THE PAIRING OF PIGEONS. 39 



insanity. I have seen a white fantail play in the same way to his shadow on the floor, 

 and when his shadow fell on a crust of bread he at once adopted the bread as the object 

 of his affection, and went through all the performances described by the lady, even to 

 repeating the behavior for several days afterward when I placed the same piece of bread 

 on the floor of his pen. If one is looking for insanity in pigeons, let him first know the 

 normal range of sanity and pay little heed to stories of inexperienced observers who are 

 apt to overlook circumstances essential to a correct understanding of what they report. 



It is not improbable that the lady's amusing pigeon at first took the bottle for a living 

 intruder upon his ground and flew down to it for the purpose of driving it off. Finding 

 it at rest, if his shadow fell upon it, or if his image was even faintly reflected from its 

 surface, he would readily mistake it for a female pigeon, and after once getting this idea 

 and performing before it, the bottle would be remembered and the same emotions excited 

 the next time it was presented. The only value this suggestion can have is that it is based 

 on a similar case. The lady's observations were not complete at the critical moment, 

 i. e., at the time of the first performance, and it is too late to mend the failure. 1 



1 Whitman, Myths in Animal Psychology, Monist, 1899, pp. 528-530. 



