side it was four feet high, and on the upper side two feet. The cache was built around two larch saplings, as if to secure their support. On the uphill side of the cache the ground was torn up in a space shaped like a half moon, twenty-eight feet long by nineteen wide. I regard that cache as a very impressive exhibit of ursine thought, reasoning and conclusion. It showed more fore-thought and provision, and higher purpose in the conservation of food than some human beings ever display, even at their best. The plains Indians and the buffalo hunters were horribly wasteful and improvident. _The impulse of that grizzly was to make good use of every pound of that meat, and to conserve for the future._ Survival of the Bears.--The bears of North America have survived thirty thousand years after the lions and the sabre-toothed tigers of La Brea perished utterly and disappeared. But there were bears also in those days, as the asphalt pits reveal. Now, why did not all the bears of North America share the fate of the lions and the tigers? It seems reasonable to answer that it was because the bears were wiser, more gifted in the art of self-preservation, and more resourceful in execution. In view of the omnivorous menu of bears, and their appalling dependence upon small things for food, it is to me marvelous that they now maintain themselves with such astounding success. A grizzly will dig a big and rocky hole three or four feet deep to get one tiny ground-squirrel, a tidbit so small that an adult grizzly could surely eat one hundred of them, like so many plums, at one sitting. A bear will feed on berries under such handicaps that one would not be surprised to see a bear starve to death in a berry-patch. But almost invariably the wild bear when killed is fairly well fed and prosperous; and I fancy that no one ever found a bear that had died of cold and exposure. The cunning of the black bear in self- preservation surpasses that of all other large mammal species of North America save the wolf, the white-tailed deer and the coyote. In the game of self-preservation I will back that quartet against all the other large land animals of North America. What Constitutes Comfortable Captivity. It is impossible for any man of good intelligence to work continuously with a wild animal without learning something of its thoughts and its temper. In our Zoological Park, day by day and hour by hour our people carry into practical effect their knowledge of the psychology of our mammals, birds and reptiles. In view of the work that we have done during the past twenty-one years of the Park's history, we do not need to apologize for claiming to know certain definite things about wild animal minds. It is my belief that nowhere in the world is there in one place so large an aggregation of dangerous beasts, birds and reptiles as ours. And yet accidents to our keepers from them have been exceedingly few, and all have been slight save four. Twenty-five years ago I endeavored to plan for the Zoological Society the most humane and satisfactory bear dens on earth. Fortunately we knew something about bears, both wild and captive. Never before have we written out the exact motif of those dens, but it is easily told. We endeavored to give each bear the following things: A very large and luxurious den, open to the sky, and practically on a level with the world; Perfect sanitation; A great level playground of smooth concrete; High, sloping rocks to climb upon when tired of the level floor; A swimming pool, always full and always clean; Openwork steel partitions between cages, to promote sociability and cheerfulness; Plenty of sunlight, but an adequate amount of shade; Dry and dark sleeping dens with wooden floors, and _Close-up views of all bears for all visitors._ If there are anywhere in the wilds any bears as healthy, happy and as secure in their life tenure as ours, I do not know of them. The wild bear lives in hourly fear of being shot, and of going to bed hungry. The service of our bear dens is based upon our knowledge of bear psychology. We knew in the beginning that about 97 per cent of our bears would come to us as cubs, or at least when quite young, and we decided to take full advantage of that fact. All our bears save half a dozen all told, have been trained to permit the keepers of the dens to go into their cages, and to _make no fuss about it._ The bears know that when the keepers enter to do the morning housework, or at any other time for any other purpose, they must at once climb up to the gallery, above the sleeping dens, and stay there until the keepers retire. A bear who is slow about going up is sternly ordered to "Go on!" and if he shows any inclination to disobey, a heavy hickory pick-handle is thrown at him with no uncertain hand. Now, in grooming a herd of bears, a hickory pick-handle leaves no room for argument. If it hits, it hurts. If it does not hit a bear, it strikes the concrete floor or the rocks with a resound and a rebound that frightens the boldest bear almost as much as being hit. So the bear herd wisely climbs up to the first balcony and sits down to wait. No bear ever leaps down to attack a keeper. The distance and the jolt are not pleasant; and whenever a bear grows weary and essays to climb down, he is sternly ordered back. The keepers are forbidden to permit any familiarities on the part of their bears. All the bears, save one, that have come to us fully grown, and savage, have been managed by other methods, involving shifting cages. On two occasions only have any of our keepers been badly bitten in our bear dens. Both attacks were due to over-trustfulness of "petted" bears, and to direct disobedience of fixed orders. From the very beginning I laid down this law for our keepers, and have repeated it from year to year. "_Make no pets of animals large enough to become dangerous._ Make every animal understand and admit day by day that you are absolute master, that it has got to obey, and that if it disobeys, or attacks you, _you will kill it!_" Familiarity with a dangerous wild animal usually breeds contempt and attack. Timidity is so fatal that none but courageous and determined men should be chosen, _or be permitted,_ to take care of dangerous animals. In every zoological garden heroic deeds are common; and the men take them all as coming in the day's work. Men in positions of control over zoological parks and gardens should recognize it as a solemn duty to provide good salaries for all men who take care of live wild mammals, birds and reptiles. _A man who is in daily danger of getting hurt should not every waking hour of his life be harried and worried by poverty in his home._ Let me cite one case of real heroism in our bear dens, which went in with "the day's work," as many others have done. Keeper Fred Schlosser thought it would be safe to take our official photographer, Mr. E. R. Sanborn, into the den of a European brown bear mother, to get a close-up photograph of her and her cubs. Schlosser felt sure that Brownie was "all right," and that he could prevent any accident. But near the end of the work the mother bear drove her cubs into their sleeping den and then made a sudden, vicious and most unexpected attack upon Keeper Schlosser. She rushed him, knocked him down, seized him by his thigh, bit him severely, and then actually began _to drag him_ to the door of her sleeping den! (Just _why_ she did this I cannot explain!) Heroically ignoring the great risk to himself, and thinking of nothing but saving Schlosser, Mr. Sanborn seized the club that had fallen from the keeper's hand when he fell, rushed up to the enraged bear and beat her over the head so savagely and so skilfully that she was glad to let go of her victim and retreat into her den. Then Mr. Sanborn seized Schlosser, dragged him away from the den, and stood guard over him until help came. XIII MENTAL TRAITS OF A FEW RUMINANTS When we wish to cover with a single word the hoofed and horned "big game" of the world, we say Ruminants. That easy and comprehensive name embraces (1) the Bison and Wild Cattle, (2) the Sheep, Goats, Ibexes and Markhors, (3) the Deer Family and (4) the Antelope Family. These groups must be considered separately, because the variations in mind and temperament are quite well marked; but beyond wisdom in self-preservation, I do not regard the intelligence of wild ruminants as being really great. Intellectually the ruminants are not as high as the apes and monkeys, bears, wolves, foxes and dogs, the domestic horses and the elephants. They are handicapped by feet that are good for locomotion and defense, but otherwise are almost as helpless as so many jointed sticks. This condition closes to the ruminants the possibility of a long program of activities which the ruminant brain might otherwise develop. The ruminant hoof and leg is well designed for swift and rough travel, for battles with distance, snow, ice, mud and flood, and for a certain amount of fighting, but they are inept for the higher manifestations of brain power. Because of this unfortunate condition, the study of ruminants in captivity does not yield a great crop of results. The free wild animals are far better subjects, and it is from them that we have derived our best knowledge of ruminant thoughts and ways. It is not possible, however, to set forth here any more than a limited number of representative species. THE BISON AND WILD CATTLE. The American Bison.--Through the age- long habit of the American bison to live in large herds, and to feel, generation after generation, the sense of personal security that great numbers usually impart, the bison early acquired the reputation of being a stolid or even a stupid animal. Particularly was this the case in the days of the greatest bison destruction, when a still-hunter could get "a stand" on a bunch of buffaloes quietly grazing at the edge of the great mass, and slowly and surely shoot down each animal that attempted to lead that group away from the sound of his rifle. During that fatal period the state of the buffalo mind was nothing less than a tragedy. "The bunch" would hear a report two hundred yards away, they would see a grazing cow suddenly and mysteriously fall, struggle, kick the air, and presently lie still. The individuals nearest dully wondered what it was all about. Those farthest away looked once only, and went on grazing. If an experienced old cow grew suspicious and wary, and quietly set out to walk away from those mysterious noises, "bang!" said the Mystery once more, and she would be the one to fall. On this murderous plan, a lucky and experienced hunter could kill from twenty to sixty head of buffaloes, mostly cows, on a space of three or four acres. The fatal trouble was that each buffalo felt that the presence of a hundred or a thousand others feeding close by was an insurance of _security_ to the individual, and so there was no stampede. But after all, the bison is not so big a fool as he looks. He can think; and he can _learn._ In 1886, when we were about to set out for Montana to try to find a few wild buffaloes for the National Museum, before the reckless cowboys could find, kill and waste absolutely the last one, a hilarious friend said: "Pshaw! You don't need to take any rifles! Just get a rusty old revolver, mount a good, sensible horse, ride right up alongside the lumbering old beasts, and shoot them down at arm's length." We went; but not armed with "a rusty old revolver." We found a few buffaloes, but ye gods! How changed they were from the old days! Although only two short years had elapsed since the terminal slaughter of the hundreds of thousands whose white skeletons then thickly dotted the Missouri-Yellowstone divide, _they had learned fear of man,_ and also how to preserve themselves from that dangerous wild beast. They sought the remotest bad lands, they hid in low grounds, they watched sharply during every daylight hour, and whenever a man on horseback was sighted they were off like a bunch of racers, for a long and frantic run straight away from the trouble-maker. Even at a distance of two miles, or as far as they could see a man, they would run from him,--not one mile, or two, but five miles, or seven or eight miles, to another wild and rugged hiding-place. To kill the buffalo specimens that we needed, three cowboys and the writer worked hard for nearly three months, and it was all that we could do to outwit those man-scared bison, and to get near enough to them to kill what we required. Many a time, when weary from a long chase, I thought with bitter scorn of my friend with the rusty-old-revolver in his mind. No deer, mountain sheep, tiger, bears nor elephants,--all of which I have pursued (and sometimes overtaken!)--were ever more wary or keen in self- preservation than those bison who _at last_ had broken out from under the fatal spell of herd security. I am really glad that this strange turn of Fortune's wheel gave me the knowledge of the true scope of the buffalo mind before the last chance had passed. What did a wild buffalo do when he found himself with a broken leg, and unable to travel, but otherwise sound? Did he go limping about over the landscape, to attract enemies from afar, and be quickly shot by a man or torn to pieces by wolves? Not he! With the keen intelligence of the wounded wild ruminant, he chose the line of least resistance, and on three legs fled downhill. He went on down, and kept going, until he reached the bottom of the biggest and most tortuous coulee in his neighborhood. And then what? Instead of coming to rest in a reposeful little valley a hundred feet wide, he chose the most rugged branch he could find, the one with the steepest and highest banks, and up that dry bed, with many a twist and turn, he painfully limped his way. At last he found himself in a snug and safe ditch, precisely like a front line trench seven feet wide, with perpendicular walls and zig- zagging so persistently that the de'il himself could not find him save by following him up to close quarters, and landing upon his horns. There, without food or water, the wounded animal would stand for many days,--in fact, until hunger would force him back to the valley's crop of grass. His wild remedy was to _keep still,_ and give that broken leg its chance to knit and grow strong. I have seen in buffalo skeletons healed bone fractures that filled us with wonder. One case that we shot was a big and heavy bull whose hip socket had been utterly smashed, femur head and all, by a heavy rifle ball; but the bull had escaped in spite of his wound, and he had nursed it until it had healed in _good working order._ We can testify that he could run as well as any of the bisons in his bunch. Of course young bisons can be tamed, and to a certain extent educated. "Buffalo" Jones broke a pair of two-year-old bulls to work under a yoke, and pull a light wagon. He tried them with bridles and bits, but the buffaloes refused to work with them. With tight-fitting halters, and the exercise of much-muscle, he was able for a time to make them "gee" and "haw." But not for long. When they outgrew his ability in free-hand drawing, he rigged an upright windlass on each side of his wagon-box, and firmly attached a line to each. When the team was desired to "gee," he deftly wound up the right line on its windlass, and vice versa for "haw." But even this did not last a great while. The motor control was more tentative than absolute. Once while driving beside a creek on a hot and thirsty day, the super-heated buffaloes suddenly espied the water, twenty feet or so below the road. Without having been bidden they turned toward it, and the windlass failed to stop them. Over the cut bank they went, wagon, man and buffalo bulls, "in one red burial blent." Although they secured their drink, their reputation as draught oxen was shattered beyond repair, and they were cashiered the service. Elsewhere I have spoken of the bison's temper and temperament. THE WILD SHEEP.--It takes most newly-captured adult mountain sheep about six months in palatial zoo quarters to get the idea out of their heads that every man who comes near them, even including the man who feeds and waters them, is going to kill them, and that they must rush wildly to and fro before it occurs. But there are exceptions. At the same time, wild herds soon learn the large difference between slaughter and protection, and thereafter accept man's hay and salt with dignity and persistence. The fine big-horn photographs that have been taken of _wild_ sheep herds on public highways just outside of Banff, Alberta, tell their own story more eloquently than words can do. The photograph of wild sheep, after only twenty-seven years of protection, feeding in herds in the main street of Ouray, Colorado, is an object lesson never to be forgotten by any student of wild animal psychology. And can any such student look upon such a picture and say that those animals have not thought to some purpose upon the important question of danger and safety to sheep? Is there anyone left who still believes the ancient and bizarre legend that mountain sheep rams jump off cliffs and alight upon their horns? I think not. People now know enough about anatomy, and the mental traits of wild sheep, to know that nothing of that kind ever occurred save by a dreadful accident, followed by the death of the sheep. No spinal column was ever made by Nature or developed by man that could endure without breaking a headforemost fall from the top of a cliff to the slide-rock bottom thereof. In Colorado, in May 1907, the late Judge D. C. Beaman of Denver saw a big-horn ram which was pursued by dogs to the precipitous end of a mountain ridge, take a leap for life into space from top to bottom. The distance straight down was "between twenty and twenty-five feet." The ram went down absolutely upright, with his head fully erect, and his feet well apart. He landed on the slide rock on his feet, broke no bones, promptly recovered himself and dashed away to safety. Judge Beaman declared that "the dogs were afraid to approach even as near as the edge of the cliff at the point from which the sheep leaped off." John Muir held the opinion that the legend of horn-landing sheep was born of the wild descent of frightened sheep down rocks so steep that they _seemed_ perpendicular but were not, and the sheep, after touching here and there in the wild pitch sometimes landed in a heap at the bottom,--quite against their will. To me this has always seemed a reasonable explanation. The big-horn sheep has one mental trait that its host of ardent admirers little suspect. It does not like pinnacle rocks, nor narrow ledges across perpendicular cliffs, nor dangerous climbing. It does not "leap from crag to crag," either up, down or across. Go where you will in sheep hunting, nine times out of ten you will find your game on perfectly safe ground, from which there is very little danger of falling. In spirit and purpose the big-horns are great pioneers and explorers. They always want to see what is on the other side of the range. They will sight a range of far distant desert mountains, and to see what is there will travel by night across ten or twenty miles of level desert to find out. It was in the Pinacate Mountains of northwestern Mexico, on the eastern shore of the head of the Gulf of California, that we made our most interesting observations on wild big-horn sheep. On those black and blasted peaks and plains of lava, where nature was working hard to replant with desert vegetation a vast volcanic area, we found herds of short-haired, undersized big-horn sheep, struggling to hold their own against terrific heat, short food and long thirst. It is a burning shame that since our discovery of those sheep hunters of a dozen different kinds have almost exterminated them. We saw one band of seventeen sheep, close to Pinacate Peak, all so utterly ignorant of the ways of men that they practically refused to be frightened at our presence and our silent guns. We watched them a long time, forgetful of the flight of time. They were not shrewdly suspicious of danger. They fed, and frolicked, and dozed, as much engrossed in their indolence as if the world contained no dangers for them. One day Mr. John M. Phillips and I shot two rams, for the Carnegie Museum; and the next morning I had the most remarkable lesson that I ever learned in mountain sheep psychology. Early on that November morning Mr. Jeff Milton and I left our chilly lair in a lava ravine, and most foolishly left both our rifles at our camp. Hobbling along on foot we led a pack mule over half a mile of rough and terrible lava to a dead sheep. There we quickly skinned the animal, packed the skin and a horned head upon the upper deck of our mule, and started back to camp, leading our assistant. Half way back we looked westward across an eighth of a mile of rough, black lava, and saw standing on a low point a fine big-horn ram. He stood in a statuesque attitude, facing us, and fixedly gazing at us. He was trying to make out what we were, and to determine why a perfectly good pair of sheep horns should grow out of the back of a sorrel mule! Ethically he had a right to be puzzled. Mr. Milton and I were greatly annoyed by the absence of our rifles; and he proposed that we should leave the mule where he stood, go back to our camp, get our guns, and kill the sheep. Now, even then I was quite well up on the subject of curiosity in wild animals, and I knew to a minute what to count upon as the standing period of sheep, goat or deer. As gently as possible I informed Milton that _no_ sheep would ever stand and look at a sorrel mule for the length of time it would take us to foot it over that lava to camp, and return. But my companion was optimistic, and even skeptical. "Maybe he will, now!" he persisted. "Let's try it. I think he may wait for us." Much against my judgment, and feeling secretly rebellious at the folly of it all, I agreed to his plan,--solely to be "a good sport," and to play his game. But _I_ knew that the effort would be futile, as well as exhausting. Jeff tied the mule, for the sheep to contemplate. We went and got those rifles. We were gone fully twenty minutes. When we again reached the habitat of the mule, _that ram was still there!_ Apparently he had not moved a muscle, nor stirred a foot, nor even batted an eye. Talk about curiosity in a wild animal! He was a living statue of it. He continued to hold his pose on his lava point while we stalked him under cover of a hillock of lava, and shot him,--almost half an hour after we first saw him. He had been overwhelmingly puzzled by the uncanny sight of a pair of curling horns like his own, growing out of the back of a long-eared sorrel mule which he felt had no zoological right to wear them. He did his level best to think it out; he became a museum specimen in consequence, and he has gone down in history as the Curiosity Ram. Mental Attitude of Captured Big-Horn Sheep. In 1906 an enterprising and irrepressible young man named Will Frakes took the idea into his head that he must catch some mountain sheep alive, and do it alone and single-handed. Presently he located a few _Ovis nelsoni_ in the Avawatz Mountains near Death Valley, California. Finding a water hole to which mountain sheep occasionally came at night to drink, he set steel traps around it. One by one he caught five sheep of various ages, but chiefly adults. The story of this interesting performance is told in _Outdoor Life_ magazine for March, April and May, 1907. I am interested in the mental processes of those sheep as they came in close contact with man, and were compelled by force of circumstances to accept captivity. Knowing, as all animal men do, the fierce resistance usually made by adult animals to the transition from freedom to captivity, I was prepared to read that those nervous and fearsome adult sheep fought day by day until they died. But not so. Those sheep showed clear perceptive faculties and good judgment. They were quick to learn that they were conquered, and with amazing resignation they accepted the new life and its strange conditions. In describing the chase on foot in thick darkness of a big old male mountain sheep with a steel trap fast on his foot, Mr. Frakes says: "A sheep's token of surrender is to lie down and lie still. Once he 'possums, no matter what you do, or how badly you may hurt him, he will never flinch. And when this sheep ("Old Stonewall") was thrown down by the trap, he evidently thought that he was captured, and lay still for a few minutes before he found out the difference, which gave me time to come up with him.... So I went to camp, got a trap clamp and some sacks, made a kind of sled and dragged him in. It was just midnight when I got him tied down, and just sun-up when I got to camp with him. I fixed him up the best I could, stood him up beside the other big-horn and took their pictures. He looked so "rough and ready" that I named him "Old Stonewall." But for all his proud, defiant bearing he has always been a good sheep, _and never tried to fight me._ Still he can hit quick and hard when he wants to, and I have to keep him tied up all the time to keep him from killing the other bucks." Now, I know not what conclusion others will draw from the above clear and straightforward recital, but to me it established in _Ovis nelsoni_ a reputation for quick thinking, original reasoning and sound conclusions. In an incredibly short period those animals came up to the status of tame animals. The five sheep caught by Mr. Frakes were suddenly confronted by new conditions, such as their ancestors had never even dreamed of meeting; and _all of them reacted in the same way._ That was more than "animal behavior." It was Thought, and Reason! THE GOATS. White Mountain Goat.--I never have had any opportunity to study at length, in the wilds, the mental traits of the markhors, ibexes, gorals or serows. I have however, enjoyed rare opportunities with the white Rocky Mountain goat, on the summits of the Canadian Rockies as well as in captivity. Where we were, on the Elk River Mountains of East Kootenay, the goats had little fear of man. They did not know that we were in the group of the world's most savage predatory animals, and we puzzled them. Fourteen of them once leisurely looked down upon us from the edge of a cliff, and silently studied us for a quarter of an hour. An hour later three of them ran through our camp. One morning an old billy calmly lay down to rest himself on the mountain side about 300 feet above our tents. At last, however, he became uneasy, and moved away. This goat is not a timid and fearsome soul, ready to go into a panic in the presence of danger. The old billy believes that the best defense is a vigorous offense. On the spot where Cranbrook, B. C., now stands, an old billy was caught unawares on an open plain and surrounded by Indians, dogs and horses. In the battle that ensued he so nearly whipped the entire outfit that a squaw rushed wildly to the rescue with a loaded rifle, to enable the Red army to win against the one lone goat. In those mountains the white goat, grizzly bear, mountain sheep, mule deer and elk all live together, in perfect liaison, and never but once have I heard of the goat getting into a fight with a joint-tenant species. A large silver-tip grizzly rashly attacked a full-grown billy, and managed to inflict upon him mortal injuries. Before he fell, however, the goat countered by driving his little skewer-sharp black horns into the vitals of the grizzly with such judgment and precision that the dead grizzly was found by Mr. A. B. Fenwick quite near the dead goat. We know that the mountain goat is a good reasoner in certain life- or-death matters affecting himself. He knows no such thing as becoming panic-stricken from surprise or fear. An animal that looks death in the face every hour from sunrise until sunset is not to be upset by trifles. We have seen that if a dog and several men corner a goat on a precipice ledge, and hem him in so that there is no avenue of escape, he does not grow frantic, as any deer or most sheep would do, and plunge off into space to certain death. Not he. He stands quite still, glares indignantly upon his enemies, shakes his head, occasionally grits his teeth or stamps a foot, but otherwise waits. His attitude and his actions say: "Well, it is your move. What are you going to do next?" Most captive ruminants struggle frantically when put into crates for shipment. White goats very rarely do so. They recognize the inevitable, and accept it with resignation. Captive antelopes and deer often kill themselves by dashing madly against wire fences, but I never knew a white goat to injure itself on a fence. Many a wild animal has died from fighting its shipping crate; but no wild goat ever did so. A white goat will walk up a forty-five degree plank to the roof of his house, climb all over it, and joyously perch on the peak; but no mountain sheep or deer of ours ever did so. _They are afraid!_ Only the Himalayan tahr equals the white goat in climbing in captivity, and it will climb into the lower branches of an oak tree, just for fun. Of all the ruminant animals I know intimately, the white mountain goat is the philosopher-in-chief. Were it not so, how would it be possible for him to live and thrive, and attain happiness, on the savage and fearsome summits that form his chosen home? We must bear in mind that the big-horn does not dare to risk the haunts and trails of his white rivals. Hear the Cragmaster of the Rockies: [Illustration with caption: THE STEADY-NERVED AND COURAGEOUS MOUNTAIN GOAT He refused to be stampeded off his ledge by men or dog. Photographed at eight feet by John M. Phillips (1905).] "On dizzy ledge of mountain wall, above the timber-line I hear the riven slide-rock fall toward the stunted pine. Upon the paths I tread secure no foot dares follow me, For I am master of the crags, and march above the scree." In other chapters I have referred to the temperament and logic of this animal, the bravest mountaineer of all America. THE DEER.--In nervous energy the species of the Deer Family vary all the way from the nervous and hysterical barasingha to the sensible and steady American elk that can successfully be driven in harness like a horse. As I look over the deer of all nations I am bound to award the palm for sound common-sense and reasoning power to the elk. A foolishly nervous deer seldom takes time to display high intelligence. Naturally we dislike men, women, children or wild animals who are always ready to make fools of themselves, stampede, and disfigure the landscape. The Axis Deer is quietly sensible,--so long as there is no catching to be done. Try to catch one, and the whole herd goes off like a bomb. Many other species are similar. No wild deer could act more absurdly than does the axis, the barasingha and fallow, even after generations have been bred in captivity. The Malay Sambar Deer of the Zoological Park have one droll trait. The adult bucks bully and browbeat the does, in a rather mild way, so long as their own antlers are on their heads. But when those antlers take their annual drop, "O, times! O, manners! What a change!" The does do not lose a day in flying at them, and taking revenge for past tyranny. They strike the hornless bucks with their front feet, they butt them, and they bite out of them mouthfuls of hair. The bucks do not seem, to know that they can fight without their antlers, and so the tables are completely turned. This continues until the new horns grow out, the velvet dries and is rubbed off,--and then quickly the tables are turned again. No other deer species of my personal acquaintance has ever equalled the American elk of Wyoming in recognizing man's protection and accepting his help in evil times. It is not only a few wise ones, or a few half-domestic bands, but vast wild herds of thousands that every winter rush to secure man's hay in the Jackson Hole country, south of the Yellowstone Park. No matter how shy they _all_ are in the October hunting season, in the bad days of January and February they know that the annual armistice is on, and it means hay for them instead of bullets. They swarm in the level Jackson Valley, around S. N. Leek's famous ranch and others, until you can see a square mile of solid gray-yellow living elk bodies. Mr. Leek once caught about 2,500 head in one photograph, all hungry. They crowd around the hay sleds like hungry horses. In their greatest hunger they attack the ranchmen's haystacks, just as far as the stout and high log fences will permit them to go, and many a kind-hearted ranchman has robbed his own haystacks to save the lives of starving and despairing elk. The Yellowstone Park elk know the annual shooting and feeding seasons just as thoroughly as do the men of Jackson Hole. Once there was a bold and hardy western man who trained a bunch of elk to dive from a forty-foot high platform into a pool of water. I say that he "trained" them, because it really was that. The animals quickly learned that the plunge did nothing more than to shock and wet them, and so they submitted to the part they had to play, with commendable resignation. Some deer would have fought the program every step of the way, and soon worn themselves out; but elk, and also horses, learn that the diving performance is all in the day's work; which to me seems like good logic. A few persons believe that such performances are cruel to the animals concerned, but the diving alone is not necessarily so. Some deer have far too much curiosity, too much desire to know "What is that?" and "What is it all about?" The startled mule deer leaps out, jumps a hundred feet or more at a great pace, then foolishly stops and looks back, to gratify his curiosity. That is the hunter's chance; and that fatal desire for accurate information has been an important contributory cause to the extermination of the mule deer, or Rocky Mountain "black-tail," throughout large areas. In the Yellowstone Park the once-wild herds of mule deer have grown so tame under thirty years of protection that they completely overrun the parade ground, the officers' quarters, and even enter porches and kitchens for food. Several authors have remarked upon the habits of the elephant, llama and guanaco in returning to the same spot; and this reminds me of a coincidence in my experience that few persons will believe when I relate it. In the wild and weird bad-lands of Hell Creek, Montana, I once went out deer hunting in company with the original old hermit wolf-hunter of that region, named Max Sieber. With deep feeling Max told me of a remarkable miss that he had made the previous year in firing at a fine mule deer buck from the top of a small butte; for which I gave him my sympathy. In the course of our morning's tramp through the very bad-lands that were once the ancestral home of the giant carnivorous dinosaur, yclept _Tyrannosaurus rex,_ we won our way to the foot of a long naked butte. Then Sieber said, very kindly: "If you will climb with me up to the top of this butte I will show you where I missed that big buck." It was not an alluring proposition, and I thought things that I did not speak. However, being an Easy Mark, I said cheerfully, "All right, Max. Go ahead and show me." We toiled up to a much-too-distant point on the rounded summit, and as Max slowed up and peered down the farther side, he pointed and began to speak. "He was standing right down there on that little patch of bare-- why!" he exclaimed. "_There's a dee-er there now!_ But it's a doe! Get down! Get down!" and he crouched. Then I woke up and became interested. "It is _not_ a doe, Max. I see horns!"--Bang! And in another five seconds a fine buck lay dead on the very spot where Sieber's loved and lost buck had stood one year previously. But that was only an unbelievable coincidence,--unbelievable to all save old Max. The natural impulse of the mule deer of those bad-lands when flushed by a hunter is to _run over a ridge,_ and escape over the top; but that is bad judgement and often proves fatal. It would be wiser for them to run _down,_ to the bottoms of those gashed and tortuous gullies, and escape by zig-zagging along the dry stream beds. The White-Tailed, or Virginia Deer is the wisest member of the Deer Family in North America, and it will be our last big-game species to become extinct. It has reduced self-preservation to an exact science. In areas of absolute protection it becomes very bold, and breeds rapidly. Around our bungalow in the wilds of Putman County, New York, the deer come and stamp under our windows, tramp through our garden, feed in broad daylight with our neighbor's cattle, and jauntily jump across the roads almost anywhere. They are beautiful objects, in those wild wooded landscapes of lake and hill. But in the Adirondacks, what a change! If you are keen you may see a few deer in the closed season, but to see in the hunting season a buck with good horns you must be a real hunter. As a skulker and hider, and a detector of hunters, I know no deer equal to the white-tail. In making a safe get-away when found, I will back a buck of this species against all other deer on earth. He has no fatal curiosity. He will not halt and pose for a bullet in order to have a look at you. What the startled buck wants is more space and more green bushes between the Man and himself. The Moose is a weird-looking and uncanny monster, but he knows one line of strategy that is startling in its logic. Often when a bull moose is fleeing from a long stern chase,--always through wooded country,--he will turn aside, swing a wide semicircle backward, and then lie down for a rest close up to leeward of his trail. There he lies motionless and waits for man-made noises, or man scent; and when he senses either sign of his pursuer, he silently moves away in a new direction. The Antelopes of the Old World. The antelopes, gazelles, gnus and hartebeests of Africa and Asia almost without exception live in herds, some of them very large. Owing to this fact their minds are as little developed, individually, as the minds of herd animals generally are. The herd animal, relying as it does upon its leaders, and the security that large numbers always seem to afford, is a creature of few independent ideas. It is not like the deer, elk, sheep or goat that has learned things in the hard school of solitude, danger and adversity, with no one on whom to rely for safety save itself. The basic intelligence of the average herd animal can be summed up in one line: "Post your sentinels, then follow your leader." Judging from what hunters in Africa have told me, the hunting of most kinds of African antelopes is rather easy and quiet long- range rifle work. In comparison with any sheep, goat, ibex, markhor and even deer hunting, it must be rather mild sport. A level grassy plain with more or less bushes and small trees for use in stalking is a tame scenario beside mountains and heavy forests, and it seems to me that this sameness and tameness of habitat naturally fails to stimulate the mental development of the wild habitants. In captivity, excepting the keen kongoni, or Coke hartebeest, and a few others, the old-world antelopes are mentally rather dull animals. They seem to have few thoughts, and seldom use what they have; but when attacked or wounded the roan antelope is hard to finish. In captivity their chief exercise consists in rubbing and wearing down their horns on the iron bars of their indoor cages, but I must give one of our brindled gnus extra credit for the enterprise and thoroughness that he displayed in wrecking a powerfully-built water-trough, composed of concrete and porcelain. The job was as well done as if it had been the work of a big-horn ram showing off. But that was the only exhibition of its kind by an African antelope. The Alleged "Charge" of the Rhinoceros. For half a century African hunters wrote of the assaults of African rhinoceroses on caravans and hunting parties; and those accounts actually established for that animal a reputation for pugnacity. Of late years, however, the evil intentions of the rhinoceros have been questioned by several hunters. Finally Col. Theodore Roosevelt firmly declared his belief that the usual supposed "charge" of the rhinoceros is nothing more nor less than a movement to draw nearer to the strange man-object, on account of naturally poor vision, to see what men look like. In fact, I think that most American sportsmen who have hunted in Africa now share that view, and credit the rhino with very rarely running at a hunter or a party in order to do damage. The Okapi, of Central Africa, inhabits dense jungles of arboreal vegetation and they are so expert in detecting the presence of man and in escaping from him that thus far, so far as we are aware, no white man has ever shot one! The native hunters take them only in pitfalls or in nooses. Mr. Herbert Lang, of the American Museum of Natural History, diligently hunted the okapi, with native aid, but in spite of all his skill in woodcraft the cunning of the okapi was so great, and the brushy woods were so great a handicap to him, that he never shot even one specimen. In skill in self-preservation the African bongo antelope seems to be a strong rival of the okapi, but it has been killed by a few white men, of whom Captain Kermit Roosevelt is one. XIV MENTAL TRAITS OF A FEW RODENTS Out of the vast mass of the great order of the gnawing animals of the world it is possible here to consider only half a dozen types. However, these will serve to blaze a trail into the midst of the grand army. The White-Footed Mouse, or Deer Mouse. On the wind-swept divides and coulees of the short-grass region of what once were the Buffalo Plains of Montana, only the boldest and most resourceful wild mice can survive. There in 1886 we found a white-footed mouse species (_Peromyscus leucopus_), nesting in the brain cavities of bleaching buffalo skulls, on divides as bare and smooth as golf links. In 1902, while hunting mule deer with Laton A. Huffman in the wildest and most picturesque bad-lands of central Montana, we pitched our tent near the upper waterhole of Hell Creek. [Footnote: A few months later, acting upon the information of our fossil discoveries that we conveyed to Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, an expedition from the American Museum of Natural History ushered into the scientific world the now famous Hell Creek fossil bed, and found, about five hundred feet from the ashes of our camp-fire, the remains of _Tyrannosaurus rex._]For the benefit of our camp-fire, our cook proceeded to hitch his rope around a dry cottonwood log and snake it close up to our tent. When it was cut up, we found snugly housed in the hollow, a nest, made chiefly of feathers, containing five white-footed mice. Packed close against the nest was a pint and a half of fine, clean seed, like radish seed, from some weed of the Pulse Family. While the food-store was being examined, and finally deposited in a pile upon the bare ground near the tent door, the five mice escaped into the sage-brush. Near by stood an old-fashioned buggy, which now becomes a valuable piece of stage property. The next morning, when Mr. Huffman lifted the cushion of his buggy-seat, and opened the top of the shallow box underneath, the five mice, with their heads close together in a droll-looking group, looked out at him in surprise and curiosity, and at first without attempting to run away. But very soon it became our turn to be surprised. We found that these industrious little creatures had gathered up every particle of their nest, and every seed of their winter store, and carried all of it up into the seat of that buggy! The nest had been carefully re-made, and the seed placed close by, as before. Considering the number of journeys that must have been necessary to carry all those materials over the ground, plus a climb up to the buggy seat, the industry and agility of the mice were amazing. By way of experiment, we again removed the nest, and while the mice once more took to the sage-brush, we collected all the seed, and poured it in a pile upon the ground, as before. During the following night, those indomitable little creatures _again_ carried nest and seed back into the buggy seat, just as before! Then we gathered up the entire family of mice with their nest and seed, and transported them to New York. Now, the reasoning of those wonderful little creatures, in the face of new conditions, was perfectly obvious, (1) Finding themselves suddenly deprived of their winter home and store of food, (2) they scattered and fled for personal safety into the tall grass and sage-brush. (3) At night they assembled for a council at the ruins of their domicile and granary. (4) They decided that they must in all haste find a new home, close by, because (5) at all hazards their store of food must be saved, to avert starvation. (6) They explored the region around the tent and camp-fire, and (7) finally, as a last resort, they ventured to climb up the thills of the buggy. (8) After a full exploration of it they found that the box under the seat afforded the best winter shelter they had found. (9) At once they decided that it would do, and without a moment's delay or hesitation the whole party of five set to work carrying those seeds up the thills--a fearsome venture for a mouse--and (10) there before daybreak they deposited the entire lot of seeds. (11) Finding that a little time remained, they carried up the whole of their nest materials, made up the nest anew, and settled down within it for better or for worse. Now, this is no effort of our imagination. It is a story of actual facts, all of which can be proven by three competent witnesses. How many human beings similarly dispossessed and robbed of home and stores, act with the same cool judgment, celerity and precision that those five tiny creatures then and there displayed? The Wood Rat, Pack Rat, or Trading Rat. Although I have met this wonderful creature (_Neotoma_) in various places on its native soil, I will quote from another and perfectly reliable observer a sample narrative of its startling mental traits. At Oak Lodge, east coast of Florida, we lived for a time in the home of a pair of pack rats whose eccentric work was described to me by Mrs. C. F. Latham, as follows: First they carried a lot of watermelon seeds from the ground floor upstairs, and hid them under a pillow on a bed. Then they took from the kitchen a tablespoonful of cucumber seeds and hid them in the pocket of a vest that hung upstairs on a nail. In one night they removed from box number one, eighty five pieces of bee-hive furniture, and hid them in another box. On the following night they deposited in box number one about two quarts of corn and oats. Western frontiersmen and others who live in the land of the pack rat relate stories innumerable of the absurd but industrious doings of these eccentric creatures. The ways of the pack rat are so erratic that I find it impossible to figure out by any rules known to me the workings of their minds. Strange to say, they are not fiends and devils of malice and destruction like the brown rat of civilization, and on the whole it seems that the destruction of valuable property is not by any means a part of their plan. They have a passion for moving things. Their vagaries seem to be due chiefly to caprice, and an overwhelming desire to keep exceedingly busy. I think that the animal psychologists have lost much by so completely ignoring these brain-busy animals, and I hope that in the future they will receive the attention they deserve. Why experiment with stupid and nerveless white rats when pack rats are so cheap? It was in the wonderland that on the map is labeled "Arizona" that I met some astonishing evidences of the defensive reasoning power of the pack rat. In the Sonoran Desert, where for arid reasons the clumps of creosote bushes and salt bushes stand from four to six feet apart, the bare level ground between clumps affords smooth and easy hunting-grounds for coyotes, foxes and badgers, saying nothing of the hawks and owls. Now, a burrow in sandy ground is often a poor fortress; and the dropping spine-clad joints of the tree choyas long ago suggested better defenses. In many places we saw the entrance of pack rat burrows defended by two bushels of spiny choya joints and sticks arranged in a compact mound-like mass. In view of the virtue in those deadly spines, any predatory mammal or bird would hesitate long before tackling a bushel of solid joints to dig through it to the mouth of a burrow. Did those little animals collect and place those joints because of their defensive stickers,--with deliberate forethought and intention? Let us see. In the grounds of the Desert Botanical Laboratory, in November 1907, we found the answer to this question, so plainly spread before us that even the dullest man can not ignore it, nor the most skeptical dispute it. We found some pack rat runways and burrow entrances so elaborately laid out and so well defended by choya joints that we may well call the ensemble a fortress. On the spot I made a very good map of it, which is presented on page 164. [Footnote: From "Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava" (Scribner's) page 304.] The animal that made it was the White-Throated Pack Rat (_Neotoma albigula_). The fortress consisted of several burrow entrances, the roads leading to which were defended by carefully constructed barriers of cactus joints full of spines. The habitants had chosen to locate their fortress between a large creosote bush and a tree-choya cactus (_Opuntia fulgida_) that grew on bare ground, twelve feet apart. When away from home and in danger, the pack rats evidently fled for safety to one or the other of those outposts. Between them the four entrance holes, then in use, went down into the earth; and there were also four abandoned holes. Connecting the two outposts,--the creosote bush and the choya,-- with the holes that were in daily use there were some much-used runways, as shown on the map; and each side of each runway was barricaded throughout its length with spiny joints of the choya. A few of the joints were old and dry, but the majority were fresh and in full vigor. We estimated that about three hundred cactus joints were in use guarding those runways; and no coyote or fox of my acquaintance, nor eke a dog of any sense, would rashly jump upon that spiny pavement to capture a rat. [Illustration with caption: FORTRESS OF A PACK-RAT, AT TUCSON DEFENDED BY THE SPINY POINTS OF THE TREE CHOYA (_Opuntia fulgida_)] Beyond the cactus outpost the main run led straight to the sheltering base of a thick mesquite bush and a palo verde that grew tightly together. This gave an additional ten feet of safe ground, or about twenty-five feet in all. On our journey to the Pinacate Mountains, northwestern Mexico, we saw about twelve cactus-defended burrows of the pack rat, some of them carefully located in the midst of large stones that rendered digging by predatory animals almost impossible. The beautiful little Desert Kangaroo Rat (_Dipodomys deserti_) has worked out quite a different system of home protection. It inhabits deserts of loose sand and creosote bushes, where it digs burrows innumerable, always located amid the roots of the bushes, and each one provided with three or four entrances,--or exits, as the occasion may require. Each burrow is a bewildering labyrinth of galleries and tunnels, and in attempting to lay bare an interior the loose sand caved in, and the little sprite that lived there either escaped at a distant point or was lost in the shuffle of sand. The Gray Squirrel (_Sciurus carolinensis_).--This beautiful and sprightly animal quickly recognizes man's protection and friendship, and meets him half way. Go into the woods, sit still, make a noise like a nut, and if any grays are there very soon you will see them. The friendships between our Park visitors and the Park's wild squirrels are one of the interesting features of our daily life. We have an excellent picture of Mrs. Russell Sage sitting on a park bench with a wild gray squirrel in her lap. I have never seen red or fox squirrels that even approached the confidence of the gray squirrel in the truce with Man, the Destroyer, but no doubt generous treatment would produce in the former the gray squirrel's degree of confidence. I never knew an observer of the home life of the gray squirrel who was not profoundly impressed by the habit of that animal in burying nuts in the autumn, and digging them up for food in the winter and spring. From my office window I have seen our silver- gray friends come hopping through eight or ten inches of snow, carefully select a spot, then quickly bore a hole down through the snow to Mother Earth, and emerge with a nut. Thousands of people have seen this remarkable performance and I think that the majority of them still ask the question: "_How_ does the squirrel know precisely where to dig?" That question cannot be answered until we have learned how to read the squirrel mind. Small city parks easily become overstocked with gray squirrels that are not adequately fed, and the result is,--complaints of "depredations." Of course hungry and half-starved squirrels will depredate,--on birds' nests, fruit and gardens. My answer to all inquirers for advice in such cases is--_feed the squirrels, adequately, and constantly, on cracked corn and nuts, and send away the surplus squirrels._ At this time many persons know that the wild animals and birds now living upon the earth are here solely because they have had sufficient sense to devise ways and means by which to survive. The ignorant, the incompetent, the slothful and the unlucky ones have passed from earth and joined the grand army of fossils. Take the case of the Rocky Mountain Pika, or little chief "hare," of British Columbia and elsewhere. It is not a hare at all, and it is so queer that it occupies a family all alone. I am now concerning myself with _Ochotona princeps,_ of the Canadian Rockies. It is very small and weak, but by its wits it lives in a country reeking with hungry bears, wolverines and martens. The pika is so small and so weak that in the open he could not possibly dig down below the grizzly bear's ability to dig. And what does he do to save himself, and insure the survival of the fittest? He burrows far down in the slide-rock that falls from the cliffs, where he is protected by a great bed of broken stone so thick that no predatory animal can dig through it and catch him. There in those awful solitudes, enlivened only by the crack and rattle of falling slide-rock, the harsh cry of Clark's nut-cracker and the whistling wind sweeping over the storm-threshed summits and through the stunted cedar, the pika chooses to make his home. Over the slide-rock that protects him, the snows of the long and dreary winter pile up from six to ten feet deep, and lie unbroken for months. And how does the pika survive? [Illustration with caption: WILD CHIPMUNKS RESPOND TO MAN'S PROTECTION. J. Alden Loring and his wild pets] [Illustration with caption: AN OPOSSUM FEIGNING DEATH] When he is awake, _he lives on hay, of his own making!_ In September and October, and up to the arrival of the enveloping snow, he cuts plants of certain kinds to his liking, he places them in little piles atop of rocks or fallen logs where the sun will strike them, and he leaves them there until they dry sufficiently to be stored without mildewing. Mr. Charles L. Smith declared that the pikas know enough to change their little hay piles as the day wears on, from shade to sunlight. The plants to be made into hay are cut at the edge of the slide-rock, usually about a foot in length, and are carried in and placed on flat- topped rocks around the mouth of the burrow. The stems are laid together with fair evenness, and from start to finish the haymaking of the pika is conducted with admirable system and precision. When we saw and examined half a dozen of those curing hay piles, we felt inclined to take off our hats to the thinking mind of that small animal which was making a perfectly successful struggle to hold its own against the winter rigors of the summits, and at the same time escape from its enemies. The common, every-day Cotton-Tail Rabbit (_Lepus sylvaticus_) is not credited by anyone with being as wise as a fox, but that is due to our own careless habits of thought. It has been man's way, ever since the days of the Cavemen, to underrate all wild animals except himself. We are not going to cite a long line of individual instances to exhibit the mental processes or the natural wisdom of the rabbit. All we need do is to point to its success in maintaining its existence in spite of the enemies arrayed against it. Take the state of Pennsylvania, and consider this list of the rabbit's mortal enemies: 450,000 well-armed men and boys, regularly licensed and diligently gunning throughout six weeks of the year, and actually killing each year about 3,500,000 rabbits! 200,000 farmers hunting on their own farms, without licenses. Predatory animals, such as dogs, cats, skunks, foxes and weasels. Predatory birds: hawks, eagles and owls. Destructive elements: forest fires, rain, snow and sleet. Now, is it not a wonder that _any_ rabbits remain alive in Pennsylvania? But they are there. They refuse to be exterminated. Half of them annually outwit all their enemies--smart as they are; they avoid death by hunger and cold, and they go on breeding in defiance of wild men, beasts and birds. Is it not wonderful-- the mentality of the gray rabbit? Again we say--the wild animal must think or die. In recognizing man's protection and friendship, the rabbit is as quick on the draw as the gray squirrel. In our Zoological Park where we constantly kill hunting cats in order that our little wild neighbors, the rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks may live, the rabbits live literally in our midst. They hang around the Administration Building, rear and front, as if they owned it; and one evening at sunset I came near stepping out upon a pair that were roosting on the official door-mat on the porch. There are times when they seem annoyed by the passage of automobiles over the service road. To keep hungry rabbits from barking your young apple trees in midwinter, spend a dollar or two in buying two or three bushels of corn expressly for them. The sentry system of the Prairie-"Dog" in guarding "towns" is very nearly perfect. A warning chatter quickly sends every "dog" scurrying to the mouth of its hole, ready for the dive to safety far below. No! the prairie-"dog," rattlesnake and burrowing owl emphatically do NOT dwell together in peace and harmony in the burrow of the "dog." The rodent hates both these interloping enemies, and carefully avoids them. The pocket gopher does his migrating and prospecting at night, when his enemies are asleep. The gray squirrel builds for itself a summer nest of leaves. At the real beginning of winter the prairie-"dog" tightly plugs up with moist earth the mouth of his burrow; and he packs it with his nose. The round-tailed muskrat of Florida (_Neofiber alleni_) builds a little platform over the water of the marsh in which it lives, on which it builds its nest high and dry. The Hudsonian red squirrel will bark and scold at a human intruder for half an hour. In Chapter IV I have already accorded the beaver a place with the most intelligent animals of the world. The books that have been written concerning that species have been amply justified. It is, however, impossible to refuse this important animal a place in any chapter devoted to the mental traits of rodents, and I deem it fitting to record here our latest experience with this remarkable species. Our Last Beaver Experiment. In the autumn of 1921 we emptied and cleaned out our Beaver Pond. The old house originally built by the beavers in the centre of the pond, was for sanitary reasons entirely removed. Work on the pond was not finished until about October 25; and the beavers had no house. It seemed to me a physical impossibility for the beavers to begin a new house at that late date and unassisted finish it by the beginning of winter. One beaver had escaped, and for the remaining three such a task would be beyond their powers. I decided to give them a helping hand, provided they would accept it, by providing them with a wooden house, which they might if they chose, entirely surround and snugly cover with mud and sticks. But would they accept it in a grateful spirit, and utilize it? One cannot always tell what a wild animal will do. With loose earth a low island with a flat top was built to carry the house. Its top was six inches above high-water mark, and (that would, if accepted) be the floor of the permanent house. A good, practicable tunnel was built to an underwater entrance. Upon that our men set a square, bottomless house of wood, with walls two feet high, and a low roof sloping four ways. Over all this the men piled in a neat mound a lot of tree branches of kinds suitable for beaver food; and with that we left the situation up to the beavers. The finish of our work was made on October 28. For a week there were no developments. The beavers made no sign of approval or disapproval. And then things began to happen. On November 5 we saw a beaver carrying a small green branch into the house for _bedding!_ That meant that our offering was going to be accepted. The subsequent chronology of that beaver house is as follows: Nov. 10. The beavers pulled all our brush away from the house, back to a distance of six or seven feet. The house stood fully exposed. Nov. 11. They began to pile up mud and sticks against the base of the south wall. Nov. 15. Mud-building to cover the house was in full progress. Nov. 17. Much of our brush had been placed in the stock of food wood being stored for winter use in the pond west of the house. Nov. 29. The outside of the house was completely covered up to the edges of the roof. The beavers were working fast and hard. No freezing weather yet. Dec. 15. The roof was not yet covered. Ice had formed on the pond, and house-building operations were at an end until the spring of 1922. XV THE MENTAL TRAITS OF BIRDS In comparison with mammalian mentality, the avian mind is much more elementary and primitive. It is as far behind the average of the mammals as the minds of fishes are inferior to those of reptiles. Instinct Prominent in Birds. The average bird is more a creature of instinct than of reason. Primarily it lives and moves by and through the knowledge that it has inherited, rather than by the observations it has made and the things it has thought out in its own head. But let it not for one moment be supposed that the instinctive knowledge of the bird is of a mental quality inferior to that of the mammal. The difference is in kind only, not in degree. As a factor in self-preservation the keen and correct reasoning of the farm-land fox is in no sense superior to the wonderful instinct and prescience of the golden plover that, on a certain calendar day, or week, bids farewell to its comfortable breeding-grounds in the cold north beyond the arctic circle, rises high in the air and launches forth on its long and perilous migration flight of 8,000 miles to its winter resort in Argentina. The Migrations of Birds. Volumes have been written on the migrations of birds. The subject is vast, and inexhaustable. It is perhaps the most wonderful of all the manifestations of avian intelligence. It is of interest chiefly to the birds of the temperate zone, whose summer homes and food supplies are for four months of the year buried under a mantle of snow and ice. All but a corporal's guard of the birds of the United States and Canada must go south every winter or perish from starvation and cold. It is a case of migrate or die. Many of the birds do not mind the cold of the northern winter--if it is dry; and _if they could be fed in winter,_ many of them would remain with us throughout the year. Consider the migratory habits of our own home favorites, and see what they reveal. After all else has been said, bird migration is the one unfathomable wonder of the avian world. Really, we know of it but little more than we know of the songs of the morning stars. We have learned when the birds start; we know that many of them fly far above the earth; we know where some of them land, and the bird calendars show approximately when they will return. And is not that really about _all_ that we do know? [Illustration with caption: MIGRATION OF THE GOLDEN PLOVER From "Bird Migration,", by Dr. W. W. Cooke, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 1915.] What courage it must take, to start on the long, tiresome and dangerous journey! How do they know where to go, far into the heart of the South, to find rest, food and security? When and where do they stop on the way to feed? Vast areas are passed over without alighting; for many species never are seen in mid career. Why is it that the golden plover feels that it is worth while to fly from the arctic coast to Argentina? Let any man--if one there be--who is not profoundly impressed by the combined instinct and the reasoning of migratory birds do himself the favor to procure and study the 47-page pamphlet by Dr. Wells W. Cooke, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, entitled "Bird Migration." I wish I could reproduce it entire; but since that is impossible, here are a few facts and figures from it. The Bobolink summers in the northern United States and southern Canada, and winters in Paraguay, making 5000 miles of travel each way. The Scarlet Tanager summers in the northeastern quarter of the United States and winters in Colombia, Equador and northern Peru, a limit to limit flight of 3,880 miles. The Golden Plover (_Charadrius dominicus_).--"In fall it flies over the ocean from Nova Scotia to South America, 2,400 miles--the longest known flight of any bird. In spring it returns by way of the Mississippi Valley. Thus the migration routes form an enormous ellipse, with a minor axis of 2,000 miles and a major axis stretching 8,000 miles from arctic America to Argentina." (Cooke.) The Arctic Tern (_Sterna paradisaea_), is "the champion long-distance migrant of the world. It breeds as far north as it can find land on which to build its nest, and winters as far south as there is open water to furnish it food. The extreme summer and winter homes are 11,000 miles apart, or a yearly round trip of 22,000 miles." (Cooke.) By what do migrating birds guide their courses high in air on a pitch-dark night,--their busy time for flying? Do they, too, know about the mariner's Southern Cross, and steer by it on starlit nights? Equally strange things have happened. The regular semi-annual migrations of birds may fairly be regarded as the high-water mark of instinct so profound and far-reaching that it deserves to rank as high as reason. To me it is one of the most marvelous things in Nature's Book of Wonders. I never see a humming-bird poised over a floral tube of a trumpet creeper without pausing, in wonder that is perpetual, and asking the eternal question: "Frail and delicate feathered sprite, that any storm-gust might dash to earth and destroy, and that any enemy might crush, _how_ do you make your long and perilous journeys unstarved and unkilled? Is it because you bear a charmed life? What is the unsolved mystery of your tiny existence in this rough and cruel world?" We understand well enough the foundation principles of mammalian and avian life, and existence under adverse circumstances. The mammal is tied to his environment. He cannot go far from the circumpolar regions of his home. A bear chained to a stake is emblematic of the universal handicap on mammalian life. Survive or perish, the average land-going quadruped must stay put, and make the best of the home in which he is born. If he attempts to migrate fast and far, he is reasonably certain to get into grave danger, and lose his life. The bird, however, is a free moral agent. If the purple grackle does not like the sunflower seeds in my garden, lo! he is up and away across the Sound to Oyster Bay, Long Island, where his luck may be better. Failing there, he gives himself a transfer to Wilmington, or Richmond, via his own Atlantic coast line. The wonderful migratory instincts of birds have been developed and intensified through countless generations by the imperative need for instinctive guidance, and the comparatively small temptation to inductive reasoning based on known facts. Evidently the bird is emboldened to migrate by the comfortable belief that somewhere the world contains food and warmth to its liking, and that if it flies fast enough and far enough it will find it. As a weather prophet, the prescience of the bird is strictly limited. The warm spells of late February deceive the birds just as they do the flowers of the peach tree and the apple. Often the bluebirds and robins migrate northward too early, encounter blizzards, and perish in large numbers from snow, sleet, cold and hunger. The Homing Sense of Birds. We can go no farther than to say that while the homing instinct of certain species of birds is quite well known, the mental process by which it functions is practically unknown. The direction instinct of the homing pigeon is marvelous, but we know that that instinct does not leap full- fledged from the nest. The homer needs assistance and training. When it is about three months old, it is taken in a basket to a point a mile distant from its home and liberated. If it makes good in returning to the home loft, the distances are increased by easy stages--two, three, five, ten, twenty, thirty, fifty and seventy- five miles usually being flown before the bird is sent as far as 100 miles. The official long-distance record for a homing pigeon is 1689.44 miles, held by an American bird. The homing instinct, or sense, is present in some mammals, but it is by no means so phenomenal as in some species of birds. In mammals it is individual rather than species-wide. Individual horses, dogs and cats have done wonderful things under the propulsion of the homing instinct, but that instinct is by no means general throughout those species. Among wild animals, exhibitions of the home-finding instinct are rare, but the annals of the Zoological Park contain one amusing record. For emergency reasons, a dozen fallow deer once were quartered in our Bison range, behind a fence only sixty-six inches high. Presently they leaped out to freedom, disappeared in the thick northern forests of the Bronx, and we charged them up to profit and loss. But those deer soon found that life outside our domain was not the dream of paradise that they had supposed. After about a week of wandering through a cold, unsympathetic and oatless world those were sadder and wiser deer, and one night they all returned and joyously and thankfully jumped back into their range, where they were happy ever after. Recognition of Sanctuary Protection. In this field of precise observation and reasoning, most birds,--if not indeed all of them,--are quick in discernment and accurate in deduction. The great gauntlet of guns has taught the birds of the United States and Canada to recognize the difference between areas of shooting and no shooting. Dull indeed is the bird mind that does not know enough to return to the feeding-ground in which it has been safe from attack. The wild geese and ducks are very keen about sanctuary waters, and no protected pond or river is too small to command attention. Our own little Lake Agassiz, in the New York Zoological Park, each year is the resort of hundreds of mallards and black ducks. And each year a number of absolutely wild wood ducks breed there and in spite of all dangers rear their young. Our wild-fowl pond, surrounded by various installations for birds, several times has been honored by visiting delegations of wild geese, seven of which were caught in 1902 for exhibition. The most astounding example of avian recognition of protection and human friendship is the spectacle of Mr. Jack Miner's wild goose sanctuary at Kingsville, Ontario, not far from Detroit. With his tile works on one side and his home on the other, he scooped out between them clay for his factory and made a small pond. With deliberate and praiseworthy intention Mr. Miner planted there a little flock of pinioned wild Canada geese, as a notice of sanctuary and an invitation to wild flocks to come down for food, rest and good society. Very slowly at first the wild geese began to come; but finally the word was passed along the line from Hudson Bay to Currituck Sound that Miner's roadhouse was a good place at which to stop. Year by year the wild geese came, and saw, and were conquered. So many thousands came that presently Mr. Miner grew tired of spending out of his own pocket more than $700 a year for goose corn; and then the Canadian government most commendably assumed the burden, and made Mr. Miner's farm a national bird preserve. [Footnote: Mr. Miner is writing his wild-goose story into a book: and the story is worth it!] The annals of wild life protection literature contain many records and illustrations of the remarkable quickness and thoroughness of sanctuary recognition by birds. On the other hand I feel greatly annoyed by the failure of waterfowl to reason equally well regarding the decoys of duck-shooters. They fail to learn, either by experience or hearsay, that small flocks of ducks sitting motionless near a shore are loaded, and liable to go off. They fail to learn that it is most wise to settle well outside such flocks of alleged ducks, and that it is a fatal mistake to plump down on the top of a motionless bunch. Protective Association of Wasps and Caciques. The colonizing caciques, of South America, representing four genera, are very solicitous of the safety of their colonies. In numerous cases, these colonies are found in association with wasps, one or more nests invariably being found near the nests of the birds. It is natural to infer that this strange association is due to the initiative of the birds. When monkeys attack the birds, the birds need the stinging insects. As usual in the study of wild creatures, the first thing that we encounter in the wild bird is Temperament. On this hangs the success or failure of a species in association with man. Temperament in the most intellectual wild creatures is just as evident and negotiable to the human eye as colors are in fur or feathers. A vastly preponderating number of bird species are of sanguine temperament; and it is this fact alone that renders it possible for us to exhibit continuously from 700 to 800 species of birds. Sensible behavior in captivity is the one conspicuous trait of character in which birds mentally and physically are far better balanced than mammals. But few birds are foolishly nervous or hysterical, and when once settled down the great majority of them are sanguine and philosophical. Birds of a great many species can be caught in an adult state and settled down in captivity without difficulty; whereas all save a few species of mammals, when captured as adults, are irreconcilable fighters and many of them die far too quickly. In a well-regulated zoological park nearly every animal that has been caught when adult is a failure and a nuisance. To name the species of birds that can be caught fully grown and settled down for exhibition purposes, would create a list of formidable length. It is indeed fortunate for us that this is true; for the rearing of nestlings is a tedious task. A conspicuous exception to the rule of philosophic sedateness in newly caught birds is the loon, or great northern diver. That bird is so exceedingly nervous and foolish, and so persistent in its evil ways, that never once have we succeeded in inducing a loon to settle down on exhibition and be good. When caught and placed in our kind of captivity, the loon goes daft. It dives and dives, and swims under water until it is completely exhausted; it loses its appetite, and very soon dies. Of course if one had a whole marine biological station to place at the disposal of the foolish loon, it might get on. There are other odd exceptions to the rule of normal bird conduct. Some of our upland game birds, particularly the Franklin grouse and ptarmigan of the Rocky Mountains, display real mental deficiencies in the very necessary business of self-preservation. WILDNESS AND TAMENESS OF THE RUFFED GROUSE. The ruffed grouse is one of the most difficult of all North American game birds to keep in captivity. This fact is due largely, though not entirely, to the nervous and often hysterical temperament of this species. Some birds will within a reasonable time quiet down and accept captivity, but others throughout long periods,--or forever,-- remain wild as hawks, and perpetually try to dash themselves to pieces against the wire of their enclosures. Prof. A. A. Allen of Cornell once kept a bird for an entire year, only to find it at the end of that time hopelessly wild; so he gave the bird its liberty. However, in this species there are numerous exceptions. Some wing- tipped birds have calmed down and accepted captivity gracefully and sensibly, and a few of the cases of this kind have been remarkable. The most astonishing cases, however, have been of the tameness of free wild birds, in the Catskills, and also near the city of Schenectady. A great many perfectly truthful stories have been published of wild birds that actually sought close acquaintance with people, and took food from their hands. We have been asked to account for those strange manifestations, but it is impossible to do so. It seems that in some manner, certain grouse individuals learned that Man is not always a killer and a dangerous animal, and so those birds accepted him as a friend,--until the killers came along and violated the sanctuary status. It is both necessary, and highly desirable for the increase of species, that all wild birds should fly promptly, rapidly and far from the presence of Man, the Arch Enemy of Wild Life. The species that persistently neglects to do so, or is unable, soon is utterly destroyed. The great auk species was massacred and extirpated on Funk Island because it could not get away from its sordid enemies who destroyed it for a paltry supply of _oil_. The Fool Hen and Its Folly. In our own country there exists a grouse species so foolish in its mind, and so destitute of the most ordinary instinct of self-preservation that it has been known for many years as "the Fool Hen." Definitely, it is the Franklin Grouse (_Conachites franklini_), and its home is in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. This famous and pitiable victim of misplaced confidence will sit only eight feet up on a jack pine limb, beside a well travelled road, while Mack Norboe dismounts, finds a suitable stick, and knocks the foolish bird dead from its perch. I have seen these birds sit still and patiently wait for their heads to be shot off, one by one, with a .22 calibre revolver when all points of the compass were open for their escape. All this, however, must be set down as an unusual and phenomenal absence of the most natural instinct of self-protection. The pinnated grouse, sage grouse, Bob White quail and ptarmigan exercise but little keen reason in self-protection. They are easy marks,--the joy of the pot-hunter and the delight of the duffer "sportsman." Dullness of Instinct in Grouse and Quail. The pinnated grouse, which in Iowa and the Dakotas positively is a migratory bird, does know enough to fly high when it is migrating, but seemingly this species and the sage grouse never will grow wise enough to save themselves from hunters when on their feeding grounds. In detecting the presence of their arch enemy they are hopelessly dull; and they are slow in taking wing. The quail is a very good hider, but a mighty poor flyer. When a covey is flushed by a collection of dogs and armed men, the lightning-quick and explosive get-away is all right; but the unshot birds do not fly half far enough! Instead of bowling away for two or three miles and getting clear out of the danger zone and hiding in the nearest timber, what do they do? They foolishly stop on the other side of the field, or in the next acre of brush, in full view of the hunters and dogs, who find it great fun to hustle after them and in fifteen minutes put them up again. Thus it is easy for a hunting party to "follow up" a covey until the last bird of it has been bagged. Just before the five-year close season on quail went into effect in Iowa, this incident occurred: On a farm of four hundred acres in the southern part of the state, two gunners killed so nearly up to their bag limit of _fifty birds per day_ that in ten days they went away with 400 quail. The foolish birds obstinately refused to leave the farm which had been their home and shelter. Day after day the chase with dogs and men, and the fusillade of shots, went briskly on. As a matter of fact, that outfit easily could have gone on until every quail on that farm had fallen. It is indeed strange that the very bird which practices such fine and successful strategy in leading an intruder away from its helpless young, by playing wounded, should fail so seriously when before the guns. A hunted quail covey should learn to post a sentry to watch for danger and give the alarm in time for a safe flight. But I know one quail species that is a glorious exception. It is Gambel's quail, of southern Arizona. I saw a good wing shot, Mr. John M. Phillips, hunt that quail (without dogs) until he was hot and red, and come in with more wrath than birds. He said, with an injured air: "The little beggars won't rise! I don't want to shoot them on the ground, and the minute they rise above the creosote bushes they drop right down into them again, and go on running." It was even so. They simply will not rise and fly away, as Bob White does, giving the sportsmen a chance to kill them, but when forced to fly up clear of the bushes they at once drop back again. [Footnote: A very few quail-killers of the East who oppose long close seasons contend that quail coveys "breed better" when they are shot to pieces every year and "scattered," but we observed that the quail of the Sonoran Desert managed to survive and breed and perpetuate themselves numerously without the benevolent cooperation of the "pump-gun" and the automatic shotgun.] While the study of avian mentality is a difficult undertaking, this is no excuse for the fact that up to this date (1922) that field of endeavor has been only scratched on its surface. The birds of the world are by no means so destitute of ideas and inventions that they merit almost universal neglect. Because of the suggestions they contain we will point out a few prominent mental traits in birds, chosen at random. At the same time, let us all beware of seeing too much, and chary of recording scientific hallucinations. It is better to see nothing than to see many things that are not true! In ten octavo pages that particular rock can split wide open the best reputation ever grown. Bird Architecture. The wisdom of birds in the selection of nesting sites, the designing of the best nest for their respective wants, and finally the construction of them, indicate instinct, reasoning power and mechanical skill of a high order. The range from the wonderful woven homes of the weaver bird and the Baltimore oriole down to the bare and nestless incubating spot of the penguin is so great that nothing less than a volume can furnish space in which to set it forth. But let us at least take a brief glance at a wide range of home-building activities by birds. The orioles, caciques and weavers weave wonderful homes of fibrous material, often in populous communities. The bower birds erect remarkable bowers, as playhouses. The brush turkey scratches together a huge mound of sticks and leaves, four feet by ten or twelve wide at the base. The vireo and many others turn out beautiful cup-like nests. The hummingbird builds with the solidity and tenacity of the wasp. The swallow is a wonderful modeler with mud. The guacharo builds a solid nest like a cheese with a concave top. The auklet, the puffin and the kingfishers burrow into the friendly and solid earth. The eider duck plucks from its own breast the softest, of feather linings for its nest. [Illustration with caption: REMARKABLE VILLAGE NESTS OF THE SOCIABLE WEAVER BIRD (Copied from "The Fauna of South Africa Birds," by Arthur C. Stark)] The grebe thoughtfully keeps its nest above high-water mark by building on a floating island. The murre and the guillemot do their best to escape their enemies of the land by building high upon inaccessible rock ledges. The woodpecker trusts no living species save his own, and drills high up into a hollow tree-trunk for his home. The cactus wren and crissal thrasher build in the geographical centres of tree choyas, so protected by 500,000 spines that no hawk or owl can reach them. This catalogue could be extended to a great length; but why pile evidence upon evidence! It cannot be correct to assume that the nesting activities of birds are based upon instinct alone. That theory would be untenable. New conditions call for independent thought, and originality of treatment. If the ancestral plans and specifications could not be varied, then every bird would have to build a nest just "such as mother used to make," or have no brood. All bird students know full well how easily the robin, the wren, the hawk and the owl change locations and materials to meet new and strange conditions. A robin has been known to build on the running-board of a switch-engine in a freight yard, and another robin built on the frame of the iron gate of an elephant yard. A wren will build in a tin can, a piece of drain tile, a lantern, a bird house or a coat pocket, just as blithely as its grandmother built in a grape arbor over a kitchen door. All this is the hall mark of New Thought. Whenever children go afield in bird country, they are constantly on the alert for fresh discoveries and surprises in bird architecture. Interest in the nest-building ingenuity and mechanical skill of birds is perpetual. The variety is almost endless. Dull indeed is the mind to which a cunningly contrived nest does not appeal. Tell the boys that it is _all right_ to collect _abandoned_ nests, but the taking of eggs and occupied nests is unlawful and wicked. The Play-House of the Bower Bird. Years ago we read of the wonderful playhouses constructed by the bower birds of Australia and New Guinea, but nothing ever brought home to us this remarkable manifestation of bird thought so closely as did the sight of our own satin bower bird busily at work on his own bower. He was quartered in the great indoor flying cage of our largest bird house, and supplied with hard grass stems of the right sort for bower-making. With those materials, scattered over the sand floor, the bird built his bower by taking each stem in his beak, holding it very firmly and then with a strong sidewise and downward thrust slicking it upright in the sand, to stand and to point "just exactly so." The finished bower was a Gothic tunnel with walls of grass stems, about eighteen inches long and a foot high. In making it the male bird wrought as busily as a child building a playhouse of blocks. Our bird would pick up pieces of blue yarn that had been placed in his cage to test his color sense, but never red,-- which color seemed to displease him. As the bird worked quietly yet diligently, one could not help longing to know what thoughts were at work in that busy little brain. The most elaborate of all the bower bird play-houses is that constructed by the gardener bower bird, which is thus described by Pycraft in his "History of Birds": "This species builds at the foot of a small tree a kind of hut or cabin, some two feet in height, roofed with orchid stems that slope to the ground, regularly radiating from the central support, which is covered with a conical mass of moss sheltering a gallery round it. One side of this hut is left open, and in front of it is arranged a bed of verdant moss, bedecked with blossoms and berries of the brightest color. As the ornaments wither they are removed to a heap behind the hut and replaced by others that are fresh. The hut is circular and some three feet in diameter, and the mossy lawn in front of it is nearly twice that expanse. Each hut and garden is believed to be the work of a single pair of birds. The use of the hut, it appears, is solely to serve the purpose of a playing-ground, or as a place wherein to pay court to the female, since it, like the bowers built by its near relatives, are built long before the nest is begun, this, by the way, being placed in a tree." [Illustration with caption: SPOTTED BOWER-BIRD, AT WORK ON ITS UNFINISHED BOWER Foreground garnished with the bird's playthings. (From A. S. Le Souef, Sydney. Photo by F. C. Morse)] Most Birds Fear Man. With the exception of those that have been reared in captivity, nearly all species of wild birds, either in captivity or out of it, fear the touch of man, and shrink from him. The birds of the lawn, the orchard and the farm are always suspicious, always on the defensive. But of course there are exceptions. A naturalist like J. Alden Loring can by patient effort win the confidence of a chickadee, or a phoebe bird, and bring it literally to his finger. These exceptions, however, are rare, but they show conclusively that wild birds can be educated into new ideas. The shrinking of wild birds from the hand of man is almost as pronounced in captivity as it is in the wilderness, and this fact renders psychological experiments with birds extremely difficult. It is really strange that the parrots and cockatoos all should take kindly to man, trust him and even like him, while nearly all other birds persistently fly, or run, or swim or dive away from him. A bird keeper may keep for twenty years, feeding daily, but his hawks, owls and eagles, the perchers, waders, swimmers and upland game birds all fly from him in nervous fear whenever he attempts to handle them. The exceptions to this rule, out of the 20,000 species of the birds of the world, are few. Wild Birds that Voluntarily Associate with Man. The species that will do so are not numerous, and I will confine myself to some of those that I have seen. The Indian adjutant, the mynah, hoopoe, vulture, robin, phoebe bird, bluebird, swallow, barn owl, flicker, oriole, jay, magpie, crow, purple grackle, starling, stork, wood pigeon, Canada goose, mallard, pintail, bob white and a few other species have accepted man at his face value and endeavored to establish with him a modus vivendi. The mallard and the graylag goose are the ancestors of our domestic ducks and geese. The jungle fowls have given us the domestic chickens. The wild turkey, the pheasants, the guinea fowl, the ostrich, the emu and the peacock we possess in domestication unchanged. Caged Wild Birds Quickly Appreciate Sanctuary. Mr. Crandall reports that in the Zoological Park there have been many instances of the voluntary return to their cages of wild birds that have escaped from them. The following instances are cited, out of many that are remembered: A wild hermit thrush, only two weeks in captivity, escaped from an outdoor cage. But he refused to leave the vicinity of his new home, and permanent food supply. He lingered around for two or three days, and finally a wise keeper opened the cage door when he was near it, and at once he went in. A magpie escaped from an outside cage, and for a week he lingered around it unwilling to leave its vicinity. At last the other birds of the cage were removed, the door was left open, and the magpie at once went back home. Bird Memory and Talk. Birds have few ways and means by which to reveal their powers of memory. The best exhibits are made by the talking parrots and cockatoos. The feats of some of these birds, both in memory and expression, are really wonderful. The startling aptness with which some parrots apply the language they possess often is quite uncanny. Concerning "sound mimicry" and the efforts of memory on which they are based, Mr. Lee S. Crandall, Curator of Birds, has contributed the following statement of his observations: "Many birds, including practically all members of the parrot tribe, many of the crows and jays, as well as mynas and starlings, learn to repeat sounds, words and sentences. Ability varies with both species and individuals. Certain species show greater aptitude as a whole than other species, while there is a great difference between individuals of the same species. "Gray parrots are generally considered the most intelligent of their tribe, and are especially apt at imitating sounds, such as running water, whistles, etc. I have one at home which always answers a knock with 'Come in.' Often he furnishes the knock himself by pounding the perch with his bill, following it with 'Come in.' Amazon parrots are especially good at tunes, some specimens being able to whistle complicated airs and sometimes sing several verses in a high, clear voice. Both grays and Amazons often talk with great fluency, vocabularies having been reported of as many as one hundred words. Often there seems to be intelligent association of certain acts or conditions with corresponding sentences, these sometimes occurring with singular patness. "Hill mynahs, of the genus _Eulabes,_ often talk as well as parrots. The common introduced European starling often says a few words quite clearly. I once knew a long-tailed glossy starling (_Lamprotornis caudatus_) which shared an aviary with an accomplished albino jackdaw. The starling had acquired much of the jackdaw's repertoire, and the 'conversations' carried on between the two birds were most amusing." A raven in the Zoological Park says "Arthur," "Shut up," "All out" and "Now look what's here" as perfectly as any parrot. Listed in the order of their ability to learn and remember talk, the important talking birds are as follows: African gray parrot, yellow-headed Amazon, other Amazons, the hill mynahs, the cockatoos, the macaws, and the various others previously mentioned. It is safe to assert that all migratory birds display excellent powers of memory, chiefly by returning to their favorite haunts after long absences. Recognition of Persons. Mr. Crandall says there can be no doubt of the ability of most birds to recognize individual persons. This is seen in the smallest species as well as in the largest. He once saw a bullfinch in the last stages of pneumonia and almost comatose, show an instant reaction to the presence of an owner it had not seen in weeks. Many birds form dislikes for individual persons. This is especially noticeable in the parrot tribe. A large male South American condor was friendly enough with two of his keepers but would instantly attack any other keeper or other person entering his enclosure, whether wearing the uniform or not. With his two approved keepers he was gentleness itself. Parasitic Nesting Habits. In the bird world there are a few species whose members are determined to get something for nothing, and to avoid all labor in the rearing of their offspring. This bad habit is known of the Old World cuckoos, the American cow- birds, the South American rice grackle (_Cassidix_), and suspected in the pin-tail whydah (_Vidua serena_). It seems to reach its highest point in the cuckoos. It is believed that individuals lay their eggs only in the nests of species whose eggs resemble their own. Apparently much skill and intelligence is required for introducing parasitic eggs at the most favorable moment. This is equally true of other parasites. Curator Crandall has taken several eggs and young of the rice birds from nests of two species of giant caciques in Costa Rica, but never saw an adult _Cassidix._ It is considered a very rare species, but probably is more sly than scarce. Young cuckoos eject unwelcome nestlings shortly after hatching. Daily contact with a large and varied collection of birds great and small, gathered from every section of the habitable regions of the earth, naturally produces in time a long series of interesting cases of intelligence and behavior. Out of our total occurrences and observations I will offer two that reveal original thought. Good Sense of the Wedge-Tailed Eagle. In discussing bird intelligence with Mr. Herbert D. Atkin, keeper of our Eagles Aviary and the cranes and water birds in the Flying Cage, he called to my attention two species of birds which had very much impressed him. Afterward he showed me all that he described. Keeper Atkin regards the wedge-tailed eagle, of Australia, as the wisest species with which he has to deal. In the first place, all four of the birds in that flock recognize the fact that he is a good friend, not an enemy, and each day they receive him in their midst with cheerful confidence and friendship. In the fall when the time comes to catch them, crate them and wheel them half a mile to their winter quarters in the Ostrich House, they do not become frightened, nor fight against being handled, and submit with commendable sense and appreciation. The one thing on which the wedge-tailed eagle really insists when in his summer quarters, is his daily spray bath from a hose. When his keeper goes in to give the daily morning wash to the cage, the eagles perch close above his head and screech and scream until the spray is turned upon them. Then they spread their wings, to get it thoroughly, and come out thoroughly soaked. When the spray is merely turned upon their log instead of upon the birds as they sit higher up, they fly down and get into the current wherever it may be. Memory of the Cereopsis Goose. Keeper Atkin also showed me an instance of the wisdom of the cereopsis geese, from Van Diemens Land, South Australia. During the winter those birds are kept in the Wild-Fowl Pond; but in summer they are quartered in a secluded yard of the Crane's Paddock, nearly half a mile away. Twice a year these birds go under their own steam between those two enclosures. When turned out of the Cranes' Paddock last November they at once set out and walked very briskly southward up the Bird's Valley, past the Zebra House. On reaching the Service Road, a quarter of a mile away, they turned to the left and kept on to the Wolf Dens. There they turned to the right and kept on two hundred yards until they reached the walk coming down from the Reptile House. There they turned to the left, crossed the bridge, stopped at the gate to the Wild-Fowl Pond enclosure, and when the gate was opened they entered and declared themselves "at home." Mr. Atkin says that in spring these birds show just as much interest in going back to their summer home. Falconry. We cannot do otherwise than regard the ancient sport of falconry as a high tribute to the mental powers of the genus _Falco._ The hunting falcons were educated into the sport of hawking, just as a boy is trained by his big brother to shoot quail on the wing. The birds were furnished with hoods and jesses, and other garnitures. They were carried on the hand of the huntsman, and launched at unlucky herons and bitterns as an _intelligent_ living force. The hunting falcon entered into the sport like a true sportsman, and he played the game according to the rules. The sport was cruel, but it was politely exciting, and it certainly was a fine exhibition of bird intelligence. Part of that intelligence was instinctive, but the most of it was acquired, by educational methods. Outstanding Traits in a Few Groups of Birds. In creatures as much lacking in visible expression as most birds are, it is difficult to detect the emotions and temperaments that prevail in the various groups. Only a few can be cited with certain confidence. Vanity Displays in Birds. The males of a few species of birds have been specially equipped by nature for the display of their natural vanity. Anyone who has seen a Zoological Park peacock working overtime on a Sunday afternoon in summer when the crowds of visitors are greatest, solely to display the ocellated splendor of his tail plumage, surely must conclude that the bird is well aware of the glories of his tail, and also that he positively enjoys showing off to admiring audiences. These displays are not casual affairs in the ordinary course of the day's doings. It is a common thing for one of our birds to choose a particularly conspicuous spot, preferably on an elevated terrace, from which his display will carry farthest to the eyes of the crowd. Even if the bird were controlled by the will of a trainer for the purpose of vanity display, the exhibition could not possibly be more perfect. Like a good speaker on a rostrum, the bird faces first in one direction and then in another, and occasionally with a slow and stately movement it completely revolves on its axis for the benefit of those in the rear. "Vain as a peacock" is by no means an unjustifiable comparison. Plumage displays are indulged in by turkeys, the blue bird of paradise, the greater and lesser birds of paradise, the sage grouse and pinnated grouse, ruffed grouse, golden pheasant and argus pheasant. On the whole, we may fairly set down vanity as one of the well defined emotions in certain birds, and probably possessed by the males in many species which have not been provided by nature with the means to display it conspicuously. Materials for Study. In seeking means by which to study the mental and temperamental traits of wild birds and mammals, the definite and clearly cut manifestations are so few in kind that we are glad to seize upon everything available. Of the visible evidences, pugnacity and the fighting habit are valuable materials, because they are visible. Much can be learned from the fighting weakness or strength of animals and men. In our great collections of birds drawn from all the land areas of the globe, our bird men see much fighting. Mr. Crandall has prepared for me in a condensed form an illuminating collection of facts regarding PUGNACITY IN CAPTIVE BIRDS 1. Most species do more or less competitive fighting for nesting sites or mates, especially: Gallinaceous birds,--many of which fight furiously for mates; The Ruff, or Fighting Snipe (_Machetes pugnax_),--very pugnacious for mates; House Sparrows (_Passer domesticus_) fight for nesting places and mates; and Some Waterfowl, especially swans and geese, fight for nesting places. 2. Most species which do not depend chiefly upon concealment, fight fiercely in defense of nests or young. Typical examples are: Geese; Swans; The larger Flycatchers; Birds of prey, especially the more powerful ones, such as Bald Eagles, Duck Hawks and Horned Owls. 3. Some species fight in competition for food. Conspicuous examples are: The fiercer hawks; Some carrion eaters, as the King Vulture, Black, Sharp-Shinned, Cooper, Gos and Duck Hawks, which fight in the air over prey. 4. Certain birds show pugnacity in connection with the robber instinct, as: Bald Eagle, which robs the Osprey; Skua and Jaeger, which rob gulls. 5. Some species show general pugnacity. Species to be cited are: Cassowaries, Emus and Ostriches, all of which are more or less dangerous; Saras Cranes, which strike wickedly and without warning; Some Herons, especially if confined, and Birds of Paradise, which are unreasonably quarrelsome. 6. In non-social birds, each male will fight for his own breeding and feeding territory. The struggle for territory is a wide one, and it is now attracting the attention of bird psychologists. Birds are no more angelic than human beings are. They have their faults and their mean traits, just as we have; but their repertoire is not so great as ours. In every species that we have seen tried out in captivity, the baser passions are present. This is equally true of mammals. In _confinement_, in every herd and in every flock from elephants down to doves, the strong bully and oppress the weak, and drive them to the wall. _The most philosophic and companionable birds_ are the parrots, parakeets, macaws and cockatoos. _The birds that most quickly recognize protection_ sanctuaries and accept them, are the geese, ducks and swans. _The game birds most nervous and foolish, and difficult to maintain in captivity,_ are the grouse, ptarmigan and quail. _The bird utterly destitute of sense_ in captivity is the loon. _The birds that are most domineering_ in captivity are the cranes. _The birds that are most treacherous_ in captivity are the darters (_Anhinga_). _The birds that go easiest and farthest in training_ are the parrots, macaws and cockatoos. _The most beautiful bird species of the world_ are about fifty in number; and only a few of them are found among the birds of paradise. The minds of wild birds are quite as varied and diversified as are the forms and habits of the different orders and genera. XVI THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT OF all the vertebrates, the serpents live under the greatest handicaps. They are hated and destroyed by all men, they can neither run nor fly far away, and they subsist under maximum difficulties. Those of the temperate zone are ill fitted to withstand the rigors of winter. And yet the serpents survive; and we have not heard of any species having become extinct during our own times. It is indeed worth while to "consider the wisdom of the serpent." Without the exercise of keen intelligence all the snakes of the cultivated lands of the world long ago would have been exterminated. The success of serpents of all species in meeting new conditions and maintaining their existence in the face of enormous difficulties compels us, as reasoning beings, to accord to them keen intelligence and ratiocination. The poisonous serpents afford a striking illustration of reason and folly en masse. The total number of venomous species is really great, and their distribution embraces practically the whole of the torrid and temperate zones. They are too numerous for mention here; and their capacity for mischief to man is very great. Our own country has at least eighteen species of poisonous snakes, including the rattlesnakes, the copperhead, moccasin, and coral snakes. All these, however, are remarkably pacific. Without exception they are non-aggressive, and they attack only when they think they are exposed to danger, and must defend themselves or die. Hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of our people have tramped through the woods and slept in the sage-brush and creosote bushes of the rattlesnake, and waded through swamps full of moccasins, with never a bite. In America only about two persons per year are bitten by _wild_ rattlesnakes. Our snakes, and all but a very few of the other poison-snake species of the world, know that _it pays to keep the peace._ Now, what if all snakes were as foolishly aggressive as the hooded and spectacled cobras of India? Let us see. Those cobra species are man-haters. They love to attack and do damage. They go out of their way to bite people. They crawl into huts and bungalows, especially during the monsoon rains, and they infest thatch roofs. But are they wise, and retiring, like the house-haunting gopher snake of the South? By no means. The cobra goes around with a chip on his shoulder. In India they kill from 17,000 to 18,000 people annually! And in return, about 117,000 cobras are killed annually. It is a mighty fortunate thing for humanity on the frontier that the other serpents of the world know that it is a good thing to behave themselves, and not bite unnecessarily. Fighting Its Own Kind. The Indian cobra, (_Naia tripudians_), is an exception to the rule of serpents that forbids fighting in the family. While cobras in captivity usually do live together in a state of vicious and fully-armed neutrality, sometimes they do fight. One of our cobras once attacked a cage-mate two-thirds the size of itself, vanquished it, seized it by the head and swallowed two-thirds of it before the tragedy was discovered. The assailant was compelled to disgorge his prey, but the victim was very dead. The poison venom of the cobra, rattlesnake, bushmaster and puff adder is a great handicap on the social standing of the entire serpent family. Mankind in general abhors snakes, both in general and particular. The snake not actually known to be venomous usually is suspected of being so. It is only the strongest mental constitution that can permit a snake to go unkilled when the killing opportunity offers. It is just as natural for the lay brother to kill a chicken snake because it looks like a copperhead, or a hog-nosed blowing "viper" because it looks like a rattlesnake, as it is to shy at a gun that "may be loaded." To American plainsmen, the non-aggressive temper of the rattlesnake is well known, and it is also a positive asset. I never knew one who was nervously afraid while sleeping in the open that snakes would come and crawl into his bed, or mix up with his camp. Of course all frontiersmen kill rattlers, as a sort of bounden duty to society, but I once knew an eastern man to turn loose a rattlesnake that he had photographed, in the observance of his principle never to kill an animal whose picture he had taken. Subsequently it was gravely reported that one of the restive horses of the outfit had "accidentally" killed that rattler by stepping upon it. A Summary of Poisonous Snakes. There are about 300,000 poisonous snakes in the United States, and 110,000,000 people for them to bite; but more people are bitten by captive snakes than by wild ones. A fool and his snake are soon parted. There are 200,000 rattlesnakes in our country, but all of them will let you alone if you will let them alone. If your police record is clear, you can sleep safely in the sage- brush. If ever you need to camp in a cave, remember that in warm weather the rattlesnakes are all out hunting, and will not return until the approach of winter. The largest snakes of the world exist only in the human mind. The rattlesnake is a world-beater at minding his own business. Men do far more fighting per capita than any snakes yet discovered. The road to an understanding of the minds of serpents is long and difficult. Perhaps the best initial line of approach is through a well-stocked Reptile House. Having studied somewhat in that school I have emerged with a fixed belief that of all vertebrate creatures, snakes are the least understood, and also the most thoroughly misunderstood. [Illustration: A PEACE CONFERENCE WITH AN ARIZONA RATTLESNAKE "You let me alone and I won't harm you" (From "Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava")] [Illustration: HAWK-PROOF NEST OF A CACTUS WREN Placed in the centre of a tree choya cactus of Arizona and defended by 10 000 hostile spines (From "Camp-Fires on Desert and Lava")] The world at large debits serpents with being far more quarrelsome and aggressive than they really are, and it credits them with knowing far less than they do know. Attitude of Snakes Toward Each Other. Toward each other, the members of the various serpent species are tolerant, patient and peaceful to the last degree. You may place together in one cage twenty big Texas rattlers, or twenty ugly cottonmouth moccasins from the Carolinas, a hundred garter snakes, twenty boa constrictors, or six big pythons, and if the various _species_ are kept separate there will be no fighting. You may stir them up to any reasonable extent, and make them keen to strike you, but they do not attack each other. There are, however, many species that will not mix together in peace. For example, the king snake of New Jersey hates the rattlesnake, no matter what his address may be. Being by habit a constrictor, the king snake at once winds himself tightly around the neck of the rattler,--and proceeds to choke him to death. The king cobra devours other snakes, as food, and wishes nothing else. The Gopher Snake. Some snakes that feel sure you will not harm them will permit you to handle them without a protest or a fight. The most spectacular example is the gopher snake of the southeastern United States. This handsome, lustrous, blue-black species is six feet long, shiny, and as clean and smooth as ivory. Its members are famous rat-killers. You can pick up a wild one wherever you find it, and it will not bite you. They do not at all object to being handled, even by timorous lady visitors who never before have touched a live snake; and in the South they are tolerated by farmers for the good they do as rat catchers. The Wisdom of a Big Python. Once I witnessed an example of snake intelligence on a large scale, which profoundly impressed me. A reticulated python about twenty-two feet long arrived from Singapore with its old skin dried down upon its body. The snake had been many weeks without a bath, and it had been utterly unable to shed its old skin on schedule time. It was necessary to remove all that dead epidermis, without delay. The great serpent, fully coiled, was taken out of its box, sprayed with warm water, and gently deposited on the gravel floor of our most spacious python apartment. Later on pails of warm water, sponges and forceps were procured, and five strong keepers were assembled for active service. The first step was to get the snake safely into the hands of the men, and fully under control. A stream of cold water from a hose was suddenly shot in a deluge upon the python's head, and while it was disconcerted and blinded by the flood, it was seized by the neck, close behind the head. Immediately the waiting keepers seized it by the body, from neck to tail, and straightened it out, to prevent coiling. Strong hands subdued its struggles, and without any violence stretched the writhing wild monster upon the floor. Then began the sponging and peeling process. The frightened snake writhed and resisted, probably feeling sure that its last hour had come. The men worked quietly, spoke soothingly, and the work proceeded successfully. With the lapse of time the serpent became aware of the fact that it was not to be harmed; for it became quiet, and lay still. At the same time, we all dreaded the crisis that we thought would come when the jaws and the head would be reached. By the time the head was reached, the snake lay perfectly passive. Beyond all doubt, it understood the game that was being played. Now, the epidermis of a snake covers the entire head, _including the eyes!_ And what would that snake do when the time came to remove the scales from its eyes and lips? It continued to lie perfectly still! When the pulling off of the old skin hurt the new skin underneath, the head flinched slightly, just as any hurt flesh will flinch by reflex action; but that was absolutely all. For a long hour or more, and even when the men pulled the dead scales from those eyes and lips, that strange creature made no resistance or protest. I have seen many people fight their doctors for less. That wild, newly-caught jungle snake quickly had recognized the situation, and acted its part with a degree of sense and appreciation that was astounding. I do not know of any _adult wild_ mammal that would have shown that kind and degree of wisdom under similar circumstances. Do Snakes "Charm" Birds? Sometimes a wild bird will sit still upon its nest while a big pilot blacksnake, or some other serpent equally bad, climbs up and poises its head before the motionless and terrified bird until at last the serpent seizes the bird to devour it. The bird victim really seems to be "charmed" by its enemy. If there were not some kind of a hypnotic spell cast over the bird, would it not fly away? I think this strange proceeding is easily explainable by any one with sufficient imagination to put himself in the bird's place. It is the rule of a sitting bird to sit tight, not to be scared off by trifles, and to take great risks rather than expose her eggs to cold and destruction. The ascent and approach of the serpent is absolutely noiseless. Not a leaf is stirred. The potential mother of a brood calmly sits with eyes half closed, at peace with all the world. Suddenly, and with a horrible shock, she discovers a deadly serpent's multi-fanged head and glittering eyes staring at her _within easy striking distance._ The horrified mother bird feels that she is lost. She knows full well that with any movement to escape the serpent instantly will launch its attack. _Her one hope,_ and seemingly her only chance for life, is that _if she remains motionless_ the serpent will go its way without harming her. (Think of the thousands of helpless men, women and children who have hoped and acted similarly in the presence of bandits and hold-up men presenting loaded revolvers! But they were far from being "charmed.") The bird hopes, and sits still, _paralyzed with fear._ At its leisure the serpent strikes; and after a certain number of horrible minutes, all is over. I think there is no real "charm" exercised in the tragedy; but that there is on the part of the bird a paralysis of fear, which is in my opinion a well defined emotion, common in animals and in men. I have seen it in many animals. Snakes that Feign Death. The common hog-nosed snake, mistakenly called the "puff-adder" and blowing "viper" (_Heterodon platyrhinus_) of the New England states, often feigns death when it is caught in the open, and picked up. It will "play 'possum" while you carry it by its tail, head downward, or hang its limp body over a fence. Of course it hopes to escape by its very clever ruse, and no doubt it often does so from the hands of inexperienced persons. Do Snakes Swallow Their Young? I _think_ not. A number of persons solemnly have declared that they have seen snakes do so, but no _herpetologist_ ever has seen an occurrence of that kind. I believe that all of the best authorities on serpents believe that snakes do not swallow their young. The theory of the pro-swallowists is that the mother snake takes her young into her interior to provide for their safety, and that they do not go as far down as the stomach. The anti-swallowists declare that the powerful digestive juices of the stomach of a snake would quickly kill any snakelets coming in contact with it; and I believe that this is true. At present the snake-swallowing theory must be ticketed "not proven," and is filed for further reference. The Hoop Snake Fable. There is no such thing as a "hoop-snake" save in the vivid imaginations of a very few men. The Intelligence of the King Cobra. Curator of Reptiles Raymond L. Ditmars regards the huge king cobra of the Malay Peninsula, the largest of all poisonous serpents, as quite the wisest serpent known to him. He says its mind is alert and responsive to a very unusual degree in serpents, and that it manifests a keen interest in everything that is going on around it, especially at feeding- time. This is quite the reverse of the usual sluggish and apathetic serpent mind in captivity. Incidentally, I would like very much to know just what our present twelve-foot cobra thought when, upon its arrival at its present home, its total blindness was relieved by the thrillingly skilful removal of the _two layers_ of dead scales that had closed over and finally adhered to each orbit. The vision of the king cobra is keen, and its temper is not easily ruffled. Its temperament seems to be sanguine, which is just the opposite of the nervous-combative hooded and spectacled cobra species. The So-called "Snake Charmers" of India. Herpetologists generally discredit the idea that a peripatetic Hindu can "charm" a cobra any farther or more quickly than any snake-keeper. In the first place, the fangs of the serpent are totally removed,--by a very savage and painful process. After that, the unfortunate snake is in no condition to fight or to flee. It seeks only to be let alone, and the musical-pipe business is to impress the mind of the observer. Serpent Psychology an Unplowed Field. At this date (1922) we know only the rudiments of serpent intelligence and temperament. In the wilds, serpents are most elusive and difficult to determine. In captivity they are passive and undemonstrative. We do not know how much memory they have, they rarely show what they think, and on most subjects we do not know where they stand. But the future will change all this. During the past twenty years the number of herpetologists in the United States has increased about tenfold. It is fairly impossible that serpent psychology should much longer remain unstudied, and unrevealed along the lines of plain common- sense. The Ways of Crocodiles. The ways of crocodiles are dark and deep; their thoughts are few and far between. Their wisdom is above that of the tortoises and turtles, but below that of the serpents. I have had field experience with four species of crocodilians in the New World and three in the Old. With but slight exceptions they all think alike and act alike. The great salt-water crocodile of the Malay Peninsula and Borneo is the only real man-eater I ever met. Except under the most provocative circumstances, all the others I have met are practically harmless to man. This includes the Florida species, the Orinoco crocodile, the little one from Cuba, the alligator, the Indian gavial and the Indian crocodile (_C. palustris_). The salt-water crocodile, that I have seen swimming out in the ocean two miles or more from shore, is in Borneo a voracious man- eater. It skilfully stalks its prey in the murky rivers where Malay and Dyak women and children come down to the village bathing place to dip up water and to bathe. There, unseen in the muddy water, the monster glides up stealthily, seizes his victim by the leg, and holding it tightly backs off into deep water and disappears. The victims are drowned, not bitten to death. I found in Ceylon that the Indian crocodile is a shameless cannibal, devouring the skinned carcasses of its relatives whenever an opportunity offered. The Florida crocodile is the shrewdest species of all those I know personally. It has the strange habit of digging out deep and spacious burrows for concealment, in the perpendicular sandy banks of southern Florida rivers where the deep water comes right up to the shore. Starting well under low-water mark, the crock digs in the yielding sand, straight into the bank, a roomy subterranean chamber. In this snug retreat he once was safe from all his enemies,--until the fatal day when his secret was discovered, and revealed to a grasping world. Since that time, the Alligator Joes of Palm Beach and Miami have made a business of personally conducting parties of northern visitors, at $50 per catch, to witness the adventure of catching a nine-foot crocodile alive. The dens are located by probing the sand with long iron rods. A rope noose is set over the den's entrance, and when all is ready, a confederate probes the crocodile out of its den and into the fatal noose. Today the Florida crocodile is so nearly extinct that it required two years of diligent inquiry to produce one live specimen subject to purchase. Common Sense in the Common Toad. Last spring, in planting a lot of trees on our lawn, a round tree-hole that stood for several days unoccupied finally accumulated about a dozen toads. Its two feet of straight depth was unscalable, and when finally discovered the toads were tired of their imprisonment. Partly as a test of their common-sense, Mr. George T. Fielding placed a six-inch board in the hole, at an angle of about thirty degrees, but fairly leading out of the trap. In very quick time the toads recognized the possibilities of the inclined plane and hopped upward to liberty. In the use of this opportunity they showed more wisdom than our mountain sheep manifest concerning the same kind of an improvement designed to enable them to reach the roof of their building. XVII THE TRAINING OF WILD ANIMALS Before we enter this chapter let us pause a moment on the threshold, and consider the logic of animal training and performances. Logic is only another name for reason. Its reverse side is fanaticism; and that way madness lies. It is the duty of every sane man and woman to consider the cold logic of every question affecting the welfare of man and nature. Fanaticism when carried to extremes can become a misdemeanor or a crime. The soft-hearted fanaticism of humanics that saves a brutal murderer, or would-be murderer like Berkman, from the gallows or the chair, and eventually turns him loose to commit more crimes against innocent people, is not only wrong, and wicked, but in aggravated cases it is a _crime_ against society. Just now there is a tiny wave of agitation against all performances of trained wild animals, and the keeping of animals in captivity, on the ground that all this is "cruel" and inhumane. The Jacklondon Society of Boston is working hard to get up steam for this crusade, but thus far with only partial success. Its influence is confined to a very small area. Now, what is the truth of this matter? Is it true that trained wild animals are cruelly abused in the training, or in compelling them to perform? Is it true that in making animals perform on the stage, or in the circus ring, their rights are wickedly infringed? Is it the duty of the American people to stop all performances by animals? Is it wicked to make wild animals, or cats and dogs, _work_ for a living, as men and women do? Is it true that captive animals in zoological parks and gardens are miserable and unhappy, and that all such institutions should be "abolished?" What is truth? In the first place, there is no sound reasoning or logic in assuming that the persons of animals, tame or wild, are any more sacred than those of men, women and children. We hold that it is no more "cruelty" for an ape or a dog to work in training quarters or on the stage than it is for men, women and young people to work as acrobats, or actors, or to engage in honest toil eight hours per day. Who gave to any warm-blooded animal that consumes food and requires shelter the right to live without work? _No one!_ I am sure that no trained bear of my acquaintance ever had to work as hard for his food and shelter as does the average bear out in the wilds. In order to find enough to eat the latter is compelled to hustle hard from dawn till dark. I have seen that the Rocky Mountain grizzly feels forced to dig a big hole three feet deep in hard, rocky ground, to get one tiny ground squirrel the size of a chipmunk,--and weighing only eight or nine ounces. Now, has he anything "on" the performing bear? Decidedly not. I regard the sentimental Jacklondon idea, that no wild animal should be made to work on the stage or in the show-ring, as illogical and absurd. Human beings who sanely work are much happier per capita than those who do nothing but loaf and grouch. I have worked, horse-hard, throughout all the adult years of my life; and it has been good for me. I know that it is no more wrong or wicked for a horse to work for his living,--of course on a humane basis,--either on the stage or on the street, than it is for a coal-carrier, a foundryman, a farmer, a bookkeeper, a school teacher or a housewife to do the day's work. The person of a wild animal is no more sacred than is that of a man or woman. A sound whack for an unruly elephant, bear or horse is just as helpful as it is for an unruly boy who needs to be shown that order is heaven's first law. In the presence of the world's toiling and sweating millions, in the presence of millions of children in the home sweat-shops and factories working their little lives out for their daily crust and a hard bed, what shall we think and say of the good, kind-hearted people who are spending time and energy in crusading against trained animal performances? The vast majority of performing animals are trained by humane men and women, practicing kindness to the utmost; and they are the last persons in the world who would be willing to have their valuable stock roughly handled, neglected or in any manner cruelly treated. So far as zoological parks and gardens are concerned, they are no more in need of defense than the Rocky Mountains. Every large zoological park is a school of wild-animal education and training; and it is literally a continuous performance. Let no one suppose that there is no training of wild beasts save for the circus ring and the vaudeville stage. Of the total number of large and important mammals that come into our zoological parks, the majority of them actually are trained to play becomingly their respective parts. An intractable and obstinate animal soon becomes a nuisance. The following, named in the order of their importance, are the species whose zoological park training is a matter of necessity: Elephants, bears, apes, hippopotami, rhinoceroses, giraffes, bison, musk-ox, wild sheep, goats and deer, African antelopes, wild swine, and wild horses, asses and zebras. Of large birds the most conspicuous candidates for training in park life are the ostriches, emus, cassowaries, cranes, pelicans, swans, egrets and herons, geese, ducks, pheasants, macaws and cockatoos, curassows, eagles and vultures. Among the reptiles, the best trained are the giant tortoises, the pythons, boas, alligators, crocodiles, iguanas and gopher snakes. Each one of these species is educated (1) to be peaceful, and not attack their keepers; (2) to not fear their keepers; (3) to do as they are bid about going here or there; (4) to accept and eat the food that is provided for them, and (5) finally, in some cases to "show off" a little when commanded, for the benefit of visitors. All this training comes in the regular course of our daily work, and there are few animals who do not respond to it. The necessity for training is most imperative with the elephants and bears, for without it the difficulties in the management of those dangerous animals is greatly intensified. In training an animal to do a particular act not in the routine of his daily life, it is of course necessary to show him clearly and pointedly what is desired. I think that in quickness of perception, and ability to adopt a new idea, the elephants and the great apes are tied for first place. Both are remarkably quick. It seems to me that it required only half a dozen lessons to teach our Indian elephant, Gunda, to take a penny in his trunk, lift the lid of a high-placed box, drop in the coin, then pull a bell-cord and ring a bell. Of course the reward for the first successful performances was lumps of sugar. Within three days this rather interesting special exhibit was working smoothly, and coining money. As a means of working off on the poor animal great numbers of foreign copper coins, and spurious issues of all kinds, it was a great boon to the foreign population of New York. Our erratic elephant Alice was quickly trained by Keeper Richards to blow a mouth organ, to ring a telephone by turning the crank, and to take off the receiver and hold it up to her ear for an imaginary call. Another keeper, with no previous experience as a trainer, taught a male orang-utan called Rajah to go through a series of performances that are elsewhere described. Bright and Dull Individuals. Every wild animal species contains the same range of bright and dull individuals that are found in the various races of men. Naturally the animal trainer selects for training only those animals that are of amiable disposition, that mentally are alert, responsive and possessed of good memories. The worst mistakes they make are in taking on and forcing ill-natured and irritable animals, that hate training and performing. Often a trainer persists in retaining an animal that resolutely should be thrown out. Captain Bonavita lost his arm solely because of his fatal persistence in retaining in his group of lions an animal that hated him, and which the trainer well knew was dangerous. While nearly every wild animal can be taught a few simple tricks, the dull mind soon reaches its constitutional limit. Even among the great apes, conditions are quite the same. One half the orang- utans are of the thin-headed, pin-headed type that is hopeless for stage training. The good ones are the stocky, round-headed, round- faced individuals who have the cephalic index of the statesman or jurist, and a broad and well-rounded dome of thought. Training for the Ring and the Stage. During his long and successful career as a purveyor of wild animals for all purposes, Carl Hagenbeck had great success in the production of large animal groups trained for stage performances. I came in close touch with his methods and their results. His methods were very simple, and they were founded on kindness and common sense. Mr. Hagenbeck hated whips and punishments. When an animal could not get on without them, it was dropped from the cast. His working theory was that an unwilling animal makes a bad actor. There is no mystery about the best methods in training animals, wild or domestic. The first thing is to assemble a suitable number of _young_ animals, all of which are mentally bright and physically sound. Most adult animals are impracticable, and often impossible, because they are set in their ways. The elephants are monumental exceptions. A large, well-lighted and sunny room is provided; and around it are the individual cages for the student animals. The members of the company are fed wisely and well, kept scrupulously clean, and in all ways made comfortable and contented. When not at their work they are allowed to romp and play together until they are tired of the exercise. The trainer who has been selected to create a specified group spends practically his entire time with his pupils. He feeds them, and mixes with them daily and hourly. From the beginning he teaches them that _they must obey him, and not fight._ The work of training begins with simple things, and goes on to the complex; and each day the same routine is carried out. To each animal is assigned a certain place in the circle, with a certain tub or platform on which to sit at ease when not acting in the ring. It is exceedingly droll to see a dozen cub lions, tigers, bears and cheetahs sitting decorously on their respective tubs and gravely watching the thirteenth cub who is being labored with by the keeper to bring its ideas and acts into line. The stage properties are many; and they all assist in helping the actors to remember the sequence of their acts, as well as the things to be done. The key that controls the mind of a good animal is the reward idea. Many a really bad animal goes through its share of the performance solely to secure the bit of meat, the lump of sugar or the prized biscuit that never fails to show up at the proper moment. [Illustration with caption: WORK ELEPHANT DRAGGING A HEWN TIMBER The most primitive form of elephant harness. The end of the drag rope is held between the teeth of the wise and patient animal (From A. G. R. Theobald, Mysore)] The acts to be performed are gone over in the training quarters, innumerable times; and this continues so long that by the time the "group" is ready for the stage, behold! the cubs with which the patient and tireless trainer began have grown so large that to the audience they now seem like adult and savage animals. Those who scoff at the wild animal mind, and say that all this displays nothing but "machines in fur" need to be reminded that this very same line of effort in training and rehearsal is absolutely necessary in the production of every military company, every ballet, and every mass performance on the stage. There is _no_ successful performance without training. Boys and girls require the very same sort of handling that the wild animals receive, but the humans do with a little less of it. The man who flouts a good stage performance by wild animals on the ground that it reveals "no thought," and is only "imitation," is, in my judgment, a very short-sighted student. Maniacs and imbeciles cannot be trained to perform any program fit to be seen. I saw that tried fifty years ago, in "the wild Australian children," who were idiots. _The performer must think, and reason._ Of the many groups of trained animals that I have seen in performances, my mind goes back first to the one which contained a genuine bear comedian, of the Charlie Chaplin type. It was a Himalayan black bear, with fine side whiskers, and it really seemed to me absolutely certain that the other animals in the group appreciated and enjoyed the fun that comedian made. He pretended to be awkward, and frequently fell off his tub. He was purposely dilatory, and was often the last one to finish. The other animals seemed to be fascinated by his mishaps, and they sat on their tubs and watched him with what looked like genuine amusement. I remember another circle of seated animals who calmly and patiently sat and watched while the trainer labored with a cross and refractory leopard, to overcome its stubbornness, and to make it do its part. Carl Hagenbeck loved to produce mixed groups of dangerous animals,--lions, tigers, leopards, bears and wolves. One trainer whom I knew was assisted in a highly dangerous group by a noble stag-hound who habitually kept close to his master, and was said to be ready to attack instantly any animal that might attack the trainer. I never saw a finer bodyguard than that dog. In 1908 the most astounding animal group ever turned out of the Hagenbeck establishment, or shown on any stage, appeared in London. It consisted of _75 full-grown polar bears!_ Now, polar bears, either for the cage or the stage, are bad citizens. Instinctively I always suspect their mental reservations, and for twenty-one years have carefully kept our keepers out of their reach. But Mr. William Hagenbeck, brother of the great Carl, actually trained and performed with a huge _herd_ of dangerous polars to the number stated. In the _Strand_ magazine for April, 1908, there is a fine article by Arthur Harold about this group and its production. It says that the bears were obtained when seven or eight months old, in large lots, and all thrown in together. It took a keeper between seven and eight months to educate them out of their savage state,--by contact, kindness, sugar and fruit,--and then they were turned over to the trainer, Mr. Hagenbeck. They were taught to form pyramids, climb ladders, shoot the chutes, ride in pony carriages, draw and ride in sleds, drink from bottles, and work a see-saw. Various individuals did individual tricks. The star performer was Monk, the wrestling bear, who went with his trainer through a fearsome wrestling performance. Concerning the temperament of that polar bear group Mr. William Hagenbeck said: "Although I know every animal in the company, have taught each one to recognize me, and have been among many of them for _fifteen years,_ I can not now tell by their expressions the moods of the animals. This is one of the characteristics of the polar bear. Their expression remains the same, and it is impossible to detect by watching their faces whether they are pleased or cross. Now in most wild animals, such as the lion, you can tell by the expression of the beast's face and by its actions whether it is in a good temper or not.... The truth is, the polar bear is a most awkward beast to train. In the first place its character is difficult to understand. He is by nature very suspicious, and without the least warning is apt to turn upon his trainer. Among the seventy bears that have been taught to do tricks, _only two_ of them are really fond of their work." In the end, Mr. William Hagenbeck was very nearly killed by one of these polar bears. I was with Carl Hagenbeck a few hours after he received telegraphic news of the tragedy, and his bitterness against those polar bears was boundless. I understood that Monk, the wrestling bear, was the assailant,--which was small cause for wonder. When I saw Mr. Hagenbeck's polar bear show, it gave me shivers of fear. The first two big male polars that we installed at our Park came from that very group, and one of them led us into a dreadful tragedy, with a female bear as the victim. The So-Called "Trick" Performances. Some psychologists make light of what they call "trick performances," in which the performing animals are guided by signs, or signals, or spoken commands from their trainers. I have never been able to account for this. It is incontestably true that dull and stupid animals can learn little, and perform less. For example, all the training in the world could not suffice to put a pig through a performance that a chimpanzee or orang could master in two weeks. The reason is that the pig has not the brain power that is indispensable. A woodchuck never could become the mental equal of a wood rat (_Neotoma_). A sheep could not hope to rival a horse, either in training or in execution. Really, _the brain, the memory and reason must enter into every animal performance that amounts to anything worth while._ It is just as sensible to flout soldiers on the drill-ground as to wave aside as of no account a troup of trained lions or sea-lions on the stage. Any animal that can be taught to perform difficult feats, and that delivers the goods in the blinding glare and riot of the circus ring or the stage footlights, is entitled to my profound respect for its powers of mind and nerve. The Sea-Lion's Repertoire. Long ago trainers recognized in the California sea-lion (_Zalophus_) a good subject for the ring and stage. Its long, supple neck, its lithe body and brilliant nervous energy seemed good for difficult acts. The sea-lion takes very kindly to training, and really delights in its performances. In fact, it enters into its performance with a keen vigor and zest that is pleasing to behold. Let this veracious record of a performance of Treat's five sea-lions and two harbor seals, that I witnessed October 15, 1910, tell the whole story, in order that the reader may judge for himself: 1. Each sea-lion balanced upright on its nose a wooden staff 3 feet long, with a round knob on its upper end. 2. Each sea-lion caught in its mouth a three-foot stick with a ball on each end, tossed it up, whirled it in the air, and caught it again. This was repeated, without a miss. 3. Each sea-lion balanced on the tip of its nose, first a ball like a baseball, then a large ball two feet in diameter. 4. Each sea-lion climbed a double ladder of eight steps, and went down on the other side, _balancing a large ball on the end of its nose, without a miss._ 5. The trainer handed a ball to the sea-lion nearest him, who balanced it on his nose, walked with it to his box and climbed up. 6. Then another sea-lion walked over to him, and waited expectantly until sea-lion No. 1 tossed the ball to No. 2, who caught it on his nose, walked over to his box, climbed up, and presently tossed it to No. 3. 7. A silk hat was balanced on its rim. 8. A seal carrying a balanced ball scrambled upon a cylindrical basket and rolled it across the arena, after which other seals repeated the performance. 9. In the last act a flaming torch was balanced, tossed about, caught and whirled, and finally returned to the trainer, still blazing. Trained Horses. By carefully selecting the brightest and most intelligent horses that can be found, it is possible for a trainer to bring together and educate a group that will go through a fine performance in public. However, some exhibitions of trained horses are halting, ragged and poor. I have seen only one that stands out in my records as superlatively fine,--for horses. That was known to the public when I saw it as Bartholomew's "Equine Paradox," and it contained twelve wonderfully trained horses. My record of this fine performance fills seven pages of a good-sized notebook. While it is too long to reproduce here entire, it can at least be briefly described. The trainer called his group a "school," and of it he said: "While I do not say that any one horse knows the meaning of from 300 to 400 words, I claim that _as a whole_ the school does know that number." The performance was fairly bewildering; but by diligent work I recorded the whole of it. Various horses did various things. They fetched chairs, papers, hats and coats; opened desks, rang bells, came when called, bowed, knelt, and erased figures from a blackboard. They danced a waltz, a clog dance, a figure-8; they marched, halted, paced, trotted, galloped, backed, jumped, leaped over each other, performed with a barrel, a see-saw and a double see-saw. Their marching and drilling would have been creditable to a platoon of rookies. In performing, every horse is handicapped by his lack of hands and plant grade feet; and the horse memory is not very sure or certain. More than any other animal, the horse depends upon the trainer's command, and in poor performances the command often requires to be repeated, two or three times, or more. The memory of the horse is not nearly so quick nor so certain as that of the chimpanzee or elephant. Dr. Martin J. Potter, of New York, famous trainer of stage and movie animals, states that of all animals, wild or domestic, the horse is the most intelligent; but I doubt whether he ever trained any chimpanzees. Speaking from out of the abundance of his training experience with many species of animals except the great apes, Dr. Potter says that "the seal [i. e. California sea-lion] learns its stage cues more easily than any other mute performer. The horse, however, is the most intelligent of all animals in its grasp and understanding of the work it has learned to perform, and in its reliable faithfulness and memory." Dr. Potter holds that of wild animals the tiger, owing to its treachery and ferocity, is the most difficult wild animal to train; the lion is the most reliable, and the most stupid of all animals is the pig. The Taming of Boma. A keeper for a short time in our place, named D'Osta, once did a very neat piece of work in taming a savage and intractable chimpanzee. When Boma came to us, fresh from the French Congo, he was savage and afraid. He retreated to the highest resting-place of his cage, came down only at night for his meals, and would make no compromise. We believed that he had been fearfully abused by his former owners, and through mistreatment had acquired both fear and hatred of all men. After the lapse of several months with Boma on that basis, the situation grew tiresome and intolerable. So D'Osta said: "I must tame that animal, and teach him not to be afraid of us." He introduced a roomy shifting cage into Boma's compartment, fixed the drop door, and for many days served Boma's food and water in that cage only. For two weeks the ape eluded capture, but eventually the keeper caught him. At first Boma's rage and fear were boundless; but presently the idea dawned upon his mind that he was not to be killed immediately. D'Osta handed him excellent food and water, twice a day, spoke to him soothingly, and otherwise let him alone. Slowly Boma's manner changed. He learned that he was not to be hurt, nor even annoyed. Confidence in the men about him began to come to him. His first signs of friendliness were promptly met and cultivated. At the end of ten days, D'Osta opened the sliding door, and Boma walked out, a wiser and better ape. His bad temper and his fears were gone. He trusted his keeper, and cheerfully obeyed him. Strangest of all, he even suffered D'Osta to put a collar upon him, and chain him to the front bars to curb his too great playfulness while his cage was being cleaned. Boma's fear of man has never returned. Now, although he is big and dangerous, he is a perfectly normal ape. The Training of an Over-Age Bear. A bear-trainer-athlete and "bear-wrestler" named Jacob Glass once taught me a lesson that astounded me. It related to the training of a bear that I thought was too old to be trained. We had an Alaskan cinnamon bear, three years old, that had been christened "Christian," at Skagway, because it stood so much pestering without flying into rages, as the grizzly did. After a short time with us, the concrete floors of our bear dens reacted upon the soles of its feet so strangely and so seriously that we were forced to transfer the animal to a temporary cage that had a wooden floor. While I was wondering what to do with that bear, along came Mr. Glass, anxious and unhappy. "My wrestling bear has died on me," he said, "and I've got to get another. You have got one that I would like to buy from you. It's the one you call Christian." Very kindly I said, "That is a mighty fine bear, as to temper; but now he is entirely too old to train, and you couldn't do anything with him. He would be a loss to you." "I've looked him over, and I like his looks. I think I can train him all right. You let me have him, and I'll make a fine performer of him." "I know that you never can do it; but you may try him, and send him back when you fail." Thus ended the first lesson; and I was sure that in a month Mr. Glass would beg me to take back the untrainable animal. About one year later Glass appeared again, jubilant. At once he broke forth into eulogies of Christian; but one chapter would not be large enough to contain them. He had trained that bear, with outrageous ease and celerity, and hadimmediately taken him upon the stage as a professional jiu-jitsu wrestler. And really, the act was admirable. As a wrestler, the bear seemed almost as intelligent as the man. He knew the "left-hand half-nelson" as well as Glass, and he knew the following words, perfectly: "Right, left, half-nelson, strangle, head up, nose under arm, and hammer-lock." [Illustration with caption: THE WRESTLING BEAR "CHRISTIAN" AND HIS PARTNER] Glass declared that this bear was more intelligent than any lion, or any other trained animal ever seen by him. He was wise in many ways besides wrestling,--in his friendship with Glass, with other bears, with other men, and with a dog. _He obeyed all orders willingly,_ even permitting Glass to take his food away when he was eating; but he would not stand being punished with a whip or a stick! In response to that he would bite. However, he generously permitted himself to be _held down and choked, as a punishment,_ after which he would be very repentant, and would insist upon getting into his partner's lap,--to show his good will. Glass was enthusiastically certain that Christian could reason independently from cause to effect. He declared that his alertness of mind was so pronounced it was very rarely necessary to show him a second time how to do a given thing. Training an Adult Savage Monkey. Once we had a number of Japanese red-faced monkeys, and one of the surplus adult males had a temper as red as his face. Mr. Wormwood, an exhibitor of performing monkeys, wished to buy that animal; but I declined to sell it, on the ground that it would be impossible to train it. At that implied challenge the trainer perked up and insisted upon having that particular bad animal; so we yielded. He wished him for the special business of turning somersaults, because he had no tail to interfere with that performance. Two months later Mr. Wormwood appeared again. "Yes," he said, but not boastfully, "_I trained him;_ but I came mighty near to giving him up as a bad job. He was the hardest subject I ever tackled; but I conquered him at last, and now he is working all right." A really great number of different kinds of animals have been trained for stage performances, running the scale all the way up from fleas to elephants. It is easy to recall mice, rats, rabbits, squirrels, parrots, macaws, cockatoos, crows, chickens, geese, cats, pigs, dogs, monkeys, baboons, apes, bears, seals, sea-lions, walruses, kangaroos, horses, hippopotami and elephants. It is a large subject, and its many details are full of interest. It is impossible to discuss here all these species and breeds. In concluding these notes I leave off as I began,--with the statement that any student of animal psychology who for any reason whatever ignores or undervalues the intelligence of trained animals puts a handicap upon himself. III. THE HIGHER PASSIONS XVIII THE MORALS OF WILD ANIMALS The ethics and morals of men and animals are thoroughly comparative, and it is only by direct comparisons that they can be analyzed and classified. It is quite possible that there are quite a number of intelligent men and women who are not yet aware of the fact that wild animals _have_ moral codes, and that on an average they live up to them better than men do to theirs. It is a painful operation to expose the grinning skeletons in the closets of the human family, but in no other way is it possible to hold a mirror up to nature. With all our brightness and all our talents,--real and imitation,--few men ever stop to ask what our horses, dogs and cats think of our follies and our wickedness. By the end of the year 1921 the annual total of human wickedness had reached staggering proportions. From August 1914 to November 1918 the moral standing of the human race reached the lowest depth it ever sounded since the days of the cave-dwellers. This we know to be true, because of the increase in man's capacity for wickedness, and its crop of results. After what we recently have seen in Europe and Asia, and on the high seas, let no man speak of a monster in human form as "a brute;" for so far as moral standing is concerned, some of the animals allegedly "below man" now are in a position to look down upon him. It is a cold and horrid fact that today, all around us, and sometimes close at hand, men are committing a long list of revolting crimes such as even the most debased and cruel beasts of the field _never_ commit. I refer to wanton wholesale murder, often with torture; assault with violence, robbery in a hundred cruel forms, and a dozen unmentionable crimes invented by degenerate man and widely practiced. If anyone feels that this indictment is too strong, I can cite a few titles that will be quite sufficient for my case. Let us make a few comparisons between the human species (_Homo sapiens_) and the so-called "lower" wild animals; and let it be understood that the author testifies, in courtroom phrase, only "to the best of his information and belief." Only two wild animal species known to me,--wolves and crocodiles, --devour their own kind; but many of the races of men have been cannibals, and some are so today. Among free wild animals, the cruel abuse or murder of children by their parents, or by other adults of the tribe, is unknown; but in all the "civilized" races of men infanticide and child murder are frightfully common crimes. In 1921 a six-year-old Eskimo girl, whose father and mother had been murdered, was strangled by her relatives, because she had no visible means of support. The murder of the aged and helpless among wild animals is almost unknown; but among both the savage and the civilized races of men it is quite common. Our old acquaintance, Shack-Nasty Jim, the Modoc Indian, tomahawked his own mother because she hindered his progress; but many persons in and around New York have done worse than that. Civil war between the members of a wild animal species is a thing unknown in the annals of wild-animal history; but among men it is an every-day occurrence. Among _free_ animals it is against the moral and ethical codes of all species of vertebrates for the strong to bully and oppress the weak; but it is almost everywhere a common rule of action with about ten per cent of the human race. The members of a wild animal species are in honor bound not to rob one another, but with 25 per cent of the men of all civilized races, robbery, and the desire to get something for nothing, are ruling passions. No wild animals thus far known and described practice sex crimes; but the less said of the races of men on this subject, the better for our feelings. Among animals, save in the warfare of carnivorous animals for their daily food, there are no exterminatory wars between species, and even local wars over territory are of very rare occurrence. Among men, the territorial wars of tribes and nations are innumerable, they have been from the earliest historic times, and they are certain to continue as long as this earth is inhabited by man. The "end of war" between the grasping nations of this earth is an iridescent dream, because of the inextinguishable jealousy and meanness of nations; but it is well to reduce them to a minimum. Nations like Germany, Bulgaria, Turkey and Russia will never stand hitched for any long periods. Their peace-loving neighbors need to keep their weapons well oiled and polished, and indulge in no hallucinations of a millenium upon this wicked earth. In the mating season, there is fighting in many wild animal species between the largest and finest male individuals for the honor of overlordship in increasing and diffusing the species. These encounters are most noticeable in the various species of the deer family, because the fatal interlocking of antlers occasionally causes the death of both contestants. We have in our National Collection of Heads and Horns sets of interlocked antlers of moose, caribou, mule deer and white-tailed deer. Otherwise than from the accidental interlocking of antlers,--due to the fact that an animal can push forward with far greater force than it can pull back,--I have never seen, heard or read of a wild animal having been _killed_ outright in a fight over the possession of females. Fur seal and Stellar sea-lion bulls, and big male orang-utans, frequently are found badly scarified by wounds received in fighting during the breeding season, but of actual deaths we have not heard. The first law of the jungle is: "Live, and let live." Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals who must kill or die, _all the wild vertebrate species of the earth have learned the logic that peace promotes happiness, prosperity and long life._ This fundamentally useful knowledge governs not only the wild animal individual, but also the tribe, the species, and contiguous species. Do the brown bears and grizzlies of Alaska wage war upon each other, species against species? By no means. It seems reasonably certain that those species occasionally intermarry. Do the big sea-lions and the walruses seek to drive away or exterminate the neighboring fur seals or the helpless hair seals? Such warfare is absolutely unknown. Do the moose and caribou of Alaska and Yukon Territory attack the mountain sheep and goats? Never. Does the Indian elephant attack the gaur, the sambar, the axis deer or the muntjac? The idea is preposterous. Does any species of giraffe, zebra, antelope or buffalo attack any other species on the same crowded plains of British East Africa? If so, we have yet to learn of it. If the races and nations of men were as peace-loving, honest and sensible in avoiding wars as all the wild animal species are, then would we indeed have a social heaven upon earth. Now, tell me, ye winged winds that blow from the four corners of the earth and over the seven seas, whence came the Philosophy of Peace to the world's wild animals? Did they learn it by observing the ways of man? "It is to laugh," says the innkeeper. Man has not yet learned it himself; and therefore do we find the beasts of the field a lap ahead of the quarrelsome biped who has assumed dominion over them. Day by day we read in our newspapers of men and women who are moral lepers and utterly unfit to associate with horses, dogs, cats, deer and elephants. Our big male chimpanzee, Father Boma, who knows no wife but Suzette, and firmly repels the blandishments of his neighbor Fanny, is a more moral individual than many a pretty gentleman whose name we see heading columns of divorce proceedings in the newspapers. Said the Count to Julia in "The Hunchback," "Dost thou like the picture, dearest?" As a natural historian, it is our task to hew to the line, and let the chips fall where they will. Among the wild animals there are but few degenerate and unmoral species. In some very upright species there are occasionally individual lapses from virtue. A famous case in point is the rogue elephant, who goes from meanness to meanness until he becomes unbearable. Then he is driven out of the herd; he becomes an outcast and a bandit, and he upsets carts, maims bullocks, tears down huts and finally murders natives until the nearest local sahib gets after him, and ends his career with a bullet through his wicked brain. In my opinion the gray wolf of North America (like his congener in the Old World) is the most degenerate and unmoral mammal species on earth. He murders his wounded packmates, he is a greedy cannibal, he will attack his wife and chew her unmercifully. On the other hand, his one redeeming trait is that he helps to rear the pups,--when they are successfully defended from him by their mother! The wolverine makes a specialty of devilish and uncanny cunning and energy in destroying the property of man. Trappers have told us that when a wolverine invades a trapper's cabin in his absence, he destroys very nearly its entire contents. The food that he can neither eat nor carry away he defiles in such a manner that the hungriest man is unable to eat it. This seems to be a trait of this species only,--among wild animals; but during the recent war it was asserted that similar acts were committed by soldiers in the captured and occupied villas of northern France. The domestication of the dog has developed a new type of animal criminal. The sheep-killing dog is in a class by himself. The wild dog hunts in the broad light of day, often running down game by the relay system. The sheep-killing dog is a cunning night assassin, a deceiver of his master, a shrewd hider of criminal evidence, a sanctimonious hypocrite by day but a bloody-minded murderer under cover of darkness. Sometimes his cunning is almost beyond belief. Now, can anyone tell us how much of this particular evolution is due to the influence of Man upon Dog through a hundred generations of captivity and association? Has the dog learned from man the science of moral banditry, the best methods for the concealment of evidence, and how to dissemble? Elsewhere a chapter is devoted to the crimes of wild animals; but the great majority of the cases cited were found among _captive_ animals, where abnormal conditions produced exceptional results. The crimes of captive animals are many, but the crimes of free wild animals are comparatively few. Whenever we disturb the delicate and precise balance of nature we may expect abnormal results. XIX THE LAWS OF THE FLOCKS AND THE HERDS Through a thousand generations of breeding and living under natural conditions, and of self-maintenance against enemies and evil conditions, the wild flocks and herds of beasts and birds have evolved a short code of community laws that make for their own continued existence. And they do more than that. When free from the evil influences of man, those flock-and-herd laws promote, and actually produce, peace, prosperity and happiness. This is no fantastic theory of the friends of animals. It is a fact, just as evident to the thinking mind as the presence of the sun at high noon. The first wild birds and quadrupeds found themselves beset by climatic conditions of various degrees and kinds of rigor and destructive power. In the torrid zone it took the form of excessive rain and humidity, excessive heat, or excessive dryness and aridity. In the temperate and frigid zones, life was a seasonal battle with bitter cold, torrents of cold rain in early winter or spring, devastating sleet, and deep snow and ice that left no room for argument. At the same time, the species that were not predatory found themselves surrounded by fangs and claws, and the never-ending hunger of their owners. The air, the earth and the waters swarmed with predatory animals, great and small, ever seeking for the herbivorous and traitorous species, and preferably those that were least able to fight or to flee. The La Brea fossil beds at Los Angeles, wherein a hospitable lake of warm asphalt conserved skeletal remains of vertebrates to an extent and perfection quite unparalleled, have revealed some very remarkable conditions. The enormous output, up to date, of skulls of huge lions, wolves, sabre-toothed tigers, bears and other predatory animals, shows, for once, just what the camels, llamas, deer, bison and mammoths of those days had to do, to be, and to suffer in order to survive. With the aid of a little serious study, it is by no means difficult to recognize the hard laws that have enabled the elephant, bison, sheep, goats, deer, antelope, gazelles, fur-seal, walrus and others to survive and increase. From the wild animal herds and bird flocks that we have seen and personally known, _we know what their laws are,_ and can set them down in the order of their evolution and importance. The First Law. _There shall be no fighting in the family, the herd or the species, at any other time than in the mating season; and then only between adult males who fight for herd leadership._ The destructiveness of intertribal warfare, either organized or desultory, must have been recognized in Jurassic times, millions of years ago, by the reptiles of that period. Throughout the animal kingdom below man the blessings of peace now are thoroughly known. This first law is obeyed by all species save man. We doubt whether all the testimony of the rocks added together can show that one wild species of vertebrate life ever really was exterminated by another species, not even excepting the predatory species which lived by killing. No one (so far as we know) has charged that the lions, or the tigers, the bears, the orcas, the eagles or the owls have ever obliterated a species during historic times. It was the swine of civilization, transplanted by human agencies, that exterminated the dodo on the Island of Mauritius; and it was men, not birds of prey, who swept off the earth the great auk, the passenger pigeon and a dozen other bird species. The Second Law. _The strong members of a flock or herd shall not bully nor oppress the weak._ This law, constantly broken by degenerate and vicious men, women and children, very rarely is broken in a free wild herd or flock. In the observance of this fundamental law, born of ethics and expediency, mankind is far behind the wild animals. It would serve a good purpose if the criminologists and the alienists would figure out the approximate proportion of the human species now living that bullies and maltreats and oppresses the weak and the defenseless. At this moment "society" in the United States is in a state of thoroughly imbecilic defenselessness against the new type of predatory savages known as "bandits." The Third Law. _During the annual period of motherhood, both prospective and actual, mothers must be held safe from all forms of molestation; and their young shall in no manner be interfered with._ For the perpetuation of a family, a clan or a species, the protection of the mothers, and their weak and helpless offspring is a necessity recognized by even the dullest vertebrate animals. As birth-time or nesting-time approaches the wild flocks and herds universally permit the potential mothers to seek seclusion, and to work out their respective problems according to their own judgment and the means at their command. The coming mother looks for a spot that will afford (1) a secure hiding-place, (2) the best available shelter from inclement weather, (3) accessible food and water, and (4) cover or other protection for her young. During this period the males often herd together, and they serve a protective function by attracting to themselves the attacks of their enemies. For the mothers, the bearing time is a truce time. There are fox-hunters who roundly assert that in spring fox hounds have been known to refuse to attack and kill foxes about to become mothers. The Fourth Law. _In union there is strength; in separation there is weakness; and the solitary animal is in the greatest danger._ It was the wild species of mammals and birds who learned and most diligently observed this law who became individually the most numerous. A hundred pairs of eyes, a hundred noses and a hundred pairs of listening ears increase about ten times the protection of the single individual against surprise attacks. The solitary elephant, bison, sheep or goat is far easier to stalk and approach than a herd, or a herd member. A wolf pack can attack and kill even the strongest solitary musk-ox, bison or caribou, but the horned herd is invincible. A lynx can pull down and kill a single mountain sheep ram, but even the mountain lion does not care to attack a herd of sheep. It is due solely to the beneficent results of this clear precept, and the law of defensive union, that any baboons are today alive in Africa. The grizzly bear loves mountain-goat meat; but he does not love to have his inner tube punctured by the deadly little black skewers on the head of a billy. It is the Mountain Goats' Protective Union that condemns the silvertip grizzly to laborious digging for humble little ground-squirrels, instead of killing goats for a living. The rogue elephant who will not behave himself in the herd, and will not live up to the herd law, is expelled; and after that takes place his wicked race is very soon ended by a high- power bullet, about calibre .26. The last one brought to my notice was overtaken by Charles Theobald, State Shikaree of Mysore, in a Ford automobile; and the car outlived the elephant. The Fifth Law. _Absolute obedience to herd leaders and parents is essential to the safety of the herd and of the individual; and this obedience must be prompt and thorough._ Whenever the affairs of grown men and women are dominated by ignorant, inexperienced and rash juniors, look out for trouble; for as surely as the sun continues to shine, it will come. With an acquaintance that comprehends many species of wild quadrupeds and birds, I do not recall even one herd or flock that I have seen led by its young members. There are no young spendthrifts among the wild animals. For them, youthful folly is too expensive to be tolerated. The older members of the clan are responsible for its safety, and therefore do they demand obedience to their orders. They have their commands, and they have a sign language by which they convey them in terms that are silent but unmistakable. They order "Halt," and the herd stops, at once. At the command "Attention," each herd member "freezes" where he stands, and intently looks, listens and scents the air. At the order "Feed at will," the tension slowly relaxes; but if the order is "Fly!" the whole herd is off in a body, as if propelled by one mind and one power. My first knowledge of this law of the flock came down to me from the blue ether when I first saw, in my boyhood, a V-shaped flock of Canada geese cleaving the sky with straight and steady flight, and perfect alignment. Even in my boyish mind I realized that the well-ordered progress of the wild geese was in obedience to Intelligence and Flock Law. Later on, I saw on the Jersey sands the mechanical sweeps and curves and doubles of flying flocks of sandpipers and sanderlings, as absolutely perfect in obedience to their leaders as the slats of a Venetian blind. A herd of about thirty elephants, under the influence of a still alarm and sign signals, once vanished from the brush in front of me so quickly and so silently that it seemed uncanny. One single note of command from a gibbon troop leader is sufficient to set the whole company in instant motion, fleeing at speed and in good order, with not a sound save the swish of the small branches that serve as the rungs of their ladder of flight. In the actual practice of herd leadership in species of ruminant animals, the largest and most spectacular bull elk or bison is not always the leader. Frequently it has been observed that a wise old cow is the actual leader and director of the herd, and that "what she says, goes." This was particularly remarked to me by James McNaney during the course of our "last buffalo hunt" in Montana, in 1886. From 1880 to 1884 he had been a mighty buffalo-hunter, for hides. He stated that whenever as a still-hunter he got "a stand on a bunch," and began to shoot, slowly and patiently, so as not to alarm the stand, whenever a buffalo took alarm and attempted to lead away the bunch, usually it proved to be a wise old cow. The bulls seemed too careless to take notice of the firing and try to lead away from it. The Sixth Law. _Of food and territory, the weak shall have their share._ While this law is binding upon all the members of a wild flock, a herd, a clan or a species, outside of species limits it may become null and void; though in actual practice I think that this rarely occurs. Among the hoofed animals; the seals and sea-lions; the apes, baboons and monkeys, and the kangaroos, the food that is available to a herd is common to all its members. We can not recall an instance of a species attempting to dispossess and evict another species, though it must be that many such have occurred. In the game-laden plains of eastern Africa, half a dozen species, such as kongonis, sable antelopes, gazelles and zebras, often have been observed in one landscape, with no fighting visible. With all but the predatory wild animals and man, the prevailing disposition is to _live, and let live._ One of the few recorded murders of young animals by an old one of the same species concerned the wanton killing of two polar bear cubs in northern Franz Joseph Land, as observed by Nansen. The Seventh Law. _Man is the deadliest enemy of all the wild creatures; and the instant a man appears the whole herd must fly from him, fast and far._ In some of the regions to which man and his death-dealing influence have not penetrated, this law is not yet on the statute books of the jungle and the wilderness. Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Scott found it unknown to the giant penguins and sea leopards of the Antarctic Continent, I have seen a few flocks and herds by whom the law was either unknown or forgotten; but the total number is a small one. There was a herd of mountain sheep on Pinacate Peak, a big flock of sage grouse in Montana, various flocks of ptarmigan on the summits of the Elk River Mountains, British Columbia,--and out of a long list of occurrences that is all I will now recall. It is fairly common for the members of a vast assemblage of animals, like the bison, barren-ground caribou, fur seal, and sea birds on their nesting cliffs, to assume such security from their numbers as to ignore man; and all such cases are highly interesting manifestations of the influence of the fourth law when carried out to six decimal places. The Eighth and Last Law. _Whenever in a given spot all men cease to kill us, there may we accept sanctuary and dwell in peace._ This law comes as Amendment 1 to the original Constitution of the Animal Kingdom. The quick intelligence of wild animals in recognizing a new sanctuary, and in adopting it unreservedly and thankfully as their own territory, is to all friends of wild life a source of wonder and delight. With their own eyes Americans have seen the effects of sanctuary-making upon bison, elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain sheep, mountain goat, prong-horned antelope, grizzly and black bears, beavers, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, sage grouse, quail, wild ducks and geese, swans, pelicans brown and white, and literally hundreds of species of smaller birds of half a dozen orders. In view of this magnificent and continent-wide manifestation of discovery, new thought and original conclusion, let no man tell us that the wild birds and quadrupeds "do not think" and "can not reason." The Exceptions of Captivity. When wild animals come into captivity, a few individuals develop and reveal their worst traits of character, and much latent wickedness comes to the surface. A small percentage of individuals become mean and lawless, and a still smaller number show criminal instincts. These Bolshevistic individuals commit misdemeanors and crimes such as are unknown in the wild state. One male ruminant out of perhaps fifty will turn murderer, and kill a female or a fawn, entirely contrary to the herd law; and at long intervals a male predatory animal kills his mate or young. Occasionally captivity warps wild animal or wild bird character quite out of shape, though it is a satisfaction to know that the total proportion of those so affected is very small. Long and close confinement in a prison-like home, filled with more daily cares and worries than any animal cage has of iron bars, has sent many a human wife and mother to an insane asylum; but the super- humanitarians who rail out at the existence of zoological parks and zoos are troubled by that not at all. XX PLAYS AND PASTIMES OF ANIMALS I approach this subject with a feeling of satisfaction; but I would not like to state the number of hours that I have spent in watching the play of our wild animals. Out in the wilds, where the bears, sheep and goats live and thrive, the outdoorsmen see comparatively few wild animals at play. No matter what the season, the dangers of the wilderness and mountain summit remain the same. When kids and lambs are young, the eaglets are hungriest, and their mothers are most determined in their hunting. After September 1, the deadly still-hunters are out, and strained watchfulness is the unvarying rule, from dawn until dark. Out in the wilds, it is the _moving_ animal that instantly catches every hostile eye within visual range. A white goat kid vigorously gamboling on the bare rocks would attract all the golden eagles, hunters, trappers and Indians within a radius of two miles. It is the rule that kids, fawns and lambs must _lie low and keep still,_ to avoid attracting deadly enemies. On the bare summits, play can be indulged in only at great risk. Generations of persecution have implanted in the brain of the ruminant baby the commanding instinct to fold up its long legs, neatly and compactly, furl its ears along its neck, and closely lie for hours against a rock or a log. During daylight hours they must literally hug the ground. Silence and inactivity is the first price that all young animals in the wilds pay for their lives. It is only in the safe shelter of captivity, or man-made sanctuaries, that they are free to play. In the comfortable security of the "zoo" all the wild conditions are changed. The restraints of fear are off, and every animal is free to act as joyous as it feels. Here we see things that men _never see in the wilds!_ If any Rocky Mountain bear hunter should ever see bear cubs or full-grown bears wrestling and carrying on as they do here, he would say that they were plumb crazy! Of all our wild animals, not even excepting the apes and monkeys, our young bears are the most persistently playful. In fact, I believe that when _properly caged and tended,_ bears under eight years of age are the most joyous and playful of all wild animals. We have given our bears smooth and spacious yards floored with concrete, with a deep pool in the centre of each, and great possibilities in climbing upon rocks high and low. The top of each sleeping den is a spacious balcony with a smooth floor. The facilities for bear wrestling and skylarking are perfect, and there are no offensive uneven floors nor dead stone walls to annoy or discourage any bear. They can look at each other through the entire series of cages and there is no chance whatever for a bear to feel lonesome. We put just as many individuals into each cage as we think the traffic will stand; and sometimes as many as six young bears are reared together. Now, all these conditions promote good spirits, playfulness, and the general enjoyment of life. Any one who thinks that our bears are not far happier than those that are in the wilds and exposed to enemies, hunger and cold, should pause and consider. Our bear cubs begin to play just as soon as they emerge from their natal den, in March or April, and they keep it up until they are six or seven years of age,--or longer! Our visitors take the playfulness of small cubs as a matter of course, but the clumsy and ridiculous postures and antics of fat-paunched full-grown bears are irresistibly funny. Really, there are times when it seems as if the roars of laughter from the watching crowd stimulates wrestling bears to further efforts. On October 28, 1921, about seventy boys stood in front of and alongside the den of two Kluane grizzly cubs and shouted for nearly half an hour in approval and admiration of the rapid and rough play of those cubs. [Illustration with caption: ADULT BEARS AT PLAY] The play of bears, young or middle-aged, consists in boxing, catch-as-catch-can wrestling, and chasing each other to and fro. Cubs begin to spar as soon as they are old enough to stand erect on their hind feet. They take their distance as naturally as prize-fighters, and they strike, parry and dodge just as men do. They handle their front feet with far more dexterity and precision than boys six years of age. Boxing bears always strike for the head, and bite to seize the cheek of the opponent. In biting, mouth meets mouth, in defense as well as attack. When a biting bear makes a successful pass and finally succeeds in getting a firm toothhold on the cheek of his opponent, the party of the second part promptly throws himself prone upon the ground, and with four free feet concentrated upon the head of the other bear forces him to let go. This movement, and the four big, flat foot soles coming up into action is, in large bears, a very laughable spectacle, and generally produces a roar. Wrestling bears roll over and over on the ground, clawing and biting, until one scrambles up, and either makes a new attack or rushes away. Bears love to chase one another, _and be chased;_ and in this form of skylarking they raise a whirlwind of activity which leads all around the floor, up to the balcony and along the length of it, and plunges down at the other end. Often a bear that is chased will fling himself into the bathing pool, with a tremendous splash, quickly scramble out again and rush off anew in a swirl of flying water. The two big male polar bears that came to us from the William Hagenbeck group were very fond of playing and wrestling in the water of their swimming pool. Often they kept up that aquatic skylarking for two hours at a stretch, and by this constant claw work upon each other's pelts they kept their coats of hair so thinned down that we had to explain them. One bear had a very spectacular swimming trick. He would swim across the pool until his front feet touched the side, then he would throw himself over backwards, put his hind feet against the rock wall, and with a final shove send himself floating gracefully on his back across to the other side. Playful bears are much given to playing tricks, and teasing each other. A bear sleeping out in the open den is regarded as a proper subject for hectoring, by a sudden bite or cuff, or a general assault. It is natural to expect that wrestling bears will frequently become angry and fight; but such is not the case. This often happens with boys and men, but bears play the game consistently to the end. I can not recall a single instance of a real bear fight as the result of a wrestling or boxing match; and may all boys take note of this good example from the bear dens. Next to the bears, the apes and monkeys are our most playful animals. Here, also, it is the young and the half grown members of the company that are most active in play. Fully mature animals are too sedate, or too heavy, for the frivolities of youth. A well- matched pair of young chimpanzees will wrestle and play longer and harder than the young of any other primate species known to me. It is important to cage together only young apes of equal size and strength, for if there is any marked disparity in size, the larger and stronger animal will wear out the strength of its smaller cage-mate, and impair its health. In playing, young chimps, orangs or monkeys seize each other and wrestle, fall, and roll over and over, indefinitely. They make great pretenses of biting each other, but it is all make-believe. My favorite orang-utan pet in Borneo loved to play at biting me, but whenever the pressure became too strong I would say chidingly, "Ah! Ah!" and his jaws would instantly relax. He loved to butt me in the chest with his head, make wry faces, and make funny noises with his lips. I tried to teach him "cat's cradle" but it was too much for him. His clumsy fingers could not manage it. One of our brightest chimpanzees, named Baldy, was much given to hectoring his female cage-mate, for sport. What he regarded as his best joke was destroying her bed. Many times over, after she had laboriously carried straw up to the balcony, carefully made up a nice, soft, circular bed for herself, and settled down upon it for a well-earned rest, Baldy would silently climb up to her level, suddenly fling himself upon her as she lay, and with all four of his arms and legs violently working, the nest would be torn to pieces and scattered and the lady orang rudely pulled about. Then Baldy would joyously swing down to the lower level, settle himself demurely at the front of the cage, and with a placid face and innocent, far-away expression in his eyes gaze at the crowd. There was nothing lacking but a mischievous wink of one eye. Whenever his cage-mate selected a particularly long and perfect straw and placed it crosswise in her mouth, Baldy would steal up behind her and gleefully snatch it away. Baldy was a born comedian. He loved to amuse a crowd and make people laugh. He would go through a great trapeze performance of clownish and absurd gymnastics, and often end it with three or four loud smacks of his big black feet against the wall. This was accomplished by violent kicking backwards. His dancing and up-and- down jumping always made visitors laugh, after which he would joyously give his piercing "_Wah-hoo_" shout of triumph. A Sioux Indian squaw dances by jumping up and down, but her performance is lifeless in comparison. No vaudeville burlesque dancer ever cut a funnier monkey shine than the up-and-down high-jump dance and floor-slapping act of our Boma chimpanzee (1921). Boma offers this whenever he becomes especially desirous of entertaining a party of distinguished visitors. In stiff dancing posture, he leaps high in the air, precisely like a great black jumping-jack straight from Dante's Inferno. Orangs love to turn somersaults, and some individuals are so persistent about it as to wear the hair off their backs, disfigure their beauty, and disgust their keepers. In the chapter on "Mental Traits of the Gorilla" a descriptionis given of the play of Major Penny's wonderful John Gorilla. When many captive monkeys are kept together in one large cage containing gymnastic properties, many species develop humor, and indulge in play of many kinds. They remind me of a group of well- fed and boisterous small boys who must skylark or "bust." From morning until night they pull each other's tails, wrestle and roll, steal each other's playthings, and wildly chase each other to and fro. There is no end of chattering, and screeching, and funny facial grimaces. A writer in _Life_ once said that the sexes of monkeys can be distinguished by the fact that "the females chatter twice as fast as the males," but I am sure that many ladies will dispute that statement. In a company of mixed monkeys, or a mixed company of monkeys, a timid and fearsome individual is often made the butt of practical jokes by other monkeys who recognize its weakness. And who has not seen the same trait revealed in crowds of boys? But we can linger no longer with the Primates. Who has not seen squirrels at play? Once seen, such an incident is not soon forgotten. I have seen gray, fox and red squirrels engage in highly interesting performances. The gray squirrel is stately and beautiful in its play, but the red squirrel is amazing in its elaborateness of method. I have seen a pair of those mischief- makers perform low down on the trunk of a huge old virgin white oak tree, where the holding was good, and work out a program almost beyond belief. They raced and chased to and fro, up, down and across, in circles, triangles, parabolas and rectangles, until it was fairly bewildering. Really, they seemed to move just as freely and certainly on the tree-trunk as if they were on the ground, with no such thing in sight as the law of gravitation. It seems to me that the gray squirrel barks and the red squirrel chatters, scolds, and at times swears, chiefly for the fun of hearing himself make a noise. In the red squirrel it is impudent and defiant; and usually you hear it near your camp, or in your own grounds, where the rascals know that they will not be shot. The playful spirit seems to be inherent in the young of all the Felidae. The playfulness of lion, tiger, leopard and puma cubs is irresistibly pleasing; and it is worth while to rear domestic kittens in order to watch their playful antics. I have been assured by men who seemed to know, that wolf and fox cubs silently play in front of their home dens, when well screened from view, just as domestic dog puppies do; and what on earth can beat the playfulness of puppies of the right kind, whose parents have given them red blood instead of fat as their inheritance. Interesting books might be written about the play of dogs alone. The play of the otter, in sliding down a long and steep toboggan slide of wet and slippery earth to a water plunge at the bottom, is well known to trappers, hunters, and a few naturalists. It is quite celebrated, and is on record in many places. I have seen otter slides, but never had the good luck to see one in use. The otters indulge in this very genuine sport with just as much interest and zest as boys develop in coasting over ice and snow with their sleds. Here at the Zoological Park, young animals of a number of species amuse themselves in the few ways that are open to them. It is a common thing for fawns and calves of various kinds to butt their mothers, just for fun. A more common form of infantile ruminant sport is racing and jumping. Now and then we see a red buffalo calf three or four months old suddenly begin a spell of running for amusement, in the pure exuberance of health and good living. A calf will choose a long open course, usually up and down a gentle slope, and for two hundred feet or more race madly to and fro for a dozen laps, with tail stiffly and very absurdly held aloft. Of course men and beasts all pause to look at such performances, and at the finish the panting and perspiring calf halts and gazes about with a conscious air of pride. All this is deliberate "showing off," just such as small boys frequently engage in. Elk fawns, and more rarely deer fawns, also occasionally indulge in similar performances. Often an adult female deer develops the same trait. One of our female Eld's deer annually engages in a series of spring runs. We have seen her race the full length of her corral, up and down, over a two hundred foot course, at really break-neck speed, and keep it up until her tongue hung out. Years ago, in the golden days, I was so lucky as to see several times wonderful dances of flocks of saras cranes on the low sandy islets in the River Jumna, northern India, just below Etawah. It was like this: While the birds are idly stepping about, apropos of nothing at all, one suddenly flaps his long wings several times in succession, another jumps straight up in the air for a yard or so, and presto! with one accord the whole flock is galvanized into action. They throw aside their dignity, and real fun begins. Some stand still, heads high up, and flap their wings many times. Others leap in the air, straight up and down, one jump after another, as high as they can go. Others run about bobbing and bowing, and elaborately courtesying to each other with half opened wings, breasts low down and their tails high in the air, cutting very ridiculous figures. In springtime in the Zoological Park we often see similar exhibitions of crane play in our large crane paddock. A particularly joyous bird takes a fit of running with spread wings, to and fro, many times over, and usually one bird thus performing inspires another, probably of his own kind, to join in the game. The other cranes look on admiringly and sometimes a spectator shrilly trumpets his approval. In his new book, "The Friendly Arctic," Mr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson records an interesting example of play indulged in jointly by a frivolous arctic fox and eight yearling barren-ground caribou. It was a game of tag, or its wild equivalent. The fox ran into and through the group of caribou fawns, which gave chase and tried to catch the fox, but in vain. At last the fawns gave up the chase, returned to their original position, and came to parade rest. Then back came the fox. Again it scurried through the group in a most tantalizing manner, which soon provoked the fawns to chase the fox anew. At the end of this inning the caribou again abandoned the chase, whereupon the fox went off to attend to other affairs. On the whole, the play of wild animals is a large field and no writer will exhaust it with one chapter. Very sincerely do we wish that at least one of the many romance writers who are so industriously inventing wild-animal blood-and-thunder stories would do more work with his eyes and less with his imagination. XXI COURAGE IN WILD ANIMALS Either in wild animals or tame men, courage is the moral impulse that impels an individual to fight or to venture at the risk of bodily harm. Like Theodore Roosevelt, the truly courageous individual engages his adversary without stopping to consider the possible consequences to himself. The timid man shrinks from the onset while he takes counsel of his fears, and reflects that "It may injure me in my business," or that "It may hurt my standing;" and in the end he becomes a slacker. Among the mental traits and passions of wild creatures, a quantitative and qualitative analysis of courage becomes a highly interesting study. We can easily fall into the error of considering that fighting is the all-in-all measure of courage; which very often is far from being true. The mother quail that pretends to be wounded and feigns helplessness in order to draw hostile attention unto herself and away from her young, thereby displays courage of a high order. No quail unburdened by a helpless brood requiring her protection ever dreams of taking such risks. The gray gibbons of Borneo, who quite successfully made their escape from us, but promptly returned close up to my party in response to the S. O. S. cries of a captured baby gibbon, displayed the sublime courage of parental affection, and of desperation. Wary, timid and fearfully afraid of man, at the first sight of a biped they swing away. At the first roar of a gun they literally fly down hill through the treetops, and vanish in a wild panic. And yet, the leading members of that troop halted and swiftly came back, piercing the gloom and silence of the forest with their shrill cries of mingled encouragement and protest. It was quite as courageous and heroic as the act of a father who rushes into a burning building to save his child, at the imminent risk of his own life. The animal world has its full share of heroes. Also, it has its complement of pugilists and bullies, its cowards and its assassins. Few indeed are the wild creatures that fight gratuitously, or attack other animals without cause. If a fight occurs, look for the motive. The wild creatures know that peace promotes happiness and long life. Now, of all wild quadrupeds, it is probable that the African baboons are pound for pound the most pugnacious, and the quickest on the draw. The old male baboon in his prime will fight anything that threatens his troop, literally at the drop of a hat. But there is method in his madness. He and his wives and children dwell on the ground in lands literally reeking with fangs and claws. He has to confront the lion, leopard, wild dog and hyena, and make good his right to live. No wonder, then, that his temper is hot, his voice raucous and blood-curdling; his canines fearfully long and sharp, and his savage yell of warning sufficient to keep even the king of beasts off his grass. Once I saw two baboons fight. We had two huge and splendid adult male gelada baboons, from Abyssinia. They were kept separate, but in adjoining cages; and the time came when we needed one of those cages for another distinguished arrival. We decided to try the rather hazardous experiment of herding those two geladas together. Accordingly, we first opened the doors to both outside cages, to afford for the moment a free circulation of baboons, and then we opened the partition door. Instantly the two animals rushed together in raging combat. With a fierce grip each seized the other by the left cheek; and then began a baboon cyclone. They spun around on their axis, they rolled over and over on the floor, and they waltzed in speechless rage over every foot of those two cages. Strange to say, beyond coughing and gasping they made no sounds. Never before had we witnessed such a fearsome exhibition of insane hatred and rage. As soon as the horrified spectators could bring it about, the wild fighters were separated; and strange to say, neither of them was seriously injured. It was a drawn battle. It is quite difficult to weigh and measure the independent and abstract courage inherent in any wild animal species. All that can be done is to grope after the truth. On this subject there can be almost as many different opinions as there are species of wild animals. What animal will go farthest in daring and defying man, even the man with a gun, in foraging for food? Unquestionably and indisputably, the lion. This is no idle repetition of an old belief, or tradition. It is a fact; and we say this quite mindful of the records made by the grizzly bear, the Alaskan brown bear, the tiger, the leopard and the jaguar. "The Man-Eaters of Tsavo" opened up a strange and new chapter in the life history of the savage lion. That truthful record of an astounding series of events showed the lion in an attitude of permanent aggression, backed by amazing and persistent courage. For several months in that rude construction camp on the arid bank of the Tsavo River, where a railway bridge was being constructed on the famous Uganda Railway line of British East Africa, lions and men struggled mightily and fought with each other, with living men as the stakes of victory. The book written by Col. J.H. Patterson, under the title mentioned above, tells a plain and simple story of the nightly onslaughts of the lions, the tragedies suffered from them, the constant, the desperate though often ill-consideredefforts of the white engineers to protect the terrorized black laborers, and finally the death of the man- eaters. During a series of battles lasting four long months the two lions _killed and carried of a total of twenty-eight men!_ How many natives were killed and not reported never will be known. The most hair-raising episode of all had a comedy touch, and fortunately it did not quite end in a tragedy. This is what happened: Col. Patterson and his staff decided to try to catch the boldest of the lions in a trap baited with _a living man._ Accordingly a two-room trap was built, one room to hold and protect the man-bait, the other to catch and hold the lion. A very courageous native consented to be "it," and he was put in place and fastened up. The lion came on schedule time, he found the live bait, boldly entered the trap to seize it, and the dropping door fell as advertised. When the lion found himself caught, did his capture trouble him? Not in the least. Instead of starting in to tear his way out he decided to postpone his escape until he had torn down the partition and eaten the man! So at the partition he went, with teeth and claws. In mortal terror the live bait yelled for succor. In "the last analysis" the man was saved from the lion, but the lion joyously tore his way out and escaped without a scratch. So far from being daunted by this divertisement he continued his man-killing industry, quite as usual. Now, the salient points of the man-eaters of Tsavo consist of the unquenchable courage of the two lions, and their persistent defiance of white men armed with rifles. I am sure that there is nowhere in existence another record of wild-animal courage equal to this, and the truthfulness of it is quite beyond question. The annals of African travel and exploration contain instances innumerable of the unparalleled courage of the lion in taking what he wants when he wants it. THE GRIZZLY BEAR'S COURAGE. As a subject, this is a hazardous risk, because so many men are able to tell all about it. Judging from reliable records of the ways and means of the grizzly bear, I think we must award the second prize for courage to "Old Ephraim." The list of his exploits in scaring pioneers, in attacking hunters, in robbing camps, and finally in bear- handling and almost killing two guides in the Yellowstone Park, is long and thrilling. The record reaches back to the days of Lewis and Clark, who related many wild adventures with bears. The grizzlies of their day were very courageous, but even then they were _not_ greatly given to attacking men quite unprovoked! In those days of bow-and-arrow Indians, and of white men armed only with ineffective muzzle-loading pea rifles, using only weak black powder, the grizzlies had an even chance with their human adversaries, and sometimes they took first money. In those days the courage of the grizzly was at its highest peak; and it was then conceded by all frontiersmen that the grizzly was thoroughly courageous, and always ready to fight. In the light of subsequent history, and in order to be just to the grizzly, we claim that his fighting was _in self defense,_ for even in those days the unwounded bear preferred to run rather than to fight unnecessarily. The rise of the high-power, long-range repeating rifle has made the grizzly bear a different animal from what he was in the days of Lewis and Clark. He has learned, _thoroughly,_ the supreme deadliness of man's new weapons, and he knows that he is no longer able to meet men on even terms. Consequently, he runs, he hides, he avoids man, everywhere save in the Yellowstone Park, where he has found out that firearms are prohibited. There he has broken the truce so often that his offenses have had to be met with stern disciplinary measures that have made for the safety of tourists and guides. Once I saw an amusing small incident. Be it known that when a new black bear cub is introduced to a den of its peers, the newcomer shrinks in fright, and cowers, and takes its place right humbly. But species alter cases. Once when we received an eight-months- old grizzly cub we turned it loose in a big den that contained five black bear cubs a year older than itself. But did the grizzly cub cower and shrink? By no manner of means. With head fully erect, it marched calmly to the centre of the den, and with serene confidence gave the other cubs the once-over with an air that plainly said: "_I'm_ a grizzly! I'm here, and I've come to stay. Do I hear any objections?" Quite as if in answer to the challenge, an eighteen-months-old black bear presently sidled up and made a trial blow at the grizzly's head. Instantly the grizzly cub's right arm shot out a well-delivered blow that sent the black one scurrying away in a panic, and perceptibly cleared the atmosphere. That cub had grizzly-bear _courage_ and _confidence;_ that was all. There are a number of American sportsmen who esteem the Cape buffalo as the most aggressive and dangerous wild animal in eastern Africa. He is so courageous and so persistently bold that he is much given to lying in wait for hunters and attacking with real fury. The high grass of his swamps is very helpful to him as a means of defense. In our National Collection of Heads and Horns there is a huge buffalo head (for years the world's highest record) that tells the story of a near tragedy. The brother of Mr. F.H. Barber, of South Africa, fired at the animal, but failed to stop it. His gun jammed, and the charging beast was almost in the act of killing him when F.H. Barber fired without pausing to take aim. His lucky bullet knocked a piece out of the buffalo's left horn, dazed the animal for a moment, and afforded time for the shot that killed the mighty bull. The leopard is usually a vicious beast. When brought to bay it fights with great fury and success. The black leopard is supremely vicious and intractable. Nearly all leopards hate training, and I have seen two or three leopard "acts" that were nerve-racking to witness because of the clear determination of all the animals to kill their trainer at the first opportunity. The status of the big Alaskan brown bear has already been referred to in terms that may stand as an estimate of its courage. Really, it is now in the same mental state as the grizzly bears of the days of Lewis and Clark, and the surplus must be shot to admonish the survivors and protect the rights of man. THE RAGE OF A WILD BULL ELK. One of the most remarkable cases of rage, resentment and fighting courage in a newly captured wild animal occurred near Buttonwillow, California, in November 1904, and is very graphically described by Dr. C. Hart Merriam in the _Scientific Monthly_ for November 1921. The story concerns the leader of a band of the small California Valley Elk (_Cervus nannodes_) which it was desired to transport to Sequoia Park, for permanent preservation. The bull refused to be driven to the corral for capture, so he was roped, thrown, hog-tied and hauled six miles on a wagon. This indignity greatly enraged the animal. At the corral he was liberated for the purpose of driving him through a chute and into a car. From his capture and the jolting ride the bull was furious, and he refused to be driven. His first act was to gore and mortally wound a young elk that unfortunately found itself in the corral with him. Then he was roped again and his horns were sawn off. At first no horseman dared to ride into the corral to attempt to drive the animal. Finally the leader of the cowboys, Bill Woodruff, mounted on a wise and powerful horse who knew the game quite as well as his rider, rode into the corral with the raging elk, and attempted to drive it. The story of the fight that followed, of raging elk vs. horse and man, makes stories of Spanish bullfights seem tame and commonplace, and the adventure of St. George and the dragon a dull affair. With the stubs of his antlers the bull charged the horse again and again, inflicting upon the splendid animal heart-rending punishment. Finally, after a fearful conflict, the wise and brave horse conquered, and the elk devil was forced into the car. After a short railway journey the elk was forced into a crate,-- fighting at every step,--and hauled a two days' journey to the Park. Reduced to kicking as its sole expression of resentment, the animal kicked continuously for forty-eight hours, almost demolishing the crate. The final scene of this unparalleled drama of wild-animal rage is thus described by Dr. Merriam: "Then the other gates were raised, giving the bull an opportunity to step out. For the first, time since his capture he did what was wanted; he voluntarily crept to the rear of the wagon and hobbled out on the ground. Looking around for an enemy to attack and not seeing any, --some of the men having stationed themselves outside the park fence, the others on top of the crate,--he set out for the river, only a few rods away. "His courage had not forsaken him, but his strength had. He was no longer the proudly aggressive wild beast he had been. He had reached his limit. The terrible ordeal he had been through; the struggle incident to his capture; the rough, hot ride to the corral, hog-tied, on the hard floor of the dead-ax wagon; the outbursts of passion in the corral; the fighting and second roping in connection with the sawing off of his horns; the battle with the big horse; the ceaseless violence of his destructive assaults, first in the car, then in the crate, continued for three days and nights, had finally undermined even his iron frame; so when at last he found himself free on the ground, he presented a truly pitiful picture. "With his head bent to one side and back curved, with one ear up and the other down, and with a dejected, helpless expression on his face, he hobbled wearily away, barely able to step without falling. Slowly he made his way to the river, waded in, drank, crossed to the far side, staggered laboriously up the low bank, and lay down. The next day he was found in the same spot,--dead." THE DEFENSE OF THE HOME AND FAMILY. Any man who is too cowardly to fight for his home and country deserves to live and die homeless and without a country. With this subject of courage the parental and fraternal affections of wild animals are inseparably linked. The defense of the home and family unit is the foundation of all courage, and of all fighting qualities in man or animals. The gospel of self-defense is the first plank in the platform of the home defenders. Obviously, the head of a family cannot permit himself to be knocked out, because as the chief fighter in the Home Defense League it is his bounden duty to preserve his strength and his weapons, and remain fit. In the days of the club, the stone axe and the flint arrow-head, men were few and feeble, and the wild beasts had no cause to fear extermination. Tooth, claw and horn were about as formidable as the clumsy and inadequate weapons of man. The wild species went on developing naturally, and some mighty hosts were the result. But gunpowder changed all that. In the chase it gave weak men their innings beside the strong. Man could kill at long range, with little danger to himself, or even with none at all. And then in the wild beast world the great final struggle for existence began. Man's flippant phrase,--"the survival of the fittest,"-- became charged with sinister and deadly meaning. But for Mother Love among wild creatures, species would not multiply, and the earth soon would become depopulated. In the entire Deer Family of the world, the annual shedding of all horns is Nature's tribute to motherhood in the herd. A buck deer or a bull moose is a domineering master--so long as his antlers remain upon his head. But with the approach of fawn-bearing time in the herd, down they go. I have seen a bull elk stand with humbly lowered head, and gaze reproachfully upon his fallen antlers. The dehorned buck not only no longer hectors and drives the females, but in fear of hurting his tender new velvet stubs he keeps well away from the front hoofs of the cows. The calves grow up quite safe from molestation within the herd. It may be set down as a basic truth that all vertebrate animals are ready to defend their homes and their young against all enemies that do not utterly outclass them in size and strength. Of course we do not expect the pygmy to try conclusions with the giant, but at the same time, wild creatures have their own queer ways of defense and counter-attack, and of matching superior cunning against superior force. But now, throughout the animal world, the fear of man is paramount. Nearly all the wild ones have learned it. It is only the enraged, the frightened or the cornered bear, lion, tiger or elephant that charges the Man with a Gun, and seeks to counter upon him with fang and claw before it drops. The deadly supremacy of the repeating rifle that kills big game at half a mile, and the pump shotgun that gets five geese out of a flock, are well recognized by the terrorized big game and small game that flies before the sweeping pestilence of machine guns and automobiles. THE FIGHTING CANADA GOOSE. In essaying to illustrate the home defense spirit, my memory goes out to one truculent and fearless Canada goose whose mate elected to nest in a horribly exposed spot on the east bank of our Wild-Fowl Pond. The location was an error in judgment. As soon as the nest was finished and the eggs laid therein, the goose took her place upon the collection, and the gander mounted guard. There were so many hostiles on the warpath that he was kept on the qui vive during all daylight hours. At a radius of about twenty feet he drew an imaginary dead-line around the family nest, and no bird, beast or man could pass that line without a fight. If any other goose, or a swan or duck, attempted to pass, the guardian gander would rush forward with blazing eyes, open beak, wings open for action, and with distended neck hiss out his challenge. If the intruder failed to register respect, and came on, the gander would seize the offender with his beak, and furiously wing-beat him into flight. That gander was afraid of nothing, and his courage and readiness to fight all comers, all day long, caused visitors to accord him full recognition as a belligerent power. THE CASE OF THE LAUGHING GULL. About that same time, a pair of laughing gulls had the temerity to build a nest on the ground in the very storm centre of the great Flying Cage. Daily and hourly they were surrounded by a truculent mob of pelicans, herons, ibises, storks, egrets and ducks, the most of whom delighted in wrecking households. The keepers sided with the gulls by throwing around their nest a wire entanglement, with a sally-port at one side for the use of the beleaguered pair. The voice of an angry or frightened laughing gull is it [sic] owner's chief defense. The female sat on her nest and shrieked out her shrill and defiant war cry of "Kah! kah, kah, kah!" The male took post just outside the sally-port, where he postured and screamed and threatened until we wondered why he did not burst with superheated emotion. I am sure that never before did two small gulls ever raise so much racket in so short a time and their cage-mates must have found it rather trying. The gulls hatched their eggs, they reared their young successfully, and at last peace was restored. A Mother Antelope Fights Off an Eagle. Mr. Howard Eaton, of Wolf, Wyoming, once saw a female prong-horned antelope put up a strong and successful fight in defense of her newly-born fawn. A golden eagle, whose spring specialty is for fawns, kids and lambs, was seen to swoop swiftly down toward a solitary antelope that had been noticed on a treeless range beside the Little Missouri. It quickly became evident that the eagle was after an antelope fawn. As the bird swooped down toward the mother, and endeavored to seize her fawn in its talons, the doe rose high on her hind legs, and with her forelegs flying like flails struck with her sharp- pointed hoofs again and again. Her blows went home, and feathers were seen to fly from the body of the marauder. The doe made good her defense. The eagle was glad to escape, and as quickly as possible pulled himself together and flew away. The Defensive Circle of the Musk-Ox. Several arctic explorers have described the wonderful living-ring defense, previously mentioned, of musk-ox herds against wolves. Mr. Paul Rainey's moving pictures have shown it to us in thrilling detail, with Eskimo dogs instead of wolves. When a musk-ox herd is attacked by the big and deadly arctic white wolves, the bulls and adult cows herd the calves and young stock into a compact group, then take their places shoulder to shoulder around them in a perfect circle, and with lowered heads await the onset. The sharp down-and-up curved horn of the musk-ox is a deadly weapon against all the dangerous animals of the North, except man. When a wolf approaches near and endeavors to make a breach in the circle, the musk-ox nearest him tries to get him, and will even rush out of the line for a short and brief pursuit. But the bull does not pursue more than twenty yards or so, for fear of being surrounded alone and cut off. At the end of his usually futile run, back he goes and carefully backs into his place in the first line of defense. A charging bull does not rush out far enough that the wolves can cut him off and kill him. He is much too wise for that. Mr. Stefansson says that the impregnability of the musk-ox defense is so well recognized by the wolves of the North that often a pack will march past a herd in close proximity without offering to attack it, and without even troubling the herd to form the hollow circle. A Savage Wild Boar. I once had a "fight" with a captive Japanese wild boar, under conditions both absurd and tragic, and from it I learned the courage and fury of such animals. The animal was large, powerful, fearfully savage toward every living thing, and insanely courageous. It was confined in a yard enclosed by a strong wire fence, and while we were all very sure that the fence would hold it, I became uneasy. In mid-afternoon I went alone to the spot, passing hundreds of school children on the way, to study the situation. When I reached the front of the corral and stood still to look at the fence, the boar immediately rushed for me. He came straight on, angry and terrible, and charged the wire like a living battering-ram. He repeated these charges until I became fearful of an outbreak, and decided to try to make him afraid to repeat them. Procuring from the bear dens, a pike pole with a stout spike in the end, I received the next charge with a return thrust meant to puncture both the boar's hide and his understanding. He backed off and charged more furiously than ever, with white foam flying from his jaws. He cared nothing for his punishment. He charged until his snout bled freely, and the fence bulged at the strain. Then I became regularly scared! I feared that the savage beast would break through the fence in spite of its strength, and run amuck among those helpless children. I "beat it" back to my office, hurried back with one of my loaded rifles, and without losing a second put a bullet through that raging brain and ended that danger forever. The Overrated Peccary. This reminds me that the collared peccary has been credited with a degree of courage that has been much exaggerated. While a hunted and cornered peccary will fight dogs or men, and put up a savage and dangerous defense, men whom I know in the peccary belt of Mexico have assured me that a drove of peccaries will _not_ attack a hunter who has killed one of their mates, nor keep him up a tree for hours while they swarm underneath him waiting for his blood. I have been assured by competent witnesses that in peccary hunting there is no danger whatever of mass attack through a desire for revenge, and that peccaries fired at will run like deer. A Black Bear Killed a Man for Food. There is on record at least one well-authenticated case of a black bear deliberately going out of his way to cross a river, attack a man and kill him. On May 17, 1907, at a lumber camp of the Red Deer Lumber Company, thirty miles south of Etiomami on the Canadian Northern Railway, Northwest Territory, a cook named T. Wilson was chased by a large black bear, without provocation, struck once on the head, and instantly killed. The bear then picked him up, carried him a short distance, and proceeded to _eat_ him. Ten shots from a .32 calibre revolver had no effect. Later a rifle ball drove the bear away, but only after it had eaten the left thigh and part of the body. (Forest and Stream, Feb. 8, 1908.) The Status of the Gray Wolf. In America wolves rarely succeed in killing men, although they often follow men's trails in the hope of spoil of some kind. But there are exceptions. In 1912, around Lake Nipigon, Province of Ontario, Canada, there existed a reign of terror from wolves. The first man killed was a half-breed mail-carrier. Then, in December, another mail-carrier, who was working the lumber camps north of Lake Nipigon, was killed by wolves and completely devoured. The snow showed a terrible struggle, in which four large wolves had been killed by the carrier. In Russia and in France in the days preceding the use of modern breech-loading firearms, the gray wolves of Europe were very bold, and a great many people were killed by them. Killings by Wild Beasts in India. The killing by wild beasts of unarmed and defenseless native men, women and children in India is a very different matter from man-killing in resourceful and dangerous North America. The annual slaughter by wild beasts in Hindustan and British Burma is a fairly good index of the courage and aggressiveness of the parties of the first part. In India during the year 1878, in which we were specially interested, the totals were as follows: Persons killed by elephants, 33; tigers, 816; leopards, 300; bears, 94; wolves, 845; hyenas, 33; snakes, 16,812. Of course such slaughter as this by the ridiculous hyenas and the absurd sloth bears of India is possible only in a country wherein the swarming millions of people are universally defenseless, and children are superabundant. As a corollary to the above figures, a comparison of them with the roster of wild animals killed and paid for is of some interest. The dangerous beasts destroyed were as follows: Elephants, 1; tigers, 1,493; leopards, 3,387; bears, 1,283; wolves, 5,067; hyenas, 1,202; serpents, 117,782. The Fighting Spirit in Baboons. In the first analysis, we find that courage is an individual trait, and that so far as we know, it never characterizes all the individuals of any one species. The strongest and the best armed of men and beasts usually are accounted the bravest ones of earth. The defenseless ones do well to be timid, to avoid hostilities and to flee from conflict to avoid being destroyed. It is just as much the duty of a professional mother to flee and to hide, in order to save her own life, as it is for "the old he-one" to threaten and to fight. At the same time, there are many species which are concededly courageous, as species. In making up this list I would place first of all the baboons of eastern Africa, whom I regard collectively as the most bold and reckless fighters per pound avoirdupois to be found in the whole Order Primates. They have weapons, agility, strength and cyclonic courage. On no other basis could they have so long survived _on land_ in a country full of lions, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas and wild dogs. In order to appreciate the fighting spirit of a male baboon, the observer need only come just once in actual touch with one. A dozen times I have been seized by a powerful baboon hand shot out with lightning quickness between or under his cage bars. The combined strength and ferocity of the grab, and the grip on the human hand or arm, is unbelievable until felt, and this with an accompaniment of glaring eyes, snarling lips and nerve-ripping voice is quite sufficient to intimidate any ordinary man. But even in the courage and belligerency of baboons, there are some marked differences between species. I rank them as follows: The most fierce and dangerous species is the East African baboon. The next for courage is the Rhodesian species. The spectacular hamadryas baboon is a very good citizen. The long-armed yellow species makes very little trouble, and The small golden baboon is the best-behaved of them all. Courage in the Great Apes. After forty years of ape study, with many kinds of evidence, I am convinced that the courage and the alleged ferocity of the gorilla has been much over-rated. I believe this is due to the influence upon the human mind of the great size and terrifying aspect of the animal. Of all the men whom I have known or read, the late R. L. Garner knew by far the most of gorilla habits and character by personal observation in the gorilla jungles of equatorial Africa. And never, in several years of intimate contact with Mr, Garner did he so much as once put forth a statement or an estimate that seemed to me exaggerated or overcolored. In our many discussions of gorilla character Mr. Garner always represented that animal as very shy, wary of observation by man, profoundly cunning in raiding _in darkness_ the banana plantations of man's villages, and most carefully avoiding exposures by daylight. He described the gorilla as practically never attacking men unless first attacked by them, and fleeing unless forcibly brought to bay. He told me of are doubtable African tribesman who once captured a baby gorilla on the ground by suddenly attacking the mother with his club and beating her so successfully that she fled from him and abandoned her young. "But," said Mr. Garner, "there is only one tribe in Africa that could turn out a man who would attempt a feat like that." That the gorilla can and will fight furiously and effectively when brought to bay is well known, and never denied. Of the apes I have known in captivity, the chimpanzees are by far the most aggressive, courageous and dangerous. A vigorous male specimen over eight years of age is more dangerous than a lion, or tiger, or grizzly bear, and _far more anxious_ to fight something. I think that even if our Boma were muzzled, no five men of my acquaintance could catch him and tie his hands and feet. The orang-utan is only half the fighter that the chimpanzee is. Even the adult males are not persistently aggressive, or inflamed by savage desires to hurt somebody. Courage in Elephants as an Asset. In all portions of India wherein tiger hunting with elephants is practiced, elephants with good courage are at a premium. No elephant is fit to carry a howdah in a line of beaters, with a valuable sahib on board, unless its courage can stand the acid test of a wounded tiger's charge. When an elephant can endure without panic an infuriated tiger climbing up its frontispiece to get at the unhappy mahout and the hunter, that elephant belongs in the courageous class. The cowardly elephant screams in terror, bolts for the rear, and if there is a tree in the landscape promptly wrecks the howdah and the sportsman against its lower branches. A "rogue" elephant always reminds me of my Barbados boatman's description of a pugnacious friend: "De trouble is, he am too brave!" A rogue elephant will attack anything from a wheelbarrow to a hut, and destroy it. The peak of rogue ambition was reached on a railway in Burma, near Ban Klap, in March 1908, when a rogue elephant "on hearing the locomotive whistle, trumpeted loudly and then, lowering his head, charged the oncoming train. The impact was tremendous. Such was the impetus of the great pachyderm that the engine was partially derailed, the front of the smoke-box shattered as far as the tubes, the cow-catcher was crushed into a shapeless piece of iron, and other damages of minor importance were sustained. The train was going thirty-four miles per hour, and the engine alone weighed between forty and fifty tons. "Of course the elephant was killed by the shock, its head being completely smashed.... It is believed that this particular rogue had been responsible for considerable damage to villages in the vicinity of Lopbusi. A number of houses have been pulled down recently and havoc wrought in other ways." On another occasion a vicious rogue elephant elected to try conclusions with a railway train. In 1906, on the Korat branch of the Siamese State Railway, a bull elephant attacked a freight train running at full speed. He charged the rushing locomotive, with the result that the locomotive and several cars were derailed and sent down the side of the grade, and two persons were killed. The elephant was killed outright and buried under the wreck of the train. This occurred in open country, where there was no excuse for an elephant on the track, and therefore the charge of the rogue was wholly gratuitous. Captive elephants whose managers are too humane to punish them for manifestations of meanness become spoiled by their immunity, just as mean children are spoiled when fond and foolish parents feel that their little jackets are too sacred ever to be tanned. Such complete immunity is as bad for bad elephants as for bad children, but in practice the severe punishment of an elephant with real benefit to the animal is next door to an impossibility, and so we never attempt it. We do, however, inflict mild punishments, of the fourth order of efficiency. Animals and Men. Among the animals that are most courageous against man are the species and individuals that are most familiar with him, and feel for him both contempt and hatred. The cat scratches, the bad dog bites, the vicious horse kicks or bites, and the mean pet bear, tiger, ape, leopard, bison or deer will attempt injury or murder whenever they think the chance has arrived. I know a lady whose pet monkey is a savage and mean little beast, and because she never thrashes it as it deserves, both of her arms from wrist to elbow have been scarified by its teeth. Mr. E. R. Sanborn, official photographer of the Zoological Park, once made an ingenious and also terrifying experiment. He made an excellent dummy keeper, stood it up, and tied it fast against the fence inside the yard of our very large and savage male Grevy Zebra. Then he posed his moving picture camera in a safe place, and the keeper turned the zebra into the yard. The moment the bad zebra caught sight of the presumptive keeper,--at last within his power,--he rushed at the dummy with glaring eyes and open mouth, and seized his victim by the head. With furious efforts he tore the dummy loose from its moorings, whirled it into the middle of the yard, where in a towering rage he knelt upon it, bit and tore its heart out. Of course the unfortunate dummy perished. The zebra reveled in his triumph, and altogether it was a fearsome sight. CAUTION. A thoroughly cowardly horse _never_ should be ridden, nor driven to anything so light that a runaway is possible. Such animals are too expensive both to human life and to property. A dangerous horse can be just as great a risk as a bad lion or bear. IV.--THE BASER PASSIONS XXII FEAR AS A RULING PASSION If we were asked, "Which one may be called the ruling passion of the wild animal?" we would without hesitation answer,--it is fear. From the cradle to the grave, every strictly wild animal lives, day and night, in a state of fear of bodily harm, and dread of hunger and famine. "Now the 'free, wild life' is a round of strife, And of ceaseless hunger and fear; And the life in the wild of the animal child Is not all skittles and beer." The first thing that the wild baby learns, both by precept and example, is safety first! When the squalling and toddling bear cub first goes abroad, the mother bear is worried and nervous for fear that in a sudden and dangerous emergency the half-helpless little one will not be able to make a successful get-away when the alarm- signal snort is given. During the first, and most dangerous, days in the life of the elk, deer and antelope fawn, the first care of the mother is to hide her offspring in a spot cunningly chosen beside a rock, beside a log, or in thick bushes. In the absence of all those she looks for a depression in the earth wherein the fawn can lie without making a hump in the landscape. The first impulse of the fawn,--even before nursing if the birth occurs in daylight,--is to fold its long legs, short body and reptilian neck into a very small package, hug the earth tightly, close its eyes and lie absolutely motionless until its mother gives the signal to arise and sup. Such infants may lie for long and weary hours without so much as moving an ear; and the anxious mother strolls away to some distance to avoid disclosing her helpless offspring. Now, suppose you discover and touch an elk or a deer fawn while thus hiding. What will it do? Nine times out of ten it will bound up as if propelled by steel springs, and go off like an arrow from a bow, dashing in any direction that is open and leads straight away. The horrified mother will rush into view in dangerously near proximity, and I have seen a wild white-tailed deer doe tear madly up and down in full view and near by, to attract the danger to herself. Thousands of men and boys have seen a mother quail flop and flutter and play wounded, to lead the dangerous boy away from her brood of little quail mites, and work the ruse so daringly and successfully as to save both her babies and herself. I well remember my surprise and admiration when a mother quail first played that trick upon me. I expected to pick her up,--and forgot all about the chicks,--until they were every one safely in hiding, and then Mrs. Quail gave me the laugh and flew away. Was it strategy? Was it the result of quail thought and reason? Or did it come by heredity, just like walking? To deny the cold facts in the quail case is to discredit our own ability to reason and be honest. Fear is the ruling emotion alike of the most timid creatures, and also the boldest. Of course each wild animal keeps a mental list of the other animals of which he is not afraid; and the predatory animal also keeps a card catalogue of those which he may safely attack when in need of food. But, with all due consideration to mighty forearm, to deadly claws and stabbing fangs, there is (I think) absolutely no land animal that is not afraid of something. Let us progressively consider a few famous species near at hand. The savage and merciless weasel fears the fox, the skunk, the wolf and the owl. The skunk fears the coyote which joyously kills him and devours all of him save his jaws and his tail. The marten, mink and fisher have mighty good reason to fear the wolverine, who in his turn cheerfully gives the road to the gray wolf. The wolf and the lynx carefully avoid the mountain lion and the black bear, and the black bear is careful not to get too close to a grizzly. Today a cotton-tail rabbit is not more afraid of a hound than a grizzly bear is of a man. The polar bear once was bold in the presence of man; but somebody has told him about breech-loading high power rifles; and now he, too, runs in terror from every man that he sees. The lion, the tiger, the leopard and the jaguar all live in wholesome fear of man, and flee from him at sight. The lordly elephant does likewise, and so does the rhinoceros, save when he is in doubt about the identity of the biped animal and trots up to get certainty out of a nearer view. Col. Roosevelt became convinced, that most of the alleged "charging" of rhinoceroses was due to curiosity and poor vision, and the desire of rhinos to investigate at close range. Today the giant brown bears of Alaska exhibit less fear of man than any other land animals that we know, and many individuals have put themselves on record as dangerous fighters. And this opens the door to the great Alaskan controversy that for a year raged,--chiefly upon one side,--in certain Alaskan newspapers and letters. Early in 1920, certain parties in Alaska publicly asked people to believe that W. T. Hornaday in his "published works" had set up the Alaskan brown bear as "a harmless animal." All these statements and insinuations were notoriously false, but the repetition of them went on right merrily, even while the author's article portraying the savage and dangerous character of the brown bear was being widely circulated in the United States through _Boys' Life_ magazine. The indisputable facts regarding the temper of the great Alaskan brown bears are as follows: Usually, unless fired at, these big brown bears flee from man at sight of him, and by many experienced Alaskan bear hunters who can shoot they are not regarded as particularly dangerous, save when they are attacked by man, or think that they are to be attacked. They are just now the boldest of all bears, and the most dangerous. They often attack men who are hunting them, and have killed several. They have attacked a few persons who were not hunting. Where they are really numerous they are a menace and a nuisance to frontiersmen who need to traverse their haunts. In all places where Alaskan brown bears are quite too numerous for public safety, their numbers should thoroughly be reduced; and everywhere the bears of Alaska should be pursued and shot until the survivors acquire the wholesome respect for man that now is felt everywhere by the polar and the grizzly. Then the Alaskans will have peace, and our Alaskan enemies possibly will cease to try to discredit our intelligence. The most impressive exhibition of wild-animal fear that Americans ever have seen was furnished by the African motion pictures of Paul J. Rainey. They were taken from a blind constructed within close range of a dry river bed in northern British East Africa, where a supply of water was held, by a stratum of waterproof clay or rock, about four feet below the surface of the dry river bed. By industrious pawing the zebras had dug a hole down to the water, and to this one life-saving well wild animals of many species flocked from miles around. The camera faithfully recorded the doings of elephants, giraffes, zebras, hartebeests, gnus, antelopes of several species, wart-hogs and baboons. The personnel of the daily assemblage was fairly astounding, and to a certain extent the observer of those wonderful pictures can from them read many of the thoughts of the animals. Next to the plainly expressed desire to quench their thirst, the dominant thought in the minds of those animals, one and all, was the _fear of being attacked._ In some species this ever- present and harassing dread was a pitiful spectacle. I wish it might be witnessed by all those ultra-humane persons who think and say that the free wild animals are the only happy ones! With the possible exception of the sanguine-tempered elephants, all those animals were afraid of being seized or attacked while drinking. One and all did the same thing. An animal would approach the water-hole, nervously looking about for enemies. The fore feet cautiously stepped down, the head disappeared to reach the water, --but quickly shot upward again, to look for the enemies. It was alternately drink, look, drink, look, for a dozen quick repetitions, then a scurry for safety. Even the stilt-legged and long-necked giraffes went through that same process,--a mouthful of water greedily seized, and a fling of the head upward to stare about for danger. Group by group the animals of each species took their turns. The baboons drifted down over the steep rocky slope like a flock of skimming birds, and watched and drank by turn. Having finished, they paused not for idle gossip or play, but as swiftly as they came drifted up the slope and sought safety elsewhere. And yet, it was noticeable that during the whole of that astounding panorama of ferae naturae unalloyed by man's baleful influence, no species attacked another, there was no fighting, nor even any threatening of any kind. Had there been a white flag waving over that water-hole, the truce of the wild could not have been more perfect. Effect of Fear in Captive Animals. Among captive wild animals, by far the most troublesome are those that are obsessed by slavish fear of being harmed. The courageous and supremely confident grizzly or Alaskan brown bear is in his den a good-natured and reliable animal, who obeys orders when the keepers enter the den to do the daily housework and order him to "Get up out of here." The fear-possessed Japanese black bear, Malay sun bear and Indian sloth bear are the ones that are most dangerous, and that sometimes charge the keepers. Our famous "picture lion," Sultan, was serenely confident of his own powers, his nerves were steady and reliable, and he never cared to attack man or beast. Once when by the error of a fellow keeper the wrong chain was pulled, and the wrong partition door was opened, the working keeper bent his head, and broom in hand walked into what he thought was an empty cage. To his horror, he found himself face to face with Sultan, with only the length of the broom handle between them. The startled and helpless keeper stood still, and said in a calm voice, without batting an eye. "Hello, Sultan." Sultan calmly looked at him, wonderingly and inquiringly, but without even a trace of excitement; and feeling sure that the keeper did not mean to harm him, he seemed to have no thought of attacking. The keeper quietly backed through the low doorway, and gently closed the door. Had the keeper lost his nerve, _and shown it,_ there might have been a tragedy. Lions are the best of all carnivorous performing animals, because of their courage, serenity, self-confidence and absence of jumpy nerves. Leopards are the worst, and polar bears stand next, with big chimpanzees as a sure third. Beware of all three. Exceptions to the Rule of Fear. Fortunately for the wild animal world, there are some exceptions to the rule of fear. I will indicate the kinds of them, and students can supply the individual cases. Whenever a wild animal species inhabits a spot so remote and inaccessible that man's blighting hand never has fallen upon it, nor in any way influenced its life or its fortunes, that species knows no fear save from the warring elements, and from predatory animals. The wonderful giant penguins found and photographed near the south pole by Sir Ernest Shackleton never had seen nor heard of men, never had been attacked by predatory animals or birds. You may search this wide world over, and you will not find a more striking example of sublime isolation. Those penguins had been living in a penguin's paradise. The sea-leopard seals harmed them not, and until the arrival of the irrepressible British explorer the spell of that antarctic elysium was unbroken. [Illustration with caption: PRIMITIVE PENGUINS ON THE ANTARCTIC CONTINENT, UNAFRAID OF MAN (From Sir Ernest Shackleton's "Heart of the Antarctic," by permission of William Heinemann and the J. B. Lippincott Company, publishers)] Those astounding birds knew no such emotion as fear. Under the impulse of the icy waves dashing straight up to the edge of the ice floes, those giant penguins shot out of the water, sped like catapulted birds curving through the air, and landed on their cushioned breasts high and dry, fully ten feet back from the edge of the floe. They flocked together, they waddled about erect and serene, heads high in air, and marched close up to the ice-bound ship to see what it was all about. Men and horses freely walked among them without exciting fear, and when the birds gathered in a vast assemblage the naturalists and photographers were welcomed everywhere. And indeed those birds were well-nigh the most fortunate birds in all the world. The men who found them were not low-browed butchers thinking only of "oil" or "fertilizer"; and they did not go to work at once to club all those helpless birds into masses of death and corruption. Those men wondered at them, laughed at them, photographed them, studied them,--and _left them in peace!_ What a thundering contrast that was with the usual course of Man, the bloody savage, under such circumstances! The coast of Lower California once swarmed with seals, sea-lions and birds, and the waters of the Gulf were alive with whales. Now the Gulf and the shores of the Peninsula are as barren of wild life as Death Valley. The history of the whaling industry contains many sickening records of the wholesale slaughter by savage whalers of newly discovered herds of walrus, seals and sea birds that through isolation knew no fear, and were easily clubbed to death en masse. Wild creatures generally subscribe to the political principle that in union there is strength. In the minds of wild animals, birds and reptiles, great numbers of individuals massed together make for general security from predatory attacks. The herd with its many eyes and ears feels far greater security, and less harrowing fear, than the solitary individual who must depend upon his own two pair. The herd members relax and enjoy life; but the solitary bear, deer, sheep, goat or elephant does not. His nerves always are strung up to concert pitch, and while he feeds or drinks, or travels, he watches his step. A moving object, a strange-looking object, a strange sound or a queer scent in the air instantly fixes his attention, and demands analysis. On the North American continent the paramount fear of the wild animal is aroused to its highest pitch by what is called "man scent." And really, from the Battery to the North Pole, there is good reason for this feeling of terror, and high wisdom in fleeing fast and far. Said a wise old Ojibway Indian to Arthur Heming: "My son, when I smell some men, and especially some white men, I never blame the animals of the Strong Woods for taking fright and running away!" And civilization also has its terrors, as much as the wilderness. The fox, no matter what is the color of his coat, or his given name, is the incarnation of timidity and hourly fear. The nocturnal animals go abroad and work at night solely because they are afraid to work in the daytime. The beaver will cheerfully work in daytime if there is no prospect of observation or interference by man. The eagle builds in the top of the tallest tree, and the California condor high up on the precipitous side of a frightful canyon wall, because they are afraid of the things on the ground below. In the great and beautiful Animallai Forest (of Southern India), in 1877 the tiger walked abroad in the daytime, because men were few and weak, but in the populous and dangerous plains he did his traveling and killing at night, and lay closely hidden by day. Judging by the records of those who have hunted lions, I think that naturally the lion has more courage and less fear of bodily harm than any other wild animal of equal intelligence. By reason of his courage and self-confidence, as well as his majesty of physique, the lion is indeed well worthy to be called the King of Beasts. Among the few animals that seem naturally bold and ready to take risks, a notable species is the gray wolf. But is it really free from fear? Far from it. When in touch with civilization, from dawn until dark the wolf never forgets to look out for his own safety. He fears man, he fears the claws of every bear, he fears traps, poison and the sharp horns of the musk-ox. Individually the wolf is a contemptible coward. Rarely does he attack all alone an animal of his own size, unless it is a defenseless colt, calf or sheep. No animal is more safe from another than an able-bodied bull from the largest wolf. The wolf believes in mass action, not in single combat. But there is hope for the harassed and nerve-racked children of the wild. _The Game Sanctuary has come!_ Its area of safety, and its magic boundary, are quickly recognized by the harried deer, elk, sheep, goat and antelope, and right quickly do these and all other wild animals set up housekeeping on a basis of absolute safety. Talk about wild animals not "reasoning!" For shame. What else than REASON convinced the wild mountain sheep in the rocky fastnesses they once inhabited in terror that now they are SAFE, even in the streets of Ouray, and that "Ouray" rhymes with "your hay"? On account of his crimes against wild life, man (both civilized and savage) has much to answer for; but each wild life sanctuary that he now creates wipes out one chapter. From the Cape to Cairo, from the Aru Islands to Tasmania and from Banks Land to the Mexican boundary, they are growing and spreading. In them, save for the misdoings of the few uncaught and unkilled predatory animals, fear can die out, and the peace of paradise regained take its place. HYSTERIA OF FEAR IN A BEAR. Among wild animals in captivity hysteria, of the type produced by fear, is fairly common. A case noticed particularly on October 16, 1909, in a young female Kadiak bear, may well be cited as an example. The subject was then about two and one-half years old, and was caged in a large open den with four other bears of the same age. Of a European brown bear male, only a trifle larger than herself, she elected to be terror-stricken, as much so as ever a human child was in terror of every move of a brutal adult tormentor. Strangely enough, the cause of all this terror was wholly unconscious of it, and in the course of an observation lasting at least twenty minutes he made not one hostile movement. The greater portion of the time he idly moved about in the central space of the den, wholly oblivious of the alarm he was causing. The young Kadiak, in full flesh and vigor, first attracted my attention by her angry and terrified snorting, three quick snorts to the series. On the top of the rocks she raced to and fro, constantly eyeing the bear in the centre of the den. If he moved toward the rocks, she wildly plunged down, snorting and glaring, and raced to the front end of the den. If the bogey stopped to lick up a fallen leaf, she took it as a hostile act and wildly rushed past him and scrambled up the rocks at the farther end of the den. This was repeated about fifteen times in twenty minutes, accompanied by a continuous series of terrified snorts. She panted from exhaustion, frothed at the mouth, and acted like an animal half crazed by terror. Not once, however, did the bogey bear pay the slightest attention to her, and his sleepy manner was anything but terrifying. These spells of hysteria (without real cause) at last became so frequent that they seemed likely to injure the growth of a valuable animal, and finally the bogey bear was removed to another den. XXIII FIGHTING AMONG WILD ANIMALS Quarrels and combats between wild animals in a state of nature are almost invariably due to one of two causes--attack and defense in a struggle for prey, or the jealousy of males during the mating season. With rare exceptions, battles of the former class occur between animals of different Orders,--teeth and claws against horns and hoofs, for instance; and it is a fight to the death. Hunger forces the aggressor to attack something, and the intended victim fights because it is attacked. The question of good or ill temper does not enter in. On both sides it is a case of "must," and neither party has any option. Such combats are tests of agility, strength, and staying powers, and, in a few cases, of thickness of bone and hide. How Orang-Utans Fight. Of the comparatively few animals which do draw blood of their own kind through ill temper or jealousy, I have never encountered any more given to internecine strife than orang-utans. Their fighting methods, and their love of fighting, are highly suggestive of the temper and actions of the human tough. They fight by biting, and usually it is the fingers and toes that suffer. Of twenty-seven orang-utans I shot in Borneo, and twelve more that were shot for me by native hunters, five were fighters, and had had one or more fingers or toes bitten off in battle. Those specimens were taken in the days when the museums of America were one and all destitute of anthropoid apes. A gorilla, chimpanzee, or orang-utan, being heavy of body, short of neck, and by no means nimble footed, cannot spring upon an adversary, choose a vulnerable spot, and bite to kill; but what it lacks in agility it makes up in length and strength of arm and hand. It seizes its antagonist's hand, carries it to its own mouth, and bites at the fingers. Usually, the bitten finger is severed as evenly as by a surgeon's amputation, and heals quite as successfully. I never saw two big orang-utans fighting, but I have had several captive ones seize my arm and try to bring my fingers within biting distance. The canine teeth of a full grown male orang, standing four feet four inches in height, and weighing a hundred and fifty pounds or more, are just as large and dangerous as the teeth of a bear of the same size, and the powerful incisors have one quality which the teeth of a bear do not possess. A bear pierces or tears an antagonist with his canines, but very rarely bites off anything. An orang-utan bites off a finger as evenly as a boy nips off the end of a stick of candy. When orang-utans fight, they also attack each other's faces, and often their broad and expansive lips suffer severely. My eleventh orang bore the scars of many a fierce duel in the tree-tops. A piece had been bitten out of the middle of both his lips, leaving in each a large, ragged notch. Both his middle fingers had been taken off at the second joint, and his feet had lost the third right toe, the fourth left toe, and the end of one hallux. His back, also, had sustained a severe injury, which had retarded his growth. This animal we called "The Desperado." Orang No. 34 had lost the entire edge of his upper lip. It had been bitten across diagonally, but adhered at one corner, and healed without sloughing off, so that during the last years of his life a piece of lip two inches long hung dangling at the corner of his mouth. He had also suffered the loss of an entire finger. No. 36 had lost a good sized piece out of his upper lip, and the first toe had been bitten off his left foot. All these combats must have taken place in the tree-tops, for an adult orang-utan has never been known to descend to the earth except for water. In some manner it has become a prevalent belief that in their native jungles all three of the great apes-- gorilla, orang, and chimpanzee--are dangerous to human beings, and often attack them with clubs. Nothing could be farther from the truth. According to the natives of West Africa, a gorilla or chimpanzee fights a hunter by biting his face and fingers, just as an orang-utan does. I believe that no sane orang ever voluntarily left the safety of a tree top to fight at a serious disadvantage on the ground; and I am sure an orang never struck a blow with a club, unless carefully taught to do so. WILD ANIMALS ARE NOT QUARRELSOME. As a species, man appears to be the most quarrelsome animal on the earth; and the same quality is strongly reflected in his most impressionable servant and companion, the domestic dog. Nearly all species of wild animals have learned the two foundation facts of the philosophy of life-- that peace is better than war, and that if one must fight, it is better to fight outside one's own species. To this rule, however, wolves are a notable exception; for wherever wolves are abundant a wounded wolf is a subject for attack, and usually it is killed and eaten by the other members of the pack. I have observed the daily habits of many kinds of wild animals in their wild haunts, but in the field I never yet have seen either a fight between animals of the same species, or between two of different species. This may seem a very humiliating admission for a hunter to make, but it happens to be true. In the matter of finding big snakes, having exciting adventures, and witnessing combats between wild animals, there are some men who never are in luck. Now there was the "Old Shekarry,"--whose elephants, tigers, bison, bears, and sambar always were so much larger than mine. In his book, "Sport in Many Lands," he describes an affair of honor between a tiger and a bull bison, which was a truly ideal combat. The champions met by appointment,--by the light of the moon, in order to be safe from interference by the jungle police,--and they fought round after round, in the most orthodox prize ring style, under the Queensberry rules. So fairly did they fight that neither claimed a foul, and at the finish the two combatants retired to their respective corners and died simultaneously, "to the musical twitter of the night bird." Another writer has given a vivid description of a battle to the death between a wild bull and a grizzly bear; and we have read of several awful combats between black bears and alligators, in Florida; but some of us have yet to find either a black bear or an alligator that will stop to fight when he has an option on a line of retreat. When he has lived long,--say to the length of twelve feet,--the alligator is a hideous and terrorizing beast; but, for all that, he knows a thing or two; and a full grown, healthy black bear of active habit is about the last creature on earth that a 'gator would care to meddle with. Pigs and calves, fawns, stray dogs, ducks and mud hens are antagonists more to his liking. The Fighting Tactics of Bears. In captivity, bears quarrel and scold one another freely, at feeding time, but seldom draw blood. I have questioned many old hunters, and read many books by bear hunters, but Ira Dodge, of Wyoming, is the only man I know who has witnessed a real fight between wild bears. He once saw a battle between a cinnamon and a grizzly over the carcass of an elk. In attacking, a bear does three things, and usually in the same order. First, he delivers a sweeping sidewise blow on the head of his antagonist; then he seizes him by the cheek, with the intention of shifting to the throat as quickly as it is safe to do so. His third move consists in throwing his weight upon his foe and bearing him to the earth, where he will have a better chance at his throat. If the fighters are fairly matched, the struggle is head to head and mouth to mouth. After the first onset, the paws do little or no damage, and the attacks of the teeth rarely go as far down as the shoulders. Often the assailant will seize his opponent's cheek and hold on so firmly that for a full minute the other can do nothing; but this means little. In combats between bears, the one that is getting mauled, or that feels outclassed, will throw himself upon the ground, flat upon his back, and proceed to fight with all four sets of claws in addition to his teeth. This attitude is purely defensive, and often is maintained until an opportunity occurs to attack with good advantage, or to escape. It is very difficult for a standing bear to make a serious impression upon an antagonist who lies upon his back, clawing vigorously with all four feet at the head of his assailant. Tiger Versus Grizzly Bear. Often is the question asked, "If a grizzly bear and a tiger should fight, which would whip the other?" One can answer only with opinions and deductions, not by reference to the records of the ring; for it seems that the terrors of the occident and the orient have never yet been matched in a fight to a finish. One of the heaviest tigers ever weighed, prior to 1878, scaled four hundred and ninety five pounds, and was as free from surplus flesh and fat as a prizefighter in the ring. He stood three feet seven inches at the shoulder, measured thirty-six inches around the jaws, and twenty inches around the forearm. Very few lions have ever exceeded his weight or dimensions. So far as I know, a wild grizzly bear of the largest size has never been scaled, but it is not at all certain that any California grizzly has weighed more than twelve hundred pounds. The silvertip of the Rocky Mountain region is a totally different animal, being smaller, as well as different in color. In a match between a grizzly and a tiger of equal weights, the activity of the latter, combined with the greater spread of his jaws and length of his canine teeth, would insure him the victory. The superior attack of the tiger would give him an advantage which it would probably be impossible to overcome. The blow of a tiger's paw is as powerful as that of a grizzly of the same size, though I doubt if it is any quicker in delivery. The quickness with which a seemingly clumsy bear can deliver a smashing blow is astonishing. Moreover, nature has given the grizzly a coat of fur which as a protection in fighting is almost equal to chain mail. Its length, combined with its density, makes it difficult for teeth or claws to cut through it, and in a struggle with a tiger, protective fur is only a fair compensation for a serious lack of leaping power in the hinder limbs. Though the tiger would win at equal weights, it is extremely probable that an adult California grizzly would vanquish a tiger of the largest size, for his greater bulk would far outweigh the latter's agility. The Great Cats as Fighters. Tigers, when well matched, fight head to head and mouth to mouth, as do nearly all other carnivora, and at the same time they strike with their front paws. One of the finest spectacles I ever witnessed was a pitched battle between two splendid tigers, in a cage which afforded them ample room. With loud, roaring coughs, they sprang together, ears laid tight to their heads, eyes closed until only sparks of green and yellow fire flashed through four narrow slits, and their upper lips snarling high up to clear the glittering fangs beneath. Coughing, snarling, and often roaring furiously, each sprang for the other's throat, but jaw met jaw until their teeth almost cracked together. They rose fully erect on their hind legs, with their heads seven feet high, stood there, and smashed away with their paws, while tufts of hair flew through the air, and the cage seemed full of sparks. Neither gave the other a chance to get the throat hold, nor indeed to do aught else than ward off calamity; and each face was a picture of fury. This startling combat lasted a surprisingly long time, without noticeable advantage to either side. Finally the tigers backed away from each other, and when at a safe distance apart dropped their front feet to the floor, growling savagely and licking their lips wherever a claw had drawn blood. Of all the wild animals that are preyed upon by lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and pumas, only half a dozen species do anything more than struggle to escape. The gaur and the wild buffalo of India are sufficiently vindictive in dealing with a human hunter whose aim is not straight, but both fly before the tiger, and count themselves lucky when they can escape with nothing worse to show than a collection of long slits on their sides and hind quarters made by his knife-like claws. They do not care to return to do battle for the sake of revenge, and seek to put the widest possible stretch of jungle between themselves and their dreaded enemy. The same is true of the African buffalo and the lion. As to the antelopes of Africa and the deer of India, what can they do but make a desperate effort to escape, and fly like the wind whenever they succeed? Of course many of these defenseless animals make a gallant struggle for their lives, and not a few succeed in throwing off their assailants and escaping. Even domestic cattle sometimes return to the hill country villages of southern India bearing claw marks on their sides--usually the work of young tigers, or of rheumatic old ones. Here is a deer and puma story. In the picturesque bad-lands of Hell Creek, Montana, I saw my comrade, Laton A. Huffman, kill a large mule deer buck that three months previously had been attacked by a puma. From above it, the great cat had leaped upon the back of the deer, and laid hold with teeth and claws. In its struggle for life the buck either leaped or fell off the edge of a perpendicular "cut bank," and landed upon its back, with the puma underneath. Evidently the puma was so seriously injured that it could not continue the struggle; but it surely left its ear-marks. One ear of the buck was fearfully torn. There was a big wound on the top of the neck, where the puma jaws had lacerated the skin and flesh; and both hind legs had been badly clawed by the assailant's hind feet. The main beam of the right antler had been, broken off half-way up, while the antlers were still in the velvet, which enabled us to fix the probable date of the encounter. In the great Wynaad forest I once got lost, and in toiling through a five acre patch of grass higher than my head, and so dense that it was not negotiable except by following the game trails, my simple old Kuramber and I came suddenly upon the scene of a great struggle. In the center of a space about twenty feet in diameter, on which the tall grass had been trampled flat, lay the remains of a sambar stag which had very recently been killed and eaten by a tiger. The neck had not been dislocated, and the sambar had fought long and hard. Evidently the tiger had lain in wait on the runway, and had failed to subdue the sambar by his first fierce onslaught. Now an angry stag with good antlers is no mean antagonist, and it is strange if the tiger in the case went through that struggle without a puncture in his tawny skin. In South Africa, Vaughan Kirby once found the dead bodies of a "patriarchal bull" sable antelope and a lion, "which had evidently been a fine specimen," lying close together, where the two animals had fallen after a great struggle. The sable antelope must have killed its antagonist by a lucky backward thrust of its long, curved horns as the lion fastened upon its back to pull it down. Mr. Kirby's dogs once disturbed a sanguinary struggle between a leopard and a wild boar, or "bush pig," which had well-nigh reached a finish. The old boar, when bayed by the dogs, was found to be most terribly mauled. Its tough skin hung literally in shreds from its neck and shoulders, presenting ghastly open wounds. The entrails protruded from a deep claw gash in the side, and the head was a mass of blood and dirt. "On searching around," says Mr. Kirby, "we found unmistakable evidence of a life and death struggle. The ground was covered with gouts of blood and yellow hair, to some of which the skin (of the leopard) was still attached. Blood was splashed plentifully on the tree stems and the low brushwood, which for a space of a dozen yards around was trampled flat." The leopard had fled upon the approach of the dogs, leaving a trail of blood, which, though followed quickly, was finally lost in bad ground. It is no wonder that from the above and many other evidences equally good, Mr. Kirby considers the bush pig a remarkably courageous animal. He says that it was "never yet known to show the white feather," and declares that "a pig is never defeated until he is dead." The Combats of Male Deer. The sable antelope is one of the few exceptions to the well-nigh universal rule against fighting between wild animals of the same species. Of this species, Mr. Kirby says: "Sable antelope bulls fight most fiercely amongst themselves, and though I have never actually witnessed an encounter between them, I have often seen the results of such, evidenced by great gaping wounds that could have been made by nothing else than the horns of an opponent. I once killed a large bull with a piece of another's horn tip, fully three inches long, buried in its neck. In 1889 I shot an old bull on the Swinya with a terrible wound in its off shoulder, caused by a horn thrust." During the jealous flashes of the mating season, the males of several species of deer fight savagely. After a long period of inaction while the new antlers are developing--from April to September--the beginning of October finds the male deer, elk, or moose of North America with a new suit of hair, new horns, a swollen neck, and all his usual assertiveness. The crisp autumn air promotes a disposition to fight something, precisely as it inspires a sportsman to "kill something." During October and November, particularly, it is well for an unarmed man to give every antlered deer a wide berth. At this period, fights between the males of herds of mule deer, white-tailed deer and elk are of frequent occurrence, but in a wild state they rarely end in bloodshed or death, save from locked antlers. Many times, however, two bucks will come together, and playfully push each other about without being angry. Many pairs of bucks have been found with their antlers fast locked in death--and I never see a death lock without a feeling of grim satisfaction that neither of the quarrelsome brutes had had an opportunity to attack some defenseless man, and spear him to death. The antlers of the common white-tailed deer seem peculiarly liable to become interlocked so tightly that it is well-nigh impossible to separate them. And whenever this happens, the doom of both deer is sealed. Unless found speedily and killed, they must die of starvation. While it is quite true that two deer playing with their antlers may become locked fast, it is safe to say that the great majority meet their fate by charging each other with force sufficient to spring the beams of their antlers, and make the lock so perfect that no force they can exert will release it. A deer cannot pull back with the same power it exerts in plunging forward. All members of the deer family that I know follow the same natural law in regard to supremacy. Indeed, this is true of nearly all animals. Leadership is not always maintained by the largest and strongest member of a herd, but very often by the most pugnacious. Sometimes a herd of elk is completely tyrannized by an old doe, who makes the young bucks fly from her in terror, when one prod of their sharp antlers would quickly send her to the rear. When bucks in a state of freedom fight for supremacy, the weaker does not stay to be overthrown and speared to death by the victor. As soon as he feels that he is mastered he releases his antlers at the first opportunity, flings himself to one side, and either remains in the herd as an acknowledged subject of the victor, or else seeks fresh fields and pastures new. Battles in Zoological Parks. In captivity, where escape is impossible, it is no uncommon thing for elk to kill each other. In fact, with several adult males in a small enclosure, tragedies may always be expected in the autumn and early winter. The process is very simple. So long as the two elk can stand up and fight head to head, there are no casualties; but when one wearies and weakens before the other, its guard is broken. Then one strong thrust in its side or shoulder sends it to the earth, badly wounded; and before it can rise, it is generally stabbed to death with horn thrusts into its lungs and liver. But, as I said before, I have never known of a fatal duel between elk outside of a zoological garden or park. One of the most novel and interesting fights that has yet taken place in the New York Zoological Park was a pitched battle between two cow elk--May Queen and the Dowager. A bunch of black fungus suddenly appeared on the trunk of a tree, about twelve feet from the ground. My attention was first called to this by seeing May Queen, a fine young cow, standing erect on her hind legs in order to reach the tempting morsel with her mouth. A little later the Dowager, the oldest and largest cow elk in the herd, met her under the tree, whereupon the two made wry faces at each other, and champed their teeth together threateningly. Suddenly both cows rose on their hind legs, struck out viciously with their sharp pointed front hoofs, and, after a lively sparring bout, they actually clinched. The young cow got both front legs of the old cow between her own, where they were held practically helpless, and then with her own front hoofs she fiercely rained blows upon the ribs of her assailant. The Dowager backed away and fled, completely vanquished, with May Queen close upon her heels; and thus was the tyrannical rule of the senior cow overthrown forever. During the breeding season, our wild buffaloes of the great vanished herds were much given to fighting, and always through jealousy. The bulls bellowed until they could be heard for miles, tore up earth and threw it into the air, rolled their eyes, and often rushed together in a terrifying manner; but beyond butting their heads, pushing and straining until the weaker turned and ran, nothing came of it all. I have yet to find a man who ever saw a wild buffalo that had been wounded to the shedding of blood by another wild buffalo. It is probable that no other species ever fought so fiercely and did so little damage as the American bison. Elephants, Wolves, and Others. In ordinary life the Indian elephant is one of the most even-tempered of all animals. I have spent hours in watching wild herds in southern India, sometimes finding the huge beasts all around me, and in dangerously close proximity. Several times I could have touched a wild elephant with a carriage whip, had I possessed one. So far from fighting, I never saw an elephant threaten or even annoy another. Elephants, being the most intelligent of all animals in the matter of training, have been educated to fight in the arena, usually by pushing each other head to head. A fighting tusker can lord it over almost any number of tuskless elephants, because he can pierce their vitals, and they cannot pierce his. A female fights by hitting with her head, striking her antagonist amidships, if possible. Once when the late G. P. Sanderson was in a keddah, noosing wild elephants, and was assulted [sic] by a vicious tusker, his life was saved by a tame female elephant, whose boy driver caused her to attack the tusker with her head, and nearly bowl him over by the force of her blows upon his ribs. In captivity, wolves are the meanest brutes on earth, and in a wild state they are no better. As a rule, the stronger ones are ever ready to kill the weaker ones, and eat them, too. One night, our male Russian wolf killed his mate, and ate nearly half of her before morning. A fox or a wolf cub which thrusts one of its legs between the partition bars and into a wolf's den almost invariably gets it bitten off as close to the body as the biter can go. In the arctic regions, north of the Great Slave Lake, "Buffalo" Jones and George Rea fought wolves incessantly for several days, and every wolf they wounded was immediately killed and devoured by its pack mates. In captivity, a large proportion of mammals fight, more or less; and the closer the confinement, the greater their nervousness and irritability, and the more fighting. Monkeys fight freely and frequently. Serpents, lizards, and alligators rarely do, although large alligators are prone to bite off the tails or legs of their small companions, or even to devour them whole. Storks, trumpeter swans, darters, jays, and some herons are so quarrelsome and dangerous that they must be kept well separated from other species, to prevent mutilation and murder. In 1900, when a pair of trumpeter swans were put upon a lake in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, with three brown pelicans for associates, they promptly assailed the pelicans, dug holes in their backs, and killed all three. The common red squirrel is a persistent fighter of the gray species, and, although inferior in size, nearly always wins. A Fight Between a Whale and a Swordfish. One of the strangest wild animal combats on record was thus described in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, for 1909. "Mr. Malcolm Maclaren, through Mr. C. Davies Sherborn, F. Z. S., called the attention of the Fellows to an account of a fight between a whale and a swordfish observed by the crew of the fishing-boat 'Daisy' in the Hauraki Gulf, between Ponui Island and Coromandel, as reported in the 'Auckland Weekly News,' 19th Nov., 1908. A cow whale and her calf were attacked by a 12 ft. 6 in. swordfish, the object of the fish being the calf. The whale plunged about and struck in all directions with her flukes. Occasionally the fins of the swordfish were seen as he rose from a dive, his object apparently being to strike from below. For over a quarter of an hour the whale circled round her calf, lashing furiously and churning up the water so that the assailant was unable to secure a good opportunity for a thrust. At last, after a fruitless dive, the swordfish came close up and made a thrust at the calf, but received a blow from the whale's flukes across the back, which apparently paralyzed it. It was killed and hauled on board the boat without difficulty, while the whale and calf went off towards Coromandel with splashings and plungings. The whale's blow had almost knocked off the back fin of the swordfish, and heavily bruised the flesh around it. No threshers accompanied the swordfish." Beyond question, as firearms and hunters multiply, all wild animals become more timid, less inclined to attack man, and also less inclined to attack one another. The higher creatures are the most affected by man's destructiveness of animal life, and the struggle for existence has become so keen that fighting for the glory of supremacy, or as a pastime, will soon have no important place in the lives of wild animals. XXIV WILD ANIMAL CRIMINALS AND CRIME Many human beings are "good" because they never have been under the harrow of circumstances, nor sufficiently tempted to do wrong. It is only under the strain of strong temptation that human character is put through the thirty-third degree and tried out. No doubt a great many of us could be provoked to join a mob for murder, or forced to steal, or tortured into homicidal insanity. It is only under the artificial conditions of captivity, with loss of freedom, exemption from the daily fear of death, abundant food without compensating labor, and with every want supplied, that the latent wickedness of wild creatures comes to the surface. A captive animal often reveals traits never recognized in the free individual. "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do." These manifestations are of many kinds; but we propose to consider the criminal tendencies of wild animals both free and captive. The persistence of the mental and moral parallelism between men and wild animals is a source of constant surprise. In a state of freedom, untrammeled by anything save the fear of death by violence, the deer or the mountain sheep works out in his own way his chosen scheme for the survival of the fittest,--himself. In the wilds we see very few manifestations of the criminal instinct. A fight between wild elk bulls for the supremacy of a herd is not a manifestation of murder lust, but of obedience to the fundamental law of evolution that the largest, the strongest and the most courageous males of every herd shall do the breeding. The killing of natural prey for daily food is not murder. A starving wolf on the desolate barren grounds may even kill and devour a wounded pack-mate without becoming a criminal by that act alone. True, such a manifestation of hard-heartedness and bad taste is very reprehensible; but its cause is hunger, not sheer blackness of heart. Among wild animals, the wanton killing of a member of the killer's own species would constitute murder in the first degree, and so is all unnecessary and wanton killing outside the killer's own species. To many a wild animal there comes at tunes the murder lust which under the spur of opportunity leads to genuine crime. In some of the many cases that have come under my notice, the desire to commit murder for the sake of murder has been as sharply defined as the fangs or horns of the criminal. Of the many emotions of wild animals which are revealed more sharply in captivity than in a state of nature, the crime-producing passions, of jealousy, hatred, desire for revenge, and devilish lust for innocent blood, are most prominent. In the management of large animals in captivity, the criminal instinct is quite as great a trouble- breeder and source of anxiety as are wild-animal diseases, and the constant struggle with the elements. In many cases there is not the slightest premonitory manifestation of murderous intent on the part of a potential criminal. Indeed, with most cunning wisdom, a wild-animal murderer will often conceal his purpose until outside interference is an impossibility, and the victim is entirely helpless. These manifestations of fiendish cunning and premeditation are very exasperating to those responsible for the care of animals in captivity. In every well regulated zoological park, solitary confinement is regarded as an unhappy or intolerable condition. Animals that live in herds and groups in large enclosures always exercise more, have better appetites, and are much more contented and happy than individuals that are singly confined. To visitors, a happy and contented community of deer, antelopes, bears, wolves, or birds is a source of far more mental satisfaction than could be found in any number of solitary animals. A small pen with a solitary animal in it at once suggests the prison-and-prisoner idea, and sometimes arouses pity and compassion rather than pleased admiration. The peaceful herd or flock is the thing to strive for as the highest ideal attainable in an exhibition of wild animals. But mark well the difficulties. _All the obstacles encountered in carrying out the community idea are created by the evil propensities of the animals themselves._ Among the hoofed animals generally, every pair of horns and front hoofs is a possible storm-center. No keeper knows whether the members of his herd of deer will live together in peace and contentment until tomorrow, or whether, on any autumn or winter night, a buck will suddenly develop in his antlered head the thought that it is a good time to "kill something." In the pairing season we always watch for trouble, and the danger signal always is up. In October a male elk may become ever so savage, and finally develop into a raging demon, dangerous to man and beast; but when he first manifests his new temper openly and in the broad light of day, we feel that he is treating fairly both his herd-mates and his keepers. If he gives fair warning to the world about him, we must not class him as a mean criminal, no matter what he may do later on. It is our duty to corral him at night according to the violence of his rage. If we separate him from the herd, and he tears a fence in pieces and kills his rival, that is honest, open warfare, not foul murder. But take the following case. In October, 1905, the New York Zoological Park received from the state of Washington a young mule deer buck and two does. Being conspicuous members of the worst species of "difficult" deer to keep alive at Atlantic tidewater, and being also very thin and weak, it required the combined efforts of several persons to keep them alive. For six months they moped about their corral, but at last they began to improve. The oldest doe gave birth to two fawns which actually survived. But, even when the next mating season began, the buck continued to be lanquid and blase. At no time did he exhibit signs of temper, of even suspicious vigor. In the middle of the night of November 6, 1906, without the slightest warning, he decided to commit a murder, and the mother of the two nursing fawns was selected as the victim. Being weak from the rearing of her offspring, she was at his mercy. He gored her most savagely, about twenty times, and killed her. That was deliberate, fiendish and cowardly murder. The killing of any female animal by her male consort is murder; but there are circumstances wherein the plea of temporary insanity is an admissible defense. In the autumn, male members of the deer family _often become temporarily insane and irresponsible,_ and should be judged accordingly. With us, sexual insanity is a recognized disease. Such distressing cases as the above are so common that whenever I go deer-hunting and kill a lusty buck, the thought occurs to me,-- "another undeveloped murderer, perhaps!" The most exasperating thing about these corral murders is the cunning treachery of the murderers. Here is another typical case: For three years a dainty little male Osceola deer from Florida was as gentle as a fawn and as harmless as a dove. But one crisp morning Keeper Quinn, to whom every doe in his charge is like a foster-daughter, was horrified at finding blood on the absurd little antlers of the Osceola pet. One of the females lay dead in a dark corner where she had been murdered during the night; and this with another and older buck in the same corral which might fairly have been regarded as an offensive rival. The desire to murder for the sake of killing is born in some carnivorous animals, and by others it is achieved. Among the largest and finest of the felines, the lions and tigers, midnight murders very rarely occur. We never have known one. Individual dislike is shown boldly and openly, and we are given a fair chance to prevent fatalities. Among the lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and pumas of the New York Zoological Park, there has been but one murder. That was the crime of Lopez, the big jaguar, who richly deserved instant death as a punishment. It was one of the most cunning crimes I have ever seen among wild animals, and is now historic. For a year Lopez _pretended,_ ostentatiously, to be a good- natured animal! Twenty times at least he acted the part of a playful pet, inviting me to reach in and stroke him. At last we decided to give him a cage-mate, and a fine adult female jaguar was purchased. The animals actually tried to caress each other through the bars, and the big male completely deceived us, one and all. At the end of two days it was considered safe to permit the female jaguar to enter the cage of Lopez. She was just as much deceived as we were. An animal that is afraid always leaves its traveling- cage slowly and unwillingly, or refuses to leave it at all. When the two sets of doors were opened, the female joyously walked into the cage of her treacherous admirer. In an instant, Lopez rushed upon her, seized her whole neck in his powerful jaws, and crushed her cervical vertebrae by his awful bite. We beat him over the head; we spiked him; we even tried to brain him; but he held her, as a bull-dog would hold a cat, until she was dead. He had determined to murder her, but had cunningly concealed his purpose until his victim was fully in his power. Bears usually fight "on the square," openly and above-board, rarely committing foul murder. If one bear hates another, he attacks at the very first opportunity, He does not cunningly wait to catch the offender at a disadvantage and beyond the possibility of rescue. Sometimes a captive bear kills a cage-mate or mauls a keeper, but not by the sneaking methods of the human assassin who shoots in the dark and runs away. I do not count the bear as a common criminal, even though at rare intervals he kills a cage-mate smaller and weaker than himself. One killing of that kind, done by Cinnamon Jim to a small black bear that had annoyed him beyond all endurance, was inflicted as a legitimate punishment, and was so recorded. The attack of two large bears, a Syrian and a sloth bear, upon a small Japanese black bear, in which the big pair deliberately attempted to disembowel the small victim, biting him only in the abdomen, always has been a puzzle to me. I cannot fathom the idea which possessed those two ursine minds; but I have no doubt that some of the book-making men who read the minds of wild animals as if they were open books could tell me all about it. On the ice-pack in front of his stone hut at the north end of the Franz Josef Archipelago Nansen saw an occurrence that was plain murder. A large male polar bear feeding upon a dead walrus was approached across the ice-pack by two polar-bear cubs. The gorging male immediately stopped feeding and rushed toward the small intruders. They turned and fled wildly; but the villain pursued them, far out upon the ice. He overtook them, killed both, and then serenely returned to his solitary feast. In February, 1907, a tragedy occurred in the Zoological Park which was a close parallel of the Lopez murder. It was a case in which my only crumb of satisfaction was in my ability to say, "I told you so,"--than which no consolation can be more barren. For seven years there had lived together in the great polar bears' den of the Zoological Park two full-grown, very large and fine polar bears. They came from William Hagenbeck's great group, and both were males. Their rough-and-tumble wrestling, both in the swimming pool and out of it, was a sight of almost perennial interest; and while their biting and boxing was of the roughest character, and frequently drew blood, they never got angry, and never had a real fight. In the autumn of 1906 one of the animals sickened and died, and presently the impression prevailed that the survivor was lonesome. The desirability of introducing a female companion was spoken of, but I was afraid to try the experiment. By and by, Mr. Carl Hagenbeck, who had handled about forty polar bears to my one, wrote to us, offering a fine female polar as a mate to the survivor. She was conceded to be one-third smaller than the big male, but was fully adult. Without loss of time I answered, declining to make the purchase, on the ground that our male bear would kill the female. It was my belief that even if he did not at once deliberately murder her, he soon would wear her out by his rough play. Mr. Hagenbeck replied with the assurance that, in his opinion, all would be well; that, instead of a tragedy taking place, the male would be delighted with a female companion, and that the pair would breed. As convincing proof of the sincerity of his views, Mr. Hagenbeck offered to lose half the purchase price of the female bear in the event that my worst fears were realized. I asked the opinion of our head keeper of bears, and after due reflection he said: "Why, no; I don't believe he'd kill her. He's not a _bad_ bear at all. I think we could work it so that there would be no great trouble." Mr. Hagenbeck's son also felt sure there would be no tragedy. Quite against my own judgment of polar-bear character, but in deference to the expert opinion arrayed against mine, I finally yielded. The female bear was purchased, and on her arrival she was placed for three weeks in the large shifting-cage which connects with the eastern side of the great polar bears' den. The two animals seemed glad to see each other. At once they fraternized through the bars, licked each other's noses, and ate their meals side by side. At night the male always slept as near as possible to his new companion. There was not a sign of ill temper; but, for all that, my doubts were ever present. At last, after three full weeks of close acquaintance, it was agreed that there was nothing to be gained by longer delay in admitting the female to the large den. But we made preparations for trouble. The door of the sleeping-den was oiled and overhauled and put in thorough working order, so that if the female should dash into it for safety, a keeper could instantly slide the barrier and shut her in. We provided pike-poles, long iron bars, lariats, meat, and long planks a foot wide. Heartily wishing myself a hundred miles away, I summoned all my courage and gave the order: "Open her door, a foot only, and let her put her head out. Keep him away." The female bear had not the slightest fear or premonition of danger. Thrusting her head through the narrow opening, she looked upon the world and the open sky above, and found that it was good. She struggled to force the door open wider; and the male stood back, waiting. "Let her go!" Forcing the door back with her own eager strength, she fearlessly dropped the intervening eighteen inches to the floor of the den, and was free. The very _next second_ the male flung his great bulk upon her, and the tragedy was on. I would not for five thousand dollars see such a thing again. A hundred times in the twenty minutes that followed I bitterly regretted my folly in acting contrary to my own carefully formed conclusions regarding the temper, the strength, and the mental processes of that male bear. He never left her alone for ten seconds, save when, at five or six different times, we beat him off by literally ramming him away. When she first fell, the slope of the floor brought her near the cage bars, which gave us a chance to fight for her. We beat him over the head; we drove big steel spikes into him; and we rammed him with planks, not caring how many bones we might break. But each time that we beat him off, and the poor harried female rose to her feet, he flung himself upon her anew, crushed her down upon the snow, and fought to reach her throat! Gallantly the female fought for her life, with six wild men to help her. After a long battle,--it seemed like hours, but I suppose it was between twenty and thirty minutes, the male bear recognized the fact that so long as the female lay near the bars his own punishment would continue and the end would be postponed. Forthwith he seized his victim and dragged her inward and down to the ice that covered the swimming-pool in the centre of the den, beyond our reach. The floor of the den was so slippery from ice and snow that it was utterly unsafe for any of our men to enter and try to approach the now furious animal within striking distance. Very quickly some choice pieces of fresh meat were thrown within six feet of the bears, in the hope that the male would be tempted away from his victim. In vain! Then, with all possible haste, Keeper Mulvehill coiled a lasso, bravely entered the den, and with the first throw landed the noose neatly around the neck of the male bear. In a second it was jerked taut, the end passed through the bars, and ten eager arms dragged the big bear away from his victim and close up to the bars. Another lariat was put on him to guard against breakages, and no bear ever missed being choked to death by a narrower margin than did that one. That morsel of revenge was sweet. While he was held thus, two men went in and attached a rope to the now dying female, and she was quickly dragged into the shifting-cage. But the rescue came too late. At the last moment on the ice, the canine teeth of the big bear had severed the jugular vein of the female, and in two minutes after her rescue she was dead. It is my belief that at first the male did not intend to murder the female. I think his first impulse was to play with her, as he had always done with the male comrade of his own size. But the _joy of combat_ seized him, and after that his only purpose was to kill. My verdict was, not premeditated murder, but murder in the second degree. In the order of carnivorous animals, I think the worst criminals are found in the Marten Family (_Mustelidae_); and if there is a more murderous villain than the mink, I have yet to find him out. The mink is a midnight assassin, who loves slaughter for the joy of murder. The wolverine, the marten, mink and weasel are all courageous, savage and merciless. To the wolverine Western trappers accord the evil distinction of being a veritable imp of darkness on four legs. To them he is the arch-fiend, beyond which animal cunning and depravity cannot go. Excepting the profane history of the pickings and stealings of this "mountain devil" as recorded by suffering trappers, I know little of it; but if its instincts are not supremely murderous, its reputation is no index of its character. The mink, however, is a creature that we know and fear. Along the rocky shores of the Bronx River, even in the Zoological Park, it perversely persisted long after our park-building began. In spite of traps, guns, and poison, and the killing of from three to five annually in our Park, _Putorius vison_ would not give up. With us, the only creatures that practiced wholesale and unnecessary murder were minks and dogs. The former killed our birds, and during one awful period when a certain fence was being rebuilt, the latter destroyed several deer. A mink once visited an open-air yard containing twenty-two pinioned laughing gulls, and during that _noche triste_ killed all of those ill-fated birds. It did not devour even one, and it sucked the blood of only two or three. On another tragic occasion a mink slaughtered an entire flock of fifteen gulls; but its joy of killing was short-lived, for it was quickly caught and clubbed to death. A miserable little weasel killed three fine brant geese, purely for the love of murder; and then he departed this life by the powder-and-lead route. All the year round captive buffalo bulls are given to fighting, and for one bull to injure or kill another is an occurrence all too common. Even in the great twenty-seven thousand acre reserve of the Corbin Blue Mountain Forest Association, fatal fights sometimes occur. It was left to a large bull named Black Beauty, in our Zoological Park herd, to reveal the disagreeable fact that under certain circumstances a buffalo may become a cunning and deliberate assassin. In the spring of 1904, a new buffalo bull, named Apache, was added to the portion of our herd which up to that time had been dominated by Black Beauty. We expected the usual head-to-head battle for supremacy, succeeded by a period of peace and quiet. It is the law of the herd that after every contest for supremacy the vanquished bull shall accept the situation philosophically, and thereafter keep his place. At the end of a half-hour of fierce struggle, head-to-head, Black Beauty was overpowered by Apache, and fled from him into the open range. To emphasize his victory, Apache followed him around and around at a quiet walk, for several hours; but the beaten bull always kept a factor of safety of about two hundred feet between himself and the master of the herd. Convinced that Black Beauty would no longer dispute his supremacy, Apache at last pronounced for peace and thought no more about the late unpleasantness. His rival seemed to accept the situation, and rejoined the herd on the subdued status of an ex-president. For several days nothing occurred; but all the while Black Beauty was biding his time and watching for an opportunity. At last it came. As Apache lay dozing and ruminating on a sunny hill-side, his beaten rival quietly drifted around his resting-place, stealthily secured a good position, and, without a second's warning plunged his sharp horns deep into the lungs of the reclining bull. With the mad energy of pent-up and superheated fury, the assassin delivered stab after stab into the unprotected side of the helpless victim, and before Apache could gain his feet he had been gored many times. He lived only a few minutes. It was foul murder, fully premeditated; and had Black Beauty been my personal property, he would have been executed for the crime, without any objections, or motions, or appeals, or far-fetched certificates of unreasonable doubt. During the past twenty years a number of persons have been treacherously murdered by animals they had fed and protected. One of the most deplorable of these tragedies occurred late in 1906, near Montclair, New Jersey. Mr. Herbert Bradley was the victim. While walking through his deer park, he was wantonly attacked by a white-tailed buck and murdered on the spot. At Helena, Montana, a strong man armed with a pitchfork was killed by a bull elk. There have been several other fatalities from elk. The greater number of such crimes as the above have been committed by members of the Deer Family (deer, elk, moose and caribou). The hollow-horned ruminants seem to be different. I believe that toward their keepers the bison, buffaloes and wild cattle entertain a certain measure of respect that in members of the Deer Family often is totally absent. But there are exceptions; and a very sad and notable case was the murder of Richard W. Rock, of Henry's Lake, Idaho, in 1903. Dick Rock was a stalwart ranchman in the prime of life, who possessed a great fondness for big-game animals. He lived not far from the western boundry of the Yellowstone Park. He liked to rope elk and moose in winter, and haul them on sleds to his ranch; to catch mountain goats or mule deer for exhibition; and to breed buffaloes. His finest bull buffalo, named Indian, was one of his favorites, and was broken _to ride!_ Scores of times Rock rode him around the corral, barebacked and without bridle or halter. Rock felt that he could confidently trust the animal, and he never dreamed of guarding himself against a possible evil day. But one day the blood lust seized the buffalo, and he decided to assassinate his best friend. The next time Dick Rock entered the corral, closing the gate and fastening it securely,--thus shutting himself in,--the big bull attacked him so suddenly and fiercely that there was not a moment for either escape or rescue. We can easily estimate the suddenness of the attack by the fact that alert and active Dick Rock had not time even to climb upon the fence of the corral, whereby his life would have been saved. With a mighty upward thrust, the treacherous bull drove one of his horns deeply into his master's body, and impaled him so completely and so securely that the man hung there and died there! As a crowning horror, the bull was unable to dislodge his victim, and the body of the ranchman was carried about the corral on the horns of his assassin until the horrified wife went a mile and a half and summoned a neighbor, who brought a rifle and executed the murderer on the spot. Such sudden onslaughts as this make it unsafe to trust implicitly, and without recourse, to the good temper of any animal having dangerous horns. If bird-lovers knew the prevalence of the murder instinct among the feathered folk, no doubt they would be greatly shocked. Many an innocent-looking bird is really a natural villain without opportunity to indulge in crime. It is in captivity that the wickedness inherent in wild creatures comes to the surface and becomes visible. In the open, the weak ones manage to avoid danger, and to escape when threatened; but, with twenty birds in one large cage, escape is not always possible. A "happy-family" of a dozen or twenty different species often harbors a criminal in its midst; and when the criminal cunningly waits until all possibilities of rescue are eliminated, an assassination is the result. [Illustration with caption: RICHARD W. ROCK AND HIS BUFFALO MURDERER This bison treacherously killed the man soon after this picture was made] [Illustration with caption: "BLACK BEAUTY" MURDERING "APACHE"] Here is a partial list of the crimes in our bird collection during one year: A green jay killed a blue jay. A jay-thrush and several smaller birds were killed by laughing thrushes,--which simply love to do murder! A nightingale was killed by a catbird and two mocking- birds. Two snake-birds killed a third one--all of them thoroughly depraved villains. Three gulls murdered another; a brown pelican was killed by trumpeter-swans; and a Canada goose was killed by a gull. All these victims were birds in good health. It is deplorable, but nevertheless true, that in large mixed companies of birds, say where forty or fifty live together, it is a common thing for a sick bird to be set upon and killed, unless rescued by the keepers. In crimes of this class birds often murder their own kind, but they are quite as ready to kill members of other species. In 1902 a sick brant goose was killed by its mates; and so were a red-tailed hawk, two saras cranes, two black vultures, a road-runner, and a great horned owl. An aged and sickly wood ibis was killed by a whooping crane; and a night heron killed its mate. Strange as it may seem, among reptiles there is far less of real first-degree murder than among mammals and birds. Twenty rattlesnakes may be crowded together in one cage, without a family jar. Even among cobras, perhaps the most irritable and pugnacious of all serpents, I think one snake never wantonly murders another, although about once in twenty years one will try to swallow another. The big pythons and anacondas never fight, nor try to commit murder. And yet, a twenty-foot regal python with a bad heart--like Nansen's polar bear--could easily constrict and kill any available snake of smaller size. At this moment I do not recall one instance of wanton murder among serpents. It is well known that some snakes devour other snakes; but that is not crime. The record of the crocodilians is not so clear. It is a common thing for the large alligators in our Reptile House to battle for supremacy and in these contests several fatalities have occurred. Some of these occurrences are not of the criminal sort; but when a twelve-foot alligator attacks and kills a six-foot individual, entirely out of his class and far too small to fight with him, it is murder. An alligator will seize the leg of a rival and by violently whirling around on his axis, like a revolving shaft, twist the leg completely off. Among sea creatures, the clearly defined criminal instinct, as exhibited aside from the never-ending struggle for existence and the quest of food, is rarely observed, possibly because opportunities are so few. The sanguinary exploits of the grampus, or whale-killer, among whales small enough to be killed and eaten, are the onslaughts of a marine glutton in quest of food. Among the fishes there is one murderer whose evil reputation is well deserved. The common swordfish of the Atlantic, forty miles or so off Block Island or Montauk Point, is not only one of the most fearless of all fishes, but it also is the most dangerous. His fierce attacks upon the boats of men who have harpooned him and seek to kill him are well known, and his unparalleled courage fairly challenges our wonder and admiration. But, unfortunately, the record of the swordfish is stained with crime. When the spirit of murder prompts him to commit a crime in sheer wantonness, he will attack a whale, stab the unfortunate monster again and again, and pursue it until it is dead. This is prompted solely by brutality and murder lust, for the swordfish feeds upon fish, and never attempts to eat any portion of a whale. It can easily be proved that wild animals in a normal state of nature are by no means as much given to murder, either of their own kind or other kinds, as are many races of men. The infrequency of animal murders cannot be due wholly to the many possibilities for the intended victim to escape, nor to difficulty in killing. In every wild species murders are abundantly possible; but it is wholly against the laws of nature for free wild beasts to kill one another in wantonness. It is left to the savage races of men to commit murders without cause, and to destroy one another by fire. The family crimes and cruelties of people both civilized and savage completely eclipse in blackness and in number the doings of even the worst wild beasts. In wild animals and in men, crime is an index to character. The finest species of animals and the noblest races of men are alike distinguished by their abhorrence of the abuse of the helpless and the shedding of innocent blood. The lion, the elephant, the wild horse, the grizzly bear, the orang-utan, the eagle and the whooping crane are singularly free from the criminal instinct. On the other hand, even today Africa contains tribes whose members are actually fond of practicing cruelty and murder. In the Dark Continent there has lived many a "king" beside whom a hungry lion or a grizzly bear is a noble citizen. XXV FIGHTING WITH WILD ANIMALS The study of the intelligence and temperaments of wild animals is by no means a pursuit of academic interest only. Men now are mixing up with dangerous wild beasts far more extensively than ever before, and many times a life or death issue hangs upon the man's understanding of the animal mind. I could cite a long and gruesome list of trainers, keepers and park owners who have been killed by the animals they did not correctly understand. Not long ago, it was a park owner who was killed by a dangerous deer. Next it was a bull elk who killed the keeper who undertook to show that the animal was afraid of him. In Idaho we saw a death-penalty mistake with a bull buffalo. Recently, in Spain, an American ape trainer was killed by his big male chimpanzee. Recently in Switzerland a snake-charmer was strangled and killed on the stage by her python. Men who keep or who handle dangerous animals owe it to themselves, their heirs and their assigns to _know the animal mind and temperament, and to keep on the safe side._ In view of the tragedies and near-tragedies that animal trainers and keepers have been through during the past twenty years, I am desirous of so vividly exhibiting the wild animal mind and temper that at least a few of the mistakes of the past may be avoided in the future. Fortunately I am able to state that thus far no one ever has been killed by an animal in the Zoological Park; but several of our men have been severely hurt. The writer hereof carries two useless fingers on his best hand as a reminder of a fracas with a savage bear. How Dangerous Animals Attack Men. The following may be listed as the wild animals most dangerous to man: 1. In the open: Alaskan brown bears, the grizzly bears, lion, tiger, elephant, leopard, wolf, African buffalo, Indian gaur and buffalo, and gorilla. All these species are dangerous to the man who meddles with them, either to kill or to capture them. If they are not molested by man, there is very little to fear from any of them save the man- eating lions, and tigers, the northern wolf packs, Alaskan brown bears and rogue elephants. 2. In captivity, or in process of capture: Under this head a special list may be thus composed: Male elk and deer in the rutting season; male elephants over fifteen years of age; all bears over one year of age, and especially "pet" bears; all gorillas, chimpanzees and orangs over seven years of age (puberty); all adult male baboons, gibbons, rhesus monkeys, callithrix or green monkeys, Japanese red-faced monkeys and large macaques; many adult bison bulls and cows of individually bad temper; also gaur, Old World buffalo, anoa bulls, many individually bad African antelopes, gnus and hartebeests; all lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, wolves, hyenas, and all male zebras and wild asses over four years of age. How they attack. The _lion, tiger and bear_ launches at a man's head or face a lightning-quick and powerful fore-paw blow that in one stroke tears the skin and flesh in long gashes, and knocks down the victim with stunning force. Before recovery is possible the assailant rushes to the prostrate man and begins to bite or to tear him. Instinctively the fallen man covers his face with his arms, and with the lion, tiger and leopard the arms come in for fearful punishment. It is the way of carnivorous beasts to attack each other head to head and mouth to mouth, and this same instinct leads these animals to focus their initial attacks upon the heads and faces of their human quarry. After a man-eating lion or tiger has reduced the human victim to a state of non-resistance, the great beast seizes the man by a bite embracing the chest, and with the feet dragging upon the ground rushes off to a place of safety to devour him at leisure. Dr. David Livingston was seized alive by a lion, and carried I forget how many yards without a stop. His left humerus was broken in the onset, but the lion abandoned him without doing him any further serious harm. Once I could not believe that a lion or a tiger could pick up a man in his mouth and rapidly carry him off, as a fox gets away with a chicken; but when I shot a male tiger weighing 495 pounds, standing 37 inches high and measuring 35 inches around his jaws, I was forever convinced. In the Malay Peninsula Captain Syers told me that a tiger leaped a stockade seven feet high, seized a Chinese woodcutter, leaped out with him, and carried him away. In a scrimmage with a lion or tiger in the open, the fight is not prolonged. It is a case of kill or be killed quickly. The time of times for steady nerves and perfectly accurate shooting is when a lion, tiger or bear charges the hunter at full speed, beginning sufficiently far away to give the hunter a sporting chance. _The hunter can not afford to be "scared!"_ It is liable to cost too much! The Alaskan brown bear has a peculiar habit. Occasionally he kills the hunter he has struck down, but very often he contents himself with biting his victim on his fleshy parts, _literally from head to foot._ More than one unfortunate amateur hunter has been fearfully bitten without having a bone broken, and without having an important artery or vein severed. Such unfortunates lie upon their faces, with their arms protecting their heads as best they can, and take the awful punishment until the bear tires of it and goes away. Then they _crawl,_ on hands and knees, to come within reach of discovery and help. In the annals of Alaska's frontier life there are some heart-rending records of cases such as I have described, coupled with some marvellous recoveries. Strange to say, bear bites or scratches _almost never produce blood poisoning!_ This seems very strange, for the bites of lions, tigers and leopards very frequently end in blood poisoning, incurable fever and death. This probably is due to the clean mouth of the omnivorous bear and the infected mouth of the large cats, from putrid meat between their teeth. _The wolf_ is particularly dangerous to his antagonists, man or beast, from the cutting power of his fearful snap. His molar teeth shear through flesh and small bones like the gash of a butcher's cleaver; and his wide gape and lightning-quick movements render him a very dangerous antagonist. The bite of a wolf is the most dangerous to man of any animal bite to which keepers are liable, and it is the law of zoological gardens and parks that every wolf bite means a quick application of anti- rabies treatment at a Pasteur institute. Personally, I would be no more scared by a wolf-bite than by a feline bite, but the verdict of the jury is,--"it is best to be on the safe side." _Buck elk and deer_ very, very rarely attack men in the wilds, unless they have been wounded and brought to bay; and then very naturally they fight furiously. It is the attacks of captive or park-bred animals that are most to be feared. All the deer that I know attack in the same way,--first by a _slow_ push forward, in order to come to close quarters _without getting hurt,_ and then follows the relentless push, push, push to get up steam for the final raging and death-dealing drive. Even in fighting each other, buck elk and deer do not come together with a long run and a grand crash. Each potential fighter _fears for his own eyes,_ and conserves them by a cautious and deliberate engaging process. This is referred to in another chapter. Fortunately for poor humanity, the same slow and cautious tactics are adopted when a buck deer or wapiti decides to attack a man. This gives the man in the case a chance to put up his defense. The attacking deer lowers his head, throws his antlers far to the front, and pushes for the body of the man. The instant a tine touches the soft breast or abdomen, he lunges forward to drive it in. But thanks to that life-saving slow start, the man is mercifully afforded a few seconds of time in which to save himself, or at least delay the punishment. No man ever should enter the enclosure of a "bad" deer, or any buck deer in the rut, without a stout and tough club or pitchfork for defense. Of the two weapons, the former is the best. In the first place, keep away from all bad deer, especially between October and January first. If you are beset, follow these instructions, as you value your life: If unarmed, seize the deer by the antlers before he touches your vitals, hold on for all you are worth, and _shout for help. Keep your feet,_ just as long as you possibly can. Never mind being threshed about, so long as you keep your feet and keep the tines out of your vitals. Your three hopes are (1) that help will come, (2) or that you can come within reach of a club or some shelter, or (3) that the animal will in some manner decide to desist,--a most forlorn hope. With a good club, or even a stout walking-stick, you have a fighting chance. As the animal lowers his head and comes close up to impale you on his spears of bone, hit him a smashing blow _across the side of his head, or his nose._ In a desperate situation, _aim at the eye,_ and lay on the blows. If your life is in danger from a buck elk or a large deer, do not hesitate about putting out an eye for him. What are a thousand deer eyes compared with a twelve inch horn thrust through your stomach? My standing instructions to our keepers of dangerous animals are: "Save your own life, at all hazards. Don't let a dangerous animal kill you. Kill any animal rather than let it kill you!" It is useless to strike a charging deer on the top of its head, or on its antlers. Give a sweeping _side_ blow for the unprotected cheek and jaw, or the tender nose. There is nothing that a club can do that is so disconcerting as the eye and nose attack, for a badly injured eye always shuts both eyes, automatically. Once when alone in the corral of the axis deer herd, I was treacherously and wantonly attacked by a full-grown buck. I had violated my own rules about going in armed with a stick, and it was lucky for me that the axis deer was not as large as the barasingha or the mule deer. As the buck lowered his head, threw his long, sharp beams straight forward, and pushed for my vitals, I seized him by both antlers, to make my defense. At that he drove forward and nearly upset me. Quickly I let go the right antler and shifted myself to the animal's left side, where by means of the left antler I pulled the struggling buck's head around to my side. Then he began to plunge. Throwing the weight of my chest upon his shoulders I reached over him and with my free hand finally grasped his right foreleg below the knee, and pulled it up clear of the ground. With that I had him. He tried to struggle free, but I was strong in those days, and angry besides, and he was helpless. Up beside the deer barn, most providentially for the finish, I saw a very beautiful barrel stave. It was the very thing! I worked him over to it, caught it up, and then still holding him by his left antler I laid that stave along his side until he was well punished, and glad when released to rush from that neighborhood. Female "pet" deer, and female elk, can and do put up dangerous fights with their front hoofs, standing high up on their hind legs and striking fast and furiously. A gentleman of my acquaintance was thus attacked, most unexpectedly, by his pet white-tailed deer doe. She struck about a dozen times for his breast, and his vest and coat were slit open in several places. I once saw two cow elk engage with their front feet in a hot fight, but they did no real damage. Of course an angry _bison, buffalo or gaur_ lowers its head in attacking a man, and seeks to gore and toss him at the same moment. The American bison will start at a distance of ten or twenty yards, and with half lowered head jump forward, grunting "Uh! Uh! Uh!" as he comes. When close up he pauses for a second and poises his head for the toss. That is the man's one chance. At that instant he must strike the animal on the side of his head, and strike hard; and the region of the eye is the spot at which to aim. Once we were greatly frightened by the determined charge of a savage cow bison upon Keeper McEnroe, who was armed with a short- handled 4-tine pitchfork. As she grunted and came for him we could not refrain from shouting a terrorized warning, "Look out, McEnroe! Look out!" He looked out. He stood perfectly still, and calmly awaited the onset. The cow rushed close up, and dropped her chin low down for the goring toss. The keeper was ready for her. Swinging his pitchfork he delivered a smashing blow upon the left side of the cow's head, which disconcerted and checked her. Before she could recover herself he smashed her again, and again. Then she turned tail and ran, followed by the shouts of the multitude. _Adult male elephants_ are among the most dangerous of all wild animals to keep in captivity. They _will_ grow bad- tempered with adult age, keepers _will_ become careless of danger that is present every day, and a bad elephant often is a cunning and deceitful devil. The strength of an elephant is so great, the toughness of its hide is so pronounced, and the danger of a sudden attack is so permanent that life in a park with a "bad" elephant is one continuous nightmare. Naturally we have been ambitious to prevent all manner of fatal wild beast attacks upon our keepers. We try our best to provide for their safety, and having done that to the limit we say: "Now it is up to you to preserve your own life. If you can not save yourself from your bad animals, no other person can do it for you!" Either positively, comparatively or superlatively, a bad elephant is a cunning, treacherous and dangerous animal. We have seen several elephants in various stages of cussedness. Alice, the adult Indian female, is mentally a freak, but she is not vicious save under one peculiar combination of circumstances. Take her outside her yard, and instantly she becomes a storm centre. Gunda was bad to begin with, worse in continuation and murderously worst at his finish. At present Kartoum is dangerous only to inanimate fences and doors. A wild elephant attacks a hunter by charging furiously and persistently, sometimes making a real man-chase, seizing the man or knocking him down, and then impaling him upon his tusks as he lies. More than one hunter has been knocked down, and escaped the impalement thrust only through the mercy of heaven that caused the tusks to miss him and expend their murderous fury in the ample earth. On rare occasions an enraged wild elephant deliberately tramples a man to death; and there is one instance on record wherein the elephant held his dead native victim firmly to the ground while he tore him asunder "and actually jerked his arms and legs to some distance." In captivity a mean elephant kills a keeper, or other person, by suddenly knocking him down, and then either trampling upon him or impaling him. Gunda, our big male Indian tusker, was the worst elephant with which I ever came in close touch, and we hope never to see his like again. When about ten years old he came to us direct from Assam, and when I saw his big and bulging eyes, and the slits torn in his ears, I recognized him as a bad-tempered animal. I kept my opinions to myself. Two weeks later when we started Gunda's Hindu keeper back toward his native land, I sent for Keepers Gleason and Forester to give them a choice lot of instruction in elephant management. They heard me through attentively, and then Forester said very solemnly: "Director, I think that is a bad elephant; and I'm afraid of him!" Keeper Gleason willingly took him over, on condition that he should have sole charge of him, and as long as Gleason remained in our service he managed the elephant successfully. Elsewhere I have spoken at length of Gunda's mind and manners. He went steadily from bad to worse; but we never once really punished him. The time was when there was only one man in the world whom he feared, and would obey, and that was his keeper, Walter Thuman. I have seen that great dangerous beast cower and quake with fear, and back off into a corner, when Thuman's powerful voice yelled at him, and admonished him to behave himself. But all that ended on the day that he "got" Thuman. On that fateful afternoon, with no visitors present, Thuman opened the outside door, took Gunda by the left ear, and with his steel- shod elephant hook in his left hand started to lead the huge animal out into his yard. Just inside the doorway Gunda thought he saw his chance, and he took it. With a fierce sidewise thrust of his head he struck his keeper squarely on the shoulder and sent him plunging to the floor in the stall corner nearest him. Then, instantly he wheeled about and started to follow up his attack. In the fall Thuman's hook flew from his hand. At first Gunda tried to step on him, but he lay so close into the corner that the elephant could not plant his feet so that they would do execution. Then he tried to kneel upon the keeper, with the same result. Thuman struggled more closely into the corner, and tried hard to pull himself into the refuse box, through its low door; but with his trunk Gunda caught him by a leg and dragged him back. Then he made a fierce downward thrust with his tusks, which were nearly four feet long, to transfix his intended victim. His left tusk struck the steel-clad wall and shattered into fragments, half way up. The resounding crash of that breaking tusk was what saved Thuman's life. Gunda thrust again and again with his sound tusk, with the terrified and despairing keeper trying to cling to the broken tusk and save himself. At last the point of the sound tusk drove full and fair through the flat of Thuman's left thigh, as he lay, and stopped against the concrete floor. Experienced animal men always are listening for sounds of trouble. In the cage of Alice, three cages and a vestibule distant, Keeper Dick Richards was busily working, when he heard the peculiar crash of that shattered tusk. "What's all that!" said he; and "That's some trouble," was his own answer. Grabbing his pitchfork he shot out of that cage, ran down the keeper's passage and in about ten seconds' arrived in front of Gunda's cage. And there was Gunda, killing Walter Thuman. Richards darted in between the widely-separated front bars, gave a wild yell, and with a fierce thrust drove all the tines of his pitchfork into Gunda's unprotected hind-quarters, where the skin was thin and vulnerable. With a shrill trumpet scream of pain and rage, Gunda whirled away from Thuman, bolted through the door, and rushed madly into his yard. Keeper Thuman survived, and his recovery was presently accomplished. When I first called to see him he begged me not to kill Gunda for what he had done, or tried to do. In due course Thuman got well, and again took charge of Gunda; but after that the elephant was not afraid of him. We adopted a policy which prevented further accidents, but finally Gunda became a hopeless case of sexual insanity and lust for murder. When Gunda became most dangerous, we protected our keepers by chaining his feet, and keeping the men out of the reach of his trunk. Because of this, his fury was boundless; and as soon as it was apparent that he was suffering from his confinement and never would be any better, we quickly decided to end it all. He was painlessly put to death, by Mr. Carl E. Akeley, with a single .26 calibre bullet very skilfully sent through the elephant's brain. _Chimpanzees and Orang-Utans_ attack and fight men just as they attack each other,--by biting the face and neck, and the hands, shoulders and arms. The fighting ape always reaches out, seizes the arm or wrist of the person to be harmed, drags it up to his mouth and bites savagely. As a home illustration of this method of attack, a chimpanzee named Chico in the Central Park Menagerie once bit a finger from the hand of his keeper. In April, 1921, Mr. Ellis Joseph, the animal dealer, was very severely bitten on his face and neck by his own chimpanzee, so much so in fact that eighteen stitches were required to sew up his lacerations. One excellent thing about the manners of chimpanzees and orang- utans in captivity and on the stage is that they do not turn deadly dangerous all in a moment, as do bears and elephants, and occasionally deer. The ape who is falling from grace goes gradually, and gives warning signs that wise men recognize. They first become strong and boisterous, then they playfully resist and defy the keeper's restraining hand. Next in order they openly become angry at their keepers over trifles, and bristle up, stamp on the floor and savagely yell. It is then that the whip and the stick become not only useless but dangerous to the user, and must be discarded. It is then that new defensive tactics must be inaugurated, and the keeper must see to it that the big and dangerous ape gets no advantage. This means the exercise of good strategy, and very careful management in cage-cleaning. It calls for two cages for each dangerous ape. There is only one thing in this world of which our three big chimps are thoroughly afraid, and that is an absurd little _toy gun_ that cost about fifty cents, and looks it. No matter how bad Boma may be acting, if Keeper Palmer says in a sharp tone, "_Where's that gun!_" Boma hearkens and stops short, and if the "gun" is shown in front of his cage he flies in terror to the top of his second balcony, and cowers in a corner. Why are those powerful and dangerous apes afraid of that absurd toy? I do not know. Perhaps the answer is--instinct; but if so, how was it acquired? The natives of the chimp country do not have many firearms, and the white man's guns have been seen and heard by not more than one out of every thousand of that chimp population. Baboons Throw Stones. So far as we are aware, baboons are the only members of the Order Primates who ever deliberately throw missiles as means of offense. In 1922 there was in the New York Zoological Park a savage and aggressive Rhodesian baboon (_Choiropithecus rhodesiae,_ Haagner) which throws stones at people whenever he can get hold of such missiles. We have seen him set up against Keeper Palmer and Curator Ditmars a really vigorous bombardment with stones and coal that had been supplied him. His throw was by means of a vigorous underhand pitch, and but for the intervening bars he would have done very good execution. Keeper Rawlinson, of the Primate House, who was in the Boer War, states that on one occasion when his company was deploying along the steep side of a rock-covered kopje a troop of baboons above them rolled and threw so many stones down at the men that finally two machine guns were let loose on the savage beasts to disperse them. THE CURTAIN On one side of the heights above the River of Life stand the men of this little world,--the fully developed, the underdone, and the unbaked, in one struggling, seething mass. On the other side, and on a level but one step lower down, stands the vanguard of the long procession of "Lower" Animals, led by the chimpanzee, the orang and the gorilla. The natural bridge that _almost_ spans the chasm lacks only the keystone of the arch. Give the apes just one thing,--_speech,_--and the bridge is closed! Take away from a child its sight, speech and hearing, and the whole world is a mystery, which only the hardest toil of science and education ever can reveal. Give back hearing and sight, without speech, and even then the world is only half available. Give a chimpanzee articulate expression and language, and no one could fix a limit to his progress. Take away from a man the use of one lobe of his brain, and he is rendered speechless. The great Apes have travelled up the River of Life on the opposite side from Man, but they are only one lap behind him. Let us not deceive ourselves about that. Remember that truth is inexorable in its demands to be heard. We need not rack our poor, finite minds over the final problem of evolution, or the final destiny of Man and Ape. We cannot prove anything beyond what we see. We do not know, and we never can know, whether the chimpanzee has a "soul" or not; and we cannot _prove_ that the soul of man is immortal. If man possesses a soul of lofty stature, why not a soul of lowly stature for the chimpanzee? We do not know just _where_ "heaven" is; and we cannot know until we find it. But what does it all matter on earth, if we keep to the straight path, and rest our faith upon the Great Unseen Power that we call God? Said the great Poet of Nature in his ode "To a Waterfowl:" "He who from zone to zone Guides through the boundless Sky thy certain flight, In the long way that I must tread alone Will lead my steps aright." CURTAIN. BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY THE MINDS AND MANNERS OF WILD ANIMALS CAMP FIRES ON DESERT AND LAVA CAMP FIRES IN THE CANADIAN ROCKIES TAXIDERMY AND ZOOLOGICAL COLLECTING TWO YEARS IN THE JUNGLE The Experiences of a Hunter and Naturalist in India, Ceylon, the Malay Peninsula and Borneo. Illustrated. 8 vo. THE AMERICAN NATURAL HISTORY A Foundation of Useful Knowledge of the Higher Animals of North America. Four Crown Octavo Volumes, Illustrated in colors and half-tones. THE SAME Royal 8 vo. Complete in one volume. OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE Its Extermination and Preservation. 
37151	----	generously made available by The Internet Archive.) _Habits Haunts and Anecdotes of The Moose and Illustrations from Life_ _By Burt Jones_ _Founder of the National Sportsman_ To E. A. D. This volume is respectfully dedicated. Copyrighted, 1901, By CHARLES ALBERT JONES. Press of ALFRED MUDGE & SON, Boston. Edition de Luxe. ONE THOUSAND SIGNED COPIES. No. 812 Signed by Burt Jones [Illustration: YOUNG BULL MOOSE NEAR RUSSELL POND. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] NOTE TO THE READER. I wish to extend to the following well-known sportsmen my sincere thanks for their kindness in contributing to the illustrated section of this volume: Mr. G. E. Harrison, of the New York Press Club; Dr. O. H. Stevens, Marlboro, Mass.; Messrs. Harry L. and Louis O. Tilton, Newton, Mass.; Mr. George M. Houghton, Bangor, Maine; and Mr. John E. Barney, Canaan, N. H., who secured the photographs facing pages 55, 61, 83, and 127, the one opposite page 55 deserving special mention, as, in my estimation, it is the finest photograph of live cow moose and calves in existence. The entire collection is copyrighted, and any infringement on the same will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. PREFACE. "This is the forest primeval." "It is my home." So spoke the moose. Suffice it is to say, that a prize trophy over one's fireplace is an object to be admired by one and all. It brings you back to a last hunting trip, and well do you remember, as you gaze thereon, what a chase it had led you in life, through bog and alder swamp, until at last an opportunity presented itself whereby the deadly missile from your rifle sends him to his death. As the blue rings of smoke from your brier pipe float up and away, you are carried in thought to the North Woods wherein he roamed. There he lived, a monarch of all he surveyed. The excitement of the chase, while it is on, knows no bounds, but at the death it subsides, and you return to civilization to recall the event only when the time arrives that another pilgrimage to the happy hunting grounds is in order. On the other hand, you find him as a subject for your camera. An excellent one, too. Exiled in his domain for a few weeks and a wealth of enjoyment is yours, as, during the long winter evenings, you may open your album and see him before you as he was in life. The smoke from the same pipe will float up and away, and you can for a moment realize what a happy pastime you have enjoyed while a guest of Dame Nature in the Haunts of the Moose. TO HIS LORDSHIP. "Deep in the silent forest, where oft I've chanced to roam, The monarch moose inhabits, it is his woodland home; By silent lake at morning, by logan, calm at night, Majestic stands his lordship, stands motionless in sight. The north wind to him is music, the tall pines are his friends, The rivers madly rushing, o'er the rocks and round the bends, Seems to him a heavenly blessing, seems to him the work above Of a kind and thoughtful Father, and His beings He doth love." [Illustration: BULL MOOSE IN BLACK POND. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] CHAPTER I. HABITS AND HAUNTS. SECTIONS WHERE FOUND. STILL HUNTING. CALLING. POSSIBLE EXTERMINATION. Throughout the vast depths of the northern forests, bordered by the virgin growth of a trackless wilderness, often with an imperial fringe of timber-crowned hills, lives the moose. He is the largest, as well as the most highly prized, live game animal extant to-day on the American continent. Formerly, this species was very abundant throughout the region of country extending from the wilds of Northern Maine westward through the wilderness bordering on the Great Lakes and far beyond; but great havoc has been wrought, especially during the past twenty-five years, in the supply of this variety of game. Comparatively few are killed annually in the United States, and those mostly within the limits of Northern Maine and the States of the far Northwest, where the pernicious activity of the professional hunters and self-styled sportsmen, who kill the large beasts during the prevalance of deep snows, will, if not checked, bring the moose into the list of extinct species of American game before the close of another decade. No animal is so persistently hunted, and when killed, none considered so grand a trophy as his lordship. Owing to the comparatively small section of this country that he inhabits they are few in number, the Maine and Canadian wildernesses sheltering by far more moose than any other section. What few specimens found in far-off Alaska are world beaters in regard to size of body and spread of antlers, one having been shot in that territory whose horns measured over eight feet from tip to tip. The best breeding and feeding grounds are along the Canadian border, while favorite localities for the sportsmen are in the vicinity of lakes, ponds, and dead waters throughout the aforementioned sections. In appearance the moose is large and awkward; its huge head and broad nose, combined with its short, thick neck, giving it a rather grotesque appearance. In color, he is brown, while his legs and belly are grayish. His mane is almost black, and at any approaching danger rises upward, making him a most formidable foe to look upon. The moose travels over the ground in a swinging trot, exhibiting remarkable speed. This style of locomotion is adopted only when the animal is suddenly started. If the presence of man is detected, while the hunter is yet some distance away, the moose moves off with considerable caution, often selecting a course which the follower can pursue only with the greatest difficulty. [Illustration: COW MOOSE ON BLACK POND. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] The endurance of the animal is such that only the hardiest of hunters can hope to overtake him in a stern chase when he has once become alarmed. The broad, palmate antlers are a distinguishing feature, and happy is the hunter who can boast the possession of a head as a trophy taken from an animal killed by himself. While few are successful in this respect the greater majority must be content with perhaps a view of his lordship at a distance. Still hunting, or stalking the moose in his native wilds, is a branch of sport successfully followed by none except the skilled woodsmen and hardy hunter. The fatigue and countless obstacles to be met with are such that comparatively few amateur sportsmen attempt it. More frequently the animal is driven to the water by the guides and woodsmen, or attracted to such localities by calling. In Northern Maine and in the Canadian Provinces, the moose is often hunted during early winter by pursuing him on snow-shoes. Jacking is often effectively followed in mid-summer, along the lakes and rivers. This method is considered unsportsmanlike by those who possess the requisite skill and endurance to adopt the style of still hunting. In size and weight he exceeds that of the horse, specimens having been shot that weighed over twelve hundred pounds and stood seven and one-half feet to the shoulder. [Illustration: COW MOOSE IN HARRINGTON LAKE. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] In the summer he is to be seen feeding in and near the streams on the lily roots, of which he is exceedingly fond. This is the time of year that he is easily approached from a canoe as he stands, with head submerged, eating that dainty morsel. The black flies, at this season, are also to a great extent responsible for his taking to the water, as any of my readers who have had a few of these insects on them at one time usually feel disposed to follow his example in their endeavor to rid themselves of this pest. As winter approaches he leaves the lakes and streams, forming a yard or runway by passing to and fro, beating a track, and keeping the snow packed down hard. These runways are always located where there is good feed to be had from young hardwood trees, such as the moosewood (a species of ash), also poplar, birch, and mosses near at hand. He does not feed from the ground, and, owing to the great height of his forelegs, he can reach from eight to ten feet to secure his food. Nor are all these twigs tender, for his lordship makes short work of biting off a sapling an inch through if it is to his liking. Moose bring forth their young in May. Two calves are born, as a rule, though sometimes not more than one. The calf stays with the mother at least a year, and often two. While the cow moose is a timid animal, she is brave in defending her young. A story told by a trustworthy Indian guide illustrates this point. While paddling on Chesuncook Lake, one day, the guide saw a cow moose and a calf come down the bank and enter the water. He watched them until they had waded some distance from shore, when his attention was arrested by another animal coming out of the woods near them. It was a black bear. The bear was not seen by the cow. He slipped easily into the water and waded towards the cow and calf. Presently he got beyond his depth, his legs being much shorter than even a calf moose's, and therefore had to swim. He swam directly for the calf, and was rapidly nearing it when the cow saw him. The ungainly beast turned with remarkable quickness towards the bear, whom she attacked with her fore feet. Three or four sharp jabs with her pointed hoofs was enough to insure the protection of her offspring, with whom she soon left the water. The bear appeared to be _hors de combat_, and the guide paddled up to him, to find that his back had been broken by the powerful blows of the cow. The Indian dispatched the bear with his knife and saved the pelt. In size and strength the bull moose is probably the equal of any antlered animal that ever lived, one having been shot in Maine with a spread of over six feet. He sheds these splendid antlers every winter, generally in January. They are found sometimes by woodsmen, but usually are gnawed and eaten up by small animals as soon as dropped, as they have a salty flavor that makes them palatable to squirrels, sable, and the like. Owing to the color of his coat, it is hard to detect a moose sometimes in "black growth," that is, spruce or hemlock, for his upper part is brownish black, and his legs tone off into gray or yellowish white. The shanks are esteemed by residents of the woods country for making boots or "shoepacks," the hair being left on and turned outward. Such foot covering lasts indefinitely and sheds water perfectly. The hoof is peculiarly flexible, and divided farther, for example, than in the case of the ox. This enables him to walk easily on slippery surfaces, and through bogs, by spreading the hoofs. It is said that he can pass through a swamp where a man would become foundered, while the speed with which he passes over moss-grown boulders, or masses of blown-down trees, is remarkable. It is most discouraging, after tracking your game for hours at a time, to finally have to give it up on account of darkness setting in. Lighting your pipe, you retrace your steps to camp and await the coming of the morrow, when the routine of the previous day is gone over. It is the quiet, careful man who succeeds in tracking, as the breaking of a twig or the brushing of one's coat against a tree will jump your game, and in his fright he travels many miles before stopping. He is an exceptionally keen-scented animal, and mark you well as to the general direction of the wind before leaving camp, as to work along with it is fatal. Miles before you have seen him he smells you and immediately increases the distance from his would-be foe. [Illustration: TWIN MOOSE CALVES, THREE DAYS OLD. (Taken at the Headwaters of the Liverpool River, Nova Scotia.) Photographed from Life.] When the rutting season is at its height, along about the first of October, and the days warm, another method of moose-hunting is brought into play,--that of imitating the call of the cow with a birch horn about eighteen inches in length. There are many expert moose-callers in Maine and the Canadian Provinces, though they have by no means a monopoly of this accomplishment. The sound is most peculiar, and can only be acquired by long practice. The most expert callers are those who have taken lessons from nature,--that is, have been close to a female moose when she was calling the male. At least one in three of the Maine guides can call moose. With his birch horn, and seated beside some lake on a quiet evening, he sends back into the forest or across some shallow logan the weird "woo-oo-oo, woo-woo-oo" of the cow moose calling the bull. If there be a bull within hearing he will respond with a deep grunt. He will then tear along through the woods in the direction of the call, and perhaps splash out with a great noise into the shallow water where he expects to find a mate answering his amorous advances. Ordinarily the moose is a silent animal, being very careful not to make a noise. Old guides have said that in spite of his great spread of horns he will pass quietly through a thick growth. Generally, if seen in summer at the edge of a lake or stream, he slips noiselessly into the woods, but when the rutting season begins he casts his discretion to the winds and responds to the call of the cow with noisy disregard of consequences. He is also quarrelsome at such times, and should another bull happen to trespass on what he considers his territory there may be trouble. The rutting season is generally over by the first week in October, and the bulls will not answer the calls after that, unless the weather should hold very warm. Most guides claim that during the rutting season the bulls have a wide range, but that the cows remain in one neighborhood. While yarded moose are very methodical in their habits: they have, however, a single eye to one object, the detection of any intruder, therefore it is only by a knowledge of their habits that they can be approached by the hunter. It is their keen sense of hearing and smell that are to be guarded against, for as a rule, when the animal can see the hunter, he can also see the moose, and his capture becomes simply a question of marksmanship. It is certainly a unique sport and has few successful aspirants. Of the two, still hunting is usually the more successful and the greater number of moose are secured in that way. In the late fall, the coming of the first snow doubles one's chances of success as every step of the animal is shown. In tracking he usually goes through the worst places possible for him to find, which adds to one's discomfort and lessens one's chances of a shot. [Illustration: BULL MOOSE SWIMMING MUSQUOCOOK LAKE. (St. John Waters.) Photographed from Life.] Nature has bestowed upon him methods of passing through underbrush or blowdowns silently where a man in following makes a noise ten times as loud. The very silence of the forest is noisy. The wind whistling through the tree-tops, the bushes grating against one another, both contribute to make noise. Those of my readers who have heard the low, weird grunt of the bull moose, and have listened to the music of the crashing of the underbrush as he forces his way through in answer to the melancholy and drawn-out bellow of the cow, will understand full well when I say that it cannot be described, but must be heard to be appreciated, and is certainly worth all the hardships it entails to be listened to only once. I remember well of a time that my guide called from the edge of a lake at sunset, and received an answer from a large bull on a mountain a mile or two away, where we could hear him coming nearer and nearer as the moments wore on. After a half hour had elapsed he had reached the other side of the lake, and was so close that we did not dare to repeat the call for fear he would detect the artificial from the natural. He did not venture nearer, and as it was too dark to see him across the lake, we returned to camp, but that fifteen minutes will live long in my memory. To hunt moose successfully one must "rough it," and sleep without a fire, as the best time to hunt is at sunset and daylight, and with their keen sight and scent a fire means no moose. In his visits to the Maine woods half a century ago, Thoreau made copious notes about the moose, which was then slaughtered indiscriminately, by Indians and others, for their hides. This slaughter, which could not be called hunting, shocked the gentle naturalist from Concord, who made the prediction that "the moose will, perhaps, some day become extinct, and exist only as a fossil relic." This may be true, but the animal has judicial friends, and so long as they protect him, it does not appear as if the moose could become extinct from slaughter. Indeed, it is claimed that as many if not more moose are to be found now than fifty years ago. [Illustration: LARGE BULL MOOSE ON MUD POND BROOK. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life. Time exposure.] CHAPTER II. THE PROVINCIAL MOOSE. A BATTLE FOR SUPREMACY. LUCK AND ILL-LUCK. THE JUDGE AND THE BANKER. One of the greatest moose regions in the world is that portion of land drained by the tributaries of the St. John, Miramichi, and Restigouche rivers. It is true that portions of Nova Scotia, Quebec, and Labrador are roamed over by herds of these magnificent animals, but the best specimens of the race are found within the compass of Eastern New Brunswick. It is a country of hill and dale, cedar swamps, hardwood ridges, and barrens, where the blueberry, the hackmatack, and here and there stunted tamaracks break the general sweep of waste country. Along these barrens the moose loves to roam. Here he finds the moss of which he is so fond, and here, too, he gets the young shoots of various shrubs on which he feeds. He can also keep a weather eye on the approach of danger, and as he feeds, he occasionally throws his massive head in the air, and takes a sudden and piercing glance around the landscape. If satisfied, he gives a short grunt of evident pleasure and proceeds with his feeding. The best horns are secured in the months of late October, November, and early December. In January the horn begins to get soft, and soon falls off. It is said by hunters that the largest animals lose their antlers weeks earlier than the younger bulls. It is also claimed that the natural color of the moose-horn is white; that this is the color when the velvet comes off, but that contact with the trees, and rubbing against the bark--something which the moose apparently delights in--causes the horn to take that pretty shade of antique oak. There is all the difference in the world in horns. Some have a multitude of points; some have wider webs; some have stouter horn stems; some set more gracefully on the skull; some lie more horizontally than others; so that when the term a "choice head" is used it means that nature has given the bull all the beauty of antlers in profusion. With far greater agility and cunning than any other animal of its weight, the moose is a formidable opponent when attacked. Some narrow escapes have been made by hunters using the old cap gun, but now with the breech-loader the speed that guarantees security is given. I have seen a great curiosity in the form of the horns of two moose inextricably interlocked. The story these horns tell is that a duel to the death had taken place in a forest glade between a bull moose of eight hundred pounds weight and a younger one of perhaps four hundred pounds. The larger had an antler spread of three feet eight inches, the smaller, that of three feet. In the shock of the conflict, the horns of the younger had fitted snugly into the many branches of the other set of antlers, and the heads were as solidly and as perfectly fastened together as if bolted with iron. [Illustration: COW MOOSE, WITH CALVES, SWIMMING MUD POND. (West Branch Waters.)] That the fight had been long and stubborn the horns showed. Where they had come together they had been rubbed and worn to the depth of half an inch. The younger had died first, whether from exhaustion, or a broken neck, or starvation, is not apparent, but the condition of the flesh when found showed that he had lost the fight; and the victor did not long survive. Fastened to his dead competitor he could not feed with this weight of four hundred pounds attached to him, and must have succumbed to starvation. A similar case is reported, and is thus described:-- "No mortal eye witnessed what must have been a prolonged and fearful contest; but when their bodies were found in the lake the story of what had taken place was easily understood. The ground for some distance from the lake was torn and trampled where the ferocious animals had charged upon each other, and when the bodies were examined the antlers were found to be so firmly interlocked that it was impossible to separate them. In order to secure one good pair the finder sawed the other pair away, it not occurring to him at the time that the interlocked antlers would be of considerably more value than many pairs in the ordinary condition. In this instance it was evident that the stronger had gone to his death because of his strength. One of the two was much stronger than the other, and under ordinary circumstances this would have secured him the victory. As it was, the advantage was fatal. In rushing at each other, the antlers of the two locked together, and it was then that the larger moose thought he had the smaller one at his mercy. So he had, as far as the ability to push him about and force him back was concerned, but when the larger animal forced the smaller into the lake, both were indeed in a common peril and shared a common fate." Moose are not secured in a day. In fact, the greater majority of sportsmen require several trips to the woods to assure them success. There are exceptions to this rule, however. I recall the case of a sportsman who went into the wilderness for a two-weeks stay with his wife, and brought down a moose the first day out. He had no thought of getting one when he started, but it being his wife's birthday, he indulged in a dream and told her that she would be presented with a pair of moose antlers by him for a birthday present. This naturally pleased her ladyship, and her liege lord took his gun, his guide and canoe, and started out to try to fulfil his promise. [Illustration: SPIKE-HORN BULL SWIMMING MUD POND. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] When the canoe emerged from the stream into the pond the hunter and guide were surprised enough to see, at the edge, in shallow water, a large bull moose. The animal was up to his back feeding on the lily roots, splashing his great head about, and having no fear, in his lonely retreat, of being interrupted by hunters. The wind, being in the right direction, gave the men an advantage, as the moose could not scent them. The guide approached cautiously, never taking his paddle from the water as he propelled the light craft along. Suddenly the moose heard something, perhaps the gentle splash of water against the canoe, that made him look around. For a second he gazed silently at the two men sitting in the little craft, now scarcely a hundred yards away. Then he swung his great body slowly around (as there was soft mud on the pond bottom, and he could not make way swiftly in it) and started for the bank. The hunter held his fire, fingering his gun-lock nervously, until the moose had reached firm ground. It would not have done to shoot him in the mire, for, the water being shallow, half a dozen men could not have extracted the body; but with the first step the great beast (with mud and water dripping from his body) took upon the shore, a bullet pierced him in the neck. Then there was a succession of shots, and little jets of blood spurted out on the dark brown coat of the forest giant, who by this time was making rapid way along the rocky shore of the pond. A dense cedar swamp lay inland from the shore, and into it the wounded moose did not dare to plunge. He must retreat under fire, like a general with the enemy on one side and a river on the other. At last he disappeared in a thicket. The hunters had gone ashore and were after him, coming up just as he sank to earth. A bullet behind the ear discharged his debt to nature. That night a noble head adorned the camp of the hunter, who had unexpectedly made good a promise his wife never expected him to fulfil. Contrast this experience with another I have in mind, and the two sides of moose hunting will be illustrated. For three seasons a good hunter from a Massachusetts town had gone into Maine to get a moose, and three times he had returned home empty handed. He scorned to shoot deer. He hardly would have brought down a bear had one presented himself to be shot. He wanted moose. It was a hard country for hunting, a place of boulders and blowdowns and stumps,--a desolate waste. He saw moose tracks, and he was there to follow them, which he did long and wearily, for a day, and at night he slept in an abandoned camp. Again on the next day he followed them, seeing them sometimes on the soft, green moss, again at the side of a stream, or in some boggy place. At times they were lost on a rocky slope, or in a region of hard ground. There was no snow to aid the hunter, and the tracking of moose in such a country without it called for the best traits of the seasoned sportsman,--patience and endurance. [Illustration: BULL MOOSE IN DEEP SNOW. Taken during January, near Eagle Lake. Photographed from Life.] The trail led uphill at last, and after following it up the base of a mountain, amid scrub growth and blowdowns, the hunter was rewarded by seeing at long range a large bull. The moose scented the hunter almost as soon as sighted, and stood not upon the order of his going but sought a lower level. It was at this juncture that the resource of the experienced hunter came in. He did not stand and watch the animal disappear. Not he! Sending along a lead missile to announce his intentions, he set out in hot pursuit. There began such a chase as hunters seldom engage in. The moose had an advantage over the man, for he could take long leaps over depressions in the ground, and over fallen trees and big rocks. The hunter had to jump, run, slide, and bound along as best he could. He saw nothing but the moose, and he saw him only as one sees an express train disappearing in a fog. Whenever, by some change in the course of the animal, or a favorable turn in the ground, a shot was offered, the hunter fired; then he would pump another cartridge into the chamber of his rifle, and resume the pace. Thus tearing at break-neck speed down a rough mountain side, the sportsman, followed by his puffing guide, gradually came up to the moose. The bullets had taken effect, though not in a vital part, and the animal was weakening. But moose and hunter plunged on, through woods and under brush that grew at the bottom of the mountain, and at last, after what seemed a chase of a dozen miles, but which in reality might have been three, the hunter came into full sight of his anticipated prize in a clearing. This time the animal was in a position for a telling shot, which was sped with good aim, and brought the great beast to his knees. Another ended his career, and the hunter, out of breath, sat down to wipe his brow. He had lost his hat and mittens in the chase, his clothing was torn, and he was battered and bruised. This counted for nothing. He had brought down his moose after four seasons' work. It was necessary to "swamp" a road, that is, cut one through the woods, for a mile to get the carcass to a logging road over which it could be hauled to the river. As the first snow of the season fell that night the moose was brought out and it was comparatively easy work to get him to the railroad station on the next day. One more moose story may not be amiss. It has to do with a party of sportsmen, consisting of a judge and a banker, who went into a famous moose country to try their luck. They fired but one round during their stay in the woods, and with a guide brought down in that one volley three large bull moose. The story is fully vouched for and the heads of two of the bulls may now be seen in an Aroostook town. [Illustration: BULL MOOSE ON BLACK POND. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] These two hunters, like the first one mentioned, did not expect to find moose. They thought luck might take a turn in their favor, but were ready to sustain themselves in hope deferred if it did not. The judge and the banker went into the woods from a little settlement on the Aroostook River. They travelled a good sixty miles by horse-sled in the snow before reaching the place where they were to engage guides. It was another twenty-five miles to the camp where they put up on their first night out, a "depot" camp, where lumber crews going in and out stopped to rest and sleep. On the morning after their arrival the two hunters set out in the snow with their guide to look for moose signs. They walked half a dozen miles without finding any, and, getting tired, went back to camp, leaving the guide to pursue the quest, and let them know when he came up to a moose. This was not thoroughly sportsmanlike, they knew, but they were a pair of worthy men, past the meridian of life, and they did not stand on the ethics of the hunt. That night the guide returned and told them he knew where there was a yard of moose. Next morning, in the sharp air of a snappy-cold dawn, they set out to find the moose, and had walked but a few miles when tracks were found in the snow. Then, with the guide leading them, stopping as he went to avoid low branches laden with snow that hung across their way, or bending aside some twig to avoid noise, they half walked, half crawled for upwards of a mile. They saw moose signs that seemed to them good. At last the guide held up a warning hand, and proceeded more slowly than formerly. After many cranings of his neck and changes of position, he drew aside a branch and told his followers by signs to look in the direction he indicated with his snow-covered mitten. They looked, but could see nothing special at first. The guide patiently pointed out to them a clump of bushes against which he could see the heads of two moose. The animals were lying down, with their heads to the wind, as is always their custom. The hunters were for firing precipitately, but their ardor, so quickly aroused, was dampened by the guide, who motioned them to wait. There was a good wind blowing, and it came from the moose to the men. Moreover, it made a noise in the trees, and whispering was therefore safe among the hunters crouched in the snow. The guide informed them that there were three moose in the bunch. The judge and the banker could see but two, and these presented as fair a mark as ever man found for rifle. When the word was given the two men fired, also the guide. There was a movement among the moose, and the hunters rushed forward to see the execution they had wrought. It was startling. There in the snow, still kicking and quivering, lay three large moose. To the worthy judge and banker they looked as big as oxen. All three were in the throes of death. [Illustration: COW AND CALF MOOSE LEAVING THE WATER. (Lobster Lake.) Photographed from Life.] There was great rejoicing in the depot camp that night. The two friends thought themselves favored by the gods of the chase beyond their deserts. The story of the great hunt was soon current in the community in which the hunters lived. The version of it given here, with slight variations, is that of one of the principals in the episode. [Illustration: COW MOOSE AND CALVES SWIMMING MUD POND. (West Branch Waters.) Photographed from Life.] CHAPTER III. ANECDOTES OF THE MOOSE. A LARGE BULL IN THREE HOURS. MOOSE WILL ANSWER A CALL. TWO PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. FROM A GUIDE'S STANDPOINT. CRACK SHOTS. A JACK, A MOOSE, AN ACCIDENT. A NOBLE ANIMAL--BUT 'T WAS JUNE. THE ABLEST ROMANCE IN MOOSE HISTORY. Picture a hungry group at supper around the camp-fire as night shuts down, when the noisy jest and laughter are suddenly interrupted by your guide. Listen! There it is again from over the lake,--the fierce challenge of the bull and the horn-like note of the cow! I'll not try to record the many exciting incidents of those glorious morning and evening watches; how this one saw his lordship in broad daylight swagger across the open, just out of rifle range; how that one, in the darkness of the homeward trail, called a jealous bull so near that he could hear him breathe ere the tell-tale human scent turned his course; or how another stalked a cow moose by mistake, and watched her some time, vainly hoping her lord would call; for every hunter knows of these slips, making success more pleasant when it is yours. I must tell you, however, of that still October morning, of the faint mist rising from the lake, of the bright hills so fairly mirrored by the clear waters, and of the rising sun so dazzling on the mist and the water. Suddenly the guide and I drop the half-prepared breakfast and take to the canoe in haste. We had heard that note of notes--the angry challenge of a bull moose. The remembrance of that morning brings back the sound as I heard it a few miles away over the hills. Watch how the guide is carefully following the course of the sound. We soon reach the other side. There he is, head on! Wait! he may give a better shot. No! he sees the canoe. Shoot now or he will be gone! Bang! A miss, for he did not flinch! The smoke hides him! Bang! Bang! The guide has fired, too, but the smoke hampers both. There he goes, crashing through the thicket! Let's give him another for luck! He certainly was hard hit, and in that event it was best to let him go, for after a short period of time he would lie down, become stiff, and die. We paddled back to camp, finished breakfast, and in about three hours returned to the place from whence he had entered the woods, and there we found him, cold in death. He was a monster! A wealth of black, glossy hair, a splendid bell, and massive antlers, fit to adorn any mantel. [Illustration: _Under full head of steam_ _A Summer Episode in the Life of a young Bull Moose_ _Nearing terra firma_ Photographed from Life.] Three days later another fine bull fell to my party. Just at sunset he was called out from across a pond, and strolled with that majestic woodland swagger through the shallow water. The first shot so confused him that he turned and came directly towards us, but soon veered off. At a closer range this might have been interpreted as a fierce charge of the dying bull, though it was merely an aimless start of surprise. He fell, with the ball behind his shoulder, and we found him quite dead. It was a fatal one, though it failed to stop him until he had gone fifty yards. There was one section I had not visited, and this was to the east, in the direction of the brook which had proven too small for floating logs. So it was that after pulling the cabin door to, I made tracks toward the stream, which I knew must be asleep under four or five inches of ice and two feet of snow. [Illustration: Off for t'other side Safe ashore What's that? Bound inland Photographed from Life.] In half an hour's time I had reached the bank and crossed over, keeping close to it all the time. I had not gone far beyond the ravine-like formation with the brook hugging its lowest point, when there were unmistakable evidences of large game. Moose it was. Tracks as large as a cow, great rents in the snow crust, through which the brown earth showed in spots; these were some of the traces. I went back across the ravine and proceeded up-stream, following the east bank; saw several fresh tracks, but they were cows, and along in the afternoon, while travelling up an old brook, I saw the imprints of a large bull, and they were big ones, together with a cow and calf. It did not take me long to decide what to do, and as they followed the brook I knew that they had not heard me. The wind was favorable and they were working up into it. Finally they left the brook and that necessitated more caution on my part. I had covered about half a mile and I heard the cow calling. Suddenly she came into view. I worked up to within forty yards of her in hopes to find the bull, but ran into the calf, a two-year-old; luckily he did not see me. Things were getting interesting, with a moose on my left and another in front of me. Working my way cautiously along I heard the bull in the thick growth. He was so covered that I could hardly see him. By careful inspection, one antler and part of his shoulder showed. Raising my rifle I fired, at which he stepped into the clearing and stood defiant. What a noble looking fellow he was, and a monster in size as he stood there shaking his head, blood running from his mouth and nostrils. Once again I fired. As the last one struck he went down, the shot breaking his shoulder blade--another victim of the 30-30. The experience of a young New Yorker will serve to exemplify both the uncertainty of moose calling and the manner in which it is prosecuted. He was hunting in the Bear River woods, accompanied by one of the most expert guides of that section. Two nights of calling proved fruitless. The sportsman frankly told his guide he had no faith in it, and that he did not believe a moose would come to the call of a man. This considerably ruffled the guide's conceit, and he resolved, if possible, to make a lasting impression to the contrary on the mind of his employer. That afternoon an ideal place for calling was chosen. The tent was pitched beside a giant boulder, on one side of which a narrow, open bog stretched away between wooded banks, and on the other a sort of natural park extended to the foot of a ridge covered with hard wood. The guide exacted the promise that his companion would not shoot until he gave the word. All arrangements being complete, as the sun was nearing the western horizon, the guide climbed to the top of the boulder and sounded the call. [Illustration: BULL MOOSE IN CARIBOU LAKE. Photographed from Life.] Almost immediately, from the ridge, about two miles away, came the deep-voiced answer of an old bull. A few minutes sufficed to show that he was coming at a rapid pace. The guide continued to call at regular intervals, and in a few minutes another answer was heard far down the bog, though this time from a smaller moose. A few seconds later brought a reply from a third, in another direction. The sport was getting exciting. The guide came down from his perch on the rock and stationed his employer and himself behind a smaller boulder, over which it was possible to look while lying on the ground. The guide thought the young moose would not come up for fear of the larger ones, and of course the one he wanted was the monster that had first answered. In that, however, he was disappointed. The distance was considerable, and while the big bull was still a long way off he was interrupted and turned from his course by another party of hunters. The little one on the bog ceased to answer, but the large one that had started last was, when the sun went down, already quite near, and coming steadily along. When the moose was about breaking cover the guide climbed partly up the big rock and noted the direction from which he was coming, satisfying himself the game would appear on the side of the boulder on which they were stationed. Another call, and the bull's hoofs were heard beating the firm ground as he trotted up the slope toward the men. In full view of the hunters, and about ten yards from them, grew a bunch of sapling birches. There the moose paused and began a furious onslaught with his antlers. Having tired of that, he turned toward the hunters, and going down on his knees plowed his horns along the ground some distance, tossing them, well loaded with vines, moss, and earth. With a snort, he shook these from his head, the dirt falling on and around the two men lying behind the rock. The city man about that time was enjoying his first acute attack of moose fever. His teeth fairly chattered, and the guide had to grip his rifle barrel to prevent it from rattling against the rock. Again the moose came on and stood with his broadside toward them, not more than twelve feet from the muzzle of the rifle. That was about as close quarters as the guide cared for on his own account, so he gave the word to fire. The moose went down with the shot, but immediately rose to his feet again. Again the rifle spoke, and down he went, only to rise again. The third shot, however, dropped him for the last time. Any of them would have proved fatal, but the moose was too close for the men to take any chances. The sportsman was convinced a moose would come at a man's call, and was so excited over the fact that he slept none on that night. I recall an experience of mine with an old bull on Pockwockamus Dead Water (from my note book), Oct. 21, 1899. I had gone only a few steps when I heard the splashing of a moose around the bend of the stream ahead. There was a stretch of sand that led to an island for which I made. There I concealed myself in the brush. I could hear the big fellow wading along and ploughing through the reeds. I first saw his antlers above the brush, and then his majestic head appeared. That was all he would show, as he suspected a hidden foe and was on the lookout for any apparent danger. For distance, he was about one hundred yards from me and close inshore. Finally an opportunity presented itself, and I raised my rifle and let go through the leaves where his neck should be. At the report he made a quick turn and disappeared in the thick growth. I dashed through the water, which was only about three feet deep, up the opposite bank, and pushed my way through the bushes to where I had last seen him. There he lay. My shot was fatal. As I appeared he snorted at me and tried to regain his feet, but his efforts were ineffectual. I then put him out of his misery with a shot through the heart. [Illustration: COW MOOSE IN UMSASKIS LAKE. Photographed from Life.] Still another is worthy of mention. At one time the guide and myself were coming back to camp, just about dusk, after a long tramp, and were within sight of the tents, when we heard a moose off to the right and close to the trail. The guide tried to coax him out of the thicket by gently sounding the birch horn, which he had with him. The moose turned with a crash and ran towards us, grunting all the time. We were crouched behind a pile of birch brush. The big fellow kept coming, until it seemed as if he might at any moment jump over the brush pile and appear before us. It was too dark to shoot, so I slightly changed my position, thinking I might see the moose outlined against the sky. Just as I moved, the moose turned, ran some distance back into the woods and stopped, grunting again as if he was not certain about it all; but he was soon off, this time silently. The next morning I was out early examining the tracks, and found it only sixteen paces from where we were behind the brush pile to where his lordship had been standing. I could see where he had barked the trees with his antlers when he was first frightened. It is fortunate for some of the sportsmen who journey to the north woods after big game in the fall that their guides live so far away, otherwise their reputation might suffer. This concerns both their personal traits and their ability as hunters. Camp life brings out a man's true qualities. The experience of a sportsman during his first attempt to lure a moose from his home in the forest is related as follows:-- One of the party tried his luck at calling. He left the guide at the camp. Quietly hiding among some shrubs, he gave a gentle but long-drawn-out call and waited results. Hardly had the notes died away than there was a tremendous crash, the alders parted, and the head of a large bull moose appeared in the leafy frame within ten feet of the hunter. This abrupt entrance dumfounded the sportsman whose confusion and consternation were pretty evenly balanced at a moment when he needed his wits. Who was the more frightened it was hard to tell. At any rate the caller returned to camp posthaste minus his gun, horn, and hat, and with an expression that was indeed pitiable. A guide, who had a well-known preacher in the woods for a short time one season, refused to take him the following year. On being asked the reason he said:-- "That man cares only for himself and thinks his guide can be wound up with a key to work like a machine. He may be good enough to preach the Gospel, but he ain't good enough for me to guide." [Illustration: YOUNG BULL AND COW MOOSE SWIMMING. (Lobster Lake.) Photographed from Life.] Many are the stories told by the guides about the unsuccessful sportsmen who lack the moral courage to go home empty-handed. So accustomed have the guides become to this sort of thing that they take it for granted, unless instructed to the contrary, that they are to kill the game their employer is to take home with him, provided he does not meet with success in the early part of the hunt. Another guide has to say of visiting sportsmen: "Some of them shoot all right, of course, but others are regular Spaniards. I had a fellow up this way last fall that thought he was death on anything walking on four legs, and that his gun was the best shooting tool ever turned out of a gun factory. I paddled him right up to a bull moose standing in the water one day, and he fired every shot in his magazine at it without rumpling a hair. "He didn't know enough to stop pumping the lever when all his shells were gone, and just about then I chipped in with my rifle and put a ball through the moose's shoulder that dropped him handy to the bank. The sportsman was in the act of pulling the trigger of his empty gun, when he saw the moose fall, and he didn't for a moment doubt but what he had killed him. He felt so good that he rose right up in the canoe and yelled, and the next thing I knew the canoe kind of slid out from under us and over we went into four feet of mud and water." [Illustration: BULL MOOSE IN CARIBOU LAKE. Photographed from Life.] A New York sportsman had his guide call a moose into the East Branch thoroughfare one evening just before dark, and the guide tells of his difficulty in pointing him out to the sportsman, who happened to be nearsighted. The moose walked right out into the water away from the concealment of the bushes and stopped. The guide nudged the sportsman and whispered to shoot. "Shoot what?" said the sportsman in a louder tone than was prudent under the circumstances. "I don't see anything to shoot." "Shoot the moose," he whispered again, "there he stands under that broken-topped spruce." The lawyer craned his neck and peered into every shadow but the right one. Two or three rods below the moose was a clump of bushes growing out beyond the general shore line. The lawyer finally singled this out as the moose and opened fire. He was perfectly cool, and every one of his shots went straight to the centre of the object at which he was firing. Moose are notoriously slow to start when alarmed, provided they have not scented the hunter, and the one in question stood motionless until the sportsman had fired five shots at his inanimate target and had but one cartridge left in the magazine. Then the moose turned to escape, and, as luck would have it, dashed directly into the line of fire. The lawyer saw it, and with his sixth and last shot dropped the moose stone dead. [Illustration: BULL MOOSE IN ALLAGASH STREAM. (St. John Waters.) Photographed from Life.] On another occasion, a sportsman, to show his contempt for Maine's prohibition law, got gloriously full every day before ten o'clock. The guide left him in the canoe one afternoon while he went ashore to look for some game signs on a bog near at hand. As he was returning he saw a nice moose step out of cover within ridiculously easy rifle shot of the sportsman. The sportsman at once opened fire on the moose, but after many shots the animal trotted off, untouched. "'T was this haway," said the bibulous hunter, in explaining his misses, "when that moose came out there was only one, all right enough, but when I cut loose with the old gun, blame if the moose didn't double up into two. I couldn't shoot both at once, and while I was pumping it into one the other got away. Mus' ha' been I shot at the wrong moose." [Illustration: BULL AND COW MOOSE. Photographed from Life.] "You want to hear how my sports shoot?" said another native guide. "Well, I'll tell you a little story and then you can judge for yourself. I started out on the river one afternoon with a man from Boston, to look for moose. It was a nice, quiet afternoon, and a good one to get game. We dropped down stream with the current, and the first thing we knew there was a big bull moose right out in the centre of the stream, sousing his head under water, and feeding on the lily roots. Mr. A. was paralyzed at the sight, for he never attempted to shoot. I held the canoe by putting my paddle down to the bottom, to give him a chance to recover his nerve, and after a while he realized what was expected of him, raised his rifle and fired. The shot did not go any where near the moose, and the animal just raised his head and stood there, looking back over its shoulder. I whispered to Mr. A.: 'You missed. Shoot again.' As it happened, my paddle slipped off into deep water, and we were floating down on the moose and getting a good deal closer than necessary. Mr. A. raised his gun and shot again, and then, as the moose started to walk towards the bank, he got the action limbered up and fired four more shots as quick as he could work the lever. None of them touched the moose, and it moved off into the bushes, without seeming to mind the racket very much. The moose wasn't nearly as rattled as Mr. A. That man was completely prostrated with excitement. Nothing would do but we must go straight back to camp. He said his nerves were too badly broken up to stand anything more of the kind that day. "Well, sir, we hadn't gone more than three hundred yards on our return trip, when I saw another bull on the bog adjacent to the stream. I paddled Mr. A. within good, easy range, and he tried his luck again, but the bullet struck the water twenty feet to the right. With that he began to swear, and he threw his rifle down on the bottom of the canoe, cussing it and everything else in sight. The moose gave a sudden jump and disappeared in the alders. I reckon the swearing scared it more than the shooting. [Illustration: MOOSE CALVES LEAVING WATER. (Mud Pond Region.) Photographed from Life.] "We hadn't more than a mile to go to reach camp, when Providence, just to tantalize that man, gave him another opportunity. As we came around the last bend, there stood a bull and a cow on the bank, not a great way off. Mr. A. shot twice at the bull, as he stood there, and never touched a hair. ''T ain't no use trying,' he said, 'I can shoot at a paper target all right, but when it comes to game it's a different matter.' If all the hunters who go into Maine could shoot as well in the woods as they can at a mark there wouldn't be a decent head left in the State. "Now, there is a sample of your city sportsmen. That man fired nine shots at those moose and he never drew blood, and I could have hit the larger majority of them with a brick. Yes, sir; if I'd had a good brick I could have swatted any one of those animals in the short ribs." [Illustration: COW MOOSE SWIMMING MOOSEHEAD LAKE Photographed from Life.] One of the most amusing incidents to others than the participants, and a most painful one to them, was the experience of two young moose hunters from far off Oregon, who tried their luck in the lower Dead River region of Maine with a jack. The night selected was one of exceptional darkness, the scene, a large bog about five miles from camp, and all conditions pointed to a most successful first attempt at this most unsportsmanlike branch of hunting. Supper over, with both eager for the fray, an early start was in order, and soon the silent craft with its over-anxious freight left the bank and started down stream. The intense stillness of an early summer night was not broken save by an occasional muskrat hurrying to its home in the bank or the ripples playing round the bow of their canoe. Mile after mile was reeled off, when suddenly a loud splashing was heard dead ahead in the stream. It was a simple matter for the man with the jack to light it, but his experience with the instrument in question was limited, and he had not discovered the slide arrangement by which the light is quickly covered without extinguishing it. The splashing continued, and both were undecided whether to back out of their present position or light up and see what the real cause of the disturbance was. The man in the stern suggested that the lamp had better remain in the bottom of the canoe, while his friend in the bow considered it far better to have a little light on the subject and therefore be able to get their bearings. By scratching a match and connecting it with the wick, the jack threw a strong light far ahead on the silent waters. It required but a second to see a large dark object ten rods ahead, waist deep in the water, and standing head on. Moose fever had attacked both of the men, and they sat motionless as the large black object cautiously moved nearer, wondering at each step who was challenging him in his woodland retreat. By a superhuman effort the stern man, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, told his friend to extinguish the light, as the animal would be upon them in a short space of time. The animal, which proved to be a large bull moose, decided that a closer inspection of these trespassers was in order. He was now scarce a rod away, and the light from the jack being exceedingly bright made him somewhat bewildered, with the result that he charged the canoe. The water, being shallow at this point, favored the men and prevented a possible catastrophe. His lordship jumped in and the men jumped out of the canoe. They crawled to the bank and secreted themselves as best they could under a neighboring tree, while the animal made short work of the frail craft he had suddenly taken possession of. A reasonable time having expired, the guides at the camp became somewhat anxious as to the safety of their charges, and started in search. At the approach of another craft the moose trotted off into the woods, leaving the thoroughly frightened sportsmen in their undesirable position, where they were found and taken back to camp, two sadder, and I might add, wiser Oregonians. [Illustration: TWO MAGNIFICENT TROPHIES OF THE CHASE. The one on the left formerly held the Maine Record.] [Illustration: YOUNG BULL MOOSE CAUGHT IN DEEP SNOW. (Northern Aroostook.) Photographed from Life.] A NOBLE ANIMAL--BUT 'TWAS JUNE. The waters of Black Pond, which but a scarce hour before had been lashed into foam by a southwardly breeze, were silent. In the west the myriad tints of a golden sunset were disappearing and the tiny stars were beginning to peep through their blanket of blue. Against this majestic picture, in the foreground, stood tall pines, rising like sentinels from the bog in which for years they had found their growth. Far out on the lake could be heard the solitary cry of a loon calling to his mate. What can be more sublime, more entertaining, to the true sportsman than to be left alone with nature in this paradise? A suggestion from the guide that we skirt the shore and see if there be any game in the pond brought hearty approval from his employer, and seating myself in the bow, we were soon under way. Such music the tiny ripples make as they frolic and dance at the bow, as the craft glides noiselessly along, the whirr of many wings, and a large flock of wild ducks are up and away at our approach. The moon is on the rise, and lights this woodland paradise with its shining rays. Suddenly a loud splashing was heard down the shore not many rods distant, and the guide sheers off so as to approach the forest denizen from the side. Again the splashing, and twenty rods distant can be seen a large moose, throwing the water from off his sides, unconscious of any human intruders. Such a picture as he made, standing side on, fearless and brave. The guide had stopped paddling, and the momentum gained was carrying us nearer every second. Suddenly, coming into his line of vision, he turned his head in our direction and showed us a most magnificent pair of velvet-covered antlers. In his eye was the look of defiance, and, with his great head lifted high in the air, the water still dripping from his brown coat, he seemed to say, "Well, it's June, what are you going to do about it?" And so it was. We left him, and slowly paddled back to camp, wishing that the seasons for a scarce minute had changed,--that October had been June, that June had been October,--and most of all that we could have used a rifle. [Illustration: COW MOOSE ON SHORE OF ALLAGASH LAKE. Photographed from Life.] THE ABLEST ROMANCE IN MOOSE HISTORY IS THUS DESCRIBED: The man who tells it says he was hunting in the mountains of Nova Scotia, when he saw a huge bull moose grazing on a patch of moss, a hundred yards away. He up and fired but when the smoke had cleared away, there stood the moose grazing as before. Again he fired, and again he was chagrined to see that the moose didn't seem to mind it. A third shot, and the moose disappeared. Much excited, the hunter ran to the moss patch, and there, on the further slope, lay three dead moose. Pretty risky story to tell in Maine. THE END. 
42871	----	WILD LIFE NEAR HOME [Illustration: "The feast is finished and the games are on."] Wild Life Near Home By Dallas Lore Sharp With Illustrations By Bruce Horsfall [Illustration] NEW YORK The Century Co. 1901 Copyright, 1901, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1897, by The J. B. Lippincott Co. Copyright, 1897, by Perry Mason & Co. Copyright, 1898, by Frank Leslie's Publishing House. _Published October, 1901._ TO MY WIFE CONTENTS PAGE IN PERSIMMON-TIME 1 BIRDS' WINTER BEDS 31 SOME SNUG WINTER BEDS 47 A BIRD OF THE DARK 65 THE PINE-TREE SWIFT 79 IN THE OCTOBER MOON 95 FEATHERED NEIGHBORS 111 "MUS'RATTIN'" 169 A STUDY IN BIRD MORALS 185 RABBIT ROADS 207 BRICK-TOP 233 SECOND CROPS 247 WOOD-PUSSIES 277 FROM RIVER-OOZE TO TREE-TOP 295 A BUZZARDS' BANQUET 321 UP HERRING RUN 341 I wish to thank the editors of "Lippincott's Magazine," "Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly," "Zion's Herald," and the "Youth's Companion" for allowing me to reprint here the chapters of "Wild Life Near Home" that first appeared in their pages. DALLAS LORE SHARP. ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE The feast is finished and the games are on _Frontispiece_ Ripe and rimy with November's frosts 5 Swinging from the limbs by their long prehensile tails 7 Under such conditions he looks quite like a ferocious beast 10 Filing through the corn-stubs 13 Here on the fence we waited 16 He had stopped for a meal on his way out 20 Playing possum 22 She was standing off a dog 26 The cheerful little goldfinches, that bend the dried ragweeds 37 There she stood in the snow with head high, listening anxiously 45 And--dreamed 46 I shivered as the icy flakes fell thicker and faster 52 The meadow-mouse 55 It was Whitefoot 60 From his leafless height he looks down into the Hollow 63 It caught at the insects in the air 71 Unlike any bird of the light 77 They peek around the tree-trunks 83 The sparrow-hawk searching the fences for them 88 In October they are building their winter lodges 103 The glimpse of Reynard in the moonlight 106 They probe the lawns most diligently for worms 117 Even he loves a listener 118 She flew across the pasture 121 Putting things to rights in his house 122 A very ordinary New England "corner" 124 They are the first to return in the spring 127 Where the dams are hawking for flies 130 They cut across the rainbow 135 The barn-swallows fetch the summer 137 From the barn to the orchard 138 Across the road, in an apple-tree, built a pair of redstarts 140 Gathered half the gray hairs of a dandelion into her beak 143 In the tree next to the chebec's was a brood of robins. The crude nest was wedged carelessly into the lowest fork of the tree, so that the cats and roving boys could help themselves without trouble 145 I soon spied him on the wires of a telegraph-pole 148 He will come if May comes 151 Within a few feet of me dropped the lonely frightened quail 152 On they go to a fence-stake 154 It was a love-song 156 But the pair kept on together, chatting brightly 161 In a dead yellow birch 163 So close I can look directly into it 164 Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went chuckling down the bank 170 The big moon was rising over the meadows 173 Section of muskrat's house 174 The snow has drifted over their house till only a tiny mound appears 177 They rubbed noses 179 Two little brown creatures washing calamus 180 She melted away among the dark pines like a shadow 186 She called me every wicked thing that she could think of 189 It was one of those cathedral-like clumps 191 They were watching me 192 A triumph of love and duty over fear 199 He wants to know where I am and what I am about 203 In the agony of death 205 Calamity is hot on his track 212 Bunny, meantime, is watching just inside the next brier-patch 215 The squat is a cold place 217 The limp, lifeless one hanging over the neck of that fox 220 His drop is swift and certain 225 Seven young ones in the nest 231 The land of the mushroom 239 Witch-hazel 244 I knew it suited exactly 252 With tail up, head cocked, very much amazed, and commenting vociferously 254 In a solemn row upon the wire fence 257 Young flying-squirrels 258 The sentinel crows are posted 260 She turned and fixed her big black eyes hard on me 265 Wrapped up like little Eskimos 266 It is no longer a sorry forest of battered, sunken stumps 269 Even the finger-board is a living pillar of ivy 272 A family of seven young skunks 284 The family followed 289 "Spring! spring! spring!" 300 A wretched little puddle 303 He _was_ trying to swallow something 307 In a state of soured silence 322 Ugliness incarnate 325 Sailing over the pines 328 A banquet this _sans_ toasts and cheer 333 Floating without effort among the clouds 337 From unknown regions of the ocean 345 A crooked, fretful little stream 346 Swimming, jumping, flopping, climbing, up he comes! 349 Here again hungry enemies await them 355 IN PERSIMMON-TIME [Illustration] WILD LIFE NEAR HOME [Illustration] IN PERSIMMON-TIME The season of ripe persimmons in the pine-barren region of New Jersey falls during the days of frosty mornings, of wind-strewn leaves and dropping nuts. Melancholy days these may be in other States, but never such here. The robin and the wren--I am not sure about all of the wrens--are flown, just as the poet says; but the jay and the crow are by no means the only birds that remain. Bob White calls from the swales and "cut-offs"; the cardinal sounds his clear, brilliant whistle in the thickets; and the meadow-lark, scaling across the pastures, flirts his tail from the fence-stake and shouts, _Can you see-e me?_ These are some of the dominant notes that still ring through the woods and over the fields. Nor has every fleck of color gone from the face of the out-of-doors. She is not yet a cold, white body wrapped in her winding-sheet. The flush of life still lingers in the stag-horn sumac, where it will burn brighter and warmer as the shortening days darken and deaden; and there is more than a spark--it is a steady glow--on the hillsides, where the cedar, pine, and holly stand, that will live and cheer us throughout the winter. What the soil has lost of life and vigor the winds have gained; and if the birds are fewer now, there is a stirring of other animal life in the open woods and wilder places that was quite lost in the bustle of summer. And yet! it is a bare world, in spite of the snap and crispness and the signs of harvest everywhere; a wider, silenter, sadder world, though I cannot own a less beautiful world, than in summer. The corn is cut, the great yellow shocks standing over the level fields like weather-beaten tepees in deserted Indian villages; frosts have mown the grass and stripped the trees, so that, from a bluff along the creek, the glistening Cohansey can be traced down miles of its course, and through the parted curtains, wide vistas of meadow and farm that were entirely hidden by the green foliage lie open like a map. This is persimmon-time. Since most of the leaves have fallen, there is no trouble in finding the persimmon-trees. They are sprinkled about the woods, along the fences and highways, as naked as the other trees, but conspicuous among them all because of their round, dark-red fruit. [Illustration: "Ripe and rimy with November's frosts."] What a season of fruit ours is! Opening down in the grass with the wild strawberries of May, and continuing without break or stint, to close high in the trees with the persimmon, ripe and rimy with November's frosts! The persimmon is the last of the fruits. Long before November the apples are gathered--even the "grindstones" are buried by this time; the berries, too, have disappeared, except for such seedy, juiceless things as hang to the cedar, the dogwood, and greenbrier; and the birds have finished the scattered, hidden clusters of racy chicken-grapes. The persimmons still hold on; but these are not for long, unless you keep guard over the trees, for they are marked: the possums have counted every persimmon. You will often wonder why you find so few persimmons upon the ground after a windy, frosty night. Had you happened under the trees just before daybreak, you would have seen a possum climbing about in the highest branches, where the frost had most keenly nipped the fruit. You would probably have seen two or three up the trees, if persimmons were scarce and possums plentiful in the neighborhood, swinging from the limbs by their long prehensile tails, and reaching out to the ends of the twigs to gather in the soft, sugary globes. Should the wind be high and the fruit dead ripe, you need not look into the trees for the marauders; they will be upon the ground, nosing out the lumps as they fall. A possum never does anything for himself that he can let the gods do for him. Your tree is perhaps near the road and an old rail-pile. Then you may expect to find your persimmons rolled up in possum fat among the rails; for here the thieves are sure to camp throughout the persimmon season, as the berry-pickers camp in the pines during huckleberry-time. Possums and persimmons come together, and Uncle Jethro pronounces them "bofe good fruit." He is quite right. The old darky is not alone in his love of possums. To my thinking, he shows a nice taste in preferring November possum to chicken. [Illustration: "Swinging from the limbs by their long prehensile tails."] It is a common thing, in passing through Mount Zion or Springtown in the winter, to see what, at first glance, looks like a six-weeks' pig hanging from an up-stairs window, but which, on inspection, proves to be a possum, scalded, scraped, and cleaned for roasting, suspended there, out of the reach of dogs and covetous neighbors, for the extra flavor of a freezing. Now stuff it and roast it, and I will swap my Thanksgiving turkey for it as quickly as will Uncle Jethro himself. Though the possum is toothsome, he is such a tame, lumbering dolt that few real sportsmen care for the sorry joy of killing him. Innumerable stories have been told of the excitement of possum-hunting; but after many winters, well sprinkled with moonlight tramps and possums, I can liken the sport to nothing more thrilling than a straw-ride or a quilting-party. There is the exhilarating tramp through the keen, still night, and if possum-hunting will take one out to the woods for such tramps, then it is quite worth while. No one could hunt possums except at night. It would be unendurably dull by daylight. The moon and the dark lend a wonderful largeness to the woods, transforming the familiar day-scenes into strange, wild regions through which it is an adventure merely to walk. There is magic in darkness. However dead by day, the fields and woods are fully alive at night. We stop at the creaking of the bare boughs overhead as if some watchful creature were about to spring upon us; every stump and bush is an animal that we have startled into sudden fixedness; and out of every shadow we expect a live thing to rise up and withstand us. The hoot of the owl, the bark of the fox, the whinny of the coon, send shivers of excitement over us. We jump at a mouse in the leaves near by. Helped out by the spell of moonlight and the collusion of a ready fancy, it is possible to have a genuine adventure by seizing a logy, grinning possum by the tail and dragging him out of a stump. Under such conditions he looks quite like a ferocious beast, grunting and hissing with wide-open mouth; and you may feel just a thrill of the real savage's joy as you sling him over your shoulder. [Illustration: "Under such conditions he looks quite like a ferocious beast."] But never go after possums alone, nor with a white man. If you must go, then go with Uncle Jethro and Calamity. I remember particularly one night's hunt with Uncle Jethro. I had come upon him in the evening out on the kitchen steps watching the rim of the rising moon across the dark, stubby corn-field. It was November, and the silver light was spreading a plate of frost over the field and its long, silent rows of corn-shocks. When Uncle Jethro studied the clouds or the moon in this way, it meant a trip to the meadows or the swamp; it was a sure sign that geese had gone over, that the possums and coons were running. I knew to-night--for I could smell the perfume of the ripe persimmons on the air--that down by the creek, among the leafless tops of the persimmon-trees, Uncle Jethro saw a possum. "Is it Br'er Possum or Br'er Coon, Uncle Jethro?" I asked, slyly, just as if I did not know. "Boosh! boosh!" sputtered the old darky, terribly scared by my sudden appearance. "W'at yo' 'xplodin' my cogitations lak dat fo'? W'at I know 'bout any possum? Possum, boy? Possum? W'at yo' mean?" "Don't you sniff the 'simmons, Uncle Jeth?" Instinctively he threw his nose into the air. "G' 'way, boy; g' 'way fum yhere! I ain't seen no possum. I 's thinkin' 'bout dat las' camp-meetin' in de pines"; and he began to hum: "Lawd, I wunda, who kilt John Henry, In de la-ane, in de lane." Half an hour later we were filing through the corn-stubs toward the creek. Uncle Jethro carried his long musket under his arm; I had a stout hickory stick and a meal-sack; while ahead of us, like a sailor on shore, rolled Calamity, the old possum-dog. If in June come perfect days, then perfect nights come in November. There is one thing, at least, as rare as a June day, and that is a clear, keen November night, enameled with frost and set with the hunter's moon. Uncle Jethro was not thinking of last summer's camp-meeting now; but still he crooned softly a camp-meeting melody: "Sheep an' de goats a- Gwine to de pastcha, Sheep tell de goats, 'Ain't yo' Walk a leetle fasta?' "Lawd, I wunda, who kilt John Henry, In de la-ane, in de lane. "Coon he up a gum-tree, Possum in de holla; Coon he roll hi'self in ha'r, Possum roll in talla. "Lawd, I wunda--" until we began to skirt Cubby Hollow, when he suddenly brought himself up with a snap. It was Calamity "talkin' in one of her tongues." The short, sharp bark came down from the fence at the brow of the hill. Uncle Jethro listened. [Illustration: "Filing through the corn-stubs."] "Jis squirrel-talk, dat. She'll talk possum by-um-bit, she will. Ain't no possum-dog in des diggin's kin talk possum wid C'lamity. An' w'en _she_ talk possum, ol' man possum gotter listen. Sell C'lamity? Dat dog can't be bought, she can't." As we came under the persimmon-trees at the foot of Lupton's Pond, the moon was high enough to show us that no possum had been here yet, for there was abundance of the luscious, frost-nipped fruit upon the ground. In the bare trees the persimmons hung like silver beads. We stopped to gather a few, when Calamity woke the woods with her cry. "Dar he is! C'lamity done got ol' man possum now! Down by de bend! Dat's possum-talk, big talk, fat talk!" And we hurried after the dog. We had gone half a mile, and Uncle Jethro had picked himself up at least three times, when I protested. "Uncle Jeth!" I cried, "that's an awfully long-legged possum. He'll run all his fat off before we catch him." "Dat's so, boy, shu' 'nough! W'at dat ol' fool dog tree a long-legged possum fo', nohow? Yer, C'lamity, 'lamity, yer, yer!" he yelled, as the hound doubled and began to track the _rabbit_ back toward us. We were thoroughly cooled before Calamity appeared. She was boxed on the ear and sent off again with the command to talk possum next time or be shot. She was soon talking again. This time it _must_ be possum-talk. There could be no mistake about that long, steady, placid howl. The dog must be under a tree or beside a stump waiting for us. As Uncle Jethro heard the cry he chuckled, and a new moon broke through his dusky countenance. "Yhear dat? _Dat's_ possum-talk. C'lamity done meet up wid de ol' man dis time, shu'." And so she had, as far as we could see. She was lying restfully on the bank of a little stream, her head in the air, singing that long, lonesome strain which Uncle Jethro called her possum-talk. It was a wonderfully faithful reproduction of her master's camp-meeting singing. One of his weird, wordless melodies seemed to have passed into the old dog's soul. But what was she calling us for? As we came up we looked around for the tree, the stump, the fallen log; but there was not a splinter in sight. Uncle Jethro was getting nervous. Calamity rose, as we approached, and pushed her muzzle into a muskrat's smooth, black hole. This was too much. She saw it, and hung her head, for she knew what was coming. "Look yhere, yo' obtuscious ol' fool. W'at yo' 'sociatin' wid a low-down possum as takes t' mus'rats' holes? W'at I done tol' yo' 'bout dis? Go 'long home! Go 'long en talk de moon up a tree." And as Uncle Jethro dropped upon his knees by the hole, Calamity slunk away through the brush. I held up a bunch of freshly washed grass-roots. "Uncle Jeth, this must be a new species of possum; he eats roots like any muskrat," I said innocently. It was good for Calamity not to be there just then. Uncle Jethro loved her as he would have loved a child; but he vowed, as he picked up his gun: "De nex' time dat no-'count dog don't talk possum, yo' 'll see de buzzard 'bout, yo' will." We tramped up the hill and on through the woods to some open fields. Here on the fence we waited for Calamity's signal. [Illustration: "Here on the fence we waited."] "Did you say you wouldn't put any price on Calamity, Uncle Jethro?" I asked as we waited. There was no reply. "Going to roast this possum, aren't you?" Silence. "Am I going to have an invite, Uncle Jeth?" "Hush up, boy! How we gwine yhear w'at dat dog say?" "Calamity? Why, didn't you tell her to go home?" The woods were still. A little screech-owl off in the trees was the only creature that disturbed the brittle silence. The owl was flitting from perch to perch, coming nearer us. "W'at dat owl say?" whispered Uncle Jethro, starting. "'No possum'? 'no possum'? 'no possum'? Come 'long home, boy," he commanded aloud. "W'en ol' Miss Owl say 'No possum,' C'lamity herself ain't gwine git none." And sliding to the ground, he trudged off for home. We were back again in the corn-field with an empty sack. The moon was riding high near eleven o'clock. From behind a shock Calamity joined us, falling in at the rear like one of our shadows. Of course Uncle Jethro did not see her. He was proud of the rheumatic old hound, and a night like this nipped his pride as the first frosts nip the lima-beans. It was the owl's evil doing, he argued all the way home. "W'en ol' Miss Owl say 'Stay in'--no use: 'Simmons sweet, 'simmons red, Ain't no possum leave his bed. All de dogs in Mount Zion won't fin' no possum out dis night." No; it was not Calamity's fault: it was Miss Owl's. We were turning in back of the barn when there came a sudden yelp, sharp as a pistol-shot, and Calamity darted through Uncle Jethro's legs, almost upsetting him, making straight for the yard. At the same moment I caught sight of a large creature hurrying with a wabbly, uncertain gait along the ridge-pole of the hen-house. It was a possum--as big as a coon. He was already half-way down the side of the coop; but Calamity was below him, howling like mad. Uncle Jethro nearly unjointed himself. Before the frightened animal had time to faint, the triumphant hunter was jouncing him up and down inside the sack, and promising the bones and baking-pan to Calamity. "W'at dat yo' mumblin', boy? Gwine ax yo'self a' invite? G' 'way; g' 'way; yo' don' lak possum. W'at dat yo' sayin' 'g'in' C'lamity? Yo' 's needin' sleep, chil', yo' is. Ain't I done tol' yo' dat dog gwine talk possum by-um-bit? W'at dem 'flections 'g'in' ol' Miss Owl? Boosh, boy! Dat all fool-talk, w'at ol' Miss Owl say. We done been layin' low jis s'prise yo', me an' C'lamity an' ol' Miss Owl has." And as he placed the chopping-block upon the barrel to keep the possum safe till morning, he began again: "Coon he up a gum-tree, Possum in de holla; Coon he roll hi'self in ha'r, Possum roll in talla. "Lawd, I wunda, who kilt John Henry, In de la-ane, in de lane." The next morning Uncle Jethro went to get his possum. But the possum was gone. The chopping-block lay on the woodshed floor, the cover of the barrel was pushed aside, and the only trace of the animal was a bundle of seed-corn that he had pulled from a nail overhead and left half eaten on the floor. He had stopped for a meal on his way out. Uncle Jethro, with Uncle Remus, gives Br'er Rabbit the wreath for craft; but in truth the laurel belongs to Br'er Possum. He is an eternal surprise. Either he is the most stupidly wise animal of the woods, or the most wisely stupid. He is a puzzle. Apparently his one unburied talent is heaviness. Joe, the fat boy, was not a sounder nor more constant sleeper, nor was his mental machinery any slower than the possum's. The little beast is utterly wanting in swiftness and weapons, his sole hope and defense being luck and indifference. To luck and indifference he trusts life and happiness. And who can say he does not prosper--that he does not roll in fat? [Illustration: "He had stopped for a meal on his way out."] I suppose there once were deer and otter in the stretches of wild woodland along the Cohansey; but a fox is rare here now, and the coon by no means abundant. Indeed, the rabbit, even with the help of the game laws, has a hard time. Yet the possum, unprotected by law, slow of foot, slower of thought, and worth fifty cents in any market, still flourishes along the creek. A greyhound must push to overtake a rabbit, but I have run down a possum with my winter boots on in less than half-way across a clean ten-acre field. He ambles along like a bear, swinging his head from side to side to see how fast you are gaining upon him. When you come up and touch him with your foot, over he goes, grunting and grinning with his mouth wide open. If you nudge him further, or bark, he will die--but he will come to life again when you turn your back. Some scientifically minded people believe that this "playing possum" follows as a physiological effect of fear; that is, they say the pulse slackens, the temperature falls, and, as a result, instead of a pretense of being dead, the poor possum actually swoons. A physiologist in his laboratory, with stethoscope, sphygmoscope, thermometer, and pneumonometer, may be able to scare a possum into a fit--I should say he might; but I doubt if a plain naturalist in the woods, with only his two eyes, a jack-knife, and a bit of string, was ever able to make the possum do more than "play possum." We will try to believe with the laboratory investigator that the possum does genuinely faint. However, it will not be rank heresy to run over this leaf from my diary. It records a faithful diagnosis of the case as I observed it. The statement does not claim to be scientific; I mean that there were no 'meters or 'scopes of any kind used. It is simply what I saw and have seen a hundred times. Here is the entry: [Illustration: Playing possum.] POSSUM-FAINT _Cause._ My sudden appearance before the patient. _Symptoms._ A backing away with open mouth and unpleasant hisses until forcibly stopped, when the patient falls on one side, limp and helpless, a long, unearthly smile overspreading the face; the off eye closed, the near eye just ajar; no muscular twitching, but most decided attempts to get up and run as soon as my back is turned. _Treatment._ My non-interference. _Note._ Recovery instantaneous with my removal ten feet. This whole performance repeated twelve times in as many minutes. December 26, 1893. I have known the possum too long for a ready faith in his extreme nervousness, too long to believe him so hysterical that the least surprise can frighten him into fits. He has a reasonable fear of dogs; no fear at all of cats; and will take his chances any night with a coon for the possession of a hollow log. He will live in the same burrow with other possums, with owls,--with anything in fact,--and overlook any bearable imposition; he will run away from everything, venture anywhere, and manage to escape from the most impossible situations. Is this an epileptic, an unstrung, flighty creature? Possibly; but look at him. He rolls in fat; and how long has obesity been the peculiar accompaniment of nervousness? It is the amazing coolness of the possum, however, that most completely disposes of the scientist's pathetic tale of unsteady nerves. A creature that will deliberately walk into a trap, spring it, eat the bait, then calmly lie down and sleep until the trapper comes, has no nerves. I used to catch a possum, now and then, in the box-traps set for rabbits. It is a delicate task to take a rabbit from such a trap; for, give him a crack of chance and away he bolts to freedom. Open the lid carefully when there is a possum inside, and you will find the old fellow curled up with a sweet smile of peace on his face, fast asleep. Shake the trap, and he rouses yawningly, with a mildly injured air, offended at your rudeness, and wanting to know why you should wake an innocent possum from so safe and comfortable a bed. He blinks at you inquiringly and says: "Please, sir, if you will be so kind as to shut the door and go away, I will finish my nap." And while he is saying it, before your very eyes, off to sleep he goes. Is this nervousness? What, then, is it--stupidity or insolence? Physically as well as psychologically the possums are out of the ordinary. As every one knows, they are marsupials; that is, they have a pouch or pocket on the abdomen in which they carry the young. Into this pocket the young are transferred as soon as they are born, and were it not for this strange half-way house along the journey of their development they would perish. At birth a possum is little more than formed--the least mature babe among all of our mammals. It is only half an inch long, blind, deaf, naked, and so weak and helpless as to be unable to open its mouth or even cry. Such babies are rare. The smallest young mice you ever saw are as large as possums at their birth. They weigh only about four grains, the largest of them, and are so very tiny that the mother has to fasten each to a teat and _force_ the milk down each wee throat--for they cannot even swallow. They live in this cradle for about five weeks, by which time they can creep out and climb over their mother. They are then about the size of full-grown mice, and the dearest of wood babies. They have sharp pink noses, snapping black eyes, gray fur, and the longest, barest tails. I think that the most interesting picture I ever saw in the woods was an old mother possum with eleven little ones clinging to her. She was standing off a dog as I came up, and every one of the eleven was peeking out, immensely enjoying this first adventure. The quizzing snouts of six were poked out in a bunch from the cradle-pouch, while the other five mites were upon their mother's back, where they had been playing Jack-and-the-beanstalk up and down her tail. [Illustration: "She was standing off a dog."] Historically, also, the possum is a conundrum. He has not a single relative on this continent, except those on exhibition in zoölogical gardens. He left kith and kin behind in Australia when he came over to our country. How he got here, and when, we do not know. Clouds hang heavy over the voyages of all the discoverers of America. The possum was one of the first to find us, and when did he land, I wonder? How long before Columbus, and Leif, son of Eric? In his appetite the possum is no way peculiar, except, perhaps, that he takes the seasons' menus entire. Between persimmon-times he eats all sorts of animal food, and is a much better hunter than we usually give him credit for. Considering his slowness, too, he manages to plod over an amazing amount of territory in the course of his evening rambles. He starts out at dusk, and wanders around all night, planning his hunt so as to get back to his lair by dawn. Sometimes at daybreak he is a long way from home. Not being able to see well in the light, and rather than run into needless danger, he then crawls into the nearest hole or under the first rail-pile he comes to; or else he climbs a tree, and, wrapping his tail about a limb, settles himself comfortably in a forked branch quite out of sight, and sleeps till darkness comes again. [Illustration] On these expeditions he picks up frogs, fish, eggs, birds, mice, corn, and in winter a chicken here and there. In the edge of a piece of woods along the Cohansey there used to stand a large hen-coop surrounded by a ten-foot fence of wire netting. One winter several chickens were missing here, and though rats and other prowlers about the pen were caught, still the chickens continued to disappear. One morning a possum was seen to descend the wire fence and enter the coop through the small square door used by the fowls. We ran in; but there was no possum to be found. We thought we had searched everywhere until, finally, one of us lifted the lids off a rusty old stove that had been used to heat the coop the winter before, and there was the possum, with two companions, snug and warm, in a nest of feathers on the grate. Here were the remains of the lost chickens. These sly thieves had camped in this stove ever since autumn, crawling in and out through the stovepipe hole. During the day they slept quietly; and at night, when the chickens were at roost, the old rascals would slip out, grab the nearest one, pull it into the stove, and feast. Is there anything on record in the way of audacity better than that? [Illustration] BIRDS' WINTER BEDS [Illustration] BIRDS' WINTER BEDS The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold. A storm had been raging from the northeast all day. Toward evening the wind strengthened to a gale, and the fine, icy snow swirled and drifted over the frozen fields. I lay a long time listening to the wild symphony of the winds, thankful for the roof over my head, and wondering how the hungry, homeless creatures out of doors would pass the night. Where do the birds sleep such nights as this? Where in this bitter cold, this darkness and storm, will they make their beds? The lark that broke from the snow at my feet as I crossed the pasture this afternoon-- What comes o' thee? Whar wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, An' close thy e'e? The storm grew fiercer; the wind roared through the big pines by the side of the house and swept hoarsely on across the fields; the pines shivered and groaned, and their long limbs scraped over the shingles above me as if feeling with frozen fingers for a way in; the windows rattled, the cracks and corners of the old farm-house shrieked, and a long, thin line of snow sifted in from beneath the window across the garret floor. I fancied these sounds of the storm were the voices of freezing birds, crying to be taken in from the cold. Once I thought I heard a thud against the window, a sound heavier than the rattle of the snow. Something seemed to be beating at the glass. It might be a bird. I got out of bed to look; but there was only the ghostly face of the snow pressed against the panes, half-way to the window's top. I imagined that I heard the thud again; but, while listening, fell asleep and dreamed that my window was frozen fast, and that all the birds in the world were knocking at it, trying to get in out of the night and storm. The fields lay pure and white and flooded with sunshine when I awoke. Jumping out of bed, I ran to the window, and saw a dark object on the sill outside. I raised the sash, and there, close against the glass, were two quails--frozen stiff in the snow. It was they I heard the night before fluttering at the window. The ground had been covered deep with snow for several days, and at last, driven by hunger and cold from the fields, they saw my light, and sought shelter from the storm and a bed for the night with me. Four others, evidently of the same covey, spent the night in the wagon-house, and in the morning helped themselves fearlessly to the chickens' breakfast. They roosted with the chickens several nights, but took to the fields again as soon as the snow began to melt. It is easy to account for our winter birds during the day. Along near noon, when it is warm and bright, you will find the sparrows, chickadees, and goldfinches searching busily among the bushes and weeds for food, and the crows and jays scouring the fields. But what about them during the dark? Where do they pass the long winter nights? Why, they have nests, you say. Yes, they _had_ nests in the summer, and then, perhaps, one of the parent birds may be said to have slept in the nest during the weeks of incubation and rearing of the young. But nests are cradles, not beds, and are never used by even the young birds from the day they leave them. Muskrats build houses, foxes have holes, and squirrels sleep in true nests; but of the birds it can be said, "they have not where to lay their heads." They sleep upon their feet in the grass, in hollow trees, and among the branches; but, at best, such a bed is no more than a roost. A large part of the year this roost is new every night, so that the question of a sleeping-place during the winter is most serious. The cheerful little goldfinches, that bend the dried ragweeds and grass-stalks down and scatter their chaff over the snow, sleep in the thick cedars and pines. These warm, close-limbed evergreens I have found to be the lodging-houses of many of the smaller winter birds--the fox-colored sparrow, snowbird, crossbill, and sometimes of the chickadee, though he usually tucks his little black cap under his wing in a woodpecker's hole. [Illustration: "The cheerful little goldfinches, that bend the dried ragweeds."] The meadow-larks always roost upon the ground. They creep well under the grass, or, if the wind is high and it snows, they squat close to the ground behind a tuft of grass or thick bush and sleep while the cold white flakes fall about them. They are often covered before the morning; and when housed thus from the wind and hidden from prowling enemies, no bird could wish for a cozier, warmer, safer bed. But what a lonely bed it is! Nothing seems so utterly homeless and solitary as a meadow-lark after the winter nightfall. In the middle of a wide, snow-covered pasture one will occasionally spring from under your feet, scattering the snow that covered him, and go whirring away through the dusk, lost instantly in the darkness--a single little life in the wild, bleak wilderness of winter fields! Again, the grass is often a dangerous bed. On the day before the great March blizzard of 1888, the larks were whistling merrily from the fences, with just a touch of spring in their call. At noon I noted no signs of storm, but by four o'clock--an hour earlier than usual--the larks had disappeared. They rose here and there from the grass as I crossed the fields, not as they do when feeding, far ahead of me, but close to my feet. They had gone to bed. By early evening the snow began to fall, and for two days continued furiously. A week later, when the deep drifts melted, I found several larks that had perished from cold or starvation or had smothered under the weight of snow. There is something of awe in the thought of a bird nestling close beneath a snow-laden bush in a broad meadow, or clinging fast to a limb in the swaying top of some tall tree, rocked in its great arms through the night by a winter gale. All trees, even the pines and cedars, are fearfully exposed sleeping-places, and death from cold is not infrequent among the birds that take beds in them. The pine barrens, and especially certain pine clumps along Cohansey Creek and at the head of Cubby Hollow, used to be famous crow-roosts. Thousands of the birds, a few years ago, frequented these pieces of wood in the winter. About the middle of the afternoon, during the severest weather, they begin to fly over to the roost at the head of the Hollow, coming in from the surrounding fields, some of them from miles away, where they have been foraging all day for food. You can tell the character of the weather by the manner of their flight. In the fall and spring they went over cawing, chasing each other and performing in the air; they were happy, and life was as abundant as the spring promise or the autumn fullness everywhere. But in January the land is bare and hard, and life correspondingly lean and cheerless. You see it in their heavy, dispirited flight; all their spring joyousness is gone; they pass over silent and somber, reluctant to leave the fields, and fearful of the night. There is not a croak as they settle among the pines--scores, sometimes hundreds of them, in a single tree. Here, in the swaying tops, amid the heavy roar of the winds, they sleep. You need have no fear of waking them as you steal through the shadows beneath the trees. The thick mat of needles or the sifted snow muffles your footfalls; and the winds still the breaking branches and snapping twigs. What a bed in a winter storm! The sky is just light enough for you to distinguish the dim outlines of the sleepers as they rock in the waves of the dark green that rise and fall above you; the trees moan, the branches shiver and creak, and high above all, around and beneath you, filling the recesses of the dark wood rolls the volume of the storm. But the crows sleep on, however high the winds. They sit close to the branches, that the feathers may cover their clinging feet; they tuck their heads beneath their wing-coverts, thus protecting the whole body, except one side of the head, which the feathers of the wing cannot quite shelter. This leaves an eye exposed, and this eye, like the heel of Achilles, proves to be the one vulnerable spot. It freezes in very severe weather, causing a slow, painful death. In the morning, after an unusually cold night, you can find dozens of crows flapping piteously about in the trees of the roost and upon the ground, with frozen eyes. In January, 1895, I saw very many of them along the Hollow, blind in one eye or in both eyes, dying of pain and starvation. It was pitiful to see their sufferings. The snow in places was sprinkled with their broken feathers, and with pine-needles which they had plucked off and tried to eat. Nothing could be done for the poor things. I have tried time and again to doctor them; but they were sure to die in the end. Who has not wondered, as he has seen the red rim of the sun sink down in the sea, where the little brood of Mother Carey's chickens skimming round the vessel would sleep that night? Or who, as he hears the _honking_ of geese overhead in the darkness, has not questioned by what ... plashy brink Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide, Or where the rocking billows rise and sink On the chafed ocean-side, they will find rest? In winter, when a heavy southeast wind is blowing, the tides of Delaware Bay are high and the waters very rough. Then the ducks that feed along the reedy flats of the bay are driven into the quieter water of the creeks, and at night fly into the marshes, where they find safe beds in the "salt-holes." The salt-holes are sheets of water having no outlet, with clean perpendicular sides as if cut out of the grassy marsh, varying in size from a few feet wide to an acre in extent. The sedges grow luxuriantly around their margins, making a thick, low wall in winter, against which the winds blow in vain. If a bird must sleep in the water, such a hole comes as near to being a perfect cradle as anything could be, short of the bottom of a well. The ducks come in soon after dark. You can hear the whistle of their wings as they pass just above your head, skimming along the marsh. They settle in a hole, swim close up to the windward shore, beneath the sedges, and, with their heads under their wings, go fast asleep. And as they sleep the ice begins to form--first, along their side of the hole, where the water is calmest; then, extending out around them, it becomes a hard sheet across the surface. A night that will freeze a salt-hole is not one in which there is likely to be much hunting done by man or beast. But I have been on the marshes such nights, and so have smaller and more justified hunters. It is not a difficult feat to surprise the sleeping ducks. The ice is half an inch thick when you come up, and seals the hole completely, save immediately about the bodies of the birds. Their first impulse, when taken thus at close range, is to dive; and down they go, turning in their tracks. Will they get out? One may chance to strike the hole which his warm body kept open, as he rises to breathe; but it is more likely that he will come up under the ice, and drown. I have occasionally found a dead duck beneath the ice or floating in the water of a salt-hole. It had been surprised, no doubt, while sleeping, and, diving in fright, was drowned under the ice, which had silently spread like a strange, dreadful covering over its bed. Probably the life of no other of our winter birds is so full of hardship as is that of the quail, Bob White. In the early summer the quails are hatched in broods of from ten to twenty, and live as families until the pairing season the next spring. The chicks keep close to the neighborhood of the home nest, feeding and roosting together, under the guidance of the parent birds. But this happy union is soon broken by the advent of the gunning season. It is seldom that a bevy escapes this period whole and uninjured. Indeed, if _one_ of the brood is left to welcome the spring it is little less than a miracle. I have often heard the scattered, frightened families called together after a day of hard shooting; and once, in the old pasture to the north of Cubby Hollow, I saw the bevy assemble. It was long after sunset, but the snow so diffused the light that I could see pretty well. In climbing the fence into the pasture, I had started a rabbit, and was creeping up behind a low cedar, when a quail, very near me, whistled softly, _Whirl-ee!_ The cedar was between us. _Whirl-ee, whirl-ee-gig!_ she whistled again. [Illustration: "There she stood in the snow with head high, listening anxiously."] It was the sweetest bird-note I ever heard, being so low, so liquid, so mellow that I almost doubted if Bob White could make it. But there she stood in the snow with head high, listening anxiously. Again she whistled, louder this time; and from the woods below came a faint answering call: _White!_ The answer seemed to break a spell; and on three sides of me sounded other calls. At this the little signaler repeated her efforts, and each time the answers came louder and nearer. Presently something dark hurried by me over the snow and joined the quail I was watching. It was one of the covey that I had heard call from the woods. Again and again the signal was sent forth until a third, fourth, and finally a fifth were grouped about the leader. There was just an audible twitter of welcome and gratitude exchanged as each new-comer made his appearance. Once more the whistle sounded; but this time there was no response across the silent field. The quails made their way to a thick cedar that spread out over the ground, and, huddling together in a close bunch under this, they murmured something soft and low among themselves and--dreamed. Some of the family were evidently missing, and I crept away, sorry that even one had been taken from the little brood. [Illustration: "And--dreamed."] SOME SNUG WINTER BEDS [Illustration] SOME SNUG WINTER BEDS It was a cold, desolate January day. Scarcely a sprig of green showed in the wide landscape, except where the pines stood in a long blur against the gray sky. There was not a sign that anything living remained in the snow-buried fields, nor in the empty woods, shivering and looking all the more uncovered and cold under their mantle of snow, until a solitary crow flapped heavily over toward the pines in search of an early bed for the night. The bird reminded me that I, too, should be turning toward the pines; for the dull gray afternoon was thickening into night, and my bed lay beyond the woods, a long tramp through the snow. As the black creature grew small in the distance and vanished among the trees, I felt a pang of pity for him. I knew by his flight that he was hungry and weary and cold. Every labored stroke of his unsteady wings told of a long struggle with the winter death. He was silent; and his muteness spoke the foreboding and dread with which he faced another bitter night in the pines. The snow was half-way to my knees; and still another storm was brewing. All day the leaden sky had been closing in, weighed down by the snow-filled air. That hush which so often precedes the severest winter storms brooded everywhere. The winds were in leash--no, not in leash; for had my ears been as keen as those of the creatures about me, I might even now have heard them baying far away to the north. It was not the winds that were still; it was the fields and forests that quailed before the onset of the storm. I skirted Lupton's Pond and saw the muskrat village, a collection of white mounds out in the ice, and coming on to Cubby Hollow, I crossed on the ice, ascended the hill, and keeping in the edge of the swamp, left the pines a distance to the left. A chickadee, as if oppressed by the silence and loneliness among the trees, and uneasy in his stout little heart at the threatening storm, flew into the bushes as near to me as he could get, and, apparently for the sake of companionship, followed me along the path, cheeping plaintively. As I emerged from the woods into a corn-field and turned to look over at the gloomy pines, a snowflake fell softly upon my arm. The storm had begun. Now the half-starved crows came flocking in by hundreds, hurrying to roost before the darkness should overtake them. A biting wind was rising; already I could hear it soughing through the pines. There was something fascinating in the oncoming monster, and backing up behind a corn-shock, I stopped a little to watch the sweep of its white winds between me and the dark, sounding pines. I shivered as the icy flakes fell thicker and faster. How the wild, unhoused things must suffer to-night! I thought, as the weary procession of crows beat on toward the trees. Presently there was a small stir within the corn-shock. I laid my ear to the stalks and listened. Mice! I could hear them moving around in there. It was with relief that I felt that here, at least, was a little people whom the cold and night could not hurt. [Illustration: "I shivered as the icy flakes fell thicker and faster."] These mice were as warmly sheltered inside this great shock as I should be in my furnace-warmed home. Their tiny nests of corn-silk, hidden away, perhaps, within the stiff, empty husks at the shock's very center, could never be wet by a drop of the most driving rain nor reached by the most searching frosts. And not a mouse of them feared starvation. A plenty of nubbins had been left from the husking, and they would have corn for the shelling far into the spring--if the fodder and their homes should be left to them so long. I floundered on toward home. In the gathering night, amid the swirl of the snow, the shocks seemed like spectral tents pitched up and down some ghostly camp. But the specters and ghosts were all with me, all out in the whirling storm. The mice knew nothing of wandering, shivering spirits; they nibbled their corn and squeaked in snug contentment; for only dreams of the winter come to them in there. These shock-dwellers were the common house-mice, _Mus musculus_. But they are not the only mice that have warm beds in winter. In fact, bed-making is a specialty among the mice. _Zapus_, the jumping-mouse, the exquisite little fellow with the long tail and kangaroo legs, has made his nest of leaves and grass down in the ground, where he lies in a tiny ball just out of the frost's reach, fast asleep. He will be plowed out of bed next spring, if his nest is in a field destined for corn or melons; for _Zapus_ is sure to oversleep. He is a very sound sleeper. The bluebirds, robins, and song-sparrows will have been back for weeks, the fields will be turning green, and as for the flowers, there will be a long procession of them started, before this pretty sleepy-head rubs his eyes, uncurls himself, and digs his way out to see the new spring morning. Does this winter-long sleep seem to him only as a nap overnight? [Illustration: The meadow-mouse.] _Arvicola_, the meadow-mouse, that duck-legged, stump-tailed, pot-bellied mouse whose paths you see everywhere in the meadows and fields, stays wide awake all winter. He is not so tender as _Zapus_. The cold does not bother him; he likes it. Up he comes from his underground nest,--or home, rather, for it is more than a mere sleeping-place,--and runs out into the snow like a boy. He dives and plunges about in the soft white drifts, plowing out roads that crisscross and loop and lady's-chain and lead nowhere--simply for the fun of it. Fairies do wonderful things and live in impossible castles; but no fairy ever had a palace in fairy-land more impossible than this unfairy-like meadow-mouse had in my back yard. One February day I broke through the frozen crust of earth in the garden and opened a large pit in which forty bushels of beets were buried. I took out the beets, and, when near the bottom, I came upon a narrow tunnel running around the wall of the pit like the Whispering Gallery around the dome of St. Paul's. It completely circled the pit, was well traveled, and, without doubt, was the corridor of some small animal that had the great beet-pit for a winter home. There were numerous dark galleries branching off from this main hallway, piercing out into the ground. Into one of these I put my finger, by way of discovery, thinking I might find the nest. I did find the nest--and more. The instant my finger entered the hole a sharp twinge shot up my arm, and I snatched away my hand with a large meadow-mouse fastened to the end of my finger, and clinging desperately to her, lo! two baby mice, little bigger than thimbles. In this mild and even temperature, four feet below the frozen surface of the garden, with never a care as to weather and provisions, dwelt this single family of meadow-mice. What a home it was! A mansion, indeed, with rooms innumerable, and a main hall girdling a very mountain of juicy, sugary beets. This family could not complain of hard times. Besides the beets, the mice had harvested for themselves a number of cribs of clover-roots. These cribs, or bins, were in the shape of little pockets in the walls of the great gallery. Each contained a cupful of the thick, meaty tap-roots of clover, cut into lengths of about half an inch. If the beets should fail (!), or cloy upon them, they had the roots to fall back on. It was absolutely dark here, and worse; there was no way to get fresh air that I could see. Yet here two baby mice were born in the very dead of winter, and here they grew as strong and warm and happy as they would have grown had the season showered rose-petals instead of snowflakes over the garden above. _Hesperomys_ is the rather woodsy name of the white-footed or deer-mouse, a shy, timid little creature dwelling in every wood, who, notwithstanding his abundance, is an utter stranger to most of us. We are more familiar with his tracks, however, than with even those of the squirrel and rabbit. His is that tiny double trail galloped across the snowy paths in the woods. We see them sprinkled over the snow everywhere; but when have we seen the feet that left them? Here goes a line of the wee prints from a hole in the snow near a stump over to the butt of a large pine. Whitefoot has gone for provender to one of his storehouses among the roots of the pine; or maybe a neighbor lives here, and he has left his nest of bird-feathers in the stump to make a friendly call after the storm. A bed of downy feathers at the heart of a punky old stump beneath the snow would seem as much of a snuggery as ever a mouse could build; but it is not. Instead of a dark, warm chamber within a hollow stump, Whitefoot sometimes goes to the opposite extreme, and climbs a leafless tree to an abandoned bird's nest, and fits this up for his winter home. Down by Cubby Hollow I found a wood-thrush's nest in a slender swamp-maple, about fifteen feet from the ground. The young birds left it late in June, and when Whitefoot moved in I do not know. But along in the winter I noticed that the nest looked suspiciously round and full, as if it were roofed over. Perhaps the falling leaves had lodged in it, though this was hardly likely. So I went up to the sapling and tapped. My suspicions were correct. After some thumps, a sleepy, frightened face appeared through the side of the nest, and looked cautiously down at me. No one could mistake that pointed nose, those big ears, and the round pop-eyes so nearly dropping out with blinking. It was Whitefoot. I had disturbed his dreams, and he had hardly got his wits together yet, for he had never been awakened thus before. And what could wake him? The black-snakes are asleep, and there is not a coon or cat living that could climb this spindling maple. Free from these foes, Whitefoot has only the owls to fear, and I doubt if even the little screech-owl could flip through these interlaced branches and catch the nimble-footed tenant of the nest. [Illustration: "It was Whitefoot."] In spite of the exposure this must be a warm bed. The walls are thick and well plastered with mud, and are packed inside with fine, shredded bark which the mouse himself has pulled from the dead chestnut limbs, or, more likely, has taken from a deserted crow's nest. The whole is thatched with a roof of shredded bark, so neatly laid that it sheds water perfectly. The entrance is on the side, just over the edge of the original structure, but so shielded by the extending roof that the rain and snow never beat in. The thrushes did their work well; the nest is securely mortised into the forking branches; and Whitefoot can sleep without a tremor through the wildest winter gale. Whenever the snow falls lightly a high white tower rises over the nest; and then the little haycock, lodged in the slender limbs so far above our heads, is a very castle indeed. High over the nest of the white-footed mouse, in the stiffened top of a tall red oak that stands on the brow of the hill, swings another winter bed. It is the bulky oak-leaf hammock of the gray squirrel. A hammock for a winter bed? Is there anything snug and warm about a hammock? Not much, true enough. From the outside the gray squirrel's leaf bed looks like the coldest, deadliest place one could find in which to pass the winter. The leaves are loose and rattle in the wind like the clapboards of a tumble-down house. The limb threatens every moment to toss the clumsy nest out upon the storm. But the moorings hold, and if we could curl up with the sleeper in that swaying bed, we should rock and dream, and never feel a shiver through the homespun blankets of chestnut bark that wrap us round inside the flapping leaves. Be it never so cozy, a nest like this is far from a burrow--the bed of a fat, thick-headed dolt who sleeps away the winter. A glance into the stark, frozen top of the oak sends over us a chill of fright and admiration for the dweller up there. He cannot be an ease-lover; neither can he know the meaning of fear. We should as soon think of a sailor's being afraid of the shrieking in the rigging overhead, as of this bold squirrel in the tree-tops dreading any danger that the winter winds might bring. There are winters when the gray squirrel stays in the hollow of some old tree. A secure and sensible harbor, this, in which to weather the heavy storms, and I wonder that a nest is ever anchored outside in the tree-tops. The woodsmen and other wiseacres say that the squirrels never build the tree-top nests except in anticipation of a mild winter. But weather wisdom, when the gray squirrel is the source, is as little wise as that which comes from Washington or the almanac. I have found the nests in the tree-tops in the coldest, fiercest winters. [Illustration: "From his leafless height he looks down into the Hollow."] It is not in anticipation of fine weather, but a wild delight in the free, wild winter, that leads the gray squirrel to swing his hammock from the highest limb of the tallest oak that will hold it. He dares and defies the winds, and claims their freedom for his own. From his leafless height yonder he looks down into the Hollow upon the tops of the swamp trees where his dizzy roads run along the angled branches, and over the swamp to the dark pines, and over the pines, on, on across the miles of white fields which sweep away and away till they freeze with the frozen sky behind the snow-clouds that drift and pile. In his aery he knows the snarl and bite of the blizzard; he feels the swell of the heaving waves that drive thick with snow out of the cold white north. Anchored far out in the tossing arms of the strong oak, his leaf nest rocks in the storm like a yawl in a heaving sea. But he loves the tumult and the terror. A night never fell upon the woods that awed him; cold never crept into the trees that could chill his blood; and the hoarse, mad winds that swirl and hiss about his pitching bed never shook a nerve in his round, beautiful body. How he must sleep! And what a constitution he has! A BIRD OF THE DARK [Illustration] A BIRD OF THE DARK The world is never more than half asleep. Night dawns and there is almost as wide a waking as with the dawn of day. We live in the glare till it leaves us blind to the forms that move through the dark; we listen to the roar of the day till we can no longer hear the stir that begins with the night. But here in the darkness is life and movement,--wing-beats, footfalls, cries, and calls,--all the wakefulness, struggle, and tragedy of the day. Whatever the dusk touches it quickens. Things of bare existence by day have life at night. The very rocks that are dead and inanimate in the light get breath and being in the dark. What was mere substance now becomes shadow, and shadow spirit, till all the day's dead live and move. The roads, fences, trees, and buildings become new creatures; landmarks, distances, and places change; new odors are on the winds; strange lights appear; soft footsteps pass and repass us; and hidden voices whisper everywhere. The brightest day is not more awake; at high noon we are not more alert. One of the commonest of these night sounds is the cry of the whippoorwill. From the middle of April to the end of September it rings along the edge of the clearing; but how seldom we have seen the singer! To most of us it is only a disembodied voice. Night has put her spell upon the whippoorwills and changed them from birds into wandering shadows and voices. There is something haunting in their call, a suggestion of fear, as though the birds were in flight, pursued by a shape in the gloom. It is the voice of the lost--the voice of the night trying to find its way back to the day. There is snap enough in the call if you happen to be near the bird. Usually the sound comes to us out of the darkness and distance--the loneliest, ghostliest cry of all the night. It is little wonder that so many legends and omens follow the whippoorwill. How could our imaginations, with a bent for superstition, fail to work upon a creature so often heard, so rarely seen, of habits so dark and uncanny? One cannot grow accustomed to the night. The eager, jostling, open-faced day has always been familiar; but with the night, though she comes as often as the day, no number of returns can make us acquainted. Whatever is peculiarly her own shares her mystery. Who can get used to the bats flitting and squeaking about him in the dusk? Or who can keep his flesh from creeping when an owl bobs over him in the silence against a full moon? Or who, in the depths of a pine barren, can listen to a circle of whippoorwills around him, and not stay his steps as one lost in the land of homeless, wailing spirits? The continual shifting of the voices, the mocking echoes, and the hiding darkness combine in an effect altogether gruesome and unearthly. One may hear the whippoorwill every summer of his life, but never see the bird. It is shy and wary, and, with the help of the darkness, manages to keep strangely out of sight. Though it is not unusual to stumble upon one asleep by day, it is a rare experience to surprise one feeding or singing at night. One evening I was standing by a pump in an open yard, listening to the whippoorwills as they came out to the edge of the woods and called along the fields. The swamp ran up so close on this side of the house that faint puffs of magnolia and wild grape could be strained pure from the mingling odors in the sweet night air. The whippoorwills were so near that the introductory _chuck_ and many of the finer, flute-like trills of their song, which are never heard at a distance, were clear and distinct. Presently one call sounded out above the others, and instantly rang again, just behind a row of currant-bushes not ten feet away. I strained my eyes for a glimpse of the creature, when swift wings fanned my face, and a dark, fluffy thing, as soft and noiseless as a shadow, dropped at my feet, and exploded with a triple cry of _Whip-poor-will!_ that startled me. It was a rapid, crackling, vigorous call that split through the night as a streak of lightning through a thunder-cloud. The farmers about here interpret the notes to say, _Crack-the-whip!_ and certainly, near by, this fits better than _Whip-poor-will!_ [Illustration: "It caught at the insects in the air."] The bird was flitting about the small platform upon which I stood. I remained as stiff as the pump, for which, evidently, it had mistaken me. It was not still a moment, but tossed back and forth on wings that were absolutely silent, and caught at the insects in the air and uttered its piercing cry. It leaped rather than flew, sometimes calling on the wing, and always upon touching the ground. This is as good a view of the bird as I ever got at night. The darkness was too thick to see what the food was it caught, or how it caught it. I could not make out a pose or a motion more than the general movements about the pump. The one other time that I have had a good look at the bird, when not asleep, showed him at play. It was an early August morning, between two and three o'clock. The only doctor in the village had been out all night at a little town about five miles away. He was wanted at once, and I volunteered to get him. Five miles is pure fun to a boy who has run barefoot every one of his fifteen summers; so I rolled up my trousers, tightened my belt, and bent away for Shiloh at an easy dog-trot that, even yet, I believe I could keep up for half a day. There was not a glimmer in the east when I started. I had covered three miles, and was entering a long stretch of sprout-land when the dawn began. The road was dusty, and the dew-laid powder puffed beneath the soft, swift pats of my feet. Things began to stand out with some distinctness now as the pale light brightened. No wagons had been along, and every mark of the night was plain. Here and there were broad, ragged-edged bands across the road--the trails of the wandering box-turtles. I saw the smooth, waving channel left by a snake that had just gone across. Here and there were bunches of rabbit tracks, and every little while appeared large spots in the road, where some bird had been dusting itself. Suddenly I made a sharp turn, and almost ran over a whippoorwill concealed in a very cloud of dust which she was flirting up with her wings. This explained the spots back along the road. The bird flew up and settled a few yards ahead of me, and took another hasty dip. This she kept up for nearly a quarter of a mile. The road was alive with whippoorwills. It was their bathing-hour, and playtime, too. The serious business of the night was done; they had hunted through the first hours, and now it was time to be social. The light was coming rapidly, and so was bedtime; but they called and capered about me, playing away the narrowing night to the very edge of day. On my return, an hour later, the sun was looking over the tops of the "cut-offs," but he did not see a whippoorwill. They were all roosting lengthwise upon the logs and stumps back among the bushes. [Illustration] These unnatural, unbirdlike habits of the whippoorwill are matched by the appearance of the bird. The first time one sees a whippoorwill he questions whether its shape and color are the result of its nocturnal life or whether it took to the night to hide its unbeautiful self from the gaze of the day. It has ridiculously short legs, a mere point of a bill, and a bristled, head-dividing gap that would shame a frog. Looked at in the daylight, its color, too, is a meaningless mixture, as unreal and half done as the rest of the creature. But we should not be so hasty in our judgment. There is design in all things in nature; utility is the first law of creation: and the discovery of plan and purpose is the highest appreciation of beauty. The whippoorwill's dress must be criticized from the view-point of its usefulness to the bird; then it becomes one of the most exquisitely artistic garments worn. Compare it with that of any other bird, and your wonder at it grows. Another such blending of light and shadow cannot be found. The night herself seems to have woven this robe out of warp from the strands of early dawn and of woof spun from the twilight. The whippoorwill cannot change the color of its dress with the passing clouds, nor match it with the light green of unfolding leaves and the deep bronze of old tree-trunks, as the chameleon can. But the bird has no need of such control. It is always in harmony with its surroundings. In the falling twilight it seems a shadow among the shadows; in the breaking dawn it melts into the gray half-light, a phantom; at midnight it is only an echo in the dark; and at noontime you would pass the creature for a mossy knot, as it squats close to a limb or rail, sitting lengthwise, unlike any bird of the light. We need not expect a bird of such irregular habits as the whippoorwill to have the normal instincts of birds, even with regard to its offspring. A bird given to roaming about at night, the companion of toads and bats and spooks, is not one that can be trusted to bring up young. You cannot count much on the domesticity of a bird that flits around with the shadows and fills the night with doleful, spellbinding cries. The nest of the whippoorwill is the bare ground, together with whatever leaves, pebbles, or bits of wood happen to be under the eggs when they are laid. I found a nest once by the side of a log in the woods, and by rarest good fortune missed putting my foot upon the eggs. Here there was no attempt at nest-building, not even a depression in the earth. There were two of the eggs,--the usual number,--long and creamy white, with mingled markings of lavender and reddish brown. Here, upon the log, one of the birds dozed away the day, while the mate on the nest brooded and slept till the gloaming. The effect of this erratic life in the forest glooms and under the cover of night has been to make the whippoorwill careless of her home and negligent of her young. She has become a creature of omen, weird and wakeful, lingering behind the time of superstition to keep myths moving in our scanty groves and mystery still stirring through the dark rooms of the night. [Illustration: "Unlike any bird of the light."] THE PINE-TREE SWIFT [Illustration] THE PINE-TREE SWIFT In any large museum you may see the fossil skeletons, or the casts of the skeletons, of those mammoth saurians of the Mesozoic Age. But you can go into the pine barrens any bright summer day and capture for yourself a real live saurian. The gloom of the pines is the lingering twilight of that far-off time, and the pine-tree lizard, or swift, is the lineal descendant of those reptile monsters who ruled the seas and the dry land before man was. Throughout southern New Jersey the pine-tree swifts abound. The worm-fences, rail-piles, bridges, stone-heaps, and, above all, the pine-trees are alive with them. They are the true children of the pines, looking so like a very part of the trees that it seems they must have been made by snipping off the pitch-pines' scaly twigs and giving legs to them. They are the aborigines, the primitive people of the barrens; and it is to the lean, sandy barrens you must go if you would see the swifts at home. In these wide, silent wastes, where there are miles of scrub-pine without a clearing, where the blue, hazy air is laden with the odor of resin, where the soft glooms are mingled with softer, shyer lights, the swifts seem what they actually are--creatures of another, earlier world. When one darts over your foot and scurries up a tree to watch you, it is easy to imagine other antediluvian shapes moving in the deeper shadows beyond. How they rustle the leaves and scratch the rough pine bark! They hurry from under your feet and peek around the tree-trunks into your face, their nails and scales scraping, while they themselves remain almost invisible on the deep browns of the pines; and if you are inclined to be at all nervous, you will start and shiver. The uncanny name "lizard" is partly accountable for our unpleasant feelings toward this really intelligent and interesting little beast. If he were more widely known as "swift," _Sceloporus_ would be less detested. The _z_ in "lizard" adds a creepy, crawly, sinister something to the name which even the wretched word "snake" does not suggest. "Swift," the common name in some localities, is certainly more pleasing, and, at the same time, quite accurately descriptive. [Illustration: "They peek around the tree-trunks."] There is nothing deadly nor vicious, nor yet unlovely, about the swift, unless some may hate his reptile form and his scales. But he is strangely dreaded. The mere mention of him is enough to stampede a Sunday-school picnic. I know good people who kill every swift they meet, under the queer religious delusion that they are lopping off a limb of Satan. "All reptiles are cursed," one such zealot declared to me, "and man is to bruise their heads." The good book of nature was not much read, evidently, by this student of the other Good Book. The swift is absolutely harmless. He is without fang, sting, or evil charm. He is not exactly orthodox, for he has a third eye in the top of his head, the scientists tell us; but that eye is entirely hidden. It cannot bind nor leer, like Medusa. Otherwise the swift is a perfectly normal little creature, about six inches long from tip to tip, quick of foot, scaly, friendly, wonderfully colored in undulating browns and blues, and looking, on the whole, like a pretty little Noah's-ark alligator. On the south side of the clump of pines beyond Cubby Hollow is a pile of decaying rails where I have watched the swifts, and they me, for so many seasons that I fancy they know me. Dewberry-vines and Virginia creeper clamber over the pile, and at one end, flaming all through July, burns a splendid bush of butterfly-weed. The orange-red blossoms shine like a beacon against the dark of the pines, and lure a constant stream of insect visitors, who make living for the swifts of this particular place rich and easy while the attraction lasts. Any hot day I can find several swifts here, and they are so tame that I can tickle them all off to sleep without the slightest trouble. They will look up quickly as I approach, fearless but alert, with head tilted and eyes snapping; but not one stirs. With a long spear of Indian grass I reach out gently and stroke the nearest one. Shut go his eyes; down drops his head; he sleeps--at least, he pretends to. This is my peace greeting. Now I may sit down, and life upon the rail-pile will go normally on. Upon the end of a rail, so close to a cluster of the butterfly-weed blossoms that he can pick the honey-gatherers from it,--as you would pick olives from a dish on the table,--lies a big male swift without a tail. He lost that member in an encounter with me several weeks ago. A new one has started, but it is a mere bud yet. I know his sex by the brilliant blue stripe down each side, which is a favor not granted the females. The sun is high and hot. "Fearfully, hot," I say under my wide straw hat. "Delightfully warm," says the lizard, sprawling over the rail, his legs hanging, eyes half shut, every possible scale exposed to the blistering rays, and his bud of a tail twitching with the small spasms of exquisite comfort that shoot to the very ends of his being. The little Caliban! How he loves the sun! It cannot shine too hot nor too long upon him. He stiffens and has aches when it is cold, so he is a late riser, and appears not at all on dark, drizzly days. His nose is resting upon the rail like a drowsy scholar's upon the desk; but he is not asleep: he sees every wasp and yellow-jacket that lights upon the luring flowers. He has learned some things about the wasp tribe; and if any of them want honey from his butterfly-weed, they may have it. These come and go with the butterflies and hard-backed bugs, no notice being taken. But I hear the booming of a bluebottle-fly. _Sceloporus_ hears him, too, and gathers his legs under him, alert. The fly has settled upon one of the flower-clusters. He fumbles among the blossoms, and pretty soon blunders upon those watched by the swift. Fatal blunder! There is a quick scratching on the rail, a flash of brown across the orange flowers, and the next thing I see is the swift, back in his place, throwing his head about in the air, licking down the stupid bluebottle-fly. A spider crawls over the rail behind him. He turns and snaps it up. A fly buzzes about his head, but he will not jump with all four feet, and so loses it. A humming-bird is fanning the butterfly-weed, and he looks on with interest not unmixed with fear. Now the bugs, butterflies, hornets, and wasps make up the motley crowd of visitants to his garden, and _Sceloporus_ stretches out in the warmth again. He is hardly asleep when a bird's shadow passes across the rails. The sharp scratch of scales and claws is heard at half a dozen places on the pile at once, and every swift has ducked around his rail out of sight. An enemy! The shadow sweeps on across the melon-field, and above in the sky I see a turkey-buzzard wheeling. This is no enemy. Evidently the swifts mistook the buzzard's shadow for that of the sharp-shinned hawk. Had it been the hawk, my little bobtailed friend might have been taking a dizzy ride through the air to some dead tree-top at that moment, instead of peeking over his rail to see if the coast were clear. [Illustration: "The sparrow-hawk searching the fences for them."] All the lesser hawks feed upon the swifts. I have often seen the sparrow-hawk perched upon a tall stake searching the fences for them. Cats eat them also. But they do not agree with puss. They make a cat thin and morbid and unhappy. We can tell when the lizard-catching disease is upon Tom by his loss of appetite, his lankness, and his melancholy expression. All fear of the hawk is passed, and the lizards come out into the light again. Presently one leaves the rails, runs over my foot, and dashes by short stages into the field. He is after a nest of ants, or is chasing a long-legged spider. It is worth while to follow them when they take to the fields, for they may let you into a secret, as they once did me. About a hundred feet into the melon-patch stands an old and very terrible scarecrow. It is quite without terrors for the swifts, however. Around this monster's feet the soil is bare and open to the sun. One day I discovered a lizard making her way thither, and I followed. She did not stop for ants or spiders, but whisked under the vines and hastened on as if bound on some urgent business. And so she was. When she reached the warm, open sand at the scarecrow's feet, she dug out a little hollow, and, to my utter amazement, deposited therein seven tough, yellowish, pea-like eggs, covered them with sand, and raced back to the rail-pile. That was all. Her maternal duties were done, her cares over. She had been a faithful mother to the last degree,--even to the covering up of her eggs,--and now she left them to the kindly skies. About the middle of July they hatched, and, in finding their way to the rail-pile, they stopped at the first mound on the road, and began life in earnest upon a fiery dinner of red ants. It looks as if nature were partial in the care she takes of her children. How long she bothers and fusses over us, for instance, and how, without one touch of parental care or interest, she tosses the lizard out, even before he is hatched, to shift for himself. If, however, we could eat red ants the day we are born and thrive on them, I suppose that our mothers, too, without much concern, might let us run. The day-old babies join their elders upon the rails, and are received with great good humor--with pleasure, indeed; for the old ones seem to enjoy the play of the youngsters, and allow them to climb over their backs and claw and scratch them without remonstrance. The swifts are gentle, peaceable, and sweet-tempered. They rarely fight among themselves. The only time that I ever found one out of humor was when she was anxiously hunting for a place in which to leave her eggs. The trouble of it all made her cross, and as I picked her up she tried to bite me. And I ought to have been bitten. Ordinarily, however, the swifts are remarkably docile and friendly. If treated kindly, they will allow you to stroke them and handle them freely within a few minutes after capture. I have sometimes had them cling to my coat of their own will as I tramped about the woods. They hiss and open their mouths when first taken; but their teeth could not prick one's skin if they did strike. They are clean, pretty, interesting pets to have about the house and yard. They are easily tamed, and, in spite of their agility, they are no trouble at all to capture. I have often caught them with my unaided hand; but an almost sure way is to take a long culm of green grass, strip off the plume, and make a snood of the wire-like end. A swift is sunning himself upon a rail. He rises upon his front legs, as you approach, to watch you. Carefully now! Don't try to get too near. You can just reach him. Now your snood is slipping over his nose; it tickles him; he enjoys it, and shuts his eyes. The grass loop is about his neck; he discovers it, and--pull! for he leaps. If the snood does not break you have him dangling in the air. Bring him to your coat now, and touch him lightly till his fear is dispelled, then loose him, and he will stay with you for hours. When upon a tree you may seize him with your bare hand by coming up from behind. But never try to catch him by the tail; for lizards' tails were not made for that purpose, though, from their length and convenience to grasp, and from the careless way their owners have of leaving them sticking out, it seems as if nature intended them merely for handles. In my haste to catch the bobtailed lizard of the rail-pile, I carelessly clapped my hand upon his long, scaly tail, when, by a quick turn, he mysteriously unjointed himself from it, leaving the appendage with me, while he scampered off along the rails. He is now growing another tail for some future emergency. Between eating, sleeping, and dodging shadows, the lizards spend their day, and about the middle of the afternoon disappear. Where do they spend their night? They go somewhere from the dew and cold; but where? There is a space about two inches deep between the window-sash and the net-frames in my room. Some time ago I put a number of swifts upon the netting, covered the window-sill with sand, and thus improvised an ideal lizard-cage. All I had to do to feed them was to raise the window, drive the flies from the room on to the netting, and close the sash. The lizards then caught them at their leisure. Two days after they were transferred here, and had begun to feel at home and fearless of me, I noticed, as night came on, that they descended from the netting and disappeared in the sand. I put my finger in and took one out, and found that the sand was much warmer than the dewy night air. This was their bed, and this explained the sleeping habits of the free, wild ones. The sand remains warm long after the sun sets and makes them a comfortable bed. Into the sand they go also to escape the winter. They must get down a foot or more to be rid of the frost; and being poor diggers, they hunt up the hole of some other creature, or work their way among the decayed roots of some old stump until below the danger-line. By the middle of September they have made their beds, and when they wake up, the melons will be started and the May sunshine warm upon the rails. [Illustration] IN THE OCTOBER MOON [Illustration] IN THE OCTOBER MOON An October night, calm, crisp, and moonlit! There is a delicate aroma from the falling leaves in the air, as sweet as the scent of fresh-filled haymows. The woods are silent, shadowy, and sleepful, lighted dimly by the moon, as a vague, happy dream lights the dark valley of our sleep. Dreamful is this night world, but yet not dreaming. When, in the highest noon, did every leaf, every breeze, seem so much a self, so full of ready life? The very twigs that lie brittle and dead beneath our feet seem wakeful now and on the alert. In this silence we feel myriad movings everywhere; and we know that this sleep is but the sleep of the bivouac fires, that an army is breaking camp to move under cover of the night. Every wild thing that knows the dark will be stirring to-night. And what softest foot can fall without waking the woods? Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie dead; They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread. Not a mouse can scurry, not a chestnut drop, not a wind whisper among these new-fallen leaves without discovery; even a weasel cannot dart across the moon-washed path and not leave a streak of brown upon the silver, plain enough to follow. A morning in May is best of all the year to be afield with the birds; but to watch for the wild four-footed things, a moonlight night in October is the choice of the seasons. May-time is bird-time. That is their spring of mate-winning and nest-building, and it bubbles over with life and song. The birds are ardent lovers; they sometimes fight in their wooing: but fighting or singing, they are frank, happy creatures, and always willing to see you. The mammals are just as ardent lovers as the birds, and infinitely more serious. But they are not poets; they are not in the show business; and they want no outsider to come and listen to their pretty story of woe. Their spring, their courting-time, is not a time of song and play. The love-affairs of a timid, soulful-eyed rabbit are so charged and intense as not always to be free from tragedy. Don't expect any attention in the spring, even from that bunch of consuming curiosity, the red squirrel; he has something in hand, for once, more to his mind than quizzing you. Life with the animals then, and through the summer, has too much of love and fight and fury, is too terribly earnest, to admit of any frolic. But autumn brings release from most of these struggles. There is surcease of love; there is abundance of food; and now the only passions of the furry breasts are such gentle desires as abide with the curious and the lovers of peace and plenty. The animals are now engrossed with the task of growing fat and furry. Troubled with no higher ambitions, curiosity, sociability, and a thirst for adventure begin to work within them these long autumn nights, and not one of them, however wild and fearful, can resist his bent to prowl in the light of the October moon. To know much of the wild animals at home one must live near their haunts, with eyes and ears open, forever on the watch. For you must wait their pleasure. You cannot entreat them for the sake of science, nor force them in the name of the law. You cannot set up your easel in the meadow, and hire a mink or muskrat to pose for you any time you wish; neither can you call, when you like, at the hollow gum in the swamp and interview a coon. The animals flatly refuse to sit for their pictures, and to see reporters and assessors. But carry your sketchbook and pad with you, and, after a while, in the most unlikely times and places, the wariest will give you sittings for a finished picture, and the most reticent will tell you nearly all that he knows. At no time of the year are the animals so loquacious, so easy of approach, as along in the October nights. There is little to be seen of them by day. They are cautious folk. By nature most of them are nocturnal; and when this habit is not inherited, fear has led to its acquisition. But protected by the dark, the shy and suspicious creep out of their hiding-places; they travel along the foot-paths, they play in the wagon-roads, they feed in our gardens, and I have known them to help themselves from our chicken-coops. If one has never haunted the fields and woods at night he little knows their multitude of wild life. Many a hollow stump and uninteresting hole in the ground--tombs by day--give up their dead at night, and something more than ghostly shades come forth. If one's pulse quickens at the sight and sound of wild things stirring, and he has never seen, in the deepening dusk, a long, sniffling snout poked slowly out of a hollow chestnut, the glint of black, beady eyes, the twitch of papery ears, then a heavy-bodied possum issue from the hole, clasping the edge with its tail, to gaze calmly about before lumbering off among the shadows--then he still has something to go into the woods for. Our forests by daylight are rapidly being thinned into picnic groves; the bears and panthers have disappeared, and by day there is nothing to fear, nothing to give our imaginations exercise. But the night remains, and if we hunger for adventure, why, besides the night, here is the skunk; and the two offer a pretty sure chance for excitement. Never to have stood face to face in a narrow path at night with a full-grown, leisurely skunk is to have missed excitement and suspense second only to the staring out of countenance of a green-eyed wildcat. It is surely worth while, in these days of parks and chipmunks, when all stir and adventure has fled the woods, to sally out at night for the mere sake of meeting a skunk, for the shock of standing before a beast that will not give you the path. As you back away from him you feel as if you were really escaping. If there is any genuine adventure left for us in this age of suburbs, we must be helped to it by the dark. Who ever had a good look at a muskrat in the glare of day? I was drifting noiselessly down the river, recently, when one started to cross just ahead of my boat. He got near midstream, recognized me, and went under like a flash. Even a glimpse like this cannot be had every summer; but in the autumn nights you cannot hide about their houses and fail to see them. In October they are building their winter lodges, and the clumsiest watcher may spy them glistening in the moonlight as they climb with loads of sedge and mud to the roofs of their sugar-loaf houses. They are readily seen, too, making short excursions into the meadows; and occasionally the desire to rove and see the world will take such hold upon one as to drive him a mile from water, and he will slink along in the shadow of the fences and explore your dooryard and premises. Frequently, in the late winter, I have followed their tracks on these night journeys through the snow between ponds more than a mile apart. [Illustration: "In October they are building their winter lodges."] But there is larger game abroad than muskrats and possums. These October nights the quail are in covey, the mice are alive in the dry grass, and the foxes are abroad. Lying along the favorite run of Reynard, you _may_ see him. There are many sections of the country where the rocks and mountains and wide areas of sterile pine-land still afford the foxes safe homes; but in most localities Reynard is rapidly becoming a name, a creature of fables and folk-lore only. The rare sight of his clean, sharp track in the dust, or in the mud along the margin of the pond, adds flavor to a whole day's tramping; and the glimpse of one in the moonlight, trotting along a cow-path or lying low for Br'er Rabbit, is worth many nights of watching. I wish the game-laws could be amended to cover every wild animal left to us. In spite of laws they are destined to disappear; but if the fox, weasel, mink, and skunk, the hawks and owls, were protected as the quail and deer are, they might be preserved a long time to our meadows and woods. How irreparable the loss to our landscape is the extinction of the great golden eagle! How much less of spirit, daring, courage, and life come to us since we no longer mark the majestic creature soaring among the clouds, the monarch of the skies! A dreary world it will be out of doors when we can hear no more the scream of the hawks, can no longer find the tracks of the coon, nor follow a fox to den. We can well afford to part with a turnip, a chicken, and even with a suit of clothes, now and then, for the sake of this wild flavor to our fenced pastures and close-cut meadows. I ought to have named the crow in the list deserving protection. He steals. So did Falstaff. But I should miss Falstaff had Shakspere left him out; yet no more than I should miss the crow were he driven from the pines. They are both very human. Jim Crow is the humanest bird in feathers. The skunk I did include in the list. It was not by mistake. The skunk has a good and safe side to him, when we know how to approach him. The skunk wants a champion. Some one ought to spend an entire October moon with him and give us the better side of his character. If some one would take the trouble to get well acquainted with him at home, it might transpire that we have grievously abused and avoided him. [Illustration: "The glimpse of Reynard in the moonlight."] There is promise of a future for the birds in their friendship for us and in our interest and sentiment for them. Everybody is interested in birds; everybody loves them. There are bird-books and bird-books and bird-books--new volumes in every publisher's spring announcements. Every one with wood ways knows the songs and nests of the more common species. But this is not so with the four-footed animals. They are fewer, shyer, more difficult of study. Only a few of us are enthusiastic enough to back into a hole in a sand-bank and watch all night for the "beasts" with dear old Tam Edwards. But such nights of watching, when every fallen leaf is a sentinel and every moonbeam a spy, will let us into some secrets about the ponds and fields that the sun, old and all-seeing as he is, will never know. Our eyes were made for daylight; but I think if the anatomists tried they might find the rudiments of a third, a night eye, behind the other two. From my boyhood I certainly have seen more things at night than the brightest day ever knew of. If our eyes were intended for day use, our other senses seem to work best by night. Do we not take the deepest impressions when the plates of these sharpened senses are exposed in the dark? Even in moonlight our eyes are blundering things; but our hearing, smell, and touch are so quickened by the alertness of night that, with a little training, the imagination quite takes the place of sight--a new sense, swift and vivid, that adds an excitement and freshness to the pleasure of out-of-door study, impossible to get through our two straightforward, honest day eyes. Albeit, let us stay at home and sleep when there is no moon; and even when she climbs up big and round and bright, there is no surety of a fruitful excursion before the frosts fall. In the summer the animals are worn with home cares and doubly wary for their young; the grass is high, the trees dark, and the yielding green is silent under even so clumsy a crawler as the box-turtle. But by October the hum of insects is stilled, the meadows are mown, the trees and bushes are getting bare, the moon pours in unhindered, and the crisp leaves crackle and rustle under the softest-padded foot. [Illustration] FEATHERED NEIGHBORS [Illustration] FEATHERED NEIGHBORS I The electric cars run past my door, with a switch almost in front of the house. I can hear a car rumbling in the woods on the west, and another pounding through the valley on the east, till, shrieking, groaning, crunching, crashing, they dash into view, pause a moment on the switch, and thunder on to east and west till out of hearing. Then, for thirty minutes, a silence settles as deep as it lay here a century ago. Dogs bark; an anvil rings; wagons rattle by; and children shout about the cross-roads. But these sounds have become the natural voices of the neighborhood--mother-tongues like the chat of the brook, the talk of the leaves, and the caw of the crows. And these voices, instead of disturbing, seem rather to lull the stillness. But the noise of the cars has hardly died away, and the quiet come, when a long, wild cry breaks in upon it. _Yarup! yarup! yarup-up-up-up-up!_ in quick succession sounds the call, followed instantly by a rapid, rolling beat that rings through the morning hush like a reveille with bugle and drum. It is the cry of the "flicker," the "high-hole." He is propped against a pole along the street railroad, nearly a quarter of a mile away. He has a hole in this pole, almost under the iron arm that holds the polished, pulsing wire for the trolley. It is a new house, which the bird has been working at for more than a week, and it must be finished now, for this lusty call is an invitation to the warming. I shall go, and, between the passing of the cars, witness the bowing, the squeaking, the palaver. A high-hole warming is the most utterly polite function in birddom. Some of my friends were talking of birds, not long ago, when one of them turned to me and said hopelessly: "'Tis no use. We can't save them even if we do stop wearing them upon our hats. Civilization is bound to sweep them away. We shall be in a birdless world pretty soon, in spite of laws and Audubon societies." I made no reply, but, for an answer, led the way to the street and down the track to this pole which High-hole had appropriated. I pointed out his hole, and asked them to watch. Then I knocked. Instantly a red head appeared at the opening. High-hole was mad enough to eat us; but he changed his mind, and, with a bored, testy flip, dived into the woods. He had served my purpose, however, for his red head sticking out of a hole in a street-railway pole was as a rising sun in the east of my friends' ornithological world. New light broke over this question of birds and men. The cars drive High-hole away? Not so long as cars run by overhead wires on wooden poles. High-hole is a civilized bird. Perhaps "domesticated" would better describe him; though domesticated implies the purposeful effort of man to change character and habits, while the changes which have come over High-hole--and over most of the wild birds--are the result of High-hole's own free choosing. If we should let the birds have their way they would voluntarily fall into civilized, if not into domesticated, habits. They have no deep-seated hostility toward us; they have not been the aggressors in the long, bitter war of extermination; they have ever sued for peace. Instead of feeling an instinctive enmity, the birds are drawn toward us by the strongest of interests. If nature anywhere shows us her friendship, and her determination, against all odds, to make that friendship strong, she shows it through the birds. The way they forgive and forget, their endless efforts at reconciliation, and their sense of obligation, ought to shame us. They sing over every acre that we reclaim, as if we had saved it for them only; and in return they probe the lawns most diligently for worms, they girdle the apple-trees for grubs, and gallop over the whole wide sky for gnats and flies--squaring their account, if may be, for cherries, orchards, and chimneys. [Illustration: "They probe the lawns most diligently for worms."] The very crows, in spite of certain well-founded fears, look upon a new farm--not upon the farmer, perhaps--as a godsend. In the cold and poverty of winter, not only the crows, but the jays, quails, buntings, and sparrows, help themselves, as by right, from our shocks and cribs. Summer and winter the birds find food so much more plentiful about the farm and village, find living in all respects so much easier and happier here than in remote, wild regions, that, as a whole, they have become a suburban people. But life is more than meat for the birds. There is a subtle yet real attraction for them in human society. They like its stir and change, its attention and admiration. The shyest and most modest of the birds pines for appreciation. The cardinal grosbeak, retiring as he is, cannot believe that he was born to blush unseen--to the tip of his beautiful crest. And the hermit-thrush, meditative, spiritual, and free as the heart of the swamp from worldliness--even he loves a listener, and would not waste his sweetness any longer on desert forest air. I do not know a single bird who does not prefer a wood with a wagon-road through it. [Illustration: "Even he loves a listener."] My friends had smiled at such assertions before their introduction to the bird in the pole. They knew just enough of woodpeckers to expect High-hole to build in the woods, and, when driven from there, to disappear, to extinguish himself, rather than stoop to an existence within walls of hardly the dignity and privacy of a hitching-post. He is a proud bird and a wild bird, but a practical, sensible bird withal. Strong of wing and mighty of voice, he was intended for a vigorous, untamed life, and even yet there is the naked savage in his bound and his whoop. But electric cars have come, with smooth-barked poles, and these are better than rotten trees, despite the jangle and hum of wires and the racket of grinding wheels. Like the rest of us, he has not put off his savagery: he has simply put on civilization. Street cars are a convenience and a diversion. He has wings and wildest freedom any moment, and so, even though heavy timber skirts the track and shadows his pole, and though across the road opposite stands a house where there are children, dogs, and cats, nevertheless, High-hole follows his fancy, and instead of building back in the seclusion and safety of the woods, comes out to the street, the railroad, the children, and the cats, and digs him a modern house in this sounding cedar pole. Perhaps it is imagination, but I think that I can actually see High-hole changing his wood ways for the ways of the village. He grows tamer and more trustful every summer. [Illustration: "She flew across the pasture."] A pair have their nest in a telegraph-pole near the school-house, where they are constantly mauled by the boys. I was passing one day when two youngsters rushed to the pole and dragged out the poor harassed hen for my edification. She was seized by one wing, and came out flapping, her feathers pulled and splintered. She had already lost all but two quills from her tail through previous exhibitions. I opened my hands, and she flew across the pasture to the top of a tree, and waited patiently till we went away. She then returned, knowing, apparently, that we were boys and a necessary evil of village life. But this pole-life marks only half the distance that these birds have come from the woods. One warm Sunday of a recent March, in the middle of my morning sermon, a ghostly rapping was heard through the meeting-house. I paused. _Tap, tap, tap!_ hollow and ominous it echoed. Every soul was awake in an instant. Was it a summons from--? But two of the small boys grinned; some one whispered "flicker"; and I gathered my ornithological wits together in time to save the pause and proceed with the service. After the people went home I found three flicker-holes in the latticework over the north windows. One of last year's tenants had got back that morning from the South, and had gone to work cleaning up and putting things to rights in his house, regardless of Sabbath and sermon. [Illustration: "Putting things to rights in his house."] This approach of the flicker to domestic life and human fellowship is an almost universal movement among the birds. And no tendency anywhere in wild life is more striking. The four-footed animals are rapidly disappearing before the banging car and spreading town, yet the birds welcome these encroachments and thrive on them. One never gets used to the contrast in the bird life of uninhabited places with that about human dwellings. Thoreau tells his wonder and disappointment at the dearth of birds in the Maine woods; Burroughs reads about it, and goes off to the mountains, but has himself such an aggravated shock of the same surprise that he also writes about it. The few hawks and rarer wood species found in these wild places are shy and elusive. More and more, in spite of all they know of us, the birds choose our proximity over the wilderness. Indeed, the longer we live together, the less they fear and suspect us. II Using my home for a center, you may describe a circle of a quarter-mile radius and all the way round find that radius intersecting either a house, a dooryard, or an orchard. Yet within this small and settled area I found one summer thirty-six species of birds nesting. Can any cabin in the Adirondacks open its window to more voices--any square mile of solid, unhacked forest on the globe show richer, gayer variety of bird life? The nightingale, the dodo, and the ivorybill were not among these thirty-six. What then? If one can live on an electric-car line, inside the borders of a fine city, have his church across the road, his blacksmith on the corner, his neighbors within easy call, and, with all this, have any thirty-six species of birds nesting within ear-shot, ought he to ache for the Archæopteryx, or rail at civilization as a destroyer? There is nothing remarkable about this bit of country. I could plant myself at the center of such a circle anywhere for miles around and find just as many birds. Perhaps the land is more rocky and hilly, the woods thicker, the gardens smaller here than is common elsewhere in eastern Massachusetts; otherwise, aside from a gem of a pond, this is a very ordinary New England "corner." [Illustration: "A very ordinary New England 'corner.'"] On the west side of my yard lies a cultivated field, beyond which stands an ancient apple orchard; on the east the yard is hedged by a tract of sprout-land which is watched over by a few large pines; at the north, behind the house and garden, runs a wall of chestnut and oak, which ten years ago would have been cut but for some fortunate legal complication. Such is the character of the whole neighborhood. Patches of wood and swamp, pastures, orchards, and gardens, cut in every direction by roads and paths, and crossed by one tiny stream--this is the circle of the thirty-six. Not one of these nests is beyond a stone's throw from a house. Seven of them, indeed, are in houses or barns, or in boxes placed about the dooryards; sixteen of them are in orchard trees; and the others are distributed along the roads, over the fields, and in the woods. Among the nearest of these feathered neighbors is a pair of bluebirds with a nest in one of the bird-boxes in the yard. The bluebirds are still untamed, building, as I have often found, in the wildest spots of the woods; but seen about the house, there is something so reserved, so gentle and refined in their voice and manner as to shed an atmosphere of good breeding about the whole yard. What a contrast they are to the English sparrows! What a rebuke to city manners! They are the first to return in the spring; the spring, rather, comes back with them. They are its wings. It could not come on any others. If it tried, say, the tanager's, would we believe and accept it? The bluebird is the only possible interpreter of those first dark signs of March; through him we have faith in the glint of the pussy-willows, in the half-thawed peep of the hylas, and in the northward flying of the geese. Except for his return, March would be the one month of all the twelve never looked at from the woods and waysides. He comes, else we should not know that the waters were falling, that a leaf could be plucked in all the bare, muddy world. [Illustration: "They are the first to return in the spring."] Our feelings for the bluebird are much mixed. His feathers are not the attraction. He is bright, but on the whole rather plainly dressed. Nor is it altogether his voice that draws us; the snowflakes could hardly melt into tones more mellow, nor flecks of the sky's April blue run into notes more limpid, yet the bluebird is no singer. The spell is in the spirit of the bird. He is the soul of this somber season, voicing its sadness and hope. What other bird can take his place and fill his mission in the heavy, hopeful days of March? We are in no mood for gaiety and show. Not until the morning stars quarrel together will the cat-bird or scarlet tanager herald the spring. The irreverent song of a cat-bird in the gray gloom of March would turn the spring back and draw the winter out of his uncovered grave. The bluebird comes and broods over this death and birth, until the old winter sleeps his long sleep, and the young spring wakes to her beautiful life. _Within_ my house is another very human little bird--the chimney-swallow. Sharing our very firesides as he does, he surely ought to have a warm place in our hearts; but where have I ever read one word expressing the affection for him that is universally shown the bluebird? I am thinking of our American swallow. We all know how Gilbert White loved his chimney-swallows--how he loved every creature that flew or crawled about the rectory. Was it an ancient tortoise in the garden? the sheep upon the downs? a brood of birds in the chimney? No matter. Let the creatures manifest never so slight a friendliness for him, let them claim never so little of his protection, and the good rector's heart went out toward them as it might toward children of his own. But the swallows were White's fondest care. He and his hirundines were inseparable. He thought of them, especially those of the chimney, as members of his household. One can detect almost a father's interest and joy in his notes upon these little birds. Listen to the parent in this bit about the young in Letter XVIII. They are just out of the chimney. [Illustration: "Where the dams are hawking for flies."] "They play about near the place where the dams are hawking for flies; and when a mouthful is collected, at a certain signal given, the dam and the nestling advance, rising toward each other, and meeting at an angle; the young one all the while uttering such a little quick note of gratitude and complacency that a person must have paid very little regard to the wonders of nature that has not often remarked this feat." [Illustration] Has anything been written about our swift showing as faithful and sympathetic observation as that? No. He comes and goes without any one, like Gilbert White, being cheered by his twitter or interested in his doings. Perhaps it is because we have so many brighter, sweeter birds about us here; or perhaps our chimneys are higher than those of Selborne Rectory; or maybe we have no Gilbert White over here. Of course we have no Gilbert White. We have not had time to produce one. The union of man and nature which yields the naturalist of Selborne is a process of time. Our soil and our sympathy are centuries savager than England's. We still look at our lands with the spirit of the ax; we are yet largely concerned with the contents of the gizzards of our birds. Shall the crows and cherry-birds be exterminated? the sparrows transported? the owls and hawks put behind bars? Not until the collectors at Washington pronounce upon these first questions can we hope for a naturalist who will find White's wonders in the chimney-swallow. These little swifts are not as attractive as song-sparrows. They are sooty--worse than sooty sometimes; their clothes are too tight for them; and they are less musical than a small boy with "clappers." Nevertheless I could ill spare them from my family. They were the first birds I knew, my earliest home being so generous in its chimneys as to afford lodgings to several pairs of them. This summer they again share my fireside, squeaking, scratching, and thundering in the flue as they used to when, real goblins, they came scrambling down to peek and spy at me. I should miss them from the chimney as I should the song-sparrows from the meadow. They are above the grate, to be sure, while I am in front of it; but we live in the same house, and there is only a wall between us. If the chimney would be a dark, dead hole without the swifts, how empty the summer sky would be were they not skimming, darting, wiggling across every bright hour of it! They are tireless fliers, feeding, bathing, love-making, and even gathering the twigs for their nests on the wing, never alighting, in fact, after leaving the chimney until they return to it. They rest while flying. Every now and then you will see them throw their wings up over their heads till the tips almost touch, and, in twos or threes, scale along to the time of their jolly, tuneless rattle. From May to September, is there a happier sight than a flock of chimney-swallows, just before or just after a shower, whizzing about the tops of the corn or coursing over the river, like so many streaks of black lightning, ridding the atmosphere of its overcharge of gnats! They cut across the rainbow and shoot into the rose- and pearl-washed sky, and drop--into the depths of a soot-clogged chimney! [Illustration: "They cut across the rainbow."] These swallows used to build in caves and in clean, hollow trees; now they nest only in chimneys. So far have they advanced in civilization since the landing of the Pilgrims! Upon the beams in the top of the barn the brown-breasted, fork-tailed barn-swallows have made their mud nests for years. These birds are wholly domesticated. We cannot think of them as wild. And what a place in our affections they have won! If it is the bluebirds that bring the spring, the barn-swallows fetch the summer. They take us back to the farm. We smell the hay, we see the cracks and knot-holes of light cutting through the fragrant gloom of the mows, we hear the munching horses and the summer rain upon the shingles, every time a barn-swallow slips past us. For grace of form and poetry of motion there is no rival for the barn-swallow. When on wing, where else, between the point of a beak and the tips of a tail, are there so many marvelous curves, such beautiful balance of parts? On the wing, I say. Upon his feet he is as awkward as the latest Herreshoff yacht upon the stays. But he is the yacht of the air. Every line of him is drawn for racing. The narrow, wide-reaching wings and the long, forked tail are the perfection of lightness, swiftness, and power. A master designed him--saved every possible feather's weight, bent from stem to stern, and rigged him to outsail the very winds. [Illustration: "The barn-swallows fetch the summer."] From the barn to the orchard is no great journey; but it is the distance between two bird-lands. One must cross the Mississippi basin, the Rocky Mountains, or the Pacific Ocean to find a greater change in bird life than he finds in leaping the bars between the yard and the orchard. A bent, rheumatic, hoary old orchard is nature's smile in the agony of her civilization. Men may level the forests, clear the land and fence it; but as long as they plant orchards, bird life, at least, will survive and prosper. [Illustration: "From the barn to the orchard."] Except for the warblers, one acre of apple-trees is richer in the variety of its birds than ten acres of woods. In the three unkempt, decrepit orchards hereabout, I found the robin, chippy, orchard-oriole, cherry-bird, king-bird, crow-blackbird, bluebird, chebec, tree-swallow, flicker, downy woodpecker, screech-owl, yellow warbler, redstart, and great-crested flycatcher--all nesting as rightful heirs and proprietors. This is no small share of the glory of the whole bird world. I ought not to name redstart as a regular occupant of the orchard. He belongs to the woods, and must be reckoned a visitor to the apple-trees, only an occasional builder, at best. The orchard is too open for him. He is an actor, and needs a leafy setting for his stage. In the woods, against a dense background of green, he can play butterfly with charming effect, can spread himself and flit about like an autumn leaf or some wandering bit of paradise life, with wings of the grove's richest orange light and its deepest shadow. When, however, he has a fancy for the orchard, this dainty little warbler shows us what the wood-birds can do in the way of friendship and sociability. Across the road, in an apple-tree whose branches overhang a kitchen roof, built a pair of redstarts. No one discovered the birds till the young came; then both parents were seen about the yard the whole day long. They were as much at home as the chickens, even more familiar. Having a leisure moment one day, when a bicycle was being cleaned beneath the tree, the inquisitive pair dropped down, the female actually lighting upon the handle-bar to see how the dusting was done. On another occasion she attempted to settle upon the baby swinging under the tree in a hammock; and again, when I caught one of her own babies in my hands, she came, bringing a worm, and, without the slightest fear of me, tried to feed it. Yet she was somewhat daunted by the trap in which her infant was struggling; she would fan my hands with her wings, then withdraw, not able to muster quite enough courage to settle upon them. [Illustration: "Across the road, in an apple-tree, built a pair of redstarts."] Neither of these birds ever showed alarm at the people of the house. In fact, I never saw a redstart who seemed to know that we humans ought to be dreaded. These birds are now as innocent of suspicion as when they came up to Adam to be named. On two occasions, during severe summer storms, they have fluttered at my windows for shelter, and dried their feathers, as any way-worn traveler might, in safety beneath my roof. From the window one morning I saw Chebec, the least flycatcher, light upon the clothes-line. She teetered a moment, balancing her big head by her loosely jointed tail, then leaped lightly into the air, turned,--as only a flycatcher can,--and, diving close to the ground, gathered half the gray hairs of a dandelion into her beak, and darted off. I followed instantly, and soon found her nest in one of the orchard trees. It was not quite finished; and while the bird was gone for more of the dandelion down, I climbed up and seated myself within three feet of the nest. Back came Mrs. Chebec with a swoop, but, on seeing me, halted short of the nest. I was motionless. Hopping cautiously toward the nest, she took an anxious look inside; finding nothing disturbed, she concluded that there was no evil in me, and so went on with her interesting work. It was a pretty sight. In a quiet, capable, womanly way she laid the lining in, making the nest, in her infinite mother-love, fit for eggs with shells of foam. The chebec is a finished architect. Better builders are few indeed. The humming-bird is slower, more painstaking, and excels Chebec in outside finish. But Chebec's nest is so deep, so soft, so round and hollow! There is the loveliness of pure curve in its walls. And small wonder! She bends them about the beautiful mold of her own breast. Whenever she entered with the dandelion cotton, she went round and round these walls, before leaving, pressing them fondly with her chin close against her breast. She could not make them sufficiently safe nor half lovely enough for the white, fragile treasures to be cradled there. [Illustration: "Gathered half the gray hairs of a dandelion into her beak."] Artists though they be, the chebecs, nevertheless, are very tiresome birds. They think that they can sing--a sad, sorry, maddening mistake. Mr. Chapman says the day that song was distributed among the birds the chebecs sat on a back seat. Would they had been out catching flies! In the chatter of the English sparrow, no matter how much I may resent his impudence and swagger, there is something so bright and lively that I never find him really tiresome. But the chebecs come back very early in spring, and sit around for days and days, catching flies, and jerking their heads and calling, _Chebec! chebec! chebec!_ till you wish their heads would snap off. In the tree next to the chebec's was a brood of robins. The crude nest was wedged carelessly into the lowest fork of the tree, so that the cats and roving boys could help themselves without trouble. The mother sputtered and worried and scolded without let-up, trying to make good her foolishness in fixing upon such a site by abundance of anxiety and noise. The fussiest, least sensible mother among the birds is the robin. Any place for her nest but a safe one! The number of young robins annually sacrificed to pure parental carelessness is appalling. The female chooses the site for the home, and her ability for blundering upon unattractive and exposed locations amounts to genius. She insists upon building on the sand. Usually the rain descends, the floods come, the winds blow, and there is a fall. [Illustration: "In the tree next to the chebec's was a brood of robins. The crude nest was wedged carelessly into the lowest fork of the tree, so that the cats and roving boys could help themselves without trouble."] Here is a pair building upon a pile of boards under a cherry-tree; another pair plaster their nest to the rider of an old worm-fence; while a third couple, abandoning the woods near by, plant theirs, against all remonstrance, upon the top of a step-ladder that the brickmakers use daily in their drying-sheds. It was the superlative stupidity of this robin that saved her family. The workmen at first knocked her nest off to the ground. She had plenty of clay at hand, however, and began her nest again, following the ladder as it moved about the shed. Such amazing persistence won, of course. Out of wonder, finally, the men gave the ladder over to her and stood aside till her family affairs were attended to. Everything was right in time. After infinite scolding, she at last came off in triumph, with her brood of four. A striking illustration of this growing alliance between us and the birds is the nest of the great-crested flycatcher in the orchard. Great-crest has almost become an orchard-bird. At heart he is, and ever will be, a bird of the wilds. He is not tame--does not want to be tame; he is bold, and the dangers and advantages of orchard life attract him. His moving into an apple orchard is no less a wonder than would be an Apache chief's settling in New York or Boston. Most observers still count Great-crest among the wild and unreclaimed. Florence A. Merriam, speaking of his return in spring, says: "Not many days pass, however, before he is so taken up with domestic matters that his voice is rarely heard outside the woods"; and in Stearns's "Birds" I find: "It does not court the society of man, but prefers to keep aloof in the depths of the forest, where it leads a wild, shy, and solitary life." This is not Great-crest as I know him. I have found many of his nests, and never one in any but orchard trees. Riding along a country road lately, I heard Great-crest's call far ahead of me. I soon spied him on the wires of a telegraph-pole. Under him was a pear-tree, and a hundred yards away a farm-house. In the pear-tree I found his nest--snake-skins and all. [Illustration: "I soon spied him on the wires of a telegraph-pole."] I disagree, too, with most descriptions of this bird's cry. The authors I have read seem never to have heard him on a quiet May morning across a fifty-acre field. His voice is "harsh and discordant" when sounded into one's very ears. The sweetest-toned organ would be discordant to one inside the instrument. Give the bird the room he demands,--wide, early-morning fields,--and listen. A single shout, almost human it seems, wild, weird, and penetrating, yet clear and smooth as the blast of a bugle. One can never forget it, nor resist it; for it thrills like a resurrection call--the last, long summons to the spring waking. This solitary note is often repeated, but is never so rapid nor so long drawn out as the call of the flicker. Great-crest is a character, one of the most individual of all our birds. What other bird lines his nest with snake-skins? or hangs such gruesome things out for latch-strings? He has taken up his residence among us, but he has given us pretty plainly to understand that we need not call, else I mistake the hint in the scaly skin that dangles from his door. The strong personality of the bird is stamped even upon its eggs. Where are any to match them for curious, crazy coloring? The artist had purple inks, shading all the way from the deepest chestnut-purple to the faintest lilac. With a sharp pen he scratched the shell from end to end with all his colors till it was covered, then finished it off with a few wild flourishes and crosswise scrawls. Like the birds of the orchards and buildings, the field-birds also are yielding to human influences. We can almost say that we have an order of farm-birds, so many species seem to have become entirely dependent upon the pasture and grain-field. "Where did Bobolink disport himself before there were meadows in the North and rice-fields in the South? Was he the same lithe, merry-hearted beau then as now?" I do not know. But I do know that, in the thirty and three years since Mr. Burroughs asked the question, Bobolink has lost none of his nimbleness, nor forgotten one bubbling, tinkling note of his song. Yet in his autumn journey South, from the day he reaches the ripe reeds of the Jersey marshes till he is lost in the wide rice-lands of Georgia, his passage is through a ceaseless, pitiless storm of lead. Dare he return to us in spring? and can he ever sing again? He will come if May comes--forgetting and forgiving, dressed in as gay a suit as ever, and just as full of song. There is no marvel of nature's making equal to the miracle of her temper toward man. How gladly she yields to his masterful dominion! How sufferingly she waits for him to grow out of his spoiled, vicious childhood. The spirit of the bobolink ought to exorcise the savage out of us. It ought, and it does--slowly. We are trying, for instance, to cow the savage in us by law, to restrain it while the birds are breeding; but we hardly succeed yet. The mating season is scarcely over, the young not yet grown, when the gunners about me go into the fields with their dogs and locate every covey of quail, even counting the number of birds in each. With the dawn of the first day of open season they are out, going from flock to flock, killing, till the last possible bird is in their bloody bags. [Illustration: "He will come if May comes."] One of the most pathetic of all the wordless cries of the out-of-doors is the covey-call of the female quail at night, trying to gather the scattered flock together after the dogs are called off and the hunters have gone home. [Illustration: "Within a few feet of me dropped the lonely frightened quail."] It was nearly dark one December afternoon, the snow ankle-deep and falling swiftly, when, crossing a wide field, I heard this call from a piece of sprout-land ahead of me. Kneeling in the snow, I answered the whistle. Instantly came a reply. Back and forth we signaled till there was a whir of wings, and down in the soft snow within a few feet of me dropped the lonely, frightened quail. She was the only one left of a covey that the night before had roosted unbroken, snugly wedged, with their tails together, under a pile of brush. Sharing the fields with the quails are the meadow-larks. They scale along the grass, rarely rising higher than the cedars, flapping rapidly for a short distance, then sailing a little in a cautious, breath-held manner, as though wings were a new invention and just a trifle dangerous yet. On they go to a fence-stake, and land with many congratulatory flirts of wings and tail. Has anybody observed the feat? They look around. Yes; here I sit,--a man on a fence across the field,--and the lark turns toward me and calls out: "Did you see me?" He would be the best-bred, most elegant of our birds, were it not for his self-consciousness. He is consumed with it. There is too much gold and jet on his breast. But, in spite of all this, the plain, rich back and wings, the slender legs, the long, delicate beak, the erect carriage, the important air, the sleek, refined appearance, compel us to put him down an aristocrat. In a closely cropped pasture near the house, in early June, I found the eggs of the night-hawk. There was no nest, of course: the eggs lay upon the grass, and, for safety, had been left directly under the fence. The cows might not step on them here, but nothing prevented their crushing the fragile things with their noses. [Illustration: "On they go to a fence-stake."] Lengthwise, upon one of the rails, slept the mother. She zigzagged off at my approach, dazzled and uncertain in the white light of the noon, making no outcry nor stopping an instant to watch the fate of her eggs. She acted like a huge bat, slinking and dodging, out of her element in the light, and anxious to be hid. She did not seem like a creature that had a voice; and the way she flew would make one think that she did not know the use of her wings. But what a circus flier she is at night! and with what an uncanny noise she haunts the twilight! She has made more hair stand on end, with her earthward plunge and its unearthly boom through the dusk, than all the owls together. It is a ghostly joke. And who would believe in the daylight that this limp, ragged lump, dozing upon the fence or the kitchen roof, could play the spook so cleverly in the dark? III On the 25th of April, before the trees were in leaf, I heard the first true wood-note of the spring. It came from the tall oaks beyond the garden. "_Clear, clear, clear up!_" it rang, pure, untamed, and quickening. The solitary vireo! It was his whistle, inimitable, unmistakable; and though I had not seen him since last July, I hurried out to the woods, sure he would greet me. Solitary is the largest, rarest, tamest, and sweetest-voiced of the vireos. I soon found him high in the tops of the trees; but I wanted him nearer. He would not descend. So I chased him, stoning and mocking him even, till, at last, he came down to the bushes and showed me his big blue head, white eye-rings, wing-bars, and yellow-washed sides. [Illustration: "It was a love-song."] He did more than show himself: he sang for me. Within ten feet of me, he began a quiet little warble of a tenderness and contentment I never heard before. Such variety of notes, such sweetness of melody, such easy, unconscious rendering! It was a love-song, but sung all to himself, for he knew that there was no gentle heart to listen this side of Virginia. He sang to his own happy heart as pure and sweet a song as the very angels know. Solitary disappeared from that day. I concluded he had gone to heavier, wilder woods to nest. It was late in June that, passing through this brush-land, I saw hanging from an oak sapling, just above my head, a soft, yellowish basket. It was a vireo's nest; but it was too large, too downy, too yellow for Red-eye. There were no bunches of white spider-webs upon it, such as Red-eye hangs all over his nest. I stepped aside for a better view, and had just caught the glint of a large, white-ringed eye peering over the nest's edge at me, when, off in the woods behind me, the noon hush was startled by Solitary's whistle--a round, pure, pearly note that broke the quiet as pearly teeth break through the smile of a beautiful face. He soon appeared, coming on, a tree at a time, looking and asking, in no hurry and in no alarm. When he reached the pine overhead, his mate left the nest to confer with him. They scolded me mildly while I climbed for a look at the four delicately spotted eggs; but as soon as I lay down upon the ground, the mother, without fuss or fear, slipped into the nest and cuddled down over the eggs till her head hardly showed above the rim. Had a few bushes been removed I could have seen the nest from my front door. Why do the wood-birds so persistently build their nests along the paths and roads? I said that even the hermit-thrush prefers a wood with a road through it. If he possibly can he will build along that road. And what one of the birds will not? Is it mere stupidity? Is it curiosity to see what goes on? Is there some safety here from enemies worse than boys and cats and dogs? Or is it that these birds take this chance for human fellowship? If this last is the reason for their rejecting the deep tangles for limbs that overhang roads and tufts of grass in constantly traveled foot-paths, then they can be pardoned; otherwise they are foolish--fatally foolish. The first black-and-white warbler's nest I ever found was at the base of a clump of bushes in a narrow wood-path not ten feet from a highway. There were acres of bushes beyond, thick and pathless, all theirs to choose from. In the same piece of scrub-oak the summer after I found another black-and-white warbler's nest. The loud talk of three of the birds attracted me. Two of them were together, and just mated, evidently; the third was a male, and just as plainly the luckless suitor. He was trying to start a quarrel between the young couple, doing his best to make the new bride break her vows. He flew just ahead of them, darting to the ground, scuttling under the brush, and calling out, "See here! Come here! Don't fool with him any longer! I have the place for a nest!" But the pair kept on together, chatting brightly as they ran up and down the trees and hunted under the fallen limbs and leaves for a home-site. The male led the way and found the places; the female passed judgment. I followed them. [Illustration: "But the pair kept on together, chatting brightly."] Every spot the cock peeped into was the finest in the woods; his enthusiasm was constant and unbounded. "Any place is heaven," he kept repeating, "any place, so long as I have you." But she was to do the housekeeping, and the ecstasies of the honeymoon were not to turn her head. She was house-hunting; and, like every woman, at her best. She said "no," and "no," and "no." I began to think they never would find the place, when the male darted far ahead and went out of sight beneath some low huckleberry-bushes near a stone wall. This wall ran between the woods and a pasture; and parallel with it, on the woods side, was a foot-path. Up came the little hen, and together they scratched about under the leaves. Suddenly the cock flew away and fetched a strip of chestnut bark. This he turned over to his wife. Then both birds flew out to the chestnut limbs for bark, and brought their strips back. The home was founded. It was the merest cavity, pushed into the dead leaves, with three shreds of bark for first timbers. In less than a week the structure was finished and furnished--with a tiny white egg thickly sprinkled with brown. I watched the spot daily, and finally saw the four young warblers safely out into their new woods-world. But from the day the first egg was laid until the nestlings left I constantly expected to find everything crushed under the foot of some passer-by. When free from household cares the chickadee is the most sociable of the birds of the woods. But he takes family matters seriously, and withdraws so quietly to the unfrequented parts of the woods during nesting-time as to seem to have migrated. Yet of the four chickadees' nests found about the house, one was in a dead yellow birch in a bit of deep swamp, two others were in yellow birches along wood-roads, and the fourth was in a rotten fence-post by the main road, a long way from any trees. A workman while mending the fence discovered this last nest. The post crumbled in his hands as he tried to pull it down, revealing the nest of moss and rabbit hair, with its five brown-and-white eggs. He left the old post, propped it up with a sound one, and, mending the broken walls of the cavity the best he could, hurried along with his task, that the birds might return. They came back, found the wreckage of dust and chips covering the eggs, tried the flimsy walls--and went away. It was a desecrated home, neither safe nor beautiful now; so they forsook it. There is no eagle's nest in this collection of thirty-six. But if Mr. Burroughs is correct, there is the next thing to it--a humming-bird's nest; three of them, indeed, one of which is within a stone's throw of my door! This one is in the oaks behind my garden, but the other two are even nearer to houses. One of these is upon the limb of a pear-tree. The tip of this limb rubs against a woodshed connected with a dwelling. The third nest is in a large apple orchard, in the tree nearest the house, and saddled upon that branch of the tree which reaches farthest toward the dwelling. So close is this nest that I can look out of the garret window directly into it. [Illustration: "In a dead yellow birch."] I believe that Ruby-throat is so far domesticated that he rejoices over every new flower-garden. There was nearly half an acre of gladioli in the neighborhood one summer, where all the humming-birds gathered from far and near. Here, for the only time in my life, I saw a _flock_ of humming-birds. I counted eight one day; and the gardener told me that he had often seen a dozen of them among the spikes. They squeaked like bats, and played--about as bullets might play. In fact, I think I dodged when they whizzed past me, as a soldier does the first time he is under fire. [Illustration: "So close I can look directly into it."] One of my friends had a cellar window abloom with geraniums. A ruby-throat came often to this window. One day the mistress of the flowers caught the wee chap in her hands. He knew at once that she meant no harm and quietly submitted. A few days later he returned and was captured again. He liked the honey, and evidently the fondling, too, for he came very regularly after that for the nectar and the lady's soft hands. The nest behind my garden is in the top of a tall, slender maple, with oaks and chestnuts surrounding and overshadowing it. Finding a nest like this is inspiration for the rest of life. The only feat comparable to it is the discovery of a bee-tree. Finding wild bees, I think, would be good training for one intending to hunt humming-birds' nests in the woods. But no one ever had such an intention. No one ever deliberately started into the woods a-saying, "Go to, now; I'll find a humming-bird's nest in here!" Humming-birds' nests are the gifts of the gods--rewards for patience and for gratitude because of commoner grants. My nests have invariably come this way, or, if you choose, by accident. The nearest I ever came to earning one was in the case of this one in the maple. I caught a glimpse of a humming-bird flashing around the high limbs of a chestnut, so far up that she looked no bigger than a hornet. I suspected instantly that she was gathering lichens for a nest, and, as she darted off, I threw my eyes ahead of her across her path. It was just one chance in ten thousand if I even saw her speeding through the limbs and leaves, if I got the line of her flight, to say nothing of a clue to her nesting-place. It was little short of a miracle. I had tried many times before to do it, but this is the only time I ever succeeded: my line of vision fell directly upon the tiny builder as she dropped to her nest in the sapling. The structure was barely started. I might have stared at it with the strongest glass and never made it out a nest; the sapling, too, was no thicker at the butt than my wrist, and I should not have dreamed of looking into its tall, spindling top for any kind of a nest. Furthermore, as if to rob one of the last possibility of discovering it, a stray bud, two years before, had pushed through the bark of the limb about three inches behind where the nest was to be fixed, and had grown, till now its leaves hung over the dainty house in an almost perfect canopy and screen. For three weeks the walls of this house were going up. Is it astonishing that, when finished, they looked like a growth of the limb, like part and parcel of the very tree? I made a daily visit to the sapling until the young birds flew away; then I bent the tree to the ground and brought the nest home. It now hangs above my desk, its thick walls, its downy bed, its leafy canopy telling still of the little mother's unwearied industry, of her infinite love and foresight. So faultlessly formed, so safely saddled to the limb, so exquisitely lichened into harmony with the green around, this tiniest nest speaks for all of the birds. How needless, how sorry, would be the loss of these beautiful neighbors of our copses and fields! "MUS'RATTIN'" [Illustration: "Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went chuckling down the bank."] "MUS'RATTIN'" One November afternoon I found Uncle Jethro back of the woodshed, drawing a chalk-mark along the barrel of his old musket, from the hammer to the sight. "What are you doing that for, Uncle Jeth?" I asked. "What fo'? Fo' mus'rats, boy." "Muskrats! Do you think they'll walk up and toe that mark, while you knock 'em over with a stick?" "G'way fum yhere! What I take yo' possumin' des dozen winters fo', en yo' dunno how to sight a gun in de moon yit? I's gwine mus'rattin' by de moon to-night, en I won't take yo' nohow." Of course he took me. We went out about nine o'clock, and entering the zigzag lane behind the barn, followed the cow-paths down to the pasture, then cut across the fields to Lupton's Pond, the little wood-walled lake which falls over a dam into the wide meadows along Cohansey Creek. It is a wild, secluded spot, so removed that a pair of black ducks built their nest for several springs in the deep moss about the upper shore. It is shallow and deeply crusted over with lily-pads and pickerel-weed, except for a small area about the dam, where the water is deep and clear. There are many stumps in the upper end; and here, in the shallows, built upon the hummocks or anchored to the submerged roots, are the muskrats' houses. The big moon was rising over the meadows as we tucked ourselves snugly out of sight in a clump of small cedars on the bank, within easy range of the dam and commanding a view of the whole pond. The domed houses of the muskrats--the village numbered six homes--showed plainly as the moon came up; and when the full flood of light fell on the still surface of the pond, we could see the "roads" of the muskrats, like narrow channels, leading down through the pads to the open space about the dam. [Illustration: "The big moon was rising over the meadows."] A muskrat's domestic life is erratic. Sometimes there will be a large village in the pond, and, again, an autumn will pass without a single new house being built. It may be that some of the old houses will be fitted up anew and occupied; but I have known years when there was not a house in the pond. At no time do all of the muskrats build winter houses. The walls of the meadow ditches just under the dam are honeycombed with subterranean passages, in which many of the muskrats live the year round. Neither food nor weather, so far as I have found, influence them at all in the choice of their winter quarters. In low, wet meadows where there are no ditches, the muskrats, of course, live altogether in mud and reed houses above ground, for the water would flood the ordinary burrow. These structures are placed on the tussocks along a water-hole, so that the dwellers can dive out and escape under water when danger approaches. But here in the tide-meadows, where the ditches are deep, the muskrats rear their families almost wholly in underground rooms. It is only when winter comes, and family ties dissolve, that a few of the more sociable or more adventurous club together, come up to the pond, and while away the cold weather in these haystack lodges. [Illustration: Section of muskrat's house.] These houses are very simple, but entirely adequate. If you will lift the top off an ordinary meadow lodge you will find a single room, with a bed in the middle, and at least one entrance and one exit which are always closed to outsiders by water. The meadow lodge is built thus: The muskrat first chooses a large tussock of sedge that stands well out of the water for his bedstead. Now, from a foundation below the water, thick walls of mud and grass are erected inclosing the tussock; a thatch of excessive thickness is piled on; the channels leading away from the doors are dug out if necessary; a bunch of soaking grass is brought in and made into a bed on the tussock--and the muskrat takes possession. The pond lodges at the head of Lupton's are made after this fashion, only they are much larger, and instead of being raised about a tussock of sedge, they are built upon, and inclose, a part of a log or stump. This lodge life is surely a cozy, jolly way of passing the winter. The possums are inclined to club together whenever they can find stumps that are roomy enough; but the muskrats habitually live together through the winter. Here, in the single room of their house, one after another will come, until the walls can hold no more; and, curling up after their night of foraging, they will spend the frigid days blissfully rolled into one warm ball of dreamful sleep. Let it blow and snow and freeze outside; there are six inches of mud-and-reed wall around them, and, wrapped deep in rich, warm fur, they hear nothing of the blizzard and care nothing for the cold. Nor are they prisoners of the cold here. The snow has drifted over their house till only a tiny mound appears; the ice has sealed the pond and locked their home against the storm and desolation without: but the main roadway from the house is below the drifting snow, and they know where, among the stumps and button-bushes, the warm-nosed watchers have kept breathing-holes open. The ice-maker never finds their inner stair; its secret door opens into deep, under-water paths, which run all over the bottom of the unfrozen pond-world. [Illustration: "The snow has drifted over their house till only a tiny mound appears."] Unless roused by the sharp thrust of a spear, the muskrats will sleep till nightfall. You may skate around the lodge and even sit down upon it without waking the sleepers; but plunge your polo-stick through the top, and you will hear a smothered _plunk, plunk, plunk_, as one after another dives out of bed into the water below. The moon climbed higher up the sky and the minutes ran on to ten o'clock. We waited. The night was calm and still, and the keen, alert air brought every movement of the wild life about us to our ears. The soft, cottony footfalls of a rabbit, hopping leisurely down the moonlit path, seemed not unlike the echoing steps on silent, sleeping streets, as some traveler passes beneath your window; a wedge of wild geese _honked_ far over our heads, holding their mysterious way to the South; white-footed mice scurried among the dried leaves; and our ears were so sharpened by the frosty air that we caught their thin, wiry squeaks. Presently there was a faint plash among the muskrat houses. The village was waking up. Uncle Jethro poked the long nose of his gun cautiously through the bushes, and watched. Soon there was a wake in one of the silvery roads, then a parting of waves, and stemming silently and evenly toward us, we saw the round, black head of a muskrat. It was a pretty sight and a pretty shot; but I would not have had the stillness and the moonlit picture spoiled by the blare of that murderous musket for the pelts of fifty muskrats, and as the gun was coming to Uncle Jethro's shoulder, I slipped my hand under the lifted hammer. With just an audible grunt of impatience the old negro understood,--it was not the first good shot that my love of wild things had spoiled for him,--and the unsuspecting muskrat swam on to the dam. [Illustration: "They rubbed noses."] A plank had drifted against the bank, and upon this the little creature scrambled out, as dry as the cat at home under the roaring kitchen stove. Down another road came a second muskrat, and, swimming across the open water at the dam, joined the first-comer on the plank. They rubbed noses softly--the sweetest of all wild-animal greetings--and a moment afterward began to play together. [Illustration: "Two little brown creatures washing calamus."] They were out for a frolic, and the night was splendid. Keeping one eye open for owls, they threw off all other caution, and swam and dived and chased each other through the water, with all the fun of boys in swimming. On the bottom of the pond about the dam, in ten or twelve feet of water, was a bed of unios. I knew that they were there, for I had cut my feet upon them; and the muskrats knew they were there, for they had had many a moonlight lunch of them. These mussels the muskrats reckon sweetmeats. They are hard to get, hard to crack, but worth all the cost. I was not surprised, then, when one of the muskrats sleekly disappeared beneath the surface, and came up directly with a mussel. There was a squabble on the plank, which ended in the other muskrat's diving for a mussel for himself. How they opened them I could not clearly make out, for the shells were almost concealed in their paws; but judging from their actions and the appearance of other shells which they had opened, I should say that they first gnawed through the big hinge at the back, then pried open the valves, and ate out the contents. Having finished this first course of big-neck clams, they were joined by a third muskrat, and, together, they filed over the bank and down into the meadow. Shortly two of them returned with great mouthfuls of the mud-bleached ends of calamus-blades. Then followed the washing. They dropped their loads upon the plank, took up the stalks, pulled the blades apart, and soused them up and down in the water, rubbing them with their paws until they were as clean and white as the whitest celery one ever ate. What a dainty picture! Two little brown creatures, humped on the edge of a plank, washing calamus in moonlit water! One might have taken them for half-grown coons as they sat there scrubbing and munching. Had the big barred owl, from the gum-swamp down the creek, come along then, he could easily have bobbed down upon them, and might almost have carried one away without the other knowing it, so all-absorbing was the calamus-washing. Muskrats, like coons, will wash what they eat, whether washing is needed or not. It is a necessary preliminary to dinner--their righteousness, the little Pharisees! Judging from the washing disease which ailed two tame muskrats that I knew, it is perfectly safe to say that had these found clean bread and butter upon the plank, instead of muddy calamus, they would have scoured it just the same. Before the two on the plank had finished their meal, the third muskrat returned, dragging his load of mud and roots to the scrubbing. He was just dipping into the water when there was a terrific explosion in my ears, a roar that echoed round and round the pond. As the smoke lifted, there were no washers upon the plank; but over in the quiet water floated three long, slender tails. "No man gwine stan' dat shot, boy, jis t' see a mus'rat wash hi' supper"; and Uncle Jethro limbered his stiffened knees and went chuckling down the bank. A STUDY IN BIRD MORALS [Illustration: "She melted away among the dark pines like a shadow."] A STUDY IN BIRD MORALS The eternal distinctions of right and wrong upon which the moral law is based inhere even in the jelly of the amoeba. The Decalogue binds all the way down. In the course of a little observation one must find how faithfully the animals, as a whole, keep the law, and how sadly, at times, certain of them are wont to break it. To pass over such notorious cases as the cow-bird, cuckoo, turkey-buzzard, and crow, there is still cause for positive alarm, if the birds have souls, in the depraved habit of duplicity common among them. In a single short tramp, one June afternoon, no less than five different birds attempted to deceive me. The casuist may be able to justify all five of them; for, no doubt, there are extremities when this breach of the law should not merit condemnation; but even so, if in the limits of one short walk _five_ little innocents deliberately act out the coolest of falsehoods, one cannot help wondering if it is not true that the whole creation needs redeeming. The first of these five was a yellow warbler. I was trying to look into her nest, which was placed in the top of a clump of alders in a muddy pasture, when she slipped out and fluttered like an autumn leaf to the ground. She made no outcry, but wavered down to my feet with quivering wings, and dragged herself over the water and mud as if wounded. I paused to look at her, and, as long as I watched, she played her best to lure me. A black-snake would have struck at her instantly; but I knew her woman's ways and turned again to the nest. As soon as she saw that her tears and prayers would not avail; she darted into the bushes near me and called me every wicked thing that she could think of. I deserved it all, of course, though I was only curious to see her cradle and its holdings, which, had she been a human mother, she would have insisted on my stopping to see. [Illustration: "She called me every wicked thing that she could think of."] On the way to Lupton's I climbed a sharp, pine-covered hill, where the needles were so slippery that I had to halt for a minute's rest at the top. The trees rose straight and close and slender, with scarcely a live branch reaching out nearer the ground than twenty feet. The roof of green shut out the light, and the matting of brown spread the ground so deep that only a few stunted blueberry-bushes, small ferns, and straying runners of ground-pine abode there. It was one of those cathedral-like clumps, a holy of holies of the woods, into whose dim silence the straggling bushes, briers, and other lowly forest folk dare not come, but fall upon their knees outside and worship. [Illustration: "It was one of those cathedral-like clumps."] The birds, however, are not so reverent. I was scarcely stretched upon the needles when a slight movement overhead arrested my attention. As I looked, a soft fluttering of wings brought a blue jay into the branches directly above me. There is nothing peculiar in finding a blue jay among the pines--they usually nest there. But there was something peculiar about this jay; he moved so quietly, he appeared so entirely unconscious of me, though I knew that he saw me as plainly as I him. Then at his side alighted his mate, meeker and more modest than a chippy. What did it signify--these squawking, scolding, garrulous birds suddenly gone silent and trustful? In the pines at this season one never gets nearer a jay than field-glass range--near enough to hear him dash away, screeching defiance. But here were these two gliding among the branches above my head as cautiously and softly as cuckoos, searching apparently for grubs, yet keeping all the time to the one spot, not leaving for a moment to hunt among other trees. Round and round the same limbs they went, without once screaming or uttering so much as a word of that sweet, confiding talk which one hears when he spies on a pair of lovers or a newly wedded couple of these birds. I became suspicious. All this meant something. They kept close together, and fluttered about, hanging from the twigs head down like chickadees, deliberately biting off bunches of needles, prying into the cones, and scaling off bits of bark, but finding nothing, nor even trying to find anything. At this juncture I chanced to move my feet. The birds stopped instantly; but on my becoming quiet they went on scattering the needles and bark-chips again. Then I raised my glass. They paused just for a second, and continued, though now I saw that their picking was all at random, hitting the limb or not as might be. They were not hunting grubs: they were watching me; and more--they were keeping me watching them. [Illustration: "They were watching me."] It was a clever little ruse. But it was too good, too new, too unjaylike for my faith. There was a nest against one of these pines, as sure as it was June. And this fearless unconcern? this new and absorbing interest in grubs? All assumed!--very genuinely assumed, indeed, and might have led me to do a dozen things other than looking for the nest, had I known a little less of jays. It was heroic, too. They were calm and had all their wits about them. Outwardly they were indifferent to my presence and gave me not the slightest heed. But this was all show. Every instant they saw me; and, while pretending not to know that I was near, they had come to intercept me, to attract my attention to themselves, and save their nest. And at how much cost! To have looked within those calm little bosoms were to have seen two hearts as anxious and fearful as ever thumped parental breasts. If I had been deceived and led to waste my afternoon or to record something untrue of the blue jay, still, I think, these two birds could hardly have been condemned before the law. For did not their motive justify the deed? The blue jays are braggarts, full of noise, and almost without morals; yet they have not seemed to me quite as bad as they used to, not quite the same blustering, quarrelsome, unmoral renegades, since these two showed me how they could conquer their instinctive fears and rise superior to everything common and cowardly by the power of their parental love. I could not find the nest; so returning the next day, I crept under cover to the foot of the hill, and, ascending stealthily, saw the hen as she slipped from the home tree. She melted away among the dark pines like a shadow, but reappeared immediately with her mate to head me off again. Not this time, however, for I had their secret. My eye was upon the nest. It was a loose, rough affair of coarse sticks, fixed upon two dead branches well up against a slender pine's trunk. I could see patches of light sky through it, it was such a botch. But where art failed nature perfected. I saw the sky through the bungled structure, but not the eggs. I had to climb to see them, for they were so washed with shadowy green that they blended perfectly with the color of the nest and the subdued light of the pines. After my adventure with the jays I had an interesting experience with a pair of tiny birds in the sand-bank on the north side of Lupton's Pond. The country immediately surrounding the pond is exceedingly varied and full of life. The high, level farm-lands break off into sandbanks, which, in turn, spread into sweeping meadows that run out to the creek. The little pond lies between steep hills of chestnut-oak and pine, its upper waters being lost in a dense swamp of magnolia and alder, while over the dam at its foot there rushes a fall that echoes around the wooded hills and then goes purling among the elder and dog roses into the sullen tide-ditches of the meadow. Except the meadows and cultivated fields, everything is on a small scale, as if the place were made of the odds and ends, the left-over pieces in the making of the region round about. Such diversity of soils, such a medley of features, such profusion of life, in a territory of the same size I never saw elsewhere. At the boarding-school, near by, Lupton's Pond is known as "Paradise." On reaching the pond I went over to the sand-bank to look for a pair of kingfishers who had nested there many years; but instead of them, I saw a pair of winter wrens fly sharply among the washed-out roots of a persimmon-tree which stood on the edge of the hill above. I instantly lost sight of one of the birds. The actions of the other were so self-conscious that I stopped and watched--I had never found a winter wren's nest. In a moment the missing bird appeared and revealed the nest. It was large for the size of the builders, made of sticks, grass, and feathers, and was fixed among the black roots just below the green hilltop, and set into the sand far enough to leave a little of one side exposed. The wrens hurried away on my approach; but when I retreated to the foot of the bank, they darted back to the nest, the hen entering without a pause, while the cock perched upon a root at the door and began a most extraordinary performance. He managed to put himself directly between me and the tiny portal, completely cutting off my view of the little brown wife inside the nest; then, spreading his wings, with tail up and head on one side, he fluttered and bobbed and wagged and poured out a volume of song that was prodigious. It lifted him fairly off his feet. Had he suddenly gone up with a whizz, like a sky-rocket, and burst into a shower of bubbles, trills, runs, and wild, ecstatic warbles, I should have looked on with no more wonder. Such a song! It was singing gone mad. My head was on a level with him. I leaned forward nearer the bank. At this he went crazy with his efforts--into a fit, almost. I cannot have been mistaken: it was the first time that I had ever heard a bird sing when in terror; but I had whistled my way past too many dogs and through too many graveyards at night to be deceived in the note of fear, and in the purpose of this song. That bit of a husband was scared almost out of his senses; but there he stood, squarely between me and that precious nest and the more precious wife, guarding them from my evil eyes with every atom of his midget self. It was as fine an illustration of courage as I ever saw, a triumph of love and duty over fear--fear that perhaps we have no way to measure. And it was a triumph of wedded love at that; for there were no young, not even an egg in the unfinished nest. It all happened in less than a minute. The female reappeared in an instant, satisfied that all was well with the nest, and both birds sped off and dropped among the briers. How would the casuist decide for so sweet, so big, so heroic a deception--or the attempt? A little farther down the creek, where the meadows meet the marsh, dwell the cousins of the winter wrens, the long-billed marsh-wrens. Here in the wide reaches of calamus and reeds, where the brackish tide comes in, the marsh-wrens build by hundreds. Their big, bulky nests are woven about a handful of young calamus-blades, or tied to a few long, stout sedge-stalks, and grow as the season grows. [Illustration: "A triumph of love and duty over fear."] The nests are made of coarse marsh-grass,--of the floatage often,--and are so long in the process of construction that, when completed, they are all speared through with the grass-blades, as with so many green bayonets. They are about the size of a large calabash, nearly round, thick-walled and heavy, with a small entrance, just under the roof, leading upward like a short stair to a deep, pocket-like cavity, at whose bottom lie the eggs, barely out of finger reach. I could hear the smothered racket of the singing wrens all about me in the dense growth, scoldings to my right, defiance to my left, discussions of wives, grumblings of husbands, and singing of lovers everywhere, until the whole marsh seemed a-sputter and a-bubble with a gurgling tide of song like a river running in. Now and then, a wave, rising higher than its fellows, splashed up above the reeds and broke into song-spray, as an ecstasy lifted the wee brown performer out of the green. But these short dashes of the wrens into upper air, I have come to believe, are not entirely the flights of enraptured souls. Something more than Mr. Chapman's "mine of music bursts within them." Before they knew that I was near I rarely saw one make this singing dive into the air; but as soon as they were acquainted with my presence they appeared on every hand. I had not gone fifty feet into their reedy domain when I began to catch a furious berating. The knives of the mowing-machine up in the meadow went no faster nor sharper than these unseen tongues in the reeds. Suddenly a bit of brown fury dashed into view near me, spattered the air thick with song-notes, and, as if veiled by this cloud of melody, it turned on its head and dived back, chattering of all that was seen to the other furies in the reeds. Does any one believe that exhibition to be an explosion of pure song--the exaltation of unmixed joy? If ever the Ninth Commandment was broken, it was broken here. This uncontrollable emotion, this shower of song, is but a cloak to the singer's fear and curiosity. He wants to know where I am and what I am about. I once knew a little dog who was so afraid of the dark that he would run barking all the way to the barn when put out at night. So these little spies start up singing their biggest as a blind to their real feelings and purposes. The quail's broken wings and rushes of blood to the head during nesting-time have lost their lure even for the small boy; yet they somehow still work on me. I involuntarily give my attention to this distress until too late to catch sight of the scurrying brood. I imagine, too, that the oldest and wisest of the foxes is still fooled by this make-believe, and will continue to be fooled to the end of time. A barren, stony hillside slopes gradually to the marsh where the wrens live. Here I was met by the fifth deceiver, a killdeer plover. The killdeer's crocodile tears are bigger and more touchingly genuine than even the quail's. And, besides all her tricks, she has a voice that fairly drips woe. The killdeer always builds in a worn-out, pebbly pasture or in a bare, unused field. Here among the stones she makes her nest by scraping out a shallow cavity, into which she scratches a few bits of rotten wood and weed-stalks in sizes that would make good timber for a caddis-worm's house. Instead of digging the cavity, she often hunts up two or three stones and a corn-butt, which happen to lie so that she can crowd in between them, and makes this shift serve her for a nest. [Illustration: "He wants to know where I am and what I am about."] Her eggs are one of the world's small wonders. They lie out in the open like so many of the pebbles about them--resembling the stones so perfectly that they are more often overlooked or crushed than discovered. The ground color of the egg is that of the earth, and the markings correspond marvelously to the size, shade, and distribution of the bits of wood beneath them in the nest. I know of no other instance of protective coloring among the birds so nearly perfect, unless it be the killdeer herself when playing her favorite trick of "invisible." She had seen me before I entered the reeds of the marsh-wrens. Squatting close over her eggs, she watched me silently, and seeing that I was approaching her nest on my way up the hill, she glided off and suddenly appeared at my feet. Where she came from I did not know. It was as if the earth had opened and let her out. I stopped. That was what she wanted. "You numskull, look at me and make a fool of yourself," she said by the light in her eye. I did exactly so. With her head outstretched and body close to the ground, she slid like a ghost before me as I followed. Now she took form like a stone, now seemed to sink out of sight into the earth, reappearing only to vanish again into thin air. Thus she led me on, contriving to keep from beneath my feet, and always just out of reach, till, seeing that my credulity and patience were failing, she broke silence for a desperate last act, and fell in a fit, screaming, _Kill-dee, kill-dee, kill-dee!_ There she lay in the agony of death. I stooped to pick her up; but she happened to flutter a little--the death-spasm. I stepped forward to take her. Putting my hand down, I--ah! not dead yet! Poor thing! She jerked just out of my hand--reflex action, no doubt. But now it is all over; she is dead, and I bend to pick her up, when, springing like an arrow from my grasp, killdeer, ringing out her wail, goes swiftly flying across the hill. Fooled! Yes; but not altogether fooled, for I knew that it would turn out so. The impostor! But wasn't it beautifully done? I shall never grow too wise to be duped. She has played me a trick, and now I will revenge myself and find her nest. I shall--perhaps. [Illustration: "In the agony of death."] RABBIT ROADS [Illustration] RABBIT ROADS In your woods walks did you ever notice a little furrow or tunnel through the underbrush, a tiny roadway in the briers and huckleberry-bushes? Did you ever try to follow this path to its beginning or end, wondering who traveled it? You have, doubtless. But the woods must be wild and the undergrowth thick and you must be as much at home among the trees as you are in your own dooryard, else this slight mark will make no impression upon you. But enter any wild tract of wood or high swamp along the creek, and look sharp as you cut across the undergrowth. You will not go far before finding a narrow runway under your feet. It is about five inches wide, leading in no particular direction, and is evidently made by cutting off the small stems of vines and bushes at an inch or more from the ground. The work looks as if it had been laid out by rule and done with a sharp knife, it is so regular and clean. This is a rabbit road. Follow it a few rods and you will find it crossed by another road, exactly similar. Take this new path now, and soon you are branching off, turning, and joining other roads. You are in rabbit-land, traveling its highways--the most complicated and entangling system of thoroughfares that was ever constructed. The individual roads are straight and plain enough, but at a glance one can see that the plan of the system is intended to bewilder and lead astray all who trespass here. Without a map and directions no one could hope to arrive at any definite point through such a snarl. There often comes along with the circus a building called the "Moorish Maze," over whose entrance is this invitation: COME IN AND GET LOST! This is what one reads at the cross-roads in rabbit-land. There are finger-boards and mile-stones along the way; but they point nowhere and mark no distances except to the rabbits. An animal's strong points usually supplement each other; its well-developed powers are in line with its needs and mode of life. So, by the very demands of his peculiar life, the beaver has become chief among all the animal engineers, his specialty being dams. He can make a good slide for logging, but of the construction of speedways he knows absolutely nothing. The rabbit, on the other hand, is a runner. He can swim if he is obliged to. His interests, however, lie mostly in his heels, and hence in his highways. So Bunny has become an expert road-maker. He cannot build a house, nor dig even a respectable den; he is unable to climb, and his face is too flat for hole-gnawing: but turn him loose in a brambly, briery wilderness, and he will soon thread the trackless waste with a network of roads, and lay it open to his nimble feet as the sky lies open to the swallow's wings. But how maddening these roads are to the dogs and foxes! In the first place, they have a peculiar way of beginning nowhere in particular, and of vanishing all at once, in the same blind fashion. I am not sure that I ever found a satisfactory end to a rabbit's road--that is, a nest, a playground, or even a feeding-place. Old Calamity, the hound, is always tormented and undone whenever she runs foul of a rabbit road. [Illustration: "Calamity is hot on his track."] She will start Bunny in the open field, and trail away after him in full tongue as fast as her fat bow-legs will carry her. The rabbit makes for the woods. Calamity is hot on his track, going down toward the creek. Suddenly she finds herself plunging along a rabbit road, breaking her way through by sheer force where the rabbit slipped along with perfect ease. She is following the path now rather than the scent, and, all at once, discovers that she is off the trail. She turns and goes back. Yes, here the rabbit made a sharp break to the right by a side-path; the track is fresh and warm, and the old hound sings in her eager delight. On she goes with more haste, running the path again instead of the trail, and--there is no path! It is gone. This bothers the old dog; but her nose is keen and she has picked up the course again. Here it goes into another road. She gives tongue again, and rushes on, when--_Wow!_ she has plunged into a thick and thorny tangle of greenbrier. That is where the torment comes in. These roads have a habit of taking in the brier-patches. Calamity will go round a patch if she can; she will work her way through if she must--but it is at the cost of bloody ears and a thousand smarting pricks. Bunny, meantime, is watching just inside the next brier-patch, counting the digs of his clumsy pursuer. I suppose that this "blind alley" kind of road is due to the fact that the rabbits have no regular homes. They make a nest for the young; but they never have dens, like minks and coons. In New England they often live in holes and among the crannies of the stone walls; and there, as far as I have seen, they rarely or never make roads. Farther south, where the winters are less severe, they dig no holes, for they prefer an open, even an exposed, bed to any sort of shelter. Shelters are dangerous. Bunny cannot back into a burrow and bare his teeth to his enemy; he is not a fighter. He can run, and he knows it; legs are his salvation, and he must have room to limber them. If he has to fight, then give him the open, not a hole; for it is to be a kangaroo kicking match, and a large ring is needed. He had as well surrender himself at once as to run into a hole that has only one opening. During the cold, snowy weather the rabbits usually leave the bare fields for the woods, though the older and wiser ones more frequently suffer the storms than risk the greater danger of such a move. When pressed by hunger or hounded hard, they often take to a rail-pile, and sometimes they grow so bold as to seek hiding under a barn or house. One young buck lived all winter in the wood-pile of one of my neighbors, becoming so tame that he fed with the chickens. [Illustration: "Bunny, meantime, is watching just inside the next brier-patch."] The nearest approach that a rabbit makes to a house is his "squat," or form. This is simply a sitting-place in the fields or along the woods, that he will change every time he is thoroughly frightened out of it. Undisturbed he will stay in this squat for months at a time. Occasionally a rabbit will have two or three squats located over his range, each one so placed that a wide view on every side may be had. If it is along the woods, then he sits facing the open fields, with his ears laid back toward the trees. He can hear as far as he can see, and his nose tells him who is coming up the wind sooner than either eyes or ears. It is cold, lonely living here in the winter. But everybody, except the mice and little birds, are enemies, his only friends being his wits and legs. In the long run, wits and legs are pretty safe insurance. "He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day," is Bunny's precept--and it works well; he still thrives. The squat is a cold place. The sky is its roof, and its only protection is the tuft of grass, the stone, or the stump beside which it is placed. Bunny may change to the lee or windward side, as suits him, during a storm; but usually he keeps his place and lies close to the ground, no matter how the wind blows, or how fiercely falls the rain and snow. I have frequently started them from their squats in bleak, wind-swept fields, when the little brown things were completely snowed under. There is great individuality among all animals, and though the rabbits look as much alike as peas, they are no exception to the rule. This personality is especially shown in their whimsical fancies for certain squats. Here, within sight of the house and the dog, an old rabbit took up her abode on a big, flat rail in the corner of the fence. Of course no hawk or owl could touch her here, for they dared not swoop between the rails; the dog and cat could scent her, but she had already whipped the cat, and she had given Calamity so many long runs that the hound was weary of her. The strategic value of such a situation is plain: she was thus raised just above the level of the field and commanded every approach. Perhaps it was not whim, but wisdom, that led to this selection. I knew another, a dwarf rabbit, that always got into a bare or plowed field and squatted beside a brown stone or clod of earth. Experience had taught him that he looked like a clod, and that no enemy ever plagued him when he lay low in the brown soil. [Illustration: "The squat is a cold place."] One summer I stumbled upon a squat close along the public road. Cart-loads of trash had been dumped there, and among the debris was a bottomless coal-scuttle. In the coal-scuttle a rabbit made his squat. Being open at both ends, it sheltered him beautifully from sun and rain. Here he sat, napping through the day, watching the interesting stream of passers-by, himself hidden by the rank weeds and grass. When discovered by a dog or boy, he tripped out of one of his open doors and led the intruder a useless run into the swamp. At one time my home was separated from the woods by only a clover-field. This clover-field was a favorite feeding-ground for the rabbits of the vicinity. Here, in the early evening, they would gather to feed and frolic; and, not content with clover, they sometimes went into the garden for a dessert of growing corn and young cabbage. Take a moonlight night in autumn and hide in the edge of these woods. There is to be a rabbit party in the clover-field. The grass has long been cut and the field is clean and shining; but still there is plenty to eat. The rabbits from both sides of the woods are coming. The full moon rises above the trees, and the cottontails start over. Now, of course, they use the paths which they cut so carefully the longest possible way round. They hop leisurely along, stopping now and then to nibble the sassafras bark or to get a bite of wintergreen, even quitting the path, here and there, for a berry or a bunch of sweet wood-grass. "Stop a moment; this won't do! Here is a side-path where the briers have grown three inches since they were last cut off. This path must be cleared out at once," and the old buck falls to cutting. By the time he has finished the path a dozen rabbits have assembled in the clover-field. When he appears there is a _thump_, and all look up; some one runs to greet the new-comer; they touch whiskers and smell, then turn to their eating. The feast is finished, and the games are on. Four or five of the rabbits have come together for a turn at hop-skip-and-jump. And such hop-skip-and-jump! They are professionals at this sport, every one of them. There is not a rabbit in the game that cannot leap five times higher than he can reach on his tiptoes, and hop a clean ten feet. [Illustration: "The limp, lifeless one hanging over the neck of that fox."] Over and over they go, bounding and bouncing, snapping from their marvelous hind legs as if shot from a spring-trap. It is the greatest jumping exhibition that you will ever see. To have such legs as these is the next best thing to having wings. Right in the thick of the fun sounds a sharp _thump! thump!_ Every rabbit "freezes." It is the stamp of an old buck, the call, _Danger! danger!_ He has heard a twig break in the woods, or has seen a soft, shadowy thing cross the moon. As motionless as stumps squat the rabbits, stiff with the tenseness of every ready muscle. They listen. But it was only a dropping nut or a restless bird; and the play continues. They are chasing each other over the grass in a game of tag. There go two, round and round, tagging and re-tagging, first one being "it" and then the other. Their circle widens all the time and draws nearer to the woods. This time round they will touch the bush behind which we are watching. Here they come--there they go; they will leap the log yonder. Flash! squeak! scurry! Not a rabbit in the field! Yes; one rabbit--the limp, lifeless one hanging over the neck of that fox trotting off yonder in the shadows, along the border of the woods! The picnic is over for this night, and it will be some time before the cottontails so far forget themselves as to play in this place again. It is small wonder that animals do not laugh. They have so little play. The savage seldom laughs, for he hunts and is hunted like a wild animal, and is allowed so scant opportunity to be off guard that he cannot develop the power to laugh. Much more is this true of the animals. From the day an animal is born, instinct and training are bent toward the circumvention of enemies. There is no time to play, no chance, no cause for laughter. The little brown rabbit has least reason of all to be glad. He is utterly inoffensive, the enemy of none, but the victim of many. Before he knows his mother he understands the meaning of _Be ready! Watch!_ He drinks these words in with his milk. The winds whisper them; the birds call them; every leaf, every twig, every shadow and sound, says: _Be ready! Watch!_ Life is but a series of escapes, little else than vigilance and flight. He must sleep with eyes open, feed with ears up, move with muffled feet, and, at short stages, he must stop, rise on his long hind legs, and listen and look. If he ever forgets, if he pauses one moment for a wordless, noiseless game with his fellows, he dies. For safety's sake he lives alone; but even a rabbit has fits of sociability, and gives way at times to his feelings. The owl and the fox know this, and they watch the open glades and field-edges. They must surprise him. The barred owl is quick at dodging, but Bunny is quicker. It is the owl's soft, shadow-silent wings that are dreaded. They spirit him through the dusk like a huge moth, wavering and aimless, with dangling dragon-claws. But his drop is swift and certain, and the grip of those loosely hanging legs is the very grip of death. There is no terror like the ghost-terror of the owl. [Illustration: "His drop is swift and certain."] The fox is feared; but then, he is on legs, not wings, and there are telltale winds that fly before him, far ahead, whispering, _Fox, fox, fox!_ The owl, remember, like the wind, has wings--wings that are faster than the wind's, and the latter cannot get ahead to tell of his coming. Reynard is cunning. Bunny is fore-sighted, wide awake, and fleet of foot. Sometimes he is caught napping--so are we all; but if in wits he is not always Reynard's equal, in speed he holds his own very well with his enemy. Reynard is nimble, but give the little cottontail a few feet handicap in a race for life, and he stands a fair chance of escape, especially in the summer woods. When the hounds are on his trail the rabbit saves his legs by outwitting his pursuers. He will win a long distance ahead of them, and before they overtake him he will double on his track, approaching as near as he dare to the dogs, then leap far aside upon a log, into a stream, or among the bushes, and strike out in a new direction, gradually making back toward the starting-place. He rises on his haunches to listen, as he goes along, and before the dogs have again picked up the trail, he has perhaps had time to rest and lunch. If it were a matter of dogs only, life would be just full enough of excitement to be interesting. He can double, balk, and mix trails on them, and enjoy it. They are nothing to fool. But the gun! Ah, that's a foe which he cannot get up with. He may double and confuse the dogs; but as he comes back along a side-road, with them yelping far in the rear, he often hops right into a game-bag. To do justice to the intelligence of the dog, and to be truthful about the rabbit, it must be remembered that, in the chase, Bunny usually has the advantage of knowing the lay of the land. The short cuts, streams, logs, briers, and roads are all in mind before he takes a jump. The dog is often on strange ground. Free the rabbit for the hunt, as you do the fox, on unknown territory, and the dogs will soon take the frightened, bewildered little creature. There is no braver or more devoted mother in all the wilds than Molly Cottontail. She has a mother's cunning and a mother's resourcefulness, also. But this is to be expected. If number of children count for experience, then, surely, Molly ought to be resourceful. There are seasons when she will raise as many as three families--and old-fashioned families for size, too. It is not uncommon to find ten young rabbits in a nest. Five times twins! And all to be fed, washed, and kept covered up in bed together! But animal children, as a rule, behave better than human children, so we may not measure the task of Mother Molly by any standard of our own. It is task enough, however, since you can scarcely count the creatures that eat young rabbits, nor the enemies that unwittingly destroy them. A heavy rain may drown them, cattle may crush them, mowing-machines may cut them to pieces, and boys who are starting menageries may carry them away to starve. Molly's mother-wit and craft are sufficient for most of these things. She picks out a sunny hillside among high grasses and bushes for the nest, so that the rain will flow off and not flood it, and because that here the cows are not so likely to trample, nor the plow and mowing-machine to come. She must also have ready and hidden access to the nest, which the grass and bushes afford. She digs a little hollow in the sand about a foot deep and as big around as a duck's nest, lines it first with coarse grasses and leaves, then with a layer of finer grass, and fills the whole with warm, downy fur plucked from her own sides and breast. This nest, not being situated at the end of an inaccessible burrow, like the tame rabbit's or woodchuck's, requires that all care be taken to conceal every sign of it. The raw sand that is thrown out is artfully covered with leaves and grass to blend with the surrounding ground; and over the nest itself I have seen the old rabbit pull vines and leaves until the inquisitive, nosing skunk would have passed it by. Molly keeps the young ones in this bed for about two weeks, after which time, if frightened, they will take to their heels. They are exceedingly tender at this age and ought not to be allowed to run out. They do not know what a man is, and hardly understand what their hind legs are. I saw one that was at least a month old jump up before a mowing-machine and bolt across the field. It was his first real scare, and the first time that he had been called upon to test his legs. It was funny. He didn't know how to use them. He made some tremendous leaps, and was so unused to the powerful spring in his hind feet that he turned several complete somersaults in the air. Molly feeds the family shortly after nightfall, and always tucks them in when leaving, with the caution to lie quiet and still. She is not often surprised with her young, but lingers near on guard. You can easily tell if you are in the neighborhood of her nest by the way she thumps and watches you, and refuses to be driven off. Here she waits, and if anything smaller than a dog appears she rushes to meet it, stamping the ground in fury. A dog she will intercept by leaving a warm trail across his path, or, in case the brute has no nose for her scent, by throwing herself in front of him and drawing him off on a long chase. One day, as I was quietly picking wild strawberries on a hill, I heard a curious grunting down the side below me, then the quick _thud! thud!_ of an angry rabbit. Among the bushes I caught a glimpse of rabbit ears. A fight was on. Crouching beside a bluish spot, which I knew to be a rabbit's nest, was a big yellow cat. He had discovered the young ones, and was making mouths at the thought of how they would taste, when the mother's thump startled him. He squatted flat, with ears back, tail swelled, and hair standing up along his back, as the rabbit leaped over him. It was a glimpse of Molly's ears, as she made the jump, that I had caught. It was the beginning of the bout--only a feint by the rabbit, just to try the mettle of her antagonist. The cat was scared, and before he got himself together, Molly, with a mighty bound, was in the air again, and, as she flashed over him, she fetched him a stunning whack on the head that knocked him endwise. He was on his feet in an instant, but just in time to receive a stinging blow on the ear that sent him sprawling several feet down the hill. The rabbit seemed constantly in the air. Back and forth, over and over the cat she flew, and with every bound landed a terrific kick with her powerful hind feet, that was followed by a puff of yellow fur. The cat could not stand up to this. Every particle of breath and fight was knocked out of him at about the third kick. The green light in his eyes was the light of terror. He got quickly to a bush, and ran away, else I believe that the old rabbit would have beaten him to death. The seven young ones in the nest were unharmed. Molly grunted and stamped at me for looking at them; but I was too big to kick as she had just kicked the cat, and I could not be led away to chase her, as she would have led a dog. The little fellows were nearly ready to leave the nest. A few weeks later, when the wheat was cut in the field above, one of the seven was killed by the long, fearful knife of the reaper. [Illustration: "Seven young ones in the nest."] Perhaps the other six survived until November, the beginning of the gunning season. But when the slaughter was past, if one lived, he remembered more than once the cry of the hounds, the crack of the gun, and the sting of shot. He has won a few months' respite from his human enemies; but this is not peace. There is no peace for him. He may escape a long time yet; but his foes are too many for him. He fights a good fight, but must lose at last. BRICK-TOP [Illustration] BRICK-TOP That man was not only an item in the reckoning when the world was made, but that his attributes were anticipated too, is everywhere attested by the way nature makes use of his wreckage. She provides bountifully for his comfort, and, not content with this, she takes his refuse, his waste, what he has bungled and spoiled, and out of it fashions some of her rarest, daintiest delicacies. She gathers up his chips and cobs, his stubble and stumps,--the crumbs which fall from his table,--and brings them back to him as the perfection of her culinary art. So, at least, any one with an imagination and a cultivated taste will say after he has eaten that October titbit, the brick-top mushroom. The eating of mushrooms is a comparatively unappreciated privilege in our country. The taste is growing rapidly; but we have such an abundance of more likely stuff to live upon that the people have wisely abstained from a fungus diet. All things considered, it is a legitimate and wholesome horror, this wide-spread horror of toadstools. The woods, the wild fields, and the shaded roadsides gleam all through July and August with that pale, pretty "spring mushroom," the deadly _Agaricus (Amanita) vernus_; yet how seldom we hear of even a child being poisoned by eating it! Surely it seems as if our fear of toadstools, like our hatred for snakes, has become an instinct. I have never known a mushroom enthusiast who had not first to conquer an almost mortal dread and to coax his backward courage and appetite by the gentlest doses. And this is well. An appetite for mushrooms is not wholly to be commended. Strangely enough, it is not the novice only who happens to suffer: the professional, the addicted eater, not infrequently falls a victim. The risk the beginner runs is mainly from ignorance of the species. In gathering anything one naturally picks the fairest and most perfect. Now among the mushrooms the most beautiful, the ideal shapes are pretty sure to be of the poisonous _Amanita_ tribe, whose toxic breath throws any concentrated combination of arsenic, belladonna, and Paris green far into the shade. There is nothing morally wrong in the mushroom habit, yet for downright fatality it is eclipsed only by the opium habit and the suicidal taste for ballooning. There are good people, nevertheless, who will eat mushrooms-toadstools even, if you please. The large cities have their mycological societies in spite of muscarine and phallin, as they have kennel clubs in spite of hydrophobia. Therefore, let us take the frontispiece of skull and crossbones, which Mr. Gibson thoughtfully placed in his poetic book on toadstools, for the centerpiece of our table, bring on the broiled brick-tops, and insist that, as for us, we _know_ these to be the very ambrosia of the gods. The development of a genuine enthusiasm for mushrooms--for anything, in fact--is worth the risk. Eating is not usually a stimulus to the imagination; but one cannot eat mushrooms in any other than an ecstatic frame of mind. If it chances to be your first meal of brick-tops (you come to the task with the latest antidote at hand), there is a stirring of the soul utterly impossible in the eating of a prosaic potato. You are on the verge all the time of discovery--of quail on toast, oysters, beefsteak, macaroni, caviar, or liver, according to your nationality, native fancy, and mycological intensity. The variety of meats, flavors, and wholesome nutrients found in mushrooms by the average mycologist beggars all the tales told by breakfast-food manufacturers. After listening to a warm mycologist one feels as Caleb felt at sight of the grapes and pomegranates: the children of Anak may be there, but this land of the mushroom is the land of milk and honey; let us go up at once and possess it. [Illustration: "The land of the mushroom."] If eating mushrooms quickens the fancy, the gathering of them sharpens the eye and trains the mind to a scientific accuracy in detail that quite balances any tendency toward a gustato-poetic extravagance. When one's life, when so slight a matter as one's dinner, depends upon the nicest distinctions in stem, gills, color, and age, even a Yankee will cease guessing and make a desperate effort to know what he is about. Here is where brick-top commends itself over many other species of mushroom that approach the shape of the deadly _Amanita_. It is umbrella-shaped, moderately long-stemmed, regularly gilled, and without a "cup" or bulge at the root, rather pointed instead. It is a rich brick-brown or red at the center of the cap, shading off lighter toward the circumference. The gills in fresh young specimens are a light drab, turning black later with the black spores. It comes in September, and lasts until the heavy snows fall, growing rarely anywhere but in the woods upon _oak_ stumps. I have found a few scattering individuals among the trees, and I took two out of my lawn one autumn. But oak-trees had stood in the lawn until a few years before, and enough of their roots still remained to furnish a host for the mushrooms. A stump sometimes will be covered with them, cap over cap, tier crowding tier so closely that no particle of the stump is seen. This colony life is characteristic. I have more than once gathered half a peck of edible specimens from a single stump. The most inexperienced collector, when brick-top has been pointed out to him, can hardly take any other mushroom by mistake. It is strange, however, that this delicious, abundant, and perfectly harmless species should be so seldom pictured among the edible fungi in works upon this subject. I have seen it figured only two or three times, under the names _Hypholoma perplexum_ and _H. sublateritius_, with the mere mention that it was safe to eat. Yet its season is one of the longest, and it is so abundant and so widely distributed as to make the gathering of the more commonly known but really rarer species quite impractical. No one need fear brick-tops. When taken young and clean, if they do not broil into squab or fry into frogs' legs, they will prove, at any rate, to be deliciously tender, woodsy sweetmeats, good to eat and a joy to collect. And the collecting of mushrooms is, after all, their real value. Our stomachs are too much with us. It is well enough to beguile ourselves with large talk of rare flavors, high per cents. of proteids, and small butcher's bills; but it is mostly talk. It gives a practical, businesslike complexion to our interest and excursions; it backs up our accusing consciences at the silly waste of time with a show of thrift and economy; but here mushroom economy ends. There is about as much in it as there is of cheese in the moon. No doubt tons and tons of this vegetable meat go to waste every day in the woods and fields, just as the mycologists say; nevertheless, according to my experience, it is safer and cheaper to board at a first-class hotel than in the wilderness upon this manna, bounty of the skies though it be. It is the hunt for mushrooms, the introduction through their door into a new and wondrous room of the out-of-doors, that makes mycology worthy and moral. The genuine lover of the out-of-doors, having filled his basket with fungi, always forces his day's gleanings upon the least resisting member of the party before he reaches home, while he himself feeds upon the excitement of the hunt, the happy mental rest, the sunshine of the fields, and the flavor of the woods. After a spring with the birds and a summer with the flowers, to leave glass and botany-can at home and go tramping through the autumn after mushrooms is to catch the most exhilarating breath of the year, is to walk of a sudden into a wonder-world. With an eye single for fungi, we see them of every shape and color and in every imaginable place--under leaves, up trees, in cellars, everywhere we turn. Rings of oreads dance for us upon the lawns, goblins clamber over the rotting stumps, and dryads start from the hollow trees to spy as we pass along. Brick-top is in its prime throughout October--when, in the dearth of other interests, we need it most. By this time there are few of the birds and flowers left, though the woods are far from destitute of sound and color. The chickadees were never friendlier; and when, since last autumn, have so many flocks of goldfinches glittered along our paths? Some of the late asters and goldenrods are still in bloom, and here and there a lagging joepye-weed, a hoary head of boneset, and a brilliant tuft of ironweed show above the stretches of brown. October is not the month of flowers, even if it does claim the witch-hazel for its own. It is the month of mushrooms. There is something unnatural and uncanny about the witch-hazel, blossoming with sear leaf and limbs half bare. I never come upon it without a start. The sedges are dead, the maples leafless, the robins gone, the muskrats starting their winter lodges; and here, in the yellow autumn sun, straggles this witch-hazel, naked like the willows and alders, but spangled thick with yellow blossoms! Blossoms, indeed, but not flowers. Hydras they look like, from the dying lily-pads, crawling over the bush to yellow and die with the rest of the dying world. [Illustration: Witch-hazel.] No natural, well-ordered plant ought to be in flower when its leaves are falling; but if stumps and dead trees are to blossom, of course leaf-falling time would seem a proper enough season. And what can we call it but blossoming, when an old oak-stump, dead and rotten these ten years, wakes up after a soaking rain, some October morning, a very mound of delicate, glistening, brick-red mushrooms? It is as great a wonder and quite as beautiful a mystery as the bursting into flower of the marsh-marigolds in May. But no deeper mystery, for--"dead," did I call these stumps? Rotten they may be, but not dead. There is nothing dead out of doors. There is change and decay in all things; but if birds and bugs, if mosses and mushrooms, can give life, then the deadest tree in the woods is the very fullest of life. SECOND CROPS [Illustration] SECOND CROPS I Take it the year round, the deadest trees in the woods are the livest and fullest of fruit--for the naturalist. Dr. Holmes had a passion for big trees; the camera-carriers hunt up historic trees; boys with deep pockets take to fruit-trees: but dead trees, since I developed a curiosity for dark holes, have yielded me the most and largest crops. An ardor for decayed trees is not from any perversity of nature. There is nothing unreasonable in it, as in--bibliomania, for instance. I discover a gaunt, punky old pine, bored full of holes, and standing among acres of green, characterless companions, with the held breath, the jumping pulse, the bulging eyes of a collector stumbling upon a Caxton in a latest-publication book-store. But my excitement is really with some cause; for--sh! look! In that round hole up there, just under the broken limb, the flame of the red-headed woodpecker--a light in one of the windows of the woods. Peep through it. What rooms! What people! No; I never paid ten cents extra for a volume because it was full of years and mildew and rare errata (I sometimes buy books at a reduction for these accidents); but I have walked miles, and passed forests of green, good-looking trees, to wait in the slim shade of some tottering, limbless old stump. Within the reach of my landscape four of these ancient derelicts hold their stark arms against the horizon, while every wood-path, pasture-lane, and meadow-road leads past hollow apples, gums, or chestnuts, where there are sure to be happenings as the seasons come and go. Sooner or later, every dead tree in the neighborhood finds a place in my note-book. They are all named and mentioned, some over and over,--my list of Immortals,--all very dead or very hollow, ranging from a big sweet-gum in the swamp along the creek to an old pump-tree, stuck for a post within fifty feet of my window. The gum is the hollowest, the pump the deadest, tree of the lot. The nozle-hole of the one-time pump stares hard at my study window like the empty socket of a Cyclops. There is a small bird-house nailed just above the window, which gazes back with its single eye at the staring pump. For some time one April the sputtering sparrows held this box above the window against the attacks of two tree-swallows. The sparrows had been on the ground all winter, and had staked their claim with a nest that had already outgrown the house when the swallows arrived. In love of fair play, and remembering more than one winter day made alive and cheerful by the sparrows, I could not interfere and oust them, though it grieved me to lose the pretty pair of swallows as summer neighbors. The swallows disappeared. All was quiet for a few days, when, one morning, I saw the flutter of steel-blue wings at the hole in the pump, and there, propped hard with his tail over the hole, hung my tree-swallow. I should have that pair as tenants yet, and in a house where I could see everything they did. He peered quickly around, then peeped cautiously into the opening, and slipped out of sight through the dark, round hole. [Illustration: "I knew it suited exactly."] I knew it suited exactly by the glad, excited way he came out and darted off. He soon returned with the little shining wife; and through a whole week there was a constant passing of blue backs and white breasts as the joyous pair fitted up the inside of that pump with grass and feathers fit for the cradle of a fairy queen. By the rarest fortune I was on hand when one of the sparrows discovered what had happened in the pump. There is not a single microbe of Anglophobia in my system. But need one's love for things English include this pestiferous sparrow? Anyhow, I feel just a mite of satisfaction when I recall how that sparrow, with the colonizing instinct of his race, dropping down upon the pump with the notion that he "had a duty to the world," dropped off that pump straightway, concluding that his "duty" did not relate to that particular pump any longer. The sparrows had built everywhere about the place, but that that pump--a post, and a post to a pair of bars at that--was worth settling had not dawned on them. When they saw that the swallows had taken it, one of them lighted there instantly, with tail up, head cocked, very much amazed, and commenting vociferously. He looked into the hole from every possible point, and was about to enter, when there came a whizz of wings, a flash of blue, and a slap that sent him spinning. When the indignant swallow swooped back, like a boomerang, the sparrow had scuttled off to an apple-tree. [Illustration: "With tail up, head cocked, very much amazed, and commenting vociferously."] That was a _coup de grâce_. Peace reigned after that; and along in July the five white eggs had found wings and were skimming about the fly-filled air or counting and preening themselves demurely in a solemn row upon the wire fence. Between two pastures, easily seen from the same study window, stands a wild apple-tree, pathetically diseased and rheumatic, which like one of Mr. Burroughs's trees, never bore very good crops of apples, but four seasons a year is marvelously full of animals. It is chiefly noted for a strange collection I once took out of its maw-like cavity. It was a keen January morning, and I stopped at the tree, as usual, and thumped. No lodgers there that day, it seemed. I mounted the rail fence and looked in. Darkness. No; there at the bottom was a patch of gray, and--I pulled out a snapping, blinking screech-owl. Down went my hand again, and a second owl came blinking to the light--this one in rich brown plumage. When I turned him up, his clenched claws held fistfuls of possum hair. Once more I pushed my hand down the hole, gingerly, and up to the shoulder. No mistake. Mr. Possum was in there, and after a little manoeuvering I seized him by the collar, and out he came grinning, hissing, and winking at the hard, white winter day. And how exactly like a possum! "There is a time for all things," comes near an incarnation in him. There is a time for eating owls--at night, of course, if owls can then be had. But day is the time to sleep; and if owls want to share his bed and roost upon him, all right. He _will_ sleep on till nightfall, in spite of owls. And he would sleep on here till dusk, in spite of my rude awakening, if I gave him leave. I dropped him back to the bottom of the hole, then put the two owls back upon him, and went my way, knowing I should find the three still sleeping on my return. And it was so. The owls were just as surprised and just as sleepy when I disturbed them the second time that day. I left them to finish their nap. But the possum was served for dinner the following evening--for this, too, is strictly in accord with his time-for-all-things philosophy. This pair of owls were most persistent in their attachment to the apple-tree. Several times in the course of the winter I found them sleeping soundly in this same deep cavity, making their winter lodgings in the bent, tumble-down shanty which, standing not far from the woods and between the uplands and meadows, has been home, hotel, post-office, city of refuge, and lookout for many of the wild folk about the fields. [Illustration: "In a solemn row upon the wire fence."] A worn-out, gone-to-holes orchard is a very city of hollows-loving animals. Not far away is one such orchard with a side bordering an extensive copse. Where the orchard and copse meet is an apple-tree that has been the ancestral home of unnumbered generations of flying-squirrels. The cavity was first hollowed out by flickers. The squirrels were interlopers. When the young come in April the large opening is stuffed with shredded chestnut bark, leaving barely room enough for the parents to squeeze through. The sharpest-eyed hawk awing would never dream of waiting outside that insignificant door for a meal of squirrel. [Illustration: "Young flying-squirrels."] But such precautions are not always proof against boys. I robbed that home one spring of its entire batch of babies (no one with any love of wild things could resist the temptation to kidnap young flying-squirrels), and tried to bring them up in domestic ways. But somehow I never succeeded with pets. Something always happened. One of these four squirrels was rocked on, a second was squeezed in a door, a third fell before he could fly, and the fourth I took to college with me. He had perfect liberty, for I had no other room-mate. I set aside one hour a day to putting corks, pens, photographs, and knives back in their places, for him to tuck away the next day in one of my shoes or under my pillow. More than once I have awakened to find him curled up in my neck or up my sleeve, the dearest little bedfellow alive. But it was three stories from my window to the street; and one day he tried his wings. They were not equal to the flight. Since then I have left my wild pets in the woods. If one wants to know what birds are about, especially the larger, more cautious species, let him get under cover near a tall dead oak or walnut, standing alone in the middle of open fields. Such a tree is the natural rest and lookout for every passer. Here come the hawks to wait and watch; here the sentinel crows are posted while the flock pilfers corn and plugs melons; here the flickers and woodpeckers light for a quick lunch of grubs, to call for company or telegraph across the fields on one of the resonant limbs; here the flocking blackbirds swoop and settle, making the old tree look as if it had suddenly leaved out in mourning--leaves black and crackling; and here the turkey-buzzards halt heavily in their gruesomely glorious flight. With good field-glasses there is no other vantage-ground for bird study equal to this. Not in a day's tramp will one see so many birds, and have such chances to observe them, as in a single hour, when the sun is rising or setting, in the neighborhood of some great, gaunt tree that has died of years or lonesomeness, or been smitten by a bolt from the summer clouds. [Illustration: "The sentinel crows are posted."] II Nature's prodigality and parsimony are extremes farther apart than her east and west. Why should she be so lavish of interstellar space, and crowd a drop of stagnant water so? Why give the wide sea surface to the petrels, and screw the sea-urchins into the rocks on Grand Manan? Why scatter in Delaware Bay a million sturgeon eggs for every one hatched, while each mite of a paramecium is cut in two, and wholes made of the halves? Why leave an entire forest of green, live pines for a lonesome crow hermitage, and convert the rottenest old stump into a submerged-tenth tenement? Part of the answer, at least, is found in nature's hatred and horror of death. She fiercely refuses to have any dead. An empty heaven, a lifeless sea, an uninhabited rock, a dead drop of water, a dying paramecium, are intolerable and impossible. She hastens always to give them life. The succession of strange dwellers to the decaying trees is an instance of her universal and endless effort at making matter live. Such vigilance over the ever-dying is very comforting--and marvelous too. Let any indifferent apple-tree begin to have holes, and the tree-toads, the bluebirds, and the red squirrels move in, to fill the empty trunk with new life and the sapless limbs with fresh fruit. Let any tall, stray oak along the river start to die at the top, and straightway a pair of fish-hawks will load new life upon it. And these other, engrafted lives, like the graft of a greening upon wild wood, yield crops more valuable often, and always more interesting, than come from the native stock. Perhaps there is no more useless fruit or timber grown than that of the swamp-gums (_Nyssa uniflora_) of the Jersey bottoms. But if we value trees according to their capacity for cavities,--the naturalist has a right to such a scale of valuation,--then these gums rank first. The deliberate purpose of a swamp-gum, through its hundred years of life, is to grow as big as possible, that it may hollow out accordingly. They are the natural home-makers of the swamps that border the rivers and creeks in southern New Jersey. What would the coons, the turkey-buzzards, and the owls do without them? The wild bees believe the gums are especially built for them. No white-painted hive, with its disappearing squares, offers half as much safety to these free-booters of the summer seas as the gums, open-hearted, thick-walled, and impregnable. When these trees alone make up the swamp, there is a roomy, empty, echo-y effect among the great gray boles, with their high, horizontal limbs spanned like rafters above, produced by no other trees I know. It is worth a trip across the continent to listen, under a clear autumn moon, to the cry of a coon-dog far away in the empty halls of such a swamp. To get the true effect of a barred owl's hooting, one wants to find the home of a pair in an ancient gum-swamp. I know such a home, along Cohansey Creek, where, the neighboring farmer tells me, he has heard the owls hoot in spring and autumn since he remembers hearing anything. I cannot reach around the butt of the tree that holds the nest. Tapering just a trifle and a little on the lean, it runs up smooth and round for twenty feet, where a big bulge occurs, just above which is the capacious opening to the owls' cave. There was design in the bulge, or foresight in the owls' choice; for that excrescence is the hardest thing to get beyond I ever climbed up to. But it must be mounted, or the queerest pair of little dragons ever hatched will go unseen. The owls themselves first guided me to the spot. I was picking my way through this piece of woods, one April day, when a shadowy something swung from one high limb to another overhead, following me. It was the female owl. Every time she lighted she turned and fixed her big black eyes hard on me, silent, somber, and watchful. As I pushed deeper among the gums, she began to snap her beak and drop closer. Her excitement grew every moment. I looked about for the likely tree. The instant I spied the hole above the bulge, the owl caught the direction of my eyes, and made a swoop at me that I thought meant total blindness. I began to climb. With this the bird lapsed into the quiet of despair, perched almost in reach of me, and began to hoot mournfully: _Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, woo-hoo, oo-oo-a!_ And faint and far away came back a timid _Woo-hoo, woo-a!_ from her mate, safely hid across the creek. [Illustration: "She turned and fixed her big black eyes hard on me."] The weird, uncanny cry rolled round under the roof of limbs, and seemed to wake a ghost-owl in every hollow bole, echoing and reëchoing as it called from tree to tree, to die away down the dim, deep vistas of the swamp. The silent wings, the snapping beaks, the eery hoots in the soft gloom of the great trees, needed the help of but little imagination to carry one back to the threshold of an unhacked world, and embolden its nymphs and satyrs, that these centuries of science have hunted into hiding. I wiggled above the bulge at the risk of life, and was greeted at the mouth of the cavern with hisses and beak-snappings from within. It was a raw spring day; snow still lingered in shady spots. But here, backed against the farther wall of the cavity, were two young owls, scarcely a week old, wrapped up like little Eskimos--tiny bundles of down that the whitest-toothed frost could never bite through. [Illustration: "Wrapped up like little Eskimos."] Very green babies of all kinds are queer, uncertain, indescribable creations-faith generators. But the greenest, homeliest, unlikeliest, babiest babes I ever encountered were these two in the hole. I wish Walt Whitman had seen them. He would have written a poem. They defy my powers of portrayal, for they challenge the whole mob of my normal instincts. But quite as astonishing as the appearance of the young owls was the presence beneath their feet of the head of a half-grown muskrat, the hind quarters of two frogs, one large meadow-vole, and parts of four mice, with many other pieces too small to identify. These all were fresh--the _crumbs_ of one night's dinner, the leavings of _one_ night's catch. If these were the fragments only, what would be a conservative estimate of the night's entire catch? Gilbert White tells of a pair of owls that built under the eaves of Selborne Church, that he "minuted" with his "watch for an hour together," and found that they returned to the nest, the one or the other, "about once in every five minutes" with a mouse or some little beast for the young. Twelve mice an hour! Suppose they hunted only two evening hours a day? The record at the summer's end is almost beyond belief. Not counting what the two old owls ate, and leaving out of the count the two frogs, it is within limits to reckon not less than six small animals brought to the hollow gum every night of the three weeks that these young owls were dependent for food--a riddance in this short time of not less than one hundred and twenty-five muskrats, mice, and voles. What four boys in the same time could clear the meadows of half that number? And these animals are all harmful, the muskrats exceedingly so, where the meadows are made by dikes and embankments. Not a tree in South Jersey that spring bore a more profitable crop. When fruit-growing in Jersey is done for pleasure, the altruistic farmer with a love for natural history will find large reward in his orchards of gums, that now are only swamps. Just as useful as the crop of owls, and beyond all calculation in its sweetening effects upon our village life, is the annual yield of swallows by the piles in the river. Years ago a high spring tide carried away the south wing of the old bridge, but left the piles, green and grown over with moss, standing with their heads just above flood-tide mark. In the tops of the piles are holes, bored to pass lines through, or left by rusted bolts, and eaten wide by waves and wind. Besides these there are a few genuine excavations made by erratic woodpeckers. This whole clump of water-logged piles has been colonized by blue-backed tree-swallows, every crack and cranny wide enough and deep enough to hold a nest being appropriated for domestic uses by a pair of the dainty people. It is no longer a sorry forest of battered, sunken stumps; it is a swallow-Venice. And no gayer gondoliers ever glided over wave-paved streets than these swallows on the river. When the days are longest the village does its whittling on the new bridge in the midst of this twittering bird life, watching the swallows in the sunset skim and flash among the rotting timbers over the golden-flowing tide. [Illustration: "It is no longer a sorry forest of battered, sunken stumps."] If I turn from the river toward the woods again, I find that the fences all the way are green with vines and a-hum with bumblebees. Even the finger-board at the cross-roads is a living pillar of ivy. All is life. There are no dead, no graveyards anywhere. A nature-made cemetery does not exist in my locality. Yonder, where the forest-fire came down and drank of the river, is a stretch of charred stumps; but every one is alive with some sort of a tenant. Not one of these stumps is a tombstone. We have graves and slabs and names in our burial-place, and nothing more. But there is not so much as a slab in the fields and woods. When the telegraph-poles and the piles are cut, the stumps are immediately prepared for new life, and soon begin blossoming into successive beds of mosses and mushrooms, while the birds are directed to follow the bare poles and make them live again. A double line of these pole-specters stretches along the road in front of my door, holding hands around the world. I have grown accustomed to the hum of the wires, and no longer notice the sound. But one May morning recently there was a new note in the pole just outside the yard. I laid my ear to the wood. _Pick--pick--pick_; then all was still. Again, after a moment's pause, I heard _pick--pick--pick_ on the inside. At my feet was a scattering of tiny yellow chips. Backing off a little, I discovered the hole, about the size of my fist, away up near the cross-bars. It was not the first time I had found High-hole laying claim to the property of the telegraph companies. I stole back and thumped. Instantly a dangerous bill and a flashing eye appeared, and High-hole, with his miner's lamp burning red in the top of his cap lunged off across the fields in some ill humor, no doubt. [Illustration: "Even the finger-board is a living pillar of ivy."] Throughout the summer there was telegraphing with and without wires on that dry, resonant pole. And meantime, if there was anything unintelligible in the ciphers at Glasgow or Washington, it was high-hole talk. For there was reared inside that pole as large, as noisy, and as red-headed a family of flickers as ever hatched. What a brood they were! They must have snarled the wires and Babelized their talk terribly. While this robust and uncultured family of flickers were growing up, only three doors away (counting by poles) a modest and soft-voiced pair of bluebirds, with a decently numbered family of four, were living in a hole so near the ground that I could look in upon the meek but brave little mother. There is still another dead-tree crop that the average bird-lover and summer naturalist rarely gathers--I mean the white-footed mice. They are the jolliest little beasts in all the tree hollows. It is when the woods are bare and deep with snow, when the cold, dead winter makes outside living impossible, that one really appreciates the coziness and protection of the life in these deep rooms, sunk like wells into the hearts of the trees. With what unconcern the mice await nightfall and the coming of the storms! They can know nothing of the anxiety and dread of the crows; they can share little of the crows' suffering in the bitter nights of winter. A warm, safe bed is a large item in out-of-doors living when it is cold; and I have seen where these mice tuck themselves away from the dark and storm in beds so snug and warm that I wished to be an elf myself, with white feet and a long tail, to creep in with them. I had some wood-choppers near the house on the lookout for mice, but, though they often marked the stumps where they had cut into nests, the winter nearly passed before I secured a single white-foot. Coming up from the pond one day with a clerical friend, after a vain attempt to skate, we lost our way in the knee-deep snow, and while floundering about happened upon a large dead pine that was new to me. It was as stark, as naked, and as dead a tree, apparently, as ever went to dust. The limbs were broken off a foot or more from the trunk, and stuck out like stumps of arms; the top had been drilled through and through by woodpeckers, and now lay several feet away, buried in the snow; and the bole, like the limbs, was without a shred of bark, but covered instead with a thin coating of slime. This slime was marked with fine scratches, as would be made by the nails of very small animals. I almost rudely interrupted my learned friend's discussion of the documentary hypothesis with the irreverent exclamation that there were mice in the old corpse. The Hebrew scholar stared at the tree. Then he stared at me. Had I gone daft so suddenly? But I was dropping off my overcoat and ordering him away to borrow the ax of a man we heard chopping. He looked utterly undone, but thought it best to humor me, though I know he dreaded putting an ax in my hands just then, and would infinitely rather have substituted his skates. I insisted, however, and he disappeared for the ax. The snow was deep, the pine was punky and would easily fall; and now was the chance to get my mice. They were in there, I knew, for those fine, fresh scratches told of scramblers gone up to the woodpecker holes since the last storm. The preacher appeared with the ax. Off came his coat. He was as eager now as though this tottering pine were an altar of Baal. He was anxious, also, to know if I had an extra sense--a kind of X-ray organ that saw mice at the centers of trees. And, priest though he was (shame on the human animal!), he had grown excited at the prospect of the chase of--mice! I tramped away the snow about the tree. The ax was swinging swiftly through the air; the preacher was repeating between strokes: "_I'm--truly--sorry--man's--dominion--has--_" when suddenly there was a crunch, a crash, and the axman leaped aside with the yell of a fiend; for, as the tree struck, three tiny, brown-backed, white-footed creatures were dashed into the soft snow. "The prettiest thing I ever saw," he declared enthusiastically, as I put into his hand the only mouse captured. We traced the chambers up and down the tree as they wound, stairway-like, just inside the hard outer shell. Here and there we came upon garners of acorns and bunches of bird feathers and shredded bark--a complete fortress against the siege of winter. That pine had not borne a green needle for a decade. It was too long dead and too much decayed to have even a fat knot left. Yet there was not a livelier, more interesting tree in the region that winter, nor one half so full of goings on, as this same old shell of a pine, with scarcely heart enough to stand. WOOD-PUSSIES [Illustration] WOOD-PUSSIES One real source of the joy in out-of-door study lies in its off-time character. A serious, bread-winning study of birds must be a lamentable vocation; it comes to measuring egg-shells merely, and stuffing skins. To get its real tonic, nature study must not be carried on with Walden Pond laboriousness, nor with the unrelieved persistence of a five years aboard a _Beagle_. Darwin staggered under the burden of his observations; and Thoreau says: "I would not have any one adopt _my_ mode of living; for before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself"--and so he did. No; the joy in wild things is the joy of being wild with them--vacation joy. Think of being forced to gather ants and watch spiders for a living! It would be quite as bad as making poetry or prophecy one's profession. From the day Mohammed formally adopts Koran-making as a business, he begins to lose his spontaneity and originality, and grows prosy and artificial, even plagiaristic. Nature shuns the professional. She makes her happiest visits as short surprises, delightful interruptions and diversions in the thick of our earnest business. You can take no vacation in the mountains? Then snatch a few minutes before the seven-o'clock whistle blows, or while you hoe, or between office-hours, to look and listen. The glimpses of wild life caught at such times will be flashes of revelation. It may be the instant picture of a gray fox leaping at a buzzard from behind a bush as the train drives across the wide, blank prairies of southern Kansas; or a warm time with wasps while mowing in New Jersey; or the chirp of sparrows in passing King's Chapel Burial-ground when a cold winter twilight is settling over Boston; or the chance meeting of a wood-pussy on your way home from singing-school in Maine. Whatever the picture, and wherever obtained, coming in this unexpected way, it is sure to be more lasting, meaningful, and happy than volumes of the kind gathered after long days of tramping with gun and glass. Any one can acquaint himself with the out-of-doors, if he keeps his eyes and ears open and lives a little while, should his lines happen to fall even in a city. Most cities have parks, or a river, or a zoölogical garden. A zoölogical garden is not to be despised by the naturalist. About ninety-nine hundredths of every wild animal remains wild in spite of iron bars and peanuts and visitors. There is one little creature, however, that you must live at least on the edge of the country to know, for I never saw a zoölogical garden that had a pit or cage for him. Yet he is not a blood-thirsty nor a venomous beast; in fact, he is as harmless as a rabbit and every whit as interesting as a prairie-dog. Nevertheless it is of no use to look for him in the city. You must go out to the outskirts, to the farms and pastures, if you would meet the wood-pussy. And even here you must not look for _him_, but go to church or visit the neighbors after dark and let the wood-pussy look for you. It will be altogether a rare and interesting experience, an encounter to remember. But what is a wood-pussy? That is the question I asked myself the first night I spent in Maine. I had occasion to go down the road that night, and as my hostess handed me the lantern she said warningly, "Look out for the wood-pussies on the way." From what I was able to put together that night I was sure that "wood-pussy" was a very pretty down-east name for what, in New Jersey, I had always called a skunk. I have had about a dozen unsought meetings with this greatly dreaded, seldom-named, but much-talked-of creature. Most of them are moonlight scenes--pictures of dimly lighted, shadow-flecked paths, with a something larger than a cat in them, standing stock-still or moving leisurely toward me, silvered now with pale light, now uncertain and monstrous where the shadows lie deepest. With these memories always come certain strange sensations of scalp-risings, chill feelings of danger, of wild adventure, and of hair-breadth escape. I have never met a skunk at night that did not demand (and receive) the whole path, even when that path was the State highway. Dispute the authority of a skunk? No more than I should the best-known ranger's in Texas when requested to hold up my hands. The skunk is the only animal left in the East that you will not parley with. Try to stare the Great Stone Face out of countenance if you wish, but when a skunk begins to sidle toward you, do not try to stare him out of the path; just sidle in the direction he sidles, and sidle as fast as you can. Late one afternoon I was reading by the side of a little ravine on one of the islands in Casco Bay. The sharp, rocky walls of the cut were shaded by scrub-pines and draped with dewberry-vines. Presently the monotonous slop of the surf along the shore, growing fainter as the tide ebbed, was broken by a stir in the dry leaves at the bottom of the ravine. I listened. Something was moving below me. Creeping cautiously to the edge, I looked down, and there, in a narrow yard between two boulders, not ten feet beneath me, was a family of seven young skunks. They were about three weeks old,--"kittens," the natives called them,--and seemed to be playing some kind of a rough-and-tumble game together. Funny little bunches of black and white they were, with pointed noses, beady black eyes, and very grand tails. They were jet-black, except for white tips to their tails and a pure white mark beginning on the top of their heads and dividing down their sides like the letter V. [Illustration: "A family of seven young skunks."] My presence was unsuspected and their play went on. It was a sight worth the rest of the vacation. When you find wild animals so far off their guard as to play, do as Captain Cuttle suggests--"make a note of it." It is a red-letter experience. I doubt if there is another set of children in all the out-of-doors so apparently incapable of playing as a set of young skunks. You have watched lambs stub and wabble about in their gambols, clumsy and unsafe upon their legs because there was so little body to hold down so much legs. These young skunks were clumsier than the wabbliest-legged lambkin that you ever saw, and for just the opposite reason--there was so little legs to hold up so much body. Such humpty-dumpty babies! They fell over each other, over the stones, and over their paws as if paws were made only to be tumbled over. Their surest, quickest way of getting anywhere was to upset and roll to it. It was a silent playground, as all animal playgrounds are. The stir of the dead leaves and now and then a faint hiss was all I could hear. Who has ever heard any noise from untamed animals at play? One day I came softly upon two white-footed mice playing in the leaves along a wood-road and squeaking joyously; but as a rule the children of the wilds, no matter how exciting their games, rarely utter a word. Silence is the first lesson they are taught. Or is it now instinctive? Have not generations of bitter life-struggle made the animals so timid and wary that the young are born with a dread of discovery so strong that they never shout in their play? This softness and silence was the only striking difference to be seen in the play of these young skunks here in the falling twilight, safely hidden among the rocks of the wild ravine, and that of school-children upon a village green. The child is much the same, whether the particular species is four-footed or whether it goes on two feet. Here below me one of the little toddlers got a bump that hurt him, and it made him just as mad as a bump ever did me. There was a fuss in a twinkling. He stamped with both fore feet, showed his teeth, humped his back, and turned both ends of his tiny body, like a pinched wasp, toward every one that came near him. The others knew what that particular twist meant and kept their distance. I knew the import of that movement, too. These young things had already learned their lesson of self-defense. I believe that a three-weeks-old skunk could hold his own against the world. The dusk was deepening rapidly in the ravine; and I was just about to shout to see how they would take it, when a long black snout was thrust slowly out from beneath a piece of the ledge, and the mother of the young skunks appeared. Without giving them a look, she crawled off around a rock. The family followed; and here they all fell to eating something--what, I could not see. I tried to scare them away, but at my commands they only switched their tails and doubled into defensive attitudes. Finally with some stones I drove them, like so many huge crabs, into the den, and--horrors! they were eating one of their own kin, a full-grown skunk, the father of their family, for all they knew or cared, that had been killed the night before in one of the islander's chicken-coops. The skunk is no epicure. The matter of eating one's husband or wife, one's father or mother, has never struck the skunk as out of the ordinary. As far as my observation goes, the supreme question with him is, Can this thing be swallowed? Such thoughts as, What is it? How does it taste? Will it digest? Is it good form?--no skunk since the line began ever allowed to interfere with his dinner. An enviable disregard, this of dietetics! To eat everything with a relish! If the testimony of Maine farmers can be credited, this animal is absolutely omnivorous. During the winter the skunks burrow and sleep, several of them in the same hole. When they go in they are as fat as September woodchucks; but long before spring, the farmers tell me, the skunks grow so lean and hungry that, turning cannibal, they fall upon their weaker comrades and devour them, only the strongest surviving until the spring. [Illustration: "The family followed."] In August, along the Kennebec, I found the skunks attacking the sugar corn. They strip the ears that hang close to the ground, and gnaw the milky grain. But they do most damage among the chickens. For downright destructiveness, a knowing old skunk, with a nice taste for pullets and a thorough acquaintance with the barn-yard, discounts even Reynard. Reynard is the reputed arch-enemy of poultry, yet there is a good deal of the sportsman about him; he has some sort of honor, a sense of the decency of the game. The skunk, on the contrary, is a poacher, a slaughterer for the mere sake of it. My host, in a single night, had fourteen hens killed by a skunk that dug under the coop and deliberately bit them through the neck. He is not so cunning nor so swift as the fox, but the skunk is no stupid. He is cool and calm and bold. He will advance upon and capture a hen-house, and be off to his den, while a fox is still studying his map of the farm. Yet, like every other predatory creature, the skunk more than balances his debt for corn and chickens by his credit for the destruction of obnoxious vermin. He feeds upon insects and mice, destroying great numbers of the latter by digging out the nests and eating the young. But we forget our debt when the chickens disappear, no matter how few we lose. Shall we ever learn to say, when the redtail swoops among the pigeons, when the rabbits get into the cabbage, when the robins rifle the cherry-trees, and when a skunk helps himself to a hen for his Thanksgiving dinner--shall we ever learn to love and understand the fitness of things out of doors enough to say, But then, poor beastie, thou maun live? The skunk is a famous digger. There are gigantic stories in Maine, telling how he has been seen to escape the hound by digging himself out of sight in the middle of an open field. I have never tried to run down a skunk, and so never gave one the opportunity of showing me all he is capable of as a lightning excavator; but, unless all my experience is wrong, a skunk would rather fight or run or even die than exert himself to the extent of digging a home. In the majority of cases their lairs are made by other paws than their own. One of the skunk's common tricks is to take up his abode with a woodchuck. As woodchucks, without exception, are decent sort of folk, they naturally object; but the unwelcome visitor, like Tar Baby, says nothing; simply gives his host the privilege of remaining in his own house if he chooses. He chooses to go, of course, and the easy-minded interloper settles down comfortably at home. But it is not long before a second wanderer chances upon this hole, and, without thanks or leave, shares the burrow with the first. This often goes on until the den is crowded--until some farmer's boy digs out a round half-dozen. From such a lair as headquarters the skunks forage at night, each making off alone to a favorite haunt, and returning before daybreak for safety and sleep. But a peculiar thing about these lodges, as about the family den in the ravine, is their freedom from the hateful musk. One rarely detects any odor about a skunk's burrow. I had been within twenty feet of this one on the island most of the afternoon and had not known it. How are a number of skunks living in a single burrow for weeks able to keep it sweet, when one of them, by simply passing through a ten-acre field of blossoming clover, will make it unendurable? It certainly speaks well for the creature's personal cleanliness, or else is proof of his extreme caution against discovery. The odor will easily carry with the wind three miles. On the spot where the animal has been shot, you will remember it a twelvemonth after whenever it rains. "Do you want to know how to shoot a skunk on your kitchen steps and never know it twenty-four hours after?" queried my Kennebec authority on these beasts. I did, of course, though I never expected a skunk to take up his stand on my kitchen steps and compel me to despatch him. "Well, shoot him dead, of course; then let him lie there three days. All that smell will come back to him, no matter how far off it's gone. It'll all come up out of the boards, too, and go into him, and you can carry him away by the tail and never know a skunk's been on the farm. It's curious how a skunk can make a smell, but never have any; and it's curious how it all returns to him when he dies. Most things are curious, ain't they?" I agreed that they were. But to return to my family in the ravine. The next morning I went back to the glen and caught three of these young ones. They made no resistance,--merely warned me to be careful,--and I took them to the house. For several days I fed them fish and fruit until they became so tame that I could handle them without caution. But they were hopelessly dull and uninteresting pets, never showing the least intelligence, curiosity, or affection. I finally turned them loose among their native rocks, and they strayed off as unconcerned as if they had not spent two weeks away from home, shut up in a soap-box. There seems to be little excuse, in this broad land of opportunity, for any one's going into skunk-farming for a business; but these animals have a good market value, and so, in spite of a big country and rich resources, our hands are so eager for gold that every summer we hear of new skunk farms. Still, why not raise skunks? They are more easily kept than pigs or pigeons; they multiply rapidly; their pelts make good (?) marten-skins; and I see no reason why any one having a piece of woodland with a stream in it, and a prairie or an ocean on each side of it, could not fence it in, stock it with skunks, and do a profitable and withal an interesting business. FROM RIVER-OOZE TO TREE-TOP [Illustration] FROM RIVER-OOZE TO TREE-TOP There are many lovers of the out-of-doors who court her in her robes of roses and in her blithe and happy hours of bird-song only. Now a lover that never sees her barefoot in the meadow, that never hears her commonplace chatter at the frog-pond, that never finds her in her lowly, humdrum life among the toads and snakes, has little genuine love for his mistress. To know the pixy when one sees it, to call the long Latin name of the ragweed, to exclaim over the bobolink's song, to go into ecstasies at a glorious sunset, is not, necessarily, to love nature at all. One who does all this sincerely, but who stuffs his ears to the din of the spring frogs, is in love with nature's pretty clothes, her dainty airs and fine ways. Her warm, true heart lies deeper down. When one has gone down to that, then a March without peepers will be as lonesome as a crowd without friends; then an orchard without the weather-wise hyla can never make good his place with mere apples; and the front door without a solemn, philosophic toad beneath its step will lack something quite as needful to its evening peace and homeness as it lacks when the old-fashioned roses and the honeysuckle are gone. We are not humble nor thoughtful out of doors. There is too much sentiment in our passion for nature. We make colored plates and poems to her. All honor to the poets! especially to those who look carefully and see deeply, like Wordsworth and Emerson and Whitman. But what the common run of us needs, when we go a-wooing nature, is not more poetry, but a scientific course in biology. How a little study in comparative anatomy, for instance, would reveal to us the fearful and wonderful in the make-up of all animal forms! And the fearful and wonderful have a meaning and a beauty which we ought to realize. We all respond to the flowers and birds, for they demand no mental effort. What about the snakes and frogs? Do we shiver at them? Do we more than barely endure them? No one can help feeling the comfort and sympathy of the bluebird. The very drifts soften as he appears. He comes some March morning in a flurry of snow, or drops down out of a cheerless, soaking sky, and assures us that he has just left the South and has hurried ahead at considerable hazard to tell us that spring is on the way. Yet, here is another voice, earlier than the bluebird's often, with the bluebird's message, and with even more than the bluebird's authority; but who will listen to a frog? A prophet is not without honor save in his own country. One must needs have wings and come from a foreign land to be received among us as a prophet of the spring. Suppose a little frog noses his way up through the stiff, cold mud, bumps against the ice, and pipes, _Spring! spring! spring!_ Has he not as much claim upon our faith as a bird that drops down from no one knows where, with the same message? The bluebird comes because he has seen the spring; Hyla comes because he has the spring in his heart. He that receives Hyla in the name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward. [Illustration: "'Spring! spring! spring!'"] For me there is no clearer call in all the year than that of the hylas' in the break-up days of March. The sap begins to start in my roots at the first peep. There is something in their brave little summons, as there is in the silvery light on the pussy-willows, that takes hold on my hope and courage, and makes the March mud good to tramp through. And this despite the fact that these early hylas so aggravated my first attack of homesickness that I thought it was to be fatal. The second night I ever spent away from home and my mother was passed with old Mrs. Tribbet, who had a large orchard, behind which was a frog-pond. In vain did she stay me with raisins and comfort me with apples. I was sick for home. And those frogs! When the guineas got quiet, how dreadful they made the long May twilight with their shrieking, strangling, homesick cries! After all these years I cannot listen to them in the evenings of early spring without catching an echo from the back of that orchard, without just a throb of that pain so near to breaking my heart. Close by, in a corner lot between the two cross-roads of the village, lies a wretched little puddle, the home of countless hylas until the June suns dry it up. Among the hundred or more people who live in the vicinity and who pass the pond almost daily, I think that I am the only one who, until recently, was sure he had ever seen a peeper, and knew that they were neither tadpoles, salamanders, nor turtles. As I was standing by the puddle, one May day, a good neighbor came along and stopped with me. The chorus was in full blast--cricket-frogs, Pickering's frogs, spring frogs, and, leading them all, the melancholy quaver of Bufo, the "hop-toad." "What is it that makes the _dreadful_ noise?" my neighbor asked, meaning, I knew, by "dreadful noise," the song of the toad. I handed her my opera-glass, pointed out the minstrel with the doleful bagpipe sprawling at the surface of the water, and, after sixty years of wondering, she saw with immense satisfaction that one part in this familiar spring medley was taken by the common toad. Sixty springs are a good many springs to be finding out the author of so well-known a sound as this woeful strain of the serenading toad; but more than half a century might be spent in catching a cricket-frog at his song. I tried to make my neighbor see one that was clinging to a stick in the middle of the puddle; but her eyes were dim. Deft hands have dressed these peepers. We have heard them by the meadowful every spring of our life, and yet the fingers of one hand number more than the peepers we have seen. One day I bent over three lily-pads till nearly blind, trying to make out a cricket-frog that was piping all the while somewhere near or upon them. At last, in despair, I made a dash at the pads, only to see the wake as the peeper sank to the bottom an instant before my net struck the surface. [Illustration: "A wretched little puddle."] The entire frog family is as protectively colored as this least member, the cricket-frog. They all carry fern-seed in their pockets and go invisible. Notice the wood-frog with his tan suit and black cheeks. He is a mere sound as he hops about over the brown leaves. I have had him jump out of the way of my feet and vanish while I stared hard at him. He lands with legs extended, purposely simulating the shape of the ragged, broken leaves, and offers, as the only clue for one's baffled eyes, the moist glisten as his body dissolves against the dead brown of the leaf-carpet. The tree-toad, _Hyla versicolor_, still more strikingly blends with his surroundings, for, to a certain extent, he can change color to match the bark upon which he sits. More than once, in climbing apple-trees, I have put my hand upon a tree-toad, not distinguishing it from the patches of gray-green lichen upon the limbs. But there is less of wonder in the tree-toad's ability to change his colors than in the way he has of changing his clothes. He is never troubled with the getting of a new suit; his labor comes in caring for his old ones. It is curious how he disposes of his cast-off clothes. One day late in autumn I picked up a tree-toad that was stiff and nearly dead with cold. I put him in a wide-mouthed bottle to thaw, and found by evening that he was quite alive, sitting with his toes turned in, looking much surprised at his new quarters. He made himself at home, however, and settled down comfortably, ready for what might happen next. The following day he climbed up the side of the bottle and slept several hours, his tiny disked toes holding him as easily and restfully as if he were stretched upon a feather-bed. I turned him upside down; but he knew nothing of it until later when he awoke; then he deliberately turned round with his head up and went to sleep again. At night he was wide awake, winking and blinking at the lamp, and watching me through his window of green glass. [Illustration] A few nights after his rescue Hyla sat upon the bottom of his bottle in a very queer attitude. His eyes were drawn in, his head was bent down, his feet rolled up--his whole body huddled into a ball less than half its normal size. After a time he began to kick and gasp as if in pain, rolling and unrolling himself desperately. I thought he was dying. He would double up into a bunch, then kick out suddenly and stand up on his hind legs with his mouth wide open as if trying to swallow something. He _was_ trying to swallow something, and the thing had stuck on the way. It was a kind of cord, and ran out of each corner of his mouth, passing over his front legs, thinning and disappearing most strangely along his sides. With the next gulp I saw the cord slip down a little, and, as it did so, the skin along his sides rolled up. It was his old suit! He was taking it off for a new one; and, instead of giving it to the poor, he was trying to economize by eating it. What a meal! What a way to undress! What curious economy! Long ago the naturalists told us that the toads ate their skins--after shedding them; but it was never made plain to me that they ate them _while_ changing them--indeed, _swallowed_ them off! Three great gulps more and the suit--shirt, shoes, stockings, and all--disappeared. Then Hyla winked, drew his clean sleeve across his mouth, and settled back with the very air of one who has magnificently sent away the waiter with the change. [Illustration: "He _was_ trying to swallow something."] Four days later Hyla ate up this new suit. I saw the entire operation this time. It was almost a case of surgery. He pulled the skin over his head and neck with his fore feet as if it were a shirt, then crammed it into his mouth; kicked it over his back next; worked out his feet and legs; then ate it off as before. The act was accomplished with difficulty, and would have been quite impossible had not Hyla found the most extraordinary of tongues in his head. Next to the ability to speak Russian with the tongue comes the power to skin one's self with it. The tree-toad cannot quite croak Russian, but he can skin himself with his tongue. Unlike ours, his tongue is hung at the front end, with the free end forked and pointing toward his stomach. When my little captive had crammed his mouth full of skin, he stuck this fork of a tongue into it and forced it down his throat and held it down while he kicked and squirmed out of it. Though less beautifully clothed than Hyla, our common toad, Bufo, is just as carefully clothed. Where the rain drips from the eaves, clean, narrow lines of pebbles have been washed out of the lawn. On one side of the house the shade lies all day long and the grass is cool and damp. Here, in the shade, a large toad has lived for two summers. I rarely pass that way without seeing him, well hidden in the grass. For several days lately he had been missing, when, searching more closely one morning, I found him sunk to the level of his back in the line of pebbles, his spots and the glands upon his neck so mingling with the varied collection of gravel about him that only a practised eye, and that sharp with expectation, could have made him out. In a newly plowed field, with some of the fresh soil sticking to him, what thing could look more like a clod than this brown, shapeless lump of a toad? But there is a beauty even in this unlovely form; for here is perfect adaptability. Our canons of the beautiful are false if they do not in some way include the toad. Shall we measure all the out-of-doors by the linnet's song, the cardinal-flower's flame, and the hay-field's odor? Deeper, wider, more fundamental and abiding than these standards, lie the intellectual principles of plan and purpose and the intellectual quality of perfect execution. We shall love not alone with all our heart, but with all our mind as well. If we judge the world beautiful by the superficial standard of what happens to please our eye, we shall see no more of the world than we do of the new moon. Whole classes of animals and wide regions of the earth's surface must, by this test, be excluded. The only way the batrachians could possibly come in would be by rolling the frogs in bread-crumbs and frying them. Treated thus, they look good and taste good, but this is all that can be said for the entire family. Studied, however, from the single view-point of protective coloring, or again, as illustrating the ease with which the clumsiest forms can be fitted to the widest variety of conditions, the toads do not suffer by any comparison. In the light of such study, Bufo loses his repulsiveness and comes to have a place quite as unique as the duckbill's, and a personality not less fascinating than the swallow's or the gray squirrel's. [Illustration] However, the toad to the most of us is anything but a poem. What, indeed, looks less lovely, less nimble and buoyant, more chained to the earth, than a toad? But stretch the least web between his toes, lengthen his hind legs, and--over he goes, the leopard-frog, champion high diver of the marsh! Or, instead of the web, tip his toes with the tiniest disks, and--there he swings, Pickering's little hyla, clinging as easily to the under surface of that oak-leaf high in the tree as a fly clings to the kitchen ceiling. When a boy I climbed to the top of the flagpole on one of the State geological survey stations. The pole rose far above the surrounding pines--the highest point for miles around. As I clinched the top of the staff, gripping my fingers into the socket for the flag-stick, I felt something cold, and drawing myself up, found a tree-toad asleep in the hole. Under him was a second toad, and under the second a third--all dozing up here on the very topmost tip of all the region. From the river-ooze to the tree-top, nature carries this toad-form simply by a thin web between the toes, or by tiny disks at their tips. And mixing her greens and browns with just a dash of yellow, she paints them all so skilfully that, upon a lily-pad, beside a lump of clay, or against the lichened limb of an old apple-tree, each sits as securely as Perseus in the charmed helmet that made him invisible. The frogs have innumerable enemies among the water-birds, the fish, the snakes, and such animals as the fisher, coon, possum, and mink. The toads fortunately are supplied with glands behind their heads whose secretion is hateful to most of their foes, though it seems to be no offense whatever to the snakes. A toad's only chance, when a snake is after him, lies in hiding. I once saw a race between a toad and an adder snake, however, in which the hopper won. One bright May morning I was listening to the music of the church bells, as it floated out from the city and called softly over the fields, when my reverie was interrupted by a sharp squeak and a thud beside the log on which I sat; something dashed over my foot; and I turned to catch sight of a toad bouncing past the log, making hard for the brush along the fence. He scarcely seemed to touch the ground, but skimmed over the grass as if transformed into a midget jack-rabbit. His case was urgent; and little wonder! At the opposite end of the log, raised four or five inches from the grass, her eyes hard glittering, her nose tilted in the air, and astonishment all over her face, swayed the flat, ugly head of a hognose-adder. Evidently she, too, had never seen a toad get away in any such time before; and after staring a moment, she turned under the log and withdrew from the race, beaten. Hungry snakes and hot, dusty days are death to the toads. Bufo would almost as soon find himself at the bottom of a well as upon a dusty road in blazing sunshine. His day is the night. He is not particular about the moon. All he asks is that the night be warm, that the dew lay the dust and dampen the grass, and that the insects be out in numbers. At night the snakes are asleep, and so are most of those ugly, creaking beasts with rolling iron feet that come crushing along their paths. There is no foe abroad at night, and life, during these dark, quiet hours, has even for a toad something like a dash of gaiety. In one of the large pastures not far away stands a pump. It is shaded by an ancient apple-tree, under which, when the days are hottest, the cattle gather to doze and dream. They have worn away the grass about the mossy trough, and the water, slopping over, keeps the spot cool and muddy the summer through. Here the toads congregate from every quarter of the great field. I stretched myself out flat on the grass one night and watched them in the moonlight. There must have been fifty here that night, hopping about over the wet place--as grotesque a band as ever met by woods or waters. We need no "second sight," no pipe of Pan, no hills of Latmos with a flock to feed, to find ourselves back in that enchanted world of the kelpies and satyrs. All we need to do is to use the eyes and ears we have, and haunt our hills by morning and by moonlight. Here in the moonlight around the old pump I saw goblins, if ever goblins were seen in the light of our moon. There was not a croak, not a squeak, not the slightest sound, save the small _pit-pat_, _pit-pat_, made by their hopping. There may have been some kind of toad talk among them, but listen never so closely, I could not catch a syllable of it. Where did they all come from? How did they find their way to this wet spot over the hills and across the acres of this wide pasture? You could walk over the field in the daytime and have difficulty in finding a single toad; but here at night, as I lay watching, every few minutes one would hop past me in the grass; or coming down the narrow cow-paths in the faint light I could see a wee black bunch bobbing leisurely along with a hop and a stop, moving slowly toward the pump to join the band of his silent friends under the trough. [Illustration] Not because there was more food at the pump, nor for the joy of gossip, did the toads meet here. The one thing necessary to their existence is water, and doubtless many of these toads had crossed this pasture of fifteen acres simply to get a drink. I have known a toad to live a year without food, and another to die in three days for lack of water. And yet this thirsty little beast never knows the pleasure of a real drink, because he does not know how to drink. I have kept toads confined in cages for weeks at a time, never allowing them water when I could not watch them closely, and I never saw one drink. Instead, they would sprawl out in the saucer on their big, expansive bellies, and _soak_ themselves full, as they did here on the damp sand about the pump. Just after sunset, when the fireflies light up and the crickets and katydids begin to chirp, the toad that sleeps under my front step hops out of bed, kicks the sand off his back, and takes a long look at the weather. He seems to _think_ as he sits here on the gravel walk, sober and still, with his face turned skyward. What does he think about? Is he listening to the chorus of the crickets, to the whippoorwills, or is it for supper he is planning? It may be of the vicissitudes of toad life, and of the mutability of all sublunary things, that he meditates. Who knows? Some day perhaps we shall have a batrachian psychology, and I shall understand what it is that my door-step lodger turns over and over in his mind as he watches the coming of the stars. All I can do now is to minute his cogitations, and I remember one evening when he sat thinking and winking a full hour without making a single hop. As the darkness comes down he makes off for a night of bug-hunting. At the first peep of dawn, bulging plump at the sides, he turns back for home. Home to a toad usually means any place that offers sleep and safety for the day; but if undisturbed, like the one under the step, he will return to the same spot throughout the summer. This chosen spot may be the door-step, the cracks between the bricks of a well, or the dense leaves of a strawberry-bed. In the spring of 1899 so very little rain fell between March and June that I had to water my cucumber-hills. There was scarcely a morning during this dry spell that I did not find several toads tucked away for the day in these moist hills. These individuals had no regular home, like the one under the step, but hunted up the coolest, shadiest places in the soft soil and made new beds for themselves every morning. Their bed-making is very funny, but not likely to meet the approval of the housewife. Wearied with the night's hunting, a toad comes to the cool cucumber-vines and proceeds at once to kick himself into bed. He backs and kicks and elbows into the loose sand as far as he can, then screws and twists till he is worked out of sight beneath the soil, hind end foremost. Here he lies, with only his big pop-eyes sticking out, half asleep, half awake. If a hungry adder crawls along, he simply pulls in his eyes, the loose sand falls over them, and the snake passes on. When the nights begin to grow chilly and there are threatenings of frost, the toads hunt up winter quarters, and hide deep down in some warm burrow--till to-morrow if the sun comes out hot, or, it may be, not to wake until next April. Sometimes an unexpected frost catches them, when any shelter must do, when even their snake-fear is put aside or forgotten. "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows," said Trinculo, as he crawled in with Caliban from the storm. So might the toad say in an early frost. The workmen in a sandstone-quarry near by dug out a bunch of toads one winter, all mixed up with a bunch of adders. They were wriggled and squirmed together in a perfect jumble of legs, heads, and tails--all in their dead winter sleep. Their common enemy, the frost, had taken them unawares, and driven them like friends into the crevice of the rocks, where they would have slept together until the spring had not the quarrymen unearthed them. There is much mystery shrouding this humble batrachian. Somewhere in everybody's imagination is a dark cell harboring a toad. Reading down through literature, it is astonishing how often the little monster has hopped into it. There is chance for some one to make a big book of the fable and folk-lore that has been gathering through the ages about the toads. The stories of the jewels in their heads, of their age-long entombments in the rocks, of the warts and spells they induce, of their eating fire and dropping from the clouds, are legion. [Illustration] And there seems to be some basis of fact for all these tales. No one has yet written for us the life-history of the toad. After having watched the tadpole miracle, one is thoroughly prepared to see toads jump out of the fire, tumble from broken marble mantles, and fall from the clouds. I never caught them in my hat during a shower; but I have stood on Mauricetown Bridge, when the big drops came pelting down, and seen those drops apparently turn into tiny toads as they struck the planks, until the bridge was alive with them! Perhaps they had been hiding from the heat between the cracks of the planks--but there are people who believe that they came down from the clouds. How, again, shall I explain this bit of observation? More than six years I lived near a mud-hole that dried up in July. I passed it almost daily. One spring there was a strange toad-call in the hole, a call that I had never heard anything like before--a deafening, agonizing roar, hoarse and woeful. I found on investigation that the water was moving with spade-foot toads. Two days later the hole was still; every toad was gone. They disappeared; and though I kept that little puddle under watch for several seasons after that, I have not known a spade-foot to appear there since. [Illustration] The water was almost jellied with their spawn, and a little later was swarming with spade-foot tadpoles. Then it began to dry up, and some of the tadpoles were left stranded in the deep foot-prints of the cows along the edge of the hole. Just as fast as the water disappeared in these foot-prints, the tails of the tadpoles were absorbed and legs formed, and they hopped away--some of them a week before their brothers, that were hatched at the same time, but who had stayed in the middle of the pond, where the deeper water allowed them a longer babyhood for the use of their tails. So swiftly, under pressure, can nature work with this adaptable body of the toad! Long before the sun-baked mud began to crack these young ones had gone--where? And whence came their parents, and whither went they? When will they return? [Illustration] A BUZZARDS' BANQUET [Illustration: "In a state of soured silence."] A BUZZARDS' BANQUET Is there anything ugly out of doors? Can the ardent, sympathetic lover of nature ever find her unlovely? We know that she is supremely utilitarian, and we have only wonder and worship for her prodigal and perfect economy. But does she always couple beauty with her utility? To her real lover nature is never tiresome nor uninteresting; but often she is most fascinating when veiled. She has moods and tempers and habits, even physical blemishes, that are frequently discovered to the too pressing suitor; and though these may quicken his interest and faith, they often dissipate that halo of perfection with which first fancy clothed her. This intimacy, this "seeing the very pulse of the machine," is what spoils poets like Burroughs and Thoreau: spoils them for poets to make them the truer philosophers. Like the spots on the sun, all of nature's other blemishes disappear in the bright blaze of her loveliness when viewed through a veil, whether of shadows, or mists, or distance. This is half the secret of the spell of the night, of the mystery of the sea, and the enchantment of an ancient forest. From the depths of a bed in the meadow-grass there is perfection of motion, the very soul of poetry, in the flight of a buzzard far up under the blue dome of the sky; but look at the same bald-headed, snaky-necked creature upon a fence-stake, and you wonder how leagues into the clouds ever hid his ugly visage from you. Melrose must be seen by moonlight. The light to see the buzzard in has never been on land or sea, has come no nearer than the high white clouds that drift far away in the summer sky. From an economic point of view the buzzard is an admirable creation. So are the robin, the oriole, and most other birds; but these are admirable also from the esthetic point of view. Not so the buzzard. He has the wings of Gabriel--the wings only; for, truly, his neck and head are Lucifer's. If ugliness be an attribute of nature, then this bird is its expression incarnate. Not that he is wicked, but worse than wicked--repulsive. Now the jackal is a mean, sordid scamp, a miserable half-dog beast, a degenerate that has not fallen far, since he was never up very high. The buzzard, on the other hand, _was_ a bird. What he is now is unnamable. He has fallen back below the reptiles, into a harpy with snake's head and bird's body--a vulture more horrid than any mythical monster. [Illustration: "Ugliness incarnate."] Having once seen a turkey-buzzard feeding, one has no difficulty in accounting for the origin of those "angry creations of the gods" that defiled the banquets of King Phineus. If there is any holiness of beauty, surely the turkey-buzzard with clipped wing is the most unholy, the most utterly lost soul in the world. One bright, warm day in January--a frog-waking day in southern New Jersey--I saw the buzzards in unusual numbers sailing over the pines beyond Cubby Hollow. Hoping for a glimpse of something social in the silent, unemotional solitaries, I hurried over to the pines, and passing through the wood, found a score of the birds feasting just beyond the fence in an open field. Creeping up close to the scene, I quietly hid in a big drift of leaves and corn-blades that the winds had piled in a corner of the worm-fence, and became an uninvited guest at the strangest, gruesomest assemblage ever gathered--a buzzards' banquet. The silence of the nether world wrapped this festive scene. Like ugly shades from across the Styx came the birds, deepening the stillness with their swishing wings. It was an unearthly picture: the bare, stub-stuck corn-field, the gloomy pines, the silent, sullen buzzards in the yellow winter sunlight! The buzzards were stalking about when I arrived, all deliberately fighting for a place and a share of the spoil. They made no noise; and this dumb semblance of battle heightened the unearthliness of the scene. As they lunged awkwardly about, the ends of their over-long wings dragged the ground, and they tripped and staggered like drunken sailors on shore. The hobbling hitch of seals on land could not be less graceful than the strut of these fighting buzzards. They scuffled as long as there was a scrap to fight for, wordless and bloodless, not even a feather being disturbed, except those that rose with anger, as the hair rises on a dog's back. But the fight was terrible in its uncanniness. [Illustration: "Sailing over the pines."] Upon the fence and in the top of a dead oak near by others settled, and passed immediately into a state of semi-consciousness that was almost a stupor. Gloomy and indifferent they sat, hunched up with their heads between their shoulders, perfectly oblivious of all mundane things. There was no sign of recognition between the birds until they dropped upon the ground and began fighting. Let a crow join a feeding group of its fellows, and there will be considerable cawing; even a sparrow, coming into a flock, will create some chirping: but there was not so much as the twist of a neck when a new buzzard joined or left this assemblage. Each bird sat as if he were at the center of the Sahara Desert, as though he existed alone, with no other buzzard on the earth. There was no hurry, no excitement anywhere; even the struggle on the ground was measured and entirely wooden. None of the creatures on the fence showed any haste to fall to feeding. After alighting they would go through the long process of folding up their wings and packing them against their sides; then they would sit awhile as if trying to remember why they had come here rather than gone to any other place. Occasionally one would unfold his long wings by sections, as you would open a jointed rule, pause a moment with them outstretched, and, with a few ponderous flaps, sail off into the sky without having tasted the banquet. Then another upon the ground, having feasted, would run a few steps to get spring, and bounding heavily into the air, would smite the earth with his too long wings, and go swinging up above the trees. As these grew small and disappeared in the distance, others came into view, mere specks among the clouds, descending in ever-diminishing circles until they settled, without word or greeting, with their fellows at the banquet. The fence was black with them. Evidently there is news that spreads even among these incommunicative ghouls. Soon one settled upon the fence-stake directly over me. To dive from the clouds at the frightful rate of a mile a minute, and, with those mighty wings, catch the body in the invisible net of air about the top of a fence-stake, is a feat that stops one's breath to see. No matter if, here within my reach, his suit of black looked rusty; no matter if his beak was a sickly, milky white, his eyes big and watery, and wrinkled about his small head and snaky neck was red, bald skin, making a visage as ugly as could be made without human assistance. In spite of all this, I looked upon him with wonder; for I had seen him mark this slender pole from the clouds, and hurl himself toward it as though to drive it through him, and then, between these powerful wings, light as softly upon the point as a sleeping babe is laid upon a pillow from its mother's arms. Perhaps half a hundred now were gathered in a writhing heap upon the ground. A banquet this _sans_ toasts and cheer--the very soul of the unconvivial. It was a strange dumb-show in serious reality, rather than a banquet. In the stir of their scuffling, the dry clashing of their wings, and the noise of their tumbling and pulling and pecking as they moved together, I could hear low, serpent-like hisses. Except for a sort of half-heard guttural croak at rare intervals, these hisses were the only utterances that broke the silence. So far as I know, this sibilant, batrachio-reptilian language is the meager limit of the buzzard's faculty of vocal expression. With croak and hiss he warns and woos. And what tender emotion has a buzzard too subtle for expression by a croak or hiss? And if he hates, what need has he of words--with such a countenance? But he does not hate, for he does not love. To be able to hate implies a soul; and the buzzard has no soul. Laziness, gluttony, uncleanness, have destroyed everything spiritual in him. He has almost lost his language, so that now, even among his own kind, except when surprised, he is silent. But he needs no language, for he is not companionable; there is no trace of companionableness in his nature. He seems entirely devoid of affection and fellow-feeling, showing no interest whatever in any one or anything save his stomach. The seven evil spirits of the dyspeptic possess him, body and soul. It must be added, however, that the buzzards are to some extent gregarious. They often fly together, roost together, and nest in communities. In this latter fact some naturalists would find evidence of sociability; but this manner of nesting is not their habit. They more generally nest a single pair to a swamp. When they nest in communities, it is rather because the locality is suitable than from any desire to be together. Yet they frequently choose the same dead tree, or clump of trees, for a roost, which may mean that even in a buzzard's bosom there is something that calls for companionship. [Illustration: "A banquet this _sans_ toasts and cheer."] For a nesting-place the buzzard selects a swamp or remote and heavy timber where there is slight chance of molestation. Here, in a rough nest of sticks and leaves, upon the ground, in a hollow log, upon a stump, or sometimes upon the bare earth, are laid the two long, brown-blotched eggs that constitute the complement. "I once found a nest," a correspondent writes, "in a low, thick mat of briers and grape-vines. The female was brooding her eggs when I came upon the nest, and the moment she caught sight of me, instead of trying to defend her treasures as any normal mother would have done, she turned like a demon upon her nest, thrust her beak into one of her eggs, and devoured it before I could scare her off." This unnatural act is thus far without parallel in my observation of bird life. But it is only testimony of what one may read in the appearance of the buzzard. The indolent habits, the unnamable tastes, have demoralized and unmothered the creature. I cannot think that the buzzard was so depraved back in the Beautiful Garden. The curse of Adam is on him; but instead of sweating like the rest of us and so redeeming himself, he is content to be cursed. The bird has degenerated. You can see in his countenance that originally he was not so vicious in taste and habit. If, when this office of scavenger was created, the buzzard was installed, it was because he was too lazy and too indifferent to refuse. He may have protested and sulked; he even continues to protest and sulk: but he has been engaged so long in the business now that he is utterly incapable of earning a living in any other way. I saw all this in the face and attitude of the buzzard on the stake above me. He sat there as if conscious that a scavenger's life was beneath a bird of his parts; he looked mad with himself for submitting to a trade so degrading, mad with his position among the birds: but long ago he recognized the difficulty of changing his place and manner of life, and, rather than make the effort, he sank into this state of soured silence. That this is the way to read his personal record and the history of his clan is clear to my mind, because the bird is still armed with the great talons and beak of the eagles. He was once a hunter. Through generations of disuse these weapons have become dulled, weakened, and unfit for the hunt; and the buzzard, instead of struggling for his quarry, is driven to eat a dinner that every other predatory bird would refuse. Another proof of his fall is that at this late day he has a decided preference for fresh food. This was doubtless the unspoiled taste of his ancestors, given with the beak and talons. He is a glutton and a coward, else he would be an eagle still. We associate the turkey-buzzard with carrion, and naturally attribute his marvelous power of finding food to his sense of smell. Let a dead animal be dragged into the field, and in less than an hour there will be scores of these somber creatures gathered about it, when, in all the reach of the horizon for perhaps a week past, not more than one or two have been seen at any one time. Did they detect an odor miles away and follow the scent hither? Possibly. But yonder you spy a buzzard sailing so far up that he appears no larger than a swallow. He is descending. Watch where he settles. Lo! he is eating the garter-snake that you killed in the path a few minutes ago. How did the bird from that altitude discover so tiny a thing? He could not have smelled it, for it had no odor. He saw it. It is not by scent, but by his astonishing powers of sight, that the buzzard finds his food. [Illustration: "Floating without effort among the clouds."] One day I carried a freshly killed chicken into the field, and tying a long string to it, hid myself near by in a corn-shock. Soon a buzzard passing overhead began to circle about me; and I knew that he had discovered the chicken. Down he came, leisurely at first, spirally winding, as though descending some aërial stairway from the clouds, till, just above the tree-tops, he began to swing like a great pendulum through the air, turning his head from side to side as he passed over the chicken, watching to see if it were alive. He was about to settle when I pulled the string. Up he darted in great fright. Again and again I repeated the experiment; and each time, at the least sign of life, the buzzard hurried off--afraid of so inoffensive a thing as a chicken! Quite a different story comes to me from Pennsylvania. My correspondent writes: "Years ago, while I was at school in De Kalb, Mississippi, all the children had their attention called to a great commotion in a chicken-yard next the school-house. It appeared that a large hawk had settled down and was doing battle with a hen. My brother left the school-house and ran to the yard, cautiously opened the gate, slipped up behind, and caught the 'hawk'--which proved to be a large and almost famished turkey-buzzard. He kept it four or five days, when it died." Extreme hunger might drive a buzzard to attack a hen; but rare indeed is such boldness nowadays. There were by this time fully a hundred buzzards about me, some coming, some going, some sitting moody and disgusted, while others picked hungrily among the bones. They had no suspicion of my presence, but I had grown tired of them, and springing suddenly from the leaves, I stood in their midst. There was consternation and hissing for an instant, then a violent flapping of wings, and away they flew in every direction. Their heavy bodies were quickly swung above the trees, and soon they were all sailing away beyond the reach of straining eyes. Presently one came over far up in the blue, floating without effort among the clouds, now wheeling in great circles, now swinging through immense arcs, sailing with stately grandeur on motionless wings in flight that was sublime. UP HERRING RUN [Illustration] UP HERRING RUN The habit of migrating is not confined to birds. To some extent it is common to all animals that have to move about for food, whether they live in the water or upon the land. The warm south wind that sweeps northward in successive waves of bluebirds and violets, of warblers and buttercups, moves with a like magic power over the sea. It touches the ocean with the same soft hand that wakes the flowers and brings the birds, and as these return to upland and meadow, the waters stir and the rivers and streams become alive with fish. Waves of sturgeon, shad, and herring come in from unknown regions of the ocean, and pass up toward the head waters of the rivers and through the smaller streams inland to the fresh-water lakes. Waves of herring, did I say? It is a torrent of herring that rushes up Herring Run, a spring freshet from the loosened sources of the life of the sea. This movement of the fish is mysterious; no more so than the migration of the birds, perhaps, but it seems more wonderful to me. Bobolink's yearly round trip from Cuba to Canada may be, and doubtless is, a longer and a more perilous journey than that made by the herring or by any other migrant of the sea; but Bobolink's road and his reasons for traveling are not altogether hidden. He has the cold winds and failing food to drive him, and the older birds to pilot him on his first journey South, and the love of home to draw him back when the spring comes North again. Food and weather were the first and are still the principal causes of his unrest. The case of the herring seems to be different. Neither food nor weather influences them. They come from the deep sea to the shallow water of the shore to find lodgment for their eggs and protection for their young; but what brings them from the salt into fresh water, and what drives these particular herring up Herring Run instead of up some other stream? Will some one please explain? [Illustration: "From unknown regions of the ocean."] Herring Run is the natural outlet of Whitman's Pond. It runs down through Weymouth about three fourths of a mile to Weymouth Back River, thence to the bay and on to the sea. It is a crooked, fretful little stream, not over twenty feet wide at the most, very stony and very shallow. [Illustration: "A crooked, fretful little stream."] About a hundred years ago, as near as the oldest inhabitants can remember, a few men of Weymouth went down to Taunton with their ox-teams, and caught several barrels of herring as they came up the Taunton River to spawn. These fish they brought alive to Weymouth and liberated in Whitman's Pond; and these became the ancestors of the herring which have been returning to Whitman's Pond for the last century of Aprils. As soon as the weather warms in the spring the herring make their appearance in the Run. A south wind along in April is sure to fetch them; and from the first day of their arrival, for about a month, they continue to come, on their way to the pond. But they may be delayed for weeks by cold or storms. Their sensitiveness to changes of temperature is quite as delicate as a thermometer's. On a favorable day--clear and sunny with a soft south wind--they can be seen stemming up-stream by hundreds. Suddenly the wind shifts, blowing up cold from the east, and long before the nicest instrument registers a fraction of change in the temperature of the Run, the herring have turned tail to and scurried off down-stream to the salt water. They seem to mind nothing so much as this particular change of the wind and the cold that follows. It may blow or cloud over, and even rain, without affecting them, if only the storms are from the right quarter and it stays warm. A cold east wind always hurries them back to deep water, where they remain until the weather warms up again. Late in May, however, when they must lay their eggs, they ascend the stream, and nothing short of a four-foot dam will effectually stop their progress to the pond. They are great swimmers. It is a live fish indeed that makes Whitman's Pond. There are flying-fish and climbing-fish, fish that walk over land and fish that burrow through the mud; but in an obstacle race, with a swift stream to stem, with rocks, logs, shallows, and dams to get over, you may look for a winner in the herring. He will get up somehow--right side up or bottom side up, on his head or on his tail, swimming, jumping, flopping, climbing, up he comes! A herring can almost walk on his tail. I have watched them swim up Herring Run with their backs half out of water; and when it became too shallow to swim at all, they would keel over on their sides and flop for yards across stones so bare and dry that a mud-minnow might easily have drowned upon them for lack of water. [Illustration: "Swimming, jumping, flopping, climbing, up he comes!"] They are strong, graceful, athletic fish, quite the ideal fish type, well balanced and bewilderingly bony. The herring's bones are his Samson hair--they make his strength and agility possible; and besides that, they are vast protection against the frying-pan. When the herring are once possessed of the notion that it is high time to get back to the ancestral pond and there leave their eggs, they are completely mastered by it. They are not to be stopped nor turned aside. Like Mussulmans toward Mecca they struggle on, until an impassable dam intervenes or the pond is reached. They seem to feel neither hunger, fear, nor fatigue, and, like the salmon of Columbia River, often arrive at their spawning-grounds so battered and bruised that they die of their wounds. They become frantic when opposed. In Herring Run I have seen them rush at a dam four feet high, over which tons of water were pouring, and, by sheer force, rise over two feet in the perpendicular fall before being carried back. They would dart from the foam into the great sheet of falling water, strike it like an arrow, rise straight up through it, hang an instant in mid-fall, and be hurled back, and killed often, on the rocks beneath. Had there been volume enough of the falling water to have allowed them a fair swimming chance, I believe that they could have climbed the dam through the perpendicular column. Under the dam, and a little to one side, a "rest," or pen, has been constructed into which the herring swim and are caught. The water in this pen is backed up by a gate a foot high. The whole volume of the stream pours over this gate and tears down a two-foot sluiceway with velocity enough to whirl along a ten-pound rock that I dropped into the box. The herring run this sluice and jump the gate with perfect ease. Twelve thousand of them have leaped the gate in a single hour; and sixty thousand of them went over it in one day and were scooped from the pen. The fish always keep their heads up-stream, and will crowd into the pen until the shallow water is packed with them. When no more can squeeze in, a wire gate is put into the sluice, the large gates of the dam are closed, and the fish are ladled out with scoop-nets. The town sold the right to a manufacturing company to build this dam in the Run, together with the sole right to catch the herring, on condition that yearly a certain number of the fish be carted alive to the pond in order to spawn; and with this further condition, that every Weymouth householder be allowed to buy four hundred herring at twenty-five cents per hundred. A century ago four hundred herring to a household might not have been many herring; but things have changed in a hundred years. To-day no householder, saving the keeper of the town house, avails himself of this generous offer. I believe that a man with four hundred pickled herring about his premises to-day would be mobbed. Pickled herring, scaly, shrunken, wrinkled, discolored, and strung on a stick in the woodshed, undoes every other rank and bilious preserve that I happen to know. One can easily credit the saying, still current in the town, that if a native once eats a Weymouth herring he will never after leave the place. Usually the fish first to arrive in the spring are males. These precede the females, or come along with them in the early season, while the fish to arrive last are nearly all females. The few that are taken alive to the pond deposit their eggs within a few days, and, after a little stay, descend the Run, leap the dam, and again pass out into the ocean. The eggs are placed along the shallow edges of the pond, among the reeds and sedges. At first they float around in a thin, viscid slime, or jelly, which finally acts as a glue to fasten them to the grass. Here, left without parental care, the eggs hatch and the fry wiggle off and begin at once to shift for themselves. How hard they fare! In her sacrifice of young fish, nature seems little better than a bloody Aztec. I happened to be at Bay Side, a sturgeon fishery on the Delaware Bay, when a sturgeon was landed whose roe weighed ninety pounds. I took a quarter of an ounce of these eggs, counted them, and reckoned that the entire roe numbered 3,168,000 eggs. Yet, had these eggs been laid, not more than one to a million would have developed to maturity. So it is with the herring. Millions of their eggs are devoured by turtles, frogs, pickerel, and eels. Indeed, young herring are so important a food-supply for fresh-water fish that the damming of streams and the indiscriminate slaughter of the spawners now seriously threatens certain inland fishing interests. Many waters have been re-stocked with herring as a source of food for more valuable fish. August comes, and the youngsters, now about the length of your finger, grown tired of the fresh water and the close margins of the pond, find their way to the Run, and follow their parents down its rough bed to a larger life in the sea. Here again hungry enemies await them. In untold numbers they fall a prey to sharks, cod, and swordfish. Yet immense schools survive, and thousands will escape even the fearful steam nets of the menhaden-fishermen and see Herring Run again. [Illustration: "Here again hungry enemies await them."] If only we could conjure one of them to talk! What a deep-sea story he could tell! What sights, what wanderings, what adventures! But the sea keeps all her tales. We do not know even if the herring from Whitman's Pond live together as an individual clan or school during their ocean life. There are certain indications that they do. There is not much about a Whitman's Pond herring to distinguish it from a Taunton River or a Mystic Pond herring,--the Weymouth people declare they can tell the difference with their eyes shut,--though I believe the fish themselves know one another, and that those of each pond keep together. At least, when the inland running begins, the schools are united, for then no Whitman's Pond herring is found with a Taunton River band. In late summer the fry go down-stream; but whether it is they that return the next spring, or whether it is only the older fish, is not certain. It is certain that no immature fish ever appear in the spring. The naturalists are almost agreed that the herring reach maturity in eighteen months. In that case it will be two years before the young appear in the Run. The Weymouth fishermen declare, however, that they do not seek the pond until the third spring; for they say that when the pond was first stocked, it was three years before any herring, of their own accord, made their way back to spawn. Meantime where and how do they live? All the ocean is theirs to roam through, though even the ocean has its belts and zones, its barriers which the strongest swimmers cannot pass. The herring are among the nomads of the sea; but let them wander never so far through the deep, you may go to the Run in April and expect to see them. Here, over the stones and shallows by which they found their way to the sea, they will come struggling back. No mistake is evermade, no variation, no question as to the path. On their way up the river from the bay they will pass other fresh-water streams, as large, even larger, than Herring Run. But their instinct is true. They never turn aside until they taste the Run, and though myriads enter, a half-mile farther up the river not a herring will be found. It is easy to see how the ox might know his owner, and the ass his master's crib; but how a herring, after a year of roving through the sea, knows its way up Herring Run to the pond, is past finding out. [Illustration] [Illustration] Transcriber's Notes Retained original spelling except for changing two oe ligatures to "oe" in "amoeba" and "manoeuvering." Moved some illustrations to paragraph breaks. The original page numbers are displayed in the List of Illustrations. The HTML version links the numbers to the illustrations rather than the page numbers. 
19850	----	[Illustration: RECREATION IS AS COMMON AMONG ANIMALS AS IT IS AMONG CHILDREN.] THE HUMAN SIDE OF ANIMALS BY ROYAL DIXON AUTHOR OF "THE HUMAN SIDE OF PLANTS," "THE HUMAN SIDE OF TREES," "THE HUMAN SIDE OF BIRDS," ETC. _WITH TWO ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLORS AND THIRTY-TWO IN BLACK-AND-WHITE_ NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS _Copyright, 1918, by_ FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages_ MADE IN U. S. A. TO MARCELLUS E. FOSTER WHO BELIEVED NOTE The author wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to his fellow-naturalist and friend, Mr. Franklyn Everett Fitch, for carefully reading the entire manuscript and making many scholarly and valuable criticisms and corrections. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE FOREWORD xiii I ANIMALS THAT PRACTISE CAMOUFLAGE 1 II ANIMAL MUSICIANS 18 III ANIMALS AT PLAY 32 IV ARMOUR-BEARING AND MAIL-CLAD ANIMALS 46 V MINERS AND EXCAVATORS 61 VI ANIMAL MATHEMATICIANS 88 VII THE LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS 99 VIII IN THEIR BOUDOIRS, HOSPITALS AND CHURCHES 120 IX SELF-DEFENCE AND HOME-GOVERNMENT 130 X ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS, AND HOUSE-BUILDERS 150 XI FOOD CONSERVERS 170 XII TOURISTS AND SIGHT-SEERS 181 XIII ANIMAL SCAVENGERS AND CRIMINALS 199 XIV AS THE ALLIES OF MAN 210 XV THE FUTURE LIFE OF ANIMALS 234 ILLUSTRATIONS Recreation is as common among animals as it is among children (_in Colours_) _Frontispiece_ The Indians claim that the mother bison forced her calf to roll often in a puddle of red clay, so that it might be indistinguishable against its clay background 6 The zebra is one of the cleverest of camouflagers. The black-and-white stripes of his body give the effect of sunlight passing through bushes 7 Monkeys are the most musical of all animals. When they congregate for "concerts," as some of the tribes do, the air is filled with weird strains of monkey-music 20 Cats, unlike dogs, are very fond of music. And it has been proved that their music-sense can be developed to a remarkable degree 21 A happy family of polar bears. The young cubs wrestle and tumble, as playfully as two puppies. This play has much to do with their physical and mental development 34 Dryptosaurus. The prehistoric animals, too, undoubtedly had their play time, with games and "setting up" exercises 35 The mother opossum is never happier than when she has her little ones playing hide-and-seek over her back 38 This young fox came from his home in the woods daily to play with a young fox-terrier. He is now resting after a romp 39 Naosaurus and Dimetrodon, two extinct armour-bearers who should have been well able to protect themselves 50 An armour-bearer of prehistoric times whose shield was an effective protection against enemy horns 51 To the polar bear the ice and snow of the Far North means warmth and protection. The mother bear digs herself into a snowbank, where she lives quite comfortably throughout the winter 84 The sharp claws of the ground squirrel are efficacious tools in digging his cosy underground burrow 85 The coyote can readily distinguish whether a herd of sheep is guarded by one or more dogs, and will plan his attack accordingly 94 The zebu, the sacred bull of India, in spite of its domestication, has an agile body and a quick, alert mind 95 Roosevelt's Colobus. These horse-tailed monkeys chatter together in a language exclusively their own, yet they seem to have no difficulty in making themselves understood by other monkey-tribes 112 A tamed deer of Texas, whose constant companion and playmate was a rabbit dog. Between the two, there developed, necessarily, a common language 113 Water-loving animals, like the beavers, seemingly take great pride in their toilets. Their fur is always sleek and clean 122 Great forest pigs of Central Africa. Like the common domesticated hogs, they will seek a clay bath to heal their wounds 123 The Rocky Mountain goat has many means of defence, not the least of which is his agility in climbing to inaccessible places 134 Wild boars are among the most ferocious of animals. By means of their great strength alone they are well able to defend themselves 135 Brontosaurus. The animals that seemed best equipped to defend themselves are the ones that, thousands of years ago, became extinct 144 This prehistoric monster was equipped not only with a pair of strong horns but with a shield back of them as well 145 The beaver is the greatest of all animal architects. His skill is equalled only by his patience (in Colours) 158 The skunk mother tries to keep on hand a good supply of such delicacies as frogs and toads, so that her young may never go hungry 172 The porcupine and the hedgehog have a unique method of collecting food for their young. After shaking down berries or grapes, they roll in them, then hurry home with the food attached to their quills 173 The black bear is not one of the great migrating animals. The thickness of his coat must therefore change with the seasons 188 Rabbits seem to have a well-devised system in their road-building, running their paths in and out of underbrush in a truly ingenious manner 189 The mongoose, a scavenger of the worst type, feeding on rats and mice and snakes, and even poultry 202 Diplodocus. The prehistoric animals, also, undoubtedly had their scavengers and criminals 203 The Esquimo-dog is man's greatest friend in the Far North 218 Chipmunks are among the most easily tamed of man's wild friends, and they even seem fond of human companionship 219 Men cruelly take the lives of these denizens of the wildwood, rejoicing in their slaughter, but the animal soul they cannot kill 244 Two pals. There is between man and dog a kinship of spirit that cannot be denied 245 FOREWORD _"And in the lion or the frog-- In all the life of moor or fen-- In ass and peacock, stork and dog, He read similitudes of men."_ More and more science is being taught in a new way. More and more men are beginning to discard the lumber of the brain's workshop to get at real facts, real conclusions. Laboratories, experiments, tables, classifications are all very vital and all very necessary but sometimes their net result is only to befog and confuse. Occasionally it becomes important for us to cast aside all dogmatic restraints and approach the wonders of life from a new angle and with the untrammelled spirit of a little child. In this book I have attempted to bring together many old and new observations which tend to show the human-like qualities of animals. The treatment is neither formal nor scholastic, in fact I do not always remain within the logical confines of the title. My sole purpose is to make the reader self-active, observative, free from hide-bound prejudice, and reborn as a participant in the wonderful experiences of life which fill the universe. I hope to lead him into a new wonderland of truth, beauty and love, a land where his heart as well as his eyes will be opened. In attempting to understand the animals I have used a method a great deal like that of the village boy, who when questioned as to how he located the stray horse for which a reward of twenty dollars had been offered, replied, "I just thought what I would do if I were a horse and where I would go--and there I went and found him." In some such way I have tried to think why animals do certain things, I have studied them in many places and under all conditions, and those acts of theirs which, if performed by children, would come under the head of wisdom and intelligence, I have classified as such. Life is one throughout. The love that fills a mother's heart when she sees her first-born babe, is also felt by the mother bear, only in a different way, when she sees her baby cubs playing before her humble cave dwelling. The sorrow that is felt by the human heart when a beloved one dies is experienced in only a little less degree by an African ape when his mate is shot dead by a Christian missionary. The grandmother sheep that watches her numerous little lamb grandchildren on the hillside, while their mothers are away grazing, is just as mindful of their care as any human grandparent could be. One drop of water is like the ocean; and love is love. The trouble with science is that too often it leaves out love. If you agree that we cannot treat men like machines, why should we put animals in that class? Why should we fall into the colossal ignorance and conceit of cataloging every human-like action of animals under the word "instinct"? Man delights in thinking of himself as only a little lower than the angels. Then why should he not consider the animals as only a little lower than himself? The poet has truly said that "the beast is the mirror of man as man is the mirror of God." Man had to battle with animals for untold ages before he domesticated and made servants of them. He is just beginning to learn that they were not created solely to furnish material for sermons, nor to serve mankind, but that they also have an existence, a life of their own. Man has long preached this doctrine that he is not an animal, but a kinsman of the gods. For this reason, he has claimed dominion over animal creation and a right to assert that dominion without restraint. This anthropocentric conceit is the same thing that causes one nation to think it should rule the world, that the sun and moon were made only for the laudable purpose of giving light unto a chosen few, and that young lambs playing on a grassy hillside, near a cool spring, are just so much mutton allowed to wander over man's domain until its flavour is improved. It is time to remove the barriers, once believed impassable, which man's egotism has used as a screen to separate him from his lower brothers. Our physical bodies are very similar to theirs except that ours are almost always much inferior. Merely because we have a superior intellect which enables us to rule and enslave the animals, shall we deny them all intellect and all feeling? In the words of that remarkable naturalist, William J. Long, "To call a thing intelligence in one creature and reflex action in another, or to speak of the same thing as love or kindness in one and blind impulse in the other, is to be blinder ourselves than the impulse which is supposed to govern animals. Until, therefore, we have some new chemistry that will ignore atoms and the atomic law, and some new psychology that ignores animal intelligence altogether, or regards it as under a radically different law from our own, we must apply what we know of ourselves and our own motives to the smaller and weaker lives that are in some distant way akin to our own." It is possible to explain away all the marvellous things the animals do, but after you have finished, there will still remain something over and above, which quite defies all mechanistic interpretation. An old war horse, for instance, lives over and over his battles in his dreams. He neighs and paws, just as he did in real battle; and cavalrymen tell us that they can sometimes understand from their horses when they are dreaming just what command they are trying to obey. This is only one of the myriads of animal phenomena which man does not understand. If you doubt it, try to explain the striking phenomena of luminescence, hybridization, of eels surviving desiccation for fourteen years, post-matrimonial cannibalism, Nature's vast chain of unities, the suicide of lemmings, why water animals cannot get wet, transparency of animals, why the horned toad shoots a stream of blood from his eye when angry. If you are able to explain these things to humanity, you will be classed second only to Solomon. Yet the average scientist explains them away, with the ignorance and loquaciousness of a fisher hag. By a thorough application of psychological principles, it is possible to show that man himself is merely a machine to be explained in terms of neurones and nervous impulses, heredity and environment and reactions to outside stimuli. But who is there who does not believe that there is more to a man than that? Animals have demonstrated long ago that they not only have as many talents as human beings, but that under the influence of the same environment, they form the same kinds of combinations to defend themselves against enemies; to shelter themselves against heat and cold; to build homes; to lay up a supply of food for the hard seasons. In fact, all through the ages man has been imitating the animals in burrowing through the earth, penetrating the waters, and now, at last, flying through the air. When a skunk bites through the brains of frogs, paralysing but not killing them, in order that he may store them away in his nursery-pantry so that his babes may have fresh food; when a mole decapitates earth-worms for the same reason and stores them near the cold surface of the ground so that the heads will not regrow, as they would under normal conditions, only a deeply prejudiced man can claim that no elements of intelligence have been employed. There are also numerous signs, sounds and motions by which animals communicate with each other, though to man these symbols of language may not always be understandable. Dogs give barks indicating surprise, pleasure and all other emotions. Cows will bellow for days when mourning for their dead. The mother bear will bury her dead cub and silently guard its grave for weeks to prevent its being desecrated. The mother sheep will bleat most pitifully when her lamb strays away. Foxes utter expressive cries which their children know full well. The chamois, when frightened, whistle; they might be termed the policemen of the animal world. The sentinel will continue a long, drawn-out whistle, as long as he can without taking a breath. He then stops for a brief moment, looks in all directions, and begins blowing again. If the danger comes too near, he scampers away. In their ability to take care of their wounded bodies, in their reading of the weather and in all forms of woodcraft, animals undoubtedly possess superhuman powers. Even squirrels can prophesy an unusually long and severe winter and thus make adequate preparations. Some animals act as both barometers and thermometers. It is claimed that while frogs remain yellow, only fair weather may be expected, but if their colour changes to brown, ill weather is coming. There is no limit to the marvellous things animals do. Elephants, for example, carry leafy palms in their trunks to shade themselves from the hot sun. The ape or baboon who puts a stone in the open oyster to prevent it from closing, or lifts stones to crack nuts, or beats his fellows with sticks, or throws heavy cocoanuts from trees upon his enemies, or builds a fire in the forest, shows more than a glimmer of intelligence. In the sly fox that puts out fish heads to bait hawks, or suddenly plunges in the water and immerses himself to escape hunters, or holds a branch of a bush over his head and actually runs with it to hide himself; in the wolverine who catches deer by dropping moss, and suddenly springing upon them and clawing their eyes out; in the bear, who, as told in the account of Cook's third voyage, "rolls down pieces of rock to crush stags; in the rat when he leads his blind brother with a stick" is actual reasoning. Indeed, there is nothing which man makes with all his ingenious use of tools and instruments, of which some suggestion may not be seen in animal creation. Great thinkers of all ages are not wanting who believe that animals have a portion of that same reason which is the pride of man. Montaigne admitted that they had both thought and reason, and Pope believed that even a cat may consider a man made for his service. Humboldt, Helvitius, Darwin and Smellie claimed that animals act as a definite result of actual reasoning. Lord Brougham pertinently observes, "I know not why so much unwillingness should be shown by some excellent philosophers to allow intelligent faculties and a share of reason to the lower animals, as if our own superiority was not quite sufficiently established to leave all jealousy out of view by the immeasurably higher place which we occupy in the scale of being." From the facts enumerated in this book I find that animals are possessed of love, hate, joy, grief, courage, revenge, pain, pleasure, want and satisfaction--that all things that go to make up man's life are also found in them. In the attempt to establish this thesis I have been led mentally and physically into some of Nature's most fascinating highways and hedges, where I have had many occasions to wonder and adore. I will be happy if I have at least added something to the depth of love and appreciation with which most men look upon the animal world. ROYAL DIXON. New York, April, 1918. THE HUMAN SIDE OF ANIMALS I ANIMALS THAT PRACTISE CAMOUFLAGE _"She was a gordian shape of dazzling line, Vermilion-spotted, golden, green and blue; Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard, Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd, And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed, Dissolved, or brighter shone, or interwreathed Their lustres with the glorious tapestries...."_ --KEATS (_on Lamia, the snake_). The art of concealment or camouflage is one of the newest and most highly developed techniques of modern warfare. But the animals have been masters of it for ages. The lives of most of them are passed in constant conflict. Those which have enemies from which they cannot escape by rapidity of motion must be able to hide or disguise themselves. Those which hunt for a living must be able to approach their prey without unnecessary noise or attention to themselves. It is very remarkable how Nature helps the wild creatures to disguise themselves by colouring them with various shades and tints best calculated to enable them to escape enemies or to entrap prey. The animals of each locality are usually coloured according to their habitat, but good reasons make some exceptions advisable. Many of the most striking examples of this protective resemblance among animals are the result of their very intimate association with the surrounding flora and natural scenery. There is no part of a tree, including flowers, fruits, bark and roots, that is not in some way copied and imitated by these clever creatures. Often this imitation is astonishing in its faithfulness of detail. Bunches of cocoanuts are portrayed by sleeping monkeys, while even the leaves are copied by certain tree-toads, and many flowers are represented by monkeys and lizards. The winding roots of huge trees are copied by snakes that twist themselves together at the foot of the tree. In the art of camouflage--an art which affects the form, colour, and attitude of animals--Nature has worked along two different roads. One is easy and direct, the other circuitous and difficult. The easy way is that of protective resemblance pure and simple, where the animal's colour, form, or attitude becomes like that of its habitat. In which case the animal becomes one with its environment and thus is enabled to go about unnoticed by its enemies or by its prey. The other way is that of bluff, and it includes all inoffensive animals which are capable of assuming attitudes and colours that terrify and frighten. The colours in some cases are really of warning pattern, yet they cannot be considered mimetic unless they are thought to resemble the patterns of some extinct model of which we know nothing; and since they are not found in present-day animals with unpleasant qualities, they are not, strictly speaking, warning colours. Desert animals are in most cases desert-coloured. The lion, for example, is almost invisible when crouched among the rocks and streams of the African wastes. Antelopes are tinted like the landscape over which they roam, while the camel seems actually to blend with the desert sands. The kangaroos of Australia at a little distance seem to disappear into the soil of their respective localities, while the cat of the Pampas accurately reflects his surroundings in his fur. The tiger is made so invisible by his wonderful colour that, when he crouches in the bright sunlight amid the tall brown grass, it is almost impossible to see him. But the zebra and the giraffe are the kings of all camouflagers! So deceptive are the large blotch-spots of the giraffe and his weird head and horns, like scrubby limbs, that his concealment is perfect. Even the cleverest natives often mistake a herd of giraffes for a clump of trees. The camouflage of zebras is equally deceptive. Drummond says that he once found himself in a forest, looking at what he thought to be a lone zebra, when to his astonishment he suddenly realised that he was facing an entire herd which were invisible until they became frightened and moved. Evidently the zebra is well aware that the black-and-white stripes of his coat take away the sense of solid body, and that the two colours blend into a light gray, and thus at close range the effect is that of rays of sunlight passing through bushes. The arctic animals, with few exceptions, are remarkable for imitating their surroundings; their colour of white blends perfectly with the snow around them. The polar bear is the only white bear, and his home is always among the snow and ice. The arctic fox, alpine hare, and ermine change to white in winter only, because during the other seasons white would be too conspicuous. The American arctic hare is always white because he always lives among the white expanses of the Far North. Both foxes and stoats are carnivorous and feed upon ptarmigan and hares, and they must be protectively coloured that they may catch their prey. On the other hand, Nature aids the prey by providing them with colours that enable them to escape the attention of their enemies. The young of many of the arctic animals are covered with fluffy white hair, so that while they are too young to swim they may lie with safety upon the ground and escape the attention of polar bears; but in the antarctic regions, where there are few enemies to fear, the young seals, for instance, are exactly the colour of their parents. The most remarkable exception of mimetic colouring among the animals of the polar regions is the sable. Throughout the long Siberian winter he retains his coat of rich brown fur. His habits, however, are such that he does not need the protection of colour, for he is so active that he can easily catch wild birds, and he can also subsist upon wild berries. The woodchuck of North America retains his coat of dark-brown fur throughout the long, cold winters. The matter of his obtaining food, however, is easy, for he lives in burrows, near streams where he can catch fish and small animals that live in or near the water. A number of the old-school naturalists believed that when an animal's colouring assumed the snowy-white coat of its arctic surroundings, this was due to the natural tendency on the part of its hair and fur to assume the colourings and tints of their habitat. This, however, is absolutely false; and no better proof of it can be offered than the case of the arctic musk-ox, who is far more polar in his haunts than even the polar bear, and is therefore exposed to the whitening influence of the wintry regions more than the bear. Yet he never turns white, but is always brown. The only enemy of this northern-dweller is the arctic wolf, and against this enemy he is protected by powerful hoofs, thick hair, and immense horns. He does not need to conceal himself, and therefore does not simulate the colour of his surroundings. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE INDIANS CLAIM THAT THE MOTHER BISON FORCED HER CALF TO ROLL OFTEN IN A PUDDLE OF RED CLAY, SO THAT IT MIGHT BE INDISTINGUISHABLE AGAINST ITS RED CLAY BACKGROUND.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE ZEBRA IS ONE OF THE CLEVEREST OF CAMOUFLAGERS. THE BLACK-AND-WHITE STRIPES OF HIS BODY GIVE THE EFFECT OF SUNLIGHT PASSING THROUGH BUSHES.] Mimetic resemblances are worked out with great difficulty, except in such cases as the nocturnal animals, which simply become one with their surroundings. Mice, rats, moles, and bats wear overcoats that are very inconspicuous, and when suddenly approached they appear almost invisible. Some of the North American Indians claimed that buffaloes made their calves wallow in the red clay to prevent them from being seen when they were lying down in the red soil. The kinds of protection from these mimetic resemblances are many and varied: the lion, because of his sandy-colouring, is able to conceal himself by merely crouching down upon the desert sands; the striped tiger hides among the tufts of grass and bamboos of the tropics, the stripes of his body so blending with the vertical stems as to prevent even the natives from seeing him in this position. The kudu, one of the handsomest of the antelopes, is a remarkable animal in several ways. His camouflage is so perfect that it gives him magnificent courage. With his spiral horns, white face, and striped coat tinted in pale blue, he is almost invisible when hiding in a thicket. The perfect harmony of his horns with the twisted vines and branches, and the white colourings with blue tints in the reflected sunlight conceal him entirely. The snow-leopard, which inhabits Central Asia, is stony-grey, with large annular spots to match the rocks among which he lives. This colouration conceals him from the sheep, upon which he preys; while the spotted and blotchy pattern of the so-called clouded tiger, and the peculiarly-barred skin of the ocelot, imitate the rugged bark of trees, upon which these animals live. One of the most unusual and skilled mimics is the Indian sloth, whose colour pattern and unique eclipsing effects seem almost incredible to those unfamiliar with the real facts. His home is in the trees, and he has a deep, orange-coloured spot on his back, which would make him very conspicuous if seen out of his home surroundings. But he is very clever, and clings to the moss-draped trees, where the effect of the orange-coloured spot is exactly like the scar on the tree, while his hair resembles the withered moss so strikingly that even naturalists are deceived. Henry Drummond must have known the animal world rather well when he remarked that "Carlisle in his blackest visions of 'shams and humbugs' among humanity never saw anything so finished in hypocrisy as the naturalist now finds in every tropical forest. There are to be seen creatures, not singly, but in tens of thousands, whose every appearance, down to the minutest spot and wrinkle, is an affront to truth, whose every attitude is a pose for a purpose, and whose whole life is a sustained lie. Before these masterpieces of deception the most ingenious of human impositions are vulgar and transparent. Fraud is not only the great rule of life in a tropical forest, but the one condition of it." Many of the larger cats live in trees, and most of them have spotted or oscillated skins, which aid them in hiding among foliage plants. The puma who wears a brown coat is an exception, but it must be remembered that he does not need the kind of coat his fellow friends wear. He clings so closely to the body of a tree while waiting for his prey as to be almost invisible. This phenomenon is true throughout the animal world. Everywhere does Nature aid in escape and capture. Only those skilled in the ways of the wild fully realise how conspicuous amidst foliage, for instance, would be a uniform colouration. A parti-coloured pattern is extremely deceptive and thus protective, and for this reason one seldom sees in Nature a background of one colour; and since the large majority of animals need concealment, it is necessary for them to be clothed in patterns that vary. These variations are especially noticeable in young animals, and furnish them with a mantle that is practically invisible to predatory enemies during the time they are left unprotected by their parents. These protective mantles often differ strikingly in pattern and colouration from those of their parents, and indicate that the young animals present the colouration and pattern of their remote forbears. It might even be said that "the skins of the fathers are thrust upon the children, even unto the third and fourth generation!" In fact, it is quite probable that they give through this varying colouration the "life-history" of their family. In all hoofed animals--antelope, deer, horses--the protective colouration is also adapted to habitat and environment. Most deer belong to the forest, carefully avoiding the open deserts and staying near water. They live chiefly in the jungle or scrub, and are usually spotted with red and white in such a way as to be almost invisible to a casual observer; some, however, that live in the very shady places are uniformly dark so as to harmonise with their surroundings. The wild horses and asses of Central Asia are dun-coloured--corresponding exactly to their sandy habitat. The Shakesperian conception of the human world as a stage may be paralleled in the animal world. Animals, like human beings, have all a definite rôle to play in the drama of life. Each is given certain equipment in form, colour, voice, demeanour, ambitions, desires, and natural habitat. Some are given much, others but little. Many have succeeded well in the art of camouflage while endeavouring to make a success in life. This success has brought the desired opportunity of mating, rearing young, bequeathing to them their special gifts and living in ease and comfort. One of the most successful and striking cases of protective colouration in young animals is found in wild swine. Here there is longitudinal striping which marks them from head to tail in broad white bands, over a background of reddish dark brown. The tapirs have a most unique form of marking. It is similar in the young of the South American and Malayan species. Their bodies are exquisitely marked in snow-white bars. At their extremities these bars are broken up into small dots which tend to overlap each other. During the daytime these young animals seek the shade of the bushes and as the spots of sunlight fall upon the ground they appear so nearly one with their environment as to pass unnoticed by their enemies. The adults, however, vary greatly one from another in colouration. The American species is self-coloured, while the Malayan has the most unique pattern known to the animal world. The fore-quarters, the head, and the hind-legs are black, while the rest of the body from the shoulders backwards is of a dirt-white colour. It has been observed by all students of Nature that bold and gaudy animals usually have means of defending themselves that make them very disagreeable to their enemies. They either have poisonous fangs, sharp spines, ferocious claws, or disagreeable odours. There are still others that escape destruction because of the bad company with which they are associated by their enemies. The reptiles offer us many good examples of mimicry. Most arboreal lizards wear the colour of the leaves upon which they feed; the same is true of the whip-snakes and the tiny green tree-frogs. A striking example of successful camouflage is found in the case of a North American frog whose home is on lichen-covered rocks and walls, which he so closely imitates in colour and pattern as to pass unnoticed so long as he remains quiet. I have seen an immense frog, whose home was in a damp cave, with large green and black spots over his body precisely like the spots on the sides of his home. _Author Note:_ The word "mimicry" as used here implies a particular kind of resemblance only, a resemblance in external appearance, never internal, a resemblance that deceives. It does not imply voluntary imitation. Both the words "mimicry" and "imitation" are used to imply outward likeness. The object of the outward likeness or resemblance is to cause a harmless or unprotected animal to be mistaken for the dangerous one which he oftentimes imitates; or to aid the unprotected animal in escaping unnoticed among the surroundings he may simulate. A splendid example of pure bluff is shown in the case of the harmless Australian lizard, known scientifically under the name of _chlamydosaurus kingii_. When he is undisturbed he seems perfectly inoffensive, but when he becomes angry, he becomes a veritable fiend-like reptile. In this condition he stands up on his hind legs, opens his gaping mouth, showing the most terrible teeth, which, by the way, have never been known to bite anything. Besides this forbidding display he further adds to his terrible appearance by raising the most extraordinary frill which is exquisitely decorated in grey, yellow, scarlet, and blue. This he uses like an umbrella, and if in this way he does not succeed in frightening away his enemy, he rushes at him, and lashes him with his saw-like tail. Even dogs are terrified at such camouflage and leave the successful bluffer alone. In all parts of the tropics are tree-snakes that lie concealed among the boughs and shrubs. Most of them are green, and some have richly coloured bands around their bodies which look not unlike gaily coloured flowers, and which, no doubt, attract flower-seeking insects and birds. Among these may be mentioned the deadly-poisonous snakes of the genus _elaps_ of South America. They are so brilliantly provided with bright red and black bands trimmed with yellow rings that it is not uncommon for a plant collector to attempt to pick them up for rare orchids! Wherever these snakes are found, are also found a number of perfectly harmless snakes, absolutely unlike the dangerous ones in habit and life, yet coloured precisely the same. The _elaps fulvius_, for example, a deadly venomous snake of Guatemala, has a body trimmed in simple black bands on a coral-red ground, and in the same country and always with him is found a quite harmless snake, which is coloured and banded in the same identical manner. The terrible and much-feared _elaps lemnicatus_ has the peculiar black bands divided into divisions of three by narrow yellow rings, thus exactly mimicking a harmless snake, the _pliocerus elapoides_, both of which live in Mexico. Presumably, the deadly variety assumes the colouring of the harmless kind in order to deceive intended victims as to his ferocity. Surely this is sufficient evidence that colouration and pattern-design is a useful camouflage device of the great struggle for existence. And it is safe to assert that any animal that has enemies and still does not resort to protective colouration or mimicry in some form is entirely able to protect itself either by its size, strength, ferocity, or by resorting to safety in numbers. Elephants and rhinoceroses, for example, are too powerful to be molested when grown, except in the rarest cases, and are furthermore thoroughly capable of protecting their young. Hippopotamuses are protected by their immense heads, and are capable of defending their young from crocodiles even when in the water. The bison and buffalo, which were once so powerful on the plains of North America, were protected by their gregarious habits, which terrorised their enemies--the wolves. Their nurseries were a feature of their wisdom. These were circular pens where the tall grass was tramped down by expectant mothers for the protection of their young. This natural nursery was protected from the inside by sentinels who went round and round the pen constantly guarding the young not only from the attack of wolves but also from venturing forth alone too early into the open unprotected plains. In a similar way the snow-pens of the moose of the Far North serve to protect them from the hungry hordes of wolves of which they live in constant danger. This indicates that the annihilation of the bison and buffalo was due, not to lack of wisdom, but to man's inhumanity; for, taking advantage of their nurseries, the men crouched near and concealing themselves in the grass killed not only the mothers for food but even the young in their savage sport. The large majority of monkeys are protectively coloured with some shade of brown or grey, with specially marked faces. Entire packs of Ceylonese species will, at the slightest alarm, become invisible by crouching on a palm-tree. One of the most strikingly coloured African monkeys is jet black with a white bushy tail, and a face surrounded by a white ring, or mantle of long silky hair. He thus simulates so strikingly the hanging white lichens upon the trees that he is rarely seen by his enemies. A book might be written upon the various ways that animals, when closely associated with other animals or human beings, imitate them. Darwin says that "two species of wolves, which had been reared by dogs, learned to bark, as does sometimes the jackall," and it is well known that certain dogs, when reared by cats, imitate their habits, even to the licking of their feet and the washing of their faces. If a mongrel dog associates with a trained dog for any period of time it is remarkable the progress he will make. For this same reason young dogs are carried on hunting trips with trained dogs that they may learn by imitation the art of hunting. In the whole realm of Nature there is nothing more wonderful than this matter of protective colouration. Animals do not monopolise the art. It extends through the whole world of living creatures. The fact that individual animals have no voluntary control over their own colour is eloquent testimony as to the existence of mysterious life forces and racial evolutions which are still far beyond the grasp of man's understanding. To see a tiny chameleon adapt his colouring to his environment, be it red, green, or yellow, in the twinkling of an eye, is to have seen an argument for God Himself. II ANIMAL MUSICIANS _"Nay, what is Nature's self, But an endless strife towards Music, euphony, rhyme?"_ --WATSON. The great thinkers of the age believe that the world is one marvellous blending of innumerable and varied voices. This unison of sound forms the great music of the spheres, which the poets and philosophers have written so much about. Even from a purely scientific point of view, there is no denying that this music exists. Aviators tell us that when they listen from a distance to the myriads of noises and sounds that arise over a great city, these are all apparently lost in a modulated hum precisely like the vibrations of an immense tuning-fork, and appearing as but a single tone. Thus the immense noise going from our world is musically digested into one tone, and the aviator soaring above the earth hears only the one sound--the music of the spheres. The deep appreciation that animals have for music is becoming a generally known fact among those who have studied them closely. Every one must admit that there is much truth in the old saying that "music hath charms to soothe the savage breast." Music is composed of vibrations, which act with great power upon the nervous system of men and animals alike. Each is affected according to his particular physical and mental development. Professor Tarchanoff has made a careful study of the influence of music upon men and animals. He has demonstrated, by means of a machine which carefully registers the various activities of the hands and fingers, that when the hands are so tired and fatigued that they cannot make any marks except a straight line on the cylinder which registers the movements, music will so stimulate the nerves as to cause all fatigue to disappear. And as soon as the fingers again touch the cylinder, they begin to draw lines of various kinds and heights, thus proving that the music had rested the fingers and placed them under control. Various kinds of music were used: that of a melancholy nature had precisely the opposite effect to that of a lively, cheerful character; the nerves of the hands could either be contracted or expanded according to the nature of the music. Like all real scientists, Professor Tarchanoff does not claim to give any positive explanation of these facts. He believes, however, that the voluntary muscles act in the same relation to the music as the heart--that is, that cheerful, happy music affects the excito-motor nerves, sets up a vibration in those nerves which produces cheer and good feeling; while sad, morbid music plays along the depressant nerves and produces sadness and depression. In view of these facts, it is easy to see how animals, with their nervous temperaments and ready response to outside stimuli, are greatly influenced by various kinds of music. It is scientifically recognised that music tends to increase the elimination of carbonic acid and increases not only the consumption of oxygen, but even the activities of the skin. There is no doubt that good music at meal time aids the digestion. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ MONKEYS ARE THE MOST MUSICAL OF ALL ANIMALS. WHEN THEY CONGREGATE FOR "CONCERTS," AS SOME OF THE TRIBES DO, THE AIR IS FILLED WITH WEIRD STRAINS OF MONKEY-MUSIC.] [Illustration: CATS, UNLIKE DOGS, ARE VERY FOND OF MUSIC. AND IT HAS BEEN PROVED THAT THEIR MUSIC-SENSE CAN BE DEVELOPED TO A REMARKABLE DEGREE.] Cats have a species of unbeautiful music all their own, generally produced at late hours of the night on the house tops, garden walls, and in the alleys of our dwellings. Miss Cat's songs are far too chromatic to be appreciated by human ears; as a result her concertos and solos are rarely spoken of by human critics. However, Nature does sometimes produce a Tetrazzini, Alice Neilson, or Caruso, in the form of a cat, which really delights in harmonious combinations of sound. I know, for instance, of a cat called "Nordica" owned by Presson Miller, who apparently takes the greatest delight in hearing good vocal and instrumental music. Another well-educated musical cat belongs to a friend who plays a guitar. This cat delights in touching the strings with his dainty, soft paws, and springs with delight as the notes are produced. The _Animal World_ speaks of five musical cats, which were carried to various parts of the world and exhibited as "bell-ringers," and their owner made a fortune out of their concerts. Five bells were suspended from a hoop, which hung above the stage, and to each bell was attached a small rope. At a given signal, each cat would seize a bell and give it a pull. This was done with such perfect time and spirit that one might well believe it was the work of human musicians and not of cats. Cows are responsive to certain kinds of music. A funeral march makes them sad, and ragtime so disturbs them that they give but little milk. The newspapers claim that Charles W. Ward, who owns a ranch near Eureka, California, says that the right kind of music will increase the production of milk, and that he uses a phonograph in the dairy barn. A friend, who has travelled much, tells the story of a musical cow. He, in company with two other friends, was coming up a river in a small boat singing. Just as they turned a bend, they saw a small brown cow, suckling her calf, along with several other cows in a nearby pasture. The cow seemed so fascinated with the music that she plunged into the water and waded up to her head trying to reach the boat. As they rowed along, she ran up and down the bank, cutting capers in a most astonishing manner and lowing and bellowing in testimony of her delight in the music. She would leap, skip, roll on the grass, paw up the earth, like an angry bull, and chase off like a playful kitten, always with a low plaintive bellow as a final farewell. These friends often rowed up the river just to see if the musical cow was there, and she always greeted them in the usual appreciative manner. Lions and tigers are proverbially fond of music. Professional trainers tell us that these animals, when tamed, will not do their stunts without the accompaniment of music. The story is told of a group of tigers which recently refused to perform, because the musicians, while the performance was going on, went on a strike. At once when the music ceased, the animals returned to their respective seats and no amount of encouragement would induce them to continue their performance. No amount of threats would induce them to work without music. The trainer dared not punish them too severely, yet he feared that if they were not forced to perform, they might continue to strike. But such was not the case, for on the morrow when the musicians returned they acted as never before. Sheep, both tame and wild, are exceedingly fond of music, and the shepherds of Scotland have used it with their sheep for ages. When the shepherd plays upon his flute or bagpipe, they gather around him and listen apparently with great satisfaction; when the music ceases, they wander out to feed, and in the evening he leads them home by the single strains of his flute. Circus horses are not only fond of music, but are partial to certain tunes, and demand that these be played while they are doing their turn. If for any reason the band changes the tune during a performance, they immediately refuse to go on with their stunts. The original fountain of all music was based on the various voices and sounds of animals--and each musical instrument was originally devised to imitate these sounds. For all instruments--the bass drum, flute, clarinet, trombone, trumpet, violin, and even pipe organ--an animal may be mentioned that owns the fundamental tones in its voice, and which man has imitated. Castanets, for example, were imitations of the rattlesnakes; the first musical instruments of any savage tribe of men are made so as to represent the voices of the chief animals of that particular locality. Every animal of the higher order, with the exception of a few mute dogs that belong to very hot or cold climates, is possessed of some sort of musical tone, expressive of pain or joy, and by means of which he can express certain emotions. Darwin claimed that the voice of the gibbon, while extremely loud, was very musical; and Waterhouse said that this musician sang the scale with considerable accuracy, at least sufficiently well for a trained violinist to accompany him. Often when dogs hear music they howl, or attempt to sing. Some show a decided preference for certain kinds of music, and actually try to imitate it. Gross tells of a friend of his who had a dog with which he often gave performances. The dog would accompany his master, when he sang in falsetto, with howls that were unmistakably attempts at singing, and which readily adapted themselves to the pitch of the tone. This was a musical accomplishment of which he was very proud. On a subject of which so little is known, there are, of course, diverse opinions. Scheitlin believed that music is actually disagreeable to a dog, but he says that it may be questioned whether or not the dog does not in some way accompany it. And Romanes, the great animal authority, thought the same thing. He had a terrier, which accompanied him when he sang, and actually succeeded in following the prolonged notes of the human voice with a certain approximation to unison. Dr. Higgins, a musician, claimed that his large mastiff could sing to the accompaniment of the organ. Alix gives such positive examples that they are really marvellous: "Pere Pardies cites the case of two dogs that had been taught to sing, one of them taking a part with his master. Pierquin de Gembloux also speaks of a poodle that could run the scale in tune and sing very agreeably a fine composition of Mozart's _My Heart It Sings at Eve_." All the scientists in Paris, according to the same authority, went to see the dog belonging to Dr. Bennati, and hear it sing the scale, which it could do perfectly. Monkeys and apes most nearly approximate human musicians. In central Africa these animal tribes have musical centres where they congregate regularly for "concerts." Prof. Richard S. Garner, the noted authority on apes and monkeys, believes that the time has already come for the establishment of a school for their education. He would have the courses beginning with a kindergarten and advancing through as many grades as the students required. Prof. Garner furthermore believes that we have little understanding of the gorilla, and points out that these animals have a very happy and harmonious home life, the father being highly domestic and delighting in the company of his wife and children. It is not uncommon to find five or six generations in a certain district of the jungle. Their near kin, the chimpanzees, are equally clannish, but more musical. They come down from the branches of the trees, seating themselves on the dry leaves and assembling like an orchestra. After all are ready, they begin beating the leaves with their hands, at first very slowly, like the quiet prelude to a symphony, and gradually increasing in tempo until the grand crescendo is reached. Then, as if by the direction of an invisible leader, the music suddenly ceases. To deny that this is to them a real concert would lead us into extreme absurdities. In this connection it is interesting to note that when a baby is expected in the village, all music ceases until after its birth, when they again resume their periodic musical festivals. Hensel verifies this observation, and tells us of having seen apes come from their shelter in the early morning and congregate for a musical concert. "They repair," he says, "to the shelter of some gigantic monarch of the forest whose limbs offer facilities for walking exercises. The head of the family appropriates one of these branches and advances along it seriously, with elevated tail, while the others group themselves about him. Soon he gives forth soft single notes, as the lion likes to do when he tests the capacity of his lungs. This sound, which seems to be made by drawing the breath in and out, becomes deeper and in more rapid succession as the excitement of the singer increases. At last, when the highest pitch is reached, the intervals cease and the sound becomes a continuous roar, and at this point all the others, male and female, join in, and for fully ten seconds at a time the awful chorus sounds through the quiet forest. At the close the leader begins again with the detached sounds." Perhaps the most remarkable evidence of animals showing a comprehensive intelligence of musical pitch is demonstrated by cavalry horses. That they thoroughly understand it is clearly demonstrated by the fact that they will obey the calls of the bugle for cavalry evolutions without a moment's hesitation and with no suggestion from outside sources. These bugle calls are produced by a combination of four notes, each of a different pitch, and it is rarer to find a horse making a mistake in the musical orders given than it is for their masters. Rats and mice have a decided liking for music, as is attested by the fact that they appear as uninvited guests and also come as near the performer as possible. Mice, one would believe, love church music, for they often build their nests in pipe organs, thus being able to rear their children in both a musical and religious atmosphere! There is more truth than imagination in the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which illustrates how they respond to the simple charms of music. Even donkeys betray tendencies toward musical efforts, and seem to be aroused by music at least temporarily to a higher mental plane than Balaam was inclined to ascribe to his wise ass. Not all of them sing equally well, but in Arizona the donkey is known as the "desert canary." If you were to spend a few glorious days in the Hopi village of Araibi, you would hear through the still, silent night their long nasal bray or song, and you would be convinced that the term is quite appropriate. You may not exactly like the tune, but you will concede that they sing! Society is just awakening to the joy and the significance of community art. This is everywhere indicated by the great growing group of people who come together for a common music, either as a chorus or an orchestra or both. But in this field man has not yet attained such unity of communal effort as have the frogs. In the great swamps of the world myriads of them gather from miles around, conscious of one purpose, and by a marvellous understanding and co-operation create for themselves a symphony with beauties and harmonies of its own, and such as to stand unrivalled in man's musical world. In the great chorus are voices from the lowest bass of the croaking bullfrog, squatting in the marshes, to the myriads of tiny green tree tenors, between which are millions of altos, contraltos, sopranos, coloraturas and other voices not yet in our musical vocabulary. These are accompanied by all the sounds of our orchestra and innumerable others of such delicate shades and gradations as to defy the ear of man. If we listen to one of these concerts, we will quickly recognise the tones of every familiar instrument, such as the drum, pipe, horn, trombone, oboe, piccolo, 'cello, and violin. The greatest of these musical festivals directly precedes the mating season, and is a dramatic instance of a manifestation of an inner rhythm which corresponds to an external periodicity. Among the oldest traditions of the Eastern world are those of snake-charming by means of music. I have long been interested in this strange phenomenon of Nature, and in company with a brilliant young violinist visited a zoological park recently, and after securing permission from the head keeper, entered the snake-house. The violinist began by playing a few most sympathetic chords, first delicate and soft, then sad, then gay, slow or tremulous. Near us, coiled in his immense cage, was a large cobra--the snake which all legend claims is most easily influenced by music. Almost immediately after the music began, the cobra raised himself in a listening attitude, steadily gazed at us as though he were viewing the future, spread his immense hood, and slowly began to shake his head from side to side, as if he were trying to keep time to the music. As soon as the music would change, his attitude changed accordingly. Only after the music had ceased did he resume his normal position. The Indians agree that under the influence of various musical instruments, especially bagpipes, snake-charmers are able to get the snakes to come out from their homes among the old rocks and walls, and when they appear they seem perfectly dazed so that they can be easily captured. It is not well to have any kind of musical instrument played, when in a forest at night where there are dangerous snakes, lest they come to hear it. Snake-hunters always carry with them some kind of musical instrument, depending upon the kind of snakes they wish to capture. It seems that all are not equally fascinated by it. I have experimented with little effect upon a large rattler; it may have been that he was deaf. But he gave little evidence of being interested. We need not feel humiliated, then, for our animal kinspeople with their primitive music: we were monkeys, and before them we were reptiles, birds, fishes, even worms. But that was ages ago, and we have grown up and become better musicians. Evolution has chosen us as its favourites and given us every advantage in the struggle up the ladder of life. Our musical rivals of yesterday are as chorus people compared to Metropolitan Opera stars, with us. On this earth we reign supreme, we have conquered the earth, air, and water, annihilating time and distance. What more is there for us to learn of Nature's secrets? Only an understanding of our lower brothers, the animals. III ANIMALS AT PLAY _"... _About them frisking, played All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase In wood or wilderness, forest or den; Sporting the lion romped, and in his paw Dandled the kid; bears, tigers, ounces, pards, Gambled before them; the unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, used all his might, and wreathed His light proboscis."_ _--Paradise Lost._ That "one touch of Nature makes the whole world kin" is shown in no clearer way than by the games and play of animals. Recreation is as common among them as it is among our own children; and they seem always to be artistic and even skilled in their play. Young goats and lambs skip, jump, run races, throw flips in the air, and gambol; calves have interesting frolics; young colts and mules have biting and kicking games; bears wrestle and tumble; puppies delight in biting and tussling; while kittens chase everything from spools of thread to their own tails. But animal children grow up, and stop playing to a certain extent as age advances, precisely as human children do. Each settles down into a more practical condition of life. They dislike to have their games and play disturbed, and if the mother dog growls because her playful son has continuously tumbled over her while she was sleeping, or the cat-mother slaps her kitten because he plays with her tail--it is a display of the same kind of emotion that prompts a human mother to rebuke her child in the nursery for making too much noise, or for throwing toys out of the window. Animals, like ourselves, feel every sensation of joy, happiness, surprise, disappointment, love, hope, ambition, and through their youthful games an entire index of their future lives may be obtained. This play has much to do with the physical and mental development of the animals; and it is strange indeed that so few writers have considered the subject of play in the animal world. Most of those who have noticed the subject at all, drop it with a few remarks, to the effect that it is "highly amusing," or "very funny," or "unbelievable," or "so like the play of children," without even a word of explanation of the whys and wherefores of it. All animals have some kinds of play. Plutarch speaks of a trained elephant that often practised her steps when she thought no one was looking. No one who has ever visited a zoological park and seen the crowded monkey and baboon cages can have failed to note the wonderful play of these animals. Seals seem never to tire of chasing one another through the water; while even the clumsy hippopotamuses have diving games. Kittens begin to tumble and play before they are two weeks old. They will roll and toss a ball, hunting it from the dark corners, lay in silent wait for each other, and suddenly spring upon an unsuspecting fellow-cat-baby's back, just as they will do later in life, when seeking their prey. I have seen them play with a catnip mouse for hours at a time, just as the mother cat plays with a real mouse. Brehm says that this is noticed in their earliest kittenhood, and that the mother cat encourages it in all ways possible, even to becoming a child with her children from love of them, as a human mother does in the nursery with her child. The mother cat begins the play by slowly moving her tail. Gesner considered her tail as the indicator of her moods. The kittens, while they may not understand what this means, are greatly excited by the movement, their eyes sparkle, their ears stand erect, and slowly one after another clutches after the moving tail. Suddenly, one springs over the mother's back, another grabs at her feet, while a third playfully slaps her in the face with his tiny, soft, cushioned paw. She, patiently and mother-like, lovingly submits to all this treatment, as it is only play. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ DRYPTOSAURUS. THE PREHISTORIC ANIMALS, TOO, UNDOUBTEDLY HAD THEIR PLAY TIME, WITH GAMES AND "SETTING UP" EXERCISES.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ A HAPPY FAMILY OF POLAR BEARS. THE YOUNG CUBS WRESTLE AND TUMBLE, AS PLAYFULLY AS TWO PUPPIES. THIS PLAY HAS MUCH TO DO WITH THEIR PHYSICAL AND MENTAL DEVELOPMENT.] Many scientists have claimed that this so-called instinct should not be classed as real play. However, such an authority as Darwin thought it was play, and Scheitlin said that the cat let the mouse loose many times in order that she might have the experience of catching it each time. No mercy is shown the helpless mouse, which is the same to her as the toy ball--in the same way as a real beetle and a toy beetle are the same to a small child. Evidently the cat does not play with the mouse for the delight in torturing it, but purely for practice that she may become skilled in the art of catching it. The cat also exercises in springing movements, and by studying the mouse's probable movements, learns to acquire a knowledge and skill in mouse-ways otherwise impossible. The same cruel practice is found among leopards, panthers, and wild cats. Brehm verifies the observation that many members of the cat family practise torturing their victims in a horrible manner, pretending to liberate them, until the poor creatures at last die from their wounds. Lenz tells of a marten that would play with its prey for hours when not hungry. Especially was this true when marmots chanced to be his victims, and around these he would leap and spring, dealing them terrific blows first with one paw and then with the other. When hungry, however, he proceeded differently, devouring them at once from teeth to tail. All the cat family, it seems, are fond of human companionship, and take almost as much delight in playing with human beings as with their own kind. This is especially true of the puma. Brehm tells of a tame one that delighted in hiding at the approach of his master and springing out unexpectedly, just as the lion does. Hudson claimed that the puma, with the exception of the monkey, was possibly the most playful of all animals. Travellers tell many interesting tales of the play of these animals, especially on the Pampas of South America. Gross relates the experience of an Englishman who was compelled to spend the night outdoors on the Pampas of the La Plata. At about nine o'clock, on a bright moonlight night, he saw four pumas coming toward him, two adult animals and two young ones. He well knew that these animals would not attack him, so he quietly waited. In a short time they approached him, chasing one another and playing hide-and-seek like little kittens; and finally leaped directly over the man several times. The mother cat would run ahead, calling to the little ones to follow her. But she never disturbed him. At times an animal at play with another uses the same tactics and methods employed on its prey. Of course, the value of such practice for the tasks of later-life is evident. Dogs play hide-and-seek, tag, and various chasing games for hours without resting. Among the negroes of the South it is not uncommon to see a hound playing hide-and-seek with the little pickaninnies. I have seen a hound peeping in and out among a pile of brush to discover where the little ones were hiding, and at the first sight of a little black face, he would lay low in anticipation of a playful spring, or a sudden dash-away, with the expectation of being chased by his friends. At times he would suddenly disappear toward his home, and slyly slip around and approach the playground from an opposite direction. Every one who has owned fox terriers knows how they will crouch in the open grass and remain motionless, with quivering expectation for the other playfellow to arrive, and when the one in ambush sees the other coming he springs toward him, as though he were going to destroy him! And when the two come together, they attempt to seize each other by the necks, as they would do in a real conflict. A wrestle and tussle ensues and when utterly exhausted from this play, the tired dogs, like two fatigued children, run to their homes. Dogs are fond of playing ball, and will readily bring a ball or stick to their master when he has thrown it. They will also go into the water to bring out sticks that may have been tossed in for amusement. Eugene Zimmerman had a young fox terrier that would set a ball in motion, when there was no one to pitch it for him, by seizing it in his mouth and tossing it up in the air. Monkeys and jaguars will also play ball, and tame bears take great delight in wrestling, playing ball, and fighting mock battles. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE MOTHER OPOSSUM IS NEVER HAPPIER THAN WHEN SHE HAS HER LITTLE ONES PLAYING HIDE-AND-SEEK OVER HER BACK.] [Illustration: THIS YOUNG FOX CAME FROM HIS HOME IN THE WOODS DAILY TO PLAY WITH A YOUNG FOX-TERRIER. HE IS NOW RESTING AFTER A ROMP.] Beckmann wonderfully describes the play of a badger, whose only playmate was an exceptionally clever dog, who from his earliest youth had been taught to live with different kinds of animals. "Together they went through a series of gymnastic exercises on pleasant afternoons, and their four-footed friends came from far and near to witness the performance. The essentials of the game were that the badger, roaring and shaking his head like a wild boar, should charge upon the dog, as it stood about fifteen paces off, and strike him in the side with its head; the dog, leaping dexterously entirely over the badger, awaited a second and third attack, and then made his antagonist chase him all round the garden. If the badger managed to snap the dog's hindquarters, an angry tussle ensued, but never resulted in a real fight. If Caspar, the badger, lost his temper, he drew off without turning round, and got up snorting and shaking and with bristling hair, and strutted about like an inflated turkey-cock. After a few moments his hair would smooth down, and with some head-shaking and good-natured grunts the mad play would begin again." Young animals are strikingly like children in their craving for amusement. A young bear will lie on his back and play with his feet and toes by the hour, while a young pup can have a great game with only a dry bone, or by chasing his shadow on the wall. Rabbits come out in evenings on the sand-hills to play hide-and-seek with their young, and squirrels never weary of this universally popular game. I know of a young fox that used to come from a nearby woods every evening to play with a young fox-terrier. They became great friends and were often seen in the woods together. A friend who owns a ranch in Texas once raised two young wolves that romped and played with the neighbour's dogs just as if they were dogs themselves. There are other animals, like the weasels, that will also play with strange friends. But they prefer their own kind as playmates. They take the greatest delight in playing with their parents, and nothing is more beautiful or strange than to see several of them playing in a valley on a sunny day. Out pops one little head, with twinkling eyes glancing from side to side, and then as if from nowhere, the little brothers and sisters begin to appear, chasing each other as though they were playing tag. These exercises give them much agility which they will need in later life. I once owned a tame raccoon, and often kept him chained in the back yard. When he could not find a young chicken or duck to torment, he devised all kinds of schemes to relieve the monotonous hours. He would pile up a number of small stones, and carefully await his chance to fling one into a group of young chickens. He seemed to understand that he was more apt to make a hit when he threw into a crowd than when aiming at a single chick. At other times he would lie on his back, madly waving his tail as though he were signalling for some one to come near. If we chanced to pass by without speaking, he would growl or whine in some way to attract attention. After hours of self-amusement he would lie down as if life were useless, and wait until something or somebody came along to amuse him. His greatest delight was in fishing things out of a pan of water, and he would wash every pebble or plaything that he owned and carefully lay it out to dry. One day he pounced upon a rooster who insulted him by drinking from his water vessel, and plucked a long feather from his tail so quickly that we could hardly realise what had taken place. He then had great fun in attempting to stick the feather in his head or by planting it upright in the ground. Another day, in winter, he broke his chain and made straight for the kitchen, where he found a snug warm place in old Aunt Moriah's kitchen oven. The old negress came to cook dinner and when the raccoon suddenly sprang out of her oven, she vowed, "I'se nevah gwine to cook in dis heah kitchen again; dis place is hoodooed fo' life!" Once we gave him a pail of hot milk, and it was evidently hotter than we realised; he started to drink it, and suddenly stopped, and in anger grabbed at a very young puppy that was following us, and before we could stop him, dipped the puppy's head into the hot milk. Fortunately, however, the milk was not hot enough to injure the puppy. But the raccoon had taken his revenge out on the little animal, and was evidently satisfied. It is interesting to note that all animals seem to play games and take exercises that will be especially helpful to them in later life. Badgers, for example, delight in turning somersaults; deer like to jump and leap; foxes and raccoons practise stealing upon one unnoticed; tapirs and crocodiles play in the water as night approaches; mountain goats, sheep, horses and mules run, leap, jump, and play follow-leader. Animals that live in the high mountains practise all kinds of high-jumps, which would be unnecessary if they lived on level ground, but are highly essential in mountainous countries. Brehm claims that in summer the chamois climb up to the everlasting snow and take much delight in playing in it. They will drop into a crouching position on the top of a very steep mountain, work their four legs with a swimming motion, and slide down on the surface of the snow for a hundred and fifty metres. As they slide down the snow flies over them like a fine powder. As soon as they reach the bottom, they jump to their feet, and slowly climb up the mountain-side again, while many of their comrades silently stand by and watch their coasting approvingly, first one and then another joining in the sport, like human coasters would do. It is not uncommon for a number of them to tumble together at the bottom, like romping children. This coasting is very remarkable, and through skill in it, no doubt, the lives of many chamois are saved from frightful accidents later in life. Alix tells us that dogs of mountainous countries are also often skilled in the art of coasting. Our tame fawn used to delight in playing with our old rabbit-dog, Nimrod. They were the best of friends, and the fawn would begin the chase by approaching Nimrod as though he were going to stamp him into the earth, and then suddenly leaping quickly and safely over the dog, he would run away. At this signal for a game, if Nimrod was in the mood, he chased the fawn, who would delight in jumping over fences and hedges and waiting for poor Nimrod to get over or under just in time to see his playmate leap to the other side. Wolves, if taken when quite young, have a most unique way of showing their affection at the appearance of their master. They will spring into the air, tumbling over, with whinnying cries of delight, falling to the ground they pretend to bite and snap at everything, until their friend finally comes very near them. Prairie dogs are fond of all kinds of races and jumping games; they will each appear at the entrance to their underground homes, and will play a simple form of prisoners'-base for long periods of time. With defiant calls at each other, one finally approaches the home of the other, which is a signal for the third to attempt to slip into the entrance to the second one's home before he can return. Many join in the game and it usually ends in a regular roll-and-tumble for their respective homes. Perhaps the strangest of all forms of play is that in which young duckbills indulge. They are slightly like puppies in their methods of roll-and-tumble, but the way in which they grab one another with their strange bills, as they strike with their fore-paws is quite original. They seem to have an unusually good disposition, and if one little playfellow falls in the game, and desires to scratch himself before arising, the other patiently waits until he arises, when the mock battle begins anew. Antelopes have chase and marching games which are beautiful. They seem rapidly to follow an invisible leader over the plains, suddenly forming themselves into pairs, fours, eights, sixteens, until the entire herd thus form one line, like an army of soldiers marching. While this game is progressing, certain of their number stand as sentinels and spectators, and the slightest approach of an enemy is the signal for all play to cease, and for them to disappear over the plains. When we witness these abundant evidences of the need and prevalence of recreation in the animal world, we are confronted with one more argument for the existence of real mental and moral faculties among our four-footed friends. IV ARMOUR-BEARING AND MAIL-CLAD ANIMALS _"The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life."_ --GOETHE'S _Aphorisms_ (trans. by HUXLEY). Civilised nations throughout the world at different times in their country's history have protected their soldiers and warriors with coats of armour or mail. This practice prevailed extensively during the Middle Ages; but it has almost entirely disappeared. The German breastplates of to-day are an attempted revival. The coats of mail of the ancient warriors underwent an evolutionary process, until they were indeed brought to a high pitch of perfection and beauty. It was at this period that they were abandoned as too burdensome to be of practical value. This protective form of armour has been used by animals since time immemorial, and was copied by man from them; and among the various forms of it are found examples of every kind of armour used in the human world, from the rough leather shields of hide which the savages use, to the ornamental suits of mail, like those used by the knights of the fifteenth century. Indeed, some animals have carried the art of protection to such an extent that they are veritable movable forts, or "tanks!" In the early part of the earth's history, animals needed greater protection from powerful enemies than they do at present, and they developed a coat of mail, exquisite in appearance and even more efficient than that used by man. Yet, like mankind, they have found newer and more efficient methods of protection, and as a result of changed conditions and enemies, have discarded, at least most of them, their coats of mail and armour. Most of those who have held to the old-fashioned ways of fighting and facing the world, have, like unprogressive peoples, perished; and to-day only a few armour-bearing animals exist. These classes, however, have never been very large, and consist of two small families; the pangolins and the armadillos. The former live in southern Asia and Africa, while the latter are inhabitants of South America. These animals have a great advantage over man, for their armour grows upon their bodies and is a part of them, while man must put his on and take it off and continually replace the worn-out parts. Again, while there are only three distinct kinds of human armour--the chain, scale and plate armour--there are many kinds of animal armour. What wonderful opportunities exist to-day in the great museums for studying the different kinds of animal armour, for those who are interested! The scaly ant-eater, who is at home in Africa and Asia, is one of the most unusual and original types of mail-clad animals. He might be compared to a wolf in outline, covered from head to tail in huge, horny plates, which look like immense finger-nails overlapping each other. His head sharpens out into a long, narrow snout, which contains a sticky, worm-like tongue, and this he can use with great rapidity and effect in raiding an ant-hill. He drops his tongue over the entrance, and the ants attempt to crawl over it and are glued to it. He walks in a very unique way by going upon the backs of his feet. This preserves his wonderful claws for bursting open ants' nests, as his chief food consists of these tiny insects and their eggs. A cousin of the scaly ant-eater, the great ant-eater of South America, has the same general habits of his near-kinsman. He has an immense bushy tail with which some naturalists claim he sweeps up ants. This is not true, however; he uses his tail, when he lies down, to cover himself. The hairs of the tail part in such a manner as to fall over the body like a thatched roof, protecting it from rain and storm alike. A part of the head and under portion of this ant-eater's body are unprotected, and this is why he rolls himself up like a ball when danger is near. In this position, his scales stand out in such a way as to make a complete row of sharp points, as uninviting as the wires on a barbed wire fence. Yet, it is claimed that certain of his enemies, like the leopard, know his one great weakness--a terror of being wet--and often make him uncoil by rolling him into the water. His coat of hard covering is really compact masses of hardened hair drawn out to sharp dagger points, and might be likened to pine cones endued with power. Through ages of experience, the scaly ant-eater has learned that even his powerful coat of protection is not altogether a success in life's battles, and from time to time his armour has been made lighter and lighter, and because he has been so slow in making the necessary changes, he is to-day very scarce, and able only by the greatest caution to drag out a dull existence as a nocturnal and burrowing animal. It would seem that with such powerful protection as he originally had, he would have outlived the puny armadillos, but his fast disappearance proves that the race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. Among the animals which have discarded their old-fashioned coats of mail, and have successfully protected themselves against all enemies, may be mentioned the frogs, newts, and their kinspeople, the reptiles. These latter, the learned, with their delight in multiplying terms, have classed as amphibians. During the period when the coal forests were growing over what we now know as England, there were innumerable amphibians, and even to-day their petrified footmarks are found in sandstone. The underside of their chests were covered with large bony plates, and in some cases the rest of the body was covered with scale-like bones. Yet, all the newts and frogs of to-day have wisely discarded the old coats of armour used by their forefathers. The armadillo has an armour of quite another kind, notwithstanding the fact that pangolins and armadillos belong to the same great family, and each eats ants. Their plates of armour, or shields, have nothing at all to do with the hair, nor do they have anything to do with the exo-skeleton; they are formed of bone material, which appears in the true skin in the form of tiny shields, and each shield is itself covered with a hard plate which grows in the outer skin. The actual formation of these shields differs largely in the various species of armadillo. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ NAOSAURUS AND DIMETRODON, TWO EXTINCT ARMOUR-BEARERS WHO SHOULD HAVE BEEN WELL ABLE TO PROTECT THEMSELVES.] [Illustration: AN ARMOUR-BEARER OF PREHISTORIC TIMES WHOSE SHIELD WAS AN EFFECTIVE PROTECTION AGAINST ENEMY HORNS.] It is well to remember that the pangolins and armadillos are the last survivors of a great and ancient family of armour-bearers. Many of their remote ancestors have been found in the rocks and hills of South America, and all of their representatives of to-day are small animals--the last of a doomed race--creatures of yesterday. The glyptodon is known to have been more than eleven feet in length, and his near-kinsman, the chlamydothere, was even larger. He was nearly the size of our present-day rhinoceros. These extinct giants carried on their backs huge domes of bony plates, that must have rivalled our much-feared tanks, of trench war fame. One would think they were invulnerable, yet the glyptodon and the chlamydothere, with many other equally well protected creatures, have long ago disappeared from the earth, but how and why nobody knows. This total disappearance of these marvellously protected giants, which seemed capable of defending themselves against any and all kinds of enemies that might have arisen, is one of the strangest and most unsolvable problems of science. Another mail-clad animal of importance is the armadillo of the tropical and temperate regions of South America. He is nocturnal in habits, sleeping in his underground home during the day, and coming out at night to seek for food. This underground home is rather large, and the nursery is well protected from enemies by its location. In it the mother armadillo rears her young until they are large enough to care for themselves. All species of the armadillos are powerful burrowers, and they are well equipped for their tunnelling in the earth with strong fore limbs. They feed upon all kinds of insects and animal substances. It is claimed that the giant armadillo is a veritable grave-robber and sometimes digs up dead bodies for the purpose of eating them. These animals are plentiful upon the savannas of South America, and they feast upon the bodies of dead cattle. So hard are their coats of armour that the Gauchos sharpen their Spanish knives, which they always carry, upon them. Should the armadillo be attacked by a man on horseback, he will burrow so rapidly that only by the quickest movements of the man can he be caught; and if he is, watch out for his terrible claws! No animal is better protected by nature from its enemies than the pichiciago, whose scientific name is _chlamyphorus truncatus_. This strange little mantle-bearer wears a coat of mail which is as flexible as the human-made coats of armour of olden times, and he is as safe under its cover, which allows him perfect freedom, as if he were under the ground. He is about the size of the ordinary mole, and his general habits are not unlike those of the mole. He is an underground-dweller, with enormous fore-paws, palm-shaped, upon which are five powerful claws. These he uses to great advantage in digging in the earth for insects and for building his home. He has a small snout, reminding one of that of a pig; while his piercing little eyes are deeply hidden in his fur. He is a native of Chile, and because of his shy nature and subterranean habits is rarely seen. The most interesting feature about this little creature is the cuirass which so perfectly protects his body. Its formation and arrangement is quite unusual; it appears like a number of squared plates of horn, tightly united to short strips of tape, which are sewed together. The cuirass is not connected with the entire body of the animal, but only on the top of the head and along the spine. It covers the entire back, and when it reaches the tail, turns downward, forming a perfect flap, which protects the hindquarters. The various species of manis are famed for their powerful coats of armour. They, also, belong to the great group of burrowers, and their coats of mail assume both offensive and defensive characters. These mail-bearers are covered with numerous sharp-edged scales, like miniature horns, which entirely overlap one another, like shingles on a house. They are of great hardness, and form a belt which no animal of their regions can penetrate. A revolver shot will produce not the slightest effect upon the body of this iron-protected animal. These animals are plentiful in India, and when they are molested, they deliberately wind themselves up, coil their tails over their bodies, and remain in conscious security against the fruitless blows of their enemies, who soon weary of the wounds caused from the prickly scales of impenetrable armour. Instead of wearing heavy coats of mail, certain animals, such as the hedgehog and porcupine, prefer to wear coats covered with needles and pins. Of course, a coat of spines is used purely for protection. And against the attacks of such enemies as dogs, it proves all-sufficient, but it is a well-known fact that pumas and leopards will kill and eat porcupines at all times, paying small attention to their spines, as is shown by the number which are sometimes found sticking in the body of a porcupine-eating animal. There are several species of this great spine-bearing family; and many of them, especially the true porcupines and the echidnas, have burrows in the ground and thus have a double means of protecting themselves. But others, such as the hedgehog, depend for their protection upon their ability to roll up into a ball, thus presenting a barbed wire protection. Still others live largely in the trees and seek by other means to protect themselves. One of the most interesting coats of armour is that worn by the porcupine ant-eater--oft-times erroneously called porcupine or hedgehog. He is a native of Australia, and is a powerful burrower. He is marvellously protected by means of a coat of needles or spines which inflict painful wounds on the dog or other enemy that ventures to attack him. In case of danger, he curls himself up into a ball, and defies any one to come near. Not only does he possess the coat of prickles with which he defends himself, but he also has a large perforated claw or spur on each hind foot through which pours an ill-smelling liquid, and these also aid in protecting him. There are several varieties of porcupines which inhabit Asia, Africa, Southern Europe and America. When a porcupine wishes to attack an enemy, he rushes at it backwards, and usually leaves the enemy literally covered, like a living pin-cushion, with his spines. These animals have convex skulls, short tails, and live chiefly in the warmer regions of the Old World. Those of America are different in one particular--the soles of their feet are covered with hard, bone-like tubercles, instead of being soft and smooth; there are also a number of hairs that are intermingled with the spines. The Canada porcupine has more hairs than the American, and a shorter and stumpier tail. Another animal whose methods of defence are by means of his spines, is the hedgehog. His spines do not terminate in sharp points, like those of the porcupine, but end in tiny knobs. These are placed beneath the skin, and are like pins stuck through a cushion. The hedgehog, like the porcupine, rolls himself into a ball when attacked by enemies, and he has the additional ability of throwing himself down a hillside, like a rolling ball, and thus escaping his enemies without injury to himself. It would seem that the hedgehog, rolled into a ball and covered with prickles, would be protected from all enemies. But this is not true, for the clever fox knows just how to make him unroll. This one secret of the hedgehog's weakness very often causes his loss of life. His weakness is a terror of being wet or dropped into water; and when the fox finds him all rolled up, he carefully rolls him into a pond of water and, when he unrolls, quickly drowns him. Notwithstanding the shortness of the hedgehog's spines, he is the most highly specialised of all spine-bearing animals. In the lower order of animals there are spiny mice and spiny rats, and even the horned toad uses his horns as a means of protection against his enemies. One of the most peculiarly armoured animals is the horned lizard, commonly known as the "horned toad" of America. His body is covered with small spiny scales, while the chisel-shaped head has a circlet of miniature horns. These he uses when attacked by enemies to shield himself against bites and knocks. The Indians claim that if a snake swallows the horned lizard whole, the lizard will immediately work his way through the snake. This would not be without a parallel, however, for it is generally known that box-fishes, when swallowed by sharks, bite their way out! Nature has been especially kind to horned lizards, and that is the reason there are so many of them. They well know the secret of the Gyges ring, and can put on the garment of invisibility in a very short time. They especially frequent the desert regions of the South and West; and those that dwell in black sandy regions are black; those of red clay regions are red; those of grey regions, grey; those from the variously coloured regions of blue and red are precisely the colour of the earth. But not satisfied with all their protections of armour and camouflage, they actually, when hard-pressed by an enemy, feign death, like an opossum! And if the enemy persists in his attack, and Mr. Lizard cannot escape, as a final effort he spurts tears of blood from his eyes. The Mexicans call him the "sacred toad." The phenomenon of blood-shooting has been explained in various ways, all of which seem equally unsatisfactory. So far it is one of Nature's secrets. Perhaps some day we may understand it. The tortoises are among the best examples of creatures which to-day protect themselves with armour. They are, of course, reptiles, yet in the general formation of their armour, they are strikingly like armadillos. The tortoise has his armour so arranged over his body that it forms one big box. He draws his head and limbs into this whenever danger is near. In Texas recently I found a small land terrapin, and as soon as I came near, he closed his house. I picked him up, and then carefully laid him upside down on the ground, and stepped behind some nearby bushes to see what he would do. Immediately he poked his head out, and then his feet, and then he began to wave his feet wildly in air, and finally threw himself in the right position and hastened away through the grass. The turtle protects himself in the same way, and draws his head, feet, and tail under his own house-roof where nothing can get him. Lobsters and crabs are excellent types of armour-bearing animals. Lobsters wear marvellous coats of mail, very similar to those worn by human warriors during the age of chivalry. Their jointed structure assures them perfect ease and security. Crabs, however, believe, as the tortoise, in the strong-box protection. When resting, crabs tuck their legs beneath them, so as to shelter themselves under the hard covering. Upon crabs Nature has bestowed twin protective characteristics: namely, they are armoured, and also mimic their surroundings. The latter protection is especially needful, because certain big fishes, like the cod, are in the habit of swallowing crabs whole. In this case the armour is of no use, while the protective resemblance saves the crab. To discuss in detail all the various kinds of armour and mail that the different groups of animals have used and developed for offensive and defensive purposes since the days of the prehistoric gigantic armadillos to the present, would require a book of itself. It is sufficient to know that armour and mail and spines are among Nature's most common forms of protection, and that each age develops new and ever more efficient methods of defence. This simply means that the age-long drama of evolution is always changing. Everything that is came out of that which was, and throughout the ages the ever-evolving organisms have been developing out of the past, that they might ever be new. V MINERS AND EXCAVATORS _"When the cold winter comes and the water plants die, And the little brooks yield no further supply, Down in his burrow he cosily creeps, And quietly through the long winter sleeps."_ --(_The Water Rat._) There are many ground-dwellers in the animal world, and foremost among them is the mole. This remarkable little creature is not only gifted as a digger of canals and tunnels, but plans and makes the most extraordinary subterranean homes. Sometimes he unites with his fellow creatures and establishes whole cities with winding passages, chambers, exits and entrances. In fact, he has not only an exquisitely arranged home, but highways and roads that lead to his kingly hunting-grounds which are as elaborate as that of a modern man of wealth and culture. Indeed his subterranean network of tunnels excels in complexity our modern city subways. His engineering calculations never fail, and a cave-in of his hallways is unknown. This little gentleman with the velvet coat is a genius of varied accomplishments! But this is only true when the mole is in his proper sphere or home. There he can fight like a tiger, catch his prey both below and above ground, build wells to collect and retain water, swim like a fish, and do many things which would seem impossible, judging from his awkward and clumsy manner above ground. His apparent awkwardness while out of his natural habitat is largely due to the peculiar formation of his limbs, and the stupid appearance of his small half-hidden eyes. These features seem to mark him to the casual observer as a dull animal, yet in reality he is very active and bright, and when at home displays his marvellous genius in many ways! His upturned hands become powerful shovels, and by the aid of an extra bone, the sickle, which belongs to the inside of the thumb, he is enabled to work like an athlete. His velvet-like hair stands straight up, like the pile on velvet, and his tiny eyes are so hidden by hair that they do not get injured. The eyes are not well finished from an optician's point of view--but they serve admirably all the needs of the mole's life. As dull and stupid as he appears, he is, considering his size, the fiercest and most active animal in existence. Imagine him the size of a wild cat! He would be a beast of exceeding ferocity. Even a lion would find him a formidable antagonist. With such an animal tunnelling in his fields and cellars, man would have a terror hard to exterminate. The mole is an engineer and miner who seems to have a strange sense of direction practically unknown to many other animals. How he manages to form tunnels and burrows in lines of such unusual straightness is unknown; he always works in darkness, unless it is that he can see in the dark. His little hills are not deliberate structures; they are only shaft ends through which this miner throws out the earth that he has scooped from subterranean depths, and in most cases smoothed out so that if an observer examines the burrow he will find only solid earth, and a road into his tunnel which leads to his real habitation. The home of the mole is usually beneath a tree or hillock, and reminds one of a miniature city of tunnels and engineering feats. The main, or central, room is shaped like a great dome, the upper part of which is level with the earth around the hill, and therefore nowhere near its apex. Mr. Wood has verified the observation that around the keep are two circular passages, one of which is level with the ceiling, while the other is above. The upper circle is decidedly smaller than the lower; and there are five ascending passages which connect the galleries with each other. There is only one entrance, however, and from it three roads lead into the upper part of the keep. When a mole enters the house from one of the tunnels, he must go through the basement in order to get to the upper part of the house and so descend into the keep. There is still another entrance into the keep from below. One passage leads downward directly from the middle of the chamber, then curving upward, leads into a larger tunnel or subway. Throughout the vast network of tunnels every inch of wall space seems quite smooth and polished. This is due to the continuous pressure of the mole's fur against the walls. Thus there is little danger of the walls collapsing even after a rain-storm. No human being knows just why the mole has such a complex system of underground streets and tunnels; perhaps it is because he finds that a greater feeling of safety surrounds his home when he knows that in case of danger he can escape in a dozen directions. Surely he is the original builder of labyrinths! How marvellous that so tiny a creature can build such a fortress! The complex chambers and circular galleries do justice to an artist. The space of ground covered by a single mole's roads and galleries is almost unbelievable; in every direction from the fortress they run, and are sunk at various depths, according to the condition of the mole's hunting-grounds, which are really the spaces of ground through which he tunnels. Worms and underground insects are his chief food. Sometimes he ploughs along the surface of the ground, and exposes his back as he works; but if the weather is dry, he ploughs deeply into the earth for worms. He fills his storehouse with earth-worms for winter use, and he finds it necessary to bite their heads off, which leaves them inert but not dead. This cannot be done in the summer months without the heads re-growing and the worms crawling away. The mole knows the exact temperature best suited for keeping his meat fresh! A most interesting and beautiful family of miner-cousins of the moles are the shrews. They are excavators of great ability, and because of their nocturnal habits are rarely seen alive. They are very similar to the mole, though much more handsome. Their domicile is built of dry grass at the end of a tunnel. The shrew mole of North America is a ground-digger of great ingenuity. He is second only to the mole in the extent and pretensions of his engineering and tunnelling. His eyes are very small and deeply hidden in his fur. During the day he constantly comes to the surface of the earth, and one may catch him by driving a hoe or spade underneath him. Another underground-dweller is the elephant shrew of South America. He has a long nose, thick fur, short ears, and, unlike his cousins, he loves to bask in the warm sunshine. At the least signal of alarm he darts away to his subterranean home. As a mining engineer he is unexcelled; he sinks his tunnels by first boring an almost perpendicular shaft, and then making his burrows at an angle. It is a sad day for earth-worms when he decides to locate in their vicinity! It is not an easy task to classify the homes of animals. Many of them have characteristics that entitle them to be placed under several groupings. The otter, for example, might be classed as a cave-dweller, as he seeks refuge in caves; yet he also rears his young in underground nests as a burrowing animal. But few naturalists believe that he does his own digging. This is not surprising when we remember that there are many other animals that live in caves and grottoes, and like the otter, seek ready-made homes for their convenience. Among these may be mentioned three American salamanders, bats, and a few strange mice, who seek darkness and constant temperature, and therefore find caves best suited to their needs. The same is true of the weasel, who is thought to be a great burrower, but in fact, like our remote cave-dwelling ancestors, makes his home only in caves, in rocky crevices, and under the gnarled roots of old trees. He is a bright-eyed little creature, with a slender snake-like neck and red body. He is a great friend of mankind, as he does more toward eradicating mice and other nocturnal depredators than all the rat-catchers in the land. His home is quite ordinary compared to that of the more ambitious underground-dwellers. A near cousin of the weasel, and a most ingenious engineer and miner, is the badger. He is a tenement-dweller and builds his home in the deep, shady woods. His home is rather pretentious with several chambers, and a most delightfully furnished nursery which is warmly padded with dry grass and moss. The badger, once so plentiful in England and America, is fast passing away because of the increase of towns and cities. As soon as the forest in which he dwells is drained and converted into farm land, the badger disappears. He is driven from the soil where he once held sway, and is one of those unfortunate animals which are eliminated by man-made civilisation. The fox of the Far North is a famous excavator, and his underground home which shelters and protects him from the extreme cold is most spacious. It is a strange fact that these cunning little animals rarely make their homes away from others of their kind. Sometimes twenty to thirty are found in close proximity. And their owners are unquestionably the smartest, keenest, and quickest creatures that roam the wilds. While some of their deeds are questionable, their quick wits and nimble bodies excite our admiration. These arctic foxes really build small cities, and their semi-social life may be accounted for by the peculiar suitability of the place which they select for a habitation. Their homes are usually in a sandy hill, where it is very easy for them to burrow; and the strangest part of the whole city is that each burrow is complete and entirely independent in itself. There are many winding paths and tunnels in each house, but each belongs exclusively to its owner and never winds into a neighbour's house. In case of danger the fox has many directions in which he may escape. The nursery is the most carefully arranged of all the rooms. It is rather small and is directly connected with the main outer chamber somewhat like the nursery of the mole. So skilfully is it situated that it sometimes happens a hunter will dig into a fox's burrow and never discover the nest of young, and later the clever mother will return to carry away her babes, which are usually five to six in number. Adjoining the nursery are two or three storage rooms filled with food for the winter. The number of bones usually found in the basement indicates that a great variety of ducks, fish, hares, lemming, and stoats are regularly eaten, and that the average fox family does not want for food. The arctic fox is not only a beauty in his coat of pure white, but is unusually brainy. Persecuted animals, like persecuted human beings, become very wise. Nature is kind to the fox in his arctic home, and in the winter turns his coat snow white so that he may easily escape his enemies--especially men, who seek his beautiful fur and edible body. He is skilled in his distrust of wires, sticks, guns and strings! No man knows better than he the meaning of foot-tracks in the snow, and how long they have been there, and which way they lead; thus, those that survive their enemies have acquired extreme wisdom, and keep carefully away from everything that is at all suspicious to their eyes and nostrils. The Siberian fox is one of those wise creatures that has defied in a most extraordinary way his handicaps, and, refusing to admit them, has boldly selected the strangest dwelling-place known to the animal world--the horn of the mountain sheep. This unique dwelling-place has been the home of the Siberian fox for ages, and his ancestors have known no other. The mountain sheep, which are giants among their kind, have the longest horns in proportion to their size of any animal in existence. The argali of Siberia is the largest of all sheep, and is equal in bulk and weight to an average-sized ox, with horns proportionally large. The horns of these animals are strikingly like those of the Rocky Mountain sheep of America, except they are much larger. They spring up from the forehead, tilt backward, then boldly curve below the muzzle, before finally again pointing upward and tapering into a sharp and delicate point. They are hollow, though exceedingly stout and elastic, and strengthened on the outside by a number of ridges or horny rings set very close together. They are found in large numbers in this land of perpetual ice and snow, and it is thought that they break from the sheep's heads very easily. It is not uncommon to find them lying in a spot which has been a battlefield, where two sheep in attempting to settle some dispute have fought and fallen. It is not long after they have thus fallen before they are utilised by Mr. Fox. He stores himself carefully away in these roomy horns, one of which Mrs. Fox uses as a nursery, finding it a snug, safe, and warm place to rear her little family. The other varieties of foxes, especially the grey and red, are not so skilled in home-making. This may be due to the fact that they do not have need of such elaborate houses as their arctic cousins. Again, it may be that the existence of numerous deserted homes of badgers, or even rabbits, makes it unnecessary for them to spend their time in building homes of their own. It is much easier to enlarge the ready-made burrow of a rabbit than to dig a new tunnel, of course. If there is no ready-made burrow to be had, then the wise fox sets to work and scoops out his own. Herein he sleeps all the day, and comes forth only at night. A small chamber from the main room serves as the nursery, and here the babies are born and nurtured. Nothing is more beautiful than to see the entire family--mother, father, and children--come forth at evening to play. The young are as sportive as pups, but they never wander far from home. Their broad heads, grey coats, short tails and awkward appearance would lead no one to think that they were the children of handsome, nimble-limbed, intelligent Mrs. Fox! Woe to the dog that enters Mrs. Fox's home! She is a pugilist of the first order, and knows how to fight far better than the average bull terrier. It requires a very savage dog to kill her, and he is apt to be minus an ear when the battle is over. Red and grey foxes are similar in intelligence, but differ in many other ways: the former are like the gipsies in always moving about from place to place, while the latter stick to one general locality, although their hunting-grounds may range for several miles in all directions. Red foxes seem actually to enjoy being hunted by dogs; in most cases they will outrun the dogs, and rarely seek protection from caves or rocks. The grey fox, on the other hand, cares little for racing, but seeks protection among rocky cliffs where the dogs are at a disadvantage. Here none but the smallest canines may enter the holes and crannies, and they are usually wise enough to stay out. Hunters are thoroughly familiar with the tactics of the fox family, and therefore select the red ones for their sport. The foxes are truly famed for their cunning, and when other animals try to play tricks on them, the trick usually turns out in the foxes' favour. During the winter season these wise creatures are sometimes hard pressed for food. Birds and small animals are hard to catch, and the farmers' chicken houses are closed. It is then that the wise fox needs all his wit and wisdom, for he oftentimes becomes the hunted as well as the hunter. His chief enemies are the puma and the timber wolf, but they are seldom able to get him. The prairie-dog is so talented that he might be classed under several headings; he is sociable, a burrower, and especially gifted in the art of constructing underground "dog towns." He is rarely called by his Indian name, _Wish-ton-wish_, and we know him only as the prairie-dog. Evidently he was given this name because of his yelping bark, which resembles the cry of a young domestic dog. He is a good-looking but rather curious little animal. He has a round, flat head, and garish-red fur, and a stout little body. He makes an affectionate pet, and loves the society of human beings. When he decides to start a town, he usually succeeds, for he is an exceedingly prolific animal, and his extensive burrows seem to have no ends. They are rather large, and run to great depths. In the western part of the United States, especially on the big prairies, the prairie-dog towns often cover large areas. They are usually dug in a sloping direction, and descend four to six feet in depth, and then suddenly rise upward again. Hundreds of these little tunnels are dug in such close proximity to each other that it is quite unsafe for cattle and horses to pass over them. This is the chief reason why ranchmen do not like the otherwise harmless little animals of the prairies. These dog towns are most curious, and a visit to one of them well repays the traveller. Strangely enough, the prairie-dog is exceedingly inquisitive and this very quality often costs the little animal his life. Mr. Wood, in describing the prairie-dog's habits, says that this wise little Westerner, when perched on the hillocks which we have already described, is able to survey a wide extent of territory and as soon as he sees a visitor, he gives a loud yelp of alarm, and dives into his burrow, his tiny feet knocking together with a ludicrous flourish as he disappears. In every direction similar scenes are enacted. The warning cry has been heard, and immediately every dog within a hundred yards repeats the cry and leaps into his burrow. Their curiosity, however, cannot be suppressed, and no sooner have they vanished from sight than their heads are seen protruding from their burrows. Sometimes hundreds of them will be peeping from their homes at one time, their beautiful eyes sparkling as they cautiously watch the enemy's every movement. The prairie-dog is truly a tenement dweller, and his home is occupied not only by his own kind, but by owls and rattlesnakes. Most naturalists believe that these incongruous families live in perfect harmony; but it is a well-known fact that the snake occasionally devours the young prairie-dogs, and he must be considered by them as an intruder who procured board and lodging without their consent. The owls, on the other hand, are supposed to do no harm, although it may be that they also occasionally feast on a tender young pup. The magnificent little animals known to scientists as vizcachas, and whose homes are on the pampas of South America, are the most skilled builders of underground cities in the animal world. Their villages or cities are called "vizcacheras" and are provided with from ten to twenty mouths or subway entrances, with one entrance often serving for several holes. If the ground is soft, it is not uncommon to find twenty to thirty burrows in a vizcachera; but if the ground is rocky and hard, only four or five burrows are found. These wide-mouthed, gaping burrows are dug close together, and the entire town usually covers from one hundred to two hundred square feet. The vizcacheras are different from other underground animal cities; some of the burrows are large, others are small. Most of them open into a subterranean main-street at from four to six feet from the entrance; from this street other streets wind and turn in all directions, like a man-made subway, and many of them extend clear into other streets or subways, thus forming a complete network of underground passageways. All the tunnelled-out dirt is brought to the surface and forms a large mound to prevent the water from entering the cities. According to W. H. Hudson, in _The Naturalist in La Plata_, "in some directions a person might ride five hundred miles and never advance half a mile without seeing one or more of them. In districts where, as far as the eye can see, the plains are as level and smooth as a bowling-green, especially in winter when the grass is close-cropped, and where the rough giant-thistle has not sprung up, these mounds appear like brown or dark spots on a green surface. They are the only irregularities that occur to catch the eye, and consequently form an important feature in the scenery. In some places they are so near together that a person on horseback may count a hundred of them from one point of view." Unlike some burrowing animals, the vizcacha does not select a spot where there is a bank or depression in the soil, or roots of trees, or even tall grass; knowing that they only attract the opossum, skunk, armadillo, and weasel, he chooses an open level plot of ground where he can watch in all directions for enemies while he works. The great or main entrance to some of these underground cities is sometimes four to six feet in diameter. A small man stands shoulder deep in them. The going and coming of these little vizcachas would almost lead one to believe that they have a primitive city government, and are ruled according to definite laws. Their cities stand for generations, and many of the old human inhabitants tell of certain vizcacheras around them which existed when their parents were living. The founder of a new village is usually a male; and he goes only a short distance from the other villages to establish his new colony. These cities are by no means occupied by their builders alone, but have their undesirables within their borders. The unique style of burrowing which the vizcachas employ benefits several kinds of birds, especially the Minerva, and one species of the swallows, which build their nests in the bank-like holes in the sides of the vizcacha's cities. Several insects, among which may be mentioned a large nocturnal bug, with red wings and shiny black body, also seek the same shelter; another foreign inhabitant is a night-roaming cincindela, with dark green wing-cases and pale red legs, which remind one of oriental jewels. There are also no less than six species of wingless wasps, beautifully coloured in red, black, and white. Dozens of spiders and smaller insects that live in and near the vizcacheras, which are everywhere sprinkled over the pampas, pass in and out among the streets recognising their respective friends and enemies. The home life in these communities is most interesting. The burrowers remain indoors until late in the evening during the winter, but in summer appear before the sun sets. One of the larger males is the first to appear, as if to see if everything is safe from danger; if it is, others immediately pop up and take their places at the entrance to the burrow. The females are smaller than the males, and stand up that they may see everything that happens. Curiosity struggling within them for mastery is often the cause of their death. Tiny swallows hover over the entrances, like myriads of large moths, with never-ending low, mournful cries. Of all the incongruous inhabitants of the vizcacheras, the fox is the most dreaded and the least welcome. To appease his growls and snarls the vizcachas are sometimes forced to let him occupy one of their rooms for a season, or even permanently. During a part of the year he appears quite unassuming and indifferent to the general affairs of the household, and he really goes quite unnoticed, even though he may be sitting on the mound in the family group. But when the vizcachas appear in the spring, the fox begins to become interested in the nursery and as soon as the older animals are away he devours the young. Occasionally, if the fox is hungry, or if he has another friend to aid him, he will hunt the vizcachera from end to end, battling with the old, and usually killing all the young. It often happens that the mother vizcacha, when her babes are large enough to follow her, will take them away to another place that is safer. The language of these city-builders is most unusual; the males frequently utter the most varied and astonishing cries. They are jarring in the extreme, and are produced in the most leisurely manner, growing louder and louder and finally ending with a slow quaver. At other times, they grunt like small pigs. Hudson says that any quick noise, like the report of a gun, produces a most startling effect among these little animals. As soon as the report is broken on the stillness of the night a perfect furore of cries issues forth from every direction. In a few seconds it ceases for a momentary lull, and then suddenly breaks forth again, louder than before. The tones of the different ones are so different that the cries of nearby individuals may be plainly distinguished amidst the babel of voices coming from the distance. It sounds as if thousands upon thousands of them were striving to express every emotion with their tiny tenor voices. No words can describe the effect that these sounds produce. One of the most peculiar calls is the special alarm-note, which is sharp, sudden, and shrill. It is reported from one to another until every vizcacha is safe in his burrow. But with all the kind and sociable qualities of these little animals, they have characteristics which seem rather paradoxical, and chief among these is their resentment of any intrusion of neighbours into their burrows. Although a number of individuals may reside in adjoining compartments in the same burrow, yet if one enters a burrow not his own--woe is he! Even when pursued by fierce dogs a vizcacha will rarely enter a room of another. If he does, he is immediately pounced upon by the angry owner, and is usually driven clear out of the burrow. These animals are undoubtedly far the most versatile and intelligent rodents in the world. A most unusual miner and underground dweller is the pocket gopher of North and Central America. He is a rat-like animal, and is most plentiful on the plains of the Mississippi region. He is unusual in appearance, dressed in brown and grey fur, with tiny white feet, small eyes and ears, and a short stubby tail. His feet are wonderfully strong, and his fore-paws are armed with strong, curved claws. But he is famed for his wonderful fur-lined pouches which open inside his cheeks and serve a peculiar use. His entire life, with rare exceptions, is spent underground. There he makes long tunnels for the purpose of securing tender roots for food; these tunnels are about twelve to eighteen inches below the surface, and usually wind under the foot of a tree where a sinking passage goes down four to five feet further and leads to a large living-room. This is the family nest and nursery, lined with grass and soft fur which Mrs. Gopher has taken from her own body. Adjoining the living-room is a storage bin filled with nuts, dried bits of roots, tobacco, and potatoes. Much that is exaggerated has been said in regard to the adaptability of the gopher for his work. But it is a fact that he is of all the diggers best suited for his task. He uses his strong teeth, like a trench-digger uses a pick, to loosen the earth; and while his fore-feet are kept constantly at work in digging and pressing the dirt back under the body, the hind feet also aid in shovelling it still farther back. When a sufficient amount has heaped up behind him, he performs the strangest of all his feats--he turns around, and places his hands vertically against his chin, thus forcing himself backwards, pushing the dirt ahead of himself until it is forced out of the tunnel. At the outer end of the tunnel is formed a little hillock. Dr. Merriam has made a special study of the gopher, and in speaking of the strange habit of running backwards, he says that even in carrying food to one of his barns or storehouses the gopher rarely turns round but usually runs backwards and forwards, over and over again like a shuttle on its track. The gopher uses his pouches for carrying food, not dirt. When he has eaten a sufficient amount of food, he fills his pouches. If a potato is too large to be carried in this way, he trims it off to the right size. His method of emptying his pouches is most interesting; with his two tiny paws he delicately presses the food from his cheeks. The woodchuck is an American basement-dweller of considerable renown. His peculiar whistling cry has won for him from the French the name of _siffleur_; and we sometimes call him by the very inappropriate name of ground-hog. He is a skilled weather prophet, and his appearance in the early spring signifies that the winter is over. He never shows himself until the cold is gone. The home of the woodchuck is usually found under a hill, with a sheltering rock to protect the entrance, which leads into a tunnel, from twenty to thirty feet in length, finally ending by entering his home proper. The tunnel descends obliquely for several feet, and again rises towards the surface. His nest is rather large, and nicely lined with dry grass and leaves, which serve as a carpet for the young woodchucks when they come into the world. The young remain in the underground home until they are about five months old, then they go out into the world for themselves. The ground squirrel long ago decided that he would rather have a dwelling under the ground than in the tree-tops, for in an underground home he would have more protection, a better place for storing food, and a far safer nursery for rearing his precious babes. So snug, cosy and hidden are the tiny quarters to which his runs or subways lead that his family is quite safe against most enemies. The ingenuity and skill shown in the construction of his home entitles him to rank among the leading animal miners and excavators. The most unusual of all the underground and basement dwellers is the polar bear. This wise inhabitant of the Far North has long ago learned that no animal needs to freeze to death in the snow. To him the snow is a constant means of warmth and protection, and as winter approaches, he seeks a position, usually near a big rock, where he digs out a hole of small dimensions, and allows the snow to cover his body. Strangely enough it is only the female bear that seeks this permanent snow hut; the males do not care to spend so much time in seclusion. The same is true of the unmated females. But the mated females always have snow huts in which they give birth to their young, and where they reside until early spring; then the mother bear comes forth with them to seek food and teach them the ways of the world. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ TO THE POLAR BEAR THE ICE AND SNOW OF THE FAR NORTH MEAN WARMTH AND PROTECTION. THE MOTHER BEAR DIGS HERSELF INTO A SNOWBANK, WHERE SHE LIVES QUITE COMFORTABLY THROUGHOUT THE WINTER.] [Illustration: THE SHARP CLAWS OF THE GROUND SQUIRREL ARE EFFICACIOUS TOOLS IN DIGGING HIS COSY UNDERGROUND BURROW.] There is no danger that the bears will stifle for air under the snow, because the warmth of their breath always keeps a small hole open at the top of the snow-cell. This snow-house increases as time goes on, the heat exhaled from their bodies gradually melting the snow. Often Mrs. Bear's home is discovered by means of the tiny hole in the roof around which is collected quantities of hoar frost. Hibernation is one of the strangest phenomena of the animal world, and bears, especially the white bear of the polar regions, the black bear of North America, and the brown bear of Europe, agree in the curious habit of semi-hibernation. In the late fall of the season, the bears begin to eat heavily and soon become enormously fat, preparatory for the long winter of semi-sleep. During the winter, at least for three months, the polar bear takes no food, but lives entirely upon the store of fat which her body had accumulated before she went into retirement. The same is true of many hibernating animals, but in case of the bears it is more remarkable because the mother bear must not only support herself but nourish her young for a long period without taking any food for herself. Another good example of a ground-dweller is the aard vark of Southern Africa. He is as curious as his name, and scoops out immense quantities of earth to form his home. This dwelling might be termed a cave, as he heaps up the earth in the shape of a mammoth artificial ant-hill; on one side is the entrance, which is so skilfully formed that it looks far more like the work of man than of an animal. His name is Dutch and means earth-hog. It is applied to him because his head looks somewhat like that of a pig. His claws are powerful and enormous, and with them he is able to dig into the hardest soil, and to destroy the giant ant-hills which are dotted over the plains of South Africa, and which can withstand the weight of a dozen men. This strange creature sleeps during the day, and comes forth at evening to seek his food. The first thing he does is to burst a hole in the stony side of an ant-hill, to the utter dismay of its tiny inhabitants. As they run among the ruins of their fallen city, he throws out his slimy tongue and catches them by the hundreds. In a short time only the shell of a half-destroyed wall remains. These once stately ant-homes metamorphosed into caves, form homes for the jackals and large serpents of the plains. The Kaffirs of Africa use them as vaults into which are thrown their dead. The aard vark outrivals, with his great claws, the most skilled burrowing tools of man. These animals are therefore rarely captured. It is not uncommon for a horse to fall into their excavations and be killed. Miners, excavators, and underground dwellers teach us the great lesson that, while many of them sought the ground as a protection, and found there many difficulties to overcome, they not only have won in the great struggle of life but have so skilfully adapted themselves to their environment and surroundings as to become entire masters, even artists, in their methods of living. VI ANIMAL MATHEMATICIANS _"But what a thoughtless animal is man,-- How very active in his own trepan!"_ --PRIOR. Among the special senses of animals none seems more human than their knowledge of mathematics. A recognition of this quality in animals is encouraging because the new scientists are earnestly trying to build up a true knowledge of animal behaviour by studying them in the light of the new psychology. This will fill the place of the vast amount of misinformation which those skilled only in book-knowledge, without really knowing the ways of Nature, have builded. It will also record all the strange and curious facts about animals and their ways without insisting too much on rigid explanation. These new scientists are far different from their predecessors who tried to explain everything they did not understand about an animal's behaviour in terms of the scanty information gained by studying a few museum specimens. We might as well attempt to explain human nature from the study of an Egyptian mummy. The new method is simply to give the facts about an animal, and frankly admit that in many cases, such as are found in their knowledge of counting and numbers, we must leave complete explanation to the future when we shall have a greater fund of scientific data on which to base our conclusions. It is an established fact that some animals can count, and that they have the faculty of close observation and keen discrimination. They learn to count quickly, but they do not fully appreciate the value of numerical rotation. Most of the arithmetical feats of trained animals are hoaxes regulated by their sense of smell, sight, touch and taste. But no one doubts their ability to count. I have known a monkey that could count to five. He played with a number of marbles, and I would ask for two marbles, one marble, four marbles, as the case might be, and he would quickly hand the number requested. Another incident that will illustrate the point is the case of a mule owned by an old negro near Huntsville, Texas. The regular routine work of this mule was to cart two loads of wood to the town every day. One day the negro wished to make a third trip, but was unable to do so. When asked the reason, he replied, "Dat fool mule, Napoleon, done decided we had hauled enough wood fo' one day!" Prantl claims that the time-sense is totally absent in animals, and that it belongs only to man, as one of the attributes of his mental superiority. However, many facts go to show that animals have not only a specific time-sense, but also a sense of personal identity which reaches back into the past. Time-sense is very highly developed in dogs, cats, hogs, horses, goats, and sheep. They apparently are able to keep an accurate account of the days of the week and hours of the day and night, and even seem to know something of numerical succession and logical sequence. A friend in Texas had an old coloured servant, whose faithful dog had been trained to know that just at noon each day he was expected to carry lunch to his master. I have seen the dog on more than one occasion playing with children in the streets, suddenly break away without any one calling him, or any suggestion on our part as to the time, and rush for the kitchen just at the proper moment. No one could detain him from his duty. This same dog, however, would on Sundays continue to play at the noon hour. Surely, if any explanation is to be offered in such a case as this, it will imply as strict a sense of time as it does of duty. A friend relates a case of a dog that went each evening to meet a train on which his master returned from the city. On one occasion the train was delayed two hours, and it was exceedingly cold, but the devoted companion remained until his master arrived. Innumerable instances of such all-absorbing affection, showing at the same time a sense of time, might be cited. Dr. Brown gives a most remarkable example of a dog's ability to distinguish time. The story is of a female dog, though named Wylie, which was purchased by Dr. Brown when he was a young man, from an old shepherd who had long been in his employment. Wylie was brought to his father's, "and was at once taken," he says, "to all our hearts; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved in all respects like a lady.... Some months after we got her, there was a mystery about her; every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but in vain; she was always off by nine P. M., and was away all night, coming back next day wearied, and all over mud, as if she had travelled far. This went on for some months, and we could make nothing of it. Well, one day I was walking across the Grass-market, with Wylie at my heels, when two shepherds started, and looking at her, one said, 'That's her; that's the wonderful wise bitch that naebody kens.' I asked him what he meant, and he told me that for months past she had made her appearance by the first daylight at the 'buchts' or sheep-pens in the cattle-market, and worked incessantly, and to excellent purpose, in helping the shepherds to get their sheep and lambs in. The man said in a sort of transport, 'She's a perfect meeracle; flees about like a speerit, and never gangs wrang; wears, but never grups, and beats a' oor dowgs. She's a perfect meeracle, and as soople as a mawkin'.' She continued this work until she died." Another most striking instance, showing animals' sense of time, is that related by Watson in which he tells of two friends, fathers of families, one living in London and the other at Guilford. For many years it was the custom of the London family to visit their friends in Guilford, always accompanied by their spaniel, Cæsar. After some years a misunderstanding arose between the two families. The usual Christmas visits were discontinued; not, however, so far as the spaniel was concerned. His visits continued as before. On the eve of the first Christmas following the misunderstanding, the Guilford family were astonished to find at their door their London friend, Cæsar. Naturally, they expected that he had come in advance of the family, and were happy in the thought of this unexpected reconciliation. All evening they awaited their friends, but none arrived. Nor did they the next day. Cæsar had come of his own accord at the accustomed time, and remained with his friends for the usual number of days. This naturally led to a correspondence between the families, who thereupon resumed their former friendly relations. We do not believe, of course, that this dog counted the exact number of days to know when to start to Guilford, but he doubtless saw something to remind him of the past. Sir John Lubbock once related before the British Association at Aberdeen how cards bearing the ten numerals were arranged before a dog, and the dog given a problem, such as to state the square root of nine, or of sixteen, or the sum of two numbers. He would then point at each card in succession, and the dog would bark when he came to the right one. The dog never made a mistake. If this was not evidence of a mentality at least approaching that of men, we do not know what to call it. If there is any difference between an animal and a human mathematician, it depends upon special training. The animal never has the same opportunities to learn as the man. Many savages, for example, cannot count beyond three or four. Sir John Lubbock gives an anecdote of Mr. Galton, who compared the arithmetical knowledge of certain savages of South Africa and a dog. The comparison proved to the advantage of the dog. There is no reason that a dog should not be taught arithmetic. And if one wishes to do so, it might be well to begin by making the dog distinguish one from two, allowing him to touch both once at the word one, and twice at the word two. Then he might pass on to six or seven. After he had progressed to ten, he might begin addition. At least the experiment would be interesting and conducive to learning the truth. Surely a knowledge of mathematics is no more wonderful than that of the ordinary pointer dog's ability to distinguish different kinds of birds. Certain of those wise dogs are trained to hunt only quail, while others hunt several varieties of game. It should be remembered that all degrees of arithmetical aptitude are found in the human races, from the genius of a Newton and a Laplace to the absolute inability of certain of the Hottentots to count to three. These inequalities in the mathematical notions of different people should make us very cautious about saying that animals cannot count and have no sense of numbers. It is extremely probable that if we had a way of choosing those animals with a special gift for arithmetic, they would surprise us with their learning. [Illustration: THE COYOTE CAN READILY DISTINGUISH WHETHER A HERD OF SHEEP IS GUARDED BY ONE OR MORE DOGS, AND WILL PLAN HIS ATTACK ACCORDINGLY.] [Illustration: THE ZEBU, THE SACKED BULL OF INDIA, IN SPITE OF ITS DOMESTICATION, HAS AN AGILE BODY AND A QUICK, ALERT MIND.] No one denies that animals are capable of distinguishing relative sizes and even quantities. They are not so skilled as the average human being in making these distinctions, yet when mentally compared to the state of Bushmen, Tasmanians, and Veddahs, who can count only two, and call it many, there is not such a vast gulf between them and mankind. The zebu, or sacred bull of India, shows his mathematical qualities to a pronounced degree. When he grows attached to a small group of his kin, he will often refuse to leave them unless the entire group accompany him. When driven from his pen, if by chance one of his party is left behind he refuses to go--thus indicating that he is able to tell that the exact number is not with him. His affectionate and gentle disposition, not to mention his love of his offspring, would entitle him to rank among the most human of animals. No wonder he is worshipped in India, where the human side of animal life is understood and appreciated to a degree quite unknown to the Western world! The fox and the wolf, and even the coyote, can readily distinguish whether a herd of sheep or cattle is guarded by three or four dogs, and whether there is one herdsman or two. They cannot tell the exact number of sheep, however; neither could a man without first counting them. Their knowledge of geometry is remarkable. They can orient themselves to the surrounding woods, measure distances, figure out the safest way of escape, and the power of the enemy even better than savage man. Yet in most of these problems, definite notions of number or figures have little part. A dog, when hunting, for example, on a prairie where he has to leap over ditches or quickly turn around a large tree, is able by a second's thought to do so without danger. He clears the wire fence, leaps the ditch, dashes through a closing gate, or escapes an infuriated enemy at a moment's notice. This natural wisdom is exercised spontaneously in him, it is the result of inborn theorems of which he may not even be aware, but which he uses with a sureness that defies the book-learning of all our teachers of mathematics. He uses speed, force, space, mass, and time with so small an effort, and by the quickest and shortest routes. Suppose a wolf or a wild hog could not tell how many dogs were attacking it? There would be no way for it to defend itself. If four dogs attack it, they are counted and the tactics used that would be useless in other cases. If four dogs attack, two on each side, it retreats, with face toward the enemy. If a dozen dogs are in the attacking force, the hog becomes confused, loses all idea of number, and wildly bites at any enemy that comes nearest. Man in a similar condition would use practically the same tactics. Cats undeniably count their kittens. If the mother loses one of three or four, she searches for it immediately. When dogs are chasing a hare, if they raise another, they become very confused, as if they did not know which to follow. Many shepherd dogs know if a sheep is missing from the flock and go to hunt it. The efforts of scientific investigators, who work with so many learned theories, have been less successful in discovering the real facts about animals than of laymen, largely because the scientists have not yet learned that arithmetical notions are more difficult than geometrical ones. Our industrial civilisation has caused us to lose the idea of the insignificance that number has in animal life compared to the idea of size. Most animals have a remarkable sense of size; they measure time and distance better than civilised man. A hyena, for example, knows just how near he dare approach an unarmed man. A sense of time is common among animals that daily eat at fixed hours. A donkey was accustomed to being fed at six o'clock in the morning, and when on one occasion his master did not appear on time, he deliberately kicked in the door to the barn and proceeded to feed himself. Animals are capable of measuring lapses of time in which they are particularly interested. Houzeau claims that a female crocodile remains away from her eggs in the sand for twelve to twenty days, according to the species, but returns to the place exactly on the day they hatch. Although we should hesitate to affirm that all animals have an extensive knowledge of figures and numbers, yet it can hardly be denied that the elephant, donkey, horse, dog, and cat, if given the proper training, become good mathematicians. It is undeniable that they have a love of mental acquisition, and it seems that the Creator has given to every animal, as a reward for its limitations in other respects, a definite innate knowledge and desire to advance educationally. There is in the breast of every animal an irresistible impulse which urges it to advance in the scale of knowledge. Where the animal is blessed with other mental powers, there is found a perfect harmony--of tact, intuition, insight, and genius--all that man himself possesses. VII THE LANGUAGE OF ANIMALS _"Who ever knew an honest brute At law his neighbours prosecute, Bring action for assault and battery Or friends beguile with lies and flattery?"_ The fact that all animals possess ideas, no matter how small those ideas may be, implies reason. That these ideas are transmitted from one animal to another, no one can doubt in the light of our present scientific knowledge. "Be not startled," says the distinguished animal authority, Dr. William T. Hornaday, "by the discovery that apes and monkeys have language; for their vocabulary is not half so varied and extensive as that of the barnyard fowls, whose language some of us know very well." The means by which ideas are transmitted from one animal to another can be rightly described by no other term than _language_. It is evident that there are many kinds of language: the written; the spoken; the universal, which implies the motion, sign, and form language; the language of the eye, by which ideas are exchanged without words or gestures; and lastly, a mode of expression little known to the human world, but universal among animals. This language is spoken by no man, but is understood by every brute from the tiniest hare to the largest elephant; it is the language whereby spirit communicates with spirit, and by which it recognises in a moment what it would take an entire volume to narrate. In its nature it differs essentially from all other languages, yet we are justified in thinking of it as a language because its function is to transmit ideas from one animal to another. Every form of language is used by animals, and each has its own peculiar language or "dialect" common to its tribe only, though occasionally learned by others. All the emotions--fear, caution, joy, grief, gratitude, hope, despair--are disclosed by some form of language. It would be interesting to know how the use of the word "dumb" ever became applied to animals, for in reality there are very few dumb animals. Doubtless the word was originally employed to express a larger idea than that of dumbness, and implied the lack of power in animals to communicate successfully with man by sound or language. The real trouble lies with man, who is unable to understand the language spoken or uttered by the animals. The gesture language is commonly used by many of the tribes of Southern Africa, and some of the Bushmen are unable to converse freely after dark, because their visible gestures are needed as an aid to their spoken words. Only a few years ago there were almost as many different languages among the North American Indians as there were different tribes, and yet each tribe had a sign-language which any Indian in any part of the world might understand. In fact it was so simple that it might be practically mastered in a few hours, and through it one might converse with the Indians of the world without knowing a single word of their spoken language. And this is exactly what the animals do with their universal language. Who does not understand the meaning of a dog when he approaches his master, after receiving a reprimand for some misdemeanor, with downcast head and lowered tail? Or who could fail to interpret the glee when he has done a noble deed and been praised by his master? His is the language of gesture and look, and is very similar to that in use by our deaf-and-dumb men throughout the world. The Hindoos invariably talk to their elephants, and it is astonishing how they understand. Bayard Taylor says that "the Arabs govern their camels with a few cries, and my associates in the African deserts were always amused whenever I addressed a remark to the dromedary who was my property for two months; yet at the end of that time the beast evidently knew the meaning of a number of simple sentences. Some years ago, seeing the hippopotamus in Barnum's museum looking very stolid and dejected, I spoke to him in English, but he did not even open his eyes. Then I went to the opposite corner of the cage, and said in Arabic, 'I know you; come here to me.' I repeated the words, and thereupon he came to the corner where I was standing, pressed his huge, ungainly head against the bars of the cage, and looked in my face with a touch of delight while I stroked his muzzle. I have two or three times found a lion who recognised the same language, and the expression of his eyes, for an instant, seemed positively human." Every one familiar with the habits of dogs believes that they have a language. Certain shepherds are quite particular about the company their dogs keep. This story is told of a couple of shepherds meeting in a market-place in Scotland, each accompanied by his dog, one of which was a sheep-murderer, the other a faithful and respectable dog. They seemed to strike up a great friendship, "and soon assumed so remarkable a demeanour in their conversation that their owners consulted together on their own account, and agreed to set a watch upon them. On that very evening both dogs started from their homes at the same hour, joined each other, and set off after the sheep." It is unquestionable that these dogs had a sufficiency of language to understand each other. The criminal had invited his innocent young friend to join him in his mischief, and they agreed upon the time to meet and each kept his appointment. It is likely that there was not an audible sound uttered during their conversation, but that they used the language of look and gesture, and while it was not understood by their masters, it was entirely comprehended by themselves. Another instance of canine language is given by John Burroughs, who says that a certain tone in his dog's bark implies that he has found a snake. There is an old maxim which says: "The empty wagon makes the most noise," and it is interesting to note that the loudest-mouthed and most loquacious of all the animals are the lemurs, who are the least intelligent members of their great family. They chatter, scream, squeak, and grunt from morning till night, and two of them can make more noise than a cageful of apes and monkeys. The orangs and chimpanzees, on the other hand, exceptionally wise and gifted linguists, seldom utter a word or cry, except under extraordinary circumstances, and then briefly. Prof. Richard L. Garner, who has spent much time in studying the language of animals, has attracted a great amount of attention through his special study of the anthropoid apes. He has lived among these animals in a steel cage in their native haunts and has used a phonograph to record their language. Prof. Garner told recently of an exceptionally intelligent ape, named Susie, whose home used to be at the Zoological Park, under the care of the Zoological Society, and he claimed that Susie could speak "in her own language" at least five words. They were "yes," "no," "protest," "satisfaction" and "contempt." Mr. George Gladden, writing in the _Outlook_ on the chimpanzee's voice, did not exactly commit himself as to his belief regarding this matter, but he says: "Now, although Mr. Engeholm (for four years in charge of the Primates House in the New York Zoological Park) has not been able to discover that his apes use any language, correctly speaking, he is confident that the chimpanzees Susie, Dick, and Baldy comprehend the definite meaning of many words, and that their minds react promptly when these words are addressed to them in the form of commands. This capacity is more highly developed in Susie than in any other of the apes in this particular group.... "It is difficult, of course, to determine from the commands which an animal will obey precisely how many words employed in these commands are plainly understood; but I have endeavoured to do this tentatively in the case of Mr. Engeholm's commands to Susie, all of which I have seen her obey repeatedly and promptly." Mr. Gladden enumerates about forty-three commands which he claims to have seen Susie obey promptly. And he further states that the belief which many students of animal psychology hold that an animal gets more of the meaning of a command from the gesture which accompanies the command than he does from the actual words by which he is commanded, is false, and he adds, "as to this, I can testify that of the forty-three commands ... thirty-six may be, and generally are, unaccompanied by any gesture whatever. How, then, does Susie comprehend those commands unless through her understanding of the meaning of the words in which they are conveyed?" The distinguished phrenologist Gall had a dog whose memory was remarkable, and he thoroughly understood words and phrases. "On this subject I have made," says Gall, "the following observations: I have often spoken intentionally of things which might interest my dog, avoiding the mention of his name, and not letting any gesture escape me which would be likely to arouse his attention. He always exhibited pleasure or pain suitable to the occasion, and by his conduct afterwards showed that he understood perfectly well." Col. W. Campbell in his _Indian Journal_ gives two remarkable instances of language and unity of work among animals which he saw at Ranee Bennore, while he was on a hunting trip. He witnessed, one morning, a striking case of wolfish generalship, which in his belief proved that animals are endowed to a certain extent not only with reason but are able to communicate their ideas to others. He was scanning the horizon one morning to see if any game was in sight when he discovered a small herd of antelopes feeding in a nearby field. In another remote corner of the field, hidden from the antelopes, he saw six wolves sitting with their heads close together as though they were in deep conversation. He knew at once that they were also seeking venison for breakfast and he determined to watch them. He concealed himself behind a clump of bushes, and the wolves who had evidently already decided upon their mode of attack began their manoeuvres: one remained stationary, while the other five crept to the edge of the field and one by one took the most advantageous positions, the fifth concealing himself in a deep furrow in the centre of the field. The sixth, which had made no previous movements, dashed at the antelopes. The swift, graceful creatures, trusting in their incomparable speed, tossed their heads as if in disdain of so small an enemy and galloped away as though they were riding on the winds with their enemy far behind. But as soon as they reached the edge of the field, one of the hiding wolves sprang up and chased them in an opposite direction, while his fatigued accomplice lay down to recuperate. Again the light-heeled herd darted across the field, evidently hoping to escape on the opposite side, but here again they met another crafty wolf who chased them directly toward another of the pack. The chase had begun in earnest, the persecuted antelopes were driven from place to place, a fresh enemy springing up at every turn, till at last they became so terrorised with fear that they crowded together in the center of the field and began running around in diminishing circles. During all this performance, the wolf which was hidden in a furrow in the centre of the field had not moved, although the antelopes had passed around and over him dozens of times. He well realised his time for action had not yet come and crouched closer and closer awaiting a signal from his fellow hunters to spring into their midst, and down one of the weakened antelopes. At this point Col. Campbell shot one of the wolves, and the other five ran away and allowed the antelopes to escape. Surely no human combination could have shown greater reason and concerted action than was shown by the wolves under such conditions. Each had a particular post assigned, and evidently some means of communication was used in indicating their respective locations. Each had a definite part to play in the complex scheme--so that their language quite evidently expressed abstract ideas. That these ideas were carried out shows that the wolves were capable not only of laying ambitious plans for capturing prey, but of carrying them out as well. "That beasts possess a language, which enables them to communicate their ideas," says Thomas Gentry, "has been clearly shown. It is just as apparent that they can act upon the ideas so conveyed. We have now to see whether they can convey their ideas to man, and so bridge over the gulf between the higher and the lower beings. Were there no means of communicating ideas between man and animals, domestication would be impossible. Every one who has possessed and cared for some favourite animal must have observed that they can do so. Their own language becomes, in many instances, intelligible to man. Just as a child that is unable to pronounce words, can express its meaning by intimation, so a dog can do the same by its different modes of barking. There is the bark of joy or welcome, when the animal sees its master, or anticipates a walk with him; the furious bark of anger, if the dog suspects that any one is likely to injure himself or master, and the bark of terror when the dog is suddenly frightened at something which he cannot understand. Supposing, now, that his master could not see the dog, but could only hear his bark, would he not know perfectly well the ideas which were passing through the animal's mind?" There is no doubt that animals understand something of our human language. They may not be able to comprehend the exact words used, but it is evident they get the meaning to a certain extent. I once had a small Mexican dog sent me from Mexico; he seemed not to understand what was said to him, until a friend called who spoke to him in Spanish, whereupon he showed his delight and became at once a friend to the man who spoke his own language. The Rev. J. G. Wood tells the following incident, which forcibly illustrates the ability possessed by animals to commune with each other. "While I was living in the country with a friend, a most interesting incident was observed in the history of the dog. My friend had several dogs, of which two had a special attachment to, and an understanding with, each other. The one was a Scotch terrier, gentle and ready to fraternise with all honest comers. The other was as large as a mastiff, and looked like a compound between the mastiff and the large rough stag-hound. He was fierce, and required some acquaintance before you knew what faithfulness and kindness lay beneath his rough and savage-looking exterior. The one was gay and lively, the other, stern and thoughtful. "These two dogs were often observed to go to a certain point together, when the small one remained behind at a corner of a large field, while the mastiff took a round by the side of the field, which ran up-hill for nearly a mile, and led to a wood on the left. Game abounded in those districts and the object of the dogs' arrangement was soon seen. The terrier would start a hare, and chase it up the hill towards the large wood at the summit, where they arrived somewhat tired. At this point, the large dog, who was fresh and had rested after his walk, darted after the animal, which he usually captured. They then ate the hare between them and returned home. This course had been systematically carried on some time before it was fully understood." Every animal has a definite language which is quite sufficient to express the desires and emotions of its nature, and to make them intelligible, not only to its own species, but also to other animals and sometimes to human beings. Those which do not actually speak by means of a voice, make signs or mimic understood things so as to be perfectly intelligible. If animals had no language, they could not instruct their young. The young of animals in a civilised country are far wiser than the old ones in wild, uninhabited countries. This can be explained only by the knowledge which the young receive from their parents. It is not uncommon for animals belonging to widely different species to speak the same language, and thus become great friends. A friend in Texas once owned a cow whose sole companion was a small black goat. One day the young goat followed the cow home from her grazing place, and from that time on they were constant companions, even occupying the same stall in winter, sharing the same food, and always sleeping near each other. If one shoots a monkey in South Africa, and wounds it, allowing it to escape, there usually come droves of its kinspeople, screaming and chattering the most diabolical language, seeking to revenge the wrong done their tribe. Nothing demonstrates plainer that they have a common language; otherwise, how could they understand that one of their number had been wounded? It is because of the communication of ideas by a common language among animals that hunters so fear to allow a wounded animal to escape at the beginning of their hunting season in certain localities. A wounded bear who escapes, for example, will spoil the entire season for hunters by spreading the alarm among his people. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ ROOSEVELT'S COLOBUS. THESE HORSE-TAILED MONKEYS CHATTER TOGETHER IN A LANGUAGE EXCLUSIVELY THEIR OWN, YET THEY SEEM TO HAVE NO DIFFICULTY IN MAKING THEMSELVES UNDERSTOOD BY OTHER MONKEY-TRIBES.] [Illustration: A TAMED DEER OF TEXAS, WHOSE CONSTANT COMPANION AND PLAYMATE WAS A RABBIT DOG. BETWEEN THE TWO THERE DEVELOPED, NECESSARILY, A COMMON LANGUAGE.] Near our country home in Texas my sister found a very young red deer one morning just outside the garden, and bringing it into the yard, soon had a wonderful pet in this dainty spotted child of the woods. We knew that its mother was not far away, and so we placed salt and food just where the baby was found, to attract the mother's attention. In a few days, we saw the mother, and shortly afterwards five grown deer were seen eating the food we had placed for the mother. Evidently the news had been carried through the pine forests that it was safe for deer to come near our home. My sister's pet grew rapidly, and became a great friend of our yard dog. They often played by running races together, the deer would leap over the fence and the dog would chase him with great delight. Surely, they must have had a spoken common language! No one claims that in the language of animals there are principles of construction such as we find in the human languages. The term Barbarian means those whose language is only a "bar-bar," and this is really all that the sound of an unknown tongue implied to the cultured Athenians. The neighing of horses, the howling of dogs and wolves, the mewing of cats, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cows, the chattering of monkeys and baboons is nothing more nor less than their language. And it is quite as intelligible to us as is the chattering of the Hottentots of Africa. Because we do not speak the languages of our animal friends does not take away from the genuineness of the languages; we might as well claim that because our horse does not comprehend what we are saying, that we are not speaking a language! Animals and men, under normal conditions, have been friends and companions since the beginning of time; and in order that they may convey ideas to each other, it is necessary for them to have some sort of means of communication. As a matter of fact, animal language is quite often intelligible to man. Their language might be likened to that of a young child that cannot pronounce distinctly the words we commonly use; and yet we get the meaning from the intonation and gesture. Any man who has ever owned a horse understands the meanings of his various actions and vocal expressions. There is the neigh of joy, upon returning home after a hard day's work, the neigh of distress, when he has strayed from his companions, the neigh of salutation that passes between two horses when they meet, and the neigh of terror when enemies are near. There is also the neigh of affection that is often given to his master when they first meet in the morning. Thus, spoken words are not necessary to express elemental feelings. Elephants readily understand most of the words uttered by their masters. Menault tells of an elephant that was employed to pile up heavy logs. The manager, suspecting the keeper of stealing the grain set aside for the elephant, accused him of theft, which he denied most vehemently in the presence of the elephant. The result was remarkable. The animal suddenly laid hold of a large wrapper which the man wore round his waist, and tearing it open, let out some quarts of rice which the fellow had stowed away under the voluminous covering. Animals have the power to make themselves understood by man, especially when they are in distress and wish man to help them. And they often combine to help one another. I was on a sheep ranch in western Texas once when one of the sheep came bleating up to the camp late in the afternoon. She uttered the most distressing calls. A friend, whom I was visiting, assured me that something unusual was wrong. Together we followed the sheep back to where she had been feeding in the pasture, she going forward in short spurts and continually looking back to see if we were coming. She finally led us to an old well, and we heard the plaintive voice of her young lamb that had fallen in. As the well had no water in it, and was only about six feet deep, we secured a ladder and in a few minutes the lamb was restored to its mother. She seemed delighted at the successful outcome of the accident. She had come and told us her troubles and got aid. Cats are gifted linguists. By mewing they can just as plainly express a desire to have a door opened or closed as if they requested it in so many words. A friend has furnished me with an interesting account of her cat's ability to make herself understood. It seems that the cat, with her three small kittens, at one time slept in a box prepared for her in the kitchen. But one night when it was particularly cold, some one left the kitchen window open, and late in the night the cat went to her mistress's bed and mewed continuously until her mistress arose and went to the kitchen and closed the window. The cat was perfectly satisfied, as she had made her great need understood. The ability that animals have to make their own language understood by man is not the only linguistic power they possess; as already mentioned, they are also capable of understanding something of human speech. There is no doubt that all domesticated animals understand the human language; the horse, dog, ox, and sheep comprehend a large part of what is said to them, though of course they may not understand the precise words used. I once owned a rabbit dog, "Nimrod," and if he never understood another word of the English language, there is no doubt that he knew what the word "rabbit" meant. No matter in what manner or way I used the word, Nimrod was ready for a hunt, and yelped with glee at the thought of the chase that he was to have. I tested him over and over again by saying "rabbit hunt" gently; it thrilled him with delight, and while he was not very well educated in other things, he always lived up to his name. The Rev. J. G. Wood speaks of the great individuality of character which he has observed in dogs, and that they unquestionably understand the human language. "There was in my pet greyhound 'Brenda,' there was in my dear lurcher 'Smoker,' and there is now in my dear lurcher 'Bar,' and in my three setters 'Chance,' 'Quail,' and 'Quince,' a refinement of feeling and sagacity infinitely beyond that existing in multitudes of the human race, whether inhabiting the deserts or the realms of civilisation. "I cannot better define it than by saying that, if I give these dogs a hastily angered word in my room, though they have never been beaten, they will, with an expression of the most dejected sorrow, go into a corner behind some chair, sofa, or table, and lie there. Perhaps I may have been guilty of a hasty rebuke to them for jogging my table or elbow while I was writing, and then continued to write on. Some time after, not having seen my companions lying on the rug before the fire, I have remembered the circumstance, and, in a tone of voice to which they are used, I have said, 'There, you are forgiven.' In an instant the greyhound Brenda would fly into my lap, and cover me with kisses, her heart tumultuously beating. After she grew old, her joy at my return home after a long absence has at times nearly killed her; and when I was away, the bed she loved best was one of my old shooting-jackets, but never when I was at home." The impassable gulf which the writers of old created between mankind and the animal kingdom was based mainly upon the belief that animals had no language, but this has been proved a mistake and no longer exists. In the light of modern knowledge and a better understanding of the marvellous theory of evolution, we are thoroughly convinced that there is no break whatever in the long chain of living beings. Man has no art, has developed no thing whatever, no mode of language or communication, that is not to be found in some degree among animals. They are capable of feeling the same emotions as human beings, and are therefore subject to the same general laws of life. No science has been more beneficial than psychology in proving that they are human in all ways; no discovery made by the human mind is so poetical and of such value as that which leads mankind to recognise some part of himself in every part of Nature, even in the language of animals. This knowledge of all life is recognised by thinking men the world over, removing forever that artificial barrier by which, in his ignorance and prejudice, he has separated himself from his lower brothers, the animals, denying unto them even a means of intelligent communication. This recognition of the existence of a common language will go far toward establishing the universal brotherhood of all living creatures. VIII IN THEIR BOUDOIRS, HOSPITALS AND CHURCHES _"Never stoops the soaring vulture On his quarry in the desert, On the sick or wounded bison, But another vulture, watching From his high aerial look-out, Sees the downward plunge and follows, And a third pursues the second, Coming from the invisible ether, First a speck and then a vulture Till the air is dark with pinions."_ Many animals show a surprising knowledge of medical and sanitary laws, but these laws vary in the different species as much as they do among humans. Animals are divided into as many classes and social castes as are mankind; and those that have advanced beyond the nomadic life, and have fixed homes with servants and luxuries, naturally are more refined in the matter of their personal care. Science may yet prove that the old legend of the mermaid sitting on a rock, with a glass and comb in her hand, was not so far from truth as we imagine. No doubt, the bright-eyed seals looked like sea-maidens to many ancient mariners. The originator of the mermaid stories had possibly seen seals making their toilettes. These beautiful and affectionate human-like creatures of the water, wear, attached to their front flipper, a handsome comb-like protuberance. When they rest on the rocks, they use this little comb to brush the fur on their faces; and the Northern fur-seals, when the weather is warm, use their flippers as fans. The secret of teaching seals to play tambourines is due to their desire to comb their fur and fan themselves! Members of the cat family are, perhaps, the cleanest of all animals, with the exception of some of the opossums. Lions, panthers, and pumas dress themselves very much as the domestic cat performs her toilette. They use their feet, dipped in water, as wash cloths, and their tongues as combs and brushes. Hares also use their feet to wash their faces, and this they do very often, to keep their exquisite hair in perfect condition. Dogs enjoy wiping their coats against green grass and shrubs. Certain animals are so fastidious that they have community beauty-parlours! Goats, deer, giraffes, and antelopes, for example, are very particular about their personal neatness and cleanliness, and they come together to assist each other in making toilettes. One of the reasons that animals suffer so much in captivity, especially when alone, is that they have no one to help them dress, and some of them, such as the giraffe, cannot reach all parts of their bodies. I have seen a young guinea pig that had been rescued from a mud puddle being cleaned by both of his parents. Water-loving animals, like the beavers, seemingly take great pride in their toilettes, and in this respect they show more human traits than any other animal. It is a general belief that animals are quite care-free, and that when they awake in the morning there is nothing for them to do but play or wander about. This is a mistaken belief, for they have to dress themselves, and this not only means a bath in many cases, but a smoothing out of their fur and hair. Some are shy and seek the darkest places to dress themselves, others, like the dog and cat, seek the hearth. Every one has possibly seen a cow and horse licking each other, and it is generally believed that this implies special friendship between the two, but this idea is incorrect; it only implies mutual aid in making their toilettes. They have a beauty parlour, and thus aid each other. In no way are animals better prepared to teach man than in their methods of personal cleanliness, and this means health. Their utilisation of clay, dust, mud, water, and even sunshine to keep their health, far exceeds that of mankind. In fact, man's first knowledge of simple, natural health remedies came from animals. This wisdom they have acquired by ages of instinct and reason, for theirs has been the normal life, whereas man's is often abnormal. Each animal is his own specialist. However, when an animal becomes too ill to doctor himself, he is treated by another. I have seen a horse licking the wound of one of his fellows to stop the pain. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ WATER-LOVING ANIMALS, LIKE THE BEAVERS, SEEMINGLY TAKE GREAT PRIDE IN THEIR TOILETTES. THEIR FUR IS ALWAYS SLEEK AND CLEAN.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ GREAT FOREST PIGS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. LIKE THE COMMON DOMESTICATED HOGS, THEY WILL SEEK A CLAY BATH TO HEAL THEIR WOUNDS.] Animals know better than man what kind of food they need, for the simple reason that their tastes are natural, while man has allowed his to become perverted. In times of sickness absurd practices have been observed. Ice-cream and buttermilk, for example, were for ages refused to typhoid fever patients, while to-day they are generally used under such circumstances. But the natural desire for sour and cold things was always in evidence; animals have always depended upon these desires. Among them are skilled dietitians, who restrict their diet in case of illness, keep quiet, avoid all excitement, seek restful places where there is plenty of fresh air and clean water. If a dog loses his appetite, he eats "dog grass," while a sick cat delights in catnip. Deer, goats, cows, and sheep, when sick seek various medicinal herbs. When deer or cattle have rheumatism, they invariably seek a health resort where they may bathe in a sulphur spring and drink of the healing mineral waters. They also know the full value of lying in the warm sun. Cats are skilled physicians, and have various home remedies, such as dipping a feverish foot into cold water, or lying before a warm fire, if they have a cold. Many animals know how to treat a sore eye--by lying in the dark, and repeatedly licking their paws and placing them over the afflicted member. How wonderful would the human race become, if it had the strength of a lion, the power of a bear, the wisdom of an elephant, the cleverness of a fox, and the health of the wild boar! But these qualities are found chiefly among the animals because of the marvellous knowledge of the laws of health and self-preservation. John Wesley claimed, in his directions on the art of keeping well, that many of the medicines which were used among the common people of his time were first discovered by watching animals in their medical practices to cure their ills and pains. "If they heal animals, they will also heal men," he claimed. The American Indians learned most of their cures from watching animals, especially the cure of such diseases as fever, rheumatism, dysentery, and snake-bites. A rheumatic old wolf would bathe in the warm waters of a sulphur spring; a sick and feverish deer would eat the fresh leaves of healing ferns, while a wounded hog or bear would always seek a red-clay bath to heal the wounds. Sick dogs will invariably eat certain weeds, and an unwell cat will seek healing mints and grasses. Old hunters tell us that a deer after having been chased for several hours by dogs, and after having escaped them by swimming a cold stream, will, upon reaching safety, lie down in the ice and snow. If a man did such a thing, he would immediately die. But not so with the deer, for he will arise about every hour and move around to exercise himself, and on the morrow he is perfectly well. The same animal, shut up in a warm barn for the night, as has many times been demonstrated with circus animals, will be dead by morning. From this natural method of healing, mankind may learn much, and especially as it pertains to the treatment of extreme heat, cold, exhaustion, and paralysis of the muscles, and most especially sores and wounds. I have seen a wounded hog that had been badly bitten by a dog, wallow in rich red mud to stop the flow of blood. It is a common practice for a raccoon actually to amputate a diseased leg, or one that has been wounded by a gunshot, and wash the stub in cool flowing water. When it is healing, he licks it with his tongue to massage it, and also to stop the pain and reduce the swelling. This wisdom is often classed by the unknowing under the term instinct, whereas it displays no less skill and knowledge than that of our modern surgery. The intelligence of the raccoon stands very high in the animal world. Foxes, when caught in a trap, will very often gnaw off a limb. This requires a special power and a moral energy that few men possess. William J. Long, in the _Outlook_, tells of an unusual proof of animal surgery in the case of an old muskrat that had cut off both of his forelegs, probably at different times, and had grown very wise in avoiding man-made traps, and when found, had covered the wound with a sticky vegetable gum from a pine tree. "An old Indian who lives and hunts on Vancouver Island told me recently," said Mr. Long, "that he had several times caught beaver that had previously cut their legs off to escape from traps, and that two of them had covered the wounds thickly with gum, as the muskrat had done. Last spring the same Indian caught a bear in a deadfall. On the animal's side was a long rip from some other bear's claw, and the wound had been smeared thickly with soft spruce resin. This last experience corresponds closely with one of my own. I shot a bear years ago in northern New Brunswick that had received a gunshot wound, which had raked him badly and then penetrated the leg. He had plugged the wound carefully with clay, evidently to stop the bleeding, and then had covered the broken skin with sticky mud from the river's brink, to keep the flies away from the wound and give it a chance to heal undisturbed. It is noteworthy here that the bear uses either gum or clay indifferently, while the beaver and muskrat seem to know enough to avoid the clay, which would be quickly washed off in the water." Animals not only know how to doctor themselves when they are sick, but some of them, such as the fox, have learned how to make artificial heat by covering green leaves with dirt. And while they do not make fire, their homes are often heated in this practical way, and thus sickness avoided. Domestic horses and dogs wear hats in summer, and possibly in the future they will learn the enormous importance of wearing clothes! Trained monkeys already take great delight in dressing up, and dogs like smart suits. Monkeys show the greatest interest and brotherly love when one of their number is injured. Watson tells of a female monkey that was shot and carried into a tent. Several of her tribe advanced with frightful gestures, and only stopped when met with a gun. The chief of the tribe then came forward, chattering and remonstrating vigorously. But as he came nearer, there was every evidence of grief and supplication for the body. As he was given the body, he affectionately took it in his arms and slowly moved to his companions, and like a silent funeral procession they all walked away. Nor does their interest cease with life, for we are told by no less authority than Col. Theodore Roosevelt of a large grizzly bear that was discovered lying across the trail in the woods. The hunter shot her as she was preparing to charge him, and later he examined the spot where she was lying, and found that it was the newly made grave of her cub. Evidently some animal had killed the cub in her absence, and she, in her grief, was determined to avenge the wrong by lying in wait for the enemy. Public meetings for civic council and religious worship are not confined to man alone. In Macgrave's _History of Brazil_ we are told of a species of South American monkey known as the ouraines, which the natives call preachers of the woods. These highly intelligent creatures assemble every morning and evening, when the leader takes a place apart from the rest and addresses them from his pulpit or platform, Having taken his position, he signals to the others to be seated, after which he speaks to them in a language loud and rapid, with the gestures of a Billy Sunday, the audience listening in profound silence. He then signals again with his paws, when all cry out together in apparently confused noises, until another signal for silence comes from their leader. Then follows another discourse, at the close of which the assembly disperses. Macgrave attempts no explanation as to the object of these addresses; but if his accounts be true, surely they must have as much meaning for the monkeys as many of our public lectures and church services have for us! No doubt much of the advice imparted concerns the personal and collective welfare of the tribe members. IX SELF-DEFENCE AND HOME-GOVERNMENT _"In the days of yore, when the world was young, Sages of asses spoke, and poets sung; In God's own book we find their humble name, Some enrolled upon the scroll of fame."_ There is no phase of animal life which is more interesting than that through which Nature governs and protects her children. Each and every species of animal possesses the method of self-defence and protection best adapted to it. Most of the larger animals are of themselves so powerful that they need no protection other than that afforded by their strength, while most of the weaker and less aggressive animals are provided with some special method of defence. The tiger, lion, panther, and wolf have formidable claws and teeth; while the shark has such immense jaws that he can sever the head of a goat at one bite. And most of them are in reality tyrants. They rule by tyranny--the oppression of the weak by the strong, whether that strength be physical or mental,--a trait as common in animals as in man. Among the animals it takes the commonest form, and they not only oppress the weak, but actually kill and eat them, even though they oftentimes are members of the same family. They are exactly like human cannibals, no better and no worse. Flight is perhaps the simplest and most natural method of defence. The swifter animals, however, such as deer, gazelles, and hares, which may easily escape by running their fastest, do not always use this method, but have other means so ingenious as to be real arts. Wolves, when they see that they are outnumbered, will sometimes escape by following the exact tracks of a single leader through the snow, and from all appearances only one has passed the way over which a hundred may have gone. Hares will separate and run in opposite directions, while gazelles, if too closely pursued, will jump to one side and lie flat on the earth to escape notice, and as soon as the enemies have passed, run in the opposite direction. It oftentimes happens that aggressively disposed animals, like cowardly men, are apt to try battle with the unlikeliest adversaries. A missionary from India tells the story of an alligator who was enjoying a noonday sleep on the bank of a river, when an immense tiger emerged from the jungle, made straight for the sleeping saurian until within leaping distance, when he sprang on the alligator's back, and gained a strangle hold before the sleeping monster could awake. At first the tiger was master, for the alligator could not bring his huge jaws into action, and while lashing viciously at the tiger with his tail, he was dragged into the jungle. What happened there no one could see, but in a few moments the tiger dashed out of the jungle and disappeared in the cane brakes, and the alligator reappeared and crawled into the water. The ape and the baboon are the most skilled of all animals in making their flight. They use every method known to man, and because of their swiftness of action excel man in certain ways. Like man, in the face of danger, they show great bravery and never lose their presence of mind. The ape is fast disappearing before man, but against other animals and Nature he can well protect himself. He is even braver than the lion, who in captivity allows himself to be petted, but rarely is this true of the ape, and then only when conditions seem insurmountable. In making his escape from an enemy, the ape directs his flight in the most self-possessed and human-like way, never losing his head, and taking advantage of the first shelter or protection that he meets; if the young, or females, or aged linger behind, a strong army of males bravely returns to rescue them at the danger of losing their own lives. Many of their brave deeds, if recorded in history, would compare favourably with those of mankind! Too often has a poor, sickly ape, which by his very feebleness allowed himself to be captured and placed in a zoo, been compared to human beings. Even in spirit and movements he has been considered as a human caricature and heaped with ridicule. We have continually considered his defects, without noticing his better qualities. We would have a much higher idea of his great family, if we would take a human derelict and compare him to an ape ruler! This comparison would be more just. Certain of the baboon tribes which live among the rocks of high mountains and cliffs, if pursued by enemies, protect themselves by ingeniously rolling immense stones down upon their foes. They also hurl with great force small stones about the size of one's hand. As these tribes have each from one hundred to three hundred members, they constitute a formidable grenade army! In addition to their skilled methods of flight, the baboons, apes, and monkeys come next to certain of the cat tribes as the greatest fighters in the animal world. This is astonishing when we remember that these animals are not professional warriors, nor do they have to fight to obtain their food. Their greatest defence is their quickness and powers of biting. When they are attacked by a dog, they usually bite off a foot or an ear, or leave him minus a tail! One of the bravest and fiercest of fighters is the bull-dog. Three of these animals together have been known to capture and hold a large bull. Deer, when fighting among themselves, often play more than anything, and are not serious. Red deer seldom injure one another with their long antlers, but they could easily kill a dog or even a man. Stags, however, often fight to death, in some instances locking horns and tumbling over a precipice. The most ingenious of all the horned fighters is the sable antelope, whose clever system of self-defence might well be taught in war-schools. His horns are long, sharp-pointed, and bend backwards. When wounded, or attacked by wolves or dogs, he lies down, and scientifically covers his back by rapid fencing with his pointed horns. He can quickly kill any dog that attacks him in this way. Occasionally great battles take place between a buffalo and a lion, or more often two or three lions attack a buffalo, who rarely escapes them. The strength of a lion is almost beyond our comprehension when we remember that one can actually carry a cow over an ordinary-sized fence. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT HAS MANY MEANS OF DEFENCE, NOT THE LEAST OF WHICH IS HIS AGILITY IN CLIMBING TO INACCESSIBLE PLACES.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ WILD BOARS ARE AMONG THE MOST FEROCIOUS OF ANIMALS. BY MEANS OF THEIR GREAT STRENGTH ALONE THEY ARE WELL ABLE TO DEFEND THEMSELVES.] A most unique fighter is the giraffe. He has neither claws nor sharp teeth with which to defend himself; so, if he gets angry with one of his kind, he deliberately uses his long neck like a pile driver would use a sledge hammer. Swinging it round and round, he lets his head descend upon his adversary like a heavy ax! The two animals use the same kind of tactics, and bracing themselves so as to stand the blows, they fight until one has to give in. Their heads are furnished with two small knob-like horns which only protect them from the heavy blows without serving as offensive weapons. Most singular and amusing of all methods of self-defence are those which entirely depend for their efficiency upon bluff, or pretence. The chameleon, for example, erects his snake-like hood, though he is harmless, and at the most could scarcely injure the smallest animal. Equally curious are the methods of skunks and polecats, which project against enemies a highly disagreeable fluid. Passive modes of defence are as many and varied as are the active; one of the strangest and most inexplicable of these is that known as spontaneous amputation, technically termed autotomy. The lizard, for example, when captured, will abruptly break loose his tail in order to escape; and certain wood rats, when caught, loosen the skin on their tails and deliberately slip away. Autotomy not only permits flight, but also defends the animal against the most adverse conditions. Nearest akin to this--defence by means of amputation--is the practice of bears and raccoons of amputating their limbs when caught in steel traps. Mimicry, which is treated under another chapter, comes under the head of passive defence, and form and colour play an important part in it. Strangely enough, animals which have never resorted to mimicry as a means of protection, when associated with others who practice it, take on the habit themselves. This may possibly be due to the fact that new enemies are constantly arising. As human sharpshooters dress in garments of the same colour as the woods in which they hunt, so many animals use this principle of imitation. The colour of most animals is very similar to their surroundings. This enables them to lie in wait for prey, a practice as old as the hillsides with animals. They have learned the extreme value of silence, and that they must remain at times motionless. This is especially noticeable with crocodiles, which wait for whole days without moving, concealed in the water or deep grass, until their prey comes within striking distance, when they pounce upon it. The same is true of the python snake, which hangs from a tree so immovable that he appears like a vine or a branch of the tree. If an animal attempts to pass, he drops upon it. Perhaps the most unique and successful method of passive defence is the feigning of death, or "playing 'possum" met with in several animals, such as the red fox, the opossum, occasionally the elephant, and several of the snakes. On many occasions I have been 'possum hunting in the South and found my dog barking at an apparently dead 'possum. As soon as these animals are approached by larger and stronger enemies, they drop absolutely motionless on the ground and close their eyes as though they were dead. Here they remain until the enemy either destroys them, carries them away, or leaves them alone. If left alone for a few moments, they immediately spring to their feet and make their escape. Elephants often feign death when captured, in order to gain their liberty. Animal catchers tell many interesting tales of elephants feigning weakness from which they fall to the earth and later apparently die. In many instances the fastenings are removed from their legs and head and the carcass is abandoned as useless, when to the utter astonishment of all--before the captors get out of sight--the animal springs up and dashes away to the forest, screaming with joy at the triumph of its deception. Many animals deliberately assume a frightful, terrifying or grotesque appearance. This they do by inflating their bodies, by erecting hair, skin, or folds, or by unusual poses. Darwin speaks of the hissing of certain snakes, the rattle of the rattle-snake, the grating of the scales of the echis, each of which serves to frighten or terrify the enemy. Bluffing is another form of defence that many animals use. The cobra, for example, when disturbed, raises its immense hood in a most terrifying attitude! Many of the lizards use the same tactics; while the horned toads of America when disturbed actually eject blood from their eyes. Every one is familiar with the cat's habit of raising the fur on his back when molested by a dog. All bluffing animals, when in danger, try to assume a pose that will make them look most dangerous and impressive to their enemies, and there is little doubt that in most cases they succeed very well, for we have all seen a dog slink away from a menacing cat. The elk or moose, whose home is in the northern part of America and Europe, is a powerful and large animal, sometimes seven feet in height, and is able to endure much cold. He has many enemies among animals and mankind, and during the summer season he is quite able to protect himself, but in winter there is considerable danger from hordes of wolves. This is especially true just after a heavy snowstorm, if the snow is wet and melting. When it is dry and frozen, he can travel over it with great speed, and this he does by a most unusual trot which carries him along much faster than the trotting gait of a horse. Thus he is able to escape the hungry, carnivorous wolves, whose courage increases with appetite. If crowded too close, he is able also to protect himself by the most terrific blows of his fore-feet. But when the spring weather sets in, and the snows begin to melt underneath, leaving the upper crust sufficiently strong to support the weight of lighter and smaller animals, such as wolves, especially when they travel swiftly, he is in great danger. For with every step he sinks to the belly in the snow, while his enemies can walk right up to his head and shoulders without his being able to strike or paw them with his dangerous hoofs. The advantage seems to be with the wolves, and if ever they bring the moose to bay in the snow, his life is doomed. For they care little for his arrow-like horns, but boldly jump at his throat and kill him. Herein comes the elk's wisdom--he deliberately sets to work, before the snow melts, and builds for himself and family an elk-yard, which is nothing more than a large space of ground on which the snow is smoothed or trampled down until it becomes a hard surface on which he can walk; it is also surrounded by a high wall of snow, through which are certain exits that allow him to pass out, if he desires. All the enclosed space is not smoothed down, but parts of it only are cut up into roads through which he may pass very swiftly. Woe unto the daring wolves that enter his snowy fortification--his "No Man's Land"--- for sure death awaits them! A sense of law, order, government; the sacredness of family ties--all these aid in the protection of animals. Family life with them originated just as it did in the human world. The social instinct and the moral sentiments which arise from social relations in man and animal are the same. Moral obligations, especially in relation to family ties and conjugal unions of animals, are in many cases sacred binders to such ties. The bear, for example, is proverbial for his conjugal faithfulness. The married life of most animals is strictly moral, and most of them are monogamists and have reached the highest form of family association and life. In those places where they live promiscuously, it gives them the same protection in herds as it does among our lower savages. Cattle, sheep, and horses unite for mutual protection; wolves band together in packs; and after they have been domesticated there is still not only a strong desire to band together for social purposes, but also to hold courts of justice. It sometimes happens that an angered husband takes the law in his hands, like uncivilised men, and beats his wife. In the development and organisation of social and civil life the horse and the goat hold the foremost position. It corresponds to that of man among the lower animals. They do not believe in monarchies, but strictly in republics, or rather, a democracy where all power comes from the working class. The claims of the working class to the exercise of supreme control in all political affairs are practically realised. Among a herd of wild Arabian horses, the leading stallion, or so-called king, is really only the father of the tribe; his functions are paternal rather than regal. If he may be said to reign in a certain sense, the true workers rule, and his scouts and sentinels obey his wishes which the workers have influenced and formulated. The existence of but one king leaves no room for dynastic troubles and rivalries which disturb, so often, our human countries and empires with such dreadful results. If two rival kings arise at the same time in a herd of horses, instead of forming factions in the state which end in civil war, they fight it out personally until one of them is killed or defeated. Once in a great while the other horses intervene, and drive the less desirable, or the false-claimant of power, away from the herd and its grazing territory. In these troubles the real king has little or no power, all activities are carried on by the workers. If by chance he dies or is captured, another king, chosen by the herd, immediately assumes the kingship. It is a well-known fact that if the king of a herd of wild horses is caught, it is not uncommon for his herd to remain as near him as possible, and in their attempt to release him are often trapped themselves. The king has no heirs, either apparent or presumptive, and no right of succession is recognised. Any member of the herd, provided the workers choose him, may become the king, as every American school boy is a possible president of the United States. Among many animals there is a perfect social and industrial organisation in which the division of labour is far better adjusted than in many human organisations. This, of course, is the result of gradual growth and evolution just as it is in the human species. This can easily be proved among animals by their more primitive and savage habits. Monkeys, for example, in civilised monkey communities, differ very greatly from those of wilder and less trained districts. They are constantly changing their habits, becoming more and more civilised by improving their methods of work and their moral and religious life as well. In many cases they have ceased to kill members of their own tribe for small offences for which they used to kill, and the cleanness and beauty of their home lives seem to increase with the years. It oftentimes happens, however, that powerful ape and baboon colonies relapse into barbarism, and roam, plunder, rob and murder, like a pack of uncivilised wolves or hyenas. They seem all at once to forget their peaceful industries and lose all desire for clean and right living. And strangely enough, when they once turn bad, they seldom reform. Some naturalists believe that they are led astray by a wicked king or ruler who comes into power; the natives believe the evil spirits have suddenly taken possession of them. There is unquestionably, in the life of many tribal animals, a definite historical connection between the mother tribe and its colonies. This relation extends to the tribes of tribes, and thus there is an international relationship between the various members of a large number of tribes. These communities share the same likes, dislikes, hatreds, and aspirations. A missionary friend told of his experience with monkey folk, and how once, when hunting, his gun was accidentally discharged, instantly wounding a large semi-tame baboon near his home. He hastened to help the injured animal, but saw that the relatives had crowded around and were terrorised, as they thought it was intentional. They not only followed him to his home, but returned in the night and actually tore his fence down. For months he was afraid to leave his wife alone during the day. And the natives reported that large tribes of monkey folk immediately came into the community from remoter regions and were distinctly on the war path. It was evident that their unjust antipathy was extended to all the kinspeople. This is evidence of hereditary enmity, such as is common among families, tribes, and clans, and it often takes the form of feuds, which are still in vogue in the mountainous counties of the South. The baboons had suffered wrongs and never forgot it, and it was transmitted to their offspring. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ BRONTOSAURUS. THE ANIMALS THAT SEEMED BEST EQUIPPED TO DEFEND THEMSELVES ARE THE ONES THAT, THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO, BECAME EXTINCT.] [Illustration: THIS PREHISTORIC MONSTER WAS EQUIPPED NOT ONLY WITH A PAIR OF STRONG HORNS, BUT WITH A SHIELD BACK OF THEM AS WELL.] The ability to use weapons, tools, and war instruments is not exclusively human. Even fish are capable of reaching their prey at a long distance. The _toxotes jaculator_, which lives in the rivers of India, and feeds upon insects, cannot afford to wait until the insects which thrive upon the leaves of aquatic plants fall into the water. So as he cannot leap high enough to catch them, he fills his mouth with water and squirts it at an insect with such aim and force that he rarely fails to knock the insect into the water where he can easily catch it. Many other animals squirt various liquids, occasionally in attack, but most times in defence. The fish makes a veritable squirt-gun of his mouth. Beavers use sticks, chips, and even stones in building their dams; and their engineering abilities are astounding. They are also capable of meeting emergencies, as shown by the following incident. A farmer in Michigan discovered one morning, just after a flood, that all his potato sacks, which had been hung on a back fence to dry, had suddenly disappeared. A few days later he found them in a nearby beavers' colony, used in rebuilding their dam, which had suddenly overflowed. The beavers wasted no time, when they discovered their danger, in meeting the emergency by using the sacks to prevent the destruction of their home. Monkeys make skilled use of clubs and stones in capturing their prey and fighting their enemies. The skill with which some of them throw pebbles would lead us to believe they have already reached the degree of civilisation that many tribes of savages had reached only a few years ago, when they learned to use the boomerang and lasso. Some naturalists claim that monkeys actually set pitfalls for their enemies and lie in wait for them to be caught, just as a hunter would do. Elephants also know the value of clubs in warfare, and will often use a broken limb of a dead tree as a weapon of defence. The story is told and vouched for by Mr. William B. Smith that on his farm, near Mount Lookout, a few years ago a donkey grazed in the same pasture with a ferocious bull. He was frequently attacked by the bull, and always got the worst of the fight. His feet were no match for the bull's horns, but one day the mule grabbed a long pole in his mouth, and, whirling it about, almost killed the bull, and henceforth the two lived on the best of terms in the same pasture. I have a friend who owns a cow that knows exactly how to lift an iron latch to the barn door with her tongue and open the door. Innumerable times she has opened a gate in the same way to permit her calf to go free with her. So skilled is she in the manipulation of doors and latches that we are tempted to believe in some previous state of existence she was a professional lock-picker! Cats and dogs are famed for their ability to open doors by pulling latch-strings. And not a few cats show a strong desire to study music by walking up and down the keyboard of a piano! Monkeys who live near the seashore show wonderful aptness in opening oysters and shell-fish with sharp stones, exactly as a man would do. Monkeys have already reached the degree of civilization where they select the stones best suited for their work, and from their progress in the past it is reasonable to believe that in the near future they will not only be able to make their own tools--thus placing themselves on a mental footing with our flint-chipping ancestors of the early stone age,--but will also learn the use of fire and eventually the use of guns and ammunition, which marks one of the most important epochs in the evolution of the human species. The chimpanzees, gorillas, and apes of the African forests have many times been observed in the act of piling brushwood upon the fires left by travellers, and though they do not know how to kindle a fire, they have learned how to keep it burning. The tame ones soon learn how to ignite matches, and often do great harm by starting forest fires. But they show quite as much intelligence about the use of fire as the average small child. In fact, it has been thought by a number of great scholars that man had not yet made his appearance upon the earth in the miocene age, and that all the marvellous chipped flints of that age belong to semi-human pithecoid apes of wonderful intelligence. There is surely nothing in the facts of natural history, nor in Darwin's theory of evolution, that makes such a supposition unbelievable. Baboons use poles as levers, stones as hammers, and seem to understand the more simple mechanical devices. Prantl claims that man is the only animal capable of using fire but not a few baboons know how to strike a match, heap dried leaves over the blaze to make it burn, and then heap on dead wood to feed the fire. This knowledge with them, exactly as with primitive peoples, is a product of long experience and does not show any mathematical truths or principles any more than making a direct cut across a field implies "knowledge of the relation of a hypothenuse to the two other sides of a right-angled triangle." This is what Prantl calls "spontaneous mathematical thinking." I knew of a tame ape in Chicago that learned to swing from the end of a clothes-line and seemed to enjoy it very much. The line was just the right length and properly hung so as to allow the ape to swing out from a kitchen window and touch the ground. Just for fun, some one cut a piece from the line so that he could not reach the ground; immediately the ape hunted another piece of cord, tying it to the end of his line so as to increase its length, and much to his delight, continued to swing on the line. The distinctive features of animal protection and home government, especially in the higher groups, may compare favourably with any of the methods used by civilised man. This is true both of their offensive and defensive contrivances and for their monarchies and republics. They use shells, scales, plates of every kind, with innumerable modifications for various purposes--spines and allied armaments--all shapes and sizes; poisonous secretions, deadly odours, strong claws and teeth wielded by strong muscles, and form colonies that are more than a gregarious association. In most cases, they have communities composed of individuals living individual lives, yet which act in cases of need as one unit. X ANIMAL ARCHITECTS, ENGINEERS, AND HOUSE BUILDERS _"The heart is hard that is not pleased With sight of animals enjoying life, Nor feels their happiness augment his own."_ The most popular and perhaps the most interesting department of natural-history study is that which treats of the manner in which animals utilise the various materials of the universe for purposes of protection, for war and defence, for raiment, food, and even the luxuries of life. Man, by his superior power of adaptation, excels the lower animals in providing for the comforts of life; but, on the other hand, in such practical arts as engineering and domestic architecture man frequently finds himself an amateur in comparison. With all man's inventions he has not been able to equal some of the remarkable results produced by some animals. The beaver, for example, shows a more profound knowledge of hydraulics than man himself. The power possessed by these craftsmen, not only in felling trees, but in duly selecting the best places for making homes and in appropriating substances suitable for their needs, is a never-ending marvel! Nowhere can we find a greater animal-workman than the beaver. He belongs to the great burrowing family, and is also extremely graceful in the water. Long ago he learned the advantages of co-operation, and he unites with his fellows in building dams of felled trees, which have been cut up into suitable length for use in damming up water places. These are skilfully placed, and with the aid of mud, control the level of the water in selected places as efficiently as man could do. As a social animal, the beaver should be ranked among the first; of course, the various marmots are extremely sociable, but they ordinarily live quite independently of each other, except in cases where they chance to congregate because of favourable conditions. The beavers, on the other hand, thoroughly understand the benefits of united labour, and work together for the good of the community. Beavers, if their skill were generally known, would have a great reputation among their human friends. Recently, at the New York Zoological Gardens, a visitor was pointing out different animals to his little son, and when he came to the beaver pond, referred to two of these dam-builders and tree-cutters, which were swimming through the water with large sticks in their mouths, as big rats! Young beavers make their appearance in May, and there are usually from four to eight to a family. These kittens, as they are called, are odd looking little fellows, with big heads, large sharp teeth, flat tails, like little fat paddles, and delicate, soft, mouse-like fur, not at all coarse like that of their parents. If taken at an early age they make nice pets and are easily domesticated. In the early days of American history it was not uncommon to see one running around an Indian lodge, playing like a child with the little Indians, and frequently receiving with the papoose nourishment from the mother's breast. Strangely enough, the cry of the young beaver is exactly like that of the baby child. One of my friends in Michigan recently stopped at an Indian's house to see a real live baby beaver. "He cry all same as papoose," remarked the squaw, as she brought the young beaver out of the house, giving him a little slap to start him crying--and cry he did! The body of a grown beaver is usually about thirty inches long, and something over eleven inches wide; it weighs about sixty pounds. The fore-paws are quite small in comparison with the rest of the body; the hind feet are larger, webbed like a duck's feet, and are the principal motive power in swimming. The most unique feature of the animal's body is the famous mud-plastering tail, which is oft-times a foot long, five inches in width, and an inch in thickness. The colour of the beaver varies; there are black beavers, white beavers, and brown beavers. The black are the best known. The beaver is well equipped for defending himself, and for carrying out his architectural schemes. His jet black tail, which is like a large paddle, covered with horny scales, he uses in many ways. With it he turns the body in any desired direction while swimming and diving, and, in time of danger, employs it as a sound board, or paddle. When alarmed at night, he dives into the water, and, by means of his tail, splashes so violently as to give warning to all beavers within a half-mile distance. The stroke of the tail sounds not unlike a pistol shot. As soon as a beaver sounds the alarm all others dive underneath the water. His teeth are expressly suited by nature for cutting and chiselling out trees. The dam is the beaver's masterpiece. In the alder or birch swamps, where he usually lives, he oft-times builds from six to eight little dams from knoll to knoll, and in this way makes a pond sufficiently large for his purposes. The average beaver dam is from twenty to thirty feet long; but they differ greatly in size. There is one on a branch of Arnold's River in Canada, where the stream is twenty-one feet wide and two feet deep, which is especially well built. The dam is seven feet high, and rises five to six feet above the pool. It is constructed mainly of alder poles, which are arranged side by side, and their length is parallel with the direction of the current. To create a pond for himself and provide against drought is the chief aim of the beaver in building his dam. Just how these dams are built; who plans the job; who sees that it is carried out; whether each works under his own impulse or whether they co-operate; when they begin and how they finish; all these things are unknown to man. The investigation of such questions is almost impossible. It is generally believed, however, that beavers work in gangs under a common "boss" or "overseer," and it is a known fact that they work only at night. During a dark, rainy night they accomplish twice as much as on a moonlight night. No doubt the darkness gives them a sense of security which aids their work. Anyway, in the completed job, we see the evidences of a skilled engineer and architect, and one who knew thoroughly what he was about. The size of a dam depends entirely upon the wishes of its builders and location and general conditions of land and water. Sometimes the more ambitious beavers build a dam a quarter of a mile in length. They employ exactly the same principle as is used in making a mill-dam. Beavers, however, were building dams long before millers came into existence, and their methods are fully as scientific as those of man. Mill-dams usually run straight across a stream, while beaver-dams are so curved that the water is gently turned to each side. In this way the beaver-dams are capable of resisting immense quantities of water which in its impetuous rush would carry away the ordinary mill-dam. Many scientific thinkers claim that the beaver employs this principle of construction without knowing it. How absurd! Who can be sure that he doesn't know it? Scientists of the old school desire proof before they will accept anything as a fact, yet they themselves repeatedly make wild statements without proper substantiation. It is not unusual for a beaver family to select a home on the bank of a pond, lake, or stream whose waters are sufficiently deep and abundant for all their needs. In such a case dams are not needed, and regulation beaver houses are rarely constructed. Instead, apartment houses are hollowed out from the banks. But in the ease of a town-site on shallow, narrow waters, dams are absolutely necessary to insure sufficient depth to conceal the beavers, and to prevent obstruction by ice. The entrance to the beaver's home is almost always under the water. This arrangement safeguards the home from predatory enemies. During the summer months, beavers are inclined to live alone, except when a new home occupies their attention; but when autumn comes, the various families of a neighbourhood meet and remain together through the following spring. In the latter part of August the busy season begins, and each and every beaver, old and young, aids in repairing the dam and dwellings, which have been allowed to fall into decay. The cutting and felling of trees is the first important work to be done. These interesting "tree-cutters" usually work in pairs, and are sometimes assisted by younger beavers; thus the family works together in cutting and felling the trees, but in other forms of labour it seems that several families work together. If only two are engaged in felling a tree, they work by turns, and alternately keep guard; this is a well-known practice of many animals both in work and play. As soon as the tree begins to bend and crack, they cease cutting and make sure of their definite direction of escape, then they continue to gnaw until it begins to fall, whereupon they plunge into the stream, usually, where they remain for some time lest the noise of the falling tree attract the attention of enemies. Their next work is to cut up the tree into sections which they can remove. If the tree is not too large and has already fallen in the water, they take it as it is, otherwise it must be cut up and conveyed to the dam. No professional lumberman better understands how to transport lumber to a desired place than beavers. They realise the value of water transportation and thoroughly appreciate that trees can only be removed downhill. From tame beavers we have learned that they remove smaller limbs by seizing them with their teeth, throwing the loose end over their shoulder, and then dragging them to their destination. These water-loving animals rely mainly upon their native element for the movement of lumber and food, and to aid this they employ engineering skill that is rivalled only by their feats of tree-cutting and dam-building. This constructive faculty is shown largely in their canal-digging. From one small stream to another, or from one lake to another, they excavate canals from three to four feet in width, with a water depth of two feet, and occasionally one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet in length. The amount of labour they perform is almost unbelievable; every particle of dirt is carried away between their chin and fore-paws. This earth is sometimes used in plastering up a nearby dam or repairing their winter home. Small and tender twigs are transported to the vicinity of their lodges, and then sunk for winter food. Mr. Morgan has made a close study of these canals, and in speaking of them he says that when he first saw them, and heard them called canals, he doubted their artificial origin; but upon examination he found that they were unquestionably beaver excavations. He considers these artificial canals, by means of which the beavers carry their wood to their lodges, the supreme act of intelligence on the part of these wise animals. Even the dam, remarkable as it is, does not show evidence of greater skill than that displayed in the making of these canals. No one who has ever understood the ways of the beaver can believe that he is not exceedingly intelligent. The banks of these canals soon become covered with growing plants and moss, and they look not unlike slow sluggish streams winding through the marshy lands. [Illustration: THE BEAVER IS THE GREATEST OF ALL ANIMAL ARCHITECTS. HIS SKILL IS EQUALLED ONLY BY HIS PATIENCE.] The beaver huts, or "lodges" as they are usually called, look not unlike beehives, somewhat broader at the base, with thick walls and roof, four to six feet in thickness. They are formed of numbers of poles, twigs, and small branches of trees, woven together and plastered with mud, in the same way that the dams are made. Inside the house are circular chambers formed of mud, which have been smoothed and polished like waxed floors by the feet of the occupants. Around the outer border of each polished floor is dry grass used for Mrs. Beaver's nursery, and here the young beavers sleep and play. From the outside these beaver huts resemble Esquimaux snow-houses, being almost circular in form, and domed. The walls are quite thick enough to keep out the cold, but with all the beaver's ingenuity, he is helpless against trappers. Summer and winter they are hunted, until now they are fast becoming extinct. How few people seem fully to realise and care what is being done to wild animals! They do not seem to know that it is a crime to take the life of a being unnecessarily. Only human life is sacred to them! To realize the wonderful work of beavers, and then to act as we do toward them is unworthy of our civilisation. An interesting cousin of the beaver, the musquash or muskrat, and called by the Indians the beaver's "little brother," is also a house-builder and engineer of no mean abilities. He is at home throughout the greater part of North America, and, like the beaver, frequents the regions of slowly flowing streams and large, reed-bordered ponds. Here he mingles in groups of his own kin, and together they build houses, work and play, dive and swim, with almost as much skill as their big beaver brothers. The muskrat is a skilled engineer, and delights in tunnelling. His home consists of a large rounded chamber which is reached by a long burrow from the side of a stream. From his main living-room are oftentimes found a number of smaller chambers or galleries, and these are used to store food in the form of delicate roots and bits of bark. Some of the more ambitious muskrats build large houses on piles of mud which rise out of the water. These houses are usually made of heaps of dead grass and weeds which are cemented together with mud and clay; at other times they contain no mud or clay, and seem to be only piles of tender roots and swamp grasses to be used for food during the long, cold winters. From his physical appearance, the muskrat is well prepared to do his work: he is stoutly built, with a body about a foot in length, not including the tail; has small eyes, and tiny ears, partly covered with fur. In the winter, as food gets scarce, he begins to eat even the walls of his house, and by the time his home is gone--spring has arrived! A most unusual family of skilled house-builders are the brush-tailed rat-kangaroos, or Jerboa kangaroos of Australia and Tasmania. They are no larger than an ordinary rabbit, but they have cousins who are as large as a man. These rat-kangaroos have most interesting tails, covered with long hair which forms itself into a crest near the tip. Their homes are found among small grassy hills, where there are a few trees and bushes. They scratch out a small hole in the ground, near a tuft of tall grass, and so bend the grass as to form a complete roof to the house, which is rather poorly constructed, and whose chief interest lies in the unusual way the kangaroos have of carrying all the building materials, like tiny bundles of hay, held compactly in their tails. There is no other workman among the animals that employs quite this method of transporting materials. The rat-kangaroos have a dainty little brown cousin that lives in Africa, and who is occasionally seen jumping around on the ground, underneath bushes, and near damp springs. He is very small, not over three inches in length, and is like a miniature kangaroo, except for his long tail. Like their great cousins--the kangaroos--Mrs. Jerboa often carries her babies on her back when she goes out to seek food. In the Great Sahara Desert, parched and dry, are found numerous cities of these little animals. With the exception of a few birds, reptiles, jackals and hyenas, they are the only inhabitants of this barren and desolate land. From the Arabs we learn that these little animals have extensive and intricate burrows, consisting of innumerable passages tunnelled out in the hard, dry soil. And these tunnels are the result of combined labour on the part of the entire community. The least alarm causes them to scuffle away into their underground homes. One of the larger species of Central Asia employs a stratagem that is remarkable. Like their cousins of Africa, they live in a great underground city which is a perfect network of burrows which end in a large central chamber. From this chamber a long winding tunnel terminates very near the surface of the ground, and it is a long distance from the other burrows. No sign of its existence appears from above the surface of the earth, but if an enemy invades the burrow, away the jerboas rush for this secret exit and break through to the surface out of reach of the trouble, and escape. These African jerboas are exceedingly odd in appearance, and they are two-legged in their habits of walk, and never go on all-fours. They walk by placing one hind foot alternately before the other; and they run in the same way. They can leap an extraordinary distance. Frogs and toads, as a class, are not so skilled in house-building as some of their higher relations, but there is one of their number--the _Hyla faber_--that is remarkably gifted in building mud houses. He lives in Brazil, and the natives call him the _ferreiro_, or smith, and he is indeed the master-builder of his family. Mrs. Hyla is really the gifted member of the tribe, and it is during the breeding season that she diligently dives underneath the water, digs up handfuls of mud, and builds on the bottom a small circular wall, which encloses a space about ten to fourteen inches in diameter. This wall is continued until it reaches about four inches above the surface of the water. It looks not unlike a small volcano, and the inside is skilfully smoothed. This has been done by Mrs. Frog's artistic hands. When the house is entirely completed, Mrs. Frog lays a great number of eggs, and here they are quite safe from enemies both as eggs and baby tadpoles. Mr. Frog seems little concerned in the building of the home, but he does take pleasure in croaking for Mrs. Frog while she works. Perhaps this is to her heart genuine music, and his faithful attention to their children makes up for his love of idleness! Perhaps the strangest animal engineer in the world is found in Madagascar and Australia. It is the duckbill or duckmole, and is scientifically known as the _Ornithorhynchus paradoxus_. The natives of Australia call it by several names: _Mallangong_, _Tambreet_, and not a few call it, _Tohunbuck_. This odd little aquatic engineer digs long tunnels of great intricacy in the bands of lazy rivers, and because of its paradoxical nature and appearance has caused many strange stories to originate about its habits and methods of propagation. It has the beak of a duck and waddles not unlike this bird, but, like other mammals, it gives birth to its young, and does not lay eggs, as is so often claimed for it. When swimming it looks like a bunch of floating weeds or grass. Its home is always on the banks of a stream, and is always provided with two entrances: one below the surface of the water, and the other above. This insures escape in case of enemies. The main tunnel or road to the home is sometimes fifty feet in length, and no engineer could devise a more deceptive approach; it winds up and down like a huge serpent, to the right, and to the left, and is so annoyingly variable in its sinuous course that even the natives have great trouble in digging the duckbill out of its nest. The nest is oval in form, and is well-carpeted with dry weeds and grass. Here the young reside on soft beds until they are large enough to care for themselves. There are from one to four in each nest. There are no greater architects in the universe than may be found among the coral-polypes. These interesting little animals of the deep have been much misunderstood, and have sometimes had the erroneous designation of "insect" bestowed upon them. The word "insect" has been applied in a very loose and general sense in other days; but naturalists and scientists should see to it that the use of this term be corrected in reference to these wonderful coral-architects, and that no informed person refer to them except as animals. Even poets have been guilty of propagating the most erroneous ideas about the nature and works of these sea-builders. Montgomery, in his _Pelican Island_, makes statements that are shocking to an intelligent thinker, and which no scientist can excuse on the ground of poetical license. "The poetry of this excellent author," says Dana, "is good, but the facts nearly all errors--if literature allows of such an incongruity." Think of coral-animals as being referred to as shapeless worms that "writhe and shrink their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions"! These deep-sea builders manufacture or secrete from their own bodies the coral substance out of which the great reefs are built. It is a part of their life work and nature, as a flower produces its own colours and shapes; it is amusing to know that it has only been about one hundred and fifty years since it was discovered not to be a plant but an animal! Even Ovid states the popular belief of the classic period when he speaks of the coral as a seaweed "which existed in a soft state as long as it remained in the sea, but had the curious property of becoming hard on exposure to the air." These strange coral-producing animals of the deep demand two especially important conditions only under which they will thrive: namely, a certain depth of water and a certain temperature. Thus it is seen that the warmth of the sea determines the distribution of the corals; the geography of these animals is defined by degrees of temperature. Only in equatorial seas may reef-building corals be found; and if we select the "Equator as a natural centre of the globe, and measure off a band of 1800 miles in breadth on each side of that line," we will find that it will include the chief coral regions of the earth. The work of the corals is most interesting. Small as are these tiny workmen, each and every one does his bit and, speck by speck, adds his minute contribution to the growing mass of coral until entire islands are surrounded by extensive reefs. Tahiti, for example, is surrounded by a barrier reef which is really an immense wall. The large barrier reef on the northeast coast of Australia extends in a continuous line for 1,000 miles, and varies from 10 to 90 miles in breadth. Some reefs are mere fringes which simply skirt the coast lands, and seem to be mere extensions of the beach. Still another variety of reef is known as the "atoll" or "lagoon" reef. This latter form is seen in circular rings of coral of various breadths which enclose a body of still water--the lagoon. There are many of these coral islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Keeling or Cocos Atoll, of the Indian Ocean, is 9-1/2 miles in its greatest width; Bow Island is 30 miles in length, and 6 miles wide; while in the Maldive Archipelago one island measures 88 geographical miles in length, and in some places is 20 miles wide. When one beholds a large coral ring, covered with rich soil and tropical vegetation, and "protecting a quiet lake-haven from the restless ocean without, it is little to be wondered at that the earlier voyagers recorded their surprise that the apparently insignificant architects of such an erection are able to withstand the force of the waves and to preserve their works among the continual attacks of the sea." As Pyrard de Laval truly said, "It is a marvel to see each of these atollons surrounded on all sides by a great bank of stone--walls such as no human hands could build on the space of earth allotted to them.... Being in the middle of an atollon, you see all around you this great stone bank, which surrounds and protects the island from the waves; but it is a formidable attempt, even for the boldest, to approach the bank and watch the waves roll in, and break with fury upon the shore." As to the explanation of the modes of formation of these coral-reefs, the scientists have long been propounding theories which are sometimes amusing. Strangely enough they have nearly all explained that coral-polypes aggregate themselves in the forms of atolls and barrier-reefs by a mysterious "instinct," mediocrity's only term for screening its ignorance, and which is also given as the cause for their secreting lime. Flinders says that they form a great protecting reef in order that they may be protected by its shelter, and that the leeward aspect of the reef forms a nursery for their infant colonies. Thus we see that these same scientists are accrediting these little architects with the possession of a great intelligence, and they are thought to co-operate together in a manner expressive of the greatest degree of efficiency and brotherly feeling. Each of these scientists gives a theory that leaves untouched the essential question of the causes for coral-reefs assuming their various shapes; and it is reasonable to believe that they work according to a divine wisdom and plan, and that mankind does not yet understand their strange ways, which give us a higher conception of the universe than that held by the ancients. Science has come to the point where it must recognise the perfect unity of all life, and that our fellow-architects, engineers, and house-builders in the animal world also fill an important place in Nature's great scheme. XI FOOD CONSERVERS _"He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast. He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all."_ --COLERIDGE. It can almost be said that there is no industry or profession of the human world that is not carried on with equal skill in the animal world. This is especially true of merchandising and store-keeping; animals, however, have different methods of merchandising than men, although these methods are none the less real. They give and take instead of buy and sell and have co-operative shops which they operate with great success. They unite for a desired end, and demonstrate their ability to work together in a common enterprise in a way that might teach man a good lesson. Food and shelter are the first needs of animals. In order to obtain these, they group themselves into foraging parties in the most ingenious manner. Like mankind, they sometimes co-operate for dishonest ends; they form "trusts" and organise into gangs for purposes of mutual aid. Deer, monkeys, rabbits, foxes, and numerous others conduct their dining-rooms on a co-operative principle. Some watch and wait while others dine. The same is true where they go to watering places to drink and bathe. Perhaps the most unique and clever food conserver is the American polecat. He not only provides for himself, but prepares a larder for his young, so that they will have plenty of food. The nursery is usually comfortably embedded in a cave, and is lined with soft, dry grass. Adjoining this nursery is a larder, which often contains from ten to fifty large frogs and toads, all alive, but so dexterously bitten through the brain as to make them incapable of escaping. Mr. and Mrs. Pole-cat can then visit or hunt as they please, so long as their children have plenty of fresh meat at home! Another interesting food conserver is the chipping squirrel, or chipmunk, so named because his cry sounds like the chirp of little chickens. His method of dress is most unusual; he is brownish grey in colour, with five stripes of black and two of pale yellow running along the back of his coat; the throat and lower part of his body is snowy white. These colours occasionally vary, when the grey and yellow are superseded by black. His home is underground, usually under an old wall, near a rock fence, or under a tree; his burrow is so long and winding that he can easily escape almost any enemy, except the weasel, which is not easily outwitted. His nursery and living-room is quite pretentious, but his lateral storeroom is a marvel! He is a miser indeed, and stores up every acorn and nut he can find, even many times more than he can ever eat. His variety of food is almost unending--he loves buckwheat, beaked nuts, pecans, various kinds of grass seeds, and Indian corn. In carrying food to his home he first fills his pouches to overflowing and then takes another nut in his mouth; he thus reminds the classical reader of Alemæon in the treasury of Croesus. The hedgehog is a regular Solomon in her methods of collecting fruit. Plutarch had a very high opinion of her. He says that when grapes are ripe, the mother hedgehog goes under the vines and shakes them until some of the grapes fall; she then literally rolls over them until many are attached to her spines, and marches back to her babies in the cave. "One day," says Plutarch, "when we were all together, we had the chance of seeing this with our own eyes--it looked as if a bunch of grapes was shuffling along the ground, so thickly covered was the animal with its booty." [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE SKUNK MOTHER TRIES TO KEEP ON HAND A GOOD SUPPLY OF SUCH DELICACIES AS FROGS AND TOADS, SO THAT HER YOUNG MAY NEVER GO HUNGRY.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE PORCUPINE AND THE HEDGEHOG HAVE A UNIQUE METHOD OF COLLECTING FOOD FOR THEIR YOUNG. AFTER SHAKING DOWN BERRIES OR GRAPES, THEY ROLL IN THEM, THEN HURRY HOME WITH THE FOOD ATTACHED TO THEIR QUILLS.] Alpine mice not only form comfortable winter homes in the earth, but combine into small winter colonies, each colony numbering about ten to twelve inhabitants, all of whom are under the direction of a leader. Thus organised, they proceed to lay up provisions for the winter. They use their mouths as scythes and their paws as rotary machines. Surely their wisdom and foresight call forth our greatest admiration. The jerboas or jumping mice are not only skilled athletes in the art of jumping, but they are gifted food conservers and producers as well. They lay up complete storehouses of food, which they do not consume altogether as their appetite may direct; but conserve it carefully for the times when nothing can be obtained from the fields. Then, and then only, do they open the closed magazines. Such acts of intelligence cannot be recorded under the head of "instinct"! They demonstrate the ability to plan for the future, and meet all emergencies. Certain food hoarders and robbers, like the vole, are so very greedy and become such misers that they often threaten total destruction to large areas of grain. They were so plentiful in the classic land of Thessaly, the vale of Tempe, and the Land of Olympus that the old Greeks established what they called an Apollo Smintheus, the Mouse-destroying God. In the early spring, according to Professor Loeffler, who has made a special study of their invasions, they begin to come down from their homes in the hills to the cultivated fields. They seem to follow regular roads, and often travel along the railroad embankment. They travel very slowly, and when at home live somewhat on the order of prairie dogs, that is, in underground dwellings with numerous winding passages and tunnels. These wise little food conservers are nocturnal in habit, and are rarely seen except by careful observers. When they once determine to rob a field, they do it with amazing rapidity and completeness. In a single night hordes of these workers go into a cornfield and by daylight not a stalk of corn remains. The field is as empty as if a cyclone had struck it. They work with great system, and while a part of their number cut the stalks down, others cut it up into movable sizes, while still others superintend its systematic removal. Storehouses are usually provided before the grain is even cut. They make long voyages throughout a country, storing away tons of grain and food in these various granaries. To these they come for supplies whenever necessary. All poverty-stricken voles are also fed from these storehouses, since it is the product of the community as a whole. Aristotle wrote at length about their wise and destructive ways. Not the least ingenious of food conservers are the hamsters, members of the great rodent family. They have made their dwellings most comfortable and even luxurious in arrangement and furnishings. Like wealthy farmers, they are not satisfied with comfortable dwellings only, but they too must have spacious barns adjoining their homes. Their home, or burrow proper, consists of two openings: one, which is used as an entrance, and which sinks vertically into the ground; the other, which is used as an exit, with a winding slope. The central room is beautifully carpeted with straw, moss, and dry leaves, which makes it a very pleasant living-room and bedroom. A third small winding tunnel leads from this room to the barns and storehouse. Thus, Mr. and Mrs. Hamster and the children have no need to go forth in the cold and wet weather to seek food--they can remain at home perfectly protected and well-fed. They are very liberal, and in case of need or poverty, will always share their food with their neighbours. I once found the nest of a harvest mouse, which was woven of plaited blades of straw of the oats and wheat. It was perfectly round, with the aperture so ingeniously closed that I could scarcely tell to what part of the nest it belonged. It was as round as a marble and would actually roll when placed on a table, although within its walls were six tiny mice, naked and blind. As they increased in size day by day, the elastic wall of their small home expanded, and thus served their need until such time as they were old enough to live independent of this specially provided shelter. There is a larger animal, known as a "rat-hare" or the harvest rat, which gathers piles of hay for winter use, sometimes to the height of six or eight feet in diameter. They begin harvesting in the early part of August, and after having cut the grass, they carefully spread it out to dry before placing it in their barns. These barns are usually located in holes or crevices of mountains. They are found in immense numbers in the Altai Mountains. The California woodrat is not only a food hoarder but a notable thief and robber. A nest was found that was a veritable tool chest and pawn shop! It contained fourteen knives, three forks, six small spoons, one large soup spoon, twenty-seven large nails, hundreds of small tacks, two butcher knives, three pairs of eye-glasses, one purse, one string of beads, one rubber ball, two small cakes of soap, one string of red peppers, several boxes of matches, with numerous small buttons, needles, and pins. Apparently these woodrats are as ambitious for unnecessary and useless possessions as is man himself. Their big storeroom did, however, contain a larder in which they had some of their favourite food, such as seeds and nuts. Some animals have learned not only to acquire, but also to defend and protect, all their property. We see in the human world how strong is the impulse to collect, and children will invariably collect anything from pebbles to peach-pits, if they see other children doing the same thing. Most animals that do not hoard are those that forage for food, or fish, and rarely have permanent homes. The orang-outangs, for example, are regular gipsies, and go from place to place wherever food is plentiful. They take life easy, and sometimes during their journeys select a suitable spot near the seashore and have a real picnic. A scout has already discovered the right spot for getting big oysters, of which they are exceedingly fond, and when they have assembled, certain ones proceed to dig up the oysters, which they hand to others on the shore and they, in turn, place them on big stones, and proceed to open them for the feast. If one of the fishermen-monkeys discovers an oyster open, he will not insert his hand to remove the meat until first placing a stone between the valves. This assures him protection against the closing of the oyster. In most cases, they open the oysters by first placing them on stones and then using another stone as a hammer. These facts are vouched for by no less authorities than Gamelli Carreri, Dampier, and Wafer. It is only a matter of time until many animals will understand the use of man-made tools. Some have already learned to use such tools as they make and shape for themselves. Monkeys and apes are already gifted in this art. Of course, under domestication, they use knives, forks, spoons, and dishes not so much from intelligence as from imitation. This, however, might be said of many human beings. I have seen an immense chimpanzee sit in a chair, set his own dinner table, use his knife and fork correctly when eating, and take great delight in the use of his napkin, which he always carefully refolded when his meal was over. The human-like qualities of apes and monkeys, however, need scarcely be told. They are so very similar to man in most ways that there are few things they cannot do. Aelian tells of an ape which learned to drive horses skilfully. He knew just when and how to use the whip, how much slack to allow in the reins, and when to tighten them! They greatly resent any intrusion on their hunting-grounds, and make use of sticks and clubs to protect them. The chief is always armed with a club, and is thoroughly skilled in the use of it. It sometimes happens that an elephant will come to the same tree to seek food that apes frequent, and although they have no enmity towards each other, they like the same kind of food. As soon as the ape sees the elephant reaching his trunk among the branches, he immediately slips near the elephant, and when an opportunity presents itself, he whacks him over the trunk with his club! The infuriated elephant runs away in terror! A story is told of a party of foraging apes who went into a cornfield with the purpose of robbing it, and discovered two men. They immediately rushed upon them and attempted to poke their eyes out with sticks and would have succeeded but for the intervention of two other men who chanced to be near. The extreme cleverness of apes in applying their reason and judgment is shown in Vosmaer's account of the female orang-outang, who tried to open the padlock of her chain with a small stick. She had seen her master open it with a key, and she exactly imitated the motion of his hands in the attempt. Man shows a disposition to deny animals all traits and characteristics which are similar to his own. This reminds us of a remark that Cardinal Newman once made that men know less of animals than they do of angels. Why should we show such foolish pride and delusion, and try to baffle one of God's great facts? When men attempt to extinguish the idea of animal intelligence and sentiment by referring to it as instinct, we are reminded of the desert ostrich, which buries its head in the sand and thinks it cannot be seen. We should proudly acknowledge the wonderful human-like methods of these food conservers of the animal world, and recognise in all this a guiding Providence who provides for and protects all his creatures, be they great or small. XII TOURISTS AND SIGHT-SEERS _"Every night we must look, lest the down slope Between us and the woods turn suddenly To a grey onrush full of small green candles, The charging pack with eyes flaming for flesh. And well for us then if there's no more mist Than the white panting of the wolfish hunger."_ The desire to travel and see the great world is by no means peculiar to the human race. It is found among animals to such a degree that groups of them will often leave their homes in one country and journey to another. These strange wanderlust habits are noticed even by the casual observer, and no special insight is required to see that these wise creatures have their annual tours excellently arranged and marked out. Their route is possibly as definitely arranged before starting, as is the route of a human traveller. They have their selected eating places arranged, know every danger spot and the enemies they are likely to encounter. The members of these co-operative tours take life tickets, and each tour lasts about one year. One of the most unusual instances of such co-operation is that of the lemmings of the Scandinavian countries. These are animals of the mouse tribe, which live in the mountainous districts. They live upon roots and grasses. They breed very rapidly. At certain times they go from the centre of Norway to the east and west, crossing valley, hill, and river in great masses. Many are destroyed by birds and beasts of prey, but finally the survivors reach the Atlantic on the Gulf of Bothnia and, for some strange unknown reason, plunge in and die. Only enough remain from one season to another to propagate the species. It is an immense co-operative suicide society. Rivers and valleys are sometimes effectual barriers. On the plains of the Amazon great numbers of animals are found on one side of the river only; these have not been able to cross to the other. On the north side of the Rio Negro are two varieties of monkeys, the _brachiurus conxion_ and the _jacchus bicolor_, which are unknown on the south side. Of course, water-loving animals, such as seals, whales, and porpoises are at home in the water and can swim for days without stopping. Quite a few animals can swim for a short distance, but comparatively few for long distances. In the early days in North America it was not uncommon for buffalo to swim across the Mississippi River. Rats and squirrels often migrate in great numbers. It oftentimes happens that Arctic animals travel from one place to another on floating ice. In the South American waters it is a common sight to see floating islands covered with plants and trees upon which there are live animals; and while these animals are likely to perish, they are oftentimes carried safely to land. Eagles have often been instrumental in bringing new species of animals to islands where they had previously been unknown, their purpose being to provide food for their own young. Some of these animals would escape and henceforth become citizens of their new habitation. An interesting division of migrants is that of the casual travellers, like the men and women who always remain at home except when special business calls them away. Sudden climatic changes, or the scarcity of food, often cause stay-at-home animals to make tours into new territories. As a good instance, I might cite the case of three wolves, which I saw entering Jackson Park in Chicago, during very severe weather when Lake Michigan was frozen over. The morning papers stated that because of forest fires in Michigan, and the extreme cold, which not only made food scarce for the wild animals of Michigan, but froze the Lake, many of them had come across the ice into the great Chicago parks seeking food and shelter. The subject of animal travel is full of interesting and difficult problems, and not the least interesting nor the least difficult is the question of just how they find their way to and from various places. Many naturalists tell us that these animals are led by inherited instinct along the migration lines followed by their forefathers. But even if this were true, what made them originally follow such a course? Wild horses when travelling always have a leader as well as several sentinels for each herd. By some unknown code this leader makes known his wishes and directs the movements of the herd. No human army could have greater order or more perfect obedience to commands; and under him there is absolute unity by means of which the carnivorous animals, such as the wolf, the jaguar, and the puma, are repelled. Wild deer invariably have a leader, and while we do not know how he obtains his position, nor how he directs his followers, we do know he is highly successful in his efforts. No act in the animal world bespeaks more intelligence than that of placing sentinels, especially during a journey. Horses show striking skill and ingenuity in the choosing and placing of their sentinels. Any one who has been fortunate enough to have seen them travelling in the forests of South America, where the wild horses are gregarious, and travel in herds of five hundred to a thousand, has noticed that sentinels are always stationed around the herd. These animals are not well prepared for fighting, and experience has taught them that their greatest safety is in flight, and so, when they graze or sleep, sentinels are always on the look-out for enemies. If a man approaches, the sentinel at first walks toward him, as if to make sure what the enemy is, and what he desires, if the man goes nearer to the herd, the sentinel neighs in a most peculiar tone. Immediately the herd is aroused, and gallops away, not in confusion, but perfect order, as though its members were human soldiers. The same is true of the white-legged peccaries, so plentiful in Guiana. They congregate by the thousands, choose a leader whose position is always at the front, and travel for hundreds of miles through the great forests. If they come to a river, the leader halts, as if to make sure that all is well for crossing, then he plunges into the water and is followed by his immense army. The sureness of the leader would suggest that he has been over the same route many times before--perhaps this is why he has been chosen! If an enemy appears, or any form of danger is approached, they carry on an immense amount of chattering and proceed only when they have talked it out. Any hunter that should be foolish enough to attack them, unless he were already up a tree, would be torn to pieces with their terrible teeth and tusks. They are as bloodthirsty as the wild boars of the Black Forest of Germany, and will sometimes actually tear down a tree up which an enemy has escaped, that they may kill him. The African apes have an interesting way of sending their sentinel to the top of an adjacent rock or tree, that he may look over the surrounding valleys and plantations before they go to plunder a garden or field. If he sees any danger, he utters a loud shriek, and the entire troop immediately runs away. The monkeys of Brazil post a guard while they sleep; the same is true of the chamois and other species of wild antelope. A few years ago, many of the sheep in the northern part of Wales had become quite wild, and they usually grazed in parties of twelve to twenty, always having a sentinel so stationed as to command a prominent view of the surrounding territory. If any animal or person came near, he would give a peculiar hiss or whistle, repeating it two or three times, at which the whole herd would scamper away to places of safety. One of the most striking facts about migration is its never-failing regularity and success. Most animals migrate at the recurrence of the breeding season. Of these, the great sea-turtle, which seeks the shallow water and deep sandy hills when ready to lay her eggs, is well known. Notwithstanding the great risks that practically all travelling animals assume, they are successful as a whole in their travels, and many return to bear testimony to a successful trip even across continents and sometimes the ocean. They migrate, for a variety of reasons. When it is not for a more desirable climate, nor more food, nor even better breeding grounds, we must either believe it is because of the natural desire to travel, or frankly admit that we do not understand it. The Icelandic mice have probably the most curious methods of travelling of all migratory animals. Dr. Henderson, an authority on Iceland, not only verifies the fact himself, but gives the names of many prominent investigators who have seen the mice crossing small rivers and streams on thin pieces of dry board, dragging them to the water, launching them, and then going aboard their little rafts. They then turn their heads to the centre, and their tails, which hang in the water, are used as paddles and rudders until they reach the destined shore. Among travellers none are more famed than the camels. In their sphere and use they are supreme, and Nature has prepared them especially for travelling on the dry, hot, and barren deserts. They are truly the "ships of the desert" for they travel on a sea of sand, and their pad-like feet, so poorly adapted for travel on moist soil, is admirably suited to the desert sands. They are capable of travelling many days without food or water, and are used extensively in the desert regions of the East not only as beasts of burden but for their milk, which is an important article of diet in those countries where the camel is at home. Animals that do not migrate, especially those living in cold climates, change their clothing at regular intervals. Their hair or fur increases in thickness in winter. If we compare the Indian and African elephants of to-day, whose delicate thin hair is scarcely noticeable, with the great extinct mammoth, which had an enormous amount of woolly fur, we readily see the great difference in their clothing. Yet these animals are members of the same great family. The same difference may be noted with horses: the Arabian horse, for example, has short, glistening fur, while those of Iceland and Norway have very thick fur; the same is true of Northern and Southern sheep. Animals which live in temperate regions, put on much thicker coats in winter, and shed them as summer approaches. [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ THE BLACK BEAR IS NOT ONE OF THE GREAT MIGRATING ANIMALS. THE THICKNESS OF HIS COAT MUST THEREFORE CHANGE WITH THE SEASONS.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ RABBITS SEEM TO HAVE A WELL-DEVISED SYSTEM IN THEIR ROAD-BUILDING, RUNNING THEIR PATHS IN AND OUT OF UNDERBRUSH IN A TRULY INGENIOUS MANNER.] The love of their original homes is one of the most striking features of certain animal travellers. The fierce struggle for existence and the territory required for an animal's home largely determine the amount of effort they make to seize and hold certain possessions. A pair of wildcats, for example, require a comparatively small hunting ground. But this they will defend against invasion even to the point of death. There are many more evidences showing the animals' love of home, and that they also know the meaning of home-sickness. Not a few animals have learned definitely to lay out and obtain recognition for the boundaries of their respective ranging-grounds. This is amply proven by their respect and recognition of rights of way. Animals of certain farms seem to know the exact boundaries of their grazing lands and pastures, and to teach this knowledge to their young. In addition they often police their lands and pastures against intruders. Woe unto any traveller found on the wrong highway! It is not uncommon for the transgressor to be pushed from a right of way to the rocks below. More than once a court's decision regarding disputable territory has been based on the sheep's recognition of boundary; those sheep slain in battle or otherwise injured while trying to invade the questionable territory have been paid for by the owner of the transgressing sheep. It is easy to understand how sheep can recognise their rights of way, but somewhat difficult to account for their knowledge of boundaries. Sheep and goats have for ages been the greatest mountain-path and road-makers. Whether or not they have engineers, we are not sure, but they seem to select the shortest, easiest, and best route across the trackless hills, and never seem to change the way. In these localities, the sheep are almost in a primitive condition, and "not the least interesting feature of their conduct in this relapse to the wild life is that, in spite of the highly artificial condition in which they live to-day, they retain the primitive instincts of their race." That this "peremptory and path-keeping" instinct is shown by the habits of the musk-ox, is clear. He is as much akin to the sheep as to cattle, and in habits more like those of the great prehistoric sheep as we imagine these to have been. The musk-ox naturally assembles in large flocks, and is migratory, just as the domesticated flocks of Spain are, and those of Thrace and the Caspian steppe. These flocks always return from the barren lands in the far north by the same road, and cross rivers by the same fords. Nothing but too persistent slaughter at these points by the enemies who beset them, induces them to desert their ancient highways. Pictures and anecdotes of the migrations of these animals, and of the bison in former days, represent them as moving on a broad front across the prairie or tundra. The examples of all moving multitudes suggest that this was not their usual formation on the march, and their roads prove that they moved on a narrow front or in file. On the North American prairie, though the bison are extinct, their great roads still remain as evidence of their former habits. These trails are paths worn on the prairie, nearly all running due north and south (the line of the old migration of the herds), like gigantic rabbit tracks. They are hard, the grass on them is green and short, and, if followed, they generally lead near water, to which a diverging track runs from the highway. How interesting must have been the life on this great animal highway, before the Indian made the deadly arrow to destroy these nature-loving travellers! There is no doubt but that, in their own way, these animals felt all the emotions known to a human traveller; that they enjoyed the flowery road, rested and played when weary, looked forward with joy to their favourite watering and bathing places, and recognised old watering places that they had visited for years. The great roads and highways made by graminivorous animals, from those which the hippopotamus cuts through the mammoth canes and reeds of the African streams, to the smaller rabbit highways of England and America, all tell their own story of how these animals live and travel. The principal roads of rabbits over hills are as permanent as sheep and buffalo roads. These roads, however, should not be confused with the little trails that lead to their play and feeding grounds. My friend and fellow-naturalist, Ralph Stuart Murray, in writing to me from Quebec, says: "In speaking of animal road builders, I might say that the rabbit or hare of the north woods deserves much attention, for greatly interesting are his highways. The life of the north woods brings one constantly in touch with these roads, which, after generations upon generations of constant use, are worn deep and smooth into the moose grass and muskeg through which they run. At places, several distinct paths intersect, and it is curious to note that while these roads wind in and out underneath the low hanging evergreens, the 'cross-roads' will invariably be located in a clear open space, often on the top of some small hillock. "The great age of these roads is very evident when compared with the newer, shallower paths of more recent years. So deep are the old ones, in fact, that the quiet watcher in the woods will occasionally see two large, upright ears--unmistakably those of a rabbit, seemingly sticking out of a hole in the ground--yet moving at a rapid pace, and all the while no rabbit in view. For all the world these vertical ears belonging to an unseen owner resemble in use and appearance the periscope of a submarine--the difference being that the rabbit uses his 'periscopes' for hearing, in order to locate and avoid his foe, the submarine its periscope to locate and attack its enemy." The sheep terraces, which are so common on the sides of hills, though made by sheep, are not roads, but feeding grounds. Sheep, when walking on a hillside, invariably graze on the upper side, as they cannot reach the lower grass. Therefore they walk backwards and forwards on the slope, just as a reaping machine is driven over a hillside wheat-field. As the sheep takes a "neck's length" each time, the little ridges or roads correspond exactly with the measurements of the sheep's neck. There are as many kinds of roads and terminals in the animal world as there are in the human, and lest our pride make us forget, we should remember that even the Panama Canal is dug according to the plan of a crawfish's canal, such as may be seen near any muddy stream. It is strange that no animal has learned to build elevated roads, though animals that live in trees, like flying squirrels, monkeys, and flying foxes, are very skilled in going from one tree to another. They have regular aerial highways, and some of the tree frogs are veritable wonders in the accuracy of their leaps from tree to tree. Even more skilled than these are the agamid lizards of India, whose chief means of travel is a folding parachute, which at a moment's notice can be erected and carry to another tree its lucky possessor. In Borneo is an aviator tree-snake which is able to so spread his ribs and inflate his body that he can actually sail from branch to branch in the tree-tops. There are night travellers as well as day travellers; in fact, there are more animals that roam around in a great forest at night than in the daytime. They sleep during the day, when the day animals are roaming about, and go forth to roam when it is night. It is then they seek for prey, and are much feared by day animals. They see well in the dark, and travel so lightly that their footsteps cannot be heard. On the Island of Java are found a family of strange, dwarfish little beings, which are called by the natives malmags, or hobgoblins. And they are well named, for they look like creatures of a distorted imagination more than real, living animals. They travel only at night, and so superstitious are the natives of their evil influence that if one of these uncanny little creatures appears near their rice fields, the plantation is immediately abandoned. However, these small creatures are no larger than squirrels, and are perfectly harmless. They are very rare even in their native lands--the Oriental Archipelago and the Philippine Islands. They rear their young in the hollow roots of bamboo trees, and to disturb their nests means to incur the evil of all the land. Night animals do not go forth to travel and seek prey until the night is far advanced, and their prey is soundly sleeping. They seem to know the exact time of the night, as if they had watches or clocks, and they usually go forth to hunt about midnight and return to their homes about four o'clock. Only in cases of extreme hunger do they vary from this rule. How marvellously skilled are they in finding their way! They pass through a crowded forest as though it were daytime, and strangely enough know just how to return to their lairs. This special sense or gift is not possessed by man; he must have marks and signs to return to a definite place. These night-travellers number among their lot bats, flying squirrels, leopards, and prowling snakes. Bats are not only the most interesting of the night-travellers, but by far the most curious and wonderful animals in the world. They are hideously ugly, reminding one more of a miniature, closed-up umbrella than an animal! They are coarse, awkward, when not in flight, and repellent; yet they have such highly developed senses that they have no rivals in the animal world. They excel most birds in flight, are able to make long nightly journeys, in which they use their wings not only for flight, but as air-bags in which they catch all kinds of flying insects. Their sense of touch as we know it is really a combination of touch, sight, and hearing. A bat is a paradox par excellence! Nature seems to have started to make a little bear or fox, and suddenly forgot how and changed it into a winged freak, with tail, claws, fur, sharp teeth, small ears that stand up, and tiny, half-buried eyes. Its queer angular-edged wings look like an umbrella, with the cloth stretched over steel ribs; but in the case of the bat, this framework is made of delicate bones which are covered with a thin skin. The skin contains numerous little sense organs dotted over its surface, which give the bat his strange power. Bats look more like mice than they do like birds, and they are sometimes called flittermice. But they are mammals, and the young are fed with milk by the mother, just as a cow feeds her calf. There is no danger that a bat will ever fly against you in the dark; for they can avoid all mishap even when their eyes are put out. They have special sense organs that tell them when they are nearing an object, and can fly at headlong speed with the accuracy of a rifle bullet directly into a small opening. This power is all due to the mysterious sense located in their wings and ears, which causes even man to consider his senses weak in comparison. Bats are sociable creatures and huddle together and sleep in vast numbers during the day, but when night comes on they come forth for their nocturnal travels and sport by the millions. I have seen them leaving caves just at dusk in such numbers as to look like one immense volume of smoke, twenty to thirty feet wide, and lasting for more than five minutes. Mrs. Bat often takes her babies with her on these nightly travels. I found one with two young clinging to her breast. How they must enjoy these lovely trips! There are many kinds and varieties of bats, ranging in size from the flying foxes of the tropical world, with wings five feet in length, to the wood bat of North America, which is not over six inches long. These interesting friends of man are his greatest scavengers of the air. They are doing much to check the mosquitoes throughout the regions of the world, and in more civilized communities man makes shelters for them, that they may eradicate mosquitoes. XIII ANIMAL SCAVENGERS AND CRIMINALS _"A warning from these pages take, And know this truth sublime-- Each creature is a criminal When he commits a crime."_ No more remarkable creatures exist in the animal world than those that play the rôle of Nature's scavengers and criminals. They are as numerous and varied in their methods of working as they are interesting. The only things they have in common are their profession and their appetites. As individuals they are ugly, unattractive and apparently void of personality and charm. Nevertheless, they have an important part to play in the scheme of things. One of the most noted of these scavengers is the jackal--the Bohemian of the desert--whose territory extends from the Gulf of Persia to the Strait of Gibraltar. He is equally at home in Arabia, Persia, Babylonia, Syria, Egypt, and the entire North Coast of Africa, and no country from Barbary to the Cape of Good Hope is ever out of reach of his ghostly and uncouth howls. He travels only by night, and very rapidly. When suffering with extreme hunger, he will attack man, but this he will do only in very rare cases. As he lives entirely upon dead animals, he is more of a thief and glutton than a robber and murderer. He depends mostly upon flight and darkness for his protection, and rarely ventures a direct attack. With all his unlikable habits he is truly valuable as an agent of public salubrity, and an important officer of the desert "commission of highways." These public scavengers, while especially fond of carcasses and putrid flesh, are not averse to a little fresh meat occasionally. The jackal is truly the follower or purveyor for the lion, and oftentimes they work together. Jackals will gather in large numbers near a lion's den and howl and scream until the lions come forth to disperse them. As soon as a lion appears they stop their noise, but when he is out of sight, they immediately begin again. This is done because game is near, and the wise jackals wish the lion to kill the game. When this is done, and the lions have eaten all except the bones, the jackals have their small feast of scraps. These weird night prowlers have ways all their own, as any one who has spent a night in a tropical desert can attest. Imagine yourself on the Syrian plains between Bagdad and Damascus; a small white tent, and a starry sky: the silence is appalling, and you are just about to have your first sleep in the desert. Away, away from the distance comes a mournful, ghostly cry. Suddenly it ceases and like myriads of echoes it is repeated in hideous intensity--a babel of cries weird beyond description--so fierce and screeching as to be almost blood-curdling. It seems to come from all directions and distance out of measure! Vibrating over the sands and through the rocks, filling the immense void, crying out as it were for the sphinx, a veritable _de profundis_ of the wastes. The vultures, who hold the fort during the day have given way to the night shift, the jackals. These come from all directions; from the caves in the earth, from among the rocks, from here, there, and from everywhere to take up their hygienic services where it has been left off by the day scavengers. If you were near an oasis in the desert at the close of day, you would suddenly hear from the hot, barren sands a deep and peculiar sound. It swells and grows as an approaching wind, growing louder and louder as it comes nearer. Suddenly by the light of the camp fire, you see myriads of horrid green eyes, like ghost torches in a graveyard, and hear gnashing teeth, greedy in anticipation of the garbage you have thrown away. These hyena hordes are frightfully ugly, but rarely dangerous to man. They visit every oasis settlement in immense numbers, howling, yelping, and fighting for any bit of offal they may find. Not a particle of garbage remains. At the first sign of dawn, they disappear like rats from a burning building, and seek their caves to digest their ignoble banquets. No human street-cleaner could ever excel their work. No matter how large the garbage pile, no matter how many dead dogs, cats, and donkeys in a village street, no matter how unspeakable the offal, it all vanishes as completely as though it had been burned. Not a piece of bone, not a single chicken feather remains. The natives have no fear of the hyena; a small child armed with a stick can put to flight a dozen of them. They are the lowest of cowards, and will flee from their own shadows. [Illustration: THE MONGOOSE IS A SCAVENGER OF THE WORST TYPE, FEEDING ON RATS AND MICE AND SNAKES, AND EVEN POULTRY.] [Illustration: _American Museum of Natural History, New York_ DIPLODOCUS. THE PREHISTORIC ANIMALS, ALSO, UNDOUBTEDLY HAD THEIR SCAVENGERS AND CRIMINALS.] In spite of their valuable services, mankind hates the hyenas. This is probably because of their absolute cowardice, for they will never attack a living creature unless it is weak from illness. Sometimes they steal a baby, never killing it outright, but carrying it away to their dens to starve it to death before mutilating its body. If the courage of this beast equalled his strength, he would be the despot of the desert. But he is like his fellow workman, the jackal, cowardly to the last degree. Neither of them ever attempts to put an enemy to flight by legitimate means. They resort to fakery: one howls, and the other wrinkles his face in great anger. The jackal's greatest asset and protection, when he meets with an enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose--a make-believe game--which he plays over and over again with every one he meets. A noted American scavenger is the peccary, a species of wild hog, whose home ranges from Texas to the Pampas of South America. He is a devourer of creatures more obnoxious than himself. He moves with great rapidity, is always on the alert, and stops at nothing from mountains to a flowing river. When he attacks an enemy he makes short work of him. Bands of these hogs are led by a chief, who is the swiftest and fiercest of the herd. This aggressive leader is followed by successive lines of males, behind which come the strong females, while the rear is brought up by the old, the sick, and the young. In marching, they have the discipline of a trained army, and turn neither to the right nor to the left but go straight ahead. If the leader, for any cause, decides to change his route, the fact is quickly made known in some way to his followers, and the turn is made at a direct angle, with the accuracy of a surveyor, and the peccaries go forward again directly toward their new destination. This is another evidence of a special sense unknown to man. But whenever a stop is made, or wherever they go, they do their work as scavengers. Fallen fruits, dead animals, insects, snakes, and worms are their prey. Thus they are valuable forest sweepers. Strangely enough, in the animal world, as in the human, the lower professions are filled with those of less mentality than the higher, and as a result we find scavengers are nearest allied to criminals. The idea of one creature killing and eating another seems terrible. Yet they do, and most often do human beings commit the same crime. Cannibalism among wild animals is a common occurrence. The demand for food usually causes one animal to kill and devour another. But in captivity there are other causes for cannibalism: fear and excitement will oftentimes cause a mother to destroy her offspring. It is a case of dog eat dog! Badgers often kill and devour their young. Wolves, in cases of extreme hunger, will eat their puppies; and Arctic travellers, when food for their dogs is scarce, have to guard constantly against the stronger eating the weaker. I once caught a mother field mouse with her two young and placed them in a cage; the next day the young had strangely disappeared, but I am not sure that the mother had eaten them. Hogs, cats, and rabbits will sometimes kill and eat their young even when food is plentiful. Crocodiles show an occasional cannibalistic tendency, while water-shrews are very pugnacious and oftentimes fight until one is killed. The victorious one eats his enemy! Thus it appears that Nature does not entirely disapprove of cannibalism, or she would not allow so many of her creatures to practise it. Theft is a common vice among these various criminals. Monkeys and baboons form regular bands to rob and plunder. They have a chief who sees that a sentinel is posted at each dangerous post. The plunderers then line up in a long row, and the leader gets the booty and passes it along the line until it reaches the last of the band--the receiver. He deposits it in a safe place. If the sentry sounds an alarm, they all flee away, each with as much booty as he can grab. If the enemy presses too close, all booty is thrown away. Passion, especially of love, causes much crime among animals as it does among men. Jealousy burns fiercely even in the breast of a beast. It is a common heritage of the fiercest lion and the gentle gazelle alike, and is capable of perpetrating the most dreadful crimes. There are types of ugly dispositioned animals, who are always in a ferocious mood, just like certain ill-tempered human beings, who believe everything and everybody is trying to injure them. The common shrew, for example, is noisy, bold and fussy. He seems to delight in calling attention to himself by his grunty, squeaky voice. He advertises himself as a bad animal; and bad he is, for his terrible odour prevents other animals from coming near. Horses and mules are at times quite ferocious, and kick and bite, with no idea of obedience or kindness. They, of course, like our human criminals, are mentally unbalanced. Skilled horse trainers can detect at a glance a criminally inclined horse. Rogue elephants are common in India. Even their trumpeting shows a ferocity and unbalance that terrifies the natives. Often these criminal elephants are sufferers of mental ailments. A respectable, law-abiding elephant herd will not allow a thug or rogue to live in their midst. They recognise him as dangerous for their society, and combine to force him entirely away from their homes. Certain criminal animals have a strange antipathy for members of their own tribe, or for other kinds of animals. Such is common among monkeys, cats, horses, and dogs, and many terrible crimes are committed because of these antipathies. Every one has witnessed the terror of a dog that has been insulted, and elephants will carry an old grudge for fifty years and finally seek the most terrible revenge. Often violent outbursts of temper on the part of a tame animal are caused by a change in the temperature or atmosphere. Even animals have days when they feel ugly and grouchy. Those that live in very hot climates are especially subject to fits of rage and anger. The approach of an electrical storm causes many of them to lose their self-control: herds of cattle often stampede just preceding a cyclone. They, like human savages, seem terrorised at the unknown. Not a few wild animals have actually run in the way of an automobile or passing train to attempt to stop it. Fear and rage are often caused by the appearance of a curious object. A bull, for example, when he sees a red rag, will madly rush at it, seemingly altogether oblivious of the man holding it. The matadors are safe only because the bull is insane from rage. Many scientists of fame, like Lombroso, have demonstrated that strong drink is the cause of much crime among animals, the same as it is among men. In the pastures of Abyssinia the sheep and goats get on regular "drunks" by eating the beans of the coffee plants. They fight and carouse at such times like regular topers. Elephants are incorrigible when drunk, while dogs and horses have to be put in strait-jackets to prevent them from killing themselves. Wicked animals always seek their own kind, and often band together for evil purposes. Figuier tells of three beavers that built for themselves a nice little home near a stream, and they had as a neighbour a respectable hermit beaver. The three called on their neighbour one day, and he received them cordially, and hastened to return their visit, when they pounced upon him and slew him, like human murderers, who had trapped their victim. From all these we learn that Nature is filled with life-saving and life-furthering adaptations. Just as in the human drama we find deceit, disguise, mask, trickery, bunco and bluff, all forms of cheating and clever deceptions, so it is precisely the same in the animal world, though man is little informed on Nature's real ways. XIV AS THE ALLIES OF MAN _"Who, after this, will dare gainsay That beasts have sense as well as they? For me--could I the ruler be-- They should have just as much as we, In youth, at least. In early years, Who thinks, reflects, or even fears? Or if we do--unmeaning elves-- 'Tis scarcely known e'en to ourselves. Thus by example clear and plain, We for these poor creatures claim Sure sense to think, reflect, and plan, And in this action rival man: Their guide--not instinct blind alone, But reason, somewhat like our own!"_ The wonderful world in which we live is full of animal life. In the great forests, under the ground, on the steep mountainsides, in the depths of the oceans, rivers, streams, from the frigid north to the torrid south, in the parched deserts, are animals of every size, colour, and form, all of which are, in their general form, adapted to their peculiar places in nature. Their lives and habits undeniably demonstrate proofs of divine wisdom, intelligence, and beneficence. In fact they show an aptitude in many arts and sciences second only to that shown in man. The reason that animals are often held in such low esteem by the world of science, is because people are apt to look upon them as natural mechanisms and overlook what they are doing and feeling. The propounders of false statements which attribute every act of an intelligent animal--second only to man and his faithful ally--as due to instinct only, deal with metaphysical reasoning. They have never considered the innumerable and irrefutable facts of animal life which no acuteness of analysis and pure thinking can ever explain. Most of these narrow, bookish men deny to animals capabilities which every country schoolboy knows they possess. It is no exaggeration to say that animals exist which sing, dance, play, speak a language, build homes, go to school and learn, wage warfare, protect their homes and property, marry, make laws, build moral codes, in fact, do everything that is generally attributed to man. In comparing man and animals scientists are prone to ascribe to man as a whole the faculties which only the best trained and most talented possess. They fail to consider our cannibal brethren, such as are found among the Dyaks on the Island of Borneo, whose chief articles of adornment in the house are heads of murdered men, and whose savage and fiendish ways would put to shame a civilised animal. They forget how long man lived on this earth before he even learned to make fire by chipping flints. Since the beginning of time animals have been the friends and allies of man. From the very earliest ages they have in innumerable ways been associated with historical events, and with the laws, customs, superstitions, and religions of all nations of the universe. Love, devotion, gratitude, the sense of duty, as well as all the lower passions of hatred, revenge, distrust and cunning are their heritage. Only an egotist who has known them in books only, and knows nothing of their mentality and brain power, would dare say that they are governed solely by instinct. Cases of animal suicide, following some deep disgrace among them, are not uncommon. From the Bible we learn that God frequently employed animals as agents to dispense His providence. Bullocks, sheep, goats were used by the Jews in their religious services, while a disobedient prophet was killed by a lion. Balaam was rebuked for his cruelty by an ass; and David even called upon the animals to aid in praising Jehovah! That we may learn real gratitude for common mercies Isaiah says: "The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib," etc. When the city of Nineveh was threatened, God had pity on it, because there were many cattle there. The Saviour compared his own earthly condition with that of certain animals: "The foxes have holes," etc. He called himself the 'Good Shepherd,' and his followers were sheep who knew his voice. John the Baptist referred to Him as the 'Lamb of God'; while John, the beloved disciple, when on the Isle of Patmos, saw the "throne of God in heaven, and before it a lion, a calf, a man, and a flying eagle." The first beginnings of co-operation between men and animals must have begun by the approach of certain less timid animals, which felt that better conditions for them and more food could be obtained near human habitations, and perhaps, more protection from dangerous animals. Or it may have begun through the stupidity of certain animals who failed to realize the danger of man's proximity. It seems that the secret ambition of all animals is to become the allies of man. This is demonstrated by the fact that most of them have gone near the villages and towns, and, consequently, there are comparatively few remaining in the heart of the big forests. Under the true state of conditions man should live in harmony with these animal brothers, with mutual trust and respect existing between them. That would mean, of course, that man would have to show a little more kindness to them. For while he is their true sovereign, he abuses the privileges of his sovereignty in untold ways, and up to the present time only a few animals, like the dog and horse, have been fully recognized as his allies. All the others, with few exceptions, have shown a desire to become more closely united with man, and yet during the thousands of years of man's rulership over the beasts, he has been able to make allies of only about sixty. This regrettable fact speaks for itself--showing that man has long abused his trust. Warfare, as it is waged to-day, demonstrates that notwithstanding man's vast number of scientific aids, animals are still invaluable. The innumerable mechanical and electrical devices unknown ten years ago, such as enormous rapid-firing guns, walking "Willies," wireless machines, traction engines, smokeless and noiseless powder, silent-sleepers and tear-bombs, all of these have greatly increased man's power of offence and defence, yet with all these ultra-modern improvements, animals are absolutely essential in waging a successful war. In military circles there is an ever-increasing demand for well-trained army horses, sound in mind and body and educated in modern campaigning. Above all, an army horse must be dependable, must love his soldier-master and must know absolute obedience to orders. Every army horse has to pass an examination and prove his worth before he is enlisted into the service. The largest of the mountain guns used in Italy against the Austrians were drawn up the steep mountains by mules. Another 75-millimetre gun for mountain warfare is taken to pieces, into four parts, and each piece is separately packed on a mule. The United States cavalry has the best trained war horses in the world; many of them actually understand the complicated commands of their masters. These horse soldiers have the insignia, U. S., branded on the hoof of the left forefoot, and the other animals in camp, on the shoulder. When a horse arrives at a regiment he is assigned to a troop according to colour, size, weight and mental efficiency, and later he is permanently assigned to a man. Under no conditions is he interchanged or even ridden by another than his master, and it is astonishing the tremendous affection that oft-times springs up between the two; in many instances horses have been known to seek out their masters among hundreds of soldiers. On the European battlefields, near which there are few or no railroads, animals have been the principal means of transportation, elephants, camels, horses, mules and oxen being chiefly used for this purpose. The Italian armies have used numerous teams of mountain-trained bullocks to draw loads up the mountains, and, while they cannot ascend roads as steep as those which the mules climb, they are very valuable for heavy loads. These bullocks work faster than an army mule, for a mule will never hurry. As the old darkey once said, "De mule warn't born fer to hurry; not even a torpedo would make him move one step farster!" Elephants have been used to a small degree in the armies of Europe. While they are splendid workmen, they are dangerously subject to stampede, and one stampeding elephant can do much harm in an army. The British army has used quite a few trained elephants from India in their ranks. They are especially employed to rout the enemy from small forests. Breaking through bushes, crushing underbrush, and pulling up small trees is their specialty. They make splendid bulwarks for soldiers, and when an army is marching through a forest, are invaluable in clearing the way. A British officer declared that one trained elephant is more valuable than a half-dozen traction engines. Far the most interesting and curious use to which an animal is subjected is the use of camels chosen and trained because of their strange colouring and height. Small groups of them have been stationed among clumps of acacia trees with a spy mounted on the animal's neck. This is the safest place a person could be, for the camel or, in like manner, the giraffe, standing with only his head above the small trees, looks precisely like a bit of the foliage in the distance. Camels are especially good for desert warfare, because they can go without water so long and can easily carry loads weighing from 400 to 500 pounds. In the last Afghan campaign the British lost over 50,000 camels and in the Great War they have had more than 60,000 in army service in Egypt. Camels are especially used for transportation purposes. The British capture of Jerusalem was greatly aided by these desert allies. Large numbers of oxen have been used in the French army. They do not balk at autos and know no fear of shells. One of the greatest allies of the animal kingdom in warfare is the dog. These allies are trained to aid relief parties on the battlefields, and many of the ambulance men have their splendidly trained dogs for seeking out wounded soldiers among the dead. They are also trained as guards and watch-dogs and they become marvellously clever when used near the firing lines. They carry water in the trenches and are trained in packs to dismount enemy motorcyclists by pulling them from their machines. Dogs also make splendid scouts, and excellent and reliable messengers when not required to go too far. These faithful friends of man, according to Buffon, are far more easily taught than man, and more easily led "than any of the other animals, for not only does the dog become educated in a short time, but even adapts himself to the habits of those who control him." According to circumstances, a dog may become a soldier, messenger, water-carrier, or guard. [Illustration: THE ESQUIMO-DOG IS MAN'S GREATEST FRIEND IN THE FAR NORTH.] [Illustration: American Museum of Natural History, New York CHIPMUNKS ARE AMONG THE MOST EASILY TAMED OF MAN'S WILD FRIENDS, AND THEY EVEN SEEM FOND OF HUMAN COMPANIONSHIP.] Not the least among the uses of war dogs is the curious practice of sending them into the enemies' lines of cavalry to convey fire in order to terrorise the horses and throw them into confusion. This practice has been quite common in the past. Each dog is dressed in a cuirass of leather and on his back is carefully strapped a pot of boiling, blazing tar. Nothing so terrorises horses as the sight of approaching fire. A small but valuable ally to man is the ferret. This little creature has come into prominence more particularly during recent years, when the rat infested trenches have made his services invaluable. These Hun-like rats, devouring and devastating in their thirst for human blood, would have forced the abandonment of many a front line trench but for the aid of these trained ferrets, thousands of which have been daily employed on the battle fronts. The immense services rendered by carrier pigeons in the battle of the Marne, not only to the military authorities, but also to the public at large, will cause the civilised world to pay more attention to the importance of these birds in the future. They carried all kinds of messages to and from Paris during this memorable battle; in fact, they have been used in all the battles as invaluable messengers. Small animals, such as mice, canary birds, guinea pigs and rabbits are used in trench warfare, because they are more sensitive than man to poisonous gases. It sometimes happens that hundreds of men must be rescued from a trench by three or four men. Each rescuer carries with him a canary bird in a small cage attached to his shoulder. And as long as these birds show no signs of distress the men are safe from gas poison. The birds soon become attached to their masters and seem to like the adventure of the trenches. As time goes on, it is to be hoped that we will understand our animal brothers better, and that our old attitude toward the so-called "brutes" will be entirely changed. Heretofore we have greatly abused the zebra, for example, because of his wild disposition, ferocious humour, distrust of all power except that in his own legs, and his pronounced aversion to work. Why should we reproach him for his wildwood philosophy? It is perfectly natural that any animal of his experience with man, and with sufficient brains, would have only contempt for all mankind. His native home is in Africa, and his human associates, if they are human, have been the Hottentots, the Namaquois or the Amazoulons--the most impossible and hideous people on the earth. Since his babyhood days he has seen nothing but cannibalism and carnage among the savages; and since his transportation to Europe by a strange occurrence of horrible circumstances, he has been the subject for all kinds of barbarous punishments which man has seen well to heap upon him. The zebra is not of the mental calibre to be suddenly seized with love for the human species and its civilisations! And the human species is astounded and thinks the zebra stupid and wicked. He may be both, but his wisdom is undeniable when it comes to trusting humanity, and his wickedness is small in comparison to man's terrible cruelties. He should be awarded a medal for wisdom! For man is far the greater ass of the two! He roams the wild prairies where the fields need no ploughing. There he finds an abundance of grass and fresh water along the streams. No loud cursing and swearing ever greets his ears, nothing but the sweet song of the wild birds. And his children romp and play with him, free as the winds that blow. Of course, he has enemies even there, and so he uses camouflage by painting himself in attractive stripes, so no one can see him at a distance. Even Solomon should have praised his wisdom! In the beginning God created man, and not long after gave him as his policeman, the dog. And the obedience, friendship and devotion of the dog to his master has been unending. The dog discusses no questions of right or wrong, his only duty is to obey. This he does without a murmur. He is the greatest testimony to man's civilisation, the first and the greatest element of human progress. Through his co-operation man was elevated from the savage to the state of the civilised. He made the herd possible. Without him there could have been no herd, no assured subsistence of food and clothing, no time to study and improve the mind, no astronomical observations, no science, no arts, no automobiles, no airships, no wireless telegraphy--nothing. The East is the home of civilisation, because the East is the home of the dog. A young hound knows more about tracking game or scenting the enemy after six months' practice than the most skilled savage after fifty years of study. The dog has so aided mankind as to give him more time for study and self-improvement. Thus began the arts and sciences. An interesting, and we believe original observation, of the influence of the dog on peoples is that wherever the dog is found, especially among the shepherd peoples, such as the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Arabs, Tartars, and Mongols, cannibalism is unknown. This is due to the fact that the dog enables them to maintain the herds which supply them with milk, food, and clothing, thus preserving them from the criminal temptation of hunger. The Indians of North America never refrained from roasting their enemies until they made allies of the horse and dog. Humboldt proves the lively regret held by one of the last surviving chief lieutenants of the war-like Tecumseh whom he asked about a certain American officer who took part in the fight. "Uh!" replied the Indian, "I eat some of him." "Do you still eat your enemies?" asked Humboldt. "No," replied the Indian. "Big dog catch heap meat for me!" Surely no animal could be more uncivilised or cannibalistic in its desires than man! Spinoza believed, however, that benevolence in animals consisted only in their kindliness and friendly feeling for each other and that we should expect nothing more of them. A good cow, so he thought, was one that was kind to her calf, however ferocious she might be toward human children. But we do not accept this standard of goodness, nor believe that animals' kindness extends only to their own tribes. Their lowest standard of life is no worse than the cannibalism existing among the lower tribes of uncivilised man, which is one of the highest ideals of tribal life. The greatest hero among our savages is the one that can put the most enemies to death. Many animals seem to have a social instinct and a moral sentiment toward man. They try to break the old bonds of distrust between their master and themselves. This is especially true of the puma, second to the largest of the big cats of the Americas, which seems to love the society of man, and seeks not only to be near him, but to protect him from the attacks of the much-dreaded jaguar. A civil engineer tells the story of an experience he had while journeying up one of the big South American rivers by boat. At their nightly encampments one of the passengers on board was an old miner who insisted on sleeping in a hammock suspended between two small trees. His weight was sufficient to bring the hammock almost to the ground at its lowest curve. One morning, his friends inquired how he had slept, and he complained that "the frogs and small animals had made so much noise under the hammock that he could not sleep." One of the Indian servants roared with laughter, as he said, "Uh, 'tiger' sleep with old man last night. He watch him!"--tiger being the Indian term for the puma. Careful searching revealed the footprints of an immense puma, and that he had evidently lain directly under the hammock. The noise which had kept the old man from sleeping was the purring of the animal, pleased over the privilege of sleeping so near a man. These Guiana Indians know the ways of the forests, and have a special liking for wild animals. This entire absence of fear in the puma is the same as exhibited by the tame house cat. Many animals seem fond of human companionship, and are easily tamed. My sister raised a small red deer in Texas, and he became so perfectly tame that he would follow her wherever she went, and would even take food from her hand. In Yellowstone Park the deer are so tame they will come into the yards to get food, while the brown bears approach the hotels like tramps, and many of the smaller animals are perfectly fearless. At the Bronx Zoological Gardens, and the London Zoo, the animals have lost all fear. They seem to realise that they have no power to escape and depend entirely upon man for their daily food. But, of course, their conditions are artificial, hence such conclusions as we may draw as to their normal attitude toward man do not necessarily indicate the innate character of their wild kinsmen. We occasionally find, for instance, that in unsettled regions like parts of Mexico and South America, where animals are plentiful and man's influence largely absent, they are found to be particularly ferocious, yet even then lions and leopards rarely attack men unless disturbed in some unusual way. Quite a few naturalists and scientists believe that the animals' love for man was acquired and not natural. But if this be true, how did the very early tribes of men escape destruction at the hands of the wild beasts which were far more numerous than at present? The animal kingdom was evidently impressed by the power of man at a very early stage of its development, but in just what manner or what period of time this came to pass is not known. If we regard the conflict as merely between two great groups of animals, surely the animals should have won, and man would have disappeared from the face of the earth. The fact that he did not, and that he became master of the animals, is presumptive evidence that man exceeded the animals in intelligence. Primitive man could have lived in no other way than by "his wits." For he was not nearly so well equipped for defence as are the monkeys of to-day. Their greatest power is in the ability to use their arms and hands in swinging rapidly from branch to branch. This gives them an advantage over all tree-climbing cats. They are very proficient in throwing stones and other missiles. This is dumbfounding to other animals. Of course, their intelligent and quick-witted methods of defence, menace, guard-duty, and loyalty to tribe makes them great warriors, and enables them to survive even the onslaughts of their greatest enemy and nightmare of every non-carnivorous animal--the harpy eagle! Through the necessary adjustments growing out of the close relationships of men to animals, the mental faculties of both have been greatly stimulated and advanced. The least developed races seem to be in such places as Tierra del Fuego, where there are no savage animals, and, therefore, no inducement for man to arm and defend himself. The Pygmies of Central Africa are mighty hunters, otherwise they could not survive. Even the Esquimaux are masters of the great polar bears and other northern animals. In the wilds of Africa, where animals have had a terrible struggle for existence, not only against disagreeable climatic conditions, but all kinds of fellow-foes as well, we find the nkengos have attained a civilisation that almost equals that of our savage brothers. And these pale-faced little beings, with their wrinkled, care-worn, parchment-like skins, remind one of ill-treated, white, human-dwarfs. Their name, nkengo, means wild animal-men, and when tamed they actually make excellent family servants for men. These closest allies of man live in tall bamboo trees, and are so curiously human that when seen walking around hunting berries, nuts, and fruits, talking in guttural, chattering tones, like old fisher-women, no one could doubt even their kinship to man. Their children assemble in groups to romp and play under the guardianship of either one of their mothers or grandmothers; while the men forage for food, and watch for enemies. It is not uncommon to see an aged, half-decrepit nkengo lying on a bed of sticks in a tall tree. Here he eats only green leaves and bits of fruit brought him by some kind friend, being far too weak to hunt for food himself, and furthermore, fearing an attack from his mortal enemy, the leopard. If the colony decides to move to other territory, either because of enemies or the scarcity of food, they all assemble and hold a farewell gathering in which there is much mourning and apparent grief at forever leaving their aged kin to the fate of the wilds. If they are possibly able to walk, they are given patient assistance in travelling along. Sometimes, when they are deserted, sympathetic friends return for days with berries and koola nuts, until at last the colony has gone so far away that none dare return alone, in which event these helpless superannuated members are left to die in their lone tree-top beds. Many of these beds are as well made as the tree-beds of human beings, and even better than the beds of the savage Dyaks of Borneo. They are usually located in tall trees, inaccessible to leopards and out of reach of their most dreaded of all enemies, the terrible hordes of war-ants. From these nothing escapes--not even elephants and tigers. The arrival of a baby to these nkengos is of far more importance in their tree-top village, than in a human city. Each of the female relatives, and also the aged males, takes special interest in the new-comer, and they chatter around his little grape-vine cradle with much enthusiasm, shaking their heads and delicately handling his tiny hands and toes as though he were the baby of a king. This baby is much stronger and quicker to learn than human babies; for when he is only two days old he is able to cling to his mother, so that she can carry him with her on her hunting trips. If he becomes too noisy from sheer delight when she is travelling through the forest with him, she slaps him, in an attempt to quiet him, lest the leopards get him. At night he sleeps snugly by his mother's side in the great tree-bed, and she never allows him to crawl out of her arms for fear that he fall to the depths below. She loves him dearly, and watches with human eagerness for his first tooth. He loves his mother and will stand for hours while she dresses his hair; or lie on her breast as she rubs his little back. These wild-children are always ill-tempered and self-willed. No human mother has to show more patience and love than does the nkengo mother. She takes the greatest delight in his first efforts at climbing and hunting, and for hours she and his admiring relatives will watch him attempting to climb a cocoanut tree. Sometimes she will climb just behind him to catch him if he falls or becomes frightened. His arms soon become very powerful, for he is constantly swinging, climbing, and exercising by hanging from a bough with one hand while he pulls himself up with the great power of his muscles. He is able to gather koola nuts long before his jaws are strong enough to crack them; so his fond mother cracks them for him until his hands and mouth are stronger. Like all babies, his ambition is to be big and strong like his father. Some of the apes are most intelligent and human, and, as allies to man, are more desirable than certain of the human savages. Dr. Livingstone, in his _Last Journals_, describes one he first discovered. "Their teeth," he says, "are slightly human, but their canines show the beast by their large development. The hands, or rather the fingers, are like those of the natives. They live in communities consisting of about a dozen individuals, and are strictly monogamous in their conjugal relations, and vegetarian, or rather frugivorous, in their diet, their favourite food being bananas." The natives where these apes live are cannibals, and Dr. Livingstone says, "they are the lowest of the low." One of their number, who had committed a great murder, offered his grandmother "to be killed in expiation of his offence, and this vicarious punishment was accepted as satisfactory." Thus it is evident that certain of these wild-creatures--like the sokos--have a more correct conception of justice than their human associates, the savages. At least the animals do not make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and give their lives unjustly. Should a soko try to take another's wife he is publicly punished by the tribe. These animals have a great sense of humour and fully enjoy a practical joke. Strangely enough, they never attack women and children, but if any man approaches them with a spear or gun, they try to rush upon him, often at the expense of their own life, and wrest the weapon from him. Most of them are exceedingly kind and civilised in their actions, and natives always say, "Soko is a man, and nothing bad in him." Often they kidnap babies and carry them up into trees. But these are never harmed and the apes are ever ready to exchange them for bananas. The robbery is, no doubt, for the purpose of extortion. If perchance one of their children is stolen, the entire forest sets up a scream and wail until it is returned. Old hunters and travellers say that they would rather steal the child of a native savage than to take one of the sokos. If one of the soko children disappears, and they do not know what became of it, they immediately send out detectives throughout the country to seek for it. And woe be the home where a stolen soko baby is found! But man has one great power--a far more potent ally than he has in his animal friends--the use of fire. Unquestionably to the minds of animals it is a supernatural power. They cannot create it, understand it, and it is very doubtful if they can yet use it to advantage. How marvellous is this thing--fire! That great blazing pillar of cloud that destroys all, and leaves nothing to show where it has taken its enemies! To animals it springs up wherever man rests his head, and protects him while he sleeps. It is always with him, and its presence for untold ages has brought terror to all of them. Not a few reports tell us that certain of our animal allies among the monkeyfolk of South Africa use fire. This may not be true; but it is probable that the time is near at hand when the wild baboon-men of the woods will learn to make and use fire just as we have done. Enough instances could be shown illustrating animals as man's allies to fill an entire book, but a sufficient number have been adduced to show how truly they are our allies, helpers, and protectors just as we are theirs, only their mode of manifesting it is different. We have shown the absolute fallacy of the old belief that animals lack mentality, and that all their acts of kindness are based upon self-love and personal gain, and have seen that in proportion to their opportunities in life, they have quite as much mentality and brotherly love for each other and mankind as is found among our lower savages. We have seen that among animals as among men, individuals will give their lives for their fellows, serve the weak and timid, and demonstrate the highest and holiest feelings of which true souls can be capable, and always share equally with man the burdens that fall upon themselves and their human allies. And the time is already here when man should protect his animal friends more, and teach them through human kindness not to fear him. But this can only be done when he is willing to treat them as fellow beings only a little below him in the scale of existence. CHAPTER XV THE FUTURE LIFE OF ANIMALS _"Ah, poor companion! when thou followedst last Thy master's parting footsteps to the gate Which closed forever on him, thou didst lose Thy best friend, and none was left to plead For the old age of brute fidelity. But fare thee well. Mine is no narrowed creed; And He who gave thee being did not frame The mystery of Life to be the sport Of merciless man. There is another world For all that live and move--a better one! Where the proud bipeds, who would fain confine Of their own charity, may envy thee."_ --SOUTHEY (on the death of his dog). The old belief is still prevalent that the Bible teaches that of all living creatures man alone is immortal. This erroneous belief springs out of man's egotism, however, and is not substantiated by the Scriptures. Among many of the Old Testament writers we find that immortality was assured for neither man nor animals; whereas, with the larger revelation of the New Testament, immortality is no longer questioned for any living creature. There are, of course, many supposedly intelligent people who deny to animals the power of reason, and attribute all their marvellous powers and abilities to blind instinct. It is, therefore, not the least bit surprising that the vast majority of people believe that when an animal dies, its life principle dies also. The animating power, they believe, is destroyed, and the body returns to the dust. These mistaken conclusions are largely, if not wholly, due to two passages of Scripture, one of which is in the Psalms and the other in Ecclesiastes. The one most often quoted, from the Psalms, runs in the authorised version: "Nevertheless, man being in honor, abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish." This verse is frequently quoted as decisive of the whole question. The other passage, which is found in Ecclesiastes, reads: "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" It is upon the authority of these two passages that we are supposed to believe that when an animal dies, its life has gone forever, departed, expired. In this new age of thought and discovery, we do not attempt to explain a passage of Scripture, no matter how simple it may appear to be, without referring to the original text, that we may see if the translator has kept the true sense of the words and adequately expressed their significance, remembering that words often change their meaning, and that the original use of a word may have conveyed exactly the opposite meaning to that which we at present attach to it. But if we accept the passage just as it stands, with the literal meaning of the words as is usually understood, there is but one conclusion--animals have no future life. Death ends all for them. But, on the other hand, if we are to take the literal interpretation of the Bible only, we are forced to believe that man, as well as the animals, has no life after death. Surely the book of Psalms is full of examples to support this literal interpretation. For example, "In death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave, who shall give thee thanks?" Again, "The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence." Or, "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." These quotations could be greatly added to, and if taken in their literal sense, we would reach but one conclusion--death ends all for every living creature! Nothing in all the literature of the earth could be more gloomy and discouraging than these quotations with numerous others that contemplate death. Yet, vain man takes one little passage that seemingly denies a future life to animals from the same book that many times over denies a future life to mankind; in fact, there are five times as many Scripture passages claiming for man that all ends in death as there are for animals. Over and over we are told that those who have died have no remembrance of God, and cannot praise Him. The Bible speaks of death as the "land of forgetfulness,"--the place of darkness, where all man's thoughts perish. Nothing more than this could be said of the "animals that perish!" Other Biblical writers referred to mankind as those who "dwell in houses of clay," and Job says: "They are destroyed from morning to evening; they perish forever, without any regarding it." In another place he says: "As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more." Again he speaks of "the land of darkness and the shadow of death," and says: "Man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up: so man lieth down, and riseth not." Job laments the pitiable conditions of his life, and complains that life was ever granted to him, and that even death can bring nothing to him except extinction. Yet, if we examine Ecclesiastes, the book in which we find the single passage upon which many people base a belief in the non-future existence of animals, there are passages which are really no more positive as to the future of mankind. For example, "I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them. As the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man has no pre-eminence over a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to the dust again." Again it is said: "For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward, for the memory of them is forgotten;" and "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou goest." By interpreting these words literally, there is but one conclusion relative to a future spiritual life, namely, that there is absolutely no distinction between man and his "lower brother" animals, and that when they die they all go to the same place. It is emphatically said that after death man knows nothing, receives no reward, and can do no work. Job has the same gloomy strain running through his writings, and Ecclesiastes gives a most morbid and gloomy view of death. However, no modern Biblical scholar accepts these passages in this literal light, for it is known that they were written symbolically, or as parables, and were not intended to be literally interpreted. They have a spiritual significance. We are, however, not interested here so much with this spiritual sense as we are with the literal implication of the translation. Therefore, according to this literal meaning of the two texts, if we accept them to prove that animals have no future life, we are forced to believe by at least fourteen passages, of equal if not greater power, that man shares their same fate after death. No man has a right to select certain passages from the same book of the Bible and say that they shall be accepted literally, and that other passages of equal merit shall be interpreted otherwise. They must all be treated the same. All scholars are familiar with that remarkable eleventh book of Homer's Odyssey, known as the Necromanteia, or Invocation of the Dead, and in it Ulysses descends into the regions of the departed spirits to invoke them and obtain advice as to his future adventures. One commentator says: "He sails to the boundaries of the ocean, and lands in the country of the Cimmerians, who dwell in perpetual cloud and darkness, and in whose country are the gates leading to the regions of the dead." All is darkness, discontent, hunger; nothing is said of virtue, wisdom, beauty, happiness. Only bitter gloom! No wonder this heathen poet considered, with such views of a future life, sensual pleasures as the chief object of this life. The following dialogue between the inhabitants of the earth and the dweller in the regions of the dead--between Ulysses and Achilles--is remarkable for its horrible depiction of the future life: "Through the thick gloom his friend Achilles knew, As he speaks the tears dissolve in dew. 'Comest thou alive to view the Stygian bounds, Where the wan spectres walk eternal rounds; Nor fear'st the dark and dismal waste to tread, Thronged with pale ghosts familiar with the dead?' To whom with sighs, 'I pass these dreadful gates To seek the Theban, and consult the Fates; For still distressed I roam from coast to coast, Lost to my friends and to my country lost. But sure the eye of Time beholds no name So blessed as thine in all the rolls of fame; Alive we hailed thee with our guardian gods, And, dead thou rulest a king in these abodes.' 'Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom, Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom. Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes and breathe the vital air, A slave for some poor hind that toils for bread, Than reign the sceptered monarch of the dead.'" Yet, even this outpouring of hopeless words by the heathen poet is encouraging when compared to the writings of the Psalmist, of Solomon or Job, for those who have gone beyond the grave still have memory, an interest in their friends on earth, love and desire. But no such hope exists for man, if we are to accept literally all the passages of Scripture which have been quoted. By such interpretation, man passes after death into eternal darkness, forgetfulness, silence, "where there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom--where even his very thoughts perish." If these particular passages are to be accepted as final on the subject, there is no future life for either man or animal. They are too definite to admit of any interpretation that might soften or alter their meaning. It may be shocking to some to compare the belief of an ancient Greek and the teachings of a Latin Epicurean with the sacred writings of the Bible. Yet, it may be even more startling to point out that some of the teachings of the Epicurean sensualist are quite as good as some of those of the writers of the sacred texts, and that those of the Greek poet are far better and more spiritual! There is no denying that these are the facts, if we are to be bound by literal interpretation, unless we throw to the winds all reason and common-sense. This leads us back to the point previously mentioned; and we must determine if the authorised version gives a full and truthful interpretation of the Hebrew original. Even a man who does not pretend to scholarship knows that it does not. The word "perish," for example, is not found at all in the Hebrew text, nor is the idea expressed; the words which our translation twice renders as "beasts that perish," is, in the original Hebrew, "dumb beasts." By comparing a number of the translations of the Psalms, into various languages--Psalm XLIX, for example--we find that few, if any, of them suggest the idea of "perishing" in the sense of annihilation. First, let us consider the Jewish Bible, which is acknowledged to be the most accurate translation in the English language, and carefully read it. In verses 12 and 20 of the above Psalm, where the passage is found, the translation reads: "Man that is in honour, and understandeth this not, is like the beasts that are irrational." In a footnote the word "dumb" is offered as an alternative for "irrational." Brunton's translation of the Septuagint is similar, and reads: "Man that is in honour understands not, he is compared to the senseless cattle, and is like them." Wycliffe's Bible, which is translated from the Vulgate, reads thus: "A man whanne he was in honour understood it not; he is compared to unwise beestis, and is maad lijk to tho." The "Douay" Bible, put forth by the English Catholic College of Douay and which is received by the Catholic Church in England, gives the passage: "Man, when he was in honour, did not understand; he hath been compared to senseless beasts, and made like to them." Many other versions might be cited, and very few of them even suggest the idea of annihilation. If, for argument's sake, we suppose that the word "perish" has been correctly translated, it by no means follows that annihilation is signified. Read, for example, the tenth verse of the same Psalm in our authorised translation: "For he seeth that wise men die, and likewise the fool and the brutish person perish, and leave their wealth to others." Certainly no intelligent person would interpret this passage as declaring that the wise and the foolish and the brutish have no life after the body dies. It is plain, therefore, that we may dismiss forever the idea that the Psalmist believed the beasts had no future life, and the citation may be rejected as absolutely irrelevant to the subject, and the only one that appears to make any definite statements as to the future life of the lower animals. Every student of the Bible will at once recognise how necessary it is that the original meaning of the Hebrew text should be known, and that the Psalmist should not be accused of setting forth a doctrine of such great importance, whether true or false, when he may never even have thought or suggested it. [Illustration: MEN CRUELLY TAKE THE LIVES OF THESE DENIZENS OF THE WILDWOOD, REJOICING IN THEIR SLAUGHTER, BUT THE ANIMAL SOUL THEY CANNOT KILL.] [Illustration: TWO PALS. THERE IS BETWEEN MAN AND DOG A KINSHIP OF SPIRIT THAT CANNOT BE DENIED.] Having disposed of the possibility of a misunderstanding of the real meaning of the "beasts that perish," let us consider the quotation from Ecclesiastes, the only one that refers to the future state of animals. "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" We find an admission here that, whether the spirit ascends or descends, man and beasts alike have the immortal spark. The Hebrew version is precisely the same as our authorised translation. Read, not an isolated verse, but the entire passage: "I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of man, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. "For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even the one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity. "All go to one place; all are of the same dust, and all turn to dust again. "Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth? "Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?" These verses tell their own story. It matters little whether Solomon wrote this book in his later years; it is, in any event, the confession of one who has had all the good things of this world, and who saw the emptiness of them all, and who sums up life with the words "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Finally the author ironically advises his readers to trust only in the good of their labour. Thus it is shown that the quotation from the Psalms in no way justifies the belief in the annihilation of beasts, and that the one from Ecclesiastes has been entirely and wrongfully misunderstood and interpreted. In no way do the Scriptures deny future life to the lower animals, but in all ways, if intelligently understood, imply that man and beasts have, equally, a share in a future life beyond the grave. As we have found out that the Scriptures, contrary to the popular belief, do not deny a future life to our lower brethren, the animals, let us see if they actually declare a future world for them in the same way that they do for man. Man's immortality, as we know, is taught in the Old Testament rather by inference than by direct affirmation. This is possibly due to the fact that the writers of the manifold books, which were at a late date selected from a large number and made into one big volume which forms our Bible, thought as a matter of course that man lived on after death, and never thought it necessary to assert that which every one knew. But if we accept the teachings of the Old Testament, inference gives much stronger testimony to the immortality of animals than it does to the immortality of man, for while in neither case is there a direct assertion of a future life, yet there is no direct denial of future life to the animals, as has been shown to be the case with man. All Divine Law includes a protection for the beasts, and the laws of the Sabbath were in essence a spiritual and not only a physical ordinance. The ancient Scriptures have innumerable provisions against mistreating or giving unnecessary pain to the lower animals; and these provisions stand side by side in the Divine Law with those which speak of man. Note, for example, the prohibition of "seething a kid in its mother's milk." Again, there is a statement that the ox in treading out the corn is not to be muzzled, lest he suffer hunger in the presence of food which he may not eat. In the following sentences from the Book of Jonah, it is plainly seen that the Deity has not failed to take notice of the animals: "And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle?" Again, in the Psalms, "Every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine." Other passages that proclaim God as the protector of beasts, as well as man, might be cited, for the Bible makes frequent mention of them. Each of these Scriptures unquestionably proves that God has an interest in all His creatures, and that each shares His universal love. No one can deny that Genesis, ninth chapter and fifth verse, refers to a future life for beasts as well as man; it is a part of the law which was given to Noah and which was the forerunner of the fuller law handed down through Moses: "Surely, your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of every man; at the hand of every man's brother will I require the life of man." According to the Mosaic law, an ox which kills a man is subject to death, exactly as a human murderer. Why should the animal be punished by death, if he has no soul to be forfeited? It should be remembered that while there are no Scriptural passages that definitely promise immortality to animals, there are many which infer it. Moreover, we should not expect to gain definite information on the subject from the Bible, for it was written for human beings and not for animals. If there are few direct references to the future life of man, surely there must be still fewer to that of animals! But just as man has for countless ages had within himself an everlasting witness to his own immortality, so do we find that all who have really become acquainted with the lower animals, with their unselfishness, parental love, devotion to duty, generosity, wonderful mentality, and self-sacrifice--all those who know them realise that they are subject to the same moral law as man and share with him a future life. Lamartine beautifully expresses a future hope for his faithful dog: "I cannot, will not, deem thee a deceiving, Illusive mockery of human feeling, A body organized, by fond caress Warmed into seeming tenderness; A mere automaton, on which our love Plays, as on puppets, when their wires we move. No! when that feeling quits thy glazing eye, 'Twill live in some blest world beyond the sky." Who can say that from the depths of the wide ocean, from regions unknown, and lands unexplored by man; from the remotest islands of the sea, and even from the far icy North, there are not animal voices ever rising in praise of our common Creator? The Bible says: "The Lord is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works," and, "All Thy works shall praise thee, O Lord,"--surely these endorse the above statements. And why should man define the limit of God's goodness, His love, care, and attention to the wants and needs of all His creatures? The distinguished animal authority, Dr. Abercrombie, admitted that animals have an "immaterial principle" in them, which is distinct from matter. But he does not say that this principle, or soul, will live after death, as it is supposed to in man. However, many scholars both of ancient and modern times hold this opinion. Broderip, in his _Zoological Recreations_ devotes much space in referring to ancient philosophers and poets, Christian Fathers, and Jewish Rabbis that have believed in the immortality of animals. The heroes of Virgil have horses to drive in the Elysian fields; the Greek poets gave to Orion dogs. Rabbi Manesseh, speaking of the resurrection, says, "brutes will then enjoy a much happier state of being than they experienced here," and a number of scholars, like Philo Judæus, believe that ferocious beasts will in a future state lose their ferociousness. Among more recent scholars who hold this belief is Dr. John Brown, who boldly says: "I am one of those who believe that dogs have a next world; and why not?" The Rev. J. G. Wood said: "Much of the present heedlessness respecting animals is caused by the popular idea that they have no souls, and that when they die they entirely perish. Whence came that most preposterous idea? Surely not from the only source where we might expect to learn about souls--not from the Bible, for there we distinctly read of 'the spirit of the sons of man,' and immediately afterwards of 'the spirit of the beasts,' one aspiring, the other not so. And a necessary consequence of the spirit is a life after the death of the body. Let any one wait in a frequented thoroughfare for one short hour, and watch the sufferings of the poor brutes that pass by. Then, unless he denies the Divine Providence, he will see clearly that unless these poor creatures were compensated in a future life, there is no such quality as justice." Eugene T. Zimmerman says: "I cannot help but think that my faithful dog, and playmate of my younger days, will have some form of a future life." We do not recognise an absolute spiritual barrier of separation between man and animals. Man is an animal--the first of animals; but it does not of necessity follow that he will always continue to be so. By what right does he presume to deny a soul and a continued spiritual existence to lower animals? Are we not all of us fellows and co-workers, partakers of the same universal life, sharing alike a common source and destiny? This has always been the faith and insight of the child, whose simple wisdom we ever turn to for truth and guidance. And in our clearer realisation of the oneness of all life, we will extend to all creatures the Golden Rule, showing them the love and consideration we would have shown to us. * * * * * The HUMAN SIDE of BIRDS. By ROYAL DIXON With 4 illustrations in color and 32 in black-and-white. Cloth, 8vo. With every statement based on fact, and every fact of unusual interest, the author shows that many qualities of and occupations in the human world have their parallels in the bird world. _Here is bird study from a new angle--instead of treating our bird neighbors as labeled specimens to be described in scientific terms, they are treated as friends, and a careful study is made of their disposition, character, emotions and "thought processes."_ Mr. Dixon tells of birds who are policemen, athletes, divers, bakers; birds who maintain courts of justice and military organizations and many other curious types. BUY FROM YOUR BOOKSELLER but let us send you the news about books To the readers of this book who furnish name and address (a postal card will do), we will gladly send, free of charge, announcements of our new publications. Our illustrated holiday pamphlets with colored picture covers are unusually attractive. Books may then be ordered through your local bookshop. We employ no agents or canvassers FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 447-448 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. Publishers FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY New York 
18193	----	[Illustration] WAYS OF WOOD FOLK BY WILLIAM J. LONG _FIRST SERIES_ [Illustration] BOSTON, U.S.A. GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS The Athenæum Press 1902 COPYRIGHT, 1899 BY WILLIAM J. LONG ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO PLATO, the owl, who looks over my shoulder as I write, and who knows all about the woods. PREFACE. "All crows are alike," said a wise man, speaking of politicians. That is quite true--in the dark. By daylight, however, there is as much difference, within and without, in the first two crows one meets as in the first two men or women. I asked a little child once, who was telling me all about her chicken, how she knew her chicken from twenty others just like him in the flock. "How do I know my chicken? I know him by his little face," she said. And sure enough, the face, when you looked at it closely, was different from all other faces. This is undoubtedly true of all birds and all animals. They recognize each other instantly amid multitudes of their kind; and one who watches them patiently sees quite as many odd ways and individualities among Wood Folk as among other people. No matter, therefore, how well you know the habits of crows or the habits of caribou in general, watch the first one that crosses your path as if he were an entire stranger; open eyes to see and heart to interpret, and you will surely find some new thing, some curious unrecorded way, to give delight to your tramp and bring you home with a new interest. This individuality of the wild creatures will account, perhaps, for many of these Ways, which can seem no more curious or startling to the reader than to the writer when he first discovered them. They are, almost entirely, the records of personal observation in the woods and fields. Occasionally, when I know my hunter or woodsman well, I have taken his testimony, but never without weighing it carefully, and proving it whenever possible by watching the animal in question for days or weeks till I found for myself that it was all true. The sketches are taken almost at random from old note-books and summer journals. About them gather a host of associations, of living-over-agains, that have made it a delight to write them; associations of the winter woods, of apple blossoms and nest-building, of New England uplands and wilderness rivers, of camps and canoes, of snowshoes and trout rods, of sunrise on the hills, when one climbed for the eagle's nest, and twilight on the yellow wind-swept beaches, where the surf sobbed far away, and wings twanged like reeds in the wind swooping down to decoys,--all thronging about one, eager to be remembered if not recorded. Among them, most eager, most intense, most frequent of all associations, there is a boy with nerves all a-tingle at the vast sweet mystery that rustled in every wood, following the call of the winds and the birds, or wandering alone where the spirit moved him, who never studied nature consciously, but only loved it, and who found out many of these Ways long ago, guided solely by a boy's instinct. If they speak to other boys, as to fellow explorers in the always new world, if they bring back to older children happy memories of a golden age when nature and man were not quite so far apart, then there will be another pleasure in having written them. My thanks are due, and are given heartily, to the editors of _The Youth's Companion_ for permission to use several sketches that have already appeared, and to Mr. Charles Copeland, the artist, for his care and interest in preparing the illustrations. WM. J. LONG. ANDOVER, MASS., June, 1899. CONTENTS. PAGE I. FOX-WAYS 1 II. MERGANSER 27 III. QUEER WAYS OF BR'ER RABBIT 41 IV. A WILD DUCK 55 V. AN ORIOLE'S NEST 69 VI. THE BUILDERS 77 VII. CROW-WAYS 101 VIII. ONE TOUCH OF NATURE 117 IX. MOOSE CALLING 121 X. CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS 135 XI. A FELLOW OF EXPEDIENTS 152 XII. A TEMPERANCE LESSON FOR THE HORNETS 161 XIII. SNOWY VISITORS 167 XIV. A CHRISTMAS CAROL 181 XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR 187 WAYS OF WOOD FOLK. I. FOX-WAYS. [Illustration] Did you ever meet a fox face to face, surprising him quite as much as yourself? If so, you were deeply impressed, no doubt, by his perfect dignity and self-possession. Here is how the meeting generally comes about. It is a late winter afternoon. You are swinging rapidly over the upland pastures, or loitering along the winding old road through the woods. The color deepens in the west; the pines grow black against it; the rich brown of the oak leaves seems to glow everywhere in the last soft light; and the mystery that never sleeps long in the woods begins to rustle again in the thickets. You are busy with your own thoughts, seeing nothing, till a flash of yellow passes before your eyes, and a fox stands in the path before you, one foot uplifted, the fluffy brush swept aside in graceful curve, the bright eyes looking straight into yours--nay, looking through them to read the intent which gives the eyes their expression. That is always the way with a fox; he seems to be looking at your thoughts. Surprise, eagerness, a lively curiosity are all in your face on the instant; but the beautiful creature before you only draws himself together with quiet self-possession. He lifts his head slightly; a superior look creeps into his eyes; he seems to be speaking. Listen-- "You are surprised?"--this with an almost imperceptible lift of his eyebrows, which reminds you somehow that it is really none of your affair. "O, I frequently use this road in attending to some matters over in the West Parish. To be sure, we are socially incompatible; we may even regard each other as enemies, unfortunately. I did take your chickens last week; but yesterday your unmannerly dogs hunted me. At least we may meet and pass as gentlemen. You are the older; allow me to give you the path." Dropping his head again, he turns to the left, English fashion, and trots slowly past you. There is no hurry; not the shadow of suspicion or uneasiness. His eyes are cast down; his brow wrinkled, as if in deep thought; already he seems to have forgotten your existence. You watch him curiously as he reenters the path behind you and disappears over the hill. Somehow a queer feeling, half wonder, half rebuke, steals over you, as if you had been outdone in courtesy, or had passed a gentleman without sufficiently recognizing him. Ah, but you didn't watch sharply enough! You didn't see, as he circled past, that cunning side gleam of his yellow eyes, which understood your attitude perfectly. Had you stirred, he would have vanished like a flash. You didn't run to the top of the hill where he disappeared, to see that burst of speed the instant he was out of your sight. You didn't see the capers, the tail-chasing, the high jumps, the quick turns and plays; and then the straight, nervous gallop, which told more plainly than words his exultation that he had outwitted you and shown his superiority. Reynard, wherever you meet him, whether on the old road at twilight, or on the runway before the hounds, impresses you as an animal of dignity and calculation. He never seems surprised, much less frightened; never loses his head; never does things hurriedly, or on the spur of the moment, as a scatter-brained rabbit or meddling squirrel might do. You meet him, perhaps as he leaves the warm rock on the south slope of the old oak woods, where he has been curled up asleep all the sunny afternoon. (It is easy to find him there in winter.) Now he is off on his nightly hunt; he is trotting along, head down, brows deep-wrinkled, planning it all out. "Let me see," he is thinking, "last night I hunted the Draper woods. To-night I'll cross the brook just this side the old bars, and take a look into that pasture-corner among the junipers. There's a rabbit which plays round there on moonlight nights; I'll have him presently. Then I'll go down to the big South meadow after mice. I haven't been there for a week; and last time I got six. If I don't find mice, there's that chicken coop of old Jenkins. Only"--He stops, with his foot up, and listens a minute--"only he locks the coop and leaves the dog loose ever since I took the big rooster. Anyway I'll take a look round there. Sometimes Deacon Jones's hens get to roosting in the next orchard. If I can find them up an apple tree, I'll bring a couple down with a good trick I know. On the way--Hi, there!" In the midst of his planning he gives a grasshopper-jump aside, and brings down both paws hard on a bit of green moss that quivered as he passed. He spreads his paws apart carefully; thrusts his nose down between them; drags a young wood-mouse from under the moss; eats him; licks his chops twice, and goes on planning as if nothing had happened. "On the way back, I'll swing round by the Fales place, and take a sniff under the wall by the old hickory, to see if those sleepy skunks are still there for the winter. I'll have that whole family before spring, if I'm hungry and can't find anything else. They come out on sunny days; all you have to do is just hide behind the hickory and watch." So off he goes on his well-planned hunt; and if you follow his track to-morrow in the snow, you will see how he has gone from one hunting ground directly to the next. You will find the depression where he lay in a clump of tall dead grass and watched a while for the rabbit; reckon the number of mice he caught in the meadow; see his sly tracks about the chicken coop, and in the orchard; and pause a moment at the spot where he cast a knowing look behind the hickory by the wall,--all just as he planned it on his way to the brook. If, on the other hand, you stand by one of his runways while the dogs are driving him, expecting, of course, to see him come tearing along in a desperate hurry, frightened out of half his wits by the savage uproar behind him, you can only rub your eyes in wonder when a fluffy yellow ball comes drifting through the woods towards you, as if the breeze were blowing it along. There he is, trotting down the runway in the same leisurely, self-possessed way, wrapped in his own thoughts apparently, the same deep wrinkles over his eyes. He played a trick or two on a brook, down between the ponds, by jumping about on a lot of stones from which the snow had melted, without wetting his feet (which he dislikes), and without leaving a track anywhere. While the dogs are puzzling that out, he has plenty of time to plan more devices on his way to the big hill, with its brook, and old walls, and rail fences, and dry places under the pines, and twenty other helps to an active brain. First he will run round the hill half a dozen times, crisscrossing his trail. That of itself will drive the young dogs crazy. Then along the top rail of a fence, and a long jump into the junipers, which hold no scent, and another jump to the wall where there is no snow, and then-- "Oh, plenty of time, no hurry!" he says to himself, turning to listen a moment. "That dog with the big voice must be old Roby. He thinks he knows all about foxes, just because he broke his leg last year, trying to walk a sheep-fence where I'd been. I'll give him another chance; and oh, yes! I'll creep up the other side of the hill, and curl up on a warm rock on the tiptop, and watch them all break their heads over the crisscross, and have a good nap or two, and think of more tricks." So he trots past you, still planning; crosses the wall by a certain stone that he has used ever since he was a cub fox; seems to float across an old pasture, stopping only to run about a bit among some cow tracks, to kill the scent; and so on towards his big hill. Before he gets there he will have a skilful retreat planned, back to the ponds, in case old Roby untangles his crisscross, or some young fool-hound blunders too near the rock whereon he sits, watching the game. If you meet him now, face to face, you will see no quiet assumption of superiority; unless perchance he is a young fox, that has not learned what it means to be met on a runway by a man with a gun when the dogs are driving. With your first slightest movement there is a flash of yellow fur, and he has vanished into the thickest bit of underbrush at hand.--Don't run; you will not see him again here. He knows the old roads and paths far better than you do, and can reach his big hill by any one of a dozen routes where you would never dream of looking. But if you want another glimpse of him, take the shortest cut to the hill. He may take a nap, or sit and listen a while to the dogs, or run round a swamp before he gets there. Sit on the wall in plain sight; make a post of yourself; keep still, and keep your eyes open. Once, in just such a place, I had a rare chance to watch him. It was on the summit of a great bare hill. Down in the woods by a swamp, five or six hounds were waking the winter echoes merrily on a fresh trail. I was hoping for a sight of Reynard when he appeared from nowhere, on a rock not fifty yards away. There he lay, his nose between his paws, listening with quiet interest to the uproar below. Occasionally he raised his head as some young dog scurried near, yelping maledictions upon a perfect tangle of fox tracks, none of which went anywhere. Suddenly he sat up straight, twisted his head sideways, as a dog does when he sees the most interesting thing of his life, dropped his tongue out a bit, and looked intently. I looked too, and there, just below, was old Roby, the best foxhound in a dozen counties, creeping like a cat along the top rail of a sheep-fence, now putting his nose down to the wood, now throwing his head back for a great howl of exultation.--It was all immensely entertaining; and nobody seemed to be enjoying it more than the fox. One of the most fascinating bits of animal study is to begin at the very beginning of fox education, _i.e._, to find a fox den, and go there some afternoon in early June, and hide at a distance, where you can watch the entrance through your field-glass. Every afternoon the young foxes come out to play in the sunshine like so many kittens. Bright little bundles of yellow fur they seem, full of tricks and whims, with pointed faces that change only from exclamation to interrogation points, and back again. For hours at a stretch they roll about, and chase tails, and pounce upon the quiet old mother with fierce little barks. One climbs laboriously up the rock behind the den, and sits on his tail, gravely surveying the great landscape with a comical little air of importance, as if he owned it all. When called to come down he is afraid, and makes a great to-do about it. Another has been crouching for five minutes behind a tuft of grass, watching like a cat at a rat-hole for some one to come by and be pounced upon. Another is worrying something on the ground, a cricket perhaps, or a doodle-bug; and the fourth never ceases to worry the patient old mother, till she moves away and lies down by herself in the shadow of a ground cedar. As the afternoon wears away, and long shadows come creeping up the hillside, the mother rises suddenly and goes back to the den; the little ones stop their play, and gather about her. You strain your ears for the slightest sound, but hear nothing; yet there she is, plainly talking to them; and they are listening. She turns her head, and the cubs scamper into the den's mouth. A moment she stands listening, looking; while just within the dark entrance you get glimpses of four pointed black noses, and a cluster of bright little eyes, wide open for a last look. Then she trots away, planning her hunt, till she disappears down by the brook. When she is gone, eyes and noses draw back; only a dark silent hole in the bank is left. You will not see them again--not unless you stay to watch by moonlight till mother-fox comes back, with a fringe of field-mice hanging from her lips, or a young turkey thrown across her shoulders. One shrewd thing frequently noticed in the conduct of an old fox with young is that she never troubles the poultry of the farms nearest her den. She will forage for miles in every direction; will harass the chickens of distant farms till scarcely a handful remains of those that wander into the woods, or sleep in the open yards; yet she will pass by and through nearer farms without turning aside to hunt, except for mice and frogs; and, even when hungry, will note a flock of chickens within sight of her den, and leave them undisturbed. She seems to know perfectly that a few missing chickens will lead to a search; that boys' eyes will speedily find her den, and boys' hands dig eagerly for a litter of young foxes. Last summer I found a den, beautifully hidden, within a few hundred yards of an old farmhouse. The farmer assured me he had never missed a chicken; he had no idea that there was a fox within miles of his large flock. Three miles away was another farmer who frequently sat up nights, and set his boys to watching afternoons, to shoot a fox that, early and late, had taken nearly thirty young chickens. Driven to exasperation at last, he borrowed a hound from a hunter; and the dog ran the trail straight to the den I had discovered. Curiously enough, the cubs, for whose peaceful bringing up the mother so cunningly provides, do not imitate her caution. They begin their hunting by lying in ambush about the nearest farm; the first stray chicken they see is game. Once they begin to plunder in this way, and feed full on their own hunting, parental authority is gone; the mother deserts the den immediately, leading the cubs far away. But some of them go back, contrary to all advice, and pay the penalty. She knows now that sooner or later some cub will be caught stealing chickens in broad daylight, and be chased by dogs. The foolish youngster takes to earth, instead of trusting to his legs; so the long-concealed den is discovered and dug open at last. When an old fox, foraging for her young some night, discovers by her keen nose that a flock of hens has been straying near the woods, she goes next day and hides herself there, lying motionless for hours at a stretch in a clump of dead grass or berry bushes, till the flock comes near enough for a rush. Then she hurls herself among them, and in the confusion seizes one by the neck, throws it by a quick twist across her shoulders, and is gone before the stupid hens find out what it is all about. But when a fox finds an old hen or turkey straying about with a brood of chicks, then the tactics are altogether different. Creeping up like a cat, the fox watches an opportunity to seize a chick out of sight of the mother bird. That done, he withdraws, silent as a shadow, his grip on the chick's neck preventing any outcry. Hiding his game at a distance, he creeps back to capture another in the same way; and so on till he has enough, or till he is discovered, or some half-strangled chick finds breath enough for a squawk. A hen or turkey knows the danger by instinct, and hurries her brood into the open at the first suspicion that a fox is watching. A farmer, whom I know well, first told me how a fox manages to carry a number of chicks at once. He heard a clamor from a hen-turkey and her brood one day, and ran to a wood path in time to see a vixen make off with a turkey chick scarcely larger than a robin. Several were missing from the brood. He hunted about, and presently found five more just killed. They were beautifully laid out, the bodies at a broad angle, the necks crossing each other, like the corner of a corn-cob house, in such a way that, by gripping the necks at the angle, all the chicks could be carried at once, half hanging at either side of the fox's mouth. Since then I have seen an old fox with what looked like a dozen or more field-mice carried in this way; only, of course, the tails were crossed corn-cob fashion instead of the necks. The stealthiness with which a fox stalks his game is one of the most remarkable things about him. Stupid chickens are not the only birds captured. Once I read in the snow the story of his hunt after a crow--wary game to be caught napping! The tracks showed that quite a flock of crows had been walking about an old field, bordered by pine and birch thickets. From the rock where he was sleeping away the afternoon the fox saw or heard them, and crept down. How cautious he was about it! Following the tracks, one could almost see him stealing along from stone to bush, from bush to grass clump, so low that his body pushed a deep trail in the snow, till he reached the cover of a low pine on the very edge of the field. There he crouched with all four feet close together under him. Then a crow came by within ten feet of the ambush. The tracks showed that the bird was a bit suspicious; he stopped often to look and listen. When his head was turned aside for an instant the fox launched himself; just two jumps, and he had him. Quick as he was, the wing marks showed that the crow had started, and was pulled down out of the air. Reynard carried him into the densest thicket of scrub pines he could find, and ate him there, doubtless to avoid the attacks of the rest of the flock, which followed him screaming vengeance. A strong enmity exists between crows and foxes. Wherever a crow finds a fox, he sets up a clatter that draws a flock about him in no time, in great excitement. They chase the fox as long as he is in sight, cawing vociferously, till he creeps into a thicket of scrub pines, into which no crow will ever venture, and lies down till he tires out their patience. In hunting, one may frequently trace the exact course of a fox which the dogs are driving, by the crows clamoring over him. Here in the snow was a record that may help explain one side of the feud. From the same white page one may read many other stories of Reynard's ways and doings. Indeed I know of no more interesting winter walk than an afternoon spent on his last night's trail through the soft snow. There is always something new, either in the track or the woods through which it leads; always a fresh hunting story; always a disappointment or two, a long cold wait for a rabbit that didn't come, or a miscalculation over the length of the snow tunnel where a partridge burrowed for the night. Generally, if you follow far enough, there is also a story of good hunting which leaves you wavering between congratulation over a successful stalk after nights of hungry, patient wandering, and pity for the little tragedy told so vividly by converging trails, a few red drops in the snow, a bit of fur blown about by the wind, or a feather clinging listlessly to the underbrush. In such a tramp one learns much of fox-ways and other ways that can never be learned elsewhere. * * * * * The fox whose life has been spent on the hillsides surrounding a New England village seems to have profited by generations of experience. He is much more cunning every way than the fox of the wilderness. If, for instance, a fox has been stealing your chickens, your trap must be very cunningly set if you are to catch him. It will not do to set it near the chickens; no inducement will be great enough to bring him within yards of it. It must be set well back in the woods, near one of his regular hunting grounds. Before that, however, you must bait the fox with choice bits scattered over a pile of dry leaves or chaff, sometimes for a week, sometimes for a month, till he comes regularly. Then smoke your trap, or scent it; handle it only with gloves; set it in the chaff; scatter bait as usual; and you have one chance of getting him, while he has still a dozen of getting away. In the wilderness, on the other hand, he may be caught with half the precaution. I know a little fellow, whose home is far back from the settlements, who catches five or six foxes every winter by ordinary wire snares set in the rabbit paths, where foxes love to hunt. In the wilderness one often finds tracks in the snow, telling how a fox tried to catch a partridge and only succeeded in frightening it into a tree. After watching a while hungrily,--one can almost see him licking his chops under the tree,--he trots off to other hunting grounds. If he were an educated fox he would know better than that. When an old New England fox in some of his nightly prowlings discovers a flock of chickens roosting in the orchard, he generally gets one or two. His plan is to come by moonlight, or else just at dusk, and, running about under the tree, bark sharply to attract the chickens' attention. If near the house, he does this by jumping, lest the dog or the farmer hear his barking. Once they have begun to flutter and cackle, as they always do when disturbed, he begins to circle the tree slowly, still jumping and clacking his teeth. The chickens crane their necks down to follow him. Faster and faster he goes, racing in small circles, till some foolish fowl grows dizzy with twisting her head, or loses her balance and tumbles down, only to be snapped up and carried off across his shoulders in a twinkling. But there is one way in which fox of the wilderness and fox of the town are alike easily deceived. Both are very fond of mice, and respond quickly to the squeak, which can be imitated perfectly by drawing the breath in sharply between closed lips. The next thing, after that is learned, is to find a spot in which to try the effect. Two or three miles back from almost all New England towns are certain old pastures and clearings, long since run wild, in which the young foxes love to meet and play on moonlight nights, much as rabbits do, though in a less harum-scarum way. When well fed, and therefore in no hurry to hunt, the heart of a young fox turns naturally to such a spot, and to fun and capers. The playground may easily be found by following the tracks after the first snowfall. (The knowledge will not profit you probably till next season; but it is worth finding and remembering.) If one goes to the place on some still, bright night in autumn, and hides on the edge of the open, he stands a good chance of seeing two or three foxes playing there. Only he must himself be still as the night; else, should twenty foxes come that way, he will never see one. It is always a pretty scene, the quiet opening in the woods flecked with soft gray shadows in the moonlight, the dark sentinel evergreens keeping silent watch about the place, the wild little creatures playing about among the junipers, flitting through light and shadow, jumping over each other and tumbling about in mimic warfare, all unconscious of a spectator as the foxes that played there before the white man came, and before the Indians. Such scenes do not crowd themselves upon one. He must wait long, and love the woods, and be often disappointed; but when they come at last, they are worth all the love and the watching. And when the foxes are not there, there is always something else that is beautiful.-- Now squeak like a mouse, in the midst of the play. Instantly the fox nearest you stands, with one foot up, listening. Another squeak, and he makes three or four swift bounds in your direction, only to stand listening again; he hasn't quite located you. Careful now! don't hurry; the longer you keep him waiting, the more certainly he is deceived. Another squeak; some more swift jumps that bring him within ten feet; and now he smells or sees you, sitting motionless on your boulder in the shadow of the pines. [Illustration] He isn't surprised; at least he pretends he isn't; but looks you over indifferently, as if he were used to finding people sitting on that particular rock. Then he trots off with an air of having forgotten something. With all his cunning he never suspects you of being the mouse. That little creature he believes to be hiding under the rock; and to-morrow night he will very likely take a look there, or respond to your squeak in the same way. It is only early in the season, generally before the snow blows, that one can see them playing; and it is probably the young foxes that are so eager for this kind of fun. Later in the season--either because the cubs have lost their playfulness, or because they must hunt so diligently for enough to eat that there is no time for play--they seldom do more than take a gallop together, with a playful jump or two, before going their separate ways. At all times, however, they have a strong tendency to fun and mischief-making. More than once, in winter, I have surprised a fox flying round after his own bushy tail so rapidly that tail and fox together looked like a great yellow pin-wheel on the snow. When a fox meets a toad or frog, and is not hungry, he worries the poor thing for an hour at a time; and when he finds a turtle he turns the creature over with his paw, sitting down gravely to watch its awkward struggle to get back onto its feet. At such times he has a most humorous expression, brows wrinkled and tongue out, as if he were enjoying himself hugely. Later in the season he would be glad enough to make a meal of toad or turtle. One day last March the sun shone out bright and warm; in the afternoon the first frogs began to tune up, _cr-r-r-runk, cr-r-runk-a-runk-runk_, like a flock of brant in the distance. I was watching them at a marshy spot in the woods, where they had come out of the mud by dozens into a bit of open water, when the bushes parted cautiously and the sharp nose of a fox appeared. The hungry fellow had heard them from the hill above, where he was asleep, and had come down to see if he could catch a few. He was creeping out onto the ice when he smelled me, and trotted back into the woods. Once I saw him catch a frog. He crept down to where Chigwooltz, a fat green bullfrog, was sunning himself by a lily pad, and very cautiously stretched out one paw under water. Then with a quick fling he tossed his game to land, and was after him like a flash before he could scramble back. On the seacoast Reynard depends largely on the tides for a living. An old fisherman assures me that he has seen him catching crabs there in a very novel way. Finding a quiet bit of water where the crabs are swimming about, he trails his brush over the surface till one rises and seizes it with his claw (a most natural thing for a crab to do), whereupon the fox springs away, jerking the crab to land. Though a fox ordinarily is careful as a cat about wetting his tail or feet, I shall not be surprised to find some day for myself that the fisherman was right. Reynard is very ingenious, and never lets his little prejudices stand in the way when he is after a dinner. His way of beguiling a duck is more remarkable than his fishing. Late one afternoon, while following the shore of a pond, I noticed a commotion among some tame ducks, and stopped to see what it was about. They were swimming in circles, quacking and stretching their wings, evidently in great excitement. A few minutes' watching convinced me that something on the shore excited them. Their heads were straight up from the water, looking fixedly at something that I could not see; every circle brought them nearer the bank. I walked towards them, not very cautiously, I am sorry to say; for the farmhouse where the ducks belonged was in plain sight, and I was not expecting anything unusual. As I glanced over the bank something slipped out of sight into the tall grass. I followed the waving tops intently, and caught one sure glimpse of a fox as he disappeared into the woods. The thing puzzled me for years, though I suspected some foxy trick, till a duck-hunter explained to me what Reynard was doing. He had seen it tried successfully once on a flock of wild ducks.-- When a fox finds a flock of ducks feeding near shore, he trots down and begins to play on the beach in plain sight, watching the birds the while out of the "tail o' his ee," as a Scotchman would say. Ducks are full of curiosity, especially about unusual colors and objects too small to frighten them; so the playing animal speedily excites a lively interest. They stop feeding, gather close together, spread, circle, come together again, stretching their necks as straight as strings to look and listen. Then the fox really begins his performance. He jumps high to snap at imaginary flies; he chases his bushy tail; he rolls over and over in clouds of flying sand; he gallops up the shore, and back like a whirlwind; he plays peekaboo with every bush. The foolish birds grow excited; they swim in smaller circles, quacking nervously, drawing nearer and nearer to get a better look at the strange performance. They are long in coming, but curiosity always gets the better of them; those in the rear crowd the front rank forward. All the while the show goes on, the performer paying not the slightest attention apparently to his excited audience; only he draws slowly back from the water's edge, as if to give them room as they crowd nearer. They are on shore at last; then, while they are lost in the most astonishing caper of all, the fox dashes among them, throwing them into the wildest confusion. His first snap never fails to throw a duck back onto the sand with a broken neck; and he has generally time for a second, often for a third, before the flock escapes into deep water. Then he buries all his birds but one, throws that across his shoulders, and trots off, wagging his head, to some quiet spot where he can eat his dinner and take a good nap undisturbed. When with all his cunning Reynard is caught napping, he makes use of another good trick he knows. One winter morning some years ago, my friend, the old fox-hunter, rose at daylight for a run with the dogs over the new-fallen snow. Just before calling his hounds, he went to his hen-house, some distance away, to throw the chickens some corn for the day. As he reached the roost, his steps making no sound in the snow, he noticed the trail of a fox crossing the yard and entering the coop through a low opening sometimes used by the chickens. No trail came out; it flashed upon him that the fox must be inside at that moment. Hardly had he reached this conclusion when a wild cackle arose that left no doubt about it. On the instant he whirled an empty box against the opening, at the same time pounding lustily to frighten the thief from killing more chickens. Reynard was trapped sure enough. The fox-hunter listened at the door, but save for an occasional surprised _cut-aa-cut_, not a sound was heard within. Very cautiously he opened the door and squeezed through. There lay a fine pullet stone dead; just beyond lay the fox, dead too. "Well, of all things," said the fox-hunter, open-mouthed, "if he hasn't gone and climbed the roost after that pullet, and then tumbled down and broken his own neck!" Highly elated with this unusual beginning of his hunt, he picked up the fox and the pullet and laid them down together on the box outside, while he fed his chickens. When he came out, a minute later, there was the box and a feather or two, but no fox and no pullet. Deep tracks led out of the yard and up over the hill in flying jumps. Then it dawned upon our hunter that Reynard had played the possum-game on him, getting away with a whole skin and a good dinner. There was no need to look farther for a good fox track. Soon the music of the hounds went ringing over the hill and down the hollow; but though the dogs ran true, and the hunter watched the runways all day with something more than his usual interest, he got no glimpse of the wily old fox. Late at night the dogs came limping home, weary and footsore, but with never a long yellow hair clinging to their chops to tell a story. The fox saved his pullet, of course. Finding himself pursued, he buried it hastily, and came back the next night undoubtedly to get it. Several times since then I have known of his playing possum in the same way. The little fellow whom I mentioned as living near the wilderness, and snaring foxes, once caught a black fox--a rare, beautiful animal with a very valuable skin--in a trap which he had baited for weeks in a wild pasture. It was the first black fox he had ever seen, and, boylike, he took it only as a matter of mild wonder to find the beautiful creature frozen stiff, apparently, on his pile of chaff with one hind leg fast in the trap. He carried the prize home, trap and all, over his shoulder. At his whoop of exultation the whole family came out to admire and congratulate. At last he took the trap from the fox's leg, and stretched him out on the doorstep to gloat over the treasure and stroke the glossy fur to his heart's content. His attention was taken away for a moment; then he had a dazed vision of a flying black animal that seemed to perch an instant on the log fence and vanish among the spruces. Poor Johnnie! There were tears in his eyes when he told me about it, three years afterwards. * * * * * These are but the beginning of fox-ways. I have not spoken of his occasional tree climbing; nor of his grasshopper hunting; nor of his planning to catch three quails at once when he finds a whole covey gathered into a dinner-plate circle, tails in, heads out, asleep on the ground; nor of some perfectly astonishing things he does when hard pressed by dogs. But these are enough to begin the study and still leave plenty of things to find out for one's self. Reynard is rarely seen, even in places where he abounds; we know almost nothing of his private life; and there are undoubtedly many of his most interesting ways yet to be discovered. He has somehow acquired a bad name, especially among farmers; but, on the whole, there is scarcely a wild thing in the woods that better repays one for the long hours spent in catching a glimpse of him. II. MERGANSER. [Illustration] Shelldrake, or shellbird, is the name by which this duck is generally known, though how he came to be called so would be hard to tell. Probably the name was given by gunners, who see him only in winter when hunger drives him to eat mussels--but even then he likes mud-snails much better. The name fish-duck, which one hears occasionally, is much more appropriate. The long slender bill, with its serrated edges fitting into each other like the teeth of a bear trap, just calculated to seize and hold a slimy wriggling fish, is quite enough evidence as to the nature of the bird's food, even if one had not seen him fishing on the lakes and rivers which are his summer home. That same bill, by the way, is sometimes a source of danger. Once, on the coast, I saw a shelldrake tying in vain to fly against the wind, which flung rudely among some tall reeds near me. The next moment Don, my old dog, had him. In a hungry moment he had driven his bill through both shells of a scallop, which slipped or worked its way up to his nostrils, muzzling the bird perfectly with a hard shell ring. The poor fellow by desperate trying could open his mouth barely wide enough to drink or to swallow the tiniest morsel. He must have been in this condition a long time, for the bill was half worn through, and he was so light that the wind blew him about like a great feather when he attempted to fly. Fortunately Don was a good retriever and had brought the duck in with scarcely a quill ruffled; so I had the satisfaction of breaking his bands and letting him go free with a splendid rush. But the wind was too much for him; he dropped back into the water and went skittering down the harbor like a lady with too much skirt and too big a hat in boisterous weather. Meanwhile Don lay on the sand, head up, ears up, whining eagerly for the word to fetch. Then he dropped his head, and drew a long breath, and tried to puzzle it out why a man should go out on a freezing day in February, and tramp, and row, and get wet to find a bird, only to let him go after he had been fairly caught. Kwaseekho the shelldrake leads a double life. In winter he may be found almost anywhere along the Massachusetts coast and southward, where he leads a dog's life of it, notwithstanding his gay appearance. An hundred guns are roaring at him wherever he goes. From daylight to dark he has never a minute to eat his bit of fish, or to take a wink of sleep in peace. He flies to the ocean, and beds with his fellows on the broad open shoals for safety. But the east winds blow; and the shoals are a yeasty mass of tumbling breakers. They buffet him about; they twist his gay feathers; they dampen his pinions, spite of his skill in swimming. Then he goes to the creeks and harbors. Along the shore a flock of his own kind, apparently, are feeding in quiet water. Straight in he comes with unsuspecting soul, the morning light shining full on his white breast and bright red feet as he steadies himself to take the water. But _bang, bang!_ go the guns; and _splash, splash!_ fall his companions; and out of a heap of seaweed come a man and a dog; and away he goes, sadly puzzled at the painted things in the water, to think it all over in hunger and sorrow. Then the weather grows cold, and a freeze-up covers all his feeding grounds. Under his beautiful feathers the bones project to spoil the contour of his round plump body. He is famished now; he watches the gulls to see what they eat. When he finds out, he forgets his caution, and roams about after stray mussels on the beach. In the spring hunger drives him into the ponds where food is plenty--but such food! In a week his flesh is so strong that a crow would hardly eat it. Altogether, it is small wonder that as soon as his instinct tells him the streams of the North are open and the trout running up, he is off to a land of happier memories. In summer he forgets his hardships. His life is peaceful as a meadow brook. His home is the wilderness--on a lonely lake, it may be, shimmering under the summer sun, or kissed into a thousand smiling ripples by the south wind. Or perhaps it is a forest river, winding on by wooded hills and grassy points and lonely cedar swamps. In secret shallow bays the young broods are plashing about, learning to swim and dive and hide in safety. The plunge of the fish-hawk comes up from the pools. A noisy kingfisher rattles about from tree to stump, like a restless busy-body. The hum of insects fills the air with a drowsy murmur. Now a deer steps daintily down the point, and looks, and listens, and drinks. A great moose wades awkwardly out to plunge his head under and pull away at the lily roots. But the young brood mind not these harmless things. Sometimes indeed, as the afternoon wears away, they turn their little heads apprehensively as the alders crash and sway on the bank above; a low cluck from the mother bird sends them all off into the grass to hide. How quickly they have disappeared, leaving never a trace! But it is only a bear come down from the ridge where he has been sleeping, to find a dead fish perchance for his supper; and the little brood seem to laugh as another low cluck brings them scurrying back from their hiding places. Once, perhaps, comes a real fright, when all their summer's practice is put to the test. An unusual noise is heard; and round the bend glides a bark canoe with sound of human voices. Away go the brood together, the river behind them foaming like the wake of a tiny steamer as the swift-moving feet lift them almost out of water. Visions of ocean, the guns, falling birds, and the hard winter distract the poor mother. She flutters wildly about the brood, now leading, now bravely facing the monster; now pushing along some weak little loiterer, now floundering near the canoe as if wounded, to attract attention from the young. But they double the point at last, and hide away under the alders. The canoe glides by and makes no effort to find them. Silence is again over the forest. The little brood come back to the shallows, with mother bird fluttering round them to count again and again lest any be missing. The kingfisher comes out of his hole in the bank. The river flows on as before, and peace returns; and over all is the mystic charm of the wilderness and the quiet of a summer day. This is the way it all looks and seems to me, sitting over under the big hemlock, out of sight, and watching the birds through my field-glass. Day after day I have attended such little schools unseen and unsuspected by the mother bird. Sometimes it was the a-b-c class, wee little downy fellows, learning to hide on a lily pad, and never getting a reward of merit in the shape of a young trout till they hid so well that the teacher (somewhat over-critical, I thought) was satisfied. Sometimes it was the baccalaureates that displayed their talents to the unbidden visitor, flashing out of sight, cutting through the water like a ray of light, striking a young trout on the bottom with the rapidity and certainty almost of the teacher. It was marvelous, the diving and swimming; and mother bird looked on and quacked her approval of the young graduates.--That is another peculiarity: the birds are dumb in winter; they find their voice only for the young. While all this careful training is going on at home, the drake is off on the lakes somewhere with his boon companions, having a good time, and utterly neglectful of parental responsibility. Sometimes I have found clubs of five or six, gay fellows all, living by themselves at one end of a big lake where the fishing was good. All summer long they roam and gad about, free from care, and happy as summer campers, leaving mother birds meanwhile to feed and educate their offspring. Once only have I seen a drake sharing the responsibilities of his family. I watched three days to find the cause of his devotion; but he disappeared the third evening, and I never saw him again. Whether the drakes are lazy and run away, or whether they have the atrocious habit of many male birds and animals of destroying their young, and so are driven away by the females, I have not been able to find out. These birds are very destructive on the trout streams; if a summer camper spare them, it is because of his interest in the young, and especially because of the mother bird's devotion. When the recreant drake is met with, however, he goes promptly onto the bill of fare, with other good things. Occasionally one overtakes a brood on a rapid river. Then the poor birds are distressed indeed. At the first glimpse of the canoe they are off, churning the water into foam in their flight. Not till they are out of sight round the bend do they hear the cluck that tells them to hide. Some are slow in finding a hiding place on the strange waters. The mother bird hurries them. They are hunting in frantic haste when round the bend comes the swift-gliding canoe. With a note of alarm they are all off again, for she will not leave even the weakest alone. Again they double the bend and try to hide; again the canoe overtakes them; and so on, mile after mile, till a stream or bogan flowing into the river offers a road to escape. Then, like a flash, the little ones run in under shelter of the banks, and glide up stream noiselessly, while mother bird flutters on down the river just ahead of the canoe. Having lured it away to a safe distance, as she thinks, she takes wing and returns to the young. Their powers of endurance are remarkable. Once, on the Restigouche, we started a brood of little ones late in the afternoon. We were moving along in a good current, looking for a camping ground, and had little thought for the birds, which could never get far enough ahead to hide securely. For five miles they kept ahead of us, rushing out at each successive stretch of water, and fairly distancing us in a straight run. When we camped they were still below us. At dusk I was sitting motionless near the river when a slight movement over near the opposite bank attracted me. There was the mother bird, stealing along up stream under the fringe of bushes. The young followed in single file. There was no splashing of water now. Shadows were not more noiseless. Twice since then I have seen them do the same thing. I have no doubt they returned that evening all the way up to the feeding grounds where we first started them; for like the kingfishers every bird seems to have his own piece of the stream. He never fishes in his neighbor's pools, nor will he suffer any poaching in his own. On the Restigouche we found a brood every few miles; on other rivers less plentifully stocked with trout they are less numerous. On lakes there is often a brood at either end; but though I have watched them carefully, I have never seen them cross to each other's fishing grounds. Once, up on the Big Toledi, I saw a curious bit of their education. I was paddling across the lake one day, when I saw a shellbird lead her brood into a little bay where I knew the water was shallow; and immediately they began dipping, though very awkwardly. They were evidently taking their first lessons in diving. The next afternoon I was near the same place. I had done fishing--or rather, frogging--and had pushed the canoe into some tall grass out of sight, and was sitting there just doing nothing. A musquash came by, and rubbed his nose against the canoe, and nibbled a lily root before he noticed me. A shoal of minnows were playing among the grasses near by. A dragon-fly stood on his head against a reed--a most difficult feat, I should think. He was trying some contortion that I couldn't make out, when a deer stepped down the bank and never saw me. Doing nothing pays one under such circumstances, if only by the glimpses it gives of animal life. It is so rare to see a wild thing unconscious. Then Kwaseekho came into the shallow bay again with her brood, and immediately they began dipping as before. I wondered how the mother made them dive, till I looked through the field-glass and saw that the little fellows occasionally brought up something to eat. But there certainly were no fish to be caught in that warm, shallow water. An idea struck me, and I pushed the canoe out of the grass, sending the brood across the lake in wild confusion. There on the black bottom were a dozen young trout, all freshly caught, and all with the air-bladder punctured by the mother bird's sharp bill. She had provided their dinner, but she brought it to a good place and made them dive to get it. As I paddled back to camp, I thought of the way the Indians taught their boys to shoot. They hung their dinner from the trees, out of reach, and made them cut the cord that held it, with an arrow. Did the Indians originate this, I wonder, in their direct way of looking at things, almost as simple as the birds'? Or was the idea whispered to some Indian hunter long ago, as he watched Merganser teach her young to dive? Of all the broods I have met in the wilderness, only one, I think, ever grew to recognize me and my canoe a bit, so as to fear me less than another. It was on a little lake in the heart of the woods, where we lingered long on our journey, influenced partly by the beauty of the place, and partly by the fact that two or three bears roamed about there, which I sometimes met at twilight on the lake shore. The brood were as wild as other broods; but I met them often, and they sometimes found the canoe lying motionless and harmless near them, without quite knowing how it came there. So after a few days they looked at me with curiosity and uneasiness only, unless I came too near. There were six in the brood. Five were hardy little fellows that made the water boil behind them as they scurried across the lake. But the sixth was a weakling. He had been hurt, by a hawk perhaps, or a big trout, or a mink; or he had swallowed a bone; or maybe he was just a weak little fellow with no accounting for it. Whenever the brood were startled, he struggled bravely a little while to keep up; then he always fell behind. The mother would come back, and urge, and help him; but it was of little use. He was not strong enough; and the last glimpse I always had of them was a foamy wake disappearing round a distant point, while far in the rear was a ripple where the little fellow still paddled away, doing his best pathetically. [Illustration] One afternoon the canoe glided round a point and ran almost up to the brood before they saw it, giving them a terrible fright. Away they went on the instant, _putter, putter, putter_, lifting themselves almost out of water with the swift-moving feet and tiny wings. The mother bird took wing, returned and crossed the bow of the canoe, back and forth, with loud quackings. The weakling was behind as usual; and in a sudden spirit of curiosity or perversity--for I really had a good deal of sympathy for the little fellow--I shot the canoe forward, almost up to him. He tried to dive; got tangled in a lily stem in his fright; came up, flashed under again; and I saw him come up ten feet away in some grass, where he sat motionless and almost invisible amid the pads and yellow stems. How frightened he was! Yet how still he sat! Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment I had to hunt again, sometimes two or three minutes, before I could see him there. Meanwhile the brood went almost to the opposite shore before they stopped, and the mother, satisfied at last by my quietness, flew over and lit among them. She had not seen the little one. Through the glass I saw her flutter round and round them, to be quite sure they were all there. Then she missed him. I could see it all in her movements. She must have clucked, I think, for the young suddenly disappeared, and she came swimming rapidly back over the way they had come, looking, looking everywhere. Round the canoe she went at a safe distance, searching among the grass and lily pads, calling him softly to come out. But he was very near the canoe, and very much frightened; the only effect of her calls was to make him crouch closer against the grass stems, while the bright little eyes, grown large with fear, were fastened on me. Slowly I backed the canoe away till it was out of sight around the point, though I could still see the mother bird through the bushes. She swam rapidly about where the canoe had been, calling more loudly; but the little fellow had lost confidence in her, or was too frightened, and refused to show himself. At last she discovered him, and with quacks and flutters that looked to me a bit hysteric pulled him out of his hiding place. How she fussed over him! How she hurried and helped and praised and scolded him all the way over; and fluttered on ahead, and clucked the brood out of their hiding places to meet him! Then, with all her young about her, she swept round the point into the quiet bay that was their training school. And I, drifting slowly up the lake into the sunset over the glassy water, was thinking how human it all was. "Doth he not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?" III. QUEER WAYS OF BR'ER RABBIT. [Illustration] Br'er Rabbit is a funny fellow. No wonder that Uncle Remus makes him the hero of so many adventures! Uncle Remus had watched him, no doubt, on some moonlight night when he gathered his boon companions together for a frolic. In the heart of the woods it was, in a little opening where the moonlight came streaming in through the pines, making soft gray shadows for hide-and-seek, and where no prowling fox ever dreamed of looking. With most of us, I fear, the acquaintance with Bunny is too limited for us to appreciate his frolicsome ways and his happy, fun-loving disposition. The tame things which we sometimes see about country yards are often stupid, like a playful kitten spoiled by too much handling; and the flying glimpse we sometimes get of a bundle of brown fur, scurrying helter-skelter through and over the huckleberry bushes, generally leaves us staring in astonishment at the swaying leaves where it disappeared, and wondering curiously what it was all about. It was only a brown rabbit that you almost stepped upon in your autumn walk through the woods. Look under the crimson sumach yonder, there in the bit of brown grass, with the purple asters hanging over, and you will find his form, where he has been sitting all the morning and where he watched you all the way up the hill. But you need not follow; you will not find him again. He never runs straight; the swaying leaves there where he disappeared mark the beginning of his turn, whether to right or left you will never know. Now he has come around his circle and is near you again--watching you this minute, out of his bit of brown grass. As you move slowly away in the direction he took, peering here and there among the bushes, Bunny behind you sits up straight in his old form again, with his little paws held very prim, his long ears pointed after you, and his deep brown eyes shining like the waters of a hidden spring among the asters. And he chuckles to himself, and thinks how he fooled you that time, sure. To see Br'er Rabbit at his best, that is, at his own playful comical self, one must turn hunter, and learn how to sit still, and be patient. Only you must not hunt in the usual way; not by day, for then Bunny is stowed away in his form on the sunny slope of a southern hillside, where one's eyes will never find him; not with gun and dog, for then the keen interest and quick sympathy needed to appreciate any phase of animal life gives place to the coarser excitement of the hunt; and not by going about after Bunny, for your heavy footsteps and the rustle of leaves will only send him scurrying away into safer solitudes. Find where he loves to meet with his fellows, in quiet little openings in the woods. There is no mistaking his playground when once you have found it. Go there by moonlight and, sitting still in the shadow, let your game find you, or pass by without suspicion; for this is the best way to hunt, whether one is after game or only a better knowledge of the ways of bird and beast. The very best spot I ever found for watching Bunny's ways was on the shore of a lonely lake in the heart of a New Brunswick forest. I hardly think that he was any different there, for I have seen some of his pranks repeated within sight of a busy New England town; but he was certainly more natural. He had never seen a man before, and he was as curious about it as a blue jay. No dog's voice had ever wakened the echoes within fifty miles; but every sound of the wilderness he seemed to know a thousand times better than I. The snapping of the smallest stick under the stealthy tread of fox or wildcat would send him scurrying out of sight in wild alarm; yet I watched a dozen of them at play one night when a frightened moose went crashing through the underbrush and plunged into the lake near by, and they did not seem to mind it in the least. The spot referred to was the only camping ground on the lake; so Simmo, my Indian guide, assured me; and he knew very well. I discovered afterward that it was the only cleared bit of land for miles around; and this the rabbits knew very well. Right in the midst of their best playground I pitched my tent, while Simmo built his lean-to near by, in another little opening. We were tired that night, after a long day's paddle in the sunshine on the river. The after-supper chat before the camp fire--generally the most delightful bit of the whole day, and prolonged as far as possible--was short and sleepy; and we left the lonely woods to the bats and owls and creeping things, and turned in for the night. I was just asleep when I was startled by a loud thump twice repeated, as if a man stamped on the ground, or, as I thought at the time, just like the thump a bear gives an old log with his paw, to see if it is hollow and contains any insects. I was wide awake in a moment, sitting up straight to listen. A few minutes passed by in intense stillness; then, _thump! thump! thump!_ just outside the tent among the ferns. I crept slowly out; but beyond a slight rustle as my head appeared outside the tent I heard nothing, though I waited several minutes and searched about among the underbrush. But no sooner was I back in the tent and quiet than there it was again, and repeated three or four times, now here, now there, within the next ten minutes. I crept out again, with no better success than before. This time, however, I would find out about that mysterious noise before going back. It isn't so pleasant to go to sleep until one knows what things are prowling about, especially things that make a noise like that. A new moon was shining down into the little clearing, giving hardly enough light to make out the outlines of the great evergreens. Down among the ferns things were all black and uniform. For ten minutes I stood there in the shadow of a big spruce and waited. Then the silence was broken by a sudden heavy thump in the bushes just behind me. I was startled, and wheeled on the instant; as I did so, some small animal scurried away into the underbrush. For a moment I was puzzled. Then it flashed upon me that I was camped upon the rabbits' playground. With the thought came a strong suspicion that Bunny was fooling me. Going back to the fire, I raked the coals together and threw on some fresh fuel. Next I fastened a large piece of birch bark on two split sticks behind the fireplace; then I sat down on an old log to wait. The rude reflector did very well as the fire burned up. Out in front the fern tops were dimly lighted to the edge of the clearing. As I watched, a dark form shot suddenly above the ferns and dropped back again. Three heavy thumps followed; then the form shot up and down once more. This time there was no mistake. In the firelight I saw plainly the dangle of Br'er Rabbit's long legs, and the flap of his big ears, and the quick flash of his dark eyes in the reflected light,--got an instantaneous photograph of him, as it were, at the top of his comical jump. I sat there nearly an hour before the why and the how of the little joker's actions became quite clear. This is what happens in such a case. Bunny comes down from the ridge for his nightly frolic in the little clearing. While still in the ferns the big white object, standing motionless in the middle of his playground, catches his attention; and very much surprised, and very much frightened, but still very curious, he crouches down close to wait and listen. But the strange thing does not move nor see him. To get a better view he leaps up high above the ferns two or three times. Still the big thing remains quite still and harmless. "Now," thinks Bunny, "I'll frighten him, and find out what he is." Leaping high he strikes the ground sharply two or three times with his padded hind foot; then jumps up quickly again to see the effect of his scare. Once he succeeded very well, when he crept up close behind me, so close that he didn't have to spring up to see the effect. I fancy him chuckling to himself as he scurried off after my sudden start. That was the first time that I ever heard Bunny's challenge. It impressed me at the time as one of his most curious pranks; the sound was so big and heavy for such a little fellow. Since then I have heard it frequently; and now sometimes when I stand at night in the forest and hear a sudden heavy thump in the underbrush, as if a big moose were striking the ground and shaking his antlers at me, it doesn't startle me in the least. It is only Br'er Rabbit trying to frighten me. The next night Bunny played us another trick. Before Simmo went to sleep he always took off his blue overalls and put them under his head for a pillow. That was only one of Simmo's queer ways. While he was asleep the rabbits came into his little _commoosie_, dragged the overalls out from under his head, and nibbled them full of holes. Not content with this, they played with them all night; pulled them around the clearing, as threads here and there plainly showed; then dragged them away into the underbrush and left them. Simmo's wrath when he at last found the precious garments was comical to behold; when he wore them with their new polka-dot pattern, it was still more comical. Why the rabbits did it I could never quite make out. The overalls were very dirty, very much stained with everything from a clean trout to tobacco crumbs; and, as there was nothing about them for a rabbit to eat, we concluded that it was just one of Br'er Rabbit's pranks. That night Simmo, to avenge his overalls, set a deadfall supported by a piece of cord, which he had soaked in molasses and salt. Which meant that Bunny would nibble the cord for the salt that was in it, and bring the log down hard on his own back. So I had to spring it, while Simmo slept, to save the little fellow's life and learn more about him. Up on the ridge above our tent was a third tiny clearing, where some trappers had once made their winter camp. It was there that I watched the rabbits one moonlight night from my seat on an old log, just within the shadow at the edge of the opening. The first arrival came in with a rush. There was a sudden scurry behind me, and over the log he came with a flying leap that landed him on the smooth bit of ground in the middle, where he whirled around and around with grotesque jumps, like a kitten after its tail. Only Br'er Rabbit's tail was too short for him ever to catch it; he seemed rather to be trying to get a good look at it. Then he went off helter-skelter in a headlong rush through the ferns. Before I knew what had become of him, over the log he came again in a marvelous jump, and went tearing around the clearing like a circus horse, varying his performance now by a high leap, now by two or three awkward hops on his hind legs, like a dancing bear. It was immensely entertaining. The third time around he discovered me in the midst of one of his antics. He was so surprised that he fell down. In a second he was up again, sitting up very straight on his haunches just in front of me, paws crossed, ears erect, eyes shining in fear and curiosity. "Who are you?" he was saying, as plainly as ever rabbit said it. Without moving a muscle I tried to tell him, and also that he need not be afraid. Perhaps he began to understand, for he turned his head on one side, just as a dog does when you talk to him. But he wasn't quite satisfied. "I'll try my scare on him," he thought; and _thump! thump! thump!_ sounded his padded hind foot on the soft ground. It almost made me start again, it sounded so big in the dead stillness. This last test quite convinced him that I was harmless, and, after a moment's watching, away he went in some astonishing jumps into the forest. A few minutes passed by in quiet waiting before he was back again, this time with two or three companions. I have no doubt that he had been watching me all the time, for I heard his challenge in the brush just behind my log. The fun now began to grow lively. Around and around they went, here, there, everywhere,--the woods seemed full of rabbits, they scurried around so. Every few minutes the number increased, as some new arrival came flying in and gyrated around like a brown fur pinwheel. They leaped over everything in the clearing; they leaped over each other as if playing leap-frog; they vied with each other in the high jump. Sometimes they gathered together in the middle of the open space and crept about close to the ground, in and out and roundabout, like a game of fox and geese. Then they rose on their hind legs and hopped slowly about in all the dignity of a minuet. Right in the midst of the solemn affair some mischievous fellow gave a squeak and a big jump; and away they all went hurry-skurry, for all the world like a lot of boys turned loose for recess. In a minute they were back again, quiet and sedate, and solemn as bull-frogs. Were they chasing and chastising the mischief-maker, or was it only the overflow of abundant spirits as the top of a kettle blows off when the pressure below becomes resistless? [Illustration] Many of the rabbits saw me, I am sure, for they sometimes gave a high jump over my foot; and one came close up beside it, and sat up straight with his head on one side, to look me over. Perhaps it was the first comer, for he did not try his scare again. Like most wild creatures, they have very little fear of an object that remains motionless at their first approach and challenge. Once there was a curious performance over across the clearing. I could not see it very plainly, but it looked very much like a boxing match. A queer sound, _put-a-put-a-put-a-put_, first drew my attention to it. Two rabbits were at the edge of the ferns, standing up on their hind legs, face to face, and apparently cuffing each other soundly, while they hopped slowly around and around in a circle. I could not see the blows but only the boxing attitude, and hear the sounds as they landed on each other's ribs. The other rabbits did not seem to mind it, as they would have done had it been a fight, but stopped occasionally to watch the two, and then went on with their fun-making. Since then I have read of tame hares that did the same thing, but I have never seen it. At another time the rabbits were gathered together in the very midst of some quiet fun, when they leaped aside suddenly and disappeared among the ferns as if by magic. The next instant a dark shadow swept across the opening, almost into my face, and wheeled out of sight among the evergreens. It was Kookoo-skoos, the big brown owl, coursing the woods on his nightly hunt after the very rabbits that were crouched motionless beneath him as he passed. But how did they learn, all at once, of the coming of an enemy whose march is noiseless as the sweep of a shadow? And did they all hide so well that he never suspected that they were about, or did he see the ferns wave as the last one disappeared, but was afraid to come back after seeing me? Perhaps Br'er Rabbit was well repaid that time for his confidence. They soon came back again, as I think they would not have done had it been a natural opening. Had it been one of Nature's own sunny spots, the owl would have swept back and forth across it; for he knows the rabbits' ways as well as they know his. But hawks and owls avoid a spot like this, that men have cleared. If they cross it once in search of prey, they seldom return. Wherever man camps, he leaves something of himself behind; and the fierce birds and beasts of the woods fear it, and shun it. It is only the innocent things, singing birds, and fun-loving rabbits, and harmless little wood-mice--shy, defenseless creatures all--that take possession of man's abandoned quarters, and enjoy his protection. Bunny knows this, I think; and so there is no other place in the woods that he loves so well as an old camping ground. The play was soon over; for it is only in the early part of the evening, when Br'er Rabbit first comes out after sitting still in his form all day, that he gives himself up to fun, like a boy out of school. If one may judge, however, from the looks of Simmo's overalls, and from the number of times he woke me by scurrying around my tent, I suspect that he is never too serious and never too busy for a joke. It is a way he has of brightening the more sober times of getting his own living, and keeping a sharp lookout for cats and owls and prowling foxes. Gradually the playground was deserted, as the rabbits slipped off one by one to hunt their supper. Now and then there was a scamper among the underbrush, and a high jump or two, with which some playful bunny enlivened his search for tender twigs; and at times one, more curious than the rest, came hopping along to sit erect a moment before the old log, and look to see if the strange animal were still there. But soon the old log was vacant too. Out in the swamp a disappointed owl sat on his lonely stub that lightning had blasted, and hooted that he was hungry. The moon looked down into the little clearing with its waving ferns and soft gray shadows, and saw nothing there to suggest that it was the rabbits' nursery. Down at the camp a new surprise was awaiting me. Br'er Rabbit was under the tent fly, tugging away at the salt bag which I had left there carelessly after curing a bearskin. While he was absorbed in getting it out from under the rubber blanket, I crept up on hands and knees, and stroked him once from ears to tail. He jumped straight up with a startled squeak, whirled in the air, and came down facing me. So we remained for a full moment, our faces scarcely two feet apart, looking into each other's eyes. Then he thumped the earth soundly with his left hind foot, to show that he was not afraid, and scurried under the fly and through the brakes in a half circle to a bush at my heels, where he sat up straight in the shadow to watch me. But I had seen enough for one night. I left a generous pinch of salt where he could find it easily, and crept in to sleep, leaving him to his own ample devices. IV. A WILD DUCK. [Illustration] The title will suggest to most boys a line across the autumn sky at sunset, with a bit of mystery about it; or else a dark triangle moving southward, high and swift, at Thanksgiving time. To a few, who know well the woods and fields about their homes, it may suggest a lonely little pond, with a dark bird rising swiftly, far out of reach, leaving the ripples playing among the sedges. To those accustomed to look sharply it will suggest five or six more birds, downy little fellows, hiding safe among roots and grasses, so still that one seldom suspects their presence. But the duck, like most game birds, loves solitude; the details of his life he keeps very closely to himself; and boys must be content with occasional glimpses. This is especially true of the dusky duck, more generally known by the name black duck among hunters. He is indeed a wild duck, so wild that one must study him with a gun, and study him long before he knows much about him. An ordinary tramp with a field-glass and eyes wide open may give a rare, distant view of him; but only as one follows him as a sportsman winter after winter, meeting with much less of success than of discouragement, does he pick up many details of his personal life; for wildness is born in him, and no experience with man is needed to develop it. On the lonely lakes in the midst of a Canada forest, where he meets man perhaps for the first time, he is the same as when he builds at the head of some mill pond within sight of a busy New England town. Other ducks may in time be tamed and used as decoys; but not so he. Several times I have tried it with wing-tipped birds; but the result was always the same. They worked night and day to escape, refusing all food and even water till they broke through their pen, or were dying of hunger, when I let them go. One spring a farmer, with whom I sometimes go shooting, determined to try with young birds. He found a black duck's nest in a dense swamp near a salt creek, and hatched the eggs with some others under a tame duck. Every time he approached the pen the little things skulked away and hid; nor could they be induced to show themselves, although their tame companions were feeding and running about, quite contented. After two weeks, when he thought them somewhat accustomed to their surroundings, he let the whole brood go down to the shore just below his house. The moment they were free the wild birds scurried away into the water-grass out of sight, and no amount of anxious quacking on the part of the mother duck could bring them back into captivity. He never saw them again. This habit which the young birds have of skulking away out of sight is a measure of protection that they constantly practise. A brood may be seen on almost any secluded pond or lake in New England, where the birds come in the early spring to build their nests. Watching from some hidden spot on the shore, one sees them diving and swimming about, hunting for food everywhere in the greatest freedom. The next moment they scatter and disappear so suddenly that one almost rubs his eyes to make sure that the birds are really gone. If he is near enough, which is not likely unless he is very careful, he has heard a low cluck from the old bird, which now sits with neck standing straight up out of the water, so still as to be easily mistaken for one of the old stumps or bogs among which they are feeding. She is looking about to see if the ducklings are all well hidden. After a moment there is another cluck, very much like the other, and downy little fellows come bobbing out of the grass, or from close beside the stumps where you looked a moment before and saw nothing. This is repeated at frequent intervals, the object being, apparently, to accustom the young birds to hide instantly when danger approaches. So watchful is the old bird, however, that trouble rarely threatens without her knowledge. When the young are well hidden at the first sign of the enemy, she takes wing and leaves them, returning when danger is over to find them still crouching motionless in their hiding places. When surprised she acts like other game birds,--flutters along with a great splashing, trailing one wing as if wounded, till she has led you away from the young, or occupied your attention long enough for them to be safely hidden; then she takes wing and leaves you. The habit of hiding becomes so fixed with the young birds that they trust to it long after the wings have grown and they are able to escape by flight. Sometimes in the early autumn I have run the bow of my canoe almost over a full-grown bird, lying hidden in a clump of grass, before he sprang into the air and away. A month later, in the same place, the canoe could hardly approach within a quarter of a mile without his taking alarm. Once they have learned to trust their wings, they give up hiding for swift flight. But they never forget their early training, and when wounded hide with a cunning that is remarkable. Unless one has a good dog it is almost useless to look for a wounded duck, if there is any cover to be reached. Hiding under a bank, crawling into a muskrat hole, worming a way under a bunch of dead grass or pile of leaves, swimming around and around a clump of bushes just out of sight of his pursuer, diving and coming up behind a tuft of grass,--these are some of the ways by which I have known a black duck try to escape. Twice I have heard from old hunters of their finding a bird clinging to a bunch of grass under water, though I have never seen it. Once, from a blind, I saw a black duck swim ashore and disappear into a small clump of berry bushes. Karl, who was with me, ran over to get him, but after a half-hour's search gave it up. Then I tried, and gave it up also. An hour later we saw the bird come out of the very place where we had been searching, and enter the water. Karl ran out, shouting, and the bird hid in the bushes again. Again we hunted the clump over and over, but no duck could be seen. We were turning away a second time when Karl cried: "Look!"--and there, in plain sight, by the very white stone where I had seen him disappear, was the duck, or rather the red leg of a duck, sticking out of a tangle of black roots. With the first sharp frost that threatens to ice over the ponds in which they have passed the summer, the inland birds betake themselves to the seacoast, where there is more or less migration all winter. The great body of ducks moves slowly southward as the winter grows severe; but if food is plenty they winter all along the coast. It is then that they may be studied to the best advantage. During the daytime they are stowed away in quiet little ponds and hiding places, or resting in large flocks on the shoals well out of reach of land and danger. When possible, they choose the former, because it gives them an abundance of fresh water, which is a daily necessity; and because, unlike the coots which are often found in great numbers on the same shoals, they dislike tossing about on the waves for any length of time. But late in the autumn they desert the ponds and are seldom seen there again until spring, even though the ponds are open. They are very shy about being frozen in or getting ice on their feathers, and prefer to get their fresh water at the mouths of creeks and springs. With all their caution,--and they are very good weather prophets, knowing the times of tides and the approach of storms, as well as the days when fresh water freezes,--they sometimes get caught. Once I found a flock of five in great distress, frozen into the thin ice while sleeping, no doubt, with heads tucked under their wings. At another time I found a single bird floundering about with a big lump of ice and mud attached to his tail. He had probably found the insects plentiful in some bit of soft mud at low tide, and stayed there too long with the thermometer at zero. Night is their feeding time; on the seacoast they fly in to the feeding grounds just at dusk. Fog bewilders them, and no bird likes to fly in rain, because it makes the feathers heavy; so on foggy or rainy afternoons they come in early, or not at all. The favorite feeding ground is a salt marsh, with springs and creeks of brackish water. Seeds, roots, tender grasses, and snails and insects in the mud left by the low tide are their usual winter food. When these grow scarce they betake themselves to the mussel beds with the coots; their flesh in consequence becomes strong and fishy. When the first birds come in to the feeding grounds before dark, they do it with the greatest caution, examining not only the little pond or creek, but the whole neighborhood before lighting. The birds that follow trust to the inspection of these first comers, and generally fly straight in. For this reason it is well for one who attempts to see them at this time to have live decoys and, if possible, to have his blind built several days in advance, in order that the birds which may have been feeding in the place shall see no unusual object when they come in. If the blind be newly built, only the stranger birds will fly straight in to his decoys. Those that have been there before will either turn away in alarm, or else examine the blind very cautiously on all sides. If you know now how to wait and sit perfectly still, the birds will at last fly directly over the stand to look in. That is your only chance; and you must take it quickly if you expect to eat duck for dinner. By moonlight one may sit on the bank in plain sight of his decoys, and watch the wild birds as long as he will. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still. But this is unsatisfactory; you can never see just what they are doing. Once I had thirty or forty close about me in this way. A sudden turn of my head, when a bat struck my cheek, sent them all off in a panic to the open ocean. A curious thing frequently noticed about these birds as they come in at night is their power to make their wings noisy or almost silent at will. Sometimes the rustle is so slight that, unless the air is perfectly still, it is scarcely audible; at other times it is a strong _wish-wish_ that can be heard two hundred yards away. The only theory I can suggest is that it is done as a kind of signal. In the daytime and on bright evenings one seldom hears it; on dark nights it is very frequent, and is always answered by the quacking of birds already on the feeding grounds, probably to guide the incomers. How they do it is uncertain; it is probably in some such way as the night-hawk makes his curious booming sound,--not by means of his open mouth, as is generally supposed, but by slightly turning the wing quills so that the air sets them vibrating. One can test this, if he will, by blowing on any stiff feather. On stormy days the birds, instead of resting on the shoals, light near some lonely part of the beach and, after watching carefully for an hour or two, to be sure that no danger is near, swim ashore and collect in great bunches in some sheltered spot under a bank. It is indeed a tempting sight to see perhaps a hundred of the splendid birds gathered close together on the shore, the greater part with heads tucked under their wings, fast asleep; but if you are to surprise them, you must turn snake and crawl, and learn patience. Scattered along the beach on either side are single birds or small bunches evidently acting as sentinels. The crows and gulls are flying continually along the tide line after food; and invariably as they pass over one of these bunches of ducks they rise in the air to look around over all the bank. You must be well hidden to escape those bright eyes. The ducks understand crow and gull talk perfectly, and trust largely to these friendly sentinels. The gulls scream and the crows caw all day long, and not a duck takes his head from under his wing; but the instant either crow or gull utters his danger note every duck is in the air and headed straight off shore. The constant watchfulness of black ducks is perhaps the most remarkable thing about them. When feeding at night in some lonely marsh, or hidden away by day deep in the heart of the swamps, they never for a moment seem to lay aside their alertness, nor trust to their hiding places alone for protection. Even when lying fast asleep among the grasses with heads tucked under their wings, there is a nervous vigilance in their very attitudes which suggests a sense of danger. Generally one has to content himself with studying them through a glass; but once I had a very good opportunity of watching them close at hand, of outwitting them, as it were, at their own game of hide-and-seek. It was in a grassy little pond, shut in by high hills, on the open moors of Nantucket. The pond was in the middle of a plain, perhaps a hundred yards from the nearest hill. No tree or rock or bush offered any concealment to an enemy; the ducks could sleep there as sure of detecting the approach of danger as if on the open ocean. One autumn day I passed the place and, looking cautiously over the top of a hill, saw a single black duck swim out of the water-grass at the edge of the pond. The fresh breeze in my face induced me to try to creep down close to the edge of the pond, to see if it were possible to surprise birds there, should I find any on my next hunting trip. Just below me, at the foot of the hill, was a swampy run leading toward the pond, with grass nearly a foot high growing along its edge. I must reach that if possible. After a few minutes of watching, the duck went into the grass again, and I started to creep down the hill, keeping my eyes intently on the pond. Halfway down, another duck appeared, and I dropped flat on the hillside in plain sight. Of course the duck noticed the unusual object. There was a commotion in the grass; heads came up here and there. The next moment, to my great astonishment, fully fifty black ducks were swimming about in the greatest uneasiness. I lay very still and watched. Five minutes passed; then quite suddenly all motion ceased in the pond; every duck sat with neck standing straight up from the water, looking directly at me. So still were they that one could easily have mistaken them for stumps or peat bogs. After a few minutes of this kind of watching they seemed satisfied, and glided back, a few at a time, into the grass. When all were gone I rolled down the hill and gained the run, getting soaking wet as I splashed into it. Then it was easier to advance without being discovered; for whenever a duck came out to look round--which happened almost every minute at first--I could drop into the grass and be out of sight. In half an hour I had gained the edge of a low bank, well covered by coarse water-grass. Carefully pushing this aside, I looked through, and almost held my breath, they were so near. Just below me, within six feet, was a big drake, with head drawn down so close to his body that I wondered what he had done with his neck. His eyes were closed; he was fast asleep. In front of him were eight or ten more ducks close together, all with heads under their wings. Scattered about in the grass everywhere were small groups, sleeping, or pluming their glossy dark feathers. Beside the pleasure of watching them, the first black ducks that I had ever seen unconscious, there was the satisfaction of thinking how completely they had been outwitted at their own game of sharp watching. How they would have jumped had they only known what was lying there in the grass so near their hiding place! At first, every time I saw a pair of little black eyes wink, or a head come from under a wing, I felt myself shrinking close together in the thought that I was discovered; but that wore off after a time, when I found that the eyes winked rather sleepily, and the necks were taken out just to stretch them, much as one would take a comfortable yawn. [Illustration] Once I was caught squarely, but the grass and my being so near saved me. I had raised my head and lay with chin in my hands, deeply interested in watching a young duck making a most elaborate toilet, when from the other side an old bird shot suddenly into the open water and saw me as I dropped out of sight. There was a low, sharp quack which brought every duck out of his hiding, wide awake on the instant. At first they all bunched together at the farther side, looking straight at the bank where I lay. Probably they saw my feet, which were outside the covert as I lay full length. Then they drew gradually nearer till they were again within the fringe of water-grass. Some of them sat quite up on their tails by a vigorous use of their wings, and stretched their necks to look over the low bank. Just keeping still saved me. In five minutes they were quiet again; even the young duck seemed to have forgotten her vanity and gone to sleep with the others. Two or three hours I lay thus and watched them through the grass, spying very rudely, no doubt, into the seclusion of their home life. As the long shadow of the western hill stretched across the pool till it darkened the eastern bank, the ducks awoke one by one from their nap, and began to stir about in preparation for departure. Soon they were collected at the center of the open water, where they sat for a moment very still, heads up, and ready. If there was any signal given I did not hear it. At the same moment each pair of wings struck the water with a sharp splash, and they shot straight up in that remarkable way of theirs, as if thrown by a strong spring. An instant they seemed to hang motionless in the air high above the water, then they turned and disappeared swiftly over the eastern hill toward the marshes. V. AN ORIOLE'S NEST. [Illustration] How suggestive it is, swinging there through sunlight and shadow from the long drooping tips of the old elm boughs! And what a delightful cradle for the young orioles, swayed all day long by every breath of the summer breeze, peeping through chinks as the world sweeps by, watching with bright eyes the boy below who looks up in vain, or the mountain of hay that brushes them in passing, and whistling cheerily, blow high or low, with never a fear of falling! The mother bird must feel very comfortable about it as she goes off caterpillar hunting, for no bird enemy can trouble the little ones while she is gone. The black snake, that horror of all low-nesting birds, will never climb so high. The red squirrel--little wretch that he is, to eat young birds when he has still a bushel of corn and nuts in his old wall--cannot find a footing on those delicate branches. Neither can the crow find a resting place from which to steal the young; and the hawk's legs are not long enough to reach down and grasp them, should he perchance venture near the house and hover an instant over the nest. Besides all this, the oriole is a neighborly little body; and that helps her. Though the young are kept from harm anywhere by the cunning instinct which builds a hanging nest, she still prefers to build near the house, where hawks and crows and owls rarely come. She knows her friends and takes advantage of their protection, returning year after year to the same old elm, and, like a thrifty little housewife, carefully saving and sorting the good threads of her storm-wrecked old house to be used in building the new. Of late years, however, it has seemed to me that the pretty nests on the secluded streets of New England towns are growing scarcer. The orioles are peace-loving birds, and dislike the society of those noisy, pugnacious little rascals, the English sparrows, which have of late taken possession of our streets. Often now I find the nests far away from any house, on lonely roads where a few years ago they were rarely seen. Sometimes also a solitary farmhouse, too far from the town to be much visited by sparrows, has two or three nests swinging about it in its old elms, where formerly there was but one. It is an interesting evidence of the bird's keen instinct that where nests are built on lonely roads and away from houses they are noticeably deeper, and so better protected from bird enemies. The same thing is sometimes noticed of nests built in maple or apple trees, which are without the protection of drooping branches, upon which birds of prey can find no footing. Some wise birds secure the same protection by simply contracting the neck of the nest, instead of building a deep one. Young birds building their first nests seem afraid to trust in the strength of their own weaving. Their nests are invariably shallow, and so suffer most from birds of prey. In the choice of building material the birds are very careful. They know well that no branch supports the nest from beneath; that the safety of the young orioles depends on good, strong material well woven together. In some wise way they seem to know at a glance whether a thread is strong enough to be trusted; but sometimes, in selecting the first threads that are to bear the whole weight of the nest, they are unwilling to trust to appearances. At such times a pair of birds may be seen holding a little tug-of-war, with feet braced, shaking and pulling the thread like a pair of terriers, till it is well tested. It is in gathering and testing the materials for a nest that the orioles display no little ingenuity. One day, a few years ago, I was lying under some shrubs, watching a pair of the birds that were building close to the house. It was a typical nest-making day, the sun pouring his bright rays through delicate green leaves and a glory of white apple blossoms, the air filled with warmth and fragrance, birds and bees busy everywhere. Orioles seem always happy; to-day they quite overflowed in the midst of all the brightness, though materials were scarce and they must needs be diligent. The female was very industrious, never returning to the nest without some contribution, while the male frolicked about the trees in his brilliant orange and black, whistling his warm rich notes, and seeming like a dash of southern sunshine amidst the blossoms. Sometimes he stopped in his frolic to find a bit of string, over which he raised an impromptu _jubilate_, or to fly with his mate to the nest, uttering that soft rich twitter of his in a mixture of blarney and congratulation whenever she found some particularly choice material. But his chief part seemed to be to furnish the celebration, while she took care of the nest-making. Out in front of me, under the lee of the old wall whither some line-stripping gale had blown it, was a torn fragment of cloth with loose threads showing everywhere. I was wondering why the birds did not utilize it, when the male, in one of his lively flights, discovered it and flew down. First he hopped all around it; next he tried some threads; but, as the cloth was lying loose on the grass, the whole piece came whenever he pulled. For a few moments he worked diligently, trying a pull on each side in succession. Once he tumbled end over end in a comical scramble, as the fragment caught on a grass stub but gave way when he had braced himself and was pulling hardest. Quite abruptly he flew off, and I thought he had given up the attempt. In a minute he was back with his mate, thinking, no doubt, that she, as a capable little manager, would know all about such things. If birds do not talk, they have at least some very ingenious ways of letting one another know what they think, which amounts to the same thing. The two worked together for some minutes, getting an occasional thread, but not enough to pay for the labor. The trouble was that both pulled together on the same side; and so they merely dragged the bit of cloth all over the lawn, instead of pulling out the threads they wanted. Once they unraveled a long thread by pulling at right angles, but the next moment they were together on the same side again. The male seemed to do, not as he was told, but exactly what he saw his mate do. Whenever she pulled at a thread, he hopped around, as close to her as he could get, and pulled too. [Illustration:] Twice they had given up the attempt, only to return after hunting diligently elsewhere. Good material was scarce that season. I was wondering how long their patience would last, when the female suddenly seized the cloth by a corner and flew along close to the ground, dragging it after her, chirping loudly the while. She disappeared into a crab-apple tree in a corner of the garden, whither the male followed her a moment later. Curious as to what they were doing, yet fearing to disturb them, I waited where I was till I saw both birds fly to the nest, each with some long threads. This was repeated; and then curiosity got the better of consideration. While the orioles were weaving the last threads into their nest, I ran round the house, crept a long way behind the old wall, and so to a safe hiding place near the crab-apple. The orioles had solved their problem; the bit of cloth was fastened there securely among the thorns. Soon the birds came back and, seizing some threads by the ends, raveled them out without difficulty. It was the work of but a moment to gather as much material as they could use at one weaving. For an hour or more I watched them working industriously between the crab-apple and the old elm, where the nest was growing rapidly to a beautiful depth. Several times the bit of cloth slipped from the thorns as the birds pulled upon it; but as often as it did they carried it back and fastened it more securely, till at last it grew so snarled that they could get no more long threads, when they left it for good. That same day I carried out some bright-colored bits of worsted and ribbon, and scattered them on the grass. The birds soon found them and used them in completing their nest. For a while a gayer little dwelling was never seen in a tree. The bright bits of color in the soft gray of the walls gave the nest always a holiday appearance, in good keeping with the high spirits of the orioles. But by the time the young had chipped the shell, and the joyousness of nest-building had given place to the constant duties of filling hungry little mouths, the rains and the sun of summer had bleached the bright colors to a uniform sober gray. That was a happy family from beginning to end. No accident ever befell it; no enemy disturbed its peace. And when the young birds had flown away to the South, I took down the nest which I had helped to build, and hung it in my study as a souvenir of my bright little neighbors. VI. THE BUILDERS. [Illustration] A curious bit of wild life came to me at dusk one day in the wilderness. It was midwinter, and the snow lay deep. I was sitting alone on a fallen tree, waiting for the moon to rise so that I could follow the faint snowshoe track across a barren, three miles, then through a mile of forest to another trail that led to camp. I had followed a caribou too far that day, and this was the result--feeling along my own track by moonlight, with the thermometer sinking rapidly to the twenty-below-zero point. There is scarcely any twilight in the woods; in ten minutes it would be quite dark; and I was wishing that I had blankets and an axe, so that I could camp where I was, when a big gray shadow came stealing towards me through the trees. It was a Canada lynx. My fingers gripped the rifle hard, and the right mitten seemed to slip off of itself as I caught the glare of his fierce yellow eyes. But the eyes were not looking at me at all. Indeed, he had not noticed me. He was stealing along, crouched low in the snow, his ears back, his stub tail twitching nervously, his whole attention fixed tensely on something beyond me out on the barren. I wanted his beautiful skin; but I wanted more to find out what he was after; so I kept still and watched. At the edge of the barren he crouched under a dwarf spruce, settled himself deeper in the snow by a wriggle or two till his feet were well under him and his balance perfect, and the red fire blazed in his eyes and his big muscles quivered. Then he hurled himself forward--one, two, a dozen mighty bounds through flying snow, and he landed with a screech on the dome of a beaver house. There he jumped about, shaking an imaginary beaver like a fury, and gave another screech that made one's spine tingle. That over, he stood very still, looking off over the beaver roofs that dotted the shore of a little pond there. The blaze died out of his eyes; a different look crept into them. He put his nose down to a tiny hole in the mound, the beavers' ventilator, and took a long sniff, while his whole body seemed to distend with the warm rich odor that poured up into his hungry nostrils. Then he rolled his head sadly, and went away. Now all that was pure acting. A lynx likes beaver meat better than anything else; and this fellow had caught some of the colony, no doubt, in the well-fed autumn days, as they worked on their dam and houses. Sharp hunger made him remember them as he came through the wood on his nightly hunt after hares. He knew well that the beavers were safe; that months of intense cold had made their two-foot mud walls like granite. But he came, nevertheless, just to pretend he had caught one, and to remember how good his last full meal smelled when he ate it in October. It was all so boylike, so unexpected there in the heart of the wilderness, that I quite forgot that I wanted the lynx's skin. I was hungry too, and went out for a sniff at the ventilator; and it smelled good. I remembered the time once when I had eaten beaver, and was glad to get it. I walked about among the houses. On every dome there were lynx tracks, old and new, and the prints of a blunt nose in the snow. Evidently he came often to dine on the smell of good dinners. I looked the way he had gone, and began to be sorry for him. But there were the beavers, safe and warm and fearless within two feet of me, listening undoubtedly to the strange steps without. And that was good; for they are the most interesting creatures in all the wilderness. Most of us know the beaver chiefly in a simile. "Working like a beaver," or "busy as a beaver," is one of those proverbial expressions that people accept without comment or curiosity. It is about one-third true, which is a generous proportion of truth for a proverb. In winter, for five long months at least, he does nothing but sleep and eat and keep warm. "Lazy as a beaver" is then a good figure. And summer time--ah! that's just one long holiday, and the beavers are jolly as grigs, with never a thought of work from morning till night. When the snow is gone, and the streams are clear, and the twitter of bird songs meets the beaver's ear as he rises from the dark passage under water that leads to his house, then he forgets all settled habits and joins in the general heyday of nature. The well built house that sheltered him from storm and cold, and defied even the wolverine to dig its owner out, is deserted for any otter's den or chance hole in the bank where he may sleep away the sunlight in peace. The great dam, upon which he toiled so many nights, is left to the mercy of the freshet or the canoeman's axe; and no plash of falling water through a break--that sound which in autumn or winter brings the beaver like a flash--will trouble his wise little head for a moment. All the long summer he belongs to the tribe of Ishmael, wandering through lakes and streams wherever fancy leads him. It is as if he were bound to see the world after being cooped up in his narrow quarters all winter. Even the strong family ties, one of the most characteristic and interesting things in beaver life, are for the time loosened. Every family group when it breaks up housekeeping in the spring represents five generations. First, there are the two old beavers, heads of the family and absolute rulers, who first engineered the big dam and houses, and have directed repairs for nobody knows how long. Next in importance are the baby beavers, no bigger than musquashes, with fur like silk velvet, and eyes always wide open at the wonders of the first season out; then the one-and two-year-olds, frisky as boys let loose from school, always in mischief and having to be looked after, and occasionally nipped; then the three-year-olds, who presently leave the group and go their separate happy ways in search of mates. So the long days go by in a kind of careless summer excursion; and when one sometimes finds their camping ground in his own summer roving through the wilderness, he looks upon it with curious sympathy. Fellow campers are they, pitching their tents by sunny lakes and alder-fringed, trout-haunted brooks, always close to Nature's heart, and loving the wild, free life much as he does himself. But when the days grow short and chill, and the twitter of warblers gives place to the _honk_ of passing geese, and wild ducks gather in the lakes, then the heart of the beaver goes back to his home; and presently he follows his heart. September finds them gathered about the old dam again, the older heads filled with plans of repair and new houses and winter food and many other things. The grown-up males have brought their mates back to the old home; the females have found their places in other family groups. It is then that the beaver begins to be busy. His first concern is for a stout dam across the stream that will give him a good-sized pond and plenty of deep water. To understand this, one must remember that the beaver intends to shut himself in a kind of prison all winter. He knows well that he is not safe on land a moment after the snow falls; that some prowling lucivee or wolverine would find his tracks and follow him, and that his escape to water would be cut off by thick ice. So he plans a big claw-proof house with no entrance save a tunnel in the middle, which leads through the bank to the bottom of his artificial pond. Once this is frozen over, he cannot get out till the spring sun sets him free. But he likes a big pond, that he may exercise a bit under water when he comes down for his dinner; and a deep pond, that he may feel sure the hardest winter will never freeze down to his doorway and shut him in. Still more important, the beaver's food is stored on the bottom; and it would never do to trust it to shallow water, else some severe winter it would get frozen into the ice, and the beavers starve in their prison. Ten to fifteen feet usually satisfies their instinct for safety; but to get that depth of water, especially on shallow streams, requires a huge dam and an enormous amount of work, to say nothing of planning. Beaver dams are solid structures always, built up of logs, brush, stones, and driftwood, well knit together by alder poles. One summer, in canoeing a wild, unknown stream, I met fourteen dams within a space of five miles. Through two of these my Indian and I broke a passage with our axes; the others were so solid that it was easier to unload our canoe and make a portage than to break through. Dams are found close together like that when a beaver colony has occupied a stream for years unmolested. The food-wood above the first dam being cut off, they move down stream; for the beaver always cuts on the banks above his dam, and lets the current work for him in transportation. Sometimes, when the banks are such that a pond cannot be made, three or four dams will be built close together, the back-water of one reaching up to the one above, like a series of locks on a canal. This is to keep the colony together, and yet give room for play and storage. There is the greatest difference of opinion as to the intelligence displayed by the beavers in choosing a site for their dam, one observer claiming skill, ingenuity, even reason for the beavers; another claiming a mere instinctive haphazard piling together of materials anywhere in the stream. I have seen perhaps a hundred different dams in the wilderness, nearly all of which were well placed. Occasionally I have found one that looked like a stupid piece of work--two or three hundred feet of alder brush and gravel across the widest part of a stream, when, by building just above or below, a dam one-fourth the length might have given them better water. This must be said, however, for the builders, that perhaps they found a better soil for digging their tunnels, or a more convenient spot for their houses near their own dam; or that they knew what they wanted better than their critic did. I think undoubtedly the young beavers often make mistakes, but I think also, from studying a good many dams, that they profit by disaster, and build better; and that on the whole their mistakes are not proportionally greater than those of human builders. Sometimes a dam proves a very white elephant on their hands. The site is not well chosen, or the stream difficult, and the restrained water pours round the ends of their dam, cutting them away. They build the dam longer at once; but again the water pours round on its work of destruction. So they keep on building, an interminable structure, till the frosts come, and they must cut their wood and tumble their houses together in a desperate hurry to be ready when the ice closes over them. But on alder streams, where the current is sluggish and the soil soft, one sometimes finds a wonderfully ingenious device for remedying the above difficulty. When the dam is built, and the water deep enough for safety, the beavers dig a canal around one end of the dam to carry off the surplus water. I know of nothing in all the woods and fields that brings one closer in thought and sympathy to the little wild folk than to come across one of these canals, the water pouring safely through it past the beaver's handiwork, the dam stretching straight and solid across the stream, and the domed houses rising beyond. Once I found where the beavers had utilized man's work. A huge log dam had been built on a wilderness stream to secure a head of water for driving logs from the lumber woods. When the pines and fourteen-inch spruce were all gone, the works were abandoned, and the dam left--with the gates open, of course. A pair of young beavers, prospecting for a winter home, found the place and were suited exactly. They rolled a sunken log across the gates for a foundation, filled them up with alder bushes and stones, and the work was done. When I found the place they had a pond a mile wide to play in. Their house was in a beautiful spot, under a big hemlock; and their doorway slanted off into twenty feet of water. That site was certainly well chosen. Another dam that I found one winter when caribou-hunting was wonderfully well placed. No engineer could have chosen better. It was made by the same colony the lynx was after, and just below where he went through his pantomime for my benefit; his tracks were there too. The barrens of which I spoke are treeless plains in the northern forest, the beds of ancient shallow lakes. The beavers found one with a stream running through it; followed the stream down to the foot of the barren, where two wooded points came out from either side and almost met. Here was formerly the outlet; and here the beavers built their dam, and so made the old lake over again. It must be a wonderfully fine place in summer--two or three thousand acres of playground, full of cranberries and luscious roots. In winter it is too shallow to be of much use, save for a few acres about the beavers' doorways. There are three ways of dam-building in general use among the beavers. The first is for use on sluggish, alder-fringed streams, where they can build up from the bottom. Two or three sunken logs form the foundation, which is from three to five feet broad. Sticks, driftwood, and stout poles, which the beavers cut on the banks, are piled on this and weighted with stones and mud. The stones are rolled in from the bank or moved considerable distances under water. The mud is carried in the beaver's paws, which he holds up against his chin so as to carry a big handful without spilling. Beavers love such streams, with their alder shade and sweet grasses and fringe of wild meadow, better than all other places. And, by the way, most of the natural meadows and half the ponds of New England were made by beavers. If you go to the foot of any little meadow in the woods and dig at the lower end, where the stream goes out, you will find, sometimes ten feet under the surface, the remains of the first dam that formed the meadow when the water flowed back and killed the trees. The second kind of dam is for swift streams. Stout, ten-foot brush is the chief material. The brush is floated down to the spot selected; the tops are weighted down with stones, and the butts left free, pointing down stream. Such dams must be built out from the sides, of course. They are generally arched, the convex side being up stream so as to make a stronger structure. When the arch closes in the middle, the lower side of the dam is banked heavily with earth and stones. That is shrewd policy on the beaver's part; for once the arch is closed by brush, the current can no longer sweep away the earth and stones used for the embankment. The third kind is the strongest and easiest to build. It is for places where big trees lean out over the stream. Three or four beavers gather about a tree and begin to cut, sitting up on their broad tails. One stands above them on the bank, apparently directing the work. In a short time the tree is nearly cut through from the under side. Then the beaver above begins to cut down carefully. With the first warning crack he jumps aside, and the tree falls straight across where it is wanted. All the beavers then disappear and begin cutting the branches that rest on the bottom. Slowly the tree settles till its trunk is at the right height to make the top of the dam. The upper branches are then trimmed close to the trunk, and are woven with alders among the long stubs sticking down from the trunk into the river bed. Stones, mud, and brush are used liberally to fill the chinks, and in a remarkably short time the dam is complete. When you meet such a dam on the stream you are canoeing don't attempt to break through. You will find it shorter by several hours to unload and make a carry. All the beaver's cutting is done by chisel-edged front teeth. There are two of these in each jaw, extending a good inch and a half outside the gums, and meeting at a sharp bevel. The inner sides of the teeth are softer and wear away faster than the outer, so that the bevel remains the same; and the action of the upper and lower teeth over each other keeps them always sharp. They grow so rapidly that a beaver must be constantly wood cutting to keep them worn down to comfortable size. Often on wild streams you find a stick floating down to meet you showing a fresh cut. You grab it, of course, and say: "Somebody is camped above here. That stick has just been cut with a sharp knife." But look closer; see that faint ridge the whole length of the cut, as if the knife had a tiny gap in its edge. That is where the beaver's two upper teeth meet, and the edge is not quite perfect. He cut that stick, thicker than a man's thumb, at a single bite. To cut an alder having the diameter of a teacup is the work of a minute for the same tools; and a towering birch tree falls in a remarkably short time when attacked by three or four beavers. Around the stump of such a tree you find a pile of two-inch chips, thick, white, clean cut, and arched to the curve of the beaver's teeth. Judge the workman by his chips, and this is a good workman. When the dam is built the beaver cuts his winter food-wood. A colony of the creatures will often fell a whole grove of young birch or poplar on the bank above the dam. The branches with the best bark are then cut into short lengths, which are rolled down the bank and floated to the pool at the dam. Considerable discussion has taken place as to how the beaver sinks his wood--for of course he must sink it, else it would freeze into the ice and be useless. One theory is that the beavers suck the air from each stick. Two witnesses declare to me they have seen them doing it; and in a natural history book of my childhood there is a picture of a beaver with the end of a three-foot stick in his mouth, sucking the air out. Just as if the beavers didn't know better, even if the absurd thing were possible! The simplest way is to cut the wood early and leave it in the water a while, when it sinks of itself; for green birch and poplar are almost as heavy as water. They soon get waterlogged and go to the bottom. It is almost impossible for lumbermen to drive spool wood (birch) for this reason. If the nights grow suddenly cold before the wood sinks, the beavers take it down to the bottom and press it slightly into the mud; or else they push sticks under those that float against the dam, and more under these; and so on till the stream is full to the bottom, the weight of those above keeping the others down. Much of the wood is lost in this way by being frozen into the ice; but the beaver knows that, and cuts plenty. When a beaver is hungry in winter he comes down under the ice, selects a stick, carries it up into his house, and eats the bark. Then he carries the peeled stick back under the ice and puts it aside out of the way. Once, in winter, it occurred to me that soaking spoiled the flavor of bark, and that the beavers might like a fresh bite. So I cut a hole in the ice on the pool above their dam. Of course the chopping scared the beavers; it was vain to experiment that day. I spread a blanket and some thick boughs over the hole to keep it from freezing over too thickly, and went away. Next day I pushed the end of a freshly cut birch pole down among the beavers' store, lay down with my face to the hole after carefully cutting out the thin ice, drew a big blanket round my head and the projecting end of the pole to shut out the light, and watched. For a while it was all dark as a pocket; then I began to see things dimly. Presently a darker shadow shot along the bottom and grabbed the pole. It was a beaver, with a twenty dollar coat on. He tugged; I held on tight--which surprised him so that he went back into his house to catch breath. But the taste of fresh bark was in his mouth, and soon he was back with another beaver. Both took hold this time and pulled together. No use! They began to swim round, examining the queer pole on every side. "What kind of a stick are you, anyway?" one was thinking. "You didn't grow here, because I would have found you long ago." "And you're not frozen into the ice," said the other, "because you wriggle." Then they both took hold again, and I began to haul up carefully. I wanted to see them nearer. That surprised them immensely; but I think they would have held on only for an accident. The blanket slipped away; a stream of light shot in; there were two great whirls in the water; and that was the end of the experiment. They did not come back, though I waited till I was almost frozen. But I cut some fresh birch and pushed it under the ice to pay for my share in the entertainment. The beaver's house is generally the last thing attended to. He likes to build this when the nights grow cold enough to freeze his mortar soon after it is laid. Two or three tunnels are dug from the bottom of the beaver pond up through the bank, coming to the surface together at the point where the center of the house is to be. Around this he lays solid foundations of log and stone in a circle from six to fifteen feet in diameter, according to the number of beavers to occupy the house. On these foundations he rears a thick mass of sticks and grass, which are held together by plenty of mud. The top is roofed by stout sticks arranged as in an Indian wigwam, and the whole domed over with grass, stones, sticks, and mud. Once this is solidly frozen, the beaver sleeps in peace; his house is burglar proof. If on a lake shore, where the rise of water is never great, the beaver's house is four or five feet high. On streams subject to freshets they may be two or three times that height. As in the case of the musquash (or muskrat), a strange instinct guides the beaver as to the height of his dwelling. He builds high or low, according to his expectations of high or low water; and he is rarely drowned out of his dry nest. Sometimes two or three families unite to build a single large house, but always in such cases each family has its separate apartment. When a house is dug open it is evident from the different impressions that each member of the family has his own bed, which he always occupies. Beavers are exemplary in their neatness; the house after five months' use is as neat as when first made. All their building is primarily a matter of instinct, for a tame beaver builds miniature dams and houses on the floor of his cage. Still it is not an uncontrollable instinct like that of most birds; nor blind, like that of rats and squirrels at times. I have found beaver houses on lake shores where no dam was built, simply because the water was deep enough, and none was needed. In vacation time the young beavers build for fun, just as boys build a dam wherever they can find running water. I am persuaded also (and this may explain some of the dams that seem stupidly placed) that at times the old beavers set the young to work in summer, in order that they may know how to build when it becomes necessary. This is a hard theory to prove, for the beavers work by night, preferably on dark, rainy nights, when they are safest on land to gather materials. But while building is instinctive, skilful building is the result of practice and experience. And some of the beaver dams show wonderful skill. [Illustration] There is one beaver that never builds, that never troubles himself about house, or dam, or winter's store. I am not sure whether we ought to call him the genius or the lazy man of the family. The bank beaver is a solitary old bachelor living in a den, like a mink, in the bank of a stream. He does not build a house, because a den under a cedar's roots is as safe and warm. He never builds a dam, because there are deep places in the river where the current is too swift to freeze. He finds tender twigs much juicier, even in winter, than stale bark stored under water. As for his telltale tracks in the snow, his wits must guard him against enemies; and there is the open stretch of river to flee to. There are two theories among Indians and trappers to account for the bank beaver's eccentricities. The first is that he has failed to find a mate and leaves the colony, or is driven out, to lead a lonely bachelor life. His conduct during the mating season certainly favors this theory, for never was anybody more diligent in his search for a wife than he. Up and down the streams and alder brooks of a whole wild countryside he wanders without rest, stopping here and there on a grassy point to gather a little handful of mud, like a child's mud pie, all patted smooth, in the midst of which is a little strong smelling musk. When you find that sign, in a circle of carefully trimmed grass under the alders, you know that there is a young beaver on that stream looking for a wife. And when the young beaver finds his pie opened and closed again, he knows that there is a mate there somewhere waiting for him. But the poor bank beaver never finds his mate, and the next winter must go back to his solitary den. He is much more easily caught than other beavers, and the trappers say it is because he is lonely and tired of life. The second theory is that generally held by Indians. They say the bank beaver is lazy and refuses to work with the others; so they drive him out. When beavers are busy they are very busy, and tolerate no loafing. Perhaps he even tries to persuade them that all their work is unnecessary, and so shares the fate of reformers in general. While examining the den of a bank beaver last summer another theory suggested itself. Is not this one of the rare animals in which all the instincts of his kind are lacking? He does not build because he has no impulse to build; he does not know how. So he represents what the beaver was, thousands of years ago, before he learned how to construct his dam and house, reappearing now by some strange freak of heredity, and finding himself wofully out of place and time. The other beavers drive him away because all gregarious animals and birds have a strong fear and dislike of any irregularity in their kind. Even when the peculiarity is slight--a wound, or a deformity--they drive the poor victim from their midst remorselessly. It is a cruel instinct, but part of one of the oldest in creation, the instinct which preserves the species. This explains why the bank beaver never finds a mate; none of the beavers will have anything to do with him. This occasional lack of instinct is not peculiar to the beavers. Now and then a bird is hatched here in the North that has no impulse to migrate. He cries after his departing comrades, but never follows. So he remains and is lost in the storms of winter. There are few creatures in the wilderness more difficult to observe than the beavers, both on account of their extreme shyness and because they work only by night. The best way to get a glimpse of them at work is to make a break in their dam and pull the top from one of their houses some autumn afternoon, at the time of full moon. Just before twilight you must steal back and hide some distance from the dam. Even then the chances are against you, for the beavers are suspicious, keen of ear and nose, and generally refuse to show themselves till after the moon sets or you have gone away. You may have to break their dam half a dozen times, and freeze as often, before you see it repaired. It is a most interesting sight when it comes at last, and well repays the watching. The water is pouring through a five-foot break in the dam; the roof of a house is in ruins. You have rubbed yourself all over with fir boughs, to destroy some of the scent in your clothes, and hidden yourself in the top of a fallen tree. The twilight goes; the moon wheels over the eastern spruces, flooding the river with silver light. Still no sign of life. You are beginning to think of another disappointment; to think your toes cannot stand the cold another minute without stamping, which would spoil everything, when a ripple shoots swiftly across the pool, and a big beaver comes out on the bank. He sits up a moment, looking, listening; then goes to the broken house and sits up again, looking it all over, estimating damages, making plans. There is a commotion in the water; three others join him--you are warm now. Meanwhile three or four more are swimming about the dam, surveying the damage there. One dives to the bottom, but comes up in a moment to report all safe below. Another is tugging at a thick pole just below you. Slowly he tows it out in front, balances a moment and lets it go--_good!_--squarely across the break. Two others are cutting alders above; and here come the bushes floating down. Over at the damaged house two beavers are up on the walls, raising the rafters into place; a third appears to be laying on the outer covering and plastering it with mud. Now and then one sits up straight like a rabbit, listens, stretches his back to get the kinks out, then drops to his work again. It is brighter now; moon and stars are glimmering in the pool. At the dam the sound of falling water grows faint as the break is rapidly closed. The houses loom larger. Over the dome of the one broken, the dark outline of a beaver passes triumphantly. Quick work that. You grow more interested; you stretch your neck to see--_splash_! A beaver gliding past has seen you. As he dives he gives the water a sharp blow with his broad tail, the danger signal of the beavers, and a startling one in the dead stillness. There is a sound as of a stick being plunged end first into the water; a few eddies go running about the pool, breaking up the moon's reflection; then silence again, and the lap of ripples on the shore. You can go home now; you will see nothing more to-night. There's a beaver over under the other bank, in the shadow where you cannot see him, just his eyes and ears above water, watching you. He will not stir; nor will another beaver come out till you go away. As you find your canoe and paddle back to camp, a ripple made by a beaver's nose follows silently in the shadow of the alders. At the bend of the river where you disappear, the ripple halts a while, like a projecting stub in the current, then turns and goes swiftly back. There is another splash; the builders come out again; a dozen ripples are scattering star reflections all over the pool; while the little wood folk pause a moment to look at the new works curiously, then go their ways, shy, silent, industrious, through the wilderness night. VII. CROW-WAYS. [Illustration] The crow is very much of a rascal--that is, if any creature can be called a rascal for following out natural and rascally inclinations. I first came to this conclusion one early morning, several years ago, as I watched an old crow diligently exploring a fringe of bushes that grew along the wall of a deserted pasture. He had eaten a clutch of thrush's eggs, and carried off three young sparrows to feed his own young, before I found out what he was about. Since then I have surprised him often at the same depredations. An old farmer has assured me that he has also caught him tormenting his sheep, lighting on their backs and pulling the wool out by the roots to get fleece for lining his nest. This is a much more serious charge than that of pulling up corn, though the latter makes almost every farmer his enemy. Yet with all his rascality he has many curious and interesting ways. In fact, I hardly know another bird that so well repays a season's study; only one must be very patient, and put up with frequent disappointments if he would learn much of a crow's peculiarities by personal observation. How shy he is! How cunning and quick to learn wisdom! Yet he is very easily fooled; and some experiences that ought to teach him wisdom he seems to forget within an hour. Almost every time I went shooting, in the old barbarian days before I learned better, I used to get one or two crows from a flock that ranged over my hunting ground by simply hiding among the pines and calling like a young crow. If the flock was within hearing, it was astonishing to hear the loud chorus of _haw-haws_, and to see them come rushing over the same grove where a week before they had been fooled in the same way. Sometimes, indeed, they seemed to remember; and when the pseudo young crow began his racket at the bottom of some thick grove they would collect on a distant pine tree and _haw-haw_ in vigorous answer. But curiosity always got the better of them, and they generally compromised by sending over some swift, long-winged old flier, only to see him go tumbling down at the report of a gun; and away they would go, screaming at the top of their voices, and never stopping till they were miles away. Next week they would do exactly the same thing. Crows, more than any other birds, are fond of excitement and great crowds; the slightest unusual object furnishes an occasion for an assembly. A wounded bird will create as much stir in a flock of crows as a railroad accident does in a village. But when some prowling old crow discovers an owl sleeping away the sunlight in the top of a great hemlock, his delight and excitement know no bounds. There is a suppressed frenzy in his very call that every crow in the neighborhood understands. _Come! come! everybody come!_ he seems to be screaming as he circles over the tree-top; and within two minutes there are more crows gathered about that old hemlock than one would believe existed within miles of the place. I counted over seventy one day, immediately about a tree in which one of them had found an owl; and I think there must have been as many more flying about the outskirts that I could not count. At such times one can approach very near with a little caution, and attend, as it were, a crow caucus. Though I have attended a great many, I have never been able to find any real cause for the excitement. Those nearest the owl sit about in the trees cawing vociferously; not a crow is silent. Those on the outskirts are flying rapidly about and making, if possible, more noise than the inner ring. The owl meanwhile sits blinking and staring, out of sight in the green top. Every moment two or three crows leave the ring to fly up close and peep in, and then go screaming back again, hopping about on their perches, cawing at every breath, nodding their heads, striking the branches, and acting for all the world like excited stump speakers. The din grows louder and louder; fresh voices are coming in every minute; and the owl, wondering in some vague way if he is the cause of it all, flies off to some other tree where he can be quiet and go to sleep. Then, with a great rush and clatter, the crows follow, some swift old scout keeping close to the owl and screaming all the way to guide the whole cawing rabble. When the owl stops they gather round again and go through the same performance more excitedly than before. So it continues till the owl finds some hollow tree and goes in out of sight, leaving them to caw themselves tired; or else he finds some dense pine grove, and doubles about here and there, with that shadowy noiseless flight of his, till he has thrown them off the track. Then he flies into the thickest tree he can find, generally outside the grove where the crows are looking, and sitting close up against the trunk blinks his great yellow eyes and listens to the racket that goes sweeping through the grove, peering curiously into every thick pine, searching everywhere for the lost excitement. The crows give him up reluctantly. They circle for a few minutes over the grove, rising and falling with that beautiful, regular motion that seems like the practice drill of all gregarious birds, and generally end by collecting in some tree at a distance and _hawing_ about it for hours, till some new excitement calls them elsewhere. Just why they grow so excited over an owl is an open question. I have never seen them molest him, nor show any tendency other than to stare at him occasionally and make a great noise about it. That they recognize him as a thief and cannibal I have no doubt. But he thieves by night when other birds are abed, and as they practise their own thieving by open daylight, it may be that they are denouncing him as an impostor. Or it may be that the owl in his nightly prowlings sometimes snatches a young crow off the roost. The great horned owl would hardly hesitate to eat an old crow if he could catch him napping; and so they grow excited, as all birds do in the presence of their natural enemies. They make much the same kind of a fuss over a hawk, though the latter easily escapes the annoyance by flying swiftly away, or by circling slowly upward to a height so dizzy that the crows dare not follow. In the early spring I have utilized this habit of the crows in my search for owls' nests. The crows are much more apt to discover its whereabouts than the most careful ornithologist, and they gather about it frequently for a little excitement. Once I utilized the habit for getting a good look at the crows themselves. I carried out an old stuffed owl, and set it up on a pole close against a great pine tree on the edge of a grove. Then I lay down in a thick clump of bushes near by and _cawed_ excitedly. The first messenger from the flock flew straight over without making any discoveries. The second one found the owl, and I had no need for further calling. _Haw! haw!_ he cried deep down in his throat--_here he is! here's the rascal!_ In a moment he had the whole flock there; and for nearly ten minutes they kept coming in from every direction. A more frenzied lot I never saw. The _hawing_ was tremendous, and I hoped to settle at last the real cause and outcome of the excitement, when an old crow flying close over my hiding place caught sight of me looking out through the bushes. How he made himself heard or understood in the din I do not know; but the crow is never too excited to heed a danger note. The next moment the whole flock were streaming away across the woods, giving the scatter-cry at every flap. There is another way in which the crows' love of variety is manifest, though in a much more dignified way. Occasionally a flock may be surprised sitting about in the trees, deeply absorbed in watching a performance--generally operatic--by one of their number. The crow's chief note is the hoarse _haw, haw_ with which everybody is familiar, and which seems capable of expressing everything, from the soft chatter of going to bed in the pine tops to the loud derision with which he detects all ordinary attempts to surprise him. Certain crows, however, have unusual vocal abilities, and at times they seem to use them for the entertainment of the others. Yet I suspect that these vocal gifts are seldom used, or even discovered, until lack of amusement throws them upon their own resources. Certain it is that, whenever a crow makes any unusual sounds, there are always several more about, _hawing_ vigorously, yet seeming to listen attentively. I have caught them at this a score of times. One September afternoon, while walking quietly through the woods, my attention was attracted by an unusual sound coming from an oak grove, a favorite haunt of gray squirrels. The crows were cawing in the same direction; but every few minutes would come a strange cracking sound--_c-r-r-rack-a-rack-rack_, as if some one had a giant nutcracker and were snapping it rapidly. I stole forward through the low woods till I could see perhaps fifty crows perched about in the oaks, all very attentive to something going on below them that I could not see. Not till I had crawled up to the brush fence, on the very edge of the grove, and peeked through did I see the performer. Out on the end of a long delicate branch, a few feet above the ground, a small crow was clinging, swaying up and down like a bobolink on a cardinal flower, balancing himself gracefully by spreading his wings, and every few minutes giving the strange cracking sound, accompanied by a flirt of his wings and tail as the branch swayed upward. At every repetition the crows _hawed_ in applause. I watched them fully ten minutes before they saw me and flew away. Several times since, I have been attracted by unusual sounds, and have surprised a flock of crows which were evidently watching a performance by one of their number. Once it was a deep musical whistle, much like the _too-loo-loo_ of the blue jay (who is the crow's cousin, for all his bright colors), but deeper and fuller, and without the trill that always marks the blue jay's whistle. Once, in some big woods in Maine, it was a hoarse bark, utterly unlike a bird call, which made me slip heavy shells into my gun and creep forward, expecting some strange beast that I had never before met. The same love of variety and excitement leads the crow to investigate any unusual sight or sound that catches his attention. Hide anywhere in the woods, and make any queer sound you will--play a jews'-harp, or pull a devil's fiddle, or just call softly--and first comes a blue jay, all agog to find out all about it. Next a red squirrel steals down and barks just over your head, to make you start if possible. Then, if your eyes are sharp, you will see a crow gliding from thicket to thicket, keeping out of sight as much as possible, but drawing nearer and nearer to investigate the unusual sound. And if he is suspicious or unsatisfied, he will hide and wait patiently for you to come out and show yourself. Not only is he curious about you, and watches you as you go about the woods, but he watches his neighbors as well. When a fox is started you can often trace his course, far ahead of your dogs, by the crows circling over him and calling _rascal, rascal_, whenever he shows himself. He watches the ducks and plover, the deer and bear; he knows where they are, and what they are doing; and he will go far out of his way to warn them, as well as his own kind, at the approach of danger. When birds nest, or foxes den, or beasts fight in the woods, he is there to see it. When other things fail he will even play jokes, as upon one occasion when I saw a young crow hide in a hole in a pine tree, and for two hours keep a whole flock in a frenzy of excitement by his distressed cawing. He would venture out when they were at a distance, peek all about cautiously to see that no one saw him, then set up a heart-rending appeal, only to dodge back out of sight when the flock came rushing in with a clamor that was deafening. Only one of two explanations can account for his action in this case; either he was a young crow who did not appreciate the gravity of crying _wolf, wolf!_ when there was no wolf, or else it was a plain game of hide-and-seek. When the crows at length found him they chased him out of sight, either to chastise him, or, as I am inclined now to think, each one sought to catch him for the privilege of being the next to hide. In fact, whenever one hears a flock of crows _hawing_ away in the woods, he may be sure that some excitement is afoot that will well repay his time and patience to investigate. * * * * * Since the above article was written, some more curious crow-ways have come to light. Here is one which seems to throw light on the question of their playing games. I found it out one afternoon last September, when a vigorous cawing over in the woods induced me to leave the orchard, where I was picking apples, for the more exciting occupation of spying on my dark neighbors. The clamor came from an old deserted pasture, bounded on three sides by pine woods, and on the fourth by half wild fields that straggled away to the dusty road beyond. Once, long ago, there was a farm there; but even the cellars have disappeared, and the crows no longer fear the place. It was an easy task to creep unobserved through the nearest pine grove, and gain a safe hiding place under some junipers on the edge of the old pasture. The cawing meanwhile was intermittent; at times it broke out in a perfect babel, as if every crow were doing his best to outcaw all the others; again there was silence save for an occasional short note, the _all's well_ of the sentinel on guard. The crows are never so busy or so interested that they neglect this precaution. When I reached the junipers, the crows--half a hundred of them--were ranged in the pine tops along one edge of the open. They were quiet enough, save for an occasional scramble for position, evidently waiting for something to happen. Down on my right, on the fourth or open side of the pasture, a solitary old crow was perched in the top of a tall hickory. I might have taken him for a sentry but for a bright object which he held in his beak. It was too far to make out what the object was; but whenever he turned his head it flashed in the sunlight like a bit of glass. As I watched him curiously he launched himself into the air and came speeding down the center of the field, making for the pines at the opposite end. Instantly every crow was on the wing; they shot out from both sides, many that I had not seen before, all cawing like mad. They rushed upon the old fellow from the hickory, and for a few moments it was impossible to make out anything except a whirling, diving rush of black wings. The din meanwhile was deafening. Something bright dropped from the excited flock, and a single crow swooped after it; but I was too much interested in the rush to note what became of him. The clamor ceased abruptly. The crows, after a short practice in rising, falling, and wheeling to command, settled in the pines on both sides of the field, where they had been before. And there in the hickory was another crow with the same bright, flashing thing in his beak. There was a long wait this time, as if for a breathing spell. Then the solitary crow came skimming down the field again without warning. The flock surrounded him on the moment, with the evident intention of hindering his flight as much as possible. They flapped their wings in his face; they zig-zagged in front of him; they attempted to light on his back. In vain he twisted and dodged and dropped like a stone. Wherever he turned he found fluttering wings to oppose his flight. The first object of the game was apparent: he was trying to reach the goal of pines opposite the hickory, and the others were trying to prevent it. Again and again the leader was lost to sight; but whenever the sunlight flashed from the bright thing he carried, he was certain to be found in the very midst of a clamoring crowd. Then the second object was clear: the crows were trying to confuse him and make him drop the talisman. [Illustration] They circled rapidly down the field and back again, near the watcher. Suddenly the bright thing dropped, reaching the ground before it was discovered. Three or four crows swooped upon it, and a lively scrimmage began for its possession. In the midst of the struggle a small crow shot under the contestants, and before they knew what was up he was scurrying away to the hickory with the coveted trinket held as high as he could carry it, as if in triumph at his sharp trick. The flock settled slowly into the pines again with much _hawing_. There was evidently a question whether the play ought to be allowed or not. Everybody had something to say about it; and there was no end of objection. At last it was settled good-naturedly, and they took places to watch till the new leader should give them opportunity for another chase. There was no doubt left in the watcher's mind by this time as to what the crows were doing. They were just playing a game, like so many schoolboys, enjoying to the full the long bright hours of the September afternoon. Did they find the bright object as they crossed the pasture on the way from Farmer B's corn-field, and the game so suggest itself? Or was the game first suggested, and the talisman brought afterwards? Every crow has a secret storehouse, where he hides every bright thing he finds. Sometimes it is a crevice in the rocks under moss and ferns; sometimes the splintered end of a broken branch; sometimes a deserted owl's nest in a hollow tree; often a crotch in a big pine, covered carefully by brown needles; but wherever it is, it is full of bright things--glass, and china, and beads, and tin, and an old spoon, and a silvered buckle--and nobody but the crow himself knows how to find it. Did some crow fetch his best trinket for the occasion, or was this a special thing for games, and kept by the flock where any crow could get it? These were some of the interesting things that were puzzling the watcher when he noticed that the hickory was empty. A flash over against the dark green revealed the leader. There he was, stealing along in the shadow, trying to reach the goal before they saw him. A derisive _haw_ announced his discovery. Then the fun began again, as noisy, as confusing, as thoroughly enjoyable as ever. When the bright object dropped this time, curiosity to get possession of it was stronger than my interest in the game. Besides, the apples were waiting. I jumped up, scattering the crows in wild confusion; but as they streamed away I fancied that there was still more of the excitement of play than of alarm in their flight and clamor. The bright object which the leader carried proved to be the handle of a glass cup or pitcher. A fragment of the vessel itself had broken off with the handle, so that the ring was complete. Altogether it was just the thing for the purpose--bright, and not too heavy, and most convenient for a crow to seize and carry. Once well gripped, it would take a good deal of worrying to make him drop it. Who first was "it," as children say in games? Was it a special privilege of the crow who first found the talisman, or do the crows have some way of counting out for the first leader? There is a school-house down that same old dusty road. Sometimes, when at play there, I used to notice the crows stealing silently from tree to tree in the woods beyond, watching our play, I have no doubt, as I now had watched theirs. Only we have grown older, and forgotten how to play; and they are as much boys as ever. Did they learn their game from watching us at tag, I wonder? And do they know coram, and leave-stocks, and prisoners' base, and bull-in-the-ring as well? One could easily believe their wise little black heads to be capable of any imitation, especially if one had watched them a few times, at work and play, when they had no idea they were being spied upon. VIII. ONE TOUCH OF NATURE. [Illustration] The cheery whistle of a quail recalls to most New England people a vision of breezy upland pastures and a mottled brown bird calling melodiously from the topmost slanting rail of an old sheep-fence. Farmers say he foretells the weather, calling, _More-wet_--_much-more-wet!_ Boys say he only proclaims his name, _Bob White! I'm Bob White!_ But whether he prognosticates or introduces himself, his voice is always a welcome one. Those who know the call listen with pleasure, and speedily come to love the bird that makes it. Bob White has another call, more beautiful than his boyish whistle, which comparatively few have heard. It is a soft liquid yodeling, which the male bird uses to call the scattered flock together. One who walks in the woods at sunset sometimes hears it from a tangle of grapevine and bullbrier. If he has the patience to push his way carefully through the underbrush, he may see the beautiful Bob on a rock or stump, uttering the softest and most musical of whistles. He is telling his flock that here is a nice place he has found, where they can spend the night and be safe from owls and prowling foxes. If the visitor be very patient, and lie still, he will presently hear the pattering of tiny feet on the leaves, and see the brown birds come running in from every direction. Once in a lifetime, perhaps, he may see them gather in a close circle--tails together, heads out, like the spokes of a wheel, and so go to sleep for the night. Their soft whistlings and chirpings at such times form the most delightful sound one ever hears in the woods. This call of the male bird is not difficult to imitate. Hunters who know the birds will occasionally use it to call a scattered covey together, or to locate the male birds, which generally answer the leader's call. I have frequently called a flock of the birds into a thicket at sunset, and caught running glimpses of them as they hurried about, looking for the bugler who called taps. All this occurred to me late one afternoon in the great Zoological Gardens at Antwerp. I was watching a yard of birds--three or four hundred representatives of the pheasant family from all over the earth that were running about among the rocks and artificial copses. Some were almost as wild as if in their native woods, especially the smaller birds in the trees; others had grown tame from being constantly fed by visitors. [Illustration] It was rather confusing to a bird lover, familiar only with home birds, to see all the strange forms and colors in the grass, and to hear a chorus of unknown notes from trees and underbrush. But suddenly there was a touch of naturalness. That beautiful brown bird with the shapely body and the quick, nervous run! No one could mistake him; it was Bob White. And with him came a flash of the dear New England landscape three thousand miles away. Another and another showed himself and was gone. Then I thought of the woods at sunset, and began to call softly. The carnivora were being fed not far away; a frightful uproar came from the cages. The coughing roar of a male lion made the air shiver. Cockatoos screamed; noisy parrots squawked hideously. Children were playing and shouting near by. In the yard itself fifty birds were singing or crying strange notes. Besides all this, the quail I had seen had been hatched far from home, under a strange mother. So I had little hope of success. But as the call grew louder and louder, a liquid yodel came like an electric shock from a clump of bushes on the left. There he was, looking, listening. Another call, and he came running toward me. Others appeared from every direction, and soon a score of quail were running about, just inside the screen, with soft gurglings like a hidden brook, doubly delightful to an ear that had longed to hear them. City, gardens, beasts, strangers,--all vanished in an instant. I was a boy in the fields again. The rough New England hillside grew tender and beautiful in sunset light; the hollows were rich in autumn glory. The pasture brook sang on its way to the river; a robin called from a crimson maple; and all around was the dear low, thrilling whistle, and the patter of welcome feet on leaves, as Bob White came running again to meet his countryman. IX. MOOSE CALLING. [Illustration] Midnight in the wilderness. The belated moon wheels slowly above the eastern ridge, where for a few minutes past a mighty pine and hundreds of pointed spruce tops have been standing out in inky blackness against the gray and brightening background. The silver light steals swiftly down the evergreen tops, sending long black shadows creeping before it, and falls glistening and shimmering across the sleeping waters of a forest lake. No ripple breaks its polished surface; no plash of musquash or leaping trout sends its vibrations up into the still, frosty air; no sound of beast or bird awakens the echoes of the silent forest. Nature seems dying, her life frozen out of her by the chill of the October night; and no voice tells of her suffering. A moment ago the little lake lay all black and uniform, like a great well among the hills, with only glimmering star-points to reveal its surface. Now, down in a bay below a grassy point, where the dark shadows of the eastern shore reach almost across, a dark object is lying silent and motionless on the lake. Its side seems gray and uncertain above the water; at either end is a dark mass, that in the increasing light takes the form of human head and shoulders. A bark canoe with two occupants is before us; but so still, so lifeless apparently, that till now we thought it part of the shore beyond. There is a movement in the stern; the profound stillness is suddenly broken by a frightful roar: _M-wah-úh! M-waah-úh! M-w-wã-a-ã-ã-a!_ The echoes rouse themselves swiftly, and rush away confused and broken, to and fro across the lake. As they die away among the hills there is a sound from the canoe as if an animal were walking in shallow water, _splash, splash, splash, klop!_ then silence again, that is not dead, but listening. A half-hour passes; but not for an instant does the listening tension of the lake relax. Then the loud bellow rings out again, startling us and the echoes, though we were listening for it. This time the tension increases an hundredfold; every nerve is strained; every muscle ready. Hardly have the echoes been lost when from far up the ridges comes a deep, sudden, ugly roar that penetrates the woods like a rifle-shot. Again it comes, and nearer! Down in the canoe a paddle blade touches the water noiselessly from the stern; and over the bow there is the glint of moonlight on a rifle barrel. The roar is now continuous on the summit of the last low ridge. Twigs crackle, and branches snap. There is the thrashing of mighty antlers among the underbrush, the pounding of heavy hoofs upon the earth; and straight down the great bull rushes like a tempest, nearer, nearer, till he bursts with tremendous crash through the last fringe of alders out onto the grassy point.--And then the heavy boom of a rifle rolling across the startled lake. Such is moose calling, in one of its phases--the most exciting, the most disappointing, the most trying way of hunting this noble game. The call of the cow moose, which the hunter always uses at first, is a low, sudden bellow, quite impossible to describe accurately. Before ever hearing it, I had frequently asked Indians and hunters what it was like. The answers were rather unsatisfactory. "Like a tree falling," said one. "Like the sudden swell of a cataract or the rapids at night," said another. "Like a rifle-shot, or a man shouting hoarsely," said a third; and so on till like a menagerie at feeding time was my idea of it. One night as I sat with my friend at the door of our bark tent, eating our belated supper in tired silence, while the rush of the salmon pool near and the sigh of the night wind in the spruces were lulling us to sleep as we ate, a sound suddenly filled the forest, and was gone. Strangely enough, we pronounced the word _moose_ together, though neither of us had ever heard the sound before. 'Like a gun in a fog' would describe the sound to me better than anything else, though after hearing it many times the simile is not at all accurate. This first indefinite sound is heard early in the season. Later it is prolonged and more definite, and often repeated as I have given it. The answer of the bull varies but little. It is a short, hoarse, grunting roar, frightfully ugly when close at hand, and leaving no doubt as to the mood he is in. Sometimes when a bull is shy, and the hunter thinks he is near and listening, though no sound gives any idea of his whereabouts, he follows the bellow of the cow by the short roar of the bull, at the same time snapping the sticks under his feet, and thrashing the bushes with a club. Then, if the bull answers, look out. Jealous, and fighting mad, he hurls himself out of his concealment and rushes straight in to meet his rival. Once aroused in this way he heeds no danger, and the eye must be clear and the muscles steady to stop him surely ere he reaches the thicket where the hunter is concealed. Moonlight is poor stuff to shoot by at best, and an enraged bull moose is a very big and a very ugly customer. It is a poor thicket, therefore, that does not have at least one good tree with conveniently low branches. As a rule, however, you may trust your Indian, who is an arrant coward, to look out for this very carefully. The trumpet with which the calling is done is simply a piece of birch bark, rolled up cone-shaped with the smooth side within. It is fifteen or sixteen inches long, about four inches in diameter at the larger, and one inch at the smaller end. The right hand is folded round the smaller end for a mouthpiece; into this the caller grunts and roars and bellows, at the same time swinging the trumpet's mouth in sweeping curves to imitate the peculiar quaver of the cow's call. If the bull is near and suspicious, the sound is deadened by holding the mouth of the trumpet close to the ground. This, to me, imitates the real sound more accurately than any other attempt. So many conditions must be met at once for successful calling, and so warily does a bull approach, that the chances are always strongly against the hunter's seeing his game. The old bulls are shy from much hunting; the younger ones fear the wrath of an older rival. It is only once in a lifetime, and far back from civilization, where the moose have not been hunted, that one's call is swiftly answered by a savage old bull that knows no fear. Here one is never sure what response his call will bring; and the spice of excitement, and perhaps danger, is added to the sport. In illustration of the uncertainty of calling, the writer recalls with considerable pride his first attempt, which was somewhat startling in its success. It was on a lake, far back from the settlements, in northern New Brunswick. One evening, late in August, while returning from fishing, I heard the bellow of a cow moose on a hardwood ridge above me. Along the base of the ridge stretched a bay with grassy shores, very narrow where it entered the lake, but broadening out to fifty yards across, and reaching back half a mile to meet a stream that came down from a smaller lake among the hills. All this I noted carefully while gliding past; for it struck me as an ideal place for moose calling, if one were hunting. The next evening, while fishing alone in the cold stream referred to, I heard the moose again on the same ridge; and in a sudden spirit of curiosity determined to try the effect of a roar or two on her, in imitation of an old bull. I had never heard of a cow answering the call; and I had no suspicion then that the bull was anywhere near. I was not an expert caller. Under tuition of my Indian (who was himself a rather poor hand at it) I had practised two or three times till he told me, with charming frankness, that possibly a _man_ might mistake me for a moose, if he hadn't heard one very often. So here was a chance for more practice and a bit of variety. If it frightened her it would do no harm, as we were not hunting. [Illustration] Running the canoe quietly ashore below where the moose had called, I peeled the bark from a young birch, rolled it into a trumpet, and, standing on the grassy bank, uttered the deep grunt of a bull two or three times in quick succession. The effect was tremendous. From the summit of the ridge, not two hundred yards above where I stood, the angry challenge of a bull was hurled down upon me out of the woods. Then it seemed as if a steam engine were crashing full speed through the underbrush. In fewer seconds than it takes to write it the canoe was well out into deep water, lying motionless with the bow inshore. A moment later a huge bull plunged through the fringe of alders onto the open bank, gritting his teeth, grunting, stamping the earth savagely, and thrashing the bushes with his great antlers--as ugly a picture as one would care to meet in the woods. He seemed bewildered at not seeing his rival, ran swiftly along the bank, turned and came swinging back again, all the while uttering his hoarse challenge. Then the canoe swung in the slight current; in getting control of it again the movement attracted his attention, and he saw me for the first time. In a moment he was down the bank into shallow water, striking with his hoofs and tossing his huge head up and down like an angry bull. Fortunately the water was deep, and he did not try to swim out; for there was not a weapon of any kind in the canoe. When I started down towards the lake, after baiting the bull's fury awhile by shaking the paddle and splashing water at him, he followed me along the bank, keeping up his threatening demonstrations. Down near the lake he plunged suddenly ahead before I realized the danger, splashed out into the narrow opening in front of the canoe--and there I was, trapped. It was dark when I at last got out of it. To get by the ugly beast in that narrow opening was out of the question, as I found out after a half-hour's trying. Just at dusk I turned the canoe and paddled slowly back; and the moose, leaving his post, followed as before along the bank. At the upper side of a little bay I paddled close up to shore, and waited till he ran round, almost up to me, before backing out into deep water. Splashing seemed to madden the brute, so I splashed him, till in his fury he waded out deeper and deeper, to strike the exasperating canoe with his antlers. When he would follow no further, I swung the canoe suddenly, and headed for the opening at a racing stroke. I had a fair start before he understood the trick; but I never turned to see how he made the bank and circled the little bay. The splash and plunge of hoofs was fearfully close behind me as the canoe shot through the opening; and as the little bark swung round on the open waters of the lake, for a final splash and flourish of the paddle, and a yell or two of derision, there stood the bull in the inlet, still thrashing his antlers and gritting his teeth; and there I left him. The season of calling is a short one, beginning early in September and lasting till the middle of October. Occasionally a bull will answer as late as November, but this is unusual. In this season a perfectly still night is perhaps the first requisite. The bull, when he hears the call, will often approach to within a hundred yards without making a sound. It is simply wonderful how still the great brute can be as he moves slowly through the woods. Then he makes a wide circuit till he has gone completely round the spot where he heard the call; and if there is the slightest breeze blowing he scents the danger, and is off on the instant. On a still night his big trumpet-shaped ears are marvelously acute. Only absolute silence on the hunter's part can insure success. Another condition quite as essential is moonlight. The moose sometimes calls just before dusk and just before sunrise; but the bull is more wary at such times, and very loth to show himself in the open. Night diminishes his extreme caution, and unless he has been hunted he responds more readily. Only a bright moonlight can give any accuracy to a rifle-shot. To attempt it by starlight would result simply in frightening the game, or possibly running into danger. By far the best place for calling, if one is in a moose country, is from a canoe on some quiet lake or river. A spot is selected midway between two open shores, near together if possible. On whichever side the bull answers, the canoe is backed silently away into the shadow against the opposite bank; and there the hunters crouch motionless till their game shows himself clearly in the moonlight on the open shore. If there is no water in the immediate vicinity of the hunting ground, then a thicket in the midst of an open spot is the place to call. Such spots are found only about the barrens, which are treeless plains scattered here and there throughout the great northern wilderness. The scattered thickets on such plains are, without doubt, the islands of the ancient lakes that once covered them. Here the hunter collects a thick nest of dry moss and fir tips at sundown, and spreads the thick blanket that he has brought on his back all the weary way from camp; for without it the cold of the autumn night would be unendurable to one who can neither light a fire nor move about to get warm. When a bull answers a call from such a spot he will generally circle the barren, just within the edge of the surrounding forest, and unless enraged by jealousy will seldom venture far out into the open. This fearfulness of the open characterizes the moose in all places and seasons. He is a creature of the forest, never at ease unless within quick reach of its protection. An exciting incident happened to Mitchell, my Indian guide, one autumn, while hunting on one of these barrens with a sportsman whom he was guiding. He was moose calling one night from a thicket near the middle of a narrow barren. No answer came to his repeated calling, though for an hour or more he had felt quite sure that a bull was within hearing, somewhere within the dark fringe of forest. He was about to try the roar of the bull, when it suddenly burst out of the woods behind them, in exactly the opposite quarter from that in which they believed their game was concealed. Mitchell started to creep across the thicket, but scarcely had the echoes answered when, in front of them, a second challenge sounded sharp and fierce; and they saw, directly across the open, the underbrush at the forest's edge sway violently, as the bull they had long suspected broke out in a towering rage. He was slow in advancing, however, and Mitchell glided rapidly across the thicket, where a moment later his excited hiss called his companion. From the opposite fringe of forest the second bull had hurled himself out, and was plunging with savage grunts straight towards them. Crouching low among the firs they awaited his headlong rush; not without many a startled glance backward, and a very uncomfortable sense of being trapped and frightened, as Mitchell confessed to me afterward. He had left his gun in camp; his employer had insisted upon it, in his eagerness to kill the moose himself. The bull came rapidly within rifle-shot. In a minute more he would be within their hiding place; and the rifle sight was trying to cover a vital spot, when right behind them--at the thicket's edge, it seemed--a frightful roar and a furious pounding of hoofs brought them to their feet with a bound. A second later the rifle was lying among the bushes, and a panic-stricken hunter was scratching and smashing in a desperate hurry up among the branches of a low spruce, as if only the tiptop were half high enough. Mitchell was nowhere to be seen; unless one had the eyes of an owl to find him down among the roots of a fallen pine. But the first moose smashed straight through the thicket without looking up or down; and out on the open barren a tremendous struggle began. There was a minute's confused uproar, of savage grunts and clashing antlers and pounding hoofs and hoarse, labored breathing; then the excitement of the fight was too strong to be resisted, and a dark form wriggled out from among the roots, only to stretch itself flat under a bush and peer cautiously at the struggling brutes not thirty feet away. Twice Mitchell hissed for his employer to come down; but that worthy was safe astride the highest branch that would bear his weight, with no desire evidently for a better view of the fight. Then Mitchell found the rifle among the bushes and, waiting till the bulls backed away for one of their furious charges, killed the larger one in his tracks. The second stood startled an instant, with raised head and muscles quivering, then dashed away across the barren and into the forest. Such encounters are often numbered among the tragedies of the great wilderness. In tramping through the forest one sometimes comes upon two sets of huge antlers locked firmly together, and white bones, picked clean by hungry prowlers. It needs no written record to tell their story. Once I saw a duel that resulted differently. I heard a terrific uproar, and crept through the woods, thinking to have a savage wilderness spectacle all to myself. Two young bulls were fighting desperately in an open glade, just because they were strong and proud of their first big horns. But I was not alone, as I expected. A great flock of crossbills swooped down into the spruces, and stopped whistling in their astonishment. A dozen red squirrels snickered and barked their approval, as the bulls butted each other. Meeko is always glad when mischief is afoot. High overhead floated a rare woods' raven, his head bent sharply downward to see. Moose-birds flitted in restless excitement from tree to bush. Kagax the weasel postponed his bloodthirsty errand to the young rabbits. And just beside me, under the fir tips, Tookhees the wood-mouse forgot his fear of the owl and the fox and his hundred enemies, and sat by his den in broad daylight, rubbing his whiskers nervously. So we watched, till the bull that was getting the worst of it backed near me, and got my wind, and the fight was over. X. CH'GEEGEE-LOKH-SIS. [Illustration] That is the name which the northern Indians give to the black-capped tit-mouse, or chickadee. "Little friend Ch'geegee" is what it means; for the Indians, like everybody else who knows Chickadee, are fond of this cheery little brightener of the northern woods. The first time I asked Simmo what his people called the bird, he answered with a smile. Since then I have asked other Indians, and always a smile, a pleased look lit up the dark grim faces as they told me. It is another tribute to the bright little bird's influence. Chickadee wears well. He is not in the least a creature of moods. You step out of your door some bright morning, and there he is among the shrubs, flitting from twig to twig; now hanging head down from the very tip to look into a terminal bud; now winding upward about a branch, looking industriously into every bud and crevice. An insect must hide well to escape those bright eyes. He is helping you raise your plants. He looks up brightly as you approach, hops fearlessly down and looks at you with frank, innocent eyes. _Chick a dee dee dee dee! Tsic a de-e-e?_--this last with a rising inflection, as if he were asking how you were, after he had said good-morning. Then he turns to his insect hunting again, for he never wastes more than a moment talking. But he twitters sociably as he works. You meet him again in the depths of the wilderness. The smoke of your camp fire has hardly risen to the spruce tops when close beside you sounds the same cheerful greeting and inquiry for your health. There he is on the birch twig, bright and happy and fearless! He comes down by the fire to see if anything has boiled over which he may dispose of. He picks up gratefully the crumbs you scatter at your feet. He trusts you.--See! he rests a moment on the finger you extend, looks curiously at the nail, and sounds it with his bill to see if it shelters any harmful insect. Then he goes back to his birch twigs. On summer days he never overflows with the rollicksomeness of bobolink and oriole, but takes his abundance in quiet contentment. I suspect it is because he works harder winters, and his enjoyment is more deep than theirs. In winter when the snow lies deep, he is the life of the forest. He calls to you from the edges of the bleak caribou barrens, and his greeting somehow suggests the May. He comes into your rude bark camp, and eats of your simple fare, and leaves a bit of sunshine behind him. He goes with you, as you force your way heavily through the fir thickets on snowshoes. He is hungry, perhaps, like you, but his note is none the less cheery and hopeful. When the sun shines hot in August, he finds you lying under the alders, with the lake breeze in your face, and he opens his eyes very wide and says: "_Tsic a dee-e-e?_ I saw you last winter. Those were hard times. But it's good to be here now." And when the rain pours down, and the woods are drenched, and camp life seems beastly altogether, he appears suddenly with greeting cheery as the sunshine. "_Tsic a de-e-e-e?_ Don't you remember yesterday? It rains, to be sure, but the insects are plenty, and to-morrow the sun will shine." His cheerfulness is contagious. Your thoughts are better than before he came. Really, he is a wonderful little fellow; there is no end to the good he does. Again and again I have seen a man grow better tempered or more cheerful, without knowing why he did so, just because Chickadee stopped a moment to be cheery and sociable. I remember once when a party of four made camp after a driving rain-storm. Everybody was wet; everything soaking. The lazy man had upset a canoe, and all the dry clothes and blankets had just been fished out of the river. Now the lazy man stood before the fire, looking after his own comfort. The other three worked like beavers, making camp. They were in ill humor, cold, wet, hungry, irritated. They said nothing. A flock of chickadees came down with sunny greetings, fearless, trustful, never obtrusive. They looked innocently into human faces and pretended that they did not see the irritation there. "_Tsic a dee_. I wish I could help. Perhaps I can. _Tic a dee-e-e?_"--with that gentle, sweetly insinuating up slide at the end. Somebody spoke, for the first time in half an hour, and it wasn't a growl. Presently somebody whistled--a wee little whistle; but the tide had turned. Then somebody laughed. "'Pon my word," he said, hanging up his wet clothes, "I believe those chickadees make me feel good-natured. Seem kind of cheery, you know, and the crowd needed it." And Chickadee, picking up his cracker crumbs, did not act at all as if he had done most to make camp comfortable. There is another way in which he helps, a more material way. Millions of destructive insects live and multiply in the buds and tender bark of trees. Other birds never see them, but Chickadee and his relations leave never a twig unexplored. His bright eyes find the tiny eggs hidden under the buds; his keen ears hear the larvæ feeding under the bark, and a blow of his little bill uncovers them in their mischief-making. His services of this kind are enormous, though rarely acknowledged. Chickadee's nest is always neat and comfortable and interesting, just like himself. It is a rare treat to find it. He selects an old knot-hole, generally on the sheltered side of a dry limb, and digs out the rotten wood, making a deep and sometimes winding tunnel downward. In the dry wood at the bottom he makes a little round pocket and lines it with the very softest material. When one finds such a nest, with five or six white eggs delicately touched with pink lying at the bottom, and a pair of chickadees gliding about, half fearful, half trustful, it is altogether such a beautiful little spot that I know hardly a boy who would be mean enough to disturb it. One thing about the nests has always puzzled me. The soft lining has generally more or less rabbit fur. Sometimes, indeed, there is nothing else, and a softer nest one could not wish to see. But where does he get it? He would not, I am sure, pull it out of Br'er Rabbit, as the crow sometimes pulls wool from the sheep's backs. Are his eyes bright enough to find it hair by hair where the wind has blown it, down among the leaves? If so, it must be slow work; but Chickadee is very patient. Sometimes in spring you may surprise him on the ground, where he never goes for food; but at such times he is always shy, and flits up among the birch twigs, and twitters, and goes through an astonishing gymnastic performance, as if to distract your attention from his former unusual one. That is only because you are near his nest. If he has a bit of rabbit fur in his bill meanwhile, your eyes are not sharp enough to see it. Once after such a performance I pretended to go away; but I only hid in a pine thicket. Chickadee listened awhile, then hopped down to the ground, picked up something that I could not see, and flew away. I have no doubt it was the lining for his nest near by. He had dropped it when I surprised him, so that I should not suspect him of nest-building. Such a bright, helpful little fellow should have never an enemy in the world; and I think he has to contend against fewer than most birds. The shrike is his worst enemy, the swift swoop of his cruel beak being always fatal in a flock of chickadees. Fortunately the shrike is rare with us; one seldom finds his nest, with poor Chickadee impaled on a sharp thorn near by, surrounded by a varied lot of ugly beetles. I suspect the owls sometimes hunt him at night; but he sleeps in the thick pine shrubs, close up against a branch, with the pine needles all about him, making it very dark; and what with the darkness, and the needles to stick in his eyes, the owl generally gives up the search and hunts in more open woods. Sometimes the hawks try to catch him, but it takes a very quick and a very small pair of wings to follow Chickadee. Once I was watching him hanging head down from an oak twig to which the dead leaves were clinging; for it was winter. Suddenly there was a rush of air, a flash of mottled wings and fierce yellow eyes and cruel claws. Chickadee whisked out of sight under a leaf. The hawk passed on, brushing his pinions. A brown feather floated down among the oak leaves. Then Chickadee was hanging head down, just where he was before. "_Tsic a dee?_ Didn't I fool him!" he seemed to say. He had just gone round his twig, and under a leaf, and back again; and the danger was over. When a hawk misses like that he never strikes again. Boys generally have a kind of sympathetic liking for Chickadee. They may be cruel or thoughtless to other birds, but seldom so to him. He seems somehow like themselves. Two barefoot boys with bows and arrows were hunting, one September day, about the half-grown thickets of an old pasture. The older was teaching the younger how to shoot. A robin, a chipmunk, and two or three sparrows were already stowed away in their jacket pockets; a brown rabbit hung from the older boy's shoulder. Suddenly the younger raised his bow and drew the arrow back to its head. Just in front a chickadee hung and twittered among the birch twigs. But the older boy seized his arm. "Don't shoot--don't shoot him!" he said. "But why not?" "'Cause you mustn't--you must never kill a chickadee." And the younger, influenced more by a certain mysterious shake of the head than by the words, slacked his bow cheerfully; and with a last wide-eyed look at the little gray bird that twittered and swung so fearlessly near them, the two boys went on with their hunting. No one ever taught the older boy to discriminate between a chickadee and other birds; no one else ever instructed the younger. Yet somehow both felt, and still feel after many years, that there is a difference. It is always so with boys. They are friends of whatever trusts them and is fearless. Chickadee's own personality, his cheery ways and trustful nature had taught them, though they knew it not. And among all the boys of that neighborhood there is still a law, which no man gave, of which no man knows the origin, a law as unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians: _Never kill a chickadee_. If you ask the boy there who tells you the law, "Why not a chickadee as well as a sparrow?" he shakes his head as of yore, and answers dogmatically: "'Cause you mustn't." * * * * * CHICKADEE'S SECRET. If you meet Chickadee in May with a bit of rabbit fur in his mouth, or if he seem preoccupied or absorbed, you may know that he is building a nest, or has a wife and children near by to take care of. If you know him well, you may even feel hurt that the little friend, who shared your camp and fed from your dish last winter, should this spring seem just as frank, yet never invite you to his camp, or should even lead you away from it. But the soft little nest in the old knot-hole is the one secret of Chickadee's life; and the little deceptions by which he tries to keep it are at times so childlike, so transparent, that they are even more interesting than his frankness. One afternoon in May I was hunting, without a gun, about an old deserted farm among the hills--one of those sunny places that the birds love, because some sense of the human beings who once lived there still clings about the half wild fields and gives protection. The day was bright and warm. The birds were everywhere, flashing out of the pine thickets into the birches in all the joyfulness of nest-building, and filling the air with life and melody. It is poor hunting to move about at such a time. Either the hunter or his game must be still. Here the birds were moving constantly; one might see more of them and their ways by just keeping quiet and invisible. I sat down on the outer edge of a pine thicket, and became as much as possible a part of the old stump which was my seat. Just in front an old four-rail fence wandered across the deserted pasture, struggling against the blackberry vines, which grew profusely about it and seemed to be tugging at the lower rail to pull the old fence down to ruin. On either side it disappeared into thickets of birch and oak and pitch pine, planted, as were the blackberry vines, by birds that stopped to rest a moment on the old fence or to satisfy their curiosity. Stout young trees had crowded it aside and broken it. Here and there a leaning post was overgrown with woodbine. The rails were gray and moss-grown. Nature was trying hard to make it a bit of the landscape; it could not much longer retain its individuality. The wild things of the woods had long accepted it as theirs, though not quite as they accepted the vines and trees. As I sat there a robin hurled himself upon it from the top of a young cedar where he had been, a moment before, practising his mating song. He did not intend to light, but some idle curiosity, like my own, made him pause a moment on the old gray rail. Then a woodpecker lit on the side of a post, and sounded it softly. But he was too near the ground, too near his enemies to make a noise; so he flew to a higher perch and beat a tattoo that made the woods ring. He was safe there, and could make as much noise as he pleased. A wood-mouse stirred the vines and appeared for an instant on the lower rail, then disappeared as if very much frightened at having shown himself in the sunlight. He always does just so at his first appearance. Presently a red squirrel rushes out of the thicket at the left, scurries along the rails and up and down the posts. He goes like a little red whirlwind, though he has nothing whatever to hurry about. Just opposite my stump he stops his rush with marvelous suddenness; chatters, barks, scolds, tries to make me move; then goes on and out of sight at the same breakneck rush. A jay stops a moment in a young hickory above the fence to whistle his curiosity, just as if he had not seen it fifty times before. A curiosity to him never grows old. He does not scream now; it is his nesting time.--And so on through the afternoon. The old fence is becoming a part of the woods; and every wild thing that passes by stops to get acquainted. I was weaving an idle history of the old fence, when a chickadee twittered in the pine behind me. As I turned, he flew over me and lit on the fence in front. He had something in his beak; so I watched to find his nest; for I wanted very much to see him at work. Chickadee had never seemed afraid of me, and I thought he would trust me now. But he didn't. He would not go near his nest. Instead he began hopping about the old rail, and pretended to be very busy hunting for insects. Presently his mate appeared, and with a sharp note he called her down beside him. Then both birds hopped and twittered about the rail, with apparently never a care in the world. The male especially seemed just in the mood for a frolic. He ran up and down the mossy rail; he whirled about it till he looked like a little gray pinwheel; he hung head down by his toes, dropped, and turned like a cat, so as to light on his feet on the rail below. While watching his performance, I hardly noticed that his mate had gone till she reappeared suddenly on the rail beside him. Then he disappeared, while she kept up the performance on the rail, with more of a twitter, perhaps, and less of gymnastics. In a few moments both birds were together again and flew into the pines out of sight. [Illustration] I had almost forgotten them in watching other birds, when they reappeared on the rail, ten or fifteen minutes later, and went through a very similar performance. This was unusual, certainly; and I sat very quiet, very much interested, though a bit puzzled, and a bit disappointed that they had not gone to their nest. They had some material in their beaks both times when they appeared on the rail, and were now probably off hunting for more--for rabbit fur, perhaps, in the old orchard. But what had they done with it? "Perhaps," I thought, "they dropped it to deceive me." Chickadee does that sometimes. "But why did one bird stay on the rail? Perhaps"--Well, I would look and see. I left my stump as the idea struck me, and began to examine the posts of the old fence very carefully. Chickadee's nest was there somewhere. In the second post on the left I found it, a tiny knot-hole, which Chickadee had hollowed out deep and lined with rabbit fur. It was well hidden by the vines that almost covered the old post, and gray moss grew all about the entrance. A prettier nest I never found. I went back to my stump and sat down where I could just see the dark little hole that led to the nest. No other birds interested me now till the chickadees came back. They were soon there, hopping about on the rail as before, with just a wee note of surprise in their soft twitter that I had changed my position. This time I was not to be deceived by a gymnastic performance, however interesting. I kept my eyes fastened on the nest. The male was undoubtedly going through with his most difficult feats, and doing his best to engage my attention, when I saw his mate glide suddenly from behind the post and disappear into her doorway. I could hardly be sure it was a bird. It seemed rather as if the wind had stirred a little bundle of gray moss. Had she moved slowly I might not have seen her, so closely did her soft gray cloak blend with the weather-beaten wood and the moss. In a few moments she reappeared, waited a moment with her tiny head just peeking out of the knot-hole, flashed round the post out of sight, and when I saw her again it was as she reappeared suddenly beside the male. Then I watched him. While his mate whisked about the top rail he dropped to the middle one, hopped gradually to one side, then dropped suddenly to the lowest one, half hidden by vines, and disappeared. I turned my eyes to the nest. In a moment there he was--just a little gray flash, appearing for an instant from behind the post, only to disappear into the dark entrance. When he came out again I had but a glimpse of him till he appeared on the rail near me beside his mate. Their little ruse was now quite evident. They had come back from gathering rabbit fur, and found me unexpectedly near their nest. Instead of making a fuss and betraying it, as other birds might do, they lit on the rail before me, and were as sociable as only chickadees know how to be. While one entertained me, and kept my attention, the other dropped to the bottom rail and stole along behind it; then up behind the post that held their nest, and back the same way, after leaving his material. Then he held my attention while his mate did the same thing. Simple as their little device was, it deceived me at first, and would have deceived me permanently had I not known something of chickadees' ways, and found the nest while they were away. Game birds have the trick of decoying one away from their nest. I am not sure that all birds do not have more or less of the same instinct; but certainly none ever before or since used it so well with me as Ch'geegee. For two hours or more I sat there beside the pine thicket, while the chickadees came and went. Sometimes they approached the nest from the other side, and I did not see them, or perhaps got only a glimpse as they glided into their doorway. Whenever they approached from my side, they always stopped on the rail before me and went through with their little entertainment. Gradually they grew more confident, and were less careful to conceal their movements than at first. Sometimes only one came, and after a short performance disappeared. Perhaps they thought me harmless, or that they had deceived me so well at first that I did not even suspect them of nest-building. Anyway, I never pretended I knew. As the afternoon wore away, and the sun dropped into the pine tops, the chickadees grew hungry, and left their work until the morrow. They were calling among the young birch buds as I left them, busy and sociable together, hunting their supper. XI. A FELLOW OF EXPEDIENTS. [Illustration] Among the birds there is one whose personal appearance is rapidly changing. He illustrates in his present life a process well known historically to all naturalists, viz., the modification of form resulting from changed environment. I refer to the golden-winged woodpecker, perhaps the most beautifully marked bird of the North, whose names are as varied as his habits and accomplishments. Nature intended him to get his living, as do the other woodpeckers, by boring into old trees and stumps for the insects that live on the decaying wood. For this purpose she gave him the straight, sharp, wedge-shaped bill, just calculated for cutting out chips; the very long horn-tipped tongue for thrusting into the holes he makes; the peculiar arrangement of toes, two forward and two back; and the stiff, spiny tail-feathers for supporting himself against the side of a tree as he works. But getting his living so means hard work, and he has discovered for himself a much easier way. One now frequently surprises him on the ground in old pastures and orchards, floundering about rather awkwardly (for his little feet were never intended for walking) after the crickets and grasshoppers that abound there. Still he finds the work of catching them much easier than boring into dry old trees, and the insects themselves much larger and more satisfactory. A single glance will show how much this new way of living has changed him from the other woodpeckers. The bill is no longer straight, but has a decided curve, like the thrushes; and instead of the chisel-shaped edge there is a rounded point. The red tuft on the head, which marks all the woodpecker family, would be too conspicuous on the ground. In its place we find a red crescent well down on the neck, and partially hidden by the short gray feathers about it. The point of the tongue is less horny, and from the stiff points of the tail-feathers lamina are beginning to grow, making them more like other birds'. A future generation will undoubtedly wonder where this peculiar kind of thrush got his unusual tongue and tail, just as we wonder at the deformed little feet and strange ways of a cuckoo. The habits of this bird are a curious compound of his old life in the woods and his new preference for the open fields and farms. Sometimes the nest is in the very heart of the woods, where the bird glides in and out, silent as a crow in nesting time. His feeding place meanwhile may be an old pasture half a mile away, where he calls loudly, and frolics about as if he had never a care or a fear in the world. But the nest is now more frequently in a wild orchard, where the bird finds an old knot-hole and digs down through the soft wood, making a deep nest with very little trouble. When the knot-hole is not well situated, he finds a large decayed limb and drills through the outer hard shell, then digs down a foot or more through the soft wood, and makes a nest. In this nest the rain never troubles him, for he very providently drills the entrance on the under side of the limb. Like many other birds, he has discovered that the farmer is his friend. Occasionally, therefore, he neglects to build a deep nest, simply hollowing out an old knot-hole, and depending on the presence of man for protection from hawks and owls. At such times the bird very soon learns to recognize those who belong in the orchard, and loses the extreme shyness that characterizes him at all other times. Once a farmer, knowing my interest in birds, invited me to come and see a golden-winged woodpecker, which in her confidence had built so shallow a nest that she could be seen sitting on the eggs like a robin. She was so tame, he said, that in going to his work he sometimes passed under the tree without disturbing her. The moment we crossed the wall within sight of the nest, the bird slipped away out of the orchard. Wishing to test her, we withdrew and waited till she returned. Then the farmer passed within a few feet without disturbing her in the least. Ten minutes later I followed him, and the bird flew away again as I crossed the wall. The notes of the golden-wing--much more varied and musical than those of other woodpeckers--are probably the results of his new free life, and the modified tongue and bill. In the woods one seldom hears from him anything but the rattling _rat-a-tat-tat_, as he hammers away on a dry old pine stub. As a rule he seems to do this more for the noise it makes, and the exercise of his abilities, than because he expects to find insects inside; except in winter time, when he goes back to his old ways. But out in the fields he has a variety of notes. Sometimes it is a loud _kee-uk_, like the scream of a blue jay divided into two syllables, with the accent on the last. Again it is a loud cheery whistling call, of very short notes run close together, with accent on every other one. Again he teeters up and down on the end of an old fence rail with a rollicking _eekoo, eekoo, eekoo_, that sounds more like a laugh than anything else among the birds. In most of his musical efforts the golden-wing, instead of clinging to the side of a tree, sits across the limb, like other birds. A curious habit which the bird has adopted with advancing civilization is that of providing himself with a sheltered sleeping place from the storms and cold of winter. Late in the fall he finds a deserted building, and after a great deal of shy inspection, to satisfy himself that no one is within, drills a hole through the side. He has then a comfortable place to sleep, and an abundance of decaying wood in which to hunt insects on stormy days. An ice-house is a favorite location for him, the warm sawdust furnishing a good burrowing place for a nest or sleeping room. When a building is used as a nesting place, the bird very cunningly drills the entrance close up under the eaves, where it is sheltered from storms, and at the same time out of sight of all prying eyes. During the winter several birds often occupy one building together. I know of one old deserted barn where last year five of the birds lived very peaceably; though what they were doing there in the daytime I could never quite make out. At almost any hour of the day, if one approached very cautiously and thumped the side of the barn, some of the birds would dash out in great alarm, never stopping to look behind them. At first there were but three entrances; but after I had surprised them a few times, two more were added; whether to get out more quickly when all were inside, or simply for the sake of drilling the holes, I do not know. Sometimes a pair of birds will have five or six holes drilled, generally on the same side of the building. Two things about my family in the old barn aroused my curiosity--what they were doing there by day, and how they got out so quickly when alarmed. The only way it seemed possible for them to dash out on the instant, as they did, was to fly straight through. But the holes were too small, and no bird but a bank-swallow would have attempted such a thing. One day I drove the birds out, then crawled in under a sill on the opposite side, and hid in a corner of the loft without disturbing anything inside. It was a long wait in the stuffy old place before one of the birds came back. I heard him light first on the roof; then his little head appeared at one of the holes as he sat just below, against the side of the barn, looking and listening before coming in. Quite satisfied after a minute or two that nobody was inside, he scrambled in and flew down to a corner in which was a lot of old hay and rubbish. Here he began a great rustle and stirring about, like a squirrel in autumn leaves, probably after insects, though it was too dark to see just what he was doing. It sounded part of the time as if he were scratching aside the hay, much as a hen would have done. If so, his two little front toes must have made sad work of it, with the two hind ones always getting doubled up in the way. When I thumped suddenly against the side of the barn, he hurled himself like a shot at one of the holes, alighting just below it, and stuck there in a way that reminded me of the chewed-paper balls that boys used to throw against the blackboard in school. I could hear plainly the thump of his little feet as he struck. With the same movement, and without pausing an instant, he dived through headlong, aided by a spring from his tail, much as a jumping jack goes over the head of his stick, only much more rapidly. Hardly had he gone before another appeared, to go through the same program. Though much shyer than other birds of the farm, he often ventures up close to the house and doorway in the early morning, before any one is stirring. One spring morning I was awakened by a strange little pattering sound, and, opening my eyes, was astonished to see one of these birds on the sash of the open window within five feet of my hand. Half closing my eyes, I kept very still and watched. Just in front of him, on the bureau, was a stuffed golden-wing, with wings and tail spread to show to best advantage the beautiful plumage. He had seen it in flying by, and now stood hopping back and forth along the window sash, uncertain whether to come in or not. Sometimes he spread his wings as if on the point of flying in; then he would turn his head to look curiously at me and at the strange surroundings, and, afraid to venture in, endeavor to attract the attention of the stuffed bird, whose head was turned away. In the looking-glass he saw his own movements repeated. Twice he began his love call very softly, but cut it short, as if frightened. The echo of the small room made it seem so different from the same call in the open fields that I think he doubted even his own voice. [Illustration] Almost over his head, on a bracket against the wall, was another bird, a great hawk, pitched forward on his perch, with wings wide spread and fierce eyes glaring downward, in the intense attitude a hawk takes as he strikes his prey from some lofty watch tree. The golden-wing by this time was ready to venture in. He had leaned forward with wings spread, looking down at me to be quite sure I was harmless, when, turning his head for a final look round, he caught sight of the hawk just ready to pounce down on him. With a startled _kee-uk_ he fairly tumbled back off the window sash, and I caught one glimpse of him as he dashed round the corner in full flight. What were his impressions, I wonder, as he sat on a limb of the old apple tree and thought it all over? Do birds have romances? How much greater wonders had he seen than those of any romance! And do they have any means of communicating them, as they sing their love songs? What a wonderful story he could tell, a real story, of a magic palace full of strange wonders; of a glittering bit of air that made him see himself; of a giant, all in white, with only his head visible; of an enchanted beauty, stretching her wings in mute supplication for some brave knight to touch her and break the spell, while on high a fierce dragon-hawk kept watch, ready to eat up any one who should dare enter! And of course none of the birds would believe him. He would have to spend the rest of his life explaining; and the others would only whistle, and call him _Iagoo_, the lying woodpecker. On the whole, it would be better for a bird with such a very unusual experience to keep still about it. XII. A TEMPERANCE LESSON FOR THE HORNETS. [Illustration] Last spring a hornet, one of those long brown double chaps that boys call mud-wasps, crept out of his mud shell at the top of my window casing, and buzzed in the sunshine till I opened the window and let him go. Perhaps he remembered his warm quarters, or told a companion; for when the last sunny days of October were come, there was a hornet, buzzing persistently at the same window till it opened and let him in. It was a rather rickety old room, though sunny and very pleasant, which had been used as a study by generations of theological students. Moreover, it was considered clean all over, like a boy with his face washed, when the floor was swept; and no storm of general house cleaning ever disturbed its peace. So overhead, where the ceiling sagged from the walls, and in dusty chinks about doors and windows that no broom ever harried, a family of spiders, some mice, a daddy-long-legs, two crickets, and a bluebottle fly, besides the hornet, found snug quarters in their season, and a welcome. The hornet stayed about, contentedly enough, for a week or more, crawling over the window panes till they were thoroughly explored, and occasionally taking a look through the scattered papers on the table. Once he sauntered up to the end of the penholder I was using, and stayed there, balancing himself, spreading his wings, and looking interested while the greater part of a letter was finished. Then he crawled down over my fingers till he wet his feet in the ink; whereupon he buzzed off in high dudgeon to dry them in the sun. At first he was sociable enough, and peaceable as one could wish; but one night, when it was chilly, he stowed himself away to sleep under the pillow. When I laid my head upon it, he objected to the extra weight, and drove me ignominiously from my own bed. Another time he crawled into a handkerchief. When I picked it up to use it, after the light was out, he stung me on the nose, not understanding the situation. In whacking him off I broke one of his legs, and made his wings all awry. After that he would have nothing more to do with me, but kept to his own window as long as the fine weather lasted. When the November storms came, he went up to a big crack in the window casing, whence he had emerged in the spring, and crept in, and went to sleep. It was pleasant there, and at noontime, on days when the sun shone, it streamed brightly into his doorway, waking him out of his winter sleep. As late as December he would come out occasionally at midday to walk about and spread his wings in the sun. Then a snow-storm came, and he disappeared for two weeks. [Illustration] One day, when a student was sick, a tumbler of medicine had been carelessly left on the broad window sill. It contained a few lumps of sugar, over which a mixture of whiskey and glycerine had been poured. The sugar melted gradually in the sun, and a strong odor of alcohol rose from the sticky stuff. That and the sunshine must have roused my hornet guest, for when I came back to the room, there he lay by the tumbler, dead drunk. He was stretched out on his side, one wing doubled under him, a forward leg curled over his head, a sleepy, boozy, perfectly ludicrous expression on his pointed face. I poked him a bit with my finger, to see how the alcohol affected his temper. He rose unsteadily, staggered about, and knocked his head against the tumbler; at which fancied insult he raised his wings in a limp kind of dignity and defiance, buzzing a challenge. But he lost his legs, and fell down; and presently, in spite of pokings, went off into a drunken sleep again. All the afternoon he lay there. As it grew cooler he stirred about uneasily. At dusk he started up for his nest. It was a hard pull to get there. His head was heavy, and his legs shaky. Half way up, he stopped on top of the lower sash to lie down awhile. He had a terrible headache, evidently; he kept rubbing his head with his fore legs as if to relieve the pain. After a fall or two on the second sash, he reached the top, and tumbled into his warm nest to sleep off the effects of his spree. One such lesson should have been enough; but it wasn't. Perhaps, also, I should have put temptation out of his way; for I knew that all hornets, especially yellow-jackets, are hopeless topers when they get a chance; that when a wasp discovers a fermenting apple, it is all up with his steady habits; that when a nest of them discover a cider mill, all work, even the care of the young, is neglected. They take to drinking, and get utterly demoralized. But in the interest of a new experiment I forgot true kindness, and left the tumbler where it was. The next day, at noon, he was stretched out on the sill, drunk again. For three days he kept up his tippling, coming out when the sun shone warmly, and going straight to the fatal tumbler. On the fourth day he paid the penalty of his intemperance. The morning was very bright, and the janitor had left the hornet's window slightly open. At noon he was lying on the window sill, drunk as usual. I was in a hurry to take a train, and neglected to close the window. Late at night, when I came back to my room, he was gone. He was not on the sill, nor on the floor, nor under the window cushions. His nest in the casing, where I had so often watched him asleep, was empty. Taking a candle, I went out to search under the window. There I found him in the snow, his legs curled up close to his body, frozen stiff with the drip of the eaves. I carried him in and warmed him at the fire, but it was too late. He had been drunk once too often. When I saw that he was dead, I stowed him away in the nest he had been seeking when he fell out into the snow. I tried to read; but the book seemed dull. Every little while I got up to look at him, lying there with his little pointed face, still dead. At last I wrapped him up, and pushed him farther in, out of sight. All the while the empty tumbler seemed to look at me reproachfully from the window sill. XIII. SNOWY VISITORS. [Illustration] Over my table, as I write, is a big snowy owl whose yellow eyes seem to be always watching me, whatever I do. Perhaps he is still wondering at the curious way in which I shot him. One stormy afternoon, a few winters ago, I was black-duck shooting at sundown, by a lonely salt creek that doubled across the marshes from Maddaket Harbor. In the shadow of a low ridge I had built my blind among some bushes, near the freshest water. In front of me a solitary decoy was splashing about in joyous freedom after having been confined all day, quacking loudly at the loneliness of the place and at being separated from her mate. Beside me, crouched in the blind, my old dog Don was trying his best to shiver himself warm without disturbing the bushes too much. That would have frightened the incoming ducks, as Don knew very well. It grew dark and bitterly cold. No birds were flying, and I had stood up a moment to let the blood down into half-frozen toes, when a shadow seemed to pass over my head. The next moment there was a splash, followed by loud quacks of alarm from the decoy. All I could make out, in the obscurity under the ridge, was a flutter of wings that rose heavily from the water, taking my duck with them. Only the anchor string prevented the marauder from getting away with his booty. Not wishing to shoot, for the decoy was a valuable one, I shouted vigorously, and sent out the dog. The decoy dropped with a splash, and in the darkness the thief got away--just vanished, like a shadow, without a sound. [Illustration] Poor ducky died in my hands a few moments later, the marks of sharp claws telling me plainly that the thief was an owl, though I had no suspicion then that it was the rare winter visitor from the north. I supposed, of course, that it was only a great-horned-owl, and so laid plans to get him. Next night I was at the same spot with a good duck call, and some wooden decoys, over which the skins of wild ducks had been carefully stretched. An hour after dark he came again, attracted, no doubt, by the continued quacking. I had another swift glimpse of what seemed only a shadow; saw it poise and shoot downward before I could find it with my gun sight, striking the decoys with a great splash and clatter. Before he discovered his mistake or could get started again, I had him. The next moment Don came ashore, proud as a peacock, bringing a great snowy owl with him--a rare prize, worth ten times the trouble we had taken to get it. Owls are generally very lean and muscular; so much so, in severe winters, that they are often unable to fly straight when the wind blows; and a twenty-knot breeze catches their broad wings and tosses them about helplessly. This one, however, was fat as a plover. When I stuffed him, I found that he had just eaten a big rat and a meadow-lark, hair, bones, feathers and all. It would be interesting to know what he intended to do with the duck. Perhaps, like the crow, he has snug hiding places here and there, where he keeps things against a time of need. Every severe winter a few of these beautiful owls find their way to the lonely places of the New England coast, driven southward, no doubt, by lack of food in the frozen north. Here in Massachusetts they seem to prefer the southern shores of Cape Cod, and especially the island of Nantucket, where besides the food cast up by the tides, there are larks and blackbirds and robins, which linger more or less all winter. At home in the far north, the owls feed largely upon hares and grouse; here nothing comes amiss, from a stray cat, roving too far from the house, to stray mussels on the beach that have escaped the sharp eyes of sea-gulls. Some of his hunting ways are most curious. One winter day, in prowling along the beach, I approached the spot where a day or two before I had been shooting whistlers (golden-eye ducks) over decoys. The blind had been made by digging a hole in the sand. In the bottom was an armful of dry seaweed, to keep one's toes warm, and just behind the stand was the stump of a ship's mainmast, the relic of some old storm and shipwreck, cast up by the tide. A commotion of some kind was going on in the blind as I drew near. Sand and bunches of seaweed were hurled up at intervals to be swept aside by the wind. Instantly I dropped out of sight into the dead beach grass to watch and listen. Soon a white head and neck bristled up from behind the old mast, every feather standing straight out ferociously. The head was perfectly silent a moment, listening; then it twisted completely round twice so as to look in every direction. A moment later it had disappeared, and the seaweed was flying again. There was a prize in the old blind evidently. But what was he doing there? Till then I had supposed that the owl always takes his game from the wing. Farther along the beach was a sand bluff overlooking the proceedings. I gained it after a careful stalk, crept to the edge, and looked over. Down in the blind a big snowy owl was digging away like a Trojan, tearing out sand and seaweed with his great claws, first one foot, then the other, like a hungry hen, and sending it up in showers behind him over the old mast. Every few moments he would stop suddenly, bristle up all his feathers till he looked comically big and fierce, take a look out over the log and along the beach, then fall to digging again furiously. I suppose that the object of this bristling up before each observation was to strike terror into the heart of any enemy that might be approaching to surprise him at his unusual work. It is an owl trick. Wounded birds always use it when approached. And the object of the digging? That was perfectly evident. A beach rat had jumped down into the blind, after some fragments of lunch, undoubtedly, and being unable to climb out, had started to tunnel up to the surface. The owl heard him at work, and started a stern chase. He won, too, for right in the midst of a fury of seaweed he shot up with the rat in his claws--so suddenly that he almost escaped me. Had it not been for the storm and his underground digging, he surely would have heard me long before I could get near enough to see what he was doing; for his eyes and ears are wonderfully keen. In his southern visits, or perhaps on the ice fields of the Arctic ocean, he has discovered a more novel way of procuring his food than digging for it. He has turned fisherman and learned to fish. Once only have I seen him get his dinner in this way. It was on the north shore of Nantucket, one day in the winter of 1890-91, when the remarkable flight of white owls came down from the north. The chord of the bay was full of floating ice, and swimming about the shoals were thousands of coots. While watching the latter through my field-glass, I noticed a snowy owl standing up still and straight on the edge of a big ice cake. "Now what is that fellow doing there?" I thought.--"I know! He is trying to drift down close to that flock of coots before they see him." That was interesting; so I sat down on a rock to watch. Whenever I took my eyes from him a moment, it was difficult to find him again, so perfectly did his plumage blend with the white ice upon which he stood motionless. But he was not after the coots. I saw him lean forward suddenly and plunge a foot into the water. Then, when he hopped back from the edge, and appeared to be eating something, it dawned upon me that he was fishing--and fishing like a true sportsman, out on the ice alone, with only his own skill to depend upon. In a few minutes he struck again, and this time rose with a fine fish, which he carried to the shore to devour at leisure. For a long time that fish was to me the most puzzling thing in the whole incident; for at that season no fish are to be found, except in deep water off shore. Some weeks later I learned that, just previous to the incident, several fishermen's dories, with full fares, had been upset on the east side of the island when trying to land through a heavy surf. The dead fish had been carried around by the tides, and the owl had been deceived into showing his method of fishing. Undoubtedly, in his northern home, when the ice breaks up and the salmon are running, he goes fishing from an ice cake as a regular occupation. The owl lit upon a knoll, not two hundred yards from where I sat motionless, and gave me a good opportunity of watching him at his meal. He treated the fish exactly as he would have treated a rat or duck: stood on it with one foot, gripped the long claws of the other through it, and tore it to pieces savagely, as one would a bit of paper. The beak was not used, except to receive the pieces, which were conveyed up to it by his foot, as a parrot eats. He devoured everything--fins, tail, skin, head, and most of the bones, in great hungry mouthfuls. Then he hopped to the top of the knoll, sat up straight, puffed out his feathers to look big, and went to sleep. But with the first slight movement I made to creep nearer, he was wide awake and flew to a higher point. Such hearing is simply marvelous. The stomach of an owl is peculiar, there being no intermediate crop, as in other birds. Every part of his prey small enough (and the mouth and throat of an owl are large out of all proportion) is greedily swallowed. Long after the flesh is digested, feathers, fur, and bones remain in the stomach, softened by acids, till everything is absorbed that can afford nourishment, even to the quill shafts, and the ends and marrow of bones. The dry remains are then rolled into large pellets by the stomach, and disgorged. This, by the way, suggests the best method of finding an owl's haunts. It is to search, not overhead, but on the ground under large trees, till a pile of these little balls, of dry feathers and hair and bones, reveals the nest or roosting place above. It seems rather remarkable that my fisherman-owl did not make a try at the coots that were so plenty about him. Rarely, I think, does he attempt to strike a bird of any kind in the daytime. His long training at the north, where the days are several months long, has adapted his eyes to seeing perfectly, both in sunshine and in darkness; and with us he spends the greater part of each day hunting along the beaches. The birds at such times are never molested. He seems to know that he is not good at dodging; that they are all quicker than he, and are not to be caught napping. And the birds, even the little birds, have no fear of him in the sunshine; though they shiver themselves to sleep when they think of him at night. I have seen the snowbirds twittering contentedly near him. Once I saw him fly out to sea in the midst of a score of gulls, which paid no attention to him. At another time I saw him fly over a large flock of wild ducks that were preening themselves in the grass. He kept straight on; and the ducks, so far as I could see, merely stopped their toilet for an instant, and turned up one eye so as to see him better. Had it been dusk, the whole flock would have shot up into the air at the first startled quack--all but one, which would have stayed with the owl. His favorite time for hunting is the hour after dusk, or just before daylight, when the birds are restless on the roost. No bird is safe from him then. The fierce eyes search through every tree and bush and bunch of grass. The keen ears detect every faintest chirp, or rustle, or scratching of tiny claws on the roost. Nothing that can be called a sound escapes them. The broad, soft wings tell no tale of his presence, and his swoop is swift and sure. He utters no sound. Like a good Nimrod he hunts silently. The flight of an owl, noiseless as the sweep of a cloud shadow, is the most remarkable thing about him. The wings are remarkably adapted to the silent movement that is essential to surprising birds at dusk. The feathers are long and soft. The laminæ extending from the wing quills, instead of ending in the sharp feather edge of other birds, are all drawn out to fine hair points, through which the air can make no sound as it rushes in the swift wing-beats. The _whish_ of a duck's wings can be heard two or three hundred yards on a still night. The wings of an eagle rustle like silk in the wind as he mounts upward. A sparrow's wings flutter or whir as he changes his flight. Every one knows the startled rush of a quail or grouse. But no ear ever heard the passing of a great owl, spreading his five-foot wings in rapid flight. He knows well, however, when to vary his program. Once I saw him hovering at dusk over some wild land covered with bushes and dead grass, a favorite winter haunt of meadow-larks. His manner showed that he knew his game was near. He kept hovering over a certain spot, swinging off noiselessly to right or left, only to return again. Suddenly he struck his wings twice over his head with a loud flap, and swooped instantly. It was a clever trick. The bird beneath had been waked by the sound, or startled into turning his head. With the first movement the owl had him. All owls have the habit of sitting still upon some high point which harmonizes with the general color of their feathers, and swooping upon any sound or movement that indicates game. The long-eared, or eagle-owl invariably selects a dark colored stub, on top of which he appears as a part of the tree itself, and is seldom noticed; while the snowy owl, whose general color is soft gray, will search out a birch or a lightning-blasted stump, and sitting up still and straight, so hide himself in plain sight that it takes a good eye to find him. The swooping habit leads them into queer mistakes sometimes. Two or three times, when sitting or lying still in the woods watching for birds, my head has been mistaken for a rat or squirrel, or some other furry quadruped, by owls, which swooped and brushed me with their wings, and once left the marks of their claws, before discovering their mistake. Should any boy reader ever have the good fortune to discover one of these rare birds some winter day in tramping along the beaches, and wish to secure him as a specimen, let him not count on the old idea that an owl cannot see in the daytime. On the contrary, let him proceed exactly as he would in stalking a deer: get out of sight, and to leeward, if possible; then take every advantage of bush and rock and beach-grass to creep within range, taking care to advance only when his eyes are turned away, and remembering that his ears are keen enough to detect the passing of a mouse in the grass from an incredible distance. Sometimes the crows find one of these snowy visitors on the beach, and make a great fuss and racket, as they always do when an owl is in sight. At such times he takes his stand under a bank, or in the lee of a rock, where the crows cannot trouble him from behind, and sits watching them fiercely. Woe be to the one that ventures too near. A plunge, a grip of his claw, a weak _caw_, and it's all over. That seems to double the crows' frenzy--and that is the one moment when you can approach rapidly from behind. But you must drop flat when the crows perceive you; for the owl is sure to take a look around for the cause of their sudden alarm. If he sees nothing suspicious he will return to his shelter to eat his crow, or just to rest his sensitive ears after all the pother. A quarter-mile away the crows sit silent, watching you and him. And now a curious thing happens. The crows, that a moment ago were clamoring angrily about their enemy, watch with a kind of intense interest as you creep towards him. Half way to the rock behind which he is hiding, they guess your purpose, and a low rapid chatter begins among them. One would think that they would exult in seeing him surprised and killed; but that is not crow nature. They would gladly worry the owl to death if they could, but they will not stand by and see him slain by a common enemy. The chatter ceases suddenly. Two or three swift fliers leave the flock, circle around you, and speed over the rock, uttering short notes of alarm. With the first sharp note, which all birds seem to understand, the owl springs into the air, turns, sees you, and is off up the beach. The crows rush after him with crazy clamor, and speedily drive him to cover again. But spare yourself more trouble. It is useless to try stalking any game while the crows are watching. Sometimes you can drive or ride quite near to one of these birds, the horse apparently removing all his suspicion. But if you are on foot, take plenty of time and care and patience, and shoot your prize on the first stalk if possible. Once alarmed, he will lead you a long chase, and most likely escape in the end. I learned the wisdom of this advice in connection with the first snowy owl I had ever met outside a museum. I surprised him early one winter morning eating a brant, which he had caught asleep on the shore. He saw me, and kept making short flights from point to point in a great circle--five miles, perhaps, and always in the open--evidently loath to abandon his feast to the crows; while I followed with growing wonder and respect, trying every device of the still hunter to creep within range. That was the same owl which I last saw at dusk, flying straight out to sea among the gulls. [Illustration: A CHRISTMAS CAROL] XIV. The Christmas carol, sung by a chorus of fresh children's voices, is perhaps the most perfect expression of the spirit of Christmastide. Especially is this true of the old English and German carols, which seem to grow only sweeter, more mellow, more perfectly expressive of the love and good-will that inspired them, as the years go by. Yet always at Christmas time there is with me the memory of one carol sweeter than all, which was sung to me alone by a little minstrel from the far north, with the wind in the pines humming a soft accompaniment. * * * * * Doubtless many readers have sometimes seen in winter flocks of stranger birds--fluffy gray visitors, almost as large as a robin--flying about the lawns with soft whistling calls, or feeding on the ground, so tame and fearless that they barely move aside as you approach. The beak is short and thick; the back of the head and a large patch just above the tail are golden brown; and across the wings are narrow double bars of white. All the rest is soft gray, dark above and light beneath. If you watch them on the ground, you will see that they have a curious way of moving about like a golden-winged woodpecker in the same position. Sometimes they put one foot before the other, in funny little attempt at a dignified walk, like the blackbirds; again they hop like a robin, but much more awkwardly, as if they were not accustomed to walking and did not quite know how to use their feet--which is quite true. The birds are pine-grosbeaks, and are somewhat irregular winter visitors from the far north. Only when the cold is most severe, and the snow lies deep about Hudson Bay, do they leave their nesting places to spend a few weeks in bleak New England as a winter resort. Their stay with us is short and uncertain. Long ere the first bluebird has whistled to us from the old fence rail that, if we please, spring is coming, the grosbeaks are whistling of spring, and singing their love songs in the forests of Labrador. A curious thing about the flocks we see in winter is that they are composed almost entirely of females. The male bird is very rare with us. You can tell him instantly by his brighter color and his beautiful crimson breast. Sometimes the flocks contain a few young males, but until the first mating season has tipped their breast feathers with deep crimson they are almost indistinguishable from their sober colored companions. This crimson breast shield, by the way, is the family mark or coat of arms of the grosbeaks, just as the scarlet crest marks all the woodpeckers. And if you ask a Micmac, deep in the woods, how the grosbeak got his shield, he may tell you a story that will interest you as did the legend of Hiawatha and the woodpecker in your childhood days. If the old male, with his proud crimson, be rare with us, his beautiful song is still more so. Only in the deep forests, by the lonely rivers of the far north, where no human ear ever hears, does he greet the sunrise from the top of some lofty spruce. There also he pours into the ears of his sober little gray wife the sweetest love song of the birds. It is a flood of soft warbling notes, tinkling like a brook deep under the ice, tumbling over each other in a quiet ecstasy of harmony; mellow as the song of the hermit-thrush, but much softer, as if he feared lest any should hear but her to whom he sang. Those who know the music of the rose-breasted grosbeak (not his robin-like song of spring, but the exquisitely soft warble to his brooding mate) may multiply its sweetness indefinitely, and so form an idea of what the pine-grosbeak's song is like. But sometimes he forgets himself in his winter visit, and sings as other birds do, just because his world is bright; and then, once in a lifetime, a New England bird lover hears him, and remembers; and regrets for the rest of his life that the grosbeak's northern country life has made him so shy a visitor. * * * * * One Christmas morning, a few years ago, the new-fallen snow lay white and pure over all the woods and fields. It was soft and clinging as it fell on Christmas eve. Now every old wall and fence was a carved bench of gleaming white; every post and stub had a soft white robe and a tall white hat; and every little bush and thicket was a perfect fairyland of white arches and glistening columns, and dark grottoes walled about with delicate frostwork of silver and jewels. And then the glory, dazzling beyond all words, when the sun rose and shone upon it! Before sunrise I was out. Soon the jumping flight and cheery good-morning of a downy woodpecker led me to an old field with scattered evergreen clumps. There is no better time for a quiet peep at the birds than the morning after a snow-storm, and no better place than the evergreens. If you can find them at all (which is not certain, for they have mysterious ways of disappearing before a storm), you will find them unusually quiet, and willing to bear your scrutiny indifferently, instead of flying off into deeper coverts. I had scarcely crossed the wall when I stopped at hearing a new bird song, so amazingly sweet that it could only be a Christmas message, yet so out of place that the listener stood doubting whether his ears were playing him false, wondering whether the music or the landscape would not suddenly vanish as an unreal thing. The song was continuous--a soft melodious warble, full of sweetness and suggestion; but suggestion of June meadows and a summer sunrise, rather than of snow-packed evergreens and Christmastide. To add to the unreality, no ear could tell where the song came from; its own muffled quality disguised the source perfectly. I searched the trees in front; there was no bird there. I looked behind; there was no place for a bird to sing. I remembered the redstart, how he calls sometimes from among the rocks, and refuses to show himself, and runs and hides when you look for him. I searched the wall; but not a bird track marked the snow. All the while the wonderful carol went on, now in the air, now close beside me, growing more and more bewildering as I listened. It took me a good half-hour to locate the sound; then I understood. Near me was a solitary fir tree with a bushy top. The bird, whoever he was, had gone to sleep up there, close against the trunk, as birds do, for protection. During the night the soft snow gathered thicker and thicker upon the flexible branches. Their tips bent with the weight till they touched the trunk below, forming a green bower, about which the snow packed all night long, till it was completely closed in. The bird was a prisoner inside, and singing as the morning sun shone in through the walls of his prison-house. As I listened, delighted with the carol and the minstrel's novel situation, a mass of snow, loosened by the sun, slid from the snow bower, and a pine-grosbeak appeared in the doorway. A moment he seemed to look about curiously over the new, white, beautiful world; then he hopped to the topmost twig and, turning his crimson breast to the sunrise, poured out his morning song; no longer muffled, but sweet and clear as a wood-thrush bell ringing the sunset. Once, long afterward, I heard his softer love song, and found his nest in the heart of a New Brunswick forest. Till then it was not known that he ever built south of Labrador. But even that, and the joy of discovery, lacked the charm of this rare sweet carol, coming all unsought and unexpected, as good things do, while our own birds were spending the Christmas time and singing the sunrise in Florida. XV. MOOWEEN THE BEAR. [Illustration] Ever since nursery times Bruin has been largely a creature of imagination. He dwells there a ferocious beast, prowling about gloomy woods, red eyed and dangerous, ready to rush upon the unwary traveler and eat him on the spot. Sometimes, indeed, we have seen him out of imagination. There he is a poor, tired, clumsy creature, footsore and dusty, with a halter round his neck, and a swarthy foreigner to make his life miserable. At the word he rises to his hind legs, hunches his shoulders, and lunges awkwardly round in a circle, while the foreigner sings _Horry, horry, dum-dum_, and his wife passes the hat. We children pity the bear, as we watch, and forget the other animal that frightens us when near the woods at night. But he passes on at last, with a troop of boys following to the town limits. Next day Bruin comes back, and lives in imagination as ugly and frightful as ever. But Mooween the Bear, as the northern Indians call him, the animal that lives up in the woods of Maine and Canada, is a very different kind of creature. He is big and glossy black, with long white teeth and sharp black claws, like the imagination bear. Unlike him, however, he is shy and wild, and timid as any rabbit. When you camp in the wilderness at night, the rabbit will come out of his form in the ferns to pull at your shoe, or nibble a hole in the salt bag, while you sleep. He will play twenty pranks under your very eyes. But if you would see Mooween, you must camp many summers, and tramp many a weary mile through the big forests before catching a glimpse of him, or seeing any trace save the deep tracks, like a barefoot boy's, left in some soft bit of earth in his hurried flight. Mooween's ears are quick, and his nose very keen. The slightest warning from either will generally send him off to the densest cover or the roughest hillside in the neighborhood. Silently as a black shadow he glides away, if he has detected your approach from a distance. But if surprised and frightened, he dashes headlong through the brush with crash of branches, and bump of fallen logs, and volleys of dirt and dead wood flung out behind him as he digs his toes into the hillside in his frantic haste to be away. In the first startled instant of such an encounter, one thinks there must be twenty bears scrambling up the hill. And if you should perchance get a glimpse of the game, you will be conscious chiefly of a funny little pair of wrinkled black feet, turned up at you so rapidly that they actually seem to twinkle through a cloud of flying loose stuff. That was the way in which I first met Mooween. He was feeding peaceably on blueberries, just stuffing himself with the ripe fruit that tinged with blue a burned hillside, when I came round the turn of a deer path. There he was, the mighty, ferocious beast--and my only weapon a trout-rod! We discovered each other at the same instant. Words can hardly measure the mutual consternation. I felt scared; and in a moment it flashed upon me that he looked so. This last observation was like a breath of inspiration. It led me to make a demonstration before he should regain his wits. I jumped forward with a flourish, and threw my hat at him.-- _Boo!_ said I. _Hoof, woof!_ said Mooween. And away he went up the hill in a desperate scramble, with loose stones rattling, and the bottoms of his feet showing constantly through the volley of dirt and chips flung out behind him. That killed the fierce imagination bear of childhood days deader than any bullet could have done, and convinced me that Mooween is at heart a timid creature. Still, this was a young bear, as was also one other upon whom I tried the same experiment, with the same result. Had he been older and bigger, it might have been different. In that case I have found that a good rule is to go your own way unobtrusively, leaving Mooween to his devices. All animals, whether wild or domestic, respect a man who neither fears nor disturbs them. Mooween's eyes are his weak point. They are close together, and seem to focus on the ground a few feet in front of his nose. At twenty yards to leeward he can never tell you from a stump or a caribou, should you chance to be standing still. If fortunate enough to find the ridge where he sleeps away the long summer days, one is almost sure to get a glimpse of him by watching on the lake below. It is necessary only to sit perfectly still in your canoe among the water-grasses near shore. When near a lake, a bear will almost invariably come down about noontime to sniff carefully all about, and lap the water, and perhaps find a dead fish before going back for his afternoon sleep. Four or five times I have sat thus in my canoe while Mooween passed close by, and never suspected my presence till a chirp drew his attention. It is curious at such times, when there is no wind to bring the scent to his keen nose, to see him turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his forehead in the vain endeavor to make out the curious object there in the grass. At last he rises on his hind legs, and stares long and intently. It seems as if he must recognize you, with his nose pointing straight at you, his eyes looking straight into yours. But he drops on all fours again, and glides silently into the thick bushes that fringe the shore. Don't stir now, nor make the least sound. He is in there, just out of sight, sitting on his haunches, using nose and ears to catch your slightest message. Ten minutes pass by in intense silence. Down on the shore, fifty yards below, a slight swaying of the bilberry bushes catches your eye. That surely is not the bear! There has not been a sound since he disappeared. A squirrel could hardly creep through that underbrush without noise enough to tell where he was. But the bushes sway again, and Mooween reappears suddenly for another long look at the suspicious object. Then he turns and plods his way along shore, rolling his head from side to side as if completely mystified. Now swing your canoe well out into the lake, and head him off on the point, a quarter of a mile below. Hold the canoe quiet just outside the lily pads by grasping a few tough stems, and sit low. This time the big object catches Mooween's eye as he rounds the point; and you have only to sit still to see him go through the same maneuvers with greater mystification than before. Once, however, he varied his program, and gave me a terrible start, letting me know for a moment just how it feels to be hunted, at the same time showing with what marvelous stillness he can glide through the thickest cover when he chooses. It was early evening on a forest lake. The water lay like a great mirror, with the sunset splendor still upon it. The hush of twilight was over the wilderness. Only the hermit-thrushes sang wild and sweet from a hundred dead spruce tops. I was drifting about, partly in the hope to meet Mooween, whose tracks were very numerous at the lower end of the lake, when I heard him walking in the shallow water. Through the glass I made him out against the shore, as he plodded along in my direction. I had long been curious to know how near a bear would come to a man without discovering him. Here was an opportunity. The wind at sunset had been in my favor; now there was not the faintest breath stirring. Hiding the canoe, I sat down in the sand on a little point, where dense bushes grew down to within a few feet of the water's edge. Head and shoulders were in plain sight above the water-grass. My intentions were wholly peaceable, notwithstanding the rifle that lay across my knees. It was near the mating season, when Mooween's temper is often dangerous; and one felt much more comfortable with the chill of the cold iron in his hands. Mooween came rapidly along the shore meanwhile, evidently anxious to reach the other end of the lake. In the mating season bears use the margins of lakes and streams as natural highways. As he drew nearer and nearer I gazed with a kind of fascination at the big unconscious brute. He carried his head low, and dropped his feet with a heavy splash into the shallow water. At twenty yards he stopped as if struck, with head up and one paw lifted, sniffing suspiciously. Even then he did not see me, though only the open shore lay between us. He did not use his eyes at all, but laid his great head back on his shoulders and sniffed in every direction, rocking his brown muzzle up and down the while, so as to take in every atom from the tainted air. A few slow careful steps forward, and he stopped again, looked straight into my eyes, then beyond me towards the lake, all the while sniffing. I was still only part of the shore. Yet he was so near that I caught the gleam of his eyes, and saw the nostrils swell and the muzzle twitch nervously. Another step or two, and he planted his fore feet firmly. The long hairs began to rise along his spine, and under his wrinkled chops was a flash of white teeth. Still he had no suspicion of the motionless object there in the grass. He looked rather out on the lake. Then he glided into the brush and was lost to sight and hearing. He was so close that I scarcely dared breathe as I waited, expecting him to come out farther down the shore. Five minutes passed without the slightest sound to indicate his whereabouts, though I was listening intently in the dead hush that was on the lake. All the while I smelled him strongly. One can smell a bear almost as far as he can a deer, though the scent does not cling so long to the underbrush. A bush swayed slightly below where he had disappeared. I was watching it closely when some sudden warning--I know not what, for I did not hear but only felt it--made me turn my head quickly. There, not six feet away, a huge head and shoulders were thrust out of the bushes on the bank, and a pair of gleaming eyes were peering intently down upon me in the grass. He had been watching me at arm's length probably two or three minutes. Had a muscle moved in all that time, I have no doubt that he would have sprung upon me. As it was, who can say what was passing behind that curious, half-puzzled, half-savage gleam in his eyes? [Illustration] He drew quickly back as a sudden movement on my part threw the rifle into position. A few minutes later I heard the snap of a rotten twig some distance away. Not another sound told of his presence till he broke out onto the shore, fifty yards above, and went steadily on his way up the lake. * * * * * Mooween is something of a humorist in his own way. When not hungry he will go out of his way to frighten a bullfrog away from his sun-bath on the shore, for no other purpose, evidently, than just to see him jump. Watching him thus amusing himself one afternoon, I was immensely entertained by seeing him turn his head to one side, and wrinkle his eyebrows, as each successive frog said _ke'dunk_, and went splashing away over the lily pads. A pair of cubs are playful as young foxes, while their extreme awkwardness makes them a dozen times more comical. Simmo, my Indian guide, tells me that the cubs will sometimes run away and hide when they hear the mother bear returning. No amount of coaxing or of anxious fear on her part will bring them back, till she searches diligently to find them. Once only have I had opportunity to see the young at play. There were two of them, nearly full-grown, with the mother. The most curious thing was to see them stand up on their hind legs and cuff each other soundly, striking and warding like trained boxers. Then they would lock arms and wrestle desperately till one was thrown, when the other promptly seized him by throat or paw, and pretended to growl frightfully. They were well fed, evidently, and full of good spirits as two boys. But the mother was cross and out of sorts. She kept moving about uneasily, as if the rough play irritated her nerves. Occasionally, as she sat for a moment with hind legs stretched out flat and fore paws planted between them, one of the cubs would approach and attempt some monkey play. A sound cuff on the ear invariably sent him whimpering back to his companion, who looked droll enough the while, sitting with his tongue out and his head wagging humorously as he watched the experiment. It was getting toward the time of year when she would mate again, and send them off into the world to shift for themselves. And this was perhaps their first hard discipline. Once also I caught an old bear enjoying himself in a curious way. It was one intensely hot day, in the heart of a New Brunswick wilderness. Mooween came out onto the lake shore and lumbered along, twisting uneasily and rolling his head as if very much distressed by the heat. I followed silently close behind in my canoe. Soon he came to a cool spot under the alders, which was probably what he was looking for. A small brook made an eddy there, and a lot of driftweed had collected over a bed of soft black mud. The stump of a huge cedar leaned out over it, some four or five feet above the water. First he waded in to try the temperature. Then he came out and climbed the cedar stump, where he sniffed in every direction, as is his wont before lying down. Satisfied at last, he balanced himself carefully and gave a big jump--Oh, so awkwardly!--with legs out flat, and paws up, and mouth open as if he were laughing at himself. Down he came, _souse_, with a tremendous splash that sent mud and water flying in every direction. And with a deep _uff-guff_ of pure delight, he settled himself in his cool bed for a comfortable nap. In his fondness for fish, Mooween has discovered an interesting way of catching them. In June and July immense numbers of trout and salmon run up the wilderness rivers on their way to the spawning grounds. Here and there, on small streams, are shallow riffles, where large fish are often half out of water as they struggle up. On one of these riffles Mooween stations himself during the first bright moonlight nights of June, when the run of fish is largest on account of the higher tides at the river mouth. And Mooween knows, as well as any other fisherman, the kind of night on which to go fishing. He knows also the virtue of keeping still. As a big salmon struggles by, Mooween slips a paw under him, tosses him to the shore by a dexterous flip, and springs after him before he can flounder back. When hungry, Mooween has as many devices as a fox for getting a meal. He tries flipping frogs from among the lily pads in the same way that he catches salmon. That failing, he takes to creeping through the water-grass, like a mink, and striking his game dead with a blow of his paw. Or he finds a porcupine loafing through the woods, and follows him about to throw dirt and stones at him, carefully refraining from touching him the while, till the porcupine rolls himself into a ball of bristling quills,--his usual method of defense. Mooween slips a paw under him, flips him against a tree to stun him, and bites him in the belly, where there are no quills. If he spies the porcupine in a tree, he will climb up, if he is a young bear, and try to shake him off. But he soon learns better, and saves his strength for more fruitful exertions. Mooween goes to the lumber camps regularly after his winter sleep and, breaking in through door or roof, helps himself to what he finds. If there happens to be a barrel of pork there, he will roll it into the open air, if the door is wide enough, before breaking in the head with a blow of his paw. Should he find a barrel of molasses among the stores, his joy is unbounded. The head is broken in on the instant and Mooween eats till he is surfeited. Then he lies down and rolls in the sticky sweet, to prolong the pleasure; and stays in the neighborhood till every drop has been lapped up. Lumbermen have long since learned of his strength and cunning in breaking into their strong camps. When valuable stores are left in the woods, they are put into special camps, called bear camps, where doors and roofs are fastened with chains and ingenious log locks to keep Mooween out. Near the settlements Mooween speedily locates the sweet apple trees among the orchards. These he climbs by night, and shakes off enough apples to last him for several visits. Every kind of domestic animal is game for him. He will lie at the edge of a clearing for hours, with the patience of a cat, waiting for turkey or sheep or pig to come within range of his swift rush. His fondness for honey is well known. When he has discovered a rotten tree in which wild bees have hidden their store, he will claw at the bottom till it falls. Curling one paw under the log he sinks the claws deep into the wood. The other paw grips the log opposite the first, and a single wrench lays it open. The clouds of angry insects about his head meanwhile are as little regarded as so many flies. He knows the thickness of his skin, and they know it. When the honey is at last exposed, and begins to disappear in great hungry mouthfuls, the bees also fall upon it, to gorge themselves with the fruit of their hard labor before Mooween shall have eaten it all. Everything eatable in the woods ministers at times to Mooween's need. Nuts and berries are favorite dishes in their season. When these and other delicacies fail, he knows where to dig for edible roots. A big caribou, wandering near his hiding place, is pulled down and stunned by a blow on the head. Then, when the meat has lost its freshness, he will hunt for an hour after a wood-mouse he has seen run under a stone, or pull a rotten log to pieces for the ants and larvæ concealed within. These last are favorite dishes with him. In a burned district, where ants and berries abound, one is continually finding charred logs, in which the ants nest by thousands, split open from end to end. A few strong claw marks, and the lick of a moist tongue here and there, explain the matter. It shows the extremes of Mooween's taste. Next to honey he prefers red ants, which are sour as pickles. Mooween is even more expert as a boxer than as a fisherman. When the skin is stripped from his fore arms, they are seen to be of great size, with muscles as firm to the touch as so much rubber. Long practice has made him immensely strong, and quick as a flash to ward and strike. Woe be to the luckless dog, however large, that ventures in the excitement of the hunt within reach of his paw. A single swift stroke will generally put the poor brute out of the hunt forever. Once Simmo caught a bear by the hind leg in a steel trap. It was a young bear, a two-year-old; and Simmo thought to save his precious powder by killing it with a club. He cut a heavy maple stick and, swinging it high above his head, advanced to the trap. Mooween rose to his hind legs, and looked him steadily in the eye, like the trained boxer that he is. Down came the club with a sweep to have felled an ox. There was a flash from Mooween's paw; the club spun away into the woods; and Simmo just escaped a fearful return blow by dropping to the ground and rolling out of reach, leaving his cap in Mooween's claws. A wink later, and his scalp would have hung there instead. In the mating season, when three or four bears often roam the woods together in fighting humor, Mooween uses a curious kind of challenge. Rising on his hind legs against a big fir or spruce, he tears the bark with his claws as high as he can reach on either side. Then placing his back against the trunk, he turns his head and bites into the tree with his long canine teeth, tearing out a mouthful of the wood. That is to let all rivals know just how big a bear he is. The next bear that comes along, seeking perhaps to win the mate of his rival and following her trail, sees the challenge and measures his height and reach in the same way, against the same tree. If he can bite as high, or higher, he keeps on, and a terrible fight is sure to follow. But if, with his best endeavors, his marks fall short of the deep scars above, he prudently withdraws, and leaves it to a bigger bear to risk an encounter. In the wilderness one occasionally finds a tree on which three or four bears have thus left their challenge. Sometimes all the bears in a neighborhood seem to have left their records in the same place. I remember well one such tree, a big fir, by a lonely little beaver pond, where the separate challenges had become indistinguishable on the torn bark. The freshest marks here were those of a long-limbed old ranger--a monster he must have been--with a clear reach of a foot above his nearest rival. Evidently no other bear had cared to try after such a record. Once, in the mating season, I discovered quite by accident that Mooween can be called, like a hawk or a moose, or indeed any other wild creature, if one but knows how. It was in New Brunswick, where I was camped on a wild forest river. At midnight I was back at a little opening in the woods, watching some hares at play in the bright moonlight. When they had run away, I called a wood-mouse out from his den under a stump; and then a big brown owl from across the river--which almost scared the life out of my poor little wood-mouse. Suddenly a strange cry sounded far back on the mountain. I listened curiously, then imitated the cry, in the hope of hearing it again and of remembering it; for I had never before heard anything like the sound, and had no idea what creature produced it. There was no response, however, and I speedily grew interested in the owls; for by this time two or three more were hooting about me, all called in by the first comer. When they had gone I tried the strange call again. Instantly it was answered close at hand. The creature was coming. I stole out into the middle of the opening, and sat very still on a fallen log. Ten minutes passed in intense silence. Then a twig snapped behind me. I turned--and there was Mooween, just coming into the opening. I shall not soon forget how he looked, standing there big and black in the moonlight; nor the growl deep down in his throat, that grew deeper as he watched me. We looked straight into each other's eyes a brief, uncertain moment. Then he drew back silently into the dense shadow. There is another side to Mooween's character, fortunately a rare one, which is sometimes evident in the mating season, when his temper leads him to attack instead of running away, as usual; or when wounded, or cornered, or roused to frenzy in defense of the young. Mooween is then a beast to be dreaded, a great savage brute, possessed of enormous strength and of a fiend's cunning. I have followed him wounded through the wilderness, when his every resting place was scarred with deep gashes, and where broken saplings testified mutely to the force of his blow. Yet even here his natural timidity lies close to the surface, and his ferocity has been greatly exaggerated by hunters. Altogether, Mooween the Bear is a peaceable fellow, and an interesting one, well worth studying. His extreme wariness, however, enables him generally to escape observation; and there are undoubtedly many queer ways of his yet to be discovered by some one who, instead of trying to scare the life out of him by a shout or a rifle-shot in the rare moments when he shows himself, will have the patience to creep near, and find out just what he is doing. Only in the deepest wilderness is he natural and unconscious. There he roams about, entirely alone for the most part, supplying his numerous wants, and performing droll capers with all the gravity of an owl, when he thinks that not even Tookhees, the wood-mouse, is looking. 
27887	----	WILD ANIMALS AT HOME +---------------------------------------+ | | | BY THE SAME AUTHOR | | | | | | THE BOOK OF WOODCRAFT AND INDIAN LORE | | | | WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN | | | | TWO LITTLE SAVAGES | | | | BIOGRAPHY OF A GRIZZLY | | | | LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTHERN ANIMALS | | | | ROLF IN THE WOODS | | | | THE FORESTERS' MANUAL | | | +---------------------------------------+ [Illustration: I. A Prairie-dog town _In N. Y. Zoo. Photo by E. T. Seton_] _Wild Animals At Home_ _by_ _ERNEST THOMPSON SETON_ Author of "_Wild Animals I Have Known_," "_Two Little Savages_," "_Biography of a Grizzly_," "_Life Histories of Northern Animals_," "_Rolf in the Woods_," "_The Book of Woodcraft_." Head Chief of the Woodcraft Indians _With over 150 Sketches and Photographs by the Author_ _Garden City New York_ _Doubleday, Page & Company_ _1923_ _Copyright, 1913, by_ ERNEST THOMPSON SETON _All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian_ PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y. Foreword My travels in search of light on the "Animals at Home" have taken me up and down the Rocky Mountains for nearly thirty years. In the canyons from British Columbia to Mexico, I have lighted my campfire, far beyond the bounds of law and order, at times, and yet I have found no place more rewarding than the Yellowstone Park, the great mountain haven of wild life. Whenever travellers penetrate into remote regions where human hunters are unknown, they find the wild things half tame, little afraid of man, and inclined to stare curiously from a distance of a few paces. But very soon they learn that man is their most dangerous enemy, and fly from him as soon as he is seen. It takes a long time and much restraint to win back their confidence. In the early days of the West, when game abounded and when fifty yards was the extreme deadly range of the hunter's weapons, wild creatures were comparatively tame. The advent of the rifle and of the lawless skin hunter soon turned all big game into fugitives of excessive shyness and wariness. One glimpse of a man half a mile off, or a whiff of him on the breeze, was enough to make a Mountain Ram or a Wolf run for miles, though formerly these creatures would have gazed serenely from a point but a hundred yards removed. The establishment of the Yellowstone Park in 1872 was the beginning of a new era of protection for wild life; and, by slow degrees, a different attitude in these animals toward us. In this Reservation, and nowhere else at present in the northwest, the wild things are not only abundant, but they have resumed their traditional Garden-of-Eden attitude toward man. They come out in the daylight, they are harmless, and they are not afraid at one's approach. Truly this is ideal, a paradise for the naturalist and the camera hunter. The region first won fame for its Canyon, its Cataracts and its Geysers, but I think its animal life has attracted more travellers than even the landscape beauties. I know it was solely the joy of being among the animals that led me to spend all one summer and part of another season in the Wonderland of the West. My adventures in making these studies among the fourfoots have been very small adventures indeed; the thrillers are few and far between. Any one can go and have the same or better experiences to-day. But I give them as they happened, and if they furnish no ground for hair-lifting emotions, they will at least show what I was after and how I went. I have aimed to show something of the little aspects of the creatures' lives, which are those that the ordinary traveller will see; I go with him indeed, pointing out my friends as they chance to pass, adding a few comments that should make for a better acquaintance on all sides. And I have offered glimpses, wherever possible, of the wild thing in its home, embodying in these chapters the substance of many lectures given under the same title as this book. The cover design is by my wife, Grace Gallatin Seton. She was with me in most of the experiences narrated and had a larger share in every part of the work than might be inferred from the mere text. ERNEST THOMPSON SETON. Contents PAGE =I. The Cute Coyote= 1 An Exemplary Little Beast, My Friend the Coyote 3 The Prairie-dog Outwitted 5 The Coyote's Sense of Humour 8 His Distinguishing Gift 11 The Coyote's Song 13 =II. The Prairie-dog and His Kin= 17 Merry Yek-Yek and His Life of Troubles 19 The Whistler in the Rocks 22 The Pack-rat and His Museum 23 A Free Trader 25 The Upheaver--The Mole-Gopher 27 =III. Famous Fur-bearers--Fox, Marten, Beaver and Otter= 29 The Most Wonderful Fur in the World 32 The Poacher and the Silver Fox 35 The Villain in Velvet--The Marten 47 The Industrious Beaver 48 The Dam 51 The Otter and His Slide 52 =IV. Horns and Hoofs and Legs of Speed= 55 The Bounding Blacktail 57 The Mother Blacktail's Race for Life 59 The Blacktail's Safety Is in the Hills 62 The Elk or Wapiti--The Noblest of all Deer 63 Stalking a Band of Elk 64 The Bugling Elk 66 Snapping a Charging Bull 69 The Hoodoo Cow 72 The Moose--The Biggest of all Deer 75 My Partner's Moose-hunt 76 The Siren Call 77 The Biggest of Our Game--The Buffalo 80 The Shrunken Range 81 The Doomed Antelope and His Heliograph 83 The Rescued Bighorn 85 =V. Bats in the Devil's Kitchen= 89 =VI. The Well-meaning Skunk= 95 His Smell-gun 98 The Cruelty of Steel Traps 99 Friendliness of the Skunk 100 Photographing Skunks at Short Range 101 We Share the Shanty with the Skunks 103 The Skunk and the Unwise Bobcat 104 My Pet Skunks 106 =VII. Old Silver-grizzle--The Badger= 111 The Valiant Harmless Badger 112 His Sociable Bent 115 The Story of the Kindly Badger 116 The Evil One 118 The Badger that Rescued the Boy 119 Finding the Lost One 123 Home Again 125 The Human Brute 129 =VIII. The Squirrel and His Jerky-tail Brothers= 133 The Cheeky Pine Squirrel 134 Chipmunks and Ground-squirrels 137 The Ground-squirrel that Plays Picket-pin 137 Chink and the Picket-pins 139 Chipmunks 141 The Ground-squirrel that Pretends It's a Chipmunk 142 A Four-legged Bird--The Northern Chipmunk 143 A Striped Pigmy--The Least Chipmunk 147 =IX. The Rabbits and Their Habits= 151 Molly Cottontail--The Clever Freezer 152 The Rabbit that Wears Snowshoes 154 The Terror of the Mountain Trails 156 Bunny's Ride 158 The Rabbit Dance 160 The Ghost Rabbit 163 A Narrow-gauge Mule--The Prairie Hare 164 The Bump of Moss that Squeaks 165 The Weatherwise Coney 169 His Safety Is in the Rocks 171 =X. Ghosts of the Campfire= 175 The Jumping Mouse 177 The Calling Mouse 179 =XI. Sneak-cats, Big and Small= 185 The Bobcat or Mountain Wildcat 186 Misunderstood--The Canada Lynx 187 The Shyest Thing in the Woods 189 The Time I Met a Lion 191 In Peril of My Life 194 The Dangerous Night Visitor 196 =XII. Bears of High and Low Degree= 201 The Different Kinds of Bears 202 Bear-trees 203 A Peep Into Bear Family Life 204 The Day at the Garbage Pile 208 Lonesome Johnny 210 Further Annals of the Sanctuary 210 The Grizzly and the Can 216 =Appendix: Mammals of Yellowstone Park= 221 List of Half-tone Plates A Prairie-dog town _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE Chink's adventures with the Coyote and the Picket-pin 8 (a) The Whistler watching me from the rocks (b) A young Whistler 9 Red Fox 32 Foxes quarrelling 33 Beaver 48 Mule-deer 49 Blacktail Family 60 Blacktail mother with her twins 61 A young investigator among the Deer at Fort Yellowstone 64 Elk in Wyoming 65 Elk on the Yellowstone in Winter 68 The first shots at the Hoodoo Cow 69 The last shots at the Hoodoo Cow 76 Elk on the Yellowstone 77 Moose--The Widow 80 Buffalo groups 81 Near Yellowstone Gate 84 Mountain Sheep on Mt. Evarts 85 Track record of Bobcat's adventure with a Skunk 98 The six chapters of the Bobcat's adventure 102 My tame Skunks 103 Red-squirrel storing mushrooms for winter use 134 Chink stalking the Picket-pin 135 The Snowshoe Hare is a cross between a Rabbit and a Snowdrift 150 The Cottontail freezing 151 The Baby Cottontail that rode twenty miles in my hat 162 Snowshoe Rabbits dancing in the light of the lantern 163 Snowshoe Rabbits fascinated by the lantern 170 The Ghost Rabbit 171 The Coney or Calling Hare 178 The Coney barns full of hay stored for winter use 179 (a) Tracks of Deer escaping and (b) Tracks of Mountain Lion in pursuit 186 The Mountain Lion sneaking around us as we sleep 187 Sketch of the Bear Family as made on the spot 198 Two pages from my journal in the garbage heap 199 While I sketched the Bears, a brother camera-hunter was stalking me without my knowledge 206 One meets the Bears at nearly every turn in the woods 207 The shyer ones take to a tree, if one comes too near 210 Clifford B. Harmon feeding a Bear 211 The Bears at feeding time 218 (a) Tom Newcomb pointing out the bear's mark, (b) E. T. Seton feeding a Bear 219 Johnnie Bear: his sins and his troubles 222 Johnnie happy at last 223 * * * * * I The Cute Coyote * * * * * I The Cute Coyote AN EXEMPLARY LITTLE BEAST, MY FRIEND THE COYOTE If you draw a line around the region that is, or was, known as the Wild West, you will find that you have exactly outlined the kingdom of the Coyote. He is even yet found in every part of it, but, unlike his big brother the Wolf, he never frequented the region known as Eastern America. This is one of the few wild creatures that you can see from the train. Each time I have come to the Yellowstone Park I have discovered the swift gray form of the Coyote among the Prairie-dog towns along the River flat between Livingstone and Gardiner, and in the Park itself have seen him nearly every day, and heard him every night without exception. [Illustration] Coyote (pronounced _Ky-o'-tay_, and in some regions _Ky-ute_) is a native Mexican contribution to the language, and is said to mean "halfbreed," possibly suggesting that the Coyote looks like a cross between the Fox and the Wolf. Such an origin would be a very satisfactory clue to his character, for he does seem to unite in himself every possible attribute in the mental make-up of the other two that can contribute to his success in life. He is one of the few Park animals not now protected, for the excellent reasons, first that he is so well able to protect himself, second he is even already too numerous, third he is so destructive among the creatures that he can master. He is a beast of rare cunning; some of the Indians call him God's dog or Medicine dog. Some make him the embodiment of the Devil, and some going still further, in the light of their larger experience, make the Coyote the Creator himself seeking amusement in disguise among his creatures, just as did the Sultan in the "Arabian Nights." [Illustration] The naturalist finds the Coyote interesting for other reasons. When you see that sleek gray and yellow form among the mounds of the Prairie-dog, at once creating a zone of blankness and silence by his very presence as he goes, remember that he is hunting for something to eat; also, that there is another, his mate, not far away. For the Coyote is an exemplary and moral little beast who has only one wife; he loves her devotedly, and they fight the life battle together. Not only is there sure to be a mate close by, but that mate, if invisible, is likely to be playing a game, a very clever game as I have seen it played. Furthermore, remember there is a squealing brood of little Coyotes in the home den up on a hillside a mile or two away. Father and mother must hunt continually and successfully to furnish their daily food. The dog-towns are their game preserves, but how are they to catch a Prairie-dog! Every one knows that though these little yapping Ground-squirrels will sit up and bark at an express train but twenty feet away, they scuttle down out of sight the moment a man, dog or Coyote enters into the far distant precincts of their town; and downstairs they stay in the cyclone cellar until after a long interval of quiet that probably proves the storm to be past. Then they poke their prominent eyes above the level, and, if all is still, will softly hop out and in due course, resume their feeding. THE PRAIRIE-DOG OUTWITTED [Illustration] This is how the clever Coyote utilizes these habits. He and his wife approach the dog-town unseen. One Coyote hides, then the other walks forward openly into the town. There is a great barking of all the Prairie-dogs as they see their enemy approach, but they dive down when he is amongst them. As soon as they are out of sight the second Coyote rushes forward and hides near any promising hole that happens to have some sort of cover close by. Meanwhile, Coyote number one strolls on. The Prairie-dogs that he scared below come up again. At first each puts up the top of his head merely, with his eyes on bumps, much like those of a hippopotamus, prominent and peculiarly suited for this observation work from below, as they are the first things above ground. After a brief inspection, if all be quiet, he comes out an inch more. Now he can look around, the coast is clear, so he sits up on the mound and scans his surroundings. [Illustration] Yes! Ho! Ho! he sees his enemy, that hated Coyote, strolling away off beyond the possibility of doing harm. His confidence is fully restored as the Coyote gets smaller in the distance and the other Prairie-dogs coming out seem to endorse his decision and give him renewed confidence. After one or two false starts, he sets off to feed. This means go ten or twenty feet from the door of his den, for all the grass is eaten off near home. [Illustration] Among the herbage he sits up high to take a final look around, then burying his nose in the fodder, he begins his meal. This is the chance that the waiting, watching, she-Coyote counted on. There is a flash of gray fur from behind that little grease bush; in three hops she is upon him. He takes alarm at the first sound and tries to reach the haven hole, but she snaps him up. With a shake she ends his troubles. He hardly knows the pain of death, then she bounds away on her back track to the home den on the distant hillside. She does not come near it openly and rashly. There is always the possibility of such an approach betraying the family to some strong enemy on watch. She circles around a little, scrutinizes the landscape, studies the tracks and the wind, then comes to the door by more or less devious hidden ways. The sound of a foot outside is enough to make the little ones cower in absolute silence, but mother reassures them with a whining call much like that of a dog mother. They rush out, tumbling over each other in their glee, six or seven in number usually, but sometimes as high as ten or twelve. Eagerly they come, and that fat Prairie-dog lasts perhaps three minutes, at the end of which time nothing is left but the larger bones with a little Coyote busy polishing each of them. Strewn about the door of the den are many other kindred souvenirs, the bones of Ground-squirrels, Chipmunks, Rabbits, Grouse, Sheep, and Fawns, with many kinds of feathers, fur, and hair, to show the great diversity of Coyote diet. [Illustration] THE COYOTE'S SENSE OF HUMOUR To understand the Coyote fully one must remember that he is simply a wild dog, getting his living by his wits, and saving his life by the tireless serviceability of his legs; so has developed both these gifts to an admirable pitch of perfection. He is blessed further with a gift of music and a sense of humour. When I lived at Yancey's, on the Yellowstone, in 1897, I had a good example of the latter, and had it daily for a time. The dog attached to the camp on the inner circle was a conceited, irrepressible little puppy named Chink. He was so full of energy, enthusiasm, and courage that there was no room left in him for dog-sense. But it came after a vast number of humiliating experiences. [Illustration] A Coyote also had attached himself to the camp, but on the outer circle. At first he came out by night to feed on the garbage pile, but realizing the peace of the Park he became bolder and called occasionally by day. Later he was there every day, and was often seen sitting on a ridge a couple of hundred yards away. [Illustration: II. Chink's adventures with the Coyote and the Picket-pin _Sketches by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: IV. (a) The Whistler watching me from the rocks. _Photo by E. T. Seton_ (b) A young Whistler _Photo by G. G. Seton_] One day he was sitting much nearer and grinning in Coyote fashion, when one of the campers in a spirit of mischief said to the dog, "Chink, you see that Coyote out there grinning at you. Go and chase him out of that." Burning to distinguish himself, that pup set off at full speed, and every time he struck the ground he let off a war-whoop. Away went the Coyote and it looked like a good race to us, and to the Picket-pin Ground-squirrels that sat up high on their mounds to rejoice in the spectacle of these, their enemies, warring against each other. The Coyote has a way of slouching along, his tail dangling and tangling with his legs, and his legs loose-jointed, mixing with his tail. He doesn't seem to work hard but oh! how he does cover the prairie! And very soon it was clear that in spite of his magnificent bounds and whoops of glory, Chink was losing ground. A little later the Coyote obviously had to slack up to keep from running away altogether. It had seemed a good race for a quarter of a mile, but it was nothing to the race which began when the Coyote turned on Chink. Uttering a gurgling growl, a bark, and a couple of screeches, he closed in with all the combined fury of conscious might and right, pitted against unfair unprovoked attack. And Chink had a rude awakening; his war-whoops gave place to yelps of dire distress, as he wheeled and made for home. But the Coyote could run all around him, and nipped him, here and there, and when he would, and seemed to be cracking a series of good jokes at Chink's expense, nor ever stopped till the ambitious one of boundless indiscretion was hidden under his master's bed. This seemed very funny at the time, and I am afraid Chink did not get the sympathy he was entitled to, for after all he was merely carrying out orders. But he made up his mind that from that time on, orders or no orders, he would let Coyotes very much alone. They were not so easy as they looked. [Illustration] The Coyote, however, had discovered a new amusement. From that day he simply "laid" for that little dog, and if he found him a hundred yards or so from camp, would chase and race him back in terror to some shelter. At last things got so bad that if we went for a ride even, and Chink followed us, the Coyote would come along, too, and continue his usual amusement. At first it was funny, and then it became tedious, and at last it was deeply resented by Chink's master. A man feels for his dog; he wasn't going to stand still and see his dog abused. He began to grumble vaguely about "If something didn't happen pretty soon, something else would." Just what he meant I didn't ask, but I know that the Coyote disappeared one day, and never was seen or heard of again. I'm not supposed to know any thing about it, but I have my suspicions, although in those days the Coyote was a protected animal. HIS DISTINGUISHING GIFT The scientific name of the Coyote (_Canis latrans_), literally "Barking Dog," is given for the wonderful yapping chorus with which they seldom fail to announce their presence in the evening, as they gather at a safe distance from the campfire. Those not accustomed to the sound are very ready to think that they are surrounded by a great pack of ravening Wolves, and get a sufficiently satisfactory thrill of mingled emotions at the sound. But the guide will reassure you by saying that that great pack of howling Wolves is nothing more than a harmless little Coyote, perhaps two, singing their customary vesper song, demonstrating their wonderful vocal powers. Their usual music begins with a few growling, gurgling yaps which are rapidly increased in volume and heightened in pitch, until they rise into a long squall or scream, which again, as it dies away, breaks up into a succession of yaps and gurgles. Usually one Coyote begins it, and the others join in with something like agreement on the scream. I believe I never yet camped in the West without hearing this from the near hills when night time had come. Last September I even heard it back of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, and I must say I have learned to love it. It is a wild, thrilling, beautiful song. Our first camp was at Yancey's last summer and just after we had all turned in, the Coyote chorus began, a couple of hundred yards from the camp. My wife sat up and exclaimed, "Isn't it glorious? now I know we are truly back in the West." The Park authorities are making great efforts to reduce the number of Coyotes because of their destructiveness to the young game, but an animal that is endowed with extraordinary wits, phenomenal speed, unexcelled hardihood, and marvellous fecundity, is not easily downed. I must confess that if by any means they should succeed in exterminating the Coyote in the West, I should feel that I had lost something of very great value. I never fail to get that joyful thrill when the "Medicine Dogs" sing their "Medicine Song" in the dusk, or the equally weird and thrilling chorus with which they greet the dawn; for they have a large repertoire and a remarkable register. The Coyote is indeed the Patti of the Plains. THE COYOTE'S SONG[A] I am the Coyote that sings each night at dark; It was by gobbling prairie-dogs that I got such a bark. At least a thousand prairie-dogs I fattened on, you see, And every bark they had in them is reproduced in me. _Refrain_: I can sing to thrill your soul or pierce it like a lance, And all I ask of you to do is give me half a chance. With a yap--yap--yap for the morning And a yoop--yoop--yoop for the night And a yow--wow--wow for the rising moon And a yah-h-h-h for the campfire light. Yap--yoop--yow--yahhh! I gathered from the howling winds, the frogs and crickets too, And so from each availing fount, my inspiration drew. I warbled till the little birds would quit their native bush. And squat around me on the ground in reverential hush. _Refrain_: I'm a baritone, soprano, and a bass and tenor, too. I can thrill and slur and frill and whirr and shake you through and through. I'm a Jews' harp--I'm an organ--I'm a fiddle and a flute. Every kind of touching sound is found in the coyoot. _Refrain_: I'm a whooping howling wilderness, a sort of Malibran. With Lind, Labache and Melba mixed and all combined in one. I'm a grand cathedral organ and a calliope sharp, I'm a gushing, trembling nightingale, a vast �olian harp. _Refrain_: I can raise the dead or paint the town, or pierce you like a lance And all I ask of you to do is to give me half a chance. Etc., etc., etc. (Encore verses) Although I am a miracle, I'm not yet recognized. Oh, when the world does waken up how highly I'll be prized. Then managers and vocal stars--and emperors effete Shall fling their crowns, their money bags, their persons, at my feet. _Refrain_: I'm the voice of all the Wildest West, the Patti of the Plains; I'm a wild Wagnerian opera of diabolic strains; I'm a roaring, ranting orchestra with lunatics be-crammed; I'm a vocalized tornado--I'm the shrieking of the damned. _Refrain_: [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote A: All rights reserved.] * * * * * II The Prairie-dog and His Kin * * * * * II The Prairie-dog and His Kin MERRY YEK-YEK AND HIS LIFE OF TROUBLES The common Prairie-dog is typical of the West, more so than the Buffalo is, and its numbers, even now, rival those of the Buffalo in its palmiest days. I never feel that I am truly back on the open range till I hear their call and see the Prairie-dogs once more upon their mounds. As you travel up the Yellowstone Valley from Livingstone to Gardiner you may note in abundance this "dunce of the plains." The "dog-towns" are frequent along the railway, and at each of the many burrows you see from one to six of the inmates. As you come near Gardiner there is a steady rise of the country, and somewhere near the edge of the Park the elevation is such that it imposes one of those mysterious barriers to animal extension which seem to be as impassable as they are invisible. The Prairie-dog range ends near the Park gates. General George S. Anderson tells me, however, that individuals are occasionally found on the flats along the Gardiner River, but always near the gate, and never elsewhere in the Park. On this basis, then, the Prairie-dog is entered as a Park animal. [Illustration] It is, of course, a kind of Ground-squirrel. The absurd name "dog" having been given on account of its "bark." This call is a high-pitched "yek-yek-yek-yeeh," uttered as an alarm cry while the creature sits up on the mound by its den, and every time it "yeks" it jerks up its tail. Old timers will tell you that the Prairie-dog's voice is tied to its tail, and prove it by pointing out that one is never raised without the other. As we have seen, the Coyote looks on the dog-town much as a cow does on a field of turnips or alfalfa--a very proper place, to seek for wholesome, if commonplace, sustenance. But Coyotes are not the only troubles in the life of Yek-yek. Ancient books and interesting guides will regale the traveller with most acceptable stories about the Prairie-dog, Rattlesnake, and the Burrowing Owl, all living in the same den on a basis of brotherly love and Christian charity; having effected, it would seem, a limited partnership and a most satisfactory division of labour: the Prairie-dog is to dig the hole, the Owl to mount sentry and give warning of all danger, and the Rattler is to be ready to die at his post as defender of the Prairie-dog's young. This is pleasing if true. There can be no doubt that at times all three live in the same burrow, and in dens that the hard-working rodent first made. But the simple fact is that the Owl and the Snake merely use the holes abandoned (perhaps under pressure) by the Prairie-dog; and if any two of the three underground worthies happen to meet in the same hole, the fittest survives. I suspect further that the young of each kind are fair game and acceptable, dainty diet to each of the other two. [Illustration] Farmers consider Prairie-dogs a great nuisance; the damage they do to crops is estimated at millions per annum. The best way to get rid of them, practically the only way, is by putting poison down each and every hole in the town, which medieval Italian mode has become the accepted method in the West. Poor helpless little Yek-yek, he has no friends; his enemies and his list of burdens increase. The prey of everything that preys, he yet seems incapable of any measure of retaliation. The only visible joy in his life is his daily hasty meal of unsucculent grass, gathered between cautious looks around for any new approaching trouble, and broken by so many dodges down the narrow hole that his ears are worn off close to his head. Could any simpler, smaller pleasure than his be discovered? Yet he is fat and merry; undoubtedly he enjoys his every day on earth, and is as unwilling as any of us to end the tale. We can explain him only if we credit him with a philosophic power to discover happiness within in spite of all the cold unfriendly world about him. THE WHISTLER IN THE ROCKS [Illustration] When the far-off squirrel ancestor of Yek-yek took to the plains for a range, another of the family selected the rocky hills. He developed bigger claws for the harder digging, redder colour for the red-orange surroundings, and a far louder and longer cry for signalling across the peaks and canyons, and so became the bigger, handsomer, more important creature we call the Mountain Whistler, Yellow Marmot or Orange Woodchuck. In all of the rugged mountain parts of the Yellowstone one may hear his peculiar, shrill whistle, especially in the warm mornings. [Illustration] You carefully locate the direction of the note and proceed to climb toward it. You may have an hour's hard work before you sight the orange-breasted Whistler among the tumbled mass of rocks that surround his home, for it is a far-reaching sound, heard half a mile away at times. Those who know the Groundhog of the East would recognize in the Rock Woodchuck its Western cousin, a little bigger, yellower, and brighter in its colours, living in the rocks and blessed with a whistle that would fill a small boy with envy. Now, lest the critical should object to the combination name of "Rock Woodchuck," it is well to remind them that "Woodchuck" has nothing to do with either "wood" or "chucking," but is our corrupted form of an Indian name "Ot-choeck," which is sometimes written also "We-jack." In the ridge of broken rocks just back of Yancey's is a colony of the Whistlers; and there as I sat sketching one day, with my camera at hand, one poked his head up near me and gave me the pose that is seen in the photograph. THE PACK-RAT AND HIS MUSEUM Among my school fellows was a boy named Waddy who had a mania for collecting odds, ends, curios, bits of brass or china, shiny things, pebbles, fungus, old prints, bones, business cards, carved peach stones, twisted roots, distorted marbles, or freak buttons. Anything odd or glittering was his especial joy. He had no theory about these things. He did not do anything in particular with them. He found gratification in spreading them out to gloat over, but I think his chief joy was in the collecting. And when some comrade was found possessed of a novelty that stirred his cupidity, the pleasure of planning a campaign to secure possession, the working out of the details, and the glory of success, were more to Waddy than any other form of riches or exploit. [Illustration] The Pack-rat is the Waddy of the mountains, or Waddy was the Pack-rat of the school. Imagine, if you would picture the Pack-rat, a small creature like a common rat, but with soft fur, a bushy tail, and soulful eyes, living the life of an ordinary rat in the woods, except that it has an extraordinary mania for collecting curios. There can be little doubt that this began in the nest-building idea, and then, because it was necessary to protect his home, cactus leaves and thorny branches were piled on it. The instinct grew until to-day the nest of a Pack-rat is a mass of rubbish from one to four feet high, and four to eight feet across. I have examined many of these collections. They are usually around the trunks in a clump of low trees, and consist of a small central nest about eight inches across, warm and soft, with a great mass of sticks and thorns around and over this, leaving a narrow entrance well-guarded by an array of cactus spines; then on top of all, a most wonderful collection of pine cones, shells, pebbles, bones, scraps of paper and tin, and the skulls of other animals. And when the owner can add to these works of art or vertu a brass cartridge, a buckle or a copper rivet, his little bosom is doubtless filled with the same high joy that any great collector might feel on securing a Raphael or a Rembrandt. I remember finding an old pipe in one Rat museum. Pistol cartridges are eagerly sought after, so are saddle buckles, even if he has to cut them surreptitiously from the saddle of some camper. And when any of these articles are found missing it is usual to seek out the nearest Rat house, and here commonly the stolen goods are discovered shamelessly exposed on top. I remember hearing of a set of false teeth that were lost in camp, but rescued in this very way. A FREE TRADER "Pack" is a Western word meaning "carry," and thus the Rat that carries off things is the "Pack-rat." But it has another peculiarity. As though it had a conscience disturbed by pilfering the treasure of another, it often brings back what may be considered a fair exchange. Thus a silver-plated spoon may have gone from its associate cup one night, but in that cup you may find a long pine cone or a surplus nail, by which token you may know that a Pack-rat has called and collected. Sometimes this enthusiastic fancier goes off with food, but leaves something in its place; in one case that I heard of, the Rat, either with a sense of humour or a mistaken idea of food values, after having carried off the camp biscuit, had filled the vacant dish with the round pellets known as "Elk sign." But evidently there is a disposition to deal fair; not to steal, but to trade. For this reason the creature is widely known as the "Trade Rat." [Illustration] Although I have known the Pack-rat for years in the mountains, I never saw one within the strict lines of the Yellowstone sanctuary. But the guides all assure me that they are found and manifest the same disposition here as elsewhere. So that if you should lose sundry bright things around camp, or some morning find your boots stuffed with pebbles, deer sign, or thorns, do not turn peevish or charge the guide with folly; it means, simply, you have been visited by a Mountain Rat, and any _un_eatables you miss will doubtless be found in his museum, which will be discovered within a hundred yards--a mass of sticks and rubbish under a tree--with some bright and shiny things on the top where the owner can sit amongst them on sunny days, and gloat till his little black eyes are a-swim, and his small heart filled with holy joy. THE UPHEAVER--THE MOLE-GOPHER [Illustration: Pack-rat nest] As you cross any of the level, well-grassed prairie regions in the Yellowstone you will see piles of soft earth thrown up in little hillocks, sometimes a score or more of them bunched together. The drivers will tell you that these are molehills, which isn't quite true. For the Mole is a creature unknown in the Park, and the animal that makes these mounds is exceedingly abundant. It is the common Mole-gopher, a gopher related very distantly to the Prairie-dog and Mountain Whistler, but living the underground life of a Mole, though not even in the same order as that interesting miner, for the Mole-gopher is a rodent (Order _Rodentia_) and the Mole a bug-eater (Order _Insectivora_); just as different as Lion and Caribou. The Mole-gopher is about the size of a rat, but has a short tail and relatively immense forepaws and claws. It is indeed wonderfully developed as a digger. Examine the mound of earth thrown up. If it is a fair example, it will make fully half a bushel. Next count the mounds that are within a radius of fifty paces; probably all are the work of this Gopher, or rather this pair, for they believe in team play. Search over the ground carefully, and you will discern that there are scores of ancient mounds flattened by the weather, and traces of hundreds, perhaps, that date from remote years. Now multiply the size of one mound by the number of mounds, and you will have some idea of the work done by this pair. Finally, remembering that there may be a pair of Gophers for every acre in the Park, estimate the tons of earth moved by one pair and multiply it by the acres in the Park, and you will get an idea of the work done by those energetic rodents as a body, and you will realize how well he has won his Indian name, the "Upheaver." We are accustomed to talk of upheaval in geology as a frightful upset of all nature, but here before our eyes is going on an upheaval of enormous extent and importance, but so gently and pleasantly done that we enjoy every phase of the process. [Illustration: The Mole-gopher] * * * * * III Famous Fur-bearers-- * * * * * III Famous Fur-bearers FOX, MARTEN, BEAVER, AND OTTER Fair Lady Multo Millionaire riding in the dusty stagecoach, comparing as you go the canyons of the Yellowstone with memories of Colorado, Overland, and Stalheim, you, in your winter home, know all about fur as it enters your world with its beauty, its warmth, its price--its gauge of the wearer's pocket. Let me add a segment of the circle to round your knowledge out. When nature peopled with our four-foot kin the cold north lands, it was necessary to clothe these little brethren of ours in a coat that should be absolutely warm, light, durable, of protective colour, thick in cold weather, thin in warm. Under these conditions she produced _fur_, with its densely woolly undercoat and its long, soft, shining outer coat, one for warmth, the other for wet and wear. Some northern animals can store up food in holes or in the fat of their bodies, so need not be out when the intensest cold is on the land. Some have to face the weather all winter, and in these we find the fur of its best quality. Of this class are the Marten and the Northern Fox. They are the finest, warmest, lightest, softest of all furs. But colour is a cardinal point when beauty is considered and where fashion is Queen. So the choicest colours are the soft olive brown with silver hairs, found in the Russian Sable, and the glossy black with silver hairs, found in the true Silver Fox of the North. THE MOST WONDERFUL FUR IN THE WORLD What is the Silver Fox? Simply a black freak, a brunette born into a red-headed family. But this does not cast any reflection on the mother or on father's lineage. On the contrary, it means that they had in them an element of exceptional vigour, which resulted in a peculiar intensifying of all pigments, transmuting red into black and carrying with it an unusual vigour of growth and fineness of texture, producing, in short, the world-famed Silver Fox, the lightest, softest, thickest, warmest, and most lustrous of furs, the fur worth many times its weight in gold, and with this single fault, that it does not stand long wear. [Illustration] [Illustration: V. Red Fox _Captive; photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: VI. Foxes quarrelling _Captive; photo by E. T. Seton_] Cold and exposure are wonderful stimulants of the skin, and so it is not surprising that the real Silver Fox should appear only in very cold climates. Owing to its elevation the Yellowstone Park has the winter climate of northern Canada, and, as might have been predicted, the Silver Fox occurs among the many red-headed or bleached blonde Foxes that abound in the half open country. You may travel all round the stage route and neither see nor hear a Fox, but travel quietly on foot, or better, camp out, and you will soon discover the crafty one in yellow, or, rather, he will discover you. How? Usually after you have camped for the night and are sitting quietly by the fire before the hour of sleep, a curious squall is heard from the dark hillside or bushes, a squall followed by a bark like that of a toy terrier. Sometimes it keeps on at intervals for five minutes, and sometimes it is answered by a similar noise. This is the bark of a Fox. It differs from the Coyote call in being very short, very squally, much higher pitched, and without any barks in it that would do credit to a fair-sized dog. It is no use to go after him. You won't see him. You should rather sit and enjoy the truly wildwood ring of his music. In the morning if you look hard in the dust and mud, you may find his tracks, and once in a while you will see his yellow-brown form drifting on the prairie as though wind-blown under sail of that enormous tail. For this is the big-tailed variety of Red Fox. But if you wish to see the Fox in all his glory you must be here in winter, when the deep snow cutting off all other foods brings all the Fox population about the hotels whose winter keepers daily throw out scraps for which the Foxes, the Magpies, and a dozen other creatures wait and fight. From a friend, connected with one of the Park hotels during the early '90's, I learned that among the big-tailed pensioners of the inn, there appeared one winter a wonderful Silver Fox; and I heard many rumours about that Fox. I was told that he disappeared, and did not die of sickness, old age, or wild-beast violence; and what I heard I may tell in a different form, only, be it remembered, the names of the persons and places are disguised, as well as the date; and my informant may have brought in details that belonged elsewhere. So that you are free to question much of the account, but the backbone of it is not open to doubt, and some of the guides in the Park can give you details that I do not care to put on paper. THE POACHER AND THE SILVER FOX How is it that all mankind has a sneaking sympathy with a poacher? A burglar or a pickpocket has our unmitigated contempt; he clearly is a criminal; but you will notice that the poacher in the story is generally a reckless dare-devil with a large and compensatory amount of good-fellow in his make-up--yes, I almost said, of good citizenship. I suppose, because in addition to the breezy, romantic character of his calling, seasoned with physical danger as well as moral risk, there is away down in human nature a strong feeling that, in spite of man-made laws, the ancient ruling holds that "wild game belongs to no man till some one makes it his property by capture." It may be wrong, it may be right, but I have heard this doctrine voiced by red men and white, as primitive law, once or twice; and have seen it lived up to a thousand times. Well, Josh Cree was a poacher. This does not mean that every night in every month he went forth with nefarious tricks and tools, to steal the flesh and fur that legally were not his. Far from it. Josh never poached but once. But that's enough; he had crossed the line, and this is how it came about: As you roll up the Yellowstone from Livingston to Gardiner you may note a little ranch-house on the west of the track with its log stables, its corral, its irrigation ditch, and its alfalfa patch of morbid green. It is a small affair, for it was founded by the handiwork of one honest man, who with his wife and small boy left Pennsylvania, braved every danger of the plains, and secured this claim in the late '80's. Old man Cree--he was only forty, but every married man is "Old Man" in the West--was ready to work at any honest calling from logging or sluicing to grading and muling. He was strong and steady, his wife was steady and strong. They saved their money, and little by little they got the small ranch-house built and equipped; little by little they added to their stock on the range with the cattle of a neighbour, until there came the happy day when they went to live on their own ranch--father, mother, and fourteen-year-old Josh, with every prospect of making it pay. The spreading of that white tablecloth for the first time was a real religious ceremony, and the hard workers gave thanks to the All-father for His blessing on their every effort. One year afterward a new event brought joy; there entered happily into their happy house a little girl, and all the prairie smiled about them. Surely their boat was well beyond the breakers. [Illustration] [Illustration] But right in the sunshine of their joy the trouble cloud arose to block the sky. Old man Cree was missing one day. His son rode long and far on the range for two hard days before he sighted a grazing pony, and down a rocky hollow near, found his father, battered and weak, near death, with a broken leg and a gash in his head. He could only gasp "Water" as Josh hurried up, and the boy rushed off to fill his hat at the nearest stream. [Illustration] They had no talk, for the father swooned after drinking, and Josh had to face the situation; but he was Western trained. He stripped himself of all spare clothing, and his father's horse of its saddle blanket; then, straightening out the sick man, he wrapped him in the clothes and blanket, and rode like mad for the nearest ranch-house. The neighbour, a young man, came at once, with a pot to make tea, an axe, and a rope. They found the older Cree conscious but despairing. A fire was made, and hot tea revived him. Then Josh cut two long poles from the nearest timber and made a stretcher, or travois, Indian fashion, the upper ends fast to the saddle of a horse, while the other ends trailed on the ground. Thus by a long, slow journey the wounded man got back. All he had prayed for was to get home. Every invalid is sure that if only he can get home all will soon be well. Mother was not yet strong, the baby needed much care, but Josh was a good boy, and the loving best of all was done for the sick one. His leg, set by the army surgeon of Fort Yellowstone, was knit again after a month, but had no power. He had no force; the shock of those two dire days was on him. The second month went by, and still he lay in bed. Poor Josh was the man of the place now, and between duties, indoors and out, he was worn body and soul. Then it was clear they must have help. So Jack S---- was engaged at the regular wages of $40 a month for outside work, and a year of struggle went by, only to see John Cree in his grave, his cattle nearly all gone, his widow and boy living in a house on which was still $500 of the original mortgage. Josh was a brave boy and growing strong, but unboyishly grave with the weight of care. He sold off the few cattle that were left, and set about keeping the roof over his mother and baby sister by working a truck farm for the market supplied by the summer hotels of the Park, and managed to come out even. He would in time have done well, but he could not get far enough ahead to meet that 10 per cent mortgage already overdue. The banker was not a hard man, but he was in the business for the business. He extended the time, and waited for interest again and again, but it only made the principal larger, and it seemed that the last ditch was reached, that it would be best to let the money-man foreclose, though that must mean a wipe-out and would leave the fatherless family homeless. [Illustration] Winter was coming on, work was scarce, and Josh went to Gardiner to see what he could get in the way of house or wage. He learned of a chance to 'substitute' for the Park mail-carrier, who had sprained his foot. It was an easy drive to Fort Yellowstone, and there he readily agreed, when they asked him, to take the letters and packages and go on farther to the Canyon Hotel. Thus it was that on the 20th day of November 189--, Josh Cree, sixteen years old, tall and ruddy, rode through the snow to the kitchen door of the Canyon Hotel and was welcomed as though he were old Santa Claus himself. [Illustration] Two Magpies on a tree were among the onlookers. The Park Bears were denned up, but there were other fur-bearers about. High on the wood-pile sat a Yellow Red Fox in a magnificent coat. Another was in front of the house, and the keeper said that as many as a dozen came some days. And sometimes, he said, there also came a wonderful Silver Fox, a size bigger than the rest, black as coal, with eyes like yellow diamonds, and a silver frosting like little stars on his midnight fur. "My! but he's a beauty. That skin would buy the best team of mules on the Yellowstone." That was interesting and furnished talk for a while. In the morning when they were rising for their candlelight breakfast, the hotel man glancing from the window exclaimed, "Here he is now!" and Josh peered forth to see in the light of sunrise something he had often heard of, but never before seen, a coal-black Fox, a giant among his kind. How slick and elegant his glossy fur, how slim his legs, and what a monstrous bushy tail; and the other Foxes moved aside as the patrician rushed in impatient haste to seize the food thrown out by the cook. "Ain't he a beauty?" said the hotel man. "I'll bet that pelt would fetch five hundred." Oh, why did he say "five hundred," the exact sum, for then it was that the tempter entered into Josh Cree's heart. Five hundred dollars! just the amount of the mortgage. "Who owns wild beasts? The man that kills them," said the tempter, and the thought was a live one in his breast as Josh rode back to Fort Yellowstone. [Illustration] At Gardiner he received his pay, $6, for three days' work and, turning it into groceries, set out for the poor home that soon would be lost to him, and as he rode he did some hard and gloomy thinking. On his wrist there hung a wonderful Indian quirt of plaited rawhide and horsehair with beads on the shaft, and a band of Elk teeth on the butt. It was a pet of his, and "good medicine," for a flat piece of elkhorn let in the middle was perforated with a hole, through which the distant landscape was seen much clearer--a well-known law, an ancient trick, but it made the quirt prized as a thing of rare virtue, and Josh had refused good offers for it. Then a figure afoot was seen, and coming nearer, it turned out to be a friend, Jack Day, out a-gunning with a .22 rifle. But game was scarce and Jack was returning to Gardiner empty-handed and disgusted. They stopped for a moment's greeting when Day said: "Huntin's played out now. How'll you swap that quirt for my rifle?" A month before Josh would have scorned the offer. A ten-dollar quirt for a five-dollar rifle, but now he said briefly: "For rifle with cover, tools and ammunition complete, I'll go ye." So the deal was made and in an hour Josh was home. He stabled Grizzle, the last of their saddle stock, and entered. [Illustration] Love and sorrow dwelt in the widow's home, but the return of Josh brought its measure of joy. Mother prepared the regular meal of tea, potatoes, and salt pork; there was a time when they had soared as high as canned goods, but those prosperous days were gone. Josh was dandling baby sister on his lap as he told of his trip, and he learned of two things of interest: First, the bank must have its money by February; second, the stable at Gardiner wanted a driver for the Cook City stage. Then the little events moved quickly. His half-formed plan of getting back to the Canyon was now frustrated by the new opening, and, besides this, hope had been dampened by the casual word of one who reported that "that Silver Fox had not been seen since at the Canyon." Then began long days of dreary driving through the snow, with a noon halt at Yancey's and then three days later the return, in the cold, the biting cold. It was freezing work, but coldest of all was the chill thought at his heart that February 1st would see him homeless. [Illustration] Small bands of Mountain Sheep he saw at times on the slope of Evarts, and a few Blacktail, and later, when the winter deepened, huge bull Elk were seen along the trail. Sometimes they moved not more than a few paces to let him pass. These were everyday things to him, but in the second week of his winter work he got a sudden thrill. He was coming down the long hill back of Yancey's when what should he see there, sitting on its tail, shiny black with yellow eyes like a huge black cat unusually long and sharp in the nose, but a wonderful Silver Fox! Possibly the same as the one he saw at the Canyon, for that one he knew had disappeared and there were not likely to be two in the Park. Yes, it might be the same, and Josh's bosom surged with mingled feelings. Why did he not carry that little gun? Why did he not realize? Were the thoughts that came--$500! A noble chance! broad daylight only twenty-five yards! and gone! The Fox was still there when Josh drove on. On the next trip he brought the little rifle. He had sawed off the stock so he could hide it easily in his overcoat if need be. No man knew that he carried arms, but the Foxes seemed to know. The Red ones kept afar and the Black one came no more. Day after day he drove and hoped but the Black Fox has cunning measured to his value. He came not, or if he came, was wisely hidden, and so the month went by, till late in the cold Moon of Snow he heard old Yancey, say "There's a Silver Fox bin a-hanging around the stable this last week. Leastwise Dave says he seen him." There were soldiers sitting around that stove, game guardians of the Park, and still more dangerous, a scout, the soldiers' guide, a mountaineer. Josh turned not an inch, he made no sound in response, but his heart gave a jump. Half an hour later he went out to bed his horses for the night, and peering around the stable he saw a couple of shadowy forms that silently shifted until swallowed by the gloom. Then the soldiers came to bed their horses, and Josh went back to the stove. His big driving coat hung with the little sawed-off rifle in the long pocket. He waited till the soldiers one by one went up the ladder to the general bunk-room. He rose again, got the lantern, lighted it, carried it out behind the lonely stable. The horses were grinding their hay, the stars were faintly lighting the snow. There was no one about as he hung the lantern under the eaves outside so that it could be seen from the open valley, but not from the house. [Illustration] A faint _Yap-yah_, of a Fox was heard on the piney hillside, as he lay down on the hay in the loft, but there were no signs of life on the snow. He had come to wait all night if need be, and waited. The lantern might allure, it might scare, but it was needed in this gloom, and it tinged the snow with faint yellow light below him. An hour went by, then a big-tailed form came near and made a little bark at the lantern. It looked very dark, but it had a paler patch on the throat. This waiting was freezing work; Josh's teeth were chattering in spite of his overcoat. Another gray form came, then a much larger black one shaped itself on the white. It dashed at the first, which fled, and the second one followed but a little, and then sat down on the snow, gazing at that bright light. When you are sure, you are _so_ sure--Josh knew him now, he was facing the Silver Fox. But the light was dim. Josh's hand trembled as he bared it to lay the back on his lips and suck so as to make a mousey squeak. The effect on the Fox was instant. He glided forward intent as a hunting cat. Again he stood in, oh! such a wonderful pose, still as a statue, frozen like a hiding partridge, unbudging as a lone kid Antelope in May. And Josh raised--yes, he had come for that--he raised that fatal gun. The lantern blazed in the Fox's face at twenty yards; the light was flung back doubled by its shining eyes; it looked perfectly clear. Josh lined the gun, but, strange to tell, the sights so plain were lost at once, and the gun was shaking like a sorghum stalk while the Gopher gnaws its root. [Illustration] He laid the weapon down with a groan, cursed his own poor trembling hand, and in an instant the wonder Fox was gone. Poor Josh! He wasn't bad-tongued, but now he used all the evil words he had ever heard, and he was Western bred. Then he reacted on himself. "The Fox might come back!" Suddenly he remembered something. He got out a common sulphur match. He wet it on his lips and rubbed it on the muzzle sight: Then on each side of the notch on the breech sight. He lined it for a tree. Yes! surely! What had been a blur of blackness had now a visible form. A faint bark on a far hillside might mean a coming or a going Fox. Josh waited five minutes, then again he squeaked on his bare hand. The effect was a surprise when from the shelter of the stable wall ten feet below there leaped the great dark Fox. At fifteen feet it paused. Those yellow orbs were fiery in the light and the rifle sights with the specks of fire were lined. There was a sharp report and the black-robed fur was still and limp in the snow. Who can tell the crack of a small rifle among the louder cracks of green logs splitting with the fierce frost of a Yellowstone winter's night? Why should travel-worn, storm-worn travellers wake at each slight, usual sound? Who knows? Who cares? * * * * * And afar in Livingston what did the fur dealer care? It was a great prize--or the banker? he got his five hundred, and mother found it easy to accept the Indians' creed: "Who owns wild beasts? The man who kills them." "I did not know how it would come," she said; "I only knew it would come, for I prayed and believed." We know that it came when it meant the most. The house was saved. It was the turn in their fortune's tide, and the crucial moment of the change was when those three bright sulphur spots were lined with the living lamps in the head of the Silver Fox. Yes! Josh was a poacher. Just once. [Illustration] THE VILLAIN IN VELVET--THE MARTEN This beautiful animal, the Sable of America, with its rich brown fur and its golden throat, comes naturally after the Silver Fox, for such is the relative value of their respective coats. The Fox is a small wild dog; the Marten is a large tree Weasel. It is a creature of amazing agility, so much so that it commonly runs down the Red-squirrel among the tree tops. Its food consists mainly of mice and Squirrels, but it kills Rabbits and Grouse when it can find them, and sometimes even feasts on game of a far more noble size. Tom Newcomb, my old guide, has given me an interesting note on the Marten, made while he was acting as hunting guide in the Shoshoni Mountains. In October, 1911, he was out with Baron D' Epsen and his party, hunting on Miller Creek east of Yellowstone Park. They shot at a Deer. It ran off as though unharmed, but turned to run down hill, and soon the snow showed that it was spurting blood on both sides. They followed for three or four hundred yards, and then the Deer track was joined by the tracks of five Marten. In a few minutes they found the Deer down and the five Marten, a family probably, darting about in the near trees, making their peculiar soft purr as though in anticipation of the feast, which was delayed only by the coming of the hunters. These attempts to share with the killers of big game are often seen. [Illustration] THE INDUSTRIOUS BEAVER In some respects the Beaver is the most notable animal in the West. It was the search for Beaver skins that led adventurers to explore the Rocky Mountains, and to open up the whole northwest of the United States and Canada. It is the Beaver to-day that is the chief incentive to poachers in the Park, but above all the Beaver is the animal that most manifests its intelligence by its works, forestalls man in much of his best construction, and amazes us by the well-considered labour of its hands. [Illustration: VII. Beaver: (a) Pond and house; (b) Stumps of tree cut and removed by Beaver, near Yancey's, 1897 _Photos by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: VIII. Mule-deer _Photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration] There was a time when the Beaver's works and wisdom were so new and astounding that super-human intelligence was ascribed to this fur-clad engineer. Then the scoffers came and reduced him to the low level of his near kin, and explained the accounts of his works as mere fairy tales. Now we have got back to the middle of the road. We find him a creature of intelligence far above that of his near kinsmen, and endowed with some extraordinary instincts that guide him in making dams, houses, etc., that are unparalleled in the animal world. Here are the principal deliberate constructions of the Beaver: First the lodge. The Beaver was the original inventor of reinforced concrete. He has used it for a million years, in the form of mud mixed with sticks and stones, for building his lodge and dam. The lodge is the home of the family; that is, it shelters usually one old male, one old female and sundry offspring. It is commonly fifteen to twenty feet across outside, and three to five feet high. Within is a chamber about two feet high and six feet across, well above water and provided with a ventilator through the roof, also two entering passages under water, one winding for ordinary traffic, and one straight for carrying in wood, whose bark is a staple food. This house is kept perfectly tidy, and when the branch is stripped of all eatable parts, it is taken out and worked into the dam, which is a crooked bank of mud and sticks across the running stream. It holds the water so as to moat the Beaver Castle. [Illustration] But the canal is one of this animal's most interesting undertakings. It is strictly a freight canal for bringing in food-logs, and is dug out across level ground toward the standing timber. Canals are commonly three or four hundred feet long, about three feet wide and two feet deep. There was a small but good example at Yancey's in 1897; it was only seventy feet long. The longest I ever saw was in the Adirondacks, N. Y.; it was six hundred and fifty-four feet in length following the curves, two or three feet wide and about two feet deep. Three other Beaver structures should be noticed. One, the dock or plunge hole, which is a deep place by a sharply raised bank, both made with careful manual labour. Next, the sunning place, generally an ant-hill on which the Beaver lies to enjoy a sun-bath, while the ants pick the creepers out of his fur. Third, the mud-pie. This is a little patty of mud mixed with a squeeze of the castor or body-scent glands. It answers the purpose of a register, letting all who call know that so and so has recently been here. The chief food of the Beaver, at least its favourite food, is aspen, also called quaking asp or poplar; where there are no poplars there are no Beavers. THE DAM Usually the Beavers start a dam on some stream, right opposite a good grove of poplars. When these are all cut down and the bark used for food, the Beaver makes a second dam on the same stream, always with a view to having deep water for safety, close by poplars for food. In this way I found the Beavers at Yancey's in 1897 had constructed thirteen dams in succession. But when I examined the ground again in 1912, the dams were broken, the ponds all dry. Why? The answer is very simple. The Beavers had used up all the food. Instead of the little aspen groves there were now nothing but stumps, and the Beavers had moved elsewhere. [Illustration: Beaver using his Tail as a Trowel] Similarly in 1897 the largest Beaver pond in the Park was at Obsidian Cliff. I should say the dam there was over four hundred yards long. But now it is broken and the pond is drained. And the reason as before--the Beavers used all the food and moved on. Of course the dam is soon broken when the hardworking ones are not there in their eternal vigilance to keep it tight. There are many good Beaver ponds near Yancey's now and probably made by the same colonies of Beavers as those I studied there. Last September I found a fine lots of dams and dammers on the southeast side of Yellowstone Lake where you may go on a camera hunt with certainty of getting Beaver pictures. Yes, in broad daylight. Let me correct here some popular errors about the Beaver: It does not use its tail as a trowel. It does not use big logs in building a dam. It does not and cannot drive stakes. It cannot throw a tree in any given way. It finishes the lodge outside with sticks, not mud. THE OTTER AND HIS SLIDE [Illustration] Every one of us that ever was a small boy and rejoiced in belly-bumping down some icy hill, on a sled of glorious red, should have a brotherly sympathy for the Otter. While in a large sense this beautiful animal belongs to the Weasel family, it has so far progressed that it is one of the merriest, best-natured, unsanguinary creatures that ever caught their prey alive. This may be largely owing to the fact that it has taken entirely to a fish diet; for without any certain knowledge of the reason, we observe that fisherfolk are gentler than hunterfolk, and the Otter among his Weasel kin affords a good illustration of this. We find the animals going through much the same stages as we do. First, the struggle for food, then for mates, and later, when they have no cause to worry about either, they seek for entertainment. Quite a number of our animals have invented amusements. Usually these are mere games of tag, catch, or tussle, but some have gone farther and have a regular institution, with a set place to meet, and apparatus provided. This is the highest form of all, and one of the best illustrations of it is found in the jovial Otter. Coasting is an established game with this animal; and probably every individual of the species frequents some Otter slide. This is any convenient steep hill or bank, sloping down into deep water, prepared by much use, and worn into a smooth shoot that becomes especially serviceable when snow or ice are there to act as lightning lubricants. And here the Otters will meet, old and young, male and female, without any thought but the joy of fun together, and shoot down one after the other, swiftly, and swifter still, as the hill grows smooth with use, and plump into the water and out again; and chase each other with little animal gasps of glee, each striving to make the shoot more often and more quickly than the others. And all of this charming scene, this group and their merry game, is unquestionably for the simple social joy of being together in an exercise which gives to them the delicious, exhilarating sensation of speeding through space without either violence or effort. In fact, for the very same reason that you and I went coasting when we were boys. Do not fail to get one of the guides to show you the Otter slides as you travel about the lake. Some of them are good and some are poor. The very best are seen after the snow has come, but still you can see them with your own eyes, and if you are very lucky and very patient you may be rewarded by the sight of these merry creatures indulging in a game which closely parallels so many of our own. * * * * * IV Horns and Hoofs and Legs of Speed * * * * * IV Horns and Hoofs and Legs of Speed THE BOUNDING BLACKTAIL When Lewis and Clark reached the Big Sioux River in Dakota, on their famous journey up the Missouri, one hundred and ten years ago, they met, on the very edge and beginning of its range, the Mule Deer, and added the new species to their collection. It is the characteristic Deer of the rough country from Mexico to British Columbia, and from California to Manitoba; and is one of the kinds most easily observed in the Yellowstone Sanctuary. [Illustration] Driving from Gardiner, passing under the Great Tower of Eagle Rock on which an Osprey has nested year after year as far back as the records go, and wheeling into the open space in front of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel, one is almost sure to come on a family of Deer wandering across the lawn, or posing among the shrubbery, with all the artless grace of the truly wild creature. These are the representatives of several hundred that collect in fall on and about this lawn, but are now scattered for the summer season over the adjoining hills, to come again, no doubt in increased numbers, when the first deep snow shall warn them to seek their winter range. Like the other animals, these are natives of the region and truly wild, but so educated by long letting alone that it is easy to approach within a few yards. The camera hunter should not fail to use this opportunity, not only because they are wild and beautiful things, but because he can have the films developed at the hotel over night, and so find out how his camera is behaving in this new light and surroundings. [Illustration] This is the common Blacktailed Deer of the hill country, called Mule Deer on account of its huge ears and the shape of its tail. In Canada I knew it by the name of "Jumping Deer," from its gait, and in the Rockies it is familiar as the "Bounding Blacktail"--"Bounding" because of the wonderful way in which it strikes the ground with its legs held stiffly, then rises in the air with little apparent effort, and lands some ten or fifteen feet away. As the hunters say, "The Blacktail hits only the high places in the landscape." On the level it does not run so well as the Antelope or the Whitetailed Deer, and I often wondered why it had adopted this laborious mode of speeding, which seemed so inferior to the normal pace of its kin. But at length I was eyewitness of an episode that explained the puzzle. THE MOTHER BLACKTAIL'S RACE FOR LIFE [Illustration] In the fall of 1897 I was out for a Wolf hunt with the Eaton boys in the Badlands near Medora, N. D. We had a fine mixed pack of dogs, trailers, runners, and fighters. The runners were thoroughbred greyhounds, that could catch any four-foot on the plains except perhaps a buck Antelope; that I saw them signally fail in. But a Wolf, or even the swift Coyote, had no chance of getting away from them provided they could keep him in view. We started one of these singers of the plains, and at first he set off trusting to his legs, but the greyhounds were after him, and when he saw his long start shrinking so fearfully fast he knew that his legs could not save him, that now was the time for wits to enter the game. And this entry he made quickly and successfully by dropping out of sight down a brushy canyon, so the greyhounds saw him no more. Then they were baffled by Prairie-dogs which dodged down out of reach and hawks which rose up out of reach, and still we rode, till, rounding a little knoll near a drinking place, we came suddenly on a mother Blacktail and her two fawns. All three swung their big ears and eyes into full bearing on us, and we reined our horses and tried to check our dogs, hoping they had not seen the quarry that we did not wish to harm. But Bran the leader gave a yelp, then leaping high over the sage, directed all the rest, and in a flash it was a life and death race. Again and frantically the elder Eaton yelled "Come back!" and his brother tried to cut across and intercept the hounds. But a creature that runs away is an irresistible bait to a greyhound, and the chase across the sage-covered flat was on, with every nerve and tendon strained. [Illustration: X. Blacktail Family _Photo by E. T. Seton_] Away went the Blacktail, bounding, bounding at that famous beautiful, birdlike, soaring pace, mother and young tapping the ground and sailing to land, and tap and sail again. And away went the greyhounds, low coursing, outstretched, bounding like bolts from a crossbow, curving but little and dropping only to be shot again. They were straining hard; the Blacktail seemed to be going more easily, far more beautifully. But alas! they were losing time. The greyhounds were closing; in vain we yelled at them. We spurred our horses, hoping to cut them off, hoping to stop the ugly, lawless tragedy. But the greyhounds were frantic now. The distance between Bran and the hindmost fawn was not forty feet. Then Eaton drew his revolver and fired shots over the greyhounds' heads, hoping to scare them into submission, but they seemed to draw fresh stimulus from each report, and yelped and bounded faster. A little more and the end would be. Then we saw a touching sight. The hindmost fawn let out a feeble bleat of distress, and the mother, heeding, dropped back between. It looked like choosing death, for now she had not twenty feet of lead. I wanted Eaton to use his gun on the foremost hound, when something unexpected happened. The flat was crossed, the Blacktail reached a great high butte, and tapping with their toes they soared some fifteen feet and tapped again; and tapped and tapped and soared, and so they went like hawks that are bounding in the air, and the greyhounds, peerless on the plain, were helpless on the butte. Yes! rush as they might and did, and bounded and clomb, but theirs was not the way of the hills. In twenty heartbeats they were left behind. The Blacktail mother with her twins kept on and soared and lightly soared till lost to view, and all were safely hidden in their native hills. [Illustration: XI. Blacktail mother with her twins _Photo by E. T. Seton_] THE BLACKTAIL'S SAFETY IS IN THE HILLS That day I learned the reason for the bounding flight, so beautiful, but not the best or swiftest on the plain, yet the one that gives them dominion and safety on the hills, that makes of them a hill folk that the dangers of the plain can never reach. So now, O traveller in the Park, if you approach too near the Blacktail feeding near the great hotel, and so alarm them--for they are truly wild--they make not for the open run as do the Antelope and the Hares, not for the thickest bottomland as do the Whitetail and the Lynxes, but for the steeper hillsides. They know right well where their safety lies, and on that near and bushy bank, laying aside all alarm, they group and pose in artless grace that tempts one to a lavish use of films and gives the chance for that crowning triumph of the art, a wild animal group, none of which is looking at the camera. One more characteristic incident: In 1897 I was riding, with my wife, from Yancey's over to Baronett's Bridge, when we came on a young buck Blacktail. Now, said I, "I am going to show you the most wonderful and beautiful thing to be seen in the way of wild life speeding. You shall now see the famous bounding of the Blacktail." Then I spurred out after the young buck, knowing that all he needed was a little alarm to make him perform. Did he take alarm and run? Not at all. He was in the Yellowstone Sanctuary. He knew nothing of guns or dogs; he had lived all his life in safety. He would trot a few steps out of my way, then turn and gaze at me, but run, bound, and make for the high land, not a bit of it. And to this day my fair companion has not seen the Blacktail bounding up the hills. THE ELK OR WAPITI--THE NOBLEST OF ALL DEER The Rocky Mountain Elk, or Wapiti, is the finest of all true Deer. The cows weigh 400 to 500 pounds, the bulls 600 or 800, but occasionally 1000. At several of the hotels a small herd is kept in a corral for the pleasure and photography of visitors. The latest official census puts the summer population of Elk in the Yellowstone Park at 35,000, but the species is migratory, at least to the extent of seeking a winter feeding ground with as little snow as possible, so that most of them move out as snow time sets in. Small herds linger in the rich and sheltered valleys along the Yellowstone, Snake and nearby rivers, but the total of those wintering in the Park is probably less than 5,000. STALKING A BAND OF ELK [Illustration] In the summer months the best places in which to look for these Deer are all the higher forests, especially along the timber-line. I had an interesting stalk after a large band of them among the woods of Tower Falls in the June of 1897. I had found the trail of a considerable herd and followed it up the mountain till the "sign" was fresh. Then I tied up my horse and went forward on foot. For these animals are sufficiently acquainted with man as a mischief-maker to be vigilant in avoiding him, even in the Park. I was cautiously crawling from tree to tree, when out across an open space I descried a cow Elk and her calf lying down. A little more crawling and I sighted a herd all lying down and chewing the cud. About twenty yards away was a stump whose shelter offered chances to use the camera, but my present position promised nothing, so I set out carefully to cross the intervening space in plain view of scores of Elk; and all would have been well but for a pair of mischievous little Chipmunks. They started a most noisy demonstration against my approach, running back and forth across my path, twittering and flashing their tails about. In vain I prayed for a paralytic stroke to fall on my small tormentors. Their aggravating plan, if plan it was, they succeeded in fully carrying out. The Elk turned all their megaphone ears, their funnel noses and their blazing telescopic eyes my way. I lay like a log and waited; so did they. Then the mountain breeze veered suddenly and bore the taint of man to those watchful mothers. They sprang to their feet, some fifty head at least, half of them with calves by their sides, and away they dashed with a roaring sound, and a rattling and crashing of branches that is wonderfully impressive to hear, and nothing at all to tell about. I had made one or two rough sketches as I lay on the ground, but the photographs were failures. [Illustration: XII. A young investigator among the Deer at Fort Yellowstone _Photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XIII. Elk in Wyoming: (a) "Dawn" _Photo by E. T. Seton_ (b) "Nightfall" _Photo by G. G. Seton_] This band contained only cows engaged in growing their calves. According to Elk etiquette, the bulls are off by themselves at a much higher elevation, engaged in the equally engrossing occupation of growing their antlers. Most persons are surprised greatly when first they learn that the huge antlers of the Elk, as with most deer, are grown and shed each year. It takes only five months to grow them. They are perfect in late September for the fighting season, and are shed in March. The bull Elk now shapes his conduct to his weaponless condition. He becomes as meek as he was warlike. And so far from battling with all of their own sex that come near, these big "moollys" gather in friendly stag-parties on a basis of equal loss, and haunt the upper woods whose pasture is rich enough to furnish the high power nutriment needed to offset the exhausting drain of growing such mighty horns in such minimum time. They are more free from flies too in these high places, which is important, for even the antlers are sensitive while growing. They are even more sensitive than the rest of the body, besides being less protected and more temptingly filled with blood. A mosquito would surely think he had struck it rich if he landed on the hot, palpitating end of a Wapiti's thin-skinned, blood-gorged antlers. It is quite probable that some of the queer bumps we see on the finished weapons are due to mosquito or fly stings suffered in the early period of formation. THE BUGLING ELK During the summer the bulls attend strictly to their self-development, but late August sees them ready to seek once more the mixed society of their kind. Their horns are fully grown, but are not quite hardened and are still covered with velvet. By the end of September these weapons are hard and cleaned and ready for use, just as a thrilling change sets in in the body and mind of the bull. He is full of strength and vigour, his coat is sleek, his neck is swollen, his muscles are tense, his horns are clean, sharp, and strong, and at their heaviest. A burning ambition to distinguish himself in war, and win favours from the shy ladies of his kind, grows in him to a perfect insanity; goaded by desire, boiling with animal force, and raging with war-lust, he mounts some ridge in the valley and pours forth his very soul in a wild far-reaching battle-cry. Beginning low and rising in pitch to a veritable scream of piercing intensity, it falls to a rumbled growl, which broken into shorter growls dies slowly away. This is the famed bugling of the Elk, and however grotesque it may seem when heard in a zoo, is admitted by all who know it in its homeland to be the most inspiring music in nature--because of what it means. Here is this magnificent creature, big as a horse, strong as a bull, and fierce as a lion, standing in all the pride and glory of his primest prime, announcing to all the world: "I am out for a fight! Do any of you want a F-I-G-H-T----!-!-!?" Nor does he usually have long to wait. From some far mountainside the answer comes: "Yes, yes, yes! _Yes, I Do_, Do, Do, Do!" A few more bugle blasts and the two great giants meet; and when they do, all the world knows it for a mile around, without it being seen. The crashing of the antlers as they close, the roars of hate, the squeals of combat, the cracking of breaking branches as they charge and charge, and push and strive, and--_sometimes_ the thud of a heavy body going down. Many a time have I heard them in the distant woods, but mostly at night. Often have I gone forth warily hoping to see something of the fight, for we all love to see a fight when not personally in danger; but luck has been against me. I have been on the battlefield next morning to see where the combatants had torn up an acre of ground, and trampled unnumbered saplings, or tossed huge boulders about like pebbles, but the fight I missed. One day as I came into camp in the Shoshonees, east of the Park, an old hunter said: "Say, you! you want to see a real old-time Elk fight? You go up on that ridge back of the corral and you'll sure see a hull bunch of 'em at it; not one pair of bulls, but _six_ of 'em." I hurried away, but again I was too late; I saw nothing but the trampled ground, the broken saplings, and the traces of the turmoil; the battling giants were gone. [Illustration] Back I went and from the hunter's description made the sketch which I give below. The old man said: "Well, you sure got it this time. That's exactly like it was. One pair was jest foolin', one was fencing and was still perlite; but that third pair was a playin' the game for keeps. An' for givin' the facts, that's away ahead of any photograph I ever seen." Once I did come on the fatal battle-ground, but it was some time after the decision; and there I found the body of the one who did not win. The antlers are a fair index of the size and vigour of the stag, and if the fallen one was so big and strong, what like was he who downed him, pierced him through and left him on the plain. SNAPPING A CHARGING BULL At one time in a Californian Park I heard the war-bugle of an Elk. He bawled aloud in brazen, ringing tones: "Anybody want a F-I-G-H-T t-t-t-t!!" I extemporized a horn and answered him according to his mood. "_Yes, I do; bring it ALONG!_" and he brought it at a trot, squealing and roaring as he came. When he got within forty yards he left the cover and approached me, a perfect incarnation of brute ferocity and hate. [Illustration] His ears were laid back, his muzzle raised, his nose curled up, his lower teeth exposed, his mane was bristling and in his eyes there blazed a marvellous fire of changing opalescent green. On he marched, gritting his teeth and uttering a most unpleasantly wicked squeal. Then suddenly down went his head, and he came crash at me, with all the power of half a ton of hate. However, I was not so much exposed as may have been inferred. I was safely up a tree. And there I sat watching that crazy bull as he prodded the trunk with his horns, and snorted, and raved around, telling me just what he thought of me, inviting him to a fight and then getting up a tree. Finally he went off roaring and gritting his teeth, but turning back to cast on me from time to time the deadly, opaque green light of his mad, malignant eyes. A friend of mine, John Fossum, once a soldier attached to Fort Yellowstone, had a similar adventure on a more heroic scale. While out on a camera hunt in early winter he descried afar a large bull Elk lying asleep in an open valley. At once Fossum made a plan. He saw that he could crawl up to the bull, snap him where he lay, then later secure a second picture as the creature ran for the timber. The first part of the programme was carried out admirably. Fossum got within fifty feet and still the Elk lay sleeping. Then the camera was opened out. But alas! that little _pesky_ "click," that does so much mischief, awoke the bull, who at once sprang to his feet and ran--not for the woods--but _for the man_. Fossum with the most amazing nerve stood there quietly focussing his camera, till the bull was within ten feet, then pressed the button, threw the camera into the soft snow and ran for his life with the bull at his coat-tails. It would have been a short run but for the fact that they reached a deep snowdrift that would carry the man, and would not carry the Elk. Here Fossum escaped, while the bull snorted around, telling just what he meant to do to the man when he caught him; but he was not to be caught, and at last the bull went off grumbling and squealing. The hunter came back, recovered his camera, and when the plate was developed it bore the picture No. xiv, b. [Illustration: XIV. Elk on the Yellowstone in winter: (a) Caught in eight feet of snow; _Photo by F. Jay Haynes_ (b) Bull Elk charging _Photo by John Fossum_] It shows plainly the fighting light in the bull's eye, the back laid ears, the twisting of the nose, and the rate at which he is coming is evidenced in the stamping feet and the wind-blown whiskers, and yet in spite of the peril of the moment, and the fact that this was a hand camera, there is no sign of shake on landscape or on Elk, and the picture is actually over-exposed. THE HOODOO COW One of the best summer ranges for Elk is near the southeast corner of the Yellowstone Lake, and here it was my luck to have the curious experience that I call the "Story of a Hoodoo Elk." [Illustration] In the September of 1912, when out with Tom Newcomb of Gardiner, I had this curious adventure, that I shall not try to explain. We had crossed the Yellowstone Lake in a motor boat and were camped on the extreme southeast Finger, at a point twenty-five miles as the crow flies, and over fifty as the trail goes, from any human dwelling. We were in the least travelled and most primitive part of the Park. The animals here are absolutely in the wild condition and there was no one in the region but ourselves. On Friday, September 6th, we sighted some Elk on the lake shore at sunrise, but could not get nearer than two hundred yards, at which distance I took a poor snap. The Elk wheeled and ran out of sight. I set off on foot with the guide about 8:30. We startled one or two Elk, but they were very wild, and I got no chance to photograph. About 10:30, when several miles farther in the wilderness, we sighted a cow Elk standing in a meadow with a Coyote sneaking around about one hundred yards away. "That's my Elk," I said, and we swung under cover. By keeping in a little pine woods, I got within one hundred yards, taking picture No. 1, Plate XV. As she did not move, I said to Tom: "You stay here while I creep out to that sage brush and I'll get a picture of her at fifty yards." By crawling on my hands I was able to do this and got picture No. 2. Now I noticed a bank of tall grass some thirty yards from the cow, and as she was still quiet, I crawled to that and got picture No. 3. She did not move and I was near enough to see that she was dozing in a sun-bath. So I stood up and beckoned to Tom to come out of the woods at once. He came on nearly speechless with amazement. "What is the meaning of this?" he whispered. [Illustration: XV. The first shots at the Hoodoo Cow _Photos by E. T. Seton_] I replied calmly: "I told you I was a medicine man, perhaps you'll believe me now. Don't you see I've made Elk medicine and got her hypnotized? Now I am going to get up to about twenty yards and take her picture. While I do so, you use the second camera and take me in the act." So Tom took No. 4 while I was taking No. 5, and later No. 6. "Now," I said, "let's go and talk to her." We walked up to within ten yards. The Elk did not move, so I said: "Well, Bossie, you have callers. Won't you please look this way?" She did so and I secured shot No. 7, Plate XVI. "Thank you," I said. "Now be good enough to lie down." She did, and I took No. 9. I went up and stroked her, so did Tom; then giving her a nudge of my foot I said: "Now stand up again and look away." She rose up, giving me Nos. 8, 10 and 11. "Thank you, Bossie! now you can go!" And as she went off I fired my last film, getting No. 12. [Illustration: XVI. The last shots at the Hoodoo Cow _Photos by E. T. Seton_] By this time Tom had used up all his allowable words, and was falling back on the contraband kind to express his surging emotions. "What the ---- is the ---- meaning ---- of this ----?" and so on. I replied calmly: "Maybe you'll believe I have Elk medicine. Now show me a Moose and I'll give you some new shocks." Our trip homeward occupied a couple of hours, during which I heard little from Tom but a snort or two of puzzlement. As we neared camp he turned on me suddenly and said: "Now, Mr. Seton, what _is_ the meaning of this? That wasn't a sick Elk; she was fat and hearty. She wasn't poisoned or doped, 'cause there's no possibility of that. It wasn't a tame Elk, 'cause there ain't any, and, anyhow, we're seventy miles from a house. Now what is the meaning of it?" I replied solemnly: "Tom! I don't know any more than you do. I was as much surprised as you were at everything but one, and that was when she lay down. I didn't tell her to lie down till I saw she was going to do it, or to get up either, or look the other way, and if you can explain the incident, you've got the field to yourself." THE MOOSE, THE BIGGEST OF ALL DEER The Moose is one of the fine animals that have responded magnificently to protection in Canada, Maine, Minnesota, and the Yellowstone Park. Formerly they were very scarce in Wyoming and confined to the southwest corner of the Reserve. But all they needed was a little help; and, receiving it, they have flourished and multiplied. Their numbers have grown by natural increase from about fifty in 1897 to some five hundred and fifty to-day; and they have spread into all the southern half of the Park wherever they find surroundings to their taste; that is, thick level woods with a mixture of timber, as the Moose is a brush-eater, and does not flourish on a straight diet of evergreen. The first Deer, almost the only one I ever killed, was a Moose and that was far back in the days of my youth. On the Yellowstone, I am sorry to say, I never saw one, although I found tracks and signs in abundance last September near the Lake. MY PARTNER'S MOOSE-HUNT Though I have never since fired at a Moose, I was implicated in the killing of one a few years later. It was in the fall of the year, in the Hunting Moon, I was in the Kippewa Country with my partner and some chosen friends on a camping trip. Our companions were keen to get a Moose; and daily all hands but myself were out with the expert Moose callers. But each night the company reassembled around the campfire only to exchange their stories of failure. [Illustration] Moose there were in plenty, and good guides, Indian, halfbreed and white, but luck was against them all. Without being a very expert caller I have done enough of it to know the game and to pass for a "caller." So one night I said in a spirit of half jest: "I'll have to go out and show you men how to call a Moose." I cut a good piece of birch-bark and fashioned carefully a horn. Disdaining all civilized materials as "bad medicine," I stitched the edge with a spruce root or wattap, and soldered it neatly with pine gum flowed and smoothed with a blazing brand. And then I added the finishing touch, a touch which made the Indian and the halfbreed shake their heads ominously; I drew two "hoodoo Moose"--that is, men with Moose heads dancing around the horn. [Illustration: XVII. Elk on the Yellowstone: (a) In Billings Park; (b) Wild Cow Elk _Photos by E. T. Seton_] THE SIREN CALL "You put that on before you catch one Moose, Moose never come," they said. Still I put them on, and near sundown set off in a canoe, with one guide as paddler, and my partner in charge of the only gun. In half an hour we reached a lonely lake surrounded by swamps, and woods of mixed timber. The sunset red was purpling all the horizon belt of pines, and the peace of the still hour was on lake and swamp. With some little sense of profanity I raised the hoodoo horn to my mouth, gave one or two high-pitched, impatient grunts, then poured forth the softly rising, long-drawn love-call of a cow Moose, all alone, and "Oh, so lonesome." The guide nodded in approval, "That's all right," then I took out my watch and waited for fifteen minutes. For, strange to tell, it seems to repel the bull Moose and alarm him if the cow seems over-eager. There is a certain etiquette to be observed; it is easy to spoil all by trying to go too fast. And it does not do to guess at the time; when one is waiting so hard, the minute is like twenty. So when fifteen minutes really had gone, I raised the magic horn again, emitted a few hankering whines, then broke into a louder, farther reaching call that thrilled up echoes from across the lake and seemed to fill the woods for miles around with its mellifluous pleading. Again I waited and gave a third call just as the sun was gone. Then we strained our eyes and watched at every line of woods, and still were watching when the sound of a falling tree was heard far off on a hillside. Then there was a sort of after-clap as though the tree had lodged the first time, and hanging half a minute, had completed its fall with breaking of many branches, and a muffled crash. We gazed hard that way, and the guide, a very young one, whispered, "Bear!" There was silence, then a stick broke nearer, and a deep, slow snort was heard; it might have been the "woof" of a Bear, but I was in doubt. Then without any more noises, a white array of shining antler tips appeared above the near willows, and swiftly, silently, there glided into view a huge bull Moose. "How solid and beefy he looks!" was my first thought. He "woofed" again, and the guide, with an eye always to the head, whispered to my partner: "Take him! he's a stunner." Striding on he came, with wonderful directness, seeing I had not called for twenty minutes, and that when he was a mile or more away. As he approached within forty yards, the guide whispered, "Now is your chance. You'll never get a better one." My partner whispered, "Steady the canoe." I drove my paddle point into the sandy bottom, the guide did the same at the other end, and she arose standing in the canoe and aimed. Then came the wicked "crack" of the rifle, the "pat" of the bullet, the snort and whirl of the great, gray, looming brute, and a second shot as he reached the willows, only to go down with a crash, and sob his life out on the ground behind the leafy screen. It all seemed so natural, so exactly according to the correct rules of sporting books and tales, and yet so unlovely. There were tears in the eyes of the fair killer, and heart wrenches were hers, as the great sobs grew less and ceased; and a different sob was heard at my elbow, as we stood beside the biggest Moose that had been killed there in years. It was triumph I suppose; it is a proud thing to act a lie so cleverly; the Florentine assassins often decoyed and trapped a brave man, by crying like a woman. But I have never called a Moose since, and that rifle has hung unused in its rack from that to the present day. [Illustration] THE BIGGEST OF OUR GAME--THE BUFFALO "Yes, that's a buffalo-bird," said the old Indian, pointing to some black birds, with gray mates, that flitted or ran across the plain. "Pretty bad luck when the Buffalo gone. Them little birds make their nest in a Buffalo's wool, right on his head, and when the Buffalo all gone, seem like the buffalo-bird die too; 'cause what's the use, no got any nest." This is a fragment that reached me long ago in Montana. It seemed like a lusty myth, whose succulent and searching roots were in a bottomless bog, with little chance of sound foundation. But the tale bore the searchlight better than I thought. For it seems that the buffalo-bird followed the Buffalo everywhere, and was fond of nesting, not in the shaggy mane between the horns of the ruling monarch, but on any huge head it might find after the bull had fallen, and the skull, with mane attached, lay discarded on the plain. While always, even when nesting on the ground, the wool of the Buffalo was probably used as lining of the black-bird's nest. I know of one case where an attendant bird that was too crippled to fly when autumn came, wintered in the mane of a large Buffalo bull. It gathered seed by day, when the bull pawed up the snow, and roosted at night between the mighty horns, snuggling in the wool, with its toes held warm against the monster's blood-hot neck. In most of the Northwest the birds have found a poor substitute for the Buffalo in the range-cattle, but oh! how they must miss the wool. [Illustration: XVIII. Moose--the Widow _Drawing by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XIX. Buffalo Groups (a) Bull and Cow at Banff; (b) Yellowstone Bulls _Photos by G. G. Seton_] THE SHRUNKEN RANGE It is not generally known that the American Buffalo ranged as far east as Syracuse, Washington City, and Carolina, that they populated the forests in small numbers, as well as the plains in great herds. I estimate them at over 50,000,000 in A.D. 1500. In 1895 they were down to 800; probably this was the low-ebb year. Since then they have increased under judicious protection, and now reach about 3,000. In the June of 1897, as I stood on a hill near Baronett's Bridge, overlooking the Yellowstone just beyond Yancey's, with an old timer, Dave Roberts, he said: "Twenty years ago, when I first saw this valley, it was black-speckled with Buffalo, and every valley in the Park was the same." Now the only sign of the species was a couple of old skulls crumbling in the grass. In 1900 the remnant in the Park had fallen to thirty, and their extinction seemed certain. But the matter was taken up energetically by the officers in charge. Protection, formerly a legal fiction, was made an accomplished fact. The Buffalo have increased ever since, and to-day number 200, with the possibility of some stragglers. We need not dwell on the story of the extinction of the great herds. That is familiar to all,[B] but it is well to remind the reader that it was inevitable. The land was, or would be, needed for human settlement, with which the Buffalo herds were incompatible; only we brought it on forty or fifty years before it was necessary. "Could we not save the Buffalo as range-cattle?" is the question that most ask. The answer is: It has been tried a hundred times and all attempts have been eventually frustrated by the creature's temper. Buffalo, male or female, are always more or less dangerous; they cannot be tamed or trusted. They are always subject to stampede, and once started, nothing, not even sure destruction, stops them; so in spite of their suitability to the climate, their hardihood, their delicious meat, and their valuable robes, the attempts at domesticating the Buffalo have not yet been made a success. [Illustration] A small herd of a dozen or so is kept in a fenced range near the Mammoth Hot Springs, where the traveller should not fail to try for pictures, and with them he will see the cowbirds, that in some regions replace the true buffalo-birds. Perched on their backs or heads or running around them on the ground are these cattle birds as of yore, like boats around a man-o'-war, or sea-gulls around a whale; living their lives, snapping up the tormenting flies, and getting in return complete protection from every creature big enough to seem a menace in the eyes of the old time King of the Plains. THE DOOMED ANTELOPE AND HIS HELIOGRAPH The Antelope, or Pronghorn, is one of the most peculiar animals in the world. It is the only known ruminant that has hollow horns on a bony core as with cattle, and also has them branched and shed each year as in the Deer. It is a creature of strangely mixed characteristics, for it has the feet of a Giraffe, the glands of a goat, the coat of a Deer, the horns of an ox and Deer combined, the eyes of a Gazelle, the build of an Antelope, and--the speed of the wind. It is the swiftest four-footed creature native to the plains, and so far as known there is nothing but a blooded race horse that can outrun it on a mile. But the peculiarity that is most likely to catch the eye of the traveller is the white disc on its rear. [Illustration: The Heliograph] The first day I was in the Yellowstone I was riding along the upland beyond Blacktail Creek with T. E. Hofer. Miles away to the southeast we saw some white specks showing, flashing and disappearing. Then as far to the northeasterly we saw others. Hofer now remarked, "Two bunches of Antelope." Then later there were flashes _between_ and we knew that these two bands had come together. How? When you have a chance in a zoo or elsewhere to watch Antelope at short range you will see the cause of these flashes. By means of a circular muscle on each buttock they can erect the white hair of the rump patch into a large, flat, snow-white disc which shines in the sun, and shows afar as a bright white spot. [Illustration: XX. Near Yellowstone Gate: (a) Antelope _Photo by F. Jay Haynes_ (b) Captive Wolf _Photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXI. Mountain Sheep on Mt. Evarts _Photo by E. T. Seton_] This action is momentary or very brief; the spread disc goes down again in a few seconds. The flash is usually a signal of danger, although it answers equally well for a recognition mark. In 1897 the Antelope in the Park were estimated at 1,500. Now they have dwindled to about one third of that, and, in spite of good protection, continue to go down. They do not flourish when confined even in a large area, and we have reason to fear that one of the obscure inexorable laws of nature is working now to shelve the Antelope with the creatures that have passed away. A small band is yet to be seen wintering on the prairie near Gardiner. THE RESCUED BIGHORN At one time the Bighorn abounded along all the rivers where there was rough land as far east as the western edge of the Dakotas, westerly to the Cascades, and in the mountains from Mexico and Southern California to Alaska. In one form or another the Mountain Sheep covered this large region, and it is safe to say that in the United States alone their numbers were millions. But the dreadful age of the repeating rifle and lawless skin-hunter came on, till the end of the last century saw the Bighorn in the United States reduced to a few hundreds; they were well along the sunset trail. But the New York Zoölogical Society, the Camp Fire Club, and other societies of naturalists and sportsmen, bestirred themselves mightily. They aroused all thinking men to the threatening danger of extinction; good laws were passed and then enforced. The danger having been realized, the calamity was averted, and now the Sheep are on the increase in many parts of the West. During the epoch of remorseless destruction the few survivors were the wildest of wild things; they would not permit the approach of a man within a mile. But our new way of looking at the Bighorn has taught them a new way of looking at us, as every traveller in Colorado or the protected parts of Wyoming will testify. In 1897 I spent several months rambling on the upper ranges of the Yellowstone Park, and I saw not a single Sheep, although it was estimated that there were nearly a hundred of the scared fugitives hiding and flying among the rocks. [Illustration] In 1912 it was believed that in spite of poachers, Cougars, snow slides, and scab contracted from domestic sheep, the Bighorn in the Yellowstone Park had increased to considerably over two hundred, and the traveller can find them with fair certainty if he will devote a few days to the quest around Mt. Evarts, Washburn, or the well-known ranges. [Illustration] In September, 1912, I left Gardiner with Tom Newcomb's outfit. I was riding at the end of the procession watching in all directions, when far up on the slide rock I caught sight of a Sheep. A brief climb brought me within plain though not near view, to learn that there were half a dozen at least, and I took a few shots with my camera. I think there were many more hidden in the tall sage behind, but I avoided alarming them, so did not find out. There were neither rams nor lambs with this herd of ewes. The rams keep their own company all summer and live, doubtless, far higher in the mountains. On Mt. Washburn a week later I had the luck to find a dozen ewes with their lambs; but the sky was dark with leaden clouds and the light so poor that I got no good results. In winter, as I learn from Colonel Brett, the Sheep are found in small bands between the Mammoth Hot Springs and Gardiner, for there is good feed there, and far less snow than in the upper ranges. I have just heard that this winter four great rams are seen there every day with about forty other Sheep; and they are so tame that one can get pictures within ten feet if desired. Alas! that I have to be so far away with such thrilling opportunities going to waste. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote B: See "Life Histories of Northern Animals," by E. T. Seton.] * * * * * V Bats in the Devil's Kitchen * * * * * V Bats in the Devil's Kitchen It is unfortunate that the average person has a deep prejudice against the Bat. Without looking or thinking for himself, he accepts a lot of absurd tales about the winged one, and passes them on and on, never caring for the injustice he does or the pleasure he loses. I have loved the Bat ever since I came to know him; that is, all my mature life. He is the climax of creation in many things, highly developed in brain, marvellously keen in senses, clad in exquisite fur and equipped, above all, with the crowning glory of flight. He is the prototype and the realization of the Fairy of the Wood we loved so much as children, and so hated to be robbed of by grown-ups, who should have known better. I would give a good deal to have a Bat colony where I could see it daily, and would go a long way to meet some new kind of Bat. [Illustration] I never took much interest in caverns, or geysers, or in any of the abominable cavities of the earth that nature so plainly meant to keep hidden from our eyes. I shall not forget the unpleasant sensations I had when first, in 1897, I visited the Yellowstone Wonderland and stood gazing at that abominable Mud Geyser, which is even worse to-day. The entry in my journal of the time runs thus: "The Mud Geyser is unlike anything that can be seen elsewhere. One hears about the bowels of the earth; this surely is the end of one of them. They talk of the mouth of hell; this is the mouth with a severe fit of vomiting. The filthy muck is spewed from an unseen gullet at one side into a huge upright mouth with sounds of oozing, retching and belching. Then as quickly reswallowed with noises expressive of loathing on its own part, while noxious steam spreads disgusting, unpleasant odours all around. The whole process is quickly repeated, and goes on and on, and has gone on for ages, and will go. And yet one feels that this is merely the steam vent outside of the huge factory where all the actual work is being done. One does not really see the thing at all, but only stands outside the building where it is going on. One never wishes to see it a second time. All are disgusted by it, but all are fascinated." * * * * * No, I like them not. I have a natural antipathy to the internal arrangements of Mother Earth. I might almost say a delicacy about gazing on such exposure. Anyhow, we shall all get underground soon enough; and I usually drop off when our party prepares to explore dark, horrible, smelly underground places that have no possible claim (I hold) for the normal being of healthy instincts. But near the Mammoth Hot Springs is a hellhole that did attract me. It is nothing else than the stuffy, blind alley known as the Devil's Kitchen. There is no cooking going on at present, probably because it is not heated up enough, but there is a peculiarly hot, close feeling suggestive of the Monkey house in an old-time zoo. I went down this, not that I was interested in the Satanic cuisine, but because my ancient antipathy was routed by my later predilection--I was told that Bats "occurred" in the kitchen. Sure enough, I found them, half a dozen, so far as one could tell in the gloom, and thanks to the Park Superintendent, Colonel L. M. Brett, I secured a specimen which, to my great surprise, turned out to be the long-eared Bat, a Southern species never before discovered north of Colorado. It will be interesting to know whether they winter here or go south, as do many of their kin. They would have to go a long way before they would find another bedroom so warm and safe. Even if they go as far as the equator, with its warmth and its pests, they would probably have reason to believe that the happiest nights of their lives were those spent in the Devil's Kitchen. [Illustration] * * * * * VI The Well-meaning Skunk * * * * * VI The Well-meaning Skunk [Illustration] I have a profound admiration for the Skunk. Indeed, I once maintained that this animal was the proper emblem of America. It is, first of all, peculiar to this continent. It has stars on its head and stripes on its body. It is an ideal citizen; minds its own business, harms no one, and is habitually inoffensive, as long as it is left alone; but it will face any one or any number when aroused. It has a wonderful natural ability to take the offensive; and no man ever yet came to grips with a Skunk without being sadly sorry for it afterward. Nevertheless, in spite of all this, and the fact that several other countries have prior claims on the Eagle, I could not secure, for my view, sufficient popular support to change the national emblem. From Atlantic to Pacific and from Mexico far north into the wilds of Canada the Skunk is found, varying with climate in size and colour indeed, but everywhere the same in character and in mode of defense. It abounds in the broken country that lies between forest and prairie, but seems to avoid the thicker woods as well as the higher peaks. In Yellowstone Park it is not common, but is found occasionally about Mammoth Hot Springs and Yancey's, at which latter place I had much pleasant acquaintance with its kind. HIS SMELL-GUN Every one knows that the animal can make a horrible smell in defending itself, but most persons do not realize what the smell is, or how it is made. First of all, and this should be in capitals, it has nothing at all to do with the kidneys or with the sex organs. It is simply a highly specialized musk secreted by a gland, or rather, a pair of them, located under the tail. It is used for defense when the Skunk is in peril of his life, or thinks he is. But a Skunk may pass his whole life without using it. [Illustration] He can throw it to a distance of seven to ten feet according to his power or the wind. If it reaches the eyes of his assailant it blinds him temporarily. If it enters his mouth it sets up a frightful nausea. If the vapour gets into his lungs, it chokes as well as nauseates. There are cases on record of men and dogs being permanently blinded by this awful spray. And there is one case of a boy being killed by it. Most Americans know somewhat of its terrors, but few of them realize the harmlessness of the Skunk when let alone. In remote places I find men who still think that this creature goes about shooting as wildly and wantonly as any drunken cowboy. THE CRUELTY OF STEEL TRAPS A few days ago while walking with a friend in the woods we came on a Skunk. My companion shouted to the dog and captured him to save him from a possible disaster, then called to me to keep back and let the Skunk run away. But the fearless one in sable and ermine did not run, and I did not keep back, but I walked up very gently. The Skunk stood his ground and raised his tail high over his back, the sign of fight. I talked to him, still drawing nearer; then, when only ten feet away, was surprised to see that one of his feet was in a trap and terribly mangled. [Illustration] I stooped down, saying many pleasant things about my friendliness, etc. The Skunk's tail slowly lowered and I came closer up. Still, I did not care to handle the wild and tormented thing on such short acquaintance, so I got a small barrel and quietly placed it over him, then removed the trap and brought him home, where he is now living in peace and comfort. I mention this to show how gentle and judicious a creature the Skunk is when gently and judiciously approached. It is a sad commentary on our modes of dealing with wild life when I add that as afterward appeared this Skunk had been struggling in the tortures of that trap for three days and three nights. FRIENDLINESS OF THE SKUNK These remarks are preliminary to an account of my adventures with a family of Skunks in the Park. During the summer I spent in the little shanty still to be seen, opposite Yancey's, I lost no opportunity of making animal investigations. One of my methods was to sweep the dust on the trail and about the cabin quite smooth at night so that any creature passing should leave me his tracks and I should be sure that they were recent. [Illustration] One morning on going out I found the fresh tracks of a Skunk. Next night these were seen again, in fact, there were two sets of them. A day or so later the cook at the nearby log hotel announced that a couple of Skunks came every evening to feed at the garbage bucket outside the kitchen door. That night I was watching for them. About dusk one came, walking along sedately with his tail at half mast. The house dog and the house cat both were at the door as the Skunk arrived. They glanced at the newcomer; then the cat discreetly went indoors and the dog rumbled in his chest, but discreetly he walked away, very stiffly, and looked at the distant landscape, with his hair on his back still bristling. The Skunk waddled up to the garbage pail, climbed in, though I was but ten feet away, and began his evening meal. [Illustration] Another came later. Their tails were spread and at each sharp noise rose a little higher, but no one offered them harm, and they went their way when they were filled. After this it was a regular thing to go out and see the Skunks feed when evening came. PHOTOGRAPHING SKUNKS AT SHORT RANGE I was anxious to get a picture or two, but was prevented by the poor light; in fact, it was but half light, and in those days we had no brilliant flash powders. So there was but one thing to do, that was trap my intended sitters. Next night I was ready for them with an ordinary box trap, and even before the appointed time we saw a fine study in black and white come marching around the cow stable with banner-tail aloft, and across the grass toward the kitchen. The box trap was all ready and we--two women including my wife, and half a dozen men of the mountaineer type--were watching. The cat and the dog moved sullenly aside. The Skunk, with the calm confidence of one accustomed to respect, sniffed his way to the box trap with its tempting odorous bait. A Mink or a Marten, not to say a Fox, would have investigated a little before entering. The Skunk indulged in no such waste of time. What had he to fear--he the little lord of all things with the power of smell? He went in like one going home, seized the bait, and down went the door. The uninitiated onlookers expected an explosion from the Skunk, but I knew quite well he never wasted a shot, and did not hesitate to approach and make all safe. Now I wanted to move the box with its captive to my photographic studio, but could not carry it alone, so I asked the mountaineers to come and help. Had I asked them to join me in killing a man, shooting up the town, or otherwise taking their lives in their hands, I would doubtless have had half a dozen cheerful volunteers; but to carry a box in which was a wild Skunk--"not for a hundred dollars," and the warriors melted into the background. Then I said to my wife, "Haven't _you_ got nerve enough to help with this box? I'll guarantee that nothing will happen." So she came and we took the box to my prepared enclosure, where next day I photographed him to my heart's content. More than once as I worked around at a distance of six or eight feet, the Skunk's tail flew up, but I kept perfectly still then; talked softly, apologizing and explaining: "Now don't shoot at me. We are to be good friends. I wouldn't hurt you for anything. Now do drop that fighting flag, if you please, and be good." [Illustration] Gradually the tail went down and the captive looked at me in mere curiosity as I got my pictures. I let him go by simply removing the wire netting of the fence, whereupon he waddled off under the cabin that I called "home." WE SHARE THE SHANTY WITH THE SKUNKS [Illustration] The next night as I lay in my bunk I heard a sniffing and scratching on the cabin floor. On looking over the edge of the bed I came face to face with my friend the Skunk. Our noses were but a foot apart and just behind him was another; I suppose his mate. I said: "Hello! Here you are again. I'm glad to see you. Who's your friend?" He did not tell me, neither did he seem offended. I suppose it was his mate. That was the beginning of his residence under the floor of my cabin. My wife and I got very well acquainted with him and his wife before the summer was over. For though we had the cabin by day, the Skunks had it by night. We always left them some scraps, and regularly at dusk they came up to get them. They cleaned up our garbage, so helped to rid us of flies and mice. We were careful to avoid hurting or scaring our nightly visitors, so the summer passed without offense. We formed only the kindest feelings toward each other, and we left them in possession of the cabin, where, so far as I know, they are living yet, if you wish to call. THE SKUNK AND THE UNWISE BOBCAT [Illustration] As already noted, I swept the dust smooth around our shanty each night to make a sort of visitors' book. Then each morning I could go out and by study of the tracks get an exact idea of who had called. Of course there were many blank nights; on others the happenings were trifling, but some were full of interest. In this way I learned of the Coyote's visits to the garbage pail and of the Skunk establishment under the house, and other interesting facts as in the diagram. I have always used this method of study in my mountain trips, and recall a most interesting record that rewarded my patience some twenty years ago when I lived in New Mexico. [Illustration: XXII. Track record of Bobcat's adventure with a Skunk] During the night I had been aroused by a frightful smell of Skunk, followed by strange muffled sounds that died away. So forth I went at sunrise and found the odour of Skunk no dream but a stern reality. Then a consultation of my dust album revealed an inscription which after a little condensing and clearing up appeared much as in Plate XXII. At A a Skunk had come on the scene, at B he was wandering about when a hungry Wild Cat or Bobcat Lynx appeared, C. Noting the promise of something to kill for food, he came on at D. The Skunk observing the intruder said, "You better let me alone." And not wishing to make trouble moved off toward E. But the Bobcat, evidently young and inexperienced, gave chase. At F the Skunk wheeled about, remarking, "Well, if you will have it, here goes!" At G the Lynx was hit. The tremendous bound from G to H shows the effect. At J he bumped into a stone, showing probably that he was blinded, after which he went bouncing and bounding away. The Skunk merely said, "I told you so!" then calmly resumed the even tenor of his way. At K he found the remains of a chicken, on which he feasted, then went quietly home to bed. This is my reading of the tracks in the dust. The evidence was so clear that I have sketched here from imagination the succession of events which it seemed to narrate. [Illustration: XXIII. The six chapters of the Bobcat's adventure. (a) The Bobcat appears on the scene; (b) "Ha," he says, "A meal for me." "Beware," says the Skunk; (c) "No! Then take that," says the Skunk; (d) "Ow-w-ow-w"; (e) "I told you so"; (f) "How pleasant is a peaceful meal" _Sketches by E. T. Seton_] MY PET SKUNKS It would not be doing justice to the Skunk if I did not add a word about certain of the kind that I have at home. For many years I have kept at least one pet Skunk. Just now I have about sixty. I keep them close to the house and would let them run loose indoors but for the possibility of some fool dog or cat coming around, and provoking the exemplary little brutes into a perfectly justifiable endeavour to defend themselves as nature taught them. But for this I should have no fear. Not only do I handle them myself, but I have induced many of my wild-eyed visitors to do so as a necessary part of their education. For few indeed there are in the land to-day that realize the gentleness and forbearance of this righteous little brother of ours, who, though armed with a weapon that will put the biggest and boldest to flight or disastrous defeat, yet refrains from using it until in absolute peril of his life, and then only after several warnings. By way of rounding out this statement, I present a picture of my little daughter playing among the Skunks, and need add only that they are full-grown specimens in full possession of all their faculties. Plate XXIV. [Illustration: XXIV. My tame Skunks: (a) Mother Skunk and her brood; (b) Ann Seton feeding her pets _Photos by E. T. Seton_] * * * * * VII Old Silver-grizzle--The Badger * * * * * [Illustration] VII Old Silver-grizzle--The Badger A brilliant newspaper man once gave vast publicity to the story that at last a use had been found for the Badger, with his mania for digging holes in the ground. By kindness and care and the help of an attached little steam-gauge speedometer plumb compass, that gave accurate aim, improved perpendicularity, and increased efficiency to the efforts of the strenuous excavator, he had been able to produce a dirigible Badger that was certain to displace all other machinery for digging postholes. Unfortunately I was in a position to disprove this pretty conceit. But I think of it every time I put my foot in a Badger hole. Such lovely holes, so plentiful, so worse than useless where the Badger has thoughtlessly located them. If only we could harness and direct such excavatory energies. [Illustration] This, indeed, is the only quarrel civilized man can pick with the honest Badger. He _will_ dig holes that endanger horse's legs and rider's necks. He may destroy Gophers, Ground-squirrels, Prairie-dogs, insects, and a hundred enemies of the farm; he may help the crops in a thousand different ways, _but he will dig post-holes where they are not wanted_, and this indiscretion has made many enemies for the kindest and sturdiest of all the squatters on the plains. THE VALIANT, HARMLESS BADGER From the Saskatchewan to Mexico he ranges, and from Illinois to California, wherever there are dry, open plains supplied with Ground-squirrels and water. [Illustration] Many times, in crossing the rolling plains of Montana, the uplands of Arizona and New Mexico, or the prairies of Manitoba, I have met with Mittenusk, as the redmen call him. Like a big white stone perched on some low mound he seems. But the wind makes cracks in it at places, and then it moves--giving plain announcement to the world with eyes to see that this is a Badger sunning himself. He seldom allows a near approach, even in the Yellowstone, where he is safe, and is pretty sure to drop down out of sight in his den long before one gets within camera range. The Badger is such a subterranean, nocturnal creature at most times that for long his home life escaped our observation, but at last a few paragraphs, if not a chapter of it, have been secured, and we find that this shy creature, in ill odour among cattlemen as noted, is a rare and lovely character when permitted to unbend in a congenial group. Sturdy, strong and dogged, and brave to the last ditch, the more we know of the Badger the more we respect him. Let us pass lightly over the facts that in makeup he is between a Bear and a Weasel, and that he weighs about twenty pounds, and has a soft coat of silvery gray and some label marks of black on his head. He feeds chiefly on Ground-squirrels, which he digs out, but does not scorn birds' eggs, or even fruit and grain at times. Except for an occasional sun-bath, he spends the day in his den and travels about mostly by night. He minds his own business, if let alone, but woe be to the creature of the plains that tries to molest him, for he has the heart of a bulldog, the claws of a Grizzly, and the jaws of a small crocodile. I shall never forget my first meeting with Old Silver-grizzle. It was on the plains of the Souris, in 1882. I saw this broad, low, whitish creature on the prairie, not far from the trail, and, impelled by the hunter instinct so strong in all boys, I ran toward him. He dived into a den, but the one he chose proved to be barely three feet deep, and I succeeded in seizing the Badger's short thick tail. Gripping it firmly with both hands, I pulled and pulled, but he was stronger than I. He braced himself against the sides of the den and defied me. With anything like fair play, he would have escaped, but I had accomplices, and the details of what followed are not pleasant reminiscences. But I was very young at the time, and that was my first Badger. I wanted his skin, and I had not learned to respect his exemplary life and dauntless spirit. In the summer of 1897 I was staying at Yancey's in the Park. Daily I saw signs of Badgers about, and one morning while prowling, camera in hand, I saw old Gray-coat wandering on the prairie, looking for fresh Ground-squirrel holes. Keeping low, I ran toward him. He soon sensed me, and to my surprise came rushing toward me, uttering sharp snarls. This one was behaving differently from any Badger I had seen before, but evidently he was going to give me a chance for a picture. After that was taken, doubtless I could save myself by running. We were within thirty yards of each other and both coming strong, when "crash" I went into a Badger hole _I_ had not seen, just as he went "thump" down tail first into a hole _he_ had not seen. For a moment we both looked very foolish, but he recovered first, and rushing a few yards nearer, plunged into a deep and wide den toward which he evidently had been heading from the first. HIS SOCIABLE BENT The strongest peculiar trait of the Badger is perhaps his sociability--sociability being, of course, a very different thing from gregariousness. Usually there are two Badgers in each den. Nothing peculiar about that, but there are several cases on record of a Badger, presumably a bachelor or a widower, sharing his life with some totally different animal. In some instances that other animal has been a Coyote; and the friendship really had its foundation in enmity and intended robbery. This is the probable history of a typical case: The Badger, being a mighty miner and very able to dig out the Ground-squirrels of the prairie, was followed about by a Coyote, whose speed and agility kept him safe from the Badger's jaws, while he hovered close by, knowing quite well that when the Badger was digging out the Ground-squirrels at their front door, these rodents were very apt to bolt by the back door, and thus give the Coyote an excellent chance for a cheap dinner. So the Coyote acquired the habit of following the hard-working Badger. At first, no doubt, the latter resented the parasite that dogged his steps, but becoming used to it "first endured, then pitied, then embraced", or, to put it more mildly, he got accustomed to the Coyote's presence, and being of a kindly disposition, forgot his enmity and thenceforth they contentedly lived their lives together. I do not know that they inhabited the same den. Yet that would not be impossible, since similar things are reported of the British Badger and the Fox. More than one observer has seen a Badger and a Coyote travelling together, sometimes one leading, sometimes the other. Evidently it was a partnership founded on good-will, however it may have been begun. THE STORY OF THE KINDLY BADGER But the most interesting case, and one which I might hesitate to reproduce but for the witnesses, reached me at Winnipeg. [Illustration] In 1871 there was a family named Service living at Bird's Hill, on the prairie north of Winnipeg. They had one child, a seven-year-old boy named Harry. He was a strange child, very small for his age, and shy without being cowardly. He had an odd habit of following dogs, chickens, pigs, and birds, imitating their voices and actions, with an exactness that onlookers sometimes declared to be uncanny. One day he had gone quietly after a Prairie Chicken that kept moving away from him without taking flight, clucking when she clucked, and nodding his head or shaking his "wings" when she did. So he wandered on and on, till the house was hidden from view behind the trees that fringed the river, and the child was completely lost. There was nothing remarkable in his being away for several hours, but a heavy thunderstorm coming up that afternoon called attention to the fact that the boy was missing, and when the first casual glance did not discover him it became serious and a careful search was begun. Father and mother, with the near neighbours, scoured the prairie till dark, and began the next day at dawn, riding in all directions, calling, and looking for signs. After a day or two the neighbours gave it up, believing that the child was drowned and carried away by the river. But the parents continued their search even long after all hope seemed dead. And there was no hour of the day when that stricken mother did not send up a prayer for heavenly help; nor any night when she did not kneel with her husband and implore the One who loved and blessed the babes of Jerusalem to guard her little one and bring him back in safety. THE EVIL ONE [Illustration] There was one neighbour of the family who joined in the search that had nevertheless incurred the bitter dislike of little Harry Service. The feeling was partly a mere baby instinct, but pointedly because of the man's vicious cruelty to the animals, wild or tame, that came within his power. Only a week before he had set steel traps at a den where he chanced to find a pair of Badgers in residence. The first night he captured the father Badger. The cruel jaws of the jag-toothed trap had seized him by both paws, so he was held helpless. The trap was champed and wet with blood and froth when Grogan came in the morning. Of what use are courage and strength when one cannot reach the foe? The Badger craved only a fair fight, but Grogan stood out of reach and used a club till the light was gone from the brave eyes and the fighting snarl was still. The trap was reset in the sand and Grogan went. He carried the dead Badger to the Service house to show his prize and get help to skin it, after which he set off for the town and bartered the skin for what evil indulgence it might command, and thought no more of the trap for three days. Meanwhile the mother Badger, coming home at dawn, was caught by one foot. Strain as she might, that deadly grip still held her; all that night and all the next day she struggled. She had little ones to care for. Their hungry cries from down the burrow were driving her almost mad; but the trap was of strong steel, beyond her strength, and at last the crying of the little ones in the den grew still. On the second day of her torture the mother, in desperation, chewed off one of her toes and dragged her bleeding foot from the trap. [Illustration] Down the burrow she went first, but it was too late; her babies were dead. She buried them where they lay and hastened from that evil spot. Water was her first need, next food, and then at evening she made for an old den she had used the fall before. THE BADGER THAT RESCUED THE BOY And little Harry, meanwhile, where was he? That sunny afternoon in June he had wandered away from the house, and losing sight of the familiar building behind the long fringe of trees by the river, he had lost his bearings. Then came the thunder shower which made him seek for shelter. There was nothing about him but level prairie, and the only shelter he could find was a Badger hole, none too wide even for his small form. Into this he had backed and stayed with some comfort during the thunderstorm, which continued till night. Then in the evening the child heard a sniffing sound, and a great, gray animal loomed up against the sky, sniffed at the tracks and at the open door of the den. Next it put its head in, and Harry saw by the black marks on its face that it was a Badger. He had seen one just three days before. A neighbour had brought it to his father's house to skin it. There it stood sniffing, and Harry, gazing with less fear than most children, noticed that the visitor had five claws on one foot and four on the other, with recent wounds, proof of some sad experience in a trap. Doubtless this was the Badger's den, for she--it proved a mother--came in, but Harry had no mind to surrender. The Badger snarled and came on, and Harry shrieked, "Get out!" and struck with his tiny fists, and then, to use his own words, "I scratched the Badger's face and she scratched mine." Surely this Badger was in a generous mood, for she did him no serious harm, and though the rightful owner of the den, she went away and doubtless slept elsewhere. [Illustration] Night came down. Harry was very thirsty. Close by the door was a pool of rainwater. He crawled out, slaked his thirst, and backed into the warm den as far as he could. Then remembering his prayers, he begged God to "send mamma," and cried himself to sleep. During the night he was awakened by the Badger coming again, but it went away when the child scolded it. Next morning Harry went to the pool again and drank. Now he was so hungry; a few old rose hips hung on the bushes near the den. He gathered and ate these, but was even hungrier. Then he saw something moving out on the plain. It might be the Badger, so he backed into the den, but he watched the moving thing. It was a horseman galloping. As it came near, Harry saw that it was Grogan, the neighbour for whom he had such a dislike, so he got down out of sight. Twice that morning men came riding by, but having once yielded to his shy impulse, he hid again each time. The Badger came back at noon. In her mouth she held the body of a Prairie Chicken, pretty well plucked and partly devoured. She came into the den sniffing as before. Harry shouted, "Get out! Go away." The Badger dropped the meat and raised her head. Harry reached and grasped the food and devoured it with the appetite of one starving. There must have been another doorway, for later the Badger was behind the child in the den, and still later when he had fallen asleep she came and slept beside him. He awoke to find the warm furry body filling the space between him and the wall, and knew now why it was he had slept so comfortably. [Illustration] That evening the Badger brought the egg of a Prairie Chicken and set it down unbroken before the child. He devoured it eagerly, and again drank from the drying mud puddle to quench his thirst. During the night it rained again, and he would have been cold, but the Badger came and cuddled around him. Once or twice it licked his face. The child could not know, but the parents discovered later that this was a mother Badger which had lost her brood and her heart was yearning for something to love. Now there were two habits that grew on the boy. One was to shun the men that daily passed by in their search, the other was to look to the Badger for food and protection, and live the Badger's life. She brought him food often not at all to his taste--dead Mice or Ground-squirrels--but several times she brought in the comb of a bee's nest or eggs of game birds, and once a piece of bread almost certainly dropped on the trail from some traveller's lunch bag. His chief trouble was water. The prairie pool was down to mere ooze and with this he moistened his lips and tongue. Possibly the mother Badger wondered why he did not accept her motherly offerings. But rain came often enough to keep him from serious suffering. Their daily life was together now, and with the imitative power strong in all children and dominant in him, he copied the Badger's growls, snarls, and purrs. Sometimes they played tag on the prairie, but both were ready to rush below at the slightest sign of a stranger. Two weeks went by. Galloping men no longer passed each day. Harry and the Badger had fitted their lives into each other's, and strange as it may seem, the memory of his home was already blurred and weakened in the boy. Once or twice during the second week men had passed near by, but the habit of eluding them was now in full possession of him. FINDING THE LOST ONE [Illustration] One morning he wandered a little farther in search of water and was alarmed by a horseman appearing. He made for home on all fours--he ran much on all fours now--and backed into the den. In the prairie grass he was concealed, but the den was on a bare mound, and the horseman caught a glimpse of a whitish thing disappearing down the hole. Badgers were familiar to him, but the peculiar yellow of this and the absence of black marks gave it a strange appearance. He rode up quietly within twenty yards and waited. After a few minutes the gray-yellow ball slowly reappeared and resolved itself into the head of a tow-topped child. The young man leaped to the ground and rushed forward, but the child retreated far back into the den, beyond reach of the man, and refused to come out. Nevertheless, there was no doubt that this was the missing Harry Service. "Harry! Harry! don't you know me? I'm your Cousin Jack," the young man said in soothing, coaxing tones. "Harry, won't you come out and let me take you back to mamma? Come Harry! Look! here are some cookies!" but all in vain. The child hissed and snarled at him like a wild thing, and retreated as far as he could till checked by a turn in the burrow. [Illustration] Now Jack got out his knife and began to dig until the burrow was large enough for him to crawl in a little way. At once he succeeded in getting hold of the little one's arm and drew him out struggling and crying. But now there rushed also from the hole a Badger, snarling and angry; it charged at the man, uttering its fighting snort. He fought it off with his whip, then swung to the saddle with his precious burden and rode away as for his very life, while the Badger pursued for a time, but it was easily left behind, and its snorts were lost and forgotten. HOME AGAIN The father was coming in from another direction as he saw this strange sight: a horse galloping madly over the prairie, on its back a young man shouting loudly, and in his arms a small dirty child, alternately snarling at his captor, trying to scratch his face, or struggling to be free. The father was used to changing intensity of feeling at these times, but he turned pale and held his breath till the words reached him: "I have got him, thank God! He's all right," and he rushed forward shouting, "My boy! my boy!" [Illustration] But he got a rude rebuff. The child glared like a hunted cat, hissed at him, and menaced with hands held claw fashion. Fear and hate were all he seemed to express. The door of the house was flung open and the distracted mother, now suddenly overjoyed, rushed to join the group. "My darling! my darling!" she sobbed, but little Harry was not as when he left them. He hung back, he hid his face in the coat of his captor, he scratched and snarled like a beast, he displayed his claws and threatened fight, till strong arms gathered him up and placed him on his mother's knees in the old, familiar room with the pictures, and the clock ticking as of old, and the smell of frying bacon, his sister's voice, and his father's form, and, above all, his mother's arms about him, her magic touch on his brow, and her voice, "My darling! my darling! Oh! Harry, don't you know your mother? My boy! my boy!" And the struggling little wild thing in her arms grew quiet, his animal anger died away, his raucous hissing gave place to a short panting, and that to a low sobbing that ended in a flood of tears and a passionate "Mamma, mamma, mamma!" as the veil of a different life was rolled away, and he clung to his mother's bosom. [Illustration] But even as she cooed to him, and stroked his brow and won him back again, there was a strange sound, a snarling hiss at the open door. All turned to see a great Badger standing there with its front feet on the threshold. Father and cousin exclaimed, "Look at that Badger!" and reached for the ready gun, but the boy screamed again. He wriggled from his mother's arms and rushing to the door, cried, "My Badgie! my Badgie!" He flung his arms about the savage thing's neck, and it answered with a low purring sound as it licked its lost companion's face. The men were for killing the Badger, but it was the mother's keener insight that saved it, as one might save a noble dog that had rescued a child from the water. It was some days before the child would let the father come near. "I hate that man; he passed me every day and would not look at me," was the only explanation. Doubtless the first part was true, for the Badger den was but two miles from the house and the father rode past many times in his radiating search, but the tow-topped head had escaped his eye. It was long and only by slow degrees that the mother got the story that is written here, and parts of it were far from clear. It might all have been dismissed as a dream or a delirium but for the fact that the boy had been absent two weeks; he was well and strong now, excepting that his lips were blackened and cracked with the muddy water, the Badger had followed him home, and was now his constant friend. [Illustration] It was strange to see how the child oscillated between the two lives, sometimes talking to his people exactly as he used to talk, and sometimes running on all fours, growling, hissing, and tussling with the Badger. Many a game of "King of the Castle" they had together on the low pile of sand left after the digging of a new well. Each would climb to the top and defy the other to pull him down, till a hold was secured and they rolled together to the level, clutching and tugging, Harry giggling, the Badger uttering a peculiar high-pitched sound that might have been called snarling had it not been an expression of good nature. Surely it was a Badger laugh. There was little that Harry could ask without receiving, in those days, but his mother was shocked when he persisted that the Badger must sleep in his bed; yet she so arranged it. The mother would go in the late hours and look on them with a little pang of jealousy as she saw her baby curled up, sleeping soundly with that strange beast. It was Harry's turn to feed his friend now, and side by side they sat to eat. The Badger had become an established member of the family. But after a month had gone by an incident took place that I would gladly leave untold. THE HUMAN BRUTE Grogan, the unpleasant neighbour, who had first frightened Harry into the den, came riding up to the Service homestead. Harry was in the house for the moment. The Badger was on the sand pile. Instantly on catching sight of it, Grogan unslung his gun and exclaimed, "A Badger!" To him a Badger was merely something to be killed. "Bang!" and the kindly animal rolled over, stung and bleeding, but recovered and dragged herself toward the house. "Bang!" and the murderer fired again, just as the inmates rushed to the door--too late. Harry ran toward the Badger shouting, "Badgie! my Badgie!" He flung his baby arms around the bleeding neck. It fawned on him feebly, purring a low, hissing purr, then mixing the purrs with moans, grew silent, and slowly sank down, and died in his arms. "My Badgie! my Badgie!" the boy wailed, and all the ferocity of his animal nature was directed against Grogan. "You better get out of this before I kill you!" thundered the father, and the hulking halfbreed sullenly mounted his horse and rode away. A great part of his life had been cut away and it seemed as though a deathblow had been dealt the boy. The shock was more than he could stand. He moaned and wept all day, he screamed himself into convulsions, he was worn out at sundown and slept little that night. Next morning he was in a raging fever and ever he called for "My Badgie!" He seemed at death's door the next day, but a week later he began to mend and in three weeks was strong as ever and childishly gay, with occasional spells of sad remembering that gradually ceased. He grew up to early manhood in a land of hunters, but he took no pleasure in the killing that was such sport to his neighbour's sons, and to his dying day he could not look on the skin of a Badger without feelings of love, tenderness, and regret. This is the story of the Badger as it was told me, and those who wish to inquire further can do so at Winnipeg, if they seek out Archbishop Matheson, Dr. R. M. Simpson, or Mrs. George A. Frazer of Kildonan. These witnesses may differ as to the details, but all have assured me that in its main outlines this tale is true, and I gladly tell it, for I want you to realize the kindly disposition that is in that sturdy, harmless, noble wild animal that sits on the low prairie mounds, for then I know that you will join with me in loving him, and in seeking to save his race from extermination. * * * * * VIII The Squirrel and His Jerky-tail Brothers * * * * * VIII The Squirrel and His Jerky-tail Brothers You remember that Hiawatha christened the Squirrel "Adjidaumo"--"Tail-in-air" and this Tail-in-air was chattering overhead as I sat, some twenty-five years ago, on the shore of the Lake of the Woods with an Ojibwa Indian, checking up the animals' names in the native tongue. Of course the Red-squirrel was early in our notice. "Ad-je-_daw_-mo" I called it, but the Indian corrected me; "Ah-chit-aw-_mo_" he made it; and when I translated it "Tail-in-air" he said gravely, "No, it means head downward." Then noting my surprise, he added, with characteristic courtesy, "Yes, yes, you are right; if his head is down, his tail must be up." Thoreau talks of the Red-squirrel flicking his tail like a whip-lash, and the word "Squirrel," from the Latin "_Sciurus_" and Greek "_Skia-oura_" means "shady tail." Thus all of its names seem to note the wonderful banner that serves the animal in turn as sun-shade, signal-flag, coverlet, and parachute. THE CHEEKY PINE SQUIRREL [Illustration] A wonderfully extensive kingdom has fallen to Adjidaumo of the shady tail; all of Canada and most of the Rockies are his. He is at home wherever there are pine forests and a cool climate; and he covers so many ranges of diverse conditions that, responding to the new environments in lesser matters of makeup, we have a score of different Squirrel races from this parent stock. In size, in tail, in kind or depth of coat they differ to the expert eye, but so far as I can see they are exactly alike in all their ways, their calls and their dispositions. The Pine Squirrel is the form found in the Rockies about the Yellowstone Park. It is a little darker in colour than the Red-squirrel of the East, but I find no other difference. It has the same aggressive, scolding propensities, the same love of the pinyons and their product, the same friends and the same foes, with one possible partial exception in the list of habits, and that is in its method of storing up mushrooms. [Illustration] The pinyons, or nuts of the pinyon pine, are perhaps the most delicious nuts in all the lap of bountiful dame Nature, from fir belt in the north to equatorial heat and on to far Fuego. All wild creatures revel in the pinyons. To the Squirrels they are more than the staff of life; they are meat and potatoes, bread and honey, pork and beans, bread and cake, sugar and chocolate, the sum of comfort, and the promise of continuing joy. But the pinyon does not bear every year; there are off years, as with other trees, and the Squirrels might be in a bad way if they had no other supply of food to lay up for the winter. [Illustration: XXV. Red-squirrel storing mushrooms for winter use _Sketched from life in the Selkirk Mountains, by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXVI. Chink stalking the Picket-pin _Photo by E. T. Seton_] A season I spent in the Southern Rockies was an off year for pinyons, and when September came I was shown what the Squirrels do in such an emergency. All through autumn the slopes of the hills were dotted with the umbrellas of countless toadstools or mushrooms, representing many fat and wholesome species. It is well known that while a few of them are poisonous, a great many are good food. Scientists can find out which is which only by slow experiment. "Eat them; if you live they are good, if you die they are poisonous" has been suggested as a certain method. The Squirrels must have worked this out long ago, for they surely know the good ones; and all through late summer they are at work gathering them for winter use in place of the pine-nuts. [Illustration] Now if the provident Squirrel stored these up as he does the pinyons, in holes or underground, they would surely go to mush in a short time and be lost. He makes no such mistake. He stores them in the forked branches of trees, where they dry out and remain good until needed; and wisely puts them high enough up to be out of reach of the Deer and low enough to avoid being dislodged by the wind. As you ramble through the Squirrel-frequented woods, you will often come across a log or stump which is littered over with the scales fresh cut from a pine cone; sometimes there is a pile of a bushel or more by the place; you have stumbled on a Squirrel's workshop. Here is where he does his husking, and the "clear corn" produced is stored away in some underground granary till It is needed. The Pine Squirrel loves to nest in a hollow tree, but also builds an outside nest which at a distance looks like a mass of rubbish. This, on investigation, turns out to be a convenient warm chamber some six inches wide and two or three high. It is covered with a waterproof roof of bark thatch, and entered by a door artfully concealed with layers and fringes of bark that hide it alike from blood-thirsty foes and piercing winter blasts. [Illustration] CHIPMUNKS AND GROUND-SQUIRRELS The Red-squirrel is safe and happy only when in the tall trees, but his kinsmen have sought out any and every different environment. One enormous group of his great grandfather's second cousins have abandoned tree life altogether. They have settled down like the Dakota farmers, to be happy on the prairie, where, never having need to get over anything higher than their own front doorstep, they have lost the last vestige of power to climb. These are the Ground-squirrels, that in a variety of forms are a pest in gardens and on farms in most of the country west of the Mississippi. Standing between these and the true Squirrels are the elegant Chipmunks, the prettiest and most popular of all the family. They frequent the borderland between woods and prairie; they climb, if anything is to be gained by it, but they know, like the Ground-squirrels, that Mother Earth is a safer retreat in time of danger than the tallest tree that ever grew. THE GROUND-SQUIRREL THAT PLAYS PICKET-PIN Conspicuous in its teeming numbers in the Yellowstone Park is the Picket-Pin Ground-squirrel. On every level, dry prairie along the great river I found it in swarms. [Illustration] It looks much like a common Squirrel, but its coat has become more mud-coloured, and its tail is reduced by long ages of neglect to a mere vestige of the ancestral banner. It has developed great powers of burrowing, but it never climbs anything higher than the little mound that it makes about the door of its home. The Picket-pin is an interesting and picturesque creature in some ways, but it has one habit that I cannot quite condone. In this land of sun and bright blue air, this world of outdoor charm, it comes forth tardily in late spring, as late sometimes as the first of May, and promptly retires in mid-August, when blazing summer is on the face of the earth, and the land is a land of plenty. Down it goes after three and one half short months, to sleep for eight and a half long ones; and since during these three and a half months it is above ground only in broad daylight, this means that for only two months of the year it is active, and the other ten, four fifths of its life, it passes in a deathlike sleep. Of course, the Picket-pin might reply that it has probably as many hours of active life as any of its kind, only it breaks them up into sections, with long blanks of rest between. Whether this defense is a good one or not, we have no facts at present to determine. [Illustration] It has a fashion of sitting up straight on the doorway mound when it wishes to take an observation, and the more it is alarmed by the approach of an enemy the straighter it sits up, pressing its paws tight to its ribs, so that at a short distance it looks like a picket-pin of wood; hence the name. Oftentimes some tenderfoot going in the evening to stake out his horse and making toward the selected patch of grassy prairie, exclaims, "Good Luck! here's a picket-pin already driven in." But on leading up his horse within ten or twelve feet of the pin, it gives a little "_chirr_" and dives down out of sight. Then the said tenderfoot realizes why the creature got the name. The summer of 1897 I spent in the Park about Yancey's and there had daily chances of seeing the Picket-pin and learning its ways, for the species was there in thousands on the little prairie about my cabin. I think I am safe in saying that there were ten families to the acre of land on all the level prairie in this valley. CHINK AND THE PICKET-PINS As already noted in the Coyote chapter, we had in camp that summer the little dog called Chink. He was just old enough to think himself a remarkable dog with a future before him. There was hardly anything that Chink would not attempt, except perhaps keeping still. He was always trying to do some absurd and impossible thing, or, if he did attempt the possible, he usually spoiled his best efforts by his way of going about it. He once spent a whole morning trying to run up a tall, straight, pine tree in whose branches was a snickering Pine Squirrel. The darling ambition of his life for some weeks was to catch one of the Picket-pin Ground-squirrels that swarmed on the prairie about the camp. Chink had determined to catch one of these Ground-squirrels the very first day he came into the valley. Of course, he went about it in his own original way, doing everything wrong end first, as usual. This, his master said, was due to a streak of Irish in his makeup. So Chink would begin a most elaborate stalk a quarter of a mile from the Ground-squirrel. After crawling on his breast from tussock to tussock for a hundred yards or so, the nervous strain would become too great, and Chink, getting too much excited to crawl, would rise on his feet and walk straight toward the Squirrel, which would now be sitting up by its hole, fully alive to the situation. After a minute or two of this very open approach, Chink's excitement would overpower all caution. He would begin running, and at the last, just as he should have done his finest stalking, he would go bounding and barking toward the Ground-squirrel, which would sit like a peg of wood till the proper moment, then dive below with a derisive chirrup, throwing with its hind feet a lot of sand right into Chink's eager, open mouth. Day after day this went on with level sameness, and still Chink did not give up, although I feel sure he had bushels of sand thrown in his mouth that summer by the impudent Picket-pins. [Illustration] Perseverance, he seemed to believe, must surely win in the end, as indeed it did. For, one day, he made an unusually elaborate stalk after an unusually fine big Picket-pin, carried out all his absurd tactics, finishing with the grand, boisterous charge, and actually caught his victim; but this time it happened to be a _wooden_ picket-pin. Any one who doubts that a dog knows when he has made a fool of himself should have seen Chink that day as he sheepishly sneaked out of sight behind the tent. CHIPMUNKS Every one recognizes as a Chipmunk the lively little creature that, with striped coat and with tail aloft, dashes across all the roads and chirrups on all the log piles that line the roads throughout the timbered portions of the Park. I am sure I have often seen a thousand of them in a mile of road between the Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Geyser Basin. The traveller who makes the entire round of the Park may see a hundred thousand if he keeps his eyes open. While every one knows them at once for Chipmunks, it takes a second and more careful glance to show they are of three totally distinct kinds. THE GROUND-SQUIRREL THAT PRETENDS IT'S A CHIPMUNK First, largest, and least common, is the Big Striped Ground-squirrel, the Golden Ground-squirrel or Say's Ground-squirrel, called scientifically _Citellus lateralis cinerascens_. This, in spite of its livery, is not a Chipmunk at all but a Ground-squirrel that is trying hard to be a Chipmunk. And it makes a good showing so far as manners, coat and stripes are concerned, but the incontrovertible evidence of its inner life, as indicated by skull and makeup, tells us plainly that it is merely a Ground-squirrel, a first cousin to the ignoble Picket-pin. I found it especially common in the higher parts of the Park. It is really a mountain species, at home chiefly among the rocks, yet is very ready to take up its abode under buildings. At the Lake Hotel I saw a number of them that lived around the back door, and were almost tamed through the long protection there given them. Like most of these small rodents, they are supposed to be grain-eaters but they really are omnivorous, and quite ready to eat flesh and eggs, as well as seeds and fruit. Warren in his "Mammals of Colorado," tells of having seen one of these Ground-squirrels kill some young Bluebirds; and adds another instance of flesh-eating observed in the Yellowstone Park, where he and two friends, riding along one of the roads, saw a Say Ground-squirrel demurely squatting on a log, holding in its arms a tiny young Meadow Mouse, from which it picked the flesh as one might pick corn from a cob. Meadow Mice are generally considered a nuisance, and the one devoured probably was of a cantankerous disposition; but just the same it gives one an unpleasant sensation to think of this elegant little creature, in appearance, innocence personified, wearing all the insignia of a grain-eater, yet ruthlessly indulging in such a bloody and cannibal feast. A FOUR-LEGGED BIRD--THE NORTHERN CHIPMUNK The early naturalists who first made the acquaintance of the Eastern Ground-squirrel named it Tamias or "The Steward." Later the Northern Chipmunk was discovered and it was found to be more of a Chipmunk than its Eastern cousin. The new one had all the specialties of the old kind, but in a higher degree. So they named this one _Eutamias_, which means "good" or "extra good" Chipmunk. And extra good this exquisite little creature surely is in all that goes to make a charming, graceful, birdy, pert and vivacious four-foot. In everything but colours it is Eutamias or Tamias of a more intensified type. Its tail is long in proportion and carried differently, being commonly held straight up, so that the general impression one gets is of a huge tail with a tiny striped animal attached to its lower end. [Illustration] Its excessive numbers along the roads in the Park are due to two things: First, the food, for oats are continually spilled from the freighting wagons. Second, the protection of piles of pine trees cut and cast aside in clearing the roadway. There is one habit of the Eastern Chipmunk that I have not noted in the mountain species, and that is the habit of song. In the early spring and late autumn when the days are bright and invigorating, the Eastern Chipmunk will mount some log, stump or other perch and express his exuberant joy in a song which is a rapid repetition of a bird-like note suggested by "Chuck," "Chuck," or "Chock," "Chock." This is kept up two or three minutes without interruption, and is one of those delightful woodland songs whose charm comes rather from association than from its inherent music. If our Western Chipmunk is as far ahead in matters musical as he is in form and other habits, I shall expect him to render no less than the song of a nightingale when he gives himself up to express his wild exuberance in a chant. I shall never forget the days I spent with a naturalist friend in an old mill building in western Manitoba. It was in a pine woods which was peopled with these little Chipmunks. They had hailed the mill and its wood piles, and especially the stables, with their squandered oats, as the very gifts of a beneficient Providence for their use and benefit. They had concentrated on the mill; they were there in hundreds, almost thousands, and whenever one looked across the yard in sunny hours one could see a dozen or more together. The old mill was infested with them as an old brewery with rats. But in many respects besides beauty they were an improvement on rats: they did not smell, they were not vicious, and they did not move by night. [Illustration] During the daytime they were everywhere and into everything. Our slender stock of provisions was badly reduced when, by mischance, the tin box was left open a few hours, but we loved to see so much beautiful life about and so forgave them. One of our regular pleasures was to sit back after a meal and watch these pert-eyed, four-legged birds scramble onto the table, eat the scraps and lick all the plates and platters clean. Like all the Chipmunks and Ground-squirrels, this animal has well-developed cheek-pouches which it uses for carrying home seeds and roots which serve for food in the winter. Or perhaps we should say in the early spring, for the Chipmunk, like the Ground-squirrel, goes into the ground for a long repose as soon as winter comes down hard and white. Yet it does not go so early or stay so late as its big cousin. October still sees it active, even running about in the snow. As late as October 31st at Breckenridge, Col., I saw one sitting up on a log and eating some grass or seeds during a driving snowstorm. High up in the Shoshonees, after winter had settled down, on October 8, 1898, I saw one of these bright creatures bounding through the snow. On a stone he paused to watch me and I made a hasty sketch of his attitude. [Illustration] Then, again, it is out in the spring, early in April, so that it is above ground for at least seven months of the year. Its nest is in a chamber at the end of a long tunnel that it digs under ground, usually among roots that make hard digging for the creatures that would rout them out. Very little is known as yet, however, about the growth or development of the young, so here is an opportunity for the young naturalist who would contribute something to our knowledge of this interesting creature. A STRIPED PIGMY--THE LEAST CHIPMUNK Closely akin to this one and commonly mistaken for its young, is the Least Chipmunk (_Eutamias minimus_), which is widely diffused in the great dry central region of the Continent. Although so generally found and so visible when found, its history is practically unknown. It probably lives much like its relatives, raising a brood of four to six young in a warm chamber far underground, and brings them up to eat all manner of seeds, grains, fruits, herbs, berries, insects, birds, eggs, and even mice, just as do most of its kinsmen, but no one has proved any of these things. Any exact observations you may make are sure to be acceptable contributions to science. * * * * * IX The Rabbits and their Habits * * * * * [Illustration: XXVII. The Snowshoe Hare is a cross between a Rabbit and a Snowdrift _Captives; photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXVIII. The Cottontail freezing _Photos after sunset, by E. T. Seton_] IX The Rabbits and their Habits [Illustration] If the Wolf may be justly proud of his jaws and the Antelope of his legs, I am sure that the Rabbit should very properly glory in his matchless fecundity. To perfect this power he has consecrated all the splendid energies of his vigorous frame, and he has magnified his specialty into a success that is worth more to his race than could be any other single gift. [Illustration] Rabbits are without weapons of defense, and are simple-minded to the last degree. Most are incapable of long-distance speed, but all have an exuberance of multiplication that fills their ranks as fast as foe can thin the line. If, indeed, they did not have several families, several times a year, they would have died out several epochs back. [Illustration] There are three marked types of Rabbits in the Rockies--the Cottontail, the Snowshoe, and the Jackrabbit. All of them are represented on the Yellowstone, besides the little Coney of the rocks which is a remote second cousin of the family. MOLLY COTTONTAIL, THE CLEVER FREEZER [Illustration: Molly Freezing] I have often had occasion to comment on the "freezing" of animals. When they are suddenly aware of a near enemy or confronted by unexpected situations, their habit is to _freeze_--that is, become perfectly rigid, and remain so until the danger is past or at least comprehended. Molly Cottontail is one of the best "freezers." Whenever she does not know what to do, she does nothing, obeying the old Western rule, "Never rush when you are rattled." Now Molly is a very nervous creature. Any loud, sharp noise is liable to upset her, and feeling herself unnerved she is very apt to stop and simply "freeze." Keep this in mind when next you meet a Cottontail, and get a photograph. In July, 1902, I tried it myself. I was camped with a lot of Sioux Indians on the banks of the Cheyenne River in Dakota. They had their families with them, and about sundown one of the boys ran into the tepee for a gun, and then fired into the grass. His little brother gave a war-whoop that their "pa" might well have been proud of, then rushed forward and held up a fat Cottontail, kicking her last kick. Another, a smaller Cottontail, was found not far away, and half a dozen young redskins armed with sticks crawled up, then suddenly let them fly. Bunny was hit, knocked over, and before he could recover, a dog had him. [Illustration] I had been some distance away. On hearing the uproar I came back toward my own campfire, and as I did so, my Indian guide pointed to a Cottontail twenty feet away gazing toward the boys. The guide picked up a stick of firewood. The boys saw him, and knowing that another Rabbit was there they came running. Now I thought they had enough game for supper and did not wish them to kill poor Molly. But I knew I could not stop them by saying that, so I said: "Hold on till I make a photo." Some of them understood; at any rate, my guide did, and all held back as I crawled toward the Rabbit. She took alarm and was bounding away when I gave a shrill whistle which turned her into a "frozen" statue. Then I came near and snapped the camera. The Indian boys now closed in and were going to throw, but I cried out: "Hold on! not yet; I want another." So I chased Bunny twenty or thirty yards, then gave another shrill whistle, and got a fourth snap. Again I had to hold the boys back by "wanting another picture." Five times I did this, taking five pictures, and all the while steering Molly toward a great pile of drift logs by the river. I had now used up all my films. The boys were getting impatient. So I addressed the Cottontail solemnly and gently: "Bunny, I have done my best for you. I cannot hold these little savages any longer. You see that pile of logs over there? Well, Bunny, you have just five seconds to get into that wood-pile. Now git!" and I shooed and clapped my hands, and all the young Indians yelled and hurled their clubs, the dogs came bounding and Molly fairly dusted the earth. "Go it, Molly!" "Go it, dogs!" "Ki-yi, Injuns!" The clubs flew and rattled around her, but Molly put in ten feet to the hop and ten hops to the second (almost), and before the chase was well begun it was over; her cotton tuft disappeared under a log; she was safe in the pile of wood, where so far as I know she lived happy ever after. [Illustration] THE RABBIT THAT WEARS SNOWSHOES The Snowshoe Rabbit is found in all parts of the Park, though not in very great numbers. It is called "Snowshoe" on account of the size of its feet, which, already large, are in snow time made larger by fringes of stiff bristles that give the creature such a broad area of support that it can skip on the surface of soft snow while all its kinsmen sink in helplessness. [Illustration] Here is the hind foot of a Snowshoe in winter, contrasted with the hind foot of a Jackrabbit that was nearly three times its weight. Rabbits are low in the scale of intelligence, but they are high enough to have some joy in social life. It always gives one a special thrill of satisfaction when favoured with a little glimpse into the home ways, the games, or social life of an animal; and the peep I had into the Rabbit world one night, though but a small affair, I have always remembered with pleasure, and hope for a second similar chance. This took place in the Bitterroot Mountains in Idaho, in 1902. My wife and I were out on a pack-train trip with two New York friends. We had seen some rough country in Colorado and Wyoming, but we soon agreed that the Bitterroots were the roughest of all the mountains. It took twenty-eight horses to carry the stuff, for which eighteen were enough in the more southern Rockies. [Illustration] The trails were so crooked and hidden in thick woods, that sometimes the man at the rear might ride the whole day, and never see all the horses until we stopped again for the night. THE TERROR OF THE MOUNTAIN TRAILS [Illustration] There were other annoyances, and among them a particularly dangerous animal. The country was fairly stocked with Moose, Elk, Blacktail, Sheep, Goats, Badgers, Skunks, Wolverines, Foxes, Coyotes, Mountain Lions, Lynx, Wolves, Black Bears and Grizzly Bears, but it was none of these that inspired us with fear. The deadly, dangerous creature, the worst of all, was the common Yellow-Jacket-Wasp. These Wasps abounded in the region. Their nests were so plentiful that many were on, or by, the narrow crooked trails that we must follow. Generally these trails were along the mountain shoulder with a steep bank on the upside, and a sheer drop on the other. It was at just such dangerous places that we seemed most often to find the Yellow-Jackets at home. Roused by the noise and trampling, they would assail the horses in swarms, and then there would be a stampede of bucking, squealing, tortured animals. Some would be forced off the trail, and, as has often happened elsewhere, dashed to their death below. This was the daily danger. [Illustration] One morning late in September we left camp about eight, and set off in the usual line, the chief guide leading and the rest of us distributed at intervals among the pack-horses, as a control. Near the rear was the cook, after him a pack-horse with tins and dishes, and last of all myself. At first we saw no wasps, as the morning was frosty, but about ten the sun had become strong, the air was quite mild, and the wasps became lively. For all at once I heard the dreaded cry, "_Yellow-Jackets_!" Then in a moment it was taken up by the cook just ahead of me. "Yellow-Jackets! look out!" with a note almost of terror in his voice. At once his horse began to plunge and buck. I saw the man of pots clinging to the saddle and protecting his face as best he could, while his mount charged into the bushes and disappeared. Then "_bzz-z-z-z_" they went at the pot-horse and again the bucking and squealing, with pots going clank, clink, rattle and away. "_Bzz-z-z-z-z_" and in a moment the dark and raging little terrors came at me in a cloud. I had no time to stop, or get off, or seek another way. So I jerked up a coat collar to save my face, held my head low, and tried to hold on, while the little pony went insane with the fiery baptism now upon him. Plunging, kicking, and squealing he went, and I stuck, to him for one--two--three jumps, but at number four, as I remember it, I went flying over his head, fortunately up hill, and landed in the bushes unhurt, but ready for peace at any price. It is good old wisdom to "lay low in case of doubt," and very low I lay there, waiting for the war to cease. It was over in a few seconds, for my horse dashed after his fellows and passed through the bushes, so that the winged scorpions were left behind. Presently I lifted my head and looked cautiously toward the wasp's-nest. It was in a bank twenty feet away, and the angry swarm was hovering over it, like smoke from a vent hole. They were too angry, and I was too near, to run any risks, so I sank down again and waited. In one or two minutes I peered once more, getting a sight under a small log lying eight or ten feet away. And as I gazed waspward my eye also took in a brown furry creature calmly sitting under the log, wabbling his nose at me and the world about him. It was a young Snowshoe Rabbit. [Illustration] BUNNY'S RIDE There is a certain wild hunter instinct in us all, a wish to capture every wood creature we meet. That impulse came on me in power. There was no more danger from wasps, so I got cautiously above this log, put a hand down at each side, grabbed underneath, and the Rabbit was my prisoner. Now I had him, what was I going to do with him--kill him? Certainly not. I began to talk to him. "Now what _did_ I catch you for?" His only reply was a wobble of his nose, so I continued: "I didn't know when I began, but I know now. I want to get your picture." And again the nose wobbled. I could not take it then as my camera had gone on with my horse. I had nothing to put the Rabbit in. I could not put it in my pocket as that would mean crushing it in some early tumble; I needed both my hands to climb with and catch my horse, so for lack of a better place I took off my hat and said, "Bunny, how would you like to ride in that?" He wobbled his nose, which I understood to mean that he didn't care. So I put the Rabbit on my head, and put the hat on again. [Illustration] Then I went forward and found that the cook had recovered his pots and pans; all was well now and my horse was awaiting me. I rode all the rest of that day with the Rabbit quietly nestling in my hair. It was a long, hard day, for we continued till nightfall and then made a dark camp in a thick pine woods. It was impossible to make pictures then, so I put the little Rabbit under a leatheroid telescope lid, on a hard level place, gave him food and water, and left him for use in the morning. THE RABBIT DANCE About nine o'clock that night we were sitting about the fire, when from the near woods was heard a tremendous "_tap-tap-taptrrr_," so loud and so near that we all jumped and stared into the darkness. Again it came, "_tap-tap-tap trrrrr_," a regular drum tattoo. "What is that?" we all exclaimed, and at that moment a large Rabbit darted across the open space lighted by the fire. Again the tattoo and another Rabbit dashed across. Then it dawned on me that that was the young Rabbit signalling to his friends. He was using the side of his box for a drum. Again the little prisoner rolled his signal call, and then a third Snowshoe Rabbit appeared. "Look at all the Rabbits!" exclaimed my friend. "Where is my gun?" "No," I said, "you don't need your gun. Wait and see. There is something up. That little chap is ringing up central." "I never saw so many together in all my life," said he. Then added: "I've got an acetylene lantern; perhaps we can get a picture." [Illustration] As soon as he had his camera and lantern, we went cautiously to the rabbity side of the woods; several ran past us. Then we sat down on a smooth place. My friend held the camera, I held the light, but we rested both on the ground. Very soon a Rabbit darted from the darkness into the great cone of light from the lantern, gazed at that wonder for a moment, gave a "thump" and disappeared. Then another came; then two or three. They gazed into this unspeakably dazzling thing, then one gave the alarm by thumping, and all were lost to sight. But they came again and in ever-increasing numbers, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10 at last, now in plain view, gazing wildly at the bright light, pushing forward as though fascinated. Some two or three so close together that they were touching each other. Then one gave the thumping alarm, and all scattered like leaves, to vanish like ghosts. But they came back again, to push and crawl up nearer to that blazing wonder. Some of the back ones were skipping about but the front ones edged up in a sort of wild-eyed fascination. Closer and closer they got, then the first one was so near that reaching out to smell the lantern he burnt his nose, and at his alarm thump, all disappeared in the woods. But they soon returned to disport again in that amazing brightness; and, stimulated by the light, they danced about, chasing each other, dodging around in large circles till one of the outermost leaped over the camera box and another following him, leaped up and sat on it. My friend was just behind, hidden by the light in front, and he had no trouble in clutching the impudent Rabbit with both hands. Instantly it set up a loud squealing. The other Rabbits gave a stamping signal, and in a moment all were lost in the woods, but the one we held. Quickly we transported it to another leatheroid box, intending to take its picture in the morning, but the prisoner had a means of attack that I had not counted on. Just as we were going to sleep he began with his front feet on the resounding box and beat a veritable drum tattoo of alarm. Every one in camp was awakened, and again, as we were dropping off, the camp was roused by another loud "tattoo." For nearly two hours this went on; then, about midnight, utterly unable to sleep, I arose and let the drummer go about his business, do anything or go anywhere, so only he would be quiet and let us attend to ours. [Illustration: XXIX. The Baby Cottontail that rode twenty miles in my hat _Photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXX. Snowshoe Rabbits dancing in the light of the lantern _Sketch by E. T. Seton_] Next morning I photographed the little Bunny, and set him free to join his kin. It is a surprising fact that though we spent two weeks in this valley, and a month in those mountains, we did not see another wild Rabbit. This incident is unique in my experience. It is the only time when I found the Snowshoe Hares gathered for a social purpose, and is the only approach to a game that I ever heard of among them. THE GHOST RABBIT An entirely different side of Rabbit life is seen in another mysterious incident that I have never been able to explain. At one time when I lived in Ontario, I had a very good hound that was trained to follow all kinds of trails. I used to take him out in the woods at night, give him general instructions "to go ahead, and report everything afoot"; then sit down on a log to listen to his reports. And he made them with remarkable promptness. Slight differences in his bark, and the course taken, enabled me to tell at once whether it was Fox, Coon, Rabbit, Skunk, or other local game. And his peculiar falsetto yelp when the creature treed, was a joyful invitation to "come and see for yourself." [Illustration] The hound's bark for a Fox was deep, strong, and at regular intervals as befitted the strong trail, and the straightaway run. But for a Rabbit it was broken, uncertain, irregular and rarely a good deep bay. [Illustration] One night the dog bawled in his usual way, "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit," and soon leaving the woods he crossed an open field where the moon shone brightly, and I could easily see to follow. Still yelping "Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit," he dashed into a bramble thicket in the middle of the field. But at once he dashed out again shrieking, "Police! Help! Murder!" and took refuge behind me, cowering up against my legs. At the same moment from the side of that bramble thicket there went out--_a Rabbit_. Yes, a common Rabbit all right, but it was a _snow-white_ one. The first albino Cottontail I had ever seen, and apparently the first albino Cottontail that[C] Ranger had ever seen. Dogs are not supposed to be superstitious, but on that occasion Ranger behaved exactly as though he thought that he had seen a ghost. A NARROW-GAUGE MULE--THE PRAIRIE HARE [Illustration] One has to see this creature with its great flopping ears, and its stiff-legged jumping like a bucking mule, to realize the aptness of its Western nickname. As it bounds away from your pathway its bushy snow-white tail and the white behind the black-tipped ears will point out plainly that it is neither the Texas Jackrabbit nor the Rocky Mountain Cottontail, but the White-tailed Jackrabbit, the finest of all our Hares. I have met it in woods, mountains, and prairies, from California to Manitoba and found it the wildest of its race and almost impossible of approach; _except_ in the great exceptional spot, the Yellowstone Park. Here in the August of 1912 I met with two, close to the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel. At a distance of thirty feet they gave me good chances to take pictures, and though the light was very bad I made a couple of snaps. Fifteen years ago, when first I roamed in the Park, the Prairie Hare was exceedingly rare, but now, like so many of the wild folk, it has become quite common. Another evidence of the efficacy of protection. This silvery-gray creature turns pure white in the winter, when the snow mantle of his range might otherwise make it too conspicuous. THE BUMP OF MOSS THAT SQUEAKS No matter how horrible a certain climate or surroundings may seem to us, they are sure to be the ideal of some wild creature, its very dream of bliss. I suppose that slide rock, away up in cold, bleak, windy country above the timber-line, is absolutely the unloveliest landscape and most repulsive home ground that a man could find in the mountains and yet it is the paradise, the perfect place of a wonderful little creature that is found on the high peaks of the Rockies from California to Alaska. It is not especially abundant in the Yellowstone Park, but it was there that first I made its acquaintance, and Easterners will meet with it in the great Reserve more often than in all other parts of its range put together. [Illustration] As one reaches the Golden Gate, near Mammoth Hot Springs, many little animals of the Ground-squirrel group are seen running about, and from the distance comes a peculiar cry, a short squeak uttered every ten or fifteen seconds. You stop, perhaps search with your eye the remote hillside, but you are looking too far afield. Glance toward the tumbled rock piles, look at every high point. There on top of one you note a little gray lump, like a bump of moss, the size of your fist, clinging to the point of the rock. Fix your glasses on it, and you will see plainly that the squeak is made by this tiny creature, like a quarter-grown Rabbit with short, round, white-rimmed ears and no visible tail. This is the curious little animal that cannot be happy anywhere but in the slide rock; this is the Calling Hare. "Little Chief Hare" is its Indian name, but it has many others of much currency, such as "Pika," and "Starved Rat," the latter because it is never fat. The driver calls it a "Coney," or "Rock Rabbit." In its colour, size, shape, and habits it differs from all other creatures in the region; it is impossible to mistake it. Though a distant kinsman of the Rabbits, it is unlike them in looks and ways. Thus it has, as noted, the very un-rabbit-like habit of squeaking from some high lookout. This is doubtless a call of alarm to let the rest of the company know that there is danger about, for the Coney is a gregarious creature; there may be a hundred of them in the rock-slide. Some years ago, in Colorado, I sketched one of the Coneys by help of a field glass. He was putting all the force of his energetic little soul into the utterance of an alarm cry for the benefit of his people. But the most interesting habit of this un-rabbity Rabbit is its way of preparing for winter. [Illustration] When the grass, the mountain dandelions, and the peavines are at their best growth for making hay, the Coney, with his kind, goes warily from his stronghold in the rocks to the nearest stretch of herbage, and there cuts as much as he can carry of the richest growths; then laden with a bundle as big as himself, and very much longer, he makes for the rocks, and on some flat open place spreads the herbage out to be cured for his winter hay. Out in full blaze of the sun he leave it, and if some inconsiderate rock comes in between, to cast a shadow on his hay a-curing, he moves the one that is easiest to move; he never neglects his hay. When dry enough to be safe, he packs it away into his barn, the barn being a sheltered crevice in the rocks where the weather cannot harm it, and where it will continue good until the winter time, when otherwise there would be a sad pinch of famine in the Coney world. The trappers say that they can tell whether the winter will be hard or open by the amount of food stored up in the Coney barns. [Illustration] Many a one of these I have examined in the mountains of British Columbia and Colorado, as well as in the Park. The quantity of hay in them varies from what might fill a peck measure to what would make a huge armful. Among the food plants used, I found many species of grass, thistle, meadow-rue, peavine, heath, and the leaves of several composite plants. I suspect that fuller observations will show that they use every herb not actually poisonous, that grows in the vicinity of their citadel. More than one of these wads of hay had in the middle of it a nest or hollow; not, I suspect, the home nest where the young are raised, but a sort of winter restaurant where they could go while the ground was covered with snow, and sitting in the midst of their provisions, eat to their heart's content. It is not unlikely that in this we see the growth of the storage habit, beginning first with a warm nest of hay, which it was found could be utilized for food when none other was available. The fact that these barns are used year after year is shown by the abundance of pellets in several layers which were found in and about them. THE WEATHERWISE CONEY [Illustration] A very wise little people is this little people of the Rocks. Not only do they realize that in summer they must prepare for winter, but they know how to face a present crisis, however unexpected. To appreciate the following instance, we must remember that the central thought in the Coney's life is his "grub pile" for winter use, and next that he is a strictly daytime animal. I have often slept near a Coney settlement and never heard a sound or seen a sign of their being about after dark. Nevertheless, Merriam tells us that he and Vernon Bailey once carried their blankets up to a Coney colony above timber-line in the Salmon River Mountains of Idaho, intending to spend the night there and to study the Coneys whose piles of hay were visible in all directions on their rocks. As this was about the first of September, it was natural to expect fair weather and a complete curing of the hay in a week or so. But a fierce storm set in with the descending night. The rain changed to hail and then to snow, and much to the surprise of the naturalists, they heard the squeak of the Coneys all night long. These animals love the sunshine, the warmth and the daylight, and dread cold and darkness as much as we do. It must have been a bitter experience when at the call of the older ones every little Coney had to tumble out of his warm bed in the chill black hours and face the driving sleet to save the winter's supplies. But tumble out they did, and overtime they worked, hard and well, for when the morning dawned the slide-rock and the whole world was covered deep in snow, but every haycock had been removed to a safer place under the rocks, and the wisdom of the Coney once more exemplified, with adequate energy to make it effective. [Illustration] [Illustration: XXXI. Snowshoe Rabbits fascinated by the lantern _Sketched in the Bitterroot Mts. by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXXII. The Ghost Rabbit _Sketch by E. T. Seton_] HIS SAFETY IS IN THE ROCKS No one has ever yet found the home nest of the Calling Hare. It is so securely hidden under rocks, and in galleries below rocks, that all attempts to dig it out have thus far failed. I know of several men, not to mention Bears, Badgers, Wolverines, and Grizzlies, who have essayed to unearth the secret of the Coney's inner life. Following on the trail of a Coney that bleated derisively at me near Pagoda Peak, Col., I began at once to roll rocks aside in an effort to follow him home to his den. The farther I went the less satisfaction I found. The uncertain trail ramified more and more as I laboured. Once or twice from far below me I heard a mocking squeak that spurred me on, but that too, ceased. When about ten tons of rock had been removed I was baffled. There were half a dozen possible lines of continuation, and while I paused to wipe the "honest sweat" from my well-meaning brow, I heard behind me the "weak," "weak," of my friend as though giving his estimate of my resolution, and I descried him--I suppose the same--on a rock point like a moss-bump against the sky-line away to the left. Only, one end of the moss-bump moved a little each time a squeak was cast upon the air. I had not time to tear down the whole mountain, so I did as my betters, the Bears and Badgers have done before me, I gave it up. I had at least found out why the Coney avoids the pleasant prairie and the fertile banks, and I finished with a new and profounder understanding of the Scripture text which says in effect, "As for the Coney, his safe refuge is in the rocks." FOOTNOTES: [Footnote C: It proved later to be an albino domestic Rabbit run wild.] * * * * * X Ghosts of the Campfire * * * * * [Illustration] X Ghosts of the Campfire It is always worth while to cultivate the old guides. Young guides are often fresh and shallow, but the quiet old fellows, that have spent their lives in the mountains, must be good or they could not stay in the business; and they have seen so much and been so far that they are like rare old manuscript volumes, difficult to read, but unique and full of value. It is not easy to get them to talk, but there is a combination that often does it. First, show yourself worthy of their respect by holding up your end, be it in an all-day climb or breakneck ride; then at night, after the others have gone to bed, you sit while the old guide smokes, and by a few brief questions and full attention, show that you value any observations he may choose to make. Many happy hours and much important information have been my reward for just such cautious play, and often as we sat, there flitted past, in the dim light, the silent shadowy forms of the campfire ghosts. Swift, not twinkling, but looming light and fading, absolutely silent. Sometimes approaching so near that the still watcher can get the glint of beady eyes or even of a snowy breast, for these ghosts are merely the common Mice of the mountains, abounding in every part of the West. [Illustration] There are half a dozen different kinds, yet most travellers will be inclined to bunch them all, and pass them by as mere Mice. But they are worthy of better treatment. Three, at least, are so different in form and ways that you should remember them by their names. First is the _Whitefooted or Deer-mouse_. This is the one that you find in the coffee pot or the water bucket in the morning; this is the one that skips out of the "grub box" when the cook begins breakfast; and this is the one that runs over your face with its cold feet as you sleep nights. It is one of the most widely diffused mammals in North America to-day, and probably the most numerous. It is an elegant little creature, with large, lustrous black eyes like those of a Deer, a fact which, combined with its large ears, the fawn-coloured back, and the pure white breast, has given it the name of "Deer-mouse." It is noted for drumming with one foot as a call to its mate, and for uttering a succession of squeaks and trills that serve it as a song. Sometimes its nest is underground; and sometimes in a tree, whence the name Tree-mouse. It breeds several times in a year and does not hibernate, so is compelled to lay up stores of food for winter use. To help it in doing this it has a very convenient pair of capacious pockets, one in each cheek, opening into the mouth. THE JUMPING MOUSE He glides around the fire much as the others do, but at the approach of danger, he simply fires himself out of a catapult, afar into the night. Eight or ten feet he can cover in one of these bounds and he can, and does, repeat them as often as necessary. How he avoids knocking out his own brains in his travels I have not been able to understand. This is the New World counterpart of the Jerboa, so familiar in our school books as a sort of diminutive but glorified kangaroo that frequents the great Pyramids. It is so like a Jerboa in build and behaviour that I was greatly surprised and gratified to find my scientist friends quite willing that I should style it the American representative of the African group. [Illustration] The country folk in the East will tell you that there are "seven sleepers" in our woods, and enumerate them thus: the Bear, the Coon, the Skunk, the Woodchuck, the Chipmunk, the Bat, and the Jumping Mouse. All are good examples, but the longest, soundest sleeper of the whole somnolent brotherhood is the Jumping Mouse. Weeks before summer is ended it has prepared a warm nest deep underground, beyond the reach of cold or rain, and before the early frost has nipped the aster, the Jumping Mouse and his wife curl up with their long tails around themselves like cords on a spool, and sleep the deadest kind of a dead sleep, unbroken by even a snore, until summer is again in the land, and frost and snow unknown. This means at least seven months on the Yellowstone. [Illustration] Since the creature is chiefly nocturnal, the traveller is not likely to see it, excepting late at night when venturesome individuals often come creeping about the campfire, looking for scraps or crumbs; or sometimes other reckless youngsters of the race, going forth to seek their fortunes, are found drowned in the tanks or wells about the hotels. [Illustration: XXXIV. The Coney or Calling Hare _Photo by W. E. Carlin_] [Illustration: XXXV. The Coney barns full of hay stored for winter use _Photos by E. T. Seton_] Here is a diagram of a Jumper in the act of living up to its reputation. And at once one asks what is the reason for this interminable tail. The answer is, it is the tail to the kite, the feathering to the arrow; and observation shows that a Jumping Mouse that has lost its tail is almost helpless to escape from danger. A good naturalist records that one individual that was de-tailed by a mowing machine, jumped frantically and far, but had no control of the direction, and just as often as not went straight up or landed wrong end to, and sometimes on a second bound was back where it had started from. It is very safe to say that all unusual developments serve a very vital purpose in the life of the creature, but we are not always so fortunate as in this case, to know what that purpose is. THE CALLING MOUSE One day fifteen years ago I was sitting on a low bank near Baronett's Bridge across the Yellowstone, a mile and a half from Yancey's. The bank was in an open place, remote from cliffs or thick woods; it was high, dry, and dotted with holes of rather larger than field-mouse size, which were further peculiar in that most of them went straight down and none was connected with any visible overland runways. All of which is secondary to the fact that I was led to the bank by a peculiar bleating noise like the "weak" of a Calling Hare, but higher pitched. As I passed the place the squeakers were left behind me, and so at last I traced the noise to some creature underground. But what it was I could not see or determine. I knew only from the size of the hole it must be as small as a Mouse. [Illustration] Not far away from this I drew some tracks I found in the dust, and later when I showed the drawing, and told the story to a naturalist friend, he said: "I had the same experience in that country once, and was puzzled until I found out by keeping a captive that the creature in the bank was a Grasshopper Mouse or a Calling Mouse, and those in your drawing are its tracks." At one time it was considered an extremely rare animal, but now, having discovered its range, we know it to be quite abundant. In northern New Mexico I found one species so common in the corn-field that I could catch two or three every night with a few mousetraps. But it is scarce on the Yellowstone, and all my attempts to trap it were frustrated by the much more abundant Deer-mice, which sprang the bait and sacrificed themselves, every time I tried for the Squeaker. In the fall of 1912 I was staying at Standing Rock Agency in North Dakota. On the broken ground, between the river and the high level prairie, I noted a ridge with holes exactly like those I had seen on the Yellowstone. A faint squeak underground gave additional and corroborative evidence. So I set a trap and next night had a specimen of the Squeaker as well as a couple of the omnipresent Deer-mice. Doubtless the Calling Mouse has an interesting and peculiar life history, but little is known of it except that it dwells on the dry plains, is a caller by habit;--through not around the campfire--it feeds largely on grasshoppers, and is in mortal terror of ants. * * * * * XI Sneak-cats Big and Small * * * * * [Illustration] XI Sneak-cats--Big and Small You may ride five hundred miles among the mountains, in a country where these beasts of prey abound, and yet see never a hair of a living Wildcat. _But how many do you suppose see you?_ Peeping from a thicket, near the trail, glimpsing you across some open valley in the mountains, or inspecting you from various points as you recline by the campfire, they size you up and decide they want no nearer dealings with you; you are bad medicine, a thing to be eluded. And oh! how clever they are at eluding us. If you turn out the biggest Lynx on the smoothest prairie you ever saw, he will efface himself before you count twenty. The grass may be but three inches high and the Lynx twenty-three, but he will melt into it, and wholly escape the searching eyes of the keenest. One would not think an empty skin could lie more flat. Add to this the silent sinuosity of his glide; he seems to ooze around the bumps and stumps, and bottle up his frightful energy for the final fearsome leap. His whole makeup is sacrificed to efficiency in that leap; on that depends his life; his very existence turns on the wondrous perfection of the sneak, of which the leap is the culmination. Hunters in all parts where these creatures abound, agree in calling Wildcat, Lynx, and Cougar by the undignified but descriptive name of Sneak-cat. THE BOBCAT OR MOUNTAIN WILDCAT The Wildcat of Europe, and of literature, is a creature of almost unparalleled ferocity. Our own Wildcat is three times as big and heavy, so many persons assume that it is three times as ferocious, and therefore to be dreaded almost like a Tiger. The fact is, the American Wildcat or Bobcat is a very shy creature, ready to run from a very small dog, never facing a man and rarely killing anything bigger than a Rabbit. I never saw but one Bobcat in the Yellowstone Park, and that was not in the Park, but at Gardiner where it was held a captive. But it came from the Park, and the guides tell me that the species is quite common in some localities. It is readily recognized by its cat-like form and its short or bob-tail, whence its name. [Illustration: XXXVI. (a) Tracks of Deer escaping and (b) Tracks of Mountain Lion in pursuit _Photos by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXXVII. The Mountain Lion sneaking around us as we sleep _Sketch by E. T. Seton_] MISUNDERSTOOD--THE CANADA LYNX The southern part of North America is occupied by Bobcats of various kinds, the northern part by Lynxes, their very near kin, and there is a narrow belt of middle territory occupied by both. The Yellowstone Park happens to be in that belt, so we find here both the Mountain Bobcat and the Canada Lynx. I remember well three scenes from my childhood days in Canada, in which this animal was the central figure. A timid neighbour of ours was surprised one day to see a large Lynx come out of the woods in broad daylight, and walk toward his house. He went inside, got his gun, opened the door a little, and knelt down. The Lynx walked around the house at about forty yards distance, the man covering it with the gun most of the time, but his hand was shaking, the gun was wabbling, and he was tormented with the thought, "What if I miss, then that brute will come right at me, and then, oh, dear! what?" He had not the nerve to fire and the Lynx walked back to the woods. How well I remember that man. A kind-hearted, good fellow, but oh! so timid. His neighbours guyed him about it, until at last he sold out his farm and joined the ministry. The next scene was similar. Two men were out Coon-hunting, when their dogs treed something. A blazing fire soon made, showed plainly aloft in the tree the whiskered head of a Lynx. The younger man levelled his gun at it, but the other clung to his arm begging him to come away, reminding him that both had families dependent on them, and earnestly protesting that the Lynx, if wounded, would certainly come down and kill the whole outfit. The third was wholly different. In broad daylight a Lynx came out of the woods near a settler's house, entered the pasture and seized a lamb. The good wife heard the noise of the sheep rushing, and went out in time to see the Lynx dragging the victim. She seized a stick and went for the robber. He growled defiantly, but at the first blow of the stick he dropped the lamb and ran. Then that plucky woman carried the lamb to the house; finding four deep cuts in its neck she sewed them up, and after a few days of careful nursing restored the woolly one to its mother, fully recovered. [Illustration] The first two incidents illustrate the crazy ideas that some folks have about the Lynx, and the last shows what the real character of the animal is. I have once or twice been followed by Lynxes, but I am sure it was merely out of curiosity. Many times I have met them in the woods at close range and each time they have gazed at me in a sort of mild-eyed wonder. There was no trace of ferocity in the gaze, but rather of innocent confidence. The earliest meeting I ever had with a Lynx I shall remember when all the other meetings have been dimmed by time, but I have used the incident without embellishment in the early part of "Two Little Savages," so shall not repeat it here. THE SHYEST THING IN THE WOODS--MOUNTAIN LION, PUMA OR COUGAR Reference to the official report shows that there are about one hundred Mountain Lions now ranging the Yellowstone Park. And yet one is very safe in believing that not twenty-five persons of those living in the Park have ever seen one. By way of contrast, the report gives the number of Blackbear at the same--about one hundred--and yet every one living in the Park or passing through, has seen scores of Bears. Why this difference? Chiefly owing to their respective habits. The Cougar is the most elusive, sneaking, adroit hider, and shyest thing in the woods. I have camped for twenty-five years in its country and have never yet seen a wild Cougar. Almost never are they found without dogs specially trained to trail and hunt them. Although I have never seen a Cougar at large, it is quite certain that many a one has watched me. Yes! even in the Yellowstone Park. Remember this, oh traveller, sitting in front of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel! you are in sight of two famous Cougar haunts--Mt. Evarts and Bunsen Peak, and the chances are that, as you sit and perhaps read these lines, a Cougar lolling gray-brown among the gray-brown rocks of the mountain opposite, is calmly surveying all the world about, including yourself. [Illustration] If you consult the witching contraband books that we of a bygone age used to read surreptitiously in school hours, you will learn that "the Cougar is a fearsome beast of invincible prowess. He can kill a Buffalo or an ox with a blow of his paw, and run off with it at full speed or carry it up a tree to devour, and he is by choice a man-eater. Commonly uttering the cry of a woman in distress to decoy the gallant victim to his doom." If, on the other hand, you consult some careful natural histories, or one or two of the seasoned guides, you learn that the Cougar, though horribly destructive among Deer, sheep, and colts, rarely kills a larger prey, and never is known to attack man. I have had many persons take exception to the last statement, and give contrary proof by referring to some hair-lifting incident which seemed to be a refutation. But most of these attacks by Cougars have failed to stand the disintegrating power of a carefully focussed searchlight. There is no doubt that the Cougar is addicted to horseflesh, as his scientific name implies (_hippolestes_=horse pirate). He will go a long way to kill a colt, and several supposed cases of a Cougar attacking a man on horseback at night prove to have been attacks on the horse, and in each case on discovering the man the Cougar had decamped. This creature is also possessed of a strong curiosity and many times is known to have followed a man in the woods merely to study the queer creature, but without intent to do him harm. Nevertheless the timid traveller who discovers he is "pursued by a Cougar" may manage to persuade himself that he has had a hairbreadth escape. THE TIME I MET A LION A newspaper reporter asked me once for a story of terrible peril from our wild animals, a time "when I nearly lost my life." [Illustration] My answer was, "I never had such an experience. Danger from wild animals is practically non-existent in America to-day." "Did you never meet a Grizzly or a Mountain Lion?" he asked. "Yes, many Grizzlies, and one or two Lions. I've had one look me over while I slept," was the answer. And now the thrill-monger's face lighted up, he straightened his paper and stuck his pencil in his mouth by way of getting ready, and ejaculated: "Say! now you're getting it; let's hear the details. Don't spare me!" "It was back in September, 1899," I said. "My wife and I were camping in the high Sierra near Mt. Tallac. At this season rain is unknown, so we took no tent. Each of us had a comfortable rubber bed and we placed these about a foot or two apart. In the narrow alley between we put a waterproof canvas, and on that each night we laid the guns. "We had a couple of cowboys to look after the outfit. A fortnight had gone by with sunny skies and calm autumn weather, when one evening it began to blow. Black, lumpy clouds came up from the far-off sea; the dust went whirling in little eddies, and when the sun went down it was of a sickly yellowish. The horses were uneasy, throwing up their noses, snorting softly and pricking their ears in a nervous way. "Everything promised a storm in spite of the rule 'no rain in September,' and we huddled into our tentless beds with such preparation as we could make for rain. "As night wore on the windstorm raged, and one or two heavy drops spattered down. Then there was a loud snort or two and a plunge of the nearest horse, then quiet. "Next morning we found every horse gone, and halters and ropes broken, while deep hoofprints showed the violence of the stampede which we had scarcely heard. The men set out on foot after the horses, and by good luck, recovered all within a mile. Meanwhile I made a careful study of the ground, and soon got light. For there were the prints of a huge Mountain Lion. He had prowled into camp, coming up to where we slept, sneaked around and smelt us over, and--I think--walked down the alley between our beds. After that, probably, he had got so close to the horses that, inspired by terror of their most dreaded foe, they had broken all bonds and stampeded into safety. Nevertheless, though the horses were in danger, there can be no question, I think, that we were not." The reporter thought the situation more serious than I did, and persisted that if I dug in my memory I should yet recall a really perilous predicament, in which thanks to some wild brute, I was near death's door. And as it proved he was right. I had nearly forgotten what looked like a hairbreadth escape. IN PERIL OF MY LIFE It was on the same Sierra trip. Our outfit had been living for weeks among the tall pines, subsisting on canned goods; and when at length we came out on the meadows by Leaf Lake we found them enlivened by a small herd of wild--that is, range-cattle. "My!" said one of the cowboys, "wouldn't a little fresh milk go fine after all that ptomaine we've been feeding on?" "There's plenty of it there; help yourself," said I. "I'd soon catch one if I knew which, and what to do when I got her," he answered. Then memories of boyhood days on the farm came over me and I said: "I'll show you a cow in milk, and I'll milk her if you'll hold her." "Agreed! Which is the one?" I put my hands up to my mouth and let off a long bleat like a calf in distress. The distant cattle threw up their heads and began "sniffing." Another bleat and three cows separated from the others; two ran like mad into the woods, the third kept throwing her head this way and that, but not running. "That one," I said, "is your cow. She's in milk and not too recently come in." [Illustration: Milk Lady] Then away went the cowboys to do their part. The herd scattered and the cow tried to run, but the ponies sailed alongside, the lariats whistled and in a flash she was held with one rope around her horns, the other around one hind leg. "Now's your chance, Milk-lady!" they shouted at me, and forward I went, pail in hand, to milk that snorting, straining, wild-eyed thing. She tried to hold her milk up, but I am an old hand at that work. She never ceased trying to kick at me with her free hind leg, so I had to watch the leg, and milk away. The high pitched "_tsee tsee_" had gradually given place to the low "_tsow tsow_" of the two streams cutting the foam when a peculiar smell grew stronger until it was nothing less than a disgusting stench. For the first time I glanced down at the milk in the pail, and there instead of a dimpled bank of snowy foam was a great yeasty mass of yellowish brown streaked with blood. Hastily rising and backing off, I said: "I've got plenty of milk now for you two. The rest of us don't care for any. Hold on till I get back to the trees." Then, when I was safely under cover, the boys turned the cow loose. Of course, her first impulse was revenge, but I was safe and those mounted men knew how to handle a cow. She was glad to run off. [Illustration] "There's your milk," I said, and pointed to the pail I had left. Evidently that cow had been suffering from more than one milk malady. The boys upset the bloody milk right there, then took the pail to the stream, where they washed it well, and back to camp, where we scalded it out several times. THE DANGEROUS NIGHT VISITOR That night about sundown, just as we finished supper, there came from the near prairie the mighty, portentous rumbling roar of a bull--the bellow that he utters when he is roused to fight, the savage roar that means "I smell blood." It is one of those tremendous menacing sounds that never fail to give one the creeps and make one feel, oh! so puny and helpless. We went quietly to the edge of the timber and there was the monster at the place where that evil milk was spilt, tearing up the ground with hoofs and horns, and uttering that dreadful war-bellow. The cowboys mounted their ponies, and gave a good demonstration of the power of brains in the ruling of brawn. They took that bull at a gallop a mile or more away, they admonished him with some hard licks of a knotted-rope and left him, then came back, and after a while we all turned in for the night. Just as we were forgetting all things, the sweet silence of the camp was again disturbed by that deep, vibrating organ tone, the chesty roaring of the enraged bull; and we sprang up to see the huge brute striding in the moonlight, coming right into camp, lured as before by that sinister blood trail. The boys arose and again saddled the ready mounts. Again I heard the thudding of heavy feet, the shouts of the riders, a few loud snorts, followed by the silence; and when the boys came back in half an hour we rolled up once more and speedily were asleep. To pass the night in peace! not at all. Near midnight my dreams were mixed with earthquakes and thunder, and slowly I waked to feel that ponderous bellow running along the ground, and setting my legs a-quiver. [Illustration] "_Row-ow-ow-ow_" it came, and shook me into full wakefulness to realize that that awful brute was back again. He could not resist the glorious, alluring chance to come and get awfully mad over that "bluggy milk." Now he was in camp, close at hand; the whole sky seemed blocked out and the trees a-shiver as he came on. "_Row-ow-ow-ow_" he rumbled, also snorted softly as he came, and before I knew it he walked down the narrow space between our beds and the wagon. Had I jumped up and yelled, he, whether mad or scared, might have trampled one or other of us. That is the bull of it; a horse steps over. So I waited in trembling silence till that horrid "_Row-ow-ow-ow_" went by. Then I arose and yelled with all my power: "Louie! Frank! Help! Here's the bull." The boys were up before I had finished. The ready ponies were put in commission in less than three minutes. Then came the stampede, the heavy thudding, the loud whacks of the ropes, and when these sounds had died in the distance, I heard the "pop, pop" of side arms. I asked no questions, but when the boys came back and said, "well, you bet he won't be here again," I believed them. [Illustration] [Illustration: XXXVIII. Sketch of the Bear Family as made on the spot _By E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XXXIX. Two pages from my journal in the garbage heap _By E. T. Seton_] * * * * * XII Bears of High and Low Degree * * * * * [Illustration: The Snorer] XII Bears of High and Low Degree Why is snoring a crime at night and a joke by day? It seems to be so, and the common sense of the public mind so views it. In the September of 1912 I went with a good guide and a party of friends, to the region southeast of Yellowstone Lake. This is quite the wildest part of the Park; it is the farthest possible from human dwellings, and in it the animals are wild and quite unchanged by daily association with man, as pensioners of the hotels. Our party was carefully selected, a lot of choice spirits, and yet there was one with a sad and unpardonable weakness--he always snored a dreadful snore as soon as he fell asleep. That is why he was usually put in a tent by himself, and sent to sleep with a twenty-five foot deadening space between him and us of gentler somnolence. He had been bad the night before, and now, by request, was sleeping _fifty_ feet away. But what is fifty feet of midnight silence to a forty-inch chest and a pair of tuneful nostrils. About 2 A.M. I was awakened as before, but worse than ever, by the most terrific, measured snorts, and so loud that they seemed just next me. Sitting up, I bawled in wrath, "Oh, Jack, shut up, and let some one else have a chance to sleep." The answer was a louder snort, a crashing of brush and a silence that, so far as I know, continued until sunrise. Then I arose and learned that the snorts and the racket were made, not by my friend, but by a huge Grizzly that had come prowling about the camp, and had awakened me by snorting into my tent. But he had fled in fear at my yell; and this behaviour exactly shows the attitude of the Grizzlies in the West to-day. They are afraid of man, they fly at whiff or sound of him, and if in the Yellowstone you run across a Grizzly that seems aggressive, rest assured he has been taught such bad manners by association with our own species around the hotels. THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF BEARS [Illustration] Some guides of unsound information will tell the traveller that there are half a dozen different kinds of Bears in or near the Yellowstone Park--Blackbear, Little Cinnamon, Big Cinnamon, Grizzlies, Silver-tip, and Roach-backs. This is sure however, there are but two species, namely, the Blackbear and the Grizzly. The Blackbear is known by its short front claws, flat profile and black colour, with or without a tan-coloured muzzle. Sometimes in a family of Blackbears there appears a red-headed youngster, just as with ourselves; he is much like his brethren but "all over red complected" as they say in Canada. This is known to hunters as a "Little Cinnamon." The Grizzly is known by its great size, its long fore claws, its hollow profile and its silver-sprinkled coat. Sometimes a Grizzly has an excessive amount of silver; this makes a Silver-tip. Sometimes the silver is nearly absent, in which case the Bear is called a "Big Cinnamon." Sometimes the short mane over his humped shoulders is exaggerated; this makes a "Roach-back." Any or all of these are to be looked for in the Park, yet remember! they form only two species. All of the Blackbear group are good climbers; none of the Grizzly group climb after they are fully grown. BEAR-TREES There is a curious habit of Bears that is well known without being well understood; it is common to all these mentioned. In travelling along some familiar trail they will stop at a certain tree, claw it, tear it with their teeth, and rub their back and head up against it as high as they can reach, even with the tip of the snout, and standing on tiptoes. There can be no doubt that a Bear coming to a tree can tell by scent whether another Bear has been there recently, and whether that Bear is a male or female, a friend, a foe or a stranger. Thus the tree serves as a sort of news depot; and there is one every few hundred yards in country with a large Bear population. These trees, of course, abound in the Park. Any good guide will point out some examples. In the country south of the Lake, I found them so common that it seemed as if the Bears had made many of them for mere sport. A PEEP INTO BEAR FAMILY LIFE When we went to the Yellowstone in 1897 to spend the season studying wild animal life, we lived in a small shanty that stood near Yancey's, and had many pleasant meetings with Antelope, Beaver, etc., but were disappointed in not seeing any Bears. One of my reasons for coming was the promise of "as many Bears as I liked." But some tracks on the trail a mile away were the only proofs that I found of Bears being in the region. One day General Young, then in charge of the Park, came to see how we were getting along. And I told him that although I had been promised as many Bears as I liked, and I had been there investigating for six weeks already, I hadn't seen any. He replied, "You are not in the right place. Go over to the Fountain Hotel and there you will see as many Bears as you wish." That was impossible, for there were not Bears enough in the West to satisfy me, I thought. But I went at once to the Fountain Hotel and without loss of time stepped out the back door. [Illustration] I had not gone fifty feet before I walked onto a big Blackbear with her two roly-poly black cubs. The latter were having a boxing match, while the mother sat by to see fair play. As soon as they saw me they stopped their boxing, and as soon as I saw them I stopped walking. The old Bear gave a peculiar "_Koff koff_," I suppose of warning, for the young ones ran to a tree, and up that they shinned with alacrity that amazed me. When safely aloft, they sat like small boys, holding on with their hands, while their little black legs dangled in the air, and waited to see what was to happen down below. The mother Bear, still on her hind legs, came slowly toward me, and I began to feel very uncomfortable indeed, for she stood about six feet high in her stocking feet, and I had not even a stick to defend myself with. I began backing slowly toward the hotel, and by way of my best defense, _I_ turned on her all the power of my magnetic eye. We have all of us heard of the wonderful power of the magnetic human eye. Yes, _we_ have, but apparently this old Bear had not, for she came on just the same. She gave a low woof, and I was about to abandon all attempts at dignity, and run for the hotel; but just at this turning-point the old Bear stopped, and gazed at me calmly. Then she faced about and waddled over to the tree, up which were the cubs. Underneath she stood, looking first at me, then at her family. I realized that she wasn't going to bother me, in fact she never seemed very serious about it, so I plucked up courage. I remembered what I came for and got down my camera. But when I glanced at the sky, and gauged the light--near sundown in the woods--I knew the camera would not serve me; so I got out my sketch book instead, and made the sketch which is given on Plate XXXVIII; I have not changed it since. [Illustration: XLI. While I sketched the Bears a brother camera hunter was stalking me without my knowledge _Photo by F. Linde Ryan, Flushing, L. I._] [Illustration: XLII. One meets the Bears at nearly every turn in the woods _Photo by E. T. Seton_] Meanwhile the old Bear had been sizing me up, and evidently made up her mind that, "although that human being might be all right, she would take no chances for her little ones." [Illustration] She looked up to her two hopefuls, and gave a peculiar whining "_Er-r-r er-r_," whereupon, like obedient children, they jumped as at the word of command. There was nothing about them heavy or bear-like as commonly understood; lightly they swung from bough to bough till they dropped to the ground, and all went off together into the woods. I was much tickled by the prompt obedience of these little Bears. As soon as their mother told them to do something they did it. They did not even offer a suggestion. But I also found out that there was a good reason back of it, for, had they not done as she had told them, they would have got such a spanking as would have made them howl. Yes, it is quite the usual thing, I find, for an old Blackbear to spank her little ones when in her opinion they need it, and she lays it on well. She has a good strong paw, and does not stop for their squealing; so that one correction lasts a long time. This was a delightful peep into Bear home-life, and would have been well worth coming for, if the insight had ended there. But my friends in the hotel said that that was not the best place for Bears. I should go to the garbage-heap, a quarter-mile off in the forest. There, they said, I surely could see as many Bears as I wished, which was absurd of them. THE DAY AT THE GARBAGE PILE [Illustration] Early next morning I equipped myself with pencils, paper and a camera, and set out for the garbage pile. At first I watched from the bushes, some seventy-five yards away, but later I made a hole in the odorous pile itself, and stayed there all day long, sketching and snapshotting the Bears which came and went in greater numbers as the day was closing. A sample of my notes made on the spot will illustrate the continuity of the Bear procession, yet I am told that there are far more of these animals there to-day than at the time of my visit. Those readers who would follow my adventures in detail will find them fully and exactly set forth in the story of Johnny Bear, which appears in "Lives of the Hunted," so I shall not further enlarge on them here, except to relate one part which was omitted, as it dealt with a photographic experience. [Illustration] In the story I told how, backed by a mounted cowboy, I sat on the garbage pile while the great Grizzly that had worsted Old Grumpy, came striding nearer, and looming larger. [Illustration] He had not quite forgotten the recent battle, his whole air was menacing, and I had all the appropriate sensations as he approached. At forty yards I snapped him, and again at twenty. Still he was coming, but at fifteen feet he stopped and turned his head, giving me the side view I wanted, and I snapped the camera again. The effect was startling. That insolent, nagging little click brought the wrath of the Grizzly onto myself. He turned on me with a savage growl. I was feeling just as I should be feeling; wondering, indeed, if my last moment had not come, but I found guidance in the old adage: "when you don't know a thing to do, don't do a thing." For a minute or two the Grizzly glared, and I remained still; then calmly ignoring me he set about his feast. All of this I tell in detail in my story. But there was one thing I did not dare to do then; that was show the snaps I made. Surely it would be a wonderful evidence of my courage and coolness if I could show a photograph of that big Grizzly when he was coming on--maybe to kill me--I did not know, but I had a dim vision of my sorrowing relatives developing the plate to see how it happened, for I pressed the button at the right time. The picture, such as it is, I give as Plate XL, c. I was so calm and cool and collected that I quite forgot to focus the camera. LONESOME JOHNNY [Illustration] During all this time Johnny had been bemoaning his sad lot, at the top of the tree; there I left him, still lamenting. That was the last I ever saw of him. In my story of Johnny Bear, I relate many other adventures that were ascribed to him, but these were told me by the men who lived in the Park, and knew the lame cub much better than I did. My own acquaintance with him was all within the compass of the one day I spent in the garbage-pile. It is worthy of note that although Johnny died that autumn, they have had him every year ever since; and some years they have had two for the satisfaction of visitors who have read up properly before coming to the Park. Indeed, when I went back to the Fountain Hotel fifteen years afterward, a little Bear came and whined under my window about dawn, and the hotel folk assured me it was Little Johnny calling on his creator. FURTHER ANNALS OF THE SANCTUARY All of this was fifteen years ago. Since then there have been some interesting changes, but they are in the line of growth. Thirteen Bears in view at one time was my highest record, and that after sundown; but I am told that as many as twenty or twenty-five Bears are now to be seen there at once in June and July, when the wildwood foods are scarce. Most of them are Blackbears, but there are always a few Grizzlies about. [Illustration: XLIII. The shyer ones take to a tree, if one comes too near _Photo by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XLIV. Clifford B. Harmon feeding a Bear _Photo by E. T. Seton_] In view of their reputation, their numbers and the gradual removal of the restraining fear of men, one wonders whether these creatures are not a serious menace to the human dwellers of the Park. The fundamental peacefulness of the unhungry animal world is wonderfully brought out by the groups of huge shaggy monsters about the hotels. At one time, and for long it was said, and truthfully, that the Bears in the Park had never abused the confidence man had placed in them. But one or two encounters have taken place to prove the exception. An enthusiastic camera-hunter, after hearing of my experiences at the garbage pile, went there some years later, duly equipped to profit by the opportunity. [Illustration] A large she Bear, with a couple of cubs appeared, but they hovered at a distance and did not give the artist a fair chance. He waited a long time, then seeing that they would not come to him, he decided to go to them. Quitting that sheltering hole, he sneaked along; crouching low and holding the camera ready, he rapidly approached the family group. When the young ones saw this strange two-legged beast coming threateningly near them, they took alarm and ran whining to their mother. All her maternal wrath was aroused to see this smallish, two-legged, one-eyed creature, evidently chasing her cubs to harm them. A less combination than that would have made her take the war-path, and now she charged. She struck him but once; that was enough. His camera was wrecked, and for two weeks afterward he was in the hospital, nursing three broken ribs, as well as a body suffering from shock. There was another, an old Grizzly that became a nuisance about the hotels, as he did not hesitate to walk into the kitchens and help himself to food. Around the tents of campers he became a terror, as he soon realized that these folk carried food, and white canvas walls rising in the woods were merely invitations to a dinner ready and waiting. It is not recorded that he hurt any one in his numerous raids for food. But he stampeded horses and broke the camp equipments, as well as pillaged many larders. [Illustration] One of my guides described a lively scene in which the Bear, in spite of blazing brands, ran into the cook's quarters and secured a ham. The cook pursued with a stick of firewood. At each whack the Bear let off a "whoof" but he did not drop the ham, and the party had to return to Fort Yellowstone for supplies. Incidents of this kind multiplied, and finally Buffalo Jones, who was then the Chief Scout of the Park, was permitted to punish the old sinner. Mounted on his trained saddle-horse, swinging the lasso that has caught so many different kinds of beasts in so many different lands, the Colonel gave chase. Old Grizzly dodged among the pines for a while, but the pony was good to follow; and when the culprit took to open ground, the unerring lasso whistled in the air and seized him by the hind paw. It takes a good rope to stand the jerk of half a ton of savage muscle, but the rope was strong; it stood, and there was some pretty manoeuvring, after which the lasso was found over a high branch, with a couple of horses on the "Jones end" and they hauled the Bear aloft where, through the medium of a stout club, he received a drubbing that has become famous in the moving-picture world. [Illustration] Another of these big, spoiled babies was sent to Washington Zoo, where he is now doing duty as an exhibition Grizzly. The comedy element is far from lacking in this life; in fact, it is probably the dominant one. But the most grotesque story of all was told me by a friend who chummed with the Bears about ten years ago. One day, it seems, a Blackbear more tame than usual went right into the bar-room of one of the hotels. The timid floating population moved out; the bar-keep was cornered, but somewhat protected by his bar; and when the Bear reared up with both paws on the mahogany, the wily "dispenser" pushed a glass of beer across, saying nervously, "Is that what you are after?" The Bear liked the smell of the offering, and, stooping down, lapped up the whole glassful, and what was spilt he carefully licked up afterward, to the unmeasured joy of the loafers who peeped in at doors and windows, and jeered at the bar-keep and his new customer. "Say, bar-keep, who's to pay?" "Don't you draw any color line?" "If I come in a fur coat, will you treat me?" "No! you got to scare him to drink free," etc., etc., were examples of their remarks. Whatever that Bear came for, she seemed satisfied with what she got, for she went off peaceably to the woods, and was seen later lying asleep under a tree. Next day, however, she was back again. The scene in the bar-room was repeated with less intensity. [Illustration] On the third and fourth days she came as before, but on the fifth day she seemed to want something else. Prompted by a kindred feeling, one of the loafers suggested that "She wants another round." His guess was right, and having got it, that abandoned old Bear began to reel, but she was quite good-natured about it, and at length lay down under a table, where her loud snores proclaimed to all that she was asleep--beastly drunk, and asleep--just like one of the lords of creation. From that time on she became a habitual frequenter of the bar-room. Her potations were increased each month. There was a time when one glass of beer made her happy, but now it takes three or four, and sometimes even a little drop of something stronger. But whatever it is, it has the desired effect, and "Swizzling Jinnie" lurches over to the table, under which she sprawls at length, and tuning up her nasophone she sleeps aloud, and unpeacefully, demonstrating to all the world that after all a "Bear is jest a kind o' a man in a fur coat." Who can doubt it that reads this tale, for it is true; at least it was told me for the truth, by no less an authority than one of Jennie's intimate associates at the bar-room. THE GRIZZLY AND THE CAN When one remembers the Grizzly Bear as the monarch of the mountains, the king of the plains, and the one of matchless might and unquestioned sway among the wild things of the West, it gives one a shock to think of him being conquered and cowed by a little tin can. Yet he was, and this is how it came about. A grand old Grizzly, that was among the summer retinue of a Park hotel, was working with two claws to get out the very last morsel of some exceptionally delicious canned stuff. The can was extra strong, its ragged edges were turned in, and presently both toes of the Bear were wedged firmly in the clutch of that impossible, horrid little tin trap. The monster shook his paw, and battered the enemy, but it was as sharp within as it was smooth without, and it gripped his paw with the fell clutch of a disease. His toes began to swell with all this effort and violence, till they filled the inner space completely. The trouble was made worse and the paw became painfully inflamed. All day long that old Grizzly was heard clumping around with that dreadful little tin pot wedged on his foot. Sometimes there was a loud succession of _clamp, clamp, clamp's_ which told that the enraged monarch with canned toes was venting his rage on some of the neighbouring Blackbears. The next day and the next that shiny tin maintained its frightful grip on the Grizzly, who, limping noisily around, was known and recognized as "Can-foot." His comings and goings to and from the garbage heap, by day and by night, were plainly announced to all by the clamp, clamp, clamp of that maddening, galling tin. Some weeks went by and still the implacable meat box held on. The officer in charge of the Park came riding by one day; he heard the strange tale of trouble, and saw with his own eyes the limping Grizzly, with his muzzled foot. At a wave of his hand two of the trusty scouts of the Park patrol set out with their ponies and whistling lassoes on the strangest errand that they, or any of their kind, had ever known. In a few minutes those wonderful raw-hide ropes had seized him and the monarch of the mountains was a prisoner bound. Strong shears were at hand. That vicious little can was ripped open. It was completely filled now with the swollen toes. The surgeon dressed the wounds, and the Grizzly was set free. His first blind animal impulse was to attack his seeming tormenters, but they were wise and the ponies were bear-broken; they easily avoided the charge, and he hastened to the woods to recover, finally, both his health and his good temper, and continue about the Park, the only full-grown Grizzly Bear, probably, that man ever captured to help in time of trouble, and then set loose again to live his life in peace. [Illustration] [Illustration: XLV. The Bears at feeding time _Photos by F. Jay Haynes_] [Illustration: XLVI. (a) Tom Newcomb pointing out the bear's mark. _Photo by E. T. Seton_ (b) E. T. Seton feeding a Bear. _Photo by C. B. Harmon_] * * * * * Appendix Mammals of the Yellowstone Park * * * * * Appendix Mammals of the Yellowstone Park A LIST OF THE SPECIES FOUND IN THE PARK IN 1912 BY ERNEST THOMPSON SETON _With assistance from the U. S. Biological Survey, and Colonel L. M. Brett, in charge of the Park._ Elk or Wapiti (_Cervus canadensis_) Abundant. By actual official count, and estimate of stray bands, they number at least 35,000, of which about 5,000 winter in the Park. Mule Deer or Rocky Mt. Blacktail (_Odocoileus heminus_) Common. The official census gives their number at 400, of which at least 100 winter about Fort Yellowstone. Whitetail Deer (_Odocoileus virginianus macrourus_) A few found about Gardiner, on Willow Creek, on Indian Creek, at Crevasse Mt. and in Cottonwood Basin. The official census gives their number at 100. Moose (_Alces americanus_) Formerly rare, now abundant in all the southerly third of the Park. In 1897 they were estimated at 50. The official census gives their number at 550 in 1912. Antelope or Pronghorn (_Antilocapra americana_) Formerly abundant, now rare; found only in broad open places such as Lamar Valley, etc. Their numbers have shrunk from many thousands in the '70's to about 1,500 in 1897, and 500 in 1912. Mountain Sheep or Bighorn (_Ovis canadensis_) Formerly rare, now common about Mt. Evarts, Mt. Washburn and the western boundary. In 1897 there were about 100, perhaps only 75; in 1912 they are reported numbering 210 by actual count. American Buffalo or Bison (_Bison bison_) Steadily increasing. In 1897 there were about 30; they now number 199 by actual count. These are in two herds, of 49 wild, and 150 in the fenced corrals. Richardson Red-squirrel (_Sciurus hudsonicus richardsoni_) Abundant in all pine woods. Northern Chipmunk (_Eutamias quadrivittatus luteiventris_) Extremely abundant everywhere. Least Chipmunk (_Eutamias minimus pictus_) Common about Mammoth Hot Springs. Golden Ground-squirrel (_Citellus lateralis cinerascens_) Common. Picket-pin Ground-squirrel (_Citellus armatus_) Abundant on all level prairies. Prairie-dog (_Cynomys ludovicianus_) Gen. Geo. S. Anderson told me long ago that the Prairie-dogs, so abundant on the Lower Yellowstone, were sometimes seen as far up as the Park at Gardiner. [Illustration: XLVII. Johnnie Bear: his sins and his troubles _Sketches by E. T. Seton_] [Illustration: XLVIII. Johnnie happy at last _Photo by Miss L. Griscom_] Yellow Woodchuck, Rock Chuck or Marmot (_Marmota flaviventer_) Abundant on all mountains. Rocky Mt. Flying Squirrel (_Sciuropterus alpinus_) Said to be found. I did not see one. Beaver (_Castor canadensis_) Abundant and increasing. Grasshopper Mouse (_Onychomys leucogaster_) I found a typical colony of this species on the Yellowstone near Yancey's but did not secure any. Mountain Deer-mouse (_Peromyscus maniculatus artemisiae_) Abundant everywhere. Mountain Rat, Pack-rat or Wood-rat (_Neotoma cinerea_) Said to be found, but I saw none. Redbacked Vole or Field-mouse (_Evotomys gapperi galei_) Not taken yet in the Park but found in all the surrounding country, therefore, probable. Common Field-mouse (_Microtus pennsylvannicus modestus_) Recorded by Vernon Bailey from Lower Geyser Basin in the Park. Long-tailed Vole (_Microtus mordax_) Vernon Bailey records this from various surrounding localities, also from Tower Falls. Doubtless it is generally distributed. This is the bobtailed, short-eared, dark gray mouse that is found making runs in the thick grass, especially in low places. Big-footed Vole (_Microtus richardsoni macropus_) Not yet taken in the Park, but found in surrounding mountains, therefore probable. Muskrat (_Fiber zibethicus osoyoosensis_) Common and of general distribution. Mole-gopher or Gray Gopher (_Thomomys talpoides_) A Gopher of some kind abounds in the Park. I assume it to be this. Rocky Mt. Jumping Mouse (_Zapus princeps_) Found in all the surrounding country, and recorded by E. A. Preble from near Yellowstone Lake. Yellow-haired Porcupine (_Erethizon epixanthus_) Somewhat common in the pine woods on the Continental Divide. Coney, Rock Rabbit, Pika, or Calling Hare (_Ochotona princeps_) Abundant in all slide rock. Rocky Mt. Cottontail (_Sylvilagus nuttalli grangeri_) Plentiful about Gardiner and in some of the lower regions of the Park, but not general. Snowshoe Rabbit (_Lepus bairdi_) Common and generally distributed. White-tailed Jack Rabbit (_Lepus campestris_) Common and generally distributed. Mountain Lion, Cougar or Puma (_Felis hippolestes_) In 1897 it was considered extremely rare; probably not more than a dozen were then living in the Park; since then it seems to have increased greatly and is now somewhat common in the mountainous parts. Their numbers are given officially at 100 in 1912. Canada Lynx (_Lynx canadensis_) Common. Bobcat or Mountain-cat (_Lynx uinta_) Somewhat common. The Big-tailed Fox (_Vulpes macrourus_) Common. Timber Wolf (_Canis occidentalis_) Very rare, noticed only at Hell Roaring Creek and Slough Creek. On August 25, 1912, Lieut. M. Murray saw two in a meadow two miles southeast of Snow Shoe Cabin on Slough Creek. They were plainly seen in broad daylight; and were nearly white. Coyote (_Canis latrans_) Abundant everywhere, although officially reckoned they numbered only 400 in 1912. Otter (_Lutra canadensis_) Common, particularly around the Lake and the Canyon. Mink (_Lutreola vison energumenos_) Common. Long-tailed Weasel (_Putorius longicauda_) Said to be found. I did not see any. Short-tailed Weasel (_Putorius cicognanii_) Included because its range includes the Park. Marten (_Mustela caurina_) Found throughout the Park, but not common. Pekan or Fisher (_Mustela pennanti_) Rare. Gen. G. S. Anderson tells me that in the early '90's he took the skin of one from a poacher. Wolverine (_Gulo luscus_) Of general distribution, but not common. Northern Skunk (_Mephitis hudsonica_) Rare, but found at Mammoth Hot Springs and Yancey's. Badger (_Taxidea taxus_) Common. Raccoon or Coon (_Procyon lotor_) Said to occur. Fifteen years ago at Gardiner I was shown one that was said to have been taken in the Park, but it was not certain. Grizzly Bear (_Ursus horribilis_) Common. The official count gives 50 in 1912. Blackbear (_Ursus americanus_) Abundant and increasing. The official count gives 100 in 1912. Common or Masked Shrew (_Sorex personatus_) Never taken, but included because its known range surrounds the Park. Marsh Shrew or Water Shrew (_Neosorex palustris_) Probably occurs there, since its known range surrounds the Park. Long-eared Bat (_Corynorhinus macrotis pallescens_) A few were seen in the Devil's Kitchen, Mammoth Hot Springs, and one sent to the Biological Survey for identification. This is the only Bat taken, but the following are likely to be found, as their known range surrounds the Park: Little Brown Bat (_Myotis lucifugus_) Silver-haired Bat (_Lasionycteris noctivagans_) Big Brown Bat (_Eptesicus fuscus_) Great Hoary Bat (_Nycteris cinereus_) * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Bold text is indicated by equal symbols: =text=. Italic text is indicated by underscores: _text_. Moved some illustrations from their original positions to avoid breaking up paragraphs of text. The List of Half-tone Plates displays the original page numbers. Some apparently missing plates may have been edited out of the original version. Corrected minor punctuation errors. Page 61: Clomb could be a typo for climb: (rush as they might and did, and bounded and clomb,) Page 123: Changed pased to passed: (men had passed near) Page 155: Changed Bitteroot to Bitterroot: (This took place in the Bitterroot Mountains) Page 157: Added missing exclamation point: (I heard the dreaded cry, "Yellow-Jackets!") Page 165: Changed conspicious to conspicuous: (might otherwise make it too conspicuous.) Page 176: Changed inclinded to inclined: (travellers will be inclined to bunch them) Page 196: Changed go to to: (We went quietly to the edge of the timber) Page 210: Plate XL was not included in the original book. (The picture, such as it is, I give as Plate XL, c.) Page 213: Manoeuvring had an oe ligature in the original book: (it stood, and there was some pretty manoeuvring,) 
44422	----	[Illustration: KING PENGUINS.] ECCENTRICITIES OF THE ANIMAL CREATION. BY JOHN TIMBS. AUTHOR OF "THINGS NOT GENERALLY KNOWN." WITH EIGHT ENGRAVINGS. SEELEY, JACKSON, AND HALLIDAY, 54, FLEET-STREET. LONDON. MDCCCLXIX. _The right of translation is reserved._ CONTENTS. INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. Natural History in Scripture, and Egyptian Records, 11.--Origin of Zoological Gardens, 12.--The Greeks and Romans, 12.--Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, 13.--Menagerie in the Tower of London, 14.--Menagerie in St. James's Park, 14.--John Evelyn's Notes, 15.--Ornithological Society, 15.--Continental Gardens, 16.--Zoological Society of London instituted, 16; its most remarkable Animals, 16.--Cost of Wild Animals, 18.--Sale of Animals, 20.--Surrey Zoological Gardens, 20.--Wild-beast Shows, 21. THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND. Ancient History, 22, 23.--One-horned and Two-horned, 25, 26.--Tractability, 25.--Bruce and Sparmann, 27.--African Rhinoceros in 1868, 27.--Description of, 29.--Burchell's Rhinoceros, 30.--Horn of the Rhinoceros, 31, 32. STORIES OF MERMAIDS. Sirens of the Ancients, 33.--Classic Pictures of Mermaids, 34.--Leyden's Ballad, 35.--Ancient Evidence, 36, 37, 38.--Mermaid in the West Indies, 39.--Mermaids, Seals, and Dugongs, 41.--Mermaids and Manatee, 42.--Test for a Mermaid, 43.--Mermaid of 1822, 43.--Japanese Mermaids, 44.--Recent Evidence, 47, 48. IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS? Ctesias and Wild Asses, 65.--Aristotle, Herodotus, and Pliny, 50.--Modern Unicorns, 50.--Ancient Evidence, 51.--Hunting the Unicorn, 52.--Antelopes, 53, 54.--Cuvier and the Oryx, 54.--Tibetan Animal, 55.--Klaproth's Evidence, 55.--Rev. John Campbell's Evidence, 57.--Baikie on, 58.--Factitious Horns in Museums, 59.--Unicorn in the Royal Arms, 60.--Catching the Unicorn, 60.--Belief in Unicorns, 61. THE MOLE AT HOME. Economy of the Mole, 62.--Its Structure, 63.--Fairy Rings; Feeling of the Mole, 64.--Le Court's Experiments, 62, 65.--Hunting-grounds, 67.--Loves of the Moles, 68, 69.--Persecution of Moles.--Shrew Mole, 70.--Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, on Moles, 71. THE GREAT ANT-BEAR. The Ant-Bear of 1853, 72, 73.--Mr. Wallace, on the Amazon, describes the Ant-Bear, 73.--Food of the Ant-Bear, 74.--His Resorts, 75.--Habits in Captivity, by Professor Owen, 76-80.--Fossil Ant-Bear, 80, 81.--Tamandua Ant-Bear, 82--Von Sack's Ant-Bear, 83.--Porcupine Ant-Eater, 84.--Ant-Bears in the Zoological Gardens, 84. CURIOSITIES OF BATS. Virgil's Harpies, 85.--Pliny on the Bat, 85.--Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, 86.--Bats, not Birds but Quadrupeds, 87.--Sir Charles Bell on the Wing of the Bat, 87.--Vampire Bat from Sumatra, 88.--Lord Byron and Vampire, 89.--Levant Superstition, 89.--Bat described by Heber, Waterton, and Steadman, 90.--Lesson on Bats, 91.--Bat Fowling or Folding, 91, 92.--Sowerby's Long-eared Bat, 92, 96.--Wing of the Bat, 96.--_Nycteris_ Bat, 97.--_Kalong_ Bat of Java, 98.--Bats, various, 100, 101. THE HEDGEHOG. Hedgehog Described, 102.--Habits, 103.--Eating Snakes, 105.--Poisons, 105, 106.--Battle with a Viper, 105.--Economy of the Hedgehog, 106, 107. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND. Living Hippopotamus brought to England in 1850, 108.--Capture and Conveyance, 111.--Professor Owen's Account, 111-115.--Described by Naturalists and Travellers, 115-118.--Utility to Man, 118-119.--Ancient History, 119.--In Scripture, 120.--Alleged Disappearance, 121.--Fossil, 122. LION-TALK. Character, 123.--Reputed Generosity, 125.--Burchell's Account, 125.--Lion-Tree in the Mantatee Country, 127.--Lion-hunting, 128.--Disappearance of Lions, 130, 131.--Human Prey, 132.--Maneless Lions of Guzerat, 134.--A Lion Family in Bengal, 135, 136.--Prickle on the Lion's Tail, 137-139.--Nineveh Lions, 139.--Lions in the Tower of London, 140, 141.--Feats with Lions, 142.--Lion-hunting in Algeria, by Jules Gerard, 144.--The Prudhoe Lions, 144. BIRD-LIFE. Rate at which Birds fly, 145, 146.--Air in the Bones of Birds, 146.--Flight of the Humming-bird, 147.--Colour of Birds, 148.--Song of Birds, 149.--Beauty in Animals, 150.--Insectivorous Birds, 151.--Sea-fowl Slaughter, 152.--Hooded Crow in Zetland, 154.--Brain of Birds, 154.--Danger-signals, 155.--Addison's Love of Nature, 156, 157. BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS. Colours of Eggs, 158.--Bird's-nesting, 159.--Mr. Wolley, the Ornithologist, 159, 160.--European Birds of Prey, 161.--Large Eggs, 162, 163, 164.--Baya's Nest, 164.--Oriole and Tailor-bird, 165, 166.--Australian Bower-bird, 167.--Cape Swallows, 168.--"Bird Confinement," by Dr. Livingstone. THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN. Origin of the Ortolan, 172; described, 173, 174; Fattening process, 175, 176.--Prodigal Epicurism, 177, 178. TALK ABOUT TOUCANS. Toucan family, 179.--Gould's grand Monograph, 180.--Toucans described, 180-182; Food, 183; Habits, 184.--Gould's Toucanet, 187. ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS. Penguins on Dassent Island, 188.--Patagonian Penguins, 189.--Falkland Islands, 189.--King Penguins, 190, 191.--Darwin's Account, 192.--Webster's Account, 193.--Swainson's Account, 194. PELICANS AND CORMORANTS. Pelicans described by various Naturalists, 195, 196.--The Pelican Island, 197.--Popular Error, 199-200.--Cormorants, and Fishing with Cormorants, 201-204. TALKING BIRDS, INSTINCTS, ETC. Sounds by various Birds, 204.--Umbrella Bird, 206.--Bittern, 207.--Butcher-bird and Parrots, 208.--Wild Swan, Laughing Goose, Cuckoo, and Nightingale, 209.--Talking Canaries, 210.--Neighing Snipe, 213.--Trochilos and Crocodiles, 216.--Instinct. Intelligence, and Reason in Birds, 217-219.--Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219. OWLS. Characteristics of the Owl, 221.--Owl in Poetry, 222.--Bischacho or Coquimbo, 224.--Waterton on Owls, 225, 226.--Owls. Varieties of, 227-230. WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS. Atmospheric Changes, 231.--Stormy Petrel, 233.--Wild Geese and Ducks, 235.--Frogs and Snails, 237.--The Mole, 240.--List of Animals, by Forster, the Meteorologist, 241.--Weatherproof Nests, 247.--"Signs of Rain," by Darwin, 248.--Shepherd of Banbury, 249. FISH-TALK. How Fishes Swim, 250.--Fish Changing Colour, 251.--"Fish Noise," 252.--Hearing of Fish, 253.--The Carp at Fontainebleau, 254, 255.--Affection of Fishes, 256.--Cat-fish, Anecdote of, 257.--Great Number of Fishes, 258.--Little Fishes Eaten by Medusæ, 259.--Migration of Fishes, 261.--Enormous Grampus, 262.--Bonita and Flying-fish, 263.--Jaculator Fish of Java, 264.--Port Royal, Jamaica Fish, 266.--The Shark, 267.--California. Fish of, 268.--Wonderful Fish, 269.--Vast Sun-fish, 271.--Double Fish, 272.--The Square-browed Malthe, 274.--Gold Fish, 275.--The Miller's Thumb, 276.--Sea-fish Observatory, 276.--Herring Question, 278.--Aristotle's History of Animals, 279-280. FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA. Salmon-swarming, 281.--Candle-fish, 282.--Octopus, the, 283.--Sturgeon and Sturgeon Fishing, 283-287. THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB. Locomotion of Fishes, 288.--Climbing Perch, 288.--Crabs in the West Indies, 289.--Crabs, Varieties of, 289-292.--Robber and Cocoa-nut Crab, 292-301.--Fish of the China Seas, 301. MUSICAL LIZARDS. Lizard from Formosa Isle, 303.--Its Habits, 304-306. CHAMELEONS AND THEIR CHANGES. The Chameleon described by Aristotle and Calmet, 307, 308.--Change of Colour, 309.--Reproduction of, 310, 311.--Tongue, 311.--Lives in Trees, 312.--Theory of Colours, 313.--The Puzzle Solved, 315.--Mrs. Belzoni's Chameleons, 317.--Lady Cust's Chameleons, 321.--Chameleon's Antipathy to Black, 322. RUNNING TOADS. Dr. Husenbeth's Toads at Cossey, 327.--Frog and Toad Concerts, 327. SONG OF THE CICADA. Greeks' Love for the Song, 329.--Cicada in British Colombia, 329.--Tennyson and Keats on the Grasshopper, 330. STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE. Baptista Porta's Account, 331.--Max Müller on, 331.--Gerarde's Account, 332.--Giraldus Cambrensis, 332.--Professor Rolleston. Drayton's _Poly-olbion_, 333.--Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir J. Emerson Tennent, 334.--Finding the Barnacle, 334. LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS. Bookworms, their Destructiveness, 336, 337.--How to Destroy, 338.--The Death-watch, 339.--Lines by Swift, 340. BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS. Life and Labours of the Pholas, 341.--Family of the Pholas, 342.--Curious Controversy, 343.--Boring Apparatus, 342.--Several Observers, 347, 348.--Boring Annelids, 348. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Page KING PENGUINS Frontispiece THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS 28 SEAL AND MERMAID 40 THE GREAT ANT-BEAR (ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY'S) 76 FRASER'S EAGLE OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO 228 SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH 274 THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB 288 CHAMELEONS 318 ECCENTRICITIES OF THE ANIMAL CREATION. INTRODUCTORY.--CURIOSITIES OF ZOOLOGY. Curious creatures of Animal Life have been objects of interest to mankind in all ages and countries; the universality of which may be traced to that feeling which "makes the whole world kin." It has been remarked with emphatic truth by a popular writer, that "we have in the Bible and in the engraven and pictorial records the earliest evidence of the attention paid to Natural History in general. The 'navy of Tarshish' contributed to the wisdom of him who not only 'spake of the trees from the cedar of Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall,' but 'also of beasts, and of fowls, and of creeping things, and of fishes,'[1] to say nothing of numerous other passages showing the progress that zoological knowledge had already made. The Egyptian records bear testimony to a familiarity not only with the forms of a multitude of wild animals, but with their habits and geographical distribution." The collections of living animals, now popularly known as Zoological Gardens, are of considerable antiquity. We read of such gardens in China as far back as 2,000 years; but they consisted chiefly of some favourite animals, such as stags, fish, and tortoises. The Greeks, under Pericles, introduced peacocks in large numbers from India. The Romans had their elephants; and the first giraffe in Rome, under Cæsar, was as great an event in the history of zoological gardens at its time as the arrival in 1849 of the Hippopotamus was in London. The first zoological garden of which we have any detailed account is that in the reign of the Chinese Emperor, Wen Wang, founded by him about 1150 A.D., and named by him "The Park of Intelligence;" it contained mammalia, birds, fish, and amphibia. The zoological gardens of former times served their masters occasionally as hunting-grounds. This was constantly the case in Persia; and in Germany, so late as 1576, the Emperor Maximilian II. kept such a park for different animals near his castle, Neugebah, in which he frequently chased. Alexander the Great possessed his zoological gardens. We find from Pliny that Alexander had given orders to the keepers to send all the rare and curious animals which died in the gardens to Aristotle. Splendid must have been the zoological gardens which the Spaniards found connected with the Palace of Montezuma. The letters of Ferdinand Cortez and other writings of the time, as well as more recently "The History of the Indians," by Antonio Herrera, give most interesting and detailed accounts of the menagerie in Montezuma's park. The buildings belonging to these gardens were all gorgeous, as became the grandeur of the Indian prince; they were supported by pillars, each of which was hewn out of a single piece of some precious stone. Cool, arched galleries led into the different parts of the garden--to the marine and fresh-water basins, containing innumerable water-fowl,--to the birds of prey, falcons and eagles, which latter especially were represented in the greatest variety,--to the crocodiles, alligators, and serpents, some of them belonging to the most venomous species. The halls of a large square building contained the dens of the lions, tigers, leopards, bears, wolves, and other wild animals. Three hundred slaves were employed in the gardens tending the animals, upon which great care was bestowed, and scrupulous attention paid to their cleanliness. To this South American zoological garden of the sixteenth century no other of its time could be compared.[2] More than six centuries ago, our Plantagenet kings kept in the Tower of London exotic animals for their recreation. The Lion Tower was built here by Henry III., who commenced assembling here a menagerie with three leopards sent to him by the Emperor Frederic II., "in token of his regal shield of arms, wherein those leopards were pictured." Here, in 1255, the Sheriffs built a house "for the King's elephant," brought from France, and the first seen in England. Our early sovereigns had a mews in the Tower as well as a menagerie:-- "Merry Margaret, as Midsomer flowre, Gentyll as faucon and hawke of the Towre."--_Skelton._ In the reign of Charles I., a sort of Royal Menagerie took the place of the deer with which St. James's Park was stocked in the days of Henry VIII, and Queen Elizabeth. Charles II. greatly enlarged and improved the Park; and here he might be seen playing with his dogs and feeding his ducks. The Bird-cage Walk, on the south side of the Park, had in Charles's time the cages of an aviary disposed among the trees. Near the east end of a canal was the Decoy, where water-fowl were kept; and here was Duck Island, with its salaried Governor. Evelyn, in 1664, went to "the Physique Garden in St. James's," where he first saw "orange trees and other fine trees." He enumerates in the menagerie, "an ornocratylus, or pelican; a fowle between a storke and a swan; a melancholy water-fowl, brought from Astracan by the Russian ambassador; a milk-white raven; two Balearian cranes," one of which, had a wooden leg "made by a soulder:" there were also "deere of severall countries, white, spotted like leopards; antelopes, an elk, red deer, roebucks, staggs, Guinea goates, Arabian sheepe, &c." There were "withy-potts, or nests, for the wild fowle to lay their eggs in, a little above y^e surface of y^e water." "25 Feb. 1664. This night I walk'd into St. James his Parke, where I saw many strange creatures, as divers sorts of outlandish deer, Guiny sheep, a white raven, a great parrot, a storke.... Here are very stately walkes set with lime trees on both sides, and a fine pallmall."[3] Upon the eastern island is the Swiss Cottage of the Ornithological Society, built in 1841 with a grant of 300l. from the Lords of the Treasury: it contains a council-room, keepers' apartments, steam-hatching apparatus; contiguous are feeding-places and decoys; and the aquatic fowl breed on the island, making their own nests among the shrubs and grasses. The majority of Zoological Gardens now in existence have been founded in this century, with the exception of the Jardin des Plantes, which, although founded in 1626, did not receive its first living animals until the year 1793-1794. Hitherto, it had been a Garden of Plants exclusively. We shall not be expected to enumerate the great Continental gardens, of which that at Berlin, half an hour's drive beyond the Brandenburg gates, contains the Royal Menagerie; it is open upon the payment of an admission fee, and generally resembles our garden at the Regent's Park. Berlin has also its Zoological Collection in its Museum of Natural History. This collection is one of the richest and most extensive in Europe, especially in the department of Ornithology: it includes the birds collected by Pallas and Wildenow, and the fishes of Bloch. The best specimens are those from Mexico, the Red Sea, and the Cape. The whole is exceedingly well arranged, and _named_ for the convenience of students. Still, our Zoological Collection in the British Museum (to be hereafter removed to South Kensington) is allowed to be the finest in Europe. The Zoological Society of London was instituted in 1826, and occupies now about seventeen acres of gardens in the Regent's Park. Among the earliest tenants of the Menagerie were a pair of emues from New Holland; two Arctic bears and a Russian bear; a herd of kangaroos; Cuban mastiffs and Thibet watch-dogs; two llamas from Peru; a splendid collection of eagles, falcons, and owls; a pair of beavers; cranes, spoonbills, and storks; zebras and Indian cows; Esquimaux dogs; armadilloes; and a collection of monkeys. To the menagerie have since been added an immense number of species of _Mammalia_ and _Birds_; in 1849, a collection of _Reptiles_; and in 1853, a collection of _Fish_, _Mollusca_, _Zoophytes_, and other _Aquatic Animals_. In 1830, the menagerie collected by George IV. at Sandpit-gate, Windsor, was removed to the Society's Gardens; and 1834 the last of the Tower Menagerie was received here. It is now the finest public Vivarium in Europe. The following are some of the more remarkable animals which the Society have possessed, or are now in the menagerie:-- _Antelopes_, the great family of, finely represented. The beautiful _Elands_ were bequeathed by the late Earl of Derby, and have bred freely since their arrival in 1851. The Leucoryx is the first of her race born out of Africa. _Ant-eater. Giant_, brought to England from Brazil in 1853, was exhibited in Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for 200l. _Apteryx_, or _Kiwi_ bird, from New Zealand; the first living specimen brought to England of this rare bird. The _Fish-house_, built of iron and glass, in 1853, consisting of a series of glass tanks, in which fish spawn, zoophytes produce young, and algæ luxuriate; crustacea and mollusca live successfully, and ascidian polypes are illustrated, together with sea anemones, jelly-fishes, and star-fishes, rare shell-fishes, &c.: a new world of animal life is here seen as in the depths of the ocean, with masses of rock, sand, gravel, corallines, sea-weed, and sea-water; the animals are in a state of natural restlessness, now quiescent, now eating and being eaten. _Aurochs_, or _European Bisons_: a pair presented by the Emperor of Russia, in 1847, from the forest of Bialowitzca: the male died in 1848, the female in 1849, from pleuro-pneumonia. _Bears_: the collection is one of the largest ever made. _Elephants_: including an Indian elephant calf and its mother. In 1847 died here the great Indian elephant Jack, having been in the gardens sixteen years. Adjoining the stable is a tank of water, of a depth nearly equal to the height of a full-grown elephant. In 1851 the Society possessed a _herd of four elephants_, besides a hippopotamus, a rhinoceros, and both species of tapir; being the largest collection of pachydermata ever exhibited in Europe. _Giraffes_: four received in 1836 cost the Society upwards of 2,300_l._, including 1,000_l._ for steamboat passage: the female produced six male fawns here between 1840 and 1851. _Hippopotamus_, a young male (the first living specimen seen in England), received from Egypt in May, 1850, when ten months old, seven feet long, and six and a-half feet in girth; also a female hippopotamus, received 1854. _Humming-birds_: Mr. Gould's matchless collection of 2,000 examples was exhibited here in 1851 and 1852. _Iguanas_, two from Cuba and Carthagena, closely resembling, in everything but size, the fossil Iguanodon. The _Lions_ number generally from eight to ten, including a pair of cubs born in the gardens in 1853. _Orang-utan_ and _Chimpanzee_: the purchase-money of the latter sometimes exceeds 300_l._ The orang "Darby," brought from Borneo in 1851, is the finest yet seen in Europe, very intelligent, and docile as a child. _Parrot-houses_: they sometimes contain from sixty to seventy species. _Rapacious Birds_: so extensive a series of eagles and vultures has never yet been seen at one view. _The Reptile-house_ was fitted up in 1849; the creatures are placed in large plate-glass cases: here are pythons and a rattle-snake, with a young one born here; here is also a case of the tree-frogs of Europe: a yellow snake from Jamaica has produced eight young in the gardens. _Cobra de Capello_, from India: in 1852, a keeper in the gardens was killed by the bite of this serpent. _A large Boa_ in 1850 swallowed a blanket, and disgorged it in thirty-three days. A _one-horned Rhinoceros_, of continental India, was obtained in 1834, when it was about four years old, and weighed 26 cwt.; it died in 1850: it was replaced by a female, about five years old. _Satin Bower-Birds_, from Sydney: a pair have built here a bower, or breeding-place. _Tapir_ of the Old World, from Mount Ophir; the nearest existing form the Paleotherium. _Tigers_: a pair of magnificent specimens, presented by the Guicoway of Baroda in 1851; a pair of clouded tigers, 1854. _The Wapiti Deer_ breeds every year in the Menagerie. The animals in the Gardens, although reduced in number, are more valuable and interesting than when their number was higher. The mission of the Society's head-keeper, to collect rare animals for the Menagerie, has been very profitable. The additional houses from time to time, are very expensive: the new monkey house, fittings, and work cost 4,842_l._; and in 1864, the sum of 6,604_l._ was laid out in permanent additions to the establishment. Very rare, and consequently expensive, animals are generally purchased. Thus, the first Rhinoceros cost 1,000_l._; the four Giraffes, 700_l._, and their carriage an additional 700_l._ The Elephant and calf were bought in 1851 for 500_l._; and the Hippopotamus, although a gift, was not brought home and housed at less than 1,000_l._--a sum which he more than realised in the famous Exhibition season, when the receipts were 10,000_l._ above the previous year. The Lion Albert was purchased for 140_l._; a tiger, in 1852, for 200_l._ The value of some of the smaller birds will appear, however, more startling: thus, the pair of black-necked Swans were purchased for 80_l._; a pair of crowned Pigeons and two Maleos, 60_l._; a pair of Victoria Pigeons, 35_l._; four Mandarin Ducks, 70_l._ Most of these rare birds (now in the great aviary) came from the Knowsley collection, at the sale of which, in 1851, purchases were made to the extent of 985_l._ It would be impossible from these prices, however, to judge of the present value of the animals. Take the Rhinoceros, for example: the first specimen cost 1,000_l._; the second, quite as fine a brute, only 350_l._ Lions range again from 40_l._ to 180_l._, and Tigers from 40_l._ to 200_l._ The ignorance displayed by some persons as to the value of well-known objects is something marvellous.--A sea-captain demanded 600_l._ for a pair of Pythons, and at last took 40_l._! An American offered the Society a Grisly Bear for 2,000_l._, to be delivered in the United States; and, more laughable still, a moribund Walrus, which had been fed for nine weeks on salt pork and meal, was offered for the trifling sum of 700_l._! There is a strange notion that the Zoological Society has proposed a large reward for a "Tortoiseshell Tom-cat," and one was accordingly offered to the Society for 250_l._! But male Tortoiseshell Cats may be had in many quarters.[4] The Surrey Zoological Gardens were established in 1831. Thither Cross removed his menagerie from the King's Mews, where it had been transferred from Exeter Change. At Walworth a glazed circular building, 100 feet in diameter, was built for the cages of the carnivorous animals (Lions, Tigers, Leopards, &c.); and other houses for Mammalia, Birds, &c. Here, in 1834, was first exhibited a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, for which Cross paid 800_l._ It was the only specimen brought to England for twenty years. In 1836 were added three Giraffes, one fifteen feet high. The menagerie was dispersed in 1856. The menagerie at Exeter Change was a poor collection, though the admission-charge was, at one period, half-a-crown! The collections of animals exhibited at fairs have added little to Zoological information; but we may mention that Wombwell, one of the most noted of the showfolk, bought a pair of the first Boa Constrictors imported into England: for these he paid 75_l._, and in three weeks realised considerably more than that sum by their exhibition. At the time of his death, in 1850, Wombwell was possessed of three huge menageries, the cost of maintaining which averaged at least 35_l._ per day; and he used to estimate that, from mortality and disease, he had lost, from first to last, from 12,000_l._ to 15,000_l._ Our object in the following succession of sketches of the habits and eccentricities of the more striking animals, and their principal claims upon our attention, is to present, in narrative, their leading characteristics, and thus to secure a willing audience from old and young. FOOTNOTES: [1] 1 Kings iv. 10. [2] "Athenæum." [3] Journal of Mr. E. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne. [4] In April, 1842, Mr. Batty's collection of animals was sold by auction, when the undermentioned animals brought--Large red-faced Monkey (clever), 1_l._ 10_s._; fine Coatimondi, 1_l._ 4_s._; Mandril (the only one in England), 1_l._ 17_s._; pair of Java Hares, 1_l._ 9_s._; a Puma, 14_l._; handsome Senegal Lioness, 9_l._; a Hyæna, 7_l._; splendid Barbary Lioness, 24_l._; handsome Bengal Tigress, 90_l._; brown Bear, 6_l._; the largest Polar Bear in Europe, 37_l._; pair of Esquimaux Sledge-Dogs, 3_l._ 7_s._; pair of Golden Pheasants, 3_l._ 10_s._; a blue-and-buff Macaw (clever talker), 2_l._ 10_s._; a horned Owl, from North America, 3_l._ 10_s._; a magnificent Barbary Lion, trained for performance, 105 guineas; a Lioness, similarly trained, 90 guineas; handsome Senegal performing Leopard, 34 guineas; two others, 50 guineas; Ursine Sloth, 12 guineas; Indian Buffalo, 10 guineas; sagacious male Elephant, trained for theatrical performances, 350 guineas. The above is stated to have been the first sale of the kind by public auction in this country. THE RHINOCEROS IN ENGLAND. The intellectual helps to the study of zoology are nowhere more strikingly evident than in the finest collection of pachyderms (thick-skinned animals) in the world, now possessed by our Zoological Society. Here we have a pair of Indian Elephants, a pair of African Elephants, a pair of Hippopotami, a pair of Indian Rhinoceroses, and an African or two-horned Rhinoceros. The specimens of the Rhinoceros which have been exhibited in Europe since the revival of literature have been few and far between. The first was of the one-horned species, sent from India to Emmanuel. King of Portugal, in the year 1513. The Sovereign made a present of it to the Pope; but the animal being seized during its passage with a fit of fury, occasioned the loss of the vessel in which it was transported. A second Rhinoceros was brought to England in 1685; a third was exhibited over almost the whole of Europe in 1739; and a fourth, a female, in 1741. A fifth specimen arrived at Versailles in 1771, and it died in 1793, at the age of about twenty-six years. The sixth was a very young Rhinoceros, which died in this country in the year 1800. The seventh, a young specimen, was in the possession of Mr. Cross, at Exeter Change, about 1814; and an eighth specimen was living about the same time in the Garden of Plants at Paris. In 1834 Mr. Cross received at the Surrey Gardens, from the Birman empire, a Rhinoceros, a year and a-half old, as already stated at page 21. In 1851 the Zoological Society purchased a full-grown female Rhinoceros; and in 1864 they received a male Rhinoceros from Calcutta. All these specimens were from India, and _one-horned_; so that the _two-horned_ Rhinoceros had not been brought to England until the arrival of an African Rhinoceros, _two-horned_, in September, 1868.[5] The ancient history of the Rhinoceros is interesting, but intricate. It seems to be mentioned in several passages of the Scriptures, in most of which the animal or animals intended to be designated was or were the _Rhinoceros unicornis_, or Great Asiatic one-horned Rhinoceros. M. Lesson expresses a decided opinion to this effect: indeed, the description in Job (chap. xxxix.) would almost forbid the conclusion that any animal was in the writer's mind except one of surpassing bulk and indomitable strength. The impotence of man is finely contrasted with the might of the Rhinoceros in this description, which would be overcharged if it applied to the less powerful animals alluded to in the previous passages. It has also been doubted whether accounts of the Indian Wild Ass, given by Ctesias, were not highly coloured and exaggerated descriptions of this genus; and whether the Indian Ass of Aristotle was not a Rhinoceros. Agatharchides describes the one-horned Rhinoceros by name, and speaks of its ripping up the belly of the Elephant. This is, probably, the earliest occurrence of the name _Rhinoceros_. The Rhinoceros which figured in the celebrated pomps of Ptolemy Philadelphus was an Ethiopian, and seems to have marched last in the procession of wild animals, probably on account of its superior rarity, and immediately after the Cameleopard. Dion Cassius speaks of the Rhinoceros killed in the circus with a Hippopotamus in the show given by Augustus to celebrate his victory over Cleopatra; he says that the Hippopotamus and this animal were then first seen and killed at Rome. The Rhinoceros then slain is thought to have been African, and two-horned. The Rhinoceros clearly described by Strabo, as seen by him, was one-horned. That noticed by Pausanias as "the Bull of Ethiopia," was two-horned, and he describes the relative position of the horns. Wood, in his "Zoography," gives an engraving of the coin of Domitian (small Roman brass), on the reverse of which is the distinct form of a two-horned Rhinoceros: its exhibition to the Roman people, probably of the very animal represented on the coin, is particularly described in one of the epigrams attributed to Martial, who lived in the reigns of Titus and Domitian. By the description of the epigram it appears that a combat between a Rhinoceros and a Bear was intended, but that it was very difficult to irritate the more unwieldy animal so as to make him display his usual ferocity; at length, however, he tossed the bear from his double horn, with as much facility as a bull tosses to the sky the bundles placed for the purpose of enraging him. Thus far the coin and the epigram perfectly agree as to the existence of the double horn; but, unfortunately, commentators and antiquaries were not to be convinced that a Rhinoceros could have more than one horn, and have at once displayed their sagacity and incredulity in their explanations on the subject. Two, at least, of the two-horned Rhinoceroses were shown at Rome in the reign of Domitian. The Emperors Antoninus, Heliogabalus, and Gordian also exhibited Rhinoceroses. Cosmas speaks expressly of the Ethiopian Rhinoceros as having two horns, and of its power of moving them. The tractability of the Asiatic Rhinoceros has been confirmed by observers in the native country of the animal. Bishop Heber saw at Lucknow five or six very large Rhinoceroses, of which he found that prints and drawings had given him a very imperfect conception. They were more bulky animals, and of a darker colour than the Bishop supposed; though the latter difference might be occasioned by oiling the skin. The folds of their skin also surpassed all which the Bishop had expected. Those at Lucknow were quiet and gentle animals, except that one of them had a feud with horses. They had sometimes howdahs, or chaise-like seats, on their backs, and were once fastened in a carriage, but only as an experiment, which was not followed up. The Bishop, however, subsequently saw a Rhinoceros (the present of Lord Amherst to the Guicwar), which was so tamed as to be ridden by a Mohout quite as patiently as an elephant. No two-horned Rhinoceros seems to have been brought alive to Europe in modern times. Indeed, up to a comparatively late period, their form was known only by the horns which were preserved in museums; nor did voyagers give any sufficient details to impart any clear idea of the form of the animal. The rude figure given by Aldrovandus, in 1639, leaves no doubt that, wretched as it is, it must have been taken from a two-horned Rhinoceros. Dr. Parsons endeavoured to show that the one-horned Rhinoceros always belonged to Asia, and the two-horned Rhinoceros to Africa; but there are two-horned Rhinoceroses in Asia, as well as in Africa. Flacourt saw one in the Bay of Soldaque, near the Cape of Good Hope, at a distance. Kolbe and others always considered the Rhinoceros of the Cape as two-horned; but Colonel Gordon seems to be the first who entirely detailed the species with any exactness. Sparrman described the Cape Rhinoceros, though his figure of the animal is stiff and ill-drawn. At this period it was well known that the Cape species was not only distinguished by having two horns from the Indian Rhinoceros then known, but also by an absence of the folds of the skin so remarkable in the latter. We should here notice the carelessness, to call it by the mildest name, of Bruce, who gave to the world a representation of a two-horned Rhinoceros from Abyssinia, with a strongly folded skin. The truth appears to be that the body of the animal figured by Bruce was copied from that of the one-horned Rhinoceros given by Buffon, to which Bruce added a second horn. Salt proved that the Abyssinian Rhinoceros is two-horned, and that it resembles that of the Cape. [Illustration: THE TWO-HORNED AFRICAN RHINOCEROS.] Sparmann exposes the errors and poetic fancies of Buffon respecting the impenetrable nature of the skin. He ordered one of his Hottentots to make a trial of this with his hassagai on a Rhinoceros which had been shot. Though this weapon was far from being in good order, and had no other sharpness than that which it had received from the forge, the Hottentot, at the distance of five or six paces, not only pierced with it the thick hide of the animal, but buried it half a foot deep in its body. Mr. Tegetmeier has sufficiently described in the "Field" journal the African Rhinoceros just received at the Zoological Society's menagerie in the Regent's-park, and which has been sketched by Mr. T. W. Wood expressly for the present volume. It was captured about a year ago in Upper Nubia by the native hunters in the employment of Mr. Casanova, at Kassala; and was sent, by way of Alexandria and Trieste, to Mr. Karl Hagenbeck, of Hamburg, a dealer in wild beasts, who sold it to the Zoological Society. "This animal is very distinct from its Asiatic congeners; it differs strikingly in the number of horns, as well as in the character of its skin, which is destitute of those large folds, which cause the Indian species to remind the observer of a gigantic 'hog in armour.' "The arrival of this animal will tend to clear up the confusion that prevails respecting the number of distinct species of African Rhinoceros. Some writers--as Sir W. C. Harris--admit the existence of two species only, the dark and the light, or, as they are termed, the 'white' and the 'black.' Others, as Dr. A. Smith, describe three; some, as the late Mr. Anderssen, write of four; and Mr. Chapman even speaks of a fifth species or hybrid. "Three of these species are very distinctly defined--the ordinary dark animal, the _Rhinoceros bicornis_, in which the posterior horn is much shorter than the anterior; the _Rhinoceros keitloa_, in which the two horns are of equal length; and the 'white' species, _Rhinoceros simus_. The last, among other characters, is, according to Dr. Smith, distinguished by the square character of the upper lip, which is not prehensile. "The young animal now (October, 1868) in the Zoological Society's garden, appears to belong to the first-named species, the largest specimens of which when full grown reach a height of 6ft., and a length of 13ft., the tail not included. Its present height is 3-1/2ft., and length about 6ft. In general appearance the mature animal resembles a gigantic pig, the limbs being brought under the body. The feet are most singular in form, being very distinctly three-toed, and the remarkable trefoil-like _spoors_ that they make in the soil render the animal easy to track. The horns vary greatly in length in different animals; the first not unfrequently reaches a length of 2ft., the second being considerably shorter. These appendages differ very much from ordinary horns; they are, in fact, more of the nature of agglutinated hair, being attached to the skin only, and consequently they separate from the skull when the latter is preserved. "The head is not remarkable for comeliness, especially in the mature animal, in which the skin of the face is deeply wrinkled, and the small eyes are surrounded with many folds. The upper lip is elongated, and is used in gathering the food. The adult animals are described by Sir W. C. Harris, in his 'Illustrations of the Game Animals of South Africa,' as 'swinish, cross-grained, ill-tempered, wallowing brutes.'" Mr. Burchell, during his travels in Africa, shot nine Rhinoceroses, besides a smaller one. The latter he presented to the British Museum. The animal is, however, becoming every day more and more scarce in Southern Africa; indeed, it is rarely to be met with in some parts. It appears that, in one day, two Rhinoceroses were shot by Speelman, the faithful Hottentot who attended Mr. Burchell. He fired off his gun but twice, and each time he killed a Rhinoceros! The animal's sense of hearing is very quick: should he be disturbed, he sometimes becomes furious, and pursues his enemy; and then, if once he gets sight of the hunter, it is scarcely possible for him to escape, unless he possesses extraordinary coolness and presence of mind. Yet, if he will quietly wait till the enraged animal makes a run at him, and will then spring suddenly on one side, to let it pass, he may gain time enough for reloading his gun before the Rhinoceros gets sight of him again, which, fortunately, owing to its imperfection of sight, it does slowly and with difficulty. Speelman, in shooting a large male Rhinoceros, used bullets cast with an admixture of tin, to render them harder. They were flattened and beat out of shape by striking against the bones, but those which were found lodged in the fleshy parts had preserved their proper form, a fact which shows how little the hardness of the creature's hide corresponds with the vulgar opinion of its being impenetrable to a musket-ball. Mr. Burchell found this Rhinoceros nearly cut up. On each side of the carcase the Hottentots had made a fire to warm themselves; and round a third fire were assembled at least twenty-four Bushmen, most of whom were employed the whole night long in broiling, eating, and talking. Their appetite seemed insatiable, for no sooner had they broiled and eaten one slice of meat than they turned to the carcase and cut another. The meat was excellent, and had much the taste of beef. "The tongue," says Mr. Burchell, "is a dainty treat, even for an epicure." The hide is cut into strips, three feet or more in length, rounded to the thickness of a man's finger, and tapering to the top. This is called a _shambok_, and is universally used in the colony of the Cape for a horsewhip, and is much more durable than the whips of European manufacture. The natural food of the Rhinoceros, till the animal fled before the colonists, was a pale, bushy shrub, called the Rhinoceros-bush, which burns while green as freely as the driest fuel, so as readily to make a roadside fire. The horn of the Rhinoceros, single or double, has its special history by the way of popular tradition. From the earliest times this horn has been supposed to possess preservative virtues and mysterious properties--to be capable of curing diseases and discovering the presence of poison; and in all countries where the Rhinoceros exists, but especially in the East, such is still the opinion respecting it. In the details of the first voyage of the English to India, in 1591, we find Rhinoceros' horns monopolised by the native sovereigns on account of their reputed virtues in detecting the presence of poison. Thunberg observes, in his "Journey into Caffraria," that "the horns of the Rhinoceros were kept by some people, both in town and country, not only as rarities, but also as useful in diseases, and for the purpose of detecting poisons. As to the former of these intentions, the fine shavings were supposed to cure convulsions and spasms in children. With respect to the latter, it was generally believed that goblets made of these horns would discover a poisonous draught that was poured into them, by making the liquor ferment till it ran quite out of the goblet. Of these horns goblets are made, which are set in gold and silver and presented to kings, persons of distinction, and particular friends, or else sold at a high price, sometimes at the rate of fifty rix-dollars each." Thunberg adds:--"When I tried these horns, both wrought and unwrought, both old and young horns, with several sorts of poison, weak as well as strong, I observed not the least motion or effervescence; but when a solution of corrosive sublimate or other similar substance was poured into one of these horns, there arose only a few bubbles, produced by the air which had been enclosed in the pores of the horn and which were now disengaged." Rankin (in his "Wars and Sports") states this mode of using it: a small quantity of water is put into the concave part of the root, then hold it with the point downwards and stir the water with the point of an iron nail till it is discoloured, when the patient is to drink it. FOOTNOTE: [5] The conveyance of a Rhinoceros over sea is a labour of some risk. In 1814 a full-grown specimen on his voyage from Calcutta to this country became so furious that he was fastened down to the ship's deck, with part of a chain-cable round his neck; and even then he succeeded in destroying a portion of the vessel, till, a heavy storm coming on, the Rhinoceros was thrown overboard to prevent the serious consequence of his getting loose in the ship. STORIES OF MERMAIDS. Less than half a century ago, a pretended Mermaid was one of the sights of a London season; to see which credulous persons rushed to pay half-crowns and shillings with a readiness which seemed to rebuke the record--that the existence of a Mermaid is an exploded fallacy of two centuries since. Mermaids have had a legendary existence from very early ages, for the Sirens of the ancients evidently belonged to the same remarkable family. Shakspeare uses the term Mermaid as synonymous with Siren:-- "O train me not, sweet Mermaid, with thy note, To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears; Sing, Syren, for thyself."--_Comedy of Errors_, iii. 2. Elsewhere, Shakspeare's use of the term is more applicable to the Siren than to the common idea of a Mermaid; as in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," where the "Mermaid on a dolphin's back" could not easily have been so placed. A Merman, the male of this imaginary species, is mentioned by Taylor, the water-poet:-- "A thing turmoyling in the sea we spide, Like to a Meareman." An old writer has this ingenious illustration:--"Mermaids, in Homer, were witches, and their songs enchantments;" which reminds us of the invitation in Haydn's Mermaid's Song:-- "Come with me, and we will go Where the rocks of coral grow." The orthodox Mermaid is half woman, half fish; and the fishy half is sometimes depicted as doubly tailed, such as we see in the heraldry of France and Germany; and in the Basle edition of Ptolemy's "Geography," dated 1540, a double-tailed Mermaid figures in one of the plates. In the arms of the Fishmongers' Company of London, the supporters are "a Merman and maid, first, armed, the latter with a mirror in the left hand, proper." From this heraldic employment, the Mermaid became a popular tavern sign; and there was an old dance called the Mermaid. Sir Thomas Browne refers to the _picture_ of Mermaids, though he does not admit their existence. They "are conceived to answer the shape of the ancient Sirens that attempted upon Ulysses; which, notwithstanding, were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up of man and bird." Sir Thomas is inclined to refer the Mermaid to Dagon, the tutelary deity of the Philistines, which, according to the common opinion, had a human female bust and a fish-like termination; though the details of this fish idolatry are entirely conjectural. Leyden, the Scottish poet, has left a charming ballad, entitled "The Mermaid," the scene of which is laid at Corrievreckin: the opening of this poem Sir Walter Scott praised as exhibiting a power of numbers which, for mere melody of sound, has seldom been excelled in English poetry:-- "On Jura's heath how sweetly swell The murmurs of the mountain bee! How softly mourns the writhèd shell Of Jura's shore its parent sea! "But softer floating, o'er the deep, The Mermaid's sweet sea-soothing lay, That charmed the dancing waves to sleep Before the bark of Colonsay." The ballad thus describes the wooing of the gallant chieftain:-- "Proud swells her heart! she deems at last To lure him with her silver tongue, And, as the shelving rocks she passed, She raised her voice, and sweetly sung. "In softer, sweeter strains she sung, Slow gliding o'er the moonlight bay, When light to land the chieftain sprung, To hail the maid of Colonsay. "O sad the Mermaid's gay notes fell, And sadly sink remote at sea! O sadly mourns the writhèd shell Of Jura's shore, its parent sea "And ever as the year returns, The charm-bound sailors know the day; For sadly still the Mermaid mourns The lovely chief of Colonsay." Curious evidences of the existence of Mermaids are to be found in ancient authors. Pliny says that "the ambassadors to Augustine from Gaul declared that sea-women were often seen in their neighbourhood." Solinus and Aulus Gellius also speak of their existence. Some stories are, however, past credence. It is related in the "Histoire d'Angleterre" that, in the year 1187, a Merman was "fished up" off the coast of Suffolk, and kept for six months. It was like a man, but wanted speech, and at length escaped into the sea! In 1430, in the great tempests which destroyed the dykes in Holland, some women at Edam, in West Friesland, saw a Mermaid who had been driven by the waters into the meadows, which were overflowed. "They took it, dressed it in female attire, and taught it to spin!" It was taken to Haarlem, where it lived some years! Then we read of Ceylonese fishermen, in 1560, catching, at one draught, seven Mermen and Mermaids, which were dissected! In 1531, a Mermaid, caught in the Baltic, was sent to Sigismund, King of Poland, with whom she lived three days, and was seen by the whole court! In Merollo's "Voyage to Congo," in 1682, Mermaids are said to be plentiful all along the river Zaire. In the "Aberdeen Almanack" for 1688, it is predicted that "near the place where the famous Dee payeth his tribute to the German Ocean," on the 1st, 13th, and 29th of May, and other specified times, curious observers may "undoubtedly see a pretty company of Mar Maids," and likewise hear their melodious voices. In another part of Scotland, about the same time, Brand, in his "Description of Orkney and Shetland," tells us that two fishermen drew up with a hook a Mermaid, "having face, arm, breast, shoulders, &c., of a woman, and long hair hanging down the neck, but the nether part, from below the waist, hidden in the water." One of the fishermen stabbed her with a knife, and she was seen no more! The evidence went thus:--Brand was told by a lady and gentleman, who were told by a baillie to whom the fishing-boat belonged, who was told by the fishers! Valentyn describes a Mermaid he saw in 1714, on his voyage from Batavia to Europe, "sitting on the surface of the water," &c. In 1758, a Mermaid is said to have been exhibited at the fair of St. Germain, in France. It was about two feet long, and sported about in a vessel of water. It was fed with bread and fish. It was a female, with negro features. In 1775 appeared a very circumstantial account of a Mermaid which was captured in the Grecian Archipelago in the preceding year, and exhibited in London. The account is ludicrously minute, and it ends with: "It is said to have an enchanting voice, which it never exerts except before a storm." This imposture was craftily made up out of the skin of the angle shark. In Mr. Morgan's "Tour to Milford Haven in the year 1795," appears an equally circumstantial account of a Mermaid, said to have been seen by one Henry Reynolds, a farmer, of Ren-y-hold, in the parish of Castlemartin, in 1782. It resembled a youth of sixteen or eighteen years of age, with a very white skin: it was bathing. The evidence is very roundabout, so that there were abundant means for converting some peculiar kind of fish into a Merman, without imputing intentional dishonesty to any one. "Something akin to this kind of evidence is observable in the account of a Mermaid seen in Caithness in 1809, which attracted much attention in England as well as in Scotland, and induced the Philosophical Society of Glasgow to investigate the matter. The Editor of a newspaper, who inserted the statement, had been told by a gentleman, who had been shown a letter by Sir John Sinclair, who had obtained it from Mr. Innes, to whom it had been written by Miss Mackay, who had heard the story from the persons (two servant girls and a boy) who had seen the strange animal in the water." (Chambers's "Book of Days.") Then we read of a so-called Mermaid, shown in the year 1794 at No. 7, Broad-court, Bow-street. Covent-garden, said to have been taken in the North Seas by Captain Foster. It was of the usual description. Much evidence comes from Scotland. Thus, in the year 1797, a schoolmaster of Thurso affirmed that he had seen a Mermaid, apparently in the act of combing her hair with her fingers! Twelve years afterwards, several persons observed near the same place a like appearance. Dr. Chisholm, in his "Essay on Malignant Fever in the West Indies," in 1801, relates that, in the year 1797, happening to be at Governor Van Battenburg's plantation, in Berbice, "the conversation turned on a singular animal which had been repeatedly seen in Berbice river, and some smaller rivers. This animal is the famous Mermaid, hitherto considered as a mere creature of the imagination. It is called by the Indians _méné_, mamma, or mother of the waters. The description given of it by the Governor is as follows:--'The upper portion resembles the human figure, the head smaller in proportion, sometimes bare, but oftener covered with a copious quantity of long black hair. The shoulders are broad, and the breasts large and well-formed. The lower portion resembles the tail of a fish, is of great dimensions, the tail forked, and not unlike that of the dolphin, as it is usually represented. The colour of the skin is either black or tawny.' The animal is held in veneration by the Indians, who imagine that killing it would be attended with calamitous consequences. It is from this circumstance that none of these animals have been shot, and consequently examined but at a distance. They have been generally observed in a sitting posture in the water, none of the lower extremity being seen until they are disturbed, when, by plunging, the tail agitates the water to a considerable distance round. They have been always seen employed in smoothing their hair, and have thus been frequently taken for Indian women bathing." In 1811, a young man, named John M'Isaac, of Corphine, in Kintyre, in Scotland, made oath, on examination at Campbell-town, that he saw, on the 13th of October in the above year, on a rock on the sea-coast, an animal which generally corresponded with the form of the Mermaid--the upper half human shape, the other brindled or reddish grey, apparently covered with scales; the extremity of the tail greenish red; head covered with long hair, at times put back on both sides of the head. This statement was attested by the minister of Campbell-town and the Chamberlain of Mull. In August, 1812, Mr. Toupin, of Exmouth, in a sailing excursion, and when about a mile south-east of Exmouth Bar, heard a sound like that of the Æolian harp; and saw, at about one hundred yards distance, a creature, which was regarded as a Mermaid. The head, from the crown to the chin, formed a long oval, and the face seemed to resemble that of the seal, though with more agreeable features. The presumed hair, the arms, and the hand, with four fingers connected by a membrane, are then described, and the tail with polished scales. The entire height of the animal was from five feet to five and a-half feet. In 1819, a creature approached the coast of Ireland. It was about the size of a child ten years of age, with prominent bosom, long dark hair, and dark eyes. It was shot at, when it plunged into the sea with a loud scream. [Illustration: SEAL AND MERMAID.] In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there is always a fish in each tale--either a living fish of a peculiar kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society, when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination, whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form, which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine." The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named from its flipper, resembling the human hand, _manus_. Again, the _mammæ_ (teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation, joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &c., have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the _Manatee_ a denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong _Baardanetjee_, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed, doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have displayed more learning than judgment. The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned as accessories in these Mermaid stories; and these, with the origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts to explain:--"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages of her toilet." The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath; and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen? Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a _manufactured_ Mermaid was shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature. In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to 400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last long; and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat; and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829, however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of preservation. In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in 1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the above Mermaid:--"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water; and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these _pictured Mermaids_ was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American, who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse." The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly said:--"Our opinion is fixed that it is a _composition_; a most ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious, and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability, from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps, be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the _simia_ upper body, and the tail of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations, and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825. After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter. We have still another recorded instance--and in Scotland. In the year 1857 two fishermen on the Argyleshire coast declared that when on their way to the fishing-station, Lochindale, in a boat, and when about four miles south-west from the village of Port Charlotte, about six o'clock in a June evening, they distinctly saw, at about six yards distance, an object in the form of a woman, with comely face and fine hair hanging in ringlets over the neck and shoulders. It was above the surface of the water gazing at the fishermen for three or four minutes--and then vanished! Yet this declaration was officially attested! In 1863 Mermaids were supposed to abound in the ponds and ditches of Suffolk, where careful mothers used them as bugbears to prevent little children from going too near the water. Children described them as "nasty things that crome you (hook you) into the water;" others as "a great big thing like a feesh," probably a pike basking in the shallow water. Sometimes the Mermaid has assumed a picturesqueness in fairy tale; and her impersonation has been described by Dryden as "a fine woman, with a fish's tail." And, laying aside her scaly train, she has appeared as a lovely woman, with sea-green hair; and Crofton Croker relates, in his "Fairy Legends," a marriage between an Irish fisherman and a "Merrow," as the Mermaid is called in Ireland. IS THE UNICORN FABULOUS? To this question we may reply, in the words of a writer of 1633, "Concerning the Unicorn, different opinions prevail among authors: some doubt, others deny, and a third class affirm its existence." The question has lasted two thousand years, and is every now and then kept alive by fresh evidences. Ctesias, a credulous Greek physician, who appears to have resided at the Court of Persia, in the time of the younger Cyrus, about 400 years before the birth of Christ, describes the wild asses of India as equal to the horse in size, and even larger, with white bodies, red heads, bluish eyes, and a horn on the forehead a cubit in length; the part from the forehead entirely white, the middle black, and the extremity red and pointed. Drinking-vessels were made of it, and those who used them were subject neither to convulsions, epilepsy, nor poison, provided that before taking the poison, or after, they drank from these cups water, wine, or any other liquor. Ctesias describes these animals as very swift and very strong. Naturally they were not ferocious; but when they found themselves and their young surrounded by horsemen, they did not abandon their offspring, but defended themselves by striking with their horns, kicking, and biting, and so slew many men and horses. This animal was also shot with arrows and brought down with darts; for it was impossible to take it alive. Its flesh was too bitter for food, but it was hunted for its horn and astragalus (ankle-bone), which last Ctesias declares he saw. Aristotle describes the Indian ass with a single horn. Herodotus mentions asses having horns; and Strabo refers to Unicorn horses, with the heads of deers. Oppian notices the Aonian bulls with undivided hoofs, and a single median horn between their temples. Pliny notices it as a very ferocious beast, similar in its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a boar, a deep bellowing voice, and a single black horn standing out in the middle of its forehead. He adds, that it cannot be taken alive; and some such excuse may have been necessary in those days for not producing the living animal upon the arena of the amphitheatre. Out of this passage most of the modern Unicorns have been described and figured. The body of the horse and the head of the deer appear to be but vague sketches; the feet of the elephant and the tail of the boar point at once to a pachydermatous (thick-skinned) animal; and the single black horn, allowing for a little exaggeration as to its length, well fits the two last-mentioned conditions, and will apply to the Indian rhinoceros, which, says the sound naturalist, Ogilby, "affords a remarkable instance of the obstructions which the progress of knowledge may suffer, and the gross absurdities which not unfrequently result from the wrong application of a name." Mr. Ogilby then refers to the account of Ctesias, which we have just quoted, and adds:--"His account, though mixed up with a great deal of credulous absurdity, contains a very valuable and perfectly recognisable description of the rhinoceros, under the ridiculous name, however, of the _Indian Ass_; and, as he attributed to it a whole hoof like the horse, and a single horn in the forehead, speculation required but one step further to produce the fabulous Unicorn." The ancient writers who have treated of the Unicorn are too numerous for us to specify. Some of the moderns may be referred to. Garcias describes this marvellous creature from one who alleges that he had seen it. The seer affirmed that it was endowed with a wonderful horn, which it would sometimes turn to the left and right, at others raise, and then again depress. Ludovicus Vartomanus writes, that he saw two sent to the Sultan from Ethiopia, and kept in a repository at Mahomet's tomb in Mecca. Cardan describes the Unicorn as a rare animal, the size of a horse, with hair very like that of a weasel, with the head of a deer, on which one horn grows three cubits in length (a story seldom loses anything in its progress) from the forehead, ample at its lowest part, and tapering to a point; with a short neck, a very thin mane, leaning to one side only, and less on the ear, as those of a young roe. In Jonston's "Historia Naturalis," 1657, we see the smooth-horned solipede, "Wald Esel;" and the digitated and clawed smooth-horned "Meer Wolff," the latter with his single horn erect in the foreground, but with it depressed in the background, where he is represented regaling on serpents. Then there are varieties, with the head, mane, and tail of a horse; another smooth-horned, with a horse's head and mane, a pig's-tail and camel-like feet; the "Meer Stenbock, Capricornus Marinus," with hind webbed feet, and a kind of graduated horn, like an opera-glass pulled out, in the foreground, and charging the fish most valiantly in the water in the distance. Then there is another, with a mule's head and two rhinoceros-like horns, one on his forehead and the other on his nose; and a horse's tail, with a collar round his neck; a neck entirely shaggy--and a twisted horn, a shaggy gorget, and curly tail, are among other peculiarities. The Unicorn seems to have been a sad trouble to the hunters, who hardly knew how to come at so valuable a piece of game. Some described the horn as moveable at the will of the animal--a kind of small sword, in short, with which no hunter who was not exceedingly cunning in fence could have a chance. Others told the poor foresters that all the strength lay in its horn, and that when pressed by them it would throw itself from the pinnacle of the highest rock, horn foremost, so as to pitch upon it, and then quietly march off not a bit the worse! Modern zoologists, disgusted as they well may be with fables, such as we have glanced at, disbelieve, generally, the existence of the Unicorn, such, at least, as we have referred to; but there is still an opinion that some land animal bearing a horn on the anterior part of its head, exists besides the rhinoceros. The nearest approach to a horn in the middle of the forehead of any terrestrial mammiferous animal known to us is the bony protuberance on the forehead of the giraffe; and though it would be presumptuous to deny the existence of a one-horned quadruped other than the rhinoceros, it may be safely stated that the insertion of a long and solid horn in the living forehead of a horse-like or deer-like cranium is as near an impossibility as anything can be. Rupell, after a long sojourn in the north-east of Africa, stated that in Kordofan the Unicorn exists; stated to be the size of a small horse, of the slender make of the gazelle, and furnished with a long straight horn in the male, which was wanting in the female. According to the statements made by various persons, it inhabits the deserts to the south of Koretofan, is uncommonly fleet, and comes only occasionally to the Koldagi Heive mountains on the borders of Kordofan. Other writers refer the Unicorn to the antelope. The origin of the name of antelope is traced by Cuvier to the Greek _Anthalops_, applied to a fabulous animal living on the banks of the Euphrates, with long jagged horns, with which it sawed down trees of considerable thickness! Others conjecture this animal to have been the _Oryx_, a species of antelope, which is fabulously reported to have had only one horn, and to have been termed _Panthalops_ in the old language of Egypt. In his "Revolutions on the Surface of the Globe." Cuvier refers the idea of the Unicorn to the coarse figures traced by savages on rocks. Ignorant of perspective, and wishing to present in profile the horned antelope, they could only give it one horn; and thus originated the _Oryx_. The oryx of the Egyptian monuments is, most probably, but the production of a similarly crude style, which the religion of the country imposed on the artist. Many of the profiles of quadrupeds have only one leg before and one behind: why, then, should they show two horns? It is possible that individual animals might be taken in the chase whom accident had despoiled of one horn, as it often happens to chamois and the Scythian antelope; and that would suffice to confirm the error which these pictures originally produced. It is thus, probably, that we find anew the Unicorn in the mountains of Thibet. The _Chiru Antelope_ is the supposed Unicorn of the Bhotians. In form it approaches the deer; the horns are exceedingly long, are placed very forward in the head, and may be popularly described as erect and straight. It is usually found in herds, and is extremely wild, and unapproachable by man. It is much addicted to salt in summer, when vast herds are often seen at the rock-salt beds which abound in Tibet. They are said to advance under the conduct of a leader, and to post sentinels around the beds before they attempt to feed. Major Salter is stated to have obtained information of the existence of an animal in Tibet closely resembling the Unicorn of the ancients, which revived the belief of naturalists by adducing testimonies from Oriental writings. Upon this statement, M. Klaproth remarks, that previous to Major Salter's Reports, the Catholic missionaries, who returned to Europe from China by way of Tibet and Nepal, in the seventeenth century, mentioned that the Unicorn was found in that part of the Great Desert which bounds China to the west, where they crossed the great wall; that Captain Turner, when travelling in Tibet, was informed by the Raja of Boutan that he had one of these animals alive; and that Bell, in his "Travels to Peking," describes a Unicorn which was found on the southern front of Siberia. He adds:--"The great 'Tibetan-Mongol Dictionary' mentions the Unicorn; and the 'Geographical Dictionary of Tibet and Central Asia,' printed at Peking, where it describes a district in the province of Kham, in Tibet, named Sera-zeong, explains this name by 'the River of Unicorns,' because," adds the author, "many of these animals are found there." In the "History of the Mongol-Khans," published and translated at St. Petersburg, we find the following statement:--Genghiz Khan, having subjected all Tibet in 1206, commenced his march for Hindustan. As he ascended Mount Jadanarung, he beheld a beast approaching him of the deer kind, of the species called _Seron_, which have a single horn at the top of the head. It fell on its knees thrice before the monarch, as if to pay respect to him. Every one was astonished at this incident. The monarch exclaimed. "The Empire of Hindustan is, we are assured, the country where are born the majestic Buddhas and Bodhisatwas, as well as the potent Bogdas and princes of antiquity: what can be the meaning, then, of this animal, incapable of speech, saluting me like a man?" Upon this, he returned to his own country. "This story," continues M. Klaproth, "is also related by Mahommedan authors who have written the life of Genghiz. Something of the kind must, therefore, have taken place. Possibly, some of the Mongol conqueror's suite may have taken a Unicorn, which Genghiz thus employed, to gain a pretext for abstaining from an expedition which promised no success." Upon this statement, it was observed in the "Asiatic Register," 1839, that "when we consider that seventeen years have elapsed since the account of Major Salter was given, and that, notwithstanding our increased opportunities of intercourse with Tibet, no fact has since transpired which supplies a confirmation of that account, except the obtaining of a supposed horn of the supposed Unicorn, we cannot participate in these renewed hopes." The Rev. John Campbell, in his "Travels in South Africa," describes the head of another animal, which, as far as the horn is concerned, seems to approach nearer than the common rhinoceros to the Unicorn of the ancients. While in the Machow territory, the Hottentots brought to Mr. Campbell a head differing from that of any rhinoceros that had been previously killed. "The common African rhinoceros has a crooked horn, resembling a cock's spur, which rises about nine or ten inches above the nose, and inclines backward; immediately behind which is a straight thick horn. But the head brought by the Hottentots had a straight horn projecting three feet from the forehead, about ten inches above the tip of the nose. The projection of this great horn very much resembles that of the fanciful Unicorn in the British arms. It has a small thick horny substance, eight inches long, immediately behind it, which can hardly be observed on the animal at the distance of a hundred yards; so that this species must look like an Unicorn (in the sense 'one-horned') when running in the field." The author adds:--"This animal is considered by naturalists, since the arrival of the above skull in London, to be the Unicorn of the ancients, and the same that is described in Job xxxix. 9--'Will the Unicorn be willing to serve thee, or abide by thy crib? 10. Canst thou bind the Unicorn with his band in the furrow? or will he harrow the valleys after thee? 11. Wilt thou trust him because his strength is great? or wilt thou leave thy labour to him?' Again, Deuteronomy xxxiii. 17--'His horns are like the horns of Unicorns: with them he shall push the people together to the ends of the earth.'" A fragment of the skull, with the horn, is deposited in the Museum of the London Missionary Society. Mr. W. B. Baikie writes to the _Athenæum_ from Bida Núpe, Central Africa, in 1862, the following suggestions:--"When I ascended the Niger, now nearly five years ago, I frequently heard allusions to an animal of this nature, but at that time I set it down as a myth. Since then, however, the amount of testimony I have received, and the universal belief of the natives of all the countries which I have hitherto visited, have partly shaken my scepticism, and at present I simply hold that its non-existence is not proven. A skull of this animal is said to be preserved in a town in the country of Bonú, through which I hope to pass in the course of a few weeks, when I shall make every possible inquiry. Two among my informants have repeatedly declared to me that they have seen the bones of this animal, and each made particular mention of the long, straight, or nearly straight, black horn. In countries to the east, and south-east, as Márgi and Bagirmi, where the one-horned rhinoceros is found, the hunters carefully distinguished between it and the supposed Unicorn, and give them different names. In the vast forests and boundless wastes which occur over Central Africa, especially towards the countries south and east of Lake Tsád, Bórnú, Bagirmi and Adamáwa, are doubtless numerous zoological curiosities as yet unknown to the man of science, and among them possibly may exist this much-talked-of, strange, one-horned animal, even though it may not exactly correspond with our typical English Unicorn." The factitious horn has been preserved in various Museums. The "Monocero Horn," in Tradescant's collection, was, probably, that which ordinarily has passed for the horn of the Unicorn, namely, the tooth of a narwhal. Old legends assert that the Unicorn, when he goes to drink, first dips his horn in the water to purify it, and that other beasts delay to quench their thirst till the Unicorn has thus sweetened the water. The narwhal's tooth makes a capital twisted Unicorn's horn, as represented in the old figures. That in the Repository of St. Denis, at Paris, was presented by Thevet, and was declared to have been given to him by the King of Monomotapa, who took him out to hunt Unicorns, which are frequent in that country. Some have thought that this horn was a carved elephant's tooth. There is one at Strasburg, some seven or eight feet in length, and there are several in Venice. Great medical virtues were attributed to the so-called horn, and the price it once bore outdoes everything in the _Tulipomania_. A Florentine physician has recorded that a pound of it (sixteen ounces) was sold in the shops for fifteen hundred and thirty-six crowns, when the same weight in gold would only have brought one hundred and forty-eight crowns. From what source we derive the stories of the animosity between the lion and the Unicorn is not clearly understood, although this is the principal medium through which the fabulous creature has been kept in remembrance by being constantly before us in the Royal Arms, which were settled at the Accession of George I. We owe the introduction of the Unicorn, however, to James I., who, as King of Scotland, bore two Unicorns, and coupled one with the English lion, when the two kingdoms were united. The position of the lion and Unicorn in the arms of our country seems to have given rise (naturally enough in the mind of one who was ignorant of heraldic decoration) to a nursery rhyme which most of us remember:-- "The Lion and the Unicorn Were fighting for the crown; The Lion beat the Unicorn All round the town," &c. unless it alludes to a contest for dominion over the brute creation, which the "rebellious Unicorn," as Spenser calls it, seems to have waged with the tawny monarch. Spenser, in his "Faerie Queen," gives the following curious way of catching the Unicorn:-- "Like as a lyon, whose imperiall powre, A prowd rebellious Unicorn defyes, T'avoide the rash assault and wrathful stowre Of his fiers foe, him a tree applyes, And when him rousing in full course he spyes, He slips aside; the whiles that furious beast His precious home, sought of his enemyes, Strikes in the stocke, ne thence can be releast. But to the mighty victor yields a bounteous feast." Shakspeare, also ("Julius Cæsar," Act ii. scene 1), speaks of the supposed mode of entrapping them:-- "For he loves to hear That Unicorns may be betrayed with trees, And bears with glasses, elephants with holes, Lions with toils, and men with flatterers." We have no satisfactory reason for believing that man ever coexisted with Mastodons; otherwise Professor Owen's discovery of the retention of a single tusk only by the male gigantic Mastodon, might have afforded another form of Unicorn. Whatever the zoologists may have done towards extirpating the belief in the existence of the Unicorn, it is ever kept in sight by heraldry, which, with its animal absurdities, has contributed more to the propagation of error respecting the natural world than any other species of misrepresentation. THE MOLE AT HOME. The Mole, though generally a despised and persecuted animal, is nevertheless useful to the husbandman in being the natural drainer of his land and destroyer of worms. To other inferior animals he is a sapper and miner, forming for them their safe retreats and well-secured dormitories. The economy of the Mole has been much controverted among naturalists. It is found throughout the greater part of Europe. We are overrun with it in most parts of England and Wales; but it does not appear to have been found in the northern extremity of Scotland, and there is no record of its having been seen in the Orkney Isles, Zetland, or Ireland. Its most diligent and instructive historian is Henri Le Court, who, flying from the terrors that came in the train of the French Revolution, betook himself to the country, and from being the attendant on a Court, became the biographer of this humble animal. M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, the celebrated French naturalist, visited Le Court for the purpose of testing his observations, and appears to have been charmed by the facility and ingenuity with which Le Court traced and demonstrated the subterraneous labours of this obscure worker in the dark. We shall first briefly describe the adaptation of its structure to its habits. The bony framework is set in motion by very powerful muscles, those of the chest and neck being most vigorous. The wide hand, which is the great instrument of action, and performs the offices of a pickaxe and shovel, is sharp-edged on its lower margin, and when clothed with the integuments the fingers are hardly distinguishable. The muzzle of the Mole is evidently a delicate organ of touch, as are also the large and broad hands and feet; and the tail has much sensitiveness to give notice to the animal of the approach of any attack from behind. Its taste and smell, especially the latter, are very sensitive. Its sight is almost rudimentary. The little eye is so hidden in the fur that its very existence was for a long time doubted. It appears to be designed for operating only as a warning to the animal on its emerging into the light; indeed, more acute vision would only have been an encumbrance. If the sight be imperfect, the sense of hearing is very acute, and the tympanum very large, though there is no external ear, perhaps because the earth assists considerably in vibration. The fore-feet are inclined sideways, so as to answer the use of hands, to scoop out the earth to form its habitation or pursue its prey, and to fling all the loose soil behind the animal. The breastbone in shape resembles a ploughshare. The skin is so tough as only to be cut by a very sharp knife. The hair is very short and close-set, and softer than the finest silk; colour black; some spotted and cream-coloured. This hair is yielding; had it been strong, as in the rat or mouse, it would doubly have retarded the progress of the creature; first by its resistance, and then acting as a brush, so as to choke up the galleries, by removing the loose earth from the sides and ceilings of the galleries. It is supposed that the verdant circles so often seen in grass ground, called by country people _fairy rings_, are owing to the operations of Moles: at certain seasons they perform their burrowings in circles, which, loosening the soil, gives the surface a greater fertility and rankness of grass than the other parts within or without the ring. The larger mole-hills denote the nests or dens of the Mole beneath. The feeling of the Mole is so acute that when casting up the earth, it is sensible of very gentle pressure; hence mole-catchers tread lightly when in quest of Moles; and unless this caution is used the Mole ceases its operation, and instantly retires. Again, so acute is the smell, that mole-catchers draw the body of a captured Mole through their traps and the adjoining runs and passages to remove all suspicious odours which might arise from the touch of their fingers. During summer the Mole runs in search of snails and worms in the night-time among the grass, which pursuit makes it the prey of owls. The Mole shows great art in skinning a worm, which it always does before it eats it, by stripping the skin from end to end, and squeezing out the contents of the body. It is doubtful whether any other animal exists which is obliged to eat at such short intervals as the Mole, ten or twelve hours appearing to be the maximum of its fasting; at the end of that time it dies. Cuvier tells us that if two Moles are shut up together without food, there will shortly be nothing left of the weakest but its skin, slit along the belly! Buffon accuses Moles of eating all the acorns of a newly-set soil. Its voracity makes the Mole a great drinker: a run is always formed to a pond or ditch as a reservoir; when it is too distant, the animal sinks little wells, which have sometimes been seen brimfull. We now return to Le Court's experiments with Moles, which are very interesting. To afford proof of the rapidity with which the Mole will travel along its passages, Le Court watched his opportunity, and when the animal was on its feed at one of the most distant points from its sanctuary or fortress, to which point the Mole's high road leads. Le Court placed along the course of that road, between the animal and the fortress, several little camp colours, so to speak, the staff of each being a straw, and the flag a bit of paper, at certain distances, the straws penetrating down into the passage. Near the end of this subterraneous road he inserted a horn, the mouthpiece of which stood out of the ground. When all was ready, Le Court blew a blast loud enough to frighten all the Moles within hearing. Down went the little flags in succession with astonishing velocity, as the terrified Mole, rushing along towards his sanctuary, came in contact with the flag-straws; and the spectators affirmed that the Mole's swiftness was equal to the speed of a horse at a good round trot. To test its amount of vision, Le Court took a spare water-pipe, or gutter, open at both ends. Into this pipe he introduced several Moles successively. Geoffroy St. Hilaire stood by to watch the result at the further end of the tube. As long as the spectators stood motionless the introduced Mole made the best of his way through the pipe and escaped; but if they moved, or even raised a finger, the Mole stopped, and then retreated. Several repetitions of this experiment produced the same results. In the domain of the Mole, the principal point is the habitation, or fortress, constructed under a considerable hillock raised in some secure place, often at the root of a tree, or under a bank. The dome of the fortress is of earth, beaten by the Mole-architect into a compact and solid state. Inside is formed a circular gallery at the base, which communicates with a smaller upper gallery by means of five passages. Within the lower gallery is the chamber or dormitory, which has access to the upper gallery by three passages. From this habitation extends the high road by which the proprietor reaches the opposite end of the encampment; the galleries open into this road, which the Mole is continually carrying out and extending in his search for food; this has been termed the _hunting-ground_. Another road extends, first downwards, and then up into the open road of the territory. Some eight or nine other passages open out from the external circular gallery. From the habitation a road is carried out, nearly straight, and connected with the encampment and the alleys leading to the hunting-ground which open into it on each side. In diameter the road exceeds the body of a Mole, but its size will not admit of two Moles passing each other. The walls, from the repeated pressure of the animal's sides, become smooth and compact. Sometimes a Mole will lay out a second or even a third road; or several individuals use one road in common, though they never trespass on each other's hunting-grounds. If two Moles should happen to meet in the same road, one must retreat into the nearest alley, unless they fight, when the weakest is often slain. In forming this tunnel the Mole's instinct drives it at a greater or less depth, according to the quality of the soil, or other circumstances. When it is carried under a road or stream, a foot and a-half of earth, or sometimes more, is left above it. Then does the little engineering Mole carry on the subterraneous works necessary for his support, travelling, and comfort; and his tunnels never fall in. The quality or humidity of the soils which regulates the abundance of earth-worms, determines the greater or less depth of the alleys; and when these are filled with stores of food the Mole works out branch alleys. The main road communicating with the hunting-grounds is of necessity passed through in the course of the day; and here the mole-catcher sets his traps to intercept the Mole between his habitation and the alley where he is carrying on his labours. Some mole-catchers will tell you the hours when the Moles move are nine and four; others that near the coast their movements are influenced by the tides. Besides the various traps which are set for Moles, they are sometimes taken by a man and a dog; when the latter indicates the presence of a Mole, the man spears the animal out as it moves in its run. Pointers will stop as steadily as at game, at the Moles, when they are straying on the surface. The Mole is a most voracious animal. Earthworms and the larvæ of insects are its favourite food; and it will eat mice, lizards, frogs, and even birds; but it rejects toads, even when pressed by hunger, deterred, probably, by the acrid secretions of their skin. Moles are essentially carnivorous; and when fed abundantly on vegetable substances they have died of hunger. During the season of love, at which time fierce battles are fought between the males, the male pursues the female with ardour through numerous runs wrought out with great rapidity. The attachment appears to be very strong in the Moles. Le Court often found a female taken in his trap and a male lying dead close to her. From four to five is the general number of young. The nest is distinct, usually distant from the habitation. It is constructed by enlarging and excavating the point where three or four passages intersect each other; and the bed of the nest is formed of a mass of young grass, root fibres, and herbage. In one nest Geoffroy St. Hilaire and Le Court counted two hundred and four young wheat-blades. M. St. Hilaire describes the pairings, or as he calls it, "the loves of the Moles." As soon as the Mole has finished the galleries he brings his mate along with him, and shuts her up in the bridal gallery, taking care to prevent the entrance of his rivals: in case of a fight they enlarge the part of the gallery where they are met; and the victory is decided in favour of him who first wounds his adversary before the ear. The female, during the fight, is shut up in the bridal gallery, so as to be unable to escape; for which purpose, however, she uses all her resources in digging, and attempts to get away by the side passages. Should she succeed the conqueror hastens to rejoin his faithless mate, and to bring her back into his galleries. This manoeuvre is repeated as often as other males enter the lists. At length the conqueror is recognised, and his mate becomes more docile. The pair work together and finish the galleries; after which the female digs alone for food. As soon as the galleries are formed, the male conducts his mate to a certain point, and from this time the female no longer digs in the solid earth, but towards the surface, advancing by merely separating the roots of the grass. The Mole is a great friend to the farmer; but there are places in which he is a public enemy. He is not a vegetable feeder, and he never roots up the growing corn in spring-time, except when he is after grubs, snails, and wire-worms. It has been calculated that two Moles destroy 20,000 white worms in a year. He is very destructive to under drains; and where the land is low we are in danger of a deluge from his piercing holes in the drain-banks. Thus it would be madness not to extirpate Moles in those places where the waters, in drains or rivers, are above the level of the lands around, especially when the banks are made of sand or earth of loose texture. The persecution of Moles in cultivated countries amounts almost to a war of extermination. The numbers annually slaughtered are enormous. A mole-catcher, who had followed the craft for thirty-five years, destroyed from forty to fifty thousand Moles. But all Mole exterminators must yield to Le Court, who, in no large district, took, in five months, six thousand of them. Moles are good swimmers, and their bite is very sharp; their attacks are ferocious, and they keep their hold like a bull-dog. The Shrew Mole of North America resembles the European Mole in its habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning, at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country to have the custom of coming daily to the surface _exactly at noon_. We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank freely, and was lively and playful, following the hand of his feeder by the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North American Zoology." James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive manner:--"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a country is that against the Mole--that innocent and blessed little pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing, dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath. The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and lambs--the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who introduced Mole-catching into Scotland." THE GREAT ANT-BEAR. A fine living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park, 1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England, and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair, captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for the sum of 200_l._ The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his "Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid. The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow, the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased by the Zoological Society. [Illustration: THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.] Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year 1853, relates:--"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten) a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants, tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm, is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance, as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely met with, and still more rarely obtained alive." We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects, which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain, being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost incredible time. The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests, but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man. When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate, sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from one to another, and copied, without question, into the histories and descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who, by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans." The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen, by Professor Owen, who writes:--"When we were introduced to this, the latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the animal busy sucking and licking up--for his feeding is a combination of the two actions--the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent proboscis, or some such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin, and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds, and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important aperture--by some deemed the essential character of an animal--is a small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as fourteen inches from the mouth." By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal is denominated _Myrmocophaga jubata_, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is, for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay, rapidly lengthening from the neck backwards to six or eight inches, and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long coarse hair of its _natural and portable blanket_. When it is enjoying its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, _greyish thatch_ is all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara, as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its grasp of an object so seized. With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and Ant-Bears can endure long fasts. Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone. The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To put the beast, however, _hors de combat_, no other weapon is needed than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be useless, for it has no teeth." "Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat. The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects." The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that the extinction of the species, like those of the _edentata_ in general, is determined upon.[6] Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied quadrupeds have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil. In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former world, Professor Owen proposes the name of _Glossotherium_, which signifies tongue-beast. Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic? Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing it over the whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted, like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, _vibrating_ all the time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth. Another species of Ant-eater is the _Tamandua_, much inferior in size to the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits the thick primæval forests of tropical America, and is never found on the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites, honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail. The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her on her shoulders for the first three or four months. _Tamandua_ is the Portuguese name; the French and English call it _fourmiller_ and Little Ant-Bear. The latter are the names of a still smaller species, which does not exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana and Brazil. It is called in Surinam _kissing-hand_, as the inhabitants pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they pulled out the nymphæ and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever known that species of animal to take any nourishment. Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run away, but were always ready for defence when attacked. The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted; and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded. To procure or carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvæ of wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as in that of other South America mammalia. The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence. It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth. The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854. There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which is a remarkably fine specimen. FOOTNOTE: [6] Proceedings of the Zoological Society. CURIOSITIES OF BATS. These harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror. The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the Harpies. Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly, places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, _Attaleph_ (bird of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds. Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however, indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned. The words _rere-mouse_ and _flitter-mouse_, the old English names for the Bat--the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aræan," to raise, or rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or flittering mouse,"--show that in their minds these animals were always associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to the language of the country. "The word _flitter-mouse_," says Mr. Bell, "sometimes corrupted into _flintymouse_, is the common term for the Bat in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found, perhaps, in any other part of England. Ben Jonson has-- "Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse, And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice. . . . Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly." _Play._--_New Inn._ The same author uses flitter-mouse also:-- "And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings." _Sad Shepherd._ Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame." Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a membrane, by which they are enabled to fly. Sir Charles Bell, in his valuable treatise on the "Hand," considers the skeleton of the Bat as one of the best examples of the moulding of the bones of the extremity to correspond with the condition of the animal. Contemplating this extraordinary application of the bones of the extremity, and comparing them with those of the wing of a bird, we might say that this is an awkward attempt--"a failure." But, before giving expression to such an opinion, we must understand the objects required in this construction. It is not a wing intended merely for flight, but one which, while it raises the animal, is capable of receiving a new sensation, or sensations, in that exquisite degree, so as almost to constitute a new sense. On the fine web of the Bat's wing nerves are distributed, which enable it to avoid objects in its flight during the night, when both eyes and ears fail. Could the wing of a bird, covered with feathers, do this? Here, then, we have another example of the necessity of taking every circumstance into consideration before we presume to criticise the ways of nature. It is a lesson of humility. In this animal the bones are light and delicate; and whilst they are all marvellously extended, the phalanges of the fingers are elongated so as hardly to be recognised, obviously for the purpose of sustaining a membranous web, and to form a wing. In 1839 there was received at the Surrey Zoological Gardens, from Sumatra, a specimen of the Vampire Bat. This was a young male; the body was black, and the membranous wing, in appearance, resembled fine black kid. He was rarely seen at the bottom of his cage, but suspended himself from the roof or bars of the cage, head downwards, his wings wrapped round his body; when spread, these wings extended nearly two feet. Although this specimen was the Vampire Bat to which so many bloodthirsty feats have been attributed, his appearance was by no means ferocious; he was active, yet docile, and the only peculiarity to favour belief in his blood-sucking propensity was his long pointed tongue. The species has popularly been accused of destroying, not only the large mammiferous animals, but also men, when asleep, by sucking their blood. "The truth," says Cuvier, in his "Regne Animal," "appears to be, that the Vampire inflicts only small wounds, which may, probably, become inflammatory and gangrenous from the influence of climate." In this habit, however, may have originated the celebrated Vampire superstition. Lord Byron, in his beautiful poem of "The Giaour," thus symbolises the tortures that await the "false infidel:"-- "First, on earth as Vampire sent, My corse shall from its tomb be rent; Then ghastly haunt thy native place, And suck the blood of all thy race; There, from thy daughter, sister, wife, At midnight drain the stream of life; Yet loathe the banquet which perforce Must feed thy livid living corse. Thy victims, ere they yet expire, Shall know the demon for their sire, As cursing thee, thou cursing them, Thy flowers are withered on the stem. But one that for thy crime must fall, The youngest, most beloved of all, Shall bless thee with _a father's_ name-- That word shall wrap thy heart in flame! Yet must thou end thy task, and mark Her cheek's last tinge, her eye's last spark, And the last glassy glance must view Which freezes o'er its lifeless blue; Then with unhallowed hand shall tear The tresses of her yellow hair, Of which in life a lock, when shorn, Affection's fondest pledge was worn, But now is borne away by thee, Memorial of thine agony! Wet with thine one best blood shall drip Thy gnashing tooth and haggard lip; Then stalking to thy sullen grave, Go, and with Gouls and Afrits rave; Till there in horror shrink away From spectre more accursed than they!" In a note, the noble poet tells us:--"The Vampire superstition is still general in the Levant." Honest Tournefort tells a long story, which Mr. Southey, in the notes on "Thalaba," quotes, about these Vardoulacha, as he calls them. "I recollect a whole family being terrified by the screams of a child, which they imagined must proceed from such a visitation. The Greeks never mention the word without horror." Bishop Heber describes the Vampire Bat of India as a very harmless creature, entirely different from the formidable idea entertained of it in England. "It only eats fruit and vegetables; indeed, its teeth are not indicative of carnivorous habits; and from blood it turns away when offered to it. During the daytime it is, of course, inert; but at night it is lively, affectionate, and playful, knows its keeper, but has no objection to the approach and touch of others." Mr. Westerton, the traveller, when speaking, in his "Wanderings," of the Vampire of South America, says:--"There are two species in Demerara, both of which suck living animals; one is rather larger than the common Bats, the other measures above two feet from wing to wing, extended. So gently does this nocturnal surgeon draw the blood, that instead of being roused, the patient is lulled into a profound sleep." The large Vampire sucks men, commonly attacking the toes; the smaller seems to confine itself chiefly to birds. Captain Stedman, who states that he was bitten by a Bat, thus describes the operation:--"Knowing by instinct that the person they intend to attack is in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet, where, while the creature continues fanning with its enormous wings, which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe, so very small indeed that the head of a pin would scarcely be received into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet through this orifice he continues to suck the blood until he is obliged to disgorge. He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until he is scarcely able to fly; and the sufferer has been often known to sleep from time into eternity. Having applied tobacco-ashes as the best remedy, and washed the gore from myself and my hammock, I observed several small heaps of congealed blood all round the place where I had lain upon the ground, on examining which the surgeon judged that I had lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces during the night." Lesson, in 1827, says:--"The single American species of Bat is celebrated by the fables with which they have accompanied its history. That Bats suck the blood of animals as well as the juices of succulent fruits zoologists are agreed. The rough tongue of one genus was, I suppose, to be employed for abrading the skin, to enable the animal to suck the part abraded; but zoologists are now agreed that the supposition is groundless. It is more than probable that the celebrated Vampire superstition and the blood-sucking qualities attributed to the Bat have some connection with each other." Bat-fowling is mentioned by Shakspeare. This is the mode of taking Bats in the night-time, while they are at roost, upon perches, trees, or hedges. They light torches or straw, and then beat the bushes, upon which the Bats, flying to the flames, are caught, either with nets or otherwise. Bat-fowling, or Bat-folding, is effected by the use of a net, called a trammel-net, and is practised at night. The net should be made of the strongest and finest twine, and extended between two poles about ten feet high, tapering to a point at the top, and meeting at the top of the net. The larger ends are to be held by the persons who take the management of the net, and who, by stretching out the arms, keep the net extended to the utmost, opposite the hedge in which the Bats or birds are supposed to be. Another of the party carries a lantern upon a pole at a short distance behind the centre of the net. One or two others place themselves on the opposite side of the hedge, and by beating it with sticks disturb the Bats or birds, which, being alarmed, fly towards the light, but are interrupted in their flight by the net which is immediately _folded_ upon them, often fifteen or twenty in number. This sport cannot be followed with much success except when the night is very dark, or until very late in the autumn, when the trees, having lost their leaves, the Bats or birds are driven for shelter to the hollies, yews, hayricks, &c. We remember reading, in the "Philosophical Magazine," in 1836, a curious account of the habits of a long-eared Bat, a living specimen of which was given to the children of Mr. De Carle Sowerby, the naturalist. "We constructed," says Mr. Sowerby, "a cage for him, by covering a box with gauze, and making a round hole in the side, fitted with a phial cork. When he was awake, we fed him with flies, introduced through this hole, and thus kept him for several weeks. The animal soon became familiar, and immediately a fly was presented alive at the hole, he would run or fly from any part of the cage, and seize it in our fingers; but a dead or quiet fly he would never touch. At other times, dozens of flies and grasshoppers were left in his cage, and, waking him by their noise, he dexterously caught them as they hopped or flew about, but uniformly disregarded them while they were at rest. The cockroach, hard beetles, and caterpillars he refused. "As we became still more familiar, our new friend was invited to join in our evening amusements, to which he contributed his full share by flitting round the room, at times settling upon our persons, and permitting us to handle and caress him. He announced his being awake by a shrill chirp, which was more acute than that of the cricket. Now was the proper time for feeding him. I before stated that he only took his food alive. It was observed that not only was motion necessary, but that generally some noise on the part of the fly was required to induce him to accept it; and this fact was soon discovered by the children, who were entertained by his taking flies from their fingers as he flew by them, before he was bold enough to settle upon their hands to devour his victims. They quickly improved upon this discovery, and, by imitating the booming of a bee, induced the Bat, directed by the sound, to settle upon their faces, wrapping his wings round their lips, and searching for the expected fly. We observed that, if he took a fly while on the wing, he frequently settled to masticate it; and, when he had been flying about a long time, he would rest upon a curtain, pricking his ears, and turning his head in all directions, when, if a fly were made to buzz, or the sound imitated, he would proceed directly to the spot, even on the opposite side of the room, guided, it would appear, entirely by the ear. Sometimes he took his victim in his mouth, even though it was not flying; at other times he inclosed it in his wings, with which he formed a kind of bag-net. This was his general plan when in his cage, or when the fly was held in our fingers, or between our lips." From these observations Mr. Sowerby concludes that many of the movements of the Bat upon the wing are directed by his exquisite sense of hearing. May not the sensibility of this organ be naturally greater in these animals, whose organs of vision are too susceptible to bear daylight, when those organs, from their nature, would necessarily be of most service?--such as the cat, who hunts by the ear, and the mole, who, feeding in the dark recesses of his subterranean abode, is very sensible of the approach of danger, and expert in avoiding it. In the latter case, large external ears are not required, because sound is well conveyed by solids, and along narrow cavities. In the cases of many Bats, and of owls, the external ears are remarkably developed. Cats combine a quickness of sight with acute hearing. They hunt by the ear, but they follow their prey by the eye. Some Bats are said to feed upon fruits: have they the same delicacy of hearing, feeling, &c., as others? Mr. Sowerby has further described the singular mode adopted by the long-eared Bat in capturing his prey. The flying apparatus is extended from the hind legs to the tail, forming a large bag or net, not unlike two segments of an umbrella, the legs and tail being the ribs. The Bat, having caught the fly, instead of eating it at once, generally covers it with his body, and, by the aid of his arms, &c., forces it into his bag. He then puts his head down under his body, withdraws the fly from his bag, and leisurely devours it. Mr. Sowerby once saw an unwary bluebottle walk beneath the body of the apparently sleeping Bat into the sensitive bag, in which it was immediately imprisoned. White, of Selborne, speaking of a tame Bat, alludes to the above described action, which he compares to that of a beast of prey, but says nothing respecting the bag. Bell, in his "British Quadrupeds," says that the interfemoral membrane of Bats "is probably intended to act as a sort of rudder, in rapidly changing the course of the animal in the pursuit of its insect food. In a large group of foreign Bats, which feed on fruit or other vegetable substances, as well as in some of carnivorous habits, but whose prey is of a less active character, this part is either wholly wanting or much circumscribed in extent and power." May it not be, asks Mr. Sowerby, that they do not require an entomological bag-net? The wing of the Bat is commonly spoken of as of leather; that it is an insensible piece of stuff--the leather of a glove or of a lady's shoe; but nothing can be further from the truth. If one were to select an organ of the most exquisite delicacy and sensibility, it would be the Bat's wing. It is anything but leather, and is, perhaps, the most acute organ of touch that can be found. Bats are supposed to perceive external objects without coming actually in contact with them, because in their rapid and irregular flight, amidst various surrounding bodies, they never fly against them; yet, to some naturalists, it does not appear that the senses of hearing, seeing, or smelling serve them on these occasions, for they avoid any obstacles with equal certainty when the eye, ear, and nose are closed: hence has been ascribed a _sixth sense_ to these animals. The nerves of the wing are large and numerous, and distributed in a minute network between the integuments. The impulse of the air against this part may possibly be so modified by the objects near which the animal passes as to indicate their situation and nature. The Bat tribe fly by means of the fingers of the fore feet, the thumb excepted, being, in these animals, longer than the whole body; and between them is stretched a thin membrane, or web, for flying. It is probable that, in the action of flight, the air, when struck by this wing, or very sensitive hand, impresses a sensation of heat, cold, mobility, and resistance on that organ, which indicates to the animal the existence or absence of obstacles which would interrupt its progress. In this manner blind men discover by their hands, and even by the skin of their faces, the proximity of a wall, door of a house, or side of a street, even without the assistance of touch, and merely by the sensation which the difference in the resistance of the air occasions. Hence they are as little capable of walking on the ground as apes with their hands, or sloths with their hooked claws, which are calculated for climbing. In a certain kind of Bat, the _Nycteris_, there exists a power of inflation to such a degree that, when inflated, the animal looks, according to Geoffroy St. Hilaire, like a _little balloon_ fitted with wings, a head, and feet. It is filled with air through the cheek-pouches, which are perforated at the bottom, so as to communicate with the spaces of the skin to be filled. When the Bat wishes to inflate, it draws in its breath, closes its nostrils, and transmits the air through the perforations of the cheek-pouches to the spaces; and the air is prevented from returning by the action of a muscle which closes those openings, and by valves of considerable size on the neck and back. There was formerly a vulgar opinion that Bats, when down on a flat surface, could not get on the wing again, by rising with great ease from the floor; but White saw a Bat run, with more dispatch than he was aware of, though in a most ridiculous and grotesque manner. The adroitness with which this Bat sheared off the wings of flies, which were always rejected, was very amusing. He did not refuse raw flesh when offered; so that the notion that Bats go down chimneys, and gnaw men's bacon, seems no improbable story. Mr. George Daniell describes a female Bat, who took her food with an action similar to that of a dog. The animal took considerable pains in cleaning herself, parting the hair on either side, from head to tail, and forming a straight line along the middle of the back. The membrane of the wings was cleaned by forcing the nose through the folds, and thereby expanding them. This Bat fed freely, and at some times voraciously, the quantity exceeding half an ounce, although the weight of the animal itself was not more than ten drams. The _Kalong_ Bat of the Javanese is extremely abundant in the lower parts of Java, and uniformly lives in society. The more elevated districts are not visited by it. "Numerous individuals," says Dr. Hornfield, "select a large tree, and, suspending themselves with the claws of their posterior extremities to the naked branches, often in companies of several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular spectacle. A species of ficus (fig-tree), resembling the _ficus religiosa_ of India, affords them a very favourite retreat, and the extended branches of one of these are sometimes covered by them. They pass the greater portion of the day in sleep, hanging motionless, ranged in succession, with the head downwards, the membrane contracted about the body, and often in close contact. They have little resemblance to living beings; and, by a person not accustomed to their economy, are readily mistaken for a part of the tree, or for a fruit of uncommon size suspended from its branches." In general, these societies are silent during the day; but if they are disturbed, or a contention arises among them, they emit sharp, piercing shrieks; and their awkward attempts to extricate themselves, when oppressed by the light of the sun, exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon after sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their nocturnal flight in quest of food. They direct their course by an unerring instinct to the forests, villages, and plantations, attacking and devouring every kind of fruit, from the abundant and useful cocoa-nut, which surrounds the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare and most delicate productions which are cultivated by princes and chiefs of distinction. Various methods are employed to protect the orchards and gardens. Delicate fruits are secured by a loose net or basket, skilfully constructed of split bamboo, without which precaution little valuable fruit would escape the ravages of the _Kalong_. There are few situations in the lower part of Java in which this night wanderer is not constantly observed. As soon as the light of the sun has retired, one animal is seen to follow the other at a small but irregular distance, and this accession continues uninterrupted till dark:-- "The night came on apace, And falling dews bewet around the place; The bat takes airy rounds, on leathern wings, And the hoarse owl his woful dirges sings." Gay's "_Pastoral III_." Bats of the ordinary size are very numerous in Jamaica. They are found in mills and old houses. They do great mischief in gardens, where they eat the green peas, opening the pod over each pea, and removing it very dexterously. Gilbert White, of Selborne, first noticed a large species of Bat, which he named _altivolans_, from its manner of feeding high in the air. In the extent of its wings it measured 14-1/2 inches; and it weighed, when entirely full, one ounce and one drachm. It is found in numbers together, so many as 185 having been taken in one night from the eaves of Queens' College, Cambridge. In the Northern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum are representatives of the several species of Bats, all bearing a family resemblance to each other. In England alone there are eighteen known species. Here is the curious leaf-nosed Bat, from Brazil, supposed to excel in the sense of smell; also, the Vampire, or large blood-sucking Bat, from the same country; and the different kinds of fruit-eating Bats, found in America and Australia, and sometimes called flying foxes, on account of their great size. The Bats of temperate climates remain torpid during the winter. Gay has these lines:-- "Where swallows in the winter season keep; And here the drowsy bat and dormouse sleep." Young Bats have been taken, when hovering near the ground, by throwing handfuls of sand, but they rarely live in confinement: they often die within a week after their capture. A Bat, taken in Elgin, gave birth to a young one, which was for two days suckled by its parent. Before she reached the age of three days the young bat died, and the parent only survived another day to mourn her loss. Sometimes females, when taken, have young ones clinging to their breast, in the act of sucking; and the female can fly with ease, though two little ones are attached to her, which weigh nearly as much as the parent. To return to an exaggeration of a famous old traveller. In "Purchas his Pilgrimage," the materials for which he borrowed from above thirteen hundred authors, when speaking of the island of Madura, in the South of India, he says:--"In these partes are Battes as big as Hennes, which the people roast and eat." THE HEDGEHOG. Of this animal some strange things are recorded. It is placed by Cuvier at the head of the insect-devouring Mammifera. It is found in Europe, Africa, and India. Its body is covered with strong and sharp prickles, and by the help of a muscle it can contract itself into a ball, and so withdraw its whole underpart, head, belly, and legs, within this thicket of prickles: "Like Hedgehogs, which Lie tumbling in my barefoot way, and mount Their pricks at my foot-fall."--Shakspeare's "_Tempest_." Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," has this odd conceit:--"Few have belief to swallow, or hope enough to experience, the collyrium of Albertus; that is, to make one see in the dark: yet thus much, according to his receipts, will the right eye of an Hedgehog, boiled in oil, and preserved in a brazen vessel, effect." Hedgehog was an old term of reproach; but we have heard a well-set argument compared to a hedgehog--all points. The food of the Hedgehog, which is a nocturnal animal, consists principally of insects, worms, slugs, and snails. That it will eat vegetables is shown by White of Selborne, who relates how it eats the root of the plantain by boring beneath it, leaving the tuft of leaves untouched. The Hedgehog is reputed to supply itself with a winter covering of leaves. So far as we are aware, it has not been observed in the act of forming the covering of leaves, though it is supposed to roll itself about till its spines take up a sufficient number, in the same way as it is popularly believed (without proof) to do with apples. Blumenbach states that he was assured, "by three credible witnesses," that Hedgehogs so gather fruit; but Buffon, who kept several Hedgehogs for observation, declares they never practise any such habit. The voracity of the Hedgehog is very great. A female, with a young one, was placed in a kitchen, having the run of the beetles at night, besides having always bread and milk within their reach. One day, however, the servants heard a mysterious crunching sound in the kitchen, and found, on examination, that nothing was left of the young Hedgehog but the skin and prickles--the mother had devoured her little pig! A Hedgehog has also been known to eat a couple of rabbits which had been confined with it, and killing others; it has likewise been known to kill hares. A Hedgehog was placed in one hamper, a wood-pigeon in another, and two starlings in a third; the lid of each hamper was tied down with string, and the hampers were placed in a garden-house, which was fastened in the evening. Next morning the strings to the hampers were found severed, the starlings and wood-pigeon dead and eaten, feathers alone remaining in their hampers, and the Hedgehog alive in the wood-pigeon's hamper. As no other animal could have got into the garden-house it was concluded that the Hedgehog had killed and eaten the birds. In the "Zoological Journal," vol. ii., is an account by Mr. Broderip of an experiment made by Professor Buckland proving that in captivity at least the Hedgehog will devour snakes; but there is no good reason for supposing that it will not do the same in a state of nature, for frogs, toads, and other reptiles, and mice, have been recorded as its prey. From its fondness for insects it is often placed in the London kitchens to keep down the swarm of cockroaches with which they are infested; and there are generally Hedgehogs on sale at Covent Garden Market for this purpose. The idle story that the persecuted Hedgehog sucks cows has been thus quaintly refuted:--"In the case of an animal giving suck, the teat is embraced round by the mouth of the young one, so that no air can pass between; a vacuum is made, or the air is exhausted from its throat, by a power in the lungs; nevertheless the pressure of the air remains still upon the outside of the dug of the mother, and by these two causes together the milk is forced in the mouth of the young one. But a Hedgehog has no such mouth as to be able to contain the teat of a cow; therefore any vacuum which is caused in its own throat cannot be communicated to the milk in the dug. And if he is able to procure no other food but what he can get by sucking cows in the night, there is likely to be a vacuum in his stomach too." (_New Catalogue of Vulgar Errors._ By Stephen Fovargue, A.M., 1786.) Yet, according to Sir William Jardine, the Hedgehog is very fond of eggs; and is consequently very mischievous in the game-preserve and hen-house. One of the most interesting facts in the natural history of the Hedgehog is that announced in 1831 by M. Lenz, and subsequently confirmed by Professor Buckland: this is, that the most violent poisons have no effect upon it; a fact which renders it of peculiar value in forests, where it appears to destroy a great number of noxious reptiles. M. Lenz says that he had in his house a female Hedgehog, which he kept in a large box, and which soon became very mild and familiar. He often put into the box some adders, which it attacked with avidity, seizing them indifferently by the head, the body, and the tail, and not appearing alarmed or embarrassed when they coiled themselves around its body. On one occasion M. Lenz witnessed a fight between a Hedgehog and a viper. When the Hedgehog came near and smelled the snake, for with these animals the sense of sight is very obtuse, she seized it by the head, and held it fast between her teeth, but without appearing to do it much harm; for having disengaged its head, it assumed a furious and menacing attitude, and, hissing vehemently, inflicted severe bites on the Hedgehog. The animal did not, however, recoil from the bites of the viper, or indeed seem to care much about them. At last, when the reptile was fatigued by its efforts, she again seized it by the head, which she ground beneath her teeth, compressing the fangs and glands of poison, and then devouring every part of the body. M. Lenz says that battles of this sort often occurred in the presence of many persons, and sometimes the Hedgehog received eight or ten wounds on the ears, the snout, and even on the tongue, without seeming to experience any of the ordinary symptoms produced by the venom of the viper. Neither herself nor the young which she was then suckling seemed to suffer from it. This observation agrees with that of Pallas, who assures us that the Hedgehog can eat about a hundred Cantharides (Spanish Flies) without experiencing any of the effects which this insect, taken inwardly, produces on men, dogs, and cats. A German physician, who made the Hedgehog a particular object of study, gave it strong doses of prussic acid, of arsenic, of opium, and of corrosive sublimate, none of which did it any harm. The Hedgehog in its natural state only feeds on pears, apples, and other fruits when it can get nothing it likes better. The Hedgehog hybernates regularly, and early in the summer brings forth from two to four young ones at a birth, which, at the time of their production, are blind, and have the spines white, soft, and flexible. The nest wherein they are cradled is said to be very artificially constructed, the roof being rain-proof. The flesh of the Hedgehog, when it has been well fed, is sweet and well flavoured, and is eaten on the Continent in many places. In Britain a few besides gipsies partake of it. The prickly skin appears to have been used by the Romans for hackling hemp. Gilbert White notes that when the Hedgehog is very young it can draw its skin down over its face, but is not able to contract itself into a ball, as the creature does, for the sake of defence when full grown. The reason, White supposes, is because the curious muscle that enables the Hedgehog to roll itself up into a ball has not then arrived at its full tone and firmness. Hedgehogs conceal themselves for the winter in their warm _hybernaculum_ of leaves and moss; but White could never find that they stored in any winter provision, as some quadrupeds certainly do. THE HIPPOPOTAMUS IN ENGLAND. In the year 1850 there was exhibited in London a living Hippopotamus, for many centuries the only instance of this extraordinary animal being seen in Europe. There is something irresistibly striking in seeing a living animal, not one of whose species we have before seen, and especially when that animal is a large one, as in the instance before us. We had been wonderstruck at forms of this creature in the old British Museum, where were two finely-preserved specimens. The Rhinoceros alive was, until of late years, very rare in England. In 1834 Mr. Cross paid some 1,500_l._ for a young Indian one-horned Rhinoceros, this being the only one brought to England for twenty years. He proved attractive, but slightly so in comparison with the expectation of a living Hippopotamus, never witnessed before in this country. The circumstances of his acquisition were as follows:-- The Zoological Society of London had long been anxious to obtain a living Hippopotamus for their menagerie, but without success. An American agent at Alexandria had offered 5,000_l._ for an animal of this species, but in vain; no speculator could be induced to encounter the risk and labour of an expedition to the White Nile for the purpose of securing the animal. The desire of the Zoological Society was communicated to the Viceroy of Egypt, who saw the difficulty. Hasselquist states it to have been impossible to bring the living animal to Cairo; and the French _savans_, attached to the expedition to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one Hippopotamus. Caillaud, however, asserts that he saw forty Hippopotami in the Upper Nile, though their resort lay fifteen hundred miles or more from Cairo. Here they were often shot with rifle-balls, but to take one alive was another matter. However, by command of the Viceroy, the proper parties were sent in search of the animal. In August, 1849, the hunters having reached the island of Fobaysch, on the White Nile, about 2,000 miles above Cairo, shot a large female Hippopotamus in full chase up the river. The wounded creature turned aside and made towards some bushes on the island bank, but sank dead in the effort. The hunters, however, kept on towards the bushes, when a young Hippopotamus, supposed to have been recently brought forth, not much bigger than a new-born calf, but stouter and lower, rushed down the bank of the river, was secured by a boatman and lifted into the boat. The captors started with their charge down the Nile. The food of their young animal was their next anxiety; he liked neither fish, flesh, fruit, nor grass. The boat next stopped at a village; their cows were seized and milked, and the young charge lapped up the produce. A good milch cow was taken on board, and with this supply the Hippopotamus reached Cairo. The colour of his skin at this time was a dull reddish brown. He was shown to the Pasha in due form; the present created intense wonder and interest in Cairo; gaping crowds filled its narrow sandy streets, and a whale at London-bridge would scarcely excite half so much curiosity. It being thought safer for the animal to winter in Cairo than to proceed forthwith on his journey, the Consul had duly prepared to receive the young stranger, for whom he had engaged a sort of nurse. Hamet Safi Cannana. An apartment was allotted to the Hippopotamus in the court-yard of the Consul's house, leading to a warm or tepid bath. His milk-diet, however, became a troublesome affair, for the new comer never drank less than from twenty to thirty quarts daily. By the next mail after the arrival of the Hippopotamus, the Consul despatched the glad tidings to the Zoological Society. The animal was shipped at Alexandria, in the Ripon steamer. On the main deck was built a house, from which were steps down into an iron tank in the hold, containing 400 gallons of water, as a bath: it was filled with fresh water every other day. Early in May, the Hippopotamus was conveyed in the canal-boat, with Hamet Safi Cannana, to Alexandria, where the debarkation was witnessed by 10,000 spectators. The animal bore the voyage well. He lived exclusively on milk, of which he consumed daily about forty pints, yielded by the cows taken on board. He was very tame, and, like a faithful dog, followed his Arab attendant Hamet, who was seldom away more than five minutes without being summoned to return by a loud grunt. Hamet slept in a berth with the Hippopotamus. On May 25 they were landed at Southampton, and sent by railway to London. On arriving at the Zoological Society's Gardens, Hamet walked first out of the transport van, with a bag of dates over his shoulder, and the Hippopotamus trotted after him. Next morning he greatly enjoyed the bath which had been prepared for him. Although scarcely twelve months old, his massive proportions indicated the enormous power to be developed in his maturer growth; while the grotesque expression of his physiognomy far exceeded all that could be imagined from the stuffed specimens in museums, and the figures which had hitherto been published from the reminiscences of travellers. Among the earliest visitors was Professor Owen, who first saw the Hippopotamus lying on its side in the straw, with its head resting against the chair in which sat the swarthy attendant. It now and then grunted softly, and, lazily opening its thick, smooth eyelids, leered at its keeper with a singular protruding movement of the eyeball from the prominent socket, showing an unusual proportion of the white. The retraction of the eyeball was accompanied by a simultaneous rolling obliquely downwards, or inwards, or forwards. The young animal, then ten months' old, was seven feet long, and six and a-half in girth at the middle of the barrel-shaped trunk, supported, clear of the ground, on very short and thick legs, each terminated by four spreading hoofs, the two middle ones being the largest, and answering to those in the hog. The naked hide, covering the broad back and sides, was of a dark, india-rubber colour, with numerous fine wrinkles crossing each other, but disposed almost transversely. The beast had just left its bath, when a glistening secretion gave the hide, in the sunshine, a very peculiar aspect. When the animal was younger, the secretion had a reddish colour, and the whole surface of the hide became painted over with it every time he quitted his bath. The ears, which were very short, conical, and fringed with hairs, it moved about with much vivacity. The skin around them was of a light reddish-brown colour, and almost flesh-coloured round the eyelids, which defended the prominent eyes, which had a few short hairs on the margin of the upper lid. The colour of the iris was of a dark brown. The nostrils, situated on prominences, which the animal had the power of raising on the upper part of the broad and massive muzzle, were short oblique slits, guarded by two valves, which were opened and closed spontaneously, like the eyelids. The movements of these apertures were most conspicuous when the beast was in the bath. The wide mouth was chiefly remarkable for the upward curve of its angles towards the eyes, giving a quaintly comic expression to the massive countenance. The short and small milk-tusks projected a little, and the minute incisors appeared to be sunk in pits of the thick gums; but the animal would not permit any close examination of the teeth, withdrawing his head from the attempt, and then threatening to bite. The muzzle was beset with short bristles, split into tufts or pencils of hairs; and fine and short hairs were scattered all over the back and sides. The tail was not long, rather flattened and tapering to an obtuse point. We may here observe that, at certain moments, the whole aspect of the head suggested to one the idea of what may have been the semblance of some of the gigantic extinct Batrachians (as sirens), the relics of a former world, whose fossil bones in the galleries of Palæontology in the British Museum excite our special wonder. After lying about an hour, now and then raising its head, and swivelling its eyeballs towards the keeper, or playfully opening its huge mouth, and threatening to bite the leg of the chair on which the keeper sat, the Hippopotamus rose, and walked very slowly about its room, and then uttered a loud and short harsh snort four or five times in quick succession, reminding one of the snort of a horse, and ending with an explosive sound, like a bark. The keeper understood the language--the animal desired to return to its bath. The Hippopotamus carried its head rather depressed, reminding one of a large prize hog, but with a breadth of muzzle and other features peculiarly its own. The keeper opened the door leading into a paddock, and walked thence to the bath, the Hippopotamus following, like a dog, close to his heels. On arriving at the bath-room, the animal descended with some deliberation the flight of low steps leading into the water, stooped and drank a little, dipped his head under, and then plunged forwards. The creature seemed inspired with new life and activity. Sinking to the bottom of the bath, and moving about submerged for a while, it suddenly rose with a bound almost bodily out of the water. Splashing back, it commenced swimming and plunging about, rolling from side to side, taking in mouthfuls of water and spirting them out again, raising every now and then its huge and grotesque head, and biting the woodwork of the margin of the bath. The broad rounded back of the animal being now chiefly in view, it seemed a much larger object than when out of the water. After half an hour spent in this amusement, the Hippopotamus quitted the water at the call of its keeper, and followed him back to the sleeping-room, which was well bedded with straw, and where a stuffed sack was provided for its pillow, of which the animal, having a very short neck, thicker than the head, availed itself when it slept. When awake, it was very impatient of any absence of its favourite attendant. It would rise on its hind legs, and threaten to break down the wooden fence, by butting and pushing against it in a way very significant of its great muscular force. The animal appeared to be in perfect health, and breathed, when at rest, slowly and regularly, from three to four times in a minute. Its food was now a kind of porridge, of milk and maize-meat, it being more than half weaned from milk diet. Its appetite had been in no respect diminished by the confinement and inconvenience of the sea voyage, or by change of climate. All observers appear to have agreed that, to see the Hippopotamus rightly, is to see him in the water. There his activity is only surpassed by that of the otter or the seal. Such was one of the opportunities afforded to zoologists for "studying this most remarkable and interesting African mammal, of which no living specimen had been seen in Europe since the period when Hippopotami were last exhibited by the third Gordian in the amphitheatre of imperial Rome."[7] It is now time to glance at the general economy of the Hippopotamus, as he is seen in his native rivers and wilds. In early days, as his Roman name imports, it was usual to consider him as a species of horse, inhabiting rivers and marshy grounds, and, in a more especial manner, the denizen of the Nile. The genus is placed by Linnæus among his _belluæ_, between _equus_ and _sus_. The skeleton approaches that of the ox and of the hog, but it presents differences from that of any other animal. The Hippopotamus is found not only in the Nile, but in the rivers of southern Africa. In the former stream of marvels, Hasselquist relates that "the oftener the River Horse goes on shore, the better hope have the Egyptians of a sufficient swelling or increase of the Nile." Again, they say that the River Horse is an inveterate enemy to the crocodile, and kills it whenever he meets it; adding that he does much damage to the Egyptians in those places he frequents. He goes on shore, and, in a short space of time, destroys an entire field of corn or clover, not leaving the least verdure, for he is very voracious. Yet neither of these stories is so marvellous as that which a sailor related to Dampier, the old traveller:--"I have seen," says the mariner, "one of these animals open its jaws, and, seizing a boat between its teeth, at one bite sink it to the bottom. I have seen it, on another occasion, place itself under one of our boats, and, rising under it, overset it with six men who were in it, but who, however, happily received no other injury." Professor Smith and Captain Tuckey, in exploring the Congo River, in South Africa, saw in a beautiful sandy cove, at the opening of a creek, behind a long projecting point, an immense number of Hippopotami; and in the evening a number of alligators were also seen there; an association hardly consistent with the hostility related by Hasselquist. Captain Tuckey observed Hippopotami with their heads above the water, "snorting in the air." In another part of his narrative he says:--"Many Hippopotami were visible close to our tents at Condo Yanga. No use firing at these animals in the water; the only way is to wait till they come on shore to feed at night." Le Vaillant had an opportunity of watching the progress of a Hippopotamus under water at Great River, which contained many of these animals. On all sides he could hear them bellow and blow. Anxious to observe them, he mounted on the top of an elevated rock which advanced into the river, and he saw one walking at the bottom of the water. Le Vaillant killed it at the moment when it came to the surface to breathe. It was a very old female, and many people, in their surprise, and to express its size, called it the Grandmother of the River. The traveller Lander tells us that, on the Niger. Hippopotami are termed water-elephants. One stormy night, as they were sailing up this unexplored current, they fell in with great numbers of Hippopotami, who came plashing, snorting, and plunging all round the canoe. Thinking to frighten them off, the travellers fired a shot or two at them, but the noise only called up from the water and out of the fens about as many more Hippopotami, and they were more closely beset than before. Lander's people, who had never, in all their lives, been exposed to such formidable beasts, trembled with fear, and absolutely wept aloud; whilst peals of thunder rattled over their heads, and the most vivid lightning showed the terrifying scene. Hippopotami frequently upset canoes in the river. When the Landers fired, every one of them came to the surface of the water, and pursued them over to the north bank. A second firing was followed by a loud roaring noise. However, the Hippopotami did the travellers no kind of mischief whatever. Captain Gordon, when among the Bakalahari, in South Africa, bagged no fewer than fifteen first-rate Hippopotami; the greater number of them being bulls. In 1828, there was brought to England the head of a Hippopotamus, with all the flesh about it, in high preservation. The animal was harpooned while in combat with a crocodile in a lake in the interior of Africa. The head measured nearly four feet in length, and eight feet in circumference; the jaws opened two feet, and the cutting teeth, of which it had four in each jaw, were above a foot long, and four inches in circumference. The utility of this vast pachydermatous, or thick-skinned animal, to man is considerable. That he can be destructive has already been shown in his clearance of the cultivated banks of rivers. The enormous ripping, chisel-like teeth of the lower jaw fit him for uprooting. The ancient Egyptians held the animal as an emblem of power, though this may have arisen from his reputed destruction of the crocodile. The flesh is much esteemed for food, both among the natives and colonists of South Africa. The blood of the animal is said to have been used by the old Indian painters in mixing their colours. The skin is extensively employed for making whips. But there is no part of the Hippopotamus more in request than the great canine teeth, the ivory of which is so highly valued by dentists for making artificial teeth, on account of its keeping its colour better than any other kind. This superiority was not unknown to the ancients Pausanias mentions the statue of Dindymene, whose face was formed of the teeth of Hippopotami, instead of elephants' ivory. The canine teeth are imported in great numbers into England, and sell at a very high price. From the closeness of the ivory, the weight of the teeth, a part only of which is available for the artificial purpose above mentioned, is great in proportion to its bulk; and the article has fetched about thirty shillings per pound. The ancient history of the Hippopotamus is extremely curious, and we have many representations of him in coins, in sculpture, and in paintings, which prove, beyond question, that the artists, as well as the writers, had a distinct knowledge of what they intended to represent. The earliest notice which occurs in any author, and which has been considered by many to be a description of the Hippopotamus, is the celebrated account in the fortieth and forty-first chapter of the Book of Job of Behemoth and Leviathan. Many learned men have contended that "Behemoth" really means "Elephant," and thus the Zurich version of the Bible translates the Hebrew by "Elephas." In the edition of the English Bible, printed by Robert Barker, in 1615, for King James I., and since considered as the authorised version, the word "Behemoth" is preserved in the text, and the following annotation is added:--"This beast is thought to bee the Elephant, or some other which is unknowen." Bochart, Ludolph, and some others, have contended warmly in favour of the Hippopotamus. Cuvier thinks, that though this animal is probably intended, yet that the description is too vague for any one to hold a certain opinion on the subject. The theory started by Bochart, and in the main supported by Cuvier, is generally supposed the real one. The description in the Book of Job, though doubtless vague, and in the highest degree poetical, has yet sufficient marks to render the identification perfectly easy, while there are certain peculiarities mentioned, which even a poetical imagination could hardly apply to the Elephant. Thus, when it is said of him, "He lieth under the shady trees, in the desert of the reed and fens; ... the willows of the brook compass him round about," this would seem to be the description of an animal which frequented the water much more than Elephants are accustomed to do. Again, in the fuller description of "Leviathan," in the forty-first chapter, we think it is quite clear that a water animal is intended, though what is there stated might be held to apply to the crocodile as well as the Hippopotamus; both are animals remarkable for extreme toughness of skin, and both are almost equally difficult to kill or to take alive. Of profane authors, Herodotus is the first who notices this animal, but his account is far from accurate: the size he states as large as the biggest ox. That the animal was sacred, in some parts at least, appears from Herodotus, who says:--"Those which are found in the district of Paprennis are sacred, but in other parts of Egypt they are not considered in the same light." Aristotle makes it no bigger than an ass; Diodorus, an elephant; Pliny ascribes to it the tail and teeth of a boar, adding, that helmets and bucklers are made of the skin. Hippopotami figured in the triumphal processions of the Roman conquerors on their return home. M. Scaurus exhibited five crocodiles and an Hippopotamus; and Augustus one in his triumph over Cleopatra. Antoninus exhibited Hippopotami, with lions and other animals; Commodus no less than five, some of which he slew with his own hand. Heliogabalus, and the third Gordian, also exhibited Hippopotami. The Hippopotamus of the London Zoological Society was joined by his mate, the more juvenile "Adhela," in 1853. Two Hippopotami have lately been born in Europe; one in the Garden of Plants, at Paris, in 1858; and another in the Zoological Gardens at Amsterdam, in 1866. With regard to the alleged disappearance of the Hippopotamus from Lower Egypt, Cuvier remarks, that the French savans attached to the Expedition to Egypt, who ascended the Nile above Syene, did not meet with one. In some of the rivers of Liberia, and other parts, perhaps, of Western Africa, a second species of Hippopotamus exists, and is proved to be a very distinct animal. We have yet to glance at the Hippopotami of a former world. Many species are recognised in the fossil remains of Europe and Asia as formerly existing in England and in France. Cuvier detected bones of the Hippopotamus among the fossil wealth of the Great Kirkdale Cavern in Yorkshire, in 1821. They have also been found in France, and especially in the Sewatick Hills in India. In the Museum of the London Zoological Society are two skulls of Hippopotami--one fossil. This measures two feet three inches, and allowing for skin and lip, two feet six inches. Now, as the head is about one-fifth the length of the body, without the tail, the full-grown animal would be little, if any, short of fifteen feet from nose to tail--a size worthy the description of the Behemoth. We may here add, that Burckhardt, in his "Travels in Nubia," describes the voice of the Hippopotamus as a hard and heavy sound, like the creaking or groaning of a large wooden door. This noise, he says, is made when the animal raises his huge head out of the water, and when he retires into it again. FOOTNOTE: [7] Professor Owen. LION-TALK. The Lion has, within the present century, lost caste, and fallen considerably from his high estate. He has been stripped of much of his conventional reputation by the spirit of inquiry into the validity of olden notions, which characterises the present age; and it appears that much of his celebrity is founded upon popular error. Nor are these results the work of stay-at-home travellers; but they are derived from the observation and experience of those who, amidst scenes of perilous adventure, seek to enlarge and correct our views of the habit and character of the overrated Lion. Mr. Bennett, in his admirable work, "The Tower Menagerie," has these very sensible remarks:--"In speaking of the Lion we call up to our imaginations the splendid picture of might unmingled with ferocity, of courage undebased by guile, of dignity tempered by grace and ennobled by generosity. Such is the Lion of Buffon; who, in describing this animal, as in too many other instances, has suffered himself to be borne along by the strong tide of popular opinion; but, as the Lion appears in his native regions, according to the authentic accounts of those travellers and naturalists who have had the best means of correctly observing his habits, he is by no means so admirable a creature. Where the timid antelope and powerless monkey fall his easy and unresisting prey--or where the elephant and buffalo find their unwieldy bulk and strength no adequate protection against his impetuous agility--he stalks boldly to and fro in fearless majesty. But in the neighbourhood of man--even in that of uncultivated savages--_he skulks in treacherous ambush for his prey_. Of his forbearance and generosity it can merely be said, that when free, he destroys only what is sufficient to satiate his hunger or revenge; and when in captivity--his wants being provided for, and his feelings not irritated--he suffers smaller animals to live unmolested in his den, or submits to the control of a keeper by whom he is fed. But even this limited degree of docility is liable to fearful interruptions from the calls of hunger, the feelings of revenge--and these he frequently cherishes for a long period--with various other circumstances which render it dangerous to approach him in his most domesticated state, without ascertaining his immediate mood and temper. That an animal which seldom attacks by open force, but silently approaches his victim, and when he imagines his prey to be within his reach, bounds upon it with an overwhelming leap, should ever have been regarded as the type of courage and the emblem of magnanimity, is indeed most astonishing!" The generosity of disposition so liberally accorded to this powerful beast has been much and eloquently praised; and it seems hard to dissipate the glowing vision which Buffon has raised; but, if there is any dependence to be placed on the observations of those travellers who have had the best opportunities of judging, and have the highest character for veracity, we must be compelled to acknowledge that Buffon's Lion is the Lion of poetry and prejudice, and very unlike the cautious lurking savage that steals on its comparatively weak prey by surprise, overwhelms it at once by the terror, the weight, and the violence of the attack, and is intent only on the gratification of the appetite. "At the time," says Mr. Burchell, "when men first adopted the Lion as the emblem of courage, it would seem that they regarded great size and strength as indicating it; but they were greatly mistaken in the character they had given of the indolent animal." Indeed, Mr. Burchell calls the Lion an "indolent skulking animal." The fact of the Lion sparing the dog that was thrown to him, and making a friend of the little animal that was destined for his prey, has been much dwelt on; but these and other such acts of mercy, as they have been called, may be very easily accounted for. If not pressed by hunger, the Lion will seldom be at the trouble of killing prey; and the desire for a companion has created much stronger friendships between animals in confinement than between a Lion and a little dog. St. Pierre touchingly describes the Lion of Versailles, who, in 1792, lived most happily with a dog, and on whose death he became disconsolate and miserable; and in confinement the "lordly Lion," as Young calls him, has been known to be deeply afflicted with melancholy at similar losses. The Lion is easily tamed, and capable of attachment to man. The story of Androdas, frequently called Androcles, is too well known to need more than allusion; but in this and other stories of Lions licking men's hands without injuring them, there must be a stretch of fancy; for the Lion's tongue has sharp thorn-points, inclining backwards, so as not to be able to lick the hand without tearing away the skin, which any one will understand who has _heard_ the Lion tear the raw meat away from the bone of his food. Still, very different accounts are given by travellers of the cruelty or generosity of the Lion's nature; which results, in all probability, from a difference in time or circumstances, or the degree of hunger which the individual experienced when the respective observations were made upon him. Meanwhile, there are many points in the history of the Lion which are yet but imperfectly understood; the explanations of which, whilst they are interesting, add to our correct knowledge of this still extraordinary animal. The Lion has been styled "The King of the Forest," which is not very applicable to him, seeing that Mr. Burchell at least never met with but one Lion on the plains; nor did he ever meet with one in any of the forests where he had been. The low cover that creeps along the sides of streams, the patches that mark the springs in the rank grass of the valley, seem to be the shelter which the African Lion, for the most part, seeks. His strength is extraordinary. To carry off a man (and there are dismal accounts of this horrible fact, which there is no reason to doubt) appears a feat of no difficulty to this powerful brute. A Cape Lion, seizing a heifer in his mouth, has carried her off with the same ease as a cat does a rat; and has leaped with her over a broad dyke without the least difficulty. A young Lion, too, has conveyed a horse about a mile from the spot where he had killed it. There seems to be an idea that the Lion preserves human prey; but, be this as it may, the inhabitants of certain districts have been under the necessity of resorting to a curious expedient to get out of the Lion's reach. Ælian, by the way, records the extinction of a Libyan people by an invasion of Lions. We read of a large tree, in the country of the Mantatees, which has amidst its limbs fourteen conical huts. These are used as dormitories, being beyond the reach of the Lions, which, since the incursions of the Mantatees, when so many thousands of persons were massacred, have become very numerous in the neighbourhood, and destructive to human life. The branches of the above trees are supported by forked sticks or poles, and there are three tiers or platforms on which the huts are constructed. The lowest is nine feet from the ground, and holds ten huts; the second, about eight feet high, has three huts; and the upper story, if it may be so called, contains four. The ascent to these is made by notches cut in the poles; the huts are built with twigs, and thatched with straw, and will contain two persons conveniently. This tree stands at the base of a range of mountains due east of Kurrichaine, in a place called "Ongorutcie Fountain," about 1,000 miles north-east of Cape Town. Kurrichaine is the Staffordshire as well as the Birmingham of that part of South Africa. There are likewise whole villages of huts erected on stakes, about eight feet from the ground; the inhabitants, it is stated, sit under the shade of these platforms during the day, and retire to the elevated huts at night. Though mortal accidents frequently occur in Lion-hunting, the cool sportsman seldom fails of using his rifle with effect. Lions, when roused, it seems, walk off quietly at first, and if no cover is near, and they are not pursued, they gradually mend their pace to a trot, till they have reached a good distance, and then they bound away. Their demeanour is careless, as if they did not want a fray, but if pressed, are ready to fight it out. If they are pursued closely, they turn and crouch, generally with their faces to the adversary: then the nerves of the sportsman are tried. If he is collected, and master of his craft, the well-directed rifle ends the scene at once; but if, in the flutter of the moment, the vital parts are missed, or the ball passes by, leaving the Lion unhurt, the infuriated beast frequently charges on his enemies, dealing destruction around him. This, however, is not always the case; and a steady, unshrinking deportment has, in some instances, saved the life of the hunter. There is hardly a book of African travels which does not teem with the dangers and hair-breadth escapes of the Lion-hunters; and hardly one that does not include a fatal issue to some engaged in this hazardous sport. The modes of destruction employed against the powerful beast are very various--from the poisonous arrow of the Bushman to the rifle of the colonist. The Lion may be safely attacked while sleeping, because of the dullness of his sense of hearing, the difficulty of awakening him, and his want of presence of mind if he be so awakened. Thus the Bushmen of Africa are enabled to keep the country tolerably clear of Lions, without encountering any great danger. The bone of the Lion's fore-leg is of remarkable hardness, from its containing a greater quantity of phosphate of lime than is found in ordinary bones, so that it may resist the powerful contraction of the muscles. The texture of this bone is so compact that the substance will strike fire with steel. He has little sense of taste, his lingual or tongue-nerve not being larger than that of a middle-sized dog. The true Lions belong to the Old World exclusively, and they were formerly widely and abundantly diffused; but at present they are confined to Asia and Africa, and they are becoming every day more and more scarce in those quarters of the globe. That Lions were once found in Europe there can be no doubt. Thus it is recorded by Herodotus that the baggage-camels of the army of Xerxes were attacked by Lions in the country of the Reonians and the Crestonæi on their march from Acanthus (near the peninsula of Mount Athos) to Therma, afterwards Thessalonica (now Saloniki); the camels alone, it is stated, were attacked, other beasts remaining untouched, as well as men. Pausanias copies the above story, and states, moreover, that Lions often descended into the plains at the foot of Olympus, which separate Macedonia from Thessaly, and that Polydamas, a celebrated athlete, slew one of the Lions, although he was unarmed. Nor is Europe the only part of the world from which the form of the Lion has disappeared. Lions are no longer to be found in Egypt, Palestine, or Syria, where they once were evidently far from uncommon. The frequent allusions to the Lion in the Holy Scriptures, and the various Hebrew terms there used to distinguish the different ages and sex of the animal, prove a familiarity with the habits of the race. Even in Asia generally, with the exception of some countries between India and Persia and some districts of Arabia, these magnificent beasts have, as Cuvier observes, become comparatively rare, and this is not to be wondered at. To say nothing of the immense draughts on the race for the Roman arena,--and they were not inconsiderable, for, as Zimmerman has shown, there were 1,000 lions killed at Rome in the space of forty years,--population and civilization have gradually driven them within narrower limits, and their destruction has been rapidly worked in modern times, when firearms have been used against them instead of the bow and the spear. Sylla gave a combat of one hundred Lions at once in his ædileship; but this exhibition is insignificant when compared with those of Pompey and Cæsar, the former of whom exhibited a fight of six hundred, and the latter of four hundred Lions. In Pompey's show three hundred and fifteen of the six hundred were males. The early Emperors consumed great numbers, frequently a hundred at a time, to gratify the people. The African Lion is annually retiring before the persecution of man farther and farther from the Cape. Mr. Bennett says of the Lion:--"His true country is Africa, in the vast and untrodden wilds of which, from the immense deserts of the north to the trackless forests of the south, he reigns supreme and uncontrolled. In the sandy deserts of Arabia, in some of the wild districts of Persia, and in the vast jungles of Hindostan, he still maintains a precarious footing; but from the classic soil of Greece, as well as from the whole of Asia Minor, both of which were once exposed to his ravages, he has been entirely dislodged and extirpated." Niebuhr places Lions among the animals of Arabia; but their proper country is Africa, where their size is the largest, their numbers are greatest, and their rage more tremendous, being inflamed by the influence of a burning sun upon a most arid soil. Dr. Fryer says that those of India are feeble and cowardly. In the interior parts, amidst the scorched and desolate deserts of Zaara or Biledugerid, they reign the masters; they lord it over every beast, and their courage never meets with a check where the climate keeps mankind at a distance. The nearer they approach the habitations of the human race the less their rage, or rather the greater is their timidity: they have often had experienced unequal combats, and finding that there exists a being superior to themselves, commit their ravages with more caution; a cooler climate, again, has the same effect, but in the burning deserts, where rivers and springs are denied, they live in a perpetual fever, a sort of madness fatal to every animal they meet with. The watchfulness and tenacity of the Lion for human prey are very extraordinary. Mr. Barrow relates that a Lion once pursued a Hottentot from a pool of water, where he was driving his cattle to drink, to an olive-tree, in which the man remained for twenty-four hours, while the Lion laid himself at the foot of the tree. The patience of the beast was at length worn out by his desire to drink, and while he satisfied his thirst the Hottentot fled to his house, about a mile off. The Lion, however, returned to the tree, and tracked the man within three hundred yards of his dwelling. Dr. Philip relates a horrible story of a very large Lion recorded at Cape Town in the year 1705. He was known to have seized a sentry at a tent, and was pursued and fired at by many persons without effect. Next morning the Lion walked up a hill _with the man in his mouth_, when about forty shots were fired at him without hitting him; and it was perceived by the blood, and a piece of the clothes of the sentry, that the Lion had taken him away and carried him with him. He was pursued by a band of Hottentots, one of whom he seized with his claws by the mantle, when the man stabbed him with an assagai. Other Hottentots adorned him with their assagais, so that he looked like a porcupine; he roared and leaped furiously, but was at length shot dead. He had a short time before carried off a Hottentot and devoured him. The Bengal or Asiatic Lion is distinguished from that of Southern Africa principally by the larger size, the more regular and graceful form, the generally darker colour, and the less extensive mane than the African. William Harvey, the graceful artist, drew a portrait of a very fine Bengal Lion, little more than five years old, and then in the Tower collection, and called by the keepers "the Old Lion;" the magnificent development of the mane is very striking in this figure. Maneless Lions have been found on the confines of Arabia, and were known to Aristotle and Pliny; a maneless Lion is also said to be represented on the monuments of Upper Egypt. The Lion of Arabia has neither the courage nor the stature, nor even the beauty, of the Lion of Africa. He uses cunning rather than force; he crouches among the reeds which border the Tigris and Euphrates, and springs upon all the feeble animals which come there to quench their thirst; but he dares not attack the boar, which is very common there, and flies as soon as he perceives a man, a woman, or even a child. If he catches a sheep he makes off with his prey; but he abandons it to save himself when an Arab looks after him. If he is hunted by horsemen, which often happens, he does not defend himself unless he is wounded, and has no hope of safety by flight. In such a case he will fly on a man and tear him to pieces with his claws, for it is courage more than strength that he wants. Achmed, Pasha of Bagdad from 1724 to 1747, would have been torn by one, after breaking his lance in a hunt, if his slave Suleiman, who succeeded him in the Pashalik, had not come promptly to his succour and pierced with a blow of his yataghan the Lion already wounded by his master. In December, 1833, Captain Walter Smee exhibited to the Zoological Society of London the skins of a Lion and Lioness killed by him in Guzerat, and distinguished from those previously known by the absence of a mane; the tail was shorter than that of the ordinary Lion, and furnished at its tip with a much larger brush or tuft; and in the tuft of the older Lion was a short horny claw or nail. The colour is fulvous; which in darker specimens has a tinge of red. A male maneless Lion, killed by Captain Smee, measured, including the tail, 8 feet 9-1/2 inches in length; the impression of his paw on the sand 6-1/4 inches across, and his height was 3 feet 6 inches. These maneless Lions are found in Guzerat, along the banks of the Sombermultee, in low, bushy-wooded plains, being driven out of the large adjoining tracts of high grass jungle by the natives annually setting fire to the grass. Here Captain Smee killed his finest specimens: they were so common in this district that he killed no fewer than eleven during a residence of about a month, yet scarcely any of the natives had seen them previously to his coming amongst them. The cattle were frequently carried off by these Lions: some natives attributed this to tigers, which, however, do not exist in this part of the country. Captain Smee could not learn that men had been attacked by these Lions: when struck by a ball they exhibited great boldness, standing as if preparing to resist their pursuers, and then going off slowly, and in a very sullen manner. In captivity the Lioness usually turns extremely savage when she becomes a mother; and, in a state of nature, both parents guard their young with the greatest jealousy. Early in the year 1823 General Watson, then on service in Bengal, being out one morning on horseback, armed with a double-barrelled rifle, was suddenly surprised by a large male Lion, which bounded out upon him from the thick jungle, at the distance of only a few yards. He instantly fired, and the shot taking complete effect, the animal fell almost dead at his feet. No sooner had the Lion fallen than the Lioness rushed out, which the General also shot at and wounded severely, so that she retired into the thicket. Thinking that the den could not be far distant, he traced her to her retreat, and there despatched her; and in the den were found two beautiful cubs, a male and a female, apparently not more than three months old. This is a very touching narrative, even of the Lion family. The General brought the cubs away; they were suckled by a goat and sent to England, where they arrived in September, 1823, as a present to George IV., and were lodged in the Tower. When young, Lions mew like a cat; at the age of ten or twelve months the mane begins to appear in the male; at the age of eighteen months this appendage is considerably developed, and they begin to roar. The _roar_ of the adult Lion is terrific, from the larynx or upper part of the wind-pipe being proportionately greater than in the whale or the elephant, or any other animal. Mr. Burchell describes the roar on some occasions to resemble the noise of an earthquake; and this terrific effect is produced by the Lion laying his head upon the ground and uttering, as it were, a half-stifled roar or growl, which is conveyed along the earth. The natural period of the Lion's life is generally supposed to be twenty or twenty-two years. Such is Buffon's limitation; but the animal will, it seems, live much longer. Pompey, the great Lion, which died in 1766, was said to have been in the Tower above seventy years; and a Lion from the river Gambia is stated to have since died in the Tower menagerie at the age of sixty-three. There had been for ages a popular belief that the Lion lashes his sides with his tail to stimulate himself into rage; when, in 1832, there was exhibited to the Zoological Society a claw obtained from the tip of the tail of a Barbary Lion, presented to the Society's menagerie by Sir Thomas Reade. It was detected on the living animal by Mr. Bennett, and pointed out to the keeper, in whose hands it came off while he was examining it. Blumenbach quotes Homer, Lucan, and Pliny, among others who have described the Lion (erroneously) as lashing himself with his tail, when angry, to provoke his rage. None of these writers, however, advert to any peculiarity in the Lion's tail to which so extraordinary a function might, however incorrectly, be attributed. Didymus Alexandrinus, a commentator on the "Iliad," cited by Blumenbach, having found a black prickle, like a horn, among the hair of the tail, immediately conjectured that he had ascertained the true cause of the stimulus when the animal flourishes his tail in defiance of his enemies, remarking that, when punctured by this prickle, the Lion became more irritable from the pain which it occasioned. The subject, however, appears to have slumbered till 1829, when M. Deshayes announced that he had found the prickle both of a Lion and Lioness, which had died in the French menagerie, and described it as a little nail, or horny production, adhering by its base only to the skin, and not to the last caudal vertebra. From that period Mr. Wood, the able zoologist, examined the tail of every Lion, living or dead, to which he could gain access; but in no instance had he succeeded in finding the prickle till the above specimen, which was placed in his hands within half an hour after its removal from the living animal, and while yet soft at its base, where it had been attached to the skin. Its shape was nearly straight, then slightly contracted, forming a very obtuse angle, and afterwards swelling out like the bulb of a bristle, to its termination. It was laterally flattened throughout its entire length, which did not amount to quite three-eighths of an inch, of horn colour, and nearly black at the tip. Its connexion with the skin must have been very slight, which accounts for its usual absence in stuffed as well as living specimens. This does not depend upon age, as it was found alike in the Paris Lions, of considerable size, as well as in the Zoological Society's Lions, very small and young; nor did it depend upon sex. It appears to be occasionally present in the Leopard; and, in both Lion and Leopard, it is seated at the extreme tip of the tail, and is altogether unconnected with the terminal caudal vertebra; not fitted on like a cap, but rather inserted into the skin. The use of the prickle, however, it still remained difficult to conjecture; but that its existence was known to the ancients is proved by the Nimroud sculptures in the British Museum, in an exaggerated representation of the claw, in support of this curious fact in natural history. The existence of the claw has been proved by Mr. Bennett; and "it is no small gratification to be able now to quote in evidence of the statement of Mr. Bennett, and of his predecessor. Didymus, of Alexandria, the original and authentic document, on the authority of the veritable descendants of the renowned hunter Nimroud; which any one may read who will take the trouble to examine the sculptured slab in the British Museum."[8] In the Nineveh galleries of the British Museum we also see pictured in stone the employment of the Lion, in the life of Assyria and Babylonia, three thousand years since; in the events of a succession of dynasties, recording the sieges of cities, the combats of warriors, the triumphs of Kings, the processions of victors, the chains and fetters of the vanquished. To the zoological observer these sculptures present drawings _ad naturam_ of tableaux of Lions and Lion-hunts; Lions in combat, as well as in moveable dens and cages, and the ferocity of the chase; and Lions transfixed with arrows or javelins in the arena. One of the finest of these sculptures is in the representation of a Lion-hunt, on a long slab that lined the principal chamber of the most ancient palace at Nimroud. The King is in his chariot, drawn by three horses, which the charioteer is urging forward to escape the attack of an infuriated Lion that has already placed its fore-paws upon the back of the chariot. At this critical moment, the Royal descendant of the mighty hunter aims a deadly shaft at the head of the roaring and wounded Lion, the position of whose tail and limbs is finely indicative of rage and fury. Behind the Lion are two of the King's attendants, fully armed, and holding their daggers and shields, ready to defend themselves in case the prey should escape the arrow of the King. Before the chariot is a wounded Lion, crawling from under the horses' feet. The cringing agony conveyed in its entire action is well contrasted with the undaunted fury of the former. In another slab we have the continuation of the same Lion-hunt, representing the triumphant return of the King from the chase. At his feet lies the Lion subdued, but not dead. Of the pageantry of the Lion, we read, in Bell's "Travels," that the monarch of Persia had, on days of audience, two great Lions chained on each side of the passage to the state-room, led there by keepers in golden chains. Our early English Sovereigns had a menagerie in the Tower from the reign of Henry III. (1252.) In 1370 (44 Edward III.) are entries of payments made to "the Keeper of the King's Lions and Leopards" there, at the rate of 6_d._ a-day for his wages, and 6_d._ a-day for each beast. The number of beasts varied from four to seven. Two young Lions are specially mentioned; and "a Lion lately sent by the Lord the Prince, from Germany to England, to our Lord the King." And we read, in Lord Burghley's "Diary," 1586, of the grant of the keeping of the Lions in the Tower, with "the Fine of 12_d._ per diem, and 6_d._ for the Meat of those Lions." The first menagerie-building was the Lion Tower, to which was added a semicircular inclosure, where Lions and Bears were baited with dogs, with which James I. and his court were much delighted. A Lion was named after the reigning King; and it was popularly believed that "when the King dies, the Lion of that name dies after him." The last of the Tower animals were transferred to the Zoological Society's menagerie, in the Regent's-park, in 1834. The Tower menagerie is well described in a handsome volume, with woodcut portraits, by William Harvey. The punishment of being _thrown to Lions_ is stated as common among the Romans of the first century; and numerous tales are extant, in which the fierce animals became meek and lamb-like before the holy virgins of the Church. This, indeed, is the origin of the superstition, nowhere more beautifully expressed than in Lord Byron's "Siege of Corinth":-- "'Tis said that a Lion will turn and flee From a maid in the pride of her purity." Every wild beast show almost has its tame Lion, with which the keeper takes the greatest liberties; liberties which the beast will suffer, generally speaking, from none but him. Major Smith relates that he had seen the keeper of a Lioness stand upon the beast, drag her round the cage by her tail, open her jaws, and thrust his head between her teeth. Another keeper, at New York, had provided himself with a fur cap, the novelty of which attracted the notice of the Lion, which, making a sudden grapple, tore the cap off his head as he passed the cage; but, perceiving that the keeper was the person whose head he had thus uncovered, he immediately laid the cap down. Wombwell, in his menagerie, had a fine Lion, Nero, that allowed _strangers_ to enter his den, and even put their heads within his jaws. This tameness is not, however, to be trusted, since the natural ferocity of some Lions is never safely subdued. Lions which have been sometimes familiar, have, on other occasions, been known to kill their keepers, and dart at those who have incautiously approached too near their cage. All these exhibitions have been entirely eclipsed by the feats of Van Amburgh, in his exercise of complete control over Lions. The melancholy fate of "the Lion Queen," however, tells of the fatal result of her confidence. The Lion-killing feats of Captain Gordon Cumming had a more legitimate object in view--to render us more familiar with the zoological character of the Lion. Colonization has scarcely yet extirpated the Lion in Algeria, where the French colonists make fine sport of "the King of the Beasts." M. Jules Gerard, a Nimroud in his way, has been noted for his Lion-killing feats. We read of his tracking a large old Lion in the Smauls country, one hundred leagues in ten days, without catching a glimpse of anything but his foot-prints. At length, accompanied by a native of the country and a spahi, Gerard took up his quarters at the foot of a tree upon the path which the old Lion had taken. It was moonlight, and Gerard made out two Lions sitting about one hundred paces off, and exactly in the shadow of the tree. The Arab lay snoring ten paces off, in the full light of the moon, and had, doubtless, attracted the attention of the Lions. Gerard expressly forbade the spahi to wake the Arab. Our Lion-hunter then got up the hill to reconnoitre; the boldest of the Lions came up to within ten paces of Gerard, and fifteen of the Arab: the Lion's eye was fixed on the latter, and the second Lion placed himself on a level with, and four or five paces from, the first. They proved to be both full-grown Lionesses. Gerard took aim at the first as she came rolling and roaring down to the foot of the tree. The Arab was scarcely awakened, when a second ball stretched the Lioness dead upon the spot. Gerard then looked out for the second Lioness, who was standing up within fifteen paces, looking around her. He fired, and she fell down roaring, and disappeared in a field of maize; she fell, but was still alive. Next morning at daybreak, at the spot where the Lioness had fallen, were blood marks, denoting her track in the direction of a wood. After sending off the dead Lioness. Gerard returned to his post of the preceding night. A little after sunset the Lion roared in his lair, and continued roaring all night. Convinced that the wounded Lioness was there, Gerard sent two Arabs to explore the cover, but they durst not. He next evening reached the lair, taking with him a goat, which he left with the Arabs: the Lioness appeared. Gerard fired, and she fell without a struggle; she was believed dead, but she got up again as though nothing was the matter, and showed all her teeth. One of the Arabs, within six paces of her, seeing her get up, clung to the lower branches of a tree and disappeared like a squirrel. The Lioness fell dead at the foot of the tree, a second bullet piercing her heart: the first had passed out of the nape of the neck without breaking the skull-bone. The Lions presented by Lord Prudhoe to the British Museum are the best sculptured representations of the animal in this country. Although the Lion is our national hieroglyphic, and there are many statues of him, yet not one among them all appears without a defect, which makes our representations of him belong to the class _canis_ instead of _felis_, a fault not found in any Egyptian sculpture.[9] FOOTNOTES: [8] Bonomi; "Nineveh and its Palaces," p. 249. [9] Bonomi; "Proc. Royal Soc., Literature." BIRD-LIFE. "Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly Father feedeth them."--Matthew vi. 26. "Free tenants of land, air, and ocean, Their forms all symmetry, their motions grace; In plumage delicate and beautiful, Thick without burthen, close as fishes' scales, Or loose as full-blown poppies on the gales; With wings that seem as they'd a soul within them, They bear their owners with such sweet enchantment." _James Montgomery._ Birds, as regards structure, are perhaps the most perfectly endowed, as they are certainly the most beautiful and interesting, of all the lower animals. In Birds there is an admirable mechanism and adaptation both for gliding in the air and swimming in the water. They surpass all other animals in the faculty of continuing their motion without resting, as well as in its rapidity. The fleetest courser can scarcely ever run more than a mile in a minute, nor support that speed beyond five or six such exertions. But the joyous Swallow does this tenfold for pleasure. In his usual way he flies at the rate of one mile in a minute; and Wilson, the ornithologist, ascertained that the Swallow is so engaged for ten hours every day. So can the Blue-bird of America, for a space of 600 miles. Our Carrier-pigeons move with half that celerity: one flew from Liskeard to London, 220 miles, in six hours. The Golden Eagle is supposed to dart through the fiercest storm at the rate of 160 miles an hour; but one of our smallest Birds, the Swift, can even quadruple the most excited quickness of the race-horse for a distance. Spallanzani thought that the little Swift travelled at the rate of 250 miles an hour. Inquiries into the phenomena of the flight of Birds would lead us far beyond our limits. The subject is beset with error. Thus, we read:--"Every one has remarked the manner in which Birds of prey float, as it were, without any effort, and with steady expanded wings, at great heights in the atmosphere. This they are enabled to do from the quantity of air contained in the air-cells of their bodies, which air being taken in at a low level in the atmosphere, of course rarefies and expands as the Bird ascends into higher regions. Their rapidity of descent must be accomplished by the sudden expulsion of this air, aided by their muscular efforts." Now, Dr. Crisp has read to the Zoological Society a paper "On the Presence or Absence of Air in the Bones of Birds," for the purpose of showing the prevailing error upon the subject--viz., "that the bones of the Bird are filled with air." Of fifty-two British Birds recently dissected by him, only one, the Sparrow-hawk, had the bones generally perforated for the admission of air. In thirteen others, the humeri only were hollow, and among these were several Birds of short flight. In the remaining thirty-eight, neither the _humeri_ nor _femora_ contained air, although in this list were several Birds of passage and of rapid flight--Dr. Crisp's conclusion being, that the majority of British Birds have no air in their bones, and that, with the exception of the Falcons, but very few British Birds have hollow femora. Mr. Gould records a most remarkable instance of rapid and sustained flight, which he witnessed on his return from North America, whither he had proceeded for the purpose of studying the habits and manners of the species of _Trochilus_ (Humming Bird), frequenting that portion of America. Having remarked that he arrived just prior to the period of the migration of this Bird from Mexico to the north, and had ample opportunities for observing it in a state of nature, he noticed that its actions were very peculiar, and quite different from those of all other birds: the flight is performed by a motion of the wings so rapid as to be almost imperceptible; indeed, the muscular power of this little creature appears to be very great in every respect, as, independently of its rapid and sustained flight, it grasps the small twigs, flowers, &c., upon which it alights with the utmost tenacity. It appears to be most active in the morning and evening, and to pass the middle of the day in a state of sleepy torpor. Occasionally it occurs in such numbers that fifty or sixty birds may be seen in a single tree. When captured it so speedily becomes tame that it will feed from the hand or mouth within half an hour. Mr. Gould having been successful in keeping a Humming-Bird alive in a gauze bag attached to his breast button for three days, during which it readily fed from a bottle filled with a syrup of brown sugar and water, he determined to make an attempt to bring some living examples to England, in which he succeeded; but unfortunately they did not long survive their arrival. The adaptation of colour in Birds to their haunts strikingly tends to their preservation. The small Birds which frequent hedges have backs of a brownish or brownish-green hue; and their bellies are generally whitish, or light-coloured, so as to harmonize with the sky. Thus, they become less visible to the hawk or cat that passes above or below them. The wayfarer across the fields also treads upon the Skylark before he sees it warbling to heaven's gate. The Goldfinch or Thistlefinch passes much of its time among flowers, and is vividly coloured accordingly. The Partridge can hardly be distinguished from the fallow or stubble among which it crouches; and it is considered an accomplishment among sportsmen to have a good eye for finding a Hare sitting. In northern countries the winter dress of the Hares and Ptarmigans is white, to prevent detection among the snows of those inclement regions. The Song of Birds is popularly explained by the author of a work, entitled, "The Music of Nature," in which he illustrates the vocal machinery of Birds as follows:--"It is difficult to account for so small a creature as a Bird making a tone as loud as some animal a thousand times its size; but a recent discovery shows that in birds the lungs have several openings communicating with corresponding air-bags or cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downward, and into which the air passes and repasses in the progress of breathing. This is not all. The very bones are hollow, from which air-pipes are conveyed to the most solid parts of the body, even into the quills and feathers. The air being rarefied by the heat of their body, adds to their levity. By forcing the air out of their body, they can dart down from the greatest heights with astonishing velocity. No doubt the same machinery forms the basis of their vocal powers, and at once resolves the mystery into a natural ordering of parts." This is a very pretty story; but, unfortunately, it is not correct, as already shown. A correspondent of the "Athenæum," writing in 1866, says:--"He would be a bold man who should say that Birds have no delight in their own songs. I have been led to conclude from experiments which I have made, and from other observations, that certain animals, especially Birds, have not only an ear for fine sounds, but also a preference for the things they see out of respect to fine colours or other pleasing external features. It is chiefly among Birds, when we consider the case of animals, that a taste for ornament and for glittering objects, often very startling and human-like, is to be found. The habits of the Pheasant, Peacock, Turkey, Bird of Paradise, several Birds of the Pigeon and Crow kind, and certain Singing Birds, are evidence. The Australian Satin Bower-Bird is the most remarkable of that class which exhibit taste for beauty or for glittering objects out of themselves--that is, beauty not directly personal; collecting, in fact, little museums of shells, gaudy feathers, shining glass, or bits of coloured cloth or pottery. It will be found with many Birds that fine plumes, a mirror, and an admirer, are not altogether objects devoid of interest. "Another consideration leading me to the same conclusion, is the fact, that beauty in animals is placed on prominent parts, or on parts which by erection or expansion are easily, and at the pairing season, frequently rendered prominent, such as a crest or tail. A spangle of ruby or emerald does not exist, for instance, on the side under the wing, which is seldom raised, of our domestic poultry. Such jewels are hung where man himself wears his, on the face and forehead, or court attention, like our own crowns, trains, shoulder-knots, breast-knots, painted cheeks, or jewelled ears. I cannot account for the existence of these gaudy ornaments to please man, for nowhere are they more gorgeous than in Birds which live in the depth of the tropical forest, where man is rarely a visitor; I cannot account for them on the principle that they do good to their possessors in the battle for life, because they rather render them conspicuous to their enemies, or coveted by man." But the beauty of these beings glows most brightly at the season of their pairing, and the selection of their mates. Baron von Tschudi, the Swiss naturalist, has shown the important services of Birds in the destruction of insects. Without Birds, no agriculture or vegetation would be possible. They accomplish in a few months the profitable work of destruction which millions of human hands could not do half so well in as many years; and the sage, therefore, blamed in very severe terms the foolish practice of shooting and destroying Birds, which prevails more especially in Italy, recommending, on the contrary, the process of alluring Birds into gardens and corn-fields. Among the most deserving Birds he counts Swallows, Finches. Titmice, Redtails, &c. The naturalist then cites numerous instances in support of his assertion. In a flower-garden of one of his neighbours three rose-trees had been suddenly covered with about 2,000 tree-lice. At his recommendation a Marsh-Titmouse was located in the garden, which in a few hours consumed the whole brood, and left the roses perfectly clean. A Redtail in a room was observed to catch about 900 flies in an hour. A couple of Night-Swallows have been known to destroy a whole swarm of gnats in fifteen minutes. A pair of Golden-crested Wrens carry insects as food to their nestlings upon an average thirty-six times in an hour. For the protection of orchards and woods Titmice are of invaluable service. They consume, in particular, the eggs of the dangerous pine-spiders. One single female of such spiders frequently lays from 600 to 800 eggs twice in the summer season, while a Titmouse with her young ones consume daily several thousands of them. Wrens, Nuthatches, and Woodpeckers often dexterously fetch from the crevices of tree-bark numbers of insects for their nestlings. Yet, profitless and wanton Bird-murder is common. The cliffs on the coasts of these islands are the resort of numerous kinds of Sea-Fowl, and these Fowl, we are told, are slaughtered by thousands, not merely for the sake of their feathers, but actually for the mere savage pleasure of killing. What speculation can enter into such a proceeding it may puzzle the reader to imagine; but it seems that the wing feathers of the poor White Gull are now inquired for in the plume-trade, and we are actually told of an order given by a single house for 10,000 of these unhappy Birds. When these facts were stated at the Meeting of the British Association, in August, 1868, at Norwich, a lady stood up boldly in defence of her sex, and declared that they sinned only through ignorance, and would never willingly wear the feathers of a Bird destroyed in the act of feeding its young. That part of the case, therefore, ought to be now in safe hands. In the Isle of Man a law has been passed, called the "Seagull Preservation Act," protecting these Birds by heavy penalties, on the ground of their utility in removing fish offal and guiding fishermen to shoals of fish. At a certain point of our shores a similar protection has been established. A visitor to the South Stack Lighthouse, on the coast of Anglesey, may see prodigious numbers of Sea-Fowl as tame as complete safety can make them. It has been ascertained that in thick weather, when neither light can be distinguished nor signal seen, the incessant scream of these Birds gives the best of all warnings to the mariner of the vicinity of the rock. The noise they make can be heard at a greater distance than the tolling of the great bell; and so valuable was this danger-signal considered, that an order from the Trinity House forbad even the firing of the warning gun, lest the colony of the Sea-Fowl should be disturbed. The signals of the bell and the cannon might be neglected or overpowered, but the Birds were always there and always audible. It is inferred that Birds possess some notion of power, and of cause and effect, from the various actions which they perform. "Thus," relates Dr. Fleming, "we have seen the Hooded Crow in Zetland, when feeding on small shell-fish, able to break some of the tenderer kinds by means of its bill, aided in some cases by beating them against a stone; but, as some of the larger shells, such as the buckie and the welk, cannot be broken by such means, the Crow employs another method, by which, in consequence of applying foreign power, it accomplishes its object. Seizing the shell with its claws, it mounts up into the air, and then loosing its hold, causes the shell to fall among stones (in preference to the sand, the water, or the soil on the ground), that it may be broken, and give easier access to the contained animal. Should the first attempt fail, a second or third is tried, with this difference, that the Crow rises higher in the air, in order to increase the power of the fall, and more effectually remove the barrier to the contained morsel. On such occasions we have seen a strong Bird remain an apparently inattentive spectator of the process of breaking the shell, but coming to the spot with astonishing keenness when the efforts of its neighbour had been successful, in order to share the spoil. Pennant mentions similar operations performed by Crows on mussels." The brain of Birds is, in general, large in proportion to the size of the body, and the instinctive powers are very perfect. A few kinds are rather dull and stupid; but the Parrot, Magpie, Raven, and many others, show great vivacity and quickness of intellect. The Raven has a great deal of humour in him. One, a most amusing and mischievous creature, would get into a well-stocked flower-garden, go to the beds where the gardener had sowed a great variety of seeds, with sticks put in the ground with labels, and then he would amuse himself with pulling up every stick, and laying them in heaps of ten or twelve on the path. This used to irritate the old gardener, who drove him away. The Raven knew that he ought not to do it, or he would not have done it. He would soon return to his mischief, and when the gardener again chased him (the old man could not run very fast), the Raven would just keep clear of the rake or the hoe in his hand, dancing before him, and singing as plainly as a Raven could. "Tol de rol de rol! tol de rol de rol!" with all kinds of mimicking gestures. The signal of danger among Birds seems to be of universal comprehension; because the instant it is uttered we hear the whole flock, though composed of various species, repeat a separate moan, and away they all scuttle into the bushes for safety. The sentinel Birds give the signal, but in some cases they are deceived by false appearances. Dr. Edmonstone, in his "View of the Zetland Isles," relates a very striking illustration of the neglect of the sentinel, in his remarks on the Shag. "Great numbers of this species of the Cormorant are sometimes taken during the night, while asleep on the rocks of easy access; but before they commit themselves to sleep, one or two of the number are appointed to watch. Until these sentinels are secured, it is impossible to make a successful impression on the whole body; to surprise them is, therefore, the first object. With this view, the leader of the expedition creeps cautiously and imperceptibly along the rock, until he gets within a short distance of the watch. He then dips a worsted glove into the sea, and gently throws water in the face of the guard. The unsuspecting Bird, either disliking the impression, or fancying, from what he considers to be a disagreeable state of the weather, that all is quiet and safe, puts his head under his wing and soon falls asleep. His neck is then immediately broken, and the party dispatch as many as they choose." Addison was a true lover of nature, which he shows in two letters written by him to the Earl of Warwick (afterwards his son-in-law), when that nobleman was very young. "My dear Lord," he writes, "I have employed the whole neighbourhood in looking after Birds'-nests, and not altogether without success. My man found one last night, but it proved a hen's, with fifteen eggs in it, covered with an old broody Duck, which may satisfy your Lordship's curiosity a little; though I am afraid the eggs will be of little use to us. This morning I have news brought me of a nest that has abundance of little eggs, streaked with red and blue veins, that, by the description they give me, must make a very beautiful figure in a string. My neighbours are very much divided in their opinions upon them: some say they are a Skylark's; others will have them to be a Canary-Bird's; but I am much mistaken in the colour and turn of the eggs if they are not full of Tomtit's." Again, Addison writes:--"Since I am so near your Lordship, methinks, after having passed the day amid more severe studies, you may often take a trip hither and relax yourself with these little curiosities of nature. I assure you no less a man than Cicero commends the two great friends of his age, Scipio and Lælius, for entertaining themselves at their country-house, which stood on the sea-shore, with picking up cockle-shells, and looking after Birds'-nests." In another letter Addison writes:--"The business of this is to invite you to a concert of music which I have found out in a neighbouring wood. It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a Blackbird, a Thrush, a Robin-Redbreast, and a Bullfinch. There is a Lark, that, by way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing; and afterwards, falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a Nightingale, that has a much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of the Italian manner in her divisions. If your Lordship will honour me with your company, I will promise to entertain you with much better music, and more agreeable scenes, than you ever met with at the Opera; and will conclude with a charming description of a Nightingale out of our friend Virgil:-- "'So close, in poplar shades, her children gone, The mother Nightingale laments alone; Whose nest some prying churl had found, and thence By stealth convey'd the unfeathered innocence: But she supplies the night with mournful strains, And melancholy music fills the plains.'" BIRDS' EGGS AND NESTS. The Eggs of Birds are variously tinted and mottled, and hence they become objects of interest to the collector. In this diversity of colour nature has, doubtless, some final object in view; and though not in every instance, yet in many, we can certainly see a design in the adaptation of the colours to the purpose of concealment, according to the habits of the various classes of Birds. Thus, as a general rule, the Eggs of Birds which have their nests in dark holes, or which construct nests that almost completely exclude the light, are white; as is also the case with those Birds that constantly sit on their Eggs, or leave them only for a short time during the night. Eggs of a light blue or light green tint will also be found in nests that are otherwise well concealed; while, on the other hand, a great proportion of those nests that are in exposed situations have Eggs varying in tints and spots in a remarkable degree, corresponding with the colours of external objects in their immediate neighbourhood. Thus, a dull green colour is common in most gallinaceous Birds that form their nests in grass, and in aquatic Birds among green hedges; a bright green colour is prevalent among Birds that nestle among trees and bushes; and a brown mottled colour is found in those Eggs that are deposited among furze, heath, shingle, and grey rocks and stones. Birds'-nesting, we need hardly remark, is a favourite pursuit of boyhood; but, in some cases, its attractions have induced young persons to take up more important branches of natural history, or the collection, systematic arrangement, and comparison of Birds' Eggs, which is, in scientific study, termed Oology; and as the study of Birds cannot be considered complete until they are known in every stage, it forms a branch of Ornithology. In this case Birds'-nesting has an useful object; but many persons are content to acquire collections of Eggs without troubling themselves about the Birds which have laid them. The late Mr. John Wolley, M.A., was one of the leading authorities upon the subject of European Ornithology, and was one of a number of University men, who, about twelve years ago, established the ornithological journal called "The Ibis," and who visited far-distant and unexplored regions, where they might hope to discover strange Birds and unknown Eggs. For several years Algiers and Tunis were their favourite resorts, and the meeting-places of many of our rarer Birds were hunted up in these countries, even so far as the Desert of the Great Sahara. Others preferred the New World as the scene of their labours, and collected long series of specimens in the highland of Guatemala, and the tropical forests of Belize. Mr. Wolley, however, confined his attention principally to the northern parts of Europe--that region being the breeding-quarters of a large number of Birds which are only known in this country as winter visitants. In order to be at his collecting-station at Muonioniska, on the frontier of Finnish Lapland, at the earliest commencement of the breeding-season, Mr. Wolley frequently passed the whole winter in that remote region. But the rigour of the climate under the Arctic Circle contributed to bring on a malady which terminated fatally in November, 1859. Upon the decease of Mr. Wolley, his large collection of Birds' Eggs, in accordance with his last wishes, became the property of his friend, Mr. Alfred Newton, who is publishing a Catalogue of Mr. Wolley's Egg Cabinet, with notes from the deceased naturalist's journals. The first part contains the Eggs of Birds of Prey (_Accipitres_), recognisable at once by their strongly-hooked bill, formed to assist them in tearing their prey, and their large feet and sharpened claws, which aid them to grasp it. They are divisible into two very distinct groups--the diurnal Birds of Prey, consisting of the Hawks, Vultures, and Eagles; and the nocturnal Birds of Prey, or Owls. In the latter the Eggs are invariably colourless; in the former they are often strongly marked, and present some of the most beautiful objects in the whole series of Birds' Eggs. In the most recently published list of European birds fifty-two species of birds of prey are given as occurring more or less frequently within the limits of our continent. Of the three generally-recognised species of European Vultures two are well represented, as regards their eggs, in the Wolleyan series. A few years ago the nesting of all these birds was utterly unknown to naturalists, and it was mainly through the exertions of Mr. Wolley and his friends that specimens first reached our collectors' cabinets. Here were found both the Egyptian Vulture and the Griffon breeding abundantly in the Eastern Atlas in 1857; and the eyries of these birds have since been visited by other collectors in the same country. The Eggs of the former of these Vultures are remarkable for their deep and rich coloration. The productions of the Griffon are not nearly so handsome, and are occasionally altogether destitute of markings. Of the Eagles of Europe the series of Eggs is very full, especially of the two well-known British species--the Golden Eagle and Sea Eagle. The Golden or Mountain Eagle is even now-a-days much more common in the remote parts of the British islands than is usually supposed to be the case. In 1852 Mr. Wolley was acquainted with five nests of this bird in various parts of Scotland, and there were undoubtedly at least as many more of which he did not learn the particulars. The eyrie is usually placed in some mountainous district, on the ledge of some "warm-looking" rock, well clothed with vegetation, and often by no means wild or exposed. Not unfrequently, under proper guidance, one can walk into the nest almost without climbing. Mr. Newton gives a very entertaining account of the taking of a pair of eggs from a nest in Argyllshire in 1861, where this seems to have been the case. In the whole ascent there was only one "ticklish place," where it was necessary to go sideways on a narrow ledge round some rocks. The Sea Eagle, on the other hand, generally breeds on the high cliffs upon the coast, often selecting the most inaccessible position for its eyrie. Sometimes, however, it will choose an island in the middle of an inland loch, and in such case places its nest upon the ground or in a tree. Mr. Wolley's well-written notes of his adventures in quest of both these Eagles, as also those relating to the other rapacious birds, will be read with much interest; as will also the details concerning the nesting-habits of many of the rarer species of European birds, several of which, such as the Rough-legged Buzzard and the Lapp Owl, were first tracked to their breeding-quarters in the remotest wilds of Scandinavia by this indefatigable naturalist.[10] Of large Eggs we are most familiar with those of the Ostrich, of which Mr. Burchell, when in Africa, found twenty-five Eggs in a hollow scratched in the sand, six feet in diameter, surrounded by a trench, but without grass, leaves, or sticks, as in the nests of other birds. In the trench were nine more Eggs, intended, as the Hottentots observed, as the first food of the twenty-five young Ostriches. Between sixty and seventy Eggs have been found in one nest; each is equal to twenty-four Eggs of the domestic hen, and holds five pints and a quarter of liquid. The shells are dirty white. The Hottentots string them together as belts, or garlands, and they are frequently mounted as cups. One Ostrich Egg is a sufficient meal for three persons. The Egg is cooked over the fire without either pot or water, the shell answering the purpose of the first, and the liquid nature of its contents that of the other. Less familiar to the reader are the gigantic Eggs of the Epyornis, a bird which formerly lived in Madagascar. One of these Eggs contains the substance of 140 hens' Eggs. Mr. Geoffroy St. Hilaire describes some portions of an Egg of the Epyornis which show the Egg to have been of such a size as to be capable of containing about ten English quarts; that in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes can only contain 8-3/4 quarts. Mr. Strickland, in some notices of the Dodo and its kindred, published in 1849, says that in the previous year a Mr. Dumarele, a French merchant at Bourbon, saw at Port Leven, Madagascar, an enormous Egg which held "_thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid_." The natives stated that the Egg was found in the jungle, and "that such Eggs were _very, very rarely_ met with." A word or two about the nests of such gigantic birds. Captain Cook found, on an island near the north-east coast of New Holland, a nest "of a most enormous size. It was built with sticks upon the ground, and was no less than six-and-twenty feet in circumference, and two feet eight inches high." (Kerr's "Collection of Voyages and Travels," xiii., 318.) Captain Flinders found two similar nests on the south coast of New Holland, in King George's Bay. In his "Voyage," &c., London, 1818, he says, "They were built upon the ground, from which they rose above two feet, and were of vast circumference and great interior capacity; the branches of trees and other matter of which each nest was composed being enough to fill a cart." Among the varieties of Birds'-nests are some very curious homes, of which we have but space to notice a few. The pendulous nest of the Indian Baya-bird is usually formed of the fibres of the palmyra, the cocoa-nut palm, and wild date of India, sometimes mixed with grass, neatly interlaced, and very strongly made. It consists of only one circular chamber, with a long tubular passage leading to it, and is suspended from a tree, preferred if overhanging water. The natives of India say the Baya lights up its nest with fire-flies. The bird lays from four to six white eggs. Bayas are of a very social disposition: numbers build on the same tree, or neighbouring trees, and singing in concert during the breeding season. The Baya is very docile, and taught to fly off the finger and return again; to dart after a ring or small coin, dropped into a deep well, and catch it before it reaches the water; to fetch and carry, and perform similar tricks. The nest of the brilliant Golden-banded Oriole is a hammock of twisted fibrous substances, and is suspended in a low shrub, so as to swing to the breeze. The twine-like fibres of which it is woven are the filaments of the gigantic palm. The threads break away from the leaf, and hang like fringe to the magnificent foliage. The Tailor-birds are the best nest-builders of all the feathered tribes. They interweave their nests between the twigs and branches of shrubs, or suspend the nests from them; and some of these birds have exercised arts from the creation which man has found of the greatest benefit to him since he discovered them. These birds, indeed, may be called the inventors of the several arts of the weaver, the sempstress, and the tailor; whence some of them have been denominated Weaver and Tailor Birds. The nests of the latter are, however, most remarkable. India produces several species of Tailor-birds that sew together leaves for the protection of their eggs and nestlings from the voracity of serpents and apes. They generally select the end of a branch or twig, and sew with cotton, thread, and fibres. Colonel Sykes has seen some in which the thread was literally knotted at the end. The inside of these nests is lined usually with down and cotton. Tailor-birds are not confined to India or tropical countries. Italy can boast a species which exercises the same art. Mr. Gould has a specimen of this bird in his possession, and the Zoological Society have a nest in their Museum. This little bird, a species of the genus _sylvia_, in summer and autumn frequents marshes; but in the spring it seeks the meadows and corn-fields, in which, at that season, the marshes being bare of the sedges which cover them in summer, it is compelled to construct its nest in tussocks of grass on the brinks of ditches; but the leaves of these being weak, easily split, so that it is difficult for our little sempstresses to unite them, and so form the skeleton of the fabric. From this and other circumstances, the spring nests of these birds differ so widely from those made in the autumn that it seems next to impossible that both should be the work of the same artisan. The latter are constructed in a thick bunch of sedge or reed: they are shaped like a pear, being dilated below and narrow above, so as to leave an aperture sufficient for the ingress and egress of the bird. The greatest horizontal diameter of the nest is about two inches and a half, and the vertical is five inches. The most wonderful thing in the construction of these nests is the method to which the little bird has recourse to keep united the living leaves of which it is composed. The sole in the weaving, more or less delicate, of the materials, forms the principle adopted by other birds to bind together the walls of their nests; but this sylvia is no weaver, for the leaves of the sedges or reeds are united by real stitches. In the edge of each leaf she makes, probably with her beak, minute apertures, through which she contrives to pass, perhaps by means of the same organ, one or more cords formed of spiders' web, particularly that of their egg-pouches. Those threads are not very long, and are sufficient to pass two or three times from one leaf to another. They are of unequal thickness, and have knots here and there, which, in some places, divide into two or three branches. This is the manner in which the exterior of the nest is formed: the interior consists mainly of down, chiefly from plants, a little spiders' web being intermixed, which helps to keep the other substances together. The upper part and sides of the nest, that is, the external and internal, are in immediate contact; but in the lower part a greater space intervenes, filled with the slender foliage of grasses, and other materials, which render soft and warm the bed on which the eggs are to repose. This little bird feeds on insects. Its flight is rectilinear, but consists of many curves, with the concavity upwards. These curves equal in number the strokes of the wing, and at every stroke its whistle is heard, the intervals of which correspond with the rapidity of its flight. The Australian Bower-bird, as its name implies, builds its nest like an arbour or bower, with twigs: in the British Museum are two specimens, each decorated--one with bones and fresh-water shells, and the other with feathers and land-shells; remarkable instances of taste for ornament already referred to in a preceding page. The Satin or Bower-bird is described by settlers in Australia as "a very troublesome rascal," which besets gardens; if once allowed to make a lodgment there it is very troublesome to get rid of him; he signalizes his arrival by pulling up, in his restless fussy way, everything in the garden that he can tug out of the ground, even to the little sticks to mark the site of seeds. A settler had formed a garden in the bush; there was no enclosure of the kind for miles in any direction: a flock of Bower-birds came; he got his gun and shot two or three; the flock went off, and he never saw another bird of the kind. The Cape Swallows build nests which show extraordinary instinct allied to reason. A pair of these built their nest on the outside of a house at Cape Town against the angle formed by the wall and the board which supported the eaves. The whole of this nest was covered in, and it was furnished with a long neck or passage, through which the birds passed in and out. It resembled a longitudinal section of a Florence oil flask. This nest having crumbled away after the young birds had quitted it, the same pair, or another of the same species, built on the old foundation again. But this time an improvement was observable in the plan of it that can hardly be referred to the dictates of mere instinct. The body of the nest was of the same shape as before, but instead of a single passage it was furnished with one at each side, running along the angle of the roof; and on watching the birds, they were seen invariably to go in at one passage and come out at the other. Besides saving themselves the trouble of turning in the nest and disturbing, perhaps, its interior arrangement, they were guarded by this contrivance against a surprise by serpents, which frequently creep up along the wall, or descend from the thatch, and devour both the mother and her brood. Dr. Livingstone relates a very curious instance of "Bird Confinement" under very strange circumstances. In passing through Mopane country, in South Africa, his men caught a great number of the birds called _Korwé_ in their breeding-places, which were holes in the mopane trees. They passed the nest of a Korwé just ready for the female to enter; the orifice was plastered on both sides, but a space was left of a heart shape, and exactly the size of the bird's body. The hole in the tree was in every case found to be prolonged some distance upwards above the opening, and thither the Korwé always fled to escape being caught. In another nest that was found, one white egg, much like that of a pigeon, was laid, and the bird dropped another when captured: she had four besides in the ovarium. Dr. Livingstone first saw this bird at Kolenbeng in the forest: he saw a slit only, about half an inch wide and three or four inches long, in a slight hollow of a tree; a native broke the clay which surrounded the slit, put his arm into the hole, and brought out a red-beaked Hornbill, which he killed. He told Dr. Livingstone that when the female enters her nest she submits to a real confinement. The male plasters up the entrance, leaving only a narrow slit by which to feed his mate, and which exactly suits the form of his beak. The female makes a nest of her own feathers, lays her eggs, hatches them, and remains with the young till they are fully fledged. During all this time, which is stated to be two or three months, the male continues to feed her and the young family. The prisoner generally becomes quite fat, and is esteemed a very dainty morsel by the natives; while the poor slave of a husband gets so lean that, on the sudden lowering of the temperature, which sometimes happens after a fall of rain, he is benumbed, falls down, and dies. Dr. Livingstone, on passing the same tree at Kolenbeng about eight days afterwards, found the hole plastered up again, as if, in the short time that had elapsed, the disconsolate bird-husband had procured another wife. Dr. L. saw a nest with the plastering not quite finished, and others completed; he also received elsewhere, besides Kolobeng, the same account that the bird comes forth when the young are fully-fledged, at the period when the corn is ripe; indeed, her appearance abroad with her young is one of the signs they have for knowing when it ought to be so: the time is between two and three months. She is said sometimes to hatch two eggs, and, when the young of these are full-fledged, the other two are just out of the egg-shells: she then leaves the nest with the two elder, the orifice is again plastered up, and both male and female attend to the wants of the young. There is a specimen of a nest in the Gardens of the Zoological Society, which merits description, besides that of the Bower-bird. Such is the nest of the Brush Turkey, which appears more like a small haystack than an ordinary nest, and the methodical manner in which it is constructed is thus described:--Tracing a circle of considerable radius, the birds begin to travel round it, continually grasping with their huge feet the leaves and grasses and dead twigs which are lying about, and flinging them inwards towards the centre. Each time that they complete their round, they narrow their circle, so that in a short time they clear away a circular belt, having in its centre a low irregular mass. By repeating the same process, however, they decrease the diameter of the mound as they increase its height, and at last a large and rudely conical mound is formed. In this nest as many as a bushel of eggs are deposited, at regular intervals, long end downwards. The leaves form a fermenting mass, which relieves the mother of the necessity of setting upon them. The male, however, has to regulate the temperature of the mass, which would otherwise get too hot. This he does by making a central ventilating shaft, which carries off the superfluous heat; and, lest the temperature should fall too low, he is constantly engaged in covering and uncovering the eggs in order to hit the exact temperature to be applied until the egg is warmed into life. FOOTNOTE: [10] Abridged from the "Saturday Review." THE EPICURE'S ORTOLAN. We have allotted this bird to the epicure, because it is rarely heard of but in association with his luxurious table. Mr. Beckford describes the Ortolans among the delicacies which he saw in the kitchen of the monastery of Batalha as "lumps of celestial fatness." Ortolan is the French and English names for a species of _Fringillidæ_ (Finches). It is the _Hortulanus_ of Gesner and other naturalists; _Miliaria pinguescens_ of Frisch; _Emberiza Hortulana_ of Linnæus; _Ortolano_ of the Italians generally; _Tordino Berluccio_ of the Venetians; _Garton Ammer_ and _Fetammer_ of the Germans; and _Gerste Keneu_ of the Netherlanders. This wide dispersion on the Continent bespeaks the pet character of the bird. Montagu terms it the Green-headed Bunting. The French have a fanciful derivation of the name: they say it is from the Italian word for gardener, which is from the Latin _hortus_, garden; because, according to Menage, in Italy, where the bird is common, it is quite at home in the hedges of gardens. The male bird has the throat, circle round the eyes, and a narrow band springing from the angle of the bill, yellow; head and neck grey, with a tinge of olive, and small brown spots; feathers black, edged with red; breast, belly, and abdomen, reddish grey, the feathers terminated with ash-colour; tail blackish, two external feathers, in part white; length rather more than six inches. There are, also, varieties marked white, green, blackish, and entirely black. The nest, which is constructed of fibres of plants and leaves, is frequently found on the ground in corn-fields, and sometimes in hedges and bushes. The Ortolan is not famed for its song, which is, however, soft and sweet. Like the Nightingale, to which it has other points of resemblance, the Ortolan sings after, as well as before sunset. It was this bird that Varro, the lyric poet, called his companion by night and day. The south of Europe may be considered the summer and autumnal head-quarters of the Ortolan, though it is a summer visitor in the central and northern parts. In Italy it is said to be common by Temminck and others. The Prince of Musignano states it to be found in the Sabine mountains; adding that it rarely flies in the plains of Rome, but is frequent in Tuscany. Lapland, Russia, Denmark. Sweden, and Norway, are among the countries visited by it. In the British Isles it seems only entitled to rank as an autumnal visitor, but it may occur more frequently than is generally supposed; for, especially to an unpractised eye, it might be mistaken for the Yellow Hammer, and in some states of plumage for other Buntings. It has been taken in the neighbourhood of London. In 1837 there was a live specimen in an aviary of the Zoological Society in Regent's-park; and many Ortolans are sent alive to the London market from Prussia. There is, however, some consolation for the rarity of the Ortolan in England. It is approached in delicacy by our Wheatear, which is termed the _English Ortolan_. Hence it has been pursued as a delicate morsel throughout all its island haunts. Bewick captured it at sea, off the coast of Yorkshire, in May, 1822. Every spring and autumn it may be observed at Gibraltar, on its migration. Mr. Strickland saw it at Smyrna in April. North Africa is its winter residence. Colonel Sykes notes it in his catalogue of the birds of the Deccan. Ortolans are solitary birds; they fly in pairs, rarely three together, and never in flocks. They are taken in traps from March or April to September, when they are often poor and thin; but if fed with plenty of millet-seed and other grain, they become sheer lumps of fat, and delicious morsels. They are fattened thus in large establishments in the south of Europe; Mr. Gould states this to be effected in Italy, and the south of France, in dark rooms; and the Prince of Musignano, having described the process, adds the relishing words. "Carne exquisita." The fattening process in Italy is one of great refinement in the manner of feeding. It is the fat of the Ortolan which is so delicious; but it has a peculiar habit of feeding which is opposed to the rapid fattening, this is, it feeds only at the rising of the sun. Yet this peculiarity has not proved an insurmountable obstacle to the Italian gourmands. The Ortolans are placed in a dark chamber, perfectly dark, with only one aperture in the wall. The food is scattered over the floor of the chamber. At a certain hour in the morning the keeper of the birds places a lantern in the orifice of the wall; when the dim light thrown from the lantern on the floor of the apartment induces the Ortolans to believe that the sun is about to rise, and they greedily consume the food upon the floor. More food is now scattered over it, and the lantern is withdrawn. The Ortolans, rather surprised at the shortness of the day, think it their duty to fall asleep, as night has spread her sable mantle round them. During sleep, little of the food being expended in the production of force, most of it goes to the formation of muscle and fat. After they have been allowed to repose for one or two hours, in order to complete the digestion of the food taken, their keeper again exhibits the lantern through the aperture. The "rising sun" a second time illumines the apartment, and the birds, awaking from their slumber, apply themselves voraciously to the food on the floor; after having discussed which, they are again enveloped in darkness. Thus the sun is made to shed its rising rays into the chamber floor four or five times every day, and as many nights following. The Ortolans thus treated become like little balls of fat in a few days. This not uninteresting process has been detailed by Dr. Lyon Playfair to the Royal Agricultural Society. It may, probably, be applied to purposes with less luxurious objects than fattening Ortolans. Notwithstanding its delicacy, the Ortolan fattens very fast; and it is this lump of fatness that is its merit, and has sometimes caused it to be preferred to the Becafico. According to Buffon, the Greeks and Romans understood fattening the Ortolan upon millet. But a lively French commentator doubts this statement: he maintains that had the ancients known the Ortolan, they would have deified it, and built altars to it upon Mount Hymettus and the Saniculum; adding, did they not deify the horse of Caligula, which was certainly not worth an Ortolan? and Caligula himself, who was not worth so much as his horse? However, this dispute belongs to the "classics of the table." The Ortolan is considered sufficiently fat when it is a handful, and is judged by feeling it, and not by appearance. It should not be killed with violence, like other birds; this might crush and bruise the delicate flesh, and spoil the _coup-d'oeil_, to avoid which it is recommended to plunge the head of the Ortolan into a glass of brandy. The culinary instruction is as follows: having picked the bird of its feathers, singe it with the flame of paper or spirits of wine; cut off the beak and ends of the feet; do not draw it; put it into a paper case soaked in olive oil, and broil it over a slow fire of slack cinders, like that required for a pigeon _à la crapaudine_; in a few minutes the Ortolan will swim in its own fat, and will be cooked. Some gourmands wrap each bird in a vine-leaf. A gourmand will take an Ortolan by the legs and craunch it in delicious mouthfuls, so as absolutely to lose none of it. More delicate feeders cut the bird into quarters, and lay aside the gizzard; the rest may be eaten, even to the bones, which are sufficiently tender for the most delicate mouth to masticate without inconvenience. On the Continent, Ortolans are packed in tin boxes for exportation. They may be bought in London for half-a-crown a-piece. A few poulterers import Ortolans in considerable numbers, and some have acquired the art of fattening these birds.[11] Alexis Soyer put into the hundred guinea dish which he prepared for the royal table at the grand banquet at York, in 1850, five pounds worth of Ortolans, which were obtained from Belgium. FOOTNOTE: [11] The Ortolan figures in a curious anecdote of individual epicurism in the last century. A gentleman of Gloucestershire had one son, whom he sent abroad to make the grand tour of the Continent, where he paid more attention to the cookery of nations, and luxurious living, than anything else. Before his return his father died and left him a large fortune. He now looked over his note-book to discover where the most exquisite dishes were to be had, and the best cooks obtained. Every servant in his house was a cook; his butler, footman, coachman, and grooms--all were cooks. He had also three Italian cooks--one from Florence, another from Vienna, and another from Viterbo--for dressing one Florentine dish. He had a messenger constantly on the road between Brittany and London to bring the eggs of a certain kind of plover found in the former country. This prodigal was known to eat a single dinner at the expense of 70_l._, though there were but two dishes. In nine years he found himself getting poor, and this made him melancholy. When totally ruined, having spent 150,000_l._, a friend one day gave him a guinea to keep him from starving, and he was found in a garret next day _broiling an Ortolan_, for which he had paid a portion of the alms. TALK ABOUT TOUCANS. The Toucans, a family of climbing-birds of tropical America, appear to have been known in Europe by the length and great size of their bills, long before the birds themselves found their way to England. Belon, in 1555, described the bill of one of the family as half a foot long, large as a child's arm, pointed, and black at the tip, white elsewhere, notched on the edges, hollow within, and so finely delicate as to be transparent and thin as parchment; and its beauty caused it to be kept in the cabinets of the curious. For more than a century after Belon's work, the birds themselves had not been seen in England; for, in the _Museum Tradescantianum_, the standard collection of the time, and which, from the list of contributors, appears to have been the great receptacle for all curiosities, we read of an "Azacari (or Toucan) of Brazil; has his beak four inches long, almost two thick, like a Turk's sword" (A.D. 1656). From this description Tradescant knew the nature of the bird, if he had not seen it. Mr. Swainson states, that the enormous bills give to these birds a most singular and uncouth appearance. Their feet are formed like those of the parrot, more for grasping than climbing; and as they live among trees, and proceed by hopping from branch to branch, their grasping feature is particularly adapted for such habits. They live retired in the deep forests, mostly in small companies. Their flight is strait and laborious, but not graceful; while their movements, as they glide rather than hop from branch to branch, are elegant. Mr. Gould, in his grand Monograph of the Toucans, or _Ramphastidæ_, remarks, that it was only within a few years of the time of Linnæus that actual specimens of the Toucan had been received in Europe. The beaks, however, of these birds, regarded as curiosities, had occasionally found their way to our shores, and had occasioned some curious conjectures. The earliest shape resembled a Turkish scimitar. The Toucans (a word derived from their Brazilian name, _Taca, Tucà_) received from Linnæus the title of _Ramphastos_, in allusion to the great volume of the beak ([Greek: ramphos]--Ramphos), a family (_Ramphastidæ_). In some respects, indeed, they resemble the Hornbills in the development of the beak. The Toucans may be said to represent in America the Hornbills in India and Africa. Large as is the beak of the Toucan compared with the size of the body, it is in reality very light. Its outer sheathing is somewhat elastic, very thin, smooth, and semi-transparent; and the interior consists of a maze of delicate cells, throughout which the olfactory nerves are multitudinously distributed. The nostrils are basal, the edges of each mandible are serrated, and the colouring of the whole beak is bright, rich, and often relieved by contrasted markings. But these tints begin to fade after death, and become ultimately dissipated. The eyes are surrounded by a considerable space of naked skin, often very richly tinted. The tongue is very long, slender, horizontally flattened, pointed, and, except at its base, horny; it is fringed or feathered along each side. The wings are short, concave, and comparatively feeble. The tail is variable, equal and squared; it is remarkable for the facility with which it can be retroverted or turned up, so as to lie upon the back. This peculiarity results from a modification of structure in the caudal vertebræ, which enables the tail to turn with a jerk by the action of certain muscles, as if it were fixed on a hinge put into action by means of a spring. When the retroversion is accomplished, the muscles which caused it become passive, and offer no resistance to their antagonists, which restore the tail to its ordinary direction. When they sleep they puff out their plumage, they retrovert the tail over the back, draw the head between the shoulders; the bill begins to turn over the right shoulder, and becomes at last buried in the plumage of the back; at the same time the pinions of the wings droop, and conceal the feet. The bird now resembles an oval ball of puffed-up feathers, and is well protected against the cold. Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice, caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic trees. Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the Spaniards _Carpintero_, and by the Brazilians _Tacataca_, in imitation, apparently, of the sound it thus makes. The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states, that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs, and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards. Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the Indians for personal decoration. Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants, when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit, insects, and the buds of trees. Edwards, in his voyage up the Amazon, observes, that when a party of Toucans alight on a tree, one usually acts the part of a sentinel, uttering the loud cry of "Tucano," whence they derive their name; the others disperse over the branches in search of fruit. While feeding they keep up a hoarse chattering, and at intervals unite with the noisy sentry, and scream a concert that may be heard a mile. Having appeased their appetites, they seek the depths of a forest, and there quietly doze away the noon. In early morning a few of them may be seen sitting quietly upon the branches of some dead tree, apparently awaiting the coming sunlight before starting for their feeding-trees. Some species of Toucans have been seen quarrelling with monkeys over a nest of eggs. Their carnivorous propensity has been strikingly shown in the specimens which have been kept in England. On the approach of any small bird the Toucan becomes highly excited, raises itself up, erects its feathers, and utters a hollow clattering sound, the irides of the eyes expand, and the Toucan is ready to dart on its prey. A Toucan, exhibited in St. Martin's-lane in 1824, seized and devoured a canary-bird. Next day Mr. Broderip tried him with a live goldfinch. The Toucan seized it with the beak, and the poor little victim uttered a short weak cry, for within a second it was dead, killed by the powerful compression of the mandibles. The Toucan now placed the dead bird firmly between its foot and the perch, stripped off the feathers with its bill, and then broke the bones of the wings and legs, by strongly wrenching them, the bird being still secured by the Toucan's foot. He then continued to work with great dexterity till he had reduced the goldfinch to a shapeless mass. This he devoured piece by piece with great gusto, not even leaving the legs or the beak of his prey: to each morsel he applied his tongue as he masticated it, chattering and shivering with delight. He never used his foot, but his bill, for conveying his food to his mouth by the sides of the bill. Mr. Swainson remarks:--"The apparent disproportion of the bill is one of the innumerable instances of that beautiful adaptation of structure to use which the book of nature everywhere reveals. The food of these birds consists principally of the eggs and young of others, to discover which nature has given them the most exquisite powers of smell." Again, the nests in which the Toucan finds its food are often very deep and dark, and its bill, covered with branches of nerves, enables the bird to feel its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. From its feeding on eggs found in other birds' nests, it has been called the Egg-sucker. Probably there is no bird which secures her young offspring better from the monkeys, which are very noisome to the young of most birds. For when she perceives the approach of these enemies she so settles herself in her nest as to put her bill out at the hole, and give the monkeys such a welcome therewith that they presently break away, and are glad to escape. Professor Owen, in his minute examination of the mandibles, remarks that the principle of the cylinder is introduced into the elaborate structure; the smallest of the supporting pillars of the mandibles are seen to be hollow or tubular when examined with the microscope. Light and almost diaphonous as is the bill of the Toucan, its strength and the power of the muscles, which act upon the mandibles, are evident in the wrenching and masticatory processes. When taking fruit, the Toucan generally holds it for a short time at the extremity of his bill, applying to it, with apparent delight, the pointed tip of the slender tongue: the bird then throws it, with a sudden upward jerk, to the throat, where it is caught and instantly swallowed. Mr. Gould divides the Toucans into six genera. 1. The true Toucans, with large and gaily-coloured bills, plumage black. 2. The Araçaris, with smaller beaks, plumage green, yellow, and red. 3. The Banded Aracauris, an Amazonian genus, proposed by Prince C. L. Bonaparte. 4. Toucanets, small, with crescent of yellow on the back, and brilliant orange and yellow ear-coverts. 5. Hill Toucans of the Andes. 6. Groove-bills, grass-green plumage. A very fine true Toucan, figured by Mr. Gould, is remarkable for the splendour and size of the bill, of a fine orange-red, with a large black patch on each side. Powder-flasks are made of large and finely-coloured bills. The naked skin round the eye is bright orange. The chest is white, with a tinge of sulphur below, and a slight scarlet margin. Upper tail-coverts, white; under tail-coverts, scarlet; the rest of the plumage, black. Several specimens of this beautiful bird lived both in the menagerie of the late Earl of Derby, at Knowsley, and in the gardens of the Zoological Society. It is a native of Cayenne, Paraguay, &c. Toucans in their manners are gentle and confident, exhibiting no alarm at strangers, and are as playful as magpies or jackdaws; travellers assure us that they may be taught tricks and feats like parrots; and although they cannot imitate the human voice, they show considerable intelligence. One of the Toucanets is named from Mr. Gould, the plates in whose _monograph_, from their size, beauty, and accuracy, have all the air of portraits. ECCENTRICITIES OF PENGUINS. This group of amphibious birds, though powerless in the wing as an organ of flight, are assisted by it as a species of fin in their rapid divings and evolutions under water, and even as a kind of anterior of extremity when progressing on the land. Their lot has been wisely cast on those desolate southern islands and shores where man rarely intrudes, and in many instances where a churlish climate or a barren soil offers no temptations to him to invade their territory. Le Vaillant, when on Dassen Island, found that the smaller crevices of the rocks served as places of retreat for Penguins, which swarmed there. "This bird," says Le Vaillant, which is about two feet in length, "does not carry its body in the same manner as others: it stands perpendicularly on its two feet, which gives it an air of gravity, so much the more ridiculous as its wings, which have no feathers, hang carelessly down on each side; it never uses them but in swimming. As we advanced towards the middle of the island we met innumerable troops of them. Standing firm and erect on their legs, these animals never deranged themselves in the least to let us pass; they more particularly surrounded the mausoleum, and seemed as if determined to prevent us from approaching it. All the environs were entirely beset with them. Nature had done more for the plain tomb of the poor Danish captain than what proceeds from the imaginations of poets or the chisels of our artists. The hideous owl, however well sculptured in our churches, has not half so dead and melancholy an air as the Penguin. The mournful cries of this animal, mixed with those of the sea-calf, impressed on my mind a kind of gloom which much disposed me to tender sensations of sadness. My eyes were sometime fixed on the last abode of the unfortunate traveller, and I gave his manes the tribute of a sigh." Sir John Narborough says of the Patagonian Penguins that their erect attitude and bluish-black backs, contrasted with their white bellies, might cause them to be taken at a distance for young children with white pinafores on. A line of them is engraved in Webster's "Voyage of the Chanticleer," and reminds us of one of the woodcuts in Hood's "Comic Annual." The "towns, camps, and rookeries," as they have been called, of Penguins have been often described. At the Falkland Islands are assemblies of Penguins, which give a dreary desolation to the place, in the utter absence of the human race. In some of the towns voyagers describe a general stillness, and when the intruders walked among the feathered population to provide themselves with eggs, they were regarded with side-long glances, but they seemed to carry no terror with them. In many places the shores are covered with these birds, and three hundred have been taken within an hour; for they generally make no effort to escape, but stand quietly by whilst their companions are knocked down with sticks, till it comes to their turn. The rookeries are described as designed with the utmost order and regularity, though they are the resort of several different species. A regular camp, often covering three or four acres, is laid out and levelled, and the ground disposed in squares for the nests, as accurately as if a surveyor had been employed. Their marchings and countermarchings are said to remind the observer of the manoeuvres of soldiers on parade. In the midst of this apparent order there appears to be not very good government, for the stronger species steal the eggs of the weaker if they are left unguarded; and the King Penguin is the greatest thief of all. Three species are found in the Falkland Islands. Two, the _Kings_ and the _Macaroni_, deposit their eggs in these rookeries. The _Jackass_, which is the third, obtained its English name from its brayings at night. It makes its nests in burrows on downs and sandy plains; and Forster describes the ground as everywhere so much bored, that a person, in walking, often sinks up to the knees; and if the Penguin chance to be in her hole, she revenges herself on the passenger by fastening on his legs, which she bites very hard. But these rookeries are insignificant when compared with a settlement of King Penguins, which Mr. G. Bennett saw at the north end of Macquarrie Island, in the South Pacific Ocean--a colony of these birds, which covered some thirty or forty acres. Here, during the whole of the day and night, 30,000 or 40,000 Penguins are continually landing, and an equal number going to sea. They are ranged, when on shore, in as regular ranks as a regiment of soldiers, and are classed, the young birds in one situation, the moulting birds in another, the sitting hens in a third, the clean birds in a fourth, &c.; and so strictly do birds in a similar condition congregate, that, should a moulting bird intrude itself among those which are clean, it is immediately ejected from them. The females, if approached during incubation, move away, carrying their eggs with them. At this time the male bird goes to sea, and collects food for the female, which becomes very fat. Captain Fitzroy describes, at Noir Island, multitudes of Penguins swarming among the bushes and tussac-grass near the shore, for moulting and rearing their young. They were very valiant in self-defence, and ran open-mouthed by dozens at any one who invaded their territory. The manner of feeding their young is amusing. The old bird gets on a little eminence and makes a loud noise, between quacking and braying, holding its head up as if haranguing the Penguinnery, the young one standing close to it, but a little lower. The old bird then puts down its head, and opens its mouth widely, into which the young one thrusts its head, and then appears to suck from the throat of its mother; after which the clatter is repeated, and the young one is again fed: this continues for about ten minutes. Mr. Darwin, having placed himself between a Penguin, on the Falkland Islands, and the water, was much amused by watching its habits. "It was a brown bird," says Mr. Darwin, "and, till reaching the sea, it regularly fought and drove me backwards. Nothing less than heavy blows would have stopped him: every inch gained, he firmly kept standing close before me, erect and determined. When thus opposed, he continually rolled his head from side to side in a very odd manner. While at sea, and undisturbed, this bird's note is very deep and solemn, and is often heard in the night time. In diving, its little plumeless wings are used as fins, but on the land as front legs. When crawling (it may be said on four legs) through the tussacks, or on the side of a grassy cliff, it moved so very quickly that it might readily have been mistaken for a quadruped. When at sea, and fishing, it comes to the surface for the purpose of breathing with such a spring, and dives again so instantaneously, that I defy any one, at first sight, to be sure that it is not a fish leaping for sport." Bougainville endeavoured to bring home a Penguin alive. It became so tame that it followed the person who fed it; it ate bread, flesh, or fish; but it fell away and died. The four-footed Duck of Gesner might have owed its origin to an ill-preserved Penguin. The notion of its being four-footed might have been fortified by some voyager who had seen the bird making progress as Mr. Darwin has above described. Mr. Webster describes the feathers of Penguins as very different from those of other birds, being short, very rigid, and the roots deeply embedded in fat. They are, in general, flat, and bent backwards, those on the breast being of a satin or silky white, and those on the flippers so short and small as to approach the nature of scales, overlaying each other very closely. The skins are loaded with fat. Their feet are not regularly webbed, but present a broad, fleshy surface, more adapted for walking than swimming. Mr. Webster saw great numbers of Penguins on Staten Island. They are the only genus of the feathered race that are there, and live in the water, like seals. He saw them at the distance of 200 miles from the land, swimming with the rapidity of the dolphin, the swiftest of fishes. When they come up to the surface for fresh breath, they make a croaking noise, dip their beaks frequently in the water, and play and dive about near the surface, like the bonita. Penguins have great powers of abstinence, and are able to live four or five months without food. Stones have been occasionally found in their stomachs, but they generally live on shrimps and crustacea, gorging themselves sometimes to excess. The sensations of these curious birds do not seem to be very acute. Sparrman stumbled over a sleeping one, and kicked it some yards, without disturbing its rest; and Forster left a number of Penguins apparently lifeless, while he went in pursuit of others, but they afterwards got up and marched off with their usual gravity. The bird is named from the Welsh word, _Pengwyn_. White head (_pen_, head; _gwyn_, white), and is thought to have been given to the bird by some Welsh sailors, on seeing its white breast. Davis, who discovered, in 1585, the straits which are named after him, was of Welsh parents. Might he not have given the name _Pengwyn_ to the bird? Swainson considers the Penguins, on the whole, as the most singular of all aquatic birds; and he states that they clearly point out that nature is about to pass from the birds to the fishes. Others consider Penguins more satisfactorily to represent some of the aquatic reptiles, especially the marine _testudinata_. PELICANS AND CORMORANTS. Pelicans are described as a large, voracious, and wandering tribe of birds, living for the most part on the ocean, and seldom approaching land but at the season of incubation. They fly with ease, and even with swiftness. Their bill is long, and armed at the end with an abrupt hook; the width of the gape is excessive; the face is generally bare of feathers, and the skin of the throat sometimes so extensible as to hang down like a bag; it will occasionally contain ten quarts. "By this curious organization," observes Swainson, "the Pelicans are able to swallow fish of a very large size; and the whole family may be termed _oceanic vultures_." The neighbourhood of rivers, lakes, and the sea-coast, is the haunt of the Pelican, and they are rarely seen more than twenty leagues from the land. Le Vaillant, upon visiting Dassen Island, at the entrance of Saldanha Bay, beheld, as he says, after wading through the surf, and clambering up the rocks, such a spectacle as never, perhaps, appeared to the eye of mortal. "All of a sudden there arose from the whole surface of the island an impenetrable cloud, which formed, at the distance of forty feet above our heads, an immense canopy, or, rather, a sky, composed of birds of every species and of all colours--cormorants, sea-gulls, sand-swallows, and, I believe, the whole winged tribe of this part of Africa, were here assembled." The same traveller found on the Klein-Brak river, whilst waiting for the ebb-tide, thousands of Pelicans and Flamingoes, the deep rose-colour of the one strongly contrasting with the white of the other. Mr. Gould says the bird is remarkable for longevity and the long period requisite for the completion of its plumage. The first year's dress is wholly brown, then fine white. The rosy tints are only acquired as the bird advances in age, and five years are required before the Pelican becomes fully mature. The expanse of wings is from twelve to thirteen feet. Although the bird perches on trees, it prefers rocky shores. It is found in the Oriental countries of Europe; and is common on the rivers and lakes of Hungary and Russia, and on the Danube. That the species exists in Asia there is no doubt. Belon, who refers to Leviticus xi. 18, where the bird is noted as unclean, says that it is frequent on the lakes of Egypt and Judæa. "When he was passing the plain of Roma, which is only half a day's journey from Jerusalem, he saw them flying in pairs, like swans, as well as in a large flock. Hasselquist saw the Pelican at Damietta, in Egypt. "In flying, they form an acute angle, like the common wild geese when they migrate. They appear in some of the Egyptian drawings."--(_Rossellini._) Von Siebold saw the Pelican in Japan. "Pelicans," says Dr. Richardson, "are numerous in the interior of the fur countries, but they seldom come within two hundred miles of Hudson's Bay. They deposit their eggs usually on small rocky islands, on the brink of cascades, where they can scarcely be approached; but they are otherwise by no means shy birds. They haunt eddies under waterfalls, and devour great quantities of carp and other fish. When gorged with food they doze on the water, and may be easily captured, as they have great difficulty in taking wing at such times, particularly if their pouches be loaded with fish." The bird builds on rocky and desert shores: hence we read of "the Pelican of the wilderness," alluded to in these beautiful lines:-- "Like the Pelicans On that lone island where they built their nests, Nourish'd their young, and then lay down to die." The bird lives on fish, which it darts upon from a considerable height. James Montgomery thus describes this mode of taking their prey:-- "Eager for food, their searching eyes they fix'd On Ocean's unroll'd volume, from a height That brought immensity within their scope; Yet with such power of vision look'd they down, As though they watch'd the shell-fish slowly gliding O'er sunken rocks, or climbing trees of coral, On indefatigable wing upheld, Breath, pulse, existence, seem'd suspended in them; They were as pictures painted on the sky; Till suddenly, aslant, away they shot, Like meteors chang'd from stars in gleams of lightning. And struck upon the deep; where, in wild play, Their quarry flounder'd, unsuspecting harm. With terrible voracity they plunged Their heads among the affrighted shoals, and beat A tempest on the surges with their wings, Till flashing clouds of foam and spray conceal'd them. Nimbly they seized and secreted their prey, Alive and wriggling, in th' elastic net Which Nature hung beneath their grasping beaks; Till, swoll'n with captures, th' unwieldy burthen Clogg'd their slow flight, as heavily to land These mighty hunters of the deep return'd. There on the cragged cliffs they perched at ease, Gorging their hapless victims one by one; Then, full and weary, side by side they slept, Till evening roused them to the chase again." _Pelican Island._ Great numbers of Pelicans are killed for their pouches, which are converted by the native Americans into purses, &c. When carefully prepared, the membrane is as soft as silk, and sometimes embroidered by Spanish ladies for work-bags, &c. It is used in Egypt by the sailors, whilst attached to the two under chaps, for holding or baling water. With the Pelican has been associated an old popular error, which has not long disappeared from books of information: it is that of the Pelican feeding her young with her blood. In reference to the actual economy of the Pelican, we find that, in feeding the nestlings--and the male is said to supply the wants of the female, when sitting, in the same manner--the under mandible is pressed against the neck and breast, to assist the bird in disgorging the contents of the capacious pouch; and during this action the red nail of the upper mandible would appear to come in contact with the breast, thus laying the foundation, in all probability, for the fable that the Pelican nourishes her young with her blood, and for the attitude in which the imagination of painters has placed the bird in books of emblems, &c., with the blood spirting from the wounds made by the terminating nail of the upper mandible into the gaping mouths of her offspring. Sir Thomas Browne, in his "Vulgar Errors," says:--"In every place we meet with the picture of the Pelican opening her breast with her bill, and feeding her young ones with the blood distilling from her. Thus it is set forth, not only in common signs, but in the crest and scutcheon of many noble families; hath been asserted by many holy writers, and was an hieroglyphic of piety and pity among the Egyptians; on which consideration they spared them at their tables." Sir Thomas refers this popular error to an exaggerated description of the Pelican's fondness for her young, and is inclined to accept it as an emblem "in coat-armour," though with great doubt. In "A Choice of Emblems and other Devices," by Geoffrey Whitney, are these lines:-- "The Pelican, for to revive her younge, Doth pierce her breste, and geve them of her blood. Then searche your breste, and as you have with tonge, With penne procede to do your countrie good: Your zeal is great, your learning is profounde; Then help our wantes with that you do abound." In George Wither's "Emblems," 1634, we find:-- "Our Pelican, by bleeding thus, Fulfill'd the law, and cured us." Shakspeare, in "Hamlet," thus alludes to the popular notion:-- "To his good friends thus wide I'll ope my arms; And like the kind, life-rendering Pelican, Repast them with my blood." In a holier light, this symbol signifies the Saviour giving Himself up for the redemption of mankind. In Lord Lindsay's "Christian Art," vols. i., xx., xxi., we find in the text, "God the Son (is symbolized) by a Pelican--'I am like a Pelican of the wilderness.' (Psalm cii. 6.)" To which is added the following note:--"The mediæval interpretation of this symbol is given by Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, Lion King, nephew of the poet, in his MS. 'Collectanea,' preserved in the Advocates' Library. Edinburgh." Sir Thomas Browne hints at the probability of the Pelican occasionally nibbling or biting itself on the itching part of its breast, upon fulness or acrimony of blood, so as to tinge the feathers in that part. Such an instance is recorded by Mr. G. Bennett of a Pelican living at Dulwich, which wounded itself just above the breast; but no such act has been observed among the Pelicans kept in the menagerie of the Zoological Society or elsewhere; and the instance just recorded was probably caused by local irritation. Of the same genus as the _Pelican_ is the _Cormorant_, an inhabitant of Europe generally and of America. It swims very deep in the water; even in the sea very little more than the neck and head are visible above the surface. It is a most expert diver, pursuing the fish which forms its food with great activity under water; it is said to be very fond of eels. It perches on trees, where it occasionally builds its nests, but it mostly selects rocky shores and islands. Upon the Fern Islands its nest is composed of a mass of sea-weed, frequently heaped up to the height of two feet. The species is easily domesticated; and its docility is shown by the use often made of Cormorants in fishing. Willughby, quoting Faber, says:--"They are wont in England to train up Cormorants to fishing. When they carry them out of the room where they are kept they take off their hoods, and having tied a leather thong round the lower part of their necks, that they may not swallow down the fish they catch, they throw them into the river. They presently dive under water, and there for a long time, with wonderful swiftness, pursue the fish, and when they have caught them they arise presently to the top of the water, and pressing the fish tightly with the bills, they swallow them, till each bird hath after this manner devoured five or six fishes. Then their keepers call them to the fish, to which they readily fly, and little by little, one after another, vomit up all the fish, a little bruised with the nip they gave them with their bills." When they have done fishing they loosen the string from the birds' necks, and for their reward they throw them part of the prey they have caught, to each, perchance, one or two fishes, which they catch most dexterously in their mouths as they are falling in the air. Pennant quotes Whitelock, who said that he had a cast of them, manned like hawks, and which would come to hand. He took much pleasure in them, and relates that the best he had was one presented him by Mr. Wood, master of the corvorants (as the older name was) to Charles I. Pennant adds, it is well known that the Chinese make great use of a congenerous sort in fishing, and that not for amusement but profit. Sir George Staunton, in his account of his Embassy to China, describes the place where the _Leu-tze_, or famed fishing-bird of China, is bred and instructed in the art and practice of supplying his owner with fish in great abundance. The bird, a Cormorant, is figured in Sir George's work, with two Chinese fishermen carrying their light boat, around the gunnel of which their Cormorants are perched by a pole resting on their shoulders between them. On a large lake are thousands of small boats and rafts built entirely for this species of fishery. On each boat or raft are ten or a dozen birds, which, on a signal from the owner, plunge into the water; and it is astonishing to see the enormous size of fish with which they return grasped between their bills. They appeared to be so well trained that it did not require either ring or cord about their throats to prevent them from swallowing any portion of their prey except what the master was pleased to return to them for encouragement and food. The boat used by these fishermen is remarkably light, and is often carried to the lake, together with the fishing-birds, by the men who are there to be supported by it. Belon gives an amusing account of the chase of this bird during calms, especially in the neighbourhood of Venice: the hunt is carried on in very light boats, each of which being rowed by five or six men, darts along the sea like the bolt from an arbalest, till the poor Cormorant, who is shot at with bows as soon as he puts his head above water, and cannot take flight after diving to suffocation, is taken quite tired out by his pursuers. Cormorant fishing has occasionally been reintroduced upon our rivers. In 1848 there were brought from Holland four tame Cormorants, which had been trained to the Chinese mode of fishing. Upon one occasion they fished three miles on a river, and caught a pannier-full of trout and eels. A ring placed round their necks to prevent them from swallowing large fish, but which leaves them at liberty to gulp down anything not exceeding the size of a gudgeon. The birds on these occasions are put into such parts of the river as are known to be favourite haunts of fish; and their activity under water in pursuit of fish can be compared to nothing so appropriate as a swallow darting after a fly. Blumenbach tells us the Cormorant occasionally increases in a few years to many thousands on coasts where it was previously unknown. It varies much both in size and colour. The late Joshua Brookes, the surgeon, possessed a Cormorant, which he presented to the Zoological Society. The Cormorant has a small sabre-shaped bone at the back of its vertex; which bone may serve as a lever in throwing back the head, when the animal tosses the fishes into the air and catches them in its open mouth. The same motion is, however, performed by some piscivorous birds, which are not provided with this particular bone. Aubrey, in his "Natural History of Wilts," quotes the following weather presage from May's "Virgil's Georgics":-- "The seas are ill to sailors evermore When Cormorants fly crying to the shore." TALKING BIRDS, ETC. Certain birds are known to utter strange sounds, the origin of which has much puzzled the ornithologists. The Brown Owl which hoots, is hence called the Screech Owl: a musical friend of Gilbert White tried all the Owls that were his near neighbours with a pitch-pipe set at a concert pitch, and found they all hooted in B flat; and he subsequently found that neither Owls nor Cuckoos keep to one note. The Whidah Bird, one of the most costly of cage-birds, rattles its tail-feathers with a noise somewhat resembling that made by the rattle-snake. The Chinese Starling, in China called _Longuoy_, in captivity is very teachable, imitating words, and even whistling tunes: we all remember Sterne's Starling. The Piping Crow, to be seen in troops in the Blue Mountains, is named from its ready mimicry of other birds: its imitation of the chucking and cackling of a hen and the crowing of a cock, as well as its whistling of tunes, are described as very perfect: its native note is said to be a loud whistle. The Blue Jay turns his imitative faculty to treacherous account: he so closely imitates the St. Domingo Falcon as to deceive even those acquainted with both birds; and the Falcon no sooner appears in their neighbourhood than the jays swarm around him and insult him with their imitative cries; for which they frequently fall victims to his appetite. The Bullfinch, according to Blumenbach, learns to whistle tunes, to sing in parts, and even to pronounce words. The note of the Crowned Crane has been compared by Buffon to the hoarseness of a trumpet; it also clucks like a hen. Mr. Wallace, in his "Travels on the Amazon," saw a bird about the size and colour of the Raven, which uttered a loud, hoarse cry, like some deep musical instrument, whence its Indian name, _Ueramioube_, Trumpet Bird: it inhabits the flooded islands of the Rio Negro and the Solimoes, never appearing on the mainland.[12] The only sound produced by Storks is by snapping their bills. The Night Heron is called the Qua Bird; from its note _Qua_. The Bittern, the English provincial names of which are the Mire-drum, Bull of the Bog, &c., is so called for the bellowing or drumming noise or booming for which the bird is so famous. This deep note of the "hollow-sounding Bittern" is exerted on the ground at the breeding season, about February or March. As the day declines he leaves his haunt, and, rising spirally, soars to a great height in the twilight. Willughby says that it performs this last-mentioned feat in the autumn, "making a singular kind of noise, nothing like to lowing." Bewick says that it soars as above described when it changes its haunts. Ordinarily it flies heavily, like the Heron, uttering from time to time a resounding cry, not bellowing; and then Willughby, who well describes the bellowing noise of the breeding season, supposes it to be the Night Raven, at whose "deadly voice" the superstitious wayfarer of the night turned pale and trembled. "This, without doubt," writes Willughby, "is that bird our common people call the Night Raven, and have such a dread of, imagining its cry portends no less than their death or the death of some of their near relations; for it flies in the night, answers their description of being like a flagging collar, and hath such a kind of hooping cry as they talk of." Others, with some reason, consider the Qua Bird already mentioned (which utters a loud and most disagreeable noise when on the wing, conveying the idea of the agonies of a person attempting to vomit) to be the true Night Raven. The Bittern was well known to the ancients, and Aristotle mentions the fable of its origin from staves metamorphosed into birds. The long claw of the hind toe is much prized as a toothpick, and in the olden times it was thought to have the property of preserving the teeth. The Greater-billed Butcher Bird, from New Holland, has extraordinary powers of voice: it is trained for catching small birds, and it is said to imitate the notes of some other birds by way of decoying them to their destruction. The mere imitative sounds of Parrots are of little interest compared with the instances of instinct, apparently allied to reason, which are related of individuals. Of this tribe the distinguishing characteristics are a hooked bill, the upper mandible of which is moveable as well as the lower, and not in one piece with the skull, as in most other birds, but joined to the head by a strong membrane, with which the bird lifts it or lets it fall at pleasure. The bill is also round on the outside and hollow within, and has, in some degree, the capacity of a mouth, allowing the tongue, which is thick and fleshy, to play freely; while the sound, striking against the circular border of the lower mandible, reflects it like a palate: hence the animal does not utter a whistling sound, but a full articulation. The tongue, which modulates all sounds, is proportionally larger than in man. The Wild Swan has a very loud call, and utters a melancholy cry when one of the flock is killed; hence it was said by the poets to sing its own dying dirge. Such was the popular belief in olden times; and, looking to the anatomical characteristics of the species, it was, in some degree, supported by the more inflated wind-pipe of the wild when compared with that of the tame species. The _Song of the Swan_ is, however, irreconcileable with sober belief, the only noise of the Wild Swan of our times being unmelodious, and an unpleasing monotony. The Laughing Goose is named from its note having some resemblance to the laugh of man; and not, as Wilson supposes, from the grinning appearance of its mandibles. The Indians imitate its cry by moving the hand quickly against the lips, whilst they repeat the syllable _wah_. The Cuckoo may be said to have done much for musical science, because from that bird has been derived the _minor scale_, the origin of which has puzzled so many; the Cuckoo's couplet being the _minor third_ sung downwards. The Germans are the finest appreciators of the Nightingale; and it is a fact, that when the Prussian authorities, under pecuniary pressure, were about to cut down certain trees near Cologne, which were frequented by Nightingales, the alarmed citizens purchased the trees in order to save the birds and keep their music. Yet one would think the music hardly worth having, if it really sounded as it looks upon paper, transcribed thus by Bechstein, from whom it is quoted by Broderip:-- Zozozozozozozozozozozozo zirrhading Hezezezezezezezezezezezezezezeze cowar ho dze hoi Higaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigaigai, guaiagai coricor dzio dzio pi.[13] M. Wichterich, of Bonn, remarks:--"It is a vulgar error to suppose that the song of the Nightingale is melancholy, and that it only sings by night. There are two varieties of the Nightingale; one which sings both in the night and the day, and one which sings in the day only." In the year 1858, Mr. Leigh Sotheby, in a letter to Dr. Gray, of the British Museum, described a marvellous little specimen of the feathered tribe--a Talking Canary. Its parents had previously and successfully reared many young ones, but three years before they hatched only _one_ out of four eggs, the which they immediately neglected, by commencing the rebuilding of a nest on the top of it. Upon this discovery, the unfledged and forsaken bird, all but dead, was taken away and placed in flannel by the fire, when, after much attention, it was restored, and then brought up by hand. Thus treated, and away from all other birds, it became familiarised only with those who fed it; consequently, its first singing notes were of a character totally different to those usual with the Canary. Constantly being talked to, the bird, when about three months old, astonished its mistress by repeating the endearing terms used in talking to it, such as "Kissie, kissie," with its significant sounds. This went on, and from time to time the little bird repeated other words; and then, for hours together, except during the moulting season, it astonished by _ringing the changes_, according to its own fancy, and as plainly as any human voice could articulate them, on the several words, "Dear sweet Titchie" (its name), "kiss Minnie," "Kiss me, then, dear Minnie." "Sweet pretty little Titchie," "Kissie, kissie, kissie." "Dear Titchie," "Titchie wee, gee, gee, gee, Titchie. Titchie." The usual singing-notes of the bird were more of the character of the Nightingale, mingled occasionally with the sound of the dog-whistle used about the house. It is hardly necessary to add, that the bird was by nature remarkably tame. In 1839, a Canary-bird, capable of distinct articulation, was exhibited in Regent-street. The following were some of its sentences:--"Sweet pretty dear," "Sweet pretty dear Dicky," "Mary," "Sweet pretty little Dicky dear;" and often in the course of the day, "Sweet pretty Queen." The bird also imitated the jarring of a wire, the ringing of a bell; it was three years old, and was reared by a lady who never allowed it to be in the company of other birds. This Canary died in October, 1839; it was, it is believed, the only other talking instance publicly known. We read of some experiments made in the rearing of birds at Kendal by a bird-fancier, the result of which was, that upwards of 20 birds--Canaries. Greenfinches, Linnets, Chaffinches, Titlarks, and Whitethroats--were reared in one cage by a pair of Canaries. The experiments were continued until the extraordinary number of thirty-eight birds had been brought up within two months by the Canaries. It may be worth while to enumerate them. In the month of June the Canaries--the male green, and the female piebald--were caged for the purpose of breeding. The female laid five eggs, and while she was sitting a Greenfinch egg was introduced into the nest. All of these were hatched, and the day after incubation was completed five Grey Linnets, also newly hatched, were put into the cage, in their own nest. Next day a newly-hatched nest of four Chaffinches was also introduced; and afterwards five different nests, consisting of six Titlarks, six Whitethroats, three Skylarks, three Winchars, and three Blackcaps. While rearing the last of these nests, the female Canary again laid and hatched four eggs, thus making thirty-eight young birds brought up by the pair of Canaries. It will be noticed that most of these birds are soft-billed, whose natural food is small insects; but they took quite kindly to the seeds upon which they were fed by their step-parents. The pair of Canaries fed at one time twenty-one young birds, and never had less than sixteen making demands upon their care; and while the female was hatching her second nest she continued to feed the birds that occupied the other nest. Of the origin of the _neighing sound_ which accompanies the single Snipe's play-flight during pairing-time, opinions are various. Bechstein thought it was produced by means of the beak; Naumann and others, again, that it originated in powerful strokes of the wing. Pratt, in Hanover, observing that the bird makes heard its well-known song or cry, which he expresses with the words, "gick jack, gick jack!" at the same time with the _neighing sound_, it seemed to be settled that the latter is not produced through the throat. In the meantime, M. Meves, of Stockholm, remarked with surprise, that the humming sound could never be observed whilst the bird was flying upwards, at which time the tail is closed; but only when it was casting itself downwards in a slanting direction, with the tail strongly spread out. M. Meves has written for the Zoological Society a paper upon the origin of this sound, which all the field-naturalists and sportsmen of England and other countries had, for the previous century, been trying to make out, but had failed to discover. Of this paper the following is an abstract:-- The peculiar form of the tail-feathers in some foreign species nearly allied to our Snipe encouraged the notion that the tail conduced to the production of the sound. M. Meves found the tail-feathers of our common Snipe, in the first feather especially, very peculiarly constructed; the shaft uncommonly stiff and sabre-shaped; the rays of the web strongly bound together and very long, the longest reaching nearly three-fourths of the whole length of the web, these rays lying along or spanning from end to end of the curve of the shaft, _like the strings of a musical instrument_. If you blow from the outer side upon the broad web, it comes into vibration, and a sound is heard, which, though fainter, resembles very closely the well-known _neighing_. But to convince yourself fully that it is the first feather which produces the peculiar sound, it is only necessary carefully to pluck out such an one, to fasten its shaft with fine thread to a piece of steel wire a tenth of an inch in diameter, and a foot long, and then to fix this at the end of a four-foot stick. If now you draw the feather, with this outer side forward, sharply through the air, at the same time making some short movements or shakings of the arm, so as to represent the shivering motion of the wings during flight, you produce the neighing sound with the most astonishing exactness. If you wish to hear the humming of both feathers at once, as must be the case from the flying bird, this also can be managed by a simple contrivance. Take a small stick, and fasten at the side of the smaller end a piece of burnt steel wire in the form of a fork; bind to each point a side tail-feather; bend the wire so that the feathers receive the same direction which they do in the spreading of the tail as the bird sinks itself in flight; and then, with this apparatus, draw the feathers through the air as before. Such a sound, but in another tone, is produced when we experiment with the tail-feathers of other kinds of Snipe. Since in both sexes these feathers have the same form, it is clear that both can produce the same humming noise; but as the feathers of the hen are generally less than those of the cock-bird, the noise made by them is not so deep as in the other case. Besides the significance which these tail-feathers have as a kind of musical instrument, their form may give a weighty character in the determination of a species standing very near one another, which have been looked upon as varieties. This interesting discovery was first announced by M. Meves in an account of the birds observed by himself during a visit to the Island of Gottland, in the summer of the year 1856, which narrative was published at Stockholm in the following winter. In the succeeding summer, M. Meves showed his experiments to Mr. Wolley, whose services to Ornithology we have already noticed. The mysterious noise of the wilderness was reproduced in a little room in the middle of Stockholm: first, the deep bleat, now shown to proceed from the male Snipe, and then the fainter bleat of the female, both most strikingly true to nature, neither producible with any other feathers than the outer ones of the tail. Mr. Wolley inquired of Mr. Meves how, issuing forth from the town on a summer ramble, he came to discover what had puzzled the wits and strained the eyes of so many observers. He freely explained how, in a number of "Naumannia," an accidental misprint of the word representing tail-feathers instead of wing-feathers,--a mistake which another author ridiculed--first led him to think on the subject. He subsequently examined in the Museum at Stockholm the tail-feathers of various species of Snipe, remarked their structure, and reasoned upon it. Then he blew upon them, and fixed them on levers that he might wave them with greater force through the air; and at the same time he made more careful observation than he had hitherto done in the living birds. In short, in him the obscure hint was thrown upon fruitful ground, whilst in a hundred other minds it had failed to come to light. Dr. Walsh saw at Constantinople a Woodpecker, about the size of a Thrush, which was very active in devouring flies, and tapped woodwork with his bill with a noise _as loud as that of a hammer_, to disturb the insects concealed therein, so as to seize upon them when they appeared. Among remarkable bird services should not be forgotten those of the Trochilos to the Crocodile. "When the Crocodile," says Herodotus, "feeds in the Nile, the inside of his mouth is always covered with _bdella_ (a term which the translators have rendered by that of _leech_). All birds, _except one_, fly from the Crocodile; but this one bird, the _Trochilos_, on the contrary, flies towards him with the greatest eagerness, and renders him a very great service; for every time that the Crocodile comes to the land to sleep, and when he lies stretched out with his jaws open, the Trochilos enters and establishes himself in his mouth, and frees him from the bdella which he finds there. The Crocodile is grateful, and never does any harm to the little bird who performs for him this office." This passage was long looked upon as a pleasant story, and nothing more; until M. Geoffroy St. Hilaire, during his long residence in Egypt, ascertained the story of Herodotus to be correct in substance, but inexact in details. It is perfectly true that a little bird does exist, which flies incessantly from place to place, searching everywhere, even in the Crocodile's mouth, for the insects which form the principal part of its nourishment. This bird is seen everywhere on the banks of the Nile, and M. Geoffroy has proved it to be of a species already described by Hasselquist, and very like the small winged Plover. If the Trochilos be in reality the little Plover, the bdella cannot be leeches, (which do not exist in the running waters of the Nile) but the small insects known as _gnats_ in Europe. Myriads of these insects dance upon the Nile: they attack the Crocodile upon the inner surface of his palate, and sting the orifice of the glands, which are numerous in the Crocodile's mouth. Then the little Plover, who follows him everywhere, delivers him from these troublesome enemies; and that without any danger to himself, for the Crocodile is always careful, when he is going to shut his mouth, to make some motion which warns the little bird to fly away. At St. Domingo there is a Crocodile which very nearly resembles that of Egypt. This Crocodile is attacked by gnats, from which he would have no means of delivering himself (his tongue, like that of the Crocodile, being fixed) if a bird of a particular species did not give him the same assistance that the Crocodile of the Nile receives from the little Plover. These facts explain the passage in Herodotus, and demonstrate that the animal, there called bdella, is not a leech, but a flying insect similar to our gnat. Exemplifications of instinct, intelligence, and reason in Birds are by no means rare, but this distinction must be made: instinctive actions are dependent on the nerves, intelligence on the brain; but that which constitutes peculiar qualities of the mind in man has no material organ. The Rev. Mr. Statham has referred to the theory of the facial angle as indicative of the amount of sagacity observable in the animal race, but has expressed his opinion that the theory is utterly at fault in the case of Birds; many of these having a very acute facial angle being considerably more intelligent than others having scarcely any facial angle at all. Size also seems to present another anomaly between the two races of Beasts and Birds; for while the Elephant and the Horse are among the most distinguished of quadrupeds for sagacity and instinct, the larger Birds seem scarcely comparable to the smaller ones in the possession of these attributes. The writer instances this by comparing the Ostrich and the Goose with the Wren, the Robin, the Canary, the Pigeon, and the Crow; and amusingly alludes to the holding of parliaments or convocations of birds of the last species, while the Ostrich is characterised in Scripture as the type of folly. The author then refers to the poisoning of two young Blackbirds by the parent birds, when they found that they could neither liberate them nor permanently share their captivity. The two fledglings had been taken from a Blackbirds' nest in Surrey-square, and had been placed in a room looking over a garden, in a wicker cage. For some time the old birds attended to their wants, visited them regularly, and fed them with appropriate food; but, at last, getting wearied of the task, or despairing of effecting their liberation, they appear to have poisoned them. They were both found suddenly dead one morning, shortly after having been seen in good health; and on opening their bodies a small leaf, supposed to be that of _Solanum Nigrum_, was found in the stomach of each. The old birds immediately deserted the spot, as though aware of the nefarious deed befitting their name. As an exemplification of instinct Dr. Horner states that Rooks built on the Infirmary trees at Hull, but never over the street. One year, however, a young couple ventured to build here: for eight mornings in succession the old Rooks proceeded to destroy the nest, when at last the young ones chose a more fitting place. Mr. A. Strickland, having referred to the tendency of birds to build their nests of materials of a colour resembling that around such nests, relates an instance in which the Fly-catcher built in a red brick wall, and used for the nest mahogany shavings. Referring to the meeting of Rooks for judicial purposes. Mr. Strickland states that he once saw a Rook tried in this way, and ultimately killed by the rest. SONGS OF BIRDS AND SEASONS OF THE DAY. Although nearly half a century has elapsed since the following observations were communicated to the Royal Society by Dr. Jenner, their expressive character is as charming as ever, and their accuracy as valuable:-- "There is a beautiful propriety in the order in which Singing Birds fill up the day with their pleasing harmony. The accordance between their songs, and the aspect of nature at the successive periods of the day at which they sing, is so remarkable that one cannot but suppose it to be the result of benevolent design. "From the _Robin_ (not the _Lark_, as has been generally imagined), as soon as twilight has drawn its imperceptible line between night and day, begins his artless song. How sweetly does this harmonize with the soft dawning of the day! He goes on till the twinkling sunbeams begin to tell him that his notes no longer accord with the rising sun. Up starts the _Lark_, and with him a variety of sprightly songsters, whose lively notes are in perfect correspondence with the gaiety of the morning. The general warbling continues, with now and then an interruption by the transient croak of the _Raven_, the scream of the _Jay_, or the pert chattering of the _Daw_. The _Nightingale_, unwearied by the vocal exertions of the night, joins his inferiors in sound in the general harmony. The _Thrush_ is wisely placed on the summit of some lofty tree, that its piercing notes may be softened by distance before it reaches the ear, while the mellow _Blackbird_ seeks the lower branches. "Should the sun, having been eclipsed by a cloud, shine forth with fresh effulgence, how frequently we see the _Goldfinch_ perch on some blossomed bough, and hear his song poured forth in a strain peculiarly energetic; while the sun, full shining on his beautiful plumes, displays his golden wings and crimson crest to charming advantage. Indeed, a burst of sunshine in a cloudy day, or after a heavy shower, seems always to wake up a new gladness in the little musicians, and invite them to an answering burst of minstrelsy. "As evening advances, the performers gradually retire, and the concert softly dies away. At sunset the _Robin_ again sends up his twilight song, till the still more serene hour of night sends him to his bower of rest. And now, in unison with the darkened earth and sky, no sooner is the voice of the _Robin_ hushed, than the _Owl_ sends forth his slow and solemn tones, well adapted to the serious hour." FOOTNOTES: [12] The popular name of this bird is the _Umbrella Bird_. On its head it bears a crest, different from that of any other bird. It is formed of feathers more than two inches long, very thickly set, and with hairy plumes curving over at the end. These can be laid back so as to be hardly visible, or can be erected and spread out on every side, forming a dome completely covering the head, and even reaching beyond the point of the beak; the individual feathers then stand out something like the down-bearing seeds of the dandelion. Besides this, there is another ornamental appendage on the breast, formed by a fleshy tubercle, as thick as a quill and an inch and a-half long, which hangs down from the neck, and is thickly covered with glossy feathers, forming a large pendent plume or tassel. This, also, the bird can either press to its breast, so as to be scarcely visible, or can swell out so as almost to conceal the forepart of its body. [13] "Athenæum," No. 1467. OWLS. These nocturnal birds of prey have large heads and great projecting eyes, directing forwards, and surrounded with a circle of loose and delicate feathers, more or less developed, according to the nocturnal or comparatively diurnal habits of the species. The position of the eyes, giving a particular fulness and breadth to the head, has gained for the Owl the intellectual character so universally awarded to it. The concave facial disc of feathers with which they are surrounded materially aids vision by concentrating the rays of light to an intensity better suited to the opacity of the medium in which power is required to be exercised. "They may be compared," says Mr. Yarrell, "to a person near-sighted, who sees objects with superior magnitude and brilliancy when within the prescribed limits of his natural powers of vision, from the increased angle these objects subtend." Their beaks are completely curved, or raptorial; they have the power of turning the outer toe either backwards or forwards; they fly weakly, and near the ground; but, from their soft plumage, stealthily, stretching out their hind legs that they may balance their large and heavy heads. Their sense of hearing is very acute: they not only look, but listen for prey. The Owl is a bird of mystery and gloom, and a special favourite with plaintive poets. We find him with Ariel:-- "There I couch when Owls do cry." He figures in the nursery rhyme of "Cock Robin." In reply to "Who dug his grave?"-- "I, says the Owl, with my little shovel-- I dug his grave." He hoots over graves, and his dismal note adds to the terror of darkness:-- "'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the Owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu-whit! tu-whoo! And hark again the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. . . . . . . . . . "When blood is nipt, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring Owl, Tu-whoo! Tu-whit! tu-whoo! _a merry note_, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot!" Titania sings of "The clamorous Owl, that nightly hoots and wonders At our quaint spirits." Bishop Hall has this "Occasional Meditation" upon the sight of an Owl in the twilight:--"What a strange melancholic life doth this creature lead; to hide her head all the day long in an ivy-bush, and at night, when all other birds are at rest, to fly abroad and vent her harsh notes. I know not why the ancients have _sacred_ this bird to wisdom, except it be for her safe closeness and singular perspicuity; that when other domestrial and airy creatures are blind, she only hath insured light to discern the least objects for her own advantage." We may here note that Linnæus, with many other naturalists and antiquaries, have supposed the Horned Owl to have been the bird of Minerva; but Blumenbach has shown, from the ancient works of Grecian art, that it was not this, but rather some smooth-headed species, probably the _Passerina_, or Little Owl. The divine has, in the above passage, overstated the melancholy of the Owl; as has also the poet, who sings:-- "From yonder ivy-mantled tower The moping Owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bower, Molest her ancient solitary reign." Shakspeare more accurately terms her "the mousing Owl," for her nights are spent in barns, or in hunting and devouring sparrows in the churchyard elms. "Moping, indeed!" says a pleasing observer. "So far from this, she is a sprightly, active ranger of the night, who had as lief sit on a grave as a rose-bush; who is as valiant a hunter as Nimroud, chasing all sorts of game, from the dormouse to the hare and the young lamb, and devouring them, while her mate hoots to her from some picturesque ruin, and invites her, when supper is over, to return to him and her babes." But the tricks of the Owl by night render her the terror of all other birds, great and small. In Northern Italy, persons in rustic districts which are well wooded, catch and tame an Owl, put a light chain upon her legs, and then place her on a small cross-bar on the top of a high pole, which is fixed in the earth. Half-blinded by the light, the defenceless captive has to endure patiently the jeers and insults of the dastardly tribes from the surrounding groves and thickets, who issue in clouds to scream, chirp, and flit about their enemy. Some, trusting to the swiftness of their wings, sweep close by, and peck at her feathers as they pass, and are sometimes punished by the Owl with her formidable beak for their audacity. Meanwhile, from darkened windows, sportsmen, with fowling-pieces well charged with shot, fire at the hosts of birds, wheeling, shrieking, screaming, and thickening around the Owl. All the guns are fired at once, and the grass is strewn for many yards round with the slain; while the Owl, whom they have been careful not to hit, utters a joyous whoo! whoo! at the fate of her persecutors. Major Head thus describes the _Biscacho_, or Coquimbo, a curious species of Owl, found all over the pampas of South America:--"Like rabbits, they live in holes, which are in groups in every direction. These animals are never seen in the day, but as soon as the lower limb of the sun reaches the horizon, they are seen issuing from the holes. The Biscachos, when full-grown, are nearly as big as badgers, but their head resembles a rabbit's, except that they have large bushy whiskers. In the evening they sit outside the holes, and they all appear to be moralizing. They are the most serious-looking animals I ever saw; and even the young ones are grey-headed, wear moustachios, and look thoughtful and grave. In the daytime their holes are guarded by two little owls, which are never an instant away from their posts. As one gallops by these owls, they always stand looking at the stranger, and then at each other, moving their old-fashioned heads in a manner which is quite ridiculous, until one rushes by them, when they get the better of their dignified looks, and they both run into the Biscacho's hole." Of all birds of prey, Owls are the most useful to man, by protecting his corn-fields, or granaried provision, from mice and numberless vermin. Yet, prejudice has perverted these birds into objects of superstition and consequent hate. The kind-hearted Mr. Waterton says:--"I wish that any little thing I could write or say might cause this bird to stand better with the world at large than it has hitherto done; but I have slender hope on this score, because old and deep-rooted prejudices are seldom overcome; and when I look back into annals of remote antiquity, I see too clearly that defamation has done its worst to ruin the whole family, in all its branches, of this poor, harmless, useful friend of mine." The Barn Owl is common throughout Europe, known in Tartary, and rare in the United States of America. In England it is called the Barn Owl, the Church Owl, Gillihowlet, and Screech Owl; the last name is improperly applied, as it is believed not to hoot, though Sir William Jardine asserts that he has shot it in the act of hooting. To the screech superstition has annexed ideas of fatal portent; "but," says Charlotte Smith, "it has, of course, no more foreknowledge of approaching evil to man than the Lark: its cry is a signal to its absent mate." "If," says Mr. Waterton, "this useful bird caught its food by day instead of hunting for it by night, mankind would have ocular demonstration of its utility in thinning the country of mice; and it would be protected and encouraged everywhere. It would be with us what the Ibis was with the Egyptians. When it has young, it will bring a mouse to the nest every twelve or fifteen minutes." Mr. Waterton saw his Barn Owl fly away with a rat which he had just shot; he also saw her drop perpendicularly into the water, and presently rise out of it with a fish in her claws, which she took to her nest. Birds and quadrupeds, and even fish, are the food of Owls, according to the size of the species. Hares, partridges, grouse, and even the turkey, are attacked by the larger Horned Owls of Europe and America; while mice, shrews, small birds, and crabs suffice for the inferior strength of the smaller Owls. Mr. Yarrell states that the Short-eared Owl is the only bird of prey in which he ever found the remains of a bat. William Bullock reports that a large Snowy Owl, wounded on the Isle of Baltoc, disgorged a young rabbit; and that one in his possession had in its stomach a sandpiper with its feathers entire. It preys on lemmings, hares, and birds, particularly the willow-grouse and ptarmigan. It is a dexterous fisher, grasping the fish with an instantaneous stroke of the foot as it sails along near the surface of the water, or sits on a stone in a shallow stream. It has been seen on the wing pursuing an American hare, making repeated strokes at the animal with its foot. In winter, when this Owl is fat, the Indians and white residents in the Fur Countries esteem it to be good eating; its flesh is delicately white. Small snakes are the common prey of this Owl during the daytime. And to show on what various kinds of food Owls subsist, Mr. Darwin states that a species that was killed among the islets of the Chonos Archipelago had its stomach full of good-sized crabs. Such are a few of the facts which attest the almost omnivorous appetite of the Owl. The flight of the Snowy Owl is stronger and swifter than any other bird of the family; its ears are very large; its voice (says Pennant) adds horror even to the regions of Greenland by its hideous cries, resembling those of a man in deep distress. The eye is very curious, being immovably fixed in its socket, so that the bird, to view different objects, must always turn its head; and so excellently is the neck adapted to this purpose, that it can with ease turn the head round in almost a complete circle, without moving the body. The Virginian Eagle-Owl, amidst the forests of Indiana, utters a loud and sudden _Wough O! wough O!_ sufficient to alarm a whole garrison; another of its nocturnal cries resembles the half-suppressed screams of a person being suffocated or throttled. The Javanese Owl is found in the closest forests, and occasionally near villages and dwellings. Dr. Horsfield says:--"It is not, however, a favourite with the natives; various superstitious notions are also in Java associated with its visits; and it is considered in many parts of the island as portending evil." One of this species never visits the villages, but resides in the dense forests, which are the usual resort of the tiger. The natives even assert that the _Wowo-wiwi_ approaches the animal with the same familiarity with which the jallack approaches the buffalo, and that it has no dread to alight on the tiger's back. Dr. Horsfield adds, that it has never been seen in confinement. The Boobook Owl has the native name of Buck-buck, and it may be heard in Australia every night during winter, uttering a cry corresponding with that word. The note is somewhat similar to that of the European _Cuckoo_, and the colonists have given it that name. The lower order of settlers in New South Wales are led away by the idea that everything is the reverse in that country to what it is in England; and the _Cuckoo_, as they call this bird, singing by night, is one of the instances which they point out. Tame Owls are described as nearly as playful, and quite as affectionate, as kittens; they will perch upon your wrist, touch your lips with their beak, and hoot to order; and they are less inclined to leave their friends than other tame birds. A writer in "Chambers's Journal" relates, that a friend lost his favourite Owl, which flew away, and was absent many days. In time, however, he came back, and resumed his habits and duties, which, for a while, went on uninterruptedly. At length, one severe autumn, he disappeared; weeks, months passed, and he returned not. One snowy night, however, as his master sat by the blazing fire, some heavy thing came bump against the shutters. "Whoo, whoo, whoo." The window was opened, and in flew the Owl, shaking the thick snow from his wings, and settling lovingly on his master's wrist, the bird's eyes dilating with delight. The Owls at Arundel Castle have a sort of historic interest; they are kept within the circuit of the keep-tower, the most ancient and picturesque portion of the castle. Among the Australian Owls here we read of one larger than a turkey, measuring four feet across the wings when expanded. The Owl named "Lord Thurlow," from his resemblance to that Judge, is a striking specimen. The accompanying illustration shows a fine specimen of Fraser's Eagle-Owl, brought from Fernando Po. It is the size of an ordinary fowl; colour, very dark reddish-brown mottling; back and wings passing through all shades of the same colour into nearly white on the under parts, where the feathers are barred; bill, pale greenish; eyes, nearly black. [Illustration: FRASER'S EAGLE-OWL, FROM FERNANDO PO.] Among the Owls but recently described is the Masked Owl of New Holland, named from the markings of the disk of the face, somewhat grotesque; the colours are brown variegated with white. A fine specimen of the Abyssinian Owl is possessed by Mr. R. Good, of Yeovil: the bird, although quite young, is of immense size. Lastly, the Owl is thought to be of the same sympathy or kindred likings as the Cat: a young Owl will feed well, and thrive upon fish. Cats, too, it is well known, like fish. Both the Cat and the Owl, too, feed upon mice. The sight of Owls, also, similar to that of Cats, appears to serve them best in the dark. WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS. Whatever may be the worth of weather prognostications, it is from the animal kingdom that we obtain the majority. How these creatures become so acutely sensible of the approach of particular kinds of weather is not at present well understood. That in many cases the appearance of the heavens is not the source from which their information is derived is proved by the signs of uneasiness frequently expressed by them when, as yet, the most attentive observer can detect no signs of change, and even when they are placed in such circumstances as preclude the possibility of any instruction from this quarter. For instance. Dogs, closely confined in a room, often become very drowsy and stupid before rain; and a leech, confined in a glass of water, has been found, by its rapid motions or its quiescence, to indicate the approach of wet or the return of fair weather. Probably the altered condition of the atmosphere with regard to its electricity, which generally accompanies change of weather, may so affect their constitution as to excite in them pleasurable or uneasy sensations; though man is far from insensible to atmospheric changes, as the feelings of utter listlessness which many persons experience before rain, and the aggravated severity of toothache, headache, and rheumatism abundantly testify. The Cat licking itself is a special influence of the above electric influence, which denotes the approach of rain. Birds, as "denizens of the air," are the surest indicators of weather changes. Thus, when swallows fly high, fine weather is to be expected or continued; but when they fly low, or close to the ground, rain is almost surely approaching; for swallows follow the flies and gnats, which delight in warm strata of air. Now, as warm air is lighter, and usually moister than cold air, when the warm strata of air are high there is less chance of moisture being thrown down from them by their mixture with cold air; but when the warm and moist air is close to the surface, it is almost certain that, as the cold air flows down into it, a deposition of water will take place. When Seagulls assemble on the land, very stormy and rainy weather is approaching. The cause of this migration to the land is the security of these birds finding food; and they may be observed at this time feeding greedily on the earth-worms and larvæ driven out of the ground by severe floods; whilst the fish on which they prey in fine weather in the sea, leave the surface, and go deeper in storms. The search after food is the principal cause why animals change their places. The different tribes of the wading birds always migrate when rain is about to take place. There is a bird which takes its name from its apparent agency in tempests. Such is the Stormy Petrel, which name Hawkesworth, in his "Voyages," mentions the sailors give to the bird, but explains no further. Navigators meet with the Little Petrel, or Storm Finch, in every part of the ocean, diving, running on foot, or skimming over the highest waves. It seems to foresee the coming storm long ere the seamen can discover any signs of its approach. The Petrels make this known by congregating together under the wake of the vessel, as if to shelter themselves, and they thus warn the mariner of the coming danger. At night they set up a piercing cry. This usefulness of the bird to the sailor is the obvious cause of the latter having such an objection to their being killed. Mr. Knapp, the naturalist, thus pictures gulls, describing the Petrel's action:--"They seem to repose in a common breeze, but upon the approach or during the continuation of a gale, they surround the ship, and catch up the small animals which the agitated ocean brings near the surface, or any food that may be dropped from the vessel. Whisking like an arrow through the deep valleys of the abyss, and darting away over the foaming crest of some mountain-wave, they attend the labouring barque in all her perilous course. When the storm subsides they retire to rest, and are seen no more." Our sailors have, from very early times, called these birds "Mother Carey's Chickens," originally bestowed on them, Mr. Yarrell tells us, by Captain Cartaret's sailors, probably from some celebrated ideal hag of the above name. Mr. Yarrell adds:--"As these birds are supposed to be seen only before stormy weather, they are not welcome visitors," a view at variance with that already suggested. The Editor of "Notes and Queries" considers the Petrels to have been called _chickens_ from their diminutive size. The largest sort, "the Giant Petrel," is "Mother Carey's _Goose_;" its length is forty inches, and it expands seven feet. The common kind are about the size of a swallow, and weigh something over an ounce; length, six inches; expansion, thirteen inches; these are Mother Carey's _chickens_ (_Latham_). It should be borne in mind that our language does not restrict the term chickens to young birds of the gallinaceous class. The Missel-bird is another bird of this kind: in Hampshire and Sussex it is called the _Storm Cock_, because it sings early in the spring, in blowing, showery weather. Petrels, by the way, are used by the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands as lamps: they pass a wick through their bodies which, when lighted, burns a long time from the quantity of fat they contain. The Fulmar Petrel, in Boothia, follows the whale-ships, availing itself of the labours of the fishermen by feeding on the carcases of the whales when stripped of their blubber. In return the bird is exceedingly useful to the whalers by guiding them to the places where whales are most numerous, and crowding to the spots where they first appear on the surface of the water. Wild Geese and Ducks are unquestionably weather-wise, for their early arrival from the north in the winter portends that a severe season is approaching; because their early appearance is most likely caused by severe frost having already set in at their usual summer residence. The Rev. F. O. Morris, the well-known writer on natural history, records from Nunburnholme, Yorkshire. December 5, 1864:--"This season, for the first time I have lived here, I have missed seeing the flocks of Wild Geese which in the autumnal months have heretofore wended their way overhead, year after year, as regularly as the dusk of the evening came on. Almost to the minute, and almost in the same exact course, they have flown over aloft from the feeding-places on the Wolds to their resting-places for the night; some, perhaps, to extensive commons, while others have turned off to the mud-banks of the Humber, whence they have returned with equal regularity in the morning. "But this year I have seen not only not a single flock, but not even a single bird. One evening one of my daughters did indeed see a small flock of six, but even that small number only once. Whether it portends a very hard winter, or what the cause of it may be, I am utterly at a loss to know or even to guess. I quite miss this year the well-known cackle of the old gander as he has led the van of the flock that has followed him; now in a wide, now in a narrow, now in a short, now in a long wedge, over head, diverging just from the father of the family, or separating from time to time further back in the line. "I may add, as a possible prognostication of future weather, that fieldfares have, I think, been unusually numerous this year, as last year they were the contrary. I have also remarked that swallows took their departure this year more than ordinarily in a body, very few stragglers being subsequently seen." It will be sufficient to state that the mean temperature of January and February was below that of the same month in the preceding year, and that of March had not been so low for twenty years. The opinion that sea-birds come to land in order to avoid an approaching storm is stated to be erroneous; and the cause assigned is, that as the fish upon which the birds prey go deep into the water during storms, the birds come to land merely on account of the greater certainty of finding food there than out at sea. We add a few notes on Bird naturalists. The Redbreast has been called _the Naturalist's Barometer_. When on a summer evening, though it be unsettled and rainy, he sings cheerfully and sweetly on a lofty twig or housetop, it is an unerring promise of succeeding fine days. Sometimes, though the atmosphere be dry and warm, he may be seen melancholy chirping and brooding in a bush or low in a hedge; this promises the reverse. In the luxuriant forests of Brazil the Toucan may be heard rattling with his large hollow beak, as he sits on the outermost branches, calling in plaintive notes for rain. When Mr. Loudon was at Schwetzingen, Rhenish Bavaria, in 1829, he witnessed in the post-house there for the first time what he afterwards frequently saw--an amusing application of zoological knowledge for the purpose of prognosticating the weather. Two tree-frogs were kept in a crystal jar about eighteen inches high and six inches in diameter, with a depth of three or four inches of water at the bottom, and a small ladder reaching to the top of the jar. On the approach of dry weather the frogs mounted the ladder, but when moisture was expected they descended into the water. These animals are of a bright green, and in their wild state climb the trees in search of insects, and make a peculiar singing noise before rain. In the jar they got no other food than now and then a fly; one of which, Mr. Loudon was assured, would serve a frog for a week, though it would eat from six to twelve flies in a day if it could get them. In catching the flies put alive into the jar the frogs displayed great adroitness. Snails are extraordinary indicators of changes in the weather. Several years ago, Mr. Thomas, of Cincinnati, known as an accredited observer of natural phenomena, published some interesting accounts of Weather-wise Snails. They do not drink (he observes), but imbibe moisture in their bodies during rain, and exude it at regular periods afterwards. Then a certain snail first exudes the pure liquid; when this is exhausted, a light red succeeds, then a deep red, next yellow, and lastly a dark brown. The snail is very careful not to exude more of its moisture than is necessary. It is never seen abroad _except before rain_, when we find it ascending the bark of trees and getting on the leaves. The tree-snail is also seen ascending the stems of plants _two days before rain_: if it be a long and hard rain they get on the sheltered side of the leaf, but if a short rain the outside of the leaf. Another snail has the same habits, but differs only in colour: before rain it is yellow, and after it blue. Others show signs of rain, not only by means of exuding fluids, but by means of pores and protuberances; and the bodies of some snails have large tubercles rising from them _before rain_. These tubercles commence showing themselves ten days previous to the fall of rain they indicate; at the end of each of these tubercles is a pore; and at the time of the fall of rain these tubercles, with their pores opened, are stretched to their utmost to receive the water. In another kind of snail, a few days before rain appears a large and deep indentation, beginning at the head between the horns, and ending with the jointure at the shells. Other snails, a few days before the rain, crawl to the most exposed hill-side, where, if they arrive before the rain descends, they seek some crevice in the rocks, and then close the aperture of the shell with glutinous substance; this, when the rain approaches, they dissolve, and are then seen crawling about. Our Cincinnati observer mentions three kinds of snails which move along at the rate of a mile in forty-four hours; they inhabit the most dense forests, and it is regarded as a sure indication of rain to observe them moving towards an exposed situation. Others indicate the weather not only by exuding fluids, but by the colour of the animal. After rain the snail has a very dark appearance, but it grows of a bright colour as the water is expended; whilst just before rain it is of yellowish white colour, also just before rain streaks appear from the point of the head to the jointure of the shell. These snails move at the rate of a mile in fourteen days and sixteen hours. If they are observed ascending a cliff it is a sure indication of rain: they live in the cavities of the sides of cliffs. There is also a snail which is brown, tinged with blue on the edges before rain, but black after rain: a few days before appears an indentation, which grows deeper as the rain approaches. The leaves of trees are even good barometers: most of them for a short, light rain, will turn up so as to receive their fill of water; but for a long rain they are doubled, so as to conduct the water away. The Frog and Toad are sure indicators of rain; for, as they do not drink water but absorb it into their bodies, they are sure to be found out at the time they expect rain. The Locust and Grasshopper are also good indicators of a storm; a few hours before rain they are to be found under the leaves of trees and in the hollow trunks. The Mole has long been recorded as a prognosticator of change of weather, before which it becomes very active. The temperature or dryness of the air governs its motions as to the depth at which it lives or works. This is partly from its inability to bear cold or thirst, but chiefly from its being necessitated to follow its natural food, the earth-worm, which always descends as the cold or drought increases. In frosty weather both worms and moles are deeper in the ground than at other times; and both seem to be sensible of an approaching change to warmer weather before there are any perceptible signs of it in the atmosphere. When it is observed, therefore, that Moles are casting hills through openings in the frozen turf or through a thin covering of snow, a change to open weather may be shortly expected. The cause of this appears to be--the natural heat of the earth being for a time pent in by the frozen surface accumulates below it; first incites to action the animals, thaws the frozen surface, and at length escapes into the air, which is warm, and softens; and if not counterbalanced by a greater degree of cold in the atmosphere brings about a change, such as from frosty to mild weather. The Mole is most active and casts up most earth immediately before rain, and in the winter before a thaw, because at those times the worms and insects begin to be in motion, and approach the surface. Forster, the indefatigable meteorologist, has assembled some curious observations on certain animals, who, by some peculiar sensibility to electrical or other atmospheric influence, often indicate changes of the weather by their peculiar motions and habits. Thus:-- _Ants._--An universal bustle and activity observed in ant-hills may be generally regarded as a sign of rain: the Ants frequently appear all in motion together, and carry their eggs about from place to place. This is remarked by Virgil, Pliny, and others. _Asses._--When donkeys bray more than ordinarily, especially should they shake their ears, as if uneasy, it is said to predict rain, and particularly showers. Forster noticed that in showery weather a donkey brayed before every shower, and generally some minutes before the rain fell, as if some electrical influence, produced by the concentrating power of the approaching rain-cloud, caused a tickling in the wind-pipe of the animal just before the shower came on. Whatever this electric state of the air preceding a shower may be, it seems to be the same that causes in other animals some peculiar sensations, which makes the peacock squall, the pintado call "come back," &c. An expressive adage says:-- "When that the ass begins to bray, Be sure we shall have rain that day." Haymakers may derive useful admonitions from the braying of the ass: thus the proverb:-- "Be sure to cock your hay and corn When the old donkey blows his horn." _Bats_ flitting about late in the evening in spring and autumn foretel a fine day on the morrow; as do Dorbeetles and some other insects. On the contrary, when Bats return soon to their hiding-places, and send forth loud cries, bad weather may be expected. _Beetles_ flying about late in the evening often foretel a fine day on the morrow. _Butterflies_, when they appear early, are sometimes forerunners of fine weather. Moths and Sphinxes also foretel fine weather when they are common in the evening. _Cats_, when they "wash their faces," or when they seem sleepy and dull, foretel rain. _Chickens_, when they pick up small stones and pebbles, and are more noisy than usual, afford a sign of rain; as do fowls rubbing in the dust, and clapping their wings; but this applies to several kinds of fowls, as well as to the gallinaceous kinds. Cocks, when they crow at unwonted hours, often foretel rain; when they crow all day, in summer particularly, a change to rain frequently follows. _Cranes_ were said of old to foretel rain when they retreated to the valleys, and returned from their aërial flight. The high flight of cranes in silence indicates fine weather. _Dolphins_ as well as _Porpoises_, when they come about a ship, and sport and gambol on the surface of the water, betoken a storm. _Dogs_, before rain, grow sleepy and dull, lie drowsily before the fire, and are not easily aroused. They also often eat grass, which indicates that their stomachs, like ours, are apt to be disturbed before change of weather. It is also said to be a sign of change of weather when Dogs howl and bark much in the night. Dogs also dig in the earth with their feet before rain, and often make deep holes in the ground. _Ducks._--The loud and clamorous quacking of Ducks, Geese, and other water-fowl, is a sign of rain; as also when they wash themselves, and flutter about in the water more than usual. Virgil has well described all these habits of aquatic birds. _Fieldfares_, when they arrive early, and in great numbers, in autumn, foreshow a hard winter, which has probably set in in the regions from which they have come. _Fishes_, when they bite more readily, and gambol near the surface of streams or pools, foreshow rain. _Flies_, and various sorts of insects, become more troublesome, and sting and bite more than usual, before, as well as in the intervals of rainy weather, particularly in autumn. _Frogs_, by their clamorous croaking, indicate rainy weather, as does likewise their coming about in great numbers in the evening; but this last sign applies more obviously to toads. _Geese_ washing, or taking wing with a clamorous noise, and flying to the water, portend rain. _Gnats_ afford several indications. When they fly in a vortex in the beams of the setting sun they forebode fair weather; when they frisk about more widely in the open air at eventide they foreshow heat; and when they assemble under trees, and bite more than usual, they indicate rain. _Hogs_, when they shake the stalks of corn, and spoil them, often indicate rain. When they run squeaking about, and jerk up their heads, windy weather is about to commence; hence the Wiltshire proverb, that "Pigs can see the wind." _Horses_ foretel the coming of rain by starting more than ordinarily, and by restlessness on the road. _Jackdaws_ are unusually clamorous before rain, as are also _Starlings_. Sometimes before change of weather the daws make a great noise in the chamber wherein they build. _Kine_ (cattle) are said to foreshow rain when they lick their fore-feet, or lie on their right side. Some say oxen licking themselves against the hair is a sign of wet. _Kites_, when they soar very high in the air, denote fair weather, as do also _Larks_. _Magpies_, in windy weather, often fly in small flocks of three or four together, uttering a strong harsh cry. _Mice_ when they squeak much, and gambol in the house, foretel a change of weather, and often rain. _Owls._--When an owl hoots or screeches, sitting on the top of a house, or by the side of a window, it is said to foretel death. "The fact," says Forster, "seems to be this: the Owl, as Virgil justly observes, is more noisy at the change of weather, and as it often happens that patients with lingering diseases die at the change of weather, so the Owl seems, by a mistaken association of ideas, to forebode the calamity." _Peacocks_ squalling by night often foretel a rainy day. Forster adds, "This prognostic does not often fail; and the indication is made more certain by the crowing of Cocks all day, the braying of the Donkey, the low flight of Swallows, the aching of rheumatic persons, and by the frequent appearance of spiders on the walls of the house." _Pigeons._--It is a sign of rain when Pigeons return slowly to the dove-houses before the usual time of day. _Ravens_, when observed early in the morning, at a great height in the air, soaring round and round, and uttering a hoarse, croaking sound, indicate that the day will be fine. On the contrary, this bird affords us a sign of coming rain by another sort of cry; the difference between these two voices being more easily learned from nature than described. The Raven frequenting the shore and dipping himself in the water is also a sign of rain. _Redbreasts_, when they, with more than usual familiarity, lodge on our window-frames, and peck against the glass with their bills, indicate severe weather, of which they have a presentiment, which brings them nearer to the habitations of man. _Rooks_ gathering together, and returning home from their pastures early, and at unwonted hours, forebode rain. When Rooks whirl round in the air rapidly, and come down in small flocks, making a roaring noise with their wings, rough weather invariably follows. On the contrary, when Rooks are very noisy about their trees, and fly about as if rejoicing, Virgil assures us they foresee a return of fine weather, and an end of the showers. _Spiders_, when seen crawling on the walls more than usual, indicate rain. "This prognostic," says Forster, "seldom fails, I have noticed it for many years, particularly in winter, but more or less at all times of the year. In summer the quantity of webs of the garden spiders denote fair weather." _Swallows_, in fine and settled weather, fly higher in the air than they do just before or during a showery or rainy time. Then, also, Swallows flying low, and skimming over the surface of a meadow where there is tolerably long grass, frequently stop, and hang about the blades, as if they were gathering insects lodged there. _Swans_, when they fly against the wind, portend rain, a sign frequently fulfilled. _Toads_, when they come from their holes in an unusual number in the evening, although the ground be still dry, foreshow the coming rain, which will generally fall more or less during the night. _Urchins of the Sea_, a sort of fish, when they thrust themselves into the mud, and try to cover their bodies with sand, foreshow a storm. _Vultures_, when they scent carrion at a great distance, indicate that state of the atmosphere which is favourable to the perception of smells, and this often forebodes rain. _Willow Wrens_ are frequently seen, in mild and still rainy weather, flitting about the willows, pines, and other trees, in quest of insects. _Woodcocks_ appear in autumn earlier, and in greater numbers, previous to severe winters; as do Snipes and other winter birds. _Worms_ come forth more abundantly before rain, as do snails, slugs, and almost all limaceous animals. Some birds build their nests weather-proof, as ascertained by careful observation of Mr. M. W. B. Thomas, of Cincinnati, Ohio. Thus, when a pair of migratory birds have arrived in the spring, they prepare to build their nest, making a careful reconnaissance of the place, and observing the character of the season. If it be a windy one, they thatch the straw and leaves on the inside of the nest, between the twigs and the lining; if it be very windy, they get pliant twigs, and bind the nest firmly to the limb of the tree, securing all the small twigs with their saliva. If they fear the approach of a rainy season, they build their nests so as to be sheltered from the weather; but if a pleasant one, they build in a fair open place, without taking any of these extra precautions. Of all writers, Dr. Darwin has given us the most correct account of the "Signs of Rain," in a poetical description of the approach of foul weather, as follows. This passage has been often quoted, but, perhaps, never exceeded in the accuracy of its phenomenal observation:-- "The hollow winds begin to blow; The clouds look black, the glass is low; The soot falls down, the spaniels sleep; And spiders from their cobwebs peep. Last night the sun went pale to bed; The moon in haloes hid her head; The boding shepherd heaves a sigh, For, see, a rainbow spans the sky. The walls are damp, the ditches smell, Clos'd is the light red pimpernel. Hark! how the chairs and tables crack, Old Betty's joints are on the rack; Her corns with shooting pains torment her, And to her bed untimely send her. Loud quack the ducks, the sea-fowls cry, The distant hills are looking nigh. How restless are the snorting swine! The busy flies disturb the kine. Low o'er the grass the swallow wings, The cricket, too, how sharp he sings! Puss on the hearth, with velvet paws, Sits wiping o'er her whisker'd jaws. The smoke from chimneys right ascends; Then spreading back, to earth it bends. The wind unsteady veers around, Or settling in the South is found. Through the clear stream the fishes rise, And nimbly catch th' incautious flies. The glowworms num'rous, clear, and bright, Illum'd the dewy hill last night. At dusk, the squalid toad was seen, Like quadruped, stalk o'er the green. The whirling wind the dust obeys, And in the rapid eddy plays. The frog has chang'd his yellow vest, And in a russet coat is drest. The sky is green, the air is still, The mellow blackbird's voice is shrill. The dog, so altered is his taste, Quits mutton-bones on grass to feast. Behold the rooks, how odd their flight, They imitate the gliding kite, And seem precipitate to fall, As if they felt the piercing ball. The tender colts on banks do lie, Nor heed the traveller passing by. In fiery red the sun doth rise, Then wades through clouds to mount the skies. ''Twill surely rain, we see 't with sorrow, No working in the fields to-morrow.'" The Shepherd of Banbury says:--"The surest and most certain sign of rain is taken from Bees, which are more incommoded by rain than almost any other creatures; and, therefore, as soon as the air begins to grow heavy, and the vapours to condense, they will not fly from their hives, but either remain in them all day, or else fly but to a small distance." Yet Bees are not always right in their prognostics, for Réaumur witnessed a swarm which, after leaving the hive at half-past one o'clock, were overtaken by a heavy shower at three. FISH-TALK. "Man favours wonders;" and this delight is almost endlessly exemplified in the stories of strange Fishes--of preternatural size and odd forms, which are to be found in their early history. In our present Talk we do not aim at re-assembling these olden tales, but propose rather to glance at recent accessions to our acquaintance with the study of Fish-life, and a few modern instances of the class of wonders. Fishes, like all other animals, have a very delicate sense of the equilibrial position of their bodies. They endeavour to counteract all change in their position by means of movements partly voluntary and partly instinctive. These latter appear in a very remarkable manner in the eye; and they are so constant and evident in fishes while alive, that their absence is sufficient to indicate the death of the animal. The equilibrium of the fish, its horizontal position, with the back upwards, depends solely on the action of the fins, and principally that of the vertical fins. The swimming-bladder may enable a fish to increase or diminish its specific gravity. By compressing the air contained in it, the fish descends in the water; it rises by releasing the muscles which produced the compression. By compressing more or less the posterior or anterior portion of the bladder, the animal, at pleasure, can make the anterior or posterior half of its body lighter; it can also assume an oblique position, which permits an ascending or descending movement in the water. There is a small fish found in the rivers of the Burmese Empire, which, on being taken out of the water, has the power of blowing itself up to the shape of a small round ball, but its original shape is resumed as soon as it is returned to the river. Mr. St. John, in his "Tour in Eastern Lanarkshire," gives some curious instances of fish changing colour, which takes place with surprising rapidity. Put a living black burn Trout into a white basin of water, and it becomes, within half an hour, of a light colour. Keep the fish living in a white jar for some days, and it becomes absolutely white; but put it into a dark-coloured or black vessel, and although on first being placed there the white-coloured fish shows most conspicuously on the black ground, in a quarter of an hour it becomes as dark-coloured as the bottom of the jar, and consequently difficult to be seen. No doubt this facility of adapting its colour to the bottom of the water in which it lives, is of the greatest service to the fish in protecting it from its numerous enemies. All anglers must have observed, that in every stream the Trout are very much of the same colour as the gravel or sand on which they live: whether this change of colour is a voluntary or involuntary act on the part of the fish, the scientific must determine. Anglers of our time have proved that Tench croak like frogs; Herrings cry like mice; Gurnards grunt like hogs; and some say the Gurnard makes a noise like a cuckoo, from which he takes one of his country names. The Maigre, a large sea-fish, when swimming in shoals, utters a grunting or piercing noise, that may be heard from a depth of twenty fathoms. M. Dufossé asserts that facts prove that nature has not refused to all fishes the power of expressing their instinctive sensations by sounds, but has not conferred on them the unity of mechanism in the formation of sonorous vibrations as in other classes of vertebrated animals. Some fishes, he says, are able to emit musical tones, engendered by a mechanism in which the muscular vibration is the principal motive power; others possess the faculty of making blowing sounds, like those of certain reptiles; and others can produce the creaking noise resembling that of many insects. These phenomena M. Dufossé has named "Fish-noise." The River Plate swarms with fish, and is the _habitat_ of one possessed of a very sonorous voice, like that found in the River Borneo--the account of which is quoted by Dr. Buist from the Journal of the Samarang; and there is similar testimony of a loud piscatory chorus being heard on board H.M.S. Eagle, anchored, in 1845-6, about three miles from Monte Video, during the night. That fishes hear has been doubted, although John Hunter was of this opinion, and has been followed by many observers. When standing beside a person angling, how often is the request made not to make a noise, as that would _alarm_ the fish. On the other hand, the Chinese drive the fish up to that part of the river where their nets are ready to capture them by loud yells and shouts, and the sound of gongs; but old Æsop writes of a fisherman who caught no fish because he alarmed them by playing on his flute while fishing. In Germany the Shad is taken by means of nets, to which bows of wood, hung with a number of little bells, are attached in such a manner as to chime in harmony when the nets are moved. The Shad, when once attracted by the sound, will not attempt to escape while the bells continue to ring. Ælian says the Shad is allured by castanets. Macdiarmid, who declares that fishes hear as well as see, relates that an old Codfish, the patriarch of the celebrated fish-pond at Logan, "answered to his name; and not only drew near, but turned up his snout most beseechingly when he heard the monosyllable 'Tom;' and that he evidently could distinguish the voice of the fisherman who superintended the pond, and fed the fish, from that of any other fisherman." In the "Kaleidoscope" mention is made of three Trout in a pond near the powder-mills at Faversham, who were so tame as to come at the call of the person accustomed to feed them. Izaak Walton tells of a Carp coming to a certain part of a pond to be fed "at the ringing of a bell, or the beating of a drum;" and Sir John Hawkins was assured by a clergyman, a friend of his, that at the Abbey of St. Bernard, near Antwerp, he saw a Carp come to the edge of the water to be fed, at the whistle of the person who fed it. The Carp at Fontainebleau, inhabiting the lake adjoining the Imperial Palace, are of great size, and manifest a curious instinct. A Correspondent of the "Athenæum" remarks:-- "Enjoying entire immunity from all angling arts and lures, the Fontainebleau Carp live a life of great enjoyment, marred only, we imagine, by their immense numbers causing the supply of food to be somewhat below their requirements. It is not, however, very easy to define what a Carp's requirements in the form of pabulum are, as he is a voracious member of the ichthyological family, eating whenever he has an opportunity until absolutely surfeited. His favourite food consists of vegetable substances masticated by means of flat striated teeth, which work with a millstone kind of motion against a singular process of the lower part of the skull covered with horny plates. When this fish obtains an abundant supply of food it grows to an enormous size. Several continental rivers and lakes are very congenial to Carp, and especially the Oder, where this fish occasionally attains the enormous weight of 60 lb. It is not probable that any Carp in the lake at Fontainebleau are so large as this; but there are certainly many weighing 50 lb., patriarchs of their kind, which, though olive-hued in their tender years, are now white with age. That the great size of these fish is due to ample feeding is, we think, evident, and, as we shall see presently, it is the large fish that are the best fed. During many years the feeding of the Carp at Fontainebleau has been a favourite Court pastime. But it is from the visitors who frequent Fontainebleau during a great part of the year that the Carp receive their most bountiful rations. For big Carp have an enormous swallow, soft penny rolls being mere mouthfuls, bolted with ostrich-like celerity. So to prevent the immediate disappearance of these _bonnes bouches_, bread, in the form of larger balls than the most capacious Carp can take into his gullet, is baked until it becomes as hard as biscuit, and with these balls the Carp are regailed. Throw one into the lake, and you will quickly have an idea of the enormous Carp population it contains. For no sooner does the bread touch the water than it is surrounded by hundreds of these fish, which dart to it from all sides. And now, if you look attentively, you will witness a curious display of instinct, which might almost take a higher name. Conscious, apparently, of their inability to crush these extremely hard balls, the Carp combine with surprising unanimity to push them to that part of the lake with their noses where it is bounded by a wall, and when there they butt at them, until at last their repeated blows and the softening effect of the water causes them to yield and open. And now you will see another curious sight. While shoals of Carp have been pounding away at the bread-balls, preparing them for being swallowed, some dozen monsters hover round, indifferent, apparently, to what is passing. But not so, for no sooner is the bread ready for eating, than two or three of these giants, but more generally one--the tyrant, probably, of the lake--rush to the prize, cleaving the shoals of smaller Carp, and shouldering them to the right and left, seize the bread with open jaws, between which it quickly disappears." Some of the finest and oldest Carp are found in the windings of the Spree, in the tavern-gardens of Charlottenburg, the great resort of strollers from Berlin. Visitors are in the habit of feeding them with bread, and collect them together by ringing a bell, at the sound of which shoals of the fish may be seen popping their noses upwards from the water. The affection of fishes has only been properly understood of late years. It might be supposed that little natural affection existed in this cold-blooded race; and, in fact, fishes constantly devour their own eggs, and, at a later period, their own young, without compunction or discrimination. Some few species bear their eggs about with them until hatched. This was long thought to be the utmost extent of care which fishes lavished on their young; but Dr. Hancock has stepped in to rescue at least one species from this unmerited charge. "It is asserted," he says, "by naturalists, that no fishes are known to take any care of their offspring. Both species of _Hassar_ mentioned below, however, make a regular nest, in which they lay their eggs in a flattened cluster, and cover them over most carefully. Their care does not end here; they remain by the side of the nest till the spawn is hatched, with as much solicitude as a hen guards her eggs, both the male and female Hassar, for they are monogamous, steadily watching the spawn and courageously attacking the assailant. Hence the negroes frequently take them by putting their hands into the water close to the nest, on agitating which the male Hassar springs furiously at them, and is thus captured. The _roundhead_ forms its nest of grass, the _flathead_ of leaves. Both, at certain seasons, burrow in the bank. They lay their eggs only in wet weather. I have been surprised to observe the sudden appearance of numerous nests in a morning after rain occurs, the spot being indicated by a bunch of froth which appears on the surface of the water over the nest. Below this are the eggs, placed on a bunch of fallen leaves or grass, which they cut and collect together. By what means this is effected seems rather mysterious, as the species are destitute of cutting-teeth. It may, possibly, be by the use of their arms, which form the first ray of the pectoral fin." There is another operation by fishes, which seems to require almost equal experience. Professor Agassiz, while collecting insects along the shores of Lake Sebago, in Maine, observed a couple of Cat-fish, which, at his approach, left the shore suddenly, and returned to the deeper water. Examining the place which the fishes had left, he discovered a _nest_ among the water-plants, with a number of little tadpoles. In a few moments the two fishes returned, looking anxiously towards the nest, and approached within six or eight feet of where Professor Agassiz stood. They were evidently not in search of food, and he became convinced that they were seeking the protection of their young. Large stones, thrown repeatedly into the middle of the nest after the fishes had returned to it, only frightened them away for a brief period, and they returned to the spot within ten or fifteen minutes. This was repeated four or five times with the same result. This negatives the assertion made by some naturalists--that no fishes are known to take any care of their offspring. But affection is scarcely to be looked for where the offspring is so very numerous as to put all attempts at even recognising them out of the question. How could the fondest mother love 100,000 little ones at once? Yet the number is far exceeded by some of the matrons of the deep. Petit found 300,000 eggs in a single carp; Lenwenhoeck 9,000,000 in a single cod; Mr. Harmer found in a sole 100,000; in a tench 300,000; in a mackerel 500,000; and in a flounder 1,357,000.[14] M. Rousseau disburthened a pike of 160,000, and a sturgeon of 1,567,000, while from this latter class has been gotten 119 pounds weight of eggs, which, at the rate of 7 to a grain, would give a total amount of 7,653,200 eggs! If all these came to maturity the world would be in a short time nothing but fish: means, however, amply sufficient to keep down this unwelcome superabundance have been provided. Fish themselves, men, birds, other marine animals, to say nothing of the dispersions produced by storms and currents, the destruction consequent on their being thrown on the beach and left there to dry up, all combine to diminish this excessive supply over demand. Yet, on the other hand (so wonderfully are all the contrivances of nature so harmonized and balanced), one of these apparent modes of destruction becomes an actual means of extending the species. The eggs of the pike, barbel, and many other fish, says M. Virey, are rendered indigestible by an acid oil which they contain, and in consequence of which they are passed in the same condition as they were swallowed; the result of which is, that being taken in by ducks, grebes, or other water-fowls, they are thus transported to situations, such as inland lakes, which otherwise they could never have attained; and in this way only can we account for the fact, now well ascertained, that several lakes in the Alps, formed by the thawing of the glaciers, are now abundantly stocked with excellent fish. Little fishes are ordinarily the food of larger marine animals; but a remarkable exception occurs in the case of the larger Medusæ, which are stated in various works to prey upon fishes for sustenance. Mr. Peach, the naturalist, has, however, by observations at Peterhead, in Aberdeenshire, thus corrected this statement. He observed several small fishes playing round the larger Medusæ in the harbour and bay. When alarmed, they would rush under the umbrella, and remain sheltered in its large folds till the danger had passed, when they would emerge, and sport and play about their sheltering friend. When beneath the umbrella they lay so close that they were frequently taken into a bucket with the Medusæ. They proved to be young whitings, varying from 1-1/2 to 2 inches long. These little creatures, so far from becoming the prey of the Medusæ, experienced from them protection; and, moreover, they preferred the _stinging_ one. In no instance did Mr. Peach see a fish in the stomach of the Medusæ, but all could liberate themselves when they pleased. In one case, Mr. Peach witnessed a small whiting, in the first instance chased by a single young pollack, whose assault the little fellow easily evaded by dodging about; but the chaser being joined by others, the whiting was driven from its imperfect shelter, and after being much bitten and dashed about by its assailants, became at length completely exhausted, and lay to all appearance dead. Recovering, however, after action, it swam slowly to the Medusæ, and took refuge as before; but its movements being soon observed, it was again attacked, after a very brief respite, driven into open water, and speedily despatched. Fishes appear to execute annually two great migrations. By one of these shiftings they forsake the deep water for a time, and approach the shallow shores, and by the other they return to their more concealed haunts. These movements are connected with the purposes of spawning, the fry requiring to come into life, and to spend a certain portion of their youth in situations different from those which are suited to the period of maturity. It is in obedience to these arrangements that the Cod and Haddock, the Mackerel, and others, annually leave the deeper and less accessible parts of the ocean, the region of the zoophytic tribes, and deposit their spawn within that zone of marine vegetation which fringes our coasts, extending from near the high-water mark of neap-tides to a short distance beyond the low-water mark of spring-tides. Amidst the shelter in this region afforded by the groves of arborescent fuci, the young fish were wont in comfort to spend their infancy, but since these plants have been so frequently cut down to procure materials for the manufacture of kelp, and the requisite protection withdrawn, the fisheries have greatly suffered. Many species of fish, as the Salmon, Smelt, and others, in forsaking the deep water, and approaching a suitable spawning station, leave the sea altogether for a time, ascend the rivers and their tributary streams, and, having deposited their eggs, return again to their usual haunts. Even a certain species of fish, inhabiting lakes, as the Roach, betake themselves to the tributary streams, as the most suitable places for spawning. The Goramy, of India, are stated by General Hardwicke to watch most actively the margins of the spot which they select and prepare for depositing their spawn, driving away with violence every other fish which approaches their cover. The General adds that from the time he first noticed this circumstance about one month had elapsed, when one day he saw numerous minute fishes close to the margin of the grass, on the outer side of which the parent fishes continued to pass to and fro. There is a species of Grampus from two to three tons weight, and about sixteen feet in length, that amuses itself with jumping, or rather springing its ponderous body entirely out of the water, in a vertical position, and falling upon its back. This effort of so large a fish is almost incredible, and informs us how surprisingly great the power of muscle must be in this class of animal. A Correspondent writes to the "United Service Journal":--"I have seen them spring out of the water within ten yards of the ship's side, generally in the evening, after having swam all the former part of the day in the ship's wake, or on either quarter. When several of these fish take it into their heads to 'dance a hornpipe,' as the sailors term their gambols, at the distance of half a mile, they, especially at or just after sundown, may easily be mistaken for the sharp points of rocks sticking up out of the water, and the splashing and foam they make and produce have the appearance of the action of waves upon rocks. An officer of the navy informed me that, after sunset, when near the equator, he was not a little alarmed and surprised at the cry of 'rocks on the starboard bow!' Looking forward, he indistinctly saw objects which he and all on board took to be pinnacles of several rocks of a black and white colour. In a short time, however, he discovered this formidable danger to be nothing more than a company of dancing Grampuses with white bellies. As one disappeared, another rose; so that there were at least five or six constantly above the surface." Captain Owen relates that "the Bonita has the power of throwing itself out of the water to an almost incredible distance when in pursuit of its prey, the Flying Fish; and, the day previous to our arrival at Mozambique, one of these fish rose close under our bow, and passed under the vessel's side, and struck with such force against the poop, that, had any one received the blow, it must have been fatal. Stunned by the violence of the contact, it fell motionless at the helmsman's feet; but, soon recovering, its struggles were so furious that it became necessary to inflict several blows with an axe before it could be approached with safety. The greatest elevation it attained above the surface of water was eighteen feet, and the length of the leap, had no opposition occurred, would have exceeded 180." Of winged or Flying Fish we find this extravagant account in a philosophical romance, entitled, "Telliamed," by M. Maillet, an ingenious Frenchman, of the days of Louis XV.:-- He believed, like Lamarck, that the whole family of birds had existed one time as fishes, which, on being thrown ashore by the waves, had got feathers by accident; and that men themselves are but the descendants of a tribe of sea-monsters, who, tiring of their proper element, crawled upon the beach one sunny morning, and, taking a fancy to the land, forgot to return. The account is as amusing as a fairy tale. "Winged or Flying Fish," says Maillet, "stimulated by the desire of prey, or the fear of death, or pushed near the shore by the billows, have fallen among the reeds or herbage, whence it was not possible for them to resume their flight to the sea, by means of which they had contracted their first facility of flying. Then their fins, being no longer bathed in the sea-water, were split and became warped by their dryness. While they found among the reeds and herbage among which they fell many aliments to support them, the vessels of their fins being separated, were lengthened, or clothed with beards, or, to speak more justly, the membranes which before kept them adherent to each other were metamorphosed. The beard formed of these warped membranes was lengthened. The skin of these animals was insensibly covered with a down of the same colour with the skin, and this down gradually increased. The little wings they had under their belly, and which, like their wings, helped them to walk into the sea, became feet, and helped them to walk on the land. There were also other small changes in their figure. The beak and neck of some were lengthened, and of others shortened. The conformity, however, of the first figure subsists in the whole, and it will be always easy to know it. Examine all the species of fowl, even those of the Indies, those which are tufted or not, those whose feathers are reversed--such as we see at Damietta, that is to say, whose plumage runs from the tail to the head--and you will see fine species of fish quite similar, scaly or without scales. All species of Parrots, whose plumages are different, the rarest and most singular marked birds, are, conformable to fact, painted, like them, black, brown, grey, yellow, green, red, violet colour, and those of gold and azure; and all this precisely in the same parts, where the plumages of these birds are diversified in so curious a manner." The Jaculator Fish, of Java, has been called "a sporting fish," from the precision with which it takes aim at its prey. In 1828 Mr. Mitchell saw several of these fishes in the possession of a Javanese chief; and here is the account of the curious manner in which these Jaculators were employed. They were placed in a small circular pond, from the centre of which projected a pole upwards of two feet in height. At the top of the pole were inserted small pieces of wood, sharp-pointed, and on each of these were placed insects of the beetle tribe. When the slaves had placed the beetles, the fish came out of their holes, and swam round the pond. One of them came to the surface of the water, rested there, and after steadily fixing its eyes for some time on an insect, it discharged from its mouth a small quantity of watery fluid, with such force, and precision of aim, as to strike it off the twig into the water, and in an instant swallowed it. After this, another fish came, and performed a similar feat, and was followed by the others, until they had secured all the insects. If a fish failed in bringing down its prey at the first shot, it swam round the pond till it came opposite the same object, and fired again. In one instance, a fish returned three times to the attack before it secured its prey; but in general the fish seemed very expert gunners, bringing down the beetle at the first shot. The fish, in a state of nature, frequents the shores and sides of the rivers in search of food. When it spies a fly sitting on the plants that grow on shallow water, it swims on to the distance of five or six feet from them, and then, with surprising dexterity, it ejects out of its tubular mouth a single drop of water, which rarely fails to strike the fly into the sea, where it soon becomes its prey. Curious fish, in great numbers, may be seen in the Harbour of Port Royal, Jamaica, on the surface of the water, and are ranked among the peculiarities of the place. They are the Guardo, or Guard-Fish; the Jack (Sword-Fish); and the Ballahou. The Jack is the largest, and appears to be always at war with the two others; it is armed with formidable teeth; it basks on the surface of the water during the heat of the day, in a sort of indolent, unguarded state; but this is assumed, the better to ensnare the other fish, and to catch the floating bodies that may happen to pass near it; for the moment anything is thrown into the sea from the ship, the Jack darts with the rapidity of lightning upon it, and seizing it as quickly, retreats. This Warrior-fish possesses a foresight or instinctive quality which we see sometimes exemplified in different animals, almost amounting to second reason, such as the sagacity it displays in avoiding the hook when baited; although extremely voracious, it seems aware of the lure held out for its destruction, and avoids it with as much cunning as the generality of fishes show eagerness to devour it. The situation it takes, immediately in the wake of the ship at anchor, is another instance of its sagacity; as whatever is thrown overboard passes astern, where the fish is ever on the alert for the articles thrown over. No other fish of equal size dare approach. The Jack is, however, sometimes enticed with the bait; but he is more frequently struck with a barbed lance, or entrapped in a net. The Guardo has similar habits with the Jack, but is generally beaten by him; yet the former tyrannizes with unrelenting rigour over the weaker associate, the Ballahou. The tiger of the ocean, the Shark, is often cruising about Port Royal, but rarely injures human life. At Kingston, however, such distressing events often occur. There was a pet Shark known as "Old Tom of Port Royal;" it was fed whenever it approached any of the ships, but was at last killed by the father of a child which it had devoured. Whilst it remained here, no other of the Shark tribe dare venture on his domain; he reigned lord paramount in his watery empire, and never committed any depredation but that for which he suffered. Attending the Shark is seen the beautiful little Pilot Fish, who, first approaching the bait, returns as if to give notice, when, immediately after, the Shark approaches to seize it. It is a curious circumstance, that this elegant little fish is seen in attendance only upon the Shark. After the Shark is hooked, the Pilot Fish still swims about, and for some time after he has been hauled on deck; it then swims very near the surface of the water. When the Shark has been hooked, and afterwards escapes, he generally returns, and renews the attack with increased ferocity, irritated often by the wound he has received. Sharks appear to have become of late years much more numerous in Faroe, as they have also in other parts of the North Seas, especially on the coast of Norway. The reader may, probably, have found on the sea-shore certain cases, which are fancifully called sea-purses, Mermaids' purses, &c. Now, some Sharks bring forth their young alive, whilst others are enclosed in oblong semi-transparent, horny cases, at each extremity of which are two long tendrils. These cases are the above _purses_, which the parent Shark deposits near the shore in the winter months. The twisting tendrils hang to sea-weed, or other fixed bodies, to prevent the cases being washed away into deep water. Two fissures, one at each end, allow the admission of sea-water; and here the young Shark remains until it has acquired the power of taking food by the mouth, when it leaves what resembles its cradle. The young fish ultimately escapes by an opening at the end, near which the head is situated. California has yielded an extraordinary novelty in fish history. In 1854 Mr. Jackson, while fishing in San Salita Bay, caught with a hook and line a fish of the perch family _containing living young_. These were supposed to be the prey which the fish had swallowed, but on opening the belly was found next to the back of the fish, and slightly attached to it, a long very light violet bag, so clear and transparent that there could already be distinguished through it the shape, colour, and formation of a multitude of small fish (all facsimiles of each other), with which the bag was filled. They were in all respects like the mother, and like each other; and there cannot remain a single doubt that these young were the offspring of the fish from whose body they were taken; and that this species of fish gives birth to her young alive and perfectly formed, and adapted to seek its own livelihood in the water. Professor Agassiz has confirmed the truth of this extraordinary statement by a careful examination of the specimens, and has ascertained that there are two very distinct species of this remarkable type of fishes. Tales of "Wonderful Fish" are common in the works of the old naturalists, whence they are quoted from generation to generation. Sir John Richardson has lately demolished one queer fish, which was as certain to reappear whenever opportunity offered, as the elephant pricked with the tailor's needle does in books of stories of the animal world. We allude to that monstrous myth, the great Manheim Pike, with a collar round his neck, put into a lake by the Emperor Frederick II. in the year 1230; and taken out in the 276th year of his age, the 17th foot of his length, and the 350th pound of his weight. M. Valenciennes, a naturalist of repute, has entered into a critical history of this monster, and has found him to be apocryphal. The creature was, at any rate, taken in several places at once, the legends written on his brass collar do not agree, and his alleged skeleton has been found to be made up of various bones of various fishes; while the vertebræ are, unfortunately, so many, that Professor Owen would order him out of Court in an instant as a rank impostor. Probably some specimen of the _Mecho_, the monstrous fish of the Danube--which has even now been scarcely described, and which has only recently been identified as one of the salmon tribe--having been called a pike, may be at the bottom of the legend of the great Manheim fish. But Sir John Richardson produces another big pike, killed by an intrepid "angler seventy years of age, with a single rod and bait"--an observation which leads to the inquiry of the possibility of catching a single fish with more than one rod and bait--"that weighed seventy-eight pounds." This is stated to have happened in the county of Clare; the angler's name was O'Flanagan. Here is another wonderful story:--The Bohemians have a proverb--"Every fish has another for prey:" that named the Wels has them all. This is the largest fresh-water fish found in the rivers of Europe, except the sturgeon; it often reaches five or six feet in length. It destroys many aquatic birds, and we are assured that it does not spare the human species. On the 3d of July, 1700, a peasant took one near Thorn, that had an infant entire in its stomach! They tell in Hungary of children and young girls being devoured on going to draw water; and they even relate that, on the frontiers of Turkey, a poor fisherman took one that had in its stomach the body of a woman, her purse full of gold, and a _ring_! The fish is even reported to have been taken sixteen feet long. The old stories of rings found in the stomachs of fishes will be remembered; as well as here and there a _book_ found in the stomach of a fish! The Sun-fish is exceedingly rare. A large specimen was captured off Start Point in 1864. Attention was first drawn to a huge dark object on the water. On a boat being sent out, it was soon discovered to be the back fin of a very large fish, apparently asleep. A very exciting chase commenced, extending over an hour, the crew meanwhile battling with harpoons, boat-hooks, &c.; the fish trying several times to upset the boat by getting his back under it. At length a line was thrown over its head, and the fish, being weakened by the struggle, was towed alongside the yacht, hoisted on board, and slaughtered. Yarrell, in his work on British Fishes, states the largest Sun-fish to be about 3 cwt., but the above specimen weighed nearly 6 cwt. Sun-fish are found occasionally in the tropical seas of large dimensions, but those found in the Channel seldom if ever exceed from 1 cwt. to 2 cwt. The peculiarities in regard to this fish are, that it has no bones, but the whole of the formation is of cartilage, which can easily be cut with a knife. The skin is cartilage of about an inch and a-half thick, under which there is no backbone or ribs. This specimen was of extraordinary dimensions--5 ft. 10 in. in length, and 7 ft. from the tip of the dorsal to the point of the anal fin. The "Courrier de Sagon" brings, as a contribution to Natural History, the not very credible-sounding description of a fish called "Ca-oug" in the Anamite tongue, which is said to have saved the lives already of several Anamites; for which reason the King of Anam has invested it with the name of "Nam hai dui bnong gnan" (Great General of the South Sea). This fish is said to swim round ships near the coast, and, when it sees a man in the water, to seize him with his mouth, and to carry him ashore. A skeleton of this singular inhabitant of the deep is to be seen at Wung-tau, near Cape St. James. It is reported to be thirty-five feet in length, to have tusks "almost like an elephant," very large eyes, a black and smooth skin, a tail like a lobster, and two "wings" on its back.[15] The Grouper must be a voracious fish, for we read of a specimen being caught off the coast of Queensland, which is thus described:--"It was 7 ft. long, 6 ft. in circumference at its thickest part, and its head weighed 80 lb. When opened, there were found in its stomach two broken bottles, a quart pot, a preserved milk tin, seven medium-sized crabs; a piece of earthenware, triangular in shape, and three inches in length, incrusted with oyster shells, a sheep's head, some mutton and beef bones, and some loose oyster shells. The spine of a skate was imbedded in the Grouper's liver." The Double-fish, here represented, is a pair of Cat-fish, which were taken alive in a shrimp-net, at the mouth of Cape Fear River, near Fort Johnston. North Carolina, in 1833, and presented to Professor Silliman. One of them is three and a-half, and the other two and a-half inches long, including the tail--the smallest emaciated, and of sickly appearance. They are connected in the manner of the Siamese Twins, by the skin at the breast, which is marked by a dark streak at the line of union. The texture and colour otherwise of this skin is the same as that of the belly. The mouth, viscera, &c., were entire and perfect in each fish; but, on withdrawing the entrails, through an incision made on one side of the abdomen, the connecting integument was found to be hollow. A flexible probe was passed through from one to the other, with the tender and soft end of a spear of grass, drawn from a green plant. But there was no appearance of the entrails of one having come in contact with those of the other, for the integument was less than one-tenth of an inch in its whole thickness; in length, from the body or trunk of one fish to the other, it was three-tenths; and in the water, when the largest fish was in its natural position, the small one could, by the length and pliancy of this skin, swim in nearly the same position. When these fish came into existence it is probable they were of almost equal size and strength, but one "born to better fortune," or exercising more ingenuity and industry than the other, gained a trifling ascendency, which he improved to increase the disparity, and, by pushing his extended mouth in advance of the other, seized the choicest and most of the food for himself. From the northern parts of British America we have received extraordinary contributions to our fish collections. One of these is the Square-browed Malthe, obtained in one of the land expeditions under the command of Captain Sir John Franklin. R.N. It was taken on the Labrador coast, and then belonged to a species hitherto undescribed. Its intestines were filled with small crabs and univalve shells. The extreme length of the fish is 7 inches 11 lines. The upper surface is greyish white, with brown blotches, and the fins are whitish. The head is much depressed and greatly widened; the eyes far forward; the snout projecting like a small horn. Most of the fish of this family can live long out of water, in consequence of the smallness of their gill-openings; indeed, those of one of the genera are able, even in warm countries, to pass two or three days in creeping over the land. All the family conceal themselves in the mud or sand, and lie in wait to take their prey by surprise. The accompanying engraving is from the very able work of Dr. Richardson, F.R.S., published by the munificence of Government. [Illustration: SQUARE-BROWED MALTHE AND DOUBLE FISH.] Gold Fish (of the Carp family) have been made to distinguish a particular sound made by those from whom they receive their food; they recognise their footsteps at a distance, and come at their call. Captain Brown says Gold Fish, when kept in ponds, are "frequently taught to rise to the surface of the water at the sound of a bell to be fed;" and Mr. Jesse was assured that Gold Fish evince much pleasure on being whistled to. Hakewill, in his "Apology for God's Power and Providence," cites Pliny to show that a certain emperor had ponds containing fish, which, when called by their respective _names_ that were bestowed upon them, came to the spot whence the voice proceeded. Bernier, in his "History of Hindustan," states a like circumstance of the fish belonging to the Great Mogul. The old poet, Martial, also mentions fish coming at the call, as will be seen by the following translation from one of his epigrams:-- "Angler! could'st thou be guiltless? Then forbear: For these are sacred fishes that swim here; Who know their Sovereign, and will lick his hand. Than which none's greater in the world's command; Nay, more; they've names, and when they called are. Do to their several owners' call repair." Who, after reading so many instances, can doubt that fish hear? It has been found that the water from steam-engines, which is thrown into dams or ponds for the purpose of being cooled, conduces much to the nutriment of Gold Fish. In these dams, the average temperature of which is about eighty degrees, it is common to keep Gold Fish; in which situation they multiply much more rapidly than in ponds of lower temperature exposed to variations of the climate. Three pair of fish were put into one of these dams, where they increased so rapidly that at the end of three years their progeny, which was accidentally poisoned by verdigris mixed with the refuse tallow from the engine, were taken out by wheel-barrow-fuls. Gold Fish are by no means useless inhabitants of these dams, as they consume the refuse grease which would otherwise impede the cooling of the water by accumulating on its surface. It is not improbable that this unusual supply of aliment may co-operate with increase of temperature in promoting the fecundity of the fishes. Most of our readers have heard of the fish popularly known as the Miller's Thumb, the origin of the name of which Mr. Yarrell has thus explained:--"It is well known that all the science and tact of a miller is directed so to regulate the machinery of his mill that the meal produced shall be of the most valuable description that the operation of grinding will permit, when performed under the most advantageous circumstances. His ear is constantly directed to the note made by the running stone in its circular course over the bedstone, the exact parallelism of their two surfaces, indicated by a particular sound, being a matter of the first consequence; and his hand is constantly placed under the meal-spout to ascertain, by actual contact, the character and quality of the meal produced, which he does by a particular movement of his thumb in spreading the sample over his fingers. By this incessant action of the miller's thumb, a peculiarity in its shape is produced, which is said to resemble exactly the shape of the _river bull-head_, a fish constantly found in the mill-stream, and which has obtained for it the name of the Miller's Thumb." M. Coste has constructed a kind of marine observatory at Concarneau (Finisterre) for the purpose of studying the habits and instincts of various Sea-fish. A terrace has been formed on the top of a house on the quay, with reservoirs arranged like a flight of steps. The sea-water is pumped up to the topmost reservoir, and thence flows down slowly, after the manner of a rivulet. The length is divided into 95 cells by wire net partitions, which, allowing free passage to the water, yet prevent the different species of fish from mingling together. By this ingenious contrivance each kind lives separate, enjoying its peculiar food and habits, unconscious of its state of captivity. Some species, such as the Mullet, the Stickleback, &c., grow perfectly tame, will follow the hand that offers them food, and will even allow themselves to be taken out of the water. The Goby and Bull-head are less familiar. The Turbot, which looks so unintelligent, will, nevertheless, take food from the hand; it changes colour when irritated, the spots with which it is covered growing pale or dark, according to the emotions excited in it. But the most curious circumstance concerning it is, that it swallows fish of a much larger size than would appear compatible with the apparent smallness of its mouth. Thus, a young Turbot, not more than ten inches in length, has been seen to swallow Pilchards of the largest size. The Pipe-Fish has two peculiarities. These fish form groups, entwining their tails together, and remaining immoveable in a vertical position, with their heads upwards. When food is offered them, they perform a curious evolution--they turn round on their backs to receive it. This is owing to the peculiar position of the mouth, which is placed under a kind of beak, and perpendicular to its axis. The crustaceous tribes have also furnished much matter of observation. The Prawn and Crab, for instance, exercises the virtue of conjugal fidelity to the highest degree; for the male takes hold of his mate, and never lets her go; he swims with her, crawls about with her, and if she is forcibly taken away from him, he seizes hold of her again. The metamorphoses to which various crustaceous tribes are subject have also been studied with much attention.[16] Much as the nature and habits of fish have been studied of late years, the economy of some is to this day involved in obscurity. The Herring is one of these fishes. The Swedish Herring Fisheries were, at one time, the largest in Europe, but at present, during the temporary disappearance of the fish, they have dwindled away. The causes which influence the movements of the Herring--one of the most capricious of fish--are a puzzle which naturalists have as yet failed to solve. They are not migratory, as was at one time believed--that is, they seldom wander far from the place where they were bred; but they are influenced by certain hidden and unexplained causes at one time to remain for years in the deep sea, and at another to come close in to land in enormous numbers. During the first half of the sixteenth century, Herrings entirely deserted the Swedish coasts. In 1556 they reappeared, and remained for thirty-one years in the shallow waters. Throughout this period they were taken in incalculable numbers; "thousands of ships came annually from Denmark, Germany, Friesland, Holland, England, and France, to purchase the fish, of which sufficient were always found for them to carry away to their own or other countries.... From the small town of Marstrand alone some two million four hundred thousand bushels were yearly exported." In 1587 the Herrings disappeared, and remained absent for seventy-three years, till 1660. In 1727 they returned, and again in 1747, remaining till 1808, and during this last period the fisheries were prosecuted with extraordinary zeal, industry, and success. The Government gave every encouragement to settlers, and it was computed that during some years as many as fifty thousand strangers took part in them. In 1808 the Herrings once more disappeared, and have never returned since. The cause must still be considered as quite unknown; but we may fairly assume, according to historical precedents, that after a certain period of absence, the Herrings will again return.[17] Aristotle, in his "History of Animals," makes some extremely curious observations on Fish and Cetaceous Animals, as might be expected from the variety of these animals in the Grecian seas. In Spratt and Forbes's "Travels in Syria" the account of the habits and structure of the Cuttle-fish in Aristotle's work is ranked amongst the most admirable natural history essays ever written. It is, moreover, remarkable for its anticipation. Dr. Osborne, in 1840, read to the Royal Society a short analysis of this work, in which he showed that Aristotle anticipated Dr. Jenner's researches respecting the cuckoo; as also some discoveries respecting the incubated egg, which were published as new in the above year. Aristotle describes the economy of bees as we have it at present; but mistakes the sex of the queen. The various organs are described as modified throughout the different classes of animals (beginning with man) in nearly the same order as that afterwards adopted by Cuvier. The chief value of this body of knowledge, which has been buried for above 2,000 years, is, that it is a collection of facts observed under peculiar advantages, such as never since occurred, and that _it is at the present day to be consulted for new discoveries_. According to Pliny, for the above work some thousands of men were placed at Aristotle's disposal throughout Greece and Asia, comprising persons connected with hunting and fishing, or who had the care of cattle, fish-ponds, and apiaries, in order that he might obtain information from all quarters, _ne quid usquam gentium ignoretur ab eo_. According to Athenæus, Aristotle received from the prince, on account of the expenses of the work, 800 talents, or upwards of 79,000_l._ FOOTNOTES: [14] A tench was brought to Mr. Harmer so full of spawn that the skin was burst by a slight knock, and many thousands of the eggs were lost; yet even after this misfortune he found the remainder to amount to 383,252! Of other marine animals, which he includes under the general term fish, the fecundity, though sufficiently great, is by no means enormous. A lobster yielded 7,227 eggs; a prawn 3,806; and a shrimp 3,057. See Mr. Harmer's paper, "Philosophical Transactions," 1767. [15] "Athenæum." [16] See "The Tree-climbing Crab," pp. 282-302. [17] "Saturday Review." FISH IN BRITISH COLOMBIA. In this bitterly cold country, where the snow lies deep six months out of the twelve, the natives subsist principally on fish, of which there is an extraordinary abundance generally, and of salmon particularly. Salmon swarm in such numbers that the rivers cannot hold them. In June and July every rivulet, no matter how shallow, is so crammed with salmon that, from sheer want of room, they push one another high and dry upon the pebbles; and Mr. Lord[18] tells us that each salmon, with its head up, struggles, fights, and scuffles for precedence. With one's hands only, or more easily by employing a gaff or a crook-stick, tons of salmon have been procured by the simple process of hooking them out. Once started on their journey, the salmon never turn back. As fast as those in front die, fresh arrivals crowd on to take their places, and share their fate. "It is a strange and novel sight to see three moving lines of fish--the dead and dying in the eddies and slack water along the bank, the living breasting the current in the centre, blindly pressing on to perish like their kindred." For two months this great _salmon army_ proceeds on its way up stream, furnishing a supply of food without which the Indians must perish miserably. The winters are too severe for them to venture out in search of food, even if there was any to be obtained. From being destitute of salt, they are unable to cure meat in the summer for winter provisions, and hence for six months in the year they depend upon salmon, which they preserve by drying in the sun. But the Indian has another source of provision for the winter, fully as important as the salmon. The Candle-fish supplies him at once with light, butter, and oil.[19] When dried, and perforated with a rush, or strip of cypress-bark, it can be lighted, and burns steadily until consumed. Strung up, and hung for a time in the smoke of a wood fire, it is preserved as a fatty morsel to warm him when pinched with cold; and, by heat and pressure, it is easily converted into liquid oil, and drunk with avidity. That nothing may be wanting, the hollow stalk of the sea-wrack, which at the root is expanded into a complete flask, makes an admirable bottle; and so, when the Indian buries himself for long dreary months in his winter quarters, neither his larder nor his cellar are empty, and he has a lamp to lighten the darkness. The steamers have, however, frightened away the Candle-fish and the Indian from their old haunts, and they have both retreated to the north of the Colombia River. Amongst the other inhabitants of the salt and fresh waters of these regions are the Halibut and the Sturgeon, both of which attain to an immense size. The bays and inlets along the coast abound with marine wonders. There feasts and fattens the Clam, a bivalve so gigantic that no oyster-knife can force an entrance, and only when his shell is almost red-hot will he be at last constrained to open his dwelling. And there lies in wait the awful Octopus, a monster of insatiable voracity, of untameable ferocity, and of consummate craft; of sleepless vigilance, shrouded amidst the forest of sea-weed, and from the touch of whose terrible arms no living thing escapes. It attains to an enormous size in those seas, the arms being sometimes five feet in length, and as thick at the base as a man's wrist. No bather would have a chance if he once got within the grasp of such a monster, nor could a canoe resist the strength of its pull; but the Indian, who devours the Octopus with great relish, has all the cunning created by necessity, and takes care that none of the eight sucker-dotted arms ever gain a hold on his frail bark. Professor Owen has figured a species of Octopus, the Eight-armed Cuttle of the European seas, representing it in the act of creeping on shore, its body being carried vertically in the reverse position, with its head downwards, and its back being turned towards the spectator, upon whom it is supposed to be advancing. This animal is said to be luminous in the dark. Linnæus quotes Bartholinus for the statement that one gave so much light that when the candle was taken away, it illuminated the room. The Sturgeon is one of the finest fishes of the country, and Mr. Lord's account of the Indian mode of taking them is a very graphic picture of this river sport. "The spearman stands in the bow, armed with a most formidable spear. The handle, from seventy to eighty feet long, is made of white pine-wood; fitted on the spear-haft is a barbed point, in shape very much like a shuttlecock, supposing each feather represented by a piece of bone, thickly barbed, and very sharp at the end. This is so contrived that it can be easily detached from the long handle by a sharp, dexterous jerk. To this barbed contrivance a long line is made fast, which is carefully coiled away close to the spearman, like a harpoon-line in a whale-boat. The four canoes, alike equipped, are paddled into the centre of the stream, and side by side drift slowly down with the current, each spearman carefully feeling along the bottom with his spear, constant practice having taught the crafty savages to know a Sturgeon's back when the spear comes in contact with it. The spear-head touches the drowsy fish; a sharp plunge, and the redskin sends the notched points through armour and cartilage, deep into the leather-like muscles. A skilful jerk frees the long handle from the barbed end, which remains inextricably fixed in the fish; the handle is thrown aside, the line seized, and the struggle begins. The first impulse is to resist this objectionable intrusion, so the angry Sturgeon comes up to see what it all means. This curiosity is generally repaid by having a second spear sent crashing into him. He then takes a header, seeking safety in flight, and the real excitement commences. With might and main the bowman plies the paddle, and the spearman pays out the line, the canoe flying through the water. The slightest tangle, the least hitch, and over it goes; it becomes, in fact, a sheer trial of paddle _versus_ fin. Twist and turn as the Sturgeon may, all the canoes are with him. He flings himself out of the water, dashes through it, under it, and skims along the surface; but all is in vain, the canoes and their dusky oarsmen follow all his efforts to escape, as a cat follows a mouse. Gradually the Sturgeon grows sulky and tired, obstinately floating on the surface. The savage knows he is not vanquished, but only biding a chance for revenge; so he shortens up the line, and gathers quietly on him to get another spear in. It is done,--and down viciously dives the Sturgeon; but pain and weariness begin to tell, the struggles grow weaker and weaker as life ebbs slowly away, until the mighty armour-plated monarch of the river yields himself a captive to the dusky native in his frail canoe." There is a very rare Spoonbill Sturgeon found in the western waters of North America: its popular name is Paddle-fish. One, five feet in length, weighed forty pounds; the nose, resembling a spatula, was thirteen inches in length. It was of a light slate colour, spotted with black; belly white; skin smooth, like an eel; the flesh compact and firm, and hard when boiled--not very enticing to the epicure. The jaws are without teeth, but the fauces are lined with several tissues of the most beautiful network, evidently for the purpose of collecting its food from the water by straining, or passing it through these membranes in the same manner as practised by the spermaceti whale. Near the top of the head are two small holes, through which it is possible the Sturgeon may discharge water in the manner practised by cetaceous animals. It is conjectured that the long "Spoonbill" nose of this fish is for digging up or moving the soft mud in the bottom of the river, and when the water is fully saturated, draw it through the filamentory strainers in search of food. Sturgeons resemble sharks in their general form, but their bodies are defended by bony shields, disposed in longitudinal rows; and their head is also well curiassed externally. The Sturgeons of North America are of little benefit to the natives. A few speared in the summer-time suffice for the temporary support of some Indian hordes; but none are preserved for winter use, and the roe and sounds are utterly wasted. The northern limit of the Sturgeon in America is probably between the 55th and 56th parallels of latitude. Dr. Richardson did not meet with any account of its existence to the north of Stewart's Lake, on the west side of the Rocky Mountains; and on the east side it does not go higher than the Saskatchewan and its tributaries. It is not found in Churchill River, nor in any of the branches of the Mackenzie or other streams that fall into the Arctic Seas--a remarkable circumstance when we consider that some species swarm in the Asiatic rivers which flow into the Icy Sea. Sturgeons occur in all the great lakes communicating with the St. Lawrence, and also along the whole Atlantic coast of the United States down to Florida. Peculiar species inhabit the Mississippi; it is, therefore, probable that the range of the genus extends to the Gulf of Mexico. The great rapid which forms the discharge of the Saskatchewan into Lake Winnipeg appears quite alive with these fish in the month of June; and some families of the natives resort thither at that time to spear them with a harpoon, or grapple them with a strong hook tied to a pole. Notwithstanding the great muscular power of the Sturgeon, it is timid; and Dr. Richardson saw one so frightened at the paddling of a canoe, that it ran its nose into a muddy bank, and was taken by a _voyageur_, who leaped upon its back. In Colombia River, a small species of Sturgeon attains eleven feet in length, and a weight of six hundred pounds.[20] It is caught as high up as Fort Colville, notwithstanding the numerous intervening cataracts and rapids which seem to be insuperable barriers to a fish so sluggish in its movements. The Sturgeon is styled a Royal Fish in England, because, by a statute of Edward II. it is enacted, "the King shall have Sturgeon taken in the sea, or elsewhere, within the realm." FOOTNOTES: [18] "The Naturalist in Vancouver Island and British Columbia." By John Keast Lord, F.Z.S., Naturalist to the British North American Boundary Commission. [19] The Petrel is similarly used in the Faroe Islands. (See _ante_, p. 234.) It may, therefore, be called the Candle Bird. [20] Dr. Richardson. The _Huro_ is reported by Pallas to attain a weight of nearly three thousand pounds, and a length exceeding thirty feet. THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB. The transition from the ordinary mode of the locomotion of fishes by swimming to that of climbing has been ably illustrated by the Rev. Dr. Buckland, who showed, in a communication to the Ashmolean Society, in 1843, that the fins in certain genera perform the functions of feet and wings. Thus, "fishing-frogs" have the fins converted into feet, or paddles, by means of which they have the power of crawling or hopping on sand and mud; and another species can live three days out of the water, and walk upon dry land. The climbing perch of the Indian rivers is known to live a long time in the air, and to climb up the stems of palm-trees in pursuit of flies, by means of spinous projections on its gill-covers. Fishes of the _silurus_ family have a bony enlargement of the first ray of the pectoral fin, which is also armed with spines; and this is not only an offensive and defensive weapon, but enables the fish to walk along the bottom of the fresh waters which it inhabits. The flying-fishes are notorious examples of the conversion of fins into an organ of movement in the air. M. Deslongchamps has published, in the "Transactions of the Linnæan Society of Normandy," 1842, a curious account of the movements of the gurnard at the bottom of the sea. In 1839, he observed these movements in one of the artificial fishing-ponds, or fishing-traps, surrounded by nets, on the shore of Normandy. He saw a score of gurnards closing their fins against their sides, like the wing of a fly in repose, and without any movement of their tails, walking along the bottom by means of six free rays, three on each pectoral fin, which they placed successively on the ground. They moved rapidly forwards, backwards, to the right and left, groping in all directions with these rays, as if in search of small crabs. Their great heads and bodies seemed to throw hardly any weight on the slender rays, or feet, being suspended in water, and having their weight further diminished by their swimming-bladder. During these movements the gurnards resembled insects moving along the sand. When M. Deslongchamps moved in the water, the fish swam away rapidly to the extremity of the pond; when he stood still, they resumed their ambulatory movement, and came between his legs. On dissection, we find these three anterior rays of the pectoral fins to be supported each with strong muscular apparatus to direct their movements, apart from the muscles that are connected with the smaller rays of the pectoral fin. Dr. Buckland states that Miss Potts, of Chester, had sent to him a flagstone from a coalshaft at Mostyn, bearing impressions which he supposed to be the trackway of some fish crawling along the bottom by means of the anterior rays of its pectoral fins. There were no indications of feet, but only scratches, symmetrically disposed on each side of a space that may have been covered by the body of the fish whilst making progress, by pressing its fin-bones on the bottom. As yet, no footsteps of reptiles, or of any animals more highly organized than fishes, have been found in strata older than those which belong to the new red sandstone. The abundant remains of fossil fishes, armed with strong bony spines, and of other fishes allied to the gurnard, in strata of the carboniferous and old red sandstone series, would lead us to expect the frequent occurrence of impressions made by their locomotive organs on the bottoms of the ancient waters in which they lived. Dr. Buckland proposed to designate these petrified traces or trackways of ancient fishes by the term of fish-tracks. Crabs and Lobsters are strange creatures: strange in their configurations; strange in the transmutations which they exhibit from the egg to maturity; strange in the process they undergo of casting off, not only their shell, but the covering of their eyes, of their long horns, and even the lining of their tooth-furnished stomach; strange, also, are they in their manners and habits. Many a reader, in wandering along the sea-shore, may have disturbed little colonies of Crabs quietly nestling in fancied security amidst banks of slimy sea-weed; and in the nooks and recesses of the coast, the shallows, and strips of land left dry at ebb-tide, may be seen numbers of little, or perchance large, Crabs, some concealed in snug lurking-places, others tripping, with a quick _side-long_ movement, over the beach, alarmed by the advance of an unwelcome intruder. Some are exclusively tenants of the water, have feet formed like paddles for swimming, and never venture on land; others seem to love the air and sunshine, and enjoy an excursion, not without hopes of finding an acceptable repast, over the oozy sands; some, equally fond of the shore and shallow water, appropriate to themselves the shells of periwinkles, whelks, &c., and there live in a sort of castle, which they drag about with them on their excursions, changing it for a larger as they increase in measure of growth. They vary in size from microscopic animalcules to the gigantic King Crab:[21] to the former, the luminosity of the ocean, or of the foam before the prows of vessels, is, to a great extent, attributable, each minute creature glowing with phosphoric light. The Bernhard Crab has been proved to have the power of dissolving shells, it not being unusual to find the long fusiform shells which are inhabited by these animals with the inner lip, and the greater part of the pillar on the inside of the mouth, destroyed, so as to render the aperture much larger than usual. Dr. Gray is quite convinced that these Crabs have the above power, some to a much greater degree than others. Certain Crabs, especially in the West Indies, are almost exclusively terrestrial, visiting the sea only at given periods, for the deposition of their eggs. These Crabs carry in their gill-chambers sufficient water for the purpose of respiration; they live in burrows, and traverse considerable tracts of land in the performance of their migratory journeys. Of these, some, as the Violet Crab, are exquisite delicacies. Of a great Crab migration we find these details in the "Jamaica Royal Gazette:"--In 1811 there was a very extraordinary production of Black Crabs in the eastern part of Jamaica. In June or July the whole district of Manchidneed was covered with countless numbers, swarming from the sea to the mountains. Of this the writer was an eye-witness. On ascending Over Hill from the vale of Plantain Garden River, the road appeared of a reddish colour, as if strewed with brick-dust. It was owing to myriads of young Black Crabs, about the size of the nail of a man's finger, moving at a pretty quick pace, direct for the mountains. "I rode along the coast," says the writer, "a distance of about fifteen miles, and found it nearly the same the whole way. Returning the following day, I found the road still covered with them, the same as the day before. How have they been produced, and where do they come from? were questions everybody asked, and nobody could answer. It is well known that Crabs deposit their eggs once a year, in May; but, except on this occasion, though living on the coast, I had never seen above a dozen young Crabs together; and here were myriads. No unusual number of old Crabs had been observed in that season; and it is worthy of note, that they were moving from a rock-bound coast of inaccessible cliffs, the abode of sea-birds, and exposed to the constant influence of the trade winds. No person, as far as I know, ever saw the like, except on that occasion; and I have understood that since 1811 Black Crabs have been more abundant further in to the interior of the island than they were ever known before." Cuvier describes the Burrowing Crab as displaying wonderful instinct:--"The animal closes the entrance of its burrow, which is situated near the margin of the sea, or in marshy grounds, with its largest claw. These burrows are cylindrical, oblique, very deep, and very close to each other; but generally each burrow is the exclusive habitation of a single individual. The habit which these crabs have of holding their large claw elevated in advance of the body, as if making a sign of beckoning to some one, has obtained for them the name of Calling Crabs. There is a species observed by Mr. Bosc in South Carolina, which passes the three months of the winter in its retreat without once quitting it, and which never goes to the sea except at the epoch of egg-laying." The same observations apply to the Chevalier Crabs (so called from the celerity with which they traverse the ground). These are found in Africa, and along the borders of the Mediterranean. Some Crabs, truly aquatic, as the Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, have the power of drawing back their limbs, and concealing them in a furrow, which they closely fit; and thus, in imitation of a tortoise, which retracts its feet and head within its shell, they secure themselves, when alarmed. Other aquatic species have their limbs adapted for clinging to weeds and other marine objects. Of these some have the two or four hind pairs of limbs so placed as to appear to spring from the back; they terminate in a sharp hook, by means of which the Crab attaches itself to the valves of shells, fragments of coral, &c., which it draws over its body, and thus lurks in concealment. Allied, in some respects, to the Hermit or Soldier Crabs, which tenant empty shells, is one which, from its manners and habits, is one of the most extraordinary of its race. The Hermit Crabs are voracious, and feed on animal substances. The Hermit, or Bernhard Crab, is so called from its habit of taking up its solitary residence in deserted shells, thus seeking a protection for its tail, which is long and naked. It is found in shells of different dimensions, and from time to time leaves its abode, as it feels a necessity, for a more commodious dwelling. It is said to present, on such occasions, an amusing instinct as it inserts the tail successively into several empty shells until one is found to fit. We learn from Professor Bell, however, that it does not always wait until the home is vacant, but occasionally rejects the rightful occupant with some violence. On the contrary, the Crab, or rather Lobster-Crab (for it takes an intermediate place between them), is more delicate in its appetite, and feeds upon fruits, to obtain which it is said to climb up certain trees, at the feet of which it makes a burrow. This species is the Purse Crab, or Robber Crab, of Amboyna and other islands in the South Pacific Ocean. "According to popular belief among the Indians," says Cuvier, "the Robber Crab feeds on the nuts of the cocoa-tree, and it makes its excursions during the night; its places of retreat are fissures in the rocks, or holes in the ground." The accounts of the early writers and travellers, as well as of the natives, were disbelieved; but their truth has since been abundantly confirmed. MM. Quoy and Guimard assure us that several Robber Crabs were fed by them for many months on cocoa-nuts alone; and a specimen of this Crab was submitted to the Zoological Society, with additional information from Mr. Cuming, in whose fine collection from the islands of the South Pacific several specimens were preserved. Mr. Cuming states these Crabs to be found in great numbers in Lord Hood's Island, in the Pacific. He there frequently met with them on the road. On being disturbed, the Crabs instantly assumed a defensive attitude, making a loud snapping with their powerful claws, or pincers, which continued as they retreated backwards. They climb a species of palm to gather a small kind of cocoa-nut that grows thereon. They live at the roots of trees, and not in the holes of rocks; and they form a favourite food among the natives. Such is the substance of Mr. Cuming's account. Mr. Darwin, in his "Researches in Geology and Natural History," saw several of these Crabs in the Keeling Islands, or Cocos Islands, in the Indian Ocean, about 600 miles distant from the coast of Sumatra. In these islands, of coral formation, the cocoa-nut tree is so abundant as to appear, at first glance, to compose the whole wood of the islands. Here the great Purse Crab is abundant. Mr. Darwin describes it as a Crab which lives on the cocoa-nut, is common on all parts of the dry land, and grows to a monstrous size. This Crab has its front pair of legs terminated by very strong and heavy pincers, and the last pair by others which are narrow and weak. It would at first be thought quite impossible for a Crab to open a strong cocoa-nut, covered with the husk; but Mr. Liesk assures me that he has repeatedly seen the operation effected. The Crab begins by tearing away the husk, fibre by fibre, and always from that end under which the three eye-holes are situated. When this is completed the Crab commences hammering with its heavy claws on one of these eye-holes till an opening is made. Then, turning its body, by the aid of its posterior and narrow pair of pincers, it extracts the white albuminous substance. I think this as curious a case as I ever heard of, and likewise of adaptation in structure between two objects apparently so remote from each other in the scheme of nature as a Crab and a cocoa-nut tree. The Crab is diurnal in its habits; but it is said to pay every night a visit to the sea for the purpose of moistening its gills. These gills are very peculiar, and scarcely fill up more than a tenth of the chamber in which they are placed: it doubtless acts as a reservoir for water, to serve the Crab in its passage over the dry and heated land. The young are hatched and live for some time on the coast; at this period of existence we cannot suppose that cocoa-nuts form any part of their diet; most probably soft saccharine grasses, fruits, and certain animal matters, serve as their food until they attain a certain size and strength. The adult Crabs, Mr. Darwin tells us, inhabit deep burrows, which they excavate beneath the roots of trees; and here they accumulate great quantities of the picked fibres of the cocoa-nut husk, on which they rest as on a bed. The Malays sometimes take advantage of the labours of the Crab by collecting the coarse fibrous substance, and using it as junk. These Crabs are very good to eat; moreover, under the tail of the larger ones there is a great mass of fat, which, when melted, yields as much as a quart bottleful of limpid oil. The Crab's means of obtaining the cocoa-nuts have, however, been much disputed. It is stated by some authors to crawl up the trees for the purpose of stealing the nuts. This is doubted; though in the kind of palm to which Mr. Cuming refers as being ascended by this Crab, the task would be much easier. Now, Mr. Darwin states, that in the Keeling Islands the Crab lives only on the nuts which fall to the ground. It may thus appear that Mr. Cuming's and Mr. Darwin's respective accounts of the _non-climbing_ of this Crab on the one side, and its _actually climbing trees_ on the other, are contradictory. The height of the stem of the cocoa-nut tree, its circumference, and comparative external smoothness, would prove insurmountable, or at least very serious obstacles, to the most greedy Crab, however large and strong it might be. But these difficulties are by no means so formidable in the tree specified by Mr. Cuming: this is arborescent, or bushy, with long, thin, rigid, sword-shaped leaves, resembling those of the pineapple, usually arranged spirally, so that they are commonly called Screw Pines. They are of the genus _Pandanus_, a word derived from the Malay _Pandang_. The ascent of these arborescent plants, having the stem furnished with a rigging of cord-like roots, and bearing a multitude of firm, long, and spirally-arranged leaves, would be by no means a work of difficulty, as would necessarily be that of the tall feathery-topped cocoa-tree, destitute of all available points of aid or support. Hence the contradiction in the two accounts referred to is seeming, and not real, and the two statements are reconciled. To sum up, Mr. Cuming fully testifies to the Crab climbing the Screw Pines; and he has told Professor Owen that he has actually seen the Crab climbing the cocoa-nut tree. The Crab has been kept on cocoa-nuts for months; and is universally reported by the natives to climb the trees at night. [Illustration: THE TREE-CLIMBING CRAB.] We may here, too, observe, that fine specimens of the Climbing Crab are to be seen in the British Museum. Here, too, arranged in cases, are Spider Crabs; Crabs with oysters growing on their backs, thus showing that Crabs do not shed their shells every year, or that the oyster increases very rapidly in bulk; Oval-bodied Crabs; and Fin-footed or Swimming Crabs. Here are also Telescope, or Long-eyed Crabs, and Land Crabs, found in India 4,000 feet above the sea-level; another of similar habits in the plains of the Deccan, that may be seen swarming in the fields, some cutting and nipping the green rice-stalks, and others waddling off backwards with sheaves bigger than themselves. To these may be added Square-bodied Crabs, Crested Crabs; Porcelain Crabs, with delicate, china-like shells; and Death's-head Crabs, which usually form cases for themselves from pieces of sponge and shells. Certain species of Crabs are remarkably tenacious of life, and have been known to live for weeks buried, and without food. It is in the Crab tribe that the fact of the metamorphosis of _crustacea_ has been most distinctly perceived; a small, peculiar crustacean animal, that had long passed for a distinct species, under the name of _Zoea_, having at length been identified with the young of the common Crab before it had attained its full development. That among the Crab tribes a tree-climbing species is to be found is certainly curious, but it is not without a parallel among fishes. Many of the latter leave the water, some even for a long time, and perform overland journeys, aided in their progress by the structure of their fins. In these fishes the gills and gill-chambers are constructed for the retention of water for a considerable time, so as to suffice for the necessary degree of respiration. In our country, we may mention the eel, which often voluntarily quits the river or lake, and wanders during the night over the adjacent meadows, probably in quest of dew-worms. But the marshes of India and China present us with fishes much more decidedly terrestrial, and some of which were known to the ancients. Among these are several fishes of a snake-like form: they have an elongated, cylindrical body, and creep on land to great distances from their native waters. The boatmen of India often keep these fishes for a long time out of water, for the sake of diverting themselves and others by their terrestrial movements, and children may often be seen enjoying this sport. Of these land-haunting fishes, the most remarkable is the tree-climber, so called in Tranquebar. This fish inhabits India, the Indian islands, and various parts of China, as Chusan, &c., living in marshes, and feeding on aquatic insects, worms, &c. According to Daldorf, a Danish gentleman, who, in 1797, communicated an account of the habits of this fish to the Linnæan Society, it _mounts up_ the bushes or low palms to some elevation. This gentleman states that he had himself observed it in the act of ascending palm-trees near the marshes, and had taken it at a height of no less than five feet, measured from the level of the adjacent water. It effects its ascent by means of its pectoral and under fins, aided by the action of the tail and the spines which border the gill covers. It is by the same agency that it traverses the land. The statement of M. Daldorf is corroborated by M. John, also a Danish observer, to whom we are indebted for the knowledge of its name in Tranquebar, which alludes to its arboreal proceedings. It is true that many other naturalists who have observed the habits of this fish in its native regions, while they concur in describing its terrestrial journeys, and its living for a long time out of water, either omit to mention, or mention with doubt, its reputed attempts at _tree-climbing_. The habits and instincts of certain Crawfishes are very extraordinary. Thus, the _Astaci_ are migratory, and in their travels are capable of doing much damage to dams and embankments. On the Little Genesee River they have, within a few years, compelled the owner of a dam to rebuild it. The former dam was built after the manner of dykes, _i.e._, with upright posts, supporting sleepers, laid inclining up the stream. On these were laid planks, and the planks were covered with dirt. The _Astacus_ proceeding up the stream would burrow under the planks where they rested on the bottom of the stream, removing bushels of dirt and gravel in the course of a night. They travel over the dam in their migrations, _often climbing posts_ two or three feet high to gain the pond above.[22] We have to add a new and eccentric variety of nature--the Pill-making Crab, which abounds at Labuan, Singapore, and Lahore, and is described in Mr. Collingwood's "Rambles of a Naturalist." When the tide is down, this little creature, if stealthily watched, may be seen creeping up a hole in the sandy shore, taking up rapidly particles of the loose powdery sand in its claws, and depositing them in a groove beneath the thorax. A little ball of sand, about the size of a filbert, is forthwith projected, though whether it passes actually through the mouth is not made clear. Pill after pill is seized with one claw, and laid aside, until the beach is covered with these queer little pellets. This is evidently the creature's mode of extracting particles of food from the sand. Mr. Collingwood also describes, as met with on the shores and waters of the China seas, Glass Crabs, whose flat, transparent, leaf-like bodies seem made of fine plates of mica. The dredge brings up many a rich haul of sponges, corals, and gorgoniæ, of the most splendid colours, certain of the sponges harbouring within their cells minute crabs of a new genus. Between Aden and Galle the sea is of a pinkish colour, owing to the immense accumulation of minute kinds of medusæ, in solid masses of red jelly. Over Fiery Cross Reef, the mirror-like sea reveals, at the depth of sixty or seventy feet, this wealth of natural treasures. "Glorious masses of living coral strew the bottom: immense globular madrepores--vast overhanging mushroom-shaped expansions, complicated ramifications of interweaving branches, mingled with smaller and more delicate species--round, finger-shaped, horn-like and umbrella-form--lie in wondrous confusion. Here and there is a large clam-shell, wedged in between masses of coral, the gaping, zigzag mouth covered with the projecting mantle of the deepest Prussian blue; beds of dark purple, long-spined Echini, and the thick black bodies of sea-cucumbers vary the aspect of the sea bottom."[23] FOOTNOTES: [21] This Crab has an elongated spine-like tail, the use of which was long misunderstood. Dr. J. Gray was shown at the Liverpool Museum some living King Crabs, and the use they made of the tail-like appendages. When turned over on their backs, he saw them bend down the tail until they could reach some point of resistance, and then employ it to elevate the body, and regain their normal position. Dr. Gray states that they never have been seen to use this tail for the purpose which has been often assigned to it--that is, for leaping from place to place by bending it under the body, like the toy called a "spring-jack," or "leaping frog." [22] American Journal of Science and Art. [23] W. C. Linnæus Martin, F.L.S. MUSICAL LIZARDS. A small Lizard, lately brought home from the Isle of Formosa by Mr. Swinhoe, is decided to be a new species by Dr. Günther, of the British Museum. Mr. Swinhoe found the eggs of this Gecko, or Lizard, in holes of walls or among mortar rubbish. They are round, and usually lie several together, resembling eggs of ordinary Lizards. The young, when first hatched, keep much under stones in dark cellars, where they remain until they attain about two-thirds of the adult size, when they begin to appear in public to catch insects, but evincing great shyness of their seniors. Mr. Swinhoe states that on the plaster-washed sides of his bedroom, close to the angle of the roof, every evening when the lamp was placed on the table below, four little Musical Lizards used to make their appearance and watch patiently for insects attracted by the light. A sphinx or a beetle buzzing into the room would put them into great excitement, and they would run with celerity from one part of the wall to the other after the deluded insect as it fluttered in vain, buffeting its head, up and down the wall. Two or three would run after the same insect, but as soon as one had succeeded in securing it, the rest would prudently draw aloof. In running over the perpendicular face of the wall they keep so close, and their movements are made so quickly, with one leg in advance of the other, that they have the appearance at a distance of gliding rather than running. The tail is somewhat writhed as the body is jerked along, and much so when the animal is alarmed and doing its utmost to escape; but its progress even then is in short runs, stopping at intervals and raising its head to look about. If a fly perch on the wall it cautiously approaches to within a short distance, then suddenly darts forwards, and with its quickly-protruded, glutinous tongue, fixes it. Apart from watching its curious manoeuvres after its insect-food, the attention of the most listless would be attracted by the singular series of loud notes these creatures utter at all hours of the day and night, more especially during cloudy and rainy weather. These notes resemble the syllables "chuck-chuck," several times repeated; and, from their more frequent occurrence during July and August, they are thought to be the call notes of the male to the female. During the greater part of the day, the little creature lies quiescent in some cranny among the beams of the roof or in the wall of the house, where, however, it is ever watchful for the incautious fly that approaches its den, upon whom it darts forth with but little notice. But it is by no means confined to the habitations of men. Every old wall, and almost every tree, possesses a tenant or two of this species. It is excessively lively, and even when found quietly ensconced in a hole, generally manages to escape--its glittering little eyes (black, with yellow ochre iris) appearing to know no sleep; and an attempt to capture the runaway seldom results in more than the seizure of an animated tail, wrenched off with a jerk by the little fellow as it slips away, without loss of blood. The younger individuals are much darker than the larger and older animals, which are sometimes almost albinoes. In ordinary fly-catching habits, as they stick to the sides of a lamp, there is much similarity between this gecko and the little papehoo, or wall-lizard of China; but this is decidedly a larger and much more active animal, and often engages in a struggle with insects of very large size. The Chinese colonists of Formosa greatly respect the geckos, in consequence of a legend which attributes to them the honour of having once poisoned the supplies of an invading rebellious army, which was thereby totally cut to pieces. The geckos were raised to the rank of generals by the grateful Emperor of China; which honour, the legend states, they greatly appreciated, and henceforth devoted their energies to the extermination of mosquitoes and other injurious insects. CHAMELEONS, AND THEIR CHANGES. "Nil fuit unquam Sic impar sibi."--_Horat._ "Sure such a various creature ne'er was seen." _Francis, in imit._ The Chameleon tribe is a well-defined family of lizard-like reptiles, whose characters may be summed up as existing in the form of their feet; the toes, which are joined together or bound up together in two packets or bundles, opposed to each other; in their shagreen-like skin; in their prehensile tail; and in their extensile and retractile vermiform tongue. That the Chameleon was known to the ancients there is no doubt. Its name we derive directly from the _Chamelæo_ of the Latins. Aristotle's history of the animal proves the acute observation of that great zoologist--the absence of a sternum, the disposition of the ribs, the mechanism of the tail, the motion of the eyes, the toes bound up in opposable bundles, &c.--though he is not entirely correct on some points. Pliny mentions it, but his account is for the most part a compilation from Aristotle. Calmet's description of the Chameleon is curiously minute:--"It has four feet, and on each foot three claws. Its tail is long: with this, as well as with his feet, it fastens itself to the branches of trees. Its tail is flat, its nose long, ending in an obtuse point; its back is sharp, its skin plaited, and jagged like a saw, from the neck to the last joint of the tail, and upon its head it has something like a comb; like a fish, it has no neck. Some have asserted that it lives only upon air, but it has been observed to feed on flies, catched with its tongue, which is about ten inches long and three thick, made of white flesh, round, but flat at the end, or hollow and open, resembling an elephant's trunk. It also shrinks, and grows longer. This animal is said to assume the colour of those things to which it is applied; but our modern observers assure us that its natural colour, when at rest, and in the shade, is a bluish-grey; though some are yellow, others green, but both of a smaller kind. When it is exposed to the sun, the grey changes into a darker grey, inclining to a dun colour, and its parts which have least of the light upon them are changed into spots of different colours. Sometimes, when it is handled, it seems speckled with dark spots, inclining to green. If it be put upon a black hat, it appears to be of a violet colour; and sometimes, if it be wrapped up in linen, it is white; but it changes colour only in some parts of the body." Its changes of colour have been commemorated by the poets. Shakspeare has-- "I can add colours ev'n to the Chameleon: Change shapes with Proteus, for advantage." Dryden has-- "The thin Chameleon, fed with air, receives The colour of the thing to which it cleaves." Prior has-- "As the Chameleon, which is known To have no colours of his own, But borrows from his neighbour's hue His white or black, his green or blue." Gay, in his charming fable of the Spaniel and the Chameleon, "scarce distinguished from the green," makes the latter thus reply to the taunts of the pampered spaniel:-- "'Sir,' says the sycophant, 'like you, Of old, politer life I knew: Like you, a courtier born and bred, Kings lean'd their ear to what I said: My whisper always met success; The ladies prais'd me for address; I knew to hit each courtier's passion, And flatter'd every vice in fashion: But Jove, who hates the liar's ways, At once cut short my prosperous days, And, sentenced to retain my nature, Transform'd me to this crawling creature. Doom'd to a life obscure and mean, I wander'd in the silvan scene: For Jove the heart alone regards; He punishes what man rewards. How different is thy case and mine! With men at least you sup and dine; While I, condemned to thinnest fare, Like those I flatter'd, fed on air.'" Upon this fable a commentator acutely notes:--"The raillery at court sycophants naturally pervades our poet's writings, who had suffered so much from them. Here, however, he intimates something more, namely, the apposite dispensations to man's acts, even in this world. The crafty is taken in by his own guile, the courtier falls by his own arts, and the ladder of ambition only prepares for the aspirant a further fall."[24] With respect to the air-food of the Chameleon. Cuvier observes that its lung is so large that, when it is filled with air, it imparts a transparency to the body, which made the ancients say that it lived upon air; and he inclines to think that to its size the Chameleon owes the property of changing its colour; but, with regard to this last speculation, he was wrong, as we shall presently see. It was long thought that the Chameleon, like most of the lizard tribe, was produced from an egg. The little animal is, however, most clearly viviparous, and not oviparous, although the tales told of the lizard tribe in the story books are most perplexing. To name a few of them:--1. The crocodile, which is the largest of the lizard tribe, and has even attained the size of 18-1/2 ft. in length, is confidently stated as laying eggs, which she covers with sand and leaves, to be hatched by the sun; and these have been met with in the rivers Nile, Niger, and Ganges. 2. _Lacerta Gangetica_, unknown to Linnæus, but brought to this country from Bengal in 1747 by the late Dr. Mead, is said to be furnished with a false belly, like the opossum, where the young can be received for protection in time of danger. In this case the egg must have been hatched in the belly of the animal, like the viper. 3. The alligator, or American crocodile, lays a vast quantity of eggs in the sand, near the banks of lakes and rivers, and leaves them to be hatched by the sun; and the young are seldom seen. 4. The cayman, or Antilles crocodile, has furnished its eggs to many collections. 5. A salamander was opened by M. Maupertuis, and its belly was found full of eggs; but in "Les Mémoires de l'Académie Royale des Sciences" it is stated that, after a similar operation of the kind, "fifty young ones, resembling the parent animal, were found in its womb all alive, and actively running about the room." The tongue is the chief organ for taking the insects on which the Chameleon lives. By a curious mechanism, of which the tongue-bone is a principal agent, the Chameleon can protrude this cylindrical tongue, which has its tip covered with a glutinous secretion from the sheath at the lower part of the mouth, to the length of six inches. When the Chameleon is about to seize an insect, it rolls round its extraordinary eyeballs so as to bring them to bear on the doomed object; as soon as it arrives within the range of the tongue, that organ is projected with unerring precision, and returns into the mouth with the prey adhering to the viscous tip. The wonderful activity with which this feat is performed, forms a strong contrast to the almost ridiculously slow motions of the animal. Their operation of taking meal-worms, of which they are fond, though comparatively rapid, is not remarkable for its quickness, but done with an act of deliberation, and so that the projection and retraction of the tongue can be very distinctly followed with the eye. The eyes of the Chameleon are remarkable objects; large, projecting, and almost entirely covered with the shagreen-like skin, with the exception of a small aperture opposite the pupil; their motions are completely independent of each other. It adds to the strange and grotesque appearance of this creature to see it roll one of its eye-globes backwards, while the other is directed forwards, as if making two distinct surveys at one time. Its sight must be acute, from the unerring certainty with which it marks and strikes its prey. The Chameleons spend their lives in trees, for clinging to the branches of which their organization is admirably adapted. There they lie in wait for the insects which may come within their reach; and it has been thought that, in such situations, their faculty of changing colour becomes highly important in aiding them to conceal themselves. The powers of abstinence possessed by this singular race are very great; and hence, most probably, arose the old fable of their _living on air_, which was for a long time considered to be "the Chameleon's dish." One has been known to fast upwards of six weeks without taking any sustenance, though meat-food and insects were procured for it. Notwithstanding this fast, it did not appear to fall away much. It would fix itself by the feet and tail to the bars of the fender, and there remain motionless, enjoying the warmth of the fire for hours together. Hasselquist describes one, that he kept for nearly a month, as climbing up and down the bars of its cage in a very lively manner. The power of the Chameleon's changing colour long exercised the ingenuity of the old naturalists. Hasselquist thought that the changes of colour depended on a kind of disease, more especially a sort of jaundice, to which the animal was subject, particularly when it was put in a rage. M. D'Obsonville thought that he had discovered the secret in the blood, and that the change of colour depended upon a mixture of blue and yellow, whence the different shades of green were derived; and these colours he obtains from the blood and the blood-vessels. Thus he says that the blood is of a violet hue, and will retain its colour on linen or paper for some minutes if previously steeped in a solution of alum, and that the coats of the vessels are yellow; consequently, he argues, that the mixture of the two will produce green. He further traces the change of colour to the passions of the animal. Thus, when a healthy Chameleon is provoked, the circulation is accelerated, the vessels that are spread over the skin are distended, and a superficial blue-green colour is produced. When, on the contrary, the animal is imprisoned, impoverished, and deprived of free air, the circulation becomes languid, the vessels are not filled, the colour of their coats prevails, and the Chameleon changes to a yellow-green, which lasts during its confinement. Barrow, in his "Travels in Africa," declares that previously to the Chameleon's assuming a change of colour, it makes a long inspiration, the body swelling out to twice its usual size; and as the inflation subsides, the change of colour gradually takes place, the only permanent marks being two small dark lines passing along the sides. Mr. Wood conceives from this account that the animal is principally indebted for these varied tints to the influence of oxygen. Mr. Spittal also regards these changes as connected with the state of the lungs; and Mr. Houston considers this phenomenon as dependent on the turgescency of the skin. Dr. Weissenborn thinks it not unlikely that the nervous currents may directly co-operate in effecting the changes of colour in the Chameleon. Mr. H. N. Turner, writing from personal observation of the phenomenon in a live Chameleon in his possession, says:--"It has been generally imagined that the purpose of the singular faculty accorded to the Chameleon is to enable it to accommodate its appearance to that of surrounding objects." Mr. Turner's observations do not, however, favour the idea, but seem rather to negative it. The box in which Mr. Turner's Chameleon was kept was of deal, with glass at the top, and a piece of flannel laid at the bottom, a small branching stick being placed there by way of a perch. He introduced, at various times, pieces of coloured paper, covering the bottom of the box, of blue, yellow, and scarlet, but without the slightest effect upon the appearance of the animal. Considering that these primary colours were not such as it would be likely to be placed in contact with in a state of nature, he next tried a piece of green calico, but equally without result. The animal went through all its usual changes without their being in any way modified by the colour placed underneath it. The general tint approximated, as may be readily observed, to those of the branches of trees, just as those of most animals do to the places in which they dwell; but Mr. Turner did not observe the faculty of changing called into play with any apparent object. It is only when the light is removed that the animal assumes a colour which absorbs but little of it. Not to go further into the numerous treatises which have been published on this intricate subject without arriving at a just conclusion, we refer to the able and interesting paper of Mr. Milne Edwards, for whose acuteness the solution of this puzzling phenomenon was reserved. The steps by which he first overthrew the received theories on the subject, and then arrived at the cause of the change of colour, is shown in the following results, derived from observing two Chameleons living, and researches after the animals had died, on the structure of their skin, and the parts immediately beneath it. 1. That the change in the colour of the Chameleon does not depend essentially either on the more or less considerable swelling of their bodies, or the changes which might hence result to the condition of their blood or circulation; nor does it depend on the greater or less distance which may exist between the several cutaneous tubercles; although it is not to be denied that these circumstances probably exercise some influence upon the phenomenon. 2. That there exist in the skin of these animals two layers of membranous pigment, placed the one above the other, but disposed in such a way as to appear simultaneously under the cuticle, and sometimes in such a manner that the one may hide the other. 3. That everything remarkable in the changes of colour in the Chameleon may be explained by the appearance of the pigment of the deeper layer to an extent more or less considerable, in the midst of the pigment of the superficial layer, or from its disappearance beneath this layer. 4. That these displacements of the deeper pigment do in reality occur; and it is a probable consequence that the Chameleon's colour changes during life, and may continue to change even after death. 5. That there exists a close analogy between the mechanism by the help of which the change of colour appears to take place in these reptiles, and that which determines the successive appearance and disappearance of coloured spots in the mantles of several of the cephalopods. Chameleons are found in warm climates of the old world, South of Spain, Africa, East Indies. Isles of Sechelles, Bourbon, France, Moluccas. Madagascar (where it is said there are seven of the species which belong to Africa), Fernando Po, and New South Wales. In the year 1860, a new and curiously formed species of Chameleon was brought from the interior of the Old Calabar district of West Africa, by one of the natives. It is characterised by three horny processes on the head. Many Lizards have singular spiny projections on all parts of the body; but this very well marked species had not been hitherto recorded. Mrs. Belzoni, the wife of the celebrated traveller in the East, made some careful observations upon the habits of Chameleons, which are worth quoting. The Arabs in Lower Egypt catch Chameleons by jumping upon them, flinging stones at them, or striking them with sticks, which hurts them very much. The Nubians lay them down gently on the ground, and when they come down from the date-trees, they catch hold of the tail of the animal, and fix a string to it; therefore the body does not get injured. Mrs. Belzoni had some Chameleons for several months in her house, and her observations are as follows:-- "In the first place they are very inveterate towards each other, and must not be shut up together, else they will bite each other's tails and legs off. [Illustration: CHAMELEONS.] "There are three species of Chameleons, whose colours are peculiar to themselves: for instance, the commonest sort are those which are generally green, that is to say, the body all green, and, when content, beautifully marked on each side regularly on the green with black and yellow, not in a confused manner, but as if drawn. This kind is in great plenty; they never have any other colour except a light green when they sleep, and when ill, a very pale yellow. Out of near forty I had the first year when in Nubia, I had but one, and that a very small one of the second sort, which had red marks. One Chameleon lived with me eight months, and most of that time I had it fixed to the button of my coat: it used to rest on my shoulder or on my head. I have observed, when I have kept it shut up in a room for some time, that on bringing it out in the air it would begin drawing the air in, and on putting it on some marjorum it has had a wonderful effect on it immediately: its colour became most brilliant. I believe it will puzzle a good many to say what cause it proceeds from. If they did not change when shut up in a house, but only on taking them in a garden, it might be supposed the change of the colours was in consequence of the smell of the plants; but when in a house, if it is watched, it will change every ten minutes: some moments a plain green, at others all its beautiful colours will come out, and when in a passion it becomes of a deep black, and will swell itself up like a balloon, and, from being one of the most beautiful animals, it becomes one of the most ugly. It is true that Chameleons are extremely fond of the fresh air, and on taking them to a window when there is nothing to be seen, it is easy to observe the pleasure they certainly take in it: they begin to gulp down the air, and their colour becomes brighter. I think it proceeds, in a great degree, from the temper they are in: a little thing will put them in a bad humour: if in crossing a table, for instance, you stop them, and attempt to turn them another road, they will not stir, and are extremely obstinate: on opening the mouth at them, it will set them in a passion: they begin to arm themselves by swelling and turning black, and will sometimes hiss a little, but not much. "The third I brought from Jerusalem was the most singular of all the Chameleons I ever had: its temper, if it can be so called, was extremely sagacious and cunning. This one was not of the order of the green kind, but a disagreeable drab, and it never once varied in its colour in two months. On my arrival in Cairo. I used to let it crawl about the room on the furniture. Sometimes it would get down, if it could, and hide itself away from me, but in a place where it could see me; and sometimes, on my leaving the room and on entering it, would draw itself so thin as to make itself nearly on a level with whatever it might be on, so that I might not see it. It had often deceived me so. One day having missed it for some time, I concluded it was hid about the room; after looking for it in vain, I thought it had got out of the room and made its escape: in the course of the evening, after the candle was lighted, I went to a basket that had got a handle across it: I saw my Chameleon, but its colour entirely changed, and different to any I ever had seen before: the whole body, head and tail, a brown with black spots, and beautiful deep orange-coloured spots round the black. I certainly was much gratified. On being disturbed, its colours vanished, unlike the others; but after this I used to observe it the first thing in the morning, when it would have the same colours. Some time after, it made its escape out of my room, and I suppose got into the garden close by. I was much vexed, and would have given twenty dollars to have recovered it again, though it only cost me threepence, knowing I could not get another like it; for, afterwards being in Rosetta, I had between fifty and sixty; but all those were green, yellow, and black; and the Arabs, in catching them, had bruised them so much, that after a month or six weeks they died. It is an animal extremely hard to die. I had prepared two cages with separate divisions, with the intention of bringing them to England; but though I desired the Arabs that used to get them for me to catch them by the tail, they used to hurt them much with their hands; and if once the body is squeezed, it will never live longer than two months. When they used to sleep at night, it was easy to see where they had been bruised; for being of a very light colour when sleeping, the part that had been bruised, either on the body or the head, which was bone, was extremely black, though when green it would not show itself so clear. Their chief food was flies: the fly does not die immediately on being swallowed, for upon taking the Chameleon up in my hands, it was easy to feel the fly buzzing, chiefly on account of the air they draw in their inside: they swell much, and particularly when they want to fling themselves off a great height, by filling themselves up like a balloon: on falling, they get no hurt, except on the mouth, which they bruise a little, as that comes first to the ground. Sometimes they will not drink for three or four days, and when they begin they are about half an hour drinking. I have held a glass in one hand while the Chameleon rested its two fore-paws on the edge of it, the two hind ones resting on my other hand. It stood upright while drinking, holding its head up like a fowl. By flinging its tongue out of its mouth the length of its body, and instantaneously catching the fly, it would go back like a spring. They will drink mutton broth: how I came to know this was, one day having a plate of broth and rice on the table where it was: it went to the plate and got half into it, and began drinking, and trying to take up some of the rice, by pushing it with its mouth towards the side of the plate, which kept it from moving, and in a very awkward way taking it into its mouth." In the autumn of 1868, a pair of Chameleons, in the possession of the Hon. Lady Cust, of Leasowe Castle, Cheshire, produced nine active young ones, like little alligators, less than an inch long. Such a birth has been, it is believed, very rare in this country. It was remarked, in the above case, that the male and female appeared altogether indifferent about their progeny. Whatever may be the cause, the fact seems to be certain, that the Chameleon has an antipathy to objects of a black colour. One, which Forbes kept, uniformly avoided a black board which was hung up in the chamber; and, what is most remarkable, when the Chameleon was held forcibly before the black board, it trembled violently and assumed a _black colour_.[25] It may be something of the same kind which makes Bulls and Turkey-cocks dislike the colour of scarlet, a fact of which there can be no doubt. FOOTNOTES: [24] The Fables of John Gay. Illustrated. With Original Memoir, Introduction, and Annotations. By Octavius Freire Owen, M.A., F.S.A. 1854. [25] This, it will be seen by referring to page 307, does not correspond with Calmet's statement. RUNNING TOADS. That the Toad, by common repute "ugly and venomous," should be made a parlour pet, is passing strange; yet such is the case, and we find in a letter from Dr. Husenbeth, of Cossey, the following curious instances. Thus he describes a species, there often met with, the eyes of which have the pupil surrounded with bright golden-yellow, whereas in the common toad the circle is red or orange. This remarkable peculiarity Dr. H. has not seen anywhere noticed. The head is like that of the common sort, but much more blunt, and rounded off at the nose and mouth, and the arches over the eyes are more prominent. The most remarkable difference is a line of yellow running all down the back. Also down each side this Toad has a row of red pimples, like small beads, which are tolerably regular, but appear more in some specimens than in others. The general colour is a yellowish-olive, but the animal is beautifully marked with black spots, very regularly disposed, and exactly corresponding on each side of the yellow line down the back. Like all other Toads, this one occasionally changes its colour, becoming more brown, or ash-colour, or reddish at times, probably in certain states of the weather. This species is much more active than the common Toad. It never leaps, and very seldom crawls, but makes a short run, stops a little, and then runs on again. If frightened or pursued, it will run along much quicker than one would suppose. During the previous summer Dr. H. kept three Toads of this kind in succession. "The first (says Dr. H.) I procured in July; but after a few days, when I let him have a run on the carpet of my parlour, he got into a hole in a corner of the floor, of which I was not aware, and fell, as I suppose, underneath the floor, into the hollow space below. I concluded that he could never get up again, and gave him up to his fate. I then began to keep another Running Toad, which fed well at first, but after three weeks refused food, and evidently wasted; so I turned him out into the garden, and have not met with him since. After more than three weeks, the former Toad reappeared, but how he came up from beneath the floor I never could conceive, or how he had picked up a living in the meantime. He was, however, in good condition, and seemed to have lived well, probably on spiders and woodlice. He had been seen by a servant running about the carpet, but I knew nothing of his having come forth again, till in the evening, when he had got near the door, and it was suddenly opened so as to pass over the poor creature, and crush it terribly. I took it up apparently dead. It showed no sign of life; the eyes were closed, it did not breathe, and the backbone seemed quite broken, and the animal was crushed almost flat. I found a very curious milky secretion exuding from it, where it had been most injured and the skin was most broken. This was perfectly white, and had exactly the appearance of milk thrown over the toad. It did not bleed, though much lacerated; but instead of blood appeared this milky fluid, which had an odour of a most singular kind, different from anything I ever smelt. It is impossible to describe it. It was not fetid, but of a sickly, disgusting, and overpowering character, so that I could not endure to inhale it for a moment. I had read and seen a good deal of the extraordinary powers of revivification in toads, but was not prepared for what I witnessed on this occasion. I laid this poor animal, crushed, flattened, motionless, and to all appearance dead, upon a cold iron plate of the fireplace. He fell over on one side, and showed no sign of life for a full hour. After that he had slightly moved one leg, and so remained for about another half-hour. Then he began to breathe feebly, and gathered up his legs, and his back began to rise up into its usual form. In about two hours from the time of the accident, he had so far recovered as to crawl about, though with difficulty. The milky liquor was reabsorbed, and gradually disappeared as the toad recovered. The next morning it was all gone, and no mark of injury could be seen, except a small hole in his back, which soon closed. He recovered so far as to move about pretty well, but his back appeared to have been broken, and one fore-leg crippled. I therefore thought it best to give him his liberty in the garden. But so wonderful and speedy a recovery I could never have believed without ocular testimony. "I then tried my third and last Running Toad. I began to keep him on Sept. 13th. He was a very fine specimen, and larger than the two former. He fed well, and amused me exceedingly. He was very tame, and would sit on my hand quite quiet, and enjoy my stroking him gently down his head and back. Soon after I got him he began to cast his skin. I helped him to get rid of it by stripping it down each side, which he seemed to like much, and sat very quiet during the operation. The new skin was quite beautiful, and shone as if varnished. This Toad lived in a crystal palace, or glass jar, where I had kept all the others before him. He took food freely, and his appetite was so good that in one day he ate seven large flies and three bees without stings. He was particularly fond of woodlice and earwigs, but would take centipedes, moths, and even butterflies. Being more active than common Toads, he often made great efforts to get out of his glass jar. I used to let him run about the room nearly every day for a short time, and often treated him to a run in the garden. Toads make a slight noise sometimes in the evenings, uttering a short sound like 'coo,' but I never heard them croak. Before wet weather, and during its continuance, my Toad was disinclined for food, and took no notice of flies even walking over his nose. He would then burrow and hide himself in the moss at the bottom of his glass palace. Thus I kept him, and found him very tame and amusing. But after about two months he became more impatient of confinement, and refused to take any food. I did not perceive that he fell away, though his feet and toes turned of a dark colour, which I knew was a sign of being out of condition; and, on the 10th of November, I found him dead. I have now tried three of this sort, and have come to the conclusion that the Running Toad will not live in captivity. This I much regret, as its habits are interesting, and its ways very amusing. "F. C. Husenbeth, D.D." * * * * * FROG AND TOAD CONCERTS. It would be hard to believe the stories of the vocal powers of Frogs and Toads were they not related by trustworthy travellers, who tell of animal concerts, "Wild as the marsh, and tuneful as the harp." Mr. Priest, the traveller in America, who was himself a musician, records:--"Prepared as I was to hear something extraordinary from these animals, I confess the first _Frog Concert_ I heard in America was so much beyond anything I could conceive of the power of these musicians, that I was truly astonished. This performance was _al fresco_, and took place on the eighteenth of April, in a large swamp, where there were at least 10,000 performers; and I really believe not two exactly in the same pitch, if the octave can possibly admit of so many divisions, or shades of semitones." Professor and Mrs. Louis Agassiz, in their recent "Journey in Brazil," record:--"We must not leave Parà without alluding to our evening concerts from the adjoining woods and swamps. When I first heard this strange confusion of sounds, I thought it came from a crowd of men shouting loudly, though at a little distance. To my surprise. I found that the rioters were the frogs and toads in the neighbourhood. I hardly know how to describe this Babel of woodland noises; and, if I could do it justice, I am afraid my account would hardly be believed. At moments it seems like the barking of dogs, then like the calling of many voices on different keys; but all loud, rapid, excited, full of emphasis and variety. I think these frogs, like ours, must be silent at certain seasons of the year, for on our first visit to Parà we were not struck by this singular music, with which the woods now resound at nightfall." SONG OF THE CICADA. The Greeks have been scoffed at for rendering in deathless verse the song of so insignificant an insect as the Cicada; and hence it has been asserted that their love for such slender music must have been either exaggerated or simulated. It is pleasant, however, to hear an independent observer in the other hemisphere confirm their testimony. Mr. Lord tells us that in British Colombia there is one sound or song which is clearer, shriller, and _more singularly tuneful than any other_. It never appears to cease, and it comes from everywhere--from the tops of the trees, from the trembling leaves of the cotton-wood, from the stunted under-brush, from the flowers, the grass, the rocks and boulders--nay, the very stream itself seems vocal with hidden minstrels, all chanting the same refrain. An especial feature of the Cicada's song is, that it increases in intensity when the sun is hottest; and one of the later Latin poets mentions the time when its music is at its highest, as an alternative expression for noon. Mr. Tennyson, inadvertently, speaks in "Ænone" of the Grasshopper being silent in the grass, and of the Cicada sleeping when the noonday quiet holds the hill. Keats sings more truly:-- "When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead: That is the Grasshopper's." Then the Greek poets show us how intimately the song of the Cicada is associated with the hottest hours of the day. Aristophanes describes it as mad for the love of the sun; and Theocritus, as scorched by the sun. When all things are parched with the heat (says Alcæus), then from among the leaves issues the song of the sweet Cicada. His shrill melody is heard in the full glow of noontide, and the vertical rays of a torrid sun fire him to sing. Over and over again Mr. Lord met with allusions to the same peculiarity. Cicadæ are regularly sold for food in the markets of South America. They are not eaten now, like they were at Athens, as a whet to the appetite; but they are dried in the sun, powdered, and made into a cake. STORIES ABOUT THE BARNACLE GOOSE. "As barnacles turn Poland geese In th' islands of the Orcades."--_Hudibras._ One of the earliest references to this popular error is in the "Natural Magic" of Baptista Porta, who says:--"Late writers report that not only in Scotland, but also in the river of Thames by London, there is a kind of shell-fish in a two-leaved shell, that hath a foot full of plaits and wrinkles.... They commonly stick to the keel of some old ship. Some say they come of worms, some of the boughs of trees which fall into the sea; if any of them be cast upon shore, they die; but they which are swallowed still into the sea, live and get out of their shells, and grow to be ducks, or such-like birds." Professor Max Müller, in a learned lecture, enters fully into the origin of the different stories about the Barnacle Goose. He quotes from the "Philosophical Transactions" of 1678 a full account by Sir Robert Moray, who declared that he had seen within the barnacle shell, as through a concave or diminishing glass, the bill, eyes, head, neck, breast, wings, tail, feet, and feathers of the Barnacle Goose. The next witness was John Gerarde, Master in Chirurgerie, who, in 1597, declared that he had seen the actual metamorphosis of the muscle into the bird, describing how-- "The shell gapeth open, and the first thing that appeareth is the fore said lace or string; next come the leg of the birde hanging out, and as it groweth greater, it openeth the shell by degrees, till at length it is all come forth, and hangeth only by the bill, and falleth into the sea, when it gathereth feathers and groweth to a foule, bigger than a mallart; for the truth hereof, if any doubt, may it please them to repair unto me, and I shall satisfie them by the testimonies of good witnesses." As far back as the thirteenth century, the same story is traced in the writings of Giraldus Cambrensis. This great divine does not deny the truth of the miraculous origin of the Barnacle Geese, but he warns the Irish priests against dining off them during Lent on the plea that they were not flesh, but fish. For, he writes, "If a man during Lent were to dine off a leg of Adam, who was not born of flesh either, we should not consider him innocent of having eaten what is flesh." This modern myth, which, in spite of the protests of such men as Albertus Magnus, Æneas Sylvius, and others, maintained its ground for many centuries, and was defended, as late as 1629, in a book by Count Maier, "De volucri arborea," with arguments, physical, metaphysical, and theological, owed its origin to a play of words. The muscle shells are called _Bernaculæ_ from the Latin _perna_, the mediæval Latin _berna_; the birds are called _Hibernicæ_ or _Hiberniculæ_, abbreviated to _Berniculæ_. As their names seem one, the creatures are supposed to be one, and everything conspires to confirm the first mistake, and to invest what was originally a good Irish story--a mere _canard_--with all the dignity of scientific, and all the solemnity of theological truth. The myth continued to live until the age of Newton. Specimens of _Lepadidæ_, prepared by Professor Rolleston of Oxford, show how the outward appearance of the _Anatifera_ could have supported the popular superstition which derived the _Bernicla_, the goose, from the _Bernicula_, the shell. Drayton (1613), in his "Poly-olbion," iii., in connexion with the river Lee, speaks of "Th' anatomised fish and fowls from planchers sprung;" to which a note is appended in Southey's edition, p. 609, that such fowls were "Barnacles, a bird breeding upon old ships." A bunch of the shells attached to the ship, or to a piece of floating timber, at a distance appears like flowers in bloom; the foot of the animal has a similitude to the stalk of a plant growing from the ship's sides, the shell resembles a calyx, and the flower consists of the tentacula, or fingers, of the shell-fish. The ancient error was to mistake the foot for the neck of a goose, the shell for its head, and the tentacula for feathers. As to the body, _non est inventus_. Sir Kenelm Digby was soundly laughed at for relating to a party at the castle of the Governor of Calais, that "the Barnacle, a bird in Jersey, was first a shell-fish to appearance, and, from that striking upon old wood, became in time a bird." In 1807, there was exhibited in Spring-gardens, London, a "Wonderful natural curiosity, called the Goose Tree, Barnacle Tree, or Tree bearing Geese," taken up at sea on January 12th, and more than twenty men could raise out of the water.[26] Sir J. Emerson Tennent asks whether the ready acceptance and general credence given to so obvious a fable may not have been derived from giving too literal a construction to the text of the passage in the first chapter of Genesis:-- "And God said, Let the _waters bring forth abundantly_ the moving creature that hath life, and the _fowl_ that may fly in the open firmament of heaven." The Barnacle Goose is a well-known bird, and is eaten on fast-days in France, by virtue of this old belief in its marine origin. The belief in the barnacle origin of the bird still prevails on the west coast of Ireland, and in the Western Highlands of Scotland. The finding of the Barnacle is thus described by Mr. Sidebotham, to the Microscopical and Natural History Section of the Literary and Philosophical Society:--"In September, I was at Lytham with my family. The day was very stormy, and the previous night there had been a strong south-west wind, and evidences of a very stormy sea outside the banks. Two of my children came running to tell me of a very strange creature that had been washed up on the shore. They had seen it from the pier, and pointed it out to a sailor, thinking it was a large dog with long hair. On reaching the shore I found a fine mass of Barnacles, _Pentalasinus anatifera_, attached to some staves of a cask, the whole being between four and five feet long. Several sailors had secured the prize, and were getting it on a truck to carry it away. The appearance was most remarkable, the hundreds of long tubes with their curious shells looking like what one would fancy the fabled Gorgon's head with its snaky locks. The curiosity was carried to a yard where it was to be exhibited, and the bellman went round to announce it under the name of the sea-lioness, or the great sea-serpent. Another mass of Barnacles was washed up at Lytham, and also one at Blackpool, the same day or the day following. This mass of Barnacles was evidently just such a one as that seen by Gerard at the Pile of Foulders. It is rare to have such a specimen on our coasts. The sailors at Lytham had never seen anything like it, although some of them were old men who had spent all their lives on the coast." FOOTNOTE: [26] "Notes and Queries," No. 201. LEAVES ABOUT BOOKWORMS. On paper, leather, and parchment are found various animals, popularly known as "Bookworms." Johnson describes it as a worm or mite that eats holes in books, chiefly when damp; and in the "Guardian" we find this reference to its habits:--"My lion, like a moth or bookworm, feeds upon nothing but paper." Many years ago an experienced keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford collected these interesting details of Bookworms:--"The larvæ of _Crambus pinguinalis_ will establish themselves upon the binding of a book, and spinning a robe will do it little injury. A mite, _Acarus eruditus_, eats the paste that fastens the paper over the edges of the binding and so loosens it. The caterpillar of another little moth takes its station in damp old books, between the leaves, and there commits great ravages. The little boring wood-beetle, who attacks books and will even bore through several volumes. An instance is mentioned of twenty-seven folio volumes being perforated in a straight line, by the same insect, in such a manner that by passing a cord through the perfect round hole made by it the twenty-seven volumes could be raised at once. The wood-beetle also destroys prints and drawings, whether framed or kept in a portfolio." There is another "Bookworm," which is often confounded with the Death-watch of the vulgar; but is smaller, and instead of beating at intervals, as does the Death-watch, continues its noise for a considerable length of time without intermission. It is usually found in old wood, decayed furniture, museums, and neglected books. The female lays her eggs, which are exceedingly small, in dry, dusty places, where they are least likely to meet with disturbance. They are generally hatched about the beginning of March, a little sooner or later, according to the weather. After leaving the eggs, the insects are so small as to be scarcely discerned without the use of a glass. They remain in this state about two months, somewhat resembling in appearance the mites in cheese, after which they undergo their change into the perfect insect. They feed on dead flies and other insects; and often, from their numbers and voracity, very much deface cabinets of natural history. They subsist on various other substances, and may often be observed carefully hunting for nutritious particles amongst the dust in which they are found, turning it over with their heads, and searching about in the manner of swine. Many live through the winter buried deep in the dust to avoid the frost. The best mode of destroying the insects which infest books and MSS. has often occupied the attention of the possessors of valuable libraries. Sir Thomas Phillips found the wood of his book-case attacked, particularly where beech had been introduced, and appeared to think that the insect was much attracted by the paste employed in binding. He recommended as preservatives against their attacks spirits of turpentine and a solution of corrosive sublimate, and also the latter substance mixed with paste. In some instances he found the produce of a single impregnated female sufficient to destroy a book. Turpentine and spirit of tar are also recommended for their destruction; but the method pursued in the collections of the British Museum is an abundant supply of camphor, with attention to keeping the rooms dry, warm, and ventilated. Mr. Macleay states it is the _acari_ only which feed on the paste employed in binding books, and the larvæ of the Coleoptera only which pierce the boards and leaves. The ravages of the Bookworm would be much more destructive had there not been a sort of guardian to the literary treasures in the shape of a spider, who, when examined through a microscope, resembles a knight in armour. This champion of the library follows the Worm into the book-case, discovers the pit he has digged, rushes on his victim, which is about his own size, and devours him. His repast finished, he rests for about a fortnight, and when his digestion is completed, he sets out to break another lance with the enemy. The Death-watch, already referred to, and which must be acquitted of destroying books, is chiefly known by the noise which he makes behind the wainscoting, where he ticks like a clock or watch. How so loud a noise is produced by so small an insect has never been properly explained; and the ticking has led to many legends. The naturalist Degeer relates that one night, in the autumn of 1809, during an entomological excursion in Brittany, where travellers were scarce and accommodation bad, he sought hospitality at the house of a friend. He was from home, and Degeer found a great deal of trouble in gaining admittance; but at last the peasant who had charge of the house told Degeer that he would give him "the chamber of death," if he liked. As Degeer was much fatigued, he accepted the offer. "The bed is there," said the man, "but no one has slept in it for some time. Every night the spirit of the officer, who was surprised and killed in this room by some chouans, comes back. When the officer was dead, the peasants divided what he had about him, and the officer's watch fell to my uncle, who was delighted with the prize, and brought it home to examine it. However, he soon found out that the watch was broken, and would not go. He then placed it under his pillow, and went to sleep; he awoke in the night, and to his terror heard the ticking of a watch. In vain he sold the watch, and gave the money for masses to be said for the officer's soul, the ticking continued, and has never ceased." Degeer said that he would exorcise the chamber, and the peasant left him, after making the sign of the cross. The naturalist at once guessed the riddle, and, accustomed to the pursuit of insects, soon had a couple of Death-watches shut up in a tin case, and the ticking was reproduced. Swift has prescribed this destructive remedy by way of ridicule:-- "A Wood-worm That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form: With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch; And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch, Because like a watch it always cries click: Then woe be to those in the house that are sick! For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post. But a kettle of scalding hot water ejected, Infallibly cures the timber affected: The omen is broken, the danger is over; The maggot will die, the sick will recover." BORING MARINE ANIMALS, AND HUMAN ENGINEERS. Were a young naturalist asked to exemplify what man has learned from the lower animals, he could scarcely adduce a more striking instance than that of a submarine shelly worker teaching him how to execute some of his noblest works. This we have learned from the life and labours of the _Pholas_, of which it has been emphatically said:--"Numerous accounts have been published during the last fourteen years in every civilized country and language of the boring process of the _Pholas_; and machines formed on the model of its mechanism have for years been tunnelling Mont Cenis." In the Eastern Zoological Gallery of the British Museum, cases 35 and 36, as well as in the Museum of Economic Geology in Piccadilly, may be seen specimens of the above very curious order of _Conchifers_, most of the members of which are distinguished by their habits of boring or digging, a process in which they are assisted by the peculiar formation of the foot, from which they derive their name. Of these ten families one of the most characteristic is that of the Razor-shells, which, when the valves are shut, are of a long, flattened, cylindrical shape, and open at both ends. Projecting its strong pointed foot at one of these ends, the _solen_ can work itself down into the sand with great rapidity, while at the upper end its respiratory tubes are shot out to bring the water to its gills. Of the _Pholadæ_, the shells of which are sometimes called multivalve, because, in addition to the two chief portions, they have a number of smaller accessory pieces, some bore in hard mud, others in wood, and others in rocks. They fix themselves firmly by the powerful foot, and then make the shell revolve; the sharp edges of this commence the perforation, which is afterwards enlarged by the rasp-like action of the rough exterior; and though the shell must be constantly worn down, yet it is replaced by a new formation from the animal, so as never to be unfit for its purpose. The typical bivalve of this family is the _Pholas_, which bores into limestone-rock and other hard material, and commits ravages on the piers, breakwaters, &c., that it selects for a home. In the same family as the above Dr. Gray ranks the _Teredo_,[27] or wood-boring mollusc, whose ravages on ships, piles, wooden piers, &c., at sea resemble those of the white ant on furniture, joints of houses, &c., on shore. Perforating the timber by exactly the same process as that by which the Pholas perforates the stones, the Teredo advances continually, eating out a contorted tube or gallery, which it lines behind it with calcareous matter, and through which it continues to breathe the water. The priority of the demonstration of the Pholas and its "boring habits" has been much disputed. The evidence is full of curious details. It appears that Mr. Harper, of Edinburgh, author of "The Sea-side and Aquarium," having claimed the lead. Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, writes to dispute the originality; adding that he publicly exhibited Pholades in the Pavilion at Brighton in July, 1851, perforating chalk rocks by the raspings of their valves and squirtings of their syphons. Professor Flourens (says Mr. Robertson) taught my observations to his class in Paris in 1853; I published them in 1851, and again more fully in the "Journal de Conchyliologie," in 1853; and M. Emile Blanchard illustrated them in the same year in his "Organisation du Règne Animal." I published a popular account of the perforating processes in "Household Words" in 1856. After obtaining the suffrages of the French authorities, I have been recently honoured with those of the British naturalist. (See Woodward's "Recent and Fossil Shells," p. 327. Family, Pholadidæ.) On returning to England last autumn I exhibited perforating Pholades to all the naturalists who cared to watch them. An intelligent lady whom I supplied with Pholades has made a really new and original observation, which I may take this opportunity of communicating to the public. She observed two Pholades whose perforations were bringing them nearer and nearer to each other. Their mutual raspings were wearing away the thin partition which separated their crypts. She was curious to know what they would do when they met, and watched them closely. When the two perforating shell-fish met and found themselves in each other's way, the stronger just bored right through the weaker Pholas.[28] Mr. Robertson has communicated to "Jameson's Journal," No. 101, the results of his opportunities of studying the Pholas, during six months, to discover how this mollusc makes its hole or crypt in the chalk: by a chemical solvent? by absorption? by ciliary currents? or by rotatory motions? Between twenty and thirty of these creatures were at work in lumps of chalk, in sea-water, in a finger-glass, and open for three months; and by watching their operations. Mr. Robertson became convinced that the Pholas makes its hole by grating the chalk with its rasp-like valves, licking it up when pulverized with its foot, forcing it up through its principal orbrambial syphon, and squirting it out in oblong nodules. The crypt protects the Pholas from _confervæ_, which, when they get at it, grow not merely outside, but even with the lips of the valves, preventing the action of the syphons. In the foot there is a gelatinous spring or style, which, even when taken out, has great elasticity, and which seems the mainspring of the motions of the Pholas. Upon this Dr. James Stark, of Edinburgh, writes: --"Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, claims the merit of teaching that Pholades perforate rocks by 'the rasping of their valves and the squirting of their syphons.' His observations only appear to reach back to 1851. But the late Mr. John Stark, of Edinburgh, author of the 'Elements of Natural History,' read a paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in 1826, which was printed in the Society's 'Transactions' of that year, in which he demonstrated that the Pholades perforate the shale rocks in which they occur on this coast, by means of the rasping of their valves, and not by acids or other secretions. From also finding that their shells scratched limestone without injury to the fine rasping rugosities, he inferred that it was by the same agency they perforated the hard limestone rocks." To this Mr. Robertson replies, that Mr. Osler also, in 1826, demonstrated that the Pholades "perforate the shale rocks by means of the rasping of their valves; and more, for he actually witnessed a rotatory movement. But Réaumur and Poli had done as much as this in the eighteenth and Sibbald in the seventeenth century: and yet I found the solvent hypothesis in the ascendant among naturalists in 1835, when I first interested myself in the controversy. What I did in 1851 was, I exhibited Pholades at work perforating rocks, and explained how they did it. What I have done is, I have made future controversy impossible, by exhibiting the animals at work, and by discovering the anatomy and the physiology of the perforating instruments. In the words of M. Flourens, 'I made the animals work before my eyes,' and I 'made known their mechanism.' The discovery of the function of the hyaline stylet is not merely a new discovery, it is the discovery of a kind of instrument as yet unique in physiology." Mr. Harper having termed the boring organ of the Pholas the "hyaline stylet," found it to have puzzled some of the disputants, whereupon Mr. Harper writes:--"Its use up to the present time has been a mystery, but the general opinion of authors seems to be, that it is the gizzard of the Pholas. This I very much doubt, for it is my belief that the presence of such an important muscle is solely for the purpose of aiding the animal's boring operations. Being situated in the centre of the foot, we can readily conceive the great increase of strength thus conveyed to the latter member, which is made to act as a powerful fulcrum, by the exercise of which the animal rotates--and at the same time presses its shell against and rasps the surface of the rock. The question being asked, 'How can the stylet be procured to satisfy curiosity?' I answer, by adopting the following extremely simple plan. Having disentombed a specimen, with the point of a sharp instrument cut a slit in the base of its foot, and the object of your search will be distinctly visible in the shape of, if I may so term it, an opal cylinder. Sometimes I have seen the point of this organ spring out beyond the incision, made as above described." Lastly, Mr. Harper presented the Editor of the "Athenæum" with a piece of bored rock, of which he has several specimens. He adds, "On examination, you will perceive that the larger Pholas must have bored through its smaller and weaker neighbour (how suggestive!), the shell of the latter, most fortunately, remaining in its own cavity." Now, Mr. Robertson claimed for his observation of this phenomenon novelty and originality; but Mr. Harper stoutly maintained it to be "as common to the eye of the practised geologist as rain or sunshine." The details are curious; though some impatient, and not very grateful reader, may imagine himself in the condition of the shell of the smaller Pholas, and will be, as he deserves to remain, in the minority.[29] It may be interesting to sum up a few of the opinions of the mode by which these boring operations are performed. Professor Forbes states the mode by which Molluscs bore into wood and other materials is as follows:--"Some of the Gauterspods have tongues covered with silica to enable them to bore, and it was probably by some process of this kind that all the Molluscs bored." Mr. Peach never observed the species of Pholas to turn round in their holes, as stated by some observers, although he had watched them with great attention. Mr. Charlesworth refers to the fact that, in one species of shell, not only does the hole in the rock which the animal occupies increase in size, but also the hole through which it projects its syphons. Professor John Phillips, alluding to the theories which have been given of the mode in which Molluscs bore into the rocks in which they live, believes that an exclusively mechanical theory will not account for the phenomenon; and he is inclined to adopt the view of Dr. T. Williams--that the boring of the Pholades can only be explained on the principle which involves a chemical as well as a mechanical agency. Mr. E. Ray Lankester notices that the boring of Annelids seems quite unknown; and he mentions two cases, one by a worm called Leucadore, the other by a Sabella. Leucadore is very abundant on some shores, where boulders and pebbles may be found worm-eaten and riddled by them. Only stones composed of carbonate of lime are bored by them. On coasts where such stones are rare, they are selected, and others are left. The worms are _quite soft_, and armed only with horny bristles. _How, then, do they bore?_ Mr. Lankester maintains that it is by carbonic acid and other acid excretions of their bodies, _aided_ by the mechanical action of their bristles. The selection of a material soluble in these acids is most noticeable, since the softest chalk and the hardest limestone are bored with the same facility. This can only be by chemical action. If, then, we have a case of chemical boring in these worms, is it not probable that many Molluscs are similarly assisted in their excavations? FOOTNOTES: [27] How Brunel took his construction of the Thames Tunnel from observing the bore of the _Teredo navalis_ in the keel of a ship, in 1814, is well known. [28] "Athenæum," No. 1640. [29] See also "Life in the Sea," in "Strange Stories of the Animal World," by the author of the present volume. Second Edition. 1868. INDEX. ANCIENT Zoological Gardens, 12 Animals, Rare, of London Zoological Society, 16, 17, 18 Annelids, boring, 348 Annelids and Molluscs, Boring Habits of, 348 Ant-Bear in captivity, 76 Ant-Bear, the Great, 72 Ant-Bear at Madrid, 72 Ant-Bear described, 77 Ant-Bear, Domestic, in Paraguay, 75 Ant-Bear, Economy of, 76 Ant-Bear and its Food, 74 Ant-Bears, Fossil, 80, 81 Ant-Bear, Muscular Force of, 79 Ant-Bear, Wallace's Account of, 73 Ant-Bear, Zoological Society's, 76, 82, 84 Ant-Eater, Porcupine, 84 Ant-Bear, Professor Owen on, 80 Ant-Eaters, scarcity of, 80 Ant-Eater, Tamandua, 82 Ant-Eaters, Von Saek's Account of, 83 Aristotle's History of Animals, 279, 280 BARNACLE GEESE, finding of the, 334 Barnacle Goose, Gerarde on, 332 Barnacle Goose, Giraldus Cambrensis on, 332 Barnacle Goose, Max Müller on, 331 Barnacle Goose, name of, 332 Barnacle Goose, Sir E. Tennent on, 334 Barnacle Goose, Sir Kenelm Digby on, 334 Barnacle Goose, Sir R. Moray on, 331 Barnacle Goose, Stories of the, 331-335 Barnacles breeding upon old ships, 333 Barnacle Geese in the Thames, 331 Bat, altivolans, by Gilbert White, 100 Bat, American, by Lesson, 91 Bat, Aristotle on, 85 Bat, Mr. Bell on, 86 Bats, Curiosities of, 85 Bat, described by Calmet, 87 Bat, Flight and Wing of, 96 Bats, in England, 100 Bat, Heber, Stedman, and Waterton on, 91 Bats in Jamaica, 100 Bat, Kalong, of Java, 98 Bat, Long-Eared, by Sowerby, 92, 93-96 Bat, Nycteris, 97 Bat, Rere-mouse and Flitter-mouse, 86 Bat Skeleton, Sir C. Bell on, 87 Bat in Scripture, 85 Bat, Vampire, from Sumatra, 88 Bat, Vampire, Lines on, by Byron, 89 Bat, vulgar errors respecting, 97 Bat-Fowling or Bat-Folding, 92 Berlin Zoological Gardens and Museum, 16 Bible Natural History, 11 Birds, Addison on their Nests and Music, 156, 157 Bird, Australian Bower, Nest of, 167 Bird, Baya, Indian, Nest of, 164 Birds and Animals, Beauty in, 150 Birds, Brain of, 154 Birds, Characteristics of, 145 Birds, Colour of, 148 Bird Confinement, Dr. Livingstone on, 169 Birds' Eggs, large, 162 Birds' Eggs, Colours of, 158 Birds' Eggs and Nests, 158 Birds, European, list of, 161 Birds, Flight of, 146, 147 Birds, Insectivorous, 151; Instinct, Intelligence, and Reason, 217 Bird-Life, 145 Bird-Murder, wanton, 152 Birds' Nesting, 159 Birds' Nests--Cape Swallows, 168 Birds' Nests--Brush Turkey, 171 Birds' Nests, large, 164 Birds' Eggs--Ostrich and Epyornis, 162, 163 Birds' Nests--Tailor Birds, 165-167 Birds, Rapid Flight of, 147 Birds, Signal of Danger among, 155 Birds, Song of, 149 Birds, Mr. Wolley's Collections, 159, 160 Bookworms, Leaves about, 336 Bookworms and Death-watch, 337 Boring Marine Animals, and Human Engineers, 341 CHAMELEON of the Ancients, 306 Chameleon's antipathy to black, 322 Chameleons, Mrs. Belzoni's, 316-320 Chameleons, Birth of, in England, 321 Chameleon changing Colour, 311, 316 Chameleon, Cuvier on, 309 Chameleon, described by Calmet, 307 Chameleon Family, 307 Chameleon, Air-food of, 309 Chameleon, Milne Edwards on its Change of Colour, 314-316 Chameleons, Native Countries of, 316 Chameleon of the Poets, 308 Chameleons, Reproduction of, 309 Chameleon, Tongue and Eyes of, 310, 311 Chinese Zoological Gardens, 12 Cicada, Song of the, 329 Cormorant's Bone, curious, 204 Cormorants, Chase of, 203 Cormorant Fishery in China, 202 Cormorant, Habits of the, 201 Cormorant trained for Fishing, 201 Curiosities of Zoology, 11 ECCENTRICITIES of Penguins, 188: Darwin, Mr., his account of Falkland Islands Penguin, 192; Dassent Island Penguins, 188; Death-watch and Bookworm, 337, 338; Falkland Islands Penguins, 189; King Penguins, 191; Patagonian Penguins, 189; Penguin, the name, 194; Webster, Mr., his Account of Penguins, 193 Epicure's Ortolan, the, 172 Epicurism Extravagant, 177 Evelyn and St. James's Physique Garden, 15 FISH in British Colombia, 280: Candle-fish, 282; Octopus, 283; Salmon Army, 281; Spoonbill Sturgeon, 285; Sturgeons, and Sturgeon Fishing, 284-287 Fish-Talk, 250: Affection of Fishes, 256; Bohemian Wels Fish, 270; Bonita and Flying Fish, 263; Californian Fish, 268; Carp at Fontainebleau, 254; Cat-fish, curious Account of, 257; Double Fish, 272; Fish changing Colour, 251; Fish Noise, 252; Gold Fish, 274; Grampus, gambols of, 262; Great General of the South Sea, 272; Grouper, the, 272; Hassar, the, 256; Hearing of Fishes, 253; Herring Puzzle, 278; Jaculator Fish of Java, 264; Jamaica, Curious Fish at, 266; Little Fishes the Food of Larger, 259; Marine Observatory, 276; Mecho of the Danube, 270; Migration of Fishes, 260; Miller's Thumb, 276; Numbers, vast, of Fishes, 258; Pike, Wonderful, 269; Pilot Fish, 267; Sharks, 267; Singing Fish,252; Square-browed Malthe, 274; Strange Fishes, 251; Sun-fish, 271; Swimming of Fishes, 250; Sword-fish, 266; Warrior Fish, 266 Frog and Toad Concerts, 327 HEDGEHOG, the, 102 Hedgehog devouring Snakes, 104 Hedgehog, Food of, 103 Hedgehogs, Gilbert White on, 107 Hedgehog and Poisons, 105 Hedgehogs, Sir T. Browne on, 102 Hedgehog Sucking Cows, 104 Hedgehog and Viper, Fight between, 106, 107 Hedgehog, Voracity of, 103 Hippopotamus, Ancient History of, 119 Hippopotamus, described by Aristotle and Herodotus, 121 Hippopotamus, Economy of the, 115 Hippopotamus, the, in England, 108 Hippopotami, Fossil, 122 Hippopotami on the Niger, 117 Hippopotamus, Professor Owen's Description of, 111-115 Hippopotamus and River Horse, 116 Hippopotamus in Scripture, 120 Hippopotamus, Utility of, 118 Hippopotamus from the White Nile, 109 Hippopotamus, Zoological Society's, in 1850, 108-111 LEAVES about Bookworms, 336 Lions in Algeria, and Jules Gerard, 143 Lion, African, 131 Lion, Bengal, 133 Lion described by Bennett, 123 Lion described by Buffon, 123-125 Lion described by Burchell, 125 Lion, disappearance of, 130 Lion and Hottentots, 132, 133-136 Lion-hunting Feats, 128 Lion, "King of the Forest," 126 Lion, Longevity of, 137 Lion, Maneless, 133-135 Lion, Niebuhr on, 131 Lion in the Nineveh Sculptures, 139, 140 Lions, the Drudhoe, 144 Lions, Popular Errors respecting, 123 Lion, Prickle or Claw in the Tail, 137-139 Lion, Roar of, 136 Lions in the Tower of London, 140 "Lion Tree" in the Mantatee Country, 127 Lion Stories of the Shows, 142 Lion-Talk, 123 Lioness and her Young, 135 MERMAID of 1822, 43-47 Mermaid in Berbice, 39 Mermaid in the Bosphorus, 47 Mermaid and Dugong, 41 Mermaids, Evidences of, 36 Mermaid at Exmouth, 40 Mermaid, Leyden's Ballad, 35 Mermaid and Manatee, 42 Mermaid at Milford Haven, 37 Mermaid, Japanese, 44 Mermaid, Scottish, 36, 38 Mermaids and Sirens, 33 Mermaid's Song, Haydn's, 34 Mermaids, Stories of, 33 Mermaid, Structure of, 43 Mermaids in Suffolk, 48 Mole, its Economy controverted, 62 Mole, the Ettrick Shepherd on, 71 Mole, Le Court on, 62, 65 Mole and Fairy Rings, 64 Mole and Farming, 70 Mole, Feeling of, 64 Mole at Home, 62 Mole, its Hunting-ground, 67 Moles, Loves of the, 68 Mole, structure of the, 63 Mole, St. Hilaire on, 69 Mole, Shrew, of North America, 70 Mole, Voracity of, 68 Montezuma's Zoological Gardens, 13 Musical Lizard, 303: Climbing Walls, 303, 304; Formosa Isle, 303; Gecko ennobled, 306 ORNITHOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 15 Ortolan described, 172, 173 Ortolans, how fattened, 174 Ortolan, Mr. Gould on, 174, 175 Owls, 221: Abyssinian Owl, 230; Barn Owl, 226; Bischaco, or Coquimbo, 224; Boobook Owl, 228; Cats and Owls, 230; Fraser's Eagle Owl, from Fernando Po, 229; Food of Owls, 226; Javanese Owl, 228; Snowy Owl, 227; Tricks by Night, 224; Utility of, 225; Waterton on the Owl, 225 PELICANS and Cormorants, 195 Pelicans described by Gould, 195 Pelican in Japan, 197 Pelican Popular Error, 198, 199 Pelican Pouches, 198 Pelican Symbol, 200 "Pelican of the wilderness," 197 Pholas, Life and Labours of, 341 Pholades, Charlesworth and Peach on, 347 Pholades, Harper on, 346 Pholades, Robertson on, 343 RHINOCEROS in England, 22: African Rhinoceros in 1858, 27; Ancient History, 23; Bruce and Sparmann, 27; Burchell's shooting, 30; Horn of the Rhinoceros, 31, 32; Indian Wild Ass, 24; One-horned and Two-horned, 23-26; Scripture, Rhinoceros of, 23; Speehnan's Rhinoceros Shooting, 30; Tegetmeir describes the African Rhinoceros, 27; Tractability, 25; Varieties of Rhinoceros, 22; Zoological Society's Rhinoceros, 23, 29 SALE of Wild Animals, 20 Sentinel Birds, 183 Song of the Cicada, 329 Songs of Birds and Seasons of the Day, 219 St. James's Park Menagerie, 14 Stories of the Barnacle Goose, 331-335 Stories of Mermaids, 33 Surrey Zoological Gardens, 20 TALKING birds, 205: Bittern and Night Raven, 207; Blue Jay, 206; Canaries, Talking, 210-212; Chinese Starling, 205; Crowned Crane, 206; Cuckoo, 209; Laughing Goose, 209; Nightingale, 209; Piping Crow, 205; Snipe, Neighing, 213; Trochilos and Crocodile, 216; Umbrella Bird, 206; Whidaw Bird, 205; Wild Swan, 209; Woodpecker at Constantinople, 215 Talk about Toucans, 179: Bills of Toucans, 180; Carnivorous propensity, 184; Economy of, 182; Food of, 183; Gould, Mr., his Grand Monograph, 180, 186; Owen, Professor, on the Mandibles, 185; Swainson, Mr., on Toucans, 185 Toucan Family, 179, 180; White Ants' Nests, 183; Toucanet, Gould's, 184 Toad and Frog Concerts, 327-328 Toads, Running, Dr. Husenbeth's, 323-327 Tower of London Menagerie, 14 Tree-climbing Crab, the, 288: Bernhard, Hermit, and Soldier Crab, 291; Climbing Perch, 288; Crab, Burrowing, 290; Crab Migration in Jamaica, 292; Fishing-frogs, 288; Glass Crabs, 301; Pill-making Crabs, 301; Purse Crab feeding on Cocoa-nuts, 296; Robber Crab, 292; Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 298; Vaulted Crab of the Moluccas, 291 UNICORNS, ancient, 51 Unicorn and Antelope, 53 Unicorn in Central Africa, 58 Unicorn described by Ctesias, 49, 50 Unicorn, Cuvier on, 54 Unicorn, Is it Fabulous? 49 Unicorn, Klaproth on, 55 Unicorn in Kordofan, 53 Unicorn and its Horn, 53, 59 Unicorn, modern, 50 Unicorn, Ogilby on, 51 Unicorn, Rev. J. Campbell on, 57 Unicorn in the Royal Arms, 60 WEATHER-WISE ANIMALS, 231: Ants, Asses, 241; Darwin's Signs of Rain, 248; Frogs and Snails, 237-240; List of Animals, 241-247; Mole, 240; Mother Carey's Chickens and Goose, 234; Redbreast, 236; Seagulls, 232; Signs of Rain, 232; Stormy Petrels, 233; Shepherd of Banbury, 249; Toucans, 237; Weatherproof Birds' Nests, 247; Wild Geese and Ducks, 235 Wild Animals, Cost of, 19 Wild Beast Shows, 21 ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS, Origin of, 12 Zoological Society of London, 16 Zoology, Curiosities of, 11 C. A. Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London. +----------------------------------------------------------------- + | Transcriber's Note: | | | | Obvious punctuation and spelling errors repaired. | | Word combinations that appeared with and without hyphens | | were changed to the predominant hyphenated form. | | Original spelling and its variations were not standardized. | | | | Corrections in the spelling of names were made when those | | could be verified. Otherwise the variations were left as they | | were. | | | | Page 18: "Parrot-houses, the, sometimes...." changed to | | "Parrot-houses: they sometimes contain...." | | | | Page 170 and others: Kolobeng and Kolenbeng. Both spellings were | | retained. | | | | Page 191 and others: Tussa, tussack and tussock. All spellings | | were retained. | | | | Page 276: Finisterre changed to Finistère. | | | | Page 333: cennexion changed to connexion "... in connexion with | | the river Lee...." | | | | Page 352: Screw-pines, Crab climbing, 295; pagination changed | | to 298. | | | | The name of Shakespeare appears with varying spellings. All | | variants were kept. | | | | Some index entries are not in alphabetical order. They were not | | corrected. | | | | Footnotes were moved to the ends of the chapters in which they | | belonged and numbered in one continuous sequence. The | | pagination in index entries which referred to these footnotes | | was not changed to match their new locations and is therefore | | incorrect. | +----------------------------------------------------------------- + 
33687	----	[Illustration: ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.--LONDON.] ANECDOTES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. BOSTON: C. H. PEIRCE AND G. C. RAND. ILLUSTRATIVE ANECDOTES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM: BY THE AUTHOR OF PETER PARLEY'S TALES. BOSTON: PUBLISHED BY RAND AND MANN, No. 3 Cornhill. 1849. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, By S. G. GOODRICH, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. PRESS OF GEORGE C. RAND & CO. CONTENTS. PAGE GENERAL CLASSIFICATION, 9 VERTEBRATA, 10 CLASS MAMMALIA, 10 ORDER I.--BIMANA, 11 Man, 11 ORDER II.--QUADRUMANA, 13 Apes, 14 Orang-Outang, 14 Chimpansé, 22 Gibbon, 23 Baboon, 25 Monkeys, 38 ORDER III.--CARNARIA, 45 Bats, 45 Hedgehog, 47 Mole, 49 Bear, 50 White Bear, 68 Raccoon, 74 Coati, 76 Badger, 76 Glutton, 78 Weasel, 79 Polecat, 85 Ferret, 86 Mink, 86 Marten, 87 Sable, 87 Skunk, 88 Otter, 90 Dog, 92 Wolf, 113 Fox, 118 Hyena, 120 Lion, 122 Tiger, 129 Panther, 132 Leopard, 134 Jaguar, 136 American Panther, 144 Cat, 151 ORDER IV.--AMPHIBIA, 162 Seal, 162 Walrus, 164 ORDER V.--MARSUPIALA, 165 Opossum, 165 Kangaroo, 166 ORDER VI.--RODENTIA, 169 Squirrel, 169 Mouse, 172 Dormouse, 174 Rat, 174 Beaver, 176 Porcupine, 179 Hare, 180 ORDER VII.--EDENTATA, 184 Sloth, 184 Platypus, 186 ORDER VIII.--PACHYDERMATA, 188 Elephant, 188 Hippopotamus, 199 Rhinoceros, 200 Wild Boar, 203 Domestic Hog, 205 Tapir, 208 Horse, 209 Pony, 222 Ass, 224 Zebra, 227 ORDER IX.--RUMINANTIA, 229 Camel, 229 Deer, 232 Moose, 233 American Elk, 233 Red Deer, 233 Virginia Deer, 235 Reindeer, 236 Giraffe, 238 Goat, 240 Sheep, 242 Ox, 246 Bison, 249 ORDER X.--CETACEA, 251 Dolphin, 251 Grampus, 252 Porpoise, 253 Whale, 254 CLASS II.--AVES, 256 ORDER I.--ACCIPITRES, 257 Vultures, 257 Condor, 257 Turkey Buzzard, 258 Carrion Crow, 258 Hawk, 259 Peregrine Falcon, 259 Kestrel, 260 Sparrow Hawk, 261 Buzzard, 261 Eagle, 262 Owl, 265 ORDER II.--PASSERINÆ, 267 Shrike, 268 King-Bird, 268 Cedar-Bird, 269 Scarlet Tanager, 269 Mocking-Bird, 270 Baltimore Oriole, 272 Wren, 273 Purple Martin, 274 Swallow, 275 Skylark, 276 Titmouse, 277 Canary-Bird, 277 Bulfinch, 280 Sparrow, 281 Crow, 281 Raven, 283 Magpie, 284 Humming-Bird, 286 Blue Jay, 287 ORDER III.--SCANSORIÆ, 288 Cuckoo, 288 Red-headed Woodpecker, 289 Ivory-billed Woodpecker, 289 Parrot, 290 ORDER IV.--GALLINACEA, 293 Cock, 293 Pheasant, 294 Ruffed Grouse, 295 Pigeon, 296 Passenger Pigeon, 296 Musical Pigeon, 297 Carrier Pigeon, 297 ORDER V.--STILTED BIRDS, 298 Adjutant, 298 Stork, 299 Heron, 300 Flamingo, 300 ORDER VI.--PALMIPEDES, 301 Gull, 301 Cormorant, 303 Swan, 303 Goose, 304 CLASS III.--REPTILIA, 305 ORDER I.--CHELONIA, 305 Tortoise, 305 ORDER II.--SAURIA, 306 Crocodile, 306 Alligator, 307 Salamander, 308 ORDER III.--OPHIDIA, 309 Serpents, 309 ORDER IV.--BATRACHIA, 311 Frog, 311 Toad, 312 CLASS IV.--PISCES, 313 Mackerel, 313 Sword-fish, 314 Pike, 314 Golden Carp, 316 Salmon, 316 Herring, 317 Shark, 317 INVERTEBRATA, 318 CLASS I.--MOLLUSCA, 318 Squid, 318 Nautilus, 320 Snail, 320 Oyster, 321 Scallop, 322 CLASS II.--ARTICULATA, 322 Leech, 322 Crab, 323 Spider, 324 Scorpion, 325 Death-watch, 325 Glowworm, 326 Fire-fly, 326 Beetle, 326 Earwig, 328 Cricket, 329 Locust, 330 Ant, 330 Caterpillar, 332 Butterfly, 332 Moth, 332 Silkworm, 333 Flies, 334 CLASS III.--RADIATA, 334 Polypi, 335 ANECDOTES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. The purpose of the present volume is to exhibit a series of well-authenticated anecdotes, calculated to illustrate the character and habits of the more prominent species of the animal kingdom. The plan of the work, of course, excludes full scientific descriptions; but it has been thought that it may be more useful, as well as interesting, to arrange the subjects according to the most approved system of classification, and to indicate, briefly, the leading traits of the several orders and genera.[1] [1] For a more scientific account of the animal kingdom, the reader is referred to "A Pictorial Natural History," &c., published by James Munroe & Co., Boston. GENERAL CLASSIFICATION OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM FIRST GRAND DIVISION, VERTEBRATA, or back boned animals, having a bony skeleton, and including four classes. _Class_ I. MAMMALIA, or sucking animals; as, man; bats, monkeys, bears, oxen, sheep, deer, and many other four-footed beasts; as well as seals, walruses, whales, &c. " II. AVES, birds of all kinds. " III. REPTILIA, or reptiles; as, lizards, frogs, serpents, toads, &c. " IV. PISCES, fishes generally. SECOND GRAND DIVISION, INVERTEBRATA, or animals without a bony spine, or a bony skeleton, and including three classes. _Class_ I. MOLLUSCA, embracing pulpy animals mostly enclosed in shells; as, the nautilus, oyster, clam, cuttle-fish, &c. " II. ARTICULATA, or jointed animals; as, crabs, lobsters, spiders, insects, leeches, earthworms, &c. " III. RADIATA, branched or radiated animals; as, the star-fish, tape-worm, coral insect, sea anemone, &c. VERTEBRATA. CLASS MAMMALIA. The mammalia include not only man, the head of creation, but, generally, those animals which have the most numerous and perfect faculties, the most delicate perceptions, the most varied powers, and the highest degrees of intelligence. All the species have a double heart; red, warm blood; and a nervous system more fully developed than that of any other animals. This class is divided into nine orders, under each of which we shall notice some of the more remarkable species. ORDER I. BIMANA, TWO-HANDED. MAN. Of this race there is one species, yet divided into many nations, kingdoms, and tribes. These are all grouped under five races: 1. The _Caucasian_, or white race, including the most highly civilized nations; 2. The _Mongolian_, or yellow race, including the Tartars, Chinese, Japanese, &c.; 3. The _Malay_, or brown race, including the people of Malacca, and most of the Oceanic islands; 4. The _American_, or red race, including the American Indians; and 5. The _African_, or black race, including Negroes. Philosophers have been a good deal puzzled for a definition of man; yet it would seem by no means difficult to point out characteristics which distinguish him from all other animated beings. He is not only the acknowledged lord and master of the animal kingdom, but he is the only being that knows God, yet the only one that worships stones, apes, and idols; the only being that has the Bible, and the only one that makes systematic warfare on his own species. He is the only created being that perceives the force of moral obligation, and the only one that makes slaves of his fellow-beings; he is the only creature that has reason, and yet the only one that besots himself with intoxicating drugs and drinks. Man is the only being that has tasted of the tree of knowledge, and yet the only one that appears, in all ages and countries, to be a _fallen being_,--one not fulfilling, here on the earth, the purposes of his creation. Must we not, from the analogy of the works of God, look to a future state, to find the true end of human existence? That we may not omit to give at least one illustrative and characteristic anecdote, under the head of "_homo sapiens_," we copy the following from the quaint pages of Carlyle:-- "What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net purport of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually, some five hundred souls. From these, by certain 'natural enemies' of the French, there are successively selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts--so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected, all dressed in red, and shipped away at the public charge some 2000 miles, or, say, only to the south of Spain, and fed there till wanted. "And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till, at length, after infinite effort, the parties come into actual juxtaposition, and thirty stand fronting thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word 'Fire' is given, and they blow the souls out of one another; and instead of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anon shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest. They lived far enough apart, were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a universe, there was indeed unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their governors had fallen out; and instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot." ORDER II. QUADRUMANA, FOUR-HANDED ANIMALS. This numerous order of animals is divided into three families: 1. _Apes_, which are destitute of tails; 2. _Baboons_, having short tails; 3. _Monkeys_, having long tails. The whole group are confined to warm countries, and none but the latter kinds are met with in America. They are not found in Europe, except at Gibraltar. Here, among the rocks, are considerable numbers of apes; and it has been conjectured that they come hither from the African coast, by means of passages under the Straits. This idea, however, is groundless. No doubt these animals were once common in Europe; but they have been gradually extirpated, except at Gibraltar, where they have made a stand. Its rocks and caverns seem to have proved as impregnable a garrison to them as to the British. APES. The ORANG-OUTANG;--a native of Cochin China, Malacca, and the large adjacent islands. It has a countenance more like that of man than any other animal. It seldom walks erect, and seems to make its home in the trees. It is covered with reddish brown hair. _An Orang-Outang in Holland._--This was a female, brought to that country in 1776. She generally walked on all fours, like other apes, but could also walk nearly erect. When, however, she assumed this posture, her feet were not usually extended like those of a man, but the toes were curved beneath, in such a manner that she rested chiefly on the exterior sides of the feet. One morning she escaped from her chain, and was seen to ascend with wonderful agility the beams and oblique rafters of the building. With some trouble she was retaken, and very extraordinary muscular powers were, on this occasion, remarked in the animal. The efforts of four men were found necessary in order to secure her. Two of them seized her by the legs, and a third by the head, whilst the other fastened the collar round her body. During the time she was at liberty, among other pranks, she had taken a bottle of Malaga wine which she drank to the last drop, and then set the bottle again in its place. She ate readily of any kind of food which was presented to her; but her chief sustenance was bread, roots, and fruit. She was particularly fond of carrots, strawberries, aromatic plants, and roots of parsley. She also ate meat, boiled and roasted, as well as fish, and was fond of eggs, the shells of which she broke with her teeth, and then emptied by sucking out the contents. If strawberries were presented to her on a plate, she would pick them up, one by one, with a fork, and put them into her mouth, holding, at the same time, the plate in the other hand. Her usual drink was water; but she also would drink very eagerly all sorts of wine, and of Malaga, in particular, she was very fond. While she was on shipboard, she ran freely about the vessel, played with the sailors, and would go, like them, into the kitchen for her mess. When, at the approach of night, she was about to lie down, she would prepare the bed on which she slept by shaking well the hay, and putting it in proper order; and, lastly, would cover herself up snugly in the quilt. One day, on noticing the padlock of her chain opened with a key, and shut again, she seized a little bit of stick, and, putting it into the keyhole, turned it about in all directions, endeavoring to open it. When this animal first arrived in Holland, she was only two feet and a half high, and was almost entirely free from hair on any part of her body, except her back and arms; but, on the approach of winter, she became thickly covered all over, and the hair on her back was at least six inches long, of a chestnut color, except the face and paws, which were somewhat of a reddish bronze color. This interesting brute died after having been seven months in Holland. _An Orang-Outang killed in Sumatra._--This specimen measured eight feet in height when suspended for the purpose of being skinned. The form and arrangement of his beard were beautiful; there was a great deal of the human expression in his countenance, and his piteous actions when wounded, and great tenacity of life, rendered the scene tragical and affecting. On the spot where he was killed, there were five or six tall trees, which greatly prolonged the combat; for so great were his strength and agility in bounding from branch to branch, that his pursuers were unable to take a determinate aim, until they had felled all the trees but one. Even then he did not yield himself to his antagonists till he had received five balls, and been moreover thrust through with a spear. One of the first balls appears to have penetrated his lungs, for he was observed immediately to sling himself by his feet from a branch, with his head downwards, so as to allow the blood to flow from his mouth. On receiving a wound, he always put his hand over the injured part, and distressed his pursuers by the human-like agony of his expression. When on the ground, after being exhausted by his many wounds, he lay as if dead, with his head resting on his folded arms. It was at this moment that an officer attempted to give him the _coup-de-grace_ by pushing a spear through his body, but he immediately jumped on his feet, wrested the weapon from his antagonist, and shivered it in pieces. This was his last wound, and his last great exertion; yet he lived some time afterwards, and drank, it is stated, great quantities of water. Captain Cornfoot also observes, that the animal had probably travelled some distance to the place where he was killed, as his legs were covered with mud up to the knees. _An Orang-Outang brought to England._--Dr. Clark Abel has given the following interesting account of an orang-outang which he brought from Java to England: "On board ship an attempt being made to secure him by a chain tied to a strong staple, he instantly unfastened it, and ran off with the chain dragging behind; but finding himself embarrassed by its length, he coiled it once or twice, and threw it over his shoulder. This feat he often repeated; and when he found that it would not remain on his shoulder, he took it into his mouth. After several abortive attempts to secure him more effectually, he was allowed to wander freely about the ship, and soon became familiar with the sailors, and surpassed them in agility. They often chased him about the rigging, and gave him frequent opportunities of displaying his adroitness in managing an escape. On first starting, he would endeavor to outstrip his pursuers by mere speed; but when much pressed, eluded them by seizing a loose rope, and swinging out of their reach. At other times, he would patiently wait on the shrouds, or at the mast-head, till his pursuers almost touched him, and then suddenly lower himself to the deck by any rope that was near him, or bound along the main-stay from one mast to the other, swinging by his hands, and moving them one over the other. The men would often shake the ropes by which he clung with so much violence, as to make me fear his falling; but I soon found that the power of his muscles could not be easily overcome. When in a playful humor, he would often swing within arm's length of his pursuer, and having struck him with his hand, throw himself from him. "Whilst in Java, he lodged in a large tamarind-tree near my dwelling, and formed a bed by intertwining the small branches, and covering them with leaves. During the day, he would lie with his head projecting beyond his nest, watching whoever might pass under; and when he saw any one with fruit, would descend to obtain a share of it. He always retired for the night at sunset, or sooner if he had been well fed, and rose with the sun, and visited those from whom he habitually received food. "Of some small monkeys on board from Java, he took little notice whilst under the observation of the persons of the ship. Once, indeed, he openly attempted to throw a small cage, containing three of them, overboard; because, probably, he had seen them receive food, of which he could obtain no part. But although he held so little intercourse with them when under our inspection, I had reason to suspect that he was less indifferent to their society when free from our observation; and was one day summoned to the top-gallant-yard of the mizzen-mast, to overlook him playing with a young male monkey. Lying on his back, partially covered with a sail, he for some time contemplated, with great gravity, the gambols of the monkey, which bounded over him; but at length caught him by the tail, and tried to envelop him in his covering. The monkey seemed to dislike his confinement, and broke from him, but again renewed its gambols, and although frequently caught, always escaped. The intercourse, however, did not seem to be that of equals, for the orang-outang never condescended to romp with the monkey, as he did with the boys of the ship. Yet the monkeys had evidently a great predilection for his company; for whenever they broke loose, they took their way to his resting-place, and were often seen lurking about it, or creeping clandestinely towards him. There appeared to be no gradation in their intimacy, as they appeared as confidently familiar with him when first observed, as at the close of their acquaintance. "This animal neither practises the grimaces and antics of other monkeys, nor possesses their perpetual proneness to mischief. Gravity, approaching to melancholy, and mildness, were sometimes strongly expressed in his countenance, and seemed to be the characteristics of his disposition. When he first came among strangers, he would sit for hours with his hand upon his head, looking pensively at all around him; and when much incommoded by their examination, would hide himself beneath any covering that was at hand. His mildness was evinced by his forbearance under injuries, which were grievous before he was excited to revenge; but he always avoided those who often teased him. He soon became strongly attached to those who kindly used him. By their side he was fond of sitting; and getting as close as possible to their persons, would take their hands between his lips, and fly to them for protection. From the boatswain of the Alceste, who shared his meals with him, and was his chief favorite, although he sometimes purloined the grog and the biscuit of his benefactor, he learned to eat with a spoon; and might be often seen sitting at his cabin door, enjoying his coffee, quite unembarrassed by those who observed him, and with a grotesque and sober air, that seemed a burlesque on human nature. "On board ship he commonly slept at the masthead, after wrapping himself in a sail. In making his bed, he used the greatest pains to remove every thing out of his way that might render the surface on which he intended to lie uneven; and, having satisfied himself with this part of his arrangement, spread out the sail, and, lying down upon it on his back, drew it over his body. Sometimes I preoccupied his bed, and teased him by refusing to give it up. On these occasions he would endeavor to pull the sail from under me, or to force me from it, and would not rest till I had resigned it. If it were large enough for both, he would quietly lie by my side. "His food in Java was chiefly fruit, especially mangostans, of which he was extremely fond. He also sucked eggs with voracity, and often employed himself in seeking them. On board ship his diet was of no definite kind. He ate readily of all kinds of meat, and especially raw meat; was very fond of bread, but always preferred fruits, when he could obtain them. "His beverage in Java was water; on board ship, it was as diversified as his food. He preferred coffee and tea, but would readily take wine, and exemplified his attachment to spirits by stealing the captain's brandy bottle. Since his arrival in London, he has preferred beer and milk to any thing else, but drinks wine and other liquors. "I have seen him exhibit violent alarm on three occasions only, when he appeared to seek for safety in gaining as high an elevation as possible. On seeing eight large turtles brought on board, whilst the Cæsar was off the Island of Ascension, he climbed with all possible speed to a higher part of the ship than he had ever before reached, and, looking down upon them, projected his long lips into the form of a hog's snout, uttering, at the same time, a sound which might be described as between the croaking of a frog and the grunting of a pig. After some time, he ventured to descend, but with great caution, peeping continually at the turtles, but could not be induced to approach within many yards of them. He ran to the same height, and uttered the same sounds, on seeing some men bathing and splashing in the sea; and since his arrival in England, has shown nearly the same degree of fear at the sight of a live tortoise." This animal survived his transportation to England from August, 1817, when he arrived, to the 1st April, 1819; during which interval he was in the custody of Mr. Cross, at Exeter 'Change, as much caressed for the gentleness of his disposition as he was noticed for his great rarity. There was no need of personal confinement, and little of restraint or coercion; to his keepers, especially, and to those whom he knew by their frequent visits, he displayed a decided partiality. During his last illness, and at his death, his piteous appearance, which seemed to bespeak his entreaties to those about him for relief, did not fail to excite the feelings of all who witnessed them--an excitement evidently heightened by the recollection of human suffering under similar circumstances, which the sight of this animal so strongly brought to mind. The CHIMPANSÉ;--a native of Guinea and Congo, in Africa. Its frame is more analogous to that of man than to that of any other tribe, and it is the only one that can walk erect with ease. It lives in troops, uses stones and clubs as weapons, and was mistaken for a species of wild man, by early voyagers along the African coast. _The Chimpansé on Board a Vessel._--M. De Grandpré, speaking of the Chimpansé, says that "his sagacity is extraordinary; he generally walks upon two legs, supporting himself with a stick. The negro fears him, and not without reason, as he sometimes treats him very roughly. He saw, on board a vessel, a female chimpansé, which exhibited wonderful proofs of intelligence. Among other arts, she had learnt to heat the oven; she took great care not to let any of the coals fall out, which might have done mischief in the ship; and she was very accurate in observing when the oven was heated to the proper degree, of which she immediately apprized the baker, who, relying with perfect confidence upon her information, carried his dough to the oven as soon as the chimpansé came to fetch him. This animal performed all the business of a sailor, spliced ropes, handled the sails, and assisted at unfurling them; and she was, in fact, considered by the sailors as one of themselves. "The vessel was bound for America; but the poor animal did not live to see that country, having fallen a victim to the brutality of the first mate, who inflicted very cruel chastisement upon her, which she had not deserved. She endured it with the greatest patience, only holding out her hands in a suppliant attitude, in order to break the force of the blows she received. But from that moment she steadily refused to take any food, and died on the fifth day from grief and hunger. She was lamented by every person on board, not insensible to the feelings of humanity, who knew the circumstances of her fate." The GIBBON;--a native of Sumatra, Borneo, and Malacca. The arms are of immense length, and the hands and feet are formed for clinging to the limbs of trees, where it throws itself from branch to branch with surprising agility. The expression of the face is gentle, and rather melancholy. There are many species, all of which utter loud cries. _The nimble Gibbon, at the Zoological Gardens in London._--"This specimen," says the editor of the Penny Magazine, "was a female, and had been four years in captivity at Macao, previous to her arrival in this country. On entering the apartment in which she was to be kept, where a large space, and a tree full of branches, were allotted for her accommodation, she sprang upon the tree, and, using her hands in alternate succession, she launched herself from bough to bough with admirable grace and address, sometimes to the distance of twelve or eighteen feet. Her flight might be termed aërial, for she seemed scarcely to touch the branches in her progress. It was curious to witness how abruptly she would stop in her most rapid flight. Suddenly as thought, she would raise her body, and sit quietly gazing at the astonished spectators of her gymnastics. "She possessed great quickness of eye; and apples, and other fruit, were often thrown at her with great rapidity, but she always caught them without an effort. On one occasion, a live bird was set at liberty in her apartment. She marked its flight, made a spring to a distant branch, caught the bird with one hand, on her passage, and attained the branch with her other hand. She instantly bit off the head of the bird, picked off its feathers, and threw it down, without attempting to eat it. "While exerting herself in feats of agility, the gibbon ever and anon uttered her call-notes, consisting of the syllables _oo-ah_, _oo-ah_, in a succession of ascending and descending semitones, during the execution of which, the lips and frame vibrated. The tones were not unmusical, but deafening, from their loudness. "In disposition, this creature was timid, being apparently afraid of men, but allowing women to come near her, and stroke her fur, and pat her hands and feet. Her eye was quick, and she seemed to be perpetually on the watch, scrutinizing every person who entered the room. After exercising in the morning from three to four hours, she would, if allowed, spend the rest of the day quietly on one of the branches." THE BABOON. This is a large and ferocious species of ape, common in the south of Africa, and Asia. _Le Vaillant's Baboon._--This celebrated traveller, while in Africa, had a dog-faced baboon, whom he called _Kees_. He accompanied his master in his wanderings, and of his way of life we have the following sketches: "I made him," says Le Vaillant, "my taster. Whenever we found fruits, or roots, with which my Hottentots were unacquainted, we did not touch them till Kees had tasted them. If he threw them away, we concluded that they were either of a disagreeable flavor, or of a pernicious quality, and left them untasted. The ape possesses a peculiar property, wherein he differs greatly from other animals, and resembles man--namely, that he is by nature equally gluttonous and inquisitive. Without necessity, and without appetite, he tastes every thing that falls in his way, or that is given to him. "But Kees had a still more valuable quality: he was an excellent sentinel; for, whether by day or night, he immediately sprang up on the slightest appearance of danger. By his cry, and the symptoms of fear which he exhibited, we were always apprized of the approach of an enemy, even though the dogs perceived nothing of it. The latter at length learned to rely upon him with such confidence, that they slept on in perfect tranquillity. I often took Kees with me when I went a-hunting; and when he saw me preparing for sport, he exhibited the most lively demonstrations of joy. On the way, he would climb into the trees, to look for gum, of which he was very fond. Sometimes he discovered to me honey, deposited in the clefts of rocks, or hollow trees. But if he happened to have met with neither honey nor gum, and his appetite had become sharp by his running about, I always witnessed a very ludicrous scene. In those cases, he looked for roots, which he ate with great greediness, especially a particular kind, which, to his cost, I also found to be very well tasted and refreshing, and therefore insisted upon sharing with him. But Kees was no fool. As soon as he found such a root, and I was not near enough to seize upon my share of it, he devoured it in the greatest haste, keeping his eyes all the while riveted on me. He accurately measured the distance I had to pass before I could get to him, and I was sure of coming too late. Sometimes, however, when he had made a mistake in his calculation, and I came upon him sooner than he expected, he endeavored to hide the root--in which case, I compelled him, by a box on the ear, to give me up my share. "When Kees happened to tire on the road, he mounted upon the back of one of my dogs, who was so obliging as to carry him whole hours. One of them, that was larger and stronger than the rest, hit upon a very ingenious artifice, to avoid being pressed into this piece of service. As soon as Kees leaped upon his back, he stood still, and let the train pass, without moving from the spot. Kees still persisted in his intention, till we were almost out of his sight, when he found himself at length compelled to dismount, upon which both the baboon and dog exerted all their speed to overtake us. The latter, however, gave him the start, and kept a good look-out after him, that he might not serve him in the same manner again. In fact, Kees enjoyed a certain authority with all my dogs, for which he perhaps was indebted to the superiority of his instinct. He could not endure a competitor if any of the dogs came too near him when he was eating, he gave him a box on the ear, which compelled him immediately to retire to a respectful distance. "Like most other domestic animals, Kees was addicted to stealing. He understood admirably well how to loose the strings of a basket, in order to take victuals out of it, especially milk, of which he was very fond. My people chastised him for these thefts; but that did not make him amend his conduct. I myself sometimes whipped him; but then he ran away, and did not return again to the tent until it grew dark. Once, as I was about to dine, and had put the beans, which I had boiled for myself, upon a plate, I heard the voice of a bird with which I was not acquainted. I left my dinner standing, seized my gun, and ran out of the tent. After the space of about a quarter of an hour, I returned, with the bird in my hand; but, to my astonishment, found not a single bean upon the plate. Kees had stolen them all, and taken himself out of the way. "When he had committed any trespass of this kind, he used always, about the time when I drank tea, to return quietly, and seat himself in his usual place, with every appearance of innocence, as if nothing had happened; but this evening he did not let himself be seen. And on the following day also he was not seen by any of us; and, in consequence, I began to grow seriously uneasy about him, and apprehensive that he might be lost forever. But, on the third day, one of my people, who had been to fetch water, informed me that he had seen Kees in the neighborhood; but that, as soon as the animal espied him, he had concealed himself again. I immediately went out and beat the whole neighborhood with my dogs. All at once, I heard a cry like that which Kees used to make when I returned from my shooting, and had not taken him with me. I looked about, and at length espied him, endeavoring to hide himself behind the large branches of a tree. I now called to him in a friendly tone of voice, and made motions to him to come down to me. But he could not trust me, and I was obliged to climb up the tree to fetch him. He did not attempt to fly, and we returned together to my quarters: here he expected to receive his punishment; but I did nothing, as it would have been of no use. "When any eatables had been pilfered at my quarters, the fault was always laid first upon Kees; and rarely was the accusation unfounded. For a time, the eggs, which a hen laid me, were constantly stolen away, and I wished to ascertain whether I had to attribute this loss also to him. For this purpose I went one morning to watch him, and waited till the hen announced, by her cackling, that she had laid an egg. Kees was sitting upon my vehicle; but, the moment he heard the hen's voice, he leaped down, and was running to fetch the egg. When he saw me, he suddenly stopped, and affected a careless posture, swaying himself backwards upon his hind legs, and assuming a very innocent look; in short, he employed all his art to deceive me with respect to his design. His hypocritical manoeuvres only confirmed my suspicions; and, in order, in my turn, to deceive him, I pretended not to attend to him, and turned my back to the bush where the hen was cackling, upon which he immediately sprang to the place. I ran after him, and came up to him at the moment when he had broken the egg, and was swallowing it. Having caught the thief in the fact, I gave him a good beating upon the spot; but this severe chastisement did not prevent his soon stealing fresh-laid eggs again. "As I was convinced that I should never be able to break Kees off his natural vices, and that, unless I chained him up every morning, I should never get an egg, I endeavored to accomplish my purpose in another manner: I trained one of my dogs, as soon as the hen cackled, to run to the nest, and bring me the egg, without breaking it. In a few days, the dog had learned his lesson; but Kees, as soon as he heard the hen cackle, ran with him to the nest. A contest now took place between them, who should have the egg: often the dog was foiled, although he was the stronger of the two. If he gained the victory, he ran joyfully to me with the egg, and put it into my hand. Kees, nevertheless, followed him, and did not cease to grumble and make threatening grimaces at him, till he saw me take the egg,--as if he was comforted for the loss of his booty by his adversary's not retaining it for himself. If Kees got hold of the egg, he endeavored to run with it to a tree, where, having devoured it, he threw down the shells upon his adversary, as if to make game of him. In that case, the dog returned, looking ashamed, from which I could conjecture the unlucky adventure he had met with. "Kees was always the first awake in the morning, and, when it was the proper time, he aroused the dogs, who were accustomed to his voice, and, in general, obeyed, without hesitation, the slightest motions by which he communicated his orders to them, immediately taking their posts about the tent and carriage, as he directed them." _A droll Mimic._--A clergyman of some distinction, in England, had a tame baboon, which became so fond of him, that, wherever he went, it was always desirous of accompanying him. Whenever, therefore, he had to perform the service of his church, he was under the necessity of shutting it up in his room. Once, however, the animal escaped, and followed his master to the church; and, silently mounting the sounding-board above the pulpit, he lay perfectly still till the sermon commenced. He then crept to the edge, and, overlooking the preacher, imitated his gestures in so grotesque a manner, that the whole congregation was unavoidably made to laugh. The minister, surprised and confounded at this levity, severely rebuked his audience for their conduct. The reproof failed of its intended effect. The congregation still laughed, and the preacher, in the warmth of his zeal, redoubled his vociferation and action. This last the ape imitated so exactly, that the congregation could no longer restrain themselves, but burst into a long and loud roar of laughter. A friend of the preacher at length stepped up to him, and pointed out the cause of this apparently improper conduct; and such was the arch demeanor of the animal, that it was with the utmost difficulty that the parson himself could maintain his gravity, while he ordered the sexton to take the creature away. MISCELLANEOUS ANECDOTES.--Immense troops of baboons inhabit the mountains in the neighborhood of the Cape of Good Hope, whence they descend to the plains, to devastate the gardens and orchards. In their plundering excursions they are very cunning, always placing sentinels, to prevent the main body from being surprised. They break the fruit to pieces, cram it into their cheek-pouches, and keep it until hungry. Whenever the sentinel discovers a man approaching, he sets up a loud yell, which makes the whole troop retreat with the utmost precipitation. They have been known to steal behind an unwary traveller resting near their retreats, and carry off his food, which they would eat at a little distance from him; and with absurd grimaces and gestures, in ridicule, offer it back; at the same time greedily devouring it. The following account is given by Lade: "We traversed a great mountain in the neighborhood of the Cape of Good Hope, and amused ourselves with hunting large baboons, which are very numerous in that place. I can neither describe all the arts practised by these animals, nor the nimbleness and impudence with which they returned, after being pursued by us. Sometimes they allowed us to approach so near that I was almost certain of seizing them. But, when I made the attempt, they sprang, at a single leap, ten paces from me, and mounted trees with equal agility, from whence they looked at us with great indifference, and seemed to derive pleasure from our astonishment. Some of them were so large that, if our interpreter had not assured us they were neither ferocious nor dangerous, our number would not have appeared sufficient to protect us from their attacks. "As it could serve no purpose to kill them, we did not use our guns. But the captain levelled his piece at a very large one, that had rested on the top of a tree, after having fatigued us a long time in pursuing him; this kind of menace, of which the animal, perhaps, recollected his having sometimes seen the consequences, terrified him to such a degree, that he fell down motionless at our feet, and we had no difficulty in seizing him; but when he recovered from his stupor, it required all our dexterity and efforts to keep him. We tied his paws together; but he bit so furiously, that we were under the necessity of binding our handkerchiefs over his head." The common baboon is very numerous in Siam, where they frequently sally forth in astonishing multitudes to attack the villages, during the time the peasants are occupied in the rice harvest, and plunder their habitations of whatever provisions they can lay their paws on. Fruits, corn, and roots, are their usual food, although they will also eat flesh. When hunted, baboons often make very formidable resistance to dogs--their great strength and long claws enabling them to make a stout defence; and it is with difficulty a single dog can overcome them, except when they are gorged with excessive eating, in which they always indulge when they can. Some years ago, Mr. Rutter, doing duty at the castle of Cape Town, kept a tame baboon for his amusement. One evening it broke its chain unknown to him. In the night, climbing up into the belfry, it began to play with, and ring the bell. Immediately the whole place was in an uproar, some great danger being apprehended. Many thought that the castle was on fire; others, that an enemy had entered the bay; and the soldiers began actually to turn out, when it was discovered that the baboon had occasioned the disturbance. On the following morning, a court-martial was summoned, when Cape justice dictated, that, "Whereas Master Rutter's baboon had unnecessarily put the castle into alarm, the master should receive fifty lashes;" Mr. Rutter, however, found means to evade the punishment. The following circumstance is characteristic of the imitative disposition of the baboon: The army of Alexander the Great marched, in complete battle array, into a country inhabited by great numbers of these apes, and encamped there for the night. The next morning, when the army was about to proceed on its march, the soldiers saw, at some distance, an enormous number of baboons, drawn up in rank and file, like a small army, with such regularity that the Macedonians, who could have no idea of such a manoeuvre, imagined at first that it was the enemy, prepared to receive them. The ape-catchers of Africa, it is said, take a vessel filled with water, and wash their hands and face in a situation where they are sure to be observed by the apes. After having done so, the water is poured out, and its place supplied by a solution of glue; they leave the spot, and the apes then seldom fail to come down from their trees, and wash themselves in the same manner as they have seen the men do before them. The consequence is, that they glue their eyelashes so fast together, that they cannot open their eyes, or see to escape from their enemy. The ape is fond of spirituous liquors, and these are also used for the purpose of entrapping them. A person places, in their sight, a number of vessels filled with ardent spirits, pretends to drink, and retires. The apes, ever attentive to the proceedings of man, descend, and imitate what they have seen, become intoxicated, fall asleep, and are thus rendered an easy conquest to their cunning adversaries. The people of India make the proneness of apes to imitation useful; for, when they wish to collect cocoa-nuts, and other fruits, they go to the woods where these grow, which are generally frequented by apes and monkeys, gather a few heaps, and withdraw. As soon as they are gone, the apes fall to work, imitate every thing they have seen done; and when they have gathered together a considerable number of heaps, the people approach, the apes fly to the trees, and the harvest is conveyed home. Apes and monkeys, in many parts of India, are made objects of religious veneration, and magnificent temples are erected to their honor. In these countries, they propagate to an alarming extent; they enter cities in immense troops, and even venture into the houses. In some places, as in the kingdom of Calicut, the natives find it necessary to have their windows latticed, to prevent the ingress of these intruders, who lay hands without scruple upon every eatable within their reach. There are three hospitals for monkeys in Amadabad, the capital of Guzerat, where the sick and lame are fed and relieved by medical attendants. Bindrabund, a town of Agra, in India, is in high estimation with the pious Hindoos, who resort to it from the most remote parts of the empire, on account of its being the favorite residence of the god Krishna. The town is embosomed in groves of trees, which, according to the account of Major Thorn, are the residence of innumerable apes, whose propensity to mischief is increased by the religious respect paid to them, in honor of Hunaman, a divinity of the Hindoo mythology, wherein he is characterized under the form of an ape. In consequence of this degrading superstition, such numbers of these animals are supported by the voluntary contributions of pilgrims, that no one dares to resist or molest them. Hence, access to the town is often difficult; for, should one of the apes take an antipathy against any unhappy traveller, he is sure to be assailed by the whole community, who follow him with all the missile weapons they can collect, such as pieces of bamboo, stones, and dirt, making at the same time a most hideous howling. A striking instance of the audacity of the ape, in attacking the human species, is related by M. Mollien, in his Travels in Africa. A woman, going with millet and milk to a vessel, from St. Louis, which had been stopped before a village in the country of Golam, was attacked by a troop of apes, from three to four feet high; they first threw stones at her, on which she began to run away; they then ran after her, and, having caught her, they commenced beating her with sticks, until she let go what she was carrying. On returning to the village, she related her adventure to the principal inhabitants, who mounted their horses, and, followed by their dogs, went to the place which served as a retreat to this troop of marauders. They fired at them, killed ten, and wounded others, which were brought to them by the dogs; but several negroes were severely wounded in this encounter, either by the stones hurled at them by the apes, or by their bites; the females, especially, were most furious in revenging the death of their young ones, which they carried in their arms. D'Obsonville, speaking of the sacred haunts of apes in different parts of India, says that, in the course of his travels through that country, he occasionally went into the ancient temples, in order to rest himself. He noticed always that several of the apes, which abounded there, first observed him attentively, then looked inquisitively at the food which he was about to take, betraying, by their features and gestures, the great desire which they felt to partake of it with him. In order to amuse himself upon such occasions, he was generally provided with a quantity of dried peas; of these he first scattered some on the side where the leader stood,--for, according to his account, the apes always obey some particular one as their leader,--upon which the animal gradually approached nearer, and gathered them eagerly up. He then held out a handful to the animal; and, as they seldom meet a person who harbors any hostile intentions against them, the creature ventured slowly to approach, cautiously watching, as it seemed, lest any trick might be played upon him. At length, becoming bolder, he laid hold, with one of his paws, of the thumb of the hand in which the peas were held out to him, while, with the other, he carried them to his mouth, keeping his eyes all the while fixed upon those of M. d'Obsonville. "If I happened to laugh," he observes, "or to move myself, the ape immediately gave over eating, worked his lips, and made a kind of growling noise, the meaning of which was rendered very intelligible to me by his long, canine teeth, which he occasionally exhibited. If I threw some of the peas to a distance from him, he sometimes seemed pleased to see other apes pick them up; though, at other times, he grumbled at it, and attacked those who approached too near to me. The noise which he made, and the apprehensions he showed, though they might, perhaps, proceed in some measure from his own greediness, evidently proved, however, that he feared I might take advantage of their weakness, and so make them prisoners. I also observed, that those whom he suffered to approach the nearest to me were always the largest and strongest of the males; the young and the females he obliged to keep at a considerable distance from me." MONKEYS. Of this numerous and frolicsome family, there is a great variety in the hot regions of both continents. In some portions of South America, they enliven the landscape by their gambols, and make the forests resound with their cries. They are the smallest and most lively of the four-handed family, and in all caravans, they are the favorites of young observers. _The Fair Monkey._--This is one of the most beautiful of the tribe. Its head is small and round: its face and hands are of scarlet, so defined and vivid that it has more the appearance of art than nature. Its body and limbs are covered with long hairs of the purest white, and of a shining and silvery brightness: the tail is of a deep chestnut color, very glistening, and considerably longer than the body. This animal is somewhat larger than the striated monkey. It is an inhabitant of South America, and is frequently to be met with on the banks of the Amazon. The following circumstance, exhibiting the fickleness of the fair monkey, was communicated to Mr. Bewick by Sir John Trevelyan. "Pug was a gentleman of excellent humor, and adored by the crew; and, to make him perfectly happy, as they imagined, they procured him a wife. For some weeks he was a devoted husband, and showed her every attention and respect. He then grew cool, and became jealous of any kind of civility shown her by the master of the vessel, and began to use her with much cruelty. His treatment made her wretched and dull; though she bore the spleen of her husband with that fortitude which is characteristic of the female sex of the human species. Pug, however, like the lords of creation, was up to deceit, and practised pretended kindness to his spouse, to effect a diabolical scheme, which he seemed to premeditate. One morning, when the sea ran very high, he seduced her aloft, and drew her observation to an object at some distance from the yard-arm; her attention being fixed, he all of a sudden applied his paw to her rear, and canted her into the sea, where she fell a victim to his cruelty. This seemed to afford him high gratification, for he descended in great spirits." _A Trick._--In 1818, a vessel that sailed between Whitehaven, in England, and Jamaica, embarked on her homeward voyage, and, among other passengers, carried Mrs. B., and an infant five weeks old. One beautiful afternoon, the captain perceived a distant sail; and, after he had gratified his curiosity, he politely offered the glass to the lady, that she might obtain a clear view of the object. She had the baby in her arms, but now she wrapped her shawl about it, and placed it on a sofa, upon which she had been sitting. Scarcely had she applied her eye to the glass, when the helmsman exclaimed, "See what the mischievous monkey has done!" The reader may judge of the mother's feelings, when, on turning round, she beheld the animal in the act of transporting her child apparently up to the top of the mast. The monkey was a very large one, and so strong and active, that, while it grasped the infant firmly with one arm, it climbed the shrouds nimbly by the other, totally unembarrassed by the weight of its burden. One look was enough for the terrified mother; and had it not been for the assistance of those around her, she would have fallen prostrate on the deck, where she was soon afterwards stretched, apparently a lifeless corpse. The sailors could climb as well as the monkey, but the latter watched their motions narrowly; and, as it ascended higher up the mast the moment they attempted to put a foot on the shroud, the captain became afraid that it would drop the child, and endeavor to escape by leaping from one mast to another. In the mean time, the little innocent was heard to cry; and though many thought it was suffering pain, their fears on this point were speedily dissipated, when they observed the monkey imitating exactly the motions of a nurse, by dandling, soothing, and caressing, its charge, and even endeavoring to hush it to sleep. From the deck, the lady was conveyed to the cabin, and gradually restored to her senses. In the mean time, the captain ordered the men to conceal themselves carefully below, and quietly took his own station on the cabin stairs, where he could see all that passed, without being seen. The plan happily succeeded. The monkey, on perceiving that the coast was clear, cautiously descended from his lofty perch, and replaced the infant on the sofa, cold, fretful, and perhaps frightened, but, in every other respect, as free from harm as when he took it up. The captain had now a most grateful office to perform; the babe was restored to its mother's arms, amidst tears, and thanks, and blessings. _A Tragedy in the Woods._--An Englishman travelling in India tells the following interesting, though painful, story:-- "I was strolling through a wood, with my gun on my shoulders, my thoughts all centred in Europe, when I heard a curious noise in a tree above me. I looked up, and found that the sounds proceeded from a white monkey, who skipped from branch to branch, chattering with delight at beholding a 'fellow-creature,' for so he decidedly seemed to consider me. For a few moments I took no notice of his antics, and walked quietly along, till suddenly a large branch fell at my feet, narrowly escaping my head. I again paused, and found that the missile had been dropped by my talkative friend. Without consideration, I instantly turned round and fired at him. "The report had scarcely sounded, when I heard the most piercing, the most distressing cry, that ever reached my ears. An agonized shriek, like that of a young infant, burst from the little creature that I had wounded. It was within thirty paces of me. I could see the wretched animal, already stained with blood, point to its wound, and again hear its dreadful moan. "The agony of a hare is harrowing, and I have seen a young sportsman turn pale on hearing it. The present cry was, however, more distressing. I turned round, and endeavored to hurry away. This, however, I found no easy task; for, as I moved forward, the unhappy creature followed me, springing as well as he could from bough to bough, uttering a low, wailing moan, and pointing at the same time to the spot whence the blood trickled. Then, regarding me steadily and mournfully in the face, it seemed to reproach me with my wanton cruelty. Again I hastened on, but still it pursued me. Never, in my life, did I feel so much for a dumb animal: never did I so keenly repent an act of uncalled-for barbarity. "Determined not to allow the poor monkey thus to linger in torture, and at once to end the annoying scene, I suddenly came to a halt; and, lowering my gun, which was only single-barrelled, I was about to reload it for the purpose of despatching the maimed creature, when, springing from a tree, it ran up to within a dozen paces of me, and began to cry so piteously, and roll itself in agony, occasionally picking up earth, with which it attempted to stanch the blood by stuffing it into the wound, that, in spite of my resolution, when I fired, I was so nervous, I almost missed my aim, inflicting another wound, which broke the animal's leg, but nothing more. Again, its piercing shriek rang in my ears. Horrified beyond endurance, I threw down my gun, and actually fled. "In about half an hour, I returned, for the purpose of getting my gun, fully expecting that the poor animal had left the spot. What, then, was my surprise, to find a crowd of monkeys surrounding the wretched sufferer, and busily employed in tearing open its wounds! A shout drove them all away, except the dying animal. I advanced. The little creature was rolling in agony. I took up my gun, which lay beside him, and fancied he cast one look of supplication on me--one prayer to be relieved from his misery. I did not hesitate; with one blow of the butt-end, I dashed out his brains. Then turning round, I slowly returned to my quarters, more profoundly dispirited than I had felt for many months.--Take my advice, reader; if you must live in India, never shoot a monkey." _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--We are told of a king of Egypt who was so successful in training monkeys to the art of dancing, that they were long admired for the dexterity and gracefulness of their movements. On one occasion, his majesty had a ball, at which a vast number of these animals "tripped it on the light, fantastic toe." A citizen, who enjoyed fun, threw a few handfuls of walnuts into the ball-room, while these picturesque animals were engaged in a high dance, upon which they forgot all decorum, and sprang to the booty. A monkey, which was kept on board a British frigate, was the favorite of all on board but the midshipmen. This animal knew well of a large store of apples being in a locker in the wardroom, which was kept constantly secure, in consequence of his propensity for plundering it. He, however, fell upon ways and means to secure his booty. He procured a piece of wadding, swung himself from the stern gallery by one hand, and, with this in the other, broke a pane of glass in the wardroom window; and, after carefully picking out all the broken pieces of glass, made his entrance, where he gorged himself so fully, that he was unable to effect his retreat by the place where he entered. He was caught in the fact, and soundly flogged. A singular piece of ingenuity was once practised by a monkey, in defending himself against fire-arms. This animal belonged to Captain M----, of the navy, who had also another small monkey, of which he was very fond, from its lively playfulness. The larger animal was often exceedingly troublesome, and could not be driven from his cabin, without _blazing_ at him with a pistol loaded with powder and currant jelly,--a discharge which produced a painful and alarming effect. The old monkey was at first astounded at the sight of the weapon, which stung him so sore, that he at last learned a mode of defence; for, snatching up the little favorite, he used to interpose him as a shield between the pistol and his body. In one of his excursions, Le Vaillant killed a female monkey, which carried a young one on her back. The latter continued to cling to her dead parent till they reached their evening quarters; and the assistance of a negro was even then required to disengage it. No sooner, however, did it feel itself alone, than it darted towards a wooden block, on which was placed the wig of Le Vaillant's father. To this it clung most pertinaciously by its fore paws; and such was the force of this deceptive instinct, that it remained in the same position for about three weeks, all this time evidently mistaking the wig for its mother. It was fed, from time to time, with goat's milk; and, at length, emancipated itself voluntarily, by quitting the fostering care of the peruke. The confidence which it ere long assumed, and the amusing familiarity of its manners, soon rendered it a favorite with the family. The unsuspecting naturalist had, however, introduced a wolf in sheep's clothing into his dwelling; for, one morning, on entering his chamber, the door of which had been imprudently left open, he beheld his young favorite making a hearty breakfast on a collection of insects which he had made. In the first transports of his anger, he resolved to strangle the monkey in his arms; but his rage immediately gave way to pity, when he perceived that the crime of its voracity had carried the punishment along with it. In eating the beetles, it had swallowed several of the pins on which they were transfixed. Its agony, consequently, became great, and all his efforts were unable to preserve its life. ORDER III. CARNARIA, BUTCHERING ANIMALS. This order includes bats, hedgehogs, bears, dogs, wolves, foxes, lions, weasels, &c. BATS. These creatures, partaking both of the nature of quadrupeds and birds, have excited the wonder of mankind in all ages. There is a great variety of species, from the common bat of our climate to the vampyre of South America, whose wings stretch to the extent of two feet. These animals live in caves and crevices during the day, and sally forth at evening to catch their prey. For this reason, there is a popular disgust of the whole tribe; yet the species in our climate are a harmless race. We cannot say as much of the larger kinds, which sometimes darken the air, by their abundance, in hot climates. One species, already mentioned, is a formidable animal. Captain Stedman, in his "Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the revolted Negroes of Surinam," relates that, on awaking about four o'clock one morning in his hammock, he was extremely alarmed at finding himself weltering in congealed blood, and without feeling any pain whatever. "The mystery was," says Captain Stedman, "that I had been bitten by the vampyre, or spectre of Guiana, which is also called the flying dog of New Spain; and by the Spaniards, _perrovolador_. This is no other than a bat of monstrous size, that sucks the blood from men and cattle, while they are fast asleep, even, sometimes, till they die; and, as the manner in which they proceed is truly wonderful, I shall endeavor to give a distinct account of it. "Knowing, by instinct, that the person they intend to attack is in a sound slumber, they generally alight near the feet, where, while the creature continues fanning with his enormous wings, which keeps one cool, he bites a piece out of the tip of the great toe, so very small, indeed, that the head of a pin could scarcely be received into the wound, which is, consequently, not painful; yet, through this orifice, he continues to suck the blood, until he is obliged to disgorge. He then begins again, and thus continues sucking and disgorging until he is scarcely able to fly, and the sufferer has often been known to pass from time to eternity. Cattle they generally bite in the ear, but always in places where the blood flows spontaneously. Having applied tobacco ashes as the best remedy, and washed the gore from myself and hammock, I observed several small heaps of congealed blood, all round the place where I had lain, upon the ground; on examining which, the surgeon judged that I had lost at least twelve or fourteen ounces of blood." "Some years ago," says Mr. Waterton, in his "Wanderings in South America," "I went to the River Paumaron, with a Scotch gentleman, by name Tarbet. We hung our hammocks in the thatched loft of a planter's house. Next morning, I heard this gentleman muttering in his hammock, and now and then letting fall an imprecation or two, just about the time he ought to have been saying his morning prayers. 'What is the matter, sir?' said I, softly; 'is any thing amiss?' 'What's the matter?' answered he, surlily; 'why, the vampyres have been sucking me to death.' As soon as there was light enough, I went to his hammock, and saw it much stained with blood. 'There,' said he, thrusting his foot out of the hammock, 'see how these infernal imps have been drawing my life's blood.' On examining his foot, I found the vampyre had tapped his great toe. There was a wound somewhat less than that made by a leech. The blood was still oozing from it. I conjectured he might have lost from ten to twelve ounces of blood. Whilst examining it, I think I put him into a worse humor, by remarking that a European surgeon would not have been so generous as to have blooded him without making a charge. He looked up in my face, but did not say a word. I saw he was of opinion that I had better have spared this piece of ill-timed levity." HEDGEHOG. This animal belongs exclusively to the eastern continent, and is well known from the thick and sharp prickles with which its back and sides are covered, and the contractile power by which it can draw its head and belly within the prickly covering of its back, so as to give it the appearance of a ball. It is found near hedges and thickets, from the fruits and herbage of which it obtains its food. It also feeds upon small animals, such as snails and beetles. The sagacity of the hedgehog is celebrated in antiquity. We are informed by Plutarch, that a citizen of Cyzicus thus acquired the reputation of a good meteorologist: A hedgehog generally has its burrow open in various points; and, when its instinct warns it of an approaching change of the wind, it stops up the aperture towards that quarter. The citizen alluded to, becoming aware of this practice, was able to predict to what point the wind would next shift. Though of a very timid disposition, the hedgehog has been sometimes tamed. In the year 1790, there was one in the possession of a Mr. Sample, in Northumberland, which performed the duty of a turnspit as well, in all respects, as the dog of that denomination. It ran about the house with the same familiarity as any other domestic animal. In the London Sporting Magazine for 1821, there is an account of one, which, after having been tamed in a garden, found its way to the scullery, and there made regular search for the relics of the dinner plates; having its retreat in the adjoining cellar. It was fed after the manner itself had selected. Milk was given in addition to the meat; but it lost its relish for vegetables, and constantly rejected them. It soon became as well domesticated as the cat, and lived on a footing of intimacy with it. THE MOLE. Of this animal there are several species; they burrow in the earth, and form avenues from one nest to another, like the crossing streets of a city. Their eyes are small, and so buried in fur as to be invisible, except on close inspection. _Mole-Catching._--It has been a common opinion that moles were destructive to the crops; and in Europe, much pains have been taken to destroy them. The mole-catcher--in general a quiet old man, who passes his winter in making his traps, in the chimney-corner--comes forth, in the spring, with his implements of destruction. His practised eye soon discovers the tracks of the mole, from the mound which he throws up to some neighboring bank, or from one mound to another. It is in this track, or run, that he sets his trap, a few inches below the surface of the ground. As the mole passes through this little engine of his ruin, he disturbs a peg which holds down a strong hazel rod in a bent position. The moment the peg is moved, the end of the rod which is held down flies up, and with it comes up the poor mole, dragged out of the earth which he has so ingeniously excavated, to be gibbeted, without a chance of escape. There was a Frenchman, of the name of Le Court, who died a few years since,--a man of great knowledge and perseverance, and who did not think it beneath him to devote his whole attention to the observation of the mole. He established a school for mole-catching; and taught many what he had acquired by incessant perseverance--the art of tracing the mole to his hiding-place in the ground, and cutting off his retreat. The skill of this man once saved, as was supposed, a large and fertile district of France from inundation by a canal, whose banks the moles had undermined in every direction. More recently, it has been doubted whether moles are really so mischievous to the farmer as has been supposed. It is said that they assist in draining the land, and thus prevent the foot-rot in sheep. Mr. Hogg, the Ettrick shepherd, says, "If a hundred men and horses were employed on a common-sized pasture-farm--say from 1500 to 2000 acres--in raising and draining manure for a top-dressing to the land, they would not do it so effectually, so equally, and so neatly, as the natural number of moles on the farm would do for themselves." Moles are said to be very ferocious animals; and, as an evidence of this, we are told that a mole, a toad, and a viper, were enclosed in a glass case; the mole despatched the other two, and devoured a great part of both of them. THE BEAR. Of this animal there are many species; among which, the white bear of the polar regions, and the grisly bear of the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, are the largest and most formidable. The brown bear is common to both continents. The most remarkable of the other species are the Bornean, spectacled, large-lipped, Thibetian, and Malayan. The BROWN or BLACK BEAR.--_Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--This species, like the rest of the family, is a solitary animal; for he only remains associated with his mate for a short period, and then retires to his winter retreat, which is usually in the hole of a rock, the cavity of a tree, or a pit in the earth, which the animal frequently digs for himself. He sometimes constructs a kind of hut, composed of the branches of trees, which he lines with moss. In these situations he continues, for the most part, in a lethargic state, taking no food, but subsisting entirely on the absorption of the fat which he has accumulated in the course of the summer. The modes that are adopted, by the inhabitants of different countries, for taking or destroying bears, are various. Of these, the following appear to be the most remarkable: In consequence of the well-known partiality of these animals for honey, the Russians sometimes fix to those trees where bees are hived a heavy log of wood, at the end of a long string. When the unwieldy creature climbs up, to get at the hive, he finds himself interrupted by the log; he pushes it aside, and attempts to pass it; but, in returning, it hits him such a blow, that, in a rage, he flings it from him with greater force, which makes it return with increased violence; and he sometimes continues this, till he is either killed, or falls from the tree. In Lapland, hunting the bear is often undertaken by a single man, who, having discovered the retreat of the animal, takes his dog along with him, and advances towards the spot. The jaws are tied round with a cord, to prevent his barking; and the man holds the other end of this cord in his hand. As soon as the dog smells the bear, he begins to show signs of uneasiness, and, by dragging at the cord, informs his master that the object of his pursuit is at no great distance. When the Laplander, by this means, discovers on which side the bear is stationed, he advances in such a direction that the wind may blow from the bear to him, and not the contrary; for otherwise, the animal would, by his scent, be aware of his approach, though not able to see the enemy, being blinded by sunshine. The olfactory organs of the bear are exquisite. When the hunter has advanced to within gunshot of the bear, he fires upon him; and this is very easily accomplished in autumn, as he is then more fearless, and is constantly prowling about for berries of different kinds, on which he feeds at this season of the year. Should the man chance to miss his aim, the furious beast will directly turn upon him in a rage, and the little Laplander is obliged to take to his heels with all possible speed, leaving his knapsack behind him on the spot. The bear, coming up to this, seizes upon it, biting and tearing it into a thousand pieces. While he is thus venting his fury, the Laplander, who is generally a good marksman, reloads his gun, and usually destroys him at the second shot; if not, the bear in most cases runs away. Bear-baiting was a favorite amusement of our English ancestors. Sir Thomas Pope entertained Queen Mary and the Princess Elizabeth, at Hatfield, with a grand exhibition of a "bear-baiting, with which their highnesses were right well content." Bear-baiting was part of the amusement of Elizabeth, among "the princely pleasures of Kenilworth Castle." Rowland White, speaking of the queen, then in her sixty-seventh year, says,--"Her majesty is very well. This day she appoints a Frenchman to do feats upon a rope, in the Conduit Court. To-morrow she has commanded the bears, the bull, and the ape, to be bayted, in the tilt-yard. Upon Wednesday, she will have solemn dauncing." The office of chief master of the bear was held under the crown, with a salary of 16d. _per diem_. Whenever the king chose to entertain himself or his visitors with this sport, it was the duty of the master to provide bears and dogs, and to superintend the baiting; and he was invested with unlimited authority to issue commissions, and to send his officers into every county in England, who were empowered to seize and take away any bears, bulls, or dogs, that they thought meet, for his majesty's service. The latest record, by which this diversion was publicly authorized, is a grant to Sir Saunders Duncombe, October 11, 1561, "for the sole practice and profit of the fighting and combating of wild and domestic beasts, within the realm of England, for the space of fourteen years." Occasional exhibitions of this kind were continued till about the middle of the eighteenth century. We are told, in Johnston's _Sketches of India_, that "bears will often continue on the road, in front of a palanquin, for a mile or two, tumbling, and playing all sorts of antics, as if they were taught to do so. I believe it is their natural disposition; for they certainly are the most amusing creatures imaginable, in a wild state. It is no wonder they are led about with monkeys, to amuse mankind. It is astonishing, as well as ludicrous, to see them climb rocks, and tumble, or rather roll, down precipices. If they are attacked by a person on horseback, they stand erect on their hind legs, showing a fine set of white teeth, and make a crackling kind of noise. If the horse comes near them, they try to catch him by the legs; and, if they miss him, they tumble over and over several times. They are easily speared by a person mounted on horseback, that is bold enough to go near them." Bears ascend trees with great facility. Of their fondness for climbing, we have the following curious instance: In the end of June, 1825, a tame bear took a notion of climbing up the scaffolding placed round a brick stalk, erecting by Mr. G. Johnstone, at St. Rollox. He began to ascend very steadily, cautiously examining, as he went along, the various joists, to see if they were secure. He at length, to the infinite amusement and astonishment of the workmen, reached the summit of the scaffolding, one hundred and twenty feet high. Bruin had no sooner attained the object of his wishes, than his physiognomy exhibited great self-gratulation; and he looked about him with much complacency, and inspected the building operations going on. The workmen were much amused with their novel visitor, and every mark of civility and attention was shown him; which he very condescendingly returned, by good-humoredly presenting them with a shake of his paw. A lime bucket was now hoisted, in order to lower him down; and the workmen, with all due courtesy, were going to assist him into it; but he declined their attentions, and preferred returning in the manner he had gone up. He afterwards repeated his adventurous visit. "Bears," says Mr. Lloyd, "are not unfrequently domesticated in Wermeland. I heard of one that was so tame, that his master, a peasant, used occasionally to cause him to stand at the back of his sledge when on a journey; but the fellow kept so good a balance, that it was next to impossible to upset him. When the vehicle went on one side, bruin threw his weight the other way, and _vice versa_. One day, however, the peasant amused himself by driving over the very worst ground he could find, with the intention, if possible, of throwing the bear off his equilibrium, by which, at last, the animal got so irritated, that he fetched his master, who was in advance of him, a tremendous thwack on the shoulders with his paw. This frightened the man so much, that he caused the beast to be killed immediately." Of the ferocity of the bear there are many instances on record. A brown bear, which was presented to his late majesty, George III., while Prince of Wales, was kept in the Tower. By the carelessness of the servant, the door of the den was left open; and the keeper's wife happening to go across the court at the same time, the animal flew out, seized the woman, threw her down, and fastened upon her neck, which he bit; and without offering any further violence, lay upon her, sucking the blood out of the wound. Resistance was in vain, as it only served to irritate the brute; and she must inevitably have perished, had not her husband luckily discovered her situation. By a sudden blow, he obliged the bear to quit his hold, and retire to his den, which he did with great reluctance, and not without making a second attempt to come at the woman, who was almost dead, through fear and loss of blood. It is somewhat remarkable, that, whenever he happened to see her afterwards, he growled, and made most violent struggles to get at her. The prince, upon hearing of the circumstance, ordered the bear to be killed. But the bear is also capable of generous attachment. Leopold, Duke of Lorraine, had a bear called Marco, of the sagacity and sensibility of which we have the following remarkable instance: During the winter of 1709, a Savoyard boy, ready to perish with cold in a barn, in which he had been put by a good woman, with some more of his companions, thought proper to enter Marco's hut, without reflecting on the danger which he ran in exposing himself to the mercy of the animal which occupied it. Marco, however, instead of doing any injury to the child, took him between his paws, and warmed him by pressing him to his breast, until next morning, when he suffered him to depart, to ramble about the city. The young Savoyard returned in the evening to the hut, and was received with the same affection. For several days he had no other retreat; and it added not a little to his joy, to perceive that the bear regularly reserved part of his food for him. A number of days passed in this manner without the servants' knowing any thing of the circumstance. At length, when one of them came to bring the bear its supper, rather later than ordinary, he was astonished to see the animal roll his eyes in a furious manner, and seeming as if he wished him to make as little noise as possible, for fear of awaking the child, whom he clasped to his breast. The bear, though ravenous, did not appear the least moved with the food which was placed before him. The report of this extraordinary circumstance was soon spread at court, and reached the ears of Leopold, who, with part of his courtiers, was desirous of being satisfied of the truth of Marco's generosity. Several of them passed the night near his hut, and beheld, with astonishment, that the bear never stirred as long as his guest showed an inclination to sleep. At break of day, the child awoke, was very much ashamed to find himself discovered, and, fearing that he would be punished for his temerity, begged pardon. The bear, however, caressed him, and endeavored to prevail on him to eat what had been brought to him the evening before, which he did at the request of the spectators, who afterwards conducted him to the prince. Having learned the whole history of this singular alliance, and the time which it had continued, Leopold ordered care to be taken of the little Savoyard, who, doubtless, would have soon made his fortune, had he not died a short time after. Munster relates the following story of a man being strangely relieved from a perilous situation: A countryman in Muscovy, in seeking for honey in the woods, mounted a stupendous tree, which was hollow in the centre of its trunk; and, discovering that it contained a large quantity of comb, descended into the hollow, where he stuck fast in the honey, which had been accumulated there to a great depth; and every effort on his part to extricate himself proved abortive. So remote was this tree, that it was impossible his voice could be heard. After remaining in this situation for two days, and allaying his hunger with the honey, all hope of being extricated was abandoned, and he gave himself up to despair. At last a bear, who, like himself, had come in search of honey, mounted the tree, and descended the hollow cleft, "stern forward." The man was at first alarmed, but mustered courage to seize the bear with all the firmness he could; upon which the animal took fright, made a speedy retreat, and dragged the peasant after it. When fairly out of the recess, he quitted his hold, and the bear made the best of its way to the ground, and escaped. It would appear that, in the remote regions of the United States, the common black bear is occasionally found of a cinnamon color, and sometimes even white. Tanner gives us the following account: "Shortly after this, I killed an old she-bear, which was perfectly white. She had four cubs; one white, with red eyes and red nails, like herself; one red, and two black. In size, and other respects, she was the same as the common black bear; but she had nothing black about her but the skin of her lips. The fur of this kind is very fine, but not so highly valued by the traders as the red. The old one was very tame, and I shot her without difficulty; two of the young ones I shot in the hole, and two escaped into a tree. "I had but just shot them when there came along three men, attracted, probably, by the sound of my gun. As these men were very hungry, I took them home with me, fed them, and gave them each a piece of meat, to carry home. Next day, I chased another bear into a low poplar-tree; but my gun being a poor one, I could not shoot him. "A few days after, as I was hunting, I started, at the same moment, an elk and three young bears; the latter ran into a tree. I shot at the young bears, and two of them fell. As I thought one or both must only be wounded, I sprang towards the root of the tree, but had scarcely reached it when I saw the old she-bear coming in another direction. She caught up the cub which had fallen near her, and, raising it with her paws, while she stood on her hind feet, holding it as a woman holds a child, she looked at it for a moment, smelled the ball-hole, which was in its belly, and perceiving it was dead, dashed it down, and came directly towards me, gnashing her teeth, and walking so erect that her head stood as high as mine. All this was so sudden, that I scarce reloaded my gun, having only time to raise it, and fire, as she came within reach of the muzzle. I was now made to feel the necessity of a lesson the Indians had taught me, and which I very rarely neglected--that is, to think of nothing else before loading it again." Some years ago, a boy, of New Hampshire, found a very young cub, near Lake Winnipeg, and carried it home with him. It was fed and brought up about the house of the boy's father, and became as tame as a dog. Every day its youthful captor had to go to school at some distance, and, by degrees, the bear became his daily companion. At first, the other scholars were shy of the creature's acquaintance; but, ere long, it became their regular playfellow, and they delighted in sharing with it the little store of provisions which they brought, for their sustenance, in small bags. After two years of civilization, however, the bear wandered to the woods, and did not return. Search was made for him, but in vain. Four succeeding years passed away, and, in the interval, changes had occurred in the school alluded to. An old dame had succeeded to the ancient master, and a new generation of pupils had taken the place of the former ones. One very cold, winter day, while the schoolmistress was busy with her humble lessons, a boy chanced to leave the door half way open, on his entrance, and, suddenly, a large bear walked in. The consternation of the old lady, and her boys and girls, was unspeakable. Both schoolmistress and pupils would fain have been abroad; but the bear was in the path, and all that could be done was to fly off, as far as possible, behind the tables and benches. But the bear troubled nobody. He walked quietly up to the fireplace, and warmed himself, exhibiting much satisfaction in his countenance during the process. He remained thus about a quarter of an hour, and then walked up to the wall where the provender bags and baskets of the pupils were suspended. Standing on his hind feet, he took hold of these successively, put his paws into them, and made free with the bread, fruit, and other eatables, therein contained. He next tried the schoolmistress's desk, where some little provisions usually were; but finding it firmly shut, he went up again to the fire, and, after a few minutes' stay before it, he walked out by the way he came in. As soon as the schoolmistress and her pupils had courage to move, the alarm was given to the neighbors. Several young men immediately started after the bear, and, as its track was perfectly visible upon the snow, they soon came up with it, and killed it. Then it was that, by certain marks upon its skin, some of the pursuers recognized, in the poor bear, no enemy, but an old friend of their own recent school days. Great regret was felt at the loss of the creature. It was like killing a human friend rather than a wild animal. Landor furnishes us with the following account: A man in Sweden set off one morning to shoot the cock of the woods. This bird is so extremely shy, that he may rarely be met with, except in the pairing season, when, every morning, he renews his song. He usually commences just before sunrise, beginning in a loud strain, which gradually sinks into a low key, until he is quite entranced with his own melody; he then droops his wings to the earth, and runs to the distance of several feet, calling, _Cluck, cluck, cluck_! during which time, he is said to be incapable of seeing, so wrapped up is he in his own contemplations, and may be caught even with the hand by those who are near enough, as the fit lasts only a few moments. If unready, wait for the next occasion; for, should he advance a step, except when the bird is thus insensible, he will certainly be overheard, and the victim escape. The man I began to speak of, being, early one morning, in pursuit of this bird, heard his song at a short distance, and, as soon as the _clucking_ commenced, of course advanced as rapidly as he could, and then remained motionless, till these particular notes were again sounded. It was quite dusk, the sun not having yet risen; but the song seemed to come from an open space in the forest, from which the sun was just emerging. He could not see many yards before him, and only followed the direction of the sound. It so happened that, from another point, but at no great distance, a bear was advancing on the bird, just in the manner of, and with the same steps as the man. The hunter, whilst standing motionless, thought he perceived a dark object on one side of him; but it did not much engage his attention; at the usual note, he moved on toward the game, but was surprised to see that the black object had also advanced in an equal degree, and now stood on a line with him. Still he was so eager after the bird, that he could think of nothing else, and approached close to his prey before he perceived that a large bear stood within a few feet of him; in fact, just as they were about to spring on the bird, they caught sight of one another, and each thought proper to slink back. After having retreated a short distance, the man began to think it would be rather inglorious to yield the prize without a struggle; and there being now more light, he returned to the spot, when it appeared that the bear had also taken the same resolution, and was actually advancing over the same open space I have mentioned, growling, and tearing up the grass with her feet. Though the man had only shot in his gun, he fired without hesitation, and immediately took to his heels and fled, conceiving the bear to be close in his rear, and returned not to pause till he gained his own habitation. Having armed himself anew, and taken a companion with him, he again repaired to the spot, where he found the bear lying dead on the ground, some of the shots having entered her heart. The American black bear lives a solitary life in forests and uncultivated deserts, and subsists on fruits, and on the young shoots and roots of vegetables. Of honey he is exceedingly fond, and, as he is a most expert climber, he scales the loftiest trees in search of it. Fish, too, he delights in, and is often found in quest of them, on the borders of lakes and on the sea-shore. When these resources fail, he will attack small quadrupeds, and even animals of some magnitude. As, indeed, is usual in such cases, the love of flesh, in him, grows with the use of it. As the fur is of some value, the Indians are assiduous in the chase of the creature which produces it. "About the end of December, from the abundance of fruits they find in Louisiana and the neighboring countries, the bears become so fat and lazy that they can scarcely run. At this time they are hunted by the Indians. The nature of the chase is generally this: the bear chiefly adopts, for his retreat, the hollow trunk of an old cypress-tree, which he climbs, and then descends into the cavity from above. The hunter, whose business it is to watch him into this retreat, climbs a neighboring tree, and seats himself opposite to the hole. In one hand he holds his gun, and in the other a torch, which he darts into the cavity. Frantic with rage and terror, the bear makes a spring from his station; but the hunter seizes the instant of his appearance, and shoots him. "The pursuit of the bear is a matter of the first importance to some of the Indian tribes, and is never undertaken without much ceremony. A principal warrior gives a general invitation to all the hunters. This is followed by a strict fast of eight days, in which they totally abstain from food, but during which the day is passed in continual song. This is done to invoke the spirits of the woods to direct the hunters to the places where there are abundance of bears. They even cut the flesh in divers parts of their bodies, to render the spirits more propitious. They also address themselves to the manes of the beasts slain in the preceding chases, and implore these to direct them, in their dreams, to an abundance of game. The chief of the hunt now gives a great feast, at which no one dares to appear without first bathing. At this entertainment, contrary to their usual custom, they eat with great moderation. The master of the feast touches nothing, but is employed in relating to the guests ancient tales of feasts in former chases; and fresh invocations to the manes of the deceased bears conclude the whole. "They then sally forth, equipped as if for war, and painted black. They proceed on their way in a direct line, not allowing rivers, marshes, or any other impediment, to stop their course, and driving before them all the beasts they find. When they arrive at the hunting-ground, they surround as large a space as they can, and then contract their circle, searching, at the same time, every hollow tree, and every place capable of being the retreat of a bear; and they continue the same practice till the chase is expired. "As soon as a bear is killed, a hunter puts into his mouth a lighted pipe of tobacco, and, blowing into it, fills the throat with the smoke, conjuring the spirit of the animal not to resent what they are about to do to its body, or to render their future chases unsuccessful. As the beast makes no reply, they cut out the string of the tongue, and throw it into the fire. If it crackle and shrivel up, which it is almost sure to do, they accept this as a good omen; if not, they consider that the spirit of the beast is not appeased, and that the chase of the next year will be unfortunate." When our forefathers first settled in America, bears were common in all parts of the country along the Atlantic. Many adventures with them took place, some of which are recorded in the histories of the times. The following is said to have occurred at a later period:-- Some years since, when the western part of New York was in a state of nature, and wolves and bears were not afraid of being seen, some enterprising pilgrim had erected, and put in operation, a sawmill, on the banks of the Genesee. One day, as he was sitting on the log, eating his bread and cheese, a large, black bear came from the woods towards the mill. The man, leaving his luncheon on the log, made a spring, and seated himself on a beam above; when the bear, mounting the log, sat down with his rump towards the saw, which was in operation, and commenced satisfying his appetite on the man's dinner. After a little while, the saw progressed enough to interfere with the hair on bruin's back, and he hitched along a little, and kept on eating. Again the saw came up, and scratched a little flesh. The bear then whirled about, and, throwing his paws around the saw, held on, till he was mangled through and through, when he rolled off, fell through into the flood, and bled to death. The GRISLY BEAR.--This creature, which is peculiar to North America, is, perhaps, the most formidable of the bruin family in magnitude and ferocity. He averages twice the bulk of the black bear, to which, however, he bears some resemblance in his slightly elevated forehead, and narrow, flattened, elongated muzzle. His canine teeth are of great size and power. The feet are enormously large--the breadth of the fore foot exceeding nine inches, and the length of the hind foot, exclusive of the talons, being eleven inches and three quarters, and its breadth seven inches. The talons sometimes measure more than six inches. He is, accordingly, admirably adapted for digging up the ground, but is unable to climb trees, in which latter respect he differs wholly from most other species. The color of his hair varies to almost an indefinite extent, between all the intermediate shades of a light gray and a black brown; the latter tinge, however, being that which predominates. It is always in some degree grizzled, by intermixture of grayish hairs. The hair itself is, in general, longer, finer, and more exuberant, than that of the black bear. The neighborhood of the Rocky Mountains is one of the principal haunts of this animal. There, amidst wooded plains, and tangled copses of bough and underwood, he reigns as much the monarch as the lion is of the sandy wastes of Africa. Even the bison cannot withstand his attacks. Such is his muscular strength, that he will drag the ponderous carcass of the animal to a convenient spot, where he digs a pit for its reception. The Indians regard him with the utmost terror. His extreme tenacity of life renders him still more dangerous; for he can endure repeated wounds which would be instantaneously mortal to other beasts, and, in that state, can rapidly pursue his enemy; so that the hunter who fails to shoot him through the brain is placed in a most perilous situation. One evening, the men in the hindmost of one of Lewis and Clark's canoes perceived one of these bears lying in the open ground, about three hundred paces from the river; and six of them, who were all good hunters, went to attack him. Concealing themselves by a small eminence, they were able to approach within forty paces unperceived; four of the hunters now fired, and each lodged a ball in his body, two of which passed directly through the lungs. The bear sprang up, and ran furiously, with open mouth, upon them; two of the hunters, who had reserved their fire, gave him two additional wounds, and one, breaking his shoulder-blade, somewhat retarded his motions. Before they could again load their guns, he came so close on them, that they were obliged to run towards the river, and before they had gained it, the bear had almost overtaken them. Two men jumped into the canoe; the other four separated, and, concealing themselves among the willows, fired as fast as they could load their pieces. Several times the bear was struck, but each shot seemed only to direct his fury towards the hunters; at last he pursued them so closely that they threw aside their guns and pouches, and jumped from a perpendicular bank, twenty feet high, into the river. The bear sprang after them, and was very near the hindmost man, when one of the hunters on the shore shot him through the head, and finally killed him. When they dragged him on shore, they found that eight balls had passed through his body in different directions. Richardson relates the following story of a grisly bear. A party of voyagers, who had been employed all day in tracking a canoe up the Saskatchewan, had seated themselves, in the twilight, by a fire, and were busy in preparing their supper, when a large grisly bear sprang over their canoe that was behind them, and, seizing one of the party by the shoulder, carried him off. The rest fled in terror, with the exception of a man named Bourasso, who, grasping his gun, followed the bear as it was retreating leisurely with its prey. He called to his unfortunate comrade that he was afraid of hitting him if he fired at the bear; but the latter entreated him to fire immediately, as the animal was squeezing him to death. On this he took a deliberate aim, and discharged his piece into the body of the bear, which instantly dropped its prey to pursue Bourasso. He escaped with difficulty, and the bear retreated to a thicket, where it is supposed to have died. The man who was rescued had his arm fractured, and was otherwise severely bitten by the bear, but finally recovered. The WHITE BEAR.--The polar bear is considerably larger than the brown or black bear, and is covered with a long, thick fur, of a bright white beneath and of a yellowish tinge above. Besides the difference in external appearance, there is a remarkable distinction between the brown and the polar bears; for the former prefers, as his abode, the wooded summits of alpine regions, feeding principally on roots and vegetables; while the latter fixes his residence on the sea-coast, or on an iceberg, and seems to delight in the stormy and inhospitable precincts of the arctic circle, where vegetation is scarcely known to exist, feeding entirely on animal matter. But it cannot be regarded as a predatory quadruped, for it seems to prefer dead to living animal food, its principal subsistence being the floating carcasses of whales. It also preys upon seals, which it catches with much keenness and certainty, as they ascend to the surface of the ocean to breathe; and sometimes fish are caught by them, when they enter shoals or gulfs. They move with great dexterity in the water, and capture their prey with apparent ease. It is only when these bears quit their winter quarters, and especially when the female has to protect her young, that they manifest great ferocity. While the Carcass, one of the ships of Captain Phipps's voyage of discovery to the north pole, was locked in the ice, early one morning the man at the mast-head gave notice that three bears were making their way very fast over the Frozen Ocean, and were directing their course towards the ship. They had no doubt been invited by the scent of some blubber of a sea-horse, which the crew had killed a few days before, and which, having been set on fire, was burning on the ice at the time of their approach. They proved to be a she-bear and her two cubs; but the cubs were nearly as large as the dam. They ran eagerly to the fire, and drew out from the flames part of the flesh of the sea-horse that remained unconsumed, and ate it voraciously. The crew of the ship threw great lumps of the flesh they had still left upon the ice, which the old bear fetched away singly, laying every piece before the cubs as she brought it, and, dividing it, gave each a share, reserving but a small portion to herself. As she was fetching away the last piece, they levelled their muskets at the cubs, and shot them both dead, at the same time wounding the dam in her retreat, but not mortally. It would have drawn tears of pity from any but the most unfeeling, to have marked the affectionate concern expressed by this poor animal, in the dying moments of her expiring young. Though she was sorely wounded, and could but just crawl to the place where they lay, she carried the lump of flesh she had just fetched away, as she had done the others, tore it in pieces, and laid it down before them. When she saw they refused to eat, she laid her paws first upon the one, then upon the other, and endeavored to raise them up, making, at the same time, the most pitiable moans. Finding she could not stir them, she went off, and, when she had got to some distance, looked back, and moaned; and that not availing to entice them away, she returned, and, smelling round them, began to lick their wounds. She went off a second time, as before, and having crawled a few paces, looked again behind her, and for some time stood moaning. But still her cubs not rising to follow, she returned to them anew, and, with signs of inexpressible fondness, went round, pawing them successively. Finding, at last, that they were cold and lifeless, she raised her head towards the ship, and growled a curse upon the destroyers, which they returned with a volley of musket-balls. She fell between her cubs, and died licking their wounds. The polar bears are remarkably sagacious, as the following instances may prove. Those in Kamtschatka are said to have recourse to a singular stratagem, in order to catch the _bareins_, which are much too swift of foot for them. These animals keep together in large herds; they frequent mostly the low grounds, and love to browse at the base of rocks and precipices. The bear hunts them by scent, till he comes in sight, when he advances warily, keeping above them, and concealing himself among the rocks, as he makes his approach, till he gets immediately over them, and near enough for his purpose. He then begins to push down, with his paws, pieces of rock among the herd below. This manoeuvre is not followed by any attempt to pursue, until he finds he has maimed one of the flock, upon which a course immediately ensues, that proves successful, or otherwise, according to the hurt the barein has received. The captain of a Greenland whaler, being anxious to procure a bear without injuring the skin, made trial of a stratagem of laying the noose of a rope in the snow, and placing a piece of kreng within it. A bear, ranging the neighboring ice, was soon enticed to the spot by the smell of burning meat. He perceived the bait, approached, and seized it in his mouth; but his foot, at the same time, by a jerk of the rope, being entangled in the noose, he pushed it off with his paw, and deliberately retired. After having eaten the piece he had carried away with him, he returned. The noose, with another piece of kreng, having been replaced, he pushed the rope aside, and again walked triumphantly off with the bait. A third time the noose was laid; but, excited to caution by the evident observations of the bear, the sailors buried the rope beneath the snow, and laid the bait in a deep hole dug in the centre. The animal once more approached, and the sailors were assured of their success. But bruin, more sagacious than they expected, after snuffing about the place for a few moments, scraped the snow away with his paw, threw the rope aside, and again escaped unhurt with his prize. A Greenland bear, with two cubs under her protection, was pursued across a field of ice by a party of armed sailors. At first, she seemed to urge the young ones to an increase of speed, by running before them, turning round, and manifesting, by a peculiar action and voice, her anxiety for their progress; but, finding her pursuers gaining upon them, she carried, or pushed, or pitched them alternately forward, until she effected their escape. In throwing them before her, the little creatures are said to have placed themselves across her path to receive the impulse, and, when projected some yards in advance, they ran onwards, until she overtook them, when they alternately adjusted themselves for another throw. In the month of June, 1812, a female bear, with two cubs, approached near a whale ship, and was shot. The cubs, not attempting to escape, were taken alive. These animals, though at first very unhappy, became, at length, in some measure reconciled to their situation, and, being tolerably tame, were allowed occasionally to go at large about the deck. While the ship was moored to a floe, a few days after they were taken, one of them, having a rope fastened round his neck, was thrown overboard. It immediately swam to the ice, got upon it, and attempted to escape. Finding itself, however, detained by the rope, it endeavored to disengage itself in the following ingenious way: Near the edge of the floe was a crack in the ice, of considerable length, but only eighteen inches or two feet wide, and three or four feet deep. To this spot the bear turned, and when, on crossing the chasm, the bight of the rope fell into it, he placed himself across the opening; then, suspending himself by his hind feet, with a leg on each side, he dropped his head and most part of his body into the chasm, and, with a foot applied to each side of the neck, attempted, for some minutes, to push the rope over his head. Finding this scheme ineffectual, he removed to the main ice, and, running with great impetuosity from the ship, gave a remarkable pull on the rope; then, going backwards a few steps, he repeated the jerk. At length, after repeated attempts to escape this way, every failure of which he announced by a significant growl, he yielded himself to hard necessity, and lay down on the ice in angry and sullen silence. Like the brown and black bear, polar bears are animals capable of great fierceness. Brentz, in his voyage in search of the north-east passage to China, had horrid proofs of their ferocity in the Island of Nova Zembla, where they attacked his seamen, seizing them in their mouth, carrying them off with the utmost ease, and devouring them even in sight of their comrades. About twenty years ago, the crew of a boat belonging to a ship in the whale fishery, shot at a bear some little distance off, and wounded him. The animal immediately set up a dreadful howl, and scampered along the ice towards the boat. Before he reached it, he had received a second wound. This increased his fury, and he presently plunged into the water, and swam to the boat; and, in his attempt to board it, he placed one of his fore paws upon the gunwale, and would have gained his point, had not one of the sailors seized a hatchet and cut it off. Even this had not the effect of damping his courage; for he followed the boat till it reached the ship, from whence several shots were fired at him, which hit, but did not mortally wound him: he approached the vessel, and ascended the deck, where, from his dreadful fury, he spread such consternation, that all the crew fled to the shrouds, and he was in the act of pursuing them thither, when an effective shot laid him dead on the deck. THE RACCOON. This animal is peculiar to America. He resembles the bear, but is much smaller and more elegantly formed. He is an active and lively animal; an excellent climber of trees, in which the sharpness of his claws greatly aids him; and he will even venture to the extremity of slender branches. He is a good-tempered animal, and, consequently, easily tamed; but his habit of prying into every thing renders him rather troublesome, for he is in constant motion, and examining every object within his reach. He generally sits on his hinder parts when feeding, conveying all his food to his mouth with his fore paws. He will eat almost every kind of food, but is particularly fond of sweetmeats, and will indulge in spirituous liquors even to drunkenness. He feeds chiefly at night, in a wild state, and sleeps during the day. Brickell gives an interesting account, in his "History of North Carolina," of the cunning manifested by the raccoon in pursuit of its prey. "It is fond of crabs, and, when in quest of them, will take its station by a swamp, and hang its tail over into the water, which the crabs mistake for food, and lay hold of it; as soon as the raccoon feels them pinch, it pulls up its tail with a sudden jerk, and they generally quit their hold upon being removed from the water. The raccoon instantly seizes the crabs in its mouth, removes them to a distance from the water, and greedily devours its prey. It is very careful how it takes them up, which it always does from behind, holding them transversely, in order to prevent their catching its mouth with their nippers." When enraged, or desirous of attacking a person, the raccoon advances with arched back and bristling hair, and with its chin or under jaw close to the ground, uttering gruff sounds of displeasure. If once injured, it seldom forgives its enemy. On one occasion, a servant struck a tame raccoon with a whip: in vain did he afterwards attempt a reconciliation; neither eggs, nor food most coveted by the animal, availed in pacifying it. At his approach, it flew into a sort of fury; it darted at him with sparkling eyes, uttering loud cries. Its accents of anger were very singular; sometimes one might fancy them the whistling of the curlew, at others, the hoarse bark of an old dog. If any one beat it, it opposed no resistance; it concealed its head and its paws, like the hedgehog, by rolling itself into a ball. In this position it would suffer death. When its chain broke, it would allow no one to approach it, and it was with great difficulty refettered. THE COATI. This animal, which frequents the woods of South America, resembles the raccoon, but is smaller. He is in the habit of rooting under trees, and thus overturns many of them, even those of large size. The most curious incident in his history, is that he eats his own tail! This is explained by Godman as follows: "The extreme length of its tail, in which the blood circulates but feebly, exposes it to the influence of cold or frost; and the exceedingly tormenting irritation produced thereby leads the animal to gnaw and scratch the tail, to relieve the excessive itching. The disease spreads, and the anguish induces the coati to gnaw more furiously, and eventually its life is destroyed by the extension of the inflammation and irritability to the spine." THE BADGER. Of this animal there are two species, one European, the other American; but they have a strong resemblance. It has short legs, and a long body; lives in burrows by day, and goes forth at night to prey on roots, snails, and worms. The American species seems to be more carnivorous than his foreign relation: in this respect he has high example, for the people of America eat more butcher's meat than those of Europe--for the reason, however, that they are so fortunate as to be able to get it. In Europe, the badger is hunted as a matter of sport, the chief amusement being derived from the fierce resistance he makes to the dogs. In South America, the creature is eaten, and badger hams are deemed a delicacy. Catching this animal is a great source of interest to the Indians. We are told that a "party of eight, in one of their expeditions, will destroy two or three hundred badgers, and a quantity of deer on their return home, besides guanas. These hunting parties are so delightful, even to the women, that the hopes of being allowed to accompany the men will make them behave well all the year. On these excursions they live well, and seem more happy than during the rainy season; in their way home, they travel day and night rapidly, in spite of obstructions, carrying long poles between them, on which the animals are slung--the boys carrying the skins and lard; the dogs too are well fed during this period, and seem to return with regret. A cloud of vultures generally hover over them, and are seen by their clans a day or two before they arrive, who make every preparation to receive them; their return is greeted like that of victors. The rainy nights are passed in recounting their exploits one to another." The habits of the badger are said to be "the most social of any quadruped in the universe; it is not known to quarrel with any other animal; even the fox, polecat, opossum, land crab, and snake, make it resign its abode, although it is much stronger than any of them. It also lives in the greatest harmony with its own species, subsisting principally on nuts, roots, and vegetables; it is cleanly in its habits, being observed to perform its ablutions while the dew is on the ground." THE GLUTTON. This animal, which is called _wolverene_ in this country, and _carcajou_ by the Canadians, is about three feet long, and of a dark-brown color. It is strong and courageous, and will even attack and destroy the fox in its burrow. Its extraordinary voracity gives the impulse to all its exertions. Incessantly in search of food, it kills animals larger and stronger than itself, seizes the deer which the hunter has just shot, plunders the baits on his traps, or the game these have taken. A proof at once of the strength, the cunning, and the strong appetite, of the glutton, was afforded by one, at Hudson's Bay, some years since, which overset the greatest part of a pile of wood of great extent, which contained a whole winter's firing; his object was to get at some provisions that had been hidden there by the company's servants when going to the factory to spend the Christmas holidays. This animal had for many weeks been lurking about their tent, and had committed many depredations on the game caught in their traps and snares, as well as eaten many of the foxes that were killed by guns set for the purpose; but he was too cunning to touch either gun or trap himself. The people thought they had adopted the best method to secure their provisions, by tying them in bundles, and laying them on the top of wood piles. To their astonishment, when they returned, they found the greatest part of the pile thrown down, notwithstanding some of the trees with which it was constructed were as much as two men could carry. The wood was very much scattered about; and it was supposed that, in the animal's attempting to carry off the booty, some of the small parcels of provisions had fallen down into the heart of the pile, and sooner than lose half his prize, he was at the trouble of pulling away the wood. The bags of flour, oatmeal, and peas, though of no use to him, he tore all to pieces, and scattered the contents about on the snow; but every bit of animal food, consisting of beef, pork, bacon, venison, salted geese, and partridges, in considerable quantities, he carried away. When attacked by other animals, the glutton fights desperately, and three stout dogs are scarcely its match. A man who had tamed one of them threw it one day into the water, and set a couple of dogs upon it, when it immediately seized one of them by the head, and held it under water till it was drowned. THE WEASEL. The weasel stands as the type of a large number of animals, such as the marten, sable, polecat, otter, skunk, &c.; all being characterized by a long body, short legs, and considerable energy of disposition. Some of the species are celebrated for their abominable odor. The weasel is an active, bloodthirsty little animal, not exceeding seven inches in length from the nose to the tail. It is much about the same size as a rat, though more slender; but it is a mortal enemy to this animal, pursuing them to their holes, and killing them in great numbers. It is also often fatal to the hare, as it will either creep upon it when at rest, or, lying unseen amidst the rubbish or furze, will spring at its throat; where, as in the case of other animals which it kills, it fixes its bite, and then sucks the blood till its victim expires. It makes a hole in the ends of eggs, and sucks the contents--differently from the rat, which breaks the shell to pieces. It is a destructive enemy to pigeons, as it creeps into the holes of a dove-cot in the evening, and surprises its prey while they are asleep; and, from the peculiar construction of its body, there are few situations it is incapable of reaching; for it can clamber up an almost perpendicular wall. When it sees a man, it endeavors as quickly as possible to get out of the way, and hide itself amidst the grass or loose stones; but if trodden on, or seized, it will turn and bite, like a serpent. An ordinary dog does not wish to attack it, for it instantly fastens itself on his lips. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Weasels seem to unite, in many cases, for mutual defence, or the attack of man. In January, 1818, a laborer in the parish of Glencairn, Dumfriesshire, was suddenly attacked by six weasels, which rushed upon him from an old dike in the field where he was at work. The man, alarmed at such a furious onset, instantly betook himself to flight; but he soon found he was closely pursued. Although he had about him a large horsewhip, with which he endeavored, by several back-handed strokes, to stop them, yet, so eager was the pursuit of the weasels, that he was on the point of being seized by the throat, when he luckily noticed, at some distance, the fallen branch of a tree, which he made for, and, hastily snatching it up, manfully rallied upon his enemies, and had such success, that he killed three of them, and put the remaining three to flight. A similar case occurred some years ago at Gilmerton, near Edinburgh, when a gentleman, observing a person leaping about in an extraordinary manner, made up to him, and found him beset, and dreadfully bitten, by about fifteen weasels, which continued their attack. Being both strong persons, they succeeded in killing a number, and the rest escaped by flying into the fissures of a neighboring rock. The account the person gave of the commencement of the affray was, that, walking through the park, he ran at a weasel which he saw, and made several attempts to strike it, remaining between it and the rock to which its retreat lay. The animal, being thus circumstanced, squeaked aloud, when an instantaneous sortie was made by the colony, and an attack commenced. The weasel is exceedingly difficult to tame. When kept in a cage, it seems in a perpetual state of agitation, is terrified at the sight of all who approach to look at it, and generally endeavors to hide itself behind the straw, or other substances, which may be at the bottom of its cage. Yet instances are not wanting to prove that the weasel may be brought into complete subjection. Mademoiselle de Laistre, in a letter on this subject, gives a very pleasing account of the education and manners of a weasel which she took under her protection, and which frequently ate from her hand, seemingly more delighted with this manner of feeding than any other. "If I pour," says this lady, "some milk into my hand, it will drink a good deal; but if I do not pay it this compliment, it will scarcely take a drop. When satisfied, it generally goes to sleep. My chamber is the place of its residence; and I have found a method of dispelling its strong smell by perfumes. By day it sleeps in a quilt, into which it gets by an unsewn place which it has discovered on the edge; during the night, it is kept in a wired box or cage, which it always enters with reluctance, and leaves with pleasure. If it be set at liberty before my time of rising, after a thousand little playful tricks, it gets into my bed, and goes to sleep on my hand or on my bosom. "If I am up first, it spends a full half hour in caressing me; playing with my fingers like a little dog, jumping on my head and on my neck, and running round on my arms and body with a lightness and elegance which I never found in any other animal. If I present my hands at the distance of three feet, it jumps into them without ever missing. It shows a great deal of address and cunning in order to compass its ends, and seems to disobey certain prohibitions merely through caprice. During all its actions it seems solicitous to divert, and to be noticed; looking, at every jump, and at every turn, to see whether it be observed or not. If no notice be taken of its gambols, it ceases them immediately, and betakes itself to sleep; and when awakened from the soundest sleep, it instantly resumes its gayety, and frolics about in as sprightly a manner as before. It never shows any ill-humor, unless when confined, or teased too much; in which case it expresses its displeasure by a sort of murmur very different from that which it utters when pleased. In the midst of twenty people, this little animal distinguishes my voice, seeks me out, and springs over every body to come to me. His play with me is the most lovely and caressing; with his two little paws he pats me on the chin, with an air and manner expressive of delight. This, and a thousand other preferences, show that his attachment is real. "When he sees me dressed to go out, he will not leave me, and it is not without some trouble that I can disengage myself from him. He then hides himself behind a cabinet near the door, and jumps upon me, as I pass, with so much celerity, that I often can scarcely perceive him. He seems to resemble a squirrel in vivacity, agility, voice, and his manner of murmuring. During the summer he squeaks and runs all the night long; and since the commencement of the cold weather, I have not observed this. Sometimes, when the sun shines while he is playing on the bed, he turns and tumbles about, and murmurs for a while. "From his delight in drinking milk out of my hand, into which I pour a very little at a time, and his custom of sipping the little drops and edges of the fluid, it seems probable that he drinks dew in the same manner. He very seldom drinks water, and then only for the want of milk; and with great caution, seeming only to refresh his tongue once or twice, and to be even afraid of that fluid. During the hot weather, it rained a good deal. I presented to him some rain water in a dish, and endeavored to make him go into it, but could not succeed. I then wetted a piece of linen cloth in it, and put it near him, when he rolled upon it with extreme delight. One singularity in this charming animal is his curiosity; it being impossible to open a drawer or box, or even to look at a paper, but it will examine it also. If he gets into any place where I am afraid to let him stay, I take a paper or a book, and look attentively at it, when he immediately runs upon my hand, and surveys, with an inquisitive air, whatever I happen to hold. I must further observe, that he plays with a young cat and dog, both of some size; getting about their necks and paws without their doing him the least harm." The following story regarding the weasel is told in Selkirkshire: "A group of haymakers, while busy at their work on Chapelhope meadow, at the upper end of St. Mary's Loch,--or rather of the Loch of the Lowes, which is separated from it by a narrow neck of land,--saw an eagle rising above the steep mountains that enclose the narrow valley. The eagle himself was, indeed, no unusual sight; but there is something so imposing and majestic in the flight of this noble bird, while he soars upwards in spiral circles, that it fascinates the attention of most people. But the spectators were soon aware of something peculiar in the flight of the bird they were observing. He used his wings violently; and the strokes were often repeated, as if he had been alarmed and hurried by unusual agitation; and they noticed, at the same time, that he wheeled in circles that seemed constantly decreasing, while his ascent was proportionally rapid. The now idle haymakers drew together in close consultation on the singular case, and continued to keep their eyes on the seemingly distressed eagle, until he was nearly out of sight, rising still higher and higher into the air. In a short while, however, they were all convinced that he was again seeking the earth, evidently not, as he ascended, in spiral curves; it was like something falling, and with great rapidity. But, as he approached the ground, they clearly saw he was tumbling in his fall like a shot bird; the convulsive fluttering of his powerful wings stopping the descent but very little, until he fell at a small distance from the men and boys of the party, who had naturally run forward, highly excited by the strange occurrence. A large black-tailed weasel or stoat ran from the body as they came near; turned with the _nonchalance_ and impudence of the tribe; stood up upon its hind legs; crossed its fore paws over its nose, and surveyed its enemies a moment or two,--as they often do when no dog is near,--and bounded into a saugh bush. The king of the air was dead; and, what was more surprising, he was covered with his own blood; and, upon further examination, they found his throat cut, and the weasel has been suspected as the regicide unto this day." THE POLECAT. This animal, which is confined to the eastern continent, is thrice the size of the weasel, but its prey is nearly the same. It has as high a reputation in Europe, for its offensive smell, as the skunk has here. The following fact is recorded in Bewick's Quadrupeds: "During a severe storm, one of these animals was traced in the snow from the side of a rivulet to its hole at some distance from it. As it was observed to have made frequent trips, and as other marks were to be seen in the snow, which could not easily be accounted for, it was thought a matter worthy of greater attention. Its hole was accordingly examined, the polecat taken, and eleven fine eels were discovered to be the fruits of its nocturnal exertions. The marks on the snow were found to have been made by the motions of the eels while in the creature's mouth." THE FERRET. This animal is a native of Africa, and requires much care to preserve it alive in cold countries. It is kept for the purpose of dislodging rabbits from their warren, and has such a natural antipathy to these animals, that, if a dead one be presented to a young ferret, though it has never seen a rabbit before, it will eagerly seize it. Like the rest of the species, it is remarkable for the pertinacity with which it retains the bite which it has once taken. This circumstance is illustrated by the following occurrence: A man, of the name of Isles, a bargeman, finding himself much incommoded by the repeated mischief done in his barge by rats, procured a ferret to destroy them. The ferret remaining away a considerable time, he thought it was devouring some rats that it had killed, and went to sleep, but was awakened early next morning by the ferret, who was commencing an attack upon him. The animal had seized him near his eyebrow; and the man, after endeavoring in vain to shake him off, at length severed the body from the head with a knife,--the latter still sticking so fast, as to be with difficulty removed. THE MINK. This animal is found throughout a great extent of country, from Carolina to Hudson's Bay, and in its habits and appearance resembles the otter. The favorite haunts of this species are the banks of streams, where it inhabits holes near the water. It is an excellent swimmer and diver, and feeds on frogs and fish. It also commits great depredations in the poultry-yard. When provoked, it ejects a fetid liquor, which is exceedingly unpleasant. THE MARTEN. Of this animal there are two or three species, confined to the northern regions of the eastern continent. Of all the weasel tribe it is the most pleasing; all its motions show great grace as well as agility; and there is scarcely an animal in our woods that will venture to oppose it. Quadrupeds five times as large are easily vanquished; the hare, the sheep, and even the wild-cat itself, is not a match for it. We are told of a marten which had been tamed, and was extremely pretty and playful in its manners. It went among the houses of the neighborhood, and always returned home when hungry. It was extremely fond of a dog that had been bred with it, and used to play with it as cats are seen to play, lying on its back, and biting without anger or injury. THE SABLE. This animal, as well as several others of the tribe, is greatly valued for its fur. It resembles the marten, and is found in the northern parts of both continents. The enterprise, perseverance, and hardships of the hunters, in America as well as Siberia, in pursuit of this creature, are almost incredible. In the latter country, the hunting of the sable chiefly falls to the lot of condemned criminals, who are sent from Russia into these wild and extensive forests, that for the greatest part of the year are covered with snow; and in this instance, as in many others, the luxuries and ornaments of the vain are wrought out of the dangers and miseries of the wretched. These are obliged to furnish a certain number of skins every year, and are punished if the proper quantity is not provided. The sable is also killed by the Russian soldiers, who are sent into those parts for the purpose. They are taxed a certain number of skins yearly, and are obliged to shoot with only a single ball, to avoid spoiling the skin, or else with cross-bows and blunt arrows. As an encouragement to the hunters, they are allowed to share among themselves the surplus of those skins which they thus procure; and this, in the process of six or seven years, amounts to a considerable sum. A colonel, during his seven years' stay, gains about four thousand crowns for his share, and the common men earn six or seven hundred each. THE SKUNK. Of this animal there are several varieties upon the American continent, to which it is confined; though we have but one in this quarter of the United States. This is of the size of a cat, and striped with black and white. Its celebrity depends exclusively upon its peculiar mode of defence--that of discharging upon its foe a liquid of the most revolting and intolerable odor, and of such vigor as to fill the air for half a mile around. Some years ago, a Frenchman, who had settled at Hartford, Connecticut, was going home from Wethersfield, a place renowned for raising _onions_. It was evening, and in the twilight the man saw a little animal crossing the path before him. Not knowing or suspecting its character, he darted upon it, caught it, and put it in his pocket. When he reached home, he took it out, and a general exclamation of astonishment burst from the household, at the extraordinary flavor of the little beast. "What is it?" "What can it be?"--was the general inquiry. "I cannot say," said the Frenchman; "but I suppose it must be a _Wethersfield_ kitten!" On a certain occasion, Dr. B----, an eminent divine, was walking at evening in a by-way, when he saw a small animal trotting along before him. He easily guessed its true character, and having a volume of Rees's Cyclopedia under his arm, he hurled it with all his might at the suspicious quadruped. It took effect, but the animal retorted by discharging, both upon the Cyclopedia and the D.D., a shaft from his abominable quiver. It seems that the event made an indelible impression both upon the garments and the memory of the divine; the former he buried; and when, some years after, he was advised to write a book against a rival sect, he replied, "No, no!--I once threw a quarto at a skunk, and got the worst of it. I shall not repeat such folly." "In the year 1749," says Kahn, "one of these animals came near the farm where I lived. It was in winter time, during the night; and the dogs that were on watch pursued it for some time, until it discharged against them. Although I was in a bed at some distance from the scene of action, I thought I should have been suffocated, and the cows and oxen, by their lowing, showed how much they were affected by the stench. "About the end of the same year, another of these animals crept into our cellar, but did not exhale the smallest scent when undisturbed. A foolish woman, however, who perceived it one night by the shining of its eyes, killed it, and at that moment the fetid odor began to spread. The cellar was filled with it to such a degree that the woman kept her bed for several days; and all the bread, meat, and other provisions that were kept there, were so infected, that they were obliged to be thrown out of doors." THE OTTER. The otter is a native of the greater part of Europe and America. Its principal food being fish, it makes its habitation on the banks of rivers, where it burrows to some depth. _Anecdotes._--The females produce from four to five at a birth. Their parental affection is so powerful, that they will frequently suffer themselves to be killed rather than quit their progeny; and this has frequently been the occasion of their losing their lives, when they might, otherwise, have escaped. Professor Steller says, "Often have I spared the lives of the female otters, whose young ones I took away. They expressed their sorrow by crying like human beings, and followed me as I was carrying off their young ones, which called to them for aid, with a tone of voice which very much resembled the wailing of children. When I sat down in the snow, they came quite close to me, and attempted to carry off their young. On one occasion, when I had deprived an otter of her progeny, I returned to the place eight days after, and found the female sitting by the river, listless and desponding; she suffered me to kill her on the spot without making any attempt to escape. On skinning her, I found she was quite wasted away, from sorrow for the loss of her young. Another time I saw, at some distance from me, an old female otter sleeping by the side of a young one, about a year old. As soon as the mother perceived us, she awoke the young one, and enticed him to betake himself to the river; but, as he did not take the hint, and seemed inclined to prolong his sleep, she took him up in her fore paws and plunged him into the water." The otter is naturally ferocious; but when taken young, and properly treated, it can be rendered tame, and taught to catch fish, and fetch them to its master. James Campbell, near Inverness, procured a young otter, which he brought up and domesticated. It would follow him wherever he chose; and, if called on by its name, would immediately obey. When apprehensive of danger from dogs, it sought the protection of its master, and would endeavor to spring into his arms for greater security. It was frequently employed in catching fish, and would sometimes take eight or ten salmon in a day. If not prevented, it always made an attempt to break the fish behind the anal fin, which is next the tail; and, as soon as one was taken away, it always dived in pursuit of more. It was equally dexterous at sea-fishing, and took great numbers of young cod, and other fish, there. When tired, it would refuse to fish any longer, and was then rewarded with as much as it could devour. Having satisfied its appetite, it always coiled itself round, and fell asleep; in which state it was generally carried home. It appears that the otter, in its native haunts, is of a playful and sportive humor. We are told that, on the banks of the northern rivers, where they dwell unmolested, they may be sometimes seen sliding down the soft, muddy banks into the water, like a parcel of boys coasting upon the snow. They become quite animated with the sport, seeming to emulate each other in the vigor and frolic of their performances. The sea otter is a larger species, living in pairs along the northern shores of the Pacific Ocean. THE DOG. The dog, in its wild state, differs little in its habits from those of the same order of quadrupeds; it resembles the wolf rather than the fox, hunts in troops, and, thus associated, attacks the most formidable animals--wild boars, tigers, and even lions. They are said, however, even while in this condition, to exhibit a disposition to yield to man; and, if approached by him with gentleness, will submit to be caressed. On the other hand, if dogs that have been once tamed are driven from the haunts of men, and the protection to which they have been accustomed, they readily become wild, and associate together in troops. In Asia, there are multitudes of these animals around the towns, which live in a half-wild state, calling no man master. But when domesticated, the dog presents the appearance of the most thorough submission to the will, and subservience to the use of man. If we look at the individual, we perceive it attached to a person whom it acknowledges as master, with whom it has formed a very humble alliance, and whose interest it considers its own. It answers to its name, is willing to follow its master wherever he goes, and exerts all its energies in any service to which he may command it, and that without any constraint except what arises from its own disposition. A more perfect image of obedience and subservience cannot be conceived. If, on the other hand, we survey the species, we find it in every variety of size, and shape, and disposition, according to the various services of which it is capable. The division of labor is almost as complete, among the different species of the dog, as among men themselves. It, like its masters, gives up the exercise of one faculty that it may bring another to a greater perfection. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The anecdotes which go to display the intelligence and fidelity of dogs, are almost innumerable. Of these, we can give only a few specimens. "My dog Sirrah," says the Ettrick shepherd, "was, beyond all comparison, the best dog I ever saw. He was of a surly and unsocial temper. Disdaining all flattery, he refused to be caressed; but his attention to my commands and interests will never again, perhaps, be equalled by any of the canine race. When I first saw him, a drover was leading him in a rope. He was both lean and hungry, and far from being a beautiful animal, for he was almost all black, and had a grim face, striped with dark-brown. The man had bought him of a boy, somewhere on the Border, for three shillings, and had fed him very ill on his journey. I thought I discovered a sort of sullen intelligence in his countenance, notwithstanding his dejected and forlorn appearance. I gave the drover a guinea for him, and I believe there never was a guinea so well laid out; at least, I am satisfied I never laid one out to so good a purpose. He was scarcely a year old, and knew so little of herding, that he had never turned a sheep in his life; but as soon as he discovered that it was his duty to do so, and that it obliged me, I can never forget with what anxiety and eagerness he learned his different evolutions. He would try every way deliberately, till he found out what I wanted him to do; and, when I once made him understand a direction, he never forgot or mistook it again. Well as I knew him, he often astonished me; for, when hard pressed in accomplishing the task that he was put to, he had expedients of the moment that bespoke a great share of the reasoning faculty." Among other remarkable exploits of Sirrah, illustrative of his sagacity, Mr. Hogg relates that, upon one occasion, about seven hundred lambs, which were under his care at weaning time, broke up at midnight, and scampered off, in three divisions, across the neighboring hills, in spite of all that he and an assistant could do to keep them together. The night was so dark that he could not see Sirrah; but the faithful animal heard his master lament their absence in words which, of all others, were sure to set him most on the alert; and, without more ado, he silently set off in quest of the recreant flock. Meanwhile, the shepherd and his companion did not fail to do all in their power to recover their lost charge; they spent the whole night in scouring the hills for miles round, but of neither the lambs nor Sirrah could they obtain the slightest trace. It was the most extraordinary circumstance that had ever occurred in the annals of pastoral life. They had nothing to do, as day had dawned, but to return to their master, and inform him that they had lost his whole flock of lambs, and knew not what was become of one of them. "On our way home, however," says Mr. Hogg, "we discovered a lot of lambs at the bottom of a deep ravine called the Flesh Cleuch, and the indefatigable Sirrah standing in front of them, looking round for some relief, but still true to his charge. The sun was then up; and when we first came in view, we concluded that it was one of the divisions, which Sirrah had been unable to manage until he came to that commanding situation. But what was our astonishment when we discovered that not one lamb of the whole flock was wanting! How he had got all the divisions collected in the dark is beyond my comprehension. The charge was left entirely to himself from midnight until the rising sun; and if all the shepherds in the Forest had been there to have assisted him, they could not have effected it with greater propriety. All that I can further say is, that I never felt so grateful to any creature under the sun, as I did to my honest Sirrah that morning." Sir Walter Scott has furnished an anecdote on this subject, concerning a dog, which, though meritorious in himself, must ever deserve the greatest share of fame and interest from the circumstance of having belonged to such a master. "The wisest dog," says Sir Walter, "I ever had, was what is called the bull-dog terrier. I taught him to understand a great many words, insomuch that I am positive that the communication betwixt the canine species and ourselves might be greatly enlarged. Camp once bit the baker, who was bringing bread to the family. I beat him, and explained the enormity of his offence; after which, to the last moment of his life, he never heard the least allusion to the story, in whatever voice or tone it was mentioned, without getting up and retiring into the darkest corner of the room, with great appearance of distress. Then, if you said, 'The baker was well paid,' or 'The baker was not hurt after all,' Camp came forth from his hiding-place, capered, barked, and rejoiced. When he was unable, towards the end of his life, to attend me when on horseback, he used to watch for my return, and the servant used to tell him 'his master was coming down the hill, or through the moor;' and although he did not use any gesture to explain his meaning, Camp was never known to mistake him, but either went out at the front to go up the hill, or at the back to get down to the moor-side. He certainly had a singular knowledge of spoken language." It has been made a question, whether the dog remembers his master after a long period of separation. The voice of antiquity favors the affirmative. Homer makes the dog of Ulysses to recognize him after many years' absence, and describes Eumenes, the swineherd, as being thus led to apprehend, in the person before him, the hero, of seeing whom he had long despaired. Byron, on the other hand, was skeptical on this point. Writing to a friend, who had requested the results of his experience on the subject,--he states that, on seeing a large dog, which had belonged to him, and had formerly been a favorite, chained at Newstead, the animal sprang towards him, as he conceived, in joy--but he was glad to make his escape from it, with the comparatively trivial injury of the loss of the skirts of his coat. Perhaps this circumstance may have suggested the following verses of the poet:-- "And now I'm in the world alone, Upon the wide, wide sea; But why should I for others groan, When none will sigh for me? Perchance my dog will whine in vain, Till fed by stranger hands; But long ere I come back again, He'd tear me where he stands." The affection of the dog for his master does not end with his life; and innumerable are the anecdotes on record of dogs, which have continued to pine after their master's death, or died immediately after. We shall select but one or two well-authenticated instances, for they are all so much alike, that it is unnecessary to produce many. It is said, in the Life of Mary, Queen of Scots, lately published at Glasgow, that, after her head was cut off, her little favorite lapdog, which had affectionately followed her, and unobserved had nestled among her clothes, now continued to caress her, and would not leave the body till forced away, and then died two days afterwards. Mr. Renton, of Lammerton, had a herdsman, who, pursuing a sheep that had run down the steep bank of Blackadder Water, fell into the river and was drowned. His dog, a common shepherd's dog, returned home next morning, and led his wife to the spot, holding her by the apron. The body was found. The dog followed it even to the grave, and died in a few days. A mastiff dog belonging to the Honorable Peter Bold, England, attended his master in his chamber during the tedious sickness consequent on a pulmonary consumption. After the gentleman expired, and his corpse had been removed, the dog repeatedly entered the apartment, making a mournful, whining noise; he continued his researches for several days through all the rooms of the house, but in vain. He then retired to his kennel, which he could not be induced to leave; refusing all manner of sustenance, he soon died. Of this fact, and his previous affection, the surgeon who attended his master was an eye-witness. The regret of the dog for its master's death is not confined to inactive sorrow; if his death has been caused by violence, it discovers a singular and persevering hatred of the murderers, which in some cases has led to their detection. The following instance is related in a letter, written in 1764, by a gentleman at Dijon, in France, to his friend in London: "Since my arrival here, a man has been broken on the wheel, with no other proof to condemn him than that of a water-spaniel. The circumstances attending it being so very singular and striking, I beg leave to communicate them to you. A farmer, who had been to receive a sum of money, was waylaid, robbed, and murdered, by two villains. The farmer's dog returned with all speed to the house of the person who had paid the money, and expressed such amazing anxiety that he would follow him, pulling him several times by the sleeve and skirt of the coat, that at length the gentleman yielded to his importunity. The dog led him to the field, a little from the roadside, where the body lay. From thence the gentleman went to a public house, in order to alarm the country. The moment he entered, (as the two villains were there drinking,) the dog seized the murderer by the throat, and the other made his escape. This man lay in prison three months, during which time they visited him once a week with the spaniel; and though they made him change his clothes with other prisoners, and always stand in the midst of a crowd, yet did the animal always find him out, and fly at him. On the day of trial, when the prisoner was at the bar, the dog was let loose in the court-house, and, in the midst of some hundreds, he found him out, though dressed entirely in new clothes, and would have torn him to pieces had he been allowed; in consequence of which he was condemned, and at the place of execution he confessed the fact. Surely so useful, so disinterestedly faithful an animal, should not be so barbarously treated as I have often seen them, particularly in London." Other cases might be produced, but we shall only present that of the dog of Montargis, which has become familiar to the public by being made the subject of a melodrame frequently acted at the present time. The fame of this English blood-hound has been transmitted by a monument in basso-relievo, which still remains in the chimney-piece of the grand hall, at the Castle of Montargis, in France. The sculpture, which represents a dog fighting with a champion, is explained by the following narrative: Aubri de Mondidier, a gentleman of family and fortune, travelling alone through the Forest of Bondy, was murdered, and buried under a tree. His dog, a bloodhound, would not quit his master's grave for several days; till at length, compelled by hunger, he proceeded to the house of an intimate friend of the unfortunate Aubri, at Paris, and, by his melancholy howling, seemed desirous of expressing the loss sustained. He repeated his cries, ran to the door, looked back to see if any one followed him, returned to his master's friend, pulled him by the sleeve, and, with dumb eloquence, entreated him to go with him. The singularity of all these actions of the dog, added to the circumstance of his coming there without his master, whose faithful companion he had always been, prompted the company to follow the animal, who conducted them to a tree, where he renewed his howl, scratching the earth with his feet, and significantly entreating them to search the particular spot. Accordingly, on digging, the body of the unhappy Aubri was found. Some time after, the dog accidentally met the assassin, who is styled, by all the historians that relate this fact, the Chevalier Macaire; when, instantly seizing him by the throat, he was with great difficulty compelled to quit his victim. In short, whenever the dog saw the chevalier, he continued to pursue and attack him with equal fury. Such obstinate violence in the animal, confined only to Macaire, appeared very extraordinary--especially as several instances of Macaire's envy and hatred to Aubri de Mondidier had been conspicuous. Additional circumstances created suspicion, and at length the affair reached the royal ear. The king, Louis VIII., accordingly sent for the dog, which appeared extremely gentle till he perceived Macaire in the midst of several noblemen, when he ran fiercely towards him, growling at and attacking him, as usual. The king, struck with such a combination of circumstantial evidence against Macaire, determined to refer the decision to the chance of battle; in other words, he gave orders for a combat between the chevalier and the dog. The lists were appointed in the Isle of Notre Dame, then an unenclosed, uninhabited place, and Macaire was allowed, for his weapon, a great cudgel. An empty cask was given to the dog as a place of retreat, to enable him to recover breath. Every thing being prepared, the dog no sooner found himself at liberty, than he ran round his adversary, avoiding his blows, and menacing him on every side, till his strength was exhausted; then springing forward, he seized him by the throat, and threw him on the ground. Macaire now confessed his guilt in presence of the king and the whole court. In consequence of this, the chevalier, after a few days, was convicted upon his own acknowledgment, and beheaded on a scaffold in the Isle of Notre Dame. The instances in which persons have been saved from drowning by the Newfoundland dog, are innumerable. The following anecdote is the more remarkable, as it does not appear that the affectionate animal was of that species. A young man belonging to the city of Paris, desirous of getting rid of his dog, took it along with him to the River Seine. He hired a boat, and, rowing into the stream, threw the animal in. The poor creature attempted to climb up the side of the boat, but his master, whose intention was to drown him, constantly pushed him back with the oar. In doing this, he fell himself into the water, and would certainly have been drowned, had not the dog, as soon as he saw his master struggling in the stream, suffered the boat to float away, and held him above the water till assistance arrived, and his life was saved. Of the alertness of the dog in recovering the lost property of its master, we shall furnish a striking instance. M. Dumont, a tradesman of the Rue St. Denis, Paris, offered to lay a wager with a friend that, if he were to hide a six-livre piece in the dust, his dog would discover and bring it to him. The wager was accepted, and the piece of money secreted, after being carefully marked. When they had proceeded some distance from the spot, M. Dumont signified to his dog that he had lost something, and ordered him to seek it. Caniche immediately turned back, while his master and his companion pursued their walk to the Rue St. Denis. Meanwhile a traveller, who happened to be just then returning in a small chaise from Vincennes, perceived the piece of money, which his horse had kicked from its hiding-place; he alighted, took it up, and drove to his inn in Rue Pont-aux-Choux, and Caniche had just reached the spot in search of the lost piece when the stranger picked it up. He followed the chaise, went into the inn, and stuck close to the traveller. Having scented out the coin, which he had been ordered to bring back, in the pocket of the latter, he leaped up incessantly at and about him. The gentleman, supposing him to be some dog that had been lost or left behind by his master, regarded his different movements as marks of fondness; and as the animal was handsome, he determined to keep him. He gave him a good supper, and, on retiring to bed, took him with him to his chamber. No sooner had he pulled off his breeches, than they were seized by the dog; the owner, conceiving he wanted to play with them, took them away again. The animal began to bark at the door, which the traveller opened, under the idea that he wanted to go out. Caniche instantly snatched up the breeches, and away he flew. The stranger posted after him with his night-cap on, and nearly _sans culottes_. Anxiety for the fate of a purse full of double Napoleons, of forty francs each, which was in one of the pockets, gave redoubled velocity to his steps. Caniche ran full speed to his master's house, where the stranger arrived a moment afterwards, breathless and furious. He accused the dog of robbing him. "Sir," said the master, "my dog is a very faithful creature, and if he has run away with your breeches, it is because you have in them money which does not belong to you." The traveller became still more exasperated. "Compose yourself, sir," rejoined the other, smiling; "without doubt there is in your purse a six-livre piece with such and such marks, which you picked up in the Boulevard St. Antoine, and which I threw down there with a firm conviction that my dog would bring it back again. This is the cause of the robbery which he has committed upon you!" The stranger's rage now yielded to astonishment; he delivered the six-livre piece to the owner, and could not forbear caressing the dog which had given him so much uneasiness and such an unpleasant chase. A shepherd on the Grampian Mountains, having left his child at the foot of the hill, was soon enveloped in mist; and, unable to return to the precise place, he could not discover the child. In vain he searched for it in the midst of the mist, not knowing whither he went; and when, at length, the moon shone clearly, he found himself at his cottage, and far from the hill. He searched in vain next day, with a band of shepherds. On returning to his cottage, he found that the dog, on receiving a piece of cake, had instantly gone off. He renewed the search for several days, and still the dog had disappeared, during his absence, taking with it a piece of cake. Struck with this circumstance, he remained at home one day, and when the dog, as usual, departed with his piece of cake, he resolved to follow him. The dog led the way to a cataract at some distance from the spot where the shepherd had left his child. The banks of the waterfall almost joined at the top, yet, separated by an abyss of immense depth, presented that abrupt appearance which so often astonishes and appals the traveller amidst the Grampian Mountains. Down one of these rugged and almost perpendicular descents the dog began, without hesitation, to make his way, and at last disappeared in a cave, the mouth of which was almost upon a level with the torrent. The shepherd with difficulty followed; but, on entering the cave, what were his emotions when he beheld his infant eating, with much satisfaction, the cake which the dog had just brought him, while the faithful animal stood by, eyeing his young charge with the utmost complacence. From the situation in which the child was found, it appears that he had wandered to the brink of the precipice, and either fallen or scrambled down till he reached the cave, which the dread of the torrent had afterwards prevented him from leaving. The dog, by means of his scent, had traced him to the spot, and afterwards prevented him from starving by giving up to him his own daily allowance. He appears never to have quitted the child by night or day, except when it was necessary to go for its food, and then he was always seen running at full speed to and from the cottage. The memory of the dog Gelert has been preserved by tradition, and celebrated in poetry. In the neighborhood of a village at the foot of Snowdon, a mountain in Wales, Llewellyn, son-in-law to King John, had a residence. The king, it is said, had presented him with one of the finest greyhounds in England, named Gelert. In the year 1205, Llewellyn one day, on going out to hunt, called all his dogs together; but his favorite greyhound was missing, and nowhere to be found. He blew his horn as a signal for the chase, and still Gelert came not. Llewellyn was much disconcerted at the heedlessness of his favorite, but at length pursued the chase without him. For want of Gelert the sport was limited; and, getting tired, he returned home at an early hour, when the first object that presented itself to him at the castle gate was Gelert, who bounded with the usual transport to meet his master, having his lips besmeared with blood. Llewellyn gazed with surprise at the unusual appearance of his dog. On going into the apartment where he had left his infant son and heir asleep, he found the bed-clothes all in confusion, the cover rent and stained with blood. He called on his child, but no answer was made, from which he hastily concluded that the dog must have devoured him; and, giving vent to his rage, plunged his sword to the hilt in Gelert's side. The noble animal fell at his feet, uttering a dying yell which awoke the infant, who was sleeping beneath a mingled heap of the bed-clothes, while beneath the bed lay a great wolf covered with gore, whom the faithful and gallant hound had destroyed. Llewellyn, smitten with sorrow and remorse for the rash and frantic deed which had deprived him of so faithful an animal, caused an elegant marble monument, with an appropriate inscription, to be erected over the spot where Gelert was buried, to commemorate his fidelity and unhappy fate. The place to this day is called Beth-Gelert, or the Grave of the Greyhound. "Here never could the spearman pass, Or forester, unmoved; Here oft the tear-besprinkled grass Llewellyn's sorrow proved. And here he hung his horn and spear, And oft, as evening fell, In fancy's piercing sounds would hear Poor Gelert's dying yell." The bull-dog would appear the least likely to combat with a heavy sea, and yet the following circumstances are well authenticated: On board a ship, which struck upon a rock near the shore, there were three dogs, two of the Newfoundland variety, and one a small but firmly-built English bull-dog. It was important to have a rope carried ashore, and it was thought that one of the Newfoundland dogs might succeed; but he was not able to struggle with the waves, and perished; and the other Newfoundland dog, being thrown over with the rope, shared the same fate. But the bull-dog, though not habituated to the water, swam triumphantly to land, and thus saved the lives of the persons on board. Among them was his master, a military officer, who still has the dog in his possession. Among the instances of sagacity, mingled with an affection for its master, may be mentioned those cases in which the dog notices or detects thefts, and restores lost or stolen articles to its master. An acquaintance of Lord Fife's coachman had put a bridle belonging to the earl in his pocket, and would have abstracted it, had he not been stopped by a Highland cur, that observed him, barked at him, and absolutely bit his leg. This was unusual conduct in the dog; but the wonder of the servants ceased when they saw the end of the bridle peeping out of the visitor's pocket; and it being delivered up, the dog became quiet. It is well known that in London, the other year, a box, properly directed, was sent to a merchant's shop to lie there all night, and be shipped off with other goods next morning, and that a dog, which accidentally came into the shop with a customer, by his smelling it, and repeatedly barking in a peculiar way, led to the discovery that the box contained not goods, but a rogue who intended to admit his companions and plunder the shop in the night-time. A man who frequented the _Pont Neuf_ in Paris, and whose business it was to brush the boots of persons passing by, taught his dog, which was a poodle, to roll himself in the mud, and then brush by gentlemen so as to soil their boots. In this way, the animal largely contributed to support the trade of his master. There were two friends--one living in London, the other at Guildford. These were on terms of the greatest intimacy, and for many years it had been the custom of the London family to pass the Christmas with the one at Guildford. Their usual practice was to arrive to dinner the day before, and they were always accompanied by a large spaniel, who was as great a favorite of the visited as of the visitors. At the end of about seven years, the two families had an unfortunate misunderstanding, which occasioned an omission of the usual Christmas invitation. About an hour before dinner, the Guildford gentleman, who was standing at the window, exclaimed to his wife, "Well, my dear, the W.'s have thought better of it, for I declare they are coming as usual, although we did not invite them; for here comes Cæsar to announce them;" and the dog came trotting up to the door, and was admitted, as usual, into the parlor. The lady of the house gave orders to prepare beds; dinner waited an hour; but no guests arrived. Cæsar, having staid the exact number of days to which he had been accustomed, set off for home, and reached it in safety. The correspondence which subsequently occurred had the happy effect of renewing the intercourse of the estranged friends; and as long as Cæsar lived, he paid the annual visit in company with his master and mistress. A terrier, belonging to the Marchioness of Stafford, having lost a litter of puppies, was quite disconsolate, till, perceiving a brood of young ducks, she immediately seized them, and carried them to her lair, where she kept them, following them out and in, and nursing them in her own way with the most affectionate anxiety. When the ducklings, obeying their instinct, went into the water, their foster-mother exhibited the utmost alarm, and as soon as they returned to land, she snatched them up, one by one, in her mouth, and ran home with them. The next year, the same animal, being again deprived of her puppies, seized two cock chickens, which she reared with infinite care. When they began to crow, their foster-mother was as much annoyed as she had been with the swimming of the young ducks, and never failed to repress their attempts at crowing. A man engaged in smuggling lace into France from Flanders, trained an active and sagacious spaniel to aid him in his enterprise. He caused him to be shaved, and procured for him the skin of another dog of the same hair and the same shape. He then rolled the lace round the body of the dog, and put over it the other skin so adroitly that the trick could not be easily discovered. The lace being thus arranged, the smuggler would say to the docile messenger, "Homeward, my friend." At these words, the dog would start, and pass boldly through the gates of Malines and Valenciennes in the face of the vigilant officers placed there to prevent smuggling. Having thus passed the bounds, he would await his master at a little distance in the open country. There they mutually caressed and feasted, and the merchant placed his rich package in a place of security, renewing his occupation as occasion required. Such was the success of this smuggler, that, in less than five years, he amassed a handsome fortune, and kept his coach. Envy pursues the prosperous. A mischievous neighbor at length betrayed the lace merchant; notwithstanding all his efforts to disguise the dog, he was suspected, watched, and discovered. But the cunning of the dog was equal to the emergency. Did the spies of the custom-house expect him at one gate, he saw them at a distance, and ran to another; were all the gates shut against him, he overcame every obstacle; sometimes he leaped over the wall; at others, passing secretly behind a carriage, or running between the legs of travellers, he would thus accomplish his aim. One day, however, while swimming a stream near Malines, he was shot, and died in the water. There was then about him five thousand crowns' worth of lace--the loss of which did not afflict his master, but he was inconsolable for the loss of his faithful dog. A dog belonging to a chamois-hunter, being on the glaciers in Switzerland, with an Englishman and his master, observed the former approaching one of the crevices in the ice, to look into it. He began to slide towards the edge; his guide, with a view to save him, caught his coat, and both slid onward, till the dog seized his master's clothes, and preserved them both from inevitable death. Dogs have a capacity to act upon excitements of an artificial nature. A dog, in Paris, at the commencement of the revolution, was known to musicians by the name of Parade, because he regularly attended the military at the Tuileries, stood by and marched with the band. At night he went to the opera, and dined with any musician who intimated, by word or gesture, that his company was asked; yet always withdrew from any attempt to be made the property of any individual. The Penny Magazine furnishes a still more singular instance of the desire of excitement, in a dog which, for several years, was always present at the fires in London. Some years ago, a gentleman residing a few miles from London, in Surrey, was roused in the middle of the night by the intelligence that the premises adjoining his house of business were on fire. The removal of his furniture and papers, of course, immediately called his attention; yet, notwithstanding this, and the bustle that is ever incident to a fire, his eye every now and then rested on a dog, whom, during the progress of the devouring element, he could not help noticing, running about, and apparently taking a deep interest in what was going on--contriving to keep himself out of every body's way, and yet always present amidst the thickest of the stir. When the fire was got under, and the gentleman had leisure to look about him, he again observed the dog, who, with the firemen, appeared to be resting from the fatigues of duty, and was led to make inquiries respecting him. Stooping down, and patting the animal, he addressed a fireman near him, and asked him if the dog were his. "No, sir," replied the man, "he does not belong to me, nor to any one in particular. We call him the firemen's dog." "The firemen's dog? Why so? Has he no master?" "No, sir; he calls none of us master, though we are all of us willing to give him a night's lodging, and a pennyworth of meat; but he won't stay long with any of us. His delight is to be at all the fires of London, and, far or near, we generally find him on the road as we are going along; and sometimes, if it is out of town, we give him a lift. I don't think that there has been a fire for these two or three years past which he has not been at." Three years after this conversation, the same gentleman was again called up in the night to a fire in the village where he resided, and, to his surprise, he again met "the firemen's dog," still alive and well, pursuing, with the same apparent interest and satisfaction, the exhibition of that which generally brings with it ruin and loss of life. Still he called no man master, disdained to receive bed or board from the same hand more than a night or two at a time, nor could the firemen trace out his ordinary resting-place. To this long list, we might add many other anecdotes, in evidence of the varied powers of the canine family. We have endeavored to select those only which are well authenticated. Some of these are sufficiently marvellous, but there are many other well-attested accounts equally wonderful. Mr. Hogg seems to imagine that mankind are prepared to believe any thing in respect to dogs which partakes of the mysterious, and accordingly plays off the following quiet joke upon his readers:-- "It's a good sign of a dog when his face grows like his master's. It's proof he's aye glow'ring up in his master's e'en to discover what he's thinking on; and then, without the word or wave of command, to be aff to execute the wull o' his silent thocht, whether it be to wean sheep, or to run doon deer. Hector got so like me, afore he dee'd, that I remember, when I was owre lazy to gang to the kirk, I used to send him to take my place in the pew, and the minister never kent the difference. Indeed, he once asked me next day what I thocht of the sermon; for he saw me wonderfu' attentive amang a rather sleepy congregation. "Hector and me gied ane anither sic a look! and I was feared Mr. Paton would have observed it; but he was a simple, primitive, unsuspecting old man--a very Nathaniel without guile, and he jaloused nothing; tho' both Hector and me was like to split; and the dog, after laughing in his sleeve for mair than a hundred yards, couldn't stand't nae longer, but was obliged to loup awa owre a hedge into a potato field, pretending to scent partridges." THE WOLF. This is a fierce and savage beast, resembling in form and size the Newfoundland dog. It hunts in packs, and attacks deer, sheep, and sometimes even man himself. When taken young, it may be tamed. It is found in the northern portions of both continents. In North America, there are several varieties. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Mr. Cuvier gives an account of a wolf that had all the obedience and affection that any dog could evince. He was brought up by his master in the same manner as a puppy, and, when full grown, was sent to the menagerie at Paris. For many weeks, he was quite disconsolate at the separation from his master, refused to take food, and was indifferent to his keepers. At length he became attached to those about him, and seemed to have forgotten his old affections. On his master's return, however, in a year and a half, the wolf heard his voice among the crowd in the gardens, and, being set at liberty, displayed the most violent joy. He was again separated from his friend; and again, his grief was as extreme as on the first occasion. After three years' absence, his master once more returned. It was evening, and the wolf's den was shut up from any external observation; yet, the moment the man's voice was heard, the faithful animal set up the most anxious cries, and, on the door of his cage being opened, he rushed to his friend, leaped upon his shoulders, licked his face, and threatened to bite his keepers when they attempted to separate them. When the man again left him, he fell sick, and refused all food; and from the time of his recovery, which was long very doubtful, it was always dangerous for a stranger to approach him. A story is told of a Scotch bagpiper, who was travelling in Ireland one evening, when he suddenly encountered a wolf who seemed to be very ravenous. The poor man could think of no other expedient to save his life, than to open his wallet, and try the effect of hospitality; he did so, and the savage beast swallowed all that was thrown to him with such voracity, that it seemed as if his appetite was not in the least degree satisfied. The whole stock of provisions was of course soon spent, and now the man's only resource was in the virtues of his bagpipe; this the monster no sooner heard than he took to the mountains with the same precipitation with which he had left them. The poor piper did not wholly enjoy his deliverance; for, looking ruefully at his empty wallet, he shook his fist at the departing animal, saying, "Ay! Are these your tricks? Had I known your humor, you should have had your music before your supper." In Sweden, frequent attacks are made upon the people by wolves, during the winter, as they are then often in a famishing condition. In one instance, a party of sixteen sledges were returning from a dance on a cold and starlight night. In the middle of the cavalcade was a sledge occupied by a lady; at the back of the vehicle sat the servant; and at her feet, on a bear skin, reposed her favorite lapdog. In passing through a wood, a large wolf suddenly sprang out, and, jumping into the sledge, seized the poor dog, and was out of sight before any steps could be taken for his rescue. A Swedish peasant was one day crossing a large lake on his sledge, when he was attacked by a drove of wolves. This frightened the horse so much that he went off at full speed. There was a loose rope hanging from the back of the vehicle that had been used for binding hay; to the end of this a noose happened to be attached. Though this was not intended to catch a wolf, it fortunately effected that object; for one of the ferocious animals getting his feet entangled in it, he was immediately destroyed, owing to the rapidity with which the horse was proceeding. The poor man at length reached a place of safety. Though he had been dreadfully frightened during the ride, he not only found himself much sooner at the end of his journey than he expected, but richer by the booty he had thus unexpectedly gained--the skin of a wolf in this country being worth about two dollars and a half. A peasant in Russia was once pursued in his sledge by eleven wolves. Being about two miles from home, he urged his horse to the very extent of his speed. At the entrance to his residence was a gate, which being shut at the time, the frightened horse dashed open, and carried his master safely into the courtyard. Nine of the wolves followed them into the enclosure, when fortunately the gate swung back, and shut them all as it were in a trap. Finding themselves thus caught, the animals seemed to lose all their ferocity; and, as escape was impossible, slunk into holes and corners, molesting no one, and offering no resistance. They were all despatched without further difficulty. The prairie wolf is said to be wonderfully cunning and sagacious. Instances have been known of his burrowing under ground to procure the bait from a trap, rather than run the chance of being caught above. Many and curious are the devices prepared to ensnare this animal, but very few have succeeded. This variety of wolf is common in the prairies of the western country, where it hunts deer by running them down. Sometimes a large number associate together, and, forming a crescent, creep slowly towards a herd of deer, so as not to alarm them. They then rush on with hideous yells, and drive the poor animals towards a precipice, seeming to know that, when they are once at full speed, they will all follow one another over the cliff. The wolves then descend at leisure, and feed upon their slaughtered victims. A farmer in France, one day looking through the hedge in his garden, observed a wolf walking round a mule, but unable to get at him on account of the mule's constantly kicking with his hind legs. As the farmer perceived that the beast was so well able to defend himself, he did not interfere. After the attack and defence had lasted a quarter of an hour, the wolf ran off to a neighboring ditch, where he several times plunged into the water. The farmer imagined that he did this to refresh himself after the fatigue he had sustained, and had no doubt that his mule had gained a complete victory; but in a few minutes the wolf returned to the charge, and, approaching as near as he could to the head of the mule, shook himself, and spouted a quantity of water into the animal's eyes, which caused him immediately to shut them. That moment, the wolf leaped upon him, and killed the poor animal before the farmer could come to his assistance. In the commencement of the reign of Louis XIV., of France, in the depth of winter, a party of dragoons were attacked, at the foot of the mountains of Jurat, by a multitude of wolves; the dragoons fought bravely, and killed many hundreds of them; but at last, overpowered by numbers, they and their horses were all devoured. A cross is erected on the place of combat, with an inscription in commemoration of it, which is to be seen at this day. THE FOX. This animal, which resembles a small dog, is widely distributed over the colder portions of both continents. There are several species, as the red, gray, black, silver, arctic, &c. In all ages and countries, the fox has been remarkable for his cunning, and, from the time of Æsop to the present day, has figured, in allegory and fable, as the personification of artifice and duplicity. _Fruitless Enterprise._--A fox finding himself hard run by the hounds, at a hunt in Ireland, ran up a stone wall, from which he sprang on the roof of an adjoining cabin, and mounted up to the chimney-top. From that elevated station, he looked all around him, as if reconnoitring the coming enemy. A wily old hound approaching, and having gained the roof, was preparing to seize the fox, when, lo! renard dropped suddenly down the chimney. The dog looked wistfully down the dark opening, but dared not pursue the fugitive. Meanwhile renard, half enrobed in soot, had fallen into the lap of an old woman, who, surrounded by a number of children, was gravely smoking her pipe, not at all expecting the entrance of this abrupt visitor. "_Emiladh deouil!_" said the affrighted female, as she threw from her the red and black quadruped. Renard grinned, growled, and showed his fangs; and when the huntsmen, who had secured the door, entered, they found him in quiet possession of the kitchen, the old woman and children having retired, in terror of the invader, to an obscure corner of the room. The fox was taken alive without much difficulty. _Unavailing Artifice._--Two gentlemen in New Jersey went out to hunt rabbits. In a low, bushy swamp, the dogs started a fox, and off they went in swift pursuit. After a chase of two miles, he entered a very dense thicket, and, making a circuit of the place, returned to the point whence he first started. The dogs closely pursuing the fox, he again started for the thicket, when one of the sportsmen shot at him, and he fell apparently dead at his feet. As he stooped to pick him up, however, he rose upon his legs and escaped. For two hours and a half, the thicket was the scene of the wiles of renard; but at last he was taken, and, being carried home by the men, was thrown, apparently quite dead, into the corner of the room. The family sat down to supper. Finding them all busily engaged, he ventured to reconnoitre, and had cautiously raised himself on his fore legs for the purpose, but, on finding himself observed, resumed his quiescent state. One of the party, to ascertain whether the fox was alive or not, passed a piece of lighted paper under his nose; but the inanimate stone or log appeared not more senseless at that moment. Finding all attempts to get away unavailing, renard submitted to his destiny with a very good grace, and the next morning was as well as ever, bating a slight wound in the shoulder and a dirty skin. _Unexpected Resentment._--Some country people in Germany once caught a pike, but in conveying it home during the night, it escaped. As it was a large fish, they returned with torches to secure their prize, and after some time found it on the grass, having fast hold of a fox by the nose. The animal caught in this novel trap made every effort to escape, without success; and it was not until the pike was killed, that it was possible to separate them. It seems that, after the pike was dropped by the fisherman, renard came across it, and in paying his addresses to it, was received in the manner we have described. THE HYENA. This animal, which is the size of a large dog, belongs to Africa. It is very ferocious, feeds on flesh, and prefers that which is in a state of decay. It seems, with the vulture, to be a scavenger to remove masses of putrid flesh, which, in these hot regions, would otherwise breed infection and disease. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Bruce, in his "Travels in Africa," gives us the following account of the hyena:-- "One night, being very busily engaged in my tent, I heard something pass behind me towards the bed, but, upon looking round, could perceive nothing. Having finished what I was about, I went out, resolving directly to return, which I did. I now perceived a pair of large blue eyes glaring at me in the dark. I called to my servant to bring a light, and there stood a hyena, near the head of my bed, with two or three large bunches of candles in his mouth. As his mouth was full, I was not afraid of him; so, with my pike, I struck him as near the heart as I could judge. It was not till then that he showed any signs of fierceness; but, feeling his wound, he let the candles drop, and endeavored to climb up the handle of the spear, to arrive at me; so that, in self-defence, I was obliged to draw a pistol from my girdle, and shoot him; nearly at the same time, my servant cleft his skull with a battle-axe. "The hyena appears to be senseless and stupid during the day. I have locked up with him a goat, a kid, and a lamb, all day, when he was fasting, and found them in the evening alive and unhurt. Repeating the experiment one night, he ate up a young ass, a goat, and a fox, all before morning, so as to leave nothing but some small fragments of the ass's bones." Sparman furnishes us with the following story:--"One night, at a feast near the Cape, a trumpeter, who had got himself well filled with liquor, was carried out of doors in order to cool and sober him. The scent of him soon attracted a spotted hyena, which threw him on his back, and carried him away to Sable Mountain, thinking him a corpse, and consequently a fair prize. "In the mean time, our drunken musician awoke, sufficiently sensible to know the danger of his situation, and to sound his alarm with his trumpet, which he carried at his side. The beast, as it may be imagined, was greatly frightened, in its turn, and immediately ran away." THE LION. This animal stands at the head of the numerous family of cats, and has often been ranked by naturalists as the lord of the brute creation, and holding the same relation to quadrupeds as the eagle does to birds. Like all the rest of his genus, the lion steals upon his prey, and, when at a proper distance, rushes upon it with a bound, securing it in his sharp claws. In general he is cowardly; but, in pursuit of his prey, he is, to the last degree, fearless and ferocious. His strength is so great that he can break a man's skull with the stroke of his paw, and can drag the body of a cow over the ground at a gallop. His roar is terrific, and when heard, the animals around seem agitated with the wildest terror. The lion is common in the hot parts of Africa, and is occasionally found in India. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Some Hottentots once perceived a lion dragging a buffalo from the plain to a neighboring woody hill. They soon forced him to quit his prey, in order to secure it for themselves. They now found that the lion had had the sagacity to take out those inner parts of the buffalo that it rejected as food, in order to make it easier to carry away the fleshy and eatable parts of the carcass, thus showing reflection on his part. It is probable that the lion does not easily venture upon any one who puts himself in a posture of defence. The following anecdote would seem to show that this is the case. A young man was walking one day on his lands in the southern parts of Africa, when he unexpectedly met a large lion. Being an excellent shot, he thought himself sure of killing him, and therefore fired. But unfortunately, the charge had been in the piece for some time, and the ball fell before it reached the animal. The young man, seized with panic, now took to his heels; but being soon out of breath, and closely pursued by the lion, he jumped upon a little heap of stones, and there made a stand, presenting the butt-end of his gun to his adversary, fully resolved to defend his life as well as he could. This movement had such an effect upon the lion, that he likewise came to a stand; and what was still more singular, laid himself down at some paces' distance from the stones, seemingly quite unconcerned. The sportsman, in the mean while, did not dare to stir a step from the spot; besides, in his flight, he had lost his powder-horn. At length, after waiting a good half hour, the lion rose up, and retreated slowly, step by step, as if it had a mind to steal off; but as soon as it got to a greater distance, it began to bound away with great rapidity. It is related that Geoffrey de la Tour, one of the knights that went upon the first crusade to the Holy Land, heard, one day, as he rode through a forest, a cry of distress. Hoping to rescue some unfortunate sufferer, the knight rode boldly into the thicket; but what was his astonishment, when he beheld a large lion, with a serpent coiled round his body! To relieve the distressed was the duty of every knight; therefore, with a single stroke of the sword, and regardless of the consequences to himself, he killed the serpent, and extricated the tremendous animal from his perilous situation. From that hour the grateful creature constantly accompanied his deliverer, whom he followed like a dog, and never displayed his natural ferocity but at his command. At length, the crusade being terminated, Sir Geoffrey prepared to set sail for Europe. He wished to take the lion with him; but the master of the ship was unwilling to admit him on board, and the knight was, therefore, obliged to leave him on the shore. The lion, when he saw himself separated from his beloved master, first began to roar hideously; then, seeing the ship moving off, he plunged into the waves, and endeavored to swim after it. But all his efforts were in vain; and at length, his strength being exhausted, he sank, and the ocean ingulfed the noble animal, whose unshaken fidelity deserved a better fate. Some years since there was, in a menagerie at Cassel, in Germany, a large lion, whose keeper was a woman, to whom the animal seemed most affectionately attached. In order to amuse the company, this woman was in the habit of putting her hands, and even her head, into the lion's mouth, without experiencing the least injury. Upon one occasion, however, having introduced her head, as usual, between the animal's jaws, he made a sudden snap, and killed her on the spot. Undoubtedly, this catastrophe was unintentional on the part of the lion; probably the hair of the woman's head irritated his throat, so as to make him sneeze or cough. This supposition is confirmed by the subsequent conduct of the animal; for as soon as he perceived that he had killed his attendant, the good-tempered, grateful creature exhibited the signs of the deepest melancholy, laid himself down by the side of the dead body, which he would not suffer to be removed, refused to take any food, and, in a few days, pined himself to death. A remarkable instance of docility in a lion once took place in the menagerie at Chester, in England. A strange keeper, having fed a magnificent lion one evening, neglected to fasten the door of the den. The watchman, when going his rounds about three the next morning, discovered the king of beasts deliberately walking about the yard, and surveying the objects with apparent curiosity. The watchman went to call the proprietors, and when they arrived they found the lion _couchant_ upon the top of one of the coaches in the yard. With very little entreaty, the monarch of the forest deigned to descend from his throne, and very graciously followed a young lady, the proprietor's daughter, back to his den. Some time ago, for the purpose of seeing the manner in which the lion pounces upon his prey, a little dog was, most cruelly, thrown into the den of one of these animals in the Tower Menagerie. The poor little animal skulked, in terror, to the most remote corner of the lion's apartment, who, regarding him with complacency, refrained from approaching him. The little trembler, seeing the lion's mildness, ventured to draw near him; and soon becoming familiar, they lived together thenceforward in the most perfect harmony; and, although the little dog had sometimes the temerity to dispute his share of food with the king of the beasts, yet he magnanimously allowed him to satisfy his appetite before he thought of making a meal himself. A lioness in the Tower of London once formed such an attachment for a little dog which was kept with her in the den, that she would not eat till the dog was first satisfied. After the lioness had become a mother, it was thought advisable to take the animal away, for fear that her jealous fondness for her whelps might lead her to injure it. But while the keeper was cleaning the den, the dog, by some means, got into it, and approached the lioness with his wonted fondness. She was playing with her cubs; and, seeing the dog approach, she sprang towards him, and, seizing the poor little animal by the throat, seemed in the act of tearing him to pieces; but as if she momentarily recollected her former fondness for him, she carried him to the door of the den, and suffered him to be taken out unhurt. To the traveller in Africa, the lion is formidable not at night only; he lies in his path, and is with difficulty disturbed, to allow a passage for his wagons and cattle, even when the sun is shining with its utmost brilliancy; or he is roused from some bushy place, on the roadside, by the indefatigable dogs which always accompany a caravan. Mr. Burchell has described, with great spirit, an encounter of this nature:-- "The day was exceedingly pleasant, and not a cloud was to be seen. For a mile or two we travelled along the banks of the river, which in this part abounded in tall mat-rushes. The dogs seemed much to enjoy prowling about, and examining every bushy place, and at last met with some object among the rushes which caused them to set up a most vehement and determined barking. We explored the spot with caution, as we suspected, from the peculiar tone of their bark, that it was, what it proved to be, lions. Having encouraged the dogs to drive them out, a task which they performed with great willingness, we had a full view of an enormous black-maned lion and lioness. The latter was seen only for a minute, as she made her escape up the river, under concealment of the rushes; but _the lion_ came steadily forward, and stood still to look at us. At this moment we felt our situation not free from danger, as the animal seemed preparing to spring upon us, and we were standing on the bank at the distance of only a few yards from him, most of us being on foot and unarmed, without any visible possibility of escaping. "I had given up my horse to the hunters, and was on foot myself; but there was no time for fear, and it was useless to attempt avoiding him. I stood well upon my guard, holding my pistols in my hand, with my finger upon the trigger; and those who had muskets kept themselves prepared in the same manner. But at this instant the dogs boldly flew in between us and the lion, and, surrounding him, kept him at bay by their violent and resolute barking. The courage of these faithful animals was most admirable; they advanced up to the side of the huge beast, and stood making the greatest clamor in his face, without the least appearance of fear. The lion, conscious of his strength, remained unmoved at their noisy attempts, and kept his head turned towards us. At one moment, the dogs, perceiving his eyes thus engaged, had advanced close to his feet, and seemed as if they would actually seize hold of him; but they paid dearly for their imprudence; for, without discomposing the majestic and steady attitude in which he stood fixed, he merely moved his paw, and at the next instant I beheld two lying dead. In doing this, he made so little exertion, that it was scarcely perceptible by what means they had been killed. Of the time which we had gained by the interference of the dogs, not a moment was lost. We fired upon him; one of the balls went through his side just between the short ribs, and the blood immediately began to flow; but the animal still remained standing in the same position. We had now no doubt that he would spring upon us; every gun was instantly reloaded; but happily we were mistaken, and were not sorry to see him move quietly away; though I had hoped in a few minutes to have been enabled to take hold of his paw without danger. "This was considered, by our party, to be a lion of the largest size, and seemed, as I measured him by comparison with the dogs, to be, though less bulky, as heavy as an ox. He was certainly as long in body, though lower in stature; and his copious mane gave him a truly formidable appearance. He was of that variety which the Hottentots and boors distinguish by the name of the _black lion_, on account of the blacker color of the mane, and which is said to be always larger and more dangerous than the other, which they call the _pale lion_. Of the courage of a lion I have no very high opinion; but of his majestic air and movements, as exhibited by this animal, while at liberty in his native plains, I can bear testimony. Notwithstanding the pain of a wound, of which he must soon afterwards have died, he moved slowly away, with a stately and measured step." THE TIGER. This animal, of which there is but one species, is found in the southern parts of Asia, and the adjacent islands. It is inferior only to the lion in strength, size, and courage. The body is long, the legs rather short, the eyes glassy, and the countenance haggard, savage, and ferocious. It has strength to seize a man and carry him off at full gallop, and its ferocity leads it to slay beyond its desire for food. In contrast to these hideous qualities, its skin is marked with a singular beauty, being of a fawn color, splendidly striped downward with black bands. Its step resembles that of a cat. When taken young, and kindly treated, it grows familiar, and exhibits gentleness and affection towards its keeper. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Of the muscular powers of the tiger we have the following illustration: A buffalo, belonging to a peasant in the East Indies, having fallen into a quagmire, the man was himself unable to extricate it, and went to call the assistance of his neighbors. Meanwhile, a large tiger, coming to the spot, seized upon the buffalo, and dragged him out. When the men came to the place, they saw the tiger, with the buffalo thrown over his shoulder, in the act of retiring with him towards the jungle. No sooner, however, did he observe the men, than he let fall the dead animal, and precipitately escaped. On coming up, they found the buffalo quite dead, and his whole blood sucked out. Some idea may be gained of the immense power of the tiger, when it is mentioned that the ordinary weight of a buffalo is above a thousand pounds, and consequently considerably more than double its own weight. The effect of feeding the tiger upon raw flesh, is shown by the following anecdote: A party of gentlemen, from Bombay, found, one day, in a cavern, a tiger's whelp, which was hidden in an obscure corner. Snatching it up hastily, they cautiously retreated. Being left entirely at liberty, and well fed, the tiger became tame, like the dog, grew rapidly, and appeared entirely domesticated. At length it attained a great size, and began to inspire terror by its tremendous strength and power, notwithstanding its gentleness. Up to this moment, it had been studiously kept from raw meat. But, unfortunately, during its rambles, a piece of flesh dripping with blood fell in its way. The instant it had tasted it, something like madness seemed to seize the animal; a destructive principle, hitherto dormant, was kindled: it darted fiercely, and with glowing eyes, upon its prey--tore it with fury to pieces, and, growling and roaring in the most frightful manner, rushed off, and disappeared in the jungle. Tigers are sometimes very cunning. One of them was kept at a French factory, at Silsceri, which was secured by a strong chain. This animal used to scatter a portion of the rice that was set before him as far round the front of his den as possible. This enticed the poultry to come and pick it up. The tiger pretended to be asleep, in order to induce them to approach nearer, when he suddenly sprang upon them, and seldom failed to make several of them his prey. This animal is susceptible of strong attachments. An instance of this is recorded of a tigress of great beauty in the Tower at London. She was extremely docile in her passage home from Calcutta, was allowed to run about the vessel, and became exceedingly familiar with the sailors. On her arrival in London, however, her temper became irascible, and even dangerous, and she exhibited for some days a savage and sulky disposition. Shortly after, a sailor, who had had charge of her on board the ship, came to the Tower, and begged permission to enter her den. No sooner did she recognize her old friend, than she fawned upon him, licked and caressed him, exhibiting the most extravagant signs of pleasure; and, when he left her, she whined and cried the whole day afterwards. In time, however, she became reconciled to her new keeper and residence. Some years ago, a tame tiger was led about Madras by some of the natives, without any other restraint than a muzzle, and a small chain round his neck. The men lived by exhibiting, to the curious, the tiger's method of seizing his prey. The manner in which they showed this, was by fastening a sheep to a stake driven into the earth. The tiger was no sooner brought in sight of it than he crouched, and moved along the ground on his belly, slowly and cautiously, till he came within the limits of a bound, when he sprang upon the sheep with the rapidity of an arrow, and struck it dead in an instant. Although the tigress sometimes destroys her young ones, she generally shows much anxiety for them. Two cubs were once discovered by some villagers, in India, while their mother was in quest of prey, and presented by them to a gentleman, who had them put in his stable. The creatures made piteous howlings every night, which at last reached the ears of the mother. She came to the spot, and answered their cries by hideous howlings, which so alarmed their keeper that he let the cubs loose, for fear the dam would break the door of the stable. Nothing was seen of them the next morning; the tigress had carried them both off into the jungle. The tiger is often hunted in India, and frequently the sportsmen are mounted upon elephants. Sometimes the animal is shot, and occasionally he is trodden to death, or laid prostrate on the earth, by the tramp of the elephant. Numerous anecdotes are told of these rencounters, all tending to show the fierce and formidable character of the tiger. It is much more active and ferocious than the lion, and is also more dangerous to the inhabitants who live in the vicinity of its retreats. THE PANTHER. This animal, which is a native of Northern Africa, is smaller than the tiger, but it possesses the same ferocious disposition. It preys upon every animal it can master, and man himself sometimes falls a victim to its rapacity. Its color is fawn, spotted with black. _A tame Panther._--Notwithstanding the savage character and habits of this animal, Mr. Bowditch, who resided at Coomassie, in Western Africa, gives us an interesting account of one that he tamed. When he was about a year old, he was taken to Cape Coast, being led through the country by a chain. When he arrived, he was placed in a court, where he became quite familiar with those around him, laying his paws upon their shoulders, and rubbing his head upon them. By degrees all fear of him subsided, and he was allowed to go at liberty within the gates of the castle, having a small boy for a keeper. On one occasion, Sai, as the panther was called, finding the lad sitting upright on the step fast asleep, lifted his paw, and gave him a blow on the side of the head, which knocked him down, and then stood wagging his tail, as if enjoying the mischief he had done. On another occasion, as an old woman was sweeping the hall with a short broom, which brought her nearly down upon all fours, Sai, who was hidden under the sofa, suddenly leaped upon her back, where he stood in triumph. She screamed violently, and all her fellow-servants scampered away in terror; nor was she released till the governor himself came to her assistance. After the departure of Mr. Bowditch from the castle, the ship in which he had embarked lay at anchor some weeks in the River Gaboon: while here, an orangoutang was brought on board, and the rage of the panther, who had accompanied his master, was indescribable. His back rose in an arch, his tail was elevated and perfectly stiff, his eyes flashed, and if he had not been restrained, he would have torn the ape in pieces. At the same time, the orang showed the greatest fear and terror. After sailing to England, the change of climate seemed to affect Sai, and medicine was given him in the shape of pills. These had the desired effect. On reaching the London Docks, he was taken ashore, and presented to the Duchess of York, who had him placed in Exeter 'Change. Here he remained for some weeks, apparently in good health; but he was taken suddenly ill, and died of an inflammation on the lungs. THE LEOPARD. This animal is more slender and graceful than the panther, yet it has all the savage qualities of the feline race. Its skin is exceedingly beautiful, being of a light fawn, marked with black spots. Nothing can surpass the ease, grace, and agility, of its movements. _Hunting the Leopard._--Two boors in Southern Africa, in the year 1822, returning from hunting the hartebeest, fell in with a leopard in a mountain ravine, and immediately gave chase to him. The animal at first endeavored to escape, by clambering up a precipice; but, being hotly pressed, and slightly wounded by a musket-ball, he turned upon his pursuers, with that frantic ferocity which, on such emergencies, he frequently displays: springing upon the man who had fired at him, he tore him from his horse to the ground, biting him, at the same time, very severely on the shoulder, and tearing his face and arms with his claws. The other hunter, seeing the danger of his comrade, sprang from his horse, and attempted to shoot the leopard through the head; but, whether owing to trepidation, the fear of wounding his friend, or the sudden motions of the animal, he unfortunately missed his aim. The leopard, abandoning his prostrate enemy, darted with redoubled fury upon this second antagonist; and so fierce and sudden was his onset, that, before the boor could stab him with his hunting-knife, he struck him in the eyes with his claws, and had torn the scalp over his forehead. In this frightful condition, the hunter grappled with the raging beast, and, struggling for life, they rolled together down a steep declivity. All this passed so rapidly that the other man had scarcely time to recover from the confusion into which his feline foe had thrown him, to seize his gun, and rush forward to aid his comrade--when he beheld them rolling together down the steep bank, in mortal conflict. In a few moments he was at the bottom with them, but too late to save the life of his friend, who had so gallantly defended him. The leopard had torn open the jugular vein, and so dreadfully mangled the throat of the unfortunate man, that his death was inevitable; and his comrade had only the melancholy satisfaction of completing the destruction of the savage beast, which was already much exhausted by several deep wounds in the breast, from the desperate knife of the expiring huntsman. _Captive Leopards._--Mr. Brown gives us the following account: "There are at present in the Tower a pair of these animals, from Asia, confined in the same den. The female is very tame, and gentle in her temper, and will allow herself to be patted and caressed by the keepers, while she licks their hands, and purrs. She, however, has one peculiarity--that she cannot bear many of the appendages which visitors bring with them to the menagerie. She has a particular predilection for the destruction of parasols, umbrellas, muffs, and hats, which she frequently contrives to lay hold of before the unwary spectator can prevent it, and tears them to pieces in an instant. She has been five years in the Tower, during which time she has seized and destroyed several hundreds of these articles, as well as other parts of ladies' dress. While this creature is in a playful mood, she bounds about her cell with the quickness of thought, touching the four sides of it nearly at one and the same instant. So rapid are her motions, that she can scarcely be followed by the eye; and she will even skim along the ceiling of her apartment with the same amazing rapidity, evincing great pliability of form and wonderful muscular powers. The male has been about two years in the Tower, and is only beginning to suffer familiarities; but he seems jealous of the slightest approach. He is larger than the female, the color of his skin more highly toned, and the spotting more intensely black." THE JAGUAR. This animal is confined to South America, where it is frequently called a tiger. It greatly resembles the panther of Africa in size, appearance, and habits. It inhabits thick forests, and sometimes destroys cows and horses. It also feeds on fish, which it entices to the surface by its spittle, and then knocks them out of the water with its paw. _The Jaguar's Cave._--From the numerous anecdotes in relation to this animal, we select the following interesting account communicated to the Edinburgh Literary Journal: "On leaving the Indian village, we continued to wind round Chimborazo's wide base; but its snow-crowned head no longer shone above us in clear brilliancy, for a dense fog was gathering gradually around it. Our guides looked anxiously towards it, and announced their apprehensions of a violent storm. We soon found that their fears were well founded. The thunder began to roll, and resounded through the mountainous passes with the most terrific grandeur. Then came the vivid lightning; flash following flash--above, around, beneath--every where a sea of fire. We sought a momentary shelter in the cleft of the rocks, whilst one of our guides hastened forward to seek a more secure asylum. In a short time he returned and informed us that he had discovered a spacious cavern, which would afford us sufficient protection from the elements. We proceeded thither immediately, and with great difficulty, and some danger, at last got into it. "When the storm had somewhat abated, our guides ventured out, to ascertain if it were possible to continue our journey. The cave in which we had taken refuge was so extremely dark, that, if we moved a few paces from the entrance, we could not see an inch before us; and we were debating as to the propriety of leaving it, even before the Indians came back, when we suddenly heard a singular groaning or growling, in the farther end of the cavern, which instantly fixed all our attention. Wharton and myself listened anxiously; but our inconsiderate young friend Lincoln, together with my huntsman, crept about on their hands and knees, and endeavored to discover, by groping, whence the sound proceeded. "They had not advanced far into the cavern, before we heard them utter an exclamation of surprise; and they returned to us, each carrying in his arms an animal singularly marked, about the size of a cat, seemingly of great strength and power, and furnished with immense fangs. The eyes were of a green color; strong claws were upon their feet; and a blood-red tongue hung out of their mouths. Wharton had scarcely glanced at them, when he exclaimed in consternation, 'We have come into the den of a ----' He was interrupted by a fearful cry of dismay from our guides, who came rushing precipitately towards us, calling out, 'A tiger, a tiger!' and, at the same time, with extraordinary rapidity, they climbed up a cedar-tree which stood at the entrance of the cave, and hid themselves among the branches. "After the first sensation of horror and surprise, which rendered me motionless for a moment, had subsided, I grasped my fire-arms. Wharton had already regained his composure and self-possession; and he called to us to assist in blocking up the mouth of the cave with an immense stone which fortunately lay near it. The sense of imminent danger augmented our strength; for we now distinctly heard the growl of the ferocious animal, and we were lost, beyond redemption, if he reached the entrance before we could get it closed. Ere this was done, we could distinctly see the tiger bounding towards the spot, and stooping in order to creep into his den by the narrow opening. At this fearful moment, our exertions were successful, and the great stone kept the wild beast at bay. "There was a small, open space, however, left between the top of the entrance and the stone, through which we could see the head of the animal, illuminated by his glowing eyes, which he rolled, glaring with fury, upon us. His frightful roaring, too, penetrated to the depths of the cavern, and was answered by the hoarse growling of the cubs. Our ferocious enemy attempted first to remove the stone with his powerful claws, and then to push it with his head from its place; and these efforts proving abortive, served only to increase his wrath. He uttered a tremendous, heart-piercing growl, and his flaming eyes darted light into the darkness of our retreat. "'Now is the time to fire at him,' said Wharton, with his usual calmness. 'Aim at his eyes; the ball will go through his brain, and we shall then have a chance to get rid of him.' "Frank seized his double-barrelled gun, and Lincoln his pistols. The former placed the muzzle within a few inches of the tiger, and Lincoln did the same. At Wharton's command, they both drew their triggers at the same moment; but no shot followed. The tiger, who seemed aware that the flash indicated an attack upon him, sprang growling from the entrance, but, finding himself unhurt, immediately turned back, and stationed himself in his former place. The powder in both pieces was wet. "'All is now over,' said Wharton. 'We have only now to choose whether we shall die of hunger, together with these animals who are shut up along with us, or open the entrance to the bloodthirsty monster without, and so make a quicker end of the matter.' "So saying, he placed himself close beside the stone, which for the moment defended us, and looked undauntedly upon the lightning eyes of the tiger. Lincoln raved, and Frank took a piece of strong cord from his pocket, and hastened to the farther end of the cave I knew not with what design. We soon, however, heard a low, stifled groaning; the tiger, which had heard it also, became more restless and disturbed than ever. He went backwards and forwards, before the entrance of the cave, in the most wild and impetuous manner; then stood still, and, stretching out his neck towards the forest, broke forth into a deafening howl. "Our two Indian guides took advantage of this opportunity to discharge several arrows from the tree; but the light weapons bounded back harmless from his thick skin. At length, however, one of them struck him near the eye, and the arrow remained sticking in the wound. He now broke anew into the wildest fury, sprang at the tree, and tore it with his claws, as if he would have dragged it to the ground. But having at length succeeded in getting rid of the arrow, he became more calm, and laid himself down, as before, in front of the cave. "Frank now returned from the lower end of the den, and a glance showed us what he had been doing. In each hand, and dangling from the end of a string, were the two cubs. He had strangled them, and, before we were aware what he intended, he threw them, through the opening, to the tiger. No sooner did the animal perceive them, than he gazed earnestly upon them, and began to examine them closely, turning them cautiously from side to side. As soon as he became aware that they were dead, he uttered so piercing a howl of sorrow, that we were obliged to put our hands to our ears. "The thunder had now ceased, and the storm had sunk to a gentle gale; the songs of the birds were again heard in the neighboring forest, and the sunbeams sparkled in the drops that hung from the leaves. We saw, through the aperture, how all nature was reviving, after the wild war of elements which had so recently taken place; but the contrast only made our situation the more horrible. The tiger had laid himself down beside his whelps. He was a beautiful animal, of great size and strength; and his limbs, being stretched out at their full length, displayed his immense power of muscle. A double row of great teeth stood far enough apart to show his large red tongue, from which the white foam fell in large drops. "All at once, another roar was heard at a distance, and the tiger immediately rose, and answered it with a mournful howl. At the same instant, our Indians uttered a shriek, which announced that some new danger threatened us. A few moments confirmed our worst fears; for another tiger, not quite so large as the former, came rapidly towards the spot where we were. "The howls which the tigress gave, when she had examined the bodies of her cubs, surpassed every thing of horrible that we had yet heard; and the tiger mingled his mournful cries with hers. Suddenly her roaring was lowered to a hoarse growling, and we saw her anxiously stretch out her head, extend her wide and smoking nostrils, and look as if she were determined to discover immediately the murderers of her young. Her eyes quickly fell upon us, and she made a spring forward, with the intention of penetrating our place of refuge. Perhaps she might have been enabled, by her immense strength, to push away the stone, had we not, with all our united power, held it against her. "When she found that all her efforts were fruitless, she approached the tiger, who lay stretched out beside his cubs, and he rose and joined in her hollow roarings. They stood together for a few moments, as if in consultation, and then suddenly went off at a rapid pace, and disappeared from our sight. Their howlings died away in the distance, and then entirely ceased. "Our Indians descended from their tree, and called upon us to seize the only possibility of yet saving ourselves, by instant flight, for that the tigers had only gone round the height to seek another inlet into the cave, with which they were, no doubt, acquainted. In the greatest haste the stone was pushed aside, and we stepped forth from what we had considered a living grave. We now heard once more the roaring of the tigress, though at a distance, and, following the example of our guides, we precipitately struck into a side path. From the number of roots and branches of trees, with which the storm had strewed our way, and the slipperiness of the road, our flight was slow and difficult. "We had proceeded thus for about a quarter of an hour, when we found that our way led along a rocky cliff, with innumerable fissures. We had just entered upon it, when suddenly the Indians, who were before us, uttered one of their piercing shrieks, and we immediately became aware that the tigers were in pursuit of us. Urged by despair, we rushed towards one of the breaks or gulfs in our way, over which was thrown a bridge of reeds, that sprang up and down at every step, and could be trod with safety by the light foot of the Indians alone. Deep in the hollow below rushed an impetuous stream, and a thousand pointed and jagged rocks threatened destruction on every side. "Lincoln, my huntsman, and myself, passed over the chasm in safety; but Wharton was still in the middle of the waving bridge, and endeavoring to steady himself, when both the tigers were seen to issue from the adjoining forest; and the moment they descried us, they bounded towards us with dreadful roarings. Meanwhile, Wharton had nearly gained the safe side of the gulf, and we were all clambering up the rocky cliff, except Lincoln, who remained at the reedy bridge, to assist his friend to step upon firm ground. Wharton, though the ferocious animals were close upon him, never lost his courage or presence of mind. As soon as he had gained the edge of the cliff, he knelt down, and, with his sword, divided the fastenings by which the bridge was attached to the rock. "He expected that an effectual barrier would thus be put to the farther progress of our pursuers; but he was mistaken; for he had scarcely accomplished his task when the tigress, without a moment's pause, rushed towards the chasm, and attempted to bound over it. It was a fearful sight to see the mighty animal suspended for a moment in the air, above the abyss; but the scene passed like a flash of lightning. Her strength was not equal to the distance; she fell into the gulf, and, before she reached the bottom, was torn into a thousand pieces by the jagged points of the rocks. "Her fate did not in the least dismay her companion. He followed her with an immense spring, and reached the opposite side, but only with his fore claws; and thus he clung to the edge of the precipice, endeavoring to gain a footing. The Indians again uttered a wild shriek, as if all hope had been lost. "But Wharton, who was nearest the edge of the rock, advanced courageously towards the tiger, and struck his sword into the animal's breast. Enraged beyond all measure, the wild beast collected all his strength, and, with a violent effort, fixing one of his hind legs upon the cliff, he seized Wharton by the thigh. The heroic man still preserved his fortitude. He grasped the trunk of a tree with his left hand, to steady and support himself, while, with his right hand, he wrenched and violently turned the sword, that was still in the breast of the tiger. All this was the work of an instant. The Indians, Frank, and myself, hastened to his assistance; but Lincoln, who was already at his side, had seized Wharton's gun, which lay near upon the ground, and struck so powerful a blow with the butt-end upon the head of the tiger, that the animal, stunned and overpowered, let go his hold, and fell back into the abyss." THE AMERICAN PANTHER. This animal, which belongs to North and South America, passes under the various titles of _cougar_, _puma_, and _panther_. The latter is its most common designation. It is about the size of the European panther, but is of a uniform reddish-brown color. It was once common throughout the United States, but it has retired from the more thickly-settled portions to the remote forests of the country. It generally flies from man, but occasions have frequently occurred in which persons have fallen victims to its rage or rapacity. _Fatal Sport._--Some years since, two hunters, accompanied by two dogs, went out in quest of game near the Catskill Mountains. At the foot of a large hill, they agreed to go round it in opposite directions, and, when either discharged his rifle, the other was to hasten towards him to aid in securing the game. Soon after parting, the report of a rifle was heard by one of them, who, hastening towards the spot, after some search, found nothing but the dog, dreadfully lacerated, and dead. He now became much alarmed for the fate of his companion, and, while anxiously looking around, was horror-struck by the harsh growl of a cougar, which he perceived on a large limb of a tree, crouching upon the body of his friend, and apparently meditating an attack on himself. Instantly he levelled his rifle at the beast, and was so fortunate as to wound it mortally, when it fell to the ground along with the body of his slaughtered companion. His dog then rushed upon the wounded cougar, which, with one blow of its paw, laid the poor animal dead by its side. The surviving hunter now left the spot, and quickly returned, with several other persons, when they found the lifeless cougar extended near the dead bodies of the hunter and the faithful dogs. _Terrible Revenge._--The following account is furnished by a correspondent of the "Cabinet of Natural History:" "It was on as beautiful an autumnal day as ever ushered in the Indian summer, that I made an excursion after game among a group of mountains, or rather on a link in the great chain of the Alleghany range, which runs in a north-eastern direction in that part of Pennsylvania which bounds the New York line. "I had kept the summit of the mountains for several miles, without success, for a breeze had arisen shortly after sunrise, which rattled through the trees, and made it unfavorable for hunting on dry ground; and indeed the only wild animal I saw was a bear, that was feeding on another ridge across a deep valley, and entirely out of reach of my rifle-shot. I therefore descended the mountain in an oblique direction, towards the salt springs, which I soon reached, and, after finding others had preceded me here, I left the spot for another mountain, on which I intended to pass the remainder of the day, gradually working my way home. This mountain was covered with chestnut-trees; and here it was that I caught a glimpse of the bear from the other ridge, and found he had disappeared but a short time previous to my arrival on this mountain. I followed his track for three miles, for chestnuts lay in abundance on the ground, and bears, like hogs, root up the leaves in search of food beneath; and it no doubt had lingered about here eating its meal until my near approach gave warning of its danger. This I could discover, as, the leaves having been wet by the melted frost on the top, a path could be traced where the bear, in running, had turned the dried part of the leaves uppermost. I quickened my pace along the mountainside and around the turn of the mountain, with the hopes of surprising the bear; and, after a rapid chase for the distance above mentioned, all proved fruitless, and I relinquished further pursuit. Warm with this exercise, and somewhat fatigued, I descended the mountain-side, and took my seat beside a stream of water which gently washed the base of the mountain, and emptied itself into the head of the waters of the Susquehannah. "I had remained, sitting on a fallen tree, whose branches extended considerably into the water, for, perhaps, an hour and a half, when, of a sudden, I heard a rustling among the leaves on the mountain immediately above my head, which, at first, was so distant that I thought it merely an eddy in the wind, whirling the leaves from the ground; but it increased so rapidly, and approached so near the spot where I sat, that instinctively I seized my rifle, ready in a moment to meet any emergency which might offer. "That part of the mountain where I was seated was covered with laurel and other bushes, and, owing to the density of this shrubbery, I could not discover an object more than ten yards from me; this, as will afterwards appear, afforded me protection; at any rate, it conduced to my success. The noise among the leaves now became tremendous, and the object approached so near, that I distinctly heard an unnatural grunting noise, as if from some animal in great distress. At length, a sudden plunge into the water, not more than twenty yards from me, uncovered to my view a full-grown black bear, intent upon nothing but its endeavors to press through the water and reach the opposite shore. The water, on an average, was not more than two feet deep, which was not sufficient for the animal to swim, and too deep to run through; consequently, the eagerness with which the bear pressed through the water created such a splashing noise as fairly echoed through the hills. With scarcely a thought, I brought my rifle to my shoulder with the intention of shooting; but, before I could sight it correctly, the bear rushed behind a rock which shielded it from my view. This gave me a momentary season for reflection; and, although I could have killed the bear so soon as it had passed the rock, I determined to await the result of such extraordinary conduct in this animal; for I was wonder-struck at actions which were not only strange, but even ludicrous,--there not appearing then any cause for them. The mystery, however, was soon unravelled. "The stream of water was not more than ten rods in width; and before the bear was two thirds across it, I heard another rustling, on the mountain-side, among the leaves, as if by jumps, and a second plunge into the water convinced me that the bear had good cause for its precipitation; for here, pressing hard at its heels, was a formidable antagonist in an enormous panther, which pursued the bear with such determined inveteracy and appalling growls, as made me shudder as with a chill. "The panther plunged into the water not more than eighteen or twenty yards from me; and, had it been but one third of that distance, I feel convinced I should have been unheeded by this animal, so intent was it on the destruction of the bear. It must indeed be an extraordinary case which will make a panther plunge into water, as it is a great characteristic of the feline species always to avoid water, unless driven to it either by necessity or desperation; but here nature was set aside, and some powerful motive predominated in the passions of this animal, which put all laws of instinct at defiance, and, unlike the clumsy bustling of the bear through the water, the panther went with bounds of ten feet at a time, and, ere the former reached the opposite shore, the latter was midway of the stream. This was a moment of thrilling interest; and that feeling so common to the human breast, when the strong is combating with the weak, now took possession of mine, and, espousing the cause of the weaker party, abstractedly from every consideration which was in the wrong, I could not help wishing safety to the bear and death to the panther. Under the impulse of these feelings, I once more brought my rifle to my shoulder, with the intention of shooting the panther through the heart; but, in spite of myself, I shrank from the effort. Perhaps it was well I reserved my fire; for, had I only wounded the animal, I might have been a victim to its ferocity. "So soon as the bear found there was no possibility of escape from an issue with so dreadful an enemy, on reaching the opposite bank of the stream, it shook the water from its hair like a dog, ran about fifteen feet on the bank, and lay directly on its back in a defensive posture. This it had scarcely done, when the panther reached the water's edge, and then, with a yell of vengeance, it made one bound, and sprang, with outstretched claws, and spitting like a cat, immediately on the bear, which lay in terror on the ground, ready to receive its antagonist; but the contest was soon at an end. Not more easily does the eagle rend in sunder its terror-stricken prey, than did the enraged panther tear in scattered fragments the helpless bear. It appeared but the work of a moment, and that moment was one of unrelenting vengeance; for no sooner did the panther alight on its victim, than, with the most ferocious yells, it planted its hinder claws deep in the entrails of the bear, and, by a few rips, tore its antagonist in pieces. Although the bear was full grown, it must have been young, and deficient in energy; for it was so overcome with dread as not to be able to make the least resistance. "Satisfied with glutting its vengeance, the panther turned from the bear, and came directly to the water's edge to drink, and allay the parching thirst created by so great excitement; after which, it looked down and then up the stream, as though it sought a place to cross, that it might avoid the water; then, as if satisfied with revenge, and enjoying its victory, stood twisting and curling its tail like a cat, and then commenced licking itself dry. "The animal was now within thirty-five yards of me; and seeing no prospect of its recrossing the stream, I took rest for my rifle on a projecting limb of the tree on which I still sat, and fired directly at the panther's heart. The moment I discharged my rifle, the monster made a spring about six feet perpendicular, with a tremendous growl, which reverberated among the rocks; fell in the same spot whence it sprang, with its legs extended; and lay in this situation, half crouched, rocking from side to side, as if in the dizziness of approaching death. I saw plainly that my fire was fatal; but I had too much experience to approach this enemy until I could no longer discover signs of life. I therefore reloaded my rifle, and with a second shot I pierced immediately behind the ear. Its head then dropped between its paws, and all was quiet. "On examining the panther, no marks of violence appeared, except where my rifle balls had passed completely through, within a foot of each other: but on turning the animal on its back, I discovered it to be a female, and a mother, who, by the enlargement of her teats, had evidently been suckling her young. From this circumstance, I supposed the bear had made inroads on her lair, and probably had destroyed her kittens. I was the more convinced of this from the fact, that I never knew, from my own experience, nor could I learn from the oldest hunters of my acquaintance, an instance wherein a bear and a panther engaged in combat; and again, no circumstance but the above would be sufficient to awaken that vindictive perseverance, in the passions of a panther, which would lead to the annihilation of so formidable an animal as a bear." THE CAT. This animal, which is chiefly known in a domestic state, was originally wild, and is still found in that condition in the forests of Europe and Asia. It was not a native of the American continent, but was brought hither by the European settlers. The quadruped found in our woods, and sometimes called by the name of _wild-cat_, is a lynx. In a domestic state, the savage habits of the cat are exchanged for a soft, gentle, and confiding character, which renders her a favorite around every fireside. Nor is puss to be admired only for these winning qualities, and her utility as a mouser. She possesses considerable genius, and the memoirs of her race are scarcely less remarkable than those of her natural rival, the dog. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The following story is furnished by a correspondent of the Penny Magazine: "I was once on a visit to a friend in the country, who had a favorite cat and dog, who lived together on the best possible terms, eating from the same plate and sleeping on the same rug. Puss had a young family, and Pincher was in the habit of making a daily visit to the kittens, whose nursery was at the top of the house. One morning, there was a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. Pincher was in the drawing-room, and puss was attending to her family in the garret. Pincher seemed annoyed by the vivid flashes of lightning; and, just as he had crept nearer to my feet, some one entered the room followed by puss, who walked in with a disturbed air, and mewing with all her might. She came to Pincher, rubbed her face against his cheek, touched him gently with her paw, walked to the door, stopped, looked back, and mewed,--all of which said, as plainly as words could have done, 'Come with me, Pincher;' but the dog was too much alarmed himself to give any consolation to her, and took no notice of the invitation. "The cat then returned, and renewed her application, with increased energy; but the dog was immovable, though it was evident that he understood her meaning, for he turned away his head with a half-conscious look, and crept closer to me; and puss soon left the room. Not long after this, the mewing became so piteous, that I could no longer resist going to see what was the matter. I met the cat at the top of the stairs, close by the door of my chamber. She ran to me, rubbed herself against me, and then went into the room, and crept under the wardrobe. I then heard two voices, and discovered that she had brought down one of her kittens, and lodged it there for safety; but her fears and cares being so divided between the kitten above and this little one below, I suppose she wanted Pincher to watch by this one, while she went for the other; for, having confided it to my protection, she hastened up stairs. Not, however, wishing to have charge of the young family, I followed her up, taking the kitten with me, placed it beside her, and moved the little bed farther from the window, through which the lightning flashed so vividly as to alarm poor puss for the safety of her progeny. I then remained in the garret till the storm had passed away. "On the following morning, much to my surprise, I found puss waiting for me at the door of my apartment. She accompanied me down to breakfast, sat by me, and caressed me in every possible way. She had always been in the habit of going down to breakfast with the lady of the house; but on this morning she had resisted all her coaxing to leave my door, and would not move a step till I had made my appearance. She had never done this before, and never did it again. She had shown her gratitude to me for the care of her little ones, and her duty was done." The editor of the "Edinburgh Evening Courant" gives us the following extraordinary story: "A country gentleman of our acquaintance, who is neither a friend to thieves nor poachers, has at this moment, in his household, a favorite cat, whose honesty, he is sorry to say, there is but too much reason to call in question. The animal, however, is far from being selfish in her principles; for her acceptable gleanings she regularly shares among the children of the family in which her lot is cast. It is the habit of this grimalkin to leave the kitchen or parlor, as often as hunger and an opportunity may occur, and wend her way to a certain pastrycook's shop, where, the better to conceal her purpose, she endeavors slyly to ingratiate herself into favor with the mistress of the house. As soon as the shopkeeper's attention becomes engrossed in business, or otherwise, puss contrives to pilfer a small pie or tart from the shelves on which they are placed, speedily afterwards making the best of her way home with her booty. "She then carefully delivers her prize to some of the little ones in the nursery. A division of the stolen property quickly takes place; and here it is singularly amusing to observe the _sleekit_ animal, not the least conspicuous among the numerous group, thankfully munching her share of the illegal traffic. We may add, that the pastrycook is by no means disposed to institute a legal process against poor Mrs. Puss, as the children of the gentleman to whom we allude are honest enough to acknowledge their fourfooted playmate's failings to papa, who willingly compensates any damage the shopkeeper may sustain from the petty depredations of the would-be philanthropic cat." In the month of July, 1801, a woman was murdered in Paris. A magistrate, accompanied by a physician, went to the place where the murder had been committed, to examine the body. It was lying upon the floor, and a greyhound, who was standing by the corpse, licked it from time to time, and howled mournfully. When the gentlemen entered the apartment, he ran to them without barking, and then returned, with a melancholy mien, to the body of his murdered mistress. Upon a chest in a corner of the room a cat sat motionless, with eyes, expressive of furious indignation, steadfastly fixed upon the body. Many persons now entered the apartment; but neither the appearance of such a crowd of strangers, nor the confusion that prevailed in the place, could make her change her position. In the mean time, some persons were apprehended on suspicion of being the murderers, and it was resolved to lead them into the apartment. Before the cat got sight of them, when she only heard their footsteps approaching, her eyes flashed with increased fury, her hair stood erect, and so soon as she saw them enter the apartment, she sprang towards them with expressions of the most violent rage, but did not venture to attack them, being probably afraid of the numbers that followed. Having turned several times towards them with a peculiar ferocity of aspect, she crept into a corner, with a mien indicative of the deepest melancholy. This behavior of the cat astonished every one present. The effect which it produced upon the murderers was such as almost amounted to an acknowledgment of their guilt. Nor did this remain long doubtful, for a train of accessory circumstances was soon discovered, which proved it to a complete conviction. A cat, which had a numerous litter of kittens, one summer day in spring, encouraged her little ones to frolic in the vernal beams of the noon, about the stable door, where she dwelt. While she was joining them in a thousand tricks and gambols, a large hawk, who was sailing above the barn-yard, in a moment darted upon one of the kittens, and would have as quickly borne it off, but for the courageous mother, who, seeing the danger of her offspring, sprang on the common enemy, who, to defend itself, let fall the prize. The battle presently became severe to both parties. The hawk, by the power of his wings, the sharpness of his talons, and the strength of his beak, had for a while the advantage, cruelly lacerating the poor cat, and actually deprived her of one eye in the conflict; but puss, no way daunted at the accident, strove, with all her cunning and agility, for her kittens, till she had broken the wing of her adversary. In this state, she got him more within the power of her claws, and, availing herself of this advantage, by an instantaneous exertion she laid the hawk motionless beneath her feet; and, as if exulting in the victory, tore the head off the vanquished tyrant. This accomplished, disregarding the loss of her eye, she ran to the bleeding kitten, licked the wounds made by the hawk's talons in its tender sides, and purred whilst she caressed her liberated offspring. In the summer of 1792, a gentleman who lived in the neighborhood of Portsmouth, England, had a cat, which kittened four or five days after a hen had brought out a brood of chickens. As he did not wish to keep more than one cat at a time, the kittens were all drowned, and the same day the cat and one chicken were missing. Diligent search was immediately made in every place that could be thought of, both in and out of the house, to no purpose; it was then concluded that some mischance had befallen both. Four days afterwards, however, the servant, having occasion to go into an unfrequented part of the cellar, discovered, to his great astonishment, the cat lying in one corner, with the chicken hugged close to her body, and one paw laid over it, as if to preserve it from injury. The cat and adopted chicken were brought into a closet in the kitchen, where they continued some days, the cat treating the chicken in every respect as a kitten. Whenever the chicken left the cat to eat, she appeared very uneasy; but, on its return, she received it with the affection of a mother, pressed it to her body, purred, and seemed perfectly happy. If the chicken was carried to the hen, it immediately returned to the cat. The chicken was by some accident killed, and the cat would not eat for several days afterwards, being inconsolable for its loss. "I had," says M. Wenzel, "a cat and dog which became so attached to each other, that they would never willingly be asunder. Whenever the dog got any choice morsel of food, he was sure to divide it with his whiskered friend. They always ate sociably out of one plate, slept in the same bed, and daily walked out together. Wishing to put this apparently sincere friendship to the proof, I, one day, took the cat by herself into my room, while I had the dog guarded in another apartment. I entertained the cat in a most sumptuous manner, being desirous to see what sort of a meal she would make without her friend, who had hitherto been her constant table companion. The cat enjoyed the treat with great glee, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the dog. I had had a partridge for dinner, half of which I intended to keep for supper. My wife covered it with a plate, and put it into a cupboard, the door of which she did not lock. The cat left the room, and I walked out upon business. My wife, meanwhile, sat at work in an adjoining apartment. "When I returned home, she related to me the following circumstances: The cat, having hastily left the dining-room, went to the dog, and mewed uncommonly loud, and in different tones of voice, which the dog, from time to time, answered with a short bark. They then went both to the door of the room where the cat had dined, and waited till it was opened. One of my children opened the door, and immediately the two friends entered the apartment. The mewing of the cat excited my wife's attention. She rose from her seat, and stepped softly up to the door, which stood ajar, to observe what was going on. The cat led the dog to the cupboard which contained the partridge, pushed off the plate which covered it, and, taking out my intended supper, laid it before her canine friend, who devoured it greedily. Probably the cat, by her mewing, had given the dog to understand what an excellent meal she had made, and how sorry she was that he had not participated in it; but, at the same time, had given him to understand that something was left for him in the cupboard, and persuaded him to follow her thither. Since that time I have paid particular attention to these animals, and am perfectly convinced that they communicate to each other whatever seems interesting to either." A cat belonging to an elderly lady in Bath, England, was so attached to her mistress, that she would pass the night in her bedchamber, which was four stories high. Outside of the window was the parapet wall, on which the lady often strewed crumbs for the sparrows that came to partake of them. The lady always sleeping with her window open, the cat would pounce upon the birds, and kill them. One morning, giving a "longing, lingering look" at the top of the wall, and seeing it free from crumbs, she was at a loss for an expedient to decoy the feathered tribe, when, reconnoitring, she discovered a small bunch of wheat suspended in the room, which she sprang at, and succeeded in getting down. She then carried it to the favorite resort of the sparrows, and actually threshed the corn out, by beating it on the wall, then hiding herself. After a while, the birds came, and she resumed her favorite sport of killing the dupes of her sagacity. A cat belonging to a gentleman of Sheffield, England, carried her notions of beauty so far, that she would not condescend to nourish and protect her own offspring, if they happened to be tinted with colors different from what adorned her own figure, which was what is usually denominated tortoise-shell. She happened, on one occasion only, to produce one kitten, of a jet black. The cruel mother drew the unfortunate little creature out of the bed in which it lay, and, refusing to give it suck, it perished on the cold ground. Some time after, she gave birth to three more, one of which had the misfortune not to be clad in the same colors as the mother. It was therefore ousted by the unnatural parent; and, although again and again replaced in its bed, it was as frequently turned out again. The owner of the cat, finding it useless to persist in what puss had determined should not be, in humanity consigned the kitten to a watery grave,--the victim of a parent's pride and cruelty. "I once saw," says De la Croix, "a lecturer upon experimental philosophy place a cat under the glass receiver of an air-pump, for the purpose of demonstrating that very certain fact, that life cannot be supported without air and respiration. The lecturer had already made several strokes with the piston, in order to exhaust the receiver of its air, when the animal, who began to feel herself very uncomfortable in the rarefied atmosphere, was fortunate enough to discover the source from which her uneasiness proceeded. She placed her paw upon the hole through which the air escaped, and thus prevented any more from passing out of the receiver. All the exertions of the philosopher were now unavailing: in vain he drew the piston; the cat's paw effectually prevented its operation. Hoping to effect his purpose, he let air again into the receiver, which as soon as the cat perceived, she withdrew her paw from the aperture; but whenever he attempted to exhaust the receiver, she applied her paw as before. All the spectators clapped their hands in admiration of the wonderful sagacity of the animal, and the lecturer found himself under the necessity of liberating her, and substituting in her place another, that possessed less penetration, and enabled him to exhibit the cruel experiment." A lady at Potsdam, in Prussia, tells an anecdote of one of her children, who, when about six years old, got a splinter of wood into her foot, early one morning, and, sitting down on the floor of the chamber, cried most vehemently. Her elder sister, asleep in the same apartment, was in the act of getting up to inquire the cause of her sister's tears, when she observed the cat, who was a favorite playmate of the children, and of a gentle and peaceable disposition, leave her seat under the stove, go up to the crying girl, and, with one of her paws, give her so smart a blow upon the cheek as to draw blood; and with the utmost gravity resume her seat under the stove, and relapse into slumber. As she was otherwise so harmless, the conclusion was, that she intended this as a chastisement for being disturbed, in hopes that she might enjoy her morning nap without interruption. A lady residing in Glasgow had a handsome cat sent her from Edinburgh. It was conveyed to her in a close basket, and in a carriage. She was carefully watched for two months; but having produced a pair of young ones, at that time she was left to her own discretion, which she very soon employed in disappearing with both her kittens. The lady at Glasgow wrote to her friend in Edinburgh, deploring her loss, and the cat was supposed to have strayed away. About a fortnight, however, after her disappearance from Glasgow, her well-known mew was heard at the street door of her old mistress in Edinburgh, and there she was with both her kittens! they in the best condition--but she very thin. It is clear that she could only carry one kitten at a time. The distance from Edinburgh to Glasgow being forty miles, she must have travelled one hundred and twenty miles at least! Her prudence must likewise have suggested the necessity of journeying in the night, with many other precautions for the safety of her young. ORDER IV. AMPHIBIA, AMPHIBIOUS ANIMALS. This order embraces several species of the seal kind, which are found in all seas, but chiefly in those of the polar regions. Their structure is admirably adapted to their mode of life; the nostrils and ears both closing when the animal dives. Its hind feet alone are used for swimming. Its movements on land are slow and painful, dragging itself along like a reptile. THE SEAL. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Mr. Brown furnishes us with the following account: About twenty-five years ago, a seal was so completely domesticated that it remained with a gentleman, whose residence was but a short distance from the sea, without attempting to escape. It knew all the inmates of the family, and would come to its master when he called it by name. It was usually kept in the stable, but was sometimes permitted to enter the kitchen, where it seemed to take great delight in reposing before the fire. It was taken to the sea every day, and allowed to fish for itself, in which it was very dexterous; but when unsuccessful, fish was bought for it. When tired of swimming, it came up to the boat, holding up its head to be taken in. A farmer in Fifeshire, Scotland, while looking for crabs and lobsters, among the rocks, caught a young seal about two feet and a half long, and carried it home. He fed it with pottage and milk, which it ate with avidity. He kept it for three days, feeding it on this meal, when, his wife being tired of it, he took it away, and restored it to its native element. He was accompanied by some of his neighbors. On reaching the shore, it was thrown into the sea; but, instead of making its escape, as one would have expected, it returned to the men. The tallest of them waded to a considerable distance into the sea, and, after throwing it as far as he was able, speedily got behind a rock, and concealed himself; but the affectionate animal soon discovered his hiding-place, and crept close up to his feet. The farmer, moved by its attachment, took it home again, and kept it for some time. Seals are said to be delighted with music. Mr. Laing, in his account of a voyage to Spitzbergen, mentions that the son of the master of the vessel in which he sailed, who was fond of playing on the violin, never failed to have a numerous auditory, when in the seas frequented by seals; and they have been seen to follow a ship for miles when any person was playing on the deck. It is a common practice in Cornwall, England, for persons, when in pursuit of seals, as soon as the animal has elevated its head above water, to halloo to it till they can approach within gunshot, as it will listen to the sound for several minutes. The bottlenose seal is in general very inactive, but when irritated, is exceedingly revengeful. A sailor, who had killed a young one, was in the act of skinning it, when its mother approached him unperceived, and, seizing him in her mouth, bit him so dreadfully that he died of the wound in three days. THE WALRUS. This animal is a native of the polar regions, and in many of its habits resembles the seal. It lives in troops, which visit the shore, or extensive fields of ice, as a sort of home. Its food consists of a kind of seaweed, which it tears up by means of its tusks. It is very much hunted for its skin and its oil. _Anecdote._--In the year 1766, a vessel which had gone to the north seas, to trade with the Esquimaux, had a boat out with a party of the crew. A number of walruses attacked them, and, notwithstanding every effort to keep them at bay, a small one contrived to get over the stern of the boat, looked at the men for some time, and then plunged into the water to rejoin his companions. Immediately after, another one, of enormous bulk, made the same attempt to get over the bow, which, had he succeeded, would have upset the boat; but, after trying every method in vain to keep him off, the boatswain discharged the contents of a gun loaded with goose-shot into the animal's mouth, which killed him; he immediately disappeared, and was followed by the whole herd. Seeing what had happened to their companion, the enraged animals soon followed the boat; but it luckily reached the ship, and all hands had got on board before they came up; otherwise, some serious mischief would, doubtless, have befallen the boat's crew. ORDER V. MARSUPIALA, POUCHED ANIMALS. This order includes animals with a pouch under the belly, where the young are in some cases produced and nursed. THE OPOSSUM. This curious animal belongs exclusively to America, and is familiarly known in the milder parts of the United States. It is about the size of a cat, but its legs are short, and its body broad and flat. The females are remarkable for having an abdominal pouch, to which the young ones retreat in time of danger. The hunting of this animal is the favorite sport in some of the Middle States. Parties go out in the moonlight evenings of autumn, attended by dogs. These trace the opossum to some tree, between the branches of which he hides himself from the view of the hunter. The latter shakes him down, and the quadruped, rolling himself into a ball, pretends to be dead. If not immediately seized, he uncoils himself, and attempts to steal away. The various artifices it adopts for escape have given rise to the proverb of "playing 'possum." THE KANGAROO. The following description of this animal, which is peculiar to New Holland, is taken from Dawson's "Present State of Australia:"-- "The country on our right consisted of high and poor, stony hills, thickly timbered; that on the left, on the opposite side of the river, was a rich and thinly-timbered country. A low and fertile flat meadow there skirted the river; and, at the extremity of the flat, hills gradually arose with a gentle slope, covered with verdure, upon which an immense herd of kangaroos were feeding. I crossed over with Maty Bill and a brace of dogs, leaving the party to proceed on their route. The moment we had crossed, the kangaroos moved off. It is extremely curious to see the manner in which a large herd of these animals jump before you. It has often been asserted that they make use of their tails to spring from you when they are pursued. This is not correct. Their tails never touch the ground when they move, except when they are on their feed, or at play; and the faster they run or jump, the higher they carry them. "The male kangaroos were called, by the natives, old men, 'wool man;' and the females, young ladies, 'young liddy.' The males are not so swift as the females; and the natives, in wet seasons, occasionally run the former down when very large, their weight causing them to sink in the wet ground, and thus to become tired. They frequently, however, make up for this disadvantage by fierceness and cunning, when attacked either by men or dogs; and it is exceedingly difficult for a brace of the best dogs to kill a 'corbon wool man.' When they can, they will hug a dog or a man as a bear would do; and as they are armed with long, sharp claws, they not unfrequently let a dog's entrails out, or otherwise lacerate him in the most dreadful manner, sitting all the while on their haunches, hugging and scratching with determined fury. "The kind of dog used for coursing the kangaroo is, generally, a cross between the greyhound and the mastiff, or sheep-dog; but, in a climate like New South Wales, they have, to use the common phrase, too much lumber about them. The true-bred greyhound is the most useful dog. He has more wind; he ascends the hills with more ease, and runs double the number of courses in a day. He has more bottom in running; and, if he has less ferocity when he comes up with an 'old man,' so much the better, as he exposes himself the less, and lives to afford sport another day. The strongest and most courageous dog can seldom conquer a 'wool man' alone, and not one in fifty will face him fairly; the dog who has the temerity is certain to be disabled, if not killed. "The herd of kangaroos we had thus come upon was too numerous to allow of the dogs' being let loose; but, as the day's walk was drawing to a close, I had given Maty Bill liberty to catch another kangaroo, if we should fall in with a single one. After moving up to the foot of the hill, about a quarter of a mile from the river, my sable companion eyed a 'corbon wool man,' as he called it, quietly feeding at a distance, on the slope of the hill. His eyes sparkled; he was all agitation; and he called out, 'Massa, massa! You tee! you tee! wool man! wool man! corbon wool man!' and off he ran with his dogs, till he was within a fair distance, when he slipped their collars. I was at this time on foot, and the whole of them, therefore, were soon out of my sight. They had turned round the bottom of the hill, in the direction of the river; and, as I was following them down, I heard the dogs at bay, and the shrill call of 'coo-oo-oo,' from my companion, to direct me to the spot; and, on turning the corner of the hill, I met him, running, and calling as fast and as loud as he could. As soon as he saw me, he stopped, and called out, 'Massa, massa! Make haste! Dingo (dogs) have got him in ribber. Many corbon wool man, all the same like it bullock.' "All this was said in a breath; and as I could not pretend to run with him, I desired him to go as fast as he could, and help the dogs, till I should arrive. When I got up to the spot, he was in the middle of the river, with about two feet depth of water, while the kangaroo, sitting upright on its haunches, was keeping both him and the dogs at a respectful distance, and had laid bare the windpipe of one of the dogs. Billy's waddy was too short to reach him without coming to close quarters, and he knew better than to do that; at length he got behind him, and, with a blow on the head, he despatched him. No huntsman could have shown more ardor in the pursuit, or more pleasure at the death of a fox, than did poor Maty Bill upon this occasion. The kangaroo was so heavy, weighing about a hundred and fifty pounds, that he could not lift him out of the water, and we were obliged to leave him till our party arrived on the opposite side." ORDER VI. RODENTIA, GNAWING ANIMALS. This order embraces a considerable number of small animals, most of which possess a gentle and harmless character. They live upon vegetable matter, and a large proportion use their fore-paws in the manner of hands. THE SQUIRREL. Of this lively, pleasing genus, there is a considerable variety, especially in the temperate zone. They are very agile, and use their paws with much grace and dexterity, in handling their food. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--A squirrel, seated in a nut-tree, was once observed to weigh a nut in each paw, to discover by weight which was good; the light ones he invariably dropped, thus making a heap of them at the foot of the tree. On examining this heap, it was found to consist entirely of bad nuts. A gentleman near Edinburgh took a common squirrel from a nest, which he reared, and rendered extremely docile. It was kept in a box, nailed against the wall, which was wired in front, and had a small aperture at the end, to allow the animal to enter. To the end of the box was suspended a rope, which touched the ground, by which the animal descended from and ascended to its domicile at pleasure. It became extremely playful, and was familiar with every one of the family, but devotedly attached to its master, who generally carried it about with him in his coat-pocket. The little creature used to watch all its master's movements. Whenever it saw him preparing to go out, it ran up his legs, and entered his pocket, from whence it would peep out at passengers, as he walked along the streets--never venturing, however, to go out. But no sooner did he reach the outskirts of the city, than the squirrel leaped to the ground, ran along the road, ascended the tops of trees and hedges with the quickness of lightning, and nibbled at the leaves and bark; and, if he walked on, it would descend, scamper after him, and again enter his pocket. In this manner, it would amuse itself during a walk of miles, which its master frequently indulged in. It was taught to catch food, roots, and acorns, with its fore-paws, which it accomplished with great neatness. It was also instructed to leap over a stick, held out to it, and perform various other little tricks. A lady in England had a squirrel which she taught to crack nuts for her, and hand her the kernels with his paws. She also instructed him to count money; and he was so attentive that, whenever he found a coin on the ground, he took it up and carried it to her. So attached was this little creature to its mistress, that, whenever she was confined to her bed, from indisposition, he lay still in his cage, without moving, although, at other times, he was full of life and vivacity. Some years ago, as a Swede was constructing a mill dike, late in the autumn, he accidentally came upon an abode of the ground or striped squirrel. He traced it to some distance, and found a gallery on one side, like a branch, diverging from the main stem, nearly two feet long; at its farther end was a quantity of fine white oak acorns; he soon after discovered another gallery, which contained a store of corn; a third was filled with walnuts; while a fourth contained three quarts of fine chestnuts;--all of which the provident little animal had stored up for the winter. A correspondent of the "Penny Magazine" gives us the following account: "Although apparently not adapted to swimming, yet both gray and black squirrels venture across lakes that are one or two miles wide. In these adventurous exploits, they generally take advantage of a favorable breeze, elevating their tails, which act like sails, thus rendering their passage quicker and less laborious. I have frequently noticed black squirrels crossing Niagara River, and I always remarked that they swam across when the morning first began to dawn. On reaching the opposite shore, they appeared greatly fatigued, and, if unmolested, generally took a long rest preparatory to their setting off for the woods." The black and gray squirrels of the western country frequently emigrate, in immense numbers, from one district to another. They may be often seen swimming across the Ohio; and it is not uncommon for persons to stand upon the banks, and kill them as they come to the shore, being then in an exhausted state. THE MOUSE. Of this genus there are many species, including not only the domestic mouse, but several other kinds, as well as the various kinds of rats. The common mouse was not originally a native of this country, but was introduced from Europe. The same may be said of the common rat. These animals are spread over nearly the whole world, seeming always to be the attendants upon man. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--"On a rainy evening," says Dr. Archer, "as I was alone in my chamber in the town of Norfolk, I took up my flute and commenced playing. In a few moments, my attention was directed to a mouse that I saw creeping from a hole, and advancing to a chair in which I was sitting. I ceased playing, and it ran precipitately back to its hole. I began again to play, and was much surprised to see it reappear, and take its old position. It couched upon the floor, shut its eyes, and appeared in ecstasy, being differently affected by the music I played, as it varied from slow and plaintive to lively and animated." A gentleman who was on board a British man of war, in the year 1817, states that, as he and some officers were seated by the fire, one of them began to play a plaintive air on the violin. He had scarcely performed ten minutes, when a mouse, apparently frantic, made its appearance in the centre of the floor. The strange gestures of the little animal strongly excited the attention of the officers, who, with one consent, resolved to suffer it to continue its singular actions unmolested. Its exertions now appeared to be greater every moment; it shook its head, leaped about the table, and exhibited signs of the most ecstatic delight. After performing actions that an animal so diminutive would at first sight seem incapable of, the little creature suddenly ceased to move, fell down, and expired, without evincing any symptoms of pain. An officer confined to the Bastille, at Paris, begged to be allowed to play on his lute, to soften his confinement by its harmonies. Shortly afterwards, when playing on the instrument, he was much astonished to see a number of mice come frisking out of their holes, and many spiders descending from their webs, and congregating round him while he continued the music. Whenever he ceased, they dispersed; whenever he played again, they reappeared. He soon had a numerous audience, amounting to about a hundred mice and spiders. Mr. Olafsen gives an account of the remarkable instinct of the Iceland mouse. In a country where berries are but thinly dispersed, these little animals are obliged to cross rivers to make their distant forages. In their return with the booty to their magazines, they are obliged to repass the stream. "The party, which consists of from six to ten, select a flat piece of dried cow-dung, on which they place the berries on a heap in the middle; then, by their united force, they bring it to the water's edge, and, after launching it, embark and place themselves round the heap, with their heads joined over it and their backs to the water, their tails pendent in the stream, serving the purpose of rudders." Remarkable as this story is, the truth of it is confirmed by many people who have watched the arrangements of the tiny navigators. THE DORMOUSE. Mr. Mangili, an Italian naturalist, made some curious experiments upon the _dormouse_. He kept one in the cupboard in his study. When the thermometer was 8° above the freezing point, the little animal curled himself up among a heap of papers, and went to sleep. It was ascertained that the animal breathed, and suspended his respiration, at regular intervals, sometimes every four minutes. Within ten days from his beginning to sleep, the dormouse awoke, and ate a little. He then went to sleep again, and continued through the winter to sleep some days and then to awaken; but as the weather became colder, the intervals of perfect repose, when no breathing could be perceived, were much longer--sometimes more than twenty minutes. THE RAT. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--There was, in the year 1827, in a farm-house in England, a remarkable instance, not only of docility, but of usefulness, in a rat. It first devoured the mice which were caught in traps, and was afterwards seen to catch others as they ventured from their holes; till, at length, the whole house was cleared of these animals. From the services it rendered, the family kindly protected the rat, and it used to gambol about the house, and play with the children, without the least fear. It sometimes disappeared for a week or ten days at a time, but regularly returned to its abode. During a dreadful storm in England, in 1829, a singular instance occurred of sagacity in a rat. The River Tyne was much swollen by the water, and numbers of people had assembled to gaze on the masses of hay it swept along in its irresistible course. A swan was at last observed, sometimes struggling for the land, at other times sailing majestically along with the torrent. When it drew near, a black spot was seen on its snowy plumage, and the spectators were greatly pleased to find that this was a live rat. It is probable that it had been borne from its domicile in some hayrick, and, observing the swan, had made for it as an ark of safety, in the hope of prolonging its life. When the swan at length reached the land, the rat leaped from his back, and scampered away, amid the shouts of the spectators. A surgeon's mate on board a ship, in 1757, relates that, while lying one evening awake in his berth, he saw a rat come into the room, and, after surveying the place attentively, retreat with the utmost caution and silence. It soon returned, leading by the ear another rat, which it left at a small distance from the hole by which they entered. A third rat then joined them. The two then searched about, and picked up all the small scraps of biscuit; these they carried to the second rat, which seemed blind, and remained on the spot where they had left it, nibbling such fare as was brought to it by its kind providers, whom the mate supposed were its offspring. A steward of a ship infested with rats used to play some lively airs on a flute after he had baited his traps and placed them near the rat-holes. The music attracted the rats, who entered the traps unconscious of that danger which, without that allurement, they would have instinctively avoided. In this manner the steward caught fifteen or twenty rats in three hours. THE BEAVER. There is but one species of this animal, which is found in the temperate regions of both continents. It spends a great part of its time in the water, where it constructs dams and builds huts of the branches of trees. It gnaws these asunder with wonderful dexterity, frequently cutting off a branch, the size of a walking-stick, with one effort. They live in families composed of from two to ten. _A tame Beaver._--Major Roderfort, of New York, had a tame beaver, which he kept in his house upwards of half a year, and allowed to run about like a dog. The cat belonging to the house had kittens, and she took possession of the beaver's bed, which he did not attempt to prevent. When the cat went out, the beaver would take one of the kittens between his paws, and hold it close to his breast to warm it, and treated it with much affection. Whenever the cat returned, he restored her the kitten. _Affection of the Beaver._--Two young beavers were taken alive some years ago, and carried to a factory near Hudson's Bay, where they grew very fast. One of them being accidentally killed, the survivor began to moan, abstained from food, and finally died in grief for the loss of its companion. _A tame Beaver in the Zoological Gardens of London._--"This animal arrived in England, in the winter of 1825, very young, being small and woolly, and without the covering of long hair which marks the adult beaver. It was the sole survivor of five or six, which were shipped at the same time, and was in a very pitiable condition. Good treatment soon made it familiar. When called by its name, 'Binny,' it generally answered with a little cry, and came to its owner. The hearth-rug was its favorite haunt, upon which it would lie stretched out, sometimes on its back, and sometimes flat on its belly, but always near its master. The building instinct showed itself immediately after it was let out of its cage, and materials were placed in its way,--and this before it had been a week in its new quarters. Its strength, even before it was half grown, was great. It would drag along a large sweeping-brush, or a warming-pan, grasping the handle with its teeth, so that the load came over its shoulder; it then advanced in an oblique direction, till it arrived at the point where it wished to place it. The long and large materials were always taken first; two of the longest were generally laid crosswise, with one of the ends of each touching the wall, and the other ends projecting out into the room. The area formed by the crossed brushes and the wall, he would fill up with hand-brushes, rush-baskets, books, boots, sticks, cloths, dried turf, or any thing portable. As the work grew high, he supported himself on his tail, which propped him up admirably; and he would often, after laying on one of his building materials, sit up over against it, apparently to consider his work, or, as the country people say, 'judge it.' This pause was sometimes followed by changing the position of the material 'judged,' and sometimes it was left in its place. "After he had piled up his materials in one part of the room,--for he generally chose the same place,--he proceeded to wall up the space between the feet of a chest of drawers, which stood at a little distance from it, high enough on its legs to make the bottom a roof for him, using for this purpose dried turf and sticks, which he laid very even, and filling up the interstices with bits of coal, hay, cloth, or any thing he could pick up. This last place he seemed to appropriate for his dwelling; the former work seemed to be intended for a dam. When he had walled up the space between the feet of the chest of drawers, he proceeded to carry in sticks, clothes, hay, cotton, and to make a nest; and, when he had done, he would sit up under the drawers, and comb himself with the nails of his hind-feet. In this operation, that which appeared at first to be a malformation was shown to be a beautiful adaptation to the necessities of the animal. The huge webbed hind-feet often turn in, so as to give the appearance of deformities; but, if the toes were straight, instead of being incurved, the animal could not use them for the purpose of keeping its fur in order, and cleansing it from dirt and moisture. Binny generally carried small and light articles between his right fore-leg and his chin, walking on the other three legs; and large masses, which he could not grasp readily with his teeth, he pushed forwards, leaning against them with his right fore-paw and his chin. He never carried any thing on his tail, which he liked to dip in water, but he was not fond of plunging in his whole body. If his tail was kept moist, he never cared to drink; but if it was kept dry, it became hot, and the animal appeared distressed, and would drink a great deal. It is not impossible that the tail may have the power of absorbing water, like the skin of frogs; though it must be owned that the scaly integument which invests that member has not much of the character which generally belongs to absorbing surfaces. Bread, and bread and milk, and sugar, formed the principal part of Binny's food; but he was very fond of succulent fruits and roots. He was a most entertaining creature; and some highly comic scenes occurred between the worthy, but slow, beaver, and a light and airy macauco, that was kept in the same apartment." THE PORCUPINE. Of this animal there are several species. The common porcupine of Europe is about two feet long, and covered with long spines or quills. In defending itself, it lies on one side, and rolls over upon its enemy. The quills of the American porcupine are used by the Indians in ornamenting their dress. _Curious Playmates._--We are told that Sir Ashton Lever had a tame porcupine, a domesticated hunting leopard, and a Newfoundland dog, which he used frequently to turn out together, to play in a green behind his house. No sooner were the dog and leopard let loose, than they began to chase the porcupine, who uniformly, at the outset, tried to escape by flight, but when he found there was no chance of doing so, he would thrust his head into some corner, and make a snorting noise, and erect his spines. His pursuers, if too ardent, pricked their noses, which made them angry; and in the quarrel which usually ensued, the porcupine effected his escape. Le Vaillant says that a wound from a porcupine's quill is difficult to cure, from some poisonous quality it possesses; he mentions that a Hottentot, who was pricked in the leg by one of these, was ill for upwards of six months afterwards; and that a gentleman at the Cape kept his bed for about four months, and nearly lost his limb, in consequence of a wound inflicted by one of these animals. THE HARE. Of this slender, graceful creature, there are several species. The animal which passes by the name of rabbit, in America, and is common in our woods, is a hare. The pursuit of this animal is a favorite sport in England, and some other countries of Europe. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--In the "Annals of Sporting," for 1822, we find the following interesting account of a hare: "Two years ago, a doe hare produced two young ones in a field adjoining my cottage; and the three were occasionally seen, during the summer, near the same spot; but the leverets were, I have reason to believe, killed at the latter end of September of the same year. The old doe hare was also coursed, and, making directly for my cottage, entered the garden, and there blinked the dogs. I repeatedly afterwards saw her sitting, sometimes in the garden, which is one hundred and ten yards by forty-three, but more frequently in the garden-hedge. She was repeatedly seen by greyhounds when she sat at some distance, but uniformly made for the garden, and never failed to find security. About the end of the following January, puss was no longer to be seen around the garden, as she had probably retired to some distance with a male companion. One day, in February, I heard the hounds, and shortly afterwards observed a hare making towards the garden, which it entered at a place well known, and left not the least doubt on my mind, that it was my old acquaintance, which, in my family, was distinguished by the name of Kitty. The harriers shortly afterwards came in sight, followed Kitty, and drove her from the garden. "I became alarmed for the safety of my poor hare, and heartily wished the dogs might come to an irrecoverable fault. The hare burst away with the fleetness of the wind, and was followed, breast high, by her fierce and eager pursuers. In about twenty minutes I observed Kitty return towards the garden, apparently much exhausted, and very dirty. She took shelter beneath a small heap of sticks, which lay at no great distance from the kitchen door. No time was to be lost, as, by the cry of the hounds, I was persuaded they were nearly in sight. I took a fishing-net, and, with the assistance of the servant, covered poor Kitty, caught her, and conveyed the little, panting, trembling creature into the house. The harriers were soon at the spot, but no hare was to be found. I am not aware that I ever felt greater pleasure than in thus saving poor Kitty from her merciless pursuers. Towards evening I gave her her liberty; I turned her out in the garden, and saw her not again for some time. "In the course of the following summer, however, I saw a hare several times which I took to be my old friend; and, in the latter end of October, Kitty was again observed in the garden. Henceforward, she was occasionally seen as on the preceding winter. One morning, in January, when I was absent, a gun was fired near my cottage. Kitty was heard to scream, but, nevertheless, entered the garden vigorously. The matter was related to me on my return home; and I was willing to hope that Kitty would survive. However, I had some doubt on the subject; and, the next morning, as soon as light permitted, I explored the garden, and found that my poor, unfortunate favorite had expired. She was stretched beneath a large gooseberry tree; and I could not help regretting very much her death." Borlase informs us that he had a hare so completely tamed as to feed from the hand. It always lay under a chair in the ordinary sitting-room, and was as much domesticated as a cat. It was permitted to take exercise and food in the garden, but always returned to the house to repose. Its usual companions were a greyhound and a spaniel, with whom it spent its evenings. The whole three seemed much attached, and frequently sported together, and at night they were to be seen stretched together on the hearth. What is remarkable, both the greyhound and spaniel were often employed in sporting, and used secretly to go in pursuit of hares by themselves; yet they never offered the least violence to their timid friend at home. Dr. Townson, the traveller, when at Gottingen, brought a young hare into such a state of domestication, that it would run and jump about his sofa and bed. It leaped on his knee, patted him with its fore feet; and frequently, while he was reading, it would knock the book out of his hands, as if to claim, like a fondled child, the preference of his attention. One Sunday evening, five choristers were walking on the banks of the River Mersey, in England. Being somewhat tired, they sat down, and began to sing an anthem. The field where they sat had a wood at its termination. While they were singing, a hare issued from this wood, came with rapidity towards the place where they were sitting, and made a dead stand in the open field. She seemed to enjoy the harmony of the music, and turned her head frequently, as if listening. When they stopped, she turned slowly towards the wood. When she had nearly reached the end of the field, they again commenced an anthem, at which the hare turned round, and ran swiftly back, to within the same distance as before, where she listened with apparent rapture till they had finished. She then bent her way towards the forest with a slow pace, and disappeared. A hare, being hard run by a pack of harriers in the west of England, and being nearly exhausted, happened to come upon another hare in her form. She instantly drew out the latter, and slipped in herself; the pack followed the newly-started hare, and the huntsmen, coming up, found the animal they had been chasing, lying down in the form, panting very hard, and covered with mud. A gentleman, actuated by curiosity, put one male and two female hares in a large garden, walled entirely round, where they had plenty to eat. Judge his surprise, when he opened the gate of the garden in a year from the time that he had shut in the animals, to find that his family had increased to the number of forty-seven! A hare was once seen to start from its form at the sound of the hunting horn, run towards a pool of water at a considerable distance, plunge in, and run to some rushes in the middle, where it lay down, and concealed itself. By this ingenious trick, the animal balked its pursuers, and effected its escape. ORDER VII. EDENTATA, ANIMALS WITHOUT FRONT TEETH. The animals in this order are not numerous, but they are marked with very peculiar characteristics. The chief species are the sloths, armadilloes, ant-eaters, and pangolins, of South America, and the platypus of Australia. Most of these are too little known to have furnished us with characteristic anecdotes. THE SLOTH. This singular animal is destined by nature to live upon the trees. He is rare and solitary; and, as he is good for food, he is much sought after by the Indians and negroes. He is ill at ease on the ground, having no soles to his feet, which are so formed as to enable him to cling to the branches of trees, from which he suspends himself. Mr. Waterton kept one of these animals in his room for several months. "I often took him out of the house," says he, "and placed him on the ground, in order to get a good opportunity of observing his motions. If the ground was rough, he would pull himself forward, by means of his fore legs, at a pretty good pace; but he invariably shaped his course towards the nearest tree. But if I put him upon a smooth and well-trodden part of the road, he appeared to be in trouble and distress: his favorite abode was on the back of a chair; and after getting all his legs in a line upon the topmost part of it, he would hang there for hours together, and often, with a low and inward cry, would seem to invite me to take notice of him." The same author thus describes an adventure with a sloth: "One day, as we were crossing the Essequibo, I saw a large two-toed sloth on the ground upon the bank. How he got there was a mystery. The Indian who was with me said that he never surprised a sloth in such a situation before. He could hardly have come there to drink; for, both above and below, the branches of the trees touched the water, and afforded him a safe and easy access to it. Be this as it may, he could not make his way through the sand time enough to escape before we landed. As soon as we got up to him, he threw himself upon his back, and defended himself in gallant style with his fore legs. 'Come, poor fellow,' said I to him, 'if thou hast had a hobble to-day, thou shalt not suffer for it; I'll take no advantage of thee in misfortune. The forest is large enough for thee and me to rove in; go thy ways up above, and enjoy thyself in these endless wilds. It is more than probable thou wilt never again have an interview with man. So, fare thee well!' "Saying this, I took up a long stick which was lying there, held it for him to hook on, and then conveyed him to a high and stately tree. He ascended with wonderful rapidity, and in about a minute he was at the top. He now went off in a side direction, and caught hold of the branch of a neighboring tree. He then proceeded towards the heart of the forest. I stood looking on, lost in amazement at his singular mode of progression, and followed him with my eyes till I lost sight of him." THE PLATYPUS. Among the strange and interesting productions of Australia, no one is more wonderful than the ornithorynchus, platypus, or water-mole. It is aquatic in its habits, frequenting quiet streams, where it excavates burrows to a great depth. It is about eighteen inches long, and is covered with fur. It is web-footed, at the same time that its feet are well fitted for burrowing in the earth. Its head terminates in a broad bill, like that of a duck. Mr. G. Bennett procured several specimens of this curious creature, but did not succeed in taking them to England. One of them was caught at the mouth of its burrow, and taken by Mr. B. to Lansdowne Park. "Here," says he, "I availed myself of the vicinity of some ponds, to give my platypus a little recreation. On opening the box where I kept it, it was lying in a corner, contracted into a very small compass, and fast asleep. I tied a very long cord to its hind leg, and roused it; in return for which, I received numerous growls. When placed on the bank, it soon found its way into the water, and travelled up the stream, apparently delighting in those places which most abounded in aquatic weeds. Although it would dive in deep water, yet it always preferred keeping close to the bank, occasionally thrusting its beak into the mud, and at the roots of the various weeds on the margin of the pond, as if in search of insects. "After it had wandered some time, it crawled up the bank, and enjoyed the luxury of scratching itself, and rolling about. In the process of cleaning itself, the hind claws were alone brought into use for the operation--first the claws of one hind leg, then the claws of the other. The animal remained for more than an hour cleaning itself, after which, it had a more sleek and glossy appearance than before. It never became familiar, and always manifested the greatest reluctance to be placed in the box. One night it escaped, and I was never able to find it again." ORDER VIII. PACHYDERMATA, THICK-SKINNED ANIMALS. THE ELEPHANT. This is the largest quadruped at present extant on the earth. It is nine feet high, and in some cases has risen to the height of fifteen feet. Its weight varies from four to nine thousand pounds. Nor is it more distinguished for its size than its sagacity. When tamed, it becomes the most gentle, obedient, and affectionate of domestic animals, capable of being trained to any service which may be required of it. There are two species of elephant--the Asiatic and the African. The former is the largest and best known. In the mighty forests which they inhabit, they hold undisputed sway; their immense size, strength, and swiftness, enabling them to dislodge all intruders from their abodes. Even the lion and tiger fear their united attacks, and avoid being in their vicinity. They are excellent swimmers, and are capable of crossing the largest rivers. This power seems essential, for the quantity of food they consume renders it necessary for them to remove often from one region to another. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Bishop Heber, in his approach to Dacca, saw a number of elephants bathing, which he thus describes: "At a distance of about half a mile from those desolate palaces a sound struck my ear, as if from the water itself on which we were riding--the most solemn and singular I can conceive. It was long, loud, deep, and tremulous--something like the blowing of a whale, or, perhaps, more like those roaring buoys which are placed at the mouths of some English harbors, in which the winds make a noise to warn ships off them. 'O,' said Abdallah, 'there are elephants bathing; Dacca much place for elephant.' I looked immediately, and saw about twenty of these fine animals, with their heads and trunks just appearing above the water. Their bellowing it was which I had heard, and which the water conveyed to us with a finer effect than if we had been on shore." The manner of hunting and taming the wild elephant, in Asia, is curious. In the middle of a forest, where these animals are known to abound, a large piece of ground is marked out, and surrounded with strong stakes driven into the earth, interwoven with branches of trees. One end of this enclosure is narrow, and it gradually widens till it takes in a great extent of country. Several thousand men are employed to surround the herd of elephants, and to prevent their escape. They kindle large fires at certain distances; and, by hallooing, beating drums, and playing discordant instruments, so bewilder the poor animals, that they allow themselves to be insensibly driven, by some thousands more Indians, into the narrow part of the enclosure, into which they are decoyed by tame female elephants, trained to this service. At the extreme end of the large area is a small enclosure, very strongly fenced in, and guarded on all sides, into which the elephants pass by a long, narrow defile. As soon as one enters this strait, a strong bar is thrown across the passage from behind. He now finds himself separated from his neighbors, and goaded on all sides by huntsmen, who are placed along this passage, till he reaches the smaller area, where two tame female elephants are stationed, who immediately commence disciplining him with their trunks, till he is reduced to obedience, and suffers himself to be conducted to a tree, to which he is bound by the leg, with stout thongs of untanned elk or buckskin. The tame elephants are again conducted to the enclosure, where the same operation is performed on the others, till all are subdued. They are kept bound to trees for several days, and a certain number of attendants left with each animal to supply him with food, by little and little, till he is brought by degrees to be sensible of kindness and caresses, and thus allows himself to be conducted to the stable. So docile and susceptible of domestication is the elephant, that, in a general way, fourteen days are sufficient to reduce the animals to perfect obedience. During this time, they are fed daily with cocoa-nut leaves, of which they are excessively fond, and are conducted to the water by the tame females. In a short time, they become accustomed to the voice of their keeper, and at last quietly resign their freedom, and great energies, to the dominion of man. The mode employed by the Africans, to take elephants alive, is by pits. Pliny, whose accounts were in general correct, mentions that, when one of the herd happened to fall into this snare, his companions would throw branches of trees and masses of earth into the pit, with the intention of raising the bottom, so that the animal might effect his escape. Although this appears to be a species of reasoning hardly to be expected from an animal, yet it has in a great measure been confirmed by Mr. Pringle, who says,--"In the year 1821, during one of my excursions in the interior of the Cape Colony, I happened to spend a few days at the Moravian missionary settlement of Enon, or White River. This place is situated in a wild but beautiful valley, near the foot of the Zuurberg Mountains, in the district of Uiterhage, and is surrounded on every side by extensive forests of evergreens, in which numerous herds of elephants still find food and shelter. "From having been frequently hunted by the Boors and Hottentots, these animals are become so shy as scarcely ever to be seen during the day, except amongst the most remote and inaccessible ravines and jungles; but in the night time they frequently issue forth in large troops, and range, in search of food, through the inhabited farms in the White River valley; and on such occasions they sometimes revenge the wrongs of their race upon the settlers who have taken possession of their ancient haunts, by pulling up fruit-trees, treading down gardens and cornfields, breaking their ploughs, wagons, and so forth. I do not mean, however, to affirm, that the elephants really do all this mischief from feelings of revenge, or with the direct intention of annoying their human persecutors. They pull up the trees, probably, because they want to browse on their soft roots; and they demolish the agricultural implements merely because they happen to be in their way. "But what I am now about to state assuredly indicates no ordinary intelligence. A few days before my arrival at Enon, a troop of elephants came down, one dark and rainy night, close to the outskirts of the village. The missionaries heard them bellowing, and making an extraordinary noise, for a long time, at the upper end of the orchard; but, knowing well how dangerous it is to encounter these powerful animals in the night, they kept close within their houses till daylight. Next morning, on their examining the spot where they had heard the elephants, they discovered the cause of all this nocturnal uproar. There was at this spot a ditch or trench, about four or five feet in width, and nearly fourteen feet in depth, which the industrious missionaries had recently cut through the banks of the river, on purpose to lead out water to irrigate some part of their garden, and to drive a corn-mill. Into this trench, which was still unfinished, and without water, one of the elephants had evidently fallen, for the marks of his feet were distinctly visible at the bottom, as well as the impress of his huge body on the sides. "How he had got into it, was not easy to conjecture; but how, being once in, he ever contrived to get out again, was the marvel. By his own unaided efforts it was obviously impossible for such an animal to have extricated himself. Could his comrades, then, have assisted him? There can be no question that they had, though by what means, unless by hauling him out with their trunks, it would not be easy to conjecture; and, in corroboration of this supposition, on examining the spot myself, I found the edges of this trench deeply indented with numerous vestiges, as if the other elephants had stationed themselves on either side,--some of them kneeling, and others on their feet,--and had thus, by united efforts, and probably after many failures, hoisted their unlucky brother out of the pit." We are told that the Emperor Domitian had a troop of elephants disciplined to dance to the sound of music; and that one of them, which had been beaten for not having his lesson perfect, was observed, on the following night, to be practising by himself in a meadow. The elephant recently exhibited in New York was fed by a young girl with cakes and apples. While in the act of pulling an apple from her bag, she drew out her ivory card-case, which fell, unobserved, in the sawdust of the ring. At the close of the performances, the crowd opened to let the elephant pass out; but, instead of proceeding as usual, he turned aside, and thrust his trunk in the midst of a group of ladies and gentlemen, who, as might be supposed, were very much alarmed. The keeper at this moment discovered that the animal had something in his trunk: upon examination, it was found to be the young lady's card-case, which the elephant had picked up, and was now seeking out the fair owner. A female elephant, belonging to a gentleman at Calcutta, being ordered from the upper country to Chittagong, broke loose from her keeper, and was lost in the woods. The excuses which the man made were not admitted. It was supposed that he had sold the elephant. His wife and family were, therefore, sold as slaves, and he was himself condemned to work upon the roads. About twelve years after, this man was ordered into the country to assist in catching wild elephants. In a group that he saw before him, the keeper thought that he recognized his long-lost elephant. He was determined to go up to it; nor could the strongest representations of the danger dissuade him from his purpose. When he approached the creature, she knew him and, giving him three salutes by waving her trunk in the air, knelt down and received him on her back. She afterwards assisted in securing the other elephants, and likewise brought with her three young ones, which she had produced during her absence. The keeper recovered his character; and, as a recompense for his sufferings and intrepidity, an annuity was settled on him for life. This elephant was afterwards in the possession of Warren Hastings. Of the attachment of elephants to their keepers, or to those who have done them a kindness, many instances are on record. Ælian relates that a man of rank in India, having very carefully trained up a female elephant, used daily to ride upon her. She was exceedingly sagacious, and much attached to her master. The prince, having heard of the extraordinary gentleness and capacity of this animal, demanded her of her owner. But so attached was this person to his elephant, that he resolved to keep her at all hazards, and fled with her to the mountains. The prince, having heard of his retreat, ordered a party of soldiers to pursue, and bring back the fugitive with his elephant. They overtook him at the top of a steep hill, where he defended himself by throwing stones down upon his pursuers, in which he was assisted by his faithful elephant, who threw stones with great dexterity. At length, however, the soldiers gained the summit of the hill, and were about to seize the fugitive, when the elephant rushed amongst them with the utmost fury, trampled some to death, dashed others to the ground with her trunk, and put the rest to flight. She then placed her master, who was wounded in the contest upon her back, and conveyed him to a place of security. When Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, attacked the territory of Argos, one of his soldiers, who was mounted upon an elephant, received a dangerous wound, and fell to the ground. When the elephant discovered that he had lost his master in the tumult, he furiously rushed among the crowd, dispersing them in every direction, till he had found him. He then raised him from the ground with his trunk, and, placing him across his tusks, carried him back to the town. Some years ago, an elephant at Dekan, from a motive of revenge, killed its conductor. The wife of the unfortunate man was witness to the dreadful scene; and, in the frenzy of her mental agony, took her two children, and threw them at the feet of the elephant, saying, "As you have slain my husband, take my life, also, as well as that of my children!" The elephant became calm, seemed to relent, and, as if stung with remorse, took up the eldest boy with its trunk, placed him on its neck, adopted him for its _cornac_, and never afterwards allowed another to occupy that seat. A soldier, in India, was in the habit of giving to an elephant, whenever he received his pay, a certain quantity of arrack. Once, being intoxicated, this soldier committed some excesses, and was ordered to be sent to the guard-house; but he fled from the soldiers who were sent to apprehend him, and took refuge under the body of his favorite elephant, where he laid himself down quietly, and fell asleep. In vain the guard attempted to seize upon him, and draw him from his place of refuge; for the grateful elephant defended him with his trunk, and they were obliged to abandon their attempt to secure him. When the soldier awoke next morning from his drunken slumber, he was very much alarmed at finding himself under the belly of such an enormous animal; but the elephant caressed him with his trunk, so as to quiet his apprehensions, and he got up and departed in safety. The author of the "Twelve Years' Military Adventures" says,--"I have seen the wife of a _mohout_ give a baby in charge to an elephant, while she was on some business, and have been highly amused in observing the sagacity and care of the unwieldy nurse. The child, which, like most children, did not like to lie still in one position, would, as soon as left to itself, begin crawling about, in which exercise it would probably get among the legs of the animal, or entangle itself in the branches of the trees on which he was feeding, when the elephant would, in the most tender manner, disengage his charge, either by lifting it out of the way with his trunk, or by removing the impediments to his free progress. If the child had crawled to such a distance as to verge upon the limits of his range,--for the animal was chained by the leg to a peg driven into the ground,--he would stretch out his trunk, and lift it back, as gently as possible, to the spot whence it had started." The elephant is not less disposed to resent an injury than to reward a benefit. It has been frequently observed, by those who have had the charge of these animals, that they seem sensible of being ridiculed, and seldom miss an opportunity of revenging themselves for the insults they receive in this way. An artist in Paris wished to draw the elephant in the menagerie at the _Jardin des Plantes_ in an extraordinary attitude, which was with his trunk elevated in the air, and his mouth open. An attendant on the artist, to make the elephant preserve the attitude, threw fruits into his mouth, and often pretended to throw them, without doing so. The animal became irritated, and, seeming to think that the painter was the cause of his annoyance, turned to him, and dashed a quantity of water from his trunk over the paper on which the painter was sketching the portrait. An amusing anecdote is related, by Captain Williamson, of an elephant, which went by the name of the _paugal_, or fool, who, by his sagacity, showed he could act with wisdom. This animal, when on a march, refused to carry on his back a larger load than was agreeable to him, and pulled down as much of the burden as reduced it to the weight which he conceived proper for him to bear. One day, the quarter-master of brigade became enraged at this obstinacy in the animal, and threw a tent-pin at his head. A few days afterwards, as the creature was on his way from camp to water, he overtook the quarter-master, and, seizing him in his trunk, lifted him into a large tamarind-tree, which overhung the road, and left him to cling to the branches, and to get down the best way he could. We shall conclude our anecdotes of the elephant with one which shows it in a most amiable light. The Rajah Dowlah chose once to take the diversion of hunting in the neighborhood of Lucknow, where there was a great abundance of game. The grand vizier rode his favorite elephant, and was accompanied by a train of Indian nobility. They had to pass through a ravine leading to a meadow, in which several sick persons were lying on the ground, in order to receive what benefit they could from exposure to the air and the rays of the sun. As the vizier approached with his numerous hunting party, the attendants of these sick persons betook themselves to flight, leaving the helpless patients to their fate. The nabob seriously intended to pass with his elephants over the bodies of these poor wretches. He therefore ordered the driver to goad on his beast. The elephant, as long as he had a free path, went on at full trot; but, as soon as he came to the first of the sick people, he stopped. The driver goaded him, and the vizier cursed; but in vain. "Stick the beast in the ear!" cried the nabob. It was done; but the animal remained steadfast before the helpless human creatures. At length, when the elephant saw that no one came to remove the patients, he took up one of them with his trunk, and laid him cautiously and gently to a side. He proceeded in the same way with a second and a third; and, in short, with as many as it was necessary to remove, in order to form a free passage, through which the nabob's retinue could pass without injuring any of them. How little did this noble animal deserve to be rode by such an unfeeling brute in human form! THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. This is among the largest of quadrupeds, being sometimes twelve feet long, and six feet high. Its body is very massive, its legs short, and its head large. The skin is extremely thick. It lives on the muddy banks of rivers in Africa, diving on the approach of danger. It eats grass, and generally feeds at night. It swims well, and walks on the bottom with ease. The negroes of Africa hunt this animal for his flesh, and when one of them is captured, it is the signal for a general feast. _Effect of Music._--The enterprising and lamented traveller Clapperton informs us that, when he was departing on a warlike expedition from Lake Muggaby, he had convincing proofs that the hippopotami are sensibly affected by musical sounds. "As the expedition passed along the banks of the lake at sunrise," says he, "these uncouth and stupendous animals followed the drums the whole length of the water, sometimes approaching so close to the shore, that the spray they spouted from their mouths reached the persons who were passing along the banks. I counted fifteen, at one time, sporting on the surface of the water." _Hunting the Hippopotamus._--Dr. Edward Russell gives us the following account of a hunt of the hippopotamus in Dongola: "One of the animals that we killed was of an enormous size. We fought with him for four good hours by night, and were very near losing our large boat, and probably our lives too, owing to the fury of the animal. As soon as he spied the huntsmen in the small canoe, he dashed at them with all his might, dragged the canoe with him under water, and smashed it to pieces. The two huntsmen escaped with difficulty. Of twenty-five musket-balls aimed at the head, only one pierced the skin, and the bones of the nose; at each snorting, the animal spouted out large streams of blood on the boat. The rest of the balls stuck in the thick hide. "At last, we availed ourselves of a swivel; but it was not till we had discharged five balls from it, at the distance of a few feet, that the colossus gave up the ghost. The darkness of the night increased the danger of the contest; for this gigantic animal tossed our boat about in the stream at his pleasure; and it was at a fortunate moment indeed for us that he gave up the struggle, as he had carried us into a complete labyrinth of rocks, which, in the midst of the confusion, none of our crew had observed." THE RHINOCEROS. In common with the lion and elephant, the rhinoceros frequents the vast deserts of Asia and Africa. Its appearance is chiefly remarkable, from possessing one solid conical horn on the nose, sometimes three feet in length, and from having the skin disposed about the neck in large plaits or folds. The body of this animal is little inferior in size to the elephant, but he is much shorter in the legs; his length, from the muzzle to the tail, is nearly twelve feet, and the girth about the same measurement: from the shortness of his legs, the belly nearly touches the ground. The rhinoceros can run with great swiftness; and, from his strength, and hard, impenetrable hide, he is capable of rushing through the thickets with resistless fury, almost every obstacle being quickly overturned in his track. There is a two-horned species in Africa, but little is known of it. In India, the hunting of the rhinoceros is famous sport. The people go out mounted on elephants, and usually find five or six of these animals in a drove. Their hides are so thick that it is difficult to kill them. One will often receive twenty bullets before he falls. The rhinoceros attacks an elephant fearlessly, and endeavors to get his horn under him, so as to rip him open. But the elephant, finding what he would be at, turns his rear to the assailant, who gives him a hunch behind, and tumbles his huge enemy upon his knees. Then the men upon the elephants fire their guns, and pepper the thick hide of the rhinoceros with their bullets. _Anecdotes._--In the year 1790, a rhinoceros arrived in England, about five years old, and was purchased by Mr. Pidcock, of Exeter 'Change, for seven hundred pounds. He was very mild, and allowed himself to be patted on the back by strangers. He was quite obedient to the orders of his keepers, and would move through the apartment to exhibit himself. His daily allowance of food was twenty-eight pounds' weight of clover, besides an equal provision of ship bread, and a great quantity of greens; he drank five pails of water every twenty-four hours. He liked sweet wines, and was sometimes indulged with a few bottles. His voice resembled that of a calf, which he usually exerted at the sight of fruit, or any favorite food. This animal suffered much from a dislocation of the joint of one of his fore-legs, which induced inflammation, and he died nine months afterwards. The following particulars of a rhinoceros, exhibited at Exeter 'Change, were obtained, by the late Sir Everard Home, from the person who kept him for three years. "It was so savage," says he, "that, about a month after it came, it endeavored to kill the keeper, and nearly succeeded. It ran at him with the greatest impetuosity; but, fortunately, the horn passed between his thighs, and threw the keeper on its head; the horn came against a wooden partition, into which the animal forced it to such a depth as to be unable for a minute to withdraw it; and, during this interval, the man escaped. Its skin, though apparently so hard, is only covered with small scales, of the thickness of paper, with the appearance of tortoise-shell; at the edges of these, the skin itself is exceedingly sensible, either to the bite of a fly or the lash of a whip. By discipline, the keeper got the management of it, and the animal was brought to know him; but frequently, more especially in the middle of the night, fits of frenzy came on; and, while these lasted, nothing could control its rage,--the rhinoceros running with great swiftness round the den, playing all kinds of antics, making hideous noises, knocking every thing to pieces, disturbing the whole neighborhood, and then, all at once, becoming quiet. While the fit was on, even the keeper durst not make his approach. The animal fell upon its knee when it wished to strike any object with its horn. It was quick in all its motions, ate voraciously all kinds of vegetables, appearing to have no selection. It was chiefly fed on branches of willow. Three years' confinement made no alteration in its habits." THE WILD BOAR. This is the original from which all the different kinds of the tame hog have sprung. He is not subject to the varieties of the domestic races, but is uniformly of a brindled or dark gray, inclining to black. His snout is longer than that of the tame hog, his ears short, and pricked. He has formidable tusks in each jaw, sometimes nearly a foot long,--those in the upper jaw bending upwards in a circular form, exceedingly sharp, being those with which the animal defends himself, and frequently inflicts mortal wounds. The wild boar is to be met with in various parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. The hunting of this animal has always afforded a rather barbarous sport to the natives of the countries in which it is to be found. The season for this sport is in the beginning of winter. The huntsmen ride with the dogs, and encourage them at the same time that, by the spear, they endeavor to dishearten the boar. The weapon is generally directed towards the front of the animal's head, but cautiously; for, were the boar to seize the spear, which it attempts to do, it would wrest it from the hand of the hunter; and the latter, unless supported, would fall a victim to its strength and ferocity. There are generally more hunters than one; the boar is called off by each man as he provokes it, and the animal thus generally perishes by a series of attacks. _Anecdotes._--A boar from Ethiopia was, in 1765, sent by the governor of the Cape of Good Hope to the Prince of Orange. From confinement and attention he became tolerably mild and gentle, except when offended, in which case even those persons to whose care he was intrusted were afraid of him. In general, however, when the door of his cage was opened, he came out in perfect good-humor, frisked about in search of food, and greedily devoured whatever was given him. He was one day left alone in the court-yard for a few minutes; and, on the return of the keeper, was found busily digging into the earth, where, notwithstanding the cemented bricks of the pavement, he had made a very large hole, for the purpose, as was afterwards conceived, of reaching a common sewer that passed at a considerable depth below. When, after long confinement, he was set at liberty, for a little while he was very gay, and leaped about in an entertaining manner. During Sparman's residence in Africa, he witnessed a curious method by which the wild hogs protected their young, when pursued. The heads of the females, which, at the commencement of the chase, had seemed of a tolerable size, appeared, on a sudden, to have grown larger and more shapeless than they were. This he found to have been occasioned by the fact, that each of the old ones, during its flight, had taken up and carried forward a young pig in its mouth; and this explained to him another subject of surprise, which was, that all the pigs he had just before been chasing with the old ones, had suddenly vanished. THE DOMESTIC HOG. The effect of domestication on the larger animals seems to be a diminution of their powers of resistance or defence, no longer necessary to their safety; and, on account of the want of free exercise, an increase of size, attended by a relaxation of the fibres and frame of the body. In this way, domestication has told with considerable disadvantage on the hog. By the diminution of the size of its tusks, and of its inclination or power to use them, it ceases to be very formidable; and by luxurious habits, by overfeeding, and indolence, the animal that fearlessly ranges the forest becomes one whose sole delight it seems to be to rise to eat, and to lie down to digest, and one whose external appearance, beyond that of any other quadruped, testifies the gluttony of its disposition and of its practices. The hog uses considerable selection in its vegetable diet, but it compensates itself for the loss which its appetite might thus sustain, by occasional recourse to animal food. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The following statement, made a few years ago by a gentleman in Stanbridge, England, develops the carnivorous propensities which the hog sometimes discovers, even in a condition of perfect domestication,--the variety too of animals which it is inclined to devour. "I had a pig," says this writer, "of the Chinese species, a most voracious fellow; but through necessity I have lately been obliged to have him killed, finding that he endangered the safety of my rabbits, hens, and ducks. Previous to possessing him, I had a small warren of about forty yards square, walled in, and well stocked with various-colored rabbits, which I had been at infinite pains to collect. But, unfortunately, one day a rabbit having intruded into his sty, the pig immediately caught and devoured it. This having given him an opportunity of knowing the agreeable flavor of rabbit, he next day, when let out, directed his course to the warren, and soon was successful in securing another; he then returned to his sty, and consumed it with the greatest avidity. "After this circumstance occurred, he was confined three weeks; but being again set at liberty, he immediately returned to his favorite pursuit, and, after trying various manoeuvres for the space of a quarter of an hour he seized another rabbit, and was returning, when I ordered my servant to take it away. Unluckily for the servant, the pig, after trying many devices to get by him, crouched for a moment, and then, running furiously at him, seized on his leg, lacerating it so severely, that he was confined to the house for six weeks. So greedy was the pig, that, while the man was limping towards the house, he actually went back to his prey, and carried it off victoriously. "Being at a party the next day, and relating the above, a gentleman in company appeared to doubt the veracity of the account. I asked him, with the rest of the party, to dine with me the following day, that they might witness the exploits of the creature. They all attended at an early hour. No sooner had we released him, than off he went with the most voracious eagerness, and entered the warren through a hole in the wall; but he was not quite so successful to-day, for, after making many fruitless attempts, most of the rabbits were driven to their burrows. He now seemed as we supposed, despairing of success, as he lay down amongst some furze; but, on our returning to the house, we were surprised by the cry of his victim, and, immediately turning round, saw him coming through the hole in the wall with a fine black rabbit. The gentleman who doubted the facts over-night nearly met the fate of my servant; but by actively springing over him, at the moment the furious animal was seizing his legs, he escaped unhurt. After showing his dexterity to many more gentlemen, I devised means to keep him out of the warren. The carnivorous animal then took to my ducks and hens. Still, however, I put up with his depredations while he confined himself to my own yard; but having visited a neighbor's, and killed two ducks and a favorite Guinea-hen, and much frightened the lady who went to drive him away, I was obliged to kill him the next morning." A gamekeeper of Sir Henry Mildmay, of England, broke a black sow to find game, back, and stand to her point, nearly as steadily as a well-bred dog. The sow was a thin, long-legged animal, of the New Forest breed. When young, she manifested a great partiality for some pointer puppies; and it occurred to the gamekeeper, that, as he had often succeeded with obstinate dogs, he might attempt to break a pig. He enticed her to follow him by bits of barley-meal pudding, which he carried in one of his pockets, while the other was filled with stones, which he threw at his pupil when she misbehaved, as she would not allow herself to be caught and corrected, like a dog. Under this system she proved tolerably tractable. When she came on the cold scent of game, she slackened her trot, and gradually dropped her ears and tail till she was certain, and then fell down on her knees. As soon as the game rose, she returned, grunting, for her reward of pudding. When the gamekeeper died, his widow sent the pig to Sir Henry Mildmay, who kept it for three years, and often amused his friends by hiding a fowl among the fern in some part of the park, and bringing out the pig, which never failed to point at it in the manner described. Some time after, a great number of lambs were lost nearly as soon as they were dropped; and a person, being sent to watch the flock, detected the sow in the act of devouring a lamb. This carnivorous propensity was ascribed to her having been accustomed to feed with the dogs on flesh; but it obliterated the memory of her singular sagacity, and she was killed for the benefit of the widow of the gamekeeper who had trained her. THE TAPIR. This quadruped resembles the hog in shape, but is much larger. It is of a brown color, and has a long, flexible nose, somewhat like the elephant's trunk. It sleeps during the day, and goes forth at night in search of pasture, melons, and vegetables. One species is found in South America, and one in Malacca and Sumatra. It is docile, is easily tamed, and capable of strong attachments. A young specimen of this animal was sent from Sumatra to Bengal, which became very tractable. It was allowed to roam in the park, and frequently entered the ponds, and walked along on the bottom, making no attempt to swim. A full-grown tapir was recently at the Zoological Gardens, in London, which seemed to thrive very well. From its curious formation, and its gentle, inoffensive manners, it became an object of great attraction. THE HORSE. This animal is now only known in a domestic state, or, if wild, but as the offspring of domestic varieties. Most countries possess races of this animal peculiar to themselves. The finest breed is that of Arabia. The horse may be considered the most valuable of all the brute creation to man. He combines strength, speed, and docility, beyond any other animal. The wild herds in the western regions, Mexico, and South America, are sprung from horses brought into the country by the Spaniards. The Arabian horse is a hardy animal, "left exposed," says Chateaubriand, "to the most intense heat of the sun, tied by the four legs to stakes set in the ground, and refreshed generally only once in the twenty-four hours. Yet," continues the same writer, "release his legs from the shackles, spring upon his back, and he will paw in the valley; he will rejoice in his strength; he will swallow the ground in the fierceness of his rage, and you recognize the original picture of Job." _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The Arab has a strong affection for his horse; nor is it wonderful, when we consider that he is his support and comfort--his companion through many a dreary day and night, enduring hunger and thirst in his service. From their constant community, a kind of sociality of feeling exists between them. The terms in which he addresses his horse are thus given by Clarke: "Ibrahim went frequently to Rama to inquire news of the mare, whom he dearly loved; he would embrace her, wipe her eyes with his handkerchief, would rub her with his shirt sleeves, would give her a thousand benedictions during whole hours that he would remain talking to her. 'My eyes! my soul! my heart!' he would say; 'must I be so unfortunate as to have thee sold to many masters, and not keep thee myself? I am poor, my antelope! I brought thee up in my dwelling as a child; I did never beat nor chide thee.'" But the poverty of the Arabs, and the desire of foreigners to possess their horses, frequently compel them to do what they so much deprecate--to sell their horse. A horse he may be tempted by a large sum to part with, but to sell a mare is a heart-rending trial to an Arab. "When the envoy," says Sir John Malcolm, "was encamped near Bagdad, an Arab rode a bright bay mare, of extraordinary shape and beauty, before his tent, until he attracted his attention. On being asked if he would sell her, 'What will you give me?' was the reply. 'That depends upon her age; I suppose she is past five.' 'Guess again,' said he. 'Four?' 'Look at her mouth,' said the Arab, with a smile. On examination, she was found to be rising three. This, from her size and symmetry, greatly enhanced her value. The envoy said, 'I will give you fifty _tomans_,' (a coin nearly of the value of a pound sterling.) 'A little more, if you please,' said the fellow, a little entertained. 'Eighty--a hundred.' He shook his head and smiled. The officer at last came to two hundred tomans. 'Well,' said the Arab, 'you need not tempt me further. You are a rich _elchee_, (nobleman;) you have fine horses, camels, and mules, and I am told you have loads of silver and gold. Now,' added he, 'you want my mare; but you shall not have her for all you have got.'" Nor does the Arabian horse fail to repay the attachment of his master. It not only flies with him over the desert, but, when he lies down to sleep, the faithful animal will browse on such herbage as is near the spot; will watch its master with solicitude; and, if a man or animal approaches, will neigh loudly till he is awakened. "When I was at Jerusalem," says Chateaubriand, "the feats of one of these steeds made a great noise. The Bedouin to whom the animal, a mare, belonged, being pursued by the governor's guards, rushed with him from the top of the hills that overlooked Jericho. The mare scoured at full gallop down an almost perpendicular declivity without stumbling, and left the soldiers lost in admiration and astonishment. The poor creature, however, dropped down dead on entering Jericho; and the Bedouin, who would not quit her, was taken, weeping over the body of his faithful companion. Ali Aga religiously showed me, in the mountains near Jericho, the footsteps of the beast that died in the attempt to save her master!" The powers of the horse, as evinced in certain cases, appear almost incredible. At four o'clock in the morning, a gentleman was robbed at Gadshill, on the west side of Chatham, England, by a highwayman named Nicks, who rode a bay mare. Nicks set off instantly for Gravesend, where he was detained nearly an hour by the difficulty of getting a boat--an interval which he employed to advantage in baiting his horse. From thence he got to Essex and Chelmsford, where he again stopped about half an hour, to refresh his horse. He then went to Braintree, Bocking, Westerfield, and over the downs to Cambridge, and, still pursuing the cross roads, he went to Huntingdon, where he again rested about half an hour. Proceeding now on the north road, and at full gallop most of the way, he arrived at York the same afternoon, put off his boots and riding clothes, and went dressed to the bowling-green, where, among other promenaders, happened to be the lord mayor of the city. He there studied to do something particular, that his lordship might remember him, and, asking what o'clock it was, the mayor informed him that it was a quarter past eight. Upon prosecution for the robbery, the whole safety of the prisoner rested upon this point. The gentleman swore positively to the time and place; but, on the other hand, the proof was equally clear of his being at York at the time specified. The jury acquitted him on the supposed impossibility of his having got so great a distance from Kent by the time he was seen in the bowling-green. Yet it appeared afterwards that he was the robber, and had performed this feat of horsemanship to escape conviction. Very extraordinary performances of the horse, in swimming, are on record. A violent gale of wind, at the Cape of Good Hope, setting in from north and northwest, a vessel in the road dragged her anchors, was forced on the rocks, and bilged; and, while the greater part of the crew fell an immediate sacrifice to the waves, the remainder were seen, from the shore, struggling for their lives by clinging to the different pieces of the wreck. The sea ran dreadfully high, and broke over the sailors with such amazing fury that no boat whatever could venture off to their assistance. Meanwhile a planter, considerably advanced in life, had come from his farm to be a spectator of the shipwreck. His heart melted at the sight of the unhappy seamen; and, knowing the bold and enterprising spirit of his horse, and his particular excellence as a swimmer, he instantly determined to make a desperate effort for their deliverance. He alighted, and blew a little brandy into his horse's nostrils, and again seating himself in the saddle, he instantly pushed into the midst of the breakers. At first both disappeared; but it was not long before they floated on the surface, and swam up to the wreck; when, taking with him two men, each of whom held by one of his boots, he brought them safe to shore. This perilous expedition he repeated no less than seven times, and saved fourteen lives; but, on his return the eighth time, his horse being much fatigued, and meeting a most formidable wave, he lost his balance, and was overwhelmed in a moment. The horse swam safely to land, but his gallant rider was no more! The effects of habit and discipline upon the horse are exemplified by the following anecdotes:--An old cavalry horse has been known to stop, in the midst of a rapid gallop, on hearing the word _Halt_, uttered by an officer in the ranks. The Tyrolese, in one of their insurrections in 1809, took fifteen Bavarian horses, on which they mounted as many of their own soldiers. A rencounter occurring with a squadron of the regiment of Bubenhoven, these horses, on hearing the trumpet and recognizing the uniform of their corps, set off at full gallop, and carried their riders, in spite of all their resistance, into the midst of the Bavarian ranks, where they were made prisoners. Previously to the erection of the cavalry barracks in Glasgow, the detachment of horse for the west of Scotland was sometimes divided between Hamilton and Kilmarnock. Those assigned to the latter place, having been sent to the fine grass fields in the vicinity of Loudon Castle, presented on one occasion a most striking appearance. The day was heavy and sultry; the thunder, which had at first been heard only at a distance, began to increase in loudness and frequency, and drew the marked attention of the horses. As it still became more loud, and the numerous peals, echoed along the extensive slopes of Galston Moor, crept along the water of the Irvine, or were reverberated through the woods, the horses became animated with the same enthusiasm which seizes them on hearing the rolling sounds emitted from numerous cannon. They rushed together, and, rapidly arranging themselves in their accustomed ranks, presented the front of a field of battle. In the following case, related by Professor Kruger, of Halle, the horse has rivalled the most remarkable examples of the sagacity and fidelity of the dog. "A friend of mine," says he, "who was, one dark night, riding home through a wood, had the misfortune to strike his head against the branch of a tree, and fell from his horse stunned by the blow. The horse immediately returned to the house they had left, which stood about a mile distant. He found the door closed--the family had retired to bed. He pawed at the door, till one of them, hearing the noise, arose and opened it, and, to his surprise, saw the horse of his friend. No sooner was the door opened than the horse turned round; and the man, suspecting there was something wrong, followed the animal, which led him directly to the spot where his master lay on the ground in a fainting fit." A horse in England, among other bad propensities, constantly resented the attempts of the groom to trim his fetlocks. This circumstance had been mentioned in a conversation, during which a young child, a very few years old, was present, when its owner defied any man to perform the operation singly. The father, next day, in passing through the stable-yard, beheld, with the utmost distress, the infant employed, with a pair of scissors, in clipping the fetlocks of the hind legs of this vicious hunter--an operation which had been always hitherto performed with great danger, even by a number of men. But the horse, in the present case, was looking with the greatest complacency on the little groom, who soon after, to the very great relief of his father, walked off unhurt. A gentleman in Bristol had a greyhound which slept in the same stable, and contracted a very great intimacy, with a fine hunter. When the dog was taken out, the horse neighed wistfully after him; he welcomed him home with a neigh; the greyhound ran up to the horse and licked him; the horse, in return, scratched the greyhound's back with his teeth. On one occasion, when the groom had the pair out for exercise, a large dog attacked the greyhound, bore him to the ground, and seemed likely to worry him, when the horse threw back his ears, rushed forward, seized the strange dog by the back, and flung him to a distance. That the horse is much affected by musical sounds, must be evident to every one who has paid attention to its motions, and the expression of its countenance, while listening to the performances of a military band. It is even said that, in ancient times, the Libyan shepherds were enabled to allure to them wild horses by the charms of music. That this is at least not entirely improbable, is evident from an experiment made by a gentleman, in the year 1829, on some of the Duke of Buccleuch's hunters. The horses being shy of his approach, and, indeed, retreating from it, he sounded a small musical instrument, called the mouth Eolian harp. On hearing it, they immediately erected their heads, and turned round. On his again sounding it, they approached nearer him. He began to retreat, and they to follow. Having gone over a paling, one of the horses came up to him, putting its mouth close to his breast, and seemingly delighted with the sounds which he continued to produce. As the other horses were coming up, apparently to follow the example of their more confident comrade, the gentleman retired. A farmer in England, on his way home one evening, having drank rather hard at an alehouse, could not keep an erect position on his horse, and rolled off the animal into the road. His horse stood still; but, after remaining patiently for some time, and not perceiving any disposition in his rider to get up and proceed farther, he took him by the collar and shook him. This had little or no effect, for the farmer only gave a grumble of dissatisfaction at having his repose disturbed. The horse was not to be put off with any such evasion, and so he applied his mouth to one of his coat-laps, and after several attempts, by dragging at it, to raise him upon his feet, the coat-lap gave way. Three individuals who witnessed this extraordinary proceeding then went up, and assisted in putting him on his horse, putting the one coat-lap into the pocket of the other, when the horse trotted off and safely reached home. He was said to be very fond of his master, and to gambol with him like a dog. As a gentleman was proceeding from a survey at Fort Augustus to his own house,--a distance of about sixteen miles,--the road became completely blocked up by snow, and nearly indiscernible. In this dilemma, he thought it best to trust to his horse, and, loosing the reins, allowed him to choose his own course. The animal made way, cautiously and slowly, till, coming to a gully or ravine, both horse and rider suddenly disappeared in a snow wreath several fathoms deep. The gentleman, on recovering, found himself nearly three yards from the dangerous spot, with his faithful horse standing over him and licking the snow from his face. He supposed that the bridle must have been attached to his person, by means of which he had been drawn out of the pit. A cart-horse belonging to a Mr. Leggat, of Glasgow had been several times afflicted with the bots, and as often cured by a farrier by the name of Dawine. He had not, however, been troubled with that disease for a considerable time; but on a recurrence of the disorder, he happened, one morning, to be employed nearly a mile from the farrier's house. He was arranged in a row with other horses engaged in the same work, and, while the carters were absent, he went, unattended by any driver, through several streets, and up a narrow lane, when he stopped at the farrier's door. As neither Mr. Leggat nor any one else appeared with the horse, it was surmised that he had been seized with his old complaint. Being unyoked from the cart, he lay down, and showed, by every means of which he was capable, that he was in distress. He was treated as usual, and sent home to Mr. Leggat, who had by that time sent persons in all directions in search of him. A curious instance of instinct occurred at Bristol, England, some years ago, which proves the great local memory possessed by horses. A person, apparently a townsman, recognized a horse, bestrode by a countryman, to be one which he had lost about nine months before. He seized his property, and put in his claim: "This is my horse. I will prove it in two minutes, or quit my claim." He then set the horse free, and declared his proof to be that the horse would be found at his stables, at some distance--a fact that was attested, in a few minutes, by the two claimants, and several bystanders, repairing to the stables, where they found the horse "quite at home." The celebrated Polish General Kosciusko once wished to send some bottles of good wine to a clergyman at Solothurn; and, as he hesitated to send them by his servant, lest he should smuggle a part, he gave the commission to a young man of the name of Zeltner, and desired him to take the horse he usually rode. Young Zeltner, on returning, said that he would never ride his horse again without he gave him his purse at the same time. Kosciusko asking him what he meant, he answered, "As soon as a poor man on the road takes off his hat, and asks for charity, the horse immediately stands still, and will not stir till something is given to the petitioner; and as I had no money about me, I was obliged to make a motion as if I had given something, in order to satisfy the horse." A higher eulogy could hardly be pronounced upon the owner of the horse. The wild horses of the western country are thus described by Mr. Catlin: "There is no other animal on the prairies so wild and sagacious as the horse, and none so difficult to come up with. So remarkably keen is their eye, that they will generally run 'at sight' a mile distant; and, when once in motion, they seldom stop short of three or four miles. I made many attempts to approach them by stealth, when they were grazing, and playing their gambols, without succeeding more than once. In this instance I left my horse, and skulked through a ravine for a couple of miles, until I was within gunshot of a fine herd of them. These were of all colors--some milk-white, some jet-black; others were sorrel, and bay, and cream color; and many were of an iron-gray. Their manes were profuse, and hanging in the wildest confusion over their faces and necks, while their long tails swept the ground." The Camanches and other tribes of Indians capture great numbers of wild horses. The process is described by Catlin as follows: "The Indian, when he starts for a wild horse, mounts one of the fleetest he can get, and, coiling his lasso under his arm, which consists of a thong of cowhide ten or fifteen yards long, with a noose at the end of it, he starts under 'full whip' till he can enter the drove, when he soon gets the noose over the neck of one of them. He then dismounts, leaving his own horse, and runs as fast as he can, letting the lasso pass out gradually and carefully through his hands, until the horse falls for want of breath, and lies helpless on the ground. The Indian then advances slowly towards his head, keeping the lasso tight upon his neck, until he fastens a pair of hobbles on his two fore feet, and also loosens the lasso, and moves it round the under jaws; by which he gets great power over the affrighted animal, which is constantly rearing and plunging. He then advances, hand over hand, towards the horse's nose, and places one hand over his eyes; he then breathes in his nostrils, when he soon becomes conquered and docile, and allows himself to be led or ridden to the camp." It appears that horses are subject to a kind of panic, which in the western prairies is called _stampede_. The instances of this frenzy, as described by travellers, sometimes present the most terrific spectacles. Mr. Kendall, in his "Narrative," gives us the following lively sketch:-- "As there was no wood about our camping-ground, some half a dozen men pushed on in search of it. One of them had a wild, half-broken Mexican horse, naturally vicious, and with difficulty mastered. His rider found a small, dry tree, cut it down with a hatchet, and very imprudently made it fast to his horse's tail by means of a rope. The animal took it unkindly from the first, and dragged his strange load with evident symptoms of fright; but when within a few hundred yards of the camp, he commenced pitching, and finally set off into a gallop, with the cause of all his uneasiness and fear still fast to his tail. His course was directly for the camp; and, as he sped along the prairie, it was evident that our horses were stricken with a panic at his approach. At first they would prick up their ears, snort, and trot majestically about in circles; then they would dash off at the top of their speed, and no human power could arrest their mad career. "'A stampede!' shouted some of the old campaigners,--a stampede! Look out for your horses, or you'll never see them again,' was heard on every side. Fortunately for us, the more intractable horses had been not only staked, but hobbled, before the panic became general, and were secured with little difficulty; else we might have lost half of them. Frequent instances have occurred where a worthless horse has occasioned the loss of hundreds of valuable animals. "Nothing can exceed the grandeur of the scene when a large _cavallada_, or drove of horses, takes a 'scare.' Old, weather-beaten, time-worn, and broken-down steeds--horses that have nearly given out from hard work and old age--will at once be transformed into wild and prancing colts. With heads erect, tails and manes streaming in the air, eyes lit up, and darting beams of fright,--old and jaded hacks will be seen prancing and careering about with all the buoyancy which characterizes the action of young colts. Then some one of the drove, more frightened than the rest, will dash off in a straight line, the rest scampering after him, and apparently gaining fresh fear at every jump. The throng will then sweep along the plain with a noise which may be likened to something between a tornado and an earthquake; and as well might feeble man attempt to arrest the earthquake as the stampede." THE PONY. This is a variety of the horse--its small stature being the result of the climate in which it is bred. The most remarkable kinds are produced in Wales, the Highlands of Scotland, and the Shetland Isles. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--One afternoon in September, a gentleman in England, mounted on a favorite old shooting pony, had beaten for game all day without meeting with any success, when, on a sudden, to his great astonishment, his pony stopped short, and he could not persuade him to move, either by whip or spur. He desired his keeper to go forward. He did. A covey of fifteen partridges rose. They were, of course, killed by the astonished sportsman. The pony had been accustomed to carry his master for many years on shooting expeditions, and had, no doubt, acquired a knowledge of the scent of birds. A little girl, the daughter of a gentleman in Warwickshire, England, playing one day on the banks of a canal which ran through the grounds, had the misfortune to fall in, and in all probability would have been drowned, had not a little pony, which was grazing near, and which had been kept by the family many years, plunged into the stream, and, taking the child up by her clothes, brought her safely to shore without the slightest injury. A gentleman was some time since presented with a Shetland pony, which was only seven hands in height, and very docile and beautiful. He was anxious to convey his present home as soon as possible, but, being at a considerable distance, he was at a loss how to do so easily. The friend who presented it to him said, "Can you not convey him home in your chaise?" He accordingly made the experiment. The pony was lifted into the bottom of the gig, and covered up with the boot--some bits of bread being given him, to keep him quiet. He lay quite peaceably till his master had reached his place of destination; thus exhibiting the novel spectacle of a horse riding in a gig. A pony mare belonging to Mr. Evans, of Montgomeryshire, England, had a colt, and they both grazed in a field adjoining the River Severn. One day, the pony made her appearance in front of the house, making a clattering with her feet, and other noises, to attract attention. Observing this, a person went out, and the pony immediately galloped off. Mr. Evans desired he should be followed. On reaching the field, the pony was found looking into the river, where the colt was drowned. THE ASS. When the ass is brought into comparison with the horse, in respect to external form, every thing appears to be in favor of the latter animal. The ass is inferior to the horse in size, less sprightly in its motions, its head is heavy, and it stoops in its gait. The horse generally moves with its head erect, looks freely abroad on the skies and earth, with an eye expressive of lively emotions. The ass is seen trudging slowly along, as if sensible of the hopelessness of a cessation from toil; and, full of melancholy thoughts, its leaden eye is fixed on the ground. Yet its shape and its habits, in its state of servitude, present something that is pleasing, though, on the whole, they are somewhat untoward and ungainly. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The ass is far from being incapable of understanding the nature of the employments in which he is engaged, or disobedient to the commands of his master. An ass was employed, at Carisbrook, in the Isle of Wight, in drawing water by a large wheel from a deep well, supposed to have been sunk by the Romans. When his keeper wanted water, he would call the ass by his name, saying, "I want water; get into the wheel;" which wish the ass immediately complied with; and there can be no doubt but that he knew the precise number of times necessary for the wheel to revolve upon its axis in order to complete his labor; for every time he brought the bucket to the surface of the well, he stopped and turned round his head to observe the moment when his master laid hold of the bucket to draw it towards him, because he had then a nice motion to make either slightly forward or backward, as the situation of the bucket might require. In 1816, an ass belonging to Captain Dundas was shipped on board the Ister, bound from Gibraltar to Malta. The vessel struck on a sand-bank off the Point de Gat, and the ass was thrown overboard into a sea which was so stormy that a boat that soon after left the ship was lost. In the course of a few days, when the gates of Gibraltar were opened in the morning, the guard was surprised by the same ass, which had so recently been removed, presenting itself for admittance. On entering, it proceeded immediately to the stable which it had formerly occupied. The ass had not only swam to the shore, but found its own way from Point de Gat to Gibraltar, a distance of more than two hundred miles, through a mountainous and intricate country intersected by streams, which it had never passed before, but which it had now crossed so expeditiously that it must have gone by a route leading the most directly to Gibraltar. A few years ago, at Swalwell, England, a man set his bull-dog to attack an ass, that for a while gallantly defended itself with its heels, which it was agile enough to keep presented to the dog. Suddenly turning round on its adversary, it caught it with its teeth, in such a manner that the dog was unable to retaliate. It then dragged the assailant to the River Derwent, into which it plunged it overhead, and lying down upon it, kept it in the water till it was drowned. Though the ass is frequently the subject of ill treatment, yet it seems to be an animal not without affection for its master, which in many cases we may suppose to be returned by kindness and care on his part. A pleasing instance to this effect we have in the following anecdote: "An old man, who some time ago sold vegetables in London, had an ass which carried his baskets from door to door. He frequently gave the poor industrious creature a handful of hay, or some pieces of bread or greens, by way of refreshment and reward. The old man had no need of any goad for the animal, and seldom, indeed, had he to lift up his hand to drive it on. His kind treatment was one day remarked to him, and he was asked whether the beast was not apt to be stubborn. 'Ah!' he said, 'it is of no use to be cruel; and as for stubbornness, I cannot complain, for he is ready to do any thing or go any where. I bred him myself. He is sometimes skittish and playful, and once ran away from me: you will hardly believe it, but there were more than fifty people after him, attempting in vain to stop him; yet he turned back of himself, and never stopped till he ran his head kindly into my bosom.'" The following is a pleasing anecdote of the sagacity of the ass, and the attachment displayed by the animal to his master. Thomas Brown travelled in England as a pedler, having an ass the partner of his trade. From suffering under paralysis, he was in the habit of assisting himself on the road by keeping hold of the crupper of the saddle, or more frequently the _tail_ of the ass. During a severe winter some years ago, whilst on one of his journeys, the old man and his ass were suddenly plunged into a wreath of snow. There they lay far from help, and ready to perish. At last, after a severe struggle, the poor ass got out; but, finding his unfortunate master absent, he eyed the snow-bank some time with a wistful look, and at last forced his way through it to where his master lay, when, placing his body in such a position as to allow him to lay a firm hold on his tail, the honest pedler was enabled to grasp it, and was actually dragged out by the faithful beast to a place of safety! THE ZEBRA. The zebra possesses some of the characteristics of the horse;--smaller in size, it strongly resembles it in the shape of its body, its head, its limbs, and its hoofs. It moves in the same paces, with a similar activity and swiftness. But it discovers none of that docility which has rendered the services of the horse so invaluable to man. On the contrary, it is proverbially untamable; it is ever the most wild even among those ferocious animals which are ranged in the menagerie, and it preserves in its countenance the resolute determination never to submit. In the year 1803, General Dundas brought a female zebra from the Cape of Good Hope, which was deposited in the Tower, and there showed less than the usual impatience of subordination. The person who had accompanied her home, and attended her there, would sometimes spring on her back, and proceed thus for about two hundred yards, when she would become restive, and oblige him to dismount. She was very irritable, and would kick at her keeper. One day she seized him with her teeth, threw him down, and showed an intention to destroy him, which he disappointed by rapidly extricating himself. She generally kicked in all directions with her feet, and had a propensity to seize with her teeth whatever offended her. Strangers she would not allow to approach her, unless the keeper held her fast by the head, and even then she was very prone to kick. The most docile zebra on record was burnt at the Lyceum, near Exeter 'Change. This animal allowed its keeper to use great familiarities with it,--to put children on its back, without discovering any resentment. On one occasion, a person rode it from the Lyceum to Pimlico. It had been bred in Portugal, and was the offspring of parents half reclaimed. The zebra of the plain differs from the other species in having the ground color of the body white, the mane alternately striped with black and white, and the tail of a yellowish white. A specimen of this animal was a few years since in the Tower of London, where it was brought to a degree of tameness seldom reached by the other variety. It ran peaceably about the Tower, with a man by its side, whom it did not attempt to leave except for the purpose of breaking off to the canteen, where it was sometimes regaled with a glass of ale, a liquor for which it discovered a considerable fondness. ORDER IX. RUMINANTIA, RUMINATING ANIMALS--THOSE THAT CHEW THE CUD. THE CAMEL. Of this quadruped there are two species, the dromedary, and the Bactrian camel, which has two hunches on the back. It has been used from the earliest ages, and is one of the most useful of all the animals over which the inhabitants of Asia and Africa have acquired dominion. These continents are intersected by vast tracts of burning sand, the seats of desolation and drought; but by means of the camel, the most dreary wastes are traversed. The camel's great strength, and astonishing powers of abstinence both from food and drink, render it truly invaluable in these inhospitable countries. Denon tells us that, in crossing the Arabian Desert, a single feed of beans is all their food for a day. Their usual meal is a few dates, or some small balls of barleymeal, or, occasionally, the dry and thorny plants they meet with, at remote intervals, during their progress across the desert. With these scanty meals, the contented creature will lie down to rest amid the scorching sands, without exhibiting either exhaustion or a desire for better fare. Well may the Arab call the camel "the ship of the desert!" Mr. McFarlane says, "I have been told that the Arabs will kiss their camels, in gratitude and affection, after a journey across the deserts. I never saw the Turks, either of Asia Minor or Roumelia, carry their kindness so far as this; but I have frequently seen them pat their camels when the day's work was done, and talk to them on their journey, as if to cheer them. The camels appeared to me quite as sensible to favor and gentle treatment as is a well-bred horse. I have seen them curve and twist their long, lithe necks as their driver approached, and often put down their tranquil heads toward his shoulder. Near Smyrna, and at Magnesia and Sardes, I have occasionally seen a camel follow his master like a pet dog, and go down on his knees before him, as if inviting him to mount. I never saw a Turk ill-use the useful, gentle, amiable quadruped; but I have frequently seen him give it a portion of his own dinner, when, in unfavorable places, it had nothing but chopped straw to eat. I have sometimes seen the _devidjis_, on a hot day, or in passing a dry district, spirt a little water in the camels' nostrils; they pretend it refreshes them." The same writer says that, upon his first camel adventure, he was so taken by surprise by the creature's singular rising behind, that he was thrown over his head, to the infinite amusement of the Turks, who were laughing at his inexperience. "I was made acquainted with this peculiarity of the animal's movement, in a striking manner, the first time I mounted a camel out of curiosity. I ought to have known better--and, indeed, did know better; but when he was about to rise, from old habits associated with the horse, I expected he would throw out his fore legs, and I threw myself forward accordingly--when up sprang his hind legs, and clean I went over his ears, to the great delight of the devidjis." The following interesting story of the sufferings of a caravan, from thirst, is related by Burckhardt: "In the month of August, a small caravan prepared to set out from Berber to Daraou. They consisted of five merchants and about thirty slaves, with a proportionate number of camels. Afraid of the robber Naym, who at that time was in the habit of waylaying travellers about the wells of Nedjeym, and who had constant intelligence of the departure of every caravan from Berber, they determined to take a more easterly road, by the well of Owareyk. They had hired an Ababde guide, who conducted them in safety to that place, but who lost his way from thence northward, the route being little frequented. After five days' march in the mountains, their stock of water was exhausted, nor did they know where they were. They resolved, therefore, to direct their course towards the setting sun, hoping thus to reach the Nile. After experiencing two days' thirst, fifteen slaves and one of the merchants died: another of them, an Ababde, who had ten camels with him, thinking that the animals might know better than their masters where water was to be found, desired his comrades to tie him fast upon the saddle of his strongest camel, that he might not fall down from weakness; and thus he parted from them, permitting his camels to take their own way; but neither the man nor his camels were ever heard of afterwards. On the eighth day after leaving Owareyk, the survivors came in sight of the mountains of Shigre, which they immediately recognized; but their strength was quite exhausted, and neither men nor beasts were able to move any farther. Lying down under a rock, they sent two of their servants, with the two strongest remaining camels, in search of water. Before these two men could reach the mountain, one of them dropped off his camel, deprived of speech, and able only to move his hands to his comrade, as a sign that he desired to be left to his fate. The survivor then continued his route; but such was the effect of thirst upon him, that his eyes grew dim, and he lost the road, though he had often travelled over it before, and had been perfectly acquainted with it. Having wandered about for a long time, he alighted under the shade of a tree, and tied the camel to one of its branches; the beast, however, smelt the water, (as the Arabs express it,) and, wearied as it was, broke its halter, and set off galloping in the direction of the spring, which, as afterwards appeared, was at half an hour's distance. The man, well understanding the camel's action, endeavored to follow its footsteps, but could only move a few yards; he fell exhausted on the ground, and was about to breathe his last, when Providence led that way, from a neighboring encampment, a Bisharye Bedouin, who, by throwing water upon the man's face, restored him to his senses. They then went hastily together to the water, filled their skins, and, returning to the caravan, had the good fortune to find the sufferers still alive. The Bisharye received a slave for his trouble." DEER. Of this genus there are many species, as the elk, moose, stag, fallow-deer, reindeer, &c. They are characterized by timidity, a love of retirement in the solitudes of the forest, a general capacity for domestication, and great swiftness of foot. The MOOSE.--In the immense forests of North America, this animal is hunted by the Indians with such relentless perseverance, that all its instincts are called forth for the preservation of its existence. Tanner tells us that, "in the most violent storm, when the wind, the thunder, and the falling timber, are making the loudest and most incessant roar, if a man, either with his foot or hand, breaks the smallest dry limb in the forest, the moose will hear it; and though he does not always run, he ceases eating, and gives all his attention to the sounds he may hear, and he does not relax this till after three or four hours of the keenest vigilance." The AMERICAN ELK.--This stately creature is easily domesticated, and will then come at the call of his master, follow him to a distance from home, and return with him quietly. Although of a gentle disposition, instances have occurred of its turning upon its pursuers. A wounded one was once known to turn and face a hunter in the woods of Canada; the man was found next day pounded to a jelly, his bones being broken to pieces; the deer, having exhausted its fury, was found dead by his side. The RED DEER.--The stag is said to love music, and to show great delight at hearing any one sing. If a person happens to whistle, or call some one at a distance, the creature stops short, and gazes upon the stranger with a kind of silent admiration; and if he perceives neither fire-arms nor dogs, he slowly approaches him with apparent unconcern. He seems highly delighted with the sound of the shepherd's pipe. Playford says, "Travelling some years since, I met, on the road near Royston, a herd of about twenty bucks, following a bagpipe and violin. While the music continued, they proceeded; when it ceased, they all stood still." Brown tells us the following story: "As Captain Smith, of the Bengal Native Infantry, was out in the country with a shooting party, very early in the morning, they observed a tiger steal out of a jungle in pursuit of a herd of deer. Having selected one as his object, it was quickly deserted by the herd. The tiger advanced with such amazing swiftness that the stag in vain attempted to escape, and, at the moment the gentleman expected to see the fatal spring, the deer gallantly faced his enemy, and for some minutes kept him at bay; and it was not till after three attacks that the tiger succeeded in securing his prey. He was supposed to have been considerably injured by the horns of the stag, as, on the advance of Captain Smith, he abandoned the carcass, having only sucked the blood from the throat." The following circumstances are mentioned by Delacroix: "When I was at Compiegne," says he, "my friends took me to a German who exhibited a wonderful stag. As soon as we had taken our seats in a large room, the stag was introduced. He was of an elegant form and majestic stature, his aspect at once animated and gentle. The first trick he performed was, to make a profound obeisance to the company, as he entered, by bowing his head; after which he paid his respects to each individual of us in the same manner. He next carried about a small stick in his mouth, to each end of which a small wax taper was attached. He was then blindfolded, and, at the beat of a drum, fell upon his knees, and laid his head upon the ground. As soon as the word _pardon_ was pronounced, he instantly sprang upon his feet. Dice were thrown upon the head of a drum, and he told the numbers that were cast up, by bowing his head so many times. He discharged a pistol, by drawing with his teeth a string that was tied to the trigger. He fired a small cannon by means of a match that was fastened to his right foot, without showing any signs of fear. He leaped several times, with the greatest agility, through a hoop, which his master held at a man's height from the ground. At length the exhibition was closed with his eating a handful of oats from the head of a drum, which a person was beating the whole time with the utmost violence. Almost every trick was performed with as much steadiness as it could have been accomplished by the best-trained dog." At Wonersh, near Guildford, the seat of Lord Grantley, a fawn was drinking in the lake, when one of the swans suddenly flew upon it, and pulled the poor animal into the water, where it held it under till it was drowned. This act of atrocity was noticed by the other deer in the park, and they took care to revenge it the first opportunity. A few days after, this swan, happening to be on land, was surrounded and attacked by the whole herd, and presently killed. Before this time, they were never known to molest the swans. The VIRGINIA DEER.--A young gentleman, in Bath, Virginia, killed two large bucks, the horns of which were so interlocked that they could not disengage themselves. There is no doubt that they had had a combat; and, from observations made by the sportsman, he supposed them to have been in that condition several days. The horns were so securely fastened that, he could not separate them without breaking off one of the prongs. The bucks were killed at two shots, and the one which escaped the first ball carried the other a hundred yards before he met his death. A farmer in the state of Kentucky domesticated a female deer, but lost her during the whole spring and summer. After an absence of several months, she returned with a fawn at her side, and, on her arrival, seemed to take great pleasure in showing her young one. The Virginia deer is said by the hunters to evince a strong degree of animosity towards serpents, and especially to the rattlesnake. In order to destroy one of these creatures, the deer makes a bound into the air, and alights upon the serpent with all four feet brought together in a square, and these violent blows are repeated till the hated reptile is destroyed. The REINDEER.--This animal, as is well known, is the great resource of the Laplanders, to whom it furnishes most of the necessaries of life. Two or three varieties are found in the polar regions of the American continent. "They visit the Arctic shores," says Captain Lyon, "at the latter end of May or the early part of June, and remain until late in September. On his first arrival, the animal is thin, and his flesh is tasteless; but the short summer is sufficient to fatten him. When feeding on the level ground, an Esquimaux makes no attempt to approach him; but should a few rocks be near, the wary hunter feels secure of his prey. Behind one of these he cautiously creeps, and, having laid himself very close, with his bow and arrow before him, imitates the bellow of the deer when calling to its mate. Sometimes, for more complete deception, the hunter wears his deer-skin coat and hood so drawn over his head, as to resemble, in a great measure, the unsuspecting animals he is enticing. Though the bellow proves a considerable attraction, yet if a man has great patience, he may do without it, and may be equally certain that his prey will ultimately come to examine him; the reindeer being an inquisitive animal, and at the same time so silly, that, if he sees any suspicious object which is not actually chasing him, he will gradually, and after many caperings, and forming repeated circles, approach nearer and nearer to it. "The Esquimaux rarely shoot until the creature is within twelve paces, and I have frequently been told of their being killed at a much shorter distance. It is to be observed that the hunters never appear openly, but employ stratagem for their purpose--thus by patience and ingenuity rendering their rudely-formed bows, and still worse arrows, as effective as the rifles of Europeans. When two men hunt in company, they sometimes purposely show themselves to the deer, and when his attention is fully engaged, walk slowly away from him, one before the other. The deer follows, and when the hunters arrive near a stone, the foremost drops behind it, and prepares his bow, while his companion continues walking steadily forward. This latter the deer still follows unsuspectingly, and thus passes near the concealed man, who takes a deliberate aim, and kills him." THE GIRAFFE. This animal, the tallest of quadrupeds, is found in the interior of Africa. Its height is about seventeen feet. It is of a fawn color, marked with dark spots. Its neck is slender, its head gracefully formed, and its eyes soft, yet animated. It associates in small troops, and feeds upon the twigs and leaves of trees. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Some years ago, a giraffe was sent from Egypt to Constantinople. Its keeper used to exercise it in an open square, where the Turks used to flock daily, in great crowds, to see the extraordinary animal. Seeing how inoffensive it was, and how domesticated it became, the keeper used to take it with him through the city, and, whenever he appeared, a number of friendly hands were held out of the latticed windows to offer it something to eat. The women were particularly attentive to it. When it came to a house where it had been well treated, if no one was at the window, it would tap gently against the wooden lattice, as if to announce its visit. It was extremely docile and affectionate; and, if left to itself it always frequented the streets where it had the most and best friends. The giraffe has become familiar to us, in the menageries, of late years; but half a century ago, its very existence was doubted. Le Vaillant was the first to dissipate the mystery which enveloped it. His account of his success in killing one, is given in the following glowing terms: "The 18th of November was the happiest day of my life. By sunrise I was in pursuit of game, in the hope to obtain some provision for my men. After several hours' fatigue, we descried, at the turn of a hill, seven giraffes, which my pack instantly pursued. Six of them went off together; but the seventh, cut off by my dogs, took another way. Bernfry was walking by the side of his horse; but in the twinkling of an eye, he was in the saddle, and pursued the six. For myself, I followed the single one at full speed; but, in spite of the efforts of my horse, she got so much ahead of me, that, in turning a little hill, I lost sight of her altogether; and I gave up the pursuit. My dogs, however, were not so easily exhausted. They were soon so close upon her, that she was obliged to stop, to defend herself. From the place where I was, I heard them give tongue with all their might; and, as their voices appeared all to come from the same spot, I conjectured that they had got the animal in a corner; and I again pushed forward. I had scarcely got round the hill, when I perceived her surrounded by the dogs, and endeavoring to drive them away by heavy kicks. In a moment I was on my feet, and a shot from my carbine brought her to the earth. Enchanted with my victory, I returned to call my people about me, that they might assist in skinning and cutting up the animal. Whilst I was looking for them, I saw one of my men, who kept making signals which I could not comprehend. At length, I went the way he pointed; and, to my surprise, saw a giraffe standing under a large ebony-tree, assailed by my dogs. It was the animal I had shot, who had staggered to this place; and it fell dead at the moment I was about to take a second shot. Who could have believed that a conquest like this would have excited me to a transport almost approaching to madness! Pains, fatigues, cruel privation, uncertainty as to the future, disgust sometimes as to the past,--all these recollections and feelings fled at the sight of this new prey. I could not satisfy my desire to contemplate it. I measured its enormous height. I looked from the animal to the instrument which had destroyed it. I called and recalled my people about me. Although we had combated together the largest and most dangerous animals, it was I alone who had killed the giraffe. I was now able to add to the riches of natural history. I was now able to destroy the romance which attached to this animal, and to establish a truth. My people congratulated me on my triumph. Bernfry alone was absent; but he came at last, walking at a slow pace, and holding his horse by the bridle. He had fallen from his seat, and injured his shoulder. I heard not what he said to me. I saw not that he wanted assistance; I spoke to him only of my victory. He showed me his shoulder; I showed him my giraffe. I was intoxicated, and I should not have thought even of my own wounds." THE GOAT. Of this animal there are many species, some wild and some domestic. They seem to be a link between the sheep and antelope, and to partake of the qualities of both. In some European countries, goat's milk is used, by the poor, as a substitute for that of the cow. _Anecdotes._--A person in Scotland having missed one of his goats when his flock came home at night, being afraid the wanderer would get among the young trees in his nursery, two boys, wrapped in their plaids, were ordered to watch all night. The morning had but faintly dawned, when they sprang up the brow of a hill in search of her. They could but just discern her on a pointed rock far off, and, hastening to the spot, perceived her standing with a newly-dropped kid, which she was defending from a fox. The enemy turned round and round to lay hold of his prey, but the goat presented her horns in every direction. The youngest boy was despatched to get assistance to attack the fox, and the eldest, hallooing and throwing up stones, sought to intimidate him as he climbed to rescue his charge. The fox seemed well aware that the child could not execute his threats; he looked at him one instant, and then renewed the assault, till, quite impatient, he made a resolute effort to seize the kid. Suddenly the whole three disappeared, and were soon found at the bottom of the precipice. The goat's horns were fast into the back of the fox; the kid lay stretched beside her. It is supposed the fox had fixed his teeth in the kid, for its neck was lacerated; but when the faithful mother inflicted a death-wound upon her mortal enemy, he probably staggered, and brought his victims with him over the rock. Dr. Clarke, in his "Travels in Palestine," relates the following: "Upon our road we met an Arab with a goat, which he led about the country for exhibition, in order to gain a livelihood. He had taught this animal, while he accompanied its movements with a song, to mount upon little cylindrical blocks of wood, placed successively one above the other, and in shape resembling the dice-boxes belonging to a backgammon-table. In this manner, the goat stood first on the top of one cylinder, and then upon the top of two, and afterwards of three, four, five, and six, until it remained balanced upon the top of them all, elevated several feet from the ground, and with its feet collected upon a single point, without throwing down the disjointed fabric upon which it stood. The diameter of the upper cylinder, on which its feet ultimately remained until the Arab had ended his ditty, was only two inches, and the length of each was six inches." We are told by a late traveller that the Spaniards do not milk, and then distribute to their customers, in the same manner as with us, but drive their flock of goats to the residence of each customer, and then milk and furnish according to contract. "I was looking out of the window of the dining-room of my hotel one morning; there were at least forty goats, young and old, and the old man who managed the affair seemed hard pushed to get our regular supply. He had to go over the whole flock once, and some twice, before he could completely fulfil his contract. After carrying in his milk, he came to the door and uttered a few Spanish words, and in an instant the whole moved off, the herdsman bringing up the rear. They moved at the word of command much quicker, and marched off in better order, than do our militia." THE SHEEP. Of this useful creature there are many varieties, all of which are supposed to have sprung from the argali, which is found in Asia, Europe, and America. _Anecdotes._--The house of the celebrated Dr. Cotton, of Massachusetts, stood on an eminence, with a garden sloping down in front, filled with fruit-trees. At the foot of the garden was a fence, and in a straight line with the fence was an old well-curb. Mr. Cotton kept a great many sheep, and one day these uneasy creatures took it into their heads to get a taste of their master's fruit. But the minister had another mind about the matter, and sallied out to chastise the marauders. These were very much alarmed; and, according to their usual habit, all followed their leader to escape. The well-curb being the lowest part of the barrier which presented itself to the retreating animal, over he leaped, and down he went to the very bottom of the well, and after him came several of his followers, till it was in danger of being choked up by the silly sheep. Dr. Cotton leaped over the barrier himself, and prevented the rest from destruction. As for those in the well, they humbly stretched out their forefeet to their master, and bleated piteously, as if petitioning him to release them. "Don't be in haste," quietly replied the good pastor: "wait patiently till I go to the house for a rope--then I will try to save you." He was as good as his word; he fastened the rope around their bodies, and drew them one by one out of the water. "There are few things," says Hogg, "more amusing than a sheep-shearing. We send out all the lambs to the hill, and then, as fast as the ewes are shorn, we send them to find their young ones. The moment that a lamb hears its dam's voice, it rushes from the crowd to meet her; but instead of finding the rough, well-clad, comfortable mamma, which it left a few hours ago, it meets a poor, naked, shivering, most deplorable-looking creature. It wheels about, and, uttering a loud, tremulous bleat of despair, flies from the frightful vision. The mother's voice arrests its flight--it returns--flies and returns again--generally for a dozen times, before the reconciliation is fairly made up." The following pleasing anecdote of the power of music is given by the celebrated Haydn: "In my early youth," says he, "I went with some other young people equally devoid of care, one morning during the extreme heat of summer, to seek for coolness and fresh air on one of the lofty mountains which surround the Lago Maggiore, in Lombardy. Having reached the middle of the ascent by daybreak, we stopped to contemplate the Borromean Isles, which were displayed under our feet, in the middle of the lake, when we were surrounded by a large flock of sheep, which were leaving their fold to go to the pasture. "One of our party, who was no bad performer on the flute, and who always carried the instrument with him, took it out of his pocket. 'I am going,' said he, 'to turn Corydon; let us see whether Virgil's sheep will recognize their pastor.' He began to play. The sheep and goats, which were following one another towards the mountain, with their heads hanging down, raised them at the first sound of the flute, and all, with a general and hasty movement, turned to the side from whence the agreeable noise proceeded. They gradually flocked round the musician, and listened with motionless attention. He ceased playing, and the sheep did not stir. "The shepherd with his staff now obliged them to move on; but no sooner did the fluter begin again to play, than his innocent auditors again returned to him. The shepherd, out of patience, pelted them with clods of earth, but not one of them would move. The fluter played with additional skill; the shepherd fell into a passion, whistled, scolded, and pelted the poor creatures with stones. Such as were hit by them began to march, but the others still refused to stir. At last, the shepherd was forced to entreat our Orpheus to stop his magic sounds; the sheep then moved off, but continued to stop at a distance as often as our friend resumed the agreeable instrument. "The tune he played was nothing more than a favorite air, at that time performing at the Opera in Milan. As music was our continual employment, we were delighted with our adventure; we reasoned upon it the whole day, and concluded that physical pleasure is the basis of all interest in music." A gentleman, while passing through a lonely district of the Highlands, observed a sheep hurrying towards the road before him, and bleating most piteously. On approaching nearer, it redoubled its cries, looked in his face, and seemed to implore his assistance. He alighted, left his gig, and followed the sheep to a field in the direction whence it came. There, in a solitary cairn, at a considerable distance from the road, the sheep halted, and the traveller found a lamb completely wedged in betwixt two large stones of the cairn, and struggling feebly with its legs uppermost. He instantly extricated the sufferer, and placed it on the greensward, while the mother poured forth her thanks and joy in a long-continued and significant strain. THE OX. There are many varieties of the domestic ox or cow, all of which are supposed to have sprung from a species still found wild in Europe and Asia. The herds of wild cattle in North and South America are the progeny of animals brought hither by the Spanish settlers. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--The following account is from the journal of a Sante Fe trader: "Our encampment was in a beautiful plain. Our cattle were shut up in the pen with the wagons; and our men were, with the exception of the guard, all wrapped in a peaceful slumber,--when all of a sudden, about midnight, a tremendous uproar was heard, which caused every man to start in terror from his couch, with arms in hand. Some animal, it appeared, had taken fright at a dog, and, by a sudden start, set all around him in violent motion. The panic spread simultaneously through the pen; and a scene of rattle, clash, and 'lumbering' succeeded, which far surpassed every thing we had yet witnessed. A general _stampede_ was the result. Notwithstanding the wagons were tightly bound together, wheel to wheel, with ropes or chains, the oxen soon burst their way out; and, though mostly yoked in pairs, they went scampering over the plains. All attempts to stop them were in vain; but early the next morning we set out in search of them, and recovered all the oxen, except half a dozen." Similar cases of panic are frequently described by travellers upon the western prairies. The cattle of South America, especially in the neighborhood of Buenos Ayres, are said to give indications of approaching rain, before the signs of it are visible in the atmosphere. A traveller relates that, in passing from this place, the weather had been long dry, almost every spring had failed, and the negroes were sent in all directions to discover fountains. Soon after, the cattle began to stretch their necks to the west, and to snuff in a singular manner through their noses, which they held very high in the air. Not a cloud was then seen, nor the slightest breath of wind felt. But the cattle proceeded, as if seized with a sudden madness, to scamper about, then to gather together, squeezing closer and closer, and snuffing as before. While he was wondering what was to be the result of such extravagant motions, a black cloud rose above the mountains, thunder and lightning followed, the rain fell in torrents, and the cattle were soon enabled to quench their thirst on the spot where they stood. There are many anecdotes which show that the ox, or cow, has a musical ear. The carts in Corunna, in Spain, make so loud and disagreeable a creaking with their wheels, for the want of oil, that the governor once issued an order to have them greased; but the carters petitioned that this might not be done, as the oxen liked the sound, and would not draw so well without their accustomed music. Professor Bell assures us that he has often, when a boy, tried the effect of the flute on cows, and has always observed that it produced great apparent enjoyment. Instances have been known of the fiercest bulls being calmed into gentleness by music. It is probable that the old rhyme had its origin in reality:-- "There was a piper had a cow, And nothing had to give her: He took his pipe and played a tune-- 'Consider, cow, consider.'" A correspondent of the Penny Magazine says that, while on a visit to the country-house of a lady, it one day happened that they were passing the cow-house just at the time when the dairymaid was driving home the cows, to be milked. They all passed in quietly enough, with the exception of one, which stood lowing at the door, and resisted every effort of the dairymaid to induce her to enter. When the maid was interrogated as to the cause of this obstinacy, she attributed it to pride; and when surprise was expressed at this, she explained that, whenever any of the other cows happened to get before her, this particular cow would seem quite affronted, and would not enter at all, unless the others were turned out again. This statement having excited curiosity, the maid was desired to redouble her exertions to induce the cow to enter; on which she chased the animal through every corner of the yard, but without success, until she at last desisted, from want of breath, declaring that there was no other remedy than to turn out the other cows. She was then permitted to make the experiment; and no sooner were the others driven out, than in walked the gratified cow, with a stately air--her more humble-minded companions following in her rear. THE BISON. This animal is peculiar to North America, and wanders in vast herds over the western plains. They are much attracted by the soft, tender grass, which springs up after a fire has spread over the prairie. In winter, they scrape away the snow with their feet, to reach the grass. The bulls and cows live in separate herds for the greater part of the year; but at all seasons, one or two bulls generally accompany a large herd of cows. The bison is in general a shy animal, and takes to flight instantly on winding an enemy, which the acuteness of its sense of smell enables it to do from a great distance. They are less wary when they are assembled together in numbers, and will then often blindly follow their leaders, regardless of, or trampling down, the hunters posted in their way. It is dangerous for the sportsman to show himself after having wounded one, for it will pursue him, and, although its gait may be heavy and awkward, it will have no difficulty in overtaking the fleetest runner. _Anecdotes._--Many instances might be mentioned of the pertinacity with which this animal pursues his revenge. We are told of a hunter having been detained for many hours in a tree by an old bull, which had taken its post below, to watch him. When it contends with a dog, it strikes violently with its fore feet, and in that way proves more than a match for an English bull-dog. The favorite Indian method of killing the bison, is by riding up to the fattest of the herd on horseback, and shooting it with an arrow. When a large party of hunters are engaged in this way, the spectacle is very imposing, and the young men have many opportunities of displaying their skill and agility. The horses appear to enjoy the sport as much as their riders, and are very active in eluding the shock of the animal, should it turn on its pursuer. The most common method, however, of shooting the bison, is by crawling towards them from to leeward; and in favorable places, great numbers are taken in pounds. When the bison runs, it leans very much first to one side, for a short space of time, and then to the other, and so on alternately. When the Indians determine to destroy bisons, as they frequently do, by driving them over a precipice, one of their swiftest-footed and most active young men is selected, who is disguised in a bison skin, having the head, ears, and horns adjusted on his own head, so as to make the deception very complete; and, thus accoutred, he stations himself between the bison herd and some of the precipices that often extend for several miles along the rivers. The Indians surround the herd as nearly as possible, when, at a given signal, they show themselves, and rush forward with loud yells. The animals being alarmed, and seeing no way open but in the direction of the disguised Indian, run towards him, and he, taking to flight, dashes on to the precipice, where he suddenly secures himself in some previously ascertained crevice. The foremost of the herd arrives at the brink--there is no possibility of retreat, no chance of escape; the foremost may for an instant shrink with terror, but the crowd behind, who are terrified by the approaching hunters, rush forward with increasing impetuosity, and the aggregated force hurls them successively into the gulf, where certain death awaits them. ORDER X. CETACEA, THE WHALE KIND. This order contains a class of animals which live in the water, propel themselves by fins, and have the general form of fishes; yet they are viviparous, and suckle their young; in these respects forming a striking contrast to all the other finny inhabitants of the wave. The principal species are the dolphin, grampus, porpoise, and whale. The latter is remarkable as being by far the largest creature known to the animal kingdom. THE DOLPHIN. This animal usually swims in troops, and its motions in the water are performed with such wonderful rapidity, that the French sailors call it _la flèche de la mer_, or the sea-arrow. St. Pierre, in his "Voyage to the Isle of France," assures us that he saw a dolphin swim with apparent ease round the vessel in which he was sailing, though it was going at the rate of about six miles an hour. A shoal of dolphins followed the ships of Sir Richard Hawkins upwards of a thousand leagues. They were known to be the same, from the wounds they occasionally received from the sailors. They are greedy of almost any kind of scraps that are thrown overboard, and consequently are often caught by means of large iron hooks, baited with pieces of fish and garbage. The bounding and gambolling of dolphins has attracted the attention of writers and poets in all ages, and is described as being extremely beautiful. The ancients believed that dolphins attended all cases of shipwreck, and transported the mariners in safety to the shore. Piroetes, having made captive Arion, the poet, at length determined on throwing him overboard; and it is said that he escaped in safety to the shore on the back of a dolphin. The poet says,-- "Kind, generous dolphins love the rocky shore, Where broken waves with fruitless anger roar. But though to sounding shores they curious come, Yet dolphins count the boundless sea their home. Nay, should these favorites forsake the main, Neptune would grieve his melancholy reign. The calmest, stillest seas, when left by them, Would awful frown, and all unjoyous seem. But when the darling frisks his wanton play, The waters smile, and every wave looks gay." THE GRAMPUS. This inhabitant of the deep is from twenty to twenty-five feet in length, and seems to cherish a mortal spite against the whale. It possesses the strong affection for its young common to this order. One of the poems of Waller is founded upon the following incident: A grampus in England, with her cub, once got into an arm of the sea, where, by the desertion of the tide, they were enclosed on every side. The men on shore saw their situation, and ran down upon them with such weapons as they could at the moment collect. The poor animals were soon wounded in several places, so that all the immediately surrounding water was stained with their blood. They made many efforts to escape; and the old one, by superior strength, forced itself over the shallow, into a deep of the ocean. But though in safety herself, she would not leave her young one in the hands of assassins. She therefore again rushed in, and seemed resolved, since she could not prevent, at least to share, the fate of her offspring: the tide coming in, however, conveyed them both off in triumph. THE PORPOISE. This creature is familiar to every one who has been at sea, or who has frequented the bays and harbors along our coast. It may often be seen in troops gambolling in the water, and seeming like a drove of black hogs, with their backs above the waves. It is imagined by the sailors that they are the most sportive just before a storm. The following method is adopted for taking them on the banks of the St. Lawrence: When the fishing season arrives, the people collect together a great number of sallow twigs, or slender branches of other trees, and stick them pretty firmly into the sand-banks of the river, which at low water are left dry; this is done on the side towards the river, forming a long line of twigs at moderate distances, which at the upper end is connected with the shore, an opening being left at the lower end, that they may enter. As the tide rises, it covers the twigs, so as to keep them out of sight: the porpoise, in quest of his prey, gets within the line; when those who placed the snare rush out in numbers, properly armed, and, while in this defenceless state, they overpower him with ease. THE WHALE. Of this monster of the deep there are several species--as the Great Whale, which is seventy or eighty feet in length; the Spermaceti Whale, which is somewhat smaller, &c. They frequent various seas, and are most common in cold latitudes. To the Greenlanders, as well as the natives of more southern climates, the whale is an animal of essential importance; and these people spend much time in fishing for it. When they set out on their whale-catching expeditions, they dress themselves in their best apparel, fancying that, if they are not cleanly and neatly clad, the whale, who detests a slovenly and dirty garb, would immediately avoid them. In this manner about fifty persons, men and women, set out together in one of their large boats. The women carry along with them their needles, and other implements, to mend their husbands' clothes, in case they should be torn, and to repair the boat, if it happen to receive any damage. When the men discover a whale, they strike it with their harpoons, to which are fastened lines or straps two or three fathoms long, made of seal-skin, having at the end a bag of a whole seal-skin, blown up. The huge animal, by means of the inflated bag, is in some degree compelled to keep near the surface of the water. When he is fatigued, and rises, the men attack him with their spears till he is killed. The affection and fidelity of the male and female are very great. Anderson informs us that some fishermen having harpooned one of two whales that were in company together, the wounded animal made a long and terrible resistance; it upset a boat containing three men with a single blow of its tail, by which all went to the bottom. The other still attended its companion, and lent it every assistance, till at last the one that was struck sank under its wounds; while its faithful associate, disdaining to survive the loss, with great bellowing, stretched itself upon the dead animal, and shared its fate. The whale is remarkable also for its attachment to its young, and may be frequently seen urging and assisting them to escape from danger, with the most unceasing care and fondness. They are not less remarkable for strong feeling of sociality and attachment to one another. This is carried to so great an extent, that, where one female of a herd is attacked or wounded, her faithful companions will remain around her to the last moment, until they are wounded themselves. This act of remaining by a wounded companion is called "heaving to," and whole "schools," or herds, have been destroyed by dexterous management, when several ships have been in company, wholly from their possessing this remarkable disposition. In the year 1814, an English harpooner struck a cub, in hopes of attracting the attention of the mother. When the young one was wounded, the whale rose to the surface, seized the cub, and dragged a hundred fathoms of line from the boat with great velocity. She again rose to the surface, and dashed furiously about, seemingly deeply concerned for the fate of her young one. Although closely pursued, she did not again descend; and, regardless of the surrounding danger, continued in this state, till she received three harpoons, and was at length killed. There are few incidents in which the enterprise and power of man are more strikingly displayed than in the chase and capture of the whale. It would be easy to fill a volume with thrilling tales of adventure in this hazardous vocation. One of the most curious occurrences upon record, in relation to the whale fishery, happened to a Nantucket ship some years since in the Pacific Ocean. An attack having been made upon a young whale, the dam went to a distance, and, turning toward the ship, came against the bow with a terrific force, which beat it in, and the vessel sank, only allowing time for the hands to get into the boat. In this they roamed upon the ocean for several weeks, and, when emaciated to the last degree by fatigue and privation, they were finally picked up and saved. CLASS II. AVES.... BIRDS. It is evident that this class of animals are generally destined to live a portion of their time in the air, and to perch upon trees. The scientific naturalist is struck with admiring wonder when he comes to examine the adaptation of these creatures to their modes of life. The ingenuity of contrivance, in giving strength, yet lightness, to the frame of the bird, is perhaps unequalled in the whole compass of animated nature. Nor are the feathered races less interesting to common observers. They are associated in the mind with all that is romantic and beautiful in scenery. Their mysterious emigrations, at stated seasons, from land to land; their foresight of calm and storm; their melody and beauty; and that wonderful construction by which some of them are fitted for land and air, and others for swimming,--these contribute to render them an unfailing source of interest to mankind at large. The birds are divided into six orders, under each of which we shall notice a few of the more prominent species. ORDER I. ACCIPITRES, BIRDS OF PREY. VULTURES. The CONDOR.--This is not only the largest of vultures, but the largest known bird of flight. It is common in the regions of the Andes, in South America, and is occasionally found as far north as the Rocky Mountains of the United States. Nuttall gives us the following characteristic sketch of this fierce and formidable bird:-- "A pair of condors will attack a cougar, a deer, or a llama: pursuing it for a long time, they will occasionally wound it with their bills and claws, until the unfortunate animal, stifled, and overcome with fatigue, extends its tongue and groans; on which occasion the condor seizes this member, being a very tender and favorite morsel, and tears out the eyes of its prey, which at length falls to the earth and expires. The greedy bird then gorges himself, and rests, in stupidity and almost gluttonous inebriation, upon the highest neighboring rocks. He can then be easily taken, as he is so gorged that he cannot fly." _Vultures in Africa._--Mr. Pringle describes these birds as follows: "They divide with the hyænas the office of carrion scavengers; and the promptitude with which they discover and devour every dead carcass is truly surprising. They also instinctively follow any band of hunters, or party of men travelling, especially in solitary places, wheeling in circles high in the air, ready to pounce down upon any game that may be shot and not instantly secured, or the carcass of any ox, or other animal, that may perish on the road. In a field of battle, no one ever buries the dead; the vultures and beasts of prey relieve the living of that trouble." TURKEY BUZZARD and CARRION CROW.--These are two small species of vulture, common in our Southern States, and may be often seen in the cities, prowling for such offals as may fall in their way. Wilson furnishes us with the following sketch: "Went out to Hampstead this forenoon. A horse had dropped down in the street, in convulsions; and dying, it was dragged out to Hampstead, and skinned. The ground, for a hundred yards beyond it, was black with carrion crows; many sat on the tops of sheds, fences, and houses within sight; sixty or eighty in the opposite side of a small run. I counted, at one time, two hundred and thirty-seven; but I believe there were more, besides several in the air over my head, and at a distance. I ventured cautiously within thirty yards of the carcass, which three or four dogs, and twenty or thirty vultures, were busily tearing and devouring. Seeing them take no notice, I ventured nearer, till I was within ten yards, and sat down on the bank. On observing that they did not heed me, I stole so close that my feet were within one yard of the horse's legs, and I again sat down. They all slid aloof a few feet; but seeing me quiet, they soon returned as before. As they were often disturbed by the dogs, I ordered the latter home: my voice gave no alarm to the vultures. As soon as the dogs departed, the vultures crowded in such numbers, that I counted, at one time, thirty-seven on and around the carcass, with several within; so that scarcely an inch of it was visible." HAWKS. The PEREGRINE FALCON.--Of this species, so celebrated, in former times, for being used in the noble sport of falconry, Mr. Selby gives us an interesting anecdote. "In exercising my dogs upon the moors, previous to the shooting season," says he, "I observed a large bird, of the hawk genus, hovering at a distance, which, upon approaching it, I knew to be a peregrine falcon. Its attention was now drawn towards the dogs, and it accompanied them whilst they beat the surrounding ground. Upon their having found and sprung a brood of grouse, the falcon immediately gave chase, and struck a young bird before they had proceeded far upon the wing. My shouts and rapid advance prevented it from securing its prey. The issue of this attempt, however, did not deter the falcon from watching our subsequent movements, and, another opportunity soon offering, it again gave chase, and struck down two birds, by two rapidly repeated blows, one of which it secured, and bore off in triumph." _Fatal Conflict._--Le Vaillant gives an account of an engagement between a falcon and a snake. "When this bird attacks a serpent, it always carries the point of one of its wings forward, in order to parry the venomous bites. Sometimes it seizes its prey and throws it high in the air, thus wearying it out. In the present instance, the battle was obstinate, and conducted with equal address on both sides. The serpent at length endeavored to regain his hole; while the bird, guessing his design, threw herself before him. On whatever side the reptile endeavored to escape, the enemy still appeared before him. Rendered desperate, he resolved on a last effort. He erected himself boldly, to intimidate the bird, and, hissing dreadfully, displayed his menacing throat, inflamed eyes, and head swollen with rage and venom. The falcon, for one moment, seemed intimidated, but soon returned to the charge, and, covering her body with one of her wings as a buckler, she struck her enemy with the bony protuberance of the other. The serpent at last staggered and fell. The conqueror then fell upon him to despatch him, and with one stroke of her beak laid open his skull." The KESTREL.--Selby gives us the following curious account of this small European species of falcon. "I had," says he, "the pleasure, this summer, of seeing the kestrel engaged in an occupation entirely new to me--hawking after cockchaffers late in the evening. I watched him through a glass, and saw him dart through a swarm of the insects, seize one in each claw, and eat them whilst flying. He returned to the charge again and again." An extraordinary spectacle was exhibited, in 1828, in the garden of Mr. May, of Uxbridge, in the instance of a tame male hawk sitting on three hen's eggs. The same bird hatched three chickens the year before; but being irritated by some person, it destroyed them. It also hatched one chicken, in the year above mentioned, which was placed with another brood. The SPARROW HAWK.--A remarkable instance of the boldness of this bird was witnessed at Market Deeping, England, one Sunday. Just as the congregation were returning from divine service in the afternoon, a hawk of this species made a stoop at a swallow which had alighted in the centre of the church; and, notwithstanding the surrounding spectators, and the incessant twitterings of numbers of the victim's friends, the feathered tyrant succeeded in bearing his prey triumphantly into the air. The BUZZARD.--Of this common species of hawk, Buffon tells us the following story: "A buzzard that had been domesticated in France exhibited much attachment to his master, attending him at the dinner-table, and caressing him with his head and bill. He managed to conquer all the cats and dogs in the house, seizing their food from them even when there were several together; if attacked, he would take wing, with a tone of exultation. He had a singular antipathy to red caps, which he dexterously snatched off the heads of the working men without being perceived. He likewise purloined wigs in the same manner; and, after carrying this strange booty off to the tallest tree, he left them there without injury. Although he sometimes attacked the neighboring poultry, he lived on amicable terms with those of his master, bathing even among the chickens and ducklings without doing them any injury." THE EAGLE. Of this bird, which seems to stand at the head of the feathered race, as does the lion at the head of quadrupeds, there are many species--among which, the sea eagle, the bald eagle, the Washington, and the golden eagle, hold prominent places. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--Several instances have been recorded of children being seized and carried off, by eagles, to their young. In the year 1737, in the parish of Norderhouss, in Norway, a boy, somewhat more than two years old, was running from the house to his parents, who were at work in the fields at no great distance, when an eagle pounced upon and flew off with him in their sight. It was with inexpressible grief and anguish that they beheld their child dragged away, but their screams and efforts were in vain. We are told that, in the year 1827, as two boys, the one seven and the other five years old, were amusing themselves in a field, in the state of New York, in trying to reap during the time that their parents were at dinner, a large eagle came sailing over them, and with a swoop attempted to seize the eldest, but luckily missed him. The bird, not at all dismayed, sat on the ground at a short distance, and in a few moments repeated the attempt. The bold little fellow defended himself with the sickle in his hand, and, when the bird rushed upon him, he struck it. The sickle entered under the left wing, went through the ribs, and, penetrating the liver, instantly proved fatal. A gentleman, visiting a friend's house in Scotland, went to see a nest which had been occupied by eagles for several summers. There was a stone near it, upon which, when there were young ones, there were always to be found grouse, partridges, ducks, and other game, beside kids, fawns, and lambs. As these birds kept such an excellent storehouse, the owner said that he was in the habit, when he had unexpected company, of sending his servants to see what his neighbors, the eagles, had to spare, and they scarcely ever returned without some dainty dishes for the table; game of all kinds being better for having been kept. When the servants took away any quantity of provisions from the stone larder, the eagles lost no time in bringing in new supplies. As some gentlemen were once hunting in Ireland, a large eagle hastily descended and seized their terrier. This being observed by some of the party, they encouraged the dog, who, turning on the eagle as it continued to soar within a few feet of the ground, brought it down by seizing its wing, and held it fast till the gentlemen secured it. Sir H. Davy gives us the following: "I once saw a very interesting sight, above one of the crags of Ben-Nevis, as I was going in the pursuit of game. Two parent eagles were teaching their offspring--two young birds--the manoeuvres of flight. They began by rising to the top of a mountain in the eye of the sun; it was about midday, and bright for this climate. They at first made small circles, and the young birds imitated them; they then paused on their wings, waiting till they had made their first flight. They then took a second and larger gyration, always rising towards the sun, and enlarging their circle of flight, so as to make a gradually ascending spiral. The young ones slowly followed, apparently flying better as they mounted; and they continued this sublime kind of exercise, always rising, till they were mere points in the air, and the young ones were lost, and afterwards their parents, to our aching sight." Not long since, a man in Connecticut shot an eagle of the largest kind. The bird fell to the ground, and being only wounded, the man carried him home alive. He took good care of him, and he soon got quite well. He became quite attached to the place where he was taken care of, and though he was permitted to go at large, and often flew away to a considerable distance, he would always come back again. He used to take his station in the door-yard in the front of the house, and, if any well-dressed person came through the yard to the house, the eagle would sit still and make no objections; but if a ragged person came into the yard, he would fly at him, seize his clothes with one claw, hold on to the grass with the other, and thus make him prisoner. Often was the proprietor of the house called upon to release persons that had been thus seized by the eagle. It is a curious fact that he never attacked ragged people going to the house the back way. It was only when they attempted to enter through the front door that he assailed them. He had some other curious habits; he did not go out every day to get breakfast, dinner, and supper; his custom was about once a week to make a hearty meal, and that was sufficient for six days. His most common food was the king-bird, of which he would catch sometimes ten in the course of a few hours, and these would suffice for his weekly repast. THE OWL. Of this numerous family, there are a great variety of species; but nearly all steal forth at night, preying upon such birds and quadrupeds as they can master. They are spread over the northern portions of both continents, and appear in all minds to be associated with ideas of melancholy and gloom. The owl was anciently an emblem of wisdom; but we have no evidence that it possesses sagacity in any degree superior to that of any other member of the feathered family. Mr. Nuttall gives us the following description of a red owl: "I took him out of a hollow apple-tree, and kept him several months. A dark closet was his favorite retreat during the day; in the evening he became very lively, gliding across the room with a side-long, restless flight, blowing with a hissing noise, stretching out his neck in a threatening manner, and snapping with his bill. He was a very expert mouse-catcher, swallowed his prey whole, and afterwards ejected the bones, skin, and hair, in round balls. He also devoured large flies. He never showed any inclination to drink." The little owl has a cry, when flying, like _poopoo_. Another note, which it utters sitting, appears so much like the human voice calling out, _Aimé aimé edmé_, that it deceived one of Buffon's servants, who lodged in one of the old turrets of a castle; and waking him up at three o'clock in the morning with this singular cry, the man opened the window, and called out, "Who's there below? My name is not Edmé, but Peter!" A carpenter, passing through a field near Gloucester, England, was attacked by a barn owl that had a nest of young ones in a tree near the path. The bird flew at his head; and the man, striking at it with a tool he had in his hand, missed his blow, upon which the owl repeated the attack, and, with her talons fastened on his face, tore out one of his eyes, and scratched him in the most shocking manner. A gentleman in Yorkshire, having observed the scales of fishes in the nest of a couple of barn owls that lived in the neighborhood of a lake, was induced, one moonlight night, to watch their motions, when he was surprised to see one of the old birds plunge into the water and seize a perch, which it bore to its young ones. A party of Scottish Highlanders, in the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, happened, in a winter journey, to encamp, after nightfall, in a dense clump of trees, whose dark tops and lofty stems, the growth of centuries, gave a solemnity to the scene that strongly tended to excite the superstitious feelings of the Highlanders. The effect was heightened by the discovery of a tomb, which, with a natural taste often exhibited by the Indians, had been placed in this secluded spot. Our travellers, having finished their supper, were trimming their fire preparatory to retiring to rest, when the slow and dismal notes of the horned owl fell on the ear with a startling nearness. None of them being acquainted with the sound, they at once concluded that so unearthly a voice must be the moaning of the spirit of the departed, whose repose they supposed they had disturbed by inadvertently making a fire of some of the wood of which his tomb had been constructed. They passed a tedious night of fear, and with the first dawn of day, hastily quitted the ill-omened spot. Genghis Khan, who was founder of the empire of the Mogul Tartars, being defeated, and having taken shelter from his enemies, owed his preservation to a snowy owl, which was perched over the bush in which he was hid, in a small coppice. His pursuers, on seeing this bird, never thought it possible he could be near it. Genghis in consequence escaped, and ever afterwards this bird was held sacred by his countrymen, and every one wore a plume of its feathers on his head. ORDER II. PASSERINÆ. This order derives its name from _passer_, a sparrow; but the title is not very appropriate, for it includes not sparrows only, but a variety of birds greatly differing from them. They have not the violence of birds of prey, nor are they restricted to a particular kind of food. They feed mainly on insects, fruit, and grain. THE SHRIKE, OR BUTCHER-BIRD. One of these birds had once the boldness to attack two canaries belonging to a gentleman in Cambridge, Mass., which were suspended, one fine winter's day, at the window. The poor songsters, in their fear, fluttered to the side of the cage, and one of them thrust its head through the bars of its prison; at this moment the wily butcher tore off its head, and left the body dead in the cage. The cause of the accident seemed wholly mysterious, till, on the following day, the bold hunter was found to have entered the room with a view to despatch the remaining bird; and but for a timely interference, it would instantly have shared the fate of its companion. This bird has been observed to adopt an odd stratagem. It sticks grasshoppers upon the sharp, thorny branches of trees, for the purpose of decoying the smaller birds, that feed on insects, into a situation whence it could dart on them. THE KING-BIRD. Mr. Nuttall, who domesticated one of these birds, gives us the following account: "His taciturnity, and disinclination to familiarities, were striking traits. His restless, quick, and side-glancing eye enabled him to follow the motions of his insect prey, and to know the precise moment of attack. The snapping of his bill, as he darted after them, was like the shutting of a watch-case. He readily caught morsels of food in his bill. Berries he swallowed whole. Large grasshoppers and beetles he pounded and broke on the floor. Some very cold nights, he had the sagacity to retire under the shelter of a depending bed-quilt. He was pleased with the light of lamps, and would eat freely at any hour of the night." THE CEDAR-BIRD. This beautiful member of the feathered family flies in flocks, and makes himself familiar with the cherry trees when their fruit is ripe. Though his habits are timid and somewhat shy, he appears to possess an affectionate disposition. Mr. Nuttall tells us that one among a row of these birds, seated one day upon a branch, was observed to catch an insect, and offer it to his associate, who very disinterestedly passed it to the next, and, each delicately declining the offer, the morsel proceeded backwards and forwards many times before it was appropriated. THE SCARLET TANAGER. Wilson gives us the following interesting anecdote of one of these birds: "Passing through an orchard one morning, I caught a young tanager that had apparently just left the nest. I carried it with me to the Botanic Garden, put it in a cage, and hung it on a large pine-tree near the nest of two orioles, hoping that their tenderness might induce them to feed the young bird. But the poor orphan was neglected, till at last a tanager, probably its own parent, was seen fluttering round the cage, and endeavoring to get in. Finding this impracticable, it flew off, and soon returned with food in its bill, feeding the young one till sunset: it then took up its lodgings on the higher branches of the same tree. In the morning, as soon as day broke, he was again seen most actively engaged; and so he continued for three or four days. He then appeared extremely solicitous for the liberation of his charge, using every expression of anxiety, and every call and invitation that nature had put in his power, for him to come out. Unable to resist this powerful pleader, I opened the cage, took out the prisoner, and restored it to its parent, who, with notes of great exultation, accompanied its flight to the woods." THE MOCKING-BIRD. The mocking-bird selects the place for his nest according to the region in which he resides. A solitary thorn bush, an almost impenetrable thicket, an orange or cedar-tree, or a holly bush, are favorite spots; and sometimes he will select a low apple or pear-tree. The nest is composed of dry twigs, straw, wool, and tow, and lined with fine fibrous roots. During the time when the female is sitting, neither cat, dog, animal, or man, can approach the nest without being attacked. But the chief vengeance of the bird is directed against his mortal enemy, the black snake. Whenever this reptile is discovered, the male darts upon it with the rapidity of an arrow, dexterously eluding its bite, and striking it violently and incessantly upon the head. The snake soon seeks to escape; but the intrepid bird redoubles his exertions; and as the serpent's strength begins to flag, he seizes it, and lifts it up from the ground, beating it with his wings; and when the business is completed, he returns to his nest, mounts the summit of the bush, and pours out a torrent of song, in token of victory. His strong, musical voice is capable of every modulation. His matin notes are bold and full, consisting of short expressions of two, three, or five and six syllables, generally interspersed with imitations, all of them uttered with great emphasis and rapidity. His expanded wings, and tail glistening with white, and the buoyant gayety of his action, arrest the eye as his song does the ear. The mocking-bird loses little of the power and energy of his music by confinement. When he commences his career of song, it is impossible to stand by uninterested. He whistles for the dog; Cæsar starts up, wags his tail, and runs to meet his master. He squeaks out like a hurt chicken, and the hen hurries about with hanging wings and bristling feathers, clucking to protect her injured brood. The barking of the dog, the mewing of the cat, the creaking of the passing wheelbarrow, follow with great truth and rapidity. He repeats the tune taught him by his master, though of considerable length, fully and faithfully. He runs over the quiverings of the canary, and the clear whistlings of the red-bird, with such superior execution and effect, that the mortified songsters feel their own inferiority, while he seems to triumph in their defeat by redoubling his exertions. THE BALTIMORE ORIOLE. A correspondent of Wilson furnishes the following account of an oriole: "This bird I took from the nest when very young. I taught it to feed from my mouth; and it would often alight on my finger, and strike the end with its bill, until I raised it to my mouth, when it would insert its bill, to see what I had for it to eat. In winter, spring, and autumn, it slept in a cage lined with cotton batting. After I had put it in, if I did not close up the apertures with cotton, it would do so itself, by pulling the cotton from the sides of the cage till it had shut up all the apertures; I fed it with sponge cake; and when this became dry and hard, it would take a piece and drop it into the saucer, and move it about till it was soft enough to be eaten. "In very cold weather, the oriole would fly to me, and get under my cape, and nestle down upon my neck. It often perched upon my finger, and drew my needle and thread from me when I was sewing. At such times, if any child approached me and pulled my dress, it would chase after the offender, with its wings and tail spread, and high resentment in its eye. In sickness, when I have been confined to the bed, the little pet would visit my pillow many times during the day, often creeping under the bed-clothes. At such times, it was always low-spirited. When it wanted to bathe, it would approach me with a very expressive look, and shake its wings. On my return home from a call or visit, it would invariably show its pleasure by a peculiar sound." THE WREN. Wilson furnishes us with the following anecdotes of this little favorite:-- "In the month of June, a mower once hung up his coat under a shed in the barn: two or three days elapsed before he had occasion to put it on again. When he did so, on thrusting his arm into the sleeve, he found it completely filled with rubbish, as he expressed it, and, on extracting the whole mass, found it to be the nest of a wren, completely finished, and lined with a large quantity of feathers. In his retreat he was followed by the forlorn little proprietors, who scolded him with great vehemence for thus ruining the whole economy of their household affairs." "A box fitted up in the window of a room where I slept, was taken possession of by a pair of wrens. Already the nest was built, and two eggs laid; when one day, the window being open as well as the room door, the female wren, venturing too far into the room, was sprung upon by grimalkin, and instantly destroyed. Curious to know how the survivor would demean himself, I watched him carefully for several days. At first he sang with great vivacity for an hour or so; but, becoming uneasy, went off for half an hour. On his return, he chanted again as before, went to the top of the house, stable, and weeping willow, that his mate might hear him; but seeing no appearance of her, he returned once more, visited the nest, ventured cautiously into the window, gazed about with suspicious looks, his voice sinking into a low, melancholy note, as he stretched his neck in every direction. "Returning to the box, he seemed for some minutes at a loss what to do, and soon went off, as I thought altogether, for I saw no more of him that day. Towards the afternoon of the second day, he again made his appearance, accompanied with a new female, who seemed exceedingly timorous and shy, and after great hesitation entered the box. At this moment, the little widower and bridegroom seemed as if he would warble out his very life with ecstasy of joy. After remaining about half a minute inside, they began to carry out the eggs, feathers, and some of the sticks, supplying the place of the two latter with materials of the same sort, and ultimately succeeded in raising a brood of seven young ones, all of whom escaped in safety." THE PURPLE MARTIN. This well-known bird is a general inhabitant of the United States, and a particular favorite wherever he takes up his abode. "I never met with more than one man," says Wilson, "who disliked the martins, and would not permit them to settle about his house. This was a penurious, close-fisted German, who hated them because, as he said, 'they ate his _peas_.' I told him he must certainly be mistaken, as I never knew an instance of martins eating _peas_; but he replied, with great coolness, that he had often seen them 'blaying round the hive, and going _schnip_, _schnap_,' by which I understood that it was his _bees_ that had been the sufferers; and the charge could not be denied." THE SWALLOW. In England, in one corner of the piazza of a house, a swallow had erected her nest, while a wren occupied a box which was purposely hung in the centre. They were both much domesticated. The wren became unsettled in its habits, and formed a design of dislodging the swallow; and having made an attack, actually succeeded in driving her away. Impudence gets the better of modesty; and this exploit was no sooner performed, than the wren removed every part of the materials to her own box, with the most admirable dexterity. The signs of triumph appeared very visible; it fluttered with its wings with uncommon velocity, and a universal joy was perceivable in all its movements. The peaceable swallow, like the passive Quaker, meekly sat at a small distance, and never offered the least opposition. But no sooner was the plunder carried away, than the injured bird went to work with unabated ardor, and in a few days the depredations were repaired. A swallow's nest, built in the west corner of a window in England facing the north, was so much softened by the rain beating against it, that it was rendered unfit to support the superincumbent load of five pretty, full-grown swallows. During a storm, the nest fell into the lower corner of the window, leaving the young brood exposed to all the fury of the blast. To save the little creatures from an untimely death, the owner of the house benevolently caused a covering to be thrown over them, till the severity of the storm was past. No sooner had it subsided, than the sages of the colony assembled, fluttering round the window, and hovering over the temporary covering of the fallen nest. As soon as this careful anxiety was observed, the covering was removed, and the utmost joy evinced by the group, on finding the young ones alive and unhurt. After feeding them, the members of this assembled community arranged themselves into working order. Each division, taking its appropriate station, commenced instantly to work; and before nightfall, they had jointly completed an arched canopy over the young brood in the corner where they lay, and securely covered them against a succeeding blast. Calculating the time occupied by them in performing this piece of architecture, it appeared evident that the young must have perished from cold and hunger before any single pair could have executed half the job. THE SKYLARK. A gentleman was travelling on horseback, a short time since, in Norfolk, England, when a lark dropped on the pommel of his saddle, and, spreading its wings in a submissive manner, cowered to him. He stopped his horse, and sat for some time in astonishment, looking at the bird, which he supposed to be wounded; but on endeavoring to take it, the lark crept round him, and placed itself behind: turning himself on the saddle, to observe it, the poor animal dropped between the legs of the horse, and remained immovable. It then struck him that the poor thing was pursued, and, as the last resource, hazarded its safety with him. The gentleman looked up, and discovered a hawk hovering directly over them; the poor bird again mounted the saddle, under the eye of its protector; and the disappointed hawk shifting his station, the little fugitive, watching his opportunity, darted over the hedge, and was hid in an instant. THE TITMOUSE. During the time of incubation, the natural timidity of birds is greatly lessened. The following instance, given by W. H. Hill, of Gloucester, England, illustrates this: "Some time since, a pair of blue titmice built their nest in the upper part of an old pump, fixing on the pin, on which the handle worked. It happened that, during the time of building the nest and laying the eggs, the pump had not been used: when again set going, the female was sitting, and it was naturally expected that the motion of the pump-handle would drive her away. The young brood were hatched safely, however, without any other misfortune than the loss of part of the tail of the sitting bird, which was rubbed off by the friction of the pump-handle; nor did they appear disturbed by the visitors who were frequently looking at them." THE CANARY-BIRD. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--At a public exhibition of birds, some years ago, in London, a canary had been taught to act the part of a deserter, and flew away pursued by two others, who appeared to apprehend him. A lighted candle being presented to one of them, he fired a small cannon, and the little deserter fell on one side, as if killed by the shot. Another bird then appeared with a small wheelbarrow, for the purpose of carrying off the dead; but as soon as the barrow came near, the little deserter started to his feet. "On observing," says Dr. Darwin, "a canary-bird at the house of a gentleman in Derbyshire, I was told it always fainted away when its cage was cleaned; and I desired to see the experiment. The cage being taken from the ceiling, and the bottom drawn out, the bird began to tremble, and turned quite white about the root of the bill; he then opened his mouth as if for breath, and respired quick; stood up straighter on his perch, hung his wing, spread his tail, closed his eyes, and appeared quite stiff for half an hour, till at length, with trembling and deep respirations, he came gradually to himself." A few years since, a lady at Washington had a pair of canaries in a cage, one of which, the female, at last died. The survivor manifested the utmost grief; but upon a looking-glass being placed by his side, so that he could see his image, he took it for his departed friend, and seemed at once restored to happiness. The details of the story are given in the following lines:-- Poor Phil was once a blithe canary-- But then his mate was at his side; His spirits never seemed to vary, Till she, one autumn evening, died;-- And now upon his perch he clung, With ruffled plumes and spirits low, His carol hushed; or, if he sung, 'Twas some sad warble of his wo. His little mistress came with seed:-- Alas! he would not, could not, feed. She filled his cup with crystal dew; She called--she whistled:--'twould not do; The little mourner bowed his head, And gently peeped--"My mate is dead!" Alas, poor Phil! how changed art thou! The gayest then, the saddest now. The dribbled seed, the limpid wave, Would purchase, then, thy sweetest stave; Or, if thou hadst some softer spell, Thine ear had stolen from the shell That sings amid the silver sand That circles round thy native land, 'Twas only when, with wily art, Thou sought'st to charm thy partner's heart. And she is gone--thy joys are dead-- Thy music with thy mate is fled! Poor bird! upon the roost he sate, With drooping wing, disconsolate; And as his little mistress gazed, Her brimming eyes with tears were glazed. In vain she tried each wonted art To heal the mourner's broken heart. At last she went, with childish thought, And to the cage a mirror brought. She placed it by the songster's side-- And, lo! the image seemed his bride! Forth from his perch he wondering flew, Approached, and gazed, and gazed anew; And then his wings he trembling shook, And then a circling flight he took; And then his notes began to rise, A song of triumph, to the skies! And since--for many a day and year, That blissful bird--the mirror near-- With what he deems his little wife, His partner still--has spent his life: Content, if but the image stay, Sit by his side, and list his lay! Thus fancy oft will bring relief, And with a shadow comfort grief. THE BULFINCH. A farmer in Scotland had a bulfinch which he taught to whistle some plaintive old Scottish airs. He reluctantly parted with the bird for a sum of money, which his narrow circumstances at the time compelled him to accept of; but inwardly resolved, if fortune should favor him, to buy it back, cost what it would. At the end of a year or so, a relation died, leaving him a considerable legacy. Away he went, the very day after he got intelligence of this pleasant event, and asked the person who had purchased the bulfinch, if he would sell it again, telling him to name his own price. The man would not hear of parting with the bird. The farmer begged just to have a sight of it, and he would be satisfied. This was readily agreed to; so, as soon as he entered the room where the bulfinch was kept, he began to whistle one of the fine old tunes which he had formerly taught it. The bulfinch remained in a listening attitude for a minute or two, then it grew restless, as if struggling with some dim recollection,--then it moved joyously to the side of the cage, and all at once it seemed to identify its old master, who had no sooner ceased, than it took up the tune, and warbled it with the tremulous pathos which marked the manner of its teacher. The effect was irresistible; the poor farmer burst into tears, and the matter ended by his receiving the bulfinch in a present: but report says, to his credit, that he insisted on making a present of money, in return. THE SPARROW. A few years since, a pair of sparrows, which had built in the thatch roof of a house at Poole, were observed to continue their visits to the nest long after the time when the young birds take flight. This unusual circumstance continued throughout the year; and in the winter, a gentleman who had all along observed them, determined on investigating the cause. He therefore mounted a ladder, and found one of the young ones detained a prisoner, by means of a piece of string, or worsted, which formed part of the nest, having become accidentally twisted round its leg. Being thus incapacitated from procuring its own sustenance, it had been fed by the continued exertions of its parents. An old man belonging to the neighborhood of Glasgow, who was a soldier in his youth, mentions, that he became first reconciled to a foreign country, by observing a sparrow hopping about just as he had seen them do at home. "Are you here too, freen?" said he to the sparrow. He does not add that it returned a verbal answer to his exclamatory question; but he could not help fancying that it looked assent, as if it understood he was an exile, and wished him to take a lesson of resignation to circumstances. THE CROW. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--In the year 1816, a Scotch newspaper states that a common crow, perceiving a brood of young chickens, fourteen in number, under the care of a parent hen, picked up one of them; but a young lady, seeing what had happened, suddenly pulled up the window, and calling out loudly, the plunderer dropped his prey. In the course of the day, however, the audacious and calculating robber, accompanied by thirteen others, came to the place where the chickens were, and each seizing one, got clearly off with the whole brood at once. An instance of sagacity in the crow is told by Dr. Darwin. He had a friend, on the northern coast of Ireland, who noticed above a hundred crows at once, feeding on mussels. The plan they took to break them was, each to lift one in its bill, and ascend about thirty or forty yards in the air, and from thence let the mussels drop upon stones; thus they secured the flesh of the animal inhabitants. During the war between Augustus Cæsar and Mark Antony, when the world looked with anxiety which way Fortune would turn herself, an indigent man in Rome, in order to be prepared to take advantage of whichever way she might incline, determined on making a bold hit for his own advancement; he had recourse, therefore, to the following ingenious expedient: He applied himself to the training of two crows with such diligence, that he taught them at length to pronounce distinctly, the one a salutation to Cæsar, and the other to Antony. When Augustus returned conqueror, the man went out to meet him, with one of the crows perched on his hand, which every little while exclaimed, _Salve, Cæsar, Victor, Imperator!_ Augustus, greatly struck, and delighted with so novel a circumstance, purchased the bird of the man for a sum which immediately raised him to opulence. There is a kind of crow, which is seen in England in flocks, called the _hooded_ crow. It is said that one or two hundred of them will sometimes meet together as if upon some fixed plan; and at these times, a few of them sit with drooping heads, and others look very grave, as if they were judges, while others still are very bustling and noisy. In about an hour, the meeting breaks up, when one or two are generally found dead; and it has been supposed that this meeting is a sort of trial of some crows who have behaved ill, and who are punished in this severe way for their bad behavior. THE RAVEN. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--This bird is very hardy, crafty, and wary. He is easily domesticated, and is very mischievous, readily catching up any thing glittering, and hiding it. There is a well-authenticated fact of a gentleman's butler having missed a great many silver spoons, and other articles, without being able to detect the thief for some time; at last he observed a tame raven with one in his mouth, and watched him to his hiding-place, where he found more than a dozen. A young raven, fifteen months old, was taken from the nest when very young, and brought up by a keeper with his dogs. It was so completely domesticated that it would go out with the keeper, and when it took its flight farther than usual, at the sound of the whistle it would return and perch upon a tree or a wall, and watch all his movements. It was no uncommon thing for it to go to the moors with him, and to return--a distance of ten or twelve miles. It would even enter a village with the keeper, partake of the same refreshment, and never leave him until he returned home. A gentleman who resided near the New Forest, Hampshire, England, had a tame raven, which used frequently to hop about the verge of the forest, and chatter to every one it met. One day, a person travelling through the forest to Winchester, was much surprised at hearing the following exclamation: "Fair play, gentlemen! fair play! for God's sake, gentlemen, fair play!" The traveller, looking round to discover from whence the voice came, to his great astonishment, beheld no human being near. But hearing the cry of "fair play" again repeated, he thought it must proceed from some fellow-creature in distress. He immediately rushed into that part of the forest from whence the cries came, where, to his unspeakable astonishment, the first objects he beheld were two ravens combating a third with great fury, while the sufferer, which proved to be the tame one aforesaid, kept loudly vociferating, "fair play;" which so diverted the traveller, that he instantly rescued the oppressed bird, by driving away his adversaries; and returned highly pleased with his morning adventure. THE MAGPIE. This bird, which is found in Europe, and also in the plains east of the Rocky Mountains, is remarkable alike for its loquacity and its disposition to theft--a trait of character which belongs to several birds of the same genus. Lady Morgan furnishes us with the following anecdote:-- "A noble lady of Florence resided in a house which still stands opposite the lofty Doric column which was raised to commemorate the defeat of Pietro Strozzi, and the taking of Sienna, by the tyrannic conqueror of both, Cosmo the First. She lost a valuable pearl necklace, and one of her waiting-women, a very young girl, was accused of the theft. Having solemnly denied the fact, she was put to the torture, which was then practised at Florence. Unable to support its terrible infliction, she acknowledged that 'she was guilty,' and, without further trial, was hung. Shortly after, Florence was visited by a tremendous storm; a thunderbolt fell on the figure of Justice, and split the scales, one of which fell to the earth, and with it fell the ruins of a magpie's nest, containing the pearl necklace. Those scales are still the haunts of birds, and I never saw them hovering round them, without thinking of those 'good old times,' when innocent women could be first tortured, and then hung, on suspicion." We are informed by Plutarch of a magpie, belonging to a barber at Rome, which could imitate every word it heard uttered. It happened one day that some trumpets were sounded before the shop door, and for some days afterwards the magpie was quite mute, and appeared pensive and melancholy. This change in its manners greatly surprised all who knew it, and it was supposed that the sound of the trumpets had so completely stunned the poor bird, that it was deprived of both voice and hearing. It soon appeared, however, that this was not the case; for Plutarch says, the bird had been all the while occupied in profound meditation, studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets, which had made a deep impression on him; and at last, to the astonishment of all its friends, it broke its long silence by a very perfect imitation of the flourish of the trumpets it had heard; observing with great accuracy all the repetitions, stops, and changes. But this turned out an unfavorable lesson, for the magpie forgot every thing else, and never afterwards attempted another imitation but that of the trumpets. THE HUMMING-BIRD. The following is from the pen of Wilson: "A nest of young humming-birds was once brought to me that were nearly fit to fly; one of them flew out of the nest and was killed. The other was fed with sugar and water, into which it thrust its bill, sucking it with great avidity. I kept it upwards of three months, feeding it on sugar and water; gave it fresh flowers every morning, sprinkled with the liquid, and surrounded the space in which I kept it with gauze, that it might not injure itself. It appeared gay, active, and full of spirit, humming from flower to flower, as if in its native wilds, and always expressed, by its motions and chirping, great pleasure at seeing fresh flowers introduced into its cage. Numbers of people visited it from motives of curiosity, and I took every precaution to preserve it, if possible, through the winter. Unfortunately, however, it got at large in the room, and, flying about, so injured itself, that it soon after died." THE BLUE JAY. "This elegant bird," says Wilson, "is distinguished as a kind of beau among the feathered tenants of our woods, by the brilliancy of his dress. He possesses the mischievous disposition of the jay family, and he seems particularly fond of exercising his malignant ingenuity against the owl. No sooner has he discovered the retreat of one of these, than he summons the whole feathered fraternity to his assistance, who surround the glimmering _solitaire_, and attack him from all sides, raising such a shout as might be heard, on a still day, more than half a mile off. When, in my hunting excursions, I have passed near this scene of tumult, I have imagined to myself that I heard the insulting party, venting their respective charges with all the virulence of a Billingsgate mob; the owl, meanwhile, returning every compliment with a broad, goggling stare. The war becomes louder and louder, and the owl, at length, forced to betake himself to flight, is followed by his whole train of persecutors, until driven beyond the boundaries of their jurisdiction." _Anecdotes._--A gentleman in South Carolina gives an account of a blue jay, which was brought up in his family, that had all the tricks and loquacity of a parrot; pilfered every thing he could carry off, and hid them in holes and crevices; answered to his name with great sociability when called on; could articulate a number of words pretty distinctly; and when he heard an uncommon noise, or loud talking, seemed impatient to contribute his share to the general festivity, by a display of all the oratorical powers he was possessed of. "Having caught a jay in the winter season," says Mr. Bartram, "I turned him loose in the greenhouse, and fed him with corn, the heart of which he was very fond of. The grain being ripe and hard, the bird at first found a difficulty in breaking it, as it would start from his bill when he struck it. After looking about, as if considering a moment, he picked up his grain, carried and placed it close up in a corner on the shelf, between the wall and a plant-box, where being confined on three sides, he soon effected his purpose, and continued afterwards to make use of the same practical expedient." ORDER III. SCANSORIÆ, CLIMBING BIRDS. THE CUCKOO. Dr. Jenner gives us the following anecdote: "I found one day the nest of a hedge-sparrow, which contained a cuckoo's and three hedge-sparrow's eggs. The next day, I found the bird had hatched, but the nest now contained only one sparrow, and the cuckoo. What was my astonishment to observe the young cuckoo, though so newly hatched, in the act of turning out the young hedge-sparrow! The mode of accomplishing this was very curious. The little animal, with the assistance of its rump and wings, contrived to get the bird on its back, and, making a lodgment for the burden, by elevating its elbows, clambered with it to the side of the nest till it reached the top, where resting for a moment, it threw off its load with a jerk, and quite disengaged it from the nest. It remained in this situation a short time, feeling about with the extremities of its wings, as if to be convinced that the business was properly done, and then dropped into the nest again." THE WOODPECKER. The RED-HEADED WOODPECKER.--Of the woodpecker there are several species; but this is one of the best known. It is, properly speaking, a bird of passage; though even in the Eastern States individuals are found during moderate winters, as well as in the states of New York and Pennsylvania. Notwithstanding the care which this bird takes to place its young beyond the reach of enemies, within the hollows of trees, yet there is one deadly foe, against whose depredations neither the height of the tree nor the depth of the cavity, is the least security. This is the black snake, who frequently glides up the trunk of the tree, and, like a skulking savage, enters the woodpecker's peaceful apartment, devours the eggs, or helpless young, in spite of the cries and flutterings of the parents, and, if the place is large enough, coils himself up in the spot they occupied, where he will sometimes remain several days. The IVORY-BILLED WOODPECKER.--Wilson says, "I found one of these birds while travelling in North Carolina. It was slightly wounded in the wing, and, on being caught, uttered a loudly-reiterated and most piteous note, exactly like the violent crying of a child, which terrified my horse very much. It was distressing to hear it. I carried it with me under cover to Wilmington. In passing through the streets, its affecting cries surprised every one within hearing, especially the females, who hurried to the doors and windows with looks of anxiety and alarm. I rode on, and on arriving at the piazza of the hotel where I intended to put up, the landlord came forward, and a number of persons who happened to be there, all equally alarmed at what they heard; this was greatly increased by my asking whether he could furnish me with accommodations for myself and baby. The man looked foolish, and the others stared with astonishment. After diverting myself a few minutes at their expense, I drew out my woodpecker, and a general laugh took place. I took him up stairs, and locked him up in my room, and tied him with a string to the table. I then went out to procure him some food. On my return, I had the mortification to find that he had entirely ruined the mahogany table, on which he had wreaked his whole vengeance. I kept him three days, but, refusing all sustenance, he died, to my great regret." THE PARROT. This is a large genus of birds, consisting of two hundred species, distinguished by the peculiar structure of the bill, which assists them in climbing. They are gregarious, have generally very brilliant plumage, and inhabit warm regions. _Anecdotes._--The gray parrot often lives to a great age. We are told by Le Vaillant of one which lived in the family of Mr. Huyser, in Amsterdam, for thirty-two years; had previously lived forty-one with that gentleman's uncle; and there can be little doubt that it was two or three years old at the time of its arrival in Europe. In the day of its vigor, it used to speak with great distinctness, repeat many sentences, fetch its master's slippers, call the servants, &c. At the age of sixty, its memory began to fail. It moulted regularly twice a year, till the age of sixty-five, when the red feathers of the tail gave place to yellow ones, after which, no other change of plumage took place. When Le Vaillant saw it, it was in a state of complete decrepitude, and, having lost its sight and memory, had lapsed into a sort of lethargic condition, and was fed at intervals with biscuit dipped in Madeira. Leo, son of the Emperor Basilius Macedo, was accused, by a monk, of having a design upon the life of his father, and was thereupon cast into prison, from which he was freed through the instrumentality of a parrot. The emperor, upon a certain occasion, entertained some of the greatest nobles of his court. They were all seated, when a parrot, which was hung up in the hall, in a mournful tone cried out, "Alas! alas! poor Prince Leo!" It is very probable that he had frequently heard courtiers passing, bewailing the prince's hard fortune in those terms. He frequently repeated these words, which at last so affected the courtiers that they could not eat. The emperor observed it, and entreated them to make a hearty repast; when one of them, with tears in his eyes, said, "How should we eat, sire, when we are thus reproached by this bird of our want of duty to your family? The brute animal is mindful of its lord; and we, that have reason, have neglected to supplicate your majesty in behalf of the prince, whom we all believe to be innocent, and to suffer under calumny." The emperor, moved by these words, commanded them to fetch Leo out of prison, admitted him to his presence, and restored him, first to his favor, and then to his former dignities. Buffon says, "I have seen a parrot very ridiculously employed, belonging to a distiller who had suffered pretty severely in his circumstances from an informer that lived opposite him. This bird was taught to pronounce the ninth commandment,--'Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor,' with a very clear, loud, articulate voice. The bird was generally placed in a cage over against the informer's house, and delighted the whole neighborhood with its persevering exhortations." Some years since, a parrot in Boston, that had been taught to whistle in the manner of calling a dog, was sitting in his cage at the door of a shop. As he was exercising himself in this kind of whistle, a large dog happened to be passing the spot; the animal, imagining that he heard the call of his master, turned suddenly about, and ran towards the cage of the parrot. At this critical moment, the bird exclaimed vehemently, "Get out, you brute!" The astonished dog hastily retreated, leaving the parrot to enjoy the joke. ORDER IV. GALLINACEA, RESEMBLING THE DOMESTIC HEN. THE COCK. The domestic cock is the origin of all the varieties of the domestic fowl, and is supposed to have come originally from Asia. It was brought to America by the first settlers. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--A short time since, a farmer in Ohio heard loud talking and angry words among his fowls, and, being a man of pacific disposition, bent his course towards the scene of cackling and confusion. Arrived in the vicinity, he observed his favorite cock engaged in mortal combat with a striped snake, dealing his blows with bill and spurs in quick succession, and with true pugilistic skill. But the wily serpent, well aware that, in order to beat his powerful antagonist, he must use cunning, seized him by the thigh in the rear. Thus situated, the cock rose on his wings, and lighted on an apple-tree, the snake keeping fast hold, and dangling down like a taglock. It then coiled its tail round a branch of the tree. The cock tried again to escape, but, not being able to disengage himself, hung with his head down. In this melancholy situation he was found by the farmer, who instantly killed the snake, and set chanticleer at liberty. The following is a remarkable instance of the degree to which the natural apprehension for her brood may be overcome, in the hen, by the habit of nursing ducks. A hen, who had reared three broods of ducks in three successive years, became habituated to their taking the water, and would fly to a large stone in the middle of the pond, and patiently and quietly watch her brood as they swam about it. The fourth year she hatched her own eggs, and finding that her chickens did not take to the water as the ducklings had done, she flew to the stone in the pond, and called them to her with the utmost eagerness. This recollection of the habits of her former charge, though it had taken place a year before, is strongly illustrative of memory in a hen. "I have just witnessed," says Count de Buffon, "a curious scene. A sparrow-hawk alighted in a populous court-yard; a young cock, of this year's hatching, instantly darted at him, and threw him on his back. In this situation, the hawk, defending himself with his talons and his bill, intimidated the hens and turkeys, which screamed tumultuously around him. After having a little recovered himself, he rose and was taking wing; when the cock rushed upon him a second time, upset him, and held him down so long, that he was easily caught by a person who witnessed the conflict." THE PHEASANT. This splendid bird was brought originally from Asia, but it is now common in Europe, especially in the parks and preserves of England, where it lives in a wild state. _Anecdotes._--"It is not uncommon," says Warwick, "to see an old pheasant feign itself wounded, and run along the ground, fluttering and crying, before either dog or man, to draw them away from its helpless, unfledged young ones. As I was hunting with a young pointer, the dog ran on a brood of very small pheasants; the old bird cried, fluttered, and ran tumbling along just before the dog's nose, till she had drawn him to a considerable distance, when she took wing, and flew still farther off. On this the dog returned to me, near the place where the young ones were still concealed in the grass. This the old bird no sooner perceived, than she flew back again to us, settled just before the dog's nose, and, by rolling and tumbling about, drew off his attention from her young, thus preserving them a second time." A turkey cock, a common cock, and a pheasant, were kept in the same farm-yard. After some time, the turkey was sent away to another farm. After his departure, the cock and pheasant had a quarrel; the cock beat, and the pheasant disappeared. In a few days he returned, accompanied by the turkey; the two allies together fell upon the unfortunate cock, and killed him. THE RUFFED GROUSE. This bird is called _pheasant_ at the south, and _partridge_ in the Eastern States. The following incident in relation to it is extracted from the "Cabinet of Natural History:" "I once started a hen pheasant with a single young one, seemingly only a few days old; there might have been more, but I perceived only this one. The mother fluttered before me for a moment; but, suddenly darting towards the young one, she seized it in her bill, and flew off along the surface through the woods, with great steadiness and rapidity, till she was beyond my sight. I made a very active and close search for others, but did not find any." THE PIGEON. This genus includes a great variety of doves and pigeons, all of which are remarkable for their tenderness and constancy. The PASSENGER PIGEON.--Audubon gives us the following description of a forest in Ohio, which was the resort of the passenger pigeon: "Every thing proved to me that the number of birds resorting to this place must be immense beyond conception. As the period of their arrival approached, a great number of persons collected, and prepared to receive them. Some were furnished with iron pots, containing brimstone; others with torches of pine-knots; many with poles, and the rest with guns. Two farmers had driven upwards of two hundred hogs more than a hundred miles, to be fattened upon the devoted pigeons! The sun was lost to our view, yet not a pigeon had arrived. Every thing was ready, and all eyes were gazing on the clear sky, when suddenly there burst forth a general cry of 'Here they come!' The noise that they made, though far distant, reminded me of a hard gale at sea through the rigging of a close-reefed vessel. As the birds arrived, and passed over me, I felt a current of air that surprised me. Thousands were soon knocked down by the pole-men. The birds continued to pour in. The fires were lighted, and a magnificent as well as terrifying sight presented itself. Pigeons, arriving in thousands, alighted every where, one over another, until solid masses as large as hogsheads were formed on the branches all around. It was a scene of uproar and confusion. I found it quite useless to speak, or even to shout, to those persons nearest to me. This uproar continued all night. Towards day the pigeons began to move off, and at sunrise, all that could fly had disappeared: the dead and the dying were then picked up and piled in heaps, while the hogs were let loose to feed on the remainder." MUSICAL PIGEON.--Bertoni, a famous instructor in music, while residing in Venice, took a pigeon for his companion, and, being very fond of birds, made a great pet of it. The pigeon, by being constantly in his master's company, obtained so perfect an ear for music, that no one who saw his behavior could doubt for a moment the pleasure it took in hearing his master play and sing. CARRIER PIGEON.--Some years ago, two persons arrived in London, from Antwerp, with 110 pigeons, to be thrown off there for the purpose of ascertaining whether they would find their way back, and if so, in what time they would perform the journey. The pigeons were contained in eight enclosures, constructed of wire and canvass, and capable of admitting a sufficiency of air to the birds, and at the top of each was a trap door of tin. The baskets were all placed side by side, and at a given signal, on Monday morning at eight o'clock, the doors were all lifted up, and out rushed all the pigeons at the same instant. They rose in a flock, and bent their way immediately in the direction of home. The men set off on foot shortly after, with certificates of the hour of departure. Most of the pigeons reached Antwerp the same day, the swiftest bird having arrived there in five hours and a half: the distance he flew was 186 miles! ORDER V. STILTED OR LONG-LEGGED BIRDS. This order includes a number of remarkable birds, some of great size. Most of them live on fish; while others eat grain and insects. THE ADJUTANT, OR MARABOO CRANE. Of this enormous bird we have the following account: A young one, about five feet high, was taken and tamed at Sierra Leone. It was fed in the large dining-hall, and at dinner-time always took its place behind its master's chair--frequently before the guests entered. The servants were obliged to watch their provisions narrowly, and defend them from the crane by means of switches; but notwithstanding all their precaution, it would frequently snatch something or other, and once purloined a whole boiled fowl, which it swallowed in an instant. When threatened with punishment, it would open its enormous bill, and roar like a bear or tiger. It swallowed every thing whole, and on one occasion took, at one mouthful, a leg of mutton weighing five or six pounds. THE STORK. A traveller in Russia tells us the following curious story: He was one evening riding near a village, when he saw a number of people in a field assembled round some object. He went to the spot, and saw two storks lying dead upon the ground. One of the bystanders said that the storks had a nest in the field, and that, not long before, the hen bird, who was sitting, left the nest in search of food. During her absence, a species of hawk very common in the country, seeing the eggs unprotected, pounced upon them and sucked them. A short time after this, the male bird, who had been away for food, returned, and finding the eggs destroyed, he threw himself down upon the shells, and gave way to every demonstration of grief. In the mean time, the female returned, and as soon as he observed her, as if to reproach her for leaving the nest, he ran up and attacked her with his beak, and, seizing her between his claws, soared up with her to a great height. He then compressed his own wings, and both falling to the ground together, were instantly killed! The Penny Magazine gives us the following story: "On the day of the memorable battle of Friedland, a farm in the neighborhood of the city was set on fire by the falling of a bomb. The conflagration spread to an old tree in which a couple of storks had built their nest. The mother would not leave this until it was completely devoured by flames. She then flew up perpendicularly, and dashed down into the midst of the fire, as if endeavoring to rescue her precious charge from destruction. At last, enveloped in fire and smoke, she fell into the midst of the blazing embers, and perished." THE HERON. In Westmoreland, England, there were, some years ago, two groves adjoining a park, one of which, for many years, had been the resort of a number of herons; the other was occupied by rooks. At length, the trees tenanted by the herons, consisting of some fine old oaks, were cut down in the spring of 1775, and the young ones had perished by the fall of the timber. The parent birds immediately set about preparing new habitations to breed again; but not finding any other in the neighborhood high enough for them, they determined to effect a settlement in the rookery. The rooks made an obstinate resistance; but after a very violent contest, in which the herons finally triumphed, they built their nests and reared their young. The next season, the same contest took place; but victory declared, as before, for the herons. After this, peace was agreed upon, and they lived together in harmony in different parts of the same grove. THE FLAMINGO. During the French revolutionary war, when the English were expected to make a descent upon St. Domingo, a negro, having perceived, at the distance of some miles, in the direction of the sea, a long file of flamingoes, ranked up and priming their wings, forthwith magnified them into an army of English soldiers; their long necks were mistaken for shouldered muskets, and their scarlet plumage suggested the idea of a military costume. The poor fellow accordingly started off to Gonalves, running through the streets, and vociferating that the English were come! Upon this alarm, the commandant of the garrison instantly sounded the tocsin, doubled the guards, and sent out a body of men to reconnoitre the invaders; but he soon found, by means of his glass, that it was only a troop of red flamingoes, and the corps of observation marched back to the garrison, rejoicing at their bloodless expedition. ORDER VI. PALMIPEDES, WEB-FOOTED BIRDS. THE GULL. Mr. Scott, of Benholm, near Montrose, many years ago caught a sea-gull, whose wings he cut, and put it into a walled garden, for the purpose of destroying slugs, of which these birds are very fond. It throve remarkably well in this situation, and remained about the place for several years. The servants were much attached to this animal, and it became so familiar that it came, at their call, to the kitchen door to be fed, and answered to the name of Willie. At length it became so domesticated, that no pains were taken to keep its wings cut; and having at last acquired their full plume, it flew away, and joined the other gulls on the beach, occasionally paying a visit to its old quarters. At the time the gulls annually leave that part of the coast, Willie also took his departure along with them, to the no small regret of the family, who were much attached to him. Next season, however, Willie again made his appearance, and visited the delighted family of Mr. Scott with his wonted familiarity. They took care to feed him well, to induce him, if possible, to become a permanent resident. But all would not do, for he annually left Benholm. This practice he regularly continued, for the extraordinary length of _forty years_, without intermission, and seemed to have much pleasure in this friendly intercourse. While he remained on that part of the coast, he usually paid daily visits to his friends at Benholm, answered to his name, and even fed out of their hands. One year the gulls appeared on the coast, at their ordinary time; but Willie did not, as was usual, pay his respects immediately on reaching that neighborhood--from which they concluded that their favorite visitant was numbered with the dead, which caused them much sorrow. About ten days after, during breakfast, a servant entered the room exclaiming that Willie had returned. The overjoyed family, one and all of them, ran out to welcome Willie; an abundant supply of food was set before him, and he partook of it with his former frankness, and was as tame as a domestic fowl. In about two years afterwards, this bird disappeared forever. The above facts are confirmatory of the great age which the gull has been said to attain. THE CORMORANT. It is well known that this bird is taught by the Chinese to fish for them. A gentleman of Scotland some years ago obtained two young ones, which he succeeded in domesticating. They soon learned to fish on their own account, and when satisfied, would amuse themselves by quitting and retaking their prey. They sometimes remained for a whole day on board of ships when they were kindly treated, and when these sailed, they would accompany their friends to sea for a few miles. They were very familiar, but would not submit to be teased. When shot at, they always flew to the first person they saw belonging to their master's family, for protection. Their owner had their heads painted white, in order to distinguish them from the wild ones with whom they frequently associated. THE SWAN. At Abbotsbury, in Dorsetshire, there was formerly a noble swannery, the property of the Earl of Ilchester, where six or seven hundred were kept; but from the mansion being almost deserted by the family, this collection has of late years been much diminished. A female swan, while in the act of sitting, observed a fox swimming towards her from the opposite shore. She instantly darted into the water, and having kept him at bay for a considerable time with her wings, at last succeeded in drowning him; after which, in the sight of several persons, she returned in triumph. This circumstance took place at Pensy, in Buckinghamshire. THE GOOSE. _Miscellaneous Anecdotes._--"An old goose," says an English writer, "that had been for a fortnight sitting in a farmer's kitchen, was perceived on a sudden to be taken violently ill. She soon after left her nest, and repaired to an outhouse, where there was a young goose, which she brought into the kitchen. The young one immediately scrabbled into the old one's nest, sat, hatched, and afterwards brought up, the young goslings as her own. The old goose, as soon as the young one had taken her place, sat down by the side of the nest, and shortly afterwards died. As the young goose had never been in the habit of entering the kitchen before, it is supposed that she had in some way received information of the wants of the sick goose, which she accordingly administered to in the best way she could." An English gentleman had some years ago a Canadian goose, which attached itself to a house dog. Whenever he barked, she cackled, ran at the person the dog barked at, and bit his heels. She would not go to roost at night with the other geese, but remained near the kennel, which, however, she never entered, except in rainy weather. When the dog went to the village, the goose always accompanied him, contriving to keep pace with him by the assistance of her wings; and in this way she followed him all over the parish. This extraordinary affection is supposed to have originated in the dog having rescued her from a foe in the very moment of distress. Captain L., of New Jersey, while lying at anchor with his schooner off Poole's Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, observed a wild goose, which had been wounded, attempt to fly from the top of a hill to the water; but being unable to reach its place of destination, it alighted about midway down the hill, where some cattle were grazing; one of which, seeing the stranger, walked up, as is commonly the case, to smell it. The goose, not fancying this kind of introduction, seized the ox by the nose with so much firmness as to set the creature bellowing; and he actually ran off a considerable distance before he could disengage the goose from its hold. CLASS III. REPTILIA ... REPTILES. This is a class of animals between birds and fishes, generally crawling or swimming, of a cold temperature, sluggish habits, slow digestion, and obtuse senses. They include serpents, lizards, tortoises, frogs, toads, salamanders, the proteus and siren. The reptilia are divided into four orders, the division being founded upon the difference in the quantity of their respiration, and the diversity of their organs of motion. ORDER I. CHELONIA, TORTOISE. These animals are of various sizes, some living on the land, and some on the sea. They are remarkable for longevity. Mr. Murray says, "The size to which this creature occasionally attains is quite monstrous. I remember, some years ago, to have seen one, then semi-torpid, exhibited near Exeter 'Change, London, which weighed several hundred weight. Its shell was proportionably thick, and its other dimensions bore a corresponding ratio. It was stated to be about _eight hundred_ years old." ORDER II. SAURIA, LIZARDS. The more formidable species of this tribe are inhabitants of the warmer countries of the globe. The larger kinds prey upon animals, the smaller upon insects. THE CROCODILE. This animal is found on the banks of the Nile, Niger, and Ganges. In crossing the Ba-Woolima, Mungo Park's attendant, Isaaco, met with a strange and nearly fatal adventure. In attempting to drive six asses across the river, just as he had reached the middle, a crocodile rose close to him, and instantly seizing him by the left thigh, pulled him under water. With wonderful presence of mind, he felt the head of the animal, and thrust his finger into its eye. This forced it to quit its hold: it soon, however, returned to the charge, and, seizing him by the other thigh, again pulled him under water. Isaaco had recourse to the same expedient, and thrust his fingers a second time into its eyes with such force, that it again quitted him, rose to the surface, floundered about as if stupid, and then swam down the stream. Isaaco, in the mean time, reached the bank of the river, bleeding very much--the wound in his left thigh being four inches long, that on the right somewhat less, but very deep, besides several single teeth-marks on his back. In six days, however, he recovered so as to be able to travel. At Chantilly, in France, there was, in the year 1828, a crocodile so perfectly tame and well-disposed, that he was caressed with impunity by the keeper, who endeavored, although not always with success, to induce visitors to follow his example. He never attempted to bite any one, but seemed pleased by being fondled. THE ALLIGATOR. This creature is similar in habits and appearance to the crocodile. It is found only in America, and is most abundant in the tropical regions. The anecdotes which display its ferocity are numerous; but we choose one which exhibits it in a different character. Mr. Jesse had one which he made so perfectly tame, that it followed him about the house like a dog, scrambling up the stairs after him, and showing much affection and docility. Its great favorite, however, was a cat; and the friendship was mutual. When the cat was reposing herself before the fire, the alligator would lay himself down, place his head upon the cat, and in this attitude go to sleep. If the cat was absent, the alligator was restless; but he always appeared happy when puss was near him. The only instance in which he showed any ferocity was in attacking a fox, which was tied up in the yard. Probably, however, the fox had resented some playful advances which the other had made, and thus called forth the anger of the alligator. In attacking the fox, he did not make use of his mouth, but beat him with so much severity with his tail, that, had not the chain which confined the fox broken, he would probably have killed him. The alligator was fed on raw flesh, and sometimes with milk, for which he showed great fondness. In cold weather, he was shut up in a box, with wool in it; but having been forgotten one frosty night, he was found dead in the morning. THE SALAMANDER. Recently, as David Virtue, a mason in Scotland, was dressing a heavy barley millstone from a large block, after cutting away a part, he found a lizard of this species imbedded in the stone. It was about an inch and a quarter long, of a brownish-yellow color, and had a round head, with bright, sparkling, projecting eyes. When first found, it was apparently dead; but after being about five minutes exposed to the air, it showed signs of life. It soon became lively, and ran about with much celerity; and about half an hour after the discovery, was brushed off the stone, and killed. When found, it was coiled up in a round cavity of its own form, being an exact impression of the animal. There were about fourteen feet of earth above the rock, and the block in which the lizard was found was seven or eight feet in the rock; so that the whole depth of the animal from the surface was twenty-one or twenty-two feet. The stone had no fissure, was quite hard, and one of the best which is got from the quarry of Cullaloe; the stone is reckoned one of the hardest in Scotland. ORDER III. OPHIDIA, SERPENTS. This order of animals is greatly diversified in their size, color, and qualities. Some are but five inches in length, and others reach the enormous extent of thirty feet. Some are inoffensive, and others are in the highest degree venomous. They are in general regarded with horror by mankind, and a universal instinct seems to call upon us to destroy them. _Anecdotes._--Mr. Strohecker, of Pennsylvania, had a daughter three years of age, who, for a number of successive days, was remarked to leave home with a piece of bread in her hand, and go to a considerable distance. The mother's attention was attracted by the circumstance, who desired the father to follow the infant, and observe what she did with the bread. On coming up to her, he found she was busy feeding several snakes called bastard-rattlesnakes. He immediately took the infant away, and proceeded to his house for his gun, and on returning killed two of them at a shot, and another a few days afterwards. The child called these reptiles, in the same manner as chickens are called; and when her father told her she would certainly be bitten by them if she attempted it again, she innocently replied, "No, father, they won't bite me; they only eat the bread I give them." It has been a common opinion that serpents possess a peculiar power of fascination. This is probably a vulgar error; yet the following story is told of the daughter of a Dutch farmer near Niagara. It was on a warm summer day that she was sent to spread out wet clothes upon some shrubbery near the house. Her mother conceived that she remained longer than was necessary, and seeing her standing unoccupied at some distance, she called to her several times, but no answer was returned. On approaching, she found her daughter pale, motionless, and fixed in an erect posture. The perspiration rolled down her brow, and her hands were clinched convulsively. A large rattlesnake lay on a log opposite the girl, waving his head from side to side, and kept his eyes steadfastly fastened upon her. The mother instantly struck the snake with a stick; and the moment he made off, the girl recovered herself, and burst into tears, but was for some time so weak and agitated that she could not walk home. ORDER IV. BATRACHEA, THE FROG KIND. THE FROG. _A Thief._--A correspondent of the Penny Magazine, who lived close to the outlet of a small lake, used to bestow a great deal of care and attention upon the rearing of young ducklings; but, after all, he had the mortification to find his efforts fruitless. The old ones would hatch fine healthy broods; but as soon as they were strong enough to waddle to a sedgy stream that issued from the adjoining lake, one or two daily disappeared, to the gentleman's great annoyance. Having suffered these continual depredations for two or three seasons, he one day noticed a nice duckling gradually disappear under the water; but judge of his surprise when he beheld a large bull-frog crawl out upon the prostrate trunk of a tree, with the duckling's feet still protruding from his capacious mouth! The mystery was thus solved; the bull-frogs had swallowed all the young ducks! _Curious._--Some years ago, the city of Metz was afflicted by one among the seven plagues of Egypt, namely, frogs; certain streets were filled with these animals, and no one was able to conjecture from whence they came, until it was explained by a dealer in frogs applying to the tribunals for the recovery of his property. He had shut up about six thousand frogs, designed for food, in a particular place belonging to the fish-market, where they were discovered by some children, who took part away to sell, and on leaving the troughs in the fish-market, forgot to close them. Profiting by the opening thus left, the frogs began to spread themselves in various parts, and even got into some of the neighboring houses, whose inhabitants found much difficulty in ejecting the unwelcome intruders. _An Escape._--A butcher in Glasgow found an ordinary-sized living frog in the stomach of a cow, which he had just killed. When laid down, it was full of spirit, and leaped about the slaughter-house, to the astonishment of a considerable crowd. The cow was killed between three and four o'clock in the afternoon; it was supposed she had swallowed the frog when drinking. THE TOAD. Not the least wonderful part of the history of the toad is the circumstance of its being frequently found in the bed of solid rocks, and the internal cavities of trees. _Anecdotes._--We find it mentioned in the "Edinburgh Philosophical Journal," that "a specimen of a toad, which was taken alive from the centre of a solid mass of stone, has been sent to the College Museum of Edinburgh by Lord Duncan." It is mentioned, in the "Transactions of the Academy of Sciences," at Paris, that a live toad was found in the centre of an elm-tree, and another in an oak. Both trees were quite sound, and in a healthy condition. To these facts we may add another: It is related by Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, who is a close observer of nature, that, on his estate in East Lothian, a large toad was found in the heart of a smooth, straight beech-tree, at the height of thirty feet from the ground, where it was confined in a circular hole. A gentleman who resided at Keswick, England, one evening in the latter end of July, observed a rustling among the strawberries in his garden, and on examining what it was, found that a toad had just seized a field-mouse, which had got on the toad's back, scratching and biting to get released, but in vain. The toad kept his hold, and, as the strength of the mouse failed, he gradually drew the unfortunate little animal into his mouth, and gorged him. CLASS IV. PISCES ... FISHES. Fishes are extremely numerous in species, and many of them are little known. They are found in every ocean, sea, lake, or river,--under the dreary skies of the poles, and the burning latitude of the tropics. Being the tenants of an element which excludes them from the familiar observation of man, we have fewer anecdotes of them than of those classes which we have already noticed. We shall therefore only attempt to present a few of the most striking that have come to our notice. THE MACKEREL. The mackerel is one of the most voracious of all fishes; and when they get among a shoal of herrings, they make such havoc as frequently to drive it off the coast. Pontoppidan informs us that a sailor, belonging to a ship lying in a harbor of Norway, went into the water to wash himself, when he was suddenly missed by his companions. In the course of a few minutes, however, he was seen on the surface with vast numbers of mackerels fastened to him. The people went to his assistance in a boat, and tore the fishes from him; but it was too late; for he very shortly afterwards expired from the effects of the wounds he had received, and from the loss of blood. THE SWORD-FISH. The extraordinary power of this fish is shown by the following statement, from the Penny Magazine: "In repairing his Britannic majesty's ship Leopard, in 1725, on her return from the coast of Guinea, a sword of this fish was found to have gone through the sheathing one inch, next through a three-inch plank, and, beyond that, four inches and a half in the firm timber. It was the opinion of mechanics that it would require nine strokes of a hammer weighing twenty-five pounds to drive an iron bolt, of similar size and form, to the same depth in the hull; yet this was accomplished by a single thrust." THE PIKE. _Anecdotes._--The rapacity of this fish is notorious. Jesse says, "Out of eight hundred gudgeons, which were brought to me by a Thames fisherman, and which I saw counted into the reservoir,--some few of which, however, died,--there were scarcely any to be seen at the end of three weeks. Indeed, the appetite of one of my pike was almost insatiable. One morning, I threw to him, one after the other, five roach, each about four inches in length. He swallowed four of them, and kept the fifth in his mouth for about a quarter of an hour, when it also disappeared." The pike is an animal of extraordinary boldness. A few years ago, the head keeper of Richmond Park was washing his hands at the side of a boat, in the great pond, when a pike made a dart at one of his hands, which the keeper suddenly withdrew, otherwise he would have received a severe snap. Mr. Jesse says, "Fish appear to be capable of entertaining affection for each other. I once caught a female pike during the spawning season, and nothing could drive the male away from the spot at which the female disappeared, whom he had followed to the very edge of the water. A person who had kept two small fish together in a glass, gave one of them away; the other refused to eat, and showed evident symptoms of unhappiness, till his companion was restored to him." In the year 1497, a pike was caught, in standing water, at Heilbronn, on the Neckar, which had a copper ring round its head; the ring bore the following inscription in Greek: "I am the first fish that was launched into this pond, and was thrown in by Frederick the Second, emperor of the Romans, on the 5th of October, 1230." It appeared, therefore, that the pike was two hundred and fifty-seven years old when thus caught; it weighed three hundred and fifty pounds; and an exact representation of it exists to this day upon one of the gates of Heilbronn. THE GOLDEN CARP. This beautiful fish was first introduced into England about the year 1691. It is a native of China, where they are very common in ponds. They are, however, very delicate, and unable to stand the powerful rays of the sun; on which account, in each of the ponds where they are kept, earthenware basins, with holes in them, are placed upside down, so that the fishes may retire under them for shade. In China these fish are taught to rise to the surface of the water, to be fed, at the sound of a bell. In very cold weather, they are frequently taken into the house, to prevent them from being frozen. There are several varieties of this beautiful fish,--some of them appearing all speckled over with golden dust; others are pure silvery white; some are spotted with red and white; and a fourth variety is black and white, spotted. Many of these, of a large size, may be seen in the ponds at the royal gardens of the Tuileries, at Paris. They are perfectly tame, and follow individuals round the ponds in hopes of being fed. THE SALMON. Some years ago, a herdsman, on a very sultry day in July, while looking for a missing sheep, observed an eagle posted on a bank that overhung a pool. Presently the bird stooped and seized a salmon, and a violent struggle ensued: when the herdsman reached the spot, he found the eagle pulled under water by the strength of the fish; and the calmness of the day, joined to his drenched plumage, rendered him unable to extricate himself. With a stone, the peasant broke the eagle's pinion, and separated the spoiler from his victim, which was dying in his grasp. THE HERRING. About fifty years ago, the shoals of herrings came into Loch Urn, Scotland, in such amazing quantities, that, from the narrows to the head, about two miles, it was quite full. So many of them were forced ashore by the pressure, that the beach, for four miles round the head, was covered with them from six to eighteen inches deep; and the ground under water, as far as could be seen, was in the same condition. Indeed, so dense and forcible was the shoal, as to carry before it every other kind of fish; even ground-fish, skate, flounders, and plaice, were driven on shore with the force of the herrings, and perished there. It is a curious fact, that herrings die the moment they are taken out of the water; whence originated the adage, which is much used, _as dead as a herring_. THE SHARK. This formidable animal is the dread of mankind in the seas where it is found. There is no safety in bathing where this monster abounds. The late Sir Brooke Watson was at one time swimming at a little distance from a ship, when he observed a shark approaching towards him. Struck with terror at its appearance, he immediately cried out for assistance. A rope was instantly thrown out for him; and even while the men were in the act of pulling him up the ship's side, the shark darted after him, and at a single snap derived him of one leg. In the West Indies, the negroes have frequently the hardihood to engage the shark in single combat, by diving beneath him, and, in ascending, stab him before he sees where they are. In these combats they frequently conquer this formidable creature; and thus, through courage and tactics, overcome his great strength and ferocity. INVERTEBRATA. We come now to the second grand division of the animal kingdom--the Invertebrata Animals--those which, instead of an internal skeleton, have, for the most part, an external shell, or framework, by means of which the fleshy parts are sustained. CLASS I. MOLLUSCA ... SOFT ANIMALS. THE SQUID. There is a singular genus of animals, called _Sepia_, of which the cuttle-fish is a familiar example. Some of them are of great size, having arms nearly thirty feet in length. We are told of a Sardinian captain, who, while bathing, felt one of his feet in the grasp of a squid; he instantly tried to disengage himself with his other foot, but this limb was immediately seized by another of the monster's arms. He then with his hands endeavored to free himself, but these also, in succession, were firmly grasped by the creature, and the poor man was shortly after found drowned, with all his limbs strongly bound together by the arms and legs of the fish; and it is extraordinary that, where this happened, the water was scarcely four feet deep. Mr. Beale gives us the following narrative: "While upon the Bonni Islands, searching for shells, I one day saw, towards the surf, a most extraordinary-looking animal, crawling upon the beach. It was creeping on eight soft and flexible legs, and, on seeing me, made every effort to escape. To prevent this, I pressed one of its legs with my foot; but it quickly liberated the member. I then laid hold of it with my hand, and gave it a powerful jerk, which it resisted by clinging with its suckers to the rock; but the moment after, the apparently enraged animal let go its hold, and sprang upon my arm, which I had previously bared to the shoulder, and clinging to it with great force, endeavored to get its beak between its arms in a position to bite. "A sensation of horror pervaded my whole frame. Its cold, slimy grasp was extremely sickening, and I immediately called to the captain, who accompanied me, and who was at a little distance, to come and release me from my disgusting assailant. He came and set me free, by cutting my tormentor apart with his boat-knife. It must have measured four feet across its extended arms, while its body was not larger than a clinched hand. This was of that species called by whalers 'rock squid.'" THE NAUTILUS. In some places, where the sea is not agitated by winds, great numbers of these singular creatures may occasionally be seen sailing and sporting about. Le Vaillant observed several of them on the sea near the Cape of Good Hope; and, as he was desirous of obtaining perfect specimens of the shells, he sent some of his people into the water to catch them; but when the men had got their hands within a certain distance, they always instantly sank, and, with all the art that could be employed, they were not able to lay hold of a single one. The instinct of the animal showed itself superior to all their subtlety; and when their disappointed master called them away from their attempts, they expressed themselves not a little chagrined at being outwitted by a shell-fish. THE SNAIL. M. de Martens states that the annual export of snails from Ulm, by the Danube, for the purpose of being used as food in the season of Lent by the convents of Austria, amounted formerly to ten millions of these animals. They were fattened in the gardens in the neighborhood. Mr. Rowe gives us the following account: "I was at Mr. Haddock's," says he, "in Kent, and was making a little shell-work tower, to stand on a cabinet in a long gallery. Sea-shells running short before I had finished, I recollected having seen some pretty large snails on the chalk hills, and we all went out one evening to pick up some. On our return, I procured a large China basin, and putting a handful or two of them into it, filled it up with boiling water. I poured off the first water, and filled the bowl again. I then carried it into a summer-house in the garden. Next morning, how great was my surprise, on entering the summer-house, to find the poor snails crawling about, some on the edge of the basin, some tumbling over, some on the table, and one or two actually eating paste that was to stick them on! I picked up every snail carefully, and carried them into a field, where I make no doubt that they perfectly recovered from their scalding." THE OYSTER. A gentleman who lived at Salisbury, England, used to keep a pet oyster, of the largest and finest breed. He fed it on oatmeal, for which it regularly opened its shell. It also proved itself an excellent mouser, having killed five mice, by crushing the heads of such as, tempted by the meal, had the audacity to intrude their noses within its bivalvular clutches. A great number of large creeks and rivers wander through the marshes on the seaboard of Georgia. Whenever the tide bends forcibly against the land, the effects are counteracted by the walls of living oysters which grow upon each other from the beds of the rivers to the very verge of the banks. They are in such abundance, that a vessel of a hundred tons might load herself in three times her length. Bunches of them sufficient to fill a bushel are found matted as it were together, and the neighboring inhabitants and laborers light fires upon the marsh grass, roll a bunch of oysters upon it, and then eat them. THE SCALLOP. The GREAT SCALLOP has the power of progressive motion upon the land, and likewise of swimming on the surface of the water. When it happens to be deserted by the tide, it opens its shell to the full extent, then shuts it with a sudden jerk, often rising five or six inches from the ground. In this manner, it tumbles forward until it regains the water. When the sea is calm, troops of little fleets of scallops, it is said, are sometimes to be observed swimming on the waves. They elevate one valve above the top of the water, which is used as a kind of sail, while they float on the other, which remains on the surface. CLASS II. ARTICULATA ... JOINTED ANIMALS. These animals have not an internal skeleton, like the vertebrata; nor are they wholly destitute of a skeleton, as are the mollusca. The hard parts are external, and the muscles are internal. The class includes red-blooded worms, the _crustacea_, spiders, and insects. THE LEECH. If you ever pass through La Brienne, in France, you will see a man pale, and straight-haired, with a woollen cap on his head, and his legs and arms naked. He walks along the borders of a marsh, among the spots left dry by the surrounding waters, but particularly wherever the vegetation seems to present the subjacent soil undisturbed. This man is a leech-fisher. To see him at a distance,--his hollow aspect, livid lips, and singular gestures,--you would take him for a patient who had left his sick bed in a fit of delirium. If you observe him every now and then raising his legs, and examining them one after another, you might suppose him a fool; but he is an intelligent leech-fisher. The leeches attach themselves to his legs and feet, and as he moves along their haunts, he feels them bite, and gathers them as they cluster round the roots of the bulrushes and sea-weeds. THE CRAB. The following incident is from a late English journal: "In the year 1812, a sailor, in company with several persons, at Sunderland, perceived a crab which had wandered to the distance of about three yards from the water-side. An old rat, on the look-out for food, sprang from his lurking-place, and seized the crab, who, in return, raised his forcep-claws, and laid fast hold of the assailant's nose, who hastily retired, squeaking a doleful chant, and much surprised, no doubt, at the reception he had met with. "The crab retreated as fast as he could towards his own element; but after a short space, the rat renewed the contest, and experienced a second rude embrace from his antagonist. The rat again retreated, but returned again to the attack. After the contest had lasted half an hour, the crab, though much exhausted, had nearly reached the sea, when the rat made a sudden spring, and capsized his antagonist; then, taking advantage of this manoeuvre, like a successful general, seized the crab by his hind leg. The crab, however, again made his escape in a most mutilated condition; the rat, however, closely pursuing him, soon dragged him back to his den, where he doubtless regaled his wife and family with his hard-earned prey. "In the year 1833, as a lady in England was in the act of dressing a crab, she found in its stomach a half guinea, of the reign of George III., worn very thin; but some of the letters were so entire as to enable the reign to be traced." THE SPIDER. The celebrated Lewenhoek found by microscopic observation that the threads of the minutest spiders, some of which are not larger than a grain of sand, are so fine that it would take four millions of them to make a thread as thick as a hair of his beard. In the early part of the last century, M. Bon, of Languedoc, fabricated a pair of stockings and a pair of gloves from the threads of spiders. They were nearly as strong as silk, and of a beautiful gray color. The animal ferocity of spiders makes it impossible to keep them together. M. Bon distributed 4 or 5000 spiders into different cells, putting in each cell about 200, and fed them with flies; but the large ones soon devoured the small ones, and in a short time there were only one or two large ones left in each cell. To test the ingenuity of the spider, a gentleman frequently placed one on a small upright stick, and surrounded the base with water. After having reconnoitred, and discovered that the ordinary means of escape were cut off, it ascended the stick, and, standing nearly on its head, ejected its long web, which the wind soon carried to some contiguous object: along this the sagacious insect effected its escape--not, however, until it had ascertained, by several exertions of its own strength, that its web was securely attached at the end. THE SCORPION. This is one of the largest of the insect tribe, and is not less terrible for its size than its malignity. Its sting, in some countries, is fatal. Volchammer put one of these creatures, and a large spider, into a glass vessel. The latter used all its efforts to entangle the scorpion in its web, which it immediately began to spin; but the scorpion stung its adversary to death; it then cut off all its legs, and sucked out the internal parts at its leisure. The same naturalist shut up a female scorpion with her young in a glass case. She devoured all but one, which took refuge on the back of its parent, and soon revenged the death of its brethren by killing the old one in its turn. THE DEATH-WATCH. This insect makes a ticking noise by beating its head with great force against whatever it happens to stand on. Two of them were kept in a box by a gentleman for three weeks; and he found that, by imitating their note by beating with the point of a pin or nail upon the table, the insect would answer him as many times as he made the sound. THE GLOWWORM. The female of this insect is very luminous, and has no wings. The light always becomes brighter when the worm is in motion, and it can withdraw it when it pleases. When the light is most brilliant, it emits a sensible heat. When a glowworm is put into a phial, and this is immersed in water, a beautiful irradiation takes place. If the insect be crushed, and the hands and face rubbed with it, they have a luminous appearance, like that produced by phosphorus. THE FIRE-FLY. "I was in the habit," says a writer on the Island of Jamaica, "of enclosing, every night, a dozen or more fire-flies under an inverted glass tumbler on my bedroom table, the light of whose bodies enabled me to read without difficulty. They are about the size of a bee, and perfectly harmless. Their coming forth in more than usual numbers is the certain harbinger of rain; and I have frequently, while travelling, met them in such numbers that, be the night ever so dark, the path was as visible as at noonday." THE BEETLE. The following account of the BURYING BEETLE is given by M. Gleditsch, a foreign naturalist. He often remarked that dead moles, when laid upon the ground, especially if upon loose earth, were almost sure to disappear in the course of two or three days, often of twelve hours. To ascertain the cause, he placed a mole upon one of the beds in his garden. It had vanished by the third morning; and, on digging where it had been laid, he found it buried to the depth of three inches, and under it four beetles, which seemed to have been the agents in this singular inhumation. To determine the point more clearly, he put four of these insects into a glass vessel, half filled with earth, and properly secured, and upon the surface of the earth, two frogs. In less than twelve hours, one of the frogs was interred by two of the beetles; the other two ran about the whole day, as if busied in measuring the dimensions of the remaining corpse, which on the third day was also found buried. He then introduced a dead linnet. A pair of the beetles were soon engaged upon the bird. They began their operations by pushing out the earth from under the body, so as to form a cavity for its reception; and it was curious to see the efforts which the beetles made, by dragging at the feathers of the bird from below, to pull it into its grave. The male, having driven the female away, continued the work alone for five hours. He lifted up the bird, changed its place, turned it, and arranged it in the grave, and from time to time came out of the hole, mounted upon it, and trod it under foot, and then retired below, and pulled it down. At length, apparently wearied with this uninterrupted labor, it came forth, and leaned its head upon the earth beside the bird, without the smallest motion, as if to rest itself, for a full hour, when it again crept under the earth. The next day, in the morning, the bird was an inch and a half under ground, and the trench remained open the whole day, the corpse seeming as if laid out upon a bier, surrounded with a rampart of mould. In the evening, it had sunk half an inch lower; and in another day, the work was completed, and the bird covered. M. Gleditsch continued to add other small dead animals, which were all sooner or later buried; and the result of his experiment was, that in fifty days four beetles had interred, in the very small space of earth allotted to them, twelve carcasses: viz., four frogs, three small birds, two fishes, one mole, and two grasshoppers, besides the entrails of a fish, and two morsels of the lungs of an ox. The QUEEN BEETLE is about one inch and a quarter in length; she carries by her side two brilliant lamps, which she lights up at pleasure with the solar phosphorus furnished her by nature. These lamps do not flash and glimmer like those of the fire-fly, but give as steady a light as that of gas, exhibiting two glowing spheres as large as a minute pearl, which affords light enough, in the darkest night, to enable one to read by them. The queen beetle is found only in tropical climates. THE EARWIG. Baron de Geer, a famous Swedish naturalist, gives us the following: "About the end of March I found an earwig brooding over her eggs in a small cell, scooped out in a garden border. In order to watch her proceedings, I removed the eggs into my study, placing them upon fresh earth under a bell-glass. The careful mother soon scooped out a fresh cell, and collected the scattered eggs with great care to the little nest, placing herself over them, to prevent the too rapid evaporation of the moisture. When the earth began to dry up, she dug the cell gradually deeper, till at length she got almost out of view. At last, the cell became too dry, and she removed the eggs to the edge of the glass, where some of the moisture had condensed. Upon observing this, I dropped some water into the abandoned cell, and the mother soon after removed the eggs there. Her subsequent proceedings were no less interesting; but I regret to add that, during my absence, the bell-glass was removed, and the earwig escaped with her eggs." THE CRICKET. Mr. Southey describes the perilous situation of a ship sailing to Brazil, which was saved from shipwreck by the singing of a ground cricket. "Three days they stood towards land. A soldier, who had set out in ill health, had brought a ground cricket with him from Cadiz, thinking to be amused by the insect's voice; but it had been silent the whole distance, to his no small disappointment. Now, on the fourth morning, the _grillo_ had begun to ring its shrill rattle, scenting the land. Such was the miserable watch that had been kept, that, upon looking out at this warning, they perceived high rocks within bowshot, against which, had it not been for the insect, they must inevitably have been lost. They had just time to drop anchor. From hence they coasted along, the grillo singing every night as if it had been on shore, till they reached the Islands of St. Catalina." In China, the people take as much pleasure in cricket fights as the Spaniards do in bull fights. Two crickets are pitted against each other, and crowds of people gather round, to witness the combat. The insects rush at each other with great fury; and the spectators, high and low, rich and poor, seem to experience the most lively sensations of delight. THE LOCUST. In July, 1827, the Russian General Cobley had a grand battle with the locusts, on his estate of Coblewka, along the borders of the Sea of Oschakoff. The locusts were marching in twenty-four columns, and were destroying all the crops. General Cobley collected the peasants on his estate, and from all the neighboring country, amounting to five hundred persons. They were armed with pitchforks, spades, drums, and bells; and, thus equipped, they commenced their march against the invaders. They soon compelled them to retreat, and pursued them incessantly towards the sea, where they were forced to jump into the water, and were drowned. Three days afterwards, the sea-shore was covered with the dead locusts, cast up by the waves; the air was infected by a fetid exhalation, and great numbers of poisoned fish were cast up by the waves on the strand. It is probable that the fish had fed on the locusts. THE ANT. _Anecdotes._--In tracing the designs of the cells and galleries, each ant appears to follow its own fancy. A want of accordance must therefore frequently take place at the point where their works join; but they never appear to be embarrassed by any difficulties of this kind. An instance is related, in which two opposite walls were made, of such different elevations, that the ceiling of the one, if continued, would not have reached above half way of the height of the other. An experienced ant, arriving at the spot, seemed struck with the defect, immediately destroyed the lower ceiling, built up the wall to the proper height, and formed a new ceiling with the materials of the former. In the "Transactions of the French Academy," an account is given of an ant, that was taken from a hill, and thrown upon a heap of corn. It seemed attentively to survey this treasure, and then hastened back to its former abode, where it communicated intelligence of the land of plenty; for an immense host of its brethren quickly made their appearance, and commenced carrying off the grain. M. Homberg informs us that, in Surinam, there is a species of ant called by the natives the _visiting ant_. These animals march in large troops, with the same order and precision as do a regularly-constituted army. They are welcome visitors to the natives, on account of their power of exterminating rats, mice, and other noxious animals, with which that country abounds. No sooner do they appear, than all the coffers, chests of drawers, and locked-up places in the house, are thrown open for them, when they immediately commence their work of destruction of animal life, as if commissioned by nature for that purpose. The only regret of the natives is, that they pay their visits but once in three or four years. Two ants meeting on a path across a gravel-walk, one going to and the other from the nest, stop, touch each other's antennæ, and appear to hold a conversation. One would almost fancy that one was communicating to the other the best place for foraging. THE CATERPILLAR. A curious species of manufacture was contrived by an officer of engineers residing at Munich. It consisted of lace veils, with open patterns on them, made entirely by caterpillars. Having made a paste of the leaves of the plant on which the insect feeds, he spread it thinly over a stone, or other flat substance, of the required size. He then, with a camel's hair pencil dipped in olive oil, drew a pattern he wished the insects to leave open. This stone was then placed in an inclined position, and a number of caterpillars were placed at the bottom. A peculiar species was chosen, which spins a strong web, and the animals commenced at the bottom, eating and spinning their way up to the top, carefully avoiding every part touched by the oil, but devouring every other part of the paste. The extreme lightness of these veils, combined with their strength, is surprising. THE BUTTERFLY. In June, 1826, a column of butterflies, from ten to fifteen feet broad, was seen to pass over Neufchatel, in Switzerland; the passage lasted upwards of two hours, without any interruption, from the moment when the insects were observed. THE MOTH. A moth was once caught, at Arracan, which measured ten inches from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, both being variegated with the brightest colors. THE SILKWORM. The great care bestowed upon this creature in China is shown in the following extract from an old work: "The place where their habitation is built must be retired, free from noisome smells, cattle, and all noises; as a noisome smell, or the least fright, makes great impressions upon so tender a breed; even the barking of dogs, and the crowing of cocks are capable of putting them in disorder when they are newly hatched. For the purpose of paying them every attention, an affectionate mother is provided for their wants; she is called _Isan-more_, mother of the worms. She takes possession of the chamber, but not till she has washed herself, and put on clean clothes which have not the least ill smell; she must not have eaten any thing before, or have handled any wild succory, the smell of which is very prejudicial; she must be clothed in a plain habit without any lining, that she may be more sensible of the warmth of the place, and accordingly increase or lessen the fire; but she must carefully avoid making a smoke, or raising a dust, which would be very offensive to these tender creatures, which must be carefully tended before the first time of casting their slough." During the first twenty-four hours of the silkworm's existence, the patient Chinese feeds the objects of her care forty-eight times a day; during the second or third day, thirty times; and so on, reducing the number of meals as the worm grows older. FLIES. Sir Arthur Young thus speaks of flies in his "Travels through the South of Europe:" "Flies form the most disagreeable circumstance in the southern climates. They are the first torments in Spain, Italy, and the olive districts of France. It is not that they bite, sting, or hurt; but they buzz, tease, and worry: your mouth, eyes, ears, and nose, are full of them; they swarm on every eatable. Fruit, sugar, milk, every thing, is attacked by them in such myriads, that if they were not driven away, by a person who has nothing else to do, to eat a meal is impossible. If I farmed in these countries, I think I should manure four or five acres of land a year with dead flies." CLASS RADIATA ... RADIATED ANIMALS. This class embraces those beings which are the lowest in the animal kingdom--those which have the fewest and most imperfect senses. Indeed, some of them so far resemble plants as to make the point of separation between the animal and vegetable kingdoms almost a matter of uncertainty. They are called _radiata_, because in most of them an arrangement may be traced, in their formation, like that of rays branching out from a centre. Among the creatures of this class are the star-fish, polypus, sea-anemone, and infusoria. POLYPI. Captain Basil Hall makes some interesting remarks on the examination of a coral-reef, which is the product of the marine polypi. He observes that, during the different stages of the tide, the changes it undergoes are truly surprising. When the tide has left it for some time, it becomes dry, and appears to be a compact rock, exceedingly hard and rugged; but as the tide rises, and the waves begin to wash over it, the coral worms protrude themselves from holes which before were invisible. These animals are of a great variety of shapes and size, and in such prodigious numbers, that, in a short time, the whole surface of the rock appears to be alive and in motion. The most common worm is in the shape of a star, with arms from four to six inches long, which move in every direction to catch food. Others are so sluggish that they may be taken for pieces of rock, and are of a dark color; others are of a blue or yellow color; while some resemble a lobster in shape. The GREEN POLYPE, or hydra, is found in clear waters, and may generally be seen in great plenty in small ditches and trenches of fields, especially in the months of April and May. It affixes itself to the under parts of leaves, and to the stalks of such vegetables as happen to grow immersed in the same water. The animal consists of a long, tubular body, the head of which is furnished with eight, and sometimes ten long arms, or tentacula, that surround the mouth. It is of an extremely predacious nature, and feeds on the various species of small worms, and other water animals, that happen to approach. When any animal of this kind passes near the polype, it suddenly catches it with its arms, and, dragging it to its mouth, swallows it by degrees, much in the same manner as a snake swallows a frog. Two of them may sometimes be seen in the act of seizing the same worm at different ends, and dragging it in opposite directions with great force. When the mouths of both are thus joined together upon one common prey, the largest polype gapes and swallows his antagonist; but, what is more wonderful, the animal thus swallowed seems to be rather a gainer by the misfortune. After it has lain in the conqueror's body for about an hour, it issues unhurt, and often in possession of the prey that had been the original cause of contention. The remains of the animals on which the polype feeds are evacuated at the mouth the only opening in the body. It is capable of swallowing a worm of thrice its own size: this circumstance, though it may appear incredible, is easily understood, when we consider that the body of the polype is extremely extensile, and is dilated, on such occasions, to a surprising degree. This species are multiplied, for the most part, by a process resembling vegetation--one or two, or even more young ones emerging gradually from the sides of the parent animal; and these young are frequently again prolific before they drop off; so that it is no uncommon thing to see two or three generations at once on the same polype. THE END. ADVERTISEMENT--CABINET LIBRARY. PARLEY'S CABINET LIBRARY, For Schools and Families. This work consists of Twenty Volumes, and contains --> _five hundred different subjects, and is illustrated by five hundred Engravings_. --> It is an entirely original series, recently written and completed by S. G. GOODRICH, the author of Peter Parley's Tales. --> _This is the only library that has been expressly written for a School and Family Library._ It is adopted into many of the libraries of the leading schools and seminaries in New England and New York, and has been introduced, in the space of a few months, into more than three thousand families, in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The following is a list of the Volumes, each containing about 320 pages, 16mo.:-- BIOGRAPHICAL DEPARTMENT. Vol. 1.--LIVES OF FAMOUS MEN OF MODERN TIMES. " 2.--LIVES OF FAMOUS MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. " 3.--CURIOSITIES OF HUMAN NATURE; OR, THE LIVES OF ECCENTRIC AND WONDERFUL PERSONS. " 4.--LIVES OF BENEFACTORS; INCLUDING PATRIOTS, INVENTORS, DISCOVERERS, &c. " 5.--LIVES OF FAMOUS AMERICAN INDIANS. " 6.--LIVES OF CELEBRATED WOMEN. HISTORICAL DEPARTMENT. " 7.--LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AMERICAN HISTORY. " 8.--LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. " 9.--LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF ASIATIC HISTORY. " 10.--LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF AFRICAN HISTORY. " 11.--HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. " 12.--MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND ANTIQUITIES OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. MISCELLANEOUS. " 13.--A GLANCE AT THE SCIENCES, ASTRONOMY, NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, &c. " 14.--WONDERS OF GEOLOGY. " 15.--ANECDOTES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. " 16.--A GLANCE AT PHILOSOPHY, MENTAL, MORAL, AND SOCIAL. " 17.--BOOK OF LITERATURE, ANCIENT AND MODERN, WITH SPECIMENS. " 18.--ENTERPRISE, INDUSTRY, AND ART OF MAN. " 19.--MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF ALL NATIONS. " 20.--THE WORLD AND ITS INHABITANTS. --> These works are designed to exhibit, in a popular form, SELECT BIOGRAPHIES, ANCIENT AND MODERN; the Wonders and Curiosities of HISTORY, NATURE, ART, SCIENCE, AND PHILOSOPHY, with the Practical Duties of Life. It cannot be deemed invidious to say, that no similar work has met with equal favor at the hands of the public, as the following testimonials, among many others, will show:-- _The Hon. H. G. Otis, of Boston, says_, I view it as the best compendium of useful learning and information, respecting its proposed contents, _for the use of young persons and schools_, that has fallen within my knowledge. It abounds in illustrations of the history of the world, and the customs and manners of nations, that _may be read by general scholars of any age_, with pleasure. _The Rev. Dr. Sprague says, Albany_, I regard the Cabinet Library as a most important accession to the means of intellectual and moral culture, especially in respect to the rising generation. But while it is peculiarly adapted to the young, it may be read by persons of any age with both pleasure and profit. To men of business, who have not leisure to read extensively, and indeed to all who would keep up with the times, the work is invaluable. It is also suited to the various members of the family circle, --> and is _among the very best of the libraries for public schools_. I learn that it is introduced into the public schools of this city, (Albany,) and various other places, and I cannot doubt that it will ultimately be adopted in our seminaries of learning generally. _Charles Sprague, Esq., of Boston, says_, I have read, with both pleasure and profit, all the numbers of your very instructive Cabinet Library. My friend and namesake, the Rev. Dr. Sprague, has so exactly expressed my opinion of the work, that I need only adopt his language, in recommending it, as I cheerfully do, to the favorable attention of both teachers and learners. _From the Quincy Patriot_, We recommend it (Parley's Cabinet Library) as peculiarly valuable to families. We often see one young man taking precedence of others in the race of life. If we could read his history minutely, we should see the explanation of the case to be, that he had a better head or a better heart than others. Now we know of no works so well calculated to mould the head and heart aright as those of "Peter Parley." Those parents who wish to have their children "go ahead" in life, should place Parley's Cabinet Library within their reach. We have never seen a work better suited to bestow instruction, or that inculcates truth in a more pleasant fashion. _From the Boston Courier_, They are exceedingly agreeable books, and such as young and old may peruse with pleasure and profit. The moral and religious account to which the author turns every subject must render the work peculiarly suitable to the family and the school library. We cheerfully commend the work to the public as one of sterling value. _From the Boston Atlas_, It is a compact family and school library of substantial reading, which is delightful in point of style, and wholesome in its moral, social, and religious tendency. _From the Boston Post_, We hardly know when we have been better pleased with a publication than this. _From Hunt's Merchant's Magazine_, This work, now complete, is the most elaborate of the works of the author for the young; and we think it quite the best. It is a _library of facts_, and seems intended to cultivate a taste for this kind of reading. It is said that "truth is stranger than fiction," and no one who has perused these pages can feel any necessity for seeking excitement in the high-wrought pages of romance. Every subject touched by the author seems invested with a lively interest; and even dry statistics are made, like steel beneath the strokes of the flint, to yield sparks calculated to kindle the mind. In treating of the iron manufacture,--a rather hard subject, it would seem,--we are told that, every "working day, fifty millions of nails are made, bought, sold, and used in the United States;" and, in speaking of the manufacture of cotton, we are informed that the Merrimack mills of Lowell alone "spin a thread of sufficient length to belt the world, at the equator, in two hours." The work was doubtless intended for the young; and we think it quite equal, for this object, to any thing that has been produced; yet it is also suited to the perusal of all classes, especially to men of business, who find little leisure for reading, and who yet are unwilling to be left behind in the great march of knowledge and improvement. _As there is now a strong desire, especially among the enlightened friends of education in this state, to have the common schools supplied with suitable books for libraries, we heartily commend this series to the notice of all who are desirous of obtaining books for this object. They are unquestionably among the best that have been prepared for school libraries, being every way attractive and instructive._ No one can fail to be pleased with the simplicity and elegance of the style, and with the vein of cheerfulness, humanity, and morality, which runs through the pages of the volumes. The moral influence of the work, especially upon the young, cannot fail to be in the highest degree effective and salutary. _From the Troy Whig_, They are written in an easy and graceful style, and are compiled from the most authentic sources. They will be found highly attractive to young people of both sexes, and worthy to be read by persons of mature age. _From the Albany Advertiser_, It would be difficult to find any where, in such convenient compass, so much healthy and palatable food for the youthful mind as is furnished by Parley's Cabinet Library. _From the Albany Argus_, We know of no series of volumes on kindred subjects so good as these for parents to put into the hands of their children. It is due not only to the author, who has rendered great service to the cause of American literature, but to the work itself, and to the best interests of the youth of our nation, that these volumes should be scattered all over the land. _From the New England Puritan_, We cordially recommend the work to the perusal of all. _From the Boston Post_, _The very best work of its class_ is Parley's Cabinet Library. It combines a vast deal of useful information, conveyed in an exceedingly interesting style. The beauty of the typographical execution, the cheapness of the volumes, and the great intrinsic merit of their contents, must render the work one of general popularity. _From the Boston Courier_, As we have quoted so largely from Mr. Goodrich's work, we ought to say--what it richly merits--that it is a pleasing and useful series, and that it is calculated not only to instruct and amuse, but to cultivate virtuous and patriotic sentiments. With those who read for mere amusement, it is worthy of attention, for the author has ingeniously contrived to give truth all the charms of fiction. _From the Albany Advertiser_, It ought to be, and no doubt will be, extensively introduced into schools. _From the Bay State Democrat_, The volumes are illustrated with spirited wood engravings, and printed in Dickinson's neatest style. Altogether, they present decidedly the most attractive appearance as to matter and form, of any works we have seen for a long time. _From the Quincy Aurora_, Parley's Cabinet Library is a publication of rare excellence. No writer of the present day invests the themes of which he treats with livelier interest than the well-known Peter Parley. His pen imparts to history and biography the charm of romance; while, at the same time, it unfolds rich and enduring treasures of practical and useful knowledge. The animal, the mineral, and vegetable kingdoms of nature present, beneath his pencil, the attractions of a grand museum. The publication of his Cabinet Library will accomplish much, in our opinion, to eradicate the eagerness for fiction which engrosses so extensively the public mind. The perusal of these volumes will convince the reader that reality has charms as potent, and far more satisfying than those of the ideal world. We know of no work, comprehended within equal limits, capable of affording richer intellectual banqueting. _From the Boston Traveller_, We deem it but a discharge of our duty to our readers, to urge this valuable series upon their attention. The whole series will cost but a trifle, yet they may and doubtless will be the deciding means of insuring success in life to many a youth who shall enjoy the means of reading them. _From the Boston Recorder_, They are written in a pleasing style, and are enlivened by numerous characteristic anecdotes. The series will form a very valuable library. _From the Boston Post_, It is an admirable publication for the family and school library. Its topics are interesting and important, and presented in a simple but effective style. _From the Boston Atlas_, Parley's Cabinet Library is worthy of all encouragement. It is cheap not only in promise, but in fact. It is also calculated to exercise a wholesome influence. Like every thing from the same author, it strongly inculcates virtue and religion, and at the same time it arrays truth in a guise so comely and attractive, that it is likely to win many votaries of fiction to companionship with it. There is great need of such works at this time. BOARD OF EDUCATION, } _City of Rochester, Sept. 2._ } Whereas, the Board of Education have examined a series of books called "Parley's Cabinet Library," now in course of publication by Samuel G. Goodrich, Esq., (the celebrated Peter Parley,) embracing, in the course of twenty volumes, the various subjects of history, biography, geography, the manners and customs of different nations, the condition of the arts, sciences, &c.; and whereas, this Board are satisfied that the same are highly useful to the young: therefore, Resolved, that we recommend that the same be procured by trustees for the several school libraries, at the earliest practicable period. A true copy of the minutes, I. F. MACK, Sup't. 
7446	----	THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA BY W. H. HUDSON, C.M.Z.S. JOINT AUTHOR OF "ARGENTINE ORNITHOLOGY" WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. SMIT THIRD EDITION. NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1895 PREFACE. The plan I have followed in this work has been to sift and arrange the facts I have gathered concerning the habits of the animals best known to me, preserving those only, which, in my judgment, appeared worth recording. In some instances a variety of subjects have linked themselves together in my mind, and have been grouped under one heading; consequently the scope of the book is not indicated by the list of contents: this want is, however, made good by an index at the end. It is seldom an easy matter to give a suitable name to a book of this description. I am conscious that the one I have made choice of displays a lack of originality; also, that this kind of title has been used hitherto for works constructed more or less on the plan of the famous _Naturalist on the Amazons._ After I have made this apology the reader, on his part, will readily admit that, in treating of the Natural History of a district so well known, and often described as the southern portion of La Plata, which has a temperate climate, and where nature is neither exuberant nor grand, a personal narrative would have seemed superfluous. The greater portion of the matter contained in this volume has already seen the light in the form of papers contributed to the _Field,_ with other journals that treat of Natural History; and to the monthly magazines:--_Longmans', The Nineteenth Century, The Gentleman's Magazine,_ and others: I am indebted to the Editors and Proprietors of these periodicals for kindly allowing me to make use of this material. Of all animals, birds have perhaps afforded me most pleasure; but most of the fresh knowledge I have collected in this department is contained in a larger work _(Argentine Ornithology),_ of which Dr. P. L. Sclater is part author. As I have not gone over any of the subjects dealt with in that work, bird-life has not received more than a fair share of attention in the present volume. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE DESERT PAMPAS CHAPTER II. CUB PUMA, OR LION OF AMERICA CHAPTER III. WAVE OF LIFE CHAPTER IV. SOME CURIOUS ANIMAL WEAPONS CHAPTER V. FEAR IN BIRDS CHAPTER VI. PARENTAL AND EARLY INSTINCTS CHAPTER VII. THE MEPHITIC SKUNK CHAPTER VIII. MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS CHAPTER IX. DRAGON-FLY STORMS CHAPTER X. MOSQUITOES AND PARASITE PROBLEMS CHAPTER XI. HUMBLE-BEES AND OTHER MATTERS CHAPTER XII. A NOBLE WASP CHAPTER XIII. NATURE'S NIGHT-LIGHTS CHAPTER XIV. FACTS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS CHAPTER XV. THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT CHAPTER XVI. HUMMING-BIRDS CHAPTER XVII. THE CRESTED SCREAMER CHAPTER XVIII. THE WOODHEWER FAMILY CHAPTER XIX. MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE CHAPTER XX. BIOGRAPHY OF THE VIZCACHA CHAPTER XXI. THE DYING HUANACO CHAPTER XXII. THE STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE CHAPTER XXIII. HORSE AND MAN CHAPTER XXIV. SEEN AND LOST APPENDIX INDEX THE NATURALIST IN LA PLATA, CHAPTER I. THE DESERT PAMPAS. During recent years we have heard much about the great and rapid changes now going on in the plants and animals of all the temperate regions of the globe colonized by Europeans. These changes, if taken merely as evidence of material progress, must be a matter of rejoicing to those who are satisfied, and more than satisfied, with our system of civilization, or method of outwitting Nature by the removal of all checks on the undue increase of our own species. To one who finds a charm in things as they exist in the unconquered provinces of Nature's dominions, and who, not being over-anxious to reach the end of his journey, is content to perform it on horseback, or in a waggon drawn by bullocks, it is permissible to lament the altered aspect of the earth's surface, together with the disappearance of numberless noble and beautiful forms, both of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. For he cannot find it in his heart to love the forms by which they are replaced; these are cultivated and domesticated, and have only become useful to man at the cost of that grace and spirit which freedom and wildness give. In numbers they are many--twenty-five millions of sheep in this district, fifty millions in that, a hundred millions in a third--but how few are the species in place of those destroyed? and when the owner of many sheep and much wheat desires variety--for he possesses this instinctive desire, albeit in conflict with and overborne by the perverted instinct of destruction--what is there left to him, beyond his very own, except the weeds that spring up in his fields under all skies, ringing him round with old-world monotonous forms, as tenacious of their undesired union with him as the rats and cockroaches that inhabit his house? We hear most frequently of North America, New Zealand, and Australia in this connection; but nowhere on the globe has civilization "written strange defeatures" more markedly than on that great area of level country called by English writers _the pampas_, but by the Spanish more appropriately _La Pampa_--from the Quichua word signifying open space or country--since it forms in most part one continuous plain, extending on its eastern border from the river Parana, in latitude 32 degrees, to the Patagonian formation on the river Colorado, and comprising about two hundred thousand square miles of humid, grassy country. This district has been colonized by Europeans since the middle of the sixteenth century; but down to within a very few years ago immigration was on too limited a scale to make any very great change; and, speaking only of the pampean country, the conquered territory was a long, thinly-settled strip, purely pastoral, and the Indians, with their primitive mode of warfare, were able to keep back the invaders from the greater portion of their ancestral hunting-grounds. Not twenty years ago a ride of two hundred miles, starting from the capital city, Buenos Ayres, was enough to place one well beyond the furthest south-western frontier outpost. In 1879 the Argentine Government determined to rid the country of the aborigines, or, at all events, to break their hostile and predatory spirit once for all; with the result that the entire area of the grassy pampas, with a great portion of the sterile pampas and Patagonia, has been made available to the emigrant. There is no longer anything to deter the starvelings of the Old World from possessing themselves of this new land of promise, flowing, like Australia, with milk and tallow, if not with honey; any emasculated migrant from a Genoese or Neapolitan slum is now competent to "fight the wilderness" out there, with his eight-shilling fowling-piece and the implements of his trade. The barbarians no longer exist to frighten his soul with dreadful war cries; they have moved away to another more remote and shadowy region, called in their own language _Alhuemapu_, and not known to geographers. For the results so long and ardently wished for have swiftly followed on General Roca's military expedition; and the changes witnessed during the last decade on the pampas exceed in magnitude those which had been previously effected by three centuries of occupation. In view of this wave of change now rapidly sweeping away the old order, with whatever beauty and grace it possessed, it might not seem inopportune at the present moment to give a rapid sketch, from the field naturalist's point of view, of the great plain, as it existed before the agencies introduced by European colonists had done their work, and as it still exists in its remoter parts. The humid, grassy, pampean country extends, roughly speaking, half-way from the Atlantic Ocean and the Plata and Paraná rivers to the Andes, and passes gradually into the "Monte Formation," or _sterile pampa_--a sandy, more or less barren district, producing a dry, harsh, ligneous vegetation, principally thorny bushes and low trees, of which the chañar (Gurliaca decorticans) is the most common; hence the name of "Chañar-steppe" used by some writers: and this formation extends southwards down into Patagonia. Scientists have not yet been able to explain why the pampas, with a humid climate, and a soil exceedingly rich, have produced nothing but grass, while the dry, sterile territories on their north, west, and south borders have an arborescent vegetation. Darwin's conjecture that the extreme violence of the _pampero,_ or south-west wind, prevented trees from growing, is now proved to have been ill-founded since the introduction of the Eucalyptus globulus; for this noble tree attains to an extraordinary height on the pampas, and exhibits there a luxuriance of foliage never seen in Australia. To this level area--my "parish of Selborne," or, at all events, a goodly portion of it--with the sea on one hand, and on the other the practically infinite expanse of grassy desert--another sea, not "in vast fluctuations fixed," but in comparative calm--I should like to conduct the reader in imagination: a country all the easier to be imagined on account of the absence of mountains, woods, lakes, and rivers. There is, indeed, little to be imagined--not even a sense of vastness; and Darwin, touching on this point, in the _Journal of a Naturalist,_ aptly says:--"At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the water, his horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In like manner, the more level the plain, the more nearly does the horizon approach within these narrow limits; and this, in my opinion, entirely destroys the grandeur which one would have imagined that a vast plain would have possessed." I remember my first experience of a hill, after having been always shut within "these narrow limits." It was one of the range of sierras near Cape Corrientes, and not above eight hundred feet high; yet, when I had gained the summit, I was amazed at the vastness of the earth, as it appeared to me from that modest elevation. Persons born and bred on the pampas, when they first visit a mountainous district, frequently experience a sensation as of "a ball in the throat" which seems to prevent free respiration. In most places the rich, dry soil is occupied by a coarse grass, three or four feet high, growing in large tussocks, and all the year round of a deep green; a few slender herbs and trefoils, with long, twining stems, maintain a frail existence among the tussocks; but the strong grass crowds out most plants, and scarcely a flower relieves its uniform everlasting verdure. There are patches, sometimes large areas, where it does not grow, and these are carpeted by small creeping herbs of a livelier green, and are gay in spring with flowers, chiefly of the composite and papilionaceous kinds; and verbenas, scarlet, purple, rose, and white. On moist or marshy grounds there are also several lilies, yellow, white, and red, two or three flags, and various other small flowers; but altogether the flora of the pampas is the poorest in species of any fertile district on the globe. On moist clayey ground flourishes the stately pampa grass, Gynerium argenteum, the spears of which often attain a height of eight or nine feet. I have ridden through many leagues of this grass with the feathery spikes high as my head, and often higher. It would be impossible for me to give anything like an adequate idea of the exquisite loveliness, at certain times and seasons, of this queen of grasses, the chief glory of the solitary pampa. Everyone is familiar with it in cultivation; but the garden-plant has a sadly decaying, draggled look at all times, and to my mind, is often positively ugly with its dense withering mass of coarse leaves, drooping on the ground, and bundle of spikes, always of the same dead white or dirty cream-colour. Now colour--the various ethereal tints that give a blush to its cloud-like purity--is one of the chief beauties of this grass on its native soil; and travellers who have galloped across the pampas at a season of the year when the spikes are dead, and white as paper or parchment, have certainly missed its greatest charm. The plant is social, and in some places where scarcely any other kind exists it covers large areas with a sea of fleecy-white plumes; in late summer, and in autumn, the tints are seen, varying from the most delicate rose, tender and illusive as the blush on the white under-plumage of some gulls, to purple and violaceous. At no time does it look so perfect as in the evening, before and after sunset, when the softened light imparts a mistiness to the crowding plumes, and the traveller cannot help fancying that the tints, which then seem richest, are caught from the level rays of the sun, or reflected from the coloured vapours of the afterglow. The last occasion on which I saw the pampa grass in its full beauty was at the close of a bright day in March, ending in one of those perfect sunsets seen only in the wilderness, where no lines of house or hedge mar the enchanting disorder of nature, and the earth and sky tints are in harmony. I had been travelling all day with one companion, and for two hours we had ridden through the matchless grass, which spread away for miles on every side, the myriads of white spears, touched with varied colour, blending in the distance and appearing almost like the surface of a cloud. Hearing a swishing sound behind us, we turned sharply round, and saw, not forty yards away in our rear, a party of five mounted Indians, coming swiftly towards us: but at the very moment we saw them their animals came to a dead halt, and at the same instant the five riders leaped up, and stood erect on their horses' backs. Satisfied that they had no intention of attacking us, and were only looking out for strayed horses, we continued watching them for some time, as they stood gazing away over the plain in different directions, motionless and silent, like bronze men on strange horse-shaped pedestals of dark stone; so dark in their copper skins and long black hair, against the far-off ethereal sky, flushed with amber light; and at their feet, and all around, the cloud of white and faintly-blushing plumes. That farewell scene was printed very vividly on my memory, but cannot be shown to another, nor could it be even if a Ruskin's pen or a Turner's pencil were mine; for the flight of the sea-mew is not more impossible to us than the power to picture forth the image of Nature in our souls, when she reveals herself in one of those "special moments" which have "special grace" in situations where her wild beauty has never been spoiled by man. At other hours and seasons the general aspect of the plain is monotonous, and in spite of the unobstructed view, and the unfailing verdure and sunshine, somewhat melancholy, although never sombre: and doubtless the depressed and melancholy feeling the pampa inspires in those who are unfamiliar with it is due in a great measure to the paucity of life, and to the profound silence. The wind, as may well be imagined on that extensive level area, is seldom at rest; there, as in the forest, it is a "bard of many breathings," and the strings it breathes upon give out an endless variety of sorrowful sounds, from the sharp fitful sibilations of the dry wiry grasses on the barren places, to the long mysterious moans that swell and die in the tall polished rushes of the marsh. It is also curious to note that with a few exceptions the resident birds are comparatively very silent, even those belonging to groups which elsewhere are highly loquacious. The reason of this is not far to seek. In woods and thickets, where birds abound most, they are continually losing sight of each other, and are only prevented from scattering by calling often; while the muffling effect on sound of the close foliage, to' which may be added a spirit of emulation where many voices are heard, incites most species, especially those that are social, to exert their voices to the utmost pitch in singing, calling, and screaming. On the open pampas, birds, which are not compelled to live concealed on the surface, can see each other at long distances, and perpetual calling is not needful: moreover, in that still atmosphere sound travels far. As a rule their voices are strangely subdued; nature's silence has infected them, and they have become silent by habit. This is not the case with aquatic species, which are nearly all migrants from noisier regions, and mass themselves in lagoons and marshes, where they are all loquacious together. It is also noteworthy that the subdued bird-voices, some of which are exceedingly sweet and expressive, and the notes of many of the insects and batrachians have a great resemblance, and seem to be in accord with the aeolian tones of the wind in reeds and grasses: a stranger to the pampas, even a naturalist accustomed to a different fauna, will often find it hard to distinguish between bird, frog, and insect voices. The mammalia is poor in species, and with the single exception of the well-known vizcacha (Lagostomus trichodactylus), there is not one of which it can truly be said that it is in any special way the product of the pampas, or, in other words, that its instincts are better suited to the conditions of the pampas than to those of other districts. As a fact, this large rodent inhabits a vast extent of country, north, west, and south of the true pampas, but nowhere is he so thoroughly on his native heath as on the great grassy plain. There, to some extent, he even makes his own conditions, like the beaver. He lives in a small community of twenty or thirty members, in a village of deep-chambered burrows, all with their pit-like entrances closely grouped together; and as the village endures for ever, or for an indefinite time, the earth constantly being brought up forms a mound thirty or forty feet in diameter; and this protects the habitation from floods on low or level ground. Again, he is not swift of foot, and all rapacious beasts are his enemies; he also loves to feed on tender succulent herbs and grasses, to seek for which he would have to go far afield among the giant grass, where his watchful foes are lying in wait to seize him; he saves himself from this danger by making a clearing all round his abode, on which a smooth turf is formed; and here the animals feed and have their evening pastimes in comparative security: for when an enemy approaches, he is easily seen; the note of alarm is sounded, and the whole company scuttles away to their refuge. In districts having a different soil and vegetation, as in Patagonia, the vizcachas' curious, unique instincts are of no special advantage, which makes it seem probable that they have been formed on the pampas. How marvellous a thing it seems that the two species of mammalians--the beaver and the vizcacha--that most nearly simulate men's intelligent actions in their social organizing instincts, and their habitations, which are made to endure, should belong to an order so low down as the Rodents! And in the case of the latter species, it adds to the marvel when we find that the vizcacha, according to Water-house, is the lowest of the order in its marsupial affinities. The vizcacha is the most common rodent on the pampas, and the Rodent order is represented by the largest number of species. The finest is the so-called Patagonian hare--Dolichotis patagonica--a beautiful animal twice as large as a hare, with ears shorter and more rounded, and legs relatively much longer. The fur is grey and chestnut brown. It is diurnal in its habits, lives in kennels, and is usually met with in pairs, or small flocks. It is better suited to a sterile country like Patagonia than to the grassy humid plain; nevertheless it was found throughout the whole of the pampas; but in a country where the wisdom of a Sir William Harcourt was never needed to slip the leash, this king of the Rodentia is now nearly extinct. A common rodent is the coypú--Myiopotamus coypú--yellowish in colour with bright red incisors; a rat in shape, and as large as an otter. It is aquatic, lives in holes in the banks, and where there are no banks it makes a platform nest among the rushes. Of an evening they are all out swimming and playing in the water, conversing together in their strange tones, which sound like the moans and cries of wounded and suffering men; and among them the mother-coypú is seen with her progeny, numbering eight or nine, with as many on her back as she can accommodate, while the others swim after her, crying for a ride. With reference to this animal, which, as we have seen, is prolific, a strange thing once happened in Buenos Ayres. The coypú was much more abundant fifty years ago than now, and its skin, which has a fine fur under the long coarse hair, was largely exported to Europe. About that time the Dictator Rosas issued a decree prohibiting the hunting of the coypú. The result was that the animals increased and multiplied exceedingly, and, abandoning their aquatic habits, they became terrestrial and migratory, and swarmed everywhere in search of food. Suddenly a mysterious malady fell on them, from which they quickly perished, and became almost extinct. What a blessed thing it would be for poor rabbit-worried Australia if a similar plague should visit that country, and fall on the right animal! On the other hand, what a calamity if the infection, wide-spread, incurable, and swift as the wind in its course, should attack the too-numerous sheep! And who knows what mysterious, unheard-of retributions that revengeful deity Nature may not be meditating in her secret heart for the loss of her wild four-footed children slain by settlers, and the spoiling of her ancient beautiful order! A small pampa rodent worthy of notice is the Cavia australis, called _cui_ in the vernacular from its voice: a timid, social, mouse-coloured little creature, with a low gurgling language, like running babbling waters; in habits resembling its domestic pied relation the guinea pig. It loves to run on clean ground, and on the pampas makes little rat-roads all about its hiding-place, which little roads tell a story to the fox, and such like; therefore the little cavy's habits, and the habits of all cavies, I fancy, are not so well suited to the humid grassy region as to other districts, with sterile ground to run and play upon, and thickets in which to hide. A more interesting animal is the Ctenomys magellanica, a little less than the rat in size, with a shorter tail, pale grey fur, and red incisors. It is called _tuco-tuco_ from its voice, and _oculto_ from its habits; for it is a dweller underground, and requires a loose, sandy soil in which, like the mole, it may _swim_ beneath the surface. Consequently the pampa, with its heavy, moist mould, is not the tuco's proper place; nevertheless, wherever there is a stretch of sandy soil, or a range of dunes, there it is found living; not seen, but heard; for all day long and all night sounds its voice, resonant and loud, like a succession of blows from a hammer; as if a company of gnomes were toiling far down underfoot, beating on their anvils, first with strong measured strokes, then with lighter and faster, and with a swing and rhythm as if the little men were beating in time to some rude chant unheard above the surface. How came these isolated colonies of a species so subterranean in habits, and requiring a sandy soil to move in, so far from their proper district--that sterile country from which they are separated by wide, unsuitable areas? They cannot perform long overland journeys like the rat. Perhaps the dunes have travelled, carrying their little cattle with them. Greatest among the carnivores are the two cat-monarchs of South America, the jaguar and puma. Whatever may be their relative positions elsewhere, on the pampas the puma is mightiest, being much more abundant and better able to thrive than its spotted rival. Versatile in its preying habits, its presence on the pampa is not surprising; but probably only an extreme abundance of large mammalian prey, which has not existed in recent times, could have, tempted an animal of the river and forest-loving habits of the jaguar to colonize this cold, treeless, and comparatively waterless desert. There are two other important cats. The grass-cat, not unlike Felis catus in its robust form and dark colour, but a larger, more powerful animal, inexpressibly savage in disposition. The second, Felis geoffroyi, is a larger and more beautiful animal, coloured like a leopard; it is called wood-cat, and, as the name would seem to indicate, is an intruder from wooded districts north of the pampas. There are two canines: one is Azara's beautiful grey fox-like dog, purely a fox in habits, and common everywhere. The other is far more interesting and extremely rare; it is called _aguará,_ its nearest ally being the _aguará-guazú,_ the Canis jubatus or maned wolf of naturalists, found north of the pampean district. The aguará is smaller and has no mane; it is like the dingo in size, but slimmer and with a sharper nose, and lias a much brighter red colour. At night when camping out I have heard its dismal screams, but the screamer was sought in vain; while from the gauchos of the frontier I could only learn that it is a harmless, shy, solitary animal, that ever flies to remoter wilds from its destroyer, man. They offered me a skin--what more could I want? Simple souls! it was no more to me than the skin of a dead dog, with long, bright red hair. Those who love dead animals may have them in any number by digging with a. spade in that vast sepulchre of the pampas, where perished the hosts of antiquity. I love the living that are above the earth; and how small a remnant they are in South America we know, and now yearly becoming more precious as it dwindles away. The pestiferous skunk is universal; and there are two quaint-looking weasels, intensely black in colour, and grey on the back and flat crown. One, the Galictis barbara, is a large bold animal that hunts in companies; and when these long-bodied creatures sit up erect, glaring with beady eyes, grinning and chattering at the passer-by, they look like little friars in black robes and grey cowls; but the expression on their round faces is malignant and bloodthirsty beyond anything in nature, and it would perhaps be more decent to liken them to devils rather than to humans. On the pampas there is, strictly speaking, only one ruminant, the Cervus campestris, which is common. The most curious thing about this animal is that the male emits a rank, musky odour, so powerful that when the wind blows from it the effluvium comes in nauseating gusts to the nostrils from a distance exceeding two miles. It is really astonishing that only one small ruminant should be found on this immense grassy area, so admirably suited to herbivorous quadrupeds, a portion of which at the present moment affords sufficient pasture to eighty millions of sheep, cattle, and horses. In La Plata the author of _The Mammoth and the Flood_ will find few to quarrel with his doctrine. Of Edentates there are four. The giant armadillo does not range so far, and the delicate little pink fairy armadillo, the truncated Chlamydophorus, is a dweller in the sand-dunes of Mendoza, and has never colonized the grassy pampas. The Tatusia hybrida, called "little mule" from the length of its ears, and the Dasypus tricinctus, which, when disturbed, rolls itself into a ball, the wedge-shaped head and wedge-shaped tail admirably fitting into the deep-cut shell side by side; and the _quirquincho_ (Dasypus minutus), all inhabit the pampa, are diurnal, and feed exclusively on insects, chiefly ants. Wherever the country becomes settled, these three disappear, owing to the dulness of their senses, especially that of sight, and to the diurnal habit, which was an advantage to them, and enabled them to survive when rapacious animals, which are mostly nocturnal, were their only enemies. The fourth, and most important, is the hairy armadillo, with habits which are in strange contrast to those of its perishing congeners, and which seem to mock many hard-and-fast rules concerning animal life. It is omnivorous, and will thrive on anything from grass to flesh, found dead and in all stages of decay, or captured by means of its own strategy. Furthermore, its habits change to suit its conditions: thus, where nocturnal carnivores are its enemies, it is diurnal; but where man appears as a chief persecutor, it becomes nocturnal. It is much hunted for its flesh, dogs being trained for the purpose; yet it actually becomes more abundant as population increases in any district; and, if versatility in habits or adaptiveness can be taken as a measure of intelligence, this poor armadillo, a survival of the past, so old on the earth as to have existed contemporaneously with the giant glyptodon, is the superior of the large-brained cats and canines. To finish with the mammalia, there are two interesting opossums, both of the genus Didelphys, but in habits as wide apart as cat from otter. One of these marsupials appears so much at home on the plains that I almost regret having said that the vizcacha alone gives us the idea of being in its habits the _product_ of the pampas. This animal--Didelphys crassicaudata--has a long slender, wedge-, shaped head and body, admirably adapted for pushing through the thick grass and rushes; for it is both terrestrial and aquatic, therefore well suited to inhabit low, level plains liable to be flooded. On dry land its habits are similar to those of a weasel; in lagoons, where it dives and swims with great ease, it constructs a globular nest suspended from the rushes. The fur is soft, of a rich yellow, reddish above, and on the sides and under surfaces varying in some parts to orange, in others exhibiting beautiful copper and terra-cotta tints. These lovely tints and the metallic lustre soon fade from the fur, otherwise this animal would be much sought after in the interests of those who love to decorate themselves with the spoils of beautiful dead animals--beast and bird. The other opossum is the black and white Didelphys azarae; and it is indeed strange to find this animal on the pampas, although its presence there is not so mysterious as that of the tuco-tuco. It shuffles along slowly and awkwardly on the ground, but is a great traveller nevertheless. Tschudi met it mountaineering on the Andes at an enormous altitude, and, true to its lawless nature, it confronted me in Patagonia, where the books say no marsupial dwells. In every way it is adapted to an arboreal life, yet it is everywhere found on the level country, far removed from the conditions which one would imagine to be necessary to its existence. For how many thousands of years has this marsupial been a dweller on the plain, all its best faculties unexercised, its beautiful grasping hands pressed to the ground, and its prehensile tail dragged like an idle rope behind it! Yet, if one is brought to a tree, it will take to it as readily as a duck to water, or an armadillo to earth, climbing up the trunk and about the branches with a monkey-like agility. How reluctant Nature seems in some cases to undo her own work! How long she will allow a specialized organ, with the correlated instinct, to rest without use, yet ready to flash forth on the instant, bright and keen-edged, as in the ancient days of strife, ages past, before peace came to dwell on earth! The avi-fauna is relatively much richer than the mammalia, owing to the large number of aquatic species, most of which are migratory with their "breeding" or "subsistence-areas" on the pampas. In more senses than one they constitute a "floating population," and their habits have in no way been modified by the conditions of the country. The order, including storks, ibises, herons, spoonbills, and flamingoes, counts about eighteen species; and the most noteworthy birds in it are two great ibises nearly as large as turkeys, with mighty resonant voices. The duck order is very rich, numbering at least twenty species, including two beautiful upland geese, winter visitors from Magellanic lands, and two swans, the lovely black-necked, and the pure white with rosy bill. Of rails, or ralline birds, there are ten or twelve, ranging from a small spotted creature no bigger than a thrush to some large majestic birds. One is the courlan, called "crazy widow" from its mourning plumage and long melancholy screams, which on still evenings may be heard a league away. Another is the graceful variegated _ypicaha,_ fond of social gatherings, where the birds perform a dance and make the desolate marshes resound with their insane humanlike voices. A smaller kind, Porphyriops melanops, has a night-cry like a burst of shrill hysterical laughter, which has won for it the name of "witch;" while another, Rallus rythyrhynchus, is called "little donkey" from its braying cries. Strange eerie voices have all these birds. Of the remaining aquatic species, the most important is the spur-winged crested screamer; a noble bird as large as a swan, yet its favourite pastime is to soar upwards until it loses itself to sight in the blue ether, whenca it pours forth its resounding choral notes, which reach the distant earth clarified, and with a rhythmic swell and fall as of chiming bells. It also sings by night, "counting the hours," the gauchos say, and where they have congregated together in tens of thousands the mighty roar of their combined voices produces an astonishingly grand effect. The largest aquatic order is that of the Limicolse--snipes, plover, and their allies--which has about twenty-five species. The vociferous spur-winged lapwing; the beautiful black and white stilt; a true snipe, and a painted snipe, are, strictly speaking, the only residents; and it is astonishing to find, that, of the five-and-twenty species, at least thirteen are visitors from North America, several of them having their breeding-places quite away in the Arctic regions. This is one of those facts concerning the annual migration of birds which almost stagger belief; for among them are species with widely different habits, upland, marsh and sea-shore birds, and in their great biannual journey they pass through a variety of climates, visiting many countries where the conditions seem suited to their requirements. Nevertheless, in September, and even as early as August, they begin to arrive on the pampas, the golden plover often still wearing his black nuptial dress; singly and in pairs, in small flocks, and in clouds they come--curlew, godwit, plover, tatler, tringa--piping the wild notes to which the Greenlander listened in June, now to the gaucho herdsman on the green plains of La Plata, then to the wild Indian in his remote village; and soon, further south, to the houseless huanaco-hunter in the grey wilderness of Patagonia. Here is a puzzle for ornithologists. In summer on the pampas we have a godwit--Limosa hudsonica; in March it goes north to breed; later in the season flocks of the same species arrive from the south to winter on the pampas. And besides this godwit, there are several other North American species, which have colonies in the southern hemi-spere, with a reversed migration and breeding season. Why do these southern birds winter so far south? Do they really breed in Patagonia? If so, their migration is an extremely limited one compared with that of the northern birds--seven or eight hundred miles, on the outside, in one case, against almost as many thousands of miles in the other. Considering that some species which migrate as far south as Patagonia breed in the Arctic regions as far north as latitude 82 degrees, and probably higher still, it would be strange indeed if none of the birds which winter in Patagonia and on the pampas were summer visitors to that great austral continent, which has an estimated area twice as large as that of Europe, and a climate milder than the arctic one. The migrants would have about six hundred miles of sea to cross from Tierra del Fuego; but we know that the golden plover and other species, which sometimes touch at the Bermudas when travelling, fly much further than that without resting. The fact that a common Argentine titlark, a non-migrant and a weak flyer, has been met with at the South Shetland Islands, close to the antarctic continent, shows that the journey may be easily accomplished by birds with strong flight; and that even the winter climate of that unknown land is not too severe to allow an accidental colonist, like this small delicate bird, to survive. The godwit, already mentioned, has been observed in flocks at the Falkland Islands in May, that is, three months after the same species had taken its autumal departure from the neighbouring mainland. Can it be believed that these late visitors to the Falklands were breeders in Patagonia, and had migrated east to winter in so bleak a region? It is far more probable that they came from the south. Officers of sailing ships beating round Cape Horn might be able to settle this question definitely by looking out, and listening at night, for flights of birds, travelling north from about the first week in January to the end of February; and in September and October travelling south. Probably not fewer than a dozen species of the plover order are breeders on the great austral continent; also other aquatic birds--ducks and geese; and many Passerine birds, chiefly of the Tyrant family. Should the long projected Australasian expedition to the South Polar regions ever be carried to a successful issue, there will probably be important results for ornithology, in spite of the astounding theory which has found a recent advocate in Canon Tristram, that all life originated at the North Pole, whence it spread over the globe, but never succeeded in crossing the deep sea surrounding the antarctic continent, which has consequently remained till now desolate, "a giant ash (and ice) of death." Nor is it unlikely that animals of a higher class than birds exist there; and the discovery of new mammalians, differing in type from those we know, would certainly be glad tidings to most students of nature. Land birds on the pampas are few in species and in numbers. This may be accounted for by the absence of trees and other elevations on which birds prefer to roost and nest; and by the scarcity of food. Insects are few in dry situations; and the large perennial grasses, which occupy most of the ground, yield a miserable yearly harvest of a few minute seeds; so that this district is a poor one both for soft and hard billed birds. Hawks of several genera, in moderate numbers, are there, but generally keep to the marshes. Eagles and vultures are somewhat unworthily represented by carrion-hawks (Polyborinae); the lordly carancho, almost eagle-like in size, black and crested, with a very large, pale blue, hooked beak--his battle axe: and his humble follower and jackal, the brown and harrier-like chimango. These nest on the ground, are versatile in their habits, carrion-eaters, also killers on their own account, and, like wild dogs, sometimes hunt in bands, which gives them an advantage. They are the unfailing attendants of all flesh-hunters, human or feline; and also furiously pursue and persecute all eagles and true vultures that venture on that great sea of grass, to wander thereafter, for ever lost and harried, "the Hagars and Ishmaels of their kind." The owls are few and all of wide-ranging species. The most common is the burrowing-owl, found in both Americas. Not a retiring owl this, but all day long, in cold and in heat, it stands exposed at the mouth of its kennel, or on the vizcacha's mound, staring at the passer-by with an expression of grave surprise and reprehension in its round yellow eyes; male and female invariably together, standing stiff and erect, almost touching--of all birds that pair for life the most Darby and Joan like. Of the remaining land birds, numbering about forty species, a few that are most attractive on account of their beauty, engaging habits, or large size, may be mentioned here. On the southern portion of the pampas the military starling (Sturnella) is found, and looks like the European starling, with the added beauty of a scarlet breast: among resident pampas birds the only one with a touch of brilliant colouring. It has a pleasing, careless song, uttered on the wing, and in winter congregates in great flocks, to travel slowly northwards over the plains. When thus travelling the birds observe a kind of order, and the flock feeding along the ground shows a very extended front--a representation in bird-life of the "thin red line"--and advances by the hindmost birds constantly flying over the others and alighting in the front ranks. Among the tyrant-birds are several species of the beautiful wing-banded genus, snow-white in colour, with black on the wings and tail: these are extremely graceful birds, and strong flyers, and in desert places, where man seldom intrudes, they gather to follow the traveller, calling to each other with low whistling notes, and in the distance look like white flowers as they perch on the topmost stems of the tall bending grasses. The most characteristic pampean birds are the tinamous--called partridges in the vernacular--the rufous tinamou, large as a fowl, and the spotted tinamou, which is about the size of the English partridge. Their habits are identical: both lay eggs of a beautiful wine-purple colour, and in both species the young acquire the adult plumage and power of flight when very small, and fly better than the adults. They have small heads, slender curved beaks, unfeathered legs and feet, and are tailless; the plumage is deep yellowish, marked with black and brown above. They live concealed, skulking like rails through the tall grass, fly reluctantly, and when driven up, their flight is exceedingly noisy and violent, the bird soon exhausting itself. They are solitary, but many live in proximity, frequently calling to each other with soft plaintive voices. The evening call-notes of the larger bird are flute-like in character, and singularly sweet and expressive. The last figure to be introduced into this sketch--which is not a catalogue--is that of the Rhea. Glyptodon, Toxodon, Mylodon, Megatherium, have passed away, leaving no descendants, and only pigmy representatives if any; but among the feathered inhabitants of the pampa the grand archaic ostrich of America survives from a time when there were also giants among the avians. Vain as such efforts usually are, one cannot help trying to imagine something of the past history of this majestic bird, before man came to lead the long chase now about to end so mournfully. Its fleetness, great staying powers, and beautiful strategy when hunted, make it seem probable that it was not without pursuers, other than the felines, among its ancient enemies, long-winded and tenacious of their quarry; and these were perhaps of a type still represented by the wolf or hound-like aguará and aguara-guazú. It might be supposed that when almost all the larger forms, both mammal and bird, were overtaken by destruction, and when the existing rhea was on the verge of extinction, these long-legged swift canines changed their habits and lost their bold spirit, degenerating at last into hunters of small birds and mammals, on which they are said to live. The rhea possesses a unique habit, which is a puzzle to us, although it probably once had some significance--namely, that of running, when hunted, with one wing raised vertically, like a great sail--a veritable "ship of the wilderness." In every way it is adapted to the conditions of the pampas in a far greater degree than other pampean birds, only excepting the rufous and spotted tinamous. Its commanding stature gives it a wide horizon; and its dim, pale, bluish-grey colour assimilates to that of the haze, and renders it invisible at even a moderate distance. Its large form fades out of sight mysteriously, and the hunter strains his eyes in vain to distinguish it on the blue expanse. Its figure and carriage have a quaint majestic grace, somewhat unavian in character, and peculiar to itself. There are few more strangely fascinating sights in nature than that of the old black-necked cock bird, standing with raised agitated wings among the tall plumed grasses, and calling together his scattered hens with hollow boomings and long mysterious suspira-tions, as if a wind blowing high up in the void sky had found a voice. Rhea-hunting with the bolas, on a horse possessing both speed and endurance, and trained to follow the bird in all his quick doublings, is unquestionably one of the most fascinating forms of sport ever invented, by man. The quarry has even more than that fair chance of escape, without which all sport degenerates into mere butchery, unworthy of rational beings; moreover, in this unique method of hunting the ostrich the capture depends on a preparedness for all the shifts and sudden changes of course practised by the bird when closely followed, which is like instinct or intuition; and, finally, in a dexterity in casting the bolas at the right moment, with a certain aim, which no amount of practice can give to those who are not to the manner born. This 'wild mirth of the desert,' which the gaucho has known for the last three centuries, is now passing away, for the rhea's fleetness can no longer avail him. He may scorn the horse and his rider, what time he lifts himself up, but the cowardly murderous methods of science, and a systematic war of extermination, have left him no chance. And with the rhea go the flamingo, antique and splendid; and the swans in their bridal plumage; and the rufous tinamou--sweet and mournful melodist of the eventide; and the noble crested screamer, that clarion-voiced watch-bird of the night in the wilderness. Those, and the other large avians, together with the finest of the mammalians, will shortly be lost to the pampas utterly as the great bustard is to England, and as the wild turkey and bison and many other species will shortly be lost to North America. What a wail there would be in the world if a sudden destruction were to fall on the accumulated art-treasures of the National Gallery, and the marbles in the British Museum, and the contents of the King's Library--the old prints and' mediaeval illuminations! And these are only the work of human hands and brains--impressions of individual genius on perishable material, immortal only in the sense that the silken cocoon of the dead moth is so, because they continue to exist and shine when the artist's hands and brain are dust:--and man has the long day of life before him in which to do again things like these, and better than these, if there is any truth in evolution. But the forms of life in the two higher vertebrate classes are Nature's most perfect work; and the life of even a single species is of incalculably greater value to mankind, for what it teaches and would continue to teach, than all the chiselled marbles and painted canvases the world contains; though doubtless there are many persons who are devoted to art, but blind to some things greater than art, who will set me down as a Philistine for saying so. And, above all others, we should protect and hold sacred those types, Nature's masterpieces, which are first singled out for destruction on account of their size, or splendour, or rarity, and that false detestable glory which is accorded to their most successful slayers. In ancient times the spirit of life shone brightest in these; and when others that shared the earth with them were taken by death they were left, being more worthy of perpetuation. Like immortal flowers they have drifted down to us on the ocean of time, and their strangeness and beauty bring to our imaginations a dream and a picture of that unknown world, immeasurably far removed, where man was not: and when they perish, something of gladness goes out from nature, and the sunshine loses something of its brightness. Nor does their loss affect us and our times only. The species now being exterminated, not only in South America but everywhere on the globe, are, so far as we know, untouched by decadence. They are links in a chain, and branches on the tree of life, with their roots in a past inconceivably remote; and but for our action they would continue to flourish, reaching outward to an equally distant future, blossoming into higher and more beautiful forms, and gladdening innumerable generations of our descendants. But we think nothing of all this: we must give full scope to our passion for taking life, though by so doing we "ruin the great work of time;" not in the sense in which the poet used those words, but in one truer, and wider, and infinitely sadder. Only when this sporting rage has spent itself, when there are no longer any animals of the larger kinds remaining, the loss we are now inflicting on this our heritage, in which we have a life-interest only, will be rightly appreciated. It is hardly to be supposed or hoped that posterity will feel satisfied with our monographs of extinct species, and the few crumbling bones and faded feathers, which may possibly survive half a dozen centuries in some happily-placed museum. On the contrary, such dreary mementoes will only serve to remind them of their loss; and if they remember us at all, it will only be to hate our memory, and our age--this enlightened, scientific, humanitarian age, which should have for a motto "Let us slay all noble and beautiful things, for tomorrow we die." CHAPTER II. THE PUMA, OB LION OF AMERICA. The Puma has been singularly unfortunate in its biographers. Formerly it often happened that writers were led away by isolated and highly exaggerated incidents to attribute very shining qualities to their favourite animals; the lion of the Old World thus came to be regarded as brave and I magnanimous above all beasts of the field--the Bayard of the four-footed kind, a reputation which these prosaic and sceptical times have not suffered it to keep. Precisely the contrary has happened with the puma of literature; for, although to those personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to possess a marvellous courage and daring, it is nevertheless always spoken of in books of natural history as the most pusillanimous of the larger carnivores. It does not attack man, and Azara is perfectly correct when he affirms that it never hurts, or threatens to hurt, man or child, even when it finds them sleeping. This, however, is not a full statement of the facts; the puma will not even defend itself against man. How natural, then, to conclude that it is too timid to attack a human being, or to defend itself, but scarcely philosophical; for even the most cowardly carnivores we know--dogs and hyaenas, for instance--will readily attack a disabled or sleeping man when pressed by hunger; and when driven to desperation no animal is too small or too feeble to make a show of resistance. In such a case "even the armadillo defends itself," as the gaucho proverb says. Besides, the conclusion is in contradiction to many other well-known facts. Putting-aside the puma's passivity in the presence of man, it is a bold hunter that invariably prefers large to small game; in desert places killing peccary, tapir, ostrich, deer, huanaco, &c., all powerful, well-armed, or swift animals. Huanaco skeletons seen in Patagonia almost invariably have the neck dislocated, showing that the puma was the executioner. Those only who have hunted the huanaco on the sterile plains and mountains it inhabits know how wary, keen-scented, and fleet of foot it is. I once spent several weeks with a surveying party in a district where pumas were very abundant, and saw not less than half a dozen deer every day, freshly killed in most cases, and all with dislocated necks. Where prey is scarce and difficult to capture, the puma, after satisfying its hunger, invariably conceals the animal it has killed, covering it over carefully with grass and brushwood; these deer, however, had all been left exposed to the caracaras and foxes after a portion of the breast had been eaten, and in many cases the flesh had not been touched, the captor having satisfied itself with sucking the blood. It struck me very forcibly that the puma of the desert pampas is, among mammals, like the peregrine falcon of the same district among birds; for there this wide-ranging raptor only attacks comparatively large birds, and, after fastidiously picking a meal from the flesh of the head and neck, abandons the untouched body to the polybori and other hawks of the more ignoble sort. In pastoral districts the puma is very destructive to the larger domestic animals, and has an extraordinary fondness for horseflesh. This was first noticed by Molina, whose _Natural History of Chili_ was written a century and a half ago. In Patagonia I heard on all sides that it was extremely difficult to breed horses, as the colts were mostly killed by the pumas. A native told me that on one occasion, while driving his horses home through the thicket, a puma sprang out of the bushes on to a colt following behind the troop, killing it before his eyes and not more than six yards from his horse's head. In this instance, my informant said, the puma alighted directly on the colt's back, with one fore foot grasping its bosom, while with the other it seized the head, and, giving it a violent wrench, dislocated the neck. The colt fell to the earth as if shot, and he affirmed that it was dead before it touched the ground. Naturalists have thought it strange that the horse, once common throughout America, should have become extinct over a continent apparently so well suited to it and where it now multiplies so greatly. As a fact wherever pumas abound the wild horse of the present time, introduced from Europe, can hardly maintain its existence. Formerly in many places horses ran wild and multiplied to an amazing extent, but this happened, I believe, only in districts where the puma was scarce or had already been driven out by man. My own experience is that on the desert pampas wild horses are exceedingly scarce, and from all accounts it is the same throughout Patagonia. Next to horseflesh, sheep is preferred, and where the puma can come at a flock, he will not trouble himself to attack horned cattle. In Patagonia especially I found this to be the case. I resided for some time at an estancia close to the town of El Carmen, on the Rio Negro, which during my stay was infested by a very bold and cunning puma. To protect the sheep from his attacks an enclosure was made of upright willow-poles fifteen feet long, while the gate, by which he would have to enter, was close to the house and nearly six feet high. In spite of the difficulties thus put in the way, and of the presence of several large dogs, also of the watch we kept in the hope of shooting him, every cloudy night he came, and after killing one or more sheep got safely away. One dark night he killed four sheep; I detected him in the act, and going up to the gate, was trying to make out his invisible form in the gloom as he flitted about knocking the sheep over, when suddenly he leaped clear over my head and made his escape, the bullets I sent after him in the dark failing to hit him. Yet at this place twelve or fourteen calves, belonging to the milch cows, were every night shut into a small brushwood pen, at a distance from the house where the enemy could easily have destroyed every one of them. When I expressed surprise at this arrangement, the owner said that the puma was not fond of calves' flesh, and came only for the sheep. Frequently after his nocturnal visits we found, by tracing his footprints in the loose sand, that he had actually used the calves' pen as a place of concealment while waiting to make his attack on the sheep. The puma often kills full-grown cows and horses, but exhibits a still greater daring when attacking the jaguar, the largest of American carnivores, although, compared with its swift, agile enemy, as heavy as a rhinoceros. Azara states that it is generally believed in La Plata and Paraguay that the puma attacks and conquers the jaguar; but he did not credit what he heard, which was not strange, since he had already set the puma down as a cowardly animal, because it does not attempt to harm man or child. Nevertheless, it is well known that where the two species inhabit the same district they are at enmity, the puma being the persistent persecutor of the jaguar, following and harassing it as a tyrant-bird harasses an eagle or hawk, moving about it with such rapidity as to confuse it, and, when an opportunity occurs, springing upon its back and inflicting terrible wounds with teeth and claws. Jaguars with scarred backs are frequently killed, and others, not long escaped from their tormentors, have been found so greatly lacerated that they were easily overcome by the hunters. In Kingsley's American _Standard Natural History_, it is stated that the puma in North California has a feud with the grizzly bear similar to that of the southern animal with the jaguar. In its encounter with the grizzly it is said to be always the victor; and this is borne out by the finding of the bodies of bears, which have evidently perished in the struggle. How strange that this most cunning, bold, and bloodthirsty of the Felidae, the persecutor of the jaguar and the scourge of the ruminants in the regions it inhabits, able to kill its prey with the celerity of a rifle bullet, never attacks a human being! Even the cowardly, carrion-feeding dog will attack a man when it can do so with impunity; but in places where the puma is the only large beast of prey, it is notorious that it is there perfectly safe for even a small child to go out and sleep on the plain. At the same time it will not fly from man (though the contrary is always stated in books of Natural History) except in places where it is continually persecuted. Nor is this all: it will not, as a rule, even defend itself against man, although in some rare instances it has been known to do so. The mysterious, gentle instinct of this ungentle species, which causes the gauchos of the pampas to name it man's friend--"amigo del cristiano"--has been persistently ignored by all travellers and naturalists who have mentioned the puma. They have thus made it a very incongruous creature, strong enough to kill a horse, yet so cowardly withal that it invariably flies from a human being--even from a sleeping child! Possibly its real reputation was known to some of those who havo spoken about it; if so, they attributed what they heard to the love of the marvellous and the romantic, natural to the non-scientific mind; or else preferred not to import into their writings matter which has so great a likeness to fable, and might have the effect of imperilling their reputation for sober-mindedness. It is, however, possible that the singular instinct of tho southern puma, which is unique among animals in a state of nature, is not possessed by the entire species, ranging as it does over a hundred degrees of latitude, from British North America to Tierra del Fuego. The widely different conditions of life in the various regions it inhabits must necessarily have caused some divergence. Concerning its habits in the dense forests of the Amazonian region, where it must have developed special instincts suited to its semi-arboreal life, scarcely anything has been recorded. Everyone is, however, familiar with the dreaded cougar, catamount, or panther--sometimes called "painter"--of North American literature, thrilling descriptions of encounters with this imaginary man-eating monster being freely scattered through the backwoods or border romances, many of them written by authors who have the reputation of being true to nature. It may be true that this cougar of a cold climate did occasionally attack man, or, as it is often stated, follow him in the forest with the intention of springing on him unawares; but on this point nothing definite will ever be known, as the pioneers hunters of the past were only anxious to shoot cougar and not to study its instinct and disposition. It is now many years since Audubon and Bachman wrote, "This animal, which has excited so much terror in the minds of the ignorant and timid, has been nearly exterminated in all the Atlantic States, and we do not recollect a single well-authenticated instance where any hunter's life fell a sacrifice in a cougar hunt." It might be added, I believe, that no authentic instance has been recorded of the puma making an unprovoked attack on any human being. In South America also the traveller in the wilderness is sometimes followed by a puma; but he would certainly be very much surprised if told that it follows with the intention of springing on him unawares and devouring his flesh. I have spoken of the comparative ease with which the puma overcomes even large animals, comparing it in this respect with the peregrine falcon; but all predacious species are liable to frequent failures, sometimes to fatal mishaps, and even the cunning, swift-killing puma is no exception. Its attacks are successfully resisted by the ass, which does not, like the horse, lose his presence of mind, but when assaulted thrusts his head well down between its fore-legs and kicks violently until the enemy is thrown or driven off. Pigs, when in large herds, also safely defy the puma, massing themselves together for defence in their well-known manner, and presenting a serried line of tusks to the aggressor. During my stay in Patagonia a puma met its fate in a manner so singular that the incident caused considerable sensation among the settlers on the Rio Negro at the time. A man named Linares, the chief of the tame Indians settled in the neighbourhood of El Carmen, while riding near the river had his curiosity aroused by the appearance and behaviour of a young cow standing alone in the grass, her head, armed with long and exceedingly sharp horns, much raised, and watching his approach in a manner which betokened a state of dangerous excitement. She had recently dropped her calf, and he at once conjectured that it had been attacked, and perhaps killed, by some animal of prey. To satisfy himself on this point he began to search for it, and while thus engaged the cow repeatedly charged him with the greatest fury. Presently he discovered the calf lying dead among the long grass; and by its side lay a full-grown puma, also dead, and with a large wound in its side, just behind the shoulder. The calf had been killed by the puma, for its throat showed the wounds of large teeth, and the puma had been killed by the cow. When he saw it he could, he affirmed, scarcely believe the evidence of his own senses, for was an unheard-of thing that a puma should be injured by any other animal. His opinion was that it had come down from the hills in a starving condition, and having sprung upon the calf, the taste of blood had made it for a moment careless of its own safety, and during that moment the infuriated cow had charged, and driving one of her long sharp horns into some vital part, killed it instantly. The puma is, with the exception of some monkeys, the most playful animal in existence. The young of all the Felidae spend a large portion of their time in characteristic gambols; the adults, however, acquire a grave and dignified demeanour, only the female playing on occasions with her offspring; but this she always does with a certain formality of manner, as if the relaxation were indulged in not spontaneously, but for the sake of the young and as being a necessary part of their education. Some writer has described the lion's assumption of gaiety as more grim than its most serious moods. The puma at heart is always a kitten, taking unmeasured delight in its frolics, and when, as often happens, one lives alone in the desert, it will amuse itself by the hour fighting mock battles or playing at hide-and-seek with imaginary companions, and lying in wait and putting all its wonderful strategy in practice to capture a passing butterfly. Azara kept a young male for four months, which spent its whole time playing with the slaves. This animal, he says, would not refuse any food offered to it; but when not hungry it would bury the meat in the sand, and when inclined to eat dig it up, and, taking it to the water-trough, wash it clean. I have only known one puma kept as a pet, and this animal, in seven or eight years had never shown a trace of ill-temper. When approached, he would lie down, purring loudly, and twist himself about a person's legs, begging to be caressed. A string or handkerchief drawn about was sufficient to keep him in a happy state of excitement for an hour; and when one person was tired of playing with him he was ready for a game with the next comer. I was told by a person who had spent most of his life on the pampas that on one occasion, when travelling in the neighbourhood of Cape Corrientes, his horse died under him, and he was compelled to continue his journey on foot, burdened with his heavy native horse-gear. At night he made his bed under the shelter of a rock, on the slope of a stony sierra; a bright moon was shining, and about nine o'clock in the evening four pumas appeared, two adults with their two half-grown young. Not feeling the least alarm at their presence, he did not stir; and after a while they began to gambol together close to him, concealing themselves from each other among the rocks, just as kittens do, and frequently while pursuing one another leaping over him. He continued watching them until past midnight, then fell asleep, and did not wake until morning, when they had left him. This man was an Englishman by birth, but having gone very young to South America he had taken kindly to the semi-barbarous life of the gauchos, and had imbibed all their peculiar notions, one of which is that human life is not worth very much. "What does it matter?" they often say, and shrug their shoulders, when told of a comrade's death; "so many beautiful horses die!" I asked him if he had ever killed a puma, and he replied that he had killed only one and had sworn never to kill another. He said that while out one day with another gaucho looking for cattle a puma was found. It sat up with its back against a stone, and did not move even when his companion threw the noose of his lasso over its neck. My informant then dismounted, and, drawing his knife, advanced to kill it: still the puma made no attempt to free itself from the lasso, but it seemed to know, he said, what was coming, for it began to tremble, the tears ran from its eyes, and it whined in the most pitiful manner. He killed it as it sat there unresisting before him, but after accomplishing the deed felt that he had committed a murder. It was the only thing ho had ever done in his life, he added, which filled him with remorse when he remembered it. This I thought a rather startling declaration, as I knew that he had killed several individuals of his own species in duels, fought with knives, in the fashion of the gauchos. All who have killed or witnessed the killing of the puma--and I have questioned scores of hunters on this point--agree that it resigns itself in this unresisting, pathetic manner to death at the hands of man. Claudio Gay, in his _Natural History of Chili,_ says, "When attacked by man its energy and daring at once forsake it, and it becomes a weak, inoffensive animal, and trembling, and uttering piteous moans, and shedding abundant tears, it seems to implore compassion from a generous enemy." The enemy is not often generous; but many gauchos have assured me, when speaking on this subject, that although they kill the puma readily to protect their domestic animals, they consider it an evil thing to take its life in desert places, where it is man's only friend among the wild animals. When the hunter is accompanied by dogs, then the puma, instead of drooping and shedding tears, is roused to a sublime rage: its hair stands erect; its eyes shine like balls of green flame; it spits and snarls like a furious torn cat. The hunter's presence seems at such times to be ignored altogether, its whole attention being given to the dogs and its rage directed against them. In Patagonia a sheep-farming Scotchman, with whom I spent some days, showed me the skulls of five pumas which he had shot in the vicinity of his ranche. One was of an exceptionally large individual, and I here relate what he told me of his encounter with this animal, as it shows just how the puma almost invariably behaves when attacked by man and dogs. He was out on foot with his flock, when the dogs discovered the animal concealed among the bushes. He had left his gun at home, and having no weapon, and finding that the dogs dared not attack it where it sat in a defiant attitude with its back against a thorny bush, he looked about and found a large dry stick, and going boldly up to it tried to stun it with a violent blow on the head. But though it never looked at him, its fiery eyes gazing steadily at the dogs all the time, he could not hit it, for with a quick side movement it avoided every blow. The small heed the puma paid him, and the apparent ease with which it avoided his best-aimed blows, only served to rouse his spirit, and at length striking with increased force his stick came to the ground and was broken to pieces. For some moments he now stood within two yards of the animal perfectly defenceless and not knowing what to do. Suddenly it sprang past him, actually brushing against his arm with its side, and began pursuing the dogs round and round among the bushes. In the end my informant's partner appeared on the scene with his rifle, and the puma was shot. In encounters of this kind the most curious thing is that the puma steadfastly refuses to recognize an enemy in man, although it finds him acting in concert with its hated canine foe, about whose hostile intentions it has no such delusion. Several years ago a paragraph, which reached me in South America, appeared in the English papers relating an incident characteristic of the puma in a wild beast show in this country. The animal was taken out of its cage and led about the grounds by its keeper, followed by a large number of spectators. Suddenly it was struck motionless by some object in the crowd, at which it gazed steadily with a look of intense excitement; then springing violently away it dragged the chain from the keeper's hand and dashed in among the people, who immediately fled screaming in all directions. Their fears were, however, idle, the object of the puma's rage being a dog which it had spied among the crowd. It is said that when taken adult pumas invariably pine away and die; when brought up in captivity they invariably make playful, affectionate pets, and are gentle towards all human beings, but very seldom overcome their instinctive animosity towards the dog. One of the very few authentic instances I have met with of this animal defending itself against a human being was related to me at a place on the pampas called Saladillo. At the time of my visit there jaguars and pumas were very abundant and extremely destructive to the cattle and horses. Sheep it had not yet been considered worth while to introduce, but immense herds of pigs were kept at every estancia, these animals being able to protect themselves. One gaucho had so repeatedly distinguished himself by his boldness and dexterity in killing jaguars that he was by general consent made the leader of every tiger-hunt. One day the comandante of the district got twelve or fourteen men together, the tiger-slayer among them, and started in search of a jaguar which had been seen that morning in the neighbourhood of his estancia. The animal was eventually found and surrounded, and as it was crouching among some clumps of tall pampas grass, where throwing a lasso over its neck would be a somewhat difficult and dangerous operation, all gave way to the famous hunter, who at once uncoiled his lasso and proceeded in a leisurely manner to form the loop. While thus engaged he made the mistake of allowing his horse, which had grown restive, to turn aside from the hunted animal. The jaguar, instantly taking advantage of the oversight, burst from its cover and sprang first on to the haunches of the horse, then seizing the hunter by his poncho dragged him to the earth, and would no doubt have quickly despatched him if a lasso, thrown by one of the other men, had not closed round its neck at this critical moment. It was quickly dragged off, and eventually killed. But the discomfited hunter did not stay to assist at the finish. He arose from the ground unharmed, but in a violent passion and blaspheming horribly, for he knew that his reputation, which he priced above everything, had suffered a great blow, and that he would be mercilessly ridiculed by his associates. Getting on his horse he rode away by himself from the scene of his misadventure. Of what happened to him on his homeward ride there were no witnesses; but his own account was as follows, and inasmuch as it told against his own prowess it was readily believed: Before riding a league, and while his bosom was still burning with rage, a puma started up from the long grass in his path, but made no attempt to run away; it merely sat up, he said, and looked at him in a provokingly fearless manner. To slay this animal with his knife, and so revenge himself on it for the defeat he had just suffered, was his first thought. He alighted and secured his horse by tying its fore feet together, then, drawing his long, heavy knife, rushed at the puma. Still it did not stir. Raising his weapon he struck with a force which would have split the animal's skull open if the blow had fallen where it was intended to fall, but with a quick movement the puma avoided it, and at the same time lifted a foot and with lightning rapidity dealt the aggressor a blow on the face, its unsheathed claws literally dragging down the flesh from his cheek, laying the bone bare. After inflicting this terrible punishment and eyeing its fallen foe for a few seconds it trotted quietly away. The wounded man succeeded in getting on to his horse and reaching his home. The hanging flesh was restored to its place and the ghastly rents sewn up, and in the end he recovered: but he was disfigured for life; his temper also completely changed; he became morose and morbidly sensitive to the ridicule of his neighbours, and he never again ventured to join them in their hunting expeditions. I inquired of the comandante, and of others, whether any case had come to their knowledge in that district in which the puma had shown anything beyond a mere passive friendliness towards man; in reply they related the following incident, which had occurred at the Saladillo a few years before my visit: The men all went out one day beyond the frontier to form a _cerco,_ as it is called, to hunt ostriches and other game. The hunters, numbering about thirty, spread themselves round in a vast ring and, advancing towards the centre, drove the animals before them. During the excitement of the chase which followed, while they were all engaged in preventing the ostriches, deer, &c., from doubling back and escaping, it was not noticed that one of the hunters had disappeared; his horse, however, returned to its home during the evening, and on the next morning a fresh hunt for the lost man was organized. He was eventually found lying on the ground with a broken leg, where he had been thrown at the beginning of the hunt. He related that about an hour after it had become dark a puma appeared and sat near him, but did not seem to notice him. After a while it became restless, frequently going away and returning, and finally it kept away so long, that he thought it had left him for good. About midnight he heard the deep roar of a jaguar, and gave himself up for lost. By raising himself on his elbow he was able to see the outline of the beast crouching near him, but its face was turned from him, and it appeared to be intently watching some object on which it was about to spring. Presently it crept out of sight, then he heard snarlings and growlings and the sharp yell of a puma, and he knew that the two beasts were fighting. Before morning he saw the jaguar several times, but the puma renewed the contest with it again and again until morning appeared, after which he saw and heard no more of them. Extraordinary as this story sounds, it did not seem so to me when I heard it, for I had already met with many anecdotes of a similar nature in various parts of the country, some of them vastly more interesting than the one I have just narrated; only I did not get them at first hand, and am consequently not able to vouch for their accuracy; but in this case it seemed to me that there was really no room for doubt. All that I had previously heard had compelled me to believe that the puma really does possess a unique instinct of friendliness for man, the origin of which, like that of many other well-known instincts of animals, must remain a mystery. The fact that the puma never makes an unprovoked attack on a human being, or eats human flesh, and that it refuses, except in some very rare cases, even to defend itself, does not seem really less wonderful in an animal of its bold and sanguinary temper thau that it should follow the traveller in the wilderness, or come near him when he lies sleeping or disabled, and even occasionally defend him from its enemy the jaguar. We know that certain sounds, colours, or smells, which are not particularly noticed by most animals, produce an extraordinary effect on some species; and it is possible to believe, I think, that the human form or countenance, or the odour of the human body, may also have the effect on the puma of suspending its predatory instincts and inspiring it with a gentleness towards man, which we are only accustomed to see in our domesticated carnivores or in feral animals towards those of their own species. Wolves, when pressed with hunger, will sometimes devour a fellow wolf; as a rule, however, rapacious animals will starve to death rather than prey on one of their own kind, nor is it a common thing for them to attack other species possessing instincts similar to their own. The puma, we have seen, violently attacks other large carnivores, not to feed on them, but merely to satisfy its animosity; and, while respecting man, it is, within the tropics, a great hunter and eater of monkeys, which of all animals most resemble men. We can only conclude with Humboldt that there is something mysterious in the hatreds and affections of animals. The view here taken of the puma's character imparts, I think, a fresh interest to some things concerning the species, which have appeared in historical and other works, and which I propose to discuss briefly in this place. There is a remarkable passage in Byron's _Narrative of the loss of the Wager,_ which was quoted by Admiral Fitzroy in his _Voyage of the Beagle,_ to prove that tho puma inhabits Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent islands; no other large beast of prey being known in that part of America. "I heard," he says, "a growling close by me, which made me think it advisable to retire as soon as possible: the woods were, so gloomy I could see nothing; but, as I retired, this noise followed me close till I got out of them. Some of our men did assure me that they had seen a very large beast in the woods. . . I proposed to four of the people to go to the end of the bay, about two miles distant from the bell tent, to occupy the skeleton of an old Indian wigwam, which I had discovered in a walk that way on our first landing. This we covered to windward with seaweed; and, lighting a fire, laid ourselves down in hopes of finding a remedy for our hunger in sleep; but we had not long composed ourselves before one of our company was disturbed by the blowing of some animal at his face; and, upon opening his eyes, was not a little astonished to see by the glimmering of the fire, a large beast standing over him. He had presence of mind enough to snatch a brand from the fire, which was now very low, and thrust it at the nose of tho animal, which thereupon made off. . . . In the morning we were not a little anxious to know how our companions had fared; and this anxiety was increased upon our tracing the footsteps of the beast in the sand, in a direction towards the bell tent. The impression was deep and plain, of a large round foot well furnished with claws. Upon acquainting the people in the tent with the circumstances of our story, we found that they had been visited by the same unwelcome guest." Mr. Andrew Murray, in his work on the Geographical Distribution of Mammals, gives the Straits of Magellan as the extreme southern limit of the puma's range, and in discussing the above passage from Byron he writes: "This reference, however, gives no support to the notion of the animal alluded to having been a puma. . . . The description of the footprints clearly shows that the animal could not have been a puma. None of the cat tribe leave any trace of a claw in their footprints. . . The dogs, on the other hand, leave a very well-defined claw-mark. . . . Commodore Byron and his party had therefore suffered a false alarm. The creature which had disturbed them was, doubtless, one of the harmless domestic dogs of the natives." The assurance that the bold hardy adventurer and his men suffered a false alarm, and were thrown into a great state of excitement at the appearance of one of the wretched domestic dogs of the Fuegians, with which they were familiar, comes charmingly, it must be said, from a closet naturalist, who surveys the world of savage beasts from his London study. He apparently forgets that Commodore Byron lived in a time when the painful accuracy and excessive minuteness we are accustomed to was not expected from a writer, whenever he happened to touch on any matters connected with zoology. This kind of criticism, which seizes on a slight inaccuracy in one passage, and totally ignores an important statement in another--as, for instance, that of the "great beast" seen in the woods--might be extended to other portions of the book, and Byron's entire narrative made to appear as purely a work of the imagination as Peter Wilkin's adventures in those same antarctic seas. Mr. J. W. Boddam Whetham, in his work _Across Central America_ (1877), gives an anecdote of the puma, which he heard at Sacluk, in Guatemala, and which strangely resembles some of the stories I have heard on the pampas. He writes: "The following event, most extraordinary if true, is said to have occurred in this forest to a mahogany-cutter, who had been out marking trees. As he was returning to his hut, he suddenly felt a soft body pressing against him, and on looking down saw a cougar, which, with tail erect, and purring like a cat, twisted itself in and out of his legs, and glided round him, turning up its fierce eyes as if with laughter. Horror-stricken and with faltering steps he kept on, and the terrible animal still circled about, now rolling over, and now touching him with a paw like a cat playing with a mouse. At last the suspense became too great, and with a loud shout he struck desperately at the creature with his axe. It bounded on one side and crouched snarling and showing its teeth. Just as it was about to spring, the man's companion, who had heard his call, appeared in the distance, and with a growl the beast vanished into the thick bushes." Now, after allowing for exaggeration, if there is no foundation for stories of this character, it is really a very wonderful coincidence that they should be met with in countries so widely separated as Patagonia and Central America. Pumas, doubtless, are scarce in Guatemala; and, as in other places where they have met with nothing but persecution from man, they are shy of him; but had this adventure occurred on the pampas, where they are better known, the person concerned in it would not have said that the puma played with him as a cat with a mouse, but rather as a tame cat plays with a child; nor, probably, would he have been terrified into imagining that the animal, even after its caresses had met with so rough a return, was about to spring on him. In Clavigero's _History of Lower California,_ it is related that a very extraordinary state of things was discovered to exist in that country by the first missionaries who settled there at the end of the seventeenth century, and which was actually owing to the pumas. The author says that there were no bears or tigers (jaguars); these had most probably been driven out by their old enemies; but the pumas had increased to a prodigious extent, so that the whole peninsula was overrun by them; and this was owing to the superstitious regard in which they were held by the natives, who not only did not kill them, but never ventured to disturb them in any way. The Indians were actually to some extent dependent on the puma's success in hunting for their subsistence; they watched the movements of the vultures in order to discover the spot in which the remains of any animal it had captured had been left by the puma, and whenever the birds were seen circling about persistently over one place, they hastened to take possession of the carcass, discovered in this way. The domestic animals, imported by the missionaries, were quickly destroyed by the virtual masters of the country, and against these enemies the Jesuits preached a crusade in vain: for although the Indians readily embraced Christianity and were baptized, they were not to be shaken in their notions concerning the sacred _Chimbicá,_ as the puma was called. The missions languished in consequence; the priests existed in a state of semi-starvation, depending on provisions sent to them at long intervals from the distant Mexican settlements; and for many years all their efforts to raise the savages from their miserable condition were thrown away. At length, in 1701, the mission of Loreto was taken charge of by one Padre Ugarte, described by Clavigero as a person of indomitable energy, and great physical strength and courage, a true muscular Christian, who occasionally varied his method of instruction by administering corporal chastisements to his hearers when they laughed at his doctrines, or at the mistakes he made in their language, while preaching to them. Ugarte, like his predecessors, could not move the Indians to hunt the puma, but he was a man of action, with a wholesome belief in the efficacy of example, and his opportunity came at last. One day, while riding in the wood, he saw at a distance a puma walking deliberately towards him. Alighting from his mule, he took up a large stone and advanced to meet the animal, and when sufficiently near hurled the missile with such precision and force that he knocked ifc down senseless. After killing it, he found that the heaviest part of his task remained, as it was necessary for the success of his project to carry the beast, still warm and bleeding, to the Indian village; but mow his mule steadfastly refused to approach it. Father Ugarte was not, however, to be defeated, and partly by stratagem, partly by force, he finally succeeded in getting the puma on to the mule's back, after which he rode in triumph to the settlement. The Indians at first thought it all a trick of their priest, who was so anxious to involve them in a conflict with the pumas, and standing at a distance they began jeering at him, and exclaiming that he had found the animal dead! But when they were induced to approach, and saw that it was still warm and bleeding, they were astonished beyond measure, and began to watch the priest narrowly, thinking that he would presently drop down and die in sight of them all. It was their belief that death would quickly overtake the slayer of a puma. As this did not happen, the priest gained a great influence over them, and in the end they were persuaded to turn their weapons against the Chimbicá. Clavigero has nothing to say concerning the origin of this Californian superstition; but with some knowledge of the puma's character, it is not difficult to imagine what it may have been. No doubt these savages had been very well acquainted from ancient times with the animal's instinct of friendliness toward man, and its extreme hatred of other carnivores, which prey on the human species; and finding it ranged on their side, as it were, in the hard struggle of life in the desert, they were induced to spare it, and even to regard it as a friend; and such a feeling, among primitive men, might in the course of time degenerate into such a superstition as that of the Californians. I shall, in conclusion, relate here the story of Maldonada, which is not generally known, although familiar to Buenos Ayreans as the story of Lady Godiva's ride through Coventry is to the people of that town. The case of Maldonada is circumstantially narrated by Rui Diaz de Guzman, in his history of the colonization of the Plata: he was a person high in authority in the young colonies, and is regarded by students of South American history as an accurate and sober-minded chronicler of the events of his own times. He relates that in the year 1536 the settlers at Buenos Ayres, having exhausted their provisions, and being compelled by hostile Indians to keep within their pallisades, were reduced to the verge of starvation. The Governor Mendoza went off to seek help from the other colonies up the river, deputing his authority to one Captain Ruiz, who, according to all accounts, displayed an excessively tyrannous and truculent disposition while in power. The people were finally reduced to a ration of sis ounces of flour per day for each person; but as the flour was putrid and only made them ill, they were forced to live on any small animals they could capture, including snakes, frogs and toads. Some horrible details are given by Rui Diaz, and other writers; one, Del Barco Centenera, affirms that of two thousand persons in the town eighteen hundred perished of hunger. During this unhappy time, beasts of prey in large numbers were attracted to the settlement by the effluvium of the corpses, buried just outside the pallisades; and this made the condition of the survivors more miserable still, since they could venture into the neighbouring woods only at the risk of a violent death. Nevertheless, many did so venture, and among these was the young woman Maldonada, who, losing herself in the forest, strayed to a distance, and was eventually found by a party of Indians, and carried by them to their village. Some months later, Captain Ruiz discovered her whereabouts, and persuaded the savages to bring her to the settlement; then, accusing her of having gone to the Indian village in order to betray the colony, he condemned her to be devoured by wild beasts. She was taken to a wood at a distance of a league from the town, and left there, tied to a tree, for the space of two nights and a day. A party of soldiers then went to the spot, expecting to find her bones picked clean by the beasts, but were greatly astonished to find Maldonada still alive, without hurt or scratch. She told them that a puma had come to her aid, and had kept at her side, defending her life against all the other beasts that approached her. She was instantly released, and taken back to the town, her deliverance through the action of the puma probably being looked on as direct interposition of Providence to save her. Rui Diaz concludes with the following paragraph, in which he affirms that he knew the woman Maldonada, which may be taken as proof that she was among the few that survived the first disastrous settlement and lived on to more fortunate times: his pious pun on her name would be lost in a translation:--"De esta manera quedo libre la que ofrecieron a las fieras: la cual mujer yo la conoci, y la llamaban la Maldonada, que mas bien se le podia llamar la BIENDONADA; pues por este suceso se ha de ver no haber merecido el castigo á que la ofrecieron." If such a thing were to happen now, in any portion of southern South America, where the puma's disposition is best known, it would not be looked on as a miracle, as it was, and that unavoidably, in the case of Maldonada. CHAPTER III. A WAVE OF LIFE, For many years, while living in my own home on the pampas, I kept a journal, in which all my daily observations on the habits of animals and kindred matters were carefully noted. Turning back to 1872-3, I find my jottings for that season contain a history of one of those waves of life--for I can think of no better name for the phenomenon in question--that are of such frequent occurrence in thinly-settled regions, though in countries like England, seen very rarely, and on a very limited scale. An exceptionally bounteous season, the accidental mitigation of a check, or other favourable circumstance, often causes an increase so sudden and inordinate of small prolific species, that when we actually witness it we are no longer surprised at the notion prevalent amongst the common people that mice, frogs, crickets, &c., are occasionally rained down from the clouds. In the summer of 1872-3 we had plenty of sunshine, with frequent showers; so that the hot months brought no dearth of wild flowers, as in most years. The abundance of flowers resulted in a wonderful increase of humble bees. I have never known them so plentiful before; in and about the plantation adjoining my house I found, during the season, no fewer than seventeen nests. The season was also favourable for mice; that is, of course, favourable for the time being, unfavourable in the long run, since the short-lived, undue preponderance of a species is invariably followed by a long period of undue depression. These prolific little creatures were soon so abundant that the dogs subsisted almost exclusively on them; the fowls also, from incessantly pursuing and killing them, became quite rapacious in their manner; whilst the sulphur tyrant-birds (Pitangus) and the Guira cuckoos preyed on nothing but mice. The domestic cats, as they invariably do in such plentiful seasons, absented themselves from the house, assuming all the habits of their wild congeners, and slinking from the sight of man--even of a former fireside companion--with a shy secrecy in their motions, an apparent affectation of fear, almost ludicrous to see. Foxes, weasels, and opossums fared sumptuously. Even for the common armadillo (Dasypus villosus) it was a season of affluence, for this creature is very adroit in capturing mice. This fact might seem surprising to anyone who marks the uncouth figure, toothless gums, and the motions--anything but light and graceful--of the armadillo and perhaps fancying that, to be a dexterous mouser, an animal should bear some resemblance in habits and structure to the felidas. But animals, like men, are compelled to adapt themselves to their surroundings; new habits are acquired, and the exact co-relation between habit and structure is seldom maintained. I kept an armadillo at this time, and good cheer and the sedentary life he led in captivity made him excessively fat; but the mousing exploits of even this individual were most interesting. Occasionally I took him into the fields to give him a taste of liberty, though at such times I always took the precaution to keep hold of a cord fastened to one of his hind legs; for as often as he came to a kennel of one of his wild fellows, he would attempt to escape into it. He invariably travelled with an ungainly trotting gait, carrying his nose, beagle-like, close to the ground. His sense of smell was exceedingly acute, and when near his prey he became agitated, and quickened his motions, pausing frequently to sniff the earth, till, discovering the exact spot where the mouse lurked, he would stop and creep cautiously to it; then, after slowly raising himself to a sitting posture, spring suddenly forwards, throwing his body like a trap over the mouse, or nest of mice, concealed beneath the grass. A curious instance of intelligence in a cat was brought to my notice at this time by one of my neighbours, a native. His children had made the discovery that some excitement and fun was to be had by placing a long hollow stalk of the giant thistle with a mouse in it--and every hollow stalk at this time had one for a tenant--before a cat, and then watching her movements. Smelling her prey, she would spring at one end of the stalk--the end towards which the mouse would be moving at the same time, but would catch nothing, for the mouse, instead of running out, would turn back to run to the other end; whereupon the cat, all excitement, would jump there to seize it; and so the contest would continue for a long time, an exhibition of the cleverness and the stupidity of instinct, both of the pursuer and the pursued. There were several cats at the house, and all acted in the same way except one. When a stalk was placed before this cat, instead of becoming excited like the others, it went quickly to one end and smelt' at the opening, then, satisfied that its prey was inside, it deliberately bit a long piece out of the stalk with its teeth, then another strip, and so on progressively, until the entire stick had been opened up to within six or eight inches of the further end, when the mouse came out and was caught. Every stalk placed before this cat was demolished in the same businesslike way; but the other cats, though they were made to look on while the stick was being broken up by their fellow, could never learn the trick. In the autumn of the year countless numbers of storks (Ciconia maguari) and of short-eared owls (Otus brachyotus) made their appearance. They had also come to assist at the general feast. Remembering the opinion of Mr. E. Newman, quoted by Darwin, that two-thirds of the humble bees in England are annually destroyed by mice, I determined to continue observing these insects, in order to ascertain whether the same thing occurred on the pampas. I carefully revisited all the nests I had found, and was amazed at the rapid disappearance of all the bees. I was quite convinced that the mice had devoured or driven them out, for the weather was still warm, and flowers and fruit on which humble bees feed were very abundant. After cold weather set in the storks went away, probably on account of the scarcity of water, for the owls remained. So numerous were they during the winter, that any evening after sunset I could count forty or fifty individuals hovering over the trees about my house. Unfortunately they did not confine their attentions to the mice, but became destructive to the birds as well. I frequently watched them at dusk, beating about the trees and bushes in a systematic manner, often a dozen or more of them wheeling together about one tree, like so many moths about a candle, and one occasionally dashing through the branches until a pigeon--usually the Zenaida maculata--or other bird was scared from its perch. The instant the bird left the tree they would all give chase, disappearing in the darkness. I could not endure to see the havoc they were making amongst the ovenbirds (Furnarius rufus--a species for which I have a regard and affection almost superstitious), so I began to shoot the marauders. Very soon, however, I found it was impossible to protect my little favourites. Night after night the owls mustered in their usual numbers, so rapidly were the gaps I made in their ranks refilled. I grew sick of the cruel war in which I had so hopelessly joined, and resolved, not without pain, to let things take their course. A singular circumstance was that the owls began to breed in the middle of winter. The field-labourers and boys found many nests with eggs and young birds in the neighbourhood. I saw one nest in July, our coldest month, with three half-grown young birds in it. They were excessively fat, and, though it was noon-day, had their crops full. There were three mice and two young cavies (Cavia australis) lying untouched in the nest. The short-eared owl is of a wandering disposition, ard performs long journeys at all seasons of the year in search of districts where food is abundant; and perhaps these winter-breeders came from a region where scarcity of prey, or some such cause, had prevented them from nesting at their usual time in summer. The gradual increase or decrease continually going on in many species about us is little remarked; but the sudden infrequent appearance in vast numbers of large and comparatively rare species is regarded by most people as a very wonderful phenomenon, not easily explained. On the pampas, whenever grasshoppers, mice, frogs or crickets become excessively abundant we confidently look for the appearance of multitudes of the birds that prey on them. However obvious may be the cause of the first phenomenon--the sudden inordinate increase during a favourable year of a species always prolific--the attendant one always creates astonishment: For how, it is asked, do these largo birds, seldom seen at other times, receive information in the distant regions they inhabit of an abundance of food in any particular locality? Years have perhaps passed during which, scarcely an individual of these kinds has been seen: all at once armies of the majestic white storks are seen conspicuously marching about the plain in all directions; while the night air resounds with the solemn hootings of innumerable owls. It is plain that these birds have been drawn from over an immense area to one spot; and the question is how have they been drawn? Many large birds possessing great powers of flight are, when not occupied with the business of propagation, incessantly wandering from place to place in search of food. They are not, as a rule, regular migrants, for their wanderings begin and end irrespective of seasons, and where they find abundance they remain the whole year. They fly at a very great height, and traverse immense distances. When the favourite food of any one of these species is plentiful in any particular region all the individuals that discover it remain, and attract to them all of their kind passing overhead. This happens on the pampas with the stork, the short-eared owl, the hooded gull and the dominican or black-backed gull--the leading species among the feathered nomads: a few first appear like harbingers; these are presently joined by new comers in considerable numbers, and before long they are in myriads. Inconceivable numbers of birds are, doubtless, in these regions, continually passing over us unseen. It was once a subject of very great wonder to me that flocks of black-necked swans should almost always appear flying by immediately after a shower of rain, even when none had been visible for a long time before, and when they must have come from a very great distance. When the reason at length occurred to me, I felt very much disgusted with myself for being puzzled over so very simple a matter. After rain a flying swan may be visible to the eye at a vastly greater distance than during fair weather; the sun shining on its intense white plumage against the dark background of a rain-cloud making it exceedingly conspicuous. The fact that swans are almost always seen after rain shows only that they are almost always passing. Whenever we are visited by a dust-storm on the pampas myriads of hooded gulls--Larus macnlipen-nis--appear flying before the dark dust-cloud, even when not a gull has been seen for months. Dust-storms are of rare occurrence, and come only after a long drought, and, the water-courses being all dry, the gulls cannot have been living in the region over which the storm passes. Yet in seasons of drought gulls must be continually passing by at a great height, seeing but not seen, except when driven together and forced towards the earth by the fury of the storm. By August (1873) the owls had vanished, and they had, indeed, good cause for leaving. The winter had been one of continued drought; the dry grass and herbage of the preceding year had been consumed by the cattle and wild animals, or had turned to dust, and with the disappearance of their food and cover the mice had ceased to be. The famine-stricken cats sneaked back to the house. It was pitiful to see the little burrowing owls; for these birds, not having the powerful wings and prescient instincts of the vagrant Otus brachyotus, are compelled to face the poverty from which the others escape. Just as abundance had before made the domestic cats wild, scarcity now made the burrowing owls tame and fearless of man. They were so reduced as scarcely to be able to fly, and hung about the houses all day long on the look-out for some stray morsel of food. I have frequently seen one alight and advance within two or three yards of the door-step, probably attracted by the smell of roasted meat. The weather continued dry until late in spring, so reducing the sheep and cattle that incredible numbers perished during a month of cold and rainy weather that followed the drought. How clearly we can see in all this that the tendency to multiply rapidly, so advantageous in normal seasons, becomes almost fatal to a species in seasons of exceptional abundance. Cover and food without limit enabled the mice to increase at such an amazing rate that the lesser checks interposed by predatory species were for a while inappreciable. But as the mice increased, so did their enemies. Insectivorous and other species acquired the habits of owls and weasels, preying exclusively on them; while to this innumerable army of residents was shortly added multitudes of wandering birds coming from distant regions. No sooner had the herbage perished, depriving the little victims of cover and food, than the effects of the war became apparent. In autumn the earth so teemed with them that one could scarcely walk anywhere without treading on mice; while out of every hollow weed-stalk lying on the ground dozens could be shaken; but so rapidly had they devoured, by the trained army of persecutors, that in spring it was hard to find a survivor, even in the barns and houses. The fact that species tend to increase in a geometrical ratio makes these great and sudden changes frequent in many regions of the earth; but it is not often they present themselves so vividly as in the foregoing instance, for here, scene after scene in one of Nature's silent passionless tragedies opens before us, countless myriads of highly organized beings rising into existence only to perish almost immediately, scarcely a hard-pressed remnant remaining after the great reaction to continue the species. CHAPTER IV. SOME CURIOUS ANIMAL WEAPONS. Strictly speaking, the only weapons of vertebrates are teeth, claws, horns, and spurs. Horns belong only to the ruminants, and the spur is a rare weapon. There are also many animals in which teeth and claws are not suited to inflict injury, or in which the proper instincts and courage to use and develop them are wanted; and these would seem, to be in a very defenceless condition. Defenceless they are in one sense, but as a fact they are no worse off than the well-armed species, having either a protective colouring or a greater swiftness or cunning to assist them in escaping from their enemies. And there are also many of these practically toothless and clawless species which have yet been provided with other organs and means of offence and defence out of Nature's curious armoury, and concerning a few of these species I propose to speak in this place. Probably such distinctive weapons as horns, spurs, tusks and spines would be much more common in nature if the conditions of life always remained the same. But these things are long in fashioning; meanwhile, conditions are changing; climate, soil, vegetation vary; foes and rivals diminish or increase; the old go, and others with different weapons and a new strategy take their place; and just as a skilful man "fighting the wilderness" fashions a plough from a hunting-knife, turns his implements into weapons of war, and for everything he possesses discovers a use never contemplated by its maker, so does Nature--only with an ingenuity exceeding that of man--use the means she has to meet all contingencies, and enable her creatures, seemingly so ill-provided, to maintain their fight for life. Natural selection, like an angry man, can make a weapon of anything; and, using the word in this wide sense, the mucous secretions the huanaco discharges into the face of an adversary, and the pestilential drops "distilled" by the skunk, are weapons, and may be as effectual in defensive warfare as spines, fangs and tushes. I do not know of a more striking instance in the animal kingdom of adaptation of structure to habit than is afforded by the hairy armadillo--Dasypus villosus. He appears to us, roughly speaking, to resemble an ant-eater saddled with a dish cover; yet this creature, with the cunning Avhich Nature has given it to supplement all deficiencies, has discovered in its bony encumbrance a highly efficient weapon of offence. Most other edentates are diurnal and almost exclusively insectivorous, some feeding only on ants; they have unchangeable habits, very limited intelligence, and vanish before civilization. The hairy armadillo alone has struck out a line for itself. Like its fast disappearing congeners, it is an insect-eater still, but does not like them seek its food on the surface and in the ant-hill only; all kinds of insects are preyed on, and by means of its keen scent it discovers worms and larvae several inches beneath the surface. Its method of taking worms and grubs resembles that of probing birds, for it throws up no earth, but forces its sharp snout and wedge-shaped head down to the required depth; and probably while working it moves round in a circle, for the hole is conical, though the head of the animal is flat. Where it has found a rich hunting-ground, the earth is seen pitted with hundreds of these neat symmetrical bores. It is also an enemy to ground-nesting birds, being fond of eggs and fledglings; and when unable to capture prey it will feed on carrion as readily as a wild dog or vulture, returning night after night to the carcase of a horse or cow as long as the flesh lasts. Failing animal food, it subsists on vegetable diet; and I have frequently found their stomachs stuffed with clover, and, stranger still, with the large, hard grains of the maize, swallowed entire. It is not, therefore, strange that at all seasons, and even when other animals are starving, the hairy armadillo is always fat and vigorous. In the desert it is diurnal; but where man appears it becomes more and more nocturnal, and in populous districts does not go abroad until long after dark. Yet when a district becomes thickly settled it increases in numbers; so readily does it adapt itself to new conditions. It is not to be wondered at that the gauchos, keen observers of nature as they are, should make this species the hero of many of their fables of the "Uncle Remus" type, representing it as a versatile creature, exceedingly fertile in expedients, and duping its sworn friend the fox in various ways, just as "Brer Rabbit" serves the fox in the North American fables. The hairy armadillo will, doubtless, long survive all the other armadillos, and on this account alone it will have an ever-increasing interest for the naturalist. I have elsewhere described how it captures mice; when preying on snakes it proceeds in another manner. A friend of mine, a careful observer, who was engaged in cattle-breeding amongst the stony sierras near Cape Corrientes, described to me an encounter he witnessed between an armadillo and a poisonous snake. While seated on the hillside one day he observed a snake, about twenty inches in length, lying coiled up on a stoue five or six yards beneath him. By-and-by, a hairy armadillo appeared trotting directly towards it. Apparently the snake perceived and feared its approach, for it quickly uncoiled itself and began gliding away. Instantly the armadillo rushed on to it, and, squatting close down, began swaying its body backward and forward with a regular sawing motion, thus lacerating its victim with the sharp, deep-cut edges of its bony covering. The snake struggled to free itself, biting savagely at its aggressor, for its head and neck were disengaged. Its bites made no impression, and very soon it dropped its head, and when its enemy drew off, it was dead and very much mangled. The armadillo at once began its meal, taking the tail in its mouth and slowly progressing towards the head; but when about a third of the snake still remained it seemed satisfied, and, leaving that portion, trotted away. Altogether, in its rapacious and varied habits this armadillo appears to have some points of resemblance with the hedgehog; and possibly, like the little European mammal it resembles, it is not harmed by the bite of venomous snakes. I once had a cat that killed every snake it found, purely for sport, since it never ate them. It would jump nimbly round and across its victim, occasionally dealing it a blow with its cruel claws. The enemies of the snake are legion. Burrowing owls feed largely on them; so do herons and storks, killing them with a blow of their javelin beaks, and swallowing them entire. The sulphur tyrant-bird picks up the young snake by the tail, and, flying to a branch or stone, uses it like a flail till its life is battered out. The bird is highly commended in consequence, reminding one of very ancient words: "Happy shall he be that taketh thy little ones and dasheth them against the stones." In arraying such a variety of enemies against the snake, nature has made ample amends for having endowed it with deadly weapons. Besides, the power possessed by venomous snakes only seems to us disproportionate; it is not really so, except in occasional individual encounters. Venomous snakes are always greatly outnumbered by non-venomous ones in the same district; at any rate this is the case on the pampas. The greater activity of the latter counts for more in the result than the deadly weapons of the former. The large teguexin lizard of the pampas, called iguana by the country people, is a notable snake-killer. Snakes have in fact, no more formidable enemy, for he is quick to see, and swift to overtake them. He is practically invulnerable, and deals them sudden death with his powerful tail. The gauchos say that dogs attacking the iguana are sometimes known to have their legs broken, and I do not doubt it. A friend of mine was out riding one day after his cattle, and having attached one end of his lasso to the saddle, He let it trail on the ground. He noticed a large iguana lying apparently asleep in the sun, and though he rode by it very closely, it did not stir; but no sooner had he passed it, than it raised its head, and fixed its attention on the forty feet of lasso slowly trailing by. Suddenly it rushed after the rope, and dealt it a succession of violent blows with its tail. When the whole of the lasso, several yards of which had been pounded in vain, had been dragged by, the lizard, with uplifted head, continued gazing after it with the greatest astonishment. Never had such a wonderful snake crossed its path before! Molina, in his _Natural History of Chill,_ says the vizcacha uses its tail as a weapon; but then Molina is not always reliable. I have observed vizcachas all my life, and never detected them making use of any weapon except their chisel teeth. The tail is certainly very curious, being straight at the base, then curving up outwardly, and slightly down again at the tip, resembling the spout of a china teapot. The under surface of the straight portion of the base is padded with a thick, naked, corneous skin; and, when the animal performs the curious sportive antics in which it occasionally indulges, it gives rapid loud-sounding blows on the ground with this part of the tail. The peculiar form of the tail also makes it a capital support, enabling the vizcacha to sit erect, with ease and security. The frog is a most timid, inoffensive creature, saving itself, when pursued, by a series of saltatory feats unparalleled amongst vertebrates. Consequently, when I find a frog, I have no hesitation in placing my hands upon it, and the cold sensation it gives one is the worse result I fear. It came to pass, however, that I once encountered a frog that was not like other frogs, for it possessed an instinct and weapons of offence which greatly astonished me. I was out snipe shooting one day when, peering into an old disused burrow, two or three feet deep, I perceived a burly-looking frog sitting it. It was larger and stouter-looking than our common Rana, though like it in colour, and I at once dropped on to my knees and set about its capture. Though it watched me attentively, the frog remained perfectly motionless, and this greatly surprised me. Before I was sufficiently near to make a grab, it sprang straight at my hand, and, catching two of my fingers round with its fore legs, administered a hug so sudden and violent as to cause an acute sensation of pain; then, at the very instant I experienced this feeling, which made me start back quickly, it released its hold and bounded out and away. I flew after it, and barely managed to overtake it before it could gain the water. Holding it firmly pressed behind the shoulders, it was powerless to attack me, and I then noticed the enormous development of the muscles of the fore legs, usually small in frogs, bulging out in this individual, like a second pair of thighs, and giving-it a strangely bold and formidable appearance. On holding my gun within its reach, it clasped the barrel with such energy as to bruise the skin of its breast and legs. After allowing it to partially exhaust itself in these fruitless huggings, I experimented by letting it seize my hand again, and I noticed that invariably after each squeeze it made a quick, violent attempt to free itself. Believing that I had discovered a frog differing in structure from all known species, and possessing a strange unique instinct of self-preservation, I carried my captive home, intending to show it to Dr. Burmeister, the director of the National Museum at Buenos Ayres-Unfortunately, after I had kept it some days, it effected its escape by pushing up the glass cover of its box, and I have never since met with another individual like it. That this singular frog has it in its power to seriously injure an opponent is, of course, out of the question; but its unexpected attack must be of great advantage. The effect of the sudden opening of an umbrella in the face of an angry bull gives, I think, only a faint idea of the astonishment and confusion it must cause an adversary by its leap, quick as lightning, and the violent hug it administers; and in the confusion it finds time to escape. I cannot for a moment believe that an instinct so admirable, correlated as it is with the structure of the fore legs, can be merely an individual variation; and I confidently expect that all I have said about my lost frog will some day be confirmed by others. Rana luctator would be a good name for this species. The toad is a slow-moving creature that puts itself in the way of persecution; yet, strange to say, the acrid juice it exudes when irritated is a surer protection to it than venomous fangs are to the deadliest snake. Toads are, in fact, with a very few exceptions, only attacked and devoured by snakes, by lizards, and by their own venomous relative, Ceratophrys ornata. Possibly the cold sluggish natures of all these creatures protects them against the toad's secretion, which would be poison to most warm-blooded animals, but I am not so sure that all fish enjoy a like immunity. I one day noticed a good-sized fish (bagras) floating, belly upmost, on the water. It had apparently just died, and had such a glossy, well-nourished look about it, and appeared so full, I was curious to know the cause of its death. On opening it I found its stomach quite filled with a very large toad it had swallowed. The toad looked perfectly fresh, not even a faint discoloration of the skin showing that the gastric juices had begun to take effect; the fish, in fact, must have died immediately after swallowing the toad. The country people in South America believe that the milky secretion exuded by the toad possesses wonderful curative properties; it is their invariable specific for shingles--a painful, dangerous malady common amongst them, and to cure it living toads are applied to the inflamed parb. I dare say learned physicians would laugh at this cure, but then, if I mistake not, the learned have in past times laughed at other specifics used by the vulgar, but which now have honourable places in the pharmacopoeia--pepsine, for example. More than two centuries ago (very ancient times for South America) the gauchos were accustomed to take the lining of the rhea's stomach, dried and powdered, for ailments caused by impaired digestion; and the remedy is popular still. Science has gone over to them, and the ostrich-hunter now makes a double profit, one from the feathers, and the other from the dried stomachs which he supplies to the chemists of Buenos Ayres. Yet he was formerly told that to take the stomach of the ostrich to improve his digestion was as wild an idea as it would be to swallow birds' feathers in order to fly. I just now called Ceratophrys ornata venomous, though its teeth are not formed to inject poison into the veins, like serpents' teeth. It is a singular creature, known as _escuerzo_ in the vernacular, and though beautiful in colour, is in form hideous beyond description. The skin is of a rich brilliant green, with chocolate-coloured patches, oval in form, and symmetrically disposed. The lips are bright yellow, the cavernous mouth pale flesh colour, the throat and under-surface dull white. The body is lumpy, and about the size of a large man's fist. The eyes, placed on the summit of a disproportionately large head, are embedded in horn-like protuberances, capable of being elevated or depressed at pleasure. When the creature is undisturbed, the eyes, which are of a pale gold colour, look out as from a couple of watch towers, but when touched on the head or menaced, the prominences sink down to a level with the head, closing the eyes completely, and giving the creature the appearance of being eyeless. The upper jaw is armed with minute teeth, and there are two teeth in the centre of the lower jaw, the remaining portions of the jaw being armed with two exceedingly sharp-edged bony plates. In place of a tongue, it has a round muscular process with a rough flat disc the size of a halfpenny. It is common all over the pampas, ranging as far south as the Rio Colorado in Patagonia. In the breeding season it congregates in pools, and one is then struck by their extraordinary vocal powers, which they exercise by night. The performance in no way resembles the series of percussive sounds uttered by most batrachians. The notes it utters are long, as of a wind instrument, not unmelodious, and so powerful as to make themselves heard distinctly a mile off on still evenings. After the amorous period these toads retire to moist places and sit inactive, buried just deep enough to leave the broad green back on a level with the surface, and it is then very difficult to detect them. In this position they wait for their prey--frogs, toads, birds, and small mammals. Often they capture and attempt to swallow things too large for them, a mistake often made by snakes. In very wet springs they sometimes come about houses and lie in wait for chickens and ducklings. In disposition they are most truculent, savagely biting at anything that comes near them; and when they bite they hang on with the tenacity of a bulldog, poisoning the blood with their glandular secretions. When teased, the creature swells itself out to such an extent one almost expects to see him burst; he follows his tormentors about with slow awkward leaps, his vast mouth wide open, and uttering an incessant harsh croaking sound. A gaucho I knew was once bitten by one. He sat down on the grass, and, dropping his hand at his side, had it seized, and only freed himself by using his hunting knife to force the creature's mouth open. He washed and bandaged the wound, and no bad result followed; but when the toad cannot be shaken off, then the result is different. One summer two horses were found dead on the plain near my home. One, while lying down, had been seized by a fold in the skin near the belly; the other had been grasped by the nose while cropping grass. In both instances the vicious toad was found dead, with jaws tightly closed, still hanging to the dead horse. Perhaps they are sometimes incapable of letting go at will, and like honey bees, destroy themselves in these savage attacks. CHAPTER V. FEAR IN BIRDS. The statement that birds instinctively fear man is frequently met with in zoological works written since the _Origin of Species_ appeared; but almost the only reason--absolutely the only plausible reason, all the rest being mere supposition--given in support of such a notion is that birds in desert islands show at first no fear of man, but afterwards, finding him a dangerous neighbour, they become wild; and their young also grow up wild. It is thus assumed that the habit acquired by the former has become hereditary in the latter--or, at all events, that in time it becomes hereditary. Instincts, which are few in number in any species, and practically endure for ever, are not, presumably, acquired with such extraordinary facility. Birds become shy where persecuted, and the young, even when not disturbed, learn a shy habit from the parents, and from other adults they associate with. I have found small birds shyer in desert places, where the human form was altogether strange to them, than in thickly-settled districts. Large birds are actually shyer than the small ones, although, to the civilized or shooting man they seem astonishingly tame where they have never been fired at. I have frequently walked quite openly to within twenty-five or thirty yards of a flock of flamingoes without alarming them. This, however, was when they were in the water, or on the opposite side of a stream. Having no experience of guns, they fancied themselves secure as long as a strip of water separated them from the approaching object. When standing on dry land they would not allow so near an approach. Sparrows in England aro very much tamer than the sparrows I have observed in desert places, where they seldom see a human being. Nevertheless young sparrows in England are very much tamer than old birds, as anyone may see for himself. During the past summer, while living near Kew Gardens, I watched the sparrows a great deal, and fed forty or fifty of them every day from a back window. The bread and seed was thrown on to a low roof just outside the window, and I noticed that the young birds when first able to fly were always brought by the parents to this feeding place, and that after two or three visits they would begin to come of their own accord. At such times they would venture quite close to me, showing as little suspicion as young chickens. The adults, however, although so much less shy than birds of other species, were extremely suspicious, snatching up the bread and flying away; or, if they remained, hopping about in a startled manner, craning their necks to view me, and making so many gestures and motions, and little chirps of alarm, that presently the young would become infected with fear. The lesson was taught them in a surprisingly short time; their suspicion was seen to increase day by day, and about a week later they were scarcely to be distinguished, in behaviour from the adults. It is plain that, with these little birds, fear of man is an associate feeling, and that, unless it had been taught them, his presence would trouble them as little as does that of horse, sheep, or cow. But how about the larger species, used as food, and which have had a longer and sadder experience of man's destructive power? The rhea, or South American ostrich, philosophers tell us, is a very ancient bird on the earth; and from its great size and inability to escape by flight, and its excellence as food, especially to savages, who prefer fat rank-flavoured flesh, it must have been systematically persecuted by man as long as, or longer than, any bird now existing on the globe. If fear of man ever becomes hereditary in birds, we ought certainly to find some trace of such an instinct in this species. I have been unable to detect any, though I have observed scores of young rheas in captivity, taken before the parent bird had taught them what to fear. I also once kept a brood myself, captured just after they had hatched out. With regard to food they were almost, or perhaps quite, independent, spending most of the time catching flies, grasshoppers, and other insects with surprising dexterity; but of the dangers encompassing the young rhea they knew absolutely frothing. They would follow me about as if they took me for their parent; and, whenever I imitated the loud snorting or rasping warning-call emitted the old bird in moments of danger, they would to me in the greatest terror, though no animal was in sight, and, squatting at my feet, endeavour to conceal themselves by thrusting their heads and long necks up my trousers. If I had caused a person to dress in white or yellow clothes for several consecutive days, and had then uttered the warning cry each time he showed himself to the birds, I have no doubt that they would soon have acquired a habit of running in terror from him, even without the warning cry, and that the fear of a person in white or yellow would have continued all their lives. Up to within about twenty years ago, rheas were seldom or never shot in La Plata and Patagonia, but were always hunted on horseback and caught with the bolas. The sight of a mounted man would set them off at once, while a person on foot could walk quite openly to within easy shooting distance of them; yet their fear of a horseman dates only two hundred years back--a very short time, when we consider that, before the Indian borrowed the horse from the invader, he must have systematically pursued the rhea on foot for centuries. The rhea changed its habits when the hunter changed his, and now, if an _estanciero_ puts down ostrich hunting on his estate, in a very few years the birds, although wild birds still, become as fearless and familiar as domestic animals. I have known old and ill-tempered males to become a perfect nuisance on some estancias, running after and attacking every person, whether on foot or on horseback, that ventured near them. An old instinct of a whole race could not be thus readily lost here and there on isolated estates wherever a proprietor chose to protect his birds for half a dozen years. I suppose the Talegallus--the best-known brush-turkey--must be looked on as an exception to all other birds with regard to the point I am considering; for this abnormal form buries its eggs in the huge mound made by the male, and troubles herself no more about them. When the young is fully developed it simply kicks the coffin to pieces in which its mother interred it, and, burrowing its way up to the sunshine, enters on the pleasures and pains of an independent existence from earliest infancy--that is, if a species born into the world in full possession of all the wisdom of the ancients, can be said ever to know infancy. At all events, from Mr. Bartlett's observations on the young hatched in the Zoological Gardens, it appears that they took no notice of the old birds, but lived quite independently from the moment they came out of the ground, even flying up into a tree and roosting separately at night. I am not sure, however, that these observations are quite conclusive; for it is certain that captivity plays strange pranks with the instincts of some species, and it is just possible that in a state of nature the old birds exercise at first some slight parental supervision, and, like all other species, have a peculiar cry to warn the young of the dangers to be avoided. If this is not so, then the young Talegallus must fly or hide with instinctive tear from every living thing that approaches it. I, at any rate, find it hard to believe that it has a knowledge, independent of experience, of the different habits of man and kangaroo, and dis-criminates at first sight between animals that are dangerous to it and those that are not. This interesting point will probably never be determined, as, most unhappily, the Australians are just now zealously engaged in exterminating their most wonderful bird for the sake of its miserable flesh; and with less excuse than the Maories could plead with regard to the moa, since they cannot deny that they have mutton and rabbit enough to satisfy hunger. Whether birds fear or have instinctive knowledge of any of their enemies is a much larger question. Species that run freely on the ground from the time of quitting the shell know their proper food, and avoid whatever is injurious. Have all young birds a similarly discriminating instinct with regard to their enemies? Darwin says, "Fear of any particular enemy is certainly an instinctive quality, as may be seen in nestling birds." Here, even man seems to be included among the enemies feared instinctively; and in another passage he says, "Young chickens have lost, wholly from habit, that fear of the dog and cat which, no doubt, was originally instinctive in them." My own observations point to a contrary conclusion; and I may say that I have had unrivalled opportunities for studying the habits of young birds. Animals of all classes, old and young, shrink with instinctive fear from any strange object approaching them. A piece of newspaper carried accidentally by the wind is as great an object of terror to an inexperienced young bird as a buzzard sweeping down with death in its talons. Among birds not yet able to fly there are, however, some curious exceptions; thus the young of most owls and pigeons are excited to anger rather than fear, and, puffing themselves up, snap and strike at an intruder with their beaks. Other fledglings simply shrink down in the nest or squat close on the ground, their fear, apparently, being in proportion to the suddenness with which the strange animal or object comes on them; but, if the deadliest enemy approaches with slow caution, as snakes do--and snakes must be very ancient enemies to birds--there is no fear or suspicion shown, even when the enemy is in full view and about to strike. This, it will be understood, is when no warning-cry is uttered by the parent bird. This shrinking, and, in some cases, hiding from an object corning swiftly towards them, is the "wildness_"_ of young birds, which, Darwin says again, is greater in wild than in domestic species. Of the extreme tameness of the young rhea I have already spoken; I have also observed young tinamous, plovers, coots, &c., hatched by fowls, and found them as incapable of distinguishing friend from foe as the young of domestic birds. The only difference between the young of wild and tame is that the former are, as a rule, much more sprightly and active. But there are many exceptions; and if this greater alertness and activity is what is meant by "wildness," then the young of some wild birds--rhea, crested screamer, &c.--are actually much tamer than our newly-hatched chickens and ducklings. To return to what may be seen in nestling birds, n very young, and before their education has begun, if quietly approached and touched, they open their bills and take food as readily from a man as from the parent bird. But if while being thus fed the parent returns and emits the warning note, they instantly cease their hunger-cries, close their gaping mouths, and crouch down frightened in the nest. This fear caused by the parent bird's warning note begins to manifest itself even before the young are hatched--and my observations on this point refer to several species in three widely separated orders. When the little prisoner is hammering at its shell, and uttering its feeble _peep,_ as if begging to be let out, if the warning note is uttered, even at a considerable distance, the strokes and complaining instantly cease, and the chick will then remain quiescent in the shell for a long time, or until the parent, by a changed note, conveys to it an intimation that the danger is over. Another proof that the nestling has absolutely no instinctive knowledge of particular enemies, but is taught to fear them by the parents, is to be found in the striking contrast between the habits of parasitical and genuine young in the nest, and after they have left it, while still unable to find their own food. I have had no opportunities of observing the habits of the young cuckoo in England with regard to this point, and do not know whether other observers have paid any attention to the matter or not, but I am very familiar with the manners of the parasitical starling or cow-bird of South America. The warning cries of the foster parent have no effect on the young cow-bird at any time. Until they are able to fly they will readily devour worms from the hand of a man, even when the old birds are hovering close by and screaming their danger notes, and while their own young, if the parasite has allowed any to survive in the nest, are crouching down in the greatest fear. After the cow-bird has left the nest it is still stupidly tame, and more than once I have seen one carried off from its elevated perch by a milvago hawk, when, if it had understood the warning cry of the foster parent, it would have dropped down into the bush or grass and escaped. But as soon as the young cow-birds are able to shift for themselves, and begin to associate with their own kind, their habits change, and they become suspicious and wild like other birds. On this point--the later period at which the parasitical young bird acquires fear of man--and also bearing on the whole subject under discussion, I shall add here some observations I once made on a dove hatched and reared by a pigeon at my home on the pampas. A very large ombú tree grew not far from the dove-cote, and some of the pigeons used to make their nests on the lower horizontal branches. One summer a dove of the most common species, Zenaida maculata, in size a third less than the domestic pigeon, chanced to drop an egg in one of these nests, and a young dove was hatched and reared; and, in due time, when able to fly, it was brought to the dove-cote. I watched it a great deal, and it was evident that this foster-young, though' with the pigeons, was not nor ever would be of them, for it could not take kiudly to their flippant flirty ways. Whenever a male approached it, and with guttural noises and strange gestures made a pompous declaration of amorous feelings, the dove would strike vigorously at its undesirable lover, and drive him off, big as he was; and, as a rule, it would sit apart, afoot or so, from the others. The dove was also a male; but its male companions, with instinct tainted by domestication, were ignorant alike of its sex and different species. Now, it chanced that my pigeons, never being fed and always finding their own living on the plain like wild birds, were, although still domestic, not nearly so tame as pigeons usually are in England. They would not allow a person to approach within two or three yards of them without flying, and if grain was thrown to them they would come to it very suspiciously, or not at all. And, of course, the young pigeons always acquired the exact degree of suspicion shown by the adults as soon as they were able to fly and consort with the others. But the foundling Zenaida did not know what their startled gestures and notes of fear meant when a person approached too near, and as he saw none of his own kind, he did not acquire their suspicious habit. On the contrary, he was perfectly tame, although by parentage a wild bird, and showed no more fear of a man than of a horse. Throughout the winter it remained with the pigeons, going afield every day with them, and returning to the dove-cote; but as spring approached the slight tie which united him to them began to be loosened; their company grew less and less congenial, and he began to lead a solitary life. But he did not go to the trees yet. He came to the house, and his favourite perch was on the low overhanging roof of a vine-covered porch, just over the main entrance. Here he would pass several hours every day, taking no notice of the people passing in and out at all times; and when the weather grew warm he would swell out his breast and coo mournfully by the hour for our pleasure. We can, no doubt, learn best by observing the behaviour of nestlings and young birds; nevertheless, I find much even in the confirmed habits of adults to strengthen me in the belief that fear of particular enemies is in nearly all cases--for I will not say all--the result of experience and tradition. Hawks are the most open, violent, and persistent enemies birds have; and it is really wonderful to see how well the persecuted kinds appear to know the power for mischief possessed by different raptorial species, and how exactly the amount of alarm exhibited is in proportion to the extent of the danger to be apprehended. Some raptors never attack birds, others only occasionally; still others prey only on the young and feeble; and, speaking of La Plata district, where I have observed hawks, from the milvago chimango--chiefly a carrion-eater--to the destructive peregrine falcon, there is a very great variety of predatory habits, and all degrees of courage to be found; yet all these raptors are treated differently by species liable to be preyed on, and have just as much respect paid them as their strength and daring entitles them to, and no more, So much discrimination must seem almost incredible to those who are not very familiar with the manners of wild birds; I do not think it could exist if the fear shown resulted from instinct or inherited habit. There would be no end to the blunders of such an instinct as that; and in regions where hawks are extremely abundant most of the birds would be in a constant state of trepidation. On the pampas the appearance of the comparatively harmless chimango excites not the least alarm among small birds, yet at a distance it closely resembles a henharrier, and it also readily attacks young, sick, and wounded birds; all others know how little they have to fear from it. When it appears unexpectedly, sweeping over a hedge or grove with a rapid flight, it is sometimes mistaken for a more dangerous species; there is then a little flutter of alarm, some birds springing into the air, but in two or three seconds of time they discover their mistake, and settle down quietly again, taking no further notice of the despised carrion-eater. On the other hand, I have frequently mistaken a harrier (Circus cinereus, in the brown state of plumage) for a chimango, and have only discovered my mistake by seeing the commotion among the small birds. The harrier I have mentioned, also the C. macropterus, feed partly on small birds, which they flush from the ground and strike down with their claws. When the harrier appears moving along with a loitering flight near the surface, it is everywhere attended by a little whirlwind of alarm, small birds screaming or chirping excitedly and diving into the grass or bushes; but the alarm does not spread far, and subsides as soon as the hawk has passed on its way. Buzzards (Buteo and Urubitinga) are much more feared, and create a more widespread alarm, and they ars certainly more destructive to birds than harriers. Another curious instance is that of the sociable hawk (Rostrhanrus sociabilis). This bird spends the summer and breeds in marshes in La Plata, and birds pay no attention to it, for it feeds exclusively on water-snails (Ampullaria). But when it visits woods and plantations to roost, during migration, its appearance creates as much alarm as that of a true buzzard, which it closely resembles. Wood-birds, unaccustomed to see it, do not know its peculiar preying habits, and how little they need fear its presence. I may also mention that the birds of La Plata seem to fear the kite-like Elanus less than other hawks, and I believe that its singular resemblance to the common gull of the district in its size, snowy-white plumage and manner of flight, has a deceptive effect on most species, and makes them so little suspicious of it. The wide-ranging peregrine falcon is a common species in La Plata, although, oddly enough, not included in any notice of the avifauna of that region before 1888. The consternation caused among birds by its appearance is vastly greater than that produced by any of the raptors I have mentioned: and it is unquestionably very much more destructive to birds, since it preys exclusively on them, and, as a rule, merely picks the flesh from the head and neck, and leaves the untouched body to its jackal, the carrion-hawk. When the peregrine appears speeding through the air in a straight line at a great height, the feathered world, as far as one able to see, is thrown into the greatest commo-tion, all birds, from the smallest up to species large as duck, ibis, and curlew, rushing about in the air as if distracted. When the falcon has disappeared in the sky, and the wave of terror attending its progress subsides behind it, the birds still continue wild and excited for some time, showing how deeply they have been moved; for, as a rule, fear is exceedingly transitory in its effects on animals. I must, before concluding this part of my subject, mention another raptor, also a true falcon, but differing from the peregrine in being exclusively a marsh-hawk. In size it is nearly a third less than the male peregrine, which it resembles in its sharp wings and manner of flight, but its flight is much more rapid. The whole plumage, is uniformly of a dark grey colour. Unfortunately, though I have observed it not fewer than a hundred times, I have never been able to procure a specimen, nor do I find that it is like any American falcon already described; so that for the present it must remain nameless. Judging solely from the effect produced by the appearance of this hawk, it must be even more daring and destructive than its larger relation, the peregrine. It flies at a great height, and sometimes descends vertically and with extraordinary velocity, the wings producing a sound like a deep-toned horn. The sound is doubtless produced at will, and is certainly less advantageous to the hawk than to the birds it pursues. No doubt it can afford to despise the wing-power of its quarry; and I have sometimes thought that it takes a tyrannous delight in witnessing the consternation caused by its hollow trumpeting sound. This may be only a fancy, but some hawks do certainly take pleasure in pursuing and striking birds when not seeking prey. The peregrine has been observed, Baird says, capturing birds, only to kill and drop them. Many of the Felidae, we know, evince a similar habit; only these prolong their pleasure by practising a more refined and deliberate cruelty. The sudden appearance overhead of this hawk produces an effect wonderful to witness. I have frequently seen all the inhabitants of a marsh struck with panic, acting as if demented, and suddenly grown careless to all other dangers; and on such occasions I have looked up confident of seeing the sharp-winged death, suspended above them in the sky. All birds that happen to be on the wing drop down as if shot into the reeds or water; ducks away from the margin stretch out their necks horizontally and drag their bodies, as if wounded, into closer cover; not one bird is found bold enough to rise up and wheel about the marauder--a usual proceeding in the case of other hawks; while, at every sudden stoop the falcon makes, threatening to dash down on his prey, a low cry of terror rises from the birds beneath; a sound expressive of an emotion so contagious that it quickly runs like a murmur all over the marsh, as if a gust of wind had swept moaning through, the rushes. As long as the falcon hangs overhead, always at a height of about forty yards, threatening at intervals to dash down, this murmuring sound, made up of many hundreds of individual cries, is heard swelling and dying away, and occasionally, when he drops lower than usual, rising to a sharp scream of terror. Sometimes when I have been riding over marshy ground, one of these hawks has placed himself directly over my head, within fifteen or twenty yards of me; and it has perhaps acquired the habit of following a horseman in this way in order to strike at any birds driven up. On one occasion my horse almost trod on a couple of snipe squatting terrified in the short grass. The instant they rose the hawk struck at one, the end of his wing violently smiting my cheek as he stooped, and striking at the snipe on a level with the knees of my horse. The snipe escaped by diving under the bridle, and immediately dropped down on the other side of me, and the hawk, rising up, flew away. To return. I think I am justified in believing that fear of hawks, like fear of men, is, in very nearly all cases, the result of experience and tradition. Nevertheless, I think it probable that in some species which have always lived in the open, continually exposed to attack, and which are preferred as food by raptors, such as duck, snipe, and plover, the fear of the falcon may be an inherited habit. Among passerine birds I am also inclined to think that swallows show inherited fear of hawks. Swallows and humming-birds have least to fear from raptors; yet, while humming-birds readily pursue and tease hawks, thinking as little of them as of pigeons or herons, swallows everywhere manifest the greatest terror at the approach of a true falcon; and they also fear other birds of prey, though in a much less degree. It has been said that the European hobby occasionally catches swal-lows on the wing, but this seems a rare and exceptional habit, and in South America I have never seen any bird of prey attempt the pursuit of a swallow. The question then arises, how did this unnecessary fear, so universal in swallows, originate? Can it be a survival of a far past--a time when some wide-ranging small falcon, aerial in habits as the swallow itself, preyed by preference on hirundines only? [NOTE.-Herbert Spencer, who accepts Darwin's inference, explains how the fear of man, acquired by experience, becomes instinctive in birds, in the following passage: "It is well known that in newly-discovered lands not inhabited by man, birds are so devoid of fear as to allow themselves to be knocked over with sticks; but that, in the course of generations, they acquire such a dread of man as to fly on his approach: and that this dread is manifested by young as well as by old. Now unless this change be ascribed to the killing-off of the least fearful, and the preservation and multiplication of the most fearful which, considering the comparatively small number killed by man, is an inadequate cause, it must be ascribed to accumulated experience; and each experience must be held to have a share in producing it. We must conclude that in each bird that escapes with injuries inflicted by man, or is alarmed by the outcries of other members of the flock (gregarious creatures of any intelligence being necessarily more or less sympathetic), there is established an association of ideas between the human aspect and the pains, direct and in-direct, suffered from human agency. And we must further con-clude, that the state of consciousness which compels the bird to take flight, is at first nothing more than an ideal reproduction of those painful impressions which before followed man's approach; that such ideal reproduction becomes more vivid and more massive as the painful experiences, direct or sympathetic, increase; and that thus the emotion, in its incipient state, is nothing else than an aggregation of the revived pains before experience. "As, in the course of generations, the young birds of this race begin to display a fear of man before yet they have been injured by him, it is an unavoidable inference that the nervous system of the race has been organically modified by these experiences, we have no choice but to conclude, that when a young bird is led to fly, it is because the impression produced in its senses by the approaching man entails, through an incipiently reflex action, a partial excitement of all those nerves which in its ancestors had been excited under the like conditions; that this partial excitement has its accompanying painful consciousness, and that the vague painful consciousness thus arising constitutes emotion proper--_emotion undecomposable into specific experiences, and, therefore, seemingly homogeneous"_ (Essays, vol. i. p. 320.)] It is comforting to know that the "unavoidable inference" is, after all, erroneous, and that the nervous system in birds has not yet been organically altered as a result of man's persecution; for in that case it would take long to undo the mischief, and we should be indeed far from that "better friendship" with the children of the air which many of us would like to see. CHAPTER VI. PARENTAL AND EARLY INSTINCTS. Under this heading I have put together several notes from my journals on subjects which have no connection with each other, except that they relate chiefly to the parental instincts of some animals I have observed, and to the instincts of the young at a very early period of life. While taking bats one day in December, I captured a female of our common Buenos Ayrean species (Molossus bonariensis), with her two young attached to her, so large that it seemed incredible she should be able to fly and take insects with such a weight to drag her down. The young were about a third less in size than the mother, so that she had to carry a weight greatly exceeding that of her own body. They were fastened to her breast and belly, one on each side, as when first born; and, possibly, the young bat does not change its position, or move, like the young developed opossum, to other parts of the body, until mature enough to begin an independent life. On forcibly separating them from their parent, I found that they were not yet able to fly, but when set free fluttered feebly to the ground. This bat certainly appeared more burdened with its young than any animal I had ever observed. I have seen an old female opossum (Didelphys azarae) with eleven young, large as old rats--the mother being less than a cat in size--all clinging to various parts of her body; yet able to climb swiftly and with the greatest agility in the higher branches of a tree. The actual weight was in this case relatively much greater than in that of the female bat: but then the opossum never quitted its hold on the tree, and it also supplemented its hand-like feet, furnished with crooked claws, with its teeth and long prehensile tail. The poor bat had to seek its living in the empty air, pursuing its prey with the swiftness of a swallow, and it seemed wonderful to me that she should have been able to carry about that great burden with her one pair of wings, and withal to be active enough to supply herself and her young with food. In the end I released her, and saw her fly away and disappear among the trees, after which I put back the two young bats in the place I had taken them from, among the thick-clustering foliage of a small acacia tree. When set free they began to work their way upwards through the leaves and slender twigs in the most adroit manner, catching a twig with their teeth, then embracing a whole cluster of leaves with their wings, just as a person would take up a quantity of loose clothes and hold them tight by pressing them against the chest. The body would then emerge above the clasped leaves, and a higher twig would be caught by the teeth; and so on successively, until they had got as high as they wished, when they proceeded to hook themselves to a twig and assume the inverted position side by side; after which, one drew in its head and went to sleep, while the other began licking the end of its wing, where my finger and thumb had pressed the delicate membrane. Later in the day I attempted to feed them with small insects, but they rejected my friendly attentions in the most unmistakable manner, snapping viciously at me every time I approached them. In the evening, I stationed myself close to the tree, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing the mother return, flying straight to the spot where I had taken her, and in a few moments she was away again and over the trees with her twins. Assuming that these two young bats had, before I found them, existed like parasites clinging to the parent, their adroit actions when liberated, and their angry demonstrations at my approach, were very astonishing; for in all other mammals born in a perfectly helpless state, like rodents, weasels, edentates, and even marsupials, the instincts of self-preservation are gradually developed after the period of activity begins, when the mother leads them out, and they play with her and Avith each other. In the bat the instincts must ripen to perfection without exercise or training, and while the animal exists as passively as a fruit on its stem. I have observed that the helpless young of some of the mammals I have just mentioned seem at first to have no instinctive understanding of the language of alarm and fear in the parent, as all young-birds have, even before their eyes are open. Nor is it necessary that they should have such an instinct, since, in most cases, they are well concealed in kennels or other safe places; but when, through some accident, they are exposed, the want of such an instinct makes the task of protecting them doubly hard for the parent. I once surprised a weasel (Galictis barbara) in the act of removing her young, or conducting them, rather; and when she was forced to quit them, although still keeping close by, and uttering the most piercing cries of anger and solicitude, the young continued piteously crying out in their shrill voices and moving about in circles, without making the slightest attempt to escape, or to conceal themselves, as young birds do. Some field mice breed on the surface of the ground in ill-constructed nests, and their young are certainly the most helpless things in nature. It is possible that where this dangerous habit exists, the parent has some admirable complex instincts to safeguard her young, in addition to the ordinary instincts of most animals of this kind. This idea was suggested to me by the action of a female mouse which I witnessed by chance. While walking in a field of stubble one day in autumn, near Buenos Ayres, I suddenly heard, issuing from near my feet, a chorus of shrill squealing voices--the familiar excessively sharp little needles of sound emitted by young, blind and naked mice, when they are disturbed or in pain. Looking down, I saw close to my foot a nest of them--there were nine in all, wriggling about and squealing; for the parent, frightened at my step, had just sprung from them, overturning in her hurry to escape the slight loosely-felted dome of fine grass and thistledown which had covered them. I saw her running away, but after going six or seven yards she stopped, and, turning partly round so as to watch me, waited in fear and trembling. I remained perfectly motionless--a sure way to allay fear and suspicion in any wild creature,--and in a few moments she returned, but with the utmost caution, frequently pausing to start and tremble, and masking her approach with corn stumps and little inequalities in the surface of the ground, until, reaching the nest, she took one of the young in her mouth, and ran rapidly away to a distance of eight or nine yards and concealed it in a tuft of dry grass. Leaving it, she returned a second time, in the same cautious manner, and taking another, ran with it to the same spot, and concealed it along with the first. It was curious that the first young mouse had continued squealing after being hidden by the mother, for I could hear it distinctly, the air being very still, but when the second mouse had been placed with it, the squealing ceased. A third time the old mouse came, and then instead of going to the same spot, as I had expected, she ran off in an opposite direction and disappeared among the dry weeds; a fourth was carried to the same place as the third; and in this way they were all removed to a distance of some yards from the nest, and placed in couples, until the last and odd one remained. In due time she came for it, and ran away with it in a new direction, and was soon out of sight; and although I waited fully ten minutes, she did not return; nor could I afterwards find any of the young mice when I looked for them, or even hear them squeal. I have frequently observed newly-born lambs on the pampas, and have never failed to be surprised at the extreme imbecility they display in their actions; although this may be due partly to inherited degeneracy caused by domestication. This imbecile condition continues for two, sometimes for three days, during which time the lamb apparently acts purely from instincts, which are far from perfect; but after that, experience and its dam teach it a better way. When born its first impulse is to struggle up on to its feet; its second to suck, but here it does not discriminate like the newly-hatched bird that picks up its proper food, or it does not know what to suck. It will take into its mouth whatever comes near, in most cases a tuft of wool on its dam's neck; and at this it will continue sucking for an indefinite time. It is highly probable that the strong-smelling secretion of the sheep's udder attracts the lamb at length to that part; and that without something of the kind to guide it, in many cases it would actually starve without finding the teats. I have often seen lambs many hours after birth still confining their attention to the most accessible locks of wool on the neck or fore legs of the dams, and believe that in such cases the long time it took them to find the source of nourishment arose from a defective sense of smell. Its next important instinct, which comes into play from the moment it can stand on its feet, impels it to follow after any object receding from it, and, on the other hand, to run from anything approaching it. If the dam turns round and approaches it from even a very short distance, it will start back and run from her in fear, and will not understand her voice when she bleats to it: at the same time it will confidently follow after a man, dog, horse, or any other animal moving from it. A very common experience on the pampas, in the sheep-country, is to see a lamb start up from sleep and follow the rider, running along close to the heels of the horse. This is distressing to a merciful man, tor he cannot shake the little simpleton off, and if he rides on, no matter how fast, it will keep up him, or keep him in sight, for half a mile or a mile, and never recover its dam. The gaucho, who is not merciful, frequently saves himself all trouble and delay by knocking it senseless with a blow of his whip-handle, and without checking his horse. I have seen a lamb, about two days old, start up from sleep, and immediately start off in pursuit of a puff ball about as big as a man's head, carried past it over the smooth turf by the wind, and chase it for a distance of five hundred yards, until the dry ball was brought to a stop by a tuft of coarse grass. This blundering instiuct is quickly laid aside when the lamb has learned to distinguish its dam from other objects, and its dam's voice from other sounds. When four or five days old it will start from sleep, but instead of rushing blindly away after any receding object, it first looks about it, and will then recognize and run to its dam. I have often been struck with the superiority of the pampa or creolla--the old native breed of sheep--in the greater vigour of the young when born over the improved European varieties. The pampa descends to us from the first sheep introduced into La Plata about three centuries ago, and is a tall, gaunt bony animal, with lean dry flesh, like venison, and long straight wool, like goats' hair. In their struggle for existence in a country subject to sudden great changes of temperature, to drought, and failure of grass, they have in a great measure lost the qualities which make the sheep valuable to man as a food and wool-producing animal; but on the other hand they have to some extent recovered the vigour of a wild animal, being hardy enough to exist without any shelter, and requiring from their master man only protection from the larger carnivores. They are keen-scented, swift of foot and Wonderfully active, and thrive where other breeds would quickly starve. I have often seen a lamb dropped on the frosty ground in bitterly cold windy weather in midwinter, and in less than five seconds struggle to its feet, and seem as vigorous as any day-old lamb of other breeds. The dam, impatient at the short delay, and not waiting to give it suck, has then started off at a brisk trot after the flock, scattered and galloping before the wind like huanacos rather than sheep, with the lamb, scarcely a minute in the world, running freely at her side. Notwithstanding its great vigour it has been proved that the pampa sheep has not so far outgrown the domestic taint as to be able to maintain its own existence when left entirely to itself. During the first half of this century, when cattle-breeding began to be profitable, and wool was not worth the trouble of shearing, and the gaucho workman would not eat mutton when beef was to be had, some of the estancieros on the southern pampas determined to get rid of their sheep, which were of no value to them; and many flocks were driven a distance out and lost in the wilds. Out of many thousands thus turned loose to shift for themselves, not one pair survived to propagate a new race of feral sheep; in a short time pumas, wild dogs, and other beasts of prey, had destroyed them all. The sterling qualities of the pampa sheep had their value in other times; at present the improved kinds are alone considered worth having, and the original sheep of the country is now rapidly disappearing, though still found in remote and poor districts, especially in the province of Cordova; and probably before long it will become extinct, together with the curious pug-nosed cow of the pampas. I have had frequent opportunities of observing the young, from one to three days old, of the Cervus campestris--the common deer of the pampas, and the perfection of its instincts at that tender age seem very wonderful in a ruminant. When the doe with, fawn is approached by a horseman, even when accompanied with dogs, she stands perfectly motionless, gazing fixedly at the enemy, the fawn motionless at her side; and suddenly, as if at a preconcerted signal, the fawn rushes directly away from her at its utmost speed; and going to a distance of six hundred to a thousand yards conceals itself in a hollow in the ground or among the long grass, lying down very close with neck stretched out horizontally, and will thus remain until sought by the dam. When very young if found in its hiding-place it will allow itself to be taken, making no further effort to escape. After the fawn has run away the doe still maintains her statuesque attitude, as if resolved to await the onset, and only when the dogs are close to her she also rushes away, but invariably in a direction as nearly opposite to that taken by the fawn as possible. At first she runs slowly, with a limping gait, and frequently pausing, as if to entice her enemies on, like a partridge, duck or plover when driven from its young; but as they begin to press her more closely her speed increases, becoming greater the further she succeeds in leading them from the starting-point. The alarm-cry of this deer is a peculiar whistling bark, a low but far-reaching sound; but when approaching a doe with young I have never been able to hear it, nor have I seen any movement on the part of the doe. Yet it is clear that in some mysterious way she inspires the fawn with sudden violent fear; while the fawn, on its side, instead of being affected like the young in other mammals, and sticking closer to its mother, acts in a contrary way, and runs from her. Of the birds I am acquainted with, the beautiful jacana (Parra jacana) appears to come into the world with its faculties and powers in the most advanced state. It is, in fact, ready to begin active life from the very moment of leaving the shell, as I once accidentally observed. I found a nest on a small mound of earth in a shallow lagoon, containing four eggs, with the shells already chipped by the birds in them. Two yards from the small nest mound there was a second mound covered with coarse grass. I got off my horse to examine the nest, and the old birds, excited beyond measure, fluttered round me close by pouring out their shrill rapidly-reiterated cries in an unbroken stream, sounding very much like a policeman's rattle. While I was looking closely at one of the eggs lying on the palm of my hand, all at once the cracked shell parted, and at the same moment the young bird leaped from my hand and fell into the water. I am quite sure that the young bird's sudden escape from the shell and my hand was the result of a violent effort on its part to free itself; and it was doubtless inspired to make the effort by the loud persistent screaming of the parent birds, which it heard while in the shell. Stooping to pick it up to save it from perishing, I soon saw that my assistance was not required, for immediately on dropping into the water, it put out its neck, and with the body nearly submerged, like a wounded duck trying to escape observation, it swam rapidly to the second small mound I have mentioned, and, escaping from the water, concealed itself in the grass, lying close and perfectly motionless like a young plover. In the case of the pampa or creolla sheep, I have shown that during its long, rough life in La Plata, this variety has in some measure recovered the natural vigour and ability to maintain existence in adverse circumstances of its wild ancestors. As much can be said of the creolla fowl of the pampas; and some observations of mine on the habits of this variety will perhaps serve to throw light on a vexed question of Natural History--namely, the cackling of the hen after laying, an instinct which has been described as "useless" and "disadvantageous." In fowls that live unconfined, and which are allowed to lay where they like, the instinct, as we know it, is certainly detrimental, since egg-eating dogs and pigs soon learn the cause of the outcry, and acquire a habit of rushing off to find the egg when they hear it. The question then arises: Does the wild jungle fowl possess the same pernicious instinct? The creolla is no doubt the descendant of the fowl originally introduced about three centuries ago by the first colonists in La Plata, and has probably not only been uncrossed with any other improved variety, such as are now fast taking its place, and has lived a much freer life than is usual with the fowl in Europe. It is a rather small, lean, extremely active bird, lays about a dozen eggs, and hatches them all, and is of a yellowish red colour--a hue which is common, I believe, in the old barn-door fowl of England. The creolla fowl is strong on the wing, and much more carnivorous and rapacious in habits than other breeds; mice, frogs, and small snakes are eagerly hunted and devoured by it. At my home on the pampas a number of these fowls were kept, and were allowed to range freely about the plantation, which was large, and the adjacent grounds, where there were thickets of giant cardoon thistle, red-weed, thorn apple, &c. They always nested at a distance from the house, and it was almost impossible ever to find their eggs, on account of the extreme circumspection they observed in going to and from their nests; and when they succeeded in escaping foxes, skunks, weasels, and opossums, which, strange to say, they often did, they would rear their chickens away out of sight and hearing of the house, and only bring them home when winter deprived them of their leafy covering and made food scarce. During the summer, in my rambles about the plantation, T would occasionally surprise one of these half-wild hens with her brood; her distracted screams and motions would then cause her chicks to scatter and vanish in all directions, and, until the supposed danger was past, they would lie as close and well-concealed as young partridges. These fowls in summer always lived in small parties, each party composed of one cock and as many hens as he could collect--usually three or four. Each family occupied its own feeding ground, where it would pass a greater portion of each day. The hen would nest at a considerable distance from the feeding ground, sometimes as far as four or five hundred yards away. After laying an egg she would quit the nest, not walking from it as other fowls do, but flying, the flight extending to a distance of from fifteen to about fifty yards; after which, still keeping silence, she would walk or run, until, arrived at the feeding ground, she would begin to cackle. At once the cock, if within hearing, would utter a responsive cackle, whereupon she would run to him and cackle no more. Frequently the cackling call-note would not be uttered more than two or three times, sometimes only once, and in a much lower tone than in fowls of other breeds. If we may assume that these fowls, in their long, semi-independent existence in La Plata, have reverted to the original instincts of the wild Gallus bankiva, we can see here how advantageous the cackling instinct must be in enabling the hen in dense tropical jungles to rejoin the flock after laying an egg. If there are egg-eating animals in the jungle intelligent enough to discover the meaning of such a short, subdued cackling call, they would still be unable to find the nest by going back on the bird's scent, since she flies from the nest in the first place; and the wild bird probably flies further than the creolla hen of La Plata. The clamorous cackling of our fowls would appear then to be nothing more than a perversion of a very useful instinct. CHAPTER VII. THE MEPHITIC SKUNK. It might possibly give the reader some faint conception of the odious character of this creature (for adjectives are weak to describo it) when I say that, in talking to strangers from abroad, I have never thought it necessary to speak of sunstroke, jaguars, or the assassin's knife, but have never omitted to warn them of the skunk, minutely describing its habits and personal appearance. I knew an Englishman who, on taking a first gallop across the pampas, saw one, and, quickly dismounting, hurled himself bodily on to it to effect its capture. Poor man! he did not know that the little animal is never unwilling to be caught. Men have been blinded for ever by a discharge of the fiery liquid full in their faces. On a mucous membrane it burns like sulphuric acid, say the unfortunates who have had the experience. How does nature protect the skunk itself from the injurious effects of its potent fluid? I have not unfrequently found individuals stone-blind, sometimes moving so briskly about that the blindness must have been of long standing--very possibly in some cases an accidental drop discharged by the animal itself has caused the loss of sight. When coming to close quarters with a skunk, by covering up the face, one's clothes only are ruined. But this is not all one has to fear from an encounter; the worst is that effluvium, after which crushed garlic is lavender, which tortures the olfactory nerves, and appears to pervade the whole system like a pestilent ether, nauseating one until sea-sickness seems almost a pleasant sensation in comparison. To those who know the skunk only from reputation, my words might seem too strong; many, however, who have come to close quarters with the little animal will think them ridiculously weak. And consider what must the feelings be of one who has had the following experience--not an uncommon experience on the pampas. There is to be a dance at a neighbouring house a few miles away; he has been looking forward to it, and, dressing himself with due care, mounts his horse and sets out full of joyous anticipations. It is a dark windy evening, but there is a convenient bridle-path through the dense thicket of giant thistles, and striking it he puts his horse into a swinging gallop. Unhappily the path is already occupied by a skunk, invisible in the darkness, that, in obedience to the promptings of its insane instinct, refuses to get out of it, until the flying hoofs hit it and sand it like a well-kicked football into the thistles. But the forefoot of the horse, up as high as his knees perhaps, have been sprinkled, and the rider, after coming out into the open, dismounts and walks away twenty yards from his animal, and literally _smells_ himself all over, and with a feeling of profound relief pronounces himself Not the minutest drop of the diabolical spray has touched his dancing shoes! Springing into the saddle he proceeds to his journey's end, is warmly welcomed by his host, and speedily forgetting his slight misadventure, mingles with a happy crowd of friends. In a little while people begin exchanging whispers and significant glances; men are seen smiling at nothing in particular; the hostess wears a clouded face; the ladies cough and put their scented handkerchiefs to their noses, and presently they begin to feel faint and retire from the room. Our hero begins to notice that there is something wrong, and presently discovers its cause; he, unhappily, has been the last person in the room to remark that familiar but most abominable odour, rising like a deadly exhalation from the floor, conquering all other odours, and every moment becoming more powerful. A drop _has_ touched his shoe after all; and fearing to be found out, and edging towards the door, he makes his escape, and is speedily riding home again; knowing full well that his sudden and early departure from the scene will be quickly discovered and set down to the right cause. In that not always trustworthy book _The Natural History of Chili,_ Molina tells us how they deal with the animal in the trans-Andine regions. "When one appears," he says, "some of the company begiu by caressing it, until an opportunity offers for one of them to seize it by the tail. In this position the muscles become contracted, the animal is unable to eject its fluid, and is quickly despatched." One might just as well talk of caressing a cobra de capello; yet this laughable fiction finds believers all over South and North America. Professor Baird gravely introduces it into his great work on the mammalia. I was once talking about animals in a rancho, when a person present (an Argentine officer) told that, while visiting an Indian encampment, he had asked the savages how they contrived to kill skunks without making even a life in the desert intolerable. A grave old Cacique informed him that the secret was to go boldly up to the animal, take it by the tail, and despatch it; for, he said, when you fear it not at all, then it respects your courage and dies like a lamb--sweetly. The officer, continuing his story, said that on quitting the Indian camp he started a skunk, and, glad of an opportunity to test the truth of what he had heard, dismounted and proceeded to put the Indian plan in practice. Here the story abruptly ended, and when I eagerly demanded to hear the sequel, the amateur hunter of furs lit a cigarette and vacantly watched the ascending smoke. The Indians aro grave jokers, they seldom smile; and this old traditional skunk-joke, which has run the length of a continent, finding its way into many wise books, is their revenge on a superior race. I have shot a great many eagles, and occasionally a carancho (Polyborus tharus), with the plumage smelling strongly of skunk, which shows that these birds, pressed by hunger, often commit the fearful mistake of attacking the animal. My friend Mr. Ernest Gibson, of Buenos Ayres, in a communication to the _Ibis,_ describes an encounter he actually witnessed between a carancho and a skunk. Riding home one afternoon, he spied a skunk "shuffling along in the erratic manner usual to that odoriferous quadruped;" following it at a very short distance was an eagle-vulture, evidently bent on mischief. Every time the bird came near the bushy tail rose menacingly; then the carancho would fall behind, and, after a few moments' hesitation, follow on again. At length, growing bolder, it sprung forward, seizing the threatening tail with its claw, but immediately after "began staggering about with dishevelled plumage, tearful eyes, and a profoundly woe-begone expression on its vulture face. The skunk, after turning and regarding its victim with an I-told-you-so look for a few moments, trotted unconcernedly off." I was told in Patagonia by a man named Molinos, who was frequently employed by the Government as guide to expeditions in the desert, that everywhere throughout that country the skunk is abundant. Some years ago he was sent with two other men to find and treat with an Indian chief whose whereabouts were not known. Far in the interior Molinos was overtaken by a severe winter, his horses died of thirst and fatigue, and during the three bitterest months of the year he kept himself and his followers alive by eating the flesh of skunks, the only wild animal that never failed them. No doubt, on those vast sterile plains where the skunk abounds, and goes about by day and by night careless of enemies, the terrible nature of its defensive weapon is the first lesson experience teaches to every young eagle, fox, wild cat, and puma. Dogs kill skunks when made to do so, but it is not a sport they delight in. One moonlight night, at home, I went out to where the dogs, twelve in number, were sleeping: while I stood there a skunk appeared and deliberately came towards me, passing through the dogs where they lay, and one by one as he passed them they rose up, and, with their tails between their legs, skulked off. When made to kill skunks often they become seasoned; but always perform the loathsome task expeditiously, then rush away with frothing mouths to rub their faces in the wet clay and rid themselves of the fiery sensation. At one time I possessed only one dog that could be made to face a skunk, and as the little robbers were very plentiful, and continually coining about the house in their usual open, bold way, it was rather hard for the poor brute. This dog detested them quite as strongly as the others, only he was more obedient, faithful, and brave. Whenever I bade him attack one of them he would come close up to me and look up into my face with piteous pleading eyes, then, finding that he was not to be let off from the repulsive task, he would charge upon the doomed animal with a blind fury wonderful to see. Seizing it between his teeth, he would shake it madly, crushing its bones, then hurl it several feet from him, only to rush again and again upon it to repeat the operation, doubtless with a Caligula-like wish in his frantic breast that all the skunks on the globe had but one backbone. I was once on a visit to a sheep-farming brother, far away on the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres, and amongst the dogs I found there was one most interesting creature, He was a great, lumbering, stupid, good-tempered brute, so greedy that when you offered him a piece of meat he would swallow half your arm, and so obedient that at a word he would dash himself against the horns of a bull, and face death and danger in any shape. But, my brother told me, he would not face a skunk--he would die first. One day I took him out and found a skunk, and for upwards of half an hour I sat on my horse vainly cheering on my cowardly follower, and urging him to battle. The very sight of the enemy gave him a fit of the shivers; and when the irascible little enemy began to advance against us, going through the performance by means of which he generally puts his foes to flight without resorting to malodorous measures--stamping his little feet in rage, jumping up, spluttering and hissing and flourishing his brush like a warlike banner above his head--then hardly could I restrain my dog from turning tail and flying home in abject terror. My cruel persistence was rewarded at last. Continued shouts, cheers, and hand-clappings began to stir the brute to a kind of frenzy. Torn by conflicting emotions, he began to revolve about the skunk at a lumbering gallop, barking, howling, and bristling up his hair; and at last, shutting his eyes, and with a yell of desperation, he charged. I fully expected to see the enemy torn to pieces in a few seconds, but when the dog was still four or five feet from him the fatal discharge came, and he dropped down as if shot dead. For some time he lay on the earth perfectly motionless, watched and gently bedewed by the victorious skunk; then he got up and crept whining away. Gradually he quickened his pace, finally breaking into a frantic run. In vain I followed him, shouting at the top of my lungs; he stayed not to listen, and very speedily vanished from sight--a white speck on the vast level plain. At noon on the following day he made his appearance, gaunt and befouled with mud, staggering forward like a galvanized skeleton. Too worn out even to eat, he flung himself down, and for hours lay like a dead thing, sleeping off the effects of those few drops of perfume. Dogs, I concluded, like men, have their idiosyncrasies; but I had gained my point, and proved once more--if any proof were needed--the truth of that noble panegyric of Bacon's on our faithful servant and companion. CHAPTER VIII. MIMICRY AND WARNING COLOURS IN GRASSHOPPERS. There is in La Plata a large handsome grasshopper (Zoniopoda tarsata), the habits of which in its larva and imago stages are in strange contrast, like those in certain lepidoptera, in which the caterpillars form societies and act in concert. The adult has a greenish protective colouring, brown and green banded thighs, bright red hind wings, seen only during flight. It is solitary and excessively shy in its habits, living always in concealment among the dense foliage near the surface of the ground. The yonng are intensely black, like grasshoppers cut out of jet or ebony, and gregarious in habit, living in bands of forty or fifty to three or four hundred; and so little shy, that they may sometimes be taken up by handfuls before they begin to scatter in alarm. Their gregarious habits and blackness--of all hues in nature the most obvious to the sight--would alone be enough to make them the most conspicuous of insects; but they have still other habits which appear as if specially designed to bring them more prominently into notice. Thus, they all keep so close together at all times as to have their bodies actually touching, and when travelling, move so slowly that the laziest snail might easily overtake and pass one of their bands, and even disappear beyond their limited horizon in a very short time. They often select an exposed weed to feed on, clustering together on its summit above the surrounding verdure, an exceedingly conspicuous object to every eye in the neighbourhood. They also frequently change their feeding-ground; at such times they deliberately cross wide roads and other open spaces, barren of grass, where, moving so slowly that they scarcely seem to move at all, they look at a distance like a piece of black velvet lying on the ground. Thus in every imaginable way they expose themselves and invite attack; yet, in spite of it all, I have never detected birds preying on them, and I have sometimes kept one of these black societies under observation near my house for several days, watching them at intervals, in places where the trees overhead were the resort of Icterine and tyrant birds, Guira cuckoos, and other species, all great hunters after grasshoppers. A young grasshopper is, moreover, a morsel that seldom comes amiss to any bird, whether insect or seed eater; and, as a rule, it is extremely shy, nimble, and inconspicuous. It seems clear that, although the young Zoniopoda does not mimic in its form any black protected insect, it nevertheless owes its safety to its blackness, together with the habit it possesses of exposing itself in so open and bold a manner. Blackness is so common in large protected insects, as, for instance, in the un-palatable leaf-cutting ants, scorpions, mygale spiders, wasps, and other dangerous kinds, that it is manifestly a "warning colour," the most universal and best known in nature; and the grasshopper, I believe, furthermore mimics the fearless demeanour of the protected or venomous species, which birds and other insect-eaters know and respect. It might be supposed that the young Zoniopoda is itself unpalatable; but this is scarcely probable, for when the deceptive black mask is once dropped, the excessive shyness, love of concealment, and protective colouring of the insect show that it is much sought after by birds. While setting this down as an undoubted case of "mimicry," although it differs in some respects from all other cases I have seen reported, I cannot help remarking that this most useful word appears to be in some danger of losing the meaning originally attached to it in zoology. There are now very few cases of an accidental resemblance found between two species in nature which are not set down by someone to "mimicry," some in which even the wildest imagination might well fail to see any possible benefit to the supposed mimic. In cases where the outward resemblance of some feeble animal to a widely different and well-protected species, or to some object like a leaf or stick, and where such resemblance is manifestly advantageous and has reacted on and modified the life habits, it is conceivable that slight spontaneous variations in the structure and colouring of the unprotected species have been taken advantage of by the principle of natural selection, and a case of "mimicry" set up, to become more and more perfect in time, as successive casual variations in the same direction increased the resemblance. The stick-insect is perhaps the most perfect example where resemblance to an inanimate object has been the result aimed at, so to speak, by nature; the resemblance of the volucella fly to the humble-bee, on which it is parasitical, is the most familiar example of one species growing like another to its own advantage, since only by means of its deceptive likeness to the humble-bee is it able to penetrate into the nest with impunity. These two cases, with others of a similar character, were first called cases of "mimicry" by Kirby and Spence, in their ever-delightful _Introduction to Entomology--_an old book, but, curiously enough in these days of popular treatises on all matters of the kind, still the only general work on insects in the English language which one who is not an entomologist can read with pleasure. A second case of mimicry not yet noticed by any naturalist is seen in another grasshopper, also common in La Plata (Rhomalea speciosa of Thun-berg). This is an extremely elegant insect; the head and thorax chocolate, with cream-coloured markings; the abdomen steel-blue or purple, a colour I have not seen in any other insects of this family. The fore wings have a protective colouring; the hind wings are bright red. When at rest, with the red and purple tints concealed, it is only a very pretty grasshopper, but the instant it takes wing it becomes the fac-simile of a very common wasp of the genus Pepris. These wasps vary greatly in size, some being as large as the hornet; they are solitary, and feed on the honey of flowers and on fruit, and, besides being furnished with stings like other wasps--though their sting is nok so venomous as in other genera--they also, when angry, emit a most abominable odour, and are thus doubly protected against their enemies. Their excessive tameness, slow flight, and indolent motions serve to show that they are not accustomed to be interfered with. All these strong-smelling wasps have steel-blue or purple bodies, and bright red wings. So exactly does the Rhomalea grasshopper mimic the Pepris when flying, that I have been deceived scores of times. I have even seen it on the leaves, and, after it has flown and settled once more, I have gone to look at it again, to make sure that my eyes had not deceived me. It is curious to see how this resemblance has reacted on and modified the habits of the grasshopper. It is a great flyer, and far more aerial in its habits than any other insect I am acquainted with in this family, living always in trees, instead of on or near the surface of the ground. It is abundant in orchards and plantations round Buenos Ayres, where its long and peculiarly soft, breezy note may be heard all summer. If the ancient Athenians possessed so charming an insect as this, their great regard for the grasshopper was not strange: I only wish that the "Athenians of South America," as my fellow-townsmen sometimes call themselves in moments of exaltation, had a feeling of the samo kind--the regard which does _not_ impale its object on a pin--for the pretty light-hearted songster of their groves and gardens. When taken in the hand, it has the habit, common to most grasshoppers, of pouring out an inky fluid from its mouth; only the discharge is unusually copious in this species. It has another habit in defending itself which is very curious. When captured it instantly curls its body round, as a wasp does to sting. The suddenness of this action has more than once caused me to drop an insect I had taken, actually thinking for the moment that I had taken hold of a wasp. Whether birds would be deceived and made to drop it or not is a question it would not be easy to settle; but the instinct certainly looks like 'one of a series of small adaptations, all tending to make the resemblance to a wasp more complete and effective. CHAPTER IX. DRAGON-FLY STORMS. One of the most curious things I have encountered in my observations on animal life relates to a habit of the larger species of dragon-flies inhabiting the Pampas and Patagonia. Dragon-flies are abundant throughout the country wherever there is water. There are several species, all more or less brilliantly coloured. The kinds that excited my wonder, from their habits, are twice as large as the common widely distributed insects, being three inches to four inches in length, and as a rule they are sober-coloured, although there is one species--the largest among them--entirely of a brilliant scarlet. This kind is, however, exceedingly rare. All the different kinds (of the large dragon-flies) when travelling associate together, and occasionally, in a flight composed of countless thousands, one of these brilliant-hued individuals will catch the eye, appearing as conspicuous among the others as a poppy or scarlet geranium growing alone in an otherwise flowerless field. The most common species--and in some cases the entire flight seems to be composed of this kind only--is the Aeschna bonariensis Raml, the prevailing colour of which is pale blue. But the really wonderful thing about them all alike is, that they appear only when flying before the southwest wind, called _pampero_--the wind that blows from the interior of the pampas. The pampero is a dry, cold wind, exceedingly violent. It bursts on the plains very suddenly, and usually lasts only a short time, sometimes not more than ten minutes; it comes irregularly, and at all seasons of the year, but is most frequent in the hot season, and after exceptionally sultry weather. It is in summer and autumn that the large dragon-flies appear; not _with_ the wind, but--and this is the most curious part of the matter--in advance of it; and inasmuch as these insects are not seen in the country at other times, and frequently appear in seasons of prolonged drought, when all the marshes and watercourses for many hundreds of miles are dry, they must of course traverse immense distances, flying before the wind at a speed of seventy or eighty miles an hour. On some occasions they appear almost simultaneously with the wind, going by like a flash, and instantly disappearing from sight. You have scarcely time to see them before the wind strikes you. As a rule, however, they make their appearance from five to fifteen minutes before the wind strikes; and when they are in great numbers the air, to a height of ten or twelve feet above the surface of the ground, is all at once seen to be full of them, rushing past with extraordinary velocity in a north-easterly direction. In very oppressive weather, and when the swiftly advancing pampero brings no moving mountains of mingled cloud and dust, and is consequently not expected, the sudden apparition of the dragon-fly is a most welcome one, for then an immediate burst of cold wind is confidently looked for. In the expressive vernacular of the gauchos the large dragon-fly is called _hijo del pampero_--son of the south-west wind. It is clear that these great and frequent dragonfly movements are not explicable on any current hypothesis regarding the annual migrations of birds, the occasional migrations of butterflies, or the migrations of some mammals, like the reindeer and buffalo of Arctic America, which, according to Rae and other observers, perform long journeys north and south at regular seasons, "from a sense of polarity." Neither this hypothetical sense in animals, nor "historical memory" will account for the dragon-fly storms, as the phenomenon of the pampas might be called, since the insects do not pass and repass between "breeding and subsistence areas," but all journey in a north-easterly direction; and of the countless millions flying like thistledown before the great pampero wind, not one solitary traveller ever returns. The cause of the flight is probably dynamical, affecting the insects with a sudden panic, and compelling them to rush away before the approaching tempest. The mystery is that they should fly from the wind before it reaches them, and yet travel in the same direction with it. When they pass over the level, treeless country, not one insect lags behind, or permits the wind to overtake it; but, on arriving at a wood or large plantation they swarm into it, as if seeking shelter from some swift-pursuing enemy, and on such occasions they sometimes remain clinging to the trees while the wind spends its force. This is particularly the case when the wind blows up at a late hour of the day; then, on the following morning, the dragon-flies are seen clustering to the foliage in such numbers that many trees are covered with them, a large tree often appearing as if hung with curtains of some brown glistening material, too thick to show the green leaves beneath. In Patagonia, where the phenomenon of dragon-fly storms is also known, an Englishman residing at the Rio Negro related to me the following occurrence which he witnessed there. A race meeting was being held near the town of El Carmen, on a high exposed piece of ground, when, shortly before sunset, a violent pampero wind came up, laden with dense dust-clouds. A few moments before the storm broke, the air all at once became obscured with a prodigious cloud of dragon-flies. About a hundred men, most of them on horseback, were congregated on the course at the time, and the insects, instead of rushing by in their usual way, settled on the people in such quantities that men and horses were quickly covered with clinging masses of them. My informant said--and this agrees with my own observation--that he was greatly impressed by the appearance of terror shown by the insects; they clung to him as if for dear life, so that he had the greatest difficulty in ridding himself of them. Weissenborn, in London's _Magazine of Natural History_ (N. S. vol. iii.) describes a great migration of dragon-flies which he witnessed in Germany in 1839, and also mentions a similar phenomenon occurring in 1816, and extending over a large portion of Europe. But in these cases the movement took place at the end of May, and the insects travelled due south; their migrations were therefore similar to those of birds and butterflies, and were probably due to the same cause. I have been unable to find any mention of a phenomenon resembling the one with which we are so familiar on the pampas, and which, strangely enough, has not been recorded by any European naturalists who have travelled there. CHAPTER X. MOSQUITOES AND PARASITE PROBLEMS. There cannot be a doubt that some animals possess an instinctive knowledge of their enemies--or, at all events, of some of their enemies--though I do not believe that this faculty is so common as many naturalists imagine. The most striking example I am acquainted with is seen in gnats or mosquitoes, and in the minute South American sandflies (Simulia), when a dragon-fly appears in a place where they are holding their aerial pastimes. The sudden appearance of a ghost among human revellers could not produce a greater panic. I have spoken in the last chapter of periodical storms or waves of dragon-flies in the Plata region, and mentioned incidentally that the appearance of these insects is most welcome in oppressively hot weather, since they are known to come just in advance of a rush of cool wind. In La Plata we also look for the dragon-fly, and rejoice at its coming, for another reason. We know that the presence of this noble insect will cause the clouds of stinging gnats and flies, which make life a burden, to vanish like smoke. When a flight of dragon-flies passes over the country many remain along the route, as I have said, sheltering themselves wherever trees occur; and, after the storm blows over, these strangers and stragglers remain for some days hawking for prey in the neighbourhood. It is curious to note that they do not show any disposition to seek for watercourses. It may be that they feel lost in a strange region, or that the panic they have suffered, in their long flight before the wind, has unsettled their instincts; for it is certain that they do not, like the dragon-fly in Mrs. Browning's poem, "return to dream upon the river." They lead instead a kind of vagabond existence, hanging about the plantations, and roaming over the surrounding plains. It is then remarked that gnats and sand-flies apparently cease to exist, even in places where they have been most abundant. They have not been devoured by the dragon-flies, which are perhaps very few in number; they have simply got out of the way, and will remain in close concealment until their enemies take their departure, or have all been devoured by martins, tyrant birds, and the big robber-flies or devil's dykes--no name is bad enough for them--of the family Asilidaa. During these peaceful gnatless days, if a person thrusts himself into the bushes or herbage in some dark sheltered place, he will soon begin to hear the thin familiar sounds, as of "horns of elf-land faintly blowing"; and presently, from the ground and the under surface of every leaf, the ghost-like withered little starvelings will appear in scores and in hundreds to settle on him, fear not having blunted their keen appetites. When riding over the pampas on a hot still day, with a pertinacious cloud of gnats or sandflies hovering just above my head and keeping me company for miles, I have always devoutly wished for a stray dragon-fly to show himself. Frequently the wish has been fulfilled, the dragon-fly, apparently "sagacious of his quarry from afar," sweeping straight at his prey, and instantly, as if by miracle, the stinging rain has ceased and the noxious cloud vanished from overhead, to be re-formed no more. This has always seemed very extraordinary to me; for in other matters gnats do not appear to possess even that proverbial small dose of intellect for which we give most insects credit. Before the advent of the dragon-fly it has perhaps happened that I have been vigorously striking at them, making it very unpleasant for them, and also killing and disabling many hundreds--a larger number than the most voracious dragon-fly could devour in the course of a whole day; and yet, after brushing and beating them off until my arms have ached with the exertion, they have continued to rush blindly on their fate, exhibiting not the faintest symptom of fear. I suppose that for centuries mosquitoes have, in this way, been brushed and beaten away with hands and with tails, without learning caution. It is not in their knowledge that there are hands and tails. A large animal is simply a field on which they confidently settle to feed, sounding shrill flourishes on their little trumpets to show how fearless they are. But the dragon-fly is very ancient on the earth, and if, during the Devonian epoch, when it existed, it preyed on some blood-sucking insect from which or Culicidae have come, then these stupid little insects have certainly had ample time in which to learn well at least one lesson. There is not in all organic nature, to my mind, any instance of wasted energy comparable in magnitude with the mosquito's thirst for blood, and the instincts and elaborate blood-pumping apparatus with which it is related. The amount of pollen given off by some wind-fertilized trees--so great in some places that it covers hundreds of square miles of earth and water with a film of yellow dust---strikes us as an amazing waste of material on the part of nature; but in these cases we readily see that this excessive prodigality is necessary to continue the species, and that a sufficient number of flowers would not be impregnated unless the entire trees were bathed for days in the fertilizing cloud, in which only one out of many millions of floating particles can ever hit the mark. The mosquito is able to procreate without ever satisfying its ravenous appetite for blood. To swell its grey thread-like abdomen to a coral bead is a delight to the insect, but not necessary to its existence, like food and water to ours; it is the great prize in the lottery of life, which few can ever succeed in drawing. In a hot summer, when one has ridden perhaps for half a day over a low-lying or wet district, through an atmosphere literally obscured with a fog of mosquitoes, this fact strikes the mind very forcibly, for in such places it frequently is the case that mammals do not exist, or are exceedingly rare. In Europe it is different. There, as Reaumur said, possibly one gnat in every hundred may be able to gratify its appetite for blood; but of the gnats in many districts in South America it would be nearer the mark to say that only one in a hundred millions can ever do so. Curtis discovered that only the female mosquito bites or sucks blood, the male being without tongue or mandibles; and he asks, What, then, does the male feed on? He conjectures that it feeds on flowers; but, had he visited some swampy places in hot countries, where flowers are few and the insects more numerous than the sands on the seashore, he would most probably have said that the males subsist on decaying vegetable matter and moisture of slime. It is, however, more important to know what the female subsists on. We know that she thirsts for warm mammalian blood, that she seeks it with avidity, and is provided with an admirable organ for its extraction--only, unfortunately for her, she does not get it, or, at all events, the few happy individuals that do get it are swamped in the infinite multitude of those that are doomed by nature to total abstinence. I should like to know whether this belief of Curtis, shared by Westwood and other distinguished entomologists, but originally put forward merely as a conjecture, has ever been tested by careful observation and experiment. If not, then it is strange that it should have crept into many important works, where it is stated not as a mere guess, but as an established fact. Thus, Van Beneden, in his work on parasites, while classing female mosquitoes with his "miserable wretches," yet says, "If blood fails them, they live, like the males, on the juices of flowers." If this be so, it is quite certain that the juices fail to satisfy them; and that, like Dr. Tanner, who was ravenously hungry during his forty days' fast, in spite of his frequent sips of water, the mosquito still craves for something better than a cool vegetarian diet. I cannot help thinking, though the idea may seem fanciful, that mosquitoes feed on nothing. We know that the ephemerae take no refreshment in the imago state, the mouth being aborted or atrophied in these short-lived creatures; but we also know that they belong to an exceedingly ancient tribe, and possibly, after the earth had ceased to produce their proper nourishment there came in their history a long hungry period, which did not kill them, but lasted until their feeding instincts became obsolete, the mouth lost its use, and their life in its perfect state dwindled to its present length. In any case, how unsatisfactory is the mosquitoes' existence, and what a curious position they occupy in nature! Let us suppose that, owing to some great change in the conditions of the earth, rapacious birds were no longer able to capture prey, and that, by a corresponding change in their organizations, they were able to subsist on the air they breathed, with perhaps an occasional green leaf and a sip of water, and yet retained the old craving for solid food, and the old predatory instincts and powers undiminished; they would be in the position of mosquitoes in the imago state. And if then fifty or a hundred individuals were to succeed every year in capturing something and making one hearty meal, these few fortunate diners would bear about the same proportion to all the raptors on the globe as the mosquitoes that succeed in sucking blood to their unsuccessful fellows. In the case of the hawks, the effect of the few meals on the entire rapacious family or order would certainly be _nil;_ and it is impossible to believe for a moment that the comparatively infinitesimal amount of blood sucked by mosquitoes can. serve to invigorate the species. The wonder is that the machinery, which accomplishes nothing, should continue in such perfect working order. When we consider the insect's delicate organ, so admirably fitted for the purpose to which it is applied, it becomes difficult to believe that it could have been so perfected except in a condition of things utterly unlike the present. There must have been a time when mosquitoes found their proper nourishment, and when warm mammalian blood was as necessary to their existence as honey is to that of the bee, or insect food to the dragon-fly. This applies to many blood-sucking insects besides mosquitoes, and with special force to the tick tribes (Ixodes), which swarm throughout Central and South America; for in these degraded spiders the whole body has been manifestly modified to fit it for a parasitical life; while the habits of the insect during its blind, helpless, waiting existence on trees, and its sudden great development when it succeeds in attaching itself to an animal body, also point irresistibly to the same conclusion. In the sunny uplands they act (writes Captain Burton) like the mosquitoes of the hot, humid Beiramar. "The nuisance is general; it seems to be in the air; every blade of grass has its colony; clusters of hundreds adhere to the twigs; myriads are found in the bush clumps. Lean and flat when growing to the leaves, the tick catches man or beast brushing by, fattens rapidly, and, at the end-of a week's good living, drops off, _plena cruoris."_ When on trees, Belt says, they instinctively place themselves on the extreme tips of leaves and shoots, with their hind legs stretching out, each foot armed with two hooks or claws, with which to lay hold of any animal brushing by. During this wretched, incom-plete existence (from which, in most cases, it is never destined to emerge), its greatest length is about one-fourth of an inch; but where it fastens itself to an animal the abdomen increases to a globe as big as a medium-sized Barcelona nut. Being silvery-grey or white in colour, it becomes, when thus distended, very conspicuous on any dark surface. I have frequently seen black, smooth-haired dogs with their coats, turned into a perfect garden of these white spider-flowers or mushrooms. The white globe is leathery, and nothing can injure it; and the poor beast cannot rub, bite, or scratch it off, as it is anchored to his flesh by eight sets of hooks and a triangle of teeth. The ticks inhabiting regions rich in bird and insect life, but with few mammals, are in the same condition as mosquitoes, as far as the supply of blood goes; and, like the mosquitoes, they are compelled and able to exist without the nourishment best suited to them. They are nature's miserable castaways, parasitical tribes lost in a great dry wilderness where no blood is; and every marsh-born mosquito, piping of the hunger gnawing its vitals, and every forest tick, blindly feeling with its grappling-irons for the beast that never brushes by, seems to tell us of a world peopled with gigantic forms, mammalian and reptilian, which once afforded abundant pasture to the parasite, and which the parasite perhaps assisted to overthrow. It is almost necessary to transport oneself to the vast tick-infested wilderness of the New World to appreciate the full significance of a passage in Belt's _Naturalist in Nicaragua,_ in which it is suggested that man's hairless condition was perhaps brought about by natural selection in tropical regions, where he was greatly troubled with parasites of this kind. It is certain that if in such a country as Brazil he possessed a hairy coat, affording cover to the tick and enabling it to get a footing on the body, his condition would be a very sad one. Savages abhor hairs on the body, and even pluck them off their faces. This seems like a survival of an ancient habit acquired when the whole body was clothed with hair; and if primitive man ever possessed such a habit, nature only followed his lead in giving him a hairless offspring. Is it not also probable that the small amount of mammalian life in South America, and the aquatic habits of nearly all the large animals in the warmer districts, is due to the persecutions of the tick? The only way in which a large animal can rid itself of the pest is by going into the water or wallowing in the mud; and this perhaps accounts for the more or less aquatic habits of the jaguar, aguará-guazú, the large Cervus paluclosus, tapir, capybara, and peccary. Monkeys, which are most abundant, are a notable exception; but these animals have the habit of attending to each other's skins, and spend a great deal of their time in picking off the parasites. But how do birds escape the ticks, since these parasites do not confine their attacks to any one class of aninials, but attach themselves impartially to any living thing coming within reach of their hooks, from snake to man? My own observations bearing on this point refer less to the Ixodes than to the minute bete-rouge, which is excessively abundant in the Plata district, where it is known as _bicho colorado,_ and in size and habits resembles the English Leptus autumnalis. It is so small that, notwithstanding its bright scarlet colour, it can only be discerned by bringing the eye close to it; and being, moreover, exceedingly active and abundant in all shady places in summer--making life a misery to careless human beings--it must be very much more dangerous to birds than the larger sedentary Ixodes. The bete-rouge invariably lodges beneath the wings of birds, where the loose scanty plumage affords easy access to the skin. Domestic birds suffer a great deal from its persecutions, and their young, if allowed to run about in shady places, die of the irritation. Wild birds, however, seem to be very little troubled, and most of those I have examined have been almost entirely free from parasites. Probably they are much more sensitive than the domestic birds, and able to feel and pick off the insects with their beaks before they have penetrated into the skin. I believe they are also able to protect themselves in another way, namely, by preventing the parasites from reaching their bodies at all. I was out under the trees one day with a pet oven-bird (Furnarius rufus), which had full liberty to range about at will, and noticed that at short intervals it went through the motions of picking something from its toes or legs, though I could see nothing on them. At length I approached my eyes to within a few inches of the bird's feet, and discovered that the large dry branch on which it stood was covered with a multitude of parasites, all running rapidly about like foraging ants, and whenever one came to the bird's feet it at once ran up the leg. Every time this happened, so far as I could see, the bird felt it. and quickly and deftly picked it off with the point of its bill. It seemed very astonishing that the horny covering of the toes and legs should be so exquisitely sensitive, for the insects are so small and light that they cannot be felt on the hand, even when a score of them are running over it; but the fact is as I have stated, and it is highly probable, I think, that most wild birds keep themselves free from these little torments in the same way. Some observations of mine on a species of Orni-thomyia--a fly parasitical on birds--might possibly be of use in considering the question of the anomalous position in nature of insects possessing the instincts and aptitudes of parasites, and organs manifestly modified to suit a parasitical mode of life, yet compelled and able to exist free, feeding, perhaps, on vegetable juices, or, like the ephemerae, on nothing at all. For it must be borne in mind that I do not assert that these "occasional" or "accidental" parasites, as some one calls them, explaining nothing, do not feed on such juices. I do not know what they feed on. I only know that the joyful alacrity with which gnats and stinging flies of all kinds abandon the leaves, supposed to afford them pasture, to attack a warm-blooded animal, serves to show how strong the impulse is, and how ineradicable the instinct, which must have had an origin. Perhaps the habits of the bird-fly I have mentioned will serve to show how, in some cases, the free life of some blood-sucking flies and other insects might have originated. Kirby and Spence, in their _Introduction,_ mention that one or two species of Ornithomyia have been observed flying about and alighting on men; and in one case the fly extracted blood and was caught, the species being thus placed beyond doubt. This circumstance led the authors to believe that the insect, when the bird it is parasitical on dies, takes to flight and migrates from body to body, occasionally tasting blood until, coming to the right body--to wit, that of a bird, or of a particular species of bird--it once more establishes itself permanently in the plumage. I fancy that the insect sometimes leads a freer life and ranges much more than the authors imagined; and I refer to Kirby and Spence, with apologies to those who regard the _Introduction_ as out of date, only because I am not aware that we have any later observations on the subject. There is in La Plata a small very common Dendrocolaptine bird--Anumbius acuticaudatus--much infested by an Ornithomyia, a pretty, pale insect, half the size of a house-fly, and elegantly striped with green. It is a very large parasite for so small a bird, yet so cunning and alert is it, and so swiftly is it able to swim through the plumage, that the bird is unable to rid itself of so undesirable a companion. The bird lives with its mate all the year round, much of the time with its grown-up young, in its nest--a large structure, in which so much building-material is used that the bird is called in the vernacular Leñatero, or Firewood-gatherer. On warm bright days without wind, during the absence of the birds, I have frequently seen a company of from half a dozen to a dozen or fifteen of the parasitical fly wheeling about in the air above the nest, hovering and gambolling together, just like house-flies in a room in summer; but always on the appearance of the birds, returning from their feeding-ground, they would instantly drop down and disappear into the nest. How curious this instinct seems! The fly regards the bird, which affords it the warmth and food essential to life, as its only deadly enemy; and with an inherited wisdom, like that of the mosquito with regard to the dragon-fly, or of the horse-fly with regard to the Monedula wasp, vanishes like smoke from its presence, and only approaches the bird secretly from a place of concealment. The parasitical habit tends inevitably to degrade the species acquiring it, dulling its senses and faculties, especially those of sight and locomotion; but the Ornithomyia seems an exception, its dependent life having had a contrary effect; the extreme sensitiveness, keenness of sight, and quickness of the bird having reacted on the insect, giving it a subtlety in its habits and motions almost without a parallel even among free insects. A man with a blood-sucking flat-bodied flying squirrel, concealing itself among his clothing and gliding and dodging all over his body with so much artifice and rapidity as to defeat all efforts made to capturo it or knock it off, would be a case parallel to that of the bird-fly on the small bird. It might be supposed that the Firewood-gatherer, like some ants that keep domestic pets, makes a pet of the fly; for it is a very pretty insect, barred with green, and with rainbow reflections on its wings--and birds are believed by some theorists to possess aesthetic tastes; but the discomfort of having such a vampire on the body would, I imagine, be too great to allow a kindly instinct of that nature to grow up. Moreover, I have on several occasions seen the bird making frantic efforts to capture one of the flies, which had incautiously flown up from the nest at the wrong moment. Bird and fly seem to know each other wonderfully well. Here, then, we have a parasitical insect specialized in the highest degree, yet retaining all its pristine faculties unimpaired, its love of liberty, and of associating in numbers together for sportive exercises, and well able to take care of itself during its free intervals. And probably when thrown on the world, as when nests are blown down, or the birds get killed, or change their quarters, as they often do, it is able to exist for some time without avian blood. Let us then imagine some of these orphaned colonies, unable to find birds, but through a slight change in habits or organization able to exist in the imago state without sucking blood until they laid their eggs; and succeeding generations, still better able to stand the altered conditions of life until they become practically independent (like gnats), multiplying greatly, and disporting themselves in clouds over forests, yet still retaining the old hunger for blood and the power to draw it, and ready at any moment to return to the ancestral habit. It might be said that if such a result were possible it would have occurred, but that we find no insect like the Ornithomyia existing independently. With the bird-fly it has not occurred, as far as we know; but in the past history of some independent parasites it is possible that something similar to the imaginary case I have sketched may have taken place. The bush-tick is a more highly specialized, certainly a more degraded, creature than the bird-fly, and the very fact of its existence seems to show that it is possible for even the lowest of the fallen race of parasites to start afresh in life under new conditions, and to reascend in the scale of being, although still bearing about it the marks of former degeneracy. The connection between the flea and the mammal it feeds on is even less close than that which exists between the Ornithomyia and bird. The fact that fleas are so common and universal--for in all lands we have them, like the poor, always with us; and that they are found on all mammals, from the king of beasts to the small modest mouse--seems to show a great amount of variability and adaptiveness, as well as a very high antiquity. It has often been reported that fleas have been found hopping on the ground in desert places, where they could not have been dropped by man or beast; and it has been assumed that these "independent" fleas must, like gnats and ticks, subsist on vegetable juices. There is no doubt that they are able to exist and propagate for one or two years after being deprived of their proper aliment; houses shut up for a year or longer are sometimes found infested with them; possibly in the absence of "vegetable juices" they flourish on dust. I have never detected them hopping on the ground in uninhabited places, although I once found them in Patagonia, in a hamlet which had been attacked and depopulated by the Indians about twenty months before my visit. On entering one of the deserted huts I found the floor literally swarming with fleas, and in less than ten seconds my legs, to the height of my knees, were almost black with their numbers. This proves that they are able toincrease greatly for a period without blood; but I doubt that they can go on existing and increasing for an indefinite time; perhaps their true position, with regard to the parasitical habit, is midway between that of the strict parasite which never leaves the body, and that of independent parasites like the Culex and the Ixodes, and all those which are able to exist free for ever, and are parasitical only when the opportunity offers. Entomologists regard the flea as a degraded fly. Certainly it is very much more degraded than the bird-borne Ornithomyia, with its subtle motions and instinct, its power of flight and social pastimes. The poor pulex has lost every trace of wings; nevertheless, in its fallen condition it has developed some remarkable qualities and saltatory powers, which give it a lower kind of glory; and, compared with another parasite with which it shares the human species, it is almost a noble insect. Darwin has some remarks about the smallness of the brain of an ant, assuming that this insect possesses a very high intelligence, but I doubt very much that the ant, which moves in a groove, is mentally the superior of the unsocial flea. The last is certainly the most teachable; and if fleas were generally domesticated and made pets of, probably there would be as many stories about their marvellous intelligence and fidelity to man as we now hear about our over-praised "friend" the dog. With regard to size, the flea probably started on its downward course as a comparatively large insect, probably larger than the Ornithomyia. That insect has been able to maintain its existence, without dwindling like the Leptus into a mere speck, through the great modification in organs and instinct, which adapt it so beautifully to the feathery element in which it moves. The bush-tick, wingless from the beginning, and diverging in another direction, has probably been greatly increased in size by its parasitical habit; this seems proven by the fact, that as long as it is parasitical on nothing it remains small, but when able to fasten itself to an animal it rapidly developes to a great size. Again, the big globe of its abdomen is coriaceous and elastic, and is probably as devoid of sensation as a ball of india-rubber. The insect, being made fast by hooks and teeth to its victim, all efforts to remove it only increase the pain it causes; and animals that know it well do not attempt to rub, scratch, or bite it off, therefore the great size and the conspicuous colour of the tick are positive advantages to it. The flea, without the subtlety and highly-specialized organs of the Ornithomyia, or the stick-fast powers and leathery body of the Ixodes, can only escape its vigilant enemies by making itself invisible; hence every variation, i.e. increase in jumping-power and diminished bulk, tending towards this result, has been taken advantage of by natural selection. CHAPTER XI HUMBLE-BEES AND OTHER MATTERS. Two humble-bees, Bombus thoracicus and B. violaceus, are found on the pampas; the first, with a primrose yellow thorax, and the extremity of the abdomen bright rufous, slightly resembles the English B. terrestris; the rarer species, which is a trifle smaller than the first, is of a uniform intense black, the body having the appearance of velvet, the wings being of a deep violaceous blue. A census of the humble-bees in any garden or field always shows that the yellow bees outnumber the black in the proportion of about seven to one; and I have also found their nests for many years in the same proportion; about seven nests of the yellow to one nest of the black species. In habits they are almost identical, and when two species so closely allied are found inhabiting the same locality, it is only reasonable to infer that one possesses some advantage over the other, and that the least favoured species will eventually disappear. In this case, where one so greatly outnumbers the other, it might be thought that the rarer species is dying out, or that, on the contrary, it is a new-comer destined to supplant the older more numerous species. Yet, during the twenty years I have observed them, there has occurred no change in their relative positions; though both have greatly increased in numbers during that time, owing to the spread of cultivation. And yet it would scarcely be too much to expect some marked change in a period so long as that, even through the slow-working agency of natural selection; for it is not as if there had been an exact balance of power between them. In the same period of time I have seen several species, once common, almost or quite disappear, while others, very low down as to numbers, have been exalted to the first rank. In insect life especially, these changes have been numerous, rapid, and widespread. In the district where, as a boy, I chased and caught tinamous, and also chased ostriches, but failed to catch them, the continued presence of our two humble-bees, sucking the same flowers and making their nests in the same situations, has remained a puzzle to my mind. The site of the nest is usually a slight depression in the soil in the shelter of a cardoon bush. The bees deepen the hollow by burrowing in the earth; and when the spring foliage sheltering it withers up, they construct a dome-shaped covering of small sticks, thorns, and leaves bitten into extremely minute pieces. They sometimes take possession of a small hole or cavity in the ground, and save themselves the labour of excavation. Their architecture closely resembles that of B. terrestris. They make rudely-shaped oval honey-cells, varying from half an inch to an inch and a half in length, the smaller ones being the first made; later in the season the old cocoons are utilized for storing honey. The wax is chocolate-coloured, and almost the only difference I can find in the economy of the two species is that the black bee uses a large quantity of wax in plastering the interior of its nest. The egg-cell of the yellow bee always contains from twelve to sixteen eggs; that of the black bee from ten to fourteen; and the eggs of this species are the largest though the bee is smallest. At the entrance on the edge of the mound one bee is usually stationed, and, when approached, it hums a shrill challenge, and throws itself into a menacing attitude. The sting is exceedingly painful. One summer I was so fortunate as to discover two nests of the two kinds within twelve yards of each other, and I resolved to watch them very carefully, in order to see whether the two species ever came into collision, as sometimes happens with ants of different species living close together. Several times I saw a yellow bee leave its own nest and hover round or settle on the neighbouring one, upon which the sentinel black bee would attack and drive it off. One day, while watching, I was delighted to see a yellow bee actually enter its neighbour's nest, the sentinel being off duty. In about five minutes' time it came out again and flew away unmolested. I concluded from this that humble-bees, like their relations of the hive, occasionally plunder each other's sweets. On another occasion I found a black bee dead at the entrance of the yellow bees' nest; doubtless this individual had been caught in the act of stealing honey, and, after it had been stung to death, it had been dragged out and left there as a warning to others with like felonious intentions. There is one striking difference between the two species. The yellow bee is inodorous; the black bee, when angry and attacking, emits an exceedingly powerful odour: curiously enough, this smell is identical in character with that made when angry by all the wasps of the South American genus Pepris--dark blue wasps with red wings. This odour at first produces a stinging sensation on the nerve of smell, but when inhaled in large measure becomes very nauseating. On one occasion, while I was opening a nest, several of the bees buzzing round my head and thrusting their stings through the veil I wore for protection, gave out so pungent a smell that I found it unendurable, and was compelled to retreat. It seems strange that a species armed with a venomous sting and possessing the fierce courage of the humble-bee should also have this repulsive odour for a protection. It is, in fact, as incongruous as it would be were our soldiers provided with guns and swords first, and after with phials of assafoatida to be uncorked in the face of an enemy. Why, or how, animals came to be possessed of the power of emitting pestiferous odours is a mystery; we only see that natural selection has, in some mstances, chiefly among insects, taken advantage of it to furnish some of the weaker, more unprotected species with a means of escape from their enemies. The most stinking example I know is that of a large hairy caterpillar I have found on dry wood in Patagonia, and which, when touched, emits an intensely nauseous effluvium. Happily it is very volatile, but while it lasts it is even more detestable than that of the skunk. The skunk itself offers perhaps the one instance amongst the higher vertebrates of an animal in which all the original instincts of self-preservation have died out, giving place to this lower kind of protection. All the other members of the family it belongs to are cunning, swift of foot, and, when overtaken, fierce-tempered and well able to defend themselves with their powerful well-armed jaws. For some occult reason they are provided with a gland charged with a malodorous secretion; and out of this mysterious liquor Nature has elaborated the skunk's inglorious weapon. The skunk alone when attacked makes no attempt to escape or to defend itself by biting; but, thrown by its agitation into a violent convulsion, involuntarily discharges its foetid liquor into the face of an opponent. When this animal had once ceased to use so good a weapon as its teeth in defending itself, degenerating at the same time into a slow-moving creature, without fear and without cunning, the strength and vileness of its odour would be continually increased by the cumulative process of natural selection: and how effective the protection has become is shown by the abundance of the species throughout the whole American continent. It is lucky for mankind--especially for naturalists and sportsmen--that other species have not been improved in the same direction. But what can we say of the common deer of the pampas (Cervus campestris), the male of which gives out an effluvium quite as far-reaching although not so abominable in character as that of the Mephitis? It comes in disagreeable whiffs to the human nostril when the perfumer of the wilderness is not even in sight. Yet it is not a protection; on the contrary, it is the reverse, and, like the dazzling white plumage so attractive to birds of prey, a direct disadvantage, informing all enemies for leagues around of its whereabouts. It is not, therefore, strange that wherever pumas are found, deer are never very abundant; the only wonder is that, like the ancient horse of America, they have not become extinct. The gauchos of the pampas, however, give _a reason_ for the powerful smell of the male deer; and, after some hesitation, I have determined to set it down here, for the reader to accept or reject, as he thinks proper. I neither believe nor disbelieve it; for although I do not put great faith in gaucho natural history, my own observations have not infrequently confirmed statements of theirs, which a sceptical person would have regarded as wild indeed. To give one instance: I heard a gaucho relate that while out riding he had been pursued for a considerable distance by a large spider; his hearers laughed at him for a romancer; but as I myself had been attacked and pursued, both when on foot and on horseback, by a large wolf-spider, common on the pampas, I did not join in the laugh. They say that the effluvium of C. campestris is abhorrent to snakes of all kinds, just as pyrethrum powder is to most insects, and even go so far as to describe its effect as fatal to them; according to this, the smell is therefore a protection to the deer. In places where venomous snakes are extremely abundant, as in the Sierra district on the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, the gaucho frequently ties a strip of the male deer's skin, which retains its powerful odour for an indefinite time, round the neck of a valuable horse as a protection. It is certain that domestic animals are frequently lost here through snake-bites. The most common poisonous species--the Craspedo-cephalus alternatus, called _Vivora de la Cruz_ in the vernacular--has neither bright colour nor warning rattle to keep off heavy hoofs, and is moreover of so sluggish a temperament that it will allow itself to be trodden on before stirring, with the result that its fangs are not infrequently struck into the nose or foot of browsing beast. Considering, then, the conditions in which C. campestris is placed--and it might also be supposed that venomous snakes have in past times been much more numerous than they are now--it is not impossible to believe that the powerful smell it emits has been made protective, especially when we see in other species how repulsive odours have been turned to account by the principle of natural selection. After all, perhaps the wild naturalist of the pampas knows what he is about when he ties a strip of deer-skin to the neck of his steed and turns him loose to graze among the snakes. The gaucho also affirms that the deer cherishes a wonderful animosity against snakes; that it becomes greatly excited when it sees one, and proceeds at once to destroy it; _they say,_ by running round and round it in a circle, emitting its violent smell in larger measure, until the snake dies of suffocation. It is hard to believe that the effect can be so great; but that the deer is a snake hater and killer is certainly true: in North America, Ceylon, and other districts deer have been observed excitedly leaping on serpents, and killing them with their sharp cutting hoofs. CHAPTER XII. A NOBLE WASP. _(Monedula punctata.)_ Naturalists, like kings and emperors, have their favourites, and as my zoological sympathies, which are wider than my knowledge, embrace all classes of beings, there are of course several insects for which I have a special regard; a few in each of the principal orders. My chief favourite among the hymenopteras is the one representative of the curious genus Monedula known in La Plata. It is handsome and has original habits, but it is specially interesting to me for another reason: I can remember the time when it was extremely rare on the pampas, so rare that in boyhood the sight of one used to be a great event to me; and I have watched its rapid increase year by year till it has come to be one of our commonest species. Its singular habits and intelligence give it a still better claim to notice. It is a big, showy, loud-buzzing insect, with pink head and legs, wings with brown reflections, and body encircled with alternate bands of black and pale gold, and has a preference for large composite flowers, on the honey of which it feeds. Its young is, however, an insect-eater; but the Monedula does not, like other burrowing or sand wasps, put away a store of insects or spiders, partially paralyzed, as a provision for the grub till it reaches the pupa state; it actually supplies the grub with fresh-caught insects as long as food is required, killing the prey it captures outright, and bringing it in to its young; so that its habits, in this particular, are more bird- than wasp-like. The wasp lays its solitary egg at the extremity of a hole it excavates for itself on a bare hard piece of ground, and many holes are usually found close together. When the grub--for I have never been able to find more than one in a hole--has come out from the egg, the parent begins to bring in insects, carefully filling up the mouth of the hole with loose earth after every visit. Without this precaution, which entails a vast amount of labour, I do not believe one grub out of every fifty would survive, so overrun are these barren spots of ground used as breeding-places with hunting spiders, ants, and tiger-beetles. The grub is a voracious eater, but the diligent mother brings in as much as it can devour. I have often found as many as six or seven insects, apparently fresh killed, and not yet touched by the pampered little glutton, coiled up in the midst of them waiting for an appetite. The Monedula is an adroit fly-catcher, for though it kills numbers of fire-flies and other insects, flies are always preferred, possibly because they are so little encumbered with wings, and are also more easily devoured. It occasionally captures insects on the wing, but the more usual method is to pounce down on its prey when it is at rest. At one time, before I had learnt their habits, I used frequently to be startled by two or three or more of these wasps rushing towards my face, and continuing hovering before it, loudly buzzing, attending me in my walks about the fields. The reason of this curious proceeding is that the Monedula preys largely on stinging flies, having learnt from experience that the stinging fly will generally neglect its own safety when it has once fastened on a good spot to draw blood from. When a man or horse stands perfectly motionless the wasps take no notice, but the moment any movement is made of hand, tail, or stamping hoof, they rush to the rescue, expecting to find a stinging fly. On the other hand, the horse has learnt to know and value this fly-scourge, and will stand very quietly with half a dozen loud Avasps hovering in an alarming manner close to his head, well knowing that every fly that settles on him will be instantly snatched away, and that the boisterous Monedula is a better protection even than the tail--which, by the way, the horse wears very long in Buenos Ayres. I have, in conclusion, to relate an incident I onco witnessed, and which does not show the Monedula in a very amiable light. I was leaning over a gate watching one of these wasps feeding on a sunflower. A small leaf-cutting bee was hurrying about with its shrill busy hum in the vicinity, and in due time came to the sunflower and settled on it. The Monedula became irritated, possibly at the shrill voice and bustling manner of its neighbour, and, after watching it for a few moments on the flower, deliberately rushed at and drove it off. The leaf-cutter quickly returned, however--for bees are always extremely averse to leaving a flower unexplored--but was again driven away with threats and demonstrations on the part of the Monedula. The little thing went off and sunned itself on a leaf for a time, then returned to the flower, only to be instantly ejected again. Other attempts were made, but the big wasp now kept a jealous watch on its neighbour's movements, and would not allow it to come within several inches of the flower without throwing itself into a threatening attitude. The defeated bee retired to sun itself once more, apparently determined to wait for the big tyrant to go away; but the other seemed to know what was wanted, and spitefully made up its mind to stay where it was. The leaf-cutter then gave up the contest. Suddenly rising up into the air, it hovered, hawk-like, above the Monedula for a moment, then pounced down on its back, and clung there, furiously biting, until its animosity was thoroughly appeased; then it flew off, leaving the other master of the field certainly, but greatly discomposed, and perhaps seriously injured about the base of the wings. I was rather surprised that they were not cut quite off, for a leaf-cutting bee can use its teeth as deftly as a tailor can his shears. Doubtless to bees, as to men, revenge is sweeter than honey. But, in the face of mental science, can a creature as low down in the scale of organization as a leaf-cutting bee be credited with anything so intelligent and emotional as deliberate anger and revenge, "which implies the need of retaliation to satisfy the feelings of the person (or bee) offended?" According to Bain _(Mental and Moral Science)_ only the highest animals--stags and bulls he mentions-can be credited with the developed form of anger, which, he describes as an excitement caused by pain, reaching the centres of activity, and containing an impulse knowingly to inflict suffering on another sentient being. Here, if man only is meant, the spark is perhaps accounted for, but not the barrel of gunpowder. The explosive material is, however, found in the breast of nearly every living creature. The bull--ranking high according to Bain, though I myself should place him nearly on a level mentally with the majority of the lower animals, both vertebrate and insect--is capable of a wrath exceeding that of Achilles; and yet the fact that a red rag can manifestly have no associations, personal or political, for the bull, shows how uniutcllectual his anger must be. Another instance of misdirected anger in nature, not quite so familiar as that of the bull and red rag, is used as an illustration by one of the prophets: "My heritage is unto me as a speckled bird; the birds round, about are against it." I have frequently seen the birds of a thicket gather round some singularly marked accidental visitor, and finally drive him with great anger from the neighbourhood. Possibly association comes in a little here, since any bird, even a small one, strikingly coloured or marked, might be looked on as a bird of prey. The flesh-fly laying its eggs on the carrion-flower is only a striking instance of the mistakes all instincts are liable to, never more markedly than in the inherited tendency to fits of frenzied excitement: the feeling is frequently excited by the wrong object, and explodes at inopportune moments. CHAPTER XIII. NATURE'S NIGHT LIGHTS. _(Remarks about Fireflies and other matters.)_ It was formerly supposed that the light of the firefly (in any family possessing the luminous power) was a safeguard against the attacks of other insects, rapacious and nocturnal in their habits. This was Kirby and Spence's notion, but it might just as well be Pliny's for all the attention it would receive from modern entomologists: just at present any observer who lived in the pre-Darwin days is regarded as one of the ancients. The reasons given for the notion or theory in the celebrated _Introduction to Entomology_ were not conclusive; nevertheless it was not an improbable supposition of the authors'; while the theory which has taken its place in recent zoological writings seems in every way even less satisfactory. Let us first examine the antiquated theory, as it must now be called. By bringing a raptorial insect and a firefly together, we find that the flashing light of the latter does actually scare away the former, and is therefore, for the moment, a protection as effectual as the camp-fire the traveller lights in a district abounding with beasts of prey. Notwithstanding this fact, and assuming that we have here the whole reason of the existence of the light-emitting power, a study of the firefly's habits compels us to believe that the insect would be just as well off without the power as with it. Probably it experiences some pleasure in emitting flashes of light during its evening pastimes, but this could scarcely be considered an advantage in its struggle for existence, and it certainly does not account for the possession of the faculty. About the habits of Pyrophorus, the large tropical firefly which has the seat of its luminosity on the upper surface of the thorax, nothing definite appears to be known; but it has been said that this instinct is altogether nocturnal. The Pyrophorus is only found in the sub-tropical portion of the Argentine country, and I have never met with it. With the widely-separated Cratomorphus, and the tortoise-shaped Aspisoma, which emit the light from the abdomen, I am familiar; one species of Cratomorphus--a long slender insect with yellow wing-cases marked with two parallel black lines--is "the firefly" known to every one and excessively abundant in the southern countries of La Plata. This insect is strictly diurnal in its habits--as much so, in fact, as diurnal butterflies. They are seen flying about, wooing their mates, and feeding on composite and umbelliferous flowers at all hours of the day, and are as active as wasps during the full glare of noon. Birds do not feed on them, owing to the disagreeable odour, resembling that of phosphorus, they emit, and probably because they are to be uneatable; but their insect enemies are not so squeamish, and devour them readily, just as they also do the blister-fly, which one would imagine a morsel fitted to disagree with any stomach. One of their enemies is the Monedula wasp; another, a fly, of the rapacious Asilidas family; and this fly is also a wasp in appearance, having a purple body and bright red wings, like a Pepris, and this mimetic resemblance doubtless serves it as a protection against birds. A majority of raptorial insects are, however, nocturnal, and from all these enemies that go about under cover of night, the firefly, as Kirby and Spence rightly conjectured, protects itself, or rather is involuntarily protected, by means of its frequent flashing light. We are thus forced to the conclusion that, while the common house fly and many other diurnal insects spend a considerable portion of the daylight in purely sportive exercises, the firefly, possessing in its light a protection from nocturnal enemies, puts off its pastimes until the evening; then, when its carnival of two or three hours' duration is over, retires also to rest, putting out its candle, and so exposing itself to the dangers which surround other diurnal species during the hours of darkness. I have spoken of the firefly's pastimes advisedly, for I have really never been able to detect it doing anything in the evening beyond flitting aimlessly about, like house flies in a room, hovering and revolving in company by the hour, apparently for amusement. Thus, the more closely we look at the facts, the more unsatisfactory does the explanation seem. That the firefly should have become possessed of so elaborate a machinery, producing incidentally such splendid results, merely as a protection against one set of enemies for a portion only of the period during which they are active, is altogether incredible. The current theory, which we owe to Belt, is a prettier one. Certain insects (also certain Batrachians, reptiles, &c.) are unpalatable to the rapacious kinds; it is therefore a direct advantage to these unpalatable species to be distinguishable from all the persecuted, and the more conspicuous and well-known they are, the less likely are they to be mistaken by birds, insectivorous mammals, &c., for eatable kinds and caught or injured. Hence we find that many such species have acquired for their protection very brilliant or strongly-contrasted colours--warning colours--which insect-eaters come to know. The firefly, a soft-bodied, slow-flying insect, is easily caught and injured, but it is not fit for food, and, therefore, says the theory, lest it should be injured or killed by mistake, it has a fiery spark to warn enemies---birds, bats, and rapacious insects--that it is uneatable. The theory of warning colours is an excellent one, but it has been pushed too far. We have seen that one of the most common fireflies is diurnal in habits, or, at any rate, that it performs all the important business of its life by day, when it has neither bright colour nor light to warn its bird enemies; and out of every hundred species of insect-eating birds at least ninety-nine are diurnal. Raptorial insects, as I have said, feed freely on fireflies, so that the supposed warning is not for them, and it would be hard to believe that the magnificent display made by luminous insects is useful only in preventing accidental injuries to them from a few crepuscular bats and goatsuckers. And to believe even this we should first have to assume that bats and goatsuckers are differently constituted from all other creatures; for in other animals--insects, birds, and mammalians--the appearance of fire by night seems to confuse and frighten, but it certainly cannot be said to _warn,_ in the sense in which that word is used when we speak of the brilliant colours of some butterflies, or even of the gestures of some venomous snakes, and of the sounds they emit. Thus we can see that, while the old theory of Kirby and Spence had some facts to support it, the one now in vogue is purely fanciful. Until some better suggestion is made, it would perhaps be as well to consider the luminous organ as having "no very close and direct relation to present habits of life." About their present habits, however, especially their crepuscular habits, there is yet much to learn. One thing I have observed in them has always seemed very strange to me. Occasionally an individual insect is seen shining with a very large and steady light, or with a light which very gradually decreases and increases in power, and at such times it is less active than at others, remaining for long intervals motionless on the leaves, or moving with a very slow flight. In South America a firefly displaying this abnormal splendour is said to be dying, and it is easy to imagine how such a notion originated. The belief is, however, erroneous, for sometimes, on very rare occasions, all the insects in one place are simultaneously affected in the same way, and at such times they mass themselves together in myriads, as if for migration, or for some other great purpose. Mr. Bigg-Wither, in South Brazil, and D'Albertis, in New Guinea, noticed these firefly gatherings; I also once had the rare good fortune to witness a phenomenon of the kind on a very grand scale. Riding on the pampas one dark evening an hour after sunset, and passing from high ground overgrown with giant thistles to a low plain covered with long grass, bordering a stream of water, I found it all ablaze with myriads of fireflies. I noticed that all the insects gave out an exceptionally large, brilliant light, which shone almost steadily. The long grass was thickly studded with them, while they literally swarmed in the air, all moving up the valley with a singularly slow and languid flight. When I galloped down into this river of phosphorescent fire, my horse plunged and snorted with alarm. I succeeded at length in quieting him, and then rode slowly through, compelled to keep my mouth and eyes closed, so thickly did the insects rain on to my face. The air was laden with the sickening phosphorous smell they emit, but when I had once got free of the broad fiery zone, stretching away on either hand for miles along the moist valley, I stood still and gazed back for some time on a scene the most wonderful and enchanting I have ever witnessed. The fascinating and confusing effect which the appearance of fire at night has on animals is a most interesting subject; and although it is not probable that anything very fresh remains to be said about it, I am tempted to add here the results of my own experience. When travelling by night, I have frequently been struck with the behaviour of my horse at the sight of natural fire, or appearance of fire, always so different from that caused by the sight of fire artificially created. The steady gleam from the open window or door of a distant house, or even the unsteady wind-tossed flame of some lonely camp-fire, has only served to rouse a fresh spirit in him and the desire to reach it; whereas those infrequent displays of fire which nature exhibits, such as lightning, or the ignis fatuus, or even a cloud of fireflies, has always produced a disquieting effect. Experience has evidently taught the domestic horse to distinguish a light kindled by man from all others; and, knowing its character, he is just as well able as his rider to go towards it without experiencing that confusion of mind caused by a glare in the darkness, the origin and nature of which is a mystery. The artificially-lighted fire is to the horse only the possible goal of the journey, and is associated with the thought of rest and food. Wild animals, as a rule, at any rate in thinly-settled districts, do not know the meaning of any fire; it only excites curiosity and fear in them; and they are most disturbed at the sight of fires made by man, which are brighter and steadier than most natural fires. We can understand this sensation in animals, since we ourselves experience a similar one (although in a less degree and not associated with fear) in the effect which mere brightness has on us, both by day and night. On riding across the monotonous grey Patagonian uplands, where often for hours one sees not the faintest tinge of bright colour, the intense glowing crimson of a cactus-fruit, or the broad shining white bosom of the Patagonian eagle-buzzard (Buteo erythronotus), perched on the summit of a distant bush, has had a strangely fascinating effect on me, so that I have been unable to take my eyes off it as long as it continued before me. Or in passing through extensive desolate marshes, the dazzling white plumage of a stationary egret has exercised the same attraction. At night we experience the sensation in a greater degree, when the silver sheen of the moon makes a broad path on the water; or when a meteor leaves a glowing track across the sky; while a still more familiar instance is seen in the powerful attraction on the sight of glowing embers in a darkened room. The mere brightness, or vividness of the contrast, fascinates the mind; but the effect on man is comparatively weak, owing to his fiery education and to his familiarity with brilliant dyes artificially obtained from nature. How strong this attraction of mere brightness, even where there is no mystery about it, is to wild animals is shown by birds of prey almost invariably singling out white or bright-plumaged birds for attack where bright and sober-coloured kinds are mingled together. By night the attraction is immeasurably greater than by day, and the light of a fire steadily gazed at quickly confuses the mind. The fires which, travellers make for their protection actually serve to attract the beasts of prey, but the confusion and fear caused by the bright glare makes it safe for the traveller to lie down and sleep in the light. Mammals do not lose their heads altogether, because they are walking on firm ground where muscular exertion and an exercise of judgment are necessary at every step; whereas birds floating buoyantly and with little effort through the air are quickly bewildered. Incredible numbers of migratory birds kill them-selves by dashing against the windows of lighthouses; on bright moonlight nights the voyagers are comparatively safe; but during dark cloudy weather the slaughter is very great; over six hundred birds were killed by striking a lighthouse in Central America in a single night. On insects the effect is the same as on the higher animals: on the ground they are attracted by the light, but keep, like wolves and tigers, at a safe distance from it; when rushing through the air and unable to keep their eyes from it they fly into it, or else revolve about it, until, coming too close, their wings are singed. I find that when I am on horseback, going at a swinging gallop, a bright light affects me far more powerfully than when I am trudging along on foot. A person mounted on a bicycle and speeding over a level plain on a dark night, with nothing to guide him except the idea of the direction in his mind, would be to some extent in the position of the migratory bird. An exceptionally brilliant ignis fatuus flying before him would affect him as the gleam of a lamp placed high above the surface affects the migrants: he would not be able to keep his eyes from it, but would quickly lose the sense of direction, and probably end his career much as the bird does, by breaking his machine and perhaps his bones against some unseen obstruction in the way. CHAPTER XIV. FACTS AND THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIDERS. Some time ago, while turning over a quantity of rubbish in a little-used room, I disturbed a large black spider. Rushing forth, just in time to save itself from destruction through the capsizing of a pile of books, it paused for one moment, took a swift comprehensive glance at the position, then scuttled away across the floor, and was lost in an obscure corner of the room. This incident served to remind me of a fact I was nearly forgetting, that England is not a spiderless country. A foreigner, however intelligent, coming from warmer regions, might very easily make that mistake. In Buenos Ayres, the land of my nativity, earth teems with these interesting little creatures. They abound in and on the water, they swarm in the grass and herbage, which everywhere glistens with the silvery veil they spin over it. Indeed it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that there is an atmosphere of spiders, for they are always floating about invisible in the air; their filmy threads are unfelt when they fly against you; and often enough you are not even aware of the little arrested aeronaut hurrying over your face with feet lighter than the lightest thistledown. It is somewhat strange that although, where other tribes of living creatures are concerned, I am something of a naturalist, spiders I have always observed and admired in a non-scientific spirit, and this must be my excuse for mentioning the habits of some spiders without giving their specific names--an omission always vexing to the severely-technical naturalist. They have ministered to the love of the beautiful, the grotesque, and the marvellous in me; but I have never _collected_ a spider, and if I wished to preserve one should not know how to do it. I have been "familiar with the face" of these monsters so long that I have even learnt to love them; and I believe that if Emerson rightly predicts that spiders are amongst the things to be expelled from earth by the perfected man of the future, then a great charm and element of interest will be lost to nature. Though loving them, I cannot, of course, feel the same degree of affection towards all the members of so various a family. The fairy gossamer, scarce seen, a creature of wind and sunshine; the gem-like Epeira in the centre of its Starry web; even the terrestrial Salticus, with its puma-like strategy, certainly appeal more to our aesthetic feelings than does the slow heavy Mygale, looking at a distance of twenty yards away, as he approaches you, like a gigantic cockroach mounted on stilts. The rash fury with which the female wolf-spider defends her young is very admirable; but the admiration she excites is mingled with other feelings when we remember that the brave mother proves to her consort a cruel and cannibal spouse. Possibly my affection for spiders is due in a great measure to the compassion I have always felt for them. Pity, 'tis said, is akin to love; and who can help experiencing that tender emotion that considers the heavy affliction nature has laid on the spiders in compensation for the paltry drop of venom with which she, unasked, endowed them! And here, of course, I am alluding to the wasps. These insects, with a refinement of cruelty, prefer not to kill their victims outright, but merely maim them, then house them in cells where the grubs can vivisect them at leisure. This is one of those revolting facts the fastidious soul cannot escape from in warm climates; for in and out of open windows and doors, all day long, all the summer through, comes the busy beautiful mason-wasp. A long body, wonderfully slim at the waist, bright yellow legs and thorax, and a dark crimson abdomen,--what object can be prettier to look at? But in her life this wasp is not beautiful. At home in summer they were the pests of my life, for nothing would serve to keep them out. One day, while we were seated at dinner, a clay nest, which a wasp had succeeded in completing unobserved, detached itself from the ceiling and fell with a crash on to the table, where it was shattered to pieces, scattering a shower of green half-living spiders round it. I shall never forget the feeling of intense repugnance I experienced at the sight, coupled with detestation of the pretty but cruel little architect. There is, amongst our wasps, even a more accomplished spider-scourge than the mason-wasp, and I will here give a brief account of its habits. On the grassy pampas, dry bare spots of soil are resorted to by a class of spiders that either make or take little holes in the ground to reside in, and from which they rush forth to seize their prey. They also frequently sit inside their dens and patiently wait there for the intrusion of some bungling insect. Now, in summer, to a dry spot of ground like this, comes a small wasp, scarcely longer than a blue-bottle fly, body and wings of a deep shining purplish blue colour, with only a white mark like a collar on the thorax. It flirts its blue wings, hurrying about here and there, and is extremely active, and of a slender graceful figure--the type of an assassin. It visits and explores every crack and hole in the ground, and, if you watch it attentively, you will at length see it, on arriving at a hole, give a little start backwards. It knows that a spider lies concealed within. Presently, having apparently matured a plan of attack, it disappears into the hole and remains there for some time. Then, just when you are beginning to think that the little blue explorer has been trapped, out it rushes, flying in terror, apparently, from the spider who issues close behind in hot pursuit; but, before they are three inches away from the hole, quick as lightning the wasp turns on its follower, and the two become locked together in a deadly embrace. Looking like one insect, they spin rapidly round for a few moments, then up springs the wasp--victorious. The wretched victim is not dead; its legs move a little, but its soft body is paralyzed, and lies collapsed, flabby, and powerless as a stranded jellyfish. And this is the invariable result of every such conflict. In other classes of beings, even the weakest hunted thing occasionally succeeds in inflicting pain on its persecutor, and the small trembling mouse, unable to save itself, can sometimes make the cat shriek with paiu; but there is no weak spot in the wasp's armour, no fatal error of judgment, not even an accident, ever to save the wretched victim from its fate. And now comes the most iniquitous part of the proceeding. When the wasp has sufficiently rested after the struggle, it deliberately drags the disabled spider back into its own hole, and, having packed it away at the extremity, lays an egg alongside of it, then, coming out again, gathers dust and rubbish with which it fills up and obliterates the hole; and, having thus concluded its Machiavellian task, it flies cheerfully off in quest of another victim. The extensive Epeira family supply the mason-wasps and other spider-killers with the majority of their victims. These spiders have soft, plump, succulent bodies like pats of butter; they inhabit trees and bushes chiefly, where their geometric webs-betray their whereabouts; they are timid, comparatively innocuous, and reluctant to quit the shelter of their green bower, made of a rolled-up leaf; so that there are many reasons why they should be persecuted. They exhibit a great variety of curious forms; many are also very richly coloured; but even their brightest hues--orange, silver, scarlet--have not been given without regard to the colouring of their surroundings. Green-leafed bushes arc frequented by vividly green Epeiras, but the imitative resemblance does not quite end here. The green spider's method of escape, when the bush is roughly shaken, is to drop itself down on the earth, where it lies simulating death. In falling, it drops just as a green leaf would drop, that is, not quite so rapidly as a round, solid body like a beetle or spider. Now in the bushes there is another Epeira, in size and form like the last, but differing in colour; for instead of a vivid green, it is of a faded yellowish white--the exact hue of a dead, dried-up leaf. This spider, when it lets itself drop--for it has the same protective habit as the other--falls not so rapidly as a green freshly broken off leaf or as the green spider would fall, but with a slower motion, precisely like a leaf withered up till it has become almost light as a feather. It is not difficult to imagine how this comes about: either a thicker line, or a greater stiffness or tenacity of the viscid fluid composing the web and attached to the point the spider drops from, causes one to fall slower than the other. But how many tentative variations in the stiffness of the web material must there have been before the precise degree was attained enabling the two distinct species, differing in colour, to complete their resemblance to falling leaves--a fresh green leaf in one case and a dead, withered leaf in the other! The Tetragnatha--a genus of the Epeira family, and known also in England--are small spiders found on the margin of streams. Their bodies are slender, oblong, and resembling a canoe in shape; and when they sit lengthwise on a stem or blade of grass, their long, hair-like legs arranged straight before and behind them, it is difficult to detect them, so closely do they resemble a discoloured stripe on the herbage. A species of Tetragnatha with a curious modification of structure abounds on the pampas. The long leg of this spider is no thicker than a bristle from a pig's back, but at the extremity it is flattened and broad, giving it a striking resemblance to an oar. These spiders are only found in herbage overhanging the borders of streams: they are very numerous, and, having a pugnacious temper, are incessantly quarrelling; and it frequently happens that in these encounters, or where they are pursuing each other through the leaves, they drop into the water below. I believe, in fact, that they often drop themselves purposely into it as the readiest means of escape when hard pressed. When this happens, the advantage of the modified structure of the legs is seen. The fallen spider, sitting boat-like on the surface, throws out its long legs, and, dipping the broad ends into the water, literally rows itself rapidly to land. The gossamer-spider, most spiritual of living things, of which there are numerous species, some extremely beautiful in colouring and markings, is the most numerous of our spiders. Only when the declining sun flings a broad track of shiny silver light on the plain does one get some faint conception of the unnumbered millions of these buoyant little creatures busy weaving their gauzy veil over the earth and floating unseen, like an ethereal vital dust, in the atmosphere. This spider carries within its diminutive abdomen a secret which will possibly serve to vex subtle intellects for a long time to come; for it is hard to believe that merely by mechanical force, even aided by currents of air, a creature half as big as a barley grain can instantaneously snoot out filaments twenty or thirty inches long, and by means of which it floats itself in the air. Naturalists are now giving a great deal of attention to the migrations of birds in different parts of the world: might not insect and spider migrations be included with advantage to science in their observations? The common notion is that the gossamer makes use of its unique method of locomotion, only to shift its quarters, impelled by want of food or unfavourable conditions--perhaps only by a roving disposition. I believe that besides these incessant flittings about from place to place throughout the summer the gossamer-spiders have great periodical migrations which are, as a rule, in-visible, since a single floating web cannot be remarked, and each individual rises and floats away by itself from its own locality when influenced by the instinct. When great numbers of spiders rise up simultaneously over a large area, then, sometimes, the movement forces itself on our attention; for at such times the whole sky may be filled with visible masses of floating web. All the great movements of gossamers I have observed have occurred in the autumn, or, at any rate, several weeks after the summer solstice; and, like the migrations of birds at the same season of the year, have been in a northerly direction. I do not assert or believe that the migratory instinct in the gossamer is universal. In a moist island, like England, for instance, where the condition of the atmosphere is seldom favourable, and where the little voyagers would often be blown by adverse winds to perish far out at sea, it is difficult to believe that such migrations take place. But where they inhabit a vast area of land, as in South America, extending without interruption from the equator to the cold Magellanic regions, and where there is a long autumn of dry, hot weather, then such an instinct as migration might have been developed. For this is not a faculty merely of a few birds: the impulse to migrate at certain seasons affects birds, insects, and even mammals. In a few birds only is it highly developed, but the elementary feeling, out of which the wonderful habit of the swallow has grown, exists widely throughout animated nature. On the continent of Europe it also seems probable that a great autumnal movement of these spiders takes place; although, I must confess, I have no grounds for this statement, except that the floating gossamer is called in Germany "Der fliegender Summer"--the flying or departing summer. I have stated that all migrations of gossamers I have witnessed have been in the autumn; excepting in one instance, these flights occurred when the weather was still hot and dry. The exceptionally late migration was on March 22--a full month after the departure of martins, humming-birds, flycatchers, and most other true bird-migrants. It struck me as being so remarkable, and seems to lend so much force to the idea I have suggested, that I wish to give here an exact copy of the entries made at the time and on the spot in my notebook. "March 22. This afternoon, while I was out shooting, the gossamer-spiders presented an appearance quite new to me. Walking along a stream (the Conchitas, near Buenos Ayres), I noticed a broad white line skirting the low wet ground. This I found was caused by gossamer web lying in such quantities over the earth as almost to hide the grass ad thistles under it. The white zone was about twenty yards wide, and outside it only a few scattered webs were visible on the grass; its exact length I did not ascertain, but followed it for about two miles without finding the end. The spiders were so numerous that they continually baulked one another in their efforts to rise in the air. As soon as one threw out its lines they would become entangled with those of another spider, lanced out at the same moment; both spiders would immediately seem to know the cause of the trouble, for as soon as their lines fouled they would rush angrily towards each other, each trying to drive the other from the elevation. Notwithstanding these difficulties, numbers were continually floating off on the breeze which blew from the south. "I noticed three distinct species: one with a round scarlet body; another, velvet black, with large square cephalothorax and small pointed abdomen; the third and most abundant kind were of different shades of olive green, and varied greatly in size, the largest being fully a quarter of an inch in length. Apparently these spiders had been driven up from the low ground along the stream where it was wet, and had congregated along the borders of the dry ground in readiness to migrate. "25th. Went again to visit the spiders, scarcely expecting to find them, as, since first seeing them, we have had much wind and rain. To my surprise I found them in greatly increased numbers: on the tops of cardoons, posts, and other elevated situations they were literally lying together in heaps. Most of them were large and of the olive-coloured species; their size had probably prevented them from getting away earlier, but they were now floating off in great numbers, the weather being calm and tolerably dry. To-day I noticed a new species with a grey body, elegantly striped with black, and pink legs--a very pretty spider. "26th. Went again to-day and found that the whole vast army of gossamers, with the exception of a few stragglers sitting on posts and dry stalks, had vanished. They had taken advantage of the short spell of fine weather we are now having, after an unusually wet and boisterous autumn, to make their escape." Here it seemed to me that a conjunction of circumstances--first, the unfavourable season preventing migration at the proper time, and secondly, the strip of valley out of which the spiders had been driven to the higher ground till they were massed together--only served to make visible and evident that a vast annual migration takes place which we have only to look closely for to discover. One of the most original spiders in Buenos Ayres--mentally original, I mean--is a species of Pholcus; a quiet, inoffensive creature found in houses, and so abundant that they literally swarm where they are not frequently swept away from ceilings and obscure corners. Certainly it seems a poor spider after the dynamical and migratory gossamer; but it happens, curiously enough, that a study of the habits of this dusty domestic creature leads us incidentally into the realms of fable and romance. It is remarkable for the extreme length of its legs, and resembles in colour and general appearance a crane fly, but is double the size of that insect. It has a singular method of protecting itself: when attacked or approached even, gathering its feet together and fastening them to the centre of its web, it swings itself round and round with the velocity of a whirligig, so that it appears like a mist on the web, offering no point for an enemy to strike at. "When a fly is captured the spider approaches it cautiously and spins a web round it, continually narrowing the circle it describes, until the victim is inclosed in a cocoon-like covering. This is a common method with spiders; but the intelligence--for I can call it by no other word--of the Pholcus has supplemented this instinctive procedure with a very curious and unique habit. The Pholcus, in spite of its size, is a weak creature, possessing little venom to despatch its prey with, so that it makes a long and laborious task of killing a fly. A fly when caught in a web is a noisy creature, and it thus happens that when the Daddylonglegs--as Anglo-Argentines have dubbed this species--succeeds in snaring a captive the shrill outrageous cries of the victim are heard for a long time--often for ten or twelve minutes. This noise greatly excites other spiders in the vicinity, and presently they are seen quitting their webs and flurrying to the scene of conflict. Sometimes the captor is driven off, and then the strongest or most daring spider carries away the fly. But where a large colony are allowed to continue for a long time in undisturbed possession of a ceiling, when one has caught a fly he proceeds rapidly to throw a covering of web over it, then, cutting it away, drops it down and lets it hang suspended by a line at a distance of two or three feet from the ceiling. The other spiders arrive on the scene, and after a short investigation retreat to their own webs, and when the coast is clear our spider proceeds to draw up the captive fly, which is by this time exhausted with its struggles." Now, I have repeatedly remarked that all spiders, when the shrill humming of an insect caught in a web is heard near them, become agitated, like the Pholcus, and will, in the same way, quit their own webs and hurry to the point the sound proceeds from. This fact convinced me many years ago that spiders are attracted by the sound of musical instruments, such as violins, concertinas, guitars, &c., simply because the sound produces the same effect on them as the shrill buzzing of a captive fly. I have frequently seen spiders come down walls or from ceilings, attracted by the sound of a guitar, softly played; and by gently touching metal strings, stretched on a piece of wood, I have succeeded in attracting spiders on to the strings, within two or three inches of my fingers; and I always noticed that the spiders seemed to be eagerly searching for something which they evidently expected to find there, moving about in an excited manner and looking very hungry and fierce. I have no doubt that Pelisson's historical spider in the Bastille came down in a mood and with a manner just as ferocious when the prisoner called it with musical sounds to be fed. The spiders I have spoken of up till now are timid, inoffensive creatures, chiefly of the Epeira family; but there are many others exceedingly high-spirited and, like some of the most touchy hymenopteras, always prepared to "greatly quarrel" over matters of little moment. The Mygales, of which we have several species, are not to be treated with contempt. One is extremely abundant on the pampas, the Mygale fusca, a veritable monster, covered with dark brown hair, and called in the vernacular _aranea peluda_--hairy spider. In the hot month of December these spiders take to roaming about on the open plain, and are then everywhere seen travelling in a straight line with a slow even pace. They are very great in attitudes, and when one is approached it immediately throws itself back, like a pugilist preparing for an encounter, and stands up so erect on its four hind feet that the under surface of its body is displayed. Humble-bees are commonly supposed to carry the palm in attitudinizing; and it is wonderful to see the grotesque motions of these irascible insects when their nest is approached, elevating their abdomens and two or three legs at a time, so that they resemble a troupe of acrobats balancing themselves on their heads or hands, and kicking their legs about in the air. And to impress the intruder with the dangerous significance of this display they hum a shrill warning or challenge, and stab at the air with their naked stings, from which limpid drops of venom are seen to exude. These threatening gestures probably have an effect. In the case of the hairy spider, I do not think any creature, however stupid, could mistake its meaning when it stands suddenly up, a figure horribly grotesque; then, dropping down on all eights, charges violently forwards. Their long, shiny black, sickle-shaped falces are dangerous weapons. I knew a native woman who had been bitten on the leg, and who, after fourteen years, still suffered at intervals acute pains in the limb. The king of the spiders on the pampas is, however, not a Mygale, but a Lycosa of extraordinary size, light grey in colour, with a black ring round its middle. It is active and swift, and irritable to such a degree that one can scarcely help thinking that in this species nature has overshot her mark. When a person passes near one--say, within three or four yards of its lurking-place--it starts up and gives chase, and will often follow for a distance of thirty or forty yards. I came once very nearly being bitten by one of these savage creatures Riding at an easy trot over the dry grass, I suddenly observed a spider pursuing me, leaping swiftly along and keeping up with my beast. I aimed a blow with my whip, and the point of the lash struck the ground close to it, when it instantly leaped upon and ran up the lash, and was actually within three or four inches of my hand when I flung the whip from me. The gauchos have a very quaint ballad which tells that the city of Cordova was once invaded by an army of monstrous spiders, and that the townspeople went out with beating drums and flags flying to repel the invasion, and that after firing several volleys they were forced to turn and fly for their lives. I have no doubt that a sudden great increase of the man-chasing spiders, in a year exceptionally favourable to them, suggested this fable to some rhyming satirist of the town. In conclusion of this part of my subject, I will describe a single combat of a very terrible nature I once witnessed between two little spiders belong-ing to the same species. One had a small web against a wall, and of this web the other coveted possession. After vainly trying by a series of strategic movements to drive out the lawful owner, it rushed on to the web, and the two envenomed httle duellists closed in mortal combat. They did nothing so vulgar and natural as to make use of their falces, and never once actually touched each other, but the fight was none the less deadly. Rapidly revolving about, or leaping over, or passing under, each other, each endeavoured to impede or entangle his adversary, and the dexterity with which each avoided the cunningly thrown snare, trying at the same time to entangle its opponent, was wonderful to see. At length, after this equal battle had raged for some time, one of the combatants made some fatal mistake, and for a moment there occurred a break in his motions; instantly the other perceived his advantage, and began leaping backwards and forwards across his struggling adversary with such rapidity as to confuse the sight, producing the appearance of two spiders attacking a third one lying between them. He then changed his tactics, and began revolving round and round his prisoner, and very soon the poor vanquished wretch--the aggressor, let us hope, in the interests of justice--was closely wrapped in a silvery cocoon, which, unlike the cocoon the caterpillar weaves for itself, was also its winding-sheet. In the foregoing pages I have thrown together some of the most salient facts I have noted; but the spider-world still remains to me a wonderland of which I know comparatively nothing. Nor is any very intimate knowledge of spiders to be got from books, though numberless lists of new species are constantly being printed; for they have not yet had, like the social bees and ants, many loving and patient chroniclers of their ways. The Hubens and Lubbocks have been many; the Moggridges few. But even a very slight study of these most versatile and accomplished of nature's children gives rise to some interesting reflections. One fact that strikes the mind very forcibly is the world-wide distribution of groups of species possessing highly developed instincts. One is the zebra-striped Salticus, with its unique strategy--that is to say, unique amongst spiders. It is said that the Australian savage approaches a kangaroo in the open by getting up in sight of its prey and standing perfectly motionless till he is regarded as an inanimate object, and every time the animal's attention wanders advancing a step or two until sufficiently near to hurl his spear. The Salticus approaches a fly in the same manner, till near enough to make its spring. Another is the Trapdoor spider. Another the Dolomedes, that runs over the surface of the water in pursuit of its prey, and dives down to escape from its enemies; and, strangest of all, the Argyroneta, that has its luminous dwelling at the bottom of streams; and just as a mason carries bricks and mortar to its building, so does this spider carry down bubbles of air from the surface to enlarge its mysterious house, in which it lays its eggs and rears its young. Community of descent must be supposed of species having such curious and complex instincts; but how came these feeble creatures, unable to transport themselves over seas and continents like the aerial gossamer, to be so widely distributed, and inhabiting regions with such different conditions? This can only be attributed to the enormous antiquity of the species, and of this antiquity the earliness in which the instinct manifests itself in the young spiders is taken as evidence. A more important matter, the intelligence of spiders, has not yet received the attention it deserves. The question of insect intelligence--naturalists are agreed that insects do possess intelligence--is an extremely difficult one; probably some of our conclusions on this matter will have to be reconsidered. For instance, we regard the Order Hymenoptera as the most intelligent because most of the social insects are included in it; but it has not yet been proved, probably never will be proved, that the social instincts resulted from intelligence which has "lapsed." Whether ants and bees were more intelligent than other insects during the early stages of their organic societies or not, it will hardly be disputed by any naturalist who has observed insects for long that many solitary species display more intelligence in their actions than those that live in communities. The nature of the spider's food and the difficulties in the way of providing for their wants impose on them a life of solitude: hunger, perpetual watchfulness, and the sense of danger have given them a character of mixed ferocity and timidity. But these very conditions, which have made it impossible for them to form societies like some insects and progress to a state of things resembling civilization in men, have served to develop the mind that is in a spider, making of him a very clever barbarian-The spider's only weapon of defence---his falces--are as poor a protection against the assaults of his insect foes as are teeth and finger-nails in man employed against wolves, bears, and tigers. And the spider is here even worse off than man, since his enemies are winged and able to sweep down instantly on him from above; they are also protected with an invulnerable shield, and are armedwith deadly stings. Like man, also, the spider has a soft, unprotected body, while his muscular strength, compared with that of the insects he has to contend with, is almost _nil._ His position in nature then, with relation to his enemies, is like that of man; only the spider has this disadvantage, that he cannot combine with others for protection. That he does protect himself and maintains his place in nature is due, not to special instincts, which are utterly insufficient, but to the intelligence which supplements them. At the same time this superior cunning is closely related with, and probably results indirectly from, the web he is provided with, and which is almost of the nature of an artificial aid. Let us take the imaginary case of a man-like monkey, or of an arboreal man, born with a cord of great length attached to his waist, which could be either dragged after him or carried in a coil. After many accidents, experience would eventually teach him to put it to some use; practice would make him more and more skilful in handling it, and, indirectly, it would be the means of developing his latent mental faculties. He would begin by using it, as the monkey does its prehensile tail, to swing himself from branch to branch, and finally, to escape from an enemy or in pursuit of his prey, he would be able by means of his cord to drop himself with safety from the tallest trees, or fly down the steepest precipices. He would coil up his cord to make a bed to lie on, and also use it for binding branches together when building himself a refuge. In a close fight, he would endeavour to entangle an adversary, and at last he would learn to make a snare with it to capture his prey. To all these, and to a hundred other uses, the spider has put his web. And when we see him spread his beautiful geometric snare, held by lines fixed to widely separated points, while he sits concealed in his web-lined retreat amongst the leaves where every touch on the far-reaching structure is telegraphed to him by the communicating line faithfully as if a nerve had been touched, we must admire the wonderful perfection to which he has attained in the use of his cord. By these means he is able to conquer creatures too swift and strong for him, and make them his prey. When we see him repairing damages, weighting his light fabric in windy weather with pebbles or sticks, as a fisher weights his net, and cutting loose a captive whose great strength threatens the destruction of the web, then we begin to suspect that he has, above his special instinct, a reason that guides, modifies, and in many ways supplements it. It is not, however, only on these great occasions, when the end is sought by unusual means, that spiders show their intelligence; for even these things might be considered by some as merely parts of one great complex instinct; but at all times, in all things, the observer who watches them closely cannot fail to be convinced that they possess a guiding principle which is not mere instinct. What the stick or stone was to primitive man, when he had made the discovery that by holding it in his hand he greatly increased the force of his blow, the possession of a web has been to the spider in developing that spark of intellect which it possesses in common with all animal organisms. CHAPTER XV. THE DEATH-FEIGNING INSTINCT. Most people are familiar with the phenomenon of "death-feigning," commonly seen in coleopterous insects, and in many spiders. This highly curious instinct is also possessed by some vertebrates. In insects it is probably due to temporary paralysis occasioned by sudden concussion, for when beetles alight abruptly, though voluntarily, they assume that appearance of death, which lasts for a few moments. Some species, indeed, are so highly sensitive that the slightest touch, or even a sudden menace, will instantly throw them into this motionless, death-simulating condition. Curiously enough, the same causes which produce this trance in slow-moving species, like those of Scarabseus for example, have a precisely contrary effect on species endowed with great activity. Rapacious beetles, when disturbed, scuttle quickly out of sight, and some water-beetles spin about the surface, in circles or zigzag lines, so rapidly as to confuse the eye. Our common long-legged spiders (Pholcus) when approached draw their feet together in the middle of the web, and spin the body round with such velocity as to resemble a whirligig. Certain mammals and birds also possess the death-simulating instinct, though it is hardly possible to believe that the action springs from the same immediate cause in vertebrates and in insects. In the latter it appears to be a purely physical instinct, the direct result of an extraneous cause, and resembling the motions of a plant. In mammals and birds it is evident that violent emotion, and not the rough handling experienced, is the final cause of the swoon. Passing over venomous snakes, skunks, and a few other species in which the presence of danger excites only anger, fear has a powerful, and in some cases a disabling, effect on animals; and it is this paralyzing effect of fear on which the death-feigning instinct, found only in a few widely-separated species, has probably been built up by the slow cumulative process of natural selection. I have met with some curious instances of the paralyzing effect of fear. I was told by some hunters in an outlying district of the pampas of its effect on a jaguar they started, and which took refuge in a dense clump of dry reeds. Though they could see it, it was impossible to throw the lasso over its head, and, after vainly trying to dislodge it, they at length set fire to the reeds. Still it refused to stir, but lay with head erect, fiercely glaring at them through the flames. Finally it disappeared from sight in the black smoke; and when the fire had burnt itself out, it was found, dead and charred, in the same spot. On the pampas the gauchos frequently take the black-necked swan by frightening it. When the birds are feeding or resting on the grass, two or three men or boys on horseback go quietly to leeward of the flock, and when opposite to it suddenly wheel and charge it at full speed, uttering loud shouts, by which the birds are thrown into such terror that they are incapable of flying, and are quickly despatched. I have also seen gaucho boys catch the Silver-bill (Lichenops perspicillata) by hurling a stick or stone at the bird, then rushing at it, when it sits perfectly still, disabled by fear, and allows itself to be taken. I myself once succeeded in taking a small bird of another species in the same way. Amongst mammals our common fox (Canis azarae), and one of the opossums (Didelphys azarae), are strangely subject to the death-simulating swoon. For it does indeed seem strange that animals so powerful, fierce, and able to inflict such terrible injury with their teeth should also possess this safeguard, apparently more suited to weak inactive creatures that cannot resist or escape from an enemy and to animals very low down in the scale of being. When a fox is caught in a trap or run down by dogs he fights savagely at first, but by-and-by relaxes his efforts, drops on the ground, and apparently yields up the ghost. The deception is so well carried out, that dogs are constantly taken in by it, and no one, not previously acquainted with this clever trickery of nature, but would at once pronounce the creature dead, and worthy of some praise for having perished in so brave a spirit. Now, when in this condition of feigning death, I am quite sure that the animal does not altogether lose consciousness. It is exceedingly difficult to discover any evidence of life in the opossum; but when one withdraws a little way from the feigning fox, and watches him very attentively, a slight opening of the eye may be detected; and, finally, when left to himself, he does not recover and start up like an animal that has been stunned, but slowly and cautiously raises his head first, and only gets up when his foes are at a safe distance. Yet I have seen gauchos, who are very cruel to animals, practise the most barbarous experiments on a captive fox without being able to rouse it into exhibiting any sign of life. This has greatly puzzled me, since, if death-feigning is simply a cunning habit, the animal could not suffer itself to be mutilated without wincing. I can only believe that the fox, though not insensible, as its behaviour on being left to itself appears to prove, yet has its body thrown by extreme terror into that benumbed condition which simulates death, and during which it is unable to feel the tortures practised on it. The swoon sometimes actually takes place before the animal has been touched, and even when the exciting cause is at a considerable distance. I was once riding with a gaucho, when we saw, on the open level ground before us, a fox, not yet fully grown, standing still and watching our approach. All at once it dropped, and when we came up to the spot it was lying stretched out, with eyes closed, and apparently dead. Before passing on my companion, who said it was not the first time he had seen such a thing, lashed it vigorously with his whip for some moments, but without producing the slightest effect. The death-feigning instinct is possessed in a very marked degree by the spotted tinamou or common partridge of the pampas (Nothura maculosa). When captured, after a few violent struggles to escape, it drops its head, gasps two or three times, and to all appearances dies. If, when you have seen this, you release your hold, the eyes open instantly, and, with startling suddenness and a noise of wings, it is up and away, and beyond your reach for ever. Possibly, while your grasp is on the bird it does actually become insensible, though its recovery from that condition is almost instantaneous. Birds when captured do sometimes die in the hand, purely from terror. The tinamou is excessively timid, and sometimes when birds of this species are chased--for gaucho boys frequently run them down on horseback--and when they find no burrows or thickets to escape into, they actually drop down dead on the plain. Probably, when they feign death in their captor's hand, they are in reality very near to death. CHAPTER XVI. HUMMING-BIRDS. Humming-birds are perhaps the very loveliest things in nature, and many celebrated writers have exhausted their descriptive powers in vain efforts to picture them to the imagination. The temptation was certainly great, after describing the rich setting of tropical foliage and flower, to speak at length of the wonderful gem contained within it; but they would in this case have been wise to imitate that modest novel-writer who introduced a blank space on the page where the description of his matchless heroine should have appeared. After all that has been written, the first sight of a living humming-bird, so unlike in its beauty all other beautiful things, comes like a revelation to the mind. To give any true conception of it by means of mere word-painting is not more impossible than it would be to bottle up a supply of the "living sunbeams" themselves, and convey them across the Atlantic to scatter them in a sparkling shower over the face of England. Doubtless many who have never seen them in a state of nature imagine that a tolerably correct idea of their appearance can be gained from Gould's colossal monograph. The pictures there, however, only represent dead humming-birds. A dead robin is, for purposes of bird-portraiture, as good as a live robin; the same may be said of even many brilliant-plumaged species less aerial in their habits than humming-birds. In butterflies the whole beauty is seldom seen until the insect is dead, or, at any rate, captive. It was not when Wallace saw the Ornithoptera croesus flying about, but only when he held it in his hands, and opened its glorious wings, that the sight of its beauty overcame him so powerfully. The special kind of beauty which makes the first sight of a humming-bird a revelation depends on the swift singular motions as much as on the intense gem-like and metallic brilliancy of the plumage. The minute exquisite form, when the bird hovers on misty wings, probing the flowers with its coral spear, the fan-like tail expanded, and poising motionless, exhibits the feathers shot with many hues; and the next moment vanishes, or all but vanishes, then reappears at another flower only to vanish again, and so on successively, showing its splendours not continuously, but like the intermitted flashes of the firefly--this forms a picture of airy grace and loveliness that baffles description. All this glory disappears when the bird is dead, and even when it alights to rest on a bough. Sitting still, it looks like an exceedingly attenuated kingfisher, without the pretty plumage of that bird, but retaining its stiff artificial manner. No artist has been so bold as to attempt to depict the bird as it actually appears, when balanced before a flower the swift motion of the wings obliterates their form, making them seem like a mist encircling the body; yet it is precisely this formless cloud on which the glittering body hangs suspended, which contributes most to give the humming-bird its wonderful sprite-like or extra-natural appearance. How strange, then, to find bird-painters persisting in their efforts to show the humming-bird flying! When they draw it stiff and upright on its perch the picture is honest, if ugly; the more ambitious representation is a delusion and a mockery. Coming to the actual colouring--the changeful tints that glow with such intensity on the scale-like feathers, it is curious to find that Gould seems to have thought that all difficulties here had been successfully overcome. The "new process" he spoke so confidently about might no doubt be used with advantage in reproducing the coarser metallic reflections on a black plumage, such as we see in the corvine birds; but the glittering garment of the humming-bird, like the silvery lace woven by the Epeira, gemmed with dew and touched with rainbow-coloured light, has never been and never can be imitated by art. On this subject one of the latest observers of humming-birds, Mr. Everard im Thurn, in his work on British Guiana, has the following passage:--"Hardly more than one point of colour is in reality ever visible in any one humming-bird at one and the same time, for each point only shows its peculiar and glittering colour when the light falls upon it from a particular direction. A true representation of one of these birds would show it in somewhat sombre colours, except just at the one point which, when the bird is in the position chosen for representation, meets the light at the requisite angle, and that point alone should be shown in full brilliance of colour. A flowery shrub is sometimes seen surrounded by a cloud of humming-birds, all of one species, and each, of course, in a different position. If someone would draw such a scene as that, showing a different detail of colour in each bird, according to its position, then some idea of the actual appearance of the bird might be given to one who had never seen an example." It is hardly to be expected that anyone will carry out the above suggestion, and produce a monograph with pages ten or fifteen feet wide by eighteen feet long, each one showing a cloud of humming-birds of one species flitting about a flowery bush; but even in such a picture as that would be, the birds, suspended on unlovely angular projections instead of "hazy semicircles of indistinctness," and each with an immovable fleck of brightness on the otherwise sombre plumage, would be as unlike living humming-birds as anything in the older monographs. Whether the glittering iridescent tints and singular ornaments for which this family is famous result from the cumulative process of conscious or voluntary sexual selection, as Darwin thought, or are merely the outcome of a superabundant vitality, as Dr. A. R.. Wallace so strongly maintains, is a question which science has not yet answered satisfactorily. The tendency to or habit of varying in the direction of rich colouring and beautiful or fantastic ornament, might, for all we know to the contrary, have descended to humming-birds from some diminutive, curiously-shaped, bright-tinted, flying reptile of arboreal habits that lived in some far-off epoch in the world's history. It is not, at all events, maintained by anyone that _all_ birds sprang originally from one reptilian stock; and the true position of humming-birds in a natural classification has not yet been settled, for no intermediate forms exist connecting them with any other group, To the ordinary mind they appear utterly unlike all other feathered creatures, and as much entitled to stand apart as, for instance, the pigeon and ostrich families. It has been maintained by some writers that they are anatomically related to the swifts, although the differences separating the two families appear so great as almost to stagger belief in this notion. Now, however, the very latest authority on this subject, Dr. Schufeldt, has come to the conclusion that swifts are only greatly modified Passeres, and that the humming-birds should form an order by themselves. Leaving this question, and regarding them simply with the ornithological eye that does not see far below the surface of things, when we have sufficiently admired the unique beauty and marvellous velocity of humming-birds, there is little more to be said about them. They are lovely to the eye--indescribably so; and it is not strange that Gould wrote rapturously of the time when he was at length "permitted to revel in the delight of seeing the humming-bird in a state of nature." The feeling, he wrote, which animated him with regard to these most wonderful works of creation it was impossible to describe, and could only be appreciated by those who have made natural history a study, and who "pursue the investigations of her charming mysteries with ardour and delight." This we can understand; but to what an astonishing degree the feeling was carried in him, when, after remarking that enthusiasm and excitement with regard to most things in life become lessened and eventually deadened by time in most of us, he was able to add, "not so, however, I believe, with those who take up the study of the Family of Humming-birds!" It can only be supposed that he regarded natural history principally as a "science of dead animals--a _necrology_," and collected humming-birds just as others collect Roman coins, birds' eggs, old weapons, or blue china, their zeal in the pursuit and faith in its importance increasing with the growth of their treasures, until they at last come to believe that though all the enthusiasms and excitements which give a zest to the lives of other men fade and perish with time, it is not so with their particular pursuit. The more rational kind of pleasure experienced by the ornithologist in studying habits and disposition no doubt results in a great measure from the fact that the actions of the feathered people have a savour of intelligence in them. Whatever his theory or conviction about the origin of instincts may happen to be, or even if he has no convictions on the subject, it must nevertheless seem plain to him that intelligence is, after all, in most cases, the guiding principle of life, supplementing and modifying habits to bring them into closer harmony with the environment, and enlivening every day with countless little acts which result from judgment and experience, and form no part of the inherited complex instincts. The longer he observes any one species or individual, the more does he find in it to reward his attention; this is not the case, however, with humming-birds, which possess the avian body but do not rank mentally with birds. The pleasure one takes in their beauty soon evaporates, and is succeeded by no fresh interest, so monotonous and mechanical are all their actions; and we accordingly find that those who are most familiar with them from personal observation have very little to say about them. A score of hummingbirds, of as many distinct species, are less to the student of habits than one little brown-plurnaged bird haunting his garden or the rush-bed of a neighbouring stream; and, doubtless, for a reason similar to that which makes a lovely human face uninformed by intellect seem less permanently attractive than many a homelier countenance. He grows tired of seeing the feathered fairies perpetually weaving their aerial ballet-dance about the flowers, and finds it a relief to watch the little finch or wren or flycatcher of shy temper and obscure protective colouring. Perhaps it possesses a graceful form and melodious voice to give it aesthetic value, but even without such accessories he can observe it day by day with increasing interest and pleasure; and it only adds piquancy to the feeling to know that the little bird also watches him with a certain amount of intelligent curiosity and a great deal of suspicion, and that it studiously endeavours to conceal from him all the little secrets its life which he is bent on discovering. It has frequently been remarked that humming birds are more like insects than birds in disposition. Some species, on quitting their perch, perform wide bee-like circles about the tree before shooting away in a straight line. Their aimless attacks on other species approaching or passing near them, even on large birds like hawks and pigeons, is a habit they have in common with many solitary wood-boring bees. They also, like dragon-flies and other insects, attack each other when they come together while feeding; and in this case their action strangely resembles that of a couple of butterflies, as they revolve about each other and rise vertically to a great height in the air. Again, like insects, they are undisturbed at the presence of man while feeding, or even when engaged in building and incubation; and like various solitary bees, wasps, &c., they frequently come close to a person walking or standing, to hover suspended in the air within a few inches of his face; and if then struck at they often, insect-like, return to circle round his head. All other birds, even those which display the least versatility, and in districts where man is seldom seen, show as much caution as curiosity in his presence; they recognize in the upright unfamiliar form a living being and a possible enemy. Mr. Whiteley, who observed humming-birds in Peru, says it is an amusing sight to watch the Lesbia nuna attempting to pass to a distant spot in a straight line during a high wind, which, acting on the long tail feathers, carries it quite away from the point aimed at. Insects presenting a large surface to the wind are always blown from their course in the same way, for even in the most windy districts they never appear to learn to guide themselves; and I have often seen a butterfly endeavouring to reach an isolated flower blown from it a dozen times before it finally succeeded or gave up the contest. Birds when shaping their course, unless young and inexperienced, always make allowance for the force of the wind. Humming-birds often fly into open rooms, impelled apparently by a fearless curiosity, and may then be chased about until they drop exhausted or are beaten down and caught, and, as Gould says, "if then taken into the hand, they almost immediately feed on any sweet, or pump up any liquid that may be offered to them, without betraying either fear or resentment at the previous treatment." Wasps and bees taken in the same way endeavour to sting their captor, as most people know from experience, nor do they cease struggling violently to free themselves; but the dragon-fly is like the humming-bird, and is no sooner caught after much ill-treatment, than it will greedily devour as many flies and mosquitoes as one likes to offer it. Only in beings very low in the scale of nature do we see the instinct of self-preservation in this extremely simple condition, unmixed with reason or feeling, and so transient in its effects. The same insensibility to danger is seen when humming-birds are captured and confined in a room, and when, before a day is over, they will flutter about their captor's face and even take nectar from his lips. Some observers have thought that hummingbirds come nearest to humble-bees in their actions. I do not think so. Mr. Bates writes: "They do not proceed in that methodical manner which bees follow, taking the flowers seriatim, but skip about from one part of a tree to another in the most capricious manner." I have observed humble-bees a great deal, and feel convinced that they arc among the most highly intelligent of the social hymenoptera. Humming-birds, to my mind, have a much closer resemblance to the solitary wood-boring bees and to dragon-flies. It must also be borne in mind that insects have very little time in which to acquire experience, and that a large portion of their life, in the imago state, is taken up with the complex business of reproduction. The Trochilidae, although confined to one continent, promise to exceed all other families--even the cosmopolitan finches and warblers--in number of species. At present over five hundred are known, or as many as all the species of birds in Europe together; and good reasons exist for believing that very many more--not less perhaps than one or two hundred species--yet remain to be discovered. The most prolific region, and where humming-birds are most highly developed, is known to be West Brazil and the eastern slopes of the Bolivian and Peruvian Andes. This is precisely the least known portion of South America; the few naturalists and collectors who have reached it have returned laden with spoil, to tell us of a region surpassing all others in the superabundance and beauty of its bird life. Nothing, however, which can be said concerning these vast unexplored areas of tropical mountain and forest so forcibly impresses us with the idea of the unknown riches contained in them as the story of the Loddigesia mirabilis. This is perhaps the most wonderful humming-bird known, and no one who had not previously seen it figured could possibly form an idea of what it is like from a mere description. An outline sketch of it would probably be taken by most people as a fantastic design representing a bird-form in combination with leaves, in size and shape resembling poplar leaves, but on leaf-stalks of an impossible length, curving and crossing each other so as to form geometrical figures unlike anything in nature. Yet this bird (a single specimen) was obtained in Peru half a century ago, and for upwards of twenty years after its discovery Gould tried to obtain others, offering as much as fifty pounds for one; but no second specimen ever gladdened his eyes, nor was anything more heard of it until Stolzmann refound it in the year 1880. The addition of many new species to the long list would, however, be a matter of small interest, unless fresh facts concerning their habits and structure were at the same time brought to light; but we can scarcely expect that the as yet unknown species will supply any link connecting the Trochilidae with other existing families of birds. The eventual conclusion will perhaps be that this family has come down independently from an exceedingly remote past, and with scarcely any modification. While within certain very narrow limits humming-birds vary more than other families, outside of these limits they appear relatively stationary; and, conversely, other birds exhibit least variability in the one direction in which humming-birds vary excessively. On account of a trivial difference in habit they have sometimes been separated in two sub-families: the Phaethornithinae, found in shady tropical forests; and the Trochilinae, comprising humming-birds which inhabit open sunny places--and to this division they mostly belong. In both of these purely arbitrary groups, however, the aerial habits and manner of feeding poised in the air are identical, although the birds living in shady forests, where flowers are scarce, obtain their food principally from the under surfaces of leaves. In their procreant habits the uniformity is also very great. In all cases the nest is small, deep, cup-shaped, or conical, composed of soft felted materials, and lined inside with vegetable down. The eggs are white, and never exceed two in number. Broadly speaking, they resemble each other as closely in habits as in structure; the greatest differences in habit in the most widely separated genera being no greater than may be found in two wrens or sparrows of the same genus. This persistence of character in humming-birds, both as regards structure and habit, seems the more remarkable when we consider their very wide distribution over a continent so varied in its conditions, and where they range from the lowest levels to the limit of perpetual snow on the Andes, and from the tropics to the wintry Magellanic district; also that a majority of genera inhabit very circumscribed areas--these facts, as Dr. Wallace remarks, clearly pointing to a very high antiquity. It is perhaps a law of nature that when a species (or group) fits itself to a place not previously occupied, and in which it is subject to no opposition from beings of its own class, or where it attains so great a perfection as to be able easily to overcome all opposition, the character eventually loses its original plasticity, or tendency to vary, since improvement in such a case would be superfluous, and becomes, so to speak, crystallized in that form which continues thereafter unaltered. It is, at any rate, clear that while all other birds rub together in the struggle for existence, the humming-bird, owing to its aerial life and peculiar manner of seeking its food, is absolutely untouched by this kind of warfare, and is accordingly as far removed from all competition with other birds as the solitary savage is removed from the struggle of life affecting and modifying men in crowded communities. The lower kind of competition affecting hummingbirds, that with insects and, within the family, of species with species, has probably only served to intensify their unique characteristics, and, perhaps, to lower their intelligence. Not only are they removed from that indirect struggle for existence which acts so powerfully on other families, but they are also, by their habits and the unequalled velocity of their flight, placed out of reach of that direct war waged on all other small birds by the rapacious kinds--birds, mammals, and reptiles. One result of this immunity is that humming-birds are excessively numerous, albeit such slow breeders; for, as we have seen, they only lay two eggs, and not only so, but the second egg is often dropped so long after incubation has begun in the first that only one is really hatched. Yet Belt expressed the opinion that in Nicaragua, where he observed humming-birds, they out-numbered all the other birds together. Considering how abundant birds of all kinds are in that district, and that most of them have a protective colouring and lay several eggs, it would be impossible to accept such a statement unless we believed that humming-birds have, practically, no enemies. Another result of their immunity from persecution is the splendid colouring and strange and beautiful feather ornaments distinguishing them above all other birds; and excessive variation in this direction is due, it seems to me, to the very causes which serve to check variation in all other directions. In their plumage, as Martin long ago wrote, nature has strained at every variety of effect and revelled in an infinitude of modifications. How wonderful their garb is, with colours so varied, so intense, yet seemingly so evanescent!--the glittering mantle of powdered gold; the emerald green that changes to velvet black; ruby reds and luminous scarlets; dull bronze that brightens and burns like polished brass, and pale neutral tints that kindle to rose and lilac-coloured flame. And to the glory of prismatic colouring are added feather decorations, such as the racket-plumes and downy muffs of Spathura, the crest and frills of Lophornis, the sapphire gorget burning on the snow-white breast of Oreotrochilus, the fiery tail of Cometes, and, amongst grotesque forms, the long pointed crest-feathers, representing horns, and flowing-white beard adorning the piebald goat-like face of Oxypogon. Excessive variation in this direction is checked in nearly all other birds by the need of a protective colouring, few kinds so greatly excelling in strength and activity as to be able to maintain their existence without it. Bright feathers constitute a double danger, for not only do they render their possessor conspicuous, but, just as the butterfly chooses the gayest flower, so do hawks deliberately single out from many obscure birds the one with brilliant plumage; but the rapacious kinds do not waste their energies in the vain pursuit of hummingbirds. These are in the position of neutrals, free to range at will amidst the combatants, insulting all alike, and flaunting their splendid colours with impunity. They are nature's favourites, endowed with faculties bordering on the miraculous, and all other kinds, gentle or fierce, ask only to be left alone by them. CHAPTER XVII. THE CRESTED SCREAMER. _(Chalina chavarria.)_ Amongst the feathered notables from all parts of the world found gathered at the Zoological Gardens in London is the Crested Screamer from South America. It is in many respects a very singular species, and its large size, great strength, and majestic demeanour, with the surprising docility and intelligence it displays when domesticated, give it a character amongst birds somewhat like that of the elephant amongst mammals. Briefly and roughly to describe it: in size it is like a swan, in shape like a lapwing, only with a powerful curved gallinaceous beak. It is adorned with a long pointed crest and a black neck-ring, the plumage being otherwise of a pale slaty blue, while the legs and the naked skin about the eyes are bright red. On each wing, in both sexes, there are two formidable spurs; the first one, on the second joint, is an inch and a half long, nearly straight, triangular, and exceedingly sharp; the second spur, on the last joint, being smaller, broad, and curved, and roughly resembling in shape and size a lion's claw. There is another stinking peculiarity. The skin is _emphysematous_--that is, bloated and yielding to pressure. It crackles when touched, and the surface, when the feathers are removed, presents a swollen bubbly appearance; for under the skin there is a layer of air-bubbles extending over the whole body and even down the legs under the horny tesselated skin to the toes, the legs thus having a somewhat massive appearance. And now just a few words about the position of the screamer in systematic zoology. It is placed in the Family Palamedeidae, which contains only three species, but about the Order it belongs to there is much disagreement. It was formerly classed with the rails, and in popular books of Natural History still keeps its place with them. "Now the rail-tribe," says Professor Parker, speaking on this very matter, "has for a long time been burdened (on paper) with a very false army list. Everything alive that has had the misfortune to be possessed of large unwieldy feet has been added to this feeble-minded cowardly group, until it has become a mixed multitude with discordant voices and with manners and customs having no consonance or relation." He takes the screamer from the rail-tribe and classes it with the geese (as also does Professor Huxley), and concludes his study with these words:--"Amongst living birds there is not one possessing characters of higher interest, none that I am acquainted with come nearer, in some important points, to the lizard; and there are parts of the organization which make it very probable that it is one of the nearest living relations of the marvellous _Archaeopteryx_"--an intermediate form between birds and reptiles belonging to the Upper Jurassic period. The screamer's right to dwell with the geese has not been left unchallenged. The late Professor Garrod finds that "from considerations of pterylosis, visceral anatomy, myology, and osteology the screamer cannot be placed along with the Anserine birds." He finds that in some points it resembles the ostrich and rhea, and concludes: "It seems therefore to me that, summing these results, the screamer must have sprung from the primary avian stock as an independent offshoot at much the same time as did most of the other important families." This time, he further tells us, was when there occurred a general break-up of the ancient terrestrial bird-type, when the acquisition of wings brought many intruders into domains already occupied, calling forth a new struggle for existence, and bringing out many special qualities by means of natural selection. With this archaeological question I have little to do, and only quote the above great authorities to show that the screamer appears to be nearly the last descendant of an exceedingly ancient family, with little or no relationship to other existing families, and that its pedigree has been hopelessly lost in the night of an incalculable antiquity. I have only to speak of the bird as a part of the visible world and as it appears to the non-scientific lover of nature; for, curiously enough, while anatomists nave been laboriously seeking for the screamer's affinities in that "biological field which is as wide as the earth and deep as the sea," travellers and ornithologists have told us almost nothing about its strange character and habits. Though dressed with Quaker-like sobriety, and without the elegance of form distinguishing the swan or peacock, this bird yet appeals to the aesthetic feelings in man more than any species I am acquainted with. Voice is one of its strong points, as one might readily infer from the name: nevertheless the name is not an appropriate one, for though the bird certainly does scream, and that louder than the peacock, its scream is only a powerful note of alarm uttered occasionally, while the notes uttered at intervals in the night, or in the day-time, when it soars upwards like the lark of some far-off imaginary epoch in the world's history when all tilings, larks included, were on a gigantic scale, are. properly speaking, singing notes and in quality utterly unlike screams. Sometimes when walking across Regent's Park I bear the resounding cries of the bird confined there attempting to sing; above the concert of cranes, the screams of eagles and macaws, the howling of dogs and wolves and the muffled roar of lions, one can hear it all over the park. But those loud notes only sadden me. Exile and captivity have taken all joyousness from the noble singer, and a moist climate has made him hoarse; the long clear strains are no more, and he hurries through his series of confused shrieks as quickly as possible, as if ashamed of the performance. A lark singing high up in a sunny sky and a lark singing in a small cage hanging against a shady wall in a London street produce very different effects; and the spluttering medley of shrill and harsh sounds from the street singer scarcely seems to proceed from the same kind of bird as that matchless melody filling the blue heavens. There is even a greater difference in the notes of the crested screamer when heard in Regent's Park and when heard on the pampas, where the bird soars upwards until its bulky body disappears from sight, and from that vast elevation pours down a perpetual rain of jubilant sound. _Screamer_ being a misnomer, I prefer to call the bird by its vernacular name of _chajá,_ or _chakar_, a more convenient spelling. With the chakar the sexes are faithful, even in very large flocks the birds all being ranged in couples. When one bird begins to sing its partner immediately joins, but with notes entirely different in quality. Both birds have some short deep notes, the other notes of the female being long powerful notes with a trill in them; but over them sounds the clear piercing voice of the male, ringing forth at the close with great strength and purity. The song produces the effect of harmony, but, comparing it with human singing, it is less like a _duo_ than a _terzetto_ composed of bass, contralto, and soprano. At certain times, in districts favourable to them, the chakars often assemble in immense flocks, thousands of individuals being sometimes seen congregated together, and in these gatherings the birds frequently all sing in concert. They invariably--though without rising--sing at intervals during the night, "counting the hours," as the gauchos say; the first song being at about nine o'clock, the second at midnight, and the third just before dawn, but the hours vary in different districts. I was once travelling with a party of gauchos when, about midnight, it being intensely dark, a couple of chakars broke out singing right ahead of us, thus letting us know that we were approaching a watercourse, where we intended refreshing our horses. We found it nearly dry, and when we rode down to the rill of water meandering over the broad dry bed of the river, a flock of about a thousand chakars set up a perfect roar of alarm notes, all screaming together, with intervals of silence after; then they rose up with a mighty rush of wings. They settled down again a few hundred yards off, and all together burst forth in one of their grand midnight songs, making the plains echo for miles around. There is something strangely impressive in these spontaneous outbursts of a melody so powerful from one of these large flocks, and though accustomed to hear these birds from childhood, I have often been astonished at some new effect produced by a large multitude singing under certain conditions. Travelling alone one summer day, I carne at noon to a lake on the pampas called Kakel--a sheet of water narrow enough for one to see across. Chakars in countless numbers were gathered along its shores, but they were all ranged in well-defined flocks, averaging about five hundred birds in each flock. These flocks seemed to extend all round the lake, and had probably been driven by the drought from all the plains around to this spot. Presently one flock near me began singing, and continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes; when they ceased the next flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on until the notes of the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water--then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the sound approached me travelling round to my side again. The effect was very curious, and I was astonished at the orderly way with which each flock waited its turn to sing, instead of a general outburst taking place after the first flock had given the signal. On another occasion I was still more impressed, for here the largest number of birds I have ever found congregated at one place all sung together. This was on the southern pampas, at a place called Gualicho, where I had ridden for an hour before sunset over a marshy plain where there was still much standing water in the rushy pools, though it was at the height of the dry season. This whole plain was covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered about in pairs and small groups. In this desolate spot I found a small rancho inhabited by a gaucho and his family, and I spent the night with them. The birds were all about the house, apparently as tame as the domestic fowls, and when I went out to look for a spot for my horse to feed on, they would not fly away from me, but merely moved, a few steps out of my path About nine o'clock we were eating supper in the rancho when suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth into a tremendous evening song. It is impossible to describe the effect of this mighty rush of sound; but let the reader try to imagine half-a-million voices, each far more powerful than that one which makes itself heard all over Regent's Park, bursting forth on the silent atmosphere of that dark lonely plain. One peculiarity was that in this mighty noise, which sounded louder than the sea thundering on a rocky coast, I seemed to be able to distinguish hundreds, even thousands, of individual voices. Forgetting my supper, I sat motionless and overcome with astonishment, while the air, and even the frail rancho, seemed to be trembling in that tempest of sound. When it ceased my host remarked with a smile, "We are accustomed to this, señor--every evening we have this concert." It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to hear. But the chakar country is just now in a transitional state, and the precise conditions which made it possible for birds so large in size to form such immense congregations are rapidly passing away. In desert places, the bird subsists chiefly on leaves and seeds of aquatic plants; but when the vast level area of the pampas was settled by man, the ancient stiff grass-vegetation gave place to the soft clovers and grasses of Europe, and to this new food the birds took very kindly. Other circumstances also favoured their increase. They were never persecuted, for the natives do not eat them, though they are really very good--the flesh being something like wild goose in flavour. A _higher_ civilization is changing all this: the country is becoming rapidly overrun with emigrants, especially by Italians, the pitiless enemies of all bird-life. The chakars, like the skylark, love to soar upwards when singing, and at such times when they have risen till their dark bulky bodies appear like floating specks on the blue sky, or until they disappear from sight altogether, the notes become wonderfully etherealized by distance to a soft silvery sound, and it is then very delightful to listen to them. It seems strange that so ponderous a fowl with only six feet and a half spread of wings should possess a power of soaring equal to that of vultures and eagles. Even the vulture with its marvellous wing power soars chiefly from necessity, and when its crop is full finds no pleasure in "scaling the heavens by invisible stairs." The chakar leaves its grass-plot after feeding and soars purely for recreation, taking so much pleasure in its aerial exercises that in bright warm weather, in winter and spring, it spends a great part of the day in the upper regions of the air. On the earth its air is grave and its motions measured and majestic, and it rises with immense labour, the wings producing a sound like a high wind. But as the bird mounts higher, sweeping round as it ascends, just as vultures and eagles do, it gradually appears to become more buoyant, describing each succeeding circle with increasing grace. I can only account for this magnificent flight, beginning so laboriously, by supposing that the bubble space under the skin becomes inflated with an air lighter than atmospheric air, enabling a body so heavy with wings disproportionately short to float with such ease and evident enjoyment at the vast heights to which the bird ascends. The heavenward flight of a large bird is always a magnificent spectacle; that of the chakar is peculiarly fascinating on account of the resounding notes it sings while soaring, and in which the bird seems to exult in its sublime power and freedom. I was once very much surprised at the behaviour of a couple of chakars during a thunderstorm. On a still sultry day in summer I was standing watching masses of black cloud coming rapidly over the sky, while a hundred yards from me stood the two birds also apparently watching the approaching storm with interest. Presently the edge of the cloud touched the sun, and a twilight gloom fell on the earth. The very moment the sun disappeared the birds rose up and soon began singing their long' resounding notes, though it was loudly thundering at the time, while vivid flashes of lightning lit the black cloud overhead at short intervals. I watched their flight and listened to their notes, till suddenly as they made a wide sweep upwards they disappeared in the cloud, and at the same moment their voices became muffled, and seemed to come from an immense distance. The cloud continued emitting sharp flashes of lightning, but the birds never reappeared, and after six or seven minutes once more their notes sounded loud and clear above the muttering thunder. I suppose they had passed through the cloud into the clear atmosphere above it, but I was extremely surprised at their fearlessness; for as a rule when soaring birds see a storm coming they get out of its way, flying before it or stooping to the earth to seek shelter of some kind, for most living things appear to have a wholesome dread of thunder and lightning. When taken young the chakar becomes very tame and attached to man, showing no inclination to go back to a wild life. There was one kept at an estancia called Mangrullos, on the western frontier of Buenos Ayres, and the people of the house gave me a very curious account of it. The bird was a male, and had been reared by a soldier's wife at a frontier outpost called La Esperanza, about twenty-five miles from Mangrullos. Four years before I saw the bird the Indians had invaded the frontier, destroying the Esperanza settlement and all the estancias for some leagues around. For some weeks after the invasion the chakar wandered about the country, visiting all the ruined estancias, apparently in quest of human beings, and on arriving at Mangrullos, which had not been burnt and was still inhabited, it settled down at ones and never afterwards showed any disposition to go away. It was extremely tame, associating by day with the poultry, and going to roost with them at night OH a high perch, probably for the sake of companionship, for in a wild state the bird roosts on the ground. It was friendly towards all the members of the household except one, a peon, and against this person from the first the bird always displayed the greatest antipathy, threatening him with its wings, puffing itself out, and hissing like an angry goose. The man had a swarthy, beardless face, and it was conjectured that the chakar associated him in its mind with the savages who had destroyed its early home. Close to the house there was a lagoon, never dry, which was frequently visited by flocks of wild chakars. Whenever a flock appeared the tame bird would go out to join them; and though the chakars are mild-tempered birds and very rarely quarrel, albeit so well provided with formidable weapons, they invariably attacked the visitor with great fury, chasing him back to the house, and not ceasing their persecutions till the poultry-yard was reached. They appeared to regard this tame bird that dwelt with man as a kind of renegade, and hated him accordingly. Before he had been long at the estancia it began to be noticed that he followed the broods of young chickens about very assiduously, apparently taking great interest in their welfare, and even trying to entice them to follow him. A few newly-hatched chickens were at length offered to him as an experiment, and he immediately took charge of them with every token of satisfaction, conducting them about in search of food and imitating all the actions of a hen. Finding him so good a nurse, large broods were given to him, and the more the foster-chickens were the better he seemed pleased. It was very curious to see this big bird with thirty or forty little animated balls of yellow cotton following him about, while he moved majestically along, setting down his feet with the greatest care not to tread on them, and swelling himself up with jealous anger at the approach of a cat or dog. The intelligence, docility, and attachment to man displayed by the chakar in a domestic state, with perhaps other latent aptitudes only waiting to be developed by artificial selection, seem to make this species one peculiarly suited for man's protection, without which it must inevitably perish. It is sad to reflect that all our domestic animals have descended to us from those ancient times which we are accustomed to regard as dark or barbarous, while the effect of our modern so-called humane civilization has been purely destructive to animal life. Not one type do we rescue from the carnage going on at an ever-increasing rate over all the globe. To Australia and America, North and South, we look in vain for new domestic species, while even from Africa, with its numerous fine mammalian forms, and where England has been the conquering colonizing power for nearly a century, we take nothing. Even the sterling qualities of the elephant, the unique beauty of the zebra, appeal to us in vain. We are only teaching the tribes of that vast continent to exterminate a hundred noble species they would not tame. With grief and shame, even with dismay, we call to mind that our country is now a stupendous manufactory of destructive engines, which we are rapidly placing in the hands of all the savage and semi-savage peoples of the earth, thus ensuring the speedy destruction of all the finest types in the animal kingdom. CHAPTER XVIII. THE WOODHEWER FAMILY. _(Dendrocolaptidae.)_ The South American Tree-creepers, or Woodhewers, as they are sometimes called, although confined exclusively to one continent, their range extending from Southern Mexico to the Magellanic islands, form one of the largest families of the order Passeres; no fewer than about two hundred and ninety species (referable to about forty-six genera) having been already described. As they are mostly small, inconspicuous, thicket-frequenting birds, shy and fond of concealment to excess, it is only reasonable to suppose that our list of this family is more incomplete than of any other family of birds known. Thus, in the southern Plata and north Pata-gonian districts, supposed to be exhausted, where my observations have been made, and where, owing to the open nature of the country, birds are more easily remarked than in the forests and marshes of the tropical region, I have made notes on the habits of five species, of which I did not preserve specimens, and which, as far as I know, have never been described and named. Probably long before the whole of South America has been "exhausted," there will be not less than four to five hundred Dendrocolaptine species known. And yet with the exception of that dry husk of knowledge, concerning size, form and colouration, which classifiers and cataloguers obtain from specimens, very little indeed--scarcely anything, in fact--is known about the Tree-creepers; and it would not be too much to say that there are many comparatively obscure and uninteresting species in Europe, any one of which has a larger literature than the entire Tree-creeper family. No separate work about these birds has seen the light, even in these days of monographs; but the reason of this comparative neglect is not far to seek. In the absence of any knowledge, except of the most fragmentary kind, of the life-habits of exotic species, the monograph-makers of the Old World naturally take up only the most important groups--i.e. the groups which most readily attract the traveller's eye with their gay conspicuous colouring, and which have acquired a wide celebrity. We thus have a succession of splendid and expensive works dealing separately with such groups as woodpeckers, trogons, humming-birds, tanagers, king-fishers, and birds of paradise; for with these, even if there be nothing to record beyond the usual dreary details and technicalities concerning geographical distribution, variations in size and markings of different species, &c., the little interest of the letter-press is compensated for in the accompanying plates, which are now produced on a scale of magnitude, and with so great a degree of perfection, as regards brilliant colouring, spirited attitudes and general fidelity to nature, that leaves little further improvement in this direction to be looked for. The Tree-creepers, being without the inferior charm of bright colour, offer no attraction to the bird-painter, whose share in the work of the pictorial monograph is, of course, all-important. Yet even the very slight knowledge we possess of this family is enough to show that in many respects it is one richly endowed, possessing characters of greater interest to the student of the instincts and mental faculties of birds, than any of |the gaily-tinted families I have mentioned. There is, in the Dendrocolaptidae, a splendid harvest for future observers of the habits of South American birds: some faint idea of its richness may perhaps be gathered from the small collection of the most salient facts known to us about them I have brought together and put in order in this place. And I am here departing a little from the plan usually observed in this book, which is chiefly occupied with matters of personal knowledge, seasoned with a little speculation; but in this case I have thought it best to supplement my own observations with those of others [Footnote: Azara; D'Orbigny; Darwin; Bridges; Frazer; Leotaud; Gaumer; Wallace; Bates; Cunningham; Stolzmann; Jelski; Durnford; Gibson; Burrows; Doering; White, &c.] who have collected and observed birds in South America, so as to give as comprehensive a survey of the family as I could. It is strange to find a Passerine family, numerous as the Tree-creepers, uniformly of one colour, or nearly so; for, with few exceptions, these birds have a brown plumage, without a particle of bright colour. But although they possess no brilliant or metallic tints, in some species, as we shall see, there are tints approaching to brightness. Notwithstanding this family likeness in colour, any person, not an ornithologist, looking at a collection of specimens comprising many genera, would hear with surprise and almost incredulity that they all belonged to one family, so great is the diversity exhibited in their structure. In size they vary from species smaller than the golden-crested wren to others larger than the woodcock; but the differences in size are as nothing compared with those shown in the form of the beak. Between the minute, straight, conical, tit-like beaks of the Laptasthenura--a tit in appearance and habits--and the extravagantly long, sword-shaped bill of Nasica, or the excessively attenuated, sickle-shaped organ in Xiphorynchus, the divergence is amazing, compared with what is found in other families; while between these two extremes there is a heterogeneous assemblage of birds with beaks like creepers, nuthatches, finches, tyrant-birds, woodpeckers, crows, and even curlews and ibises. In legs, feet and tails, there are corresponding differences. There are tails of all lengths and all forms; soft and stiff, square, acuminated, broad and fan-like, narrow and spine-like, and many as in the woodpeckers, and used as in that bird to support the body in climbing. An extremely curious modification is found in Sittosoma: the tail-feathers in this genus are long and graduated, and the shafts, projecting beyond the webs at the ends, curve downwards and form stiff hooks. Concerning the habits of these birds, it has only been reported that they climb on the trunks of trees: probably they are able to run vertically up or down with equal facility, and even to suspend themselves by their feather-hooks when engaged in dislodging insects. Another curious variation is found in Sylviothorhynchus, a small wren-like bird and the only member known of the genus, with a tail resembling that of the lyre-bird, the extravagantly long feathers being so narrow as to appear almost like shafts destitute of webs. This tail appears to be purely ornamental. This extreme variety in structure indicates a corresponding diversity in habits; and, assuming it to be a true doctrine that habits vary first and structure afterwards, anyone might infer from a study of their forms alone that these birds possess a singular plasticity, or tendency to vary, in their habits--or, in other words, that they are exceptionally intelligent; and that such a conclusion would be right I believe a study of their habits will serve to show. The same species is often found to differ in its manner of life in different localities. Some species of Xenops and Magarornis, like woodpeckers, climb vertically on tree-trunks in search of insect prey, but also, like tits, explore the smaller twigs and foliage at the extremity of the branches; so that the whole tree, from its root to its topmost foliage, is hunted over by them. The Sclerurus, although an inhabitant of the darkest forest, and provided with sharply-curved claws, never seeks its food on trees, but exclusively on the ground, among the decaying fallen leaves; but, strangely enough, when alarmed it flies to the trunk of the nearest tree, to which it clings in a vertical position, and, remaining silent and motionless, escapes observation by means of its dark protective colour. The Drymornis, a large bird, with feet and tail like a woodpecker, climbs on tree-trunks to seek its food; but also possesses the widely-different habit of resorting to the open plain, especially after a shower, to feed on larvae and earthworms, extracting them from a depth of three or four inches beneath the surface with its immense curved probing beak. Again, when we consider a large number of species of different groups, we find that there is not with the Tree-creepers, as with most families, any special habit or manner of life linking them together; but that, on the contrary, different genera, and, very frequently, different species belonging to one genus, possess habits peculiarly their own. In other families, even where the divergence is greatest, what may be taken as the original or ancestral habit is seldom or never quite obsolete in any of the members. This we see, for instance, in the woodpeckers, some of which have acquired the habit of seeking their food exclusively on the ground in open places, and even of nesting in the banks of streams. Yet all these wanderers, even those which have been structurally modified in accordance with their altered way of life, retain the primitive habit of clinging vertically to the trunks of trees, although the habit has lost its use. With the tyrant birds--a family showing an extraordinary amount of variation--it is the same; for the most divergent kinds are frequently seen reverting to the family habit of perching on an elevation, from which to make forays after passing insects, returning after each capture to the same stand. The thrushes, ranging all over the globe, afford another striking example. Without speaking of their nesting habits, their relationship appears in their love of fruit, in their gait, flight, statuesque attitudes, and abrupt motions. With the numerous Dendrocolaptine groups, so widely separated and apparently unrelated, it would be difficult indeed to say which, of their most striking habits is the ancestral one. Many of the smaller species live in trees or bushes, and in their habits resemble tits, warblers, wrens, and other kinds that subsist on small caterpillars, spiders, &c., gleaned from the leaves and smaller twigs. The Anumbius nests on trees, but feeds exclusively on the ground in open places; while other ground-feeders seek their food among dead leaves in dense gloomy forests. Coryphistera resembles the lark and pipit in its habits; Cinclodes, the wagtail; Geobates a Saxicola; Limnornis lives in reed beds growing in the water; Henicornis in reed beds growing out of the water; and many other ground species exist concealed in the grass on dry plains; Homorus seeks its food by digging in the loose soil and dead leaves about the roots of trees; while Geo-sitta, Furnarius, and Upercerthia obtain a livelihood chiefly by probing in the soil. It would not be possible within the present limits to mention in detail all the different modes of life of those species or groups which do not possess the tree-creeping habit; after them comes a long array of genera in which this habit is ingrained, and in which the greatly modified feet and claws are suited to a climbing existence. As these genera comprise the largest half of the family, also the largest birds in it, we might expect to find in the tree-creeping the parental habit of the Dendrocolaptidae, and that from these tropical forest groups have sprung the widely-diverging thicket, ground, marsh, sea-beach, and rock-frequenting groups. It happens, however, that these birds resemble each other only in their climbing feet; in the form of their beaks they are as wide apart as are nuthatches, woodpeckers, crows, and curlews. They also differ markedly in the manner of seeking their food. Some dig like woodpeckers in decayed wood; others probe only in soft rotten wood; while the humming-bird-billed Xiphorhynchus, with a beak too long and slender for probing, explores the interior of deep holes in the trunks to draw out nocturnal insects, spiders, and centipedes from their concealment. Xiphoco-laptes uses its sword-like beak as a lever, thrusting it under and forcing up the loose bark; while Dendrornis, with its stout corvine beak, tears the bark off. In the nesting habits the diversity is greatest. Some ground species excavate in the earth like kingfishers, only with greater skill, making cylindrical burrows often four to five feet deep, and terminating in a round chamber. Others build a massive oven-shaped structure of clay on a branch or other elevated site. Many of those that creep on trees nest in holes in the wood. The marsh-frequenting kinds attach spherical or oval domed nests to the reeds; and in some cases woven grass and clay are so ingeniously combined that the structure, while light as a basket, is perfectly impervious to the wet and practically indestructible. The most curious nests, however, are the large stick structures on trees and bushes, in the building and repairing of which the birds are in many cases employed more or less constantly all the year round. These stick nests vary greatly in form, size, and in other respects. Some have a spiral passage-way leading from the entrance to the nest cavity, and the cavity is in many cases only large enough to accommodate the bird; but in the gigantic structure of Homorus gutturalis it is so large that, if the upper half of the nest or dome were removed, a condor could comfortably hatch her eggs and rear her young in it. This nest is spherical. The allied Homorus lophotis builds a nest equally large, but with a small cavity for the eggs inside, and outwardly resembling a gigantic powder-flask, lying horizontally among the lower branches of a spreading tree. Pracellodomtis sibila-trix, a bird in size like the English house sparrow, also makes a huge nest, and places it on the twigs at the terminal end of a horizontal branch from twelve to fifteen feet above the ground; but when finished, the weight of the structure bears down the branch-end to within one or two feet of the surface. Mr. Barrows, who describes this nest, says: "When other branches of the same tree are similarly loaded, and other trees close at hand bear the same kind of fruit, the result is very picturesque." Synallaxis phryganophila makes a stick nest about a foot in depth, and from the top a tubular passage, formed of slender twigs interlaced, runs down the entire length of the nest, like a rain-pipe on the wall of a house, and then becoming external slopes upward, ending at a distance of two to three feet from the nest. Throughout South America there are several varieties of these fruit-and-stem or watering-pot shaped nests; they are not, however, all built by birds of one genus, while in the genus Synallaxis many species have no tubular passageways attached to their nests. One species--erythro thorax--in Yucatan, makes so large a nest of sticks, that the natives do not believe that so small a bird can be the builder. They say that when the _tzapatan_ begins to sing, all the birds in the forest repair to it, each one carrying a stick to add to the structure; only one, a tyrant-bird, brings two sticks, one for itself and one for the _urubú_ or vulture, that bird being considered too large, heavy, and ignorant of architecture to assist personally in the work. In the southern part of South America, where scattered thorn trees grow on a dry soil, these big nests are most abundant. "There are plains," Mr. Barrows writes, "within two miles of the centre of this town (Concepcion, Argentine Republic), where I have stood and counted, from one point within a radius of twenty rods, over two hundred of these curious nests, varying in size from that of a small pumpkin to more than the volume of a barrel. Often a single tree will contain half a dozen nests or more; and, not unfrequently, the nests of several different species are seen crowding each other out of shape on the same bush or tree." It would be a mistake to think that the widely different nesting habits I have mentioned are found in different genera. I have just spoken of the big stick nests, with or without passage-ways, of the Synallaxes, yet the nest of one member of this group is simply a small straight tube of woven grass, the aperture only large enough to admit the finger, and open at both ends, so that the bird can pass in and out without turning round. Another species scoops a circular hollow in the soil, and builds over it a dome of fine woven grass. It should be mentioned that the nesting habits of only about fifteen out of the sixty-five species comprised in this genus are known to us. In the genus Furnarius the oven-shaped clay structure is known to be made by three species; a fourth builds a nest of sticks in a tree; a fifth burrows in the side of a bank, like a kingfisher. The explanation of the most striking features of the Dendrocolaptidae, their monotonous brown plumage, diversity of structure, versatile habits, and the marvellous development of the nest-making instinct which they exhibit is to be found, it appears to me, in the fact that they are the most defenceless of birds. They are timid, unresisting creatures, without strength or weapons; their movements arc less quick and vigorous than those of other kinds, and their flight is exceedingly feeble. The arboreal species flit at intervals from one tree to another; those that frequent thickets refuse to leave their chosen shelter; while those inhabiting grassy plains or marshes study concealment, and, when forced to rise, flutter away just above the surface, like flying-fish frightened from the water, and, when they have gone thirty or forty yards, dip into the grass or reeds again. Their life is thus one of perpetual danger in a far greater degree than with other passerine families, such as warblers, tyrants, finches, thrushes, &c.; while an exclusively insect diet, laboriously extracted from secret places, and inability to change their climate, contribute to make their existence a hard one. It has been with these birds as with human beings, bred in "misfortune's school," and subjected to keen competition. One of their most striking characteristics is a methodical, plodding, almost painful diligence of manner while seeking their food, so that when viewed side by side with other species, rejoicing in a gayer plumage and stronger flight, they seem like sober labourers that never rest among holiday people bent only on enjoyment. That they are able not only to maintain their existence, but to rise to the position of a dominant family, is due to an intelligence and adaptiveness exceeding that of other kinds, and which has been strengthened, and perhaps directly results from the hard conditions of their life. How great their adaptiveness and variability must be when we find that every portion of the South American continent is occupied by them; for there is really no climate, and no kind of soil or vegetation, which does not possess its appropriate species, modified in colour, form, and habits to suit the surrounding conditions. In the tropical region, so rich in bird life of all kinds, in forest, marsh, and savanna, they are everywhere abundant--food is plentiful there; but when we go to higher elevations avd cold sterile deserts, where their companion families of the tropics dwindle away and disappear, the creepers are still present, for they are evidently able to exist where other kinds would starve. On the stony plateaus of the Andes, and on the most barren spots in Patagonia, where no other bird is seen, there are small species of Synallaxis, which, in their obscure colour and motions on the ground, resemble mice rather than birds; indeed, the Quichua name for one of these Synallaxes is _ukatchtuka,_ or mouse-bird. How different is the life habit here from what we see in the tropical groups--the large birds with immense beaks, that run vertically on the trunks of the great forest trees! At the extreme southern extremity of the South American continent we find several species of Cin-clodes, seeking a subsistence like sandpipers on the beach; they also fly out to sea, and run about on the floating kelp, exploring the fronds for the small marine animals on which they live. In the dreary forests of Tierra del Fuego another creeper, Uxyurus, is by far the commonest bird. "Whether high up or low down, in the most gloomy, wet, and scarcely penetrable ravines," says Darwin, "this little bird is to be met with;" and Dr. Cunningham also relates that in these wintry, savage woods he was always attended in his walks by parties of these little creepers, which assembled to follow him out of curiosity. To birds placed at so great a disadvantage, by a feeble flight and other adverse circumstances, in the race of life bright colours would certainly prove fatal. It is true that brown is not in itself a protective colour, and the clear, almost silky browns and bright chestnut tints in several species are certainly not protective; but these species are sufficiently protected in other ways, and can afford to be without a strictly adaptive colour, so long as they are not conspicuous. In a majority of cases, however, the colour is undoubtedly protective, the brown hue being of a shade that assimilates very closely to the surroundings. There are pale yellowish browns, lined and mottled, in species living amidst a sere, scanty vegetation; earthy browns, in those frequenting open sterile or stony places; while the species that creep on trees in forests are dark brown in colour, and in many cases the feathers are mottled in such a manner as to make them curiously resemble the bark of a tree. The genera Lochmias and Sclerurus are the darkest, the plumage in these birds being nearly or quite black, washed or tinged with rhubarb yellow. Their black plumage would render them conspicuous in the sunshine, but they pass their lives in dense tropical forests, where the sun at noon sheds only a gloomy twilight. If "colour is ever tending to increase and to appear where it is absent," as Dr. Wallace believes, then we ought to find it varying in the direction of greater brightness in some species in a family so numerous and variable as the Dendrocolaptidae, however feeble and in need of a protective colouring these birds may be in a majority of pases. And this in effect we do find. In many of the dark-plumaged species that live in perpetual shade some parts are a very bright chestnut; while in a few that live in such close concealment as to be almost independent of protective colouring, the lower plumage has become pure white. A large number of species have a bright or nearly bright guiar spot. This is most remarkable in Synallaxis phryganophila, the chin being sulphur-yellow, beneath which is a spot of velvet-black, and on either side a white patch, the throat thus having three strongly contrasted colours, arranged in four divisions. The presence of this bright throat spot in so many species cannot very well be attributed to voluntary sexual selection, although believers in that theory are of course at liberty to imagine that when engaged in courtship, the male bird, or rather male and female both, as both sexes possess the spot, hold up their heads vertically to exhibit it. Perhaps it would be safer to look on it as a mere casual variation, which, like the exquisitely pencilled feathers and delicate tints on the concealed sides and under surfaces of the wings of many species possessing outwardly an obscure protective colouring, is neither injurious nor beneficial in any way, either to the birds or to the theory. It is more than probable, however, that in such small feeble-winged, persecuted birds, this spot of colour would prove highly dangerous on any conspicuous part of the body. In some of the more vigorous, active species, we can see a tendency towards a brighter colouring on large, exposed surfaces. In Auto-malus the tail is bright satiny rufous; in Pseudo-colaptes the entire under surface is rufous of a peculiar vivid tint, verging on orange or red; in Magarornis the bosom is black, and beautifully ornamented with small leaf-shaped spots of a delicate straw-colour. There are several other very pretty birds in this homely family; but the finest of all is Thripodectes flammulatus, the whole body being tortoise-shell colour, the wings and tail bright chesnut. The powerful tanager-like beak of this species seems also to show that it has diverged from its timid shade-loving congeners in another direction by becoming a seed and fruit eater. Probably the sober and generally protective colouring of the tree-creepers, even with the variability and adaptiveness displayed in their habits superadded, would be insufficient to preserve such feeble birds in the struggle of life without the further advantage derived from their wonderful nests. It has been said of domed nests that they are a danger rather than a protection, owing to their large size, which makes it easy for carnivorous species that prey on eggs and young birds to find them; while small open nests are usually well concealed. This may be the case with covered nests made of soft materials, loosely put together; but it cannot be said of the solid structure the tree-creeper bnilds, and which, as often as not, the bird erects in the most conspicuous place it can find, as if, writes Azara, it desired all the world to admire its work. The annual destruction of adult birds is very great--more than double that, I believe, which takes place in other passerine families. Their eggs and young are, however, practically safe in their great elaborate nests or deep burrows, and, as a rule, they lay more eggs than other kinds, the full complement being seldom less than five in the species I am acquainted with, while some lay as many as nine. Their nests are also made so as to keep out a greater pest than their carnivorous or egg-devouring enemies--namely, the parasitical starlings (Molo-thrus), which are found throughout South America, and are excessively abundant and destructive to birds' nests in some districts. In most cases, in the big, strong-domed nest or deep burrow, all the eggs are hatched and all the young reared, the thinning, out process commencing only after the brood has been led forth into a world beset with perils. With other families, on the contrary, the greatest amount of destruction falls on the eggs or fledglings. I have frequently kept a dozen or twenty pairs of different species--warblers, finches, tyrants, starlings, &c.--under observation during the breeding season, and have found that in some cases no young-were reared at all; in other cases one or two young; while, as often as not, the young actually reared were only parasitical starlings after all. I have still to speak of the voice of the tree-creepers, an important point in the study of these birds; for, though not accounted singers, some species emit remarkable sounds; moreover, language in birds is closely related to the social instinct. They seem to be rather solitary than gregarious; and this seems only natural in birds so timid, weak-winged, and hard pressed. It would also be natural to conclude from what has been said concerning their habits that they are comparatively silent; for, as a rule, vigorous social birds are loquacious and loud-voiced, while shy solitary kinds preservo silence, except in the love season. Nevertheless the creepers are loquacious and have loud resonant voices; this fact, however, does not really contradict a well-known principle, for the birds possess the social disposition in an eminent degree, only the social habit is kept down in them by the conditions of a life which makes solitude necessary. Thus, a large proportion of species are found to pair for life; and the only reasonable explanation of this habit in birds--one which is not very common in the mammalia--is that such species possess the social temper or feeling, and live in pairs only because they cannot afford to live in flocks. Strictly gregarious species pair only for the breeding season. In the creepers the attachment between the birds thus mated for life is very great, and, as Azara truly says of Anumbius, so fond of each other's society are these birds, that when one incubates the other sits at the entrance to the nest, and when one carries food to its young the other accompanies it, even if it has found nothing to cany. In these species that live in pairs, when the two birds are separated they are perpetually calling to each other, showing how impatient of solitude they are; while even from the more solitary kind, a high-pitched call-note is constantly heard in the woods, for these birds, debarred from associating together, satisfy their instinct by conversing with one another over long distances. The foregoing remarks apply to the Dendrocolap-tidae throughout the temperate countries of South America--the birds inhabiting extensive grassy plains and marshes, and districts with a scanty or scattered tree and bush vegetation. In the forest areas of the hotter regions it is different; there the birds form large gatherings or "wandering bands," composed of all the different species found in each district, associated with birds of other families--wood-peckers, tyrant-birds, bush shrikes, and many others. These miscellaneous gatherings are not of rare occurrence, but out of the breeding season are formed daily, the birds beginning to assemble at about nine or ten o'clock in the morning, their number increasing through the day until it reaches its maximum between two and four o'clock in the afternoon, after which it begins to diminish, each bird going off to its customary shelter or dwelling-place. Mr. Bates, who first described these wandering bands, says that he could always find the particular band belonging to a district any day he wished, for when he failed to meet with it in one part of the forest he would try other paths, until he eventually found it. The great Amazonian forests, he tells us, appear strangely silent and devoid of bird life, and it is possible to ramble about for whole days without seeing or hearing birds. But now and then the surrounding trees and bushes appear suddenly swarming with them. "The bustling crowd loses no time, and, always moving in concert, each bird is occupied on its own account in searching bark, or leaf, or twig. In a few moments the host is gone, and the forest path remains deserted and silent as before." Stolzmann, who observed them in Peru, says that the sound caused by the busy crowd searching through the foliage, and the falling of dead leaves and twigs, resembles that produced by a shower of rain. The Indians of the Amazons, Mr. Bates writes, have a curious belief to explain these bird armies; they say that the Papa-uira, supposed to be a small grey bird, fascinates all the others, and leads them on a weary perpetual dance through the forest. It seems very wonderful that birds, at other times solitary, should thus combine daily in large numbers, including in their bands scores of widely different species, and in size ranging from those no larger than a wren to others as big as a magpie. It is certainly very advantageous to them. As Belt remarks, they play into each other's hands; for while the larger creepers explore the trunks of big trees, others run over the branches and cling to the lesser twigs, so that every tree in their route, from its roots to the topmost foliage, is thoroughly examined, and every spider and caterpillar taken, while the winged insects, driven from their lurking-places, are seized where they settle, or caught flying by the tyrant birds. I have observed the wandering bands only in Patagonia, where they are on a very small scale compared with those of the tropical forests. In the Patagonia thickets the small tit-like creeper, Laptas-thenura, is the prime mover; and after a considerable number of these have gathered, creepers of other species and genera unite with them, and finally the band, as it moves through the thickets, draws to itself other kinds--flycatchers, finches, &c.--many of the birds running or hopping on the ground to search for insects in the loose soil or under dead leaves, while others explore the thorny bushes. My observations of these small bands lead me to believe that everywhere in South America the Dendrocolaptidae are the first in combining to act in concert, and that the birds of other families follow their march and associate with them, knowing from experience that a rich harvest may be thus reaped. In the same way birds of various kinds follow the movements of a column of hunting ants, to catch the insects flying up from the earth to escape from their enemies; swallows also learn to keep company with the traveller on horseback, and, crossing and recrossing just before the hoofs, they catch the small twilight moths driven up from the grass. To return to the subject of voice. The tree-creepers do not possess melodious, or at any rate mellow notes, although in so numerous a family there is great variety of tone, ranging from a small reedy voice like the faint stridulation of a grasshopper, to the resounding, laughter-like, screaming concerts of Homorus, which may be heard distinctly two miles away. As a rule, the notes are loud ringing calls; and in many species the cry, rapidly reiterated, resembles a peal of laughter. With scarcely an exception, they possess no set song; but in most species that live always in pairs there are loud, vehement, gratulatory notes uttered by the two birds in concert when they meet after a brief separation. This habit they possess in common with birds of other families, as, for instance, the tyrants; but, in some creepers, out of this confused outburst of joyous sound has been developed a. musical performance very curious, and perhaps unique among birds. On meeting, the male and female, standing close together and facing each other, utter their clear ringing concert, one emitting loud single measured notes, while the notes of its fellow are rapid, rhythmical triplets; their voices have a joyous character, and seem to accord, thus producing a kind of harmony. This manner of singing is perhaps most perfect in the oven-bird, Furnarias, and it is very curious that the young birds, when only partially fledged, are constantly heard in the nest or oven apparently practising these duets in the intervals when the parents are absent; single measured notes, triplets, and long concluding trills are all repeated with wonderful fidelity, although these notes are in character utterly unlike the hunger cry, which is like that of other fledglings. I cannot help thinking that this fact of the young birds beginning to sing like the adults, while still confined in their dark cradle, is one of very considerable significance, especially when we consider the singular character of the performance; and that it might even be found to throw some light on the obscure question of the comparative antiquity of the different and widely separated Dendrocolaptine groups. It is a doctrine in evolutionary science that the early maturing of instincts in the young indicates a high antiquity for the species or group; and there is no reason why this principle should not be extended, in the case of birds at any rate, to language. It is true that Daines Barrington's notion that young song-birds learn to sing only by imitating the adults still holds its ground; and Darwin gives it his approval in his _Descent of Man._ It is perhaps one of those doctrines which are partially true, or which do not contain the whole truth; and it is possible to believe that, while many singing birds do so learn their songs, or acquire a greater proficiency in them from hearing the adults, in other species the song comes instinctively, and is, like other instincts and habits, purely an "inherited memory." The case of a species in another order of birds--Crypturi--strikes me as being similar to this of the oven-bird, and seems to lend some force to the suggestion I have made concerning the early development of voice in the young. Birds peculiar to South America are said by anatomists to be less specialized, lower, more ancient, than the birds of the northern continents, and among those which are considered lowest and most ancient are the Tinamous (rail and partridge like in their habits), birds that lead a solitary, retiring life, and in most cases have sweet melancholy voices. Rhynchotus rufescens, a bird the size of a fowl, inhabiting the pampas, is perhaps the sweetest-voiced, and sings with great frequency. Its song or call is heard oftenest towards the evening, and is composed of five modulated notes, flute-like in character, very expressive, and uttered by many individuals answering each other as they sit far apart concealed in the grass. As we might have expected, the faculties and instincts of the young of this species mature at a very early period; when extremely small, they abandon their parents to shift for themselves in solitude; and when not more than one-fourth the size they eventually attain, they acquire the adult plumage and are able to fly as well as an old bird. I observed a young bird of this species, less than a quail in size, at a house on the pampas, and was told that it had been taken from the nest when just breaking the shell; it had, therefore, never seen or heard the parent birds. Yet this small chick, every day at the approach of evening, would retire to the darkest corner of the dining room, and, concealed under a piece of furniture, would continue uttering its evening song for an hour or longer at short intervals, and rendering it so perfectly that I was greatly surprised to hear it; for a thrush or other songster at the same period of life, when attempting to sing, only produces a chirping sound. The early singing of the oven-bird fledgling is important, owing to the fact that the group it belongs to comprises the least specialized forms in the family. They are strong-legged, square-tailed, terrestrial birds, generally able to perch, have probing beaks, and build the most perfect mud or stick nests, or burrow in the ground. In the numerous tree-creeping groups, which, seem as unrelated to the oven-bird as the woodpecker is to the hoopoe, we find a score of wonderfully different forms of beak; but many of them retain the probing character, and are actually used to probe in rotten wood on trees, and to explore the holes and deep crevices in the trunk. We have also seen that some of these tree-creepers revert to the ancestral habit (if I may so call it) of seeking their food by probing in the soil. In others, like Dendrornis, in which the beak has lost this character, and is used to dig in the wood or to strip off the bark, it has not been highly specialized, and, compared with the woodpecker's beak, is a very imperfect organ, considering the purpose for which it is used. Yet, on the principle that "similar functional requirements frequently lead to the development of similar structures in animals which are otherwise very distinct"--as we see in the tubular tongue in honey-eaters and humming birds--we might have expected to find in the Dendrocolaptidae a better imitation of the woodpecker in so variable an organ as the beak, if not in the tongue. Probably the oven-birds, and their nearest relations--generalized, hardy, builders of strong nests, and prolific--represent the parental form; and when birds of this type had spread over the entire continent they became in different districts frequenters of marshes, forests, thickets and savannas. With altered life-habits the numerous divergent forms originated; some, like Xiphorynchus, retaining a probing beak in a wonderfully modified form, attenuated in an extreme degree, and bent like a sickle; others diverging more in the direction of nuthatches and woodpeckers. This sketch of the Dendrocolaptidae, necessarily slight and imperfect, is based on a knowledge of the habits of about sixty species, belonging to twenty-eight genera: from personal observation I am acquainted with less than thirty species. It is astonishing to find how little has been written about these most interesting birds in South America. One tree-creeper only, Furnarius rufus, the oven-bird _par excellence,_ has been mentioned, on account of its wonderful architecture, in almost every general work of natural history published during the present century; yet the oven-bird does not surpass, or even equal in interest, many others in this family of nearly three hundred members. CHAPTER XIX. MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE. In reading books of Natural History we meet with numerous instances of birds possessing the habit of assembling together, in many cases always at the same spot, to indulge in antics and dancing performances, with or without the accompaniment of music, vocal or instrumental; and by instrumental music is here meant all sounds other than vocal made habitually and during the more or less orderly performances; as, for instance, drumming and tapping noises; smiting of wings; and humming, whip-cracking, fan-shutting, grinding, scraping, and horn-blowing sounds, produced as a rule by the quills. There are human dances, in which only one person performs at a time, the rest of the company looking on; and some birds, in widely separated genera, have dances of this kind. A striking example is the Rupicola, or cock of-the-rock, of tropical South America. A mossy level spot of earth surrounded by bushes is selected for a dancing-place, and kept well cleared of sticks and stones; round this area the birds assemble, when a cock-bird, with vivid orange-scarlet crest and plumage, steps into it, and, with spreading wings and tail, begins a series of movements as if dancing a minuet; finally, carried away with excitement, he leaps and gyrates in the most astonishing manner, until, becoming exhausted, he retires, and another bird takes his place. In other species all the birds in a company unite in the set performances, and seem to obey an impulse which affects them simultaneously and in the same degree; but sometimes one bird prompts the others and takes a principal part. One of the most curious instances I have come across in reading is contained in Mr. Bigg-Wither's _Pioneering in South Brazil._ He relates that one morning in the dense forest his attention was roused by the unwonted sound of a bird singing--songsters being rare in that district. His men, immediately they caught the sound, invited him to follow them, hinting that he would probably witness a very curious sight. Cautiously making their way through the dense undergrowth, they finally came in sight of a small stony spot of ground, at the end of a tiny glade; and on this spot, some on the stone and some on the shrubs, were assembled a number of little birds, about the size of tom-tits, with lovely blue plumage and red top-knots. One was perched quite still on a twig, singing merrily, while the others were keeping time with wings and feet in a kind of dance, and all twittering an accompaniment. He watched them for some time, and was satisfied that they were having a ball and concert, and thoroughly enjoying themselves; they then became alarmed, and the performance abruptly terminated, the birds all going off in different directions. The natives told him that these little creatures were known as the "dancing birds." This species was probably solitary, except when assembling for the purpose of display; but in a majority of cases, especially in the Passerine order, the solitary species performs its antics alone, or with no witness but its mate. Azara, describing a small finch, which he aptly named _Oscilador,_ says that early and late in the day it mounts up vertically to a moderate height; then, flies off to a distance of twenty yards, describing a perfect curve in its passage; turning, it flies back over the imaginary line it has traced, and so on repeatedly, appearing like a pendulum swung in space by an invisible thread. Those who seek to know the cause and origin of this kind of display and of song in animals are referred to Darwin's _Descent of Man_ for an explanation. The greater part of that work is occupied with a laborious argument intended to prove that the love-feeling inspires the animals engaged in these exhibitions, and that sexual selection, or the voluntary selection of mates by the females, is the final cause of all set musical and dancing performances, as well as of bright and harmonious colouring, and of ornaments. The theory, with regard to birds is, that in the love-season, when the males are excited and engage in courtship, the females do not fall to the strongest and most active, nor to those that are first in the field; but that in a large number of species they are endowed with a faculty corresponding to the aesthetic feeling or taste in man, and deliberately select males for their superiority in some aesthetic quality, such as graceful or fantastic motions, melody of voice, brilliancy of colour, or perfection of ornaments. Doubtless all birds were originally plain-coloured, without ornaments and without melody, and it is assumed that so it would always have been in many cases but for the action of this principle, which, like natural selection, has gone on accumulating countless small variations, tending to give a greater lustre to the species in each case, and resulting in all that we most admire in the animal world--the Rupicola's flame-coloured mantle, the peacock's crest and starry train, the joyous melody of the lark, and the pretty or fantastic dancing performances of birds. My experience is that mammals and birds, with few exceptions--probably there are really no exceptions--possess the habit of indulging frequently in more or less regular or set performances, with or without sound, or composed of sound exclusively; and that these performances, which in many animals are only discordant cries and choruses, and uncouth, irregular motions, in the more aerial, graceful, and melodious kinds take immeasurably higher, more complex, and more beautiful forms. Among the mammalians the instinct appears almost universal; but their displays are, as a rule, less admirable than those seen in birds. There are some kinds, it is true, like the squirrels and monkeys, of arboreal habits, almost birdlike in their restless energy, and in the swiftness and certitude of their motions, in which the slightest impulse can be instantly expressed in graceful or fantastic action; others, like the Chinchillidae family, have greatly developed vocal organs, and resemble birds in loquacity; but mammals generally, compared with birds, are slow and heavy, and not so readily moved to exhibitions of the kind I am discussing. The terrestrial dances, often very elaborate, of heavy birds, like those of the gallinaceous kind, are represented in the more volatile species by performances in the air, and these are very much more beautiful; while a very large number of birds--hawks, vultures, swifts, swallows, nightjars, storks, ibises, spoonbills, and gulls--circle about in the air, singly or in flocks. Sometimes, in serene weather, they rise to a vast altitude, and float about in one spot for an hour or longer at a stretch, showing a faint bird-cloud in the blue, that does not change its form, nor grow lighter and denser like a flock of starlings; but in the seeming confusion there is perfect order, and amidst many hundreds each swift- or slow-gliding figure keeps its proper distance with such exactitude that no two ever touch, even with the extremity of the long-wings, flapping or motionless:--such a multitude, and such miraculous precision in the endless curving motions of all the members of it, that the spectator can lie for an hour on his back without weariness watching this mystic cloud-dance in the empyrean. The black-faced ibis of Patagonia, a bird nearly as large as a turkey, indulges in a curious mad performance, usually in the evening when feeding-time is over. The birds of a flock, while winging their way to the roosting-place, all at once seem possessed with frenzy, simultaneously dashing downwards with amazing violence, doubling about in the most eccentric manner; and when close to the surface rising again to repeat the action, all the while making the air palpitate for miles around with their hard, metallic cries. Other ibises, also birds of other genera, have similar aerial performances. The displays of most ducks known to me take the form of mock fights on the water; one exception is the handsome and loquacious whistling widgeon of La Plata, which has a pretty aerial performance. A dozen or twenty birds rise up until they appear like small specks in the sky, and sometimes disappear from sight altogether; and at that great altitude they continue hovering in one spot, often for an hour or longer, alternately closing and separating; the fine, bright, whistling notes and flourishes of the male curiously harmonizing with the grave, measured notes of the female; and every time they close they slap each other on the wings so smartly that the sound can be distinctly heard, like applauding hand-claps, even after the birds have ceased to be visible. The rails, active, sprightly birds with powerful and varied voices, are great performers; but owing to the nature of the ground they inhabit and to their shy, suspicious character, it is not easy to observe their antics. The finest of the Platan rails is the ypecaha, a beautiful, active bird about the size of the fowl. A number of ypecahas have their assembling place on a small area of smooth, level ground, just above the water, and hemmed in by dense rush beds. First, one bird among the rushes emits a powerful cry, thrice repeated; and this is a note of invitation, quickly responded to by other birds from all sides as they hurriedly repair to the usual place. In a few moments they appear, to the number of a dozen or twenty, bursting from the rushes and running into the open space, and instantly beginning the performance. This is a tremendous screaming concert. The screams they utter have a certain resemblance to the human voice, exerted to its utmost pitch and expressive of extreme terror, frenzy, and despair. A long, piercing shriek, astonishing for its vehemence and power, is succeeded by a lower note, as if in the first the creature had well nigh exhausted itself: this double scream is repeated several times, and followed by other sounds, resembling, as they rise and fall, half smothered cries of pains and moans of anguish. Suddenly the unearthly shrieks are renewed in all their power. While screaming the birds rush from side to side, as if possessed with madness, the wings spread and vibrating, the long-beak wide open and raised vertically. This exhibition lasts three or four minntes, after which the assembly peacefully breaks up. The singular wattled, wing-spurred, and long-, toed jacana has a remarkable performance, which seems specially designed to bring out the concealed beauty of the silky, greenish-golden wing-quills-The birds go singly or in pairs, and a dozen or fifteen individuals may be found in a marshy place feeding within sight of each other. Occasionally, in response to a note of invitation, they all in a moment leave off feeding and fly to one spot, and, forming a close cluster, and emitting short, excited, rapidly repeated notes, display their wings, like beautiful flags grouped loosely together: some hold the wings up vertically and motionless; others, half open and vibrating rapidly, while still others wave them up and down with a slow, measured motion. In the ypecaha and jacana displays both sexes take part. A stranger performance is that of the spur-winged lapwing of the same region--a species resembling the lapwing of Europe, but a third larger, brighter coloured, and armed with spurs. The lapwing display, called by the natives its "dance," or "serious dance"--by which they mean square dance--requires three birds for its performance, and is, so far as I know, unique in this respect. The birds are so fond of it that they indulge in it all the year round, and at frequent intervals during the day, also on moonlight nights. If a person watches any two birds for some time--for they live in pairs--he will see another lapwing, one of a neighbouring couple, rise up and fly to them, leaving his own mate to guard their chosen ground; and instead of resenting this visit as an unwarranted intrusion on their domain, as they would certainly resent the approach of almost any other bird, they welcome it with notes and signs of pleasure. Advancing to the visitor, they place themselves behind it; then all three, keeping step, begin a rapid march, uttering resonant drumming notes in time with their movements; the notes of the pair behind being emitted in a stream, like a drum-roll, while the leader utters loud single notes at regular intervals. The march ceases; the leader elevates his wings and stands erect and motionless, still uttering loud notes; while the other two, with puffed-out plumage and standing exactly abreast stoop forward and downward until the tips of their beaks touch the ground, and, sinking their rhythmical voices to a murmur, remain for some time in this posture. The performance is then over and the visitor goes back to his own ground and mate, to receive a visitor himself later on. In the Passerine order, not the least remarkable displays are witnessed in birds that are not accounted songsters, as they do not possess the highly developed vocal organ confined to the suborder Oscines. The tyrant-birds, which represent in South America the fly-catchers of the Old World, all have displays of some kind; in a vast majority of cases these are simply joyous, excited duets between male and female, composed of impetuous and more or less confused notes and screams, accompanied with beating of wings and other gestures. In some species choruses take the place of duets, while in others entirely different forms of display have been developed. In one group--Cnipolegus--the male indulges in solitary antics, while the silent, modest-coloured female keeps in hiding. Thus, the male of Cnipolegus Hudsoni, an intensely black-plumaged species with a concealed white wing-band, takes his stand on a dead twig on the summit of a bush. At intervals he leaves his perch, displaying the intense white on the quills, and producing, as the wings are thrown open and shut alternately, the effect of successive flashes of light. Then suddenly the bird begins revolving in the air about its perch, like a moth wheeling round and close to the flame of a candle, emitting a series of sharp clicks and making a loud humming with the wings. While performing this aerial waltz the black and white on the quills mix, the wings appearing like a grey mist encircling the body. The fantastic dance over, the bird drops suddenly on to its perch again; and, until moved to another display, remains as stiff and motionless as a bird carved out of jet. The performance of the scissors-tail, another tyrant-bird, is also remarkable. This species is grey and white, with black head and tail and a crocus-yellow crest. On the wing it looks like a large swallow, but with the two outer tail-feathers a foot long. The scissors-tails always live in pairs, but at sunset several pairs assemble, the birds calling excitedly to each other; they then mount upwards, like rockets, to a great height in the anand, after wheeling about for a few moments, pro-cipitate themselves downwards with amazing violence in a wild zigzag, opening and shutting the long tail-feathers like a pair of shears, and producing loud whirring sounds, as of clocks being wound rapidly up, with a slight pause after each turn of the key. This aerial dance over, they alight in separate couples on the tree tops, each couple joining in a kind of duet of rapidly repeated, castanet-like sounds. The displays of the wood-hewers, or Dendrocolap-tidae, another extensive family, resemble those of the tyrant-birds in being chiefly duets, male and female singing excitedly in piercing or resonant voices, and with much action. The habit varies somewhat in the cachalote, a Patagonian species of the genus Homorus, about the size of the missel-thrush. Old and young birds live in a family together, and at intervals, on any fine day, they engage in a grand screaming contest, which may be heard distinctly at a distance of a mile and a half. One bird mounts on to a bush and calls, and instantly all the others hurry to the spot, and burst out into a chorus of piercing cries that sound like peals and shrieks of insane laughter. After the chorus, they all pursue each other wildly about among the bushes for some minutes. In some groups the usual duet-like performances have developed into a kind of harmonious singing, which is very curious and pleasant to hear. This is pre-eminently the case with the oven-birds, as D'Orbigney first remarked. Thus, in the red oven-bird, the first bird, on the appearance of its mate flying to join it, begins to emit loud, measured notes, and sometimes a continuous trill, somewhat metallic in sound; but immediately on the other bird striking in this introductory passage is changed to triplets, strongly accented on the first note, in a _tempo vivace;_ while the second bird utters loud single notes in the same time. While thus singing they stand facing each other, necks outstretched and tails expanded, the wings of the first bird vibrating rapidly to the rapid utterance, while those of the second bird beat measured time. The finale consists of three or four notes, uttered by the second bird alone, strong and clear, in an ascending scale, the last very piercing. In the melodists proper the displays, in a majority of cases, are exclusively vocal, the singer sitting still on his perch. In the Troupials, a family of starling-like birds numbering about one hundred and forty species, there are many that accompany singing with pretty or grotesque antics. The male screaming cow-bird of La Plata, when perched, emits a hollow-sounding internal note that swells at the end into a sharp metallic ring, almost bell-like: this is uttered with wings and tail spread and depressed, the whole plumage being puffed out as in a strutting turkey-cock, while the bird hops briskly up and down on its perch as if dancing. The bell-like note of the male is followed by an impetuous scream from the female, and the dance ends. Another species, the common Argentine cow-bird of La Plata, when courting puffs out his glossy rich violet plumage, and, with wings vibrating, emits a succession of deep internal notes, followed by a set song in clear, ringing tones; and then, suddenly taking wing, he flies straight away, close to the surface, fluttering like a moth, and at a distance of twenty to thirty yards turns and flies in a wide circle round the female, singing loudly all the time, hedging her in with melody as it were. Many songsters in widely different families possess the habit of soaring and falling alternately while singing, and in some cases all the aerial postures and movements, the swift or slow descent, vertical, often, with oscillations, or in a spiral, and sometimes with a succession of smooth oblique lapses, seem to have an admirable correspondence with the changing and falling voice--melody and motion being united in a more intimate and beautiful way than in the most perfect and poetic forms of human dancing. One of the soaring singers is a small yellow field-finch of La Plata--Sycalis luteola; and this species, like some others, changes the form of its display with the seasons. It lives in immense flocks, and during the cold season it has, like most finches, only aerial pastimes, the birds wheeling about in a cloud, pursuing each other with lively chirpings. In August, when the trees begin to blossom, the flock betakes itself to a plantation, and, sitting on the branches, the birds sing in a concert of innumerable voices, producing a great volume of sound, as of a high wind when heard at a distance. Heard near, it is a great mass of melody; not a confused tangle of musical sounds as when a host of Troupials sing in concert, but the notes, although numberless, seem to flow smoothly and separately, producing an effect on the ear similar to that which rain does on the sight, when the sun shines on and lightens up the myriads of falling drops all falling one way. In this manner the birds sing for hours, without intermission, every day. Then the passion of love infects them; the pleasant choir breaks up, and its ten thousand members scatter wide over the surrounding fields and pasture lands. During courtship the male has a feeble, sketchy music, but his singing is then accompanied with very charming love antics. His circlings about the hen-bird; his numberless advances and retreats, and little soarings above her when his voice swells with importunate passion; his fluttering lapses back to earth, where he lies prone with outspread, tremulous wings, a suppliant at her feet, his languishing voice meanwhile dying down to lispings--all these apt and graceful motions seem to express the very sickness of the heart. But the melody during this emotional period is nothing. After the business of pairing and nest-building is over, his musical displays take a new and finer form. He sits perched on a stalk above the grass, and at intervals soars up forty or fifty yards high; rising, he utters a series of long melodious notes; then he descends in a graceful spiral, the set of the motionless wings giving him the appearance of a slowly-falling parachute; the voice then also falls, the notes coming lower, sweeter, and more expressive until he reaches the surface. After alighting the song continues, the strains becoming longer, thinner, and clearer, until they dwindle to the finest threads of sound and faintest tinklings, as from a cithern touched by fairy fingers. The great charm of the song is in this slow gradation from the somewhat throaty notes emitted by the bird when ascendino-to the excessively attenuated sounds at the close. In conclusion of this part I shall speak of one species more--the white-banded mocking-bird of Patagonia, which greatly excels all other songsters known to me in the copiousness, variety and brilliant character of its music. Concealed in the foliage this bird will sing by the half-hour, reproducing with miraculous fidelity the more or less melodious set songs of a score of species--a strange and beautiful performance; but wonderful as it seems while it lasts, one almost ceases to admire this mimicking bird-art when the mocker, as if to show by contrast his unapproachable superiority, bursts into his own divine song, uttered with a power, abandon and joyousness resembling, but greatly exceeding, that of the skylark "singing at heaven's gate;" the notes issuing in a continuous torrent; the voice so brilliant and infinitely varied, that if "rivalry and emulation" have as large a place in feathered breasts as some imagine all that hear this surpassing melody might well languish ever after in silent despair. In a vast majority of the finest musical performances the same notes are uttered in the same order, and after an interval the song is repeated without any variation: and it seems impossible that we could in any other way have such beautiful contrasts and harmonious lights and shades--the whole song, so to speak, like a "melody sweetly played in tune." This seeming impossibility is accomplished in the mocking-bird's song: the notes never come in the same order again and again, but, as if inspired, in a changed order, with variations and new sounds: and here again it has some resemblance to the skylark's song, and might be described as the lark's song with endless variations and brightened and spiritualized in a degree that cannot be imagined. This mocking-bird is one of those species that accompany music with appropriate motions. And just as its song is, so to speak, inspired and an im-provization, unlike any song the bird has ever uttered, so its motions all have the same character of spontaneity, and follow no order, and yet have a grace and passion and a perfect harmony with the music unparalleled among birds possessing a similar habit. While singing he passes from bush to bush, sometimes delaying a few moments on and at others just touching the summits, and at times sinking out of sight in the foliage: then, in an access of rapture, soaring vertically to a height of a hundred feet, with measured wing-beats, like those of a heron: or, mounting suddenly in a wild, hurried zigzag, then slowly circling downwards, to sit at last with tail outspread fanwise, and vans, glistening white in the sunshine, expanded and vibrating, or waved languidly up and down, with, a motion like that of some broad-winged butterfly at rest on a flower. I wish now to put this question: What relation that we can see or imagine to the passion of love and the business of courtship, have these dancing and vocal performances in nine cases out of ten? In such cases, for instance, as that of the scissors-tail tyrant-bird, and its pyrotechnic evening displays, when a number of couples leave their nests containing eggs and young to join in a wild aerial dance: the mad exhibitions of ypecahas and ibises, and the jacanas' beautiful exhibition of grouped wings: the triplet dances of the spur-winged lapwing, to perform which two birds already mated are compelled to call in a third bird to complete the set: the harmonious duets of the oven-birds, and the duets and choruses of nearly all the wood-hewers, and the wing-slapping aerial displays of the whistling widgeons--will it be seriously contended that the female of this species makes choice of the male able to administer the most vigorous and artistic slaps? The believer in the theory would put all these cases lightly aside, to cite that of the male cow-bird practising antics before the female and drawing a wide circle of melody round her; or that of the jet-black, automaton-like, dancing tyrant-bird; and concerning this species he would probably say that the plain-plumaged female went about unseen, critically watching the dancing of different males, to discover the most excellent performer according to the traditional standard. And this was, in substance, what Darwin did. There are many species in which the male, singly or with others, practises antics or sings during the love-season before the female; and when all such cases, or rather those that are most striking and bizarre, are brought together, and when it is gratuitously asserted that the females _do_ choose the males that show off in the best manner or that sing best, a case for sexual selection seems to be made out. How unfair the argument is, based on these carefully selected cases gathered from all regions of the globe, and often not properly reported, is seen when we turn from the book to nature and closely consider the habits and actions of all the species inhabiting any _one_ district. We see then that such cases as those described and made so much of in the _Descent of Man,_ and cases like those mentioned in this chapter, are not essentially different in character, but are manifestations of one instinct, which appears to be almost universal among the animals. The explanation I have to offer lies very much on the surface and is very simple indeed, and, like that of Dr. Wallace with regard [Footnote: It is curious to find that Dr. Wallace's idea about colour has been independently hit upon by Ruskin. Of stones he writes in _Frondes Agrestis_:--"I have often had occasion to allude to the apparent connection of brilliancy of colour with vigour of life and purity of substance. This is pre-eminently the case in the mineral kingdom. The perfection with which the particles of any substance unite in crystallization, corresponds in that kingdom to the vital power in organic nature."] to colour and ornaments covers the whole of the facts. We see that the inferior animals, when the conditions of life are favourable, are subject to periodical fits of gladness affecting them powerfully and standing out in vivid contrast to their ordinary temper. And we know what this feeling is--this periodic intense elation which even civilized man occasionally experiences when in perfect health, more especially when young. There are moments when he is mad with joy, when he cannot keep still, when his impulse is to sing and shout aloud and laugh at nothing, to run and leap and exert himself in some extravagant way. Among the heavier mammalians the feeling is manifested in loud noises, bellowings and screamings, and in lumbering, uncouth motions--throwing up of heels, pretended panics, and ponderous mock battles. In smaller and livelier animals, with greater celerity and certitude in their motions, the feeling shows itself in more regular and often in more complex ways. Thus, Felidae when young, and, in very agile, sprightly species like the Puma, throughout life, simulate all the actions of an animal hunting its prey--sudden, intense excitement of discovery, concealment, gradual advance, masked by intervening objects, with intervals of watching, when they crouch motionless, the eyes flashing and tail waved from side to side; finally, the rush and spring, when the playfellow is captured, rolled over on his back and worried to imaginary death. Other species of the most diverse kinds, in which voice is greatly developed, join in noisy concerts and choruses; many of the cats may be mentioned, also dogs and foxes, capybaras and other loquacious rodents; and in the howling monkeys this kind of performance rises to the sublime uproar of the tropical forest at eventide. Birds are more subject to this universal joyous instinct than mammals, and there are times when some species are constantly overflowing with it; and as they are so much freer than mammals, more buoyant and graceful in action, more loquacious, and have voices so much finer, their gladness shows itself in a greater variety of ways, with more regular and beautiful motions, and with melody. But every species, or group of species, has its own inherited form or style of performance; and, however rude and irregular this may be, as in the case of the pretended stampedes and fights of wild cattle, that is the form in which the feeling will always be expressed. If all men, at some exceedingly remote period in their history, had agreed to express the common glad impulse, which they now express in such an infinite variety of ways or do not express at all, by dancing a minuet, and minuet-dancing had at last come to be instinctive, and taken to spontaneously by children at an early period, just as they take to walking "on their hind legs," man's case would be like that of the inferior animals. I was one day watching a flock of plovers, quietly feeding on the ground, when, in a moment, all the birds were seized by a joyous madness, and each one, after making a vigorous peck at his nearest neighbour, began running wildly about, each trying in passing to peck other birds, while seeking by means of quick doublings to escape being pecked in turn. This species always expresses its glad impulse in the same way; but how different in form is this simple game of touch-who-touch-can from the triplet dances of the spur-winged lapwings, with their drumming music, pompous gestures, and military precision of movement! How different also from the aerial performance of another bird of the same family--the Brazilian stilt--in which one is pursued by the others, mounting upwards in a wild, eccentric flight until they are all but lost to view; and back to earth again, and then, skywards once more; the pursued bird when overtaken giving place to another individual, and the pursuing pack making the air ring with their melodious barking cries! How different again are all these from the aerial pastimes of the snipe, in which the bird, in its violent descent, is able to produce such wonderful, far-reaching sounds with its tail-feathers! The snipe, as a rule, is a solitary bird, and, like the oscillating finch mentioned early in this paper, is content to practise its pastimes without a witness. In the gregarious kinds all perform together: for this feeling, like fear, is eminently contagious, and the sight of one bird mad with joy will quickly make the whole flock mad. There are also species that always live in pairs, like the scissors-tails already mentioned, that periodically assemble in numbers for the purpose of display. The crested screamer, a very large bird, may also be mentioned: male and female sing somewhat harmoniously together, with voices of almost unparalleled power: but these birds also congregate in large numbers, and a thousand couples, or even several thousands, may be assembled together: and, at intervals, both by day and night, all sing in concert, their combined voices producing a thunderous melody which seems to shake the earth. As a rule, however, birds that live always in pairs do not assemble for the purpose of display, but the joyous instinct is expressed by duet-like performances between male and female. Thus, in the three South American Passerine families, the tyrant-birds, wood-hewers, and ant-thrushes, numbering together between eight and nine hundred species, a very large majority appear to have displays of this description. In my own experience, in cases where the male and female together, or assembled with others, take equal parts in the set displays, the sexes arc similar, or differ little; but where the female takes no part in the displays the superiority of the male in brightness of colour is very marked. One or two instances bearing on this point may be given. A scarlet-breasted troupial of La Plata perches conspicuously on a tall plant in afield, and at intervals soars up vertically, singing, and, at the highest ascending point, flight and song end in a kind of aerial somersault and vocal flourish at the same moment. Meanwhile, the dull-plumaged female is not seen and not heard: for not even a skulking crake lives in closer seclusion under the herbage--so widely have the sexes diverged in this species. Is the female, then, without an instinct so common r--has she no sudden fits of irrepressible gladness? Doubtless she has them, and manifests them down in her place of concealment in lively chirpings and quick motions--the simple, primitive form in which gladness is expressed in the class of birds. In the various species of the genus Cnipolegus, already mentioned, the difference in the sexes is just as great as in the case of the troupial: the solitary, intensely black, statuesque male has, we have seen, a set and highly fantastic performance; but on more than one occasion I have seen four or five females of one species meet together and have a little simple performance all to themselves--in form a kind of lively mock fight. It might be objected that when a bird takes its stand and repeats a set finished song at intervals for an hour at a stretch, remaining quietly perched, such a performance appears to be different in character from the irregular and simple displays which are unmistakably caused by a sudden glad impulse. But we are familiar with the truth that in organic nature great things result from small beginnings--a common flower, and our own bony skulls, to say nothing of the matter contained within them, are proofs of it. Only a limited number of species sing in a highly finished manner. Looking at many species, we find every gradation, every shade, from the simple joyous chirp and cry to the most perfect melody. Even in a single branch of the true vocalists we may see it--from the chirping bunting, and noisy but tuneless sparrow, to linnet and goldfinch and canary. Not only do a large majority of species show the singing instinct, or form of display, in a primitive, undeveloped state, but in that state it continues to show itself in the young of many birds in which melody is most highly developed in the adult. And where the development has been solely in the male the female never rises above that early stage; in her lively chirpings and little mock fights and chases, and other simple forms which gladness takes in birds, as well as in her plainer plumage, and absence of ornament, she represents the species at some remote period. And as with song so with antics and all set performances aerial or terrestrial, from those of the whale and the elephant to those of the smallest insect. Another point remains to be noticed, and that is the greater frequency and fulness in displays of all kinds, including song, during the love season. And here Dr. Wallace's colour and ornament theory helps us to an explanation. At the season of courtship, when the conditions of life are most favourable vitality is at its maximum, and naturally it is then that the proficiency in all kinds of dancing-antics, aerial and terrestrial, appears greatest, and that melody attains its highest perfection. This applies chiefly to birds, but even among birds there are exceptions, as we have seen in the case of the field-finch, Sycalis luteola. The love-excitement is doubtless pleasurable to them, and it takes the form in which keenly pleasurable emotions are habitually expressed, although not infrequently with variations due to the greater intensity of the feeling. In some migrants the males arrive before the females, and no sooner have they recovered from the effects of their journey than they burst out into rapturous singing; these are not love-strains, since the females have not yet arrived, and pairing-time is perhaps a mouth distant; their singing merely expresses their overflowing gladness. The forest at that season is vocal, not only with the fine melody of the true songsters, but with hoarse cawings, piercing cries, shrill duets, noisy choruses, drummings, boomings, trills, wood-tappings--every sound with which different species express the glad impulse; and birds like the parrot that only exert their powerful voices in screamings--because "they can do no other"--then scream their loudest. When courtship begins it has in many cases the effect of increasing the beauty of the performance, giving added sweetness, verve, and brilliance to the song, and freedom and grace to the gestures and motions. But, as I have said, there are exceptions. Thus, some birds that are good melodists at other times sing in a feeble, disjointed manner during courtship. In Patagonia I found that several of the birds with good voices--one a mocking bird--were, like the robin at home, autumn and winter songsters. The argument has been stated very binefly: but little would be gained by the mere multiplication of instances, since, however many, they would bo selected instances--from a single district, it is true, while those in the _Descent of Man_ were brought together from an immeasurably wider field; but the principle is the same in both cases, and to what I have written it may be objected that, if, instead of twenty-five, I had given a hundred cases, taking them as they came, they might have shown a larger proportion of instances like that of the cow-bird, in which the male has a set performance practised only during the love-season and in the presence of the female. It is, no doubt, true that all collections of facts relating to animal life present nature to us somewhat as a "fantastic realm"--unavoidably so, in a measure, since the writing would be too bulky, or too dry, or too something inconvenient, if we did not take only the most prominent facts that come before us, remove them from their places, where alone they can be seen in their proper relations to numerous other less prominent facts, and rearrange them patch work-wise to make up our literature. But I am convinced that any student of the subject who will cast aside his books--supposing that they have not already bred a habit in his mind of seeing only "in accordance with verbal statement"--and go directly to nature to note the actions of animals for himself--actions which, in many cases, appear to lose all significance when set down in writing--the result of such independent investigation will be a conviction that conscious sexual selection on the part of the female is not the cause of music and dancing performances in birds, nor of the brighter colours and ornaments that distinguish the male. It is true that the females of some species, both in the vertebrate and insect kingdoms, do exercise a preference; but in a vast majority of species the male takes the female he finds, or that he is able to win from other competitors; and if we go to the reptile class we find that in the ophidian order, which excels in variety and richness of colour, there is no such thing as preferential mating; and if we go to the insect class, we find that in butterflies, which surpass all creatures in their glorious beauty, the female gives herself up to the embrace of the first male that appears, or else is captured by the strongest male, just as she might be by a mantis or some other rapacious insect. CHAPTER XX. BIOGRAPHY OF THE VIZCACHA. _(Lagostomus Trichodactylus.)_ The vizcacha is perhaps the most characteristic of the South American Rodentia, [Footnote: "According to Mr. Waterhouse, of all rodents the vizcacha is most nearly related to marsupials; but in the points in which it approaches this order its relations are general, that is, not to any one marsupial species more than to another. As these points of affinity are believed to be real and not merely adaptive, they must be due in accordance with our view to inheritance from a common progenitor. Therefore wo must suppose either that all rodents, including the vizcacha, branched off from some ancient marsupial, which will naturally have been more or less intermediate in character with respect to all existing marsupials; or, that both lodents and marsupials branched off from a common progenitor. ... On either view we must suppose that the vizcacha has retained, by inheritance, more of the characters of its ancient progenitor than have other rodents."--DARWIN; _Origin of Species._] while its habits, in some respects, are more interesting than those of any other rodent known: it is, moreover, the most common mammal we have on the pampas; and all these considerations have induced me to write a very full account of its customs. It is necessary to add that since the following pages were written at my home on the pampas a great war of extermination has been waged against this animal by the landowners, which has been more fortunate in its results--or unfortunate if one's sympathies are with the vizcacha--than the war of the Australians against their imported rodent--the smaller and more prolific rabbit. The vizcachas on the pampas of Buenos Ayres live in societies, usually numbering twenty or thirty members. The village, which is called Vizcachera, is composed of a dozen or fifteen burrows or mouths; for one entrance often serves for two or more distinct holes. Often, where the ground is soft, there are twenty or thirty or more burrows in an old vizcachera; but on stony, or "tosca" soil even an old one may have no more than four or five burrows. They are deep wide-mouthed holes, placed very close together, the entire village covering an area of from one hundred to two hundred square feet of ground. The burrows vary greatly in extent; and usually in a vizcachera there are several that, at a distance of from four to six feet from the entrance, open into large circular chambers. From these chambers other burrows diverge in all directions, some running horizontally, others obliquely downwards to a maximum depth of six feet from the surface: some of these burrows or galleries communicate with those of other burrows. A vast amount of loose earth is thus brought up, and forms a very irregular mound, fifteen to thirty inches above the surrounding level. It will afford some conception of the numbers of these vizcacheras on the settled pampas when I say that, in some directions, a person might ride five hundred miles and never advance half a mile without seeing one or more of them. In districts where, as far as the eye can see, the plains are as level and smooth as a bowling-green, especially in winter when the grass is close-cropped, and where the rough giant-thistle has not sprung up, these mounds appear like brown or dark spots on a green surface. They are the only irregularities that occur to catch the eye, and consequently form an important feature in the scenery. In some places they are so near together that a person on horseback may count a hundred of them from one point of view. The sites of which the vizcacha invariably makes choice to work on, as well as his manner of burrow-ing, adapt him peculiarly to live and thrive on the open pampas. Other burrowing species seem always to fix upon some spot where there is a bank or a sudden depression in the soil, or where there is rank herbage, or a bush or tree, about the roots of which to begin their kennel. They are averse to commence digging on a clear level surface, either because it is not easy for them where they have nothing to rest their foreheads against while scratching, or because they possess a wary instinct that impels them to place the body in concealment whilst working on the surface, thus securing the concealment of the burrow after it is made. Certain it is that where large hedges have been planted on the pampas, multitudes of opossums, weasels, skunks, armadillos, &c., come and make their burrows beneath them; and where there are no hedges or trees, all these species make their kennels under bushes of the perennial thistle, or where there is a shelter of some kind. The vizcacha, on the contrary, chooses an open level spot, the cleanest he can find to burrow on. The first thing that strikes the observer when viewing the vizcachera closely is the enormous size of the entrance of the burrows, or, at least, of several of the central ones in the mound; for there are usually several smaller outside burrows. The pit-like opening to some of these principal burrows is often four to six feet across the mouth, and sometimes deep enough for a tall man to stand up waist-deep in. How these large entrances can be made on a level surface may be seen when the first burrow or burrows of an incipient vizcachera are formed. It is not possible to tell what induces a vizcacha to be the founder of a new community; for they increase very slowly, and furthermore are extremely fond of each other's society; and it is invariably one individual that leaves his native village to found a new and independent one. If it were to have better pasture at hand, then he would certainly remove to a considerable distance; but he merely goes from forty to fifty or sixty yards off to begin his work. Thus it is that in desert places, where these animals are rare, a solitary vizcachera is never seen; but there are always several close together, though there may be no others on the surrounding plain for leagues. When the vizcacha has made his habitation, it is but a single burrow, with only himself for an inhabitant, perhaps for many months. Sooner or later, however, others join him: and these will be the parents of innumerable generations; for they construct no temporary lodging-place, as do the armadillos and other species, but their posterity continues in the quiet possession of the habitations bequeathed to it; how long, it is impossible to say. Old men who have lived all their lives in one district remember that many of the vizcacheras around them existed when they were children. It is invariably a male that begins a new village, and makes his burrow in the following manner, though he does not always observe the same method. He works very straight into the earth, digging a hole twelve or fourteen inches wide, but not so deep, at an angle of about 25 degrees with the surface. But after he has progressed inwards a few feet, the vizcacha is no longer satisfied with merely scattering away the loose earth he fetches up, but cleans it away so far in a straight line from the entrance, and scratches so much on this line (apparently to make the slope gentler), that he soon forms a trench a foot or more in depth, and often three or four feet in length. Its use is, as I have inferred, to facilitate the conveying of the loose earth as far as possible from the entrance of the burrow. But after a while the animal is unwilling that it should accumulate even at the end of this long passage; he therefore proceeds to make two additional trenches, that form an acute, sometimes a right angle, converging into the first, so that when the whole is completed it takes the form of a capital Y. These trenches are continually deepened and lengthened as the burrow progresses, the angular segment of earth between them, scratched away, until by degrees it has been entirely conveyed off, and in its place is the one deep great unsymmetrical mouth I have already described. There are soils that will not admit of the animals working in this manner. Where there are large cakes of "tosca" near the surface, as in many localities on the southern pampas, the vizcacha makes its burrow as best he can, and without the regular trenches. In earths that crumble much, sand or gravel, he also works under great disadvantages. The burrows are made best in the black and red moulds of the pampas; but even in such soils the entrances of many burrows are made differently. In some the central trench is wanting, or is so short that there appear but two passages converging directly into the burrow; or these two trenches may be so curved inwards as to form the segment of a circle. Many other forms may also be noticed, but usually they appear to be only modifications of the most common Y-shaped system. As I have remarked that its manner of burrowing has peculiarly adapted the vizcacha to the pampas, it may be asked what particular advantage a species that makes a wide-mouthed burrow possesses over those that excavate in the usual way. On a declivity, or at the base of rocks or trees, there would be none; but on the perfectly level and shelterless pampas, the durability of the burrow, a circumstance favourable to the animal's preservation, is owing altogether to its being made in this way, and to several barrows being made together. The two outer trenches diverge so widely from the mouth that half the earth brought out is cast behind instead of before it, thus creating a mound of equal height about the entrance, by which it is secured from water during great rainfalls, while the cattle avoid treading over the great pit-like entrances. But the burrows of the dolichotis, armadillo, and other species, when made on perfectly level ground, are soon trod on and broken in by cattle; in summer they are choked up with dust and rubbish; and, the loose earth having all been thrown up together in a heap on one side, there is no barrier to the water which in every great rainfall flows in and obliterates the kennel, drowning or driving out the tenant. I have been minute in describing the habitations of the vizcacha, as I esteem the subject of prime importance in considering the zoology of this portion of America. The vizcacha does not benefit himself alone by his perhaps unique style of burrowing; but this habit has proved advantageous to several other species, and has been so favourable to two of our birds that they are among the most common species found here, whereas without these burrows they would have been exceedingly rare, since the natural banks in which they breed are scarcely found anywhere on the pampas. I refer to the Minera (Geositta cunicularia), which makes its breeding-holes in the bank-like sides of the vizcacha's burrow, and to the little swallow (Atticora cyanoleuca) which breeds in these excavations when forsaken by the Minera. Few old vizcacheras are seen without some of these little parasitical burrows in them. Birds are not the only beings in this way related to the vizcachas: the fox and the weasel of the pampas live almost altogether in them. Several insects also frequent these burrows that are seldom found anywhere else. Of these the most interesting are:--a large predacious nocturnal bug, shining black, with red wings; a nocturnal Cicindela, a beautiful insect, with dark green striated wing-cases and pale red legs; also several diminutive wingless wasps. Of the last I have counted six species, most of them marked with strongly contrasted colours, black, red, and white. There are also other wasps that prey on the spiders found on the vizcachera. All these and others are so numerous on the mounds that dozens of them might there be collected any summer day; but if sought for in other situations they are exceedingly rare. If the dry mound of soft earth which the vizcacha elevates amidst a waste of humid, close-growing grass is not absolutely necessary to the existence of all these species, it supplies them with at least one favourable condition, and without doubt thereby greatly increases their numbers: they, too, whether predacious or preyed on, have so many relations with other outside species, and these again with still others, that it would be no mere fancy to say that probably hundreds of species are either directly or indirectly affected in their struggle for existence by the vizcacheras so abundantly sprinkled over the pampas. In winter the vizcachas seldom leave their burrows till dark, but in summer come out before sunset; and the vizcachera is then a truly interesting spectacle. Usually one of the old males first appears, and sits on some prominent place on the mound, apparently in no haste to begin his evening meal. When approached from the front he stirs not, but eyes the intruder with a bold indifferent stare. If the person passes to one side, he deigns not to turn his head. Other vizcachas soon begin to appear, each one quietly taking up his station at his burrow's mouth, the females, known by their greatly inferior size and lighter grey colour, sitting upright on their haunches, as if to command a better view, and indicating by divers sounds and gestures that fear and curiosity struggles in them for mastery; for they are always wilder and sprightlier in their motions than the males. With eyes fixed on the intruder, at intervals they dodge the head, emitting at the same time an internal note with great vehemence; and suddenly, as the danger comes nearer, they plunge simultaneously, with a startled cry, into their burrows. But in some curiosity is the strongest emotion; for, in spite of their fellow's contagious example, and already half down the entrance, again they start up to scrutinize the stranger, and will then often permit him to walk within five or six paces of them. Standing on the mound there is frequently a pair of burrowing owls (Pholeoptynx cunicularia). These birds generally make their own burrows to breed in, or sometimes take possession of one of the lesser outside burrows of the village; but their favourite residence, when not engaged in tending their eggs or young, is on the vizcachera. Here a pair will sit all day; and I have often remarked a couple close together on the edge of the burrow; and when the vizcacha came out in the evening, though but a hand's breadth from them, they did not stir, nor did he notice them, so accustomed are these creatures to each other. Usually a couple of the little burrowing Geositta are also present. They are lively creatures, running with great rapidity about the mound and bare space that surrounds it, suddenly stopping and jerking their tails in a slow deliberate manner, and occasionally uttering their cry, a trill, or series of quick short clear notes, resembling somewhat the shrill excessive laughter of a child. Among the grave, stationary vizcachas, of which they take no heed, perhaps half a dozen or more little swallows (Atticora cyanoleuca) are seen, now clinging altogether to the bank-like entrance of a burrow, now hovering over it in a moth-like manner, as if uncertain where to alight, and anon sweeping about in circles, but never ceasing their low and sorrowful notes. The vizcachera with all its incongruous inhabitants thus collected upon it is to a stranger one of the most novel sights the pampas afford. The vizcacha appears to be a rather common species over all the extensive Argentine territory; but they are so exceedingly abundant on the pampas inhabited by man, and comparatively so rare in the desert places I have been in, that I was at first much surprised at finding them so unequally distributed. I have also mentioned that the vizcacha is a tame familiar creature. This is in the pastoral districts, where they are never disturbed; but in wild regions, where he is scarce, he is exceedingly wary, coming forth long after dark, and plunging into his burrow on the slightest alarm, so that it is a rare thing to get a sight of him. The reason is evident enough; in desert regions the vizcacha has several deadly enemies in the larger rapacious mammals. Of these the puma or lion (Felis concolor) is the most numerous, as it is also the swiftest, most subtle, and most voracious; for, as regards these traits, the jaguar (F. onca) is an inferior animal. To the insatiable bloody appetite of this creature nothing comes amiss; he takes the male ostrich by surprise, and slays that wariest of wild things on his nest; He captures little birds with the dexterity of a cat, and hunts for diurnal armadillos; he comes unawares upon the deer and huanaco, and, springing like lightning on them, dislocates their necks before their bodies touch the earth. Often after he has thus slain them, he leaves their bodies untouched for the Polyborus and vulture to feast on, so great a delight does he take in destroying life. The vizcacha falls an easy victim to this subtle creature; and it is not to be wondered at that it becomes wild to excess, and rare in regions hunted over by such an enemy, even when all other conditions are favourable to its increase. But as soon as these wild regions are settled by man the pumas are exterminated, and the sole remaining foe of the vizcacha is the fox, comparatively an insignificant one. The fox takes up his residence in a vizcachera, and succeeds, after some quarrelling (manifested in snarls, growls, and other subterranean warlike sounds), in ejecting the rightful owners of one of the burrows, which forthwith becomes his. Certainly the vizcachas are not much injured by being compelled to relinquish the use of one of their kennels for a season or permanently; for, if the locality suits him, the fox remains with them always. Soon they grow accustomed to the unwelcome stranger; he is quiet and unassuming in demeanour, and often in the evening sits on the mound in their company, until they regard him with the same indifference they do the burrowing owl. But in spring, when the young vizcachas are large enough to leave their cells, then the fox makes them his prey; and if it is a bitch fox, with a family of eight or nine young to provide for, she will grow so bold as to hunt her helpless quarry from hole to hole, and do battle with the old ones, and carry off the young in spite of them, so that all the young animals in the village are eventually destroyed. Often when the young foxes are large enough to follow their mother, the whole family takes leave of the vizcachera where such cruel havoc has been made to settle in another, there to continue their depredations. But the fox has ever a relentless foe in man, and meets with no end of bitter persecutions; it is consequently much more abundant in desert or thinly settled districts than in such as are populous, so that in these the check the vizcachas receive from the foxes is not appreciable. The abundance of cattle on the pampas has made it unnecessary to use the vizcacha as an article of food. His skin is of no value; therefore man, the destroyer of his enemies, has hitherto been the greatest benefactor of his species. Thus they have been permitted to multiply and spread themselves to an amazing extent, so that the half-domestic cattle on the pampas are not nearly so familiar with man, or so fearless of his presence as are the vizcachas. It is not that they do him no injury, but because they do it indirectly, that they have so long enjoyed immunity from persecution. It is amusing to see the sheep-farmer, the greatest sufferer from the vizcachas, regarding them with such indifference as to permit them to swarm on his "run," and burrow within a stone's throw of his dwelling with impunity, and yet going a distance from home to persecute with unreasonable animosity a fox, skunk, or opossum on account of the small annual loss it inflicts on the poultry-yard. That the vizcacha has comparatively no adverse conditions to war with wherever man is settled is evident when we consider its very slow rate of increase, and yet see them in such incalculable numbers. The female has but one litter in the year of two young, sometimes of three. She becomes pregnant late in April, and brings forth in September; the period of gestation is, I think, rather less than five months. The vizcacha is about two years growing. A full-sized male measures to the root of the tail twenty-two inches, and weighs from fourteen to fifteen pounds; the female is nineteen inches in length, and her greatest weight nine pounds. Probably it is a long-lived, and certainly it is a very hardy animal. Where it has any green substance to eat it never drinks water; but after a long summer drought, when for months it has subsisted on bits of dried thistle-stalks and old withered grass, if a shower falls it will come out of its burrows even at noonday and drink eagerly from the pools. It has been erroneously stated that vizcachas subsist on roots. Their food is grass and seeds; but they may also sometimes eat roots, as the ground is occasionally seen scratched up about the burrows. In March, when the stalks of the perennial cardoon or Castile thistle (Cynara cardunculus) are dry, the vizcachas fell them by gnawing about their roots, and afterwards tear to pieces the great dry flower-heads to get the seeds imbedded deeply in them, of which they seem very fond. Large patches of thistle are often found served thus, the ground about them literally white with the silvery bristles they have scattered. This cutting down tall plants to get the seeds at the top seems very like an act of pure intelligence; but the fact is, the vizcachas cut down every tall plant they can. I have seen whole acres of maize destroyed by them, yet the plants cut down were left untouched. If posts be put into the ground within range of their nightly rambles they will gnaw till they have felled them, unless of a wood hard enough to resist their chisel-like incisors. The strongest instinct of this animal is to clear the ground thoroughly about its burrows; and it is this destructive habit that makes it necessary for cultivators of the soil to destroy all the vizcachas in or near their fields. On the uninhabited pampas, where the long grasses grow, I have often admired the vizcachera; for it is there the centre of a clean space, often of half an acre in extent, on which there is an even close-shaven turf: this clearing is surrounded by the usual rough growth of herbs and giant grasses. In such situations this habit of clearing the ground is eminently advantageous to them, as it affords them a comparatively safe spot to feed and disport themselves on, and over which they can fly to their burrows without meeting any obstruction, on the slightest alarm. Of course the instinct continues to operate where it is no longer of any advantage. In summer, when the thistles are green, even when growing near the burrows, and the giant thistle (Carduus mariana) springs up most luxuriantly right on the mound, the vizcachas will not touch them, either disliking the strong astringent sap, or repelled by the thorns with which they are armed. As soon as they dry, and the thorns become brittle, they are levelled; afterwards, when the animal begins to drag them about and cut them up, as his custom is, he accidentally discovers and feasts on the seed: for vizcachas are fond of exercising their teeth on hard substances, such as sticks and bones, just as cats are of "sharpening their claws" on trees. Another remarkable habit of the vizcacha, that of dragging to and heaping about the mouth of his burrow every stalk he cuts down, and every portable object that by dint of great strength he can carry, has been mentioned by Azara, Darwin, and others. On the level plains it is a useful habit; for as the vizcachas are continually deepening and widening their burrows, the earth thrown out soon covers up these materials, and so assists in raising the mound. On the Buenos-Ayrean pampas numbers of vizcacheras would annually be destroyed by water in the great sudden rainfalls were the mounds loss high. But this is only an advantage when the animals inhabit a perfectly level country subject to flooding rains; for where the surface is unequal they invariably prefer high to low ground to burrow on, and are thus secured from destruction by water; yet the instinct is as strong in such situations as on the level plains. The most that can be said of a habit apparently so obscure in its origin and uses is, that it appears to be part of the instinct of clearing the ground about the village. Every tall stalk the vizcacha cuts down, every portable object he finds, must be removed to make the surface clean and smooth; but while encumbered with it he does not proceed further from his burrows, but invariably re-tires towards them, and so deposits it upon the mound. So well known is this habit, that whatever article is lost by night--whip, pistol, or knife--the loser next morning visits the vizcacheras in the vicinity, quite sure of finding it there. People also visit the vizcacheras to pick up sticks for firewood. The vizcachas are cleanly in their habits; and the fur, though it has a strong earthy smell, is kept exceedingly neat. The hind leg and foot afford a very beautiful instance of adaptation. Propped by the hard curved tail, they sit up erect, and as firmly on the long horny disks on the undersides of the hind legs as a man stands on his feet. Most to be admired, on the middle toe the skin thickens into a round cushion, in which the curved teeth-like bristles are set; nicely graduated in length, so that "each particular hair" may come into contact with the skin when the animal scratches or combs itself. As to the uses of this appendage there can be no difference of opinion, as there is about the serrated claw in birds. It is quite obvious that the animal cannot scratch himself with his hind paw (as all mammals do) without making use of this natural comb. Then the entire foot is modified, so that this comb shall be well protected, and yet not be hindered from performing its office: thus the inner toe is pressed close to the middle one, and so depressed that it comes under the cushion of skin, and cannot possibly get before the bristles, or interfere their coming against the skin in scratching, as certainly be the case if this toe were free as outer one. Again, the vizcachas appear to form the deep trenches before the burrows by scratching the earth violently backwards with the hind claws. Now these straight, sharp, dagger-shaped claws, and especially the middle one, are so long that the vizcacha is able to perform all this rough work without the bristles coming into contact with the ground, and so getting worn by the friction. The Tehuelcho Indians in Patagonia comb their hair with a brush-comb very much like that on the vizcacha's toe, but in their case it does not properly fulfil its office, or else the savages make little use of it. Vizcachas have a remarkable way of dusting themselves: the animal suddenly throws himself on his back, and, bringing over his hind legs towards his head, depresses them till his feet touch the ground. In this strange posture he scratches up the earth with great rapidity, raising a little cloud of dust, then rights himself with a jerk, and, after an interval, repeats the dusting. Usually they scratch a hole in the ground to deposit their excrements in. Whilst opening one of the outside burrows that had no communication with the others, I once discovered a vast deposit of their dung (so great that it must have been accumulating for years) at the extremity. To ascertain whether this be a constant, or only a casual habit, it would be necessary to open up entirely a vast number of vizcacheras. When a vizcacha dies in his burrow the carcass is, after some days, dragged out and left upon the mound. The language of the vizcacha is wonderful for its variety. When the male is feeding he frequently pauses to utter a succession of loud, percussive, and somewhat jarring cries; these he utters in a leisurely manner, and immediately after goes on feeding. Often he utters this cry in a low grunting tone. One of his commonest expressions sounds like the violent hawking of a man clearing his throat. At other times he bursts into piercing tones that may be heard a mile off, beginning like the excited and quick-repeated squeals of a young pig, and growing longer, more attenuated, and quavering towards the end. After retiring alarmed into the burrows, he repeats at intervals a deep internal moan. All these, and many other indescribable guttural, sighing, shrill, and deep tones, are varied a thousand ways in strength and intonation, according to the age, sex, or emotions of the individual; and I doubt if there is in the world any other four-footed thing so loquacious, or with a dialect so extensive. I take great pleasure in going to some spot where they are abundant, and sitting quietly to listen to them; for they are holding a perpetual discussion, all night long, which the presence of a human being will not interrupt. At night, when the vizcachas are all out feeding, in places where they are very abundant (and in some districts they literally swarm) any very loud and sudden sound, as the report of a gun, or a clap of unexpected thunder, will produce a most extraordinary effect. No sooner has the report broken on the stillness of night than a perfect storm of cries bursts forth over the surrounding country. After eight or nine seconds there is in the storm a momentary hill or pause; and then it breaks forth again, apparently louder than before. There is so much difference in the tones of different animals that the cries of individuals close at hand may be distinguished amidst the roar of blended voices coming from a distance. It sounds as if thousands and tens of thousands of them were striving to express every emotion at the highest pitch of their voices; so that the effect is indescribable, and fills a stranger with astonishment. Should a gun be fired off several times, their cries become less each time; and after the third or fourth time it produces no effect. They have a peculiar, sharp, sudden, "far-darting" alarm-note when a dog is spied, that is repeated by all that hear it, and produces an instantaneous panic, sending every vizcacha flying to his burrow. But though they manifest such a terror of dogs when out feeding at night (for the slowest dog can overtake them), in the evening, when sitting upon their mounds, they treat them with tantalizing contempt. If the dog is a novice, the instant he spies the animal he rushes violently at it; the vizcacha waits the charge with imperturbable calmness till his enemy is within one or two yards, and then disappears into the burrow. After having been foiled in this way many times, the dog resorts to stratagem: he crouches down as if transformed for the nonce into a Felis, and steals on with wonderfully slow and cautious steps, his hair bristling, tail hanging, and eyes intent on his motionless intended victim; when within seven or eight yards he makes a sudden rush, but invariably with the same dis-appointing result. The persistence with which the dogs go on hoping against hope in this unprofitable game, in which they always act the stupid part, is highly amusing, and is very interesting to the naturalist; for it shows that the native dogs on the pampas have developed a very remarkable instinct, and one that might be perfected by artificial selection; but dogs with the hunting habits of the cat would, I think, be of little use to man. When it is required to train dogs to hunt the nocturnal armadillo (Dasypus villosus), then this deep-rooted (and, it might be added, hereditary) passion for vizcachas is excessively annoying, and it is often necessary to administer hundreds of blows and rebukes before a dog is induced to track an armadillo without leaving the scent every few moments to make futile grabs at his old enemies. The following instance will show how little suspicion of man the vizcachas have. A few years ago I went out shooting them on three consecutive evenings. I worked in a circle, constantly revisiting the same burrows, never going a greater distance from home than could be walked in four or five minutes. During the three evenings I shot sixty vizcachas dead; and probably as many more escaped badly wounded into their burrows; for they are hard to kill, and however badly wounded, if sitting near the burrow when struck, are almost certain to escape into it. But on the third evening I found them no wilder, and killed about as many as on the first. After this I gave up shooting them in disgust; it was dull sport, and to exterminate or frighten them away with a gun seemed an impossibility. It is a very unusual thing to eat the vizcacha, most people, and especially the gauchos, having a silly unaccountable prejudice against their flesh. I have found it very good, and while engaged writing this chapter have dined on it served up in various ways. The young animals are rather insipid, the old males tough, but the mature females are excellent--the flesh being tender, exceedingly white, fragrant to the nostrils, and with a very delicate game-flavour. Within the last ten years so much new land has been brought under cultivation that farmers have been compelled to destroy incredible numbers of vizcachas: many large "estancieros" (cattle-breeders) have followed the example set by the grain-growers, and have had them exterminated on their estates. Now all that Azara, on hearsay, tells about the vizcachas perishing in their burrows, when these are covered up, but that they can support life thus buried for a period of ten or twelve days, and that during that time animals will come from other villages and disinter them, unless frightened off with dogs, is strictly true. Country workmen are so well acquainted with these facts that they frequently undertake to destroy all the vizcacheras on an estate for so paltry a sum as ten-pence in English money for each one, and yet will make double the money at this work than they can at any other. By day they partly open up, then cover up the burrows with a great quantity of earth, and by night go round with dogs to drive away the vizcachas from the still open burrows that come to dig out their buried friends. After all the vizcacheras on an estate have been thus served, the workmen are usually bound by previous agreement to keep guard over them for a space of eight or ten days before they receive their hire: for the animals covered up are then supposed to be all dead. Some of these men I have talked with have assured me that living vizcachas have been found after fourteen days--a proof of their great endurance. There is nothing strange, I think, in the mere fact of the vizcacha being unable to work his way out when thus buried alive; for, for all I know to the contrary, other species may, when their burrows are well covered up, perish in the same manner; but it certainly is remarkable that other vizcachas should come from a distance to dig out those that are buried alive. In this good office they are exceedingly zealous; and I have frequently surprised them after sunrise, at a considerable distance from their own burrows, diligently scratching at those that had been covered up. The vizcachas are fond of each other's society, and live peaceably together; but their goodwill is not restricted to the members of their own little community; it extends to the whole species, so that as soon as night comes many animals leave their own and go to visit the adjacent villages. If one approaches a vizcachera at night, usually some of the vizcachas on it scamper off to distant burrows: these are neighbours merely come to pay a friendly visit. This intercourse is so frequent that little straight paths are formed from one vizcachera to another. The extreme attachment between members of different communities makes it appear less strange that they should assist each other: either the desire to see, as usual, their buried neighbours becomes intense enough to impel them to work their way to them; or cries of distress from the prisoners reach and incite them to attempt their deliverance. Many social species are thus powerfully affected by cries of distress from one of their fellows; and some will attempt a rescue in the face of great danger--the weasel and the peccary for example. Mild and sociable as the vizcachas are towards each other, each one is exceedingly jealous of any intrusion into his particular burrow, and indeed always resents such a breach of discipline with the utmost fury. Several individuals may reside in the compartments of the same burrow; but beyond themselves not even their next-door neighbour is permitted to enter; their hospitality ends where it begins, at the entrance. It is difficult to compel a vizcacha to enter a burrow not his own; even when hotly pursued by dogs they often refuse to do so. When driven into one, the instant their enemies retire a little space they rush out of it, as if they thought the hiding-place but little less dangerous than the open plain. I have frequently seen vizcachas, chased into the wrong burrows, summarily ejected by those inside: and sometimes they make their escape only after being well bitten for their offence. I have now stated the most interesting facts I have collected concerning the vizcacha: when others rewrite its history they doubtless will, according to the opportunities of observation they enjoy, be able to make some additions to it, but probably none of great consequence. I have observed this species in Patagonia and Buenos Ayres only; and as I have found that its habits are considerably modified by circumstances in the different localities where I have met with it, I am sure that other variations will occur in the more distant regions, where the conditions vary. The most remarkable thing to be said about the vizcacha is, that although regarded by Mr. Waterhouse, and others who have studied its affinities, as one of the lowest of the rodents, exhibiting strong Marsupial characters, the living animal appears to be more intelligent than other rodents, not of South America only, but also of those of a higher type in other continents. A parallel case is, perhaps, to be found in the hairy armadillo, an extremely versatile and intelligent animal, although only an edentate. And among birds the ypecaha--a large La Plata rail--might also be mentioned as an example of what ought not to be; for it is a bold and intelligent bird, more than a match for the fowl, both in courage and in cunning; and yet it is one of the family which Professor Parker--from the point of view of the anatomist--characterizes as a "feeble-minded, cowardly group." CHAPTER XXI. THE DYING HUANACO. Lest any one should misread the title to this chapter, I hasten to say that the huanaco, or guanaco as it is often spelt, is not a perishing species; nor, as things are, is it likely to perish soon, despite the fact that civilized men, Britons especially, are now enthusiastically engaged in the extermination of all the nobler mammalians:--a very glorious crusade, the triumphant conclusion of which will doubtless be witnessed by the succeeding generation, more favoured in this respect than ours. The huanaco, happily for it, exists in a barren, desolate region, in its greatest part waterless and uninhabitable to human beings; and the chapter-heading refers to a singular instinct of the dying animals, in very many cases allowed, by the exceptional conditions in which they are placed, to die naturally. And first, a few words about its place in nature and general habits. The huanaco is a small camel--small, that is, compared with its existing relation--without a hump, and, unlike the camel of the Old World, non-specializad; doubtless it is a very ancient animal on the earth, and for all we know to the contrary, may have existed contemporaneously with some of the earliest known representatives of the camel type, whose remains occur in the lower and upper miocene deposits--Poebrotherium, Protolabis, Procamelus, Pliauchenia, and Macrauchenia. It ranges from Tierra del Fuego and the adjacent islands, northwards over the whole of Patagonia, and along the Andes into Peru and Bolivia. On the great mountain chain it is both a wild and a domestic animal, since the llama, the beast of burden of the ancient Peruvians, is no doubt only a variety: but as man's slave it has changed so greatly from the original form that some naturalists have regarded the llama as a distinct species, which, like the camel of the East, exists only in a domestic state. It has had time enough to vary, as it is more than probable that the tamed and useful animal was inherited by the children of the sun from races and nations that came before them: and how far back Andean civilization extends may be inferred from the belief expressed by the famous American archaeologist, Squiers, that the ruined city of Tiahuanaco, in the vicinity of Lake Titicaca, is as old as Thebes and the Pyramids. It is, however, with the wild animal, the huanaco, that I am concerned. A full-grown male measures seven to eight feet in length, and four feet high to the shoulder; it is well clothed in a coat of thick woolly hair, of a pale reddish colour, Longest and palest on the under parts. In appearance it is very unlike the camel, in spite of the long legs and neck; in its finely-shaped head and long ears, and its proud and graceful carriage, it resembles an antelope rather than its huge and, from an aesthetic point of view, deformed Asiatic relation. In habits it is gregarious, and is usually seen in small herds, but herds numbering several hundreds or even a thousand are occasionally met with on the stony, desolate plateaus of Southern Patagonia; but the huanaco is able to thrive and grow fat where almost any other herbivore would starve. While the herd feeds one animal acts as sentinel, stationed on the hillside, and on the appearance of danger utters a shrill neigh of alarm, and instantly all take to flight. But although excessively shy and wary they are also very inquisitive, and have enough intelligence to know that a single horseman can do them no harm, for they will not only approach to look closely at him, but will sometimes follow him for miles. They are also excitable, and at times indulge in strange freaks. Darwin writes:--"On the mountains of Tierra del Fuego I have more than once seen a huanaco, on being approached, not only neigh and squeal, but prance and leap about in a most ridiculous manner, apparently in defiance as a challenge." And Captain King relates that while sailing into Port Desire he witnessed a chase of a huanaco after a fox, both animals evidently going at their greatest speed, so that they soon passed out of sight. I have known some tame huanacos, and in that state they make amusing intelligent pets, fond of being caressed, but often so frolicsome and mischievous as to be a nuisance to their master. It is well known that at the southern extremity of Patagonia the huanacos have a dying place, a spot to which all individuals inhabiting the surrounding plains repair at the approach of death to deposit their bones. Darwin and Fitzroy first recorded this strange instinct in their personal narratives, and their observations have since been fully confirmed by others. The best known of these dying or burial-places are on the banks of the Santa Cruz and Gallegos rivers, where the river valleys are covered with dense primeval thickets of bushes and trees of stunted growth; there the ground is covered with the bones of countless dead generations. "The animals," says Darwin, "in most cases must have crawled, before dying, beneath and among the bushes." A strange instinct in a creature so preeminently social in its habits; a dweller all its life long on the open, barren plateaus and mountain sides! What a subject for a painter! The grey wilderness of dwarf thorn trees, aged and grotesque and scanty-leaved, nourished for a thousand years on the bones that whiten the stony ground at their roots; the interior lit faintly with the rays of the departing sun, chill and grey, and silent and motionless--the huanacos' Golgotha. In the long centuries, stretching back into a dim immeasurable past, so many of this race have journeyed hither from the mountain and the plain to suffer the sharp pang of death, that, to the imagination, something of it all seems to have passed into that hushed and mournful nature. And now one more, the latest pilgrim, has come, all his little strength spent in his struggle to penetrate the close thicket; looking old and gaunt and ghostly in the twilight; with long ragged hair; staring into the gloom out of death-dimmed sunken eyes. England has one artist who might show it to us on canvas, who would be able to catch the feeling of such a scene--of that mysterious, passionless tragedy of nature--I refer to J. M. Swan, the painter of the "Prodigal Son" and the "Lioness Defending her Cubs." To his account of the animal's dying place and instinct, Darwin adds: "I do not at all understand the reason of this, but I may observe that the wounded huanacos at the Santa Cruz invariably walked towards the river." It would, no doubt, be rash to affirm of any instinct that it is absolutely unique; but, putting aside some doubtful reports about a custom of the Asiatic elephant, which may have originated in the account of Sindbad the Sailor's discovery of an elephant's burial place, we have no knowledge of an instinct similar to that of the huanaco in any other animal. So far as we know, it stands alone and apart, with nothing in the actions of other species leading up, or suggesting any family likeness to it. But what chiefly attracts the mind to it is its strangeness. It looks, in fact, less like an instinct of one of the inferior creatures than the superstitious observance of human beings, who have knowledge of death, and believe in a continued existence after dissolution; of a triba that in past times had conceived the idea that the liberated spirit is only able to find its way to its future abode by starting at death from the ancient dying-place of the tribe or family, and thence moving westward, or skyward, or underground, over the well-worn immemorial track, invisible to material eyes. But, although alone among animal instincts-in its strange and useless purpose--for it is as absolutely useless to the species or race as to the dying individual--it is not the only useless instinct we know of: there are many others, both simple and complex; and of such instincts we believe, with good reason, that they once played an important part in the life of the species, and were only rendered useless by changes in the condition of life, or in the organism, or in both. In other words, when the special conditions that gave them value no longer existed, the correlated and perfect instinct was not, in these cases, eradicated, but remained, in abeyance and still capable of being called into activity by a new and false stimulus simulating the old and true. Viewed in this way, the huanaco's instinct might be regarded as something remaining to the animal from a remote past, not altogether unaffected by time perhaps; and like some ceremonial usage among men that has long ceased to have any significance, or like a fragment of ancient history, or a tradition, which in the course of time has received some new and false interpretation. The false interpretation, to continue the metaphor, is, in this case, that the _purpose_ of the animal in going to a certain spot, to which it has probably never previously resorted, is to die there. A false interpretation, because, in the first place, it is incredible that an instinct of no advantage to the species, in its struggle for existence and predominance should arise and become permanent; and, in the second place, it is equally incredible that it could ever have been to the advantage of the species or race to, have a dying place. We must, then, suppose that there is in the sensations preceding death, when death comes slowly, some resemblance to the sensations experienced by the animal at a period when its curious instinct first took form and crystallized; these would be painful sensations that threatened life; and freedom from them, and safety to the animal, would only exist in a certain well-remembered spot. Further, we might assume that it was at first only the memory of a few individuals that caused the animals to seek the place of safety; that a habit was thus formed; that in time this traditional habit became instinctive, so that the animals, old and young, made their way unerringly to the place of refuge whenever the old danger returned. And such an instinct, slowly matured and made perfect to enable this animal to escape extinction during periods of great danger to mammalian life, lasting hundreds or even thousands of years, and destructive of numberless other species less hardy and adaptive than the generalized huanaco, might well continue to exist, to be occasionally called into life by a false stimulus, for many centuries after it had ceased to be of any advantage. Once we accept this explanation as probable--namely, that the huanaco, in withdrawing from the herd to drop down and die in the ancient dying ground, is in reality only seeking an historically remembered place of refuge, and not of death--the action of the animal loses much of its mysterious character; we come on to firm ground, and find that we are no longer considering an instinct absolutely unique, with no action or instinct in any other animal leading up or suggesting any family likeness to it, as I said before. We find, in fact, that there is at least one very important and very well-known instinct in another class of creatures, which has a strong resemblance to that of the huanaco, as I have interpreted it, and which may even serve to throw a side light on the origin of the huanaco's instinct. I refer to a habit of some ophidians, in temperate and cold countries, of returning annually to hybernate in the saine den. A typical instance is that of the rattlesnake in the colder parts of North America. On the approach of winter these reptiles go into hiding, and it has been observed that in some districts a very large number of individuals, hundreds, and even thousands, will repair from the surrounding country to the ancestral den. Here the serpents gather in a mass to remain in a wholly or semi-torpid condition until the return of spring brings them out again, to scatter abroad to their usual summer haunts. Clearly in this case the knowledge of the hyberna-ting den is not merely traditional--that is, handed down from generation to generation, through the young each year following the adults, and so forming the habit of repairing at certain seasons to a certain place; for the young serpent soon abandons its parent to lead an independent life; and on the approach of cold weather the hybernating den may be a long distance away, ten or twenty, or even thirty miles from the spot in which it was born. The annual return to the hybernating den is then a fixed unalterable instinct, like the autumnal migration of some birds to a warmer latitude. It is doubtless favourable to the serpents to hybernate in large numbers massed together; and the habit of resorting annually to the same spot once formed, we can imagine that the individuals--perhaps a single couple in the first place--frequenting some very deep, dry, and well-sheltered cavern, safe from enemies, would have a great advantage over others of their race; that they would be stronger and increase more, and spread during the summer months further and further from the cavern on all sides; and that the further afield they went the more would the instinct be perfected; since all the young serpents that did not have the instinct of returning unerringly to the ancestral refuge, and that, like the outsiders of their race, to put it in that way, merely crept into the first hole they found on the approach of the cold season, would be more liable to destruction. Probably most snakes get killed long before a natural decline sets in; to say that not one in a thousand dies of old age would probably be no exaggeration; but if they were as safe from enemies and accidents as some less prolific and more highly-organized animals, so that many would reach the natural term of life, and death came slowly, we can imagine that in such a heat-loving creature the failure of the vital powers would simulate the sensations caused by a falling temperature, and cause the old or sick serpent, even in midsummer, to creep instinctively away to the ancient refuge, where many a long life-killing frost had been safely tided over in the past. The huanaco has never been a hybernating animal; but we must assume that, like the crotalus of the north, he had formed a habit of congregating with his fellows at certain seasons at the same spot; further, that these were seasons of suffering to the animal--the suffering, or discomfort and danger, having in the first place given rise to the habit. Assuming again that the habit had existed so long as to become, like that of the reptile, a fixed, immutable instinct, a hereditary knowledge, so that the young huanacos, untaught by the adults, would go alone and unerringly to the meeting-place from any distance, it is but an easy step to the belief, that after the conditions had changed, and the refuges were no longer needed, this instinctive knowledge would still exist in them, and that they would take the old road when stimulated by the pain of a wound; or the miserable sensations experienced in disease or during the decay of the life-energy, when the senses grow dim, and the breath fails, and the blood is thin and cold. I presume that most persons who have observed animals a great deal have met with cases in which the animal has acted automatically, or instinctively, when the stimulus has been a false one. I will relate one such case, observed by myself, and which strikes me as being apposite to the question I am considering. It must be premised that this is an instance of an acquired habit; but this does not affect my argument, since I have all along assumed that the huanaco--a highly sagacious species in the highest class of vertebrates--first acquired a habit from experience of seeking a remembered refuge, and that such habit was the parent, as it were, or the first clay model, of the perfect and indestructible instinct that was to be. It is not an uncommon thing in the Argentino pampas--I have on two occasions witnessed it myself--for a riding-horse to come home, or to the gate of his owner's house, to die. I am speaking of riding-horses that are never doctored, nor treated mercifully; that look on their master as an enemy rather than a friend; horses that live out in the open, and have to be hunted to the corral or enclosure, or roughly captured with a lasso as they run, when their services are required. I retain a very vivid recollection of the first occasion of witnessing an action of this kind in a horse, although I was only a boy at the time. On going out one summer evening I saw one of the horses of the establishment standing unsaddled and unbridled leaning his head over the gate. Going to the spot, I stroked his nose, and then, turning to an old native who happened to be near, asked him what could be the meaning of such a thing. "I think he is going to die," he answered; "horses often come to the house to die." And next morning the poor beast was found lying dead not twenty yards from the gate; although he had not appeared ill when I stroked his nose on the previous evening; but when I saw him lying there dead, and remembered the old native's words, it seemed to me as marvellous and inexplicable that a horse should act in that way, as if some wild creature--a rhea, a fawn, or dolichotes--had come to exhale his last breath at the gates of his enemy and constant persecutor, man. I now believe that the sensations of sickness and approaching death in the riding-horse of the pampas resemble or similate the pains, so often experienced, of hunger, thirst and fatigue combined, together with the oppressive sensations caused by the ponderous native saddle, or recado, with its huge surcingle of raw hide drawn up so tightly as to hinder free respiration. The suffering animal remembers how at the last relief invariably came, when the twelve or fifteen hours' torture were over, the toil and the want, and when the great iron bridle and ponderous gear were removed, and he had freedom and food and drink and rest. At the gate or at the door of his master's house, the sudden relief had always come to him; and there does he sometimes go in his sickness, his fear overmastered by his suffering, to find it again. Discussing this question with a friend, who has a subtle mind and great experience of the horse in semi-barbarous countries, and of many other animals, wild and tame, in many regions of the globe, he put forward a different explanation of the action of the horse in coming home to die, which he thinks simpler and more probable than mine. It is, that a dying or ailing animal instinctively withdraws itself from its fellows--an action of self-preservation in the individual in opposition to the well-known instincts of the healthy animals, which impels the whole herd to turn upon and persecute the sickly member, thus destroying its chances of recovery. The desire of the suffering animal is not only to leave its fellows, but to get to some solitary place where they cannot follow, or would never find him, to escape at once from a great and pressing danger. But on the pastoral pampas, where horses are so numerous that on that level, treeless area they are always and everywhere visible, no hiding-place is discoverable. In such a case, the animal, goaded by its instinctive fear, turns to the one spot that horses avoid; and although that spot has hitherto been fearful to him, the old fear is forgotten in the present and far more vivid one; the vicinity of his master's house represents a solitary place to him, and he seeks it, just as the stricken deer seeks the interior of some close forest, oblivious for the time, in its anxiety to escape from the herd, of the dangers lurking in it, and which he formerly avoided. I have not set this explanation down merely because it does credit to my friend's ingenuity, but because it strikes me that it is the only alternative explanation that can be given of the animal's action in coming home to die. Another fact concerning the ill-tamed and barbarously treated horses of the pampas, which, to my mind, strengthens the view I have taken, remains to be mentioned. It is not an uncommon thing for one of these horses, after escaping, saddled and bridled, and wandering about for anight or night and day on the plains, to return of its own accord to the house. It is clear that in a case of this kind the animal comes home to seek relief. I have known one horse that always had to be hunted like a wild animal to be caught, and that invariably after being saddled tried to break loose, to return in this way to the gate after wandering about, saddled and bridled, for over twenty hours in uncomfortable freedom. The action of the riding-horse returning to a master he is accustomed to fly from, as from an enemy, to be released of saddle and bridle, is, no doubt more intelligent than that of the dying horse coming home to be relieved from his sufferings, but the motive is the same in both cases; at the gate the only pain the animal has ever experienced has invariably begun, and there it has ended, and when the spur of some new pain afflicts him--new and yet like the old--it is to the well-remembered hated gate that it urges him. To return to the huanaco. After tracing the dying instinct back to its hypothetical origin--namely, a habit acquired by the animal in some past period of seeking refuge from some kind of pain and danger at a certain spot, it is only natural to speculate a little further as to the nature of that danger and of the conditions the animal existed in. If the huanaco is as old on the earth as its antique generalized form have led naturalists to suppose, we can well believe that it has survived not only a great many lost mammalian types, but many changes in the conditions of its life. Let us then imagine that at some remote period a change took place in the climate of Patagonia, and that it became colder and colder, owing to some cause affecting only that portion of the antarctic region; such a cause, for instance, as a great accumulation of icebergs on the northern shores of the antarctic continent, extending century by century until a large portion of the now open sea became blocked up with solid ice. If the change was gradual and the snow became deeper each winter and lasted longer, an intelligent, gregarious, and exceedingly hardy and active animal like the huanaco, able to exist on the driest woody fibres, would stand the beat chance of maintaining its existence in such altered conditions, and would form new habits to meet the new danger. One would be that at the approach of a period of deep snow and deadly cold, all the herds frequenting one place would gather together at the most favourable spots in the river valleys, where the vegetation is dense and some food could be had while the surrounding country continued covered with deep snow. They would, in fact, make choice of exactly such localities as are now used for dying places. There they would be sheltered from the cutting-winds, the twigs and bark would supply them with food, the warmth from a great many individuals massed together would serve to keep the snow partially melted under foot, and would prevent their being smothered, while the stiff and closely interlaced branches would keep a roof of snow above them, and thus protected they would keep alive until the return of mild weather released them. In the course of many generations all weakly animals, and all in which the habit of seeking the refuge at the proper time was weak or uncertain in its action would perish, but their loss would be an advantage to the survivors. It is worthy of remark that it is only at the southern extremity of Patagonia that the huanacos have dying places. In Northern Patagonia, and on the Chilian and Peruvian Andes no such instinct has been observed. CHAPTER XXII. THE STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE. My purpose in this paper is to discuss a group of curious and useless emotional instincts of social animals, which have not yet been properly explained. Excepting two of the number, placed first and last in the list, they are not related in their origin; consequently they are here grouped together arbitrarily, only for the reason that we are very familiar with them on account of their survival in our domestic animals, and because they are, as I have said, useless; also because they resemble each other, among the passions and actions of the lower animals, in their effect on our minds. This is in all cases unpleasant, and sometimes exceedingly painful, as when species that rank next to ourselves in their developed intelligence and organized societies, such as elephants, monkeys, dogs, and cattle, are seen under the domination of impulses, in some cases resembling insanity, and in others simulating the darkest passions of man. These instincts are:-- (1) The excitement caused by the smell of blood, noticeable in horses and cattle among our domestic animals, and varying greatly in degree, from an emotion so slight as to be scarcely perceptible to the greatest extremes of rage or terror. (2) The angry excitement roused in some animals when a scarlet or bright-red cloth is shown to them. So well known is this apparently insane instinct in our cattle that it has given rise to a proverb and metaphor familiar in a variety of forms to everyone. (3) The persecution of a sick or weakly animal by its companions. (4) The sudden deadly fury that seizes on the herd or family at the sight of a companion in extreme distress. Herbivorous mammals at such times will trample and gore the distressed one to death. In the case of wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot. To take the first two together. When we consider that blood is red; that the smell of it is, or may be, or has been, associated with that vivid hue in the animal's mind; that blood, seen and smelt is, or has been, associated with the sight of wounds and with cries of pain and rage or terror from the wounded or captive animal, there appears at first sight to be some reason for connecting these two instinctive passions as having the same origin--namely, terror and rage caused by the sight of a member of the herd struck down and bleeding, or struggling for life in the grasp of an enemy. I do not mean to say that such an image is actually present in the animal's mind, but that the inherited or instinctive passion is one in kind and in its working with the passion of the animal when experience and reason were its guides. But the more I consider the point the more am I inclined to regard these two instincts as separate in their origin, although I retain the belief that cattle and horses and several wild animals are violently excited by the smell of blood for the reason just given--namely, their inherited memory associates the smell of blood with the presence among them of some powerful enemy that threatens their life. To this point I shall return when dealing with the last and most painful of the instincts I am considering. The following incident will show how violently this blood passion sometimes affects cattle, when they are permitted to exist in a half-wild condition, as on the pampas. I was out with my gun one day, a few miles from home, when I came across a patch on the ground where the grass was pressed or trodden down and stained with blood. I concluded that some thievish gauchos had slaughtered a fat cow there on the previous night, and, to avoid detection, had somehow managed to carry the whole of it away on their horses. As I walked on, a herd of cattle, numbering about three hundred, appeared moving slowly on towards a small stream a mile away; they were travelling in a thin long line, and would pass the blood-stained spot at a distance of seven to eight hundred yards, but the wind from it would blow across their track. When the tainted wind struck the leaders of the herd they instantly stood still, raising their heads, then broke out into loud excited bellowings; and finally turning they started off at a fast trot, following up the scent in a straight line, until they arrived at the place where one of their kind had met its death. The contagion spread, and before long all the cattle were congregated on the fatal spot, and began moving round in a dense mass, bellowing continually. It may be remarked here that the animal has a peculiar language on occasions like this; it emits a succession of short bellowing cries, like excited exclamations, followed by a very loud cry, alternately sinking into a hoarse murmur, and rising to a kind of scream that grates harshly on the sense. Of the ordinary "cow-music" I am a great admirer, and take as much pleasure in it as in the cries and melody of birds and the sound of the wind in trees; but this performance of cattle excited by the smell of blood is most distressing to hear. The animals that had forced their way into the centre of the mass to the spot where the blood was, pawed the earth, and dug it up with their horns, and trampled each other down in their frantic excitement. It was terrible to see and hear them. The action of those on the border of the living mass in perpetually moving round in a circle with dolorous bellowings, was like that of the women in an Indian village when a warrior dies, and all night they shriek and howl with simulated grief, going round and round the dead man's hut in an endless procession. The "bull and red rag" instinct, as it may be called, comes next in order. It is a familiar fact that brightness in itself powerfully attracts most if not all animals. The higher mammalians are affected in the same way as birds and insects, although not in the same degree. This fact partly explains the rage of the bull. A scarlet flag fluttering in the wind or lying on the grass attracts his attention powerfully, as it does that of other animals; but though curious about the nature of the bright object, it does not anger him. His anger is excited--and this is the whole secret of the matter--when the colour is flaunted by a man; when it forces him to fix his attention on a man, i.e. an animal of another species that rules or drives him, and that he fears, but with only a slight fear, which may at any moment be overcome by his naturally bold aggressive disposition, Not only does the vivid colour compel him to fix his attention on the being that habitually interferes with his liberty, and is consequently regarded with unfriendly eyes, but it also produces the illusion on his mind that the man is near him, that he is approaching him in an aggressive manner: it is an insult, a challenge, which, being of so explosive a temper, he is not slow to accept. On the pampas I was once standing with some gauchos at the gate of a corral into which a herd of half-wild cattle had just been driven. One of the men, to show his courage and agility, got off his horse and boldly placed himself in the centre of the open gate. His action attracted the attention of one of the nearest cows, and lowering her horns she began watching him in a threatening manner. He then suddenly displayed the scarlet lining of his poncho, and instantly she charged him furiously: with a quick movement to one side he escaped her horns, and after we had driven her back, resumed his former position and challenged her again in the same way. The experiment was repeated not less than half a dozen times, and always with the same result. The cattle were all in a savage temper, and would have instantly charged him on his placing himself before them on foot without the display of scarlet cloth, but their fear of the mounted men, standing with lassos in their hand on either side of him, kept them in check. But whenever the attention of any one individual among them was forcibly drawn to him by the display of vivid colour, and fixed on him alone, the presence of the horsemen was forgotten and fear was swallowed by rage. It is a fact, I think, that most animals that exhibit angry excitement when a scarlet rag is flourished aggressively at them, are easily excited to anger at all times. Domestic geese and turkeys may be mentioned among birds: they do not fly at a grown person, but they will often fly at a child that challenges them in this way; and it is a fact that they do not at any time fear a child very much and will sometimes attack him without being challenged. I think that the probability of the view I have taken is increased by another fact--namely, that the sudden display of scarlet colour sometimes affects timid animals with an extreme fear, just as, on the other hand, it excites those that are bold and aggressive to anger. Domestic sheep, forinstance, that vary greatly in disposition in different races or breeds, and even in different individuals, may be affected in the two opposite ways, some exhibiting extreme terror and others only anger at a sudden display of scarlet colour by the shepherd or herder. The persecution of a sick animal by its companions comes next under consideration. It will have been remarked, with surprise by some readers, no doubt, that I have set down as two different instincts this persecution of a sick or weakly individual by its fellows, and the sudden deadly rage that sometimes impels the herd to turn upon and destroy a wounded or distressed companion. It is usual for writers on the instincts of animals to speak of them as one: and I presume that they regard this sudden deadly rage of several individuals against a companion as merely an extreme form of the common persecuting instinct or impulse. They are not really one, but are as distinct in origin and character as it is possible for any two instincts to be. The violent and fatal impulse starts simultaneously into life and action, and is contagious, affecting all the members of the herd like a sudden madness. The other is neither violent nor contagious: the persecution is intermittent: it is often confined to one or to a very few members of the herd, and seldom joined in by the chief member, the leader or head to whom all the others give way. Concerning this head of the herd, or flock, or pack, it is necessary to say something more. Some gregarious animals, particularly birds, live together in the most perfect peace and amity; and here no leader is required, because in their long association together as a species in flocks, they have attained to a oneness of mind, so to speak, which causes them to move or rest, and to act at all times harmoniously together, as if controlled and guided by an extrane-ous force. I may mention that the kindly instinct in animals, which is almost universal between male and female in the vertebrates, is most apparent in these harmoniously acting birds. Thus, in La Plata, I have remarked, in more than one species, that a lame or sick individual, unable to keop pace with the flock and find its food, has not only been waited for, but in some cases some of the flock have constantly attended it, keeping close to it both when flying and on the ground; and, I have no doubt, feeding it just as they would have fed their young. Naturally among such kinds no one member is of more consideration than another. But among mammals such equality and harmony is rare. The instinct of one and all is to lord it over the others, with the result that one more powerful or domineering gets the mastery, to keep it thereafter as long as he can. The lower animals are, in this respect, very much like us; and in all kinds that are at all fierce-tempered the mastery of one over all, and of a few under him over the others, is most salutary; indeed, it is inconceivable that they should be able to exist together under any other system. On cattle-breeding establishments on the pampas, where it is usual to keep a large number of fierce-tempered dogs, I have observed these animals a great deal, and presume that they are very much like feral dogs and wolves in their habits. Their quarrels are incessant; but when a fight begins the head of the pack as a rule rushes to the spot, whereupon the fighters separate and march off in different directions, or else cast themselves down and deprecate their tyrant's wrath with abject gestures and whines. If the combatants are both strong and have worked themselves into a mad rage before their head puts in an appearance, it may go hard with him: they know him no longer, and all he can do is to join in the fray; then, if the fighters turn on him, he may be so injured that his power is gone, and the next best dog in the pack takes his place. The hottest contests are always between dogs that are well matched; neither will give place to the other, and so they fight it out; but from the foremost in strength and power down to the weakest there is a gradation of authority; each one knows just how far he can go, which companion he can bully when he is in a bad temper or wishes to assert himself, and to which he must humbly yield in his turn. In such a state the weakest one must always yield to all the others, and cast himself down, seeming to call himself a slave and worshipper of any other member of the pack that chooses to snarl at him, or command him to give up his bone with a good grace. This masterful or domineering temper, so common among social mammals, is the cause of the persecution of the sick and weakly. When an animal begins to ail he can no longer hold his own; he ceases to resent the occasional ill-natured attacks made on him; his non-combative condition is quickly discovered, and he at once drops down to a place below the lowest; it is common knowledge in the herd that he may be buffeted with impunity by all, even by those that have hitherto suffered buffets but have given none. But judging from my own observation, this persecution, is not, as a rule, severe, and is seldom fatal. It is often the case that a sick or injured animal withdraws and hides himself from the herd; the instinct of the "stricken deer" this might be called. But I do not think that we need assume that the ailing individual goes away to escape the danger of being ill-used by his companions. He is sick and drooping and consequently unfit to be with the healthy and vigorous; that is the simplest and probably the true explanation of his action; although in some cases he might be driven from them by persistent rough usage. However peaceably gregarious mammals may live together, and however fond of each other's company they may be, they do not, as a rule, treat each other gently. Furthermore, their games are exceedingly rough and require that they shall be in a vigorous state of health to escape injury. Horned animals have no buttons to the sharp weapons they prod and strike each other with in a sportive spirit. I have often witnessed the games of wild and half-wild horses with astonishment; for it seemed that broken bones must result from the sounding kicks they freely bestowed on one another. This roughness itself would be a sufficient cause for the action of the individual, sick and out of tune and untouched by the glad contagion of the others, in escaping from them; and to leave them would be to its advantage (and to that of the race) since, if not fatally injured or sick unto death, its chances of recovery to perfect health would be thereby greatly increased. It remains now to speak of that seemingly most cruel of instincts which stands last on my list. It is very common among gregarious animals that are at all combative in disposition, and still survives in our domestic cattle, although very rarely witnessed in England. My first experience of it was just before I had reached the age of five years. I was not at that early period trying to find out any of nature's secrets, but the scene I witnessed printed itself very vividly on my mind, so that I can recall it as well as if my years had been five-and-twenty; perhaps better. It was on a summer's evening, and I was out by myself at some distance from the house, playing about the high exposed roots of some old trees; on the other side of the trees the cattle, just returned from pasture, were gathered on the bare level ground. Hearing a great commotion among them, I climbed on to one of the high exposed roots, and, looking over, saw a cow on the ground, apparently unable to rise, moaning and bellowing in a distressed way, while a number of her companions were crowding round and goring her. What is the meaning of such an instinct? Darwin has but few words on the subject. "Can we believe," he says, in his posthumous _Essay on Instinct, "_when a wounded herbivorous animal returns to its own herd and is then attacked and gored, that this cruel and very common instinct is of any service to the species?" At the same time, he hints that such an instinct might in some circumstances be useful, and his hint has been developed into the current belief among naturalists on the subject. Here it is, in Dr. Romanes' words: "We may readily imagine that the instinct displayed by many herbivorous animals of goring sick and wounded companions, is really of use in countries where the presence of weak members in a herd is a source of danger to the herd from the prevalence of wild beasts." Here it is assumed that the sick are set upon and killed, but this is not the fact; sickness and decay from age or some other cause are slow things, and increase imperceptibly, so that the sight of a drooping member grows familiar to the herd, as does that of a member with some malformation, or unusual shade of colour, or altogether white, as in the case of an albino. Sick and weak members, as we have seen, while subject to some ill-treatment from their companions (only because they can be ill-treated with impunity), do not rouse the herd to a deadly animosity; the violent and fatal attack is often as not made on a member in perfect health and vigour and unwounded, although, owing to some accident, in great distress, and perhaps danger, at the moment. The instinct is, then, not only useless but actually detrimental; and, this being so, the action of the herd in destroying one of its members is not even to be regarded as an instinct proper, but rather as an aberration of an instinct, a blunder, into which animals sometimes fall when excited to action in unusual circumstances. The first thing that strikes us is that in these wild abnormal moments of social animals, they are acting in violent contradiction to the whole tenor of their lives; that in turning against a distressed fellow they oppose themselves to the law of their being, to the whole body of instincts, primary and secondary, and habits, which have made it possible for them to exist together in communities. It is, I think, by reflecting on the abnormal character of such an action that we are led to a true interpretation of this "dark saying of Nature." Every one is familiar with Bacon's famous passage about the dog, and the noble courage which that animal puts on when "maintained by a man; who is to him in place of a God, or _melior natura;_ which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without the confidence of a better nature than its own, could never attain." Not so. The dog is a social animal, and acts instinctively in concert with his fellows; and the courage he manifests is of the family, not the individual. In the domestic state the man he is accustomed to associate with and obey stands to him in the place of the controlling pack, and to his mind, which is canine and not human, _is_ the pack. A similar "noble courage," greatly surpassing that exhibited on all other occasions, is displayed by an infinite number of mammals and birds of gregarious habits, when repelling the attacks of some powerful and dangerous enemy, or when they rush to the rescue of one of their captive fellows. Concerning this rage and desperate courage of social animals in the face of an enemy, we see (1) that it is excited by the distressed cries, or by the sight of a member of the herd or family dying from or struggling in the clutches of an enemy; (2) that it affects animals when a number af individuals are together, and is eminently contagious, like fear, that communicates itself, quick as lightning, from one to another until all are in a panic, and like the joyous emotion that impels the members of a herd or flock to rush simultaneously into play. Now, it is a pretty familiar fact that animals acting instinctively, as well as men acting intelligently, have at times their delusions and their illusions, and see things falsely, and are moved to action by a false stimulus to their own disadvantage. When the individuals of a herd or family are excited to a sudden deadly rage by the distressed cries of one of their fellows, or by the sight of its bleeding wounds and the smell of its blood, or when they see it frantically struggling on the ground, or in the cleft of a tree or rock, as if in the clutches of a powerful enemy, they do not turn on it to kill but to rescue it. In whatever way the rescuing instinct may have risen, whether simply through natural selection or, as is more probable, through an intelligent habit becoming fixed and hereditary, its effectiveness depends altogether on the emotion of overmastering rage excited in the animal--rage against a tangible visible enemy, or invisible, and excited by the cries or struggles of a suffering companion; clearly, then, it could not provide against the occasional rare accidents that animals meet with, which causes them to act precisely in the way they do when seized or struck down by an enemy. An illusion is the result of the emotion similar to the illusion produced by vivid expectation in ourselves, which has caused many a man to see in a friend and companion the adversary he looked to see, and to slay him in his false-seeing anger. An illusion just as great, leading to action equally violent, but ludicrous rather than painful to witness, may be seen in dogs, when encouraged by a man to the attack, and made by his cries and gestures to expect that some animal they are accustomed to hunt is about to be unearthed or overtaken; and if, when they are in this disposition, he cunningly exhibits and sets them on a dummy, made perhaps of old rags and leather and stuffed with straw, they will seize, worry, and tear it to pieces with the greatest fury, and without the faintest suspicion of its true character. That wild elephants will attack a distressed fellow seemed astonishing to Darwin, when he remembered the case of an elephant after escaping from a pit helping its fellow to escape also. But it is precisely the animals, high or low in the organic scale, that are social, and possess the instinct of helping each other, that will on occasions attack a fellow in misfortune--such an attack being no more than a blunder of the helping instinct. Felix de Azara records a rather cruel experiment on the temper of some tame rats confined in a cage. The person who kept them caught the tail of one of the animals and began sharply pinching it, keeping his hand concealed under the cage. Its cries of pain and struggles to free itself greatly excited the other rats; and after rushing wildly round for some moments they flew at their distressed companion, and fixing their teeth in its throat quickly dispatched it. In this case if the hand that held the tail had been visible and in the cage, the bites would undoubtedly have been inflicted on it; but no enemy was visible; yet the fury and impulse to attack an enemy was present in the animals. In such circumstances, the excitement must be discharged--the instinct obeyed, and in the absence of any other object of attack the illusion is produced and it discharges itself on the struggling companion. It is sometimes seen in dogs, when three or four or five are near together, that if one suddenly utters a howl or cry of pain, when no man is near it and no cause apparent, the others run to it, and seeing nothing, turn round and attack each other. Here the exciting cause--the cry for help--is not strong enough to produce the illusion which is sometimes fatal to the suffering member; but each dog mistakingly thinks that the others, or one of the others, inflicted the injury, and his impulse is to take the part of the injured animal. If the cry for help--caused perhaps by a sudden cramp or the prick of a thorn--is not very sharp or intense, the other dogs will not attack, but merely look and growl at each other in a suspicious way. To go back to Azara's anecdote. Why, it may be asked--and this question has been put to me in conversation--if killing a distressed companion is of no advantage to the race, and if something must be attacked--why did not these rats in this instance attack the cage they were shut in, and bite at the woodwork and wires? Or, in the case related by Mr. Andrew Lang in _Longman's Magazine_ some time ago, in which the members of a herd of cattle in Scotland turned with sudden amazing fury on one of the cows that had got wedged between two rocks and was struggling with distressed bellowings to free itself--why did they not attack the prisoning rocks instead of goring their unfortunate comrade to death? For it is well known that animals will, on occasions, turn angrily upon and attack inanimate objects that cause them injury or hinder their freedom of action. And we know that this mythic faculty--the mind's projection of itself into visible nature--survives in ourselves, that there are exceptional moments in our lives when it comes back to us; no one, for instance, would be astonished to hear that any man, even a philosopher, had angrily kicked away or imprecated a stool or other inanimate object against which he had accidentally barked his shins. The answer is, that there is no connection between these two things--the universal mythic faculty of the mind, and that bold and violent instinct of social animals of rushing to the rescue of a stricken or distressed companion, which has a definite, a narrow, purpose--namely, to fall upon an enemy endowed not merely with the life and intelligence common to all things, including rocks, trees, and waters, but with animal form and motion. I had intended in this place to give other instances, observed in several widely-separated species, including monkeys; but it is not necessary, as I consider that all the facts, however varied, are covered by the theory I have suggested--even a fact I like the one mentioned in this chapter of cattle bellowing and madly digging up the ground where the blood of one of their kind had been spilt: also such a fact as that of wild cattle and other animals caught in a trap or enclosure attacking and destroying each other in their frenzy; and the fact that some fierce-tempered carnivorous mammals will devour the companion they have killed. It is an instinct of animals like wolves and peccaries to devour the enemy they have overcome and slain: thus, when the jaguar captures a peccary out of a drove, and does not quickly escape with his prize into a tree, he is instantly attacked and slain and then consumed, even to the skin and bones. This is the wolf's and the peccary's instinct; and the devouring of one of their own companions is an inevitable consequence of the mistake made in the first place of attacking and killing it. In no other circumstances, not even when starving, do they prey on their own species. If the explanation I have offered should seem a true or highly probable one, it will, I feel sure, prove acceptable to many lovers of animals, who, regarding tins seemingly ruthless instinct, not as an aberration but as in some vague way advantageous to animals in their struggle for existence, are yet unable to think of it without pain and horror; indeed, I know those who refuse to think of it at all, who would gladly disbelieve it if they could. It should be a relief to them to be able to look on it no longer as something ugly and hateful, a blot on nature, but as an illusion, a mistake, an unconscious crime, so to speak, that has for its motive the noblest passion that animals know--that sublime courage and daring which they exhibit in defence of a distressed companion. This fiery spirit in animals, which makes them forget their own safety, moves our hearts by its close resemblance to one of the most highly-prized human virtues; just as we are moved to intellectual admiration by the wonderful migratory instinct in birds that simulates some of the highest achievements of the mind of man. And we know that this beautiful instinct is also liable to mistakes--that many travellers leave us annually never to return. Such a mistake was undoubtedly the cause of the late visitation of Pallas' sand-grouse: owing perhaps to some unusual atmospheric or dynamic condition, or to some change in the nervous system of the birds, they deviated widely from their usual route, to scatter in countless thousands over the whole of Europe and perish slowly in climates not suited to them; while others, overpassing the cold strange continent, sped on over colder, stranger seas, to drop at last like aerolites, quenching their lives in the waves. Whether because it is true, as Professor Freeman and some others will have it, that humanity is a purely modern virtue; or because the doctrine of Darwin, by showing that we are related to other forms of life, that our best feelings have their roots low down in the temper and instincts of the social species, has brought us nearer in spirit to the inferior animals, it is certain that our regard for them has grown, and is growing, and that new facts and fresh inferences that make us think more highly of them are increasingly welcome. CHAPTER XXIII. HORSE AND MAN. There is no mode of progression so delightful as riding on horseback. Walking, rowing, bicycling are pleasant exercises in their way, but the muscular exertion and constant exercise of judgment they call for occupy the mind partly to the exclusion of other things; so that a long walk may sometimes be only a long walk and nothing more. In riding we are not conscious of exertion, and as for that close observation and accurate discernment necessary in traversing the ground with speed and safety, it is left to the faithful servant that carries us. Pitfalls, hillocks, slippery places, the thousand little inequalities of the surface that have to be measured with infallible eye, these disturb us little. To fly or go slowly at will, to pass unshaken over rough and smooth alike, fording rivers without being wet, and mounting hills without climbing, this is indeed unmixed delight. It is the nearest approach to bird-life we seem capable of, since all the monster bubbles and flying fabrics that have been the sport of winds from the days of Montgolfier downwards have brought us no nearer to it. The aeronaut gasping for breath above the clouds offers only a sad spectacle of the imbecility of science and man's shattered hopes. To the free inhabitants of air we can only liken the mounted Arab, vanishing, hawklike, over the boundless desert. In riding there is always exhilarating motion; yet, if the scenery encountered be charming, you are apparently sitting still, while, river-like, it flows toward and past you, ever giving place to fresh visions of beauty. Above all, the mind is free, as when one lies idly on the grass gazing up into the sky. And, speaking of myself, there is even more than this immunity from any tax on the understanding such as we require in walking; the rhythmic motion, the sensation as of night, acting on the brain like a stimulus. That anyone should be able to think better lying, sitting, or standing, than when speeding along on horseback, is to me incomprehensible. This is doubtless due to early training and long use; for on those great pampas where I first saw the light and was taught at a tender age to ride, we come to look on man as a parasitical creature, fitted by nature to occupy the back of a horse, in which position only he has full and free use of all his faculties. Possibly the gaucho--the horseman of the pampas--is born with this idea in his brain; if so, it would only be reasonable to suppose that its correlative exists in a modification of structure. Certain it is that an intoxicated gaucho lifted on to the back of his horse is perfectly safe in his seat. The horse may do his best to rid himself of his burden; the rider's legs--or posterior arms as they might appropriately be called--retain their iron grip, notwithstanding the fuddled brain. The gaucho is more or less bow-legged; and, of course, the more crooked his legs are, the better for him in his struggle for existence. Off his horse his motions are awkward, like those of certain tardigrade mammals of arboreal habits when removed from their tree. He waddles in his walk; his hands feel for the reins; his toes turn inwards like a duck's. And here, perhaps, we can see why foreign travellers, judging him from their own standpoint, invariably bring against him the charge of laziness. On horseback he is of all men most active. His patient endurance under privations that would drive other men to despair, his laborious days and feats of horsemanship, the long journeys he performs without rest or food, seem to simple dwellers on the surface of the earth almost like miracles. Deprive him of his horse, and he can do nothing but sit on the ground cross-legged, or _en cuclillas_,--on his heels. You have, to use his own figurative language, cut off his feet. Darwin in his earlier years appears not to have possessed the power of reading men with that miraculous intelligence always distinguishing his researches concerning other and lower orders of beings. In the _Voyage of a Naturalist,_ speaking of this supposed indolence of the gauchos, he tells that in one place where workmen were in great request, seeing a poor gaucho sitting in a listless attitude, he asked him why he did not work. The man's answer was that _he was too poor to work!_ The philosopher was astonished and amused at the reply, but failed to understand it. And yet, to one acquainted with these lovers of brief phrases, what more intelligible answer could have been returned? The poor fellow simply meant to say that his horses had been stolen--a thing of frequent occurrence in that country, or, perhaps, that some minion of the Government of the moment had seized them for the use of the State. To return to the starting point, the pleasures of riding do not flow exclusively from the agreeable sensations attendant on flight-like motion; there is also the knowledge, sweet in itself, that not a mere cunningly fashioned machine, like that fabled horse of brass "on which the Tartar king did ride," sustains us; but a something with life and thought, like ourselves, that feels what we feel, understands us, and keenly participates in our pleasures. Take, for example, the horse on which some quiet old country gentleman is accustomed to travel; how soberly and evenly he jogs along, picking his way over the ground. But let him fall into the hands of a lively youngster, and how soon he picks up a frisky spirit! Were horses less plastic, more the creatures of custom than they are, it would always be necessary, before buying one, to inquire into the disposition of its owner. When I was thirteen years old I was smitten with love for a horse I once saw--an untamable-looking brute, that rolled his eyes, turbulently, under a cloud of black mane tumbling over his forehead. I could not take my sight off this proud, beautiful creature, and I longed to possess him with a great longing. His owner--a worthless vagabond, as it happened--marked my enthusiastic admiration, and a day or two afterwards, having lost all his money at cards, he came to me, offering to sell me the horse. Having obtained my father's consent, I rushed off to the man with all the money I possessed--about thirty or thirty-five shillings, I believe. After some grumbling, and finding he could get no more, he accepted the money. My new possession filled me with unbounded delight, and I spent the time caressing him and leading him about the grounds in search of succulent grasses and choice leaves to feed him on. I am sure this horse understood and loved me, for, in spite of that savage look, which his eyes never quite lost, he always displayed a singular gentleness towards me. He never attempted to upset me, though he promptly threw--to my great delight, I must confess--anyone else who ventured to mount him. Probably the secret of his conduct was that he hated the whip. Of this individual, if not of the species, the celebrated description held true:--"The horse is a docile animal, but if you flog him he will not do so." After he had been mine a few days, I rode on him one morning to witness a cattle-marking on a neighbouring estate. I found thirty or forty gauchos on the ground engaged in catching and branding the cattle. It was rough, dangerous work, but apparently not rough enough to satisfy the men, so after branding an animal and releasing him from their lassos, several of the mounted gauchos would, purely for sport, endeavour to knock it down as it rushed away, by charging furiously on to it. As I sat there enjoying the fun, my horse stood very quietly under me, also eagerly watching the sport. At length a bull was released, and, smarting from the fiery torture, lowered his horns and rushed away towards the open plain. Three horsemen in succession shot out from the crowd, and charged the bull at full speed; one by one, by suddenly swerving his body round, he avoided them, and was escaping scot-free. At this moment my horse--possibly interpreting a casual touch of my hand on his neck, or some movement of my body, as a wish to join in the sport--suddenly sprang forward and charged on the flying bull like a thunderbolt, striking him full in the middle of his body, and hurling him with a tremendous shock to earth. The stricken beast rolled violently over, while my horse stood still as a stone watching him. Strange to say, I was not unseated, but, turning-round, galloped back, greeted by a shout of applause from the spectators--the only sound of that description I have ever had the privilege of listening to. They little knew that my horse had accomplished the perilous feat without his rider's guidance. No doubt he had been accustomed to do such things, and, perhaps, for the moment, had forgotten that he had passed into the hands of a new owner--one of tender years. He never voluntarily attempted an adventure of that kind again; he knew, I suppose, that he no longer carried on his back a reckless dare-devil, who valued not life. Poor Picáso! he was mine till he died. I have had scores of horses since, but never one I loved so well. With the gauchos the union between man and horse is not of so intimate a nature as with the Indians of the pampas. Horses are too cheap, where a man without shoes to his feet may possess a herd of them, for the closest kind of friendship to ripen. The Indian has also less individuality of character. The immutable nature of the conditions he is placed in, and his savage life, which is a perpetual chase, bring him nearer to the level of the beast he rides. And probably the acquired sagacity of the horse in the long co-partnership of centuries has become hereditary, and of the nature of an instinct. The Indian horse is more docile, he understands his master better; the slightest touch of the hand on his neck, which seems to have developed a marvellous sensitiveness, is sufficient to guide him. The gaucho labours to give his horse "a silken mouth," as he aptly calls it; the Indian's horse has it from birth. Occasionally the gaucho sleeps in the saddle; the Indian can die on his horse. During frontier warfare one hears at times of a dead warrior being found and removed with difficulty from the horse that carried him out of the fight, and about whose neck his rigid fingers were clasped in death. Even in the gaucho country, however, where, I grieve to confess, the horse is not deservedly esteemed, there are very remarkable instances of equine attachment and fidelity to man, and of a fellowship between horse and rider of the closest kind. One only I will relate. When Rosas, that man of "blood and iron," was Dictator of the Argentine country--a position which he held for a quarter of a century--desertors from the army were inexorably shot when caught, as they generally were. But where my boyhood was spent there was a deserter, a man named Santa Anna, who for seven years, without ever leaving the neighbourhood of his home, succeeded in eluding his pursuers by means of the marvellous sagacity and watchful care exercised by his horse. When taking his rest on the plain--for he seldom slept under a roof--his faithful horse kept guard. At the first sight of mounted men on the horizon he would fly to his master, and, seizing his cloak between his teeth, rouse him with a vigorous shake. The hunted man would start up, and in a moment man and horse would vanish into one of the dense reed-beds abounding in the place, and where no man could follow. I have not space to tell more about this horse; but at last, in the fulness of time, when the figs were ripe--literally as well as figuratively, for it happened in the autumn of the year--the long tyrannous rule ended, and Santa Anna came out of the reed-beds, where he had lived his wild-animal life, to mix with his fellows. I knew him some years later. He was a rather heavy-looking man, with little to say, and his reputation for honesty was not good in the place; but I dare say there was something good in him. Students of nature are familiar with the modifying effects of new conditions on man and brute. Take, for example, the gaucho: he must every day traverse vast distances, see quickly, judge rapidly, be ready at all times to encounter hunger and fatigue, violent changes of temperature, great and sudden perils. These conditions have made him differ widely from the peasant of the Peninsula; he has the endurance and keen sight of a wolf, is fertile in expedients, quick in action, values human life not at all, and is in pain or defeat a Stoic. Unquestionably the horse he rides has also suffered a great change. He differs as much from the English hunter, for instance, as one animal can well differ from another of the same species. He never pounds the earth and wastes his energies in vain parade. He has not the dauntless courage that performs such brilliant feats in the field, and that often as not attempts the impossible. In the chase he husbands all his strength, carrying his head low, and almost grazing the ground with his hoofs, so that he is not a showy animal. Constant use, or the slow cumulative process of natural selection, has served to develop a keenness of sense almost preternatural. The vulture's eye, with all the advantage derived from the vulture's vast elevation above the scene surveyed, is not so far-reaching as the sense of smell in the pampa horse. A common phenomenon on the pampas is a sudden migration of the horses of a district to some distant place. This occurs in seasons of drought, when grass or water fails. The horses migrate to some district where, from showers having fallen or other circumstances, there is a better supply of food and drink. A slight breeze blowing from the more favoured region, which may be forty or fifty miles away, or even much further, is enough to start them off. Yet, during the scorching days of midsummer, very little moisture or smell of grass can possibly reach them from such a distance. Another phenomenon, even more striking, is familiar to every frontiersman. For some reason, the gaucho horse manifests the greatest terror at an Indian invasion. No doubt his fear is, in part at any rate, an associate feeling, the coming of the Indians being always a time of excitement and com-motion, sweeping like a great wave over the country; houses are in flames, families flying, cattle being driven at frantic speed to places of greater safety. Be this as it may, long before the marauders reach the settlement (often when they are still a whole day's journey from it) the horses take the alarm and come wildly flying in: the contagion quickly spreads to the horned cattle, and a general stampede ensues. The gauchos maintain that the horses _smell_ the Indians. I believe they are right, for when passing a distant Indian camp, from which the wind blew, the horses driven before me have suddenly taken fright and run away, leading me a chase of many miles. The explanation that ostriches, deer, and other fleet animals driven in before the invaders might be the cause of the stampede cannot be accepted, since the horses are familiar with the sight of these animals flying from their gaucho hunters. There is a pretty fable of a cat and dog lying in a dark room, aptly illustrating the fine senses of these two species. "Listen! I heard a feather drop!" said the dog. "Oh, no!" said the cat, "it was a needle; I saw it." The horse is not commonly believed to have senses keen as that, and a dog tracing his master's steps over the city pavement is supposed to be a feat no other animal can equal. No doubt the artificial life a horse lives in England, giving so little play to many of his most important faculties, has served to blunt them. He is a splendid creature; but the noble bearing, the dash and reckless courage that distinguish him from the modest horse of the desert, have not been acquired without a corresponding loss in other things. When ridden by night the Indian horse--and sometimes the same habit is found in the gaucho's animal--drops his head lower and lower as the darkness increases, with the danger arising from the presence of innumerable kennels concealed in the grass, until his nose sweeps the surface like a foxhound's. That this action is dictated by a powerful instinct of self-preservation is plain; for, when I have attempted to forcibly drag the animal's head up, he has answered such an experiment by taking the bit in his teeth, and violently pulling the reins out of my hand. His miraculous sense of smell measures the exact position of every hidden kennel, every treacherous spot, and enables him to pass swiftly and securely over it. On the desert pampa the gaucho, for a reason that he knows, calls the puma the "friend of man." The Arab gives this designation to his horse; but in Europe, where we do not associate closely with the horse, the dog naturally takes the foremost place in our affections. The very highest praise yet given to this animal is probably to be found in Bacon's essay on Atheism. "For take an example of a dog," he says, "and mark what a generosity and courage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man, who is to him in place of a god, or _melior natura,_ which courage is manifestly such as that creature, without the confidence of a better nature than its own, could never attain!" Can we not say as much of the horse? The very horses that fly terror-stricken from the smell of an Indian will, when "maintained by a man," readily charge into a whole host of yelling savages. I once had a horse at home, born and bred on the place, so docile that whenever I required him I could go to him where the horses were at pasture, and, though they all galloped off at my approach, he would calmly wait to be caught. Springing on to his back, I would go after the other horses, or gallop home with only my hand on his neck to guide him. I did not often ride him, as he was slow and lazy, but with timid women and children he was a favourite; he was also frequently used for farm work, in or out of harness, and I could shoot from his back. In the peach season he would roam about the plantation, getting the fruit, of which he was very fond, by tugging at the lower branches of the trees and shaking it down in showers. One intensely dark night I was riding home on this horse. I came through a road with a wire fence on each side, two miles in length, and when I had got nearly to the end of this road my horse suddenly stopped short, uttering a succession of loud terrified snorts. I could see nothing but the intense blackness of the night before me and tried to encourage him to go on. Touching him on the neck, I found his hair wet with the sudden profuse sweat of extreme fear. The whip made no impression on him. He continued to back away, his eyes apparently fixed on some object of horror just before him, while he trembled to such a degree that I was shaken in the saddle. He attempted several times to wheel round and run away, but I was determined not to yield to him, and continued the contest. Suddenly, when I was beginning to despair of getting home by that road, he sprang forward, and regularly charged the (to me) invisible object before him, and in another moment, when he had apparently passed it, taking the bit between his teeth he almost flew over the ground, never pausing till he brought me to my own door. When I dismounted his terror seemed gone, but he hung his head in a dejected manner, like a horse that has been under the saddle all day. I have never witnessed another such instance of almost maddening fear. His terror and apprehension were like what we can imagine a man experiencing at sight of a ghost in some dark solitary place. Yet he did not forcibly carry me away from it, as he might so easily have done; but, finding himself maintained by a "nature superior to his own," he preferred to face it. I have never met in the dog a more striking example of this noblest kind of brute courage. The incident did not impress me very much at the moment, but when I came to reflect that my sight was mere blindness compared with that of my horse, and that it was not likely his imagination clothed any familiar natural object with fantastic terrors, it certainly did impress me very deeply. I am loth to finish with, my subject, in which, to express myself in the manner of the gauchos, I have passed over many matters, like good grass and fragrant herbs the galloping horse sniffs at but cannot stay to taste; and especially loth to conclude with this last incident, which has in it an element of gloom. I would rather first go back for a few moments to my original theme--the pleasures of riding, for the sake of mentioning a species of pleasure my English reader has probably never tasted or even heard of. When riding by night on the pampas, I used to enjoy lying back on my horse till my head and shoulders rested well on his back, my feet also being raised till they pressed against his neck; and in this position, which practice can make both safe and comfortable, gaze up into the starry sky. To enjoy this method of riding thoroughly, a sure-footed unshod horse with perfect confidence in his rider is necessary; and he must be made to go at a swift and smooth pace over level grassy ground. With these conditions the sensation is positively delightful. Nothing of earth is visible, only the vast circle of the heavens glittering with innumerable stars; the muffled sound of the hoofs on the soft sward becomes in fancy only the rushing of the wings of our Pegasus, while the enchanting illusion that we are soaring through space possesses the mind. Unfortunately, however, this method of riding is impracticable in England. And, even if people with enthusiasm enough could be found to put it in practice by importing swift light-footed Arabian or pampa horses, and careering about level parks on dark starry nights, probably a shout of derision would be raised against so undignified a pastime. _Apropos_ of dignity, I will relate, in conclusion, an incident in my London life which may possibly interest psychologists. Some time ago in Oxford Street I got on top of an omnibus travelling west. My mind was preoccupied, I was anxious to get home, and, in an absent kind of way, I became irritated at the painfully slow rate of progress. It was all an old familiar experience, the deep thought, lessening pace, and consequent irritation. The indolent brute I imagined myself riding was, as usual, taking advantage of his rider's abstraction; but I would soon "feelingly persuade" him that I was not so far gone as to lose sight of the difference between a swinging gallop and a walk. So, elevating my umbrella, I dealt the side of the omnibus a sounding blow, very much to the astonishment of my fellow-passengers. So overgrown are we with usages, habits, tricks of thought and action springing from the soil we inhabit; and when we have broken away and removed ourselves far from it, so long do the dead tendrils still cling to us! CHAPTER XXIV, SEEN AND LOST, We can imagine what the feelings of a lapidary would be--an enthusiast whose life is given to the study of precious stones, and whose sole delight is in the contemplation of their manifold beauty--if a stranger should come in to him, and, opening his hand, exhibit a new unknown gem, splendid as ruby or as sapphire, yet manifestly no mere variety of any familiar stone, but differing as widely from all others as diamond from opal or cat's-eye; and then, just when he is beginning to rejoice in that strange exquisite loveliness, the hand should close and the stranger, with a mocking smile on his lips, go forth and disappear from sight in the crowd. A feeling such as that would be is not unfrequently experienced by the field naturalist whose favoured lot it is to live in a country not yet "thoroughly worked out," with its every wild inhabitant scientifically named, accurately described, and skilfully figured in some colossal monograph. One swift glance of the practised eye, ever eagerly searching for some new-thing, and he knows that here at length is a form never previously seen by him; but his joy is perhaps only for a few moments, and the prize is snatched from sight for ever. The lapidary might have some doubts; he might think that the stranger had, after all, only mocked him with the sight of a wonderful artificial gem, and that a close examination would have proved its worthlessness; but the naturalist can have no doubts: if he is an enthusiast, well acquainted with the fauna of his district, and has good eyesight, he knows that there is no mistake; for there it is, the new strange form, photographed by instantaneous process on his mind, and there it will remain, a tantalizing image, its sharp lines and fresh colouring unblurred by time. Walking in some open forest glade, he may look up just in time to see a great strange butterfly--a blue Morpho, let us say, wandering in some far country where this angel insect is unknown--passing athwart his vision with careless, buoyant flight, the most sylph-like thing in nature, and all blue and pure like its aerial home, but with a more delicate and wonderful brilliance in its cerulean colour, giving such unimaginable glory to its broad airy wings; and then, almost before his soul has had time to feel its joy, it may soar away unloitering over the tall trees, to be seen no more. But the admiration, the delight, and the desire are equally great, and the loss just as keenly felt, whether the strange species seen happens to be one surpassingly beautiful or not. Its newness is to the naturalist its greatest attraction. How beautiful beyond all others seems a certain small unnamed brown bird to my mind! So many years have passed and its image has not yet grown dim; yet I saw it only for a few moments, when it hopped out from, the thick foliage and perched within two or three yards of me, not afraid, but only curious; and after peering at me first with one eye and then the other, and wiping its small dagger on a twig, it flew away and was seen no more. For many days I sought for it, and for years waited its reappearance, and it was more to me than ninety and nine birds which I had always known; yet it was very modest, dressed in a brown suit, very pale on the breast and white on the throat, and for distinction a straw-coloured stripe over the eye--that ribbon which Queen Nature bestows on so many of her feathered subjects, in recognition, I suppose, of some small and common kind of merit. If I should meet with it in a collection I should know it again; only, in that case it would look plain and homely to me--this little bird that for a time made all others seem unbeautiful. Even a richer prize may come in sight for a brief period--one of the nobler mammalians, which are fewer in number, and bound to earth like ourselves, and therefore so much better known than the wandering children of air. In. some secluded spot, resting amidst luxuriant herbage or forest undergrowth, a slight rustling makes us start, and, lo! looking at us from the clustering leaves, a strange face; the leaf-like ears erect, the dark eyes round with astonishment, and the sharp black nose twitching and sniffing audibly, to take in the unfamiliar flavour of a human presence from the air, like the pursed-up and smacking lips of a wine-drinker tasting a new vintage. No sooner seen than gone, like a dream, a phantom, the quaint furry face to be thereafter only an image in memory. Sometimes the prize may be a very rich one, and actually within reach of the hand--challenging the hand, as it were, to grasp it, and yet presently slip away to be seen no more, although it maybe sought for day after day, with a hungry longing comparable to that of some poor tramp who finds a gold doubloon in the forest, and just when he is beginning to realize all that it means to him drops it in the grass and cannot find it again. There is not the faintest motion in the foliage, no rustle of any dry leaf, and yet we know that something has moved--something has come or has gone; and, gazing fixedly at one spot, we suddenly see that it is still there, close to us, the pointed ophidian head and long neck, not drawn back and threatening, but sloping forward, dark and polished as the green and purple weed-stems springing from marshy soil, and with an irregular chain of spots extending down the side. Motionless, too, as the stems it is; but presently the tongue, crimson and glistening, darts out and flickers, like a small jet of smoke and flame, and is withdrawn; then the smooth serpent head drops down, and the thing is gone. How I saw and lost the noble wrestling frog has been recounted in Chapter IV.: other tantalizing experiences of the same kind remain to be told in the present chapter, which is not intended for the severe naturalist, but rather for such readers as may like to hear something about the pains and pleasures of the seeker as well as the result of the seeking. One of my earliest experiences of seeing and losing relates to a humming-bird--a veritable "jewel of ornithology." I was only a boy at the time, but already pretty well acquainted with the birds of the district I lived in, near La Plata River, and among them were three species of the hummingbird. One spring day I saw a fourth--a wonderful little thing, only half as big as the smallest of the other three--the well-known Phaithornis splendens--and scarcely larger than a bumble-bee. I was within three feet of it as it sucked at the flowers, suspended motionless in the air, the wings appearing formless and mist-like from their rapid vibratory motion, but the rest of the upper plumage was seen distinctly as anything can be seen. The head and neck and upper part of the back were emerald green, with the metallic glitter usually seen in the burnished scale-like feathers of these small birds; the lower half of the back was velvet-black; the tail and tail-coverts white as snow. On two other occasions, at intervals of a few days, I saw this brilliant little stranger, always very near, and tried without success to capture it, after which, it disappeared from the plantation. Four years later I saw it once again not far from the same place. It was late in summer, and I was out walking on the level plain where the ground was carpeted with short grass, and nothing else grew there except a solitary stunted cardoou thistle-bush with one flower on its central stem above the grey-green artichoke-like leaves. The disc of the great thorny blossom was as broad as that of a sunflower, purple in colour, delicately frosted with white; on this flat disc several insects were feeding--flies, fireflies, and small wasps--and I paused for a few minutes in my walk to watch them. Suddenly a small misty object flew swiftly downwards past my face, and paused motionless in the air an inch or two above the rim of the flower. Once more my lost humming-bird, which I remembered so well! The exquisitely graceful form, half circled by the misty moth-like wings, the glittering green and velvet-black mantle, and snow-white tail spread open like a fan--there it hung like a beautiful bird-shaped gem suspended by an invisible gossamer thread. One--two--three moments passed, while I gazed, trembling with rapturous excitement, and then, before I had time to collect my faculties and make a forlorn attempt to capture it with my hat, away it flew, gliding so swiftly on the air that form and colour were instantly lost, and in appearance it was only an obscure grey line traced rapidly along the low sky and fading quickly out ol sight. And that was the last I ever saw of it. The case of this small "winged gem," still wandering nameless in the wilds, reminds me of yet another bird seen and lost, also remarkable for its diminutive size. For years I looked for it, and when the wished-for opportunity came, and it was in my power to secure it, I refrained; and Fate punished me by never permitting me to see it again. On several occasions while riding on the pampas I had caught glimpses of this minute bird flitting up mothlike, with uncertain tremulous flight, and again dipping into the weeds, tall grass, or thistles. Its plumage was yellowish in hue, like sere dead herbage, and its extremely slender body looked longer and slimmer than it was, owing to the great length of its tail, or of the two middle tail-feathers. I knew that it was a Synallaxis--a genus of small birds of the Woodhewer family. Now, as I have said in a former chapter, these are wise little birds, more interesting--I had almost said more beautiful--in their wisdom, or wisdom-simulating instincts, than the quatzel in its resplendent green, or the cock-of-the-rock in its vivid scarlet and orange mantle. Wrens and mocking-birds have melody for their chief attraction, and the name of each kind is, to our minds, also the name of a certain kind of sweet music; we think of swifts and swallows in connection with the mysterious migratory instinct; and humming-birds have a glittering mantle, and the miraculous motions necessary to display its ever-changing iridescent beauty. In like manner, the homely Dendrocolaptidae possess the genius for building, and an account of one of these small birds without its nest would be like a biography of Sir Christopher Wren that made no mention of his works. It was not strange then that when I saw this small bird the question rose to my mind, what kind of nest does it build? One morning in the month of October, the great breeding-time for birds in the Southern Hemisphere, while cautiously picking my way through a bed of eardoon bushes, the mysterious little creature flitted up and perched among the clustering leaves quite near to me. It uttered a feeble grasshopper-like chirp; and then a second individual, smaller, paler-coloured, and if possible shyer than the first, showed itself for two or three seconds, after which both birds dived once more into concealment. How glad I was to see them! for here they were, male and female, in a suitable spot in my own fields, where they evidently meant to breed. Every day after that I paid them one cautious visit, and by waiting from five to fifteen minutes, standing motionless among the thistles, I always succeeded in getting them to show themselves for a few moments. I could easily have secured them then, but my wish was to discover their nesting habits; and after watching for some days, I was rewarded by finding their nest; then for three days more I watched it slowly progressing towards completion, and each time I approached it one of the small birds would flit out to vanish into the herbage. The structure was about six inches long, and not more than two inches in diameter, and was placed horizontally on a broad stiff eardoon leaf, sheltered by other leaves above. It was made of the finest dry grass loosely woven, and formed a simple perfectly straight tube, open at both ends. The aperture was so small that I could only insert my little finger, and the bird could not, of course, have turned round in so narrow a passage, and so always went in at one end and left by the other. On visiting the spot on the fourth day I found, to my intense chagrin, that the delicate fabric had been broken and thrown down by some animal; also, that the birds had utterly vanished--for I sought them in vain, both there and in every weedy and thistly spot in the neighbourhood. The bird without the nest had seemed a useless thing to possess; now, for all my pains, I had only a wisp of fine dry grass in my hand, and no bird. The shy, modest little creature, dwelling violet-like amidst clustering leaves, and even when showing itself still "half-hidden from the eye," was thereafter to be only a tantalizing image in memory. Still, my case was not so hopeless as that of the imagined lapidary; for however rare a species may be, and near to its final extinction, there must always be many individuals existing, and I was cheered by the thought that I might yet meet with one at some future time. And, even if this particular species was not to gladden my sight again, there were others, scores and hundreds more, and at any moment I might expect to see one shining, a living gem, on Nature's open extended palm. Sometimes it has happened that an animal would have been overlooked or passed by with scant notice, to be forgotten, perhaps, but for some singular action or habit which has instantly given it a strange importance, and made its possession desirable. I was once engaged in the arduous and monotonous task of driving a large number of sheep a distance of two hundred and fifty miles, in excessively hot weather, when sheep prefer standing still to travelling. Five or six gauchos were with me, and we were on the southern pampas of Buenos Ayres, near to a long precipitous stony sierra which rose to a height of five or six hundred feet above the plain. Who that has travelled for eighteen days on a dead level in a broiling sun can resist a hill? That sierra was more sublime to us than Conon-dagua, than Illimani. Leaving the sheep, I rode to it with three of the men; aad after securing our horses on the lower slope, we began our laborious ascent. Now the gaucho when taken from his horse, on which he lives like a kind of parasite, is a very slow-moving creature, and I soon left my friends far behind. Coming to a place where ferns and flowering herbage grew thick, I began to hear all about me sounds of a character utterly unlike any natural sound I was acquainted with--innumerable low clear voices tinkling or pealing like minute sweet-toned, resonant bells--for the sounds were purely metallic and perfectly bell-like. I was completely ringed round with the mysterious music, and as I walked it rose and sank rhythmically, keeping time to my steps. I stood still, and immediately the sounds ceased. I took a step forwards, and again the fairy-bells were set ringing, as if at each step my foot touched a central meeting point of a thousand radiating threads, each thread attached to a peal of little bells hanging concealed among the herbage. I waited for my companions, and called their attention to the phenomenon, and to them also it was a thing strange and perplexing. "It is the bell-snake!" cried one excitedly. This is the rattle-snake; but although at that time I had no experience of this reptile, I knew that he was wrong. Yet how natural the mistake! The Spanish name of "bell-snake" had made him imagine that the whirring sound of the vibrating rattles, resembling muffled cicada music, is really bell-like in character. Eventually we discovered that the sound was made by grasshoppers; but they were seen only to be lost, for I could not capture one, so excessively shy and cunning had the perpetual ringing of their own little tocsins made them. And presently I had to return to my muttons; and afterwards there was no opportunity of revisiting the spot to observe so singular a habit again and collect specimens. It was a very slender grasshopper, about an inch and a half long, of a uniform, tawny, protective colour--the colour of an old dead leaf. It also possessed a protective habit common to most grasshoppers, of embracing a slender vertical stem with its four fine front legs, and moving cunningly round so as to keep the stem always in front of it to screen itself from sight. Only other grasshoppers are silent when alarmed, and the silence and masking action are related, and together prevent the insect from being detected. But this particular species, or race, or colony, living on the sides of the isolated sierra, had acquired a contrary habit, resembling a habit of gregarious birds and mammals. For this informing sound (unless it mimicked some _warning-sound,_ as of a rattlesnake, which it didn't) could not possibly be beneficial to individuals living alone, as grasshoppers generally do, but, on the contrary, only detrimental; and such a habit was therefore purely for the public good, and could only have arisen in a species that always lived in communities. On another occasion, in the middle of the hot season, I was travelling alone across-country in a locality which was new to me, a few leagues east of La Plata River, in its widest part. About eleven o'clock in the morning I came to a low-lying level plain where the close-cropped grass was vivid green, although elsewhere all over the country the vegetation was scorched and dead, and dry as ashes. The ground being so favourable, I crossed this low plain at a swinging gallop, and in about thirty minutes' time. In that half-hour I saw a vast number of snakes, all of one kind, and a species new to me; but my anxiety to reach my destination before the oppressive heat of the afternoon made me hurry on. So numerous were the snakes in that green place that frequently I had as many as a dozen in sight at one time. It looked to me like a coronelia--harmless colubrine snakes--but was more than twice as large as either of the two species of that genus I was already familiar with. In size they varied greatly, ranging from two to fully five feet in length, and the colour was dull yellow or tan, slightly lined and mottled with shades of brown. Among dead or partially withered grass and herbage they would have been undistinguishable at even a very short distance, but on the vivid green turf they were strangely conspicuous, some being plainly visible forty or fifty yards away; and not one was seen coiled up. They were all lying motionless, stretched out full length, and looking like dark yellow or tan-coloured ribbons, thrown on to the grass. It was most unusual to see so many snakes together, although not surprising in the circumstances. The December heats had dried up all the watercourses and killed the vegetation, and made the earth hard and harsh as burnt bricks; and at such times snakes, especially the more active non-venomous kinds, will travel long distances, in their slow way, in search of water. Those I saw during my ride had probably been attracted by the moisture from a large area of country; and although there was no water, the soft fresh grass must have been grateful to them. Snakes are seen coiled up when they are at home; when travelling and far afield, they lie as a rule extended full length, even when resting--and they are generally resting. Pausing at length, before quitting this green plain, to give my horse a minute's rest, I got off and approached a large snake; but when I was quite twelve yards from it, it lifted its head, and, turning deliberately round, came rather swiftly at me. I retreated, and it followed, until, springing on to my horse, I left it, greatly surprised at its action, and beginning to think that it must be venomous. As I rode on the feeling of surprise increased, conquering haste; and in the end, seeing more snakes, I dismounted and approached the largest, when exactly the same thing occurred again, the snake rousing itself and coming angrily at me when I was still (considering the dull lethargic character of the deadliest kinds) at an absurd distance from it. Again and again I repeated the experiment, with the same result. And at length I stunned one with a blow of my whip to examine its mouth, but found no poison-fangs in it. I then resumed my journey, expecting to meet with more snakes of the same kind at my destination; but there were none, and very soon business called me to a distant place, and I never met with this species afterwards. But when I rode away from that green spot, and was once more on the higher, desolate, wind-swept plain surrounding it--a rustling sea of giant thistles, still erect, although dead, and red as rust, and filling the hot blue sky with silvery down--it was with a very strange feeling. The change from the green and living to the dead and dry and dusty was so great! There seemed to be something mysterious, extra-natural, in that low level plain, so green and fresh and snaky, where my horse's hoofs had made no sound--a place where no man dwelt, and no cattle pastured, and no wild bird folded its wing. And the serpents there were not like others--the mechanical coiled-up thing we know, a mere bone-and-muscle man-trap, set by the elements, to spring and strike when trodden on: but these had a high intelligence, a lofty spirit, and were filled with a noble rage and astonishment that any other kind of creature, even a man, should venture there to disturb their sacred peace. It was a fancy, born of that sense of mystery which the unknown and the unusual in nature wakes in us--an obsolescent feeling that still links us to the savage. But the simple fact was wonderful enough, and that has been set down simply and apart from all fancies. If the reader happens not to be a naturalist, it is right to tell him that a naturalist cannot exaggerate consciously; and if he be capable of unconscious exaggeration, then ho is no naturalist. He should hasten "to join the innumerable caravan that moves" to the fantastic realms of romance. Looking at the simple fact scientifically, it was a case of mimicry--the harmless snake mimicking the fierce threatening gestures and actions proper to some deadly kind. Only with this difference: the venomous snake, of all deadly things in nature, is the slowest to resentment, the most reluctant to enter into a quarrel; whereas in this species angry demonstrations were made when the intruder was yet far off, and before he had shown any hostile intentions. My last case--the last, that is, of the few I have selected--relates to a singular variation in the human species. On this occasion I was again travelling alone in a strange district on the southern frontier of Buenos Ayres. On a bitterly cold midwinter day, shortly before noon, I arrived, stiff and tired, at one of those pilgrims' rests on the pampas--a wayside _pulperia,_ or public house, where the traveller can procure anything he may require or desire, from a tumbler of Brazilian rum to make glad his heart, to a poncho, or cloak of blue cloth with fluffy scarlet lining, to keep him warm o' nights; and, to speed him on his way, a pair of cast-iron spurs weighing six pounds avoirdupois, with rowels eight inches in diameter, manufactured in this island for the use of barbarous men beyond the sea. The wretched mud-and-grass building was surrounded by a foss crossed by a plank drawbridge; outside of the enclosure twelve or fourteen saddled horses were standing, and from the loud noise of talk and laughter in the bar I conjectured that a goodly company of rough frontiersmen were already making merry at that early hour. It was necessary for me to go in among them to see the proprietor of the place and ask permission to visit his kitchen in order to make myself a "tin of coffee," that being the refreshment I felt inclined for. When I went in and made my salutation, one man wheeled round square before me, stared straight into my oyes, and in an exceedingly high-pitched reedy or screechy voice and a sing-song tone returned my "good morning," and bade me call for the liquid I loved best at his expense. I declined with thanks, and in accordance with gaucho etiquette added that I was prepared to pay for his liquor. It was then for him to say that he had already been served and so let the matter drop, but he did not do so: he screamed out in his wild animal voice that he would take gin. I paid for his drink, and would, I think, have felt greatly surprised at his strange insolent behaviour, so unlike that of the usually courteous gaucho, but this thing affected me not at all, so profoundly had his singular appearance and voice impressed me; and for the rest of the time I remained in the place I continued to watch him narrowly. Professor Huxley has somewhere said, "A variation frequently occurs, but those who notice it take no care about noting down the particulars." That is not a failing of mine, and this is what I noted down while the man's appearance was still fresh in memory. He was about five feet eleven inches in height--very tall for a gaucho--straight and athletic, with exceedingly broad shoulders, which made his round head look small; long arms and huge hands. The round flat face, coarse black hair, swarthy reddish colour, and smooth hairless cheeks seemed to show that he had more Indian than Spanish blood in him, while his round black eyes were even more like those of a rapacious animal in expression than in the pure-blooded Indian. He also had the Indian or half-breed's moustache, when that natural ornament is permitted to grow, and which is composed of thick bristles standing out like a cat's whiskers. The mouth was the marvellous feature, for it was twice the size of an average mouth, and the two lips were alike in thickness. This mouth did not smile, but snarled, both when he spoke and when he should have smiled; and when he snarled the wliolo of his teeth and a part of the gums were displayed. The teeth were not as in other human beings--incisors, canines, and molars: they were all exactly alike, above and below, each tooth a gleaming white triangle, broad at the gum where it touched its companion teeth, and with a point sharp as the sharpest-pointed dagger. They were like the teeth of a shark or crocodile. I noticed that when he showed them, which was very often, they were not set together as in dogs, weasels, and other savage snarling animals, but apart, showing the whole terrible serration in the huge red mouth. After getting his gin he joined in the boisterous conversation with the others, and this gave me an opportunity of studying his face for several minutes, all the time with a curious feeling that I had put myself into a cage with a savage animal of horrible aspect, whose instincts were utterly unknown to me, and were probably not very pleasant. It was interesting to note that whenever one of the others addressed him directly, or turned to him when speaking, it was with a curious expression, not of fear, but partly amusement and partly something else which I could not fathom. Now, one might think that this was natural enough purely on account of the man's extraordinary appearance. I do not think that a sufficient explanation; for however strange a man's appearance may be, his intimate friends and associates soon lose all sense of wonder at his strangeness, and even forget that he is unlike others. My belief is that this curiosity, or whatever it was they showed in their faces, was due to something in his character--a mental strangeness, showing itself at unexpected times, and which might flash, out at any moment to amuse or astonish them. There was certainly a correspondence between the snarling action of the mouth and the dangerous form of the teeth, perfect as that in any snarling animal; and such animals, it should be remembered, snarl not only when angry and threatening, but in their playful moods as well. Other and more important correspondences or correlations might have existed; and the voice was certainly unlike any human voice I have ever heard, whether in white, red, or black man. But the time I had for observation was short, the conversation revealed nothing further, and by-and-by I went away in search of the odorous kitchen, where there would be hot water for coffee, or at all events cold water and a kettle, and materials for making a fire--to wit, bones of dead cattle, "buffalo chips," and rancid fat. I have never been worried with the wish, or ambition to be a head-hunter in the Dyak sense, but on this one occasion I did wish that it had been possible, without violating any law, or doing anything to a fellow-creature which I should not like done to myself, to have obtained possession of this man's head, with its set of unique and terrible teeth. For how, in the name of Evolution, did he come by them, and by other physical peculiarities--the snarling habit and that high-pitched animal voice, for instance--which made him a being different from others--one separate and far apart? Was he, so admirably formed, so complete and well-balanced, merely a freak of nature, to use an old-fashioned phrase--a sport, or spontaneous individual variation--an experiment for a new human type, imagined by Nature in some past period, inconceivably long ago, but which she had only now, too late, found time to carry out? Or rather was he like that little hairy maiden exhibited not long ago in London, a reproduction of the past, the mystery called reversion--a something in the life of a species like memory in the life of an individual, the memory which suddenly brings back to the old man's mind the image of his childhood? For no dream-monster in human form ever appeared to me with so strange and terrible a face; and this was no dream but sober fact, for I saw and spoke with this man; and unless cold steel has given him his quietus, or his own horse has crushed him, or a mad bull sored him--all natural forms of death in that wild land--he is probably still living and in the prime of life, and perhaps at this very moment drinking gin at some astonished traveller's expense at that very bar where I met him. The old Palaeolithic man, judging from the few remains we have of him, must have had an unspeakably savage and, to our way of thinking, repulsive and horrible aspect, with his villainous low receding forehead, broad nose, great projecting upper jaw, and retreating chin; to meet such a man face to face in Piccadilly would frighten a nervous person of the present time. But his teeth were not unlike our own, only very much larger and more powerful, and well adapted to their work of masticating the flesh, underdone and possibly raw, of mammoth and rhinoceros. If, then, this living man recalls a type of the past, it is of a remoter past, a more primitive man, the volume of whose history is missing from the geological record. To speculate on such a subject seems idle and useless; and when I coveted possession of that head it was not because I thought that it might lead to any fresh discovery. A lower motive inspired the feeling. I wished for it only that I might bring it over the sea, to drop it like a new apple of discord, suited to the spirit of the times, among the anthropologists and evolutionists generally of this old and learned world. Inscribed, of course, "To the most learned," but giving no locality and no particulars. I wished to do that for the pleasure--not a very noble kind of pleasure, I allow--of witnessing from some safe hiding-place the stupendous strife that would have ensued--a battle more furious, lasting and fatal to many a brave knight of biology, than was ever yet fought over any bone or bony fragment or fabric ever picked up, including the celebrated cranium of the Neanderthal. APPENDIX. THE PUMA, OR LION OF AMERICA. The following passage occurs in an article on "The Naturalist in La Plata," by the late Professor Piomanes, which appeared in the _Nineteenth Century,_ May, 1893. After quoting the account of the puma's habits and character given in the book, the writer says:--"I have received corroboration touching all these points from a gentleman who, when walking alone and unarmed on the skirts of a forest, was greatly alarmed by a large puma coming out to meet him. Deeming it best not to stand, he advanced to meet the animal, which thereupon began to gambol around his feet and rub against his legs, after the manner of an affectionate cat. At first he thought these movements must have been preliminary to some peculiar mode of attack, and therefore he did not respond, but walked quietly on, until the puma suddenly desisted and re-entered the forest. This gentleman says that, until the publication of Mr. Hudson's book, he had always remained under the impression that that particular puma must have been insane." MUSIC AND DANCING IN NATURE. I have found among my papers the following mislaid note on the subject of sportive displays of mammalians, which should have been used on page 281, where the subject is briefly treated:--Most mammalians are comparatively silent and live on the ground, and not having the power to escape easily, which birds have, and being more persecuted by man, they do not often disport themselves unrestrainedly in his presence; it is difficult to watch any wild animal without the watcher's presence being known or suspected. Nevertheless, their displays are not so rare as we might imagine. I have more than once detected species, with which I was, or imagined myself to be, well acquainted, disporting themselves in a manner that took me completely by surprise. While out tinamou shooting one day in autumn, near my own home in La Plata, I spied a troop of about a dozen weasels racing madly about over a vizcacha village--the mound and group of pit-like burrows inhabited by a community of vizcachas. These weasels were of the large common species, Galictis barbara, about the size of a cat; and were engaged in a pastime resembling a complicated dance, and so absorbed were they on that occasion that they took no notice of me when I walked up to within nine or ten yards of them, and stood still to watch the performance. They were all swiftly racing about and leaping over the pits, always doubling quickly back when the limit of the mound was reached, and although apparently carried away with excitement, and crossing each other's tracks at all angles, and this so rapidly and with so many changes of direction that I became confused when trying to keep any one animal in view, they never collided nor even came near enough to touch one another. The whole performance resembled, on a greatly magnified scale and without its beautiful smoothness and lightning swiftness, the fantastic dance of small black water-beetles, frequently seen on the surface of a pool or stream, during which the insects glide about in a limited area with such celerity as to appear like black curving lines traced by flying invisible pens; and as the lines everywhere cross and intersect, they form an intricate pattern on the surface, After watching the weasel dance for some minutes, I stepped up to the mound, whereupon the animals became alarmed and rushed pell-mell into the burrows, but only to reappear in a few seconds, thrusting up their long ebony-black necks and flat grey-capped heads, snarling chattering at me, glaring with fierce, beady eyes. THE STRANGE INSTINCTS OF CATTLE. In November and December, 1893, a short correspondence appeared in the _Field_ on the curious subject of "Dogs burying their dead." It arose through a letter from a Mr. Gould, of Albany, Western Australia, relating the following incident:-- A settler shot a bitch from a neighbouring estate that had formed the habit of coming on to his land to visit and play with his dog. The dog, finding his companion dead, was observed to dig a large hole in the ground, into which he dragged the carcase; but he did not cover it with earth. The writer wished to know if any reader of the _Field_ had met with a similar case. Some notes, which I contributed in reply to this letter, bear on one of the subjects treated in the chapter on "strange instincts," namely, the instinct of social animals to protect and shield their fellows; and for this reason I have thought it best to reproduce them in this place. I remember on one occasion watching at intervals, for an entire day, a large and very savage dog keeping watch over the body of a dead bitch that had been shot. He made no attempt to bury the dead animal, but he never left it. He was observed more than once trying to drag the body away, doubtless with the intention of hiding it; not succeeding in these attempts, he settled down by its side again, although it was evident that he was suffering greatly from thirst and heat. It was at last only with the greatest trouble that the people of the house succeeded in getting the body away and burying it out of his sight. Another instance, more to the point, occurred at my own house on the pampas, and I was one of several persons who witnessed it. A small, red, long-haired bitch--a variety of the common native cur--gave birth to four or five pups. A peon was told to destroy them, and, waiting until the bitch was out of sight, he carried them off to the end of the orchard, some 400 or 500 yards from the house, and threw them into a pool of water which was only two to three feet deep. The bitch passed the rest of the day in rushing frantically about, searching for her young, and in the evening, a little after dark, actually succeeded in finding them, although they were lying at the bottom of the pool. She got them all out, and carried them, one by one, to another part of the grounds, where she passed the night with them, uttering at intervals the most piercing cries. In the morning she carried them to still another spot, where there was a soft mould, and then dug a hole large and deep enough to bury them all, covering them over with the loose earth. Her task done, she returned to the house to sleep all day, but when night came again the whole piteous performance was repeated: the pups were dug up, and she passed the long, piercingly cold night--for it was in the depth of winter--trying to keep them warm, and uttering, as before, distressing cries. Yet a third time the whole thing was repeated; but after the third night, when the dog came home to sleep, the dead pups were taken out of the ground and buried at a distance. Such an action as this strikes one with astonishment only because we have the custom of burying our dead, and are too ready at all times to regard the dog as human-like. But the explanation of the action in this case is to be found in the familiar fact that very many animals, including the dog, have the habit or instinct of burying or concealing the thing they wish to leave in safety. Thus, the dog buries the bone it does not want to eat, and when hungry digs it up again. When a dog buries or hides the dead body of the she dog it was attached to, or the she dog buries her dead young, it is with the same motive--namely, to conceal the animal that cannot be roused, and that it would not be safe to leave exposed. It is plain to all who observe their actions that the lower animals have no comprehension of death. In the case of two animals that are accustomed to play or to be much together, if one dies, or is killed, and its body left, the other will come to sniff at, touch, and at last try to rouse it; but finding all attempts vain, it will at length go away to seek companionship elsewhere. In cases where the attachment is much stronger, the dead body may be watched over for an indefinite period. A brother of mine once related to me a very pathetic incident which occurred at an estancia on the pampas where he was staying. A large portion of the land was a low, level, marshy plain, partly overgrown with reeds and rushes; and one day, in this wilderness, a little boy of eight or nine, from the estancia, lost himself. A small dog, his invariable attendant, had gone out with him, but did not return. Seven days later the poor boy was found, at a great distance from the house, lying on the grass, where he had died of exhaustion. The dog was lying coiled up at his side, and appeared to be sleeping; but, when spoken to, he did not stir, and was presently found to be dead too. The dog could have gone back at any moment to the estancia, but his instinct of attachment overcame all others; he kept guard over his little master, who slept so soundly and so long, until he, too, slept in the same way. A still more remarkable case of this kind was given in one of my books, of a gaucho, accompanied by his dog, who was chased and overtaken by a troop of soldiers during one of the civil wars in Uruguay. Suspecting him of being a spy, or, at all events, an enemy, his captors cut his throat, then rode away, calling to the dog to follow them; but the animal refused to leave his dead master's side. Returning to the spot a few days later, they saw the body of the man they had killed surrounded by a large number of vultures, which the dog, in a frenzy of excitement, was occupied in keeping at a respectable distance. It was observed that the dog, after making one of his sallies, driving the birds away with furious barkings, would set out at a run to a small stream not far from the spot; but when half way to it he would look back, and, seeing the vultures advancing once more to the corpse, would rush back to protect it. The soldiers watched him for some time with great interest, and once more they tried in vain to get him to follow them. Two days afterwards they revisited the spot, to find the dog lying dead by the side of his dead master. I had this story from the lips of one of the witnesses. In all such cases, whether the dog watches over, conceals, or buries a dead body, he is doubtless moved by the same instinct which leads him to safeguard the animal he is attached to--another dog or his human master. But, as the dead animal is past help, it is, of course, a blunder of the instinct; and the blunder must be of very much less frequent occurrence among wild than among domestic animals. In a state of nature, when a gregarious animal dies, he dies, as a rule, alone; his body is not seen by his former companions, and he is not missed. When he dies by violence--which is the common fate--the body is carried off or devoured by the killer. This being the usual order, there is no instinct, except in a very few species, relating to the disposal of the dead among mammals and other vertebrates, such as is found in ants and other social insects. There are a few mammalians that live together in small communities, in a habitation made to last for many generations, in which such an instinct would appear necessary, and it accordingly exists, but is very imperfect. This is the case with the vizcacha, the large rodent of the pampas, which lives with its fellows, to the number of twenty or thirty, in a cluster of huge burrows. When a vizcacha dies in a burrow, the body is dragged out and thrown on to the mound among the mass of rubbish collected on it--but not until he has been dead a long time, and there is nothing left of him but the dry bones held together by the skin. In that condition the other members of the community probably cease to look on him as one of their companions who has fallen into a long sleep; he is no more than so much rubbish, which must be cleared out of an old disused burrow. Probably the beaver possesses some rude instinct similar to that of the vizcacha. _Apropos_ of animals burying their treasures (or connections) for safety, it is worth mentioning that the skunk of the pampas occasionally buries her young in the kennel, when hunger compels her to go out foraging. I had often heard of this habit of the female skunk from the gauchos, and one day had the rare good fortune to witness an animal engaged in obliterating her own kennel. The senses of the skunk are so defective that one is able at times to approach very near to without alarming them. In this instance I sat on my horse at a distance of twenty yards, and watched the animal at work, drawing in the loose earth with her fore feet until the entrance to the kennel was filled up to within three inches of the surface; then, dropping into the shallow cavity, she pressed the loose mould down with her nose. Her task finished, she trotted away, and the hollow in the soil, when I examined it closely, looked only like the mouth of an ancient choked-up burrow. The young inhabit a circular chamber, lined with fine dry grass, at the end of a narrow passage from 3 ft. to 5 ft. long, and no doubt have air enough to serve them until their parent returns; but I believe the skunk only buries her young when they are very small. 
40459	----	THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. VOLUME XLIV. I HAVE recently learnt from the publishers of the 'International Scientific Series' that they have made arrangements with Sir John Lubbock to bring out in the same series a work of his on Ants and Bees. Necessarily, therefore, the material to be dealt with in his work will to a large extent overlap that which is presented by my chapters on the same insects; but after consulting with the publishers, and also with Sir John Lubbock, it has seemed to me undesirable to omit these chapters on account of the circumstances here stated. For, on the one hand, the facts will not lose their value from being twice told; and on the other, it is desirable that the present member of the Series should form in itself, so far as its Author can make it, a complete _résumé_ of all the more important facts of _Animal Intelligence_. THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. EACH BOOK COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME, 12MO, AND BOUND IN CLOTH. I. 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ROMANES. $1.75. XLV. MAN BEFORE METALS. By N. JOLY, Correspondent of the Institute. With 148 Illustrations. $1.75. XLVI. THE ORGANS OF SPEECH AND THEIR APPLICATION IN THE FORMATION OF ARTICULATE SOUNDS. By GEORG HERMANN VON MEYER, Professor in Ordinary of Anatomy at the University of Zürich. With 47 Woodcuts. $1.75. New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. THE INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. BY GEORGE J. ROMANES, M. A., LL. D., F. R. S., ZOOLOGICAL SECRETARY OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY. NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1884. PREFACE. WHEN I first began to collect materials for this work it was my intention to divide the book into two parts. Of these I intended the first to be concerned only with the facts of animal intelligence, while the second was to have treated of these facts in their relation to the theory of Descent. Finding, however, as I proceeded, that the material was too considerable in amount to admit of being comprised within the limits of a single volume, I have made arrangements with the publishers of the 'International Scientific Series' to bring out the second division of the work as a separate treatise, under the title 'Mental Evolution.' This treatise I hope to get ready for press within a year or two. My object in the work as a whole is twofold. First, I have thought it desirable that there should be something resembling a text-book of the facts of Comparative Psychology, to which men of science, and also metaphysicians, may turn whenever they may have occasion to acquaint themselves with the particular level of intelligence to which this or that species of animal attains. Hitherto the endeavour of assigning these levels has been almost exclusively in the hands of popular writers; and as these have, for the most part, merely strung together, with discrimination more or less inadequate, innumerable anecdotes of the display of animal intelligence, their books are valueless as works of reference. So much, indeed, is this the case, that Comparative Psychology has been virtually excluded from the hierarchy of the sciences. If we except the methodical researches of a few distinguished naturalists, it would appear that the phenomena of mind in animals, having constituted so much and so long the theme of unscientific authors, are now considered well-nigh unworthy of serious treatment by scientific methods. But it is surely needless to point out that the phenomena which constitute the subject-matter of Comparative Psychology, even if we regard them merely as facts in Nature, have at least as great a claim to accurate classification as those phenomena of structure which constitute the subject-matter of Comparative Anatomy. Leaving aside, therefore, the reflection that within the last twenty years the facts of animal intelligence have suddenly acquired a new and profound importance, from the proved probability of their genetic continuity with those of human intelligence, it would remain true that their systematic arrangement is a worthy object of scientific endeavour. This, then, has been my first object, which, otherwise stated, amounts merely to passing the animal kingdom in review in order to give a trustworthy account of the grade of psychological development which is presented by each group. Such is the scope of the present treatise. My second, and much more important object, is that of considering the facts of animal intelligence in their relation to the theory of Descent. With the exception of Mr. Darwin's admirable chapters on the mental powers and moral sense, and Mr. Spencer's great work on the Principles of Psychology, there has hitherto been no earnest attempt at tracing the principles which have been probably concerned in the genesis of Mind. Yet there is not a doubt that, for the present generation at all events, no subject of scientific inquiry can present a higher degree of interest; and therefore it is mainly with the view of furthering this inquiry that I have undertaken this work. It will thus be apparent that the present volume, while complete in itself as a statement of the facts of Comparative Psychology, has for its more ultimate purpose the laying of a firm foundation for my future treatise on Mental Evolution. But although, from what I have just said, it will be apparent that the present treatise is preliminary to a more important one, I desire to emphasise this statement, lest the critics, in being now presented only with a groundwork on which the picture is eventually to be painted, should deem that the art displayed is of somewhat too commonplace a kind. If the present work is read without reference to its ultimate object of supplying facts for the subsequent deduction of principles, it may well seem but a small improvement upon the works of the anecdote-mongers. But if it is remembered that my object in these pages is the mapping out of animal psychology for the purposes of a subsequent synthesis, I may fairly claim to receive credit for a sound scientific intention, even where the only methods at my disposal may incidentally seem to minister to a mere love of anecdote. It remains to add a few words on the principles which I have laid down for my own guidance in the selection and arrangement of facts. Considering it desirable to cast as wide a net as possible, I have fished the seas of popular literature as well as the rivers of scientific writing. The endless multitude of alleged facts which I have thus been obliged to read, I have found, as may well be imagined, excessively tedious; and as they are for the most part recorded by wholly unknown observers, the labour of reading them would have been useless without some trustworthy principles of selection. The first and most obvious principle that occurred to me was to regard only those facts which stood upon the authority of observers well known as competent; but I soon found that this principle constituted much too close a mesh. Where one of my objects was to determine the upper limit of intelligence reached by this and that class, order, or species of animals, I usually found that the most remarkable instances of the display of intelligence were recorded by persons bearing names more or less unknown to fame. This, of course, is what we might antecedently expect, as it is obvious that the chances must always be greatly against the more intelligent individuals among animals happening to fall under the observation of the more intelligent individuals among men. Therefore I soon found that I had to choose between neglecting all the more important part of the evidence--and consequently in most cases feeling sure that I had fixed the upper limit of intelligence too low--or supplementing the principle of looking to authority alone with some other principles of selection, which, while embracing the enormous class of alleged facts recorded by unknown observers, might be felt to meet the requirements of a reasonably critical method. I therefore adopted the following principles as a filter to this class of facts. First, never to accept an alleged fact without the authority of some name. Second, in the case of the name being unknown, and the alleged fact of sufficient importance to be entertained, carefully to consider whether, from all the circumstances of the case as recorded, there was any considerable opportunity for mal-observation; this principle generally demanded that the alleged fact, or action on the part of the animal, should be of a particularly marked and unmistakable kind, looking to the end which the action is said to have accomplished. Third, to tabulate all important observations recorded by unknown observers, with the view of ascertaining whether they have ever been corroborated by similar or analogous observations made by other and independent observers. This principle I have found to be of great use in guiding my selection of instances, for where statements of fact which present nothing intrinsically improbable are found to be unconsciously confirmed by different observers, they have as good a right to be deemed trustworthy as statements which stand on the single authority of a known observer, and I have found the former to be at least as abundant as the latter. Moreover, by getting into the habit of always seeking for corroborative cases, I have frequently been able to substantiate the assertions of known observers by those of other observers as well or better known. So much, then, for the principles by which I have been guided in the selection of facts. As to the arrangement of the facts, I have taken the animal kingdom in ascending order, and endeavoured to give as full a sketch as the selected evidence at my disposal permitted of the psychology which is distinctive of each class, or order, and, in some cases, family, genus, or even species. The reason of my entering into greater detail with some natural groups than with others scarcely requires explanation. For it is almost needless to say that if the animal kingdom were classified with reference to Psychology instead of with reference to Anatomy, we should have a very different kind of zoological tree from that which is now given in our diagrams. There is, indeed, a general and, philosophically considered, most important parallelism running through the whole animal kingdom between structural affinity and mental development; but this parallelism is exceedingly rough, and to be traced only in broad outlines, so that although it is convenient for the purpose of definite arrangement to take the animal kingdom in the order presented by zoological classification, it would be absurd to restrict an inquiry into Animal Psychology by any considerations of the apparently disproportionate length and minute subdivision with which it is necessary to treat some of the groups. Anatomically, an ant or a bee does not require more consideration than a beetle or a fly; but psychologically there is need for as great a difference of treatment as there is in the not very dissimilar case of a monkey and a man. Throughout the work my aim has been to arrive at definite principles rather than to chronicle mere incidents--an aim which will become more apparent when the work as a whole shall have been completed. Therefore it is that in the present volume I have endeavoured, as far as the nature and circumstances of the inquiry would permit, to suppress anecdote. Nevertheless, although I have nowhere introduced anecdotes for their own sake, I have found it unavoidable not to devote much the largest part of the present essay to their narration. Hence, with the double purpose of limiting the introduction of anecdotes as much as possible, and of not repeating more than I could help anecdotes already published, I have in all cases, where I could do so without detriment to my main object, given the preference to facts which have been communicated to me by friends and correspondents. And here I may fitly take the opportunity of expressing my thanks and obligations to the latter, who in astonishing numbers have poured in their communications during several years from all quarters of the globe. I make this statement because I desire to explain to all my correspondents who may read this book, that I am not the less sensible of their kindness because its bounty has rendered it impossible for me to send acknowledgments in individual cases. However, I should like to add in this connection that it does not follow, because I have only quoted a small percentage of the letters which I have received, that all of the remainder have been useless. On the contrary, many of these have served to convey information and suggestions which, even if not reserved for express quotation in my forthcoming work, have been of use in guiding my judgment on particular points. Therefore I hope that the publication of these remarks may serve to swell the stream of communications into a yet larger flow.[1] In all cases where I have occasion to quote statements of fact, which in the present treatise are necessarily numerous, I have made a point of trying to quote _verbatim_. Only where I have found that the account given by an author or a correspondent might profitably admit of a considerable degree of condensation have I presented it in my own words. And here I have to express my very special obligations to Mr. Darwin, who not only assisted me in the most generous manner with his immense stores of information, as well as with his valuable judgment on sundry points of difficulty, but has also been kind enough to place at my disposal all the notes and clippings on animal intelligence which he has been collecting for the last forty years, together with the original MS. of his wonderful chapter on 'Instinct.' This chapter, on being re-cast for the 'Origin of Species,' underwent so merciless an amount of compression that the original draft constitutes a rich store of hitherto unpublished material. In my second work I shall have occasion to draw upon this store more largely than in the present one, and it is needless to add that in all cases where I do draw upon it I shall be careful to state the source to which I am indebted. [The above was written when I sent this work to the publishers several months ago, and I have thought it best to leave the concluding paragraph as it originally stood. But in making this explanation, I cannot allude to the calamity which has since occurred without paying my tribute, not alone to the memory of the greatest genius of our age, but still more, and much more, to the memory of a friend so inexpressibly noble, kind, and generous, that even my immense admiration of the naturalist was surpassed by my loving veneration for the man.] FOOTNOTES: [1] Letters may be addressed to me directly at 18 Cornwall Terrace, Regent's Park, London, N W. CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER I. APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES TO THE LOWEST ANIMALS 18 CHAPTER II. MOLLUSCA 25 CHAPTER III. ANTS 31 CHAPTER IV. BEES AND WASPS 143 CHAPTER V. TERMITES 198 CHAPTER VI. SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS 204 CHAPTER VII. REMAINING ARTICULATA 226 CHAPTER VIII. FISH 241 CHAPTER IX. BATRACHIANS AND REPTILES 254 CHAPTER X. BIRDS 266 CHAPTER XI. MAMMALS 326 CHAPTER XII. RODENTS 353 CHAPTER XIII. ELEPHANT 386 CHAPTER XIV. THE CAT 411 CHAPTER XV. FOXES, WOLVES, JACKALS, &C. 426 CHAPTER XVI. THE DOG 437 CHAPTER XVII. MONKEYS, APES, AND BABOONS 471 INDEX 499 INTRODUCTION. BEFORE we begin to consider the phenomena of mind throughout the animal kingdom it is desirable that we should understand, as far as possible, what it is that we exactly mean by mind. Now, by mind we may mean two very different things, according as we contemplate it in our own individual selves, or in other organisms. For if we contemplate our own mind, we have an immediate cognizance of a certain flow of thoughts or feelings, which are the most ultimate things, and indeed the only things, of which we are cognisant. But if we contemplate mind in other persons or organisms, we have no such immediate cognizance of thoughts or feelings. In such cases we can only _infer_ the existence and the nature of thoughts and feelings from the activities of the organisms which appear to exhibit them. Thus it is that we may have a subjective analysis of mind and an objective analysis of mind--the difference between the two consisting in this, that in our subjective analysis we are restricted to the limits of a single isolated mind which we call our own, and within the territory of which we have immediate cognizance of all the processes that are going on, or at any rate of all the processes that fall within the scope of our introspection. But in our objective analysis of other or foreign minds we have no such immediate cognizance; all our knowledge of their operations is derived, as it were, through the medium of ambassadors--these ambassadors being the activities of the organism. Hence it is evident that in our study of animal intelligence we are wholly restricted to the objective method. Starting from what I know subjectively of the operations of my own individual mind, and the activities which in my own organism they prompt, I proceed by analogy to infer from the observable activities of other organisms what are the mental operations that underlie them. Now, in this mode of procedure what is the kind of activities which may be regarded as indicative of mind? I certainly do not so regard the flowing of a river or the blowing of the wind. Why? First, because the objects are too remote in kind from my own organism to admit of my drawing any reasonable analogy between them and it; and, secondly, because the activities which they present are of invariably the same kind under the same circumstances; they afford no evidence of feeling or purpose. In other words, two conditions require to be satisfied before we even begin to imagine that observable activities are indicative of mind: first, the activities must be displayed by a living organism; and secondly, they must be of a kind to suggest the presence of two elements which we recognise as the distinctive characteristics of mind as such--consciousness and choice. So far, then, the case seems simple enough. Wherever we see a living organism apparently exerting intentional choice, we might infer that it is conscious choice, and therefore that the organism has a mind. But further reflection shows us that this is just what we cannot do; for although it is true that there is no mind without the power of conscious choice, it is not true that all apparent choice is due to mind. In our own organisms, for instance, we find a great many adaptive movements performed without choice or even consciousness coming into play at all--such, for instance, as in the beating of our hearts. And not only so, but physiological experiments and pathological lesions prove that in our own and in other organisms the mechanism of the nervous system is sufficient, without the intervention of consciousness, to produce muscular movements of a highly co-ordinate and apparently intentional character. Thus, for instance, if a man has his back broken in such a way as to sever the nervous connection between his brain and lower extremities, on pinching or tickling his feet they are drawn suddenly away from the irritation, although the man is quite unconscious of the adaptive movement of his muscles; the lower nerve-centres of the spinal cord are competent to bring about this movement of adaptive response without requiring to be directed by the brain. This non-mental operation of the lower nerve-centres in the production of apparently intentional movements is called Reflex Action, and the cases of its occurrence, even within the limits of our own organism, are literally numberless. Therefore, in view of such non-mental nervous adjustment, leading to movements which are only in appearance intentional, it clearly becomes a matter of great difficulty to say in the case of the lower animals whether any action which appears to indicate intelligent choice is not really action of the reflex kind. On this whole subject of mind-like and yet not truly mental action I shall have much to say in my subsequent treatise, where I shall be concerned among other things with tracing the probable genesis of mind from non-mental antecedents. But here it is sufficient merely to make this general statement of the fact, that even within the experience supplied by our own organisms adaptive movements of a highly complex and therefore apparently purposive character may be performed without any real purpose, or even consciousness of their performance. It thus becomes evident that before we can predicate the bare existence of mind in the lower animals, we need some yet more definite criterion of mind than that which is supplied by the adaptive actions of a living organism, howsoever apparently intentional such actions may be. Such a criterion I have now to lay down, and I think it is one that is as practically adequate as it is theoretically legitimate. Objectively considered, the only distinction between adaptive movements due to reflex action and adaptive movements due to mental perception, consists in the former depending on inherited mechanisms within the nervous system being so constructed as to effect _particular_ adaptive movements in response to _particular_ stimulations, while the latter are independent of any such inherited adjustment of special mechanisms to the exigencies of special circumstances. Reflex actions under the influence of their appropriate stimuli may be compared to the actions of a machine under the manipulations of an operator; when certain springs of action are touched by certain stimuli, the whole machine is thrown into appropriate movement; there is no room for choice, there is no room for uncertainty; but as surely as any of these inherited mechanisms are affected by the stimulus with reference to which it has been constructed to act, so surely will it act in precisely the same way as it always has acted. But the case with conscious mental adjustment is quite different. For, without at present going into the question concerning the relation of body and mind, or waiting to ask whether cases of mental adjustment are not really quite as _mechanical_ in the sense of being the necessary result or correlative of a chain of physical sequences due to a physical stimulation, it is enough to point to the variable and incalculable character of mental adjustments as distinguished from the constant and foreseeable character of reflex adjustments. All, in fact, that in an objective sense we can mean by a mental adjustment is an adjustment of a kind that has not been definitely fixed by heredity as the only adjustment possible in the given circumstances of stimulation. For were there no alternative of adjustment, the case, in an animal at least, would be indistinguishable from one of reflex action. It is, then, adaptive action by a living organism in cases where the inherited machinery of the nervous system does not furnish data for our prevision of what the adaptive action must necessarily be--it is only here that we recognise the objective evidence of mind. The criterion of mind, therefore, which I propose, and to which I shall adhere throughout the present volume, is as follows:--Does the organism learn to make new adjustments, or to modify old ones, in accordance with the results of its own individual experience? If it does so, the fact cannot be due merely to reflex action in the sense above described, for it is impossible that heredity can have provided in advance for innovations upon, or alterations of, its machinery during the lifetime of a particular individual. In my next work I shall have occasion to consider this criterion of mind more carefully, and then it will be shown that as here stated the criterion is not rigidly exclusive, either, on the one hand, of a possibly mental element in apparently non-mental adjustments, or, conversely, of a possibly non-mental element in apparently mental adjustments. But, nevertheless, the criterion is the best that is available, and, as it will be found sufficient for all the purposes of the present work, its more minute analysis had better be deferred till I shall have to treat of the probable evolution of mind from non-mental antecedents. I may, however, here explain that in my use of this criterion I shall always regard it as fixing only the upper limit of non-mental action; I shall never regard it as fixing the lower limit of mental action. For it is clear that long before mind has advanced sufficiently far in the scale of development to become amenable to the test in question, it has probably begun to dawn as nascent subjectivity. In other words, because a lowly organised animal does _not_ learn by its own individual experience, we may not therefore conclude that in performing its natural or ancestral adaptations to appropriate stimuli consciousness, or the mind-element, is wholly absent; we can only say that this element, if present, reveals no evidence of the fact. But, on the other hand, if a lowly organised animal _does_ learn by its own individual experience, we are in possession of the best available evidence of conscious memory leading to intentional adaptation. Therefore our criterion applies to the upper limit of non-mental action, not to the lower limit of mental. Of course to the sceptic this criterion may appear unsatisfactory, since it depends, not on direct knowledge, but on inference. Here, however, it seems enough to point out, as already observed, that it is the best criterion available; and further, that scepticism of this kind is logically bound to deny evidence of mind, not only in the case of the lower animals, but also in that of the higher, and even in that of men other than the sceptic himself. For all objections which could apply to the use of this criterion of mind in the animal kingdom would apply with equal force to the evidence of any mind other than that of the individual objector. This is obvious, because, as I have already observed, the only evidence we can have of objective mind is that which is furnished by objective activities; and as the subjective mind can never become assimilated with the objective so as to learn by direct feeling the mental processes which there accompany the objective activities, it is clearly impossible to satisfy any one who may choose to doubt the validity of inference, that in any case other than his own mental processes ever do accompany objective activities. Thus it is that philosophy can supply no demonstrative refutation of idealism, even of the most extravagant form. Common sense, however, universally feels that analogy is here a safer guide to truth than the sceptical demand for impossible evidence; so that if the objective existence of other organisms and their activities is granted--without which postulate comparative psychology, like all the other sciences, would be an unsubstantial dream--common sense will always and without question conclude that the activities of organisms other than our own, when analogous to those activities of our own which we know to be accompanied by certain mental states, are in them accompanied by analogous mental states. The theory of animal automatism, therefore, which is usually attributed to Descartes (although it is not quite clear how far this great philosopher really entertained the theory), can never be accepted by common sense; and even as a philosophical speculation it will be seen, from what has just been said, that by no feat of logic is it possible to make the theory apply to animals to the exclusion of man. The expression of fear or affection by a dog involves quite as distinctive and complex a series of neuro-muscular actions as does the expression of similar emotions by a human being; and therefore, if the evidence of corresponding mental states is held to be inadequate in the one case, it must in consistency be held similarly inadequate in the other. And likewise, of course, with all other exhibitions of mental life. It is quite true, however, that since the days of Descartes--or rather, we might say, since the days of Joule--the question of animal automatism has assumed a new or more defined aspect, seeing that it now runs straight into the most profound and insoluble problem that has ever been presented to human thought--viz. the relation of body to mind in view of the doctrine of the conservation of energy. I shall subsequently have occasion to consider this problem with the close attention that it demands; but in the present volume, which has to deal only with the phenomena of mind as such, I expressly pass the problem aside as one reserved for separate treatment. Here I desire only to make it plain that the mind of animals must be placed in the same category, with reference to this problem, as the mind of man; and that we cannot without gross inconsistency ignore or question the evidence of mind in the former, while we accept precisely the same kind of evidence as sufficient proof of mind in the latter. And this proof, as I have endeavoured to show, is in all cases and in its last analysis the fact of a living organism showing itself able to learn by its own individual experience. Wherever we find an animal able to do this, we have the same right to predicate mind as existing in such an animal that we have to predicate it as existing in any human being other than ourselves. For instance, a dog has always been accustomed to eat a piece of meat when his organism requires nourishment, and when his olfactory nerves respond to the particular stimulus occasioned by the proximity of the food. So far, it may be said, there is no evidence of mind; the whole series of events comprised in the stimulations and muscular movements may be due to reflex action alone. But now suppose that by a number of lessons the dog has been taught not to eat the meat when he is hungry until he receives a certain verbal signal: then we have exactly the same kind of evidence that the dog's actions are prompted by mind as we have that the actions of a man are so prompted.[2] Now we find that the lower down we go in the animal kingdom, the more we observe reflex action, or non-mental adjustment, to predominate over volitional action, or mental adjustment. That is to say, the lower down we go in the animal kingdom, the less capacity do we find for changing adjustive movements in correspondence with changed conditions; it becomes more and more hopeless to _teach_ animals--that is, to establish associations of ideas; and the reason of this, of course, is that ideas or mental units become fewer and less definite the lower we descend through the structure of mind. * * * * * It is not my object in the present work to enter upon any analysis of the operations of mind, as this will require to be done as fully as possible in my next work. Nevertheless, a few words must here be said with regard to the main divisions of mental operation, in order to define closely the meanings which I shall attach to certain terms relating to these divisions, and the use of which I cannot avoid. The terms sensation, perception, emotion, and volition need not here be considered. I shall use them in their ordinary psychological significations; and although I shall subsequently have to analyse each of the organic or mental states which they respectively denote, there will be no occasion in the present volume to enter upon this subject. I may, however, point out one general consideration to which I shall throughout adhere. Taking it for granted that the external indications of mental processes which we observe in animals are trustworthy, so that we are justified in inferring particular mental states from particular bodily actions, it follows that in consistency we must everywhere apply the same criteria. For instance, if we find a dog or a monkey exhibiting marked expressions of affection, sympathy, jealousy, rage, &c., few persons are sceptical enough to doubt that the complete analogy which these expressions afford with those which are manifested by man, sufficiently prove the existence of mental states analogous to those in man of which these expressions are the outward and visible signs. But when we find an ant or a bee apparently exhibiting by its actions these same emotions, few persons are sufficiently non-sceptical not to doubt whether the outward and visible signs are here trustworthy as evidence of analogous or corresponding inward and mental states. The whole organisation of such a creature is so different from that of a man that it becomes questionable how far analogy drawn from the activities of the insect is a safe guide to the inferring of mental states--particularly in view of the fact that in many respects, such as in the great preponderance of 'instinct' over 'reason,' the psychology of an insect is demonstrably a widely different thing from that of a man. Now it is, of course, perfectly true that the less the resemblance the less is the value of any analogy built upon the resemblance, and therefore that the inference of an ant or a bee feeling sympathy or rage is not so valid as is the similar inference in the case of a dog or a monkey. Still it _is_ an inference, and, so far as it goes, a valid one--being, in fact, the only inference available. That is to say, if we observe an ant or a bee apparently exhibiting sympathy or rage, we must either conclude that some psychological state resembling that of sympathy or rage is present, or else refuse to think about the subject at all; from the observable facts there is no other inference open. Therefore, having full regard to the progressive weakening of the analogy from human to brute psychology as we recede through the animal kingdom downwards from man, still, as it is the only analogy available, I shall follow it throughout the animal series. It may not, however, be superfluous to point out that if we have full regard to this progressive weakening of the analogy, we must feel less and less certain of the real similarity of the mental states compared; so that when we get down as low as the insects, I think the most we can confidently assert is that the known facts of human psychology furnish the best available pattern of the probable facts of insect psychology. Just as the theologians tell us--and logically enough--that if there is a Divine Mind, the best, and indeed only, conception we can form of it is that which is formed on the analogy, however imperfect, supplied by the human mind; so with 'inverted anthropomorphism' we must apply a similar consideration with a similar conclusion to the animal mind. The mental states of an insect may be widely different from those of a man, and yet most probably the nearest conception that we can form of their true nature is that which we form by assimilating them to the pattern of the only mental states with which we are actually acquainted. And this consideration, it is needless to point out, has a special validity to the evolutionist, inasmuch as upon his theory there must be a psychological, no less than a physiological, continuity extending throughout the length and breadth of the animal kingdom. * * * * * In these preliminary remarks only one other point requires brief consideration, and this has reference to the distinction between what in popular phraseology is called 'Instinct' and 'Reason.' I shall not here enter upon any elaborate analysis of a distinction which is undoubtedly valid, but shall confine my remarks to explaining the sense in which I shall everywhere use these terms. Few words in our language have been subject to a greater variety of meanings than the word instinct. In popular phraseology, descended from the Middle Ages, all the mental faculties of the animal are termed instinctive, in contradistinction to those of man, which are termed rational. But unless we commit ourselves to an obvious reasoning in a circle, we must avoid assuming that all actions of animals are instinctive, and then arguing that because they are instinctive, therefore they differ from the rational actions of man. The question really lies in what is here assumed, and we can only answer it by examining in what essential respect instinct differs from reason. Again, Addison says:-- I look upon instinct as upon the principle of gravitation in bodies, which is not to be explained by any known qualities inherent in the bodies themselves, nor from any laws of mechanism, but as an immediate impression from the first Mover, and the Divine energy acting in the creatures. This mode of 'looking upon instinct' is merely to exclude the subject from the sphere of inquiry, and so to abstain from any attempt at definition. Innumerable other opinions might be quoted from well-known writers, 'looking upon instinct' in widely different ways; but as this is not an historical work, I shall pass on at once to the manner in which science looks upon it, or, at least, the manner in which it will always be looked upon throughout the present work. Without concerning ourselves with the origin of instincts, and so without reference to the theory of evolution, we have to consider the most conspicuous and distinctive features of instinct as it now exists. The most important point to observe in the first instance is that instinct involves _mental_ operations; for this is the only point that serves to distinguish instinctive action from reflex. Reflex action, as already explained, is non-mental neuro-muscular adaptation to appropriate stimuli; but instinctive action is this and something more; there is in it the element of mind. Such, at least, is instinctive action in the sense that I shall always allude to it. I am, of course, aware that the limitation which I thus impose is one which is ignored, or not recognised, by many writers even among psychologists; but I am persuaded that if we are to have any approach to definiteness in the terms which we employ--not to say of clearness in our ideas concerning the things of which we speak--it is most desirable to restrict the word instinct to mental as distinguished from non-mental activity. No doubt it is often difficult, or even impossible, to decide whether or not a given action implies the presence of the mind-element--_i.e._, conscious as distinguished from unconscious adaptation; but this is altogether a separate matter, and has nothing to do with the question of defining instinct in a manner which shall be formally exclusive, on the one hand of reflex action, and on the other of reason. As Virchow truly observes, 'it is difficult or impossible to draw the line between instinctive and reflex action;' but at least the difficulty may be narrowed down to deciding in particular cases whether or not an action falls into this or that category of definition; there is no reason why the difficulty should arise on account of any ambiguity of the definitions themselves. Therefore I endeavour to draw as sharply as possible the line which _in theory_ should be taken to separate instinctive from reflex action; and this line, as I have already said, is constituted by the boundary of non-mental or unconscious adjustment, with adjustment in which there is concerned consciousness or mind. Having thus, I hope, made it clear that the difficulty of drawing a distinction between reflex and instinctive actions as a class is one thing, and that the difficulty of assigning particular actions to one or the other of our categories is another thing, we may next perceive that the former difficulty is obviated by the distinction which I have imposed, and that the latter only arises from the fact that on the objective side there is no distinction imposable. The former difficulty is obviated by the distinction which I have drawn, simply because the distinction is itself a definite one. In particular cases of adjustive action we may not always be able to affirm whether consciousness of their performance is present or absent; but, as I have already said, this does not affect the validity of our definition; all we can say of such cases is that if the performance in question is attended with consciousness it is instinctive, and if not it is reflex. And the difficulty of assigning particular actions to one or other of these two categories arises, as I have said, merely because on the objective side, or the side of the nervous system, there is no distinction to be drawn. Whether or not a neural process is accompanied by a mental process, it is in itself the same. The advent and development of consciousness, although progressively converting reflex action into instinctive, and instinctive into rational, does this exclusively in the sphere of subjectivity; the nervous processes engaged are throughout the same in kind, and differ only in the relative degrees of their complexity. Therefore, as the dawn of consciousness or the rise of the mind-element is gradual and undefined, both in the animal kingdom and in the growing child, it is but necessary that in the early morning, as it were, of consciousness any distinction between the mental and the non-mental should be obscure, and generally impossible to determine. Thus, for instance, a child at birth does not close its eyes upon the near approach of a threatening body, and it only learns to do so by degrees as the result of experience; at first, therefore, the action of closing the eyelids in order to protect the eyes may be said to be instinctive, in that it involves the mind-element:[3] yet it afterwards becomes a reflex which asserts itself even in opposition to the will. And, conversely, sucking in a new-born child, or a child _in utero_, is, in accordance with my definition, a reflex action; yet in later life, when consciousness becomes more developed and the child _seeks_ the breast, sucking may properly be called an instinctive action. Therefore it is that, as in the ascending scale of objective complexity the mind-element arises and advances gradually, many particular cases which occupy the undefined boundary between reflex action and instinct cannot be assigned with confidence either to the one region or to the other. We see then the point, and the only point, wherein instinct can be consistently separated from reflex action; viz., in presenting a mental constituent. Next we must consider wherein instinct may be separated from reason. And for this purpose we may best begin by considering what we mean by reason. The term 'reason' is used in significations almost as various as those which are applied to 'instinct.' Sometimes it stands for all the distinctively human faculties taken collectively, and in antithesis to the mental faculties of the brute; while at other times it is taken to mean the distinctively human faculties of intellect. Dr. Johnson defines it as 'the power by which man deduces one proposition from another, and proceeds from premises to consequences.' This definition presupposes language, and therefore ignores all cases of inference not thrown into the formal shape of predication. Yet even in man the majority of inferences drawn by the mind never emerge as articulate propositions; so that although, as we shall have occasion fully to observe in my subsequent work, there is much profound philosophy in identifying reason with speech as they were identified in the term Logos, yet for purposes of careful definition so to identify intellect with language is clearly a mistake. More correctly, the word reason is used to signify the power of perceiving analogies or ratios, and is in this sense equivalent to the term 'ratiocination,' or the faculty of deducing inferences from a perceived equivalency of relations. Such is the only use of the word that is strictly legitimate, and it is thus that I shall use it throughout the present treatise. This faculty, however, of balancing relations, drawing inferences, and so of forecasting probabilities, admits of numberless degrees; and as in the designation of its lower manifestations it sounds somewhat unusual to employ the word reason, I shall in these cases frequently substitute the word intelligence. Where we find, for instance, that an oyster profits by individual experience, or is able to perceive new relations and suitably to act upon the result of its perceptions, I think it sounds less unusual to speak of the oyster as displaying intelligence than as displaying reason. On this account I shall use the former term to signify the lower degrees of the ratiocinative faculty; and thus in my usage it will be opposed to such terms as instinct, reflex action, &c., in the same manner as the term reason is so opposed. This is a point which, for the sake of clearness, I desire the reader to retain in his memory. I shall always speak of intelligence and intellect in antithesis to instinct, emotion, and the rest, as implying mental faculties the same in kind as those which in ourselves we call rational. Now it is notorious that no distinct line can be drawn between instinct and reason. Whether we look to the growing child or to the ascending scale of animal life, we find that instinct shades into reason by imperceptible degrees, or, as Pope expresses it, that these principles are 'for ever separate, yet for ever near.' Nor is this other than the principles of evolution would lead us to expect, as I shall afterwards have abundant occasion to show. Here, however, we are only concerned with drawing what distinction we can between instinct and reason as these faculties are actually presented to our observation. And this in a general way it is not difficult to do. We have seen that instinct involves 'mental operations,' and that by this feature it is distinguished from reflex action; we have now to consider the features by which it is distinguished from reason. These are accurately, though not completely, conveyed by Sir Benjamin Brodie, who defines instinct as 'a principle by which animals are induced, independently of experience and reasoning, to the performances of certain voluntary acts, which are necessary to their preservation as individuals, or to the continuance of the species, or in some other way convenient to them.'[4] This definition, as I have said, is accurate as far as it goes, but it does not state with sufficient generality and terseness that all instinctive action is adaptive; nor does it clearly bring out the distinction between instinct and reason which is thus well conveyed by the definition of Hartmann, who says in his 'Philosophy of the Unconscious,' that 'instinct is action taken in pursuance of an end, but without conscious perception of what the end is.' This definition, however, is likewise defective in that it omits another of the important differentiæ of instinct--namely, the uniformity of instinctive action as performed by different individuals of the same species. Including this feature, therefore, we may more accurately and completely define instinct as mental action (whether in animals or human beings), directed towards the accomplishing of adaptive movement, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained, but similarly performed under the same appropriate circumstances by all the individuals of the same species. Now in every one of these respects, with the exception of containing a mental constituent and in being concerned in adaptive action, instinct differs from reason. For reason, besides involving a mental constituent, and besides being concerned in adaptive action, is always subsequent to individual experience, never acts but upon a definite and often laboriously acquired knowledge of the relation between means and ends, and is very far from being always similarly performed under the same appropriate circumstances by all the individuals of the same species. Thus the distinction between instinct and reason is both more definite and more manifold than is that between instinct and reflex action. Nevertheless, in particular cases there is as much difficulty in classifying certain actions as instinctive or rational, as there is in cases where the question lies between instinct and reflex action. And the explanation of this is, as already observed, that instinct passes into reason by imperceptible degrees; so that actions in the main instinctive are very commonly tempered with what Pierre Huber calls 'a little dose of judgment or reason,' and _vice versâ_. But here, again, the difficulty which attaches to the classification of particular actions has no reference to the validity of the distinctions between the two classes of actions; these are definite and precise, whatever difficulty there may be in applying them to particular cases. Another point of difference between instinct and reason may be noticed which, although not of invariable, is of very general applicability. It will have been observed, from what has already been said, that the essential respect in which instinct differs from reason consists in the amount of conscious deliberation which the two processes respectively involve. Instinctive actions are actions which, owing to their frequent repetition, become so habitual in the course of generations that all the individuals of the same species automatically perform the same actions under the stimulus supplied by the same appropriate circumstances. Rational actions, on the other hand, are actions which are required to meet circumstances of comparatively rare occurrence in the life-history of the species, and which therefore can only be performed by an intentional effort of adaptation. Consequently there arises the subordinate distinction to which I allude, viz., that instinctive actions are only performed under particular circumstances which have been frequently experienced during the life-history of the species; whereas rational actions are performed under varied circumstances, and serve to meet novel exigencies which may never before have occurred even in the life-history of the individual. Thus, then, upon the whole, we may lay down our several definitions in their most complete form. Reflex action is non-mental neuro-muscular adjustment, due to the inherited mechanism of the nervous system, which is formed to respond to particular and often recurring stimuli, by giving rise to particular movements of an adaptive though not of an intentional kind. Instinct is reflex action into which there is imported the element of consciousness. The term is therefore a generic one, comprising all those faculties of mind which are concerned in conscious and adaptive action, antecedent to individual experience, without necessary knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, but similarly performed under similar and frequently recurring circumstances by all the individuals of the same species. Reason or intelligence is the faculty which is concerned in the intentional adaptation of means to ends. It therefore implies the conscious knowledge of the relation between means employed and ends attained, and may be exercised in adaptation to circumstances novel alike to the experience of the individual and to that of the species. FOOTNOTES: [2] Of course it may be said that we have no evidence of _prompting_ in either case; but this is the side issue which concerns the general relation of body and mind, and has nothing to do with the guarantee of inferring the presence of mind in particular cases. [3] _I.e._, ancestral as well as individual. If the race had not always had occasion to close the eyelids to protect the eyes, it is certain that the young child would not so quickly learn to do so in virtue of its own individual experience alone; and as the action cannot be attributed to any process of conscious inference, it is not rational; but we have seen that it is not originally reflex; therefore it is instinctive. [4] _Psychological Researches_, p. 187. CHAPTER I. APPLICATION OF THE FOREGOING PRINCIPLES TO THE LOWEST ANIMALS. _Protozoa._ NO one can have watched the movements of certain Infusoria without feeling it difficult to believe that these little animals are not actuated by some amount of intelligence. Even if the manner in which they avoid collisions be attributed entirely to repulsions set up in the currents which by their movements they create, any such mechanical explanation certainly cannot apply to the small creatures seeking one another for the purposes of prey, reproduction, or, as it sometimes seems, of mere sport. There is a common and well-known rotifer whose body is of a cup shape, provided with a very active tail, which is armed at its extremity with strong forceps. I have seen a small specimen of this rotifer seize a much larger one with its forceps, and attach itself by this means to the side of the cup. The large rotifer at once became very active, and swinging about with its burden until it came to a piece of weed, it took firm hold of the weed with its own forceps, and began the most extraordinary series of movements, which were obviously directed towards ridding itself of the encumbrance. It dashed from side to side in all directions with a vigour and suddenness which were highly astonishing, so that it seemed as if the animalcule would either break its forceps or wrench its tail from its body. No movements could possibly be better suited to jerk off the offending object, for the energy with which the jerks were given, now in one direction and now in another, were, as I have said, most surprising. But not less surprising was the tenacity with which the smaller rotifer retained its hold; for although one might think that it was being almost jerked to pieces, after each bout of jerking it was seen to be still attached. This trial of strength, which must have involved an immense expenditure of energy in proportion to the size of the animals, lasted for several minutes, till eventually the small rotifer was thrown violently away. It then returned to the conflict, but did not succeed a second time in establishing its hold. The entire scene was as like intelligent action on the part of both animals as could well be imagined, so that if we were to depend upon appearances alone, this one observation would be sufficient to induce me to attribute conscious determination to these microscopical organisms. But, without denying that conscious determination may here be present, or involving ourselves in the impossible task of proving such a negative, we may properly affirm that until an animalcule shows itself to be teachable by individual experience, we have no sufficient evidence derived or derivable from any number of such apparently intelligent movements, that conscious determination is present. Therefore, I need not wait to quote the observations of the sundry microscopists who detail facts more or less similar to the above, with expressions of their belief that microscopical organisms display a certain degree of instinct or intelligence as distinguished from mechanical, or wholly non-mental adjustment. But there are some observations relating to the lowest of all animals, and made by a competent person, which are so remarkable that I shall have to quote them in full. These observations are recorded by Mr. H. J. Carter, F.R.S., in the 'Annals of Natural History,' and in his opinion prove that the beginnings of instinct are to be found so low down in the scale as the Rhizopoda. He says:--'Even _Athealium_ will confine itself to the water of the watch-glass in which it may be placed when away from sawdust and chips of wood among which it has been living; but if the watch-glass be placed upon the sawdust, it will very soon make its way over the side of the watch-glass and get to it.' This is certainly a remarkable observation: for it seems to show that the rhizopod distinguishes the presence of the sawdust outside the watch-glass, and crawls over the brim of the latter in order to get into more congenial quarters, while it is contented with the water in the watch-glass so long as there is no sawdust outside. But to proceed: On one occasion, while investigating the nature of some large, transparent, spore-like elliptical cells (fungal?) whose protoplasm was rotating, while it was at the same time charged with triangular grains of starch, I observed some actinophorous rhizopods creeping about them, which had similarly shaped grains of starch in their interior; and having determined the nature of these grains in both by the addition of iodine, I cleansed the glasses, and placed under the microscope a new portion of the sediment from the basin containing these cells and actinophryans for further examination, when I observed one of the spore-like cells had become ruptured, and that a portion of its protoplasm, charged with the triangular starch-grains, was slightly protruding through the crevice. It then struck me that the actinophryans had obtained their starch-grains from this source; and while looking at the ruptured cell, an _actinophrys_ made its appearance, and creeping round the cell, at last arrived at the crevice, from which it extricated one of the grains of starch mentioned, and then crept off to a good distance. Presently, however, it returned to the same cell; and although there were now no more starch-grains protruding, the _actinophrys_ managed again to extract one from the interior through the crevice. All this was repeated several times, showing that the _actinophrys_ instinctively knew that those were nutritious grains, that they were contained in this cell, and that, although each time after incepting a grain it went away to some distance, it knew how to find its way back to the cell again which furnished this nutriment. On another occasion I saw an _actinophrys_ station itself close to a ripe spore-cell of _pythium_, which was situated upon a filament of _Spirogyra crassa_; and as the young ciliated monadic germs issued forth, one after another, from the dehiscent spore-cell, the _actinophrys_ remained by it and caught every one of them, even to the last, when it retired to another part of the field, as if instinctively conscious that there was nothing more to be got at the old place. But by far the greatest feat of this kind that ever presented itself to me was the catching of a young _acineta_ by an old sluggish _amoeba_, as the former left its parent; and this took place as follows:-- In the evening of the 2nd of June, 1858, in Bombay, while looking through a microscope at some _Euglenæ_, &c., which had been placed aside for examination in a watch-glass, my eye fell upon a stalked and triangular _acineta_ (_A. mystacina_?), around which an _amoeba_ was creeping and lingering, as they do when they are in quest of food. But knowing the antipathy that the _amoeba_, like almost every other infusorian, has to the tentacles of the _acineta_, I concluded that the _amoeba_ was not encouraging an appetite for its whiskered companion, when I was surprised to find that it crept up the stem of the _acineta_, and wound itself round its body. This mark of affection, too much like that frequently evinced at the other end of the scale, even where there is a mind for its control, did not long remain without interpretation. There was a young _acineta_, tender, and without poisonous tentacles (for they are not developed at birth), just ready to make its exit from the parent, an exit which takes place so quickly, and is followed by such rapid bounding movements of the non-ciliated _acineta_, that who would venture to say, _à priori_, that a dull, heavy, sluggish _amoeba_ could catch such an agile little thing? But the _amoeba_ are as unerring and unrelaxing in their grasp as they are unrelenting in their cruel inceptions of the living and the dead, when they serve them for nutrition; and thus the _amoeba_, placing itself round the ovarian aperture of the _acineta_, received the young one, nurse-like, in its fatal lap, incepted it, descended from the parent, and crept off. Being unable to conceive at the time that this was such an act of atrocity on the part of the _amoeba_ as the sequel disclosed, and thinking that the young _acineta_ might yet escape, or pass into some other form in the body of its host, I watched the _amoeba_ for some time afterwards, until the tale ended by the young _acineta_ becoming divided into two parts, and thus in their respective digestive spaces ultimately becoming broken down and digested.[5] With regard to these remarkable observations it can only, I think, be said that although certainly very suggestive of something more than mechanical response to stimulation, they are not sufficiently so to justify us in ascribing to these lowest members of the zoological scale any rudiment of truly mental action. The subject, however, is here full of difficulty, and not the least so on account of the _amoeba_ not only having no nervous system, but no observable organs of any kind; so that, although we may suppose that the adaptive movements described by Mr. Carter were non-mental, it still remains wonderful that these movements should be exhibited by such apparently unorganised creatures, seeing that as to the remoteness of the end attained, no less than the complex refinement of the stimulus to which their adaptive response was due, the movements in question rival the most elaborate of non-mental adjustments elsewhere performed by the most highly organised of nervous systems. _Coelenterata._ Dr. Eimer attributes 'voluntary action' to the Medusæ, and indeed draws a sharp distinction between what he considers their 'involuntary' and 'voluntary' movements. In this distinction, however, I do not at all concur; for although I am well acquainted with the difference between the active and slow rhythm upon which the distinction is founded, I see no evidence whatever for supposing that the difference involves any psychological element. The active swimming is produced by stimulation, and is no doubt calculated to lead to the escape of the organism; but this fact certainly does not carry us beyond the ordinary possibilities of reflex action. And even when, as in some species is constantly the case, bouts of active swimming appear to arise spontaneously or without observable stimulation, the fact is to be attributed to a liberation of overplus ganglionic energy, or to some unobservable stimulation; it does not justify the supposition of any psychical element being concerned.[6] M'Crady gives an interesting account of a medusa which carries its larvæ on the inner sides of its bell-shaped body. The manubrium, or mobile digestive cavity of the animal, depends, as in the other Medusæ, from the summit of the concave surface of the bell, like a clapper or tongue. Now M'Crady observed this depending organ to be moved first to one side and then to the other side of the bell, in order to give suck to the larvæ on the sides of the bell--the larvæ dipping their long noses into the nutrient fluids which that organ of the parent's body contained. I cite this case, because if it occurred in one of the higher animals it would probably be called a case of instinct; but as it occurs in so low an animal as a jelly-fish, it is unreasonable to suppose that intelligence can ever have played any part in originating the action. Therefore we may set it down as the uncompounded result of natural selection. Some species of medusæ--notably _Sarsia_--seek the light, crowding into the path of a beam, and following it actively if moved. They derive advantage from so doing, because certain small crustacea on which they feed likewise crowd into the light. The seeking of light by these medusæ is therefore doubtless of the nature of a reflex action which has been developed by natural selection in order to bring the animals into contact with their prey. Paul Bert has found that _Daphnia pulex_ seeks the light (especially the yellow ray), and Engelmann has observed the same fact with regard to certain protoplasmic organisms. But in none of these or other such cases is there any evidence of a psychical element being concerned in the process. _Echinodermata._ Some of the natural movements of these animals, as also some of their movements under stimulation, are very suggestive of purpose; but I have satisfied myself that there is no adequate evidence of the animals being able to profit by individual experience, and therefore, in accordance with our canon, that there is no adequate evidence of their exhibiting truly mental phenomena. On the other hand, the study of reflex action in these organisms is full of interest--so much so that in my next work I shall take them as typical organisms in this connection.[7] _Annelida._ Mr. Darwin has now in the press a highly interesting work on the habits of earth-worms. It appears from his observations that the manner in which these animals draw down leaves, &c., into their burrows is strongly indicative of instinctive action, if not of intelligent purpose--seeing that they always lay hold of the part of the leaf (even though an exotic one) by the traction of which the leaf will offer least resistance to being drawn down. But as this work will so shortly be published, I shall not forestall any of the facts which it has to state, nor should I yet like to venture an opinion as to how far these facts, when considered altogether, would justify any inference to a truly mental element as existing in these animals. Of the land leeches in Ceylon, Sir E. Tennent gives an account which likewise seems to bespeak intelligence as occurring in annelids. He says:-- In moving, the land leeches have the power of planting one extremity on the earth and raising the other perpendicularly to watch for their victim. Such is their vigilance and instinct, that on the approach of a passer-by to a spot which they infest, they may be seen amongst the grass and fallen leaves on the edge of a native path, poised erect, and preparing for their attack on man and horse. On descrying their prey they advance rapidly by semicircular strides, fixing one end firmly and arching the other forwards, till by successive advances they can lay hold of the traveller's foot, when they disengage themselves from the ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture to enter. In these encounters the individuals in the rear of a party of travellers in the jungle invariably fare worst, as the leeches, once warned of their approach, congregate with singular celerity.[8] FOOTNOTES: [5] H. J. Carter, F.R.S., _Annals of Natural History_, 3rd Series, 1863, pp. 45-6. [6] For an account of the natural movements of the Medusæ and the effects of stimulation upon them, see Croonian Lecture in _Phil. Trans._ 1875, and also _Phil. Trans._ 1877 and 1879. [7] See Croonian Lecture, 1881, in forthcoming issue of _Phil. Trans._ [8] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 481. CHAPTER II. MOLLUSCA. I SHALL treat of the Mollusca before the Articulata, because as a group their intelligence is not so high. Indeed, it is not to be expected that the class of animals wherein the 'vegetative' functions of nutrition and reproduction predominate so largely over the animal functions of sensation, locomotion, &c., should present any considerable degree of intelligence. Nevertheless, in the only division of the group which has sense organs and powers of locomotion highly developed--viz., the Cephalopoda--we meet with large cephalic ganglia, and, it would appear, with no small development of intelligence. Taking, however, the sub-kingdom in ascending order, I shall first present all the trustworthy evidence that I have been able to collect, pointing to the highest level of intelligence that is attained by the lower members. The following is quoted from Mr. Darwin's MS.:-- Even the headless oyster seems to profit from experience, for Dicquemase ('Journal de Physique,' vol. xxviii. p. 244) asserts that oysters taken from a depth never uncovered by the sea, open their shells, lose the water within, and perish; but oysters taken from the same place and depth, if kept in reservoirs, where they are occasionally left uncovered for a short time, and are otherwise incommoded, learn to keep their shells shut, and then live for a much longer time when taken out of the water.[9] Some evidence of intelligence seems to be displayed by the razor-fish. For the animals dislike salt, so that when this is sprinkled above their burrows in the sand, they come to the surface and quit their habitations. But if the animal is once seized when it comes to the surface and afterwards allowed to retire into its burrow, no amount of salt will force it again to come to the surface.[10] With regard to snails, L. Agassiz writes: 'Quiconque a eu l'occasion d'observer les amours des limaçons, ne saurait mettre en doute la séduction déployée dans les mouvements et les allures qui préparent et accomplissent le double embrassement de ces hermaphrodites.'[11] Again, Mr. Darwin's MS. quotes from Mr. W. White[12] a curious exhibition of intelligence in a snail, which does not seem to have admitted of mal-observation. This gentleman 'fixed a land-shell mouth uppermost in a chink of rock; in a short time the snail protruded itself to its utmost length, and, attaching its foot vertically above, tried to pull the shell out in a straight line. Not succeeding, it rested for a few minutes and then stretched out its body on the right side and pulled its utmost, but failed. Resting again, it protruded its foot on the left side, pulled with its full force, and freed the shell. This exertion of force in three directions, which seems so geometrically suitable, must have been intentional.' If it is objected that snail shells must frequently be liable to be impeded by obstacles, and therefore that this display of manoeuvring on the part of their occupants is to be regarded as a reflex, I may remark that here again we have one of those incessantly recurring cases where it is difficult to draw the line between intelligence and non-intelligence. For, granting that the action is to a certain extent mechanical, we must still recognise that the animal while executing it must have remembered each of the two directions in which it had pulled ineffectually before it began to pull in the third direction; and it is improbable that snail shells are so frequently caught in positions from which a pull in only one direction will release them, that natural selection would have developed a special instinct to try pulling successively in three directions at right angles to one another. The only other instance that I have met with of the apparent display of intelligence in snails is the remarkable one which Mr. Darwin gives in his 'Descent of Man,' on the authority of Mr. Lonsdale. Although the interpretation which is assigned to the fact seems to me to go beyond anything that we should have reason to expect of snail intelligence, I cannot ignore a fact which stands upon the observation of so good an authority, and shall therefore quote it in Mr. Darwin's words:-- These animals appear also susceptible of some degree of permanent attachment: an accurate observer, Mr. Lonsdale, informs me that he placed a pair of land-snails (_Helix pomatia_), one of which was weakly, into a small and ill-provided garden. After a short time the strong and healthy individual disappeared, and was traced by its track of slime over a wall into an adjoining well-stocked garden. Mr. Lonsdale concluded that it had deserted its sickly mate; but after an absence of twenty-four hours it returned, and apparently communicated the result of its successful exploration, for both then started along the same track, and disappeared over the wall.[13] In this case the fact must be accepted, seeing that it stands on the authority of an accurate observer, and is of so definite a kind as not to admit of mistake. Consequently we are shut up to the alternative of supposing the return of the healthy snail to its mate a mere accident, and their both going over the wall into the well-stocked garden another mere accident, or acquiescing in the interpretation which Mr. Darwin assigns. Now, if we look closely into the matter, the chances against the double accident in question are certainly so considerable as to render the former supposition almost impossible. On the other hand, there is evidence to prove, as I shall immediately show, that a not distantly allied animal is unquestionably able to remember a particular locality as its home, and habitually to return to this locality after feeding. Therefore, in view of this analogous and corroborative case, the improbability of the snail remembering for twenty-four hours the position of its mate is very much reduced; while the subsequent communication, if it took place, would only require to have been of the nature of 'follow me,' which, as we shall repeatedly find, is a degree of communicative ability which many invertebrated animals possess. Therefore, in view of these considerations, I incline to Mr. Darwin's opinion that the facts can only be explained by supposing them due to intelligence on the part of the snails. Thus considered, these facts are no doubt very remarkable; for they would appear to indicate not merely accurate memory of direction and locality for twenty-four hours, but also no small degree of something akin to 'permanent attachment,' and sympathetic desire that another should share in the good things which one has found.[14] The case to which I have just alluded as proving beyond all doubt that some Gasteropoda are able to retain a very precise and accurate memory of locality, is that of the common limpet. Mr. J. Clarke Hawkshaw publishes in the Journal of the Linnæan Society the following account of the habits in question:-- The holes in the chalk in which the limpets are often to be found are, I believe, excavated in a great measure by rasping from the lingual teeth, though I doubt whether the object is to form a cavity to shelter in, though the cavities, when formed, may be of use for that purpose. It must be of the greatest importance to a limpet that, in order that it may insure a firm adherence to the rock, its shell should fit the rock accurately; when the shell does fit the rock accurately, a small amount of muscular contraction of the animal would cause the shell to adhere so firmly to a smooth surface as to be practically immoveable without fracture. As the shells cannot be adapted daily to different forms of surface, the limpets generally return to the same place of attachment. I am sure this is the case with many; for I found shells perfectly adjusted to the uneven surfaces of flints, the growth of the shells being in some parts distorted and indented to suit inequalities in the surface of the flints. . . . I noticed signs that limpets prefer a hard, smooth surface to a pit in the chalk. On one surface of a large block, over all sides of which limpets were regularly and plentifully distributed, there were two flat fragments of a fossil shell about 3 inches by 4 inches, each embedded in the chalk. The chalk all round these fragments was free from limpets; but on the smooth surface of the pieces of shell they were packed as closely as they could be. I noticed another case, which almost amounts, to my mind, to a proof that they prefer a smooth surface to a hole. A limpet had formed a clearing on one of the sea-weed-covered blocks before referred to. In the midst of this clearing was a pedestal of flint rather more than one inch in diameter, standing up above the surface of the chalk; it projected so much that a tap from my hammer broke it off. On the top of the smooth fractured surface of this flint the occupant of the clearing had taken up its abode. The shell was closely adapted to the uneven surface, which it would only fit in one position. The cleared surface was in a hollow with several small natural cavities, where the limpet could have found a pit ready made to shelter in; yet it preferred, after each excursion, to climb up to the top of the flint, the most exposed point in all its domain.[15] It appears certain from these observations, which to some extent were anticipated by those of Mr. F. C. Lukis,[16] that limpets, after every browsing excursion, return to one particular spot or home; and the precise memory of direction and locality implied by this fact seems to justify us in regarding these actions of the animal as of a nature unquestionably intelligent. Coming now to the cephalopoda, there is no doubt that if a larger sphere of opportunity permitted, adequate observation of these animals would prove them to be much the most intelligent members of the sub-kingdom. Unfortunately, however, this sphere of opportunity has hitherto been very limited. The following meagre account is all that I have been able to gather concerning the psychology of these interesting animals. According to Schneider,[17] the Cephalopoda show unmistakable evidence of consciousness and intelligence. This observer had an opportunity of watching them for a long time in the zoological station at Naples; and he says that they appeared to recognise their keeper after they had for some time received their food from him. Hollmann narrates that an octopus, which had had a struggle with a lobster, followed the latter into an adjacent tank, to which it had been removed for safety, and there destroyed it. In order to do this the octopus had to climb up a vertical partition above the surface of the water and descend the other side.[18] According to Schneider, the Cephalopoda have an abstract idea of water, seeking to return to it when removed, even though they do not see it. But this probably arises from the sense of discomfort due to exposure of their skin to the air; and if we can call it an 'idea,' it is doubtless shared by all other aquatic Mollusca when exposed to air. FOOTNOTES: [9] This fact is also stated by Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. iii. p. 454, and is now turned to practical account in the so-called 'Oyster-schools' of France. The distance from the coast to Paris being too great for the newly dredged oysters to travel without opening their shells, they are first taught in the schools to bear a longer and longer exposure to the air without gaping, and when their education in this respect is completed they are sent on their journey to the metropolis, where they arrive with closed shells, and in a healthy condition. [10] Bingley, _loc. cit._, vol. iii. p. 449. [11] _De l'Espèce et de la Classe_, &c., 1869, p. 106. [12] _A Londoner's Walk to Edinburgh_, p. 155 (1856). [13] _Descent of Man_, pp. 262-3. [14] The facts, however, in order to sustain such conclusions, of course require corroboration, and it is therefore to be regretted that Mr. Lonsdale did not experimentally repeat the conditions. [15] _Journal Linn. Soc._ vol. xiv. p. 406 _et seq._ [16] _Mag. Nat. Hist._ 1831, vol. iv. p. 346. [17] _Thieresche Wille_, § 78. [18] _Leben der Cephalopoden_, s. 21. CHAPTER III. ANTS. WITHIN the last ten or twelve years our information on the habits and intelligence of these insects has been so considerably extended, that in here rendering a condensed epitome of our knowledge in this most interesting branch of comparative psychology, it will be found that the chapter is constituted principally of a statement of observations and experiments which have been conducted during the short period named. The observers to whom we are mainly indebted for this large increase of our knowledge are Messrs. Bates, Belt, Müller, Moggridge, Lincecum, MacCook, and Sir John Lubbock. From the fact that these naturalists conducted their observations in different parts of the world and on widely different species of ants, it is not surprising that their results should present many points of difference; for this only shows, as we might have expected, that different species of ants differ considerably in habits and intelligence. Therefore, in now drawing all these numerous observations to a focus, I shall endeavour to show clearly their points of difference as well as their points of agreement; and in order that the facts to be considered may be arranged in some kind of order, I shall deal with them under the following heads:--Powers of special sense; Sense of direction; Powers of memory; Emotions; Powers of communication; Habits general in sundry species; Habits peculiar to certain species; General intelligence of various species. _Powers of Special Sense._ Taking first the sense of sight, Sir John Lubbock made a number of experiments on the influence of light coloured by passing through various tints of stained glass, with the following results. The ants which he observed greatly dislike the presence of light within their nests, hurrying about in search of the darkest corners when light is admitted. The experiments showed that the dislike is much greater in the case of some colours than in that of others. Thus under a slip of red glass there were congregated on one occasion 890 ants, under green 544, under yellow 495, and under violet only 5. To our eyes the violet is as opaque as the red, more so than the green, and much more so than the yellow. Yet, as the numbers show, the ants had scarcely any tendency to congregate under it: there were nearly as many under the same area of the uncovered portion of the nest as under that shaded by the violet glass. It is curious that the coloured glasses appear to act on the ants in a graduated series, which corresponds with the order of their influence on a photographic plate. Experiments were therefore made to test whether it might not be the actinic rays that were so particularly distasteful to the ants; but with negative results. Placing violet glass above red produces the same effect as red glass alone. Obviously, therefore, the ants avoid the violet glass because they dislike the rays which it transmits, and do not prefer the other colours because they like the rays which they transmit. Sodium, barium, strontium, and lithium flames were also tried, but not with so much effect as the coloured glass. It has just been observed that the relative dislike which Sir John Lubbock's ants showed to lights of different colours seems to be determined by the position of the colour in the spectrum--there being a regular gradation of intolerance shown from the red to the violet end. As these ants dislike light, the question suggests itself that the reason of their graduated intolerance to light of different colours may be due to their eyes not being so much affected by the rays of low as by those of high refrangibility. In this connection it would be interesting to ascertain whether ants of the genus _Atta_ show a similarly graduated intolerance to the light in different parts of the spectrum; for both Moggridge and MacCook record of this genus that it not only does not shun the light, but seeks it--coming to the glass sides of their artificial nests to enjoy the light of a lamp. Possibly, therefore, the scale of preference to lights of different colours would be found in this genus to be the reverse of that which Sir John Lubbock has found in the case of the British species. As regards hearing, Sir John Lubbock found that sounds of various kinds do not produce any effect upon the insects. Tuning-forks and violin notes, shouting, whistling, &c., were all equally inefficient in producing the slightest influence upon the animals; and experiments with sensitive flames, microphone, telephone, &c., failed to yield any evidence of ants emitting sounds inaudible to human ears. Lastly, as regards the sense of smell, Sir John Lubbock found that on bringing a camel's-hair brush steeped in various strong scents near where ants were passing, "some went on without taking any notice, but others stopped, and evidently perceiving the smell, turned back. Soon, however, they returned, and passed the scented pencil. After doing this two or three times, they generally took no further notice of the scent. This experiment left no doubt on my mind." In other cases the ants were observed to wave about and throw back their antennæ when the scented pencil was brought near. That ants track one another by scent was long ago mentioned by Huber, and also that they depend on this sense for their power of finding supplies which have been previously found by other ants. Huber proved their power of tracking a path previously pursued by their friends, by drawing his finger across the trail, so obliterating the scent at that point, and observing that when the ants arrived at that point they became confused and ran about in various directions till they again came upon the trail on the other side of the interrupted space, when they proceeded on their way as before. The more numerous and systematic experiments of Sir John Lubbock have fully corroborated Huber's observations, so far as these points are concerned. Thus, to give only one or two of these experiments; in the accompanying woodcut (Fig. 1) A is the nest, B a board, _n_ _f_ _g_ slips of paper, _h_ and _m_ similar slides of glass, on one of which, _h_, there was placed pupæ, while the other, _m_, was left empty. Sir John Lubbock watched two particular (marked) ants proceeding from A to _h_ and back again, carrying the pupæ on _h_ to the nest A. Whenever an ant came out of A upon B he transposed the slips _f_ and _g_. Therefore at the angle below _n_ there was a choice presented to the ant of taking the unscented pathway leading to the full glass _h_, or the scented pathway leading to the empty glass _m_. The two marked ants, knowing their way, always took the right turn at the angle; but the stranger ants, being guided only by scent, for the most part took the wrong turn at the angle, so going to the empty glass _m_. For out of 150 stranger ants only 21 went to _h_, while the remaining 129 went to _m_. Still the fact that all the stranger ants did not follow the erroneous scent-trail to _m_, may be taken to indicate that they are also assisted in finding treasure by the sense of sight, though in a lesser degree. Therefore Sir John Lubbock concludes that in finding treasure 'they are guided in some cases by sight, while in others they track one another by scent.' [Illustration: Fig. 1.] As further evidence showing how much more ants depend upon scent than upon sight in finding their way, the following experiment may be quoted. In the accompanying woodcut (Fig. 2) the line marked 1, 2, 3 represents the edge of a paper bridge leading to the nest; A the top of a pencil which is standing perpendicularly upon a board, represented by the general black surface; B the top of the same pencil when moved a distance of a few inches from its first position A. On the top of this pencil were placed some pupæ. Sir John Lubbock, after contriving this arrangement, marked an ant and put it upon the pupæ on the top of the pencil. After she had made two journeys carrying pupæ from the pencil to the nest (the tracks she pursued being represented by the two thick white lines), while she was in the nest he moved the pencil to its position at B. The thin white line represents the course then pursued by the ant in its endeavours to find the pencil, which was shifted only a few inches from A to B. That is, 'the ants on their journey to the shifted object travelled very often backwards and forwards and round the spot where the coveted object first stood. Then they would retrace their steps towards the nest, wander hither and thither from side to side between the nest and the point A, and only after very repeated efforts around the original site of the larvæ reach, as it were, accidentally the object desired at B.' Therefore the ants were clearly not guided by the _sight_ of the pencil. [Illustration: Fig. 2.] [Illustration: Fig. 3.] [Illustration: Fig. 4.] [Illustration: Fig. 5.] The same thing is well shown by another form of experiment. 'Some food was placed at the point _a_ (Figs. 3 and 4) on a board measuring 20 inches by 12 inches, and so arranged that the ants in going straight from it to the nest would reach the board at the point _b_, and after passing under the paper tunnel _c_, would proceed between five pairs of wooden bricks, each 3 inches in length and 1-3/4 inches in height. When they got to know their way they went quite straight along the line _d e_ to _a_. The board was then twisted as shown in Fig. 4. 'The bricks and tunnel being arranged exactly in the same direction as before, but the board having been moved, the line _d e_ was now outside them. The change, however, did not at all discompose the ants; but instead of going, as before, through the tunnel and between the rows of bricks to _a_, they walked exactly along the old path to _e_.' Keeping the board steady, but moving the brick pathway to the left-hand corner of the board where the food was next placed (Fig. 5), had the effect of making the ant first go to the old position of the food at _a_, whence it veered to a new position, which we may call _x_. The bricks and food were then moved towards the right-hand corner of the board--_i.e._ over a distance of 8 inches (Fig. 6). The ant now first went to _a_, then to _x_, and not finding the food at either place, set to work to look for it at random, and was only successful after twenty-five minutes' wandering. [Illustration: Fig. 6.] And, as evidence how much more dependence they place upon scent in finding their way than upon any other of their faculties, it is desirable to quote yet one further experiment, which is of great interest as showing that when their sense of smell is made to contradict their sense of direction, they follow the former, notwithstanding, as we shall presently see, the wonderful accuracy of the information which is supplied to them by the latter. 'If, when _F. niger_ were carrying off larvæ placed in a cup on a piece of board, I turned the board round so that the side which had been turned towards the nest was away from it, and _vice versâ_, the ants always returned over the same track on the board, and, in consequence, directly away from home. If I moved my board to the other side of my artificial nest, the result was the same. Evidently they followed the road, not the direction.' There can be little doubt that ants have a sense of taste, as they are so well able to distinguish sugary substances; and it is unquestionable that in their antennæ they possess highly elaborated organs of touch. _Sense of Direction._ As evidence of the accuracy and importance of the sense of direction in the Hymenoptera, we must here adduce Sir John Lubbock's highly interesting experiments on ants--leaving his experiments in this connection on bees and wasps to be considered in the next chapter. He first accustomed some ants (_Lasius niger_) to go to and fro to food over a wooden bridge. When they had got quite accustomed to the way, he watched when an ant was upon a bridge which could be rotated, and while she was passing along it, he turned it round, so that end _b_ was at _c_, and _c_ at _b_. 'In most cases the ant immediately turned round also; but even if she went on to _b_ or _c_, as the case might be, as soon as she came to the end of the bridge she turned round.' Next, between the nest and the food he placed a hat-box twelve inches in diameter and seven inches high, cutting two small holes, so that the ants in passing from the nest to the food had to pass in at one hole and out at the other. The box was fixed upon a central pivot, so as to admit of being rotated easily without much friction or disturbance. When the ants had well learnt their way, the box was turned half round as soon as an ant had entered it, 'but in every case the ant turned too, thus retaining her direction.' Lastly, Sir John took a disk of white paper, which he placed in the stead of the hat-box between the nest and the food. When an ant was on the disk making towards the food, he gently drew the disk to the other side of the food, so that the ant was conveyed by the moving surface in the same direction as that in which she was going, but _beyond_ the point to which she intended to go. Under these circumstances 'the ant did not turn round, but went on' to the further edge of the disk, when she seemed 'a good deal surprised at finding where she was.' These experiments seem to show that the mysterious 'sense of direction,' and consequent faculty of 'homing,' are in ants, at all events, due to a process of registering, and, where desirable, immediately counteracting any change of direction, even when such change is gently made by a wholly closed chamber in which the animal is moving, and not by any muscular movements of the animal itself. And the fact that drawing the moving surface along in the same direction of advance as that which the insect is pursuing does not affect the movements of the latter, seems conclusively to show that the power of registration has reference only to _lateral_ movements of the travelling surface; it has no reference to variations in the _velocity_ of advance along the line in which the animal is progressing.[19] _Powers of Memory._ Little need here be said to prove that ants display some powers of memory; for many of the observations and experiments already detailed constitute a sufficient demonstration of the statement that they do. Thus, for instance, the general fact that whenever an ant finds her way to a store of food or larvæ, she will return to it again and again in a more or less direct line from her nest, constitutes ample proof that the ant remembers the way to the store. It is of considerable interest, however, to note that the nature of this insect-memory appears to be, as far as it goes, precisely identical with that of memory in general. Thus, a new fact becomes _impressed_ upon their memory by _repetition_, and the impression is liable to become effaced by lapse of time. More evidence on both these features of insect-memory will be adduced when we come to treat of the intelligence of bees; but meanwhile it is enough to refer to the fact that in his experiments on ants, Sir John Lubbock found it necessary to _teach_ the insects by a repetition of several lessons their way to treasure, if that way was long or unusual. With regard to the _duration_ of memory, it does not appear that any experiments have been made; but the following observation by Mr. Belt on this point in the case of the leaf-cutting ant may here be stated. In June 1859 he found his garden invaded by these ants, and following up their paths he found their nest about a hundred yards distant. He poured down their burrows a pint of common brown carbolic acid, mixed with four buckets of water. The marauding parties were at once drawn off from the garden to meet the danger at home, and the whole formicarium was disorganised, the ants running up and down again in the utmost perplexity. Next day he found them busily employed bringing up the ant-food from the old burrows, and carrying it to newly formed ones a few yards distant. These, however, turned out to be only intended as temporary repositories; for in a few days both the old and the new burrows were entirely deserted, so that he supposed all the ants to have died. Subsequently, however, he found that they had migrated to a new site, about two hundred yards from the old one, and there established themselves in a new nest. Twelve months later the ants again invaded his garden, and again he treated them to a strong dose of carbolic acid. The ants, as on the previous occasion, were at once withdrawn from the garden, and two days afterwards he found 'all the survivors at work on one track that led directly to the old nest of the year before, where they were busily employed in making fresh excavations. Many were bringing along pieces of ant-food' from the nest most recently deluged with carbolic acid to that which had been similarly deluged a year before, and from which all the carbolic acid had long ago disappeared. 'Others carried the undeveloped white pupæ and larvæ. It was a wholesale and entire migration;' and the next day the nest down which he had last poured the carbolic acid was entirely deserted. Mr. Belt adds: 'I afterwards found that when much disturbed, and many of the ants destroyed, the survivors migrate to a new locality. I do not doubt that some of the leading minds in this formicarium recollected the nest of the year before, and directed the migration to it.' Now, I do not insist that the facts necessarily point to this conclusion; for it may have been that the leaders of the migration simply stumbled upon the old and vacant nest by accident, and finding it already prepared as a nest, forthwith proceeded to transfer the food and pupæ to it. Still, as the two nests were separated from one another by so considerable a distance, this hypothesis does not seem probable, and the only other one open to us is that the ants remembered the site of their former home for a period of twelve months. And this conclusion is rendered less improbable from a statement of Karl Vogt in his 'Thierstaaten,' to the effect that for several successive years ants from a certain nest used to go through certain inhabited streets to a chemist's shop 600 mètres distant, in order to obtain access to a vessel filled with syrup. As it cannot be supposed that this vessel was found in successive working seasons by as many successive accidents, it can only be concluded that the ants remembered the syrup store from season to season. I shall now pass on to consider a class of highly remarkable facts, perhaps the most remarkable of the many remarkable facts connected with ant psychology. It has been known since the observations of Huber that all the ants of the same nest or community recognise one another as friends, while an ant introduced from another nest, even though it be an ant of the same species, is known at once to be a foreigner, and is usually maltreated or put to death. Huber found that when he removed an ant from a nest and kept it away from its companions for a period of four months it was still recognised as a friend, and caressed by its previous fellow-citizens after the manner in which ants show friendship, viz., by stroking antennæ. Sir John Lubbock, after repeating and fully confirming these observations, extended them as follows. He first tried keeping the separated ant away from the nest for a still longer period than four months, and found that even after a separation of more than a year the animal was recognised as before. He repeated this experiment a number of times, and always with the same invariable difference between the reception accorded to a foreigner and a native--no matter, apparently, how long the native had been absent. Considering the enormous number of ants that go to make a nest, it seems astonishing enough that they should be all personally known to one another, and still more astonishing that they should be able to recognise members of their community after so prolonged an absence. Thinking that the facts could only be explained, either by all the ants in the same nest having a peculiar smell, or by all the members of the same community having a particular pass-word or gesture-sign, Sir John Lubbock, with the view of testing this theory, separated some ants from a nest while still in the condition of pupæ, and, when they emerged from that state as perfect insects, transferred them back to the nest from which they had been taken as pupæ. Of course in this case the ants in the nest could never have _seen_ those which had been removed, for a larval ant is as unlike the mature insect as a grub is unlike a beetle; neither can it be supposed that a larva, hatched out away from the nest, should retain, when a perfect insect, any smell belonging to its parent nest--more especially as it had been hatched out by ants in another nest;[20] nor, lastly, is it reasonable to imagine that the animal, while still a larval grub, can have been taught any gesture-signal used as a pass-word by the matured animals. Yet, although all these possible hypotheses seem to be thus fully excluded by the conditions of the experiment, the result showed unequivocally that the ants recognised their transformed larvæ as native-born members of their community. Lastly, Sir John Lubbock tried the experiment of going still further back in the life-history of the ants before separating them from the nest. For in September he divided a nest into two halves, each having a queen. At this season there were neither larvæ nor eggs. The following April both the queens began to lay eggs, and in August--_i.e._ nearly a year after the original partitioning of the nest--he took some of the ants newly hatched from the pupæ in one division, and placed them in the other division, and _vice versâ_. In all cases these ants were received by the members of the other half of the divided nest as friends, although if a stranger were introduced into either half it was invariably killed. Yet the ants which were thus so certainly recognised by their kindred ants as friends had never, even in the state of an egg, been present in that division of the nest before. On this highly remarkable fact Sir John Lubbock says:-- These observations seem to me conclusive as far as they go, and they are very surprising. In my experiments of last year, though the results were similar, still the ants experimented with had been brought up in the nest, and were only removed after they had become pupæ. It might therefore be argued that the ants, having nursed them as larvæ, recognised them when they came to maturity; and though this would certainly be in the highest degree improbable, it could not be said to be impossible. In the present case, however, the old ants had absolutely never seen the young ones until the moment when, some days after arriving at maturity, they were introduced into the nest; and yet in all ten cases they were undoubtedly recognised as belonging to the community. It seems to me, therefore, to be established by these experiments that the recognition of ants is not personal and individual; that their harmony is not due to the fact that each ant is individually acquainted with every other member of the community. At the same time, the fact that they recognise their friends even when intoxicated, and that they know the young born in their own nest even when they have been brought out of the chrysalis by strangers, seems to indicate that the recognition is not effected by means of any sign or pass-word. We must, therefore, conclude with reference to this subject that the mode whereby recognition is undoubtedly effected is as yet wholly unintelligible; and I have introduced these facts under the heading of memory only because this heading is not more inappropriate than any other that could be devised for their reception. It ought here to be added also that the power of thus recognising members of their community is not confined by the limits of blood-relationship, for in an experiment made by Forel it was shown that Amazon ants recognised their own slaves almost instantaneously after an absence of four months. Under this heading I may also adduce the evidence as to enormous masses, or, as we might say, a whole nation of ants recognising each other as belonging to the same nationality. New nests often spring up as offshoots from the older ones, and thus a nation of towns gradually spreads to an immense circumference around the original centre. Forel describes a colony of _F. exsecta_ which comprised more than two hundred nests, and covered a space of nearly two hundred square mètres. 'All the members of such a colony, even those from the furthermost nest, recognise each other and admit no stranger.' Similarly, MacCook describes an 'ant town' in the Alleghany Mountains of North America ('Trans. Amer. Entom. Soc.,' Nov. 1877) which was inhabited by _F. exsectoïdes_. It consists of 1,600 to 1,700 nests, which rise in cones to a height of from two to five feet. The ground below is riddled in every direction with subterranean passages of communication. The inhabitants are all on the most friendly terms, so that if any one nest is injured it is repaired by their united forces. It remains to be added in connection with this subject that the recognition is not automatically invariable, but when 'ants are removed from a nest in the pupa state, tended by strangers, and then restored, some at least of their relatives are certainly puzzled, and in many cases doubt their claims to consanguinity. I say some, because while strangers under the circumstances would have been immediately attacked, these ants were in every case amicably received by the majority of the colony, and it was sometimes several hours before they came across one who did not recognise them.' It may also be added that _Lasius flavus_ behaves towards strangers quite differently and much more hospitably than is the case with _L. niger_. The stranger shows no alarm, but, on the contrary, will voluntarily enter the strange nest, and she is there received with kindness; although from the attention she excites, and the numerous communications which take place between her and her new friends, Sir John was 'satisfied that they knew she was not one of themselves. . . . Very different is the behaviour of _L. niger_ under similar circumstances. I tried the same experiment with them. There was no communications with the antennæ, there was no cleaning, but every ant which the stranger approached flew at her like a little tigress. I tried this experiment four times; each stranger was killed and borne off to the nest.' _Emotions._ The pugnacity, valour, and rapacity of ants are too well and generally known to require the narration of special instances of their display. With regard to the tenderer emotions, however, there is a difference of opinion among observers. Before the researches of Sir John Lubbock it was the prevalent view that these insects display marked signs of affection towards one another, both by caressing movements of their antennæ, and by showing solicitude for friends in distress. Sir John, however, has found that the species of ants on which he has experimented are apparently deficient both in feelings of affection and of sympathy--or, at least, that such feelings are in these species much less strongly developed than the sterner passions. He tried burying some specimens of _Lasius niger_ beneath an ant-road; but none of the ants traversing the road made any attempt to release their imprisoned companions. He tried the same experiment with the same result on various other species. Even when the friends in difficulty are actually in sight, it by no means follows that their companions will assist them. Of this, he says, he could give almost any number of instances. Thus, when ants are entangled in honey, their companions devote themselves to the honey, and entirely neglect their friends in distress; and when partly drowned, their friends take no notice. When chloroformed or intoxicated their own companions either do not heed them, or else 'seem somewhat puzzled at finding their intoxicated fellow-creatures in such a condition, take them up, and carry them about for a time in a somewhat aimless manner.' Further experiments, however, on a larger scale, went to show that chloroformed ants were treated as dead, _i.e._ removed to the edge of the parade-board and dropped over into the surrounding moat of water; while intoxicated ants were generally carried into the nest, if they were ants belonging to that community; if not, they were thrown overboard. This care shown towards intoxicated friends appears to indicate a dim sense of sympathy towards afflicted individuals; but that this emotion or instinct does not in the case of these species extend to healthy individuals in distress seems to be proved, not only by the experiments of burying already described, but also by the following:-- On Sept. 2, therefore, I put two ants from one of my nests of _F. fusca_ into a bottle, the end of which was tied up with muslin as described, and laid it down close to the nest. In a second bottle I put two ants from another nest of the same species. The ants which were at liberty took no notice of the bottle containing their imprisoned friends. The strangers in the other bottle, on the contrary, excited them considerably. The whole day one, two, or more ants stood sentry, as it were, over the bottle. In the evening no less than twelve were collected round it, a larger number than usually came out of the nest at any one time. The whole of the next two days, in the same way, there were more or less ants round the bottle containing the strangers; while, as far as we could see, no notice whatever was taken of the friends. On the 9th the ants had eaten through the muslin, and effected an entrance. We did not chance to be on the spot at the moment; but as I found two ants lying dead, one in the bottle and one just outside, I think there can be no doubt that the strangers were put to death. The friends throughout were quite neglected. Sept. 21.--I then repeated the experiment, putting three ants from another nest in a bottle as before. The same scene was repeated. The friends were neglected. On the other hand, some of the ants were always watching over the bottle containing the strangers, and biting at the muslin which protected them. The next morning at 6 A.M. I found five ants thus occupied. One had caught hold of the leg of one of the strangers, which had unwarily been allowed to protrude through the meshes of the muslin. They worked and watched, though not, as far as I could see, with any system, till 7.30 in the evening, when they effected an entrance, and immediately attacked the strangers. Sept. 24.--I repeated the same experiment with the same nest. Again the ants came and sat over the bottle containing the strangers, while no notice was taken of the friends. The next morning again, when I got up, I found five ants round the bottle containing the strangers, none near the friends. As in the former case, one of the ants had seized a stranger by the leg, and was trying to drag her through the muslin. All day the ants clustered round the bottle, and bit perseveringly, though not systematically, at the muslin. The same thing happened all the following day. On repeating these experiments with another species (viz., _Formica rufescens_) the ants took no notice of either bottle, and showed no sign either of affection or hatred. One is almost tempted to surmise that the spirit of these ants is broken by slavery [_i.e._ by the habit of keeping slaves]. But the experiments on _F. fusca_ seem to show that in these curious insects hatred is a stronger passion than affection. We must not, however, too readily assent to this general conclusion, that ants as a whole are deficient in the tenderer emotions; for although the case is doubtless so with the species which Sir John examined, it appears to be certainly otherwise with other species, as we shall presently see. But first it may be well to point out that even the hard-hearted species with which Sir John had to do seem not altogether devoid of sympathy with sick or mutilated friends, although they appear to be so towards healthy friends in distress. Thus the care shown to intoxicated friends seems to indicate, if not, as already observed, a dim sense of sympathy, at least an instinct to preserve the life of an ailing citizen for the future benefit of the community. Sir John also quotes some observations of Latreille showing that ants display sympathy with mutilated companions; and, lastly, mentions an instance which he has himself observed of the same thing. A specimen of _F. fusca_ congenitally destitute of antennæ was attacked and injured by an ant of another species. When separated by Sir John, another ant of her own species came by. 'She examined the poor sufferer carefully, then picked her up tenderly, and carried her away into the nest. It would have been difficult for any one who witnessed this scene to have denied to this ant the possession of humane feelings.' Moggridge is also of opinion that the habit of throwing sick and apparently dead ants into the water, is 'in part to be rid of them, and partly, perhaps, with a view to effecting a possible cure; for I have seen one ant carry another down the twig which formed their path to the surface of the water, and, after dipping it in for a minute, carry it laboriously up again, and lay it in the sun to dry and recover.' But that some species of ants display marked signs of what we may call sympathy even towards healthy companions in distress, is proved by the following observation of Mr. Belt. He writes:[21]-- One day, watching a small column of these ants (_i.e._ _Eciton humata_), I placed a little stone on one of them to secure it. The next that approached, as soon as it discovered its situation, ran backwards in an agitated manner, and soon communicated the intelligence to the others. They rushed to the rescue; some bit at the stone and tried to move it, others seized the prisoner by the legs and tugged with such force that I thought the legs would be pulled off, but they persevered until they got the captive free. I next covered one up with a piece of clay, leaving only the ends of its antennæ projecting. It was soon discovered by its fellows, which set to work immediately, and by biting off pieces of the clay soon liberated it. Another time I found a very few of them passing along at intervals. I confined one of these under a piece of clay at a little distance from the line, with his head projecting. Several ants passed it, but at last one discovered it and tried to pull it out, but could not. It immediately set off at a great rate, and I thought it had deserted its comrade, but it had only gone for assistance, for in a short time about a dozen ants came hurrying up, evidently fully informed of the circumstances of the case, for they made directly for their imprisoned comrade and soon set him free. I do not see how this action could be instinctive. It was sympathetic help, such as man only among the higher mammalia shows. The excitement and ardour with which they carried on their unflagging exertions for the rescue of their comrade could not have been greater if they had been human beings. This observation seems unequivocal as proving fellow-feeling and sympathy, so far as we can trace any analogy between the emotions of the higher animals and those of insects. That insects with such highly organised social habits, and depending so greatly on the principles of co-operation, should manifest emotions or instincts of an incipiently altruistic character, is no more than we should antecedently expect on the general principle of survival of the fittest. Our only surprise should be that these emotions, or instincts, should appear to be so feebly developed in some species of ants, and, as we shall subsequently see, also of bees. But it may be worth while in this connection to point out that the valuable observation of Mr. Belt above quoted refers to the species of ant which, as we shall subsequently find, presents the most highly organised instincts of co-operation that are to be met with among ants, and therefore the greatest dependence of the welfare of the individual on that of the community. And the same remark is applicable to our native species, _F. sanguinea_, which the Rev. W. W. F. White has repeatedly seen rescuing buried companions very much in the manner described by Mr. Belt; and he does not appear to be acquainted with Mr. Belt's observations. He figures one case in which he saw three ants co-operating to dig out a buried comrade.[22] _Powers of Communication._ Huber, Kirby and Spence, Dugardin, Burmeister, Franklin, and other observers have all expressed themselves as more or less strongly of the opinion that members of the same community of ants, and other social Hymenoptera, are able to communicate information to one another by some system of language or signs. The facts, however, on which their opinion rests have not been stated with that degree of caution and detail which the acceptance of the conclusion requires. Thus, Kirby and Spence give only one instance of supposed communication between ants,[23] and even this one is inconclusive, as the facts described admit of being explained by supposing that the ants simply tracked one another by scent; while Huber merely deals in general statements as to 'contact of antennæ,' without narrating any particulars of his observations. Therefore, until within the last few years there was really no sufficient evidence to sustain the general opinion that ants are able to communicate with one another; but the observations which I shall now detail must be regarded as fully substantiating that general opinion by facts as abundant and conclusive as the most critical among us can desire. I shall first narrate in his own words the more important of Sir John Lubbock's experiments in this connection:-- I took three tapes, each about 2 feet 6 inches long, and arranged them parallel to one another and about 6 inches apart. An end of each I attached to one of the nests (_F. niger_), and at the other end I placed a glass. In the glass at the end of one tape I placed a considerable number (300 to 600) of larvæ. In the second I put two or three larvæ only, in the third none at all. The object of the last was to see whether many ants would come to the glasses under such circumstances by mere accident, and I may at once say that scarcely any did so. I then took two ants, and placed one of them to the glass with many larvæ, the other to that with two or three. Each of them took a larva and carried it to the nest, returning for another, and so on. After each journey I put another larva in the glass with only two or three larvæ, to replace that which had been removed. Now, if several ants came under the above circumstances as a mere matter of accident, or accompanying one another by chance, or if they simply saw the larvæ which were being brought, and consequently concluded that they might themselves find a larva in the same place, then the numbers going to the two glasses ought to be approximately equal. In each case the number of journeys made by the ants would be nearly the same; consequently, if it was a matter of scent, the two glasses would be in the same position. It would be impossible for an ant, seeing another in the act of bringing a larva, to judge for itself whether there were few or many left behind. On the other hand, if the strangers were brought, then it would be curious to see whether more were brought to the glass with many larvæ than to that which only contained two or three. I should also mention that every stranger was imprisoned until the end of the experiment. The results of these experiments were that during 47-1/2 hours the ants which had access to a glass containing numerous larvæ brought 257 friends to their assistance; while during an interval 5-1/2 hours longer those which visited the glass with only two or three larvæ brought only 82 friends; and, as already mentioned, no single ant came to the glass which contained no larvæ. Now, as all the glasses were exposed to similar conditions, and as the roads to the first two must, in the first instance at all events, have been equally scented by the passage of ants over them, these results look very conclusive as proving some power of definite communication, not only that larvæ are to be found, but even where the largest store is to be met with. To this interesting account Sir John Lubbock adds,-- One case of apparent communication struck me very much. I had had an ant (_F. niger_) under observation one day, during which she was occupied in carrying off larvæ to her nest. At night I imprisoned her in a small bottle; in the morning I let her out at 6.15, when she immediately resumed her occupation. Having to go to London, I imprisoned her again at 9 o'clock. When I returned at 4.40 I put her again to the larvæ. She examined them carefully, and went home without taking one. At this time no other ants were out of the nest. In less than a minute she came out again with eight friends, and the little heap made straight for the heap of larvæ. When they had gone two-thirds of the way I again imprisoned the marked ant; the others hesitated a few minutes, and then with curious quickness returned home. At 5.15 I put her again to the larvæ. She again went home _without a larva_, but after only a few seconds' stay in the nest, came out with no less than thirteen friends. They all went towards the larvæ, but when they had got about two-thirds of the way, although the marked ant had on the previous day passed over the ground about 150 times, and though she had just gone straight from the larvæ to the nest, she seemed to have forgotten her way, and considered; and after she had wandered about for half an hour, I put her to the larvæ. Now, in this case, the twenty-one ants must have been brought out by my marked one, for they came exactly with her, and there were no other ants out. Moreover, it would seem that they must have been told, because (which is very curious in itself) she did not in either case bring a larva, and consequently it cannot have been the mere sight of a larva which had induced them to follow her. Further experiments proved, as we might have expected, that although an ant is able to communicate to her friends in the nest that she has found treasure somewhere outside, she is not able to describe to them its precise locality. Thus, having exposed larvæ and placed an ant upon them as before, Sir John watched every time she came out of the nest with friends to assist her, but instead of allowing her to pilot the way, he took her up and carried her to the larvæ, allowing her to return with a larva upon her own feet. Under these circumstances the friends, although evidently coming out with the intention of finding some treasure, were never able to find it; but wandered about in various directions for a while, and then returned to the nest. Thus, during two hours she brought out in her successive journeys altogether no less than 120 ants, of which number only 5 in their unguided wanderings happened to find the sought-for treasure. This result seems to prove, as we might have expected, that the communication is of the nature of some sign amounting to no more than a 'follow me.' Other experiments confirmed this result, and also brought out the fact that 'some species act much more in association than others--_Formica fusca_, for instance, much less than _Lasius niger_.' Thus Sir John Lubbock placed some honey before a marked specimen of the former species; but although she visited and revisited the honey during an entire day, she brought out no friends to share it; and although in her journeys to and from the nest she happened to pass and repass many other individuals, they took no notice of each other. The obvious objection to these experiments, that an ant observing a friend bringing home food or a pupa might infer, without being told, that by accompanying the friend on the return journey she 'might participate in the good things,' has been partly met by the fact already stated, viz., that there is so very marked a difference in the result if, on experimenting on two ants, one had access to a large treasure and the other only to a small one. But to put this matter beyond question, Sir John Lubbock tried the experiment of pinning down a dead fly, so that the ant which found it was unable, with all her tugging, to move it towards the nest. At length she went back to the nest for assistance, and returned accompanied by seven friends. So great was her excitement, however, that she outran these friends, 'who seemed to have come out reluctantly, as if they had been asleep, and were only half awake;' and they failed to find the fly, slowly meandering about for twenty minutes. After again tugging for a time at the fly, the first ant returned a second time to the nest for assistance, and in less than a minute came out with eight friends. They were even less energetic than the first party, and having lost sight of their guide in the same manner as happened before, they all returned to the nest. Meanwhile several of the first party, which had all the while been meandering about, found the fly, and proceeded to dismember it, carrying the trophy to the nest, and calling out more friends in the ordinary way. This experiment was repeated several times and on different species, always with the same result. Now, as Sir John remarks, 'the two cases (_i.e._ those in which the ant brought out friends to her assistance even when she had no booty to show) surely indicate a distinct power of communication. . . . It is impossible to doubt that the friends were brought out by the first ant; and as she returned empty-handed to the nest, the others cannot have been induced to follow her by merely observing her proceedings. I conclude, therefore, that they possess the power of requesting their friends to come and help them.' In order to ascertain whether the signs which communicating ants make to one another are made by means of sound, Sir John Lubbock placed near a nest of _Lasius flavus_ six small upright pillars of wood about 1-1/2 inch high, and on one of these he put a drop of honey. 'I then put three ants to the honey, and when each had sufficiently fed, I imprisoned her, and put another; thus always keeping three ants at the honey, but not allowing them to go home. If, then, they could summon their friends by sound, there ought soon to be many ants at the honey.' The result showed that the ants were not able thus to call to one another from a distance. As additional proof of the general fact that at all events some ants have the power of communicating information to one another, it will be enough here to quote an exceedingly interesting observation of the distinguished geologist Hague. The quotations are taken from his letters written to Mr. Darwin, and published in _Nature_:[24]-- On the mantelshelf of our sitting-room my wife has the habit of keeping fresh flowers. A vase stands at each end, and near the middle a small tumbler, usually filled with violets. Some time ago I noticed a pile of very small red ants on the wall above the left-hand vase, passing upward and downward between the mantelshelf and a small hole near the ceiling, at a point where a picture nail had been driven. The ants, when first observed, were not very numerous, but gradually increased in number, until on some days the little creatures formed an almost unbroken procession, issuing from the hole at the nail, descending the wall, climbing the vase directly below the nail, satisfying their desire for water or perfume, and then returning. The other vase and tumbler were not visited at that time. As I was just then recovering from a long illness it happened that I was confined to the house, and spent my days in the room where the operations of these insects attracted my attention. Their presence caused me some annoyance, but I knew of no effective means of getting rid of them. For several days in succession I frequently brushed the ants in great numbers from the wall down to the floor; but as they were not killed the result was that they soon formed a colony in the wall at the base of the mantel, ascending thence to the shelf, so that before long the vase was attacked from above and below. One day I observed a number of ants, perhaps thirty or forty, on the shelf at the foot of the vase. Thinking to kill them, I struck them lightly with the end of my finger, killing some and disabling the rest. The effect of this was immediate and unexpected. As soon as those ants which were approaching arrived near to where their fellows lay dead and suffering, they turned and fled with all possible haste. In half an hour the wall above the mantelshelf was cleared of ants. During the space of an hour or two the colony from below continued to ascend until reaching the lower bevelled edge of the shelf, at which point the more timid individuals, although unable to see the vase, somehow became aware of trouble, and turned about without further investigation, while the more daring advanced hesitatingly just to the upper edge of the shelf, when, extending their antennæ and stretching their necks, they seemed to peep cautiously over the edge until beholding their suffering companions, when they too turned and followed the others, expressing by their behaviour great excitement and terror. An hour or two later, the path or trail leading from the lower colony to the vase was almost entirely free from ants. I killed one or two ants on their path, striking them with my finger, but leaving no visible trace. The effect of this was that as soon as an ant ascending towards the shelf reached the spot where one had been killed, it gave signs immediately of great disturbance, and returned directly at the highest possible speed. A curious and invariable feature of their behaviour was that when such an ant, returning in fright, met another approaching, the two would always communicate, but each would pursue its own way, the second ant continuing its journey to the spot where the first had turned about, and then following that example. For some days after this there were no ants visible on the wall, either above or below the shelf. Then a few ants from the lower colony began to reappear, but instead of visiting the vase which had been the scene of the disaster, they avoided it altogether, and following the lower front edge of the shelf to the tumbler standing near the middle, made their attack upon that. I repeated the same experiment here with precisely the same result. Killing or maiming a few of the ants and leaving their bodies about the base of the tumbler, the others on approaching, and even before arriving at the upper surface of the shelf where their mutilated companions were visible, gave signs of intense emotion, some running away immediately, and others advancing to where they could survey the field and then hastening away precipitately. Occasionally an ant would advance towards the tumbler until it found itself among the dead and dying; then it seemed to lose all self-possession, running hither and thither, making wide circuits about the scene of the trouble, stopping at times and elevating the antennæ with a movement suggestive of wringing them in despair, and finally taking flight. After this another interval of several days passed, during which no ants appeared. Now, three months later, the lower colony has been entirely abandoned. Occasionally, however, especially when fresh and fragrant violets have been placed on the shelf, a few 'prospectors' descend from the upper nail-hole, rarely, almost never, approaching the vase from which they were first driven away, but seeking to satisfy their desire at the tumbler. To turn back these stragglers and keep them out of sight for a number of days, sometimes for a fortnight, it is sufficient to kill one or two ants on the trail which they follow descending the wall. This I have recently done as high up as I can reach, three or four feet above the mantel. The moment this spot is reached, an ant turns abruptly and makes for home, and in a little while there is not an ant visible on the wall. In a subsequent volume of 'Nature' (viii. p. 244), Mr. Darwin publishes another letter which he received from Mr. Hague upon the same subject. It seems that Mr. Moggridge suggested to Mr. Darwin that, as he and others had observed ants to be repelled by the mere scent of a finger drawn across their path, the observation of Mr. Hague might really resolve itself into a dislike on the part of the ants to cross a line over which a finger had been drawn, and have nothing to do with intelligent terror inspired by the sight of their slaughtered companions. The following is Mr. Hague's reply to Mr. Darwin's request for further experiments to test this point:-- Acting on Mr. M----'s suggestion, I first tried making simple finger-marks on their path (the mantel is of marble), and found just the results which he describes in his note as observed by himself at Mentone, that is, no marked symptoms of fear, but a dislike to the spot, and an effort to avoid it by going around it, or by turning back and only crossing it again after an interval of time. I then killed several ants on the path, using a smooth stone or piece of ivory, instead of my finger, to crush them. In this case the ants approaching all turned back as before, and with much greater exhibition of fear than when the simple finger-mark was made. This I did repeatedly. The final result was the same as obtained last winter. They persisted in coming for a week or two, during which I continued to kill them, and then they disappeared, and we have seen none since. It would appear from this that while the taint of the hand is sufficient to turn them back, the killing of their fellows with a stone or other material produces the effect described in my first note. This was made clear to me at that time, from the behaviour of the ants the first day I killed any, for on that occasion some of them approaching the vase from below, on reaching the upper edge of the mantel, peeped over, and drew back on seeing what had happened about the vase, then turned away a little, and after a moment tried again at another and another point along the edge, with the same result in the end. Moreover, those that found themselves among the dead and dying went from one writhing ant to another in great haste and excitement, exhibiting the signs of fright which I described. I hardly hope that any will return again, but if they do, and give me an opportunity, I shall endeavour to act further on Mr. M----'s suggestion. With this quotation I shall conclude the present division of the chapter; for, looking to all the other observations previously mentioned, there can be no question concerning the general fact that ants have the power of communicating with one another. And under subsequent headings abundant additional evidence on this point will be found implicated with the other facts detailed. _Habits General in Sundry Species._ _Swarming._--The precise facts with regard to the swarming of ants are not yet certainly established. As regards some of the facts, however, there is no doubt. The winged males and females first quit the nest in enormous numbers, and choose some fine afternoon in July or August for their wedding flight. The entrances to the nest are widened by the workers and increased in number, and there is a great commotion on the surface of the nest. The swarm takes place as a thick cloud of all the male and female insects, rising together to a considerable height. The flight continues for several hours, usually circling round some tree or tower, and it is during the flight that fertilisation is effected. After it is effected, the swarm returns to the ground, when the males perish, either from falling a prey, in their shelterless condition, to birds or spiders, or, on account of not being able to feed themselves, from starvation. 'The workers, or neuter ants, of their own colony have lost all interest in them from the moment of their return, and trouble themselves no more about them, for they well know that the males have now fulfilled their vocation.' The great majority of the fertilised females share the same fate as the males. But a small proportion find concealment in holes, which they either dig for themselves, or happen to find ready made, and there found a new colony. The first thing they do is to pull off their now useless wings, by scratching and twisting them, one after the other, with the clawed ends of their feet. They then lay their eggs, and become the queens of new colonies. Forel says that no fertilised female ever returns to her original home; but that the workers keep back a certain number of females which are fertilised before the swarming takes place; in this case the workers pull off the wings of the fertilised females. The majority of observers, however, maintain that some of the females composing the swarm return to their native home to become mothers where they had been children. Probably both statements are correct. A writer in the 'Groniger Deekblad' for June 16, 1877, observes that, looking to the injurious effects of in-breeding, the facts as related by Forel are less probable than those related by other observers, and that, if they actually occur, the females fertilised before flight are probably kept by the ants as a sort of 'reserve corps to which the workers resort only in case of need, and if they fail to secure any returning queens.' _Nursing._--The eggs will not develop into larvæ unless nursed. The nursing is effected by licking the surface of the eggs, which under the influence of this process increase in size, or grow. In about a fortnight, during which time the workers carry the eggs from higher to lower levels of the nest, and _vice versâ_, according to the circumstances of heat, moisture, &c., the larvæ are hatched out, and require no less careful nursing than the eggs. The workers feed them by placing mouths together and regurgitating food stored up in the crop or proventriculus into the intestinal tract of the young. The latter show their hunger by 'stretching out their little brown heads.' Great care is also taken by the workers in cleaning the larvæ, as well as in carrying them up and down the chambers of the nest for warmth or shelter. When fully grown the larvæ spin cocoons, and are then pupæ, or the 'ants' eggs' of bird-fanciers. These require no food, but still need incessant attention with reference to warmth, moisture, and cleanliness. When the time arrives for their emergence as perfect insects, the workers assist them to get out of their larval cases by biting through the walls of the latter. It is noticeable that in doing this the workers do not keep to any exact time, but free them sometimes earlier and sometimes later, in accordance with their rate of development. 'The little animal when freed from its chrysalis is still covered with a thin skin, like a little shirt, which has to be pulled off. When we see how neatly and gently this is done, and how the young creature is then washed, brushed, and fed, we are involuntarily reminded of the nursing of human babies. The empty cases, or cocoons, are carried outside the nest, and may be seen heaped together there for a long time. Some species carry them far away from the nest, or turn them into building materials for the dwelling.'[25] _Education._--The young ant does not appear to come into the world with a full instinctive knowledge of all its duties as a member of a social community. It is led about the nest, and 'trained to a knowledge of domestic duties, especially in the case of the larvæ.' Later on the young ants are taught to distinguish between friends and foes. When an ants' nest is attacked by foreign ants, the young ones never join in the fight, but confine themselves to removing the pupæ; and that the knowledge of hereditary enemies is not wholly instinctive in ants is proved by the following experiment, which we owe to Forel. He put young ants belonging to three different species into a glass case with pupæ of six other species--all the species being naturally hostile to one another. The young ants did not quarrel, but worked together to tend the pupæ. When the latter hatched out, an artificial colony was formed of a number of naturally hostile species all living together after the manner of the 'happy families' of the showmen. _Habit of keeping Aphides._--It is well known that various species of ants keep aphides, as men keep milch cows, to supply a nutritious secretion. Huber first observed this fact, and noticed that the ants collected the eggs of the aphides and treated them exactly as they treated their own, guarding and tending them with the utmost care. When these eggs hatch out the aphides are usually kept and fed by the ants, to whom they yield a sweet honey-like fluid, which they eject from the abdomen upon being stroked on this region by the antennæ of the ants. Mr. Darwin, who has watched the latter process, observes with regard to it,-- I removed all the ants from a group of about a dozen aphides on a dock plant, and prevented their attendance during several hours. After this interval, I felt sure that the aphides would want to excrete. I watched them for some time through a lens, but not one excreted; I then tickled them with a hair in the same manner, as well as I could, as the ants do with their antennæ; but not one excreted. Afterwards I allowed an ant to visit them, and it immediately seemed, by its eager way of running about, to be well aware what a rich flock it had discovered; it then began to play with its antennæ on the abdomen, first of one aphis and then of another; and each, as soon as it felt the antennæ, immediately lifted up its abdomen and excreted a limpid drop of sweet juice, which was eagerly devoured by the ant. Even quite young aphides behaved in this manner, showing that the action was instinctive, and not the result of experience. The facts also show that the yielding of the secretion to the ants is, as it were, a voluntary act on the part of the aphides, or, perhaps more correctly, that the instinct to yield it has been developed in such a relation to the requirements of the ants, that the peculiar stimulation supplied by the antennæ of the latter is necessary to start the act of secretion; for in the absence of this particular stimulation the aphides will never excrete until compelled to do so by the superabundance of the accumulating secretion. The question, therefore, directly arises how, on evolutionary principles, such a class of facts is to be met; for it is certainly difficult to understand the manner in which this instinct, so beneficial to the ants, can have arisen in the aphides, to which it does not appear, at first sight, to offer any advantages. Mr. Darwin meets the difficulty thus: 'Although there is no evidence that any animal performs an action for the exclusive good of another species, yet each tries to take advantage of the instincts of others;' and 'as the secretion is extremely viscid, it is no doubt a convenience to the aphides to have it removed; therefore probably they do not excrete solely for the good of the ants.'[26] Some ants which keep aphides build covered ways, or tunnels, to the trees or shrubs where the aphides live. Forel saw a tunnel of this kind which was taken up a wall and down again on the other side, in order to secure a safe covered way from the nest to the aphides. Occasionally such covered ways, or tubes, are continued so as to enclose the stems of the plants on which the aphides live. The latter are thus imprisoned by the walls of the tube, which, however, expand where they take on this additional function of stabling the aphides, so that these insects are really confined in tolerably large chambers. The doors of these chambers are too small to allow the aphides to escape, while large enough for the ants to pass in and out. Forel saw such a prison or stable shaped like a cocoon, and about a centimètre long, which was hanging on the branch of a tree, and contained aphides carefully tended by the ants. Huber records similar observations. Sir John Lubbock has made an interesting addition to our knowledge respecting this habit as practised by a certain species of ant (_Lasius flavus_), which departs in a very remarkable manner from the habit as practised by other species. He says: 'The ants took the greatest care of these eggs, carrying them off to the lower chambers with the utmost haste when the nest was disturbed.' But the most interesting of Sir John Lubbock's observations in this connection is new, and reveals an astonishing amount of method shown by the ants in farming their aphides. He says:-- When my eggs hatched I naturally thought that the aphides belonged to one of the species usually found on the roots of plants in the nests of _Lasius flavus_. To my surprise, however, the young creatures made the best of their way out of the nest, and, indeed, were sometimes brought out by the ants themselves. In vain I tried them with roots of grass, &c.; they wandered uneasily about, and eventually died. Moreover, they did not in any way resemble the subterranean species. In 1878 I again attempted to rear these young aphides; but though I hatched a great many eggs, I did not succeed. This year, however, I have been more fortunate. The eggs commenced to hatch the first week in March. Near one of my nests of _Lasius flavus_, in which I had placed some of the eggs in question, was a glass containing living specimens of several species of plants commonly found on or around ants' nests. To this some of the young aphides were brought by the ants. Shortly afterwards I observed on a plant of daisy, in the axils of the leaves, some small aphides, very much resembling those from my nest, though we had not actually traced them continuously. They seemed thriving, and remained stationary on the daisy. Moreover, whether they had sprung from the black eggs or not, the ants evidently valued them, for they built up a wall of earth round and over them. So things remained throughout the summer, but on October 9 I found that the aphides had laid some eggs exactly resembling those found in the ants' nests; and on examining daisy plants from outside, I found on many of them similar aphides, and more or less of the same eggs. I confess these observations surprised me very much. The statements of Huber have not, indeed, attracted so much notice as many of the other interesting facts which he has recorded, because if aphides are kept by ants in their nests, it seems only natural that their eggs should also occur. The above case, however, is much more remarkable. Here are aphides, not living in the ants' nests, but outside, on the leaf-stalks of plants. The eggs are laid early in October on the food-plant of the insect. They are of no direct use to the ants, yet they are not left where they are laid, where they would be exposed to the severity of the weather and to innumerable dangers, but brought into their nests by the ants, and tended by them with the utmost care through the long winter months until the following March, when the young ones are brought out and again placed on the young shoots of the daisy. This seems to me a most remarkable case of prudence. Our ants may not perhaps lay up food for the winter, but they do more, for they keep during six months the eggs which will enable them to procure food during the following summer. The following, which is taken from Büchner's 'Geistesleben der Thiere' is perhaps a still more striking performance of the same kind as that which Sir John Lubbock observed:-- The author is debtor to Herr Nottebohm, Inspector of Buildings at Karlsruhe, who related the following on May 24, 1876, under the title, 'Ants as Founders of Aphides' Colonies:'--'Of two equally strong young weeping ashes, which I planted in my garden at Kattowitz, in Upper Silesia, one succeeded well, and in about five or six years showed full foliage, while the other regularly every year was covered, when it began to bud, with millions of aphides, which destroyed the young leaves and sprouts, and thus completely delayed the development of the tree. As I perceived that the only reason for this was the action of the aphides, I determined to destroy them utterly. So in the March of the following year I took the trouble to clean and wash every bough, sprig, and bud before the bursting of the latter, with the greatest care, by means of a syringe. The result was that the tree developed perfectly healthy and vigorous leaves and young shoots, and remained quite free from the aphides until the end of May or the beginning of June. My joy was of short duration. One fine sunny morning I saw a surprising number of ants running quickly up and down the trunk of the tree; this aroused my attention, and led me to look more closely. To my great astonishment I then saw that many troops of ants were busied in carrying single aphides up the stem to the top, and that in this way many of the lower leaves had been planted with colonies of aphides. After some weeks the evil was as great as ever. The tree stood alone on the grass plot, and offered the only situation for an aphides' colony for the countless ants there present. I had destroyed this colony; but the ants replanted it by bringing new colonists from distant branches, and setting them on the young leaves.[27] Again-- MacCook noticed, of the mound-making ants, that of the workers returning to the nest from the tree on which the milking was going on, a far smaller number had distended abdomens than among those descending the tree itself. A closer investigation showed that at the roots of the trees, at the outlets of the subterranean galleries, a number of ants were assembled, which were fed by the returning ants after the fashion already described in feeding the larvæ, and which were distinguished by the observer as 'pensioners.' MacCook often observed the same fact later, among, with others, the already described Pennsylvanian wood-ant. Distinguished individuals in the body-guard of the queen were fed in like fashion. MacCook is inclined to think that the reason of this proceeding is to be found in the 'division of labour' so general in the ant republic, and that the members of the community which are employed in building and working within the nest, leave to the others the care of providing food for themselves as well as for the younger and helpless members; they thus have a claim to receive from time to time a reciprocal toll of gratitude, and take it, as is shown very clearly, in a way demanded by the welfare of the community.[28] Aphides are not the only insects which ants employ as cows, several other insects which yield sweet secretions being similarly utilised in various parts of the world. Thus, gall insects and cocci are kept in just the same way as aphides; but MacCook observed that where aphides and cocci are kept by the same ants, they are kept in separate chambers, or stalls. The same observer saw caterpillars of the genus _Lycoena_ kept by ants for the sake of a sweet secretion which they supply. _Habit of making Slaves._--This habit, or instinct, obtains among at least three species of ant, viz., _Formica rufescens_, _F. sanguinea_, and _strongylognathus_. It was originally observed by P. Huber in the first-named species. Here the species enslaved is _F. fusca_, which is appropriately coloured black. The slave-making ants attack a nest of _F. fusca_ in a body; there is a great fight with much slaughter, and, if victorious, the slave-makers carry off the pupæ of the vanquished nest in order to hatch them out as slaves. Mr. Darwin gives an account of a battle which he himself observed.[29] When the pupæ hatch out in the nest of their captors, the young slaves begin their life of work, and seem to regard their master's home as their own; for they never attempt to escape, and they fight no less keenly than their masters in defence of the nest. _F. sanguinea_ content themselves with fewer slaves than do _F. rufescens_; and the work that devolves upon the slaves differs according to the species which has enslaved them. In the nests of _F. sanguinea_ the comparatively few captives are kept as household slaves; they never either enter or leave the nest, and so are never seen unless the nest is opened. They are then very conspicuous from the contrast which their black colour and small size present to the red colour and much larger size of _F. rufescens_. As the slaves are by this species kept strictly indoors, all the outdoor work of foraging, slave-capturing, &c., is performed by the masters; and when for any reason a nest has to migrate, the masters carry their slaves in their jaws. _F. rufescens_, on the other hand, assigns a much larger share of labour to the slaves, which, as we have already seen, are present in much larger numbers to take it. In this species the males and fertile females do no work of any kind; and the workers, or sterile females, though most energetic in capturing slaves, do no other kind of work. Therefore the whole community is absolutely dependent upon its slaves. The masters are not able to make their own nests or to feed their own larvæ. When they migrate, it is the slaves that determine the migration, and, reversing the order of things that obtains in _F. sanguinea_, carry their masters in their jaws. Huber shut up thirty masters without a slave and with abundance of their favourite food, and also with their own larvæ and pupæ as a stimulus to work; but they could not feed even themselves, and many died of hunger. He then introduced a single slave, and she at once set to work, fed the surviving masters, attended to the larvæ, and made some cells. In order to confirm this observation, Lespès placed a piece of sugar near a nest of slave-makers. It was soon found by one of the slaves, which gorged itself and returned to the nest. Other slaves then came out and did likewise. Then some of the masters came out, and, by pulling the legs of the feeding slaves, reminded them that they were neglecting their duty. The slaves then immediately began to serve their masters with the sugar. Forel also has confirmed all these observations of Huber. Indeed, in the case of _F. rufescens_, the structure of the animal is such as to render self-feeding physically impossible. Its long and narrow jaws, adapted to pierce the head of an enemy, do not admit of being used for feeding, unless liquid food is poured into them by the mouth of a slave. This fact shows of how ancient an origin the instinct of slave-making must be; it has altered in an important manner a structure which could not have been so altered prior to the establishment of the instinct in question. Mr. Darwin thus sums up the differences in the offices of the slaves in the nests of _F. sanguinea_ and _F. rufescens_ respectively:-- The latter does not build its own nest, does not determine its own migrations, does not collect food for itself or for its fellows, and cannot even feed itself; it is absolutely dependent on its numerous slaves. _Formica sanguinea_, on the other hand, possesses much fewer slaves, and in the early part of the summer extremely few; the masters determine when and where a new nest shall be formed, and when they migrate, the masters carry the slaves. Both in Switzerland and England the slaves seem to have the exclusive care of the larvæ, and the masters alone go on slave-making expeditions. In Switzerland the slaves and masters work together, making and bringing materials for the nest; both, but chiefly the slaves, tend and milk, as it may be called, their aphides; and thus both collect food for the community. In England the masters alone usually leave the nest to collect building materials and food for themselves, their slaves and larvæ. So that the masters in this country receive much less service from their slaves than they do in Switzerland. Mr. Darwin further observes that 'this difference in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two countries probably depends merely on the slaves being captured in greater numbers in Switzerland than in England;' and records that he has observed in a community of the English species having an unusually large stock of slaves that 'a few slaves mingled with their masters leaving the nest, and marched along the same road to a tall Scotch fir tree, twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended together, probably in search of aphides or cocci.' And, according to Huber, the principal office of the slaves in Switzerland is to search for aphides. Mr. Darwin also made the following observation:--'Desiring to ascertain whether _F. sanguinea_ could distinguish the pupæ of _F. fusca_, which they habitually make into slaves, and which are an unwarlike species, from _F. flava_, which they rarely capture, and never without a severe fight,' he found 'it was evident that they did at once distinguish them;' for while 'they eagerly and instantly seized the pupæ of _F. fusca_, they were much terrified when they came across the pupæ, or even the earth from the nest, of _F. flava_, and quickly ran away; but in about a quarter of an hour, shortly after the little yellow ants had crawled away (from their nest having been disturbed by Mr. Darwin), they took heart and carried off the pupæ.' Concerning the origin of this remarkable instinct, Mr. Darwin writes:-- As ants which are not slave-makers will, as I have seen, carry off pupæ of other species if scattered near their nests, it is possible that such pupæ originally stored as food might become developed, and the foreign ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence proved useful to the species which had seized them--if it were more advantageous to the species to capture workers than to procreate them--the habit of collecting pupæ, originally for food, might by natural selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the very different purpose of raising slaves. When the instinct was once acquired, if carried out to a much less extent even than in our British _F. sanguinea_, which, as we have seen, is less aided by its slaves than the same species in Switzerland, natural selection might increase and modify the instinct, always supposing such modification to be of use to the species, until an ant was found as abjectly dependent on its slave as is the _Formica rufescens_. Ants do not appear to be the only animals of which ants make slaves; for there seems to be at least one case in which these wonderful insects enslave insects of another species, which therefore may be said to stand to the ants in the relation of beasts of burden. The case to which I allude is one that is recorded in Perty's 'Intellectual Life of Animals' (2nd ed. p. 329), and is as follows:-- According to Audubon certain leaf-bugs are used as slaves by the ants in the Brazilian forests. When these ants want to bring home the leaves which they have bitten off the trees, they do it by means of a column of these bugs, which go in pairs, kept in order on either side by accompanying ants. They compel stragglers to re-enter the ranks, and laggards to keep up by biting them. After the work is done the bugs are shut up within the colony and scantily fed. _Wars._--On the wars of ants a great deal might be said, as the facts of interest in this connection are very numerous; but for the sake of brevity I shall confine myself to giving only a somewhat meagre account. One great cause of war is the plundering of ants' nests by the slave-making species. Observers all agree that this plundering is effected by a united march of the whole army composing a nest of the slave-making species, directed against some particular nest of the species which they enslave. According to Lespès and Forel, single scouts or small companies are first sent out from the nest to explore in various directions for a suitable nest to attack. These scouts afterwards serve as guides to the marauding excursion. Forel saw several of these scouts of the species _F. rufescens_ or Amazon carefully inspecting a nest of _F. fusca_ which they had found, investigating especially the entrances. These are purposely made difficult to find by their architects, and it not unfrequently happens that after all precautions and inspections on the part of the invaders, an expedition fails on account of not finding the city gates. When the scouts have been successful in discovering a suitable nest to plunder, and have completed their strategical investigations of the locality to their satisfaction, they return straight to their own nest or fortress. Forel has then seen them walking about on the surface of their nest for a long time, as if in consultation, or making up their minds. Then some of them entered the nest, soon after which hosts of warriors streamed out of the entrances, and ran about tapping each other with their heads and antennæ. They then formed into column and set out to pillage the nest of the slave ants. The following is the account which Lespès gives of such expeditions:-- They only take place towards the end of the summer and in autumn. At this time the winged members of the slave species (_F. fusca_ and _F. cunicularia_) have left the nest, and the Amazons will not take the trouble to bring back useless consumers. When the sky is clear our robbers leave their town in the afternoon at about three or four o'clock. At first no order is perceptible in their movements, but when they are all gathered together they form a regular column, which then moves forward quickly, and each day in a different direction. They march closely pressed together, and the foremost always appear to be seeking for something on the ground. They are each moment overtaken by others, so that the head of the column is continually growing. They are in fact seeking the traces of the ants which they propose to plunder, and it is scent that guides them. They snuff over the ground like hounds following the track of a wild animal, and when they have found it they plunge headlong forward, and the whole column rushes on behind. The smallest armies I saw consisted of several hundred individuals, but I have also seen some four times as large. They then form columns which may be five mètres long, and as much as fifty centimètres wide. After a march, which often lasts a full hour, the column arrives at the nest of the slave species. The _F. cuniculariæ_, which are the strongest, offer keen opposition, but without much result. The Amazons soon penetrate within the nest, to come out again a moment later, while the assailed ants at the same time rush out in masses. During the whole time attention is directed solely to the larvæ and pupæ, which the Amazons steal while the others try to save as many as possible. They know very well that the Amazons cannot climb, so they fly with their precious burdens to the surrounding bushes or plants, whereto their enemies cannot follow them. They then pursue the retreating robbers and try to take away from them as much of their booty as possible. But the latter do not trouble themselves much about them, and hasten on home. On their return they do not follow the shortest road, but exactly the one by which they came, finding their way back by smell. Arrived at their nest, they immediately hand over their booty to the slaves, and trouble themselves no more about it. A few days afterwards the stolen pupæ or nymphæ emerge, without memory of their childhood, and immediately and without compulsion take part in all tasks. According to Büchner's account,[30]-- From time to time the army makes a short halt, partly to let the rearguard close up, partly because different opinions arise as to the direction of the host, or because the place at which they are is unknown to them. Forel several times saw the army completely lose its way--an incident only once observed by Huber. Forel puts the number of warriors in such an army at from one hundred to more than two thousand. Its speed is on an average a mètre per minute, but varies much according to circumstances, and is naturally least when returning laden with booty. If the distance be very great, such bodily fatigue may at last be felt that the whole attack on the hostile nest is given up, and a retreat is begun; Forel once saw this happen after they had passed over a distance of two hundred and forty yards. Sometimes it seems as though, on coming within sight of the hostile nest, a kind of discouragement took possession of them, and prevented their making the attack. If the nest cannot at once be found, the whole army halts, and some divisions are sent forward to search for it, and these are gradually seen returning towards the centre. Forel also saw such an army only searching the first day, advancing zigzag, and with frequent halts, whereas on the following day it went forward to its aim swiftly and without delay, having found out the road. It seems that a single ant, even if it knows the way and the place, is not able alone to lead a large army, but that a considerable number must be employed in this duty. Mistakes as to the road occur with special ease during the return journey, because the several ants are laden with booty and cannot readily understand each other. Individual ants are then seen to wander about in every direction often for a long time, until they at last reach a spot known to them, and then advance swiftly to their goal. Many never come back at all. These mistakes easily occur when the robbers which have passed into a hostile nest do not come out again at the same holes whereby they entered, but by others at some distance--for instance, by a subterranean canal. Coming out thus in a strange neighbourhood, they do not know which way to take, and only some chance to find the right road during their aimless wanderings about, and recognise and follow it by smell. On the other hand, such mistakes scarcely ever happen to individuals in an unladen train, kept in good array. Other species of ants (_F. fusca_, _rufa_, _sanguinea_) know better how to manage under such circumstances than do the Amazons. The laden ones lay down their loads, first find where they are, and only take them up again after they have found their way. If the booty seized in the nest first attacked is too large to be all taken at once, the robbers return once, or oftener, so as to complete their work. . . . The ants, as already said, have no regular leaders nor chiefs, yet it is certain that in each expedition, alteration of road, or other change, the decision during that event comes from a small knot of individuals, which have previously come to an understanding, and carry the rest and the undecided along with them. These do not always follow immediately, but only after they have received several taps on the head from the members of the 'ring.' The procession does not advance until the leaders have convinced themselves by their own eyesight that the main part of the army is following. One day Forel saw some Amazons on the surface of a nest of the _F. fusca_ seeking and sounding in all directions, without being able to find the entrance. At last one of them found a very little hole, hardly as large as a pin's head, through which the robbers penetrated. But since, owing to the smallness of the hole, the invasion went on slowly, the search was continued, and an entrance was found further off, through which the Amazon army gradually disappeared. All was quiet. About five minutes later Forel saw a booty-laden column emerge from each hole. Not a single ant was without a load. The two columns united outside and retreated together. A marauding excursion of the Amazons against the _F. rufibarbis_, a sub-species of the _F. fusca_, or small black ants, took place as follows:--The vanguard of the robber army found that it had reached the neighbourhood of the hostile nest more quickly than it had expected; for it halted suddenly and decidedly, and sent a number of messengers which brought up the main body and the rearguard with incredible speed. In less than thirty seconds the whole army had closed up, and hurled itself in a mass on the dome of the hostile nest. This was the more necessary as the _rufibarbes_ during the short halt had discovered the approach of the enemy, and had utilised the time to cover the dome with defenders. An indescribable struggle followed, but the superior numbers of the Amazons overcame, and they penetrated into the nest, while the defenders poured by thousands out of the same holes, with their larvæ and pupæ in their jaws, and escaped to the nearest plants and bushes, running over the heaps of their assailants. These looked on the matter as hopeless, and began to retreat. But the _rufibarbes_, furious at their proceedings, pursued them, and endeavoured to get away from them the few pupæ they had obtained, by trying to seize the Amazons' legs and to snatch away the pupæ. The Amazon lets its jaws slip slowly along the captive pupa, as far as the head of its opponent, and pierces it, if it does not, as generally happens, draw back. But it often manages to seize the pupa at the instant at which the Amazon lets it go and flies with it. This is managed yet more easily when a comrade holds the robber by the legs, and compels it to loose its prey in order to guard itself against its assailant. Sometimes the robbers seize empty cocoons and carry them away, but they leave them on the road when they have discovered their mistake. In the above case the strength of the _rufibarbes_ proved at last so great that the rearguard of the retreating army was seriously pressed, and was obliged to give up its booty. A number of the Amazons also were overpowered and killed, but not without the _rufibarbes_ also losing many people. None the less did some individuals, as though desperate, rush into the thickest hosts of the enemy, penetrated again into the nest, and carried off several pupæ by sheer audacity and skill. Most of them left their prey to go to the help of their comrades when assailed by the _rufibarbes_. Ten minutes after the commencement of the retreat all the Amazons had left the nest, and, being swifter than their opponents, they were only pursued for about halfway back. Their attack had failed on account of a short delay! On another occasion observed by Forel, in which several fertile Amazons also took part and killed many enemies, the nest was thoroughly ravished, but the retreat was also in this case very much disturbed and harassed by the superior numbers of the enemy. There were many slain on both sides. That in spite of the above-mentioned unanimity different opinions among the members of an expedition sometimes hinder its conduct, the following observation seems to show:--An advancing column divided after it had gone about ten yards from the nest. Half turned back, while the other half went on, but after some time hesitated and also turned back. Arrived at home, it found those which had formerly turned back putting themselves in motion in a new direction. The newly returned followed them, and the reunited army, after various wheelings, halts, &c., at last turned home again by a long way round. The whole business looked like a promenade. But apparently different parties had different nests in view, while others were entirely against the expedition. Yet perhaps it was only a march for exercise. Outer obstacles do not, as a rule, hinder the Amazons when they are once on the march. Forel saw them wade through some shallow water, although many were drowned in it, and then march over a dusty high road, although the wind blew half of them away. As they returned, booty-laden, neither wind, nor dust, nor water could make them lay down their prey. They only got back with great trouble, and turned back again to bring fresh booty, although many lost their lives. The following is also quoted from Büchner's excellent epitome of Forel's observations in this connection:-- The most terrible enemy of the Amazons is the sanguine ant (_F. sanguinea_), which also keeps slaves, and thereby often comes into collision with the Amazons on their marauding excursions. It is not equal to it in bodily strength or fighting capacity, but surpasses it in intelligence; according to Forel it is the most intelligent of all the species of ants. If Forel, for instance, poured out the contents of a sack filled with a nest of the slave species near an Amazon nest, the Amazons apparently generally regarded the tumbled together heap of ants, larvæ, pupæ, earth, building materials, &c., as the dome of a hostile nest, and took all imaginable but useless pains to find out the entrances thereinto, leaving on one side for this investigation their only object, the carrying off the pupæ; but the sanguine ants under similar circumstances did not allow themselves to be deceived, but at once ransacked the whole heap. On another occasion, while a procession of Amazon ants was on its way to plunder a nest of _F. fusca_, before it arrived Forel poured out a sack-full of sanguine ants, and made a break in the nest:-- The sanguine ants pressed in, while the _fusca_ came out to defend themselves. At this moment the first Amazons arrived. When they saw the sanguine ants they drew back and awaited the main army, which appeared much disturbed at the news. But once united, the bold robbers rushed at their foes. The latter gathered together and beat back the first attack, but the Amazons closed up their ranks and made a second assault, which carried them on to the dome and into the midst of the enemy. These were overthrown, as well as a number of _F. pratensis_, which Forel at this moment poured out on the nest. The conquerors delayed for a moment on the dome after their victory, and then entered the nest to bring out a little of the valuable booty. A few Amazons which were mad with anger did not return with the main army, but went on slaughtering blindly among the conquered and the fugitives of the three species, _fusca_, _pratensis_, and _sanguinea_. The ravished _rufibarbes_ once became so desperate at their overthrow that they followed the robbers to their own nest, and the latter had some trouble in defending it. The _rufibarbes_ let themselves be killed in hundreds, and really seemed as though they courted death. A small number of the Amazons also sank under the bites of their enemies. The nest contained slaves of the _rufibarbis_ species, which on this emergency fought actively against their own race. There were also slaves of the species _fusca_, so that the nest included three different species of ants. The same nest is often revisited many times on the same day or at different periods, until either there is no more to steal, or the plundered folk have hit upon better mode of defence. A column which was in the act of going back to such a plundered nest turned when halfway there, and halted, apparently on no other ground than because it had met the rearguard of the army, and had learned that the nest was exhausted, and that there was nothing more to be had there. The robbers then went off to a _rufibarbis_ nest which was in the neighbourhood, and killed half the inhabitants while plundering the nest. The surviving _rufibarbes_ returned after the robbery and brought up new progeny; but thirteen days later the Amazons again reaped a rich harvest from the same nest. The Amazon army often severs itself into two separate divisions when there is not enough for both to do at the same spot. Sometimes one division finds something and the other nothing, and they then reunite. If any obstacle be placed in their way they try to overcome it, in doing which some leave the main army, lose themselves, and only find their way home again with difficulty. Forel has tried to establish the normal frequency of expeditions, and found that a colony watched by himself for a space of thirty days sent out no less than forty-four marauding excursions. Of these about eight-and-twenty were completely, nine partially, and the remainder not at all successful. He four times saw the army divide into two. Half the expeditions were levelled against the _rufibarbes_, half against the _fuscæ_. On an average a successful expedition would bring back to the colony a thousand pupæ or larvæ. On the whole, the number of future slaves stolen by a strong colony during a favourable summer may be reckoned at forty thousand! The internecine battles which occasionally break out among the Amazons themselves are naturally the most cruel. They tear each other to pieces with incredible fury, and knots of five or six individuals which have pierced each other may be seen rolling over each other on the ground, it being impossible to distinguish between friend and foe. Civil wars among men are also known to be the most embittered and the most bloody. The mode of attack practised by the other best known species of slave-making ant, _sanguinea_, is somewhat different:-- They march in small troops which, in case of need, summon reinforcements, and therefore as a rule only reach their goal slowly. Between the individual troops messengers or scouts run continually backwards and forwards. The first troop which arrives at the hostile nest does not rush at it, as do the Amazons, but contents itself with making provisional reconnaissances, wherein some of the assailants are generally made prisoners by the enemy, which have time to bethink and to collect themselves. Reinforcements are now brought up, and a regular siege of the nest begins. A sudden invasion, like that of the Amazons, is never seen. The besieging army forms a complete ring round the hostile nest, and the besiegers hold this with mandibles open and antennæ drawn back, without going nearer. In this position they beat off all assaults of the besieged, until they feel themselves strong enough to advance to the attack. This attack scarcely ever fails, and has for its chief object the mastering of the entrances and outlets of the nest. A special troop guards each opening, and only allows such of the besieged to pass out as carry no pupæ. This manoeuvre gives rise to a number of comical and characteristic scenes. By this means the sanguine ants in a few minutes manage to have all the defenders out of the nests and the pupæ left behind. This is the case at least with the _rufibarbes_, while the rather less timid _fuscæ_ try, even at the last moment when it is useless, to stop up or barricade the entrances. The sanguine ants do not indeed possess the terrible weapons and the warlike impetuosity of the Amazons, but they are stronger and larger. If a _fusca_ or a _rufibarbis_ fights with a sanguine ant for the possession of a pupa, it is generally very soon overcome. While the main part of the army is penetrating into the nest to steal the pupæ, some divisions pursue the fugitives, to take away from them the few pupæ which may chance to have been saved. They drive them even out of the cricket-holes in which they have meanwhile taken refuge. In short, it is a _razzia_, or sweeping burglary, as complete as can be imagined. In the retreat the robbers in no wise hurry themselves, for they know that they are threatened by no danger and no loss, and the complete emptying of a large and distant nest often takes several days in accomplishing. The ants which have been so thoroughly robbed scarcely ever return to their former abode. It must be admitted that a human army, robbing a foreign town or fortress, could not behave better or more prudently. Huber gives the following account of a battle waged by sanguine ants:-- At ten, in a July morning, he noticed a small band of them emerge from their nest, and march rapidly towards a nest of negroes, around which it dispersed. A number of the blacks rushed out, gave battle, and succeeded in defeating their invaders, and in making several of them prisoners. Upon this, the remainder of the attacking force waited for a reinforcement. When this came up, they still declined further proceedings, and sent more aides-de-camp to their own nest. The result of these messages was a much larger reinforcement; but even yet the pirates appeared to shun the combat. At last, the negroes marched out from their nest in a phalanx of about two feet square, and a number of skirmishes began, which soon ended in a general _mêlée_. Long before the event seemed certain, the negroes carried off their pupæ to the most distant part of the nest; and when, after a longer encounter, they appeared to think further resistance vain, they retreated, attempting to take with them their young. In this, however, they were prevented, and the invaders obtained possession of their nest and the booty. When they had done this, they put in a garrison, and occupied the night and the succeeding day in carrying off their spoil. Büchner says-- Battles between ants of the same species often end with a lasting alliance, especially when the number of the workers on both sides is comparatively small. The wise little animals under such circumstances discover, much more quickly and better than men, that they can only destroy each other by fighting, while union would benefit both parties. Sometimes they drive each other out of their nests in a quite friendly way. Forel laid on a table a piece of bark with a nest of the gentle _Leptothorax acervorum_, and then put on it the contents of another nest of the same species. The last comers were by far the more numerous, and soon possessed themselves of the nest, driving out the inmates. But the latter did not know whither to go, and turned back again. They were then seized by their opponents one after the other, carried away as far as possible from the nest, and there put down. The oftener they came back the further were they carried away. One of the carriers arrived in this fashion at the edge of the table, and after it had by means of its feelers convinced itself that it had reached the end of the world, mercilessly let its burden drop into the fathomless abyss. It waited a moment to see if it had attained its object, and then turned back to the nest. Forel picked up the ant which had fallen on the floor, and put it down right in front of the returning ant. The latter repeated the same manoeuvre as at first, only stretching its neck further over the edge of the table. He several times reiterated his experiment, and always with the same result. Later the two colonies were shut up together in a glass case, and gradually learned to agree. At other times, however, warlike ants show great and needless cruelty to one another:-- They slowly pull from their victim, that is rendered defenceless by wounds, exhaustion, or terror, first one feeler and then the other, then the legs one after another, until they at last kill it, or pull it in a completely mutilated and helpless condition to some out-of-the-way spot where it perishes miserably. Yet some compassionate hearts are to be found among the victors, which only pull the conquered to a distant place in order to get rid of them, and there let them go without injuring them. The following account is also taken from Büchner's 'Mind in Animals,' p. 87:-- The doors are often guarded by special sentries, which fulfil their important duty in various ways. Forel saw a nest of the _Colobopsis truncata_, the two or three very small round openings of which were watched by soldiers, arranged so that their thick cylindrical heads stopped them up, just as a cork stops up the mouth of a bottle. The same observer saw the _Myrmecina Latreillei_ defend themselves against the invasions of the slave-making _Strongylognathus_, by placing a worker at each of the little openings of the nest, which quite stops up the opening either with its head or abdomen. The _Camponotus_ species also defend their nests by stretching their heads in front of the openings, drawing back the antennæ. Each approaching enemy thus receives a sharp blow or bite delivered with the whole weight of the body. MacCook noticed in the nests of the soon to be described Pennsylvanian mound-building ants, the employment of special sentries, which lay watching within the nest entrances, and sprang out at the first sight of danger to attack the enemy; and it was wonderful to see with what swiftness the news of such an alarm spread through the nest, and how the inhabitants came out _en masse_ to meet the enemy. The _Lasius_ species defend their large, strong, and very extensive nests against hostile attack or sieges with equal courage and skill, while other timid species seek to fly as speedily as possible with their larvæ, pupæ, and fruitful queens. There is, as Forel tells us, a regular barricade fight. Passage after passage is stopped and defended to the uttermost, so that the assailants can only advance step and step. Unless the latter are in an enormous majority, the struggle may last a very long time with these tactics. During this time, other workers are busy preparing subterranean passages backwards for eventual flight. Generally such passages are already made, and during a fight a new dome of the _Lasius_ may be seen rising at a distance, it not being difficult for them to make this with the help of their extended subterranean passages and communications. The _F. exsecta_ or _pressilabris_ fights in a peculiar way, which is due to care of their small and very tender bodies. It avoids all single combats, and always fights in closed ranks. Only when it thinks victory secure does it spring on its enemy's back. But its chief strength lies in the fact that many together always attack a foe. They nail down their opponent by seizing its legs and holding them firmly to the ground, while a comrade springs on the back of the defenceless creature and tries to bite through its neck. But if threatened the holders sometimes take flight, and so it happens that in battles between the _exsectæ_ and the much stronger _pratenses_ not a few of the latter are seen running about with a small enemy clutching their shoulders, and making violent efforts to tear the neck of its foe. If the bearer is then seized with cramp, the nervous cord has been injured. On the other hand, if an _exsecta_ is seized by the back by a _pratensis_ it is at once lost. The tactics of the turf ants resemble those of the _exsectæ_, three or four of them seizing an opponent and pulling off his legs. In similar fashion the attack of the _Lasius_ species is chiefly directed against the legs of its enemies, three, four, or five uniting in the effort. They understand barricade fighting particularly well in their large well-built dwellings, and if it comes to the worst fly by subterranean passages. They are feared by most ants on account of their numerical superiority. Forel one day poured the contents of ten nests of _pratenses_ in front of a tree trunk inhabited by _Lasius fuliginosus_ (jet ant). The siege at once began; but the jet ants called in help from the nests connected with their colony, and thick black columns were at once seen coming out from the surrounding trees. The _pratenses_ were obliged to fly, and left behind them a mass of dead as well as their pupæ, which last were carried off by the victors to their nests to be eaten. Battles, however, are not confined to species of ants having warlike and slave-making habits. The agricultural ants likewise at times wage fierce wars with one another. The importance of seeds to these ants, and the consequent value which they set upon them, induce the animals, when supplies are scarce, to plunder each other's nests. Thus Moggridge says,-- By far the most savage and prolonged contests which I have witnessed were those in which the combatants belong to two different colonies of the same species. . . . The most singular contests are those which are waged for seeds by _A. barbara_, when one colony plunders the stores of an adjacent nest belonging to the same species, the weaker nest making prolonged though, for the most part, inefficient attempts to recover their property. In the case of the other species of ant which I have watched fighting, the strife would last but a short time--a few hours or a day--but _A. barbara_ will carry on the battle day after day and week after week. I was able to devote a good deal of time to watching the progress of a predatory war of this kind, waged by one nest of _barbara_ against another, and which lasted for forty-six days, from January 18 to March 4! I cannot of course declare positively that no cessation of hostilities may have taken place during the time, but I can affirm that whenever I visited the spot--and I did so on twelve days, or as nearly as possible twice a week--the scene was one of war and spoliation such as that which I shall now describe. An active train of ants, nearly resembling an ordinary harvesting train, led from the entrance of one nest to that of another lower down the slope, and fifteen feet distant; but on closer examination it appeared that though the great mass of seed-bearers were travelling towards the upper nest, some few were going in the opposite direction and making for the lower. Besides this, at intervals, combats might be seen taking place, one ant seizing the free end of a seed carried by another, and endeavouring to wrench it away, and then frequently, as neither would let go, the stronger ant would drag seed and opponent towards its nest. At times other ants would interfere and seize one of the combatants and endeavour to drag it away, this often resulting in terrible mutilations, and especially in the loss of the abdomen, which would be torn off while the jaws of the victim retained their indomitable bull-dog grip upon the seed. Then the victor might be seen dragging away his prize, while its adversary, though now little more than a head and legs, offered a vigorous though of course ineffectual resistance. I frequently observed that the ants during these conflicts would endeavour to seize one another's antennæ, and that if this were effected, the ant thus assaulted would instantly release his hold, whether of seed or adversary, and appear utterly discomfited. No doubt the antennæ are their most sensitive parts, and injuries inflicted on these organs cause the greatest pain. It was not until I had watched this scene for some days that I apprehended its true meaning, and discovered that the ants of the upper nest were robbing the granaries of the lower, while the latter tried to recover the stolen seeds both by fighting for them and by stealing seeds in their turn from the nest of their oppressors. The thieves, however, were evidently the stronger, and streams of ants laden with seeds arrived safely at the upper nest, while close observation showed that very few seeds were successfully carried on the reverse journey into the lower and plundered nest. Thus when I fixed my attention on one of these robbed ants surreptitiously making its exit with the seed from the thieves' nest, and having overcome the opposition and dangers met with on its way, reaching, after a journey which took six minutes to accomplish, the entrance to its own home, I saw that it was violently deprived of its burden by a guard of ants stationed there apparently for the purpose, one of whom instantly started off and carried the seed all the way back again to the upper nest. This I saw repeated several times. After March 4 I never saw any acts of hostility between these nests, though the robbed nest was not abandoned. In another case of the same kind, however, where the struggle lasted thirty-one days, the robbed nest was at length completely abandoned, and on opening it I found all the granaries empty with one single exception, and this one was pierced by the matted roots of grasses and other plants, and must therefore have been long neglected by the ants. Strangely enough, not one of the seeds in this deserted granary showed traces of germination. No doubt some very pressing need is the cause of these systematic raids in search of accumulations of seeds, and there can be little doubt that the requirements of distinct colonies of ants of the same species are often different even at the same season and date. Thus these warring colonies of ants were active on many days when the majority of the nests were completely closed; and I have even seen these robbers staggering along, enfeebled by the cold, and in wind and rain, when all other ants were safe below ground. The agricultural ants of Texas do not appear to be less pugnacious than their European congeners. Thus MacCook says:-- A young community has sometimes to struggle into permanent prosperity through many perils. The following example is found in the unpublished Lincecum manuscripts. One day a new ant-city was observed to be located within ten or twelve yards of a long-established nest, a distance that the doctor thought would prove too near for peaceable possession--for the agriculturals seem to pre-empt a certain range of territory around their formicary as their own, within which no intrusion is allowed. He therefore concluded to keep these nests under close observation, and visited them frequently. Only a day or two had elapsed before he found that the inhabitants of the old city had made war upon the new. They had surrounded it in great numbers, and were entering, dragging out and killing the citizens. The young colonists, who seemed to be of less size than their adversaries, fought bravely, and, notwithstanding they were overwhelmed by superior numbers, killed and maimed many of their assailants. The parties were scattered in struggling pairs over a space ten or fifteen feet around the city gate, and the ground was strewed with many dead bodies. The new colonists aimed altogether at cutting off the legs of their larger foes, which they accomplished with much success. The old-city warriors, on the contrary, gnawed and clipped off the heads and abdomens of their enemies. Two days afterward the battlefield was revisited, and many ants were found lying dead tightly locked together by legs and mandibles, while hundreds of decapitated bodies and severed heads were strewed over the ground. Another example, which is given in the published paper, is quite similar, and had like result. In forty-eight hours the old settlers had exterminated the new. The distance between the nests was about 20 feet. While the young colonists remained in concealment they were not disturbed, but as soon as they began to clear away their open disk war was declared. MacCook, however, says that 'these ants are not always so jealous of territorial encroachment, or at least must have different standards of rights.' For he observed many cases of nests situated within twenty, and even ten feet of one another, without a battle ever occurring between members of the two communities. Therefore, without questioning the accuracy of Lincecum's observations--which, indeed, present no scope for inaccuracy--he adds, 'That neighbouring ants, like neighbouring nations of civilised men, will fall out and wage war Lincecum's examples show. Perhaps we should be quite as unsuccessful in case of these ants as of our human congeners, should we seek a sufficient reason for these wars, or satisfactory cause for these differences in dealing with neighbours which appear from the comparison of Lincecum's observations with mine.' In connection with the wars of these ants, the following quotations may also be made from the same author:-- The erratic ants do not appear to be held as common enemies by the agriculturals, and they are even permitted to establish their formicaries within the limits of the open disk. Sometimes, however, the diminutive hillocks which mark the entrance to an erratic ant-nest multiply beyond the limit of the agriculturals' forbearance. But they do not declare war, nor resort to any personal violence. Nevertheless, they get rid of them, oddly enough, by a regular system of vexatious obstructions. They suddenly conclude that there is urgent demand for improving their public domain. Forthwith they sally forth in large numbers, fall eagerly to work gathering the little black balls which are thrown up by the earth-worms in great quantities everywhere in the prairie soil, which they bring and heap upon the paved disk until all the erratic ant-nests are covered! The entire pavement is thus raised an inch or so, and pains are taken to deposit more balls upon and around the domiciles of their tiny neighbours than elsewhere. The erratics struggle vigorously against this Pompeian treatment; they bore through the avalanche of balls, only to find barriers laid in their way. The obstructions at length become so serious that it is impossible to keep the galleries open. The dwarfs cease to contend against destiny, and, gathering together their household stores, quietly evacuate the premises of the inhospitable giants. It is the triumph of the policy of obstruction, a bloodless but effectual opposition. Lastly, MacCook records the history of an interesting engagement which he witnessed between two nests of _Tetramorium cæspitum_. It took place between Broad Street and Penn Square in Philadelphia, and lasted for nearly three weeks. Although all the combatants belonged to the same species, however great the confusion of the fight, friends were always distinguished from foes--apparently by contact of antennæ. _Habit of keeping Domestic Pets._--Many species of ants display the curious habit of keeping in their nests sundry kinds of other insects, which, so far as observation extends, are of no benefit to the ants, and which therefore have been regarded by observers as mere domestic pets. These 'pets' are for the most part species which occur nowhere else except in ants' nests, and each species of 'pet' is peculiar to certain species of ants. Thus Moggridge found 'a large number of a minute shining brown beetle moving about among the seeds' in the nests of the harvesting ant of the south of Europe, 'belonging to the scarce and very restricted genus _Colnocera_, called by Kraatz _C. attæ_, on account of its inhabiting the nests of ants belonging to the genus _Atta_.' He also observed inhabiting the same nests a minute cricket 'scarcely larger than a grain of wheat' (_Gryllus myrmecophilus_), which had been previously observed by Paolo Savi in the nests of several species of ants in Tuscany, where it lived on the best terms with its hosts, playing round the nests in warm weather, and retiring into them in stormy weather, while allowing the ants to carry it from place to place during migrations. Again, Mr. Bates observes that 'some of the most anomalous forms of coleopterous insects are those which live solely in the nests of ants.' Sir John Lubbock also, and other observers whom we need not wait to cite, mention similar facts. The Rev. Mr. White says that altogether 40 distinct species of Coleoptera, most of which he has in his own collection, are known to inhabit the nests of various species of ants, and to occur nowhere else. As in all these cases the ants live on amicable terms with their guests, and in some cases even bestow labour upon them (as in carrying them from one nest to another during migration), it is evident that these insects are not only tolerated, but fostered by the ants. Moreover, as it seems absurd to credit ants with any mere fancy or caprice such as that of keeping pets, we can only conclude that these insects, like the aphides, are of some use to their hosts, although we are not yet in a position to surmise what this use can be. _Habits of Sleep and Cleanliness._--It is probable that all species of ants enjoy periods of true sleep alternating with those of activity; but actual observations on this subject have only been made on two or three species. The following is MacCook's account of these habits in the harvesting ant of Texas:-- The observation upon the ants now before me began at 8 o'clock; at 11 P.M. the cluster had nearly dissolved, only a few being asleep. To illustrate the soundness of this sleep I take the quill pen with which I write, and apply the feather end of it to an ant who is sleeping upon the soil. She has chosen a little oval depression in the surface, and lies with abdomen upon the raised edge, and face toward the lamp. Her legs are drawn up close to the body. She is perfectly still. I gently draw the feather tip along the body, stroking 'with the fur,' if I may so say. There is no motion. Again and again this action is repeated, the stroke gradually being made heavier, although always quite gentle. Still there is no change. The strokes are now directed upon the head, with the same result. Now the tip is applied to the neck, the point at which the head is united to the pro-thorax, with a waving motion intended to produce a sensation of tickling. The ant remains motionless. After continuing these experiments for several minutes, I arouse the sleeper by a sharp touch of the quill. She stretches out her head, then her legs, which she also shakes, steps nearer to the light, and begins to cleanse herself in the manner already described. This act invariably follows the waking of ants from sleep. The above description applies to the general habit of somnolence as observed upon the two named species of harvesting ants for nearly four months. I have often applied the quill, and even the point of a lead pencil, to the sleeping Floridians without breaking their slumber. There are some other details which have not appeared in the behaviour of the individual just put under observation. Thus, I have several times seen the ants (_Crudelis_) _yawning_ after awaking. I use this word for lack of one which more accurately expresses the behaviour. The action is very like that of the human animal; the mandibles are thrown open with the peculiar muscular strain which is familiar to all readers; the tongue also is sometimes thrust out, and the limbs stretched with the appearance, at least, of that tension which accompanies the yawn in the genus _homo_. During sleep the antennæ have a gentle, quivering, apparently involuntary motion, which seemed to me, at times, to have the regularity of breathing. I also often noted an occasional regular lifting up and setting down of the fore-feet, one leg after another, with almost a rhythmic motion. The length of time during which sleep is prolonged appears to vary according to circumstances and, perhaps, organism. The large head-soldiers of the Floridian harvesters appear to have a more sluggish nature than the smaller workers. Their sleep is longer and heavier. The former fact the watch readily determined. The latter appeared from the greater stolidity of the creatures under disturbance. While the ants of one group are taking sleep others may be busy at work, and these stalk among and over the sleepers, jostling them quite vigorously at times. Again, new members occasionally join the group, and, in their desire to get close up to the heat and light, crowd their drowsy comrades aside. I have seen ants who had been at work in the galleries drop their pellets, push thus into the cluster, and presently be apparently sound asleep. This rough treatment is invariably received with perfect good humour, as are like jostlings when the ants are awake. I have never seen the slightest display of anger or attempt to resent disturbance even under these circumstances, so peculiarly calculated to excite the utmost irritation in men. But of course some of the sleepers are aroused. They change position a little, or give themselves a brief combing, and then resume their nap, unless, indeed, they are satisfied. In watching these movements it was quite evident that the Florida soldiers were far less easily disturbed than their smaller fellows. They slept on stolidly while all the others were in agitation around them. Moreover, their very appearance, particularly when awaking out of sleep, indicated the greater sluggishness of their temperament in this respect. The ordinary duration of sleep MacCook takes to be about three hours. Ants, like many other insects, are in the habit of cleaning themselves, being, like them, provided by nature with combs and brushes, &c., for the purpose. But, unlike other insects, several species of ants are also in the habit of assisting each other in the performance of their toilet. The author last quoted gives the following account of this process in the genus _Atta_:-- We take a couple; the cleanser has begun at the face, which is licked thoroughly, even the mandibles being cared for, they being held apart for convenient manipulation. From the face the cleanser passes to the thorax, thence to the haunch, and so along the first leg, along the second and third in the same manner, around to the abdomen, and thence up the other side of the ant to the head. A third ant approaches and joins in the friendly task, but soon abandons the field to the original cleanser. The attitude of the cleansed all this while is one of intense satisfaction, quite resembling that of a family dog when one is scratching the back of his neck. The insect stretches out her limbs, and, as her friend takes them successively into hand, yields them limp and supple to her manipulation; she rolls gently over upon her side, even quite over upon her back, and with all her limbs relaxed presents a perfect picture of muscular surrender and ease. The pleasure which the creatures take in being thus 'combed' and 'sponged' is really enjoyable to the observer. I have seen an ant kneel down before another and thrust forward the head, drooping, quite under the face, and lie there motionless, thus expressing, as plainly as sign-language could, her desire to be cleansed. I at once understood the gesture, and so did the supplicated ant, for she at once went to work. If analogies in nature-studies were not so apt to be misleading, one might venture to suggest that our insect friends are thus in possession of a modified sort of Emmetonian Turkish bath. The acrobatic skill of these ants, which has often furnished me amusement, and which I shall yet further illustrate, was fully shown one morning in these offices of ablution. The formicary was taken from the study, where the air had become chilled, and placed in an adjoining chamber upon the hearth, before an open-grate fire. The genial warmth was soon diffused throughout the nest, and aroused its occupants to unusual activity. A tuft of grass in the centre of the box was presently covered with them. They climbed to the very top of the spires, turned round and round, hanging by their paws, not unlike gymnasts performing upon a turning-bar. They hung or clung in various positions, grasping the grass blade with the third and fourth pairs of legs, which were spread out at length, cleansing their heads with the fore-legs or bending underneath to comb and lick the abdomen. Among these ants were several pairs, in one case a triplet, engaged in the cleansing operation just described. The cleanser clung to the grass, having a fore-leg on one side and a hind leg on the other side of the stem, stretched out at full length, while the cleansed hung in a like position below, and reached over and up, submitting herself to the pleasant process. As the progress of the act required a change of posture on the part of both insects, it was made with the utmost agility. Similarly, Bates thus describes the cleansing process in another genus of ants (_Ecitons_):-- Here and there an ant was seen stretching forth first one leg and then another, to be brushed and washed by one or more of its comrades, who performed the task by passing the limb between the jaws and tongue, finishing by giving the antennæ a friendly wipe. _Habits of Play and Leisure._--The life of ants is not all work, or, at least, is not so in all species; for in some species, at any rate, periods of recreation are habitually indulged in. Büchner('Geistesleben der Thiere,' p. 163) gives the following abstract of Huber's celebrated observations in this connection:-- It was of the _pratensis_ that Huber wrote the observations touching its gymnastic sports which became so famous. He saw these ants on a fine day assembled on the surface of their nest, and behaving in a way that he could only explain as simulating festival sports or other games. They raised themselves on their hind legs, embraced each other with their fore-legs, seized each other by the antennæ, feet, or mandibles, and wrestled--but all in friendliest fashion. They then let go, ran after each other, and played hide-and-seek. When one was victorious, it seized all the others in the ring, and tumbled them over like ninepins. This account of Huber's found its way into many popular books, but in spite of its clearness won little credence from the reading public. 'I found it hard to believe Huber's observation,' writes Forel, 'in spite of its exactness, until I myself had seen the same.' A colony of the _pratensis_ several times gave him the opportunity when he approached it carefully. The players caught each other by the feet or jaws, rolled over each other on the ground like boys playing, pulled each other inside the entrances of their nest, only to come out again, and so on. All this was done without bad temper, or any spurting of poison, and it was clear that all the rivalry was friendly. The least breath from the side of the observer was enough to put an end to the games. 'I understand,' continues Forel, 'that the affair must seem marvellous to those who have not seen it, especially when we remember that sexual attraction can here play no part.' MacCook also gives an account of habits of play as indulged in among ants of the other Hemisphere:-- At one formicary half a dozen or more young queens were out at the same time. They would climb up a large pebble near the gate, face the wind, and assume a rampant posture. Several having ascended the stone at one time, there ensued a little playful passage-at-arms as to position. They nipped each other gently with the mandibles, and chased one another from favourite spots. They, however, never nipped the workers. These latter evidently kept a watch upon the sportive princesses, occasionally saluted them with their antennæ in the usual way, or touched them at the abdomen, but apparently allowed them full liberty of action. As to leisure, Bates writes:-- The life of these Ecitons is not all work, for I frequently saw them very leisurely employed in a way that looked like recreation. When this happened the place was always a sunny nook in the forest. The main column of the army and the branch columns, at these times, were in their ordinary relative positions; but instead of pressing forward eagerly and plundering right and left, they seemed to have been all smitten with a sudden fit of laziness. Some were walking sternly about, others were brushing their antennæ with their fore-feet; but the drollest sight was their cleaning each other. [Here follows the above-quoted passage.] The actions of these ants looked like simple indulgence in idle amusement. . . . It is probable that these hours of relaxation and cleaning may be indispensable to the effective performance of their harder burdens; but whilst looking at them, the conclusion that the ants were engaged merely in play was irresistible.[31] _Funereal Habits._--In another connection it has already been stated that Sir John Lubbock found his ants to be very careful in disposing of the dead bodies of their comrades. This habit seems to be pretty general among many species of ants, and is no doubt due to sanitary requirements, thus becoming developed as a beneficial instinct by natural selection. The funereal habits of the agricultural ant are thus related by MacCook:[32]-- There is nothing which is apt to awaken deeper interest in the life-history of ants than what may properly be called their funereal habits. All species whose manners I have closely observed are quite alike in their mode of caring for their own dead, and for the dry carcasses of aliens. The former they appear to treat with some degree of reverence, at least to the extent of giving them a sort of sepulture without feeding upon them. The latter, after having exhausted the juices of the body, they usually deposit together in some spot removed from the nest. I did not see any of the 'cemeteries' of the agricultural ant upon the field, nor, indeed, observe any of their behaviour towards the dead, but my artificial nests gave me some insight of this. In the first colony had been placed eight agriculturals of another nest, which were literally cut to pieces. Very soon after the ants were comfortably established in their new home, a number of them laid hold upon these _disjecta membra_, and began carrying them back and forth around the formicarium. The next day this continued, and several of their own number who had died were being treated in like manner. Back and forth, up and down, into every corner of the box the bearers wandered, the very embodiment of restlessness. For four days this conduct continued without any intermission. No sooner would a body or fragment thereof be dropped by one bearer than another would take it up and begin the restless circuit. The difficulty, I easily understood, was that there was no point to be found far enough removed from the living-rooms of the insects in which to inter these dead. Their desire to have their dead buried out of their sight was strong enough to keep them on this ceaseless round, apparently under the continuous influence of the hope that something might turn up to give them a more satisfactory burial-ground. It does not appear greatly to the credit of their wisdom that they were so long discovering that they were limited to a space beyond their power to enlarge. When, however, this fact was finally recognised they gave their habit its utmost bent, and began to deposit the carcasses in the extreme corner of the flat, as distant as possible from the galleries on the terrace above. Here a little hollow was made in the earth, quite up against the glass, wherein a number of bodies were laid. Portions of bodies were thrust into the chinks formed in the dry sod. This flat became the permanent charnel-house of the colony, and here, in corners, crevices, and holes, for the most part out of sight, but not always so, the dead were deposited. But the living never seemed quite reconciled to their presence. Occasionally, restless resurrectionists would disentomb the dead, shift them to another spot, or start them once more upon their unquiet wanderings. Even after the establishment of this cemetery, the creatures did not seem able to lay away their newly deceased comrades--for there were occasional deaths in the formicary--without first indulging in this funereal promenade. In the formicaries established in glass jars, both of _barbatus_ and _crudelis_, the same behaviour appeared. So great was the desire to get the dead outside the nest, that the bearers would climb up the smooth surface of the glass to the very top of the jar, laboriously carrying with them a dead ant. This was severe work, which was rarely undertaken except under the influence of this funereal enthusiasm. The jar was very smooth and quite high. Falls were frequent, but patiently the little 'undertaker' would follow the impulse of her instinct, and try and try again. Finally, as in the large box, the fact of a necessity seemed to dawn upon the ants, and a portion of the surface opposite from the entrance to the galleries, and close up against the glass, was used as burial-ground and sort of kitchen-midden, where all the refuse of the nest was deposited. Mrs. Treat has informed me that her artificial nests of _crudelis_ behaved in precisely the same way. An interesting fact in the funereal habits of _Formica sanguinea_ was related to me by this lady. A visit was paid to a large colony of these slave-makers, which is established on the grounds adjoining her residence at Vineland, New Jersey. I noticed that a number of carcasses of one of the slave species, _Formica fusca_, were deposited together quite near the gates of the nest. These were probably chiefly the dry bodies of ants brought in from recent raids. It was noticed that the dead ants were all of one species, and thereupon Mrs. Treat informed me that the red slave-makers never deposited their dead with those of their black servitors, but always laid them by themselves, not in groups, but separately, and were careful to take them a considerable distance from the nest. One can hardly resist pointing here another likeness between the customs of these social hymenopters and those of human beings, certain of whom carry their distinctions of race, condition, or religious caste, even to the gates of the cemetery in which the poor body moulders into its mother dust! It will be observed that none of these accounts furnish evidence of ants burying their dead, as Pliny asserts to have been the case with ants in the south of Europe. In the Proceedings of the Linnæan Society, however (1861), there is a very definite account of such a practice as obtaining among the ants of Sydney; and although it is from the pen of an observer not well known, the observation seems to have been one about which there could scarcely have been a mistake. The observer was Mrs. Hutton, and this is her account. Having killed a number of 'soldier ants,' and returning half an hour afterwards to the place where the dead bodies were lying, she says: I saw a large number of ants surrounding the dead ones. I determined to watch their proceedings closely. I followed four or five that started off from the rest towards a hillock a short distance off, in which was an ants' nest. This they entered, and in about five minutes they reappeared, followed by others. All fell into rank, walking regularly and slowly two by two, until they arrived at the spot where lay the dead bodies of the soldier ante. In a few minutes two of the ants advanced and took up the dead body of one of their comrades; then two others, and so on, until all were ready to march. First walked two ants bearing a body, then two without a burden; then two others with another dead ant, and so on, until the line was extended to about forty pairs, and the procession now moved slowly onwards, followed by an irregular body of about two hundred ants. Occasionally the two laden ants stopped, and laying down the dead ant, it was taken up by the two walking unburdened behind them, and thus, by occasionally relieving each other, they arrived at a sandy spot near the sea. The body of ants now commenced digging with their jaws a number of holes in the ground, into each of which a dead ant was laid, where they now laboured on until they had filled up the ants' graves. This did not quite finish the remarkable circumstances attending this funeral of the ants. Some six or seven of the ants had attempted to run off without performing their share of the task of digging; these were caught and brought back, when they were at once attacked by the body of ants and killed upon the spot. A single grave was quickly dug, and they were all dropped into it. The Rev. W. Farren White also, in his papers on ants published in the 'Leisure Hour' (1880), after alluding to the above case, corroborates it by some interesting observations of his own. He says:-- Several of the little sextons I observed with dead in their mandibles, and one in the act of burying a corpse. . . . I should mention that the dead are not interred without considerable difficulty, in consequence of the sides of the trays being almost perpendicular. The work of the sextons continued until no dead bodies remained upon the surface of the nest, but all were interred in the extramural cemeteries. Afterwards I removed the trays, and turned the contents of the formicarium upside down, and then I placed six trays on the surface of the earth, two of which I filled with sugar for food. All six were used freely as cemeteries, being crowded with the corpses of the little people and their young, the larvæ which had perished in the disruption of their home. I have noticed in one of my formicaria a subterranean cemetery, where I have seen some ants burying their dead by placing earth above them. One ant was evidently much affected, and tried to exhume the bodies, but the united exertions of the yellow sextons were more than sufficient to neutralise the effort of the disconsolate mourner. The cemetery was now converted into a large vault, the chamber where the dead were placed, together with the passage which led to it, being completely covered in. _Habits Peculiar to Certain Species._ _Leaf-cutting Ants of the Amazon_ ([OE]codoma cephalotes).--The mode of working practised by these ants is thus described by Mr. Bates:-- They mount a tree in multitudes. . . . Each one places itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts with its sharp scissor-like jaws a nearly semicircular incision on the upper side; it then takes the edge between its jaws, and by a sharp jerk detaches the piece. Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where a little heap accumulates, until carried off by another relay of workers; but generally each marches off with the piece it has operated on, and as all take the same road to the colony, the path they follow becomes in a short time smooth and bare, looking like the impression of a cart-wheel through the herbage. Each ant carries its semicircular piece of leaf upright over its head, so that the home-returning train is rendered very conspicuous. Nearer observation shows that this home-returning or ladened train of workers keeps to one side of the road, while the outgoing or empty-handed train keeps to the other side; so that on every road there is a double train of ants going in opposite directions. When the leaves arrive at the nest they are received by a smaller kind of workers, whose duty it is to cut up the pieces of leaf into still smaller fragments, whereby the leaves seem to be better fitted for the purpose to which, as we shall presently see, they are put. These smaller workers never take any part in the outdoor labours; but they occasionally leave the nest, apparently for the sole purpose of obtaining air and exercise, for when they leave the nest they merely run about doing nothing, and frequently, as if in mere sport, mount some of the semicircular pieces of leaf which the carrier ants are taking to the nest, and so get a ride home. From his continued observation of these ants, Bates concludes--and his opinion has been corroborated by that both of Belt and Müller--that the object of all this labour is highly interesting and remarkable. The leaves when gathered do not themselves appear to be of any service to the ants as food; but when cut into small fragments and stored away in the nests, they become suited as a nidus for the growth of a minute kind of fungus on which the ants feed. We may therefore call these insects the 'gardening ants,' inasmuch as all their labour is given to the rearing of nutritious vegetables on artificially prepared soil. They are not particular as to the material which they collect and store up for soil, provided that it is a material on which the fungus will grow. Thus they are very partial to the inside white rind of oranges, and will carry off the flowers of certain shrubs while leaving the leaves untouched. But, to quote again from Bates,-- They are very particular about the ventilation of their underground chambers, and have numerous holes leading up to the surface from them. These they open out or close up, apparently to keep up a regular degree of temperature below. The great care they take that the pieces of leaves they carry into the nest should be neither too dry nor too damp, is also consistent with the idea that the object is the growth of a fungus that requires particular conditions of temperature and moisture to ensure its vigorous growth. If a sudden shower should come on, the ants do not carry the wet pieces into the burrows, but throw them down near the entrances. Should the weather clear up again, these pieces are picked up when nearly dried, and taken inside: should the rain, however, continue, they get sodden down into the ground, and are left there. On the contrary, in dry and hot weather, when the leaves would get dried up before they could be conveyed to the nest, the ants, when in exposed situations, do not go out at all during the hot hours, but bring in their leafy burdens in the cool of the day and during the night. As soon as the pieces of leaves are carried in they must be cut up by the small class of workers into little pieces. Some of the ants make mistakes, and carry in unsuitable leaves. Thus grass is always rejected by them, but I have seen some ants, perhaps young ones, carrying leaves of grass; but after a while these pieces are always brought out again and thrown away. I can imagine a young ant getting a severe ear-wigging from one of the major-domos for its stupidity. When a nest is disturbed and the masses of ant-food spread about, the ants are in great concern to carry every morsel of it under shelter again; and sometimes, when I had dug into a nest, I found the next day all the earth thrown out filled with little pits, that the ants had dug into it to get out the covered-up food. When they migrate from one part to another, they also carry with them all the ant-food from their old habitations. In Büchner's 'Geistesleben der Thiere' there is published an interesting description of the habits of these ants, which was communicated to the author by Dr. Fr. Ellendorf of Wiedenbrück, who has lived many years in Central America. Dr. Ellendorf says that-- It would be quite impossible for them to creep even through short grass with loads on their heads for miles. They therefore bite off the grass close to the ground for a breadth of about five inches, and throw it on one side. Thus a road is constructed, which is finally made quite smooth and even by the continual passing to and fro of millions upon millions night and day. . . . If the road is looked down upon from a height with these millions thickly pressed together, and all moving along with their green bannerets over their heads, it looks as though a giant green snake were gliding slowly along the ground; and this picture is all the more striking in that all these bannerets are swaying backwards and forwards.[33] This observer made the experiment of interrupting the advance of a column of these ants, with the interesting result which he describes:-- I wished to see how they would manage if I put an obstacle in their way. Thick high grass stood on either side of their narrow road, so that they could not pass through it with the load on their heads. I placed a dry branch, nearly a foot in diameter, obliquely across their path, and pressed it down so tightly on the ground that they could not creep underneath. The first comers crawled beneath the branch as far as they could, and then tried to climb over, but failed owing to the weight on their heads. Meanwhile the unloaded ants from the other side came on, and when these succeeded in climbing over the bough there was such a crush that the unladen ants had to clamber over the laden, and the result was a terrible muddle. I now walked along the train, and found that all the ants with their bannerets on their heads were standing still, thickly pressed together, awaiting the word of command from the front. When I turned back to the obstacle, I saw with astonishment that the loads had been laid aside by more than a foot's length of the column, one imitating the other. And now work began on both sides of the branch, and in about half an hour a tunnel was made beneath it. Each ant then took up its burden again, and the march was resumed in the most perfect order. A migration of these ants is thus described by the same observer:-- The road led towards a cocoa plantation, and here I soon discovered the building which I afterwards visited daily. As I again went thither one day I was met, at a considerable distance from the nest, by a closely pressed column coming thence, and all the ants laden with leaves, beetles, pupæ, butterflies, &c.; the nearer I came to the nest, the greater was the activity. It was soon plain to me that the ants were in the act of leaving their dwelling, and I walked along the train to discover the new abode. They had gone for some distance along the old road, and had then made a new one through the grass to a cooler place, lying rather higher. The grass on the new road was all bitten off close to the ground, and thousands were busy carrying the path on to the new building. At the new home itself was an unusual stir of life. There were all sorts of labourers--architects, builders, carpenters, sappers, helpers. A number were busy digging a hole in the ground, and they carried out little pellets of earth and laid them together on end to make a wall. Others drew along little twigs, straws, and grass-stalks, and put them near the place of building. I was anxious to know why they had quitted their old home, and when the departure was complete, I dug it up with a spade. At a depth of about a foot and a half I found several tunnels of a large marmot species, the terror of cocoa planters, because in making their passages they gnaw off the thickest roots of the cocoa plants. The interior of the ant-hill had apparently fallen in through these mines. Unfortunately I was unable to follow further the progress of the new building, for I was obliged to leave the next day for San Juan del Sur. When I returned at the end of a week the building was finished, and the whole colony was again busy with the leaves of the coffee plants. _Harvesting Ants_ (Atta).--The ants which, so far as at present known, practise the peculiar and distinctive habits to be described under this division belong for the most part to one genus, _Atta_, which, however, comprises a number of species distributed in localised areas over all the four quarters of the globe. Hitherto nineteen species have been detected as having the habits in question. These consist of gathering nutritious seeds of grasses during summer, and storing them in granaries for winter consumption. We owe our present knowledge concerning these insects to Mr. Moggridge,[34] who studied them in the south of Europe, Dr. Lincecum,[35] and Mr. MacCook,[36] who studied them in Texas, and Colonel Sykes[37] and Dr. Jerdon,[38] who made some observations upon them in India. They also occur scattered over a great part of Europe and in Palestine, where they were clearly known to Solomon and other classical writers of antiquity,[39] whose claim to accurate observation, although long disputed (owing to the authority of Huber), has now been amply vindicated. Mr. Moggridge, who was a careful and industrious observer, found the following points of interest in the habits of the European harvesters. From the nest in various directions there proceed outgoing trains, which may be from twenty to thirty or more yards in length, and each consists of a double row of ants, moving, like the leaf-cutting ants, in opposite directions. Those in the outgoing row are empty-handed, while those in the incoming row are laden. But here the burdens are grass seeds. The roads terminate in the foraging ground, or ant-fields, and the insects composing the columns there become dispersed by hundreds among the seed-yielding grasses. The following is their method of collecting seeds; I quote from Moggridge:-- It is not a little surprising to see that the ants bring in not only seeds of large size and fallen grain, but also green capsules, the torn stalks of which show that they have been freshly gathered from the plant. The manner in which they accomplish this feat is as follows. An ant ascends the stem of a fruiting plant of shepherd's-purse (_Capsella bursa-pastoris_), let us say, and selects a well-filled but green pod about midway up the stem, those below being ready to shed their seeds at a touch. Then, seizing it in its jaws, and fixing its hind legs firmly as a pivot, it contrives to turn round and round, and so strain the fibres of the fruit-stalk that at length they snap. It then descends to the stem, patiently backing and turning upwards again as often as the clumsy and disproportionate burden becomes wedged between the thickly set stalks, and joins the line of its companions on their way to the nest. In this manner capsules of chickweed (_Stellaria media_) and entire calyces, containing the nutlets of calamint, are gathered; two ants also sometimes combine their efforts, when one stations itself near the base of the peduncle and gnaws it at the point of greatest tension, while the other hauls upon and twists it. I have never seen a capsule severed from its stalk by cutting alone, and the mandibles of this ant are perhaps incompetent to perform such a task. I have occasionally seen ants engaged in cutting the capsules of certain plants, drop them, and allow their companions below to carry them away; and this corresponds with the curious account given by Ælian of the manner in which the spikelets of corn are severed and thrown down 'to the people below,' [Greek: tô dêmô tô katô]. The recognition of the principle of the division of labour which the latter observation supplies, is further proved by the following quotation from the same author. A dead grasshopper which was being carried into their nest was-- Too large to pass through the door, so they tried to dismember it. Failing in this, several ants drew the wings and legs as far back as possible, while others gnawed through the muscles where the strain was greatest. They succeeded at last in thus pulling it in. The same thing is strikingly shown by the following quotation from Lespès:-- If the road from the place where they are gathering their harvest to the nest is very long, they make regular depôts for their provisions under large leaves, stones, or other suitable places, and let certain workers have the duty of carrying them from depôt to depôt. Büchner (_loc. cit._ p. 101) also makes the following references to the statements of previous observers:-- The subterranean workers of this remarkable genus are very clever. The Rev. H. Clark reports from Rio de Janeiro, that the _Sa-ubas_ have made a regular tunnel under the bed of the river Parahyba, which is there as broad as the Thames at London, in order to reach a storehouse which is on the opposite bank. Bates tells us that close to the Magoary rice-mills, near Para, the ants bored through the dam of a large reservoir, and the water escaped before the mischief could be remedied. In the Para Botanical Gardens an enterprising French gardener did everything he could to drive the _Sa-ubas_ away. He lit fires at the chief entrances of their nests, and blew sulphur vapour into their galleries by means of bellows. But how astonished was Bates when he saw the vapour come out at no less a distance than seventy yards! Such an extension have the subterranean passages of the _Sa-ubas_. The recognition of the principle of the division of labour, which is shown by the above observations, is further corroborated by the following quotation from Belt:-- Between the old burrows and the new one was a steep slope. Instead of descending this with their burdens, they cast them down on the top of the slope, whence they rolled down to the bottom, where another relay of labourers picked them up and carried them to the new burrow. It was amusing to watch the ants hurrying out with bundles of food, dropping them over the slope, and rushing back immediately for more. The same thing has been observed, as already stated, of the leaf-cutting ants--those engaged in cutting frequently throwing down the fragments of leaf which they cut to the carriers below. The prevalence of this habit among various species of ants therefore renders credible the following statements of Vincent Gredler of Botzen which are thus recorded in 'der Zool. Gart.,' xv. p. 434:-- In Herr Gredler's monastery one of the monks had been accustomed for some months to put food regularly on his window-sill for ants coming up from the garden. In consequence of Herr Gredler's communications he took it into his head to put the bait for the ants, pounded sugar, into an old inkstand, and hung this up by a string to the cross-piece of his window, and left it hanging freely. A few ants were in with the bait. These soon found their road out over the string with their grains of sugar, and so their way back to their friends. Before long a procession was arranged on the new road from the window-sill along the string to the spot where the sugar was, and so things went on for two days, nothing fresh occurring. But one day the procession stopped at the old feeding-place on the window-sill, and took the food thence, without going up to the pendent sugar-jar. Closer observation revealed that about a dozen of the rogues were in the jar above, and were busily and unwearyingly carrying the grains of sugar to the edge of the pot, and throwing them over to their comrades down below. Many other instances of the division of labour might be given besides these, and those to be mentioned hereafter in other connections throughout the course of the present chapter; but enough has been said to show that the principle is unquestionably acted upon by sundry species of ants. That ants are liable to make mistakes, and, when they do, that they profit by experience, is shown by the following experiment made by Moggridge; and many other instances might be given were it desirable:-- It sometimes happens that an ant has manifestly made a bad selection, and is told on its return that what it has brought home with much pains is no better than rubbish, and is hustled out of the nest, and forced to throw its burden away. In order to try whether these creatures were not fallible like other mortals, I one day took out with me a little packet of grey and white porcelain beads, and scattered these in the path of a harvesting train. They had scarcely lain a minute on the earth before one of the largest workers seized upon a bead, and with some difficulty clipped it with its mandibles and trotted back at a great pace to the nest. I waited for a little while, my attention being divided between the other ants who were vainly endeavouring to remove the beads, and the entrance down which the worker had disappeared, and then left the spot. On my return in an hour's time, I found the ants passing unconcernedly by and over the beads which lay where I had strewed them in apparently undiminished quantities; and I conclude from this that they had found out their mistake, and had wisely returned to their accustomed occupations. When the grain is thus taken into the nest, it is stored in regular granaries, but not until it has been denuded of its 'husks' or 'chaff.' The denuding process is carried on below ground, and the chaff is brought up to the surface, where it is laid in heaps to be blown away by the wind. It is a remarkable thing, and one not yet understood, why the seed, when thus stored in subterranean chambers just far enough below the surface to favour germination, does not germinate. Moggridge says that out of twenty-one nests and among many thousands of seeds that he examined, he only found twenty-seven cases of incipient germination. Moreover, all these cases occurred in months from November to February, while in the nests opened in October, March, April, and May, no sprouted seeds were discovered, though these are the months highly favourable to germination. He is at a loss to suggest the treatment to which the ants expose the seeds in order to prevent their sprouting. 'Apparently it is not that moisture or warmth or the influence of atmospheric air is denied to the seeds, for we find them in damp soil in genial weather, and often at but a trifling distance below the surface of the ground;' and he has proved that the vitality of the seeds is not impaired, for he succeeded in raising crops of young plants from seeds removed from the granaries. He also says,-- By a fortunate chance I have been able to prove that the seeds will germinate in an undisturbed granary when the ants are prevented from obtaining access to it: and this goes to show not only that the structure and nature of the granary chamber is not sufficient of itself to prevent germination, but also that the presence of the ants is essential to secure the dormant condition of the seeds. I discovered in two places portions of distinct nests of _Atta structor_ which had been isolated owing to the destruction of the hollow wall behind which they lay, and then the granaries well filled up and literally choked with growing seeds, though the earth in which they lay completely enclosed and concealed them until by chance I laid them bare. In one case I knew that the destruction of the wall had only taken place ten days before, so that the seeds had sprouted in the interval. My experiments also tend to confirm this, and to favour the belief that the non-germination of the seeds is due to some direct influence voluntarily exercised by the ants, and not merely to the conditions found in the nest, or to acid vapours which in certain cases are given off by the ants themselves. These experiments consisted in confining a large number of harvesting ants with their queen and larvæ in a glass test-tube partly filled with damp soil and various seeds, the whole being closed with a cork in the mouth of the test-tube. Under these circumstances the seeds all sprouted, showing that mere confinement in an atmosphere of exhalations from the ants did not prevent germination. Another series of experiments, undertaken at the suggestion of Mr. Darwin, on the effects of an atmosphere of formic acid, showed that although this vapour was very injurious to the seeds, it did not prevent their incipient germination. Therefore it yet remains to be ascertained why the seeds do not germinate in the granaries of the ants. But in whatever way the ants manage to prevent germination, it is certain that they are aware of the importance in this connection of keeping the seeds as dry as possible; for Moggridge repeatedly observed that when the seeds which had been stored proved over-moist, the ants again took them out and spread them in the sun to dry, to be again brought into the nest after a sufficient exposure. Lastly, he also repeatedly observed the most surprising and interesting fact that when, as we have seen was occasionally the case, the seeds did begin to germinate in the nests, the ants knew the most effective method of preventing the germination from proceeding; for he found that in these cases the ants gnawed off the tips of the radicles. This fact deserves to be considered as one of the most remarkable among the many remarkable facts of ant-psychology. Passing on now to the harvesting or agricultural ants of Texas, attention was first called to the habits of this insect by Mr. Buckley in 1860,[40] and by Dr. Lincecum, who sent an account of his observations to Mr. Darwin, by whom they were communicated to the Linnæan Society in 1861. Five years later a paper was published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia from the MS. of Dr. Lincecum. Lastly, in 1877 Mr. MacCook went to Texas expressly to study the habits of these insects, and he has recently embodied the results of his observations in a book of three hundred pages.[41] These observations are for the most part confirmatory of those of Lincecum, and for this as well as for reasons to be deduced from the work itself, they deserve to be accepted as trustworthy, notwithstanding that in some cases they are provokingly incomplete. The following is an epitome of these observations. The ants clear away all the herbage above their nest in the form of a perfect circle, or 'disk,' 15 or 20 feet in diameter, by carefully felling every stalk of grass or weed that may be growing thereon. As the nests are placed in thickly grown localities, the effect of these bald or shaven disks is highly conspicuous and peculiar, exactly resembling in miniature the clearings which the settlers make in the American backwoods. The disk, however, is not merely cleared of herbage, but also carefully levelled, all inequalities of the surface being reduced by building pellets of soil into the hollows to an extent sufficient to make a uniformly flat surface. The action of rain and the constant motion of multitudes of ants cause this flat surface to become hard and smooth. In the centre of the disk is the gateway of the nest. This may be either a simple hole or a hollow cone. From the disk in various directions there radiate ant-roads or avenues, which are cleared and smoothed like the disk itself, and which course through the thick surrounding grass, branching and narrowing as they go till they eventually taper away. These roads are usually three or four in number before they begin to branch, but may be as many as seven. They are usually two to three inches wide at their origin, but in large nests may be as much as five. MacCook found no road longer than sixty feet, but Lincecum describes one of three hundred feet. Along these hard and level roads there is always passing, during the daytime of the harvesting season, a constant stream of ants--those going from the nest being empty-handed, and those returning to it being laden with seeds. Of course the incoming ants, converging from all quarters upon the road, and therefore increasing in numbers as they approach the nest, require greater space for free locomotion; while the outgoing ants, diverging as they get further from home, also require greater proportional space the less their distance from the nest: hence the gradual swelling in the width of the roads as they approach the nests. The manner of collecting the seeds in the jungle surrounding the roads is thus described by MacCook:-- At last a satisfactory seed is found. It is simply lifted from the ground, or, as often happens, has to be pulled out of the soil into which it has been tightly pressed by the rain or by passing feet. Now follows a movement which at first I thought to be a testing of the seed, and which, indeed, may be partially that; but finally I concluded that it was the adjusting of the burden for safe and convenient carriage. The ant pulls at the seed-husk with its mandibles, turning and pinching or 'feeling' it on all sides. If this does not satisfy, and commonly it does not, the body is raised by stiffening out the legs, the abdomen is curved underneath, and the apex applied to the seed. I suppose this to be simply a mechanical action for the better adjusting of the load. Now the worker starts homeward. It has not lost itself in the mazes of the grass forest. It turns directly towards the road with an unerring judgment. There are many obstacles to overcome. Pebbles, pellets of earth, bits of wood, obtruding rootlets, or bent-down spears of grass block up or hinder the way. These were scarcely noticed when the ant was empty-handed. But they are troublesome barriers now that she is burdened with a seed quite as thick, twice as wide, and half as long as herself. It is most interesting to see the skill, strength, and rapidity with which the little harvester swings her treasure over or around, or pushes it beneath these obstacles. Now the seed has caught against the herbage as the porter dodges under a too narrow opening. She backs out and tries another passage. Now the sharp points of the husk are entangled in the grass. She jerks or pulls the burden loose, and hurries on. The road is reached, and progress is comparatively easy. Holding the grain in her mandibles well above the surface, she breaks into what I may describe with sufficient accuracy as 'a trot,' and with little further interruption reaches the disk and disappears within the gate. There are variations from this behaviour, more or less marked, according to the nature of the grounds, the seeds, and (I suppose) the individuality of the harvesters; but the mode of ingathering the crop is substantially as above. Each ant operated independently. Once only did I see anything like an effort to extend sympathy and aid. A worker minor seeming to have difficulty in testing or adjusting a large seed of buffalo-grass, was assisted (apparently) by one worker major, and then by another, after which she went on her way. But these ants do not confine their harvesting operations to gathering fallen seeds; they will, like the ants of Europe, also cut seeds from the stalk. In order to test the disposition of _crudelis_ to garner the seeds from the stem, bunches of millet were obtained from the North, and stalks eighteen inches high, crowned by the boll of close-set seeds, were stuck in the mound of an active formicary. The ants mounted the stems and set to work vigorously to secure the seeds, clusters of twenty or more being engaged at once upon one head. The seeds were carried off and stored within the nest. This experiment proved pretty conclusively that in the seeding season _crudelis_ does not wait for the seeds to drop, but harvests them from the plant. The 'granaries' into which the seeds are brought are kept distinct from the 'nurseries' for the pupæ. Their walls, floor, and roof are so hard and smooth, that MacCook thinks the insects must practise upon them 'some rude mason's craft.' He traced these granaries to a depth of four feet below the surface of the ground, and believes, from the statements of a native peasant, that they, or at least the formicaries, extend to a depth of fifteen feet. As regards the care that the ants take of the gathered grain, Lincecum describes the same habit as Moggridge and Sykes describe--viz., the sunning of wet seeds to dry. MacCook, however, neglected to make any experiments on this subject. Neither has he been able to throw any light upon the question as to why the stored seeds do not germinate, and is doubtful whether the habit of gnawing the radicle of sprouting seeds, which prevails in the European species, is likewise practised by the American. On two other points of importance MacCook's observations are also incomplete. One of these has reference to an alleged statement, which he is disposed to believe, that when some ants in a community have been killed by poison, the survivors avoid the poison: he, however, made no experiments to test this statement. The other main point on which his observations are defective has reference to a remarkable statement made by Lincecum in the most emphatic terms. This statement is that upon the surface of their disk the ants sow the seeds of a certain plant, called ant-rice, for the purpose of subsequently reaping a harvest of the grain. There is no doubt that the ant-disks do very often support this peculiar kind of grass, and that the ants are particularly fond of its seed; but whether the plant is actually sown in these situations by the insects, or grows there on account of these situations being more open than the general surface of the ground--this question MacCook has failed to answer, or even to further. We are, therefore, still left with Dr. Lincecum's emphatic assurance that he has witnessed the fact. His account is that the seed of the ant-rice, which is a biennial plant, is sown in time for the autumnal rains to bring up. At the beginning of November a green row or ring of ant-rice, about four inches wide, is seen springing up round the circumference of the disk. In the vicinity of this circular ring the ants do not permit a single spire of any other grass or weed to remain a day, but leave the aristida, or ant-rice, untouched until it ripens, which occurs in June of the next year. After the maturing and harvesting of the seed, the dry stubble is cut away and removed from the pavement or disk, which is thus left unencumbered until the ensuing autumn, when the same species of grass again appears as before, and so on. Lincecum says he has seen the process go on year after year on the same ant-farms, and adds,-- There can be no doubt of the fact that the particular species of grain-bearing grass mentioned above is intentionally planted. In farmer-like manner the ground upon which it stands is carefully divested of all other grasses and weeds during the time it is growing. When it is ripe the grain is taken care of, the dry stubble cut away and carried off, the paved area being left unencumbered until the ensuing autumn, when the same 'ant-rice' reappears within the same circle, and receives the same agricultural attention as was bestowed upon the previous crop--and so on year after year, as I _know_ to be the case, in all situations when the ant's settlements are protected from graminivorous animals. In a second letter Dr. Lincecum, in reply to an inquiry from Mr. Darwin whether he supposed that the ants plant seeds for the ensuing crop, says:-- I have not the slightest doubt of it. And my conclusions have not been arrived at from hasty or careless observation, nor from seeing the ants do something that looked a little like it, and then guessing at the results. I have at all seasons watched the same ant-cities during the last twelve years, and I know that what I stated in my former letter is true. I visited the same cities yesterday, and found the crop of ant-rice growing finely, and exhibiting also the signs of high cultivation, and not a blade of any other kind of grass or weed was to be seen within twelve inches of the circular row of ant-rice.--(_Journ. Linn. Soc._, vol. vi. p. 30-1.) Now, MacCook found the ant-rice growing as described, but only on some nests. Why it does not grow upon all the nests he does not understand. So far, then, as his observations go, they confirm those of Dr. Lincecum; but he does 'not believe that the ants deliberately sow a crop as Lincecum asserts;' he thinks 'that they have for some reason found it to their advantage to permit the aristida to grow upon their disks, while they clear off all other herbage;' but finally concludes 'that there is nothing unreasonable, nor beyond the probable capacity of the emmet intellect, in the supposition that the crop is actually sown. Simply, it is the Scotch verdict--"Not proven."' The following facts with regard to 'modes of mining' are worth quoting from MacCook:-- In sinking the galleries the difficulty of carrying is not great in a moist or tough soil, which permits the ant to obtain goodly-sized pellets for portage. But when the soil is light and dry, so that it crumbles into dust as it is bitten off, the difficulty is greatly increased. It would be a very tedious task indeed to take out the diggings grain by grain. This difficulty the worker overcomes by balling the small particles against the surface of the gallery, the under side of the head, or within and against the mandibles. The fore-feet are used for this purpose, being pressed against the side face, turned under, and pushed upward with a motion similar to that of a man putting his hand upon his mouth. The abdomen is then swung underneath the body and the apex pressed against the little heap of grains of dirt massed against the under side of the mandibles, or between that and the smooth under surface of the head. Thus the dust is compressed into a ball which is of sufficient size to justify deportation. The same operation is observed in the side-galleries, where the ants work very frequently upon their sides or backs, precisely as I have seen colliers do in Pennsylvania coal-mines. The following is likewise worth quoting from the same author:-- Seeds are evidently not the only food of our agriculturals. When the ants at disk No. 2 had broken through the slight mud-sediment that sealed up their gate, as described above, they exhibited a peculiar behaviour. Instead of heading for the roads and pressing along them, they distributed themselves at once over the entire disk, radiating from the gate to all points in the circumference, from which they penetrated the jungle of grass beyond. In a moment a large number were returning across the roads, out of the grass, over the pavement toward the entrance. They bore in their mandibles objects which I presently found to be the males and females of white ants (_Termes flavipes_), which were filling the air, during and after the rain, in marriage flight. They had probably swarmed just before the shower. The agriculturals were under great excitement, and hurried forth and back at the top of their speed. The number of ants bearing termites was soon so great that the vestibule became choked, and a mass of struggling anthood was piled up around the gate. A stream of eager insects continually poured out of the door, pushing their way through the crowd that vainly but persistently endeavoured to get in with their burdens. The outcoming ants had the advantage, and succeeded in jostling through the quivering rosette of antennæ, legs, heads, and abdomens. Occasionally a worker gained an entrance by dint of sheer physical force and perseverance. Again and again would the crowd rush from all sides upon the gate, only to be pushed back by the issuing throng. In the meanwhile quite a heap of termites, a good handful at least, had been accumulated at one side of the gate, the ants having evidently dropped them, in despair of entrance, and hurried off to garner more. In due time the pressure upon the vestibule diminished, the laden workers entered more freely, and in the end this heap was transferred to the interior. The rapidity with which the ants were distributed to all parts of their roads, after the first opening of the gates, was truly surprising. I was greatly puzzled, at the first, to know what the cause of such a rush might be. The whole behaviour was such as to carry the conviction that they knew accurately what effect the rain would have, had calculated upon it, and were acting in accordance with previous experience. I had no doubt at the time, and have none now, that the capturing of insects beaten down by the rain is one of the well-established customs of these ants. I saw a few other insects taken in, and one milliped, but chiefly the white ants. That very afternoon I found in a formicary which I then opened several large colonies, or parts of one colony of termites, nested within the limits of the disk and quite at home. The next day numbers of the winged white ants were found stored within the granaries of a large formicary. There is no reason to doubt that these insects were intended for food, in accordance with the quite universal habit of the _Formicariæ_. A curious habit has been noticed by most observers to occur in many species of ant, and it is one on which Mr. MacCook has a good deal to say. The habit in question consists in the ants transporting one another from place to place. The carrying ant seizes her comrade by the middle, and hurries along with it held aloft--the ant which is carried remaining quite motionless with all her legs drawn together. Huber supposed the process to be one enjoyable to both the insects concerned, and to be performed by mutual understanding and consent; but MacCook, in common with most other observers, supposes that it is merely a rough and primitive way of communicating to fellow-workers the locality where their services are required. He says:-- Keeping these facts in mind, we have a key to the solution of the press-gang operations which Lincecum observed among the agriculturals, and which have been fully described in other species. In the absence of any common head or directory, and of all executive officers, a change of location or any other concerted movement must be carried forward by the willing co-operation of individuals. At first sight, the act of seizing and carrying off workers does not appear like an appeal to free-will. It is indeed coercive, so far as the first act goes. But, in point of fact, the coercion ceases the moment the captive is set down within the precincts of the new movement. The carrier-ant has depended upon securing her consent and co-operation by thus bringing her within the circle of activity for which her service is sought. As a rule, no doubt, the deported ant at once yields to the influence around her, and drops into the current of fresh enterprise, in which she moves with as entire freedom and as independently as any other worker. But she is apparently under no restraint, and if she so please, may return to her former haunts. _Certain Ants of Africa._--Livingstone says of certain ants of Africa:-- They have established themselves on the plain where water stands so long annually as to allow the lotus and other aqueous plants to come to maturity. When all the ant-horizon is submerged a foot deep, they manage to exist by ascending to little houses built of black tenaceous loam on stalks of grass, and placed higher than the line of inundation. This must have been the result of experience, for, if they had waited till the water actually invaded their terrestrial habitations, they would not have been able to procure materials for their aërial quarters, unless they dived down to the bottom for every mouthful of clay.[42] _The Tree Ant of India and New South Wales._--These ants are remarkable from their habit of forming nests only in trees. According to Col. Sykes' account, the shape of the nest is more or less globular, and about ten inches in diameter. It is formed entirely of cow-dung, which the insects collect from the ground beneath, and work into the form of thin scales. These are then built together in an imbricated manner, like tiles or slates upon the roof of a house, the upper or outer scale, however, being one unbroken sheet, which covers the whole nest like a skull-cap. Below this the scales are placed one upon another in a wavy or scalloped manner, so that numerous little arched entrances are left, and yet, owing to the imbricated manner in which the scales are arranged, the interior of the nest is perfectly protected from rain. This interior consists of a number of irregular cells, the walls of which are formed by the same process as the exterior. In New South Wales there is another species of ant which also frequents trees, but builds within the stem and branches. In the report of Captain Cook's expedition its habits are thus described:--'Their habitations are the insides of the branches of a tree, which they contrive to excavate, by working out the pith almost to the extremity of the slenderest twig; the tree at the same time flourishing as if it had no such inmate.' On breaking one of the branches the ants swarm out in legions. Some of our native species also have the habit of excavating the interior of trees, though not on so extensive a scale. _Honey-making Ant_ (Myrmecocystus mexicanus).--This ant is found in Texas and New Mexico. Capt. W. B. Fleeson has observed its habits, and his observations have been communicated to the Californian Academy of Sciences, and also, by Mr. Henry Edwards, to Mr. Darwin. The following are the chief points of interest in Capt. Fleeson's results:-- The community appears to consist of three distinct kinds of ants, probably of two separate genera, whose offices in the general order of the nest would seem to be entirely apart from each other, and who perform the labour allotted to them without the least encroachment upon the duties of their fellows. These three kinds are-- I. Yellow workers; nurses and feeders of II. II. Yellow honey-makers; sole function to secrete a kind of honey in their large globose abdomens, on which the other ants are supposed to feed. They never quit the nest, and are fed and tended by I. III. Black workers, guards, and purveyors; surround the nest as guards or sentinels, in a manner presently to be described, and also forage for the food required for I. They are much larger and stronger insects than either I. or II., and are provided with very formidable mandibles. The nest is placed in sandy soil in the neighbourhood of shrubs and flowers, is a perfect square, and occupies about four or five square feet of ground, the surface of which is kept almost unbroken. But the boundaries of the nest are rendered conspicuous by the guard of black workers (III.), which continuously parade round three of its sides in a close double line of defence, moving in opposite directions. In the accompanying diagram this sentry path is represented by the thick black lines. These always face the same points of the compass, and the direction in which the sentries march is one column from south-west to south-east, and the other column from south-east to south-west--each column, however, moving in regular order round three sides of a square. The southern side of the encampment is left unguarded; but if any enemy approaches on this or any other side, a number of the guards leave their stations, and sally forth to face the foe--raising themselves on their hind tarsi on meeting the enemy, and moving their large mandibles in defiance. Spiders, wasps, beetles, and other insects, if they venture too near the nest, are torn to pieces by the guard in a most merciless manner, and the dead body of the vanquished is speedily removed from the neighbourhood of the nest--the guard then marching back to resume their places in the line of defence, their object in destroying other insects being the defence of their encampment, and not the obtaining of food. The object of leaving the southern side of the square encampment open is as follows. While some of the black workers are engaged on duty as guard, another and larger division are engaged on duty as purveyors. These enter and leave the quadrangle by its open or southern side along the dotted line marked _a_ to the central point _c_. The incoming line is composed of individuals each bearing a burden of fragments of flowers or aromatic leaves. These are all deposited in the centre of the quadrangle _c_. Along the other diagonal _e_ there is a no less incessantly moving double line of yellow workers (I.), whose office it is to convey the supplies deposited by the black workers at _c_ to _b_, which is the gateway of the fortress. It is remarkable that no black ant is ever seen upon the line _e_, and no yellow one upon the line _a_; each keeps his own separate station, and follows his own particular duty with a steadfastness and apparent adherence to discipline that are most astonishing. The hole at _d_ seems to be a ventilating shaft; it is never used as a gateway. [Illustration: Fig. 7.] Section of the nest reveals, besides galleries, a small chamber about three feet below the surface, across which is spread, like a spider's web, a network of squares spun by the insects, the squares being about 1/4 inch across, and the ends of the whole net being fastened to the earthen walls of the chamber. In each one of the squares, supported by the web, sits one of the honey-making ants (II.). Here these honey makers live in perpetual confinement, and receive a constant supply of flowers, pollen, &c., which is continually being brought them by (I.), and which, by a process analogous to that performed by the bee, they convert into honey. Such is an epitome of the only account that the world has yet received of the habits and economy of this wonderful insect, whose instincts of military organization seem to be not less wonderful than those of the Ecitons, though in this case they are developed with reference to defence, and not to aggression. It is especially noteworthy that the black and yellow workers are believed to belong to 'two separate genera;' for if this is the case, it is the only one I can recall of two distinct species co-operating for a common end; for even the nearest parallel which we find supplied in other species of ants maintaining aphides, is not quite the same thing, seeing that the aphides are merely passive agents, like Class II., of the honey-making ant, and not actively co-operating members of the community, like Class I. _Ecitons._--We have next to consider the habits of the wonderful 'foraging,' or, as it might be more appropriately called, the military ant of the Amazon. These insects, which belong to several species of the same genus, have been carefully watched by Belt, Bates, and other naturalists. The following facts must therefore be accepted as fully established. _Eciton legionis_ moves in enormous armies, and everything that these insects do is done with the most perfect instinct of military organization. The army marches in the form of a rather broad and regular column, hundreds of yards in length. The object of the march is the capture and plunder of other insects, &c., for food, and as the well-organised host advances, its devastating legions set all other terrestrial life at defiance. From the main column there are sent out smaller lateral columns, the composing individuals of which play the part of scouts, branching off in various directions, and searching about with the utmost activity for insects, grubs, &c., over every log, under every fallen leaf, and in every nook and cranny where there is any chance of finding prey. When their errand is completed, they return into the main column. If the prey found is sufficiently small for the scouts themselves to manage, it is immediately seized, and carried back to the main column; but if the amount is too large for the scouts to deal with alone, messengers are sent back to the main column, whence there is immediately dispatched a detachment large enough to cope with the requirements. Insects which when killed are too large for single ants to carry, are torn in pieces, and the pieces conveyed back to the main army by different individuals. Many insects in trying to escape run up bushes and shrubs, where they are pursued from branch to branch and twig to twig by their remorseless enemies, until on arriving at some terminal ramification they must either submit to immediate capture by their pursuers, or drop down amid the murderous hosts beneath. As already stated, all the spoils that are taken by the scouts or by the detachments sent out in answer to their demands for assistance, are immediately taken back to the main column. When they arrive there, they are taken to the rear of that column by two smaller columns of carriers, which are constantly running, one on either side of the main column, with the supplies that are constantly pouring in from both sides. Each of these outside columns is a double line, the ants composing one of the two lines all running in the same direction as the main army, and the ants composing the other line all running in the opposite direction. The former are empty-handed carriers, which having deposited their burdens in the rear, are again advancing to the van for fresh burdens. Those composing the other line are all laden with the mangled remains of insects, pupæ of other ants, &c. On either side of the main column there are also constantly running up and down a few individuals of smaller size and lighter colour than the other ants, which seem to play the part of officers; for they never leave their stations, and while running up and down the outsides of the column, they every now and again stop to touch antennæ with some member of the rank and file, as if to give instructions. When the scouts discover a wasp's nest in a tree, a strong force is sent out from the main army, the nest is pulled to pieces, and all the larvæ carried to the rear of the army, while the wasps fly around defenceless against the invading multitude. Or, if the nest of any other species of ant is found, a similarly strong force, or perhaps the whole army is deflected towards it, and with the utmost energy the innumerable insects set to work to sink shafts and dig mines till the whole nest is rifled of its contents. In these mining operations the ants work with an extraordinary display of organized co-operation; for those low down in the shafts do not lose time by carrying up the earth which they excavate, but pass on the pellets to those above; and the ants on the surface, when they receive the pellets, carry them, 'with an appearance of forethought that quite staggered' Mr. Bates, only just far enough to ensure that they shall not roll back again into the shaft, and, after depositing them, immediately hurry back for more. But there is not a rigid division of labour, although the work 'seems to be performed by intelligent co-operation amongst a host of eager little creatures;' for some of them act 'sometimes as carriers of pellets, and at another as miners, and all shortly afterwards assume the office of conveyors of the spoil.' Again, as showing the instincts of co-operation, the following may also be quoted from Bates's account:-- On the following morning no trace of ants could be found near the place where I had seen them the preceding day, nor were there signs of insects of any description in the thicket; but at the distance of eighty or one hundred yards, I came upon the same army, engaged evidently on a razzia of a similar kind to that of the previous evening; but requiring other resources of their instinct, owing to the nature of the ground. They were eagerly occupied on the face of an inclined bank of light earth in excavating mines, whence, from a depth of eight or ten inches, they were extracting the bodies of a bulky species of ant of the genus Formica. It was curious to see them crowding round the orifices of the mines, some assisting their comrades to lift out the bodies of the Formicæ, and others tearing them in pieces, on account of their weight being too great for a single Eciton; a number of carriers seizing each a fragment, and carrying it off down the slope. These Ecitons have no fixed nest themselves, but live, as it were, on a perpetual campaign. At night, however, they call a halt and pitch a camp. For this purpose they usually select a piece of broken ground, in the interstices of which they temporarily store their plunder. In the morning the army is again on the march, and before an hour or two has passed not a single ant is to be seen where the countless multitudes had previously covered the ground. Another and larger species of Eciton (_E. humata_) hunts sometimes in dense armies, and sometimes in columns, according to the kind of prey of which they are in search. When in columns they are seeking for the nests of a certain species of ant which have their young in holes of rotten logs. These Ecitons when seeking for these nests hunt about, like those just described, in columns, which branch off in various directions. When a fallen log is reached, the column spreads over it, searching through all the holes and cracks. Mr. Belt says of them:-- The workers are of various sizes, and the smallest are here of use, for they squeeze themselves into the narrowest holes, and search out their prey in the furthest ramifications of the nests. When a nest of the _Hypoclinea_ is attacked, the ants rush out, carrying the larvæ and pupæ in their jaws, but are immediately despoiled of them by the Ecitons, which are running about in every direction with great swiftness. Whenever they come across a _Hypoclinea_ carrying a larva or pupa, they take it from it so quickly, that I could never ascertain exactly how it was done. As soon as an Eciton gets hold of its prey, it rushes off back along the advancing column, which is composed of two sets, one hurrying forward, the other returning laden with their booty, but all and always in the greatest haste and apparent hurry. About the nest which they are harrying, all appears in confusion, Ecitons running here and there and everywhere in the greatest haste and disorder; but the result of all this apparent confusion is that scarcely a single _Hypoclinea_ gets away with a pupa or larva. I never saw the Ecitons injure the Hypoclineas themselves, they were always contented with despoiling them of their young. The columns of this species 'are composed almost entirely of workers of different sizes;' but, as in the species previously mentioned, 'at intervals of two or three yards there are larger and lighter coloured individuals that often stop, and sometimes run a little backward, stopping and touching some of the ants with their antennæ,' and looking 'like officers giving orders and directing the march of the column.' Concerning the other habits of this species, the same author writes:-- The eyes in the Ecitons are very small, in some of the species imperfect, and in others entirely absent; in this they differ greatly from the _Pseudomyrma_ ants, which hunt singly and which have the eyes greatly developed. The imperfection of eyesight in the Ecitons is an advantage to the community, and to their particular mode of hunting. It keeps them together, and prevents individual ants from starting off alone after objects that, if their eyesight was better, they might discover at a distance; the Ecitons and most other ants follow each other by scent, and, I believe, they can communicate the presence of danger, of booty, or other intelligence, to a distance by the different intensity or qualities of the odours given off. I one day saw a column of _Eciton hamata_ running along the foot of a nearly perpendicular tramway cutting, the side of which was about six feet high. At one point I noticed a sort of assembly of about a dozen individuals that appeared in consultation. Suddenly one ant left the conclave, and ran with great speed up the perpendicular face of the cutting without stopping. It was followed by others, which, however, did not keep straight on like the first, but ran a short way, then returned, then again followed a little further than the first time. They were evidently scenting the trail of the pioneer, and making it permanently recognisable. These ants followed the exact line taken by the first one, although it was far out of sight. Wherever it had made a slight _détour_ they did so likewise. I scraped with my knife a small portion of the clay on the trail, and the ants were completely at fault for a time which way to go. Those ascending and those descending stopped at the scraped portion, and made short circuits until they hit the scented trail again, when all their hesitation vanished, and they ran up and down it with the greatest confidence. On gaining the top of the cutting, the ants entered some brushwood suitable for hunting. In a very short space of time the information was communicated to the ants below, and a dense column rushed up to search for their prey. The Ecitons are singular amongst the ants in this respect, that they have no fixed habitations, but move on from one place to another, as they exhaust the hunting grounds around them. I think _Eciton hamata_ does not stay more than four or five days in one place. I have sometimes come across the migratory columns; they may easily be known. Here and there one of the light-coloured officers moves backwards and forwards directing the columns. Such a column is of enormous length, and contains many thousands if not millions of individuals. I have sometimes followed them up for two or three hundred yards without getting to the end. They make their temporary habitations in hollow trees, and sometimes underneath large fallen trunks that offer suitable hollows. A nest that I came across in the latter situation was open at one side. The ants were clustered together in a dense mass, like a great swarm of bees, hanging from the roof but reaching to the ground below. Their innumerable long legs looked like brown threads binding together the mass, which must have been at least a cubic yard in bulk, and contained hundreds of thousands of individuals, although many columns were outside, some bringing in the pupæ of ants, others the legs and dissected bodies of various insects. I was surprised to see in this living nest tubular passages leading down to the centre of the mass, kept open just as if it had been formed of inorganic materials. Down these holes the ants who were bringing in booty passed with their prey. I thrust a long stick down to the centre of the cluster, and brought out clinging to it many ants holding larvæ and pupæ, which probably were kept warm by the crowding together of the ants. Besides the common dark-coloured workers and light-coloured officers, I saw here many still larger individuals with enormous jaws. These they go about holding wide open in a threatening manner. It was this ant which, as previously stated, showed sympathy and fellow-feeling with companions in difficulties. The habits of _E. drepanophora_ are closely similar to those of the species already described; and, indeed, except in matters of detail, all the species of Ecitons have much the same habits. Mr. Bates records an interesting observation which he made on one of the moving columns of this species. He says: 'When I interfered with the column or abstracted an individual from it, news of the disturbance was quickly communicated to a distance of several yards to the rear, and the column at that point commenced retreating.' The main column is in this species narrower, viz., 'from four to six deep,' but extends to a great length, viz., half a mile or more. It was this species of Eciton that the same naturalist describes as enjoying periods of leisure and recreation in the 'sunny nooks of the forest.' Next we have to consider _E. prædator_, of which the same observer writes:-- This is a small dark reddish species, very similar to the common red stinging ant of England. It differs from all other Ecitons in its habit of hunting, not in columns, but in dense phalanxes consisting of myriads of individuals, and was first met with at Ega, where it is very common. Nothing in insect movements is more striking than the rapid march of these large and compact bodies. Wherever they pass, all the rest of the animal world is thrown into a state of alarm. They stream along the ground and climb to the summits of all the lower trees, searching every leaf to its apex, and whenever they encounter a mass of decaying vegetable matter, where booty is plentiful, they concentrate, like other Ecitons, all their forces upon it, the dense phalanx of shining and quickly-moving bodies, as it spreads over the surface, looking like a flood of dark red liquid. They soon penetrate every part of the confused heap, and then, gathering together again in marching order, onward they move. All soft-bodied and inactive insects fall an easy prey to them, and, like other Ecitons, they tear their victims in pieces for facility of carriage. A phalanx of this species, when passing over a tract of smooth ground, occupies a space of from four to six square yards; on examining the ants closely they are seen to move, not all together in one straightforward direction, but in variously spreading contiguous columns, now separating a little from the general mass, now reuniting with it. The margins of the phalanx spread out at times like a cloud of skirmishers from the flanks of an army. I was never able to find the hive of this species. Lastly, there are two species of Eciton totally blind, and their habits differ from those of the species which we have hitherto considered. Bates writes of them:-- The armies of _E. vastator_ and _E. erratica_ move, as far as I could learn, wholly under covered roads, the ants constructing them gradually but rapidly as they advance. The column of foragers pushes forward step by step, under the protection of these covered passages, through the thickets, and on reaching a rotting log, or other promising hunting-ground, pour into the crevices in search of booty. I have traced their arcades, occasionally, for a distance of one or two hundred yards; the grains of earth are taken from the soil over which the column is passing, and are fitted together without cement. It is this last-mentioned feature that distinguishes them from the similar covered roads made by termites, who use their glutinous saliva to cement the grains together. The blind Ecitons, working in numbers, build up simultaneously the sides of their convex arcades, and contrive, in a surprising manner, to approximate them and fit in the key-stones without letting the loose uncemented structure fall to pieces. There was a very clear division of labour between the two classes of neuters in these blind species. The large-headed class, although not possessing monstrously lengthened jaws like the worker-majors in _E. hamata_ and _E. drepanophora_, are rigidly defined in structure from the small-headed class, and act as soldiers, defending the working community (like soldier termites) against all comers. Whenever I made a breach in one of their covered ways, all the ants underneath were set in commotion, but the worker-minors remained behind to repair the damage, whilst the large-heads issued forth in a most menacing manner, rearing their heads and snapping their jaws with an expression of the fiercest rage and defiance. _Annornia arcens._--This is the so-called 'driver' or 'marching' ant of West Africa, which in habits and intelligence closely resembles the military ants of the other hemisphere. I shall therefore not wait again to describe these habits in detail. Like the Ecitons, the marching ants of Africa have no fixed nest, but make temporary halts in the shade of hollow trees, overhanging rocks, &c. They march in large armies, and, like the Ecitons, always in the form of a long close column; but in this case the relative position of the carriers of spoil and larvæ is reversed, for while these occupy the middle place the soldiers and officers march on either side. These have large heads armed with powerful jaws, and never take part in carrying; their function is to maintain order, act as scouts, and attack prey. The habits of these ants resemble most closely those of the blind Ecitons in that they very frequently, and indeed generally, build covered ways; they do so apparently in order to protect themselves from the heat of the African sun. Their line of march is therefore marked by a continuous arch or tunnel, which is always being constructed by the van of the column. The structure is made of earth moulded together by saliva, and is very quickly built. But it is only built in places where the line of march is exposed to the sunlight; at night, or in the shadow of trees or long grass, it is not made. If their camp is flooded by a tropical rainstorm, the ants congregate in a close mass, with the younger ants in the centre; they thus form a floating island. It is remarkable that ants of different hemispheres should manifest so close a similarity with respect to all these wonderful habits. The Chasseur ants of Trinidad, and, according to Madame Merian, the ants of visitation of Cayenne, also display habits of the same kind. _General Intelligence of Various Species._ Many of the foregoing facts display an astonishing degree of intelligence as obtaining among ants; for I think that however much latitude we may be inclined to allow to 'blind instinct' in the way of imitating actions elsewhere due to conscious purpose, some at least of these foregoing facts can only be fairly reconciled with the view that the insects know what they are doing and why they are doing it. But as I am myself well aware of the difficulty that arises in all such cases of drawing the line between purposeless instinct and purposive intelligence, I have thought it desirable to reserve for this concluding division of the present chapter several isolated facts which have been observed among sundry species of ants, and which do not seem to admit of being reasonably comprised under the category of instinctive action, if by the latter we mean action pursued without knowledge of the relation between the means adopted and the ends attained. It will be remembered that our test of instinctive as distinguished from truly intelligent action is simply whether all individuals of a species perform similar adaptive movements under the stimulus supplied by similar and habitual circumstances, or whether they manifest individual and peculiar adaptive movements to meet the exigencies of novel and peculiar circumstances. The importance of this distinction may be rendered manifest by the following illustrations. [Illustration: Fig. 8.] We have already seen that the ants which Sir John Lubbock observed display many and complex instincts, which together might seem to justify us in anticipating that animals which present such wonderful instincts must also present sufficient general intelligence to meet simple though novel exigencies by such simple adaptations as the unfamiliar circumstances require. Yet experiments which he made in this connection seem to show that such is not the case, but that these ants, with all their wealth of instinctive endowments, are utterly destitute of intelligent resources; they have abundance of common and detailed knowledge (supposing the adaptations to be made consciously) how to act under certain complex though familiar circumstances, but appear quite unable to originate any adaptive action to obviate even the simplest conceivable difficulty, if this is of a kind which they have not been previously accustomed to meet. Thus, on a horizontal rod B supported in a saucer of water S, and therefore inaccessible to the ants from beneath, he placed some larvæ A. On the nest N he then placed a block of wood C D, constructed so that the portion D should touch the larvæ at A. When the ants had made a number of journeys over C D A and back again, he raised the block C D so that there was an interval 3/10 of an inch between the end of the block D and the larvæ at A. The ants kept on coming, and tried hard to reach down from D to A, which was only just out of their reach. . . . After a while they all gave up their efforts and went away, losing their prize in spite of most earnest efforts, because it did not occur to them to drop 3/10 of an inch. At the moment when the separation was made there were fifteen ants on the larvæ. These could, of course, have returned if one had stood still and allowed the others to get on its back. This, however, did not occur to them; nor did they think of letting themselves drop from the bottom of the paper (P) on to the nest. Two or three, indeed, fell down, I have no doubt by accident; but the remainder wandered about, until at length most of them got into the water. In another experiment he interposed a light straw bridge on the way between the nest and the larvæ, and when the ants had well learnt the way, he drew the bridge a short distance towards the nest, so that a small chasm was made in the road. The ants tried hard and ineffectually to reach across it, but it did not occur to them to _push_ the straw into its original position. The following experiment is still more illustrative of the absence of intelligence, because the adjustive action required would not demand the exercise of such high powers of imagination and abstraction as would have been required for the moving forwards of the paper drawbridge. To test their intelligence I made the following experiments: I suspended some honey over a nest of _Lasius flavus_ at a height of about 1/2 an inch, and accessible only by a paper bridge more than 10 feet long. Under the glass I then placed a small heap of earth. The ants soon swarmed over the earth on to the glass, and began feeding on the honey. I then removed a little of the earth, so that there was an interval of about 1/3 of an inch between the glass and the earth; but though the distance was so small, they would not jump down, but preferred to go round by the long bridge. They tried in vain to stretch up from the earth to the glass, which, however, was just out of their reach, though they could touch it with their antennæ; but it did not occur to them to heap the earth up a little, though if they had moved only half a dozen particles of earth they would have secured for themselves direct access to the food. This, however, never occurred to them. At length they gave up all attempts to reach up to the glass, and went round by the paper bridge. I left the arrangement for several weeks, but they continued to go round by the long paper bridge. Another and somewhat similar experiment consisted in placing an upright stick A, supporting at an angle another stick B, which nearly but not quite touched the ground at C. At the end of the stick B there were placed some larvæ in a horizontal glass cell at D. Into this cell were also placed a number of ants along with the larvæ. The drop from D to C was only 1/2 an inch; 'still, though the ants reached over and showed a great anxiety to take this short cut home, they none of them faced the leap, but all went round by the sticks, a distance of nearly 7 feet.' Sir John then reduced the interruption to 2/5 of an inch, so that the ants could even touch the glass cell with their antennæ; yet all day long the ants continued to go the long way round rather than face the drop. Next, therefore, he took still longer sticks and tapes, and arranged them as before, only horizontally instead of vertically. He also placed some fine earth under the glass cell containing the larvæ. The ants as before continued to go the long way round (16 feet), though the drop could not have hurt either themselves or the larvæ, and though even this drop might have been obviated by heaping up the fine earth into a little mound 1/8 of an inch high, so as to touch the glass cell. It is desirable, however, here to state that all species of ants do not show this aversion to allowing themselves to drop through short distances; for Moggridge describes the harvesting ants of Europe as seeming rather to enjoy acrobatic performances of this kind; and the same fact is recorded by Belt of the leaf-cutting ants of the Amazons. Dr. Bastian, in his work on 'Brain as an Organ of Mind,' suggests that the 'seeming lack of intelligence betrayed by our English ants, from their disinclination to take a small leap, may be due simply to their defective sight' (pp. 241-2). But even this consideration does not extenuate the stupidity of the ants which failed to heap up the fine earth to reach the glass cell which they were able to touch with their antennæ. That the species of ants on which Sir John Lubbock experimented were not, however, quite destitute of intelligence is proved by the result of the following experiment:-- I put some provisions in a shallow box with a glass top and a single hole in one side; I then put some specimens of _Lasius niger_ to the food, and soon a stream of ants was at work busily carrying supplies off to the nest. When they had got to know their way thoroughly, and from thirty to forty were so occupied, I poured some fine mould in front of the hole, so as to cover it to a depth of about 1/2 an inch. I then took out the ants which were actually in the box. As soon as the ants had recovered from the shock of this unexpected proceeding on my part, they began to run all round and about the box, looking for some other place of entrance. Finding none, however, they began digging down into the earth just over the hole, carrying off the grains of earth one by one and depositing them without any order all round at a distance of from 1/2 to 6 inches, until they had excavated down to the doorway, when they again began carrying off the food as before. This experiment was several times repeated on _L. niger_ and on _L. flavus_, always with the same result. Thus, then, we may conclude that the reasoning power of these ants, although shown by the first experiments to be almost _nil_, is shown by this experiment to be not quite _nil_; for the attempt to meet the exigencies of the case by first going round the box to seek another entrance, before taking the labour to remove the earth from the known entrance, implies a certain rudimentary degree of adaptive capacity which belongs to the category of the rational. Another point of considerable interest, as bearing on the general intelligence of ants, is one that was brought out as the result of a laborious series of hourly observations, extending without intermission from 6.30 A.M. to 10 P.M. for a period of three months. The object of these observations was to ascertain whether the principle of the division of labour is practised by the ants. The result of these observations was to show that during the winter-time, when the ants are not active, certain individuals are told off to forage for supplies, and that when any casualty overtakes these individuals, others are told off to supply their places. Thus, in the words of Sir John Lubbock's analysis of his lengthy tables,-- The feeders at the beginning of the experiment were those known to us as Nos. 5, 6, and 7. On the 22nd of November a friend, registered as No. 8, came to the honey, and again on the 11th December; but with these two exceptions the whole of the supplies were carried in by Nos. 5 and 6, with a little help from No. 7. Thinking now it might be alleged that possibly these were merely unusually active or greedy individuals, I imprisoned No. 6 when she came out to feed on the 5th. As will be seen from the table, no other ant had been out to the honey for some days; and it could therefore hardly be accidental that on that very evening another ant (then registered as No. 9) came out for food. This ant, as will be seen from the table, then took the place of No. 6 (No. 5 being imprisoned). On the 11th January No. 9 took in all the supplies, again with a little help from No. 7. So matters continued until the 17th, when I imprisoned No. 9, and then again, _i.e._ on the 19th, another ant (No. 10) came out for the food, aided, on and after the 22nd, by another (No. 11). This seems to me very curious. From the 1st November to the 5th January, with two or three casual exceptions, the whole of the supplies were carried in by three ants, one of whom, however, did comparatively little. The other two are imprisoned, and then, but not till then, a fresh ant appears on the scene. She carries in the food for a week, and then she being imprisoned, two others undertake the task. On the other hand, in nest 1, when the first foragers were not imprisoned, they continued during the whole time to carry in the necessary supplies. The facts, therefore, certainly seem to indicate that certain ants are told off as foragers, and that during winter, when but little food is required, two or three such foragers are sufficient to provide it. Although Sir John Lubbock's ants showed such meagre resources of intelligent adjustment, other species of ants, which we have already had occasion to consider, appear to be as remarkable in this respect as they are in respect of their instinctive adjustments. Unfortunately observations on this subject are very sparse, but such as they are they hold out a strong inducement for any one who has the opportunity to experiment with the view of testing the intelligence of those species in connection with which the following observations have been made. Réaumur states that ants will make no attempt to enter an inhabited beehive to get at the contained honey, knowing that the bees will slaughter them if they do so. But if the hive is uninhabited, or the bees all dead, the ants will swarm into the hive as long as any honey is to be found there. P. Huber records that a wall which had been partly erected by ants was observed by him-- As though it were intended to support the still unfinished arched roof of a large room, which was being built from the opposite side. But the workers which had begun the arch had given it too low an elevation for the wall on which it was to rest, and if it had been continued on the same lines it would have met the partition wall halfway up, and this was to be avoided. I had just made this criticism to myself, when a new arrival, after looking at the work, came to the same conclusion. For it began at once to destroy what had been done, and to heighten the wall on which it was supported, and to make a new arch with the materials of the old one under my very eyes. When the ants begin an undertaking it seems exactly as if an idea slowly ripened into execution in their minds. Thus if one of them finds two stalks lying crosswise on the nest, which make possible the formation of a room, or some little rafters which suggest the walls and the corners, it first observes the various parts accurately, and then quickly and neatly heaps little pellets of earth in the interspaces and alongside the stalks. It brings from every side materials that seem appropriate, and sometimes takes such from the uncompleted works of its companions, so much is it urged on by the idea which it has once conceived, and by the desire to execute it. It goes and comes and turns back again, until its plan is recognisable by the others. Ebrard, in his 'Etudes de Moeurs' (p. 3), gives the following remarkable instance of the display of intelligence of _F. fusca_:-- The earth was damp and the workers were in full swing. It was a constant coming and going of ants, coming forth from their underground dwelling, and carrying back little pellets of earth for building. In order to concentrate my attention I fixed my gaze on the largest of the rooms which were being built, wherein several ants were busy. The work had made considerable progress; but although a projection could be plainly seen along the upper edge of the wall, there remained an interspace of about twelve or fifteen millimetres to fill in. Here would have been the place, in order to support the earth still to be brought in, to have had recourse to those pillars, buttresses, or fragments of dried leaves, which many ants are wont to use in building. But the use of this expedient is not customary with the ants I was observing (_F. fusca_). Our ants, however, were sufficient for the occasion. For a moment they seemed inclined to leave their work, but soon turned instead to a grass-plant growing near, the long narrow leaves of which ran close together. They chose the nearest, and weighted its distal end with damp earth, until its apex just bent down to the space to be covered. Unfortunately the bend was too close to the extremity, and it threatened to break. To prevent this misfortune, the ants gnawed at the base of the leaf until it bent along its whole length and covered the space required. But as this did not seem to be quite enough, they heaped damp earth between the base of the plant and that of the leaf, until the latter was sufficiently bent. After they had thus attained their object, they heaped on the buttressing leaf the materials required for building the arched roof. The characteristic _trait_ of the building of ants, says Forel, is the almost complete absence of an unchangeable model, peculiar to each species, such as is found in wasps, bees, and others. The ants know how to suit their indeed little perfect work to circumstances, and to take advantage of each situation. Besides, each works for itself and on a given plan, and is only occasionally aided by others when these understand its plan. Naturally many collisions occur, and some destroy that which others have made. This also gives the key to understanding the labyrinth of the dwelling. For the rest, it is always those workers which have discovered the most advantageous method, or which have shown the most patience, which win over to their plan the majority of their comrades and at last the whole colony, although not without many fights for supremacy. But if one succeeds in obtaining a second to follow it, and this second draws the others after it, the first is soon lost again in the crowd. Espinas also observed ('Thierischen Gesellschaften,' German translation, 1879, p. 371) that each single ant made its own plan and followed it until a comrade, which had caught the idea, joined it, and then they worked together in the execution of the same plan. Moggridge says of the harvesters of Europe,-- I have observed on more than one occasion that when in digging into an ants' nest I have thrown out an _elater_ larva, the ants would cluster round it and direct it towards some small opening in the soil, which it would quickly enlarge and disappear down. At other times, however, the ants would take no notice of the _elater_, and it is my belief that the attentions paid to it on former occasions were purely selfish, and that they intended to avail themselves of the tunnel thus made down into the soil, with the view of reopening communications with the galleries and granaries concealed below, the approaches to which had been covered up. I have frequently watched the ants make use of these passages mined by the _elater_ on these occasions. And again, as showing apparently intelligent adaptation of their usual habits to altered circumstances, he gives an account of the behaviour of these ants when a great crowd of them were confined by him in a glass jar containing earth. He says:-- On the following morning the openings were ten in number, and the greatly increased heaps of excavated earth showed that they must probably have been at work all night. The amount of work done in this short time was truly surprising, for it must be remembered that, eighteen hours before, the earth presented a perfectly level surface, and the larvæ and ants, now housed below, found themselves prisoners in a strange place, bounded by glass walls, and with no exit possible. It seems to me that the ants displayed extraordinary intelligence in having thus at a moment's notice devised a plan by which the superabundant number of workers could be employed at one time without coming in one another's way. The soil contained in the jar was of course less than a tenth part of that comprised within the limits of an ordinary nest, while the number of workers was probably more than a third of the total number belonging to the colony. If therefore but one or two entrances had been pierced in the soil, the workers would have been for ever running against one another, and a great number could never have got below to help in the all-important task of preparing passages and chambers for the accommodation of the larvæ. These numerous and funnel-shaped entrances admitted of the simultaneous descent and ascent of large numbers of ants, and the work progressed with proportionate rapidity. After a few days only three entrances, and eventually only one, remained open. Concerning the harvesting ant of Texas, the following quotation may be made, under the present head, from MacCook. After remarking that these ants always select sunny places wherein to build their nests, or disks, he goes on to say that within a few paces of his tent-- A nest was made which was partly shaded by a small mesquite tree that stood just beyond the margin of the clearing. The sapling had probably grown up after the location of the community, and for some reason had been permitted to remain until too old to kill off. The shadow thrown upon the pavement was very slight; nevertheless, fifteen feet distant a new formicary was being established. The path from the ranch to the spring ran between this new hill and the old one, and ants were in communication between the two. An opening had been made in the ground, and the beginnings of a new formicary were quite apparent. This is the only instance observed of what seemed an attempt at colonising or removing, and I associated it with the presence of the small but growing shadow of the young tree. He also gives us a still more remarkable observation, which indeed, I must candidly say, does not appear to me credible. I am, therefore, glad to add that it does not appear very distinctly from the account whether the author himself made the observation, or had it narrated to him by his guide. But here is the observation in his own words:-- While studying the habits of the cutting ant I was tempted to make a night visit to a farm some distance from camp, by the farmer's story of depredations made by these insects upon certain plants and vegetables. A long, dark tramp, a blind and vain search among the fields, compelled us at last to call out the countryman from his bed. He led us directly to one of the cutting ants' nests, which was overshadowed by a young peach tree. 'There they be, sir,' cried he triumphantly. They were agriculturals! So also were the other nests shown. The reason for this confounding of the two ants on the part of the people hereabouts, and the reason for the 'cutting' operations of our harvesters, will be explained farther on. It is only in point here to say that the farmer affirmed that the ants under the peach tree had stripped off the first tender leaves last spring, so that scarcely one had been left upon the limbs. I am convinced that the reason for this onslaught was the desire to be rid of the obnoxious shade, and open the formicary to the full light of the sun. From this account it is not very clear whether the writer himself saw evidence of the former denudation of the tree, and if so whether there was any indication, other than the word of the farmer, that the denudation had been effected by the ants. To make this conclusion credible the best conceivable evidence would be required, and this, unfortunately, is just what we find wanting. Somewhat the same remarks may be made on the following quotation from the same writer, though in this case his view is to some extent supported by an observation of Moggridge, as well as by that of Ebrard already quoted:-- Here I observed what appeared to be a new mode of operation. The workers, in several cases, left the point at which they had begun a cutting, ascended the blade, and passed as far out toward the point as possible. The blade was thus borne downward, and as the ant swayed up and down it really seemed that she was taking advantage of the leverage thus gained, and was bringing the augmented force to bear upon the fracture. In two or three cases there appeared to be a division of labour; that is to say, while the cutter at the roots kept on with her work, another ant climbed the grass blade and applied the power at the opposite end of the lever. This position may have been quite accidental, but it certainly had the appearance of a voluntary co-operation. I was sorry not to be able to establish this last inference by a series of observations, as the facts were only observed in this one nest. The observation of Moggridge, to which I have alluded as in some measure rendering support to the foregoing, is as follows. Speaking of European harvesters which he kept in an artificial nest for the purposes of close observation, he says:-- I was also in this way able to see for myself much that I otherwise could not have seen. Thus I was able to watch the operation of removing roots which had pierced through their galleries, belonging to seedling plants growing on the surface, and which was performed by two ants, one pulling at the free end of the root, and the other gnawing at its fibres where the strain was greatest, until at length it gave way. And again,-- Two ants sometimes combine their efforts, when one stations itself near the base of the peduncle, and gnaws it at the point of greatest tension, while the other hauls upon and twists it. . . . I have occasionally seen ants engaged in cutting the capsules of certain plants, drop them, and allow their companions below to carry them away. Lastly, the statements of these three observers taken together serve to render credible the following quotation from Bingley,[43] who says that in Captain Cook's expedition in New South Wales ants were seen by Sir Joseph Banks and others-- As green as a leaf, which live upon trees and build their nests of various sizes, between that of a man's head and his fist. These nests are of a very curious structure: they are formed by bending down several of the leaves, each of which is as broad as a man's hand, and gluing the points of them together so as to form a purse. The viscous matter used for this purpose is an animal juice. . . . Their method of bending down leaves we had no opportunity to observe; but we saw thousands uniting all their strength to hold them in this position, while other busy multitudes were employed within, in applying this gluten, that was to prevent their returning back. To satisfy ourselves that the leaves were bent and held down by the efforts of these diminutive artificers, we disturbed them in their work; and as soon as they were driven from their station, the leaves on which they were employed sprang up with a force much greater than we could have thought them able to conquer by any combination of their strength. This remarkable fact also seems to be corroborated by the following independent observation of Sir E. Tennent:-- The most formidable of all is the great red ant, or Dimiya. It is particularly abundant in gardens and on fruit-trees; it constructs its dwellings by gluing the leaves of such species as are suitable from their shape and pliancy into hollow balls, and these it lines with a kind of transparent paper, like that manufactured by the wasp. I have watched them at the interesting operation of forming these dwellings;--a line of ants standing on the edge of one leaf bring another into contact with it, and hold both together with their mandibles till their companions within attach them firmly by means of their adhesive paper, the assistants outside moving along as the work proceeds. If it be necessary to draw closer a leaf too distant to be laid hold of by the immediate workers, they form a chain by depending one from the other till the object is reached, when it is at length brought into contact, and made fast by cement. I shall now pass on to the remarkable observation communicated to Kirby by Colonel Sykes, F.R.S., and which is thus narrated by Kirby in his 'History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals:'-- When resident at Poona, the dessert, consisting of fruits, cakes, and various preserves, always remained upon a small side table, in a verandah of the dining-room. To guard against inroads, the legs of the table were immersed in four basins filled with water; it was removed an inch from the wall, and, to keep off dust from open windows, was covered with a tablecloth. At first the ants did not attempt to cross the water, but as the strait was very narrow, from an inch to an inch and a half, and the sweets very tempting, they appear, at length, to have braved all risks, to have committed themselves to the deep, to have scrambled across the channel, and to have reached the objects of their desires, for hundreds were found every morning revelling in enjoyment: daily vengeance was executed upon them without lessening their numbers; at last the legs of the table were painted, just above the water, with a circle of turpentine. This at first seemed to prove an effectual barrier, and for some days the sweets were unmolested, after which they were again attacked by these resolute plunderers; but how they got at them seemed totally unaccountable, till Colonel Sykes, who often passed the table, was surprised to see an ant drop from the wall, about a foot above the table, upon the cloth that covered it; another and another succeeded. So that though the turpentine and the distance from the wall appeared effectual barriers, still the resources of the animal, when determined to carry its point, were not exhausted, and by ascending the wall to a certain height, with a slight effort against it, in falling it managed to land in safety upon the table. Colonel Sykes was a good observer, so that this statement, standing upon his authority, ought not, perhaps, to be questioned. But in all cases of remarkable intelligence displayed by animals, we naturally and properly desire corroboration, however good the authority may be on which the statement of such cases may rest. I will, therefore, add the following instances of the ingenious and determined manner in which ants overcome obstacles, and which so far lend confirmation to the above account. Professor Leuckart placed round the trunk of a tree, which was visited by ants as a pasture for aphides, a broad cloth soaked in tobacco-water. When the ants returning home down the trunk of the tree arrived at the soaked cloth, they turned round, went up the tree again to some of the overhanging branches, and allowed themselves to drop clear of the obnoxious barrier. On the other hand, the ants which desired to mount the tree first examined the nature of the barrier, then turned back and procured from a distance little pellets of earth, which they carried in their jaws and deposited one after another upon the tobacco-cloth till a road of earth was made across it, over which the ants passed to and fro with impunity. This interesting, and indeed surprising observation of Leuckart's is, in turn, a corroboration of an almost identical one made more than a century ago by Cardinal Fleury, and communicated by him to Réaumur, who published it in his 'l'Histoire des Insectes' (1734). The Cardinal smeared the trunk of a tree with birdlime in order to prevent the ants from ascending it; but the insects overcame the obstacle by making a road of earth, small stones, &c., as in the case just mentioned. In another instance the Cardinal saw a number of ants make a bridge across a vessel of water surrounding the bottom of an orange-tree tub. They did so by conveying a number of little pieces of _wood_, the choice of which material instead of earth or stones, as in the previous case, seems to betoken no small knowledge of practical engineering. Büchner, after quoting these cases, proceeds to say (_loc. cit._, p. 120),-- The ants behaved in yet more ingenious fashion under the following very similar circumstances. Herr G. Theuerkauf, the painter (Wasserthorstr. 49, Berlin), writes to the author, November 18, 1875: 'A maple tree standing on the ground of the manufacturer, Vollbaum, of Elbing (now of Dantzic), swarmed with aphides and ants. In order to check the mischief, the proprietor smeared about a foot width of the ground round the tree with tar. The first ants who wanted to cross naturally stuck fast. But what did the next? They turned back to the tree and carried down aphides, which they stuck down on the tar one after another until they had made a bridge over which they could cross the tarring without danger. The above-named merchant, Vollbaum, is the guarantor of this story, which I received from his own mouth on the very spot whereat it occurred.' Büchner also gives the following case on the authority of Karl Vogt (_loc. cit._, p. 128). An apiary of a friend was invaded by ants:-- To make this impossible for the future, the four legs of the beehive-stand were put into small, shallow bowls filled with water, as is often done with food in ant-infested places. The ants soon found a way out of this, or rather a way into their beloved honey, and that over an iron staple with which the stand was attached to a neighbouring wall. The staple was removed, but the ants did not allow themselves to be defeated. They climbed into some linden trees standing near, the branches of which hung over the stand, and then dropped upon it from the branches, doing just the same as their comrades do with respect to food surrounded by water, when they drop upon it from the ceiling of the room. In order to make this impossible, the boughs were cut away. But once more the ants were found in the stand, and closer investigation showed that one of the bowls was dried up, and that a crowd of ants had gathered in it. But they found themselves puzzled how to go on with their robbery, for the leg did not, by chance, rest on the bottom of the bowl, but was about half an inch from it. The ants were seen rapidly touching each other with their antennæ, or carrying on a consultation, until at last a rather larger ant came forward and put an end to the difficulty. It rose to its full height on its hind legs, and struggled until at last it seized a rather projecting splinter of the wooden leg, and managed to take hold of it. As soon as this was done other ants ran on to it, strengthened the hold by clinging, and so made a little living bridge, over which the others could easily pass. The same author publishes the following very remarkable observation, quoted from a letter to him by Dr. Ellendorf:-- It is a hard matter to protect any eatables from these creatures, let the custody be ever so close. The legs of cupboards and tables in or on which eatables are kept are placed in vessels of water. I myself did this, but I none the less found thousands of ants in the cupboard next morning. It was a puzzle to me how they crossed the water, but the puzzle was soon solved; for I found a straw in one of the saucers, which lay obliquely across the edge of the pan and touched the leg of the press: this they had used for a bridge. Hundreds were drowned in the water, apparently because disorder had reigned at first, those coming down with booty meeting those going up. But now there was perfect order; the descending stream used one side of the straw, the ascending the other. I now pushed the straw about an inch away from the cupboard leg; a terrible confusion arose. In a moment the leg immediately over the water was covered with hundreds of ants, feeling for the bridge in every direction with their antennæ, running back again and coming in ever larger swarms, as though they had communicated to their comrades within the cupboard the fearful misfortune that had taken place. Meanwhile the new-comers continued to run along the straw, and not finding the leg of the cupboard the greatest perplexity arose. They hurried round the edge of the pan, and soon found out where the fault lay. With united forces they quickly pulled and pushed at the straw, until it again came into contact with the wood, and the communication was again restored. This observation is strikingly, though unconsciously, confirmed by a recent writer in the _Leisure Hour_ (1880, pp. 718-19), who having been much troubled by small red ants in the tropics swarming over his provisions, placed the latter in a meat-safe detached from the wall and standing on four legs, each of which was placed in a little tin vessel containing water. Eight or ten days afterwards he found his provisions in the safe swarming with ants as before, and on investigating their mode of access to them found-- Proceeding along the whitewashed wall a string of ants going and coming from the outer door to a height of four feet on my wall, and corresponding with that of the safe; and looking between it and the wall, I discovered the secret--the bridge which these persevering little insects had made. It consisted of a broken bit of straw, which rested with one end on a mud buttress fixed to the wall, and the other on the overhanging or projecting top of the safe, which came within an inch and a half of the wall. So they must have carried the straw up from the floor, and resting their end of it on the support they had prepared, let it fall until its other end reached the safe, and then crossed and completed the structure, for it was fastened at both ends with the mortar composed of their saliva and fine earth. Ruthlessly I destroyed the bridge, and moving the safe farther from the wall, managed to prevent their inroads for that season at least. Since then I have frequently seen short bridges, composed entirely of the concrete or mortar which the white ants use to cover up their workings, extending from a damp earthen wall to anything not more than three-quarters of an inch from it. Of the Ecitons Mr. Belt says:-- I shall relate two more instances of the use of a reasoning faculty in these ants. I once saw a wide column trying to pass along a crumbling, nearly perpendicular slope. They would have got very slowly over it, and many of them would have fallen, but a number having secured their hold, and reaching to each other, remained stationary, and over them the main column passed. Another time they were crossing a watercourse along a small branch, not thicker than a goose-quill. They widened this natural bridge to three times its width by a number of ants clinging to it and to each other on each side, over which the column passed three or four deep; whereas excepting for this expedient they would have had to pass over in single file, and treble the time would have been consumed. Can it be contended that such insects are not able to determine by reasoning powers which is the best way of doing a thing? Another observer, writing from the same part of the world to Büchner, gives a still more wonderful account of the ingenuity of Ecitons in crossing water. This observer is Herr H. Kreplin, of Heidemühl (Station Ducherom), 'who lived for nearly twenty years in South America as an engineer, and had often the opportunity of seeing the driver ants in the forests there.' He writes to Büchner, under date May 10, 1876, as follows:-- On both sides of the train, at about 10 mm. distance from each other, stronger ants are to be seen, distinguishable from the others by their foxy colour and very thick heads with gigantic mandibles. These 'thickheads' play the same _rôle_ in the ant-state for which they are cast in cultured communities. They look after the order of the march, and allow none to turn either to the right or left. The least confusion in the regularity of the march makes them turn round and put things straight again. While the procession of the brown workers streams on unceasingly with a swarming motion, the 'officers,' as the natives call these thickheads, run constantly backwards and forwards, ready to take the command on meeting any difficulty. The crossing of streams by these creatures is the most interesting point. If the watercourse be narrow, the thickheads soon find trees, the branches of which meet on the bank on either side, and after a short halt the column set themselves in motion over these bridges, rearranging themselves in the narrow train with marvellous quickness on reaching the further side. But if no natural bridge be available for the passage, they travel along the bank of the river until they arrive at a flat sandy shore. Each ant now seizes a bit of dry wood, pulls it into the water, and mounts thereupon. The hinder rows push the front ones even further out, holding on to the wood with their feet and to their comrades with their jaws. In a short time the water is covered with ants, and when the raft has grown too large to be held together by the small creatures' strength, a part breaks itself off and begins the journey across, while the ants left on the bank busily pull their bits of wood into the water, and work at enlarging the ferry-boat until it again breaks. This is repeated as long as an ant remains on shore. I had often heard described this method of crossing rivers, but in the year 1859 I had the opportunity of seeing it for myself. It is remarkable that the military or driving ants of Africa exhibit precisely similar devices for the bridging of streams, namely, by forming a chain of individuals over which the others pass. By means of similar chains they also let themselves down from trees. It must be observed, however, that these and all the above observations, being independently made and separately recorded, serve to corroborate one another so strongly that we can entertain no reasonable doubt concerning the wonderful facts which they convey. I shall now bring these numerous instances to a close with a quotation from Mr. Belt, which reveals in the most unequivocal manner surprising powers of observation and rational action on the part of the leaf-cutting ants of South America, whose general habits we have already considered:-- A nest was made near one of our tramways, and to get to the trees the ants had to cross the rails, over which the waggons were continually passing and repassing. Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for some time, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the waggons were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut off from the nest, they would not cross the rails, but set to work making fresh tunnels underneath them. _Anatomy and Physiology of Nerve-centres and Sense-organs._ The foregoing facts concerning the intelligence of ants fully justifies Mr. Darwin's observation that 'the brain of an ant is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of a man.' It may therefore be interesting in this particular case to depart from the lines otherwise laid down throughout the present work, and to devote a short section to the anatomy and physiology of this nerve-centre with its appended organs of sense. The brain of an ant, then, is proportionally larger than that of any other insect. (See Titus Graber, 'Insects,' vol. i. p. 255.) In structure, also, the brain of an ant is in advance of that of other insects, its nearest analogue being the brain of a bee. The superiority of development is particularly remarkable with reference to the 'stalked bodies' of Dujardin; and these are largest in neuter workers, which are the most intelligent members of the community. Injury of the brain causes, as in higher animals, tetanic spasms and involuntary reflex movements, followed by stupefaction. An ant, whose brain has been perforated by the pointed mandibles of an amazon, remains as though nailed to its place; a shudder runs from time to time through its body, and one of its legs is lifted at regular intervals. It occasionally makes a short and quick step, as though driven by an unseen spring, but, like that of an automaton, aimless and objectless. If it is pulled, it makes a movement of avoidance, but falls back into its stupefied condition as soon as it is released. It is no longer capable of action consciously directed to a given object; it neither tries to escape, nor to attack, nor to go back to its home, nor to rejoin its companions, nor to walk away; it feels neither heat nor cold, it knows neither fear nor desire for food. It is merely an automatic and reflex machine, and is exactly similar to one of those pigeons from which Flourens removed the hemispheres of the cerebrum. Just in the same way behaves the body of an ant from which the head has been taken away. In the numerous fights between amazons and other ants, countless cases have been observed of slight injury to the brain, which have caused the most remarkable phenomena. Many of the wounded were seized with a mad rage, and flung themselves at every one that came in their way, whether friend or foe. Others assumed an appearance of indifference, and walked serenely about in the midst of the fighting. Others exhibited a sudden failure of strength; but they still recognised their enemies, approached them, and tried to bite them in cold blood, in a way quite foreign to the behaviour of healthy ants. They were also often observed to run round and round in a circle, the motion resembling the _manège_, or riding-school action of mammals, when one of the crura cerebri has been removed. If an ant is cut in half through the thorax, so that the great nerve ganglia of the pro-thorax remain untouched, the behaviour of the head shows that intelligence also remains untouched. Ants mutilated in this way try to go forwards with their two remaining legs, and beg with their antennæ for their companions' aid. If one of these latter lets itself be stopped, then we observe a lively interchange of thanks and sympathy expressed by the actively moving antennæ. Forel placed near to each other two such mutilated bodies of the _F. rufibarbis_. They conversed with each other in the above-described way, and appeared each to beg for help. But when he put in some similarly mutilated ants of a hostile species, _F. sanguinea_, the picture was changed; war broke out between these cripples just in the same way and with the same fury as between perfect ants.[44] The antennæ appear to be the most important of the sense-organs, as their removal produces an extraordinary disturbance in the intelligence of the animal. An ant so mutilated can no longer find its way or recognise companions, and therefore is unable to distinguish between friends and foes. It is also unable to find food, ceases to engage in any labour, and loses all its regard for larvæ, remaining permanently quiet and almost motionless. A somewhat similar disturbance, or rather destruction, of the mental faculties is observable as a result of the same mutilation in the case of bees.[45] FOOTNOTES: [19] While this MS. is passing through the press Sir John Lubbock has read another paper before the Linnæan Society, which contains some important additional matter concerning the sense of direction in ants. It seems that in the experiment above described, the hat-box was not provided with a cover or lid, i.e. was not a 'closed chamber,' and that Sir John now finds the ants to take their bearings from the direction in which they observe the light to fall upon them. For in the experiment with the uncovered hat-box, if the source of light (candle) is moved round together with the rotating table which supports the box, the ants continue their way without making compensating changes in their direction of advance. The same thing happens if the hat-box is covered, so as to make of it a dark chamber. Direction of light being the source of their information that their ground is being moved, we can understand why they do not know that it is being moved when it is moved in the direction of their advance, as in the experiment with the paper slip. [20] It is to be noted that although ants will attack stranger ants introduced from other nests, they will carefully tend stranger larvæ similarly introduced. [21] _The Naturalist in Nicaragua_, 1874, p. 26. [22] See _Leisure Hour_, 1880, p. 390. [23] _Introduction to Entomology_, vol. ii. p. 524. [24] Vol. vii. pp. 443-4. [25] Büchner, _Geistesleben der Thiere_, pp. 66-7. [26] _Origin of Species_, 6th ed. pp. 207-8. [27] _Loc. cit._ p. 121. [28] _Loc. cit._ p. 123. [29] _Origin of Species_, 6th ed. p. 218. [30] _Geistesleben der Thiere_, pp. 145-9. [31] _Loc. cit._ [32] _Loc. cit._ p. 337. [33] _Loc. cit._ p. 97. [34] _Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders_, London, 1873 and Supplement, 1874. [35] _Journal Linn. Soc._, vol. vi. p. 29, 1862. [36] _Agricultural Ant of Texas_, Philadelphia, 1880. [37] _Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond._, i. 103, 1836. [38] _Madras Journ. Lit. Sc._, 1851. [39] For this see Moggridge, _loc. cit._ pp. 6-10, where, besides Prov. iv. 6-8, and xxx. 25, quotations are given from Horace, Virgil, Plautus, and others. [40] Proc. Phil. Acad. Nat. Sci., xii. p. 445. [41] Agricultural Ant of Texas (Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia, 1880). [42] _Missionary Travels_, p. 328. [43] _Animal Biography_, 'Ants.' [44] Büchner, _Geistesleben der Thiere_, English translation, p. 49. [45] While this work is passing through the press, an interesting Essay has been published by Mr. MacCook on the Honey-making Ant. I am not here able to refer to this Essay at greater length, but have done so in a review in _Nature_ (March 2, 1882.)--G. J. R. CHAPTER IV. BEES AND WASPS. ARRANGING this chapter under the same general headings as the one on ants, we shall consider first-- _Powers of Special Sense._ Bees and wasps have much greater powers of sight than ants. They not only perceive objects at a greater distance, but are also able to distinguish their colours. This was proved by Sir John Lubbock, who placed honey on slips of paper similarly formed, but of different colours; when a bee had repeatedly visited a slip of one colour (A), he transposed the slips during the absence of the bee; on its return the insect did not fly to slip B, although this now occupied the _position_ which had been previously occupied by slip A, but again visited slip A, although this now occupied the position which had been previously occupied by slip B. Therefore, as these experiments were again and again repeated both on bees and wasps with uniform results, there can be no question that the insects by their first visits to slip A established an association between the colour of A and the honey upon it, such that, when they again returned and found B in the place of A, they were guided by their memory of the colour rather than by their memory of the position. It was thus shown that the insects could distinguish green, red, yellow, and blue. These experiments also brought out the further fact that both bees and wasps exhibit a marked preference for some colours over others. Thus, in a series of black, white, yellow, orange, green, blue, and red slips, two or three bees paid twenty-one visits to the orange and yellow, and only four to all the other slips. The slips were then moved, after which, out of thirty-two visits, twenty-two were to the orange and yellow. Another colour to which a similar preference is shown is blue. As regards scent, Sir John found that on putting a few drops of eau de Cologne at the entrance of a beehive, 'immediately a number (about 15) came out to see what was the matter.' Other scents had a similar effect; but on repetition several times the bees became accustomed to the scent, and no longer came out. As in ants, so in bees, Sir John's experiments failed to yield any evidence of a sense of hearing. But in this connection we must not forget the well-known fact, first observed by Huber, that the queen bee will answer by a certain sound the peculiar piping of a pupa queen; and again, by making a certain cry or humming noise, will strike consternation suddenly on all the bees in the hive--these remaining for a long time motionless as if stupefied. _Sense of Direction._ The following are Sir John Lubbock's observations upon this subject in the case of bees and wasps:-- Every one has heard of a 'bee-line.' It would be no less correct to speak of a wasp-line. On August 6 I marked a wasp, the nest of which was round the corner of the house, so that her direct way home was not out at the window by which she had entered, but in the opposite direction, across the room to a window which was closed. I watched her for some hours, during which time she constantly went to the wrong window, and lost much time in buzzing about at it. For ten consecutive days this wasp paid numerous visits, coming in at the open window, and always trying, though always unsuccessfully, to return to her nest in the 'wasp-line' of the closed window--buzzing about that window for hours at a time, though eventually on finding it closed she returned and went round through the open window by which she always entered. This observation shows how strong must be the instinct in a wasp to take the shortest way home, and how much the insect depends upon its sense of direction in so doing. It also shows how long a time it requires to learn by individual experience the properties of a previously unknown substance such as glass. But to this latter point we shall presently have occasion to return. Next we must adduce evidence to show that in way-finding the 'sense of direction' in bees appears to be largely supplemented by observation of particular objects. Sir John Lubbock observes: 'I never found bees to return if brought any considerable distance at once. By taking them, however, some twenty yards each time they came to the honey, I at length _trained_ them to come to my room;' that is to say, bees require to _learn_ their way little by little before they can return to a store of honey which they may have been fortunate enough to find; their general sense of direction is not in itself a sufficient guide. This, at least, is the case where, as in the experiments in question, the bees are _carried_ from the hive to the store of honey (here a distance of less than 200 yards): possibly if they had found the honey by themselves flying towards it, and so probably taking note of objects by the way, one journey might have proved sufficient to teach them the way. But, whether or not this would have been the case, the fact that when carried they required also to be taught the way piece by piece, is conclusive proof that their sense of direction _alone_ is not sufficient to enable them to traverse a route of 200 yards a second time. The same result is brought out by other experiments conducted on a different plan, though not apparently with this object. 'My room is square, with two windows on the south-west side, where the hive was placed, and one on the south-east.' Besides the ordinary entrance from outside, the hive had a small postern door opening into the room. At 6.50 a bee came out through the little postern door. After she had fed, she evidently did not know her way home; so I put her back. At 7.10 she came out again. I again fed her and put her back. At 10.15 she came out a third time; and again I had to put her back. At 10.55 she came out again, and still did not remember the door. Though I was satisfied that she really wished to return, and was not voluntarily remaining outside; still, to make the matter clear, I turned her out of a side window into the garden, when she at once returned to the hive. At 11.15 she came out again; and again I had to show her the way back. At 11.20 she came out again; and again I had to show her the way back (this makes five times); when, however,-- At 11.30 she came out again after feeding, she returned straight to the hive. At 11.40 she came out, fed, and returned straight to the hive. At 11.50 she came out, fed, and returned straight to the hive; she then stayed in for some time. At 12.30 she came out again, but seemed to have forgotten the way back; after some time, however, she found the door and went in. Again:--August 24 at 7.20 a bee came through the postern: I fed her; and though she was not frightened or disturbed, when she had finished her meal she flew to the window and had evidently lost her way; so at 8 o'clock I in pity put her back myself. August 29.--A bee came out to the honey at 10.10; at 10.12 she flew to the window, and remained buzzing about till 11.12, when, being satisfied that she could not find her way, I put her in. Nay, even those who seemed to know the postern, if taken near the other window, flew to it, and seemed to have lost themselves. This cost me a great many bees. Those which got into my room by accident continually died on the floor near the window. These observations show that even when a bee is not _carried_ from the hive to the honey, but herself _flies_ to it, her sense of direction is not alone sufficient to enable her to find the way back to the hive--or, rather, to the unaccustomed entrance to the hive from which she had come out. Probably if the side window had been open, the bee would have returned to the hive round the corner of the house, and through the entrance to which she was most accustomed. But as it was she had to _learn_, by five or six journeys, the way between the postern entrance and the food. But the following observation on a wasp is in this connection the most conclusive. A marked wasp visited honey exposed in the room before mentioned. 'The next morning she came-- At 7.25, and fed till 7.28, when she began flying about the room and even into the next; so I thought it well to put her out of the window, when she flew straight away to her nest. My room, as already mentioned, had windows on two sides; and the nest was in the direction of a closed window, so that the wasp had to go out of her way in going out through the open one. At 7.45 she came back. I had moved the glass containing the honey about two yards; and though it stood conspicuously, the wasp seemed to have much difficulty in finding it. Again she flew to the window in the direction of her nest, and I had to put her out, which I did at 8.2. At 8.15 she returned to the honey almost straight. 8.21, she flew again to the closed window, and apparently could not find her way; so at 8.35 I put her out again. It seems obvious from this that wasps have a sense of direction, and do not find their way merely by sight. At 8.50 back to honey, and 8.54 again to wrong window; but finding it closed, she took two or three turns round the room, and then flew out through the open window. At 9.24 back to the honey; and 9.27 away, first, however, paying a visit to the wrong window, but without alighting. At 9.36 back to the honey, and 9.39 away, but, as before, going first to wrong window. She was away therefore 9 minutes. 9.50 " 9.53 away, this time straight. " 11 " 10 " 10. 7 " " 11 " 10.19 " 10.22 " " 12 " 10.35 " 10.39 " " 13 " 10.47 " 10.50 " " 9 " 11. 4 " 11. 7 " " 14 " 11.21 " 11.24 " " 14 " 11.34 " 11.37 " " 10 " 11.49 " 11.52 " " 1 " 12. 3 " 12. 5 " Away therefore 11 minutes. 12.13 " 12.15½ " " 8 " 12.25 " 12.28 " " 10 " 12.39 " 12.43 " " 11 " 12.54 " 12.57 " " 11 " 1.15 " 1.19 " " 18 " 1.27 " 1.30 " " 8 minutes,' &c., &c., the way being now clearly well learnt. But that the sense of direction is of much service to bees in finding the locality of their hives seems to be indicated by the following observation thus narrated, on the authority of the authors themselves, by Messrs. Kirby and Spence:-- In vain, during my stay at St. Nicholas, I sallied out at every outlet to try to gain some idea of the extent and form of the town. Trees, trees, trees, still met me, and intercepted the view in every direction; and I defy any inhabitant bee of this rural metropolis, after once quitting its hive, ever to gain a glimpse of it again until nearly perpendicularly over it. The bees, therefore, . . . must be led to their abodes by instinct, &c. The observation, however, is not so conclusive as its authors suppose; for there is nothing to show that the bees did not take note of particular objects on their accustomed routes, and so learn these routes by stages. It would be worth while in this connection to try the effect of hooding the eyes of a bee, or, if this were deemed too disturbing an experiment, removing the hive bodily to a distance from its accustomed site, and observing whether the bees start away boldly as before for long flights, or learn their new routes by stages. In this connection I may quote the following. Mr. John Topham, of Marlborough House, Torquay, writing to 'Nature,'[46] says:-- On October 29, 1873, I removed a hive of bees in my garden, after it was quite dark, for a distance of 12 yards from the place in which it had stood for several months; and between its original situation and the new one there was a bushy evergreen tree, so that all sight of its former place was obstructed to a person looking from the new situation of the hive. Notwithstanding this change, the bees every day flew to the locality where they formerly lived, and continued flying around the site of what had been their home until, as night came on, they many of them sank upon the grass exhausted and chilled by the cold. Numbers, however, returned alive to their new position, after having looked in vain for their hive in its old place. At night I picked the exhausted bees up, and having restored warmth to them (by leaving them for a time on my coat-sleeve), I returned them to their companions. Here was an illustration that the faculty of memory was superior to that of observation; but that was not all. Nearly every bee which I picked up during the 23 days through which this effort of memory lasted was an _old one_, as was easily deduced from observing the worn edges of the wings; showing that whilst the young insects were quick in receiving new impressions and in correcting errors, the nervous system of the old bees continued _acting in the direction which early habit had effected_. So true it is that 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.' A closely similar observation has been told me by a friend, Mr. George Turner. He found that when he removed a beehive only a yard or two from its accustomed site, the bees, on returning home, flew in swarms around the latter, and for a long time were unable to find the hive. And several other similar cases might be adduced. Lastly, Thompson says:-- It is highly remarkable that they [bees] know their hive more from its locality than from its appearance, for if it be removed during their absence and a similar one be substituted, they enter the strange one. If the position of a hive be changed, the bees for the first day take no distant flight till they have thoroughly scrutinised every object in its neighbourhood.[47] On the other hand, the writer of the article on 'Bees' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' says that in certain parts of France it is the habit of bee-keepers to place a number of hives upon a boat, which, in charge of a man, floats slowly down a river. The bees are thus continuously changing their pasture-ground, and yet do not lose their locomotive hives. It may be here worth while to add, parenthetically, as the only authentic observation with which I am acquainted concerning the distance that bees are accustomed to forage, the following statement of Prof. Hugh Blackburn. Writing from Glasgow University to 'Nature,'[48] he says that bees are found in a certain peach-house every spring at the time of blossom, although, so far as he can ascertain, the beehives nearest to the peach-house in question are his own, and these are at a distance of ten miles. On the whole, then, and in the absence of further experiments, we must conclude it to be probable that the sense of direction with which hymenopterous insects are, as shown by some of Sir John Lubbock's experiments, unquestionably endowed, is of no small use to them in finding their way from home to food and _vice versâ_; although it appears certain, from other of his experiments, that this sense of direction is not in all cases a sufficient guide, and therefore requires to be supplemented by the definite observation of landmarks. But the most conclusive evidence on this latter point is afforded by a highly interesting observation of Mr. Bates on the sand-wasps at Santurem, which may here be suitably introduced, as the insects are not distantly allied. He describes these animals as always taking a few turns in the air round the hole they had made in the sand before leaving to seek for flies in the forest, apparently in order to mark well the position of the burrow, so that on their return they might find it without difficulty. This observation has been since confirmed in a striking manner by Mr. Belt, who found that the sand-wasp takes the most precise bearings of an object the position of which she desires to remember. This observation is so interesting that it deserves to be rendered _in extenso_:-- A specimen of _Polistes carnifex_ (_i.e._ the sand-wasp noticed by Mr. Bates) was hunting about for caterpillars in my garden. I found one about an inch long, and held it out towards it on the point of a stick. It seized it immediately, and commenced biting it from head to tail, soon reducing the soft body to a mass of pulp. It rolled up about one-half of it into a ball, and prepared to carry it off. Being at the time amidst a thick mass of a fine-leaved climbing plant, it proceeded, before flying away, to take note of the place where it was leaving the other half. To do this, it hovered in front of it for a few seconds, then took small circles in front of it, then larger ones round the whole plant. I thought it had gone, but it returned again, and had another look at the opening in the dense foliage down which the other half of the caterpillar lay. It then flew away, but must have left its burden for distribution with its comrades at the nest, for it returned in less than two minutes, and making one circle around the bush, descended to the opening, alighted on a leaf, and ran inside. The green remnant of the caterpillar was lying on another leaf inside, but not connected with the one on which the wasp alighted, so that in running in it missed it, and soon got hopelessly lost in the thick foliage. Coming out again, it took another circle, and pounced down on the same spot again, as soon as it came opposite to it. Three small seed-pods, which here grew close together, formed the marks that I had myself taken to note the place, and these the wasp seemed also to have taken as its guide, for it flew directly down to them, and ran inside; but the small leaf on which the fragment of caterpillar lay not being directly connected with any on the outside, it again missed it, and again got far away from the object of its search. It then flew out again, and the same process was repeated again and again. Always when in circling round it came in sight of the seed-pods down it pounced, alighted near them, and recommenced its quest on foot. I was surprised at its perseverance, and thought it would have given up the search; but not so, it returned at least half-a-dozen times, and seemed to get angry, hurrying about with buzzing wings. At last it stumbled across its prey, seized it eagerly, and as there was nothing more to come back for, flew straight off to its nest, without taking any further note of the locality. Such an action is not the result of blind instinct, but of a thinking mind; and it is wonderful to see an insect so differently constructed using a mental process similar to that of man. _Memory._ We may here first allude to an observation of Sir John Lubbock already quoted in another connexion (see p. 147). It is here evident that the wasp, after finding the store of honey in the room, and after finding the window closed in the 'wasp-line' direction to its nest, required three repeated _lessons_ from Sir John before she _learnt_ that the window on the other side of the room, and away from the direction of her nest, afforded no obstacle to her exit. Having learnt this, the fourth time she came she again flew to the closed window as before, and then, as if but dimly remembering that there was another opening somewhere that offered no such mysterious resistance to her passage, 'she took two or three turns round the room, and then flew out through the open window.' Having now taken the bearings of all the room upon her own wings, and having again found the difference between the two windows in respect of resistance, although in all other respects so much alike, the next time she came she made in the first instance as it were an experimental flight towards the closed window, but clearly had the alternative of going to the open one in her memory; for on finding the window closed as before, she did not alight, but flew straight from the closed to the open window. The same thing happened once again, but now, with the distinction between the two windows thus fully learnt, and with it the perception that in this case 'the shortest cut was the longest way round,' she never again flew to the closed window; in the forty successive visits which she paid through the remainder of that day, and the hundred visits or so which she made during the two following days, she seems to have uniformly flown to the open window. As evidence of _forgetfulness_, it will be enough to refer to the case of another wasp which, under precisely similar circumstances to those just detailed, learnt her way out of the open window one day, having made fifty passages through it in five hours. Yet Sir John remarks,-- It struck me as curious that on the following day this wasp seemed by no means so sure of her way, but over and over again went to the closed window. It is further of interest to note, as showing the similarity of the memory displayed by these insects with that of the higher animals, that there are considerable individual differences to be found in the degree of its manifestation. In this respect they certainly differ considerably. Some of the bees which came out of the little postern door (already described) were able to find their way back after it had been shown to them a few times. Others were much more stupid; thus one bee came out on the 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th, and came to the honey; but though I repeatedly put her back through the postern, she was never able to find her way for herself. I often found that if bees which were brought to honey did not return at once, still they would do so a day or two afterwards. For instance, on July 11, 1874, a hot thundery day, and when the bees were much out of humour, I brought twelve bees to some honey; only one came back, and that one only twice; but on the following day several of them returned. This latter observation is important, as proving that bees can remember for at least a whole day the locality where they have found honey only once before, and that they so far think about their past experiences as to return to that locality when foraging. As the association of ideas by contiguity is the principle which forms the basis of all psychology, it is desirable to consider still more attentively this the earliest manifestation that we have of it in the memory of the Hymenoptera. That it is not exercised with exclusive reference to _locality_ is proved by the following observation of Sir John Lubbock:-- I kept a specimen of _Polistes Gallica_ for no less than nine months.[49] . . . I had no difficulty in inducing her to feed on my hand; but at first she was shy and nervous. She kept her sting in constant readiness. . . . Gradually she became quite used to me, and when I took her on my hand apparently expected to be fed. She even allowed me to stroke her without any appearance of fear, and for some months I never saw her sting. One other observation which goes to prove that other things besides locality are noted and remembered by bees may here be quoted. Sir John placed a bee in a bell jar, the closed end of which he held towards a window. The bee buzzed about at that end trying to make for the open air. He then showed her the way out of the open end of the jar, and after having thus learnt it, she was able to find the way out herself. This seems to show that the bee, like the wasp on the closed window-pane, was able to appreciate and to remember the difference between the quality of glass as resisting and air as permeable, although to her sense of vision the difference must have been very slight. In other words, the bee must have remembered that by first flying _away_ from the window, round the edge of the jar, and then _towards_ the window, she could surmount the transparent obstacle; and this implies a somewhat different act of memory from that of associating a particular object--such as honey--with a particular locality. It is noteworthy that a fly under similar circumstances did not require to be taught to find its way out of the jar, but spontaneously found its own way out. This, however, may be explained by the fact that flies do not always direct their flight towards windows, and therefore the escape of this one was probably not due to any act of intelligence. While upon the subject of memory in the Hymenoptera, it is indispensable that we should again refer to the observation of Messrs. Belt and Bates already alluded to on pages 150-51. For it is from that observation rendered evident that these sand-wasps took definite pains, as it were, to _teach themselves_ the localities to which they desired to return. Mr. Bates further observed that after thus taking a careful mental note of the place, they would return to it without a moment's hesitation after an absence of an hour. The observation of Mr. Belt, already quoted _in extenso_, proves that these mental notes may be taken with the utmost minuteness, so that even in the most intricate places the insect, on its return, is perfectly confident that it has not made a mistake. With regard to the duration of memory, Stickney relates a case in which some bees took possession of a hollow place beneath a roof, and having been then removed into a hive, continued for several years to return and occupy the same hole with their successive swarms.[50] Similarly Huber relates an observation of his own showing the duration of memory in bees. One autumn he put some honey in a window, which the bees visited in large numbers. During the winter the honey was taken away and the shutters shut. When they were again opened in the spring the bees returned, although there was no honey in the window. These two cases amply prove that the memory of bees is comparable with that of ants, which, as we have seen from analogous facts, also extends at least over a period of many months. _Emotions._ Sir John Lubbock's experiments on this head go to show that the social sympathies of bees are even less developed than he found them to be in certain species of ants. Thus he says:-- I have already mentioned with reference to the attachment which bees have been said to show for one another, that though I have repeatedly seen them lick a bee which had smeared herself in honey, I never observed them show the slightest attention to any of their comrades who had been drowned in water. Far, indeed, from having been able to discover any evidence of affection among them, they appear to be thoroughly callous and utterly indifferent to one another. As already mentioned, it was necessary for me occasionally to kill a bee; but I never found that the others took the slightest notice. Thus on the 11th of October I crushed a bee close to one which was feeding--in fact, so close that their wings touched; yet the survivor took no notice whatever of the death of her sister, but went on feeding with every appearance of composure and enjoyment, just as if nothing had happened. When the pressure was removed, she remained by the side of the corpse without the slightest appearance of apprehension, sorrow, or recognition. It was, of course, impossible for her to understand my reason for killing her companion; yet neither did she feel the slightest emotion at her sister's death, nor did she show any alarm lest the same fate should befall her also. In a second case exactly the same occurred. Again, I have several times, while a bee has been feeding, held a second bee by the leg close to her; the prisoner, of course, struggled to escape, and buzzed as loudly as she could; yet the selfish eater took no notice whatever. So far, therefore, from being at all affectionate, I doubt whether bees are in the least fond of one another. Réaumur, however ('Insects,' vol. v., p. 265), narrates a case in which a hive-bee was partly drowned and so rendered insensible; the others in the hive carefully licked and otherwise tended her till she recovered. This seems to show that bees, like ants, are more apt to have their sympathies aroused by the sight of ailing or injured companions than by that of healthy companions in distress; but Sir John Lubbock's observations above quoted go to prove that even in this case display of sympathy is certainly not the rule. _Powers of Communication._ Huber says that when one wasp finds a store of honey 'it returns to its nest, and brings off in a short time a hundred other wasps;' and this statement is confirmed by Dujardin, who witnessed a somewhat similar performance in the case of bees--the individual which first found a concealed store informing other individuals of the fact, and so on till numberless individuals had found it. Although the systematic experiments of Sir John Lubbock have not tended to confirm these observations with regard to bees and wasps, we must not too readily allow his negative results to discredit these positive observations--more especially as we have seen that his _later_ experiments have fully confirmed the opinion of these previous authors with respect to ants. His experiments on bees and wasps consisted in exposing honey in a hidden situation, marking a bee or wasp that came to it, and observing whether it afterwards brought any companions to share the booty. He found that although the same insect would return over and over again, strangers came so rarely that their visits could only be attributed to accidental and independent discovery. Only if the honey were in an exposed situation, where the insects could _see_ one another feeding, would one follow the other to the food. But we have the more reason not to accept unreservedly the conclusion to which these experiments in themselves might lead, because the very able observer F. Müller states an observation of his own which must be considered as alone sufficient to prove that bees are able to communicate information to one another:-- Once (he says[51]) I assisted at a curious contest, which took place between the queen and the other bees in one of my hives, which throws some light on the intellectual faculties of these animals. A set of forty-seven cells have been filled, eight on a newly completed comb, thirty-five on the following, and four around the first cell of a new comb. When the queen had laid eggs in all the cells of the two older combs she went several times round their circumference (as she always does, in order to ascertain whether she has not forgotten any cell), and then prepared to retreat into the lower part of the breeding-room. But as she had overlooked the four cells of the new comb, the workers ran impatiently from this part to the queen, pushing her, in an odd manner, with their heads, as they did also other workers they met with. In consequence the queen began again to go around on the two older combs; but as she did not find any cell wanting an egg she tried to descend, but everywhere she was pushed back by the workers. This contest lasted for a rather long while, till the queen escaped without having completed her work. Thus the workers knew how to advise the queen that something was as yet to be done, but they knew not how to show her _where_ it had to be done. Again, Mr. Josiah Emery, writing to 'Nature,'[52] with reference to Sir John Lubbock's experiments, says that the faculty of communication which bees possess is so well and generally known to the 'bee-hunters' of America, that the recognised method of finding a bees' nest is to act upon the faculty in question:-- Going to a field or wood at a distance from tame bees, with their box of honey they gather up from the flowers and imprison one or more bees, and after they have become sufficiently gorged, let them out to return to their home with their easily gotten load. Waiting patiently a longer or shorter time, according to the distance of the bee-tree, the hunter scarcely ever fails to see the bee or bees return accompanied with other bees, which are in like manner imprisoned till they in turn are filled, when one or more are let out at places distant from each other, and the direction in each case in which the bee flies noted, and thus, by a kind of triangulation, the position of the bee-tree proximately ascertained. Those who have stored honey in their houses understand very well how important it is to prevent a single bee from discovering its location. Such discovery is sure to be followed by a general onslaught from the hive unless all means of access is prevented. It is possible that our American are more intelligent than European bees, but hardly probable; and I certainly shall not ask an Englishman to admit it. Those in America who are in the habit of playing first, second, and third fiddle to instinct will probably attribute this seeming intelligence to that principle. According to De Fravière, bees have a number of different notes or tones which they emit from the stigmata of the thorax and abdomen, and by which they communicate information. He says:-- As soon as a bee arrives with important news, it is at once surrounded, emits two or three shrill notes, and taps a comrade with its long, flexible, and very slender feelers, or antennæ. The friend passes on the news in similar fashion, and the intelligence soon traverses the whole hive. If it is of an agreeable kind--if, for instance, it concerns the discovery of a store of sugar or of honey, or of a flowering meadow--all remains orderly. But, on the other hand, great excitement arises if the news presages some threatened danger, or if strange animals are threatening invasion of the hive. It seems that such intelligence is conveyed first to the queen, as the most important person in the state. This account, which is quoted from Büchner, no doubt bears indications of imaginative colouring; but if the observation as to the emission of sounds is correct--and, as we shall see, this point is well confirmed by other observers--it is most likely concerned in communicating by tone a general idea of good or harm: probably in the former case it acts as a sign, 'follow me;' and in the latter as a signal of danger. Büchner further says that, according to Landois, if a saucer of honey is placed before a hive, a few bees come out, which emit a cry of tut, tut, tut. This note is rather shrill, and resembles the cry of an attacked bee. Hereupon a large number of bees come out of the hive to collect the offered honey. Again,-- The best way to observe the power of communication possessed by bees by means of their interchange of touches, is to take away the queen from a hive. In a little time, about an hour afterwards, the sad event will be noticed by a small part of the community, and these will stop working and run hastily about over the comb. But this only concerns part of the hive, and the side of a single comb. The excited bees, however, soon leave the little circle in which they at first revolved, and when they meet their comrades they cross their antennæ and lightly touch the others with them. The bees which have received some impression from this touch now become uneasy in their turn, and convey their uneasiness and distress in the same way to the other parts of the dwelling. The disorder increases rapidly, spreads to the other side of the comb, and at last to all the people. Then arises the general confusion before described. Huber tested this communication by the antennæ by a striking experiment. He divided a hive into two quite separate parts by a partition wall, whereupon great excitement arose in the division in which there was no queen, and this was only quieted when some workers began to build royal cells. He then divided a hive in similar fashion by a trellis, through which the bees could pass their feelers. In this case all remained quiet, and no attempt was made to build royal cells: the queen could also be clearly seen crossing her antennæ with the workers on the other side of the trellis. Apparently the feelers are also connected with the exceedingly fine scent of the bees, which enables them, wonderful as it may seem, to distinguish friend and foe, and to recognise the members of their own hive among the thousands and thousands of bees swarming around, and to drive back from the entrance stranger or robber bees. The bee-masters, therefore, when they want two separate colonies or the members of them to unite in one hive, sprinkle water over the bees, or stupefy them with some fumigating substance, so as to make them to a certain extent insensible to smell, in order to attain their object. It is always possible to unite colonies by making the bees smell of some strong-smelling stuff, such as musk.[53] Lastly, under the present heading I shall quote one other observation, for which I am also indebted to Büchner's very admirable collection of facts relating to the psychology of Hymenoptera:-- Herr L. Brofft relates, in 'der Zoologische Garten' (XVIII. Year, No. 1, p. 67), that a poor and a rich hive stood next each other on his father's bee stand, and the latter suddenly lost its queen. Before the owner had come to a decision thereupon the bees of the two hives came to a mutual understanding as to the condition of their two states. The dwellers in the queenless hive, with their stores of provisions, went over into the less populous or poorer hive, after they had assured themselves, by many influential deputations, as to the state of the interior of the poor hive, and, as appeared, especially as to the presence of an egg-laying queen! _General Habits._ The active life of bees is divided between collecting food and rearing young. We shall therefore consider these two functions separately. The food collected consists of two kinds, honey (which, although stored in the 'crop' for the purpose of carriage from the flowers to the cells, appears to be but the condensed nectar of flowers) and so-called 'bee-bread.' This consists of the pollen of flowers, which is worked into a kind of paste by the bees and stored in their cells till it is required to serve as food for their larvæ. It is then partly digested by the nurses with honey, so that a sort of chyle is formed. It is observable that in each flight the 'carrier bees' collect only one kind of pollen, so that it is possible for the 'house bees' (which, by the way, are the younger bees left at home to discharge domestic duties with only a small proportion of older ones, left probably to direct the more inexperienced young) to sort it for storage in different cells. In the result there are several different kinds of bee-bread, some being more stimulating or nutritious than others. The most nutritious has the effect, when given to any female larva, of developing that larva into a queen or fertile female. This fact is well known to the bees, who only feed a small number of larvæ in this manner, and the larvæ which they select so to feed they place in larger or 'royal' cells, with an obvious foreknowledge of the increased dimensions to which the animal will grow under the influence of this food. Only one queen is required for a single hive; but the bees always raise several, so that if any mishap should occur to one, other larvæ may be ready to fall back upon. Besides honey and bee-bread two other substances are found in beehives. These are propolis and beeswax. The former is a kind of sticky resin collected for the most part from coniferous trees. This is used as mortar in building, &c. It adheres so strongly to the legs of the bee which has gathered it, that it can only be detached by the help of comrades. For this purpose the loaded bee presents her legs to her fellow-workers, who clean it off with their jaws, and while it is still ductile, apply it round the inside of the hive. According to Huber, who made this observation, the propolis is applied also to the insides of the cells. The workers first planed the surfaces with their mandibles, and one of them then pulled out a thread of propolis from the heap deposited by the carrier bees, severed it by a sudden throwing back of the head, and returned with it to the cell which it had previously been planing. It then laid the thread between the two walls which it had planed; but, proving too long, a portion of the thread was bitten off. The properly measured portion was then forced into the angle of the cell by the fore-feet and mandibles. The thread, now converted into a narrow ribbon, was next found to be too broad. It was therefore gnawed down to the proper width. Other bees then completed the work which this one had begun, till all the walls of the cells were framed with bands of propolis. The object of the propolis here seems to be that of giving strength to the cells. The wax is a secretion which proceeds from between the segments of the abdomen. Having ingested a large meal of honey, the bees hang in a thick cluster from the top of their hive in order to secrete the wax. When it begins to exude, the bees, assisted by their companions, rub it off into heaps, and when a sufficient quantity of the material has been thus collected, the work begins of building the cells. As the cells are used both for storing food and rearing young, I shall consider them later on. Now we have to pass to the labours incidental to propagation. All the eggs are laid by one queen, who requires during this season a large amount of nourishment, so much, indeed, that ten or twelve working bees (_i.e._ sterile females) are set apart as her feeders. Leaving the 'royal cell,' she walks over the nursery-combs attended by a retinue of workers, and drops a single egg into each open cell. It is a highly remarkable fact that the queen is able to control the sex of the eggs which she lays, and only deposits drone or male eggs in the drone cells, and worker or female eggs in the worker cells--the cells prepared for the reception of drone larvæ being larger than those required for the worker larvæ. Young queens lay more worker eggs than old queens, and when a queen, from increasing age or any other cause, lays too large a proportion of drone eggs, she is expelled from the community or put to death. It is remarkable, also, under these circumstances, that the queen herself seems to know that she has become useless, for she loses her propensity to attack other queens, and so does not run the risk of making the hive virtually queenless. There is now no doubt at all that the determining cause of an egg turning out male or female is that which Dzierzon has shown, namely, the absence or presence of fertilisation--unfertilised eggs always developing into males, and fertilised ones into females. The manner, therefore, in which a queen controls the sex of her eggs must depend on some power that she has of controlling their fertilisation. The eggs hatch out into larvæ, which require constant attention from the workers, who feed them with the chyle or bee-bread already mentioned. In three weeks from the time that the egg is deposited, the white worm-like larva has passed through its last metamorphosis. When it has emancipated itself its nurses assemble round it to wash and caress it, as well as to supply it with food. They then clean out the cell which it has left. When so large a number of the larvæ hatch out as to overcrowd the hive, it is the function of the queen to lead forth a swarm. Meanwhile several larval queens have been in course of development, and matters are so arranged by the foresight of the bees, that one or more young queens are ready to emerge at a time when otherwise the hive would be left queenless. But the young queen or queens, although perfectly formed, must not escape from their royal prison-houses until the swarm has fairly taken place; the worker bees will even strengthen the coverings of these prison-houses if, owing to bad weather or other causes, swarming is delayed. The prisoner queens, which are fed through a small hole in the roof of their cells, now continually give vent to a plaintive cry, called by the bee-keepers 'piping,' and this is answered by the mother queen. The tones of the piping vary. The reason why the young queens are kept such close prisoners till after the departure of the mother queen with her swarm, is simply that the mother queen would destroy all the younger ones, could she get the chance, by stinging them. The workers, therefore, never allow the old queen to approach the prisons of the younger ones. They establish a guard all round these prisons or royal cells, and beat off the old queen whenever she endeavours to approach. But if the swarming season is over, or anything should prevent a further swarm from being sent out, the worker bees offer no further resistance to the jealousy of the mother queen, but allow her in cold blood to sting to death all the young queens in their nursery prisons. As soon as the old queen leaves with a swarm, the young queens are liberated in succession, but at intervals of a few days; for if they were all liberated at once they would fall upon and destroy one another. Each young queen as it is liberated goes off with another swarm, and those which remain unliberated are as carefully guarded from the liberated sister queen as they were previously guarded from the mother queen. When the season is too late for swarming the remaining young queens are liberated simultaneously, and are then allowed to fight to the death, the survivor being received as sovereign. The bees, far from seeking to prevent these battles, appear to excite the combatants against each other, surrounding and bringing them back to the charge when they are disposed to recede from each other; and when either of the queens shows a disposition to approach her antagonist, all the bees forming the cluster instantly give way to allow her full liberty of attack. The first use which the conquering queen makes of her victory is to secure herself against fresh dangers by destroying all her future rivals in the royal cells; while the other bees, which are spectators of the carnage, share in the spoil, greedily devouring any food which may be found at the bottom of the cells, and even sucking the fluid from the abdomen of the pupæ before they toss out the carcasses.[54] Similarly, when a strange queen is put into a hive already provided with a queen-- A circle of bees instinctively crowd around the invader, not, however, to attack her--for a worker never assaults a queen--but to respectfully prevent her escape, in order that a combat may take place between her and their reigning monarch. The lawful possessor then advances towards the part of the comb where the invader has established herself, the attendant workers clear a space for the encounter, and, without interfering, wait the result. A fearful encounter then ensues, in which one is stung to death, the survivor mounting the throne. Although the workers of a _de facto_ monarch will not fight for her defence, yet, if they perceive a strange queen _attempting_ to enter the hive, they will surround her, and hold her until she is starved to death; but such is their respect for royalty that they never attempt to sting her.[55] All these facts display a wonderful amount of apparently sagacious purpose on the part of the workers, although they may not seem to reflect much credit on the intelligence of the queens. But in this connection we must remember the observation of F. Huber, who saw two queens, which were the only ones left in the hive, engaged in mortal combat; and when an opportunity arose for each to sting the other simultaneously, they simultaneously released each other's grasp, as if in horror of a situation that might have ended in leaving the hive queenless. This, then, is the calamity to avert which all the instincts both of workers and queens are directed. And that these instincts are controlled by intelligence is suggested, if not proved, by the adaptations which they show to special circumstances. Thus, for instance, F. Huber smoked a hive so that the queen and older bees effected their escape, and took up their quarters a short distance away. The bees which remained behind set about constructing three royal cells for the purpose of rearing a new queen. Huber now carried back the old queen and ensconced her in the hive. Immediately the bees set about carrying away all the food from the royal cells, in order to prevent the larvæ contained therein from developing into queens. Again, if a strange queen is presented to a hive already provided with one, the workers do not wait for their own queen to destroy the pretender, but themselves sting or smother her to death. When, on the other hand, a queen is presented to a hive which is without one, the bees adopt her, although it is often necessary for the bee-master to protect her for a day or two in a trellis cage, until her subjects have become acquainted with her. When a hive is queenless, the bees stop all work, become restless, and make a dull complaining noise. This, however, is only the case if there is likewise a total absence of royal pupæ, and of ordinary pupæ under three days of age--_i.e._ the age during which it is possible to rear an ordinary larva into a queen. As soon as the queen has been fertilised, and the services of the drones therefore no longer required, the worker bees fall upon their unfortunate and defenceless brothers to kill them, either by direct stinging or by throwing them out of the hive to perish in the cold. The drones' cells are then torn down, and any remaining drone eggs or pupæ destroyed. Generally all the drones--which may number more than a thousand--are slaughtered in the course of a single day. Evidently the object of this massacre is that of getting rid of useless mouths; but there is a more difficult question as to why these useless mouths ever came into existence. It has been suggested that the enormous disproportion between the present number of males and the single fertile female refers to a time before the social instincts became so complex or consolidated, and when, therefore, bees lived in lesser communities. Probably this is the explanation, although I think we might still have expected that before this period in their evolution had arrived bees might have developed a compensating instinct, either not to allow the queen to lay so many drone eggs, or else to massacre the drones while still in the larval state. But here we must remember that among the wasps the males do work (chiefly domestic work, for which they are fed by their foraging sisters); so it is possible that in the hive-bee the drones were originally useful members of the community, and that they have lost their primitively useful instincts. But whatever the explanation, it is very curious that here, among the animals which are justly regarded as exhibiting the highest perfection of instinct, we meet with perhaps the most flagrant instance in the animal kingdom of instinct unperfected. It is the more remarkable that the drone-killing instinct should not have been better developed in the direction of killing the drones at the most profitable time--namely, in their larval or oval state--from the fact that in many respects it seems to have been advanced to a high degree of discriminative refinement. Thus, to quote Büchner,-- That the massacre of the drones is not performed entirely from an instinctive impulse, but in full consciousness of the object to be gained, is proved by the circumstance that it is carried out the more completely and mercilessly the more fertile the queen shows herself to be. But in cases where this fertility is subject to serious doubt, or when the queen has been fertilised too late or not at all, and therefore only lays drones' eggs, or when the queen is barren, and new queens, to be fertilised later, have to be brought up from working-bee larvæ, then all or some of the drones are left alive, in the clear prevision that their services will be required later. . . . This wise calculation of consequences is further exemplified in that sometimes the massacre of the drones takes place before the time for swarming, as, for instance, when long-continued unfavourable weather succeeds a favourable beginning of spring, and makes the bees anxious for their own welfare. If, however, the weather breaks, and work again becomes possible, so that the bees take courage anew, they then bring up new drones, and prepare them in time for the swarming. This killing of drones is distinguished from the regular drone massacre by the fact that the bees then only kill the developed drones, and leave the drone larvæ, save when absolute hunger compels their destruction. Not less can it be regarded as a prudent calculation of circumstances when the bees of a hive, brought from our temperate climate to a more southern country, where the time of collecting lasts longer, do not kill the drones in August, as usual, but at a later period, suitable to the new conditions. But the philosophy of drone-killing is, I think, even more difficult in the case of the wasps than in that of the bees. For, unlike the bees, whose communities live from year to year, the wasps all perish at the end of autumn, with the exception of a very few fertilised females. As this season of universal calamity approaches, the workers destroy all the larval grubs--a proceeding which, in the opinion of some writers, strikingly exemplifies the beneficence of the Deity! Now, it does not appear to me easy to understand how the presence of such an instinct in this case is to be explained. For, on the one hand, the individual females which are destined to live through the winter cannot be conspicuously benefited by this slaughter of grubs; and, on the other hand, the rest of the community is so soon about to perish, that one fails to see of what advantage it can be to it to get rid of the grubs. If the whole human race, with the exception of a few women, were to perish periodically once in a thousand years, the race would profit nothing by destroying, a few months before the end of each millennium, all sick persons, lunatics, and other 'useless mouths.' I have not seen this difficulty with regard to the massacring instinct in wasps mentioned before, and I only mention it now in order to draw attention to the fact that there seems to be a more puzzling problem presented here than in the case of the analogous instinct as exhibited by bees. The only solution which has suggested itself to my mind is the possibility that in earlier times, or in other climates, wasps may have resembled bees in living through the winter, and that the grub-slaying instinct is in them a survival of one which was then, as in the case of the bees now, a clearly beneficial instinct. For some days before swarming begins, there is a great excitement and buzzing in the hive, the temperature of which rises from 92° to 104°. Scouts having been previously sent out to explore for suitable quarters wherein to plant the new colony, these now act as guides. The swarm leaves the hive with their queen. The bees which remain behind busy themselves in rearing out the pupæ, which soon arriving at maturity, also quit the hive in successive swarms. According to Büchner, 'secondary swarms with young queens send out no scouts, but fly at random through the air. They clearly lack the experience and prudence of the older bees.' And, regarding the behaviour of the scouts sent out by primary swarms, this author says:-- M. de Fravière had the opportunity of observing the manner in which such an examination is carried on, and with what prudence and accuracy. He placed an empty beehive, made in a new style, in front of his house, so that he could exactly watch from his own window what went on inside and out without disturbance to himself or to the bees. A single bee came and examined the building, flying all round it and touching it. It then let itself down on the board, and walked carefully and thoroughly over the interior, touching it continually with its antennæ so as to subject it on all sides to a thorough investigation. The result of its examination must have been satisfactory, for after it had gone away it returned accompanied by a crowd of some fifty friends, which now together went through the same process as their guide. This new trial must also have had a good result, for soon a whole swarm came, evidently from a distant spot, and took possession. Still more remarkable is the behaviour of the scouts when they take possession of a satisfactory hive or box for an imminent or approaching swarm. Although it is not yet inhabited they regard it as their property, watch it and guard it against stranger bees or other assailants, and busy themselves earnestly in the most careful cleansing of it, so far as this cleansing is impossible to the setter up of the hive. Such a taking possession sometimes occurs eight days before the entrance of the swarm. _Wars._--As with ants, so with bees, the great cause of war is plunder; and facts now well substantiated by numberless observers concerning 'robber-bees' indicate a large measure of intelligence. These aim at lessening their labour in collecting honey by plundering the store of other hives. The robberies may be conducted singly or in concert. When the thieving propensity is developed only in individual cases, the thieves cannot rely on force in plundering a foreign state, and so resort to cautious stealth. 'They show by their whole behaviour--creeping into the hive with careful vigilance--that they are perfectly conscious of their bad conduct; whereas the workers belonging to the hive fly in quickly and openly, and in full consciousness of their right.' If such solitary burglars are successful in obtaining plunder, their bad example leads other members of their own community to imitate them; thus it is that the whole bee-nation may develop marauding habits, and when they do this they act in concert to rob by force. In this case an army of bees precipitates itself upon the foreign hive, a battle ensues, and if successful in overcoming resistance, the invaders first of all search out the queen-bee and put her to death, whereby they disorganise their enemies and plunder the hive with ease. It is observed that when this policy is once successful, the spirit of aggrandisement is encouraged, so that the robber-bees 'find more pleasure in robbery than in their own work, and become at last formidable robber-states.' When an invaded hive is fairly overcome by the invaders killing the queen, the owners of the hive, finding that all is lost, not only abandon further resistance, but very often reverse their policy and join the ranks of their conquerors. They assist in the tearing down of their cells, and in the conveyance of the honey to the hive of their invaders. 'When the assailed hive is emptied, the next ones are attacked, and if no effective resistance is offered, are robbed in similar fashion, so that in this way a whole bee-stand may be gradually destroyed.' Siebold observed the same facts in the case of wasps (_Polistes gallica_). If, however, the battle turns in favour of the defenders, they pursue the flying legions of their enemies to a distance from their home. It sometimes happens that the plundered hive offers no resistance at all, owing to the robbers having visited the same flowers as the robbed, and so probably (having much the same smell) not being recognised as belonging to a different community. The thieves, when they find such to be the case, may become so bold as to stop the bees that are returning to the hive with their loads, of which they deprive them at the entrance of the hive. This is done by a process which one observer, Weygandt,[56] calls 'milking,' and it seems that the milking bee attains the double advantage of securing the honey from the milked one and disarming suspicion of the other bees by contracting its smell and entering the hive loaded, into which it is admitted without opposition to continue its plunder. Sometimes robber-bees attack their victims in the fields at a distance from the hives. This sort of highway robbery is generally conducted by a gang of four or five robber-bees which set upon a single honest bee, 'hold him by the legs, and pinch him until he unfolds his tongue, which is sucked in succession by his assailants, who then suffer him to depart in peace.' It is strange that hive-bees of dishonest temperaments seem able to coax or wheedle humble-bees into the voluntary yielding of honey. 'Humble-bees have been known to permit hive-bees to take the whole honey that they have collected, and to go on gathering more, and handing it over, for three weeks, although they refuse to part with it, or seek refuge in flight, when wasps make similar overtures.'[57] Besides theft and plunder, there are other causes of warfare among bees, which, however, are only apparent in their effects. Thus, for some undiscernible reason, duels are not infrequent, which generally end in the death of one or both combatants. At other times, equally without apparent reason, civil war breaks out in a hive, which is sometimes attended with much slaughter. _Architecture._--Coming now to the construction of the cells and combs, there is no doubt that here we meet with the most astonishing products of instinct that are presented in the animal kingdom. A great deal has been written on the practical exhibition of high mathematical principles which bees display in constructing their combs in the form that secures the utmost capacity for storage of honey with the smallest expenditure of building material. The shortest and clearest statement of the subject that I have met with is the following, which has been given by Dr. Reid:-- There are only three possible figures of the cells which can make them all equal and similar, without any useless interstices. These are the equilateral triangle, the square, and the regular hexagon. Mathematicians know that there is not a fourth way possible in which a plane may be cut into little spaces that shall be equal, similar, and regular, without useless spaces. Of the three figures, the hexagon is the most proper for convenience and strength. Bees, as if they knew this, make their cells regular hexagons. Again, it has been demonstrated that, by making the bottoms of the cells to consist of three planes meeting in a point, there is a saving of material and labour in no way inconsiderable. The bees, as if acquainted with these principles of solid geometry, follow them most accurately. It is a curious mathematical problem, at what precise angle the three planes which compose the bottom of a cell ought to meet, in order to make the greatest possible saving, or the least expense of material and labour. This is one of the problems which belong to the higher parts of mathematics. It has accordingly been resolved by some mathematicians, particularly by the ingenious Maclaurin, by a fluctionary calculation, which is to be found in the Transactions of the Royal Society of London. He has determined precisely the angle required, and he found, by the most exact mensuration the subject would admit, that it is the very angle in which the three planes in the bottom of the cell of a honeycomb do actually meet.[58] Marvellous as these facts undoubtedly are, they may now be regarded as having been satisfactorily explained. Long ago Buffon sought to account for the hexagonal form of the cells by an hypothesis of mutual pressure. Supposing the bees to have a tendency to build tubular cells, if a greater number of bees were to build in a given space than could admit of all the parallel tubes being completed, tubes with flat sides and sharp angles might result, and if the mutual pressure were exactly equal in all directions, these sides and angles would assume the form of hexagons. This hypothesis of Buffon was sustained by such physical analogies as the blowing of a crowd of soap-bubbles in a cup, the swelling of moistened peas in a confined space, &c. The hypothesis, however, as thus presented was clearly inadequate; for no reason is assigned why the mutual pressure, even if conceded to exist, should always be so exactly equal in all directions as to convert all the cylinders into perfect hexagons--even the analogy of the soap-bubbles and the moistened peas failing, as pointed out by Brougham and others, to sustain it, seeing that as a matter of fact bubbles and peas under circumstances of mutual pressure do not assume the form of hexagons, but, on the contrary, forms which are conspicuously irregular. Moreover, the hypothesis fails to account for the particular prismatic shape presented by the cell base. Therefore it is not surprising that this hypothesis should have gained but small acceptance. Kirby and Spence dispose of it thus:--'He (Buffon) gravely tells us that the boasted hexagonal cells of the bee are produced by the reciprocal pressure of the cylindrical bodies of these insects against each other!!'[59] The double note of admiration here may be taken to express the feelings with which this hypothesis of Buffon was regarded by all the more sober-minded naturalists. Yet it turns out to have been not very wide of the mark. As is often the case with the gropings of a great mind, the idea contains the true principle of the explanation, although it fails as an explanation from not being in a position to take sufficient cognizance of all the facts. Safer it is for lesser minds to restrain their notes of exclamation while considering the theories of a greater; however crude or absurd the latter may appear, the place of their birth renders it not impossible that some day they may prove to have been prophetic of truth revealed by fuller knowledge. Usually in such cases the final explanation is eventually reached by the working of a yet greater mind, and in this case the undivided credit of solving the problem is to be assigned to the genius of Darwin. Mr. Waterhouse pointed out 'that the form of the cell stands in close relation to the presence of adjoining cells.' Starting from this fact, Mr. Darwin says,-- Let us look to the great principle of gradation, and see whether Nature does not reveal to us her method of work. At one end of a short series we have humble-bees, which use their old cocoons to hold honey, sometimes adding to them short tubes of wax, and likewise making separate and very irregular rounded cells of wax. At the other end of the series we have the cells of the hive-bee, placed in a double layer. . . . In the series between the extreme perfection of the cells of the hive-bee and the simplicity of those of the humble-bee we have the cells of the Mexican _Melipona domestica_, carefully described and figured by Pierre Huber. . . . It forms a nearly regular waxen comb of cylindrical cells, in which the young are hatched, and, in addition, some large cells of wax for holding honey. These latter cells are nearly spherical and of nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an irregular mass. But the important thing to notice is, that these cells are always made at that degree of nearness to each other that they would have intersected or broken into each other if the spheres had been completed; but this is never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat cells of wax between the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence each cell consists of an outer spherical portion; and of two, three, or more flat surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three, or more other cells. When one cell rests on three other cells, which, from the spheres being nearly of the same size, is very frequently and necessarily the case, the three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid; and this pyramid, as Huber has remarked, is manifestly a gross imitation of the three-sided pyramidal base of the cell of the hive-bee. . . . Reflecting on this case, it occurred to me that if the Melipona had made its spheres at some given distance from each other, and had made them of equal sizes, and had arranged them symmetrically in a double layer, the resulting structure would have been as perfect as the comb of the hive-bee. Accordingly I wrote to Prof. Miller of Cambridge, and this geometer has kindly read over the following statement, drawn up from his information, and tells me that it is strictly correct. This statement having fully borne out his theory, Mr. Darwin continues:-- Hence we may safely conclude that, if we could slightly modify the instincts already possessed by the Melipona, and in themselves not very wonderful, this bee would make a structure as wonderfully perfect as that of the hive-bee. We must suppose the Melipona to have the power of forming her cells truly spherical, and of equal sizes; and this would not be very surprising, seeing that she already does so to a certain extent, and seeing what perfectly cylindrical burrows many insects make in wood, apparently by turning round on a fixed point. We must suppose the Melipona to arrange her cells in level layers, as she already does her cylindrical cells; and we must further suppose--and this is the greatest difficulty--that she can somehow judge accurately at what distance to stand from her fellow-labourers when several are making their spheres; but she is already so far able to judge of distance that she always describes her spheres so as to intersect to a certain extent; and then she unites the points of intersection by perfectly flat surfaces. By such modifications of instinct, which in themselves are not very wonderful--hardly more wonderful than those which guide a bird to make its nest,--I believe that the hive-bee has acquired through natural selection her inimitable architectural powers.[60] Mr. Darwin next tested this theory by the experiment of introducing into beehives plates of wax, and observing that the bees worked upon these plates just as the theory required. That is to say, they made their cells by excavating a number of little circular pits at equal distances from one another, so that by the time the pits had acquired the width of an ordinary cell, the sides of the pits intersected. As soon as this occurred the bees ceased to excavate, and instead began to build up flat walls of wax on the lines of intersection. Other experiments with very thin plates of vermilion-coloured wax showed that the bees all worked at about the same rate, and on opposite sides of the plates, so that the common bottoms of any two opposite pits were flat. These flat bottoms 'were situated, as far as the eye could judge, exactly along the planes of imaginary intersection between the basins on the opposite sides of the ridge of wax;' so that if the plate of wax had been thick enough to admit of the opposite basins being deepened (and widened) into cells, the mutual intersection of _adjacent_ as well as _opposite_ bottoms would have given rise, as in the first experiment with the thick plate of wax, to the pyramidal bottoms. Experiments with the vermilion wax also showed, as Huber had previously stated, that a number of individual bees work by turns at the same cell; for by covering parts of growing cells with vermilion wax, Mr. Darwin-- Invariably found that the colour was most delicately diffused by the bees--as delicately as a painter could have done it with his brush--by atoms of the coloured wax having been taken from the spot on which it had been placed, and worked into the growing edges of the cells all round. Such, omitting details, is the substance of Mr. Darwin's theory. In summary he concludes,-- The work of construction seems to be a sort of balance struck between many bees, all instinctively standing at the same relative distance from each other, all trying to sweep equal spheres, and then building up, or leaving ungnawed, the planes of intersection between these spheres. This theory, while serving as a full and simple explanation of all the facts, has, as we have seen, been so fully substantiated by observation and experiment, that it deserves to be regarded as raised to the rank of a completed demonstration. It differs from the theory of Buffon in two important particulars: it embraces all the facts, and supplies a cause adequate to explain them. This cause is natural selection, which converts the random 'pressure' in Buffon's theory into a precisely regulated principle. Random pressure alone could never produce the beautifully symmetrical form of the hexagonal cell with the pyramidal bottom; but it could and must have produced the intersection of cylindrical cells among possibly many extinct species of bees, such as the Melipona. Whenever this intersection occurred in crowded nests, it must clearly have been of great benefit in securing economy of precious wax; for in every case where a flat wall of partition between two adjacent cells did duty instead of a double cylindrical wall of separate cells, there wax should have been saved. Thus we can see how natural selection would have worked towards the developing of an instinct to excavate cells near enough together to produce intersection; and once begun, there is no reason why this instinct should not have been perfected by the same agency, till we meet with its ideal perfection in the hive-bee. For as Mr. Darwin observes,-- With respect to the formation of wax, it is known that bees are often hard pressed to get sufficient nectar; and I am informed by Mr. Tegetmeier that it has been experimentally proved that from twelve to fifteen pounds of dry sugar are consumed by a hive of bees for the secretion of a pound of wax; so that a prodigious quantity of fluid nectar must be collected and consumed by the bees in a hive for the secretion of the wax necessary for the construction of their combs. Moreover, many bees have to remain idle for many days during the process of secretion. . . . Hence it would continually be more and more advantageous to our humble-bees if they were to make their cells more and more regular, nearer together, and aggregated into a mass, like the cells of Melipona; for in this case a large part of the bounding surface of each cell would serve to bound the adjoining cell, and much labour and wax would be saved. Again, from the same cause, it would be advantageous to the Melipona if she were to make her cells closer together, and more regular in every way than at present; for then, as we have seen, the spherical surfaces would wholly disappear and be replaced by plane surfaces; and the Melipona would make a comb as perfect as that of the hive-bee. Beyond this stage of perfection in architecture, natural selection could not lead; for the comb of the hive-bee, as far as we can see, is absolutely perfect in economising labour and wax. The problem, then, as to the origin and perfection of the cell-making instinct appears thus to have been fully and finally solved. I shall now adduce a few facts to show that while the general instinct of building hexagonal cells has doubtless been acquired by natural selection in the way just explained, it is nevertheless an instinct not wholly of a blind or mechanical kind, but is constantly under the control of intelligent purpose. Thus Mr. Darwin observes,-- It was really curious to note in cases of difficulty, as when two pieces of comb met at an angle, how often the bees would pull down and rebuild in different ways the same cell, sometimes recurring to a shape which they had at first rejected.[61] Again, Huber saw a bee building upon the wax which had already been put together by her comrades. But she did not arrange it properly, or in a way to continue the design of her predecessors, so that her building made an undesirable corner with theirs. 'Another bee perceived it, pulled down the bad work before our eyes, and gave it to the first in the requisite order, so that it might exactly follow the original direction.' Similarly, to quote Büchner,-- All the cells have not the same shape, as would be the case if the bees in building worked according to a perfectly instinctive and unchangeable plan. There are very manifold changes and irregularities. Almost in every comb irregular and unfinished cells are to be found, especially where the several divisions of a comb come together. The small architects do not begin their comb from a single centre, but begin building from many different points, so as to progress as rapidly as possible, and so that the greatest number may work simultaneously; they therefore build from above downwards, in the shape of flat truncated cones or hanging pyramids, and these several portions are afterwards united together during the winter budding. At these lines of junction it is impossible to avoid irregular cells between the pressed together or unnaturally lengthened ones. The same is true more or less of the passage cells, which are made to unite the large cells of the so-called drone wax with the smaller ones of the working bees, and which are generally placed in two or three rows. The cells also which they usually build from the combs to the glass walls of their hives, in order to hold them up, show somewhat irregular forms. Finally, in places where special conditions of the situation do not otherwise permit, it may be observed that the bees, far from clinging obstinately to their plan, very well understand how to accommodate themselves to circumstances not only in cell-building, but also in making their combs. F. Huber tried to mislead their instinct, or rather to put to the proof their reason and cleverness in every possible way, but they always emerged triumphant from the ordeal. For instance, he put bees in a hive the floor and roof of which were made of glass, that is of a body which the bees use very unwillingly for the attachment of their combs, on account of its smoothness. Thus the possibility of building as usual from above downwards, and also from below upwards, was taken away from them; they had no point of support save the perpendicular walls of their dwelling. They thereupon built on one of these walls a regular stratum of cells, from which, building sideways, they tried to carry the comb to the opposite side of the hive. To prevent this Huber covered that side also with glass. But what way out of the difficulty was found by the clever insects? Instead of building further in the projected direction, they bent the comb round at the extreme point, and carried it at a right angle towards one of the inner sides of the hive which was not covered with glass, and there fastened it. The form and dimensions of the cells must necessarily have been altered thereby, and the arrangement of their work at the angle must have been quite different from the usual. They made the cells of the convex side so much broader than those of the concave that they had a diameter two or three times as great, and yet they managed to join them properly with the others. They also did not wait to bend the comb until they came to the glass itself, but recognised the difficulty beforehand,[62] which had been interposed by Huber while they were building with a view to overcome the first difficulty. _Special Habits._ _The Mason-Bee._--This insect closes the roof of its larval cell with a kind of mortar, which sets as hard as stone. A little hole, closed only with soft mud, is, however, left in one part of the roof as a door of exit for the matured insect. It is said that when a mason-bee finds an old and deserted nest, it saves itself the trouble of making a new one--utilising the ready-made nest after having well cleaned it. In Algiers the mason-bees have been observed in this way to utilise empty snail-shells. According to Blanchard, some individuals avoid the labour of making their own nests or houses for their young, by possessing themselves of their neighbours' houses either by craft or by force. 'Does the mason-bee act like a machine,' says E. Menault, 'when it directs its work according to circumstances, possesses itself of old nests, cleanses and improves them, and thereby shows that it can fully appreciate the immediate position? Can one believe that no kind of reflection is here necessary?' _The Tapestry-Bee._--The so-called tapestry-bee digs holes for her larvæ three or four inches deep in the earth, and lines the walls and floor of the chamber with petals of the poppy laid perfectly smooth. Several layers of petals are used, and when the eggs are introduced the chamber is closed by drawing all the leaves together at the top. Loose earth is then piled over the whole structure in order to conceal it. The so-called rose-bee (_Megachile centuncularis_) displays very similar habits.[63] _The Carpenter-Bee._--This was first observed and described by Réaumur.[64] It makes a long cylindrical tube in the wood of beams, palings, &c. This it divides into a number of successive chambers by partitions made of agglutinated saw-dust built across the tube at right angles to its axis. In each chamber there is deposited a single egg, together with a store of pollen for the nourishment of the future larva. The larvæ hatch out in succession and in the order of their age--_i.e._ the dates at which they were deposited. To provide for this, the bee bores a hole from the lower cell to the exterior, so that each larva, when ready to escape from its chamber, finds an open way from the tube. The larvæ have to cut their own way out through the walls of their respective chambers, and it is remarkable that they always cut through the wall that faces the tubular passage left by the parent; they never bore their way out in the opposite direction, which, were they to do so, would entail the destruction of all the other and immature larvæ. _The Carding-Bee._--This insect surrounds its nest with a layer of wax, and then with a thick covering of moss. For this purpose a number of bees co-operate, and in order to save time each bee does not find and carry its own moss, but, with a division of labour similar to that which we have already noticed in the case of certain ants, a row of bees is formed, and the bits of moss passed from one to another along the line. There is a long passage to the nest, through which the moss has to be passed, and it is said that at the mouth of the tunnel a guard is stationed to drive away ants or other intruders. _Wasps._--These usually construct their nests of wood-dust, which they scrape off the weather-worn surfaces of boards, palings, &c., and work into a kind of paper with their saliva. If they happen to find any real paper, they perceive that it so much resembles the product of their own manufacture that they utilise it forthwith. The wasps do not require any special cells or chambers for the storage of honey, as they do not lay up any supply for the winter. The cells which they construct are therefore used exclusively for the rearing of larvæ. In form these cells are sometimes cylindrical or globular, but more usually hexagonal, like those of the hive-bee. Although the mode of building is different from that employed by the bees, there can be little doubt that if it were as carefully investigated Mr. Darwin's theory of transition from the cylindrical to the hexagonal form would be found to apply here also, seeing that both forms so frequently occur in the same nest. _The Mason-Wasp._--The habits of this insect are described by Mr. Bates. It constructs its nest of clay. Each pellet that the insect brings it lays on the top of its nest-wall, and then spreads it out with its jaws, and treads it smooth with its feet. The nest, which is suspended on the branch of a tree, is then stocked with spiders and insects paralysed by stinging. The victims, not being wholly deprived of life, keep fresh until required as food of the developing larvæ. _The Butcher-Wasps._--These also paralyse their prey in a similar manner, and for a similar purpose. Fabre removed from a so-called sphex-wasp a killed grasshopper, which it was conveying to its nest and had momentarily laid down at the mouth of the burrow--as these insects always do on returning with prey, in order to see that nothing has intruded into the burrow during their absence. Fabre carried the dead or paralysed grasshopper to a considerable distance from the hole. On coming out the insect searched about until it found its prey. It then again carried it to the mouth of its burrow, and again laid it down while it once more went in to see that all was right at home. Again Fabre removed the grasshopper, and so on for forty times in succession--the sphex never omitting to go through its fixed routine of examining the interior of its burrow every time that it brought the prey to its mouth. Mr. Mivart, in his 'Lessons from Nature,' points to the instinct of this animal in the stinging of the ganglion of its prey as one that cannot be explained on Mr. Darwin's theory concerning the origin of instincts. In my next work, which will have to deal with this theory, I shall consider Mr. Mivart's difficulty, and also the difficulty first pointed out by Mr. Darwin himself as to why neuter insects, separated as they appear to be from the possibility of communicating by heredity any instinctive acquirements of the individual to the species, should present any instincts at all. _General Intelligence._ Beginning with Sir John Lubbock's observations on this head, I shall first quote his statements with regard to way-finding:-- I have found, he says, that some bees are much more intelligent in this respect than others. A bee which I had fed several times, and which had flown about in the room, found its way out of the glass in a quarter of an hour, and when put in a second time came out at once. Another bee, when I closed the postern door, used to come round to the honey through an open window. Bees seem to me much less clever in finding things than I had expected. One day (April 14, 1872), when a number of them were very busy on some barberries, I put a saucer with some honey between two bunches of flowers; these were repeatedly visited, and were so close that there was hardly room for the saucer between them, yet from 9.30 to 3.30 not a single bee took any notice of the honey. At 3.30 I put some honey on one of the bunches of flowers, and it was eagerly sucked by the bees; two kept continually returning till past five in the evening. One day when I came home in the afternoon I found that at least a hundred bees had got into my room through the postern and were on the window, yet not one was attracted by an open jar of honey which stood in a shady corner about 3 feet 6 inches from the window. One day (29th April, 1872) I placed a saucer of honey close to some forget-me-nots, on which bees were numerous and busy; yet from 10 A.M. till 6 only one bee went to the honey. I put some honey in a hollow in the garden wall opposite the hives at 10.30 (this wall is about five feet high and four feet from the hives); yet the bees did not find it during the whole day. On the 30th March, 1873, a fine sunshiny day, when the bees were very active, I placed a glass containing honey at 9 in the morning on the wall in front of the hives; but not a single bee went to the honey the whole day. On April 20 I tried the same experiment, with the same result. September 19.--At 9.30 I placed some honey in a glass about four feet from and just in front of the hive; but during the whole day not a bee observed it. As it then occurred to me that it might be suggested that there was something about this honey which rendered it unattractive to the bees, on a following day I placed it again on the top of the wall for three hours, during which not a single bee came, and then moved it close to the alighting-board of the hive. It remained unnoticed for a quarter of an hour, when two bees observed it; and others soon followed in considerable numbers. . . . On the whole, wasps seem to me more clever in finding their way than bees. I tried wasps with the glass mentioned on p. 124 [_i.e._ the bell-jar], but they had no difficulty in finding their way out. We shall now conclude this _résumé_ of Sir John Lubbock's observations by quoting two other passages bearing on the general intelligence of bees and wasps:-- The following fact struck me as rather remarkable. The wasp already mentioned at the foot of p. 135 one day smeared her wings with syrup, so that she could not fly. When this happened to a bee, it was only necessary to carry her to the alighting-board, when she was soon cleaned by her comrades. But I did not know where this wasp's nest was, and therefore could not pursue a similar course with her. At first, then, I was afraid that she was doomed. I thought, however, that I would wash her, fully expecting, indeed, to terrify her so much that she would not return again. I therefore caught her, put her in a bottle half full of water, and shook her up well till the honey was washed off. I then transferred her to a dry bottle and put her in the sun. When she was dry I let her out, and she at once flew to her nest. To my surprise, in thirteen minutes she returned, as if nothing had happened, and continued her visits to the honey all the afternoon. This experiment interested me so much that I repeated it with another marked wasp, this time, however, keeping the wasp in the water till she was quite motionless and insensible. When taken out of the water she soon recovered; I fed her; she went quietly away to her nest as usual, and returned after the usual absence. The next morning this wasp was the first to visit the honey. I was not able to watch any of the above-mentioned wasps for more than a few days; but I kept a specimen of _Polistes Gallica_ for no less than nine months. This is the wasp which has already been alluded to under the heading 'Memory;' but it is evident that the capacity which the insect displayed of becoming tamed implies no small degree of general intelligence; its hereditary instincts were conspicuously modified by the individual experiences incidental to its domestication. The remaining passages that deserve quotation are the following:-- It is sometimes said of bees that those of one hive all know one another, and immediately recognise and attack any intruder from another hive. At first sight this certainly implies a great deal of intelligence. It is, however, possible that the bees of particular hives have a particular smell. Thus Langshaft, in his interesting 'Treatise on the Honey-Bee,' says: 'Members of different colonies appear to recognise their hive companions by the sense of smell; and I believe that if colonies are sprinkled with scented syrup, they may generally be safely mixed. Moreover, a bee returning to its own hive with a load of treasure is a very different creature from a hungry marauder; and it is said that a bee, if laden with honey, is allowed to enter any hive with impunity.' Mr. Langshaft continues, 'There is an air of roguery about a thieving bee which, to the expert, is as characteristic as are the motions of a pickpocket to a skilful policeman. Its sneaking look, and nervous, guilty agitation, once seen, can never be mistaken.' It is, at any rate, natural that a bee which enters a wrong hive by accident should be much surprised and alarmed, and would thus probably betray herself. On the whole, then, I do not attach much importance to their recognition of one another as an indication of intelligence. Since their extreme eagerness for honey may be attributed rather to their anxiety for the common weal than to their desire for personal gratification, it cannot fairly be imputed as greediness; still the following scene, one which most of us have witnessed, is incompatible surely with much intelligence. The sad fate of their unfortunate companions does not in the least deter others who approach the tempting lure from madly alighting on the bodies of the dying and dead, to share the same miserable end. No one can understand the extent of their infatuation until he has seen a confectioner's shop assailed by myriads of hungry bees. I have seen thousands strained out from the syrup in which they had perished; thousands more alighting even upon the boiling sweets, the floor covered and windows darkened with bees, some crawling, others flying, and others still, so completely besmeared as to be able neither to crawl nor fly, not one in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers. Passing on now to the statements of other observers, Huber first noticed the remarkable fact that when beehives are attacked by the death's-head moth the bees close the entrance of their hive with wax and propolis to keep out the marauder. The barricade, which is built immediately behind the gateway, completely stops it up--only a small hole being left large enough to admit a bee, and therefore of course too small to admit the moth. Huber specially states that it was not until the beehives had been _repeatedly_ attacked and robbed by the death's-head moth, that the bees closed the entrance of their hive with wax and propolis. _Pure_ instinct would have induced the bees to provide against the first attack. Huber also observed that a wall built in 1804 against the death's-head hawk-moth was destroyed in 1805. In the latter year there were no death's-head moths, nor were any seen during the following. But in the autumn of 1807 a large number again appeared, and the bees at once protected themselves against their enemies. The bulwark was destroyed again in 1808. Again, Huber (_loc. cit._, tom. ii., p. 280) gives a case of apparent exercise of reason, or power of inference from a particular case to other and general cases. A piece of comb fell down and was fixed in its new position by wax. The bees then strengthened the attachments of all the other combs, clearly because they inferred that they too might be in danger of falling. This is a very remarkable case, and leads Huber to exclaim, 'I admit that I was unable to avoid a feeling of astonishment in the presence of a fact from which the purest reason seemed to shine out.' A closely similar, and therefore corroborative case of an even more remarkable kind is thus narrated in Watson's 'Reasoning Power of Animals' (p. 448):-- Dr. Brown, in his book on the bee, gives another illustration of the reasoning power of bees, observed by a friend of his. A centre comb in a hive, being overburdened with honey, had parted from its fastenings, and was pressing against another comb, so as to prevent the passage of the bees between them. This accident excited great bustle in the colony, and as soon as their proceedings could be observed, it was found that they had constructed two horizontal beams between the two combs, and had removed enough of the honey and wax above them to admit the passage of a bee, while the detached comb had been secured by another beam, and fastened to the window with spare wax. But what was most remarkable was, that, when the comb was thus fixed, they removed the horizontal beams first constructed, as being of no further use. The whole occupation took about ten days. Again, Mr. Darwin's MS. quotes from Sir B. Brodie's 'Psychological Inquiries' (1854, p. 88) the following case, which is analogous to the above, except that the supports required had to be made in a vertical instead of in a horizontal direction:-- On one occasion, when a large portion of the honeycomb had been broken off, they pursued another course. The fragment had somehow become fixed in the middle of the hive, and the bees immediately began to erect a new structure of comb on the floor, so placed as to form a pillar supporting the fragment, and preventing its further descent. They then filled up the space above, joining the comb which had become detached to that from which it had been separated, and they concluded their labours by removing the newly constructed comb below, thus proving that they had intended it to answer a merely temporary purpose. Similarly, Dr. Dzierzon, an experienced keeper of bees, and the observer who first discovered the fact of their parthenogenesis, makes the general remark,-- The cleverness of the bees in repairing perfectly injuries to their cells and combs, in supporting on pillars pieces of their building accidentally knocked down by a hasty push, in fastening them with rivets, and bringing everything again into proper unity, making hanging bridges, chains, and ladders, compels our astonishment. Lastly, as still further corroboration of such facts, I shall quote the following from Jesse's 'Gleanings:'[65]-- Bees show great ingenuity in obviating the inconvenience they experience from the slipperiness of glass, and certainly beyond what we can conceive that mere instinct would enable them to do. I am in the habit of putting small glass globes on the top of my straw hives, for the purpose of having them filled with honey; and I have invariably found that before the bees commence the construction of combs, they place a great number of spots of wax at regular distances from each other, which serve as so many footstools on the slippery glass, each bee resting on one of these with its middle pair of legs, while the fore claws were hooked with the hind ones of the bee next above him; thus forming a ladder, by means of which the workers were enabled to reach the top, and begin to make their combs there. Herr Kleine, in his pamphlet on Italian Bees and Bee-keeping (Berlin, 1855), says that on substituting during the absence of the bees a hive filled with empty comb for their own hive, the returning bees exhibit the utmost perplexity. As the substituted hive stands in the exact spot previously occupied by their own hive, the returning bees fly into it without observing the change. But finding only empty combs inside, 'they stop, do not know where they are, come out of the hole again without depositing their loads, fly off, look most carefully round the stand to assure themselves that they have made no mistake, and go in once more when convinced that they are at the right place. The same thing is repeated over and over again, until the bees at last bow to the incomprehensible and unavoidable, lay down their loads, and set to work at those tasks made necessary by the new circumstances of the hive. But as all the newly arriving bees behave in similar fashion, the disturbance lasts till late in the evening, and the uncertainty and anxiety of the bees is so great that the bee-master cannot contemplate it without deep sympathy.' Under such circumstances the bees take quickly to a substituted queen; 'for the feeling of the first comers that they have no right to the new dwelling, having, as they suppose, made some inexplicable mistake which they cannot remedy, prevents them from feeling any hostility to the new queen which they find; they probably consider themselves as merely on sufferance, and feel that they should be grateful that no action is taken against them for their illegal entry, as generally happens in bee-experience.' Hence the writer adopts this device when he desires to exchange or substitute queens. Büchner, after alluding to this case, supplements it with the following:-- The wind threw down from the stand of a bee-master--a friend of the author's, whose name will soon become known--a straw beehive, the inmates of which were surprised in full work, and no small disorder in the interior was the result. The owner repaired the hive, put the loose comb back in its place, and replaced it in such a manner that the wind could not again catch it, hoping that the accident would have no further results. But when he examined the hive a few days later, he found that the bees had left their old home in the lurch, and had tried to enter other hives, clearly because they could no longer trust the weather, and feared that the terrible accident might again befall them. Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in his 'Zoonomia,' asserts that bees, when transported to Barbadoes, where there is no winter, cease to lay up honey. In contradiction to this statement, however, Kirby and Spence say, 'It is known to every naturalist acquainted with the fact, that many different species of bees store up honey in the hottest climates, and that there is no authentic instance on record of the hive-bees altering in any age or climate their peculiar operations.' On the other hand, more recent observation has shown that Dr. Darwin's statement is probably correct. For, according to a note in _Nature_,[66] European bees, when transported to Australia, retain their industrious habits only for the first two or three years. After that time they gradually cease to collect honey till they become wholly idle. In a subsequent number of the same periodical (p. 411) a correspondent writes that the same fact is observable with bees transported to California, but is obviated by abstracting honey as the bees collect it. There seems to be no doubt that bees and wasps are able to distinguish between persons, and even to recognise those whom they are accustomed to see, and to regard as friends. Bee-masters who attend much to their bees, so as to give the insects a good chance of knowing them, are generally of the opinion that the insects do know them, as shown by the comparatively sparing use of their stings. Again, many instances might be quoted, such as that given by Guerinzius,[67] who allowed a species of wasp native to Natal to build in the doorposts of his house, and who observed that although he often interfered with the nest, he was only once stung, and this by a young wasp; while no Caffre could venture to approach the door, much less to pass through it.[68] This power of distinguishing between persons indicates a higher order of intelligence than we might have expected to meet with among insects; and, according to Bingley, bees will not only learn to distinguish persons, but even lend themselves to tuition by those whom they know. For he says, 'Mr. Wildman, whose remarks on the management of bees are well known, possessed a secret by which he could at any time cause a hive of bees to swarm upon his head, shoulders, or body, in a most surprising manner. He has been seen to drink a glass of wine with the bees all over his head and face more than an inch deep; several fell into the glass, but did not sting him. He could even act the part of a general with them, by marshalling them in battle array on a large table. Then he divided them into regiments, battalions, and companies, according to military discipline, waiting only for his word of command. The moment he uttered the word _march!_ they began to march in a very regular manner in rank and file, like soldiers. To these, his Lilliputians, he also taught so much politeness that they never attempted to sting any of the numerous company which, at different times, resorted to admire this singular spectacle.' Huber's observation, since amply confirmed, of bees biting holes through the base of corollas in order to get at the honey which the length of the corollas prevent them from reaching in the ordinary way, also seems to indicate a rational adjustment to unusual circumstances. For the bees do not resort to this expedient until they find from trial that they cannot reach the nectar from above; but having once ascertained this, they forthwith proceed to pierce the bottoms of all the flowers of the same species. From an interesting account by Mr. Francis Darwin[69] (unfortunately too long to quote) it appears that, even when the nectar may be reached from above, bees may still resort to the expedient of biting through corollas in order to save time. In connection with biting holes in corollas I may quote an observation communicated to me by a correspondent, Sir J. Clarke Jervoise. Speaking of a humble-bee, he says: 'I watched him into the flower of a foxglove, and, when out of sight, I closed the lips of the flower with my finger and thumb. He did not hesitate a moment, but cut his way out at the further end as if he had been served the same trick before. I never did it.' Bees are highly particular in the matter of keeping their hives pure, and their sanitary arrangements often exhibit intelligence of a high order. The following is quoted from Büchner (_loc. cit._, p. 248):-- Impure air within the hive is that which the bees must above all things fear and avoid, for with the pressure together of so many individuals in a comparatively small space, it would not only be directly harmful to individual bees, but would produce among them dangerous diseases. They therefore also never void their excrements within, but always outside the hive. While this is very easy to do in summer, it is, on the contrary, very difficult in the winter, when the bees sit close together and generally motionless in the upper part of the hive, and when, from impure air and foul evaporations, as well as from bad and insufficient food, dysentery-like diseases break out among them, and often carry off the whole community in a brief space of time. In such cases they utilise the first fine day to relieve themselves, and in the spring they take a long general cleansing flight. But they also know how to take advantage of special circumstances so as to perform the process of purification in the way least harmful to the hive. Herr Heinrich Lehr, of Darmstadt, a bee-keeping friend of the author, has sent the following communication:--During an epidemic of dysentery in winter, from which most of his hives suffered (as the bees were no longer able to retain their excrements), one hive suffered less than the others. Exact investigation showed that this hive was soiled all over at the back with the excrement of the bees, and that the inmates had here made a kind of drain. On this spot a little opening had been made by the falling off of the covering clay, which led directly to the upper part of the hive, where the bees were accustomed to sit together during the winter. This excellent opportunity, whereby they could reach in the shortest way an otherwise difficult object, and one rendered complicated by circumstances, did not escape them. It sometimes happens that mice, slugs, &c., enter a beehive. They are then killed and covered with a coating of propolis. Réaumur says[70] that he once saw a snail enter a hive in this way. The hard shell was an effective protection against the stings of the bees, so the insects smeared round the edges of the shell with wax and resin, fastening down the animal to the wall of the hive, so that it died of starvation or want of air. If the encasing of an animal (such as a mouse) with propolis is not sufficient to prevent its putrefaction, the bees gnaw away all the putrescible parts of the carcass and carry them out of the hive, leaving only the skeleton behind. The dead bodies of their companions are also carried out of the hive and deposited at a distance. There is no question about this fact (which it will be remembered is analogous to that already mentioned in the case of ants); according to Büchner, however, bees not only remove their dead, but also, occasionally at least, bury them. But as he gives very inadequate evidence in support of this assertion, we may safely set it aside as insufficiently proven. Büchner, however, gives an admirable summary, and makes some judicious remarks on the well-known and highly remarkable habit which bees practise for the obvious purpose of ventilating their hives. As this account gives all the facts in a brief compass, I cannot do better than quote it:-- Very interesting, and closely connected with this characteristic of cleanliness, is the conduct of the so-called ventilating-bees, which have to take care that in summer or hot weather the air necessary for respiration of the bees in the interior of the hive is renewed, and the too high temperature cooled down. The latter precaution is necessary, not only on account of the bees working within the hive, to whom, as already said, a temperature risen beyond a certain point would be intolerable, but also to guard against the melting or softening of the wax. The bees charged with the care of the ventilation divide themselves into rows and stages in regular order through all parts of the hive, and by swift fanning of their wings send little currents of air in such fashion that a powerful stream or change of air passes through all parts of the hive. Other bees stand at the mouth of the hive, which fan in the same way and considerably accelerate the wind from within. The current of air thus caused is so strong that little bits of paper hung in front of the mouth are rapidly moved, and that, according to F. Huber, a lighted match is extinguished. The wind can be distinctly felt if the hand be held in front. The motion of the wings of the ventilating bees is so rapid that it is scarcely perceptible, and Huber saw some bees working their wings in this way for five-and-twenty minutes. When they are tired they are relieved by others. According to Jesse, the bees in very hot weather, in spite of all their efforts, are unable to sufficiently lower the temperature, and prevent the melting of some of the wax; they then get into a condition of great excitement, and it is dangerous to approach them. In such a case they also try to mend matters by a number leaving the hive and settling in large masses on its surface, so as to protect it as much as possible from the scorching rays of the sun. Although the described plan of ventilation is remarkable enough in itself, it is yet more remarkable in that it is clearly only the result of bee-keeping, and is evoked by this misfortune. For there could be no need of such ventilation for bees in a state of nature, whose dwellings in hollow trees and clefts of rocks leave nothing to be desired as to roominess and airiness, while in the narrow artificial hive this need at once comes out strongly. In fact, the fanning of the bees almost entirely ceased when Huber brought them into large hives five feet high, in which there was plenty of air. It follows, therefore, that the fanning and ventilating can have absolutely nothing to do with an inborn tendency or instinct, but have been gradually evoked by necessity, thought, and experience. As the following observation on the cautious sagacity of wasps is, so far as I am aware, new, and as it certainly does not admit of mal-observation, I introduce it on the authority of a correspondent, the Rev. Mr. J. W. Mossman, who writes from Tarrington Rectory, Wragby. He found an apple in his orchard which had fallen from a tree in apparently good condition; but on taking it up observed that it was little more than a shell filled with wasps. Giving the apple a shake, he saw a wasp slowly emerging from a single small aperture in the rind:-- This aperture was sufficient, and only just sufficient, to admit of the ingress or egress of a single wasp. The circumstance which struck me as very remarkable was this--that the wasp did not make its way through the aperture with its head first, as I should have expected, but with its tail, darting out its sting to its utmost extent, and brandishing it furiously. In this manner it came out of the apple backwards. Then, finding itself in the open air upon the outer surface of the apple, it turned round, and without any attempt to molest me, flew off in the usual way. The moment this first wasp had emerged, the sting and tail of another was seen protruding. This, too, I watched with much interest, and exactly the same process was repeated as in the case of the first. I held the apple in my hand until some ten or a dozen wasps had made their exit in the same identical manner in each individual case. I then threw down the apple, inside of which, however, there were still apparently a good many wasps. It seemed to me at the time, and I have always felt since, that the wasps coming out of the apple backwards, brandishing their stings as a defensive weapon against possible enemies, whom of course they were not able to see, was an evidence of what would be called thought and reflection in the case of human beings. It seems to me that these wasps must have reflected that if they came out of the narrow aperture in the apple, which was their only possible means of ready egress, in the usual manner, head first, they might be taken at a disadvantage by a possible enemy, and destroyed in detail. They, therefore, with great prudence and foresight, came out of the apple backwards, protecting themselves by means of their chief offensive and defensive weapons, their stings, which, according to their normal method of locomotion, would have been useless to them as long as they were making their exit. With regard to the tactics displayed by hunting wasps I may quote the following cases:-- Mr. Seth Green, writing to the _New York World_ of May 14, says that one morning when he was watching a spider's nest, a wasp alighted within an inch or two of the nest, on the side opposite the opening. Creeping noiselessly around towards the entrance of the nest the wasp stopped a little short of it, and for a moment remained perfectly quiet; then reaching out one of his antennæ he wriggled it before the opening and withdrew it. This overture had the desired effect, for the boss of the nest, as large a spider as one ordinarily sees, came out to see what was wrong and to set it to rights. No sooner had the spider emerged to that point at which he was at the worst disadvantage than the wasp, with a quick movement, thrust his sting into the body of his foe, killing him easily and almost instantly. The experiment was repeated on the part of the wasp, and when there was no response from the inside he became satisfied, probably, that he held the fort. At all events, he proceeded to enter the nest and slaughter the young spiders, which were afterwards lugged off one at a time. Mr. Henry Cecil writes as follows (_Nature_, vol. xviii., p. 311):-- I was sitting one summer's afternoon at an open window (my bedroom) looking into a garden, when I was surprised to observe a large and rare species of spider run across the window-sill in a crouching attitude. It struck me the spider was evidently alarmed, or it would not have so fearlessly approached me. It hastened to conceal itself under the projecting ledge of the window-sill inside the room, and had hardly done so when a very fine large hunting wasp buzzed in at the open window and flew about the room, evidently in search of something. Finding nothing, the wasp returned to the open window and settled on the window-sill, running backwards and forwards as a dog does when looking or searching for a lost scent. It soon alighted on the track of the poor spider, and in a moment it discovered its hiding-place, darted down on it, and no doubt inflicted a wound with its sting. The spider rushed off again, and this time took refuge under the bed, trying to conceal itself under the framework or planks which supported the mattress. The same scene occurred here; the wasp now appeared to follow the spider by sight, but ran backwards and forwards in large circles like a hound. The moment the trail of the spider was found the wasp followed all the turns it had made till it came on it again. The poor spider was chased from hiding-place to hiding-place, out of the bedroom, across a passage, and into the middle of another large room, where it finally succumbed to the repeated stings inflicted by the wasp. Rolling itself up into a ball the wasp then took possession of its prey, and after ascertaining it could make no resistance, tucked it up under its _very long hind legs_, just as a hawk or eagle carries off its quarry, when I interposed and secured both for my collection. Mr. Belt, in his work already frequently quoted, gives the following account of a struggle which not unfrequently occurs between wasps and ants for the sweet secretion of 'frog-hoppers:'-- Similarly as, on the savannahs, I had observed a wasp attending the honey-glands of the bull's-horn acacia along with the ants; so at Santo Domingo another wasp, belonging to quite a different genus (_Nectarina_), attended some of the clusters of frog-hoppers, and for the possession of others a constant skirmishing was going on. The wasp stroked the young hoppers, and sipped up the honey when it was exuded, just like the ants. When an ant came up to a cluster of leaf-hoppers attended by a wasp, the latter would not attempt to grapple with its rival on the leaf, but would fly off and hover over the ant; then when its little foe was well exposed, it would dart at it and strike it to the ground. The action was so quick that I could not determine whether it struck with its fore-feet or its jaws; but I think it was with the feet. I often saw a wasp trying to clear a leaf from ants that were already in full possession of a cluster of leaf-hoppers. It would sometimes have to strike three or four times at an ant before it made it quit its hold and fall. At other times one ant after the other would be struck off with great celerity and ease, and I fancied that some wasps were much cleverer than others. In those cases where it succeeded in clearing the leaf, it was never left long in peace; for fresh relays of ants were continually arriving, and generally tired the wasp out. It would never wait for an ant to get near it, doubtless knowing well that if its little rival once fastened on its leg, it would be a difficult matter to get rid of it again. If a wasp first obtained possession, it was able to keep it; for the first ants that came up were only pioneers, and by knocking these off, it prevented them from returning and scenting the trail to communicate the intelligence to others. Dr. Erasmus Darwin records an observation ('Zoonomia,' i., p. 183) which, from having since been so widely quoted, deserves to be called classical. He saw a wasp upon the ground endeavouring to remove a large fly which was too heavy for it to carry off. The wasp cut off the head and abdomen, and flew away with the thorax alone. The wind, however, catching the wings of this portion made it still too unwieldy for the wasp to guide. It therefore again alighted, and nipped off first one wing and then the other, when it was able to fly off with its booty without further difficulty. This observation has since been amply confirmed. I shall quote some of the confirmatory cases. Mr. R. S. Newall, F.R.S., in _Nature_, vol. xxi., p. 494, says:-- Many years ago I was examining an apple tree, when a wasp alighted on a leaf which formed a caterpillar's nest neatly rolled up. The wasp examined both ends, and finding them closed, it soon clipped a hole in the leaf at one end of the nest about one-eighth of an inch in diameter. It then went to the other end and made a noise which frightened the caterpillar, which came rushing out of the hole. It was immediately seized by the wasp, who finding it too large to carry off at once, cut it in two and went off with his game. I waited a little and saw the wasp come back for the other half, with which it also flew away. Again, Büchner (_loc. cit._, p. 297) gives the following account in the words of his informant, Herr H. Löwenfels, who himself witnessed the incident:-- I here found a robber-wasp busied in lifting from the ground a large fly which it had apparently killed. It succeeded indeed in its attempt, but had scarcely raised its prey a few inches above the ground when the wind caught the wings of the dead fly, and they began to act like a sail. The wasp was clearly unable to resist this action, and was blown a little distance in the direction of the wind, whereupon it let itself fall to the ground with its prize. It now made no more attempts to fly, but with eager industry pulled off with its teeth the fly's wings which hindered it in its object. When this was quite done it seized the fly, which was heavier than itself, and flew off with it untroubled on its journey through the air at a height of about five feet. Büchner also records the two following remarkable observations, which from being so similar corroborate one another. The first is received from Herr Albert Schlüter, who writing from Texas says that he there saw a cicada pursued by a large hornet, which threw itself upon its prey and seemed to sting it to death:-- The murderer walked over its prey, which was considerably larger than itself, grasped its body with its feet, spread out its wings, and tried to fly away with it. Its strength was not sufficient, and after many efforts it gave up the attempt. Half a minute went by; sitting astride on the corpse and motionless--only the wings occasionally jerking--it seems to reflect, and indeed not in vain. A mulberry tree stood close by, really only a trunk--for the top had been broken off, clearly by the last flood--of about ten or twelve feet high. The hornet saw this trunk, dragged its prey toilsomely to the foot of it, and then up to the top. Arrived thereat, it rested for a moment, grasped its victim firmly, and flew off with it to the prairies. That which it was unable to raise off the ground it could now carry easily once high in the air. The other instance is as follows:-- Th. Meenan ('Proc. of the Acad. of Nat.,' Philadelphia, Jan. 22, 1878) observed a very similar case with _Vespa maculata_. He saw one of these wasps try in vain to raise from the ground a grasshopper it had killed. When all its efforts proved to be in vain, it pulled its prey to a maple tree, about thirty feet off, mounted it with its prize, and flew away from it. 'This,' adds the writer, 'was more than instinct. It was reflection and judgment, and the judgment was proved to be correct.' Depriving bees of their antennæ has the effect of producing an even more marked bewilderment than results from this operation in the case of ants. A queen thus mutilated by Huber ran about in confusion, dropping her eggs at random, and appeared unable to take with precision the food that was offered her. She showed no resentment to a similarly mutilated stranger queen that was introduced: the workers also heeded not the mutilated stranger; but when an unmutilated stranger was introduced they fell upon her. When the mutilated queen was allowed to escape, none of the workers followed. FOOTNOTES: [46] Vol. ix. p. 484. [47] _Passions of Animals_, p. 53. [48] Vol. xii. p. 68. [49] 'Three months' in the Journal of the Linnæan Society, but Sir John Lubbock informs me that this is a misprint. [50] See Kirby and Spence, vol. ii. p. 591. [51] Letter to Mr. Darwin, published in _Nature_, vol. x., p. 102. [52] Vol. xii., pp. 25-6. [53] _Loc. cit._ [54] Art. 'Bees,' _Encycl. Brit._ [55] Dr. Kemp, _Indications of Instinct_. [56] _The Bee_, 1877, No. 1. [57] Dr. Lindley Kemp, _Indications of Instinct_. [58] Handcock on Instinct, p. 18. [59] _Introd. Ent._, ii, p. 465. [60] _Origin of Species_, 'Cell-making Instinct.' [61] _Origin of Species_, p. 225. [62] _Mind in Animals_, pp. 252-3. [63] For a complete account of these habits see Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. iii., pp. 272-5. [64] _Mém. sur les Insectes_, tom. vi., p. 39. [65] Vol. i., pp. 22-3 (3rd ed.). [66] Vol. xvii., p. 373. [67] See Brehm, _Thierleben_, ix., p. 252. [68] An exactly similar case is recorded by Stodmann in his _Travels in Surinam_, ii., p. 286. [69] _Nature_, ix., p. 189. [70] See _Kirby and Spence_, vol. ii., p. 229. CHAPTER V. TERMITES. THE habits of the Termites, or so-called White Ants, have not been so closely studied as they deserve. Our chief knowledge concerning them is derived from the observations of Jobson, in his 'History of Gambia;' Bastian, in 'The Nations of Eastern Asia;' Forsteal, Lespès, König, Sparman, Hugen, Quatrefages, Fritz Müller, and most of all, Smeathman, in 'Philosophical Transactions,' vol. lxxi. In Africa these insects raise their hills to a height of between ten and twenty feet, and construct them of earth, stones, pieces of wood, &c., glued together by a sticky saliva. The hills are in the form of a cone, and so strong that it is said the buffaloes are in the habit of using them as watch-towers on which to post sentries, and that they will even support the weight of an elephant. The growth of these gigantic mounds is gradual, increasing with the increase of the population. From the mound in all directions there radiate subterranean tunnels, which may be as much as a foot in width, and which serve as roadways. Besides these tunnels there are a number of other subterranean tubes, which serve the purpose of drainage to carry off the floods of water to which the nest is exposed during tropical showers. Büchner calculates that a pyramid built by man on a scale proportional to his size would only equal one of these nests if it attained to the height of 3,000 feet. The following is this author's description of the internal structure:-- These internal arrangements are so various and so complicated that pages of description might be written thereupon. There are myriads of rooms, cells, nurseries, provision chambers, guard-rooms, passages, corridors, vaults, bridges, subterranean streets and canals, tunnels, arched ways, steps, smooth inclines, domes, &c., &c., all arranged on a definite, coherent, and well-considered plan. In the middle of the building, sheltered as far as possible from outside dangers, lies the stately royal dwelling, resembling an arched oven, in which the royal pair reside, or rather are imprisoned; for the entrances and outlets are so small, that although the workers on service can pass easily in and out, the queen cannot; for during the egg-laying her body swells out to an enormous size, two or three thousand times the size and weight of an ordinary worker. The queen, therefore, never leaves her dwelling, and dies therein. Round the palace, which is at first small, but is later enlarged in proportion as the queen increases in size until it is at least a yard long and half a yard high, lie the nurseries, or cells for the eggs and larvæ; next these the servants' rooms, or cells for the workers which wait on the queen; then special chambers for the soldiers on guard, and, between these, numerous store-rooms, filled with gums, resins, dried plant-juices, meal, seeds, fruits, worked-up wood, &c. According to Bettziech-Beta, there is always in the midst of the nest a large common room, which is used either for popular assemblies or as the meeting and starting point of the countless passages and chambers of the nest. Others are of the opinion that this space serves for purposes of ventilation. Above and below the royal cell are the rooms of the workers and soldiers which are specially charged with the care and defence of the royal pair. They communicate with each other, as well as with the nursery-cells and store-rooms, by means of galleries and passages which, as already said, open into the common room in the middle under the dome. This room is surrounded by high, boldly projected arched ways, which lose themselves further out in the walls of the countless rooms and galleries. Many roofs outside and in protect this room and the surrounding chambers from rain, which, as already said, is drained away by countless subterranean canals, made of clay and of a diameter of ten or twelve centimetres. There are also, under the layer of clay covering the whole building, broad spirally winding passages running from below to the highest points, which communicate with the passages of the interior, and apparently, as they mainly consist of smooth inclines, serve for carrying provisions to the higher parts of the nest.[71] The termites, like many species of true ants, are divided into two distinct castes, the workers and the soldiers. If a breach is made in the walls of the dome the soldiers rush out to meet the enemy, and fight desperately with any enemy that they may find. Here, again, I cannot do better than quote Büchner's epitome of facts:-- If the assailant withdraws beyond their reach and inflicts no further injury, they retire within their dwelling in the course of half an hour, as though they had come to the conclusion that the enemy who had done the mischief had fled. Scarcely have the soldiers disappeared when crowds of workers appear in the breach, each with a quantity of ready-made mortar in its mouth. As soon as they arrive they stick this mortar round the open place, and direct the whole operation with such swiftness and facility that in spite of their great number they never hinder each other, nor are obliged to stop. During this spectacle of apparent restlessness and confusion the observer is agreeably surprised to see arising a regular wall, filling up the gap. During the time that the workers are thus busied the soldiers remain within the nest, with the exception of a few, which walk about apparently idly, never touching the mortar, among the hundreds and thousands of workers. Nevertheless one of them stands on guard close to the wall which is being built. It turns gently each way in turn, lifting its head at intervals of one or two minutes to strike the building with its heavy mandibles, making the before-mentioned crackling noise. This signal is immediately answered by a loud rustling from the interior of the nest and from all the subterranean passages and holes. There is no doubt that this noise arises from the workers, for as often as the sign is given they work with increased energy and speed. A renewal of the attack instantaneously changes the scene. 'At the first stroke,' says Smeathman, 'the workers run into the many tunnels and passages which run through the building, and this happens so quickly that they seem regularly to vanish. In a few seconds they are all gone, and in their stead appear the soldiers once more, as numerous and as pugnacious as before. If they find no enemy, they turn back slowly into the interior of the hill, and immediately the mortar-laden workers again appear, and among them a few soldiers, which behave just as on the first occasion. So one can have the pleasure of seeing them work and fight in turn, as often as one chooses; and it will be found each time that one set never fight, and the other never work, however great the need may be.'[72] Similar facts have been observed by Fritz Müller of the South American species. The Termites, being like the Ecitons blind, like them make all their expeditions under the protection of covered ways. These are underground tunnels in all cases where circumstances permit, but on arriving at a rock or other impenetrable obstruction, they build a tubular passage upon the surface. According to Büchner,-- They can even carry their viaducts through the air, and that in such bold arches that it is difficult to understand how they were projected. In order to reach a sack of meal which was well protected below, they broke through the roof of the room in which it was, and built a straight tube from the breach they had made down to the sack. As soon as they tried to carry off their booty to a safe place, they became convinced that it was impossible to pull it up the straight road. In order to meet this difficulty, they adopted the principle of the smooth incline, the use of which we have already seen in the interior of their nests, and built close to the first tube a second, which wound spirally within, like the famous clock tower of Venice. It was now an easy task to carry their booty up this road and so away. . . . Either from the desire to remain undiscovered, or from their liking for darkness, they have the remarkable habit of destroying and gnawing everything from within outwards, and of leaving the outside shell standing, so that from the outside appearance the dangerous state of the inside is not perceptible. If, for instance, they have destroyed a table or other piece of household furniture, in which they always manage from the ground upwards to hit exactly the places on which the feet of the article rest, the table looks perfectly uninjured outside, and people are quite astonished when it breaks down under the slightest pressure. The whole inside is eaten away, and only the thinnest shell is left standing. If fruits are lying on the table, they also are eaten out from the exact spot on which they rest on the surface of the table. In similar fashion things consisting wholly of wood, such as wooden ships, trees, &c., are destroyed by them so that they finally break in without any one having noticed the mischief. Yet it is said that they go so prudently to work in their destruction that the main beams, the sudden breakage of which would threaten the whole building and themselves therewith, are either spared, or else so fastened together again with a cement made out of clay and earth that their strength is greater than ever!(?) Hagen also states that they never cut right through the corks which stop up stored bottles of wine, but leave a very thin layer, which is sufficient to prevent the outflow of the wine and the consequent destruction of the workers. The same author relates that in order to reach a box of wax lights they made a covered road from the ground up to the second story of a house.[73] It is needless to give a special description of any of the other habits of these insects, such as their swarming, breeding, &c., for they all more or less closely resemble the analogous habits of ants and bees. It is very remarkable that insects of two distinct orders should both manifest such closely similar social habits of such high complexity, and it rather surprises me that more has not been made of this point by writers opposed to the principles of evolution. Of course if the point were raised, the argument in answer would require to be, either that the similar instincts were derived from common and very remote progenitors (in which case the fact would form by far the most remarkable instance of the permanency of instincts among changing species), or more probably, that similar causes operating in the two orders have produced similar effects--complex and otherwise unique though these effects undoubtedly are. In connection with the theory of evolution I may conclude this chapter with the following quotation from Smeathman, as it shows how natural relation may develop for the benefit of the species instincts which are detrimental to the individual. Speaking of the soldiers he says:-- I was always amused at the pugnacity displayed when, in making a hole in the earthy cemented archway of their covered roads, a host of these little fellows mounted the breach to cover the retreat of the workers. The edges of the rupture bristled with their armed heads as the courageous warriors ranged themselves in compact line around them. They attacked fiercely any intruding object, and as fast as their front ranks were destroyed, others filled up their places. When the jaws closed in the flesh, they suffered themselves to be torn in pieces rather than loosen their hold. It might be said that this instinct is rather a cause of their ruin than a protection when a colony is attacked by the well-known enemy of termites, the ant-bear; but it is the soldiers only which attach themselves to the long worm-like tongue of this animal, and the workers, on whom the prosperity of the young brood immediately depends, are left for the most part unharmed. I always found, on thrusting my finger into a mixed crowd of termites, that the soldiers only fastened upon it. Thus the fighting caste do in the end serve to protect the species by sacrificing themselves to its good.[74] FOOTNOTES: [71] _Loc. cit._, p. 189. [72] _Ibid._, p. 119. [73] _Geistesleben der Thiere_, pp. 194 and 199-200. [74] Phil. Trans., _loc. cit._ CHAPTER VI. SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS. _Emotions._ THE emotional life of spiders, so far as we can observe it as expressed in their actions, seems to be divided between sexual passion (including maternal affection) and the sterner feelings incidental to their fiercely predatory habits. But the emotions, although apparently few and simple in character, are exceedingly strong in force. In many species the male spider in conducting his courtship has to incur an amount of personal danger at the hands (and jaws) of his terrific spouse, which might well daunt the courage of a Leander. Ridiculously small and weak in build, the males of these species can only conduct the rites of marriage with their enormous and voracious brides by a process of active manoeuvring, which if unsuccessful is certain to cost them their lives. Yet their sexual emotions are so strong that, as proved by the continuance of the species, no amount of personal risk is sufficient to deter them from giving these emotions full play. There is no other case in the animal kingdom where courtship is attended with any approach to the gravity of danger that is here observable. Among many animals the males have to meet a certain amount of inconvenience from the coquetry or disinclination of the females; but here the coquetry and disinclination has passed into the hungry determination of a ferocious giantess. The case, therefore, because unique, is of interest from an evolutionary point of view. We can see a direct advantage to species from the danger incurred by males on account of mutual jealousy; for this, giving rise to what Mr. Darwin has called 'the law of battle,' must obviously be a constant source of the creation and the maintenance of specific proficiency; the law of battle determines that only the strongest and most courageous males shall breed. But the benefit to species is not so obvious where the danger of courtship arises from the side of the female. Still, that there must be some benefit is obvious, seeing that the whole structure of the male, if we take that of the female as the original type, has been greatly modified with reference to this danger: had the latter been wholly useless, either it would not have been allowed to arise, or the species must have become extinct. The only suggestion I can make to meet this aberrant case is that the courage and determination required of the male, besides being no doubt of use to him in other relations in life, may be of benefit to the species by instilling these qualities into the psychology both of his male and female descendants. The courage and rapacity of spiders as a class are too well and generally known to require special illustration. One instance, however, may be quoted to show the strength of their maternal emotions. Bonnet threw a spider with her bag of eggs into the pit of an ant-lion. The latter seized the eggs and tore them away from the spider; but although Bonnet forced her out of the pit, she returned, and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than leave her charge. The only other point that occurs to me with reference to the emotions of spiders is the somewhat remarkable one concerning their apparent fondness of music. The testimony is so varied and abundant on this matter that we can scarcely doubt the truth of the facts. These simply are that spiders--or at any rate some species or individuals--approach a sounding musical instrument, 'especially when the music is tender and not too loud.' They usually approach as near as possible, often letting themselves down from the ceiling of the room by a line of web, and remain suspended above the instrument. Should the music become loud, they often again retreat. Professor C. Reclain, during a concert at Leipsic, saw a spider descend in this way from one of the chandeliers while a violin solo was being played; but as soon as the orchestra began to sound it quickly ran back again.[75] Similar observations have been published by Rabigot, Simonius, von Hartmann, and others. A highly probable explanation of these facts has recently been given by Mr. C. V. Boys, which relieves us of the necessity of imputing to animals so low in the scale any rudiment of æsthetic emotion as aroused by musical tones. As the observation is an interesting one, I shall quote it _in extenso_:-- Having made some observations on the garden spider which are I believe new, I send a short account of them, in the hope that they may be of interest to the readers of _Nature_. Last autumn, while watching some spiders spinning their beautiful geometrical webs, it occurred to me to try what effect a tuning-fork would have upon them. On sounding an A fork, and lightly touching with it any leaf or other support of the web, or any portion of the web itself, I found that the spider, if at the centre of the web, rapidly slues round so as to face the direction of the fork, feeling with its fore-feet along which radial thread the vibration travels. Having become satisfied on this point, it next darts along that thread till it reaches either the fork itself or a junction of two or more threads, the right one of which it instantly determines as before. If the fork is not removed when the spider has arrived it seems to have the same charm as any fly; for the spider seizes it, embraces it, and runs about on the legs of the fork as often as it is made to sound, never seeming to learn by experience that other things may buzz besides its natural food. If the spider is not at the centre of the web at the time that the fork is applied, it cannot tell which way to go until it has been to the centre to ascertain which radial thread is vibrating, unless of course it should happen to be on that particular thread, or on a stretched supporting thread in contact with the fork. If, when a spider has been enticed to the edge of the web the fork is withdrawn, and then gradually brought near, the spider is aware of its presence and of its direction, and reaches out as far as possible in the direction of the fork; but if a sounding fork is gradually brought near a spider that has not been disturbed, but which is waiting as usual in the middle of the web, then, instead of reaching out towards the fork, the spider instantly drops--at the end of a thread, of course. If under these conditions the fork is made to touch any part of the web, the spider is aware of the fact, and climbs the thread and reaches the fork with marvellous rapidity. The spider never leaves the centre of the web without a thread along which to travel back. If after enticing a spider out we cut this thread with a pair of scissors, the spider seems to be unable to get back without doing considerable damage to the web, generally gumming together the sticky parallel threads in groups of three and four. By means of a tuning-fork a spider may be made to eat what it would otherwise avoid. I took a fly that had been drowned in paraffin and put it into a spider's web, and then attracted the spider by touching the fly with a fork. When the spider had come to the conclusion that it was not suitable food, and was leaving it, I touched the fly again. This had the same effect as before, and as often as the spider began to leave the fly I again touched it, and by this means compelled the spider to eat a large portion of the fly. The few house-spiders that I have found do not seem to appreciate the tuning-fork, but retreat into their hiding-places as when frightened; yet the supposed fondness of spiders for music must surely have some connection with these observations; and when they come out to listen, is it not that they cannot tell which way to proceed? The few observations that I have made are necessarily imperfect, but I send them, as they afford a method which might lead a naturalist to notice habits otherwise difficult to observe, and so to arrive at conclusions which I in my ignorance of natural history must leave to others.[76] _General Habits._ Coming now to general habits, our attention is claimed by the only general habit that is of interest--namely, that of web-building. The instinct of constructing nets for the capture of prey occurs in no other class of animals, while in spiders it not only attains to an extraordinary degree of perfection (so that, in the opinion of some geometers, the instinct is not less wonderful in this respect than is that displayed by the hive-bee in the construction of its cells), but also ramifies into a number of diverse directions. Thus we have, in different species, wide open networks spread between the branches of bushes, &c., closely woven textures in the corners of buildings, earth tubes lined with silk, the strong muslin-like snare of the Mygale, which, as first noticed by Madame Merian,[77] and since confirmed by Bates,[78] is able to retain a struggling humming-bird while this most beautiful animal in creation is being devoured by the most repulsive; and many other varieties might be mentioned. It may at first sight appear somewhat remarkable that this instinct of spreading snares should on the one hand occur only in one class of the animal kingdom, while on the other hand, in the class where it does occur, it should attain such extreme perfection, and run into so much variety. But we must here remember that the development of the instinct obviously depends upon the presence of a web-secreting apparatus, which is a comparatively rare anatomical feature. In caterpillars, which are not predaceous, the web is used only for the purposes of protection and locomotion; and it is easy to see that the spreading of snares would here be of no use to the animals. But in spiders, of course, the case is otherwise. Once granting the power of forming a web, and it is evident that there is much potential service to which this power may be put with reference to the voracious habits of the animal; and therefore it is not to be wondered that both the anatomical structures and their correlated instincts should attain to extreme perfection in sundry lines of development. The origin of the web-building structure was probably due to the use of the web for purposes of locomotion or of cocoon-spinning, as we see it still so used in the same way that it is used by caterpillars for descending from heights, and in the case of the gossamer spider for travelling immense distances through the air. As the anatomical structures in question differ very greatly in the case of spiders and in that of caterpillars, we may wonder why analogous if not homologous structures should never have been developed in the case of any other animal having predaceous habits--especially, perhaps, in that of the imago form of predaceous insects. It is easy to see how, if there were any original tendency to secrete a viscid substance in the neighbourhood of the anus, this might be utilised in descending from low elevations (as certain kinds of slugs use their viscid slime as threads whereby to let themselves down from low branches to the ground); and so we can understand how natural selection might thus have the material supplied out of which to develop such highly specialised organs as the spinnerets of a spider. But if we are inclined to wonder why this should not have happened among other animals, we must remember that any expectation that it should rests on negative grounds; we have no reason to suppose that in any other case the initial tendency to secrete a viscid substance was present. One inference, however, in the case of spiders seems perfectly valid. As this comparatively rare faculty of web-spinning occurs so generally throughout the class, it must have had its earliest origin very far back in the history of that class, though probably not so far back as to include the common progenitors of the spiders and the scorpions, seeing that the latter do not spin webs. I shall now give a few details on the manner in which spiders' webs are made. Without going into the anatomy of the subject further than to observe that a spider's 'thread' is a composite structure made up of a number of finer threads, which leave their respective spinneret-holes in an almost fluid condition, and immediately harden by exposure to the air, I shall begin at once to describe the method of construction. The so-called 'geometric spider' constructs her web by first laying down the radiating and unadhesive rays, and then, beginning from the centre, spins a spiral line of unadhesive web, like that of the rays which it intersects. This line, in being woven through the radii in a spiral from centre to circumference, serves as a scaffolding for the spider to walk over, and also keeps the rays properly stretched. She next spins another spiral line, but this time from the circumference to near the centre, and formed of web, covered with a viscid secretion to retain prey. Lastly, she constructs her lair to bide and watch for prey, at some distance from the web but connected with it by means of a line of communication or telegraph, the vibrations of which inform her of the struggling of an insect in the net.[79] According to Thompson,-- The web of the garden spider--the most ingenious and perfect contrivance that can be imagined--is usually fixed in a perpendicular or somewhat oblique direction in an opening between the leaves of some plant or shrub; and as it is obvious that round its whole extent lines will be required to which those ends of radii that are farthest from the centre can be attached, the construction of those exterior lines is the spider's first operation. It seems careless about the shape of the area they are to enclose, well aware that it can as readily inscribe a circle in a triangle as a square; and in this respect it is guided by the distance or proximity of the points to which it can attach them. It spares no pains, however, to strengthen and keep them in a proper degree of tension. With the former view it composes each line of five or six or even of more threads glued together; and with the latter it fixes to them from different points a numerous and intricate apparatus of smaller threads; and having thus completed the foundation of its snare, it proceeds to fill up the outline. Attaching a thread to one of the main lines, it walks along it, guiding it with one of its hind legs, that it may not touch in any part and be prematurely glued, and crosses over to the opposite side, where, by applying its spinners, it firmly fixes it. To the middle of this diagonal thread, which is to form the centre of its net, it fixes a second, which in like manner it conveys and fastens to another part of the lines including the area. The work now proceeds rapidly. During the preliminary operations it sometimes rests, as though its plan required meditation; but no sooner are the marginal lines of the net firmly stretched, and two or three radii spun from its centre, than it continues its labour so quickly and unremittingly that the eye can scarcely follow its progress. The radii, to the number of about twenty, giving the net the appearance of a wheel, are speedily finished. It then proceeds to the centre, quickly turns itself round, pulls each thread with its feet to ascertain its strength, breaking any one that seems defective, and replacing it by another. Next it glues, immediately round the centre, five or six small concentric circles, distant about half a line from each other, and then four or five larger ones, each separated by the space of half an inch or more. These last serve as a sort of temporary scaffolding to walk over, and to keep the radii properly stretched while it glues to them the concentric circles that are to remain, which it now proceeds to construct. Placing itself at the circumference, and fastening its thread to the end of one of the radii, it walks up that one, towards the centre, to such a distance as to draw the thread from its body of a sufficient length to meet the next. Then stepping across and conducting the thread with one of its hind legs, it glues it with its spinners to the point in the adjoining radius to which it is to be fixed. This process it repeats until it has filled up nearly the whole space from the circumference to the centre with concentric circles, distant from each other about two lines. It always, however, leaves a vacant interval around the smallest first spun circles that are nearest to the centre, and bites away the small cotton-like tuft that united all the radii, which being held now together by the circular threads have thus probably their elasticity increased; and in the circular opening, resulting from this procedure, it takes its station and watches for its prey, or occasionally retires to a little apartment formed under some leaf, which it also uses as a slaughter-house.[80] According to Büchner,-- The long main threads, with the help of which the spider begins and attaches its web, are always the thickest and strongest; while the others, forming the web itself, are considerably weaker. Injuries to the web at any spot the spider very quickly repairs, but without keeping to the original plan, and without taking more trouble than is absolutely necessary. Most spiders' webs, therefore, if closely looked into, are found to be somewhat irregular. When a storm threatens, the spider, which is very economical with its valuable spinning material, spins no web, for it knows that the storm will tear it in pieces and waste its pains, and it also does not mend a web which has been torn. If it is seen spinning or mending, on the other hand, fine weather may be generally reckoned on. . . . The emerged young at first spin a very irregular web, and only gradually learn to make a larger and finer one, so that here, as everywhere else, practice and experience play a great part. . . . The position must also offer favourable opposite points for the attachment of the web itself. People have often puzzled their brains, wondering how spiders, without being able to fly, had managed first to stretch their web through the air between two opposite points. But the little creature succeeds in accomplishing this difficult task in the most various and ingenious ways. It either, when the distance is not too great, throws a moist viscid pellet, joined to a thread, which will stick where it touches; or hangs itself by a thread in the air and lets itself be driven by the wind to the spot; or crawls there, letting out a thread as it goes, and then pulls it taut when arrived at the desired place; or floats a number of threads in the air and waits till the wind has thrown them here or there. The main or radial threads which fasten the web possess such a high degree of elasticity, that they tighten themselves between two distant points to which the spider has crawled, without it being necessary for the latter to pull them towards itself. When the little artist has once got a single thread at its disposition, it strengthens this until it is sufficiently strong for it to run backwards and forwards thereupon, and to spin therefrom the web.[81] _Special Habits._ _Water-spider._--The water-spider (_Argyroneta aquatica_), as is well known, displays the curious instinct of building her nest below the surface of water, and constructing it on the principle of a diving-bell. The animal usually selects still waters for this purpose, and makes her nest in the form of an oval hollow, lined with web, and held secure by a number of threads passing in various directions and fastened to the surrounding plants. In this oval bell, which is open below, she watches for prey, and, according to Kirby,[82] passes the winter after having closed the opening. The air needful for respiration the spider carries from the surface of the water. To do this she swims upon her back in order to entangle an air-bubble upon the hairy surface of her abdomen. With this bubble she descends, 'like a globe of quicksilver,' to the opening of her nest, where she liberates it and returns for more. _The Vagrant or Wolf Spider._--This insect catches its prey by stealthily stalking it until within distance near enough to admit of a sudden dart being successful in effecting capture. Some species, before making the final dart (_e.g. Salticus scenicus_), fix a line of web upon the surface over which they are creeping, so that whether their station is vertical or horizontal with reference to the prey, they can leap fearlessly, the thread in any case preventing their fall. Dr. H. F. Hutchinson says that he has seen this spider crawling over a looking-glass stalking its own reflection.[83] The following is quoted from Büchner:-- Less idyllic than the water-spider is our native hunting-spider (_Dolomedes fimbriata_), which belongs to those species which spin no web, but hunt their victims like animals of prey. As the _Argyroneta_ is the discoverer of the diving-bell, so may this be regarded as the discoverer or first builder of a floating raft. It is not content with hunting insects on land, but follows them on the water, on the surface of which it runs about with ease. It, however, needs a place to rest on, and makes it by rolling together dry leaves and such like bodies, binding them into a firm whole with its silken threads. On this raft-like vessel it floats at the mercy of wind and waves; and if an unlucky water-insect comes for an instant to the surface of the water to breathe, the spider darts at it with lightning speed, and carries it back to its raft to devour at its ease. Thus everywhere in nature are battle, craft, and ingenuity, all following the merciless law of egoism, in order to maintain their own lives and to destroy those of others! _Trap-door Spiders._--These display the curious instinct of providing their nests with trap-doors. The nest consists of a tube excavated in the earth to the depth of half a foot or more. In all save one species the tube is unbranched; it is always lined with silk, which is continuous with the lining of the trap-door or doors, of which it forms the hinge. In the species which constructs a branching tube, the branch is always single, more or less straight, takes origin at a point situated a few inches from the orifice of the main tube, is directed upwards at an acute angle with that tube, and terminates blindly just below the surface of the soil. At its point of junction with or departure from the main tube it is provided with a trap-door resembling that which closes the orifice of the main tube, and of such a size and arrangement that when closed against the opening of the branch tube it just fills that opening; while when turned outwards, so as to uncork this opening, it just fills the diameter of the main tube: the latter, therefore, is in this species provided with two trap-doors, one at the surface of the soil, and the other at the fork of the branched tube. Each species of trap-door spider is very constant in building a particular kind of trap-door; but among the different species there are four several kinds of trap-doors to be distinguished. 1st. The single-door cork nest, wherein the trap-door is a thick structure, and fits into the tube like a cork into a bottle. 2nd. The single-door wafer nest, wherein the trap-door is as thin as a piece of paper. 3rd. The double-door unbranched nest, wherein there is a second trap-door situated a few inches below the first one. And 4th, the double-door branched nest already described. In all cases the trap-doors open outwards, and when the nest is placed, as it usually is, on a sloping bank, the trap-door opens upwards; hence there is no fear of its gaping, for gravity is on the side of holding it shut. The object of the trap-door is to conceal the nest, and for this purpose it is always made so closely to resemble the general surface of the ground on which it occurs, that even a practised eye finds it difficult to detect the structure when closed. In order to make the resemblance to the surrounding objects as perfect as possible, the spider either constructs the surface of its door of a portion of leaf, or weaves moss, grass, &c., into the texture. Moggridge says,[84]-- Thus, for example, in one case where I had cut out a little clod of mossy earth, about two inches thick and three square on the surface, containing the top of the tube and the moss-covered cork door of _N. cæmentaria_, I found, on revisiting the place six days later, that a new door had been made, and that the spider had mounted up to fetch moss from the undisturbed bank above, planting it in the earth which formed the crown of the door. Here the moss actually called the eye to the trap, which lay in the little plain of brown earth made by my digging. If an enemy should detect the trap-door and endeavour to open it, the spider frequently seizes hold of its internal surface, and, applying her legs to the walls of the tube, forcibly holds the trap-door shut. In the double trap-door species it is surmised that the second trap-door serves as an inner barrier of defence, behind which the spider retires when obliged to abandon the first one. In the branched tube species (which, so far as at present known, only occurs in the south of Europe) it is surmised that the spider, when it finds that an enemy is about to gain entrance at the first trap-door, runs into the branch tube and draws up behind it the second trap-door. The surface of this trap-door, being overlaid with silk like the walls of the tube, is then invisible; so that the enemy no doubt passes down the main tube to find it empty, without observing the lateral branch in which the spider is concealed behind the closed door. As showing that these animals are to no small extent able to adapt their dwellings to unusual circumstances, I shall here quote the following from Moggridge (_loc. cit._, p. 122):-- Certain nests which were furnished with two doors of the cork type were observed by Mr. S. S. Saunders in the Ionian Islands. The door at the surface of these nests was normal in position and structure, but the lower one was placed at the very bottom of the nest, and inverted, so that, though apparently intended to open downwards, it was permanently closed by the surrounding earth. The presence of a carefully constructed door in a situation which forbade the possibility of its ever being opened seemed, indeed, something difficult to account for. However, it occurred to Mr. Saunders that, as these nests were found in the cultivated ground round the roots of olive trees, they may occasionally have got turned topsy-turvy when the soil was broken up. The spider then, finding her door buried below in the ground and the bottom of the tube at the surface, would have either to seek new quarters or to adapt the nest to its altered position, and make an opening and door at the exposed end. In order to try whether one of these spiders would do this, Mr. Saunders placed a nest, with its occupant inside, upside down in a flower-pot. After the lapse of ten days a new door was made, exactly as he had conjectured it would be, and the nest presented two doors like those which he had found at first. The most remarkable fact connected with these animals, if we regard their peculiar instinct from the standpoint of the descent theory, is the wide range of their geographical distribution. In all quarters of the globe species of trap-door spiders are found occurring in more or less localised areas; and as it is improbable that so peculiar an instinct should have arisen independently in more than one line of descent, we can only conclude that the wide dispersion of the species presenting it has been subsequent to the origin and perfecting of the instinct. This conclusion of course necessitates the supposition that the instinct must be one of enormous antiquity; and in this connection it is worthy of remark that we seem to have independent evidence to show that such is the case. It is a principle of evolution that the earlier any structure or instinct appears in the development of the race, the sooner will it appear in the development of the individual; and read by the light of this principle we should conclude, quite apart from all considerations as to the wide geographical distribution of trap-door spiders, that their instincts--as, indeed, is the case with the characteristic instincts of many other species of spiders--must be of immense age. Thus, again to quote Moggridge,-- It seems to be the rule with spiders generally that the offspring should leave the nest and construct dwellings for themselves when very young. Mr. Blackwall, speaking of British spiders, says:--'Complicated as the processes are by which these symmetrical nets are produced, nevertheless young spiders, acting under the influence of instinctive impulse, display, even in their first attempts to fabricate them, as consummate skill as the most experienced individuals.' Again, Mr. F. Pollock[85] relates of the young of _Epeira aurelia_, which he observed in Madeira, that when seven weeks old they made a web the size of a penny, and that these nets have the same beautiful symmetry as those of the full-grown spider. And, speaking of trap-door spiders, Moggridge says,-- I cannot help thinking that these very small nests, built as they are by minute spiders probably not very long hatched from the egg, must rank among the most marvellous structures of this kind with which we are acquainted. That so young and weak a creature should be able to excavate a tube in the earth many times its own length, and know how to make a perfect miniature of the nest of its parents, seems to be a fact which has scarcely a parallel in nature.[86] Regarding the steps whereby the instinct of building trap-doors probably arose, Büchner quotes Moggridge thus:-- To show, lastly, how various are the transitional forms and gradations so important in deciding upon the gradual origin of the forms of nests, Moggridge also alludes to the similar buildings made by other genera of spiders. _Lycosa Narbonensis_, a spider of Southern France much resembling the Apuleian tarantula, and belonging to the family of the wolf spiders, makes cylindrical holes in the earth, about one inch wide and three or four inches deep, in a perpendicular direction; when they have attained this depth they run further horizontally, and end in a three cornered room, from one to two inches broad, the floor of which is covered with the remnants of dead insects. The whole nest is lined within with a thick silken material, and has at its opening--closed by no door--an above-ground chimney-shaped extension, made of leaves, needles, moss, wood, &c., woven together with spider threads. These chimneys show various differences in their manner of building, and are intended chiefly, according to Moggridge, to prevent the sand blown about by the violent sea-winds from penetrating into the nests. During winter the opening is wholly and continuously woven over, and it is very well possible, or probable, that the process of reopening such a warm covering in the spring, after this opening was three-quarters completed, and was large enough to let the spider pass out, may have long ago awaked in the brain of some species of spider the idea of making a permanent and moveable door. But from this to the practical construction of so perfect a door as we have learned to know, and even to the building of the exceedingly complicated nest of the _N. Manderstjernæ_, through all the gradations which we already know, and which doubtless exist in far greater number, is no great or impossible step. _General Intelligence._ Coming now to the general intelligence of spiders, I think there can be no reasonable doubt, from the force of concurrent testimony, that they are able to distinguish between persons, and approach those whom they have found to be friendly, while shunning strangers. This power of discrimination, it will be remembered, also occurs among bees and wasps, and therefore its presence in spiders is not antecedently improbable. I myself know a lady who has 'tamed' spiders to recognise her, so that they come out to be fed when she enters the room where they are kept; and stories of the taming of spiders by prisoners are abundant. The following anecdote recorded by Büchner is in this connection worth quoting:-- Dr. Moschkau, of Gohlis, near Leipsic, writes as follows to the author, on August 28, 1876:--'In Oderwitz(?), where I lived in 1873 and 1874, I noticed one day in a half-dark corner of the anteroom a tolerably respectable spider's web, in which a well-fed cross-spider had made its home, and sat at the nest-opening early and late, watching for some flying or creeping food. I was accidentally several times a witness of the craft with which it caught its victim and rendered it harmless, and it soon became a regular duty to carry it flies several times during a day, which I laid down before its door with a pair of pincers. At first this feeding seemed to arouse small confidence, the pincers perhaps being in fault, for it let many of the flies escape again, or only seized them when it knew that they were within reach of its abode. After a while, however, the spider came each time and took the flies out of the pincers and spun them over. The latter business was sometimes done so superficially, when I gave flies very quickly one after the other, that some of the already ensnared flies found time and opportunity to escape. This game was carried on by me for some weeks, as it seemed to me curious. But one day when the spider seemed very ravenous, and regularly flew at each fly offered to it, I began teasing it. As soon as it had got hold of the fly I pulled it back again with the pincers. It took this exceedingly ill. The first time, as I finally left the fly with it, it managed to forgive me, but when I later took a fly right away, our friendship was destroyed for ever. On the following day it treated my offered flies with contempt, and would not move, and on the third day it had disappeared.[87] Jesse relates the following anecdote, which seems to display on the part of a spider somewhat remote adaptation of means to novel circumstances. He confined a spider with her eggs under a glass upon a marble mantelpiece. Having surrounded the eggs with web,-- She next proceeded to fix one of her threads to the upper part of the glass which confined her, and carried it to the further end of the piece of grass, and in a short time had succeeded in raising it up and fixing it perpendicularly, working her threads from the sides of the glass to the top and sides of the piece of grass. Her motive in doing this was obvious. She not only rendered the object of her care more secure than it would have been had it remained flat on the marble, but she was probably aware that the cold from the marble would chill her eggs, and prevent their arriving at maturity: she therefore raised them from it in the manner I have described.[88] Mr. Belt gives the following account of the intelligence which certain species of South American spiders display in escaping from the terrible hosts of the Eciton ants:-- Many of the spiders would escape by hanging suspended by a thread of silk from the branches, safe from the foes that swarmed both above and below. I noticed that spiders generally were most intelligent in escaping, and did not, like the cockroaches and other insects, take shelter in the first hiding-place they found, only to be driven out again, or perhaps caught by the advancing army of ants. I have often seen large spiders making off many yards in advance, and apparently determined to put a good distance between themselves and the foe. I once saw one of the false spiders, or harvest-men (_Phalangidæ_), standing in the midst of an army of ants, and with the greatest circumspection and coolness lifting, one after the other, its long legs, which supported its body above their reach. Sometimes as many as five out of its eight legs would be lifted at once, and whenever an ant approached one of those on which it stood, there was always a clear space within reach to put down another, so as to be able to hold up the threatened one out of danger.[89] Mr. L. A. Morgan, writing to 'Nature' (Jan. 22, 1880), gives an account of a spider conveying a large insect from the part of the web where it was caught to the 'larder,' by the following means. The spider first went two or three times backwards and forwards between the head of the insect and the main strand of the web. After this he went about cutting all the threads around the insect till the latter hung by the head strands alone. The spider then fixed a thread to the tail end, and by this dragged the carcass as far on its way to the larder as the head strands would permit. As soon as these were taut, he made the tail rope fast, went back to the head rope and cut it; then he attached himself to the head and pulled the body towards the larder, until the tail rope was taut. In this way, by alternately cutting the head and tail ropes and dragging the insect bit by bit, he conveyed it safely to the larder. But the practical acquaintance with mechanical principles which this observation displays is perhaps not so remarkable as that which is sometimes shown by spiders when they find that a widely spread web is not tightly enough stretched, and as a consequence is to an inconvenient extent swayed about by the wind. Under such circumstances these animals have been observed to suspend to their webs small stones or other heavy objects, the weight of which serves to steady the whole system. Gleditsch saw a spider so circumstanced let itself down to the ground by means of a thread, seize a small stone, remount, and fasten the stone to the lower part of its web, at a height sufficient to enable animals and men to walk beneath it. After alluding to this case, Büchner observes (_loc. cit._, p. 318),-- But a similar observation was made by Professor E. H. Weber, the famous anatomist and physiologist, and was published many years ago in Müller's Journal. A spider had stretched its web between two posts standing opposite each other, and had fastened it to a plant below for the third point. But as the attachment below was often broken by the garden work, by passers-by, and in other ways, the little animal extricated itself from the difficulty by spinning its web round a little stone, and fastened this to the lower part of its web, swinging freely, and so to draw the web down by its weight instead of fastening it in this direction by a connecting thread. Carus ('Vergl. Psycho.,' 1866, p. 76) also made a similar observation. But the most interesting observation on this head is related by J. G. Wood ('Glimpses into Petland'), and repeated by Watson (_loc. cit._, p. 455). One of my friends, says Wood, was accustomed to grant shelter to a number of garden spiders under a large verandah, and to watch their habits. One day a sharp storm broke out, and the wind raged so furiously through the garden that the spiders suffered damage from it, although sheltered by the verandah. The mainyards of one of these webs, as the sailors would call them, were broken, so that the web was blown hither and thither, like a slack sail in a storm. The spider made no fresh threads, but tried to help itself in another way. It let itself down to the ground by a thread, and crawled to a place where lay some splintered pieces of a wooden fence thrown down by the storm. It fastened a thread to one of the bits of wood, turned back with it, and hung it with a strong thread to the lower part of its nest, about five feet from the ground. The performance was a wonderful one, for the weight of the wood sufficed to keep the nest tolerably firm, while it was yet light enough to yield to the wind, and so prevent further injury. The piece of wood was about two and a half inches long, and as thick as a goose-quill. On the following day a careless servant knocked her head against the wood, and it fell down. But in the course of a few hours the spider had found it and brought it back to its place. When the storm ceased, the spider mended her web, broke the supporting thread in two, and let the wood fall to the ground! If so well-observed a fact requires any further confirmation, I may adduce the following account, which is of the more value as corroborative evidence from the writer not appearing to be aware that the fact had been observed before. This writer is Dr. John Topham, whom the late Dr. Sharpey, F.R.S., assured me is a competent observer, and who publishes the account in 'Nature' (xi. 18):-- A spider constructed its web in an angle of my garden, the sides of which were attached by long threads to shrubs at the height of nearly three feet from the gravel path beneath. Being much exposed to the wind, the equinoctial gales of this autumn destroyed the web several times. The ingenious spider now adopted the contrivance here represented. It secured a conical fragment of gravel with its larger end upwards by two cords, one attached to each of its opposite sides, to the apex of its wedge-shaped web, and left it suspended as a moveable weight to be opposed to the effect of such gusts of air as had destroyed the webs previously occupying the same situation. The spider must have descended to the gravel path for this special object, and having attached threads to a stone suited to its purpose, must have afterwards raised this by fixing itself upon the web, and pulling the weight up to a height of more than two feet from the ground, where it hung suspended by elastic cords. The excellence of the contrivance is too evident to require further comment. An almost precisely analogous case, with a sketch, is published by another observer in 'Land and Water,' Dec. 12, 1877. _Scorpions._ Before quitting the Arachnida I must allude to some recent correspondence on the alleged tendency of the scorpion to commit suicide when surrounded by fire. This alleged tendency has long been recognised in popular fables, and has been used by Byron as a poetical metaphor in certain well-known lines. But until the publication of the correspondence to which I allude, no one supposed the tendency in question to have any existence in fact. This correspondence took place in 'Nature' (vol. xi.), and as the subject is an interesting one, I shall reproduce the more important contributions to it _in extenso_. It was opened by Mr. W. G. Biddie as follows:-- I shall feel obliged if you will record in 'Nature' a fact with reference to the common black scorpion of Southern India, which was observed by me some years ago in Madras. One morning a servant brought to me a large specimen of this scorpion, which, having stayed out too long in its nocturnal rambles, had apparently got bewildered at daybreak, and been unable to find its way home. To keep it safe the creature was at once put into a glazed entomological case. Having a few leisure minutes in the course of the forenoon I thought I would see how my prisoner was getting on, and to have a better view of it the case was placed in a window in the rays of the hot sun. The light and heat seemed to irritate it very much, and this recalled to my mind a story which I had read somewhere that a scorpion, on being surrounded with fire, had committed suicide. I hesitated about subjecting my pet to such a terrible ordeal, but taking a common botanical lens, I focussed the rays of the sun on its back. The moment this was done it began to run hurriedly about the case, hissing and spitting in a very fierce way. This experiment was repeated some four or five times with like results, but on trying it once again, the scorpion turned up its tail and plunged the sting, quick as lightning, into its own back. The infliction of the wound was followed by a sudden escape of fluid, and a friend standing by me called out, 'See, it has stung itself: it is dead;' and sure enough in less than half a minute life was quite extinct. I have written this brief note to show (1) that animals may commit suicide; (2) that the poison of certain animals may be destructive to themselves. The following corroborative evidence on the subject was then supplied by Dr. Allen Thomson, F.R.S. ('Nature,' vol. xx., p. 577):-- Doubts having been expressed at various times, even by learned naturalists, as to the reality of the suicide or self-destruction of the scorpion by means of its own poison, and these doubts having been again stated in 'Nature,' vol. xx., p. 553, by Mr. B. F. Hutchinson, of Peshawur, as the result of his own observations, I think it may be useful to give an articulate account of the phenomenon as it has been related to me by an eye-witness, which removes all possible doubt as to its occurrence under certain circumstances. While residing many years ago, during the summer months, at the baths of Sulla in Italy, in a somewhat damp locality, my informant together with the rest of the family was much annoyed by the frequent intrusion of small black scorpions into the house, and their being secreted among the bedclothes, in shoes, and other articles of dress. It thus became necessary to be constantly on the watch for these troublesome creatures, and to take means for their removal and destruction. Having been informed by the natives of the place that the scorpion would destroy itself if exposed to a sudden light, my informant and her friends soon became adepts in catching the scorpions and disposing of them in the manner suggested. This consisted in confining the animal under an inverted drinking-glass or tumbler, below which a card was inserted when the capture was made, and then, waiting till dark, suddenly bringing the light of a candle near to the glass in which the animal was confined. No sooner was this done than the scorpion invariably showed signs of great excitement, running round and round the interior of the tumbler with reckless velocity for a number of times. This state having lasted for a minute or more, the animal suddenly became quiet, and turning its tail on the hinder part of its body over its back, brought its recurved sting down upon the middle of the head, and piercing it forcibly, in a few seconds became quite motionless, and in fact quite dead. This observation was repeated very frequently; in truth, it was adopted as the best plan of getting rid of the animals. The young people were in the habit of handling the scorpions with impunity immediately after they were so killed, and of preserving many of them as curiosities. In this narrative the following circumstances are worthy of attention:-- (1) The effect of light in producing the excitement amounting to despair, which causes the animal to commit self-destruction; (2) The suddenness of the operation of the poison, which is probably inserted by the puncture of the head into the upper cerebral ganglion; and (3) The completeness of the fatal symptoms at once induced. I am aware that the phenomena now described have been observed by others, and they appear to have been familiarly known to the inhabitants of the district in which the animals are found. Sufficient confirmation of the facts is also to be found in the narratives of 'G. Biddie' and 'M. L.' contained in 'Nature,' vol. ix., pp. 29-47, and it will be observed that the circumstances leading the animal to self-destruction in these instances were somewhat similar to those narrated by my informant. It is abundantly clear, therefore, that the view taken by Mr. Hutchinson, viz., that the 'popular idea regarding scorpionic suicide is a delusion based on an impossibility,' is wholly untenable; indeed, the recurved direction of the sting, which he refers to as creating the impossibility of the animal destroying itself, actually facilitates the operation of inflicting the wound. I suppose Mr. Hutchinson, arguing from the analogy of bees or wasps, imagined that the sting would be bent forwards upon the body, whereas the wound of the scorpion is invariably inflicted by a recurvation of the tail over the back of the animal. It will be perceived that these observations were not made by Dr. Allen Thomson himself, and that there are certain inherent discrepancies in the account which he has published--such, for instance, as the reason given for trying and repeating the experiment, the method being clearly a cumbersome one to employ if the only object were that of 'disposing of' the animals. Nevertheless, as Dr. Thomson is a high authority, and as I learn from him that he is satisfied regarding the capability and veracity of his informant, I have not felt justified in suppressing his evidence. Still I think that so remarkable a fact unquestionably demands further corroboration before we should be justified in accepting it unreservedly. For if it is a fact, it stands as a unique case of an instinct detrimental alike to the individual and to the species. FOOTNOTES: [75] _Body and Mind_, p. 275. [76] _Nature_, xxiii., pp. 149-50. [77] _Naturalist on the Amazon_, p. 83. [78] For many other confirmations see Sir E. Tennent, _Nat. Hist. Ceylon_, pp. 468-69. [79] Kirby, vol. ii., p. 298. [80] Thompson, _Passions of Animals_, p. 145. [81] _Loc. cit._, p. 316 _et seq._ [82] _Hist. Habits and Inst. of Animals_, vol. ii. p. 296. [83] _Nature_, vol. xx., p. 581. [A] _Loc. cit._, p. 323. [84] _Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders_, p. 120. [85] 'The History and Habits of _Epeira aurelia_,' in _Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist._ for June 1865. [86] _Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders_, p. 126. This admirable work, with its appendix, contains a very full account of the whole economy of the interesting animals with which it is concerned. [87] _Loc. cit._, p. 319. [88] _Gleanings_, vol. i., p. 103. [89] _Naturalist in Nicaragua_, p. 19. CHAPTER VII. REMAINING ARTICULATA. THE Hymenoptera being so much the most intelligent order, not merely of insects, but of Invertebrata, and the Arachnida having been now considered, very little space need be occupied with the remaining classes of the Articulata. _Coleoptera._ Sir John Lubbock, in his first paper on Bees and Wasps, quotes the following case from Kirby and Spence, with the remarks which I append:-- The first of these anecdotes refers to a beetle (_Ateuchus pilularius_) which, having made for the reception of its eggs a pellet of dung too heavy for it to move, repaired to an adjoining heap, and soon returned with three of his companions. 'All four now applied their united strength to the pellet, and at length succeeded in pushing it out; which being done, the three assistant beetles left the spot and returned to their own quarters.' This observation rests on the authority of an anonymous German artist; and though we are assured that he was a 'man of strict veracity,' I am not aware that any similar fact has been recorded by any other observer. Catesby, however, says:-- I have attentively admired their industry, and their mutual assisting of each other in rolling these globular balls from the place where they made them, to that of their interment, which is usually a distance of some yards, more or less. This they perform back foremost, by raising their hind parts and pushing away the ball with their hind feet. Two or three of them are sometimes engaged in trundling one ball, which from meeting with impediments, on account of the unevenness of the ground, is sometimes deserted by them. It is, however, attempted by others with success, unless it happen to roll into some deep hollow or ditch, where they are accustomed to leave it; but they continue their work by rolling off the next ball that comes in their way. None of them seem to know their own balls, but an equal care for the whole appears to affect all the community. They form these pellets while the dung remains moist, and leave them to harden in the sun before they attempt to roll them. In their rolling of them from place to place, both they and the balls may frequently be seen tumbling about over the little eminences that are in their way. They are not, however, easily discouraged, and by repeating their attempts usually surmount the difficulties.[90] Büchner speaks of the fact that dung-beetles co-operate in their work as one that is well established, but gives no authorities or references.[91] A friend of my own, however, informs me that she has witnessed the fact; and in view of analogous observations made on other species of Coleoptera, I see no reason to doubt this one. Some of these observations I may here append. Herr Gollitz writes to Büchner thus:-- Last summer, in the month of July, I was one day in my field, and found there a mound of fresh earth like a molehill, on which a striped black and red beetle, with long legs, and about the size of a hornet, was busy taking away the earth from a hole that led like a pit into the mound, and levelling the place. After I had watched this beetle for some time, I noticed a second beetle of the same kind, which brought a little lump of earth from the interior to the opening of the hole, and then disappeared again in the mound; every four or five minutes a pellet came out of the hole, and was carried away by the first-named beetle. After I had watched these proceedings for about half an hour, the beetle which had been working underground came out and ran to its comrade. Both put their heads together, and clearly held a conversation, for immediately afterwards they changed work. The one which had been working outside went into the mound, the other took the outside labour, and all went on vigorously. I watched the affair still for a little longer, and went away with the notion that these insects could understand each other just like men. Klingelhöffer, of Darmstadt (in Brehm, _loc. cit._, ix., p. 86), says:--A golden running beetle came to a cockchafer lying on its back in the garden, intending to eat it, but was unable to master it; it ran to the next bush, and returned with a friend, whereupon the two overpowered the cockchafer, and pulled it off to their hiding-place. Similarly, there is no doubt that the burying beetles (_Nicrophorus_) co-operate. Several of them unite together to bury under the ground, as food and shelter for their young, some dead animal, such as a mouse, a toad, a mole, a bird, &c. The burial is performed because the corpse, if left above ground, would either dry up, or grow rotten, or be eaten by other animals. In all these cases the young would perish, whereas the dead body lying in the earth and withdrawn from the outer air lasts very well. The burying beetles go to work in a very well-considered fashion, for they scrape away the earth lying under the body, so that it sinks of itself deeper and deeper. When it is deep enough down, it is covered over from above. If the situation is stony, the beetles with united forces and great efforts drag the corpse to some place more suitable for burying. They work so diligently that a mouse, for instance, is buried within three hours. But they often work on for days, so as to bury the body as deeply as possible. From large carcasses, such as those of horses, sheep, &c., they only bury pieces as large as they can manage.[92] Lastly, Clarville gives a case of a burying beetle which wanted to carry away a dead mouse, but, finding it too heavy for its unaided strength, went off, like the beetles previously mentioned, and brought four others to its assistance.[93] A friend of Gleditsch fastened a dead toad, which he desired to dry, upon the top of an upright stick. The burying beetles were attracted by the smell, and finding that they could not reach the toad, they undermined the stick, so causing it to fall with the toad, which was then buried safe out of harm's way.[94] A converse exemplification of beetle-intelligence is given by G. Berkeley.[95] He saw a beetle carrying a dead spider up a heath plant, and hanging it upon a twig of the heath in so secure a position, that when the insect had left it Mr. Berkeley found that a sharp shake of the heather would not bring the dead spider down. As the burying beetle preserves its treasure by hiding it out of sight below ground, so this beetle no doubt secured the same end but by other means; 'seeing,' as Mr. Berkeley observes, 'that if it did not hang up its prey, it might fall into the hands of other hunters, it took all possible pains to find out the best store-room for it.' The above instances of beetle-intelligence lead me to credit the following, which has been communicated to me by Dr. Garraway, of Faversham. On a bank of moss in the Black Forest he saw a beetle alight with a caterpillar which it was carrying, and proceed to excavate a cylindrical hole in the peat, about an inch and a half deep, into which, when completed, it dropped the caterpillar, and then flew away through the pines. 'I was struck,' says my correspondent, 'with the creature's folly in leaving the whole uncovered, as every curious wayfaring insect would doubtless be tempted to enter therein. However, in about a minute the beetle returned, this time carrying a small pebble, of which there were none in the immediate vicinity, and having carefully fitted this into the aperture, fled away into space.' _Earwig._ I must devote a short division of this chapter to the earwig. M. Geer describes a regular process of incubation as practised by the mother insect. He placed one with her eggs in a box, and scattered the eggs on the floor of the latter. The earwig, however, carried them one by one into a certain part of the box, and then remained constantly sitting upon the heap without ever quitting it for a moment. When the eggs were hatched, the young earwigs kept close to their mother, following her about everywhere, and often running under her abdomen, just as chickens run under a hen.[96] A young lady, who objects to her name being published, informs me that her two younger sisters (children) are in the habit of feeding every morning with sugar an earwig, which they call 'Tom,' and which crawls up a certain curtain regularly every day at the same hour, with the apparent expectation of getting its breakfast. This resembles analogous instances which, have been mentioned in the case of spiders. _Dipterous Insects._ The gad-fly, whose eggs are hatched out in the intestines of the horse, exhibits a singular refinement of instinct in depositing them upon those parts of the horse which the animal is most likely to lick. For, according to Bingley and other writers, 'the inside of the knee is the part on which these flies principally deposit their eggs; and next to this they fix them upon the sides, and the back part of the shoulder; but almost always in places liable to be licked by the tongue.' The female fly deposits her eggs while on the wing, or at least scarcely appears to settle when she extends her ovidepositor to touch the horse. She lays only a single egg at a time--flying away a short distance after having deposited one in order to prepare another, and so on. The following anecdote, which I quote from Jesse, seems to indicate no small degree of intelligence on the part of the common house-fly--intelligence, for instance, the same both in kind and degree as that which was displayed by Sir John Lubbock's pet wasp already mentioned: Slingsby, the celebrated opera dancer, resided in the large house in Cross-deep, Twickenham, next to Sir Wathen Waller's, looking down the river. He was fond of the study of natural history, and particularly of insects, and he once tried to tame some house-flies, and preserve them in a state of activity through the winter. For this purpose, quite at the latter end of autumn, and when they were becoming almost helpless, he selected four from off his breakfast-table, put them upon a large handful of cotton, and placed it in one corner of the window nearest the fireplace. Not long afterwards the weather became so cold that all flies disappeared except these four, which constantly left their bed of cotton at his breakfast-time, came and fed at the table, and then returned to their home. This continued for a short time, when three of them became lifeless in their shelter, and only one came down. This one Slingsby had trained to feed upon his thumb-nail, by placing on it some moist, sugar mixed with a little butter. Although there had been at intervals several days of sharp frost, the fly never missed taking his daily meal in this way till after Christmas, when, his kind preserver having invited a friend to dine and sleep at his house, the fly, the next morning, perched upon the thumb of the visitor, who, being ignorant that it was a pet of his host's, clapped his hand upon it, and thus put an end to Mr. Slingsby's experiment.[97] _Crustacea._ There is no doubt that these are an intelligent group of animals, although I have been able to collect but wonderfully little information upon the subject. Mr. Moseley, F.R.S., in his very interesting work, 'Notes by a Naturalist on the _Challenger_,' says (p. 70):-- In the tropics one becomes accustomed to watch the habits of various species of crabs, which there live so commonly an aërial life. The more I have seen of them, the more have I been astonished at their sagacity. And again (pp. 48-9):-- A rock crab (_Grapsus stringosus_) was very abundant, running about all over the rocks, and making off into clefts on one's approach. I was astonished at the keen and long sight of this crab. I noticed some made off at full speed to their hiding-places at the instant that my head showed above a rock fifty yards distant. . . . At Still Bay, on the sandy beach of which a heavy surf was breaking, I encountered a sand crab (_[OE]cypoda ippeus_), which was walking about, and got between it and its hole in the dry sand above the beach. The crab was a large one, at least three inches in breadth of its carapace. . . . With its curious column-like eyes erect, the crab bolted down towards the surf as the only escape, and as it saw a great wave rushing up the shelving shore, dug itself tight into the sand, and held on to prevent the undertide from carrying it into the sea. As soon as the wave had retreated, it made off full speed for the shore. I gave chase, and whenever a wave approached, the crab repeated the manoeuvre. I once touched it with my hand whilst it was buried and blinded by the sandy water, but the surf compelled me to retreat, and I could not snatch hold of it for fear of its powerful claws. At last I chased it, hard pressed, into the surf in a hurry, and being unable to get proper hold in time, it was washed into the sea. The crab evidently dreaded going into the sea. . . . They soon die when kept a short time beneath the water. The land crabs of the West Indies and North America descend from their mountain home in May and June, to deposit their spawn in the sea. They travel in such swarms that the roads and woods are covered with them. They migrate in a straight line, and rather than allow themselves to be deflected from it, 'they scale the houses, and surmount every other obstacle that lies in their way' (Kirby). They travel chiefly by night, and when they arrive at the sea-shore they 'bathe three or four different times,' and then 'commit their eggs to the waves.' They return to the mountains by the same route, but only the most vigorous survive the double journey. Prof. Alex. Agassiz details some interesting observations on the behaviour of young hermit crabs reared by himself 'from very young stages,' when first presented with shells of mollusks. 'A number of shells, some of them empty, others with the animal living, were placed in a glass dish with the young crabs. Scarcely had the shells reached the bottom before the crabs made a rush for the shells, turned them round and round, invariably at the mouth, and soon a couple of the crabs decided to venture in, which they did with remarkable alacrity.' The crabs which obtained for their share the shells still inhabited by living mollusks, 'remained riding round upon the mouth of their future dwelling, and, on the death of the mollusk, which generally occurred soon after in captivity, commenced at once to tear out the animal, and having eaten him, proceeded to take its place within the shell.'[98] There is a species of small crustacean (_Podocerus capillatus_) described by Mr. Bates, which builds a nest to contain its eggs. The nest is in the form of a hollow cone, built upon seaweed, and composed of fine thread-like material closely interlaced. 'These nests,' says Mr. Bates, 'are evidently used as a place of refuge and security, in which the parent protects and keeps her brood of young until they are old enough to be independent of the mother's care.' Dr. Erasmus Darwin tells us, on the authority of a friend on whose competency as an observer he relied, that the common crab during the moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual, to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state. While thus mounting guard the hard-shelled crab is much more courageous than at other times, when he has only his own safety to consider. But these observations require to be corroborated. In 'Nature' (xv., p. 415) there is a notice of a lobster (_Homarus marinus_) in the Rothesay Aquarium which attacked a flounder that was confined in the same tank with him, and having devoured a portion of his victim, buried the rest beneath a heap of shingle, on which he 'mounted guard.' 'Five times within two hours was the fish unearthed, and as often did the lobster shovel the gravel over it with his huge claws, each time ascending the pile and turning his bold defensive front to his companions.' The following is quoted from Mr. Darwin's 'Descent of Man' (pp. 270-1):-- A trustworthy naturalist, Mr. Gardner, whilst watching a shore-crab (_Gelasimus_) making its burrow, threw some shells towards the hole. One rolled in, and three other shells remained within a few inches of the mouth. In about five minutes the crab brought out the shell which had fallen in, and carried it away to the distance of a foot; it then saw the three other shells lying near, and evidently thinking that they might likewise roll in, carried them to the spot where it had laid the first. It would, I think, be difficult to distinguish this act from one performed by man by the aid of reason. Mr. Darwin also alludes to the curious instinctive habits of the large shore-crab (_Birgus latro_), which feeds on fallen cocoa-nuts 'by tearing off the husk fibre by fibre; and it always begins at that end where the three eye-like depressions are situated. It then breaks through one of these eyes by hammering with its heavy front pincers, and turning round, extracts the albuminous core with its narrow posterior pincers.' Remarkable cases occur of commensalism between certain crabs and sea-anemones, and they betoken much intelligence. Thus Professor Möbius says in his 'Beiträge zur Meeresfauna der Insel Mauritius' (1880) that there are two crabs belonging to different genera which have the habit of firmly grasping a sea-anemone in each claw and carrying them about, presumably to secure some benefit to themselves. The more familiar case of the species of anemone which lives on the shells tenanted by hermit crabs is of special interest to us on account of a remarkable observation published by Mr. Gosse, F.R.S. (_Zoologist_, June, 1859). He found that on his detaching the anemone (_Adamsia_) from the shell, the hermit crab always took it up in its claws and held it against the shell 'for the space of ten minutes at a time, until fairly attached by a good strong base.' It was said by the late Dr. Robert Ball that when the common _Sagartia parasitica_ is attached to a stone and a hermit crab is placed in its vicinity, the anemone will leave the stone and attach itself to the hermit's shell (_Critic_, March 24, 1860). _Intelligence of Larvæ of Certain Insects._ I shall now allude to some of the more interesting facts touching the psychology of insects when in their immature or larval state. This is an interesting topic from the point of view which we occupy as evolutionists, because a caterpillar is really a locomotive and self-feeding embryo, whose entire mental constitution is destined to undergo a metamorphosis no less complete and profound than that which is also destined to take place in its corporeal structure. Yet although the caterpillar has an embryo psychology, its instincts and even intelligence often seem to be higher or more elaborated than is the case with the imago form. Where such is the case the explanation of course must be that it is of more importance to the species that the larval form should be in a certain measure intelligent than that the imago form should be so. Every larva is a potential imago, or breeding individual; therefore its life is of no less value to the species during its larval than during its adult existence; and if certain instincts or grades of intelligence are of more use to it during the former than during the latter period, of course natural selection would determine the unusual event which we seem here in some cases to see--namely, that the embryo should stand on a higher level of psychological development than the adult. I may most fitly begin under this heading with the remarkable instincts of the so-called 'ant-lion,' which is the larva of a neuropterous insect, the common _Myrmeleon_ (_M. formicarium_). I quote the following account of its habits from Thompson's 'Passions of Animals' (p. 258):-- The devices of the ant-lion are still more extraordinary if possible. He forms, with astonishing labour and perseverance, a pit in the shape of a funnel, in a dry sandy soil, under some old wall or other spot protected from the wind. His pit being finished, he buries himself among the sand at the bottom, leaving only his horns visible, and thus waits patiently for his prey. When an ant or any other small insect happens to walk on the edge of the hollow, it forces down some of the particles of sand, which gives the ant-lion notice of its presence. He immediately throws up the sand which covers his head to overwhelm the ant, and with its returning force brings it to the bottom. This he continues to do till the insect is overcome and falls between his horns. Every endeavour to escape, when once the incautious ant has stepped within the verge of the pit, is vain, for in all its attempts to climb the side the deceptive sand slips from under its feet, and every struggle precipitates it still lower. When within reach its enemy plunges the points of its jaws into its body, and having sucked out all its juices, throws out the empty skin to some distance. According to Bingley, if the ant-lion, while excavating its pitfall,-- Comes to a stone of some moderate size, it does not desert the work on this account, but goes on, intending to remove that impediment the last. When the pit is finished, it crawls backward up the side of the place where the stone is; and, getting its tail under it, takes great pains and time to get it on a true poise, and then begins to crawl backward with it up the edge to the top of the pit, to get it out of the way. It is a common thing to see an ant-lion labouring in this manner at a stone four times as big as its own body; and as it can only move backwards, and the poise is difficult to keep, especially up a slope of such crumbling matter as sand, which moulders away from under its feet, and necessarily alters the position of its body, the stone very frequently rolls down, when near the verge, quite to the bottom. In this case the animal attacks it again in the same way, and is often not discouraged by five or six miscarriages, but continues its struggle so long that it at length gets over the verge of the place. When it has done this, it does not leave it there, lest it should roll in again; but is always at the pains of pushing it further on, till it has removed it to a necessary distance from the edge of the pit.[99] Passing on now to the intelligence of caterpillars, Mr. G. B. Buckton, F.R.S., writing from Haslemere, says:-- Many caterpillars of _Pieris rapæ_ have, during this autumn, fed below my windows. On searching for suitable positions for passing into chrysalides, some eight or ten individuals, in their direct march upwards, encountered the plate-glass panes of my windows; on these they appeared to be unable to stand. Accordingly in every case they made silken ladders, some of them five feet long, each ladder being formed of a single continuous thread, woven in elegant loops from side to side. . . . The reasoning, however, seems to be but narrow, for one ladder was constructed parallel to the window-frame for nearly three feet, on which secure footing could be had by simply diverting the track two inches.[100] In this case it appears clear that we have to do with instinct, and not with reason. No doubt it is the congenital habit of these caterpillars to overcome impediments in this way; but the instinct is one of sufficient interest to be here stated. The following is quoted from Kirby and Spence:-- A caterpillar described by Bonnet, which, from being confined in a box, was unable to obtain a supply of the bark with which its ordinary instinct directs it to make its cocoon, substituted pieces of paper that were given to it, tied them together with silk, and constructed a very passable cocoon with them. In another instance the same naturalist having opened several cocoons of a moth (_Noctura verbasci_), which are composed of a mixture of grains of earth and silk, just after being finished, the larvæ did not repair the injury _in the same manner_. Some employed both earth and silk; others contented themselves with spinning a silken veil before the opening.[101] The same authorities state, as result of their own observation, that the-- Common cabbage caterpillar, which, when building web under stone or wooden surfaces, previously covers a space with a web to form a base for supporting its dependent pupa, when building a web beneath a muslin surface dispenses with this base altogether: it perceives that the woven texture of the muslin forms facilities for attaching the threads of the cocoon securely enough to support the weight of the cocoon without the necessity of making the usual square inch or so of basal support.[102] The instincts of the larva of the _Tinea_ moth are thus described by Réaumur:-- It feeds upon the elm, using the leaves both as food and clothing. To do this it only eats the parenchyma of the leaf, preserving the upper and under epidermal membranes, between which it then insinuates itself as it progressively devours the parenchyma. It, however, carefully avoids separating these membranes where they unite at the extreme edge of the leaf, which is designed to form 'one of the seams of its coat.' The cavity when thus excavated between the two epidermal membranes is then lined with silk, made cylindrical in shape, cut off at the two ends and all along the side remote from the 'seam,' and then the two epidermal membranes sewn together along the side where they have had to be cut in order to separate them from the tree. The larva now has a coat exactly fitting its body, and open at each end. By the one opening it feeds, and by the other discharges its excrement, 'having on one side a nicely jointed seam--that which is commonly applied to its back--composed of the natural marginal junction of the membranes of the leaf.' Réaumur cut off the edge of a newly finished coat, so as to expose the body of the larva at that point. The animal did not set about making a new coat _ab initio_, as we might expect that it would on the popular supposition that a train of instinctive actions is always as mechanical as the running down of a set of cog-wheels, and that wherever a novel element is introduced the machinery must be thrown out of gear, so that it cannot meet a new emergency of however simple a character, and must therefore re-start the whole process over again from the beginning. In this case the larva sewed up the rent; and not only so, but 'the scissors having cut off one of the projections intended to enter into the construction of the triangular end of the case, it entirely changed the original plan, and made that end the head which had been first designed for the tail.' Another remarkable case of the variation of instinct in the Lepidoptera is stated by Bonnet. There are usually, he says, two generations of the Angoumois moth: the first appear in early summer, and lay their eggs upon the ears of wheat in the fields; the second appear later in the summer, or in the autumn, and these lay their eggs upon wheat in the granaries; from these eggs there comes the first generation of next year's moths. This is a highly remarkable case--supposing the facts to be as Bonnet states; for it seems that the early summer moths, although born in the granaries, immediately fly to the unreaped fields to lay their eggs in the standing corn, while the autumn moths never attempt to leave the granaries, but lay their eggs upon the stored wheat.[103] Westwood says that-- A species of Tasmanian caterpillar (_Noctua Ewingii_) swarms over the land in enormous companies, which regularly begin to march at four o'clock in the morning, and as regularly halt at midday. _Liparis chrysorrhaca_, a kind of caterpillar, spins for the winter a common web, in which several hundred individuals find a common shelter.[104] According to Kirby and Spence,-- The larva of the ichneumon, while feeding upon its caterpillar host, spares the walls of the intestines until it is time for it to escape, when, the life of the caterpillar being no longer necessary to its development, it perforates these walls.[105] The larvæ _Theda isocrates_ live in a group of seven or eight in the fruit of pomegranate. In consequence of their excavations within the fruit, the latter is apt to fall; and to prevent its doing so the larvæ throw out a thread of attachment wherewith to secure the fruit to the branch, so that if the stalk withers, this thread serves to suspend the fruit.[106] The caterpillar of the Bombyx moth, which is a native of France, exhibits very wonderful instincts. The larva is gregarious in its habits, each society (family) consisting of perhaps 600 or 800 individuals. When young they have no fixed habitation, but encamp sometimes in one place, and sometimes in another, under the shelter of their web; but when they have attained two-thirds of their growth, they weave for themselves a common tent. About sunset the regiment leaves its quarters. . . . At their head is a chief, by whose movements their procession is regulated. When he stops all stop, and proceed when he proceeds; three or four of his immediate followers succeed in the same line, the head of the second touching the tail of the first; then comes an equal series of pairs, next of threes, and so on, as far as fifteen or twenty. The whole procession moves regularly on with an even pace, each file treading in the steps of those that precede it. If the leader, arriving at a particular point, pursues a different direction, all march to that point before they turn.[107] The following additional facts concerning these remarkable habits may be quoted. I take them from the account published by Mr. Davis in 'Loudoun's Magazine of Natural History:'-- The caterpillars, he observed, were Bombyces, and were seen crossing a road in single file, each so close to its predecessor that the line was quite continuous, 'moving like a living cord.' The number of caterpillars was 154, and the length of the line 27 feet. When Mr. Davis removed one from the line the caterpillar immediately in front suddenly stood still, then the next, and next, and so on to the leader. Similarly, those behind the point of interruption successively halted. After a pause of a few moments, the first caterpillar behind the break in the line endeavoured to fill up the vacant space, and so recover contact or communication, which after a time it succeeded in doing, when the information that the line was again closed was passed forward in some way from caterpillar to caterpillar till it reached the leader, when the whole fine was again put in motion. The individual which had been abstracted remained rolled up and motionless; but on being placed near the moving column it immediately unrolled, and made every attempt to get readmitted into the procession. After many endeavours it succeeded, the one below falling into the rear of the interloper. On repeating the experiment by removing a caterpillar fifty from the head of the procession, Mr. Davis found that it took just thirty seconds by his watch for information of the fact to reach the leader. All the same results followed as in the previous case. It was observable that the animals were guided neither by sight nor smell while endeavouring to close up the interrupted line; for the caterpillar next behind the interruption, on whom the duty of closing up devolved, 'turned right and left, and often in a wrong direction, when within half an inch of the one immediately before him; when he at last touched the object of his search, the fact was communicated again by signal; and in thirty seconds the whole line was in rapid march.' This gentleman adds that the object of the march was the search for new pasture. The caterpillars feed on the Eucalyptus, and when they have completely stripped one tree of its leaves, they all congregate on the trunk, and proceed as described to another tree. De Villiers[108] gives an account of his observations on the manner in which these caterpillars (_Cnethocampii pitzocampa_) are able to pass information, which does not quite agree with the above observation of Mr. Davis. For he says that, in a train of 600 caterpillars, interference by him in any part of the train was communicated through the whole series instantaneously--all the 600 caterpillars stopping immediately and with one consent like a single organism. According to Kirby and Spence there is a kind of caterpillar (_Pieris cratægi_) which lives in little colonies of ten or twelve in common chambers lined with silk. In one part they make of the same material a little bag or pocket, which is used by the community or household as a water-closet. When full of excrement the caterpillars empty it by turning out the pellets with their feet.[109] Only two other instances of noteworthy intelligence as exhibited by larvæ have fallen within my reading. One of these is mentioned by Réaumur, who says that the larvæ of _Hemerobius chrysops_ chase aphides, and having killed them, clothe themselves in their skins; and the other case is the very remarkable one mentioned in his newly published work by W. MacLachlan, F.R.S., of caddis-worms adjusting the specific gravity of their tubes to suit that of the water in which they live, by attaching heavy or light material to them according as they require sinking or flotation. FOOTNOTES: [90] Quoted by Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. iii., p. 118. [91] _Loc. cit._, p. 344. [92] Büchner, _loc. cit._, p. 344. [93] Quoted in Strauss, _Insects_, s. 389. [94] Kirby and Spence, _loc. cit._, pp. 321-2. [95] _Life and Recollections_, vol. ii., p. 356. [96] Quoted by Bingley, _loc. cit._, vol. iii., pp. 150-51. [97] _Gleanings_, vol. ii., pp. 165-6. [98] _American Journ. Sc. and Art_, vol. x., Oct. 1875. [99] _Animal Biography_, vol. iii., pp. 244-5. [100] _Nature_, vii., p. 49. [101] _Intr. to Ent._, ii., p. 475. [102] _Ibid._, p. 475. [103] _[OE]uvres_, ix., p. 370. [104] _Trans. Ent. Soc._, vol. ii. [105] _Introd. Ent._, Letter xi. [106] Westwood, _Trans. Ent. Soc._, vol. ii., p. 1. [107] Kirby and Spence, _Entomology_, Letter xvi. [108] _Trans. Ent. Soc. France_, vol. i., p. 201. [109] _Introduction to Entomology_, Letter xxvi. CHAPTER VIII. FISH. ALTHOUGH we here pass into the sub-kingdom of animals the intelligence of which immeasurably surpasses that of the other sub-kingdoms, it is remarkable that these lowest representatives of the higher group are psychologically inferior to some of the higher members of the lower groups. Neither in its instincts nor in general intelligence can any fish be compared with an ant or a bee--a fact which shows how slightly a psychological classification of animals depends upon zoological affinity, or even morphological organisation. For although a highly competent authority, namely Van Baer, has said that a bee is as highly organised an animal as a fish, though on a different type,[110] no one would be found to assert that an ant or a bee is so much more highly organised than a fish as its higher intelligence would require, supposing degrees of intelligence to stand in necessary relation to degree of organic development. And this consideration is not materially altered if, instead of regarding the whole organism, we look to the nervous system alone. There is no doubt that the cerebral hemispheres of a fish, although small as compared with these organs in the higher Vertebrata, are, bulk for bulk, enormous as compared with the oesophageal ganglia or 'brain' of an insect; while the disproportion becomes still greater if the cerebral hemispheres of a fish are compared with their supposed analogues in the brain of an ant, viz., the pedunculated and convoluted lobes which surmount the cephalic ganglion. But here the relative smallness of the ant as a whole must be taken into consideration, and also the fact that its brain is relatively much more massive as well as more highly organised than that which occurs in any other order of invertebrated animals, except, perhaps, the octopus and his allies. Therefore, although the brain of a fish is formed upon a type which by increase of size and complexity is destined in function far to eclipse all other types of nerve-centre, we have to observe that in its lowest stage of evolution as presented to science in the fishes, this type is functionally inferior to the invertebrate type, where this reaches its highest stage of evolution in the Hymenoptera. _Emotions._ Fish display emotions of fear, pugnacity; social, sexual, and parental feelings; anger, jealousy, play, and curiosity. So far the class of emotions is the same as that with which we have met in ants, and corresponds with that which is distinctive of the psychology of a child about four months old. I have not, however, any evidence of sympathy, which would be required to make the list of emotions identical; but sympathy may nevertheless be present. Fear and pugnacity are too apparent in fish to require special proof. The social or gregarious feelings are strongly shown by the numberless species which swim in shoals, the sexual feelings are proved by courtships, and the parental by those species which build nests and guard their young. Schneider saw several species of fish at the Naples Aquarium protecting their eggs. In one case the male mounted guard over a rock where the eggs were deposited, and swam with open mouth against intruders. The following accounts of the nidification of certain species of fish show that the parental instincts are not unlike those which obtain in birds, and are comparable in point of strength with the same instincts as they occur in ants, bees, and spiders. Agassiz remarks[111] that while examining the marine products of the Sargasso Sea, Mr. Mansfield picked up and brought to him a round mass of sargassum, about the size of the two fists placed together. The whole consisted, to all appearance, of nothing but gulf-weed, the branches and leaves of which were, however, evidently knit together, and not merely balled into a roundish mass. The elastic threads which held the gulf-weed together were beaded at intervals, sometimes two or three beads being close together, or a branch of them hanging from the cluster of threads. This nest was full of eggs scattered throughout the mass, and not placed together in a cavity. It was evidently the work of the _Chironectes_. This rocking fish-cradle is carried along as an undying arbour, affording at the same time protection and afterwards food for its living freight. It is suggested that the fish must have used their peculiar pectoral fins when constructing this elaborate nest. The well-known tinker or ten-spined stickleback (_Gasterosteus pungitius_) is one of our indigenous fish which constructs a nest. On May 1, 1864, a male[112] was placed in a well-established aquarium of moderate size, to which, after three days, two ripe females were added. Their presence at once roused him into activity, and he soon began to build a nest of bits of dirt and dead fibre, and of growing confervoid filaments, upon a jutting point of rock among some interlacing branches of _Myriophyllum spicatum_--all the time, however, frequently interrupting his labours to pay his addresses to the females. This was done in most vigorous fashion, he swimming, by a series of little jerks, near and about the female, even pushing against her with open mouth, but usually not biting. After a little coquetting she responds and follows him, swimming just above him as he leads the way to the nest. When there, the male commences to flirt--he seems unaware of its situation, will not swim to the right spot, and the female, after a few ineffectual attempts to find the proper passage into it, turns tail to swim away, but is then viciously pursued by the male. When he first courts the female, if she, not being ready, does not soon respond, he seems quickly to lose his temper, and, attacking her with great apparent fury, drives her to seek shelter in some crevice or dark corner. The coquetting of the male near the nest, which seems due to the fact that he really has not quite finished it, at length terminates by his pushing his head well into the entrance of the nest, while the female closely follows him, placing herself above him, and apparently much excited. As he withdraws she passes into the nest, and pushes quite through it, after a very brief delay, during which she deposits her ova. The male now fertilises the eggs, and drives the female away to a safe distance; then, after patting down the nest, he proceeds in search of another female. The nest is built and the ova deposited in about twenty-four hours. The male continued to watch it day and night, and during the light hours he also continually added to the nest. The marine fifteen-spined stickleback (_Gasterosteus spinachia_) affords another instance of nest-constructing fishes. The places selected for their nests are usually harbours, or some sheltered spots to where pure sea water reaches. The fish either find growing, or even collect some of the softer kinds of green or red seaweed, and join them with so much of the coralline tufts (_Janiæ_) growing on the rock as will serve the purpose of affording firmness to the structure, and constitute a pear-shaped mass five or six inches long, and about as stout as a man's fist. A thread, which is elastic and resembles silk, is employed for the purpose of binding the materials together: under a magnifier it appears to consist of several strands connected by a gluey substance, which hardens by exposure to the water.[113] M. Carbonnier, who has studied the habits of the Chinese butterfly-fish (_Macropodus_) in his private aquarium in Paris, where he had some in confinement, observed that the male constructs a nest of froth of considerable size, 15 to 18 centimetres horizontal diameter, and 10 to 12 high. He prepares the bubbles in the air (which he sucks in and then expels), strengthening them with mucous matter from his mouth, and brings them into the nest. Sometimes the buccal secretion will fail him, whereupon he goes to the bottom in search of confervæ, which he sucks and bites for a little in order to stimulate the act of secretion. The nest prepared, the female is induced to enter. Not less curious is the way in which the male brings the eggs from the bottom into the nest. He appears unable to carry them up in his mouth; instead of this, he first swallows an abundant supply of air, then descending, he places himself beneath the eggs, and suddenly, by a violent contraction of the muscles in the interior of his mouth and pharynx, he exhales the air which he had accumulated by the gills. This air, finely divided by the lamellæ and fringes of the gills, escapes in the form of two jets of veritable gaseous powder, which envelopes the eggs and raises them to the surface. In this manoeuvre the _Macropodus_ entirely disappeared in a kind of air-mist, and when this had dissipated he reappeared with a multitude of air-bubbles like little pearls clinging all over his body.[1] Again, in detailing Mr. Baker's observations on the three-spined stickleback, published in the Philosophical Transactions, this author says:-- It has been remarked that after the deposition of the eggs the nest was opened more to the action of the water, and the vibratory motion of the body of the male fish, hovering over its surface, caused a current of water to be propelled across the surface of the ova, which action was repeated almost continuously. After about ten days the nest was destroyed and the materials removed; and now were seen the minute fry fluttering upwards here and there, by a movement half swimming, half leaping, and then falling rapidly again upon or between the clear pebbles of the shingle bottom. This arose from their having the remainder of the yelk still attached to their body, which, acting as a weight, caused them to sink the moment the swimming effort had ceased. Around, across, and in every direction the male fish, as the guardian, continually moved. Now his labours became more arduous, and his vigilance was taxed to the utmost extreme, for the other fish (two tench and a gold carp), some twenty times larger than himself, as soon as they perceived the young fry in motion, continuously used their utmost endeavours to snap them up. The courage of the little stickleback was now put to its severest test; but, nothing daunted, he drove them all off, seizing their fins and striking with all his strength at their heads and at their eyes. His care of the young brood when encumbered with the yelk was very extraordinary; and as this was gradually absorbed and they gained strength, their attempts to swim carried them to a greater distance from the parent fish; his vigilance, however, seemed everywhere, and if they rose by the action of their fins above a certain height from the shingle bottom, or flitted beyond a given distance from the nest, they were immediately seized in his mouth, brought back, and gently puffed or jetted into their place again. The same care of the young, bringing them back to then nest up till about the sixth day after hatching, has been remarked by Dr. Ransom in the ten-spined stickleback (_G. pungitius_).[114] The well-known habit of the lophobranchiate fish, of incubating their eggs in their pouches, also displays highly elaborated parental feeling.[115] M. Risso says that when the young of the pipe-fish are hatched out, the parents show them marked attachment, and that the pouch then serves them as a place of shelter or retreat from danger.[116] M. Carbonnier has recorded how the male of the curiously grotesque telescope-fish, a variety of _Carassius auratus_ (Linn.), acts as accoucheur to the female. Three males pursued one female which was heavy with spawn, and rolled her like a ball upon the ground for a distance of several metres, and continued this process without rest or relaxation for two days, until the exhausted female, who had been unable to recover her equilibrium for a moment, had at last evacuated all her ova.[117] That adult fish are capable of feeling affection for one another would seem to be well established: thus Jesse relates how he once captured a female pike (_Esox lucius_) during the breeding season, and that nothing could drive away the male from the spot at which he had perceived his partner slowly disappear, and whom he had followed to the edge of the water. Mr. Arderon[118] gave an account of how he tamed a dace, which would lie close to the glass watching its master; and subsequently how he kept two ruffs (_Acerina cernua_) in an aquarium, where they became very much attached to one another. He gave one away, when the other became so miserable that it would not eat, and this continued for nearly three weeks. Fearing his remaining fish might die, he sent for its former companion, and on the two meeting they became quite happy again. Jesse gives a similar account of two gold carp.[119] Anger is strikingly shown by many fish, and notoriously by sticklebacks when their territory is invaded by a neighbour. These animals display a strange instinct of appropriating to themselves a certain part of the tank in which they may be confined, and furiously attacking any other stickleback which may presume to cross the imaginary frontier. Under such circumstances of provocation I have seen the whole animal change colour, and, darting at the trespasser, show rage and fury in every movement. Of course, here, as elsewhere, it is impossible to be sure how far apparent expression of an emotion is due to the presence of that mental state which we recognise as the emotion in ourselves; but still the best guide we have to follow is that of apparent expression. Following this principle, we are also entitled to attribute to fish the emotions conducive to play; for nothing can well be more expressive of sportive glee than many of their movements. As for jealousy, the fights of many male fish for the possession of females constitutes evidence of emotion which would be called by this name in the higher animals. Schneider, in his recent work already often quoted, says that he has observed a male fish (_Labrus_) show jealousy only towards other individual males of his own species--chasing these away from the neighbourhood of his female, but not objecting to the approach of fish of other species. Curiosity is shown by the readiness, or even eagerness, with which fish will approach to examine any unfamiliar object. So much is this the case that fishermen, like hunters, sometimes trade upon this faculty:-- And the fisher, with his lamp And spear, about the low rocks damp Crept, and struck the fish which came To worship the delusive flame.[120] Stephenson, the engineer, on sinking lighted lanterns in the water, also found that fish were attracted to them.[121] _Special Habits._ As curious instances of special instincts in fish we may notice the well-known habit of the angler (_Lophius piscator_), which conceals itself in mud and seaweed, while waving in the water certain filaments with which it is provided above its snout. Other fish, attracted by these moving objects, approach, and are thereupon seized by the angler. We must also allude to the _Chelmon rostratus_, which shoots its prey by means of a drop of water projected from the mouth with considerable force and unerring aim. The mark thus shot at is always some small object, such as a fly, at rest above the surface of the water, so that when suddenly hit it falls into the water.[122] This remarkable instinct can only, I think, have originated as a primordially intentional adjustment, and as such shows a high degree of intelligence on the part of these fishes' ancestors. Moreover, the wonderful co-ordination of sight and muscular movements required to judge the distance, to make due allowance for refraction, and to aim correctly, shows that the existing representatives are not unworthy of their ancestors. Several species of fish in different parts of the world have the habit of quitting pools which are about to dry up, and taking excursions across country in search of more abundant water. Eels have this habit, and perform their migrations by night. Dr. Hancock, in the 'Zoological Journal,' gives an account of a species of _Doras_, the individuals of which are about a foot in length, and travel by night in large shoals, or 'droves,' when thus searching for water. A strong serrated arm constitutes the first ray of the pectoral fin; and, using this as a kind of foot, the animal pushes itself forward by means of its tail, thus moving nearly as fast as a man can walk. Another migrating fish (_Hydrargzra_) was found by thousands in the fresh waters of Carolina by Bosc. It travels by leaps, and, according to Bosc, always directs itself towards the nearest water, although he purposely placed them so that they could not see it. But perhaps the strangest among this class of habits is that of the climbing perch (_Perca scandens_), first discovered by Daldorff in Tranquebar; for this animal not only creeps over land, but even climbs the fan palm in search of certain Crustacea which form its food. In climbing it uses its open gill-covers as hands wherewith to suspend itself, while it deflects its tail laterally upwards so as to bring to bear upon the bark certain little spines with which its anal fin is provided; it then pushes itself upwards by straightening the tail, while it closes the gill-covers not to prevent progress, and so on. Sir E. Tennent, however, without disputing the evidence that these fish do climb trees, says,-- The probability is, as suggested by Buchanan, that the ascent which was witnessed by Daldorff was accidental, and ought not to be regarded as the habit of the animal.[123] A great number of species of fish perform migrations. In relation to intelligence, the most interesting of these is the migration of salmon, which annually leave the sea to spawn in rivers, though there is some doubt whether the same individuals spawn every year. There is no doubt, however, that the same individuals frequently, though not invariably, revisit the same rivers for their successive spawnings. This fact may be due either to the remembrance of locality, similar to that which is unquestionably manifested by birds, or to the salmon not swimming far along the coast during other seasons of the year, and therefore in the spawning season when seeking a river happening to hit upon the same one. The latter hypothesis is one which Mr. Herbert Spencer tells me he is inclined to adopt, and, being a salmon-fisher, he has paid attention to the subject. He informs me of an observation by a friend of his own, who saw a salmon, when about to spawn, swimming along the coast-line, and all round a boathouse, apparently seeking any stream that it might first encounter. The distances up rivers to which salmon will swim in the spawning season is no less surprising than the energy with which they perform the feat, and the determination with which they overcome all obstacles. They reach Bohemia by the Elbe, Switzerland by the Rhine, and, which is much more wonderful, the Cordilleras of America by the Maragnon. They employ only three months in ascending to the sources of the Maragnon (a journey of 3,000 miles), the current of which is remarkably rapid, which is at the rate of nearly forty miles a day; in a smooth stream or lake their progress would increase in a fourfold ratio. Their tail is a very powerful organ, and its muscles have wonderful energy; by placing it in their mouths they make of it a very elastic spring, for letting it go with violence they raise themselves in the air to the height of from twelve to fifteen feet, and so clear the cataract that impedes their course: if they fail in their first attempt, they continue their efforts till they have accomplished it.[124] _General Intelligence._ With reference to the general intelligence of fish, allusion may first be made to their marked increase of wariness in waters which are much fished. This shows no small degree of intelligence, for the caution is proved to be the result of observation by the fact that young trout under such circumstances are less wary than old ones. Moreover, many fish will abandon old haunts when much disturbed. Again, according to Kirby, the carp thrusts itself into the mud in order that the net may pass over it, or, if the bottom be stony, makes great leaps to clear it. At the Andaman Islands fish are captured by the convicts by means of weirs fixed across the openings of creeks. After existing a week or so, it is observed that captures invariably cease; and it is believed that such is due to barnacles, &c., clustering on to the wood of which they are composed. It does not seem improbable that the fish have learned to avoid a locality out of terror at those which enter but do not again return.[125] Lacepède[126] relates that some fish, which had been kept for many years in a basin of the Tuileries, would come when called by their names. Probably it was the sound of the voice and not the articulate words to which they responded; for Lacepède also relates that in many parts of Germany trout, carp, and tench were summoned to their food by the sound of a bell; and the same thing has been recorded of various fish in various localities, notably by Sir Joseph Banks, who used to collect his fish by sounding a bell.[127] In 'Nature' (vol. xi., p. 48) Mr. Mitchell gives the following instance of intelligence on the part of a small perch. Having one day disturbed its nest full of young fry, Mr. Mitchell next day went to look for the nest; 'but we searched in vain for the fish and her young. At length, a few yards further up stream, we discovered the parent guarding her fry with jealous care in a cavity scooped out of the coarse sand. . . . This is the first and only instance that has come under my notice of a fish watching over her young, and conveying them, when threatened with danger, to some other place.' In 'Nature' (December 19, 1878) there is also published a communication which was made by Mr. J. Faraday to the Manchester Anglers' Association, concerning a skate which he observed in the aquarium of that town:-- A morsel of food thrown into the tank fell directly in an angle formed by the glass front and the bottom. The skate, a large example, made several vain attempts to seize the food, owing to its mouth being on the underside of its head and the food being close to the glass. He lay quite still for a while as though thinking, then suddenly raised himself into a slanting posture, the head inclined upwards, and the under surface of the body towards the food, when he waved his broad expanse of fins, thus creating an upward current or wave in the water, which lifted the food from its position and carried it straight to his mouth. It will be observed, however, that this observation is practically worthless, from the observer having neglected to repeat the conditions in order to show that the movements of the fish were not, in their adaptation to these circumstances, purely accidental. Therefore I should not have alluded to this observation, had I not found that it has been quoted by several writers as a remarkable display of intelligence on the part of the fish. I must not take leave of this class without making some allusion to the alleged habits of the so-called 'pilot-fish,' and also to those of 'thresher' and 'sword-fish.' I class these widely different habits together because they are alike in being dubious; different observers give different accounts, and therefore, until more information is forthcoming, we must suspend our judgment with regard to the habits in question. The following describes what these habits are believed by many observers to be. Captain Richards, R.N., says that he saw a blue shark following a bait which was thrown out to him from the ship. The shark, which was attended by four pilot-fish, repeatedly approached the bait; but every time he did so one of the latter rushed in and prevented him. After a time the shark swam away; but when he had gone a considerable distance, he turned back again, swam quickly after the vessel, and before the pilot-fish could overtake him, seized the bait and was caught. While hoisting him on board, one of the pilots was seen to cling to his side until above water, when it dropped off. All the pilots then swam about for a time, as if searching for their friend, 'with every apparent mark of anxiety and distress.'[128] Colonel Smith fully corroborates this observation; but Mr. Geoffrey, on the other hand, saw a pilot-fish take great pains to bring a shark to the bait.[129] Probably the truth is that the pilot-fish attend the shark in order to obtain the crumbs that fall from his feasts, and that the cases in which they appear to prevent his taking the bait are without any psychological significance. With regard to the alleged co-operation of the threshing and sword-fish in the destruction of whales, all that can be said is that the statements, although antecedently improbable, are sufficient in number not to be ignored. Mr. Day appears to accept the evidence as adequate, and gives the following cases:-- Captain Arn, in a voyage to Memel in the Baltic, gives the following interesting narrative:--One morning during a calm, when near the Hebrides, all hands were called up at 2 A.M. to witness a battle between several of the fish called threshers or fox-sharks (_Alopecias vulpes_), and some sword-fish on one side, and an enormous whale on the other. It was in the middle of the summer; and the weather being clear, and the fish close to the vessel, we had a fine opportunity of witnessing the contest. As soon as the whale's back appeared above the water, the threshers springing several yards into the air descended with great violence upon the object of their rancour, and inflicted upon him the most severe slaps with their long tails, the sounds of which resembled the reports of muskets fired at a distance. The sword-fish in their turn attacked the distressed whale, stabbing from below: and thus beset on all sides and wounded, when the poor creature appeared, the water around him was dyed with blood. In this manner they continued tormenting and wounding him for many hours, until we lost sight of him; and I have no doubt they in the end completed his destruction. The master of a fishing-boat has recently observed that the thresher-shark serves out the whales, the sea sometimes being all blood. One whale, attacked by these fish, once took refuge under his vessel, where it lay an hour and a half without moving a fin. He also remarked having seen the threshers jump out of the water as high as the mast-head and down upon the whale, while the sword fish was wounding him from beneath, the two sorts of fish evidently acting in concert. FOOTNOTES: [110] _Phil. Frags._, translated by Huxley, _Taylor's Mag._, 1853, p. 196. [111] Silliman's _American Journal_, Feb. 1872. [112] Ransom, _Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist._, 1865, xvi., p. 449. [113] Quoted from Francis Day, F.L.S., 'Instincts and Emotions of Fish,' _Journ. Linn. Soc._, vol. xv., pp. 36-7, where see for other cases of nest-building among fish. [114] _Ibid._ [115] Kaup, _Catal. Lopho. Fish in Brit. Mus._ 1856, p. i. [116] Yarrell, _Brit. Fishes_, 2nd ed. ii. p. 436. [117] _Compt. Rend._, Nov. 4, 1872, p. 1127. [118] _Phil. Trans. Royal Society_, 1747. [119] F. Day, _loc. cit._ [120] Shelley, _Lines written in the Bay of Lerici_. [121] See Smiles, _Lives of Engineers_, vol. iii., p. 69. [122] See 'On the Jaculator-Fish,' by Schlosser, _Phil. Trans._ 1764. [123] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 351. [124] Kirby, _Hist. Habits and Instincts of Animals_, vol i. p. 119. [125] F. Day, _loc. cit._ [126] _Hist. des Poiss._, _Introd._, cxxx. [127] For sundry other similar cases see Mr. Day's excellent paper already quoted. [128] Cuv., _Anim. Kingd._ x. p. 636. [129] F. Day, _loc. cit._ CHAPTER IX. BATRACHIANS AND REPTILES. ON the intelligence of frogs and toads very little has to be said. Frogs seem to have definite ideas of locality; for several of my correspondents inform me that they have known cases in which these animals, after having been removed for a distance of 200 or 300 yards from their habitual haunts, returned to them again and again. This, however, may I think perhaps be due to these haunts having a moistness which the animals are able to perceive at a great distance. But be this as it may, certainly the distance at which frogs are able to perceive moisture is surprising. Thus, for instance, Warden gives a case in which a pond containing a number of frogs dried up, and the frogs thereupon made straight for the nearest water, although this was at a distance of eight kilometres.[130] A curious special instinct is met with in the toad _Bufo obstetricans_, from which it derives its name; for the male here performs the function of an accoucheur to the female, by severing from her body the gelatinous cord by which the ova are attached. Another special instinct or habit manifested by toads is described by M. Duchemin in a paper before the Academy of Sciences at Paris.[131] The habit consists in the killing of carp by squatting on the head of the fish and forcing the fore-feet into its eyes. Probably this habit arises from sexual excitement on the part of the toads. I have one case, communicated to me by a correspondent, of a frog which learnt to know her voice, and to come when called. As fish will sometimes do the same thing, the account is sufficiently credible for me to quote:-- I used to open the gate in the railings round the pond, and call out 'Tommy' (the name I had given it), and the frog would jump out from the bushes, dive into the water, and swim across to me--get on my hand sometimes. When I called 'Tommy,' it would nearly always come, whatever the time of day, though it was only fed after breakfast; but it seemed quite tame. A very similar case is recorded by Mr. Pennent[132] of a toad which was domesticated for thirty-six years, and knew all his friends. There is no doubt that frogs are able to appreciate coming changes of weather, and to adapt their movements in anticipation of them; but these facts show delicate sensibility rather than remarkable intelligence. The following observation of Edward, the Scottish naturalist, however, shows considerable powers of observation on the part of frogs. After describing the great noise made by a number of frogs on a moonlight night, he says:-- Presently, when the whole of the vocalists had reached their highest notes, they became hushed in an instant. I was amazed at this, and began to wonder at the sudden termination of the concert. But, looking about, I observed a brown owl drop down, with the silence of death, on to the top of a low dyke close by the orchestra.[133] _Reptiles._ Like the other cold-blooded Vertebrata, the reptiles are characterised by a sluggishness and low development of mental power which is to some extent proverbial. Nevertheless, that some members of the class present vivid emotions is not to be questioned. Thus, to quote from Thompson:-- The common guana (_Lacerta iguana_) is naturally extremely gentle and harmless. Its appearance, however, is much against it, especially when agitated by fear or anger. Its eyes then seem on fire; it hisses like a serpent, swells out the pouch under its throat, lashes about its long tail, erects the scales on its back, and extending its wide jaws, holds its head, covered over with tubercles, in a menacing attitude. The male, during the spring of the year, exhibits great attachment towards the female. Throwing aside his usual gentleness of character, he defends her even with fury, attacking with undaunted courage every animal that seems inclined to injure her; and at this time, though his bite is by no means poisonous, he fastens so firmly, that it is necessary either to kill him or to beat him with great violence on the nose, in order to make him quit his hold.[134] Several species of snake incubate their eggs and show parental affection for their young when they are hatched out; but neither in these nor in any other of their emotions do the reptiles appear to rise much above the level of fish. The case, however, which I shall afterwards quote, of the tame snakes kept by Mr. and Mrs. Mann, seems to show a somewhat higher degree of emotional development than could be pointed to as occurring in any lower Vertebrata. Moreover, according to Pliny, so much affection subsists between the male and female asp, that when the one is killed the other seeks to avenge its death; and this statement is so far confirmed--or rather, its origin explained--by Sir Emerson Tennent that he says when a cobra is killed, its mate is often found on the same spot a day or two afterwards. Passing on to the general intelligence of reptiles, we shall find that this also, although low as compared with the intelligence of birds and mammals, is conspicuously higher than that of fish or batrachians. Taking first the case of special instincts, Mr. W. F. Barrett, in a letter to Mr. Darwin, bearing the date May 6, 1873, and contained among the MSS. already alluded to, gives an account of cutting open with a penknife the egg of an alligator just about to hatch. The young animal, although blind, 'instantly laid hold of the finger, and attempted to bite.' Similarly, Dr. Davy, in his 'Account of Ceylon,' gives an interesting observation of his own on a young crocodile, which he cut out of the egg, and which, as soon as it escaped, started off in a direct line for a neighbouring stream. Dr. Davy placed his stick before it to try to make the little animal deviate from its course; but it stoutly resisted the opposition, and raised itself into a posture of offence, just as an older animal would have done. Humboldt made exactly the same observation with regard to young turtles, and he remarks that as the young normally quit the egg at night, they cannot see the water which they seek, and must therefore be guided to it by discerning the direction in which the air is most humid. He adds that experiments were made which consisted in putting the newly hatched animals into bags, carrying them to some distance from the shore, and liberating them with their tails turned towards the water. It was invariably found that the young animals immediately faced round, and took without hesitation the shortest way to the water. Scarcely less remarkable than the instincts of the young turtles are those of the old ones. Their watchful timidity at the time of laying their eggs is thus described by Bates:-- Great precautions are obliged to be taken to avoid disturbing the sensitive turtles, who, previous to crawling ashore to lay, assemble in great shoals off the sand-bank. The men during this time take care not to show themselves, and warn off any fisherman who wishes to pass near the place. Their fires are made in a deep hollow near the borders of the forest, so that the smoke may not be visible. The passage of a boat through the shallow waters where the animals are congregated, or the sight of a man or a fire on the sand-bank, would prevent the turtles from leaving the water that night to lay their eggs; and if the causes of alarm were repeated once or twice they would forsake the praia for some other quieter place. . . . I rose from my hammock by daylight, shivering with cold--a praia, on account of the great radiation of heat in the night from the sand, being towards the dawn the coldest place that can be found in this climate. Cardozo and the men were already up watching the turtles. The sentinels had erected for this purpose a stage about fifty feet high, on a tall tree near their station, the ascent to which was by a roughly made ladder of woody lianas. They are enabled, by observing the turtles from this watch-tower, to ascertain the date of successive deposits of eggs, and thus guide the commandante in fixing the time for the general invitation to the Ega people. The turtles lay their eggs by night, leaving the water, when nothing disturbs them, in vast crowds, and crawling to the central and highest part of the praia. These places are, of course, the last to go under water when, in unusually wet seasons, the river rises before the eggs are hatched by the heat of the sand. One could almost believe, from this, that the animals used forethought in choosing a place; but it is simply one of those many instances in animals where unconscious habit has the same result as conscious prevision. The hours between midnight and dawn are the busiest. The turtles excavate with their broad webbed paws deep holes in the fine sand: the first comer, in each case, making a pit about three feet deep, laying its eggs (about 120 in number) and covering them with sand; the next making its deposit at the top of that of its predecessor, and so on until every pit is full. The whole body of turtles frequenting a praia does not finish laying in less than fourteen or fifteen days, even when there is no interruption. When all have done, the area (called by the Brazilians _taboleiro_) over which they have excavated is distinguishable from the rest of the praia only by signs of the sand having been a little disturbed.[135] The same naturalist says of the alligator, These little incidents show the timidity and cowardice (? prudence and caution) of the alligator. He never attacks man when his intended victim is on his guard; but he is cunning enough to know when this may be done with impunity. Of this we had proof a few days afterwards, &c.[136] Of the alligator, Jesse writes:[137]-- But a most singular instance of attachment between two animals, whose natures and habits were most opposite, was related to me by a person on whose veracity I can place the greatest reliance. He had resided for nine years in the American States, where he superintended the execution of some extensive works for the American Government. One of these works consisted in the erection of a beacon in a swamp in one of the rivers, where he caught a young alligator. This animal he made so perfectly tame that it followed him about the house like a dog, scrambling up the stairs after him, and showing much affection and docility. Its great favourite, however, was a cat, and the friendship was mutual. When the cat was reposing herself before the fire (this was at New York), the alligator would lay himself down, place his head upon the cat, and in this attitude go to sleep. If the cat was absent the alligator was restless; but he always appeared happy when the cat was near him. The only instance in which he showed any ferocity was in attacking a fox, which was tied up in the yard. Probably, however, the fox resented some playful advances which the other had made, and thus called forth the anger of the alligator. In attacking the fox he did not make use of his mouth, but beat him with so much severity with his tail, that, had not the chain which confined the fox broken, he would probably have killed him. The alligator was fed on raw flesh, and sometimes with milk, for which he showed a great fondness. In cold weather he was shut up in a box, with wool in it; but, having been forgotten one frosty night, he was found dead in the morning. This is not, I believe, a solitary instance of amphibia becoming tame, and showing a fondness for those who have been kind to them. Blumenbach mentions that crocodiles have been tamed; and two instances have occurred under my own observation of toads knowing their benefactors, and coming to meet them with considerable alacrity. With regard to the higher intelligence of reptiles, I may quote the following instances. Three or four different correspondents tell me of cases which they have themselves observed, of snakes and tortoises unmistakably distinguishing persons. In one of these cases the tortoise would come to the call of the favoured person, and when it came would manifest its affection by tapping the boot of this person with its mouth; 'but it would not answer anyone else.' A separation of some weeks did not affect the memory of this tortoise for his friend.[138] The following interesting observation on the intelligence of snakes shows, not only that these animals are well able to distinguish persons, and that they remember their friends for a period of at least six weeks, but also that they possess an intensity of amiable emotion scarcely to be expected in this class. Clearly the snakes in question were not only perfectly tame, but entertained a remarkable affection for those who tended and petted them. The facts were communicated to me by Mr. Walter Severn, the well-known artist, who was a friend of Mr. and Mrs. Mann, the gentleman and his wife to whom the snakes belonged. Mr. and Mrs. Mann having got into trouble with their neighbours on account of the fear and dislike which their pets occasioned, legal proceedings were instituted, and so the matter came before the public. Mr. Severn then wrote a letter to the _Times_, in order to show that the animals were harmless. From this letter the following is an extract:-- I happen to know the gentleman and lady against whom a complaint has been made because of the snakes they keep, and I should like to give a short account of my first visit to them. Mr. M., after we had talked for a little time, asked if I had any fear of snakes; and after a timid 'No, not very,' from me, he produced out of a cupboard a large boa-constrictor, a python, and several small snakes, which at once made themselves at home on the writing-table among pens, ink, and books. I was at first a good deal startled, especially when the two large snakes coiled round and round my friend, and began to notice me with their bright eyes and forked tongues; but soon finding how tame they were, I ceased to feel frightened. After a short time Mr. M. expressed a wish to call Mrs. M., and left me with the boa deposited on an arm-chair. I felt a little queer when the animal began gradually to come near, but the entrance of my host and hostess, followed by two charming little children, put me at my ease again. After the first interchange of civilities, she and the children went at once to the boa, and, calling it by the most endearing names, allowed it to twine itself most gracefully round about them. I sat talking for a long time, lost in wonder at the picture before me. Two beautiful little girls with their charming mother sat before me with a boa-constrictor (as thick round as a small tree) twining playfully round the lady's waist and neck, and forming a kind of turban round her head, expecting to be petted and made much of like a kitten. The children over and over again took its head in their hands and kissed its mouth, pushing aside its forked tongue in doing so. The animal seemed much pleased, but kept turning its head continually towards me with a curious gaze, until I allowed it to nestle its head for a moment up my sleeve. Nothing could be prettier than to see this splendid serpent coiled all round Mrs. M. while she moved about the room, and when she stood to pour out our coffee. He seemed to adjust his weight so nicely, and every coil with its beautiful marking was relieved by the black velvet dress of the lady. It was long before I could make up my mind to end the visit, and I returned soon after with a friend (a distinguished M.P.[139]), to see my snake-taming acquaintance again. . . . These (the snakes) seemed very obedient, and remained in their cupboard when told to do so. About a year ago Mr. and Mrs. M. were away for six weeks, and left the boa in charge of a keeper at the Zoo. The poor reptile moped, slept, and refused to be comforted, but when his master and mistress appeared he sprang upon them with delight, coiling himself round them, and showing every symptom of intense delight.[140] The end of this python was remarkable and pathetic. Mr. Severn tells me that some years after he had published the above letter Mr. Mann was seized with an apoplectic fit. His wife, being the only other person in the house at the time, ran out to fetch a doctor. She was absent about ten minutes, and on returning found that the serpent during her absence had crawled upstairs from the room below into that where her husband was lying, and was stretched beside him dead. Such being the fact, we are left to speculate whether the double seizure of the man and the snake was a mere coincidence, or whether the sight of its stricken master, acting on the emotions of a possibly not healthy animal, precipitated its death. Looking to the extreme suddenness of the latter, as well as to the fact of the animal having pined so greatly for his friends while it was confined at the Zoological Gardens, I think the probability rather points to the death of the animal having been accelerated by emotional shock. But of course the question is an open one. So much for the power of reptiles to establish such definite and complete associations as are required for the recognition of persons--associations, however, to which, as we have seen, frogs, and even insects may attain. As for other associations, a correspondent writes to me:-- I believe tortoises are able to establish a definite association between particular colours on a flat surface and food. Only the day before reading your article on animal intelligence I noticed the endeavours of a small tortoise to eat the _yellow_ flowers of an inlaid writing-table, and I have often remarked the same recognition with regard to red. Lord Monboddo relates the following anecdote of a serpent:-- I am well informed of a tame serpent in the East Indies, which belonged to the late Dr. Vigot, and was kept by him in the suburbs of Madras. This serpent was taken by the French, when they invested Madras in the late war, and was carried to Pondicherry in a close carriage. But from thence he found his way back again to his old quarters, which it seems he liked better, though Madras is distant from Pondicherry about one hundred miles. This information, he adds, I have from a lady who then was in India, and had seen the serpent often before his journey and after his return. Considering the enormous distances over which turtles are able to find their way in the season of migration, this display of the homing faculty to so great a degree in a serpent is not to be regarded as incredible. Mr. E. L. Layard, in his 'Rambles in Ceylon' says of the cobra:[141]-- I once watched one which had thrust its head through a narrow aperture and swallowed one (_i.e._ a toad). With this encumbrance he could not withdraw himself. Finding this, he reluctantly disgorged the precious morsel, which began to move off. This was too much for snake philosophy to bear, and the toad was again seized; and again, after violent efforts to escape, was the snake compelled to part with it. This time, however, a lesson had been learnt, and the toad was seized by one leg, withdrawn, and then swallowed in triumph. Mr. E. C. Buck, B.C.S., says in 'Nature' (vol. viii., p. 303):-- I have witnessed exactly a similar plan pursued by a large number of Ganges crocodiles, which had been lying or swimming about all day in front of my tent, at the mouth of a small stream which led from some large inland lakes to the Ganges. Towards dusk, at the same moment every one of them left the bank on which they were lying, or the deep water in which they were swimming, and formed a line across the stream, which was about twenty yards wide. They had to form a double line, as there was not room for all in a single line. They then swam slowly up the shallow stream, driving the fish before them, and I saw two or three fish caught before they disappeared. An account of reptile psychology would be incomplete without some reference to the alleged facts of snakes charming other animals by 'fascination,' and being themselves charmed by the arts of music, &c. The testimony on both subjects is conflicting, and especially with regard to the fascination of other animals by snakes. Thus:-- Mr. Pennant says that this snake (rattle-snake) will frequently lie at the bottom of a tree on which a squirrel is seated. He fixes his eyes on the animal, and from that moment it cannot escape; it begins a doleful outcry, which is so well known that a passer-by, on hearing it, immediately knows that a snake is present. The squirrel runs up the tree a little way, comes down again, then goes up, and afterwards comes still lower. The snake continues at the bottom of the tree with its eyes fixed on the squirrel, and his attention is so entirely taken up, that a person accidentally approaching may make a considerable noise without so much as the snake turning about. The squirrel comes lower, and at last leaps down to the snake, whose mouth is already distended for its reception. Le Vaillant confirms this fascinating terror by a scene he witnessed. He saw on the branch of a tree a species of shrike, trembling as if in convulsions, and at the distance of nearly four feet, on another branch, a large snake that was lying with outstretched neck and fiery eyes, gazing steadily at the poor animal. The agony of the bird was so great that it was deprived of the power of moving away; and when one of the party killed the snake, it (_i.e._ the bird) was found dead upon the spot--and that entirely from fear; for, on examination, it appeared not to have received the slightest wound. The same traveller adds that a short time afterwards he observed a small mouse in similar agonising convulsions, about two yards from a snake, whose eyes were intently fixed upon it; and on frightening away the reptile, and taking up the mouse, it expired in his hand.[142] Many other observations, more or less similar, might be quoted; but, on the other hand, Sir Joseph Fayrer tells me that 'fascination is only fright;' and this appears to be the opinion of all persons who have had the opportunity of looking into the subject in a scientific manner. The truth probably is that small animals are occasionally much alarmed by the sight of a snake looking at them, and as a consequence of this more easily fall a prey. In some cases, it is likely enough, strong terror so unnerves the animal as to make it behave in the manner which the witnesses describe; in making half-palsied efforts to escape, it may actually fall or draw nearer to the object of its dread. Perhaps, therefore, Dr. Barton, of Philadelphia, is a little too severe on previous observers when he says that-- The report of this fascinating property has had its rise in nothing more than the fears and cries of birds and other animals in the protection of their nests. . . . The result of not a little attention has taught me that there is but one wonder in the business--the wonder that the story should ever have been believed by any man of understanding and observation. But, be this as it may, it is certainly remarkable, as Sir J. Fayrer in his letter to me observes, 'how little fear some animals show until the moment that they are seized and struck.' As for snake-charming, the facts seem to be that cobras and other serpents are attracted by the sound of a pipe to creep out of their hiding-places, when they are captured and tamed. It is certain that the fangs are not always drawn, and also that from the first moment of capture, before there has been time for any process of training, a real snake-charmer is able to make the reptile 'dance.' Thus, for instance, Sir E. Tennent publishes the following letter from Mr. Reyne. After describing all his precautions to ensure that the snake-charmer had no tamed snakes concealed about his person, Mr. Reyne proceeds to tell how he made the man accompany him to the jungle, where, attracted by the music of a pipe which the man played, a large cobra came from an ant-hill which Mr. Reyne knew it to occupy:-- On seeing the man it tried to escape, but he caught it by the tail and kept swinging it round until we reached the bungalow. He then made it dance, but before long it bit him above the knee. He immediately bandaged the leg above the bite and applied a snake-stone to the wound to extract the poison. He was in great pain for a few minutes, but after that it gradually went away, the stone falling off just before he was relieved.[143] Thus the only remarkable thing about the charming of a freshly caught snake seems to be that the charmer is able to make the animal 'dance'--for the fact of the snake approaching the unfamiliar sound of music is not in itself any more remarkable than a fish approaching the unfamiliar sight of a lantern. It does not, however, appear that this dancing is anything more than some series of gestures or movements which may be merely the expressions, more or less natural, of uneasiness or alarm. Anything else that charmed snakes may do is probably the result of training; for there is no doubt that cobras admit of being tamed, and even domesticated. Thus, for instance, Major Skinner, writing to Sir E. Tennent, says:-- In one family near Negombo, cobras are kept as protectors, in the place of dogs, by a wealthy man who has always large sums of money in his house. But this is not a solitary case of the kind. . . . The snakes glide about the house, a terror to the thieves, but never attempting to harm the inmates.[144] Thus, on the whole, we may accept Dr. Davey's opinion--who had good opportunities for observation--that the snake-charmers control the cobras by working upon the well-known timidity and reluctance of these animals to use their fangs till they become virtually tame. FOOTNOTES: [130] _Account of the United States_, vol. ii., p. 9. [131] April 11, 1870. [132] See Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. ii., p. 406. [133] Smiles, _Life of Edwards_, p. 124. [134] _Passions of Animals_, p. 229. [135] _Naturalist on the Amazon_, pp. 285-6. [136] _Ibid._ The astonishing facts relating to the migration of turtles in the laying season will be treated under the general heading 'Migration' in my forthcoming work. [137] _Gleanings_, vol. i., pp. 163-4. [138] The tortoise which has gained such immortal celebrity by having fallen under the observation of the author of the _Natural History of Selborne_, likewise distinguished persons in this way. For 'whenever the good old lady came in sight, who had waited on it for more than thirty years, it always hobbled with awkward alacrity towards its benefactress, whilst to strangers it was altogether inattentive.' [139] This gentleman was Lord Arthur Russell. [140] The _Times_, July 25, 1872. [141] See _Annas. and Mag. of Nat. Hist._, 2nd series, vol. ix., p. 333. [142] Thompson, _Passions of Animals_, p. 118; see also Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. ii., pp. 447-8. [143] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 314. [144] Tennent, _loc. cit._, p. 299. CHAPTER X. BIRDS. ADEQUATELY to treat of the intelligence of birds a separate volume would be required; here it must be enough to deal with this class as I shall afterwards deal with the Mammalia--namely, by giving an outline sketch of the more prominent features of their psychology. _Memory._ The memory of birds is well developed. Thus, although we are much in the dark on the whole subject of migration--so much so that I reserve its discussion with all the problems that this presents for a separate chapter in my next work--we may at least conclude that the return of the same pair of swallows every year to the same nest must be due to the animals remembering the precise locality of their nests. Again, Buckland gives an account of a pigeon which remembered the voice of its mistress after an absence of eighteen months;[145] but I have not been able to meet with satisfactory evidence of the memory of a bird enduring for a longer time than this. As it is a matter of interest in comparative psychology to trace as far as possible into detail the similarities of a mental faculty as it occurs in different groups of animals, and as the faculty of memory first admits of detailed study in the class which we are now considering, I shall here devote a paragraph to the facts concerning the exhibition of memory by birds where its mechanism best admits of being analysed; I refer to the learning of articulate phrases and tunes by talking and musical birds. The best observations in this connection with which I am acquainted are those of Dr. Samuel Wilks, F.R.S., and therefore I shall quote _in extenso_ the portion of his paper which refers to the memory of parrots: other portions of this paper I shall have occasion to quote in my next work:-- When my parrot first came into my possession, several years ago, it was quite unlettered, and I therefore had an opportunity of observing the mode in which it acquired the accomplishment of speech. I was very much struck with its manner of learning, and the causes for its speaking on special occasions. The first seemed to resemble very much the method of children in learning their lessons, and the second to be due to some association or suggestion--the usual provocative for set speeches at all periods of human life. A parrot is well known to imitate sounds in a most perfect manner, even to the tone of the voice, besides having a compass which no human being can approach, ranging from the gravest to the most acute note. My bird, though possessing a good vocabulary of words and sentences, can only retain them for a few months unless kept constantly in practice by the suggestive recurrence of some circumstance which causes their continual utterance. If forgotten, however, they are soon revived in the memory by again repeating them a few times, and much more speedily than any new sentence can be acquired. In beginning to teach the parrot a sentence, it has to be repeated many times, the bird all the while listening most attentively by turning the opening of the ear as close as possible to the speaker. After a few hours it is heard attempting to say the phrase, or, I should say, trying to learn it. It evidently has the phrase somewhere in store, for eventually this is uttered perfectly, but at first the attempts are very poor and ludicrous. If the sentence be composed of a few words, the first two or three are said over and over again, and then another and another word added, until the sentence is complete, the pronunciation at first being very imperfect, and then becoming gradually more complete, until the task is accomplished. Thus hour after hour will the bird be indefatigably working at the sentence, and not until some days have elapsed will it be perfect. The mode of acquiring it seems to me exactly what I have observed in a child learning a French phrase; two or three words are constantly repeated, and then others added, until the whole is known, the pronunciation becoming more perfect as the repetition goes on. I found also on whistling a popular air to my parrot that she picked it up in the same way, taking note by note until the whole twenty-five notes were complete. Then the mode of forgetting, or the way in which phrases and airs pass from its recollection, may be worth remarking. The last words or notes are first forgotten, so that soon the sentence remains unfinished or the air only half whistled through. The first words are the best fixed in the memory; these suggest others which stand next to them, and so on till the last, which have the least hold on the brain. These, however, as I have before mentioned, can be easily revived on repetition. This is also a very usual process in the human subject: for example, an Englishman speaking French will, in his own country, if no opportunity occur for conversation, apparently forget it; he no sooner, however, crosses the Channel and hears the language than it very soon comes back to him again. In trying to recall poems learned in childhood or in school days, although at that period hundreds of lines may have been known, it is found that in manhood we remember only the two or three first lines of the 'Iliad,' the 'Æneid,' or the 'Paradise Lost.'[146] The following is communicated to me by Mr. Venn, of Cambridge, the well-known logician:-- I had a grey parrot, three or four years old, which had been taken from its nest in West Africa by those through whom I received it. It stood ordinarily by the window, where it could equally hear the front and back door bells. In the yard, by the back door, was a collie dog, who naturally barked violently at nearly all the comers that way. The parrot took to imitating the dog. After a time I was interested in observing the discriminative association between the back-door bell and the dog's bark in the parrot's mind. Even when the dog was not there, or for any other cause did not bark, the parrot would constantly bark when the back-door bell sounded, but never (that I could hear) when the front-door bell was heard. This is but a trifle in the way of intelligence, but it struck me as an interesting analogous case to a law of association often noticed by writers on human psychology. The celebrated parrot that belonged to the Buffon family and of which the Comte de Buffon wrote, exhibited in a strange manner the association of its ideas. For he was frequently in the habit of asking himself for his own claw, and then never failed to comply with his own request by holding it out, in the same way as he did when asked for his claw by anybody else. This, however, probably arose, not, as Buffon or his sister Madame Nadault supposed, from the bird not knowing its own voice, but rather from the association between the words and the gesture. According to Margrave, parrots sometimes chatter their phrases in their dreams, and this shows a striking similarity of psychical processes in the operations of memory with those which occur in ourselves. Similarly, Mr. Walter Pollock, writes me of his own parrot:-- In this parrot the sense of association is very strongly developed. If one word picked up at a former home comes into its head, and is uttered by it, it immediately follows this word up with all the other words and phrases picked up at the same place and period. Lastly, parrots not only remember, but recollect; that is to say, they know when there is a missing link in a train of association, and purposely endeavour to pick it up. Thus, for instance, the late Lady Napier told me an interesting series of observations on this point which she had made upon an intelligent parrot of her own. They were of this kind. Taking such a phrase as 'Old Dan Tucker,' the bird would remember the beginning and the end, and try to recollect the middle. For it would say very slowly, 'Old--old--old--old' (and then very quickly) 'Lucy Tucker.' Feeling that this was not right, it would try again as before, 'Old--old--old--old--old Bessy Tucker,' substituting one word after another in the place of the sought-for word 'Dan.' And that the process was one of truly seeking for the desired word was proved by the fact that if, while the bird was saying, 'Old--old--old--old,' any one threw in the word 'Dan,' he immediately supplied the 'Tucker.' _Emotions._ As regards emotions, it is among birds that we first meet with a conspicuous advance in the tenderer feelings of affection and sympathy. Those relating to the sexes and the care of progeny are in this class proverbial for their intensity, offering, in fact, a favourite type for the poet and moralist. The pining of the 'love-bird' for its absent mate, and the keen distress of a hen on losing her chickens, furnish abundant evidence of vivid feelings of the kind in question. Even the stupid-looking ostrich has heart enough to die for love, as was the case with a male in the Rotund of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, who, having lost his wife, pined rapidly away. It is remarkable that in some species--notably pigeons--conjugal fidelity should be so strongly marked; for this shows, not only what may be called a refinement of sexual feeling, but also the presence of an abiding image in the mind's eye of the lover. For instance,-- Referring to the habits of the mandarin duck (a Chinese species) Mr. Bennett says that Mr. Beale's aviary afforded a singular corroboration of the fidelity of the birds in question. Of a pair in that gentleman's possession, the drake being one night purloined by some thieves, the unfortunate duck displayed the strongest marks of despair at her bereavement, retiring into a corner, and altogether neglecting food and drink, as well as the care of her person. In this condition she was courted by a drake who had lost his mate, but who met with no encouragement from the widow. On the stolen drake being subsequently recovered and restored to the aviary, the most extravagant demonstrations of joy were displayed by the fond couple; but this was not all, for, as if informed by his spouse of the gallant proposals made to her shortly before his arrival, the drake attacked the luckless bird who would have supplanted him, beat out his eyes, and inflicted so many injuries as to cause his death.[147] Similarly, to give an instance or two with regard to other birds, Jesse states the following as his own observation:-- A pair of swans had been inseparable companions for three years, during which time they had reared three broods of cygnets; last autumn the male was killed, and since that time the female has separated herself from all society with her own species; and, though at the time I am writing (the end of March) the breeding season for swans has far advanced, she remains in the same state of seclusion, resisting the addresses of a male swan, who has been making advances towards forming an acquaintance with her, either driving him away, or flying from him whenever he comes near her. How long she will continue in this state of widowhood I know not, but at present it is quite evident that she has not forgotten her former partner. This reminds me of a circumstance which lately happened at Chalk Farm, near Hampton. A man, set to watch a field of peas which had been much preyed upon by pigeons, shot an old cock pigeon which had long been an inhabitant of the farm. His mate, around whom he had for many a year cooed, whom he had nourished from his own crop, and had assisted in rearing numerous young ones, immediately settled on the ground by his side, and showed her grief in the most expressive manner. The labourer took up the dead bird, and tied it to a short stake, thinking that it would frighten away the other depredators. In this situation, however, the widow did not forsake her deceased husband, but continued, day after day, walking slowly round the stick. The kind-hearted wife of the bailiff of the farm at last heard of the circumstance, and immediately went to afford what relief she could to the poor bird. She told me that, on arriving at the spot, she found the hen bird much exhausted, and that she had made a circular beaten track round the dead pigeon, making now and then a little spring towards him. On the removal of the dead bird the hen returned to the dove-cote.[148] As evidence of the intensity of the maternal instinct even in the case of barren birds, I may quote the following from the naturalist Couch. I do so because, although the instance is a trivial one, and also one of frequent occurrence, it is interesting as showing that a deeply rooted instinct or emotion may assert itself powerfully even in the absence of what may be termed its natural stimulus or object:-- I was once witness to a curious instance of the yearning for progeny in a diminutive bantam hen. There was at this time a nest of the common hen in a secluded part of the garden, and the parent had been sitting on its eggs, till compelled by hunger she left them for a short time. This absence was fatal; for the bantam had in the meantime found its situation in a covered recess in the hedge, and I saw her creep into it with all the triumph of the discoverer of a treasure. The real mother now returned, and great was her agony at finding an intruder in her nest. The expression of her eye and the attitude of her head were emphatic of surprise at the impudence of the proceeding. But after many attempts to recover possession she was compelled to resign her rights, for the bantam was too resolute to be contended with; and though its body was not big enough to cover the whole of the eggs, and thus some of them were not hatched, yet in due season the pride of this audacious step-mother was gratified by strutting at the head of a company of robust chickens, which she passed off upon the feathered public as a brood of her own.[149] As evidence of sympathy I shall quote _in extenso_ an interesting case which has been communicated to me by a young lady, who desires her name withheld. There are several more or less corroborative cases in the anecdote-books,[150] so that I have no doubt as to the substantial accuracy of the account:-- My grandfather had a Swan River gander, which had been reared near the house, and had consequently attached himself to the members of the family; so much so that, on seeing any of them at a distance, he would run to meet them with all possible demonstrations of delight. But 'Swanny' was quite an outcast from his own tribe; and as often as he made humble overtures to the other geese, so often was he driven away with great contempt, and on such occasions he would frequently run to some of his human friends, and laying his head on their laps, seem to seek for sympathy. At last, however, he found a friend among his own species. An old grey goose, becoming blind, was also discarded by her more fortunate companions, and Swanny lost no opportunity of recognising this comrade in distress. He at once took her under his protection and led her about. When he considered it well for her to have a swim, he would gently take her neck in his bill, and thus lead her, sometimes a considerable distance, to the water's edge. Having fairly launched her, he kept close by her side, and guided her from dangerous places by arching his neck over hers, and so turning her in the right direction. After cruising about a sufficient time, he would guide her to a convenient landing-place, and taking her neck in his bill as before, lead her to _terra firma_ again. When she had goslings, he would proudly convoy the whole party to the water-side; and if any ill-fated gosling got into difficulties in a hole or deep cart-rut, Swanny with ready skill would put his bill under its body, and carefully raise it to the level ground. My grandfather had also another gander who attached himself to him, and would follow him for hours through fields and lanes, pausing when he stood still, and waddling gravely by his side as he proceeded. This gander was not, like the other, discarded by his kind, but would leave them any time to walk with his master, and was exceedingly jealous of any one else who tried to share this privilege, excepting only his mistress. On one occasion, a gentleman venturing to place his hand on my grandfather's arm, the gander flew at him, and beat him severely with his wings, and it was with great difficulty that he was induced to let go. The solicitude which most gregarious birds display when one of their number is wounded or captured, constitutes strong evidence of sympathy. As Jesse observes,-- There is one trait in the character of the rook which is, I believe, peculiar to that bird, and which does him no little credit; it is the distress which is exhibited when one of his fellows has been killed or wounded by a gun while they have been feeding in a field or flying over it. Instead of being scared away by the report of the gun, leaving their wounded or dead companion to his fate, they show the greatest anxiety and sympathy for him, uttering cries of distress, and plainly proving that they wish to render him assistance by hovering over him, or sometimes making a dart from the air close up to him, apparently to try and find out the reason why he did not follow them. . . . I have seen one of my labourers pick up a rook which he had shot at for the purpose of putting him up as a scarecrow in a field of wheat, and while the poor wounded bird was still fluttering in his hand, I have observed one of his companions make a wheel round in the air, and suddenly dart past him so as almost to touch him, perhaps with the last hope that he might still afford assistance to his unfortunate mate or companion. Even when the dead bird has been hung, _in terrorem_, to a stake in the field, he has been visited by some of his former friends, but as soon as they found that the case was hopeless, they have generally abandoned that field altogether. When one considers the instinctive care with which rooks avoid any one carrying a gun, and which is so evident that I have often heard country people remark that a rook can smell gunpowder, one can more justly estimate the force of their love or friendship in thus continuing to hover round a person who has just destroyed one of their companions with an instrument the dangerous nature of which they seem fully capable of appreciating.[151] The justice of these remarks may be better appreciated in the light of the following very remarkable observation, as an introduction to which I have quoted them. Edward, the naturalist, having shot a tern, which fell winged into the sea, its companions hovered around the floating bird, manifesting much apparent solicitude, as terns and gulls always do under such circumstances. How far this apparent solicitude is real I have often speculated, as in the analogous case of the crows--wondering whether the emotions concerned were really those of sympathy or mere curiosity. The following observation, however, seems to set this question at rest. Having begun to make preparations for securing the wounded bird, Edward says: 'I expected in a few moments to have it in my possession, being not very far from the water's edge, and drifting shorewards with the wind.' He continues:-- While matters were in this position I beheld, to my utter astonishment and surprise, two of the unwounded terns take hold of their disabled comrade, one at each wing, lift him out of the water, and bear him out seawards. They were followed by two other birds. After being carried about six or seven yards, he was let gently down again, when he was taken up in a similar manner by the two who had been hitherto inactive. In this way they continued to carry him alternately, until they had conveyed him to a rock at a considerable distance, upon which they landed him in safety. Having recovered my self-possession, I made toward the rock, wishing to obtain the prize which had been so unceremoniously snatched from my grasp. I was observed, however, by the terns; and instead of four, I had in a short time a whole swarm about me. On my near approach to the rock I once more beheld two of them take hold of the wounded bird as they had done already, and bear him out to sea in triumph, far beyond my reach. This, had I been so inclined, I could no doubt have prevented. Under the circumstances, however, my feelings would not permit me; and I willingly allowed them to perform without molestation an act of mercy, and to exhibit an instance of affection which man himself need not be ashamed to imitate.[152] According to Clavigero,[153] the inhabitants of Mexico utilise the sympathy of the wild pelican for the procuring of fish. First a pelican is caught and its wing broken. The bird is then tied to a tree, and being both in pain and captivity, it utters cries of distress. Other pelicans are attracted by the cries, and finding their friend in such a sorry case, their bowels of compassion become moved in a very literal sense; for they disgorge from their stomachs and pouches the fish which they have caught, and deposit them within reach of the captive. As soon as this is done the men, who have been lying in wait concealed, run to the spot, drive off the friendly pelicans, and secure their fish, leaving only a small quantity for the use of the captive. The parrot which belonged to the Buffon family showed much sympathy with a female servant to whom it was attached when the girl had a sore finger, which it displayed by its never leaving her sick room, and groaning as if itself in pain. As soon as the girl got better the bird again became cheerful. I shall conclude this brief demonstration of the keen sympathy which may exist in birds, by quoting the following very conclusive case in the words of its distinguished observer, Dr. Franklin:[1]-- I have known two parrots, said he, which had lived together four years, when the female became weak, and her legs swelled. These were symptoms of gout, a disease to which all birds of this family are very subject in England. It became impossible for her to descend from the perch, or to take her food as formerly, but the male was most assiduous in carrying it to her in his beak. He continued feeding her in this manner during four months, but the infirmities of his companion increased from day to day, so that at last she was unable to support herself on the perch. She remained cowering down in the bottom of the cage, making, from time to time, ineffectual efforts to regain the perch. The male was always near her, and with all his strength aided the feeble attempts of his dear better half. Seizing the poor invalid by the beak, or the upper part of the wing, he tried to raise her, and renewed his efforts several times. His constancy, his gestures, and his continued solicitude, all showed in this affectionate bird the most ardent desire to relieve the sufferings and assist the weakness of his companion. But the scene became still more interesting when the female was dying. Her unhappy spouse moved around her incessantly, his attention and tender cares redoubled. He even tried to open her beak to give some nourishment. He ran to her, then returned with a troubled and agitated look. At intervals he uttered the most plaintive cries; then, with his eyes fixed on her, kept a mournful silence. At length his companion breathed her last; from that moment he pined away, and died in the course of a few weeks.[154] The jealousy of birds is proverbial; and that they also manifest the kindred passion of emulation, no one can doubt who has heard them singing against one another. Mr. Bold relates that a mule canary would always sing at his own image in a mirror, becoming more and more excited, till he ended by flying in rage against his supposed rival. The late Lady Napier wrote me, among other 'anecdotes of a grey parrot left on a long visit to the family of General Sir William Napier, at the time residing in Germany,' the following graphic description of the exultation displayed by the bird when it baffled the imitative powers of its master. The bird was the same as that already mentioned under the head of 'Memory':-- Sometimes when only two or three were in the room, at quiet occupations instead of talking, she would utter at short intervals a series of strong squalls or cries in an interjectional style, each more strange and grotesque than the previous one. My father on these occasions sometimes amused himself by imitating these cries as she uttered them, which seemed to excite her ingenuity in the production of them to the uttermost. As a last resource she always had recourse to a very peculiar one, which completely baffled him; upon which, with a loud ha! ha! ha! she made a somersault round her perch, swinging with her head downwards, sprung from one part of the cage to another, and tossed a bit of wood she used as a toy over her head in the most exulting triumph, repeating at intervals the inimitable cry, followed by peals of ha! ha! ha! to the great amusement of all present. Allied to emulation is resentment, of which the following, communicated to me by a correspondent, may be taken as an example. If space permitted I could give confirmatory cases:-- One day the cat and the parrot had a quarrel. I think the cat had upset Polly's food, or something of that kind; however, they seemed all right again. An hour or so after, Polly was standing on the edge of the table; she called out in a tone of extreme affection, 'Puss, puss, come then--come then, pussy.' Pussy went and looked up innocently enough. Polly with her beak seized a basin of milk standing by, and tipped the basin and all its contents over the cat; then chuckled diabolically, of course broke the basin, and half drowned the cat. Several strange but mutually corroborative stories seem to show cherished vindictiveness on the part of storks. Thus, in Captain Brown's book there occurs an account of a tame stork which lived in the college yard at Tübingen,-- And in a neighbouring house was a nest, in which other storks, that annually resorted to the place, used to hatch their eggs. At this nest, one day in autumn, a young collegian fired a shot, by which the stork that was sitting on it was probably wounded, for it did not fly out of the nest for some weeks afterwards. It was able, however, to take its departure at the usual time with the rest of the storks. But in the ensuing spring a strange stork was observed on the roof of the college, which, by clapping his wings and other gestures, seemed to invite the tame stork to come to him; but, as the tame one's wings were clipped, he was unable to accept the invitation. After some days the strange stork appeared again, and came down into the yard, when the tame one went out to meet him, clapping his wings as if to bid him welcome, but was suddenly attacked by the visitor with great fury. Some of the neighbours protected the tame bird, and drove off the assailant, but he returned several times afterwards, and incommoded the other through the whole summer. The next spring, instead of one stork only, four storks came together into the yard, and fell upon the tame one; when all the poultry present--cocks, hens, geese, and ducks--flocked at once to his assistance, and rescued him from his enemies. In consequence of this serious attack, the people of the house took precaution for the tame stork's security, and he was no more molested that year. But in the beginning of the third spring came upwards of twenty storks, which rushed at once into the yard and killed the tame stork before either man or any other animal could afford him protection. A similar occurrence took place on the premises of a farmer near Hamburg, who kept a tame stork, and, having caught another, thought to make it a companion for the one in his possession. But the two were no sooner brought together than the tame one fell upon the other, and beat him so severely that he made his escape from the place. About four months afterwards, however, the defeated stork returned with three others, who all made a combined attack upon the tame one and killed him.[155] The curiosity of birds is highly developed, so much so, indeed, that in this and other countries it is played upon by sportsmen and trappers. Unfamiliar objects being placed within sight, say, of ducks, the birds approach to examine them, and fall into the snares which have been prepared. Similarly, in oceanic islands unfrequented by man, the birds fearlessly approach to examine the first human beings that they have seen. That birds exhibit pride might be considered doubtful if we had to rely only on the evidence supplied by the display of the peacock, and the strutting of the turkey-gobbler; for these actions, although so expressive of this emotion, may not really be due to it. But I think that the evident pleasure which is taken in achievement by talking birds can only be ascribed to the emotion in question. These birds regularly practise their art, and when a new phrase is perfected they show an unmistakable delight in displaying the result. Play is exhibited by many species in various ways, and it seems to be this class of feelings in their most organised form which have led to the extraordinary instincts of the bower-birds of New South Wales. The 'playhouses' of the animals have been described by Mr. Gould in his 'History of the Birds of New South Wales.' Of course the play-instincts are here united with those of courtship, which are of such general occurrence among birds; but I think no one can read Mr. Gould's description of the bowers and the uses to which they are put without feeling that the love of sportive play must have been joined with the sexual instincts in producing the result. But, be this as it may, there can be no question that these bowers are highly interesting structures, as furnishing the most unexceptionable evidence of true æsthetic, if not artistic feeling, on the part of the bird which constructs them; and, according to Mr. Herbert Spencer, the artistic feelings are physiologically allied with those of play. It is a matter of importance to obtain definite proof of an æsthetic sense in animals, because this constitutes the basis of Mr. Darwin's theory of sexual selection; but as he has treated the evidence on this subject in so exhaustive a manner, I shall not enter upon so wide a field further than to point out that the case of the bower-bird, even if it stood alone, would be amply sufficient to carry the general conclusion that some animals exhibit emotions of the beautiful. The following is Mr. Gould's description, _in extenso_, of the habits of the bird in question:-- The extraordinary bower-like structure, alluded to in my remarks on the genus, first came under my notice in the Sydney Museum, to which an example had been presented by Charles Cox, Esq. . . . On visiting the cedar bushes of the Liverpool range, I discovered several of these bowers or playing-houses on the ground, under the shelter of the branches of the overhanging trees, in the most retired part of the forest; they differed considerably in size, some being a third larger than others. The base consists of an extensive and rather convex platform of sticks firmly interwoven, on the centre of which the bower itself is built. This, like the platform on which it is placed, and with which it is interwoven, is formed of sticks and twigs, but of a more slender and flexible description, the tips of the twigs being so arranged as to curve inwards and nearly meet at the top; in the interior the materials are so placed that the forks of the twigs are always presented outwards, by which arrangement not the slightest obstruction is offered to the passage of the birds. The interest of this curious bower is much enhanced by the manner in which it is decorated with the most gaily coloured articles that can be collected, such as the blue tail-feathers of the Rose-hill and Pennantian parakeets, bleached bones and shells of snails, &c.; some of the feathers are inserted among the twigs, while others with the bones and shells are strewed near the entrances. The propensity of these birds to fly off with any attractive object is so well known to the natives that they always search the runs for any small missing article that may have been accidentally dropped in the bush. I myself found at the entrance of one of them a small neatly worked stone tomahawk of an inch and a half in length, together with some slips of blue cotton rag, which the birds had doubtless picked up at a deserted encampment of the natives. It has now been clearly ascertained that these curious bowers are merely sporting-places in which the sexes meet, when the males display their finery, and exhibit many remarkable actions; and so inherent is this habit, that the living examples, which have been from time to time sent to this country, continue it even in captivity.[156] Those belonging to the Zoological Society have constructed their bowers, decorated and kept them in repair, for several years. In a letter from the late Mr. F. Strange, it is said:-- My aviary is now tenanted by a pair of satin-birds, which for the last two months have been constantly engaged in constructing bowers. Both sexes assist in their erection, but the male is the principal workman. At times the male will chase the female all over the aviary, then go to the bower, pick up a gay feather or a large leaf, utter a curious kind of note, set all his feathers erect, run round the bower, and become so excited that his eyes appear ready to start from his head, and he continues opening first one wing and then another, uttering a low whistling note, and, like the domestic cock, seems to be picking up something from the ground, until at last the female goes gently towards him, when after two turns round her, he suddenly makes a dash, and the scene ends.[157] I have said that if this case stood alone it would constitute ample evidence that some animals possess emotions of the beautiful. But the case does not stand alone. Certain humming-birds, according to Mr. Gould, decorate the outsides of their nests 'with the utmost taste; they instinctively fasten thereon beautiful pieces of flat lichen, the larger pieces in the middle, and the smaller on the part attached to the branch. Now and then a pretty feather is intertwined or fastened to the outer sides, the stem being always so placed that the feather stands out beyond the surface.' Several other instances might be rendered of the display of artistic feeling in the architecture of birds; and, as Mr. Darwin so elaborately shows, there can scarcely be question that these animals take emotional pleasure in surveying beautiful plumage in the opposite sex, looking to the careful manner in which the males of many species display their fine colours to the females. Doubtless the evidence of æsthetic feeling is much stronger in the case of birds than it is in that of any other class; but if this feeling is accepted as a sufficient cause, through sexual selection, of natural decoration in the members of this class, we are justified in attributing to sexual selection, and so to æsthetic feeling, natural decoration in other classes, at least as low down in the scale as the Articulata. But, as I have said, Mr. Darwin has dealt with this whole subject in so exhaustive a manner that it is needless for me to enter upon it further than to say in general terms, that whatever we may think of his theory of sexual selection, his researches have unquestionably proved the existence of an æsthetic sense in animals. The same fact appears to be shown in another way by the fondness of song-birds for the music of their mates. There can be no doubt that male birds charm their females with their strains, and that this, in fact, is the reason why song in birds has become developed. Of course it may be said that the vocal utterances of birds are not always, or even generally, musical; but this does not affect the fact that birds find some æsthetic pleasure in the sounds which they emit; it only shows that the standard of æsthetic taste differs in different species of birds as it does in different races of men. Moreover, the pleasure which birds manifest in musical sounds is not always restricted to the sounds which they themselves produce. Parrots seem certainly to take delight in hearing a piano play or a girl sing; and the following instance, published by the musician John Lockman, reveals in a remarkable manner the power of distinguishing a particular air, and of preferring it above others. He was staying at the house of a Mr. Lee in Cheshire, whose daughter used to play; and whenever she played the air of 'Speri si' from Handel's opera of 'Admetus,' a pigeon would descend from an adjacent dovecot to the window of the room where she sat, 'and listen to the air apparently with the most pleasing emotions,' always returning to the dovecot immediately the air was finished. But it was only this one air that would induce the bird to behave in this way.[158] _Special Habits._ Under this heading we shall have a number of facts to consider, which are more or less of a disconnected character. Taking first those special habits connected with the procuring of food, we may notice the instinct manifested by blackbirds and thrushes of conveying snails to considerable distances in order to hammer and break their shells against what may happen to be the nearest stone,[159] and the still more clever though somewhat analogous instinct exhibited by certain gulls and crows of flying with shell-fish to a considerable height and letting them fall upon stones for the purpose of smashing their shells.[160] Both these instincts manifest a high degree of intelligence, either on the part of the birds themselves, or on that of their ancestors; for neither of these instincts can be regarded as due to originally accidental adjustments favoured and improved by natural selection; they must at least originally have been intelligent actions purposely designed to secure the ends attained. An interesting instinct is that of piracy, which in the animal kingdom reaches its highest or most systematic development among the birds. It is easy to see how it may be of more advantage to a species of strong bird that its members should become parasitic on the labours of other species than that they should forage for themselves, and so there is no difficulty in understanding the development of the plundering instinct by natural selection. We find all stages of this development among the sea-birds. Thus the gulls, although usually self-foragers, will, as I have often observed, congregate in enormous numbers where the guillemots have found a shoal of fish. Resting on or flying over the surface of the water, the gulls wait till a guillemot comes to the surface with a fish, and then wrest the latter from the beak of the former. In the robber-tern this instinct has proceeded further, so that the animal gains its subsistence entirely by plunder of other terns. I have often observed this process, and it is interesting that the common tern well knows the appearance of the robber; for no sooner does a robber-tern come up than the greatest consternation is excited among a flock of common terns, these flying about and screaming in a frantic manner. The white-headed eagle has also developed the plundering instinct in great perfection, as is shown by the following graphic account of Audubon:-- During spring and summer, the white-headed eagle, to procure sustenance, follows a different course, and one much less suited to a bird apparently so well able to supply itself without interfering with other plunderers. No sooner does the first hawk make its appearance along the Atlantic shore, or around the numerous and large rivers, than the eagle follows it, and, like a selfish oppressor, robs it of the hard-earned fruits of its labour. Perched on some tall summit, in view of the ocean or of some watercourse, he watches every motion of the osprey while on the wing. When the latter rises from the water, with a fish in its grasp, forth rushes the eagle in pursuit. He mounts above the fish-hawk, and threatens it by actions well understood; when the latter, fearing perhaps that its life is in danger, drops its prey. In an instant the eagle, accurately estimating the rapid descent of the fish, closes its wings, follows it with the swiftness of thought, and the next moment grasps it. The prize is carried off in silence to the woods, and assists in feeding the ever-hungry brood of the eagle. The frigate pelican is likewise a professional thief, and attacks the boobies not only to make them drop the fish which they have newly caught, but also to disgorge those which are actually in their stomachs. The latter process is effected by strong punishment, which they continue until the unfortunate booby yields up its dinner. The punishment consists in stabbing the victim with its powerful beak. Catesby and Dampier have both observed and described these habits, and it seems from their account that the plunderer may either commit highway robbery in the air, or lie in wait for the boobies as they return to rest. In antithesis to this habit of plundering other birds I may quote the following from 'Nature' (July 20, 1871), to show that the instinct of provident labour, so common among insects and rodents, is not altogether unrepresented in birds:-- The ant-eating woodpecker (_Melanerpes formicivorus_), a common Californian species, has the curious and peculiar habit of laying up provision against the inclement season. Small round holes are dug in the bark of the pine and oak, into each of which is inserted an acorn, and so tightly is it fitted or driven in, that it is with difficulty extricated. The bark of the pine trees, when thus filled, presents at a short distance the appearance of being studded with nails. The following may also be quoted:-- It is the nature of this bird (guillemot), as well as of most of those birds which habitually dive to take their prey, to perform all their evolutions under water with the aid of their wings; but instead of dashing at once into the midst of the terrified group of small prey, by which only a few would be captured, it passes round and round them, and so drives them into a heap; and thus has an opportunity of snatching here one and there another as it finds it convenient to swallow them; and if any one pushes out to escape, it falls the first prey of the devourer. The manner in which this bird removes the egg of a gull or hen to some secure place to be devoured, when compared with that in which a like conveyance is made by the parent for the safety of its future progeny, affords a striking manifestation of the difference between appetite and affection. When influenced by affection, the brittle treasure is removed without flaw or fracture, and is replaced with tender care; but the plunderer at once plunges his bill into its substance, and carries it off on its point.[161] Speaking of the feeding habits of the lapwing, Jesse says:-- When the lapwing wants to procure food, it seeks for a worm's cast, and stamps the ground by the side of it with its feet. After doing this for a short time, the bird waits for the issue of the worm from its hole, which, alarmed at the shaking of the ground, endeavours to make its escape, when it is immediately seized, and becomes the prey of the ingenious bird. The lapwing also frequents the haunts of moles, which, when in pursuit of worms on which they feed, frighten them, and the worm, in attempting to escape, comes to the surface of the ground, when it is seized by the lapwing.[162] Again,-- A lady of Dr. E. Darwin's acquaintance saw a little bird repeatedly hop on a poppy stem, and shake the head with his bill, till many seeds were scattered, when it settled on the ground and picked up the seeds.[163] It is a matter of common remark that in countries where vultures abound, these birds rapidly 'gather together where the carcass is,' although before the death of their prey no bird was to be seen in the sky. The question has always been asked whether the vultures are guided to the carcass by their sense of smell or by that of sight; but this question is really no longer an open one. When Mr. Darwin was at Valparaiso he tried the following experiment. Having tied a number of condors in a long row, and having folded up a piece of meat in paper, he walked backwards and forwards in front of the row, carrying the meat at a distance of three yards from them, 'but no notice whatever was taken.' He then threw the meat upon the ground, within one yard of an old male bird; 'he looked at it for a moment with attention, but then regarded it no more.' With a stick he next pushed the meat right under the beak of the bird. Then for the first time the bird smelled it, and tore open the paper 'with fury, and at the same moment every bird in the long row began struggling and flapping its wings.'[164] Thus there can be no doubt that vultures do not depend on their sense of smell for finding carrion at a distance. Nor is it mysterious why they should find it by their sense of sight. If over an area of many square miles there are a number of vultures flying as they do at a very high elevation, and if one of the number perceives a carcass and begins to descend, the next adjacent vultures would see the descent of the first one, and follow him as a guide, while the next in the series would follow these in the same way, and so on. Coming now to special instincts relating to incubation and the care of offspring, a correspondent writes:-- Last spring I had a pair of canaries, in an ordinary breeding cage (with two small boxes for nests in a compartment at one end). In due course the first egg was laid, which I inspected through the little door made for that purpose. The next day I looked again; still only one egg, and so for four or five days. It being evident, from the appearance of the hen, that there were more eggs coming, and as she seemed in good health, I supposed she might have broken some; and I took out the box, and examined it carefully for the shells (but without pulling the nest to pieces), and found nothing, until towards the beginning of another week I went to take the one egg away, as the hen seemed preparing to sit upon it. There were two eggs! The next morning, to my surprise, she was sitting upon six eggs! She must therefore have buried four of them in the four corners of the box, and so deep that I had been unable to find them. At first I thought that she had done so merely from dislike at their being looked at, but on reflection it has occurred to me that she did it that all might be hatched at the same time (as they subsequently were); for she was perfectly tame, and would almost suffer herself to be handled when on her nest. Wild birds never seem to conceal their eggs before sitting; but then (having more amusements than cage birds) they do not revisit their eggs after laying, until they have laid their number, whereas a caged bird, having nothing to divert her attention from her nest, often sits on it the greater part of the day. I am not aware that this curious display of forethought on the part of a caged bird has been hitherto recorded, and seeing, as my correspondent points out, that it has reference to the changed conditions of life brought about by domestication, it may be said to constitute the first step in the development of a new instinct, which, if the conditions were of sufficiently long continuance, might lead to an important and permanent change of the ancestral instinct. I have several interesting facts, also communicated to me by correspondents, similarly relating to individual variations of the ancestral instinct of incubation in order to meet the requirements of a novel environment. Thus Mr. J. F. Fisher tells me that while he was a commander in the East India trade he always took a quantity of fowls to sea for food. The laying-boxes being in a confined space, the hens used to quarrel over their occupancy; and one of the hens adopted the habit of removing the 'nest-eggs' which Mr. Fisher placed in one of the boxes to another box of the same kind not very far away. He watched the process through a chink of a door, and 'saw her curl her neck round the egg, thus forming a cup by which she lifted the egg,' and conveyed it to the other box. He adds:-- I can give no information as to the more recondite question _why_ the egg was removed, or the fastidious preference of the one box over the other, or the inventive faculty that suggested the neck as a makeshift hand; but from the despatch with which she effected the removal of the egg in the case I saw, I have no doubt that this hen was the one which had performed the feat so often before. The explanation of the preference shown for the one box over the other may, I think, be gathered from another part of my correspondent's letter, for he there mentions incidentally that the box in which he placed the nest-egg, and from which the hen removed it, was standing near a door which was usually open, and thus situated in a more exposed position than the other box. But be this as it may, considering that among domestic fowls the habit of conveying eggs is not usual, such isolated cases are interesting as showing how instincts may originate. Jesse gives an exactly similar case ('Gleanings,' vol. i., p. 149) of the Cape goose, which removed eggs from a nest attacked by rats, and another case of a wild duck doing the same. In the same connection, and with the same remarks, I may quote the following case in which a fowl adopted the habit of conveying, not her eggs, but her young chickens. I quote it from Houzeau ('Journ.,' i., p. 332), who gives the observation on the authority of his brother as eye-witness. The fowl had found good feeding-ground on the further side of a stream four metres wide. She adopted the habit of flying across with her chickens upon her back, taking one chicken on each journey. She thus transferred her whole brood every morning, and brought them back in a similar way to their nest every evening. The habit of carrying young in this way is not natural to Grallinaceæ, and therefore this particular instance of its display can only be set down as an intelligent adjustment by a particular bird. Similarly, a correspondent (Mr. J. Street) informs me of a case in which a pair of blackbirds, after having been disturbed by his gardener looking into their nest at their young, removed the latter to a distance of twenty yards, and deposited them in a more concealed place. Partridges are well known to do this, and similarly, according to Audubon, the goatsucker, when its nest is disturbed, removes its eggs to another place, the male and female both transporting eggs in their beaks.[165] Still more curiously, a case is recorded in 'Comptes Rendu' (1836) of a pair of nightingales whose nest was threatened by a flood, and who transported it to a safe place, the male and the female bearing the nest between them. Now, it is easy to see that if any particular bird is intelligent enough, as in the cases quoted, to perform this adjustive action of conveying young--whether to feeding-grounds, as in the case of the hen, or from sources of danger, as in the case of partridges, blackbirds, and goatsuckers--inheritance and natural selection might develop the originally intelligent adjustment into an instinct common to the species. And it so happens that this has actually occurred in at least two species of birds--viz., the woodcock and wild duck, both of which have been repeatedly observed to fly with their young upon their backs to and from their feeding-ground. Couch gives some facts of interest relating to the mode of escape practised by the water-rail, swan, and some other aquatic birds. This consists in sinking under water, with only the bill remaining above the surface for respiration. When the swan has young, she may sink the head quite under water in order to allow the young to mount on it, and so be carried through even rapid currents. The same author remarks that-- Many birds will carefully remove the meetings of the young from the neighbourhood of their nests, in order not to attract the attention of enemies; for while we find that birds which make no secret of their nesting-places are careless in such matters, the woodpecker and the marsh tit in particular are at pains to remove even the chips which are made in excavating the cavities where the nests are placed, and which might lead an observer to the sacred spot. Similarly, Jesse observes:-- The excrement of the young of many birds who build their nests without any pretensions to concealment, such as the swallow, crow, &c., may at all times be observed about or under the nest; while that of some of those birds whose nests are more industriously concealed is conveyed away in the mouths of the parent birds, who generally drop it at a distance of twenty or thirty yards from the nest. Were it not for this precaution, the excrement itself, from its accumulation, and commonly from its very colour, would point out the place where the young were concealed. When the young birds are ready to fly, or nearly so, the old birds do not consider it any longer necessary to remove the excrement. Sir H. Davy gives an account of a pair of eagles which he saw on Ben Nevis teaching their young ones to fly; and every one must have observed the same thing among commoner species of birds. The experiments of Spalding, however, have shown that flying is an instinctive faculty; so that when he reared swallows from the nest and liberated them only after they were fully fledged, they flew well immediately on being liberated. Therefore, the 'teaching to fly' by parent birds must be regarded as mere encouragement to develop instinctive powers, which in virtue of this encouragement are probably developed sooner than would otherwise be the case. A few observations may here be offered on some habits which do not fall under any particular heading. The habit which many small birds display of mobbing carnivorous ones is probably due to a desire to drive off the enemy, and perhaps also to warn friends by the hubbub. It may therefore perhaps be regarded as a display of concerted action, of which, however, we shall have better evidence further on. I have seen a flock of common terns mob a pirate tern, which shows that this combined action may be directed as much against robbery as against murder. Couch says he has seen blackbirds mobbing a cat which was concealed in a bush, and here the motive would seem to be that of warning friends rather than that of driving away the enemy. I have observed among the sea-gulls at the Zoological Gardens a curious habit, or mode of challenge. This consists in ostentatiously picking up a small twig or piece of wood, and throwing it down before the bird challenged, in the way that a glove used to be thrown down by the old knights. I observed this action performed repeatedly by several individuals of the glaucous and black-back species in the early spring-time of the year, and so it probably has some remote connection with the instinct of nest-building. _Nidification._ In connection with the habits and instincts peculiar to certain species of birds, I may give a short account of the more remarkable kinds of nidification that are met with in this class of animals. As the account must necessarily be brief, I shall only mention the more interesting of the usual types. Petrels and puffins make their nests in burrows which they excavate in the earth. The great sulphur mountain in Guadaloupe is described by Wasser as 'all bored like a rabbit warren with the holes that these imps (_i.e._ petrels) excavate.' In the case of the puffin it is the male that does the work of burrowing. He throws himself upon his back in the tunnel which he has made, and digs it longer and longer with his broad bill, while casting out the mould with his webbed feet. The burrow when finished has several twists and turns in it, and is about ten feet deep. If a rabbit burrow is available, the puffin saves himself the trouble of digging by taking possession of the one already made. The kingfisher and land-martin also make their nests in burrows. Certain auks lay their single egg on the bare rock while the stone curlew and goatsucker deposit theirs on the bare soil, returning, however, year after year to the same spot. Ostriches scrape holes in the sand to serve as extemporised nests for their eggs promiscuously dropped, which are then buried by a light coating of sand, and incubated during the day by the sunbeams, and at night by the male bird. Sometimes a number of female ostriches deposit their eggs in a common nest, and then take the duty of incubation by turns. Similarly, gulls, sandpipers, plovers, &c., place their eggs in shallow pits hollowed out of the soil. The kingfisher makes a bed of undigested fish-bones ejected as pellets from her stomach, and 'some of the swifts secrete from their salivary glands a fluid which rapidly hardens as it dries on exposure to the air into a substance resembling isinglass, and thus furnish the "edible birds' nests" that are the delight of the Chinese epicures.'[166] The house-martin builds its nest of clay, which it sticks upon the face of a wall, and renders more tenacious by working into it little bits of straw, splinters of wood, &c. According to Mr. Gilbert White:-- That this work may not, while it is soft and green, pull itself down by its own weight, the provident architect has prudence and forbearance enough not to advance her work too fast; but by building only in the morning, and by dedicating the rest of the day to food and amusement, gives it sufficient time to dry and harden. About half an inch seems a sufficient layer for a day. Thus careful workmen, when they build mud walls (informed at first perhaps by these little birds), raise but a moderate layer at a time, and then desist, lest the work should become top-heavy, and ruined by its own weight. By this method, in about ten or twelve days is formed a hemispheric nest, with a small aperture towards the top, strong, compact, and warm, and perfectly fitted for all the purposes for which it was intended. Other birds build in wood. The tomtit and the woodpecker excavate a hole in a tree, and carefully carry away the chips, so as not to give any indication of the whereabouts of their nests. Wilson says that the American woodpecker makes an excavation five feet in depth, of a tortuous form, to keep out wind and rain. The orchard starling suspends its nest from the branches of a tree, and uses for its material tough kinds of grass, the blades of which it weaves together. Wilson found one of these blades to be thirteen inches long, and to be woven in and out thirty-four times. We may next notice the weaver (_Ploceus textor_) and tailor (_Prinia_, _Orthotomus_, and _Sylvia_). The former intertwines slender leaves of grass so as to produce a web sufficiently substantial for the protection of its young. The tailor-birds sew together leaves wherewith to make their nests, using for the purpose cotton and thread where they can find it, and natural vegetable fibres where they cannot obtain artificial. Colonel Sykes says that he has found the threads thus used for sewing knotted at the ends.[167] Forbes saw the tailor-bird of the East Indies constructing its nest, and observed it to choose a plant with large leaves, gather cotton which it regularly spun into a thread by means of its bill and claws, and then sew the leaves together, using its beak as a needle, or rather awl. This instinct is rendered particularly interesting to evolutionists from the fact that it is exhibited by three distinct genera. For, as the instinct is so peculiar and unique, it is not likely to have originated independently in the three genera, but must be regarded as almost certainly derived from a common ancestral type--thus showing that an instinct may be perpetuated unaltered after the differentiation of structure has proceeded beyond a specific distinction. The genus _Sylvia_ inhabits Italy, the other two inhabit India. _Sylvia_ uses for thread spiders' web collected from the egg-pouches, which is stitched through holes made in the edges of leaves, presumably with the beak. The baya bird of India 'hangs its pendulous dwelling from a projecting bough, twisting it with grass into a form somewhat resembling a bottle with a prolonged neck, the entrance being inverted, so as to baffle the approaches of its enemies, the tree snakes and other reptiles.' Sir E. Tennent, from whom this account is taken, adds:-- The natives assert that the male bird carries fire-flies to the nest, and fastens them to its sides by particles of soft mud. Mr. Layard assures me that although he has never succeeded in finding the fire-fly, the nest of the male bird (for the female occupies another during incubation) invariably contains a patch of mud on each side of the perch. Dr. Buchanan confirms the report of the natives here alluded to, and says:-- At night each of the habitations is lighted up by a fire-fly stuck on the top with a bit of clay. The nest consists of two rooms; sometimes there are three or four fire-flies, and their blaze in the little cells dazzles the eyes of the bats, which often kill the young of these birds. While this work is passing through the press I meet with the following, which appears to refer to some independent, and therefore corroborative observation concerning the above-stated fact, and in any case is worth adding, on account of the observation concerning the rats, which, if trustworthy, would furnish a sufficient reason for the instinct of the birds. The extract is taken from a letter to 'Nature' (xxiv., p. 165), published by Mr. H. A. Severn: I have been informed on safe authority that the Indian bottle-bird protects his nest at night by sticking several of these glow-beetles around the entrance by means of clay; and only a few days back an intimate friend of my own was watching three rats on a roof rafter of his bungalow when a glow-fly lodged very close to them; the rats immediately scampered off. The Talegallus of Australia is, in the opinion of Gould,-- Among the most important of the ornithological novelties which the exploration of Western and Southern Australia has unfolded to us, and this from the circumstance of its not hatching its own eggs, which, instead of being incubated in the usual way, are deposited in mounds of mixed sand and herbage, and there left for the heating of the mass to develop the young, which, when accomplished, force their way through the sides of the mound, and commence an active life from the moment they see the light of day.[168] Sir George Grey measured one of these mounds, and found it to be 'forty-five feet in circumference, and if rounded in proportion on the top (it being at the time unfinished) would have been full five feet high.' The heat round the eggs was taken to be 89°. A curious aberration of the nest-building instinct is sometimes shown by certain birds--particularly the common wren--which consists in building a supernumerary nest. That is to say, after one nest is completed, another is begun and finished before the eggs are laid, and the first nest is not used, though sometimes it is used in preference to the second. As showing at once the eccentricity which birds sometimes display in the choice of a site, and also the determination of certain birds to return to the same site in successive years, I may allude to the case published by Bingley, of a pair of swallows which built their nest upon the wings and body of a dead owl, which was hanging from the rafters of a barn, and so loosely as to sway about with every gust of wind. The owl with the nest upon it was placed as a curiosity in the museum of Sir Ashton Lever, and he directed that a shell should be hung upon the rafters in the place which had been previously occupied by the dead owl. Next year the swallows returned and constructed their new nest in the cavity of the shell.[169] The following is quoted from Thompson's 'Passions of Animals,' p. 205:-- The sociable grosbeak of Africa is one of the few instances of birds living in community and uniting in constructing one huge nest for the whole society. L. Valiant's account has been fully confirmed by other travellers. He says: 'I observed on the way a tree with an enormous nest of these birds, which I have called republicans; and as soon as I arrived at my camp I despatched a few men with a waggon to bring it to me, that I might open and examine the hive. When it arrived, I cut it in pieces with a hatchet, and saw that the chief portion of the structure consisted of a mass of Boshman's grass, without any mixture, but so compact and firmly basketed together as to be impenetrable to the rain. This is the commencement of the structure, and each bird builds its particular nest under this canopy. But the nests are formed only beneath the eaves, the upper surface remaining void, without, however, being useless; for as it has a projecting rim, and is a little inclined, it serves to let the water run off, and preserves each little dwelling from the rain. Figure to yourself a huge irregular sloping roof, all the eaves of which are covered with nests, crowded one against another, and you will have a tolerably accurate idea of these singular edifices. Each individual nest is three or four inches in diameter, which is sufficient for the bird; but, as they are all in contact with one another around the eaves, they appear to the eye to form but one building, and are distinguishable from each other only by a little external aperture which serves as an entrance to the nest; and even this is sometimes common to three different nests, one of which is situated at the bottom and the other two at the sides. This large nest, which was one of the most considerable I had anywhere seen in the course of my journey, contained 320 inhabited cells, which, supposing a male and female to each, would form a society of 640 individuals; but as these birds are polygamous, such a calculation would not be exact.' The following is quoted from Couch ('Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 227 _et seq._):-- Mr. Waterton says there is a peculiarity in the nidification of the domestic swan too singular to be passed over without notice. At the time it lays its first egg the nest which it has prepared is of very moderate size; but as incubation proceeds we see it increase vastly in height and breadth. Every soft material, such as pieces of grass and fragments of sedges, is laid hold of by the sitting swan as they float within her reach, and are added to the nest. This work of accumulation is performed by her during the entire period of incubation, be the weather wet or dry, settled or unsettled; and it is perfectly astonishing to see with what assiduity she plies her work of aggrandisement to a nest already sufficient in strength and size to answer every end. My swans generally form their nest on an island quite above the reach of a flood; and still the sitting bird never appears satisfied with the quantity of materials which are provided for her nest. I once gave her two huge bundles of oaten straw, and she performed her work of apparent supererogation by applying the whole of it to her nest, already very large, and not exposed to destruction had the weather become ever so rainy. This same author continues:-- It is probable that this disposition to accumulation, in its general bearing, has reference to heat rather than the flood; but that the wild swan has a foresight regarding danger, and a quick perception as to the means of securing safety, appears from an instance mentioned by Captain Parry, in his Northern voyage. When everything was deeply involved in ice, the voyagers were obliged to pay much attention to discern whether they were travelling over water or land; but some birds, which formed their nest at no great distance from the ships, were under no mistake in so important a matter; and when the thaw took place it was seen that the nest was situated on an island in the lake. The following cases are likewise taken from Couch (_loc. cit._, p. 225):-- This swan was eighteen or nineteen years old, had brought up many broods, and was highly valued by the neighbours. She exhibited, some eight or nine years past, one of the most remarkable powers of instinct ever recorded. She was sitting on four or five eggs, and was observed to be very busy in collecting weeds, grasses, &c., to raise her nest; a farming man was ordered to take down half a load of haulm, with which she most industriously raised her nest and the eggs two feet and a half; that very night there came down a tremendous fall of rain, which flooded all the malt-shops and did great damage. Man made no preparation, the bird did; instinct prevailed over reason. Her eggs were above, and only just above, the water. During the early part of the summer of 1835, a pair of water-hens built their nest by the margin of the ornamental pond at Bell's Hill, a piece of water of considerable extent, and ordinarily fed by a spring from the height above, but into which the contents of another large pond can occasionally be admitted. This was done while the female was sitting; and as the nest had been built when the water level stood low, the sudden influx of this large body of water from the second pond caused a rise of several inches, so as to threaten the speedy immersion and consequent destruction of the eggs. This the birds seem to have been aware of, and immediately took precautions against so imminent a danger; for when the gardener, upon whose veracity I can safely rely, seeing the sudden rise of the water, went to look after the nest, expecting to find it covered and the eggs destroyed, or at least forsaken by the hen, he observed, whilst at a distance, both birds busily engaged about the brink where the nest was placed; and when near enough he clearly perceived that they were adding, with all possible despatch, fresh materials to raise the fabric beyond the level of the increased contents of the pond; and that the eggs had by some means been removed from the nest by the birds, and were then deposited upon the grass about a foot or more from the margin of the water. He watched them for some time, and saw the nest rapidly increase in height; but I regret to add that he did not remain long enough, fearing he might create alarm, to witness the interesting act of replacing the eggs which must have been effected shortly after; for, upon his return in less than an hour, he found the hen quietly sitting upon them in the newly raised nest. In a few days afterwards the young were hatched, and, as usual, soon quitted the nest and took to the water with their parents. The nest was shown to me _in situ_ shortly after, and I could then plainly discern the formation of the new with the older part of the fabric. We must not conclude these remarks on nidification without alluding to Mr. Wallace's chapters on the 'Philosophy of Birds' Nests,' in his work on 'Natural Selection.' This writer is inclined to suppose that birds do not build their nests distinctive of their various species by the teachings of hereditary instinct, but by the young birds intelligently observing the construction of the nests in which they are hatched, and purposely imitating this construction when in the following season they have occasion to build nests of their own. With reference to this theory it is only needful to say that it is antecedently improbable, and not well substantiated by facts. It is antecedently improbable because, when any habit has been continued for a number of generations--especially when the habit is of a peculiar and detailed character--the probability is that it has become instinctive; we should have almost as much reason to anticipate that the nest of the little crustacean _Podocerus_, or the cell of the hive-bee, is constructed by a process of conscious imitation, as that this is the case with the nests of birds. And this theory is not well substantiated by facts because, if the theory were true, we should expect considerable differences to be usually presented by nests of the same species. Unless the construction of the nest of any given species were regulated by a common instinct, numberless idiosyncratic peculiarities would necessarily require to arise, and there would only be a very general uniformity of type presented by the nests of the same species. A more valuable contribution to the 'Philosophy of Birds' Nests' is furnished by this able naturalist when he directs attention to a certain general correlation between the form of the nest and the colour of the female. For, on reviewing the birds of the world, he certainly makes good the proposition that, as a general rule, liable however to frequent exceptions, dull-coloured females sit on open nests, while those that are conspicuously coloured sit in domed nests. But Mr. Darwin, in a careful review of all the evidence, clearly shows that this interesting fact is to be attributed, not, as Mr. Wallace supposed, to the colour of the female having been determined through natural selection by the form of the nest, but to the reverse process of the form of the nest having been determined by the colour of the female.[170] Another general fact of interest connected with nidification must not be omitted. This is that the instincts of nidification, although not so variable as the theory of Mr. Wallace would require, are nevertheless highly plastic. The falcon, which usually builds on a cliff, has been known to lay its eggs on the ground in a marsh; the golden eagle sometimes builds in trees or on the ground, while the heron varies its site between trees, cliffs, and open fen.[171] Again, Audubon, in his 'Ornithological Biography,' gives many cases of conspicuous local variations in the nests of the same species in the northern and southern United States; and, as Mr. Wallace truly observes,-- Many facts have already been given which show that birds do adapt their nests to the situations in which they place them; and the adoption of eaves, chimneys, and boxes by swallows, wrens, and many other birds, shows that they are always ready to take advantage of changed conditions. It is probable, therefore, that a permanent change of climate would cause many birds to modify the form or materials of their abode, so as better to protect their young.[172] In America the change of habits in this respect undergone by the house-swallow has been accomplished within the last three hundred years. Closely connected, if not identical, with this fact is another, namely, that in some species which have been watched closely for a sufficient length of time, a steady improvement in the construction of nests has been observed. Thus C. G. Leroy, who filled the post of Ranger of Versailles about a century ago, and therefore had abundant opportunities of studying the habits of animals, wrote an essay on 'The Intelligence and Perfectibility of Animals from a Philosophical Point of View.' In this essay he has anticipated the American observer Wilson in noticing that the nests of young birds are distinctly inferior to those of older ones, both as regards their situation and construction. As we have here independent testimony of two good observers to a fact which in itself is not improbable, I think we may conclude that the nest-making instinct admits of being supplemented, at any rate in some birds, by the experience and intelligence of the individual. M. Pouchet has also recorded that he has found a decided improvement to have taken place in the nests of the swallows at Rouen during his own lifetime; and this accords with the anticipation of Leroy that if our observation extended over a sufficient length of time, and in a manner sufficiently close, we should find that the accumulation of intelligent improvements by individuals of successive generations would begin to tell upon the inherited instinct, so that all the nests in a given locality would attain to a higher grade of excellence. Leroy also says that when swallows are hatched out too late to migrate with the older birds, the instinct of migration is not sufficiently imperative to induce them to undertake the journey by themselves. 'They perish, the victims of their ignorance, and of the tardy birth which made them unable to follow their parents.' _Cuckoo._ Perhaps the strangest of the special instincts manifested by birds is that of the cuckoo laying its eggs in the nests of other birds. As the subject is an important one from several points of view, I shall consider it at some length. It must first be observed that the parasitic habit in question is not practised by all species of the genus--the American cuckoo, for instance, being well known to build its nest and rear its young in the ordinary manner. The Australian species, however, manifests the same instinct as the European. The first observer of the habit practised by the European cuckoo was the illustrious Jenner, who published his account in the 'Philosophical Transactions.'[173] From this account the following is an extract:-- The cuckoo makes choice of the nests of a great variety of small birds. I have known its eggs entrusted to the care of the hedge-sparrow, water-wagtail, titlark, yellowhammer, green linnet, and winchat. Among these it generally selects the three former, but shows a much greater partiality to the hedge-sparrow than to any of the rest; therefore, for the purpose of avoiding confusion, this bird only, in the following account, will be considered as the foster-parent of the cuckoo, except in instances which are particularly specified. When the hedge-sparrow has sat her usual time, and disengaged the young cuckoo and some of her own offspring from the shell,[174] her own young ones, and any of her eggs that remain unhatched, are soon turned out, the young cuckoo remaining possessor of the nest, and sole object of her future care. The young birds are not previously killed, nor are the eggs demolished, but all are left to perish together, either entangled about the bush which contains the nest, or lying on the ground under it. On June 18, 1787, I examined the nest of a hedge-sparrow, which then contained a cuckoo's and three hedge-sparrow's eggs. On inspecting it the day following, I found the bird had hatched, but that the nest now contained a young cuckoo and only one young hedge-sparrow. The nest was placed so near the extremity of a hedge, that I could distinctly see what was going forward in it; and, to my astonishment, saw the young cuckoo, though so newly hatched, in the act of turning out the young hedge-sparrow. The mode of accomplishing this was very curious. The little animal, with the assistance of its rump and wings, contrived to get the bird upon its back, and making a lodgment for the burden by elevating its elbows, clambered backward with it up the side of the nest till it reached the top, when, resting for a moment, it threw off its load with a jerk, and quite disengaged it from the nest. It remained in this situation a short time, feeling about with the extremities of its wings, as if to be convinced whether this business was properly executed, and then dropped into the nest again. With these (the extremities of its wings) I have often seen it examine, as it were, an egg and nestling before it began its operations; and the sensibility which these parts appeared to possess seemed sufficiently to compensate the want of sight, which as yet it was destitute of. I afterwards put in an egg, and this by a similar process was conveyed to the edge of the nest and thrown out. These experiments I have since repeated several times in different nests, and have always found the young cuckoo disposed to act in the same manner. In climbing up the nest it sometimes drops its burden, and thus is foiled in its endeavours; but after a little respite the work is resumed, and goes on almost incessantly till it is effected. It is wonderful to see the extraordinary exertions of the young cuckoo, when it is two or three days old, if a bird be put into the nest with it that is too weighty for it to lift out. In this state it seems ever restless and uneasy. But this disposition for turning out its companions begins to decline from the time it is two or three till it is about twelve days old, when, as far as I have hitherto seen, it ceases. Indeed, the disposition for throwing out the egg appears to cease a few days sooner; for I have frequently seen the young cuckoo, after it had been hatched nine or ten days, remove a nestling that had been placed in the nest with it, when it suffered an egg, put there at the same time, to remain unmolested. The singularity of its shape is well adapted to these purposes; for, different from other newly hatched birds, its back from the scapulæ downwards is very broad, with a considerable depression in the middle. This depression seems formed by nature for the design of giving a more secure lodgment to the egg of the hedge-sparrow, or its young one, when the young cuckoo is employed in removing either of them from the nest. When it is about twelve days old this cavity is quite filled up, and then the back assumes the shape of nestling birds in general. . . . The circumstance of the young cuckoo being destined by nature to throw out the young hedge-sparrows seems to account for the parent cuckoo dropping her egg in the nests of birds so small as those I have particularised. If she were to do this in the nest of a bird which produced a large egg, and consequently a large nestling, the young cuckoo would probably find an insurmountable difficulty in solely possessing the nest, as its exertions would be unequal to the labour of turning out the young birds. (I have known a case in which a hedge-sparrow sat upon a cuckoo's egg and one of her own. Her own egg was hatched five days before the cuckoo's, when the young hedge-sparrow had gained such a superiority in size that the young cuckoo had not powers sufficient to lift it out of the nest till it was two days old, by which time it had grown very considerably. This egg was probably laid by the cuckoo several days after the hedge-sparrow had begun to sit; and even in this case it appears that its presence had created the disturbance before alluded to, as all the hedge-sparrow's eggs had gone except one.) . . . June 27, 1787.--Two cuckoos and a hedge-sparrow were hatched in the same nest this morning; one hedge sparrow's egg remained unhatched. In a few hours after, a contest began between the cuckoos for the possession of the nest, which continued undetermined till the next afternoon; when one of them, which was somewhat superior in size, turned out the other, together with the young hedge-sparrow and the unhatched egg. This contest was very remarkable. The combatants alternately appeared to have the advantage, as each carried the other several times nearly to the top of the nest, and then sunk down again oppressed with the weight of its burden; till at length, after various efforts, the strongest prevailed, and was afterwards brought up by the hedge-sparrows. To what cause, then, may we attribute the singularities of the cuckoo? May they not be owing to the following circumstances,--the short residence this bird is allowed to make in the country where it is destined to propagate its species, and the call that nature has upon it, during that short residence, to produce a numerous progeny? The cuckoo's first appearance here is about the middle of April, commonly on the 17th. Its egg is not ready for incubation till some weeks after its arrival, seldom before the middle of May. A fortnight is taken up by the sitting bird in hatching the egg. The young bird generally continues three weeks in the nest before it flies, and the foster-parents feed it more than five weeks after this period; so that, if a cuckoo should be ready with an egg much sooner than the time pointed out, not a single nestling, even one of the earliest, would be fit to provide for itself before its parent would be instinctively directed to seek a new residence, and be thus compelled to abandon its young one; for old cuckoos take their final leave of this country the first week in July. Had nature allowed the cuckoo to have stayed here as long as some other migrating birds, which produce a single set of young ones (as the swift or nightingale, for example), and had allowed her to have reared as large a number as any bird is capable of bringing up at one time, there might not have been sufficient to have answered her purpose; but by sending the cuckoo from one nest to another, she is reduced to the same state as the bird whose nest we daily rob of an egg, in which case the stimulus for incubation is suspended. A writer in 'Nature' (vol. v., p. 383; and vol. ix., p. 123), to whom Mr. Darwin refers in the latest edition of 'The Origin of Species' as an observer that Mr. Gould has found trustworthy, precisely confirms, from observations of his own, the above description of Jenner. So far, therefore, as the observations are common I shall not quote his statements; but the following additional matter is worth rendering:-- But what struck me most was this: the cuckoo was perfectly naked, without a vestige of a feather or even a hint of future feathers; its eyes were not yet opened, and its neck seemed too weak to support the weight of its head. The pipits (in whose nest the young cuckoo was parasitic) had well-developed quills on the wings and back, and had bright eyes partially open; yet they seemed quite helpless under the manipulations of the cuckoo, which looked a much less developed creature. The cuckoo's legs, however, seemed very muscular, and it appeared to feel about with its wings, which were absolutely featherless, as with hands--the 'spurious wing' (unusually large in proportion) looking like a spread-out thumb. The most singular thing of all was the direct purpose with which the blind little monster made for the open side of the nest, the only part where it could throw its burden down the bank. [The latter remark has reference to the position of the nest below a heather bush, on the declivity of a low abrupt bank, where the only chance of dislodging the young birds was to eject them over the side of the nest remote from its support upon the bank.] As the young cuckoo was blind, it must have known the part of the nest to choose by feeling from the inside that that part was unsupported. Such being the facts, we have next to ask how they are to be explained on the principles of evolution. At first sight it seems that although the habit saves the bird which practises it much time and trouble, and so is clearly of benefit to the individual, it is not so clear how the instinct is of benefit to the species; for as cuckoos are not social birds, and therefore cannot in any way depend on mutual co-operation, it is difficult to see that this saving of time and trouble to the individual can be of any use to the species. But Jenner seems to have hit the right cause in the concluding part of the above quotation. If it is an advantage that the cuckoo should migrate early, it clearly becomes an advantage, in order to admit of this, that the habit should be formed of leaving her eggs for other birds to incubate. At any rate, we have here a sufficiently probable explanation of the _raison d'être_ of this curious instinct; and whether it is the true reason or the only reason, we are justified in setting down the instinct to the creating influence of natural selection. Mr. Darwin, in his 'Origin of Species,' has some interesting remarks to make on this subject. First, he is informed by Dr. Merrell that the American cuckoo, although as a rule following the ordinary custom of birds in incubating her own eggs, nevertheless occasionally deposits them in the nests of other birds. Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid her egg in another bird's nest. If the old bird profited by this occasional habit through being able to migrate earlier, or through any other cause; or if the young were made more vigorous by advantage being taken of the mistaken instinct of another species than when reared by their own mother, encumbered as she could hardly fail to be by having eggs and young at the same time;[175] then the old birds or the fostered young would gain an advantage.[176] The instinct would seem to be a very old one, for there are two great changes of structure in the European cuckoo which are manifestly correlated with the instinct. Thus, the shape of the young bird's back has already been noted; and not less remarkable than this is the small size of the egg from which the young bird is hatched. For the egg of the cuckoo is not any larger than that of the skylark, although an adult cuckoo is four times the size of an adult skylark. And 'that the small size of the egg is a real case of adaptation (in order to deceive the small birds in whose nests it is laid), we may infer from the fact of the non-parasitic American cuckoo laying full-sized eggs.' Yet, although the instinct in question is doubtless of high antiquity, there have been occasional instances observed in cuckoos of reversion to the ancestral instinct of nidification; for, according to Adolf Müller, 'the cuckoo occasionally lays her eggs on the bare ground, sits on them, and feeds her young.' In 'Nature' for November 18, 1869, Professor A. Newton, F.R.S., has published an article on a somewhat obscure point connected with the instincts of the cuckoo. He says that Dr. Baldamus has satisfied him, by an exhibition of sixteen specimens of cuckoos' eggs found in the nests of different species of birds, 'that the egg of the cuckoo is approximately coloured and marked like those of the bird in whose nest it is found,' for the purpose, no doubt, of deceiving the foster-parents. Professor Newton adds, however:-- Having said this much, and believing as I do the Doctor to be partly justified in the carefully worded enunciation of what he calls a 'law of nature,' I must now declare that it is only 'approximately,' and by no means _universally_ true that the cuckoo's egg is coloured like those of the victims of her imposition, &c. Still, when so great an authority as Professor Newton expresses himself satisfied that there is a marked _tendency_ to such imitation, which in some cases leads to extraordinary variations in the colouring of the cuckoo's egg, the alleged fact becomes one which demands notice. The question, of course, immediately arises, How is it conceivable that the fact, if it is a fact, can be explained? We cannot imagine the cuckoo to be able consciously to colour her egg during its formation in order to imitate the eggs among which she is about to lay it; nor can we suppose that having laid an egg and observed its colouring, she then carries it to the nest of the bird whose eggs it most resembles. Professor Newton suggests another theory, which he seems to think sufficient, but which I confess seems to me little more satisfactory than the impossible theories just stated. He says:-- Only one explanation of the process can, to my mind, be offered. Every person who has studied the habits of birds with sufficient attention will be conversant with the tendency which certain of those habits have to become hereditary. It is, I am sure, no violent hypothesis to suppose that there is a very reasonable probability of each cuckoo most commonly placing her eggs in the nest of the same bird, and of this habit being transmitted to her posterity. Now it will be seen that it requires but only an application to this case of the principle of 'natural selection,' or 'survival of the fittest,' to show that if my argument be sound, nothing can be more likely than that, in the course of time, that principle should operate so as to produce the facts asserted, the eggs which best imitated those of particular foster-parents having the best chance of duping the latter, and so of being hatched out. Now, granting to this hypothesis the assumption that individual cuckoos have special predilections as to the species in whose nests they are to lay their eggs, and that some of these species require to be deceived by imitative colouring of the egg to prevent their tilting it out, there is still an enormous difficulty to be met. Supposing that one cuckoo out of a hundred happens to lay eggs sufficiently like those of the North African magpies (a species alluded to by Professor Newton) to deceive the latter into supposing the egg to be one of their own. This I cannot think is too small a proportion to assume, seeing that, _ex hypothesi_, the resemblance must be tolerably close, and that the egg of the magpie does not resemble the great majority of eggs of the cuckoo. Now, in order to sustain the theory, we must suppose that the particular cuckoo which happens to have the peculiarity of laying eggs so closely resembling those of the magpie, must also happen to have the peculiarity of desiring to lay its eggs in the nest of a magpie. The conjunction of these two peculiarities would, I should think, at a moderate estimate reduce the chances of an approximately coloured egg being laid in the appropriate nest to at least one thousand to one. But supposing the happy accident to have taken place, we have next to suppose that the peculiarity of laying these exceptionably coloured eggs is not only constant for the same individual cuckoo, but is inherited by innumerable generations of her progeny; and, what is much more difficult to grant, that the fancy for laying eggs in the nest of a magpie is similarly inherited. I think, therefore, notwithstanding Professor Newton's strong opinion upon the subject, that the ingenious hypothesis must be dismissed as too seriously encumbered by the difficulties which I have mentioned. We may with philosophical safety invoke the influence of natural selection to explain all cases of protective colouring when the _modus operandi_ need only be supposed simple and direct; but in a case such as this the number and complexity of the conditions that would require to meet in order to give natural selection the possibility of entrance, seem to me much too considerable to admit of our entertaining the possibility of its action--at all events in the way that Professor Newton suggests. Therefore, if the facts are facts, I cannot see how they are to be explained. Cuckoos are not the only birds which manifest the parasitic habit of laying their eggs in other birds' nests. Some species of _Melothrus_, a widely distinct genus of American birds, allied to our starlings, have parasitic habits like those of the cuckoo; and the species present an interesting gradation in the perfection of their instincts. The sexes of _Melothrus cadius_ are stated by an excellent observer, Mr. Hudson, sometimes to live promiscuously together in flocks and sometimes to pair. They either build a nest of their own, or seize on one belonging to some other bird, occasionally throwing out the nestlings of the stranger. They either lay their eggs in the nest thus appropriated, or oddly enough build one for themselves on the top of it. They usually sit on their own eggs and rear their own young; but Mr. Hudson says it is probable that they are occasionally parasitic, for he has seen the young of this species feeding old birds of a distinct kind and clamouring to be fed by them. The parasitic habits of another species of _Melothrus_, the _M. Canariensis_, are much more highly developed than those of the last, but are still far from perfect. This bird, as far as it is known, invariably lays its eggs in the nests of strangers, but it is remarkable that several together sometimes commence to build an irregular untidy nest of their own, placed in singularly ill-adapted situations, as on the leaves of a large thistle. They must, however, as far as Mr. Hudson has ascertained, complete a nest for themselves. They often lay so many eggs, from fifteen to twenty, in the same foster-nest, that few or none can possibly be hatched. They have, moreover, the extraordinary habit of pecking holes in the eggs, whether of their own species or of their foster-parents, which they find in the appropriated nests. They drop also many eggs on the bare ground, which are thus wasted. A third species, the _M. precius_ of North America, has acquired instincts as perfect as those of the cuckoo, for it never lays more than an egg in a foster-nest, so that the young bird is securely reared. Mr. Hudson is a strong disbeliever in evolution, but he appears to have been so much struck by the imperfect instincts of the _Melothrus Canariensis_ that he quotes my words, and asks, 'Must we consider these habits not as especially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law, namely transition?'[177] Such are all the facts and considerations which I have to present with reference to the curious instinct in question. It will be seen that--with one doubtful or not sufficiently investigated exception, viz., that of cuckoos adapting the colour of their eggs to that of the eggs of the foster-parents--there is nothing connected with these instincts that presents any difficulty to the theory of evolution. We may, perhaps, at first sight wonder why some counteracting instinct should not have been developed by the same agency in the birds which are liable to be thus duped; but here we must remember that the deposition of a parasitic egg is, comparatively speaking, an exceedingly rare event, and therefore not one that is likely to lead to the development of a special instinct to meet it. _General Intelligence._ Under this heading I shall here, as in the case of this heading elsewhere, string together all the instances which I have met with, and which I deem trustworthy, of the display of unusually high intelligence in the class, family, order, or species of animals under consideration--the object of this heading in all cases being that of supplying, by the facts mentioned beneath it, a general idea of the upper limit of intelligence which is distinctive of each group of animals. That birds recognise their own images in mirrors as birds there can be no question. Houzeau, who records observations of his own in this connection with parrots,[178] adds that dogs are more difficult to deceive by mirrors in this way than birds, on account of their depending so much upon smell for their information. No doubt individual differences are to be met with in animals of both classes, and much depends on previous experience. Young dogs, or dogs which have never seen a mirror before, are not, as a rule, difficult to deceive, even though they have good noses. I myself had a setter with an excellent nose, who on many repeated occasions tried to fight his own image, till he found by experience that it was of no use. As to birds, I have seen canaries suppose their own images to be other canary birds, and also the reflection of a room to be another room--the birds flying against a large mirror and falling half stunned. I mention the latter circumstance because it afforded evidence of the superior intelligence of a linnet, which on the same occasion dashed itself against the mirror once, but never a second time, while the canaries did so repeatedly. Mrs. Frankland, in 'Nature' (xxi., p. 82), gives the following account of a bullfinch paying more attention to a portrait of a bullfinch than to his own image in a mirror, which is certainly remarkable; and as the fact seems to have been observed repeatedly, it can scarcely be discredited: The following is a curious instance of discrimination which I have observed in my bullfinch. He is in the habit of coming out of his cage in my room in the morning. In this room there is a mirror with a marble slab before it, and also a very cleverly executed water-colour drawing of a hen bullfinch, life size. The first thing that my bullfinch does on leaving his cage is to fly to the picture (perching on a vase just below it) and pipe his tune in the most insinuating manner, accompanied with much bowing to the portrait of the hen bullfinch. After having duly paid his addresses to it, he generally spends some time on the marble slab in front of the looking-glass, but without showing the slightest emotion at the sight of his own reflection, or courting it with a song. Whether this perfect coolness is due to the fact of the reflection being that of a cock bird, or whether (since he shows no desire to fight the reflected image) he is perfectly well aware that he only sees himself, it is difficult to say. That birds possess considerable powers of imagination, or forming mental pictures of absent objects, may be inferred from the fact of their pining for absent mates, parrots calling for absent friends, &c. The same fact is further proved by birds dreaming, a faculty which has been noticed by Cuvier, Jerdon, Thompson, Bennet, Houzeau, Bechstein, Lindsay, and Darwin.[179] The facility with which birds lend themselves to the education of the show-man is certain evidence of considerable docility, or the power of forming novel associations of ideas. Thus, according to Bingley,-- Some years ago the Sieur Roman exhibited in this country the wonderful performances of his birds. These were goldfinches, linnets, and canary birds. One appeared dead, and was held up by the tail or claw without exhibiting any signs of life. A second stood on its head, with its claws in the air, &c., &c.[180] And many years ago there was exhibited a very puzzling automaton, which, although of very small size and quite isolated from any possibly mechanical connection with its designer, performed certain movements in any order that the fancy of the observers might dictate. The explanation turned out to be that within the mechanism of the figure there was a canary bird which had been taught to run in different directions at different words or tones of command, so by its weight starting the mechanism to perform the particular movement required. The rapidity with which birds learn not to fly against newly erected telegraph wires, displays a large amount of observation and intelligence. The fact has been repeatedly observed. For instance, Mr. Holden says:-- About twelve years ago I was residing on the coast of county Antrim, at the time the telegraph wires were set up along that charming road which skirts the sea between Larne and Cushendall. During the winter months large flocks of starlings always migrated over from Scotland, arriving in the early morning. The first winter after the wires were stretched along the coast I frequently found numbers of starlings lying dead or wounded on the road-side, they having evidently in their flight in the dusky morn struck against the telegraph wires, not blown against them, as these accidents often occurred when there was but little wind. I found that the peasantry had come to the conclusion that these unusual deaths were due to the flash of the telegraph messages killing any starlings that happened to be perched on the wires when working. Strange to say that throughout the following and succeeding winters hardly a death occurred among the starlings on their arrival. It would thus appear that the birds were deeply impressed, and understood the cause of the fatal accidents among their fellow-travellers the previous year, and hence carefully avoided the telegraph wires; not only so, but the young birds must also have acquired this knowledge and perpetuated it, a knowledge which they could not have acquired by experience or even instinct, unless the instinct was really inherited memory derived from the parents whose brains were first impressed by it.[181] Similar facts are given in Buckland's 'Curiosities of Natural History,'[182] and I have myself known of a case in Scotland where a telegraph was erected across a piece of moorland. During the first season some of the grouse were injured by flying against the wires, but never in any succeeding season. Why the young birds should avoid them without having had individual experience may, I think, be explained by the consideration that in birds which fly in flocks or coveys, it is the older ones that lead the way. This explanation would not, of course, apply to birds which fly singly; but I am not aware that any observations have gone to show that the young of such birds avoid the wires. I quote the following exhibition of intelligence in an eagle from Menault:-- The following account of the patience with which a golden eagle submitted to surgical treatment, and the care which it showed in the gradual use of the healing limb, must suggest the idea that something very near to prudence and reason existed in the bird. This eagle was caught in a fox-trap set in the forest of Fontainebleau, and its claw had been terribly torn. An operation was performed on the limb by the conservators of the Zoological Gardens at Paris, which the noble bird bore with a rational patience. Though his head was left loose, he made no attempts to interfere with the agonising extraction of the splinters, or to disturb the arrangements of the annoying bandages. He seemed really to understand the nature of the services rendered, and that they were for his good.[183] Speaking of the Urubu vultures, Mr. Bates says:-- They assemble in great numbers in the villages about the end of the wet season, and are then ravenous with hunger. My cook could not leave the open kitchen at the back of the house for a moment whilst the dinner was cooking, on account of their thievish propensities. Some of them were always loitering about, watching their opportunity, and the instant the kitchen was left unguarded, the bold marauders marched in and lifted the lids of the saucepans with their beaks to rob them of their contents. The boys of the village lie in wait, and shoot them with bow and arrow; and vultures have consequently acquired such a dread of these weapons, that they may be often kept off by hanging a bow from the rafters of the kitchen.[184] Mrs. Lee, in her 'Anecdotes', says that one day her gardener was struck by the strange conduct of a robin, which the man had often fed. The bird fluttered about him in so strange a manner--now coming close, then hurrying away, always in the same direction--that the gardener followed its retreating movements. The robin stopped near a flower-pot, and fluttered over it in great agitation. It was soon found that a nest had been formed in the pot, and contained several young. Close by was a snake, intent, doubtless, upon making a meal of the brood. The following appeared in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' for Aug. 3, 1878, under the initials 'T. G.' I wrote to the editor requesting him to supply me with the name of his correspondent, and also to state whether he knew him to be a trustworthy man. In reply the editor said that he knew his correspondent to be trustworthy, and that his name is Thomas Guring:-- About thirty years ago the small market town in which I reside was skirted by an open common, upon which a number of geese were kept by cottagers. The number of the birds was very great. . . . Our corn market at that time was held in the street in front of the principal inn, and on the market day a good deal of corn was scattered from sample bags by millers. Somehow the geese found out about the spilling of corn, and they appear to have held a consultation upon the subject. . . . From this time they never missed their opportunity, and the entry of the geese was always looked for and invariably took place. On the morning after the market, early, and always on the proper morning, fortnightly, in they came cackling and gobbling in merry mood, and they never came on the wrong day. The corn, of course, was the attraction, but in what manner did they mark the time? One might have supposed that their perceptions were awakened on the market day by the smell of corn, or perhaps by the noise of the market traffic; but my story is not yet finished, and its sequel is against this view. It happened one year that a day of national humiliation was kept, and the day appointed was that on which our market should have been held. The market was postponed, and the geese for once were baffled. There was no corn to tickle their olfactory organs from afar, no traffic to appeal to their sense of hearing. I think our little town was as still as it usually is on Sundays. . . . The geese should have stopped away; but they knew their day, and came as usual. . . . I do not pretend to remember under what precise circumstances the habit of coming into the street was acquired. It may have been formed by degrees, and continued from year to year; but how the old birds, who must have led the way, marked the time so as to come in regularly and fortnightly, on a particular day of the week, I am at a loss to conceive. Livingstone's 'Expedition to the Zambesi, 1865,' p. 209, gives a conclusive account of the bird called the honey-guide, which leads persons to bees' nests. 'They are quite as anxious to lure the stranger to the bees' hive as other birds are to draw him away from their own nests.' The object of the bird is to obtain the pupæ of the bees which are laid bare by the ravaging of the nest. The habits of this bird have long been known and described in books on popular natural history; but it is well that the facts have been observed by so trustworthy a man as Livingstone. He adds, 'How is it that members of this family have learned that all men, white and black, are fond of honey? 'We can only answer, by intelligent observation in the first instance, passing into individual and hereditary habit, and so eventually into a fixed instinct. Brehm relates an instance of cautious sagacity in a pewit. He had placed some horsehair snares over its nest, but the bird seeing them, pushed them aside with her bill. Next day he set them thickly round the nest; but now the bird, instead of running as usual to the nest along the ground, alighted directly upon it. This shows a considerable appreciation of mechanical appliances, as does also the following. Mrs. G. M. E. Campbell writes to me:-- At Ardglass, co. Down, Ireland, is a long tract of turf coming to the edge of the rocks overhanging the sea, where cattle and geese feed; at a barn on this tract there was a low enclosure, with a door fastening by a hook and staple to the side-post: when the hook was out of the staple, the door fell open by its own weight. I one day saw a goose with a large troop of goslings coming off the turf to this door, which was secured by the hook being in the staple. The goose waited for a minute or two, as if for the door to be opened, and then turned round as if to go away, but what she did was to make a rush at the door, and making a dart with her beak at the point of the hook nearly threw it out of the staple; she repeated this manoeuvre, and succeeded at the third attempt, the door fell open, and the goose led her troop in with a sound of triumphant chuckling. How had the goose learned that the force of the rush was needful to give the hook a sufficient toss? Mrs. K. Addison sends me the following instance of the use of signs on the part of an intelligent jackdaw. The bird was eighteen months old, and lived in some bushes in Mrs. Addison's garden. She writes:-- I generally made a practice of filling a large basin which stands under the trees every morning for Jack's bath. A few days ago I forgot this duty, and was reminded of the fact in a very singular manner. Another of my daily occupations is to open my dressing-room shutters about eleven o'clock of a morning. Now these said shutters open almost on to the trees where Jack lives. The day I forgot his bath, when I opened the shutters I found my little friend waiting just outside them, as though he knew that he should see me there; and when he did he placed himself immediately in front of me, and then shook himself and spread out his wings just as he always does in his bath. The action was so suggestive and so unmistakable, that I spoke just as I would have done to a child--'Oh yes, Jack, of course you shall have some water.' Mr. W. W. Nichols writes to 'Nature:'-- The Central Prison at Agra is the roosting-place of great numbers of the common blue pigeon; they fly out to the neighbouring country for food every morning, and return in the evening, when they drink at a tank just outside the prison walls. In this tank are a large number of fresh-water turtles, which lie in wait for the pigeons just under the surface of the water and at the edge of it. Any bird alighting to drink near one of these turtles has a good chance of having its head bitten off and eaten; and the headless bodies of pigeons have been picked up near the water, showing the fate which has sometimes befallen the birds. The pigeons, however, are aware of the danger, and have hit on the following plan to escape it. A pigeon comes in from its long flight, and, as it nears the tank, instead of flying down at once to the water's edge, will cross the tank at about twenty feet above its surface, and then fly back to the side from which it came, apparently selecting for alighting a safe spot which it had remarked as it flew over the bank; but even when such a spot has been selected the bird will not alight at the edge of the water, but on the bank about a yard from the water, and will then run down quickly to the water, take two or three hurried gulps of it, and then fly off to repeat the same process at another part of the tank till its thirst is satisfied. I had often watched the birds doing this, and could not account for their strange mode of drinking till told by my friend the superintendent of the prison, of the turtles which lay in ambush for the pigeons. As a still more remarkable instance of the display of intelligence by a bird of this species, I shall quote the following observation of Commander R. H. Napier, also published in 'Nature' (viii., p. 324):-- A number of them (pouters) were feeding on a few oats that had been accidentally let fall while fixing the nose-bag on a horse standing at bait. Having finished all the grain at hand, a large 'pouter' rose, and flapping its wings furiously, flew directly at the horse's eyes, causing the animal to toss his head, and in doing so, of course shake out more corn. I saw this several times repeated--in fact, whenever the supply on hand had been exhausted. . . . Was not this something more than instinct? The following display of intelligence on the part of swallows is communicated to me by Mr. Charles Wilson. It can scarcely be attributed to accident, and does not admit of mal-observation. My informant says:-- Two swallows were building a nest in the verandah of a house in Victoria, but as their nest was resting partly on a bell-wire, it was by this means twice pulled down. They then began afresh, making a tunnel through the lower part of the nest, through which the wire was able to act without doing damage. Another gentleman writes me of another use to which he has observed swallows put the artifice of building tunnels. Being molested by sparrows which desired to take forcible possession of their nest, a pair of swallows modified the entrance of the latter, so that instead of opening by a simple hole under the eaves of a house, it was carried on in the form of a tunnel. Linnæus says that the martin, when it builds under the eaves of houses, sometimes is molested by sparrows taking possession of the nest. The pair of martins to which the nest belongs are not strong enough to dislodge the invaders; but they convoke their companions, some of whom guard the captives, whilst others bring clay, close up the entrance of the nest, and leave the sparrows to die miserably. This account has been to a large extent independently confirmed by Jesse, who seems not to have been acquainted with the statement of Linnæus. He writes:-- Swallows seem to entertain the recollection of injury, and to resent it when an opportunity offers. A pair of swallows built their nest under the ledge of a house at Hampton Court. It was no sooner completed than a couple of sparrows drove them from it, notwithstanding the swallows kept up a good resistance, and even brought others to assist them. The intruders were left in peaceable possession of the nest, till the two old birds were obliged to quit it to provide food for their young. They had no sooner departed than several swallows came and broke down the nest; and I saw the young sparrows lying dead on the ground. As soon as the nest was demolished, the swallows began to rebuild it.[185] The same author gives the following and somewhat similar case:-- A pair of swallows built their nest against one of the first-floor windows of an uninhabited house in Merrion Square, Dublin. A sparrow, however, took possession of it, and the swallows were repeatedly seen clinging to the nest, and endeavouring to gain an entrance to the abode they had erected with so much labour. All their efforts, however, were defeated by the sparrow, who never once quitted the nest. The perseverance of the swallows was at length exhausted: they took flight, but shortly afterwards returned, accompanied by a number of their congeners, each of them having a piece of dirt in its bill. By this means they succeeded in stopping up the hole, and the intruder was immured in total darkness. Soon afterwards the nest was taken down and exhibited to several persons, with the dead sparrow in it. In this case there appears to have been not only a reasoning faculty, but the birds must have been possessed of the power of communicating their resentment and their wishes to their friends, without whose aid they could not thus have avenged the injury they had sustained.[186] That birds sometimes act in concert may also be gathered from the following observations recorded by Mr. Buck:-- I have constantly seen a flock of pelicans, when on the feed, form a line across a lake, and drive the fish before them up its whole length, just as fishermen would with a net.[187] The following is extracted from Sir E. Tennent's 'Natural History of Ceylon,' and displays remarkable intelligence on the part of the crows in that island:-- One of these ingenious marauders, after vainly attitudinising in front of a chained watch-dog, that was lazily gnawing a bone, and after fruitlessly endeavouring to divert his attention by dancing before him, with head awry and eye askance, at length flew away for a moment, and returned bringing a companion which perched itself on a branch a few yards in the rear. The crow's grimaces were now actively renewed, but with no better success, till its confederate, poising itself on its wings, descended with the utmost velocity, striking the dog upon the spine with all the force of its strong beak. The ruse was successful; the dog started with surprise and pain, but not quickly enough to seize his assailant, whilst the bone he had been gnawing was snatched away by the first crow the instant his head was turned. Two well-authenticated instances of the recurrence of this device came within my knowledge at Colombo, and attest the sagacity and powers of communication and combination possessed by these astute and courageous birds. This account, which would be difficult of credence if narrated by a less competent author, is strikingly confirmed by an independent observation on the crows of Japan, which has recently been published by Miss Bird, in whose words I shall render it. She writes:-- In the inn garden I saw a dog eating a piece of carrion in the presence of several of these covetous birds. They evidently said a great deal to each other on the subject, and now and then, one or two of them tried to pull the meat away from him, which he resented. At last a big strong crow succeeded in tearing off a piece, with which he returned to the pine where the others were congregated, and after much earnest speech they all surrounded the dog, and the leading bird dexterously dropped the small piece of meat within reach of his mouth, when he immediately snapped at it, letting go the big piece unwisely for a second, on which two of the crows flew away with it to the pine, and with much fluttering and hilarity they all ate, or rather gorged it, the deceived dog looking vacant and bewildered for a moment, after which he sat under the tree and barked at them inanely. A gentleman told me that he saw a dog holding a piece of meat in like manner in the presence of three crows, which also vainly tried to tear it from him, and after a consultation they separated, two going as near as they dared to the meat, while the third gave the tail a bite sharp enough to make the dog turn round with a squeak, on which the other villains seized the meat, and the three fed triumphantly upon it on the top of a wall.[188] These two independent statements by competent observers of such similar exhibitions of intelligence by crows, justifies us in accepting the fact, remarkable though it be. As further corroboration, however, I shall quote still another independent and closely similar observation, which I find in a letter to me from Sir J. Clarke Jervoise, who says, while writing of rooks which he has observed in England:-- A pheasant used to come very boldly and run off with large pieces of food, which he could only divide by shaking, and he was closely watched by the rooks for the pieces that flew out of his reach. He learned to run off into the shrubs, followed by the rooks, who pulled his tail to make him drop his food. I shall next quote a highly interesting observation which seems to have been well made, and which displays remarkable intelligence on the part of the birds described. These are Turnstones, which, as their name implies, turn over stones, &c., in order to obtain as food the sundry small creatures concealed beneath. In this case the observer was Edward. Being concealed in a hollow, and unnoticed by the birds, he saw a pair trying to turn over the body of a stranded cod-fish, three and a half feet long, and buried in the sand to a depth of several inches. He thus describes what he saw:-- Having got fairly settled down in my pebbly observatory, I turned my undivided attention to the birds before me. They were boldly pushing at the fish with their bills, and then with their breasts. Their endeavours, however, were in vain: the object remained immovable. On this they both went round to the opposite side, and began to scrape away the sand from beneath the fish. After removing a considerable quantity, they again came back to the spot which they had left, and went once more to work with their bills and breasts, but with as little apparent success as formerly. Nothing daunted, however, they ran round a second time to the other side, and recommenced their trenching operations with a seeming determination not to be baffled in their object, which evidently was to undermine the dead animal before them, in order that it might be the more easily overturned. While they were thus employed, and after they had laboured in this manner at both sides alternately for nearly half an hour, they were joined by another of their own species, which came flying with rapidity from the neighbouring rocks. Its timely arrival was hailed with evident signs of joy. I was led to this conclusion from the gestures which they exhibited, and from a low but pleasant murmuring noise to which they gave utterance so soon as the new-comer made his appearance. Of their feelings he seemed to be perfectly aware, and he made his reply to them in a similar strain. Their mutual congratulations being over, they all three set to work; and after labouring vigorously for a few minutes in removing the sand, they came round to the other side, and putting their breasts simultaneously to the fish, they succeeded in raising it some inches from the sand, but were unable to turn it over. It went down again into its sandy bed, to the manifest disappointment of the three. Resting, however, for a space, and without leaving their respective positions, which were a little apart the one from the other, they resolved, it appears, to give the work another trial. Lowering themselves, with their breasts pressed close to the sand, they managed to push their bills underneath the fish, which they made to rise about the same height as before. Afterwards, withdrawing their bills, but without losing the advantage which they had gained, they applied their breasts to the object. This they did with such force, and to such purpose, that at length it went over, and rolled several yards down a slight declivity. It was followed to some distance by the birds themselves before they could recover their bearing.[189] I shall now bring this chapter to a close by presenting all the evidence that I have been able to collect with regard to the punishment of malefactors among rooks. Goldsmith, who used constantly to observe a rookery from his window, says that the selection of a site for the building of a nest is a matter of much anxious deliberation on the part of a young crow couple; the male and female 'examining all the trees of a grove very attentively, and when they have fixed upon a branch that seems fit for their purpose, they continue to sit upon it, and observe it very sedulously for two or three days longer:'-- It often happens that the young couple have made choice of a place too near the mansion of an older pair, who do not choose to be incommoded by such troublesome neighbours; a quarrel, therefore, instantly ensues, in which the old ones are always victorious. The young couple, thus expelled, are obliged again to go through their fatigues--deliberating, examining, and choosing; and, having taken care to keep their due distance, the nest begins again, and their industry deserves commendation. But their activity is often too great in the beginning; they soon grow weary of bringing the materials of their nests from distant places, and they very early perceive that sticks may be provided nearer home, with less honesty indeed, but some degree of address. Away they go, therefore, to pilfer as fast as they can, and, whenever they see a nest unguarded, they take care to rob it of the very choicest sticks of which it is composed. But these thefts never go unpunished, and probably, upon complaint being made, there is a general punishment inflicted. I have seen eight or ten rooks come upon such occasions, and, setting upon the new nest of the young couple, all at once tear it to pieces in a moment. At length, however, the young pair find the necessity of going more regularly to work. While one flies to fetch the materials, the other sits upon the tree to guard it; and thus in the space of three or four days, with a skirmish now and then between, the pair have filled up a commodious nest, composed of sticks without, and of fibrous roots and long grass within. From the instant the female begins to lay, all hostilities are at an end; not one of the whole grove, that a little before treated her so rudely, will now venture to molest her, so that she brings forth her brood with perfect tranquillity. Such is the severity with which even native rooks are treated by each other; but if a foreign rook should attempt to make himself a denizen of their society, he would meet with no favour, the whole grove would at once be up in arms against him, and expel him without mercy. Couch says ('Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 334 _et seq._):-- The wrong-doers being discovered, the punishment is appropriate to the offence; by the destruction of their dishonest work they are taught that they who build must find their own bricks or sticks, and not their neighbours', and that if they wish to live in the enjoyment of the advantages of the social condition, they must endeavour to conform their actions to the principles of the rookery of which they have been made members. It is not known what enormities led to the institution of another tribunal of the same kind, called the Crow Court, but according to Dr. Edmonson, in his 'View of the Shetland Islands,' its proceedings are as authoritative and regular, and it is remarkable as occurring in a species (_Corvus Cornice_) so near akin to the rook. The Crow Court is a sort of general assembling of birds who, in their usual habits, are accustomed to live in pairs, scattered at great distances from each other; when they visit the south or west of England, as they do in severe winters, they are commonly solitary. In their summer haunts in the Shetland Islands, numbers meet together from different points on a particular hill or field; and on these occasions the assembly is not complete, and does not begin its business for a day or two, till, all the deputies having arrived, a general clamour or croaking ensues, and the whole of the court, judges, barristers, ushers, audience, and all, fall upon the two or three prisoners at the bar, and beat them till they kill them. When this is accomplished the court breaks up and quietly disperses. In the northern parts of Scotland (says Dr. Edmonson), and in the Faroe Islands, extraordinary meetings of crows are occasionally known to occur. They collect in great numbers, as if they had all been summoned for the occasion; a few of the flock sit with drooping heads, and others seem as grave as judges, while others again are exceedingly active and noisy; in the course of about one hour they disperse, and it is not uncommon, after they have flown away, to find one or two left dead on the spot. These meetings will sometimes continue for a day or two before the object, whatever it may be, is completed. Crows continue to arrive from all quarters during the session. As soon as they have all arrived, a very general noise ensues; and, shortly after, the whole fall upon one or two individuals, and put them to death. When the execution has been performed, they quietly disperse. Similarly, the Bishop of Carlisle writes in the 'Nineteenth Century' for July 1881:-- I have seen also a jackdaw in the midst of a congregation of rooks, apparently being tried for some misdemeanour. First Jack made a speech, which was answered by a general cawing of the rooks; this subsiding, Jack again took up his parable, and the rooks in their turn replied in chorus. After a time the business, whatever it was, appeared to be settled satisfactorily: if Jack was on his trial, as he seemed to be, he was honourably acquitted by acclamation; for he went to his home in the towers of Ely Cathedral, and the rooks also went their way. Lastly, Major-General Sir George Le Grand Jacob, K.C.S.I., C.B., writes to me that while sitting in a verandah in India, he saw three or four crows come and perch on a neighbouring house. They then cawed continuously with such peculiar sound and vigour as to attract his attention. His account proceeds:-- Soon a gathering of crows from all quarters took place, until the roof of the guard-house was blackened by them. Thereupon a prodigious clatter ensued; it was plain that a 'palaver' was going forward. Some of its members, more eager than others, skipping about, I became much interested, and narrowly watched the proceedings, all within a dozen yards of me. After much cawing and clamour, the whole group suddenly rose into the air, and kept circling round half a dozen of their fellows, one of whom had been clearly told off for punishment, for the five repeatedly attacked it in quick succession, allowing no opportunity for their victim to escape, which he was trying to do, until they had cast him fluttering on the ground about thirty yards from my chair. Unfortunately I rushed forward to pick up the bird, prostrate but fluttering on the grass which was like a lawn before the building. I succeeded only in touching it, for it wriggled away from my grasp, and flew greatly crippled and close to the ground into the neighbouring bushes, where I lost sight of it. All the others, after circling round me and chattering, angrily as I thought, flew away, on my resuming my seat, in the direction taken by their victim. [Since going to press I have seen, through the kindness of Mr. Seebohm, some specimens of cuckoo's eggs coloured in imitation of those belonging to the birds in the nests of which they are laid. There can be no question about the imitation, and I add this note to mitigate the criticism which I have passed upon Professor Newton's theory of the cause. For Mr. Seebohm has pointed out to me that the theory becomes more probable if we consider that a cuckoo reared in the nest of any particular bird is likely afterwards to choose a similar nest for the deposition of its own eggs. Whether or not the memory of a bird would thus act could only, of course, be certainly proved by experiment; but in view of the possibility that it may, Professor Newton's theory becomes more probable than it is if the selection of the appropriate nest is supposed to depend only on inheritance. I most also add that Dr. Sclater has been kind enough to draw my attention to a remarkable description of a species of Bower-bird, published by Dr. Beccari in the _Gardener's Chronicle_ for March 16, 1879. This species is called the Gardener Bower-bird (_Amblyornis niornata_), and inhabits New Guinea. The animal is about the size of a turtle-dove, and its bower--or rather hut--is built round the stem of a tree in the shape of a cone, with a space between the stem of the tree and the walls of the hut. The latter are composed of stems of an orchid with their leaves on--this particular plant being chosen by the birds apparently because its leaves remain long fresh. But the most extraordinary structure is the garden, which is thus described by Dr. Beccari:--'Before the cottage there is a meadow of moss. This is brought to the spot and left free from grass, stones, or anything which would offend the eye. On this green turf flowers and fruits of pretty colour are placed, so as to form an elegant little garden. The greater part of the decoration is collected round the entrance to the nest, and it would appear that the husband offers these his daily gifts to his wife. The objects are very various, but always of a vivid colour. There were some fruits of a Garcinia like a small-sized apple. Others were the fruits of Gardencias of a deep yellow colour in the interior. I saw also small rosy fruits, probably of a Scitamineous plant, and beautiful rosy flowers of a new Vaccinium. There were also fungi and mottled insects placed on the turf. As soon as the objects are faded they are moved to the back of the hut.' There is a fine-coloured plate of this bird in its garden, published in the _Birds of New Guinea_, by Mr. Gould Part ix., 1879.] FOOTNOTES: [145] _Curiosities_, &c., p. 126. Wilson also, in his _American Ornithology_, gives the following sufficiently credible account of the memory of a crow:--'A gentleman who resided on the Delaware, a few miles below Easton, had raised [reared] a crow, with whose tricks and society he used frequently to amuse himself. This crow lived long in the family, but at length disappeared, having, as was then supposed, been shot by some vagrant gunner, or destroyed by accident. About eleven months after this, as the gentleman one morning, in company with several others, was standing on the river shore, a number of crows happened to pass by; one of them left the flock, and flying directly towards the company, alighted on the gentleman's shoulder, and began to gabble away with great volubility, as one long-absent friend naturally enough does on meeting another. On recovering from his surprise the gentleman instantly recognised his old acquaintance, and endeavoured, by several civil but sly manoeuvres, to lay hold of him; but the crow, not altogether relishing quite so much familiarity, having now had a taste of the sweets of liberty, cautiously eluded all his attempts; and suddenly glancing his eye on his distant companions, mounted in the air after them, soon overtook and mingled with them, and was never afterwards seen to return.' [146] _Journal of Mental Science_, July 1879. [147] Couch, _Illustrations of Instinct_, p. 165. [148] _Gleanings_, vol. i., pp. 112-13. [149] Couch, _Illustrations of Instinct_, p. 232. [150] See especially Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. ii., pp. 327-29. [151] _Gleanings_, pp. 58-9. [152] Smiles, _Life of Edward_, p. 240. [153] _History of Mexico_, p. 220. [154] _Zoologist_, vol. ii. [155] Watson, _Reasoning Power of Animals_, pp. 375-76, where see also some curious cases of male storks slaying their females upon the latter hatching out eggs of other birds. He gives an exactly similar case as having occurred with the domestic cock; and in Bingley (_loc. cit._, vol. ii., p. 241) there is quoted from Dr. Percival another case of the same kind, in which a cock killed his hen as soon as she had hatched out a brood of young partridges from eggs which had been set to her. [156] See Darwin. _Descent of Man_, pp. 92, 381, 406, 413. [157] Gould, _Birds of Australia_, vol. i., pp. 442-45. [158] Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. ii., p. 220. [159] For full information, see Buckland, _Curiosities of Natural History_, p. 183. [160] Of the crow (carrion and hooded), Edward says: 'He goes aloft with a crab, and lets it fall upon a stone or a rock chosen for the purpose. If it does not break, he seizes it again, goes up higher, lets it fall, and repeats his operation again and again until his object is accomplished. When a convenient stone is once met with, the birds resort to it for a long time. I myself know a pretty high rock, that has been used by successive generations of crows for about twenty years!' Also, as Handcock says, 'a friend of Dr. Darwin saw on the north coast of Ireland above a hundred crows preying upon mussels, which is not their natural food; each crow took a mussel up into the air, twenty or forty yards high, and let it fall on the stones, and thus breaking the shell, got possession of the animal. Ravens, we are told, often resort to the same contrivance.' [161] Couch, _Illustrations of Instinct_, pp. 192-93. [162] _Gleanings_, &c., vol. i., p. 71. [163] _Ibid._ [164] _Voyage of a Naturalist_, &c., p. 184. [165] _Orn. Biog._, i., p. 276. [166] Newton, _Encycl. Brit._, art. 'Birds.' [167] _Catalogue of Birds_, &c., p. 16. [168] Gould, _Birds of Australia_, vol. ii., p. 155, where see for further description. [169] _Animal Biography_, vol. ii., p. 204. [170] See _Descent of Man_, p. 452 _et seq._ [171] See Newton, _Ency. Brit._, art. 'Birds.' [172] _Natural Selection_, pp. 232-3. [173] _Phil. Trans._, vol. lxxviii., p. 221 _et seq._ [174] The young cuckoo is generally hatched first. [175] Allusion is here made to the fact that the cuckoo lays her eggs at intervals of two or three days, and therefore that if all were incubated by the mother, they would hatch out at different times--a state of things which actually obtains in the case of the American cuckoo, whose nest contains eggs and young at the same time. [176] It is worth while to observe, as bearing on this theory of the origin of this parasitic habit, that even non-parasitic birds occasionally deposit their eggs in nests of other birds. Thus, Professor A. Newton writes in his admirable essay on 'Birds' in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 'Certain it is that some birds, whether by mistake or stupidity, do not unfrequently lay their eggs in the nests of others. It is within the knowledge of many that pheasants' eggs and partridges' eggs are often laid in the same nest; and it is within the knowledge of the writer that gulls' eggs have been found in the nests of eider-ducks, and _vice versâ_; that a redstart and a pied flycatcher will lay their eggs in the same convenient hole--the forest being rather deficient in such accommodation; that an owl and a duck will resort to the same nest-hole, set up by the scheming woodman for his own advantage; and that the starling, which constantly dispossesses the green woodpecker, sometimes discovers that the rightful heir of the domicile has to be brought up by the intruding tenant.' [177] _Origin of Species_, p. 215. [178] Tom. i., p. 130. [179] See _Birds of India_, i., p. 21; _Passions of Animals_, p. 60; _Fac. Men. des Ani._, tom. ii., p. 183; _Mind in Lower Animals_, vol. ii., p. 96; and _Descent of Man_, p. 74. [180] _Animal Biography_, vol. ii., p. 173. [181] _Nature_, xx., p. 266. [182] Vol. i., p. 216. See also _Descent of Man_, p. 80. [183] Menault, _Wonders of Instinct_, p. 132. [184] _Nat. on Amazons_, p. 177; _Anecdotes_, p. 135. [185] _Gleanings_, vol. ii., p. 96. [186] _Ibid._, p. 99. [187] _Nature_, vol. xiii., p. 303. [188] _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, vol. ii, pp. 149-50. [189] Smiles, _Life of Edward_, pp. 244-6. CHAPTER XI. MAMMALS. I SHALL devote this chapter to the psychology of all the Mammalia which present any features of psychological interest, with the exception of the rodents, the elephant, the dog and cat tribe among Carnivora, and the Primates--all of which I shall reserve for separate treatment. _Marsupials._ In the 'Transactions of the Linnean Society,' Major Mitchell gives an interesting account of the structure reared by a small Australian marsupial (_Conilurus constructor_) for the purposes of defence against the dingo dog. It consists of a large pile of dry sticks and brushwood, 'big enough to make two or three good cart-loads.' Each stick and fragment is closely intertwined or woven with the rest, so that the whole forms a solid, compact mass. In the middle of this large structure is the nest of the animal. The marsupials are as low in the scale of mammalian intelligence as they are in that of mammalian structure: so that, except the above, I have met with no fact connected with the psychology of this group that is worth quoting, except, perhaps, the following, which appears to show deliberation and decision on the part of the kangaroo. Jesse writes:-- A gentleman who had resided for several years in New South Wales related the following circumstance, which he assured me he had frequently witnessed while hunting the kangaroo: it furnishes a strong proof of the affection of that animal for her young, even when her own life has been placed in the most imminent danger. He informed me that, when a female kangaroo has been hard pressed by dogs, he has seen her, while she has been making her bounds, put her fore-paws into her pouch, take a young one from it, and then throw it as far on one side as she possibly could out of the way of the dogs. But for this manoeuvre her own life and that of her young one would have been sacrificed. By getting rid of the latter she has frequently effected her escape, and probably returned afterwards to seek for her offspring. _Cetaceans._ The following is quoted from Thompson:-- In 1811, says Mr. Scoresby, one of my harpooners struck a sucker, with the hope of leading to the capture of the mother. Presently she arose close to the 'fast boat,' and seizing the young one, dragged about 600 feet of line out of the boat with remarkable force and velocity. Again she rose to the surface, darted furiously to and fro, frequently stopped short or suddenly changed her direction, and gave every possible intimation of extreme agony. For a length of time she continued thus to act, though pursued closely by the boats; and, inspired with courage and resolution by her concern for her young, seemed regardless of the danger's which surrounded her. At length one of the boats approached so near that a harpoon was hove at her; it hit, but did not attach itself. A second harpoon was struck, but this also failed to penetrate; but a third was more successful, and held. Still she did not attempt to escape, but allowed other boats to approach; so that in a few minutes three more harpoons were fastened, and in the course of an hour afterwards she was killed.[190] Mr. Saville Kent communicates an article to 'Nature' (vol. viii., p. 229) on 'Intellect of Porpoises.' He says:-- The keeper in charge of these interesting animals is now in the habit of summoning them to their meals by the call of a whistle; his approaching footsteps, even, cause great excitement in their movements. . . . The curiosity attributed to these creatures, as illustrated by the experiences of Mr. Matthew Williams, receives ample confirmation from their habits and confinement. A new arrival is at once subjected to the most importunate attention, and, advancing from familiarity to contempt if disapproved of, soon becomes the object of attack and persecution. A few dog-fish (_Acanthias_ and _Mastelus_), three or four feet long, now fell victims to their tyranny, the porpoises seizing them by their tails, and swimming off with and shaking them in a manner scarcely conducive to their comfort or dignified appearance, reminding the spectator of a large dog worrying a rat. . . . On one occasion I witnessed the two _Cetacea_ acting evidently in concert against one of these unwieldy fish (skates), the latter swimming close to the top of the water, and seeking momentary respite from its relentless enemies by lifting its unfortunate caudal appendage high above its surface--the peculiar tail of the skate being the object of sport to the porpoises, which seized it in their mouths as a convenient handle whereby to pull the animal about, and worry it incessantly. In a subsequent number of 'Nature' (vol. ix., p. 42) Mr. C. Fox writes:-- Several years ago a herd of porpoises was scattered by a net which I had got made to enclose some of them. . . . The whole 'sculle' was much alarmed, and two were secured. I conclude that their companions retained a vivid remembrance of the sea-fight, as these _Cetacea_, although frequent visitants in this harbour (Falmouth) previously, and often watched for, were not seen in it again for two years or more. _Horse and Ass._ The horse is not so intelligent an animal as any of the larger Carnivora, while among herbivorous quadrupeds his sagacity is greatly exceeded by that of the elephant, and in a lesser degree by that of his congener the ass. On the other hand, his intelligence is a grade or two above that of perhaps any ruminant or other herbivorous quadruped. The emotional life of this animal is remarkable, in that it appears to admit of undergoing a sudden transformation in the hands of the 'horse-tamer.' The celebrated results obtained by Rarey in this connection have since been repeated with more or less success by many persons in various parts of the world, and the 'method' appears to be in all cases essentially the same. The untamed and apparently untamable animal has its fore-leg or legs strapped up, is cast on its side and allowed to struggle for a while. It is then subjected to various manipulations, which, without necessarily causing pain, make the animal feel its helplessness and the mastery of the operator. The extraordinary fact is that, after having once felt this, the spirit or emotional life of the animal undergoes a complete and sudden change, so that from having been 'wild' it becomes 'tame.' In some cases there are subsequent relapses, but these are easily checked. Even the truly 'wild' horse from the prairie admits of being completely subdued in a marvellously short time by the Gauchos, who employ an essentially similar method, although the struggle is here much more fierce and prolonged.[191] The same may be said of the taming of wild elephants, although in this case the facts are not nearly so remarkable from a psychological point of view, seeing that the process of taming is so much more slow. Another curious emotional feature in the horse is the liability of all the other mental faculties of the animal to become abandoned to that of terror. For I think I am right in saying that the horse is the only animal which, under the influence of fear, loses the possession of every other sense in one mad and mastering desire to run. With its entire mental life thus overwhelmed by the flood of a single emotion, the horse not only loses, as other animals lose, 'presence of mind,' or a due balance among the distinctively intellectual faculties, but even the avenues of special sense become stopped, so that the wholly demented animal may run headlong and at terrific speed against a stone wall. I have known a hare come to grief in a somewhat similar fashion when hotly pursued by a dog; this, however, was clearly owing to the hare looking behind instead of before, in a manner not, under the circumstances, unwise; but, as I have said, there is no animal except the horse whose whole psychology is thus liable to be completely dominated by a single emotion. As for its other emotions, the horse is certainly an affectionate animal, pleased at being petted, jealous of companions receiving favour, greatly enjoying play with others of its kind, and also the sport of the hunting-field. Lastly, horses exhibit pride in a marked degree, as do also mules. Such animals, when well kept, are unmistakably pleased with gay trappings, so that 'in Spain, as a punishment for disobedience, it is usual to strip the animal of its gaudy coronal and bells, and to transfer them to another' (Thompson). The memory of the horse is remarkably good, as almost every one must have had occasion to observe who has driven one over roads which the animal may have only once traversed a long time before. As showing the duration of memory I may quote the following letter to Mr. Darwin from the Rev. Rowland H. Wedgwood, which I find among the MSS. of the former:-- I want to tell you of an instance of long memory in a horse. I have just driven my pony down from London here, and though she has not been here for eight years, she remembered her way quite well, and made a bolt for the stables where I used to keep her. A few instances of the display of intelligence by members of the horse tribe may bring this section to a close. * * * * * Mr. W. J. Fleming writes me concerning a vicious horse he had which, while being groomed, frequently used to throw a ball of wood attached to his halter at the groom. He did so by flexing his fetlock and jamming the ball between the pastern and the leg, then throwing the ball backwards 'with great force.' I myself had a horse which was very clever at slipping his halter after he knew that the coachman was in bed. He would then draw out the two sticks in the pipe of the oat-bin, so as to let all the oats run down from the bin above upon the stable floor. Of course he must have observed that this was the manner in which the coachman obtained the oats, and desiring to obtain them, did what he had observed to be required. Similarly, on other occasions he used to turn the water-tap to obtain a drink, and pull the window cord to open the window on hot nights. The anecdote books contain several stories very much alike concerning horses spontaneously visiting blacksmiths' shops when they require shoeing, or feel their shoes uncomfortable. The appended account, vouched for as it is by a good authority, may be taken as corroborative of these stories. I quote the account from 'Nature' (May 19, 1881):-- The following instance of animal intelligence is sent to us by Dr. John Rae, F.R.S., who states that the Mr. William Sinclair mentioned is respectable and trustworthy. The anecdote is taken from the 'Orkney Herald' of May 11:--"A well-authenticated and extraordinary case of the sagacity of the Shetland pony has just come under our notice. A year or two ago Mr. William Sinclair, pupil-teacher, Holm, imported one of these little animals from Shetland on which to ride to and from school, his residence being at a considerable distance from the school buildings. Up to that time the animal had been unshod, but some time afterwards Mr. Sinclair had it shod by Mr. Pratt, the parish blacksmith. The other day Mr. Pratt, whose smithy is a long distance from Mr. Sinclair's house, saw the pony, without halter or anything upon it, walking up to where he was working. Thinking the animal had strayed from home, he drove it off, throwing stones after the beast to make it run homewards. This had the desired effect for a short time; but Mr. Pratt had only got fairly at work once more in the smithy when the pony's head again made its appearance at the door. On proceeding a second time outside to drive the pony away, Mr. Pratt, with a blacksmith's instinct, took a look at the pony's feet, when he observed that one of its shoes had been lost. Having made a shoe he put it on, and then waited to see what the animal would do. For a moment it looked at the blacksmith as if asking whether he was done, then pawed once or twice to see if the newly-shod foot was comfortable, and finally gave a pleased neigh, erected its head, and started homewards at a brisk trot. The owner was also exceedingly surprised to find the animal at home completely shod the same evening, and it was only on calling at the smithy some days afterwards that he learned the full extent of his pony's sagacity." In 'Nature,' also (vol. xx., p. 21), Mr. Claypole, of Antioch Cottage, Ohio, writes as follows:-- A friend of mine is employed on a farm near Toronto, Ontario, where a horse, belonging to the wife of the farmer, is never required to work, but is allowed to live the life of a gentleman, for the following reason. Some years ago the lady above mentioned fell off a plank bridge into a stream when the water was deep. The horse, which was feeding in a field close by, ran to the spot, and held her up with his teeth till assistance arrived, thus probably saving her life. Was this reason or instinct? Mr. Strickland, also writing to 'Nature' (vol. xix., p. 410), says:-- A mare here had her first foal when she was ten or twelve years old. She was blind of one eye. The result was, she frequently trod upon the foal or knocked it over when it happened to be on the blind side of her, in consequence of which the foal died when it was three or four months old. The next year she had another foal, and we fully expected the result would be the same. But no; from the day it was born she never moved in the stall without looking round to see where the foal was, and she never trod upon it or injured it in any way. You see that reason did not teach her that she was killing her first foal; her care for the second was the result of memory, imagination, and thought after the foal was dead, and before the next one was born. The only difference that I can see between the reasoning power of men and animals is that the latter is applied only to the very limited space of providing for their bodily wants, whereas that of men embraces a vast amount of other objects besides this. Houzeau (vol. ii., p. 207) says that the mules used in the tramways at New Orleans prove that they are able to count five; for they have to make five journeys from one end of the tramway to the other before they are released, and they make four of these journeys without showing that they expect to be released, but bray at the end of the fifth. This observation, however, requires to be confirmed, for unless carefully made we must suppose that the fact may be due to the mules seeing the ostler waiting to take them out. Mr. Samuel Goodbehere, solicitor, writes me from Birmingham the following instance as having fallen under his own observation:-- We had a Welsh cob pony or Galloway about 14 hands high, who was occasionally kept in a shed (in a farmyard), partly closed at the front by a gate which was secured by a bolt inside and a drop latch outside. The pony (who was able to put his head and neck over the gate, but could not reach the outside latch) was constantly found loose in the yard, which was considered quite a mystery until it was solved one day by my observing the pony first pushing back the inside bolt, and then neighing until a donkey, who had the run of the yard and an adjoining paddock, came and pushed up the outside latch with his nose, thus letting the pony at liberty, when the two marched off together. The following is the only instance that I have met with in any of the horse tribe of that degree of sagacity which leads to the intentional concealment of wrong-doing. In the case of elephants, dogs, and monkeys we find abundant evidence on this head, which therefore renders the following instance more antecedently credible, and, as it is also narrated on good authority, I do not hesitate to quote it. Professor Niphon, of Washington University, St. Louis, U.S., says:-- A friend of mine living at Iowa City had a mule, whose ingenuity in getting into mischief was more than ordinarily remarkable. This animal had a great liking for the company of an oat-bin, and lost no opportunity, when the yard gate and barn door were open, to secure a mouthful of oats. Finally the mule was found in the barn in the morning, and for a long time it was found impossible to discover how he had come there. This went on for some time, until the animal was 'caught in the act.' It was found that he had learned how to open the gate, reaching over the fence to lift the latch, and that he then effectually mystified his masters by turning round and backing against it until it was latched. He then proceeded to the barn door, and pulling out the pin which held the door, it swung open of its own accord. From the intelligence which this animal displayed on many occasions, I am of the opinion that had not discovery of his trick prevented, it would soon have occurred to him to retrace his steps before daylight, in order to avoid the clubbing which the stable boys gave him in the morning. It may be added that this animal had enjoyed no unusual educational advantages, and his owners found it to their interest to discourage his intellectual efforts as much as possible.[192] _Ruminants._ Concerning sympathy, Major-General Sir George Le Grand Jacob, C.B., &c., writes me of instances which he observed of doe ibexes raising with their heads the bucks which he shot, and supporting them during flight. A vivid and intelligent class of emotions, in which sympathy and rational fear are blended, seem to be exhibited by cattle in slaughterhouses. Many years ago a pamphlet was written upon the subject, and more recently Mr. Robert Hamilton, F.C.S., without apparently knowing of this previous publication, wrote another pamphlet, conveying precisely similar statements. These are too long to quote _in extenso_; but from a letter which the latter gentleman writes to me I may make the following extract:-- The animal witnessing the process of killing, flaying, &c., repeated on one after another of its fellows, gets to comprehend to the full extent the dreadful ordeal, and as it mentally grasps the meaning of it all, the increasing horror depicted in its condition can be clearly seen. Of course some portray it much more vividly than others; the varying intelligence manifested in this respect is only another link which knits them in oneness with the human family. Pride is well marked in sheep and cattle, as shown by the depressing effects produced on a 'bell-wether' or leading cow by transferring the bell to another member of the herd; and it is said that in Switzerland the beasts which on show days are provided with garlands, are evidently aware of the distinction thus placed upon them. With some amount of poetic exaggeration this fact is noted by Schiller, who says in 'Wilhelm Tell,'-- See with what pride your steer his garland wears; He knows himself the leader of the herd; But strip him of it, and he'd die of grief. With regard to the general intelligence of ruminants I may first quote the following:-- The sagacity with which the bisons defend themselves against the attack of wolves is admirable. When they scent the approach of a drove of these ravenous creatures, the herd throws itself into the form of a circle, having the weakest and the calves in the middle, and the strongest ranged on the outside; thus presenting an impenetrable front of horns.[193] The buffalo of the Old World manifests sagacity very similar. As Sir J. E. Tennent informs us,-- The temper of the wild buffalo is morose and uncertain; and such is its strength and courage, that in the Hindu epic of the 'Ramayana' its onslaught is compared with that of the tiger. It is never quite safe to approach them if disturbed in their pasture, or alarmed from their repose in the shallow lakes. On such occasions they hurry into line, draw up in defensive array, with a few of the oldest bulls in advance; and, wheeling in circles, their horns clashing with a loud sound as they clank them together in their rapid evolutions, they prepare for attack: but generally, after a menacing display, the herd betake themselves to flight; then forming again at a safer distance, they halt as before, elevating their nostrils, and throwing back their heads to take a defiant survey of the intruders.[194] When tamed this animal is used for sporting purposes in a manner which displays the spirit of curiosity of deer, hogs, and other animals. Thus, Sir J. E. Tennent continues:-- A bell is attached to its neck, and a box or basket with one side open is securely strapped on its back. This at night is lighted with flambeaux of wax, and the buffalo bearing it is slowly driven into the jungle. The huntsmen with their fowling-pieces keep close under the darkened side, and as it moves slowly onwards, the wild animals, startled by the sound and bewildered by the light, steal cautiously towards it in stupefied fascination. Even the snake, I am assured, will be attracted by this extraordinary object; and the leopard, too, falls a victim to curiosity.[195] Livingstone says of the African buffalo, that he has known the animal, when pursued by hunters, to 'turn back to a point a few yards from its own trail, and then lie down in a hollow for the hunter to come up,'--a fact which displays a level of intelligence in this animal surpassing that which is met with in most Carnivora.[196] Livingstone also says:-- It is curious to observe the intelligence of game; in districts where they are much annoyed by fire-arms they keep out on the most open spots of country they can find, in order to have a widely extended range of vision, and a man armed is carefully shunned. . . . But here, where they are killed by the arrows of the Balonda, they select for safety the densest forest, where the arrow cannot be easily shot.[197] Jesse, who had many opportunities of observing the fact, says:-- I have been much delighted with watching the manner in which some of the old bucks in Bushey Park continue to get the berries from the fine thorn trees there. They will raise themselves on their hind legs, give a spring, entangle their horns in the lower branches of the tree, give them one or two shakes, and they will then quietly pick them up.[198] The same author elsewhere says:-- Few things, indeed, can show more forcibly the powerful instinct which is implanted in animals for their self-preservation than the means which they take to avoid danger. I saw an instance of this lately in a stag. It had been turned out before a pack of hounds, and, when somewhat pressed by them, I observed it twice to go amongst a flock of sheep, and in both cases to double back, evidently, I should imagine, with the intention of baffling the pursuit of the dogs. It would thus seem that the animal was aware of its being followed by the scent, and not by sight. If this be the case, it affords another proof that animals are possessed of something more than common instinct.[199] This author also says that he has 'frequently observed the buffalo at the Zoological Farm on Kingston Hill' display the following proof of intelligence. Being of a ferocious disposition, a strong iron ring was fixed through the septum of his nose, to which a chain about two feet long was attached. At the free end of the chain there was another ring about four inches in diameter. 'In grazing the buffalo must have put his feet on this ring, and in raising his head the jerk would have produced considerable pain. In order to avoid this the animal has the sense to put his horn through the lower ring, and thus avoid the inconvenience he is put to. I have seen him do this in a very deliberate manner, putting his head on one side while he got his horn through the ring, and then shaking his head till the ring rested at the bottom of the horn.'[200] The following is quoted from Mrs. Lee's 'Anecdotes' (p. 366), and is rendered credible not only because her own observations are generally good, but also because we shall subsequently find unquestionable evidence of the display of similar intelligence by cats:-- A goat and her kids frequented a square in which I once lived, and were often fed by myself and servants--a circumstance which would have made no impression, had I not heard a thumping at the hall door, which arose from the buttings of the goat when the food was not forthcoming, and whose example was followed by the two little things. After a time this remained unheeded, and, to our great astonishment, one day the area bell used by the tradespeople, the wire of which passed by the side of one of the railings, was sounded. The cook answered it, but no one was there save the goat and kids, with their heads bent down towards the kitchen window. It was thought that some boy had rung for them; but they were watched, and the old goat was seen to hook one of her horns into the wire and pull it. This is too much like reason to be ascribed to mere instinct. P. Wakefield, in his 'Instinct Displayed,'[201] gives two separate cases of an intelligent manoeuvre performed by goats. On both occasions two goats met on a ridge of rock with a precipice on each side, and too narrow to admit of their passing one another. One of these cases occurred on the ramparts of Plymouth Citadel, and was witnessed by 'many persons;' the other took place at Ardenglass, in Ireland. 'In both these instances the animals looked at each other for some time, as if they were considering their situation, and deliberating what was best to be done in the emergency.' In each case one of the goats then 'knelt down with great caution, and crouched as close as it could lie, when the other walked over its back.' This manoeuvre on the part of goats has also been recorded by other writers, and is not so incredible as it may at first sight appear, if we remember that in their wild state these animals must not unfrequently find themselves in this predicament. Mr. W. Forster, writing from Australia, gives me the following account of the intelligence of a bull:-- A rather tame bull, bred of a milch cow, used to puzzle me by being found inside a paddock used for cultivation, and enclosed by a two-railed fence, of which the lower rail was unusually high. At last I saw the animal lie down close to the fence, and roll over on his back, with four legs in the air, by which proceeding he was inside the paddock. I never knew another beast perform this feat; and although it must have been often done in the presence of a number of cows, not one of them ever imitated it, though they would all have unquestionably followed the bull through an opening in the fence, or by the slip-rails. Mr. G. S. Erb, writing from Salt Lake City, gives me an interesting account of the sagacity displayed by the wild deer of the United States in avoiding gun-traps, which, except for the cutting of the string, to which the teeth of the animal are not so well adapted, is strikingly similar to the sagacity which we shall see to be displayed in this respect by sundry species of Carnivora. He says:-- My method was this: I would fell or cut down a maple tree, the top of which they are very partial to; and as the ground was invariably covered with snow to the depth of 12 inches, food was scarce, and the deer would come and browse, probably from hearing the tree fall. I would place a loaded gun 20 feet from the top of the tree at which it was pointing; I would attach a line the size of an ordinary fish-line to a lever that pressed against the trigger; the other end of the line I would fasten to the tree-top. By this means the deer could not pass between the tree and the gun without getting shot, or at least shot at; but I never succeeded in killing one when my line was as large as a fish-line, _i.e._ about one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness. Commencing at the body of the tree on one side, the deer would eat all the tops to within 12 inches of the line, and then go around the gun and eat all on the other side, never touching the line. I tried this at least sixty times, always with the same result. Then I took a black linen thread, and had no difficulty in killing them, as it was so small and black that they could not distinguish it. _Pigs._ There can be no doubt that pigs exhibit a degree of intelligence which falls short only of that of the most intelligent Carnivora. The tricks taught the so-called 'learned pigs' would alone suffice to show this; while the marvellous skill with which swine sometimes open latches and fastenings of gates, &c., is only equalled by that of the cat. The following account of pigs in their wild state shows that they manifest the same kind of sagacious co-operation in facing an enemy as that which we have just seen to be manifested by the bison and the buffalo, although here it seems to be displayed in a manner still more organised:-- Wild swine associate in herds and defend themselves in common. Green relates that in the wilds of Vermont a person fell in with a large herd in a state of extraordinary restlessness; they had formed a circle with their heads outwards, and the young ones placed in the middle. A wolf was using every artifice to snap one, and on his return he found the herd scattered, but the wolf was dead and completely ripped up. Schmarda recounts an almost similar encounter between a herd of tame swine and a wolf, which he witnessed on the military positions of Croatia. He says that the swine, seeing two wolves, formed themselves into a wedge, and approached the wolves slowly, grunting and erecting their bristles. One wolf fled, but the other leaped on to the trunk of a tree. As soon as the swine reached it they surrounded it with one accord, when, suddenly and instantaneously, as the wolf attempted to leap over them, they got him down and destroyed him in a moment.[202] In Bingley's 'Memoirs of British Quadrupeds' (page 452) there is an account drawn up at his request by Sir Henry Mildmay, concerning the docility of the pig. The Toomer brothers were King's keepers in the New Forest, and they conceived the idea of training a sow to point game. This they succeeded in doing within a fortnight, and in a few more weeks it also learnt to retrieve. Her scent was exceedingly good, and she stood well at partridges, black game, pheasants, snipes, and rabbits, but never pointed hares. She was more useful than a dog, and afterwards became the property of Sir Henry Mildmay. According to Youatt,[203] Colonel Thornton also had a sow similarly trained. The same author says that a sow belonging to Mr. Craven had a litter of pigs, one of which, when old enough, was taken and roasted, then a second and a third. These were necessarily taken when the mother returned in the evening from the woods for supper. But the next time she came she was alone, and, 'as her owners were anxious to know what was become of her brood, she was watched on the following evening, and observed driving back her pigs at the extremity of the wood, with much earnest grunting, while she went off to the house, leaving them to wait for her return. It was evident that she had noticed the diminution of her family, and had adopted this method to save those that remained.'[204] Mr. Stephen Harding sends me the following as an observation of his own:-- On the 15th ult. (Nov. 1879) I saw an intelligent sow pig about twelve months old, running in an orchard, going to a young apple tree and shaking it, pricking up her ears at the same time, as if to listen to hear the apples fall. She then picked the apples up and ate them. After they were all down she shook the tree again and listened, but as there were no more to fall she went away. The proverbial indifference to dirt attributed to the pig seems scarcely to be justified; the worst that can be said is that the animal prefers cool mud to dry heat, and the filth which swine often exhibit in their sty is the fault of the farmers rather than of the animals. Or, to quote from Thompson's 'Passions,'-- A washed sow in the hot season of our temperate climate, and in almost every season of such a climate as that of Palestine, 'returns to her wallowing in the mire' simply because she feels scorched, and blistered, and sickened under the ardent sunshine; and hence, when she receives from man the aid which is due to her as a domesticated animal, she demands not dirt all the year through, nor any day at all, but shade in summer, shelter in winter, and a clean, dry bed in every season. _Cheiroptera._ Mr. Bates says of bats: 'The fact of their sucking the blood of persons sleeping is now well established; but it is only a few persons who are subject to this bloodletting. . . . I am inclined to think many different kinds of bats have this propensity' ('Nat. on Amaz.,' p. 91). The particular species of bat, however, which has been most universally accredited with this habit, viz., the vampire, is perfectly harmless. Mr. G. Clark ('A Brief Notice of the Fauna of Mauritius') gives an account of the intelligence displayed by a tame bat (_Pteropus vulgaris_). As soon as its master came into the room, it welcomed him with cries; and if not at once taken up to be petted, it climbed up his dress, rubbed its head against him, and licked his hands. If Mr. Clark took anything in his hand, the bat would carefully examine it by sight and smell, and when he sat down the bat would hang upon the back of his chair, following all his movements with its eyes. _Carnivora._ I shall here run together a few facts relating to the intelligence of carnivorous animals other than those to be considered in subsequent chapters. _Seals._--In their wild state these animals have not much opportunity for the display of intelligence; but when tamed it is seen that the latter is considerable. They are then affectionate animals, liking to be petted, and showing attachment to their homes. The most remarkable species of the order from a psychological point of view are the so-called Pinnipeds, whose habits during the breeding season are so peculiar that I think it is worth while to quote the best account that has hitherto been published on the subject. This is the elaborate work of Mr. Joel Asaph Allen:[205]-- From the time of the first arrivals in May up to the 1st of June, as late as the middle of this month if the weather be clear, is an interval in which everything seems quiet; very few seals are added to the pioneers. By the 1st of June, however, or thereabouts, the foggy, humid weather of summer sets in, and with it the bull-seals come up by hundreds and thousands, and locate themselves in advantageous positions for the reception of the females, which are from three weeks to a month later, as a rule. The labour of locating and maintaining a position in the rookery is really a serious business for those bulls which come in last, and for those that occupy the water-line, frequently resulting in death from severe wounds in combat sustained. It appears to be a well understood principle among the able-bodied bulls that each one shall remain undisturbed on his ground, which is usually about ten feet square, provided he is strong enough to hold it against all comers; for the crowding in of fresh bulls often causes the removal of those who, though equally able-bodied at first, have exhausted themselves by fighting earlier, and are driven by the fresher animals back further and higher up on the rookery. Some of these bulls show wonderful strength and courage. I have marked one veteran, who was among the first to take up his position, and that one on the water-line, when at least fifty or sixty desperate battles were fought victoriously by him with nearly as many different seals who coveted his position; and when the fighting season was over (after the cows have mostly all hauled up) I saw him covered with scars and gashes, raw and bloody, an eye gouged out, but holding it bravely over his harem of fifteen or twenty cows, all huddled together on the same spot he had first chosen. The fighting is mostly or entirely done with the mouth, the opponents seizing each other with the teeth and clenching the jaws; nothing but sheer strength can shake them loose, and that effort almost always leaves an ugly wound, the sharp canines tearing out deep gutters in the skin and blubber, or shredding the flippers into ribbon-strips. They usually approach each other with averted heads and a great many false passes before either one or the other takes the initiative by gripping; the heads are darted out and back as quick as flash, their hoarse roaring and shrill piping whistle never ceases, while their fat bodies writhe and swell with exertion and rage, fur flying in air and blood streaming down--all combined make a picture fierce and savage enough, and, from its great novelty, exceedingly strange at first sight. In these battles the parties are always distinct, the offensive and the defensive; if the latter proves the weaker he withdraws from the position occupied, and is never followed by his conqueror, who complacently throws up one of his hind flippers, fans himself, as it were, to cool himself from the heat of the conflict, uttering a peculiar chuckle of satisfaction and contempt, with a sharp eye open for the next covetous bull or 'sea-catch' (native name for the bulls on the rookeries, especially those which are able to maintain their position). * * * * * All the bulls, from the very first, that have been able to hold their positions have not left them for an instant, night or day; nor do they do so until the end of the rutting season, which subsides entirely between the 1st and 10th of August, beginning shortly after the coming of the cows in June. Of necessity, therefore, this causes them to fast, to abstain entirely from food of any kind, or water for at least three months; and a few of them stay four months before going into the water for the first time after hauling up in May. This alone is remarkable enough, but it is simply wonderful when we come to associate the condition with unceasing activity, restlessness, and duty devolved upon the bulls as heads and fathers of large families. They do not stagnate like bears in caves; it is evidently accomplished or due to the absorption of their own fat, with which they are so literally supplied when they take their positions on the breeding-ground, and which gradually diminishes while they remain on it. * * * * * They are noticed and received by the bulls on the water-line station with much attention; they are alternately coaxed and urged up on the rocks, and are immediately under the most jealous supervision; but owing to the covetous and ambitious nature of the bulls which occupy the stations reaching some way back from the water-line, the little cows have a rough-and-tumble time of it when they begin to arrive in small numbers at first; for no sooner is the pretty animal fairly established on the station of bull No. 1 who has installed her there, than he perhaps sees another one of her style down in the water from which she has just come, and in obedience to his polygamous feeling, he devotes himself anew to coaxing the later arrival in the same winning manner so successful in her case, when bull No. 2, seeing bull No. 1 off his guard, reaches out his long strong neck, and picks the unhappy but passive creature up by the scruff of hers, just as a cat does a kitten, and deposits her on his seraglio-ground; then bulls Nos. 3, 4, 5, and so on in the vicinity, seeing this high-handed operation, all assail one another, and especially bull No. 2, and have a tremendous fight perhaps for half a minute or so; and during this commotion the cow is generally moved or moves farther back from the water two or three stations more, where, when all gets quiet, she usually remains in peace. Her late lord and master, not having the exposure to such diverting temptation as had her first, gives her such care that she not only is unable to leave did she wish, but no other bull can seize upon her. This is only one instance of the many different trials and tribulations which both parties on the rookery subject themselves to before the harems are filled. Far back, fifteen or twenty stations deep from the water-line sometimes, but generally not more than, on an average, ten or fifteen, the cows crowd in at the close of the season for arriving, July 10 to 14, and then they are able to go about pretty much as they please, for the bulls have become greatly enfeebled by this constant fighting and excitement during the past two months, and are quite content with even only one or two partners. * * * * * I have found it difficult to ascertain the average number of cows to one bull on the rookery, but I think it will be nearly correct to assign to each male from twelve to fifteen females occupying the stations nearest the water, those back in the rear from five to nine. I have counted forty-five cows all under the charge of one bull, which had them penned up on a flat table-rock near Kestaire Point; the bull was enabled to do this quite easily, as there was but one way to go to or come from this seraglio, and on this path the old Turk took his stand and guarded it well. At the rear of all these rookeries there is always a large number of able-bodied bulls, who wait patiently, but in vain, for families, most of them having had to fight as desperately for the privilege of being there as any of their more fortunately located neighbours, who are nearer the water than themselves; but the cows do not like to be in any outside position, when they are not in close company lying most quiet and content in the largest harems; and these large families pack the surface of the ground so thickly that there is hardly moving or turning room until the females cease to come up from the sea; but the inaction on the part of the bulls in the rear during the rutting season only serves to qualify them to move into the places vacated by those males who are obliged to leave from exhaustion, or to take the position of fearless and jealous protectors for the young pups in the fall. The courage with which the fur-seal holds his position as the head and guardian of a family is of the very highest order compared with that of other animals. I have repeatedly tried to drive them when they have fairly established themselves, and have almost always failed, using every stone at my command, making all the noise I could, and finally, to put their courage to the full test, I walked up to within twenty feet of a bull at the rear and extreme end of Tolstoi Rookery, who had four cows in charge, and commenced with my double-barrelled breech-loading shot-gun to pepper him all over with mustard-seed or dust-shot. His bearing in spite of the noise, smell of powder, and pain, did not change in the least from the usual attitude of determined defence which nearly all the bulls assume when attacked with showers of stones and noise; he would dart out right and left and catch the cows which timidly attempted to run after each report, fling and drag them back to their places; then, stretching up to his full height, look me directly and defiantly in the face, roaring and spitting most vehemently. The cows, however, soon got away from him, but he still stood his ground, making little charges on me of ten or fifteen feet in a succession of gallops or lunges, spitting furiously and then retreating to the old position, back of which he would not go, fully resolved to hold his own or die in the attempt. This courage is all the more noteworthy from the fact that, in regard to man, it is invariably of a defensive character. The seal, if it makes you turn when you attack it, never follows you much farther than the boundary of its station, and no aggravation will compel it to become offensive, as far as I have been able to observe. * * * * * The apathy with which the young are treated by the old on the breeding-grounds is somewhat strange. I have never seen a cow caress or fondle her offspring, and should it stray but a short distance from the harem, it can be picked up and killed before the mother's eyes, without causing her to show the slightest concern. The same indifference is exhibited by the bull to all that takes place outside of the boundary of his seraglio. While the pups are, however, within the limits of his harem-ground he is a jealous and fearless protector; but if the little animals pass beyond this boundary, then they may be carried off without the slightest attention in their behalf from their guardian. * * * * * Early in August (8th) the pups that are nearest the water on the rookeries essay swimming, but make slow and clumsy progress, floundering about, when over head in depth, in the most awkward manner, thrashing the water with their fore-flippers, not using the hinder ones. In a few seconds, or a minute at the most, the youngest is so wary that he crawls out upon the rocks or beach, and immediately takes a recuperative nap, repeating the lesson as quick as he awakes and is rested. They soon get familiar with the water and delight in it, swimming in endless evolutions, twisting, turning, diving; and when exhausted, they draw up on the beach again, shake themselves as young dogs do, either going to sleep on the spot, or having a lazy frolic among themselves. In this matter of learning to swim, I have not seen any 'driving' of the young pups into the water by the old in order to teach them this process, as has been affirmed by writers on the subject of seal life. _Otter._--The fact that otters admit of being taught to catch fish and bring them to their masters, shows no small degree of docility on the part of these animals. 'I have seen,' says Dr. Goldsmith, 'an otter go to a gentleman's pond at word of command, drive the fish into a corner, and, seizing upon the largest of the whole, bring it off in his mouth to his master.' And several other cases of the same kind are given by Bingley.[206] _Weasel._--'Mdlle. de Faister described her tame weasel to Buffon as playing with her fingers like a kitten, jumping on her head and neck; and if she presented her hands at the distance of three feet, it jumped into them without ever missing. It distinguished her voice amidst twenty people, and sprang over everybody to get at her. She found it impossible to open a drawer or a box, or even to look at a paper, without his examining it also. If she took up a paper or book, and looked attentively at it, the weasel immediately ran upon her hand, and surveyed with an inquisitive air whatever she happened to hold.'[207] _Polecat._--Professor Alison, in his article on 'Instinct,' in Todd's 'Cyclopædia of Anatomy,' quotes the following account from the 'Magazine of Natural History' (vol. iv., p. 206) touching a remarkable instinct manifested by polecats. 'I dug out five young polecats, comfortably embedded in dry, withered grass; and in a side-hole, of proper dimensions for such a larder, I picked out forty large frogs and two toads, all alive, but merely capable of sprawling a little. On examination, I found that the whole number, toads and all, had been purposely and dexterously bitten through the brain.' The analogy of this instinct to that which has already been mentioned as having been much more recently observed by M. Fabre in the sphex insect is noteworthy. _Ferret._--I once kept a ferret as a domestic pet. He was a very large specimen, and my sister taught him a number of tricks, such as begging for food (which he did quite as well and patiently as any terrier), leaping over sticks, &c. He became a very affectionate animal, delighting much in being petted, and following like a dog when taken out for walk. He would, however, only follow those persons whom he well knew. That his memory was exceedingly good was shown by the fact that after an absence of many months, during which he was never required to beg, or to perform any of his tricks, he went through all his paces perfectly the first time that we again tried him. I strongly suspect that ferrets dream, as I have frequently seen them when fast asleep moving their noses and twitching their claws as if in pursuit of rabbits. Another fact I may mention as bearing on the intelligence of these animals. On one occasion, while ferreting rabbits, I lost the ferret about a mile away from home. Some days afterwards the animal returned to his home. Similar cases have been communicated to me by several sporting friends, but certainly the return of a ferret under such circumstances is the exception, and not the rule. _Wolverine._--Amazing tales are told concerning the intelligence of this animal, which for the most part are certainly exaggerations. Still there is no doubt that the creature does display a degree of sagacious cunning unsurpassed, if not unequalled, in the animal kingdom. This may be shown by the two following quotations from the statements of trustworthy writers. The first is a letter kindly sent me by Dr. J. Rae, F.R.S., in reply to my request for information concerning the intelligence of this animal:-- The narratives of most travellers in America tell wonderful stories of the glutton or wolverine, but I do not know that any of my experiences of this extremely acute animal indicate what I call reasoning powers. They are very suspicious, and can seldom or never be taken with poisoned bait, trap, or gun. The poisoned baits are usually found broken up, but not eaten by them; traps are destroyed or entered, but not where the trapper desired; and guns, except when concealed after the Eskimo fashion by a covering of snow, are avoided. In 1853, on the Arctic coast, when about to change our domicile from a tent to the warmer snow hut, my man had carried over about 100 lbs. or more of fine venison steaks to the snow houses about a quarter of a mile from our tents; and as there were at the time no traces either of foxes, wolves, or wolverines about, the meat was placed overnight in one of the huts, and the door left open. During the night two wolverines came, but, evidently dreading some trap or danger in the open door, would not enter that way, but cut a hole for themselves through the wall of the snow hut, and carried off all our fine steaks, a considerable quantity of which was picked up close to our house when the thaw took place in the spring, it having been hid in the snow, but completely spoilt for use, by a well-known filthy habit. Dr. Rae has also drawn my attention to the following account contained in the Miscellaneous Publications of the Geological Survey of the United States.[208] The writer of this account is Captain Elliot Cones:-- To the trapper the wolverines are equally annoying. When they have discovered a line of marten traps they will never abandon the road, and must be killed before the trapping can be successfully carried on. Beginning at one end, they proceed from trap to trap along the whole line, pulling them successively to pieces, and taking out the baits from behind. When they can eat no more, they continue to steal the baits and câche them. If hungry they may devour two or three of the martens they find captured, the remainder being carried off and hidden in the snow at a considerable distance. The work of demolition goes on as fast as the traps can be renewed. The propensity to steal and hide things is one of the strongest traits of the wolverine. To such an extent is it developed that the animal will often secrete articles of no possible use to itself. Besides the wanton destruction of marten traps, it will carry off the sticks and hide them at a distance, apparently in sheer malice. Mr. Ross, in the article above quoted, has given an amusing instance of the extreme of this propensity. The desire for accumulating property seems so deeply implanted in this animal, that, like tame ravens, it does not appear to care much what it steals so that it can exercise its favourite propensity to commit mischief. An instance occurred within my own knowledge, in which a hunter and his family having left their lodge unguarded during their absence, on their return found it completely gutted--the walls were there, but nothing else. Blankets, guns, kettles, axes, cans, knives, and all the other paraphernalia of a trapper's tent had vanished, and the tracks left by the beast showed who had been the thief. The family set to work, and by carefully following up all his paths recovered, with some trifling exceptions, the whole of the lost property. * * * * * At Peel's River, on one occasion, a very old carcajou discovered my marten road, on which I had nearly a hundred and fifty traps. I was in the habit of visiting the line about once a fortnight, but the beast fell into the way of coming oftener than I did, to my great annoyance and vexation. I determined to put a stop to his thieving and his life together, cost what it might. So I made six strong traps at as many different points, and also set three steel traps. For three weeks I tried my best to catch the beast without success; and my worst enemy would allow that I am no green hand in these matters. The animal carefully avoided the traps set for his own benefit, and seemed to be taking more delight than ever in demolishing my marten traps and eating the martens, scattering the poles in every direction, and câching what baits or martens he did not devour on the spot. As we had no poison in those days, I next set a gun on the bank of a little lake. The gun was concealed in some low bushes, but the bait was so placed that the carcajou must see it on his way up the bank. I blockaded my path to the gun with a small pine tree, which completely hid it. On my first visit afterwards I found that the beast had gone up to the bait and smelled it, but had left it untouched. He had next pulled up the pine tree that blocked the path, and gone around the gun and cut the line which connected the bait with the trigger, just behind the muzzle. Then he had gone back and pulled the bait away, and carried it out on the lake, where he lay down and devoured it at his leisure. There I found my string. I could scarcely believe that all this had been done designedly, for it seemed that faculties fully on a par with human reason would be required for such an exploit if done intentionally. I therefore rearranged things, tying the string where it had been bitten. But the result was exactly the same for three successive occasions, as I could plainly see by the footprints; and what is most singular of all, each time the brute was careful to cut the line a little back of where it had been tied before, as if actually reasoning with himself that even the knots might be some new device of mine, and therefore a source of hidden danger he would prudently avoid. I came to the conclusion that that carcajou ought to live, as he must be something at least human, if not worse. I gave it up, and abandoned the road for a period. * * * * * With so much for the tricks and the manners of the beast behind our backs, roaming at will in his vast solitudes, what of his actions in the presence of man? It is said that if one only stands still, even in full view of an approaching carcajou, he will come within fifty or sixty yards, provided he be to windward, before he takes the alarm. Even then, if he be not warned by sense of smell, he seems in doubt, and will gaze earnestly several times before he finally concludes to take himself off. On these and similar occasions he has a singular habit--one not shared, so far as I am aware, by any other beast whatever. He sits on his haunches and shades his eyes with one of his fore-paws, just as a human being would do in scrutinising a dim or distant object. The carcajou, then, in addition to his other and varied accomplishments, is a perfect sceptic--to use this word in its original signification. A sceptic, with the Greeks, was simply one who would shade his eyes to see more clearly. _Bears._--There is no doubt that the intelligence of these animals stands very high in the psychological scale, although the actual instances which I have met of the display of their intelligence are few. The tricks which are taught performing bears do not count for much as proof of high sagacity, as they for the most part consist in teaching the animals to assume unnatural positions, or display grotesque antics--performances which speak indeed for the general docility of the creatures, but scarcely for their high intelligence. Still even here it is worth while to remark that all species of bears would probably not lend themselves to this kind of education, for the emotional temperament manifested by the different species is unquestionably diverse. Thus, making all allowances for exaggeration, it seems certain that the grizzly bear displays a courage and ferocity which are foreign to the disposition of the brown bear, and indeed to that of most other animals. The polar bear likewise displays much bravery under the influence of hunger or maternal feeling, although under other circumstances it usually deems discretion the better part of valour. The following incident displays considerable intelligence on the part of this animal. Scoresby, in his 'Account of the Arctic Regions,' gives the instance to which I allude:-- The animal with two cubs was being pursued by a party of sailors over an ice-field. She urged her young to an increase of speed by running before them, turning round, and manifesting, by a peculiar action and voice, her anxiety for their progress; but finding that her pursuers were gaining upon them, she carried, or pushed, or pitched them alternately forward, until she effected their escape. In throwing them before her, the little creatures placed themselves across her path to receive the impulse; and when projected some yards in advance, they ran onwards until she overtook them, when they alternately adjusted themselves for a second throw. As the polar bear is not exposed to any enemies except man, this method of escaping is not likely to be instinctive, but was probably an intelligent adaptation to the particular circumstances of the case. Mr. S. J. Hutchinson writes me as follows with regard to this same species:-- One Sunday, at the 'Zoo,' some one threw a bun to the bears, but it fell in the water in that quadrant-shaped pond you will remember. The bun fell just at the angle, and the bear seemed disinclined to enter the water, but stood on the edge of the pond, and commenced _stirring_ the water with its paw, so that it established a sort of rotatory current, which eventually brought the bun within reach. When one leg got tired it used the other, but in the same direction. I watched the whole performance with the greatest interest myself. In corroboration of this most remarkable observation I quote the following from Mr. Darwin's 'Descent of Man' (p. 76), which is so precisely similar, that the fact of bears reaching the high level of intelligence which the fact implies can scarcely be doubted. 'A well-known entomologist, Mr. Westropp, informs me that he observed in Vienna a bear deliberately making with his paw a current in some water which was close to the bars of his cage, so as to draw a piece of floating bread within his reach.' FOOTNOTES: [190] _Passions of Animals_, p. 154. [191] See Mr. Darwin's account in _Naturalist's Voyage round the World_, pp. 151-2. [192] _Nature_, vol. xx., p. 21. [193] Thompson, _Passions of Animals_, p. 308. [194] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 54. [195] _Ibid._, p. 56. [196] _Missionary Travels_, p. 328. [197] _Ibid._, p. 280. [198] _Gleanings_, &c., vol. i., p. 20. [199] _Ibid._, vol. ii., p. 20. [200] _Ibid._, pp. 226-7. [201] Pp. 66 and 97. [202] Thompson, _Passions of Animals_, p. 308. [203] _On the Pig_, p. 17. [204] _Ibid._ [205] _History of the North American Pinnipeds._ The quotations are taken from pp. 348 to 361. [206] _Animal Biography_, vol. iii., pp. 301-2. [207] Thompson, _Passions in Animals_, p. 337. [208] Vol. viii., Washington, 1877: 'A Monograph of the North American _Mustelidæ_.' CHAPTER XII. RODENTS. THE rodents, psychologically considered, are, of all orders in the animal kingdom, most remarkable for the differences presented by constituent species. For while the group contains many animals, such as the guinea-pig, whose instincts and intelligence cannot be said to rise above the lowest level that obtains among mammalian forms, it also contains other animals with instincts as remarkable as those of the squirrel, intelligence as considerable as that of the rat, and a psychological development as unique as that of the beaver. In no other group of animals do we meet with nearly so striking an exemplification of the truth that zoological or structural affinity is only related in a most loose and general way to psychological or mental similarity. Up to a certain point, however, even here we meet with an exemplification of what I may call a complementary truth, namely, that similarity of organisation and environment is in a general way related to similarity of instincts (though not necessarily of intelligence). This is obviously the case with the habit from which the order takes its name; for whether the instinct of gnawing is here the cause or the result of peculiar organisation, the instinct is unquestionably correlated with the peculiarity. And similarly, though less obviously, is this the case with the instinct of storing food for winter consumption, which is more prevalent among the rodents than in any other order of mammals--rats, mice, squirrels, harvesters, beavers, &c., all manifesting it with remarkable vigour and persistency. Here we probably have a case of similar organisation and environment determining the same instinct; for the latter is not of sufficiently general occurrence among all species of rodents to allow us to suppose that the species in which it does occur have derived it from a common ancestry. _Rabbit._ Rabbits are somewhat stupid animals, exhibiting but small resources under novel circumstances, although inheriting several clever instincts, such as that of rapidly deciding upon the alternative of flight or crouching, which is usually done with the best judgment. I have, however, often observed that the animal does not seem to have sense enough to regard the colour of the surface on which it crouches, so that if this happens to be inappropriate, the rabbit may become conspicuous, and so its crouching a source of danger. I have been particularly struck with the fact that black rabbits inherit the crouching instinct as strongly as do normally coloured ones, with the effect of rendering themselves highly conspicuous. This shows that the instinct is not necessarily correlated with the colour which alone renders the instinct useful, but that both have developed simultaneously and independently, and by natural selection. The fact also shows that the crouching of rabbits is purely instinctive, and not due to any conscious process of comparing their own colour with that of the surfaces on which they crouch. No doubt the instinct began and was developed by natural selection placing a premium upon the better judgment of those individuals which know when best to seek safety in flight and when by crouching--protective colouring being added at the same time by the same agency. Another fact, which every one who shoots must have observed, goes to show the stupidity of rabbits, or their inability to learn by experience. When alarmed they run for their burrows, and when they reach them, instead of entering they very frequently squat down to watch the enemy. Now, although they well know the distance at which it is safe to allow a man with a gun to approach, excess of curiosity, or a mistaken feeling of security in being so near their homes, induces the animals to allow a man to approach within easy shooting distance. Yet that in other respects rabbits can learn much by experience must be evident to all who are accustomed to shoot with ferrets. From burrows which have not been much ferreted, rabbits will bolt soon after the ferret is put in; but this is not the case where rabbits have had previous experience of the association between ferrets and sportsmen. Rather than bolt under such circumstances, and so face the known danger of the waiting gun, rabbits will often allow themselves to be torn with the ferrets' claws and mutilated by their teeth. This is the case, no matter how silently the sportsmen may conduct their operations; the mere fact of a ferret entering their burrows seems to be enough to assure the rabbits that sportsmen are waiting outside.[209] In its emotions the rabbit is for the most part a very timid animal, although the males fight severely with one another--having more strongly developed than any other animal the strange but effectual instinct of castrating their rivals. Moreover, even against other animals, rabbits will, when compelled to do so, stand upon the defensive. To show this I may quote a letter which several years ago I published in 'Nature:'-- I have occasion just now to keep over thirty Himalayan rabbits in an outhouse. A short time ago it was observed that some of these rabbits had been attacked and slightly bitten by rats. Next day the person who feeds the rabbits observed, upon entering the outhouse, that nearly all the inmates were congregated in one corner; and upon going to ascertain the cause, found one rat dead, and another so much injured that it could scarcely run. Both rats were of an unusually large size, and their bodies were much mangled by the rabbits' teeth. I never before knew that domestic rabbits would fight with any carnivorous antagonist. That wild rabbits never do so I infer from having several times seen ferrets turn out from the most crowded burrow in a warren young stoats and weasels not more than four inches long. It is evident that the show-fight instinct cannot have been developed in Himalayan rabbits by means of natural selection, but it is no less evident that if it ever arose in wild rabbits it would be preserved and intensified by such means. The following observation of my own on a previously unnoticed instinct displayed by wild rabbits is, I think, of sufficient interest to render. Most people are aware that if a rabbit is shot near the mouth of its burrow, the animal will employ the last remnant of its life in struggling into it. Having several times observed that wounded rabbits which had thus escaped appeared again several days afterwards above ground, lying dead a few feet from the mouth of the burrow, I wished to ascertain whether the wounded animals had themselves come out before dying, possibly for air, or had been taken out by their companions. I therefore shot numerous rabbits while they were sitting near their burrows, taking care that the distance between the gun and the animal should be such as to insure a speedy, though not an immediate death. Having marked the burrows at which I shot rabbits in this manner I returned to them at intervals for a fortnight or more, and found that about one-half of the bodies appeared again on the surface in the way described. That this reappearance above ground is not due to the victim's own exertions, I am now quite satisfied; for not only did two or three days generally elapse before the body thus showed itself--a period much too long for a severely wounded rabbit to survive--but in a number of cases decomposition had set in. Indeed, on one occasion scarcely anything of the animal was left save the skin and bones. This was in a large warren. It is a curious thing that I have hitherto been unable to get any bodies returned to the surface, of rabbits which I _inserted_ into their burrows _after death_. I account for this by supposing that the stench of the decomposing carcass is not so intolerable to the other occupants of the burrow when it is near the orifice as it is when further in. Similarly, I find that there is not so good a chance of bodies being returned from an extensive warren of intercommunicating holes, as there is from smaller warrens or blind holes; the reason probably being that in the one case the living inhabitants are free to vacate the offensive locality, while in the other case they are not so. Anyhow, there can be no reasonable doubt that the instinct of removing their dead has arisen in rabbits from the necessity of keeping their confined domiciles in a pure state. _Hare._ The hare is a more intelligent animal than the rabbit. Possibly its much greater powers of locomotion may be one cause of its mental superiority to its nearest congener. I have never myself observed a hare commit the mistake already mentioned in the case of the rabbit, viz., that of crouching for concealment upon an inappropriately coloured surface. But the best idea of the comparatively high intelligence of the hare will be gained by the following quotations. The first of these is taken from Loudoun's 'Magazine of Natural History' (vol. iv., p. 143):-- It is especially conscious of the scent left by its feet, and of the danger which threatens it in consequence; a reflection which implies as much knowledge of the habits of its enemies as of its own. When about to enter its seat for the purpose of rest, it leaps in various directions, and crosses and recrosses its path with repeated springs; and at last, by a leap of greater energy than it has yet used, it effects a lodgment in the selected spot, which is chosen rather to disarm suspicion than to protect it from injury. In the 'Manuel du Chasseur' some instances are quoted from an ancient volume on hunting by Jaques du Fouillouse. A hare intending to mislead its pursuers has been seen spontaneously to quit its seat and to proceed to a pond at the distance of nearly a mile, and having washed itself, push off again through a quantity of rushes. It has, too, been known, when pursued to fatigue by dogs, to thrust another hare from its seat and squat itself down in its place. This author has seen hares swim successively through two or three ponds, of which the smallest was eighty paces round. He has known it, after a long chase, to creep under the door of a sheep-house and rest among the cattle, and when the hounds were in pursuit, it would get into the middle of a flock of sheep and accompany them in all their motions round the field, refusing by any means to quit the shelter they afforded. The stratagem of its passing forward on one side of a hedge and returning by the other, with only the breadth of the hedge between itself and its enemies, is of frequent occurrence, and it has even been known to select its seat close to the walls of a dog-kennel. This latter circumstance, however, is illustrative of the principles of reflection and reasoning; for the fox, weasel, and polecat are to the hare more dangerous enemies than the hound; and the situations chosen were such as those ferocious creatures were not likely to approach. A gentleman was engaged in the amusement of coursing, when a hare, closely pressed, passed under a gate, while the dogs followed by leaping over it. The delay caused to her pursuers by this manoeuvre seems to have taught a sudden and useful lesson to the persecuted creature; for as soon as the dogs had cleared the gate and overtaken her, she doubled and returned under the gate as before, the dogs again following and passing over it. And this flirtation continued backwards and forwards until the dogs were fairly tired of the amusement; when the hare, taking advantage of their fatigue, quietly stole away. The following note, by Mr. Yarrell, is significant of a process of reasoning derived from observations of the course of nature, such as would do no discredit to a higher race of creatures:-- A harbour of great extent on our northern coast has an island near the middle of considerable size, the nearest point of which is a mile distant from the mainland at high water, and with which point there is frequent communication by a ferry. Early one morning in spring two hares were observed to come down from the hills of the mainland towards the sea-side; one of which from time to time left its companion, and proceeding to the very edge of the water, stopped there a minute or two, and then returned to its mate. The tide was rising, and after waiting some time, one of them, exactly at high water, took to the sea, and swam rapidly over, in a straight line, to the opposite projecting point of land. The observer on this occasion, who was near the spot, but remained unperceived by the hares, had no doubt they were of different sexes, and that it was the male (like another Leander) which swam across the water, as he had probably done many times before. It was remarkable that the hares had remained on the shore nearly half an hour; one of them occasionally examining, as it would seem, the state of the current, and ultimately taking to the sea at that precise period of the tide called slackwater, when the passage across could be effected without being carried by the force of the stream either above or below the desired point of landing. The other hare then cantered back to the hills. (Loudoun's 'Magazine of Natural History,' vol. v., p. 99.) According to Couch ('Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 177)-- When followed by dogs, it will not run through a gate, though this is obviously the most ready passage; nor in crossing a hedge will it prefer a smooth and even part, but the roughest, where thorns and briars abound; and when it mounts an eminence it proceeds obliquely, and not straightforward. And whether we suppose these actions to proceed from a desire to avoid those places where traps may probably have been laid, or from knowing that his pursuers will exactly follow his footsteps, and he has resolved to lead them through as many obstacles as possible, in either case an estimation of causes and consequences is to be discovered. It is a remarkable thing that both hares and rabbits should allow themselves to be overtaken in the open field by weasels. I have myself witnessed the process, and am at a loss to account for it. The hare or rabbit seems perfectly aware of the dangerous character of the weasel, and yet does not put forth its powers of escape. It merely toddles along with the weasel toddling behind, until tamely allowing itself to be overtaken. This anomalous case may perhaps be akin to the alleged phenomena of the fascination of birds and small rodents by snakes; but in any case there seems to have been here a remarkable failure of natural selection in doing duty to the instincts of these swift-footed animals. We must not close this account of the intelligence of the hare genus without alluding to the classical case of Cowper's hares. The following abstract is taken from Tegg's edition of 'The Life and Works of William Cowper,' p. 633:-- Puss was ill three days, during which time I nursed him, kept him apart from his fellows, . . . and by constant care, &c., restored him to perfect health. No creature could be more grateful than my patient after his recovery, a sentiment which he most significantly expressed by licking my hand, first the back of it, then the palm, then every finger separately, then between all the fingers, as if anxious to leave no part of it unsaluted; _a ceremony which he never performed but once again upon a similar occasion_. Finding him extremely tractable, I made it my custom to carry him always after breakfast into the garden. . . . I had not long habituated him to this taste of liberty before he began to be impatient for the return of the time when he might enjoy it. He would invite me to the garden by drumming upon my knee, and by a look of such expression as it was not possible to misinterpret. If this rhetoric did not immediately succeed, _he would take the skirt of my coat between his teeth and pull it with all his force_. He seemed to be happier in human society than when shut up with his natural companions. _Rats and Mice._ Rats are well known to be highly intelligent animals. Unlike the hare or rabbit, their shyness seems to proceed from a wise caution rather than from timidity; for, when circumstances require, their boldness and courage in combat is surprising. Moreover, they never seem to lose their presence of mind; for, however great their danger, they seem always ready to take advantage of any favouring circumstances that may arise. Thus, when matched with so formidable an opponent as a ferret in a closed room, they have been known to display wonderful cunning in taking advantage of the light--keeping close under the window so as to throw the glare into the eyes of the enemy, darting forwards time after time to deliver a bite, and then as often retiring to their vantage-ground.[210] But the emotions of rats do not appear to be of an entirely selfish character. There are so many accounts in the anecdote books of blind rats being led about by their seeing companions, that it is difficult to discredit an observation so frequently confirmed.[211] Moreover, rats have been frequently known to assist one another in defending themselves from dangerous enemies. Several observations of this kind are recorded by the trustworthy writer Mr. Rodwell, in his somewhat elaborate work upon this animal. Again, as showing affection for human beings, I may quote the following:--'The mouse which had been tamed by Baron Trench in his prison having been taken from him, watched at the door and crept in when it was opened; being removed again, it refused all food, and died in three days.'[212] With regard to general intelligence, every one knows the extraordinary wariness of rats in relation to traps, which is only equalled in the animal kingdom by that of the fox and the wolverine. It has frequently been regarded as a wonderful display of intelligence on the part of rats that while gnawing through the woodwork of a ship, they always stop before they completely perforate the side; but, as Mr. Jesse suggests, this is probably due to their distaste of the salt water. No such disparaging explanation, however, is possible in some other instances of the display of rat-intelligence. Thus, the manner in which they transport eggs to their burrows has been too frequently observed to admit of doubt. Rodwell gives a case in which a number of eggs were carried from the top of a house to the bottom by two rats devoting themselves to each egg, and alternately passing it down to each other at every step of the staircase.[213] Dr. Carpenter also received from an eye-witness a similar account of another instance.[214] According to the article in the _Quarterly Review_, already mentioned, rats will not only convey eggs from the top of the house to the bottom, but from bottom to top. 'The male rat places himself on his fore-paws, with his head downwards, and raising up his hind legs and catching the egg between them, pushes it up to the female, who stands on the step above, and secures it with her fore-paws till he jumps up to her; and this process is repeated from step to step till the top is reached.' 'The captain of a merchantman,' says Mr. Jesse, 'trading to the port of Boston, in Lincolnshire, had constantly missed eggs from his sea stock. He suspected that he was robbed by his crew, but not being able to discover the thief, he was determined to watch his store-room. Accordingly, having laid in a fresh stock of eggs, he seated himself at night in a situation that commanded a view of his eggs. To his great astonishment he saw a number of rats approach; they formed a line from his egg baskets to their hole, and handed the eggs from one to another in their fore-paws.'[215] Another device to which rats resort for the procuring of food is mentioned in all the anecdote books, and it seemed so interesting that I tried some direct experiments upon the subject. I shall first state the alleged facts in the words of Watson:-- As to oil, rats have been known to get oil out of a narrow-necked bottle in the following way:--One of them would place himself, on some convenient support, by the side of the bottle, and then, dipping his tail into the oil, would give it to another to lick. In this act there is something more than what we call instinct; there is reason and understanding.[216] Jesse also gives the following account:-- A box containing some bottles of Florence oil was placed in a store-room which was seldom opened; the box had no lid to it. On going to the room one day for one of the bottles, the owner found that the pieces of bladder and cotton at the mouth of each bottle had disappeared, and that much of the contents of the bottles had been consumed. The circumstance having excited suspicion, a few bottles were refilled with oil, and the mouths of them secured as before. Next morning the coverings of the bottles had been removed, and some of the oil was gone. However, upon watching the room, which was done through a little window, some rats were seen to get into the box, and insert their tails into the necks of the bottles, and then withdrawing them, they licked off the oil which adhered to them.[217] Lastly, Rodwell gives another case similar in all essential respects, save that the rat licked its own tail instead of presenting it to a companion. The experiment whereby I tested the truth of these statements was a very simple one. I recorded it in 'Nature' as follows:-- It is, I believe, pretty generally supposed that rats and mice use their tails for feeding purposes when the food to be eaten is contained in vessels too narrow to admit the entire body of the animal. I am not aware, however, that the truth of this supposition has ever been actually tested by any trustworthy person, and so think the following simple experiments are worth publishing. Having obtained a couple of tall-shaped preserve bottles with rather short and narrow necks, I filled them to within three inches of the top with red currant jelly which had only half stiffened. I covered the bottles with bladder in the ordinary way, and then stood them in a place infested by rats. Next morning the bladder covering each of the bottles had a small hole gnawed through it, and the level of the jelly was reduced in both bottles to the same extent. Now, as this extent corresponded to about the length of a rat's tail if inserted at the hole in the bladder, and as this hole was not much more than just large enough to admit the root of this organ, I do not see that any further evidence is required to prove the manner in which the rats obtained the jelly, viz., by repeatedly introducing their tails into the viscid matter, and as repeatedly licking them clean. However, to put the question beyond doubt, I refilled the bottles to the extent of half an inch above the jelly level left by the rats, and having placed a circle of moist paper upon each of the jelly surfaces, covered the bottles with bladder as before. I now left the bottles in a place where there were no rats or mice, until a good crop of mould had grown upon one of the moistened pieces of paper. The bottle containing this crop of mould I then transferred to the place where the rats were numerous. Next morning the bladder had again been eaten through at one edge, and upon the mould there were numerous and distinct tracings of the rats' tails, resembling marks made with the top of a pen-holder. These tracings were evidently caused by the animals sweeping their tails about in a fruitless endeavour to find a hole in the circle of paper which covered the jelly. With regard to mice, the Rev. W. North, rector of Ashdown, in Essex, placed a pot of honey in a closet, in which a quantity of plaster rubbish had been left by builders. The mice piled up the plaster in the form of a heap against the sides of the pot, in order to constitute an inclined plane whereby to reach the rim. A quantity of the rubbish had also been thrown into the pot, with the effect of raising the level of the honey that remained to near the rim of the pot; but, of course, the latter fact may have been due to accident, and not to design.[218] This is a case in which mal-observation does not seem to have been likely. Powelsen, a writer on Iceland, has related an account of the intelligence displayed by the mice of that country, which has given rise to a difference of competent opinion, and which perhaps can hardly yet be said to have been definitely settled. What Powelsen said is that the mice collect in parties of from six to ten, select a flat piece of dried cow-dung, pile berries or other food upon it, then with united strength drag it to the edge of any stream they wish to cross, launch it, embark, and range themselves round the central heap of provisions with their heads joined over it, and their tails hanging in the water, perhaps serving as rudders. Pennant afterwards gave credit to this account, observing that in a country where berries were scarce, the mice were compelled to cross streams for distant forages.[219] Dr. Hooker, however, in his 'Tour in Iceland,' concludes that the account is a pure fabrication. Dr. Henderson, therefore, determined on trying to arrive at the truth of the matter, with the following result:--'I made a point of inquiring of different individuals as to the reality of the account, and am happy in being able to say that it is now established as an important fact in natural history by the testimony of two eye-witnesses of unquestionable veracity, the clergyman of Briamslaek, and Madame Benedictson of Stickesholm, both of whom assured me that they had seen the expedition performed repeatedly. Madame Benedictson, in particular, recollected having spent a whole afternoon, in her younger days, at the margin of a small lake on which these skilful navigators had embarked, and amusing herself and her companions by driving them away from the sides of the lake as they approached them. I was also informed that they make use of dried mushrooms as sacks, in which they convey their provisions to the river, and thence to their homes.'[220] Before leaving the mice and rats I may say a few words upon certain mouse- and rat-like animals which scarcely require a separate section for their consideration. Of the harvesting mouse Gilbert White says:-- One of their nests I procured this autumn, most artificially plaited and composed of blades of wheat, perfectly round, and about the size of a cricket-ball, with the aperture so ingeniously closed that there was no discovering to what part it belonged. It was so compact and well filled that it would roll across the table without being discomposed, though it contained eight little mice that were naked and blind. As the nest was perfectly full, how could the dam come at her litter respectively, so as to administer a teat to each? Perhaps she opens different places for that purpose, adjusting them again when the business is over; but she could not possibly be contained herself in the ball with the young ones, which, moreover, would be daily increasing in size. This wonderful procreant cradle, an elegant instance of the efforts of instinct, was found in a wheat field, suspended on the head of a thistle. Pallas has described the provident habits of the so-called 'rat-hare' (_Lagomys_), which lays up a store of grass, or rather hay, for winter consumption. These animals, which occur in the Altai Mountains, live in holes or crevices of rock. About the middle of the month of August they collect grass, and spread it out to dry into hay. In September they form heaps or stacks of the hay, which may be as much as six feet high, and eight feet in diameter. It is stored in their chosen hole or crevice, protected from the rain. The following is quoted from Thompson's 'Passions of Animals,' pp. 235-6:-- The life of the harvester rat is divided between eating and fighting. It seems to have no other passion than that of rage, which induces it to attack every animal that comes in its way, without in the least attending to the superior strength of its enemy. Ignorant of the art of saving itself by flight, rather than yield, it will allow itself to be beaten to pieces with a stick. If it seizes a man's hand, it must be killed before it will quit its hold. The magnitude of the horse terrifies it as little as the address of the dog, which last is fond of hunting it. When a harvester perceives a dog at a distance, it begins by emptying its cheek-pouches, if they happen to be filled with grain; it then blows them up so prodigiously, that the size of the head and neck greatly exceeds that of the rest of the body. It rears itself upon its hind legs, and thus darts upon the enemy. If it catches hold, it never quits it but with the loss of its life; but the dog generally seizes it behind, and strangles it. This ferocious disposition prevents it from being at peace with any animal whatever. It even makes war against its own species. When two harvesters meet, they never fail to attack each other, and the stronger always devours the weaker. A combat between a male and a female commonly lasts longer than between two males. They begin by pursuing and biting each other, then each of them retires aside, as if to take breath. After a short interval they renew the combat, and continue to fight till one of them falls. The vanquished uniformly serves as a repast to the conqueror. If we contrast the fearless disposition of the harvester with the timidity of the hare or rabbit, we observe that in respect of emotions, no less than in that of intelligence, the order Rodentia comprises the utmost extremes. The so-called 'prairie-dog' is a kind of small rodent, which makes burrows in the ground, and a slight elevation above it. The animals being social in their habits, their warrens are called 'dog-towns.' Prof. Jillson, Ph.D., kept a pair in confinement (see 'American Naturalist,' vol. v., pp. 24-29), and found them to be intelligent and highly affectionate animals. These burrows he found to contain a 'granary,' or chambers set apart for the reception of stored food. With regard to the association said to exist between this animal and the owl and rattle-snake, Prof. Jillson says, 'I have seen many dog-towns, with owls and dogs standing on contiguous, and in some cases on the same mound, but never saw a snake in the vicinity.' The popular notion that the owl acts the part of sentry to the dog requires, to say the least, confirmation. _Beaver._ Most remarkable among rodents for instinct and intelligence unquestionably stands the beaver. Indeed, there is no animal--not even excepting the ants and bees--where instinct has risen to a higher level of far-reaching adaptation to certain constant conditions of environment, or where faculties, undoubtedly instinctive, are more puzzlingly wrought up with faculties no less undoubtedly intelligent. So much is this the case that, as we shall presently see, it is really impossible by the closest study of the psychology of this animal to distinguish the web of instinct from the woof of intelligence; the two principles seem here to have been so intimately woven together, that in the result, as expressed by certain particular actions, it cannot be determined how much we are to attribute to mechanical impulse, and how much to reasoned purpose. Fortunately, the doubt that for many years shrouded the facts has been dispelled by the conscientious and laborious observations of the late Mr. Lewis H. Morgan,[221] whose work throughout displays the judicious accuracy of a scientific mind. As this is much the most trustworthy, as well as the most exhaustive essay upon the subject, I shall mainly rely upon it for my statement of facts, and while presenting these I shall endeavour to point out the psychological explanation, or difficulty of explanation, to which they are severally open. The beaver is a social animal, the male living with his single female and progeny in a separate burrow or 'lodge.' Several of these lodges, however, are usually built close together, so as to form a beaver colony. The young quit the lodge of their parents when they enter upon the summer of their third year, seek mates, and establish new lodges for themselves. As each litter numbers three or four, and breeding is annual, it follows that a beaver lodge never or rarely contains more than twelve individuals, while the number usually ranges from four to eight. Every season, and particularly when a district becomes overstocked, some of the beavers migrate. The Indians say that in their local migrations the old beavers go up stream, and the young down; assigning as a reason that in the struggle for existence greater advantages are afforded near the source than lower down a stream, and therefore that the old beavers appropriate the former. But although lodges may thus be vacated by the old beavers, they are not left tenantless; their lease is, as it were, transferred to another beaver couple. This process of transference of ownership goes on from generation to generation, so that the same lodges are continuously occupied for centuries. These lodges, which are always constructed in or near water, are of three kinds--the island, bank, and lake lodge. The first are formed on small islands which may happen to occur in the ponds made by the beaver-dams. The floor of the lodge is a few inches above the level of the water, and into it there open two, or sometimes more entrances: These are made with great skill, and in the most artistic manner. One is straight, or as nearly so as possible, with its floor, which is of course under water, an inclined plane, rising gradually from the bottom of the pond into the chamber; while the other is abrupt in its descent, and often sinuous in its course. The first we shall call the 'wood entrance,' from its evident design to facilitate the admission into the chamber of their wood cuttings, upon which they subsist during the season of winter. These cuttings, as will elsewhere be shown, are of such size and length that such an entrance is absolutely necessary for their free admission into the lodge. The other, which we shall call the 'beaver entrance,' is the ordinary run-way for their exit and return. It is usually abrupt, and often winding. In the lodge under consideration, the wood entrance descended from the outer run of the chamber entrance about ten feet to the bottom of the pond in a straight line, and upon an inclined plane; while the other, emerging from the line of the chamber at the side, descended quite abruptly to the bottom of the moat or trench, through which the beavers must pass, in open water, out into the pond. Both entrances were rudely arched, with a roof of interlaced sticks filled in with mud intermixed with vegetable fibre, and were extended to the bottom of the pond or trench, with the exception of the opening at their ends. At the places where they were constructed through the floor they were finished with neatness and precision; the upper parts and sides forming an arch more or less regular, while the bottom and floor edges were formed with firm and compacted earth, in which small sticks were embedded. It is difficult to realise the artistic appearance of some of these entrances without actual inspection. Upon the floor of the lodge there is constructed a house of sticks, brushwood, and mud, in the form of a circular or oval chamber, the size of which varies with the age of the lodge; for by a continuous process of repair (which consists in removing the decayed sticks, &c., from the interior and working them up with new material upon the exterior) the whole lodge progressively increases in size: eventually in this way the interior chamber may attain a diameter of seven or eight feet. The 'bank lodges' are of two kinds:-- One is situated upon the bank of the stream or pond, a few feet back from its edge, and entered by an underground passage from the bed of the stream, excavated through the natural earth up into the chamber. The other is situated upon the edge of the bank, a portion of it projecting over and resting upon the bed of the channel, so as to have the floor of the chamber rest upon the bank as upon solid ground, while the external wall on the pond side projects beyond it, and is built up from the bottom of the pond. Lastly, the 'lake lodges' are constructed on the shores of lakes, which, being usually shelving and hard, require some further variation in the structure of the lodges. These, therefore, are of interest 'as illustrations of the capacity of the beavers to vary the mode of construction of their lodges in accordance with the changes of situation.' One-half or two-thirds of the lodge is in this case 'built out upon the lake for the obvious purpose of covering the entrance, as well as for its extension into deep water.' All these forms of lodge are, historically regarded, modified burrows. The beaver is a burrowing animal. Indulging this propensity, he excavates chambers underground, and constructs artificial lodges upon its surface, both of which are indispensable to his security and happiness. The lodge is but a burrow above ground, covered with an artificial roof, and possesses some advantages over the latter as a place for rearing young. There are reasons for believing that the burrow is the normal residence of the beavers, and that the lodge grew out of it, in the progress of their experience, by a process of natural suggestion. . . . In addition to the lodge, the same beavers who inhabit it have burrows in the banks surrounding the pond. They never risk their personal safety upon their lodge alone, which, being conspicuous to their enemies, is liable to attack. . . . As the entrances are always below the surface level of the pond, there are no external indications to mark the site of the burrow, except occasionally a small pile of beaver-cuttings a foot or more high. These, the trappers affirm, are purposely left there by the beavers to keep the snow loose over the ends of their burrows during winter for the admission of air. Mr. Morgan adds the very probable suggestion that this habit of piling up cuttings for purposes of ventilation may have constituted the origin of lodge-building. It is but a step from such a surface-pile of sticks to a lodge, with its chamber above ground, and the previous burrow as its entrance from the pond. A burrow accidentally broken through at its upper end, and repaired with a covering of sticks and earth, would lead to a lodge above ground, and thus inaugurate a beaver lodge out of a broken burrow. It is evidence of an important local variation of instinct, that in the Cascade Mountains the beavers live chiefly in burrows in the banks of streams, and rarely construct either lodges or dams. Dr. Newbury, in his report on the zoology of Oregon and California, says: 'We found the beavers in numbers, of which, when applied to beavers, I had no conception,' and yet 'we never saw their houses and seldom a dam.' Whether this local variation be due to a relapse from dam- and lodge-building instincts to the primitive burrowing instinct, or to a failure in the full development of the newer instinct, is immaterial. Probably, I think, looking to the high antiquity of the building instinct, and also to its being occasionally manifested by the Californian beavers, their case is to be regarded as one of relapsing instinct. In selecting the site of their lodges beavers display much sagacity and forethought. The severity of the climate in these high northern latitudes lays upon them the necessity of so locating their lodges as to be assured of water deep enough in their entrances, and also so protected in other respects, as not to freeze to the bottom;[222] otherwise they would perish with hunger, locked up in ice-bound habitations. To guard against this danger, the dam, also, must be sufficiently stable through the winter to maintain the water at a constant level; and this level, again, must be so adjusted with reference to the floor of the lodge as to enable them, at all times, to take in their cuttings from without as they are needed for food. When they leave their normal mode of life in the banks of the rivers, and undertake to live in dependence upon artificial ponds of their own formation, they are compelled to prevent the consequences of their acts at the peril of their lives. On the upper Missouri, where the banks of the river are for miles together vertical, and rising from three to eight feet above its surface, the beavers resort to the device of making what are called 'beaver slides.' These are narrow inclined planes cut into the banks at intervals, the angle of inclination being 45° to 60°, so as to form a gradual descent from a point a few feet back from the edge of the bank to the level of the river. As Mr. Morgan observes, 'they furnish another conspicuous illustration of the fact that beavers possess a free intelligence, by means of which they are enabled to adapt themselves to the circumstances in which they are placed.' Coming now to the habits of these animals in connection with the procuring and storing of food, it is first to be observed that 'the thick bark upon the trunks of large trees, and even upon those of medium size, is unsuitable for food; but the smaller limbs, the bark of which is tender and nutritious, afford the aliment which they prefer.' To obtain this food, the animals, as is well known, fell the trees by gnawing a ring round their base. Two or three nights' successive work by a pair of beavers is enough to bring down a half-grown tree, 'each family being left to the undisturbed enjoyment of the fruits of their own toil and industry.' 'When the tree begins to crackle they desist from cutting, which they afterwards continue with caution until it begins to fall, when they plunge into the pond usually, and wait concealed for a time, as if fearful that the cracking noise of the tree-fall might attract some enemy to the place.' It is of much interest that the beavers when thus felling trees know how to regulate the direction of the fall; by gnawing chiefly on the side of the trunk remote from the water, they make the tree fall towards the water, with the obvious purpose of saving as much as possible the labour of subsequent transport. For as soon as a tree is down, the next work is to cut off the branches, or such as are from two to six inches in diameter; and then, when they have been cleared of their twigs, to divide them into lengths sufficient to admit of the beavers transporting them to their lodges. The cutting into lengths is effected by making a number of semi-sections through the branch at more or less equal distances as it lies upon the ground, and then turning the branch half round and continuing the sections from the opposite side. 'To cut it (the branch) entirely through from the upper side would require an incision of such width as to involve a loss of labour.' The thicker the branch, the closer together are the sections made, and consequently the shorter are the resulting portions--the reason, of course, being that the strength of the animal would not be sufficient to transport a thick piece of timber of the same length as a thin piece which it is only just able to manage. In moving cuttings of this description they are quite ingenious. They shove and roll them with their hips, using also their legs and tails as levers, moving sideways in the act. In this way they move the larger pieces from the more or less elevated ground on which the deciduous trees are found, over the uneven but generally descending surface to the pond. . . . After one of these cuttings has been transported to the water, a beaver, placing one end of it under his throat, pushes it before him to the place where it is to be sunk. The sinking is no doubt partly effected by mere soaking; but there is also some evidence to show that the beavers have a method of anchoring down their supplies. Thus they have been observed towing pieces of brush to their lodges, and then, while holding the large end in their mouths, 'going down with it to the bottom, apparently to fix it in the mud bottom of the pond.' A brush-heap being thus formed, the cuttings from the felled trees are stuck through the brushwork, without which 'protection they would be liable to be floated off by the strong currents, and thus be lost to the beavers at the time when their lives might depend upon their safe custody.' Lastly, as a method whereby the beavers can save themselves the trouble of cutting, transporting, and anchoring all at the same time, they are prone, when circumstances permit, to fell a tree growing near enough to their pond to admit of its branches being submerged in the water. The animals then well know that the branches and young shoots will remain preserved throughout the winter without any further trouble from them. But of course the supply of trees thus growing conveniently near a beaver-pond is too limited to last long. We have next to consider the most wonderful, and I think the most psychologically puzzling structures that are presented as the works of any animal; I mean, of course, the dams and canals. The object of the dam is that of forming an artificial pond, the use of which is to afford refuge to the animals as well as water connection with their lodges. Therefore the level of the pond must in all cases be higher than that of the lodge- and burrow-entrances, and it is usually maintained two or three feet above them. As the dam is not an absolute necessity to the beaver for the maintenance of his life--his normal habitation being rather natural ponds and rivers, and the burrows in their banks--it is, in itself considered, a remarkable fact that he should have voluntarily transferred himself, by means of dams and ponds of his own construction, from a natural to an artificial mode of life. In external appearance there are two distinct kinds of dams, although all are constructed on the same principle. One, the more common, is the 'stick dam,' which is composed of interlaced stick and pole work upon the lower face, with an embankment of earth mixed with the same materials on the upper face. The other is the 'solid-bank dam,' which differs from the former in having much more brush and mud worked into its construction, especially upon its surfaces; the result being that the whole formation looks like a solid bank of earth. In the first kind of dam the surplus water percolates through the structure along its entire length; but in the second kind the discharge takes place through a single furrow in the crest, which, remarkable though the fact unquestionably is, the beavers intentionally form for this purpose. In the construction of the dam, stones are used here and there to give down-weight and solidity. These stones weigh from one to six pounds, and are carried by the beavers in the same way as they carry their mud--namely, by walking on their hind legs while holding their burden against the chest with their fore-paws. The solid dams are much firmer in their consistence than the stick dams; for while a horse might walk across the former, the weight of a man would be too great to be sustained by the latter. Each kind of dam is adapted to the locality in which it is built, the difference between the two kinds being due to the following cause. As a stream gains water and force in its descent, it develops banks, and also a broader and deeper channel. These banks assume a vertical form in the level areas where the soil is alluvial. Thus, an open stick-work dam could not in such places be led off from either bank; and even if it could, the force and depth of the stream would carry it away. Therefore in such places the beavers build their solid-bank dams, while in shallow and comparatively sluggish waters they content themselves with the smaller amount of labour involved in the building of a stick dam. To give some idea of the proportions of a dam, I shall epitomise a number of measurements given by Mr. Morgan:-- Feet Height of structure from base line 2 to 6 Difference in depth of water above and below dam 4 to 5 Width of base or section 6 to 18 Length of slope, lower face 6 to 13 Length of slope, upper face 4 to 8 The only other measurement is that of length, and this, of course, varies with the width of water to be spanned. Where this width is considerable the length of a dam may be prodigious, as the following quotation will show:-- Some of the dams in this region are not less remarkable for their prodigious length, a statement of which, in fact, would scarcely be credited unless verified by actual measurement. The largest one yet mentioned measures 260 feet, but there are dams 400 and even 500 feet long. There is a dam in two sections, situated upon a tributary of the main branch of the Esconauba River, about a mile and a half north-west of the Washington Main. One section measures 110 and the other 400 feet, with an interval of natural bank, worked here and there, of 1,000 feet. A solid-bank dam, 20 feet in length, was first constructed across the channel of the stream, from bank to bank, with the usual opening for the surplus water, five feet wide. As the water rose and overflowed the bank on the left side, the dam was extended for 90 feet, until it reached ground high enough to confine the pond. This natural bank extended up the stream, and nearly parallel with it, for 1,000 feet, where the ground again subsided, and allowed the water in the upper part of the pond to flow out and around into the channel of the stream below the dam. To meet this emergency a second dam, 420 feet long, was constructed. For the greater part of its length it is low, but in some places it is two and a half and three feet high, and constructed of stick-work on the land, and with an earth embankment on its outer face. In effect, therefore, it is one structure 1,530 feet in length, of which 530 feet in two sections is artificial, and the remainder natural bank, but worked here and there where depressions in the ground required raising by artificial means. It is truly an astonishing fact that animals should engage in such vast architectural labours with what appears to be the deliberate purpose of securing, by such very artificial means, the special benefits that arise from their high engineering skill. So astonishing, indeed, does this fact appear, that as sober-minded interpreters of fact we would fain look for some explanation which would not necessitate the inference that these actions are due to any intelligent appreciation, either of the benefits that arise from the labour, or of the hydrostatic principles to which this labour so clearly refers. Yet the more closely we look into the subject, the more impossible do we find it to account for the facts by any such easy method. Thus it seems perfectly certain that the beavers, properly and strictly speaking, understand the use of their dams in maintaining a certain level of water. For it is unquestionable that in the solid-bank dams, as already observed, a regular opening or trough is cut at one part of its crest to provide for the overflow; and now it has to be added that this opening is purposely widened or narrowed with reference to the amount of water in the stream at different times, so as to ensure the maintenance of a constant level in the pond. Similarly, though by different means, the same end is secured in the case of the stick dams. For 'in most of these dams the rapidity or slowness with which the surplus water is discharged is undoubtedly regulated by the beavers; otherwise the level of the pond would continually vary. There must be a constant tendency to enlarge the orifices through which the water passes,' when the stream is small, and _vice versâ_; otherwise the lodges would be either inundated or have their sub-aquatic entrances exposed.[223] Moreover, a very little consideration is enough to show that in stick dams the tendency to increased leakage from the effects of percolation, and to a settling down of the dam as its materials decay from underneath, must demand unceasing vigilance and care to avert the consequences. And accordingly it is found that 'in the fall of the year a new supply of materials is placed upon the lower face of these dams to compensate this waste from decay.' Now, it is obvious that we have here presented a continual variation of conditions, imposed by continual variations in the amount of water coming down; and it is a matter of observation that these variations are met by the beavers in the only way that they can be met--namely, by regulating the amount of flow taking place through the dams. It will therefore be seen that we have here to consider a totally different case from that of the operation of pure instinct, however wonderful such operation may be. For the adaptations of pure instinct only have reference to conditions that are unchanging; so that if in this case we suppose pure instinct to account for all the facts, we must greatly modify our ideas of what pure instinct is taken to mean. Thus we must suppose that when the beavers find the level of their ponds rising or falling, the discomfort which they experience acts as a stimulus to cause them, without intelligent purpose, either to widen or to narrow the orifices in their dams as the case may be. And not only so, but the conditions of stimulation and response must be so nicely balanced that the animals widen or narrow these orifices with a more or less precise _quantitative_ reference to the degree of discomfort, actual or prospective, which they experience. Now it seems to me that even thus far it is an extremely difficult thing to believe that the mechanism of pure or wholly unintelligent instinct could admit of sufficient refinement to meet so complex a case of compensating adaptation; and, as we shall immediately see, this difficulty increases still more as we contemplate additional facts relating to these structures. Thus it sometimes happens that in large dams the pressure of the water which they keep back is so considerable that their stability is endangered. In such cases it has been observed by Mr. Morgan that, at a short distance beneath the main dam, another and lower dam is thrown across the stream, with the result of forming a shallow pond between the two. This pond is-- Of no apparent use for beaver occupation, but yet subserving the important purpose of setting back water to the depth of twelve or fifteen inches; . . . and the small dam, by maintaining the water a foot deep below the great dam, diminishes to this extent the difference in level above and below, and neutralises to the same extent the pressure of the water in the pond above against the main structure. 'Whether,' adds Mr. Morgan, with commendable caution, 'the lower dam was constructed with this motive and for this object, or is explainable on some other hypothesis, I shall not venture an opinion.' But as, he further adds, 'I have also found the same precise work repeated below other large dams,' we are led to conclude that their correlation cannot at least be accidental; and as it is of so definite a character, there really seems no 'other hypothesis' open to us than that of its having reference to the stability of the main dam. Yet, if this is the case, it becomes in my opinion simply impossible to attribute the fact to the operation of pure instinct. Again, Mr. Morgan observed one case in which, higher up stream than the main dam, there was constructed another dam, ninety-three feet long, and two and a half feet high at the centre:-- A dam at this point is apparently of no conceivable use to improve the lake for beaver occupation. It has one feature, also, in which it differs from other dams except those upon lake outlets, and that consists in its elevation, at all points, of about two feet above the level of the lake at ordinary stages of the water. In all other dams, except those upon lake outlets, and in most of the latter, the water stands quite near their crests, while in the one under consideration it stood about two feet below it. This fact suggests at least the inference, although it may have but little of probability to sustain it, that it was constructed with special reference to sudden rises of the lake in times of freshet, and that it was designed to hold this surplus water until it could be gradually discharged through the dam into the great space below. It would at least subserve this purpose very efficiently, and thus protect the dam below it from the effects of freshets. To ascribe the origin of this dam to such motives of intelligence is to invest this animal with a higher degree of sagacity than we have probable reason to concede to him, and yet it is proper to mention the relation in which these dams stand to each other--whether that relation is regarded as accidental or intentional. As before, we have here to commend the caution displayed by the closing sentence; but, as useless dams are not found in other places, the inference clearly is that the dam in question, both as regards its exceptional position and exceptional height, can only be explained by supposing the structure to have been designed for the use which it unquestionably served. That is to say, if we do not entertain this explanation, there is no other to be suggested; and although in any ordinary or occasional instance of the display of animal intelligence in such a degree as this I should not hesitate to attribute the facts to accident, in the case of the beaver there are such a multitude of constantly recurring facts, all and only referable to a practical though not less extraordinary appreciation of hydrostatic principles, that the hypothesis of accident must here, I think, be laid aside. To substantiate this statement I shall detail the facts concerning the beaver-canals. As Mr. Morgan, who first discovered and described these astonishing structures, observes,-- Remarkable as the dam may still be considered, from its structure and objects, it scarcely surpasses, if it may be said to equal, these water-ways, here called canals, which are excavated through the low lands bordering their ponds for the purpose of reaching the hard wood, and for affording a channel for its transportation to their lodges. To conceive and execute such a design presupposes a more complicated and extended process of reasoning than that required for the construction of a dam, and, although a much simpler work to perform when the thought was fully developed, it was far less to have been expected from a mute animal. These canals are developed in this way. One of the principal objects served by a dam thrown across a small stream, is that of flooding the low ground so as to obtain water connection with the first high ground upon which hard wood is to be found, such connection being convenient, or even necessary, for the purposes of transport. Where the pond fails to accomplish this fully, and also where the banks are defined and mark the limits of the pond, the deficiency is supplied by the canals in question. On descending surfaces, as has elsewhere been stated, beavers roll and drag their short cuttings down into the ponds. But where the ground is low it is generally so uneven and rough as to render it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the beavers to move them for any considerable distance by physical force. Hence the canal for floating them across the intervening level ground to the pond. The necessity for it is so apparent as to diminish our astonishment at its construction; and yet that the beaver should devise a canal to surmount this difficulty is not the less remarkable. The canals, which are made by excavation, are usually from three to five feet wide, three feet deep, and perhaps hundreds of feet long--the length of course depending on the distance between the lodge and the wood supply. They are cut in the form of trenches, having perpendicular sides and abrupt ends. All roots of trees, under-brush, &c., are cleared away in their course, so as to afford an unobstructed passage. These canals are of such frequent occurrence that it is impossible to attribute them to accident; they are evidently made, at the cost of much labour, with the deliberate purpose of putting them to the use for which they are designed. In executing this purpose there is sometimes displayed a depth of engineering forethought over details of structure required by the circumstances of special localities, which is even more astonishing than the execution of the general idea. Thus it not unfrequently happens that when a canal has been run for a certain distance, a rise in the level of the ground renders it impossible to continue the structure further from the water supply or lodge-pond, without either incurring a great amount of labour in digging the canal with progressively deepening sides, or leaving the trench empty of water, and so useless. In such cases the beavers resort to various expedients, according to the nature of the ground. [Illustration] Mr. Morgan gives an interesting sketch of one such case, where the canal is excavated through low ground for a distance of 450 feet, when it reaches the first rise of ground, and throughout this distance, being level with the pond, it is supplied with water from this source. Where the rise begins a dam is made, and the canal is then continued for 25 feet at a level of one foot higher than before. This higher level reach is supplied with water collected from still higher levels by another dam, extending for 75 feet upon one side of the canal and 25 feet on the other, in the form of a crescent with its concavity directed towards the highlands, so as to collect all the drainage water, and concentrate it into the second reach of the canal. Beyond this larger dam there is another abrupt rise of a foot, and the canal is there continued for 47 feet more, where a third dam is built resembling the second in construction, only having a still wider span on either side of the canal (142 feet), so as to catch a still larger quantity of drainage water to supply the third or uppermost reach of the canal. We have, therefore, here presented, not only a perfect application of the principle of 'locks,' which are used in canals of human construction, but also the principle of collecting water to supply the reaches situated on the slope by means of elaborately constructed dams of wide extent, and of the best form for the purpose. There is thus shown much too great a concurrence of engineering principles to the attainment of one object to admit of our attributing the facts to accident. On this structure Mr. Morgan observes:-- The crests of these dams where they cross the canals are depressed, or worn down, in the centre, by the constant passage of beavers over them while going to and fro and dragging their cuttings. This canal with its adjuncts of dams and its manifest objects is a remarkable work, transcending very much the ordinary estimates of the intelligence of the beaver. It served to bring the occupants of the pond into easy connection by water with the trees that supplied them with food, as well as to relieve them from the tedious and perhaps impossible task of transporting their cuttings 500 feet over uneven ground unassisted by any descent. Again, in another case, also sketched by Mr. Morgan, another device is resorted to, and one which, having reference to the particular circumstances of the case, is the best that could have been adopted. Here the canal, proceeding from the pond to the woodland 150 feet distant, encounters at the woodland a rising slope covered with hard wood. Thereupon the canal bifurcates, and the two diverging branches or prongs are carried in opposite directions along the base of the woodland rise, one for a distance of 100 and the other for 115 feet. The level being throughout the same, the water from the pond supplies the two branch-canals as well as the trunk. Both branches end with abrupt vertical faces. Now the object of these branches is sufficiently apparent:-- After the rising ground, and with it the hard wood trees, were reached at the point where it branches, there was no very urgent necessity for the branches. But their construction along the base of the high ground gave them a frontage upon the canal of 215 feet of hard-wood lands, thus affording to them, along this extended line, the great advantages of water transportation for their cuttings. One more proof of engineering purpose in the construction of canals will be sufficient to place beyond all question the fact that beavers form these canals, as they form their dams, with a far-seeing perception of the suitability of highly artificial means to the attainment of particular ends, under a variety of special circumstances. Mr. Morgan observed one or two instances where the land included in a wind or loop of a river was cut through by a beaver canal across the narrowest part, 'apparently to shorten the distance in going up and down by water.' Judging from the figures which he gives, drawn to measurement, there can be no question that such was the object; and as these structures may be one or two hundred feet in length, and represent the laborious excavation of some 1,500 cubic feet of soil, the animals must be actuated by the most vivid conception of the subsequent saving in labour that is to be effected by making an artificial communication across the chord of an arc, instead of always going round the natural curve of a stream. Regarding now together all these facts relating to the psychology of the beaver, it must be confessed, as I said at the outset, that we have presented to us a problem perhaps the most difficult of any that we have to encounter in the whole range of animal intelligence. On the one hand, it seems incredible that the beaver should attain to such a level of abstract thought as would be implied by his forming his various structures with the calculated purpose of achieving the ends which they undoubtedly subserve. On the other hand, as we have seen, it seems little less than impossible that the formation of these structures can be due to instinct. Yet one or other hypothesis, either singly or in combination, must be resorted to. The case, it will be observed, thus differs from that of the more wonderful performances of instinct elsewhere, such as that of ants and bees, inasmuch as the performances here are so complex and varied, as well as having reference to physical principles of a much more recondite or less observable nature. The case from its theoretical side being thus one of much difficulty, I think it will be better to postpone its discussion till in 'Mental Evolution' I come to treat of the whole subject of instinct in relation to intelligence. I must not, however, conclude this epitome of the facts without alluding to the only other publication on the habits of the beaver which is of distinctly scientific value. This is a short but interesting paper by Prof. Alexander Agassiz.[224] He says that the largest dam he has himself seen measured 650 feet in length, and 3-1/2 feet in height, with a small number of lodges in the vicinity of the pond. The number of lodges is always thus very small in proportion to the size of the dam, the greatest number of lodges that he has observed upon one pond being five. It is evident from this that beavers are not really gregarious in their habits, and that their dams and canals 'are the work of a comparatively small number of animals; but to make up for the numbers the work of succeeding inhabitants of any one pond must have been carried on for centuries to accomplish the gigantic results we find in some localities.' In one case Prof. Agassiz obtained what may be termed geological evidence of the truth of an opinion advanced by Mr. Morgan, that beaver-works may be hundreds if not thousands of years in course of continuous formation. For the purpose of obtaining a secure foundation for a mill dam erected above a beaver dam, it was necessary to clear away the soil from the bottom of the beaver pond. This soil was found to be a peat bog. A trench was dug into the peat 12 feet wide by 1,200 feet long, and 9 feet deep; all the way along this trench old stumps of trees were found at various depths, some still bearing marks of having been gnawed by beavers' teeth. Agassiz calculated the growth of the bog as about a foot per century, so that here we have tolerably accurate evidence of an existing beaver dam being somewhere about a thousand years old. The gradual growth of these enormous dams has the effect of greatly altering the configuration of the country where they occur. By taking levels from dams towards the sources of streams on which they occur, Agassiz was able ideally to reconstruct the original landscape before the growth of the dams, and he found that, 'from the nature of the surrounding country, the open spaces now joining the beaver ponds--the beaver meadows where the trees are scanty or small--must at one time have been all covered with forests.' At first the beavers 'began to clear the forest just in the immediate vicinity of the dams, extending in every direction, first up the stream as far as the nature of the creek would allow, and then laterally by means of their canals, as far as the level of the ground would allow, thus little by little clearing a larger area according to the time they have occupied any particular place,' In this way beavers may change the whole aspect of large tracts of country, covering with water a great extent of ground which was once thickly wooded. FOOTNOTES: [209] It is particularly remarkable that if under these circumstances a rabbit bolts and, seeing the sportsman, doubles back into its burrow, being then certain that the sportsman is waiting, it will usually allow itself to be slowly and painfully killed by the ferret rather than bolt a second time. This is remarkable because it proves the strength of an abiding image or idea in the mind of the animal. [210] See Watson's _Reasoning Power in Animals_, and _Quarterly Review_, c. i., p. 135. [211] See especially Jesse, _Gleanings_, &c., iii., p. 206; and _Quarterly Review_, c. i., p. 135. [212] Thompson, _Passions of Animals_, p. 368. [213] _The Rat, its Natural History_, p. 102. [214] Mrs. Lee, _Anecdotes of Animals_, p. 264. [215] Jesse, _Gleanings_, &c., ii., p. 281. [216] _Reasoning Power in Animals_, p. 293. [217] _Loc. cit._ [218] Jesse, _Gleanings_, iii., p. 176. [219] _Introduction to Arctic Zoology_, p 70. [220] Dr. Henderson, _Journal of a Residence in Iceland in 1814 and 1815_, vol. ii., p. 187. [221] _The American Beaver and his Works_ (Lippincott & Co. 1868). [222] To obviate this possibility, they often select as their site a place where a spring happens to rise in the bottom of the lake or pond. [223] In times of considerable 'freshet' the former case sometimes occurs; the beavers not being able to provide for a very considerable overflow through their dams, the latter become then wholly submerged. When again exposed, the animals take great pains in repairing the injuries sustained. [224] Note on Beaver Dams (_Proc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist._, 1869, p. 101, _et seq._). CHAPTER XIII. ELEPHANT. THE intelligence of the elephant is no doubt considerable, although there is equally little doubt that it is generally exaggerated. Some of the most notorious instances of the display of remarkable sagacity by this animal are probably fabulous, or at least are not sufficiently corroborated to justify belief. Such, for instance, is the celebrated story told by Pliny with all the assurance of a '_certum est_,'[225] and repeated by Plutarch,[226] of the elephant, who having been beaten for not dancing properly, was afterwards found practising his steps alone in the light of the moon. Although this story cannot, in the absence of corroboration, be accepted as fact, we ought to remember, in connection with it, that many talking and piping birds unquestionably practise in solitude the accomplishments which they desire to learn. Quitting, however, the enormous multitude of anecdotes, more or less doubtful, and which may or may not be true, I shall select a few well-authenticated instances of the display of elephant intelligence. _Memory._ As regards memory, several cases are on record of tamed elephants having become wild, and, on again being captured after many years, returning to all their old habits under domestication. Mr. Corse publishes in the 'Philosophical Transactions'[227] an instance which came under his own notice. He saw an elephant, which was carrying baggage, take fright at the smell of a tiger and run off. Eighteen months afterwards this elephant was recognised by its keepers among a herd of wild companions, which had been captured and were confined in an enclosure. But when anyone approached the animal he struck out with his trunk, and seemed as fierce as any of the wild herd. An old hunter then mounted a tame elephant, went up to the feral one, seized his ear and ordered him to lie down. Immediately the force of old associations broke through all opposition, the word of command was obeyed, and the elephant while lying down gave a certain peculiar squeak which he had been known to utter in former days. The same author gives another and more interesting account of an elephant which, after having been for only two years tamed, ran wild for fifteen years, and on being then recaptured, remembered in all details the words of command. This, with several other well-authenticated facts of the same kind,[228] shows that the elephant certainly has an exceedingly tenacious memory, rendering credible the statement of Pliny, that in their more advanced age these animals recognise men who were their drivers when young.[229] _Emotions._ Concerning emotions, the elephant seems to be usually actuated by the most magnanimous of feelings. Even his proverbial vindictiveness appears only to be excited under a sense of remembered injustice. The universally known story of the tailor and the elephant doubtless had a foundation in fact, for there are several authentic cases on record of elephants resenting injuries in precisely the same way;[230] and Captain Shipp[231] personally tested the matter by giving to an elephant a sandwich of bread, butter, and cayenne pepper. He then waited for six weeks before again visiting the animal, when he went into the stable and began to fondle the elephant as he had previously been accustomed to do. For a time no resentment was shown, so that the Captain began to think that the experiment had failed; but at last, watching for an opportunity, the elephant filled his trunk with dirty water, and drenched the Captain from head to foot. Griffiths says that at the siege of Bhurtpore, in 1805, the British army had been a long time before the city, and, owing to the hot dry winds, the ponds and tanks had dried up. There used therefore to be no little struggle for priority in procuring water at one of the large wells which still contained water:-- On one occasion two elephant-drivers, each with his elephant, the one remarkably large and strong, and the other comparatively small and weak, were at the well together; the small elephant had been provided by his master with a bucket for the occasion, which he carried on the end of his proboscis, but the larger animal, being destitute of this necessary vessel, either spontaneously, or by the desire of his keeper, seized the bucket, and easily wrested it from his less powerful fellow-servant; the latter was too sensible of his inferiority openly to resent the insult, though it is obvious that he felt it; but great squabbling and abuse ensued between the keepers. At length the weaker animal, watching the opportunity when the other was standing with his side to the well, retired backwards a few paces in a very quiet and unsuspicious manner, and then, rushing forward with all his might, drove his head against the side of the other, and fairly pushed him into the well. Great trouble was experienced in extricating this elephant from the well--a task which would, indeed, have been impossible but for the intelligence of the animal itself. For when a number of fascines, which had been employed by the army in conducting the siege, were thrown down the well, the elephant showed sagacity enough to arrange them with his trunk so as to construct a continuously rising platform, by which he gradually raised himself to a level with the ground. Allied to vindictiveness for small injuries is revenge for large ones, and this is often shown in a terrible manner by wounded elephants. For instance, Sir E. Tennent writes:-- Some years ago an elephant which had been wounded by a native, near Hambangtotte, pursued the man into the town, followed him along the street, trampled him to death in the bazaar before a crowd of terrified spectators, and succeeded in making good its retreat to the jungle. Many other cases of vindictiveness, more or less well authenticated, may be found mentioned by Broderip,[232] Bingley,[233] Mrs. Lee,[234] Swainson,[235] and Watson.[236] This trait of emotional character seems to be more generally present in the elephant than in any other animal, except perhaps the monkey. Another emotion strongly developed in the elephant is sympathy. Numberless examples on this head might be adduced, but one or two may suffice. Bishop Huber saw an old elephant fall down from weakness, and another elephant was brought to assist the fallen one to rise. Huber says he was much struck with the almost human expression of surprise, alarm, and sympathy manifested by the second elephant on witnessing the condition of the first. A chain was fastened round the neck and body of the sick animal, which the other was directed to pull. For a minute or two the healthy elephant pulled strongly; but on the first groan given by its distressed companion it stopped abruptly, 'turned fiercely round with a loud roar, and with trunk and fore-feet began to loosen the chain from the neck.' Again, Sir E. Tennent says:-- The devotion and loyalty which the herd evince to their leader are very remarkable. This is more readily seen in the case of a tusker than any other, because in a herd he is generally the object of the keenest pursuit by the hunters. On such occasions the others do their utmost to protect him from danger: when driven to extremity they place their leader in the centre and crowd so eagerly in front of him that the sportsmen have to shoot a number which they might otherwise have spared. In one instance a tusker, which was badly wounded by Major Rogers, was promptly surrounded by his companions, who supported him between their shoulders, and actually succeeded in covering his retreat to the forest. Lastly, allusion may be made to the celebrated observation of M. le Baron de Lauriston, who was at Laknaor during an epidemic which stretched a number of natives sick and dying upon the road. The Nabob riding his elephant over the road was careless whether or not the animal crushed the men and women to death, but not so the elephant, which took great pains to pick his steps among the people so as not to injure them. The following account of emotion and sagacity is quoted from the Rev. Julius Young's Memoirs of his father, Mr. Charles Young, the actor. The animal mentioned is the one that subsequently attained such widespread notoriety at Exeter Change, not only on account of his immense size, but still more because of his cruel death:-- In July 1810, the largest elephant ever seen in England was advertised as 'just arrived.' As soon as Henry Harris, the manager of Covent Garden Theatre, heard of it, he determined, if possible, to obtain it; for it struck him that if it were to be introduced into the new pantomime of 'Harlequin Padmenaba,' which he was about to produce at great cost, it would add greatly to its attraction. Under this impression, and before the proprietor of Exeter Change had seen it, he purchased it for the sum of 900 guineas. Mrs. Henry Johnston was to ride it, and Miss Parker, the columbine, was to play up to it. Young happened to be one morning at the box-office adjoining Covent Garden Theatre, when his ears were assailed by a strange and unusual uproar within the walls. On asking one of the carpenters the cause of it, he was told 'it was something going wrong with the elephant; he could not exactly tell what.' I am not aware what the usage may be nowadays, but then, whenever a new piece had been announced for presentation on a given night, and there was but scant time for its preparation, a rehearsal would take place after the night's regular performance was over, and the audience had been dismissed. One such there had been the night before my father's curiosity had been roused. As it had been arranged that Mrs. Henry Johnston, seated in a howdah on the elephant's back, should pass over a bridge in the centre of a numerous group of followers, it was thought expedient that the unwieldy monster's tractability should be tested. On stepping up to the bridge, which was slight and temporary, the sagacious brute drew back his fore-feet and refused to budge. It is well known as a fact in natural history that the elephant, aware of his unusual bulk, will never trust its weight on any object which is unequal to its support. The stage-manager, seeing how resolutely the animal resisted every attempt made to compel or induce it to go over the bridge in question, proposed that they should stay proceedings till next day, when he might be in a better mood. It was during the repetition of the experiment that my father, having heard the extraordinary sounds, determined to go upon the stage, and see if he could ascertain the cause of them. The first sight that met his eyes kindled his indignation. There stood the high animal, with downcast eyes and flapping ears, meekly submitting to blow after blow from a sharp iron goad, which his keeper was driving ferociously into the fleshy part of his neck, at the root of the ear. The floor on which he stood was converted into a pool of blood. One of the proprietors, impatient at what he regarded as senseless obstinacy, kept urging the driver to proceed to still severer extremities, when Charles Young, who was a great lover of animals, expostulated with him, went up to the poor patient sufferer, and patted and caressed him; and when the driver was about to wield his instrument again, with even still more vigour, he caught him by the wrist as in a vice, and stayed his hand from further violence. While an angry altercation was going on between Young and the man of colour, who was the driver, Captain Hay, of the _Ashel_, who had brought over 'Chuny' in his ship, and had petted him greatly on the voyage, came in and begged to know what was the matter. Before a word of explanation could be given, the much-wronged creature spoke for himself; for, as soon as he perceived the entrance of his patron, he waddled up to him, and, with a look of gentle appeal, caught hold of his hand with his proboscis, plunged it into his bleeding wound, and then thrust it before his eyes. The gesture seemed to say, as plainly as if it had been enforced by speech, 'See how these cruel men treat Chuny. Can _you_ approve of it?' The hearts of the hardest present were sensibly touched by what they saw, and among them that of the gentleman who had been so energetic in promoting its harsh treatment. It was under a far better impulse that he ran out into the street, purchased a few apples at a stall, and offered them to him. Chuny eyed him askance, took them, threw them beneath his feet, and when he had crushed them to pulp, spurned them from him. Young, who had gone into Covent Garden on the same errand as the gentleman who had preceded him, shortly after re-entered, and also held out to him some fruit, when, to the astonishment of the bystanders, the elephant ate every morsel, and after he had done so, twined his trunk with studied gentleness around Young's waist, marking by his action that, though he had resented a wrong, he did not forget a kindness. It was in the year 1814 that Harris parted with Chuny to Cross, the proprietor of the menagerie at Exeter Change. One of the purchaser's first acts was to send Charles Young a life ticket of admission to his exhibition; and it was one of his little innocent vanities, when passing through the Strand with any friend, to drop in on Chuny, pay him a visit in his den, and show the intimate relations which existed between them. Some years after, when the elephant's theatrical career was run, and he was reduced to play the part of captive in one of the cages of Exeter Change, a thoughtless dandy one day amused himself by teasing him with the repeated offer of lettuces--a vegetable for which he was known to have an antipathy. At last he presented him with an apple, but, at the moment of his taking it, drove a large pin into his trunk, and then sprang out of big reach. The keeper seeing that the poor creature was getting angry, warned the silly fellow off, lest he should become dangerous. With a contemptuous shrug of the shoulder, he trudged off to the other end of the gallery, and there displayed his cruel ingenuity on other humbler beasts, till, after the absence of half-an-hour, he once more approached one of the cages opposite the elephant's. By this time he had forgotten his pranks with Chuny, but Chuny had not forgotten him; and as he was standing with his back towards him, he thrust his proboscis through the bars of his prison, twitched off the offender's hat, dragged it in to him, tore it to shreds, then threw it into the face of the offending gaby, consummating his revenge with a loud guffaw of exultation. All present proclaimed their approbation of this act of retributive justice, and the discomfited coxcomb had to retreat from the scene in confusion, jump into a hackney coach, and betake himself to the hatter's in quest of a new tile for his unroofed skull. The tragic end of poor Chuny must be within the recollection of many of my readers. From some cause unknown he went mad, and after poison had been tried in vain it took 152 shots, discharged by a detachment of the Guards, to despatch him.[237] The elephant in many respects displays strange peculiarities of emotional temperament. Thus Mr. Corse says:--'If a wild elephant happens to be separated from its young for only two or three days, though giving suck, she never after recognises or acknowledges it;'[238] yet the young one knows its dam, and cries plaintively for her assistance. Again, in the wild state, the spirit of exclusiveness shown by members of a herd (_i.e._ family) towards elephants of other herds is remarkable. Sir E. Tennent writes:-- If by any accident an elephant becomes hopelessly separated from his own herd, he is not permitted to attach himself to any other. He may browse in the vicinity, or frequent the same place to drink and to bathe; but the intercourse is only on a distant and conventional footing, and no familiarity or intimate association is under any circumstances permitted. To such a height is this exclusiveness carried, that even amidst the terror of an elephant corral, when an individual, detached from his own party in the _mêlée_ and confusion, has been driven into the enclosure with an unbroken herd, I have seen him repulsed in every attempt to take refuge among them, and driven off by heavy blows with their trunks as often as he attempted to insinuate himself within the circle which they had formed for common security. There can be no reasonable doubt that this jealous and exclusive policy not only contributes to produce, but mainly serves to perpetuate, the class of solitary elephants which are known by the term _goondahs_ in India, and which from their vicious propensities and predatory habits are called _Hora_, or _Rogues_, in Ceylon.[239] The emotional temper, or rather transformation of emotional psychology, which is exhibited by the Rogues here mentioned, is as extraordinary as it is notorious. From being a peaceable, sympathetic, and magnanimous animal, the elephant, when excluded from the society of its kind, becomes savage, cruel, and morose to a degree unequalled in any other animal. The repulsive accounts of the bloodthirsty rage and wanton destructiveness of Rogues show that their actions are not due to sudden bursts of fury at the sight of man or his works, but rather to a deliberate and brooding resolve to wage war on everything, so that the animal patiently lies in wait for travellers, rushing from his ambush only when he finds that the latter are within his power. As showing the cold-blooded determination of this murderous desire, I may quote the following case, as it was communicated to Sir E. Tennent:-- We had, says the writer, calculated to come up with the brute where it had been seen half an hour before; but no sooner had one of our men, who was walking foremost, seen the animal at the distance of some fifteen or twenty fathoms, than he exclaimed, 'There! there!' and immediately took to his heels, and we all followed his example. The elephant did not see us until we had run some fifteen or twenty paces from the spot where we turned, when he gave us chase, screaming frightfully as he came on. The Englishman managed to climb a tree, and the rest of my companions did the same; as for myself, I could not, although I made one or two superhuman efforts. But there was no time to be lost. The elephant was running at me with his trunk bent down in a curve towards the ground. At this critical moment Mr. Lindsay held out his foot to me, with the help of which and then of the branches of the tree, which were three or four feet above my head, I managed to scramble up to a branch. The elephant came directly to the tree and attempted to force it down, which he could not. He first coiled his trunk round the stem, and pulled it with all his might, but with no effect. He then applied his head to the tree, and pushed for several minutes, but with no better success. He then trampled with his feet all the projecting roots, moving, as he did so, several times round and round the tree. Lastly, failing in all this, and seeing a pile of timber, which I had lately cut, at a short distance from us, he removed it all (thirty-six pieces) one at a time to the root of the tree, and piled them up in a regular business-like manner; then placing his hind feet on this pile, he raised the fore part of his body, and reached out his trunk, but still he could not touch us, as we were too far above him. The Englishman then fired, and the ball took effect somewhere on the elephant's head, but did not kill him. It made him only the more furious. The next shot, however, levelled him to the ground. I afterwards brought the skull of the animal to Colombo, and it is still to be seen at the house of Mr. Armitage.[240] Another highly curious trait in the emotional psychology of the elephant is the readiness with which the huge animal expires under the mere influence of what the natives call a 'broken heart.' The facts on this head are without a parallel in any other animal, and are the more remarkable from the fact that, so far as natural length of life is any token, the elephant may be said to have more vitality, or innate power of living, than any other terrestrial mammal. Again, to quote from Sir E. Tennent:-- Amongst the last of the elephants noosed was the _rogue_. Though far more savage than the others, he joined in none of their charges and assaults on the fences, as they uniformly drove him off, and would not permit him to enter their circle. When dragged past another of his companions in misfortune, who was lying exhausted on the ground, he flew upon him and attempted to fasten his teeth in his head; this was the only instance of viciousness which occurred during the progress of the corral. When tied up and overpowered, he was at first noisy and violent, but soon lay down peacefully, a sign, according to the hunters, that his death was at hand. Their prognostication was correct; he continued for about twelve hours to cover himself with dust like the others, and to moisten it with water from his trunk; but at length he lay exhausted, and died so calmly, that having been moving but a few moments before, his death was only perceived by the myriads of black flies by which his body was almost instantly covered, although not one was visible a moment before.[241] But this peculiarity is not confined to rogue elephants. Thus Captain Yule, in his 'Narrative of an Embassy to Ava in 1855,' records an illustration of this tendency of the elephant to sudden death. One newly captured, the process of taming which was exhibited to the British Envoy, 'made vigorous resistance to the placing of a collar on its neck, and the people were proceeding to tighten it, when the elephant, which had lain down as if quite exhausted, reared suddenly on the hind quarters, and fell on its side--_dead_!' Mr. Strachan noticed the same liability of the elephants to sudden death from very slight causes. 'Of the fall,' he says, 'at any time, though on plain ground, they either die immediately, or languish till they die; their great weight occasioning them so much hurt by the fall.'[242] And Sir E. Tennent observes that,-- In the process of taming, the presence of the tame ones can generally be dispensed with after two months, and the captive may then be ridden by the driver alone; and after three or four months he may be entrusted with labour, so far as regards docility; but it is undesirable, and even involves the risk of life, to work an elephant too soon; it has frequently happened that a valuable animal has lain down and died the first time it was tried in harness, from what the natives believed to be 'broken heart,' certainly without any cause inferable from injury or previous disease.[243] Nor is this tendency to die under the influence of mere emotion restricted to the effect of a 'broken heart;' it seems also to occur under the power of strong emotional disturbances of other kinds. For instance, an elephant caught and trained by Mr. Cripps is thus alluded to by Sir E. Tennent:-- This was the largest elephant that had been tamed in Ceylon; he measured upwards of nine feet at the shoulders, and belonged to the caste so highly prized for the temples. He was gentle after his first capture, but his removal from the corral to the stables, though only a distance of six miles, was a matter of the extremest difficulty; his extraordinary strength rendering him more than a match for the attendant decoys. He on one occasion escaped, but was recaptured in the forest; and he afterwards became so docile as to perform a variety of tricks. He was at length ordered to be removed to Colombo; but such was his terror on approaching the fort, that on coaxing him to enter the gate he became paralysed in the extraordinary way elsewhere alluded to, and _died on the spot_. _General Intelligence._ The higher mental faculties of the elephant are more advanced in their development than in any other animal, except the dog and monkey. I shall, therefore, devote some considerable space to the narration of instances of its display. The general fact that elephants are habitually employed in certain parts of India for the purposes of building, storing timber, &c., in itself shows a level of docile intelligence which only that of the dog can rival; but I shall here confine myself to stating special instances of the display of sagacity unusually high, even for the elephant. Capt. Shipp, in his 'Memoirs,' gives the following incident, of which he was an eye-witness. During a march with guns in the mountainous districts of India, the force of which he was a member came to a steep ascent. A staircase of logs was prepared to enable the elephants to ascend the slope. When all was ready the first elephant was led to the bottom of the staircase:-- He looked up, shook his head, and when forced by his driver, roared piteously. There can be no question, in my opinion, but that this sagacious animal was competent instinctively to judge of the practicability of the artificial flight of steps thus constructed; for the moment some little alteration had been made, he seemed willing to approach. He then commenced his examination and scrutiny by pressing with his trunk the trees that had been thrown across; and after this he put his fore-leg on with great caution. . . . The next step for him to ascend by was a projecting rock, which he could not remove. Here the same sagacious examination took place, the elephant keeping his flat side close to the side of the trunk, and leaning against it. The next step was against a tree, but this, on the first pressure of his trunk, he did not like. Here the driver made use of the most endearing epithets, such as 'Wonderful,' 'My life,' 'Well done, my dear,' 'My dove,' 'My son,' 'My wife;' but all these endearing appellations, of which elephants are so fond, would not induce him to try again. Force was at length resorted to, and the elephant roared terrifically, but would not move. Something was then altered, the elephant was satisfied, and at last succeeded in mounting to the top of the staircase:-- On reaching the top his delight was visible in a most eminent degree; he caressed his keepers, and threw dirt about in a most playful manner. Another elephant, a much younger animal, had now to follow. He had watched the ascent of the other with the utmost interest, making motions all the while as though he was assisting him by shouldering him up the acclivity, in such gestures as I have seen some men make when spectators of gymnastic exercises. When he saw his comrade up, he evinced his pleasure by giving a salute something like the sound of a trumpet. When called upon to take his turn, however, he seemed much alarmed, and would not act at all without force. After a performance similar to that of the previous elephant, however, he too neared the top, when 'the other, who had already performed his task, extended his trunk to the assistance of his brother in distress, round which the younger animal entwined his, and thus reached the summit.' There was then a cordial greeting between the two animals, 'as if they had been long separated from each other, and had just escaped from some perilous achievement. They mutually embraced each other, and stood face to face for a considerable time, as if whispering congratulations.'[244] Mr. Jesse says: 'I was one day feeding the poor elephant (who was so barbarously put to death at Exeter Change) with potatoes, which he took out of my hand. One of them, a round one, fell on the floor, just out of reach of his proboscis.' After several ineffectual attempts to reach it, 'he at length _blew_ the potato against the opposite wall with sufficient force to make it rebound, and he then without difficulty secured it.'[245] This remarkable observation has fortunately been corroborated by Mr. Darwin. He writes:-- I have seen, as I dare say have others, that when a small object is thrown on the ground beyond the reach of one of the elephants at the Zoological Gardens, he blows through his trunk on the ground beyond the object, so that the current reflected on all sides may drive the object within his reach.[246] The observation has also been corroborated by other observers.[247] The following is quoted from Mr. Watson's book:[248]-- Of the elephant's sense and judgment the following instance is given as a well-known fact in a letter of Dr. Daniel Wilson, Bishop of Calcutta, to his son in England, printed in a Life of the bishop, published a few years ago. An elephant belonging to an Engineer officer in his diocese had a disease in his eyes, and had for three days been completely blind. His owner asked Dr. Webb, a physician intimate with the bishop, if he could do anything for the relief of the animal. Dr. Webb replied that he was willing to try, on one of the eyes, the effect of nitrate of silver, which was a remedy commonly used for similar diseases in the human eye. The animal was accordingly made to lie down, and when the nitrate of silver was applied, uttered a terrific roar at the acute pain which it occasioned. But the effect of the application was wonderful, for the eye was in a great degree restored, and the elephant could partially see. The doctor was in consequence ready to operate similarly on the other eye on the following day; and the animal, when he was brought out and heard the doctor's voice, lay down of himself, placed his head quietly on one side, curled up his trunk, drew in his breath like a human being about to endure a painful operation, gave a sigh of relief when it was over, and then, by motions of his trunk and other gestures, gave evident signs of wishing to express his gratitude. Here we plainly see in the elephant memory, understanding, and reasoning from one thing to another. The animal remembered the benefit that he had felt from the application to one eye, and when he was brought to the same place on the following day and heard the operator's voice, he concluded that a like service was to be done to his other eye. The fact that elephants exhibit this sagacious fortitude under surgical operations--thus resembling, as we shall afterwards observe, both dogs and monkeys--is corroborated by another instance given in Bingley's 'Animal Biography,'[249] and serves to render credible the following story given in the same work:-- In the last war in India a young elephant received a violent wound in its head, the pain of which rendered it so frantic and ungovernable that it was found impossible to persuade the animal to have the part dressed. Whenever any one approached it ran off with fury, and would suffer no person to come within several yards of it. The man who had care of it at length hit upon a contrivance for securing it. By a few words and signs he gave the mother of the animal sufficient intelligence of what was wanted; the sensible creature immediately seized her young one with her trunk, and held it firmly down, though groaning with agony, while the surgeon completely dressed the wound; and she continued to perform this service every day till the animal was perfectly recovered.[250] Again, as still further corroboration of this point, I may quote the following from Sir E. Tennent's 'Natural History of Ceylon:'-- Nothing can more strongly exhibit the impulse to obedience in the elephant than the patience with which, at the order of his keeper, he swallows the nauseous medicines of the native elephant-doctors; and it is impossible to witness the fortitude with which (without shrinking) he submits to excruciating surgical operations for the removal of tumours and ulcers to which he is subject, without conceiving a vivid impression of his gentleness and intelligence. Dr. Davy when in Ceylon was consulted about an elephant in the Government stud, which was suffering from a deep, burrowing sore in the back, just over the back-bone, which had long resisted the treatment ordinarily employed. He recommended the use of the knife, that issue might be given to the accumulated matter, but no one of the attendants was competent to undertake the operation. 'Being assured,' he continues, 'that the creature would behave well, I undertook it myself. The elephant was not bound, but was made to kneel down at his keeper's command; and with an amputating knife, using all my force, I made the incision required through the tough integuments. The elephant did not flinch, but rather inclined towards me when using the knife; and merely uttered a low, and as it were suppressed groan. In short, he behaved as like a human being as possible, as if conscious (as I believe he was) that the operation was for his good, and the pain unavoidable.' Major Skinner witnessed the following display of intelligent action by a large herd of wild elephants. During the hot season at Nenera Kalama the elephants have a difficulty in finding water, and are therefore obliged to congregate in large numbers where water is to be obtained. Being stationed near a water supply, and knowing that a large herd of elephants were in the neighbourhood, Major Skinner resolved to watch their proceedings. On a moonlight night, therefore, he climbed a tree about four hundred yards from the water, and waited patiently for two hours before he heard or saw anything of the elephants. At length he saw a huge beast issue from the wood, and advance cautiously across the open ground to within a hundred yards of the tank, where he stood perfectly motionless; and the rest of the herd, meanwhile, were so quiet that not the least sound was to be heard from them. Gradually, at three successive advances, halting some minutes after each, he moved up to the water's edge, in which, however, he did not think proper to quench his thirst, but remained for several minutes listening in perfect stillness. He then returned cautiously and slowly to the point at which he had issued from the wood, from whence he came back with five other elephants, with which he proceeded, somewhat less slowly than before, to within a few yards of the tank, where he posted them as patrols. He then re-entered the wood and collected the whole herd, which must have amounted to between eighty and a hundred, and led them across the open ground with the most extraordinary composure and quiet till they came up to the five sentinels, when he left them for a moment, and again made a reconnaissance at the edge of the tank. At last, being apparently satisfied that all was safe, he turned back, and obviously gave the order to advance; 'for in a moment,' says Major Skinner, 'the whole herd rushed to the water with a degree of unreserved confidence so opposite to the caution and timidity which had marked their previous movements, that nothing will ever persuade me that there was not rational and preconcerted co-operation throughout the whole party, and a degree of responsible authority exercised by the patriarch-leader.'[251] Mr. H. L. Jenkins writes to me:-- What I particularly wish to observe is that there are good reasons for supposing that elephants possess abstract ideas; for instance, I think it is impossible to doubt that they acquire through their own experience notions of hardness and weight, and the grounds on which I am led to think this are as follows. A captured elephant after he has been taught his ordinary duty, say about three months after he is taken, is taught to pick up things from the ground and give them to his mahout sitting on his shoulders. Now for the first few months it is dangerous to require him to pick up anything but soft articles, such as clothes, because the things are often handed up with considerable force. After a time, longer with some elephants than others, they appear to take in a knowledge of the nature of the things they are required to lift, and the bundle of clothes will be thrown up sharply as before, but heavy things, such as a crowbar or piece of iron chain, will be handed up in a gentle manner; a sharp knife will be picked up by its handle and placed on the elephant's head, so that the mahout can also take it by the handle. I have purposely given elephants things to lift which they could never have seen before, and they were all handled in such a manner as to convince me that they recognised such qualities as hardness, sharpness, and weight. You are quite at liberty to make any use of these remarks you please if they are of service. Again, as Dr. Lindley Kemp observes,[252] 'the manner in which tame elephants assist in capturing wild ones affords us an instance of reasoning in an animal,' &c.; and similarly, Mr. Darwin observes: 'It is, I think, impossible to read the account given by Sir E. Tennent of the behaviour of the female elephants used as decoys, without admitting that they intentionally practise deceit.'[253] The following is an extract from the more interesting of the observations to which Mr. Darwin here alludes, and I think it is impossible to read them without assenting to his judgment. Several herds of wild elephants having been driven into a corral, two tame decoys were ridden into it:-- One was of prodigious age, having been in the service of the Dutch and English Governments in succession for upwards of a century. The other, called by her keeper 'Siribeddi,' was about fifty years old, and distinguished for gentleness and docility. She was a most accomplished decoy, and evinced the utmost relish for the sport. Having entered the corral noiselessly, carrying a mahout on her shoulders with the headman of the noosers seated behind him, she moved slowly along with a sly composure and an assumed air of easy indifference; sauntering leisurely in the direction of the captives, and halting now and then to pluck a bunch of grass or a few leaves as she passed. As she approached the herd they put themselves in motion to meet her, and the leader, having advanced in front and passed his trunk gently over her head, turned and paced slowly back to his dejected companions. Siribeddi followed with the same listless step, and drew herself up close behind him, thus affording the nooser an opportunity to stoop under her and slip the noose over the hind foot of the wild one. The latter instantly perceived his danger, shook off the rope, and turned to attack the man. He would have suffered for his temerity had not Siribeddi protected him by raising her trunk and driving the assailant into the midst of the herd, when the old man, being slightly wounded, was helped out of the corral, and his son, Ranghanie, took his place. The herd again collected in a circle, with their heads towards the centre. The largest male was singled out, and two tame ones pushed boldly in, one on either side of him, till the three stood nearly abreast. He made no resistance, but betrayed his uneasiness by shifting restlessly from foot to foot. Ranghanie now crept up, and holding the rope open with both hands (its other extremity being made fast to Siribeddi's collar), and watching the instant when the wild elephant lifted its hind foot, succeeded in passing the noose over its leg, drew it close, and fled to the rear. The two tame elephants instantly fell back, Siribeddi stretched the rope to its full length, and whilst she dragged out the captive, her companion placed himself between her and the herd to prevent any interference. In order to tie him to a tree he had to be drawn backwards some twenty or thirty yards, making furious resistance, bellowing in terror, plunging on all sides, and crushing the smaller timber, which bent like reeds beneath his clumsy struggles. Siribeddi drew him steadily after her, and wound the rope round the proper tree, holding it all the time at its full tension, and stepping cautiously across it when, in order to give it a second turn, it was necessary to pass between the tree and the elephant. With a coil round the stem, however, it was beyond her strength to haul the prisoner close up, which was, nevertheless, necessary in order to make him perfectly fast; but the second tame one, perceiving the difficulty, returned from the herd, confronted the struggling prisoner, pushed him shoulder to shoulder, and head to head, forcing him backwards, whilst at every step Siribeddi hauled in the slackened rope till she brought him fairly up to the foot of the tree, where he was made fast by the cooroowe people. A second noose was then passed over the other hind-leg, and secured like the first, both legs being afterwards hobbled together by ropes made from the fibre of the kitool or jaggery palm, which, being more flexible than that of the cocoa-nut, occasions less formidable ulcerations. The two decoys then ranged themselves, as before, abreast of the prisoner on either side, thus enabling Ranghanie to stoop under them and noose the two fore-feet as he had already done the hind; and these ropes being made fast to the tree in front, the capture was complete, and the tame elephants and keepers withdrew to repeat the operation on another of the herd. The second victim singled out from the herd was secured in the same manner as the first. It was a female. The tame ones forced themselves in on either side as before, cutting her off from her companions, whilst Ranghanie stooped under them and attached the fatal noose, and Siribeddi dragged her out amidst unavailing struggles, when she was made fast by each leg to the nearest group of strong trees. When the noose was placed upon her fore-foot, she seized it with her trunk, and succeeded in carrying it to her mouth, where she would speedily have severed it had not a tame elephant interfered, and placing his foot on the rope pressed it downwards out of her jaws. . . . The conduct of the tame ones during all these proceedings was truly wonderful. They displayed the most perfect conception of every movement, both of the object to be attained and of the means to accomplish it. They manifested the utmost enjoyment in what was going on. There was no ill-humour, no malignity in the spirit displayed, in what was otherwise a heartless proceeding, but they set about it in a way that showed a thorough relish for it, as an agreeable pastime. Their caution was as remarkable as their sagacity; there was no hurrying, no confusion, they never ran foul of the ropes, were never in the way of the animals already noosed; and amidst the most violent struggles, when the tame ones had frequently to step across the captives, they in no instance trampled on them, or occasioned the slightest accident or annoyance. So far from this, they saw intuitively a difficulty or a danger, and addressed themselves unbidden to remove it. In tying up one of the larger elephants, he contrived, before he could be hauled close up to the tree, to walk once or twice round it, carrying the rope with him; the decoy, perceiving the advantage he had thus gained over the nooser, walked up of her own accord, and pushed him backwards with her head, till she made him unwind himself again; upon which the rope was hauled tight and made fast. More than once, when a wild one was extending his trunk, and would have intercepted the rope about to be placed over his leg, Siribeddi, by a sudden motion of her own trunk, pushed his aside, and prevented him; and on one occasion, when successive efforts had failed to put the noose over the fore-leg of an elephant which was already secured by one foot, but which wisely put the other to the ground as often as it was attempted to pass the noose under it, I saw the decoy watch her opportunity, and when his foot was again raised, suddenly push in her own leg beneath it, and hold it up till the noose was attached and drawn tight. One could almost fancy there was a display of dry humour in the manner in which the decoys thus played with the fears of the wild herd, and made light of their efforts at resistance. When reluctant they shoved them forward, when violent they drove them back; when the wild ones threw themselves down, the tame ones butted them with head and shoulders, and forced them up again. And when it was necessary to keep them down, they knelt upon them, and prevented them from rising, till the ropes were secured. At every moment of leisure they fanned themselves with a bunch of leaves, and the graceful ease with which an elephant uses his trunk on such occasions is very striking. It is doubtless owing to the combination of a circular with a horizontal movement in that flexible limb; but it is impossible to see an elephant fanning himself without being struck by the singular elegance of motion which he displays. The tame ones, too, indulged in the luxury of dusting themselves with sand, by flinging it from their trunks; but it was a curious illustration of their delicate sagacity, that so long as the mahout was on their necks, they confined themselves to flinging the dust along their sides and stomach, as if aware that to throw it over their heads and back would cause annoyance to their riders.[254] Sir E. Tennent has also some observations on other uses to which tame elephants are put, which are well worth quoting. Thus, speaking of the labour of piling timber, he says that the elephant manifests an intelligence and dexterity which are surprising to a stranger, because the sameness of the operation enables the animal to go on for hours disposing of log after log, almost without a hint or direction from his attendant. For example, two elephants employed in piling ebony and satinwood in the yards attached to the commissariat stores at Colombo, were so accustomed to their work, that they were able to accomplish it with equal precision and with greater rapidity than if it had been done by dock-labourers. When the pile attained a certain height, and they were no longer able by their conjoint efforts to raise one of the heavy logs of ebony to the summit, they had been taught to lean two pieces against the heap, up the inclined plane of which they gently rolled the remaining logs, and placed them trimly on the top. It has been asserted that in their occupations 'elephants are to a surprising extent the creatures of habit,' that their movements are altogether mechanical, and that 'they are annoyed by any deviation from their accustomed practice, and resent any constrained departure from the regularity of their course.' So far as my own observation goes, this is incorrect; and I am assured by officers of experience, that in regard to changing his treatment, his hours or his occupation, an elephant evinces no more consideration than a horse, but exhibits the same pliancy and facility. At one point, however, the utility of the elephant stops short. Such is the intelligence and earnestness he displays in work, which he seems to conduct almost without supervision, that it has been assumed that he would continue his labour, and accomplish his given task, as well in the absence of his keeper as during his presence. But here his innate love of ease displays itself, and if the eye of his attendant be withdrawn, the moment he has finished the thing immediately in hand, he will stroll away lazily, to browse or enjoy the luxury of fanning himself and blowing dust over his back. The means of punishing so powerful an animal is a question of difficulty to his attendants. Force being almost inapplicable, they try to work on his passions and feelings, by such expedients as altering the nature of his food or withholding it altogether for a time. On such occasions the demeanour of the creature will sometimes evince a sense of humiliation as well as of discontent. In some parts of India it is customary, in dealing with offenders, to stop their allowance of sugar canes or of jaggery; or to restrain them from eating their own share of fodder and leaves till their companions shall have finished; and in such cases the consciousness of degradation betrayed by the looks and attitudes of the culprit is quite sufficient to identify him, and to excite a feeling of sympathy and pity. The elephant's obedience to his keeper is the result of affection, as well as of fear; and although his attachment becomes so strong that an elephant in Ceylon has been known to remain out all night, without food, rather than abandon his mahout, lying intoxicated in the jungle, yet he manifests little difficulty in yielding the same submission to a new driver in the event of a change of attendants.[255] Lastly, Sir E. Tennent writes:-- One evening, whilst riding in the vicinity of Candy, towards the scene of the massacre of Major Dabies' party in 1803, my horse evinced some excitement at a noise which approached us in the thick jungle, and which consisted of a repetition of the ejaculation _urmph! urmph!_ in a hoarse and dissatisfied tone. A turn in the forest explained the mystery, by bringing us face to face with a tame elephant, unaccompanied by any attendant. He was labouring painfully to carry a heavy beam of timber, which he balanced across his tusks, but, the pathway being narrow, he was forced to bend his head to one side to permit it to pass endways; and the exertion and this inconvenience combined led him to utter the dissatisfied sounds which disturbed the composure of my horse. On seeing us halt, the elephant raised his head, reconnoitred us for a moment, then flung down the timber, and voluntarily forced himself backwards among the brushwood so as to leave a passage, of which he expected us to avail ourselves. My horse hesitated: the elephant observed it, and impatiently thrust himself deeper into the jungle, repeating his cry of _urmph!_ but in a voice evidently meant to encourage us to advance. Still the horse trembled; and, anxious to observe the instinct of the two sagacious animals, I forebore any interference: again the elephant of his own accord wedged himself further in amongst the trees, and manifested some impatience that we did not pass him. At length the horse moved forward; and when we were fairly past, I saw the wise creature stoop and take up its heavy burden, trim and balance it on its tusks, and resume its route as before, hoarsely snorting its discontented remonstrance. Dr. Erasmus Darwin records an observation which was communicated to him by a 'gentleman of undoubted veracity,' of an elephant in India which the keeper was in the habit of leaving to play the part of nurse to his child when he and his wife had occasion to go away from home. The elephant was chained up, and whenever the child in its creeping about came to the end of the elephant's tether, he used gently to draw it back again with his trunk. In 'Nature,' vol. xix., p. 385, Mr. J. J. Furniss writes:-- In Central Park one very hot day my attention was drawn to the conduct of an elephant which had been placed in an enclosure in the open air. On the ground was a large heap of newly-mown grass, which the sagacious animal was taking up by the trunkful, and laying carefully upon his sun-heated back. He continued the operation until his back was _completely thatched_, when he remained quiet, apparently enjoying the result of his ingenuity. Mr. Furniss in a later communication (vol. xx., p. 21) continues:-- Since the publication of my former letter (as above), I have received additional data bearing on the subject from Mr. W. A. Conklin, the superintendent of the Central Park Menagerie. I am informed by him that he has frequently observed elephants, when out of doors in the hot sunshine, thatch their backs with hay or grass; that they do so to a certain extent when under cover in the summer time, and when the flies which then attack the animals, often so fiercely as to draw blood, are particularly numerous; but that they never attempt to thatch their backs in winter. This seems to prove that they act intelligently for the attainment of a definite end. It would be interesting to learn whether elephants in their wild state are in the habit of so thatching their backs. It seems more probable to suppose that in their native wilds they would avail themselves of the natural shade afforded by the jungle, and that the habit is one which has been developed in consequence of their changed surroundings in captivity. Mr. G. E. Peal writes to 'Nature' (vol. xxi., p. 34):-- One evening, soon after my arrival in Eastern Assam, and while the five elephants were as usual being fed opposite the bungalow, I observed a young and lately caught one step up to a bamboo-stake fence, and quietly pull one of the stakes up. Placing it under foot, it broke a piece off with the trunk, and after lifting it to its mouth threw it away. It repeated this twice or thrice, and then drew another stake and began again. Seeing that the bamboo was old and dry I asked the reason of this, and was told to wait and see what it would do. At last it seemed to get a piece that suited, and holding it in the trunk firmly, and stepping the left fore-leg well forward, passed the piece of bamboo under the armpit, so to speak, and began to scratch with some force. My surprise reached its climax when I saw a large elephant leech fall on the ground, quite six inches long and thick as one's finger, and which, from its position, could not easily be detached without this scraper or scratcher which was deliberately made by the elephant. I subsequently found that it was a common occurrence. Such scrapers are used by every elephant daily. On another occasion, when travelling at a time of the year when the large flies are so tormenting to an elephant, I noticed that the one I rode had no fan or wisp to beat them off with. The mahout, at my order, slackened pace and allowed her to go to the side of the road, when for some moments she moved along rummaging the smaller jungle on the bank; at last she came to a cluster of young shoots well branched, and after feeling among them and selecting one, raised her trunk and neatly stripped down the stem, taking off all the lower branches and leaving a fine bunch on top. She deliberately cleaned it down several times, and then laying hold at the lower end broke off a beautiful fan or switch about five feet long, handle included. With this she kept the flies at bay as we went along, flapping them off on each side. Say what we may, these are both really _bonâ fide_ implements, each intelligently made for a definite purpose. My friend Mrs. A. S. H. Richardson sends me the following. The Rev. Mr. Townsend, who narrated the episode, is personally known to her:-- An elephant was chained to a tree in the compound opposite Mr. Townsend's house. Its driver made an oven at a short distance, in which he put his rice-cakes to bake, and then covered them with stones and grass and went away. When he was gone, the elephant with his trunk unfastened the chain round his foot, went to the oven and uncovered it, took out and ate the cakes, re-covered the oven with the stones and grass as before, and went back to his place. He could not fasten the chain again round his own foot, so he twisted it round and round it, in order to look the same, and when the driver returned the elephant was standing with his back to the oven. The driver went to his cakes, discovered the theft, and, looking round, caught the elephant's eye as he looked back over his shoulder out of the corner of it. Instantly he detected the culprit, and condign punishment followed. The whole occurrence was witnessed from the windows by the family. FOOTNOTES: [225] Plin., _Hist. Nat._, viii. 1-13. [226] _De Solert. Anim._, c. 12. [227] _Philosophical Transactions_, 1799, p. 40. [228] See Bingley, _loc. cit._, vol. i., pp. 148-51. [229] _Hist. Nat._, viii., 5. [230] For these and other cases of vindictiveness, see Bingley, _loc. cit._, vol. i., pp. 156-8. [231] _Memoirs_, vol. i., p. 448. [232] _Zoological Recreations_, p. 315. [233] _Animal Biography_, i., pp. 156-8. [234] _Anecdotes of Animals_, p. 276. [235] _Habits and Instincts of Animals_, p. 37. [236] _Reasoning Power of Animals_, chap. iv. [237] Quoted in _Animal World_, March 1882. [238] _Philosophical Transactions_, 1873. [239] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 114. [240] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 140. [241] _Natural History of Ceylon_, p. 196. [242] _Phil. Trans._, A.D. 1701, vol. xxiii., p. 1052. [243] _Loc. cit._, p. 216. [244] _Memoirs_, vol. ii., p. 64 _et seq._ [245] Jesse, _Gleanings in Natural History_, vol. i, p. 19. [246] _Descent of Man_, p. 96. [247] See _Animal Kingdom_, vol. iii., p. 374. [248] _Reasoning Power of Animals_, pp. 54-5. [249] Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. i., p. 155. [250] Bingley, _Animal Biography_, vol. i., p. 155. [251] See his letter to Sir E. Tennent in _Nat. Hist. of Ceylon_, pp. 118-20. [252] _Indications of Instinct_, p. 129. [253] _Descent of Man_, p. 69. [254] _Natural History of Ceylon_, pp. 181-94. [255] _Natural History of Ceylon_, pp. 181-94. CHAPTER XIV. THE CAT. THE cat is unquestionably a highly intelligent animal, though when contrasted with its great domestic rival, the dog, its intelligence, from being cast in quite a different mould, is very frequently underrated. Comparatively unsocial in temperament, wanderingly predaceous in habits, and lacking in the affectionate docility of the canine nature, this animal has never in any considerable degree been subject to those psychologically transforming influences whereby a prolonged and intimate association with man has, as we shall subsequently see, so profoundly modified the psychology of the dog. Nevertheless, as we shall immediately find, the cat is not only by nature an animal remarkable for intelligence, but in spite of its naturally imposed disadvantages of temperament, has not altogether escaped those privileges of nurture which unnumbered centuries of domestication could scarcely fail to supply. Thus, as contrasted with most of the wild species of the genus when tamed from their youngest days, the domestic cat is conspicuously of less uncertain temper towards its masters--the uncertainty of temper displayed by nearly all the wild members of the feline tribe when tamed being, of course, an expression of the interference of individual with hereditary experience. And, as contrasted with all the wild species of the genus when tamed, the domestic cat is conspicuous in alone manifesting any exalted development of affection towards the human kind; for in many individual cases such affection, under favouring circumstances, reaches a level fully comparable to that which it attains in the dog. We do not know the wild stock from which the domestic cat originally sprang, and therefore cannot estimate the extent of the psychological results which human agency has here produced; but it is worth while in this connection to remember that the nearest ally of the domestic cat is the wild cat, and that this animal, while so closely resembling its congener in size and anatomical structure, differs so enormously from it in the branch of psychological structure which we are considering, that there is no animal on the face of the earth so obstinately untamable. As regards the wild species of the tribe in general, it may be said that they all exhibit the same unsocial, fierce, and rapacious character. Bold when brought to bay, they do not court battle with dangerous antagonists, but prefer to seek safety in flight. Even the proverbial courage of the lion is now known, as a rule, to consist in 'the better part of valour;' and those exceptional individuals among tigers which adopt a 'man-eating' propensity, snatch their human victims by stealth. That the larger feline animals possess high intelligence would be shown, even in the absence of information concerning their ordinary habits, by the numerous tricks which they prove themselves capable of learning at the hands of menagerie-keepers; though in such cases the conflict of nature with nurture renders even the best-trained specimens highly uncertain in their behaviour, and therefore always more or less dangerous to the 'lion-kings.' The only wild species that is employed for any practical purpose--the cheetah--is so employed by utilising directly its natural instincts; it is shown the antelope, and runs it down after the manner of all its ancestors. Returning now to the domestic cat, it is commonly remarked as a peculiar and distinctive trait in its emotional character that it shows a strongly rooted attachment to places as distinguished from persons. There can be no question that this peculiarity is a marked feature in the psychology of domestic cats considered as a class, although of course individual exceptions occur in abundance. Probably this feature is a survival of an instinctive attachment to dens or lairs bequeathed to our cats by their wild progenitors. The only other feature in the emotional life of cats which calls for special notice is that which leads to their universal and proverbial treatment of helpless prey. The feelings that prompt a cat to torture a captured mouse can only, I think, be assigned to the category to which by common consent they are ascribed--delight in torturing for torture's sake. Speaking of man, John S. Mill somewhere observes that there is in some human beings a special faculty or instinct of cruelty, which is not merely a passive indifference to the sight of physical sufferings, but an active pleasure in witnessing or causing it. Now, so far as I have been able to discover, the only animals in which there is any evidence of a class of feelings in any way similar to these--if, indeed, in the case even of such animals the feelings which prompt actions of gratuitous cruelty really are similar to those which prompt it in man--are cats and monkeys. With regard to monkeys I shall adduce evidence on this point in the chapter which treats of these animals. With regard to cats it is needless to dwell further upon facts so universally known. _General Intelligence._ Coming now to the higher faculties, it is to be noted as a general feature of interest that all cats, however domesticated they may be, when circumstances require it, and often even quite spontaneously, throw off with the utmost ease the whole mental clothing of their artificial experience, and return in naked simplicity to the natural habits of their ancestors. This readiness of cats to become feral is a strong expression of the shallow psychological influence which prolonged domestication has here exerted, in comparison with that which it has produced in the case of the dog. A pet terrier lost in the haunts of his ancestors is almost as pitiable an object as a babe in the wood; a pet cat under similar circumstances soon finds itself quite at home. The reason of this difference is, of course, that the psychology of the cat, never having lent itself to the practical uses of, and intelligent dependency on, man, has never, as in the case of the dog, been under the cumulative influence of human agency in becoming further and further bent away from its original and naturally imposed position of self-reliance; so that when now a severance takes place between a cat and its human protectors, the animal, inheriting unimpaired the transmitted experience of wild progenitors, knows very well how to take care of itself. Having made these general remarks, I shall now pass on to quote a few instances showing the highest level of intelligence to which cats attain. As to observation, Mrs. Hubbard tells me of a cat which she possessed, and which was in the habit of poaching young rabbits to 'eat privately in the seclusion of a disused pigsty.' One day this cat caught a small black rabbit, and instead of eating it, as she always did the brown ones, brought it into the house unhurt, and laid it at the feet of her mistress. 'She clearly recognised the black rabbit as an unusual specimen, and apparently thought it right to show it to her mistress.' Such was 'not the only instance this cat showed of zoological discrimination,' for on another occasion, 'having caught another unusual animal--viz., a stoat--she also brought this alive into the house for the purpose of exhibiting it.' Mr. A. Percy Smith informs me of a cat which he possesses, and which, to test her intelligence, he used to punish whenever her kittens misbehaved. Very soon this had the effect of causing the cat herself to train the kittens, for whenever they misbehaved 'she swore at them and boxed their ears, until she taught the kittens to be clean.' Mr. Blackman, writing from the London Institution, tells me of a cat which he has, and which without tuition began to 'beg' for food, in imitation of a terrier in the same house whose begging gesture it must have observed to be successful in the obtaining of tit-bits. The cat, however, would never beg unless it was hungry;-- And no coaxing could persuade it to do so unless it felt so inclined. The same cat also, whenever it wanted to go out, would come into the sitting-room, and make a peculiar noise to attract attention: failing that mode being successful, it would pull one's dress with its claw and then having succeeded in attracting the desired attention, it would walk to the street door and stop there, making the same cry until let out. Coming now to cases indicative of reason in cats, Mr. John Martin, writing from St. Clement's, Oxford, informs me: 'I have a cat which a short time ago had kittens, and from some cause or other her milk failed. My housekeeper saw her carrying a piece of bread to them.' The process of reasoning here is obvious. Mr. Bidie, writing from the Government Museum of Madras to 'Nature' (vol. xx., p. 96), relates this instance of reasoning in a cat:-- In 1877 I was absent from Madras for two months, and left in my quarters three cats, one of which, an English tabby, was a very gentle and affectionate creature. During my absence the quarters were occupied by two young gentlemen, who delighted in teasing and frightening the cats. About a week before my return the English cat had kittens, which she carefully concealed behind bookshelves in the library. On the morning of my return I saw the cat, and patted her as usual, and then left the house for about an hour. On returning to dress I found that the kittens were located in a corner of my dressing-room, where previous broods had been deposited and nursed. On questioning the servant as to how they came there, he at once replied, 'Sir, the old cat taking one by one in her mouth, brought them here.' In other words, the mother had carried them one by one in her mouth from the library to the dressing-room, where they lay quite exposed. I do not think I have heard of a more remarkable instance of reasoning and affectionate confidence in an animal, and I need hardly say that the latter manifestation gave me great pleasure. The train of reasoning seems to have been as follows: 'Now that my master has returned there is no risk of the kittens being injured by the two young savages in the house, so I will take them out for my protector to see and admire, and keep them in the corner in which all my former pets have been nursed in safety.' Dr. Bannister writes me from Chicago, of a cat belonging to his friend the late Mr. Meek, the palæontologist, who drew my correspondent's attention to the fact:-- He had fixed upright on his table a small looking-glass, from which he used to draw objects from nature, reversed on wood. The cat seeing her image in this glass made several attempts to investigate it, striking at it, &c. Then coming apparently to the conclusion that there was something between her and the other animal, she very slily and cautiously approached it, keeping her eye on it all the while, and struck her paw around behind the mirror, becoming seemingly much surprised at finding nothing there. This was done repeatedly, until she was at last convinced that it was beyond her comprehension, or she lost interest in the matter. Mr. T. B. Groves communicates an almost precisely similar observation to 'Nature' (vol. xx., p. 291), of a cat which, on first seeing his own reflection in a mirror, tried to fight it. Meeting with resistance from the glass, the cat next ran behind the mirror. Not finding the object of his search, he again came to the front, and while keeping his eyes deliberately fixed on the image, felt round the edge of the glass with one paw, whilst with his head twisted round to the front he assured himself of the persistence of the reflection. He never afterwards condescended to notice a mirror. The following is communicated to me by a correspondent whose name I cannot obtain permission to publish. I am sure, however, that it is communicated in good faith, and the incident can scarcely be supposed to have been due to accident. After describing the cat and the parrot in their amiable relationship, my correspondent proceeds:-- One evening there was no one in the kitchen. Cook had gone upstairs, and left a bowl full of dough to rise by the fire. Shortly after, the cat rushed up after her, mewing, and making what signs she could for her to go down; then she jumped up and seized her apron, and tried to drag her down. As she was in such a state of excitement cook went, and found 'Polly' shrieking, calling out, flapping her wings and struggling violently, 'up to her knees' in dough, and stuck quite fast. No doubt if she had not been rescued she would have sunk in the morass and been smothered. I shall here introduce two or three cases to show the ingenious devices to which clever cats will resort for the purpose of capturing prey. Mr. James Hutchings writes in 'Nature' (vol. xii., p. 330) an account of an old tom cat using a young bird, which had fallen out of its nest, as a decoy for the old birds. The cat touched the young bird with his paw when it ceased to flutter and cry, in order that, by thus making it display its terror, the old cock bird, which was all the while flying about in great consternation, might be induced to approach near enough to be caught. Many times the cock bird did so, and the cat made numerous attempts to catch it, but without success. All the while a kitten had to be kept from killing the young bird. As this scene continued for a long time--in fact, till terminated by Mr. Hutchings--and as there does not appear to have been any opportunity for errors of observation, I think the case worth recording. The following case is communicated to me by Mr. James G. Stevens, of St. Stephen, New Brunswick:-- Looking out on the garden in front of my residence, I observed a robin alight on a small tree: it was midwinter, the ground covered with about a foot of _light_ snow. A cat came stealthily along, with difficulty making her way through the snow until within about three feet of the tree where the bird was; the robin was sluggishly resting on a twig distant three feet from the ground or surface of snow; the cat could not well, owing to the softness of the snow, venture to make a spring. She crouched down and at first gently stirred herself, evidently with the purpose of causing the bird to move. The first attempt failed. She again more actively stirred herself by a shaking motion. She again failed, when she stirred herself vigorously again and started the bird, which flew about fifty feet away, and alighted on a small low bush on the _northern_ side of a _close-boarded_ fence. The cat keenly watched the flight and the alighting of the bird; as quickly as she could cross through the snow, she then _took a circuit of about one hundred feet_, watching the place where the bird was all the while, and covering her march by making _available every bush to hide her_. When out of range of vision of the bird she more actively made for the fence, leaped over it, came up on the _southern_ side of it, and jumped on it, calculating her distance so accurately that she came within a foot of the bush where the bird was, and at once sprung. She missed her prey, but I thought she proved herself a cunning hunter. If this case is worth relating you may use the name of Judge Stevens, of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, as a witness to the same. Again, I quote the following case communicated to 'Nature' by Dr. Frost, because, although it shows an almost incredible amount of far-sighted stratagem, I cannot on the one hand see much room for mal-observation, and on the other hand it is, as I shall show, to some extent corroborated by an independent observation of my friend Dr. Klein, and another correspondent:-- Our servants have been accustomed during the late frost to throw the crumbs remaining from the breakfast-table to the birds, and I have several times noticed that our cat used to wait there in ambush in the expectation of obtaining a hearty meal from one or two of the assembled birds. Now, so far, this circumstance in itself is not an 'example of abstract reasoning.' But to continue. For the last few days this practice of feeding the birds has been left off. The cat, however, with an almost incredible amount of forethought, was observed by myself, together with two other members of the household, to scatter crumbs on the grass with the obvious intention of enticing the birds.[256] Although this account, as I have said, borders on the incredible, I have allowed it to pass, because up to a certain point it is, as I have also said, corroborated by an observation communicated to me by my friend Dr. Klein, F.R.S. Dr. Klein satisfied himself that the cat he observed had established a definite association between crumbs already sprinkled on the garden walk, and sparrows coming to eat them; for as soon as the crumbs were sprinkled on the walk, the cat used to conceal himself from the walk in a neighbouring shrubbery, there to await in ambush the coming of the birds. The latter, however, showed themselves more wide awake than the cat, for there was a wall running behind the shrubbery, from the top of which the birds could see the cat in his supposed concealment, and then a long line of sparrows used to wait watching the cat and the crumbs at the same time, but never venturing to fly down to the latter until the former, wearied with waiting, went away. In this case the reasoning observation of the cat--'crumbs attract birds, therefore I will wait for birds when crumbs are scattered'--was as complete as in the case of Dr. Frost's cat, but the reasoning in the latter case seems to have proceeded a stage further--'therefore I will scatter crumbs to attract birds.' Now, in the face of the definite statement made by Dr. Frost, that his cat did advance to this further stage of reasoning, I have not felt justified in suppressing his remarkable observation. And, as lending still further credence to the account, I may quote the corroborative observation of another correspondent in 'Nature,' which is of value because forming an intermediate step between the intelligence displayed by Dr. Klein's cat and that displayed by Dr. Frost's. This correspondent says:-- A case somewhat similar to that mentioned by Dr. Frost, of a cat scattering crumbs, occurred here within my own knowledge. During the recent severe winter a friend was in the habit of throwing crumbs outside his bedroom window. The family have a fine black cat, which, seeing that the crumbs brought birds, would occasionally hide herself behind some shrubs, and when the birds came for their breakfast, would pounce out upon them with varying success. The crumbs had been laid out as usual one afternoon, but left untouched, and during the night a slight fall of snow occurred. On looking out next morning my friend observed puss busily engaged scratching away the snow. Curious to learn what she sought, he waited, and saw her take the crumbs up from the cleared space and lay them one by one after another on the snow. After doing this she retired behind the shrubs to wait further developments. This was repeated on two other occasions.[257] Taking, then, these three cases together, we have an ascending series in the grades of intelligence from that displayed by Dr. Klein's cat, which merely observed that crumbs attracted birds, through that of the cat which exposed the concealed crumbs for the purpose of attracting birds, to that of Dr. Frost's cat, which actually sprinkled the crumbs. Therefore, although, if the last-mentioned or most remarkable case had stood alone, I should not have felt justified in quoting it, as we find it thus led up to by other and independent observations, I do not feel that I should be justified in suppressing it. And, after all, regarded as an act of reason, the sprinkling of crumbs to attract birds does not involve ideas or inferences very much more abstruse or remote than those which are concerned in some of the other and better corroborated instances of the display of feline intelligence, which I shall now proceed to state. In the understanding of mechanical appliances, cats attain to a higher level of intelligence than any other animals, except monkeys, and perhaps elephants. Doubtless it is not accidental that these three kinds of animals fall to be associated in this particular. The monkey in its hands, the elephant in its trunk, and the cat in its agile limbs provided with mobile claws, all possess instruments adapted to manipulation, with which no other organs in the brute creation can properly be compared, except the beak and toes of the parrot, where, as we have already seen, a similar correlation with intelligence may be traced. Probably, therefore, the higher aptitude which these animals display in their understanding of mechanical appliances is due to the reaction exerted upon their intelligence by these organs of manipulation. But, be this as it may, I am quite sure that, excepting only the monkey and elephant, the cat shows a higher intelligence of the special kind in question than any other animal, not forgetting even the dog. Thus, for instance, while I have only heard of one solitary case (communicated to me by a correspondent) of a dog which, without tuition, divined the use of a thumb-latch, so as to open a closed door by jumping upon the handle and depressing the thumb-piece, I have received some half-dozen instances of this display of intelligence on the part of cats. These instances are all such precise repetitions of one another, that I conclude the fact to be one of tolerably ordinary occurrence among cats, while it is certainly very rare among dogs. I may add that my own coachman once had a cat which, certainly without tuition, learnt thus to open a door that led into the stables from a yard into which looked some of the windows of the house. Standing at these windows when the cat did not see me, I have many times witnessed her _modus operandi_. Walking up to the door with a most matter-of-course kind of air, she used to spring at the half-hoop handle just below the thumb-latch. Holding on to the bottom of this half-hoop with one fore-paw, she then raised the other to the thumb-piece, and while depressing the latter, finally with her hind legs scratched and pushed the doorposts so as to open the door. Precisely similar movements are described by my correspondents as having been witnessed by them. Of course in all such cases the cats must have previously observed that the doors are opened by persons placing their hands upon the handles, and, having observed this, the animals forthwith act by what may be strictly termed rational imitation. But it should be observed that the process as a whole is something more than imitative. For not only would observation alone be scarcely enough (within any limits of thoughtful reflection that it would be reasonable to ascribe to an animal) to enable a cat upon the ground to distinguish that the essential part of the process as performed by the human hand consists, not in grasping the handle, but in depressing the latch; but the cat certainly never saw any one, after having depressed the latch, pushing the doorposts with his legs; and that this pushing action is due to an originally deliberate intention of opening the door, and not to having accidentally found this action to assist the process, is shown by one of the cases communicated to me (by Mr. Henry A. Gaphaus); for in this case, my correspondent says, 'the door was not a loose-fitting one by any means, and I was surprised that by the force of one hind leg she should have been able to push it open after unlatching it.' Hence we can only conclude that the cats in such cases have a very definite idea as to the mechanical properties of a door; they know that to make it open, even when unlatched, it requires to be _pushed_--a very different thing from trying to imitate any particular action which they may see to be performed for the same purpose by man. The whole psychological process, therefore, implied by the fact of a cat opening a door in this way is really most complex. First the animal must have observed that the door is opened by the hand grasping the handle and moving the latch. Next she must reason, by 'the logic of feelings'--If a hand can do it, why not a paw? Then, strongly moved by this idea, she makes the first trial. The steps which follow have not been observed, so we cannot certainly say whether she learns by a succession of trials that depression of the thumb-piece constitutes the essential part of the process, or, perhaps more probably, that her initial observations supplied her with the idea of clicking the thumb-piece. But, however this may be, it is certain that the pushing with the hind feet after depressing the latch must be due to adaptive reasoning unassisted by observation; and only by the concerted action of all her limbs in the performance of a highly complex and most unnatural movement is her final purpose attained. Again, several very similar cases are communicated to me of cats spontaneously, or without tuition, learning to knock knockers and ring bells. Of course in both cases the animals must have observed the use to which knockers and bells are put, and when desiring a door to be opened, employ these signals for the purpose. It betokens no small amount of observation and reasoning in a cat to jump at a knocker with the expectation of thereby summoning a servant to open the door--especially as in some of the cases the jump is not a random jump at the knocker, but a deliberate and complex action, having for its purposes the raising and letting fall of the knocker. For instance, Mr. Belshaw, writing to 'Nature' (vol. xix., p. 659), says:-- I was sitting in one of the rooms, the first evening there, and hearing a loud knock at the front door was told not to heed it, as it was only this kitten asking admittance. Not believing it, I watched for myself, and very soon saw the kitten jump onto the door, hang on by one leg, and put the other fore-paw right through the knocker and rap twice. In such cases the action closely resembles that of opening thumb-latches, but clearly is performed with the purpose of summoning some one else to open the door. Wonderful, however, as these cases of summoning by knockers undoubtedly are, I think they are surpassed by other cases in which the instrument used is the bell. For here it is not merely that cats perfectly well understand the use of bells as calls,[258] but I have one or two cases of cats jumping at bell-_wires_ passing from outside into houses the doors of which the cats desired to be opened.[259] My informants tell me that they do not know how these cats, from any process of observation, can have surmised that pulling the wire in an exposed part of its length would have the effect of ringing the bell; for they can never have observed any one pulling the wires. I can only suggest that in these cases the animals must have observed that when the bells were rung the wires moved, and that the doors were afterwards opened; then a process of inference must have led them to try whether jumping at the wires would produce the same effects. But even this, which is the simplest explanation possible, implies powers of observation scarcely less remarkable than the process of reasoning to which they gave rise. As further instances corroborating the fact that both these faculties are developed in cats to a wonderful degree, I may add the following. Couch ('Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 196) gives a case within his own knowledge of a cat which, in order to get at milk kept in a locked cupboard, used to unlock the door by seating herself on an adjoining table, and 'repeatedly patting on the bow of the key with her paw, when with a slight pull on the door' she was able to open it; the lock was old, and the key turned in it 'on a very slight impulse.' As a still further instance of the high appreciation of mechanical appliances to which cats attain, I shall quote an extract from a paper by Mr. Otto, which will have been read at the Linnean Society before this work is published. After describing the case of a cat opening a thumb-latch in the same way as those already mentioned, this writer proceeds:-- At Parara, the residence of Parker Bowman, Esq., a full-grown cat was one day accidentally locked up in a room without any other outlet than a small window, moving on hinges, and kept shut by means of a swivel. Not long afterwards the window was found open and the cat gone. This having happened several times, it was at last found that the cat jumped upon the window-sill, placed her fore-paws as high as she could reach against the side, deliberately reached with one over to the swivel, moved it from its horizontal to a perpendicular position, and then, leaning with her whole weight against the window, swung it open and escaped. To give only one other instance of high reasoning power in this animal, Mr. W. Brown, writing from Greenock to 'Nature' (vol. xxi., p. 397), gives a remarkable story of a cat, the facts in which do not seem to have admitted of mal-observation. While a paraffine lamp was being trimmed, some of the oil fell upon the back of the cat, and was afterwards ignited by a cinder falling upon it from the fire. The cat with her back 'in a blaze, in an instant made for the door (which happened to be open) and sped up the street about 100 yards,' where she plunged into the village watering-trough, and extinguished the flame. 'The trough had eight or nine inches of water, and puss was in the habit of seeing the fire put out with water every night.' The latter point is important, as it shows the data of observation on which the animal reasoned. FOOTNOTES: [256] _Nature_, vol. xix., p. 519. [257] _Nature_, vol. xx., p. 197. [258] Some of my correspondents tell me of pet or drawing-room cats jumping on chairs and looking at bells when they want milk--this being their sign that they want the bell pulled to call the servant who brings the milk; and Mr. Lawson Tait tells me that one of his cats--of course without tuition--has gone a step further, in that she places her paws upon the bell as a still more emphatic sign that she desires it pulled. But Dr. Creighton Browne tells me of a cat which he has that goes a step further than this, and herself rings the bell. This is corroborative of Archbishop Whately's anecdote. 'This cat lived many years in my mother's family, and its feats of sagacity were witnessed by her, my sisters, and myself. It was known, not merely once or twice, but habitually, to ring the parlour bell whenever it wished the door to be opened. Some alarm was excited on the first occasion that it turned bell-ringer. The family had retired to rest, and in the middle of the night the parlour bell was rung violently; the sleepers were startled from their repose, and proceeded downstairs with poker and tongs, to intercept, as they thought, the predatory movements of some burglar; but they were equally surprised to find that the bell had been rung by pussy, who frequently repeated the act whenever she wished to get out of the parlour.' The cases, however, mentioned in the text are more remarkable than any of these, which, nevertheless, all tend to lead up to them as by a series of steps. Dogs attain to the level of asking by gesture their masters to ring bells. One instance will be sufficient to quote. Mr. Rae says in 'Nature' (vol. xix., p. 459): 'A small English terrier belonging to a friend has been taught to ring for the servant. To test if the dog knew _why_ it rang the bell he was told to do so while the girl was in the room. The little fellow looked up in the most intelligent manner at the person giving the order (his master or mistress, I forget which), then at the servant, and refused to obey, although the order was repeated more than once. The servant left the room, and a few minutes afterwards the dog rang the bell immediately on being told to do so.' It must also be added that dogs sometimes attain to the level of knocking knockers--though I should think this must be very rare with these animals, as I have only met with one case of it. This, however, is a remarkably good case, not only because it rests upon the authority of a famous observer, but also because it is so very definite as proving an act of reason. Dureau de la Malle had a terrier born in his house. It had never seen a knocker in its native home, and when grown up it was taken by its master to Paris. Getting fatigued by a walk in the streets, the animal returned to the house, but found the door shut, and it endeavoured vainly to attract the attention of those within by barking. At length a visitor called, knocked at the knocker, and gained admittance. The dog observed what had been done, and went in together with the visitor. The same afternoon he went in and out half a dozen times, gaining admittance on each occasion by springing at the knocker. Lastly, Dr. W. H. Kesteven writes to 'Nature' (xx., p. 428) of a cat which used to knock at a knocker to gain admittance, in the way already described of so many other cats; but as showing how much more readily cats acquire this practice than dogs, it is interesting to note that Dr. Kesteven adds that a dog which lived in the same house ascertained that the cat was able to gain admittance by knocking, and yet did not imitate the action, but 'was in the habit of searching for her when he wanted to come in, and either waiting till she was ready to knock at the door, or inducing her to do it to please him.' [259] Consul E. L. Layard gives in _Nature_ (xx., p. 339) a precisely similar case of a cat habitually and without tuition ringing a bell by pulling at an exposed wire. CHAPTER XV. FOXES, WOLVES, JACKALS, ETC. THE general psychology of these animals is, of course, very much the same as that of the dog; but, from never having been submitted to the influences of domestication, their mental qualities present a sufficient number of differences from those of the dog to require another chapter for their consideration. If we could subtract from the domestic dog all the emotions arising from his prolonged companionship with man, and at the same time intensify the emotions of self-reliance, rapacity, &c., we should get the emotional character now presented by the wolves and jackals. It is interesting to note that this genetic similarity of emotional character extends to what may be termed idiosyncratic details in cases where it has not been interfered with by human agency. Thus the peculiar, weird, and unaccountable class of emotions which cause wolves to bay at the moon has been propagated unchanged to our domestic dogs. The intelligence of the fox is proverbial; but as I have not received many original observations on this head, I shall merely refer to some of the best authenticated observations already published, and shall begin with the instance narrated by Mr. St. John in his 'Wild Sports of the Highlands':-- When living in Ross-shire I went out one morning in July, before daybreak, to endeavour to shoot a stag, which had been complained of very much by an adjoining farmer, as having done great damage to his crops. Just after it was daylight I saw a large fox coming quietly along the edge of the plantation in which I was concealed; he looked with great care over the turf wall into the field, and seemed to long to get hold of some hares that were feeding in it, but apparently knew that he had no chance of catching one by dint of running; after considering a short time he seemed to have formed his plans, and having examined the different gaps in the wall by which the hares might be supposed to go in and out, he fixed upon the one that seemed the most frequented, and laid himself down close to it in an attitude like a cat watching a mouse. Cunning as he was, he was too intent on his own hunting to be aware that I was within twenty yards of him with a loaded rifle, and able to watch every movement that he made. I was much amazed to see the fellow so completely outwitted, and kept my rifle ready to shoot him if he found me out and attempted to escape. In the meantime I watched all his plans. He first with great silence and care scraped a small hollow in the ground, throwing up the sand as a kind of screen between his hiding-place and the hares' mews; every now and then, however, he stopped to listen, and sometimes to take a most cautious look into the field; when he had done this he laid himself down in a convenient position for springing upon his prey, and remained perfectly motionless with the exception of an occasional reconnoitre of the feeding hares. When the sun began to rise, they came one by one from the field to the cover of the plantation; three had already come in without passing by his ambush; one of them came within twenty yards of him, but he made no movement beyond crouching still more closely to the ground. Presently two came directly towards him; though he did not venture to look up, I saw by an involuntary motion of his ears that those quick organs had already warned him of their approach: the two hares came through the gap together, and the fox, springing with the quickness of lightning, caught one and killed her immediately; he then lifted up his booty and was carrying it off like a retriever, when my rifle-ball stopped his course by passing through his back-bone, and I went up and despatched him. Numberless instances are on record showing the remarkable cunning of foxes in procuring bait from traps without allowing themselves to be caught. These cases are so numerous, and all display so much the same quality of intelligence, that it is impossible to doubt so great a concurrence of testimony. I shall only give two or three specific cases, to show the kind of intelligence that is in question. It will be observed that it is much the same as that which is displayed under similar circumstances by rats and wolverines, in which animals we have already considered it. In all these cases the intelligence displayed must justly be deemed to be of a very remarkable order. For, inasmuch as traps are not things to be met with in nature, hereditary experience cannot be supposed to have played any part in the formation of special instincts to avoid the dangers arising from traps, and therefore the astonishing devices by which these dangers are avoided can only be attributed to observation, coupled with intelligent investigation of a remarkably high character. I extract the following from Couch's 'Illustrations of Instinct' (p. 175):-- Whenever a cat is tempted by the bait, and caught in a fox-trap, Reynard is at hand to devour the bait and the cat too, and fearlessly approaches an instrument which the fox must know cannot _then_ do it any harm. Let us compare with this boldness the incredible caution with which the animal proceeds when tempted by the bait in a _set_ trap. Dietrich aus dem Winkell had once the good fortune of observing, on a winter evening, a fox which for many preceding days had been allured with loop baits, and as often as it ate one it sat comfortably down, wagging its brush. The nearer it approached the trap, the longer did it hesitate to take the baits, and the oftener did it make the tour round the catching-place. When arrived near the trap it squatted down, and eyed the bait for ten minutes at least; whereupon it ran three or four times round the trap, then it stretched out one of its fore-paws after the bait, but did not touch it; again a pause, during which the fox stared immovably at the bait. At last, as if in despair, the animal made a rush and was caught by the neck. (Mag. Nat. Hist., N. S., vol. i., p. 512.) In 'Nature,' vol. xxi., p. 132, Mr. Crehore, writing from Boston, says:-- Some years since, while hunting in Northern Michigan, I tried with the aid of a professional trapper to entrap a fox who made nightly visits to a spot where the entrails of a deer had been thrown. Although we tried every expedient that suggested itself to us we were unsuccessful, and, what seemed very singular, we always found the trap sprung. My companion insisted that the animal dug beneath it, and putting his paw beneath the jaw, pushed down the pan with safety to himself; but though the appearance seemed to confirm it, I could hardly credit his explanation. This year, in another locality of the same region, an old and experienced trapper assured me of its correctness, and said in confirmation that he had several times caught them, after they had made two or three successful attempts to spring the trap, by the simple expedient of setting it upside down, when of course the act of undermining and touching the pan would bring the paw within the grasp of the jaws. In connection with traps, my friend Dr. Rae has communicated to me a highly remarkable instance of the display of reason on the part of the Arctic foxes. I have previously published the facts in my lecture before the British Association in 1879, and therefore shall here quote them from it:-- Desiring to obtain some Arctic foxes, Dr. Rae set various kinds of traps; but as the foxes knew these traps from previous experience, he was unsuccessful. Accordingly he set a kind of trap with which the foxes in that part of the country were not acquainted. This consisted of a loaded gun set upon a stand pointing at the bait. A string connected the trigger of the gun with the bait, so that when the fox seized the bait he discharged the gun, and thus committed suicide. In this arrangement the gun was separated from the bait by a distance of about 30 yards, and the string which connected the trigger with the bait was concealed throughout nearly its whole distance in the snow. The gun-trap thus set was successful in killing one fox, but never in killing a second; for the foxes afterwards adopted either of two devices whereby to secure the bait without injuring themselves. One of these devices was to bite through the string at its exposed part near the trigger, and the other device was to burrow up to the bait through the snow at right angles to the line of fire, so that, although in this way they discharged the gun, they escaped with perhaps only a pellet or two in the nose. Now both of these devices exhibited a wonderful degree of what I think must fairly be called power of reasoning. I have carefully interrogated Dr. Rae on all the circumstances of the case, and he tells me that in that part of the world traps are never set with strings; so that there can have been no special association in the foxes' minds between strings and traps. Moreover, after the death of fox No. 1, the track on the snow showed that fox No. 2, notwithstanding the temptation offered by the bait, had expended a great deal of scientific observation on the gun before he undertook to sever the cord. Lastly, with regard to burrowing at right angles to the line of fire, Dr. Rae justly deemed this so extraordinary a circumstance, that he repeated the experiment a number of times, in order to satisfy himself that the direction of the burrowing was really to be attributed to thought, and not to chance.[260] Dr. Rae also informs me with, regard to wolves, that 'they have been frequently known to take the bait from a gun without injury to themselves, by first cutting the line of communication between the two.'[261] He adds:-- I may also mention what I have been told, although I have never had an opportunity of seeing it, that wolves watch the fishermen who set lines in deep water for trout, through holes in the ice on Lake Superior, and very soon after the man has left, the wolf goes up to the place, takes hold of the stick which is placed across the hole and attached to the line, trots off with it along the ice until the bait is brought to the surface, then returns and eats the bait and the fish, if any happens to be on the hook. The trout of Lake Superior are very large, and the baits are of a size in proportion. Mr. Murray Browne, Inspector of the Local Government Board, writes to me from Whitehall as follows:-- I once, at the Devil's Glen, Wicklow, found a fox fast in a trap by the foot. We did not like to touch him, but got sticks and poked at the trap till we got it open. The process took ten minutes or a quarter-hour. When first we came up the fox strained to get free, and looked frightfully savage; but we had not poked at the trap more than a very short time before the whole expression of his face changed, he lay perfectly quiet (though we must at times have hurt him); and when at last we had got the trap completely off his foot, he still lay quiet, and looked calmly at us, as if he knew we were friends. In fact, we had some little difficulty in getting him to move away, which he did readily enough when he chose. Was not this a case of reason and good sense _overpowering_ natural instinct? Couch says ('Illustrations of Instinct,' p. 178): 'Derham quotes Olaus in his account of Norway as having himself witnessed the fact of a fox dropping his tail among the rocks on the sea-shore to catch the crabs below, and hauling up and devouring such as laid hold of it.' Under the present heading I must not omit to refer to an interesting class of instincts which are manifested by those species of the genus _Canis_, whose custom it is to hunt in packs. The instincts to which I refer are those which lead to a combination among different members of the same pack for the capture of prey by stratagem. These instincts, which no doubt arose and are now maintained by intelligent adaptation to the requirements of the chase, I shall call 'collective instincts.' Thus Sir E. Tennent writes:-- At dusk, and after nightfall, a pack of jackals, having watched a hare or a small deer take refuge in one of these retreats, immediately surrounded it on all sides; and having stationed a few to watch the path by which the game entered, the leader commences the attack by raising the cry peculiar to their race, and which resembles the sound 'okkay' loudly and rapidly repeated. The whole party then rush into the jungle and drive out the victim, which generally falls into the ambush previously laid to entrap it. A native gentleman, who had favourable opportunities of observing the movements of these animals, informed me that when a jackal has brought down his game and killed it, his first impulse is to hide it in the nearest jungle, whence he issues with an air of easy indifference to observe whether anything more powerful than himself may be at hand, from which he might encounter the risk of being despoiled of his capture. If the coast be clear he returns to the concealed carcass and carries it away, followed by his companions. But if a man be in sight, or any other animal to be avoided, my informant has seen the jackal seize a cocoa-nut husk in his mouth, or any similar substance, and fly at full speed, as if eager to carry off his pretended prize, returning for the real booty at some more convenient season.[262] Again, Jesse records the following display of the same instinct by the fox, as having been communicated to him by a friend on whose veracity he could rely:-- Part of this rocky ground was on the side of a very high hill, which was not accessible for a sportsman, and from which both hares and foxes took their way in the evening to the plain below. There were two channels or gullies made by the rains, leading from these rocks to the lower ground. Near one of these channels, the sportsman in question, and his attendant, stationed themselves one evening in hopes of being able to shoot some hares. They had not been there long, when they observed a fox coming down the gully, and followed by another. After playing together for a little time, one of the foxes concealed himself under a large stone or rock, which was at the bottom of the channel, and the other returned to the rocks. He soon, however, came back, chasing a hare before him. As the hare was passing the stone where the first fox had concealed himself, he tried to seize her by a sudden spring, but missed his aim. The chasing fox then came up, and finding that his expected prey had escaped, through the want of skill in his associate, he fell upon him, and they both fought with so much animosity, that the parties who had been watching their proceedings came up and destroyed them both. Similarly, Mr. E. C. Buck records ('Nature,' viii., 303) the following interesting observation made by his friend Mr. Elliot, B.C.S., Secretary to Government, N.W.P.:-- He saw two wolves standing together, and shortly after noticing them was surprised to see one of them lie down in a ditch, and the other walk away over the open plain. He watched the latter, which deliberately went to the far side of a herd of antelopes standing in the plain, and drove them, as a sheep-dog would a flock of sheep, to the very spot where his companion lay in ambush. As the antelopes crossed the ditch, the concealed wolf jumped up as in the former case, seized a doe, and was joined by his colleague. Mr. Buck draws attention to another closely similar display of collective instinct of wolves in the same district observed by a 'writer of one of the books on Indian sport.' With reference to this case I wrote to 'Nature' as follows. The friend to whom I allude was the late Dr. Brydon, C.B. (the 'last man' of the Afghan expedition of 1841), whom I knew intimately for several years, and always found his observations on animals to be trustworthy:-- In response to the appeal which closes Mr. Buck's interesting letter ('Nature,' vol. viii., p. 302), the following instance of 'collective instinct' exhibited by an animal closely allied to the wolf, viz., the Indian jackal, deserves to be recorded. It was communicated to me by a gentleman (since deceased) on whose veracity I can depend. This gentleman was waiting in a tree to shoot tigers as they came to drink at a large lake (I forget the district), skirted by a dense jungle, when about midnight a large axis deer emerged from the latter and went to the water's edge. Then it stopped and sniffed the air in the direction of the jungle, as if suspecting the presence of an enemy; apparently satisfied, however, it began to drink, and continued to do so for a most inordinate length of time. When literally swollen with water it turned to go into the jungle, but was met on its extreme margin by a jackal, which, with a sharp yelp, turned it again into the open. The deer seemed much startled, and ran along the shore for some distance, when it again attempted to enter the jungle, but was again met and driven back in the same manner. The night being calm, my friend could hear this process being repeated time after time--the yelps becoming successively fainter and fainter in the distance, until they became wholly inaudible. The stratagem thus employed was sufficiently evident. The lake having a long narrow shore intervening between it and the jungle, the jackals formed themselves in line along it while concealed within the extreme edge of the cover, and waited until the deer was waterlogged. Their prey, being thus rendered heavy and short-winded, would fall an easy victim if induced to run sufficiently far, _i.e._, if prevented from entering the jungle. It was, of course, impossible to estimate the number of jackals engaged in this hunt, for it is not impossible that as soon as one had done duty at one place, it outran the deer to await it in another. A native servant who accompanied my friend told him that this was a stratagem habitually employed by the jackals in that place, and that they hunted in sufficient numbers 'to leave nothing but the bones.' As it is a stratagem which could only be effectual under the peculiar local conditions described, it must appear that this example of collective instinct is due to 'separate expression,' and not to 'inherited habit.' Cases of collective instinct are not of unfrequent occurrence among dogs. For the accuracy of the two following I can vouch. A small Skye and a large mongrel were in the habit of hunting hares and rabbits upon their own account, the small dog having a good nose, and the larger one great fleetness. These qualities they combined in the most advantageous manner, the terrier driving the cover towards his fleet-footed companion which was waiting for it outside. The second case is remarkable for a display of sly sagacity. A friend of mine in Ross-shire had a small terrier and a large Newfoundland. One day a shepherd called upon him to say that his dogs had been worrying sheep the night before. The gentleman said there must be some mistake, as the Newfoundland had not been unchained. A few days afterwards the shepherd again called with the same complaint, vehemently asserting that he was positive as to the identity of the dogs. Consequently the owner set one watch upon the kennel and another outside the sheep enclosure, directing them (in consequence of what the shepherd had told him) not to interfere with the action of the dogs. After this had been done several nights in succession, the small dog was observed to come at daydawn to the place where the large one was chained; the latter immediately slipped his collar, and the two animals made straight for the sheep. Upon arriving at the enclosure the Newfoundland concealed himself behind a hedge, while the terrier drove the sheep towards his ambush, and the fate of one of them was quickly sealed. When their breakfast was finished the dogs returned home, and the larger one, thrusting his head into his collar, lay down again as though nothing had happened. Why this animal should have chosen to hunt by stratagem prey which it could easily run down, I cannot suggest; but there can be little doubt that so wise a dog must have had some good reason. A similar instance of the display of collective instinct is thus narrated by M. Dureau de la Malle:-- I had at one time two sporting dogs, the one an excellent pointer with a very smooth skin, and of remarkable beauty and intelligence; the other was a spaniel with long and thick hair, but which had not been taught to point, but only coursed in the woods like a harrier. My _château_ is situated on a level spot of ground, opposite to copse wood filled with hares and rabbits. When sitting at my window, I have observed these two dogs, which were at large in the yard, approach and make signs to each other, and first glancing at me, as if to see if I offered any obstacle to their wishes, step away very gently, then quicken their pace when they were at a little distance from my sight, and finally dart off at full speed when they thought I could neither see them nor order them back. Surprised at this mysterious manoeuvre, I followed them, and witnessed a singular sight. The pointer, who seemed to be the leader of the enterprise, had sent the spaniel out to beat the bushes, and give tongue at the opposite extremity of the bushwood. As to himself, he made with slow steps the circuit of the wood by following it along the border, and I observed him stop before a passage much frequented by rabbits, and there point. I continued at a distance to observe how the intrigue was going to end. At length I heard the spaniel, which had started a hare, drive it with much tongue towards the place where its companion was lying in ambush, and the moment that the hare came out of the passage to gain the fields, the latter darted upon it and brought it to me with an air of triumph. I have seen these two dogs repeat this same manoeuvre more than a hundred times; and this conformity has convinced me that it was not accidental, but the result of a concerted agreement and combined plan of operations understood beforehand. Again, among Mr. Darwin's MSS., I find a letter from Mr. H. Reeks (1871), which says that the wolves of Newfoundland adopt exactly the same stratagem for the capture of deer in winter as that which is adopted by the hunters. That is to say, some of the pack secrete themselves in one or more of the _leeward_ deer-paths in the forest or 'belting,' while one or two wolves make a circuit round the herd of deer to windward. The herd invariably retreats by one of its accustomed runs, and 'it rarely happens . . . that the wolves do not manage by this stratagem to secure a doe or young stag.' And Leroy, in his book on Animal Intelligence, narrates closely similar facts of the wolves of Europe as having fallen within his own observation. FOOTNOTES: [260] I have requested Dr. Rae to write out all the particulars of these remarkable observations, and the following is the response which he has kindly made:--'When trapping foxes in Hudson's Bay it sometimes happens that certain of these acute animals, probably from having seen their companions caught, studiously avoid the ordinary steel and wooden traps, however carefully set. The trapper then sets one or more guns in a peculiar manner, having a line 15 or 20 yards long uniting the trigger with a bait, on taking hold of which the fox sets the gun off, and commits suicide. The double object of the bait being placed so near the gun is that the fox may be certainly killed--not wounded only--and that the head alone should be hit, and the body not riddled all over with shot, which would spoil the skin. It is also necessary to mention that four or five inches of slack line must be allowed for contraction of the line by change from a dry to a moist atmosphere, which otherwise would cause so great a strain on the trigger that the gun would be discharged without the bait being touched. So as to conceal as far as possible all connection between bait and gun, that part of the line next the bait is carefully hid under the snow. 'When the fox takes the bait, he will have lifted it five inches (the length of the slack line) from its normal position before the gun goes off; consequently, instead of pointing the gun at the bait, it is aimed fully eight or nine inches higher, at the probable position of the brain of the animal when the gun is discharged. 'For reasons which scarcely require explanation, foxes very generally go about in pairs (long before the snow disappears), not necessarily always close together, because they have a better chance of finding food if separated some distance from each other. 'After one or more foxes have been shot, the trapper on visiting his guns perhaps finds that a fox has first cut the line connecting the bait with the gun, and then gone up and eaten the bait; or, if the gun has been set on a drift bank of snow, he or she has scraped a trench ten or twelve inches deep up to the bait, taken hold of it whilst lying in the trench, set the gun off, and then trotted coolly away with the food (taken, one may say, from the gun's mouth) safe and uninjured, as is clearly evinced by there being no mark of blood on the tracks. 'In pulling the bait whilst in the trench, the fox would drag it five inches, or the length of the slack line, _downwards_, and therefore his _head_ and _nose_ would be completely out of harm's way, both because of the snow protection, and also these parts of his body being twelve or thirteen inches below the line of aim. 'In the cases seen by myself, and by a friend of greater experience, the trench was always scraped at right angles, or nearly so, to the line of fire of the gun. This at first sight may appear erroneous, but on reflection it really is not so, for if the trench is to be a shelter one--thinking, as the fox must have done, that the gun or something coming from it was the danger to be protected from or guarded against--it must be made across the line of fire, for if scratched in the direction of fire it would afford little or no protection or concealment, and the reasoning power or intelligence of the fox would be at fault. 'My belief is that one of these knowing foxes had seen his or her companion shot, or found it dead shortly after it had been killed, and not unnaturally attributed the cause of the mishap to the only strange thing it saw near, namely, the gun. 'It was evident that in all cases they had studied the situation carefully, as was sufficiently shown by their tracks in the snow, which indicated their extremely cautious approach when either the string-cutting or trench-making dodge was resorted to, in attempting to obtain the coveted bait without injury to themselves.' [261] It will be remembered that, from evidence previously detailed, both the wolverine or glutton and certain deer have been shown capable of similarly obviating the danger of gun-traps. [262] _Nat. Hist. of Ceylon_, p. 35. CHAPTER XVI. THE DOG. THE intelligence of the dog is of special, and indeed of unique interest from an evolutionary point of view, in that from time out of record this animal has been domesticated on account of the high level of its natural intelligence; and by persistent contact with man, coupled with training and breeding, its natural intelligence has been greatly changed. In the result we see, not only a general modification in the way of dependent companionship and docility, so unlike the fierce and self-reliant disposition of all wild species of the genus; but also a number of special modifications, peculiar to certain breeds, which all have obvious reference to the requirements of man. The whole psychological character of the dog may therefore be said to have been moulded by human agency with reference to human requirements, so that now it is not more true that man has in a sense created the structure of the bull-dog and greyhound, than that he has implanted the instincts of the watch-dog and pointer. The definite proof which we thus have afforded of the transforming and creating influence exerted upon the mental character and instincts of species by long and persistent training, coupled with artificial selection, furnishes the strongest possible corroboration of the theory which assigns psychological development in general to the joint operation of individual experience coupled with natural selection. For thousands of years man has here been virtually, though unconsciously, performing what evolutionists may regard as a gigantic experiment upon the potency of individual experience accumulated by heredity; and now there stands before us this most wonderful monument of his labours--the culmination of his experiment in the transformed psychology of the dog. In my next work I shall treat of this subject with the fulness that it deserves--especially in its relation to the origin of instincts and the development of the moral sense; but to enter upon this topic at present would demand more space than can be allowed. To do full justice to the psychology of the dog a separate treatise would be required. Here I can only trace a sketch. _Memory._ As regards memory, one or two instances will suffice. Mr. Darwin writes: 'I had a dog who was savage and averse to all strangers, and I purposely tried his memory after an absence of five years and two days. I went near the stable where he lived, and shouted to him in my old manner; he showed no joy, but instantly followed me out walking, and obeyed me, as if I had parted with him only an hour before.'[263] It is not only persons or places that dogs remember for long periods. I had a setter in the country, which one year I took up with me to town for a few months. While in town he was never allowed to go out without a collar on which was engraved my address. A ring upon this collar made a clinking sound, and the setter soon learnt to associate the approach of this sound with the prospect of a walk. Three years afterwards I again took this setter up to town. He remembered every nook and corner of my house in town, and also his way about the streets, and the first time that I brought his collar, slightly clinking as before, he showed by his demonstrations of joy that he well remembered the sound with all its old associations, although he had not heard this sound for three years. _Emotions._ The emotional life of the dog is highly developed--more highly, indeed, than that of any other animal. His gregarious instincts, united with his high intelligence and constant companionship with man, give to this animal a psychological basis for the construction of emotional character, having a more massive as well as more complex consistency than that which is presented even in the case of the monkey, which, as we shall afterwards see, attains to a remarkably high level in this respect. Pride, sense of dignity, and self-respect are very conspicuously exhibited by well-treated dogs. As with man, so with the friend of man, it is only those whose lines of fortune have fallen in pleasant places, and whose feelings may therefore be said to have profited by the refining influences of culture, that display in any conspicuous measure the emotions in question. 'Curs of low degree,' and even many dogs of better social position, have never enjoyed those conditions essential to moral refinement, which alone can engender a true sense of self-respect and dignity. A 'low-life' dog may not like to have his tail pulled, any more than a gutter child may like to have his ears boxed; but here it is physical pain rather than wounded pride that causes the smart. Among 'high-life' dogs, however, the case is different. Here wounded sensibilities and loss of esteem are capable of producing much keener suffering than is mere physical pain; so that among such dogs a whipping produces quite a different and a much more lasting effect than in the case of their rougher brethren, who, as soon as it is over, give themselves a shake and think no more about it. As evidence of the delicacy of feeling to which dogs of aristocratic estate may attain, I shall give one or two among many instances that I could render. A reproachful word or look from any of his friends would make a Skye terrier that I owned miserable for a whole day. If we had ever ventured to strike him I do not know what would have happened, for his sentiments were quite abreast of the age with respect to moral repugnance to the use of the lash. Thus, for instance, at one time when all his own friends were out of town, he was taken for a walk every day in the park by my brother, to whose care he had been entrusted. He enjoyed his walks very much, and was wholly dependent upon my brother for obtaining them. Nevertheless, one day while he was amusing himself with another dog in the park, my brother, in order to persuade him to follow, struck him with a glove. The terrier looked up at his face with an astonished and indignant gaze, deliberately turned round, and trotted home. Next day he went out with my brother as before, but after he had gone a short distance he looked up at his face significantly, and again trotted home with a dignified air. After thus making his protest in the strongest way he could, the dog ever afterwards refused to accompany him. This terrier habitually exhibited a strong repugnance to corporal punishment, even when inflicted upon others. Thus, whenever or wherever he saw a man striking a dog, whether in the house or outside, near at hand or at a distance, he used to rush in to interfere, snarling and snapping in a most threatening way. Again, when driving with me in a dog-cart, he always used to hold the sleeve of my coat every time I touched the horse with the whip. As bearing upon this sensitiveness of feeling produced in dogs by habitually kind treatment, I shall here give an extract from the letter of one of my correspondents (Mrs. E. Picton). It relates to a Skye terrier which had a strong aversion to being washed:-- In process of time this aversion increased so much that all the servants I had refused to perform the ablutions, being in terror of doing so from the ferocity the animal evinced on such occasions. I myself did not choose to undertake the office, for though the animal was passionately attached to me, such was his horror of the operation, that even I was not safe. Threats, beating, and starving were all of no avail; he still persisted in his obstinacy. At length I hit upon a new device. Leaving him perfectly free, and not curtailing his liberty in any way, I let him know, by taking no notice of him, that he had offended me. He was usually the companion of my walks, but now I refused to let him accompany me. When I returned home I took no notice of his demonstrative welcome, and when he came looking up at me for caresses when I was engaged either in reading or needlework, I deliberately turned my head aside. This state of things continued for about a week or ten days, and the poor animal looked wretched and forlorn. There was evidently a conflict going on within him, which told visibly on his outward appearance. At length one morning he crept quietly up to me, and gave me a look which said as plainly as any spoken words could have done, 'I can stand it no longer; I submit.' And submit he did quite quietly and patiently to one of the roughest ablutions it had ever been his lot to experience; for by this time he sorely needed it. After it was over he bounded to me with a joyous bark and wag of his tail, saying unmistakably, 'I know all is right now.' He took his place by my side as his right when I went for my walk, and retained from that time his usually glad and joyous expression of countenance. When the period for the next ablution came round the old spirit of obstinacy resumed its sway for a while, but a single look at my averted countenance was sufficient for him, and he again submitted without a murmur. Must there not have been something akin to the reasoning faculty in the breast of an animal who could thus for ten days carry on such a struggle? This strong effect of silent coldness shows that the loss of affectionate regard caused the terrier more suffering than beating, starving, or even the hated bath; and as many analogous cases might be quoted, I have no hesitation in adducing this one as typical of the craving for affectionate regard, which is manifested by sensitive dogs. In this connection I may point out the remarkable change which has been produced in the domestic dog as compared with wild dogs, with reference to the enduring of pain. A wolf or a fox will sustain the severest kinds of physical suffering without giving utterance to a sound, while a dog will scream when any one accidentally treads upon its toes. This contrast is strikingly analogous to that which obtains between savage and civilised man: the North American Indian, and even the Hindoo, will endure without a moan an amount of physical pain--or at least bodily injury--which would produce vehement expressions of suffering from a European. And doubtless the explanation is in both cases the same--namely, that refinement of life engenders refinement of nervous organisation, which renders nervous lesions more intolerable. As evidence of the idea of caste in a dog, I shall quote only one instance, although many others might be given: this also may be taken as typical. I extract it from St. John's 'Wild Sports of the Highlands,' where, speaking of his retriever, this very good observer states: 'He struck up an acquaintance with a ratcatcher and his cur, thoroughly entering into their way of business; but the moment he saw me he instantly cut his humble friends, and denied all acquaintance with them in the most comical manner.'[264] Dogs likewise display in a high degree the feelings of emulation and jealousy. I once had a terrier which took great pains, and manifested paternal delight, in teaching his puppy to hunt rabbits. But in time the puppy outgrew his father in strength and fleetness, so that in the chase, in spite of straining every nerve, the father used to be gradually distanced. His whole demeanour then changed, and every time that he found his son drawing away from him he used in desperation to seize the receding tail of the youngster. Although the son was now much stronger than the father, he never used to resent this exercise of paternal authority, even though the rabbit were close under his nose. Of jealousy in dogs innumerable instances might be given, but I shall merely quote one from my bulky correspondence on this head. It is sent me by Mr. A. Oldham:-- He had grown old, and having some affection in his legs which made walking difficult to him, he had sunk into a very stagnant sort of life, when a Scotch terrier was brought to live with us, and treated with much favour. All Charlie's old vigour revived upon the advent of this rival. He exhibited agonies of jealousy, and has since spent his life in following, watching, and imitating him. He insists on doing everything that Jack does. Although he had previously given up walking, he now makes a point of going out whenever Jack does so. Several times he has started with us, but finding that Jack was not of the party, has turned back and quietly gone home. In the same way, although before he ate nothing but meat, he now eats any food that is also given to Jack; and if Jack is caressed he watches for some time, and then bursts out whining and barking. I have seen the same rage manifested by a fine cockatoo at the sight of his mistress carrying on her wrist and stroking affectionately a little green parrot. Such jealousy seems to me a very advanced emotion, as it has passed beyond the stage when it may be supposed to be caused by a fear of other animals monopolising _material_ benefits which they desire for themselves; it is excited solely by seeing _affection_ or _attention_ bestowed by those they love upon other animals. The actions in which Charlie tries to participate--such as walking far, plunging into cold water after sticks, &c.--are in themselves extremely disagreeable to him, and he performs them only that he may obtain a share in the companionship and notice bestowed upon Jack. Akin to jealousy is the sense of justice. If a master is not equal in his ways towards his dogs, the dogs are very apt to discover the injustice and to resent it accordingly. The well-known observation of the great Arago may be taken as a typical one in this connection. Having been detained by a storm at a country inn, and having ordered a chicken for his dinner, Arago was warming himself by the kitchen fire, when he saw the innkeeper put the fowl on the spit and attempt to seize a turnspit dog lying in the kitchen. The brute, however, refused to enter the wheel, got under a table, and showed fight. On Arago asking what could be the meaning of such conduct, the host replied that the dog had some excuse, that it was not his turn but his comrade's, who did not happen to be in the kitchen. Accordingly, the other turnspit was sent for, and he entered the spit very willingly, and turned away. When the fowl was half roasted Arago took him out, and the other dog, no longer smarting under the sense of injustice, now took his turn without any opposition, and completed the roasting of the fowl. Deceitfulness is another trait in canine character of which numberless instances might be given; but here, again, it seems unnecessary to quote more than one or two cases as illustrative of the general fact. Another of my correspondents, after giving several examples of the display of hypocrisy of a King Charles spaniel, proceeds:-- He showed the same deliberate design of deceiving on other occasions. Having hurt his foot he became lame for a time, during which he received more pity and attention than usual. For months after he had recovered, whenever he was harshly spoken to, he commenced hobbling about the room as if lame and suffering pain from his foot. He only gave up the practice when he gradually perceived that it was unsuccessful. The following instance, which I observed myself, I regard as more remarkable. It has already been published in 'Nature' (vol. xii., p. 66), from which I quote it: The terrier used to be very fond of catching flies upon the window-panes, and if ridiculed when unsuccessful was evidently much annoyed. On one occasion, in order to see what he would do, I purposely laughed immoderately every time he failed. It so happened that he did so several times in succession--partly, I believe, in consequence of my laughing--and eventually he became so distressed that he positively _pretended_ to catch the fly, going through all the appropriate actions with his lips and tongue, and afterwards rubbing the ground with his neck as if to kill the victim: he then looked up at me with a triumphant air of success. So well was the whole process simulated that I should have been quite deceived, had I not seen that the fly was still upon the window. Accordingly I drew his attention to this fact, as well as to the absence of anything upon the floor; and when he saw that his hypocrisy had been detected he slunk away under some furniture, evidently very much ashamed of himself. This allusion to the marked effects of ridicule upon a dog leads to a consideration of the next emotion with which I feel certain that some dogs are to be accredited. I mean the emotion of the ludicrous. This same terrier used, when in good humour, to perform several tricks, which I know to have been self-taught, and which clearly had the object of exciting laughter. For instance, while lying on his side and violently grinning, he would hold one leg in his mouth. Under such circumstances, nothing pleased him so much as having his joke duly appreciated, while if no notice was taken of him he would become sulky. On the other hand, nothing displeased him so much as being laughed at when he did not intend to be ridiculous, as could not be more conclusively proved than by the fact of his behaviour in pretending to catch the fly. Mr. Darwin observes: 'Dogs show what may be fairly called a sense of humour, as distinct from mere play; if a bit of stick or other such object be thrown to one, he will often carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes close to take it away. The dog will seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical joke.'[265] _General Intelligence._ I have very definite evidence of the fact that dogs are able to communicate to one another simple ideas. The communication is always effected by gesture or tones of barking, and the ideas are always of such a simple nature as that of a mere 'follow me.' According to my own observations, the dogs must be above the average of canine intelligence, and the gesture they invariably employ is a contact of heads, with a motion between a rub and a butt. It is quite different from anything that occurs in play, and is always followed by a definite course of action. I must add, however, that although the information thus conveyed is always definite, I have never known a case in which it was complex--anything like asking or telling the way, which several writers have said that dogs can do, being, I believe, quite out of the question. One example will suffice. A Skye terrier (not quite pure) was asleep in the room where I was, while his son lay upon a wall which separates the lawn from the high road. The young dog, when alone, would never attack a strange one, but was a keen fighter when in company with his father. Upon the present occasion a large mongrel passed along the road, and shortly afterwards the old dog awoke and went sleepily downstairs. When he arrived upon the door-step his son ran up to him and made the sign just described. His whole manner immediately altered to that of high animation. Clearing the wall together, the two animals ran down the road as terriers only can when pursuing an enemy. I watched them for a mile and a half, within which distance their speed never abated, although the object of their pursuit had not from the first been in sight. It is almost superfluous to give cases illustrating the well-known fact that dogs communicate their desires and ideas to man; but as the subject of the communication by signs will afterwards be found of importance in connection with the philosophy of communication by words, I shall here give a few examples of dogs communicating by signs with man, which for my purpose will be the more valuable the less they are recognised as unusual. Lieutenant-Gen. Sir John H. Lefroy, C.B., K.C.M.G., F.R.S., writes me that he has a terrier which it is the duty of his wife's maid to wash and feed. 'It was her habit after calling her mistress in the morning to go out and milk a goat which was tethered near the house, and give "Button" the milk. One morning, being rather earlier than usual, instead of going out at once she took up some needlework and began to occupy herself. The dog endeavoured in every possible way to attract her attention and draw her forth, and at last pushed aside the curtain of a closet, and never having been taught to fetch or carry, took between his teeth the cup she habitually used, and brought it to her feet. I inquired into every circumstance strictly on the spot, and was shown where he found the cup.' Similarly I select the following case from a great number of others that I might quote, because it is so closely analogous to the above. It is communicated to me by Mr. A. H. Baines:-- There is a drinking-trough for him in my sitting-room: if at any time it happens to be without water when he goes to drink, he scratches the dish with his fore-paws in order to call attention to his wants, and this is done in an authoritative way, which generally has the desired effect. Another Pomeranian--a member of the same family--when quite young used to soak hard biscuits in water till soft enough to eat. She would carry the biscuit in her mouth to the drinking-trough, drop it in and leave it there for a few minutes, and then fish it out with her paw. One more instance of the communication of ideas by gestures will no doubt be deemed sufficient. It is one of a kind which has many analogies in the literature of canine intelligence. Dr. Beattie relates this case of canine sagacity, of which the scene was a place near Aberdeen. The Dee being frozen, a gentleman named Irvine was crossing the ice, which gave way with him about the middle of the river. Having a gun, he was able to keep himself from sinking by placing it across the opening. 'The dog made many fruitless efforts to save his master, and then ran to a neighbouring village, where he saw a man, and with the most significant gestures pulled him by the coat, and prevailed on him to follow. The man arrived on the spot in time to save the gentleman's life.' Numberless other instances of the same kind might be given, and they display a high degree of intelligence. Even the idea of saving life implies in itself no small amount of intelligence; but in such cases as these we have added the idea of going for help, communicating news of a disaster, and leading the way to its occurrence. Having thus as briefly as possible considered the emotional and the more ordinary intellectual faculties of the dog, I shall pass on to the statement of cases showing the higher and more exceptional developments of canine sagacity. Were the purpose of this work that of accumulating anecdotes of animal intelligence, this would be the place to let loose a flood of facts, which might all be well attested, relating to the high intelligence of dogs. But as my aim is rather that of suppressing anecdotes, except in so far as facts are required to prove the presence in animals of the sundry psychological faculties which I believe the different classes to present, I shall here, as elsewhere, follow the method of not multiplying anecdotes further than seems necessary fully to demonstrate the highest level of intelligence to which the animal under consideration can certainly be said to attain. But in order that any who read these pages for the sake of the anecdotes which they necessarily present may not be disappointed by meeting with cases already known to them, I shall draw my material mainly from the facts communicated to me by private correspondents, alluding to previously published facts only as supplementary to those now published for the first time. It may be well to explain to my numerous correspondents that I select the following cases for quoting, not because they are the most sensational that I have received, but rather because they either contain nothing sufficiently exceptional to excite the criticism of incredulity, or because they happen to have been corroborated by the more or less similar cases which I quote from other correspondents. As showing the high general intelligence of the dog, I shall first begin with the collie. It is certain that many of these dogs can be trusted to gather and drive sheep without supervision. It is enough on this head to refer to the well-known anecdotes of the poet Hogg in his 'Shepherd's Calendar,' concerning his dog 'Sirrah.' Williams, in his book on 'Dogs and their Ways,' says (p. 124) that a friend of his had a collie which, whenever his master said the words 'Cast, cast,' would run off to seek any sheep that might be cast, and on finding it would at once assist it to rise. He also knew of another dog (p. 102), which would perform the same office even in the absence of his master, going the round of the fields and pastures by himself to right all the sheep that he found to be cast.[266] One of my correspondents (Mr. Laurie Gentles) sends me an account of a sheep-dog belonging to a friend of his (Mr. Mitchell, of Inverness-shire) which strayed to a neighbouring farm, and took up his residence with the farmer. On the second night after the dog arrived at the farm the farmer 'took the dog down to the meadow to see if the cattle were all right. To his dismay he found that the fence between his meadow and his neighbour's had got broken down, and that the whole of his neighbour's cattle had got mixed up with his. By the help of the dog the strange cattle were driven back into their proper meadow, and the fence put into temporary repair. The _next_ night, at the same hour, the gentleman started off to look after the cattle. The dog, however, was not to be seen. On arriving at the meadow, what was the gentleman's astonishment to find that the dog had preceded him! His astonishment soon changed into delighted approbation when he found the dog sitting on the broken fence between the two meadows, and daring the cattle from either side to cross. The cattle had during the interval between the first and second visits broken down the fence, and had got mixed up with each other. The dog had quietly gone off on his own account to see if all was right, and finding a similar accident to the one the previous evening, had _alone_ and _unaided_ driven back the _strange_ cattle to their proper meadow, and had mounted guard over the broken fence as I have already indicated.' Colonel Hamilton Smith says that the cattle-dogs of Cuba and Terra Firma are very wise in managing cattle, but require to display different tactics from the cattle-dogs of Europe:-- When vessels with live stock arrive at any of the West India harbours, these animals, some of which are nearly as large as mastiffs, are wonderfully efficient in assisting to land the cargo. The oxen are hoisted out with a sling passing round the base of their horns; and when an ox, thus suspended by the head, is lowered, and allowed to fall into the water, so that it may swim to land, men sometimes swim by the side of it and guide it, but they have often dogs of this breed which will perform the service equally well; for, catching the perplexed animal by the ears, one on each side, they will force it to swim in the direction of the landing-place, and instantly let go their hold when they feel it touch the ground, as the ox will then naturally walk out of the water by itself.[267] That this sagacity need not be due to special tuition, may be inferred from a closely similar display spontaneously shown in the following case. It is communicated to me by a correspondent, Mr. A. H. Browning. This gentleman was looking at a litter of young pigs in their sty, and when he went away the door of the sty was inadvertently left unfastened. The pigs all escaped into his garden. My correspondent then proceeds:-- My attention was called to my dog appearing in a great state of excitement, _not_ barking (he seldom barks), but whining and performing all sorts of antics (in a human subject I should have said 'gesticulating'). The herdmen and myself returned to the sty; we caught but one pig, and put him back; no sooner had we done so than the dog ran after each pig in succession, brought him back to the sty by the ear, and then went after another, until the whole number were again housed. In Lord Brougham's 'Dialogues on Instinct' (iii.) there is narrated the story told to the author by Lord Truro of a dog that used to worry sheep at night. The animal quietly submitted to be tied up in the evening, but when everybody was asleep he used to slip his collar, worry the sheep, and, returning before dawn, again get into his collar to avoid suspicion. I allude to this remarkable display of sagacity because I am myself able fully to corroborate it by precisely similar cases. A friend of mine (the late Mr. Sutherland Murray) had a dog which was always kept tied up at night, but nevertheless the neighbouring farmers complained of having detected him as the culprit when watching to find what dog it was that committed nightly slaughter among their sheep. My friend, therefore, set a watch upon his dog, and found that when all was still be slipped his collar, and after being absent for some hours, returned and slipped his head in again. A precisely similar case is given further back, and others are communicated to me by two correspondents (Mr. Goodbehere, of Birmingham, and Mr. Richard Williams, of Buffalo). The latter says:-- And here let me ask if you are aware of the cunning and sagacity of these sheep-killing dogs, that they never kill sheep on the farm to which they belong, or in the immediate vicinity, but often go miles away; that they always return before daylight, and before doing so wash themselves in some stream to get rid of the blood. In Germany I knew a large dog that was very fond of grapes, and at night used to slip his collar in order to satisfy his propensity; and it was not for some time that the thief was suspected, owing to his returning before daylight and appearing innocently chained up in his kennel. A closely similar case is recorded in Mr. Duncan's book on 'Instinct' of a dog belonging to the Rev. Mr. Taylor, of Colton. The only difference is that the delinquent dog slipped and afterwards readjusted a muzzle instead of a collar. In connection with sly sagacity I may also give another story contained in my correspondence, although in this case I am specially requested by my correspondent not to publish his name. I can, therefore, only say that he occupies a high position in the Church, and that the dog (a retriever) was his own property:-- The dog was lying one evening before the kitchen fire where the cook had prepared a turkey for roasting. She left the kitchen for a few moments, when the dog immediately carried away the turkey and placed it in the cleft of a tree close to the house, but which was well concealed by the surrounding laurels. So rapid were his movements that he returned to his post before the cook had come back, and stretching himself before the fire, looked 'as innocent as a child unborn.' Unfortunately for him, however, a man who was in the habit of taking him to shoot, saw him carrying away his prize and watched his progress. On coming into the kitchen the man found the dog in his old place pretending to be asleep. Diver's conduct was all along dictated by a desire to conceal his theft, and if he were a man I should have said that he intended, in case of inquiry, to prove an alibi. Mr. W. H. Bodley writes me of a retriever dog that belonged to him:-- Before he came to me he lived where another dog of similar size was kept, and on one occasion they fought. Having been chastised for this, on future occasions when they quarrelled they used to swim over a river of some breadth, where they could not be interfered with, and fight out their quarrel on the other side. What seems to me noteworthy in this conduct is the _self-restraint_ manifested under the influence of _passion_, and the mutual understanding to defer the fight till they could prosecute it unmolested; like two duellists crossing the Channel to fight in France. It is, of course, a well-known thing that dogs may easily be taught the use of coin for buying buns, &c. In the 'Scottish Naturalist' for April, 1881, Mr. Japp vouches for the fact that a collie which he knew was in the habit of purchasing cakes with coppers without ever having been taught the use of coin for such purposes. This fact, however, of a dog spontaneously divining the use of money requires corroboration, although it is certain that many dogs have an instinctive idea of giving peace-offerings, and the step from this to the idea of barter may not be large. Thus, to give only two illustrations, Mr. Badcock writes to me that a friend of his had a dog which one day had a quarrel with a companion dog, so that they parted at variance. 'On the next day the friend appeared with a biscuit, which he presented as a peace-offering.' Again, Mr. Thomas D. Smeaton writes to me of his dog that he 'has an amusing practice when he is restored to favour after some slight offence, of immediately picking up and carrying anything that is handiest, stone, stick, paper: it is a deliberate effort to please, a sort of good-will offering, a shaking hands over the past.' I am indebted for the following to Mr. Goodbehere, of Birmingham; it may be taken as typical of many similar cases:-- My friend (Mr. James Canning, of Birmingham) was acquainted with a small mongrel dog who on being presented with a penny or a halfpenny would run with it in his mouth to a baker's, jump on to the top of the half-door leading into the shop, and ring the bell behind the door until the baker came forward and gave him a bun or a biscuit in exchange for the coin. The dog would accept any small biscuit for a halfpenny, but nothing less than a bun would satisfy him for a penny. On one occasion the baker (being annoyed at the dog's too frequent visits), after receiving the coin, refused to give the dog anything in exchange, and on every future occasion the latter (who declined being _taken in_ a second time) would put the coin on the floor, and not permit the baker to pick it up until he had received its equivalent. Mr. R. O. Backhouse writes to me:-- My dog is a broken-haired rabbit-coursing dog, and is very intelligent. I took him one day to an exhibition of pictures and objects of interest, among which were statues and a bust of Sir Walter Scott. It was a local exhibition, and as there was jewellery, some one had to sit up all night with it as guard. I volunteered, and as we were looking about and sitting on a stand of flowers, my dog suddenly began to bark, and made as if he had found some one hiding. On looking round I found that it was the bust of Sir Walter Scott standing among the flowers, and in which he evidently recognised sufficient likeness to a human being to think the supposed man had no business there at so late an hour. I adduce this instance because it serves as a sort of introduction to the more remarkable faculty which I cannot have the least doubt is manifested by some dogs--the faculty, namely, of recognising portraits as representing persons, or possibly of mistaking portraits for persons. Mr. Crehore, writing to 'Nature' (vol. xxi., p. 132), says:-- A Dandie-Dinmont terrier, after the death of his mistress, was playing with some children in a room into which was brought a photograph (large) of her that he had never previously seen. It was placed upon the floor leaning against the wall. In the words of my informant, who witnessed it, the dog, when he suddenly caught sight of the picture, crouched and trembled all over, his whole body quivering. Then he crept along the floor till he reached it, and, seating himself before it, began to bark loudly, as if he would say, 'Why don't you speak to me?' The picture was moved to other parts of the room, and he followed, seating himself before it and repeating his barking. Mr. Charles W. Peach also gives an account in 'Nature' (vol. xx., p. 196) of a large dog recognising his portrait:-- When it (the portrait) was brought to my house, my old dog was present with the family at the unveiling; nothing was said to him, nor invitation given to him to notice it. We saw that his gaze was steadily fixed on it, and he soon became excited and whined, and tried to lick and scratch it, and was so much taken up with it that we--although so well knowing his intelligence--were all quite surprised--in fact, could scarcely believe that he should know it was my likeness. We, however, had sufficient proof after it was hung up in our parlour. The room was rather low, and under the picture stood a chair: the door was left open, without any thought about the dog; he, however, soon found it out, when a low whining and scratching was heard by the family, and on search being made, he was in the chair trying to get at the picture. After this I put it up higher, so as to prevent its being injured by him. This did not prevent him from paying attention to it, for whenever I was away from home, whether for a short or a long time--sometimes for several days--he spent most of his time gazing on it, and as it appeared to give him comfort the door was always left open for him. When I was long away he made a low whining, as if to draw attention to it. This lasted for years--in fact, as long as he lived. From this account it appears that when in the first instance the dog's attention was drawn to the picture it was on the floor in the line of the dog's sight; the behaviour of the animal then and subsequently was too marked and peculiar to admit of mistake. Another correspondent in 'Nature' (vol. xx., p. 220), alluding to the previous letter, writes:-- Having read Mr. Peach's letter on 'Intellect in Brutes,' as shown by the sagacity he witnessed in his dog, I have been asked to send a similar anecdote, which I have often told to friends. Many years ago my husband had his portrait taken by J. Phillips, R.A., and subsequently went to India, leaving the portrait in London to be finished and framed. When it was sent home, about two years after it was taken, it was placed on the floor against the sofa, preparatory to being hung on the wall. We had then a very handsome black-and-tan setter, which was a great pet in the house. As soon as the dog came into the room he recognised his master, though he had not seen him for two years, and went up to the picture and licked the face. When this anecdote was told to Phillips, he said it was the highest compliment that had ever been paid him. Similarly, in the same periodical (vol. xx., p. 220), Mr. Henry Clark writes:-- Some years ago a fine arts exhibition was held at Derby. A portrait of a Derby artist (Wright) was thus signalised:--'The artist's pet dog distinguished this from a lot of pictures upon the floor of the studio by licking the face of the portrait.' Again, I learn from Dr. Samuel Wilks, F.R.S., that a friend of his, whom I shall call Mrs. E., has a terrier which recognised her portrait. 'The portrait is now (1881) hanging in the Royal Academy. When it first arrived home the dog barked at it, as it did at strangers; but after a day or two, when Mrs. E. opened the door to show the portrait to some friends, the dog went straight to the picture and licked the hand. The picture is a three-quarter length portrait of a lady with the hand at the bottom of the picture.' Lastly, my sister, who is a very conscientious and accurate observer, witnessed a most unmistakable recognition of portraits as representative of persons on the part of a small but intelligent terrier of her own. At my request she committed the facts to writing shortly after they occurred. The following is her statement of them:-- I have a small terrier who attained the age of eight months without ever having seen a large picture. One day three nearly life-sized portraits were placed in my room during his absence. Two were hung up, and one left standing against the wall on the floor awaiting the arrival of a picture-rod. When the dog entered the room he appeared much alarmed by the sight of the pictures, barking in a terrified manner first at one and then at another. That is to say, instead of attacking them in an aggressive way with tail erect, as he would have done on thus encountering a strange person, he barked violently and incessantly at some distance from the paintings, with tail down and body elongated, sometimes bolting under the chairs and sofas in the extremity of his fear, and continuing barking from there. Thinking it might be merely the presence of strange objects in the room which excited him, I covered the faces of the portraits with cloths and turned the face of the one on the floor to the wall. The dog soon after emerged from his hiding-place, and having looked intently at the covered pictures and examined the back of the frame on the ground, became quite quiet and contented. I then uncovered one of the pictures, when he immediately flew at it, barking in the same frightened manner as before. I then re-covered that one and took the cover off another. The dog left the covered one and rushed at the one which was exposed. I then turned the face of the one on the floor to the room, and he flew at that with increased fierceness. This I did many times, covering and uncovering each picture alternately, always with the same result. It was only when all three paintings were uncovered at the same time, and he saw one looking at him in whatever direction he turned, that he became utterly terrified. He continued in this state for nearly an hour, at the end of which time, although evidently very nervous and apt to start, he ceased to bark. After that day he never took any more notice of the pictures during the three months he remained in the house. He was then absent from the house for seven months. On his return he went with me into the room where the portraits were hung, immediately on his arrival. He was evidently again much startled on first seeing them, for he rushed at one, barking as he had done on the first occasion, but he only gave three or four barks when he ran back to me with the same apologetic manner as he has when he has barked at a well-known friend by mistake. It will have been observed that in all these cases the portraits, when first recognised as bearing resemblance to human beings, were placed on the floor, or in the ordinary line of the dog's sight. This is probably an important condition to the success of the recognition. That it certainly was so in the case of my sister's terrier was strikingly proved on a subsequent occasion, when she took the animal into a picture-shop where there were a number of portraits hanging round the walls, and also one of Carlyle standing on the floor. The terrier did not heed those upon the walls, but barked excitedly at the one upon the floor. This case was further interesting from the fact that there were a number of purchasers in the shop who were, of course, strangers to the terrier; yet he took no notice of them, although so much excited by the picture. This shows that the pictorial illusion was not so complete as to make the animal suppose the portrait to be a real person; it was only sufficiently so to make it feel a sense of bewildered uncertainty at the kind of life-in-death appearance of the motionless representation. If, notwithstanding all this body of mutually corroborative cases, it is still thought incredible that dogs should be able to recognise pictorial representations,[268] we should do well to remember that this grade of mental evolution is reached very early in the psychical development of the human child. In my next work I shall adduce evidence to show that children of one year, or even less, are able to distinguish pictures as representations of particular objects, and will point at the proper pictures when asked to show these objects. Coming now to cases more distinctly indicative of reason in the strict sense of the word, numberless ordinary acts performed by dogs indisputably show that they possess this faculty. Thus, for instance, Livingstone gives the following observation.[269] A dog tracking his master along a road came to a place where three roads diverged. Scenting along two of the roads and not finding the trail, he ran off on the third without waiting to smell. Here, therefore, is a true act of inference. If the track is not on A or B, it must be on C, there being no other alternative. Again, it is not an unusual thing for intelligent dogs, who know that their masters do not wish to take them out, to leave the house and run a long distance in the direction in which they suppose their masters are about to go, in order that when they are there found the distance may be too great for their masters to return home for the purpose of shutting them up. I have myself known several terriers that would do this, and one of the instances I shall give _in extenso_ (quoted from an account which I published at the time in 'Nature'); for I think it displays remarkably complex processes of far-seeing calculation:-- The terrier in question followed a conveyance from the house in which I resided in the country, to a town ten miles distant. _He only did this on one occasion_, and about five months afterwards was taken _by train_ to the same town as a present to some friends there. Shortly afterwards I called upon these friends in a different conveyance from the one which the dog had previously followed; but the latter may have known that the two conveyances belonged to the same house. Anyhow, after I had put up the horses at an inn, I spent the morning with the terrier and his new masters, and in the afternoon was accompanied by them to the inn. I should have mentioned that the inn was the same as that at which the conveyance had been put up on the previous occasion, five months before. Now, the dog evidently remembered this, and, reasoning from analogy, inferred that I was about to return. This is shown by the fact that he stole away from our party--although at what precise moment he did so I cannot say, but it was certainly _after_ we had arrived at the inn, for subsequently we all remembered his having entered the coffee-room with us. Now, not only did he infer from a single precedent that I was going home, and make up his mind to go with me, but he also further reasoned thus:--'As my previous master lately sent me to town, it is probable that he does not want me to return to the country; therefore, if I am to seize this opportunity of resuming my poaching life, I must now steal a march upon the conveyance. But not only so, my former master may possibly pick me up and return with me to my proper owners; therefore I must take care only to intercept the conveyance at a point sufficiently far without the town to make sure that he will not think it worth his while to go back with me.' Complicated as this train of reasoning is, it is the simplest one I can devise to account for the fact that slightly beyond the _third_ milestone the terrier was awaiting me, lying right in the middle of the road with his face towards the town. I should add that the second two miles of the road were quite straight, so that I could easily have seen the dog if he had been merely running a comparatively short distance in front of the horses. Why this animal should never have returned to his former home on his own account I cannot suggest, but I think it was merely due to an excessive caution which he also manifested in other things. However, be the explanation of this what it may, as a fact he never did venture to come back upon his own account, although there never was a subsequent occasion upon which any of his former friends went to the town but the terrier was seen to return with them, having always found some way of escape from his intended imprisonment. The Rev. J. C. Atkinson gives an account ('Zoologist,' vol. vii., p. 2338) of his terrier, which, on starting a water-rat out of reeds into the running stream, would not plunge directly after it, knowing that the rat would beat him at swimming. But the moment the rat plunged, the dog ran four or five yards down the bank, and there waited till the water-rat, being carried down stream, appeared upon the surface, when he pounced upon it successfully. Cases of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely, and they appear to show a true faculty of reason or inferring. Professor W. W. Bailey, writing from Brown University to 'Nature' (xxii., p. 607), says:-- A friend of mine, a naturalist, and a very conscientious man, whose word can be implicitly trusted, gives the following, to which he was an eye-witness. His grandfather, then a very old but hale and hearty man, had a splendid Newfoundland. There was a narrow and precipitous road leading from the fields to the house. It was regarded as a very dangerous place. One day when the old gentleman was doing some work about the farm his horse became alarmed, and started off with the waggon along this causeway. The chances were that he would dash himself and the empty waggon to pieces. At once the dog seemed to take in the situation, although until that time he had been impassive. He started after the horse at full speed, overtook him, caught the bridle, and by his strength arrested the frightened creature until help could reach him. My friend gives many other stories of this fine dog, and thinks he had a decided sense of humour. I will repeat that both of these tales come to me well authenticated, and I could, by seeking permission, give names and places. Couch gives the following, which is worth quoting, as showing the intelligence of dogs in attacking unusual prey:-- On the first discovery of the prey (crabs) a terrier runs in to seize it, and is immediately and severely bitten in the nose. But a sedate Newfoundland dog of my acquaintance proceeds more soberly in his work. He lays his paw on it to arrest it in its escape; then tumbling it over he bares his teeth, and, seizing it with the mouth, throws the crab aloft. It falls upon the stones; the shell is cracked beyond redemption, and then the dainty dish is devoured at his leisure.[270] I myself know a large dog in Germany which used to kill snakes by dexterously tossing them in the air a great number of times, too quickly to admit of the snake biting. When the snake was thus quite confused, the dog would tear it in pieces. This dog can never have been poisoned by the bite of a snake; but he seems to have had an instinctive idea that the snake might be more harmful in its bite than other animals; for while he was bold in fighting with dogs, and did not then object to receiving his fair share of laceration, he was extremely careful never to begin to tear a snake till he had thoroughly bewildered it by tossing it as described. The reasoning displayed by dogs may not always be of a high order, but little incidents, from being of constant occurrence among all dogs, are the more important as showing the reasoning faculty to be general to these animals. I shall therefore give a few cases to show the kind of reasoning that is of constant occurrence. Mr. Stone writes to me from Norbury Park concerning two of his dogs, one large and the other small. Both being in a room at the same time, one of them, the larger, had a bone, and when he had left it the smaller dog went to take it, the larger one growled, and the other retired to a corner. Shortly afterwards the larger dog went out, but the other did not appear to notice this, and at any rate did not move. A few minutes later the large dog was heard to bark out of doors; the little dog then, without a moment's hesitation, went straight to the bone and took it. It thus appears quite evident that she reasoned--'That dog is barking out of doors, therefore he is not in this room, therefore it is safe for me to take the bone.' The action was so rapid as to be clearly a consequence of the other dog's barking. Again, Mr. John Le Conte, writing from the University of California, tells me of a dog which used to hunt rabbits in an extensive pasture-ground where there was a hollow tree, which frequently served as a place of refuge for the rabbits when they were pressed:-- On one occasion a rabbit was 'started,' and all of the dogs, with the exception of 'Bonus,' dashed off in full pursuit. We were astonished to observe that the sedate 'Bonus,' foregoing the intense excitement of the chase, deliberately trotted by a short cut to a hollow oak trunk, and crouching at its base calmly awaited the advent of the fleeing rabbit. And he was not disappointed (they frequently escaped without being reduced to this extremity), for the pursuing dogs pressed the rabbit so hard that, after making a long detour, it made for the place of refuge. As it was about entering the hollow trunk, the crouching 'Bonus' captured the astonished rodent. Similarly, Dr. Andrew Wilson, F.R.S.E., writes me as follows:-- There is a shrubbery near the house, about 200 or 300 yards long, and running in the shape of a horseshoe. A small terrier used to start a rabbit nearly every morning, at the end of the shrubbery next the house, and hunt him through the whole length of it to the other end, where the rabbit escaped into an old drain. The dog then appears to have come to the conclusion that the chord of a circle is shorter than its arc, for he raised the rabbit again, and instead of following him through the shrubbery as usual, he took the short cut to the drain, and was ready and in waiting on the rabbit when he arrived, and caught him. A somewhat similar instance is communicated to me by Mr. William Cairns, of Argyll House, N.B.:-- I was watching the operations of a little Skye terrier on a wheatstack which was in the course of being thrashed, when suddenly a very large rat bounced off, just from under Fan's nose. It darted into a pit of water about a dozen yards from the stack, and tried to escape. Fan, however, plunged after, and swam for some distance, but found she was being left behind. So she turned to the shore again _and ran round to the other side of the pit, and was ready and caught it just on landing_. I never saw anything more remarkable. If it was not reason, I do not know how it is possible that it could come much more closely to the exercise of that faculty. Dr. Bannister, editor of the 'Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases,' writes me from Chicago, that having spent a winter in Alaska, he 'had a good opportunity to study animal intelligence in the Eskimo dogs,' and he reports it as 'a fact of common occurrence,' when the dogs are drawing sledges on the ice near the coast, that on coming to sinuosities in the coast-line, they spontaneously leave the beaten track and strike out so as to 'cut across the windings by going straight from point to point' of land. This is frequently done even when the leading dog 'could not see the whole winding of the beaten track; he seemed to reason that the route must lead around the headlands, and that he could economise travel by cutting across.' It will be remembered in connection with these dogs, that Mr. Darwin in the 'Descent of Man' (p. 75) quotes Dr. Hayes, who, in his work on 'The Open Polar Sea,' 'repeatedly remarks that his dogs, instead of continuing to draw the sledges in a compact body, diverged and separated when they came to thin ice, so that their weight might be more evenly [and widely] distributed. This was often the first warning which the travellers received that the ice was becoming thin and dangerous.' Mr. Darwin remarks, 'This instinct may possibly have arisen since the time, long ago, when dogs were first employed by the natives in drawing their sledges; or the Arctic wolves, the parent stock of the Esquimaux dog, may have acquired an instinct, impelling them not to attack their prey in a close pack when on thin ice.' Mrs. Horn writes me:-- One morning, soon after his usual time for starting, I saw the dog looking anxiously about, evidently afraid that my brother had gone without him. He looked into the room where we had breakfasted, but my brother was not there. He went up two or three stairs, and listened attentively. Then, to my astonishment, he came down, and going to the hat-stand in the hall, stood on his hind legs and sniffed at the great-coats hanging there, undoubtedly trying to ascertain whether my brother's coat was there or not. Another correspondent (Mr. Westlecombe) writes:-- My cat had kittens, of which two were preserved, the rest being drowned. The dog tolerated the two kittens, but did not care about them with any friendship. When the kittens were a few weeks old, I--finding that I could get but one of them off my hands--determined to kill the other, and, as the quickest mode of death, to shoot it by a pistol close behind its head. The dog saw me do this in my garden, and in a few minutes afterwards she appeared with the other kitten dead in her mouth; she had killed it. If that was not reasoning I do not know what is. Mr. W. F. Hooper writes me of a Newfoundland dog that was in the habit of accompanying the nursemaid and baby belonging to its mistress. On one occasion a keen wind began to blow, and the nursemaid drew her shawl over the child:-- The nursemaid had not taken many steps towards home before her progress was barred by the dog, who placed himself in the centre of the path and growled whenever she advanced. She was much alarmed, and tried to coax the dog to move, but Leo would not, and abated nothing of the hostile display. Half an hour passed, and the girl became nearly distracted. What could be the matter with the dog? Was she to be a prisoner all day? Would the animal fly at her throat? Was Leo suffering from hydrophobia? These and similar questions crossed the girl's mind. At length a suggestion of despair--it was nothing more--occurred to her. She thought it might win the dog round to good humour if she showed it the baby; so she removed the folds of her shawl and presented it at arm's length to the dog. The result was magical, and far in excess of all expectation, for not only did the dog cease to growl, but he began to gambol and caress, and removed himself from the path altogether, so that there was now a free course, and home was soon reached. The explanation of the whole affair is, when the nursemaid turned on her path thinking she had gone sufficiently far, the dog missed sight of the baby, and believed it was gone. Under this impression the dog converted himself into a sentinel, with the resolve that not one step should be taken towards home without the baby; and faithfully did the animal keep watch and ward until the demonstration was given that the child had not been left behind, but was still in the nurse's arms alive and well. I think this is an exhibition of intelligence worthy of being known to you. I extract the following instance from Col. Hutchinson's 'Dog-breaking.' It is briefly alluded to in the 'Descent of Man.' The observer and narrator is Mr. Colquhoun:-- I may mention a proof of his sagacity. Having a couple of long shots across a pretty broad stream, I stopped a mallard with each barrel, but both were only wounded. I sent him across for the birds. He first attempted to bring them both, but one always struggled out of his mouth: he then laid down one intending to bring the other; but whenever he attempted to cross to me, the bird left fluttered into the water; he immediately returned again, laid down the first on the shore and recovered the other. The first now fluttered away, but he instantly secured it, and, standing over them both, seemed to cogitate for a moment; then, although on any other occasion he never ruffles a feather, deliberately killed one, brought over the other, and then returned for the dead bird. The following, communicated to me by Mr. Blood, is a closely analogous, and therefore confirmatory case. He was out shooting with a companion, and three wild ducks were simultaneously dropped into a lake--one falling dead and the other two winged. Mr. Blood sent in his spaniel to retrieve, and of course when the wounded birds saw her coming they swam out, so that she first reached the dead duck. She swam up to it, paused for a moment, and passing it went after the nearest wounded bird. Having caught this, she again hesitated, and apparently after consideration she gave it a chop and let it go, quieted for the present. She then caught and brought to land the other wounded duck, and going back she again reached the dead bird; but looking at the other and seeing that it was again moving, she went out and brought it in, and last of all brought the dead bird. The dog was a first-rate retriever and never injured game, so that it was an entirely new thing for her to kill a bird. Again, Mr. Arthur Nicols, in 'Nature,' vol. xix., page 496, says:-- Can we conceive any human being reasoning more correctly than a dog did in the following instance? Towards the evening of a long day's snipe-shooting on Dartmoor, the party was walking down the bank of the Dart, when my retriever flushed a widgeon which fell to my gun in the river, and of course instantly dived. I said no word to the dog. He did not plunge into the river _then_, but galloped _down_ stream some fifty or sixty yards, and then entered and dashed from side to side--it was about twenty or thirty feet wide--working up stream, and making a great commotion in the water until he came to the place where we stood. Then he landed and shook himself, and carefully hunted the near bank a considerable distance down, crossed to the opposite side, and diligently explored that bank. Two or three minutes elapsed, and the party was for moving on, when I called their attention to a sudden change in the dog's demeanour. His 'flag' was now up and going from side to side in that energetic manner which, as every sportsman knows, betokens a hot scent. I then knew that the bird was as safe as if it was already in my bag. Away through the heather went the waving tail, until twenty or thirty yards from the bank opposite to that on which we were standing there was a momentary scuffle; the bird just rose from the ground above the heather, the dog sprang into the air, caught it, came away at full gallop, dashed across the stream, and delivered it into my hands. Need I interpret all this for the experienced sportsman? The dog had learned from long experience in Australia and the narrow cañadas in the La Plata that a wounded duck goes down stream; if winged, his maimed wing sticks out and renders it impossible for him to go up, so he will invariably land and try to hide away from the bank. But if the dog enters at the place where the bird fell, the latter will go on with the stream for an indefinite distance, rising now and then for breath, and give infinite trouble. My dog had found out all this long since, and had proved the correctness of his knowledge times out of number, and by his actions had _taught me_ the whole art and mystery of retrieving duck. His object, I say without a doubt, because I had numberless opportunities of observing it, was to fling the bird and force it to land by cutting it off lower down the stream. Then assuming, as his experience justified him, that the bird had landed, he hunted each bank in succession for the trail, which he knew must betray the fugitive. As showing in a higher, and therefore rarer degree, the ratiocinative faculty in dogs, I may quote a brief extract from my British Association lecture:-- My friend Dr. Rae, the well-known traveller and naturalist, knew a dog in Orkney which used to accompany his master to church on alternate Sundays. To do so he had to swim a channel about a mile wide; and before taking to the water he used to run about a mile to the north when the tide was flowing, and a nearly equal distance to the south when the tide was ebbing, 'almost invariably calculating his distance so well that he landed at the nearest point to the church.' In his letter to me Dr. Rae continues: 'How the dog managed to calculate the strength of the spring and neap tides at their various rates of speed, and always to swim at the proper angle, is most surprising.' As a confirmatory case, I may also quote an extract from a letter sent me by Mr. Percival Fothergill. Writing of a retriever which he has, he says:-- I have seen her spring overboard from our gangway 16 feet from the water-line. The tides ran more than 5 knots, and she invariably came down to a little wharf abreast the ship, and gazed intently for small pieces of stick or straw, and having thus ascertained the drift of the tide (did as you mention of another dog), ran up tide and swam off. The sentry on the forecastle always kept a look-out for the dog, and threw over a line with a bowling knot, and she was hauled on board. But one day she was observed to wait an unusual time on the wharf; no wood or straw gave her the required information. After waiting some time, she lay down on the planks, and dropped one paw into the water, and found by the feel which way the tide ran, got up, and ran up stream as usual. Mr. George Cook writes me that he recently had a pointer, which one morning, when the grass was covered with frost, dragged a mat out of his kennel, from which he had got loose, to the lawn beneath the house windows, where he was found lying upon the mat, which thus served to protect him from the frost. The distance over which he had dragged the mat for this purpose was about 100 yards. Mr. Cook adds: 'I have since frequently seen him bring this mat out of his kennel and lay it in the sunshine, shifting it if a shadow came upon the place where he had laid it.' The following is sent me by the Rev. F. J. Penky. He gives me the name of his friend the canon, but does not give me express permission to publish it. In quoting his account, therefore, I leave this name blank. He says:-- The following is an instance of sagacity--indeed, amounting to reason--in a dog, a French poodle that belonged to Colonel Pearson (not the lately beleaguered colonel at Ekowe, but a Colonel Pearson living some years ago at Lichfield). The circumstance happened to a friend of mine, Canon ----, rector of ----. I have the story from his own lips, but I have no permission for his name to be used in any publication, should the story be thought worthy of it. My friend the canon, I may say, has no leanings. Being a guest at luncheon with the dog's master, my friend fed the dog with pieces of beef. After luncheon the beef was taken into the larder. The dog did not think he had his fair share. What did he do? Now he had been taught to stand on his hind legs, put his paw on a lady's wrist, and hand her into the dining-room. He adopted the same tactics with my friend the canon, stood on his hind legs, put his paw on his arm, and made for the door. To see what would follow, Canon ---- suffered himself to be led; but the sagacious dog, instead of steering for the dining-room, led him in the direction of the larder, along a passage, down steps, &c., and did not halt till he brought him to the larder, and close to the shelf where the beef had been put. The dog had a small bit given him for his sagacity, and Canon ---- returned to the drawing-room. But the dog was still not satisfied. He tried the same trick again, but this time fruitlessly. The canon was not going again with him to the larder. What was Mori to do? And here comes the instance of reason in the poodle. Finding he could not prevail on the visitor to make a second excursion to the larder, he went out into the hall, took in his teeth Canon ----'s hat from off the hall table, and carried it under the shelf in the larder, where the coveted beef lay out of his reach. There he was found with the hat, waiting for the owner of the hat, and expecting another savoury bit when he should come for his hat. Many anecdotes might be adduced of the cleverness which some dogs show in finding their way by train; but I shall give only three, and I select these, not only because they all mutually corroborate one another, but likewise because they all display such high intelligence on the part of the dogs. Mr. Horsfall, in 'Nature,' vol. xx., p. 505, says:-- Last year we spent our holidays at Llan Bedr, Merionethshire. Our host has a house in the above village, and another at Harlech, a town three miles distant. His favourite dog, Nero, is of Norwegian birth, and a highly intelligent animal. He is at liberty to pass his time at either of the houses owned by his master, and he occasionally walks from one to the other. More frequently, however, he goes to the railway station at Llan Bedr, gets into the train, and jumps out at Harlech. Being most probably unable to get out of the carriage, he was on one occasion taken to Salsernau, the station beyond Harlech, when he left the carriage and waited on the platform for the return train to Harlech. If Nero did not make use of 'abstract reasoning' we may as well give up the use of the term. Miss M. C. Young writes to me:-- You may perhaps think the following worthy of notice, as illustrating the comparative failure of _instinct_ in an animal which has begun to _reason_. A friend of mine has a mongrel fox-terrier of remarkable intelligence, though undeveloped by any training. This dog has always shown a great fondness for accompanying any of the family on a railway journey, often having to be taken out of the train by force. One morning in the summer of 1877 the groom came, in great distress, to say that Spot had followed him to the station, and jumped into the train after a visitor's maid who was going to see her friends, and he (the groom) felt sure the dog would be stolen. The railway is a short single line, with three trains down and up each day, and my friend is well known to all the officials, so she sent to meet the next train, when the guard said the dog (apparently finding no _friend_ in the train) had jumped out at a little roadside station about five miles distant. Most dogs would have found their way home easily, though the place itself was strange, but Spot did not appear till late in the evening, after ten hours' absence, and _dead tired_. On inquiry we found that the guard had seen nothing of her at 9 A.M., at 12 A.M., at 1 P.M., nor at 4 P.M.; but when he reached the little station on his return at 5.30, 'she was walking up and down the platform like a Christian,' jumped into his box, and jumped out again of her own accord at the right station for her home. She had evidently spent the interval in trying to find her way home on foot, and not succeeding, had resolved on returning the way she came. Lastly, for the following very remarkable case I am indebted to my friend Mrs. A. S. H. Richardson:-- The Rev. Mr. Townsend, incumbent of Lucan, was formerly an engineer on the Dundalk line of railway. He had a very intelligent Scotch retriever dog, which used to have a habit of jumping into any carriage in which Mr. Townsend travelled; but this had been discontinued for a year when the following incident happened. Mr. Townsend and the dog were on the platform at Dundalk station; Mr. Townsend went to get a ticket for a lady, and during his absence the dog jumped into a carriage, and when the train started, was carried down to Clones. There he found himself alone when he jumped out; he went into the station-master's office and looked about, then into the ticket-collector's and searched there, and then ran off to the town of Clones, a mile distant. There he searched the resident engineer's office, and not finding his master, returned to the station and went to the _up_ platform. When the up train arrived, he jumped in, but was driven out by the guard. A ballast train then drew up, going on to a branch line which was being constructed to Caran, but which was not finished yet. The dog travelled on the engine as far as the line went, and then ran the remaining five miles to Caran, where Mr. Townsend's sister lived. He visited her house, and not finding his master, ran back to the station, and took a return train to Clones, where he slept, and was fed by the station-master. At four in the morning he took a goods train down to Dundalk, where he found Mr. Townsend. [Illustration] It would be easy to continue multiplying anecdotes of canine intelligence; but I think a sufficient number of instances have now been given for the only purpose that I have in view--namely, that of exhibiting in a connected manner the various psychological faculties which are presented by dogs, and the level of development to which they severally attain. I may again remark that I have selected these instances for publication from among many others that I could have given, only because they conform to one or other of the general principles to which I everywhere adhere in the quoting of facts. That is to say, these facts are either matters of ordinary observation, and so intrinsically credible; or they stand upon the authority of observers well known to me as competent; or they are of a kind which do not admit of mal-observation; or, lastly, they are well corroborated by similar accounts received from independent observers. I think, therefore, that this sketch of the psychology of the dog is as accurate as the nature of the materials admits of my drawing it. If it is fairly open to criticism on any one side, I believe it is from the side of the dog-lovers, who may perhaps with justice complain that I have ignored a number of published facts, standing on more or less good authority, and appearing more wonderful than any of the facts that I have rendered. To this criticism I have only to answer that it is better to err on the safe side, and that if the facts which I have rendered are sufficient to prove the existence of all the psychological faculties which the dog can fairly be said to possess, it is of less moment that partly doubtful cases should be suppressed, where the only object of introducing them would be to show that some particular faculties were in some particular instances more highly developed than was the case in the instances here recorded. FOOTNOTES: [263] _Descent of Man_, p. 74. [264] So many cases are on record of large dogs (especially of the Newfoundland breed) throwing troublesome curs into the water, and again rescuing them if they show danger of drowning, that we can scarcely fail to accept them as true. Such cases exhibit a wonderful play of human-like emotions. [265] _Descent of Man_, p. 71. [266] For many other instances of sheep-dog sagacity, see Watson, _Reasoning Power of Animals_, under 'Shepherd's Dog.' [267] _Naturalist's Library_, vol. x., p. 154 (quoted by Watson). [268] Since my MS. went to press I have myself met with a striking display of the recognition of a portrait by a dog. The portrait was one of myself, and the dog a half-bred setter and retriever of my own. [269] _Missionary Travels_, chap. i. [270] _Illustrations of Instinct_, p. 179. CHAPTER XVII. MONKEYS, APES AND BABOONS. WE now come to the last group of animals which we shall have occasion to consider, and these, from an evolutionary point of view, are the most interesting. Unfortunately, however, the intelligence of apes, monkeys, and baboons has not presented material for nearly so many observations as that of other intelligent mammals. Useless for all purposes of labour or art, mischievous as domestic pets, and in all cases troublesome to keep, these animals have never enjoyed the improving influences of hereditary domestication, while for the same reasons observation of the intelligence of captured individuals has been comparatively scant. Still more unfortunately, these remarks apply most of all to the most man-like of the group, and the nearest existing prototypes of the human race: our knowledge of the psychology of the anthropoid apes is less than our knowledge of the psychology of any other animal. But notwithstanding the scarcity of the material which I have to present, I think there is enough to show that the mental life of the _Simiadæ_ is of a distinctly different type from any that we have hitherto considered, and that in their psychology, as in their anatomy, these animals approach most nearly to _Homo sapiens_. _Emotions._ Affection and sympathy are strongly marked--the latter indeed more so than in any other animal, not even excepting the dog. A few instances from many that might be quoted will be sufficient to show this. Mr. Darwin writes:-- Rengger observed an American monkey (a Cebus) carefully driving away the flies which plagued her infant; and Duvancel saw a Hylobates washing the faces of her young ones in a stream. So intense is the grief of female monkeys for the loss of their young, that it invariably caused the death of certain kinds kept under confinement by Brehm in North Africa. Orphan monkeys were always adopted and carefully guarded by the other monkeys, both male and female.[271] Again, Jobson says that whenever his party shot an orang-outang from their boat, the body was carried off by others before the men could reach the shore. So, again, James Forbes, F.R.S., in his 'Oriental Memoirs,' narrates the following remarkable instance of the display of solicitude and care for a dead companion exhibited by a monkey:-- One of a shooting-party under a banian tree killed a female monkey, and carried it to his tent, which was soon surrounded by forty or fifty of the tribe, who made a great noise and seemed disposed to attack their aggressor. They retreated when he presented his fowling-piece, the dreadful effect of which they had witnessed and appeared perfectly to understand. The head of the troop, however, stood his ground, chattering furiously; the sportsman, who perhaps felt some little degree of compunction for having killed one of the family, did not like to fire at the creature, and nothing short of firing would suffice to drive him off. At length he came to the door of the tent, and, finding threats of no avail, began a lamentable moaning, and by the most expressive gesture seemed to beg for the dead body. It was given him; he took it sorrowfully in his arms and bore it away to his expecting companions. They who were witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race. Of course it is not to be supposed from this instance that all, or even most monkeys display any care for their dead. A writer in 'Nature' (vol. ix., p. 243), for instance, says expressly that such is not the case with Gibbons (_Hylobates agilis_), which he has observed to be highly sympathetic to injured companions, but 'take no notice whatever' of dead ones. Regarding their sympathy for injured companions this writer says:-- I keep in my garden a number of Gibbon apes (_Hylobates agilis_); they live quite free from all restraint in the trees, merely coming when called to be fed. One of them, a young male, on one occasion fell from a tree and dislocated his wrist; it received the greatest attention from the others, especially from an old female, who, however, was no relation; she used before eating her own plantains to take up the first that were offered to her every day, and give them to the cripple, who was living in the eaves of a wooden house; and I have frequently noticed that a cry of fright, pain, or distress from one would bring all the others at once to the complainer, and they would then condole with him and fold him in their arms. Captain Hugh Crow, in his 'Narrative of my Life,' relates an interesting tale of the conduct of some monkeys on board his ship. He says:-- We had several monkeys on board; they were of different species and sizes, and amongst them was a beautiful little creature, the body of which was about ten inches or a foot in length, and about the circumference of a common drinking glass. This interesting little animal, which, when I received it from the Governor of the Island of St. Thomas, diverted me by its innocent gambols, became afflicted by the malady which unfortunately prevailed in the ship. It had always been a favourite with the other monkeys, who seemed to regard it as the last born and the pet of the family; and they granted it many indulgences which they seldom conceded to one another. It was very tractable and gentle in its temper, and never took advantage of the partiality shown to it. From the moment it was taken ill their attention and care of it redoubled; and it was truly affecting and interesting to see with what anxiety and tenderness they tended and nursed the little creature. A struggle often ensued among them for priority in those offices of affection; and some would steal one thing and some another, which they would carry to it untasted, however tempting it might be to their own palates. Then they would take it up gently in their fore-paws, hug it to their breasts, and cry over it as a fond mother would over her suffering child. The little creature seemed sensible of their assiduities, but it was wofully overpowered by sickness. It would sometimes come to me and look me pitifully in the face, and moan and cry like an infant, as if it besought me to give it relief; and we did everything we could think of to restore it to health: but, in spite of the united attention of its kindred tribes and ourselves, the interesting little creature did not survive long. Here is a case which I myself witnessed at the Zoological Gardens, and published in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science,' from which I now quote:-- A year or two ago there was an Arabian baboon and an Anubis baboon confined in one cage, adjoining that which contained a dog-headed baboon. The Anubis baboon passed its hand through the wires of the partition, in order to purloin a nut which the large dog-headed baboon had left within reach--expressly, I believe, that it might act as a bait. The Anubis baboon very well knew the danger he ran, for he waited until his bulky neighbour had turned his back upon the nut with the appearance of having forgotten all about it. The dog-headed baboon, however, was all the time slyly looking round with the corner of his eye, and no sooner was the arm of his victim well within his cage than he sprang with astonishing rapidity and caught the retreating hand in his mouth. The cries of the Anubis baboon quickly brought the keeper to the rescue, when, by dint of a good deal of physical persuasion, the dog-headed baboon was induced to leave go his hold. The Anubis baboon then retired to the middle of his cage, moaning piteously, and holding the injured hand against his chest while he rubbed it with the other one. The Arabian baboon now approached him from the top part of the cage, and, while making a soothing sound very expressive of sympathy, folded the sufferer in its arms--exactly as a mother would her child under similar circumstances. It must be stated, also, that this expression of sympathy had a decidedly quieting effect upon the sufferer, his moans becoming less piteous so soon as he was enfolded in the arms of his comforter; and the manner in which he laid his cheek upon the bosom of his friend was as expressive as anything could be of sympathy appreciated. This really affecting spectacle lasted a considerable time, and while watching it I felt that, even had it stood alone, it would in itself have been sufficient to prove the essential identity of some of the noblest among human emotions with those of the lower animals. As a beautiful instance of the display of sympathy, I may narrate an occurrence which was witnessed by my friend Sir James Malcolm--a gentleman on the accuracy of whose observation I can rely. He was on board a steamer where there were two common East India monkeys, one of which was older and larger than the other, though they were not mother and child. The smaller monkey one day fell overboard amidships. The larger one became frantically excited, and running over the bulwarks down to a part of the ship which is called 'the bend,' it held on to the side of the vessel with one hand, while with the other it extended to her drowning companion a cord with which she had been tied up, and one end of which was fastened round her waist. The incident astonished everyone on board, but unfortunately for the romance of the story the little monkey was not near enough to grasp the floating end of the cord. The animal, however, was eventually saved by a sailor throwing out a longer rope to the little swimmer, who had sense enough to grasp it, and so to be hauled on board. The following account of the behaviour of a wounded monkey seems to suggest the presence of a class of emotions similar to those which we know as feelings of reproach. The observer was Capt. Johnson:-- I was one of a party of Jeekary in the Bahar district; our tents were pitched in a large mango garden, and our horses were picquetted in the same garden a little distance off. When we were at dinner a Syer came to us, complaining that some of the horses had broken loose in consequence of being frightened by monkeys (i.e. Macacus Orhesus) on the trees. As soon as dinner was over I went out with my gun to drive them off, and I fired with small shot at one of them, which instantly ran down to the lowest branch of the tree, as if he were going to fly at me, stopped suddenly, and coolly put his paw to the part wounded, covered with blood, and held it out for me to see. I was so much hurt at the time that it has left an impression never to be effaced, and I have never since fired a gun at any of the tribe. Almost immediately on my return to the party, before I had fully described what had passed, a Syer came to inform us that the monkey was dead. We ordered the Syer to bring it to us, but by the time he returned the other monkeys had carried the dead one off, and none of them could anywhere be seen. This case is strikingly corroborated by the following allusion to Sir W. Hoste's Memoirs, given by Jesse as follows:-- One of his officers, coming home after a long day's shooting, saw a female monkey running along the rocks, with her young one in her arms. He immediately fired, and the animal fell. On his coming up, she grasped her little one close to her breast, and with her other hand pointed to the wound which the ball had made, and which had entered above her breast. Dipping her finger in the blood, and then holding it up, she seemed to reproach him with being the cause of her death, and consequently that of the young one, to which she frequently pointed. 'I never,' says Sir William, 'felt so much as when I heard the story, and I determined never to shoot one of these animals as long as I lived.'[272] Mr. Darwin says that most persons who have observed monkeys have seen them show a sense of the ludicrous. Here is an instance which I have myself observed, and now quote from my article in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science:'-- Several years ago I used to watch carefully the young orang-outang in the Zoological Gardens, and I am quite sure that she manifested a sense of the ludicrous. One example will suffice. Her feeding tin was of a somewhat peculiar shape, and when it was empty she used sometimes to invert it upon her head. The tin then presented a comical resemblance to a bonnet, and as its wearer would generally favour the spectators with a broad grin at the time of putting it on, she never failed to raise a laugh from them. Her success in this respect was evidently attended with no small gratification on her part. But perhaps the strongest evidence of monkeys having an appreciation of the ludicrous is the same as that which we have seen to be presented in the case of certain dogs--namely, in the animals disliking ridicule. Abundant evidence on this head in the case of monkeys will be given further on. That monkeys enjoy play no one can question who spends an hour or two in the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. According to Savage, chimpanzees congregate together for the sole purpose of play, when they beat or drum with pieces of stick on sonorous pieces of wood.[273] Curiosity is more strongly pronounced in monkeys than in any other animals. We all know the interesting illustration on this head furnished by the experiment of Mr. Darwin, who, in order to test the statement of Brehm that monkeys have an instinctive dread of snakes, and yet cannot 'desist from occasionally satiating their curiosity in a most human fashion, by lifting up the lid of the box in which the snakes were kept,' took a stuffed snake to the monkey-house at the Zoological Gardens. Mr. Darwin says:-- The excitement thus caused was one of the most curious spectacles I ever beheld. . . . I then placed a live snake in a paper bag, with the mouth loosely closed, in one of the larger compartments. One of the monkeys immediately approached, cautiously opened the bag, peeped in, and instantly dashed away. Then I witnessed what Brehm has described, for monkey after monkey, with head raised high and turned on one side, could not resist taking a momentary peep into the upright bag, at the dreadful object lying quietly at the bottom.[274] Allied, perhaps, to curiosity, and so connected with the emotions, is what Mr. Darwin calls 'the principle of imitation.' It is proverbial that monkeys carry this principle to ludicrous lengths, and they are the only animals which imitate for the mere sake of imitating, as has been observed by Desor, though an exception ought to be made in favour of talking birds. The psychology of imitation is difficult of analysis, but it is remarkable as well as suggestive that it should be confined in its manifestations to monkeys and certain birds among animals, and to the lower mental levels among men. As Mr. Darwin says:-- The principle of imitation is strong in man, and especially, as I have myself observed, with savages. In certain morbid states of the brain, this tendency is exaggerated to an extraordinary degree; some hemiplegic patients and others, at the commencement of inflammatory softening of the brain, unconsciously imitate every word that is uttered, whether in their own or in a foreign language, and every gesture or action which is performed near them. The same sort of tendency is often observable in young children, so that it seems to be frequently distinctive of a certain stage or grade of mental evolution, and particularly in the branch _Primates_. Other animals, however, certainly imitate each other's actions to a certain extent, as I shall have occasion fully to notice in my next work. As for the sterner emotions, rage may be so pronounced as to make a monkey exhaust itself with beating about its cage, or a baboon bite its own limbs till the blood flows.[275] Jealousy occurs in a correspondingly high degree, while retaliation and revenge are shown by all the higher monkeys when injury has been done to them, as any one may find by offering an insult to a baboon. The following is a good case of this, as it shows what may be called brooding resentment deliberately preparing a satisfactory revenge. Mr. Darwin writes:-- Sir Andrew Smith, a zoologist whose scrupulous accuracy was known to many persons, told me the following story of which he was himself an eye-witness. At the Cape of Good Hope, an officer had often plagued a certain baboon, and the animal, seeing him approaching one Sunday for parade, poured water into a hole and hastily made some thick mud, which he skilfully dashed over the officer as he passed by, to the amusement of many bystanders. For long afterwards the baboon rejoiced and triumphed whenever he saw his victim.[276] _General Intelligence._ Coming now to the higher powers, I shall give a few cases to show that monkeys certainly surpass all other animals in the scope of their rational faculty. Professor Croora Robertson writes me:-- I witnessed the following incident in the Jardin des Plantes, now many years ago; but it struck me greatly at the time, and I have narrated it repeatedly in the interval. A large ape--I believe anthropoid, but cannot tell the species--was in the great iron cage with a number of smaller monkeys, and was lording it over them with many wild gambols, to the amusement of a crowd of spectators. Many things--fruits and the like--had been thrown between the bars into the cage, which the ape was always forward to seize. At last some one threw in a small hand looking-glass, with a strongly made frame of wood. This the ape at once laid hold of, and began to brandish like a hammer. Suddenly he was arrested by the reflection of himself in the glass, and looked puzzled for a moment; then he darted his head behind the glass to find the other of his kind that he evidently supposed to be there. Astonished to find nothing, he apparently bethought himself that he had not been quick enough with his movement. He now proceeded to raise and draw the glass nearer to him with great caution, and then with a swifter dart looked behind. Again finding nothing, he repeated the attempt once more. He now passed from astonishment to anger, and began to beat with the frame violently on the floor of the cage. Soon the glass was shattered, and pieces fell out. Continuing to beat, he was in the course of one blow again arrested by his image in the piece of glass still remaining in the frame. Then, as it seemed, he determined to make one trial more. More circumspectly than ever the whole first part of the process was gone through with; more violently than ever the final dart made. His fury over this last failure knew no bounds. He crunched the frame and glass together with his teeth, he beat on the floor, he crunched again, till nothing but splinters was left. Mr. Darwin writes: 'Rengger, a most careful observer, states that when first he gave eggs to his monkeys in Paraguay, they smashed them, and thus lost much of their contents; afterwards they generally hit one end against some hard body, and picked off the bits with their fingers. After cutting themselves only _once_ with any sharp tool, they would not touch it again, or would handle it with the greatest caution. Lumps of sugar were often given them wrapped up in paper; and Rengger sometimes put a live wasp in the paper, so that in hastily unfolding it they got stung; after this had _once_ happened, they always first held the packet to their ears to detect any movement within.'[277] The powers of observation and readiness to establish new associations thus rendered apparent, display a high level of general intelligence. Mr. Darwin further observes that Mr. Belt 'likewise describes various actions of a tamed cebus, which, I think, clearly show that this animal possessed some reasoning power.' The following is the account to which Mr. Darwin here refers, and I quote it _in extenso_, because, as I shall presently show, I have myself been able to confirm most of the observations on another monkey of the same genus:-- It would sometimes entangle itself round a pole to which it was fastened, and then unwind the coils again with the greatest discernment. Its chain allowed it to swing down below the verandah, but it could not reach to the ground. Sometimes, when there were broods of young ducks about, it would hold out a piece of bread in one hand, and when it had tempted a duckling within reach, seize it by the other, and kill it with a bite in the breast. There was such an uproar amongst the fowls on these occasions, that we soon knew what was the matter, and would rush out and punish Mickey (as we called him) with a switch; so that he was ultimately cured of his poultry-killing propensities. One day, when whipping him, I held up the dead duckling in front of him, and at each blow of the light switch told him to take hold of it, and at last, much to my surprise, he did so, taking it and holding it tremblingly in one hand. He would draw things towards him with a stick, and even used a swing for the same purpose. It had been put up for the children, and could be reached by Mickey, who now and then indulged himself in a swing on it. One day I had put down some bird-skins on a chair to dry, far beyond, as I thought, Mickey's reach; but, fertile in expedients, he took the swing and launched it towards the chair, and actually managed to knock the skins off in the return of the swing, so as to bring them within his reach. He also procured some jelly that was set out to cool in the same way. Mickey's actions were very human-like. When any one came near to fondle him, he never neglected the opportunity of pocket-picking. He would pull out letters, and quickly take them from their envelopes.[278] I shall now proceed to state some further facts, showing the high level of intelligence to which monkeys of various kinds attain. The orang which Cuvier had used to draw a chair from one end to the other of a room, in order to stand upon it so as to reach a latch which it desired to open; and in this we have a display of rationally adaptive action which no dog has equalled, although, as in the case before given of the dog dragging the mat, it has been closely approached. Again, Rengger describes a monkey employing a stick wherewith to prise up the lid of a chest, which was too heavy for the animal to raise otherwise. This use of a lever as a mechanical instrument is an action to which no animal other than a monkey has ever been known to attain; and, as we shall subsequently see, my own observation has fully corroborated that of Rengger in this respect. More remarkable still, as we shall also subsequently see, the monkey to which I allude as having myself observed, succeeded also by methodical investigation, and without any assistance, in discovering for himself the mechanical principle of the screw; and that monkeys well understand how to use stones as hammers is a matter of common observation since Dampier and Wafer first described this action as practised by these animals in the breaking open of oyster-shells. The additional observation of Gernelli Carreri of monkeys thrusting stones into the open valves of oysters so as to save themselves the trouble of smashing the shells, though not incredible, requires confirmation. But Mr. Haden, of Dundee, has communicated to me the following very remarkable appreciation of mechanical principles which he himself observed in a monkey (species not noted), and which would certainly be beyond the mental powers of any other animal:-- 'A large monkey, confined alone in a large cage, had its sleeping-place in the form of a kind of hut in the centre of the cage. Springing near the hut was a tree, or imitation tree, the main branch of which ascended over the top of the hut, and then came forwards away from it. Whether the roof of the hut enabled this animal to gain any part of this branch, I did not observe, but only remarked its method at the time of gaining the part of the branch which led frontwards, and away from the hut. This could be done by means of the hut door, which, when opened, swung beneath this part of the branch. The door, either by accident or by the design of its construction, _swung_ to each time the animal opened it to mount upon its top edge. After one or two efforts to mount by it in spite of its immediate swinging to, the creature procured a thick blanket which lay in the cage, and threw it over the door, having opened the same, so that its complete swinging to was prevented sufficiently for the creature to mount upon its free edge, and so gain that part of the branch which ran above it.' The following, which I quote from 'Nature' (vol. xxiii., p. 533), also displays high intelligence:-- One of the large monkeys at the Alexandra Palace had been for some time suffering from the decay of the right lower canine, and an abscess, forming a large protuberance on the jaw, had resulted. The pain seemed so great, it was decided to consult a dentist as to what should be done; and, as the poor creature was at times very savage, it was thought that if the tooth had to be extracted, gas should be used for the safety of the operation. Preparations were made accordingly, but the behaviour of the monkey was quite a surprise to all who were concerned. He showed great fight on being taken out of the cage, and not only struggled against being put into a sack prepared with a hole cut for his head, but forced one of his hands out, and snapped and screamed, and gave promise of being very troublesome. Directly, however, Mr. Lewen Moseley, who had undertaken the operation, managed to get his hand on the abscess and gave relief, the monkey's demeanour changed entirely. He laid his head down quietly for examination, and, without the use of the gas, submitted to the removal of a stump of a tooth as quietly as possible. According to D'Osbonville, certain monkeys that he observed in the wild state were in the habit of administering corporal chastisement to their young. After suckling and cleansing them, the mothers used to sit down and watch the youngsters play. These would wrestle, throw and chase each other, &c.; but if any of them grew malicious, the dams would spring up, and, seizing their offspring by the tail with one hand, correct them severely with the other. We have already seen that dogs and cats display the idea of maintaining discipline among their progeny. According to Houzeau the sacred monkey of India (_Semnopithecus entellus_) is very clever in catching snakes, and in the case of poisonous species destroy the fangs by breaking them against stones.[279] Of the fact that monkeys act in co-operation, many proofs might be given, but one will suffice. Lieutenant Schipp, in his Memoirs, says:-- A Cape baboon having taken off some clothes from the barracks, I formed a party to recover them. With twenty men I made a circuit to cut them off from the caverns, to which they always fled for shelter. They observed my movements, and detaching about fifty to guard the entrance, the others kept their post. We could see them collecting large stones and other missiles. One old grey-headed one, who had often paid us a visit at the barracks, was seen distributing his orders, as if a general. We rushed on to the attack, when, at a scream from him, they rolled down enormous stones on us, so that we were forced to give up the contest. I shall here bring to a close my selections from the literature of monkey psychology, because I wish to devote a good deal of space to detailing a number of observations which have not yet been published. Thinking it desirable for the purposes of this work that an intelligent monkey should be subjected to close observation for some length of time, I applied to Mr. Sclater for the loan of one from the collection of the Zoological Society. He kindly consented to my proposal, and I selected a specimen of _Cebus fatuellus_, which appeared to me to be the most intelligent monkey in the collection. Not having facilities for keeping the animal in my own house, I consigned him to the charge of my sister (who lives close by), with the request that she should carefully note all points of interest connected with his intelligence. Therefore, from the day of his arrival till that of his departure she kept a diary, or note-book, in which all the observations that she made when I was absent were entered. It was originally my intention to make an abstract of this note-book; but on afterwards reading it through for this purpose, it seemed to me that I should rather spoil matters by attempting a condensation. There is a certain graphic effect incidental to the diary form and spontaneous style of diction--the notes, of course, not having been written with a view to verbatim publication; and besides, as the psychology of monkeys has been so little studied, I think it is well to give all the details of a continuous series of observations. It is desirable to add that on occasions subsequent to the taking of this or that particular note, I generally had the opportunity of verifying the observation myself; but I may state that I attach no more importance to this circumstance than I should to verifying an observation of my own; for as a careful observer of animals I have quite as much confidence in my sister as in myself. It only remains to explain that my mother, being an invalid, is confined most of the time to her bedroom; and that the monkey was kept there for the first six weeks of his stay at her house, partly in order that he might be under constant observation, and partly also to furnish her with an entertaining pet. The following are my sister's notes _in extenso_ and without alteration:-- _Brown Capuchin_ (_Cebus fatuellus_--Linn.), _Brazil_. DIARY, 1880. _December_ 18th. Arrived in box with keeper. Seemed rather frightened and screamed a good deal on being transferred from small box to a larger one. 19th. Took him out of the box he had been in all night and fastened chain on to collar. Was meek and subdued, hiding his face in my lap. 20th. Has become much more lively and somewhat aggressive, especially towards the servants. He has taken a fancy to my mother, and (she holding his chain) he plays with her in a gentle and affectionate manner in her bed, but flies angrily at any of the servants who come near the bed. I observed to-day that he breaks walnuts (which are too hard for him to crack with his teeth) by striking them with the flat bottom of a dish he has for drinking out of. He is ceaselessly active all day, and at night covers himself very neatly with warm shawls, and sleeps soundly till about eight o'clock. 21st. I notice that the love of mischief is very strong in him. To-day he got hold of a wine-glass and an egg-cup. The glass he dashed on the floor with all his might, and of course broke it. Finding, however, that the egg-cup would not break for being thrown down, he looked round for some hard substance against which to dash it. The post of the brass bedstead appearing to be suitable for the purpose, he raised the egg-cup high over his head and gave it several hard blows. When it was completely smashed he was quite satisfied. He breaks a stick by passing it down between a heavy object and the wall, and then hanging on to the end, thus breaking it across the heavy object. He frequently destroys an article of dress by carefully pulling out the threads (thus unripping it) before he begins to tear it with his teeth in a more violent manner. If he gets hold of anything that he sees we do not care about, he soon leaves it again; but if it is an article of value (even if it be only a scrap of paper) which he sees we are anxious about, nothing will induce him to give it up. No food, however inviting, will distract his attention: scolding only makes him more angry, and he keeps the article until it is quite destroyed. To-day I gave him a hammer to break his walnuts with, and he uses it in a proper manner for that purpose. 22nd. To-day a strange person (a dressmaker) came into the room where he is tied up, and I gave him a walnut that she might see him break it with his hammer. The nut was a bad one, and the woman laughed at his disappointed face. He then became very angry, and threw at her everything he could lay hands on; first the nut, then the hammer, then a coffee-pot which he seized out of the grate, and, lastly, all his own shawls. He throws things with great force and precision by holding them in both hands, and extending his long arms well back over his head before projecting the missile, standing erect the while. 23rd. There is continual war between him and Sharp [a small terrier], but they both seem to have a certain mutual respect for each other. The dog makes snatches at nuts, &c., and runs away with them beyond the reach of his chain, and the monkey catches at the dog, but seems afraid to hold him or hurt him. He however pelts him with nuts or bits of carrot, and chatters at him. At other times he holds out his hand as if to make friends, but the dog is too suspicious to go near him. His hostility towards the servants (one especially) increases, so that he will not even take a nut from her without catching fiercely at her hand; he also frequently throws things at her. On the other hand, he allows my mother to do anything with him. 24th. He bit me in several places to-day when I was taking him away from my mother's bed after his morning's game there. I took no notice, but he seemed ashamed of himself afterwards, hiding his face in his arms and sitting quiet for a time.[280] In accordance with his desire for mischief, he is of course very fond of upsetting things, but he always takes great care they do not fall on himself. Thus he will pull a chair towards him till it is almost over-balanced, then he intently fixes his eyes on the top bar of the back, and when he sees it coming over his way, darts from underneath and watches the fall with great delight; and similarly with heavier things. There is a washhand-stand, for example, with a heavy marble top, which he has with great labour upset several times, and always without hurting himself.[281] 25th. I observed to-day that if a nut or any object he wishes to get hold of is beyond the reach of his chain, he puts out a stick to draw it towards him, or, if that does not succeed, he stands upright and throws a shawl back over his head, holding it by the two corners so that it falls down his back; he then throws it forward with all his strength, still holding on by the corners; thus it goes out far in front of him and covers the nut, which he then draws towards him by pulling in the shawl. When his chain becomes twisted round the bars of a 'clothes-horse' (which is given him to run about upon), and thus too short for his comfort, he looks at it intently and pulls it with his fingers this way and that, and when he sees how the turns are taken, he deliberately goes round and round the bars, first this way, then that, until the chain is quite disentangled. He often carries his chain grasped in his tail and held high over his back to keep it from getting into the way of his feet. He is always rather excited in the morning when I loosen his chain preparatory to taking him to my mother's bed; jumps about and tugs at the chain. Sometimes, however, if the chain is entangled, and I am rather long in getting it unfastened, he sits quietly down beside me, and begins picking at the chain with his fingers as if to help me to untie it. I cannot say, however, that he succeeds in helping me at all. 26th. He seems very fond of spinning things round. If he gets a whole apple or orange he generally sits spinning it on one end, before beginning to eat it. He eats an orange by biting off a tiny piece of the peel, and putting his long, thin finger deep into the fruit; he then lays the whole orange under a piece of wire netting he has near him, and, putting his mouth to the hole he has made, presses the wire netting down upon the fruit, thus squeezing the juice up into his mouth. When a good deal of juice begins to run out, he holds the orange up over his head and lets the juice run into his mouth. 27th. To-day he obtained possession of a rather valuable document, and, as usual, nothing I could do would persuade him to give it up. He neglected any kind of food I offered him, and only chattered when I coaxed him. When at last I tried threatening him with a cane, he only became savage and flew at me, chattering. My mother now came and sat down in a chair beside him. He immediately jumped into her lap, and remained quite still while she took the paper out of his hands. When, however, she handed it to me and I laughed at her success, he showed his teeth and screamed and chattered at me angrily. I find laughing generally irritates him. Thus, when he is playing with my mother in the bed in the best of humour, as long as I sit quietly on the bed all is well, but if I laugh, for example at any of his affectionate glances, he makes a dart at me to send me off, and then returns with renewed demonstrations of affection to my mother, tumbling head over heels and lying on his back, grinning in a most comical manner, and making a sound very like slight laughter. 28th. His chain is fastened to the marble slab of a washhand-stand, placed on the floor against the wall. It is too heavy for him to pull along by his chain without hurting himself, so when he desires to do any mischief which is beyond the reach of his chain, he deliberately goes to the marble and pushes an arm down between an upright part of it and the wall, until he has moved the whole slab sufficiently far from the wall to admit of his slipping down behind the upright part himself. He then places his back against the wall and his four hands against the upright part of the marble, and pushes the slab as far as he can stretch his long legs. He only does this, however, when he is bent on mischief, as the fact of food being beyond the reach of his chain does not furnish a strong enough inducement to lead him to take so much exertion. Thus to-day he began to pull the glazed leather cover off a trunk which was near him. I pulled the trunk away, and when he found it was out of his reach he ran and pushed the marble towards the trunk in the manner I have described, and when he knew his chain was then sufficiently long to reach the trunk, he ran to the latter and hastily resumed his destructive process. 29th. I notice that nothing the person does who has hold of his chain offends him. I mean, although he is furiously angry at having anything taken away from him, he is not at all angry if he is pulled away by his chain. If he is trying to bite a person, and another person takes hold of his chain behind him and so prevents his spring forward, he does not turn to bite the person who has taken hold of his chain, as a dog would do under similar circumstances, but quietly submits to be thus held. He seems to look upon his confinement and management by a chain as a natural law against which it is useless to struggle. On the other hand, he seems to be quite aware of the place where his chain is fastened, and to know that if he were clever enough to undo it he would be free. After we found he could move about the marble slab of the washhand-stand in the way described, we had a ring sunk in the floor to tie him to. The moment the chain was fastened to that[282] he began to investigate its new connection, and continued to do so for hours, passing the chain rapidly backward and forwards through the ring. When he found this did not loosen it, he began to hammer it and the ring also with all his strength, and this he continued to do for the rest of the day. 30th. He still continues to work at the chain where it is fastened to the ring. He passed the whole of the chain through the ring so many times with his fingers that it became quite blocked up in the ring, which made it very short, and it took me a quarter of an hour to disentangle it. He was very much interested in this process, sitting quietly beside me and watching my fingers intently, sometimes gently pulling my fingers on one side in order to see better, and sometimes casting a quick intelligent glance into my face as if asking how I did it. After I had disentangled and lengthened the chain he worked at it again for hours, but took care not to twist it into the ring a second time. 31st. To-day he hurt himself by getting one of his toes caught in a hinge of the clothes-horse. He did not make any fuss, although the accident must have been somewhat a painful one, nor did he try to pull the toe out, which would have been useless and only hurt him more; but he sat almost motionless, making slight complaining noises until I discovered that there was something wrong with him. When I began to extricate his foot, he remained perfectly passive--although I dare say I hurt him a good deal--and only looked at me gratefully. _January_ 1, 1881. He has now quite given up trying to loosen his chain himself; having tried every way and failed, he has evidently become hopeless about it. He now resents being tied up. When I loosen him he is quite pleased, and when I tie him he waits until he is quite sure he is being tied, and not loosened, and then he flies at me and bites me. 10th. As he is always tied up in the same place he has no new opportunities given him of showing his intelligence. His attachment to my mother has increased. When she goes out he immediately gives up all play and mischief, and does nothing but run round and round in a restless manner, making a peculiar sweet calling noise, such as he never makes when she is in the room, listening intently between times. As long as she remains away he takes no rest or amusement, nor does he ever, or hardly ever, become angry; but the moment she returns he begins all his old ways again, usually becoming more savage at other people than before. My mother frequently takes things away from him, and he never resents it to her as he would do to any other person. He generally, however, chatters angrily at some one else when my mother removes anything he wishes to keep. At first I thought he was deceived in the matter--that he could not believe it possible that his best friend could deprive him of what he valued, and so thought someone else must have done it. But the same thing has now happened so frequently that I can hardly think he is not really aware of who takes the things away. He seems rather to think it politic to keep on good terms with one person, and that although he does see her remove the things, and feels angry in consequence, he thinks it more prudent to vent his anger upon someone with whom he has already quarrelled. He always shows more irritation when my mother gives anything to me after having taken it away from him, than when she keeps it herself (as mentioned on December 26), and this may be the reason partly why he resents these matters to me; he thinks when I obtain possession of anything he wants that it is a sort of triumph to me. In the same way my mother may laugh as much as she likes whether he is with her or not, but if I laugh at all at anything it generally results in something being thrown at me. If my mother calls out to the servants--if, for instance, a servant has left the room and my mother calls her back--he becomes very angry at the servant, and salutes her on her return with a shower of missiles. Sometimes my mother pretends to scold or beat the servants, and then he joins with great energy, by way of supporting his friend. If I scold or beat the servants he does not mind so much. When my mother comes back after being out he does not show any great demonstrations of joy. He screams out with pleasure when he hears her voice approaching on the stairs, but does not make much ado when she enters the room. While my mother is out I can do anything I like with him, just as she can when she is at home. Perhaps being in low spirits he does not feel angry, or perhaps he thinks it prudent to be amiable when his best friend is away. When my mother comes back, all his ill-temper returns at once and even in an increased degree towards other people, and he immediately resumes playing with all his toys. 11th. When he throws things at people now he first runs up the bars of the clothes-horse; he seems to have found out that people do not much care for having things thrown at their feet, and he is not strong enough to throw such heavy objects as a poker or a hammer at people's heads; he therefore mounts to a level with his enemy's head, and thus succeeds in sending his missile to a greater height and also to a greater distance. 14th. To-day he obtained possession of a hearth-brush, one of the kind which has the handle screwed into the brush. He soon found the way to unscrew the handle, and having done that he immediately began to try to find out the way to screw it in again. This he in time accomplished. At first he put the wrong end of the handle into the hole, but turned it round and round the _right way for screwing_. Finding it did not hold, he turned the other end of the handle and carefully stuck it into the hole, and began again to turn it the right way. It was of course a very difficult feat for him to perform, for he required both his hands to hold the handle in the proper position and to turn it between his hands in order to screw it in, and the long bristles of the brush prevented it from remaining steady or with the right side up. He held the brush with his hind hand, but even so it was very difficult for him to get the first turn of the screw to fit into the thread; he worked at it, however, with the most unwearying perseverance until he got the first turn of the screw to catch, and he then quickly turned it round and round until it was screwed up to the end. The most remarkable thing was that, however often he was disappointed in the beginning, he never was induced to try turning the handle the wrong way; he always screwed it from right to left. As soon as he had accomplished his wish, he unscrewed it again, and then screwed it in again the second time rather more easily than the first, and so on many times. When he had become by practice tolerably perfect in screwing and unscrewing, he gave it up and took to some other amusement. One remarkable thing is that he should take so much trouble to do that which is no material benefit to him. The desire to accomplish a chosen task seems a sufficient inducement to lead him to take any amount of trouble. This seems a very human feeling, such as is not shown, I believe, by any other animal. It is not the desire of praise, as he never notices people looking on; it is simply the desire to achieve an object for the sake of achieving an object, and he never rests nor allows his attention to be distracted until it is done. 16th. When he is angry, and has at hand only those things which he wishes to keep, he makes a great show of throwing them at people, but always retains a hold. Thus if he has had a plaything a long time and is tired of it, he throws it right at a person without the least hesitation; but if he has a new thing which he values, he goes through all the appropriate motions for throwing, but only brings the object down with a noise upon the ground, taking care not to let go his hold. He beats people with a long cane he has, and when he cannot reach people he strikes it with all his strength upon the ground to show what he would do if he had the chance. There is no more comical sight than to see him hurriedly climbing his screen in fierce anger, taking (not without great difficulty) his long and awkward stick up with him in order to be high enough to give a good blow to a person. The dog is quite afraid of the stick in the monkey's hands, although he is too petted to be afraid of it in a person's. The monkey is jealous of the dog lying in the arm-chair in which he sometimes seats himself with my mother, so he pokes the stick at the dog (as the chair is beyond the reach of his chain) and makes him get off. 18th. He was very angry to-day at a servant girl sweeping out his place with a long brush, and he seized the brush every time the servant attempted to sweep. My mother then took it, and he at once became not only quite good-tempered, but assisted her in sweeping, by gathering the rubbish in the corners of his place into little heaps with his hands, and putting the heaps into the way of the brush. 20th. To-day he broke his chain, and flew at a servant savagely, but seeing my mother he immediately jumped into her lap. While another chain was being prepared he got to the trunk where his nuts are kept. I have long noticed that he looks upon that trunk as in some special sense his own property. There are other things kept in the trunk as well as the nuts, and if any person goes to the trunk for anything he becomes furiously angry. Indeed nothing makes him so angry as people opening the trunk, and this is not because he wants nuts out of it, for he always has more than he can eat beside him, and generally refuses to take any that are offered to him. Well, to-day, as soon as the breaking of his chain enabled him to get to the trunk, he began picking at the lock with his fingers. I then gave him the key, and he tried for two full hours without ceasing to unlock the trunk with this key. It was a very difficult lock to open, being slightly out of order, and requires the lid of the trunk to be pressed down before it would work, so I believe it was absolutely impossible for him to open it, but he found in time the right way to put the key in, and to turn it backwards and forwards, and after every attempt he pulled the lid upwards to see if it were unlocked. That this was the result of observing people is obvious, from the fact that after every time he put the key into the lock and failed to open the trunk, he passed the key round and round the outside of the lock several times. The explanation of this is that, my mother's sight being bad, she often misses the lock when putting in the key, and then feels round and round the lock with the key; the monkey therefore evidently seems to think that this feeling round and round the lock with the key is in some way necessary to the success of unlocking the lock, so that, although he could see perfectly well how to put the key in straight himself, he went through this useless operation first. 21st. To-day I gave him a wooden box with the lid nailed on, and an iron spoon, to see if he would use the latter as a lever wherewith to raise the lid. The experiment was somewhat spoiled by my mother putting the handle of the spoon into the crack between the lid and the box to show him how to do it. Therefore I cannot tell whether or not he would have taken this first step himself, if he had had time to do so. However, when the handle of the spoon was in he certainly used it in the proper manner, pulling it down with all his strength at the extreme end, thus drawing the nails out of the box and raising the lid. 22nd. He was sitting on my mother's knee, and she washing his hands with a little sponge, a process of which he is very fond; she tried to wash his face, and that he disliked very much. Every time she began, the expression of his face became more angry; at last he suddenly jumped off her knee, and made a violent attack on one of the servants who is usually his favourite, although she was doing nothing at all to anger him. This is a good instance of his habit of venting his anger at my mother on other people. He always eats vigorously when he is angry, or after a fit of passion. After a prolonged fit of passion he always lies down on his side as if dead, probably from exhaustion. 30th. He quite understands the meaning of shaking hands. He always holds out his own hand when he wishes to be friendly, especially when a friend is entering or leaving the room. To-day he had been a long time playing with his toys, taking no notice of any one. Suddenly my mother remembered that to-day was my birthday, and (for the first time since he came to the house) shook hands with me in congratulation. He immediately became very angry with me, screamed and chattered and threw things at me, being evidently jealous of the attention my mother was paying me. _February_ 1st. He has now been moved down to the dining-room, where he is chained between the fireplace and the window. He seems quite miserable on account of the change, as he does not see so much of my mother. 4th. His low spirits continue, and threaten to make him ill. He will not play with anything, but sits moping and shivering in a corner. To-day I found him very cold and unhappy, and warmed his hands for him. He is very meek and gentle, and seems to be getting fond of me. 8th. He has quite recovered his spirits since he took a fancy to me. He likes me now apparently as well as he used to do my mother; that is to say, he allows me to nurse him, and walk about in his place, and even take things away from him. When, however, my mother comes to see him, he does not care for me, although he shows none of his old hostility. To the servants, however, he continues to do so when my mother is present. 10th. We gave him a bundle of sticks this morning, and he amused himself all day by poking them into the fire and pulling them out again to smell the smoking end. He likewise pulls out hot cinders from the grate and passes them over his head and chest, evidently enjoying the warmth, but never burning himself. He also puts hot ashes on his head. I gave him some paper, and, as he cannot, from the length of his chain, quite reach the fire, he rolled the paper up into the form of a stick, and then put it into the fire, pulling it out as soon as it caught light, and watching the blaze in the fender with great satisfaction. I gave him a whole newspaper, and he tore it in pieces, rolled up each piece as I have described, to make it long enough to reach the fire, and so burnt it all piece by piece. He never once burnt his own fingers during the operation. 13th. He can open and shut the folding shutters with ease, and this seems to be an amusement to him. He also unscrewed all the knobs that belong to the fender. The bell-handle beside the mantelpiece he likewise took to bits, which involves the unscrewing of three screws. 15th. He is so amiable to me now that he constantly gives me bits of things that he himself is eating, evidently expecting me to share his repast with him. Sometimes this attention on his part is not altogether agreeable. For instance, to-day he thrust into my hand, when I was not looking, a quantity of sopped bread and milk out of his pan, no doubt thinking himself very kind-hearted thus to supply me with food. 17th. He offered the dog a bit of toast which he himself was eating, and the dog took a part of it. I think, however, that he had at the same time a sly design of catching the dog with the other hand, but he did not do so--perhaps because I was looking on, and he knows the dog is a friend of mine; but he had a wicked look in his eye while feeding the dog, which he has not when he extends his bounty to me. 19th. When I was brushing him to-day he took the brush away from me. Playthings are especially valuable to him now, as he is not allowed to have any lest he should break the windows with them. For this reason I was afraid to leave the brush with him, but found he was not at all disposed to give it up. I threw other things within his reach, but he carried the brush in his hind hand while going after the other things. At last I sat down and called him gently, when he mildly came up to my lap and put the brush into my two hands, evidently resolving that he would not now quarrel with his only friend. 22nd. His manner of showing his humours is interesting, as illustrating the principle of antithesis. Thus when he is angry he springs forward on all four hands with tail very erect and hair raised, so making himself look much bigger. When affectionate he advances slowly _backwards_ with his body in the form of a hoop, so that the crown of his head rests on the ground, face inwards. He walks on three hands (hair very smooth), and puts the fourth fore-hand out at his back in advance of his body. He expects this hand to be taken kindly, and he then assumes his natural attitude. In that manner of advancing it is obviously impossible that he could bite, as his mouth is towards his own chest, so it is the best way of showing how far he is from thinking of hostility. February 28, 1881. The above account may be taken as fully trustworthy. Most of the observations recorded I have myself subsequently verified numberless times. From the account, however, several observations which I happened to make myself in the first instance are designedly omitted, and these I shall therefore now supply. I bought at a toy-shop a very good imitation of a monkey, and brought it into the room with the real monkey, stroking and speaking to it as if it were alive. The monkey evidently mistook the figure for a real animal, manifesting intense curiosity, mixed with much alarm if I made the figure approach him. Even when I placed the figure upon a table, and left it standing motionless, the monkey was afraid to approach it. From this it would appear that the animal trusted much more to his sense of sight than to that of smell in recognising one of his own kind. I placed a mirror upon the floor, and the monkey at once mistook his reflection in it for a real animal. At first he was a little afraid of it; but in a short time he gained courage enough to approach and try to touch it. Finding he could not do so, he went round behind the mirror and then again before it a great number of times; but he did not become angry, as the monkey of which Prof. Brown Robertson wrote me. Strange to say, he appeared to mistake the sex of the image, and began in the most indescribably ludicrous manner to pay to it the addresses of courtship. First placing his lips against the glass he rose to his full height on his hind legs, retired slowly, and while doing so turned his back to the mirror, looking over his shoulder at the image, and, with a preposterous amount of 'pinch' in his back, strutted up and down before the glass with all the appearance of the most laughable foppery. This display was always gone through when at any subsequent time the mirror was placed upon the floor. From the first time that he saw me, this monkey took as violently passionate an attachment to me as that which he took to my mother. His mode of greeting, however, was different. When she entered the room after an absence, his welcome was of a quiet and contented character; but when I came in, his demonstrations were positively painful to witness. Standing erect on his hind legs at the full length of his tether, and extending both hands as far as he could reach, he screamed with all his strength, in a tone and with an intensity which he never adopted on any other occasion. So loud, indeed, were his rapidly and continuously reiterated screams, that it was impossible for any one to hold even a shouting conversation till I took the animal in my arms, when he became placid, with many signs of intense affection. Even the sound of my voice down two flights of stairs used to set him screaming in this manner, so that whenever I called at my mother's house I had to keep silent while on the staircase, unless I intended first of all to pay a visit to the monkey. It has frequently been noticed that monkeys are very capricious in forming their attachments and aversions; but I never knew before that this peculiarity could be so strongly marked as it was in this case. His demonstrations of affection to my mother and myself were piteous; while towards every one else, male or female, he was either passively indifferent or actively hostile. Yet no shadow of a reason could be assigned for the difference. My sister, to whom animals are usually much more attached than they are to me, used always to be forbearingly kind to this one--taking all his bites, &c., with the utmost good humour. Moreover, she supplied him with all his food, and most of his playthings, so that she was really in every way his best friend. Yet his antipathy to her was only less remarkable than his passionate fondness of my mother and myself. Another trait in the psychology of this animal which is worth observing was his quietness of manner towards my mother. With me, and indeed with every one else, his movements were unrestrained, and generally monkey-like; but with her he was always as gentle as a kitten: he appeared to know that her age and infirmities rendered boisterousness on his part unacceptable. I returned the monkey to the Zoological Gardens at the end of February, and up to the time of his death in October 1881, he remembered me as well as the first day that he was sent back. I visited the monkey-house about once a month, and whenever I approached his cage he saw me with astonishing quickness--indeed, generally before I saw him--and ran to the bars, through which he thrust both hands with every expression of joy. He did not, however, scream aloud; his mind seemed too much occupied by the cares of monkey-society to admit of a vacancy large enough for such very intense emotion as he used to experience in the calmer life that he lived before. Being much struck with the extreme rapidity of his discernment whenever I approached the cage, however many other persons might be standing round, I purposely visited the monkey-house on Easter Monday, in order to see whether he would pick me out of the solid mass of people who fill the place on that day. Although I could only obtain a place three or four rows back from the cage, and although I made no sound wherewith to attract his attention, he saw me almost immediately, and with a sudden intelligent look of recognition ran across the cage to greet me. When I went away he followed me, as he always did, to the extreme end of his cage, and stood there watching my departure as long as I remained in sight. In conclusion, I should say that much the most striking feature in the psychology of this animal, and the one which is least like anything met with in other animals, was the tireless spirit of investigation. The hours and hours of patient industry which this poor monkey has spent in ascertaining all that his monkey-intelligence could of the sundry unfamiliar objects that fell into his hands, might well read a lesson in carefulness to many a hasty observer. And the keen satisfaction which he displayed when he had succeeded in making any little discovery, such as that of the mechanical principle of the screw, repeating the results of his newly earned knowledge over and over again, till one could not but marvel at the intent abstraction of the 'dumb brute'--this was so different from anything to be met with in any other animal, that I confess I should not have believed what I saw unless I had repeatedly seen it with my own eyes. As my sister once observed, while we were watching him conducting some of his researches, in oblivion to his food and all his other surroundings--'when a monkey behaves like this, it is no wonder that man is a scientific animal!' And in my next work I shall hope to show how, from so high a starting-point, the psychology of the monkey has passed into that of the man. FOOTNOTES: [271] _Descent of Man_, p. 70. [272] _Gleanings_, vol. iii. pp. 86-7. [273] _Boston Journal of Nat. Hist._, iv. p. 324. [274] _Descent of Man_, p. 72. [275] _Descent of Man_, 71. [276] _Ibid._, p. 69. [277] _Descent of Man_, pp. 77-8. [278] _Naturalist in Nicaragua_, p. 119. [279] _Loc. cit._, vol. i., p. 305. [280] On subsequent observation (January 14, 1881), I find this quietness was not due to shame at having bitten me, for whether he succeeds in biting any person or not he always sits quiet and dull-looking after a fit of passion, being, I think, fatigued. He has bitten me often since December 24, and seems to enjoy the fun on the whole. [281] These heavy objects he overturns with exceeding caution, balancing them several times carefully, and studying them before finally throwing or pulling them over. [282] January 14, 1881. The marble slab was left with him after the chain had been fastened to the ring; but since that time he has never attempted to move the marble. INDEX. ACCOUCHEUR, fish, 246; toad, 254 _Acerina cernua_, 246 _Acinia prehensa_, 233 _Actinia_, 233, 234 _Actinophrys_, apparent intelligence of, 20 _Adamsia_, 234 Adaptive movement, as evidence of mind, 2, 3 Addison, his definition of instinct, 11 Addison, Mrs. K., on gesticulating signs made by a jackdaw, 316 Ælian, on division of labour in harvesting ants, 98 Æsthetic emotions of birds, 279-82 Affection, sexual, parental, and social, of snails, 27; of ants, 45-9 and 58, 59; of bees, 155, 156, and 162; of earwig, 229; of fish, 242-6; of reptiles, 256, 258, 259; of birds, 270-6; of kangaroo, 326, 327; of whale, 327; of horse, 329; of deer, 334; of bat, 341; of seal, 341-6; of hare, 338-40; of rats, 340; of mice, 341; of beaver, 367; of elephant, 387-92; of cat, 411, 412; of dog, 437, 440, 441; of monkeys, 471-5 and 484-98 Agassiz, Professor A., on instinct of hermit-crab, 232; nest of fish, 242-3; on beaver-dams, 384, 385 Agassiz, Professor L., on intelligence of snails, 26 Alison, Professor, on curious instinct of polecat, 347 Allen, J. A., on breeding habits of pinniped seals, 341-6 Alligators, 256-8 and 263 _Alopecias vulpes_, 252 _Amoeba_, apparent intelligence of, 21 Anemones, sea, 233, 234 Anger, of ants and bees, _see_ under; of fish, 246, 247; of monkeys, 478, 479 and 484-96 Angler-fish, 247, 248 _Annelida_, apparent intelligence of, 24 Antennæ, effects of removal in ants, 142; in bees, 197 Antithesis, principle of, in expression of emotions by monkeys, 494, 495 Ant-lion, 234, 235 Ants, powers of special sense, 31-37; of sight, 31-33; of hearing, 33; of smell, 33-37; sense of direction, 37, 38; memory, 39-45; recognition of companions and nest-mates, 41-45; emotions, 45-49; affection, 45-48; sympathy, 48, 49; communication, 49-57; habits general in sundry species, 57-93; swarming, 57, 58; nursing, 58, 59; education, 59, 60; keeping aphides, 60-64; making slaves, 64-68; wars, 68-83; keeping domestic pets, 83, 84; sleep and cleanliness, 84-7; play and leisure, 87-89; funeral habits, 89-93; habits peculiar to certain species, 93-122; leaf-cutting, 93-96; harvesting, 96-110; African, 110, 111; tree, 110, 111; honey making, 111-114 and 142; ecitons, or military, 114-122; general intelligence, 122-142; Sir John Lubbock's experiments on intelligence, 123-128; intelligence displayed in architecture, 128-130; in using burrows made by elater larvæ, 130; in artificial hives, 130; in removing nest from shadow of tree, 131; in cutting leaves off overshadowing tree, 131, 132; in bending blades of grass while cutting them, 132, 133; in co-operating to glue leaves together, 133, 134; in getting at food in difficult places, 134, 135; in making bridges, &c., 135-139; in tunnelling under rails, 140; anatomy and physiology of nerve-centres and sense organs, 140-2 Apes, _see_ Monkeys _Arachnidæ_, 204-225, _see_ Spiders and Scorpions Arago, his observation regarding sense of justice in dog, 443 Arderon, on taming a dace, 246 _Argyroneta aquatica_, 212 Arn, Capt., on sword- and thresher-fish, 252, 253 _Articulata_, _see_ under divisions of Ass, general intelligence of, 328 and 333 Association of ideas, _see_ under various animals _Ateuchus pilularius_, 226 _Athealium_, apparent intelligence of, 19-20 Atkinson, the Rev. J. C., on reasoning power of a dog, 458, 459 Audubon, on ants making beasts of burden of bugs, 68; plundering instincts of white-headed eagle, 284; variations in instinct of incubation, 299, 300 Auk, nidification of, 292 Automatism, hypothesis of animal, 6 BABOON, sympathy shown by Arabian, 474; rage of, 478; revenge of, 478 Badcock, on dog making peace-offerings, 452 Baer, Van, on organisation of bee, 241 Backhouse, R. O., on dog being alarmed at a statue, 453 Bailey, Professor W. W., on dog stopping a runaway horse, 459 Baines, A. H., on dog communicating wants by signs, 446, 447 Baker, on sticklebacks, 245 Baldamus, Dr., on cuckoo laying eggs coloured in imitation of those of the birds in whose nests they lay them, 307 Ball, Dr. Robert, on commensalism of crab and anemone, 234 Banks, Sir Joseph, on intelligence of tree-ants, 133; fish coming to sound of bell, 250 Bannister, Dr., on cat trying to catch image behind mirror, 415, 416; on intelligence of the Eskimo dogs, 461, 462 Barrett, W. F., on instincts of young alligator, 256 Barton, Dr., on alleged fascination by snakes, 264 Bastian, on termites, 198 Bates, on ants' habit of keeping pets, 84; cleaning one another, 87; play and leisure, 88, 89; leaf-cutting, 93-95; tunnelling, 99; ecitons, 114-21; on sand-wasp taking bearings to remember precise locality, 150; mygale eating humming-birds, 208; on nidification of small crustacean, 232, 233; habits of turtles, and alligators, 257, 258; intelligence of vultures, 314; bats sucking blood, 341 Batrachians, 254, 255 Bats, 341 Baya-bird, nidification of, 294 Bears, 350-352 Beattie, Dr., on dog communicating desires by signs, 447 Beaver, 367-85; breeding habits, 367, 368; lodges, 368-73; dams, 373-79; canals, 379-83; general remarks upon, 368, 377, 379, 383; age of their buildings, 384; effects of their buildings on the configuration of landscapes, 384, 385 Bechstein, on birds dreaming, 312 Bee, mason, 178, 179; tapestry, 179; carpenter, 179; rose, 179; carding, 179, 180 Bees, sense of sight, 143, 144; of smell and hearing, 144; of direction, 144-51; remembering exact locality of absent hive, 148-49; following floating hives, 149; memory, 151-55; sympathy, 155, 156; distances over which they forage, 150; powers of communication, 156-60; economy of hive, 160-8; food and rearing, 160-163; swarming and battles of queens, 163, 164; drone-killing, 164-68; plunder and wars, 168-170; architecture, 170-8; way-finding, 181, 182; instinct of neuters, 181; recognising companions, 183, 184; barricading doors against moths, 184, 185; strengthening combs in danger of falling, 185, 186; mode of dealing with surfaces of glass, 186; with strange hives, 186, 187; evacuating fallen hive, 187; ceasing to store honey in Barbadoes and California, 187, 188; recognising persons, 188, 189; biting holes in corollas, 189; ventilating hives, 191, 192; covering slugs, &c., with propolis, 190, 191; effects of removing antennæ, 197 Beetles, _see_ _Coleoptera_ Belshaw, on cat knocking knockers, 422 Belt, on ants, duration of memory in, 39, 40; sympathy, 48; division of labour, 99; ecitons, 114-19 and 138; tunnelling under rails, 140; on sand-wasp taking precise bearings to remember locality, 150, 151; struggle between wasps and ants for secretion of frog-hoppers, 194, 195; intelligence of spiders in protecting themselves from ecitons, 219, 220; beetles undermining stick supporting a dead toad, 228; intelligence of monkeys, 480 Benedictson, on navigating habits of Iceland mice, 364, 365 Bennet, on birds dreaming, 312 Bennett, on conjugal fidelity of duck, 270, 271 Berkeley, G., on beetle storing its food, 228, 229 Bettziech-Beta, on termites, 199 Bidie, on suicide of scorpion, 222, 223; on reasoning power of cat, 415 Bingley, on intelligence of ants, 133; carpenter-bees, 179; account of alleged training of bees, 189; co-operation of beetles, 226, 227; ant-lion, 230, 235; domestication of toad, 255; fascination by snakes, 264; sympathy in birds, 272; eccentricity of nest building instinct, 295; education of birds, 312; pigs pointing game, 339, 340; intelligence of otter, 346; memory of elephant, 387; vindictiveness of elephant, 387, 389; elephants enduring surgical operations, 399, 400 Bird, Miss, on combined action of crows in obtaining food from dogs, 320 Birds, 266-325; memory of, 266-70; emotions, 270-82; special habits of procuring food, 283-6; of incubation and taking care of offspring, 287-310; general intelligence, 310-25; dreaming and imagination, 311-12; learning to avoid telegraph wires, 313; recognising painting of birds, 311; submitting to surgical operation, 313-14; honey-guide, 315-16; appreciation of mechanical appliances, 315-16; concerted action, 318-322 _Birgus latro_, 233 Bison, 334-5 Blackbirds, breaking shells against stones, 283; removing eggs, 289; mobbing cat, 291 Blackburn, Professor H., on distances over which bees forage, 150 Blackman, on cats learning to beg for food, 414-15 Blackwall, on early display of instincts by spiders, 216 Blanchard, on mason-bee, 178 Blood, on reasoning power of a dog, 464 Boa-constrictor, really a Python, which _see_ Bodley, W. H., on dogs crossing a river to fight undisturbed, 451-2 Bold, on canary singing against own image in mirror, 276 Bombyx moth, larva of, 238-40 Bonnet, on spider following her eggs into pit of ant-lion, 205; his experiments on instincts of caterpillars, 236; observations on ditto, 238 Boobies, plundered by frigate pelicans, 284 Bosc, on migrating fish, 248 Bower-bird, instincts of, 279-81, 325 Bowman, Parker, his cat opening swivel of window, 425 Boys, C. V., his experiments with a tuning-fork on spiders, 206, 207 Brehm, on wasps recognising persons, 188; intelligence of lapwing, 315, 316; curiosity of monkeys, 477 Broderip, on vindictiveness of elephant, 389 Brodie, Sir B., his definition of instinct, 15; on bees strengthening their combs, 185, 186 Brofft, Herr L., on powers of communication in bees, 160 Brougham, Lord, on hexagonal form of bees' cells, 172; on intelligence of a dog, 450 Brown, Capt., on vindictiveness of a stork, 277-8 Brown, W., on a cat extinguishing fire by water, 425 Browne, Dr. Crichton, on cat ringing bell, 423 Browne, Murray, on fox allowing itself to be extricated from trap, 431 Browning, A. H., on intelligence of a dog, 450 Brydon, Dr., on collective instinct of jackals, 434 Buchanan, Dr., on climbing perch, 249; on nidification of baya-bird, 294 Büchner, Professor, on ants: nursing habits, 59; stocking trees with aphides, 63; warfare, 71-9; play, 87-88; leaf cutting, 95-96; intelligence in making a bridge of aphides over tar, 136; of themselves over a space, 136-37; and of a straw over water, 137; ecitons, 139; anatomy and physiology of brain, 141-42. On bees and wasps: powers of communication, 158-60; swarming habits, 168; wars and plunder, 169; cell-building, 177-78; evacuating dangerous hive, 187; keeping hives clean, 190; carrying dead from hive and burying them, 191; ventilating hives, 191-92; hornet and wasp dismembering heavy prey, and carrying it to an eminence in order to fly away with it, 196. On termites, 198-202. On spiders: web-building, 211-12; wolf spider, 213; trap-door spiders, 217-18; intelligence of a spider habitually fed by Dr. Moschkau, 218-19; spiders weighting their webs, 221. On beetles: co-operation of, 227-28 Buck, E. C., on intelligence of crocodiles, 263; on collective instinct of wolves, 433; on combined action of pelicans, 319 Buckland, F., on pigeon remembering voice of mistress, 266; crows breaking shells by dropping them on stones, 283; birds avoiding telegraph wires, 313 Buckley, on harvesting ants, 103 Buckton, G. B., on caterpillars, 236 Buffalo, 335-37 Buffon, on hexagonal form of bees' cells, 171-72; association of ideas in parrot, 269; sympathy in ditto, 275; goat sucker removing eggs, 289 _Bufo obstetricans_, 254 Bull, intelligence of, 338 Burmeister, on powers of communication in ants, 49 Byron, Lord, lines on alleged tendency to scorpion to commit suicide, 222 CADDIS-WORMS, 240 Cairns, Mr. W., on reasoning power of a dog, 461 Campbell, Mrs. G. M. F., on intelligence of goose, 316 Canary, jealousy of, 276; modification of incubating instinct in cage, 287; flying against mirror, 311; trained, 312 Canning, J., his dog knowing value of different coins, 452-3 _Carassius auratus_, 246 Carbonnier, M., on telescope-fish, 246 Carlisle, Bishop of, on congregation or court held by jackdaws, 324 Carpenter, Dr., on intelligence of rats, 361 Carreri, Gernelli, on monkeys thrusting stones between oyster-shells to keep them from closing, 481 Carter, H. J., on apparent intelligence of _athealium_, 19; of _actinophrys_ and _amoeba_, 20-1 Carus, Professor, on spiders weighting their webs, 221 Cat, the, 411-25; general remarks upon, 411-14; emotions of, 412-13; general intelligence of, 413-25; showing zoological discrimination, 414; punishing kittens for misbehaviour, 414; begging for food, 414-15; feeding kittens on bread when milk fails, 415; carrying kittens to be protected by master, 415; trying to catch image behind mirror, 416; communicating by signs, 419; devices for catching prey, 417-20; appreciation of mechanical appliances, 420-25; extinguishing fire by water, 425 Caterpillars, instinct of assisted by intelligence, 236-8; migrating, 238-40 Catesby, on co-operation of beetles, 226, 227; on frigate-pelican plundering boobies, 284 Cattle, fear exhibited by in slaughterhouses, 334; pride of, 334 _Cebus fatuellus_, observations on intelligence of, 484-98 Cecil, H., on tactics displayed by hunting wasps, 194 _Cephalopoda_, intelligence of, 29-30 _Cetacea_, 327-28 Challenge, mode of, in gulls, 291 Charming of snakes, 264 _Cheiroptera_, 341 _Chelmon rostratus_, 248 Chimpanzee, play of, 476-77 Chinese swallow, nidification of, 292 _Chironectes_, 243 Choice, as evidence of mind, 2 Clark, G., on intelligence of a bat, 341 Clark, Rev. H., on harvesting ants, 99; on dog recognising portrait, 454-5 Clarville, on co-operation of beetles, 228 Clavigero, on sympathy of pelicans for wounded companions, 275 Claypole, on intelligence of horse, 331-2 _Cnethocampii pitzocampa_, 244 Cobra, sexual affection of, 256; charming, 265; intelligence of, 262 Cock, domestic, killing hen upon hatching out eggs of other birds, 278 _Coelenterata_, movements of, and question concerning their intelligence, 22 _Coleoptera_, 226-9; co-operation of, 226-8; other instances of intelligence, 228-9 Colquhoun, on reasoning power of a dog, 463-4 Commensalism, between crab and anemone, and between mollusk and anemone, 233 Communication, _see_ Co-operation Concerted action, _see_ Co-operation Cones, Captain Elliot, on intelligence of wolverine, 348-50 _Conilurus constructor_, 326 Conklin, W. A., on elephants thatching their backs, 409 Consciousness, as evidence of mind, 2; gradual dawn of, 13 Conte, John Le, on reasoning power of a dog, 460-1 Cook, Capt., on tree ants, 111; intelligence of tree-ants, 133 Cook, George, on dog dragging mat about to lie upon, 466 Co-operation, of ants, 48-49, 51-59, 64 _et seq._ (in making slaves and waging war), 85-96; (in sundry occupations), 96-100; (in harvesting), 108-10, 111-14; (of apparently different species), 114-122; (of military ants), 127-30, 132-4, 136-40; of bees, 159-74; (in general work, wars, and architecture), 177, 178, 184-6, 190-2; of termites, 198-203; of beetles, 226-8; of birds, 318-22; of horses and asses, 333; of bison and buffalo, 335; of pigs, 339; of rats, 361, 362; of mice, 364; of beavers, 367-83; of elephants, 401; of foxes, 433; of wolves, 433 and 436; of jackals, 432-5; of baboons, 483 Corse, on memory of elephant, 386, 387; emotions of elephant, 393 Couch, on maternal instinct of hen, 272; mode in which guillemots catch fish, 285; mode of escape practised by swan, 290; birds removing dung from neighbourhood of their nests, 290; blackbirds mobbing cat, 291; nidification of swan, 296-8; crows punishing offenders, 323-4; intelligence of hare, 359; cat unlocking door, 424; fox avoiding trap, 428; catching crabs with tail, 432; mode by which a dog killed crabs, 459 _Corvus cornice_, punishing offenders, 323, 324 Cowper, on intelligence of hare, 359, 360 Cox, C., playhouses of bower-birds presented by him to Sydney Museum, 280 Crabs, 231-4 Craven, on intelligence of a sow, 340 Crehore, on foxes avoiding traps, 428, 429; on dog recognising portrait, 453 Cripps, his elephant dying under emotional disturbance, 396 Criterion of mind, 4-8 Crocodiles, 263 Crow, Capt. Hugh, on sympathy shown by monkeys for sick companion, 473, 474 Crows, memory of, 266; breaking shells by dropping them on the stones, 283; punishing offenders, 323-5 Cruelty, of cat, 413 Crustacea, 231-34 Cuckoo, parasitic instincts of, 301-7; eggs of coloured like those of the bird in whose nest they are laid, 307-9; American, 305, 306 Curiosity, of fish, 247; of birds, 278, 279; of ruminants and swine, 335; of monkeys, 477 Curlew, nidification of, 292 Cuvier, his orang drawing chair to stand upon to reach a latch, 481; on birds dreaming, 312 DACE, tamed, 246 Daldorff, on climbing perch, 248, 249 Dampier, on frigate-pelicans plundering boobies, 284; on monkeys hammering oyster shells with stones, 481 _Daphnia pulex_, seeking light, especially yellow ray, 23 Darwin, Charles, on apparent intelligence of worms, 24; of oyster, 25; of snail, 27; Mr. Hague's letter to, on powers of communication in ants, 54-7; observations on ants keeping aphides, 60, 61; on ants making slaves, 64, 66, 67; communications of Lincecum to, on harvesting ants, 103, 107; on proportional size of ants' brain, 140; communication of Müller on powers of communication in bees, 157; origin and development of cell-making instinct, 173-7; instincts of neuters, 181; quotation in MS. from Sir B. Brodie on bees supporting their combs, 185-6; his 'law of battle' in relation to spiders, 205; intelligence of crab, 233; his theory of sexual selection, 279-82; sense of smell in vultures, 286; on Wallace's theory of correlation between colour of sitting birds and form of their nests, 299; instincts of cuckoo, 304-6; birds dreaming, 312; Gauchos taming wild horses, 329; memory of horse, 330; intelligence of bear, 352; of elephant, 398, 402; collective instinct of wolves, 436; duration of memory in dogs, 438; intelligence of Eskimo dogs, 462; reasoning of retriever, 463-4; maternal care and grief of monkey, 472; sense of ludicrous in monkeys, 476; curiosity and imitativeness of monkeys, 477; imitativeness of man, 477-8; intelligent observation displayed by monkeys, 479, 480 Darwin, Erasmus, on bees ceasing to store honey in Barbadoes, 187; wasp dismembering fly to facilitate carriage, 195; unmoulted crab guarding moulted, 233; crows breaking shells by dropping them on stones, 283; bird shaking seed out of poppy, 286; elephant acting nurse to young child, 408 Darwin, F., on bees biting holes through corollas, 189 Davis, on instincts of larvæ of bombyx moth, 239 Davy, Dr., on instincts of alligators, 256, 257; taming cobra, 265; performing operation on elephants, 400 Davy, Sir H., on eagles teaching young to fly, 290 Day, F., on intelligence of fish, 244-52 Deceitfulness, of elephant 410; of dog, 443, 444, 450-52, 457, 458; of monkey, 494 Deer, intelligence of, 336, 338, 339 De Fravière, on powers of communication in bees, 158; their scouts, 168 Descartes, his hypothesis of animal automatism, 6 Dicquemase, on intelligence of oyster, 25 Dipterous insects, intelligence in finding way out of a bell-jar, 153, 154; gad-fly, 230; house-fly, 230, 231 Division of labour, _see_ Co-operation Dog, ringing bell, 423; knocking knocker, 423; collective instinct of, 435, 436; general remarks on psychology of, as influenced by domestication, 437, 438; memory of, 438; emotions of, 438-45; pride and sensitiveness, 439-42; intolerance of pain, 441; emulation and jealousy, 442, 443; sense of justice, 443; deceitfulness, 443, 444; sense of ludicrous and dislike of ridicule, 444, 445; general intelligence of, 445-70; communicating ideas, 445-7; instances of reason, 447-69 _Dolomedes fimbriata_, 213 _Doras_, 248 D'Osbonville, on monkeys administering corporal chastisement to their young, 482, 483 Dreaming, of birds, 269, 312; of ferrets, 347 Duchemin, M., on toads killing carp, 254 Duck, conjugal fidelity of, 270, 271; conveying young on back, 289 Dugardin, on communication among ants, 49; in bees, 156 Duncan, on cunning of a dog, 451 Dzierzon, on cause determining sex of bees' eggs, 162; bees repairing injuries to their cells, 186 EAGLE, plundering instinct of white-headed, 284; teaching young to fly, 290; variations in nest-building, 299; submitting to surgical operations, 313, 314 Earwig, 229, 230 Ebrard, on co-operation of ants, 132 _Echinodermata_, movements of, 23 Edmonson, Dr., on crows punishing offenders, 323, 324 Edward, on intelligence of frogs, 255; sympathy of terns for wounded companion, 274, 275; crows breaking shells by dropping them on stones, 283; co-operation of turnstones, 321 Edward, H., on honey-making ants, 111-14 Eimer, Dr., on voluntary and involuntary movements of _Medusæ_, 22, 23 Elephant, general remarks upon, 386; memory of, 386, 387; emotions of, 387-96; vindictiveness, 387-9; sympathy, 389-90; rogue, 393, 394; dying under effects of emotion, 395, 396; general intelligence of, 396-410; enduring surgical operations, 399-400; vigilance, 401; formation of abstract ideas, 401, 402; intelligence of tame decoys, 402-6; of tame workers, 306-8; thatching their backs, 308, 309; removing leeches, and fanning away flies, 309, 310; concealing theft, 410 Ellendorf, Dr. F., on leaf-cutting ants, 95, 96; on ants making a bridge, 137 Elliot, on collective instinct of wolves, 433 Emery, J., on powers of communication in bees, 157 Emulation, of birds, 277; of dogs, 442 Encyclopædia Britannica, on bees following floating hives, 149; battles of queen-bees, 163, 164; parasitic instincts in birds, 306 Endurance, of pain by wild dogs, 441; of surgical operations by eagle, 313, 314; by elephants, 399, 400; by monkey, 482 Engelmann, on _Daphnia pulex_ seeking yellow light, 23 _Epeira aurelia_, Mr. F. Pollock on perfection of web built by young, 217 Erb, G. S., on intelligence of deer, 338, 339 _Esox lucius_, 246 Espinas, on co-operation of ants, 130 FABRE, on instincts of sphex-wasp, 180, 181 Faister, Mdlle de, her tame weasel, 346 Falcon, variations in nest-building, 299 Faraday, J., on intelligence of skate, 251 Fascination, alleged, by snakes, 263, 264 Fayrer, Sir J., on fascination by and charming of snakes, 264 Fear, in horses, 329; in ruminants, 334; in rabbits, 355; in rats, 360 excited in dogs by portraits, 455-7; in monkey by snakes, 477, and by imitation monkey, 495 Ferret, 347 Fire-flies, stuck on nests by baya-birds, 294 Fish, 241-53; comparison of brain with that of invertebrata, 241; emotions, 242-7; nidification, courtship, and care of young, 242-6; pugnacity, and social feelings, 242; anger, 246, 247; play, jealousy, curiosity, 247; angler, 247, 248; jaculator, 248; travelling over land, 248; climbing trees, 248, 249; migrations, 249, 250; general intelligence, 250-53 Fisher, J. F., on hen removing eggs with her neck, 288 Fleeson, Captain B., on honey-making ants, 111-14 Fleming, W. J., on intelligence of horse, 330 Fleury, Cardinal, on intelligence of ants in making bridges, 135 Forbes, on nidification of tailor-bird, 293 Forbes, James, on monkey begging for dead body of companion, 472 Forel, on ants; recognising slaves, 43; and fellow-citizens, 44; swarming habits, 58; experiment in rearing together hostile species, 59, 60; tunnelling to obtain aphides, 61; warfare, 68-77; play, 88; intelligence shown in architecture, 129 Forsteal, on termites, 198 Forster, W., on intelligence of a bull, 338 Fothergill, Percival, on reasoning power of a dog, 466 Fouillouse, J. de, on intelligence of hares, 357, 358 Fox, 426-33; lying in wait for hares, 426, 427; avoiding traps, 427-30; allowing itself to be extricated from trap, 431; catching crabs with tail, 432; collective instinct in hunting, 433 Fox, C., on intelligence of porpoises, 328 Frankland, Mrs., on cock bullfinch recognising portrait of hen, 311 Franklin, on powers of communication in ants, 49 Franklin, Dr., on sympathy in parrots, 276 Frogs, 254, 255 Frost, Dr., on cat sprinkling crumbs to attract birds, 418, 419 Furniss, J. J., on elephants thatching their backs, 408, 409 GAD-FLY, instinct of, 230 Gander, _see_ Goose Gaphaus, H. A., on cat opening thumb-latch, 421 Gardener, on intelligence of crab, 233 Garraway, Dr., on beetle concealing its store of food, 229 _Gasteropoda_, intelligence of, 26-29 _Gasterosteus pungitius_, 243; _G. spinachia_, 243 Geer, M., on earwig incubating young, 229 _Gelasimus_, 233 Gentles, W. Laurie, on intelligence of a sheep-dog, 448, 449 Geoffrey, on pilot fish, 252 Gibbons, their sympathy for suffering companions, 472, 473 Gleditsch, on beetles undermining stick supporting a dead toad, 228; on spiders weighting their webs, 221 Glutton, 347-50 Goat, intelligence of, 337, 338 Goat-sucker, removing eggs, 289; nidification of, 292 Goldfinch, trained, 312 Goldsmith on habits of rooks, 322, 323 Goldsmith, Dr., on intelligence of otter, 346 Gollitz, Herr, on co-operation of beetles, 227 Goodbehere, S., on intelligence of a pony and ass, 332, 333; on cunning of sheep-killing dogs, 450; on dog knowing value of different coins, 452, 453 Goose, affection and sympathy of, 272, 273; removing eggs from rats, 288; noting time, 314; opening latch of gate, 316 Gosse, on commensalism of crab and anemone, 234 Gould, on bower-bird, 279-81; on humming-birds, 281; on talegallus, 294, 295 Graber, Titus, on proportional size of ant's brain, 141 _Grapsus stringosus_, 231 Gray, Sir George, on nidification of talegallus, 295 Gredler, Vincent, on division of labour among leaf-cutting ants, 99, 100 Green, on intelligence of pigs, 339 Green, Seth, on tactics displayed by hunting wasps, 193 Griffiths, on intelligence of elephant, 388, 389 Grosbeak, nidification of, 295, 296 Grouse, learning to avoid telegraph wires, 312, 313 Groves, J. B., on cat trying to catch image behind mirror, 416 Guana, _see_ Reptiles Guerinzius, on wasps recognising persons, 188 Guillemots, plundering of by gulls, 283, 284; mode of catching fish, 285 Gulls, plundering guillemots, 283, 284; mode of challenge, 291; nidification, 292 Guring, Thomas, on intelligence of geese, 314, 315 HAGEN, on termites, 202 Hague, on powers of communication in ants, 54-7 Hamilton, R., on fear exhibited by cattle in slaughterhouses, 334 Hancock, Dr., on fish quitting water, 248; crows breaking shells by dropping them on stones, 283 Harding, S., on intelligence of a pig, 340 Hare, 357-60 Hartmann, Von, his definition of instinct, 15; on fondness of spiders for music, 206 Harvesting-ants, 96-110; mice, 365, 366 Hawkshaw, J. Clarke, on limpet remembering locality, 28-9 Hayden, on monkey keeping door open with blanket, 481 Hayes, Dr., on intelligence of Eskimo dogs, 462 _Helix pomatia_, intelligence of, 26, 27 _Hemerobius chrysops_, 240 Hen, maternal instinct of, 272; removing eggs with neck, 288; and young chicken on back, 288, 289 Henderson, on navigating habits of Iceland mice, 364, 365 Heron, variations in nest-building, 299 Hogg, on intelligence of his sheep-dog, 448 Holden, on starlings learning to avoid telegraph wires, 312, 313 Hollmann, on intelligence of _octopus_, 30 _Homarus marinus_, 233 Hooker, Sir Joseph, on navigating habits of Iceland mice, 364 Hooper, W. F., on intelligence of a dog, 463 Horn, Mrs., on reasoning powers of a dog, 462 Hornet, carrying heavy prey up an elevation in order to fly away with it, 196 Horse, emotions of, 328-30; memory, 330; general intelligence, 328, 330-3 Horse-fly, tamed, 230, 231 Horsfall, on dog finding his way about by train, 467, 468 Hoste, Sir W., on wounded monkey showing its blood to the sportsman, 476 Houzeau, on hen transporting young chicken on her back, 288, 289; parrots not being deceived by mirrors, 310, 311; birds dreaming, 312; mules counting their journeys, 332; monkeys destroying poison-fangs of snakes, 483 Hubbard, Mrs., on intelligence of a cat, 414 Huber, Bishop, on sympathy of elephant, 389 Huber, F. and P., on instinct, 16. On ants: sense of smell in, 33; recognising companions, 41; powers of communication, 49, 50; observations on slave-making instinct, 65; on warfare, 76; play, 87, 88; harvesting, 97; carrying one another, 109; intelligence shown in architecture, 128, 129. On bees: sense of hearing in, 144; duration of memory, 155; powers of communication, 156, 159; manipulation and uses of propolis, 161; battles of queen-bees, 164, 165; form of cells, 173; building cells, 177, 178; barricading doors against moths, 184; strengthening combs, 185; biting holes in corollas, 189; ventilating hives, 191, 192; effects of removing antennæ of bees, 197 Hudson, on habits of _Melothrus_, 309, 310 Hugen, on termites, 198 Humboldt, on instincts of young turtles, 257 Humming-birds, æsthetic instincts of, 281 Hutchings, J., on intelligence of a cat, 417 Hutchinson, on alleged tendency of scorpion to commit suicide, 225 Hutchinson, Col., on reasoning power of a dog, 463, 464 Hutchinson, Dr. H. F., on wolf-spider stalking own image in mirror, 213 Hutchinson, S. J., on intelligence of polar bear, 351, 352 Hutton, Mrs., on ants burying their dead, 91, 92 _Hydrargrza_, 248 _Hymenoptera_, _see_ Ants and Bees IBEX, does assisting wounded buck to escape, 334 Idealism, cannot be refuted by argument, 6 Ideas, _see_ Association Imitation, shown by talking birds, monkeys, and idiots, 477, 478 Instinct, defined and distinguished from reason and reflex action, 10-17; of medusæ, 23; of worms, 24; of mollusca, 25; of ants with reference to colour, 32, 33; to smell, 33-7; to sense of direction, 37-9; to recognising friends, 41-5; to swarming, 57, 58; to nursing, 58; to education, 59, 60; to keeping aphides, 60-4; to making slaves, 64-8; to wars, 68-83; to keeping pets, 83, 84; to sleep and cleanliness, 84-7; to play and leisure, 87-9; to treatment of dead, 89-93; of leaf-cutting species, 93-6; of harvesting species, 97-110; of tree-inhabiting species, 110, 111; of honey-making species, 111-14; of ecitons, 114-22; of driver and marching species, 121-2; of bees and wasps, with reference to colour, 143-4; to sense of direction, 144-51; to food-collecting and wax-making, 160-2; to propagation, 162-8; of queens, 162-5; of killing drones, 165-8; with reference to wars, 169, 170; to architecture, 170-80; of sphex-wasp, 180, 181; of termites, 198-203; of spiders, 204-18; of scorpion, 222-5; of beetles, 226-9; of earwig, 229, 230; of flies, 230, 231; of crustacea, 231, 232; of larvæ, 234-40; of fish, 242-53; of batrachians, 254; of reptiles, 256-9; of birds, with reference to procuring food, 283-7; to incubation, 287-91; to nidification, 291-301; of cuckoo, 301-10; of marsupials, 320; of whale, 327; of ruminants, 335; of swine, 339; of bats, 341; of seals, 341-8; of wolverine, 348-50; of rodents, 353, 354; of rabbit, 354-7; of hare, 354-9; of rats, 360; of mice, 364-5; of rat-hare, 365, 366; of beaver, mixed with intelligence, 367; with reference to propagation and lodges, 367-71; to procuring food, 371-3; to dams, 373-80; to canals, 380-4; of cat, 411-12; of dog, 437, 438; of monkey, 471 JACKAL, 426; collective instinct in hunting, 432-35 Jackdaw, gesticulating signs made by, 316; congregation for court held by, 324 Jacob, Sir G. Le Grand, on crows punishing offender, 324-5; ibexes assisting wounded mate to escape, 334 Japp, on dog spontaneously learning use of coin, 452 Jealousy, of fish, 242; of birds, 276-7; of horse, 329, 330; of dogs, 442, 443; of monkey, 493 Jenkins, H. L., on formation of abstract ideas by elephants, 401, 402 Jenner, on instinct of young cuckoo, 301-4 Jerdon, Dr., on harvesting-ants, 97; on birds dreaming, 312 Jervoise, Sir J. C., on bee biting hole in a corolla, 189; on combined action of rooks in obtaining food from pheasants, 321 Jesse, on intelligence of bees in adapting their combs to smooth surface, 186; spider protecting eggs from cold, 219; tame house-fly, 230, 231; affection of male for female pike, 246; attachment between alligator and cat, 258, 259; conjugal fidelity of swan, and pigeon, 271; sympathy of rooks, 273, 274; lapwing stamping on ground to make worms rise, 285; goose removing eggs from rats, 288; birds removing dung from neighbourhood of their nests, 290; swallows killing and imprisoning hostile sparrows, 318, 319; kangaroo throwing young from pouch when pursued, 326, 327; stag shaking berries from trees, and manifesting intelligence in escaping from dogs, 336; intelligence of buffalo, 336, 337; intelligence of rats, 360-2; of elephants, 398; collective instinct of foxes, 433; wounded monkey showing its blood to the sportsman, 476 Jillson, Professor, on habits of the 'prairie-dog,' 366 John, St., on intelligence of fox, 426, 427; idea of caste in dog, 442 Johnson, on termites, 198; on orang-outangs removing their dead companions, 472 Johnson, Capt., on wounded monkey showing its blood to the sportsman, 475 Johnson, Dr., his definition of reason, 14 KANGAROO, throwing young from pouch when pursued, 326, 327 Kaup, on fish, 246 Kemp, Dr. L., on battles of queen-bees, 164; robber bees, 170; on intelligence of decoy elephants, 402 Kent, Saville, on intelligence of porpoises, 327, 328 Kesteven, Dr. W. H., on cat knocking knocker, 424 Kingfisher, nidification of, 292 Kirby, on water-spider, 212; shore crabs, 232; migration of salmon, 249, 250; intelligence of carp, 250 Kirby and Spence, on powers of communication in ants, 49; sense of direction in bees, 148; hexagonal form of bees' cells, 172; ceasing to store honey in tropics, 188; co-operation of beetles, 226; caterpillars, 236, and 238, 239 Klein, Dr., on intelligence of a cat, 418, 419 Kleine, Herr, on behaviour of bees when finding empty combs substituted for full ones, 186, 187 Klingelhöffer, Herr, on co-operation of beetles, 227-8 König, on termites, 198 Kreplin, Herr H., on ecitons, 139 _LABRUS_, 247 Lacepède, on fish coming to sound of bell, &c., 250 _Lacerta iguana_, 255 _Lagomys_, provident habits of, 365 Landois, on powers of communication in bees, 158 Langshaft, on bees recognising hive companions, 183; on robber bees, 183-4 Lapwing, stamping on ground to make worms rise, 285; intelligence of, 315, 316 Larvæ, of insects, intelligence of, 234-40 Latreille, on ants, sympathy of, 47 Lauriston, Baron, on sympathy of elephant, 390 Layard, Consul, on intelligence of cobra, 262; on nidification of baya-bird, 294; on cat pulling bell-wire, 424 Lee, Mrs., on intelligence of robin, 314; of goats, 337; of rats, 361; on vindictiveness of elephant, 389 Leeches, apparent intelligence of, 24 Lefroy, Lieut-Gen, Sir John, on terrier communicating wants by signs, 446 Lehr, Herr H., on bees draining their hive, 190 Leroy, C. G., on nidification of birds, 300; on migration, 301; on collective instinct of wolves, 436 Lespès, on ants: slave-making instinct, 65, 66; warfare, 68, 69; division of labour, 98, 99; on termites, 198 Leuckart, Prof., on intelligence of ants in surmounting obstacles, 135 Lever, Sir Ashton, his experiment on eccentricity of nest-building instinct, 295 Limpet, remembering locality, 28, 29 Lincecum, Dr., on harvesting ants, 97 and 103-7; carrying one another, 109 Lindsay, Dr. L., on birds dreaming, 312 Linnæus, on swallows imprisoning sparrows, 318 Linnet, intelligence of in not flying against mirror, 311; trained, 312 _Liparis chrysorrhaca_, 238 Livingstone, Dr., on certain ants of Africa, 110; honey-guide, 315; intelligence of buffalo, 335, 336; reasoning power of dog, 457 Lobster, 233 Lockman, J., on fondness of pigeon for a particular air of music, 282 Lonsdale, on intelligence of snails, 27 _Lophius piscator_, 247-8 Lophobranchiate fish, incubating eggs in mouth, 245-6 Loudoun's 'Magazine of Natural History,' quotations from, 357 Love-bird, conjugal affection of, 270 Löwenfels, Herr H., on a wasp dismembering a fly to facilitate carriage, 196. Lubbock, Sir John, on ants: sense of sight in, 32; of hearing, 33; of smell, 33-7; of direction, 37-8; recognising companions and nest-mates, 41-3 and 44-5; deficiency of affection and sympathy, 45-7; powers of communication, 50-3; collecting hatching eggs of aphides, 61-2; keeping pets, 84; general intelligence, 123-8. On bees and wasps: sense of sight in, 143; of smell and hearing, 144; of direction, 144-8; memory, 151-4; taming wasps, 153; experiment on comparative intelligence of wasp and fly in finding way out of a bell-jar, 153-4; experiments to test sympathy, 155-6; way-finding, 181-3; recognising one another, 183-4. On co-operation of beetles, 226. Ludicrous, sense of, in dogs, 444-5; in monkeys, 476, 485, 487, and 490 Lukis, F. C., on limpet remembering locality, 29 MACLACHLAN, on caddis-worms, 244 Maclaurin, on mathematical principles observed by bees in constructing their cells, 171 _Macropodus_, 244 Malcolm, Sir James, on sympathy shown by monkey, 474-5 Malle, Dureau de la, on dog knocking knocker, 423-4; collective instinct of dogs, 435-6 Mammals, 326-498 Mann, Mr. and Mrs., their tame snakes, 256, 260-2 Mansfield, nest of fish, 242-43 Marsupials, 326-7 Martin, nidification of house, 292; of land, 292 Martin, John, on reasoning power of cat, 415 MacCook, the Rev. Dr., on ants: recognising fellow-citizens, 44; feeding comrades with aphides-secretion, 63-4; keeping cocci and caterpillars, 64; warfare, 78, 81-3; sleep and cleanliness, 84-87; play, 88; funeral habits, 89-91; agricultural, 97, 103-10; modes of mining, 108; swarming habits of agriculturals, 108-9; carrying one another, 109-10; removing nest from shade of tree, 131; cutting leaves from shading tree, 131-2; co-operation in cutting grass, 132 M'Crady, on larva of _Medusæ_ sucking nutriment from parent, 34 Meek, his cat trying to catch image behind mirror, 415-16 Meenan, on a wasp carrying heavy prey up an elevation in order to fly away with it, 197 _Melanerpes formicivorus_, 285 _Melia tessellata_, 233-4 _Melipona domestica_, form of its cells, 173-6 _Melothrus_, 309-10 Memory, of mollusca, 25-9; of ants, 39-45; of bees, 151-5; of beetles and earwig, 226-30; of batrachians, 255; of reptiles, 259 _et seq._; of birds, 266-70; of horse, 330; of elephant, 386-7; of dog, 438; of monkey, 497 Menault, on eagle submitting to surgical operation, 313-14; on mason bee, 178-9 Merian, Madame, on ants of visitation, 130; mygale spider eating humming-birds, 208 Merrell, Dr., on instinct of American cuckoo, 305-6 Mice, 360-4 Migration, of caterpillars, 238; of crabs, 232; of fish, 248-50; of reptiles, 257-8; of birds, 266; of mammals, 341-50, and 368 Mildmay, Sir Henry, on pigs learning to point game, 339-40 Mill, John S., on instinct of cruelty in man, 413 Miller, Prof., calculations regarding form of bee's cell, 173 Mind, subjective and objective analysis of, 1; evidence of, 2; criterion of, 4-8 Mischievousness, fondness of, shown by monkeys, 485 _et seq._ Mitchell, on fish removing eggs from disturbed nest, 251 Mitchell, Major, on habits of _Conilurus constructor_, 326 Mivart, on instincts of sphex-wasps, 181 Mobbing instinct in birds, 291 Möbius, Prof., on commensalism between crab and anemone, 233 Moggridge, on ants: sympathy of, 48; suggestion to Mr. Hague, 56; warfare of, 79-81; keeping pets, 83; harvesting, 97-8 and 100-2; division of labour, 98; harvesters using burrows made by elater, 130; intelligent adaptation to artificial conditions, 130; co-operation in cutting grass, &c., 133. On trap-door spiders covering trap-doors with moss, &c., 214-15; making trap-door at exposed end of accidentally inverted tube, 215-216; perfection of dwellings built by young spiders, 216-17; manner in which instinct of making trap-doors probably arose, 217-18 Mollusca, intelligence of, 25-30 Monboddo, Lord, on snake finding way home, 262 Monkeys, 471-98; general remarks on psychology of, 471 and 497-98; emotions of, 471-8; affection and sympathy, 471-5; reproach, 475-6; ludicrous, 476, 485, 487, 490; play, 476-77; curiosity, 477; imitation, 477; rage, jealousy, and revenge, 478; memory of, 497; general intelligence of, 478; behaviour with mirror, 478-9 and 495-6; picking shells off eggs, and taking care not to be stung by wasps in paper, 479; intelligence of Mr. Belt's, 480; disentangling chains, 480 and 486-8; raking in objects with sticks or cloths, 480 and 486; drawing chair to stand upon, 481; using levers, 481 and 492; using hammers, 481 and 485; divining principle of screw, 490-91; keeping door open with blanket, 481-2; allowing tooth to be drawn, 482; punishing young, 482-3; destroying snake's fangs, 483; concerted action, 483; love of mischief, 485 _et seq._; throwing things in rage, 485 _et seq._; pushing slab to which tied, 484-7; capricious attachments and dislikes, 484 _et seq._; trying to unlock a box, 492; playing with fire, 493-4; expression of emotions, 494-5; dread of imitation monkey, 495 Morgan, L. A., on spider conveying insect to larder, 220 Morgan, L. H., on the beaver, 367-83 Moschkau, Dr., on intelligence shown by a spider which he habitually fed, 218-19 Moseley, Lewin, performing operation on a monkey, 482 Moseley, Prof., on intelligence of crabs, 231-2 Mossman, Rev. J. W., on wasps coming out of small aperture backwards, 192-3 Mule, alleged counting by, 332; intelligence of, 333-4 Müller, Adolph, on instinct of cuckoo, 306-7 Müller, F., on powers of communication in bees, 157; on termites, 198 and 201 Murray, S., intelligence of his dog, 450 Music, fondness of spiders for, 205-7; of parrots and pigeon, 282 Mygale spider eating humming-birds, 208 _Myriophyllum spicatum_, 243 _Myrmeleon formicarium_, 234-5 NADAULT, Madame, the association of ideas shown by her parrot, 269 Napier, Commander, on pigeon making a horse shake oats from nose-bag, 317 Napier, Lady, recollection in parrot, 269, 270; emulation in parrot, 276, 277 Nest, _see_ Nidification Newall, R. S., on wasp dividing caterpillar to facilitate carriage, 195, 196 Newbury, on absence of beaver dams in California, 370, 371 Newton, Professor A., on instincts of cuckoo, 306-9 Nichols, W. W., on intelligence of pigeons, 317 Nicols, A., on reasoning power of a retriever, 464, 465 _Nicrophorus_, 228 Nidification, of crustacean, 232, 233; of fish, 242-5; of birds, 291-301; petrels and puffins, 291, 292; auks, curlew, goatsucker, ostrich, gulls, sandpipers, plovers, kingfisher, Chinese swallow, house-martin, 292; tomtit, woodpecker, starling, weaver, 293; baya, talegallus, 294; grosbeak, 295, 296; swan, 296-8; Wallace's theories concerning, 298, 299; variability of 299-301; of harvesting mice, 365 Nightingales, removing nest, 289 Niphon, Professor, on intelligence of a mule, 333, 334 _Noctua Ewingii_, 238 _Noctura verbasci_, 236 North, the Rev. W., on intelligence of mice, 361, 362 Nottebohm, Herr, on ants stocking trees with aphides, 63 OBSTETRIC-FISH, 246; toad, 254 _Octopus_, intelligence of, 29, 30 _[OE]cypoda ippeus_, 231 Oldham, A., on jealousy in dog, 442, 443 Orang-outang, removing dead companions, 472; sense of humour in, 476; drawing chair to stand upon to reach high places, 481 _Orthotomus_, 293 Ostrich, conjugal affection of, 270; nidification, 292 Otter, 346 Oyster, intelligence of, 25 PALLAS, on provident habits of Lagomys, 365 Parrot, memory of, 267-9; recollection, 269, 270; talking, &c., 267-70; sympathy, 275, 276; exultation on baffling imitative powers of master, 277; vindictiveness, 277; fondness of music, 282; difficult to deceive by mirrors, 310, 311 Parry, Captain, on instincts of wild swan, 297 Partridge, removing eggs, 289 Peach, C. W., on dog recognising portrait, 453, 454 Peal, G. E., on elephants removing leeches and fanning away flies, 409, 410 Pearson, Colonel, the reasoning power of his dog, 466, 467 Peeweet, _see_ Lapwing. Pelicans, sympathy of for wounded companions, 275; frigate, 284; combined action of in fishing, 319 Penky, the Rev. Mr., on reasoning power of a dog, 466, 467 Pennant, on navigating habits of Iceland mice, 364 Pennent, on domestication of toad, 255; on fascination by rattle-snake, 263 _Perca scandens_, 248, 249 Perception, 9 Perch, climbing, 248, 249 Percival, Dr., on cock killing hen when she hatched out eggs of partridge, 278 Petrels, nidification of, 291, 292 Phillips, J., his portrait-painting recognised by a dog, 454 Picton, Mrs. E., on sensitiveness of a terrier, 440, 441 _Pieris rapæ_, 236 Pigeon, memory of, 266; conjugal affection and fidelity, 270, 271; fondness for a particular air of music, 282; intelligence in avoiding turtles, 317; in making horse shake oats from nose-bag, 317 Pigs, 339-41 Pike, affection of male for female, 246 Pilot-fish, 251, 252 Pinnipeds, breeding habits of, 342, 346 Pipe-fish, 246 Piracy, instinct of, in birds, 283, 284, 301-7 _Pisces_, _see_ Fish Play, of ants, 87, 89; of fish, 242; of birds, 279; of porpoise, 327, 328; of dogs, 445; of monkeys, 476, 477 Pliny, on ants burying their dead, 91; sexual affection of snakes, 256; on intelligence of elephant, 386; on memory of elephant, 387 _Ploceus textor_, 293 Plover, _see_ Lapwing; nidification of, 292 Plutarch, on intelligence of elephant, 386 _Podocerus capillatus_, 232 Polar bear, 352, 353 Polecat, curious instinct of, 347 _Polistes carnifex_, taking precise bearings to remember locality, 150, 151 _Polistes Gallica_, tamed by Sir John Lubbock, 153; robber, 169 Pollock, F., on perfection of webs built by young spiders, 217 Pollock, W., on association of ideas in parrot, 269 _Polydectes cupulifer_, 233 Pope, on instinct and reason, 15 Porpoise, intelligence of, 327, 328 Portraits, recognised by birds, 311; by dogs, 453-7 Pouchet, on improvement in nidification of swallows, 300, 301 Powelsen, on navigating habits of Iceland mice, 364 Prairie dog, 366 Pride, of birds, 279; of horse, 330; of ruminants, 334; of dog, 439-42 _Prinia_, 293 _Protozoa_, movements of, 18; apparent intelligence of, 19-21 Provident instincts, of ants, 97-110; of bees, 160-162; of a bird, 285; of rodents, 353, 354, and 365, 366; of beaver, 368-70 Puffins, nidification of, 291, 292 Pugnacity, of ants, 45; of bees, 165-70; of spiders, 204-5; of fish, 242; of seal, 341-6; of rabbits, 355; of rat-hare, 365, 366; of canine animals, 426 Python, tame, affection of, &c., 256 and 260-2 QUARTERLY REVIEW, on intelligence of rats, 360, 361 Quatrefages, on termites, 198 RABBIT, 354-7 Rabigot, on fondness of spiders for music, 206 Rae, Dr. John, on intelligence of horse, 331; of wolverine, 348; of wolves and foxes, 429, 430; of dog, 465, 466 Rae, on dog ringing bell, 423 Ransom, Dr., on sticklebacks, 245 Rarey, his method of taming horses, 328, 329 Rats, 360-3 Rattlesnake, alleged fascination by, 263 Ravens, breaking shells by dropping them on stones, 283 Razor-fish, intelligence of, 25 Reason, definition of, and distinguished from instinct, 13-17; exhibitions of, by various animals, _see_ under sections headed 'general intelligence' Réaumur, on intelligence of ants, 128; sympathy of bees, 156; carpenter-bee, 179; encasing snail with propolis, 190; conveying carrion out of hive, 191; experiments on instincts of caterpillars, 237; on larvæ chasing aphides, 240 Reclain, Professor C., on spider descending to violin-player, 205, 206 Recognition of persons, by bees, 188; by snakes and tortoises, 259-61; of places, by mollusca, 27-9; by ants, 33 _et seq._; by bees, 144 _et seq._; of offspring, by earwig, 229; of portraits, _see_ Birds and Dogs; of other members of a hive by ants and bees, _see_ Ants and Bees Reeks, H., on collective instinct of wolves, 436 Reflex action, 2-4 Reid, Dr., on mathematical principles observed by bees in constructing their cells, 171 Rengger, on maternal care and grief of a cebus, 472; monkeys displaying intelligent observation, 479; using levers, 481 Reproach, shown by gestures of monkeys 475-478 Reptiles, 255-265; emotions of, 255, 256, and 260-2; incubating eggs, sexual and parental affection of, 256; general intelligence of, 256-263; fascination by, 263, 264; charming of, 264, 265 Reyne, his observations on snake-charming, 264, 265 _Rhizopoda_, apparent intelligence of, 19-21 Richards, Captain, on pilot-fish, 252 Richardson, Mrs. A. S. H., on elephant concealing theft, 410; on dog finding its way home by train, 468, 469 Ridicule, dislike of, by dogs and monkeys, _see_ Ludicrous Risso, M., on habits of pipe-fish, 246 Robertson, Professor G. Croora, on behaviour of an ape with a mirror, 478, 479 Robin, intelligence of, 314 Rodents, 353 Rodwell, on intelligence of rats, 360-2 Rogue-elephants, _see_ Elephant Romanes, Miss C., on dog recognising portrait, 455, 456; on intelligence of cebus, 484-95 Romanes, G. J., on movements of rotifer, 18, 19; of medusæ, 22; of echinodermata, 23; emotions of stickleback, 246, 247; piracy of terns and gulls, 283-4; mode of challenge practised by gulls, 291; birds deceived by mirrors, 311; grouse learning to avoid telegraph wires, 313; intelligence of horse, 330; intelligence of ferrets, 347; instincts of rabbits, 354; intelligence of rabbits, 354, 355; rabbits fighting rats, 355; drawing dead companions out of holes, 356, 357; intelligence of hare, 357; hares and rabbits allowing themselves to be caught by weasels, 359; rats using their tails for feeding purposes, 363; cat opening thumb-latch, 420, 421; collective instinct of jackals, 434, 435; of dogs, 435; duration of memory in dog, 438; pride and sensitiveness in dog, 439, 440; intolerance of dog towards pain, 441; emulation and jealousy in dog, 442; deceitfulness and dislike of ridicule in dog, 444; sense of ludicrous in dog, 444, 445; dogs communicating ideas, 445, 446; dogs slipping into their collars to conceal their sheep-killing, &c., 435 and 450, 451; dog recognising portrait, 456, 457; reasoning of dog, 457, 458; caution of a dog in killing snakes, 460; sympathy of an Arabian baboon, 474; sense of ludicrous and dislike of ridicule in monkey, 476; intelligence of _Cebus fatuellus_, 484-98 Rooks, sympathy of, for wounded companions, 273, 274; concerted action of, in obtaining food from dogs, 319, 320; from pheasants, 321; nesting habits and punishment of culprits, 322-5 _Rotifera_, movements of, 18 Ruminants, 334 Russell, Lord Arthur, witnessing tameness of snakes, 261 _SAGARTIA parasitica_, 234 Salmon, migration of, 249, 250 _Salticus scenicus_, 213 Sandpipers, nidification of, 292 _Sarsia_, seeking light, 23 Saunders, S. S., on trap-door spiders, 215 Savage, on play of chimpanzees, 476, 477 Schiller, on pride of bell-wether steers, 334 Schipp, Lieut., on combined action of baboons, 483 Schlosser, on jaculator-fish, 248 Schlüter, Herr A., on a hornet carrying heavy prey up an elevation in order to fly away with it, 196 Schneider, on intelligence of _octopus_, 29, 30; on fish guarding eggs, 242; jealousy of fish, 247 Sclater, Dr., on instincts of cuckoo, 325; lending a cebus for observation, 483 Scoresby, on maternal affection of whale, 327; on intelligence of polar bear, 351 Scorpion, alleged suicide of, when surrounded by fire or heat, 222-25 Sea-anemones, 233, 234 Seals, intelligence of, and breeding-habits of pinnipeds, 341-6 Seebohm, on instincts of cuckoo, 325 _Semnopithecus entellus_, destroying poison fangs of snakes, 483 Sensation, 8 Severn, H. A., on nidification of baya-bird, 294 Severn, W., on snakes, 260, 261 Sheep, pride of leaders, 334 Shelley, lines on curiosity of fish, 247 Shipp, Capt., on vindictiveness of elephant, 387, 388; on intelligence of elephant, 397, 398 Siebold, on robber-wasps, 169 Sieur, Roman, his trained birds, 312 Signs, made by ants, 49 _et seq._; by bees, 157 _et seq._; by termites, 200; by birds, 315, 316; by elephants, 391 and 401; by cat, 416; by dog, 445-7; by monkey, 472, 475, 476 _Simiadæ_, _see_ Monkeys Simonius, on fondness of spiders for music, 206 Sinclair, W., on intelligence of horse, 33 Skate, supposed intelligence of, 251 Skinner, Major, on intelligent vigilance of elephants, 400, 401; on training of cobra, 265 Slingsby, his experiment in training a house-fly, 230, 231 Smeathman, on termites, 198-203 Smeaton, Th. D., on dog making peace-offerings, 452 Smiles, Dr. S., on observation of Stephenson, 247; on observations of Edward, 255, 275, 283, 321 Smith, A. P., on intelligence of a cat, 414 Smith, Colonel, on pilot-fish, 252 Smith, Colonel Hamilton, on intelligence of cattle-dogs, 449 Smith, Sir Andrew, on revenge of a baboon, 478 Snails, intelligence of, 26-28 Snakes, incubating eggs, sexual and parental affection of, 256; tamed, 256, 260-3, 265; finding way home, 262; intelligence of, 262-3; fascination by, 263-4; charming of, 264-5 Social feelings, _see_ Sympathy and Affection; habits common to Hymenoptera and termites, 202 Sow, pointing game, 339, 340 Sparman, on termites, 198 Spencer, Herbert, on migration of salmon, 249; on play as allied to artistic feeling, 279 Sphex, _see_ under Wasp Spiders, emotions of, 204-7; courtship, 204, 205; strength of maternal instinct, 205; fondness of music, 205-7; web-building, 207-12; geometric, 209; water, 212; wolf or vagrant, 213; trap-door, 213-18; admit of being tamed and distinguish persons, 218-19; protecting eggs from cold, 219; protecting themselves from ecitons, 219; conveying prey to larder, 220; suspending weights to steady web, 220-2; wide geographical range of trap-door spiders, 216 Stag, intelligence of, 336 Starlings, nidification of, 293; learning to avoid telegraph-wires, 312-13 Stephenson, on curiosity of fish, 247 Stevens, J. G., on intelligence of a cat, 417-18 Sticklebacks, 243-5, 246-7 Stickney, on bees remembering in successive years the position of a disused hive, 154 Stodmann, on wasps recognising persons, 188 Stone, on reasoning power of a dog, 460 Stork, vindictiveness of, 277-8 Strachan, on elephants dying under emotional disturbance, 395-6 Strange, F., on habits of bower-bird, 281 Strauss, on co-operation of beetles, 228 Street, J., on blackbirds removing their young, 289 Strickland, on intelligence of a mare, 332 Swainson, on vindictiveness of elephant, 389 Swallows, memory of, 266; improvement in their nidification and adopting new modes of, 300; migration, 301; making tunnels, 318; killing imprisoned hostile sparrows, 318-19 Swan, conjugal fidelity of, 271; mode of escaping with young, 290; nidification, 496-8 Swine, 339-41 Sword-fish, 252-3 Sykes, Colonel, on harvesting ants, 97; on tree ants, 110-11; intelligence of ants in getting at food in difficult situations, 134, 135; on nidification of tailor-bird, 293 _Sylvia_, 293 Sympathy, of ants, 46-9; of bees, 155-6; of fish, 242; of birds, 270-6; of horse, 331-2; of ruminants, 334; of elephants, 387-92, and 397, 398; of cat, 416; of monkeys, 471-5 TAIT, LAWSON, on cat signing to have bell pulled, 423 _Talegallus_, nidification of, 294 Taylor, the Rev. Mr., cunning of his dog, 451 Tegetmeier, on amount of sugar required by bees to make honey, 176 Telescope-fish, 246 Tennent, Sir E., on apparent intelligence of land-leeches, 24; intelligence of tree-ants, 134; mygale eating humming birds, 208; climbing-perch, 249; sexual affection of cobra, 246; snake-charming, 264, 265; taming of cobra, 265; nidification of baya-bird, 294; combined action of crows, 319, 320; of buffaloes, 335; use of tame buffalo, 335; on emotions and intelligence of elephant, 389, 390, 393-6, 400-8; collective instinct of jackals, 432, 433 Tepper, Mr. Otto, on intelligence of a cat, 424 Termites, 198-203; architecture, 198, 199, and 201, 202; workers and soldiers, 200, 201; swarming, breeding, &c., 202; remarkable similarity of instincts to those of Hymenoptera, 202; instincts detrimental to individual but beneficial to species, 202, 203 Terns, sympathy of, for wounded companions, 274, 275; robber, 284; mobbing robber-terns, 291 _Theda isocrates_, 238 Theuerkauf, Herr G., on intelligence of ants in making a bridge of aphides over tar, 136 Thompson, E. P., on bees remembering exact position of absent hive, 149; on garden-spider's mode of web-building, 210, 211; ant-lion, 234, 235; emotions of guana, 255, 256; fascination by snakes, 264; nidification of sociable grosbeak, 295, 296; birds dreaming, 312; maternal affection of whale, 327; bisons defending themselves from wolves, 334, 335; pigs defending themselves from wolves, 339; cleanliness of pig, 340, 341; intelligence of weasel, 346; of mouse, 361; harvesting-mice, 365, 366 Thomson, Dr. Allen, on scorpions committing suicide, 223-5 Thornton, Colonel, his sow trained to point game, 340 Thresher-fish, 252, 253 Thrushes, breaking shells against stones, 283 _Tinea_, 237 Toads, 254, 255 Tomtit, nidification of, 293 Topham, Dr. J., on spiders weighting their webs, 222 Topham, Mr. J., on bees remembering exact position of absent hive, 149 Tortoises, knowing persons, 259 Townsend, the Rev. W., on elephant concealing theft, 410; on dog finding its way about by train, 468-9 Truro, Lord, on intelligence of a dog, 450 Turner, George, on bees remembering exact position of absent hive, 149 Turnstones, intelligence of, 321 Turtles, 257, 258, and 262 VAILLANT, Le, on fascination by tree-snake, 263, 264 Valiant, L., on nidification of sociable grosbeak, 296 Venn, on association of ideas in parrot, 267, 268 Vigot, Dr., on snake finding way home, 262 Villiers, De, on instincts of larvæ of bombyx moth, 240 Vindictiveness, of birds, 277, 278, and 318-25; of horse, 330, 331; of elephant, 387-9; of monkeys, 478, and 484-96 Virchow, on difficulty of distinguishing between instinct an reason, 12 Vogt, Karl, on duration of memory in ants, 41; bridge-making, 136 Vultures, finding carrion by sight and not by smell, 286, 287; intelligence, 314 WAFER, on monkeys hammering oyster-shells with stones, 481 Wakefield, P., on intelligence of goats, 337, 338 Wallace, A. R., on philosophy of birds'-nests, 298-300 Warden, on frogs going straight to nearest water, 254 Wasp-mason, 180; butcher, 180, 181; sphex, 181; hunting, 193, 194; common, tamed by Sir John Lubbock, 153 Wasps, sense of direction in, 147; teaching themselves, 154; killing larvæ, 167, 168; making cells, 180; instincts of neuters, 181; recognising persons, 188; coming out of small aperture backwards, 192, 193; struggles with ants for secretion of frog-hoppers, 194, 195; dismembering heavy prey for convenience of carriage, and mounting eminences for same purpose, 195, 197 Wasser, on nidification of puffins, 291 Waterhouse, on hexagonal form of bee's cell, 173 Water-rail, its mode of escape, 289 Waterton, on nidification of swan, 295, 296 Watson, on spiders weighting their webs, 221; cock killing hen on her hatching out eggs of other birds, 278; intelligence of rats, 360-62; vindictiveness of elephant, 389; elephant enduring surgical operation, 399; intelligence of sheep-dogs, 448; of cattle-dogs, 449 Weasel, 346, 347 Weaver, nidification of, 293 Web, _see_ Spider Web-building, _see_ Spiders Webb, Dr., performing operation on elephant, 399 Weber, Professor E. H., on spiders weighting their webs, 221 Wedgwood, the Rev. R. H., on memory of horse, 330 Westlecombe, on reasoning power of a dog, 462, 463 Westropp, on intelligence of bear, 352 Westwood, on instinct of caterpillars, 288 Weygandt, on robber-bees, 170 Whale, maternal affection of, 327; attacks on, by sword- and thresher-fish, 252, 253 Whately, Archbishop, on cat ringing bell, 423 White ants, _see_ Termites White, the Rev. Gilbert, on nests of harvesting-mice, 365; on nidification of house-martin, 292, 293 White, W., on intelligence of snails, 26 White, the Rev. W. W. F., on sympathy of ants, 49; keeping pets, 84; burying dead, 92, 93 White-headed eagle, _see_ Eagle Wildman, his alleged training of bees, 189 Wilks, Dr. S., observations on talking of parrot, 267, 268; on dog recognising a portrait, 455 Williams, on intelligence of sheep-dogs, 448 Williams, B., on cunning of sheep-killing dogs, 450, 451 Wilson, on memory of crow, 266 Wilson, Dr. Andrew, on reasoning power of a dog, 460 Wilson, Charles, on intelligence of swallows, 318 Wilson, Dr. D., on elephant enduring surgical operation, 399 Winkell, Dietrich aus dem, on intelligence of fox, 428 Wolf, 426-36; avoiding gun-traps, 431; drawing up fish-lines to take fish, 431; collective instinct in hunting, 433, 436 Wolverine, 347-50 Wood, Rev. G. J., on spiders weighting their webs, 221 Woodcock, conveying young on back, 289 Woodpecker, ant-eating, its instinct of storing food, 285; nidification, 293 Words, understanding of, by bees, 189; by talking birds, 267-9 Worms, apparent intelligence of, 24 Wright, his portrait-painting recognised by a dog, 454-5 YARRELL, on fish, 246; on intelligence of hare, 358-9 Youatt, on pigs learning to point game, 340 Young, the Rev. Charles, on emotions and intelligence of elephant, 390-92 Young, Miss E., on dog finding his way about by train, 468 Yule, Captain, on elephants dying under emotional disturbance, 395 THE END. FOOTNOTES: [282] January 14, 1881. The marble slab was left with him after the chain had been fastened to the ring; but since that time he has never attempted to move the marble. ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. By GEORGE J. ROMANES, F.R.S., Zoölogical Secretary of the Linnæan Society, etc. 12MO. CLOTH, $1.75. "My object in the work as a whole is twofold: First, I have thought it desirable that there should be something resembling a text-book of the facts of Comparative Psychology, to which men of science, and also metaphysicians, may turn whenever they have occasion to acquaint themselves with the particular level of intelligence to which this or that species of animal attains. My second and much more important object is that of considering the facts of animal intelligence in their relation to the theory of descent."--_From the Preface._ "Unless we are greatly mistaken, Mr. Romanes's work will take its place as one of the most attractive volumes of the INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC SERIES. Some persons may, indeed, be disposed to say that it is too attractive, that it feeds the popular taste for the curious and marvelous without supplying any commensurate discipline in exact scientific reflection; but the author has, we think, fully justified himself in his modest preface. The result is the appearance of a collection of facts which will be a real boon to the student of Comparative Psychology, for this is the first attempt to present systematically well-assured observations on the mental life of animals."--_Saturday Review._ "The author believes himself, not without ample cause, to have completely bridged the supposed gap between instinct and reason by the authentic proofs here marshaled of remarkable intelligence in some of the higher animals. It is the seemingly conclusive evidence of reasoning powers furnished by the adaptation of means to ends in cases which can not be explained on the theory of inherited aptitude or habit."--_New York Sun._ "The high standing of the author as an original investigator is a sufficient guarantee that his task has been conscientiously carried out. His subject is one of absorbing interest. He has collected and classified an enormous amount of information concerning the mental attributes of the animal world. The result is astonishing. We find marvelous intelligence exhibited not only by animals which are known to be clever, but by others seemingly without a glimmer of light, like the snail, for instance. Some animals display imagination, others affection, and so on. The psychological portion of the discussion is deeply interesting."--_New York Herald._ "The chapter on monkeys closes this excellent work, and perhaps the most instructive portion of it is that devoted to the life-history of a monkey."--_New York Times._ "Mr. Romanes brings to his work a wide information and the best of scientific methods. He has carefully culled and selected an immense mass of data, choosing with admirable skill those facts which are really significant, and rejecting those which lacked sustaining evidence or relevancy. The contents of the volume are arranged with reference to the principles which they seem to him to establish. The volume is rich and suggestive, and a model in its way."--_Boston Courier._ "It presents the facts of animal intelligence in relation to the theory of descent, supplementing Darwin and Spencer in tracing the principles which are concerned in the genesis of mind."--_Boston Commonwealth._ "One of the most interesting volumes of the series."--_New York Christian at Work._ "Few subjects have a greater fascination for the general reader than that with which this book is occupied."--_Good Literature, New York._ _For sale by all booksellers; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price._ New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, and 5 Bond Street. ANTS, BEES, AND WASPS. _A Record of Observations on the Habits of the Social Hymenoptera._ By Sir JOHN LUBBOCK, Bart., M. P., F. R. S., etc., Author of "Origin of Civilization, and the Primitive Condition of Man," etc., etc. WITH COLORED PLATES. 12MO. Cloth, $2.00. "This volume contains the record of various experiments made with ants, bees, and wasps during the last ten years, with a view to test their mental condition and powers of sense. The principal point in which Sir John's mode of experiment differs from those of Huber, Forel, McCook, and others, is that he has carefully watched and marked particular insects, and has had their nests under observation for long periods--one of his ants' nests having been under constant inspection ever since 1874. His observations are made principally upon ants because they show more power and flexibility of mind; and the value of his studies is that they belong to the department of original research." "We have no hesitation in saying that the author has presented us with the most valuable series of observations on a special subject that has ever been produced, charmingly written, full of logical deductions, and, when we consider his multitudinous engagements, a remarkable illustration of economy of time. As a contribution to insect psychology, it will be long before this book finds a parallel."--_London Athenæum._ "These studies, when handled by such a master as Sir John Lubbock, rise far above the ordinary dry treatment of such topics. The work is an effort made to discover what are the general, not the special, laws which govern communities of insects composed of inhabitants as numerous as the human beings living in London and Peking, and who labor together in the utmost harmony for the common good. That there are remarkable analogies between societies of ants and human beings no one can doubt. If, according to Mr. Grote, 'positive morality under some form or other has existed in every society of which the world has ever had experience,' the present volume is an effort to show whether this passage be correct or not."--_New York Times._ "In this work the reader will find the record of a series of experiments and observations more thorough and ingenious than those instituted by any of the accomplished author's predecessors. . . . Sir John has been a close observer of the habits of ants for many years, generally having from thirty to forty communities under his notice, and not only watching each of these in its carefully isolated glass house, but, by the use of paint-marks, following the fortunes of individuals. . . . One notable result of this system has been the correcting of previous theories as to the age to which ants attain: instead of living merely a year, as the popular belief has been, some of Sir John's queens and workers are thriving after being under observation since 1874 and 1875."--_New York World._ "Sir John Lubbock's book on 'Ants, Bees, and Wasps' is mainly devoted to the crawlers, and not the fliers, though he has some observations upon honey-bees and more interesting ones upon the unpopular wasp, which he fondly deems to be capable of gratitude. Darwin made a strong case for the monkeys, but Lubbock may yet make us out to be, as Irishmen say, 'The sons of our ants.' For he begins his entertaining book thus: 'The anthropoid apes no doubt approach nearer to man in bodily structure than do any other animals, but, when we consider the habits of ants, their large communities and elaborate habitations, their roadways, their possession of domestic animals, and, even in some cases, of slaves, it must be admitted that they have a fair claim to rank next to man in the scale of intelligence.'"--_Springfield Republican._ _For sale by all booksellers; or sent by mail, post-paid, on receipt of price._ New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Obvious punctuation errors repaired. Sometimes the footnote number did not appear with the footnote at the bottom of the page. (Page 27, 154) In these cases it was replaced. Page 76, "every" changed to "ever" (scarcely ever return) Page 95, "1" changed to "I" (I now walked) Page 119, "trucks" changed to "trunks" (under fallen trunks) Page 177, "circumstancces" changed to "circumstances" (themselves to circumstances) Page 178, section header "Special Habits" was small-capped instead of italic in the original. This was changed to italic to match the rest of the text's usage. Page 181, "betweeen" changed to "between" (saucer between them) Page 213, this page had two footnote references but only one footnote anchor. This footnote has been renamed "[A] _Loc. cit._, p. 323." It is right after footnote [83]. Page 218, "tamd" changed to "tamed" (who has 'tamed' spiders) Page 246, "Uunder" changed to "Under" (Under such circumstances) Page 285, the footnote number was missing at the bottom of the page and was inserted in the text. Page 316, "shuuters" changed to "shutters" (these said shutters) Page 322, "tri l" changed to "trial" (the work another trial) Page 324, "appa ently" changed to "apparently" (apparently being tried) Page 367, "pyschology" changed to "psychology" (of the psychology of this) Page 375, "eth" changed to "the" (the building of a stick) Page 384, "once" changed to "one" (In one case Prof. Aggaziz) Page 420, "intelgence" changed to "intelligence" (exerted upon their intelligence) Page 457, footnote originally at bottom of page (now on page 470), "retreiver" changed to "retriever" (and retriever of my own) Page 459, "Broun" changed to "Brown" (writing from Brown university) Page 476, "on" changed to "an" (spends an hour or two) Page 483, footnote missing number was added. Index: when an entry was changed so that its correct spelling placed it out of alphabetical order from its original location, it was relocated. Page 500, "Atenchus" changed to "Ateuchus" (_Atenchus pilularius_, 226) Page 501, "Blackhouse" changed to "Backhouse" to match usage in text (Backhouse, R. O., on dog) Page 502, under entry: "Büchner, Professor," "On termites" was originally printed "on termites." As this was a subheading, the "On" was capitalized to match the form of the rest of the index. Page 503, under entry: "Cat, the", "42" changed to "25" (general intelligence of, 413-25) Page 504, entry: "_Corvus cornice_" was originally above "Couch". This was adjusted. Page 505, "Doldorff" changed to "Daldorff" (Daldorff, on climbing perch) Pgae 507, "Gelasinnus" changed to "Gelasimus" (_Gelasimus_, 233) Page 508, "Heber" changed to "Huber"; "289" changed to "389" (Huber, Bishop, on sympathy of elephant, 389) Page 509, "Hydrargyra" changed to "Hydrargzra" (_Hydrargrza_, 248) Page 510, "Jilson" changed to "Jillson" (Jillson, Professor, on habits) Page 511, "Lespes" changed to "Lespès." Page 511, "MacLaurin" changed to "Maclaurin" (Maclaurin, on mathematical principles) Page 511, "Macropodos" changed to "Macropodus" (_Macropodus_, 244) Page 511, "M'Cook" changed to "MacCook" (MacCook, the Rev. Dr.) Page 512, "M'Cready" changed to "M'Crady" (M'Crady, on larva of _Medusæ_) Page 513, "Myrionphyllum" changed to "Myriophyllum" (_Myriophyllum spicatum_, 243) Page 513, "Ervingii" changed to "Ewingii" (_Noctua Ewingii_, 238) Page 514, "capillata" changed to "capillatus"; "332" changed to "232" (_Podocerus capillatus_, 232) Page 515, entry under "Recognition," "by snakes and tortoises," "269" changed to "259." (tortoises, 259-61) Page 515, "Croom" changed to "Croora" (Robertson, Professor G. Croora) Page 517, entry: "Strauss, on co-operation of beetles" was missing its page reference. "228" added to text. (co-operation of beetles, 228) Page 518, "Timea" changed to "Tinea" (_Tinea_, 237) Page 519, "Wedgewood" changed to "Wedgwood" (Wedgwood, the Rev. R. H., on memory) Ad for "Ants, Bees and Wasps," "communties" changed to "communities" (govern communities of insects)