EFFECT OF FEAR ON ANIMALS. 21h 
ferred from its pleasant haunts in the marshes to 
the capacious maw of the hungry mink. 
It is at low tide that this animal usually ‘cap- 
tures the marsh-hen. We have often at high 
spring tide observed a dozen of those birds 
standing on a small field of floating sticks and 
matted grasses, gazing stupidly at a mink seated 
not five feet from them. No attempt was made 
by the latter to capture the birds that were now 
within his reach. At first we supposed that he 
might have already been satiated with food and 
was disposed to leave the tempting marsh-hens 
till his appetite called for more; but we were 
after more mature reflection inclined to think 
that the high spring tides which occur, exposing 
the whole marsh to view and leaving no place 
of concealment, frighten the mink as well as the 
marsh-hen; and as. misery sometimes makes us 
familiar with strange associates, so the mink and 
the marsh-hen like neighbour and brother hold 
on to their little floating islands till the waters 
subside, when each again follows the -instincts 
of nature. An instance of a similar effect of 
fear on other animals was related to us by an 
old resident of Carolina: some forty years ago, 
during a tremendous flood in the Santee river, 
he saw two or three deer on a small mound not 
twenty feet in diameter, surrounded by a wide 
sea of waters, with a cougar seated in the midst 
