STOCK-DOVES, WOOD-PIGEONS, SNIPE 63 



temps, she instantly flew out on to the opposite bank, 

 and began to flap and struggle along the flat marshy 

 meadow-land, of course in full view. I crossed the 

 stream and pursued her, allowing her to " fool me 

 to the top of my bent," and this she appeared to 

 me to do, or to think she was doing, on much the 

 same kind of indicia as one would go by in the 

 case of a man. Now, unless this bird had wished 

 to keep me in view, and thus judge of the effect of 

 her stratagem, or unless she feared that "out of 

 sight " would be " out of mind " with regard to her- 

 self (but this would be to credit her with yet greater 

 powers of reflection), why should she have left the 

 water, the element in which she usually and most 

 naturally performs these actions, to modify them on 

 the land ? Yet to suppose that it has ever occurred 

 suddenly, and as a new idea, to any bird to act a 

 pious fraud of this kind, would be to suppose wonders, 

 and also to be unevolutionary (almost as serious a 

 matter nowadays as to be un-English). 



But may we not think that an act, which in its 

 origin has been of a nervous and, as it were, patho- 

 logical character, has become, in time, blended with 

 intelligence, and that natural selection has not only 

 picked out those birds who best performed a me- 

 chanical action — which, though it sprung merely from 

 mental disturbance, was yet of a beneficial nature — 

 but also those whose intelligence began after a time 

 to enable them to see whereto such action tended, 

 and thus consciously to guide and improve it ? There 

 is evidence, I believe — though neither space nor the 

 nature of this slight work will allow me to go into 

 it — that such abnormal mental states as of old in- 



