NATURE AND ANIMAL LIFE 



measure of their propagating instincts to make 

 sure that the species do not fail. 



How clever, too, they are about their food ! They 

 have to be or else starve. No doubt many of them 

 have starved in the past, and only the clever ones 

 survived and so continued the species. When one 

 sees the birds in spring scouring about for food 

 where apparently there is no food, or thinks of the 

 mice and squirrels and foxes in the barren, desolate, 

 snow-choked woods, or of the thousands of crows in 

 winter going to and fro night and morning in quest 

 of forage, one realizes how acute and active and 

 discerning they must become to survive at all. 

 Just how the robin knows the precise spot in the 

 turf on the lawn to dig in order to strike a fat grub, 

 I do not know, but he rarely fails. I am sure that I 

 could not pick out the spots. But my dinner is not 

 contingent upon that kind of acuteness; if it were, 

 no doubt I could quickly learn the secret, too. The 

 red squirrel, no doubt, learned that the sap of the 

 maple was sweet long before the Indian or white 

 man did. How surely he finds out in May when the 

 seeds of the elm-tree will afford him a tiny morsel ! 

 He is hard-pressed for food at this time and will 

 take up with very short pickings. I saw one a few 

 moments ago getting his breakfast in an elm near 

 my cabin. How eager and hungry he appeared to 

 be, how rapidly he chipped up or opened the flake- 

 like samaras of the tree and devoured the minute 

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