214 BIRDS OF THE PLAINS 



dangerous save by his actions in the presence of those 

 things? Or how tell of a newly found food supply 

 save by flying eagerly to it ? " 



Even if we admit that a crow is not able to recount 

 the experiences of the day to his companion, it does 

 not follow that the crow does not remember them, or 

 cannot picture them in his mind. With regard to the 

 last question, I have frequently seen a crow, at the 

 sight of some food thrown out to him, caw loudly, and 

 his friends, on hearing his cry, at once fly to the food. 



Of course it is open to any one to assert that, in this 

 case, the crow that discovers the food does not con- 

 sciously call its companions ; at the sight of its food it 

 instinctively caws, and its companions obey the caw 

 instinctively, without knowing why they do so. No 

 one, however, who watches crows for long can help 

 believing that they think. The fact that they hang 

 about the kitchen every day at the time the cook 

 pitches out the leavings seems inconsistent with the 

 theory that birds cannot think. The crows obtained 

 food at this place yesterday and the day before at a 

 certain hour, and the fact that they are all on the look 

 out for food to-day shows, not only that they possess 

 a good memory, but that they are endowed with a 

 certain amount of reasoning power. 



Many animals have very good memories. Now, in 

 order that an animal may remember a thing it must 

 think. Its thoughts are of course not clothed in lan- 

 guage as human thoughts are, but they nevertheless 

 exist as mental pictures. 



According to Professor Thorndike, the psychic hfe of 



