348 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIX. No. 47s. 



there not evinced at the same time a lack of 

 discrimination as deplorable as it is, in cer- 

 tain respects, inexcusable. We have, indeed, 

 nature writers of every conceivable shade, from 

 the ponderously accurate, scientific-because- 

 incomprehensible, inartistic, biological special- 

 ist, through the whole gamut of good, bad and 

 indifferent writers, to those who scruple not to 

 .take all manner of liberties with natural his- 

 tory facts in order to make an impression — ■ 

 and a fortune. And the public reads on with 

 patient equanimity without distinguishing 

 sound and critical observations on animal be- 

 havior from the drivel in which animals are 

 humanized beyond all recognition. 



Any endeavor to disturb such complacency 

 will, perhaps, seem unkind, but it is clearly a 

 duty which no serious student can shirk who 

 has at heart the development of true animal 

 psychology. In an admirable article pub- 

 lished in the Atlantic Monthly for March, 

 1903, Mr. John Burroughs called attention to 

 certain abominations in current nature books. 

 He dwelt especially on the unwarrantable 

 humanizing of animals which has become 

 almost a mania with a certain class of writers. 

 Mr. Burroughs's remarks, if anything, were 

 too temperate, as events have shown. One 

 would have supposed that his criticisms of 

 Mr. William J. Long, for example, would have 

 led that gentleman, before publishing further 

 observations on animal behavior, to gain some 

 idea of the value, or rather, lack of value, 

 which serious students attach to anecdotes as 

 evidences of rational endowment in animals. 

 Instead of this, however, he publishes in a 

 reputable and widely circulated journal (The 

 Outlooh, September 12, 1903) and republishes 

 in book form with illustrations (' A Little 

 Brother to the Bear, and Other Animal Stud- 

 ies ') a series of anecdotes which for rank and 

 impossible humanization of the animal can 

 ^hardly be surpassed. Verily, quem deus vuU 

 perdere prius dementat. 



Although a careful dissection of this whole 

 article, entitled ' Animal Surgery,' would yield 

 no little instruction and some amusement, it 

 will siiffice to quote only one of the author's 

 anecdotes with a brief commentary: 



" Twenty years ago, while sitting quietly by a 



brook at the edge of the woods in Bridgewater, 

 Mass., a woodcock fluttered out into the open, 

 and made his way to a spot on the bank where 

 a light streak of clay showed clearly from 

 where I was watching. It was the early hunt- 

 ing season, when gunners were abroad in the 

 land, and my first impression was that this was 

 a wounded bird that had made a long flight 

 after being shot at, and that had now come 

 out to the stream to drink or to bathe his 

 wound, as birds often do. Whether this were 

 so or not is a matter of guesswork; but the 

 bird was acting strangely in broad daylight, 

 and I crept nearer, till I could see him plainly 

 on the other side of the little stream, though 

 he was still too far away for me to be abso- 

 lutely sure of what all his motions meant. 



" At first he took soft clay in his bill from 

 the edge of the water and seemed to be smear- 

 ing it on one leg near the knee. Then he 

 fluttered away on one foot for a distance and 

 seemed to be pulling tiny roots and fibers of 

 grass, which he worked into the clay that he 

 had already smeared on his leg. Again he 

 took more clay and plastered it over the fibers, 

 putting on more and more till I could plainly 

 see the enlargement; he worked away with 

 strange, silent intentness for fully fifteen 

 minutes, while I watched and wondered, scarce 

 believing my eyes. Then he stood perfectly 

 still for a full hour under an overhanging sod, 

 where the eye could with difficulty find him, 

 his only motion meanwhile being an occasional 

 rubbing and smoothing of the clay bandage 

 with his bill, until it hardened enough to suit 

 him, whereupon he fluttered away from the 

 brook and disappeared in the thick woods. 



" I had my own explanation of the incredible 

 action — namely, that the woodcock had a 

 broken leg, and had deliberately put it into a 

 clay east to hold the broken bones in place 

 until they should knit together again; but, 

 naturally, I kept my own counsel, knowing 

 that no one would believe in the theory. For 

 years I questioned gunners closely, and found 

 two who said that they had killed woodcock 

 whose legs had at one time been broken and 

 had healed again. As far as they could re- 

 member, the leg had in each case healed per- 

 fectly straight instead of twisting to one side. 



