LITERARY TREATMENT OF NATURE 



hard put to it for food; their color does not make 

 them conspicuous, — all these things, no doubt, tend 

 to make them more famiUar than their congeners. 

 Why, again, the chickadee can be induced to perch 

 upon your hand, and take food from it, more readily 

 than can the nuthatch or the woodpecker, is a ques- 

 tion not so easily answered. It being a lesser bird, it 

 probably has fewer enemies than either of the others, 

 and its fear would be less in proportion. 



Why does the dog, the world over, use his nose 

 in covering the bone he is hiding, and not his paw ? 

 Is it because his foot would leave a scent that 

 would give his secret away, while his nose does not ? 

 He uses his paw in digging the hole for the bone, 

 but its scent in this case would be obliterated by 

 his subsequent procedure. 



The foregoing is one way to interpret or explain 

 natural facts. Everything has its reason. To hit 

 upon this reason is to interpret it to the understand- 

 ing. To interpret it to the emotions, or to the moral 

 or to the aesthetic sense, that is another matter. 



I would not be unjust or unsympathetic toward 

 this current tendency to exalt the lower animals into 

 the human sphere. I would only help my reader to 

 see things as they are, and to stimulate him to love 

 the animals as animals, and not as men. Nothing is 

 gained by self-deception. The best discipline of life 

 is that which prepares us to face the facts, no matter 

 what they are. Such sweet companionship as one 

 205 



