The Birds' Calendar 



Are these creatures possibly endowed with 

 a ''sixth sense," or with a faculty of commu- 

 nication not dreamed of by those who are so 

 proud of the possession of " intelligence," rath- 

 er than what they contemptuously call ''mere 

 instinct?" Really, we human beings flatter 

 ourselves quite too much ; and, moreover, our 

 very familiarity with the many wonderful man- 

 ifestations of instinct all about us breeds a 

 contempt therefor that discounts our own intel- 

 ligence, and causes us to fall into still greater 

 condemnation ; for surely no charge more seri- 

 ous can be brought against the supremacy of 

 man's reasoning powers than the fact that the 

 mere prevalence of anything inexplicable, so far 

 from increasing our wonderment thereat, invari- 

 ably reduces it to a minimum, eventually be- 

 coming a sort of reason for eliminating all sense 

 of mystery. In other words, a marvellous ex- 

 hibition of the Creator's wisdom and i)ower 

 evokes a thousand times less of admiration when 

 the display is a thousand times repeated. Where 

 does the instinct of the " lower " animals lead 

 to any such foolishness as this? 



h 



The classification of objects in natural science 

 is a recognition of the two diametrically op- 



178 



