KFFKCT OF FEAR 0^ ANIMALS. 215 



ferred from its pleasant haunts in the marshes to 

 the capacious maw of the hungry mink. 



It is at low tide that this animal usually cap- 

 tures the marsh-hen. We have often at high 

 spring tide observed a dozen of those birds 

 standing on a small field of floating sticks and 

 matted grasses, gazing stupidly at a mink seated 

 not five feet from them. No attempt was made 

 by the latter to capture the birds that were now 

 within his reach. At first we supposed that he 

 might have already been satiated with food and 

 was disposed to leave tha tempting marsh-hens 

 till his appetite called for more; but we were 

 after more mature reflection inclined to think 

 that the high spring tides which occur, exposing 

 the whole marsh to view and leaving no place 

 of concealment, frighten the mink as well as the 

 marsh-hen ; and as misery sometimes makes us 

 familiar with strange associates, so the mink and 

 the marsh-hen like neighbour and brother hold 

 on to their little floating islands till the waters 

 subside, when each again follows the instincts 

 of nature. An instance of a similar effect of 

 fear on other animals was related to us by an 

 old resident of Carolina : some forty years ago, 

 during a tremendous flood in the Santee river, 

 he saw two or three deer on a small mound not 

 twenty feet in diameter, surrounded by a wide 

 sea of waters, with a cougar seated in the midst 



