WAYS OF NATURE 



when our yellow warbler, finding this strange egg of 

 the cowbird in her nest, proceeds to bury it by put- 

 ting another bottom in the nest and carrying up the 

 sides to correspond, she shows something very much 

 like sense and judgment, though of a clumsy kind. 

 How much simpler and easier it would be to throw 

 out the strange egg ! I have known the cowbird her- 

 self to carry an egg from a nest in which she wished 

 to deposit one of her own. Again, how stupid and 

 ludicrous it seems on the part of the mother spar- 

 row, or warbler, or vireo, when she goes about toiling 

 desperately to satisfy the hunger of her big clam- 

 orous bantling of a cowbird, never suspecting that 

 she has been imposed upon ! 



Of course the line that divides man from the lower 

 orders is not a straight line. It has many breaks and 

 curves and deep indentations. The man-like apes, 

 as it were, mark where the line rises up into the 

 domain of man. Furthermore, the elephant and the 

 dog, especially as we know them in domestication, 

 encroach upon man's territory. 



Men are born with aptitudes for different things, 

 but the art and the science of them all they have to 

 learn; proficiency comes with practice. Man must 

 learn to spin his web, to build his house, to sing his 

 song, to know his food, to sail his craft, to find his way 

 — things that the animals know " from the jump." 

 The animal inherits its knowledge and its skill : man 

 must acquire his by individual effort; all he inherits 

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