OF WILD ANIMALS 7 



the great Observer of Wonders spends his day in the woods. 

 Wise men always suspect the man who sees too many mar- 

 velous things. 



The Relative Value of Witnesses. It is due that a 

 word should be said regarding "expert testimony" in the case 

 of the wild animal. Some dust has been raised in this field 

 by men posing as authorities on wild animal psychology, whose 

 observations of the world's wild animals have been confined 

 to the chipmunks, squirrels, weasels, foxes, rabbits, and birds 

 dwelling within a small circle surrounding some particular 

 woodland house. In another class other men have devoted 

 heavy scientific labors to laboratory observations on white 

 rats, domestic rabbits, cats, dogs, sparrows, turtles and newts 

 as the handpicked exponents of the intelligence of the animals 

 of the world! 



Alas! for the human sense of Proportion! 



Fancy an ethnologist studying the Eskimo, the Dog-Rib 

 Indian, the Bushman, the Aino and the Papuan, and then 

 proceeding to write conclusively "On the Intelligence of the 

 Human Race." 



The proper place in which to study the minds, maimers 

 and morals of wild aiiimals is in the most thickly populated 

 haunts of the most intelligent species. The free and untram- 

 meled animal, busily working out its own destiny unhindered 

 by man, is the beau-ideal animal to observe and to study. 

 Go to the plain, the wilderness, the desert and the mountain, 

 not merely to shoot everything on foot, but to see animals at 

 home, and there use your eyes and your field-glass. See what 

 normal wild animus do as "behavior," and then try to find out 

 why they do it. 



The next best place for study purposes is a spacious, sani- 

 tary and weU-stocked zoological park, wherein are assembled 

 great collections of the most interesting land vertebrates that 

 can be procured, from all over the earth. There the student 



