A PINCH OF SALT 
still want to cross-question you sharply, but I may 
believe you. Such things have happened. Or if 
you tell me that you have seen an old doe with 
horns, or a hen with spurs, or a male bird incubat- 
ing and singing on the nest, unusual as the last 
occurrence is, I shall not dispute you. I will concede 
that you may have seen a white crow ora white 
blackbird or a white robin, or a black chipmunk 
or a black red squirrel, and many other departures 
from the usual in animal life; but I cannot share the 
conviction of the man who told me he had seen a 
red squirrel curing rye before storing it up in its 
den, or of the writer who believes the fox will ride 
upon the back of a sheep to escape the hound, or 
of another writer that he has seen the blue heron 
chumming for fish. Even if you aver that you 
have seen a woodpecker running down the trunk 
of a tree as well as up, I shall be sure you have 
not seen correctly. It is the nuthatch and not the 
woodpecker that hops up and down and around 
the trees. It is easy to transcend any man’s experi- 
ence; not so easy to transcend his reason. “ Nobody 
has seen so many things as everybody,” yet a dozen 
men cannot see any farther than one, and the truth 
is not often a matter of majorities. If you tell me 
any incident in the life of bird or beast that implies 
the possession of what we mean by reason, I shall 
be very skeptical. 
Am I guilty, then, as has been charged, of pre- 
175 
