118 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



all forms of life on earth save one. Their sense pro- 

 vision against danger often seems developed to a point 

 past which development need not go ; but their mind 

 provision hardly exists. At most, some of them have 

 a memory, short or fairly long. But which one has 

 the gift to think or reason out ? If partridges had it, 

 would they not fly back over the heads of the beaters, 

 or tower high out of shot ere flying away over the 

 gunner? Would not pheasants run far more than 

 they do now ? Would not rooks give up their rookery 

 habit ? 



Fear chiefly lends the wild creature flight, not 

 reason. Were it otherwise, the hunter's difficulties 

 would be increased a thousandfold. The chase might 

 become absurd. Give partridge or pheasant the think- 

 ing out, the planning power, of the meanest human 

 brain, and the pursuit of the bird for pleasure or for 

 profit is hard to imagine. Addition and subtraction 

 tables of the mind the deer, rabbit, partridge are 

 without ; or, if they have such tables, the figures are 

 very vague and incomplete. People forget or dis- 

 believe this when they talk of the birds " setting 

 sentinels " to watch on behalf of the feeding flock. I 

 am not sure whether the bird scarer and the gardener 

 do not fall into the same error when they hang up a 

 dead rook or a dead jay to warn off their unwelcome 

 visitors. A dead " crow " may be a scarecrow, but, if 

 it be, it is not so through the birds' reasoning power. 

 Who can quite imagine a flock of rooks coming to the 



