PREFACE 
My reader will find this volume quite a departure 
in certain ways from the tone and spirit of my pre- 
vious books; especially in regard to the subject of 
animal intelligence. Heretofore I have made the 
most of every gleam of intelligence of bird or four- 
footed beast that came under my observation, often, 
I fancy, making too much of it, and giving the wild 
creatures credit for more “sense” than they really 
possessed. The nature lover is always tempted to 
do this very thing; his tendency is to humanize the 
wild life about him, and to read his own traits and 
moods into whatever he looks upon. I have never 
consciously done this myself, at least to the extent 
of willfully misleading my reader. But some of our 
later nature writers have been guilty of this fault, 
and have so grossly exaggerated and misrepresented 
the every-day wild life of our fields and woods that 
their example has caused a strong reaction to take 
place in my own mind, and has led me to set about 
examining the whole subject of animal life and 
instinct in a way I have never done before. 
In March, 1903, I contributed to “The Atlantic 
Monthly” a paper called “Real and Sham Natural 
History,” which was as vigorous a protest as I could 
Vv 
