70 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



wards in the same direction with its body and neck, so 

 as perfectly to resemble a stake aslant. If the bill had 

 made an angle with the neck it would have been be- 

 trayed at once. Its resource evidently was to rely on its 

 form and color and immobility solely for its concealment. 

 This was its instinct, whether it implies any conscious 

 artifice or not. I watched it for fifteen minutes, and at 

 length it relaxed its muscles and changed its attitude, 

 and I observed a slight motion ; and soon after, when 

 I moved toward it, it flew. It resembled more a piece of 

 a rail than anything else, — more than anything that 

 would have been seen here before the white man came. 

 It is a question whether the bird consciously cooperates 

 in each instance with its Maker, who contrived this 

 concealment. I can never believe that this resemblance 

 is a mere coincidence, not designed to answer this very 

 end — which it does answer so perfectly and usefully. 



June 6, 1860. Ever and anon we hear a few sucks or 

 strokes from the bittern, the stake-driver, wherever we 

 lie to, as if he had taken the job of extending all the 

 fences into the river to keep cows from straying round. 



Oct. 16, 1860. Horace Mann ^ tells me that he found 

 in the crop or inside of the stake-driver killed the other 

 day one grasshopper, several thousand-legs one to one 

 and a half inches long, and not much else. 



April 16, 1861. He ^ brought me some days ago the 

 contents of a stake-driver's stomach or crop. It is ap- 



^ [Tlie son of the famous educator of that name. He was living' in 

 Concord, aud he accompanied Thoreau on his journey to Minnesota in 

 the following summer.] 



^ [Horace Mann.] 



