THE ANIMAL AND THE PUZZLE-BOX 



accord, runs round a bevy of quail that will not sit, 

 but keep moving off, and places them between 

 himseK and the sportsman; or when gulls carry shell- 

 fish high in the air and drop them on the rocks to 

 break their shells ; or when, in Africa, a bird called the 

 honey-guide leads the hunter to stores of wild honey 

 — a fact which Roosevelt verified. We have no ways 

 in the laboratory, or out, to assay such incidents and 

 discover how much, if any, of the gold of real thought 

 they contain. They may contain none, but may be 

 only phases of the animal's instinctive activities, 

 yet they are phases which the laboratory investiga- 

 tor is powerless to bring out. If there are degrees 

 in instinct, as in judgment, then in the cases just 

 cited we have the higher degrees. 



Ill 



The laboratory naturalist is hampered by the nar- 

 rowness of his field: he has but one string to his 

 bow, he has to do with only one phase or motive of 

 animal life — the desire for food; the mainspring 

 of the behavior of all his subjects is their hunger. 

 Spurred on by the sight or smell of food they attack 

 the problems he sets before them. All the rest of 

 their varied and picturesque activities in field and 

 wood, their multiplex life-problems for which Nature 

 has equipped them, both physically and mentally, 

 their loves, their wars, their home-making and nest- 

 building, their migrations,, their herdings, their 

 183 



