LEAF AND TENDRIL 



one of them tells how the salmon get up the high 

 falls that they meet with in the rivers they ascend 

 in spring — it is by easy stages; they rest upon 

 shelves or upon niches in the rocks behind the cur- 

 tain of water, and leap from these upward through 

 the pouring current till the top is gained; and he 

 tells it as if he knew it to be a fact, when, in truth, 

 it is a fiction. 



Then this so-called individuality of the animals 

 is enormously exaggerated by the nature fakers. 

 The difference between two individuals of the same 

 species in a wild state is but a small matter. What 

 is true of one is practically true of all the others. 

 They are all subject to the same conditions, and 

 the life problems are essentially the same with each ; 

 hence their variations are but slight, while in the 

 case of man the variations are enormous. One child 

 is bom a genius and another is born a dunce. The 

 mass of mankind would still be sunk in barbarism 

 had it not been for the few superior minds bom in 

 every age and country, who have lifted the stand- 

 ard of living and thinking to a higher plane. It is 

 only when the lower animals are brought in contact 

 with man and subjected to artificial conditions that 

 wide diversity of character and disposition appears 

 among them. Then we have on the farm the buck- 

 ing horse, the intractable ox, the unruly cow, and, 

 in the circus, the trained lion or tiger or elephant 

 that suddenly "goes bad." In domestication the 

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