808 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the greatest agitation till lie caught the bird, which was completely 

 exhausted. For a long time the bird went through this manoeuvre, 

 showing that while he knew how to fly it could not alight, though it 

 finally acquired this faculty. Professor L. A. Lee * records a remark- 

 able attack made on him by a marsh-hawk, and Mr. Abbott M. Frazer f 

 tells of a tame crow deliberately standing on an ant-hill and permitting 

 the ants to remove the parasites from its feathers. In this connection 

 a paper by Mr. Joseph F. James J should be read, in which he shows 

 by a number of arguments that animals not only present a reasoning 

 faculty, but that this faculty has been the result of slow evolution. 



Mr. Xenos Clark,* in an exceedingly interesting article on the music 

 of animals, and particularly the music of birds, concludes by saying 

 there is " a theory for the origin of melody, whether human or extra- 

 human, which, besides the usual basis of physiological acoustics, em- 

 ploys the law of modified, inherited, selected, and adapted structure 

 i. e., the law of evolution." 



Mr. Ruthven Deane || records cases of albinism and melanism in a 

 great many families of birds ; and Mr. 1ST. C. Brown A shows the variable 

 abundance of birds at the same locality in different years. In this con- 

 nection it will be of interest to read Dr. L. P. Gratacap's Q paper en- 

 titled " Zoic Maxima, or Periods of Numerical Variations in Animals." 



The behavior of wild birds when kept in confinement, and the at- 

 tempts made in domesticating them, have always furnished an interest- 

 ing field for study. The curious freaks and impulses which they often 

 betray, the changes they show under the new conditions, indicate in 

 some measure the plasticity of their organization. 



Hon. John D. Caton^ in an interesting paper on " Unnatural At- 

 tachments among Animals," records a curious fondness shown by a 

 crane for a number of pigs ; and in another paper on the " Wild Turkey 

 and its Domestication," \ this wi'iter has made some valuable records of 

 the successive changes which take place in the bird during this pro- 

 cess : changes in color, during which the more conspicuous features of 

 protective coloring are lost ; changes in habit, in which is seen the un- 

 doing or relaxing of those features which indicate constant vigilance, 

 from carrying itself in a semi-erect attitude, perching on the tallest 

 trees, covering up the eggs carefully with leaves when off the nest, 

 etc., to moving in an horizontal attitude, perching near the ground, 

 covering the eggs but slightly, or carelessly, etc., and losing that wild- 

 ness which characterizes the bird in its wild state. At the breeding 

 season, however, the females became wild again, but this was a feature 

 too deeply implanted to show modification in the time allotted to Mr. 



* " Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club," vol. v, p. 1S6. f Ibid -> T l 5 > P- 76< 

 % " American Naturalist," vol. xv, p. 604. * Ibid., vol. xiii, p. 209. 



1 " Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club," vol. i, p. 20. A Ibid., vol. i, p. 15. 

 " American Naturalist," vol. xx, p. 1009. J Ibid., vol. xvii, p. 359. 



% Ibid., vol. xi, p. 321. 



