WHAT DO ANIMALS KNOW? 
has a chapter entitled “Animal Materia Medica.” 
The writer, to make out his case, is forced to treat 
as medicine the salt which the herbivorous animals 
eat, and the sand and gravel which grain and nut- 
eating birds take into their gizzards to act as mill- 
stones to grind their grist. He might as well treat 
their food as medicine and be done with it. So far 
as I know, animals have no remedies whatever for 
their ailments. Even savages have, for the most 
part, only “fake” medicines. 
A Frenchman has published a book, which has 
been translated into English, on the “ Industries of 
Animals.” Some of these Frenchmen could give 
points even to our “Modern School of Nature 
Study.” It may be remembered that Michelet said 
the bird floated, and that it could puff itself up so 
that it was lighter than the air! Not a little contem- 
porary natural science can beat the bird in this 
respect. 
The serious student of nature can have no interest 
in belittling or in exaggerating the intelligence of 
animals. What he wants is the truth about them, 
and this he will not get from our natural history 
romancers, nor from the casual, untrained observers, 
who are sure to interpret the lives of the wood-folk 
in terms of their own motives and experiences, nor 
from Indians, trappers, or backwoodsmen, who give 
such free rein to their fancies and superstitions. 
Such a book as Romanes’s “ Animal Intelligence” 
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