JIM CROW 39 



because he enjoyed the physical sensation, not be- 

 cause it was a form of contact with one he loved, as 

 in the case of a dog. Try to put your hand about 

 his body and pick him up, and away he would 

 struggle, with an angry oath, his instinct of personal 

 independence roused into fierce resentment. After 

 all, a crow is a bird, a creature of the air, of the free 

 spaces. He has a marvelous adaptability to human 

 companionship, but his heart remains aloft. 



I have never myself heard a crow talk. There 

 used to be a theory when I was a boy that if you 

 slit their tongues they could talk, but I never tried 

 this measure. It is perfectly easy, however, for a 

 fairly lively imagination to construe the incessant 

 gibber of a pet crow into human speech. He makes 

 so many noises that some of them are mathemati- 

 cally bound to resemble certain monosyllabic and 

 even bisyllabic words. Jim, for example, frequent- 

 ly said "Papa" quite as plainly as most babies do 

 when they are being shown off by their proud par- 

 ents. Certain it is that if any bird could be taught 

 to use speech intelligently, the crow could. He has 

 a perfectly well-defined language of his own, which 

 is unfailingly understood by his fellows. I have 

 heard it said that an investigator in Washington, 

 D. C, could distinguish and successfully imitate no 

 less than twenty different crow calls, each with a 

 specific meaning. This may be an exaggeration, 

 but any observant farmer's boy knows half a dozen. 

 Many times I have gone out into the fields and seen 

 the crows walking about on the ground, with one or 

 two sentinels posted in conspicuous trees at the 

 edge of the clearing, and heard a sudden caw go 



