1903] Smith — My Pet Crows. 105 



scratched. On one occasion he carried a chip to her, which of 

 course sY e took and used tor the purpose indicated. 



As a bird student, I will not say what can be taken out of 

 these two episodes. Evidently, my pet was delighted to see me 

 back after a month's absence, though what he said to me, crows 

 alone could tell. The bird which carried the chip, might have 

 done so with the intention of getting his head scratched with it, 

 and he might not. We cannot get at what the birds know and 

 what they think. 



There is one objection to keeping pets, it is that they nearly 

 always meet with an accidental, and often a tragic death. One 

 morning in winter I called my bird to his breakfast, and he failed 

 to respond. I never saw him after. He used to roost in the trees 

 by the house, and 1 blamed the big brown owl for robbing me of 

 the most lovable pet I evei had, and thus adding another to his 

 long list of murders. 



John Burroughs, in the "Atlantic Monthly " for March, 1903, 

 in a paper on " Real and Sham Natural History," handles Seton 

 Thompson and Rev. William J. Long without gloves. He 

 ridicules some of the stories in Thompson's " Wild Animals I have 

 known," and caljs the writer of " School of the Woods" "Our 

 Natural History Munchausen." I am not prepared to take sides. 

 I think there are stories in " Wild Animals I have Known " which 

 had better have been omitted or written differently. Long says a 

 partridge can count eleven ; Burroughs scouts the assertion. 

 Who is to decide ? 



I might have drawn on my imagination, and said much more 

 about my pet crows than I have done. 



There is a mystery surrounding animal life which we cannot 

 read, cannot interpret and cannot understand. I think, though, 

 that one can get a little nearer the soul of a wild animal by mak- 

 ing a pet of it. 





