DKCFMBKR 1, JD15 



1049 



POULTEY DEPAMTMENT 



THE IXTKI.LIGENCE OF THE HEN; ALSO SOME- 

 THING AUOUT CHICKEN HAWKS. 



The letter below was received some years 

 ago, before the trouble in Mexico. May God 

 jriant that a settlement may be near at 

 Iiand. and that we may hoar further from 

 llic writer. 



At Veiietlocia v.e care for :U10 ilii'.-kt us, and we 

 vtry scldoii! eat one — not because we do not ai)))rr!- 

 oiate tlie taste of their tender flesh as much as the 

 hawks do, but because it is too much lil^e eating 

 the tender i)odies of our owo bal ies which we have 

 ofuimos snatched from the oulstretdicd hand of 

 ncatli, and in our bosom-; liiddou from liis ^rasp. 

 We sell our cockerels, and let others slaughter and 

 cat them. But on those rare occasions wher ve 

 r.erve ourselves to kill one at home we sec to it 

 that there be no race-witnesses to the regretful deed, 

 ^^hi!e the victim himself knows not his impending 

 fale, for a sack drawn over his head mercifully 

 clo&es his eyes alike to the liglit of his departing day 

 and to the uplifted ax that descends to destroy a 

 bright intelligence and a pleasing personality. 



I>o we incline to believe a chicken has a soul? 

 We do not know. Let our practice indicating a rec- 

 ognition of a visible degree of intelligence, of race 

 consciousness, and ability to adapt itself to a chang- 

 ed environment, be our answer. 



As to the intelligence of the hen, our observation 

 shows it to be marvelous ■within the limit of its 

 environment. We hnve seen chickens struggling 

 sturdily with problems, trying in many ways to 

 solve thera. Certain emergencies a hen meets 

 promptly and bravely. All is accounted for by 

 " instinct," a word e.^pressing only the ignorance of 

 our forbears. Call it rather the accumulated tendency 

 of successive generations to answer a question in 

 its one and only answerable way. We have no 

 ncsitancy in asserting that the hen has intelligence 

 of a rational charact-er, and that it can arrive at 

 correct conclusions' w ithin the limits of its ability to 

 take correct observations. The hen (and her mate) 

 has wonderful eyes, with remarkable accommoda- 

 tion — eyes capable of detecting the arch enemy, the 

 hawk, when a mere speck in the sky, and equally 

 •i.-ell to recognize and pick up mere specks of food 

 on the ground. I could tell you many an incident 

 illustrative of the existence of indubitable intelli- 

 pence in the hen — not the kind that would make her 

 out a mere ref^e.K machine or an automaton. 



Once I bought a hen from a Mexican seuora — 

 e\idi'ntly old (the hen), and s-old because her days 

 of usefulness were believed to be over. She proved 

 to be an inveterate mother, and we soon named her 

 "La galliiia loco" (the Crazy Hen) because of her 

 belligerent nature. I wish I knew and could por- 

 tray the life of that hen during the years before she 

 na.ssed to my care. I know they were full of trag- 

 edies; that hawks and coyotes had embittered her 

 life and accentuated the di.Ktrust of innumerable 

 jungle ancestors. I could gain her confidence up (•:) 

 the point of picking up one of her family. .She 

 drew tl'.e line at that, and would attack with all the 

 fury and ferocity of the mother robbed of her young, 

 to the point of insanity. On'-e I gave her the fam- 

 ily of a comrade mother, feeling inexpressibly me.nn 

 when I did it, and she raised twenty-six. So you 

 8te that the idea that a hen is past her usefulness at 

 two years of age will not pan out. We say that a 

 hen of indefinite age that has learned to be a good 

 mother is worth several times over more thnn ibe 

 pullet whi«h takes her place. " Don't kill the laying 



hen" is good advice; but "Don't kill the expert 

 mother " is better. 



The last family of the Crazy Hen consisted of 

 eighteen. In our prudo, or green, there is a mes- 

 quite.bush around which I constructed an open 

 circle of cordwood. This solitary refuge was imme- 

 diately recognized and taken possession of by the 

 Crazy Hen, and she and hev family wisely kept 

 within scooting distance of it. Nothing skyward 

 escaped that mother hen's vigilant eye, old as it was. 

 IJut the hawks had a way of sneaking down under 

 cover of the seventy-foot cyanide tower, coming in 

 sight only when on the downward fatal swoop. 



Once a large hank thus appeared over the family 

 of eighteen. The crazy hen gave the signal to rush to 

 cover, at th'3 same time herself rushing furiously in 

 line with the hawk to meet it as it neared the ground. 

 The chicks were racins: for and reaching the refuge; 

 but one little belatsd fellow was seized just before 

 the mother reached it with so furious an onslaught 

 on the marauder that its flight was broken and it 

 vas obliged to drop the chick and make a run to 

 get into the air again. After that the hawk kept 

 circling at a great height for some minuteg before 

 he made off, the hen meantime watching his move- 

 ments and signaling the chicks to lie low. We saw 

 it all clearly- — the hen maintaining a vigilant watch 

 between where we stood and the refuge. At last, 

 when the hawk was far distant, scarcely discernible, 

 occurred the prettiest net of the entire drama, whicli 

 only the intelligence and experience of the mother 

 htn prevented being a tragedy. The hen gave a 

 different signal, and immediately her family began 

 streaming one by one out of the refuge, running 

 like little white heads in a bee-line for their mother.* 

 We counted them a-s they came out — seventeen; then 

 there was a pause, and we thought the hawk had 

 held on to the eighteenth and got away with it. We 

 had all yelled involularily at the hawk when it tirst 

 appeared. W^e had no gun, but we almost shouted 

 when, a moment later, the wounded chick emerged 

 and tried to run, but could not, though it bravely 

 struggled at a walk to reach its mother. I went to 

 meet it and found that one talon had gone through 

 a wing, piercing the body ; while another had punc- 

 tured the crop. Notwithstanding its injuries, the 

 wounded cliick, rescued and afterward cared for 



* This matter of the " signal " that the hen makes 

 to c-ill her chickens to run under cover, and another 

 signal that they can come out as soon as the danger 

 is past, is something wonderful. Human lieings 

 have to be taught to talk; but the baby chicks, like 

 the honeybee, are born with an education — an edu- 

 cation that is given by no teacher, but by the great 

 God above. Wild fowls — the partridge, for instance 

 — have the same wonderful vocabulary when danger 

 threatens. This whole matter calls tc mind vividly 

 a fragment of an old letter that has just turned up. 

 It was something I wrote to Mrs. Root when I was 

 down on the island near Osprey. It is dated Jan. 

 7, 1907. 



Dfar Sue: — I ought to grow "fat." I have been 

 laughing so hard at my pet chicks. .\s they have 

 no mother, they not only chase after me, but they 

 talk to me almost incessantly; and oh such pretty 

 litll(5 baby talk it isl I am learning their language, 

 and they are learning mine; and I am sure the 

 loving Father is sending messages to me — messages 

 nf his great love to " even me," through these tiny 

 little voices. When their feet get cold they come 

 to me to " cuddle them up," and then I get, oh 

 such pretty little contented and plaintive voices of 

 thanks! Two liave died; but I think through no 

 fault of mine unless it was because I didn't under- 

 stand the necessity of keeping thofce tiny little feet 

 re,-. I varm. Of course I have lots more", but I am 

 ;^!most aslfamed to tell you how hard it was to give 

 •jp those two. 



