A PINCH OF SALT 



still want to cross-question you sharply, but I may 

 believe you. Such things have happened. Or if 

 you tell me that you have seen an old doe with 

 horns, or a hen with spurs, or a male bird incubat 

 ing and singing on the nest, unusual as the last 

 occurrence is, I shall not dispute you. I will concede 

 that you may have seen a white crow or a white 

 blackbird or a white robin, or a black chipmunk 

 or a black red squirrel, and many other departures 

 from the usual in animal life ; but I cannot share the 

 conviction of the man who told me he had seen a 

 red squirrel curing rye before storing it up in its 

 den, or of the writer who believes the fox will ride 

 upon the back of a sheep to escape the hound, or 

 of another writer that he has seen the blue heron 

 chumming for fish. Even if you aver that you 

 have seen a woodpecker running down the trunk 

 of a tree as well as up, I shall be sure you have 

 not seen correctly. It is the nuthatch and not the 

 woodpecker that hops up and down and around 

 the trees. It is easy to transcend any man s experi 

 ence; not so easy to transcend his reason. &quot; Nobody 

 has seen so many things as everybody,&quot; yet a dozen 

 men cannot see any farther than one, and the truth 

 is not often a matter of majorities. If you tell me 

 any incident in the life of bird or beast that implies 

 the possession of what we mean by reason, I shall 

 be very skeptical. 



Am I guilty, then, as has been charged, of pre- 

 175 



