WAYS OF NATURE 
trap, but what the motive is, who shall say? Would 
the same mice share their last crumb with their fel- 
low if he were starving? That, of course, would be 
a much nearer approach to the human code, and 
is too much to expect. Bees will clear their fellows 
of honey, but whether it be to help them, or to save 
the honey, is a question. 
In my youth I saw a parent weasel seize one of its 
nearly grown young which I had wounded and carry 
it across an open barway, in spite of my efforts to 
hinder it. A friend of mine, who is a careful observer, 
says he once wounded a shrike so that it fell to the 
ground, but before he got to it, it recovered itself and 
flew with difficulty toward some near trees, calling 
to its mate the while; the mate came and seemed to 
get beneath the wounded bird and buoy it up, so 
aiding it that it gained the top of a tall tree, where 
my friend left it. But in neither instance can we 
call this helpfulness entirely disinterested, or pure 
altruism. 
Emerson said that he was an endless experimenter 
with no past at his back. This is just what Nature is. 
She experiments endlessly, seeking new ways, new 
modes, new forms, and is ever intent upon breaking 
away from the past. In this way, as Darwin showed, 
she attains to new species. She is blind, she gropes 
her way, she trusts to luck; all her successes are 
chance hits. Whenever I look over my right shoul- 
der, as I sit at my desk writing these sentences, I see 
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