WAYS OF NATURE 



his breakfast ? This last supposition is just as rea- 

 sonable as any part of the story. A grouse will not 

 readily leave her unfledged young, but she will leave 

 her eggs when disturbed by man or beast with 

 apparent unconcern. 



It is the rarest thing in the world that real 

 observers see any of these startling and exceptional 

 things in nature. Thoreau saw none. White saw 

 none. Charles St. John saw none. John Muir 

 reports none, Audubon none. It is always your 

 untrained observer that has his poser, his shower 

 of frogs or lizards, or his hoop snakes, and the like. 

 The impossible things that country people see or 

 hear of would make a book of wonders. In some 

 places fishermen believe that the loon carries its 

 egg under its wing till it hatches, and one would say 

 that they are in a position to know. So they are. 

 But opportunity is only half the problem; the verify- 

 ing mind is the other half. One of our writers of 

 popular nature books relates this curious incident of 

 " animal surgery " among wild ducks. He discovered 

 two eider ducks swimming about a fresh-water pond 

 and acting queerly, " dipping their heads under 

 water and keeping them there for a minute or more 

 at a time." He later discovered that the ducks had 

 large mussels attached to their tongues, and that 

 they were trying to get rid of them by drowning 

 them. The birds had discovered that the salt-water 

 mussel cannot live in fresh water. Now am I to 

 180 



