56 the president's address. 



of paper, often uses it instead of making the paper for itself out of 

 wood. Mr. S. S. Saunders took the nest of a trap-door spider 

 with the occupant at home and placed it upside-down in a flower- 

 pot. In ten days the spider had made a new door at what was 

 formerly the bottom, but was now the top. Gulls and crows carry 

 shell-fish to a height and drop them upon rocks to crack them. 

 The house-martin has manifestly changed its habits, and the 

 American house-swallow has effected this change within the last 

 three hundred years. Mr. L. H. Morgan found that the beaver 

 widens the openings in its dam when there is a flood and narrows 

 them in drought. The elephant has been seen to blow an object 

 which is on the ground beyond its reach against the opposite wall 

 that the rebound may bring it nearer. I think that the Zoological 

 Gardens is an excellent place to consider this subject, because the 

 creatures there are wild animals which have had to adapt them- 

 selves to altered circumstances ; they are not accustomed in nature 

 to look on man as an organism instituted for the purpose of pro- 

 viding them with buns and sugar, but the most cursory observer will 

 soon see how thoroughly most of them have learnt the lesson. One 

 day I gave a large piece of biscuit to a Falkland Island goose ; it 

 tried to get it down, turning it different ways, but could not do 

 so ; it then took the biscuit in its bill and threw it violently 

 against the stones several times, but it did not break ; finally it 

 took the piece in its bill and held it in the water till it was soft, 

 when it quickly disposed of it. I stuck a large bit of sugar 

 between the wires of the cage of the hybrid paradoxure, a creature 

 which has a quaint habit of rolling up its long tail in a flat spiral. 

 It passed its long claws through the wires so as to clasp outside 

 the sugar, and had a good pull, but the desired morsel would not 

 come through ; then it tried its teeth and bit off the piece inside ; 

 then it licked what remained, and finally retired in disgust, and sat 

 still at the other end of the cage. I now pushed the sugar 

 further through with the handle of my umbrella ; the paradoxure 

 instantly saw the change, jumped at the sugar, and pulled it 

 through with its claws. You may see these things and many 

 others with numbers of the creatures any day. There is a little 

 bear that will walk up the perpendicular bars and turn a circle 

 upon them for a lump of sugar. There is an old crow that pipes 

 " The miller's wife." There are the ridiculously human Barbary 

 apes, and finally there is Sally, the bald chimpanzee, the most 



