Vv 
FACTORS IN ANIMAL LIFE 
HE question that the Californian schoolchildren 
put to me, “ Have the birds got sense?” still 
“sticks in my crop.” 
Such extraordinary sense has been attributed to 
most of the wild creatures by several of our latter day 
nature-writers, that I have been moved to examine 
the whole question more thoroughly than ever be- 
fore, and to find out, as far as I can, just how much 
and what kind of sense the birds and four-footed 
beasts have. 
In this and in some following chapters I shall 
make an effort touse my own sense to the best advan- 
tage in probing that of the animals, which has, as I 
think, been so vastly overrated. 
When sentiment gets overripe, it becomes senti- 
mentalism. The sentiment for nature which has 
been so assiduously cultivated in our times is fast 
undergoing this change, and is softening into sen- 
timentalism toward the lower animals. Many a 
wholesome feeling can be pushed so far that it 
becomes a weakness and a sign of disease. Pity for 
the sufferings of our brute neighbors may be a manly 
59 
