JIM CROW 45 



sense, vision or odor or reasoning, I cannot say. 

 Walking over this field, I came upon two footprints 

 of a crow, with the brush-marks of the wings on 

 either side. Just in front was a hole into the snow, 

 from the bottom of which a piece of mud-wasps' 

 nest had been extracted, the bodies it contained (if 

 any) eaten, and the gray comb dropped. Now, that 

 bit of nest was buried under six inches of snow, and 

 could hardly have been visible from above. Yet 

 the crow had descended exactly to it, without hav- 

 ing to take a single step after alighting. The only 

 explanation I can give except the improbable one 

 of pure chance is that some conformation of the 

 snow over the nest disclosed to the bird's reasoning 

 faculties or trained instinct the presence beneath 

 of something worth investigating. In my own oat- 

 field, after the snow has covered the mown stubble, 

 the crows walk about and get grain with a sure 

 instinct; but here they are on the ground, and 

 hence so near the object sought that other senses can 

 aid them. 



The single crow, too, not only shifts wisely for 

 himself, but thinks of his fellows. They are co- 

 operative workers. The tribe survives because of 

 tribe instinct no less than individual smartness. 

 Last winter a farmer in our region was bringing 

 home on a wood-sledge a load of oats from the village 

 and one of the bags fell over and the grain trickled 

 out for a quarter of a mile along the road before he 

 discovered the accident. That was late in the after- 

 noon. The next morning the road was quite liter- 

 ally black with crows. They must have come from 

 miles around, for but few had been noted in the 



