,VIII 

 THE KEY TO ANIMAL BEHAVIOR 



IF I were to give a detailed account of the tide of 

 wild life that ebbs and flows, winter and sum- 

 mer, about my cabin door, of the shrike I saw a few 

 days ago hunting a little brown creeper about the 

 trunk of the maple-tree in front of my window, and 

 especially of the downy woodpecker that has been 

 excavating a chamber for his winter-quarters in the 

 top of a chestnut post in the vineyard near my 

 study, hammering away at it day after day like a 

 carpenter building a house, and returning there at 

 night after his day's work and his foraging for sup- 

 per are over — if I were to give a detailed account 

 of these things and others, many of the incidents 

 would show so much of what we in ourselves call 

 rational intelligence that we should be tempted to 

 ascribe the same powers or faculties to these wild 

 neighbors of mine. Intelligence we may call it with- 

 out falling into any very serious anthropomor- 

 phism — the kind of intelligence that pervades 

 all nature, and which is seen in the vegetable as 

 well as in the animal world, but which differs rad- 

 ically, in its mode of working, from rational human 

 intelligence. 



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