WAYS OF NATURE 
but his “wife would not consent.” Many a feather- 
less biped has had the same experience with his 
society-spoiled wife. The puzzle is, how did this 
masterly observer know that this state of affairs 
existed between this couple? Did the wife tell him, 
or the husband? “Hermit” often takes his visitors 
to a wood thrushes’ singing-school, where, “as the 
birds forget their lesson, they drop out one by one.” 
He has seen an old rooster teaching a young 
rooster to crow! At first the old rooster crows 
mostly in the morning, but later in the season he 
crows throughout the day, at short intervals, to show 
the young “the proper thing.” “Young birds re- 
moved out of hearing will not learn to crow.” He 
hears the old grouse teaching the young to drum in 
the fall, though he neglects to tell us that he has 
seen the young in attendance upon these lessons. 
He has seen a mother song sparrow helping her two- 
year-old daughter build her nest. He has discov- 
ered that the cat talks to her kittens with her ears: 
when she points them forward, that means “yes;” 
when she points them backward, that means “no.” 
Hence she can tell them whether the wagon they 
hear approaching is the butcher’s cart or not, and 
thus save them the trouble of looking out. 
And so on through a long list of wild and domes- 
tic creatures. At first I suspected this writer was 
covertly ridiculing a certain other extravagant “ob- 
server,” but a careful reading of his letter shows him 
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