READING THE BOOK OF NATURE 



beasts often show much intelligence, or what looks 

 like intelligence, but; as Hamerton says, "the mo- 

 ment we think of them as human, we are lost." 



A farmer had a yearling that sucked the cows. 

 To prevent this, he put on the yearling a muzzle 

 set full of sharpened nails. These of course pricked 

 the cows, and they would not stand to be drained of 

 their milk. The next day the farmer saw the year- 

 ling rubbing the nails against a rock in order, as 

 he thought, to dull them so they would not prick 

 the cows! How much easier to believe that the 

 beast was simply trying to get rid of the awkward 

 incumbrance upon its nose. What can a calf or 

 a cow know about sharpened nails, and the use 

 of a rock to dull them ? This is a kind of outside 

 knowledge — outside of their needs and experi- 

 ences — that they could not possess. 



An Arizona friend of mine lately told me this 

 interesting incident about the gophers that infested 

 his cabin when he was a miner. The gophers ate up 

 his bread. He could not hide it from them or put 

 it beyond their reach. Finally, he bethought him to 

 stick his loaf on the end of a long iron poker that 

 he had, and then stand up the poker in the middle 

 of his floor. Still, when he came back to his cabin, 

 he would find his loaf eaten full of holes. One day, 

 having nothing to do, he concluded to watch and 

 see how the gophers reached the bread, and this 

 was what he saw: The animals climbed up the side 

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