55* 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



DEVELOPING A NEW INSTINCT. 

 Messrs. Editors : 



A COW (half Jersey) ran with others in 

 an orchard, and showed herself ex- 

 ceedingly fond of green, sour apples. So 

 persistently did she " go for them," that it 

 was suggested she would climb the trees yet. 

 But she did not take to climbing ; she in- 

 vented another method : she took to shak- 

 ing the limbs. 



At first she reached directly for the 

 fruit and foliage, but at the same time, no 

 doubt, observed that, when the limb sprang 

 back, apples fell to the ground. This left 

 an impression known as memory ; and, at 

 length, keeping hold of the limb with her 

 teeth, she shook it precisely as a man would, 

 jerking it downward a number of times in 

 quick succession, and then letting go her 

 hold to pick up the apples. I once drove 

 her away from a tree which she was reliev- 

 ing of its fruit rather successfully, when she 

 went to another tree, apparently intent on 

 business, seeming to have forgotten that 

 she had previously shaken off all the apples 

 within reach ; but, when there, she either 

 observed that there was no fruit to shake 

 off, or else recollected that she had already 

 harvested all that was to be had ; at any rate, 

 she did no shaking. 



To protect the fruit against her fertile 

 genius, I tied her head to a fore-leg, with 

 about twenty inches interval between them. 

 She would then support herself on three 

 legs, lift up the fourth one and seize with 

 her teeth limbs as much as five feet from 

 the ground, and shake them as skillfully as 

 before. 



In this case there is no mistake about 

 the fact. I have witnessed the novel per- 

 formance many times ; and, when not look- 

 ing, I have heard the peculiar sound of the 

 shaking limb and falling apples, and realized 

 how strikingly suggestive it was of a human 

 presence. The animal is now four years 

 old, and has given exhibitions of her skill 

 the last two summers. 



This trick was not learned by witness- 

 ing a like act of man or animal. It was 

 independently invented through suggestion, 

 as a human being would independently in- 

 vent a mechanical process. The animal in 

 question is not any wiser than her comrades 

 in other respects ; but, though she invented 

 limb-shaking for herself, they have not 

 taken the first step toward imitating her. 

 Still it would be plausible to suppose that 

 other cattle, especially her own offspring, 

 would come to follow her example by-and- 

 by, and that if they ran constantly in apple- 



orchards they might become permanently 

 endowed with the limb-shaking instinct 

 not of miraculous but of purely utilitarian 

 origin. J. S. Patterson. 



Beblis Heights, Ohio, April, 1SS3. 



THE AGE OF TEEES. 

 Messrs. Editors: 



In the December number of " The Popu- 

 lar Science Monthly " I observe an article 

 by A. L. Childs, M. D., stating that the old 

 notion that a person could tell the age of a 

 tree by the number of the concentric rings 

 shown on a cross-section of the timber was 

 a fallacy, and giving some facts to sustain 

 the theory advanced. As the " Monthly " 

 is searching for the truth only on scientific 

 questions, permit me to give a few facts, 

 which tend to support the old theory that 

 Dr. Childs attacks. 



When Virginia ceded to the United States 

 the territory northwest of the river Ohio, she 

 reserved all the lands lying between the 

 Scioto and Little Miami Rivers, in order to 

 satisfy the bounty lands given by her to her 

 soldiers who had served in the Revolution- 

 ary War. The State of Virginia had given 

 lands varying in quantity from one hundred 

 acres to a private soldier, five thousand acres 

 to a colonel, to fifteen thousand acres to a 

 major-general, to all those who had served as 

 such soldiers and officers during the war, 

 and issued what were termed " land-war- 

 rants " to such soldiers and officers for the 

 land to which each was entitled. These 

 parties took the " land-warrants " thus is- 

 sued to them, and made their own entries 

 of the lands called for on any vacant land 

 in the district, describing the same on the 

 " Book of Entries," and then had these en- 

 tries surveyed by the surveyor of the dis- 

 trict, who marked the boundaries and cor- 

 ners of the several surveys on the grow- 

 ing timber, by hacking the same that hap- 

 pened to be standing along the lines of the 

 surveys or near the corners thereof ; and on 

 these surveys being returned by the holder 

 to the General Land-Office, at Washington 

 city, the Government issued a patent for 

 the land thus surveyed to the holder of the 

 warrant, his heirs and assigns. Some of 

 these surveys were made before General An- 

 thony Wayne defeated the Indian tribes in 

 1794, and others were made as late as 1857. 

 From the fact that parties made their own 

 entries, there were many overlapping and 

 interfering entries and surveys, and very 

 frequently junior entries and surveys ob- 

 tained the first patent. (Some of the en- 



