WAYS OF NATURE 



sooner in fresh water than in salt or than in the air. 

 A duck's mouth held open and the tongue pinched 

 by a shell-fish would doubtless soon be in a feverish 

 and abnormal condition, which cool water would 

 tend to alleviate. One is unable to see how the 

 ducks could have acquired the kind of human ex- 

 perimental knowledge attributed to them. A per- 

 son might learn such a secret, but surely not a duck. 

 In discovering and in eluding its enemies, and in 

 many other ways, the duck's wits are very sharp, 

 but to attribute to them a knowledge of the virtues 

 of fresh water over salt in a certain unusual emer- 

 gency — an emergency that could not have occurred 

 to the race of ducks, much less to individuals often 

 enough for a special instinct to have been developed 

 to meet it — is to make them entirely human. 



The whole idea of animal surgery which the 

 incident impUes — such as mending broken legs 

 with clay, salving wounds with pitch, or resorting 

 to bandages or amputations — is preposterous. Sick 

 or wounded animals will often seek rehef from pain 

 by taking to the water or to the mud, or maybe to 

 the snow, just as cows will seek the pond or the 

 bushes to escape the heat and the flies, and that is 

 about the extent of their surgery. The dog licks 

 his wound; it no doubt soothes and reUeves it. 

 The cow Ucks her calf; she licks him into shape; 

 it is her instinct to do so. That tongue of hers is 

 a currycomb, plus warmth and moisture and flexi- 

 182 



