LEAF AND TENDRIL 



upon the wild creatures than upon the tame, but 

 that the removal or the modification of this should 

 cause them to lose their neutral tints is not credible. 

 The domestic pigeons and the barnyard fowls are 

 almost as much exposed to their arch enemy, the 

 hawk, as is the wild pigeon or the jungle fowl, if 

 not more, since the wild birds are free to rush to the 

 cover of the trees and woods. And how ceaseless 

 their vigilance! what keen eyes they have for hawks, 

 whether they circle in the air or walk about in the 

 near fields! In fact, the instinct of fear of some 

 enemy in the air above has apparently not been 

 diminished in the barnyard fowls by countless gen- 

 erations of domestication. Let a boy shy a rusty 

 pie-tin or his old straw hat across the henyard, and 

 behold what a screaming and a rushing to cover 

 there is ! This ever watchful fear on the part of 

 the domestic fowls ought to have had some eflFect 

 in preserving their neutral tints, but it has not. A 

 stronger influence has come from man's disrupture 

 of natural relations. 



Why are ducks more variously and more bril- 

 liantly colored than geese ? I think it would be hard 

 to name the reason. A duck seems of a more intense 

 nature than a goose, more active, more venturesome; 

 it takes to the bypaths, as it were, while the goose 

 keeps to a few great open highways; its range is 

 wider, its food supply is probably more various, 

 and hence it has greater adaptiveness and variabil- 

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