WAYS OF NATURE 
is not always a safe guide. It is like a lawyer’s plea 
to the jury for his client. Romanes was so intent 
upon making out his case that he allowed himself 
to be imposed upon by the tales of irresponsible 
observers. Many of his stories of the intelligence of 
birds and beasts are antecedently improbable. He 
evidently credits the story of the Bishop-of Carlisle, 
who thinks he saw a jackdaw being tried by a jury of 
rooks for some misdemeanor. Jack made a speech 
and the jury cawed back at him, and after a time 
“appeared to acquit Jack! What a child’s fancy to 
be put in a serious work on “ Animal Intelligence”! 
The dead birds we now and then find hanging from 
the nest, or from the limb of a tree, with a string 
wound around their necks are no doubt criminals 
upon whom their fellows have inflicted capital pun- 
ishment! 
Most of the observations upon which Romanes 
bases his conclusions are like the incident which he 
quoted from Jesse, who tells of some swallows that 
in the spirit of revenge tore down a nest from which 
they had been ejected by the sparrows, in order to 
destroy the young of their enemies — a feat im- 
possible for swallows to do. Jesse does not say he 
saw the swallows do it, but he “saw the young spar- 
rows dead upon the ground amid the ruins of the 
nest,” and of course the nest could get down in no 
other way! 
Not to Romanes or Jesse or Michelet must we go 
148 
