UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 



When a Cooper's hawk makes a dash among them, 

 their mirth turns to terror, but they are usually 

 equal to the emergency, and by darting through the 

 vines they manage to escape him. 



It is said that when a flock of mallards, or of black 

 ducks, while feeding upon the water, see an eagle, or 

 a certain large hawk coming, they take to wing, 

 knowing that they can outdistance their enemy, but 

 that when they see a duck hawk coming, they hug 

 the water the closer, knowing well that their safety 

 is not in flight, but in diving beneath the surface. 



What ages upon ages of schooling in the fierce 

 struggle for existence it must have taken the wild 

 creatures to get their wisdom into their very blood 

 and bones ! Yet we cannot think of them as existing 

 without it; we cannot go back in thought to the time 

 when they did not have it; to be without it would be 

 to cease to exist. What, then, is its genesis? We 

 cannot think of man as existing without his reason, 

 his tools, his artificial aids of one kind and another; 

 yet there was a time when he did exist without them, 

 just as the monkeys and anthropoid apes exist with- 

 out them. Sufficient for the day is the wisdom there- 

 of. Every stage and phase of animal life is wise in 

 those things necessary for its continuance, but 

 whether that wisdom comes from experience or in- 

 heritance, or is one phase of the wisdom that per- 

 vades the whole economy of nature, that makes 

 the heart beat and the eye see, and that adapts 

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