WAYS OF NATURE 
Romanes himself or Darwin himself said he saw 
this, one would have to believe it. Birds whose nests 
have been plundered sometimes pull the old nest to 
pieces and use the material, or parts of it, in build- 
ing a new nest; but I cannot believe that any pair 
of birds ever picked up a nest containing eggs and 
carried it off to a new place. How could they do it? 
With one on each side, how could they fly with the 
nest between them ? They could not carry it with their 
feet, and how could they manage it with their beaks ? 
My neighbor met in the woods a black snake that 
had just swallowed a red squirrel. Now your ro- 
mance-naturalist may take such a fact as this and 
make as pretty a story of it as he can. He may 
ascribe to the snake and his victim all the human 
emotions he pleases. He may make the snake glide 
through the tree-tops from limb to limb, and from 
tree to tree, in pursuit of its prey: the main thing is, 
the snake got the squirrel. If our romancer makes 
the snake fascinate the squirrel, I shall object, be- 
cause I don’t believe that snakes have this power. 
People like to believe that they have. It would seem 
as if this subtle, gliding, hateful creature ought to 
have some such mysterious gift, but I have no proof 
that it has. Every year I see the black snake robbing 
birds’-nests, or pursued by birds whose nests it has 
just plundered, but I have yet to see it cast its fatal 
spell upon a grown bird. Or, if our romancer says 
that the black snake was drilled in the art of squir- 
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