LOCH C RE RAN. 



declaration of success. At any rate, to us the two in- 

 stincts seem wholly antagonistic, although some birds 

 more cunning than others reconcile them so far as to 

 skulk off some distance from the nest ere starting their 

 announcement. The nest we find well filled and cunn- 

 ingly hidden, or in all likelihood the grey crows would 

 not have left an egg in it ; and a day after our discovery 

 another wanderer appears with a brood of ten, that she 

 has successfully hatched out under trying conditions. 

 We think there is here an interesting direction in which 

 the earlier and later acquired instincts might be studied 

 to advantage, as well as the extent to which the intelli- 

 gence of the individual bird may reconcile them when 

 opposed. This question of individual intelligence, com- 

 pared with the average intellect of the mass of a species, 

 is too frequently overlooked in experiments upon the 

 lower creation, and this we note even in such careful 

 observers as Sir John Lubbock and other workers in the 

 school of ants, bees, and wasps. The bulk of the lower 

 class of men act in accustomed grooves, and display 

 singular lack of capacity when moved out of them, quite 

 as much in a way as the ants experimented upon by 

 Lubbock. We must observe specially intelligent fowls, 

 as well as the ordinary silly creatures, in order to do 

 justice to our inquiries. 



SEPTEMBER, 1882. 



We saw the northern lights last week, and although 

 the sword of the Frost King has not yet swept along the 

 hillsides of Benderloch, he has flung his javelin freely 

 here leaving its track marked by gay bunches of dead 



