the humming sound. All the while the droppings of the birds came down 

 like a summer shower. At the bottom of the shaft was a mine of Peruvian 

 guano three or four feet deep, with a dead swift here and there upon it. 

 Probably one or more birds out of such a multitude died every night. I had 

 fancied there would be many more. It was a long time before it dawned 

 upon me what this uninterrupted flight within the chimney meant. Finally 

 I saw that it was a sanitary measure; only thus could the birds keep 

 from soiling each other with their droppings. Birds digest very rapidly, and 

 had they all continued to cling to the sides of the wall, they would have been 

 in a sad predicament before morning. Like other acts of cleanliness on the 

 part of birds, this was doubtless the prompting of instinct and not of judg- 

 ment. It was nature looking out for her own. 



In view, then, of the doubtful sense or intelligence of the wild creatures, 

 what shall we say of the new school of nature writers or natural history ro- 

 mancers that has lately arisen, and that reads into the birds and animals al- 

 most the entire human psychology? This, surely: so far as these writers 

 awaken an interest in the wild denizens of the field and wood, and foster a 

 genuine love of them in the hearts of the young people, so far is their influ- 

 ence good ; but so far as they pervert natural history and give false impres- 

 sions of the intelligence of our animals, catering to a taste that prefers the fan- 

 ciful to the true and the real, is their influence bad. Of course, the great 

 army of readers prefers this sugar-coated natural history to the real thing, but 

 the danger always is that an indulgence of this taste will take away a liking 

 for the real thing, or pervert its development. The knowing ones, those who 

 can take these pretty tales with the pinch of salt of real knowledge, are not 

 many; the great majority are simply entertained while they are being hum- 

 bugged. There may be no very serious objection to the popular love of 

 sweets being catered to in this field by serving up the life history of our ani- 

 mals in a story, all the missing links supplied, and all their motives and acts 

 humanized, provided it is not done covertly and under the guise of a real his- 

 tory. 



I am reminded of a mystery connected with a snake-skin, and a bird. 

 Why does our great crested fly-catcher weave a snake-skin into its nest, 

 or, in lieu of that, something that suggests a snake-skin, such as an 

 onion-skin, or fish-scales, or a bit of oiled paper? It is thought by some 

 persons that it uses the snake-skin as a kind of scarecrow, to frighten away 

 its natural enemies. But think what this purpose in the use of it would imply. 

 It would imply that the bird knew that there were among its enemies crea- 

 tures that were afraid of snakes — so afraid of them that one of their faded and 

 cast-off skins would keep them away. How could the bird obtain this knowl- 

 edge? It is not afraid of the skin; why should it infer that squirrels, for in- 

 stance, are? I am convinced there is nothing in this notion. In all the nests 



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