io WILD BIRDS 



round or fly clear of it. Yet this habit of covering 

 eggs, as the dabchick covers them, hardly points 

 to stupidity. Some birds may cover the eggs to 

 keep the warmth in them, but the pheasant will 

 cover them before she begins to sit. She covers 

 them, I think, to guard against enemies. But what 

 interests me most is that the habit is not invariable 

 or general. Many pheasants do not try to hide 

 their eggs ; and this, I must admit, tells against my 

 view that the reasoning or mind power of a wild 

 creature is common to each member of its species 

 that what one honey-bee does all honey-bees do, 

 the wisdom being collective not individual. The 

 hen pheasant and other exceptions of the kind do 

 not shake me in this view, but they are striking 

 and worth thought. Suppose a hen pheasant regu- 

 larly covers her eggs on leaving the nest, will her 

 chicks, when they lay eggs, do likewise ? If the 

 habit is not inherited, one cannot understand how 

 it arose and lived. 



MOORHENS 



It is hard to make a census of even the most 

 modest little pond among the hills and woods, if 

 that pond be weedy and fairly deep in spots, and is 

 fed by the smallest spring. It may hold its unknown 

 rarely seen population of water flies, water beetles, 

 and fishes. It has, too, its own little flora as well 

 as fauna, water plants that are nowhere else within 

 a radius of miles ; it is as if they had been spon- 

 taneously generated there as our forefathers may 



