III. 



THE CROWS AND PING-PONG. 



A CHAPTER IN TWENTIETH CENTURY NATURAL 

 HISTORY. 



REAT is the indignation of the crows of our station. 

 And the cause of it all is that new-fangled game, that 

 sign of twentieth century degeneracy, ping-pong. Utterly 

 regardless of the fact that it was the Sabbath, and that a 

 high Episcopal dignitary was staying in the station, it was 

 ordained that the " final" of the local ping-pong tourna- 

 ment should be played off last Sunday. One of the com- 

 petitors was a retired colonel of three-score years and ten, 

 but his eye is not dim, nor is his natural force abated. He 

 lost, but not without making a plucky fight of it. He 

 attributes his defeat to the fact that an unsound ball was 

 used at a critical juncture. The colonel acted up to his 

 belief, and wrought vengeance upon the ball by sending it 

 forth into space. The ball, although unsound, obeyed the 

 laws of gravitation ; it fell on a grassy plot. Presently a 

 vigilant crow espied that ball, and, taking it for an egg, 

 swooped down upon it, seized it in its powerful beak, and 

 bore it off in triumph. Of course it was very foolish of the 

 crow to mistake a ping-pong ball for an egg ; for, granted 

 that he was not a society bird, acquainted with the myster- 

 ies of ping-pong, the weight of the ball should have sufficed 

 to convey to his corvine mind the fact that it could not 

 contain a very substantial breakfast. But crows, although 

 the cleverest of birds, are really very silly, if judged by 

 human standards. They have not the wit to discover 

 when a koel has dropped an egg into the nest, nor have 



