WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW? 



dead leaves when in a hedge-row or a bramble-bush, 

 in each case thus rendering the nest very difficult of 

 detection because it harmonizes so perfectly with its 

 surroundings, and the writer wonders if this har- 

 mony is the result of accident or of design. He is 

 incKned to think that it is unpremeditated, as I my- 

 self do. The bird uses the material nearest to hand. 



Another case, which this same writer gives at 

 second-hand, of a bird recognizing the value of pror 

 tective coloration, is not credible. A friend of his 

 told him that he had once visited a colony of terns 

 "on an island where the natural breeding accom- 

 modation was so hmited that many of them had 

 conveyed patches of pebbles on to the grass and laid 

 their eggs thereon." 



Here is the same difficulty we have encountered 

 before — one more step of reasoning than the bird 

 is capable of. As a deduction from observed facts, 

 a bird, of course, knows nothing about protective 

 coloring; its wisdom in this respect is the wisdom 

 of Nature, and Nature in animal life never acts with 

 this kind of foresight. A bird may exercise some 

 choice about the background of its nest, but it will 

 not make both nest and background. 



Nature learns by endless experiment. Through a 

 long and expensive process of natural selection she 

 seems to have brought the color of certain animals 

 and the color of their environment pretty close 

 together, the better to hide the animals from their 

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