The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 stories alleged, yet he might almost as well do 
 so, for the slightest touch will cause their needle- 
 like barbed points to adhere to any soft surface, 
 and they are pulled out and carried away by 
 the enemy as souvenirs of a fruitless encounter 
 far more difficult to get rid of than to acquire. 
 
 Few of the woodland animals are unaware of 
 this, and consequently nothing but the foolish- 
 ness of youth, or the desperation of extreme 
 hunger, will lead any beast of prey to forget 
 the warning of the rattling quills and leap upon 
 their tender-fleshed but bristling owner. Some 
 of the smaller ones, like the fisher marten, do, 
 however, get him by strategy, creeping be- 
 neath the snow in winter and seizing his unpro- 
 tected throat or belly in a fatal nip. Against 
 such an attack, by what soldiers would call 
 " sapping and mining," the poor porcupine can 
 make little defense. 
 
 A good many bugs and some caterpillars and 
 crustaceans have an armament somewhat similar 
 to that of the " fretful porcupine," but these 
 behave more like the hedgehog, simply rolling 
 up so that their points stand out in every direc- 
 
 *>$ 126 &* 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 r 
 
 tion and defy the enemy to find an exposed point 
 for attack. 
 
 There is one sort of fish, however, represented 
 by several species in Northern seas, as well as 
 many in the tropics, which combines a strong 
 disposition to bluff with a very good " hand." 
 This is the tribe of globe-fish or porcupine fish, 
 of which the little puffer or swell-doodle of our 
 Atlantic coast is a good example. 
 
 These fishes when quiet look much like others, 
 except that they have a rough, leathery skin 
 instead of a scaly one, and are everywhere (ex- 
 cept along the abdomen) covered with bristle- 
 like appendages. Let one of them be alarmed 
 in any way, however, and an almost instan- 
 taneous change takes place. It sucks in water 
 by rapid gulps until it swells into a ball studded 
 with stiff spikes. In this condition it rises to 
 the surface of the water and spins and bobs 
 about, giving queer audible grunts, and making 
 a most extraordinary and to our eyes comical 
 appearance. 
 
 This is enough to make 'most any thought- 
 ful fish repent the error of its intention, and 
 
 ^ 127 ^ 
 
BIOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 G 
 
THE WIT OF THE WILD 
 
 if at, 
 
d 
 
 O 
 
 0) 
 
 a 
 
 i 
 I 
 
THE 
 WIT OF THE WILD 
 
 By 
 ERNEST INGERSOLL 
 
 <) 
 
 Author of "The Life of Mammals," 
 
 "Wild Neighbors," "Wild Life of 
 
 Orchard and Field," Etc. 
 
 Illustrated 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 1906 
 

 BIOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 6 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY 
 
 ERNEST INGERSOLL 
 
 Published, September. 1906 
 
To 
 HELEN 
 
 The Chatelaine 
 of 
 
 Rim rocks 
 
 383459 
 
Prefatory Note 
 
 r 
 
 THE substance of many of the chapters in this 
 little book first appeared as articles in the 
 Sunday edition of The World, New York; in 
 The Field, of London, and in The Youth's 
 Companion, of Boston ; and the author acknowl- 
 edges with cordial thanks the courtesy of the 
 publishers of these periodicals in permitting 
 him to revise and make renewed use of the 
 
 material. 
 
 E. L 
 
Contents 
 
 PA.OB 
 
 The Way of a Weasel 1 
 
 Madame Redbelt 13 
 
 Life Insurance for Wasps 26 
 
 The Squirrel's Thrift, and How It Was 
 
 Learned .......... 87 
 
 The Seamy Side of Bird-Life .... 49 
 
 Three Tragical Bird-Romances ... 59 
 
 A Tiny Man-o'-War 70 
 
 My Snake-Stick 88 
 
 Animals that Advertise . 102 
 
 Animals that Wear Disguises . . . 
 Birds and Beasts that Bluff ... 
 
 A Good Habit Gone Wrong .... 182 
 
 Animals that Set Traps 141 
 
 Animal Partnerships 151 
 
 The Bird that Whips Poor Will ... 162 
 <o$ ix +> 
 
Contents 
 
 r 
 
 PAOB 
 
 Birds of a Feather 186 
 
 Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? . . . 196 
 
 A Turn-Coat of the Woods 211 
 
 The Biggest Bird's-Nest and Its Maker 226 
 
 The Phoebe at Home 237 
 
 The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks . . 250 
 
 A Kitten at School 262 
 
 Catching Menhaden off Mont auk . . . 70 
 Gull Dick . 281 
 
Illustrations 
 
 r 
 
 Mother Phoebe and her little ones . Frontispiece 
 
 FACING 
 PAGH 
 
 A squirrel in the door of his storehouse 46 
 Chickadee's nest in the top of a hollow 
 
 stump 52 
 
 A ruined bird house 56 
 
 Portuguese man-o'-war 72 
 
 A copperhead, drawing himself into a coil 94 
 A twig-like walking-stick insect . . .118 
 A bluffing sphinx caterpillar . . . .124 
 " That harmless braggart, the hog-nosed 
 
 snake" 128 
 
 Two opossums feigning death .... 134 
 Sapsucker work on an apple tree . . .148 
 Nests of wild eave, or cliff swallows . .192 
 The winter castle of the muskrat . . . 204 
 The changeable tree-frog . . . , . 220 
 
 Phoebe's nest 246 
 
 "If we keep quite still, sister, he won't 
 
 see us on this old gray log " 
 xi 
 
The Way of a Weasel 
 
 r 
 
 AS I was hurrying down the path past 
 /% my neighbor's summer lodge, " Slab- 
 -* ^^ sides," at the edge of the rocky woods, 
 this morning, I heard a commotion in the brush, 
 and an instant later saw rushing across the 
 road ahead of me a pullet closely followed by a 
 weasel, the latter going very easily as compared 
 with the chicken's frantic haste. 
 
 My neighbor happened to be standing by 
 his doorstep, and, running forward to meet the 
 pair, stamped his foot on the weasel just an 
 instant after it had leaped upon the hen, whose 
 gray feathers were already flying. The 
 marauder's first stroke had had almost the 
 deadly effect of a charge of shot, and although 
 the pullet struggled away into the shelter of 
 some vines (not thinking of coming to us for 
 protection), I suspect she never got well. 
 
 Reaching down, my neighbor released and 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 lifted the weasel by the nape of the neck, and 
 held him out at arm's length between his thumb 
 and finger an image of impotent rage. His 
 head was like a round wedge, his ears lay flat 
 back, his round black eyes glowed like jet, and 
 the white, long-whiskered lips, flecked with 
 blood, were drawn back from a jagged row of 
 needle-pointed teeth, ivory-white, in a snarl that 
 portrayed a prisoner caught but not con- 
 quered. He writhed and squirmed in the man's 
 firm grasp, trying his best to get his teeth 
 into the detaining fingers, and did succeed in 
 scratching them with the nails of a paw already 
 red with the blood of the wounded pullet. 
 
 It would be hard to make a finer picture of 
 baffled fury than that little carnivore presented. 
 He knew he was doomed, for he remembered 
 other chickens he had caught and killed ; and if 
 he had acted like a coward he would simply 
 have been drowned in the horse-trough or had 
 his brains dashed out on a rock. But his bold 
 spirit against overwhelming odds his un- 
 quenchable courage won him a nobler fate; 
 and calling his dog my friend gave the bandit 
 
 +2 $+> 
 
The Way of a Weasel 
 
 r 
 
 a chance for a hero's victory or death in hon- 
 orable battle. 
 
 The little weasel, not one-twentieth the weight 
 of the terrier, accepted the challenge without 
 a breath of hesitation. The instant he was 
 thrown down before the dog, he faced the foe 
 with fur on end, feet braced and jaws wide open 
 never a thought of running away in his 
 plucky heart. 
 
 The terrier rushed in only to have the weasel 
 leap straight at his open mouth and fasten its 
 teeth in his nose. This was disconcerting, and 
 the dog squealed with surprise and pain ; but he 
 also was courageous, and, shaking off his tor- 
 mentor, seized it again, only to have it wriggle 
 a second time out of his jaws and make a valiant 
 effort to escape from this unequal contest. The 
 dog darted after it and got a fresh hold, but 
 so did his undaunted and pertinacious foe, and 
 Nip had to whirl the weasel round and round 
 his head, while it hung to his torn lip by its 
 teeth, before he could shake it loose and a third 
 time seize its body in an effective grip. Even 
 when, crushed at last under major force, the 
 **$ 3 fc> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 weasel lay at the point of death among the 
 bruised and bloody weeds, an indomitable spirit 
 still glared from the black eyes, the sharp teeth 
 were bared as defiantly as ever in the face of his 
 big conqueror, and it died like a hero. 
 
 These weasels, which are substantially the 
 same as the European stoats, whose coats, 
 turning white (except the black tail- tip) in 
 winter, in northern countries, give us the " er- 
 mine " of the furriers, are one of the few kinds 
 of wild quadrupeds which seem not only to 
 maintain themselves against civilization, but 
 actually to profit by it. This they can do 
 because of their small size, their clever wits, 
 developed by a life of constant cunning, their 
 hardihood and fearlessness. 
 
 Finding some cranny to their liking among 
 the rocks or within an old stone wall, a weasel 
 family will furnish it with bedding of dried 
 grass and make a home as snug as it is secure. 
 An exceedingly narrow doorway will serve 
 them, for their loose and lithe bodies can creep 
 through a very small and tortuous aperture, 
 which may be defended against any enemy un- 
 
The Way of a Weasel 
 
 r 
 
 able to tear the place apart. A snake, indeed, 
 is the only hostile thing (except another wea- 
 sel) that can get into such an intricate den. 
 I believe a weasel would not hesitate an instant 
 in attacking it if it came ; and I guess he would 
 overcome the worst snake of our woods. I have 
 never seen a battle between a serpent and an 
 ermine, but I have no doubt the mammal, small 
 as he is, could avoid the reptile's fangs by his 
 leaping agility for he is acrobat and contor- 
 tionist in one and destroy it by his lancet-like 
 teeth. 
 
 By the same token, as Irishmen say, the 
 animal is able to follow the mice and other of 
 its lesser prey along their runways, and into 
 their narrow and winding burrows and hiding- 
 places, careless of depth, or darkness or danger. 
 
 It is characteristic of so courageous a crea- 
 ture that it should be a faithful ally. A pair 
 will stand affectionately and nobly by each 
 other in danger, and a weasel mother will de- 
 fend her young to the last gasp. I once met 
 in the spring, in the woods, a family of minks 
 only another sort of weasel consisting of a 
 *$ 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 mother and four little ones, perhaps a quarter 
 grown. In the first surprise the mother darted 
 under a rock, whining a danger-signal to her 
 children, one of which I knocked on the head 
 to add as an instructive specimen to my collec- 
 tion of skins; while the others, too young to 
 understand their danger, dodged about among 
 the leaves. 
 
 The instant I stooped to pick up the dead 
 kitten the mother rushed at my hand, and I 
 had to draw back quickly to escape her. She 
 stopped at my feet and sat up on her haunches, 
 her lips drawn back, her eyes gleaming, and 
 every hair on end, whining and daring me to 
 come on. I stood perfectly still, and in a min- 
 ute she dropped down on all fours, and, always 
 keeping her eye upon me a giant to her appre- 
 hensive view coolly began to collect her babies, 
 and carry them off, one by one, in her mouth, 
 to a place of safety under a rock, where per- 
 haps was their home. A lion could not have 
 shown more clean courage and indifference to 
 danger than that small mink mother. 
 
 IA. relative of mine, a preacher and truthful, 
 + 6 
 
The Way of a Weasel 
 
 ? 
 
 relates that he was sitting in an upper room of 
 his house at Easthampton, Mass., one after- 
 noon, when he saw a weasel come up the stairs, 
 enter the room and saunter about, examining 
 everything within reach of his nose, including 
 the parson's square-toed boots, with careful 
 attention. Having completed this survey, it 
 quietly withdrew, pattered softly down stairs, 
 and the dominie went on with his sermon. 
 Whether his visitor also went to hear the ser- 
 mon, I do not know ; and it is a pity, for then 
 perhaps we should learn whether it really were 
 possible to " catch a weasel asleep." 
 
 Ferocity marks all that the weasel does. He 
 constantly kills more than he can eat, seem- 
 ingly just for the joy of seizing and killing, 
 and a pair that make their residence near a 
 poultry-yard will destroy the flock in a short 
 time if not prevented. They are the terror of 
 the wild birds one of the worst of their day- 
 light foes, especially for the ground-keeping 
 birds ; and here again they arouse the anger of 
 the sportsman, whose wild poultry, the quails 
 and grouse and woodcock, they kill before he 
 
 +$7 fc 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 himself can get a chance to do so with his gun. 
 I have known one recently to conquer a half- 
 grown house-cat. 
 
 Thus, between their coveting the value of his 
 fur and their vexation at his depredations upon 
 the farmyard and the game-preserve, most men 
 are at enmity with the weasel and compel him 
 to be on his guard whenever he goes abroad. 
 Yet so secretive and sly is he, so exceedingly 
 alert, quick, and courageous, that he maintains 
 himself in great numbers everywhere outside 
 of towns; and even in large villages you may 
 find his tracks on the snow on winter mornings, 
 " a chain that is blown away by the wind and 
 melted by the sun, links with pairs of parallel 
 dots the gaps of farm fences, and winds 
 through and along walls and zigzag lines of 
 rails," as Rowland Robinson says. 
 
 Civilization, indeed, has helped rather than 
 hurt him and his tribe. His food does not con- 
 sist altogether, or perhaps mainly, of birds, 
 but even if it did he would be benefited by the 
 human clearing and cultivation of the wilder- 
 ness, because these bring about a multiplica- 
 
 *$ 8 5 
 
The Way of a Weasel 
 
 r 
 
 tion of the total number of birds in a locality, 
 in spite of the fact that a few species are less- 
 ened or extinguished. But man's operations 
 also tend to increase the total of small mam- 
 mals, such as rabbits, gophers, squirrels, and 
 mice, upon all of which the weasel preys with 
 avidity, and none of which can wholly escape 
 him, for he can race the swiftest of them with 
 success, can pursue the squirrels to the topmost 
 tree-boughs, though he dare not follow them 
 in lofty jumping, and can chase into their ut- 
 most burrows those creatures that seek safety 
 in holes or by digging. Of mice he kills hun- 
 dreds in the course of a year, no doubt, and 
 thus repays the husbandman for the chickens 
 and ducks he steals, and he will clear a barn 
 of rats in a short time. The chipmunk is a 
 tidbit he is extremely fond of, and probably 
 more of these pretty ground-squirrels fall be- 
 neath his teeth than in any other single way. 
 
 Of what, indeed, is this bold little carnivore 
 afraid? for fear may honorably quicken the 
 beating of a heart where cowardice finds no 
 residence. 
 
 $ 9 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 In the New England, or Middle States, al- 
 most nothing exists to alarm him, except man 
 and his guns, dogs, and traps. Where wild- 
 cats range the woods, he no dcubt falls into 
 their grasp now and then, and then sells his life 
 as dearly as possible ; and that he would " die 
 game " even within the jaws of a wolf one may 
 be sure who has seen his sturdy, undaunted 
 struggle with a dog. I have read and have seen 
 pictured accounts of birds of prey having 
 seized weasels of one kind or another that in 
 turn fastened upon the bird's throat or body, 
 and so were carried up into the air until they 
 had gnawed the bird's life away, and both came 
 tumbling to earth locked in mutual murder. 
 It is quite possible something of this sort may 
 occasionally happen, but I have never seen it, 
 nor can I find any evidence of a predatory bird 
 in this country ever having seized a weasel, 
 even by mistake, for something easier to handle. 
 
 This animal's endowment of especial valor 
 seems, therefore, superlative, and tending to 
 needless slaughter and cruelty in nature. But 
 this quality is probably an inheritance from 
 
 *$ 10 So* 
 

 The Way of a Weasel 
 
 r 
 
 the distant past, when the race of weasels dwelt 
 in the midst of a world of fighting against con- 
 ditions and enemies which they have survived 
 by means of these very virtues; and it may be 
 that here, as sometimes happens elsewhere, vir- 
 tues have changed into vices through change 
 of exterior circumstances. 
 
 Yet this leads us into what is really a wrong 
 and illogical position, for what we are calling 
 vices, namely, the weasel's acts of rapacity and 
 unnecessary slaughter, are only so from our 
 point of view and in his relation to us. 
 
 Apart from the fact that the excessive 
 slaughter of which we call him " guilty " may 
 have a beneficent purpose and effect in keep- 
 ing down the too rapid multiplication of mice 
 and other noxious pests whose other natural 
 enemies have been unduly diminished in culti- 
 vated regions, it must be remembered that he 
 is doing only what it is the business and need 
 of his life to do; and that we hate him princi- 
 pally because he becomes a rival and interferes 
 with our own plans in the same direction. 
 Hence the vengeful spirit in which my farmer- 
 
 *ff 11 So 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 friend this morning damned him and hurled 
 him down before his dog was as illogical as it 
 was unkind. 
 
 On the whole, philosophically considered, the 
 difference between the weasel's acts and our 
 own cannot be regarded as really great at any 
 rate to the victims! 
 
 12 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 r 
 
 I WAS sitting on the stone wall waiting 
 for the August sun to knock off its day's 
 work, and idly watching a gray spider 
 that had spread a gauzy net across an opening 
 among the loose slabs, when Madame Redbelt 
 came and sat down beside me. 
 
 I looked for trouble at once, for Madame 
 Redbelt is a wasp, and many wasps have a habit 
 not only of dining off spiders, but of preferring 
 them as food for their babies, which has made 
 hard feeling between the two branches of the 
 insect race, from which only the most enlight- 
 ened members are free. Therefore I was anx- 
 ious, but when I saw the visitor coolly running 
 about underneath the web, while the gray spider 
 peered down with languid wonder at her activ- 
 ity in the heat, apparently not fearing her at 
 all, I aroused myself to sharper attention. 
 ^ 13 ^ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 ? 
 
 Then I saw that she was not one of the 
 broad-winged brown wasps so numerous about 
 this house in the edge of the woods, but a 
 slender, thread-waisted one, exceedingly active 
 afoot, and carrying her wings like two slats 
 along her back; in fact, each was folded up 
 like a fan of three sticks. 
 
 Right behind the flexible rod of a waist, 
 where the body swelled again, was a bright red 
 band ; and so I called her Madame Redbelt, for 
 I did not then know her book-name, which is 
 Ammophila urnaria. You may read scientific 
 history of her, if you wish, in that fine treatise, 
 "The Instincts and Habits of the Solitary 
 Wasps," by George W. and Elizabeth G. 
 Peckham. 
 
 A wide crack in the top of the wall, under 
 the web, was filled with dry earth in which a 
 few small weeds grew, and this tiny garden 
 seemed greatly to interest the little lady, who 
 darted hither and thither examining every 
 inch. 
 
 Suddenly she halted and began to scratch 
 with' her foremost feet, sending the grains of 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 r 
 
 sand flying backward and deepening a hole 
 precisely as does my fox-terrier Waggles when 
 he hopes he has found the hiding place of a 
 chipmunk. 
 
 In a minute or so she changed her method 
 and began to dig with her jaws. She would 
 scrape down a quantity of earth, gather it 
 into a bundle between her chin and elbows, 
 so to speak, and then backing out, would carry 
 it well back from the entrance and fling it away 
 with a quick flirt, as though glad to be rid of it. 
 Now and then she would pause and choose where 
 she would next drop her load, or stop and push 
 away the loose earth to prevent its rolling back 
 toward her trench, and all together her move- 
 ments were most human and interesting. 
 
 I leaned down close to her without her caring, 
 yet every few minutes she would stop work 
 and walk all about her narrow domain, and 
 sometimes make short flights here and there, 
 as if to make sure no danger were near; but 
 these halts were brief, and at the end of twenty 
 minutes or so she had almost disappeared in 
 her excavation just the tip of her body with 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 its sting showing at the top of the ground, and 
 two hind feet clinging to the surface. 
 
 Now it was plain why her wings were folded 
 so snugly on her back the ordinary shape 
 would never do for a miner, like this industrious 
 little lady. 
 
 She worked on as hard as ever, bringing up 
 earth and pebbles, piling them in a ring around 
 her, and then diving after more; and all the 
 time she sang a low, contented, humming song 
 which told of hope and joy. Why not? She 
 was constructing a home a place for her 
 babies, where the first object of her existence, 
 the limit of her desire and ambition, should be 
 satisfied. The sun shone, the ground was dry 
 and warm, no parasites were near to make her 
 anxious nor enemies to alarm her. Why 
 shouldn't she sing of her content and glad- 
 ness ? 
 
 For some time then I noticed that she went 
 no deeper, so I concluded that she was hollow- 
 ing out a chamber at the end of her sloping 
 drift, and I was right. 
 
 It was just half an hour by the watch from 
 *$ 16 $o 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 r 
 
 the time she began (5 p.m.) until she quit dig- 
 ging. Then Madame Redbelt looked tired as 
 she shook and brushed the dust from her black 
 satin dress and sauntered out into the sunshine 
 to rest a while. 
 
 But this was only the first stage of her pro- 
 ceedings. Soon she was running about with 
 her head down, evidently in search of something. 
 Every pebble she came to she would measure 
 with her feelers, as a workman uses a pair of 
 calipers. Presently one seemed to suit her and 
 she picked it up in her jaws and trotted off in 
 great haste. Now, try to lift a stone twice as 
 big as your head and you will appreciate the 
 strength of this tiny miner, who carried her 
 burden in her teeth a good deal easier than you 
 could carry a proportionate weight in your 
 arms indeed, you could scarcely lift a propor- 
 tionate weight. 
 
 Running straight to her hole she dropped 
 the pebble into its mouth, where it lodged 
 neatly in the funnel-shaped top, forming a plug, 
 or cover. I could see, however, that a crevice 
 remained at one side, and Madame Redbelt saw 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 it, too, and at once found a smaller pebble with 
 which to stop the gap. 
 
 Then turning her back she scraped over the 
 stones a quantity of loose earth until all traces 
 of a hole were concealed. And now, having shut 
 and locked her door, Madame Redbelt ran 
 'round and 'round as if to make sure nobody 
 had seen her do it, and then flew away. 
 
 I sat watching until dark. Every half an 
 hour or so the owner came back, looked at her 
 property and left it untouched. Then I put 
 some bits of leaf on the spot, so that I might 
 know of any disturbance, and said good-night. 
 
 Next morning (the 28th) the leaves had been 
 thrown aside, but I saw nothing of Madame 
 Redbelt until late afternoon, when she half dug 
 another tunnel, close by the first one. This 
 she finished on the 29th, but I did not see her 
 again until the third morning (30th) about 
 eight o'clock (when the sun first reached that 
 spot), when I found her busily closing a new 
 nest between the other two. She put into it a 
 pebble that nearly filled it, then slowly packed 
 armfuls of clay, bits of stick and stone over it, 
 
 ^ 18 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 r 
 
 forcing the latter well into the ground. Often 
 she would try a bit that would not fit the place 
 to her liking, and it was amusing to see her 
 toss it aside with an impatient gesture, just 
 as a man does when choosing proper stones for 
 a wall. 
 
 She was very suspicious now, and at my least 
 movement would dart away, but quickly return. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when she finished filling 
 in the nest, and then she departed for half an 
 hour as if to rest, and probably to get a drink, 
 which such wasps take frequently. In her re- 
 turning, by the way, she almost always arrived 
 from a certain direction and first alighted on a 
 particular stone, where she cautiously surveyed 
 the land before going in a roundabout way to 
 her holes. 
 
 At 10.30 a.m. she began a fourth tunnel 
 within an inch or two of the others, and worked 
 at it with feverish haste, often lying on her back 
 to dig, until the chamber was completed, as be- 
 fore, in just thirty minutes. 
 
 She then went out upon a warm stone and 
 quietly rested for a few minutes, then ran away 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 into the grass, but by 11.20 she was back again 
 and carefully examining every nook and corner 
 of her estate, now and then entering and repair- 
 ing the two open holes. Her movements were 
 quick and cautious, and my least change of 
 attitude alarmed her, whereas when she was dig- 
 ging she seemed careless of my presence; and 
 soon she disappeared, leaving the last tunnel 
 quite open. This, I fancied, was because she 
 had been unable to find any suitable cork, so 
 I gathered a few little pebbles of about the 
 right size and laid them near the nest, when to 
 my dismay one rolled halfway down the sloping 
 tunnel. 
 
 Now that her quarters seemed prepared some- 
 thing interesting was likely to follow, so I got 
 an umbrella and stayed in the hot sun to see 
 what it might be. A half hour of patience met 
 its reward. Suddenly Madame Redbelt alighted 
 upon the accustomed stone, astride of a smooth, 
 yellow caterpillar, gripped near its head in her 
 jaws. 
 
 I have never been able, among the rocky 
 ridges here, to follow and watch an Ammo- 
 20 $ 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 r 
 
 phila catch a caterpillar, but I know from what 
 others have seen how it is done. The capture 
 maybe made so far from the nest that an hour or 
 more must be spent in bringing home the prey. 
 
 When the wasp finds a caterpillar she springs 
 upon it and a fight for life begins. The poor 
 worm leaps and curls and thrashes about, 
 using every art and weapon it possesses, but to 
 little avail, for the wasp, striding over it and 
 seizing its head in her jaws, drives in her sting 
 until movement ceases and the caterpillar lies 
 outstretched and quiescent. Sometimes a sin- 
 gle thrust of the sting suffices, the poison act- 
 ing like an electric shock; sometimes seven or 
 eight stings are given into several segments. 
 
 It all depends upon whether the wasp pierces 
 the central nervous system, which runs along 
 the ventral side of the caterpillar in the form of 
 a cord thickened into a " ganglion " in each 
 segment. Some kinds of wasps seem to know 
 how to strike certain ganglia every time; and 
 this wasp, lifting the larva from the ground so 
 that she may curve the tip of her abdomen un- 
 derneath it, seems to try to do so, but she is 
 ^ 21 ^ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 by no means sure in her aim. When the victim 
 has become limp and quiet (though perhaps not 
 dead, but only paralyzed), the wasp usually 
 squeezes its neck in her jaws until that part is 
 thoroughly crushed. 
 
 Now, what does she want of the caterpillar 
 why all this labor and trouble? Because a 
 caterpillar, in her instinct-opinion, is the only 
 thing suitable upon which to lay an egg that 
 needs to be packed away in the earthen cham- 
 ber so carefully prepared for it, in order that it 
 may hatch in safety ; and also because the larva 
 thus to be bred must have food ready for it. 
 
 Having subdued her prey, the wasp stands 
 over it lengthwise, picks it up by the neck in 
 her jaws and partly carries, partly drags it, 
 going quickly or slowly according to its weight 
 and the difficulties of the way; and if you in- 
 terfere she will let it go and fight, but after- 
 ward hunt up the lost prey and continue the 
 journey. 
 
 No animals have a better sense of locality 
 and direction than the wasps and their relatives, 
 the bees. It is plain that they study the place 
 o 22 o 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 I 
 
 where their nests are, familiarizing themselves 
 with all its features. Any disturbance of these 
 is sure to be noticed ; but experiments designed 
 to ascertain how much of their behavior in this 
 respect arises from discriminating memory and 
 intelligence have had varying results. 
 
 Prof. Jacques Loeb tells how an Ammophila 
 laden with a caterpillar too heavy to lift off 
 the ground went around the wall she was ac- 
 customed to flying over and worked her way 
 afoot to her nest by an unknown route, then 
 betrayed much stupidity because the hole had 
 been concealed by a clover-blossom. But other 
 individuals have been more clever at detecting 
 deceits practiced upon them by inquisitive natu- 
 ralists. 
 
 Madame Redbelt carried her captive to the 
 mouth of the fourth hole, and, letting it drop, 
 hastily entered the nest, where she at once ran 
 against my fallen pebble, and pulled it out with- 
 out more ado. 
 
 Doubtless she thought it a mere accident, 
 not noticing, or caring nothing for, any odor 
 of my hand that may have lingered about it. 
 
 -$ 23 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 This done, she seized the lifeless caterpillar 
 by its head and dragged it backward into the 
 hole, humming a song of success the while. 
 For a whole minute she stayed there, doubtless 
 engaged in producing and affixing an egg to the 
 caterpillar's abdomen as it lay coiled in its 
 sepulcher. 
 
 And as the captor came out and excitedly 
 crowded stones and sticks and lumps of earth 
 down the cavity, and finally scratched over it 
 the hiding dust, I pondered upon the strange- 
 ness of this arrangement its careless cruelty 
 and boundless sacrifice of the present for the 
 sake of a future the exact and diligent worker 
 would never share perhaps never see. For 
 the worm is buried there to serve as food for the 
 larval wasp that, some sixty hours hence, will 
 be hatched from the egg and find itself fiercely 
 hungry. 
 
 Sometimes this wasp will take a pebble in her 
 jaws and with it pound and smooth the surface 
 of the hidden pit, the better to destroy traces 
 of digging. 
 
 Since that afternoon I am not sure that I 
 
Madame Redbelt 
 
 r 
 
 have seen Madame Redbelt. Now and then, it 
 is true, I catch a glimpse of an Ammophila 
 flitting about the stone wall, and perhaps it 
 may sometimes have been she, who remembers 
 why not? the very hot days and the gray 
 spider overhead, and the colossal figure that 
 so strangely scrutinized all the work in the 
 tiny triangular garden where her hopes lie 
 buried, and who anxiously watches for their 
 fulfillment. 
 
Life Insurance for Wasps 
 
 r 
 
 LIFE insurance is an arrangement by 
 which the results of a person's labor 
 may be stored up for the benefit of 
 others who are to come after him. This is sup- 
 posed to be, and is, among men, a device of 
 modern and the most civilized society, but it 
 has been practiced in effect by certain animals 
 ever since they came to be what they are. 
 
 The best examples of animal life insurers 
 are to be found among those wasps and bees 
 which are called " solitary," because they do 
 not live in companies, making combs or coopera- 
 tive nests in which the young are reared from 
 the egg and cared for until they are grown, 
 which is the custom of the " social " hymen- 
 opters. 
 
 The solitary wasps, on the other hand, ar- 
 range single chambers of one sort or another 
 in which one egg is laid and provision is stored 
 
 *$ 26 o 
 
Life Insurance for Wasps 
 
 r 
 
 ready to be eaten by the young one that will 
 develop from the egg, and which must spend a 
 considerable time in the confinement of its nurs- 
 ery before it has grown big enough to go 
 abroad. This custom involves some of the most 
 ingenious arrangements and most wonderful in- 
 stincts in the whole range of life. 
 
 For example: Last August I found in the 
 edge of the woods an old pail, on the inside of 
 which were plastered structures of dried mud 
 which looked as if they had been made by braid- 
 ing clay cords into miniature imitations of half- 
 round drain tiles. Each was as broad as my 
 finger, with walls rather less than a sixteenth 
 of an inch in thickness, and there were five 
 or six side by side, the longest measuring some 
 six inches, and containing five compartments 
 of equal length, separated by thick cross-parti- 
 tions of clay. 
 
 These were the safety-deposit vaults of a 
 large black mother-wasp, in which she had left 
 her treasures for the use of an assignee yet un- 
 born. I recognized them because I had been 
 watching for a fortnight a similar mud-wasp 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 building and filling similar treasure-houses un- 
 der my porch roof. The main difference was, 
 that while this black wasp of the woods spread 
 its cells out flat, the blue ones in the veranda 
 piled theirs into a heap, and finally hid the heap 
 and protected it from enemies under a general 
 rough coat of mud. 
 
 As soon as the really warm weather of sum- 
 mer arrives each of these wasps (all of which 
 are fertile females that have survived the winter 
 by hibernating in some snug retreat, and have 
 been spending a month or two in elegant leisure 
 sipping nectar and getting other dainties) feels 
 that the time has come to lay her quota of eggs, 
 and begins to build cells of mud, each just big 
 enough to contain her own body. 
 
 Their skill in fabricating these out of pellets 
 of clayey earth, mixed with saliva and drawn 
 out by the complicated mouth-organs into rib- 
 bons of glutinous mud as they are laid on, is 
 admirable, but not so surprising as what 
 follows : 
 
 As soon as the cell is finished the fresh open 
 end is usually closed by a temporary dab of 
 *>$ 28 fc 
 
Life Insurance for Wasps 
 
 r 
 
 mud, to exclude strangers and mischief-makers, 
 and the wasp goes hunting takes out its first 
 policy of insurance for the benefit of the in- 
 tended occupant of this domicile. 
 
 Before long, if she is fortunate, she finds a 
 spider. What is its name does not matter, nor 
 does its size, so that it be not too large ; but big 
 ones are sometimes sheared of legs or dismem- 
 bered in order to be made manageable. She 
 darts at it, whereupon the spider probably 
 drops like Newton's apple, by which ruse it 
 may escape, or it may not. If it fails to drop 
 quickly enough or far enough the wasp catches 
 it in her jaws, drives in her sting once or twice, 
 and carries it off in the grasp of her mouth and 
 forefeet not, however, directly to her home. 
 Instead, she first alights on some convenient 
 perch and there rolls her captive about until 
 she has it in a position she likes, and then stings 
 it once, deliberately and forcibly. This done 
 she picks it up, takes it home and stuffs it down 
 into the bottom of the cell. Then she rushes 
 away for another, seeking one of the same kind 
 as a preference, but if they are scarce catch- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 ing any other spider not too large for her use 
 none are so big as to scare her. Thus in two 
 or three hours of a July afternoon she will 
 pack solidly into her cell ten to twenty spiders, 
 big and little, until at last it can hold only 
 one more. 
 
 Having caught this last one, the wasp pauses 
 on her threshold and performs the crowning 
 act for which all that has gone before has been 
 simply a preparation. She deposits and glues 
 a single egg upon the abdomen of this latest 
 victim, and then crowding it on top of the rest, 
 concludes her labors by bringing mud and seal- 
 ing the chamber as tightly as possible. 
 
 This done, she goes her way and leaves her 
 venture to its fate, but next day she builds and 
 stocks a second chamber close beside it, or in 
 continuation of it, and so on until her number 
 is complete. 
 
 Responsibility for her young ceases with the 
 mother's insurance to them of shelter and food 
 until they " come of age." 
 
 Now, what happens in that dark cell? Well, 
 in two or three days, depending on the tem- 
 
Life Insurance for Wasps 
 
 r 
 
 perature, the egg hatches, and a tiny white 
 grub emerges, which at once begins to feed 
 upon the nearest spider, eating the soft parts 
 first, then proceeding to the next, and so on, 
 taking the tidbits of its store first, and eating 
 the harder parts later. By this time ten days 
 have passed, and the grub has grown nearly 
 as big as its room. It feels, then, that the time 
 has come for a change, and spins about itself 
 a capsule-shaped cocoon of glutinous silk, in 
 which it slumbers quietly for several days as a 
 chrysalis until perfected. 
 
 Then it wakes, bursts its cerements, gnaws 
 a hole through the clay walls of its nursery 
 prison, and emerges into the world as a brilliant 
 wasp. It is at first limp and hardly able to 
 fly, yet it knows perfectly well how to sting 
 you if you arouse its easy anger. 
 
 Now this simple story is really a marvelous 
 one when you ponder its details. The mother- 
 wasp was born the previous summer, too late 
 to see the method of building the adobe houses. 
 So were all her companions. There was no one 
 to teach her architecture, nor to suggest the 
 
 ^ 31 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 proper time and place, or even the need for do- 
 ing such work. Yet at just the right season 
 the insect collected the materials a pretty 
 thing to watch and accomplished her task as 
 neatly and effectively as had her dead-and-gone 
 mother and grandmothers, themselves guided 
 only by that inborn knowledge we term instinct. 
 
 Such an instinct has many parallels among 
 animals, which know intuitively how to make 
 homes for themselves or nests for the care of 
 their young ; but what shall be said of the next 
 move? How can the wasp foresee (if she does) 
 the end of all preparations a history to come 
 in which she will take no part? Why must she 
 lay up spiders, and only spiders, while other 
 wasps are content with nothing but flies, and 
 still others with caterpillars, or plant lice, or 
 something else? for the methods and the pro- 
 visions are almost as various as the species. 
 
 And here comes in another most extraor- 
 dinary feature. Many wasps do not, except 
 by accident, kill their prey. After catching 
 them they sting them with such consummate 
 art in certain nervous centers that they are not 
 o 32 fo> 
 
Life Insurance for Wasps 
 
 r 
 
 killed, but paralyzed, and so are packed away 
 alive and remain fresh during the many days 
 when some of them are awaiting the use of the 
 grub. 
 
 One of the most conspicuous examples of this 
 is the European mud-dauber, and that insect 
 always attaches its egg to the first spider the 
 one stowed away in the furthest end of the cell, 
 so that when the grub begins to eat it devours 
 first the oldest provisions, while those kept to 
 the last are the freshest. Our own mud-wasp 
 does not seem to use this paralyzing method. 
 
 Three-fourths of its spiders are killed out- 
 right and dry up in the store-house; nor does 
 our wasp lay its egg until the last spider is put 
 in, by which plan it escapes a large risk from 
 destructive parasites. 
 
 We do possess certain wasps, however, which 
 paralyze their prey rather than kill it as often 
 as they can. One of these is the largest of our 
 wasps a great golden fellow, half as big as 
 a humming-bird, which digs a tunnel in the 
 ground, which I have sometimes found to be 
 three feet long, and deposits in a chamber at 
 ^ 33 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 the end a single cicada, as big as my lady's 
 thumb, with an egg safely tucked under its 
 thigh. 
 
 This cicada is always buried alive, and re- 
 mains comatose until the wasp-grub it carries 
 hatches and begins to devour its vitals; and it 
 finally succumbs to this horrid vivisection. 
 
 Another example of paralyzation stinging is 
 found among the potter-wasps, a common kind 
 of which in this country makes little jugs of 
 almost microscopic grains of quartz solidly 
 cemented by its own saliva. Like the graceful 
 [Ammophila, whose burrows are to be seen in 
 almost every garden, it invests in an insurance 
 in caterpillars, only in this case they must be 
 wee ones, for the jug is not so large as a 
 thimble and often is balanced upon a twig. 
 
 The French entomologist, Fabre, disclosed 
 the very curious secrets of this race. With 
 great care he opened a window in the side of 
 the jug, so that with a magnifying glass he 
 could see what was going on. By repeated ob- 
 servations he thus discovered that it was half 
 full of caterpillars, all of which showed more 
 
Life Insurance for Wasps 
 
 r 
 
 or less life. The egg had not been laid by the 
 mother-wasp on one of these captives, as usual 
 elsewhere, but had been suspended by a gossa- 
 mer thread from the apex of the chamber. 
 When the grub hatches, it, too, hangs by a 
 thread, attached to a sort of ribbon, whence 
 it reaches down and takes a bite from one of 
 the caterpillars, which squirms under the in- 
 fliction. 
 
 A mere stir is not attended to, but if the 
 half-benumbed worm is aroused enough to rear 
 its head and thrash about the grub pulls itself 
 up by the thread and glides into the " ribbon," 
 which is hollow (for, in fact, it is the aban- 
 doned egg-shell), and forms a refuge from the 
 fury of the paralyzed, but not wholly inert, 
 caterpillars. When it gets larger, the larva 
 drops down and feeds at will, regardless of the 
 writhing of its food. 
 
 This wonderful system of insurance for the 
 benefit of their children, of which a great vari- 
 ety of further examples may easily be found 
 and studied during the summer all over the 
 United States, is the outcome of the growth 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 of instincts that have been perfected through 
 unnumbered ages by means of natural selec- 
 tion instincts that, on the whole, are perhaps 
 the most complicated and surprising in the 
 world. 
 
 36 
 
The Squirrel's Thrift, and How 
 it was Learned 
 
 ONE of the poetic and pleasing incidents 
 of autumn in the woods is the eager 
 industry of the squirrels in gathering 
 and carrying to their habitations quantities of 
 nuts, acorns, rose-hips, grains of corn, and 
 other dainties. We say they are " storing 
 food " for the winter, and we know that the 
 mice beneath the meadow grass, the beaver in 
 his forest-girt pond, the weasel within the stone 
 wall, and now and then a woodpecker or jay, 
 are taking similar precautions against a com- 
 ing season of scarcity. 
 
 The poets and moralists long ago took this 
 incident to heart, more or less incorrectly ; but, 
 so far as I can recall, the philosopher has not 
 considered it, nor offered any explanation of 
 what is in reality a remarkable phenomenon. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 We speak lightly of an animal foreseeing the 
 winter, and even of having prophetic knowledge 
 of what its character is to be. Proverbial 
 weather-lore is founded on this popular faith, 
 as witness such sayings as that the muskrats 
 build their houses twenty inches higher and 
 far thicker before early and long winters 
 than in view of short and mild ones; and that 
 chipmunks store a larger supply of nuts than 
 ordinary in anticipation of a hard winter. Per- 
 haps nothing in folk-lore is more fixed and wide- 
 spread than this class of beliefs, despite the 
 discouragement of many adverse statistics. 
 Yet what evidence have we that any one of the 
 small mammals or birds that interest us at 
 the moment have any conscious anticipatory 
 thought of winter ahead, or a conception of 
 winter at all? The associative memory of older 
 and superior animals may bring back from time 
 to time a recollection of the last or previous 
 ones, but we can hardly suppose that these mice 
 and squirrels many too young to have seen 
 snow and ice have any realization of the fact 
 of the succession of seasons, or are able to rea- 
 
The Squirrel's Thrift 
 
 r 
 
 son out with conscious intelligence that the 
 scenes of a twelvemonth ago will surely be re- 
 peated that again, by and by, the green 
 leaves will change to brown, the flowers and 
 fruits will wither and fall, the soft odorous 
 earth and rippling water will turn to stone, and 
 the world become a place of starvation for 
 squirrels unless they bestir themselves. 
 
 Any one who stops to consider the little 
 beasts, and measures how much knowledge, ex- 
 perience, and brain-work are implied in their 
 alleged " foreseeing," must conclude that it is 
 very unlikely the squirrels have any perception 
 of the facts at all, much less a superhuman 
 capability of knowing what is to be the next 
 season's particular character and of providing 
 against it. If this is so, it follows that the ap- 
 parently careful, and certainly effective, pro- 
 vision of shelter and food which so many of 
 them make previous to the descent of winter, is 
 an automatic performance the result of an 
 instinctive impulse wholly independent of fore- 
 knowledge or any anxiety about impending 
 scarcity. The fact that in some of its higher 
 0$ 39 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 manifestations a good deal of intelligence seems 
 to be exercised the curing and garnering of 
 its hay by the pika, for example is not at all 
 incompatible with this view of the case. 
 
 That this view is right seems plain, and an 
 alteration of circumstances would, no doubt, 
 prove it ; for should a sudden change of climate 
 by obliterating winter remove all need of their 
 exertion, the rodents would doubtless continue 
 for hundreds of years to come to heap up stores 
 in the season of abundance, just as that old- 
 fogey woodpecker of southern California still 
 hammers hundreds of acorns into holes in the 
 bark of sugar pines preparatory to a time of 
 scarcity which no longer arrives, so that the 
 bird of the present day will never need nor 
 care to make use of a single one of its treasures. 
 The European hamsters toil to lay up astonish- 
 ing masses of grain underground, not a tenth 
 of which, it is said, do they eat, because now 
 they sink into the cold trance and sleep for 
 months beside their almost untouched stores. 
 Here, as in the case of the opossum, elsewhere 
 described, an instinct has overshot its mark, 
 
The Squirrel's Thrift 
 
 r 
 
 and a heritage once essential has become an 
 affliction to each new generation. 
 
 In northern countries, however, the majority 
 of mice, squirrels, gophers and the like, are 
 still face to face annually with famine, and 
 must starve to death or create a hoard of food 
 against that contingency. Nor can the matter 
 be left to individual precaution. Chipmunks 
 and pocket-mice are irresponsible folk, and 
 could hardly be trusted to look out for them- 
 selves in so momentous a matter. How, then, 
 has Nature impressed upon their giddy minds 
 the necessity for the " foresight " we admire, 
 and kept them faithful in execution of the idea? 
 It appears to me that the beneficial habit of 
 doing what they must do, if they are to survive 
 in our cold climate, has been inculcated in some 
 such way as this : 
 
 It is the natural custom of most small ani- 
 mals, not mere grazers or flycatchers, to take 
 as much of their food as they well can to some 
 favorite eating place. This trait is noticeable 
 in a wide range of creatures ants, bees, crabs, 
 crocodiles, crows, fruit-bats, monkeys, certain 
 ^ 41 ^ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 carnivores (notably the fox), and a large num- 
 ber of rodents. One finds all along streams 
 frequented by muskrats heaps of mussel shells, 
 and other refuse, indicating where day after 
 day the musquash has brought his catch and 
 dined. Little hillocks and stumps are favorite 
 refectories, perhaps because they afford an easy 
 outlook; and I have given in my Life of Mam- 
 mals* a photographic illustration of such a 
 dining-room on and about a stump beside a 
 stream. 
 
 This practice may be followed from various 
 motives, such as the wish to be alone so as not 
 to suffer robbery between bites, or to be in a 
 suitable place to lie down and sleep at the end 
 of the meal. In the case of flesh-eaters the 
 beasts or birds of prey there is added to this, 
 at any rate in the season when their offspring 
 are young, the impulse to carry some of the 
 plunder to the family. 
 
 Now, one of the strongest feelings animating 
 animal conduct is the desire to do things by 
 
 * The Life of Animals: the Mammals. The Macmillan 
 Company, New York, 1906. 
 
 <* 42 $* 
 
The Squirrel's Thrift 
 
 r 
 
 rule, to go accustomed rounds and repeat acts 
 and operations in precisely the same way, the 
 intelligent recognition of which is the secret of 
 the good hunter's success. 
 
 .... Use and habit are powers 
 Far stronger than passion in this world of ours, 
 
 even among the wild rangers of the woods and 
 fields. Hence the habit of seeking the same 
 place, for an often-recurring necessity or func- 
 tion is quickly confirmed. Wild horses and the 
 African rhinoceros, for example, are said to go 
 daily to certain spots to leave their dung until 
 a large heap forms. I have observed that dogs 
 in the country have a similar regularity. 
 
 If this tendency is well marked in animals 
 more or less nomadic, and whose residence in a 
 locality is temporary, how much stronger and 
 more noticeable will it be in the case of an 
 animal with a permanent abiding-place, as a 
 resident bird like the fishhawk, eagle, or rook, 
 whose nests are occupied year after year as 
 well as more or less continuously between breed- 
 ing seasons. In the British rook, for example, 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 and in the jackdaw and other birds of the crow 
 tribes, this habit leads them not only to ac- 
 cumulate a quantity of edible things in and 
 about the nest long after the young have left 
 it and are taking care of themselves, but to 
 pick up and deposit there any bright object 
 which attracts their restless eyes and minds. 
 
 But still more conspicuous examples of the 
 power of habit in regulating the routine of 
 daily life are to be found among those smaller 
 mammals, mainly rodents, which have acquired 
 the habit of making and living in permanent 
 burrows, or in such houses as that of the beaver. 
 These animals, almost without exception, are 
 feebly endowed with powers either of defense 
 or of escape outside their habitations, and when 
 gathering their food (seeds, bark, etc.) they 
 are in constant terror of enemies. They must 
 be as quick about the task as possible, and can- 
 not stop to eat much out there, but must merely 
 gather what they can carry, and hasten to the 
 safety of their doorways, at least, so as to be 
 able to dodge back into harbor at the first 
 alarm. This is the reason why surviving species 
 
 +S 44 5 
 
The Squirrel's Thrift 
 
 r 
 
 of such animals have mostly acquired capacious 
 cheek-pouches in which they can transport a 
 fair supply of food to be eaten at leisure. 
 
 During the larger part of the year the pick- 
 ings are scanty, and these mice, gophers, and 
 the like, are driven by hunger to seek and try to 
 save every bit of nutriment they can find; and 
 some seem to be imbued with so much anxiety, 
 or such superabundant restlessness and energy, 
 that they bring to their homes quantities of 
 things not edible, as well as far more food than 
 they are able to eat. The well-known habit of 
 the South American viscacha, as described by 
 Darwin, Hudson, and others, of dragging to 
 its burrow bright pebbles, flowers, lost trinkets, 
 and all kinds of orts and ends, strikingly ex- 
 hibits this sort of a disposition; and the crow 
 tribe the world over is noted for miserly pro- 
 pensities witness the sacrilegious jackdaw of 
 Rheims. 
 
 Now, in some cases this secretiveness may 
 redound, quite unintentionally or unexpectedly 
 on his part, to the benefit of the busybody, and 
 in that case would be likely to increase in effec- 
 
 + 45 &* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 tiveness. Thus, as has been intimated, the Eu- 
 ropean rooks heap up in their old nests piles 
 of acorns, bones, potatoes, and whatnot, which 
 they find on the ground in the fall and do not 
 care to devour at the moment. Should the win- 
 ter weather set in with unusual severity, and 
 these birds find themselves unable to obtain their 
 natural insect food from the frozen ground, 
 their hunger leads them to peck at the stuff 
 they have left lying in the old nest, which con- 
 tinues to be a sort of headquarters for each 
 family group. If the hard weather long con- 
 tinues the savings will be mostly or wholly con- 
 sumed. Should the season be open, however, 
 the purposeless " stores " will scarcely be 
 touched, and when the time of " spring clean- 
 ing " arrives, in preparation for a new brood, 
 the neglected and decayed accumulation will be 
 cast out. 
 
 In the case of the store-saving mice, ham- 
 sters, squirrels, and beavers, necessity and ad- 
 vantage have led to a more advanced develop- 
 ment of the habit, until finally it has become 
 an instinct necessary to the preservation of the 
 
The Squirrel's Thrift 
 
 r 
 
 species. One may reasonably infer the process 
 of acquirement of this instinctive habit to have 
 been something like this : Remembering that the 
 restless search for and eager utilization of food 
 constitute the foremost characteristic of these 
 little animals, we may believe that this activity 
 would be increasingly stimulated as the ripen- 
 ing season of the seeds, nuts, etc., on which they 
 depend, advanced; and the acquisitive impulse 
 urging them to incessant industry, so neces- 
 sary during the poorer parts of the year, would 
 then be over-excited and over-worked, and each 
 animal in its haste to be up and doing would 
 constantly bring to its home much more food 
 than would be daily consumed, so that a lot of 
 it would accumulate in the accustomed dining- 
 room, which, in the case of the burrowers, is 
 mostly a chamber underground, especially after 
 the weather begins to grow too inclement in the 
 autumn to make it comfortable to eat out of 
 doors. In the ensuing winter the gradual fail- 
 ure of outdoor food-resources, and the growing 
 drowsy indisposition to go abroad, which more 
 or less incapacitates most small animals at this 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 time of the year, would lead to the utilization 
 of those supplies casually saved in or near the 
 burrow or house. 
 
 The animal which had been most busy, inde- 
 fatigable, and clever in gathering food would 
 then be the one having in possession the largest 
 amount of these leavings of his autumnal feasts. 
 Having the most food, he would be among those 
 in the colony or neighborhood most likely to 
 survive, and to perpetuate in his descendants 
 the industrious qualities which had been his 
 salvation. He would probably also be one 
 of the strongest and fattest of his kind, and 
 hence in general more fit to stand the strains 
 of existence. 
 
 The action of natural selection would after 
 due time increase in the line of descent from 
 such an ancestor the transmitted greed for 
 gathering food in the fall, until, quite unknown 
 to itself in each passing individual, and, there- 
 fore, implying no creditable virtue of char- 
 acter, the mere busybody of old times would 
 develop into our model of thrift, 
 
 48 
 
The Seamy Side of Bird-Life 
 
 I 
 
 I DO not know how many song-sparrows 
 there are in this township say one hun- 
 dred pairs for a guess. Each of these 
 will lay on an average five eggs every spring. 
 If all the eggs of every pair hatched and the 
 young survived, we should have next year two 
 hundred and fifty pairs, supposing all the par- 
 ents to have died. The second year a similar 
 success would furnish us with twelve hundred 
 and fifty pairs, and the third year our township 
 would contain over twelve thousand song-spar- 
 rows. So the increase would go on, by larger 
 and larger leaps, until soon the hosts would 
 hardly have room to fly, not to speak of finding 
 food. 
 
 Experience shows that no such a thing hap- 
 pens. The census of song-sparrows, and of all 
 other birds, remains about the same, showing 
 that the births only equal the deaths. 
 ^49 So* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 Assuming that the average life of one of the 
 woodland songsters may be five years, one-fifth 
 perish annually, and only one in five of the eggs 
 or young survives, or needs to do so, in order 
 to replace the mortality. As a matter of fact, 
 however, the proportion of eggs and nestlings 
 saved is less than one in five, for most small 
 birds attempt to rear two or sometimes three 
 broods a year, and, moreover, the breeding lives 
 of many pairs may continue through several 
 seasons. It would not be too much to say, then, 
 that for every success the birds of our fields 
 and woods suffer seven or eight failures. In 
 some classes the proportion is greater, in others 
 less. Many seabirds rear chicks from nearly 
 every egg they produce, so safe are the condi- 
 tions surrounding their nesting life. 
 
 Now, this mortality is not equally distrib- 
 uted. Birds do not find a part of their eggs 
 infertile, nor do a part of each set of nestlings 
 die, so that each family loses some and saves 
 some of its offspring, but ordinarily they suc- 
 ceed wholly or else wholly fail in respect to each 
 brood; and every such failure is tragic, how- 
 
The Seamy Side of Bird-Life 
 
 r 
 
 ever much utility it may serve, secondarily, in 
 providing some other creature with needed food. 
 Bright and lissome, gay and careless as our 
 birds seem to be, their lives are burdened by 
 dread, and that which should be the most joy- 
 ous season is most frequently fraught with 
 sorrow. 
 
 Yesterday, for example, we found dead in the 
 road a fledgling, beaten down, chilled and de- 
 stroyed by the cold rains that for two or three 
 days have pelted the earth. Undoubtedly many 
 such an accident has happened, and it is proba- 
 ble that in hundreds of nests the young have 
 been drowned, or chilled, or starved to death 
 by this same unseasonable storm. 
 
 I remember that once a foolish chickadee nes- 
 tled in the top of a hollow stump, where her 
 chamber was a perfect pocket, and while she 
 was sitting a tremendous rain fell. I am sure 
 her brood would have been drowned in their 
 bed had I not thought of them and fixed a 
 temporary pent-house to shield their domicile. 
 
 Long-continued rains do immense damage to 
 the robins' early mud-built nests by melting 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 them down, and that is probably the main rea- 
 son why this bird so persistently seeks the shel- 
 ter of our porches. The cliff swallows, too, 
 suffer in that way in wild regions, where they 
 plaster their earthen bulb-like homes in dense 
 colonies on the face of a cliff or clay bank, 
 whence I have seen them slough off by the score 
 when dampened ; but they, too, " know enough 
 to come in when it rains " and wherever civiliza- 
 tion has gone they have abandoned their preca- 
 rious native method for nesting sites beneath 
 the eaves of barns and have even modified their 
 architecture in adaptation to the new and safer 
 positions. 
 
 Gales sometimes upset nests and hurl them 
 out of the trees, though this is not so frequent 
 an accident as one might expect. Sometimes, 
 however, birds place their nests most insecurely. 
 A robin last summer built a nest near me in a 
 clump of maples, and was so foolish as to rest 
 it upon two near-by branches, one of which be- 
 longed to one tree and one to another. Of 
 course the first high wind, moving the trees at 
 variance, wrenched the nest apart. I saw a 
 
C. Barlow, Phot. 
 
 Chicadee's Nest in the Top of a Hollow Stump 
 
The Seamy Side of Bird-Life 
 
 r 
 
 blue jay's nest lately subject to a similar acci- 
 dent. A dove's nest that I had been watching, 
 because of its unusual position on the edge of 
 a ledge of rocks, came to an end by the eggs 
 being rolled over the cliff in a gust of a thunder- 
 storm. 
 
 The only nest of those among tree branches 
 really safe in respect to gales is the pendent 
 purse of the Baltimore oriole, which sways with 
 the elastic twigs at the extremity of which it 
 hangs, and suffers no harm as long as they hold 
 their form. This nest is secure against many 
 other dangers to which most are exposed, and 
 probably the comparative abundance of this 
 beautiful denizen of our parks and orchards 
 and rural highways is largely due to this fact. 
 
 Misfortunes that befall bird families through 
 physical agencies, such as rains, floods, gales, 
 forest fires and the like, play but a small part, 
 however, in the " infant mortality " of the 
 woods, beside the loss from marauders of vari- 
 ous sorts, from the bird's-nesting boy or cattle's 
 crushing foot to the minute insect vermin that 
 sometimes compel small species to abandon their 
 <+$ 53 $*> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 hair- or wool-lined nests before the proper 
 time. 
 
 Eggs and young birds form a large item 
 upon the bill of fare of many animals in the 
 early half of the year. Hardly any carnivore 
 will refuse to rob a bird's nest, and many dili- 
 gently search for them. I was passing through 
 a thicket the other day with my terrier at my 
 heels when a field sparrow jumped away from 
 my feet in a manner indicating that she had 
 just left her nest. While I was searching about 
 for it I glanced at my dog and saw the little 
 rascal who is by no means thievish with his 
 nose in the poor sparrow's snug home in a low 
 bush, licking up the remains of the last egg. 
 
 This momentary return to primitive ways 
 on Waggles's part reminded me that in the Arc- 
 tic regions the foxes grow fat in spring after 
 their winter famine by feasting upon the eggs 
 and young of the marsh-breeding water-fowl, 
 and nearer home the foxes doubtless help to 
 decimate our nesting game-birds. 
 
 The mink, badger, skunk, muskrat and wood- 
 rat are all robbers of ground-built nests, and 
 ^ 54 ^ 
 
The Seamy Side of Bird-Life 
 
 r 
 
 even the mice destroy many small ones, while 
 the wildcat, weasel, raccoon and red squirrel, 
 climb trees in a systematic search for eggs and 
 squabs, subsisting largely at this season (when, 
 indeed, other food for them is scarce) upon 
 these delicacies. The chipmunk does some simi- 
 lar damage, but the gray and fox squirrels are 
 innocent of it, else it would prove most mis- 
 chievous to cultivate them in city parks and 
 village streets. 
 
 Yet none of these animals, nor in thickly 
 settled districts all of them together, equal do- 
 mestic cats in this rapine. Night and day, in 
 the neighborhood of towns not only, but upon 
 farms, they range the woods and fields search- 
 ing high and low for birds' nests. No single 
 agency with the possible exception of the 
 English sparrow has done so much to drive 
 away and diminish our village birds as these 
 useless and dreadful " pets." 
 
 I was told by an intelligent man, who took 
 pains to " keep tabs " on Tabby, that one single 
 house-cat in western New York last summer 
 destroyed sixty-eight nests within a radius of 
 
 <$ 55 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 a mile from the farm-house. Every lover of 
 birds and all Audubon societies should organize 
 the fiercest kind of a crusade against vagrant 
 cats as the prime movement in every plan for 
 bird preservation. 
 
 Several birds are nest robbers, the most ar- 
 rant offenders in the United States being mag- 
 pies, crows (especially the Southern fish-crow), 
 jays and, along the seashore, certain gulls. 
 These destroy thousands of sets of eggs in each 
 district every spring. In a special sort of way, 
 and locally, the English sparrows belong in this 
 criminal list, for they often tear nests to pieces 
 in order to rebuild them for themselves or to use 
 the materials. The worst sufferers from these 
 bandits are the barn swallows, which have been 
 greatly lessened in many localities in the East 
 by this means. 
 
 The birds of prey are active at this season, 
 too, especially the owls, which pounce at night 
 upon the sitting mothers and, dragging them 
 from their nests, leave the little ones to starve 
 or, perhaps, to form a second course of the 
 meal. 
 
i.2 
 
 
 i 
 
 t 
 
 
 pq *.s 
 
 5 O g 
 
 ^ 'Sg- 
 
 3 |ll 
 rt .s 
 
 ao 3 
 
 fli 
 
The Seamy Side of Bird-Life 
 
 r 
 
 Even worse are the snakes. An African ser- 
 pent feeds so exclusively upon eggs that it has 
 a mouth especially fitted for breaking and con- 
 suming them. Birds breeding on the ground 
 are especially liable to this foe, and it is the 
 natural hostility all birds feel toward this enemy 
 that leads them to attack it, often with such 
 recklessness that people say the snake " fas- 
 cinates " them within reach of its stroke. 
 
 In our country the most persistent and suc- 
 cessful nest-hunter is the blacksnake, which is 
 an expert climber. Every ornithologist can tell 
 of dozens of nests he has known to be despoiled 
 by this sable marauder; yet it often fails. I 
 saw one knocked from a high limb within a yard 
 of our house porch by a couple of robins who 
 came home just in time to protect their prop- 
 erty. Blacksnakes will ascend to astonishing 
 heights, explore the tree-tops with great skill 
 in festooning their weight across the slender 
 branches, and search woodpeckers' holes and 
 every cranny for a variety of prey. It is this 
 serpent, instead of the rattlesnake, which never 
 climbs trees, that Audubon should have repre- 
 + 57 $+ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 sented in his spirited but erroneous picture of 
 the brown thrashers defending their home in a 
 bush. 
 
 When all these dangers are thus passed in 
 review, one begins to understand how perilous 
 an experience is a bird's attempt at domestic 
 life, and how needful are all possible circum- 
 stances and qualities guarding and favoring it. 
 
 58 
 
Three Tragical Bird-Romances 
 
 r 
 
 I HAVE certain rural friends in the Hud- 
 son Valley, in whose society I delight so 
 much that I am accustomed to jot down 
 from time to time memoranda of their doings. 
 Thus after a while I find myself in possession 
 of little stories whose very simplicity of truth 
 constitutes a charm often lacking in elaborate 
 fiction. Such is the record of the midsummer 
 affairs of three familiar birds who gave me 
 their confidence or gained my sympathy. 
 
 June 22. Four days ago the pair of phoebe 
 flycatchers which had been investigating the 
 porch for some days, always together, sud- 
 denly began in great haste to settle themselves 
 on one of the timber-ends that support the over- 
 hanging roof of the south gable. But which 
 one? There were a dozen there just alike. 
 Poor little Phoebe couldn't select among them, 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 and made a beginning on one only to turn dis- 
 contentedly to the next one, until every timber 
 on one side of the gable was spotted with muddy 
 semicircles. I showed this situation to a liter- 
 ary neighbor, and he immediately wrote a very 
 pretty and moral essay upon it, but he totally 
 neglected to explain by what criterion, philo- 
 sophical or sentimental, one timber was at last 
 chosen, so that now a nest is really being com- 
 pleted. The literary essays that deal with na- 
 ture are often most disappointingly deficient, 
 as I have observed, in respect to the very things 
 I most want to know. If I could find out just 
 what the phoebes need or prefer, I should be 
 delighted to furnish them with precisely suit- 
 able quarters, for the sake of their society. 
 
 One day I noticed that the male no longer 
 appeared, but the female went on doing all the 
 work, as probably she would choose to do in 
 any case, tearing up thread-like moss by the 
 roots, and bringing it, with as much attached 
 mud as possible, to be plastered into a cup-like 
 structure, where the moss continues alive and 
 keeps green and growing. She worked all day, 
 
Three Tragical Bird-Romances 
 
 r 
 
 mostly upon and within it, patting with her 
 feet, pulling and pushing with her beak, and 
 molding the form to the eager breast, with every 
 appearance of fond enjoyment, but progress 
 was slow. At last the task was finished, and I 
 was looking forward to the opportunity for 
 convenient and minute study of her method of 
 rearing her young, when she suddenly ceased 
 to flutter about the gable or perch confid- 
 ingly on the clothes-lines ; and I never saw her 
 again. 
 
 June 81. Robins have been making a home 
 for some days past, not far from the busy 
 phoebes, in the top of a maple close by the 
 corner of the kitchen porch. A branch of an 
 adjacent poplar runs through the maple-crotch 
 in which the nest rested, and hence through the 
 nest itself, which is thus bound to the limbs of 
 two separate trees. This will make trouble the 
 first time the wind blows. 
 
 June 22. I have been keeping an eye for 
 some time on a nest full of young worm-eating 
 o$ 61 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 warblers, snugly tucked into a tiny cave of the 
 hillside close to the path. This morning I 
 found that the fledglings were out, one flutter- 
 ing in a thick little bush as if unable to make 
 its way through the tangle of twigs. Their 
 mother was distracted with care, and leaped 
 upon the leg of my trousers, where she clung 
 sideways and looked up at me with black eyes 
 " popping " with fear. Then she caught sight 
 of my terrier, and her wits returned promptly. 
 He was comprehensible. Springing at him like 
 a fury, she whirled around his head and then 
 dropping before his nose feigned helplessness, 
 and let the surprised, but innocent, dog chase 
 her until they were far away from the young. I 
 never saw a bird do the broken-wing dodge 
 better. Waggles was astounded to see her quick 
 recovery at the proper time, and trotted sheep- 
 ishly back to me, confessing that he had learned 
 a new wrinkle in woodcraft. The incident took 
 some of the conceit out of me, as well as my 
 dog ; for, without thinking about it, I had been 
 regarding this well-known action of birds as 
 directed wholly toward human alarms, whereas, 
 + 62 So 
 
Three .Tragical Bird-Romances 
 
 r 
 
 of course, it is a trick to cheat foxes, snakes 
 and similar enemies first of all. 
 
 I was obliged to go away for a few days at 
 this time, and during my absence a tremendous 
 thunderstorm deluged the locality, and filled 
 me with anxiety, when I heard of it, for the 
 safety of my little friends. As I expected, the 
 robins' nest by the kitchen had been sawed in 
 two by the swaying of the alien limb. The pair 
 had then chosen a more secure crotch in another 
 tree, where a very poor specimen of a nest, 
 composed mainly of staghorn " moss " and 
 totally lacking in the customary mortar of 
 mud, was already completed and occupied. The 
 female of this pair was an undersized and ap- 
 parently immature bird, but her mate was one 
 of the reddest, grandest-looking robins ever 
 seen. Here was a fine example of the Wallace- 
 Darwin theory of sexual selection ; but it seemed 
 as though it ought to have been his fortune to 
 be beguiled by a better mate. Such a pairing 
 would seem to vitiate the required result. 
 
 It was probably the inexperience of this 
 
 *$ 63 fo> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 young housewife that had led to the unfor- 
 tunate choice of the bad site first taken, and to 
 the poor architecture in both attempts at home- 
 making. But no one has heard any complaints 
 from the magnificent husband, who no doubt 
 sees charms in his young spouse outweighing 
 considerations of comfort. As both the home 
 and the partnership are temporary, it doesn't 
 much matter. Maybe next year he will have 
 better luck. Possibly he doesn't know or de- 
 serve anything better, fine feathers do not al- 
 ways make fine birds, 'tis said. 
 
 June 26. Found a wood-thrush's nest to- 
 day, close to the house, which had been con- 
 structed and occupied with such secrecy that 
 we had never suspected its presence, though it 
 has been inhabited so long that the female is 
 now sitting. It is a beautifully typical leaf- 
 made nest, resting on the flat bough of a hem- 
 lock, ten feet from the ground. 
 
 June 28. Already the wood-thrush is so 
 tame that I can go close to her without dis- 
 turbing her, and, doubtless, were she within 
 *$ 64 5 
 
Three Tragical Bird-Romances 
 
 r 
 
 easy reach, I could teach her to let me stroke 
 her back, as I have taught other birds. 
 
 Last night I made a tour of various nests at 
 midnight and found all the mothers sitting, of 
 course; but unexpectedly I aroused no males 
 by disturbing these females. Could a small 
 marauder have ravaged without resistance? or 
 did silently watchful cock-birds perceive my 
 friendliness? I regret to say I think the for- 
 mer was the case. They were sound asleep some- 
 where else. 
 
 July 1. The male of my interesting pair of 
 robins spends most of his time in the dead top 
 of a large tree, about one hundred feet in an 
 air-line from his home. In this old birch, 
 which is a house of call for the winged people 
 of the whole neighborhood, Cock Robin has 
 a particular perch whence he can see his nest; 
 and near him, on the outermost tip of an ex- 
 tended dry twig, sits most of the time a hum- 
 mingbird, no doubt in view of his family 
 treasures somewhere on the wooded Rimrocks 
 hillside. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 To-day there suddenly dashed into the 
 tree, with a loud, rasping shout, a bully of a 
 bluejay. The hummer glanced into the air and 
 vanished like the bursting of an iridescent bub- 
 ble; but the robin whirled and drove at the 
 stranger without an instant's waiting. Like a 
 flash his little mate came from the nest to her 
 husband's aid, and a third robin rushed in from 
 elsewhere, so that in two seconds the braggart 
 jay was routed and fleeing to the woods. What 
 a row it raised! The robins chased him hotly, 
 the wood- thrush sprang from her cradle in the 
 hemlock to give her help, and I could hear little 
 birds joining in the hue and cry as the rout ran 
 up the hillside, till the jay had been driven to 
 a safe distance. 
 
 Now and then the robin visits his wife at the 
 nest, and, I think, takes her a cherry ; but I get 
 no sight of any conjugal attentions on the part 
 of the wood- thrush, in whose nest are only three 
 eggs. Probably it is a second brood. 
 
 July 3. Both robins have disappeared, yet 
 no one has seen any harm befall them nor heard 
 
 -$ 66 &*> 
 
Three Tragical Bird-Romances 
 
 r 
 
 the outcry that would surely follow an attack. 
 There are no bird's-nesting boys in this local- 
 ity, and few, if any, house-cats. I climbed to 
 the deserted nest this evening, and could see no 
 signs of a struggle, nor were there any eggs 
 or remnants of any ; yet the bird had been sit- 
 ting several days. Did she find herself unable 
 to produce eggs, and therefore abandoned the 
 nest? It is a mysterious outcome of a queer 
 little bird-romance. 
 
 July 5. Father Wood-thrush never stays 
 close to his nest, and is rarely seen; but while 
 his mate is brooding, her golden mouth often 
 gasping for air during these hot, stagnant 
 days, he sits in a tree not far away and sings 
 almost continuously, and evidently to her alone. 
 It is not a loud, rollicking song, such as he still 
 sometimes gives in the cool of the morning, but 
 a low, fond and exceedingly melodious chant 
 a perfect lullaby, altogether outside of the pub- 
 lic repertoire of this virtuoso of the woods. It 
 is in four parts, the intervals five pulse-beats 
 in length. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 July 14. The wood-thrusK, presumably, is 
 rejoicing in success; at any rate three young 
 ones are squirming about in the bottom of the 
 nest this morning. A friend wishes to photo- 
 graph them, so this afternoon we parted the 
 twigs in front of the nest and clipped off some 
 of them to expose it to view more clearly, the 
 familiar bird paying very little attention to our 
 tinkering. 
 
 July 15. Last night fell dark, and at mid- 
 night a storm of wind and rain beat upon us 
 for three or four hours. The photographer 
 came over about nine o'clock, but when we went 
 to the thrush's nest it was empty. No commo- 
 tion had been heard, such as an owl or black- 
 snake would arouse; and there were no marks 
 of violence about the nest indicating that it 
 had been harmed by the tempest or by a ma- 
 rauder. Yet the home was desolate. I knew 
 of a precisely similar and unexplained disaster 
 overtaking the brood of a vireo last year. 
 
 These ever-recurring tragedies lend a tinge 
 of awe and sadness to all nature-study. After 
 
 *>$ 68 
 
Three Tragical Bird-Romances 
 
 r 
 
 careful consideration I have concluded that only 
 one nestful of birds out of seven, on the aver- 
 age, is saved to reach maturity. Greater than 
 protection for adult birds is the necessity of 
 guarding the cradles of their young. 
 
 ^69 
 
A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 A MONG the tiny ocean tramps that drift 
 f\ along the Gulf Stream into our north- 
 * ^" ern harbors during September days, 
 when the water gets warm and the weather is 
 calm, none is more strange and lovely than the 
 Portuguese man-o'-war. It is an iridescent 
 bubble, courtesying to the ripples as the tide 
 bears it along, while flashes of prismatic color 
 sweep over its surface with every movement of 
 the azure mirror upon which it dances so gayly. 
 
 Under the smiling skies that arch Antillean 
 seas you may behold fleets of them like convoys 
 of tiny toy boats painted in rainbow hues, and 
 after great storms they are sometimes thrown 
 by tens of thousands on the coral beaches in 
 piles and windrows that seem globules of deli- 
 cately tinted glass or huge, irregular pearls, 
 gleaming in purple and green, carmine and 
 gold. 
 
 *$ 70 5 
 
A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 Now, this exquisite gem of the ocean appar- 
 ently a creature of foam and sunlight, a flower 
 blushing in the desert of the mighty deep- is 
 not only a living and possibly sentient animal, 
 but a most curious and complicated community 
 or family: a ship and crew in one, needing no 
 commander, working always in harmony, voy- 
 aging ever, and, like a privateer, protecting 
 its radiant structure and gathering supplies 
 as it goes. Nobody knows who gave it the 
 name " man-o'-war," nor whether he understood 
 the truth, but it was a happy thought. In 
 classification it ranks as a free-swimming com- 
 pound hydrozoan of the order Siphonophora, 
 a group intermediate between jelly-fishes and 
 polyps. The genus is Physalia, and our 
 wanderer Physalia pelagica. It consists of a 
 unison of four parts, or kinds of parts, which 
 some naturalists regard as separate classes of 
 united individuals (or "persons"), and others 
 as the organs or appendages of a single ani- 
 mal. The reasons why the latter seems the 
 better view are too technical for statement 
 here, but a plain account may be given which 
 
 ^ 71 ^ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 will enable anyone to understand the creature 
 who will lift a physalia from the waves in a 
 bucket and then gently pour it into a glass jar 
 or aquarium of sea water, and so preserve the 
 delicate animal alive, to be examined at leisure. 
 It will not bear touching. 
 
 It will then be observed that the gaudy float 
 sometimes eight inches long and three high 
 is a pear-shaped bladder-like thing, tensely in- 
 flated. It is pinched along its top into a brill- 
 iant crest, and from its lower side, mainly to- 
 ward the larger (front) end, depend a great 
 number of filmy appendages. 
 
 This float is in reality a sac filled with air, 
 which enters it through an opening in the 
 pointed end. The sac, although seeming as 
 thin, and in parts as diaphanous, as a bubble, 
 has a double wall that is, it is one sac inside 
 of another ; and it abounds in muscular fibers, 
 by which the animal can vary its shape, con- 
 tracting the sac at will into creases and open- 
 ing or closing the air door; and the beautiful 
 creature, when young, is able by this means, 
 when rain falls or the winds blow cold, to expel 
 
Portugese Man-'o-War 
 
A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 the air from its float and sink below the surface 
 to warm and quiet levels until better weather 
 recalls it to bask in the sunlight and sail upon 
 serener seas. Thus this man-o'-war may be 
 called the submarine boat of nature's miniature 
 navy a primitive model for our Hollands and 
 Maxims. But with age comes stiffness; and 
 the older ones must drift at the surface and 
 take the storm as well as the sunshine, while 
 the youngsters " go below " to disport them- 
 selves at ease. 
 
 It is a lover of warmth, and those seen along 
 northern coasts are venturesome vagrants who 
 have wandered up the Gulf Stream and then 
 been blown astray. They are occasionally seen 
 in New York Bay, but are more common from 
 Long Island to Newport. 
 
 Innumerable pigment cells give a permanent 
 color to much of the sac, rich blues changing in 
 places to rosy tints; but, besides this, the sur- 
 face is striated or scratched with exceedingly 
 fine straight lines, crossing each other at right 
 angles, forming prisms thousands to the inch 
 which break up the light and cause it to play 
 o$ 73 &* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 over the surface with that same shifting irides- 
 cence which illumines so beautifully the nacre- 
 ous lining of shells (mother-of-pearl) and the 
 surface of ancient glass. 
 
 Seen under a microscope, this striated coat 
 glistens with a magnificent display of silvery 
 light. Furthermore, the pointed end (which is 
 the overhanging stern of this fairy boat) may 
 be lifted, or depressed, or turned a little to one 
 side, so that it acts partly like a rudder and 
 partly like an after-sail, apparently enabling 
 the mariner to steer a course, even somewhat up 
 into the wind. I say " apparently," because in 
 truth the " steering," no doubt, is a mechanical 
 result of the pressure of the breeze together 
 with the dragging back of the flat trailing ten- 
 tacles, sometimes fifty feet long when fully 
 stretched out, which tips up the stern and, in 
 a strong wind, " brings the ship to," head on 
 to the gale. Mariners, when hard pressed by a 
 gale, sometimes rig and trail astern a " drag " 
 for precisely the same purpose. 
 
 This float that we have been considering is a 
 single organ whose sole service it is to carry the 
 -74 $+ 
 
A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 rest about, and it is the first part of the animal 
 to develop at birth. This birth may be from 
 an egg an almost invisible globule voided into 
 the sea to take its chances of escape from a 
 thousand perils long enough to develop into a 
 tiny sac and gradually to perfect its system 
 of appendages. More often, probably, the 
 young physalia begins as a bud attached to one 
 of the reproductive appendages of its mother 
 and does not break off to start on an inde- 
 pendent existence until it is pretty well ad- 
 vanced in growth. This is so jelly-fish-like that 
 some naturalists say the float is a true medusa. 
 I have italicized the word " probably " in the 
 sentence above, not to throw doubt on the state- 
 ment, but to emphasize the fact that no female 
 physalia has been observed : all the specimens we 
 see, apparently, are males. 
 
 As it becomes larger there gradually grow 
 from the lower surface of its outer wall four 
 pairs or groups of appendages or associated 
 organs which have been named zooids, or poly- 
 pites. These vary in form and in function, 
 for in this society there is complete division 
 
frhe Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 of labor fixed individualization, which is never 
 transgressed because each member is capable 
 of but a single kind of work. 
 
 Three kinds of zooids may be discerned. The 
 first to attract the eye are the long and writh- 
 ing tentacles which trail like living thick-edged 
 ribbons beneath the float. Some are contracted 
 into tight brown ringlets, others crinkled, 
 others hanging loose and long. Their elas- 
 ticity is enormous, so that when the wind is 
 strong they may trail thirty or fifty feet behind 
 a physalia of large size, forming what sailors 
 know as a " wind anchor " against drifting 
 ashore and causing the little ship to " heave to," 
 as has been explained. The business of these 
 scores of long, sensitive, contractile tentacles 
 is to find and seize the prey upon which this 
 man-o'-war subsists. This food consists of 
 small, juicy larvae of shellfish of every kind, 
 fragile oceanic relatives of the shrimp, tiny 
 fishes, and anything else small and soft. 
 
 The instant such an unfortunate swims 
 against the invisible nets of this Medusa of the 
 sea, the tentacles cling and wind about it, and 
 
A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 from them burst hundreds of exquisitely sharp, 
 thread-like and barbed darts (until then hidden 
 in pockets opened by a touch), which penetrate 
 the victim's flesh and carry into it a fiery poison 
 (perhaps formic acid) that benumbs the nerves 
 and paralyzes effort. 
 
 Then the tentacles begin to contract, and 
 slowly draw the captive up into the living 
 thicket beneath the float, where it comes into 
 contact with shorter and broader tentacles bear- 
 ing flask-shaped bodies, whese pores are filled 
 with the equivalent of gastric juice. I have 
 seen a physalia kill and lift to its " mouths " a 
 fish longer than its own float. 
 
 These feeding organs gradually absorb and 
 digest the nutritive part of the prey and send it 
 circulating, in the place of blood, throughout 
 the space between the walls of the float and up 
 and down the interior of every pendent organ, 
 and so the whole is nourished impartially. 
 There are large and small feeders, each with 
 highly colored tentacles of its own, and some of 
 them, according to Prof. Alexander Agassiz, 
 seem also to perform a respiratory function. 
 *> 77 j 
 
The .Wit of the WM 
 
 r 
 
 The stinging cells which serve to render help- 
 less its prey are also the defense of the physalia. 
 They are the batteries of guns of this Portu- 
 guese man-o'-war, and cause it to be avoided 
 by many fishes and other animals that might 
 otherwise like to eat it. If you should put your 
 hand into this tangle you would quickly with- 
 draw it, red and smarting almost as if you had 
 thrust it into flame. 
 
 Big things like whales and turtles gulp down 
 the physalias, but even the green turtle, which 
 is fond of them, is often rendered almost blind 
 by the stings inflicted upon its lidless eyes ; and 
 Professor Mayer says that the loggerhead in- 
 variably shuts its eyes when it seizes one. 
 Nevertheless, extraordinary as it may appear, 
 certain small fishes habitually hide themselves 
 beneath this fiery veil from their worse enemies 
 without ; they go and come after their own food, 
 accompany the physalia as it travels, and live 
 amid its tentacles as a refuge. Yet, for many 
 of them, it is only a leaping from the ashes into 
 the fire, for every now and then their protector 
 seizes and consumes one of the panic-stricken 
 
A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 flock, whether as payment for " protection " 
 or pour encourager les autres you may decide 
 for yourself. 
 
 A third sort of zooid, hanging like the others 
 in bunches attached to the float by a single cen- 
 tral stem, comprises those whose function is 
 reproductive. These are shaped like Indian 
 clubs and have purple walls and a creamy inte- 
 rior. Like all the other appendages, they are 
 in continual motion, waving about, writhing, 
 contracting and dilating with the eternal rest- 
 lessness of the sea itself, and ever the rainbow 
 lights shift and glide beneath the silvery sheen. 
 
 Such is the structure and history of this ele- 
 gant creature, which seems as fragile as if 
 blown of thin glass and draped with gossamer, 
 yet survives the beating of gales and the tur- 
 moil of the billows. It has many exquisite filmy 
 relatives in the warmer seas, some of which are 
 frequently met with even on the coasts of New 
 England. 
 
 Buzzard's and Narragansett bays, indeed, 
 having a southern opening, receive numbers of 
 these and other tropical visitors every season. 
 
 ^ 79 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 All are less conspicuous than the physalia, be- 
 cause more transparent and colorless, but they 
 are more fairy-like in delicacy. Instead of a 
 big crested float they have one or more small 
 floats, made buoyant in some cases by a filling 
 of an oily substance. An exquisite example is 
 Nanomia. Another is Vellela, which lifts from 
 its purplish, raft-like disk a triangular sail by 
 which to trim its course to the breeze. 
 
 Of the latter, also a siphonophore, Prof. A. 
 G. Mayer gives the following description in his 
 valuable " Seashore Life " : 
 
 " Vellela mutica is an exquisite creature rarely 
 seen along our [northern] coasts, but it occurs 
 in great swarms in the tropical Atlantic. The 
 body is an oblong disk about four inches long, 
 and deep blue-green in color. The upper side 
 of the disk is occupied by the chambered, gas- 
 filled float, which is chitinous and gives rise to 
 a sail-like crest. On the under side of the disk 
 we find a large central feeding-mouth sur- 
 rounded on all sides by numerous little mouths 
 and reproductive polypites. Near the outer 
 edge of the under side of the disk there is a 
 ^ 80 So* 
 
'A Tiny Man-o'-War 
 
 r 
 
 row of long blue tentacles. Large numbers of 
 little jelly-fishes are constantly budding off from 
 the sides of the reproductive polypites and 
 swimming away in the water; but their further 
 development is unknown. 
 
 " Porpita linnaeana is related to Vellela, but 
 is smaller, being only about one inch in diame- 
 ter; also the disk is flat and circular, and there 
 is no sail-like ridge to the float. When seen 
 in the water it appears as a deep blue circle, 
 while the chambered float at the center glistens 
 with a beautiful greenish iridescence. Under- 
 neath we find feeding polypites and tentacles 
 very much as in Vellela. Porpita is rare along 
 our coast, but between Cuba and South Caro- 
 lina it is sometimes so abundant as to fleck the 
 ocean for miles with specks of brilliant blue." 
 
 None of these wanderers, probably, ever sur- 
 vives our winter, and few, if any, escape it by 
 returning to the Gulf Stream, against whose 
 current they could make little headway if they 
 tried* 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 IT was not a wooden toy made in imitation 
 of a serpent, like one of those unpleasant 
 Japanese things ; nor a cane with a handle 
 carved like a snake's head; nor a cobra-hiding 
 bamboo-tube, such as Hindoo assassins use, but 
 simply a but wait a bit. 
 
 Helen came into the house one day from 
 the other side of the creek, looking much dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 " I have seen a copperhead," she stated, as 
 she set down her berry basket. 
 
 " Nonsense ! There are no copperheads here ; 
 and you wouldn't know one if you saw it, any- 
 how," said I. 
 
 "Wouldn't I? Perhaps I didn't learn any- 
 thing about a copperhead in New Jersey the 
 other day ! " 
 
 I could not gainsay this remark. She had 
 been with a botanical party in the suburbs of 
 <*$ 82 5 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 r 
 
 Newark, and in poking about a brushy pas- 
 ture had observed a large snake glide out of 
 one side of a tuft of huckleberry bushes as she 
 placed her foot into the other. Both halted and 
 looked at one another, the sunlight glancing 
 off the girl's chestnut hair, but reflecting no 
 such reddish intensity as from the flat and bur- 
 nished head the snake held erect, while it calmly 
 awaited her next movement. 
 
 " A copperhead ! " she called out, and half a 
 dozen young men rushed gallantly forward 
 and crushed the creature; a copperhead sel- 
 dom runs. 
 
 The professor told the class that she was 
 right. He pried open the mouth, showed them 
 the poison fangs hanging like curved thorns 
 from the upper jaws, and explained that it was 
 a true pit-viper a rattlesnake, except that it 
 had no rattles, but only a horny tip to the tail; 
 a peculiarity that allied it with the moccasins 
 of Southern swamps the two forming the genus 
 Ancistrodon. 
 
 Helen remembered this field-lesson very well; 
 and when she added that the snake she had just 
 
Ihe Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 seen was long enough to reach from rut to rut 
 of the wood road across which it lay, I was 
 bound to believe her identification. 
 
 " What did you do? " I asked. 
 
 "Do? I stiffened with fright, and just 
 looked at him as he lifted his head six or eight 
 inches from the ground and dared me to disturb 
 him. I turned back and crept home a quarter 
 of a mile around." 
 
 " Why didn't you kill him? " 
 
 " I had nothing to do it with, and he looked 
 so fierce I thought he'd leap at me if I stayed 
 there an instant longer." 
 
 " But those snakes never attack anybody out 
 of their reach," I said. 
 
 " So they say. But I didn't care to take the 
 chances. A garter-snake rushed at me the other 
 day, and why shouldn't a copperhead? " 
 
 " Oh, the little, harmless serpents have to 
 bluff like sixty to make up for their real weak- 
 ness; but the poisonous ones know their power 
 and don't bluster. Next time you must take a 
 good, long stick with you. I'll get you one 
 now." 
 
 +$ 84 ^ 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 i 
 
 A straight young pig-nut was selected forth- 
 with, cut down, and trimmed. 
 
 It was a beautiful wand straight and some 
 eight feet long much farther than any snake 
 could strike, for the animal never jumps, as 
 popularly understood, but only darts forth its 
 head perhaps half the length of the body, and 
 it was tough and lithe, so that its pliant tip 
 would lie flat along the ground like a flail 
 an ideal snake-stick. 
 
 A serpent's backbone is extremely brittle. A 
 light, sharp blow will almost invariably break 
 it, fatally injure the spinal cord and render the 
 animal helpless, and a second blow on the head 
 finish it. Yet so sluggish is the nervous life 
 and so intense the muscular energy that the 
 creature will often seem to remain alive espe- 
 cially toward its tail for a considerable time. 
 This is partly reflex energy, and partly nothing 
 more than the mechanical action resulting from 
 unequal changes in the tension of the muscles 
 following death. These muscles are small and 
 extremely numerous, controlling each of the 
 many ribs ; and as they stiffen and loosen irregu- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 larly they move the slender hinder end of the 
 body with an appearance of life; and so the 
 country boys will tell you that no snake will 
 die until sundown. 
 
 I was returning home along the same wood- 
 land road the next day, when my eye caught a 
 peculiar quiver and became aware of a narrow, 
 tapering object as large as a lead pencil, and of 
 the richest burnt sienna red color, right beside 
 my foot. I wasn't jumping to make a record 
 so it is not worth while to state precisely how 
 much ground was cleared in the bound that fol- 
 lowed, but it was considerable. Then I looked 
 back. There lay the tail slowly vibrating from 
 side to side like that of an angry cat; and be- 
 yond it could be distinguished a sinuous body, 
 dull reddish-yellow, very thick in the middle, 
 and tapering toward each end, with angular 
 dusky blotches forming a zigzag pattern along 
 its sides. Unquestionably this was a " pilot," 
 as people here in the Hudson Valley call the 
 copperhead. 
 
 It is said to be the peculiar distinction of 
 this snake that it will turn and bite you as you 
 ^ 86 ^ 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 r 
 
 pass without any preliminary movement or 
 warning. But this specimen did nothing of 
 the sort, nor did he even draw himself into a 
 coil, but simply lay still, with upraised head and 
 attentive eye, in which I thought I saw a cynical 
 glare, as if the creature might be saying to 
 himself : " Well, if I was a great animal like 
 that I wouldn't jump at the sight of as small 
 a thing as I am." 
 
 The path was one we continually used ; often 
 after dark. That this reptile must be put out 
 of the way was certain, but how? 
 
 The reader may deem this much ado about 
 nothing ; but there is to me, as to most persons, 
 I believe, a peculiar terror in approaching a 
 poisonous snake, an unexplained, yet real repug- 
 nance felt for all reptiles, originating, no doubt, 
 in the frequent inability to distinguish at a 
 glance between venomous and non-venomous 
 kinds, and strengthened by heredity. 
 
 This feeling must have arisen in a primitive 
 time when our forefathers dwelt in the jungle 
 a tropical jungle, one must believe where many 
 serpents were dangerous, so that it behooved 
 ^ 87 fo> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 every one to halt and scan a snake carefully 
 the instant it was seen (and that is not, you may 
 be sure, until after it has seen you) to make 
 sure it was not a cobra or something of the 
 sort. Such a habit and dread impressed upon 
 children as their first lesson in the cautions of 
 woodcraft, would become ingrained into the very 
 brain of the race as an almost instinctive fear. 
 By no amount of knowledge or philosophy can 
 I rid myself of this gruesome inheritance. I 
 have known good naturalists who have said the 
 same thing, and confessed that it made a serious 
 drawback to the pleasure of their rambles. 
 
 Others, on the contrary, handle the bad ones, 
 cautiously, but calmly, and play with the harm- 
 less ones with no more repugnance than if they 
 were fishes or salamanders or frogs, cold and 
 reptilian things, by the way, that it does not 
 disturb me to handle. It is a curious coincidence 
 that most of these fearless persons are in terror 
 of spiders! 
 
 To be reasonably " afraid of snakes " is the 
 safer state of mind, however, in the eastern part 
 of this country, where every rocky hill west of 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 r 
 
 the Connecticut River is likely to harbor rattle- 
 snakes, or copperheads, or both. The rugged 
 hills along the Hudson abound in them; and 
 they occasionally come into our paths and little 
 clearings in the woods on the rough hillside and 
 would lie basking in the sun; that is, we or 
 others frequently saw them, and usually were 
 able to kill them, for they seemed indifferent 
 about moving, though they can run swiftly 
 when they please. Their hunting and wander- 
 ing about is done mainly at night, as with most 
 terrestrial animals. 
 
 One day a party of young ladies from Vas- 
 sar College came across the river for a day's 
 ramble in the woods, and encountered a hand- 
 some snake, about eighteen inches long, lying 
 stretched right at our steps (no one was at home 
 that day) as if it owned the place. They gath- 
 ered about it and one of the girls stooped down 
 and began to stroke it, first with a little stick 
 and then with her bare hand. But when my 
 neighbor came along, and, keeping his wits 
 about him, had discreetly got the fair enthu- 
 siast out of harm's way, he set off a " Vassar 
 
 *$ 89 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 yell," as if he had touched an electric button, 
 by the remark : " That's a half -grown copper- 
 head!" 
 
 Another time I saw a lady stumble over a small 
 copperhead, and positively disentangle it from 
 her dancing feet without being bitten. Prob- 
 ably this snake was as much disconcerted as 
 the other had been soothed. 
 
 These incidents illustrate what you can do 
 with even a rattlesnake sometimes; but it is a 
 mighty unsafe experiment to indulge. You 
 can make no bargain with a viper! Which 
 brings me back to my snake in the grass the 
 first I had ever encountered. 
 
 Certainly this copperhead must be dispatched 
 but how? 
 
 I could see no club anywhere near. I had in 
 my pocket a new knife which had lately been 
 given to me with a lovely desire to please, 
 but very poor judgment in cutlery. The first 
 time I had used it the blade had turned up as if 
 it were tin. Nevertheless, with it I gradually 
 hacked off a stout oak sapling a very fair 
 snake-stick. 
 
 *$ 90 
 
My Snake- Stick 
 
 r 
 
 The reptile quietly watched my actions until 
 he saw that I had a weapon and was going for 
 him, when he started off. I darted forward and 
 a couple of vigorous whacks broke his back; 
 and, turning him over until the ugly black spots 
 on his yellow belly were uppermost, I tossed him 
 far into the bushes, and gave thanks that he was 
 out of the way of the children who played up 
 and down the lane; and of the little white dog, 
 who, however, was afterward bitten on the toe 
 and nearly died. 
 
 A few days later the ladies of our camp 
 were going along that same woodland road to 
 town one morning, when they suddenly came 
 upon two large copperheads stretched out in the 
 middle of the track. Their startled halt and 
 nervous grip of snake-sticks none of them ven- 
 tured out now without snake-sticks accom- 
 panied by the thought that there was a battle 
 to be fought, were followed by the discovery 
 that both were dead killed by some other ram- 
 bler, as the broken boughs and stones lying 
 about testified. Of course it had never occurred 
 to him to get rid of the bodies as a matter of 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 good taste, or because they might possibly 
 shock nervous people. The average rustic is 
 not built in that considerate way. We learnt 
 afterward that a man had encountered these 
 reptiles here as he came along in the early morn- 
 ing. One was coiled up, he related, and the 
 other was circling about it. They paid no at- 
 tention to him, and after watching them a while 
 he destroyed them. 
 
 It is probable that these two snakes were fe- 
 males, about to give birth to their young. The 
 progeny, usually no more than five to seven in 
 number, are not produced from eggs, as in the 
 case of most harmless snakes, but, some time 
 in September, are born alive and very much 
 alive, for they exhibit after a few hours all 
 the activity and animosity of their parents, 
 coiling and striking at anything which threat- 
 ens them, with complete knowledge of how to 
 use their fangs. When hard pressed, however, 
 they will retreat for safety into the mouth of 
 the mother, to reappear when the coast is 
 clear. 
 
 After that experience none of us, men or 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 | 
 
 women, went anywhere in the woods without 
 carrying a snake-stick. 
 
 This copperhead, or red adder, is reputed to 
 be a lover of dry lands. In the northern part 
 of his range, which reaches eastward to the 
 Connecticut River and northward to the Cat- 
 skills and follows the Appalachian ridges south- 
 westward, his proper home is on the wild 
 mountains, where he makes a den among the 
 rocks. 
 
 Whether it was really a " headquarters," in- 
 habited by a regular colony of copperheads, as 
 has been known to be the habit of rattlesnakes, 
 or whether it was just a gathering for hiberna- 
 tion in company, as is the custom of many kinds 
 of snakes, I do not know; but something very 
 like a den was discovered a few years after. 
 
 We had lived on the hillside half a dozen years 
 and had seen and heard of a few serpents near 
 us every year. Meanwhile two or three other 
 houses had been built in the woods on the ridge, 
 and some peat-bogs had been drained and turned 
 into market-gardens near us. All these occupa- 
 tions had been accompanied by the death of a 
 <*? 93 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 good many copperheads, and we began to think 
 we were really getting rid of them when some 
 workmen on a neighbor's house suspected their 
 presence at a certain spot among the ledges 
 and fallen rocks, and were told to spend an hour 
 of their time daily in hunting them out. This 
 was toward the first of April, when the after- 
 noon warmed the sheltered stones considerably, 
 and enticed them to the surface. They were 
 found one by one in crevices under leaves, be- 
 neath loose rocks, and sometimes out in the sun- 
 shine drowsy and inactive, so that it was an easy 
 matter to kill them, and forty-four of various 
 sizes were destroyed before the place seemed 
 empty. This was within a hundred yards of the 
 famous summer-cottage " Slabsides " of Mr. 
 John Burroughs ; and his path to our spring, as 
 well as my road in and out to the highway, lay 
 right along the base of these danger-haunted 
 rocks ! 
 
 But the people who dwell in the rough coun- 
 try between the Hudson and the Blue Ridge 
 have been alongside of this danger all their life, 
 and lose no sleep over it, which shows not only 
 <*> 94 
 
s 
 
 &JD 
 
 I 
 
 ^o 
 
 < 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 r 
 
 that men grow accustomed to peril, but that in 
 this case the peril is not really great, for it 
 is evident that, at least in the daytime, the 
 snake is not at all aggressive, though able and 
 willing to fight when attacked or provoked ; and 
 that reminds me of the experience of Mrs. Tom 
 Murphy, who lived in a log-cabin in the woods 
 about a mile up Black Creek. 
 
 " Wan day," as she told Helen, " I stepped 
 out o' my doore and there on top of a rock fer- 
 ninst the well lay a pilot all curled up, and the 
 childers all playing close by without a wan of 
 'em noticin' the baste. I let a yell out o' me, 
 and I picked up the first thing handy, a shovel, 
 'n whacked the shnake over the head, 'n he 
 sthruck me hand, an' I knew thin I was gone. 
 I threw the baste into the brush, and then called 
 the childers 'n run into the cabin. I was want- 
 in' to die as daycent as maybe, and I wint and 
 lay down on the bed, biddin' the childers all 
 good-by and lavin' word with 'em for the ould 
 man at his wurrk in the ice-house. Thin I sint 
 'em all out again so they shouldn't see me in 
 me agonies. 
 
 *>$ 95 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 " I lay there all straight out, as if I was a 
 corpse at a foine wake, wid me hands folded 
 proper, awaitin' to die, and wanst in a while the 
 young wans 'd come in and say : ' Are ye dead 
 yit, mamma? ' 'nd I'd say: ' Not yit.' And- 
 wad ye believe it? I lay there more'n two 
 hours, composin' meself and praying to the Vir- 
 gin, and I niver died wanst! Then I said to 
 meself : ' It's an ould fool you are, Mrs. Mur- 
 phy,' and I got up." 
 
 But all this information as to the manners 
 and customs of this lurking danger of the north- 
 ern woods was gained long after the occurrence 
 which I started out to tell much more briefly 
 namely, how we verified Helen's assertion that 
 she knew a copperhead when she saw it; and, 
 secondarily, how we lost faith in a theory. The 
 theory was that this is a dry-land snake exclu- 
 sively. Compared with its cousin, the black 
 water moccasin, it is; and down South they 
 distinguish it as the upland moccasin, and look 
 out for it in the cottonfields where it hunts 
 for mice. But in our region we learned that 
 the tribe regularly migrates from the stony 
 *>$ 96 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 r 
 
 hills, where it spends the winter, to the swamps 
 and river-courses and meadows, where it passes 
 the summer and finds its food abundant; and 
 May and October are the months when it makes 
 its migratory journeys and is most often seen 
 or felt. But at that time, relying upon the 
 books, we felt safe along the creek, where vari- 
 ous water-loving snakes, as the racers, were not 
 uncommon. 
 
 One afternoon we were all down at this stream, 
 where we had an old skiff, so leaky that Helen 
 said she always felt like a criminal when she 
 was using it out on bail. 
 
 The creek was obstructed just below the land- 
 ing by a fallen tree. Its broad disk of up- 
 turned roots was reared in the air near our bank, 
 while its trunk extended clear across the stream. 
 If it could be broken our boat might float a 
 long distance beyond it. 
 
 So one day Helen paddled me out to it in 
 the boat, and I pulled off shoes and stockings, 
 and scrambled out upon the old log to examine 
 into the matter. I was walking upward along 
 the trunk toward the roots, when at a cry I 
 + 97 So* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 glanced back to see the girl pointing in terror 
 to where, just ahead, a great copperhead lay 
 festooned in rich golden undulations along the 
 topmost rim of the pile of roots. The eyes 
 that are really red, but looked black above the 
 cream-white lips that hid his fangs but dis- 
 played the forked flame of his tongue were 
 fixed upon me, and slow, wave-like wrinklings 
 crept along his thick, burnished, heavily scaled 
 sides, which were flattened and met in a ridge 
 upon the spine like a slated roof. 
 
 I stared back at him. Barefooted, weapon- 
 less and balancing myself upon that smooth 
 bridge, I had no means of fighting, yet was re- 
 solved not to let the venomous thing escape. 
 
 As I gazed the serpent, with no winding mo- 
 tion whatever such as we use in coiling a rope, 
 but slowly, by the contraction of every part at 
 once, drew himself into a heap, part coil, part 
 folds ; and there he lay a gorgeous pyramid 
 of coppery gold upon the very summit of the 
 earth-clogged roots, his head elevated, his ar- 
 mor reflecting the sunlight, and his daggers 
 drawn. 
 
 $ 98 5 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 r 
 
 " And to think," exclaimed the girl, under 
 her breath, " that yesterday I went wading close 
 by that stump, to get that cast-skin I took home 
 perhaps the old coat of this very snake ! 
 and came within an inch of clambering up 
 among those very roots ! And, look ! I can see 
 the hole where he lives." 
 
 Finding that this bravo of our jungle, ac- 
 customed to fear nothing the woods or water 
 contained (excepting only the all-conquering 
 blacksnakes), meant to stay upon his throne, 
 un alarmed by our presence, I asked a little 
 boy standing on the river-bank to fetch my 
 revolver from the camp. Then I went back 
 into the boat, put on my footgear and we went 
 ashore. 
 
 Taking the pistol in one hand and Helen's 
 well-tried snake-stick in the other, I crept 
 through the bushes to a position in the rear of 
 the old stump. The snake scrutinized the 
 movements with vigilant eyes, arched his neck 
 with increased ferocity, yet changed position 
 only far enough to face me well when I men- 
 aced him from the new direction. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 He was now above me and had so much the 
 advantage, if he dared to throw himself down, 
 that I confess to some timidity about going too 
 near, and therefore opened fire at the distance 
 of a dozen feet. 
 
 None but a long practiced hand can attain to 
 accuracy with a " bulldog " pistol, short and 
 heavy, and the first ball passed through the 
 shell of earth beneath the living target, caus- 
 ing it to shrink down into a much smaller mark. 
 The next bullet sang close beside his head, now 
 stretched out with rigid, slender neck though 
 even to the last moment his mouth was never 
 opened, as the pictures invariably represent it 
 to be in such contests as this. 
 
 The third bullet plowed a furrow across his 
 back and filled the animal with rage. Swing- 
 ing around like a flash of yellow light he thrust 
 his head straight toward me with vicious energy, 
 until more than half his body was extended be- 
 yond any support, and for an instant I thought 
 he meant to dart through the air like a living 
 lance. Dropping the revolver, I dashed for- 
 ward and with one blow of the snake-stick broke 
 + 100 
 
My Snake-Stick 
 
 f 
 
 his knotted neck, and the writhing, deadly coil 
 of red and gold stretched out, dropped like 
 a spent rocket into the water and slid away 
 down the rapids. 
 
 101 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 r 
 
 THE literal meaning of the expression to 
 advertise is " to turn toward," and we 
 have stuck to it much more closely than 
 to most words derived from a foreign language. 
 Every man who issues an advertisement tries 
 to turn your attention, if not your person and 
 pocket, to him and his wares. Now, in this sense, 
 a great many animals are truly advertisers, fol- 
 lowing primitive methods. 
 
 The first form of advertising was the one 
 still followed in barbarous countries and in some 
 of our rustic communities that of crying out 
 one's occupation, or wares, or whatever an- 
 nouncement is to be made. The voice of such 
 criers, alas ! is still to be heard in the land, and 
 strangers usually need to be told what the man 
 is saying ; but the crier's voice and the cadence 
 of the shout quickly become familiar to his cus- 
 tomary hearers. They are just putting an end 
 102 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 r 
 
 to one of the relics of this practice in London 
 by stopping the cry of the chimney-sweeps, 
 which is only a long wail, the original words of 
 which were long ago lost and forgotten; and 
 this very year I heard them in the old town of 
 Stirling, in Scotland, telling the people when 
 certain excursion trains left on the railway. 
 
 Another very early form of advertising, not 
 yet quite extinct, was the display of some sym- 
 bol of the business done, like the mortar and 
 pestle of the druggist, the uplifted hammer of 
 the goldsmith, or a more conventional symbol, 
 such as a green bough, to indicate a wine-shop 
 whence the proverb " Good wine needs no bush." 
 Now, one or the other, or both, of these meth- 
 ods are used by animals to make announcements 
 which they desire to publish. 
 
 These announcements mainly perhaps alto- 
 gether fall under the heads of information to 
 the evilly disposed or careless to " keep off," 
 warning to friends of danger ; challenge to the 
 prize ring; and desire for a mate. The mar- 
 riage advertisement, indeed, is one of the oldest 
 and most ubiquitous institutions in nature, in- 
 
 $ 103 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 stead of a modern notion, the product of news- 
 paper enterprise, as most of us consider it. 
 
 You see that I am leaving aside here the 
 varied utterances, tones and inflections by which 
 the higher animals really converse with one an- 
 other. That is speech, not advertising. And 
 I wish to add another prefatory word, though 
 perhaps it is needless namely, that of course 
 we must not suppose that the animals think of 
 these announcements in our sense of the word 
 " advertisement," but are moved by various im- 
 pulses, some instinctive, some physical, some ac- 
 cidental, even though they may desire to obtain 
 the effect they more usually succeed in getting 
 than do human advertisers. 
 
 Take the case of the rattlesnake. When he 
 shakes his castanets above the horrid coil where 
 deadly fangs await his enemy, he says as plainly 
 as the motto on Paul Jones's flag, " Don't tread 
 on me ! " All and sundry hear and heed. 
 
 He keeps quiet enough when not aroused by 
 
 fear. I remember camping once in a villainous 
 
 sage-brush desert in southern Idaho. I had 
 
 taken off my boots, put on a pair of moccasins, 
 
 ^ 104 ^ 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 r 
 
 and started toward a near-by stream for a pail 
 of water, when I almost stepped on a rattler, 
 which my light footfall had not awakened. I 
 sprang away and in an instant his rattle was 
 going, faster and faster, singing higher and 
 higher, as he saw me preparing to attack him. 
 He did his very best to let me know how danger- 
 ous he was, as he would have done if a deer, or 
 horse, or anything else he had reason to fear had 
 come near. 
 
 Animal advertising with this purpose, how- 
 ever, is more often addressed to the eye than 
 to the ear, and consists in the wearing and dis- 
 play, sometimes in moments of fear or defiance 
 only, often continuously, of a conspicuous 
 badge, which all the people of the woods recog- 
 nize as the sign of a creature not to be meddled 
 with with impunity. 
 
 The advertisement here takes the form usually 
 of some striking color-marking or badge; and 
 our American skunk has been a classic example 
 ever since Wallace spoke of its broad white 
 bands and bushy white tail. That tail is held 
 aloft as he marches through the grass or along 
 
 + 105 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 the road in the dusk, and cannot fail to be seen ; 
 and you bow before that flag with becoming 
 meekness or take the consequences ! 
 
 Another striking example, as familiar in Eu- 
 rope as is the skunk in America, is afforded by 
 the fire-bellied toad, which the Germans call 
 unke. Its upper parts are greenish-black, but 
 the under parts are conspicuously colored blu- 
 ish-black, with large, irregular red or flame-col- 
 ored patches. When one of these toads is sur- 
 prised on land, or roughly touched, it invariably 
 throws back its head, spreads its limbs outward 
 and upward, and curves up its whole body, so 
 that as much as possible of the bright red mark- 
 ings is displayed; and it remains in this posi- 
 tion until the danger has disappeared. 
 
 " In reality," says Gadow, " this is an exhibi- 
 tion of warning colors, to show the enemy what 
 a dangerous animal he would have to deal with. 
 The secretion of the skin is very poisonous, and 
 the fire-toads are thereby well protected. I know 
 of no creature which will eat or even harm 
 them. I have kept numbers in a large vivarium, 
 together with various snakes, water-tortoises, 
 
 <$ 106 5 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 f 
 
 and crocodiles, but for years the little fire- 
 bellies remained unmolested, although they 
 shared a pond in which no other frog or newt 
 could live without being eaten." 
 
 That such advertising of character and qual- 
 ity has proved serviceable to each race practic- 
 ing it is implied in the fact that it is most 
 strongly manifested in those of most decided 
 harmfulness in one way or another. 
 
 Among insects, for example, many are so 
 distasteful to birds that they go about in broad 
 daylight quite fearless of being snatched by the 
 fly-catchers which compel most insects to fly 
 abroad only under cover of night and hide 
 quietly during daylight hours. 
 
 In every case such nasty-tasting insects are 
 now brilliantly colored and are easily recog- 
 nized, which has been gradually brought about 
 through the fact that the brightest the most 
 quickly recognized, the best advertisers sur- 
 vived to perpetuate their kind with an ever-in- 
 creasing tendency toward more perfect protec- 
 tion, while the less well marked suffered acci- 
 dents. 
 
 *$ 107 &* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 One has to be very careful in treating a scien- 
 tific subject in this somewhat figurative style 
 not to give a wrong impression that is, not 
 to lead the reader to suppose that the changes 
 which have come about toward protective colora- 
 tion or other beneficial adaptation to its cir- 
 cumstances have been by intention on the part 
 of the animal itself. Hence it is dangerous to 
 say that the trademarks of such advertisers as 
 these last-named insects have been counterfeited. 
 
 Nevertheless, that in effect has happened ; and 
 many species of butterflies, beetles, etc., which 
 had no noxious qualities, are partaking of the 
 benefits of this color-protection by acquiring a 
 likeness to the bad ones, since birds avoid them 
 under the mistake that they are what their label 
 declares. 
 
 Advertisement of warning to other animals 
 that danger threatens may take the form of 
 peculiar cries, or of attitudes, or of a display 
 of colors or of parts of the body. Tell-tale snipe 
 are so called by gunners because the instant 
 they discover the sportsman they begin yelling 
 the news far and wide, arousing the whole marsh. 
 
 *$ 108 &* 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 f 
 
 Animals like wild sheep, which go in bands 
 about a rough country, are extremely watchful 
 of each other, and need only to see one of their 
 number in an attitude of attention, with head 
 up and ears pricked forward, to become suspi- 
 cious and ready for flight. The white-tailed 
 deer and pronghorn set their dazzling white 
 scuts erect when their suspicions are aroused, 
 and thus signal (you can see it half a mile away 
 on the plains) to every member of the band to 
 be cautious. 
 
 But the most numerous and striking of ani- 
 mal advertisements are those which, as has been 
 said, refer to mating. These are of two classes 
 the challenges and assembly calls of the males, 
 and the display of their qualities before the 
 females. 
 
 Marriage among the higher animals is in 
 many cases a mere seizure of the available fe- 
 males by compulsion and a holding of them by 
 force, and here it is mainly polygamous. Among 
 those which are not polygamous, but are con- 
 tent with a single mate for the season, the choice 
 is made by the female from such males as com- 
 
 $ 109 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 pete for her favor. Humanity has not greatly 
 departed from this natural plan. 
 
 In any case, competition decides the matter, 
 and this competition may be one in brute 
 strength or of milder qualities, such as attrac- 
 tiveness of shape, color, ornament or voice, or a 
 combination of these. 
 
 As the time of the year comes round when 
 mates are to be chosen, the would-be bride- 
 grooms of the first class issue their challenges 
 to all competitors. The alligators make the 
 tropical marshes resound with their hoarse bel- 
 lowings, and the stagnant pools boil as they 
 rush at one another, clashing their huge jaws 
 and lashing their mighty tails. The victor is 
 lord of the pool and of the horrid harem that 
 lurks among the reeds about its margin. 
 
 At the same season the lion roars out his 
 defiance to all other lions, saying : " Come and 
 conquer me if you can ; the prize of beauty 
 awaits you if you are better than I ! " Then 
 the moonlit sands are dyed with the blood of 
 these kings of the desert, and when the combat 
 is finished sleek golden-eyed queens steal lightly 
 
 *$ 110 S* 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 r 
 
 out of the shadows and fawn upon the victor of 
 the tournament, who to-morrow must again 
 fight for them in the arena or lose their allegi- 
 ance. 
 
 In northern forests, when the long sweet days 
 of Indian summer suffuse the air with golden 
 radiance, the bull moose and wapiti tell the world 
 the same story of desire. They publish it from 
 hilltop to hilltop in sonorous, bell-like calls that 
 summon eager contestants for these advertise- 
 ments never fail of an answer; and if the new- 
 comer can vanquish the old knight of the herd 
 the meek does are his. Many of the smaller 
 animals thus challenge and fight for supremacy. 
 The game-birds do so, and the drumming of our 
 grouse is an announcement of such purpose. 
 
 But milder measures prevail in the larger 
 part of animal society, where the beaux seek 
 to recommend themselves to the belles less by 
 prowess than by accomplishments. Their ad- 
 vertisement of a desire to marry is the putting 
 on of gayer dress, or the exhibition of their 
 graces and attractions. Even the " cold- 
 blooded " fishes (many of them, at least) glow 
 0$ HI 5*. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 with rosy color as the breeding season ap- 
 proaches. 
 
 But it is among birds that the display of col- 
 ors and ornaments to catch the female eye is 
 carried to its highest perfection. 
 
 " In the spring a livelier iris 
 Comes upon the burnished dove," 
 
 but it fades or perhaps wears away, as in the 
 case of the gaudy bobolink before the summer 
 is over. 
 
 In some cases wholly new and conspicuous 
 ornamental feathers come with the spring moult 
 and are not renewed in the fall, so that they seem 
 wholly for the purpose of aiding in courtship. 
 Then these glories of color and ornament are 
 displayed to the best advantage for the choice 
 of the coy hen-birds. For their admiration the 
 great peacock spreads his gorgeous tail, birds 
 of paradise wave their silken plumes in the 
 green half-light of leafy halls, and the hum- 
 mingbird flashes his gems among the flowers ; 
 and it is to woo their bird hearts and hands 
 <* 112 &+> 
 
Animals that Advertise 
 
 r 
 
 that the songsters chant their sweetest melodies, 
 or chirrup and whistle as best they may. 
 
 Now, it is not straining words to speak of 
 all these intentional displays of ability and 
 beauty as advertisements of the desire to marry 
 and the attractions each has to offer. And 
 naturalists say that the females deliberately 
 choose among the competitors, taking the best 
 one according to the standard of each species. 
 Thus the most brightly plumaged males, the 
 best singers, are given the greatest number of 
 chances to mate and perpetuate their race, and 
 to transmit their excellence to their offspring. 
 
 The result of this tendency to breed from the 
 strongest and best has been a steady increase 
 of such qualities and a steady growth in these 
 directions. Thus, say those to whom the theory 
 of sexual selection is sufficient to explain all 
 these things, have gradually come about all the 
 gay colors and all the brilliant songs of our 
 birds. 
 
Animals that Wear Disguises 
 
 r 
 
 ONE of our commonest birds is the whip- 
 poor-will, yet, though constantly heard, 
 he is rarely seen. This is because he 
 goes abroad only in the hours of darkness. 
 
 He does not seek security there by hiding, 
 but squats boldly upon a log. His plumage is 
 mottled gray and brown, like old bark, yet this 
 would not suffice to conceal him if he sat cross- 
 wise, as birds generally do, so he sits lengthwise, 
 and at once falls into the appearance of a stub 
 of a broken branch. He disguises himself as 
 a " bump on a log." 
 
 But some of his relatives in other parts of 
 the world do even better. Down in the Antilles 
 there is a goatsucker as all of this family have 
 long been called, though none really rob the 
 goats of their milk, and hence nightjar is a bet- 
 ter family name which is abroad during the 
 ^ 114 
 
Animals that Wear Disguises 
 
 r 
 
 day, flitting from stump to stump, for it 
 chooses only to alight upon dead stubs. The 
 instant it thinks itself observed it straightens 
 up, stiffens every muscle, and becomes to the eye 
 merely a spike or splinter of its perch. 
 
 A large Australian relative, the " more-pork," 
 does this trick so well and quickly that you may 
 almost touch the bird with your cane in point- 
 ing it out to a friend, yet the chances are that 
 he will be unable to see it in fact, more than 
 one person has placed his hand upon a more- 
 pork perched upon some fence, without sus- 
 pecting that it was anything more than a knot, 
 until he touched it. 
 
 Both these birds maintain their rigid dis- 
 guises as long as any reason for alarm remains, 
 and few lose their lives from hawks. 
 
 An African member of the family is very con- 
 spicuous when it flies about in the dusk by rea- 
 son of a long, bright feather streaming out 
 from its wings, and it would be in constant 
 peril of discovery and destruction when at rest 
 during the day did it not hide these telltale 
 plumes. So it rests in the grass and lifts its 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 two long wing feathers straight up, where they 
 nod and quiver among the heads of the grasses. 
 
 A fish whose name is out of my memory at 
 this moment (but that doesn't matter), has its 
 fins and tail prolonged into queer ragged 
 fringes which would give it a most shredded, 
 disreputable appearance when out of water or 
 swimming in a clear place; but it never does 
 swim naturally in a clear place, but dwells in 
 the midst of floating seaweed, and so disguises 
 itself as a part of the wavering vegetation about 
 it that its enemies must search very carefully to 
 find it. 
 
 It is with the same prudence that the slender 
 and defenseless pipefish pretends to be a tall 
 sea-plant, standing almost continuously on his 
 head among the eel grass, where he becomes 
 simply another blade in the little forest of the 
 seashore. 
 
 The bittern does the same thing when, fearing 
 discovery, he stands with outstretched neck and 
 bill pointing straight toward the sky, as motion- 
 less as a statue as long as you keep quiet. He 
 has taken advantage of his stripes imitating the 
 
Animals that Wear Disguises 
 
 r 
 
 upright rushes and their shadows, and so has 
 disguised himself as a bit of marsh, and if you 
 walk slowly around him he will turn as if on a 
 pivot and so make no alteration either in his 
 attitude or aspect. In consequence many a 
 silent bittern is never seen at all. 
 
 In a somewhat similar way to the seaweed- 
 haunting fishes mentioned above, the South 
 American river turtle called matamata has ac- 
 quired a disguise which enables it not only to 
 escape its enemy the alligator, but to secure its 
 own prey of fish and little reptiles. Its shell 
 is dark-colored and rough, so that it is imper- 
 ceptible among the aquatic vegetation amid 
 which the animal lurks, and all over its brown- 
 black head and long neck, outstretched and 
 ready to seize its victims, grow a multitude of 
 strings and knobs of dark skin which so pre- 
 cisely imitate a plant stem that often a fish 
 will swim unsuspectingly right into its jaws. 
 
 The great cayman himself may be said to 
 assume the appearance of a knobbed and slimy 
 drift log as he lies on the mud of the river mar- 
 gin or floats motionless at the surface of the 
 
 $ 117 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 water, and not only has many an animal walked 
 or swam within his reach without a thought of 
 his presence, but man himself is frequently de- 
 ceived. 
 
 Very different in circumstances, but the same 
 in intent, is the disguise of the sloth as a bunch 
 of " old man's beard " moss, for as he hangs 
 after his manner from the underside of a limb 
 in a Brazilian forest, his coarse gray hair so 
 perfectly resembles the mossy draping of the 
 trees that no casual eye would suspect that a 
 living animal was there in place of it. 
 
 It is among insects, crabs, etc., that the most 
 perfect disguises are found, as also are the 
 most perfect cases of " mimicry," by which term 
 we may distinguish those resemblances which 
 imitate some other creature for which it is to 
 an animal's advantage to be mistaken. 
 
 Occasionally in late summer, when my eyes 
 are fixed, perhaps in idle gaze, upon a bush, 
 I am startled to see a twig suddenly walk off, 
 and thus I find I have been looking at a walking- 
 stick insect without seeing it. This is a relative 
 of the grasshopper which is drawn out until 
 
 +$ 118 & 
 
L W. Brownell, Phot. 
 
 A Twig-like Walking-stick Insect 
 
Animals that Wear Disguises 
 
 $ 
 
 its body, gray or light brown in color, looks 
 much like a stick from two to six inches long, 
 and its legs are prolonged into wiry appendages 
 equally dry and twig-like. In the tropics the 
 walking-sticks are large, varied and numerous, 
 and Alfred Russel Wallace tells of one which he 
 found in the East Indies whose body was covered 
 by little greenish excrescences that perfectly 
 resembled a kind of wood moss common on the 
 trees there, so much so that even the sharp-eyed 
 Dyaks were completely deceived. These dry 
 stick-like insects walk slowly about the twigs of 
 trees, feeding upon the juices of the bark, and 
 have no means of defense against nor escape 
 from birds, monkeys and other insect-eaters, 
 except to trust to their invisibility. 
 
 The same need of protection against the dan- 
 ger of being eaten causes many moths and but- 
 terflies to assume the disguises of a dead leaf 
 whenever they rest. Every one knows that as 
 a rule moths are dully colored on the upper side 
 of their wings, which lie out flat when the moth 
 is at rest, whereas in butterflies the brilliant 
 tints are upon the upper side while the under- 
 <*? 119 $*> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 side is plainly colored a fact which goes with 
 the ordinary habit of butterflies of sitting with 
 their wings closed and held upright over their 
 backs, so that the gay colors are hidden and 
 only the plain undersides are exposed. 
 
 In some butterflies of the tropics this disguise 
 is the most perfect probably of all in the animal 
 kingdom. The kallima, a common butterfly of 
 India and Sumatra, simply disappears when it 
 settles on a bush, for it hides its head and an- 
 tennae between its closed wings, which in form, 
 color and veining cannot be distinguished from 
 a withered leaf. The likeness is complete, even 
 to the discolored spots, broken places and bent 
 footstalks. One may safely defy the keenest 
 eye to find the living insect among the leaves, 
 and you may go as close as you please to exam- 
 ine it, for the butterfly understands perfectly 
 well that its disguise is impenetrable as long as 
 it holds still. Scarcely less puzzling cloaks of 
 invisibility are worn by many other butterflies 
 and by various sorts of more or less seden- 
 tary insects. 
 
 Sometimes, however, mimicry is assumed not 
 
 $ 120 5o 
 
Animals that Wear Disguises 
 
 r 
 
 for protection against foes, but to assist the 
 creature in getting its living. Belt tells of 
 his surprise in Nicaragua at finding what he 
 supposed the dropping of some large bird on 
 the leaves of a bush to be really a voracious 
 spider lying in wait for victims. When it drew 
 in its legs and squatted in this disguise no bug 
 would ever suspect any harm, and at the same 
 time the spider itself was safeguarded, because 
 there was no likelihood that any of its enemies 
 (mostly birds) would pay it any attention, ex- 
 cept to avoid it. 
 
 This is one of the most extraordinary and 
 most effectual disguises that have been discov- 
 ered; but the more naturalists investigate the 
 ways and means of the lower orders of life, the 
 more they find nature utilizing these protective 
 resemblances. 
 
 121 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 r 
 
 THE verb " to bluff " long ago passed 
 from the slang of the card-table into 
 truly respectable if not elegant speech. 
 It expresses more precisely and forcibly than 
 anything else the idea of dissembling uncon- 
 f essed weakness by a bold and defiant attitude 
 the legitimate, justifiable attempt at deception 
 in self-defense which is a part of the armament 
 of every creature. For, after all, bluffing is 
 nothing else than an attempt to make your an- 
 tagonist believe you bigger or stronger than 
 you are, or, perhaps, than he is ; and thus it 
 becomes the natural tactics of the weak against 
 the powerful. 
 
 The gambler who holds a strong hand has no 
 need of this resource; it is the resort of the 
 player who, lacking munitions for his war, must 
 set up a pretense of strength that shall frighten 
 $ 122 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 I 
 
 his adversary. This is nothing new. Most men 
 and all women are bluffers, and every animal is 
 an adept at the art within its own range of ex- 
 perience, while the less actual ability it has to 
 use them, the more inclined it is to put up its 
 fists. 
 
 Take, for instance, the caterpillar of a sphinx 
 moth a slow, fat, green worm, crawling slug- 
 gishly about the bushes in plain view of every 
 insect-eater. It has no armor, or spines, or 
 poison, or ability to defend itself whatever, 
 but the instant anything approaches it it rears 
 up and wags its horned head and looks so for- 
 midable that almost nothing has the nerve to 
 tackle it. This is purely a bluff. 
 
 Consider the case of that harmless braggart, 
 the hog-nose snake. He can really hurt nothing 
 bigger than a mouse or a fledgling sparrow, and 
 he lives mainly on ground beetles and worms, 
 yet he has to be on his guard against hawks, 
 owls, skunks, blacksnakes and various other ser- 
 pent-eaters, in respect to all of which he is full 
 of cowardly fear. But he is so slow that he 
 cannot run; he can wield no poisoned stilettos, 
 
 <$ 123 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 as do the rattlesnake and copperhead; and 
 hence must rely entirely upon inspiring terror. 
 
 So he swells out his head and neck to twice 
 their size by expanding his ribs, opens a great 
 triangular mouth, blows and hisses, and makes 
 believe he is the ugliest sort of viper and as a 
 rule succeeds well enough to be left alone. If 
 you " call " his bluff he will fall limp and liter- 
 ally go into convulsions of terror, or turn over 
 on his back in a dead faint of fear before you 
 have really injured him at all. 
 
 The dreadful East Indian viper which the 
 Portuguese pioneers in India named cobra de 
 capello the hooded snake has the same idea 
 when he lifts a third of his length and presents 
 his immensely distended head and neck in the 
 face of a leopard or other threatening foe. He 
 has good weapons, but few animals fight unless 
 compelled to do so, and he tries to avoid it by 
 a bluff. 
 
 In fact almost all animals, when they find that 
 
 shrinking out of sight fails to cause them to be 
 
 overlooked, immediately try to make themselves 
 
 as big as they can to produce fright. We 
 
 < 124 &* 
 
* 
 
 I 
 
 fr 
 
 o 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 r 
 
 borrow the simile from them when we say of a 
 truculent fellow that he "bristles up." That 
 is the notion of a wolf or dog when he lifts his 
 hackles and rises on tip-toe to meet his chal- 
 lenger ; and of puss when she sets every hair on 
 end, arches her spine and swells her tail to 
 thrice its peaceful girth. 
 
 When the fight actually comes on they forget 
 all these blustering preparations, which were 
 merely terrifying tactics, like the bellowing and 
 pawing of a bull, the war-paint and rattles of 
 the Indian, or the yelling and firecrackers of 
 the Chinese before a battle. 
 
 The porcupine is one of the best of the blus- 
 terers, for he not only turns himself into a liv- 
 ing chestnut burr, but rattles his quills against 
 one another like some mediaeval knight jangling 
 all his war harness as he enters the joust to pro- 
 claim how impregnable he is and at the same time 
 to hearten himself up a bit. If the porcupine 
 shivered with fright the same rattling of the hol- 
 low quills would follow, and perhaps, if the truth 
 were known, that is really what happens. At 
 any rate he doesn't shoot his quills as the old 
 $ 125 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 stories alleged, yet he might almost as well do 
 so, for the slightest touch will cause their needle- 
 like barbed points to adhere to any soft surface, 
 and they are pulled out and carried away by 
 the enemy as souvenirs of a fruitless encounter 
 far more difficult to get rid of than to acquire. 
 
 Few of the woodland animals are unaware of 
 this, and consequently nothing but the foolish- 
 ness of youth, or the desperation of extreme 
 hunger, will lead any beast of prey to forget 
 the warning of the rattling quills and leap upon 
 their tender-fleshed but bristling owner. Some 
 of the smaller ones, like the fisher marten, do, 
 however, get him by strategy, creeping be- 
 neath the snow in winter and seizing his unpro- 
 tected throat or belly in a fatal nip. Against 
 such an attack, by what soldiers would call 
 " sapping and mining," the poor porcupine can 
 make little defense. 
 
 A good many bugs and some caterpillars and 
 crustaceans have an armament somewhat similar 
 to that of the " fretful porcupine," but these 
 behave more like the hedgehog, simply rolling 
 up so that their points stand out in every direc- 
 
 * 126 &* 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 r 
 
 tion and defy the enemy to find an exposed point 
 for attack. 
 
 There is one sort of fish, however, represented 
 by several species in Northern seas, as well as 
 many in the tropics, which combines a strong 
 disposition to bluff with a very good " hand." 
 This is the tribe of globe-fish or porcupine fish, 
 of which the little puffer or swell-doodle of our 
 Atlantic coast is a good example. 
 
 These fishes when quiet look much like others, 
 except that they have a rough, leathery skin 
 instead of a scaly one, and are everywhere (ex- 
 cept along the abdomen) covered with bristle- 
 like appendages. Let one of them be alarmed 
 in any way, however, and an almost instan- 
 taneous change takes place. It sucks in water 
 by rapid gulps until it swells into a ball studded 
 with stiff spikes. In this condition it rises to 
 the surface of the water and spins and bobs 
 about, giving queer audible grunts, and making 
 a most extraordinary and to our eyes comical 
 appearance. 
 
 This is enough to make 'most any thought- 
 ful fish repent the error of its intention, and 
 
 +$ 127 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 leave the uncanny thing alone, but if, misguid- 
 edly, it still tries to seize it, it finds the grunting, 
 prickly little globe something it is indisposed 
 to swallow and hastily spits it out. As a matter 
 of fact the spines of the globe-fish are neither 
 hard or venomous and would do no harm, but 
 the little fellow succeeds in life as well as if he 
 wore a real armor, because he makes his foes 
 think him a real terror. 
 
 The processes of natural selection have 
 worked steadily among birds, fishes and beasts 
 toward making this faculty of bluffing more 
 and more successful as a means of self-pro- 
 tection, and have supplied many means to that 
 end. 
 
 An owl and various other birds throw their 
 wings out or forward and use them well in a 
 struggle, but one the magnificent argus pheas- 
 ant spreads them in front of him, which not 
 only magnifies his warlike appearance, but 
 serves as a shield in the combat that may not 
 always be avoided. The wings, in fact, so well 
 form a round screen in front of the bird that 
 it can withdraw its head altogether behind it, 
 
"O 
 
 S 
 
 o 
 
 r 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 * 
 
 and then strike through it at its antagonist in 
 some altogether unexpected place. 
 
 Tactics of this kind are said to be a part of 
 the secret of the extraordinary success the 
 ground hornbill of South Africa has in killing 
 the dreadful puffing-adder and other deadly 
 snakes of that region which it likes to eat. On 
 discovering a snake three or four of the birds 
 advance sideways toward it with wings stretched 
 out and with their quills flap at and irritate 
 the snake till it strikes their wing-feathers, when 
 they immediately close in on all sides, and vio- 
 lently peck it with their long, sharp bills, 
 quickly withdrawing again when the snake lets 
 go. This they repeat until the snake is dead. 
 If the reptile advances the bird places both 
 wings in front of it, completely covering its 
 head and most vulnerable parts, just as does 
 the argus pheasant. 
 
 All the lizards, having little ability for real 
 harm in them, are great braggarts, and seem 
 to know well how to profit by their spiny- 
 crested, diabolically ugly features. 
 
 There is one sort, however, which has special 
 *$ 129 
 
The Wit of the WUd 
 
 r 
 
 means for " putting up a bluff " in its vast 
 Elizabethan collar or " frill." This consists of 
 a great outgrowth of flesh from behind the ears 
 all the way round under the throat. It is as 
 though the head of the animal were pushed 
 through an umbrella, which lies folded back 
 upon its fore shoulders in ordinary moments. 
 
 This lizard is an inhabitant of Australia and 
 sometimes reaches three feet in length. It seeks 
 its food both in trees and on the ground, where 
 it runs swiftly, and is often seen about gardens. 
 When not disturbed it moves quietly about, 
 but it is highly irascible and the instant it is 
 provoked opens its frills and makes for a tree, 
 where, if overtaken, it throws itself on its 
 haunches, raises its front as high as possible 
 and sinks its head between its shoulders in the 
 center of an inverted umbrella studded with 
 spines and prickles. 
 
 It would certainly be difficult to invent a 
 picture of armament, rage and disgusting quali- 
 ties all together, to exceed this bit of acting, 
 and it is sufficient, many a time, to warn off the 
 attacker who had not thought a peaceful-look- 
 
Birds and Beasts that Bluff 
 
 r 
 
 ing lizard would make a lightning change into 
 something satanic. 
 
 As a matter of fact animals are probably able 
 to bluff more effectively than men, because they 
 are in such deadly earnest about it and do it 
 so often. 
 
 131 
 
A Good Habit Gone Wrong 
 f 
 
 TAKE him by and large probably none 
 of our American animals is more inter- 
 esting to a thoughtful person than the 
 gray, grunting, snarling, pilfering, dunder- 
 headed and motherly creature which the south- 
 ern Indians told us was an opossum. John 
 Smith reported among the wonders of Vir- 
 ginia : " The opassam hath a head like a Swine, 
 a tayle like a Bat, as bigge as a Cat, and hath 
 under her belly a Bag wherein she carrieth her 
 Young." No need for mistake in identifying 
 this creature, though in respect to some of the 
 other " marvels " of those early reporters nat- 
 uralists are guessing yet. 
 
 It was the distinction of our opossum to be 
 the first of all marsupials to be brought to the 
 knowledge of the civilized world, and some of 
 the early notions as to the method of its novel 
 reproduction are among the most grotesque 
 + 132 
 
A Good Habit Gone Wrong 
 
 r 
 
 relics of the early stages of zoology. More than 
 two hundred years elapsed before the matter 
 was understood aright, so far as can be learned ; 
 and then it was the study of our little old 
 opossum, and not of the numerous and diver- 
 sified marsupials of Australia, which solved the 
 puzzle. 
 
 Another, and perhaps more lasting distinc- 
 tion, is that of adding a phrase to the language, 
 " playing 'possum." It needs no definition. 
 Everybody understands the nature of the ruse 
 signified, yet not all know the circumstances 
 under which it is practiced; and so far as I 
 know no one has asked, not to speak of answer- 
 ing, the question how the little beast acquired 
 the idea, or habit, or whatever it is that causes 
 him to " go dead," why he plays 'possum. 
 
 In the first place it appears that the animal 
 remains wide-awake and fights as briskly as 
 any other on many occasions, so that the use 
 of the ruse is by no means invariable. A 
 mother with half -grown young, for example, 
 will sit up on her haunches and face an enemy 
 with gleaming eyes and teeth, without a thought 
 
 + 133 
 
The .Wit of the iWild 
 
 r 
 
 of taking refuge in coma ; and in the season of 
 courtship all the males go about with a chip on 
 their shoulders, seeking and carrying on terrific 
 fights, in which neither combatant lies down 
 until he has to, and then his foe makes sure 
 that the death is real before he quits. Dr. 
 Lincecum tells how he went close to such a bat- 
 tle once and watched it a long time, the furious 
 rivals being too busy to mind him ; then " kicked 
 over " the female, " who went into a spasm." All 
 predatory animals seem to bear the creature en- 
 mity, yet few or none devour it. Dogs take every 
 opportunity to crack its bones, and from them 
 the opossum tries to escape, when he hears them 
 in time, by hastening up a tree. In a great 
 number of cases of danger, in fact, as all ac- 
 counts agree, the animal does its best to utilize 
 ordinary methods of escape or defense, running 
 or hiding or fighting in a perfectly natural way. 
 In other cases, just what or when it would be 
 hard to define exactly but apparently in the 
 presence of something so large as to make re- 
 sistance idle, the animal, when attacked or cor- 
 nered, will fall limp and "dead"; "and when 
 

 o 
 H 
 
A Good Habit Gone Wrong 
 
 r 
 
 the opossum plays 'possum," as Witmer Stone 
 remarks, " he invariably draws back the gums 
 from his glittering white teeth until he looks 
 as if he had been dead for a month." You may 
 roll the creature about with your foot, explore 
 the pouch, pick it up and carry it by its tail, 
 offer it almost any indignity, and it will in most 
 cases neither resist nor complain ; but take your 
 eye off it as it lies upon the ground, and it will 
 soon jump up and scuttle away, or if you pick 
 it up carelessly enough to give it a chance it 
 may nip you savagely. Severely injured, as in 
 the jaws of a big dog, or under the club of a 
 darkey eager to sop sweet potatoes in 'possum 
 gravy, the animal protests, but yields as if ut- 
 terly discouraged. 
 
 This behavior does not bear out the theory 
 held by some naturalists, that the action is not 
 a ruse, but an involuntary paralysis due to sud- 
 den, hysterical fear; to one who knows the 
 creature nervousness and hysterics are the last 
 things to be thought of. It will hardly do 
 then to believe it a physiological effect ; and yet 
 it is exercised in so irregular and often useless 
 
 ^ 135 
 
.The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 and dunderheaded a way that it seems hardly 
 worthy the name of an intellectual performance, 
 like the fox's use, on occasion, of a similar de- 
 vice in stalking or ambushing his prey. It 
 looks to me more like the action of an instinct 
 which has lost its steering gear an instinct 
 that has outgrown the circumstances which 
 originated it and in which it was advantageous. 
 Of what service now is the time-honored ruse? 
 How many of the opossum's enemies are now 
 sufficiently deceived by his little game to go 
 away and leave him? Would a cat or a dog, a 
 wolf or a big owl, neglect to seize and eat him 
 (if they cared to dogs won't touch the flesh) 
 because of his pretense? What do they care 
 whether he is dead or not if the former, so 
 much the easier for them. But their noses tell 
 them better. Dr. Lincecum says that in Texas 
 he has repeatedly seen turkey buzzards alight 
 " near where they find an opossum feeding in 
 the woods and, running up on him, flap their 
 wings violently over him a few times, when the 
 opossum goes into a spasm, and the buzzards 
 very deliberately proceed to pick out its ex- 
 * 136 So 
 
A Good Habit Gone .Wrong 
 
 r 
 
 posed eye, and generally take a pretty good 
 bite from its neck and shoulders, the opossum 
 lying on its side all the time and grunting." 
 If then the feint (or faint?) does not deceive, 
 of what service is it? On the contrary, is it 
 not a fatal mistake in tactics, leading to death 
 by tame submission many an opossum which 
 might otherwise save himself by fight or flight? 
 Hence the practice seems to me an obsolete sur- 
 vival from some time and place in the past his- 
 tory of the race when such a habit was service- 
 able. Let us see whether any exterior evidence 
 exists to justify this proposition. 
 
 It is now known and it is only very recently 
 that the facts have become clearly established 
 that the opossums are traceable farther back 
 than any other family of mammals; theirs is 
 the group lowest in organization, and most an- 
 cient in lineage. Long before the dawn (Eo- 
 cene Period) of the Tertiary Era, or " Age of 
 Mammals," away back in the Cretaceous di- 
 vision of the preceding Mesozoic time, the 
 opossum race was well defined and established. 
 -Still more remarkable is the fact that from that 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 time to this the variation it has undergone hag 
 been extremely small, so small that the teeth 
 found fossil in the Laramie formations of 
 Wyoming are hardly distinguishable from 
 those of the " 'possum-up-a-gum-tree " to-day. 
 Now it must be remembered that the world 
 of that era was peopled almost wholly, so far 
 as interested opossums of the time, with preda- 
 cious reptiles, brutes often of enormous size and 
 strength but of low and sluggish nervous or- 
 ganization. The relatively minute size and 
 smooth interior of their brain-boxes show that 
 their brains were of little value as instruments 
 of intelligence, and all their senses were doubt- 
 less far inferior to those even of the dull-witted, 
 sluggish crocodilians, lizards and turtles of the 
 present. Small objects would not attract their 
 attention unless they moved, and a little animal 
 remaining absolutely motionless would in most 
 cases be overlooked, or if seen would not be 
 attacked. Put a tree-toad in a cage with a 
 bull-frog to-day and the little one will be safe 
 from his ravenous neighbor, no matter how near 
 he sits, until he makes a move. Should the crea- 
 
A Good Habit Gone Wrong 
 
 r 
 
 ture's odor penetrate the dull nostrils of the foe, 
 and an examination follow, if the prey had reso- 
 lution enough to continue its quiet position, 
 so that it would appear to be dead, even with a 
 great dinosaur nose poking at it, it would prob- 
 ably be left untouched, for, as a rule, land rep- 
 tiles do not feed upon carrion. 
 
 An ability of this self -preserving kind would 
 be almost a corollary of existence under the cir- 
 cumstances in which the Mesozoic opossums 
 found themselves ; the habit would be of a nature 
 most likely to be advanced by natural selection ; 
 and in the course of the immensely long time 
 available for producing the effect the practice 
 would become thoroughly ingrained into opos- 
 sum nature. But after a while the great stupid 
 reptiles died out and were gradually replaced 
 by hunters and foes alert in perception, quick- 
 witted and active. An adaptive, plastic sort of 
 animal would have shaped habits and structure 
 to the new circumstances as they arose : but the 
 opossum nature is not of that kind, perhaps 
 no other has been physically so inflexible; and 
 along with its unchanging body has gone a 
 
 $ 139 ** 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 rigidity of mind which has retained habits so 
 long beyond their usefulness that now they are 
 detrimental. So far is the practice of " feign- 
 ing death " from being, as is popularly thought, 
 a wonderful provision for safety, that to its 
 habit of " playing 'possum " the race may at- 
 tribute, more than to any other one thing, its 
 present restricted range in the world, and its 
 steady decadence in numbers. 
 
 140 
 
Animals That Set Traps 
 
 r 
 
 A NIMALS must work for their living or 
 /\ they won't get it any more than would 
 * *- their human superiors. Now and then 
 one may find itself a sort of millionaire so 
 favorably situated that it gets all its needs 
 without any special exertion. But this is rare 
 at any rate among the higher sort which lead 
 an active life. 
 
 The great and varied army of roving ani- 
 mals, little and big, whether inhabiting the 
 waters or the air, or wandering about the land, 
 must " hustle " night and day or they will get 
 left in the constant race and struggle for daily 
 bread. They vary immensely in their means 
 and abilities, and hence must pursue vastly dif- 
 ferent methods, constantly devise new schemes, 
 to outwit their would-be victims and keep even 
 with their competitors. In this way a good 
 many have learned how to make ambushes, set 
 <* 141 5 
 
,The .Wit of, the 5VUd 
 
 r 
 
 traps, or throw out lures which shall bring their 
 prey to them, or at least enable them to get 
 near enough unobserved to pounce upon it. 
 
 This is a large part of the service of what 
 is called " protective coloring " that is, the 
 possession (by slow acquirement in the course 
 of many generations) of colors that correspond 
 so closely with the creature's customary sur- 
 roundings as to make it unnoticeable when quiet. 
 
 The colors of the tree-frog, for example, 
 which modify themselves by almost immediate 
 change to precisely accord with the hue of the 
 bark upon which he sits, hide him not only from 
 his enemies, but make him look so much like a 
 knot on the branch, that the insects running 
 about the trees never see him until they have 
 run right against his nose and the next instant 
 find themselves stuck to the tongue he has darted 
 out and traveling down his throat. The same 
 is true of the garden toad, as he sits as quiet 
 and brown as a lump of earth among the grass 
 roots and seizes the flies and bugs that blunder 
 within reach, never noticing the ogre until it 
 is too late. 
 
 $ 142 o 
 
[Animals that Set Traps 
 
 i 
 
 Many crabs are dark green, like the eel-grass 
 where they love to lurk. They feed upon all 
 sorts of small swimming creatures and do not 
 chase them much, but back into a tangle of grass 
 along some little path and keep perfectly still 
 in wait for a victim, upon which they leap like 
 a Zulu ambushed beside a jungle path. 
 
 Almost innumerable are the examples that 
 might be quoted of these tactics among animals 
 of prey in almost all the active classes even 
 among the birds. For instance, herons that 
 feed on fish get them usually by standing im- 
 movable in the water and waiting until one comes 
 unsuspectingly near, when the spear-like beak 
 is thrust through it with a downward stroke 
 of amazing rapidity. It used to be said that 
 the heron had the power of making a mysterious 
 tuft of feathers on its breast glow with phos- 
 phorescent light, attractive to its prey, while 
 at the same time it lighted the water so that 
 the bird could see where to strike. This story 
 has all the advantage of a good illustration for 
 us, except truth! 
 
 Some, however, are too impatient to wait in 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 1 
 
 this manner, but drum up their prey. Thus 
 the African saddle-billed stork runs about in 
 shallow water and then strikes at the fish that 
 try to escape past it; while an ibis of Ceylon 
 stirs up the bottom with its foot and then picks 
 one after another the mudfish that are aroused. 
 
 Many animals, however, improve upon the 
 methods described by setting traps and using 
 decoys and lures of one sort or another to at- 
 tract prey to them. Familiar to most students 
 is the method of the goose-fish, or angler, a big, 
 repulsive, voracious fish of our coast, which 
 dwells at the bottom in shallow water, half 
 smothered in mud no blacker than its own body. 
 From the top of the lips of this fish there stands 
 up a feeler several inches in length which trem- 
 bles in the water like a tasseled whiplash. This 
 is sure to attract the eye of small fishes cruis- 
 ing about, who mistake it for a bug or some- 
 thing else fit to eat, and will dart at it, only 
 to find themselves seized by the horrid mouth 
 that lies beneath. 
 
 In a similar way the puma (or panther) gets 
 itself many a meal otherwise difficult of attain- 
 + 144 5 
 
Animals that Set Traps 
 
 r 
 
 ment, if the guachos of the Argentina pampas 
 are to be believed and they ought to know. 
 When one of these great cats seeking for food 
 spies a herd of guanacos on the plain he steals 
 as near as he can (always, of course, up the 
 wind) and crouches flat upon the ground. 
 Then he lifts his tail and begins to wave the 
 end of it above the grass. The sharp-eyed 
 guanacos soon catch sight of it and draw nearer 
 and nearer to investigate this strange freak. 
 They gather closer and circle around the cat, 
 coming closer and closer with fatuous craving 
 to understand it, until the puma strikes one 
 down. This fact may be true, without requir- 
 ing us to believe that the puma lifts and waves 
 its tail with a deliberate purpose to attract his 
 prey; it may be done out of habit, or nervous 
 eagerness, quite unconsciously in respect to 
 the effect. 
 
 It has been surmised that the nervously 
 wavering tail of the coiled serpent intent upon 
 prey was really the instrument of what is called 
 its fascination for the bird or squirrel upon 
 which its eye is fixed. If so, this wavering 
 $ 145 *> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 * 
 
 tail, like that of the puma, becomes a true lure ; 
 but whether it is the gratification of curiosity 
 or a gloating over danger or a wish to punish 
 the reptile that causes the little animals to be 
 too venturesome, certainly many seem to hover 
 about a serpent until they are caught. 
 
 Every spider's web is a snare before the feet 
 and wings of the unwary. These nets of glu- 
 tinous thread are set where the insects upon 
 which spiders subsist are passing, and they are 
 constructed with marvelous skill. The spider 
 builds them as accurately as she can, and then 
 goes about pulling the tiny cables here and there 
 with precise judgment of the proper tension in 
 order to make sure that all is right. The net 
 must be elastic enough not to break under the 
 first struggles of the prisoner, yet must not be 
 so loose that he can push through. Some of 
 these spider snares are several feet in diameter 
 and frequently they are strong enough to cap- 
 ture small birds or mice. 
 
 Analogous to this is the small net of silken 
 threads spun by the caddis-worms of certain 
 species common in all our swifter streams, which 
 * 146 to* 
 
Animals that Set Traps 
 
 r 
 
 are spread between pebbles, or across crevices 
 in rocks, and serve as true gill-nets to capture 
 minute swimming creatures upon which caddis- 
 worms feed, but which they could not other- 
 wise catch in sufficient abundance. 
 
 Another familiar and pertinent example is 
 that of the pit of the ant-lion, a true trap. 
 The larva of the tiger-beetle, whose widely 
 opened jaws fill the mouth of his burrow, is a 
 living trap, made to snap, precisely like a fur- 
 hunter's steel-trap, on the heedless insect that 
 steps into it. 
 
 The jelly-fish as it sails gracefully through 
 the surface of the sea is another living trap 
 of the most deadly kind. There is floating about 
 him in all directions, and to a distance (in the 
 largest ones) of several feet, a perfect tangle 
 of extremely delicate ribbons, like the flying 
 hair of a Medusa head, which are as transparent 
 as glass and as deadly as poison to all small 
 swimmers. Let a minnow or shrimp or some one 
 of the hundreds of sorts of young creatures 
 that float in the ocean run against these unseen 
 threads, and they will cling to him, envelop him 
 
 $ 147 $ 
 
,The .Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 in multiplied and ever-fastening threads from 
 which there exudes a poison that paralyzes his 
 efforts. And so he is caught and held, and 
 gradually brought up to the body of the jelly- 
 fish to be devoured. Now, this is not only a liv- 
 ing trap, but includes a lure as well, for the 
 jelly-fish is phosphorescent, and its pulsating 
 flashes of light attract the attention of the small 
 creatures who swim toward their ruin. Un- 
 doubtedly one of the effects, if not purposes (a 
 word that must be used very cautiously in nat- 
 ural history), of the phosphorescence that be- 
 longs to so many marine animals is to act as 
 an attraction to animals that are needed as food. 
 It has not been known until recently that 
 birds do anything in the way of luring victims 
 within their power or at any rate, anything 
 further than the use our sapsucker makes of 
 his " honey-pots." This bird is the American 
 yellow-bellied woodpecker, which digs hundreds 
 of little pits in the bark of sweet-sapped trees 
 such as the apple, basswood and maple (produc- 
 ing in the last-named injuries that result in 
 "bird's-eye maple"), and greedily drinks the 
 <*$ 148 &* 
 
c\ Lown, 
 Sapsucker Work on an Apple Tree 
 
Animals that Set Traps 
 
 r 
 
 sap which exudes besides eating a certain quantity 
 of the layer of soft growing wood beneath the 
 bark. But it has been shown by experiments with 
 captives that when fed wholly or mainly upon this 
 sap the bird starves. The larger part of its 
 fare, in fact, must consist of insects, and some 
 naturalists believe that the primary object of 
 the woodpecker in digging his circles of holes 
 in the tree-bark is to form a bait for insects. 
 Certain it is, that as soon as the sap flows in- 
 sects gather and buzz in swarms about the 
 honeyed exudation, and that the bird returns 
 again and again during the day to his tree, gath- 
 ering the bugs that have been caught in the 
 sticky little cups or in the drippings on the bark, 
 or snapping them from the air, as he is very 
 skillful in doing. 
 
 In Teneriffe two warblers, familiar in Great 
 Britain as the blackcap and the garden warbler, 
 are each accustomed to puncture the calyx of 
 certain large flowers, particularly those of the 
 hibiscus and. abutilon, causing a little sweet 
 liquor to exude from the nectarous juices of 
 the blossom. This is attractive to many small 
 *$ 149 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 insects, and the birds make the rounds of their 
 punctured flowers and so obtain food without 
 the need of hunting. 
 
 How far the result obtained is intentional on 
 the part of these birds is a moot point, but at 
 any rate it may be accepted as fostered by nat- 
 ural selection and has now, perhaps, become 
 instinctive. 
 
Animal Partnerships 
 
 'ijjjjl . r \ 
 
 MANY animals go into partnerships with 
 others. Sometimes it is a union of the 
 strong with the weak, and the benefit, 
 so far as we can see, is wholly one-sided, but 
 often visible advantage results to both. 
 
 Jackals and hyenas that dog the steps of lions 
 in order to crack the bones left from the royal 
 feast can be of service only rarely, as sentinels ; 
 and what return can be made by the remora? 
 This is the queerly striped " sucking fish," which 
 attaches itself by the sucker on the top of its 
 head to a turtle or shark or swordfish and is car- 
 ried about free for hundreds of miles, having 
 nothing to do but dart aside here and there to 
 snatch up a bit of food and then resume its 
 dead-heading. 
 
 The partnership between the shark and the 
 pilot fish, however, seems to be one of mutual 
 service, the little one accepting the protection 
 o$ 151 o 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 of his wonderful patron, and in recompense act- 
 ing as intelligence officer and guide. 
 
 Mosely gives a most interesting account of 
 their scouting for the master ; and he also men- 
 tions the habitual attendance, in the South Seas, 
 of a petrel upon the whale; but the principal 
 " whale-bird " is a small snipe-like creature of 
 the Arctic regions called a phalarope. These 
 abound in Greenland waters, and they assemble 
 in flocks about every whale that basks upon the 
 surface, as the whales often do, alighting upon 
 its back and industriously cleaning it of the 
 small crustaceous parasites that attach them- 
 selves to the leviathan's skin, often in hundreds 
 of thousands. The monster of the deep floats 
 contentedly on the surface and lets his little 
 friends pull out and eat the annoying " lice " 
 as though he really appreciated the favor. 
 
 Another very curious partnership of the sea 
 is that between certain large Medusae or sea- 
 jellies and small fishes. The jellies consist of 
 an umbrella-shaped body, which looks like glass, 
 and from the under side of which trail great 
 bunches of filmy threads and some larger cur- 
 $ 152 &o 
 
Animal Partnerships 
 
 r 
 
 tains. These tentacles are endowed with sting- 
 ing power, by means of which the jellies benumb 
 what they seek to catch as food and then hoist 
 it up to the " mouth " in the under surface of 
 their floating disk. Now, certain little fishes, 
 which are exposed to a multitude of enemies in 
 the open sea, are in the habit of taking shelter 
 right among the poisonous tentacles of the 
 medusa, where, for the time, they are safe from 
 any outside harm and where a good deal of food 
 falls in their way ; but the capital they put into 
 this strange partnership is their lives, for if 
 they travel about long enough with their dan- 
 gerous " protector " they are certain one day 
 to be wrapped in the fatal net and eaten. So 
 this is jumping from the pan into the fire ; but 
 it is an illustration of the hard straits that sea 
 animals are put to to preserve life even for a 
 little while. 
 
 Many other curious instances of permanent 
 association among the humbler denizens of the 
 sea might be mentioned, but their description 
 comes under a different head, for they are para- 
 sites or messmates, rather than partners. 
 
 *$ 153 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 It is among birds that the most interesting 
 examples of partnership are found sometimes 
 with other birds and often with animals of an- 
 other class. That familiar little company of 
 our winter woods the downy woodpecker, nut- 
 hatch and chickadee is a mutual aid society, 
 not only enjoying each other's companionship, 
 but profiting by their varied ways of searching 
 for similar fare, and especially by the powerful 
 pickax of the woodpecker, which uncovers many 
 a tidbit his friends could not get at with their 
 weaker bills. Birds are friendly creatures as a 
 rule, and often nest in companies, not only in 
 rookeries of their own kind alone, but by vari- 
 ous species carrying on their domestic life in 
 close proximity yet peaceably, and all rallying 
 to defend the whole community against threat- 
 ened dangers. Sometimes the association is 
 closer. 
 
 Thus it often happens that the huge nests 
 occupied year after year along our coasts by the 
 fish-hawks will be dotted among the sticks on 
 the outside with the nests of blackbirds, which 
 raise their young comfortably beneath the 
 <* 154 *> 
 
Animal Partnerships 
 
 r 
 
 shadow of the great hawk's wings ; and the same 
 thing has been noted in the nests of the whistling 
 sea-eagle of Australia, which harbors in the 
 niches of its castle the home of a small finch, 
 the diminutive tenants getting along most ami- 
 cably with their powerful host. 
 
 At the other extreme is the curious voluntary 
 association of birds with ants and wasps for 
 the sake of safety for their homes. Gosse tells 
 us, in his " Naturalist in Jamaica," that in that 
 island a small seed-eater called the grass-quit 
 often selects a shrub on which wasps have built 
 and fixes the entrance to its domed nest close 
 to their cells; and Prince Maximilian Neuwied 
 states, in his " Travels in Brazil," that he found 
 the curious purse-shaped nest of one of the 
 todies constantly placed near the nests of wasps, 
 and that the natives informed him that it did 
 so to secure itself against attacks by its enemies. 
 The mocking-birds in Guiana are said to do the 
 same thing to guard themselves from thievish 
 monkeys. 
 
 Alluding to this, that excellent observer, 
 Thomas Belt, remarks that one would think it 
 
The Wit of, the .Wild 
 
 r 
 
 likely that the birds when building their nests 
 would be very likely to be attacked by the wasps, 
 and that this does not happen is good evidence 
 of an acknowledged " partnership." However, 
 it is to be noticed that nests in such a situation 
 are usually domed that is, have a cap or cover, 
 as if the birds thought the wasps neighbors of 
 very uncertain temper. 
 
 Belt himself instances the similar case of a 
 Nicaraguan fly-catcher. " On the Savannahs, 
 between Acoyapo and Naucital," he says, " there 
 is a shrub with sharp curved prickles, called 
 viena paraca (come here) by the Spaniards, 
 because it is difficult to extricate one's self from 
 its hold when the dress is caught ; as one part is 
 cleared another will be entangled. A yellow and 
 brown fly-catcher builds its nest in these bushes, 
 and generally places it alongside that of a 
 banded wasp, so that with the prickles and the 
 wasps it is well guarded. 
 
 " I witnessed, however, the death of one of the 
 
 birds from the very means it had chosen for the 
 
 protection of its young. Darting hurriedly out 
 
 of its domed nest as we were passing, it was 
 
 $ 156 So* 
 
Animal Partnerships 
 
 r 
 
 caught just under its bill by one of the curved, 
 hook-like thorns, and in trying to extricate it- 
 self got further entangled. Its fluttering dis- 
 turbed the wasps, who flew down upon it and in 
 less than a minute stung it to death." 
 
 Other tropical birds seek the society of sting- 
 ing ants for the same reason. Thus in Nica- 
 ragua many birds hang their nests from the 
 extremities of the branches of the bull's-horn 
 thorn ; and a safer place could hardly be chosen, 
 as with the sharp thorns and the stinging ants 
 that inhabit them no mammal would dare to 
 attempt the ascent of the tree. 
 
 Stinging ants are not the only insects whose 
 protection birds secure by building near their 
 nests, for a small Central American parrot 
 breeds constantly on the plains in a hole made 
 in the subterranean nests of the termites, or 
 destructive " white ants," whose forays are so 
 much dreaded. And a woodpecker of the East- 
 ern Himalayas actually takes up its quarters 
 inside of the habitation of an ant. 
 
 There is a kind of ant there which constructs 
 a globular nest of a soft felt-like material, a 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 * 
 
 foot or more in diameter, suspended upon a 
 branch and involving many twigs and leaves. 
 Into this gray-brown mass the woodpecker bores 
 a hole and then scoops out a chamber large 
 enough for its nesting purposes, while the ants 
 continue to occupy the remainder of the globe. 
 
 The most perfect and mutually beneficial 
 partnerships in animal life, however, are those 
 formed between birds and certain large grazing 
 mammals, for each member is of service to the 
 other. We have a daily example before us in 
 our own country in the way that the cow-black- 
 birds go afield with the cattle and stay close to 
 them as they feed. The profit to the birds is 
 in snapping up the insects the cows flush from 
 the grass as they move about, and the cattle 
 like the little friends who perch so confidingly 
 upon their backs, for they not only catch or 
 dislodge troublesome flies, but pull out of the 
 skin any parasites which may have lodged there. 
 
 [All countries have something like this to show. 
 In Spain jackdaws follow the herds of pigs, 
 and in Central America a certain plover is pro- 
 tected by the people because so serviceable to 
 *$ 158 &* 
 
Animal Partnerships 
 
 r 
 
 the cattle ; while a certain plover of Egypt has 
 been considered the friend and ally of the croco- 
 dile ever since Pliny's time. 
 
 It is in Africa, indeed, that the most promi- 
 nent examples of this kind of partnership are 
 seen. To none is the arrangement more im- 
 portant than to the rhinoceros, an animal stupid, 
 short-sighted, and easily approached from any 
 direction that does not carry a warning scent 
 to its sensitive nostrils. But he feeds and sleeps 
 in peace under the watchful care of a flock of 
 starlings, who flutter about him or run up and 
 down his rough back picking off the various 
 ticks and grubs that would keep him itching or 
 perhaps work real harm, and which to them are 
 excellent morsels. Moreover, they are super- 
 naturally keen as watchmen, as hunters well 
 know, for many a fine rhino has got away be- 
 cause the rhinoceros-birds made haste to wake 
 their patron, by pecking at his head and scream- 
 ing in his dull ears until he took warning. 
 
 This same starling, or one like it, may also 
 be seen sitting in rows on the heads and horns 
 of buffaloes when feeding or ruminating, and 
 *>$ 159 $+> 
 
,The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 they warn these animals in the same way. The 
 buffaloes of Central Africa are also guarded and 
 attended in a similar manner by a beautiful lit- 
 tle white egret, whose snowy plumage and statu- 
 esque pose look very quaint perched upon some 
 shaggy old bull of the forest. Zebras are looked 
 after by a helmet-shrike, and " the tiny three- 
 collared plover," according to Bryden, " is 
 called the * sea-cow bird ' from its fondness for 
 the hippopotamus, or sea-cow, with which it is 
 often found associating." Hunters are well 
 aware of these facts, for they have lost many 
 an expected trophy or sorely needed dinner on 
 account of them, and you cannot persuade them 
 that the association is anything less than a real 
 and intelligent partnership. 
 
 The most extraordinary of these mutually 
 protective arrangements, however, is that be- 
 tween Cook's petrel and the tuatara lizard of 
 New Zealand. This petrel, or " titi," breeds on 
 rocky islets on the New Zealand coast and de- 
 posits a single egg at the interior end of a tor- 
 tuous burrow several feet long, dug by the birds 
 themselves. 
 
Animal Partnerships 
 
 r 
 
 " On some of the islands," says Buller, " there 
 exists a very remarkable lizard the tuatara of 
 the Maoris. Wherever the tuatara and burrow- 
 ing petrel coexist there appears to be a perfect 
 understanding between them, and they share 
 the same habitation. When, as often happens, 
 the terminal chamber of the burrow has two 
 chambers, one is occupied by the bird and the 
 other by the reptile usually cheek by jowl." 
 
 The curious part of the story follows. Or- 
 dinarily the lizard is timid and does its best 
 to escape ; but here, whenever any one attempts 
 to meddle with the bird on its nest the lizard 
 immediately comes to the rescue, attacking 
 the hands with exceeding ferocity and biting 
 fiercely. So real and constant is this defense 
 that collectors of the petrel's eggs are obliged 
 to dispose of their faithful guardian before they 
 can get at the nest. What reward the tuatara 
 exacts or receives for this friendly service, be- 
 yond the shelter it enjoys, is not known. 
 
 161 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 W 
 
 'HEN the sun has disappeared so long 
 that only ruddy lines athwart the 
 west remain to show where it has set, 
 and a darkness as of velvet pours slowly into 
 the hollows of the landscape, then suddenly there 
 springs from the warm gloom of the hillside 
 the cry of the whip-poor-will, loud, vivid and 
 challenging. At first you may hear only a sin- 
 gle uncertain call, repeated now here, now there ; 
 but soon the bird settles upon a place that suits 
 him and begins his song in earnest, chanting 
 steadily while the darkness deepens. 
 
 This eerie cry is a characteristic note of sum- 
 mer throughout the eastern United States. 
 Wintering silent and secluded in the warm re- 
 gions bordering upon the Gulf of Mexico, the 
 shy bird gladly turns homeward from its exile 
 as spring returns, and steals north, always by 
 short night-journeys, as fast as insect-life 
 ^ 162 * 
 
.The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 awakes and furnishes him subsistence. There 
 is a tradition in Virginia that it arrives there 
 whenever " corn is up " ; but it is not usually 
 heard in New York before May-day. Even then 
 only the wilder places may listen, for the whip- 
 poor-will avoids the town and lends his society 
 to farmer and woodsman alone. He hunts along 
 lanes and country roads, where he is so fond 
 of rolling about in the dust that the Mexicans 
 call birds of this sort " road-blockers " ; and 
 after the farmer and his " hands " have gone 
 indoors for the night, searches the orchard and 
 dooryard, and summons his rivals to vocal con- 
 tests there, but he has no mind for displaying 
 himself by daylight. 
 
 None of our birds, perKaps, is so truly and ex- 
 clusively nocturnal as this one. Owls, bitterns 
 and even night-hawks, are often seen abroad in 
 daylight, but never the whip-poor-will, nor its 
 big Southern cousin, the chuck-wilPs-widow, 
 even in the cloudiest weather. To find them, in 
 the daytime, you must go into dense woods or 
 some swampy thicket, where their days are 
 passed watchful of a nest or soundly sleeping 
 *$ 163 5+ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 until the return of twilight shall make it safe 
 for them to venture out in search of food and 
 pleasure. 
 
 Of a creature leading such a life as this, so 
 strangely at variance with all our notions of 
 bird-nature, one might expect something un- 
 usual in appearance and structure. 
 
 Taking the bird in your hand you are struck 
 by the general resemblance in its form to a 
 chimney-swift, and are not surprised to find it 
 classified in the books next to the swift family. 
 Here are the same muscular shoulders support- 
 ing long, pointed wings, the short, stout, wedge- 
 shaped tail, capable of wide expansion, and hav- 
 ing great power in guiding and checking flight, 
 as is needful in a bird whose activity in the 
 air must surpass that of a moth or grasshopper, 
 the short legs and weak feet, and the minute 
 beak terminating a vast mouth. Its legs are 
 feathered to the toes, perhaps to prevent ants 
 and other minute biting insects crawling up 
 upon them during its daylight sleep; and the 
 middle toe is greatly prolonged and furnished, 
 on the undersides of its claw, with " pectina- 
 *$ 164 So* 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 tions " forming a regular comb, useful for 
 cleaning its long whiskers, and for keeping its 
 head free from the parasites to which a day- 
 sleeping bird must be especially exposed. 
 
 The head of the whip-poor-will is, indeed, its 
 most peculiar part. Large, round, fluffy and 
 bewhiskered, its owl-like aspect (more striking 
 in some of the eared tropical species than in this 
 one) is enhanced by the great brown eyes that 
 bespeak the nocturnal habitant, and by the 
 diminutive, almost hidden beak, arched above 
 and up curved at the point below, forming a pair 
 of pincers well able to hold a struggling moth. 
 These pointed, horny lips are only the extrem- 
 ity, however, of a mouth and throat so capa- 
 cious that when they are opened it seems as 
 though the head were split in halves ; and it is to 
 this great mouth, quite big enough to take in 
 the teat of a goat, coupled with their habit of 
 leaping about the cattle in the evening in pur- 
 suit of the insects they stir up, that these birds 
 owe their ancient name caprimulgus, a goat- 
 milker ; but night- jar is a better term. Spring- 
 ing from the upper lip is an array of stiff 
 ^ 165 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 bristles, some of which reach out far beyond 
 the tip of the bill and then curve inward, aiding 
 in the capture of the bird's agile prey by en- 
 tangling their wings as if in a trap. 
 
 Another resemblance to the owls (and inci- 
 dentally to the nocturnal moths as compared 
 with the diurnal butterflies) is found in the 
 fluffy softness and neutral tints of the plumage. 
 
 Complete noiselessness is highly important to 
 the success of nocturnal creatures, whether 
 hunting or hiding; and even more so is invisi- 
 bility of hue. Gay colors need daylight for 
 their display, as well as for easy recognition, 
 and would not only be wasted upon a night- 
 ranging animal, but might become a source of 
 positive danger during the day, exposing the 
 wearer to discovery and an assault that he could 
 neither avoid nor repel. The night- jars are 
 utterly defenseless birds. The Southern chuck- 
 will's-widow is said to pretend to prodigious 
 powers of harm, ruffling its feathers and hissing 
 like a snake when disturbed from its rest in a 
 hollow log ; but in reality it can make no defense, 
 and like the others must rely wholly upon being 
 + 166 $+> 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor SVill 
 I 
 
 overlooked or managing to dart out of danger. 
 Nature has therefore done the best she could 
 for these weaklings by making them incon- 
 spicuous. 
 
 Our whip-poor-will, indeed, is an excellent 
 example of the adaptation of animal colors to 
 customary surroundings. Its plumage presents 
 to the eye at a little distance a brownish neutral 
 tint blended of ochres, grays, browns and blacks, 
 apportioned in an exquisite pattern to each silky 
 feather; the only break is made by a rather 
 obscure crescent of white upon the breast, which, 
 through the overlapping of feathers and dim 
 reflections from the ground, quite disappears 
 when the bird is sitting in its usual squatting 
 fashion. In fact, when the whip-poor-will is 
 at rest in the flickering gray-green light of the 
 woods, the whole of it practically disappears, 
 becomes as unnoticeable as any fallen leaf or 
 chip, and the bird understands very well how 
 to avail itself of such protection, by crouching 
 low and keeping utterly still. Species that live 
 on open plains are gifted with almost supernat- 
 ural abilities in this direction. 
 
 + 167 *> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 The whip-poor-will's singular habit of sitting 
 lengthwise, instead of crosswise, as other birds 
 do, upon a log or bough, arises, I believe, from 
 this instinct for concealment rather than from 
 any inability to perch transversely. In the ac- 
 tivity of the night, or when solicitous about a 
 discovered nest, they will often stand athwart 
 a bough or fence-rail like any other bird. That 
 they ordinarily sit lengthwise during their diur- 
 nal siesta I believe is due to a feeling that they 
 are safer that way a matter we can explain 
 by observing that in that position they simu- 
 late a knot or the stub of a broken limb, and 
 thus escape eyes that would at once mark a 
 crosswise attitude. I am surprised that no one 
 has called attention to this before, since some- 
 thing similar is highly characteristic of cer- 
 tain tropical species. Mr. W. Saville Kent, 
 who had a close acquaintance with the Austra- 
 lian night-jar, called " morepork," tells us 
 and shows photographs to prove it that when- 
 ever it is alarmed, as, for instance, by the ap- 
 pearance of a hawk in the sky, " this bird will 
 at once straighten itself up stiffly, and, with its 
 
 $ 168 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 mottled feathers closely pressed to its body, 
 assume so perfect a resemblance to the branch 
 upon which it is seated, that, even at a short 
 distance, it is almost impossible to recognize it. 
 . . . People have actually placed their hand 
 on the bird, when seated on a rail or log fence, 
 before being conscious of its presence. 
 It will thus remain stiff and motionless, and not 
 attempt to fly away, until forcibly removed." 
 Again, Mr. Frank M. Chapman has lately de- 
 scribed how a Mexican species will behave, under 
 fear, in almost the same way, assuming an atti- 
 tude so thin, gray and rigid, with closely ap- 
 pressed feathers and beak pointing to the sky, 
 that no naturalist need feel ashamed of mis- 
 taking the bird for an upright stub or splinter. 
 It is true that the legs and feet of our whip- 
 poor-will are poorly adapted to firm grasping, 
 but this may be more or less the effect rather 
 than the cause of the practice referred to. 
 
 As nature cannot afford to make this mantle 
 
 of invisibility so perfect that the birds shall not 
 
 be able to find each other, she has provided 
 
 them with a private badge or signal, whereby 
 
 *$ 169 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 they may easily recognize one another in the 
 air the only time (except as between mated 
 couples) when there is any need for such recog- 
 nition marks. This badge is a large patch of 
 white bordering the tail. It is near the end on 
 each side, and slides out of sight underneath 
 the central quills when the bird is quiet, but is 
 conspicuously displayed when the tail is fanned 
 out in flight. This is also a badge of the male 
 sex, for in the hens these outer tail-feathers are 
 cream-colored and not nearly so plain to view 
 another indication that among birds the female 
 chooses her mate rather than is chosen ; it is 
 consequently more important that she should be 
 able to recognize and follow him than that he 
 should always know her. 
 
 In all birds the spring molt is followed by the 
 brightest plumage of the year. Tennyson's 
 " livelier iris comes upon the burnished dove," is 
 good ornithology. In many, moreover, tempo- 
 rary nuptial finery is put on in the way of 
 novel and sometimes gorgeous colors and frills, 
 that disappear after the breeding-season. Our 
 goldfinch and bobolink are familiar local ex- 
 
 $ 170 &* 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 amples, and more striking ones may be found 
 
 in the tropics. Even some of the somber sea- 
 birds, like the shag, assume a gay top-knot as 
 an advertisement of their desire to marry ; and, 
 in short, it is a general rule that male birds add 
 something attractive to their dress on the ap- 
 proach of the nesting-time. 
 
 Among nocturnal birds an accession of color 
 would evidently be ineffective, and such nuptial 
 ornaments as they indulge in must attract by 
 form rather than by color. Nowhere is this 
 more curiously shown than by tropical night- 
 jars. In one South American group the wings 
 of the males have three of the flight-feathers 
 enormously elongated, so that they trail or 
 flutter like streamers as the bird flies; and in 
 another the two outer tail-feathers are more 
 than twice the length of the bird's body, -and 
 bend inward at the tips antil their white points 
 nearly meet. It is a singular sight to watch 
 one of these " lyre-tails " hawking after insects, 
 the long plumes opening and shutting like a 
 pair of flexible calipers. 
 
 Central Africa shows even more remarkable 
 + 171 $+> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 ornaments distinguishing the male night-jars 
 and putting them among the curiosities of bird- 
 life. The one best known is the standard-wing 
 (Cosmetornis), where one of the outer feathers 
 in each wing is several times the length of the 
 others, and undulates behind the bird in its 
 evening flight like a ghostly streamer, for it is 
 the only white feather in the wing. Another 
 has similarly elongated quills, but these are bare 
 almost to the end, where a brown, paddle-shaped 
 vane appears, barred with black; and Schwein- 
 furth tell us that as the bird " chases the mice 
 it looks as though it had a couple of satellites 
 in attendance." The Arabs call it Father 
 Four-wings. It appears only after dark, and 
 scientific observers are so few in its country that 
 we don't know much about the bird; but Prof. 
 Alfred Newton gives in his great " Dictionary 
 of Birds " a note and picture which show it 
 roosting in the daytime on the ground with its 
 wing-quills, some twenty inches long, held per- 
 fectly upright, so that the little terminal vanes 
 tremble unnoticeable among the heads of the 
 grasses. 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 Considering the fact that neither our North 
 American, the European nor the Asiatic night- 
 jars sport such appendages in the breeding-sea- 
 son or at any other time, the reason for their 
 existence in these scattered tropical species is a 
 problem which I, at least, cannot solve. It 
 would seem as though such extras, however 
 much enjoyed and proudly flourished by their 
 owners, would be more trouble and risk than 
 they were worth. Professor Poulton has elab- 
 orated a theory that long tails and fluttering 
 appendages such as these serve a purpose of 
 safety by tempting a pursuer to seize upon and 
 thereby lose the body of his quarry, because 
 they will easily break off or pull out; but why 
 should nature make elaborate preparations 
 to have a creature almost caught, (and then 
 maimed) in order to insure its safety? On the 
 other hand it is observable that these lengthened 
 wing-quills do retard and interfere with flight 
 (though long tail-feathers do not seem to do 
 so), and hence are really disadvantageous. 
 This may be one of nature's errors, tending to 
 the extinction rather than to the prosperity 
 
 <$ 173 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 of the species. Development is not invariably 
 upward. 
 
 Our whip-poor-wills announce their arrival in 
 May by their familiar call, but some days pass 
 before they get into full song, and even then 
 they are much influenced by weather, keeping 
 silent when it is gloomy, even for several days in 
 succession, while on warm moonlit nights they 
 are vociferous from dusk to dawn. Ordinarily, 
 a couple of hours after dark and another hour 
 or two before dawn give them time enough to 
 express themselves. They are remarkably reg- 
 ular as to the time (referred to the setting of 
 the sun) of commencing and quitting, and they 
 like to resort to the same spot night after night. 
 One will often make a beginning and then seem 
 to stop and try it over again, like a person prac- 
 ticing a new tune ; but these interruptions really 
 mean so many leaps into the air, with perhaps 
 frantic dodges and a somersault or two, for the 
 snatching and devouring of some lusty insect 
 that objects to the process. They never reg- 
 ularly sweep through the upper air as does the 
 nighthawk, but seek their food near the ground 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 by leaping after it in short, erratic flights. 
 They have a way of balancing themselves near 
 a tree-trunk or barn-wall, picking ants and 
 other small provender off the bark; and even 
 hunt for worms and beetles on the ground, turn- 
 ing over the leaves to root them out. It is not 
 until their first hunger has been assuaged that 
 one hears that long, steady chanting for which 
 the bird is distinguished, and which, as a sus- 
 tained effort, is perhaps unequaled elsewhere. 
 
 The singer is fond of perching upon a stone, 
 rocky hillsides are favorite resorts, or upon 
 a stump, fence-post or shed-roof. I do not 
 believe he ever sings in the air, though low mur- 
 murings may be heard as he flits past, for he 
 seems to need a solid fulcrum under his feet 
 for the great physical effort his utterance seems 
 to cost. He begins by a sharp, liquid churp! 
 like the plumping of a big drop into a cistern, 
 then swings into his loud monotonous recitative. 
 
 To my ear he does not say " whip-poor-will " 
 at all, yet it is not easy to write down an exact 
 interpretation of the notes. The first syllable 
 is a clear whistle strongly accented and end- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 Jf 
 
 ing in a hard t not in a palatal. The last 
 part is a forcible wheyo that sound, as of a 
 switch lashed through the air, which gives us 
 our word whip. The emphasis is very great. 
 All the breath the bird has seems driven into the 
 final syllable tongue-lashing, of the most lit- 
 eral and vindictive sort, which can be heard 
 half a mile. Nuttall, often so felicitous in por- 
 traying bird-music, writes it 'whip-'whip-poor 
 will, 'whip-peri will, noting with truth that the 
 repetitions tend to fall into pairs; and he 
 adds that to the ears of the aboriginal Dela- 
 ware its call was wecowdlis, but thought 
 that " probably some favorite phrase or inter- 
 pretation." Others tell us that the Seminoles of 
 Florida imitate it by wac-co-ldr, and the Chip- 
 pewas of Minnesota by gwen-go-wi-d. In " The 
 Auk " (viii, 35) Mr. S. P. Cheney has given a 
 whole page of musical notation to illustrate 
 variations perceptible to the trained ear. 
 
 Considerable individuality is perceptible in 
 
 their voices, and they are likely to improvise 
 
 unusual endings, or to break off with comical 
 
 abruptness, as though suddenly seized with dis- 
 
 *S 176 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 gust at the performance. The sharply whistled 
 whit-to-wheyo is rarely given singly, though one 
 sometimes hears whit, whit, whit, repeated soft 
 and low, or a sharp chirk, or liquid gurglings 
 that seem outpourings of a heart full of happi- 
 ness. 
 
 But this is chatter and woman-talk, for when 
 the head of the family really sings he makes 
 the woods ring with a surprising clamor. 
 Launching his voice at full strength, he strikes 
 at once into a gait of about sixty repetitions to 
 the minute, and keeps at it as regularly as a 
 machine for several minutes. It is an ordinary 
 feat for him to " whip poor Will " with two or 
 three hundred strokes in unbroken succession, 
 and sometimes the flagellation goes further, my 
 wife noting in one instance, when one summer 
 we made a business of counting the beats, no 
 less than 831 unbroken repetitions, lasting 
 nearly fifteen minutes and then stopping sud- 
 denly in full voice. Such a performance seems 
 objectless, except as a show of endurance, but 
 as such it is truly wonderful. 
 
 Another very queer thing about this song is 
 <*? 177 ^ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 the click to be noted between each whit-to- 
 wheyo, audible several rods away under fa- 
 vorable conditions; but this follows the final 
 syllable with such suddenness as to seem coin- 
 cident with it, and so exactly resembles a tap- 
 ping together of dry sticks that it is almost 
 impossible to convince yourself that it is a vocal 
 utterance. 
 
 To hear a single whip-poor-will calling alone 
 is uncommon. Usually a second or several birds 
 begin their evensong about the same time, and 
 then vie with one another with angry energy. 
 When they are many, the racket raised soon 
 becomes tiresome; but where there are only two 
 their rivalry is amusing. Each shouts at the 
 top of his voice, as if trying to drown his rival, 
 and failing that he increases his speed until each 
 bird is working at a breathless rate, but bound 
 to outlast the other. The result is, that after 
 a few moments they coincide in time, when, as 
 neither can any longer hear the other, each 
 stops, believing itself the victor. 
 
 While these braggart cocks are denouncing 
 " poor Will " throughout the summer evenings, 
 
 ^ 178 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 and often waking us, to our disgust, long before 
 dawn by their " damnable iteration," the patient 
 hens are secretly pursuing the joys and labor of 
 maternity. 
 
 Like all its tribe, except the aberrant group 
 Podargus of New Zealand, our whip-poor- 
 will lays its eggs upon the ground in the 
 woods, making no nest whatever and seeking no 
 particular concealment. It chooses an open, 
 dryish spot, perhaps with the feeling that such 
 places are likely to be overlooked by the ani- 
 mals ever prowling through the thickets in 
 search of eggs or fledglings. Professor New- 
 ton asserts that the British night-jar, or fern- 
 owl, which is closely like its American cousin 
 in habits, returns year after year to the same 
 spot to breed, and many indications suggest that 
 our whip-poor-wills have the same constancy. 
 
 The eggs are always two in number, rather 
 large for the bird and of equal thickness at 
 both ends ; and are cream-colored, prettily spec- 
 kled with lilac and red. As if aware that they 
 may be easily seen, the mother broods very 
 closely during daylight. Watching you with 
 ^ 179 to* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 r 
 
 intent alarm, she will quietly let you come quite 
 close, trusting to the invisible rusty hue of her 
 back ; but at your next step her fears overcome 
 her prudence and she is off like a fleeing shadow, 
 never fluttering away, pretending to be wing- 
 broken, as does the nighthawk when similarly 
 disturbed. This, very likely, is the first inti- 
 mation you have of her presence; and then, as 
 your eye alights upon her treasures and you 
 stoop down to examine them, you hear the soft 
 duckings of the distressed mother, and perhaps 
 see her flitting in timid circles around you as 
 if tethered by a cord. Audubon declares that 
 these birds will move their eggs to a safe place if 
 they are handled by any one ; and describes how 
 he himself saw each of a pair of chuck-will's- 
 widows pick up an egg in its mouth and fly away 
 with it. He also says that they will carry the 
 fledglings out of danger in the same way; and 
 Wilson tells how, after he had been sketching 
 a downy young whip-poor-will, on going back 
 for a forgotten pencil, he found that his little 
 model had disappeared, although unable to 
 travel. There is no reason to discredit these 
 o$ 180 & 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 stories, although recent confirmation of them is 
 lacking. 
 
 The fledglings are not born naked, as are 
 those of most small birds, but clothed with a 
 yellowish down so near the color of the dead 
 leaves on which they lie as almost to defy search, 
 ' and they remain absolutely quiet. 
 
 Now this rigidity and silence, as a measure 
 of safety in these infant birds, must be purely 
 instinctive, for they are characteristic of the 
 very youngest, who could not have learned the 
 trick from their parents. Why does not the 
 terror that causes the mother to rush away 
 communicate itself to them as an impulse to 
 flutter away also ? And why do not they answer 
 her anxious duckings? Instead of this, they 
 lie close and dumb, and when at last you find 
 one and take it up it will squat in the palm of 
 your hand as motionless as if paralyzed. The 
 fledglings of tree-nesting birds do not behave 
 in that way: they must be well-grown before 
 they will show either fear or caution at your 
 approach, and, in spite of the warnings of their 
 agonized mother, will cry just as loudly when 
 +$ 181 +> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 a shrike, or a weasel, or a bird's-nesting boy 
 appears at their door, as when their own parents 
 come there. This noisy loquacity, in fact, 
 brings destruction to them, as often as the 
 young whip-poor-wills escape it by their sensible 
 silence, notwithstanding their more exposed 
 situation. 
 
 The young are fed at first mainly upon half- 
 digested food disgorged by the parents, and 
 later upon soft worms until able to receive and 
 digest beetles and winged insects. The parents 
 are brave in their defense, but this must be 
 mainly by " bluffing," for no bird is so poorly 
 provided with weapons as this. " The chuck- 
 will' s-widow," Audubon tells us, " manifests a 
 strong antipathy toward all snakes, no matter 
 how harmless they may be. Although these 
 birds cannot in any way injure the snakes, they 
 alight near them on all occasions, and try to 
 frighten them away by opening their prodigious 
 mouth and emitting a strong, hissing murmur." 
 
 It would by no means be surprising if a 
 bird like this should share with the owl and the 
 bat a superstitious regard from those ignorant 
 *$ 182 fc 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 of nature and fond of mysteries. There still 
 lingers among us the imported tradition of its 
 milking the cattle, which began, perhaps, among 
 the goat herds on Mt. Olympus; but that mis- 
 take is almost world-wide, existing even in the 
 heart of the Sudan. Wilson hints at quaint 
 beliefs among the farmers of his day, but, un- 
 fortunately for lovers of folk-lore, he fails to 
 recite them; an earlier naturalist of Philadel- 
 phia, Dr. Benjamin S. Barton, records, how- 
 ever, that " it is an old observation in Pennsyl- 
 vania, that when the whip-poor-will arrives it is 
 time to go barefooted." 
 
 Down in Virginia they say that the white 
 spots on the wings of its cousin, the nighthawk, 
 are silver dollars. 
 
 As for the bodings and dire omens so fre- 
 quently referred to in ornithological writings 
 of the sentimental sort, a somewhat extensive 
 search has shown only that in northern New 
 England (where the bird is rare) it is believed 
 that a whip-poor-will singing beneath your bed- 
 room window presages your early death. In 
 more southerly regions, where the bird comes 
 
 o$ 183 fo 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 every night close to the house, no such a super- 
 stition can survive, of course. I was more sur- 
 prised, however, at not being able to find that 
 this bird has any part in the folk-lore of 
 weather signs. 
 
 Indian folk-lore is almost equally barren. 
 The Carolina Indians told Catsby that they 
 had never heard whip-poor-wills until after one 
 of the tribe's early battles with Europeans, and 
 hence considered them the souls of their ances- 
 tors killed in that battle; but this has the ear- 
 marks of a " yarn." Dr. Barton, writing in 
 Philadelphia in 1799, remarks: 
 
 " Some of our Indians believe that this bird is 
 a messenger sent to call their attention to the 
 planting of the ground. Accordingly, upon the 
 arrival of the whip-poor-will, they say to one 
 another, ' The wee-co-lis is come : it is planting- 
 time' ; and, while the bird is uttering the sound of 
 whip-poor-will, or wee-co-lis, they will repeat the 
 word hacJcibeck, which is ' plant the ground.' ' 
 
 Modern Iroquois indulge the pretty fancy 
 that the moccasin-flowers (cypripediums) are 
 the whip-poor-will's shoes. 
 
 *$ 184 &* 
 
The Bird that Whips Poor Will 
 
 r 
 
 The Utes call the bird a god of the night; 
 and say that it made the moon by magic trans- 
 formation of a frog; and among the Sioux and 
 Omahas a pretty custom leads a person whose 
 attention is attracted to the calling of the 
 whip-poor-wills at night to go out and ques- 
 tion them, by asking "No?" Should the 
 birds stop at once it is a sign that the ques- 
 tioner must die soon ; but if the birds continue 
 singing he will continue to live for a long 
 time. 
 
 185 
 
Birds of a Feather 
 
 ~l^"T"OTHING is more characteristic of 
 
 ^y autumn than the assembling of birds 
 -"*- ^ in companies, sometimes of vast extent. 
 Each consists, usually, of birds of a single sort 
 only, whence the proverb as to " birds of a 
 feather." 
 
 This familiar fact illustrates one trait of 
 birds that is seldom recognized, and it is very 
 pleasing the sociability which arises from a 
 sympathetic nature. 
 
 It is true that various advantages may come 
 from the flocking of some birds during migra- 
 tions, and that necessity may account for other 
 assemblages, yet in most cases, at any rate 
 among the smaller songsters, birds seem to de- 
 light in the company of their kind and in asso- 
 ciation with other kinds simply for the sake 
 of it. 
 
 That hordes of water-birds throng about 
 ^ 186 5 
 
Birds of a Feather 
 
 r 
 
 certain cliffy coasts of islets, or within the re- 
 cesses of some swamps, is due mainly to the fact 
 that places suitable for their nesting and feed- 
 ing are limited, and local crowding results ; but 
 this will not explain gregarious breeding habits 
 in others, such as the wild pigeon and various 
 swallows and seed-eaters. 
 
 Mutual self -protection is certainly not now 
 the reason for the flocking, whatever may have 
 been the case in the remote past (when perhaps 
 the tendency thus arose under different condi- 
 tions), for the danger from enemies to birds 
 in this country, at least, is increased by herding 
 rather than diminished. We are driven back, 
 then, to the simple and natural reason that birds 
 enjoy one another's society. 
 
 This fraternal, sympathetic, one might say 
 affectionate, disposition is apparent in all their 
 relations with one another that is, within their 
 own tribe. 
 
 Most birds show much conjugal attachment, 
 and from the courting time in spring until the 
 young are well grown most mates remain to- 
 gether. Some of the large birds of prey seem 
 
 *$ 187 So 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 I 1 
 
 to mate for life, owing probably to scarcity 
 of possible partners; but there is no satisfac- 
 tory evidence of this custom among any of the 
 little birds, though it has often been asserted 
 of the dove. 
 
 It is the female, nevertheless, who directs do- 
 mestic affairs, as well she may, for she does 
 most of the housework. She it is who selects 
 the site, and is the architect of the home, deftly 
 weaving the materials and fitting them within 
 to her comfort. Every nest bears upon its in- 
 terior the impress of the faithful breast that 
 molded its form with loving anticipation, and 
 brooded there with patient anxiety. 
 
 At the same time the male is in most cases 
 a worthy assistant, especially among those birds 
 which dig out holes. If he wears a brilliant 
 plumage, however, the male is likely to keep out 
 of sight, for his gaudy presence would often be 
 a dangerous advertisement of the home, which 
 both parents are so anxious to conceal. 
 
 Hence, while the wife works the husband sits 
 within her hearing and sings, partly to her, no 
 doubt, but mainly because he feels too jolly to 
 
Birds of a Feather 
 
 r 
 
 keep quiet. At night he roosts near her while 
 she sleeps on the nest, or, in rare cases, he builds 
 a nest-like hut for himself one of the very few 
 instances of an animal taking pains to erect a 
 shelter. 
 
 The baya sparrow, so called, a weaver-bird 
 of India, furnishes the best example of these 
 cock nests, but each pair of our own marsh 
 wrens construct several nests (hollow basket- 
 balls among the reeds), only one of which is 
 occupied for brooding, while the others form 
 sleeping quarters for the males or are not used 
 at all. The nest of the baya, however, is double, 
 one chamber being occupied by the nest proper, 
 with its eggs and brooding female, while the 
 male roosts in the other part. 
 
 Our small woodpeckers, too, are likely to dig 
 two holes, in one of which the father of the 
 family takes shelter when he pleases. 
 
 While the eggs are being laid or incubated 
 the male holds aloof still more cautiously, only 
 darting in morning and evening for an hour 
 or two (regularly timed) after his mate begins 
 to sit, in order that she may steal away for food 
 ^ 189 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 or exercise; yet he is rarely out of earshot, so 
 that she may not only be cheered and comforted 
 by his singing, but may summon him by a cry 
 of alarm when she needs help ; and it is a poor 
 sort of bird indeed that will not instantly rush 
 to defend its home. 
 
 In this respect birds are far superior to the 
 four-footed animals, according to our ideas of 
 morality, for almost all of them will boldly and 
 distinctly fight in defense of nests and family, 
 regardless of peril to themselves, whereas few 
 if any male mammals will do so. 
 
 Among birds, in truth, we first find a sense 
 of fatherhood and husbandhood, for when their 
 wives are busy in nest-building, and later are 
 brooding upon the eggs, their mates bring them 
 something to eat and when the young are fledg- 
 lings the father as well as the mother labors 
 to provide for them the enormous quantity of 
 food which they require. This helpfulness 
 varies with different species, however, some be- 
 ing much more attentive and maintaining their 
 family relations much longer than others. 
 
 Most of the smaller birds of this country 
 +$ 190 So 
 
Birds of a Feather 
 
 r 
 
 choose to nest alone, scattering far and wide 
 over their breeding range, so that each pair 
 may choose a hiding place and have little compe- 
 tition for food in its own neighborhood. They 
 are jealous of infringement of these rights of 
 reservation, but rarely quarrel with neighbors 
 of other species. 
 
 Thus a single old orchard tree will often har- 
 bor half a dozen families, nesting on its branches 
 or in some broken cranny, or within its cham- 
 bered trunk. Even the peppery oriole will per- 
 mit that, and the fish-hawk lets blackbirds place 
 their nests, as sub-tenants, among the sticks that 
 form the wall of his huge castle. Among such 
 solitary home-makers are species most gregari- 
 ous in the fall, such as our blackbirds and bobo- 
 links. 
 
 On the other hand, a few land birds that seem 
 to have no advantageous reason for doing so 
 carry their love of society into their domestic 
 life and crowd their nests close together, some- 
 times forming clusters which can be compared 
 only with the packed tenement-houses of human 
 cities. The most conspicuous instance of this 
 <* 191 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 among American birds is (or was, for it is now 
 almost extinct) the wild pigeon, which once so 
 loaded the trees with its nests and perching pairs 
 that limbs would break under their weight, and 
 this over spaces of forest several miles square. 
 To a greater or less degree this is the habit 
 of pigeons elsewhere, and doubtless it is owing 
 to this companionability in its temperament that 
 we have been able to domesticate many varieties 
 of this kind. 
 
 Another tribe highly sociable in its nesting 
 as well as in its migratory life is that of the 
 swallows, which, in all parts of the world, not 
 only nestle in companies, but gather into im- 
 mense wandering bands as soon as their family 
 duties are over. 
 
 Our eave-swallows, for example, whose bulb- 
 shaped nests of mud are set in rows beneath the 
 eaves of country barns, in primitive days at- 
 tached these adobe chambers in compact masses 
 against the faces of cliffs and clay banks. A 
 similar fondness for crowding characterizes all 
 sorts of swallows ; and that it implies a peculiar 
 companionability of temper is indicated by the 
 ^ 192 
 
J. W. James, Phot. 
 
 Nests of Wild Eave, or Cliff, Swallows 
 
 They are massed beneath overhanging ledges on the face 
 of a cliff in Arizona 
 
Birds of a Feather 
 
 r . 
 
 fact that in all countries swallows have been 
 quick to attach themselves to mankind and to 
 make their homes about buildings. 
 
 Such bird-towns or collections of nests may 
 be repeated for many years, and yet they will 
 be nothing more than so many separate homes 
 near together. There is no united community 
 almost the only advantage of the crowd being 
 that some are always on the lookout and ready 
 to alarm the rest when danger threatens. 
 
 The same is true of the vast rookeries of 
 herons, pelicans, cormorants and many sorts of 
 sea-fowl, which cover remote cliffs, beaches and 
 islands, with as many nests or eggs as the room 
 permits. They are gregarious and friendly, but 
 not helpful to one another except in a very lim- 
 ited, accidental way. 
 
 Little more can be said of the weaver-birds. 
 These small finches are numerous in South and 
 Central Africa, and of several sorts. All build 
 large nests of grass, lodged among the tree- 
 branches, and several are inclined to colonize, 
 placing half a dozen or so structures in a single 
 tree-top. One species goes a little further and 
 *>$ 193 $*> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 joins its nests together into a huge mass, in 
 which each pair has a chamber where birds and 
 eggs seem safe from all enemies except climb- 
 ing-snakes; and these composite structures are 
 repaired and used year after year, no doubt by 
 the descendants of the original builders. 
 
 Still more advanced, however, are the colonies 
 of another species, the " social " weaver, which 
 literally dwell under one roof. These birds 
 erect mushroom-shaped structures among the 
 branches of a tree, the top of which is a conical 
 covering of grass, all lying smooth and length- 
 wise from peak to eaves a regular thatched 
 roof. In the thickness of this roof are as many 
 nesting chambers as there are pairs in the flock 
 perhaps fifty or more. The entrances are 
 narrow holes on the under side, and they are 
 almost entirely inaccessible, while the thick roof 
 not only protects the sitting mothers, but shel- 
 ters the whole flock from blazing sun and tor- 
 rential rains. 
 
 An attack upon it is resented by the com- 
 bined forces of the colony, and any damage done 
 to this huge structure (which may be five or six 
 *>$ 194 5 
 
Birds of a Feather 
 
 r 
 
 feet in diameter and visible for a mile) is imme- 
 diately repaired, for these fine apartment- 
 houses are occupied year after year. This is 
 probably the nearest approach among birds to 
 a real community and a truly social life, and it 
 is the highest manifestation of their graceful 
 disposition toward companionability. 
 
 195 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 A STUDY OF BRUTE LIMITATIONS 
 
 I ' r 
 
 IN that fascinating book, "Wild Animals 
 I Have Known," no chapter is more allur- 
 ing in its mixture of plain fact and fanci- 
 ful interpretation than the one which chronicles 
 the doings of the Springfield fox and its dra- 
 matic end. This story, which purports to be 
 that of the real field-life of an actual American 
 red fox, is made vivid by the human perceptions 
 and sentiments attributed to the animal as its 
 own, among which is a perfect comprehension 
 of death. This fox, it appears, knew thor- 
 oughly the use and efficacy of poison. That 
 such an animal may learn and teach its young 
 to detect by smell the taint of poison in a piece 
 of meat, and so refuse to eat the morsel on the 
 broad ground that it is unsafe, or on the nar- 
 rower ground that it has something to do with 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 r 
 
 the enemy, man, all of whose works are to be 
 suspected, is easy of belief. " Vix knew right 
 well," says Mr. Seton, " what poisoned bait was ; 
 she passed them by or treated them with con- 
 tempt, but one she dropped down the hole of 
 an old enemy, a skunk, who was never afterward 
 seen." 
 
 One must wish this naturalist would substan- 
 tiate by more particulars this revengeful mur- 
 der by indirect means, which seems to me to 
 imply more, in several directions, than we have 
 been able hitherto to grant to the intelligence 
 of even a fox; yet this is easy of acceptance 
 beside the further deeds of this prodigy, after 
 its mate had been shot and its home ravaged by 
 men and dogs. Three of its cubs are killed and 
 a fourth is made captive and chained in the 
 farmer's yard. Night after night, urged by 
 mother-love, old Vixen comes to feed her im- 
 prisoned bairn, and to try by every strength 
 and device of tooth and nail and mind to get it 
 free. At last she becomes convinced that no 
 effort of hers can loosen the chain, and the 
 next night she turns to her last resort: 
 
 ^ 197 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 " Like a shadow she came, and in a moment 
 was gone, and Tip seized on something dropped, 
 and crunched and chewed with relish what she 
 brought. But even as he ate, a knife-like pang 
 shot through, and a scream of pain escaped him. 
 Then there was a momentary struggle and the 
 little fox was dead. 
 
 " The mother's love was strong in Vix, but a 
 higher thought was stronger. She knew right 
 well the poison's power, . . . now at last 
 when she must choose for him a wretched pris- 
 oner's life or sudden death, she quenched the 
 mother in her breast and freed him by the one 
 remaining door." 
 
 After that Vixen is no longer seen in the 
 neighborhood, " gone, maybe, deliberately," 
 says the author, " from the scene of a sorrowful 
 life, as many a wildwood mother has gone, by 
 the means that she herself had used to free her 
 young one the last of all her brood." 
 
 Now, here is an assertion, as of observed 
 facts; first, of two premeditated murders by a 
 brute animal, one from motives of prudence and 
 revenge, and another from motives of the high' 
 est moral import; and, second, an implication, 
 $ 198 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide''? 
 
 r 
 
 amounting almost to an assertion, of conscious 
 suicide. If it were no more than a bit of pa- 
 thetic fancy it would be worth notice only as 
 evidence of a popular notion, but it is woven 
 into what is declared to be a true story of the 
 conduct of life by an actual fox, and thus takes 
 its place as an assertion of history. 
 
 But do animals ever kill one another, except 
 by accident, in anger or as prey? And, do 
 animals ever commit suicide? 
 
 What is suicide? Literally, and taking the 
 word merely as it stands, nothing more than 
 self -killing ; but the customary and now only 
 proper definition involves the idea of intentional, 
 voluntary self-destruction, and this implies on 
 the part of the being so acting an understanding 
 of the circumstances of life and death, at least 
 of the difference between them. 
 
 The literature of dog-stories if one may use 
 the expression abounds in anecdotes of pets, 
 or of canine servants of the hunter and shep- 
 herd, which have grieved themselves into a 
 speedy decline and death by exhaustion due to 
 refusal of food, on the graves of their dead 
 
 *$ 199 * 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 masters; which have refused to leave them in 
 moments of great peril, as in a shipwreck, and 
 so have perished; or which in some other way 
 have sacrificed their lives for their friends or at 
 least with them. All these incidents, however, 
 only illustrate that remarkable dependence and 
 sense of duty which distinguish the dog an 
 inheritance from innumerable generations of 
 trained ancestors taught to be " faithful unto 
 death." 
 
 Something of the same disposition is occa- 
 sionally shown in the horse, which stands next 
 to the dog in long association with man. The 
 sense of dependence upon and affection for a 
 master is so exceedingly strong in most dogs, 
 that when one of them is suddenly deprived of 
 companionship it is no wonder it places itself 
 as near as possible to where its benefactor has 
 been laid, and waits for his reappearance, fear- 
 ing to leave the place even for a moment, lest 
 it shall miss his return. This very attitude 
 proves that it does not apprehend the finality 
 of its master's condition. At last exhaustion, 
 and the nervous depression resulting from grief, 
 
 200 +> 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 r 
 
 mysterious dread and disappointment, causes 
 mortal illness, but there is no evidence the dog 
 foresees or intends a fatal result. In the other 
 class of cases, the idea of remaining with a 
 master, danger or no danger, or of defending 
 him, as if it were itself attacked, is so strong 
 in a good dog as to overcome timidity and pru- 
 dence. 
 
 Something different from this is needed as 
 evidence of intentional suicide; and when the 
 incidents alleged to furnish such further evi- 
 dence are examined, they are always, so far as 
 has come to my knowledge, found wanting. 
 Here, for an instance, is one published in Notes 
 and Queries during 1898. An English gentle- 
 man, who owned a small terrier, was obliged to 
 go to the Continent for his health, and after a 
 few weeks died. When the news of his death 
 came the dog seemed to understand what had 
 happened, " and shared the grief of the family 
 to such an overwhelming extent that one day it 
 went to an upper window and jumped out, kill- 
 ing itself in a very distressing way." Any one 
 considering this narrative a moment may see 
 
 ^ 201 ^ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 how many assumptions it contains, and espe- 
 cially how supposititious is the conclusion. There 
 is no evidence that it was not an accident. Ter- 
 riers often fall from windows and sometimes 
 jump from them. Only a short time ago a dog 
 sprang from a lofty window-sill in New York 
 in an attempt to catch a bird ; it either did not 
 know, or more probably forgot, the peril of the 
 leap. My own dog, the first time it was taken 
 in a boat upon a lake, stood on the prow of the 
 boat a while and then deliberately sprang over- 
 board, where it was immensely surprised and 
 alarmed to find itself struggling in deep water : 
 all the water it knew about previously was very 
 shallow. 
 
 Had not the circumstances of both these last- 
 mentioned cases been known, and especially had 
 they been associated with deaths in the families, 
 or something else remarkable, they might well 
 have been adduced as examples of conscious self- 
 destruction. 
 
 A correspondent of The Field some time ago 
 gave a long account of how a terrier between re- 
 peated attacks of " fits," first dashed himself 
 ^202 5 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 r 
 
 off a high wall and then ran into the sea, where, 
 after a few half-hearted strokes, it turned on 
 its back and drowned. The observer declares 
 his belief that the animal deliberately put itself 
 out of its miseries, but most of us cannot but 
 attribute the acts to temporary insanity. It is 
 difficult to separate sympathy, romance and tra- 
 dition from facts and cool judgment, in such 
 cases. It has been an ancient belief, for ex- 
 ample, coming down from the middle ages, that 
 a scorpion put within a circle of fire will sting 
 itself and die as soon as it perceives that there 
 is no escape; but not only do not modern scor- 
 pions turn to the felo de se as a release from 
 expected pain, but no scorpion could sting itself 
 to death if it tried. 
 
 Perhaps the influence of these old fancies 
 lingered in the mind of Mr. Seton when in an- 
 other chapter of the same book he suggests sui- 
 cide as the final proud and praiseworthy act of 
 a wild stallion, which for years had baffled all 
 pursuers. At last, however, an organized effort 
 for the capture of the " pacing mustang " was 
 at the point of success : 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 " The man rejoiced, but the mustang gath- 
 ered his remaining strength for one more des- 
 perate dash. Up, up the grassy slope from the 
 trail he went, defied the swinging, slashing rope, 
 and the gunshot fired in air, in vain attempt to 
 turn his frenzied course. Up, up and on, above 
 the sheerest cliff he dashed, then sprang away 
 into the vacant air, down down two hundred 
 feet to fall, and landed upon the rocks below, a 
 lifeless wreck but free." 
 
 All equine animals are subject to insane panic, 
 when they lose all self-control and may rush 
 blindly to accidental destruction; but this 
 author, who claims to be relating actual facts, 
 doesn't mean us to understand this incident in 
 that way. I should like to hear his explanation 
 of how this black mustang, or how Vixen, the 
 fox-mother, had arrived at the knowledge that 
 death meant freedom, and was preferable to the 
 halter? What experience had either of captiv- 
 ity? No such condition exists in nature: what 
 reason had they to foresee, much less dread it? 
 Upon what data could they create a mental pic- 
 ture (granting imaginative ability) calculated 
 to alarm them so profoundly? 
 *> 204 &* 
 
I 
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 EH 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 r 
 
 If horses or foxes comprehend so much as 
 that, why do not thousands of over-worked, half- 
 fed, cruelly abused domestic animals, and many 
 a starving or tortured wild one, commit suicide 
 every day? Why do not fur-bearing animals 
 caught in traps kill themselves at once instead 
 of dying by inches, or merely gnawing off the 
 fixed foot, an act, in my opinion, due to an 
 effort to relieve the dreadful pain, and not to 
 a deliberate method of release. Either they do 
 not know enough, or else their sense of moral 
 responsibility is superior to that of thousands 
 of their masters. 
 
 So enamored is Mr. Seton of this conceit of 
 suicide among wild creatures that he resorts to 
 it again as the climax of his " Biography of a 
 Grizzly," a childish performance, at best, for 
 a man who has shown such literary ability. He 
 disposes of his hero, supposed to be a typical 
 bear, living an average life, when old age and 
 rheumatism make him feel ill and unfit, by mak- 
 ing him go to a certain narrow valley which he 
 (the bear) knows of, and which is strewn with 
 the remains of animals that have perished in the 
 *>$ 205 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 fumes of a stream of noxious gas that flows out 
 of a hole in the rocks. The disgusting odors 
 of Death Gulch " had a message for him," and 
 Bruin meditates that it is far to Yellowstone 
 Park, where he may end his days in peace under 
 the protection of Uncle Sam's hospitality 
 though how could a grizzly have learned that? 
 Moreover, as the sage animal reflects, " What's 
 the use?" 
 
 " Here in this little garden was all he sought ; 
 here were peace and painless sleep. He knew 
 it; for his nose, his never-erring nose, said 
 * Here ! here ! now ! ' He paused a moment at 
 the gate, and as he stood the wind-borne fumes 
 began their subtle work. ... A rush of his 
 ancient courage surged in the grizzly's rugged 
 breast. He turned aside into the little gulch. 
 The deadly vapors entered in, filled his huge 
 chest, and tingled in his vast, heroic limbs, as 
 he calmly lay down on the rocky, herbless floor, 
 and gently went to sleep." 
 
 I can leave to others the literary question 
 whether it is good to wind up a story, alleged 
 to be of facts, with a purely imaginative de- 
 
 ^206 5 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 r 
 
 nouement. My contention now is that animals 
 do not know anything whatever about life and 
 death as contrasted or correlative conditions; 
 and can have no idea that life may be ended, 
 or that death is an alternative state which may 
 be arrived at by fatal means. 
 
 Young beasts do not recognize death when 
 they see it manifested in a lifeless body though 
 the highest apes seem to have some glimmering 
 of the truth but will linger about a mother 
 that has been shot and try to awaken her at- 
 tention. Older animals usually recognize a dead 
 body as dead, but the state seems to mean to 
 them only a mysterious disability, incapacity 
 for resistance and readiness to be eaten at lei- 
 sure. In the case of carnivores, the last is proba- 
 bly the most vivid impression, and many of them 
 will devour almost at once a partner, or even 
 mate or offspring, killed by their side, when not 
 themselves too much alarmed to take advantage 
 of the lucky provision. Hunters constantly 
 meet with instances of this " cannibalism." 
 
 I have watched with interest the behavior of 
 my dogs toward dead animals. They would 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 approach them cautiously, uncertain whether 
 there were not some trick of play or hostile ruse 
 in the immobility, until they could smell the cold 
 form, then would turn away with an expression 
 of wonder and disgust, but no further interest. 
 Hunting animals have learned that in order to 
 feed upon their prey they must reduce it to 
 complete disability: it is the submission not 
 the death of the creature which they seek when 
 they strike. Such was the idea in the minds of 
 the retrievers, made much of by Romanes, which 
 kill one of two wounded ducks when they 
 find it impracticable to retrieve both birds alive, 
 as they are expected to do. The dog uses its 
 natural dog sense in completing the disablement 
 of an unmanageable thing, in order to accom- 
 plish that part of its mission which it feels of 
 the highest importance, viz. : To get the game 
 ashore, somehow. The retriever does not seek 
 the death of the duck, per se, but merely its 
 instantaneous acquiescence in his plan. 
 
 How could a dog or any other brute creature 
 know of death apart from its outward aspects 
 of disability and subsequent dissolution ? What 
 
Do Animals "Commit Suicide"? 
 
 r 
 
 more, really, do we know about it, aside from 
 our belief in Divine Revelation, or in the deduc- 
 tions of metaphysics? What data have the 
 brutes for supposing that it gives " surcease of 
 sorrow," or offers any refuge from distress, 
 or even that such a change can be obtained by 
 one's own act? 
 
 To comprehend the fact, not to say the na- 
 ture, of death, one must comprehend the fact of 
 self-life, and all that we know of the range of 
 brute intelligence leads us to deny its ability 
 to postulate self-existence. No experience can 
 avail brutes in judging the effect of being lifeless, 
 and every case of death seen must seem to the 
 onlookers (if they " sense " it at all) utter ruin 
 ^something to be strenuously avoided. This 
 is the natural physical view of death which must 
 prevail throughout all nature, or life would 
 come to an end. Everything in the natural 
 world shapes itself and tends toward the preser- 
 vation, in order to insure the propagation, of 
 life. All feral instincts face that way, and to 
 impartial laws and processes, with which indi- 
 viduals have nothing to do, is alone intrusted 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 the duty of keeping within bounds the degree 
 of multiplication. 
 
 Self-sacrifice is a supernatural, human idea, 
 utterly at variance with all nature not human, 
 and subversive of its prime reason and motive 
 for existing. Nothing could be more illogical, 
 or wicked, in the brute world, than the possi- 
 bility of intentional self-destruction. Dogs and 
 other animals may sometimes recklessly expose 
 their lives to fatal peril, or, influenced by some 
 nervous stress or extreme emotion, fall ill and 
 die, or do blindly some fatal act; but we may 
 be sure that no animal ever truly commits sui- 
 cide, because no animal has any conception that 
 it is possible to do so. 
 
 210 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 - r 
 
 HEREWITH is reproduced a most excel- 
 lent photograph from life of a little 
 creature which almost everyone knows 
 by name and by the sound of its voice, but which 
 is rarely seen. It is the " tree-toad " really 
 not a toad at all, despite its lumpish and warty 
 appearance, but a true frog that spends most 
 of its time in the trees instead of on the ground 
 or in the water, as do others of the family. 
 
 To enable these small frogs to make their 
 homes on the smooth and shaking branches of 
 trees, they are given special means of holding 
 tightly to an upright surface. The extended 
 fingers of the forefoot are not connected by 
 webs, as are those of the water-frogs, nor termi- 
 nated by suckers, like those of some climbing 
 lizards, but are thickened at the ends into knobs, 
 the under sides of which form cushions always 
 moist with a sticky perspiration enabling the 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 frog to take a firm grasp of whatever he 
 touches. 
 
 This is really a very interesting bit of mech- 
 anism. The holding-power seems really due 
 to the fact that all air is pressed out from be- 
 neath the pad of the toe, rather than to either 
 suction (certainly not exerted) or the stickiness 
 of the secretion, although the latter helps. The 
 matter was experimentally studied by the Ger- 
 man naturalist Schuberg, who found that he 
 could support more than the weight of one of 
 these frogs from a bit of glass merely moistened 
 and pressed against another glass surface. The 
 glass sides of a case or fernery, in which these 
 frogs are kept captive, will soon be smeared 
 with their finger-marks. 
 
 In addition to this, the lower half of the abdo- 
 men (where the skin is thick and porous) also 
 exudes a sticky liquid, so that when the animal 
 sits pressed against the bark of a tree-trunk, or 
 any other upright surface, he is really glued 
 there, and thus supports his weight more easily 
 than if he clung with his hands and feet alone. 
 All the same, he likes to sit in a comfortable 
 *$ 212 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 crotch, where he can rest his back, like other 
 folks. 
 
 Lurking in such a place, he becomes an ogre 
 to minute creeping and flying bugs of all sorts, 
 who never notice his gray or green coat until 
 out darts a spoon-like tongue, and they are 
 caught and dragged into his stomach. The 
 little ones feed especially on the destructive 
 plant-lice (aphides), and thus do a service of 
 great and particular value to the owners of 
 orchards, and recommend themselves as most 
 excellent assistants to be kept in a conservatory 
 or hothouse. 
 
 The instrument with which Mr. Tree-toad 
 catches insect food is his tongue, and it is an 
 extraordinary one of its kind. It is almost as 
 round as a ball a regular lump of a tongue 
 is not attached at the hinder end and capable 
 of being stretched out forward, but beneath its 
 front end, so that it is rolled over and its hinder 
 end is thrown out of the mouth, something as a 
 boy throws a return-ball attached to a rubber 
 cord. It is coated with sticky saliva, and so 
 any small object it hits adheres to it and is 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 brought back into the mouth, which has a few 
 teeth in the upper jaw to help crush the food 
 if necessary to do so before swallowing it. 
 
 If these little frogs would only keep quiet 
 they would rarely be found except by accident, 
 but they are the noisiest of their kind in fact, 
 one of the noisiest creatures in the woods, espe- 
 cially in summer, when nature generally grows 
 quiet. The skin of the throat is as elastic as a 
 rubber ball ; and gulping down a great quantity 
 of air, the hyla will distend his throat until it 
 looks like a small balloon, and then let the air 
 escape through his vocal pipe in a shrill trill 
 that is surprisingly loud and sustained for so 
 small an animal, and can be heard a surprising 
 distance. He never seems to consider that his 
 shouting will betray his position, but will keep 
 at it while you stand close to him and can watch 
 every trembling movement of the inflated throat. 
 
 This loud and not unmusical trill is one of 
 the earliest of spring sounds, though not so 
 early as the peeping of the little yellow, or Pick- 
 ering's, tree-frog, which opens the frog chorus 
 as soon as the ice has gone out of the swamps, 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 and sometimes before ; and it outlasts the clamor 
 of all the other frogs and toads, which grow 
 quiet as the hot, dry days of early summer come 
 on, while our hyla sings away until autumn. 
 It is at night, however, that he is noisiest, for it 
 is then he is most awake and busy, especially 
 when it is wet. His skin, despite its thick and 
 rough appearance, is exceedingly sensitive to 
 changes in the atmosphere, and he is a fairly 
 trustworthy prophet of rain. It is said that 
 the German peasants sometimes keep them in 
 captivity, so as to know when it will be safe to 
 go to picnics ; at any rate, let a damp, rainy day 
 come in July or August, and the air is at once 
 filled with the " croaks " of their loquacious 
 race, whether in rejoicing or distress it is hard 
 to say the former, I guess. It is an old saying 
 that tree-frogs crawl up to the branches of trees 
 before a change in the weather. 
 
 In early spring the noise is made mainly by 
 the males calling to the females to come down 
 with them to the water-side. As soon as the 
 warm days of late March or early April arouse 
 these, as well as other frogs, from dormancy, 
 *> 215 &o 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 their first thought is of egg-laying that prime 
 duty of all wild creatures. For this purpose 
 they, like other frogs, must go to the water; 
 and in April (or perhaps later in northerly lati- 
 tudes) they troop from the woods down to the 
 swamps, ponds and muddy pools in order to 
 deposit their eggs under water. Swimming or 
 creeping out a little way from shore, they at- 
 tach their eggs singly or in little clusters (not 
 in masses of jelly, like the big frogs) to a blade 
 of grass or some other support in shallow water 
 and leave them to be hatched by the warmth 
 of the sun. 
 
 This happens usually inside of two days, when 
 the cream-colored tadpoles, a quarter of an 
 inch long, struggle out of the egg coatings and 
 cling to the grass stems by means of a tempo- 
 rary sucker-like appendage near the mouth, 
 steadily gaining in strength, and hoping no 
 big beetle or other dreadful ogre will catch 
 them before they grow able to swim. This abil- 
 ity comes speedily with the perfection of the 
 tail, for at first they have no limbs, and breathe 
 through external tufted gills like a mud-puppy. 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 In a week or so, however, the gills disappear, 
 and a few days later the hind limbs begin to 
 grow, progressing until even the feet are per- 
 fect by the time the tadpole is a month old. 
 Another month must elapse, however, before the 
 fore-arms have pushed out from the skin and 
 been perfected, by which time the tail is short- 
 ened and has lost its leaf -like shape, and the 
 hind feet have begun to do a part of the work of 
 swimming. The plumpness shrinks to a more 
 frog-like form, and early in July each tiny 
 froglet, dragging a mere remnant of tail, be- 
 gins to try what he can do with his feet on shore, 
 and soon finds himself able to jump about and 
 catch flies like an old hand. Then he hops away 
 to the woods, climbs a tree or fence-post, and is 
 received into hyla society. 
 
 The family to which this frog belongs (the 
 Hylidce) is a numerous one, and has a remark- 
 able distribution, a fact which is commented 
 upon by Dr. Hans Gadow, as follows: 
 
 " To say that this family is cosmopolitan, 
 with the exception of the African region, is 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 literally true, but very misleading. There are 
 in all about one hundred and fifty species, and 
 of these, one hundred are Notogaean [i. e., 
 belong to the Southern Hemisphere], one-half 
 of the whole number, or seventy-five, being Neo- 
 tropical [South American] ; twenty-three are 
 Central American, seven Antillean, and about 
 eighteen are found in North America. One 
 species, Hyla arborea, extends over nearly 
 the whole Palaearctic region [Europe, Asia], 
 and two closely allied forms occur in Northern 
 India and Southern China. Consequently, with 
 the exception of three closely allied species, the 
 Hylidae are either American or Australian. We 
 conclude that their original home was Notogaea, 
 and that they have spread northwards through 
 Central and into North America. The enor- 
 mous moist and steamy forests of South Amer- 
 ica naturally suggest themselves as a paradise 
 for tree-frogs, and it is in this country, espe- 
 cially in the Andesian and the adjoining Cen- 
 tral American subregions, that the greatest 
 diversity of generic and specific forms have 
 been produced. It is all the more remarkable 
 that similar forest-regions, like those of Borneo 
 and other Malay Islands, are absolutely devoid 
 of Hylidse. . . . The various Hylidae re- 
 sort to all kinds of modes of rearing their 
 
 *> 218 > 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 broods. Most of them lay many eggs, up to 
 one thousand, in the water, not coherent in 
 strings, but in clumps ; others lay only a few, 
 attach them to various parts of the body, or, 
 as in the genus Nototrema, the female receives 
 them in a dorsal-pouch." 
 
 Of our North American species, the one we 
 are talking about is the most widespread, occur- 
 ring all over the country east of the dry plains, 
 though becoming rare north of the Great Lakes. 
 It is among the largest, too, being about one 
 and one-third inches long, when fully grown. 
 Its name in classification is Hyla vefsicolor, or 
 the changeable hyla, in reference to its power 
 of assuming, upon all its upper surface, the 
 color of what it sits upon. This power is lim- 
 ited, however. If the animal were placed upon 
 a scarlet or gilded or bright blue surface, it 
 would not take those brilliant hues, because in 
 nature it never chooses or is called upon to rest 
 against colors so gay as these ; but it will change 
 all the way from dark green to nearly white, or 
 to deep gray or reddish brown, according as 
 it finds itself among green vegetation, or on an 
 
 ^219 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 old lichen-covered fence-rail, a moldering log 
 or variously colored barks. The one here pho- 
 tographed was clinging to a birch tree, and the 
 likeness of color in the illustration is not the 
 mere sameness of printer's ink, but is a real 
 similarity. 
 
 How is this change of color made? The proc- 
 ess has been carefully studied by Biedermann 
 in the case of the European tree-frog, and his 
 conclusions apply to the American species as 
 well. Gadow summarizes the explanation of 
 the mechanism as follows : 
 
 " If we examine the green skin of the com- 
 mon tree-frog, Hyla arborea, under a low-power 
 and direct light, we see a mosaic of green, polyg- 
 onal areas, separated by dark lines and inter- 
 rupted by the openings of the skin-glands. 
 Seen from below, the skin appears black. Under 
 a stronger power the black layer is seen to be 
 composed of anastomosing and ramified black 
 pigment-cells. When the light shines through 
 the skin appears yellow. The epidermis itself 
 is quite colorless. The mosaic-layer is com- 
 posed of polygonal interference-cells, each of 
 which consists of a basal half which is granular 
 
 *>$ 220 *> 
 
t 
 
 C. Lown, Phot. 
 
 The Changeable Tree-frog 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 and colorless, while the upper half is made up 
 of yellow drops. Sometimes the tree-frog ap- 
 pears blackish, and if then the black pigment- 
 cells are induced to contract, for instance by 
 warming the frog, it appears silver-gray; in 
 this case the pigment in the yellow drops is no 
 longer diffuse, but is concentrated into a round 
 lump lodged between the interstices of the gran- 
 ular portions; the black pigment-cells are like- 
 wise balled together. These black chromato- 
 phores send out numerous fine branches, which 
 occasionally stretch between and around the 
 polygonal cells. When each of these is quite 
 surrounded and covered by the black processes, 
 the frog appears black. On the other hand, 
 when the black pigment-cells withdraw their 
 processes, shrink up, and, so to speak, retire, 
 then the light which passes through the yellow 
 drops is, by interference, broken into green. 
 
 " Stoppage of the circulation of the blood 
 in the skin causes the black chromatophores to 
 contract. Carbon dioxide paralyzes them and 
 causes them to dilate. This is direct influence 
 without the action of nerves. But stimulation 
 of the nerve-centers makes the skin turn pale. 
 Low temperature causes expansion, high tem- 
 perature contraction, of the chromatophores. 
 Hence hibernating frogs are much darker than 
 
 + 221 &o 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 they are in summer. Frogs kept in dry moss, 
 or such as have escaped into the room and dry 
 up, turn pale, regardless of light or darkness, 
 probably owing to a central, reflex, nerve- 
 stimulus. 
 
 " Tree-frogs turn green as a result of the 
 contact with leaves. Dark frogs will turn green 
 when put into an absolutely dark vessel in 
 which there are leaves. This is reflex action, 
 and blinded specimens do the same. The princi- 
 pal centers of the nerves which control the chro- 
 matophores lie in the corpora bigemina and in 
 the optic thalami of the brain. When these 
 centers are destroyed the frog no longer 
 changes color when put upon leaves, but if a 
 nerve, for instance the sciatic, be stimulated, 
 the corresponding portion of the body, in this 
 case the leg, turns green. Rough surfaces 
 cause a sensation which makes the frog turn 
 dark. . . . Biedermann concludes that the 
 * chromatic function of frogs in general de- 
 pends chiefly upon the sensory impressions re- 
 ceived from the skin, while that of fishes depends 
 upon the eye.' 
 
 " All this sounds very well, but the observa- 
 tions and experiments are such as are usual in 
 physiological laboratories, and frogs, when ob- 
 served in their native haunts, or even when kept 
 
 $ 222 fo> 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 under proper conditions, do not always behave 
 as the physiologist thinks they should. There 
 is no doubt that in many cases the changes of 
 color are not voluntary, but reflex actions. It 
 is quite conceivable that the sensation of sitting 
 on a rough surface starts a whole train of proc- 
 esses : roughness means bark, bark is brown, 
 change into brown; but one and the same tree- 
 frog does not always assume the color of the 
 bark when it rests, or even sleeps, upon such a 
 piece. He will, if it suits him, remain grass- 
 green upon a yellow stone, or on a white window- 
 frame. I purposely describe such conditions, 
 changes, coincidences and discrepancies, in vari- 
 ous species, notably in Hyla arborea, H. cceru- 
 lea, Rana temporaries, Bufo viridis, to show that 
 in many cases the creature knows what it is 
 about, and that the eye plays a very important 
 part in the decision of what color is to be 
 produced. The sensory impression received 
 through the skin of the belly is the same, no 
 matter if the board be painted white, black, or 
 green, and how does it then come to pass that 
 the frog adjusts its color to a nicety to the 
 general hue or tone of its surroundings ? " 
 
 Whether or not the little animal makes this 
 change knowingly, sometimes doing it almost 
 
 *>$ 223 5* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 instantaneously and sometimes gradually, or 
 whether he cannot avoid the alteration of his 
 coat if he wishes to, it serves to make him almost 
 invisible to his enemies, such as birds and snakes, 
 who may easily overlook what seems nothing 
 but a knot or loose scale of bark. This power 
 of hiding is, indeed, his only protection, for he 
 has no weapons of defense, and much less agility 
 in escaping than have many of his relatives. It 
 answers the purpose so well, however, that it is 
 not surprising to find tree-frogs exceedingly 
 numerous in all parts of the country, serving 
 everywhere to keep down the hordes of insects 
 that dwell among the foliage and on the bark 
 of trees and bushes, which always threaten to 
 increase beyond control. 
 
 In the autumn, when the nights begin to grow 
 chill, the leaves fade and fall, and the short life 
 of the insect world comes to an end, these little 
 frogs grow quiet, and, descending from their 
 perches to the ground, seek a snug, warm berth 
 in which to take their long winter sleep. Some 
 creep beneath the drifting dead leaves, and 
 squirm their bodies, tail foremost, as deeply into 
 ^224 5 
 
A Turn-Coat of the Woods 
 
 r 
 
 the loose loam of the woods or garden as they 
 well can, where their eyes close in a drowsiness 
 which so fills their whole bodies that life practi- 
 cally stops until the sun of spring revives it. 
 Others work their way into the dusty decay of 
 hollow trees and rotten stumps, where they also 
 rest secure from storm and trouble, unless some 
 hungry mink or skunk may dig them out. 
 
 These frogs form interesting pets in a fern- 
 ery, where they will sometimes become so tame 
 that they may be let out and trusted to come 
 back ; and they pay for their care by devouring 
 many minute, but noxious, insects. 
 
 225 
 
The Biggest Bird's-Nest and its 
 Maker 
 
 T 
 
 r 
 
 HE mere question: What bird builds the 
 biggest nest? would be an idle query did 
 it not include various other interesting 
 facts and considerations. One might reasonably 
 argue that the bigger the bird the bigger the 
 nest, and in a general way this is so, an eagle 
 is, of course, obliged to make a more capacious 
 receptacle in which to bestow its eggs and rear 
 its young than is a wren. But in a more par- 
 ticular way the rule does not hold. Birds of 
 similar size vary greatly in the amount of nest- 
 ing materials they gather, and in the accommo- 
 dations generally which they seem to require. 
 Thus, to recur to our house-wren, though it is 
 one of the most diminutive of birds, it heaps up 
 a mass of twigs often three times as large as 
 the neat, compact home of, say, the cedar-bird, 
 whose body is three times bigger. Our western 
 + 226 
 
The Biggest Bird's-Nest 
 
 r 
 
 magpie is little larger than a jay, but its domed 
 castle of thorny twigs would fill a bushel-bas- 
 ket. Then, too, the very largest of all birds, 
 the ostriches, make no nest at all, in any proper 
 sense of the word. The huge extinct ratite 
 birds of Madagascar and New Zealand (rela- 
 tives of the ostrich) laid eggs much larger even 
 than those of the moa, that of the epiornis 
 reaching thirteen inches in length. One can 
 imagine the relatively vast capacity of the bed 
 required for them ; but such beds were probably 
 nothing more than basin-like hollows scraped 
 in the sand or among the dead leaves carpeting 
 the forest. 
 
 For similar reasons we ought not to include 
 the heaps of decaying vegetation thrown up by 
 the mound-turkeys of Australia and neighbor- 
 ing islands, some of which are six to ten feet in 
 height and ten to fifteen feet in diameter. These 
 hillocks of weeds, grass and leaves, are tossed 
 together by the birds by scratching backward, 
 and have a crater-like form at the top in which 
 the numerous eggs are deeply buried in layers 
 and left to be incubated by the heat of the sun 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 and of the fermentation of the vegetation. But 
 in most cases several females work at and use the 
 same mound, which rules them out of our con- 
 sideration. 
 
 In absolute bigness, the result of the labor 
 of a single pair, the foremost place (with one 
 exception, which I shall consider in detail pres- 
 ently) belongs to the great birds of prey. 
 Gould long ago expressed the opinion, in his 
 " Birds of Australia," that " the largest nest 
 known was that of the Australian sea-eagle," 
 which he said contained " materials enough to 
 fill a small cart." The same expression was 
 used by Wilson, the father of American orni- 
 thology, in describing the eyries of fish-hawks 
 along the coast of southern New Jersey. " I 
 ascended," he says, " to several of these nests 
 that had been built in from year to year, and 
 found them constructed as follows : Externally, 
 large sticks, from an inch to an inch and a half 
 in diameter, and two or three feet in length, 
 piled to the height of four or five feet, and from 
 two to three feet in breadth; these were inter- 
 mixed with cornstalks, seaweed, pieces of Wet 
 ^f? 228 > 
 
The Biggest Bird's-Nest 
 
 r 
 
 turf in large quantities, mullein-stalks, and 
 lined with dry sea-grass ; the whole forming a 
 mass very observable at half a mile's distance, 
 and large enough to fill a cart, and be no incon- 
 siderable load for a horse." 
 
 Still more bulky nests are still to be seen on 
 certain protected islands off the eastern end of 
 Long Island, if recent reports have not been 
 exaggerated. 
 
 These nests of the American ospreys, and of 
 the foreign sea-eagles, are, however, subject to 
 a serious discount in our present view, since 
 they are occupied continuously, and are the 
 accumulations of many years; and while decay 
 and the winter winds cause the loss annually of 
 a certain proportion, so much new material is 
 added in the way of repairs each year as to 
 steadily increase the total mass. Our white- 
 headed eagle is a closely related form, and its 
 nests sometimes become truly gigantic through 
 continual occupancy for many years. Such 
 ancestral eyries are known in many parts of the 
 country. One on the lake shore near Cleveland, 
 Ohio, had been the home of successive pairs of 
 *$ 229 * 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 eagles for a century until recently, when the 
 old tree fell. 
 
 The biggest regular nest made by a single 
 pair of birds, and used only one season, is un- 
 doubtedly that of a small African wader, named 
 by the early ornithologists umbrette (Scopus 
 umbretta)) but popularly known in South 
 Africa as hammer-kop (hammer-head). It is 
 allied to the storks, yet is sufficiently distinct to 
 be set apart in a family by itself, and is about 
 the size of a raven, but in shape and carriage 
 suggests an overgrown sandpiper. In color it 
 is umber brown, handsomely glossed with pur- 
 plish ; the bill black and feet brown. The head 
 exhibits a thick crest of feathers, which may be 
 erected uprightly, but is usually carried hori- 
 zontally, balancing the long conical beak, and 
 so giving a hammer-like outline to the head in 
 the side view. 
 
 It is found in Madagascar and throughout 
 most of Africa, wherever wooded districts pre- 
 vail ; and its food consists of fish, reptiles, frogs, 
 worms, snails, and insects, captured alive in 
 shallow water or found dead. Sir Harry Johns- 
 *$ 230 5 
 
The Biggest Bird's-Nest 
 
 r 
 
 ton mentions that in Nyassaland these storks are 
 welcome scavengers ; and as their flesh is utterly 
 uneatable, the birds are not much molested there, 
 and therefore are far from shy in most places. 
 In South Africa, according to Layard, they 
 are regarded by the natives as the agents of 
 witches, and hence are rarely injured for fear 
 of evil consequences. It is an interesting coin- 
 cidence, pointing to cunning wisdom on the part 
 of ancient ruler-priests, that in tropical lands 
 nearly all the sacred animals are those which are 
 of practical service locally, as scavengers, or 
 destroyers of noxious snakes and crocodiles, or 
 in some other way; and at the same time have 
 no particular worth as food. It was a far-seeing 
 sagacity which prompted the thought that the 
 best way to preserve such animals, and so enjoy 
 the benefit of their work, was to throw around 
 them the shield of reverence, which in the savage 
 is superstitious fear. In the present case, never- 
 theless, the association with witchcraft may sim- 
 ply arise from the weird appearance and cries 
 of the birds, as they circle in the dusk above the 
 swamps, where they are likely to remain hid by 
 *$ 231 So- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 (r 
 
 day; and from their curious dancing in pairs 
 or in threes in lonely spots. 
 
 if; The British settlers in Africa find them rather 
 easy to tame and amusing as pets, except for 
 their harsh, quacking cries. They indulge an 
 odd habit of prancing around one another when 
 feeding, and occasionally at other times, as is 
 the way of many of the waders. Layard gives 
 an extended description of these antics. 
 
 Their time for activity is mainly in the cool 
 of the evening and early morning. " The 
 quaint-looking umbers," remarks Schweinfurth, 
 author of " The Heart of Africa," " which are 
 generally seen sitting solitary by the shady 
 swamps in the woods, were here [Dyoor, Sudan] 
 marshaled along the banks in flocks of twelve 
 or fifteen ; these birds, with their ponderous 
 crested heads pensively drooping in the noon- 
 tide heat, seemed in their * somber weeds ' rather 
 to belong to the dreary wastes of the chilly 
 North than to the smiling grass-plains of the 
 upper Nile." 
 
 Now none of these features of structure or 
 habit would suggest that anything unusual in 
 *> 232 fc 
 
The Biggest Bird's-Nest 
 
 I 
 
 the nest-building was to be expected; yet in 
 fact the architecture of this bird is very curious 
 indeed. Instead of a scanty platform of loosely 
 entangled sticks on some limb or bush-top, as 
 is the custom of most storks and ibises, the 
 hammer-head constructs an astonishingly large 
 and elaborate home for its family. It is a huge 
 composition of weeds, sticks, etc., placed in a 
 fork of a large, low tree, or sometimes in a rocky 
 cleft, and one examined by Layard measured 
 three yards long by a yard and a half across. 
 It is ordinarily flat on top, as figured by Holub 
 and Penzeln in their great work on South- 
 African birds, and its roof will easily bear a 
 man's weight. 
 
 This massive bird's nest is entered by a hole 
 in one side, only large enough to admit the 
 owner, and contains three chambers, connected 
 by small openings, and lined with grass and 
 weed-stems mixed with clay. " The sleeping 
 chamber occupies the highest portion of the 
 nest, in order to be safe from floods, and in it, 
 upon a bed of water-plants, are laid the white 
 eggs, which are from three to five in number, 
 ^233 &* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 and are incubated by each parent in turn. The 
 middle chamber serves for the young when they 
 are too big for the inner one, while the hall is 
 used as a lookout station." 
 
 Mr. Layard also says that the birds are also 
 fond of embellishing their substantial home with 
 anything bright or glittering which they may 
 pick up, as brass buttons, bits of pottery, 
 bleached bones and the like. This reminds one of 
 the similar fancy of the Australian bower-birds, 
 which likewise construct very elaborate homes. 
 Where animals spend much time and labor in 
 their architecture, they evidently feel a much 
 more profound and lasting interest in their 
 habitations than do those which form merely 
 hasty and temporary breeding-places. 
 
 It is an entertaining matter for speculation, 
 why this bird should diverge so far from its 
 relatives in its home-making habits, and choose 
 to produce a nest which is a regular castle in 
 comparison with the ordinary type. We cannot 
 see that the hammer-head is exposed to any 
 greater present dangers than are its cousins, 
 or that it gains much or anything from its 
 +$ 234 fo> 
 
The Biggest Bird's-Nest 
 
 r 
 
 superior comforts and defenses that is, the 
 umbrettes do not seem to increase faster than 
 do the other African waders. On the contrary, 
 they are nowhere numerous, and perhaps as a 
 race are on the decline. 
 
 The explanation of the problem should no 
 doubt be sought in the early history of the 
 species. This bird is of very ancient lineage, 
 its anatomy, which has been specially investi- 
 gated by Beddard, showing many generalized 
 features, indicating that its history goes back 
 farther than that of any other species or group 
 of its kind. In short, it is the nearest remain- 
 ing representative of an ancestral stock from 
 which herons, storks and ibises have branched 
 off and become severally differentiated. The 
 conservatism it has shown in organization may 
 have been accompanied by an equal conserva- 
 tism of mind; and so its peculiar modern nest- 
 building is probably a traditional method de- 
 scended from a time when it was needful to make 
 so strong and warm a nest, and which has tena- 
 ciously been adhered to beyond a time when it 
 ceased to be advantageous. 
 ^235 $+ 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 Thus, in our search for the biggest nest, we 
 have also discovered one of the most ancient 
 styles of architecture remaining among birds, 
 and have hit upon an interesting underlying 
 principle of natural history, a curious par- 
 allel to the history of the opossum detailed in 
 another chapter. 
 
The Phoebe at Home 
 
 DAY after day, in the spring, a certain 
 small bird comes at intervals into the 
 top of a half -dead tree near the house, 
 and sits there by the half -hour. It is a demure 
 little figure in blended olive-green and brown, 
 with a large, dark head, and a tail narrowly 
 edged with white. It bears itself soberly, like 
 some dear old Quaker lady in plain rich silk, 
 with touches of lace here and there, like the soft 
 edging of foam that bedecks the summer sea. 
 Sometimes there are two, and they sit very up- 
 right on the cleanest twig, as if they had been 
 trained, as was the good dame I have suggested, 
 in some prim, old-fashioned " seminary," which 
 taught them that the backs of chairs were not 
 for use by the young ; and I hear them calling, 
 sometimes insistently, sometimes carelessly, their 
 name, tswee-zee. That is the true pronuncia- 
 
 ^237 te 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 tion, as nearly as I can catch it, but my neigh- 
 bors generally find that too hard, and call the 
 bird phcebe. More extraordinary changes than 
 that have taken place in names from a foreign 
 language, as genealogists well know. 
 
 The family is of fly-catcher stock, and my 
 friends belong to the pewee branch, being own 
 cousins to the aristocratic wood-pewee, whose 
 plaintive pee-ah-wee hints at decayed fortunes, 
 and who holds himself aloof. There are various 
 other relatives, such as the chebec of our gar- 
 dens, the Acadian, the olive-sided, and other 
 woodland sorts. All have the family trait of 
 sitting very erect and waiting for Providence 
 to send insects near enough to be seized by a 
 quick dash their eyesight being microscopi- 
 cally keen. I have read that the kingbird (an- 
 other relative) has been seen to make a dash of 
 more than one hundred feet in order to seize a 
 minute insect near the observer's face. Though 
 the phcebe may get much of its food in morsels 
 too small for us to perceive, and we laugh at the 
 sudden dash and somersault the act requires, 
 and to hear the vicious snapping of the pincer- 
 
 +$ 238 5 
 
f The Phoebe at Home 
 
 r 
 
 like beak as gnats are caught " on the fly," it 
 sometimes stoops at larger food, even conde- 
 scending now and then to pick up a wriggling 
 caterpillar, or to engage in a contest with a 
 moth half as big as itself. 
 
 The phoebe is one of the earliest birds to re- 
 turn to us from its winter home, which may 
 have been in Mexico or the West Indies, or per- 
 haps not farther away than North Carolina. 
 It is the latter, hardier ones, no doubt, that are 
 boldest in following the retreating winter north- 
 ward, so that we often hear their little song 
 before the last snowstorm. 
 
 Now begins the most entertaining chapter of 
 phoebe's history that of its home-making and 
 home-keeping. There is a sweetness of domes- 
 ticity about the nesting and brooding of a bird 
 that belongs to no other creature. The bees 
 make good houses, and dwell in them and care 
 for their offspring and for each other ; and the 
 affection for their young in the four-footed ani- 
 mals is often striking and courageous, but the 
 suggestion of real home-life and happiness in 
 the ways of our woodland birds in spring ap- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 peals to the human heart almost beyond any- 
 thing else in nature. 
 
 My friendly phoebe was the builder and owner 
 of a nest made after the old prehistoric phoebe 
 fashion on the front of a well-shaded ledge near- 
 by. No new-fangled notions for her! She was 
 satisfied with the ways of her forefathers, and 
 expected her children to abide by them. Her 
 home, then, was founded upon a shelf hardly 
 wide enough to hold it, above which an over- 
 hanging rock gave not only shelter from the 
 weather but security against attack from above ; 
 and in addition it was shadowed and hidden by 
 a mingled maple and shad-bush. The face of 
 the rock was rough, and on many of its ledges 
 and projections, where a trifle of soil had been 
 borne by the winds or by trickling rainwater, 
 moss had taken root, and, clinging with micro- 
 scopic fingers, had spread into irregular patches. 
 To make her home look like one of these had been 
 the object of the little architect. No bigness 
 nor ostentation and needless ornament formed a 
 part of her plan. These might do for her 
 cousins, the strong kingbirds, or her other cou- 
 
The Phoebe at Home 
 
 r 
 
 sins, the wood-pewees, who play the fine lady in 
 the forest. Her idea was the substantial, the 
 inconspicuous, and the safe. 
 
 With this in view, Mme. Phoebe and her hus- 
 band together, after much interesting investiga- 
 tion and colloquy, decided upon a good spot, 
 and there the work of the husband seemed to 
 end. Whether he is too indolent, or thinks it 
 infra dig., or pleases himself with the notion 
 that he will play soldier and defend the laborer, 
 or whether he is simply not permitted by his 
 spouse to meddle with this important matter, 
 you may decide for yourself. At any rate, 
 Mme. Phoebe seems to do all the work alone, but 
 her mate entertains her now and then by a little 
 song, which is scarcely more than a repetition 
 of his name, as fast as he can chatter, for a min- 
 ute or so at a time. The builder finds some spot 
 where moss is growing, plucks it up by the 
 roots, brings the sprays, with the mud clinging 
 to their roots, and lays them in a circle upon the 
 rock, where the material is patted down by her 
 feet until its sticks. If the shelf is wide enough 
 a complete circle is laid, and as more is laid and 
 <$ 241 $& 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 patted down on top, a bowl is presently built; 
 but generally she likes to set the structure in a 
 corner, or against the wall, and then it becomes 
 a half or three-quarters circle. 
 
 Several days are consumed in this operation, 
 but not much work is done except in the morn- 
 ing, leaving the new material to dry during the 
 afternoon. She works slowly and carefully, 
 too, spending many minutes, at times, in tram- 
 pling down the wet moss with her feet, pushing 
 it with her breast to make the cavity of just the 
 right size and fitness, and arranging and rear- 
 ranging the sprays with her bill, delightedly 
 loitering about her work like any other happy 
 young home-maker. If not enough mud clings 
 to the roots of the moss, she brings more, in 
 pellets, and uses it as extra mortar. Finally, 
 when she has erected the rim so high that it will 
 conceal all of her body except head and tail (as 
 she sits upon her eggs), she lines it with a bed- 
 ding of horsehair, to lift the eggs above the chill 
 and dampness of the adobe walls and base. 
 Meanwhile the hardy moss, rooted in the nest, 
 lives and keeps green and hangs down in tufts, 
 
 + 242 o> 
 
The Phoebe at Home 
 
 r 
 
 so that the resemblance of the nest to any of the 
 many patches of naturally growing moss about 
 it is nearly complete, and the architect's attempt 
 at concealment by this likeness is entirely suc- 
 cessful. It seems the more so when, as fre- 
 quently happens, the bird avoids the use of any 
 ledge, along which a mouse or weasel or snake 
 might possibly creep, upon eggs intent, and 
 plasters her dwelling, in the form of a heavy 
 bracket, right upon the face of the rock, where 
 it clings by the cohesive force of mud, mingled 
 with the moss and other fibrous ingredients. 
 
 Thus far one might say that the phoebe showed 
 great intelligence, but it is worth while exam- 
 ining whether that is really a good word to use, 
 if by " intelligence " is meant conscious adapta- 
 tion of means to an end. It is probably safe to 
 say that this method is a departure from the 
 more ordinary tree-nesting habit practiced by 
 its relatives rather than that it alone represents 
 an original style from which all the rest have de- 
 parted. It secures more safety by greater inac- 
 cessibility, at the expense of using much mud 
 and also at the expense of far greater labor 
 *>$ 243 &* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 than is required by the ordinary stick or grass- 
 built home. Its resemblance to a patch of moss 
 is an accidental result of the use of such mate- 
 rials, but the effect of this is so good that 
 natural selection seems to have nearly perfected 
 the tendency to the exclusive use of moss. 
 
 The mud, of course, is a mortar needed to 
 hold the nest in place when it is bracketed 
 against the face of a rock, which may be consid- 
 ered the typical situation, but it is rarely needed 
 when the nest rests upon a ledge or other flat 
 surface, as it often does; yet the birds seem 
 rarely to spare themselves labor in that case 
 though now and then a nest will be found with 
 very little mud and composed of miscellaneous 
 materials. 
 
 Thus far I have been dealing only with the 
 primitive style of nest, in the wilderness. But 
 this bird has been one of the first to attach itself 
 to mankind, as settlements advanced into the 
 interior, and to make use of his structures. Its 
 greatest anxiety, apparently, in choosing a 
 nesting-site was to find one beneath a shelter, 
 so that the rain should not dampen and chill the 
 <*$ 244 5o 
 
The Phoebe at Home 
 
 r 
 
 mud, or perhaps dissolve it, and so ruin the nest 
 completely. When men came to their locality 
 and began to build houses and sheds and bridges, 
 the phoebes instantly perceived the advantage 
 their roofs and covering afforded, and straight- 
 way began to occupy nesting-sites beneath them. 
 Barns they seem rarely to have entered, perhaps 
 because the pugnacious swallows always drove 
 them away ; but carriage-sheds, isolated and 
 unfrequented buildings, like boat-houses and 
 sugar-camps, were and are quickly seized upon, 
 and in many a rural house to-day a pair of 
 phones is a regular summer accompaniment in 
 some corner beneath the porch-roof. Bridges 
 they are especially fond of, finding in the stone 
 abutments a semblance to their natural cliffs, 
 with an admirable roof in the bridge floor ; but 
 they often choose to put the nest, even there, on 
 the upper surface of a beam or girder, perhaps 
 just beneath the planks of the rattling roadway. 
 So constant and peculiar is this custom that in 
 many parts of the country the bird is known as 
 the " bridge pewee." Abandoned and broken 
 down old houses, especially the stone ones so 
 
 *$ 245 > 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 common in the Hudson Valley, are almost always 
 inhabited by the phcebe, too, and the basement 
 or cellar seems to be preferred, no matter how- 
 dark. In such places they are not shy, and will 
 let you make a close acquaintance with their life. 
 Now in this association with man, and in these 
 improved situations, which have been occupied 
 in the older districts by succeeding generations 
 of phoebes for one or two hundred years, the 
 birds seem to have changed their style of nest- 
 building in only one particular, though they 
 occasionally pick up civilized material, such as 
 strings, tufts of wool, straws, etc. ; the one par- 
 ticularly referred to is the now prevalent use 
 of horsehair as lining, where they must have 
 employed fine grass before horses came into the 
 country. This novelty, however, is a disad- 
 vantage, for it causes the nests to become so 
 overrun with vermin that it is said the young 
 are sometimes worried to death by the excess of 
 it. This would prevent the use of the nest for 
 the second brood, which the early-breeding spe- 
 cies almost always raises ; but it frequently hap- 
 pens that a second nest is built upon the top of 
 
 *$ 246 o 
 
C. Lown, Phot. 
 
 Phoebe's Nest 
 
 This nest was on a beam in the basement of a half-ruined 
 stone house ; and the white-edged tail of the brooding 
 bird is seen over the edge of the mossy structure 
 
The Phoebe at Home 
 
 r 
 
 the first, or close beside it. I once found six 
 nests in a row, touching one another, on a pro- 
 tected ledge of rocks in a lonely part of West 
 Virginia, some of which may have been for sec- 
 ond broods, though most of them, no doubt, 
 were the work of successive seasons. 
 
 But in general the heavy, laboriously built 
 mud and fiber bowl or bracket will be found in 
 the most concealed and well-covered situations, 
 where a very slight open structure would have 
 sufficed for all purposes, as well as in a com- 
 pletely exposed place, and the green coating of 
 moss is maintained there, where it is of no pro- 
 tective service, as carefully as on the wild crags. 
 Moreover, it often happens that in such circum- 
 stances the moss is worse than useless it posi- 
 tively draws attention to the bird's home. A 
 notable instance came under my observation last 
 summer, when I found a beautiful example of 
 the bracket-nest affixed to the white-plastered 
 wall inside a ruined house in Ulster County, 
 N. Y., and this year a new nest surmounted it. 
 Here the green moss was the very opposite of 
 protective it attracted the eye instantly. This 
 ^247 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 I 
 
 illustrates one of the reasons why it is not fair 
 to speak of the bird's " intelligence " in appar- 
 ently concealing its cliff-built home by a coating 
 of living moss. 
 
 Indeed, one wonders at the bird's stupidity 
 sometimes as much as its cleverness. A marked 
 characteristic, belonging, more or less, to all 
 birds, is its love of locality, and enjoyment of 
 placing its home as near as possible to the place 
 it lived in the season before. A rural railway 
 station of stone that I know has been resorted to 
 for years by phoebes, presumably the same pair, 
 who almost always build on a projecting stone 
 about four inches below the crowning timber 
 that supports the roof of the porch. Two 
 years ago their nest was knocked down there 
 by one of the bad boys who are the pest of all 
 villages, and the birds hunted up a new site. 
 They fixed upon a projection of the wall on the 
 other side of the building, and a new nest was 
 begun. This stone, however, was fully fourteen 
 inches below the timber that had formerly lim- 
 ited the height of their nest, and the foolish 
 birds, apparently thinking it needful to carry 
 
 *>$ 248 
 
The Phoebe at Home 
 
 r 
 
 their work up to that familiar level, heaped up 
 no less than fourteen inches of foundation be- 
 fore they made a cup and lined it for the eggs. 
 Such facts as these, among many that are 
 known to students, seem to be interesting as 
 showing the traditional character and limita- 
 tions of bird intelligence as applied to nest- 
 building. 
 
 249 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow 
 Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 WHEN one, in climbing almost any 
 of the great mountains that stand, 
 range behind range, between the 
 plains and the Pacific coast, comes out above 
 the woods upon the naked slopes and crags of 
 the summit, he has reached a new world, and one 
 whose attractiveness grows with longer acquain- 
 tance. One's first walk above timber-line, how- 
 ever, will be likely to set his curiosity on edge 
 to account for innumerable keen, bleating cries, 
 which seem to come now from the rocks beneath 
 his feet, then from the wonderfully clear and 
 silent air, or from near and far to the right and 
 to the left. 
 
 Pausing in silence and looking intently about 
 him, in an effort to solve the mystery, the ex- 
 plorer's eye will presently detect a movement, 
 as if a shadow flitted across the scant sod, or a 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 piece of rock itself had moved; by and by, if 
 alert to this suggestion, his eye will catch a 
 glimpse of a small creature, so near the color 
 of the stones, as to seem a part of them, and 
 then of another and another, until, if one remain 
 quiet, a score may come into sight. Gaining 
 confidence they will begin scuttling about, sit 
 up like tiny poodles, and squeak out their small 
 yet wonderfully resonant cry, with outstretched 
 necks and jerking heads like the barking of a 
 toy dog. Let the rambler make a noise or mo- 
 tion, however, and every squeaker will disappear 
 as if by magic, and every sound will cease. 
 
 These curious animals are pikas, queer lit- 
 tle degenerate hares which the miners and hunt- 
 ers happily call " conies." They do certainly 
 resemble in habits the conies of Africa, those 
 described in proverbs as " feeble folk " which 
 " make their houses in the rocks " ; but in struc- 
 ture they are far away, and in reality are much 
 nearer relatives of the rabbits, or of the guinea- 
 pigs, whose wild brethren still dwell among the 
 pumice and lava of the Bolivian Andes. They 
 look, indeed, much like guinea-pigs, being about 
 + 251 5* 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 the same size, having the same blunt nose, squat, 
 rotund form, and small, creeping feet. Their 
 ears are round, set close to the head and rimmed 
 with white, and they have almost no tails at all. 
 The varied colors of guinea-pigs are due to their 
 long domestication, and the pikas do not re- 
 semble them in that respect, but are grayish 
 above and yellowish-white on the lower parts. 
 Most of the mountain animals may go down 
 into the protection of the forests when autumnal 
 storms begin to blanket the peaks with snow, but 
 some cannot get away. The siffleur, or moun- 
 tain woodchuck, no longer sounds the wild, clear 
 whistling that seems the voice of the mountain 
 spirit, so eerie and disembodied is it, but, heavy 
 with fatness, lounges into his snug burrow and 
 goes to sleep. The few squirrels, mice and 
 shrews, that dwell along the upper borders of 
 the timber, seek warm retreats prepared in ad- 
 vance ; the bears no longer climb the rocks, and 
 even the white goat, whose favorite resting- 
 place has been the middle of a glacial snow-field, 
 now seeks some sheltered ravine-head for a win- 
 ter hospice. Very few four-footed animals 
 ^252 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 bravely keep their residence while winter as- 
 saults and holds the icy heights. One of these 
 is our little friend the pika; the other a neigh- 
 bor of his, the sewellel, a creature much like a 
 dimunitive beaver, but one which never takes 
 to the water nor builds a dam, and has in place 
 of a tail like a mason's trowel one like a very 
 small and scanty whisk-broom. I shall have 
 more to say of him presently. 
 
 In no season is the Alpine world more entic- 
 ing than in early autumn. A carpet of exqui- 
 site late flowers is spread upon the softer 
 ground: they are the same that in the valleys 
 sway upon tall stems, but here form a mat close 
 in the earth, for in the short summer of these 
 heights nature has no time to waste on making 
 stems and leaves. The slopes and ridges just 
 above the dwarf trees that mark the limit of 
 forest growth, are golden with ripened grass; 
 and the bared crags overhead glitter upon their 
 edges, but are richly purple in shadow. The 
 sunshine is yellow and mellow, and an opalescent 
 mist veils the peaks, near and remote, which 
 shine in it like the ruins of mighty shells, nbw 
 
 ^253 5 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 silvery white, now palest blue, now rosy, and 
 over all arches a perfect sky. 
 
 In this delicious weather, as you stroll about 
 these gable-ends of the roof of the world, you 
 constantly come upon bouquets of flowers, their 
 stems all one way, laid side by side on some 
 warm rock, and you wonder who has picked and 
 arranged them so carefully yet left them to 
 wither ; and then you begin to see little heaps of 
 grass and weeds standing in the sun and turn- 
 ing yellow and dry under its long, hot beams. 
 There may be scores or hundreds of them. 
 
 If your curiosity led to observation you would 
 presently discover that these were near the home 
 of a colony of pikas, which lived in the loose 
 slide-rock, finding their way in winding galleries 
 far into its interior, where each family had a 
 snug nest in some convenient hollow, and that 
 these heaps of drying vegetation tiny hay- 
 stacks were the gathered material of their win- 
 ter stores. 
 
 They do not, like the whistlers, pass the win- 
 ter in torpid sleep, nor is it possible for them 
 cither to seek or find any forage during the 
 + 254 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 cold season. Hence they must lay up stores, 
 and plentiful ones. In this duty they show not 
 only great industry, but much sagacity, the 
 former being required, indeed, by the latter, for 
 their harvest is a short and precarious one. 
 They must not cut the grasses and flowering 
 weeds too early, for then the juices are still 
 copious in the stalks, and these would heat and 
 ferment the plants when piled up, causing them 
 to rot instead of to " cure." They dare not 
 wait too long, for fear the plants may shed their 
 nutritious seeds and wither, or even be lost alto- 
 gether beneath burying snows or destructive 
 gales. Hence it is an evidence of much judg- 
 ment and great activity on the part of these 
 little husbandmen that they are able to meet 
 their requirements in the brief season only 
 a fortnight or so in later September allowed 
 them by their climate and circumstances. Dur- 
 ing this short harvest-time the pikas make their 
 hay, stack it up in the sun to cure, and, when it 
 is thoroughly dry, but not decayed, take it into 
 their barns beneath the stones and store it as 
 food for the long winter jto. come. 
 
 +$ "255' 3 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 In doing this they keep a sharp eye upon the 
 weather, in respect to which they seem to have 
 remarkable foreknowledge. The pikas of Rus- 
 sia, which have much the same habit, but exist 
 lower down on the mountain sides, so that they 
 are better known to the people, are called by the 
 peasants " weather wisers " and are depended 
 upon as living barometers. The same faculty 
 belongs to our " little chief," as the Northern 
 Indians call him, and he turns it to good ac- 
 count. 
 
 Some day the barometer at your mountain 
 camp will begin falling, although otherwise no 
 sign of bad weather disturbs the serenity of the 
 heights. But you will notice a sudden excite- 
 ment and great activity on the part of your 
 squeaking little friends among the rocks. All 
 the afternoon, braving your presence with un- 
 wonted courage, they will toil at their work of 
 carrying in their provender, and, though usu- 
 ally they go to bed at sunset, to-night you will 
 hear them bleating and calling to one another 
 as they hasten their harvesting until far into 
 the night. Before morning gales and snow ami 
 *$ 256 5 
 
> o 
 
 o 
 
 -( 1 
 I I 
 
 d 
 
 PH 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 sleet will envelop the mountain, the first patrol 
 of winter attacking it with a fierceness that 
 seems an assault by all the boreal hosts. But 
 whether you be prepared or not, the pikas have 
 not been caught napping! Their provender is 
 all safe in the underground barns. 
 
 An odder and less known animal, living near 
 timber-line in the Coast ranges of Oregon and 
 northward, is the one introduced to us a century 
 ago by Lewis and Clark as the " sewellel," a 
 name which involved one of those errors so 
 easily and frequently made by explorers. It 
 appears that the Chinook Indian's name for the 
 animal itself was o-gwool-lal, but they called a 
 robe made of its skins she-wal-lal, corrupted 
 into " sewellel." That is, Lewis and Clark mis- 
 took the name of the garment for that of the 
 animal. The Nisquallies, living along the shores 
 of Puget Sound, called it showt'l, as may be 
 seen in some of our older books; and the white 
 trappers soon dubbed the animal " mountain 
 beaver," which was much closer to the truth 
 than their names usually were. 
 
 In fact it is nearer to the beaver than to any 
 ^257 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 other animal in structure, but is so generalized 
 that some paleontologists believe it represents, 
 better than any other existing species, the an- 
 cestral type from which the varied tribes of 
 squirrels and squirrel-like rodents have de- 
 scended. It stands in a group of its own, the 
 Haplodontia. 
 
 The sewellel is about the size of a muskrat, 
 and reddish-brown in color, with a very short, 
 brush-shaped tail, very small eyes, and a 
 Warm, close fur, of which the Indians made much 
 use, as also they did of that of the pika, the 
 women fashioning baby-clothes and winter un- 
 dergarments by stitching together these delicate 
 pelts, as well as making of them blanket-like 
 robes. All the mountain Indians are (or used 
 to be) very fond of its flesh; and Dr. George 
 Suckley, one of the earliest naturalists to in- 
 vestigate the fauna of the Columbia Valley, 
 roasted one and " found it excellent, tasting 
 much like chicken." 
 
 They are shy and cunning, however, and now- 
 adays, at any rate, are trapped only with much 
 difficulty; when chased by dogs, they fight so 
 ^258 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 well as to make a very respectable antagonist 
 to the average terrier. 
 
 The sewellels live in wet places, where the 
 ground is soft, rich and overrun with rank 
 vegetation, " preferably," writes Dr. Merriam, 
 " in springy, sloping ground, where their in- 
 numerable burrows are kept wet by the cold, 
 trickling water." In fact, settlers complain 
 that their burrows often start bad washouts in 
 the hillsides, especially in clover-fields, a plant 
 of which they are as fond as are the woodchucks. 
 In such places they often exist in a numerous 
 colony whose underground passages are con- 
 nected in a neighborly way; and early in the 
 morning a dozen or so may often be seen sit- 
 ting at the entrances to their subterranean 
 homes, and " whistling like prairie dogs," as 
 one writer puts it. Long ago the Oregon people 
 named them " boomers," in reference to the hol- 
 low tone of their voices. 
 
 These little folks, like the pikas and beavers 
 of which they remind us, must store winter sup- 
 plies, and in the late summer " they cut various 
 plants, commonly rank or woody kinds, which 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 they gather and carry in bundles to their bur- 
 rows or to places near by, where they spread 
 them out to dry." They will climb a small bush 
 some distance in order to cut off the tender up- 
 per twigs. These provisions vary with the local- 
 ity, and what is there available. Twigs of thim- 
 ble-berry, mountain-ash, salal, willow and other 
 shrubs, whose bark they find edible, are common 
 in the stacks ; but most of all they gather brake- 
 ferns, sometimes a bushel or more in a single 
 heap over or close to the principal mouth of 
 the burrow. After these have been thoroughly 
 dried and cured in the sun they are dragged 
 into the innermost burrows, and used to sustain 
 the very simple requirements of a life reduced 
 to inertness by having very little to do or think 
 about during the long months of imprisonment 
 by cold and snow. They are very fat and 
 sleek when they go in in the fall, but look decid- 
 edly seedy when they reappear in the spring. 
 
 How completely the showt'ls hibernate it is 
 
 hard to determine: probably more than do the 
 
 conies, and apparently far more than do their 
 
 neighbors of the upper edge of the woods, 
 
 ^260 So* 
 
The Haymakers of the Snow Peaks 
 
 r 
 
 the Sierra pocket-gophers. Where the latter 
 are numerous, as on the higher slopes of Mount 
 Shasta, you may see, when the snow has gone 
 off in the spring, hundreds of little cake-like 
 elevations of soil which have been pushed up 
 underneath its crystal covering. These de- 
 posits show that all winter these small but hardy 
 ground-squirrels are burrowing about beneath 
 the frost in search of tuberous roots and other 
 food, and every now and then have poked their 
 heads above ground to push the earth out of 
 some newly bored tunnel, or to investigate the 
 condition of the world and the progress of 
 events. 
 
 261 
 
A Kitten at School 
 
 r 
 
 THE "back yard" of a metropolitan 
 house does not afford much material for 
 natural history study, except, perhaps, 
 to the insect hunter; but I have been amused 
 and interested in watching the education and 
 recreation of a kitten which is going on in 
 my neighbor's little area. 
 
 It has all been seen before, no doubt, a thou- 
 sand times; but it struck me that not many 
 young animals had so much fun mixed up with 
 their schooling as a kitten gets. Its school is, 
 in fact, a sort of kindergarten. This old cat 
 plays with her kitten in the most patient way, 
 when, I have no doubt, she'd much rather be 
 quietly asleep on the warm flagstone by the 
 kitchen window. 
 
 Now few animals do that. The youngsters 
 of all sorts frolic by themselves. I have seen 
 a family of four wolf-pups rollicking at the 
 <* 262 
 
A Kitten at School 
 
 r 
 
 door of their rocky den in the Green River sand- 
 hills of Wyoming, exactly as you may see a 
 parcel of small dogs scrambling over one an- 
 other and pretending to bite. Most adult beasts 
 have some sense of humor, and many a large 
 degree of playfulness. Who that has ever 
 watched the monkeys in Central, or Schenley, or 
 Lincoln parks, or in any other menagerie, can 
 doubt that ? Squirrels spend much of their time 
 in pure play, as do all agile animals. But the 
 instances are rare, as I have said, where the 
 old ones seek to amuse the young, or join in 
 with them in real sport. 
 
 I remember once lying upon the brink of a 
 very lofty cliff, in northern Wyoming, watch- 
 ing for an hour or two the extraordinary agility 
 and jollity of a lot of bighorn kids. They 
 were racing up and down steep snowbanks, 
 leaping over and dodging each other among the 
 rocks like children playing tag, while the old 
 rams and ewes lay curled up in dry spots, or 
 fed quietly upon the fresh herbage of the alpine 
 meadow, without paying the least attention to 
 the games. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 But my neighbor's tabby is evidently of the 
 opinion that all work and no play will make of 
 her Jack a dull cat ; and there is no room in the 
 city of New York for a dull cat ! Its wits must 
 be as sharp as its claws ; it must be armed cap-a- 
 pie, so to speak, if it is to hold its own in the 
 nocturnal competition of the back fence. What 
 but the brightest wits would enable a cat to do 
 as the one in the following story, related by 
 Romanes, did? 
 
 An English family had been accustomed dur- 
 ing a season of severe cold to throw crumbs 
 from the breakfast-table to the birds, and pres- 
 ently their cat got into the habit of waiting in 
 ambush, in the expectation (often realized) of 
 obtaining a hearty meal from one or two of the 
 assembled sparrows. After a time the servant 
 neglected the practice of throwing out the 
 crumbs, whereupon the cat was observed by sev- 
 eral persons to get crumbs and scatter them 
 on the grass with the obvious intention of entic- 
 ing the birds anew. Dr. Romanes says he has 
 no reason to doubt the accuracy of this narra- 
 tive; and furnishes in corroboration other simi- 
 -$264 So* 
 
A Kitten at School 
 
 r 
 
 lar incidents, in one of which a cat scratched 
 up and laid upon the surface decoy-crumbs that 
 had been concealed by a slight fall of new snow. 
 
 Only two blocks away from where I write 
 there lived until recently a tomcat of great 
 size and marked intelligence, who once saved the 
 house from burglary, by recognizing the in- 
 truder as a stranger improperly in the house, 
 and thereupon making such a rumpus as to 
 arouse the family. " If left in the yard," says 
 an account of him in the New York Times, 
 " this smart animal would not stand at the door 
 and mew, as most cats would, but always reached 
 up, and with his fore paws turned the doorknob 
 and passed into the house." 
 
 The comprehension of mechanical appliances 
 like that is often seen in cats. I have read of 
 one that quickly learned to open a hinged win- 
 dow that was fastened with a swivel catch. 
 Many instances are recorded of cats opening 
 doors by springing upon the thumb latch. But 
 success here involves more than the mere de- 
 pressing of the thumb-piece of the latch, al- 
 though this act alone shows close observation 
 <*$ 265 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 and reasoning on the part of the animal; for 
 the cat at once discovers that it must, by 
 scratching with its hind feet against the posts, 
 or by throwing its weight against the door, 
 push the door far enough to prevent the latch 
 falling into the guard again, if it expects to 
 accomplish its object. A good many smart cats 
 have " caught on " to the fact that the ringing 
 of a door-bell or the bell-pull in a room will 
 summon a servant, who will understand that 
 they want to be fed. This is quite different 
 from the case where a captive animal is taught 
 to ring a bell arranged for it, as is sometimes 
 done. In the former instance the cat observes 
 that the pulling of that bell-handle makes noise, 
 which is followed by the appearance of a ser- 
 vant, who has the means to gratify its wants. 
 It reasons : " If somebody opens the door I can 
 get in; when men pull that handle somebody 
 does open the door; the same result will follow 
 if I pull the handle; therefore I will do so." 
 
 The most characteristic feature in the feline 
 nature, probably, is the practice of keeping its 
 half -dead victims under its paws and recaptur- 
 ^ 266 o 
 
A Kitten at School 
 
 $ 
 
 ing them again and again, as they attempt to 
 escape, before finally giving them their quietus. 
 Many explanations of this have been given, 
 none of which seem to me very satisfactory. 
 Mr. Romanes refers it to an endowment of extra 
 cruelty in the feline nature, which seems to me 
 simply begging the question. I am inclined to 
 refer it to the animal's enjoyment of play 
 its living victim is an active toy. Few cats 
 ever get too old to frolic with a ball. I have 
 seen a bulldog become enraged almost to the 
 point of insanity over a struggle with a stone 
 globe about the size of a football. It is proba- 
 ble the animal thinks it alive. Tigers and lions, 
 when they are enraged, or alarmed, and strike 
 down a hunter, do not hesitate about killing him 
 at once they are in no mood for play; but 
 domestic cats will sometimes catch animals they 
 do not like to eat just for the fun of it. An 
 instance in point was reported in Science Gossip 
 (July, 1876), as follows: " We had a cat which 
 was very fond of playing with frogs. She 
 would hunt about the garden until she unearthed 
 one, and pat it on the back until it leaped away 
 
 + 267 o 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 with a loud squeak. I have often observed her 
 doing this, but on no occasion did she attempt 
 to eat the frog, and I never could discover that 
 she injured it in the least." 
 
 Moreover, it should be observed that this 
 characteristic feline practice seems to be some- 
 thing a young cat is taught to do by its par- 
 ents at any rate that seemed to be the intent 
 of what I saw going on over the fence this 
 morning. The mother-cat brought out a bone 
 to which considerable meat was attached, and 
 laid it down. The kitten made a dash at it, but 
 was driven off. Then the old cat approached 
 the bone and began to toy with it, snatching 
 at it with its fore paws, hopping about, and 
 generally behaving as nearly as possible as if 
 the bit of meat were a living prey. After a lit- 
 tle the cat stopped this and lay down at a dis- 
 tance, whereupon the kitten approached and 
 clumsily imitated its mother's action. A second 
 time the scene was rehearsed, and only after 
 this lesson was Kitty allowed to eat her meal 
 as she pleased. 
 
 Inherited aptitude for its special training is 
 
 $ 268 
 
A Kitten at School 
 
 r 
 
 undoubtedly there, but the number of things 
 which an animal would do when it grew up, with- 
 out the training by and imitation of its parents 
 in its youth, is, to say the least, much smaller 
 than it used to be considered. 
 
 269 
 
Catching Menhaden off Montauk 
 
 ONE day a fishing-steamer came in and its 
 captain invited me to go with him, in 
 search of menhaden, off Montauk Point. 
 This promised to be good fun, and I gladly ac- 
 cepted the bid. That night we ran across the 
 eastern throat of Long Island Sound, rounded 
 Point Judith in a lively breeze, which set the 
 little vessel dancing gayly, and next day were 
 back again, anchored in Gardiner's Bay. The 
 wind was wrong, or something else, I forget 
 what, but at any rate we went into Greenport 
 that night, and postponed fishing until the follow- 
 ing morning. I strolled about the pretty Long 
 Island village until bedtime, and then went 
 aboard, for we were to be off at daylight. 
 
 What an exquisite night it was! The air was 
 perfectly calm, the moon just risen, and no sound 
 was to be heard save the ticking of that mighty 
 time-piece, the tide, as its wavelets swung gently 
 
Catching Menhaden off Montauk 
 
 r 
 
 back and forth under the weedy piers, or divided 
 against the sharp prows of the smacks. There 
 was light enough to show the spars and ropes of 
 every craft in the harbor, and all lay as motionless 
 as though fixed in rock rather than floating on 
 liquid. 
 
 I " turned in " upon a sofa in the captain's cabin ; 
 and when I emerged, after what seemed an hour's 
 pounding on my door by the chuggety-chugging 
 engine, we were far down Gardiner's Bay again. 
 
 Last night the unruffled water was like bronze; 
 now, under the soft silvery haze of the morning, 
 the dancing surface became frosted silver, opaque 
 and white save where the early sunbeams, striking 
 through the mist, were reflected from the crests of 
 the ripples in glancing ribbons of light. Shelter 
 Island was an indistinguishable mass far astern; 
 Long Beach light had ceased to twinkle; Orient 
 Point was hidden in haze ; Plumb Island, where 
 eagles used to make their metropolis, and many 
 fish-hawks now live, nesting on the ground with 
 the gulls, was only a low bank of blue; Gull Is- 
 lands could not be seen at all; and I only knew 
 that Little Gull was there from the dot in the 
 ^271 fc> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 horizon made by its lonely lighthouse, and an 
 occasional gleam imagined to be the surf break- 
 ing on the reefs at the Race. All this was north- 
 ward. Southward the wooded bluffs of Gardi- 
 ner's Island, with its natural breakwater and 
 lighthouse, like a long arm reaching out between 
 the outer and the inner waters, limited the view. 
 But this was soon left behind, and as the deep in- 
 dentation of Napeaque came into view, the 
 steamer's head was turned southeastward, toward 
 Montauk, which, in the growing light, now stood 
 out plain in every bleak feature of sandy dune 
 and treeless moor. 
 
 Now a very sharp lookout must be kept for 
 fish, and after the substantial breakfast in the 
 forecastle, I climbed half way up the shrouds. 
 Even then I could not look across Montauk, but 
 could easily see two great ponds of fresh water, 
 which nearly serve to make an island of the Point. 
 One of them, Fort Pond, was once a scene of san- 
 guinary Indian warfare between the Montauks 
 and Narragansetts, the latter being beaten only 
 by help from the Shelter Island Indians, who 
 drove the invaders to their canoes. At that 
 ^ 272 So 
 
Catching Menhaden off Montauk 
 
 r 
 
 time the Montauks were the most powerful of all 
 the tribes on Long Island, and appear to have 
 been unusually upright savages. Their country, 
 Montauk Point, was once clothed with an abun- 
 dant forest, but the clearing, which took place a 
 century and a half ago, has never been replaced 
 by a new growth, and the whole space is now a 
 wild waste of desolate grass, almost uninhabited, 
 and rarely visited except by gunners and cran- 
 berry-pickers. 
 
 Off Culloden Point the lookout excitedly an- 
 nounced, "Fish off the port bow!" The captain 
 seized his glass and scanned the water. So did I. 
 
 "There's a big bunch," he shouts. "Watch 
 'em flirt their tails! Good color! See how red 
 the water is?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, to be sure," I cry. " By Jove, that's 
 a good color!" 
 
 My vacant face must have belied my words, 
 but he didn't notice it. He was shouting: 
 
 " Lower away the boats ! Stand by to ship the 
 nets!" furiously ringing signals to the engineer, 
 giving hasty orders to the wheelsman, ensconcing 
 himself in a pair of oilskin trousers so capacious 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 I half expected he would disappear altogether; 
 and so, amid the roar of escaping steam, the 
 creaking of davit tackle, the laughing excitement 
 of the crews, and the rattle of rowlocks, I tumbled 
 head-foremost into a boat, and the steamer was 
 left behind. Now the flirting of tiny tails was 
 plainly visible, but I must confess that I did not 
 learn to distinguish the reddish hue which indi- 
 cates a school of these fish until much later in 
 the day. 
 
 The two large boats side by side were sculled 
 rapidly toward the shore where the fish were seen, 
 the forward part of each boat piled full of the 
 brown seine, which extended in a great festoon 
 from one to the other. There were four men in 
 each boat, all standing up, and in our red shirts 
 and shiny yellow oilskin overalls, we must have 
 made a pretty picture on that sunny morning. 
 Close by was a pound net, where a porpoise was 
 rolling gayly, notwithstanding his captivity, but 
 by maneuvering we got the "bunch" turned 
 away from it and well inshore where the water 
 was not too deep. At last we were close to them, 
 and now came a scene of excitement. 
 274 &o 
 
Catching Menhaden off Montauk 
 
 r 
 
 " Heave it ! " yelled the captain, and in each boat 
 a sailor whose place it was worked like a steam- 
 engine, throwing the net overboard, while the 
 crews pulled with all their muscles in opposite 
 directions around a circle perhaps a hundred 
 yards in diameter, and defined by the line of cork 
 buoys left behind, which should inclose the fish. 
 In three minutes the boats were together again, 
 the net was all paid out and an enormous weight 
 of lead had been cast over, drawing after it a 
 line rove through rings along the bottom of the 
 seine. The effect, of course, was instantly to 
 pucker the bottom of the net into a purse, and 
 thus, before the bunkers had fairly apprehended 
 their danger, they were caught in a bag whose in- 
 visible folds held a cubic acre or two of water. 
 " Bunker " is one of the many so called names of 
 the fish known in books as menhaden. 
 
 This was sport! None of the fish were to be 
 seen. Every fin of them had discreetly sunk to 
 the bottom. Whether we had caught ten or ten 
 thousand remained to be proved. Now, lifting 
 such a net is no easy job. The weight of nearly 
 ten thousand square yards of seine, alone, is im- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 mense, but when it is saturated with cold sea- 
 water, and held back by the pushing of thousands 
 of energetic little noses, to pull it into a rocking 
 boat, implies very hard work. However, little by 
 little it came over the gunwales, the first thing 
 being to bring up the ponderous sinker and as- 
 certain that the closing of the purse at the bot- 
 tom had been properly executed. Yard by yard 
 the cork line was contracted, and one after an- 
 other frightened captives began to appear, some 
 folded into a wrinkle of the twine, or caught by 
 the gills in a torn mesh (and such were thrown 
 back), until at last the bag was reduced to only 
 a few yards in diameter, and the menhaden were 
 seen, a sheeny, gray, struggling mass, which 
 bellied out the net under the cork line and under 
 the boats, in vain anxiety to pass the curious bar- 
 rier which on every side hemmed them in, and in 
 leaping efforts to escape the crowding of their 
 thronging fellows. How they gleamed, like fish 
 of jewels and gold ! The sunshine finding its way 
 down through the clear green water seemed not 
 to reflect from their iridescent scales, but to pene- 
 trate them all, and illumine their bodies from 
 
 ^276 
 
Catching Menhaden off Montauk 
 
 r 
 
 within with a wonderful changing flame. Gleam- 
 ing, shifting, lambent waves of color flashed and 
 paled before my entranced eyes gray, as the fishes 
 turned their backs, sweeping brightly back with 
 a thousand brilliant tints as they showed their 
 sides soft, undefined, and mutable, down there 
 under the green glass of the sea; while, to show 
 them the better, myriads of minute medusae car- 
 ried hither and thither glittering little phosphores- 
 cent lanterns in gossamer frames and transparent 
 globes. 
 
 All possible slack having now been taken in, the 
 steamer approaches, and towing us away to deeper 
 water, for we are drifting toward a lee shore, 
 comes to a standstill, and the work of loading 
 begins. The cork line is lifted up and made fast 
 to the steamer's bulwarks, to which the boats have 
 already attached themselves at one end, holding 
 together at the other. This crowds all the bunk- 
 ers together in a mass between the two boats and 
 the steamer's side, where the water boils with the 
 churning of thousands of active fins. A twenty- 
 foot oar is plunged into the mass, but will not 
 suffice to sound its living depths. Then a great 
 
 + 277 o 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 dipper of strong netting on an iron hoop is let 
 down by tackle from the yard-arm, dipped into 
 the mass under the guidance of a man on deck 
 who holds the handle, the pony engine puffs and 
 shakes, and away aloft for an instant swings a 
 mass of bunkers, only to be upset and fall like 
 so much sparkling water into the resounding hold. 
 
 "How many fish does the dipper lift out at 
 once?" 
 
 "About a thousand." 
 
 "Very well. I will count how many times it 
 goes after a load." 
 
 But I didn't. I forgot it in looking down the 
 hatchway. 
 
 The floor of the shallow hold was paved with 
 animated silver, and every new addition falling 
 in a lovely cataract from far overhead, seemed to 
 shatter a million rainbows as it struck the yielding 
 mass below and slid away on every side to glitter 
 in a new iridescence until another myriad of dia- 
 monds rained down. 
 
 If you take it in your hand, the moss-bunker 
 presents itself as an ordinary-looking fish, and 
 you do not admire it; but every gleaming, fiery 
 
 *S 278 5o 
 
Catching Menhaden off Montauk 
 
 r 
 
 tint that ever burned in a sunset, or tinged a gem- 
 crystal, or painted the petals of a flower, was cast 
 in lovely confusion into that dark hold. There 
 lay the raw materials of beauty the gorgeous 
 elements out of which dyes are resolved : abstract 
 bits of lustrous azure and purple, crimson and 
 gold, and those indefinable greenish and pearly 
 tints that make the luminous background of all 
 celestial sun-painting. As the steamer rolled on 
 the billows, and the sun struck the wet and trem- 
 ulous mass at this and that angle, or the whole 
 was in the half-shadow of the deck, now a cerulean 
 tint, now a hot brazen glow, would spread over all 
 for an instant, until the wriggling mixture of olive 
 backs and pearly bellies and nacreous sides, with 
 scarlet blood-spots where the cruel twine had 
 wounded, was buried beneath a new stratum. 
 
 " How many? " I asked, when all were in. 
 
 "Hundred and ten thousand," replied Captain 
 Hawkins. "Pretty fair, but I took three times 
 as many at one haul last week." 
 
 "What are they worth?" 
 
 " Oh, something over a hundred dollars. Hard 
 a-starboard! go ahead slow." 
 ^ 279 $+> 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 r 
 
 Then the labor of the engines drowned the spat , 
 spat, spat, of the myriad of restless little tails strug- 
 gling to swim out of their strange prison, while I 
 climbed to the masthead to talk with the grizzly 
 old lookout, who had been round Cape Horn 
 thirteen times, yet did not think himself much of 
 a traveler. 
 
 That day we caught 250,000 fish and made a 
 round trip of a hundred miles, going away outside 
 of Montauk Point, where it was frightfully rough 
 after a two days' easterly gale. Pyramids and 
 ridges of water, huge and irresistible, green as 
 liquid malachite, traveled in turbulent haste to 
 magnificent destruction on the beach, where sun- 
 lit clouds of spray were floating dense and high, 
 and the roar of the surf came grandly to our ears 
 wherever we went, Yet the difficulties were none 
 too great for these hardy fishermen, who balanced 
 themselves in their cockleshells, and rose and 
 sank with the huge billows, without losing their 
 hold upon the seines, or permitting a single 
 wretched bunker to escape. 
 
 280 
 
Gull Dick 
 
 r 
 
 DICK was a herring-gull that first began 
 to be noticed around the lightship which 
 warns vessels away from Brenton's 
 Reef, a ledge of dangerous rocks two miles 
 off the harbor of Newport, Rhode Island, 
 a place of perils that will long be remembered by 
 the gallant story of " Grace Darling " (Ida 
 Lewis), who lived there in the little lighthouse 
 she made famous. 
 
 As the lightship rolls and sways and tosses 
 in the midst of never-quiet surges, her crew in 
 their loneliness observe keenly many things that 
 on land would escape their attention. It was 
 thus that Dick came to be noticed one day 
 among a flock of lively companions wheeling 
 and curveting over the waves that rose and fell 
 upon the cruel ledges noticed day after day, 
 because he seemed so much older and more fee- 
 ble than his younger and gayer companions. 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 The sailors began to toss bits of food where 
 he could snatch them up before some rival could 
 get ahead of him, and Dick soon understood the 
 game and was ready to play his part. 
 
 This went on for twenty years, but the crew 
 of the lightship, changing year by year, passed 
 along the tradition to the new hands, so that 
 although by this time not a man was left of 
 those who had first known the bird, yet all were 
 his friends, and looked for his arrival as 
 eagerly, perhaps, as he anticipated his return 
 to the place where he was fed. 
 
 All our gulls are now winter visitors to the 
 southern New England coast. Originally her- 
 ring-gulls bred there on the outer islets, but one 
 of the bad effects of civilization has been to 
 exterminate the breeding colonies or drive them 
 to more thinly settled northern shores, to lay 
 their eggs and rear their young in security. 
 
 Dick was never seen in the summer, therefore, 
 but with unfailing regularity on some fine morn- 
 ing in the first week of October he would reap- 
 pear always in the morning, for these birds per- 
 form their migratory journeys mainly at night. 
 *>$ 282 
 
Gull Dick 
 
 r 
 
 Nobody could say where he had been, of course ; 
 but he almost always showed signs of wear and 
 tear, as if from contests with gales that had 
 torn feathers from wings and tail, and seemed 
 tired and hungry, as if a very long flight had 
 just been finished. No wonder, then, that he 
 came straight to the lightship, and hovered 
 about it in pleased expectation of rest and the 
 full breakfast that never failed him. 
 
 One day in 1891 an ornithologist, Mr. George 
 H. McKay, discovered what these good sailor- 
 men had known for twenty years, and straight- 
 way the comings and goings of Gull Dick began 
 to be regularly reported and discussed in The 
 Auk, quite as if he were a real Newport " swell." 
 
 Every morning at sunrise, when the great 
 lanterns at the masthead were lowered, Dick 
 would take it as a signal, and be seen flying 
 steadily toward the little vessel from the rocks, 
 two miles away, where he had spent the night 
 roosting in some snug crevice. If now and then 
 he was not in sight, one of the crew had only 
 to call or whistle a minute or two, when the 
 knowing bird would appear, and wait on the 
 
 So- 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 alert for the breakfast soon to be tossed to 
 him. 
 
 Other gulls would come, too, but none would 
 ever approach so near as Dick, although even 
 he never alighted upon the vessel nor allowed 
 himself to be handled. He liked boiled pork 
 best, but did not object to fish ; and it was amaz- 
 ing to see the famished eagerness with which, 
 in the first few days of the season, the bird 
 would eat, gulping down whole six or eight 
 pieces each the size of a hen's egg. 
 
 I am sorry to say that this voracity was not 
 altogether hunger, but partly greediness; for 
 Dick would usually do his best to keep any 
 other gull in the neighborhood from getting 
 not only what was meant for him, but morsels 
 thrown to his companions, " making the great- 
 est possible fuss," says the captain, " if one 
 of the other gulls attempted to secure an occa- 
 sional piece." Once, he relates, Dick seized an 
 aggressive rival by the neck and tore out its 
 feathers until the poor creature was glad to get 
 away with his life. 
 
 This, I fear, is a way the gulls have all over 
 
Gull Dick 
 
 r 
 
 the world. They are social creatures rather 
 from motives of economy than of good-will, I 
 suspect, for many eyes can sweep a range of 
 beach or tide-flat or a space of water better 
 than a single pair ; and when one discovers any 
 food his actions will at once let the rest know 
 of it, and then there is a rush, for at the gulls' 
 table the rule is first come, first served. 
 
 Gulls feed on anything and everything eata- 
 ble, apparently, and many go far inland for 
 food at certain times; but carrion and fish 
 thrown up on the beach or embayed in some lit- 
 tle tide-pool, sandworms, small crabs and mol- 
 lusks, form their principal fare. The floating 
 carcass of a whale is always covered with them ; 
 and the garbage-scows that go out from the 
 harbor of New York to throw the refuse of the 
 city into the ocean are always accompanied in 
 winter by so great a cloud of these birds that 
 the scows themselves are sometimes almost in- 
 visible. 
 
 They do not catch living food by diving after 
 it, or chasing it under water, as do some sea- 
 birds, but trust to the surface to supply them, 
 $ 285 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 pouncing down in a beautiful curve when they 
 espy anything eatable, and deftly snatching it 
 up without actually touching the water. Where 
 time and place favor they will " run about the 
 fields like rooks, busying themselves with the 
 capture of insects, slugs and worms " ; and will 
 even catch mice and small birds if they can, and 
 devour them bones, fur, feathers and all. 
 They may even be taught to live wholly on 
 grain, and in such cases the stomach is modified 
 into an organ closely like a fowl's gizzard. 
 
 The habit of rough warfare has developed a 
 great deal of courage in the bird, which will 
 fight bravely in defense of its nest or young, 
 and often boldly assails a person who has just 
 shot a companion. 
 
 That gulls are keen-witted is plain not only 
 to one who watches them in freedom, but from 
 their behavior as pets. Various kinds have been 
 easily domesticated, and this is in itself a testi- 
 mony to intelligence, for it is not easy to make 
 a pet of a stupid creature. 
 
 All accounts agree that captive gulls know 
 and take an interest in those who show them at- 
 ^286 
 
Gull Dick 
 
 r 
 
 tention; and that if they fly away they are 
 pretty sure to return again and again, and per- 
 haps will bring a mate or young ones with them. 
 
 In the light of these facts the acquaintance 
 between the men of Brenton's Reef lightship 
 and Gull Dick is no longer singular, although it 
 remains interesting. All winter he would linger 
 about the lightship, taking the raising of the 
 lanterns as a signal to come and get his supper, 
 after which he would fly away to his customary 
 roost on Beaver's-tail until sunrise. 
 
 About April 6th he would be seen for the last 
 time that season, usually remaining until night- 
 fall of the last day. " It would seem," Captain 
 Fogarty records for 1892, "that Dick is in- 
 clined to have company during his migration 
 this time, for he brought another gull with him 
 to jointly partake of the supper provided, then 
 both went away together." In 1894, his twenty- 
 third return, a companion came with him, but 
 Dick would not let him share even the first 
 breakfast; and in 1895 he went away again, 
 attended by a young gull, " after a hearty 
 supper." 
 
The Wit of the Wild 
 
 r 
 
 On October 2, 1895, Dick appeared for the 
 twenty-fourth and last time, and instead of be- 
 ing ragged and torn, as usual, he now looked 
 sleek, had all his proper feathers, and was in 
 excellent spirits, fighting off every attempt to 
 share the lightship's bounty. After braving 
 all the winter storms, he said good-by again on 
 April 7, 1896, and has not since been seen. I 
 dare say Gull Dick is dead. 
 
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