132 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



detour and so avoid the gunners lying in wait for 

 them day after day; or they might rise to the 

 height of a hundred or a hundred and fifty yards 

 ere making each trip. The flighter, be he never 

 so skilled and watchful, must then be baffled. But 

 the wild-fowl, with all their wariness, their intensely 

 nervous suspicion, are remote from such reasoning. 

 We can hardly imagine a simpler logic than such 

 an act of avoidance would imply plainer syllogism 

 there never could be for human reason. It would 

 seem as if alarming experience must in the end 

 force the mind of the wild creature to argue out 

 and act on this conclusion. Yet the ducks will 

 continue to go to and fro over the hidden flighter. 

 Shot at and constantly harassed at a certain spot, 

 some wild creatures will leave the district altogether. 

 But this precaution is so crude and elementary, 

 one can hardly think of it as a reasoning process. It 

 seems a mere automatic shrinking from danger, no 

 calculation about it; the slightest calculation would 

 often enable the animal to remain safely in its 

 haunt by some simple, effective device for escaping 

 its foes. 



What a desperately hard thing the pursuit of 

 wild life would become if birds and beasts and 

 insects began to argue out the simplest syllogism 

 of danger! The chase might become almost im- 

 possible. Against the water-fowl we should want 

 arms of far more precision and longer carrying 



