Einie}^ on Growth and Inheritance 445 



unnoticed by me. The shot must have passed around him. My 

 sorrow for the accident was deep, for what was to be expected 

 occurred — the finch afterwards carefully avoided me, and notwith- 

 standing all enticements, I could only with difficulty induce him again 

 to take from the ground at a great distance from me food which I had 

 scattered. But after a short time he disappeared entirely from my 

 garden with the family which he had established.' 



We most of us know something of the cunning and 

 prudence of sparrows. As to this we have the following 

 anecdote : — 



* One snowy winter recently, when the sparrows around the house 

 were very hungry, I made an attempt to catch a number under a 

 large sieve, the edge of which was supported on one side by a piece 

 of wood, which was connected with a long string; the string was 

 covered up in the snow, and passed through an opening in the door 

 into the house, where my little son watched, ready to pull the string 

 as soon as some sparrows went under the sieve. Corn was strewed 

 about under the sieve and around it as bait. The sparrows gathered 

 in dozens round the sieve, and picked up the corn to its very edge to 

 the last grain, then flew round and screamed at the sieve in hunger 

 and rage, but not one was enticed under it.' 



On the subject of the same caution as displayed by a dog 

 who, after accompanying him to the shore, ran away when 

 the Professor had undressed and entered the water, he makes 

 some curious, not to say singularly nonsensical, remarks. 



' The whole occurrence,' he tells us,^ ' gave me the impression that 

 the dog was terrified at the appearance, to him previously unknown, 

 of an almost unclothed and afterwards naked man, and that he did 

 not give way to the panic from the first, before I went into the bath, 

 because he had not yet drawn the conclusion that he had to do with a 

 spectre. . . . Fear of things incomprehensible is indeed the cause of 

 such conceptions among men, and among many savage peoples is still 

 at the present day clearly the cause of their belief in a higher being. 

 It is stated that dogs do not bark at naked men, which is probably 

 to be attributed to fear of the unknown.' 



1 P. 238. 



